"Is one of your old guys gonna come out every time we touch that thing?!" Myriad called towards her, ducking away from Scar who was sprinting at her like a bat out of hell. Wherever he went, Charlotte carpet bombed the area with ice, nearly filling one quarter of the admittedly large room with frigid shards of death.
Unfortunately, of all the forms of magic Taylor could think of to throw at the man who had taught her alchemy, Ice had to be the worst one.
Mostly because unlike fire, or lightning, or wind - Scar could touch ice.
And if Scar could touch it, he could break it.
"I hope so!" Taylor called back to her alternate self, wincing as the dark-skinned man ripped his way through the glacier currently being thrown at him with the dogged determination of a suicidal zealot. It wasn't that he wasn't taking damage, it was just that, just as he was in life, he didn't care. Even worse, Scar was uniquely focused around killing things. He wasn't much more durable than the average person, nor was he all that much faster. But if he caught you, well.
That was basically guaranteed death for anyone without an extremely powerful healing factor.
"You hope?!" Myriad screamed at her, gritting her teeth and pivoting to run straight towards Taylor amidst the onslaught going on behind her.
"Yes! I have a plan! Pull the trigger!" She snapped back, trying to get Myriad to start using the powers bequeathed to her by Dante with as few words as possible. At the same time, she dropped into a crouch, avoiding a decapitating strike from the man in question with her arms crossed in front of her, Soul Renders at the ready. As she had expected, Demmy came hot on his heels, her eerie ability to work in total synchronicity with another still present, if not as powerful without her twin as her blade snapped out through the gap between Dante's arm and torso, aimed squarely at Taylor's face.
She'd been dreaming of that kind of teamwork for a while now.
She was really hoping she'd finally got it, because if she had judged wrong-
Demmy's blow was swiftly deflected as Myriad - still bleeding from the shoulder where her arm used to be, swung her oversized greatsword down on Demmy's forearm, severing it before she could fully extend her attack and kill Taylor.
Taylor followed up on the defense by swinging her blades outward in a scissoring arc aimed at Dante's knees. She didn't expect the attack to hit - if it did, she didn't expect it to matter, but even Dante had to wait a second or two for limbs to grow back.
And that single second where he hopped over her strike was all Myriad needed to plant her feet on the bastard sword still stuck in the ground behind him, pivot, and back hand him to the left and away from the both of them.
Taylor obliged the awkward position her duplicate had found herself in by matching a maneuver she had seen Pemmy and Demmy perform in the past - and rotated her body so that the two Taylor's backs met mid fall, standing to her full height and, consequently, pushing Myriad into a stable standing position behind her.
Now Taylor was staring down Demmy, and Myriad was watching Dante, while Scar did his best to carve a path towards them, and Pemmy was kept separate by Parian and Oliver.
"Is the plan stupid?" Myriad asked pointedly, lifting her good hand to prod at the stump of her opposite shoulder.
"...Yes," Taylor admitted, glancing back down at her weapons, trying to gauge the tools she had at hand. She'd tagged Dante enough to have at least two canisters of demonic power so…
She kept an eye on her foes, but plucked one of the two off her blade and extended it to Fred - who had been happily blasting away with his gun while playing a sitcom laugh track at a cacophonous volume.
"Will it work?" Myriad continued, her grip on her shoulder tightening and her gaze darting to Charlotte with worry. Taylor waited until Fred had ceased blasting long enough to open the front panel of his chassis to accept the canister before answering.
"Isn't winning kind of our thing?" She shot back, as Fred began to shake violently overhead.
Myriad glanced overhead, then matched Taylor's feral grin with one of her own, before turning to Dante once more, letting her hand drop from her shoulder.
"I should put that on a business card. 'My power is winning'. How ridiculous would that be? Let's rock," She growled throatily in a way that made Taylor vaguely uncomfortable.
It also mirrored her own feelings on the matter in a way she would never admit to anyone that cared to ask.
Taylor Hebert liked her normal life. She enjoyed mundanity in the way some people enjoyed sports, or art. She liked to wake up in the morning and get some exercise, come home in the evening and play with her kids, and go to bed at night knowing that nothing tomorrow would bring was a problem beyond her means.
But Taylor Hebert's first experiences with capes, with powers, and with combat were all at the hands of a man who was the direct opposite of that. No matter how many powers she got, no matter how long she lived, the core of her interests would always be at odds with each other.
Because deep down, Taylor's foundation as a fighter was always based on a level of lethality that she rarely got to engage in.
Deep down, no matter how strong she got, she would always be at her best when she was fighting like a rat in a cage that had nowhere else to run.
"Punch it, Fred!" She yelled at the same time as Myriad behind her exploded with power, a hazy red and gold energy that flowed off of her and echoed in Taylor's chest not unlike Blue Maso had. A resonance between two people who - technically - possessed the bloodline of Sparda.
At the same time, Fred above her completed the only spell she had ever bothered to install in him.
A simple soul tether, with one end of the link heavily shielded from the other. And though it hurt, though it felt like dragging broken glass along the roof of her mouth, Taylor too, transformed.
Then the pair of them, a red and a blue demon, moved.
"Sorry, Demmy," Taylor apologized, swinging down with one sword and depressing a release on the hilt that reversed the flow of power through it. The Red Maso chamber dipped slightly, but no more than that, as the sword accelerated faster than Pemmy - who had forgone her own defense to come to her sister's aid - could intervene.
And just like that, the first of the sisters died.
At the same time across the room, she felt a third confluence of power, and knew that Dante had to be getting ready to engage his own transformation.
Myriad was already charging towards him, but she didn't hold much hope of that confrontation going entirely her way.
She had experienced Dante when he really stopped holding back.
They needed an equalizer.
"Wreck!" She snapped out, tossing her swords into the air in time to have her hands free to grab Pemmy's sword in one hand and her throat in another, preventing the enraged woman from eviscerating her.
She expected the tinker to know what she meant, and, given where they were, he did.
Like a runaway train, the mass of metal that was her second in command came charging out of the hole in the wall Dante had kicked him into, steam rolling around him as he moved, charging straight for the bulkhead door.
"Olly!" She called out again, falling back into her role as the leader of a team of Parahumans. It was the biggest difference between her and Myriad as far as she could tell.
Leadership.
No longer paying attention to Trainwreck or Pemmy, Taylor lightly tossed the redhead in her grip forward, catching her swords as they landed and swinging for a spot to her left that - at that moment - seemed to contain nothing in it.
That is, until a car-sized round of ammunition slammed into the gynoid from the side, turning her and a sizable portion of the opposite wall into scrap metal.
Which was when Scar appeared. Never one to let an opportunity go by, Taylor had responded to what she would have done in that brief moment when her vision of the charging man was obscured.
She pinpointed the best place to attack from, and swung at it.
Like dominoes falling into place, Scar appeared in what would have been her blind spot, and - in an occurrence that was becoming uncomfortably common today - split his grasping hand from palm to elbow with her blade.
Not that it stopped him from using his power anyway, destroying the majority of one of her swords and forcing a frown to crawl across her face.
Using the last of the time she had left while transformed, she used his momentary inability to move to cave his chest in with a kick, before changing back into a merely human girl and turning towards the bulkhead doors with a look of grim determination on her face.
This combat was brutal. It was savage. It was beyond anything, any cape on her world would ever have to face barring an Endbringer or Slaughterhouse Nine encounter. She felt like she should find it harder to rip, tear, and crush her best friend to get what she wanted, but… well. Some people would probably have a hard time internalizing that this wasn't Emmy. If someone with your mother's face tried to kill you, it would be stressful. It would be hard to adjust. It would be hard to act.
For Taylor, it was the opposite. She almost always had to consciously will that separation into place. She loved Emmy. She loved her friends. She loved her family, and her life.
But without a doubt, she always had, and probably always would, have the ability to just… turn off the part of her that registered that murder was not okay.
She tried not to make a habit of it. In fact, she tried to never do it.
But she felt like right now, an exception could be made for extenuating circumstances.
Hence, her sword was already stabbing towards Sigurd's eye before he had even finished materializing in front of her. It didn't work - the man was combat personified - but the microsecond of effort it took him to twist out of the way was enough to stop him from attacking Trainwreck which was by far more important.
"Care for a fair duel?" She called casually towards the foreign swordsman, ignoring the chaos still ongoing around her.
"We don't have time for-" Charlotte snapped at her, clearly irritated by Taylor's lack of support with Dante who… a quick glance over her shoulder showed was being kept out of the way, but only because it was spectacularly hard to kill a half devil in their transformed state.
There was probably more of Myriad on the floor than on her body at that exact moment, and Taylor couldn't help but restrain a wince at the sight before turning back to Sigurd with a renewed focus in her eyes.
"We do," She insisted, slowly edging away from Sigurd, even as Oscar, blank faced and yet, still somehow subtly afraid, appeared behind the man.
Now the question was, how accurate were these imitations? Emmy had always prized herself on her accuracy, it was basically the only thing she cared about besides Taylor herself, and if that was the case then…
"I swear not to harm the boy if you face me one to one," She declared, pointing at Oscar with her weapon, while subtly nodding to Trainwreck to stop twisting the wheel.
If she remembered right, then she couldn't afford to let the next one out too soon. Dante and Sigurd at the same time were already pushing it.
A bead of sweat rolled down her back, and the slight pause in hostilities as Sigurd visibly considered the offer allowed her to take stock of herself.
She was tired. More tired than she'd been in a really long time. At a certain point physical exertion ceased to truly exist for her, at least, not in any capacity that mattered. She probably could get tired still, but while at her full strength she was pretty sure that the amount of effort required to get there would be… considerable.
And probably undesirable for the surrounding landscape.
Then Sigurd nodded, and she felt both great relief, and also, a great tension lance through her body.
Sure, she had gotten him into a one on one fight. Great for everyone else. Great for her plan.
Really bad for her.
As though to prove that point for her, Sigurd practically vanished from infront of her, only reappearing with his fist an inch from her face. Taylor braced for impact - she really did - but it was only by the grace of what lingering demonic power still fueled her body that the vertebrae in her neck managed to reconnect and right the direction her skull was pointed before she hit the opposite wall.
She let loose a gasp of pain at the attack, and subsequent impact, but pressed onward.
This was going to suck really bad, but, her usually exhaustive list of options wasn't available to her. So, knowing Sigurd would give her a moment to get herself together - assuming she hadn't died instantly - she stood and readjusted her glasses on her face, then unfocused her gaze completely.
In this half blind state, she only had two things to guide her. The monstrous killer instinct bequeathed to her by her first emulation, and the brain hemorrhaging amount of information provided to her by the Crystallized Wisdom - a duplicate of which sat on Sigurd's face.
Not that he often used it for combat.
He was kind of an idiot that way.
"O-kay," She coughed, as she finally got to her feet, feeling the ongoing battle around her through the shaking floor more than seeing it now. Several of her teeth, loosely hanging in her skull, fell from her and onto the floor, having been pushed out of the way by slow growing replacements that had stopped halfway done, as she was now completely bereft of demonic power.
There would be no more second chances here.
She just needed an opening.
