The air was stained with the stench of blood. Bodies strewn about without care or compassion, some hardly recognizable in the light of flames that licked at their flesh.
I stood in the center of it all, basking in the heat, thriving in the carnage of my own creation.
Yet, the bodies I gouged on tasted bitter on my tongue, far harder to force down my throat than my previous feasts. Even Curses held more flavor than this.
They had hardly put up a resistance, their honored Sorcerers cut down with a little more than a couple drops of blood to show for it on my end.
Was the disappointment I felt souring the taste of my meals?
I tossed an unfinished leg into the growing flames with a groan, preparing to stand and make a swift run to the next village. Perhaps they could satisfy me, unlike these half-rate sorcerers.
Like a distant heartbeat, I felt a pulse of energy—stopping me in my tracks. I let my feet carry me toward the faint ringing of negative emotion, the prospective of a Sorcerer with at least a sliver of talent or a lingering Curse I could use as a palate cleanser urged me forward.
When I approached the source of this suppressed energy, I found it to be where I had first encountered the 'chief' of this village, an aging Sorcerer with a Technique allowing him to make himself intangible and an annoying distraction at most while I butchered his 'disciples'.
But my focus was beneath the collapsed wooden structure, where the pulsing of emotion still persisted despite my obvious presence. Without much effort, a hole was carved into the ground and by proxy, into the underground portion of the building.
A square pit was revealed to my eyes once the debris was reduced to splinters, about as large as most of the wooden huts that had once littered this village. Half of it was fenced off, wooden pillars as wide as trees containing the subject of my interest.
They lay on a muddied floor, dressed in a tattered cloth covered in a layer of dirt. Now that I was this close, without a doubt they were the one I had been seeking.
I stood at the edge of the pit, watching as they lightly stirred in the large shadow I'd cast over them from the still lingering flames behind me.
"Are you a Sorcerer?" I called out to no immediate response, the figure still trying to pull themselves together as I stood before them, shaking like a leaf as their fingers sunk into the mud.
Growing impatient, I attempted to draw their ire with a flash of my Technique, hitting inches away from one of the hands they submerged into the mud. Even then, they slowly craned their head upwards to gaze upon me, unphased by how easily I could have taken their head.
"Have you killed them all?" Their voice was strained, devoid of life and emotion despite the slowly rising aura around them.
"I have," I answered without hesitation. "Do you seek to avenge them?" I further questioned, urging my own energy to smother theirs all the while.
Small grey eyes only peered into my own, unflinching in the face of certain death.
"No," their answers remained toneless despite the weight I pushed on their shoulders. "I only wish to know whether you would allow them to come back as Curses, so I may slaughter them myself."
The ferocious nature of their words betrayed the face they displayed to the world. One broken into an expression I was far too familiar with.
"I slayed them with a Curse, their Sorcerers will not be returning to this plane," I elaborated, watching closely as their expression shifted ever so slightly to my words. A twitch of the eye here, the slightest curve of their lips.
Despite it all, I did not act upon my observations, only watching as they pulled themselves to their feet. On limbs as thick as sticks, they stumbled toward the dirt wall I stood on. Uncut fingernails dug into the dirt, a strength impossible for someone of their size pulling them up, one clawing grasp at a time.
Eventually, they made it to my feet, nails black and broken even as they pushed off the ground once more to stand before me. They didn't even make it past my waist, yet on legs frail enough to snap against a strong wind, they stood before me stronger than most who had claimed to be my equal.
"I shall settle for feasting on their remains," they breathed out, a fire in their eyes growing stronger by the second.
I couldn't help but smile.
Taylor jolted awake, sweat soaked into the back of her shirt and a shout dying at the edge of her lips. A hand went to her chest, feeling her heart pump blood through her body at the pace of a machine gun. Her fingers pressed against a patch of still-healing skin just beneath her breast.
Her heartbeat began to slowly even out with controlled breaths.
Taylor brought her hand off the healing wound and to her face, the hand unstained by the blood of the previous night. After several minutes of careful breathing, Taylor saw fit to finally swing her feet over the edge of her bed and move to open the blinds.
