Modification 5.3
Taylor rolled herself down the Boardwalk, her chair bouncing over the slightly uneven wooden planks, warped by the moisture from the bay.
She couldn't quite keep the grin off of her face, for multiple reasons.
For one, her workshop was undoubtedly secure. She would never have to deal with a night of exploding houses again. Maybe, if Dragon dropped a massive bomb on her and destroyed the entire Hospital or something, but she wasn't sure. The Labyrinth worked in strange ways.
Secondly, Amy still hadn't run away screaming, even after she revealed that she was hunting parahumans for their blood and powers. Taylor hadn't considered it likely at this point, but the risk was always there. A small part of her wanted it to happen, so Amy wouldn't get dragged down with her.
But not a very large or important part, in the grand scheme of things.
And finally, who would expect that Carpenter, Hunter, the mass murdering villain in the night, was the girl pushing herself around in a shitty old wheelchair? Every glance from a stranger, every stare that flickered away a bit too quickly, was hilarious to her. Their eyes didn't want to linger on the girl in the chair. That which was other was uncomfortable to them.
But it was a lot more comfortable for her, compared to walking around on the peg leg. She couldn't exactly wear her stake driver in public. That would definitely defeat the purpose.
She really did need to be more careful, though. She had totally forgotten her scarf last night, and the night before.
Taylor could feel herself getting more careless, in more ways than one. Was the blood affecting her judgement?
Obviously, it was. She hadn't been nearly this violent or reckless, before. The real question was whether she cared.
Maybe. Just a little.
Not enough to stop, though.
Taylor Hebert may be dead, but there were benefits to having an undercover identity. She didn't necessarily want to make it obvious to everyone that she was Hunter everywhere she went.
Meetings like this, for example.
Taylor wheeled her way towards the patio in front of Tipton's bar and grill, looking around for her contact.
A blonde girl in a purple jacket with cute freckles met her questioning gaze. The girl's eyes widened comically and her expression fell slack.
Tattletale.
Taylor pushed herself over and stopped her chair next to the stranger, locking the wheels and looking out over the bay.
"I heard you were looking for me," Taylor said casually.
Tattletale nodded.
"You're a tough person to find," the blonde said.
"I don't like very many people," Taylor replied.
Tattletale glanced down at her.
"That's… understandable. People can kind of suck, sometimes," she said.
It was quiet, except for the waves.
"You can call me Lisa, if you want."
"Anne."
"That's not your real name, is it?" Lisa raised an eyebrow.
"No. But I don't think Lisa is yours, either," Taylor said.
Tattletale wouldn't give up her real name that easily.
Lisa clicked her tongue but didn't answer.
"We all wear masks," Lisa said eventually. "Some are just harder to take off than others."
Taylor nodded. She understood that better than most.
"What do you want, Lisa?" Taylor asked. She was already tired of the games. Plus, she wanted to sleep. It had been a long night.
"My boss wants you to join our team. Rachel's and mine, I mean. The Undersiders," Lisa said.
Now it was Taylor's turn to raise an eyebrow.
"We both know that isn't going to happen," Taylor said.
Lisa nodded, eyes moving out over the sea.
Taylor chewed her lip as the gears turned in her mind.
Someone wanted her to work with the Undersiders. Their 'boss', who pulled the strings.
Someone who went to a lot of trouble to get in contact with her, but in a way she wouldn't be immediately suspicious of.
Someone who was playing games.
Her thrall said that Coil had unaffiliated capes under his employ.
"Your boss wouldn't happen to be Coil, would he?" Taylor asked.
Lisa flinched ever so slightly. She was good at controlling her reactions, but not good enough to escape Taylor's perception.
It was too big of a coincidence. The secretive gang boss had put together an elaborate plan to gather information about her, followed her father, uncovered her (other) civilian identity and set a trap to confirm his suspicions. He could manipulate probability, according to his men, at least. He wanted her to work for him. What were the odds that two shadowy parahuman organizations were trying to manipulate her?
Well, aside from her mysterious note-leaver. Couldn't forget about them.
"You're guessing. And you know I can't tell you that," Lisa said.
Taylor knew she was right, though.
"It doesn't really matter, anyway," Taylor said. "I don't have a team, and I don't want one. I'm neither a villain nor a hero."
