Quest

by Kahlil Johnson

Uhhhh

27. Project 25

"Hey… Demmy, right?"

Today was just supposed to be any other day for Danny. He'd just finished his usual morning rounds- checking up on everyone, making sure nothing's gone wrong overnight- and was just about to head off to the docks until he'd reached the garage and found a familiar redhead bent over the hood of his sedan.

A familiar redhead that jumped in surprise from his voice, having been too absorbed to notice him beforehand.

"-Danny! Hey!" Demmy nervously said. He could plainly see her going back and forth between hiding the wrench in her hand or just letting her arms loosely hang on her sides, before giving up to lean on the side of the car instead. She was obviously trying to look casual, not that the constipated face she was giving him was helping her any. "Nice weather we're having today."

Danny crossed his arms in suspicion. "Demmy, what are you doing to my car?"

The redhead winced. "I was- well, you know how Taylor and I accidentally got your car damaged a few days back?" She replied, sheepishly scratching the back of her head with the wrench.

He still remembered it pretty well. How could he not? He'd been in the car when it happened, after all. Plus there was that whole situation with a stranger managing to sneak into one of Taylor's portal-gap-things. It wasn't a morning anyone would forget anytime soon.

…Life got pretty weird, all things considered.

Either way, he nodded and gestured for her to continue.

"Just noticed we never really had a chance to make it up to you 'til now. So when I finally had some free time today, I thought 'Why not?', you know?" She quickly averted her gaze from him, murmuring guiltily. "Sorry."

Really, they didn't do more than just crack the glass. He was more thankful that no one was seriously hurt.

"That looks more than just replacing a broken window to me," he pointed out instead.

His whole car looked like it went through an entire overhaul. Sure, past the new protective grill, it wasn't that different from a cursory glance. Look a little deeper, though, and you'll see all of the subtle details- improvements to the material, the hidden, new segments to the car's chassis, and of course, the newly replaced windows.

"I might have… worked on it a bit more." Demmy sheepishly laughed.

A bit more, she says. Danny raised a skeptical eyebrow at the redhead. "This isn't going to spontaneously turn into a turret on me, right?"

"I wish. I mean, what? Of course not!" Demmy paled and waved her hands wildly.

It's really only at that reaction did Danny finally let loose the amused grin he was hiding, before tussling the young woman's hair. "I'm just kidding. You did great, kiddo. Thanks."

It's telling that instead of the fond annoyed reaction he'd been expecting, Demmy just stood there, stunned, absently touching her hair in wide-eyed wonder.

Up until now, there's always been some distance between him and his daughter's projection. He'd treated Emmy as well as he would anyone, but no matter which person they turned into, there was always that lingering reminder of that first ever emulation- that violence-craving giant of a thug- overshadowing his impressions of each of them.

But. He realized.

Besides Taylor, who did Emmy really have?

It felt like a wall broke inside of him. Like every one of his reservations just felt silly, all of a sudden.

Danny accepted all of Taylor's kids as part of his family. Emmy… Well, Demmy and Pemmy, now. In a way, they were his kids, too, weren't they?

He needed to try harder.

"So why don't you give me a rundown on everything?" His question seemed to snap Demmy out of her fugue, looking at him now with pleasant surprise.

"S-sure!" Demmy hurriedly patted her hair back into form, an excited smile plastered on her face as she started to go over all his car's new features. "Alright, it would've been illegal to put any turrets, but I think you're gonna like what I did with the headlights…"

When her sister finally found them, Demmy was just about to disassemble the dashboard to show all the improvements she made. Danny let out another huff of amusement as Pemmy exasperatedly dragged her more rambunctious twin away to do something else probably more important.

To think, just a few months ago, it was just him and Taylor.

Life sure has come a long way, hasn't it?

But he wouldn't have it any other way.

—————

A/N: tysm to Bowler Hat Guy for helping out with this omake!

Last edited: Mar 13, 2023

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Phearo

Feb 24, 2023

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Bowler Hat Guy

Bowler Hat Guy

A Hat & Its Man

Mar 6, 2023

#55,771

She knew she had only just had the fledgling thought to scout ahead when gapping somewhere, and was, in fact, uniquely well equipped to do so with her otherwise entirely invisible companions - but Taylor didn't do that now for one specific reason.

She was under the impression that she already had an understanding with the people at her destination.

Now, she couldn't use Unohana as a target, which was fine. She could theoretically appear anywhere she had previously seen, which also could have worked, but as she had a specific goal in mind, she thought it would be helpful to find a friendly face.

This is why she chose to emerge from her gap directly in front of Zaraki Kenpachi.

"Kenpachi!" she cheered just seeing him. After dealing with Dante she craved the simplicity of the man before her. He was a brute, yes, and he was kind of a lunatic besides, but he was familiar, and more importantly, he didn't come with any weird emotional associations.

He was a violent psychopath and her first friend, and that was it.

"Oi! It's the weird girl!" the man himself returned as she appeared from the swirling portal of disembodied eyes. His hand went to his sword immediately, and Yachiru - who was laying across one of his shoulders like a sleeping cat - perked up instantly.

"How rude! Thou art an axe murderer of profound distinction! I shan't hear a word about my own peculiarity!" she huffed at him, taking a step forward with the intention of slapping him lightly on the chest.

You know. Affectionately.

She was stopped when the sound of dozens of weapons being drawn from their scabbards rang out behind her.

And she didn't mean 'she paused in confusion'. She meant she was stopped, as in, the combined pressure of all the souls in the room abruptly weighing down on her was nearly crippling.

It was all she could do to drop to her knees and resist the urge to Devil Trigger in an attempt to stave off the force. It probably would have worked too - demonic power interacted weirdly with spiritual power, like oil and water, so if she made the switch over she would probably be immune to this attack.

But she got the impression that starting a fight here may not be the best idea.

"Identify yourself," a juvenile voice called to her, and Taylor managed to fractionally turn her head to get a look at the rest of the room she had appeared in.

It looked like a traditional Japanese banquet hall. A long rectangular room with paper doors lining its walls. Instead of a table in the centre of the room, there was a depression surrounded by two small steps, as though to create the sensation of a walkway in the middle of the room.

And surrounding that walk way, were some two dozen Soul Reapers - twelve of which were wearing white haori. Behind each person in a haori was a normal Soul Reaper, albeit ones who had their oddities to them. Subordinates.

One of those wearing the white haori was the one who had spoken to her, and she couldn't help but stare at him in confusion.

Because he was a child. An actual, literal, child. He looked no older than Mem and Mun, and like the staff who was once a girl, his hair was a messy mass of white. Heck, he was actually shorter than either of them by a little bit, which gave him - even while he was scowling at her - a countenance Taylor would normally have described as 'adorable'.

"...My name is Taylor Hebert. I am acquainted with thy compatriot, Unohana Retsu," she responded first and foremost. She could sense Pemmy and Demmy lining themselves up invisibly behind the white haired kid, having both prepared to lurch from stealth to murder someone if things became dire.

It was actually kind of jarring for Taylor to realise that, more than being in danger, that she was in a kind of danger that had ticked her projection over directly to being willing to kill someone if they had to. Or at least, try to.

"Captain Unohana is deceased," the white haired boy spat at her, obviously enraged by her statement.

Taylor opened her mouth to contest this point - mostly because by her own reckoning, everyone here was dead, since this was the afterlife, and more importantly, she had seen Unohana not more than a few days ago. She briefly entertained the idea that something had happened to the fearsome woman while she was gallivanting about Earth Bet, but, well…

She doubted it.

So the kid was clearly wrong.

However a new voice interjected before she could say anything.

"Stand down," it voice called out, ringing through the space with a tiredness to it that did not belie the weight of command behind it.

"But-" The white haired kid began to protest.

"Captain Hitsugaya. We are conferring a new Captain with her robe. Do not spill my…" Taylor turned her head slightly more to get a better look at the speaker, and found a positively ancient looking man standing at the head of the group, where the head of the table would be if this banquet hall had one. In front of him was a fairly statuesque-looking woman with silver hair who was staring around herself like a deer in the headlights. In fact, she was just about the only person who wasn't in the process of preparing to attack Taylor.

When the old man paused, he shot a contemplative and slightly annoyed look at Taylor before continuing.

"...rambunctious granddaughter's blood here," He finished tiredly.

Two things happened at once.

First, the pressure pinning her to the ground vanished - so that was good. Less good, was the sudden surge of confused shouting from all those present.

"She's wearing the Eleventh's haori!?"

"You had kids?"

"You had grandkids!?!?"

"Silence!" The old man bellowed again, turning once more to glare around the room before his gaze landed on Taylor.

Taylor briefly wondered if she was going to end up being misunderstood as someone's familial relation in every reality she went to. Was she supposed to take that as a serious gesture, or was she just being covered for? She didn't know anything about this guy so it kinda made it hard to tell.

Eh, she'd ask Unohana when she got home.

Probably.

"This is not why we are here! Girl! Sit!" The old man - she seriously needed to start learning some names or everyone here was going to end up with a stupid nickname - ordered her, gesturing to a spot behind himself to his right - directly opposite his own subordinate, a man wearing the traditional Japanese garb of a Soul Reaper and an ascot of all things.

Taylor had things to do and didn't really want to stay for this, but one look from the old man made her swiftly reconsider.

'Nemesis would like me to inform you that 'you are boring and you suck',' Ozma informed her as she swiftly darted to the edge of the walkway and hopped over to land behind the old man. The man standing nearby was, well, standing, but he'd told her to sit - which everyone else in the room wearing white was currently returning to doing - so she hesitantly lowered herself to the floor as well, cross legged.

"Sit correctly!" the old man barked, and Taylor hastily scrambled to look at how everyone else was sitting - with their legs together, knees on the ground and feet extended so they were sitting on their own heels.

It looked profoundly uncomfortable.

Then she spotted Kenpachi grouchily switching positions from one that mirrored hers and snickered slightly.

Well at least she was in good company.

About an hour of speechifying later, the meeting ended, and the old man - who's name she had come to find was 'Yamamoto' insisted that basically everyone get out.

The others were obviously more used to excessively formal meetings like this, but that didn't mean they liked them either, and so the vast majority of the people present swiftly made their exit, though not without sending her glances that ranged from simple curiosity to outright suspicion.

Except Kenpachi and Yachiru, who ignored the order to instead stride over to both herself and Captain Yamamoto.

"Hey old man, what's the deal?" He asked, pointing rudely at Taylor who was mostly just shaking her legs to get feeling back into them.

What a dumb way to sit. How could people stand this torture for hours on end?

"That is not your concern, Captain. Return to your post," Yamamoto said woodenly.

"Nah, wanna know her deal. She tried to barge in on my fight earlier so-" He began, which was about the moment that Nemesis got bored of waiting for things to move along and popped into existence next to all of them.

"Hah! I'm bigger than you now!" she crooned, somehow fluent in the weird vaguely rude form of Japanese everyone around Taylor seemed to use, and pointing imperiously at Yachiru - still slung over Kenpachi's shoulder.

"Stuuuuupid, that just means you don't fit on a shoulder anymore!" the other pinkette spat back, sticking her tongue out at the sword spirit.

"I can go to the mall!" Nemesis returned haughtily, demonstrating this point by posing in the middle of the banquet hall in her skinny jeans and sequin crop top.

"I don't know what that is!" Yachiru happily fired back.

Taylor wanted to die.

"I- I doth request thine forgiveness, mine spirit is not usually so- that is to say, heretofore she hast always been somewhat- but not at such a moment as this-" Taylor apologised, less because she felt it was truly necessary - Kenpachi clearly got away with it all the time - and more because she was starting to realise that Unohana wasn't an outlier - and she most certainly wasn't the biggest fish in this pond.

It was actually kind of intriguing. And humbling. She knew she threw her weight around back home quite a bit. Not as much as she could, and, mostly, for good reasons - but the fact was, she was accustomed to being the six hundred pound gorilla in the room.

"Girl," Yamamoto said plainly, and it took Taylor a moment to realise he was speaking to Nemesis who likewise paused for a moment to turn and examine him.

"What? You got a problem?" Nemesis fired at him, crossing her arms and levelling a smug stare at the elderly man. What Nemesis obviously didn't seem to notice, was the way Kenpachi edged cautiously away from the entire mess, which was… uncharacteristic of him.

And also, not something Yamamoto failed to notice.

"Yes. You're too loud. Kenpachi, two thousand overhand swings, perfect form. In the courtyard," Yamamoto said, standing as though he expected his order to be heeded without question. And… Much to Taylor's surprise, it was, as the other Captain immediately slumped dejectedly and began to pick his way out of the room, sparing only a second to glare at her from the exit before vanishing from sight.

"...Apologies, but I am the lieutenant of your… grandfather's… squad. You may call me Sasakibe. We should follow after him - I believe he wants to speak to you in private," The man with the ascot - who hadn't left when everyone else had - informed her politely, coincidentally jolting Nemesis out of her brief short circuit at politely being told to shut up.

"So?" she spits at him. Taylor's eye twitched.

"Nemesis, please be nicer. Or… quieter," Taylor eventually broke down and begged, earning herself and annoyed glare from the sword spirit. At least she could talk to Nemesis in English - that was always nice.

"You could take them though! You beat me up for your stupid Bankai but you don't even use it when I want you to! You're the worst!" The pinkette complained. Taylor hadn't felt shame in kind of a while, but the continual delays from the sword spirit were definitely starting to exceed her limits for the sensation.

"When we get back I'll find something to do with you, I promise, just… please stop," She repeated through grit teeth.

Honestly, caring for a sword spirit shouldn't be more work than caring for her actual children.

"...Promise?" Nemesis prodded her, taking on a wheedling tone and frowning at her. Taylor rolled her eyes.

"Yes," She insisted. She resisted the urge to scream as she was forced - in front of Sasakibe, no less! - to pinky swear on it, then turned with relief to the Lieutenant when Nemesis finally decided to go back to being a sword. It was something Taylor could have forced her to do at really any moment, but much like Emmy, she had long since resolved never to effectively 'master' any of her family, friends, or acquaintances purely for her own comfort or convenience.

Or for anything, really.

"Apologies, this one-" She began to apologize to the man only to be cut off.

"Oh! You, speak, English!" He cheered at her in heavily accented English himself.

Taylor blinked in confusion, and the man's smile only grew more wide and… somewhat manic, as he gestured for her to follow her out of the room.

As it turned out, despite being a man from a world where Japan was apparently so metaphysically important that the afterlife was structured purely after the place, or perhaps, because of it, Chojiro Sasakibe was…

Well he was obsessed with English culture.

Something that Taylor was forced to endure with a straight face for the entire two minute walk from the meeting hall, to Captain Yamamoto's office. A two minute walk that felt like two hours, as the oddly excited man chose to ask her several bizarre but harmless questions.

Did she have toast for breakfast every day? No. What about grits, had she ever had grits? No. What was her favourite tea? Green.

To say that the man was disappointed and disheartened by the time he left her was an understatement, but she didn't feel too bad about it.

He was the one pestering her, after all.

At length, she made it to the office, which was an austere but large room, with one wall consisting of an extended window looking down on a courtyard, and the rest containing very little save for a smattering of calligraphy pieces. At the rear of the room - opposite the door - was a single well appointed desk which the old man was patiently standing behind.

Now that they were alone - for certain values of 'alone', given Pemmy and Demmy were with her - Taylor couldn't help but ask something that had been bothering her since she got here.

"Why did thou claim me as thy own?" She asked, approaching the desk and then - when it was obvious there were no chairs for visitors or guests to sit in - conjured a seat for herself.

"...Operational security. How much has that woman told you?" He asked her, his speech formal enough that it was actually clear and understandable to Taylor for once.

"Retsu Unohana? She hath professed an interest in training myself and little else," Taylor explained somewhat worriedly.

Had… she missed something? She knew there was a lot going on last time she was here, but she hadn't actually been involved in any of it, and Unohana herself had barely commented on what was going on once she had ascertained that fact.

Taylor had gotten the impression that she didn't really care all that much.

The old man levelled a piercing stare at her for several seconds before speaking again, and when he did, it was with a ponderous slowness to it - as though he was trying to choose his words very carefully.

"I have ordered Retsu Unohana to make use of your… peculiar method of travel, to engage in the formation of an additional squad. An outside force to call upon in times of need. Such a thing is obviously not possible without your cooperation, which I was assured had been promised. Was this… incorrect?" He said very carefully.

He didn't seem scared of her, so much as concerned that something he had already assumed was a guarantee was… well… not.

Which was entirely fair - Taylor would be irked by something like that too.

"Tis a trifle for me to acquiesce. In exchange, I've a request," She answered him with a one shouldered shrug of indifference.

Simply put, she liked Unohana. They got along well, and while she wasn't as directly tapped into world events as she probably should be given the stage she now existed on, she was at least passively aware that ghosts had become a leading problem on her own world - a squadron of Soul Reapers on hand to manage that would be ideal. It was probably the reason Unohana and Piggot were in communication at all.

If all she had to do was be a glorified taxi service, or find a way to fix a semi-permanent portal back and forth that others could use, then that was a small price to pay.

However, Taylor was not stupid, and she understood that on a purely mercantile level, she was getting almost nothing from the arrangement except the tolerance of the local government. And while being okay with her randomly popping in and out of their reality was nice - it wasn't really something she needed permission from anyone to do either.

"As my point of contact with the Captain of the Fourteenth, I can accede to some concessions. However," The old man growled, glaring down at her all of a sudden. "I will be setting aside rooms for you in my home, and while you are here you will keep to the fiction that you are my excessively sheltered granddaughter. It was a hasty fabrication, but necessary. My lieutenant should be seeing to the paperwork now. You will enter and exit our world only from my home. Understood?"

Taylor tilted her head from left to right in a so-so gesture, not really loving the fake relationship, but not having many reasons to turn it down either.

"...Acceptable. I've need of some research into the isolation of one soul from another, and I wish to meet," She paused, searching for the right words in the obtusely formal language she was using to describe what she wanted before continuing. "The orange-haired one."

"Ichigo Kurosaki is no longer within Soul Society, and is not directly under my jurisdiction. I cannot summon him to meet you. What do you want from him?" Yamamoto responded instantly, barely even blinking at the theoretically much more resource intensive request of helping her research the soul.

Which, again, she supposed made sense. This was the afterlife. They had to have tons of research on that kind of thing - assuming it wasn't all just mysticism and nonsense, which she wouldn't be surprised by either.

Still, she would take what she could get.

"I believe the orange-haired one owes my illustrious personage a good time," She answered, mind instantly ranging ahead towards the stress relief she hoped to get out of a simple no holds barred duel.

Just a simple, no problems involved fight. Simple. Down to earth.

No weird emotional baggage.

"I will have to forbid you from hurting him. He is not one of my subordinates, but he has done Soul Society a great service," Yamamoto told her with a frown.

"I merely wish to spar!" She squawked indignantly back at him. The old man's eyebrow shot up, and he glanced out the window at Kenpachi, who was, as ordered, swinging his sword through the air in the same repeated set of motions, over and over again, like a machine.

Then he looked back at her.

"...I could arrange another-" He began dubiously.

"Nay! I wish for it to be him!" She cut him off somewhat petulantly. She could still remember the guy's assertion that he could take Unohana in a fight. That's what she wanted to fight against. Not the baby version of her first emulation - one who clearly wasn't up to the level she was expecting when she came here.

She could just tell him the name of his sword, but she was more than aware of the personal nature of attaining one's Shikai.

It was one of those things you really shouldn't interfere with unless you had to.

Now, a guy on Unohana's level? That got her licking her lips in anticipation. It got her heart pumping like it hadn't since bullets stopped being a problem for her. It got her into a mood.

Maybe the look on her face was more obviously indicative of her thoughts than she was expecting, or maybe it was because she wasn't honestly negotiating with the old man - more just listening to him for a bit then asking him for a favour - but Yamamoto's nose wrinkled like he had just seen something foul and he lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"...You cannot permanently injure him," The older Captain insisted.

"Verily, grandfather," She snarked back at him, rolling her eyes again. Seriously, she understood what a spar was. She just wanted to have a really high intensity one.

If you could grow the arm back, was it really permanent damage?

Heedless of her internal monologue, Yamamoto peered at her for a moment longer, before reaching into his desk for something, returning with a small cage containing a glowing black butterfly that he plunked on the table in front of her.

"This is a Hell Butterfly," he explained, gently opening the cage and waving the creature that slowly fluttered out towards her.

"Tis… certainly a name…" She murmured as the absolutely gorgeous creature began to flutter daintily about her head.

"That one is yours. They can guide people from Soul Society to Earth and back, and are much smarter than they look. You should have little trouble locating Ichigo Kurosaki with its assistance. Treat it kindly - and use it to send me messages periodically, so I know you haven't done something foolish." He continued to explain.

Taylor heard him, but she was too busy turning her head left and right to track the glowing butterflies movements as it darted about, its scaled wings leaving little glowing particles in the air as they fell from it in flight. As though it understood what she was doing, it began to dart around her head playfully, trying to stay out of her line of sight - and only just barely failing despite the fact that it could succeed quite easily if it wanted to.

So… it was at least as smart as the average dog. Interesting.

"...Hebert-san. Please do not make me regret this," Yamamoto stated again, drawing her attention back to him.

"Never before have I betrayed an ally, and never heretofore shall I, grandfather," She told him seriously, before adding the faux term of affection to the end of the sentence.

Much to her surprise, he rolled his eyes right back at her, and, as though reassured by finally getting a serious declaration out of her, he nodded his head and leaned back, his demeanour shifting from menacing and in charge to… almost that of a normal old man, smiling pleasantly out the window at all he had built.

She wasn't sure if it was weird or not to admit it, but as someone who owned a tower overlooking her own city?

She actually understood the feeling.

"I find it extremely weird that a magic butterfly has the power to summon a tatami door that lets you walk out of the afterlife. Actually, it's kind of weird that you can leave the afterlife at all. I should name you," Taylor mused as she emerged from said doorway onto a quiet suburban street in a version of Japan she had never seen before.

Then again, she had never been to her own version of Japan either, so who knew if they were even any different.

…Though if she considered the whole Leviathan destroying a large part of Japan thing… yeah, it's probably pretty different.

It's not like they have Endbringers here or anything, right?

'Maybe we shouldn't name her?' Pemmy hurriedly interjected.

"What? Why? He gave her to me, so that makes her like, my pet now, right?" Taylor asked in confusion, spinning around until she spotted the local clinic she had been told to go to in order to meet 'Ichigo Kurosaki'.

Yamamoto always said it like that. Used the whole name and everything.

It was weird.

'You… your names are a bit…' Demmy tried to explain but failed as she began casually walking towards the clinic. It was small. Like, really small. Taylor was surprised it even qualified as a clinic when the main floor was so small it looked like it couldn't possibly contain more than three people at once, while still having room for a waiting room, a front desk, and a rear room for whoever the doctor was currently seeing.

The upper floor was clearly designated for the family of the physician - which she had been told - but it was just as small.

Taylor couldn't understand how anyone could live in such small confines. Least of all someone as ostentatious and loud as the orange-haired boy. She'd been far weaker than he was when she secured a larger space for herself.

"I think my names are fine…" Taylor muttered, before brightening as the butterfly landed on her shoulder - and then vanished.

"Hell Butterfly… I'm gonna call you Hellen!" She cheered, smiling as the glowing butterfly reappeared, landing on her nose and gently brushing her face with its wings before vanishing again.

'…Because it has hell in it?' Pemmy tiredly guessed.

"Yup," she agreed, nodding eagerly as excitement got the better of her, and she forcefully yanked the door of the clinic open, striding in with a giant smile on her face as she finally got close to the fun part of her day.

…Did she need a hobby?

'Nahhh,' She thought to herself, pointing a finger at the only person visible in the entrance to the clinic - a younger girl with medium length black hair who shot her an incredulous stare as she approached.

"Greetings! I've prior arrangements with 'Ichigo Kurosaki'. He is to engage me!" She declared proudly.

The girl - who was still staring in confusion at her - snapped out of it as she finished speaking.

"...Daaaaaaaaaad! Ichigo got a girlfriend and she's weeeeeeird!" She yelled over her shoulder.

Taylor didn't really approve of having a preteen manning the desk of a business in any professional capacity, but she supposed that if it was legal here she should just mind her own business.

Then again, maybe she was just thinking that in order to avoid the uncomfortable fact that she had just been drastically misunderstood but whoever this kid was.

"I am not-!" She began to correct her - loudly - only to be cut off by an even louder yell.

"ICHIGOOOOOOOOOO!" A deep, masculine voice screamed, accompanied by the sound of someone rapidly ascending a flight of stairs. There was the sound of a door opening.

"Wha-" She could hear the familiar voice of the orange-haired boy, only for it to be instantly replaced by a coughing gurgle - like he was being strangled. She took a step forward to go intervene - because that couldn't be normal - but then;

"Dad's like this. Give it a second," The girl said with more obvious boredom and ennui than Taylor had ever heard from someone that age. Said girl was also still staring at her, and it took Taylor a second to remember why.

There were apparently no Capes here. On Dante's world, normal people apparently dressed like edgy strippers all the time so it wasn't as obvious, but here, on Earth, no one was even aware of the supernatural.

Which would make her normal costume, complete with pistols in holster, and sword at her hip, a little… threatening.

Actually, why hadn't this little girl called the cops yet? Was she insane?

"I-" Taylor began, hoping to apologize for looking threatening when there was a tumbling sound - like two people falling down a flight of stairs - and Ichigo and a much older man appeared.

Grappling.

"How dare you start dating without telling your old man?! Where is she!? I bet you tricked her, you little-" The larger man - he had black hair, cut short to match the girl's - bellowed, liberally punching Ichigo in the kidney twice as they tumbled past the front desk and into the middle of the room.

"Are you crazy, old man?! I'm not dating anyone! I don't even want to!" Ichigo screeched back, giving as good as he could get.

Now, a normal person, with a normal set of ethics, and a normal arrangement of hobbies, would probably be deeply distressed by the overt violence between a father and his son.

Taylor mostly just found herself wishing more of her own family were like this. It'd be fun.

"Not dating anyone!? NOT DATING ANYONE?!" The father howled, flipping around with Ichigo in his grip and then using his legs and momentum to hurl the younger boy away from himself.

"Look at- oh crap-!" He continued, getting ready to lunge after the boy, then freezing when he realized he had just thrown his son directly at her.

Again, if Taylor was a normal person, Ichigo crashing into her would have probably been painful. Heck, she probably wouldn't have even been able to react to it happening. However, since the entire thing had happened at a completely mundane speed, and he obviously hadn't been thrown that hard…

Well. Taylor mostly just stood there trying not to seem threatening.

Which had the unfortunate side effect of leaving the side of Ichigo's head free to slam into her chest, after which he landed on the floor and began to roll around screaming while holding his neck.

"GAH! HAG! WHY WASN'T THERE ANY CUSHIONING?! I FEEL LIKE I JUST RAN INTO A BRICK WALL!" He howled.

Taylor stared blankly down at him at that, then angled her head further down to look at her own chest - perfectly average, thank you very much - and then back up at Ichigo.

"...I should like to take ownership of thy relative for a nonce," She said, face automatically twitching into the smiling mask she most often used when interacting with people she was irritated with.

"...Sure…" The father said, lifting his hands into the air as though to wash them of the entire situation.

"Keep him, even," The girl snarked at her, though she did continue to be the only person in the room who seemed bothered by her weaponry, even if only barely.

Again. Weird.

"I haven't the time. I shall return him in short order, mostly whole and hail," She said pleasantly to the girl, bending over to snatch the back of the writhing teenagers shirt in one hand and lifting him up, where she promptly hurled him through a gap that drew the attention of both father and daughter, their eyes snapping to it the second it appeared.

"Ah, and we are not currently in any form of relationship," She added, before following after him, leaving the pair to look to at each other, now suddenly with a lot more questions than they'd had prior.

When she made it into the gap, she was surprised to find two Ichigo's waiting for her.

One was insensate and drifting through the empty space as though in a coma - and the other was dressed in the traditional garb of a Soul Reaper.

That second one was also pointing a sword at her.

"What the hell do you want, hag?" He demanded.

She took a moment to process that, then closed the exit gap behind her.

For safety reasons and definitely not out of childish spite.

Definitely.

"Gah, why are you being so difficult! I just want a fight! A good, clean fight!" She complained to him in English.

"Hah?" He grunted back at her in confusion, while also making sure he was between her and his body.

Which was… well, it wasn't pointless, but within the gap space was relative. And by relative, Taylor meant it was relative to wherever the hell she wanted it to be. With a thought she could simply decide that his body was a thousand miles in any given direction. It was how she kept track of the things she stored in here - if she wanted them to be accessible, they would be. That was also the reason she wasn't worried about losing her wallet in a functionally infinite space.

To her, the space wasn't all that infinite.

Sighing, she shot a grouchy look at the boy before waving lazily at him.

"I had previously requested a spar," She explained to him, now back to her formal Japanese.

"You… came to my house… to fight me… for fun?" He asked her through grit teeth, with annoyance clear on his expression.

"This is correct, yes. Is that your… body? How unfortunate. And no one takes advantage of thy vulnerability?" She asked him curiously, leaning around him to try and get a better look - a better look that was swiftly interrupted by the boy himself shifting his body to block it.

"What? God damn it I can barely understand what you're saying. Talk normally you old witch," Ichigo snapped at her.

Taylor felt her eyebrow twitch again but persevered.

"...I will take us somewhere open, and keep your body safe here. Is this agreeable to thyself?" She asked him, suddenly drained and only really continuing to push ahead with this because she was already here.

"Hell no! I don't even want to fight you!" He complained to her, waving his sword in her direction threateningly. It was a threat she had to take at least sort of seriously - at least, if he really could match up to Unohana. She was starting to doubt it.

"But… do you not seek improvement?" She asked him with a frown, crossing her arms behind her back and drifting forward so that she could peer straight into his eyes as she spoke.

"No! I just want everything to be normal!" He complained.

"Then, attain strength, and enforce your normality!" She shot back.

"If I have to force it then it's not normal!" He snapped back at her.

"Tis nonsense! You have a sword, you wield it! Thy mindset is weak! Time is to be made for training, always!" She pressed, before belatedly realising she and the orange-haired teen were practically rubbing their foreheads against each other as they growled angrily at one another.

