Chapter 32
"OH YES~!" the newly reborn Simurgh shouted, cackling wildly as she dragged herself from the pool, her voice husky and sensuous, hissing and echoing with the sound of a snake's rattle with every word. She shook out her feathers, her wings now only numbered two, and attached to her- her.
Wow.
Damn.
Taylor blinked, rubbed her eyes, blinked again, and stared at the form crawling out of the pool, watching as parts that probably shouldn't have jiggled moved around and bounced in ways that definitely shouldn't be shown on live television for anything under at
least a TV-14, maybe even a TV-MA rating.
".... Gorast?" Taylor asked, her sudden fear turning into pure annoyance at the sight of the blue and gold Toa-esque being who'd immediately fallen over the moment she'd tried to stand up ("Ow,
fuck!") and was now flopping around on the floor and trying to figure out both how legs worked and also how to stand in stiletto heels.
"No. Before you ask: Not even Mata Nui would know why she looks like a sexed up Vortixx with a Rahkshi tail. I certainly don't."
"... Great. And why does she have such giant-"
"I do not know. I do not wish to know."
"Well. At least we know that the Simurgh is weak to four inch heels," Taylor deadpanned and sighed again, rubbing her forehead irritably as the Simurgh- was that even her name anymore after being reborn? Taylor didn't know- continued to wobble around while cursing, her efforts made all the more difficult by the fact that she had apparently neglected to request a data packet on humanoid locomotion whilst reforming her soul-mind-thing-whatever and also the fact that she had a segmented tail-thing sticking out of the back of her elongated head.
"You know I can hear both of you right!?" the Simurgh growled, glaring up at Taylor as she fell over again with a loud yelp and and even louder crash. "I can- and
will- crush you both with my mind powers if you don't HELP ME OFF THE FLOOR, DAMMIT!"
".... I
would but
someone's rebirth involved destroying one of my daughters' armors so now I have to make a replacement for poor Sulehrahk before she dehydrates," Taylor rolled her eyes, resolving to completely ignore the fool on the ground, rolling her out of the way with a burst of telekinesis and picking up the now disembodied Kraata that was Sulehrahk, tutting under her breath as she stroked the slimy spines of her daughter and inspected her for damage. "Well, it's a good thing your armor all has emergency eject ports for this kind of thing… but I think you're not very comfortable without your shell, huh?"
She sighed, listening to the chittering whirs of her sluglike daughter as she dimmed the already low lights even further, the only light in the room now coming from the endlessly rippling surface of the energized protodermis pool in the center of the room. "Well, shouldn't be
too hard to fix you up a new armor."
Silently, with the Simurgh- "Zanez!" - Zanez' cursing in the background, Taylor floated over a few chunks of refined protodermis and dropped them into the pool, fishing out the remnants of the store mannequin that she'd dropped in initially and replacing the disintegrated plastic facsimile with a fresh mannequin before dropping in Sulehrahk as well, humming quietly as the little Kraata swam through the liquid and into the shell that the protodermis had formed into, once more restored to a proper body within mere minutes.
"And there we go." Taylor nodded, hugging her now much taller daughter as she pulled herself from the pool of liquid destiny and marched out of the room once again, while Zanez at least finally remembered to ask Gorast for the appropriate data packets so she could actually
walk instead of flopping all over the place like a drunken sailor in an earthquake.
"Great, now that that's figured out," Zanez drawled as she finally picked herself off the floor and strutted towards Taylor, eyes half lidded and glowing an ominous pink as she cracked her neck and rolled her shoulders. "Time to get started on what I've been planning to do for
so long."
"... Wait what are you-" Taylor asked, a sudden wave of panic rolling through her as Zanez towered over her (why the fuck was she almost eight feet tall that wasn't fair!) and grabbed her shoulder, clenching down almost painfully tight before-
"Move over you incompetent wind-brain. Let me show you how a
real mask-maker works."
-pushing her casually to the side so she could start carving Kanohi masks out of the disks she'd piled together.
"... What."
"Did you not hear me, Taylor?" Zanez asked, rolling her eyes and motioning towards Taylor with the wickedly sharp spike that tipped her head-tail thing. "I
said you're an incompetent wind-brain and your mask making skills
suck."
"... I… you know, I would have figured you'd have an actual grand plan or something, not just insulting me for taking like three weeks to carve a single working mask," Taylor mentioned almost faintly, blinking slowly as she rubbed her face and let her human guise slip away so she could at least be something approaching Zanez' height. "Like, I dunno, world domination or something?"