She flinched at the natural light that poured into the room from the window but did not shy away, peering through to take a glance at the city behind the glass. The Sun was high in the sky as people went about their business, cutting lawns and watering plants as Taylor rubbed her eyes.
Taylor rubbed her eyes again.
And again.
Now she was frantically pressing her hands to her eyes before letting her eyes adjust to the light, only to find her vision clearer than crystal.
In the chaos of last night, she really hadn't paid any mind to why she could see those gangsters so well in the dead of night. The gangsters she'd beaten within an inch of their lives.
If the revelation instant 20/20 vision gave her wasn't enough, now she was awake.
The fact she'd fled a scene of broken and bloody bodies in a city with people who could track her down with the smallest nugget of evidence was truly dawning on her. The scene of the beatdown painfully replayed in her head, thinking of anything she might've left behind that'll trace back to her.
If police or a stray hero found them first the gangsters would likely spill what happened, if only out of spite, including her appearance and any identifying marks. Even as drunk as they'd been she doubted they would forget her so easily. By the end of the week, she could have one of the city's major gangs and the Protectorate breathing down her neck.
'White girl with long curly hair' wasn't that uncommon, but one with distinct marks underneath her eyes definitely was.
Her feet quickly carried her to the bathroom where she found herself digging underneath the sink, frantically looking for any old makeup still stuffed away.
While she hadn't been one to use any of the stuff her mother had. Behind rolls of paper toilet paper and cleaning products, she found stacks of dusty little containers with italicized and fancy lettering. She pulled out what looked like concealer and set it on the counter, vaguely remembering when her mother had shown her how to apply it before she could even reach the sink, curious hands gripping the ends of a purple dress to—
She shook off the rouge memories that plagued her.
"Why was I remembering that now?"
Taylor stared into the mirror. Her eyes trained on the half-inch lines at the outer corners of each of her eyes.
"Sukuna," Taylor began as she unscrewed the lid of the narrow container. "If you can hear me, I'd like to make it clear that your eyes 'defaced' my body," Taylor spoke defiantly as her fingers gripped the brush and slowly brought up the skin-colored material at the edge of it to her face.
"Finally scraped together some spine have you?" A sudden voice split the tension better than any knife.
Taylor looked down to see a familiar mouth beneath an open eye, a sly grin spread across her cheek.
"If you aren't going to offer help then I'm just going to pretend you aren't there."
"Oh, I see now...did beating on those little humans give you the confidence you needed to believe we stand at the same height?"
Taylor hesitated.
"Did their brittle bones snapping beneath your blows dilute your understanding of the pecking order I've established?"
Taylor grit her teeth.
"Shut up."
"Don't be fooled into thinking the physical gifts you've been granted bring you anywhere close to my level."
"Shut up," Taylor demanded once more. "You know nothing about me."
"Sadly, I've been cursed with the knowledge of your character. I know you better than anyone, and frankly, I'm surprised you still walk around believing you're deserving of such strength."
Sukuna let out a bark of laughter, a crass and sickening thing.
"It's amusing to see your shattered ego propped up on those inflated muscles of yours—"
Taylor swept the brush across Sukuna's eye and received nothing but an annoyed growl. She watched as his one, make-up-covered eye twitched rapidly while his mouth twisted into a snarl.
"Your bones will prove to make for good toothpicks brat," Sukuna spat out one last threat before his mouth faded away and his eye closed shut.
"Really? That's all it took?"
A knock at the door moved her back into action, brushing across Sukuna's closed eyes to moderate success.
"Taylor! You alright in there?" The déjà vu her father elicited from the other side of the bathroom door didn't go unnoticed.
"Yep, just got something in my eye," Taylor called back, thankfully only having to twist the truth slightly as she dabbed at her face. "Alright, just wanted to let you know you'll be going back to the hospital tomorrow," his words caused her breath to hitch momentarily. "Just a quick checkup."
She heard him walk down the stairs from within the bathroom, wooden steps creaking all the way down until he stepped into the living room. It was only then she checked to see if her make-up did its job.