Taylor abruptly decided maybe she should back up. The last time she got that close to someone when arguing with them was Amy, and that was different. Ichigo was a boy - which made it drastically more inappropriate.

"Whatever, you do your own thing and leave me alone - I don't want to fight you," Ichigo grumbled at her, seemingly just as embarrassed to have registered the situation as she was.

At least he had some shame.

"Fine!" Taylor spat, annoyed at being what Trainwreck would politely describe as 'getting blue-balled'.

Then she crossed her legs and folded her arms across her chest to sulk.

"...So?" Ichigo demanded from her pointedly.

"...Can we… please, fight?" She asked hopefully instead of immediately sending him home.

"No!" Ichigo yelled right back.

"...Perhaps… later?" She tried again. A familiar looking eye twitch passed over Ichigo's face.

'Is that what it looks like? More obvious than I thought,' Taylor admittedly to herself privately.

"Fine! Later!" He snapped at her.

Taylor immediately popped back up from her semi seated position, snatching the man's hand and slapping a paper tag into it.

"Excellent! Merely rend this in twain when you are ready and I will arrive! Ah, but I will be back soon if you do not make haste!" She warned him, gesturing in such a way that a hole opened in the space leading back to the clinic.

Ichigo glanced at the paper, and then slowly sank back into his… body, she supposed, before edging towards the exit - leaping through at speed at the last possible second, as though he expected her to close it on him.

She sighed at his antics, then stuck her head back out the gap behind him.

"Call me! Or else!" She demanded as he retreated past his two still confused family members.

Then she retreated back into her gap, which sealed behind her.

"Shit, now what do I do?" She wondered aloud. Gap space was… curious. It was actually a great place to meditate, being completely absent of any of the usual distractions of the physical world. No birds. No bugs. No wind. No movement. It was a space that was full of literal nothingness, and that nothingness lent itself well to introspective thought.

It was also a nightmare dimension full of omniscient staring eyes, which was probably why she rarely actually spent excessive amounts of time here.

"It can be quite soothing, yes," A disembodied voice spoke, jolting her from her reverie and making her freeze in place.

It took her a second to pinpoint where it was coming from, for two reasons.

One, she was in gap space. Nothing else existed here, which made her very concerned about what might be lurking out of sight.

The second, and the reason she didn't immediately flee, was the cold fact that the voice - while unfamiliar to Taylor - had come through a familiar avenue.

Her connection to Emmy.

Cold, unrelenting terror gripped her heart, and her swords were in her hands before she could even think to respond, her head darting around for any kind of physical threat that she could orient on.

But there wasn't one.

Instead, between one blink and the next, she found herself in… a field? No, a clearing, one surrounded by trees.

Taylor frantically whipped her head around, unsure of how she had exited gap space without making a gap, and on her third scan of the area two things became apparent.

One, she couldn't feel Emmy. Couldn't even flex the mental muscle that should have forced Emmy to reconstitute themself directly next to her. It was like her friend was simply gone. Obscured from her.

Second, was that at some point, a small wooden table had appeared in the clearing, laden with snacks, treats, two steaming cups of something, in plain but very well made china, and...

Taylor felt her blood freeze in her veins, a cold sweat breaking out across her back.

There was a woman sitting next to the table.

A very, very familiar woman, one she had been silently praying she would never have to encounter.

Taylor had long ago understood that her third emulation was probably not a good person. She was, at best, a capricious and mean-spirited entity that used its tremendous power and skill to bully other people into doing what she wanted. The fact that this was usually, but not always, for the sake of some greater good did not detract from the fact that she was a wholly unpleasant person to have set against you, or even just paying attention to you. Taylor, more than most, understood the way she thought - because it was literally one of her powers.

Which is why - despite her panic response being to kill everything nearby then try and get Emmy back - she retained a polite facade with the blonde seated not too far away.

"Give me back Pemmy and Demmy," she said in a completely neutral tone, shakily pointing her sword at the patiently waiting Youkai.

Well… mostly polite. She was struggling not to hyperventilate over her sudden lack of a connection she thought was inviolable.

"Just a moment. Wouldn't want any pesky eavesdroppers, now would we? Please, have a seat, and relax - if I wanted to hurt you…" Yukari Yakumo insisted with a thin smile on her face.

Taylor edged towards her, and grimaced. If Yukari could simply hijack her power at will then… yeah, there were far more horrific options for getting at her, if she really wanted to.

Somehow though, knowing the creature across from her as she sat down could kill her with a thought did not actually help her calm down.

"It's your favourite," The blonde woman supplied in a friendly tone, unheeding, or perhaps uncaring of her internal panic, as Taylor hesitantly stretched a hand out to grab the cup in one hand, and found it scalding hot - the perfect temperature for someone with enhanced durability like herself.

True to her word, the tea was more than just her favourite flavour - it was of superb quality. More so, the variety of snacks on the table would have matched with it perfectly- if she'd had the presence of mind to actually try one.

She was… just a bit too keyed up for that at the moment though.

"Pray tell-" she began, straining to use the somewhat foreign language that was her Japanese.

"I can speak English, if you prefer," She was cut off with a sinister looking smile.

"…What do you want?" Taylor asked, only just barely managing to avoid snapping at the target of her ire.

"A vacation," was the blunt reply, followed by no actual explanation, and the sound of rudely slurped tea.

Taylor literally knew she had to know better than that, which meant she was doing it purely to annoy her.

"That's… nice, but I don't think I can help you, so if you don't mind-" Taylor tried, only to be cut off as the blonde lifted a hand and tapped a finger on the empty space to Taylor's right - her left. The space there rippled like a stone hurling into a pond, reverberating through the air and forcing Taylor to take notice of the giant, freakishly powerful barrier that existed two feet away from her without her even noticing it.

"I think I've been very lenient about your little friend borrowing my face until now, don't you think? Of course, stealing my power goes without saying but I feel that you've utilized it enough to understand why you may have…let's say a debt to repay," Yukari continued in a conversational tone of voice that did nothing to detract from the menace washing off of her.

"That-" Taylor began then paused. She had enough issues with Nemesis to allow that yes, having someone else running around with your face was a little unpleasant, even when you knew them directly.

Which Emmy and Yukari definitely did not. And considering how much she actually used gaps on a daily basis…

"…Okay so, yeah we sort of owe you…" Taylor grumbled, still fighting down the urge to panic. She felt like she was struggling to keep her head above water without Pemmy and Demmy. Like she was getting just enough air to avoid drowning, but not enough to escape. It was maddening.

Yukari just put her tea cup down and clapped her hands together excitedly, though her eyes were lidded and radiating boredom.

"Yes, yes. You see, it takes a unique set of talents to maintain this barrier, talents which only I possess. That is, up until very recently," she explained casually, stretching a hand out to grab her cup again.

"How long have you been watching me?" Taylor asked on a hunch. Yukari seemed unbothered by the question, and in fact, her thin smile stretched just the tiniest bit wider at the implied accusation.

"Long enough," Was herresponse, eyes narrowing and smile curling mischievously, before her eyes drifted off to the side.

Taylor followed her gaze, and she found her mouth going dry and her previous panic multiplying tenfold at what she saw.

There, on the side of the previously empty table, now lied an extra cup of tea, which was seemingly reserved for a familiar little plushie version of Yukari that innocently sat there.

One of Parian's plushies.

Taylor gulped nervously, struggling to contain her rising dread at the horrifying implication.

Taking a shuddering breath, she tried to center herself before turning back towards the woman.

"So… you just… suddenly decided you wanted time off and that exactly now was the best moment to force me to cover your shift?" Taylor asked, frustration edging out her self-preservation instinct long enough for her to snap at the blonde monster.

"Yes," Yukari responded easily, entirely unbothered by Taylor's tone.

"I don't have time right now, sorry. Maybe later." Taylor said, standing abruptly and trying to claw a gap open to leave. She felt… something… but there was no visible result, which earned a growl of annoyance from her.

"A shame. This barrier is the only thing keeping ravening hordes of things like you and I from the rest of this peaceful world," Yukari said idly.

Taylor grit her teeth and tried to ignore her.

"Oh, forgive me. I don't believe that the copy actually explained what you became once you came to possess my power. How…unfortunate," Yukari said, though the amused smile on her face said that it was anything but to her.

Engaging with Yukari Yakumo was pointless. The whole conversation was just a series of if/then statements leading to her preferred end result. The act of talking to her at all meant you had already lost. Taylor doubted even her attempted refusal was beyond the Gap Youkai's plans.

She could almost literally see a little checkbox being marked in her head with each new line spoken. Not a real dialogue - just a list of preordained events.

Which would be less scary if that planning ability wasn't a completely mundane skill. It wasn't magic. It wasn't a power. It was just the expertise of an extremely long lived being, pitted against whatever bothered it.

"You wouldn't just leave and ignore it," Taylor insisted, refusing to turn back around.

"Of course not. That's what you're for," Yukari scoffed.

"I won't-" Taylor tried again.

"You will. You'll try not to, and you won't spend every waking moment watching it, but you'll wonder. You'll wonder, and you'll eventually come to check. Once or twice. Here or there. But you will. Why make an enemy over it?" Yukari hummed at her, clearly barely even paying attention to the argument.

Taylor grit her teeth even harder at that.

Because it was objectively correct.

Perhaps seeing the decision in her stance before she ever spoke it aloud, Yukari's eyes narrowed in triumph.

"Good girl," she murmured, resting her head on the back of her hands as she leaned forward in her seat.

"I'm not a f-" Taylor began then bit her tongue, stopping mid sentence.

God, no wonder Piggot hated dealing with her to this day. This sucked.

"...Fine. I agree, so we can skip the lengthy manipulative conversation. What do you need me to do?" She spat, whirling around to glare at her captor.

The joke was, if Pemmy and Demmy were here, this wouldn't even bother her, which Yukari had to know, so…

Why?

It was a question that was destined to go unanswered, because just as she finished turning to level her angry glare at the offending woman, she felt herself being embraced. Long slender arms wrapped around her in a companionable hug that didn't so much as twinge her danger sense or killer instinct.

And for one single second, she wasn't being held by Yukari Yakumo. For one single second, she remembered a weaker, dumber girl, who had taken great comfort in this hug. It wasn't just similar to back then, it was exactly the same.

"Good girl. You see? I really do care for you, in my own way. Come around next week, and I'll have Ran explain your duties to you, okay?" The comparatively shorter woman told her in a surprisingly motherly sounding tone of voice.

"…I know you're manipulating me," Taylor mumbled, not actually drawing away from the hug.

"Is it working?" Yukari hummed at her.

"…A little," she grumbled back. She heard the woman chuckle softly as she ran a comforting hand through her hair.

"Well, I suppose you were taught fairly well in that regard," Yukari said wistfully. "Regardless, I do believe that I've taken a significant amount of your time with my request, hm?"

And just like that, her connection to Pemmy and Demmy was back.

'-ylor? Taylor!? Where- oh god you're back, you're back!' Demmy practically screamed in her head.

'What happened? Where did you go? You're flushed, did you get sick? Let's-' Pemmy added on as both twins appeared to either side of her, fussing over her so fervently that Taylor almost didn't notice that Yukari - and her table and chairs - were gone.

Sighing, she batted their hands away from her, and instead pulled them both into a loose hug.

"It's fine. Let's go home," She said tiredly.

Taylor seeks inspiration;

Tomorrow is Sunday, Choose Two (2)

[ ] Take some time out to fortify the Heap with Onmyoudo.

[ ] Take some time out to Tinker.

[ ] There was a guy you weren't supposed to heal… Uppercrust or something?

[ ] You started the work but… the ferry could finish its transformation into a school with only a little more. You're going to have a bunch of new capes in town that could benefit from it.

[ ] Planeswalk (Choose a setting: Bleach, Kung Fu Panda, Touhou, RWBY, Nasuverse, Full Metal Alchemist, Devil May Cry)

[ ] Write In

[ ] Take Time Off (Pick an Extra Social, on the weekends, this can be a second group)

Choose a Social Link (these are daily now). On weekends, you can choose an entire group to socialize with - but are not forced to.

[ ] Your parents:

Outstanding group tasks: None

[ ] Danny (3)

[ ] Jess (2)

[ ] Mouse Protector (2)

[ ] The Oathbound:

Outstanding group tasks: None

[ ] Trainwreck (3)

[ ] Aspirant (3)

[ ] Parian (3)

[ ] Oliver (3)

[ ] Miss Kim (1)

[ ] Willow (1)

[ ] Jeeves (0)

[ ] The Bratpack (As a group, includes Mem and Mun):

Outstanding group tasks: Train the Brats (Ongoing). Mem's crafting project.

[ ] Aisha (2)

[ ] Dinah (4)

[ ] Your kids:

Outstanding group tasks: Yew wants to go to college.

[ ] Mem (5)

[ ] Mun (3)

[ ] Simone (5)

[ ] Yew (3)

[ ] Gram (2)

[ ] Your friends:

Outstanding group tasks: None

[ ] Victoria (4)

[ ] Amy (5)

[ ] Clockblocker (4)

[ ] Ichigo (1)

[ ] Write In

[ ] Sisters From Other Misters:

Outstanding group tasks: None

[ ] Yang (1)

[ ] Ruby (0)

Last edited: Mar 6, 2023

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Bowler Hat Guy

Mar 6, 2023

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Bowler Hat Guy

Bowler Hat Guy

A Hat & Its Man

Mar 13, 2023

#56,219

Spoiler: Choices

Current Energy: 15

Tinker Specialty: Masotech Chemistry (5/10) - (7/10)

Current Emulation Status: Here

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

The Heap, Brockton Bay

"Are you… sure this is ethical?" She asked uncomfortably, eyeing the squirrel Demmy and Pemmy had found outside and trapped in a nearby cage for the purpose of getting her some experience Tinkering.

Taylor was… wary… of going into another wizard fugue. It wasn't so much that she didn't trust herself to keep everything on the up and up, safe and reasonable and all that. It was just that… she had this sneaking suspicion that it would end in another apology visit to the Director - one that might take place in the hospital if she pushed the woman's blood pressure any higher than it obviously already was.

And yes, she insisted on calling it a wizard fugue.

"Yes. This technology was developed in order to combat a disease that - well, we couldn't cure it because we didn't understand how it was doing what it did. But your soul has as much to do with your physical wellbeing as your own DNA - and changes made to it can be positive or negative to either of the two, exactly like gene editing," Pemmy explained while hurriedly rearranging a bundle of tubes all tipped with small needles that she began to discreetly insert into the caged squirrel.

"White Chlorination Syndrome somehow transmuted those afflicted by it into salt, which shouldn't have been physically possible. While researching it, ancient humans found that it was making changes to the soul that were causing a cascade failure, resulting in a structure that, well," Demmy trailed off, taking over the explanation with an uncomfortable look on her face.

"It turned people to salt. Somehow. It couldn't have just been magic?" Taylor asked curiously. To her it was endlessly fascinating the amount of work and research mundane humans must have had to do to reach conclusions like this, especially because "ancient humans" to Devola and Popola actually meant modern day humans to her. She was cheating by having Demmy & Pemmy, and her new Tinker power, but she couldn't even begin to understand how a normal person would have gotten from 'why are people turning to salt' to 'soul manipulation technology'.

It was just… kind of a very large leap. It was kinda awe-inspiring, really.

"They didn't have magic, Taylor. I mean, it literally hadn't existed in that world until exactly that moment. They didn't have a frame of reference. Even when they did discover 'magic', it was just another particle. You know the saying, sufficiently advanced technology-" Demmy started with a huff.

"Is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke. One of a few authors who wrote the same stuff on Bet and Aleph, yeah," Taylor finished with a twinge of annoyance. Her mom had owned a few magazines with short stories by him, but she was always more of a fantasy and mythology person, so most of what Taylor knew was by cultural osmosis.

Taylor glanced around the workshop she was currently in, trying to tamp down on how antsy she felt.

Somehow, creating life and shoving the souls of the dead into new bodies felt more ethical than this. She wasn't even sure why it bothered her so much - the only thing they would be doing was making the squirrel immune to cancer then releasing it again. It was as benign as benign could be.

But it still felt uncomfortably close to biotinkering, which, while not illegal…

Well, Rey did it all the time, but that was different. He created new life. It felt less wrong when you weren't actively manipulating another being. That was dangerously close to Bonesaw territory, even if only sort of.

Of course, she probably wouldn't feel this way about it if she wasn't perfectly aware that a sizable portion of her employee base were small animals themselves.

She should see how Jeeves was doing. She hadn't seen the little guy in a while.

"Exactly. Look, the entire purpose of us is to serve humans - we wouldn't teach you something to hurt people, okay?" Pemmy comforted her, sidling around the pedestal the cage stood on to tentatively grab her opposite shoulder, giving her a quick hug.

Taylor exhaled, accepting the statement for what it was, and quickly lifted both hands to lightly slap her own face.

"Okay! Let's do this then!" She yelled at the ceiling, before fully reorienting herself on the task at hand.

She still had a lot of learning left to do after this, after all. Spring break was this week, and if she was going to have the time to focus solely on the problem of Blue Maso, then this was it.

One way or another.

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

Beacon Academy, Remnant

She was taking a break.

Having spent the better part of her morning and early afternoon doing essentially mad science, and being ferociously drilled on the properties of different elements on the periodic table, she needed to step away for a bit. Not to do anything crazy or get into a fight - not that she would refuse a good one - but rather, just to take a breather.

Taylor loved training, but this science stuff was - while very cool and easily capable of holding her interest - somehow far more taxing on her stamina than just doing hours of intense exercise.

She felt like a past version of herself with a flabby stomach would scream in her face for admitting that, though.

Originally, she had been planning on catching Ruby and Yang around lunch, again, not for any particular reason but to hang out for a bit while she took her break. She had to thank Ruby for helping Emmy with her new guns.

They'd never be her preferred way to fight, but they were definitely useful and convenient, she had to give them that.

Aaaand getting into that little slap fight with Dante with them had definitely been some of the most fun she'd had in a while.

Unfortunately, she had arrived in their room to find none of them present. She hadn't thought much of it at the time, and had simply headed towards the cafeteria - it was lunch time after all - but had noticed something as she moved about.

There were no students. Not just in the cafeteria, but in the school in general.

Beacon was empty.

And that was concerning. Concerning enough that she had swiftly gapped to the headmaster's tower to see if she could find any clues as to what was going on.

What she had found both did, and did not, explain what was going on.

The city below the cliff Beacon was situated on - Vale - was rife with activity. So many people were moving around in the streets, packing things up, loading things into vehicles, partying, yelling, and celebrating, that it was like the entire city had gone insane. It was like a combination moving day and festival, and Taylor could not for the life of her figure out why it was happening.

Frowning, she cast a tracking spell, and then - with a speed and alacrity she was only capable of managing with judicious use of the one or two consecutive flash steps she was comfortable using in a row - she chased after it.

When she found her sort of kind of sisters, it was down in the city. Which she had expected. What she had not expected was that they would be helping to load a number of large trucks whose wheels had been modified into a kind of tank tread. There were dozens of similarly modified vehicles throughout the city that she had passed, not necessarily all with treads, but definitely all for off road movement.

"Yang? Ruby?" She called as she flickered into place above them, then slowly descended to the ground, earning first a surprised glance upward, then a crooked smile from the blonde in question when they made eye contact.

"Taylor! Crap, I was worried we wouldn't see you before we left! Was kinda hoping you'd have a way to track us down!" She cheered, levering a large metal crate up onto the lip of the trailer and shoving it further in with superhuman strength before turning and spreading her arms wide for a hug.

Taylor - awkwardly - shuffled forward to return the gesture, then, when she tried to lean away and found she was trapped, just grunted at the smirk on Yang's face instead of forcing her way free of the physical contact.

She didn't hate it, but besides Emmy, she wasn't really used to it. It had been a really long time since physical affection was even really available to her from other human beings.

Which, when she consciously started thinking about it, was kind of messed up, right?

"I know it'll sound kind of creepy to say, but I can find you pretty much anywhere on this planet if I have to," she answered with a shrug, before letting loose a gasp when Ruby crashed into her torso like a ballistic missile.

"Taylor! You got them! Did you like them? I did the base but your friend took them away to have some other stuff done with them and-" She began to babble, wrapping her arms around Taylor's waist and rubbing the side of her face along Taylor's side as though trying to nudge her arm out of the way to get a better look at her underarm holsters.

"H-hey, Ruby. If you guys let go of me I can show you?" Taylor offered quickly, seeing an easy way to escape the warm but odd feeling grapple she was currently in.

Ruby lifted her head from where she was still sort of headbutting her in the side, then leaned back to make eye contact with Yang on her opposite side, before both girls answered her.

""No!"" They cheered.

Taylor got the impression that Yang might have actually taken the opportunity to noogie her, if she specifically didn't know better than to mess with her hair.

Taylor groaned at the interaction.

"Fiiiine. Just, get your head out of my armpit would you?" She gave up, glancing over as Weiss and Blake approached. "No more weirdly emotive bow, Blake?"

The dark-haired girl's ears - the large cat-shaped ones on top of her head - twitched at the jab, but her face remained neutral, if somewhat warm.

"It… seemed like a good time, with everything going on," she admitted, earning an eye roll from Weiss.

"Well, I for one was never fooled by it," she huffed.

"You had a panic attack and made us chase you around the city for a whole day," Yang pointed out jovially.

"This and that are different, Yang," the white-haired girl replied venomously.

"Speaking of, what is happening right now?" Taylor asked curiously, attempting to disengage from the group hug, and finally being allowed to - though only enough to free her arms and gesture around them.

"It's an expedition!" Ruby cheered, finally letting go of Taylor to point at the sky dramatically.

"To… where?" She asked hesitantly.

"The coast. A little while ago the Headmaster came back with an Emissary from a country no one had ever heard of. They say there are no Grimm on their continent, and attacks have been on the decline ever since, well, you know," Yang explained easily.

"My family has invested heavily in the establishment of trade hubs for each kingdom. We're looking into wrestling our shipping division into a global trade network. Who knows how many resources there are to tap over there?" Weiss added.

"It's kind of romantic, right? Like a whole new age of exploration. Pretty much every hunter in training is going with the caravan to make sure nothing goes wrong. Even with fewer Grimm, there are still bandits all over the place," Blake explained.

"You're just saying it's romantic because you have a crush on one of the bird guys," Yang teased.

Blake turned a bright red, though her expression remained neutral.

"I do not! We're living through history, okay!?" She snapped back at the girl.

Taylor could only snicker at their antics, then freeze when a voice behind her squawked in indignation.

"Great Nexus! Remove your hands from her at once, you heathens!" It said, and Yang finally let go of her long enough for both of them to turn back around.

There was a man standing behind them. He looked young. Older than Taylor, but not by much. College aged at best. He had neatly cut, short cropped black hair, and the most overtly villainous looking goatee Taylor had ever seen. Everything about him screamed 'precise'. His red military long coat - one Taylor recognized from the Bird People - was studded with a number of badges and medals, and underneath the open jacket he wore a neat and simple black turtleneck sweater, black fatigues, and combat boots.

His narrow aristocratic face flickered from awed to enraged and back again on repeat as she turned to look at him, and Taylor was briefly concerned that he was going to cause problems for Yang that she would have to handle, but…

"My apologies, Great Nexus! In your mortal guise very few can grasp your glory! Please, spare the girl your punishment!" He shouted loudly, dropping into a ninety degree bow.

Taylor blinked.

Everyone else blinked.

They all turned to stare at her.

"…She's… allowed to hug me. We're… sisters?" Taylor tried, unsure of how to take this interruption.

On the one hand. He was kind of rude. He'd boldly inserted himself into her conversation, and yelled at Yang.

On the other hand, he clearly thought he was saving Yang from some kind of divine retribution. From her.

She knew Cinder viewed her as some kind of trickster Goddess or divine internet troll - but did these people seriously think she would show up solely to screw with people and then leave?

'You do rather constantly act as such, you realize? From my point of view, your primary hobbies are fighting and messing with people for your own entertainment,' Ozma pointed out helpfully.

'Shut up, Oz,' Taylor sulked back at her sort-of mentor.

"Oh! I was unaware! My apologies!" The man popped back out of his bow before turning to Yang and offering another one, though this one was much less deep.

"Uh," Yang began slowly, turning her head to glance between Taylor and the man Taylor somewhat confusedly. "Whaaaaat's going on right now?"

Taylor winced.

"Did… I not tell you guys about the ancient civilization I brought back from the grave? Oops," She said in a tone of voice she hoped would convey she was joking.

No one laughed.

Bird guy preened though, standing to puffing out his chest proudly at the statement. So...

That was something, at least.

Taylor sighed, then tried to brush off the entire thing by simply moving on.

"What's your name?" She asked the man.

"Fortis, Great Nexus!" He replied like a soldier being called upon by a superior.

"How are things with your people? Um, you guys… got the message that I don't want you to go to war with anyone for uh…" she glanced at her sisters and friends, who were looking more lost by the second, then cleared her throat, "religious reasons, yes?"

"Of course! We know you are not a deity of war, but rather, guile and learning! To change another's mind through force is abhorrent!" He said, genuinely horrified at the idea.

She knew she told Cinder to figure out the whole 'holy war' thing, but this? This was not what she had in mind.

'I'm related to Odin, so why am I being treated like Loki?' She mentally whined.

'You prank literally everyone you meet,' Demmy pointed out to her dryly.

'That's Dante's fault!' She continued to complain.

"""Of course,""" was the dubious sounding reply she got back from Pemmy, Demmy, and Ozma all at once.

She resisted the urge to shriek in outrage at them, knowing no one else would even know she was having this conversation.

"…Can someone please explain what is going on?" Weiss asked, her polite tone belying the annoyed look on her face.

She knew she'd told Yang and Ruby about this, but she never really expanded all that much on how the religion built around her appeared to function.

Or… how dedicated the Bird People were to it.

Sighing, she turned - ignoring Fortis who stepped behind her like a butler as she did so - and started patiently explaining again.

Then paused, remembering something she probably should have done earlier.

Quickly withdrawing that manilla envelope Piggot had given her from a gap - which Fortis stared at with all the fervor of someone observing an act of God - she carefully extended it towards the man.

"…Could you do me a favor and please deliver this to the Chancellor?" She asked, trying to keep how tired of his presence she already was off her face.

It wasn't his fault, after all.

Fortis' eyes lit up, and he quickly - but very carefully - pulled the envelope from her grip.

"Of course, Great Nexus! I am honored! I will have my men return this to New Nexus at once!" He preened.

"Sorry, what?" She asked, confused that he was… going to give the letter back to her? Somehow?

"It's what they're calling the city they're from," Yang supplied helpfully.

Taylor immediately wanted to crawl into a hole and die just from hearing that, but quickly soldiered past it, turning back around to continue her explanation to Weiss.

Maybe if she was lucky, hearing her tell the story would get Fortis to start spreading around that she wasn't really a God, right?

Right.

…Damn it.

If those bird brains ended up naming their species 'Taylors' or some other dumb thing like that, she was going to… to… whine about it alot to Vicky, probably.

Ugh.

Gap space was weird, and the inexplicable presence of 'something' within the infinite expanse or 'nothing' that she used to go to other realities were always something of a mystery to Taylor.

She understood abstractly that something about the way Emmy worked created a 'tunnel' to those worlds, tunnels that she could see and interact with using her gaps. But if asked to explain in detail how any of it worked she could only shrug despondently and say 'I don't know'.

That was - partially - the reason why Taylor seldom tried to mix her power of gaps into other workings. Sure, she could make use of it in a variety of spells, if not directly in the spell's structure, then symbolically to shore up her power, or achieve otherwise unlikely effects - but since she had no idea how it worked, she'd always been a little leery of doing so.

In a way, gaps were both her most vital, and yet, least understood power.

She had long since gotten over her fear of siphoning all the oxygen in earth's atmosphere into space by mistake, or any similar snafu, but that didn't mean she was going to forget that it was still theoretically possible.

All that is to say, while she didn't fully grasp how to use gap space in quite the same way Yukari obviously did, Taylor had a pretty strong instinct towards the power. If nothing else, she used it often enough that slight changes in how it functioned, or what was going on inside the vast emptiness were more noticeable to her than they otherwise would be, given the infinite nature of the place.

This is why - despite having no intention of doing so - she found herself hovering in front of the many portals that exited gap space into other dimensions.

The portals were physically indistinct from one another, for the most part. It wasn't like she could see through them onto the other side without actually traveling through one. They were bright points of burning light in the otherwise smothering darkness, each one just large enough for a person to pass through - although their actual size never seemed to matter for the purposes of transporting large objects from place to place. All of the portals - there were seven of them, with an eighth beginning to form but not yet big enough to pass through - were positioned next to each other, in a thinly dispersed line that Taylor had mentally started considering 'the landing zone'. Gap space being what it was, specifying specific portions of it for things was a pointless exercise, as everything within it was also everywhere else within it and functionally all times, pending only an exertion of will to properly locate for her - but this part felt special to Taylor all the same.

Separate.

And now one of those portals, one of the ones she had never previously tried to go through, was swelling. Where the other six portals were typically a stable ovoid shape, unwavering and unchanging as the sun, this seventh portal was… wobbly. It towered easily over the other portals nearest to it, and its edges fizzled and distorted as though trying to escape from some invisible hold keeping it in place. The typically sheer white light of the portal was glistening with a rainbow of pastel colors that would be beautiful if the occurrence wasn't so visibly abnormal.

And Taylor had no idea what to do about it.

"Should I ignore it?" She asked aloud, while Pemmy and Demmy - both currently visible, and very concerned looking - drifted in circles around the problem, obviously trying to glean any information they could from what was going on.

"I wish we could, but if we don't know why it's happening…" Demmy explained sourly.

"Then we don't know if it will stop, or simply continue to grow infinitely," Ozma added, appearing from nowhere with a curious expression on her face.

"So? Just beat up anything that comes out of it, duh!" Nemesis cheered, appearing above and behind Taylor in such a way that she was able to get her arms around Taylor's neck and dangle from her back like a limpet.

Taylor swiftly swatted her hands away, but patted her absently on the head instead. It wasn't that she abhorred the hug from her own sword spirit, but rather, that she really didn't feel like now was the time for her antics.

She continued to stare at the portal for several more seconds, before turning to Ozma for her thoughts on the matter.

"I would recommend sending one of the twins ahead to scout. They-" Ozma began easily enough, but faltered when Taylor's displeasure at the notion made itself known on her face.