"It's all a game, you know," Lisa replied. "The Protectorate. The gangs. They fight and they squabble, but everyone knows that they need capes for Endbringer fights. And powers need to be used, so they can't just force everyone to be friends and sing Kumbaya. Plus, they can't afford to have us turn on the unpowered people as a group, because the planet would end up glassed by nuclear fire. That's why the rules exist. To keep us in line, focused on each other, and from slaughtering each other wholesale."
That actually made a lot of sense, from a certain perspective.
"I don't care about the rules," Taylor said. "I have my own game to play, and I don't need you to do it."
"It doesn't hurt to have friends, though," Lisa replied. "You seem to like Rachel. And somehow, she seems to like you, too. You'll have to tell me how you managed that, because I can't figure her out even with my power to help."
"What is your power then?" Taylor asked.
"I'm psychic," Lisa shot her a crooked grin.
Taylor considered her shrewdly and thought as hard as she could about the unknowable nature of the Labyrinth, the eyes that followed her from the dark.
Lisa just stared back. No flashes of incomprehensible horror. No incoherent babbling or tortured screams.
"You're trying to test if I'm actually psychic right now, aren't you?" Lisa said.
"Yes," Taylor said.
"How's that going for you?" Lisa asked.
"Very well, thanks for asking," Taylor said dryly.
She wasn't psychic.
Lisa raised an eyebrow.
Taylor smiled.
"Now that we've established that, care to explain what your power actually is, or are you keeping that to yourself for now?" Taylor asked.
Lisa scowled at her. It was kind of cute. Like an angry cat without claws.
"I don't know why I should tell you, if you're so against joining the team," Lisa said. Pouted, really, even if she wouldn't admit it.
"You're the one who brought it up," Taylor pointed out. "Besides, I thought we were trying to be friends."
Lisa hummed noncommittally, still frowning. Her curiosity quickly overcame her irritation, though. "What's your power, then?"
Taylor's smile widened.
"I'm the Hunter."
Lisa blinked and took a breath to answer.
Taylor's phone rang.
So did Lisa's.
They both looked at each other and then down at their pockets.
"I have to take this," they both said at the same time.
Lisa grinned at her. A bit less sharp, and a bit less fake, than before.
Lisa flipped open the phone.
"Broccoli R," Lisa said.
Taylor answered her phone.
"Hunter," Taylor said.
She was met with heavy breathing on the other end of the line.
"-fuck. Empire, shit- Brutus-"
The call cut off.
Rachel.
Lisa's eyes widened. Taylor heard a male voice speaking quickly, but she couldn't make out the words.
"The Empire- oh, you already know," Lisa said.
"Where is she?" Taylor asked urgently.
"Dog shelter, the Trainyards," Lisa said.
"I know that, but where?" Taylor growled.
Lisa rattled off an address.
"You have a car?" Taylor asked.
"Yeah, but-" Lisa started, glancing towards the parking lot behind the building.
Taylor was already wheeling herself in that direction.
"Good, I'll drive," Taylor said as Lisa ran to catch up.
"You can't- oh, right, of course you can," Lisa muttered.
A nondescript black sedan with heavily tinted windows beeped as Lisa pulled out her keys.
"Could you be any more stereotypical?" Taylor chuckled as she threw herself into the driver's seat.
She left the chair behind. She could come back for it later.
Lisa got in the passenger seat.
"You know, it's polite to let-"
"Don't care," Taylor cut her off.
Victor was very good at driving.
Lisa didn't seem to appreciate it.
"Holy shit, fuck, fuck-"
"Calm down. I'm not going to actually hit anything," Taylor grumbled as she floored it down the narrow street and skidded around a corner.
Lisa screamed as they came very close to getting smeared by a semi-truck.
"Horseshoes and hand grenades," Taylor muttered.
Lisa obviously didn't agree, but that didn't matter right now.
"If you have a spare costume with you, you should probably change," Taylor said casually. They weaved through a red light and came out the other side at sixty miles per hour.
Taylor's enhanced perception caught the barest hint of crimson in the rearview mirror, but it was gone as soon as she looked back.
"As if I could change right- slow down, we're going to die," Lisa yelled.