For the most part—it did. You could definitely notice the localized patch of ever so slightly discolored skin if you looked close enough, but the eye itself had its prominence reduced to something of a light scar, the kind you could only see in a certain light.
It would have to do.
Sadly, the coiling of steel beneath her skin with every slight movement wasn't as easily hidden. Even under the sweater she'd thrown on immediately after shedding the hospital gown, the statuesque physique of a Greek God refused to be hidden away. It certainly didn't help that these clothes were made for someone a couple of inches shorter and thinner.
But Taylor sure as hell wasn't ungrateful for the blessing she'd been given with the trademark 'Superhero(ine)' body. She'd skipped years of conditioning and dieting overnight with not a single drop of sweat to show for it.
However, the problem of the one person most qualified to notice the minute changes in her body was still downstairs and had somehow not kicked her to the curb in a world of shapeshifters and bio-tinkers was a concern of its own.
The only possibility was that he just somehow hadn't noticed last night or already called the PRT, all of this being an elaborate act to buy time, and she was minutes away from being dragged out of her own home by a team of Capes.
No, that made no sense. If he had called the PRT last night she would probably be in a padded cell right now, unless they were abruptly wiped out in the several hours Taylor had been asleep. Nothing short of an Endbringer could manage that without a peep.
Taylor would just have to hope her father actually believed the taller and far more muscular girl that showed up at his doorstep was in fact, his daughter, and not a sadistic villain looking to flay him alive when the moment he let his guard down.
A deep breath filled her lungs before she vacated the bathroom...and immediately turned to dig through her closet for the biggest hoodie she could find.
Taylor had to silently thank the relatives who she hadn't seen face-to-face in years for the two-sizes too-large brown hoodie she now donned. An unripped tag scratched at the back of her neck as she stopped at the foot of the stairs, turning to the kitchen where she spied her father milling about
When she entered the room he was filling himself a glass of orange juice, his back to her.
"You're cleared for the rest of the month from school if you're curious," his sudden speech almost made her flinch, more caught off guard by his words than the impacts of gunfire.
"Get it together."
"That's good...though catching up is going to hurt," Taylor felt like the words weren't coming from her own lips, just preordained responses from someone trying to predict what Taylor Hebert would say next.
"What the hell is wrong with me?"
A hush filled the room. Her father had yet to make a move since he'd set down the carton of juice, seemingly just electing to stare at the glass in front of him as he remained hunched over the counter.
A bead of sweat began making its way down Taylor's temple as she shifted her stance and let her eyes dart to possible exits, waiting for the moment a costumed figure decided to burst through one of the nearby walls or windows.
He finally sighed, breaking the silence with a deep sound filled with an emotion Taylor couldn't place.
"Who put you in that locker Taylor?"
It was a question that hit harder than a grown man with a baseball bat.
"I—I don't know...someone shoved me from behind and locked me in..." A quick answer, something that wouldn't send him tearing down the street to crash into Emma's house.
"Taylor...please," his hands were balled into fists on the counter as he pleaded with her. "You have to give me something, anyone you might suspect."
"I already gave him an answer."
"That toxicology report that came in when they finally got you admitted..." He paused while she watched his posture shift with a deep breath. His hands went back to laying flat on the counter.
"They had Panacea visit you know?" He turned his head to look at her, making the heavy bags under his eyes visible. "The doctors said they would've had to amputate your leg without her there."
In an instant, she found herself back in that locker. The bugs crawling across her legs, that horrific smell still scarred into her nostrils, the ankle-deep sludge she was forced to shift around in while her voice gave out. Every time she desperately screamed and smashed into the locker door, only more laughter seemed to drown her out.
"I—" She stopped before she began.
Taylor's hands gripped into fists, eyes locked onto the floor as her words petered out. The familiar sensation of tears welling up had her furiously wiping at her eyes before they could trail down to her recently applied makeup.
It made her completely defenseless against the two arms that wrapped around her and forced her into the warmth of a hug she hadn't felt in ages.
Awww, how sweet. Better hold him tight Taylor, the current ending is still up in the air.
JK (for the most part)
A bit of purposely planted OOCness from the original material might rock the boat for some of you but be assured it's noticed and all according to plan.