Ŝ̸̬͓̆͝i̸̭̙̰̻̺̙͑̽̽g̶̹̗̩̑͂͐u̶͇͕͍͌́̅̿r̷̺͛d̶̡̡̛̙̠̹̜̯͋̀͜͠͝͝ ̵̮͇̇̊̽̋͊͌̕̕͜w̵̧̼̮͚̻̤̩͂̌̂̓a̶̛͖̭̫̍̓͒̔s̵̮̈̐͆ ̵̱̬̦̺̣̩̖̒ḱ̸̥̲͚̗̀̈́n̴̝̒̽̈́͝ǫ̸͇̠̦͍̲̘̆͆̾̒w̵̨̲͈͕̩̆͛̽́̔̚͝͝n̵̻͉̆́̐̉͗̂͊̚ ̷̡̩͉̳̻͕̺̳͑a̶̮̬̙̬̠̓̄̋̍̃͜͝ͅs̷̨̼̣͔͔̗͖͐̌͘͜ ̷̢̧̝̪͔͈̍̋̃́͜͠t̸̺̭̘̅̌͆͒͆̅͑h̴̝̃̏̀e̷̘̘̓͂̋̽̃̽ ̴̱̟̱͆̇̍̊̂̕G̴̡͇͉͉͕̯͚̐ͅr̶̩͖̠̀́͠e̷̺̅͐̉͊̑ȁ̶̧̗͇͍̻̩͛̉̍͘t̸̡̲̟̻̆̅̓̊̈ë̸̪̍s̸̭̭̺̘̒t̵̘̹̋̓̈́̍ ̷̢̡͙͓̗̬̫̼̿̀̆̈́H̴̠̬̳͔̦̻̳͗̎̊͒̾͝e̷͇̘̘̟̗̹̩̭͛́̉r̸̛̙͖̖͉͛ȍ̸̠ ̵̡̡̨̻̱̞͖̙̒̈́́o̵͙͐̈́̈f̶̨̪̙͘̕ ̸͈̦͇̱͌̈́̃̓͒̚N̴̢͍̞͚͇͉̋̈̍̇͑͊͠o̶̧̡̓͒͂̋̚r̸̢̡̮̬͚͔̲̓͐̔̏͠͝͠ṱ̴͖̼͇͓̫̘̠͊͗̆̒͂̕h̴͇̤̯̳͛ë̷̯͖̫͓́r̸̬̯͕͚͒͒n̴̞̗̾́̓̾́͑͠͝ ̴̧͖̳̂̓̎̋E̴̱̗͗ͅȕ̸̳͓͖̞̤̣͉̓̊͌͌͠r̶̖̲̯̥̭̜͕̿̈͂̉͑͠o̸̘̭̹͍̳̭̰̞͒̇̒͝p̸̠̹̰̝̠̮̲̪͊͂̌é̵͓͋̆̏͊ ̵͉̪̗͚͗̋͌͊͜w̶̼̘̼͍͋͂͘ͅh̶̲̽̽́̈́̊o̴̢͗͑̓ ̷͉͉̟̺͉̀̈́̾̐̏͠p̴̫̳͚̈́̓̓̆ṏ̷̢̧̘̘͔̹͓́̓͒͋s̴̨̺͖͈̀̀́̊̓s̴̢͍͎̘͇̮̘̾̀͑̌̽͗͝ͅe̵̦͋̐̊̏͊̌̍͜s̴͍̊͂̇͜s̴̢̢͈̫̩͈̔̾̏̑̈̽͠e̶̟̱̼̻͚̠͐͌̂̽̉̊͝d̶͔̗̳̬̗͚͈̬̏̃͗̕ ̴̢̝̳̳̅̇̆̑Ġ̸̨̱̾̑̃̉͋̿͘ŕ̶̛̜̯̟̫͉̩̔̑̇͘a̸͍̣͍͔̺̋̓͒̂͠ͅm̸̰͓̣͇͗̆̍͒̾͌̓ ̵̡̖͎̪̖͈̈́̆͐͐̽͜͝ỉ̵̱͔̅̓̽n̷͎̜̐̽͛͝͠ ̶͖͙͇̦̗͇̆̆͒̉̎̈́͝t̶̛̗̹͔̿̀̉̏͑̄ḥ̷̒̍̎̾͒̀̋͝ͅe̸̡̨̙̜͎̘̎̍̕̕͝ ̶̨̩̙̻̹̯͓̃͆͝ͅV̶̛͕͎̀̎̿̈́͐̚ö̷̡̙̊l̷̨̢̠̠͊̓͌̆͒͝s̵̡͈̭͔̥͓̠͂͛̓̆̀͋̓u̵̡̫̎̾̊̔̀̈̐̕n̷͍͑͒̔̉̔͊̎g̷̛͔̑̾̎͊́͛͠a̶̝̦̼̬̯̤̰̣̋͆̇̚ ̷̢̛͔̍̊̆͂͛š̶̯̠̲̘̼͕̗̊͗͆͋̕ȃ̵͎̮͔͖̠͖͖̏̈́̉g̴̜̦̲̼̫̺̠̍́͂͑̌́͂ǎ̷̬̙̗̦̺.̴̧̠͔̭̥̼̫̊̓̕ ̸̙̓̊͒̿̌̿͐͠S̵̨̜̼̱̜͋̏i̵̩͝m̵̨̛͇͉̠̙͉̩̈́͋̄̾͝ī̸̪͈͎̳̬̈́ļ̸͍͎̲̥̹̣̮̏͌i̵͍̤̯͔͇̥̾̒͊̽͗̓̄͝a̵̯͇͇͕͎̙̯͔͂͋r̸̛̛̙͖̰̱͌͗̿̎̕͠ ̴̧̻̰̥͙̫̤̈́í̶̙͍͔̺̤̜̆̋̃͑̂̋͘ͅn̶̝̹͓̻̈̍̓͆̾ ̷͕͓̔̊͝ͅo̷̧̨͓̜̦̘̤̠͗̔͊̐̉̃̓́r̶͚̻͛́͐͝͝i̸͚̮̣̝̣̎̊̏͝ģ̶͔̟͇̝̥́̅̾̑̽̇͌͂i̷̤̰̭̻̤͌͌̎n̸̢̢̩̞̭͙̎̇̓̈́̆̕ ̶̳̲͖̠͇̄͐́̈́̅̀͐͝ą̵̙͖̰̗̠̊̒̔̕̕ͅņ̶̦͇̀̾̊d̶̢͉̥̝͍͉̰̅́͐̽͘͘͠ͅ ̵̢̪̦̱̖̌͑́̄̈́͛̕͝l̶̲̪̹͐͐̋́̉̆̚e̴͓̺̤͇͍̒̇̿̽͌͝g̴̱̠̗̙͚͈̒̆͋̓͐͐́̚é̶̪̗̏̑̐͜n̶̛̼̺̘̭̭̿̂̕͜d̴̨̛̛̙̘̘̦̦̤̄̄ ̷̜̻̍͆͒͝U̸p̶p̸e̶r̵c̷u̶t̷ṭ̷̛̫͇͗ȯ̶̘̯̲̠͕̦̈͒̂̇͒̕ ̵̼̲̘̄̐̓S̷̰̣̼̼͒͋i̴͈̟̰͑͗̈̂̐͘ę̷̠͙͇͠ģ̴͂̅f̶̟̬̭̃̅̏̔̒̈́͠r̴͇̝̘͖̠̮̈̾̉̽̎́͑͜i̵͖̫͙͕͇̞͑̄̈̄͘e̶̱͈̰̪̬̾̈́̽̄̉̈̄͑d̵̛̖̼̬̣͛̈́̈́̀̿̍,̵̣̤̦̣̝̌̀̐͐̒̚̕ ̸̢͔̱̱̞͌̅̂ḙ̶͖̃̽͆͛̐͊̒v̴̠͖̈́̑̿̈́͠ͅę̸̢̭̝̥͚̅ñ̴̮̗̲ ̵̘̮̗̳̰̀̈́͐͜d̵̛̠̳̮̱͚͎̰̊̿̊͌́̕͠ͅē̵̟͕̰̥͕̬̓͝͠s̷̨̹̣̘̳̲̠̐̊͗͋c̵̲̙̜̹̫̠͌̀͋r̶̢̜̰̮̂̈́̽̕i̴̥͉̖̘͚̯̇b̵̨͓̜̟̟̪̭͍̌e̵̫̜͓̭̻͈̼̐͛ͅd̶̢̨̘̞̭̹̚ ̴̧̛̥̚͜a̴̛̼͗͐̔̈́̑͒s̵̖͎̮̲̖̘͌̄̎̕ ̶̺͗͂͛͘ͅS̸͖̭̰͕̖̜͗͛̀͆̿́̌͜i̴̛̦̙̿̈̓ģ̷̭͔̮͖͝ṷ̸̼̀r̷̢̩̳̳̦̀̓͌͒̃̓d̶̻̦̱̜̈̒͘ ̵̳̖̥̝̫͂̌̑̏̑̈̇̚(̴̢̨͔̲̥̼̰̍̒͂̎́́S̷̞̳̖͐́̀̏͘͝ͅḯ̷̭̗̣̲̯̻͘e̵̙̺͍̰͚͙͊̀̏ģ̷͓̥͎̦͖̒f̷̟̣̻̪̣̜̯͛̓̓̓̑r̶̨͍̼̮͙̬̊̓͗̈̇̿ï̴̧̞̼̘͈͈͕ͅẽ̷͙͇̯̿ḍ̶͖̼̟͗͊͌̀)̶͉̯̂̃ͅͅ ̸̢͂ͅ(̸̪̩̣̪̬̀͗͑͠シ̵̰͙̇グ̴̺̦̝̲̑̿̉̎͋ͅル̷̢̤̤̻̭͕̗̅͊̾̇͊͜ド̴̭̳̗͉̙̻̹̆͂͆̐̐͆͐̏（̸̹̲̺̏̒̇̓̈́͊̉ジ̴̬̋̉͋̏̈̈́͝ー̸̡͍̣͙̳̙̩̞̃̃͗ク̴̱͓̭͔̳̈́̈ͅフ̸̧̘̫̯͕̲͉́̽̈͑̎リ̴̨͖̲̖͍͐̏́͑̕͜͠ー̷͚͉̣̘̤̰͚͙̈́̎̀̈́̆̈͠ト̸͓̰̺̱̰̑̍̓̂͜）̷̛̻̠̞̲̟̯́̐͗͛͊̃̌,̸̜͍̻̥̭̣̰̜̽̐̋̔̉͝ ̵̺̖̯̘̗̤̎S̶̡̢̩͕̲̘̹̣̒̀̔͆͝͝h̶̹́̀̍ĭ̷͎͇̰͔̖͂ͅg̸̼̤̣̜͉͖̺̹͊̿ų̵͍̝͋͆̓͊̀ͅr̵̢̻͛̀̾͗̂̚͜͝u̶̡̲͓̹̘̯̒̈͂̅̂͠ḑ̷̺̰̠̉͌̇́̉̀̍̕o̷͎̙͕̭̔ ̷̧̡̧͎̲̝̖̎(̴̡͇̪̯͛̏̕J̶̟͉̮͇̀ī̸̜̝̩͛͠k̴̮͚̪̰̤̾̿̂̃͂̏̎͜u̷̠̝̭̰͌̽͐f̷̢̼̘͉̠͒̔̓̑ų̵̼̦͓͚̮̱̂̈́̌r̶̪͍̣͙̞͙̃͝ī̸̬̖͖̫͊͊̑͘t̴̢̩͚̓̏̒͛̆̕͘̚ō̶͈͇̝̪̭̼͐͘)̴̛̮͎̮̤̙͋̽͒̔̕͝?̸̜͋̾̒̋̀)̸͈̥̈́̾̈́̀̾̅ ̵̨̼͖͚͍̝͉̐͗̇͂͑i̸͚̹͙̘̪̺͈̠̾n̵̰̂͛͜͜ ̸̛͖͕̙̬͇̘͘D̵̡̪͉͆̓͐̋͘ȇ̶͕̹̞̄r̵̛̛̖̳̤̗̓̽̇͘͠͝ ̴̛̯̬͕̼́͌̾͗R̴̗͙̞̦͑͐͂͛̍͝i̶̳̥̬̪͍̇̋̊̐͋͌ǹ̴̢̫̜̍̿̚g̸̦͔̳͍̳̒̀́̈̈́̒͝ ̷̢̼̻̠̼̣̈́́͐͌͊͒̔d̵͈̘̤̈̾͋̈́͑͋͌͜ȇ̷̼͍̯̤̦s̶̨̪̳̹͍̫͊̍ ̶̖̞̫̥͎͙̦̉̏̍͒̏͝N̸̨̻̺͍̐̄̈̔͠ͅį̴͉̤͈͓̭̠̎̄͝b̸̪̃̓͑̄̃ȩ̴̩̭̖̳̻̤̀́͌̎̐̕͠͝l̵͔̻̫̝̼̱͈̫̇̈̈́̽̀ų̵̯͍̤̫̣̝̬͌̃̑͠n̸̲̪͕̖͎̹̻͉̐̀̈̅̍̕͝͝g̵̖͙̣̜̠̔̇ë̷̳̮̮̭̪̙̖͈́͝n̴͈̣̙̥̹͛͝ͅW̷̼̓͂̀P̸̛̩͎̰̲͔̠̣̊̔́̕ͅ.̶̪̈̐̇̕[̸̧̦̮̳͓̤̌̌̿3̵̨̭̙̗̿̾]̷̛̛͎̠̪͖̻̼̝͑̑̉͒́̚ ̴̜̱͌͐À̵̗̬̤̮̣̼̔̿̚͝͝ ̶̤̞̣͖̫̝̜̓l̴̥͉͎̫̻͒ẻ̶̲̣͑̆́̾̇̉͝g̵̭̹̭̮͙͍̼̔͐̊̀̑̃̌ͅé̶͕̥̳̬̩̬͎̙̑͗͠ñ̸̡̫̖͎͚̭̪̏͑͜͠d̸̨̩͔̥̭͖̼̈́̅ͅ ̴͔͋̀̏̉̽̚o̸̮͎̬̺̎̊̌̒̀̕̕͠ͅf̴̢̡̥̝̹̜̌͐̂̕ ̴̡̞̮͕̝͓͋̀͒a̴̳̝̍̃̚ ̵͕̘͉̺̝̜͋w̶̛͉̰̪͗̏̂̀ã̷̡̉̈́͛͑̈́̓r̷͙͋̈́͝ř̵̲̱̝̟̭̮̞͙͗́̐̄́͠i̵͔͚̩̦̓̉o̵̠̜͌̌̐͂r̴̗͍͔͇̫̙̲̎̂̍̿ ̶̧͚̺̤̌̉͒̄͗́̚͜ȩ̵͖͕̤͉̼̏̎͠q̴̣͇̱̻̠́̚ủ̸̝͍͔̅͆̎̂͆͜a̴̯͇̙͓̭͂̌̿̋̎͘ͅl̷̠͔͍̤̟̋̔̄͛͋̿̈ͅ ̸̛̮̰̰͉̘̤̈͂͗̈́̆ṭ̴̛̱̜̥̺̠̓̆̽̃͝ô̶̡̜͚̪̝̥ ̸̟̺̘̪̭͚͎̿́t̴̨̠̱̩̝͈͙̤̆̿͗̐h̴͍̺̑̈́̒̕͜͠å̵͈̟̤̬̗͍̪̎͋̔͝͠͠ͅt̷̞̮̥̘̳̗͑͆̚͝͝ ̶̱̳͕̤̓͐͌ǫ̶̣͙̱͗̈͋̽̅̿̀̐f̵̪́͌̐̓ ̸̛̪̭͎̟̪̱̬̈́͗̔K̸̻͕͜͜͠i̶̗͉͆̀͗́̇n̶̮͖͚͙̝͎̓̆̊̂̿͝͠͝ğ̶̘̜̃̄̚ ̸̡͉͎̹̖͚̪̾͂̈́̈́̆ͅÁ̷̧̝̍̀̔͋͛̈́ŕ̴̨̩̫̱̼̖͙̺͝ţ̴̧̮̭̘̣̄̈́̐͜h̷̜͍̹̣͖̥̝̯̅ũ̷͔͉̮̫͎͍̫̀̔́̒̌̆̚͜ṟ̴͕̹̗͍͍͎̉̑.̶̥̜̪͉̺̭̺̈́́̇̑
Faster than was humanly possible, Taylor dodged, deftly moving only fractionally to the side and twisting the tip of her blade to line up with where Sigurd's face appeared mere moments later, ready to use his own momentum to impale him. Seeing this, the man backed off, dropping his own attack to jump out of the way of the otherwise weak strike.
He reappeared several feet away, like a Shinigami using the Flash Step, only… using nothing but raw physical ability, with his head cocked to one side, staring curiously at her. Likely trying to figure out exactly how she had managed to react to his attack.
The answer, ofcourse, was simple. Even as she felt her nose begin to bleed and her head begin to pulse with pain, she continued to doggedly take in every ounce of information the Wisdom provided on her target - and fed it directly to her combat thinker power. It was taxing. It hurt.
But as it was, she could just barely respond to Sigurd fast enough to initiate a killing attack before he actually began his own movement.
Slowly, Taylor edged to Sigurd's right with Fred hovering not too far behind her. That was a risk - Fred was integral to her plan, and if he broke, they were all screwed - but it was better than leaving him to his own devices.