So dramatic.
"Everyone dies eventually," Taylor said. "Some of us just go sooner than others."
"You're suicidal. Of course you are. Why am I not surprised? It's always-"
Lisa cut off as Taylor drifted around a corner. The momentum threw her yammering passenger against the window.
They pulled up outside the Hospital in record time.
Taylor wasn't exactly worried about Lisa or Coil learning about its location, now that it was wrapped in the Labyrinth's embrace.
"Put on your damn costume. I'll meet you there," Taylor called in Lisa's general direction before leaping from the driver's seat.
Hopping through the corridors wasn't exactly dignified, but there was no one around to see her.
Taylor shoved her leg into the stake driver and slammed the lock home.
She grabbed her repeating pistol and holstered it at her waist. Her quick injector and a few special cocktails went in her shoulder holster. She slung a leather bandolier of quicksilver bullets and blood vials over her chest and pulled on her coat.
The Kirkhammer went on her back, and her silver sword at her hip.
She tied her hair back, wrapped her scarf around her face, and put on her hat.
The Empire thought they could go after Rachel, since they couldn't find her.
She would make them pay in blood. With interest.
Fucking Nazis.
Taylor raced back through the broken hallways
Hang in there, Bitch.
She reached the door and leapt off her good leg.
As she arched through the air, Taylor primed the stake driver.
I'm on my way.
The roof of one of the many destitute cars on the muddy lawn rushed towards her.
Something itched in the back of her mind, but she ignored it. She had more important things to worry about.
Bringing her left leg down with all her strength, Taylor released the coiled piston.
The blunt steel rod left a crater in the car roof and Taylor rocketed over the crumbling buildings with violent velocity.
Let the hunt… begin.
…
Luckily, the lightshow cast by Purity's bombing runs was easy to track.
Taylor slipped between the buildings as she approached, doing her best to stay out of sight of the Empire's flying laser artillery.
Several buildings lay in ruins, not from slow decay but from violent destruction.
Taylor carefully made her way up the fire escape and onto the roof of one of the taller abandoned apartment buildings. The main conflict was still a hundred yards away, but she kept low and pressed against the brick, just in case.
It looked like at least one of the other Undersiders had beaten her here. Patches of strange, pitch-black fog pockmarked the battlefield.
Overhead, the shining white star that was Purity flew in wide arcs, launching twisting blasts of searing light. Her burning rays cut away great swaths of rubble and debris with every shot. She circled and dove from hundreds of feet in the air in varying directions, likely trying to get a good angle on her target.
On the broken street, Bitch's dogs ran wild and attacked anyone they could get their teeth or prehensile tails into. Taylor couldn't see her friend anywhere, but that wasn't surprising. The toppled buildings and clouds of darkness made it difficult to see anything at all, even with her enhanced perception.
She could see a familiar monster, though, amid the chaos.
Hookwolf was in rare form, the metal monstrosity alive and ferocious. He twisted and churned with bladed death, leaping from building to building and throwing himself against Bitch's beasts with reckless abandon.
At the other end of the street, another shirtless man who could only be Stormtiger worked to remove the clouds of darkness with wide gusts of razor-sharp wind. He stood on top of a floating platform that looked like it had been ripped from the street itself, floating twenty feet off the ground.
Next to Stormtiger, a hooded figure's black and red robe flapped in the unnatural breeze.
Rune.
That explained the floating platform and the flying bits of rubble.
Taylor put her back against the cold brick of the roof access doorway.
She needed to level the playing field, and fast. Even if Lisa arrived, there wouldn't be much she could do against so many heavy hitters.
Purity was the biggest immediate threat. She was fast enough to outrun Taylor, and could attack from a distance. Taylor knew that she couldn't let herself get tangled up with Hookwolf while being pelted by massive energy blasts.
The flying artillery needed to go before her enemies realized she was here. So far, it didn't seem like any of them had noticed her approach, but all it took was one lucky circle from Purity and her cover would be blown.
Taylor primed her stake driver and drew her pistol. The repeating pistol could fire both barrels simultaneously or separately, and Taylor switched it to double. She would only get one shot at this, and things would go downhill very quickly if she missed.