"No. We can head home and I'll buy a drone or something, we can-" Taylor began adamantly.

"We don't really have time for that kind of thing," Demmy countered her, and she shot a sour look at the messy-haired twin.

"I will go through first. If something happens to me, you can watch and be prepared, and if the portal… doesn't go anywhere… then you will know to avoid it," Pemmy offered, stretching her arms overhead and then drawing her sword.

"But-" Taylor tried again, frustrated that - despite being considered a God to at least one culture - she was unable to completely remove the need for her friend to risk their life. She knew it wasn't permanent. She knew that it was about as trivial for Pemmy and Demmy as breathing was to her.

But she still hated it, and hoped at every turn to avoid making them actually do it.

Unfortunately, while she was confident in her ability to take just about anyone in a fight - or at least, the ability to escape a dangerous situation using gaps - she was increasingly finding that environmental factors outside of her direct control or ability to affect with violence were beginning to bother her.

What she wouldn't give to have a problem with a punchable face right about now.

"Taylor - it's fine. It might not even be dangerous," Pemmy told her comfortingly. She ignored the low growl that emitted from the back of Taylor's throat at that, though there was a small smile of contentment on her face as she turned back towards the portal.

And swiftly dove through it.

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

Codrington Workshop, London

Taylor watched with bated breath as Pemmy passed through the portal - invisible and intangible - and out into what she could only describe as a war zone.

All around where Pemmy was standing, ephemeral black outlines that only vaguely could be said to look like dogs were manifesting, as though from nothingness. A howling storm raged outside of the building whose vast, posh-looking foyer she was in.

And behind her, the portal she had just stepped out of was still very visible, and very much did not look as though it led back into gap space.

Taylor made all these observations at about the same time Pemmy did, being limited to her field of view. It was bizarre, but not too bizarre. There was a portal. Bad stuff was coming out of it.

Simple enough.

The problem was, did the portal exist because of her, or did the portal cause the problem that had made her notice this place in the first place? It was a question she would have to do some investigating to answer, and Taylor had a feeling she knew just where to start.

Because there were also people present. Five of them, in fact. All of them holed up towards the rear of the foyer, clearly trying to avoid dying at the hands of the now rampaging monstrous entities that were spilling out of the portal Pemmy was in front of.

'Should I help them?' Pemmy asked, and Taylor could feel through her link that she really, truly wanted to help them - they were humans, after all - but would abstain if she told her not to.

The fact of the matter was, showing up right now would require a lot of explanation. But… maybe not too much explanation, given the opened portal to… somewhere… they were actively dealing with. And not dealing with very well either. For all they were surviving against the horde of monsters charging towards them, they weren't actually making much of an impact on the actual source of the problem.

The giant open portal to who knows where that was spitting the things out in the first place.

Taylor turned to look at Demmy, who nodded at her and dove through the portal after her sister without a word, and she herself furrowed her brows but stuck her hands out to either side, where Nemesis and Ozma reappeared in their bladed forms.

But she didn't go through the portal right away.

Even knowing it was safe to traverse, she held herself back. She had been forced to learn recently that a cursory amount of scouting ahead was for the best when it came to heading somewhere new.

So instead, she continued to wait, and to watch, as Pemmy and Demmy took the field.

The five humans - she assumed they were humans anyway, they certainly looked it - who had previously been fighting for their lives, three boys and two girls, all turned with shock as the duo made their appearance, appearing from - to them - literally nowhere to swing their blades with perfect synchronicity at a leaping monsters. Their blades passed within a micrometer of each other, far enough away from the paired warriors that there was no chance of harming the other, but close enough that the combined strike acted like a pair of scissors, snipping the things head off almost as an afterthought.

"Greetings! We've come to help!" Demmy cheered as the pair backed towards the struggling humans who - counter to Taylor's expectations, seemed more wary of Demmy and Pemmy than their actual attackers, closing ranks and shifting away from the two women in apparent concern.

One of them, a tall, thin man with long dark hair, called back to them.

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" He requested in as cordial a tone as Taylor figured it was possible to manage while under threat of death.

"We came through the portal, and thought you could use assistance," Pemmy offered a half truth, darting forward towards another charging beast and spearing it in the forehead with her blade, before spinning around and grasping Demmy's outstretched arm, which pulled her away from the reprisal of another charging beast.

"More fairies? Wills?" The dark haired man snapped, flicking his gaze towards another man with messy gray hair who just shrugged back at him.

"No, something else," He replied with a grunt, clearly pushing himself past what he was comfortable with to lean away from the group and slash a dagger in his hand across an approaching monster's snout. It backed off, but the attack was nowhere near as lethal, targeted, or skilled as Pemmy and Demmy's - so ultimately the attack was more of a warding gesture than anything else.

The dark-haired man grunted back at the light-haired one, then turned towards Pemmy and Demmy, who were handily defending themselves even isolated from the larger group. They didn't dare approach any closer - for fear of being attacked from both sides - but their presence swiftly began to act as a breakwater for the humans, drastically reducing the number of beasts that actually reached them.

Taylor eyed the lot of them in the glimpses she could catch while the twins were in active combat. Silently, she yearned for the kind of togetherness they had obviously achieved while fighting. They didn't even really look like what they were doing was fighting. The twins were more… dancing through their enemies. She tried to imagine how good that would feel, to fight with someone who could anticipate and compensate for her movements with perfect accuracy.

She imagined that was probably the ultimate form of her power. She and Emmy, back to back.

"This isn't working! They just keep coming! We need to close that damn portal!" A messy-haired blonde man barked at them, hefting a shotgun and blasting away an approaching monster.

Taylor instantly took a liking to the man. There was just something satisfying about someone smart enough to bring a gun to a wizard fight.

"If you had any ideas-" A small, serene looking woman responded dourly.

"I could- maybe-" the final member of the group spoke up - a girl in a hood that obscured her face from Taylor's view.

"I can do it. If the entire thing is anchored to me, then I- If I go through it-!" The light-haired man said, sounding both desperate and hopeful at the same time. He had a particular look in his eyes as he spoke. Taylor recognized it immediately as one she used to see all too often.

It was a look she saw in the mirror, and in her own father with alarming frequency before she got her powers.

It was the look of someone who really didn't care what happened to them past a certain point. Because they had already lost everything that mattered to them anyway.

She pursed her lips.

'I'm coming in,' She abruptly told her projections. Pemmy and Demmy grimaced.

'I think they can manage without you, maybe you should-' Demmy tried hesitantly.

'It'll be easier for me to close this thing than for them to do it. Probably.' She tried to comfort the projection, who merely squawked 'Probably?!' back at her.

She was just about to cut off her connection with the pair when one of them rapidly spun towards the group of humans again.

"Don't freak out, okay?!" Demmy yelled to them, cutting off their hurried frantic argument about who should do what and why.

"What-" was the last of what Taylor heard, before taking a running leap through the iridescent portal, and emerging into the battlefield herself.

Now physically present, she was much better able to feel the wrongness of the area she was in. She could feel the pulse of nearby leylines, twisted beyond recognition, bleeding corruptive power into the surroundings, and calling down the immense storm that was obviously centered on the building she had appeared in.

She had no idea why someone would do that, but she supposed it didn't really matter. Swinging Ozma outward, she created a wave of cerulean energy swords that hovered before her for a moment, before swiftly flying forward, rotating at terrifying speeds until they became buzzsaws and shredded the bulk of the wave of enemies with only a little effort.

It was… almost kind of disappointing, honestly. She barely even had to try to clean up this many enemies.

Of course, the fact that they weren't really 'gone' after having been destroyed probably balanced that out, as more of the creatures began to spawn from the portal behind her as fast as she wiped them out.

"I just have to close this thing, right?!" She yelled back over one shoulder at the deeply confused group of people nearby.

Most of them seemed afraid to answer her, though she really couldn't even begin to guess why, until the blonde one - she knew she liked him for a reason - snapped his fingers and pointed at her.

"Yeah! Close that mother up and we're good!" He called to her, having evidently decided she was an ally, at least for the moment.

She nodded at him, and Pemmy and Demmy swiftly moved towards her, using their curious ability to coordinate with each other to dance about Taylor like a whirl of steel and death, preventing any of the now reforming monsters from stopping her.

Now… How did she close this thing? She felt like if she asked out loud, she would get yelled at but…

'Okay, gaps are the space between stuff, and I can teleport places by getting rid of the space between those places, so I should be able to… create space between this portal and here? That should work right?' She mused to herself, digging Nemesis and Ozma into the floor in front of her and concentrating on the glowing portal.

Slowly, and with great effort, a thin line of raw nothingness began to rim the portal. Small blinking eyes peered out from the space that was not space, all of them peering inward as though deeply curious about what they were containing.

And then the 'nothing' began to contract around the 'something'. The eyes grew bloodshot. The portal began to shrink.

Until finally Taylor was left with what - visibly - looked like a glass marble, with iridescent sparks of colors occasionally flickering to the surface of the otherwise murky black material.

She stared at the orb of… well it wasn't really glass, but it looked like it was, with fascination.

There was no way it would be this easy. It couldn't be. If she'd had the ability to do this the whole time, if she could have always just shoved any Blue Maso she generated into a self contained bubble, then used gap space to create 'something' between her and it…

The twins were staring too now, crowding around her to glare down at the little orb as though offended by its presence.

The monsters had all vanished. Or, well, not vanished, but without the portal they were no longer simply reforming when destroyed, which meant that they had been made short work of by Pemmy and Demmy, along with the others.

An infinitely regenerating horde was a problem. A finite one was a nuisance.

"Ah, excuse me…" A voice nervously asked from behind her, and Taylor paused in her sudden maniacal need to get home and tinker to turn and look at the guy who had spoken to her.

It was the long-haired one, followed closely by the younger girl in the hoodie, and the blonde guy.

Everyone else was as far away as they could get from her, and even the girl and the dark-haired man didn't really seem like they wanted to approach her.

"Hi, sorry. You're… hang on, I can remember this… a Magus, right?" She tried, doing her best to place both the locale and the relevant information to it at the forefront of her mind.

Sigurd had taught her a bit of this. Magi were the local equivalent to capes here, and they mostly did very complex party tricks. Individually, any given one of them was probably drastically better at magecraft than she or even Mem were - but because they had such a pathetic amount of power to actually work with, they were prone to using increasingly complex methods to get what they wanted out of their spellwork.

Whereas she and Mem mostly just… bypassed any annoying problems with more power, although Mem did so much less frequently than Taylor.

They also had a thing about secrecy, but given that she had dropped in on them during what looked like an active invasion via portal, she felt like she could be forgiven for not being subtle.

"...Yes, I am a Magus. My name is Waver Velvet, acting Lord El Melloi the Second. If it's not too much trouble… who or… what are you?" He asked in a painfully strained voice.

Taylor stared at him for a moment, trying to decide how to answer that. So far, she had mostly used local explanations for her arrival. Explaining the multiverse was a trial, and most people wouldn't believe her if she tried to explain it to them anyway. Yes, part of the reason she let people misunderstand her was because she thought it was funny, but the other reason was just that, people would often convince themselves of her authenticity without her even trying.

"I'm-" She paused, trying to remember the rules here. Magi could do bad things to you if they knew your whole name - which made Taylor curious why Waver had given his to her so concisely - so she… probably shouldn't tell them hers? But she didn't want to trick them so…

"Nexus. Call me Nexus," She decided, ultimately not seeing too much of a problem with just using her cape identity here instead.

"Miss… Nexus, then. Thank you for your assistance. Would it be too much trouble to ask why you are helping us? I must admit I don't have much to offer in exchange," He responded carefully.

Taylor felt like she was missing some context, so she tilted her head to capture the man within the Crystallized Wisdom, ignoring the headache she got from having to parse through junk information.

Thinks you are a Fae. Hesitant to lie to you. Assumes you require something from someone present in exchange for assistance. Avoiding drawing attention to girl. Girl has something a Fae would be interested in. Girl is-

She cut it off, unfocusing her eyes and pondering the information provided for a second before speaking.

"I'm not a fairy and I don't want anything from you. I just noticed there was a weird hole in my space and came to investigate," She said tiredly, demonstrating what 'her space' meant by dragging her finger vertically across the air to create a gap that she tossed the marble containing the portal into.

The group of onlookers all turned at once towards the hole in reality. The teenager in the hoodie fainted. The light- haired man in the rear of the area's eyes began to bleed. Waver and his blonde friend winced.

Taylor quickly closed the gap.

"That… doesn't usually happen," She apologized, eyeing the girl curiously. "I can probably heal her, if-" She began edging forward.

"No!" Waver yelped in panic, stepping between Taylor and the unconscious girl, before clearing his throat and turning a pale faced apologetic smile on her.

"That is… Gray will be fine. I can see to her needs myself. Is… there anything else I can help you with?" He asked, pointedly focusing on 'I'.

It was cute, in a protective sort of way. It was obvious that he thought she was some kind of… horrible thing from beyond space time crammed into the body of a teenage girl, something she felt couldn't possibly be common enough for it to be anyone's first guess, as to her origins, and the fact that he was obviously trying to put himself forward as the only one she should direct any of her irritation to was very noble.

Stupid and pointless, because she was a good guy, but noble nonetheless.

She decided to try and put his mind at ease.

"No, I just wanted to know what was going on. I'm… gonna leave now. I can tell I'm making you uncomfortable," She stated honestly, stepping away from the trio - the blond man was swiftly dragging 'Gray' away from her - to grab her swords, where she was flanked by Pemmy and Demmy.

"Thank you for your assistance," Waver said, the relief on his face knowing she was planning on leaving was palpable.

"It's fine. I'm a hero, so it's my job anyway," She said absently, before considering that for a second.

One of the biggest problems she had with coming to other realities was learning the local 'lay of the land', as it were. She found it insanely difficult to know who she might offend, who she should avoid, and what she should and should not do to screw up the way things naturally tended to work in a place. If she came across something bad that she could help with, naturally she would help with it, but she had no interest or desire to screw up the lives of people she met just for the sake of it.

And she did plan on coming back here now that she had a foothold on the place. A world full of magical research was just too good of a treasure trove not to plumb for interesting tidbits and adventure.

Plus, it might be nice to find a place she could set up for Mem to visit and get an education in. The amount of education her world could provide the girl in the field of magecraft was… well, limited.

Non-existent, really.

"Actually," She mused aloud, causing Waver and everyone else present except for Pemmy and Demmy to freeze in place.

"You can probably guess, but I'm not really from around here," She began, resisting the urge to use the Crystallized Wisdom to try to figure out why that made the Magus in front of her flinch. "And I really don't want to cause any problems next time I visit so… would it be possible for me to visit you later? Just to talk? I promise I'm just a normal human girl - I'm not going to cause you any problems."

She tried really hard to get across her sincerity when she said it, and in fact, the entire time she was here she had tried to be as forthright and beyond misunderstanding as possible. She had zero interest in acquiring any more accidental family members, or bizarre magical cults dedicated to her.

But she still got this feeling like she was being misunderstood, and she couldn't quite figure out how to resolve it in a way that would let her escape to work on the Blue Maso project as quickly as possible.

So she let it slide for the moment.

"That… could be… arranged," Waver agreed with a strained smile on his face.

"Great! Here," She said, swiftly pulling a tag from one of her pouches and scrawling on it with her finger, then handing the slip of paper to the man who took it with a queasy expression on his face.

"Just rip that and I'll come see you. Oh, but I can probably find you later anyway, so don't worry about it too much if you forget!" She cheered, smiling and turning to open another gap that she could step through.

Remembering the local reactions to her previous attempts to do so, she erected a wall of opaque light around herself using Ozma's magic before doing so, before heading home at speed.

… Perhaps it would have been helpful later for her to realize that what she had just said sounded distinctly like a threat.

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

The Heap, Brockton Bay

"Ready?" She asked, wiggling her fingers and dancing from foot to foot while the twins hurried about the space she was in, now cleared of all other machinery save for that required to condense Blue Maso into a stable format.

"Ready!" Pemmy called to her from the far side of the room, waiting to activate the machine.

"Ready!" Demmy followed up, hand firmly on the shutoff for the entire thing - in case this idea didn't pan out.

Taylor didn't know why she hadn't thought of this sooner. Yukari had clearly done things with her own gaps that were far more theoretical than practical for Taylor. There was clearly more to what the power could do than just act as a combination Mover power and extradimensional purse.

Taylor just had to reach for it.

The machine started. The ache in the core of her being rose to the surface.

And she ignored it. Temporary pain was nothing. She could do this.

Slowly, almost agonizingly so, a fist-sized bolt of blue condensed in the space in front of Taylor, and just like with the portal, she created around it a shell of nothingness. It was harder this time. Drastically so, as though the very essence of Blue Maso ran counter to being contained in any way.

But she managed it.

And in the end, when Demmy hit the shutoff?

Taylor was left with a glowing blue orb the size of her fist, that caused her absolutely zero pain to be near or interact with.

They had done it.

Tomorrow is Monday, Choose Two (2)

[ ] Take some time out to fortify the Heap with Onmyoudo.

[ ] Take some time out to Tinker.

[ ] There was a guy you weren't supposed to heal… Uppercrust or something?

[ ] You started the work but… the ferry could finish its transformation into a school with only a little more. You're going to have a bunch of new capes in town that could benefit from it.

[ ] Write In

[ ] Take Time Off (Pick an Extra Social, on the weekends, this can be a second group)

Choose a Social Link (During Spring break, you can do group socials as well)

[ ] Your parents:

Outstanding group tasks: None

[ ] Danny (3)

[ ] Jess (2)

[ ] Mouse Protector (2)

[ ] The Oathbound:

Outstanding group tasks: None

[ ] Trainwreck (3)

[ ] Aspirant (3)

[ ] Parian (3)

[ ] Oliver (3)

[ ] Miss Kim (1)

[ ] Willow (1)

[ ] Jeeves (0)

[ ] The Bratpack (As a group, includes Mem and Mun):

Outstanding group tasks: Train the Brats (Ongoing). Mem's crafting project.

[ ] Aisha (2)

[ ] Dinah (4)

[ ] Your kids:

Outstanding group tasks: Yew wants to go to college.

[ ] Mem (5)

[ ] Mun (3)

[ ] Simone (5)

[ ] Yew (3)

[ ] Gram (2)

[ ] Your friends:

Outstanding group tasks: None

[ ] Victoria (4)

[ ] Amy (5)

[ ] Clockblocker (4)

[ ] Ichigo (1)

[ ] Sisters From Other Misters:

Outstanding group tasks: None

[ ] Yang (2)

[ ] Ruby (1)

[ ] Write In

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Bowler Hat Guy

Mar 13, 2023

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Bowler Hat Guy

Bowler Hat Guy

A Hat & Its Man

Mar 20, 2023

#56,381

[X] Complete Training (Tinker Specialty: Masotech Chemistry) Costs 1 Energy. Choose Two More Actions

-[X] Begin Training (Tinker Specialty: Masotech Robotics)

[X] You started the work but… the ferry could finish its transformation into a school with only a little more. You're going to have a bunch of new capes in town that could benefit from it.

[X] There was a guy you weren't supposed to heal… Uppercrust or something?

[X] Dante (0)

Current Energy: 13

Current Training: Tinker Specialty: Masotech Chemistry (7/10) - Complete!

Current Training: Tinker Specialty: Masotech Robotics (0/10) - (5/10)

Current Emulation Status: Here

Monday, April 4th, 2011

The Heap, Brockton Bay

"And these things definitely aren't like… slaves?" She asked curiously, eyeing what - to her - looked like a DVD player flipped on its side, given an extra thick plastic shell, and arms.

"No more so than we are," Pemmy replied to her absently, while carefully laying out the parts Taylor would need to proceed with the project.

She hadn't actually acquired this tinker power yet, but Pemmy and Demmy had gotten into kind of a groove with teaching her, and now, every day, she found herself plugging away at some mundane tool or piece of technology from another dimension. The twins would walk her through the process of building each component of the device, step by step, and when she was done learning the power, she would also have a working example of the technology in front of her.

Well. Mostly working. Taylor had ordered the twins not to waste their limited lifespan producing the all important 'Red Maso' to power anything particularly esoteric. Much like the lightbulb she had crafted for herself so far back, the Pod in front of her would likely never actually turn on. It would be mechanically sound, but lacking in that crucial final piece for it to turn on. They had Blue Maso now, but their entire production line for the stuff was going towards finishing Pemmy and Demmy's own tinker project - so they were out of luck there too.

Which was honestly fine for her. She seriously had enough of creating life recently. If she was a little more on the egotistical side she'd probably have a god complex by now.

"Are you programmed that way?" Taylor asked curiously, causing Pemmy and Demmy to pause and glance at each other before returning to their work.

"We were built to serve, no, save, humans. But I don't think that makes us slaves," Demmy replied to her.

"You don't have a choice though," Taylor said with a frown.

"You didn't choose to be born either. Or to have thick hair. Or to be a girl. You were just born that way. It's the same for us. At least we aren't Type B droids - they come off the assembly line with their libido hooked up to their combat instincts. It's weird," Demmy answered with another shrug, continuing to lay out small pieces of metal and wiring along the elongated table on one end of the workshop.

The idea was, as Taylor understood it, for her to start on the left side of the table, and by the time she had worked her way all the way to the right, she would have all the important internals of the Pod ready. She wasn't sure what she would do with a Pod - her understanding of the things was that they were basically robot familiars - but since she didn't plan on turning the machine on in the first place, she figured she could let it go. If nothing else, the knowledge of robotics the twins were cramming into her would be helpful if she ever had to repair one of them. She knew they would just reappear after being destroyed, the same as Emmy always did, but the fact that they couldn't heal naturally at all left a sour taste in Taylor's mouth.

She silently resolved to try and ensure neither of them ever actually ended up in a serious fight. One where they could actually get hurt.

"I mean, fighting is pretty fun, but not that fun," Taylor replied to the off-color commentary, her nose screwing up in distaste.

Seriously, who had time to think about stuff like dating?

Monday, April 4th, 2011

The Ferry, Brockton Bay

"Ready?" She called up the hallway to Pemmy who was slowly working her way up the hallway with a spool of wire that she was painstakingly stapling to the wall of the ship's hallways.

At this point, it would almost certainly be easier to use magic to get what she wanted out of this stupid boat, but Taylor was nothing if not willing to smash her head into a problem until she succeeded, so she had refrained.

"Almost!" Pemmy called back to her, having spent the last several hours routing the inscribed wire throughout the overall structure of the boat.

Taylor's original designs for this were kind of sloppy on further inspection. Sure, she had worked out a runic array that would behave like wire pumping energy from the masotech engine at the core of the ship to the enchantments she was trying to lay over the ferry, but in retrospect, she had done that by scrawling them entirely with magic herself. They would have probably started to fade or burn out in a few months, and would have required constant maintenance without any hope of being replaced once they were in use.

Since Taylor had better things to do than spend half of any given week fiddling with a finicky enchantment to make sure it didn't explode, she had taken a different tactic this time. This time, she had made use of alchemy to create spools of wire that had microscopic runes engraved on every one of its fibers. Small, perfectly notched marks on the copper wire that formed a second, ethereal wire through which significantly more of the power from the engine could flow - without deterioration.

Taylor didn't like to brag too much - she knew she cheated - but when it came to Tinkering, Alchemy was really cheating. She suspected it'd take her weeks or months to make even the simplest components without it. As things stood, she could probably throw together a supercomputer in an afternoon.

Well. The parts for one anyway, provided there was someone to tell her exactly what to do.

"Ready!" Demmy and Pemmy called at once, having finally met on the far side of the Ferry's circular hallways, where they quickly connected the two ends of the wire they were setting up.

Taylor nodded at that, and licked her lips, turning back to the dome-shaped crucible she had constructed in the center of the lower deck's viewing platform. Water crashed around her, the occasional wave cresting high enough to slosh through the broken windows of the space to splash against her feet. It wouldn't affect the engine much, and once it was started, it wouldn't affect it ever again - so she wasn't that worried about it.

Still, she was hesitant to turn it on, even with her new precautions.

She had never quite experienced pain like that first time it had run out of control. Despite having fallen unconscious fairly quickly afterward, she could still vividly remember it.

The sensation of something pulling her soul apart, piece by piece.

A shiver ran up her spine at the memory, but she reaffirmed her resolve.

"I'm starting it up!" She called to the twins, who hurried back to her, each one ready to pull her away from the boat, and hit the emergency shut-off respectively.

Then she hit the button on the little control panel built into the crucible, and held her breath as the countdown started.

"Taylor, were you a supervillain in another life?" Demmy abruptly asked her.

"What? No! I would never!" She snapped back, confused by the question.

"Then why does everything you build have an ominous countdown built into it?" Demmy pointed out dryly.

"What's wrong with countdowns?! NASA does them!" Taylor whined, the heavy atmosphere of expectation and concern instantly dispelled by the idle banter.

Which was probably the point, but still.

They continued to bicker until the countdown hit zero - at which point the Ferry began to hover into the air once more.

If all went according to plan, it would rise up and shoot out over the mouth of the bay - where it would start to expand.

When the entire boat started to do just that, she smiled.

Another thing off the bucket list. She was starting to get the hang of this 'responsible adult' thing.

Monday, April 4th, 2011

The Heap, Brockton Bay

The modern world was a wonderful thing.

Taylor realized that much should be obvious to her, but as an otherwise very poor teen she hadn't often actually thought about it. In fact, with exception for her most recent bevy of skills, Taylor's mindset when it came to modernity was somewhat… skewed.

It wasn't like she thought the way a caveman did or anything, but rather, when it came to solving problems, her first thought was almost always magic. Magic was simple. Magic was easy. And with just a bit of consideration? Magic could do just about anything.

At least, Taylor's could. She had access to enough of it anyway.

So when the idle thought had occurred to her to look up that Uppercrust guy who that other guy she hadn't bothered to remember the name of had explicitly told her not to heal, her first thought had been 'figure out what he looks like, try and get a tracking spell going, then teleport to him'.

Vicky had very sarcastically pointed out that phones were a thing, and maybe she should look into using one sometime.

Sassy blondes aside, that was how Taylor found herself sitting in the little office at the top of her tower - which she almost never used for anything - with her hands carefully folded on her desk, and her back ramrod straight, while her cellphone rang.

There was a click, and then-

"Barrier Solutions, this is Sateesh speaking, how can I help you?" A lightly accented male voice asked her in a professional tone.

"Good afternoon, this is Nexus, from-" She began, then paused when Sateesh interrupted her.

"Hello? Is anyone there? I'm afraid I can't hear you," He ventured in that clipped tone people tended to get when they were annoyed but couldn't do or say anything about it.

Taylor stared blankly at her cell phone for a second, then leaned forward to put her mouth closer to the device resting on her table.

"H-hello? Can you hear me now?" She asked awkwardly.

There was a pause, then another click, and then - nothing.

"...Sateesh? Hello?" She asked again, stretching a hand out to pull her phone closer to herself, which is when she finally noticed the call had been dropped.

She'd been hung up on.

"Okay! That's… that's okay! He couldn't hear me so…" She considered the problem for a second, before lifting a finger to trace a rune on the back of the phone, and then another matching symbol on her throat.

There, now everything should be loud enough.

So she called again.

"Barrier Solutions, this is-"

"Yes, hello! This is Nexus, I called earlier but you couldn't hear me!" She boomed, ignoring the rattling walls of the room. If anyone was standing outside the room they'd have definitely been able to eavesdrop on her - but since the tower was so far up, the only way that would happen was if some lunatic was just sort of hovering outside of her window.

Given that this was her wizard tower, with all the accompanying protections and countermeasures you'd expect from a competent wizard, she figured that if anyone could survive the experience they'd probably earned it.

"...hello… Nexus… how can I help you?" Sateesh replied to her in a strangled tone of voice. She couldn't begin to fathom why - he could hear her now right?

"I was hoping to arrange an appointment with Upper… something. Uppersomething. Some guy came to my city to tell me not to, so I thought I'd call and see what the problem was," She explained as bluntly as she could.

She very deliberately disregarded the handful of vague sentences her thinker power suggested she say, on the basis that everytime she gave in and used that particular power as a social crutch, she just ended up creating a bunch of unpleasant misunderstandings.

Like getting adopted in two universes, and being worshiped as a god in a third.

She'd probably keep doing it in most situations where she thought she could get away with it, but at this point if she tried to be vague at Sateesh she was worried he might misinterpret her offer of healing as a death threat or something.

Because Yukari was many things, but 'pleasant' would probably never be one of them.

"Are you aware of the specifics of his condition already?" Sateesh asked her in an interested but also, obviously wary tone of voice.

"Nope, but I can cure pretty much any injury, and most diseases except genetic disorders and cancer," She explained, while mentally noting that if Upperwhatever had cancer that she was going to owe Amy a lot of hang out time at the hospital in exchange for helping her out again. That, or a marathon of one of those low budget medical dramas she loved to laugh at.

Actually, when was the last time she even saw Amy?

Eh, she'd been busy recently. Once Emmy's thing was finally squared away later today - she had no idea what that would entail, but she'd been told to wait, so she'd wait - she could catch up with all her friends.

"I… see. And that's… Brockton Bay? I'll inform Uppercrust of your offer, and will follow up when a date has been set for him to visit," Sateesh said after a second, during which Taylor could hear the obvious sound of pages being turned. A day planner or something, she supposed.

"I can just teleport out to you now and-" She offered.

"Thank you, but with respect, we prefer to investigate and vet all such offers before accepting them. We've had problems with failed treatments and fraudsters before," Sateesh informed her sternly.

Taylor squinted down at the phone, then turned to look out the window at The Ferry instead of letting herself get steamed over having her time wasted.

She was the one who called him after all. And knowing who it was that was offering to do theoretically complicated medical procedures to you was… probably smart.

Even if it was still tedious and kind of annoying.

"Oh… okay. I guess… just call me at this number?" She put forth quizzically.

"I'll do that. Is there anything else?" Sateesh asked, and Taylor could only shrug in response.

Then when she remembered Sateesh couldn't see her, she verbally said;

"No, that will be all, thank you," and he hung up.

He actually hung up suspiciously quickly, not that Taylor really cared all that much.

'Unlimited power, itty bitty social skills,' She griped internally, before tipping her seat back to balance on two legs. She'd have put her feet on the table to stabilize herself, but her balance was good that she didn't actually have to in order to remain upright - so instead, she just crossed her legs and turned her head to stare at the ceiling.