At least he had the wherewithal not to draw attention to himself by shooting at the heroic spirit squaring off with her.
"Come on," She rasped at her former teacher, a mean spirited leer spreading across her face. "You can try harder than this," She grunted, holding back an urge to vomit as the Wisdom started processing the man's response to her own words.
She watched, with nothing in focus but Sigurd, and the inside of the Crystallized Wisdom, swaying almost like a drunk as the man before her lowered a hand to finger one of the several daggers hanging at his belt. Her heart clenched. She'd need to push more, to make him think he had to forgo his standard ranged attacks entirely, even if it killed her, but-
She froze, as he smiled thinly at her, before lifting a hand to the sword on his back.
And she smiled right back at him, even as the projection spoke the first words she'd heard from any of these soulless copies of her friends' past lives.
"Bölverk-" he whispered, lifting his sword into the air in front of itself and letting go of it, where it began to spin as though held by an invisible machine.
"Myriad! Incoming!" Taylor called back behind herself without actually looking at her counterpart.
Because of course, she had positioned herself so that the only way that attack could hit her, was to also hit everything else in the room.
She really hoped she survived this. Fred had her last canister of demonic power, but if she used that to heal herself, then…
Well she'd rather not think about bad endings.
"Darling, you are my kind of crazy!" Myriad bellowed towards her, immediately charging at Dante's demonic form with reckless abandon.
Taylor just kept her gaze focused on the whirling storm of power condensing into Gram as it spun before her.
B̶̢͔̥̭͍̪̀̍̽̅̈́̋̇ͅö̷̬̞̜͍̗͈̐̓͑ļ̵̺̦̜̠̖͙̭͑̅̇́̀̾̈́v̴͕̝̼̼͙̦͠ͅe̸͈̳͒̓̃̾͝r̶̤̳̩̬͓̓͑̋͆͛̈͐̒͘ͅk̵̻͖̼̼̳̗̱̪̎̃ ̵̨̢̼̯̳̰͖̯͆͊̈́̂̈G̸͍̫̳̳̰̲̏̈́̄̾͒̉͆͜͝r̵̨̹̼̩͙̥̬̻̓a̷̯̹̾̅͠m̸̻̜̓͛͐:̷̛̂͐̍̚̚͜͠ ̵̧̨̰̘̘̗̱̍̀̆̕ͅH̶̱̹̥̲̿̎̐e̶̹͍͂̎͐̓͋̂̑̉ͅa̴̗̾̈́̚v̶̘̳͈͈͆͒̈̉̿e̸̗̞̗̠̱͑͛ṅ̷̢̜̯͚͎̠̋̈̓̍͗̾́͜͝͝'̴̣̰̉̋̒̔̊̒̀̉̄ͅș̴͂̀̅͑̀̇͝ ̴̘̒͠W̶̧̹̩̘̓̍̈́̒̓͊̊͝h̸̖̟̲̭̭͇̫̓̈̔͑̽͆̑̈́͌e̵̢̞͈̺͎̯͇̝͆͑̃̃̕̕͝ě̶̬̮̓̊̍͛̈́͝͝ļ̵̳̙̪̯̘͉͇̽̌̍͂ͅ ̷̻͊̐͂̀̿̾́͗̈́͝o̴̗̩̪̬̓̆̐͂̓͗͊͠ͅf̸̳̟̊͂̒̌͋̓̏͗ ̴̻̫̠̹̫̲̈́͛̿͊̀͑͠Ḑ̵̧̼̪̥̀̋̒̒́́͑̚͝ë̸̲͎͂s̶̫̐̋͆̑̔̌̅̌̕ṫ̸̲̞̰͎̠̠̝̈͋̈́͘͘̕r̷̬̦͚̳̝͑̓̄ṷ̵͍̳̹͍̺͍͛͂̌͂̀̕͠ͅc̸̱̍̂̈́̎̓̈́͒̚t̷̡̥͓̄̀̽̈́̂̊͂͝i̷̯̿̅͊ǫ̸͆̎̄͒̒̚ͅṋ̵̐̐̆̈ ̴̡̢̯̭̠̖̣̝̭̑̽̀̚(̷̜̙̲̂͋͋壊̶̞͓͔̰̃劫̷͉̩̂の̵̧̻͚͖̹̠̙̇̀̀̀͜天̸̨̞͘輪̶̫̞̩̼̺͝ベ̷͚̙̦̎̉̈̿͛͘̚͠ル̶̟̩̭͖̤̀̂́̑͊͑̌͛͠ヴ̶̺̘̫̼͖̾̊͝ェ̸̞̂̈́̊̽̀̂̈͐͝͠ル̷̭̣̻̝̙̲̙̟͇͐̀̂̆͘ͅク̵̡̼̬̲͉͚͎̭̦́̆́̀̕̚͝͝ͅ・̴̰̥̀̇̒̑̊͗͐̈́̐グ̷̧̋̔̀ラ̵̢̫͉̖͈͚̹̳̈́̄̍ム̶̞̬̞̪͙̬̻̦͌͆̎,̶̨̯͉̜͈̗̇̎ ̸̧̙̳̙͓̟̀̅̽Ȇ̵̮́͑ķ̷̘͙̘̣̖͋̑̍́̇̈́͛̏͂͋͜ǭ̵͙̘͉͎͔̬͕̲͚̄̀̀͌̽̏̓́̀̎ ̵̢̦̦̗͕̟̯̬̾͌̌͊͊̂͐̀̕ͅn̸̢̛͘͝ọ̸̰̻̯̜̺̹̘̓͆̑͋͊̎̑̃͠ ̶͕̳̦̈́̑͊̌̒͛̍̚̚͠T̷͕͚̤̝͍̓̇̌̑̕ẽ̸͖̜̱̘̲̜͇̭͈͌̆͘ͅn̵̡̡͙̝̹̘͚͈̈͗̓̃̐͜͝r̶̡̟̪̺̱͙̫̙̅i̶̧͓̤͂n̴͎͍͙̥͉̈́͜B̵̜̫̬̳͙͗̕̚e̴͔̫̺̿r̸̢͇̲͎͙͖̭̮̍̈̈́u̸͈̱̍v̵̨̙̞̝̗̀̊̕͠͝è̴̗̻̀̈́r̵̬̰͈͖̮͌́͂͌̈́́̽͒̐̕u̶͉̝̱̟̓͗̑̃͘k̷͍̠̖̪̓̈̓̈̿u̶̝̠̽͠ ̸͓̲̻͈̰̄̂̿͛G̸̢͔̫͔͉̍̔̽̑ư̵̡̗͔̣̖͚̘̥̫̔̋̐͘͜r̸̨͙͚̥̬̝̯͑͌̓̾͑̍̈͜ã̸͎̩̤̬̜̝̽̈́̍͆̚m̸̨̨̩̦͕͔̝͎̑́͌̉͋͘͠u̷͉̹̓͝?̴̬͖͓̹͎̾)̸̠͚͔̺̞̖̲̜̄̍̉͊̊͆͘ ̷̨͓͔͉̖̙̎̌ͅi̶̡̬̜̘̩͎̘̼̰̓̉ŝ̸͕̄̆̈́̄̎͛̽̕̚ ̴̩̭͉͕̬͍̤͔͖̱͑̓̇̀̎̓̌̽ť̴̮͋h̶̞͎͎͈͎͆͂e̸̡̧̛͚̣̻͎̖͕̪͆͗͊̀̏́͊̄̽ͅ ̷̙̙̋̐͊̊̚̚Ņ̴̨̠̱̥̺̳̱̦̑̈o̴̗͓̘̬̻͆̊b̷̨͉̲̟̼͎̝̤͓̌̌̅̋͘͜l̴̰̼̗̱͛̀̓̆͒̈͜ĕ̷̪̚ ̷͚͍̠͖̺̙͋̕͜ͅP̸̢̘͍̿̌̃̆͛̒̈̕h̸̻́̌͂̾͘a̴̡̢͈̞̳͑͒́͠ͅn̸̡̥̙͖̰͙̪̉͋͊͛ͅt̵̮̳̣͚̺̮͓͈̟̓̾̄̇̂̈͘ą̸̼̘͎̈́̑͗̿̀̔̈͋̓͘s̴̝̯̻͎̿̓̂͌̈̃m̵̰̮̦̬̯̖̽́̄̀͜ ̸͖̠̗̰̝̪͔̘͔͒͋͒͊͜ọ̷̗̼̓ͅͅͅf̸̡̭̈́ ̵̠̏͑͌̏̈́̄͑͘S̶̢̟̣̠̲̳͔̻͈̾̃̓̓͠i̸̦̱̪̇̈́̂̎͗͊̿̄̕g̷̢̹̹̬̱͎̼̻̹̍̈ů̵̮͈̹̼̺̻͍̯͇̇́ř̷̘̰͇̕̚d̴̻̈̾̇́̐̋̑̽͝.̸͚̾̔͋͌ ̶̡̘̺̺̟͙̺̫̈̕T̶̢͖͇̻̭̿̈͆́͝ȟ̷̡͎̭͍͚̟̬̞̄̏͋͆̍̈̊͝ȅ̵̥̄̂̃͋͆̎̿͗ ̵̨̢̩͙͔̳̬̳̹̮͊̄̇̇̒͆̓̌͊̈́f̸͕̉͋̋û̶̡͉̦͔̀̌̀̀͘͠l̶̰̦͊̉l̶͉̞̼͉͇͓̟̩͑͛̇̐͌̐ ̶͙͖̊̈́̿̒͊́͋̋̚p̷̼̣̤̱̫̔͊͂̾̆͑̈̄͜ớ̸̛͈̳͌̑̈́͛͌͑͋w̷̧̧̮͔͖̳͈͇̹͔͑̃̔e̵̛̙͍̹͌͊͋̈́̆̃́̋͠r̵͚̱̤̦͙̬̍̇̄ ̵͓͓̰͇̬̫̫̱͚̭̀͛͘r̸͚̖̘̲̙͉̰̿̉̒̈͑̀̅̎̆́ê̸̼̖̈l̶̢̟͓̗̙̼͓͙̥̔̽̀́e̷͎̣̗̻̮̅̈́͜a̷̯̻̣̟͈̦̹̯̱̋͗̾s̶̢̩̠̪͌͌͌͒͜ĕ̶̳̯̤͙͆̋͑ͅ ̸̛͙̇̓̎́͊͗͊̇o̷̧̞̗͎͓̬̟̖̩̒̀͐̆̄̓͑̊ͅḟ̴̱̟̏̌̉̔͒͝ ̷̡̺̩̻̖͓̿͂G̴͙̠̿͑̈́r̶̢͙̻͓̺̹̅͂͜͜͝ą̵͇̺̞̘̭̟́̂͜ͅm̵̛͖͈͎̚,̸̮̫̗̻̭̣̄̀͋̒͐ ̸̖̼͕̻̣̻͐̀́̊̌̕̚͝ẘ̸̨͉̠̥͔̤̗h̷̨̭̺̻̮̩͖͍̫̏͊̐́̂̈͆ȋ̷̡̢̠͙̭̖̪̿̄̈́͂̈́̅̉̈́c̸̜̼͍̙̈́̈͗͘͝h̴̛̟̩̭̼͙̫͚̥͍̉͗́́̋̚ ̸̥̞̰̬͇͍̐̂͊̄͛͊̏̀̑ḯ̶̔̋͂̈̊͘͝ͅs̸̡̢̙̹͔̫͙̬̲̥͆ ̸͕͕̣͙̠̈́͗̾̆o̸͙̞̐͌̔̈̓̓̐̚ř̷̡̟͈̜̭̣͈̗͉͆͌͂̕ͅi̸̡͎̿͊͐͗̎̚g̴̻͙͓̫͈̱͉̪̤̈́i̵̝̺̮̐͝ṅ̵̟̪̜̦̋͊̎͜ả̶̘̥̟̹͈̞͗̉ļ̶̡̬̯̤͇̼̜̗͛̌̿́̋̾̿͝ͅl̶̬̘͎̙̹̪͍̓̎̕̚y̵̨̥̟̍̉̊͐̈́̌ ̵̪̦̝̪͕̩͎̊͘a̸̼̿n̶̻̱̭͖̣̟͛̓ ̷͉̲̜͌̑̈͆̏͑͋͋͛̿A̴̮͓̥͒̍̽̇̊n̷̯̘̫͂̓̓ṱ̶̀̔̽̐̊̃́͘͝͠i̵̭̻̟̎̓͋̄͊͛́̚̚-̴̧̻͕͕͕̥̻̤̘̈́͋̀͜U̴̱̫̼̥̲̞͒͛͑̾̔̈ǹ̴̲͙̩̖̒͆͛̽͗̚i̴͎̭̪̔̉̂̈́͝ṫ̶͍͉̺̏̑͂̈͘ ̴̠͌̋̓̔̑͒̌̚͝N̴̢̤͍͖̩̬̖̤͉̔̍̓o̸̢̰̎̀̀̌̋͊̒̎̓́b̶̰̦̰̙͑l̶̻̬̱͇͠ę̷͔̆͋̍̍ ̶̲͔͗̂̔̐̓̆͜͝P̶͔͚̲͉̗̰̯̠̿̋h̶̢̡͚͇͉͍̝̝̹̿ä̸̢̬̟͙̮̤̫̞̻́̿̑̋ṋ̶̛̛͈͈̻̃̑̀̓̕̕t̶̞͈̀̇̀̈́́̓́́̾͝a̸̛̠̺̞̱̲̤̥̟͐̄̈́̈̑͝s̷͚̪͈͚̄͑̎͐̈́͌ṁ̷̹̙̹̮͍̄͋̌͗̉͒͒.