Spiders, Depression, and Acid Falls (Worm/Bionicle)

In which a girl and a Makuta are severely depressed in the same body.

Chapter 1

“....”

She stared up at the ceiling of her room, listless, unable to think or move or breathe. The sunlight filtered through her window, a bright, harsh light that made her squint and hiss in annoyance, squeezing her eyes shut until the bright rays became too much for her to handle and forced her to roll over and face the wall instead.

She was a mess.

Her hair, once lustrous and shiny, was matted and greasy, unwashed for days- weeks, even. Her skin, pallid and colorless. She felt and looked crusty, the kind of filth and smell that only happened from nearly a month of starvation and stagnation.

She, Taylor Hebert, was a mess.

A horrible, disgusting mess.

Taylor sighed as she stared at the wall, blinking slowly as she tried to calm the raging storm of her thoughts, to keep herself from spiraling into an even deeper pit of despair and apathy.

The… thing in the back of her mind certainly didn’t help.

A gibbering, muttering creature, in the midst of its own nervous breakdown, was stuck in the back of her mind, its essence infused into her body to the deepest depths of her cells. It- no, she, was called Gorast.

She was a Makuta. An ancient being who was created by an even older deity, one which housed the entire universe she lived in. She’d once been a creator of thousands of amazing biomechanical beasts, creatures that would have taken a whole team of Tinkers years to create, and her race created them with ease and in the millions.

Gorast had been almost kind, once upon a time. Then she became vicious and cruel over the passing eons, behavior reinforced as she fell in with a horrible, evil plan enacted by the leader of her kind, one which she followed until her betrayal and swift, painful death.

And now, the mutated, insectoid creature was a shell of her former self. An empty spirit in the pit of depression.

Taylor would have found it hilarious if it weren’t so sad.

Of course the single most depressed alien ghost in the universe would latch onto a depressed loser like her.

“.... betrayed…. Plan…. Stupid stupid stupid! Should have…. Vivisect… damned Krika! Miserix would-”

“Shut up already! Just because we’re both depressed losers doesn’t mean I want to hear you whining about it all the time!” Taylor snapped hoarsely, squeezing her hands against her ears and shaking her head to try and silence Gorast to no avail- the Makuta was steadfastly ignoring everything in favor of muttering to herself and wallowing in her own despair.

Taylor sighed and rolled over again, rubbing her eyes as the afternoon sun shone through her window. Gaining a mild sensitivity to sunlight now that she was possessed by Gorast was a pain in the ass, she thought to herself, wincing as the mild light landed on the pale skin of her face. Even with the weakness of northeastern winter sunlight, it still felt like she was standing outside on a warm summer day. At least she wasn’t burning though, which is what would have happened to Gorast, if her memories were accurate. And thankfully, it was a fairly minor sensitivity, all told.

Still, it was annoying, especially since her window faced the sun.

Taylor groaned as she found within her the energy to sit up, shivering gently as the covers fell from her body and released all the precious trapped body heat she’d been trying to conserve. She shuddered and yawned, swaying drowsily as she tried not to pass out just from the act of sitting up.

“Oohnorak.” she spoke quietly, a raspy, dry whisper tumbling from her lips as she summoned the black and orange spider-like creature from the shadows beneath her bed, the yellow crystal embedded in her sternum pulsing as the shadows twisted and spat out the creature, which hissed and clicked to life in an instant. Its jaws gnashed, chainsaw like teeth whirling around inside of its mouth as its massive mandibles clacked viciously together and gleamed in the sunlight.

“Good visorak,” she yawned, continuing to blink slowly as she gathered strength to her limbs, wiggling about in the oversized hoodie and pajama pants she’d been stewing in for the last several days until she reached the edge of her bed, then allowed herself to topple down onto the smooth, glossy shell of her minion creature. It bowed slightly under her weight, but stood firm- after all, it was capable of hauling much larger and heavier things than one stick thin girl who’d been starving herself. Idly, she pet the shell of her Oohnorak as it moved along, one spiked limb lifting from the ground and opening her bedroom door before carrying her to the bathroom, whereupon it dumped her into the tub and, with surprising gentleness that seemed at odds with its vicious appearance, undressed her and threw her filthy, disgusting clothes into the laundry hamper.

Being possessed by some kind of alien ghost apparently had benefits, Taylor mused to herself as she flexed her will, creating a tiny thunderstorm above her head to rain down upon her and wash the grime from her body. Another flex of her will combined Disintegration and Molecular disruption, destroying the filth that had built up in her mouth, eyes, nose, all over her body, rendering it all into dust and free particles.

“Vohtarak, Boggarak,” she whispered once more, blinking slowly as the shadows behind the toilet twisted and writhed, spitting out two more small visorak- Vohtarak, a crimson visorak, and Boggarak, a visorak in shades of blue. The two spider-like Rahi instantly climbed up her back as she dispelled the thunderstorm, the two visorak beginning to wash her scalp properly, massaging shampoo and conditioner into her limp curls and rinsing repeatedly with more small rainstorms until her hair was shiny and clean again, a pleasant floral scent filling the bathroom as the two hand-sized Rahi finished their jobs and began playing in the leftover suds.

For a moment, she smiled, then groaned as she flopped out of the tub and shifted her density, letting the water all fall through her and back into the tub, her dried off body flopping across the broad, smooth back of her summoned Oohnorak as it carried her back to her room. She sighed again, pulling a face at the smell of her own filth before directing her Oohnorak to start packing up everything clean.

There wasn’t much.

A few shirts, some underwear, pants, socks. Her spare shoes.

Most of the things in her room were filthy- a consequence of having had a full laundry hamper when-

When…

Taylor bit back a sob and curled up on the back of her Oohnorak, gulping thickly as she remembered the putrid filth of the locker, the pain surging through her blood, the stabbing agony as her organs failed and she…

She…

She hadn’t made it.

The only reason why she was alive right now was because of Gorast’s antidermis possessing her corpse mere moments after she’d died in the ambulance.

And then…

Then…

Taylor shook her head, forcing her emotions down, stomping them into that deep, dark pit that she didn’t dare look into. No, she had to focus on the here and now.

She stood for the first time in weeks, shaking slightly as she dressed herself and dismissed her visorak- the ones in the bathroom, the ones in the kitchen, the ones standing guard in the living room, all of them returning to shadow with a flex of her will.

She sighed, picking up the duffel bag that now held the sum total of all that she cared for in the world- a few sets of clothes, some books that her mother used to read to her, a watch that used to be her father’s, and all the money she could find in the house.

It’d be enough for at least a few days in a motel, she supposed.

With a heavy sigh, she let herself fall through the floor, shifting her density and floating until she reached the living room, where the body of her father laid, surrounded by dried blood from his wrists, pristine in death from where she’d locked his corpse in stasis.

“I’m sorry dad. I can’t…” She sighed and gently pressed a kiss to his forehead, blinking tears from her eyes as she prepared to do something she could never have done before. “I can’t stay here anymore. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I…. I couldn’t… I couldn’t last. I’m sorry I didn’t come back faster, that I… I’m sorry.”

She turned away, choking on her tears and pushing down her nausea as a shadowy hand burst from her body, gently lifting the body of her father and absorbing it into her without a trace. She shuddered and left her home, now devoid of everything in the world that she could have cared about.

And there, on the sidewalk, she stood.

The sun was bright, too bright for such an occasion. She hated it more than anything else at the moment. She was tired. So tired.

But, before she left for good, she had one last thing to do.

“Goodbye, dad. Goodbye, mom. I’m…. I’m sorry.”

A flex of her will, not even a finger lifted, and the house that she had called home for fifteen years disintegrated into nothing more than ash in the wind, stripped bare from the broken porch step all the way down to the concrete of its foundations.

Tears fell silently down her face as she watched it all vanish, and when it was gone, her eyes were dry.

Taylor turned and left, fading out of sight as she flexed her will one more time, disappearing into the city even as the high whine of PRT sirens began to echo quietly in the distance, their presence called by someone who’d seen her home disintegrate.

She didn’t care.

She only wished that things had happened differently.

She left her home behind.

“Goodbye.”

 

Chapter 2

February in Brockton Bay was a terrible time to be outside without a jacket on. This was known quite well by all who lived there- after all, a coastal city in the northeastern part of the United States? If the winter was anything near mild it would have been called a sign of the end times.

And yet, there she was.

Taylor Hebert, fifteen years old. Trudging through the thick, fluffy snow with nothing to shield her from the falling flakes but the thin cotton of her hoodie. Her duffel bag hung loose at her side, her arm curled protectively around it as she wandered aimlessly, searching for… for something.

A purpose.

Meaning in her life.

Food.

Shelter.

A way to end it all.

She wished she could have done it ages ago, wished she could have died permanently so she wouldn’t have been the last member of her family alive. But she’d tried.

She’d tried everything she could back at home to kill herself. Knives had just bounced off of her skin. Drowning herself had only resulted in gills sprouting from her neck. A noose had done nothing, not even compressed her windpipe. All the medicine in the cabinet had done nothing to her, nor did the chemicals under the sink, nor did the rat poison in the garage. She hadn’t even felt the flames from the stove, and trying to crush herself under the car had only popped the tires.

She was tired, so tired. So… so tired.

But she couldn’t… couldn’t stop herself anymore. Her powers couldn’t harm her own body, no matter how hard she tried. Plasma only settled like a blanket around her shoulders, laser vision stopped at her skin, heat vision only made her feel warm, on and on and on.

Forty two.

Forty two goddamn powers and none of them had worked.

She’d cried herself to sleep after that revelation, after realizing that she couldn’t kill herself and end her suffering.

And then all she did was sleep. Fitfully, tossing and turning, wallowing in her own nightmares and worries, the anxieties she’d had once upon a time. Some of them had gone away after the first few days- if she were legally dead, then she didn’t have to go to school, didn’t have to deal with bullies, or homework, or exams, or wannabe gang members. If she were dead, she wouldn’t have to deal with anything but herself.

If she were dead, she wouldn’t have to pretend like she cared.

Not even trying to burn herself to death in the sunlight worked, as evidenced by the fact that she was still fucking alive even as the sun shone down on her, weak as it was.

And so she walked along, uncaring, unseeing, just putting one foot in front of the other. She stared blankly ahead, her steps slow and plodding, ignoring the snow, ignoring the other people around her. She ignored the cold air against her face, she ignored the steam rising from her body as she instantly evaporated the snow coming in contact with her- she didn’t care anymore.

She didn’t even remember why she came this way, down to the docks, down to this… putrid spit of land, full of scum and villainy. She…

She stared blankly at the wall in her way. A rundown warehouse, filthy and broken, just like everything else in the city. Around her, a few stacked shipping containers, more filth. Everything covered in a thin blanket of snow, as if to hide its ugliness from sight.

She sighed and sat down, ignoring the way the snow stained her pants, soaking into the fabric until her body heat created a hissing cloud of steam around her. She sighed again, watching the thin curls of steam rise up into the sky, drowning out the sound of Gorast’s muttering still going on inside of her head, if only just barely.

It was…

Almost nice.

She felt no hunger, felt no pain, didn’t feel the cold or heat unless it was pure light. She could, theoretically, even just sit where she was forever, until the end of time. Even the slight drain of her powers tugging at her… core, for lack of a better word, could be mitigated and staved off just by draining the life force of the insects that heeded her commands.

Taylor smiled weakly and shook her head, finally speaking out into the cold air, her breath sending out great clouds of mist as she spoke.

“Hey. Gorast. Are you in there?”

“What do you think, human?”

The Makuta in her mind spat viciously as she spoke, buzzing in Taylor’s ears as her powers- no, Gorast’s powers- activated and projected an illusion of the Makuta before her- not as her memories showed her, moments before her death, but as she had been. A sleek, humanoid being, four armed, with lustrous wings that arched out behind her like a stained glass window. Green and black, accents of turquoise- a beautiful mix of emerald and lime green, not that poisonous acid green the Pit had turned her into. She had… something similar to breasts, Taylor mused blankly as the illusion sat down across from her, glaring bitterly back despite the fact that Taylor knew it was only a visual aid for Gorast’s words.

“What do you want?” the Makuta asked as her illusory body sat there calmly, her voice low and hissing, sibilant and somehow seductive despite its rasping tone. “I was busy.”

“Busy muttering to yourself about how you’d have your revenge once you found your way off this miserable planet, yeah, I know,” Taylor sighed, rubbing her eyes as she tried to fight off her exhaustion- she didn’t need to sleep or eat and she certainly hadn’t been exercising too much so why was she tired- and focus on the present. “Look. I’m just…. I wanted… I wanted to get to know you. Since we’re stuck together and all. I know we’re both depressed and hurting. I know that you didn’t have any friends or family that you actually liked, and… I know you were a vicious psychopath…. But. Y’know… we’re… we’re the only ones each other has now. So… I figure we should be friends.”

“Friends? Ha! Pretty words coming from the idiot who tried to kill herself in every way possible for a week straight before falling into a two and a half week coma!” Gorast sneered, a tight glare on her face even as her emotions surged through Taylor, both of them wincing as they felt each others’ hopelessness and anxieties, their fears and worries. Gorast was… afraid. Afraid of betrayal, afraid of dying for real, afraid of being left alone again, afraid of living life with no purpose.

She was absolutely terrified of not having a purpose. Her entire life had been driven with only a single-minded pursuit of what she felt was her duty, her birthright… and now she had nothing. Only the sting of betrayal, the collapse of all she knew, the destruction of her whole way of thinking.

Taylor felt sick just thinking about having so much of her ideology uprooted.

On the other hand, Taylor was… tired. Dulled, exhausted. Tired of the pain and suffering she’d endured for the past two years, tired of having to look at the person she once called her best friend. Tired of having to deal with the lingering trauma of her mother’s death alone. Tired of being alone now that both of her parents were gone. Tired of life. Tired of existence.

If she could have killed herself, she would have. Just to make it all stop, to make the aching, gnawing pit in her chest go away.

Gorast couldn’t relate, but the avatar she chose shed a silver tear all the same.

Neither of them had the strength to go on alone. Gorast couldn’t act in the physical world, and Taylor was too tired to push herself to do anything until several weeks had passed and she was on the verge of snapping.

They conversed silently, the illusion controlled by a disembodied mind and the girl who was barely human anymore.

Their voices echoed in the girl’s mind as she slowly stood up, a fresh wave of energy pulsing through her for the first time in weeks. Taylor let a thin, wavering smile cross her face as she figured out what she was going to do with herself, as Gorast found herself a new purpose to follow.

“Okay,” Taylor whispered to herself, almost giddy just from the tiny flitter of energy she could feel coursing through her limbs, almost skipping as she began to head back into the city proper. “Okay. We can do this.”

Her smile, weak and wavering strengthened as she dared let herself hope, dared to believe in herself again.

“Okay Gorast! Let’s be heroes!”

 

Chapter 3

“Okay… how to be a hero…” Taylor muttered quietly as she sat on a park bench, her duffel bag set next to her as she rubbed her face and tried to think of something. Nothing came to mind other than “wander around in the middle of the night and hope to find muggers”.

Which, technically speaking, was a plan, but not one much different from what she had been doing before.