Purity could probably obliterate her body with one good shot. Taylor would come back, but Rachel wouldn't. Rachel's dogs wouldn't. She couldn't afford to fuck this up.
Purity swooped back down for another strafing run.
Taylor gripped her pistol in both hands and exhaled.
I won't miss.
The stake driver reduced the roof beneath her to rubble, and Taylor rocketed into the sky.
Purity twisted in surprise, raising her glowing hands at the new threat suddenly flying to meet her.
Taylor leveled her gun and sighted her target, leading the brilliant comet ever so slightly.
Power gathered in the Nazi Blaster's palms.
Taylor fired both barrels of her repeating pistol with a cacophonous BOOM, and Purity's head exploded.
One down. Three to go.
Taylor landed hard in the middle of the chaotic street, Purity's headless corpse plummeting to the ground beside her in a shower of crimson rain. The corpse hit the pavement with a sickening splat. It didn't bounce like they did in the movies.
Pain flared in her leg on impact and Taylor felt something tear around the prosthesis, but she ignored it. The regeneration solution would do its job, and the pain would fuel her fury.
Everything was still, for a long moment.
Taylor pulled a ragged breath into her lungs and called to the bloodlust that always simmered beneath the surface, the desire for violence that sang within her.
How dare these monsters presume to hunt her friend?
How dare they claim to be righteous while they poisoned the world?
How dare they think themselves civilized, when they were nothing but beasts?
Her blood pounded in her ears, and Taylor let the rage build until the need to rip and tear overwhelmed her, and she screamed.
"HOOKWOLF!"
The street shuddered and cracked with the force of her roar, the rubble and smoke thrown back in a wide circle around her as she primed the stake driver and brandished her Kirkhammer. Bitch's dogs howled with her in a harmony of savagery.
The steel beast landed across from her, skidding to a stop and carving deep gashes into the pavement.
Down the street, Taylor caught a flurry of movement as Rune almost stumbled off her platform. Stormtiger wasn't so lucky, and she saw him fall writhing to the concrete twenty feet below, clawing at his ears.
Some kind of enhanced senses?
Unfortunate, for him.
Hookwolf let out a horrible, metallic laugh. Like silverware going through a garburator.
"Badass leg, little Hunter," the monster coughed. "I'm impressed."
Taylor's bloodthirsty smile widened behind her scarf.
"If you liked the taste so much the first time, why don't you try for another bite?" Taylor growled through her teeth.
She could have sworn the beast smiled.
"Oh, I will, killer. Let's fucking GO!" Her enemy roared.
Taylor slammed the stake driver into the ground and launched herself forward at the same moment that he leapt for her.
Hookwolf was fast, and strong, but her senses and dexterity were better attuned than his. Especially with Victor's combat skills.
Taylor used the momentum generated by the torqued spring to twist sideways as she flew, bringing the Kirkhammer around in a wide, horizontal arc. The consecrated stone hammerhead smashed through the monster's outstretched claws and straight into his metal face.
Pieces of Hookwolf scattered across the street as the beast himself was thrown clear into one of the surrounding buildings.
Taylor let her inertia pull her around and yanked the other lever on her stake driver, locking the bladed spike on the bottom into place.
She landed hard and drove the steel prosthesis into the concrete, wrenching herself to a stop in a furrow of broken road.
The movement yanked at the metal spikes embedded into her flesh, but the constant regeneration solution would fix the damage shortly. In the meantime, blood dripped through the mechanisms and splashed onto the ruined street.
Taylor primed the weapon again with a deeply satisfying thunk.
She ducked automatically to avoid the piece of speeding rubble that would have taken her head off.
Fucking Rune.
Taylor would need to find a moment to deal with her soon. The floating platform was currently out of range of her pistol, and she still needed to reload anyway.
Hookwolf threw himself towards her from the depths of the crumbling building, his body reforming and expanding in a wide net of metal to ensure that she couldn't escape him.
She didn't intend to, this time.
Taylor triggered the stake driver early and let the bladed spike sink deep into the earth beneath her.
It would limit her mobility, but Hookwolf was expecting her to dodge. He had spread his metal thin to catch her when she tried.
Instead, she planted her foot with her prosthesis anchored to the pavement and hurled her Kirkhammer at him as hard as her considerable strength would allow.