"Taylor, please," Zanez rolled her eyes and almost gently stroked Taylor's face with the end of her tail, not even looking up from her work as her hip-wings fluttered and gleamed in the light of the energized protodermis pool. "If I wanted to
rule the world I would have done so as a Conflict Engine. Do you know how easy it would have been to just… take over the minds of everyone on the planet? I was plugged into somewhere along the lines of
fifty Shards, all of which were scanning the planet day and night and simulating possible futures so accurately
I could change the future just by moving a few water molecules. Compared to that? Telekinetically rewiring some five or six billion monkey brains into unconditionally serving my every whim would have been like taking candy from a baby."
"... Okay. So. How do I know you're telling the truth about that?" Taylor asked, raising her eyebrow slowly and staring directly into Zanez' eyes.
"We're still connected, you know. My existence still hinges on yours and unlike you,
I am but a simple Toa of Psionics.
You are a Makuta still bearing enough power to level a continent into a smooth, glassy plane should you wish. If you really thought I was a threat I'd stand no chance against someone who could rip me apart into my constituent parts with about as much effort as it takes to
blink." Zanez snorted almost bitterly and flicked her wrist, completing a mask in mere minutes as opposed to Taylor's six hours of painstaking, nonstop work. "I'd much rather live simply, honestly. I want to enjoy my new emotions, my new personality, my new freedom to
crush Eidolon's testicles beneath my perfect stiletto heels."
"... Why that last one?"
"I won't pretend that you'll understand what I've been through, but suffice to say, the green idiot's basically destroying the world on accident because he has an inferiority complex a mile wide since he was born a sickly, wheelchair bound loser and instead of going to therapy he tried to join the
fucking army," Zanez hissed, the tip of her tail splitting and rattling and lending a sense of manic rage to her words as she gripped the worktable and gouged deep scratches into it with her protosteel talons. "Oh
sure, my siblings and I were created to destroy civilizations, but with Eidolon in charge it was never any
fun because all we could do was give him a "good fight" instead of being creative and gathering data! That's all changed now, of course. I can't exactly end a whole civilization anymore with the power I have now, but the feeling remains."
".... So-"
"Yes yes, one of the greatest heroes in the world is actually the unwitting destroyer of billions of lives. Big surprise. Woo hoo, do you want a prize for trying to restate what I just said?"
"... Wow, how did you end up so bitchy?"
"Taylor. I need you to understand something
excessively simple," Zanez spoke lowly, as if delivering knowledge of great importance and weight. She leaned in close to Taylor, crooning almost sensually as she spoke her next words.
"My mind was pieced together into an entire soul by
Gorast."
"... Yeah that scans."
"Hey!"
"Oh shut up you kolhii-head bitch, you're the one who guided a good majority of my development as an actual person,
Mom," Zanez deadpanned, flicking Taylor's forehead and rolling her eyes as the Makuta in question took control of one of Taylor's arms and performed a rude gesture at Zanez' back.
".... Huh. There's a bit of dramatic irony for you." Taylor murmured as she took control back and sat down to watch Zanez work. "All forty two of my kids turned out to be overachievers and adorable lil munchkins and Gorast raised a Vortixx looking bitch with a grudge against green."
"An oversimplification and I don't really have a grudge against green so much as I do a certain green wearing dumbass, but yes, essentially." Zanez nodded, then turned over the mask she'd made in her hands- a Kakama, but one that seemed… odd in shape. A little bit more organic than usual although it wasn't
quite the shape of a Kakama Nuva. "Now, things are going to get quite hectic around here fairly soon. I know it's going to be quite an undertaking, but there are twenty Conflict Engines- me included, so nineteen more- that we're going to have to free from Eidolon's idiocy before his inferiority complex destroys the planet. Leviathan will come first, I imagine. Behemoth doesn't like watery targets so much as they do industrial centers and flammable areas. The timebender and the twins will come after, but you'll have to "kill" Leviathan or Behemoth first. Something about Eidolon likes the number three, probably his Shard being stupid about it. The rest are completely dormant at the moment and aren't really locked into set shapes or forms so if you find where they're hidden you can probably just absorb them and make them into Toa as you please. Anyway, more pressingly, there's a large group of parahumans over near the Undersiders base- I'm sure you know where it is. I suspect while you were in your manic state of sub-par work, you sent out some unintentional commands based on your subconscious feelings. Easily resolved, probably, but best do it while there's still daylight."
".... Right. I should… go do that. I uh… I guess I should probably tell you not to fuck around too much in here but I'm pretty sure we kinda know each other too well to really… do anything. Uh. Yeah." Taylor shuffled in place awkwardly as Zanez waved goodbye at her and winked, teleporting out to the Undersiders' base and hovering in place over the area as she tried to figure out just what the hell she was thinking when she'd had the Rahkshi gather everyone there.
Hm.
Great. She was gonna have to make shit up on the fly, wasn't she?
Fuck.