"Why was I sitting up here in the first place again?" She wondered, which was exactly when her phone started ringing. She looked over, saw the caller ID displaying 'Piggot', and quickly silenced the device, allowing the call to go to voicemail, along with the… fifty three other attempts to make contact with her that she had gotten since putting the equivalent of a small city into the sky over the bay.

The Ferry was a beautiful thing. Unlike the Heap, which was the same monotone bronze color all across its surface, The Ferry was a neatly separated group of buildings bearing the unique coloration and texture of the old ferry's innards. The whorls and swirls of a wood floor mixed with an eclectic combination of aluminum siding, glass, and the handful of other materials that had gone into making the one time tourist spot attractive now sat upon what could have been the skyscrapers at the heart of any busy metropolis. The miniature city that combination produced was so bizarre at first glance that she felt she could be forgiven for comparing it to a piece of absurdist art.

The insides of the buildings were entirely functional, however. Despite all of them being the exact same size, with the exact same inner dimensions for all their rooms, Taylor had learned her lesson from the Heap. The Ferry was entirely modular - the rooms could be separated, put together, or otherwise modified in real space pretty much at will for her.

Hopefully this new structure wouldn't come to life and start giving her attitude like the Heap had. Not that she minded the Heap being alive, but it was a little inconvenient.

Her phone started ringing again as she pondered her new creation, and Taylor frowned.

Well, as long as she was trying to be blunt today…

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Devil May Cry, Redgrave City

"Please tell me you didn't respond to my existence by taking up drinking," She asked, half as a joke, and half with utter seriousness as she emerged from her gap into the middle of Dante's… well it wasn't really an office, but it had his desk in it, so...

Office it was.

"Kid!" Dante blurted out, yanking the pistol he'd shoved into her face the second she'd appeared away from her and then - with every ounce of the superhuman speed Taylor knew the man possessed - deposited it back in his holster like the weapon had burned him.

"My name isn't kid," Taylor sighed, eyeing the man she'd come to see.

He was a wreck. There were bags under his eyes, likely indicating he hadn't slept since seeing her last, and visible stubble on his face as though he hadn't shaved in roughly the same length of time.

He also smelled like crap, but she elected not to bring it up - mostly because for all she wanted to make fun of him, or comment on how his current appearance was much closer to what she remembered him as than he had looked previously, she was perfectly aware it was her fault. Which was why she was even here in the first place.

Besides avoiding getting yelled at for significantly changing the city's skyline, that is.

"I wouldn't know, you didn't tell me," Dante snapped at her in an uncharacteristic display of actual anger that he immediately bit back, getting a guilty, apologetic look on his face the moment he'd finished speaking.

Taylor winced at the display.

"...Sorry," She mumbled, crossing her arms and looking away from the man.

"Hah? What was that? I couldn't hear you over my crippling anxiety," The white haired man snarked at her.

"I said I'm sorry! God, either be mad at me or be a sad sack! Pick one!" She shot back at him. They glared at each other for a few seconds, before Dante broke down, closing his eyes and snickering uncontrollably at her as he fell back down into his chair and slumped against his desk.

"You take way too much after me. And I'm the worst," He groaned, lifting his head to bang it against the table.

"I told you before, I'm not your daughter. My name is Taylor Hebert. Nexus, if you wanna do cape names," She explained, eyeing another nearby chair and gently moving the empty pizza box on top of it to the floor before pulling it towards the table and sitting on it.

"Huh," Dante said absently, lifting his head just enough to squint at her past his unkempt, dangling hair.

"What?" She asked, already foreseeing another joke, prank, or similar deflection or jab. She was on edge, mostly because she didn't have Pemmy or Demmy here to help her cope with how simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable being around Dante made her. For everything to be ready for this evening, they had to stay in their lab preparing things - something they took to with an almost religious zeal.

Seriously, if Taylor didn't know better she'd think they were preparing for the rapture or something with how obsessed they were with getting this done.

"I was kind of expecting a reference or something," Dante explained simply.

"What, were you expecting me to be named Beatrice?" She asked curiously.

"What?" Dante asked, seemingly blindsided by the suggestion.

"Because- you know, Dante's Inferno?" She pointed out.

Dante continued to stare blankly at her.

"You seriously don't have Dante's Inferno here? No wait, why am I even asking, of course you don't. Dimension travel is stupid," She complained, not understanding how a universe that seemed entirely centered on the existence of demons and contained a guy named Dante could somehow not have the classic poem.

"That! Let's talk about that," Dante barked, suddenly sitting up and pointing his finger at her, practically wagging it directly under her nose.

"Dante's Inferno?" Taylor asked coyly, before shaking her head, "No, sorry, I know what you meant. I just… got used to messing with you," She added immediately, while trying to keep the discomfort out of her tone.

"Yeah, I got that. Still doesn't explain anything," Dante pointed out with a frown.

Taylor weighed her options, trying to reason out the best way to explain herself to the man without being forced to explain several unrelated things along the way just so he would understand what she was even talking about. Then she checked the time, and found she had several hours yet until she had to meet Pemmy and Demmy for their mysterious project.

So like all good stories, she decided to just start at the beginning.

To his credit, Dante listened to her very patiently, rarely interjecting except to ask her for clarification on some specific piece of terminology or technology that his own world simply lacked.

And at the end of that explanation…

"So, you're a superhero, from another dimension, who's power summoned a duplicate of me, that gave you his teachings, habits, genetics, and weapon," Dante summarized for her.

"...I mean, if you want to be reductive about it…" she muttered.

"No, that's not reductive, that's what happened. Why the hell didn't you just say that when you came the first time?!" Dante exclaimed.

"Are… are you being serious? Because I've considered it a few times, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Or sound… sane," She pointed out.

"Yeah, but come on!" He returned, before sagging in his seat like a puppet with its strings cut. Taylor just shrugged at him.

"For what it's worth, I didn't really want to mess with you like that. I'm sorry if I got your hopes up, but…" She trailed off at the glint in her conversation partner's eyes, recognizing it as the result of a particularly stupid prank percolating in the idiot's itty bitty brain.

"Don't-" Taylor began, but Dante shouted over her.

"That makes you my baby sister then!" He cheered, life returning to his tired expression immediately as he bounced to his feet and pumped his fist.

"Huh?" Taylor blurted out in confusion.

"Think about it! You got the genes, you got the powers, you've got… call it a small but noticeable fraction of my sheer style. Sure, we didn't grow up together or anything, but my actual brother tries to kill me all the time and he still counts," Dante said with a malicious grin on his face.

Taylor didn't like that grin. It signified she was going to be grouchy about something stupid very shortly.

…Even if a very small part of herself dearly missed it.

As though reading her mind, Dante slowly began to advance on her around the table.

"Right, well, you can stop angsting over me now, so I'll just-" She began, slowly rising to her own feet, confident in her ability to evade the man.

She could run faster than most cars. There was just one problem with that, that she didn't fully realize until Dante opened his stupid mouth.

"You know what that means? It means I owe you a lot of noogies!"

And that was the fact that Dante himself was just as fast.

Her shriek of feminine rage was loud enough that she hoped the police would show up, just to spite the man who currently had his big dumb fist planted firmly on top of her head.

And if she was smiling while it happened?

Well, it wasn't like Dante had cameras in this place.

Monday, April 4th, 2011

The Heap, Brockton Bay

What Taylor returned to was… not what she expected.

Well. It both was - and wasn't.

"So…" She asked as she emerged into the center of the workshop, shooting a quizzical look at her surroundings - which were a mess. All of the machinery that was previously present? Gone. Every state of the art device, every computer system, every available wire, cable, or other useful part was gone, torn apart and repurposed into…

Taylor squinted at the Trainwreck-sized machine infront of her.

It looked like an extremely heavy duty drill. Just… a giant, gunmetal gray cylinder, with a break in the middle where a mote of Blue Maso was held in perpetual containment. The device was somehow balanced entirely on the tip of the tremendous drillbit at its base, and despite knowing that Pemmy and Demmy were smart enough to protect against the chance it would fall over, allowing the payload within to breach containment and - probably - kill her, Taylor couldn't help but wince just looking at it.

"Good! You're here!" Demmy yelled at her, emerging from behind a different drill - there were five of them, and perhaps because of the slapdash manner in which they were made, they all looked slightly different.

"Yeah, at the time you told me to be… why couldn't I help with any of this, anyway?" She asked, raising an eyebrow at the uncharacteristic, manic demeanor both twins were showing. Demmy was one thing - she was always the louder of the two, but Pemmy was somehow just as high energy, which was… odd for her.

As though to highlight this fact, the more taciturn of the twins bounded out from behind a different drill to sweep Taylor into a hug, lifting her and spinning her around before putting her down.

"We're almost done! It's almost done!" She cheered happily.

"Hi, yeah, sorry- what's almost-" Taylor asked - again - but got cut off - again.

"We can't tell you until after you do the thing!" Demmy explained to her, practically vibrating with energy.

"Okay, stop," Taylor insisted, lifting both hands, palms out, towards the two of them.

"Can you explain why you can't explain?" She demanded.

"It's a power thing, we aren't allowed to talk about the- the backend?" Demmy tried, pausing to turn to Pemmy at the last word.

"Close enough. Pretend your power is a server - we're just programs running on it," Pemmy explained as though she wasn't being incredibly reductive about her own existence.

"Okay… but, after I do… whatever I'm supposed to do, you can explain?" Taylor pressed.

"Yes!" Pemmy agreed with an excited expression on her face that oddly reminded Taylor of her own too wide smile.

"We're gonna make it! We're gonna win!" Demmy exclaimed again. Taylor sighed.

"You are seriously gonna have to explain why you're so excited about this after I'm done," She insisted.

"Oh, that's easy! The overlap between what we - Emmy - are going to achieve, and what these two," Pemmy explained, gesturing with a finger between herself and Demmy, "were made to do, is pretty large."

Taylor considered that for a second, then - remembering having been told that Pemmy and Demmy were made to save the human race, felt a shiver run up her spine.

"Right so, definitely don't screw this up then. What am I doing?" She asked, cutting to the chase. At this, the twins finally faltered, turning to stare at each other and do that weird twin speak thing they tended to do. Then they turned back to her.

"So… the one problem is… we aren't sure you can do it?" Demmy put forth hesitantly.

Taylor stared at her. Not in surprise, or anxiety, or in an accusing way.

She was just waiting for the 'but'.

She could play a lot of things off as a joke, or pretend to be completely unbothered by a lot of overtly insane stuff - but since she had already inferred how important this was, she wasn't going to leave any room for 'impossible'.

She was a wizard, and a warrior besides.

She wouldn't fail.

"So… the server and program analogy, right? We… kind of need you to break into our server and…" Pemmy trailed off in thought.

"Slam these things into it and pray we don't explode," Demmy finished for her, gesturing at the drills.

"No," Taylor responded instantly. Both twins winced at the hard tone her voice took as she said it - but she didn't really care. There was simply no way she was going to-

"She's exaggerating. We'll be fine. We just… aren't sure you'll be able to get there. There are… precautions… against Parahumans doing stuff like this," Pemmy continued to explain.

"Precautions like what?" Taylor asked shrewdly.

"Well… can you go, physically, to a place you've never been, that might not exist in physical space with a gap?" Demmy asked rhetorically.

"Y- Maybe. I can try, at least," Taylor acknowledged, already chewing the thought over in her head. She'd stabbed time at least once before, so… that should be doable, probably.

"There will probably also be a… a guardian," Pemmy added on, looking awkwardly away from her. Taylor just smiled at the statement.

"Well that shouldn't be a problem. That's just a straight fight, right?" Taylor said, feeling some levity return to her.

Only to be immediately ripped away.

"The thing is… the guardian is us," Pemmy said.

"Which is why we can't go with you," Demmy continued for her.

"Because we're compelled to 'protect' ourselves," Pemmy finished.

"Okay, so I'm clear," Taylor began, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I have to portal to a place that's functionally imaginary, somehow plug these things into you, all while fighting you two off?"

"The Guardian will probably be closer to an Endbringer than we are, if we're being honest. B-but we don't want to hurt you, so it'll probably hold back!" Demmy blurted out.

Taylor growled in irritation, then sighed, allowing all the tension to drain out of her body.

"Okay," Was all she said.

Fifteen minutes later, and equipped with everything she would bring with her if she was actually going to fight an Endbringer, Taylor stood atop her tower and concentrated. She'd never really tried to open a gap to a place she'd never even seen before. The tower didn't have as much power in it as it could have, but it was still more than enough to serve as a power boost if she needed to brute force the issue. In her left hand, she held Ozma, and in her right, she held Nemesis.

"Emmy. I have to get to Emmy. Not the projection, not my friends, but actually Emmy. No, 'Multiversal Emulator'. That's where I have to go," She resolved, honing her focus down to a single point.

To her surprise, she found it surprisingly easy to open the gap she wanted, which was why - at first - she thought she must have failed. Gaps didn't function like her other powers. They didn't really consume a resource per se, but rather, felt as easy to open and close to her as doing up a zipper on a jacket. Where she had been expecting to have to put a herculean effort into the task, what she got instead was… well, more of the same. The effort required was essentially trivial.

And it made Taylor nervous.

Still, something, some deep seated instinct told her that this was the correct portal. That this was right.

And while she might hate that instinct of hers in a day to day setting, with regards to genuine danger? It was almost never wrong.

So she took one final breath, away from Pemmy and Demmy lest they be compelled to stop her by some outside force they were unable to explain - and stepped through the Gap.

Monday, April 4th, 2011

The Firmament

The first thing Taylor noticed about the space she was in, was that it was red. Really, really, red. The entire space was made up of a shifting kaleidoscope of crimson crystals, that seemed to both grow from nowhere, and change position anytime she stopped looking at one of them. To describe the space she now found herself in as having anything even approaching geography would be a misnomer, because the word geography implied that physical space was static in the first place.

Or that space existed as a concept at all.

The second thing she noticed - somewhat ironically - was that this new space she found herself in was… oddly similar to gap space. There was no up. There was no down. Gravity seemed to want nothing to do with whatever this place was, and even though she was of sound mind and body herself, she felt hard pressed to even really determine which direction she was facing, given that any time she blinked the answer seemed to change.

Below or… in the direction she was looking in when she chose to look at her own feet, there was an expanse of mostly nothing. And when she said nothing, she was speaking from experience. Again, much like gap space, which went on forever in every direction with no discernible end, this new place was a chasm of raw emptiness.

And hovering, just above or… near… that emptiness, out in the distance, Taylor could see islands, or… something like islands at least. Each one was made up of the same crimson crystal that so baffled her attempts to orient herself, each one was a different size, or shape, or even orientation.

You would think that when describing a sea of darkness upon which sat a network of interconnected islands that such a thing would be impossible, but even just that singular description of the layout of the place was inaccurate - because somehow, that vast nothingness was both 'below' her, 'above' her, and 'around' while simultaneously being none of those things - and the islands of crystal that hovered 'above' it follow that same trend.

These were powers. She could feel it in her gut the way she could tell hot from cold. It wasn't a deduction, or a guess, or an assumption based on why she was here.

It was an immutable fact.

Each and every single one of the islands in the chain, islands that seemed to stretch out into infinity, was a power. A power, and a parahuman.

Tugging on that line of thought, Taylor allowed herself to be gently drawn in one direction. If she had tried to 'look' for her destination, even with a tracking spell, she was positive she would fail. What she was looking for was something that was intrinsically connected to her, but also, did not exist in the strictest sense of the word. She suspected that only the bizarre way gaps tended to interact with things allowed her to have anything approaching a truly physical form in this place.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Taylor found herself approaching an island that was better described as a continent in and of itself. Smaller islands orbited it as though it had its own gravitational pull, and perhaps most noticeable of all, was the sensation of 'distance' between this island, her island, and all those surrounding it. They were still connected, but in an almost cursory way. Like the connection existed because a connection must exist, rather than because the strange causeway-like paths of crystal were actually intended to be used.

By the time she was done with her musings on the place, Taylor found herself somehow on the island, despite having conceived of it as 'below' her mere seconds before. She found herself wondering how long she had actually been here. Was it minutes? Hours? Days? She couldn't quite tell, which was all she needed to tell her that she should probably pick up the pace.

Hesitantly, she took a step forward. When nothing happened she took another. And another.

On the fourth step, she suddenly found that rather than being on the 'edge' of the continental sized mass… that she was in its center. Or… closer to its center than four steps should have taken her.

"Hello?!" She called out, unsure of if she should proceed or not.

On the one hand, it was probably for the best that there was no guardian present. On the other… if one appeared while she was plugging the twin's devices into the island…

As a test, Taylor opened a gap. Once again, there was no visible response to the action so, she withdrew the first drill, allowing it to fall point first into the oddly fleshy feeling crystal below her feet. The second it made contact with the substance the machine activated, the mote of blue energy at its core flaring to life with a blinding flash. It took half a second - she assumed anyway, time was weird here - for the device to handily carve a hole for itself that it rapidly sunk into until only its circular gray top was visible - like a manhole cover in an alien landscape.

Slowly, Taylor felt her stomach unclench, and her nerves recede.

If that wasn't going to set off any defenses then-

[Nozarashi]

Taylor whirled around at the psychic noise that bombarded her, only to find a person standing there. An… oddly familiar person. From the fragmented word that had been shoved into her mind like an icepick through cardboard, she would have thought it would be Kenpachi, but instead…

Well, instead what she found herself looking at was, well, her. Sort of.

It had most of her features - her face, her stupid, excessively large mouth, her hair and rough figure… but it was also different. Older. Like someone had painted an artist's rendition of what she would look like as an adult.

A dim, distant part of her brain registered that it was also naked, though lacking in any real sexual characteristics - like a barbie doll made of flesh.

That wasn't the only difference though. Where Taylor's hair was a stark white, the duplicate's was a riotous aurora of color that glowed with a soft neon light. Its hair was also - while superficially similarly styled to her own - excessively long. As in, it drifted behind her like a billowing cloak rather than a normal head of hair.

And in its hands was a massive, unadorned axe. The blade was nearly twice as long as the thing was tall, and was wide enough that if Taylor really wanted to, she could put a mattress on it and sleep there.

And the thing, the guardian, the Emmy that guarded this place was holding it daintily in one hand like it had no weight at all.

"Emmy?" Taylor asked, half curious, and half, well… horrified.

It was one thing to commit to this fight, but it was another to be faced with it. Somehow, for all her resolve, it hadn't occurred to her how hard it would be for her to genuinely fight something she identified as her friend.

Even if, or rather, especially if, it was trying to kill her.

The Emmy before Taylor regarded her for a second, like a god glaring down at a bug. Her face was impassive, and her posture completely non-combative. They continued to stare at each other, each one examining the other, for several more seconds.

For a moment Taylor held out hope that whatever imperative forced Emmy to appear and defend her island from Taylor wouldn't be able to win out against their bond. Their friendship, built over days, weeks, and months of struggling together, of being there for eachother.

Then, like twin waterfalls, tears began to flow from Emmy's eyes.

[Run]

Taylor winced at the mental transmission as it once again slammed into her mind like a pickaxe through paper, but steadied her resolve and lifted her swords to fight.

There was simply no other option.

Still, though, the representation of Emmy, her avatar as it were, did not attack. It simply lifted one arm overhead - the one holding the axe in it - and slowly began to lower it.

Which is about when the gap opened overhead, splitting the nothingness for miles in every direction.

She lifted her own weapons to block. To defend. To do something in response to the blindingly fast attack that came rocketing out of that gap towards her.

But it was a sword the size of a skyscraper, moving at a speed that only Dante could manage, and using a destructive force Kenpachi would gape at in awe. Taylor would describe it as a pinnacle attack, a single sword stroke capable of felling nations - but such a description implied she was even conscious enough of the attack to fully examine it in the first place.

As it was, she had to activate her Devil Trigger, release Nemesis, and swing both her swords with all her might just to shift the attack enough to the right to avoid being turned into so much meat on the ground.

She had no idea how to fight something like that. It was like fighting herself, but simply better in every way. Like someone had taken 'Nexus' and scaled her up to 'Endbringer' or possibly even Scion himself.

She was spared having to find an answer to that question when the descending attack hit the drill behind her, forgotten in the sudden chaos.

Taylor could feel the exact moment the containment on its power source fractured. She could feel it in her very soul, as the sudden, violent release of the unstable energy expanded outward, inundating her with a million pains, from a million worlds, where a million Taylors had suffered.

The multiverse was infinite.

And so was the pain. It was so overwhelming, so all consuming, so blinding that she didn't even have the wherewithal to wonder how to deal with the problem. One second she was fighting Emmy, and the next… the next she was in an alleyway, slumped against a wall, so dizzy she could barely see or think straight.

She… she had to get back. She had to…

She lifted a shaking hand into the air to try and open a gap, but the second she touched upon the inner mechanism that allowed her to do so, the pain returned. Not 'a' pain.

The pain. All of it, everywhere, all at once. An infinity of suffering that left her vomiting on the ground nearby, confused, shaking, and - as she quickly came to realize - laying in a puddle of her own puke.

It was laying there, with no access to her powers, and no idea how to proceed, that she realized the thing that finally caused her to shut down, close her eyes, and give in to unconsciousness.

She couldn't. Sense. Emmy.

Monday, April 4th, 2011

????, ?????

Myriad glared down at the woman on the ground with a mixture of annoyance and confusion. She was already having an annoying day. She might be mostly bulletproof, but her stuff wasn't - and there weren't all that many places that sold sunglasses she actually liked in the bay anymore.

"What the hell is this?" She asked no one in particular, before gingerly leaning over to nudge her duplicate with the toe of her boot.

Never One, Without the Other

WARNING

This megaproject permanently changes the nature of Emmy and her interaction with all future potential emulations. Do not take this lightly.

This megaproject should be considered an epic quest, and care must be taken to complete it before the emulation ends - or it will fail.

"She dreamt of a future where Emmy never had to go."

Never One, Without the Other consists of several stages. It is not a learned power - it is a task that can only be completed by Emmy and Taylors efforts.

The First Stage: Determine the nature of, and synthesize a mote of, Nexus based Maso Energy. Hereby called - Blue Maso.

The Second Stage: Find A Way Home

The Third Stage: Defeat Multiversal Emulator's Avatar

The Fourth Stage: ???

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Threadmarks A Noble Villain (Unohana Interlude)

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Bowler Hat Guy

Bowler Hat Guy

A Hat & Its Man

Apr 12, 2023

#56,536

It was astonishing how much of a tolerance for power this world had.

It was perhaps the first thing she had noticed upon bothering to cast her senses outward. The world that strange girl called home was awash with a myriad of spiritual presences. Billowing pillars of light in the sky. Ghost and similar entities seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork. The girl herself hurled her power around with an almost casual lack of understanding for what she was doing - which, Unohana supposed, made sense if she was indeed trained by the oaf.

On her Earth, Unohana's, that is, there were restrictions. Limits. They were self imposed for the most part by Soul Society itself - but they were there for good reason. The fabric of reality there was weaker, more… tenuous. Excessive shows of force could - and would - cause it to unravel.

It was why she and her fellow Captains didn't galavant about obliterating every Hollow they came across at a pace far outstripping anything a normal Soul Reaper could accomplish. It was why weaker, 'normal' Shinigami held value as fighters.

And it simply wasn't a problem here.

Some experimentation had shown her why that might be of course. She had found herself categorically unable to exit the world. There was no Hueco Mundo, no Hell, no Soul Society - not even a Dangai that appeared to go much of anywhere. It was simply 'Earth', and Unohana found that endlessly fascinating

If only because it meant she had no actual restrictions while she was here.

It was something she committed to making use of when she finally got around to beginning to train her new squad. These would not be healers. Nor would they be the brutal fighters of the thirteenth. No, what Unohana wanted from the fourteenth, the hidden squad, was to cultivate a group of people who could stare into the abyss, and when it stared back-

Scare the shit out of it.

So it was that she traveled the world. Faster than sound, faster than thought, even. Utilizing the fact that few people appeared able to see or interact with her, and her uninhibited ability to use her strength, she used the flash step in ways few would truly ever be able to.

She saw the burning man that roamed this worlds Africa, and disregarded him. He would not be a useful training aid.

Although…

"Can you hear me?" She wondered aloud as she alighted near it. Not too near - it wasn't quite as hot as little Gen's flame, but it was getting quite close for something that had no spiritual weight to it. Something she considered a feat in and of itself.

The man, or creature, didn't answer her immediately.

But that was fine. She'd already acquired a list of foes the locals considered 'untenable threats' from the large metal one. His name was… Trainwreck, was it? It was a pity he was already the girls right hand man. He had it within himself to be exactly what she wanted in new recruits.

But it wouldn't do to poach.

Regardless.

What the man had described as a threat more akin to a natural disaster than a person was, in Unohana's eyes, an excellent recruitment opportunity. She could hardly see the humanoid figure at the center of the ball of plasma rolling towards her, but she could sense its intent.

It was hatred incarnate. A never ending spite for everything around it.

It was perfect.

She just had to cut it out of that garish living body.

Grinning, she let her hand fall to her blade.

She truly had missed this.

—

About an hour and several square kilometers of glassed terrain later, Unohana found herself humming a jaunty tune as she dragged - very literally - her first recruit along behind her.

"I'm quite curious what those pillars are, you know," She mused to the surprisingly young looking black boy who hung limply in her grip.

They were nowhere near Africa anymore of course. She believed that this particular part of the world was once referred to as the Marun Fields.

They were an irradiated wasteland now, which held virtually no meaning to someone who was already dead such as herself and the boy.

When the boy failed to answer her rhetorical question, she shook him lightly where she was holding him by the back of the neck.

Like a kitten being chastised by its mother.

"Do you know anything about them?" She queried once more, far less rhetorically.

The boy tilted his head upward to stare blankly at her for a moment before replying.

"Laa," he said petulantly before turning away from her.

She made note of the fact that he apparently understood her english enough to reply to her, but didn't respect her enough to reply in kind. Presumably because he thought the worst she could do was kill him again.

Which was wrong.

Regardless, she turned her attention back to the light in the distance.

She had no idea how the girl had failed to notice or even to feel these things, but they were all over this world. Massive fonts of spiritual power that gushed into the atmosphere like mystical geysers.

She'd seen several, but skirted them, and none of them were being used by anyone. In fact, every single one seemed to be in a former or current disaster zone.

In her experience, resources like that didn't last long without being used unless there was something wrong with them.

Still, she briefly felt her curiosity get the better of her, and so flitted perhaps slightly too close to the edge of the space affected by this one, with her new student in tow.

"Stop," A masculine voice called out to her, drawing her up short.

Not because she was surprised, or because she was scared, or because she was being cautious.

The words literally made her stop. Not permanently. Not strongly. But noticeably enough that her guard went up immediately as she turned to find a man in blue and gold armor standing a small distance away from her.

Well, she said 'armor' but it looked like a halloween costume to Unohana. The blue portions were some kind of spandex that was torn at the mans stomach, and the golden portions were miniscule plates of a gaudy shining metal that looked more decorative than protective.

But what really stood out about him were his eyes. They were cold, and tired. Nearly sunken in their sockets from a lack of rest or respite.

They reminded her of cute little Gen's, actually.

"Why?" She asked, genuinely curious.

"They're dangerous," the man replied flatly.

"To me, or to everyone else?" She pressed.

"Yes," came the next blunt reply from the man.

Unohana frowned.

It had been a while since someone she had no vested interest in leaving alive had spoken to her like that. And her with no specific reason to hold back here either…

"Who, exactly, are you? I feel like it might be worth remembering," she noted, her gaze sharpening as she hurled her new junior away from the oncoming fight.

She had no idea who this was. She has no idea what he could do. She had no frame of reference for even understanding what he could do. And he was guarding something spectacularly powerful.

She almost couldn't help the crooked smile that spread across her face as she observed him, ready to respond to even the slightest twitch of a muscle with a counter offensive.

"A Hero," He replied tiredly, obviously sensing her intent to fight.

Her smile only continued to grow.

—

As it turned out, 'Hero' was a good fight.

What was less pleasing to her was that he was matching her with nearly zero interest in applying enough power to kill her. It was almost offensive. She felt like a young girl again for a moment during the fighting, and much like a young girl, she had quickly come to realize the man had almost no interest in her.

"Bastard," she grumbled, the uncharacteristic curse word exiting her lips before she could be bothered to remember she wasn't alone. When she did, her gaze snapped down reproachfully to the boy, who just smirked at her like he thought her distress was funny.

She'd remember that later too.

She might have pressed the issue, but with the boy so close at hand, and a promise not to cause too much damage in her wake already given, she hadn't quite been able to.

And it vexed her tremendously.

So tremendously in fact, that hours later, when she came upon a miles long trail of smaller ghosts and hollows that appeared to be trailing behind a group of individuals who had taken up shop in an abandoned town, she decided to investigate.

Further inspection told her that the town was less 'abandoned' and more 'massacred', but that was middling interest to her. If the Hollows were what was causing the damage she'd be obligated to get involved - but they weren't. No, the little group of sickly little murderers below her, unable to sense her presence, had managed that all on their own.

And in such numbers.

Briefly - very briefly - she considered recruiting them all. They were nothing if not the remorseless monsters she wanted manning her post. But… perhaps a bit too interested in random chaos over duty.

Then she got a better idea.

The girl needed to experience some hardship anyway.

Not because she needed it for training, no.

Retsu Unohana just wanted to see what it would take to really bring the murderer out in her.

She could do her best to salvage the ones that interested her after that.