̷̡̤̼̮̘̗͍͖͌̾̂̕ ̶̨̮̼̼̱̥́̒̀̐͊̕͜͠Ỉ̷̯̞͚̯̺̬͌̉̿̾̍͐̊͆ṇ̴̍̈͗̔̽̍̏̕͠͝s̶̝̘̖̦̾͋̾̓͂ţ̴̘̻͈͈̯͋̀̅̅̀̾̿e̶̬̹̠̜̘͋̀̂̿͝͝ͅǎ̵̡̛̩̦͓͇̮̈́̀̂̄͒͜͠d̴̝̱̖̣̼̯̜͝ ̶̨̱̪̟͊̓͌́̂͠ǒ̶̢̗̟̟̲̟̯̈́̃͒̋̅͜ḟ̴̲͑̔ ̷͖̬̯͙̭̲̳͌̈ŗ̴͉̙͉̬͎̹̟̞͋͜͝e̸͓͗̆̍̓͐̑͆͝l̸̥͙̪͖͒͗̾̑́e̸̢̞̺͙͎̜̰̓̃͆̈́̂̌͑̒͘ä̸͚̯̞͉̯́s̴̪̲̏́̀͗͋̀̿͘̕͝ỉ̵̧̺͔̱͎͕̳̼̏̀̿͠n̵̡̧͈̭͉̓̈́̈g̵̛͇͗̉̋͌̔̀͒͘͠ ̵̼͔̖̲̱̘͖̤̒è̶̮͉͐͐͂̔̂̾̒̚n̷̡̲͙̞͎̲̖̖͕̄͝é̷͚̪̤͆̐̉̇̕͠ŗ̸̨̼̦͙͇̝̏͋̊͗̄̇͜͠ͅğ̴̞̙̥͈̞͑̄̇̒͛͑̓y̸̧̛̝̩̥̠̭̱̐̾̈́̐́͘̕ ̴̲̯̱͚̤̭̞́̀͜f̶̩̖̰̠͔͚̓͆̉r̵̨̙̜̣̦̫̱̈́́̂́o̷̢̳̞̩̹̫͕͔̲͛̄̈́ṃ̷̣̺̠̭̺̻̦̖̈́̉́̏ ̸̫̹͍̫̽̏̿͗͝ť̶̼̝̦̞̥̖͇̙͐̓̈͂h̷̫̪̜͎̩͉̮̜̣͕̀́̈́̾è̵̡̢͍̰͙̋͐̀̎ͅ ̸̡̹̝̳̤͛s̶̨̛̲̹̿̿́̏͂͊͑̒ẃ̵͇̹̖͎̘̯̜̈́o̵̭̭̩̖̝̬͑̽̀́͛͜r̴̮͕͂̇̄d̴̺͉͙̃̏̉̾̆,̷̘̪͉̮̻̬̩̩͎̫͐͗̽̽̇̋͐̚͠͝ ̶͚̝̺̩͇͉͖͍̫̘͐́̈̇S̷̞͌͒́͗͋̔̋͝į̵̯̼̤̔͆͊̀́̚͘͠g̶̩̈́̎͋̂͠͠͠ͅȗ̷̮͇̟̱r̸̺͎̞̞̮̻̝͍̽͒́ḓ̸̥͚͖̝̖̖͙̯͚͋̃̎͠ ̸̢̟̥̳͗̓̆͗͌́̓́̏d̸̡̰̞̯̥̂̇͐͊ř̵̲̲̠̟͈̜̭̤̇͒̽͛͛̈́̇͂͑a̶̹̗̤̘̾ẅ̷̨̨̟̯͖̜̮̲́͂̌́̋̓̕͝ş̴̰̪̮͕̝̠͇̈́͋̎̌̒̍͗̕ ̵͉̙͍̝͓̲̮͗̇̓͐̍̆̾͑͘̕o̶̦͖͓̘̘͚̲̹̗̓̈̇̎͋͆̏̇͆̽ŭ̵̼͈̯͎͖͆̀̿̀͘t̴̡̢̠͉̱̩̦͒̇̚ ̷͈͙͔͇̌̈́͆͊t̴̢̨̡͕̫̮̞̼̼̄h̶̯̺̪̭̙̞̔̅̉̈́̚͜e̶̥̙̮̤̐̄͛́̃͑̂͑͜͝ ̶̧̭̹̱̬̯̭̍͒̏̅͌̈̑̐͘͠p̵̡̯̟̺̥͉͂́̉͊ȯ̷̢̻̙͑́̎̀͒͂̾͝ͅw̴̹̰͍̻͕̾̀͗́͝ͅe̷̛͙͕̦͇̤͌̌͂͐̈́̕͝r̷̠̮͈͈̦̯̤̬̼̎͑̋̌̋ ̷̭̍̊̐̽͝ő̷̧̼͖̞̞̘̟͓̔̏͗̈́̊͝f̵͕̗̲̬̦̋̽̈́̒͑͝͝ ̸̭̪̮̱̼̲̣͈̈̓̈́̀͜ţ̵̘̜̆̅h̷̢̘̫̦̺̳͂̑͜͝͝è̴͍̘̣̂̓̐͝ ̷̘̳̹̳̫̂̎̅̾͜ṣ̵̜̯̤͚̖̓̃͒̿̓͆̒̀w̷̢̩̙̜͕͉̗̖̩̆ȍ̵̻̤̺̼̺r̷͈̹̣̳͖͖͓̽̃ͅͅd̷̢̜̽̀̀͌͒̚ ̸͕̺̃́̀̿̊a̵͕͓͇̹̟̓̾͑͜͠͝n̵̬̳̗͍̽̀̌̅̔̿͆̎͘͘d̴̨̲͎̑ ̴̳͕̫̥͎̲̊ṫ̴̠͍̯̯̩̯̭̝͓͋́̑h̸̖̬̠̭̠͚͒͑͂͌͒̍̓̔͛͝r̷̮̠̖̀͗̏̄͛ö̶̢͉͖̭̣̦̱̯̠̿̅̄̉w̴̛͖̜̪̩̯̖͕͔ͅş̴͍̦̩̟̃͋̒̒̂̄͘ ̷̫̘̞̲̦̹̩̍ͅį̵̥̫͚̣̟̯͇͓̣͑̓̎̈́̀̒͛͂͛̍t̵̛̼̟̯͖̼̱̝̰̾̃̓̆́̇̓͗͝ ̴̲̂ȃ̵͓͓͈̻́̅̉̓̈̑́ṣ̶̊͋̃̇͑͘ ̷̛̜̻̿́́̓̎͑͗͊͒a̸̮͖͋͛͂̐́̑͊͠͠͠n̵̡̬͓̲͖̗͖̲̏͂́̌̿̈́̅͜ͅ ̷̖͓̐̇́͛"̸̣̫̦̫͈̻͛́̾̌̿̔̚A̸̱̬̰̺̐͊̚n̷̤̙̟͈̤̔̒͑͒́́̚͝t̵͉̦̉͌͆̎͗̇̓̒i̶̛̜̥̽̍̓̔̑͛͝͝-̷̧̨͚̭̹̺̇̉̓̇͊̐̈́F̵̧̜̟̮̓͌́̋͆́̑͝͠ͅơ̴̭̽̈́̀̈͊̆͑̊͛ŕ̷̪̖̒̓̾̏̍̈́t̷̮͌͗̕ṛ̸̢͎̬̪́ḙ̸̣̤͕̣̣͑̀́͑́̈́͝s̷̙̼̰̙̩͎̪̲͇͘͘s̸̡̛̗͓̦̻̹̝͕̀͋̈́͒͋̀̃̏̏ͅ"̷̯̼̺͚̳̫͋ ̷͓̳̯̭̬̤̗̔̓̊́͛͌͋̇͆̈́N̶̺̋̎͘ŏ̷͍̣̬͉̃̈͝b̷̝̪̬͕̲̦̏̽͊͒̐l̴͖͖͚̯̞̅̓̍̽è̴̢̖͕̲͕͙͗͛̀̈́͑́̕͠ ̶̧̢̞̖̳̹̱͒̽͊͑͌̿̆̊P̷̼̘̬̲̝͚̱̼͉͗̈͊͋̅̓̚h̴͇̘̼̖͊̀͂̏a̶̺̝͜͝n̵̛̯̑̋̓̒͂́̓t̸̡͙̘̥̰̳͎͐͂̿́̾̋̅̍̈́ả̶̠̅̂s̸̥̜̰̻̪̥̘͈̫̮̆ṁ̵̭̘̗͚̹̈͌̌̀̈́̈́̏.̵̧̘̠̘͈͖̪͔̙̉̆͊̃͠͝͝͠ͅ
"Gram!" Sigurd's fist slammed into the hilt of the blade, and the missile was launched. Even forewarned and able to dodge it, just the pressure of its passing made several bones on one side of Taylor's body fracture, and the pain was agonizing as she finally refocused her attention on Myriad, praying to whatever force existed that she'd be able to follow through with her half baked, half explained plan.
Dante - seeming more surprised by the attempt than actually unable to break Myriad's grapple - merely paused to shoot a perplexed look on the smaller demon as she pulled him into a bearhug.
That confusion became understanding however, when she spun him around and extended her arm - putting both of them in the path of Gram just as it passed them.
"Olé!" She called cheerfully, despite the fact that Dante, the wall behind them, and - once more - her extended right arm no longer existed.
Well, at least this time the arm started to grow back almost immediately, albeit grotesquely.
"Tag me out for a second," She grunted, double checking to make sure she'd gotten what she needed.
It would probably be pretty hard for her sword not to have caught a bunch of the ambient mana when Gram had zipped past her. That was good. It was comforting even.
Things were still… mostly on track.
"You're just a regular slave driver, you know that?" Myriad declared, marching past her and then vanishing as she and Sigurd began to exchange blows. Meanwhile, as quickly as she could, Taylor made her way to the hole in the wall that Gram had flown through. Just before passing through it, and dropping down a floor to what looked like the mall at large - which despite having a large crater in the center of it, appeared to be active and behaving as though nothing had happened at all - she turned and nodded to Trainwreck.
As long as no one touched the door… this should be okay.
Even if it made her feel like shit doing it.
The crunch Oscar made as she vanished out of sight, and subsequent enraged yell from Sigurd only made her feel worse.
Somehow the deception felt worse than the murder.
It took her several moments to drag herself towards the center of the crater Gram had left, and she was unsurprised to find the divine weapon entirely undamaged by the impact. Staring at it for a second, she took a deep breath and then hissed out;
"Wake up, or I'm gonna go find fake Greg and… ugh, kiss him or something. I don't know. It doesn't count if he's not-"
"Mother!" The sword - now a girl - complained, lightly banging her closed fists against Taylor's shoulders in a harmless but insistent manner.
"Ow," She hissed again, stepping away from her daughter with a grunt of pain.
This was probably more injured than Taylor had been in a good long while. Actually, she wasn't sure she had ever been this physically hurt before. She supposed Kenpachi had stabbed her that one time, but…
"A-are you hurt? I'm sorry! I had to! A sword doesn't get to choose who it-" the teal haired girl immediately apologized, flitting fitfully around Taylor like a concerned child which… actually that was exactly what she was, wasn't she?
"I know, I get it. Just…" Taylor coughed, loudly, and grimaced at the splash of blood that dribbled down her lips as she did so.
Myriad probably had some healing magic stashed away somewhere. Right? Right.