Wandering around the city aimlessly until she’d bumped into a warehouse was enough. She didn’t have the emotional energy to do so again in hopes that she’d run into a criminal. Even the manic energy that suffused her limbs now wasn’t going to go along with that.

So. She had to try something different.

Something like…

“Gorast? Any ideas?”

“No. Your memories are useless for this task, and mine are no better,” the Makuta hissed back, the violent buzz of insectoid wings filling her mind before Gorast retreated back to the depths of her psyche. Taylor sighed and stood up again, worrying her lip as she paced along the park trails, muttering quietly to herself and dragging her feet.

She reached into her duffel bag and sighed, floating upwards and sitting in the crook of a tree branch before pulling out a book and flipping it open. It was only six in the afternoon anyway, and even with the sun setting earlier, there likely wasn’t going to be much in the way of crime at the moment anyway- well, crime that she could actively do something about, she supposed.

What to do… what to do…

She pursed her lips and ignored the niggling feeling in the back of her head that even just flying around the city and looking for trouble was better than just sitting in a tree branch and hoping that an epiphany would strike.

A brief flash of emotion pulled her attention away, though, as Gorast reeled back in disgust at a flicker of thought that had passed through her mind.

“This… Protectorate, your memories describe… they seem like an abhorrent bunch,” Gorast muttered, images of the current Protectorate roster filling her mind as Taylor just shut her book and rubbed her temples.

“They’re-” Taylor paused and thought back, back to the hundreds of newscasts, the hundreds of cape fights that went on in the streets since before she was born. The Protectorate never did anything about the gangs infesting the city, did they? They just punched out some of their members and maybe tossed a few in jail, only for them to escape the next month or so, if even that. Petty crime was at an all time high, and yet the Protectorate did nothing about that either. Hell, she’d even seen a few PHO posts saying that they’d seen Protectorate members driving past smaller crimes if they didn’t involve parahumans- Hell, the only people who seemed to actually interfere with those were the Wards, and what did it say about the city’s defenders if they made children fight criminals when the adults did the equivalent of jack shit?

Maybe it was her distrust of authority. Maybe it was Gorast’s newfound hatred of power structures that seemed to only be in place for some nebulous, undefined reason. Maybe it was logical sense. Maybe it was paranoia.

But at the moment, no, going to the Protectorate- or rather, even the Wards, given her age- was a no go. If she’d tried to join, who knows what they would try to do to her?

The more logical portion of her brain said that fighting crime with Protectorate backing was the most reasonable thing to do, even if they did want to run tests on her-

No. She couldn’t.

It wasn’t her body to let people mess with anymore, and with how Gorast reacted at even the mere suggestion of testing under unknown hands, with unknown scientists with even more unknown intentions-

No. No. No.

No!

Taylor shook her head and almost fell out of the tree she was perched in as she inadvertently drained its life force, the branches turning brittle and dry until the tree itself crumbled to ash, leaving Taylor floating in the air, coated in a thin layer of sawdust.

“Okay, okay, get it together… get it together,” Taylor murmured, both for herself and Gorast as she shifted her density and let the sawdust fall through her before taking off and flying further into the city, away from the park and into the back alleys. She shivered, not from cold, but from just how good draining the tree to death had felt- to take the life from something and feel it filling her core, replenishing all the energy she’d lost over the last month in far greater supply than mere bugs could ever do.

No wonder most Makuta had gone insane and given into their psychopathic bloodlust if feeding on the life energy of other beings felt so good.

Well, other than the fact that they were, as a race, psychopathic and vicious murder-creatures.

No, no, focus.

Taylor slapped her face to get her bearings, then floated upwards, silent and invisible as she watched the city fall away beneath her, an uneven sea of twinkling lights and sound, smoke and steam, rushing cars and strolling pedestrians.

It was almost… hypnotic.

Patterns within patterns within patterns, the quiet murmuring of hundreds of thousands of souls.

She stared down silently, and then... she acted.

Mind reading.

One of the powers she’d deemed useless in the last month- after all, what use was a power when there was no one to focus on? No ability to end her pain?

But now? It was the single most useful tool she had.

A broad sweep of the ground below, several blocks lighting up to her senses as she swiftly scanned the surface thoughts and intentions of hundreds of people, a rush of information overwhelming her senses and almost knocking her out if not for the stabilizing, experienced presence of Gorast, who guided her mind, brought it into shallower territory, and focused it.

She flew along quietly and flexed her will, her frail, human body becoming the tall, armored, almost beautiful form of Gorast as she had been long ago. A sleek, slender being, four armed with massive dragonfly-like wings, an armored body of black and emerald green, highlights of lime and turquoise, claw tipped fingers and toes, with stern crimson eyes glaring out from behind a mask of obsidian and emerald.

The Felnas on her face was… not real. Technically speaking, it shouldn’t have had any power at all.

But, through some unknown mechanic, the mask that Gorast had died wearing had fused with her soul, the very antidermis possessing Taylor’s body, and it was as real and powerful as it had been even at the height of Gorast’s power on the Tren Krom Peninsula.

Taylor put it out of her mind- it was real enough at the moment, and that was all that mattered. Not that she hoped to need its ability to disrupt powers, but it would come in handy if it came down to an unfortunate cape encounter.

She sighed and returned her attention to the surface level scans of the hundreds of people before her, wincing at the sheer amount of negativity pouring from the city in a wave of almost visible miasma. It was almost so strong that she was almost swept away with the psychic current, almost spiraling into her own despair and self loathing before she caught herself and pushed past it.

No, no. Focus. Don’t get lost in the mire.

Ignore the background negativity, and push a little deeper. Into the intentions of the people below, into their surface thoughts, into their hearts.

There.

A domestic dispute, escalating beyond yelling and threats. A woman, brandishing a knife. A man, cowering on the ground.

She dove down, both minds snarling as one.

Justice would be served.

 

Chapter 4

“YOU SON OF A BITCH! I’LL KILL YOU!”

The woman- Inez Mendelsohn- screeched as she charged at the man who had betrayed her, Mark Mendelsohn, her husband and soon to be dead man.

It wasn’t enough that he wouldn’t follow the entirely fair and reasonable rules she’d set out for him, but now he was coming home late with no explanation!?

He had to be cheating on her! Had to be!

He hadn’t been happy since they got married a few months ago, so of course he had to be cheating on her with some hussy!

She was going to- to-

“Put the knife down now. Or there’s going to be trouble.”

A monster. A terrifying monster, six feet tall and then some, glaring down at her as it grabbed her wrist, cold and lifeless as it- it-

Taylor stared down at the unconscious woman she held with one hand, keeping her from hitting the ground as she gently removed the knife from her limp fingers and set her down on the couch.

She hadn’t been expecting the woman to faint just from her grabbing the woman’s wrist and glaring at her- she hadn’t even been using her Fear power or anything. The man behind her cowered, whimpering and begging for her to not hurt him, please he’ll do anything just don’t kill him please.

She silently tried to figure out what was going on, gently swiping the surface memories from the man and going over what had happened in the last thirty seconds. And…

Oh.

Oh god.

She saw herself- a horrid, twisted monster descending through the apartment ceiling upon a wave of writhing, coiling shadows that seemed to spit her out as if she were a part of them. The very light in the room was sucked away by her presence, and she towered as a glistening being of chitin and armor, clicking and whirring with every movement as her wings flared out and vibrated, the high frequency sound coming off of her wings creating a painful spike of agony in the man’s skull.

Her voice, cloaked in shadow as she was naturally, was harsh, terrible. A mix of gnashing teeth and a thousand million buzzing wasps, metallic and cold and only the slightest hint of feminine. Monstrous and deadly, her inflection dull and yet sharp with a thousand unheard, unspoken promises of violence and murder.

She didn’t look like a hero.

She looked like a demon.

“... I…. I…” Taylor stepped back, suddenly horrified at herself, at what she looked like, at the fear she’d caused. She gulped thickly, then forced herself to change back into her human self, ratty hoody and all.

“H-here. Call the police.” she almost whispered, picking up the man’s phone from the coffee table and tossing it at him before dashing through the wall, phasing through it and falling to the ground below, throwing her bag to the side and leaning against the alley wall as she hyperventilated and tried not to throw up.

“Is… Is that what we really looked like, Gorast? Like… Like a monster?” she gulped thickly and collapsed to the ground, shaking fitfully as she tried not to break down in tears, the sheer, visceral fear that her form inspired in the man she sought to save almost breaking her spirit entirely.

“I don’t know what you expected,” Gorast muttered bitterly, waves of resentment oozing from every word. “This happened back home too. We Makuta are terrifying to all life. Our bodies are shadowed and our natures are vicious and amoral and it is a stain on our very antidermis essences. We were shunned and hated for countless millennia just for being the way we were, even if we tried to help the Matoran and do our duty to the Great Spirit. This is no different.”

“Then… what’s the point?” Taylor asked, a sudden surge of energy rushing through her as she slammed her fist into and through a nearby dumpster, shaking with impotent rage. “What’s the point of trying to be a hero if the only thing I ever do is terrify people into a coma!? All they’ll ever do is hate me because I’m scary!? What kind of bullshit is that!?”

She vented her frustrations for a while longer, kicking and smashing the dumpster into an unrecognizable pile of scrap metal, furious, hot, useless anger surging through her body the whole time. By the time she finally looked up, the snow had stopped and the sky was dark, the streets were lit only dimly by street lamps and building lights.

She sighed heavily and disintegrated the destroyed dumpster, grumbling over the fact that, even with all her powers granted to her by Gorast’s antidermis surging through her body, none of them could actually fix things. Nothing she did would make things better. All she could do was... was….

Silvery tears leaked from her eyes, pooling on her eyelashes before falling to the ground, drops of light that shimmered and squirmed as if alive, rolling about before leaping back onto Taylor and-

PAIN

Taylor screamed as the strange, silver substance flowed through her body and sent lightning through her nerves, twisting her powers against her and forcing her body into a new form, one that was twisting and wrong, full of strange sensations and crushing agony as her flesh bubbled and hardened, the brick and asphalt around her dissolving away as it was transmuted and reformed into powerful armor befitting her new form.

She…

She rolled over and groaned, coughing and forcing down nausea as a new feeling ran through her body- several new feelings. She was…

She was…

“A Toa!?” Gorast howled inside of her mind, an illusion springing up in front of Taylor- a direct mirror of her body now, she could tell. An almost beautiful being, one that was conventionally beautiful instead of the strange, eldritch beauty of Gorast’s true form, looked back at her- tall, about six feet and then some, smooth green plates of armor covering a lithe, athletic body. Her new form was… a bit lighter colored, a more verdant, floral green streaked with acid green and darkening to a more emerald and olive green around her torso, shifting into a deep navy blue around her breasts, and with black plates of natural chitin and flesh serving as an underlayer. Her Felnas had changed as well- not the rubbery, mutated organic monstrosity of Gorasts’ mutated self, nor the harsh, almost monstrous lines of the original, but a more human-like face, stern and yet gentle. The mask was hard, almost impenetrable- made of the same protosteel as the rest of the thin armor plating covering her biomechanical body, and yet soft and responsive, as if it were her actual face- which, considering her shapeshifting, it was.

Taylor stood up, shakily examining herself as the glowing substance faded away at last, covering her body with another thin layer and dispersing into the form of silvery armor plates- pauldrons on her shoulders, a segmented breastplate, gauntlets, and a pair of greaves. She flexed gently, feeling the silvery protosteel armor shift around and, with a flex of her will, vanish away.

Along with the green plates covering up her more organic parts.

“What the fuck!?” Taylor shrieked and covered herself up, the armor plates of her body snapping back into place within an instant as she all but flung herself into the shadows of the alleyway, feeling them curling around her protectively as she tried to figure out what the fuck was going on within her body.

“Acid… of course! Of course! Destiny has a cruel sense of humor indeed!” Gorast almost shrieked inside of her mind, cackling hysterically as Taylor flexed her hand, the energy in her core pouring out and becoming a bubbling, hissing orb of green around her hand- acid potent enough to melt even the strongest materials, enough to corrode even hardened protosteel in mere minutes. “Of course the mistress of the Acid Falls would become a false Toa of Acid! Ha! The sentient muck has a sense of humor!”

“Sentient muck?” Taylor asked, almost hyperventilating a bit as she dispelled the acid blob and flexed her hands- all four of them, and stretched out her wings. She felt something like a switch flick in the back of her mind as she listened to Gorast explain, continuing to experiment with her newfound powers- her wings detached now, she thought numbly, the flexible wings held in her upper pair of hands as a pair of massive swords, each one almost as large as she was and yet still light and agile as a feather, despite being made of protosteel. In her lower hands, a pair of… what Gorast’s memories called Nynrah Ghostblasters, though they seemed a bit more optimized than the bulky form in Gorast’s memories, slimmed down and now with a magazine filled with projectiles made of her own energy.

“Yes! Yes! The energized protodermis that binds us together!” Gorast hissed, almost jumping up and down in Taylor’s mind with some kind of manic glee. “I was a fool to not see it earlier! The antidermis of a Makuta is incompatible with organic systems! The energized protodermis that tore through me during the energy storm must have bonded with my essence and created a bridge between our bodies! That is why you can use my powers, and why you did not stay dead when I entered your lifeless corpse!”

“.... Okay. That’s… how do I react to that?” Taylor muttered, furrowing her brow and wondering just how the hell she was supposed to deal with the fact that she apparently had not one, but two incredibly powerful incorporeal entities keeping her body from just straight up dying.

“You do not. It is neither important nor useful information at the moment, as the muck is neither responsive nor capable of doing anything unless its nebulous sense of “destiny” tells it to.” Gorast snorted inside of her mind, causing Taylor to simply roll her eyes and sigh, clipping her wing swords back to their proper sockets and letting the blasters fold away into… somewhere.

“You know what, let’s just… let’s find somewhere else to talk about this,” Taylor sighed and took to the air again, shifting with some difficulty out of her new “Toa” form and back into her human form, grimacing a bit as the feeling of “Light” in her core faded and butted up against the Shadow already inside of her, both sides settling into a messy equilibrium as she flew along, silent and invisible towards the Boat Graveyard.

 

Chapter 5

“Faster!” Gorast screeched angrily in Taylor’s mind, heedless of the exhaustion in Taylor’s limbs that she was almost certain was only a hallucination, the pair of wooden sticks in her hands slicing through the air and thwacking against the hard shells of her Visorak horde, throwing them away as even more charged at her.

In her other pair of hands, her Ghostblasters fired repeatedly, bolts of air striking out like baseballs and striking legs and bodies, sending Visorak tumbling to the ground before they twitched and fell still seconds later.

Taylor only groaned as she sped up her movements, the Visorak horde attacking faster and faster until she slipped in the sand and an Oohnorak managed to finally take her feet out from under her, sending her toppling to the ground and making her groan in defeat.

“Dammit… almost had that one..” Taylor sighed as the swarm of spiders shrieked and pulled themselves up, all of them dancing about and screeching in victory as she wiped the sand off of her armor and sat up, glaring gently at the one Visorak that had managed to get the drop on her. “Something just isn’t right… Gorast, any ideas?”