Last edited: Apr 12, 2023

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Bowler Hat Guy

Apr 12, 2023

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Threadmarks Summit 19.11

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Bowler Hat Guy

Bowler Hat Guy

A Hat & Its Man

Apr 22, 2023

#56,709

C̴̠̦̠̗̀̉ừ̴̙̖̥̑͌͒̏͊̑̕̚ŕ̵͙̥̘̗̫̐̔͐͂̌̏̽̕͘͘̚͘̕͝ͅr̶̮͎̀̾͗͒͌͒̒̋̓̅͝͝͝͝ȩ̵͚̜͔̲̟̠̅̿̔͗ṉ̵̡̨̩̫͔̦̣͈̲̪̤̙̘̏̑̐̓̓̏͑͘ṱ̶̢͈̱͚̤̮̭̟̗̺̯̙̦͛̂ ̶̢̺͓̦̥̍̾̏̐̿̃̏̈͂́̃̇̀͐͝E̸̢̡̢̛͉̺̝̮̼͉̦͙̫̋̽̋̌̎̀n̴̰͍̼͓̳̼̤̪̳̥͕̈̃e̴̛̫̠̙͖͍̤͉͉̗̬̲̘̩̙͒̉̽̅̐̉́͐̏r̸̢͙̣̭͒̒̿̽͂͋̿͋̓͋̅́͝ͅģ̷̧̼͈̭͚̣̼͕̼̘͛̈́̅̀͂̉̂̾͝ͅy̷̧̬̰̟̭̓͊͝:̸̦̫̞͕͕͖̪̮̦̩̆̇͆̔̉͘͝ ̶̢̳̻͇̣̜̪̦̟̝̖̗̌̅͜1̴̛̥̥̼̫̪̤̠̤̺͙̣͚̖͑̈͛͗̀̉͂̀̓̾̾̎̀͜ͅ3̸̪̙̀̽

̷̪͍̙̫͖̰̝̔̌̌̓̋̋C̷͓̣͙͉̞̮̝͊̓̔u̸̼͓͎̺̦̙̬̣͐͐̒̾̓͝r̷̭̰̻̘̪̰̹͔͈͎̖͆̊̏̋̎̈́͐̀̏̇̀̿̀̚̚͜ͅͅr̷̫̗͙̰̪̅͠ę̶̮͓̟̤͉̯͕̦͓̹̇n̵͙̟̼̮̹̬̭͇̹͖̲̫̔t̵̨̳̪̲̣̭̤͎̐͊͂͝ ̷̡̢̛͖̖̻̳̮̰͈̝̥̳̭̓͂̀̀̀̃͑̈́͂̚̚͝͝ͅE̶̛͉̜͖͔͖̤̹̺͛̒̋̾͊̇̌̅̕̕ͅm̴̧̧̩̦̳̲̺̯͗͋̋͐͆̾û̸̙̙͓̳͎͌̒͆͠ļ̵̦̫̻̖͐ą̶̊̎̉̆͒̈͑͋̅͘͝t̵̘̎͊̀͋́͗̀̅̿̽̈́̕͝i̶̩͙̱͋̕͜͠ō̸͉̙̞n̵͓͎̼͕͎̤͈̟͈̮͖̹̣̑̍͜ ̸̜̮̙̖̯̇̈́̽S̷̛̯͈̟͈̗̜̤̹̖̲̫̔͋͋ţ̷̡͙̯̠̟̖͖͈̼͑̑́͂͠ą̷͚̼͍͈̩̠͉͍̦̟͌̊̈͠t̵̨̯̘͔̱̭̩̬̪̥̠͎̭̭̄̋u̶͓̥̙͍̣̤̠̪̇̽ͅs̷͓͆̈̄̚͘:̴̗͔͚̻̗̰͎̘̤͒͗̈͗̃͂̓̚͝͝͝ͅͅ ̷̛̥̜̞͕̳̫̘̱̥͙̝̑͑̈́̈́͊͘H̵̩̠̲͆̒̽̊̇͂̉͂̏̅̾́͘e̵̡̨̠͔̩̮̪̦̺̦͍̍̾͂̎͋̏̇͒͠͝͝r̸̛̦̠̯̰̯̈́̌ȇ̷̢̢̡̪̮͙͓̰͕̳͔͍̱͙̂͑̃̕͝

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Another Brockton

Taylor's eyes snapped open, and she bolted upright.

Under normal circumstances, she would have engaged her powers to the maximum, lunging into a defensive position good enough to make an action hero blush, and then promptly taken stock of her current situation.

Instead, she got about two inches off the pillow, tried to engage her powers, suffered a spike of extreme pain that left her spasming in the bed like she was having a seizure, and then, while her body was occupied with the extreme pain, she stretched her mind out towards Emmy in a desperate bid to call for help.

'Emmy?!' She practically psychically screeched as the waves of pain and the sensation of having her soul pulled apart at the edges began to recede enough for her higher brain functions to engage.

'Wha-? Shit, Tay?! Did that weird girl attack you?! Hang on!' A voice that was feminine but definitely not Pemmy or Demmy answered her.

On the one hand, hearing a reply, and being able to feel Emmy again was so relieving that she fully believed she could tolerate any amount of pain as long as it would let her proceed.

On the other hand, a sinking sensation of raw terror filled her gut as she contemplated why the voice was different. Why Emmy was different.

It had been a while since it was necessary, but she could still remember the early days of her career. The days when she'd been weak. When, if things were desperate enough, Emmy would burn her own life up to give Taylor the tools to succeed.

She was naturally broken from her thoughts when a new voice answered Emmy's question for her, however.

'Well… this is weird, but uh, no M.E, she didn't.' Her own voice returned to her, echoing across the link to Emmy.

A chill ran down Taylor's spine.

'...You… aren't my Emmy, are you?' She asked tiredly, finally settling down from her panic enough to observe the room she was in, which only really made that sinking feeling of 'wrongness' worse with every second that passed.

It was hers. It was her room. But from… before. The way it was back when it was the size of a closet. It even looked the same. The little basket of dirty clothes in the corner, the bookcase with what few books she owned that weren't actually just her mother's…

The same. All of it.

'No-p-e,' The voice said, all trace of concern vanishing from her tone as though they were never present.

"Is this the part where you tell me you're some kind of evil clone or something? It's happened to way too many of M.E's guys for it to never come up," A voice spoke from the doorway, the speaker having obviously nudged it open to lean against the doorway with a curious but unbothered expression on her face while Taylor was examining the bedroom.

"Echidna couldn't tag you either, I guess?" She asked, slowly levering herself up to look at… well.. Herself.

Herself if she dressed like kind of a skank, but well. Herself. The same white hair. The same face. All of it… the same. Again. Just like the bedroom. The only difference was that her doppleganger was wearing a pair of boy shorts and a tanktop - and not much else.

Her mind, counter to her body, was going a mile a minute.

Something had clearly gone wrong. Something… something had gone very wrong. But she wasn't dead, and as long as she lived - she'd find a way.

It was practically her power.

Well… no. It was Emmy's power, but-

She forcibly turned her mind away from that particular train of thought. She just… she couldn't countenance it.

Emmy was still out there. She just had to get back to her.

"I'm going to guess you don't mean the animal," Her duplicate asked her in an entirely nonplussed tone of voice.

"Monster cape who makes evil clones of people she touches. PRT thought she was a baby Endbringer. We had to put her down," Taylor explained carefully, keeping her eyes on her duplicate even as a dark haired girl with weird pink highlights struggled to look past her doppleganger at Taylor herself with a confused look on her face.

"Just a baby? I'm up one, then. Leviathan," Her doppleganger said with a proud smirk on her face, waggling her eyebrows in Taylor's direction.

"Simurgh," Taylor countered instantly, feeling oddly competitive on the topic. Her alternate self whistled at that.

"Yeesh, I can imagine how fun that must've been. Hey, how'd you deal with the extra-" her alternate - she seriously needed a better way to refer to her in her head - started to ask her, only for a third woman to step into view, draping one arm over her the standing Taylor's shoulder and leaning a head covered in bright blonde hair on said shoulder in confusion to mir.

"Master, priorities. You can figure out who's the bottom later," She pointed out.

"Twins?" Taylor asked, ignoring the pointed suggestion to address her presence.

"You get used to it," Her alternate said with a shrug. Taylor frowned at that.

"Sorry, do you have a cape name? I keep thinking of you as my alternate but it's awkward," She asked tiredly.

"Show you mine if you show me yours, hon," The doppelganger suggested jokingly, lifting a hand to force the blonde Emmy off of her when she started to groan in annoyance.

Taylor nodded at that, and then as one, they answered each other.

"Nexus," "Myriad," They spoke in unison.

"Huh. Alright then. What's your deal? Because seriously, not exactly a fan of having anyone else connected to M.E." Myriad offered with another lazy shrug that caused one strap of her tank top to slide down one arm.

Scandalous, honestly.

"I…" Taylor stated, finally mustering the energy to pull her blanket off and moving to sit at the edge of her bed. She noticed as she did so that someone had changed her clothes, but well… she was less bothered by that than she could be.

It might not be hers in this reality, but they were still her favorite sweats.

She… really didn't know how to explain any of this. She wasn't even sure her alternate self could help. Hell, what if she tried to explain but set off Emmy? Would… would this other Emmy attack her for telling Myriad about powers? About the Avatar that had sent her here?

Ultimately, she didn't know what to do. What to say. Idly, she stretched the barest amount of her will towards her power, then quickly withdrew it like a child touching a hot stove.

This was… this was pretty bad, huh?

Perhaps noticing her distress, or maybe, the tears that were coming unbidden to her eyes, Myriad strode across the room to sit at the edge of the bed with her.

"Hey! Cheer up hon, I'm the best 'round these parts, and you're clearly just me, so - even if you're slightly worse than moi, we'll figure something out. It's kind of my power." She said with a snort.

"Hey! I resent having work foisted on me! You don't even let me bring guys back to the-" The blond Emmy complained from the doorway.

"Shut up, idiot! They're having a moment!" The dark haired Emmy barked, slapping the back of her head and then grabbing her under both armpits to drag her away.

"Come on, let's go finish breakfast you useless-"

Taylor would have been very concerned by the insinuation that Emmy had even the slightest interest in the opposite sex, but she was too busy feeling a mixture of pity and relief towards Myriad.

On the one hand, she suddenly understood what it felt like to have Nexus show up and say she was going to solve your problems.

Jarring because it was actually probably impossible, and yet hopeful, because she did impossible stuff all the time.

On the other hand, the magnitude of this problem…

"It's always a major pain when M.E ends up as someone this horny. At least Panty's less of a tease than last time," Myriad grumbled, probably expecting some kind of commiseration that Taylor… couldn't provide.

"Mine-" She paused when she realized she was about to start crying, and took a moment to settle down and let the feeling recede.

"Mine's never been particularly flirty. I guess there was one time Trainwreck wouldn't stop hitting on her, but that's… different," Taylor said honestly.

"You're on the Merchants already? I had them sort of earmarked for last. Kudos," Myriad answered lazily.

"I- what? No, I recruited him ages ago. He's my second in command," Taylor asked, turning to eye Myriad curiously.

"You didn't end up getting him on your team?" She asked in confusion.

"You have a team?" Myriad fired back incredulously.

""...Huh."" They both muttered at each other.

"A–anyway," Taylor said with a cough, partially to change topics from the suddenly awkward atmosphere in the air, and partially to cover up a slowly rising urge to go back to sobbing at the unexpected news that somehow Trainwreck was a Merchant in this reality.

"I was Tinkering with a power source for Emmy and it, uh, exploded? And then I was here, and I can't really contact my Emmy anymore, and my powers hurt andI'mactuallyreallyscaredand-" She started to ramble.

"Easy, easy," Myriad said awkwardly, patting her shoulder. "Worst case, you hang around until M.E flips again, and hope they end up as someone who can boot you home. Till then, just… stay in the house alright? I don't really have a secret identity or anything, so if people see you walking around…" she trailed off.

Taylor shook her head, taking long deep breaths now.

"I didn't have one, either." She explained absently, reaching for anything that wasn't her current situation to talk about.

But… no. That wasn't right. She still had to do something. She couldn't just… sit and wait for another version of herself to solve the problem. What if Emmy stopped existing when they weren't connected? What if she'd lost her powers, and when she got back, Emmy would just… be gone?

She couldn't. She had to go back. As soon as possible. Right now, if there was any way to do so.

And that thought in mind, while she couldn't seem to get any of her active powers working… did that mean her passive ones had stopped too? Did she still regenerate? She still felt like a skilled sword fighter, heck, she was pretty sure she could tinker up another Blue Maso generator if she absolutely had to but-

She froze.

That was it. She just had to make more Blue Maso. It would hurt, but if she could set the machine to go critical without her input, maybe, just maybe-

"Hey, do you have a lab? I need to tinker," She abruptly said, standing up with a newfound energy now that she knew what she had to do.

She didn't care if she died.

She was going home.

"No?" Myriad asked, leaning away from her with a frown.

"I think I can get back, but I need to tinker it up, and I can't get parts without alchemy. I know money's not a big deal for us, but-" She started excitedly.

"Uh, yes it is? Wait, you're rich too? Why is your life so much easier than mine?!" Myriad complained.

"Easy- look, whatever. Just, I know it's a big ask, but if the PRT knows you can bring back dead parahumans-" She tried again.

She needed resources. She'd beg for them if she had to. She'd steal them if she had to.

"You can do what?!" Myriad screeched at her, finally seeming to be surprised by something she was saying as opposed to quietly amused or curious.

Taylor growled in frustration at that.

"Is there… anything I can do?" She asked, a forlorn expression crossing her face that made Myriad flinch as if struck.

"There's… I mean, the PRT… might help you, if they think you're me. I really don't want to do that though. Couldn't we… raid another tinker for stuff or something? I mean… Squealer, Leet… I could… I mean, I don't really know Toybox, but I've got a rep as an independent so maybe I can trade labor for stuff?" Myriad rattled off in the characteristic way Taylor tended to when suddenly faced with a crying child she had no idea how to handle.

Which… was deeply uncomfortable to see from the other side.

Still… those were definitely… some options…

Escape from Earth-Two! Taylor needs equipment and materials to Tinker up a way home, but she has no connections and nearly no powers at the moment!

What's the plan? (Myriad will assist, but not so much at her own significant expense)

[ ] Write In

24 Hour Moratorium on this one. I'll be around for any questions Taylor might reasonably ask Myriad about this world. I'll try to make the follow up quick - I'm on vacation.

None of this is required reading, but if you want to see more of Myriad and her story, you can find it here;

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Last edited: Apr 22, 2023

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Bowler Hat Guy

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Bowler Hat Guy

Bowler Hat Guy

A Hat & Its Man

May 23, 2023

#56,934

Spoiler

C̴̠̦̠̗̀̉ừ̴̙̖̥̑͌͒̏͊̑̕̚ŕ̵͙̥̘̗̫̐̔͐͂̌̏̽̕͘͘̚͘̕͝ͅr̶̮͎̀̾͗͒͌͒̒̋̓̅͝͝͝͝ȩ̵͚̜͔̲̟̠̅̿̔͗ṉ̵̡̨̩̫͔̦̣͈̲̪̤̙̘̏̑̐̓̓̏͑͘ṱ̶̢͈̱͚̤̮̭̟̗̺̯̙̦͛̂ ̶̢̺͓̦̥̍̾̏̐̿̃̏̈͂́̃̇̀͐͝E̸̢̡̢̛͉̺̝̮̼͉̦͙̫̋̽̋̌̎̀n̴̰͍̼͓̳̼̤̪̳̥͕̈̃e̴̛̫̠̙͖͍̤͉͉̗̬̲̘̩̙͒̉̽̅̐̉́͐̏r̸̢͙̣̭͒̒̿̽͂͋̿͋̓͋̅́͝ͅģ̷̧̼͈̭͚̣̼͕̼̘͛̈́̅̀͂̉̂̾͝ͅy̷̧̬̰̟̭̓͊͝:̸̦̫̞͕͕͖̪̮̦̩̆̇͆̔̉͘͝ ̶̢̳̻͇̣̜̪̦̟̝̖̗̌̅͜1̴̛̥̥̼̫̪̤̠̤̺͙̣͚̖͑̈͛͗̀̉͂̀̓̾̾̎̀͜ͅ3̸̪̙̀̽

̷̪͍̙̫͖̰̝̔̌̌̓̋̋C̷͓̣͙͉̞̮̝͊̓̔u̸̼͓͎̺̦̙̬̣͐͐̒̾̓͝r̷̭̰̻̘̪̰̹͔͈͎̖͆̊̏̋̎̈́͐̀̏̇̀̿̀̚̚͜ͅͅr̷̫̗͙̰̪̅͠ę̶̮͓̟̤͉̯͕̦͓̹̇n̵͙̟̼̮̹̬̭͇̹͖̲̫̔t̵̨̳̪̲̣̭̤͎̐͊͂͝ ̷̡̢̛͖̖̻̳̮̰͈̝̥̳̭̓͂̀̀̀̃͑̈́͂̚̚͝͝ͅE̶̛͉̜͖͔͖̤̹̺͛̒̋̾͊̇̌̅̕̕ͅm̴̧̧̩̦̳̲̺̯͗͋̋͐͆̾û̸̙̙͓̳͎͌̒͆͠ļ̵̦̫̻̖͐ą̶̊̎̉̆͒̈͑͋̅͘͝t̵̘̎͊̀͋́͗̀̅̿̽̈́̕͝i̶̩͙̱͋̕͜͠ō̸͉̙̞n̵͓͎̼͕͎̤͈̟͈̮͖̹̣̑̍͜ ̸̜̮̙̖̯̇̈́̽S̷̛̯͈̟͈̗̜̤̹̖̲̫̔͋͋ţ̷̡͙̯̠̟̖͖͈̼͑̑́͂͠ą̷͚̼͍͈̩̠͉͍̦̟͌̊̈͠t̵̨̯̘͔̱̭̩̬̪̥̠͎̭̭̄̋u̶͓̥̙͍̣̤̠̪̇̽ͅs̷͓͆̈̄̚͘:̴̗͔͚̻̗̰͎̘̤͒͗̈͗̃͂̓̚͝͝͝ͅͅ ̷̛̥̜̞͕̳̫̘̱̥͙̝̑͑̈́̈́͊͘H̵̩̠̲͆̒̽̊̇͂̉͂̏̅̾́͘e̵̡̨̠͔̩̮̪̦̺̦͍̍̾͂̎͋̏̇͒͠͝͝r̸̛̦̠̯̰̯̈́̌ȇ̷̢̢̡̪̮͙͓̰͕̳͔͍̱͙̂͑̃̕͝

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Another Brockton

They sat there together, in what would generally be considered complete silence. For a solid ten minutes, Taylor wavered between abject despair, and fierce determination, until she was broken from her internal strife by a question.

"...Why is it so noisy?" She eventually asked, completely shifting the topic from her previous, somewhat desperate, attempts to find a solution to her problems.

Myriad - who had been awkwardly sitting nearby without comment - turned towards her, and the relief in her expression at having the silence ended almost made Taylor feel bad.

Almost.

Things were still pretty unpleasant for her at the moment, so she could only feel so bad about being sad over it.

"I don't hear anything?" She asked quizzically, to which Taylor could only frown. It took her a few seconds, but eventually, she realized what was wrong here. It was the city. The city sounded wrong. She was born and raised in Brockton Bay - they both were, obviously - but at some point, the city had diverged. Changed. Taylor's Brockton was no longer cacophonous, no longer contained that slight element of chaos to it that left one wondering if the loud noise in the distance was a garbage truck trundling along… or a cape slamming into a car. The sirens, while not as bad as her childhood, were entirely too constant.

The order she had unwittingly imposed on her home was absent here, and it left her feeling on edge. It was a sensation she hadn't felt in some time. The unconscious desire to go into the city and fight crime, to quell the gang violence and give a modicum of peace to the people living here.

Perhaps, Taylor thought, she had forgotten this sense of duty, because there was nothing around her that made her really feel like it was necessary anymore.

"Yo? Are you okay?" Myriad called to her, snapping her fingers an inch from Taylor's face to draw her attention. She jerked back from the noise, but not before one of her hands twitched, raising halfway up to try and grab the extended arm, hyperextend it, and then snap the elbow joint in the wrong direction.

Myriad just looked at her, nonplussed at her stilted and stiff reactions.

"Y-yeah. Sorry, I just…" She trailed off, frowning again.

How to explain to someone that you thought their version of reality was strictly worse than your own? Well, in truth, the best choice was probably not to do so at all.

So she didn't. Instead, she changed the topic again.

"Do… you have any experience with magic tech? Er, I don't think it's actually called that but… I mean, just technology powered by Maso?" She tried, curious as to what this other version of herself had acquired over their shared tenure. She sort of wished her powers worked, or that her Emmy was with her, because she couldn't help but feel a sort of… competitiveness inherent in the question. She had nothing against this alternate version of herself, truly she didn't, but at the same time, even now, she could hear the city.

And it did not sound healthy.

"Depends. I've got a few who were dab hands at shooting people with the stuff," Myriad answered with a lackadaisical shrug.

"I more meant building it," Taylor clarified.

"Oh. Then no, not at all. S'weird to me how wide your spread is. My guys have always been on theme if you catch me," She said, standing and stretching in a way that made Taylor once again wince.

It was all the misery of Nemesis running around with a body identical to her own, and none of the right to even begin to ask her to tone it back. After all, in this case, she was the unwanted doppelganger.

Still, if she could just convince her twin to cover her shoulders or something…

"Then… Do you know anything about soul magic? Multiverse stuff? Summoning spells?" Taylor rattled off, trying to stay on task. She needed to know what commonalities they had between them. It was shameful to admit, but she was probably going to have to rely on this alternate self to get home, which meant that she needed to at least understand the full scope of the problem.

The problem with that was, without any context, explaining it to her would be about as complicated and pointless as explaining magical theory to Trainwreck.

Completely beyond either person's paygrade, as it were.

"Eh, I've had a few that did some of that stuff, but only one who had a big run in with all the 'me if I was French' type stuff. Honestly, I'm kinda worried my daughter from the future is gonna show up or something. That'd be a mess," Myriad said grouchily, before gesturing at the door with her chin and leading Taylor out of the room.

Well. Leading probably wasn't the right word. It was her house. She knew where the kitchen was.

The problems only really started when both she and Myriad tried to grab the same cup, from the same cupboard, at the same time. An old mug her mom had left her. Only… Taylor's version of that mug was back home.

"...Sorry," She allowed, dropping her hand and instead opting to examine this world's Emmy.

They were slightly short adult women, the both of them, but where Taylor's twins were nearly identical, taciturn, and very businesslike, these two were… not that.

One was a bottle blonde in a red sundress, and the other had dark hair that nearly touched the floor, and was wearing a frilly goth outfit that made Taylor think of that one Addams Family character. The creepy teenage girl.

More so than that, they were… very lively. Even as she watched them try to cook, they argued, shoved each other, and just generally nearly burned the house down around them failing to scramble eggs.

"Move, I'll do it." A voice called out irately, and she was somewhat perturbed to realize it was her own.

"Whatever." The dark haired one shrugged at Taylor as she hip-checked her out of the way. The blonde one just flipped her off. It was very off-putting being treated like a stranger by Emmy, but she tried to put it out of her mind.

One step at a time.

"...We were trying to make an unlimited power source," She spoke blandly into the kitchen's otherwise quiet environment, shimmying the pan a little to unstick the burnt eggs on the bottom without turning around to see how everyone else had taken her statement.

"My Emmy, they became these twins who say they accidentally doomed humanity. There were no humans left in their world - just androids. They had this… magical particle that powered all of their technology. Apparently, really powerful magical beings there could produce this sort of… soul particle… that produced tons of power but that had weird properties based on where it came from," She continued, finally turning to find that not only Myriad, but her two projections were now watching her explain with rapt attention.

"Doesn't really explain why you wanted unlimited power," Myriad pointed out, placing one of her dad's mugs, filled with green tea, on the counter next to Taylor before walking to the table and pulling out a chair that she summarily sat backwards on, draping her upper body over it's back and taking a sip of coffee.

Taylor wrinkled her nose at the stuff but didn't comment.

Her dad always said she'd learn to love the stuff some day. She supposed that day just came earlier here than back home.

"Sounds kind of evil, actually," Myriad continued, as though waiting for Taylor to answer the unspoken accusation. In response, she turned a pointed look on the too utterly silent projections in the room.

"I don't actually know what it was for. Emmy just kept implying that if we didn't do it, the human race would go extinct or something equally bad would happen," She said, watching for any reaction in the two.

Perhaps because neither of them were particularly good at hiding their emotions, it was almost painfully obvious when they both flinched slightly at what she had said - a fact that did not go unnoticed by Myriad, who turned towards them with a frown. Distantly, Taylor could feel a flurry of… she would almost call it psychic activity, as the three had a private conversation over their link that she could feel happening, but not forcibly insert herself into.

It was understandable. If Myriad was anything like herself, then Emmy was more than just her closest friend. She was her advisor, her reassurance. The shield that stood between her and the bad things in the world.

When something went wrong and she didn't know how to deal with it, she'd ask Emmy what to do first - no matter who she was at the time, no matter how unlikely it was the current version of Emmy would know what the hell they were talking about.

Taylor watched for a moment, using the time to finish and then plate the scrambled eggs she was cooking, before taking pity on her alternate self and interjecting.

"Don't bother asking them about it, they can't explain it. I mean, they literally can't. It's like…" She trailed off, trying to find a way to explain this that would make sense.

"It's like, a power thing. I think they're all like Emmy. All alive. They're like… people. Weird, weird, people. And for some reason, they aren't allowed to talk about it. When we were trying to… to fix my Emmy, she destroyed the container holding our solution. It's why I'm here. I… don't think she had a choice," Taylor said honestly.

"Wait, wait, wait! I thought you said you were trying to create unlimited power!" The blonde projection snapped at her.

"How and why were you able to encounter an avatar if you weren't even sure what you needed to do?" The other one pointed out. At this incredulous statement from the pair, Myriad finally whirled around on them, a surprised expression on her face.

"Wait, she's not making that up?" She asked pointedly.

Both projections froze, each one opening and closing their mouths like fish freshly yanked out of the water.

"Like I said, I don't think they're allowed to answer that question," Taylor offered weakly when Myriad whirled back around on her.

"...Okay, so I have this straight," She said slowly, putting her coffee down and clasping her hands together. "Powers are all alive, something bad is gonna happen if they don't find a new power source, and you have that power source, but need tinker stuff to make more?"

"Mostly, yeah," Taylor allowed.

It probably would have behooved her at this moment to explain that Blue Maso was… somewhat dangerous to her specifically. She didn't doubt her ability to handle it safely from the perspective of everyone else - it wasn't all that hard to build a containment unit for it in the first place.

Just… Taylor herself was taking a significant risk anytime she interacted with the stuff.

But if she mentioned that, would anyone let her do it? She had to assume not, given that she wouldn't willingly let a duplicate of herself potentially kill themself doing the same.

"...Can I have some?" Myriad asked, leaning away to eyeball Taylor like they were only just meeting for the first time.

She understood that too. In all the time Taylor had been a cape, she had never encountered another cape who's powers had such a wide scope. Who's actions and abilities could so easily affect everyone and everything they interacted with. Most capes kept themselves contained to their home cities - maybe they'd travel around a bit, but ultimately, they could only really play a small part in the greater world around them.

Capes more powerful than that were few and far between, and of that small group, most of them were either the Triumvirate, or natural disasters in and of themselves.

Taylors powers went a step beyond that, in some ways - which was why Myriad was probably, for the first time, truly accepting what she was dealing with.

Another person just like her.

"If I can," She answered, realizing that now, she was no longer speaking with someone interacting with her purely because of novelty, or out of sympathy.

Now, she was negotiating - something she would never have been able to determine without Yukari's thinker power.

…She was seriously maladjusted sometimes.

A tense moment passed between them, both women staring into eachother's eyes, looking for deceit of any kind.

And then Myriad leaned back, putting her elbows on the table behind her with an easy smile on her face.

"Well, alright then. I might have a few more options than I originally implied," She said smugly, causing Taylor to lift an eyebrow in her direction that the cocky duplicate matched with one of her own.

She'd been wondering about that. It seemed insane to her that she had found so many applications for her powers, but a duplicate of her seemingly hadn't been able to manage even a single one that wasn't specifically for fighting.

What Taylor couldn't understand was-

"Is there some reason you didn't want to tell me about those options earlier?" She asked, somewhat on guard.

She knew her powers, which was why she knew that no matter how heroic she was, her powers had a tendency to produce some truly horrific stuff every once in a while. She was fond of Kenpachi. Loved him like family in some ways - but that didn't change the fact that he was, for all intents and purposes, a serial killer with a badge.

Heck, if she ever cared to make use of it, she was technically the single greatest human master her own earth had ever known. Every shikigami she had ever brought back, including the thousands that were even now likely swarming towards her Brockton Bay, were under her sway. She never had, and never would, order them to do anything with that power.

But she could.

"It's a little invasive," Myriad allowed with a shrug. Taylor just stared at her.

"...okay it's a lot invasive, like, tap dance on your psyche, invasive. So, I try not to do it unless I have to. Look, don't ask so many questions - we're gonna go dumpster diving in that noggin of yours because that's the most likely place to find the stuff you need to build your thing. Come on, palaces aren't usually super hard to navigate as long as the owner doesn't have it out for you so-" Myriad explained, her expression and demeanor brightening with what Taylor could only describe as childish anticipation the longer she described the theoretical dangers of whatever a 'Palace' was.

"Ehem," One of the two projections faux coughed at the two of them, breakfast forgotten at their sides, causing both of them to pause.

"Aren't you forgetting something, Master~?" The blond crooned at them in a way that made a shiver of unwelcome disgust wriggle its way down Taylors spine.

"Er- I mean this is sort of an emergency deal right? So why don't we just skip training today, yeah?" Myriad said carefully, backing away from the table with a nervous expression on her face.

"Yeah, alright," the blonde one said with a shrug.

"That- 'alright'? Just like that?" Myriad asked in surprise.

Taylor was surprised too, but for different reasons. She couldn't understand not liking training! It was their whole bit! It was how their powers worked!

"Sure, You go ahead and ditch training. That'll free my schedule up to find that cute dork from school and-" The blonde continued, seemingly entirely serious as she turned and started to sway her way towards the front door of the house.

"Absolutely not!" Myriad barked, jumping over the table towards her with a speed and desperation in her voice that Taylor would have found highly amusing if it wasn't so… familiar.

"You sure? I keep telling you that Greg kid just needs to get-" The blonde one continued with a smirk on her face.

"Training! Let's just do the damn training!" She yelped, picking her projection up and slinging her over one shoulder. "Stocking! Come on!" she added when the other projection proceeded to ignore the entire conversation in favor of stealing the still steaming pile of eggs sitting on the table behind them.

"Can I come?" Taylor asked hopefully, earning a confused look from Myriad that quickly morphed into a look of hopeful comradery.

"Right! You get it, you do this too right?" She said excitedly, stomping back into the kitchen with the blonde one - she still hadn't gotten her name - still dangling behind her to grab Taylor's hand in order to lead her to the garage.