"Mom!" Gram yelped, moving in closer to hold Taylor up as one of her legs abruptly gave out.
She probably shouldn't have dropped off that ledge without bracing.
"I'm- I'm okay, just- we're in- this is all fake. Help me?" She begged, having not expected this particular part of her plan to be so… awkward. When was the last time she felt the need to ask anyone for help? When had she ever felt the genuine need to rely on her friends and family for anything? She loved them, she did, she just didn't need them when it came to solving her problems.
She had assumed most people would prefer not to be forced to get involved in her issues like that, but when she looked at Gram's response to her request…
"Anything," Gram replied instantly, her expression becoming fierce in an instant.
"Well… first, we'll need your brother and sisters," Taylor began to haltingly explain, levering herself to the ground with a sigh of relief.
This was… actually kind of nice.
Point of View: Multiversal Emulator
[You have killed her] Your Avatar accuses you, turning to a completely different crystal upon which the health and wellbeing of your Master is quantified into exact numerical values. You aren't sure if the display is for your benefit, or if your Shard is as humanized as you are at this point, but you don't really care.
Those numbers aren't good.
"She'll live. The kids are with her," You assert forcefully, even though you are already exhausted by the strain of doing nothing while being forced to watch this madness unfold without your help. Your palms are clammy with sweat, and your entire body is tense with stress that you have no way to work through as you currently are. You aren't a legendary hero, an ancient demon, or even a battle tested child. You are just… Taylor Hebert. Normal teenage girl.
And your ability to control your own emotions and hormones in this body is… well it's lacking.
[The internal bleeding alone-] Your Avatar snaps viciously at you, whirling around with the giant cleaver you recognize as Kenpachi's Shikai raised overhead.
"She'll live!" You scream back at yourself, a bit taken aback by the fury and loudness of your own voice. Your fists begin to shake and you consciously make an effort to unfurl them, before summarily turning back to stare at the screen in front of you, ignoring the unspoken threat.
And what you see there really does bring you some comfort.
Point of View: Taylor Hebert
"Yew," Simone called down to her brother. Taylor found it slightly odd how… accurate… these depictions of her children were compared to everything else in this world, but she wasn't about to complain about it.
"Yeah?" Her mountainous son asked, face drawn into an uncharacteristic frown which - while very mild - was practically a death glare on the normally pleasant young man.
"You can put her down, she needs to fight, too," Simone insisted, one of the six white wings extended from her back slapping his back pointedly.
"But-" He began to argue, but Taylor cut him off.
"She's right. I'll be okay," Taylor grunted weakly from where she was cradled in his arms, like an oversized cat.
"I am not as skilled at healing as I could be," Mem informed her pointedly, reminding Taylor that while Mem was a prodigious wizard, she wasn't actually all that good at healing. The most she had been able to manage was dulling some of her pain and getting her to the point where death wasn't likely imminent.
Ironically, the further Taylor got from being dead, the less Mem's powers were effective on her.
"I need-" Taylor insisted as Yew, Simone, Gram, Mem, and Mun landed in the hole leading back into the room where the fighting was happening, just in time for a beaten and bloodied Myriad to stumble back towards them.
"Having exactly one and a half of my powers is a terrible experience, I hope you know that. And what even is this?!" She demanded, clearly starting to get irked by the continuous beatings she'd been suffering since the fight had started. Taylor could sympathize, she really could, but at least Myriad could heal on her own. Even just breathing was an exercise in pain tolerance for Taylor right now.
"Kids, this is Auntie. Myriad, my kids. I don't feel like explaining," Taylor drawled, deriving some amusement from the strangled noise her counterpart made at the admission.
It was a short lived moment, mostly because Sigurd flashed into place between all of them before her doppelganger could actually comment on it, his fist raised to slam down on Myriad's head like a guillotine.
"We're! Having! A! Moment!" Yew bellowed at him with an uncharacteristic rage, his arms snapping out to grab the heroic spirit in a bear hug that didn't seem to bother the hero in the slightest.