“Well, perhaps it has to do with the fact that you insist on using that horrid Toa body instead of my beautiful form,” Gorast buzzed haughtily in her skull, the memories of Gorast’s unique fighting style back when she’d been a solid being instead of a cloud of particularly aggressive gas flowing through her mind and revealing that, although she still had the six limbs, trying to use swords and blasters rather than natural claws and Makuta powers was… a poor substitute, especially since said fighting style was meant for the sole purpose of ending the lives of those foolish enough to be on the end of it, rather than incapacitating and rendering foes unconscious and/or unable to fight.

“Well it’s not like I can change back now, is it?” Taylor hissed back, grumbling as she dismissed the Visorak back to… wherever they went whenever she sent them away. She sighed as she let herself change back to human form, flexing her hand and watching as thin lines of protosteel wove through and around her flesh and joints, shimmering in the dim starlight, her eyes still glowing crimson for a moment before the transformation completed. She was speaking the truth, too- the Energized Protodermis, whatever it had done, had completely demolished her ability to take on a proper Makuta form, having apparently replaced that exact shape with her newfound false Toa body. Oh, sure, she could shapeshift to sort of look like Gorast, but it wasn’t the same as being in the same body, the same as how a Makuta shapeshifted into a Matoran wasn’t the same as being a Makuta possessing a Matoran.

Honestly, Taylor preferred her Toa form- even hunched over, Gorast’s body was nearly two bio tall, almost nine feet, even when she was squatting as low as possible in the apartment she’d been in earlier, she was still about a bio and a half- seven feet or so. She shook her head and sighed, quite glad that she was actually considerably shorter than the average Toa, even if she was tall for a human and incredibly tall for a woman, at about 1.4 bio, or about six and a half feet.

Ignoring Gorast’s halfhearted shouting in her head, she wiped her brow and decided to call it a night, reaching into the shadows and pulling out her duffel bag as she left the Boat Graveyard and began walking back into the city proper. Along the way, she turned invisible and intangible, such that nobody could actually try and accost her while she tried to figure out if it was worth the effort to try and find actual shelter, or if she should just find an unattended rooftop to lay down on until morning.

“Find an actual shelter you nitwit! I’ve had enough of sleeping on concrete and snow! Do you know how annoying it is to wake up to the sunlight all the time!?” Gorast screeched, almost doing something of a petulant tantrum in her head as she sent feelings of annoyance and desperation Taylor’s way, making her stumble and roll her eyes.

“Okay okay, fine, I’ll find a place to stay-”

“-stay with me! Fuck fuck fuck! Ames I need your help here!”

“... for the night.”

Taylor sighed and silently drifted towards the source of panic, groaning as she did a quick wash of mind reading and-

“Oh. That’s not good,” Taylor muttered and dropped out of invisibility, her duffel bag vanishing into her shadow as she sprinted towards where apparently Glory Girl was trying to keep a nearly dead man from actually dying after punching the guy (a rapist whose almost victim had run away already, thank goodness) into a dumpster and inadvertently breaking the man’s spine. Or something.

The memories were neither clear nor medically accurate, and as clouded with panic as the other hero was, Taylor figured that the man had maybe twenty, thirty minutes left if she didn’t do something very stupid that she’d just thought of right now.

“Hey!” she shouted, immediately skidding around the corner and all but chucking Glory Girl to the side, dropping to her knees as she summoned up a ball of acid and focused.

“Dilute, dilute, dilute…” she whispered to herself drawing on the partial instincts that had been bestowed upon her, diluting the acid until the vicious, glowing green became an almost transparent blue, a soft, soothing color that was just below neutral on the pH scale. “And now… heal!”

Taylor focused, keeping her powers on a tight leash as the glowing blob of elemental almost-water went to work, healing the man’s wounds slowly, oh so slowly to the point where she didn’t know if it was working at all until she heard a hiss of steam and felt more than heard the man’s bones crunch back into place.

Her powers continued to rage under her control- instincts warring against themselves as she tried to keep her power focused solely on healing rather than harming, on keeping the conceptual nature of her power under the action of scouring the harm from the man’s body rather than scouring him from the face of the planet.

“Focus on healing… focus on healing… focus on healing… focus on healing…” Taylor chanted to herself, keeping herself steady as she kept a careful eye on Glory Girl off to the side, who was only staring at her awkwardly, wondering if she should be annoyed at being thrown to the side like a ragdoll, scared of a Brute strong enough to move her without any physical strain, or thankful that a healer showed up at the most convenient possible time.

Taylor just continued healing and healing… healing some more… healing some more… healing some-

“AH!” the man shot up and nearly slammed his forehead against Taylor’s, who easily and smoothly shifted out of the way thanks to a handy application of her Dodge power, which she kept active just in case.

“Well, Henry, you’ve been healed. Now do both me and Glory Girl a favor and stay here until the police come, yeah? Otherwise this healing aura might just turn into acid,” Taylor spoke quietly, her eyes flashing as she applied just a touch of fear to make the man compliant- only to wince as said man immediately shrieked and began blubbering on the ground, screaming about giant shadow monsters and evil demon bugs and-

“.... That was… annoying,” Taylor sighed as she stood up, shaking her hand and dispelling her acid bubble as she set her Sleep power upon the man and made him pass into a silent, dreamless sleep so she wouldn’t have to listen to him yelling at her any more. “Now…”

“... Who… or what are you?” Glory Girl whispered, almost instinctively taking a step back from the massive armored being in front of her, who towered over her by almost a full foot and had biceps almost as big as her thighs. She almost considered attacking the other person, but they- she?- had just helped her fix this latest screw up.

“.... Toa. You can call me… Toa,” Taylor answered after a moment of silence, then glared down at Glory Girl, her lips pursed into a stern scowl. “Now, mind explaining why I just happened to come across a scene wherein a famous hero was panicking over almost killing someone?”

 

Chapter 6

“I… um…” Glory Girl winced and stepped back again, stiffening as her back hit the alley wall, gulping as she stared up at Toa’s stern visage, trying to not feel like she was an ant under a microscope.

“Don’t answer that. You got pissed when you saw him in the middle of attempting to rape someone, and even moreso when he called you a whore and then you lashed out without control. Understandable, I suppose, but sloppy. If I weren’t here, then this would have turned out far worse,” Toa broke the silence a moment later, shaking her head and rolling her eyes as she seemed to relax, losing much of her terrifying countenance as she slouched and sat down on the ground without even noticing the snow- in fact, Glory Girl saw wisps of steam rising from beneath her, drying out the ground in an instant and creating a zone of warmth around the two. “Not that I’m any better. My healing is unacceptably slow and unstable at the moment. Hrm… what a fluke… If even a single thing had gone wrong...”

“... How the fuck did you know that?” Glory Girl asked, instantly shocked and immediately confused. “Are you a Thinker like Tattletale or something? Did you read my mind!?”

“With your thoughts as loud as they are, I picked up a bit more than I would have liked, yes,” Toa murmured apologetically, shrugging a bit without much regret. “I don’t regret reading your mind- I had to in order to figure out what was wrong with the rapist over there and keep him from dying- but I do apologize for digging further than your surface thoughts.”

“... Well as long as you’re sorry for it, I guess… just… don’t do it again? It feels like an invasion of privacy,” Victoria shuddered, holding her hands ineffectually over her forehead and staring at Toa with a bit of distrust.

“Of course. That reminds me, however- you punched the man in the ribs so hard he flew into a dumpster and nearly shattered his spine.” Toa looked up at Glory Girl, whose indignation and defensiveness immediately fled from her mind under the weight of her disappointed stare. “Forgive me if this is impertinent, but do you not have training in acceptable force limitations? I understand that heroes are supposed to have those kinds of lessons before they subdue criminals.”

“I…” Glory Girl hung her head sheepishly, shaking it back and forth as she twiddled her thumbs. “I never… um… went to those classes…”

“... That explains why PHO calls you the collateral damage barbie.”

“Hey!”

“If the shoe fits.” Toa deadpanned, then blinked lightly tapped the side of her head, moving in an almost insect-like way as she all but ignored Glory Girl in favor of… arguing with herself?

“No, I definitely need- I have a moral code dammit! I need to learn how to use my sword somehow!”

Toa shook her head and stood up again, pacing back and forth as she muttered under her breath, wings fluttering on her back as all four (Four!) of her hands moved through the air in time with her speech. Glory Girl watched the whole display with an air of confusion, part of her still terrified of the armored being and part of her finding her unconscious actions somewhat… adorable for someone so huge and intimidating.

“S-so um… Toa…?” Glory Girl spoke up after a moment, clearing her throat and swallowing the lump in her throat that formed when Toa whipped around in the most unnatural manner she’d ever seen, as if she weren’t quite tethered to the laws of physics.

“Yes?” Toa asked, blinking slowly and tilting her head, her wings folding down from where they’d flared open mid-spin.

“Y-you’re um… you’re a hero, right?” Glory Girl was… fairly certain that the other cape was a hero, but it never hurt to ask… though it wasn’t like Toa couldn’t just lie to her face. Then again, she did instantly rush over to save a guy’s life, so…

“Yes. Or at least, I am trying to be,” Toa spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. Idly, Glory Girl thought that Toa’s voice, now that it wasn’t layered with a terrifying undertone of command and authority, was quite beautiful. It was a low, but smooth and melodic sound, one that seemed wise beyond her years. “I just started a few hours ago, actually.”

“Oh… wait, you’re new? That’s… wow, that is a really impressive costume for a newbie… did you make it yourself? And what’s it made of? I’ve never seen armor like that- are you a Tinker?” Glory Girl asked, leaning forward with sudden interest as she almost floated off the ground and her aura washed over the area… and received absolutely no reaction from Toa. At all.

Huh.

Usually people flinched a little or something.

“Turn that off,” Toa deadpanned, gently placing her hand on Vicky’s head and slowly pushing her back to the ground, staring down at her until she retracted her aura down to its smallest amount. “Thank you. That was… irksome. I dislike it when something tries to change my mental state without permission. I’ll let it slide this time since you were excited, though.”

“... You sound like my mom,” Glory Girl pouted, crossing her arms and huffing petulantly, then blinked when Toa immediately stiffened up and a brilliant lime green patch spread across the front of her… helmet? face? and her eyes began to glow even brighter than before, to the point that they almost turned white with how wide and bright they’d gotten. “Uh... are you okay?”

“What. Do you think. You’re doing?” Toa hissed, shaking a bit as she slowly stepped forward and turned around, holding her rear and glaring down at-

“Ames! You’re here!” Glory Girl almost shouted, grinning widely and hugging her sister, who seemed to just be extremely confused. Or, more accurately, almost catatonic. “Ames? Are you okay…?”

“.... I think touching my rear sent her into an information overload,” Toa spoke dryly, pursing her lips and sighing as she reached out for a moment and flicked Amy’s forehead causing the girl to immediately snap out of her reverie with a quiet yelp of surprise and blush wildly from the fact that she’d just poked someone in the ass.

“I-um… sorry!” Amy squeaked, burying her face in her hands and groaning miserably, pulling her hood down to hide her blush and just about melting on the spot from sheer embarrassment. “I-I just… um… y-your biology is… really weird.”

“I am aware of that,” Toa sighed, then blinked slowly and tilted her head as she mulled something over in her mind, wings fluttering and buzzing as she seemed to argue with herself, lips moving silently with no sound coming out before she broke the silence with a loud sigh, rubbing her forehead before shifting shapes and shrinking down by a solid foot- now only just shorter than Glory Girl and, most importantly, human. “I have… a favor to ask.”

“.... Oh, you’re a changer,” Victoria whispered loudly, coughing into her hand when she realized she’d said that aloud. “Oh uh, not that that’s a bad thing! I was uh… just wondering… y’know… um, your other form-”

“I get it,” Toa sighed and rubbed her forehead again. “Can… Do you know if there’s a homeless shelter nearby? I’d rather not sleep in an alleyway or a rooftop again if I can help it… Oh… and um… you can call me Taylor, I guess, when I’m like this.”

“Taylor… wait… as in Taylor Hebert?” Amy blinked slowly and stared wide eyed at Taylor, going pale almost as if she’d seen a ghost. “As in the girl who, about a month ago, spontaneously revived after suffering catastrophic organ failure and being brain dead for a literal hour, Taylor Hebert!?”

“... Yes. That’s me,” Taylor sighed again, feeling a weight drape itself across her shoulders and slumping over slightly, more from mental exhaustion than anything else. “Now you know why, huh?”

“... Well that certainly explains how you got back up…” Amy muttered, then shook her head as Vicky blinked and pulled out her phone, gasping in shock a moment later.

“Wait! You’re the girl whose entire house went missing literally two days ago!” Victoria spluttered, shoving her phone in Taylor’s face and making her wince at the brightness before she actually took a look at the article on display- a picture of the empty lot that used to be her house front and center, surrounded by PRT vehicles. “What happened to you!?”

“I…. don’t want to talk about it,” Taylor whispered, gulping thickly as she took a deep, steadying breath and tried very hard to not collapse into a puddle of tears from the emotions that the article had dredged up from deep in the pit where she’d managed to suppress them until now. “It’s… it’s a painful memory.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to say anything,” Victoria immediately backpedaled, trying to comfort Taylor by rubbing her back and gently giving her a hug. “Hey, look. You um…”

Victoria wrinkled her nose and looked down at Taylor for a moment, clearing her throat. “You um… kinda look like you need a shower and someone to talk to right now.”

“Vicky, no, we can’t just bring someone home that we just met! We don’t even know if she’s trustworthy!” Amy protested, rolling her eyes in exasperation as she rubbed her forehead and groaned. “Look, I know you’ve got a bleeding heart but come on!”

“She’s right,” Taylor sighed, pulling away from Victoria and shaking her head slowly as she walked away. “You don’t even know me. You don’t… you don’t have to do anything. Sorry for bothering you.”

“Hey wait!” Victoria protested, spluttering a little as she grabbed ahold of Taylor’s wrist and tugged at her to make her stop moving. “Don’t just run off just because Amy doesn’t wanna let you stay at our house. And yeah, look, we may have just met, but… You look like you need help. And I wouldn’t be a very good hero if I just turned away someone in need, would I?”

“.... I suppose not.”

“How about this, we’ll take you home and get you cleaned up and you can stay the night- no buts Ames! I’m not letting her just go to a random homeless shelter in the middle of the night when all of them are closed! It just wouldn’t be right!” Victoria shushed Amy, who just rolled her eyes and gave both Taylor and Victoria something akin to a sullen stare, more hesitant than resentful, but still distrustful of Taylor, and for good reason too- after all, who would trust an unknown cape to just sleep in their home and not try to do something stupid?

“... Are… are you sure this is a good idea…?” Taylor asked quietly, blinking disbelievingly at Victoria, who just beamed back with a smile so bright it actually hurt Taylor to look at. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble just because I need a place to sleep…”

Victoria just sighed and rolled her eyes, hugging Taylor tightly- frowning imperceptibly when Taylor stiffened up and began to tremble- before letting her go and immediately starting to push her in a random direction. “Again, I wouldn’t be a hero if I let someone in need go like that. C’mon, let’s get the perp handed over to the cops and go home. Ames, did you bring your car?”

“It’s that way.” Amy deadpanned, pointing in the exact opposite direction of where Victoria was going.

“Right! Let’s go!”