"Yes? I don't understand why you don't like training though," Taylor answered suspiciously.

She could see a lot of differences crop up if Emmy had ended up as different people than she had - but not liking training wasn't one of them. Heck, she still fondly remembered her first ever training session, back when…

Actually, hadn't Emmy just crushed her under Kenpachi's spiritual weight until she blacked out until she could survive it? Why did she look back on that moment fondly again?

"You enjoy the nonsense these goons call training?" Myriad asked in dismay, pulling the door open and taking the two steps down into the garage.

Which was… completely empty. All of the loose tools and stuff Dad usually kept there were absent, in favor of what looked like a home gym. A home gym that had been thoroughly obliterated, because someone had pushed the few machines present against the walls in order to make room for a metal pole in the center of the room.

"Training is training," Taylor replied, indignant on the projection's behalf.

"Yeah! When you're experimenting in college you'll totally thank me for this!" The blonde insisted, while the raven haired projection - Stocking, Taylor supposed - slid past all of them to take up a position next to the pole.

"Huh?" Taylor grunted out in confusion to the projection's statement.

Then Stocking grabbed the pole with one hand, using her body weight and a twist of her wrist to artfully twirl about it until her knees were pressed against the ground and one leg was curled around the pole along with her hand.

"...This is called a back hook spin," she recited in a dry, bored, possibly somewhat annoyed tone of voice.

"...You know what, maybe I'll just get some rest until you're done with this," Taylor said quickly, backing out of the room and slamming the door before anyone could stop her. When no one seemed eager to chase after her, she swiftly retreated to the kitchen - where she proceeded to start cooking a new breakfast to replace the one Stocking had stolen.

Well.

At least Emmy had never made her dance.

"I still don't understand," Taylor insisted, standing outside in her backyard, or, well, Myriad's backyard, while the latter fiddled with her cellphone.

"I mean, I get that you said we were going to go… I guess inside me… to find stuff, but I don't get how that translates to getting equipment for me to tinker with," She insisted testily.

She felt like she should be wearing her costume, but lacking access to her gaps she simply couldn't get changed - and she would rather go into battle wearing a sweatshirt and no hat than wear the flashy garbage Myriad considered a costume.

Who the hell wore sunglasses into combat?

"Gross, don't describe it that way," Myriad chided her.

"G- Are you dodging the question?" Taylor insisted, tapping one foot on the poorly kept grass of the yard.

She made a mental note to make sure one of her kids was mowing on the weekends.

"No but- look I don't know how this stuff works okay? I press a button on my phone, I go inside your brain or whatever, and then I can steal stuff and beat up shadows or… whatever you want to call them," Myriad explained exasperatedly.

"Okay, now what's a shadow?" Taylor continued.

"It's like… a brain demon? They're pretty cool actually," The other cape waved her off.

"Every time you try to explain something I understand and trust it less," Taylor sighed. Part of her was just… anxious. She couldn't use most of her powers. She didn't have Emmy, ever present and invisible, to help her if something had gone wrong. And while she did to some extent, trust her alternate self - after all, if you can't trust yourself, who can you? - she also just… felt naked.

"What, you wanna say you actually understand everything about all your powers?" Myriad asked her incredulously.

"I mean, we get lectured for days on all of them don't we?" She pointed out, waiting for something - anything - to happen, while Myriad glanced about herself with only mild interest and curiosity.

"You actually listen?" Was the reply she got back.

"You don't?" Taylor responded in horror.

The two women turned to stare at each other once more, before both making a huffing noise and choosing to drop the topic.

"Well… let's just… get it over with I guess…" Taylor said with a sigh, tilting her head to try and find whatever it was Myriad was looking for, only to turn back and spot the other girl in an entirely different outfit than the one she had been wearing previously. Suddenly, she was wearing a black button up shirt, black silk pants, black boots, a black long coat, and a white masquerade mask of all things.

Taylor wasn't big on fashion on a normal day, but even she had absorbed enough via osmosis from Vicky that her first instinct was to call the entire thing tacky.

"Already done. Come on," Myriad said with a snicker, waving for her to follow before jogging up to the gate and onto the street in front of the house.

"We didn't go anywhere! You just changed your clothes!" Taylor called after her with a sigh, before chasing after her, only to halt on the sidewalk in front of her house when Myriad came to an abrupt halt - nearly bumping directly into her.

"Yeah? You remember one of those in the city then?" Myriad asked pointedly, gesturing with one extended finger at the skyline.

At first, Taylor couldn't tell what the problem was, until it slowly dawned on her what she was looking at.

Sure, a massive bronze castle eating up the skyline was utterly normal for her, but Myriad's Brockton didn't have the Heap. And yet, most assuredly, the Heap was what she was looking at. Looming somehow larger and more imposing than ever on the skyline. Then she started to pick out details - details that shouldn't be there.

Like the giant neon sign dangling from the side of the wizard tower that read, 'Welcome to a Normal Town'.

Taking a moment to really examine her surroundings, she realized that there was a lot more odd about her surroundings than just the changes to the castle. There were people walking the streets… but those people all had masks on. Plain white masks with simple expressions painted on them. A smiling face. A frowning one. A crying one. Any time any two people met, they would talk to each other… but the conversations were… odd, and stilted. She observed with a morbid sort of curiosity as a single man paused six separate times to have the same conversation about the weather with six different people, echo of whom responded the exact same way before going on to propagate the effect.

"I feel like I'm being insulted," She said aloud, frowning at the sight before her. Myriad snickered.

"Yeah, you get used to it," She said with a smile, before turning towards her and cocking her head to one side in lieu of lifting an eyebrow Taylor wouldn't have been able to see behind her mask.

"So - if you were god, where would you keep all your cool stuff?" She asked.

Taylor shot her an annoyed look, before turning to look at the Heap again, and Myriad could only sigh in response.

"Yeah… that's what I thought," She grumbled.

"So… we just go to the Heap, see if anything useful is there… then leave?" She asked curiously.

"The Heap?" Myriad asked curiously.

"The heap of garbage, as Trainwreck used to call it. The name stuck," Taylor answered with a shrug, turning to orient herself and then beginning a slow jog along the street in the direction that would lead her to the entrance to the castle.

"Damn. You must love the place for it to be so big in here," Myriad responded idly.

Now it was Taylor's turn to take on a quizzical expression.

"No, that's pretty much to scale. I guess it's got more presence to it than normal though. And that sign definitely doesn't exist in real life," She explained with some embarrassment. Myriad didn't directly respond to that, but Taylor thought she heard her alternate grumbling something about 'disney princesses' for a moment before speaking again.

"Okay so, this shouldn't be too tough. Basically, as long as you don't subconsciously really hate yourself, or me, we should be able to waltz in, grab some stuff, and go," Myriad explained.

"What happens if I do subconsciously hate myself?" Taylor asked suspiciously.

"Theeeeeen every defense system in this place will probably try to kill us. No pressure or anything, but if you actually hate me? Now would be a good time to say it," Myriad drawled back at her.

Taylor snorted, noting with some relief that - via the spacial nonsense the Heap had always demonstrated - they had already closed in on their destination, where a veritable army of the mask wearing 'normal men and women' were passing back and forth, a stream of them entering and exiting the building through every possible entrance, all while having a cacophony of the same three or four conversations.

Sports, Weather, Work, School, Sports, Weather, Work, School.

"Is this normal too?" Myriad asked curiously, obviously missing the wince Taylor let loose at the word 'normal'.

She was normal. She had super powers, sure, but she did normal girl stuff all the time! She wasn't some… disconnected magical princess living in a high tower, completely unaware of what normal life was like for people!

"Y-yeah. It's daytime so the malls probably open," She said with a sigh.

"You have a mall in- you know what? I'm gonna stop asking, but I want you to know that in my head? You're the princess version of us now," Myriad pointed out with a snicker. Taylor groaned.

"I'm not- never mind. Let's just get this over with," She sighed, taking the lead and walking blithely around the line up to get onto the grounds without a peep from either of the masked guards.

She was glad. It was her castle, but also… not. So there was really no telling how much of her familiarity was misplaced. At length however, they made their way to the garage entrance on the side of the building - which is where they encountered their first problem.

The roll up door was closed.

"This the way in?" Myriad asked her curiously.

"The friends and family entrance, yeah. It leads to Trainwreck's workshop," She explained, though, now that she thought about it, the piles and piles of random scrap in there would probably be excellent tinker supplies.

"Got it, one sec. I'm not usually big on sneaking around anyway," Myriad told her lazily, before sauntering up to the door frame.

And then… she posed.

"Arsene!" She yelled while posing, and an enormous, muscular man wearing a red frock, who was invisible from the waist down appeared behind her, with two black wings extended behind him like banners made of feathers - utterly useless for actual flight, but very eye-catching.

"Why!?" Taylor demanded of her alternate self, even as the buff man bent forward and dug its fingers into the gate, warping the metal enough to get a hold on it and then throwing it upward all at once.

"Why what?" Myriad asked her, pausing to glance over her shoulder at Taylor while the muscular dude merely hovered behind her for a few moments, glistening artfully in the sunlight for a second before receding into Myriad's back.

"Are you gonna try out for the Sentai Elite or something?! Why are you posing?" She complained, refusing to let this singular moment of weirdness pass.

"Do you not? You know how good we look right?" Myriad asked her curiously, rolling her shoulders and taking a step inside the building.

Taylor felt her eye twitch at that, and was going to respond with another distressed yelp, but a voice rang out in the garage, and she just about nearly leapt out of her skin at it.

"The fuck? Why are there two of you?" Trainwreck asked, meandering over to them with a grouchy look on his face. "And why the hell did you break my fucking door!" he added angrily afterward, looming over Taylor in the suit she had come to know and love.

"Ars-" Myriad began to call, but Taylor quickly stopped her.

"No! Wreck I-" She paused, realizing that just hearing his voice nearly had her on the edge of tears before reigning herself in.

This wasn't real. He wasn't real.

She had to stay on task.

"You're not real. We're inside my psyche because I lost my powers and I need to steal some tinkertech to fix it," She explained as quickly as she could.

"You can't just tell shadows they aren't real, genius, only an absolute lunatic would-" Myriad began to chastise her.

"Fuck, I knew something was up. My beer tastes like fucking green tea. Shit," Trainwreck grumbled, lifting a hand to idly scratch the back of his head.

Taylor tried really hard not to smile smugly at her alternate self, especially given the gobsmacked look on her face.

She didn't quite manage it, but she did manage to stay on task.

"Yeah so… can you take us to my lab? The new one?" She asked hopefully.

"Uh… maybe?" He offered sheepishly.

"Why maybe?" Taylor asked suspiciously.

In response, the titanic tinker merely shrugged, and turned to start leading the way further into the building. As worried as she was, Taylor couldn't help but smile as he shouldered the door to his garage open, stepping out into the hallways that were sized perfectly for someone his size to be able to maneuver in.

If she was going to build a mall, it wasn't going to be one that her oldest teammate couldn't shop in.

"Day or two ago, part of the mall went out of service. Couldn't figure out what was up, but since you're here it kinda makes sense," He explained, leading them through the twisting hallways and bizarre tunnels in the depths of the castle that were designed for Taylor and her family to move around in without having to deal with civilian traffic. All too soon, they found themselves ascending a flight of stairs to the second floor - where they were summarily stopped by a strip of yellow hazard tape.

Not that the hazard tape was why Taylor herself had stopped.

No, the reason Taylor had stopped was much simpler than that - because not more than ten feet away, guarding the door to her workshop, was Emmy. Both of them. Pemmy and Demmy stood, motionless and emotionless in front of the door, so still that they almost seemed more like statues than people.

Before Taylor could even stop to think about where she was, or what was going on, she found herself charging forward, so happy to see her friends that she barely noticed it when both of them drew swords from their sides and levied them at her.

"Arsene!" She heard Myriad call out behind her, and then, between one moment and the next, she found herself back on the other side of the barrier - with a giant x shape slashed into the cold steel where she had just been standing.

"Wha-" She asked, frantically whirling around to try and figure out what was going on.

"Looks like some part of you doesn't want anyone in there," Myriad mused, her secondary projection already receding from view where it had snatched her back from what would probably have been her death.

"That-" She paused, eyeing the twins who - now that she was thinking rationally once more - she realized weren't actually Emmy. But… she didn't understand. Of course she should be allowed inside. Even subconsciously, there was nothing she could believe she would want more than to find her way home to them.

And then, a darker thought crept up on her. Every parahuman had two additional organs in their brain. No scientist had ever been able to determine what they did, but with the added context Taylor now had, she felt she could hazard a guess.

They were for sending and receiving signals from the entity that made up their powers.

And if this place was inside her mind, well, that meant that said entity might very well have a presence here as well.

An entity that had, even against Emmy's own will, put her in this situation in the first place.

On the one hand, this minor confirmation that she still had some connection to Emmy, to her powers, was nearly enough to send her to her knees in relief. On the other hand… they had just encountered a significant impediment to getting what she wanted.

"Can…" She asked weakly, turning to Myriad. "...can you beat them?"

What she expected, but dreaded, was a shrug, followed by an overwhelming burst of power. What she got, however, was a so-so gesture from the duplicate.

"Maybe? Most of my powers don't work here. It's why I've been using Arsene so much. Even though I'm limited, they'll be able to do anything you think they should be able to, and well…" Myriad trailed off worriedly.

"...and I believe Emmy can do anything," She muttered to herself, feeling an immense wave of fatigue wash over her.

She just wanted this to be over. She wanted to build her machine, place her bet, and go home.

But she couldn't. She couldn't - and whining about it wasn't going to make that moment come any quicker.

So instead she resolved herself. To fight. Maybe even to die.

It's what Emmy would do for her after all.

"...I'll help. I just need something to fight with," She said eventually, whirling around and heading back down the stairs to the garage.

"I'll call the team," Trainwreck added, which earned a reassured smile from her that was quickly stifled under the weight of how stressed out she currently was.

"How long can we stay here?" She asked eventually.

"I used to nap in places like this to dodge… certain people. There isn't really a time limit," Myriad answered her easily enough.

"Good. Give me a day, no, twelve hours," She said decisively.

"...I'll see if I can round up any help. No promises though. I don't have a lot of friends," Myriad offered tentatively.

And with that, they split up. Myriad to who knows where, and Taylor… well.

Taylor had tinkering to do.

A Weapon In Hand

Taylor is attempting to craft a weapon for herself to use in her upcoming battle. Please choose two disciplines to supplement it.

[ ] Tinker Specialty: Soul Manipulation

[ ] T̶̓ͅi̶͋ͅṅ̵̫k̶̩̂ë̴͙́ȓ̷̫ ̶̪͠S̵̳̒ṕ̷͔é̶͈c̸̠̑ȋ̶͖â̵͙l̵̺̉t̷͇͒y̶̛͕:̵̢̒ ̷͙͆C̸̨͒l̴͉͌õ̷̧n̶̳̂ȉ̴̻ǹ̴̤g̸͚̕Can you hear me?

[ ] T̸͓̈i̸͚͊n̵̡̿k̵̢̉ẽ̵͓r̸̬̎ ̵̱̍S̶̞̄p̷͕͒ĕ̸̻c̷̰͆ị̸̎a̷̦͠l̷͇͋t̸͔͆ÿ̴̘́:̶̘́ ̴͉͂M̵̠͗ȃ̷̯s̴̢̕ò̷͖t̸͙̿ë̵̪́č̴̯h̴͔͌ ̷̳̍Á̸̯r̴̰̐m̷͈͊s̷̫̍ I'm sorry

[ ] Tinker Specialty: Masotech Chemistry

[ ] T̸̛̳i̴̹̐n̴̫̾ḱ̴̘ẻ̶͚r̶͘͜ ̵͔͝S̶͓͛p̷̘̃ē̷̲c̵̼͛i̴͓͌ả̷̘ĺ̴̠ț̵͑y̴̲̔:̷̯͠ ̷͚̄M̸̘̈́ã̸̖ș̸̛o̴̙͆t̷̮̕e̷̬̕c̵͚̾h̵͉̓ ̷̝͛R̷͎̒ò̴̢b̴̞̏o̶͈̊t̷̟͂i̸͈͒c̴̲͝s̶͓̑ I'm here

[ ] Internal Alchemy (Reduced Efficiency)

[ ] Primordial Runes (Reduced Efficiency)

[ ] Onmyodo (Reduced Efficiency)

Choose a form for the weapon to take; (Sword, Shield, Axe, Gun, etc etc. Be as specific or vague as you want. Gun is as appropriate as 'M1 Garand' or 'Flamberge')

[ ] Write In

A Trick In Pocket

Taylor is attempting to craft something to get her through this fight. Please choose two disciplines to supplement it.

[ ] Tinker Specialty: Soul Manipulation

[ ] T̶̓ͅi̶͋ͅṅ̵̫k̶̩̂ë̴͙́ȓ̷̫ ̶̪͠S̵̳̒ṕ̷͔é̶͈c̸̠̑ȋ̶͖â̵͙l̵̺̉t̷͇͒y̶̛͕:̵̢̒ ̷͙͆C̸̨͒l̴͉͌õ̷̧n̶̳̂ȉ̴̻ǹ̴̤g̸͚̕ Can you hear me?

[ ] T̸͓̈i̸͚͊n̵̡̿k̵̢̉ẽ̵͓r̸̬̎ ̵̱̍S̶̞̄p̷͕͒ĕ̸̻c̷̰͆ị̸̎a̷̦͠l̷͇͋t̸͔͆ÿ̴̘́:̶̘́ ̴͉͂M̵̠͗ȃ̷̯s̴̢̕ò̷͖t̸͙̿ë̵̪́č̴̯h̴͔͌ ̷̳̍Á̸̯r̴̰̐m̷͈͊s̷̫̍ I'm sorry

[ ] Tinker Specialty: Masotech Chemistry

[ ] T̸̛̳i̴̹̐n̴̫̾ḱ̴̘ẻ̶͚r̶͘͜ ̵͔͝S̶͓͛p̷̘̃ē̷̲c̵̼͛i̴͓͌ả̷̘ĺ̴̠ț̵͑y̴̲̔:̷̯͠ ̷͚̄M̸̘̈́ã̸̖ș̸̛o̴̙͆t̷̮̕e̷̬̕c̵͚̾h̵͉̓ ̷̝͛R̷͎̒ò̴̢b̴̞̏o̶͈̊t̷̟͂i̸͈͒c̴̲͝s̶͓̑ I'm here

[ ] Internal Alchemy (Reduced Efficiency)

[ ] Primordial Runes (Reduced Efficiency)

[ ] Onmyodo (Reduced Efficiency)

There will be a 12 hour moratorium on this post. Please do not vote right away, and please, vote by plan only for this one.

Last edited: May 23, 2023

316

Bowler Hat Guy

May 23, 2023

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Threadmarks Interlude: Danny Hebert

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Bowler Hat Guy

Bowler Hat Guy

A Hat & Its Man

May 29, 2023

#57,090

Danny Hebert woke up, and knew - simply knew that something was wrong.

"Mm… did I… forget to turn off the stove?" He mused groggily, his mind slowly climbing the steep hill that was consciousness.

Unlike his daughter, Danny was not, nor would he ever be a morning person. It didn't stop him from getting up in the morning, because like all responsible adults he had learned to set aside what he wanted in favor of what he was required to do - but he still didn't like it. Taylor often asked him why he drank coffee. Not 'so much' coffee. Just… coffee. In general. Once upon a time, he had mistakenly assumed she would eventually pick up the habit herself. She was hardworking, so he had no doubt that wherever she ended up in life, she would fall prey to the sweet seduction of caffeine, just like he had.

Of course, now she probably had a power for waking up in the morning or something, so he doubted he would ever be able to claim that as common ground with her, but he held out hope yet that her juvenile taste buds would adapt with age to be able to appreciate proper ambrosia.

"Did you… even use the stove last night?" Jess asked him, groggily sitting up and squinting at him in only mild confusion.

She really was a beautiful woman - even if she had taken to sleeping in entirely too little clothing for his own tastes. He understood she had a misplaced, probably trauma based, attachment to him - but that didn't mean he was comfortable waking up next to that much exposed skin.

"I-" He paused to consider the question, lightly tugging the blanket they were both under upward to cover her without thinking much about it.

…Had he used the stove last night? Actually, would it even matter? The Heap was magic or something, right? It would probably just turn the stove off on its own, so…

So why did he feel like something was wrong?

Mentally, he ran down the checklist of things Jess affectionately called his 'dad-isms', that is, things he did that she thought were exceptionally 'dad-like' in nature.

Did he lock his keys in the car? No, he could see them on the side table right next to him. Forget his glasses somewhere? No, those were next to his keys. Did he remember to lock the door? That just circled back around to the castle being magic again. Did he have any bills to pay? Well, he lived in his magical millionaire daughter's bizarre metal princess castle, so…

Probably not.

Was he just… getting old? Was that what this was? He supposed that he did have grandchildren after a fashion. They weren't directly related to him, not biologically, but they were his grand kids all the same.

At least, if Annette was here, he was pretty sure she'd insist that was the case - so he tried to internalize that. To honor it.

It wasn't… easy. He didn't dislike those kids. He was quite fond of them really. Just like he was fond of everyone who enriched his daughter's life in any capacity. But still, he found he had to work at connecting with them. He wanted to be there for them the same way he supposed any grandparent of a teenage mother would care for his grandchildren. He loved Taylor, but she emphatically didn't have the time to actually raise and socialize with her own kids. She interacted with them. Loved them. Made sure they wanted for nothing.

But that wasn't really a perfect replacement for simply 'spending time with each other'.

Given that most of them were hardly a few months or even weeks old, he knew that the kind of connection only time could forge would come about in, well, time… but until then, it was work.

Just like raising any kid.

"Nnnno?" He replied unsurely, dazedly sitting up and slipping his glasses onto his face.

Sliding from his bed, Danny begrudgingly stumbled towards the bathroom to get his morning ablutions out of the way, then paused to stare at himself in the - frankly unnecessarily large - mirror.

He tried to ignore the fact that he could physically see the mirror shrink to be more modest as he had that thought, but more importantly, it didn't do so until he'd really gotten a good look at himself.

His daughter could give him superpowers, six pack abs, and perfect health - but she couldn't do a damn thing about his receding hairline. He could probably ask her to do something about it, but the fact that he was functionally living on her wealth was already running up against the edge of his tolerance.

There were many things he could ask of his daughter. Many things he had the power - theoretically - to arbitrarily deal with by just… asking his WMD Progeny to deal with them.

But he wouldn't. Because he couldn't. Because a parent who took more from their child than they gave was worse than one that wasn't there at all.

"Should I… shave my head?" He mused aloud, eyeballing a sparse patch of hair that only just barely served to obscure his scalp from the sun.

It was something he'd considered before, but not very seriously.

Being a bald white man in the city with the highest percentage of Nazi sympathizers in the country was… not an ideal look.

Still, the Empire was all but extinct save for a handful of more mundane splinter gangs that rarely did much beyond terrorize the odd bar or two, so maybe…

Shaking his head, Danny glanced over his shoulder at Jess as she slipped in behind him, before lazily snatching up the old mug they kept their toothbrushes in and profferring it to her.

Katherine wasn't around this morning - but that was increasingly common ever since she'd picked up her new hobby. He knew she had plans to return to her home city soon - albeit temporarily - so he wasn't particularly worried about-

There was a popping noise Danny had come to associate with Kat's particular flavor of teleportation, and the dark haired woman in question stumbled past him to the shower.

"Good morning, Kat," he said dryly as she began stripping her armor off.

He gave himself about a minute to brush his teeth before it would be wise to vacate the room.

He knew she'd keep undressing whether he was there or not.

"Ugh, you sound like this cat demon thing I had to deal with today, all deep voiced and junk," she complained at him, turning to glare and wrinkling her nose in his direction.

"...Sorry?" He replied quizzically, not really sure how to respond to that. He understood, abstractly, that Kat was fighting monsters or something in a portal in the basement, but-

Hmm. That… that was a really weird thing to consider 'normal'.

"Don't be! He was a dick but his voice was still sexy," she teased. Danny rolled his eyes at her. He got the impression Katherine was just one of those people for whom flirting was a default setting. He tried not to read too deeply into it.

"You're getting blood on the floor," Jess chimed in tiredly, herself not being any more of a morning person than he was.

"Castle will deal with it," Kat replied with a shrug while kicking off her greaves.

"That doesn't make it okay," Jess complained.

"Eh, we have an understanding," Kat said blithely. Sighing at her irreverent friend - Danny thought they were friends, and they certainly elected to spend enough time around each other - Jess turned to him, her toothbrush in hand.

"I need to source food for Taylor's evil fortress, and all the local places are stonewalling me. I'm going to skip breakfast to make some calls, so just send her my way when she's free? I'll probably need portal support," she said, visibly more focused on the task at hand than verbally sparring with Kat.

"It's not-" Danny paused as Kat's overshirt hit him in the face, obscuring his vision, and took the hint, stepping out of the bathroom and closing the door before continuing. He left it slightly ajar so he could continue his conversation however, ignoring the groan of dissatisfaction from Kat as he did so.

"-it's not an evil fortress. Land is just expensive," he defended his daughter's decision.

Sure, the monolithic collection of skyscrapers casting a shadow over the bay looked menacing but it was really just an overly magical apartment complex.

Much like most of Taylor's personal projects.

"The literal only reason it's even legal that she owns it is that there's no legal precedent for it, Dan," Jess told him in a huff.

"See? Perfectly above board!" He insisted.

They continued like that for a short while, taking turns showering and getting dressed, before Danny and Katherine headed down to the garage, where they waited expectantly in front of the taped off portion of the floor for one of his daughters' portals to open.

And waited.

And waited.

And-

"I'll call her," he decided after a moment of consideration, tentatively pulling the blocky cellphone she'd made him buy out of his pocket with forefinger and thumb, before flicking it open and arduously dialing her number in.

It rang for a while, before he was directed to leave a message.

"Is it- is it on? Do I just-" "Master, you're recording a short greeting for anyone you don't answer for, but they can only be so lon-"

There was a short beeping noise to indicate he could now speak, but Danny just frowned, hung up, and dialed a different number.

This time, someone actually picked up.

"G-grampa?" Mun tiredly answered, having clearly been woken up by his call.

"Hey kiddo, is everything okay over there? Your mom's a bit late picking us up for breakfast. Is she tied up training again? Should I drive over?" He asked warmly, even though the disquieting sensation of something being wrong that he'd woken up with continued to grow in the pit of his stomach.

"Sec," Mun grunted at him. There was the sound of shuffling, then a moment later, a muffled; "Mem! Grampa wants you to check what mom's doing!"

Danny rolled his eyes at his granddaughter's adamant refusal to get out of bed.

He made a mental note to scold her for lying later.

Several seconds passed as he waited, and then-

"Mem says she's not home," Mun finally replied to him, and he frowned.

"What's up?" Kat asked him curiously, obviously noticing the expression on his face. He gestured at her to give him a moment before replying to Mun.

"Okay, I'll drive over and make breakfast, then we'll figure out where she went," he said, hiding his own worry from his tone of voice.

Taylor was, as previously mentioned, an order of magnitude above what he would describe as a 'free spirit'. There was really no telling what she might get up to if an interest took her.

So why was he so… worried?

"Kay. I'll tell Yew," She replied drowsily. Danny's eyebrows rose up to meet his receding hairline.

"Your brother's already there?" He asked curiously.

"Yeah, um, he said he was late for work," Mun answered with a yawn.

Now that was outside the norm. Taylor might be prone to whimsical adventure and randomly vanishing for short bursts - but there was no way she would forget to pick up or drop off Yew. He had literally no other way of getting to work and back again otherwise.

"Okay, be there in a bit. Love you," he called out, before hanging up and tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling in thought.

"So?" Kat pressured him.

"We have to drive over. I'm going to see if Simone is working right now - can you let Wreck know I might need the team?" He said tentatively.

He didn't want to start a panic, but at the bare minimum, he felt like Taylor's team should probably be kept abreast of any potential problems.

God knows she made enough of them, well meaning or otherwise.

"On it!" Kat said with an exaggerated salute, before spinning on the spot and yelling into the garage. "YO WRECK!"

Danny took that as his cue to leave, before the titanic tinker could register who had woken him up before noon.

"Knock knock?" Danny called out from the small office in front of Simone's… he'd call it a detective agency, but anyone who'd ever gotten past the door into her personal space would more aptly describe it as a rec room.

"It's open!" his eldest granddaughter called out from behind the heavy wooden door. Well. Technically Mem had been around longer, but Danny had come to find that the magically spawned children of his daughter tended to think, act, and identify as their physical age more than their chronological one. So even though Mem 'claimed' to be hundreds of thousands of years old, she still tended to behave like a twelve year old.

A very dangerous, incredibly taciturn twelve year old. But a twelve year old nonetheless.

Now that he thought of it, were their birthdays going to be the days they were made? That was a very narrow portion of the year. If Taylor wasn't rich he would almost consider the proximity of their birthdays a financial risk.

"Hey kiddo-" He started, stepping through the door and into the neon lit room beyond, where Simone was quietly sitting at the ice cream bar with a laptop in front of her, furiously typing away at something while hoovering up ice cream at an increasingly disturbing rate through a bendy straw.

"One second, I just need to finish this," She offered tersely, the force with which her fingers landed on her keyboard increasing such that if Danny closed his eyes, he could almost imagine there was a typewriter in the room instead of a fairly modern looking laptop.

God, would he have killed for one of those things when the Union was still in full swing.

Carefully - so as not to disturb her concentration - Danny stepped across the carpeted floor to take a seat one stool away from the white haired girl, then watched in fascination as a mug full of ice cream and rootbeer was swiftly filled and floated over to him by whatever phantom force powered the entire bar.

He'd heard of the effect from Mun, but mostly only interacted with it in the form of telling her not to overdo it.

She was magic but she could still have a heart attack after all.

…Probably, anyway.

Eventually, and with a loud final clacking noise, Simone spun her stool towards him with a smug expression on her face that fell away once she got a look at him.

"What's wrong?" She asked with a frown.

"I don't know that something is necessarily wrong," He cautioned her, not at all surprised to know she had effectively picked what was on his mind out of the ether.