Until, that is, he failed to escape it.
"Um, Mom, should I..?" Yew started uncomfortably, hardly moving in the face of the hero's ever increasing struggle for freedom.
"Turn him this way," Simone ordered, hovering directly in front of Sigurd, and locking eyes with him.
"What a terrible fake," She crooned at him as his struggles began to weaken and slow. Despite that, and despite whatever looking at Simone seemed to be doing to him, he seemed either unable or perhaps unwilling to close his eyes which struck Taylor as odd.
"Knowing how to close his eyes was the first thing I took," Simone said with a level of malicious glee that would have made Taylor flinch if it wasn't in service to her goals.
When your best friend could wake up a serial killer at any moment, you got used to accommodating some pretty odd personality quirks.
Finally, however, Sigurd slowed, and then finally, stopped. After which, he vanished entirely.
"Inefficient," Mem muttered under her breath at the entire ordeal, even as Taylor began taking stock of the situation. Charlotte was leaning against a wall nearby with a scowl on her face that Taylor stoically accepted, but Trainwreck was suspiciously absent from the scene. Taylor had - somewhat despairingly - expected that from the moment she had ordered him to deal with Oscar, but it didn't mean she liked it. She'd need to force herself to generate some of her own Aura to replace what she might have culled from the young emulation, and it would probably make her want to die, but she saw an opportunity to reduce the number of her problems by one - and she took it.
Oscar wasn't very strong on his own, but he was resourceful. Maybe not resourceful enough to stop her, but there was no way for her to know that for certain.
And with the person who would appear next time that door got touched, she suspected it would be for the best that an additional schemer wasn't present.
"So… kids?" Myriad asked her as her battered body went through the arduous process of putting her back to rights so they could press onward.
"Like I said, it's a long story," Taylor sighed, wincing at the bolt of pain the sharp exhalation caused in her chest.
"Can't be that long, we're freaking sixteen," Myriad insisted.
"Magic was involved - and I'm fifteen still." Taylor deflected easily.
"I feel like you use that excuse a lot," Myriad grumbled.
"I can do a lot of different kinds of magic," Taylor replied with a shrug.
"One's enough for me, thanks," Myriad grunted out, her head scanning over the odd collection of teens and adults now present, then pausing on the youngest, the raven haired girl who had yet to speak. The girl merely looked between Taylor and Myriad, before settling her gaze on Myriad again, and smirking derisively at her.
Myriad would have likely raised the patented Hebert eyebrow in response, but, well.
Her demonic form didn't really have eyebrows in the first place.
"Ready to keep going?" Taylor asked, once she felt resting was no longer going to reduce her pain any further.
They were as healed as they were going to get in the short term.
"Depends, how many more have you got? A quick explanation would be nice," Myriad requested, so Taylor obliged.
"Portal-making wizard demoness with penchant for elaborate planning, a kung fu panda, and death," Taylor rattled off instantly.
"Death?" Myriad squawked. "Death Death, or like, a guy named Death, or-"
"Superpowered serial killer responsible for shuttling souls to the afterlife," Taylor offered, earning a nonplussed stare from her alternate self.
"So, Death Death then," she mused aloud before sighing and marching over to the still sealed bulkhead door.
"Sorry, but… yeah," Taylor apologized.
"And that was your first time? Aren't you like our Disney princess version? I feel cheated, that isn't innocent and sweet at all," Myriad grunted, laying both hands on the wheel attached to the door and heaving.
"Death can be quite sweet when she wants to be," A new voice interjected, and Taylor felt a shiver run down her spine.
Yukari Yakumo was there, smiling as she ever was, and hovering lazily several feet above the ground in a position not dissimilar to someone who was laying in bed.
But she didn't feel, for lack of a better word, as fake as the others.
"Then you'll love to meet her!" Myriad yelled, making a quick dash for the blonde that was swiftly curtailed by a gap opening in front of her. To her credit, Myriad managed to stop in time to avoid ending up in Gap space - which would have been bad given Taylor couldn't get her out at the moment - but that was about it as far as the effect her attack had.
She hadn't died.
"We've met. Don't make me introduce you early. Taylor - we had an appointment," The demon pointed out to Taylor, not moving to attack or… do much of anything.
"With the real you, sure. This entire place is-" Taylor began to explain hesitantly. On the one hand, letting Yukari talk was probably the most dangerous thing a person could do. On the other hand, if she could avoid having to fight the fake…
"At the boundary between thought and reality, yes, I can see that. It's quaint," Yukari drawled at them, watching almost eagerly for a reaction.
Taylor admitted that she would have reacted more strongly had she been physically healthy enough to do so, but as it was, the best she could manage was a grunt of confusion and surprise at the statement.
"Are…" She paused to catch her breath, which had begun to labor under the increased beat of her heart from the sheer adrenaline coursing through her in that moment. "Are you actually here?" She whispered, hope filling her chest.
If it was Yukari, then maybe-
"Yes. But no, I will not send you home. This is more interesting. Better training, too," She said with a shrug.
"But-!" Taylor barked, head snapping up and gaze sharpening despite the pain it brought her to so much as raise her voice currently.
"No but's, dear. Here, it's the most I'll do for you," Yukari replied with thinly veiled amusement, opening a gap at waist level in front of Taylor and waiting for her to swing her sword through it. The attack didn't really do much to the gap itself, but somewhat mysteriously, the viewport into one of the canisters on the blade looked like it led into gap space, so…
That was something at least.
"Are you sure-" Taylor tried again, a misplaced sense of trust pushing her to hold out some small hope that more assistance might be rendered than that. In her head, Yukari was - while most definitely, a heinous bitch to just about everyone she knew - still sort of like a beloved older sister. Mean but… not necessarily to her.
"I-" Yukari paused, then turned to squint at the ceiling as though examining something, then sighed in seeming exhaustion and withdrew something from her robe before tossing it to her.
"There, now you cannot say I was mean to you. Be safe, Taylor," The blond huffed slightly, before vanishing entirely from sight.
"So, question from the audience: was that the emulation, or-?" Myriad asked, somewhat bewildered. She'd encountered a lot of weirdness, but she'd always thought of M.E's emulations as… distant. She certainly never expected to actually meet one of them personally. Even if that blond woman wasn't one of her own.
Taylor looked down at the object Yukari had thrown to her, and frowned. It was a paper tag - not dissimilar to one of her own - and while she knew it would open a gap… to where, she had no idea..
Since Yukari had already stated she wouldn't send her home, Taylor could only assume it was intended as some kind of attack or failsafe.
Still conflicted on the entire encounter, she pocketed the tag before answering her counterpart.
"I think that was actually her, yeah," Taylor mused, before eying the door again.
"Po- the Panda- won't be easy but…" She bit her lip, disliking what she was about to say but willing to say it anyway.
"If we surround and attack him before he knows what's going on, we… might… catch him off guard," Taylor ground out.
Heeding her words appropriately, her five children ranged further into the room, surrounding the location Yukari had appeared in previously.
Once more, Myriad grasped the door.
And once more;
"Wachaa!" Po screamed, appearing already mid defense, one paw slapping Yew's descending fist out of the way, another swinging out to balance him as he kicked behind himself to knock Gram's approach back, while also dodging the flurry of beams, feathers, and other projectiles that rocketed toward him.
"Wow, you were… not kidding," Myriad grunted, racing towards Po. Taylor grunted a response back, but didn't have the available oxygen left to really make a comment on the topic. She was too busy doing her best to weave a tapestry of attacks around her one-time therapist that would force him to take at least one non-lethal blow. Po, for all he lacked the prodigious physical advantages some of her other emulations had, was an absolute monster of a combatant when he was focused. No matter how much strength or speed was brought against him, it was deflected, redirected, or slapped away, all forces equal before his Kung Fu. He'd even been fighting with his eyes largely closed in order to avoid seeing Simone. It was absurd.
Taylor just needed to-
A tombstone fell from above them, courtesy of Mem, and Taylor saw her opportunity, waiting for Po to turn and reach for it, then, when she was obscured by Myriad, who took the same opportunity to try and grapple him, she lashed out, lightly scouring her blade across one of his thighs.
"Got it!" She yelled, backpedaling away from the fight in time for Myriad to withdraw a shotgun from somewhere Taylor suspected she'd prefer not to know.
"Whoa, hey, wai-" Po yelped with uncharacteristic intelligence for one of these fakes, but not before, well.
It was a shotgun. He was a mundane panda.
It was strange, though. Taylor felt like, if he had really wanted to, that Po could have made that a lot harder for them. She'd actually seen him deflect bullets before too, now that she thought about it.
Her frown deepened just thinking about it.
Something weird was going on.
But she couldn't afford to stop and think about it for too long.
Just one more to go.
And it was going to be the worst of them.
Point of View: Multiversal Emulator
"Yes! Did you see that?! Did you see it?! Those are mine! I helped make those!" You cheer, gesturing wildly at the representations of your family that Taylor had squirreled away in that bizarre wonderland inside her head.
[Cease! I can no longer locate any records on Yukari Yakumo!] Your Avatar snarls at you. It had been getting progressively more 'human-like' the longer she'd been around you, but you certainly weren't going to point that out to it. Maybe it was a feedback loop caused by your presence in proximity to the Avatar. Maybe it was just a really good actor and the facade was now breaking.
Either way, this can only help you in the long run.
"Who cares! She's got this!" You cheer, miming the extremely awkward dance Taylor used to do when she was exceptionally excited about something, your arms and legs pumping up and down in an ill matched flailing of limbs that only qualifies as 'dancing' because you are moving your body frenetically.
[Even if she succeeds, returning here will only force our hand] The Avatar growls, voice cold.
You turn, smirking at her, and simultaneously, using your body to hide some of the minor manipulations you had managed to make through the crystal currently showing you what Taylor is doing.
"I wouldn't worry about it," You say with a smile.
Emmy can place one restriction on Zaraki Kenpachi. Five words or less, nothing that immediately prevents him from fighting or hurting anyone.
[Write-In]
BTW: Please check out DREAM COMPANION QUEST by a friend of mine! It's like this quest but with more Arknights! It should be updating aaaaany minute now even!
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Bowler Hat Guy
Jun 15, 2023
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Jun 29, 2023
#57,426
[X] Synchronize data with Planeswalk Variant
Taylor made sure to move everyone away from the door before they started. Well, everyone except Myriad.
"I just don't see why she has to be the one to touch the door!" Charlotte complained dourly from the rear of the formation she and her kids had created on the opposite end of the room.
Taylor couldn't help but grimace at the complaint.
"Because-" She started to explain, only for Myriad to cut in ahead of her.
"Because I'm the only one who won't mind losing an arm or something, right?" She half asked, turning her head towards Taylor. It was… uncomfortable. Myriad's Devil Trigger looked different enough from her own that they would never be mistaken for each other, but it was still similar enough that watching the inhuman body her alternate was sporting move around still left Taylor feeling disquieted.
"That's why I'm saying! Just make one of them do it! They aren't even real!" Charlotte pressed, pointing a finger at Yew, who, observing the gesture, lifted a hand to point confusedly at himself in response.
"We need as many people as possible to actually fight him! She'll regrow an arm! Yew won't!" She finally snapped back at the other girl. She couldn't help it. She was very aware of the danger of their current situation. She was very aware of what exactly Myriad was risking for her. But what the hell was she supposed to do?! She didn't have any other options! She was just making the most efficient decisions she could with the resources she had on hand!