 

Chapter 7

“I’m just gonna ask you one more time- are you sure this is a good idea?” Taylor asked as the three of them exited Amy’s car and walked up the driveway to the Dallon house, wondering why the general area seemed so familiar and yet… not.

Something seemed a bit odd about that, but she didn’t really know what.

“Oh please, it’s like two in the morning and tomorrow’s Saturday! Who’s even gonna be awake to notice?” Victoria asked rhetorically, continuing to lead Taylor along until they came to the front door of the Dallon household, which Victoria unlocked with the quietest of clicks- apparently a house full of heroes had better technology than other houses, since the lock itself was… impressive, to say the least, from what little she could see of it as Victoria all but dragged her into the house and out of the cold, finally letting her deactivate her ice resistance power as her body adapted to the warmth and-

“Ahhhhh…. That’s really nice~” Taylor almost moaned out, shuddering as her skin went from deathly, icy pale to a more normal color in an instant, while Victoria and Amy both froze in place, staring at the shadowed figure standing in the hallway, silhouetted by the hall light behind her.

“So. You two mind telling me just what you two think you’re doing?” Carol Dallon, the heroine known as Brandish, asked, twisting her lips into a dry, disappointed scowl as she raised a single eyebrow and flicked on the foyer lights, almost blinding Taylor for a moment before her eyes adjusted. Carol froze for a moment and blinked, then recovered with an impressive speed and continued speaking as if she hadn’t just been surprised by Taylor’s appearance. “And why exactly did you bring home what looks like some homeless girl you picked up from an alleyway?”

“... Hi mom…” Victoria spoke weakly, while Amy all but hid behind Victoria and Taylor just stood there, feeling supremely awkward and wondering if she should take the opportunity to slip away and- ah, Victoria just grabbed her wrist again. “This is uh… not what it looks like?”

“.... Oh, really? Because it looks like my daughter is bringing home some unknown vagabond from the streets due to her bleeding heart, and trying to let her sleep in our house without any actual idea if she’s trustworthy or not. So if it’s not that, what is it?” Carol asked, tapping her foot impatiently on the floor as she leaned against the wall, keeping up an impressively stern face while Victoria tried to come up with an explanation.

“I- uh… y’see… that is… um…”

“That’s exactly what’s happening,” Amy sighed, rubbing her forehead and pushing past the two of them to head upstairs. “For the record, I was actually against bringing her home.”

“... You keep your butt down here young lady!” Carol snapped, catching Amy’s shoulder and redirecting her to sit down in the living room, a thin snarl appearing on her face before vanishing so quickly that Taylor wasn’t even sure if it had even been there or not. “As for you, Victoria… what were you thinking! I am not letting you bring in some random homeless girl you just brought in off the street! You don’t even know if she’s trustworthy! Look at her, she’s not even dressed for the weather and you just happened to find her? You have a good heart, but did it ever occur to you that she might not be telling the truth?”

“She’s right you know,” Taylor murmured, interrupting Victoria before she could speak. “I was all set to find a homeless shelter for the night. You didn’t have to bring me here. It’s… nice to be optimistic about people, but it is kind of foolish to trust people so quickly.”

“.... Taylor, no. Look, mom, Taylor’s not just some… random hobo! She’s a cape! She helped me out earlier and healed a guy without me even needing to ask her!” Victoria pleaded, looking up at her mother with watery, pouty eyes and sticking out her lower lip, begging silently for Carol to let Taylor stay.

“... Victoria, that’s even worse! The vast majority of capes in Brockton Bay are villains! How do you know she wasn’t just healing that person to look good in front of you?” Carol grumbled, throwing her hands in the air and sighing. “And even then, she already clearly doesn’t want to be here!”

“Oh come on! Just because the Empire’s got a fuckton of capes doesn’t mean that every new cape is a criminal! She helped me, mom! She deserves a place to sleep that’s not under a goddamn highway overpass!” Victoria raised her voice, taking a step forward and almost unleashing her aura before a hand on her shoulder made her pause.

“No, she’s right.” Taylor shook her head, her once almost lively expression falling into a flat, blank stare, her dull, black eyes meeting Victoria’s before turning away, shoulders falling as she trudged back out the door. “I’m... sorry to bother you, Mrs. Dallon. I’ll just… find somewhere else to sleep tonight.”

“Wait wh- Taylor no!” Victoria scrambled after Taylor, who slipped her arm between Victoria’s grasping fingers with a single flex of will, intangible flesh passing through solid fingers for a brief moment before returning to normal, before Taylor began to speed up, her slow trudge becoming a trot, then a jog as she ran away from the Dallon home and deeper into the city, sprinting as fast as she could until she blinked tears out of her eyes and-

“Oof!” Victoria coughed as Taylor slammed into her chest, the two of them bouncing off of each other and falling to the ground, Taylor blinking tears out of her eyes while Victoria shook her head and tried not to marvel at the fact that not only had Taylor been running nearly as fast as a car, but had hit her hard enough to make her shield deactivate.

She took a breath and stood up again, while Taylor just laid back on the cold ground, staring up at the cloudless night sky and letting her body steam up with her ice resistance power, blinking slowly and not even bothering to move.

“Hey, c’mon, get up,” Victoria sighed, kneeling down next to Taylor and poking her cheek gently before offering her hand to help Taylor up. “Look, I know my mom’s kinda a bitch but I got her to calm down and get off my ass about it after I explained a few things. I mean, she still doesn’t want you hanging around but like… um… I might be able to convince her if you come back?”

“... I’d… rather not cause trouble,” Taylor sighed, taking Victoria’s hand and standing, muttering under her breath as she turned away again. “I’ll just… go find a place to be a barn owl in, I suppose. Beats being on a rooftop…”

“Wai- wait hold up, what do you mean be a barn owl?” Victoria asked, stepping in front of Taylor again and holding her shoulders to keep her in place, both of them acutely aware of the fact that Taylor was pretty much just indulging Victoria at the moment.

“... Oh. I suppose I never mentioned,” Taylor murmured, shaking herself free of Victoria’s grip and shrinking down into the form of a barn owl, staring up at Victoria for a moment before turning back. “I can… shapeshift into just about anything I want to. Living, nonliving. It doesn’t matter. I’m… still just as heavy, though.”

Victoria blinked in surprise, then a slow smile spread over her face as she thought of a way to get Taylor to stay in her house without arousing suspicion. “I have an idea. But I need you to turn into something specific.”

>*<

“I’m back,” Victoria sighed as she walked through the front door of her home again, shuddering gently from the cold and rubbing her arms, her movements a bit stiff. “I couldn’t find her. She just… poof. Gone.”

Carol sighed at the expression on her daughter’s face, patting her shoulder as she walked past. “I’m sure she’ll be fine on her own, Victoria. Why don’t you get some sleep? It’s late.”

“... Yeah. Okay.” Victoria nodded and trudged up the stairs to her room, smirking as soon as she closed the door and fished a single object out of her pocket- a small gemstone, pried from her tiara. “Okay, we’re in the clear. Just be careful not to make too much noise.”

“... I’m… surprised that I let you talk me into this,” Taylor muttered, rocking herself loose from where she had embedded herself in Victoria’s tiara and taking the stone from Victoria’s hand to put it back into its proper place with a quiet click. “Your mother is going to be… angry if she finds out about this.”

“Well, that’s all the more reason to keep quiet, then,” Victoria whispered, giggling excitedly as she picked up a large stuffed animal- one almost a foot and a half tall sitting down- from where it had been resting against the wall, showed it to Taylor from all angles, and stuffed it into the depths of her closet before burying it under a pile of various clothes and other odds and ends. “There, now turn into Flufflekins and get in bed. I’ll go get changed.”

“... Are you… sure?” Taylor asked, standing still until Victoria bodily shoved her onto the bed and stuffed a spare pillow into her arms.

“Of course I am! It’ll be like a sleepover!” Victoria smiled, whispering a little louder to make sure that Taylor understood the full weight of her words.

“... I haven’t… had a sleepover in a few years…” Taylor murmured, shapeshifting into the form of the massive plush unicorn and laying down, her dirty clothes phasing through her and onto the floor before vanishing into her shadow, while Victoria changed into her pajamas, brushed her teeth, and slipped into bed next to Taylor, drawing the covers over them both and turning the light off.

“Then maybe next time we can have a proper one, yeah?” Victoria asked rhetorically, gently patting Taylor’s head before rolling over and falling asleep in nearly an instant.

Taylor sighed and stared at the ceiling for a few moments longer, becoming drowsier and drowsier as she let the softness of the blankets and pillows lull her into a daze before finally falling asleep as well.

“... Yeah… next time…”

 

Chapter 8

Morning came with a quiet fanfare for Taylor- the sensation of sunlight filtering through closed blinds, lightly dancing across her skin and leaving trails of warmth that, due to her new mutated nature, didn’t burn at all, but instead left her feeling pleasant and refreshed. The blankets still covering the majority of her body contributed to that, swaddling her with a gentle warmth and leaving her feeling as if she were floating weightless in a sea of soft clouds, the amazingly plush pillow beneath her head only adding to that.

She blinked again, slowly, and quietly realized that at some point during the night, she’d changed back to her human form again and managed to… to…

Taylor took a deep, unnecessary breath, and tried not to scream at the fact that Victoria was wrapped around her like some kind of bony squid thing and all but squeezing the life out of her like she was actually a stuffed animal and not a depressed mutant eldritch being in the vague approximation of human form.

It was… kind of cute, if she was being honest with herself. The small string of drool dangling from her lips as she pressed her face against Taylor’s neck, the tiny snores from her nose, the way the morning sun caught her hair and made it almost glow like a halo.

Taylor blinked and furrowed her brow, slowly turning intangible and shifting her shape back to the form of Flufflekins so she wouldn’t arouse suspicion should someone walk in and, after a moment of intense indecision, slipped herself back into Victoria’s arms, wincing a bit at the tiny whine that left Victoria’s lips when she couldn’t feel Taylor anymore and almost smiling when the whine turned into a happy sigh the moment she slipped back into Victoria’s arms.

Taylor sighed again, and, after realizing that, no, she definitely wasn’t falling back asleep again now that the sun was up and shining in her face, began to assess her situation- or, more specifically, the strange feelings that started churning in her gut the moment she saw Victoria clinging to her.

“We have a libido again!?” Gorast shrieked, cutting off Taylor’s thought process the moment the Makuta awoke from her own slumber, insectoid wings buzzing in Taylor’s ears as the Makuta began shrieking incoherently, whining about everything from “not wanting to experience sexual desire again” to “being relieved that she was finally capable of doing that kind of thing again after nearly a hundred thousand years”.

“You’re… of two minds about this,” Taylor deadpanned silently, using her powers to keep anyone from hearing her speaking to herself. She was actually almost amused by Gorast’s wild fretting, and actually would have been amused if it wasn’t so weird because, as far as she knew before she died, she was straight as a ruler and had never once thought of any girls in the way she did right now so what the fuck Gorast!?

“In your words, I was a, how do you say…” Gorast deadpanned, metaphorically rolling her eyes and filling Taylor’s brain with so much sass and sarcasm she nearly choked. “Raging bisexual? That seems to describe it fairly well, though of course, we Makuta had fluid genders at the best of times before we became sentient gas clouds.”

“... So you-”

“Yes, I did indeed.”

“... how does that even-?”

“The same way human reproduction works, without the actual organic reproduction part.”

“.... I don’t know whether to be sickened or- JESUS CHRIST!” Taylor shrieked and shook her head, projecting nothing but fury and disgust at Gorast, who laughed long and loud in her mind, a cackling buzz that echoed in her ears and drowned out all other noise for several minutes until the Makuta finally got over the hilarity of showing her horrible imagery that she really did not need to see.

“I. Hate. You.” Taylor growled, rubbing her eyes and groaning as the image in her mind just wouldn’t go away. Why the fuck did Gorast even think it was an appropriate moment to show her an entire vivisected Matoran as an “anatomy reference” anyway!? “I need to scrub my eyes with bleach to forget that…. Why…. Why would you do this to me?”

“Well you were curious as to how our bodies worked, so I showed you just about the closest thing I had clear memories of,” Gorast answered calmly, only a hint of amusement still in her voice. “As you can see, the biology of all biomechanical races in Mata Nui, shown here by some random Ga-Matoran that I experimented on some twelve thousand years before my death, maps rather closely with your fleshy organic messes, just more efficient and elegant than your… meat piles.”

“That’s disgusting, Gorast,” Taylor groaned, continuing to rub her eyes until she finally gave in and just accepted that this was her life now. Forced to have the image of a dead matoran stuck in her long term memory for the rest of her potentially endless life.

Great.

Wonderful.

And the morning had started so well too.

Taylor sighed and resumed staring at the ceiling, letting her thoughts drift away into a blank haze, her senses dulling as she pulled back her focus and went all but catatonic, listening to the phantom pulse of blood running in her ears for the next god knew how long until Victoria finally woke up with a quiet groan, squeezing Taylor gently and yawning as she climbed out of bed with Taylor in her arms, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes before opening the door to her room and plodding down the stairs, continuing to yawn as she made her way to the kitchen and over to where Carol had already set down a plate of breakfast- hashbrowns and pancakes and all that good delicious, organic, high quality stuff that Taylor hadn’t gotten to eat in…

A long time. Two years, maybe, ever since Emma broke off their friendship and-

Taylor shuddered imperceptibly, freezing up again the moment that Carol turned around to greet Victoria, who only offered up a zombie-like shrug before setting Taylor down on the chair next to hers and stumbling over to the coffee machine to get some liquid life into her. Taylor watched with a sort of horrified fascination as Victoria proceeded to pour out a mug, reach into the cupboard to pour a second mug… and then immediately dumped the entire rest of the pot down her gaping, ravenous maw as if her stomach was a black hole, not even bothered in the slightest by the scalding liquid pouring down her gullet with an audible splash as it hit the bottom.

That last part may or may not have been Gorast giving her auditory hallucinations just to fuck with her.

“Unfortunately, it’s not me. Your…. Friend is just like that.”

Oh. That was. Hm.

“I lied. I’m fucking with you.”

Goddammit.

“I hate you. So much,” Taylor muttered under her breath, a bubble of silence forming around her to silence her words. She then watched as Victoria gulped down a truly ridiculous amount of coffee, belching loudly and immediately springing awake in a way that really should not have been possible outside of a cartoon.

“Ahhh~! That’s better!” Victoria yawned, a bright smile on her face as she hugged Carol and slid around the kitchen island to commence eating her breakfast, while Taylor just stared at them both with her beady eyes, a wave of suppressed emotions flooding through her and cutting off Gorast’s quiet needling in an instant.

She would have cried if she were able to in this plush, soft body. Something inside of her body pulsed sharply, making her almost wince as the pain spread out through her body like a fire, electric and sharp and ending near her hands. She tried to suppress her biological urges, struggling to keep still as she watched Victoria and Carol interact, struggling to keep the bubble of silence around her so she wouldn’t start crying audibly.

Seeing the two of them, mother and daughter, reminded her of years long past. Back when her own mother would make her breakfast, when her family was whole and happy and together, when she wasn’t alone in the world, only able to witness the scene before her through some cosmic stroke of bad luck.