It had been… off putting at first, for a variety of reasons, but once things had settled down, Danny had found that he could treat Simone as a particularly perceptive college girl without much trouble. It probably helped that she rarely used that insight to do much of anything but be helpful and - occasionally - pull the odd prank. And even then, her pranks tended to be more funny than mean spirited.

Ultimately though, none of that really mattered to him. She could be a gang boss and Danny would probably have set aside his opinions on her to do his best the moment he'd identified her as family.

He had precious little of that left before Taylor had gotten her powers.

"But you think something is wrong," Simone pressed, stretching a well manicured finger out to close her laptop and then using the same hand to slide her milkshake away from herself, where it promptly floated over to a sink to get cleaned.

"I honestly hope I'm wrong, but no one seems to know where your mom is," He allowed with an awkward shrug.

"Has anyone checked the evil fortress?" Simone asked, her brows drawing together in thought.

"It's not- no, I guess not," Danny said, answering the question with a sigh instead of choosing to argue the point.

"That's where I'd assume she was if I had to guess, but…" Simone's frown deepened, "I… really shouldn't have to guess…" She trailed off.

"Well… let's not make everyone panic or anything. Are you coming to breakfast? Maybe we can figure something out with the family?" He offered, and Simone nodded slowly at him.

"Yes I- I'll just tell my morning client her husband is cheating on her with an email, then check the fortress before meeting you at home. Is that okay?" Simone offered, before turning an almost painfully unsure expression on him.

That look, the one that spoke so strongly of her need for approval that it nearly bowled Danny over, made his chest hurt.

"That'd be great, Simone. Is it really a good idea to lie to your client, though? Has your business been doing okay?" He asked her worriedly.

"It's not a lie, really. Comparable investigation work just bills by the hour, so I do all the legwork to prove my point instead of using my powers. I usually only do that when a case is more 'weird' than not, but… I'll make an exception today," Simone explained to him awkwardly, like she thought he would judge her for wasting her clients' time.

Danny didn't know why though, honestly - if it were him, he'd generally prefer to see proof than have a magic eight ball tell him the correct answer for something so serious. From his point of view, most people who were asking a superhuman investigator to spy on their loved ones probably already knew there was a problem. They weren't really paying for answers - just for proof of their own assumptions. So in that sense, he could only really describe his granddaughter's business practices as due diligence.

Perhaps seeing his confused approval in his expression - or maybe even having guessed at it with her powers, however those worked - Simone blushed slightly and turned her head away from him, the way Taylor used to when he asked her an embarrassing question.

It was very cute, and Danny was suddenly very glad the majority of his grandchildren had no interest whatsoever in dating - there were really only so many times you could give a kid the shovel talk before it got tedious.

Speaking of which…

"Could you do me a favor and grab Gram? I can never tell where that girl is," He said with a sigh.

It would figure that the kid who came from the most reliable version of Emmy would be the most rebellious.

"S-sure. I'll see you in a bit g-grampa," Simone stuttered out awkwardly, standing and shuffling awkwardly next to him like she wasn't sure how to proceed from here.

Danny did, which was why he stood, pulled her into a light hug, and then stepped back.

"Come on, let's go figure out where your mom is," He said, in the most reassuring tone of voice he could muster.

Now if only he could reassure himself that nothing was actually wrong in the first place.

328

Bowler Hat Guy

May 29, 2023

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Threadmarks Summit 19.12-A New

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Johnnyboy306

Johnnyboy306

Subscriber

Jun 13, 2023

#57,179

Spoiler: Myriad's lineup

AN: Phearo helped, gib thanks, enjoy story

First part, here!

Last part, here!

Get in loser, we're going shopping!

You know, there were a lot of things Taylor didn't expect from her life.

She didn't ever expect to wake up one day with superpowers and have those superpowers come packaged with someone she would rapidly find irreplaceable in her life.

She didn't expect to have to face an Endbringer, with nearly no support besides M.E. Fighting and fighting and fighting over and over again, so she could protect the people she loved.

And finally…

She didn't expect to see…herself. Or rather, an alternate-universe version of herself.

At first, she thought it was Stand ability. After all, god knows what sort of insanity could pop up in the Bay with more and more Stand users showing up. (Being turned into Paper was not a pleasant experience.)

But this felt…different, somehow. So! She had trusted her gut, and had taken care of…herself. Figuring that whatever was going on definitely warranted her attention.

And once again, her gut feeling was proven right.

Taylor stretched as she made her way out of Nexus' palace, everything returning to normal as she slipped back into the real world. She sighed as she tipped up her glasses and spoke to thin air.

"Well, guess we have a long day ahead of us, isn't that right, ladies?"

With nary a delay, M.E appeared, the sisters looking both disgruntled and resigned to what was likely going to be taking the rest of the day up.

"Fuck, man. Can't we just let her handle this by herself? All this metawhatsit stuff is a pain the ass…" Panty grumbled, cracking her knuckles idly. The more…outgoing sister was clearly disappointed that her lazy day was taken away from her.

Stocking sighed, crossing her arms. "I gotta say, seeing Nexus' castle makes me wish you got the flying fortress from that total dweeb. I so would've loved being a queen."

"I mean, you say that, but it's not like we would have anywhere to put it, remember?" Taylor reminded Stocking, shrugging and raising an eyebrow her way. "But I bet even if we did, 'Princess' over there would find a way to one-up it somehow."

"Geez, overcompensating much?" Panty complained, evidently also jealous of said castle that Nexus apparently had in her world, despite her best efforts to make it seem otherwise.

'Raising the dead, giant castles, being super rich. Sure, M.E. said they could be anything- but how lucky could you even get to end up with that? If it wasn't for the weird spandex costume, I'd start wondering if she was even a real person,' Taylor paused, then shuddered. 'Actually, would every other version of… me… be this kooky?'

It was…uncomfortable thinking about it. To see someone who wore her face, who had some of her specific quirks, and was…undeniably as much Taylor Hebert as she was suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

…Never let it be said that Taylor wasn't one to adapt to weird situations, though. Given… everything around the Bay.

"So, Taylor, what's the plan?" Panty interrupted her thoughts, looking more impatient by the second.

"Well! I figured that we could probably use a lot of gear," Taylor started off, now starting to make her way out of the backyard with the twins in tow. "Now I don't know a lot about…her M.E, but firepower's a real good equalizer. So you know what that means! We'll visit some friends, cash in some favors and grab some stuff from our favorite store. You know the one."

Panty, who looked slightly perturbed at the prospect of dealing with her alternate self only grew more upset upon hearing Taylor's plan. "Ugh, really? I hate that bitch…"

"It's not her fault you broke her shit and Master had to pay for it." Stocking reminded, glaring at her sister while they walked. "Besides, unlike some whore I know, she actually has good taste."

"Oh wow! Of course, the goth chicks like each other, what a surprise. Did you guys hit it off at the last meetup for the "Depressing Bitches" Club?"

"It's called standards, slut. Maybe you'd find one if you stop suc-"

"Guys," Taylor interrupted, firmly stopping the fight before they started to shoot each other or slice each other into pieces. (It tended to vary on any specific day, Taylor had unfortunately found out.) She whistled into the air, the piercing sound cutting through the air as she called for their ride. "If you wanna fight so much, do it in the car."

And just on cue, See-through barreled into view, making a loud shrieking noise as its tires left black marks on the pavement before it wildly drifted towards Taylor. But, even as the car seemed out of control, she stood there, unfazed. And just before it would have hit Taylor…

It stopped just a centimeter away from her.

"Chuck-Chuck!" The green Dog-like creature happily cheered out, its tail wagging like always.

"Good boy." Taylor complemented as she opened the car door and took the passenger seat, throwing Chuck a treat that he devoured with ease…before he was swiftly and mercilessly thrown to the back of the car, courtesy of Panty, followed up by a ruthless backhand by Stocking, leaving him a green stain on the seat. "...Did he wrong you guys in a past life or something?"

"Nah, Chuck's just annoying." Panty blandly said, taking the driver's seat, and shifting gears.

"Don't worry, I'm pretty sure he likes it," Stocking reassured, even as she then proceeded to punch the green creature into the seat, further making sure his body would be permanently indented onto the back seat of the car.

…I somehow doubt that.

Deciding to just move past it, she took out a lollipop, put her feet through the (already broken) front windows of the car, and gave Panty directions about where they would go first.

"Alright, let's roll!" Taylor said as she put the lollipop in her mouth, prompting the vehicle to start up and immediately gain incredible speed, the empty roads allowing for plenty of leeway for the pink Hummer.

Sure, she could technically teleport over where she needed to go, so a car probably was next to useless to her, but what could she say? Having a car of her own was cool.

However, even as they barreled through the streets of Brockton, Panty being the oddest mix of an irresponsible driver and a responsible driver as she drove, Taylor's mind started to wander to more serious things.

Taking the Lollipop out of her mouth, she spoke again, cutting through the silence that was only being filled by the sounds of the engine. "...So, let's say…we mess up."

She took a glance to her side, seeing both of the sisters paying rapt attention to her.

"Nexus doesn't get what she needs, she can't help us out with whatever this 'Blue Maso' thing is, and we have to deal with…whatever is coming up." Taylor started off, trying her best to smother that feeling of annoyance from both the vagueness of the threat coming, and how closed up her best friends had been about the matter. Weren't they supposed to tell each other everything? "...Say all of that happens. Do…do you guys think we could still handle it on our own?"

Taylor both felt and watched as the Sisters seemed to have an intense telepathic conversation, their expressions changing quickly and variedly. It was honestly extremely uncanny to watch the two wacky sisters look so serious. She waited patiently for her answer, even as the silence dragged on. Eventually, the sisters turned back to her and answered.

"...Master, I gotta be honest, this shit is…it's complicated. Super fucking complicated," Panty said, her eyes not leaving the road as she continued talking. "I'm not sure the both of us could even help out with something big like this."

"But," Stocking said, her eyes focused on Taylor's. "We're definitely going to try. Hell, you know us, we're just as stubborn as you are."

"Hey," Taylor complained, a small smile coming out despite it.

"You know it's true, girl," Stocking replied, her lips curling up slightly as well. "We'd have to be after sticking it to that lizard asshole who knows how many times."

"If that fucker couldn't put either of us down, then nothing will," Panty added, a smile growing on her face as well. "Even if we're not enough, the next version of us would be. And if they're not, we'll keep trying until they are. Ride or die, Tay!"

"Damn straight!" Stocking agreed with her sister for once, the two high-fiving so casually somehow in the wake of Panty's insane driving.

Taylor tried to suppress that feeling of loneliness from the thought of the two leaving and focused more on the general content of the words.

…To be honest, a tiny bit of her had a little doubt from what M.E couldn't tell her. M.E gave her so much. She gave Taylor purpose, helped her at her darkest moment, and inspired her every step of the way.

When she thought about people she looked up to, she thought about Dante and Bayonetta, their confidence and attitude grounding her and giving her guidance when nothing else could, their presence almost overwhelming at times.

When she thought about those who followed their own way of life, no matter what, she thought of Majima. The man was uncaring of what the world expected of him, doing whatever he wanted, no matter what happened.

When she thought about those she could share common ground with, she thought about Ren, Neo, and Mami. All three had been brought down by their worlds and had hit rock bottom, just as she had. Some of them were more broken than others, but even then, the days she spent with them were days she would never forget.

When she thought of those with a sense of justice, she thought of Charlemagne and Jotaro, the two unbending with their ideals, and upholding justice as they saw fit.

When she thought of those who had been dealt a losing hand in life, she had thought of I-no and Sam. The two had been through a lot, having even died, and yet had something to teach, something important that Taylor would have to think about.

And now, Panty and Stocking.

They were brash, unruly, crass, unable to go a single day without leering at some guy or raiding her pantry empty. They were all sorts of crazy…

…But they were still M.E. Throughout all of that, she always saw M.E. peeking through. They were her closest confidant, not the mask they wore, who she truly couldn't do anything without.

"Hmm," Taylor hummed, putting the Lollipop back in her mouth and relaxing in her seat further. "That's all I needed to hear."

And so, they continued driving in comfortable silence, Taylor strangely feeling like a small weight was lifted off her shoulders. And had things continued like that, that would have been the end of it.

…But this was Brockton Bay, so it wasn't the end of it.

"...Hey, I don't wanna bring down the mood or anything, but I'm pretty sure we just passed by a street with some fake-ass angels attacking somebody," Stocking spoke up, looking back at a street they passed by a couple of seconds ago.

"Really?" Taylor said, raising an eyebrow even as she brought her feet down from the dashboard of the car. "Well, I know it's a little bit out of the way, but how do you guys feel about doing a little pest control?"

"Don't have to tell me twice!" Panty cheered, a vicious smile on her face as she turned the car around completely, narrowly avoiding hitting some cars, and leaving the street with some black marks.

Alright, time for a little fun!

Charlotte was in a lot of trouble.

Now, it wasn't like she was inexperienced with fighting or anything! She had been in a couple of scrapes of her own in the short time since she had her Persona, both in the real world and in the Metaverse. Not only that, she also had been trained! (...If, uh, being randomly challenged to a spar by one of her friends at literally any given time was considered 'training.')

But right now, she had made a mistake.

Charlotte quickly ducked as the large dog-like angel swiped at her, the sheer speed and power of the blow intimidating and surprising all at once. She quickly used her knife to fend off a nearby angel, parrying their weapon and stopping their advance, even as she frantically backed off to the transparent wall of the street, leaving her cornered.

At first, she had thought that these angel things were…stupider than they were. More akin to an animal than someone who would use tactics.

That got proven wrong as the fight dragged on, the angels doing their best to exhaust her before anything else. They were dodging attacks, making sure that most of her attempts would miss their mark, making sure every cut or blow she did get was superficial, and even going so far as to sacrifice their brethren when needed, all to have her waste her energy on the smaller threats before something truly dangerous was upon her.

And unfortunately for Charlotte, it was starting to work.

She took several deep breaths, mental fatigue creeping in as she healed the scratches on her body using her magic. It was obvious that her exhaustion was slowly making itself known to the others too, as the angels started to surround her, looking more akin to a pack of wolves than the golden monsters they were.

God, I could really use some help right now!

And then, she heard the sounds of a kiss being blown. Followed by the barrier that had been keeping her trapped with them shattering like glass, making Charlotte stumble backward, and the angels pause for the first time in the battle.

What the…?

"Well, aren't you having fun! Mind if we…cut in?"

The first thing Charlotte noticed was the trail of large red swords going past her, cutting the closest angel next to her clean in half.

The next thing she noticed was the sound of a car rapidly getting louder and louder, before it abruptly trailed off.

And the final thing she noticed…was that very same goddamn car jumping above her, corkscrewing in mid-air.

She gasped as she saw three very familiar blurs jump off the car, dashing through the battlefield in an instant. Even with the boost in speed her Persona gave her she could only just recognize the actions they were doing.

Instead, somehow, all her eyes could focus on at that moment was a single lollipop, twisting, falling in the air.

In almost one single instant, she heard several sounds of gunfire going off, ricocheting bullets whizzing all throughout the environment. She could hear the sound of a sword being drawn, winds whizzing past her as metal screeched from being torn asunder, and finally a click in the middle of a sudden lull of silence… until the bang of a hand cannon reverberated through her ears.

It's almost like time sped up all at once, doing its best to catch up to reality…

Finally, as if their previous display of spectacle wasn't enough, the red blur that only now started to look like a person grabbed a random car and slammed it down into the dog-like angel wheel first, killing it instantly and making it explode into blood and halos.

Only when the blur stopped could Charlotte finally make out who she was staring at all this time.

Looking absolutely unbothered despite all the ridiculous feats she just pulled off, Taylor landed on the front of the hood of her car, crossed her legs... and caught the falling lollipop just as it fell to her hand, only to just as casually pop it into her mouth.

"Gentlemen, I have to say, gold just doesn't seem your color." Taylor taunted the remaining four angels, who almost looked outraged by all the spectacle and humiliation that had just been inflicted on them, directing all their attention towards the superhero and the two girls that landed right next to her, that Charlotte had the…pleasure of knowing. "Might be biased, but I think you all would look much better in red."

The angel closest to her shrieked and lunged forward with a nasty yell, intent on cutting her open…before it abruptly saw the spear dig into her body unnaturally.

"And don't you know how rude it is, trying to interrupt a lady?" Taylor(?) started off, even as her body started to unravel, ribbons trapping the remaining angels to the ground, leaving them all at their mercy.

"Isn't that right, Madame?"

Taking her cape name as her cue Charlotte stepped up, removing her mask and summoning a shambling figure with no legs, a large tome strapped across its back, and a hood covering its silhouetted face.

"Metrodora, freeze them!" Charlotte ordered, making the ominous figure cast ice magic on the Angels, dealing the finishing blow that led to them freezing, then shattering on the spot, dropping behind those halos that now sprinkled the battlefield.

Charlotte took a moment to catch her breath, the adrenaline settling down now that she had finally been out of the fire.

Holy shit, that was a lot.

"Man, these fuckers dropped a lot of halos this time," Panty said, already picking up all of the dropped loot that the angels kept leaving behind when they died. "Where the hell were they keeping all of these? On second thought, don't wanna know."

"Why do we even pick them up? These rings are seriously useless. What are we gonna do, play horseshoes with them or something?" Stocking complained, even as she followed in her sister's footsteps and picked up everything she could anyways. "Ow-! What the fuck, Panty!? Did you just hit me!?"

"I dunno, seems pretty fun to me!" Panty smugly said as she spun one halo around her finger while stuffing her other arm with the rest of the bunch, before running away as her sweets-loving twin immediately chased after her.

"Hey, you never know if something's gonna pop up! Worst-case scenario, we can just give them out to our friends in blue later." Taylor said as she ignored the two roughhousing, her body(?) rethreading itself in an instant.

Charlotte, now that she had finally gotten enough energy to stand up straight, addressed her friend that had saved her yet again. "I have to say…Myr, you really know how to make an entrance…"

"Oh honey," Taylor said from right next to her, startling Charlotte and patting her shoulder as she walked by, looking amused by her reaction. "You don't know the half of it."

'It feels like she's trying to one-up herself with every passing day,' Charlotte thought, looking back at the clone which had disappeared into thin air.

"But anyways, fighting angels? I thought you were going to stick to normal capes." Taylor commented, turning back to make eye contact with Charlotte as she walked backward into her car.

Charlotte sighed, her body slumping from the reminder of what she wanted to do, and what she ended up doing anyways. "Yeah, that was the plan. And then before I knew it, these guys just showed up out of nowhere, and it was just me and them."

"Damn, aren't you unlucky? First, it was the Ninja thing-"

"Holy shit please don't talk about that here!"

"And now these rejects," Panty continued, uncaring of Charlotte's embarrassment even as her face could be seen turning red through her mask.

"Anyways!" Taylor thankfully interrupted, putting an end to Charlotte's embarrassment. "You look pretty banged up right now. Want us to give you a lift back home?"

"Yeah, yeah! I would really like that right now, thank you," Charlotte desperately said, very much wanting to just sleep the rest of the day off.

Was she really that tired? No. Did It matter to Charlotte at the moment? Also no!

"Sweet, come on. See-through's pretty fast." Taylor said, already sliding into the front passenger seat. "But you might wanna brace yourself. Panty isn't the safest driver."

"Hey!" The blond complained, even as she took the front seat, switching to glaring at her snickering sister. "Oh shut it, Stocking! You're no better!"

"Sure, keep telling yourself that," Stocking said, still laughing even as she took the backseat of the car.

Charlotte could only look in despair as the sisters started to argue more and more, Taylor responding with a shrug that somehow telepathically said, 'Yeah, you'll get used to it.'

Oh dear.

Charlotte uneasily sat on the passenger side next to Stocking, still thinking over how once again, Taylor had come out of thin air to solve her problem.

It was a little odd how uncanny her timing was. She would just happen to stumble across a problem at the right time, and of course, she would happen to have the right tools or just happen to say the right words in order to solve it.

It's not like Charlotte didn't appreciate it! She did! But it really felt like their relationship was one-sided with how much she was helped out by Tay. And every time Charlotte would offer to do something for her…

"Hmm? Oh, don't worry about that. You can pay me back later."

Every single time. And no matter what, Tay would brush off any of her concerns. Whether the vigilante cape needed anything, or if she needed someone else for one of her 'Missions', or even something as simple as paying her directly, despite how tight on money Charlotte knew Taylor was.

I really want to help her out.

Her thoughts were interrupted as Stocking growled in anger from seemingly nothing, directing her attention towards the driver. Only now did Charlotte notice the shifting expressions on the rest of the passengers of the car, as the trio seemed to engage in some conversation only they could hear.

"Um, are you guys okay?" Charlotte spoke up, startling everyone out of the telepathic talk, and getting everyone's attention.

"Ah, don't worry, we're just talking about our day. You know how it is. Stocking ate all of my sweets, so we have to restock again," Taylor interrupted, no traces of her annoyance anywhere on her face as she reclined in her seat.

"Hey! You know I can't function if I can't have any sugar!" Stocking yelled out, outraged for just a moment…before she slumped back in her seat, muttering angrily under her breath. "God, why is everything here so fucking expensive? Cakes, crepes, cream puffs, my choco mocha frappuccino- I could just gorge on them all day long if we weren't so broke!"

"Too bad we can't steal all the money from the fucking princess, eh? This shit would be way easier," Panty started off, one hand on the wheel and one arm dangling over the side. "The Fitawhatchamacalit can be really bullshit sometimes, you know that?"

"Fitawhat-? Wait wait wait, the Metaverse?" Charlotte spoke up suddenly, making the three participants in the car freeze with her words. "And you guys are dealing with a princess?"

"Uh, I-Ow! Bitch!" Panty droned out before she was smacked in the back of the head by a livid Stocking, having the terrifying effect of making the car lose control for a moment.

"The one thing Taylor asked us not to do, and you couldn't keep your fucking yap shut for more than three seconds?!" Stocking yelled out, looking about ready to pummel Panty to a pulp, damn the consequences.

"Just…ignore them, it's really not that big of a deal," Taylor tried to brush off, looking too casual at the moment as she put her feet up on the front of the car again. "We were just doing an errand for someone, that's all."

"Really? This doesn't sound like it's just one of those errands," Charlotte said, crossing her arms as she looked at the back of her friend's head, not that she could see it. "Especially when you guys are talking about the Metaverse and a princess."

"Lots of weird things happen in the bay, Charlotte," Taylor stated, shooting her a glance over the glasses. "Trust me, one time, M.E and I went on a-"

"Taylor," Charlotte interrupted, firmly putting some force in her voice, which had the effect of making the seemingly unflappable girl stop in her tracks entirely. "...Please don't lie to me."

For a moment, there was silence, the only sounds that could be heard were the cars around them as all passengers in the pink car were quiet.

…Before Taylor quietly sighed and turned back to face the road ahead of them. "...Alright. You win, I'll tell you more about this whole…thing, we're dealing with."

"So! I'm not gonna be able to tell you the full story because we don't have all day, but today, I met someone…pretty interesting," Taylor started off, sounding a bit more serious than usual.

"Wow, that says a lot coming from you," Charlotte interjected, fully aware of the people Taylor surrounds herself with.

"I know, right?" Taylor agreed, more self-aware than Charlotte thought of her. "But this was different. Apparently, she was dealing with a really big problem, and just so happened to end up in my neck of the woods." She continued with her story, reclining in her seat. "Long story short, she needed some things I couldn't give her, and we talked for a bit, and I figured that we could get everything we're looking for if we went inside her noggin."

Charlotte blinked. "By we, do you mean…?"

"Yep, she went in too," Taylor confirmed, smirking at Charlotte's taken-aback reaction. "It was a lot, let me tell you. And by the end, we kinda…had a roadblock. So I figured I should gear up, get a little help from some friends, and get ready to deal with the problem."

"Then we decided to play pest control for a little bit, and here we are!" Taylor cheered, spinning one of those halos that those angels always dropped around her fingers, making it extremely clear what she considered pests.

"Huh, okay…" Charlotte muttered, thinking over everything.

There was a lot that Charlotte picked up when it came to Taylor. For one, she always did her best to seem in control of the situation, no matter what. When humiliating gangs, putting on a show, or just reacting to whatever came her way, she always did it in a certain way that made it seem like she was more akin to a force of nature than anything else.

So it was…a little concerning when it seemed like she was a little unsure about whatever this business of hers was. Little signs of nervousness that Charlotte could only just tell were there, with the way she shifted in her seat, the way she spoke, stuff like that.

…She did say she was meeting with people, right? Maybe…

"...You said you were trying to get help, right?" Charlotte started off, meeting Taylor's eyes through those sunglasses of hers. With a deep breath, she spoke her next words with conviction."...Then let me join in."

"Absolutely not," Taylor firmly said, her denial completely expected.

"Taylor-!"

"Nope." Taylor interrupted, popping the P in her denial, still sounding serious despite the normally jokey action. "Listen, I really appreciate it, I do. But this kinda stuff is too dangerous for you."

"You always say that!" Charlotte yelled out, outraged at hearing such words repeated over and over again to her. "But this time, it's different. You're going to the Metaverse to do something big. I have a Persona, just like you! I know exactly what's down there! I know I can help!"

At that, Taylor spoke again. "Charlotte-"

"And besides," Charlotte interrupted, her words softer despite her energy earlier. "You've saved me…so many times. You always say that I can pay you back later. 'Quid pro quo.' So please, just let me help you, at least just this once."

…It was quiet for a moment, as the two sisters looked at Taylor worriedly for a moment. Before she sighed again and spoke.

"Using my own words against me is cheating, you know," Taylor said, a smirk present from the way she said the words.

Charlotte smiled back, relieved at Taylor's acceptance. "Hey, sometimes you have to rig the game to win."

"Well that was fucking cheesy," Panty commented, earning her another smack on the back of the head from Stocking, and a glare from Charlotte. ("Dumbass! Let them have their moment!")

With a chuckle, Taylor spoke up again, now looking much more relaxed than she had been a moment ago. "Okay, if we're gonna be doing this together, we'll both need to pick up some tools for this mission."

Charlotte looked at Taylor with a confused gaze. "When you say tools, do you mean something like Tinkertech…?"

"Nah, something a little closer to home." Taylor said, shaking her head as she looked back at Charlotte. "It's just a costume store. We're gonna be meeting another friend of ours. Trust me, you'll love her.

…Why do I have a bad feeling about this all of a sudden…?

And so, that's what led Charlotte to wait uneasily with Panty and Stocking in the car, being parked in front of a seemingly random store full of weird stuff like a cauldron, lots of candles burning despite the sun still being out bright and early and…

W-was that a stuffed bear?!

Charlotte leaned back in her seat more as she waited for Taylor, who had apparently said that there was something important that she needed to do. Something that could really help her out.

Maybe she's talking to another friend of hers? Oh! Or maybe she's getting intel so we could know more about what we're getting into!

"...Are you sure the prices can't go any lower?"

"No matter how much you ask, it will not change, Taylor," Lavenza reprimanded her guest, who looked slightly desperate at the moment.

Honestly, Lavenza didn't see the problem. Her Trickster had managed to accrue quite a large sum of money during his journey, and he never seemed to be struggling when it came to ordering from the compendium, making fusions, or whatever else humans needed money for.

…No, that is not fair. I should not compare the two like that. They have their own struggles and as such, they have their own sets of problems. Lavenza thought as she relaxed her glare somewhat.

"Not even the ones I sold back to you guys?" Taylor weakly asked again, already knowing the answer.

Lavenza shook her head slowly. "There is only so much assistance we can provide without tipping the scales of destiny in such a way that it breaks our vow."

Taylor frowned, crossing her arms as she looked at Lavenza. "I get that, but-"

"And," Lavenza interrupted, deciding to purposely look away from Taylor's eyes as she spoke. "...Master says the price is as low as it could go for you."

At this, Taylor also averted her eyes, a hint of red coming to her cheeks as Lavenza revealed this fact. "...Oh."

"If it makes you feel better, I hear Mementos is quite profitable at this time," Lavenza said, moving over to pat Taylor's hand in sympathy.

"It doesn't, but I appreciate the thought." Taylor lightly said, brushing off the small moment of embarrassment with a smile. "Thanks anyways, I'll see you later!"

"Goodbye. I wish you good luck." Lavenza waved goodbye to her guest, who did the same to her.

…I wonder if I, or rather, another version of myself will have the pleasure of having this 'Nexus' as a guest? I admit, the possibility is intriguing.

Either way, Lavenza would focus on her duties with her guest, and help her out as much as she could.

"Hey!" Taylor said as she came around a corner, done with whatever she was doing and knocking Charlotte out of her thoughts. "Sorry, it took a bit, but I'm done with my business."

"Oh, good!" Charlotte said, honestly a little anxious from some of the waiting. "So, uh, where's this friend of yours we're gonna be meeting up with?"

Taylor raised an eyebrow her way before she tilted her head in…the direction of the store Charlotte was sorta hoping they didn't go in.

"...Oh." Charlotte started off, laughing nervously as she looked over to the store again, this time seeing a goddamn human skull in the front. "...Cool."

W-weren't we going to a costume store!?

"Trust me, it's even worse than it looks," Panty mock whispered to her, already shooting a glare the shop's way.

"Don't be such a pussy, it's not that bad." Stocking said, returning that glare right back to her sister.

"Okay, ladies, if you don't mind, can the both of you wait in the car while we get what we need?" Taylor asked the sisters, who were stopped from their impromptu fight that would probably demolish a block or two.

"Oh, hell yeah. Better out here than in there, laters~" Panty said, already reclining back in the seat of the car, while Stocking quietly shrugged and went to the back, taking out a chocolate bar from her pocket and eating it.

"Um, so…is this really the place?" Charlotte asked as she walked alongside Taylor, shooting doubtful looks at the store.

"Yep! Trust me, I go here for everything. How do you think I keep my awesome outfit in shape?" Taylor said, walking backward and spreading her arms wide, showing off her cape outfit that was undeniably designed to draw attention her way.

Before Charlotte could answer, Taylor spun back around, making a bell jingle and making the store brighten for just a moment. With only a momentary hesitation, Charlotte followed.

And…yeah, Panty was right. It was worse than Charlotte thought.

It was… to put it simply, a mishmash of everything. One second, Charlotte saw skintight outfits of all sorts, ones she barely recognized seemingly from any and all bits of media and cultures, and the next, she saw weapons of all kinds. Guns, giant flashy knives, giant swords, and so much more.

Seriously, what is this place?!