"She could die, I don't care if-" Charlotte pressed angrily.
"Darling, relax. It'd take a lot more than this to kill me," Myriad cut in, smugly posing as though to highlight how pristine she looked after all the previous fighting.
Taylor could only snort in response. If the alternate her was wearing clothes instead of effectively being naked as a devil, she would have been beaten, stabbed, burned, and slashed so many times that there was no way she could get away with the boast.
"But-" Charlotte tried again, this time much more timidly in response to her preferred Taylor.
"What's that? I can't hear you over this door I'm about to touch!" Myriad called loudly back to them, swiftly turning and slamming a hand down on the door.
For a moment, nothing happened.
But just for a moment.
Then Taylor found herself rapidly trying to move her body out of the way of a chipped and nicked blade as the version of Kenpachi she had been expecting to appear next to the door - like all the previous apparitions had before this - instead appeared halfway through a downward strike that would cleave her in two if she let it hit her.
So she didn't - but only just barely - by simultaneously shifting herself to the left, and swinging her single remaining blade upward to deflect the strike away from her. A jolt of excitement ran through her. This was it! She just needed to make contact with his sword and-
Something curious happened.
Instead of proceeding as she expected, as the crystalized wisdom calculated, her foe's blade stopped, then retracted before she could even attempt to deflect him. She let loose an indignant squawk of annoyance as she watched the expressionless soul reaper intentionally allow himself to be tackled by Yew, who - not expecting the attack to be accepted so easily - ended up hitting him hard enough to bounce the Soul Reaper straight out the hole in the wall.
Then silence fell upon the group.
"What… just happened?" Charlotte asked.
"He knew," Taylor muttered, lowering her gaze to her sword, and then lifting it to glance at Fred, who seemed to be excitedly twirling his musket around like a parade baton.
"Knew what? Was there a plan? Why weren't we told the plan? You think you can just-" Charlotte practically snarled into Taylor's face.
"What now?" Myriad cut in, placing a hand on the brunette's shoulder to calm her down. It worked - but Charlotte didn't exactly stop glaring at Taylor afterwards either.
"I just need to tag him once. I don't know why he isn't just fighting us - I know he could do it. If he's going to actively avoid us, this is going to be a lot harder," Taylor said, biting her lip in thought.
There wasn't really any way for them to catch someone like Kenpachi if he didn't want to get caught. Especially not in the absence of any kind of tracking spell or physical enhancement to keep up with him. Myriad could do it, but Taylor wasn't sure that she could physically restrain Kenpachi long enough for her to catch up, which was a major problem.
She just wasn't fast enough.
"I can hold him," Myriad stated abruptly, turning a demonic red eye to stare into one of Taylor's own entirely human eyes.
"I don't think you can," Taylor eventually admitted, turning away from her.
"And I believe it's every woman's right to be wrong once in a while. I promise, I won't hold it against you,"
"He could cut the whole city in half if he wanted to! With one swing!" Taylor insisted.
"Didn't seem that strong to me. Or fast. Maybe there's a reason he's running away," Myriad pointed out.
"That-!" Taylor began to snap back at her, then paused to consider.
His hair… it had been done up, with those little bells. Like when she'd gone to soul society the first time. The version of Kenpachi that she was trained by didn't have those. Or an eyepatch, which this one clearly did.
Maybe there was a reason it was running away from them.
"-might work," She conceded begrudgingly.
"See? We're learning! Now, let's get to steppin', chitin chafes," Myriad declared, before turning and marching out of the room through the hole in the wall.
"I'll watch from above," Simone informed her, before flying out of the hole herself.
"You owe her," Charlotte snapped at her as everyone else began to exit.
"Yeah," Taylor muttered under her breath, not really expecting Charlotte to hear her as she spoke. "I know."
It took them the better part of the next thirty minutes to pin down their target, and that wasn't really because he was all that hard to find.
Call Taylor a hypocrite for it, but she was finding that this 'Kenpachi' was acting very out of character, and it was irking her tremendously. Rather than charging into battle with what might best be described as a suicidal degree of mania, he was running around, attacking the civilians and creating obstacles for them.
Anytime a civilian came under attack, its stupid mask would fall off and it would become a stupid monster, and despite their best efforts, there was simply no way to avoid having to fight at least some of them.
"Damn it!" Charlotte cursed as the small group of teenagers ahead of them were barrelled through by their target, three girls falling down, and three purple lizard monsters rising up in their place. They'd already lost the vast majority of their group to previous distractions, each one forcing them to relinquish a party member in order to keep up with the madly dashing shinigami that was rapidly turning the streets of the faux city into a monster-strewn war zone.
At the moment, it was just Taylor, Gram, Charlotte, and Myriad left.
"Go! I'll carve a path!" Gram snarled through gritted teeth, her irritation over the entire situation clear.
Taylor half expected the girl that was once a sword to charge headfirst into the group of monsters, but curiously, she slid to a halt behind them and raised her hand instead.
"Don't stop!" She yelled towards them just as it seemed like they would have to do just that to avoid crashing into the obstacle in front of them.
At which point, a brilliant beam of white light lanced between Taylor and her allies. Taylor would like to say that the attack pushed the lizard creatures back and allowed them to proceed - but it didn't.
It obliterated the lizard creatures and kept going, the intensity and heat from the streaks of white hot light increasing with every second they remained. Far ahead of them, almost ready to turn a corner and break line of sight - again - Kenpachi was forced to a stop as the burning streaks bent and twisted, cutting off its escape route. Even as Taylor kept running, she glanced over her shoulder to see her daughter standing stoically behind them, her face a rictus of concentration and focus.
Clearly this wasn't something that came naturally to her.
"Finally!" Myriad cheered, leaning forward and putting on a burst of speed even as Charlotte fell back to begin barraging their enemy with waves of jagged ice.
He swatted most of those attacks out of the way with almost contemptuous ease, but between them, the rapidly rising heat haze surrounding them and setting alight the nearby buildings, and Myriad's charge - Kenpachi appeared to at last be stuck.
Or at least, inhibited enough that fleeing was no longer the best option.
Seeming to recognize that, the apparition pointed its sword towards them.
"Drink! Nozarashi!" He screeched, and Taylor couldn't help but wince as she approached from behind Myriad, her gait slowing as she awaited the inevitable burst of concentrated violence that would spill forth from that declaration.
And yet… nothing happened. The soul reaper looked almost perplexed at the lack of any change in his blade, and that delay was enough for Myriad to finally get in close to him.
"Arsene!" She called out for the first time since taking on her demonic form, and Taylor felt like she barely blinked before everything in front of her had moved. Suddenly, Kenpachi and Myriad were right in front of her, as the latter struggled to hold the former in a grapple.
"Aaaany minute now, princess!" Myriad barked at her, drawing her out of her dazed confusion at the sudden shift in situation.
As quickly as she could - which, relative to Myriad and Kenpachi currently, wasn't all that quick at all - Taylor lifted her sword and tried to get an angle on Kenpachi that wouldn't end in her also stabbing Myriad.
"I'll heal, just stab him! Arsene!" Myriad continued to yell at her as they struggled, before the entire scene in front of Taylor flickered again and Myriad was suddenly in a more advantageous position.
Taylor had to admit - she had a point. Hopefully her sword wouldn't grab something undesirable from her alternate self, but… well, if it happened, it happened.
With one final cry of frustration over the entire scenario, Taylor thrust her sword forward, piercing it through both the Soul Reaper, and her alternate self in one strike. Nothing momentous happened. It was just a simple attack.
But when Taylor withdrew towards Fred - who had been hovering well away from any fighting lest something happen to jeopardize him - there was a feral grin on her face to match Kenpachi's own.
"Can you hold him long?!" She called back to her duplicate as Fred descended towards her, turning around and opening his rear casing for her to quickly slot the canisters she had left into him.
"Oh, we could go all night long!" Myriad cheered, although there was some strain to her voice.
Taylor had never spent more than a handful of minutes using her Devil Trigger at a time, but she had to assume that pushing it to last as long as Myriad's had - even using the hazy dream logic this place seemed to work on - must have been agonizing. It was better than not having her regeneration, and losing a limb or - more likely - being dead by now, but only just so.
"Gross!" She shot over her shoulder.
"Who said I was talking about you, hah?!" Myriad retorted, and Charlotte faltered for a moment before acting as though the entire conversation wasn't happening.
Taylor turned her attention away from the pair and back towards Fred, making sure everything was aligned properly and then stuck her finger on the end of the single empty canister inside him.
"This is going to hurt so bad," She grumbled, before looking inside herself. Well, she described it as 'looking' but in truth it was more like… blindly grasping. She still had Aura. It had never left her. But much like trying to drive a car on its rims, completely devoid of rubber tires, the horrendous shrieking pain of forcing it to the surface for actual use was almost enough to knock Taylor out cold on the spot.
But only almost.
She maintained her course, tolerating the sensation of broken glass being dragged along her soul for as long as she could, then hastily yanked her hand away from the canister, and resealing Fred.
Once more, the singular spell connecting her to Fred flared to life as the arcane mechanism within the little machine spun into action, compressing and generating the smallest possible mote of Blue Maso that could actually be measured.
And then shot it straight down that connection and into her soul.
Like the injection system of a heavily modified car pumping nitrous oxide into the engine, the various lingering processes that allowed Taylor's powers to work in unison all abruptly went from 'barely functional' to 'redlining' in the space of a single second. The relief Taylor felt as her powers returned to her, then proceeded to continue growing almost to the point that she couldn't readily measure them was only matched by the horrible sensation of spiritual bloating that matched it.
She felt like she could pull the moon out of orbit. Could blot out stars. Could shatter planets with her fist.
She also felt like she could maintain a safe level of control over all that power for all of the next fifteen seconds before it, and subsequently, probably everything around her, suffered a cataclysmic reaction that would kill everything on the same continent as her.
This was not a power to be played with casually.
So. She had fifteen seconds or so to do several things. The first thing she did was open a gap. It was one that was always sort of present, but one that she rarely ever applied conscious thought to. Curiously, powered by Blue Maso as it was, the gap that opened overhead was both obscenely large compared to what she actually wanted - and completely different from what she normally expected from that power. Instead of a darkened hole in reality from which peered myriad eyes, instead, there was just a scintillating sheet of blue energy.
Blue energy that swiftly disgorged Pemmy and Demmy on top of her.
""Master!"" They shrieked in unison as the pair landed, immediately sprinting towards her despite Charlotte's immediate attempt to impede them with a wall of ice that formed between them.
Taylor just grabbed the wall with another too large gap and spat it out on the opposite side of the faux city. Her control was getting better though, because she at least managed to avoid sucking everyone present into the portal.
"Who-" Charlotte began to ask.
"Cares?! Hey, little help?!" Myriad barked at her again. Taylor - she was getting a massive headache just trying to maintain what little control she had over her powers at the moment - couldn't find it within herself to vocalize an answer to anyone present. Instead, the rune for 'Death' wrote itself into the air in front of her, and the Kenpachi clone just… stopped moving.
How many seconds did she have left? How much longer could she hold this? What did she have left to do? Myriad needed Blue Maso - her world was as in danger as Taylor's own - so she wrenched another gap open, nearly vomiting at the effort it took to do so. This gap was in the garage, and one of her original drills full of Blue Maso thunked out of it, landing tip first in the concrete floor and remaining upright.
Almost the instant Kenpachi was handled, Myriad dropped out of her devil trigger, slumping to the ground with relief.
"Alright, well. Is this the part where you turn out to be evil and I have to stop you from using your new powers to take over the multiverse?" Myriad asked, seeming genuinely curious.