“Oh hey Ames! You’re up!” Victoria waved and smiled, turning around to face her sister, reaching over and picking up Taylor with one hand before setting her down on the table so Amy could sit down. Taylor barely remembered to lower her density so that she wouldn’t arouse suspicion, lost in her mind as she was.

She wanted what the Dallons had, she thought to herself. A happy family, with nobody constantly harassing her, a home to live in, a warm place to sleep. People who loved her unconditionally. Food on her plate. Someone who cared.

“Mornin’,” Amy muttered, shambling into place at the table and slowly sipping the coffee that Victoria had so graciously saved for her, digging into her own breakfast. Taylor watched silently, wondering if she should try to arrange some manner of events to let her escape this awkward situation, her thoughts whirling in her mind until she saw… Carol, whose mouth had twitched into a much cooler expression at the sight of Amy.

Something was wrong.

Taylor watched, pulling her focus into the present as she swept the area with her mind reading, shuddering as she felt the ocean of bitterness and resentment flowing from both Carol and Amy, Carol’s hot and laser focused, a stubborn mule of untreated, festering hatred and paranoia that polarized her views of the world until all that she saw was black and white, Amy’s deep and brooding, simmering and bubbling and seething with both fear and self loathing. It was unstable, a bubbling pot that would soon spill over. She shuddered, trying not to retch at the sheer amount of negative feelings present in the air around her, not even going near the infinite cesspool of depression that was, she assumed, the Dallon patriarch, who was still in bed and whose thoughts mirrored her own, with even deeper severity.

She almost threw up as she accidentally scanned over Victoria’s mind, the incongruity of her emotions clashing with the mix already flooding her mind and knocking her out of her fugue to see… to see…

Everyone staring at her.

“Victoria Nike Dallon…. Why is your stuffed animal moving?” Carol growled low in her throat as she stood up slowly, her emotions already blaming Amy even as she formed a sword of light in her hand and leveled it at Taylor’s soft, plushy chest.

Taylor slowly raised her stumpy limbs, not wanting to draw Carol’s ire any further. Carol only glared at her motion of surrender, pushing her sword forward until Victoria suddenly grabbed Taylor from behind with a shout, holding Taylor’s diminutive form to her chest and wrapping her arms around to protect her.

“Mom no! Don’t!” Victoria shouted, scooting away from the table while Amy just sighed and backed away from the drama. “Don’t hurt Taylor!”

“.... Victoria. Did you sneak an unknown parahuman into my house… specifically after I told you that she couldn’t stay over?” Carol asked, her voice low and dangerous as she fixed Victoria with a glare so powerful Taylor almost thought she saw laser beams boring into Victoria’s skull.

“Um… m-maybe?” Victoria shrugged sheepishly, letting Taylor go as Carol only glared harder. Taylor sighed and transformed back, blinking slowly as she stood up and stared at Carol, the emotions she’d managed to push back for the last minute or so rushing back until she hiccuped and her mind began to cloud over with a strange, muddled sensation, her breath quickening as she began to lose control of her own body.

“T-Taylor? You okay there?” Victoria asked, her voice muffled, as if heard through a wall, or thick cotton. Taylor didn’t respond, shaking her head slowly before collapsing to the ground, hyperventilating as her mind raced, shrieking at her as it tried to process the flood of emotions. She felt sick, sweating despite her fire resistance, shaking despite her ice resistance, her fingers going numb as a sense of abject terror loomed over her.

“S-shit what’s going on!? Amy, help!”

“Stay away from her! You don’t know what she’s capable of!”

“Both of you stop screaming! She’s having a panic attack!”

Taylor stared forward, paralyzed by her emotions, her stomach roiling and her mind continuing to race and race, her thoughts whirling in her mind as her body continued to all but shut down, hundreds of contradictory inputs flooding her senses and only exacerbating the looming sense of dread until finally, mercifully, Gorast clawed her way through the flood of terror and activated her powers.

“Sleep!”

And Taylor, blessedly, fell unconscious.

 

Chapter 9

She woke up in a cell.

Not surprising that she would end up in one, given that she was technically trespassing on personal property, but she was still a bit surprised that they gave her such a nice cell. Taylor blinked slowly and stared at the ceiling, pondering its strange cleanliness and working lights, not a hint of decay or damage to be seen. Similarly, the floor seemed to be padded instead of bare concrete, and the walls were painted a soothing cream color.

She didn’t know what to think about that. Next to the door, she saw a screen, and in the corners of the ceiling there were security cameras.

Her breath hitched when she saw the letters and numbers painted next to the door- PRT 015. A meaningless number, one most likely referring to her cell number, but the letters. PRT. Parahuman Response Teams.

Those three letters were…

She shuddered, suddenly aware of her position in space. She almost wanted to escape, almost wanted to phase through the wall and teleport out and run into the city, but that wouldn’t help her.

That wouldn’t make any of the “heroes” inclined to trust her, in fact, it would do the opposite. Breaking out now was the easiest way to be labeled a dangerous villain.

So she stayed put. She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t blink. She let her Makuta nature rise to the surface and felt her heart stop. A sense of apathy settled over her, dull and weighty, pressing down on her until she found out that she didn’t have the energy to move anymore- or rather, maybe she did, but she certainly didn’t have a reason to want to move.

“You idiot!” Gorast shrieked in her mind, verbally lambasting her out of the blue and all but drowning her sense of hearing with the sound of buzzing wings and vitriol. “What were you thinking!? You know mind reading gets a scan of emotions too! You went too deep on the empathy! There are two sides to the power, fool! And you managed to screw up so badly that I almost literally drowned in the feedback loop you generated! I had to put you to sleep so I could clear out the flood that you nearly killed yourself with!”

Flood? What flood? She dimly recalled feeling like her blood was roaring in her ears, and that she was about to drown, but… a literal flood in her mind? And how would a flood of emotions kill her anyway?

“Yes there was a flood! I am in your mind, meatbag! Everything here is a haze of metaphor! And you almost killed yourself because you were this close to having your willpower crushed by the emotions around you! Do you know what that does to a Makuta!? Do you!?”

Unfortunately, yes.

Gorast had shown her enough images of fellow Makuta losing their wills to live at some point during their endless lifespan, becoming nothing but hollow shells as their antidermis faded away, consuming itself until nothing was left but the memory of who that Makuta used to be.

“Good! Now never do that ever again! I have no wish to die screaming in your pathetic brain just because you decided to drown yourself in misery and regret! We had enough of that in the last month to last a lifetime!”

Fair enough. She had no desire to repeat such a debacle either. The sheer amount of emotion she’d felt… it was…. Horrible.

“And now you know how I feel every time you try to suppress your emotions.”

Taylor almost huffed and rolled her eyes, only to be immediately cut off as the door to her cell slammed open and a whole crowd of people stormed in- a few people wearing medical scrubs bearing strange equipment, all of them immediately rushing over to her and pulling out devices from cases, almost shouting about “no heart rate” and “lack of brain activity” and “what seemed like total organ failure”

Oh.

Taylor blinked, sending the medics scrambling back at once with loud shrieks, while she finally let her body work again, drawing in a deep breath as she sat up and looked over at the assembled people.

Five medics, all of them watching her with open fear on their faces. Two heroes, Armsmaster and Miss Militia, both of them pointing weapons at her. The screen next to the door had lit up as well, showing the face of some… fairly attractive looking woman. For some reason.

“... Miss Hebert.” Armsmaster deadpanned, stepping forward just a bit as he addressed her, his halberd moving away from her general direction, though he still held it in a ready position.

She didn’t blame him.

“Yes?” She asked quietly, looking over at Armsmaster slowly and tilting her head, not moving otherwise. She blinked slowly as she heard some of the medics whispering in surprise, and silently sent out a tiny probe of their surface thoughts, soon realizing that, apparently, her entire body was moving in ways that seemed more like a ball jointed doll than a human body.

“The Dallons already explained their part of the story. About why you were in their home. Would you care to explain your side of things?” Armsmaster asked, pulling over the single other chair in the room and sitting down, while everyone else filed out and presumably went off to do other things after shutting the door, with Miss Militia being the only mind she could sense still lingering outside the door. Taylor mulled over Armsmaster’s words, blinking at him slowly still as she did a small surface scan, finding not much in the way of emotion, only the need to hear both sides of the story before rendering judgement one way or another.

Commendable, she supposed, if she didn’t also sense the vague need to further his career constantly niggling in the back of his mind. But he was human. Not Toa. She could forgive him some faults, probably.

“I was… looking for a place to stay the night,” Taylor started slowly, watching Armsmaster’s flat, neutral expression as she told her story. “I was training in the Boat Graveyard until about midnight, maybe, and on the way out, I heard someone calling for help. Glory Girl was there… she’d hit a rapist with too much force and broke his ribs and almost his spine, so I think she was calling Panacea to come help her before he died. I was right there, so I healed him instead. At some point, Panacea showed up as well… and then Glory Girl decided to let me sleep over at her home rather than letting me find an open homeless shelter. I didn’t think it was a good idea, but I went along with it anyway since it was already late and I was… tired.”

“That lines up with what Glory Girl said, as well as Panacea,” Armsmaster nodded, motioning for her to continue.

“After that, Brandish said I couldn’t stay, which I agreed with, but Glory Girl chased me down and convinced me to go back with her and made me sleep in her bed disguised as a stuffed unicorn.” Taylor blinked, then pursed her lips. “In the morning she seemed to have forgotten that I wasn’t a stuffed animal and brought me down to breakfast. Then I… it’s fuzzy but… I think I had a panic attack?”

“Panacea reported that you displayed all the conventional symptoms of a panic attack before you suddenly fell unconscious, at which point Brandish called the Protectorate and had the five of you brought in for MS confinement.”

“... Five?”

“Flashbang decided to come along as well, just in case there was an undetected Master effect.”

“... I understand. I don’t… I don’t have a power like that, though. I can’t just… control people,” Taylor murmured, ignoring the voice of Gorast idly wondering if threatening to disembowel and dismember someone if they didn’t do what she said counted as controlling people.

“That remains to be seen.” Armsmaster slowly stood up and walked out the door, seemingly satisfied with her answers. “You will remain here until such a time as the Dallons are cleared for any signs of being Mastered. Amenities can be requested via the touch screen by the door, though we may refuse some depending on what you ask for. Do not flatline your vital signs again, or we will be forced to move you under heavy surveillance.”

“.... Understood.” Taylor murmured quietly, laying back down the moment Armsmaster closed the door and closing her eyes again. Unbidden, the lights in the room dimmed to a nice, twilight level and the soft sound of ocean waves began playing from hidden speakers.

“... Interesting…” Taylor sighed and let her mind drift off, turning her focus inwards and beginning to meditate.

 

Chapter 10

Six hours of dead silence, broken only by quiet zen white noise and relaxing music played through the speakers. Taylor opened her eyes slowly, right before an alarm began to blare throughout the entire base. It was a familiar sound, a dreadful sound. The one she heard nearly every month. A quiet, whining drone at first, building up into a truly horrid crescendo of descending notes. An eldritch siren that truly exemplified the horror that was happening.

Endbringer.

She sat up slowly, blinking as she slipped out of bed. This was the perfect opportunity to do something, to be a hero, to make a mark on the world that was more than just her tragedy, more than just her depression, to have a purpose.

“Are you sure this is what you want? Or are we still suicidal and hoping the Endbringer will kill us?” Gorast asked in her mind, metaphorically raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t want to die. Not anymore.” Taylor murmured to herself, cracking her neck as she shifted her shape, flexing her muscles as she went from flesh and blood to protodermis and semi-organic tissue, feeling the seams of her armor smoothly fold out around her, body growing and bulking out until she was in the form of Toa, her wings flared majestically out behind her as she stepped forward and phased through the door. She ignored the alarm of her cell going off, phasing through the containment foam spray as concealed turrets folded out of the ceiling. Silently, she scanned the area, ignoring the harried staff running around the Rig, ignored the PRT troops stationed in the area running towards her position.

There.

“You do realize there’s no guarantee that we can even harm an Endbringer, right? Your memories have shown them as excessively resistant to all harm, even our powers may not be enough.” Gorast murmured, a cautionary worry filling her mind as the Makuta mulled over the odds.

“Maybe. But… like Victoria said. I wouldn’t be much of a hero if I just did nothing when people need help, right?” Taylor asked as she walked through the halls, shifting her density and just flying through the Rig towards where the assembled heroes had gathered and-

Vanished.

“Dammit!” Taylor cursed, coming to a halt on the empty helicopter pad and stomping her foot, barely seconds too late to catch up to the heroes. “Fuck!”

She growled low in her throat and let her mind reading flare out, a surface scan of the entire Rig almost overwhelming her mind for a second before she forced herself to focus and pulled out the location of the Endbringer- Canberra, Australia. The Simurgh.

“Okay, I know where they are… but how do I get there!?” Taylor grumbled, watching as PRT Troopers began to enter the landing pad, yelling at her to freeze. “Gorast, any ideas?”

“We are Makuta. We can travel through shadows on a whim,” Gorast answered, bringing up the roiling pit of Shadow that sat in Taylor’s core, eldritch wisps of deepest black seeping out from the plates of her armor and from her shadow. She looked up at the sky, tinted deep purple and orange as the sun began to set. Her powers grew stronger by the second, a deep, pitch black cloud expanding from beneath her feet and into the air, wrapping around her and forming a door just before her.

She concentrated on the door, trying to force the slippery shadows to her will, only for them to pass through her mental fingers like an eel, losing cohesion even as she began to force more shadows from the ground, growling low and deep, a buzzing swarm of insects and the roar of poisonous acid falls echoing in her voice.

“Come on… come on… work dammit!” Taylor muttered, keeping a hold of the shadows with a part of her will, leashing them so that they didn’t lash out at the Troopers firing at her with containment foam grenades, letting the grenades just vanish into the depths of the shadows without harm. “Gorast, it’s not working!”

“You are inexperienced yet. We are losing time. Do you trust me?” Gorast asked calmly, taking control from Taylor, who froze up as she felt her limbs move of their own accord, guiding the shadow into a proper portal, feeling the dimensional tunnel click into place.

“... I trust you. More than anyone else.” Taylor nodded and stepped through the portal, shadows collapsing around her and leaving her in a world of pitch black and silence.

Taylor took a bracing breath and began to walk.

No footsteps could be heard. No sense of progress. She couldn’t see, couldn’t feel. Couldn’t smell or taste or anything. She was a wisp of shadow amongst an endless sea. She almost shuddered, but her body couldn’t even feel itself to tell. She would have felt lost if not for the feeling in her mind, the quietest nudge that told her she was moving, that the shadows were guiding her to her destination. But other than that, she felt nothing.

The only thing she could feel was the end of the tunnel.

It was almost lonely, even with Gorast’s presence in the back of her mind. Almost boring, if not for how much destruction would happen with every second lost. Almost inane, if not for the thought of how many people would die even if she helped.

There, the end of the tunnel.

She rushed forward and leapt out into the air, gasping as time seemed to bend strangely until it snapped back into place, an instinctive knowledge in her mind telling her that almost no time at all had passed.

She stared at the massive array of heroes and villains before her, blinking slowly as she felt her fire resistance power go into overdrive, roiling cold mist falling from her shoulders as she stepped out away from Armsmaster’s shadow, feeling quite awkward about suddenly appearing with no warning.