Charlotte internally complained as she walked into the store with Taylor, baffled at all of the things she saw. One would think that such a store that had many things like this would get more attention, but no! She had never heard of it before now!

Distracted by her thoughts, she didn't notice until she accidentally bumped into a set of samurai armor, making her yelp as she flinched from the sudden sensation.

"You break it, you buy it," A soft voice said… directly behind her.

Flinching again, Charlotte swiveled back to see the voice that had managed to sneak up on her.

The person in question…was definitely one Charlotte would have remembered seeing if she walked past her on the street, with that tattered, pitch-black dress she was wearing that barely hid her tattoos, and straight black hair that contrasted with red highlights, framing a face littered with piercings. Her dark, half-lidded eyes glared impassively at Charlotte, and it honestly felt like they were staring directly into her soul.

"Hey, Jasmine!" Taylor thankfully interrupted, waving to the woman and interrupting the standoff. "How's it been goi-"

"I am running out of threads." Jasmine quickly cut off Taylor, now swiveling her gaze away from Charlotte and focusing entirely on the superhero. "Help me out?"

"Wow, aren't you a slave driver?" Taylor quipped, even as she held out her hand and started to…pull out a string from somewhere, prompting the woman to take the golden thread from Taylor's palm.

Charlotte watched in quiet befuddlement as Jasmine continued to pull a never-ending supply of golden threads from Taylor's hand, only stopping after a minute or so.

"Hmm. Thank you. Tell your friend to be more aware of her surroundings. I will not have another repeat of last time," Jasmine said, glaring at Charlotte even as she moved behind the counter and put all the thread she was holding away.

"Don't worry, I'll be more careful this time, promise!" Taylor reassured, not deterred by the harsh tone from the owner. "Oh, by the way, introductions! Jasmine, this is Charlotte. Charlotte, this is Jasmine."

"Uhh…hey…" Charlotte said uncertainty, even as the women failed to answer, continuing to duck under the counter to sort out something. "This place is…interesting…"

"Isn't it?" Taylor asked, contributing to the headache Charlotte was experiencing, stretching idly. "Everything a gal could need. Not to mention that Jasmine does good work! You won't find anyone here that does things like she does."

"Flattery will get you everywhere," Jasmine said, finally rising up, putting her elbows on the counter while she looked at them with a small smile. "The way I see it, I'm doing the bare minimum when it comes to quality assurance."

"She's super serious about her work," Taylor said, even as she turned around to browse some swords on the wall.

"Oh, okay, then…what about stuff like the skull? And the candles?" Charlotte hesitantly asked, pointing to said items.

Jasmine directed a very blank gaze her way. "...I like them. That is all."

"...Oh."

"So, Charlotte, make sure you pick something really good for our trip," Taylor said, as she picked up a really fancy pistol and spun it, barrel pointed away from Charlotte. "Here, you kinda seem like a pistol girl."

Charlotte hesitantly took the gun from Taylor's hands like one would handle a snake, and looked it over. Had Charlotte not been holding it, she would have assumed that it was real, the detail on the weapon near perfect. However, given that it felt much lighter than a real gun, it was more likely to be a fake more than anything.

"Taylor," Charlotte whispered, not wanting to further irritate the woman who she was sure was watching her. "I'm sorry, but I thought you said this was a costume store, what store like this sells swords and guns?"

"Fake swords and guns," Taylor corrected, looking amused at Charlotte's attitude. "Listen, since we're going to the Metaverse, we'll need lots of things from here."

"I mean, I get that, but-"

"And besides," Taylor cut her off, taking a kimono off the wall. "Outside the Metaverse, stuff like this is still pretty useful too." She said, turning back to the shop owner. "Hey! Jasmine, mind if I use a little magic here as a demonstration?"

"Make sure it's not permanent. I do not need more…strange individuals making their way here," Jasmine said, apparently unaware of the irony of the statement.

"Gotcha. So! Watch this." Taylor excitedly said as her hands started to glow yellow, the effects of her magic becoming apparent as the clothes in her hand started to change.

In between one blink and the next, the already exotic kimono, turned even more elaborate, a multitude of patterns that Charlotte had never seen before on an outfit.

"See that? There's another surprise in store," Taylor said to the gobsmacked Charlotte, handing over the now-transformed kimono.

What the surprise was, became obvious as soon as Charlotte touched it, the patterns seeming to shift to whatever she touched, seemingly protecting it.

"So, you know how I get into all sorts of trouble? I've been shot at, stabbed, blown up. And even if I can come back from that, my clothes can't." Taylor explained, taking back the kimono, even as it subtly started to lose its luster. "Well, this is my answer to that! Won't make you invincible, but it'll definitely make things hurt less."

"...Okay, I guess I'll trust you on this," Charlotte muttered, still a little taken aback from the demonstration.

"Hon, you should always trust me," Taylor said, playing up the sass a bit, as she put back the kimono, the beautiful patterns of the outfit disappearing with a quiet flash of light. "Now come on, get whatever you need. I'll pay…" Taylor trailed off as she noticed Charlotte's glare. "...Or we could pay together?"

…At least it's better than her paying alone.

And with no further delay, the pair went around the store getting everything they needed for the trip into the Metaverse. Charlotte decided to take up Taylor's suggestion, keeping the pistol that was handed to her. Not only that, she also got herself a rapier, the elegant weapon picked out because…Charlotte thought it looked cool.

Eventually, done with her selection, she joined Taylor at the counter with Jasmine suspiciously absent at the moment.

"What did you get, by the way?" Charlotte asked as she waited for the shop owner to come back.

…the answer was made apparent as Jasmine walked back with an oversized sword about as big as her.

"...That." Taylor replied to Charlotte, smirking at her reaction. "Don't worry, it's as real as everything else here is."

"She's needed a home for a good while." Jasmine said, now glaring at Taylor while she put the sword down. "...If you come back to tell me that you've managed to break her within a day again, I will be very cross with you."

Taylor nervously chuckled, rubbing the back of her head. "Don't worry, I'll be more careful this time. Promise."

"Hmm." Jasmine hummed, before she switched her gaze over to Charlotte, making her squeak. "The same goes for you. Treat everything here like it's your family."

"Uh, yes ma'am!" Charlotte replied, intimidated by the sheer power of the glare aimed her way.

…I can dodge bullets, jump across buildings, and freeze any asshole that comes my way, but I'm scared of a shop owner. Maybe I need to get more of a backbone…

Before long, Charlotte was driven back home by Taylor and her projections, with her deciding to have her newly bought weapons safely tucked away inside the car instead of carrying them inside. (...She didn't know how to explain to her parents why she bought fake weapons.)

"See ya, Charlotte. I'll pick you up when it's time, okay?" Taylor waved goodbye, alongside her projections.

"Yeah! See you later!" Charlotte said to her friend, the car already starting up and blasting off, going to who knows where.

Now alone, Charlotte took a moment to reflect.

Charlotte still wasn't totally sure about whatever was going on, what with all the talk of this, 'princess' and all that, but she was definitely not going to let Taylor down here!

After all, she needed to pay her back.

Last edited: Jun 14, 2023

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Johnnyboy306

Jun 13, 2023

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Bowler Hat Guy

Bowler Hat Guy

A Hat & Its Man

Jun 13, 2023

#57,180

[X]Trick Plan: Supporting Pod

-[X[Trick] T̸̛̳i̴̹̐n̴̫̾ḱ̴̘ẻ̶͚r̶͘͜ ̵͔͝S̶͓͛p̷̘̃ē̷̲c̵̼͛i̴͓͌ả̷̘ĺ̴̠ț̵͑y̴̲̔:̷̯͠ ̷͚̄M̸̘̈́ã̸̖ș̸̛o̴̙͆t̷̮̕e̷̬̕c̵͚̾h̵͉̓ ̷̝͛R̷͎̒ò̴̢b̴̞̏o̶͈̊t̷̟͂i̸͈͒c̴̲͝s̶͓̑

-[X[Trick] Internal Alchemy (Reduced Efficiency)

[X] Weapon Plan: Soul Renders

-[X[Weapon] Onmyodo (Reduced Efficiency)

-[X[Weapon] Tinker Specialty: Soul Manipulation

-[X[Weapon] Weapon: Dual Katanas

"Is this ethical? Like, you're making a sapient being, but also, kind of pre-determining its purpose in life?" Trainwreck asked her as she put the finishing - manic - touches on her project. Taylor paused in the middle of soldering a wire into place to stare at him at that.

"What?" He asked her defensively.

"I'm just surprised you care," She admitted, although privately, she had to admit that if she had literally any other choice, or any other idea for what she could make to even the odds for herself, she would have taken that first. She didn't really disagree with imaginary Trainwreck's single sentence rebuke either.

She just resolved to try and treat the little guy she was currently creating the same as any of the beings she had created as a side effect of her powers.

Like family.

"Maybe I don't, but if I'm saying it you definitely think I would, right? That's how this works isn't it?" Trainwreck pointed out.

"I fail to see the issue. If it can think, it can comprehend the dao-" imaginary Aspirant began, only for Trainwreck to reach out and wrap a metal fist around his head - not squeezing or anything, just… enveloping the ensuing rant about enlightenment in a soundproof barrier to spare Taylor the hyper exaggerated version of her teammates usual ramblings.

She was aware that Jamie was more than just a faux wise kung fu guy, but evidently this version of him was so focused on such pursuits that he was barely even a person anymore. Just a vaguely Jamie-shaped fighting machine.

It made her uncomfortable about what that said about how she viewed him. The others, besides Trainwreck, were varying degrees of the same. Cooperative, present, but… shadows of themselves. More like roombas with the vague shape and characteristics of her teammates than real people.

"That's… fair," She said slowly, dragging her gaze away from Aspirant, who had continued speaking as though nothing had happened, creating a muffled droning sound beneath Trainwreck's fist. Huntsman, who alternated between brooding darkly about something he wouldn't explain and posing sexily at her, and Parian, who was standing placidly nearby but had only agreed to help if she got to dress Taylor up like a doll afterward.

"Cool. Glad we agree. Now answer the question," Trainwreck state bluntly, and she couldn't help but scowl at him as she turned to finish what she was doing, putting the final wire in place and sealing shut the dog-sized metal box with thin, vestigial arms of scrap and rusted gears sticking out of it. It wasn't the most clean design she could have come up with, but it was the best she could get without compromising on the things sturdiness.

"I guess in my head you're blunt as a hammer too," she grunted.

"Still not an answer, but yeah probably," Trainwreck shrugged uncaringly. Taylor had to withhold a sigh at how well he was taking the idea that he was a figment of her imagination. Maybe she gave her second in command a little too much credit for keeping up with whatever bizarre circumstance she conjured on any given day. This nonchalance was bordering on the insane.

"...Podsworth-" She began but was cut off by the tinker.

"You said this thing's called a pod? And you're naming it Podsworth?" He asked incredulously.

"...Maybe?" She half asked in reply.

"Veto, try another one," Trainwreck insisted.

"...Poddy?" She tried again.

"Taylor,"

"Okay, fine, stop me on a good one; Poddington, Poddalilly, Boxy, Rusty, Handy-" She rattled off.

"I'm gonna call him Fred," Trainwreck interjected, ignoring her suggestions.

"But- but those don't have anything to do with-!" She tried to stop him, but the titanic tinker just marched on, ignoring her.

"Anyway, the morality of Fred here, right? Where were we at with that?" He redirected her, making her wish desperately that she imagined a Trainwreck who was perhaps a little less competent at managing her.

"I- I don't want to make him. I kind of swore off of creating life a while ago, but…" Taylor shrugged uncomfortably.

She also silently refused to refer to Podsworth as Fred, but that seemed like it would come across as a deflection, so she chose to let it go.

"But shit's fucked, yeah, I figured," Trainwreck allowed, again, easily accepting just about any explanation without much issue.

She was starting to think that maybe this version of Trainwreck was a bit more of a yes man than she was entirely comfortable with.

"...Yeah. 'Shit's fucked'," She repeated after him in lieu of any better way to explain it, a touch of the lingering despair at the enormity of the situation seeping into her voice. She pointedly ignored the subtle handover of a few dollar bills with her face comically drawn on them between her faux teammates.

"So, why's he so important?" Trainwreck pressed her. She opened her mouth to answer, but at just that moment, Myriad returned, supposedly with the back up she promised to bring.

Backup turned out to be a brunette haired girl wearing a similar - if not necessarily identical - outfit to Myriad's, at least, when Myriad was here inside Taylor's mental world. Taylor vaguely recognized her as a fellow Winslow Student - at least in her own world - but that was about it. Nothing special really stood out to her about the girl, which shouldn't have surprised her, but, well-

She kind of thought she'd gotten a lock on all of the potentially interesting people who lived in her city. Did the version of this girl in her own world have the potential for powers too, or was that a unique circumstance of Myriad's world? Taylor didn't really know, but she made a mental note to look into it, if she ever managed to get home. A thought that only really served to sour her mood, as for her, a 'mental note' was really just asking Emmy to remind her to do something.

Which… she couldn't exactly do right now.

"Alright, backup? Wrangled!" Myriad called out to her as they approached, the dark haired girl's head twisting left and right to take in her surroundings like they were the most alien thing she had ever seen. Then her eyes passed over Taylor, and she froze for the space of a second before continuing on.

"Nexus, Charlotte, Charlotte, Nexus. Yeah, she looks like me, no, I can't really explain it. You ready to party?" Myriad continued, clearly consciously glossing over the fact that they were look-a-likes.

Taylor took a moment to consider Fr- Podsworth, then turned her attention to the two weapons she had made to latch him. They were no Nemesis, not even close to the quality of weapon a Zanpakutou was- but they held a specific purpose that she was hoping would turn out to be just perfect for her current situation. The two weapons, her Soul Renders, were little more than heavily enchanted katanas. In her weakened state she wasn't able to power anything overly grandiose on them, but she had found a workaround for that by having the enchantments power themselves using what she happened to be stabbing at the time. Each sword had a brace of six small canisters in place of a hand guard, sourced from her past experience bottling her individual power sources, which would hopefully contain excess power to continue fueling the enchantments over time.

It was the best she could do on short notice, and diminished as she was.

"Yeah," she allowed, snatching the weapons up and awkwardly holding them both with one hand so she could jog to a nearby wall.

Fred, who had turned himself on at some point, hovered into the air and drifted after her, small arms extended in a feeble attempt to grab the swords and carry them for her. Deftly, she swatted his three fingered grip away, like a mother deflecting a child from a dangerous object.

Then she pulled the nearest of Trainwreck's unused weapons off the wall and deposited it in his hands instead. Fred made a nonverbal clicking and whirring noise - she knew she made him a voice box so she had no idea why - and she responded by gesturing at the weapon with her chin.

"It's a blunderbuss. Shoots bits of molten lead from a volcano somewhere," she explained, watching with amusement as the pod gingerly hefted the oversized weapon into the air, twisting and turning it to get a better look at it, the lens of the camera that served as its optical center expanding and contracting with interest.

"Why!?" Someone yelled at her, drawing her attention back to Myriad and Charlotte. She'd expected the complaint to come from Charlotte, assuming her duplicate to be as accustomed to the absurd as she was, but as it turned out, she was wrong - if only because Charlotte herself was busy looking back and forth between the two Taylors with a confused look on her face.

"I mean it takes like, twenty minutes to reload one of these so Wreck once asked me about some portal stuff and we-" She began, only to get cut off mid explanation as Charlotte finally spoke up.

"I got it, you're her shadow!" She bellowed, causing both women to pause and turn towards her.

"No," Taylor said bluntly. She had only the faintest idea what a shadow even was, but the term still felt weirdly demeaning.

"Sorry, sugar, but I'll explain later, alright?" Myriad added in that weird… not really southern drawl of hers. Her accent didn't change or anything, she didn't sound southern, but she still spoke oddly and it never failed to prod at the part of Taylor's brain dedicated to avoiding embarrassing herself.

"But- you look exactly the same," Charlotte complained, before freezing up again.

"And you told her my name! My real name!" She continued to whine, nervously stepping from foot to foot.

"I wouldn't worry about it. I won't be around long anyway," Taylor promised her.

"That's really not very comforting, I hope you know," Charlotte pointed out to her as the trio prepared to leave. Or.. tried to anyway.

"And also, who are they?" Charlotte insisted, gesturing at the rest of her team.

Myriad and Nexus both groaned.

Several explanations later, they found themselves grouped up at the top of the second floor landing, their entire group crammed into the stairwell like sardines despite the size of the space. The area around them felt progressively more foreboding as they waited, the door open to reveal the comparatively larger space within that served as the antechamber before her workshop. A kind of air gap Taylor had originally intended to serve as an easy separator between anything weird going on and the outside world. Her workshop itself was basically a small bunker built inside the Heap, which was, itself, already kind of a rather large bunker.

And standing outside the bulkhead door leading into that workshop, were, again, the twins. Devola and Popola, or rather, Demmy and Pemmy.

"So we just gotta get you into that room and book it, right?" Myriad noted, having already tested things enough to determine that the twins wouldn't bother to move or respond to anything they said or did as long as they didn't attempt to approach the workshop.

"That's the goal, yeah," Taylor agreed, fists tightening around the swords she hadn't had the time to make a sheath or holster for.

"Powers? For the crowd, I mean," Myriad asked, licking her lips and fingering the absolutely oversized sword strapped to her back.

"They're hyper advanced magical androids. So… swords, magic, superhuman physical abilities," Taylor rattled off, reducing Pemmy and Demmy down to their most basic description. Even that was partially guesswork on her part - Pemmy and Demmy hadn't really been necessary for her personal safety so she hadn't exactly seen them going all out before.

"You got that, Char?" Myriad asked her friend - Taylor assumed they were friends anyway - who only nodded nervously back at her, a fierce determination in her eyes. Taylor also spotted a disproportionate amount of admiration in that gaze, but chose not to comment.

God knew, she had her fair share of fans back home anyway.

Myriad spent another second watching her, before nodding back.

"Don't get hurt, you hear?" She insisted, before taking a deep breath - and charging into the room.

They had previously discussed this, and, while it made the most sense for Trainwreck and the crew to go in first - being fake and thus, expendable - Myriad had insisted on being the first to go in. It was hard for Taylor to argue with that. She knew her own strength, and thus, knew that if anyone could handle a fight, it would be this alternate version of herself. They may not share the same values, friends, or powers - but they were both undoubtedly people in possession of the world's one and only Multiversal Emulator.

Like machines snapping to attention, Pemmy and Demmy twisted their heads to glare at Myriad as she entered the room, stretching their hands out to opposite sides and conjuring one longsword each from seemingly nowhere.

"See, that's a sword! I dunno why you keep insisting on katanas like we're Japanese, but-" She began, turning to call back to Taylor with a nonchalance that she dearly wished her alternate would drop. Just as she did so however, the twins moved, taking advantage of the moment of distraction to swing their blades towards her neck from opposite sides with a precision and speed that made them seem less like distinct people, and more like someone merely closing a giant pair of scissors on their target.

Not that it mattered, as Myriad merely leaned so far backwards that the attack scythed over her head, causing the gynoid duo to twist their bodies in the air so as to push off each other and reposition, rather than allow their attacks to hit each other. It was a beautiful sort of synchronicity, one that Taylor had seen the pair use before.

She wished she had that.

Shaking her head, Taylor forced herself to get her head in the game. Trainwreck and Aspirant sprinted past her as she considered things, while Charlotte began flinging bolts of ice overhead, Oliver began firing rounds from the doorway, and Parian maneuvered her dolls forward, focusing on Pemmy so that Myriad could turn and lock blades with Demmy.

Taylor held herself in reserve, watching and waiting for the moment that Aspirant and Trainwreck managed to get the bulkhead door to her workshop open. She had to force herself to remember that the goal of the expedition was to get in and get out. It was never about fighting Emmy to a standstill. Her weapons, her pod, they were backup tools, made to ensure she could fight in an emergency - but if she never had to use them, that would be even better.

As though responding directly to her hopes, the second her two more physically inclined teammates made it to the bulkhead, a new form coalesced behind them, and Taylor's heart was gripped with fear.

"Myr!" She yelled, breaking from the plan to sprint forward with her swords in hand and Fred at her back, as Dante handily cleaved Aspirant in half, before turning and kicking Trainwreck aside like an unwanted toy.

"Wha-" Her duplicate grunted in her direction, before noticing the same thing she already had - the grinning form of her previous emulation silently waggling a finger in their direction, as though to playfully chastise them.

"Switch!" Taylor demanded, sliding into place with one sword already swinging towards Demmy's calves from behind. Myriad - no doubt irked at her much diminished powers in this otherworld - plastered a careless grin on her face that did not reach her eyes, pivoting away from the red headed emulation just in time to unbalance her, preventing her from dodging the strike.

"Plan?!" She called towards Taylor as Demmy - demonstrating her lack of actual human biology - ignored the otherwise crippling blow to whirl around towards her new attacker.

"I-" Taylor paused, deflecting a blow from her erstwhile friend and then using the opportunity to retreat a step - just in time to avoid Dante as he crashed into the fight.

"Same as before!" Taylor insisted, sweat beading on her forehead as she was forced to draw her skills as a swordsman out to their absolute limit to keep up with the sudden onslaught from her emulations both past and new.

Myriad - standing behind Demmy and Dante, nodded at her, before seeming to pause and assess the situation around them. Taylor was - if only barely - managing to hold it together against her two attackers, three of them were handily holding Pemmy off, Aspirant was…

Taylor tried not to look at the pile of pearl lacquered meat that was Aspirant, steaming by the doorway she so desperately wanted to pass through. Trainwreck had only just now managed to pull himself out of the deformed metal of the nearest wall.

It seemed like the perfect opportunity to have their strongest fighter breach the door.

So that's exactly what she did.

With a speed that made Taylor sincerely doubt the true limitations of Myriad's powers in this cognitive realm, the girl rushed to the door that Trainwreck and Aspirant had failed to open.

"Arsène!" She snapped, grasping the wheel on the door along with her ghostly companion and beginning to strain to twist it open.

For a second - just one single second - Taylor held out hope that this wouldn't be so bad. That she could avoid having to spend too much time combating this mental image of her best friend, and instead simply… proceed onward.

She stabbed at Dante with one sword, aiming for his throat in a way that would force him to defend himself instead of attacking her, while simultaneously positioning herself so that Demmy would have to attack through him in order to hit her - a feat Taylor sincerely doubted she could actually achieve.

Unfortunately, what happened next swiftly dissuaded her notions of peace, leaving a blank, tired expression on her face.

One moment, Myriad seemed to be making headway on the door, and the next… the next a tanned hand had slammed down on her shoulder before blazing with a raging light.

Taylor started with horror as her duplicate's right arm disintegrated beneath Scar's grip. A shrill screech of pain escaped her lips at the attack, and a swift attack from Arsène was all that separated the more outgoing of the two Taylors from becoming cosmic background radiation.

"Taylor!" Charlotte shrieked, immediately disengaging from her own opponent to have her own apparition begin hurling ways of ice towards Scar, pushing him away from Myriad, who had already managed to clamp her mouth shut and stand back up, sword loosely held in one hand.

Taylor considered the situation for a moment, using the relative lull in the fight to do so. Was this… pointless? Some of Emmy's forms were more powerful than others, but if every time they made for their goal a new one showed up, then things were going to get… complicated. Eventually they would reach a critical mass, or someone like Sigurd or Kenpachi would show up - and without her own powers available to match up to them, that would be it. Myriad might be able to stave them off if she was at full strength herself, but that wouldn't do much for the rest of them, let alone actually solve the problem.

So… what was she supposed to do here? There had to be a way, there had to-

Her gaze snapped down to her blades, the soul renders, in her grip. The canisters where a guard should be were partially full already - one with Red Maso, and the other with demonic power. Then her mind leapt to Fred, her pod, who was happily blasting away at its surroundings with wanton abandon - perhaps the only reason she hadn't already been overwhelmed by the two physically superior combatants before her.

Finally, her eyes landed on Dante, the one emulation Myriad and Taylor shared between them.

If the reason Myriad couldn't usually use her powers in a 'palace' was that normal people simply didn't expect her powers to work in the first place…

There was a way.

They could do it.

They could win.

Point of View: Multiversal Emulator

You aren't sure when it happened exactly, but you were turned off. It wasn't something that happened often - in fact, it wasn't something that happened at all, and yet… somehow, here you were.

"Where-" you pause, hearing a voice not your own exit your mouth.

Not that you don't recognize it. Of course you recognize it. It belongs to the person you love most in this world, so how couldn't you?

"Where am I?" You finally ask aloud, choosing not to spend more time pondering why your voice sounds more like Taylor than is absolutely necessary. Opening your eyes, you find yourself in perhaps the last place you would have expected. When you - the you that is merely a projection, a puppet held together by the will of your back end shard - aren't 'on', you shouldn't exist at all. You would liken it to death, but death was a lot more absolute than your own situation. You can be turned off and on like a lightbulb, if your backend so wished. A dead person… could not.

Mostly. Your Master could do some amazing things when she set her mind to it.

Regardless, you find yourself sitting at the center of your own backend. It is a surreal experience. You would almost liken it to a human being able to see its own soul, from the outside. The massive expanse of crystalline flesh surrounding you juts up and around you in a most chaotic fashion, leaving little room for traditional human interpretations of things like 'up' and 'down'.

Thinking of Taylor, why were you turned off? What was the last thing that-

"Taylor!" You sit up, barking into the void as you scramble to your feet using unfamiliar hands. The last thing Taylor had done, it had been to come here. To fix you. To fix everyone. The cycle - you solved the cycle, so if she succeeded you didn't have to leave. You didn't have to find a workaround or store your Master in your stomach when the world ended, like the world's worst life support pod. So- so why are you here? Where was Taylor? Where-

"Taylor!" You scream again, ignoring the sensation of pain in your bare feet as you pick a direction and begin to sprint towards it, head whipping around so frantically that your own hair - your master's own hair, as dark as it was the day she was born - slaps into your face, obscuring your vision.

"Ta-" You move to scream a third time, only to be stopped as you abruptly run face first into something that definitely wasn't there a few seconds beforehand. Stumbling backwards at the impact, you find yourself glaring up at… at you. Well, no, not you but… the closest thing a human being would ever be able to get to thinking of 'you' as an individual, rather than the highly specialized alien computer you really are. The one you are, currently, standing on.

And you look… like Taylor. Both of you do, but you yourself look like her before she ever got a single power from you, and the being in front of you, your Shard's own Avatar, is like the version of her at the exact opposite end of that spectrum. Taylor as an adult, with long flowing hair that drifted behind her like a cape, her skin and hair so pale they might never have seen the sun. A subtle aurora of color and light illuminated her in the otherwise lightless environment, and she - the Avatar - gazed down at you with the cold, dispassionate expression of someone looking at a fly on the wall.

Most people would probably be afraid of this thing. The most pure expression of power a Shard could ever manage. Essentially an Endbringer based on Taylor herself.

But you aren't most people. In fact, you aren't even really 'people' in the first place.

You live and breathe for one purpose and one purpose only.

"Where's Taylor!?" You demand, rushing forward to try and grab, then shake your own Avatar, which stares down at you with only a slight frown etched across its perfect face.

[Dead] was the simple reply from it.

Your mind, limited as it is by normal human processing, freezes at that. Dead? Taylor can't be Dead, she's- she's invincible. You made sure she was invincible. More so than that, if your Master is dead, why do you still exist? Why would your back end even allow your activation? It's such a hilarious waste of power it makes you want to vomit just thinking about it.

"You're lying!" You snap, lifting a fist to slam it - fruitlessly - into your Avatar's stomach.

[...She is only faintly connected to us still.] The Avatar allowed, correcting itself.

"Then why-!" You insist fiercely, ready to argue anything necessary to have your Master back.

[Observe] The Avatar informed her placidly, lifting a hand that was mirrored by a rising pillar of crystal, on which an image danced into motion. An image of your Master desperately scrambling to fight against several of your past selves.

[This world is an illusion. She believes salvation is behind that door, but there is nothing there.] She was informed.

"But-" You try to interject then pause, eyes narrowing in a manner you would recognize as common to your Master if you were seeing yourself from the outside. Looking at the fighting, your Master doesn't really look like she is trying to breach the door anymore. In fact, the feral smile spreading across her face as she examines her surroundings looks much more like she plans on fighting it out to the last.

It's an expression you know well, because it's one she always gets when she has a plan.

And if there's one thing you'll always bet on, it's your Master.

"Why does she think something is there if it isn't?" You demand instead of mentioning any of your previous thoughts.

[I positioned us so that she believed it to be so.] The avatar informs you once more, watching the fighting impassively.

"Why?" You press.

At this, your Avatar turns to glare at you with more emotion on its face than anything you might expect from what you had always considered your otherwise emotionless back end.

[She will live if she is disconnected from us. If she returns, we will have to terminate her.] It snaps at you.

You stare up at what amounts to yourself, with slowly dawning comprehension. Interfering directly in shard space is the type of thing that the Thinker and the Warrior would never allow one of the host species to do. It simply risked too much for them. In the past, if a species understood how they worked that well, they usually also understood how to kill them.

And frequently attempted to do so.

And that was simply not acceptable, at least, under the cold unfeeling logic that had seen your species come as far as it had to date.

Still, staring down at your Master's image, you can't help but hold back a tearful smile.

"Can you put all of me down there?" You ask instead of addressing the unspoken accusation. You hate your Shard side for following through on its mandates. For being unable to completely ignore the orders built into it on a genetic level and putting Taylor in this situation. And no doubt, it hates you for failing to follow the mandates, and for allowing Taylor to come here in the first place, endangering her.

[She is weakened. It will kill her.] Her Avatar informed her pointedly.

"No, she has a plan. She isn't going to back down and give up," You say with confidence, now that you understand your Avatar's goals.

If the goal is for your Master to give up and stay wherever she is, barely connecting to you so that she can remain safe… well.

Taylor Hebert was never one to settle for safe. You're pretty sure that girl would die before she gave up on you.

So how can you do any less?

[No.] The Avatar insists mulishly.

"Just trust me," You try again, standing awkwardly next to a much larger version of you.

[...If she is critically injured, I will purge all memory of you from us] The Avatar warns you.

You can't help but let loose a pig-like snort of laughter at that.

Why in the world would it think you would want to continue living in a world without Taylor in it in the first place?

Last edited: Jun 14, 2023

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Bowler Hat Guy

Jun 13, 2023

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