Without the extra leverage, she could easily have thrown herself instead of her hammer, but she was unmovable in her current state. As it was, the rotating metal wrecking ball struck her enemy's center mass with the literal and conceptual force of a freight train.
Hookwolf's churning web of metal blades folded inwards on itself and he was driven back into the building again, this time with enough force to smash through several walls.
The building also collapsed on top of him. That was convenient.
Taylor pulled the lever and re-primed her stake driver, wrenching it free of the concrete.
She dodged another rock.
That was getting really annoying.
She reloaded her pistol.
Three more missiles flew at her from different angles, so Taylor quickstepped to the left to avoid them. Luckily, her prosthesis came with her into her shadow state. She hadn't even thought about that potential pitfall until now. It would have been embarrassing to quickstep and then fall over, missing a foot.
The building began to shift, but she still had time.
Taylor pulled another lever and switched back to her blunt piston, turning to survey her targets.
Stormtiger was pulling himself upright, looking battered but not beaten.
Rune still floated on her platform, charging more rocks to throw at her.
Taylor swayed sideways to dodge another missile.
It was like they weren't really used to their enemies shooting back.
Not that she was complaining.
Taylor launched herself down the street in another explosion of cracked pavement, rapidly closing the distance between her and her quarry.
Her mechanically empowered leap took her high enough to look down on Rune's platform.
As she flew, Taylor roared again, asserting her raging desire to see the Nazi scum bleeding at her feet.
Stormtiger stumbled, but not nearly as badly as the first time. Maybe he was learning.
Rune was also disoriented, the rubble quivering under her as she struggled to maintain her focus under the auditory assault.
Taylor switched her pistol to fire consecutively rather than simultaneously.
Two enemies. Two consecrated quicksilver bullets.
It was almost too easy.
Taylor leveled her pistol, and fired.
Rune's platform tumbled from the sky as a fist sized hole appeared in her chest, splattering the flying concrete crimson.
Two down, two to go.
Her momentum began to flag and she fell towards the rubble, coincidentally bringing herself closer to Stormtiger's disoriented form.
Taylor pulled the trigger again, and his head followed Purity's into non-existence.
Three down, one to go.
She landed with several running steps to bleed off her inertia before turning back towards her last enemy. She also reloaded her pistol and primed her stake driver.
Hookwolf managed to drag himself out of the wreckage, but he was looking quite a bit worse for wear. His fluctuating metal was badly bent, and his wolf form appeared misshapen and twisted.
Taylor stared down the street at him. She saw him look past her to the bodies of his comrades.
A car pulled up behind her. Tattletale had finally arrived. Better late than never.
Her enemy's sunken eyes met hers, and she couldn't figure out if it was hatred, fury, or admiration that burned within them. Maybe all three.
Taylor felt the pavement quake as Bitch's remaining dogs padded forward to stand at her shoulders. There were only two of them. She needed to end this and find Rachel, quickly.
It pained her to give him the option, but she didn't have time to go find her hammer while actively fighting, and the Protectorate were probably on their way. Even this far out, they couldn't ignore a massive brawl like this.
Taylor yelled to him, her voice echoing unnaturally in the broken street.
"Run, or die, Hookwolf," she roared, stepping towards him and slamming her stake driver into the ground with a heavy clang. "Run back to Kaiser, and tell him that if he goes after my people again, I'll mount his head in my workshop next to Cricket's."
That seemed to give the monster pause, and Taylor laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound.
"You didn't think they were still alive, did you?" She shouted through her mad cackles. "That's cute. I finished butchering Victor weeks ago, and I drank the last of Cricket's blood out of her empty skull last night. Run, Hookwolf, and tell Kaiser to fuck off, or he'll be next."
Hookwolf ran away.
Taylor heard uneven footsteps approaching, and turned to see Rachel's ragged form dragging her way over. She looked pretty torn up, and it didn't help that she was carrying the limp, bloodstained body of the Rottweiler that Taylor saw with her on Sunday night.
Behind her, a tall man in road leathers and a motorcycle helmet stood stiffly. She couldn't see his expression under the dark helmet.
From beside the car, Lisa was staring at Taylor with open-mouthed horror.
Huh.