“... Toa.” Armsmaster nodded curtly, taking a deep breath after just barely keeping himself from drawing his halberd on Taylor.

“Sorry about the entrance. You left before I could ask to join up,” Taylor murmured quietly, stepping out of the circle and using one of her hands to wave at Victoria, who waved back quickly, right before both Panacea and Brandish glared at her and made her put her hand down. “I um… I want to help.”

“... We’ll have words about this later, if we all survive. But for now, any help is appreciated.”

“Thanks… and… I’m sorry for breaking out of my cell, but I couldn’t just sit there while innocent people die, even halfway around the world,” Taylor- no, Toa. She had to be Toa right now- said, murmuring it low enough that only Armsmaster could hear. He nodded, and led the Brockton Bay group along towards the armband station.

In the distance, she could see the Simurgh floating above Canberra, a cloud of broken buildings and rubble floating around her body, a twisted mockery of an angelic being. Taylor’s heart pulsed with rage as she took an armband and announced herself, psyching herself up as she picked out her role and cracked her neck, rolling her shoulders and sprinting forward, quickly passing through the ramshackle barrier that made up the minimum safe distance and rushing into the city.

“This is Toa! Heading in for Search and Rescue!”

 

Chapter 11

All around her, the screams of the dying. All around her, the crunching of bodies, the breaking of buildings. Cars floated into the air with passengers still inside, pedestrians running for shelters were knocked about by rubble. Capes heading for direct combat were flung around like so much trash, crushed against massive chunks of concrete or crushed under flung rubble.

And there she was.

She almost wanted to vomit from the sheer aura of despair and hopelessness present throughout the city, even as she threw her mind out as far as she could, saving as many people as she could.

She teleported around almost as fast as she could think, blinking around so fast that the world became a blur of colors and sounds, more than it was actual shapes. Her form shifted as well, human shaped one second, the next, shrunk down to the size of a spider. A snake, slithering into rubble to save a trapped family. An elephant, bracing a ceiling long enough to use her shadows to drop a little girl into a triage tent. A massive flying Rahi, cushioning the fall of a flyer before they could splatter against a building and teleporting them out a moment later. A small beetle, squeezing into a gap so small not even a snake could fit through, so she could imbue a trapped mother and her baby with her Quick Healing and teleport them to safety.

It hurt.

It burned.

Her energy drained almost faster than she could replenish it from the plants and insects in the area, draining them to dust in between jumps. Even then, it wasn’t enough. She was slowing down.

She couldn’t slow down.

She was slowing down.

She couldn’t- she was- she couldn’t.

“DARKNESS!” Toa screamed, rivers of purest shadow flooding from her back as she slammed her hands into the ground, absorbing the light in the area and using it to power her shadows, reaching out further and further and further, faster and faster as the sun began to dim, the sky began to blacken, the beams of the blasters firing at the Simurgh fading in brightness and power as she drained and drained and drained.

It burned.

The shadows writhed.

She screamed.

She screamed and shrieked and let out a whole host of demonic, eldritch sounds, wailing and roaring as her shadows reached out and pulled, reaching across the darkened dome of purest black that covered the city and yanked, hundreds of thousands of people falling into the abyss at once, draining her energy with every single person until she was absolutely sure they were all safe, far beyond the minimum radius, far out enough that the Simurgh couldn’t hurt them.

“Safe… safe… good….” she whispered, choking a bit on her words as she released her hold on the shadows and let them dissipate, cloaking herself in only the thinnest robe of shadows to protect herself from the suddenly too bright sun, falling to her knees and crawling away until she reached the shade of a nearby building, gasping as she let her cloak fade away.

Her armband beeped- a warning. Her time in the area was halfway up. She shuddered and absorbed the life force of a few more bugs, coughing as she drained a bit more of her own energy to absorb the light and restore herself, groaning as she stood up and stumbled out of the shattered alleyway and-

“Duck!”

Ducked involuntarily, almost toppling over as a chunk of rubble flew through where her head once was.

Taylor gulped, suddenly realizing that, in her fit of desperation, she’d engulfed the city in shadows and teleported every other living person to safety.

Including the capes.

The Simurgh was facing in her direction.

Shit.

With a sudden burst of energy powered by sheer panic, Taylor immediately ran away from the Simurgh’s gaze, ducking behind a building and into the wreckage of what used to be a two story house, crashing through drywall and wooden beams without even noticing them breaking against her protosteel armor, only using the slightest bit of energy to phase through the dust as she continued sprinting to safety.

Except…

The Simurgh didn’t seem to be attacking… her.

Taylor yelped as a chunk of rubble slammed down next to her, phasing out as it swiped to the side, slamming through right where she would have been seconds prior. She fell through the ground, panting a bit and yet reveling in the darkness, the pitch black underground of the sewers restoring her strength bit by bit.

Taylor paused for breath, cloaking herself in shadows, her chameleon ability turned to full bore, shifting her density until she was completely intangible, silencing every sound.

Nothing.

She floated through the ground again, cautiously moving around the area and watching as the Simurgh seemed to do… nothing? No. Chunks of rubble were still smashing down the area where she had been mere moments ago, crushing the house to rubble.

Her armband beeped again. Five minutes left.

Something was… strange.

Taylor rubbed her chin, and on a whim, used a tiny flex of her gravity power to move a small chunk of rubble on the other side of the street.

Instantly, the Simurgh reoriented and destroyed the area, slamming down rubble and rebar with extreme prejudice until even the half built machine she’d had hovering in the sky seemed to start disassembling.

The machine that was quickly reorienting and collapsing into several smaller machines, that all looked suspiciously long and hollow.

Taylor almost yelped as the newly built laser cannons charged up and fired down in the area, the beams spreading out in a tight spiral of destruction.

Her armband beeped again.

Thirty seconds.

Taylor shook her head and, with an immense amount of effort due to her dwindling reserves, teleported out, stumbling as she appeared in the battle center and tore off her armband with a loud grunt, throwing it over her shoulder as it fizzled and died.

“Toa! What the hell was that!?” someone yelled- Armsmaster? No, someone else. Someone in white and blue, looked almost like a lightbulb to her at the moment. Her brain felt fuzzy, her vision starting to blur more and more with every passing second. She looked down and rubbed her eyes, staring at the stone in her chest, circular and glowing- pulsating really. It seemed… dim. Which seemed bad.

Was it bad?

She wasn’t quite sure.

A hand caught her shoulder and directed her to the side- ah, a chair!

She… she felt weak. Hungry, even. There were… so many life signatures around her… so many dying, who wouldn’t be able to make it unless someone did something about it. She blinked slowly as someone shouted in the back of her mind- was it just her or did she suddenly feel more empty all of a sudden?

She was hungry.

She needed… She needed something. The life signatures around her? No, she needed something more substantial, something… it sure was bright. How annoying… It was so hot too, she felt like she was getting weaker by the second trying to keep herself from burning up.

Someone shined a light in her face and she hissed, a sudden ravenous rage overtaking her as she pulled up her powers and-

HUNGER.

Taylor gasped as she snapped awake, staring blankly at her hand, clasping the white gloved hand of… of… Legend!?

“W-what the hell? Where… how did I get here? I was…. Why am I…?” she asked, wondering why she could feel energy flooding into her body until she realized that her Hunger power had activated on its own accord and that the pulses of sickly green light flowing from her hand to the yellow core in her chest were mirrored on Legend, sickly green pulsing up his hand even as a brilliant, almost blinding glow filled the space between their hands.

As soon as she realized what she was doing, she immediately cut off the drain, forcing her hand out of the death grip it had been in and freeing Legend’s hand.

“Oh my god I’m so sorry,” she all but babbled, rubbing her temples with two hands and massaging her wrist with her last hand, not even wanting to look at the Triumvirate member standing before her. “I- I don’t know what I was thinking, I was-”

“It’s fine, Toa. I willingly let you grab me,” the older hero spoke, squatting down slightly to be on level with her. “Now, would you mind explaining what the hell happened out there? And how exactly every single civilian in the city somehow got teleported to Bywong?”

“... Bywong?” Toa asked, blinking slowly as she looked around, a large number of capes seemingly milling around, tending injuries and recovering their energy. “I… I don’t know. It was… a blur. I was… out there, moving as fast as I could to save trapped civilians and capes, and… I think I started to run low on power so… I…”

“Created a dome of shadow that covered just about three hundred square miles and mass teleported literally everyone out of the city?” Legend deadpanned, breathing deeply through his nose as he raised a single eyebrow.

“... Yes.” Toa nodded slowly, then held up a single hand. “I think, at some point, I also started healing people in the field before I teleported them out? It was… confusing, I think. I know I had to pull someone out from under a car and their legs were…”

“I see.” Legend rubbed his chin and thought things over for a moment. “Well…”

Toa blinked. Something was wrong.

“Wait. What happened to the lasers?” Toa asked suddenly, sitting up and immediately teleporting out, shuddering with the effort even as she looked around from the sky above the command tent.

“Oh.”

Taylor gulped quietly as she stared at the massive laser cannon in the sky, her entire mouth going dry as the Simurgh stared at her from where it hovered directly over the capitol building, a sickening grin upon its normally expressionless face.

The laser cannon the size of a football field pointed directly at her, a deathly, ghastly glow emanating from its barrel as it charged up.

“Shit.”

The cannon fired.

 

Chapter 12

There was a strange clarity in her mind as she stared at the beam coming towards her, viewing it in slow motion as her thoughts seemed to accelerate all at once. Acceptance of death, perhaps. She’d saved what might have been hundreds of thousands of people all at once, brought some of them back from the brink of death. Kept them alive even though they by all rights should have been dead.

She did good. More than she’d ever thought she’d manage to do even a half hour ago. More good than she thought she could ever accomplish in one lifetime.

But, as she thought to herself, she didn’t quite do enough. After all, there was still the Simurgh, floating over the city, still looking directly at her with intent to kill. There was still the massive laser cannon that hung over the city like a specter of imminent death, ready to be used the moment anyone else attacked. There was still the beam of swirling, deadly energies heading her way, a crimson helix of exotic effects layered upon each other with such potent power that she could feel it creating static in the air even from where she was.

If she dodged, then everyone in the command tents would surely die given that she was right above them and it would be simple for the Simurgh to lower the aim of the beam. If she tanked it, then she would almost certainly die as whatever energy filled that massive beam tore her apart and only god knew what else. Her Ghost Blasters were too short ranged and too slow to disrupt the beam at the source, and even then, they didn’t pack enough power to actually affect such a large machine all at once- nor did she think that whatever mental control she’d gain would be at all effective against the Simurgh’s telekinesis.

Using her Gravity powers without extreme concentration and exact, precise application would bend the beam in an unpredictable direction- almost certainly in a direction that would cause massive loss of life, most of her powers would be useless for actually handling the beam or redirecting it safely… and she was too tired to even use most of them effectively.

All except for two. And coincidentally, they were the two powers best suited for facing down a massive beam of energy about to kill her. She hoped.

She really, really hoped.

She grit her teeth and braced herself in the air, screaming with effort as she pulled the shadows out from within and formed a shield of darkness. It burned, to try and keep the shadows stable in the burning afternoon sunlight, especially with as low energy as she was (Legend was many things, but a good battery he was not), but she kept going. As she grunted and groaned with the sheer difficulty of her labor, Darkness continued pouring from within and consuming the sunlight even as it burned her shadows away bit by bit. A sphere of pitch black formed around her, one that consumed all light and energy and restored just enough of her strength as she fed on the Australian sunlight and used it to fuel her second power.

Hunger spilled forth next, sickly green light emanating from the poisonous yellow crystal in her chest that was the core of her body and wrapping around the sphere of darkness like a corrupted spider web. As the manifestation of Hunger spun its way into existence, it began shining and crackling, emanating a horrible, eldritch color of light that seemed to suck the energy right out of the air, funneling it into her own body and helping to maintain both its structure and the shadowy sphere, which had grown to an equal diameter to the skyscraper sized death beam that was just barely a few car lengths away from her.

Taylor gulped and, in the last few fractions of a second left, let out a quick prayer that it would be enough. That she would be enough. That her power would be strong enough to overwhelm the beam bearing down on her without burning away completely.

The beam struck.

Taylor screamed as it slammed into her bubble of shadow, not from the pain of it tearing her apart, but from the sheer rush of energy slamming into her, her endless, all consuming Hunger swallowing and absorbing all in its path. As the beam continued crashing against her shadowy bubble, a horrible screeching began emanating from the contact area as the shadows consumed the beam’s light and gained strength, as Hunger consumed its energy and fed her core with what felt like an ocean’s worth of power.

It was exhilarating. Like a twelve course meal after starving for weeks. Like a breath of fresh air after almost drowning. Like that first sip of water after spending a month in the desert.

She felt, for the first time in a long time, properly powerful. Properly herself.

She felt alive, awake, as if she could take on the world and win.

It was intoxicating, the rush of energy. It filled her body and almost exploded out of her, there was so much of it. So she let it loose with a mighty cry, a mix of pure adrenaline and raw excitement. As more and more energy continued to soak into her, she screamed louder and louder, a deafening warcry shaking the air around her as she let loose with her power scream, almost crumbling the earth around her before she realized where she was.

“Yes! YES!” Taylor all but howled, a nearly animalistic cry of victory bubbling from her chest and out of her throat. She hung in the air, limbs outstretched as her sphere of shadow grew ever larger, consuming the whole beam in mere seconds and reaching out, further and further until it engulfed the machine entirely. As her shadow sped through the cracks of the cannon, her Hunger continued feeding, only growing stronger and stronger as she crushed the massive cannon with her shadows, tearing it apart and absorbing its energy, crumpling the metal with magnetism until the beam fizzled out and the remnants of its structure fell to the ground like a rain of steel.

Taylor shuddered, breathing heavily as energy coursed through her, a roaring river where there was once barely a trickle. Even the strength of her abilities before was nothing compared to the sheer strength she felt, the organic protodermis that made up her entire body supercharged by the energy she’d absorbed from the massive laser beam.

“Gorast? What do you think our odds of winning are?” Taylor asked, a wide grin slowly creeping across her face as she rolled her neck and flexed her shoulders, the protosteel claws in her fingertips extending with an audible shriek of metal against metal.

“As we are now? That winged bitch doesn’t stand a chance in hell.” Gorast hissed quietly in the back of her mind, smug and sadistic, vicious amusement pouring through her mind and filling her with boundless confidence.

Her power surged as she hovered in place, wings vibrating as they flared out and buzzed against the air, a high pitched drone emanating from their protosteel surfaces as she prepared to head into the fray.

“Good. Then let’s send her down.”

Her form blurred.

 

Chapter 13

Taylor whooped as she raced through the air on wings of protosteel and light, her Toa powers flooding out in a deluge as she wrapped herself in a bubble of pure acid, burning through the rubble that the Simurgh flung at her with ease, not even slowing down as she melted through rebar, dissolved through concrete, shattered through glass, burned through cars and trucks.