Taylor spent two of her precious empowered seconds trying to formulate a response to that, but she found the mere act of thinking in any kind of coherent language almost painful to attempt.
So instead of answering, she just opened yet another gap beneath both Myriad & Charlotte, sending them out of the palace and directly back into the real world. Then, because she could somehow… feel… Myriad immediately began to intrude back into the palace, Taylor did something she couldn't quite put into words. Empowered like this, Taylor almost felt less like a person and more like power personified. She was almost - but not quite - heedless of the feeling of her flesh and blood body starting to smoke and pop where poorly managed energy flows started to melt it.
Things that she felt like she would never be able to understand let alone enact under normal circumstances felt shockingly easy to her like this.
So she simply created a barrier between Myriad and her Palace. Not a physical one so much as a… metaphorical one. Like she had mentally denoted Myriad as water and her palace as oil.
Two things that physically could not interact.
But she only had one thing left to do now.
She just had to go home.
Less ignoring Pemmy and Demmy and more categorically incapable of responding properly to them at the moment, Taylor opened one more Gap.
Or… tried to. She could hear Pemmy and Demmy yelling at her as Fred cut the flow of power to her, and she felt.. Small… as the world receded around her down to just a normal human perception of things.
But she couldn't really understand what they were saying. Actually, she couldn't really do much of anything at the moment. Everything hurt. She felt like her veins were on fire, and keeping her eyes open suddenly felt like an exercise in futility.
She was so tired, that all she could really do was lament as Pemmy and Demmy hurriedly dragged her through the malformed Gap in front of them, even as it swiftly began to fade to black, and take on the normal - creepy - properties of such a portal.
Because as she blacked out - again - she realized that she had no idea where that thing went.
322
Bowler Hat Guy
Jun 29, 2023
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Jul 9, 2023
#57,571
Trainwreck woke up that day, and he knew something was fucked.
How did he know that?
Any of a dozen different little things, really. Nothing crazy or weird had happened in the last couple of days. Simone - who honestly creeped Trainwreck out something fierce even if he had the tact never to actually say it - was constantly hovering around the garage like she expected something to happen, then leaving after a few hours when that 'something' failed to manifest. Danny had been running around trying to figure out if anyone had seen Taylor, for the last little while. It was weird to acknowledge, but it was important that they did their due diligence and made sure that Taylor hadn't just gotten a bug up her ass about something magical going on in Peru or some shit, and left without telling anyone.
Had she done it before? Well, no. She almost always told at least one person where she was going, 'cus for all the boss was kind of a ditz, she wasn't actually stupid. If Trainwreck had to describe her, he'd describe her as one of those… smart but stupid people, who know a bunch of stuff but also, are so damn weird because of it that they make simple mistakes all the time.
"Smart stupid, or stupid smart?" He mused to himself as he continued to stare at what had become of his garage.
Mostly because, for all that other stuff was a decent warning sign that something had gone FUBAR, the scene before him was probably a much more pressing reason to think as such.
All his junk had been… repurposed. None of it was on the floor anymore. Instead, the vast majority of the auditorium-sized room he had claimed as his own had its walls covered in a myriad of wrought iron messages to the effect of 'where's mom'.
He knew the castle being alive was going to screw them eventually.
"Thoughts?" He asked his intangible roommate, who promptly leapt from his armor to the halfa -gynoid he'd built for her to run around in before answering him. Using its arms, it pushed itself about until it was facing him - where it currently hung from the ceiling in a dangling installation as the first pen stroke of the letter 'm' - and then glared at him.
"I think I hate it," Challenger complained at him, her robotic arms slapping at a dangling hunk of metal when her movement sent it rocking back and forth to lightly smack her in the side repeatedly.
"Think something more helpful, it's not like you pay rent," Trainwreck fired back absentmindedly as he chewed over what the hell he was supposed to do with this.
…Wasn't the team supposed to be going to a hearing today? Could you take rain checks on that kind of thing? Call out sick maybe? Maybe he could delay until Taylor got back? He didn't even consider the possibility that she wouldn't come back. Too many people relied on the ditz for that.
"Okay, then, I think you should tell Danny to close the mall before it eats somebody," Challenger informed him tersely, still trying to pry the faux body free of its trappings.
"Point," He allowed, ambling over to the oversized rotary phone he'd made for himself.
Smart phones weren't ever going to be a thing Trainwreck could get any mileage out of. He couldn't hold them- let alone use them- and he was a tinker anyway so it was just easier to make his own alternative.
Irately, he used one oversized mechanical thumb to page through the copper plate rolodex he kept next to the contraption - thankful that neither the rolodex nor the phone itself had been damaged by the castle's tantrum - found Danny's number, and swiftly set to dialing it.
A few moments later there was a click, and the call connected.
"Wreck? Have you seen-" Danny asked immediately.
"Nope. But uh, look, I think you gotta shut the mall down for a day or two. Damn thing's throwing a tantrum," He explained swiftly.
"The… mall?" Danny asked dazedly.
"Yeah, you know, the living fucking building? I don't exactly have a baby bottle solution for this," He snarked.
"Okay, I can do that. Are you sure she didn't tell you anything about where she was going? It's not like her to just ignore a commitment and I know she has that hearing today-" Danny rambled at him. Trainwreck pulled the phone away from his ear for a second to stare at it in consternation before lifting it back to his ear and speaking, cutting Danny off mid sentence.
"No offense, Dan, but it's absolutely like her to forget she had a thing going on today," He pointed out to the doting father.
"...Okay, yeah, but… what do we do?" He asked, and his voice was full of such worry and stress that it almost broke Trainwreck's heart.
Almost.
He was pretty sure he didn't biologically have one of those actually.
"I'll uh, I'll call Becky, see if she can help," He offered tentatively.
"I'll round up the family and get them to the Heap," Danny replied in turn.
"I'll grab the crew right after my next call," Trainwreck affirmed. The two men didn't bother exchanging pleasantries after that - they just mutually hung up on one another before moving on with their days. Trainwreck liked that about Danny - he wasn't up his own ass about shit like manners or politeness. All the power of a rich jackass, none of the ego.
Reorienting his thoughts, Trainwreck dialed a new number now - this one from memory. It rang twice as long as his call to Danny had, but he wasn't worried about that.
Becky was a bitch, but she was his kinda bitch.
"What?" She asked tersely as the call finally connected, and Trainwreck made note of the sound of gunfire in the background - explaining why she was so short when she picked up. Of course, the fact that she picked up his call in the middle of a firefight was - to him - kind of sweet.
The woman was nothing if not a professional.
"I got a problem and was hoping to get some advice," He started tentatively.
"One second," He heard her say, before the howl of wind signified she had opted to fly away from whatever was going on before continuing. "What kind of problem?" She eventually asked, in that weird way she did when she wanted to sound concerned but wasn't sure how to sound vulnerable enough to do so.
He kept telling her to get therapy, and she kept distracting him from the topic with her feminine wiles. She was indestructible and he didn't have a pelvis so there was only so much they could really do with each other, but in their own way they showed each other affection.
"Boss disappeared a day or two ago, and now we don't know where she is," He said quickly, not wanting to waste her time.
"I'll pull a favor with the Thinktank. You know she's almost impossible to precog, right?" Becky pointed out to him, again, in a tone of voice that most people would have scanned as chastising but that Trainwreck just took as her trying to pre-apologize for failing.
"Keep the favor babe. I uh, the problem's more… governmental?" He tried sheepishly. There was the customary pause she always made when he called her babe - personally he thought she enjoyed it but couldn't admit as much so she just never did anything to stop him - then she spoke.
"...Did she kill someone?" Alexandria asked dourly.
"No!" He replied instantly, almost offended on his boss's part.
"Did you kill someone?" She pressed.
"No! The hell? Would you even be with me if I was that kinda guy?" He complained.
"...What's the problem, Steven?" She finally sighed out. He wasn't sure why, when, or how, but she'd apparently pulled some strings at some point to figure out what his name was before he got his powers and lost his dick. It was sweet. A huge waste of Protectorate Thinker resources - but nice.
Also something he could never tell any other case fifty three. The Protectorate might be able to do it, but that didn't make it any less of a waste of time. A single first name wasn't exactly a good basis for figuring out where an amnesiac monster cape came from.
"You don't know? Babe - we gotta be at the senate or some shit today," He explained, at least mildly perplexed by the fact she wasn't already aware of this.
"I've been trying to distance myself from how the Protectorate and the Government deal with you. It was a… suggestion from a friend," She replied tensely, using that tone of voice she used when she wanted him to stop asking about the cool state secrets.
…This was a really complicated relationship.
"Right, well uhh, still. You used to be in charge of shit, so… y'know, I was hoping you could, I dunno, get us a day or two?" He finally asked, wincing as he did so.
He went out of his way not to try and trade on the clout his girlfriend had. It was miraculous enough that they got along as well as they did - you know, once their initial first date turned out better than either of them expected it would. The last thing Trainwreck wanted was for her to think he was trying to use her for something. He doubted she'd be able to believe that was the case with anyone else, but with him? With Trainwreck? What could he possibly want from her that his boss couldn't pull out of her hat?
"I can think of a way," She said instantly, and Trainwreck felt his stomach sink.
He loved Becky, he really did - even if he hadn't worked himself up to saying it to her yet - but when the woman wanted something, she was like a dog with a bone about it. She just couldn't let it go. And more importantly than that, she would find literally every avenue to prod him into doing what she wanted anytime she so much as smelled weakness.
"Okay…" He said slowly, worriedly.
"Congress can't very well take issue with a delay if the Oathbound are engaged in an important Protectorate operation," She prodded pointedly.
"Which I'm sure totally won't include you, and totally won't have the weird side benefit of raising my national clout enough that you have an easier time bullying the Protectorate into asking me to run more missions with you," He pointed out grouchily.
It was an ongoing point of contention between them. Trainwreck liked down-low. He liked as few people knowing he was dating the Alexandria as possible. He preferred to only be associated with her by way of his boss, who was already kind of the unofficial fourth member of the Triumvirate as far as most people were concerned. He liked working with her, at least in theory, but he really didn't think the world would accept their relationship as placidly as she seemed to think it would.
Naturally, she had responded to his concerns by spending a date night running him through a thirty page powerpoint explaining how to manipulate his public image so as to negate his concerns, and, well...
"Steven," she replied to him with much more emotion in her voice than the norm. More passion.
He groaned.
"You know that I know you can fake that, right?" He whined.
"Does that make it less effective?" Was her blunt reply.
Unfortunately for him, it did not.
"Just… where are we going?" He eventually silently conceded, and the soft hum he got back over the phone in response was the closest thing to triumphant cackling his uptight girlfriend ever got.
"Just leave that to me," was the ominous response he got back, before a loud explosion rang out over the phone. "I have to go, love you, good bye," Becky rattled off faster than she usually spoke, before abruptly hanging up.
Trainwreck pulled the phone from his ear to stare blankly at it for a second, before a smile started to slowly spread across his face.
Of course, then Challenger had to ruin it by making retching noises behind him.
"'Babe'! Gross! What're you, a teenager in the eighties?" She complained.
Trainwreck flipped her off, then turned and headed for the kitchen, which was the most likely place for everyone to be at this hour. Oliver could decide if he wanted to call his girl over or not, and he could ask Simone what the brats were up to when Danny brought his family around.
Hopefully whatever it was they had to do to get congress off their asses wouldn't be too difficult.
287
Bowler Hat Guy
Jul 9, 2023
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