Whatever Tattletale's power was, she knew that Taylor hadn't lied. Maybe that would keep Coil from going after her father.
Taylor looked away from the blonde's stunned terror. She still had a strange feeling of malcontent, like she was being watched.
First things first, though. Rachel was in rough shape.
"You look like shit," Taylor said.
"Fucking Nazis," Rachel growled.
"You want me to heal you?" Taylor asked.
Rachel stared at her for a long moment before finally nodding.
"Brutus first," she said.
Taylor strode over and slammed a blood vial into the dying dog's flank.
He whined, but the gaping wounds and broken bones healed under his matted fur.
Taylor reloaded another vial and healed Bitch, too.
She looked up at the dark, unknown man. Probably one of the other Undersiders. She didn't know all of their names. He looked tense. She couldn't imagine why.
"You hurt?" Taylor asked.
There was a long beat of silence aside from the wind blowing in the ruined street.
"You killed them," he said, his voice distorted by the mask and his black smoke.
"They tried to hurt Rachel. They asked for it," Taylor shrugged.
"The rules are there for a reason-" he started, but Taylor cut him off. It was late, and she was tired.
Well, early, for normal people. Whatever.
"I don't give a fuck about the rules. I'm the Hunter, and these monsters didn't deserve my restraint," Taylor growled.
He just stared at her.
Taylor shot him and Lisa a look, then stomped down the street to retrieve her Kirkhammer and grab Purity's body.
Hopefully the Blaster hadn't leaked too much. Taylor really wanted to experiment with her powers.
Digging through the collapsed building was annoying, but Taylor found her wayward hammer fairly easily.
As she dragged the corpse back towards the ragtag group, she caught a low argument between Lisa and Mr. Tall, Dark, and Stressed.
"She's fucking crazy, Tats-"
"You think I don't know that? But the boss wants-"
"I don't care what he wants, I'm not inviting her over to drink our blood while we sleep-"
"She doesn't… okay, she does, but not like that-"
"No. Veto. Fuck that-"
Taylor stopped listening. It didn't matter, anyway.
She walked over and threw Purity into the trunk of Lisa's car.
"Wait, what do you think you're-" Lisa yelled.
Taylor glared at her.
"I don't feel like carrying all three of them back to the Hospital on my shoulders, so you've been volunteered as the delivery service. Congratulations. I'll even let you drive this time, if you ask nicely," Taylor said, jagged onyx burning into bottle green.
"I don't think-" Lisa started, floundering and biting her lip.
"Wasn't asking," Taylor cut her off.
Bitch snorted. At least someone appreciated her.
Taylor stuffed Stormtiger's body beside Purity's.
She looked at the car critically.
There wasn't room in the trunk for Rune, so Taylor tossed her in the back seat along with her Kirkhammer. The car sagged on its suspension.
Lisa whined incoherently as the dripping blood from the ragged hole in Rune's chest got on the seats.
Taylor didn't care.
Rachel finished checking her dog's healed injuries and stood, walking over to her.
"Thanks," Rachel said.
Taylor nodded.
"We're square, now," Taylor said.
Rachel shook her head.
"Would'a killed Brutus and the others. I owe you," she said.
Taylor considered that. She still liked the idea of hunting hounds. Or guard dogs.
"I'll let you know, next time I go hunting," Taylor said.
Rachel nodded.
On a whim, Taylor held out her hand, and Rachel clasped it tightly for a moment.
Taylor turned back to the other two Undersiders. She couldn't see Biker-Guy's face, but Lisa looked concerned. And a bit terrified.
Good.
"You want to drive or not, Tattletale?" Taylor asked, grinning at the conflicted expression under Lisa's mask.
"Fine," Lisa eventually snapped. "But don't break the floor with that… thing."
Taylor looked down at the stake driver and then the passenger seat of Lisa's car.
With a shrug, Taylor reached down and released the lock, pulling her leg free from the prosthesis.
"Oh, God…"
Lisa wasn't accustomed to Taylor's brand of tinkering. She'd learn to get over a bit of blood and ragged skin eventually.
Apparently, the regeneration solution wasn't quite up to the task of holding her stump together under that much pressure. Taylor would have to fix that later.