She was unstoppable, a whizzing bullet racing through the skies at mach speeds, flying aerial acrobatics around the Simurgh with ease. She dared to laugh in the face of the being that had killed so many, dared mock the angel of death, dared to reach out and touch the Simurgh and-

“DISINTEGRATION!” Taylor roared, channeling her Toa power, her Disintegration, her Molecular Disruption into her fist and slamming it into the Simurgh’s unseeing face, watching with untold glee as the Simurgh burst into a cloud of dust in an instant, a massive, rushing explosion that billowed outward into a web of thin wisps of fragmenting molecules, rendered down to fine dust and even finer powder and clumping into a sticky, gluey rain as elemental acid flooded through the particles and rendered them down even further, coating what was left of the Simurgh with sickly green fluid that sizzled through her white, metallic flesh and burned through her, deeper than anything else had ever gone.

The Simurgh, for the first time in history, screamed. Not the invisible siren song of her psychic influence, but a true, agonized scream. The false angel writhed in place, shrieking with lungs that did not exist, clawing at its melting flesh as feathers molted away, holes grew larger, chunks of her body ceased to exist. She had diminished immensely in just a few seconds, losing a good foot of height and several wings that all fell to earth and immediately destabilized, their solid crystal forms completely breaking down into toxic gunk.

But it wasn’t quite enough. Not by a long shot.

Even as Taylor zipped away from the screaming, wailing Endbringer, she could see her acid slowing down, stopping as it burned deep, horrid, ugly pits into the Simurgh’s thin limbs and now almost gangrenous looking flesh. Something inside of the Simurgh was resisting her acid, even though it was almost the strongest acid she had. Taylor growled slightly, whizzing back around in a wide arc even as the Simurgh continued to fling rubble her way, buildings tumbling through the air in shaky, uncertain arcs- the Simurgh was distracted by its burning flesh, it seemed, even though it had never before reacted to any attacks in such a manner.

Taylor grinned, a vicious thing, sharp and cruel. She was enjoying this.

She phased through a Starbucks that had been uprooted and flung her way, spinning artfully and, with a twist of her wings and the tiniest flex of her power, sliced the entire building into ribbons as she passed through, cheering almost wildly as she reveled in the wind flowing through her wings. She felt alive with power, not even caring that she was burning through energy like a wildfire just to boost a few attacks.

She ran through her list of powers as she intensified her acid, concentrating it even further until it could be strengthened and concentrated no more, the Simurgh’s limbs sloughing off as it let out an ear piercing wail- almost begging for her to stop, true desperation in its voice for the first time in its fifteen years of existence. Taylor didn’t listen, her grin shifting into an intense, hate-filled glare.

It dared to beg for mercy, to weep and wail with its false face, as if that would garner her sympathy? She shook her head and pulled, her gravity powers dragging the Simurgh to the ground, crushing it against asphalt and concrete and dirt and stone, grinding away its exterior even further. A flex of her will and Magnetism sprung forth, sharpened blades of metal compressing and compressing until they were so dense that she could barely keep them in the air- So she let them fall. Gravity pulled them in and spun them around, blades of blackened, almost physics breaking metals slamming against the Simurgh’s crystal body, shredding through layer after layer, scoring deep gouges and rending the material away. All the while, the Simurgh continued to wail until its entire body was rendered down, unable to scream anymore without its face or mouth.

She continued until the blades broke against a substance too hard to be cut through, even the hyper compressed material failing against the still denser, almost indestructible center of the Endbringer- a lumpy mass, vaguely humanoid, about three feet long. It seemed to pulse and writhe as it was exposed to the air, a psychic scream of desperation ringing out so powerfully that it flooded Taylor’s mind, begging for mercy once more, pleading for the pain to stop.

It was pathetic.

“Shut up,” Taylor spat, grimacing as the Simurgh finally gave up pretense of Manton limitations, the lull in attacks giving it just enough focus to grab hold of Taylor’s body and push, a wave of force throwing Taylor back long enough for the Simurgh to broadcast a blast of information that pierced into Taylor’s mind and brought her up short as she processed what the Simurgh was trying to tell her.

She paused and blinked slowly, glaring at the core on the ground as it floated back into the air, just barely a foot above the ground, shuddering and twitching as it fitfully regrew a portion of its flesh, slowly reforming a head that continued wailing, begging, even as it broadcasted more information straight into Taylor’s mind.

Taylor paused and tilted her head, a heavy frown forming on her face as she continued glaring.

She’d already made up her mind, her and Gorast as one.

Nothing would change that, not even the Simurgh’s cries for some kind of mercy. The Endbringer would die today, and nothing would change that.

But, then again, a mercy kill was still mercy.

Taylor grit her teeth as the Endbringer before her seemed to accept its fate, the crystalline lump falling to the ground once again as she drew the shadows around her one more time, building up her power and letting it loose with a cry of effort. A massive shadowy hand erupted from her chest, smokey and tinged with crimson, lunging forth and grasping the core of the Simurgh with deadly intent.

Hunger snapped out moments later, violent streaks of electric green racing through the shadowy limb and draining the Simurgh’s life, drawing in what felt like infinite wells of energy, pulsing through her until it all cut off at once, a snapping sound reverberating through Taylor’s mind as the Simurgh screamed out one last time.

The hand retracted, dragging the core with it until a swirling mass of shadow consumed it whole, absorbing it into Taylor and crushing it into nothingness.

Taylor shuddered, then bent over and screamed.

A pillar of shadow erupted around her like a cyclone, power flooding through her as silvery liquid- energized protodermis- leaked from the joints of her armor, covering her body and burning her flesh, agonizing pain erupting through her limbs as new mutations took hold.

Wings, two pairs of them, joined her original wings. Out they came, sprouting from her back in the form of massive curving arcs, all three pairs taking on the same form and color at once, melding together and shifting irregularly until the energized protodermis covering her finalized their shape- two pairs of wings in the shape of massive, almost rectangular broadswords, similar to her original wings, yet slightly smaller, more agile. A single pair of wings hanging down almost like the tails on a butterfly’s wings, curved in smooth arcs, like a pair of sabers.

Shining, pearlescent veins covered her armor, artful and beautiful, glowing as they cracked through her body and flooded in like kintsugi. Feathers, razor sharp and shining the same pearlescent white, erupted from her elbows, knees, and shoulders, accenting them and fluttering in the breeze generated by the cyclone of shadow surrounding her.

She screamed one last time, the changes finalizing as a crown of feathers erupted from the back of her mask, flaring up like a crest and fluttering in the wind as well, and two teartracks burning down from her eyes all the way to her chin, filled in with the same pearlescent white.

The pain faded.

The Shadows dissipated.

Taylor dropped to her knees and panted, dropping out of her Toa form and changing back to her human self, whimpering as she curled up into a fetal ball on the ground, her hair now shining white and irises an iridescent pearl color with no pupil.

“.... That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Gorast muttered, wheezing a bit as she recovered from the shock of the pain, groaning as she went over the memories of what had just happened. “Makuta absorption isn’t supposed to cause pain, nor such extensive mutations… we were only supposed to gain wings, maybe telekinesis! What was that…? The Endbringer had no will either… that… that isn’t… normal. Even Rahi have wills that need to be suppressed.”

Taylor only groaned and flopped over onto her back, taking a few shuddering breaths until she finally, blessedly passed out.

 

Chapter 14

There was a controlled chaos in the aftermath of it all. Taylor stirred gently as she awoke once more in a cell for the second time in her life, blinking the sleep out of her eyes and sitting up, the thin blanket covering her body falling down and-

“... Why am I naked?” Taylor asked to no one in particular, frowning heavily before she blinked and examined herself more thoroughly. “Wait… what the hell…?”

Taylor slowly slid out of bed and began turning around, looking at her body from all sides, tracing the new lines of shimmering protodermis lining her entire body, outlining muscles and joints and giving her a nearly inhuman, robotic look. She grimaced, watching as the lines shifted colors in response to her mood, the silvery material becoming a metallic lavender color in her confusion.

“Oh wonderful, I have mood lighting installed into my skin,” Taylor groused, rubbing her forehead as the lines in her flesh began to glow a faint orange-ish red, a signal of her annoyance. She sighed and sat back down on the bed, not even noticing as the bed sheet twirled around her body and ripped itself in strategic locations, providing her with a neat cotton robe and protected her from the slightly chilly cell.

Another MS confinement cell, it seemed. This one was… different from Brockton Bay. It had a different acronym than PRT on the wall- an APR stamped onto the colored strip next to the door instead, but otherwise seemed to be constructed pretty much the same way. An approximately twelve foot cube, with a small blocked off section in the corner with a toilet, a sink, and a shower stall, a bed opposite the door, a desk that folded out of the wall with a matching bench directly below it, and at least four security cameras in the ceiling, along with a touch screen next to the door.

What was nonstandard and, honestly, quite surprising, were the- what seemed like- hundreds of gifts piled up all over the floor that she’d somehow managed to not bump into while she was examining herself, nor noticed until just now.

“... When the hell did these get here?” Taylor muttered, walking over to the assembled piles and sorting through them all, tossing the slightly wilted looking bouquets of flowers to the side to look at later and tearing open the envelopes, goggling at the sheer amount of cash that had been inside of them. She sat back, jaw dropping open as she stared at the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bills floating before her, various kinds of currency represented from USD, AUD, even a few piles of Euros.

All told, even with conversion rates…

It was more money than she’d ever seen in one place at once.

And that wasn’t even counting whatever was in the myriad of boxes that were still piled up at the edges of the room.

“Gorast?”

“Yes?”

“I think we’re rich.”

“No, really?”

Taylor continued sitting there, surrounded by envelope scraps for the better part of a few minutes before she finally came to her senses and flexed her will, summoning her shadow into existence and-

“Gah!” Taylor screeched as her shadow expanded far faster than it should have, lashing out into a smoky miasma that instantly flooded the entire room and swallowed up the money, gifts, and the flowers alike before retracting once again. “What the fuck!?”

“Oh, did I not mention?” Gorast snickered in the depths of her mind, seeming far too energetic and almost manic for someone who’d probably just woken up. “Our body is running at about six thousand percent power right now.”

“Gorast. That doesn’t make any physical sense,” Taylor deadpanned, crossing her legs and kneading her forehead irritably. “You can’t just run at six thousand percent max power, if you could, then why haven’t we exploded yet?”

“Well how else do you call having nearly sixty times the energy and energy capacity that we used to? With this much power we’re approaching- even surpassing that bastard traitor Teridax!” Gorast crowed victoriously in the back of her mind, pumping her fists metaphorically and buzzing with glee. “I haven’t felt this powerful since the day Mata Nui created me!”

“.... Well, now that you mention it…” Taylor muttered, flexing her muscles experimentally, marvelling at the fact that, yes, she did seem stronger now. “Interesting… We’re… gonna need to do a lot of testing later on. And practice, so we don’t kill people on accident.”

“Yes, killing people would be bad,” Gorast deadpanned before taking a brief amount of control from Taylor, disgorging the boxes from her shadow while keeping the cash inside, draining the energy from the flowers and shreds of paper until they crumbled into dust and the resultant mess was summarily dumped into the toilet and flushed away. “I believe you wanted to check these?”

“Thanks Gorast,” Taylor murmured, before blinking as several boxes instantly floated to her lap without her using either her shadows or her actual limbs. “.... Wait we have Telekinesis now?”

“Yes. And fortunately for the both of us, it actually comes with the closest equivalent of a user manual,” Gorast answered, dumping what felt like an infinite amount of information into Taylor’s memory at once, a sudden rush of data that- surprisingly- didn’t immediately knock her out.

It did, however, give her a splitting headache.

“Ow fuck! Jesus christ Gorast! Warn me before you do that!” Taylor groaned, collapsing to the ground and wincing, her vision swimming as she immediately blocked out the lights and rubbed her temples, blindly stumbling over to the sink and filling it to the brim before dunking her face in and groaning in relief as the cool water soothed her throbbing (technically not even real) brain.

She breathed deeply, gills sprouting along her neck as Adaptation activated and let her breathe without issue, a quick flash of her Heat Resistance ability instantly turning the water into a frigid slush that cooled her down further.

“Ahhhh… that’s so much better…” Taylor groaned as she fell back to the floor, headache now cured after breathing in slushy ice for the better part of five minutes. “Okay, now let’s open those boxes.”

>*<

“Okay, so. We’ve got…. What’s probably about a metric fuckton of candy and other nonperishable food, thirty stuffed animals of various kinds, about a hundred ‘honorary citizen’ plaques from about as many countries, even more money… and also more thank you notes than I know what to do with. Gorast, how long have we been out?” Taylor asked, sorting everything into neat piles before extending out her shadow- slowly this time, to take away everything and store it safely and neatly with everything else she owned.

“From what I can gather? Approximately a week or so. Something like that, though you’ll have to check the date yourself,” Gorast murmured, yawning quietly in the recesses of Taylor’s mind and reminding her of the fact that she’d been sorting through stuff, opening boxes, and generally just cleaning up her cell of the stuff that had been crowding it for the better part of a few hours now.

“... Wait. Why hasn’t anyone come to check on me?” Taylor asked, then winced as a massive burst of data spiked into her mind again, her Mind Reading activating on the slightest flex of her will and gathering what had to be a massive sonar ping of pretty much entirely junk data from the minds of people…

“What the hell!?” Taylor shrieked, clamping her hands against her head and chucking the data into the back of her mind, wincing again before dunking her head into the still cold slush in the sink to clear the pain. “When the hell did our Mind Reading hit planetary range!?”

“Probably when we ate the Endbringer best known for total mastery of all things Psionics,” Gorast deadpanned dryly, metaphorically stamping the data into the junk pile in the back of Taylor’s short term memory. “Just a thought.”

“God, I hate it when you get snarky.” Taylor muttered and sighed, stepping up to the touch screen next to the door and activating it, grumbling quietly to herself and scrolling through the menus before blinking at the note that had been left on the home screen.

Toa:
When you are ready, activate the intercom button to be released.
Thank you for killing the Simurgh.​

Huh.

Convenient.

“Well… I guess it’s nice that they’re fine just letting me out like this. Not that they could stop me if they tried, but… y’know. What do you say, Gorast? Ready to get out of here?”

“I wanted to leave the moment you woke up. But nooooo, you had to waste our time opening tithes and gifts from the peasantry.”

“... Snippy today, aren’t you? Whatever, let’s just go,” Taylor muttered, raising her eyebrow and tabbing over to the intercom button, activating it with a simple press of her palm against the screen.

“Hey, this is Toa. I’d like to be let out now, please.”

 

Chapter 15

Home.

Home at last.

Or at least, as close to home as she could imagine, since her actual home was… no longer in existence.

A hotel room, paid for by the PRT, the most expensive, high class one in Brockton Bay.

It’d be funny to her, the fact that she’d gone from homeless to a world hero in mere hours, if it weren’t so sad.

Taylor groaned as she flopped down onto the bed, not even caring that she was still filthy, not caring that she hadn’t showered in what had to be weeks. She was finally back in Brockton Bay after a week long coma and another week of endless, tiring, horrible interviews.

She was so tired. So, so tired. Not physically, no. She had more energy in her body than she knew what to do with, enough power to level two continents into a flat wasteland and get a good start on a third if she damn well wanted to. But right now? All she wanted to do was sleep. To rest.