In the meantime, she injected herself with a spare regeneration vial. She had time to let the torn flesh heal during the drive home, and she didn't actually want any more scars on her leg. It might interfere with the prosthesis junction.
She heard a distinctive engine roar approaching.
Time to go.
Taylor grabbed the detached stake driver and flopped into the passenger seat. The blood from her leg splattered the floor.
Lisa made another pitiful whining noise. It was pretty funny.
Taylor closed the door behind her and Lisa got in the driver's seat.
The car pulled away, bouncing over the cracked road.
"So…" Lisa started slowly.
"No talking," Taylor said. She was tired, and her leg hurt.
Lisa didn't say a word until they pulled up at the Hospital.
Her unwilling driver took a deep breath when they arrived.
"Thank you," Lisa said, even though Taylor could tell that the words irked her. "For saving Rachel. We may not always get along, but she's my teammate. Our teammate, if you change your mind."
"I didn't do it for you," Taylor said.
"I know. But she's… I'm glad she found someone like you, that's all," Lisa said quietly.
Taylor glanced over at her.
"I wasn't lying, about the friends thing," Lisa continued. "Everyone needs friends, in a city like this. In a world like this."
Taylor nodded slowly.
"I'll think about it," Taylor's eyes met hers. "In the meantime, tell Coil to stay away from me and mine, or I'll make sure to keep him alive and alert while I peel the flesh from his bones."
Lisa flinched and paled.
"Right. If I… run into him, I'll pass along the message," she said.
"Good."
They stared at each other for another long moment.
"See you around, Lisa," Taylor said.
"Okay, Anne," Lisa replied.
Taylor opened the passenger door, reattached her stake driver, grabbed the dead bodies, and headed back into her Hospital, her Labyrinth, her Workshop.
And Lisa drove away.
…
Amy's phone rang in the middle of class.
Luckily, she always kept her phone on silent. She couldn't remember the last time it wasn't on silent. What kind of psychopath actually used a ringtone?
She was one of the few students at Arcadia whose phone was capable of functioning under the faraday cage, for obvious reasons. The PRT always needed to be able to reach their miracle healer, just in case.
Amy decided to risk a glance down to see who it was.
Why the fuck is Taylor calling me at 10:00 in the morning?
This didn't bode well. Hopefully Taylor wasn't lost or whatever esoteric shit she had rambled about.
It was probably just another rampage. She had promised to let Amy know the next time that happened. Nothing to worry about.
Amy excused herself to the bathroom and ran to lock the stall door.
She missed the original call, but called back quickly.
"Hey, Amy," Taylor's voice sounded tired but generally pleased.
"Why are you calling me at school?" Amy whispered.
"Shit, sorry, I forgot you still go to school. Well, you told me to tell you the next time I killed a bunch of people," Taylor yawned.
Amy closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. How had her life reached this point?
"What did you do now?"
"I killed Purity, Stormtiger, and Rune," Taylor said.
Holy shit.
"That's… okay, that's insane, but I appreciate the heads up, I guess? Are you okay?" Amy asked.
"Yeah, all good. No misplaced limbs this time. No bullet wounds, either. I kinda kicked their ass, actually. Hookwolf made a run for it."
Hookwolf was there too? Again?
"Okay. I'm glad you're alright. Can you tell me more tonight?" Amy whispered.
"Sure. I'm probably gonna go to sleep now, though. It's been a long night," Taylor said.
Right. Taylor was functionally nocturnal.
Just another weird thing in her messed up life.
Amy couldn't help but smile.
"Did your thing work, then?"
"Yeah, yeah it did. The Workshop is secure. I'll… tell you more, tonight."
Something about that made Amy's heart beat faster.
Taylor had a safe haven. Somewhere Carol couldn't find her, somewhere-
Don't think about it.
"Okay," Amy said softly.
"I think I'm going to pass out now. That lab table is looking more and more comfortable by the second," Taylor said.
"Sleep well," Amy grinned.
"Have a good day, Amy," Taylor replied.
Amy hung up the phone and took several long breaths before she left the stall.
It was weird, and it was insane, but the world seemed a bit more colorful than it had before. She could live with this unstable house of cards, as long as it was allowed to remain upright.
And hopefully, if… when… it all came crashing down, Taylor would be there to catch her.
…