To get away from it all and just find some peace, some security. Somewhere she could just relax and not have to deal with so many hundreds of people at once, all of them vying to shake her hand, to take a picture with her, to thank her, to bow at her feet. She never wanted any of that, to have people supplicating themselves at her feet like she was some kind of goddess. Even Gorast, who’d been a dictator for well over fifty thousand years, never wanted nor experienced that kind of devotion- sure, she’d enslaved what was probably thousands of Matoran and did horrible experiments on them but that was never something that inspired endless devotion and praise, and getting both from the collective people of the world now was just bizarre.

Idly, Taylor thought that maybe she shouldn’t be so lenient about Gorast’s previous crimes against decency and biology, but then again Gorast was effectively dead and incapable of doing anything without Taylor’s explicit trust in her, so. Kind of a moot point, in her opinion.

“Is this the part where we finally get to go to sleep again?” Gorast asked from the recesses of her mind, yawning and buzzing quietly as she metaphorically tramped around in circles and prepared for bed. Somehow, Taylor was struck with the image of Gorast wearing pajamas and holding a stuffed teddy bear- an image so ridiculous she almost started laughing, but only managed to snort some air out of her nose.

“You’d think sleeping would be the last thing on our priority list, huh?” Taylor muttered, shaking her head and burrowing into the thick, soft comforters of the king sized bed, sighing quietly as she surrounded herself in fluffy and warmth and buried herself down as deep as she could go until the only thing she could see, hear, and feel was the silk sheets wrapped around her body like a nest.

Gorast didn’t answer, not that Taylor expected her to. The Makuta had, after all, been falling asleep even as Taylor burrowed into her nest and proceeded to surround herself with as many pillows and blankets as was physically possible until the bed more resembled the cocoon of some large butterfly or moth rather than what was supposed to be a king sized bed.

Taylor yawned quietly and snuggled into the pillows cushioning her body, both her heat and ice resistance abilities turned on at a low level and making sure she had a cool, soothing environment that was just warm enough that she wouldn’t feel cold, and cool enough that she wouldn’t overheat. Blinking slowly, she let herself drift off, bit by bit, slowly letting her mind fall into the haze of dreams as the soft warmth and cool darkness of her nest lulled her into a deep, restful sleep.

>*<

“Toa?” A quiet knock on the hotel door, barely audible to her ears with how deeply she was buried. “This is Armsmaster. Are you decent? I’m here on behalf of the Protectorate.”

Armsmaster.

Hm.

She stirred gently in her sleep, murmuring quietly as she struggled to remember through the fog in her mind- was there something she had to do? She hoped not.

Silently, she wiggled and made a motion at the door, groaning softly from the effort of staying awake before falling back asleep once again.

Armsmaster, meanwhile, blinked slowly as the door clicked and swung open, allowing him entry into Toa’s room- he hadn’t really known what he expected, but the fact that it was entirely untouched save for the massive nest of blankets and pillows heaped precariously upon the king sized mattress was… not particularly surprising per se, but he had expected perhaps a bit more mess around the room. From what he could see, Toa hadn’t even touched anything other than the bed since arriving at the hotel the day prior.

Considering she showed an enormous amount of signs of both mental exhaustion and most likely suicidal depression, he wasn’t… too surprised that the first thing she’d done was hole up in a nest and sleep.

He’d done much the same in his college years after all.

And so had several of his colleagues.

Hm.

Armsmaster silently scheduled a quick appointment for himself with the onsite therapist before continuing into the room, the quiet whir of the servos in his armor providing a soothing bit of noise- he of course could have eliminated the sound entirely but the PR team and him both shockingly agreed that it would have been so much less impressive and/or intimidating- as he stepped up next to the bed and disengaged his armor locks, stepping free of his armor and sitting down on the conveniently placed chair.

Colin paused, then looked over at where he thought the chair had been seconds ago, only to find an empty spot next to the table. Had Toa teleported the chair over while he wasn’t looking?

Most likely.

Rhetorical questions aside, Colin cleared his throat and leaned forward, pulling a sheaf of papers from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and unfolding them.

“Miss Hebert, I apologize for interrupting your rest, but I’ve come to represent the Protectorate, who, in conjunction with the Guild and the appropriate equivalent organizations across the entirety of the United Nations, have come to ask you a few questions regarding your actions in Canberra sixteen days ago, on February 25th, 2011, as well as a few questions regarding whether or not you would be willing to help out with subsequent S class threats in the future.”

Colin blinked slowly as the sheaf of papers in his hand fluttered of their own accord, the various questions written down now answered neatly, flowing letters of emerald green… something now appearing under every question, answering all of them before writing out a small list of demands on the blank paper at the bottom of the stack.

Hm.

Colin read through the questions again, noting the answers and nodding slowly with every line, his brow furrowing every now and then but otherwise remaining calm.

“Hm. Unorthodox, but thank you for your time regardless. I’ll be leaving now. And… I know this may be a bit belated, but… I’m sorry for your loss. If you need any aid- anything at all, the Protectorate and the PRT are more than willing to help.”

No response- not that he expected anything, but he thought he saw a slight movement in the pile of blankets right before the door closed behind him. If that was a sign that Toa was listening, then he supposed that it was a good thing.

Now… where was he going to find an appropriately sized workspace for her?

 

Chapter 16

1- Do you, in any way, have any ill will towards the general human populace?

No. I have some grudges against certain people, and against criminals and villains in general, but in general I think I would prefer helping rather than hurting people.

2- What exactly did you do that created the dome of shadows over Canberra as well as the smaller orb that absorbed the Simurgh’s cannon beam?

I am Makuta. I command Shadows in all forms. To consume the light and draw strength from it is my nature.

3- How were you able to evade the Simurgh even when it seemed to be actively targeting you?

Unknown. Presumably, it could not see me directly. It could, however, seem to sense where I was by my effects on the world. I threw a rock and instead of attacking me, it attacked where the rock was.

4- Are you willing to submit to power testing some time in the near future?

Yes. As long as it isn’t too invasive.

A sea of odd questions floated through her mind as she slept, a familiar, yet still strange, voice whispering them into her ear as she dreamed. She thought it was a male voice, her mind conjuring up images of a beard and a blue helmet, a knight-like figure upon a mighty steed of fire and steel. Handsome, vaguely so, in that sort of way that was more reminiscent of a dad than someone she’d be attracted to. Like she could have seen how he would have been attractive about twenty years ago, give or take five years, but as he was, he reminded more of…

Well, not her father.

Her father was gone.

She blinked slowly, pursing her lips as she gained a sudden clarity, the dream around her fading away into a black, empty expanse where no light existed, no physicality existed. There was nothing but her mind, and her memories.

The voice continued whispering in her mind, making her blink slowly as she waved it away, a tiny flex of her will causing… something to happen. She felt her powers activate, but it was distant and far away, as if feeling someone poke the finger of an arm that had long since fallen asleep- she could feel it, but it was…. Dim. Muted. As if she weren’t quite there. Still the voice whispered to her- questions that she vaguely answered in the back of her mind, some polite words, some concerned feelings, a quiet resentment.

Resentment?

Ah, yes, the resentment of her being more famous than… not the voice, but whoever the voice was reading from. The person with the beard, not the voice in her ears- why did she think the voice in her mind was male? No, clearly female, high and clear, the alto voice in an angelic choir. Beautiful, silky, a bit subversive with its ever so slightly husky undertones.

Not like her voice, human and rough, scratchy with disuse and echoing with a metallic rasp that sounded of whirring joints and gnashing blades. Not like Gorast’s voice, inhuman and eldritch, a mix of strange tones that became the sound of a buzzing swarm, the rush of an ancient and terrible river, the ripping of wings through wind and the rending of claws through metallic flesh.

A voice she couldn’t quite place…

A voice that she knew she’d heard before.

It wasn’t important though, was it?

No, not yet. Something in the back of her mind whispered to her- not the beautiful voice, but a low, sibilant thing, slithering around in the very back of her awareness. It wasn’t ready yet. She wasn’t ready yet. It wasn’t important yet. What was important, though, was the lair.

Taylor cocked her head to the side- lair?

Ah, she remembered now. An out of the way underground space. A fortress deemed nigh impregnable. Nearly in the middle of the city, disguised as a simple transportation storage hub. A fortress with everything she’d need in the future.

More than what she had now, even. A preparation for- for…

Taylor blinked in confusion as she tried to shake herself out of the dreamy haze over her mind. Color began bleeding back into the area as she lost her cohesion, lost the clarity of her mind into the haze of dreaming sleep once again. She wasn’t… wasn’t quite sure what she had been thinking. Wasn’t really sure why she wanted a lair- though a permanent home would be nice… someplace to stay, someplace to rest and heal, to move forward and move on.

Yes, that’d be nice… very nice indeed.

Taylor nodded to herself as she watched the black abyss in her mind fade away slowly, a silvery looking circle forming in the very center of the abyss even as color began to fog her eyes. Something was… moving in that circle- no not a circle. A pool. A silvery pool of liquid in the back of her mind, and something was splashing around in it, its form hazy and indistinct and yet… memorable somehow. Like she knew the figure- had… met whoever it was.

Pale skin…

Hm… beautiful, in its own way…

Taylor hummed softly as she drifted back to sleep, a snippet of song that she didn’t remember drifting through her mind.

>*<

“I still don’t like it,” Director Tagg grumbled, crossing his arms and glaring directly into the camera. Director Piggot rolled her eyes and tried not to snort at the vein visibly bulging on Tagg’s forehead. The former squad leader was still new to his position, and it showed. Being overly aggressive towards everyone under his command, not working well with the local Protectorate- if he weren’t such an honest and straightforward person and an otherwise competent leader and director, Piggot was sure he would have been kicked out not even a week after his instatement.

Then again, the person who used to sit where Tagg sat now had been the same way, except she was now in a federal prison for embezzling funds and knowingly under-equipping her troops.

“Don’t like what, James?” Piggot asked, raising her eyebrow and folding her hands in front of her.

“That we’re knowingly allowing an S-class threat to just… parade around as she damn well pleases! We don’t even know if she’s still human! What if the Simurgh took over her brain or something, and she’s just biding her time until she decides to kill us all!?” Tagg slammed his fist against the table, almost shouting as the vein on his forehead popped even larger and his face took on an impressive looking shade of red.

“Then we can only really wait until she actually tries to kill us all,” Chief Director Costa Brown sighed, rubbing her forehead and pursing her lips disapprovingly. “James, I realize that you have a prejudice against capes with mental powers, but let me put it like this: Taylor Hebert, alias Toa, has singlehandedly killed a being which has evaded all parahuman attempts to destroy it for nine years straight. She has proven herself not only both incredibly powerful, but also incredibly difficult to kill, to the point that even in a week long coma neither Eidolon nor Alexandria were even able to put so much as a dent in her skin. So let me ask you again, what could we possibly do to contain her that wouldn’t instantly draw her ill will in our direction?”

Tagg paled slightly at the Chief Director’s words, leaning back slightly while Director Armstrong chose that moment to clear his throat and shuffle his copy of Armsmaster’s report.

“Not to mention,” the man spoke, his voice a bit hesitant out of what might have been fear, might have been disbelief. “She has been recorded as saying that she can read minds on a planetary scale. Even if she is exaggerating or lying, the report from Armsmaster just a day ago proves that she seems to have some form of either extra-sensory or precognitive power, given that she managed to answer every single question that he was going to ask before he could even finish his introduction. So. Just a fact to consider.”

“....”

“Don’t look so pale, James,” Director Piggot finally huffed derisively, rolling her eyes at her fellow Director. “You’re not the one who has to put up with the fact that she’s currently living six blocks from my office.”

“... Best of luck then, Emily.” Director Tagg murmured quietly, his hands shaking vigorously as he took a sip from his coffee cup and tried not to panic at the thought of a literally indestructible, ultra powerful cape reading his mind from halfway across the country.

Director Piggot sniffed. “I’ll fucking need it.”

 

Chapter 17

“I can’t believe you’re even thinking of doing such a- a crude, disgusting act! Have you no shame!? Stop it! Stop it right this instant!” Gorast howled in the back of Taylor’s mind, straining to take control of Taylor’s body to stop her from- from…

“Gorast, can you not?” Taylor groaned, sighing as she flexed her arm and broke Gorast’s hold over her limb with a slight bit of difficulty. “I haven’t eaten in almost a month and a half. I know we don’t need to, but I’m starting to forget what things taste like.”

“... Taste?”

“What, do Makuta not have a sense of taste?” Taylor asked as she rooted through her pile of nonperishable food, yawning quietly as she pulled out a can of soup- apparently it was some kind of “chicken pot pie” in a can… whatever the fuck that meant. “God, that’s sad.”

“... What in the name of Mata Nui is taste?” Gorast muttered, her wings buzzing in Taylor’s ears as she tried to remember why the word seemed so familiar, and yet so strange and alien to her metaphorical ears. While Gorast wracked her memory, Taylor simply removed the lid of the can, pulling the tab and using a flex of magnetism, heat vision, and telekinesis to re-shape it into a thin but serviceable spoon. Another flex of will and redirecting her eyes caused the can to begin steaming under her heat vision, perfectly heated without causing the thick soup to boil or explode from the can.

“Taste is uh- you did have a mouth, right? And the ability to eat?” Taylor asked, sniffing the can of soup in her hand and humming appreciatively, adding a bit of salt and pepper to give it a bit more flavor before digging in and-

“OoooOOOOOHHHHHHH! BY THE GREAT SPIRIT!” Gorast almost moaned in Taylor’s ear, a sound so sudden and shocking compared to Gorast’s normal grating, eldritch tone that Taylor almost spit out her soup, choking as it shot up her nose and coughing madly into a napkin before she managed to swallow it and use her telekinesis to get all the wasted droplets out of where they weren’t supposed to be.

“Jesus fuck Gorast! What the hell was that!?” Taylor hacked, smacking the side of her head and forming an illusion of Gorast just to glare at something that wasn’t the wall.

“I. Um. Ignore that.” Gorast’s illusory shuffled in place, crimson eyes looking in literally every direction but Taylor’s as Gorast seemed to blush sheepishly. “I had… forgotten that… taste was a sense that I had. And-”

“Your first taste of food in a hundred thousand years was too much for you to handle. Gotcha,” Taylor nodded slowly, smirking a bit at Gorast’s obvious embarrassment. Without waiting for Gorast’s response, she dispelled the illusion and shoveled another spoonful of soup into her mouth, chewing on the slightly mushy chicken and revelling in the act of eating something for the first time in months.

Gorast’s definitely-not-moans in her ear were a bit grating, but she just shoved them into the back of her mind and continued shoveling the soup down her gullet all the same, groaning in delight as she all but dumped the entire can down her throat like a fucking animal, not even caring that her table manners were atrocious nor giving half a damn that she probably looked like some kind of horrible gremlin with her rat’s nest of bedhead, her dirty, torn up hoodie and sweatpants, and her generally greasy, unwashed state.

Which, speaking of.

Taylor burped noisily once she finished the can, crushing it into a ball along with the lid-spoon she’d made and disintegrating it into free floating molecules with a touch. Hrmmm…

Idly, she licked the inside of her teeth and shuddered, all but forcing herself to stand up and not immediately gorge herself on the food she knew she had tucked away in her shadow, and instead to walk into the massive bathroom the hotel provided, shuck off her absolutely ruined clothes and disintegrate them so she wouldn’t have to deal with cleaning out that much dirt, and stepped into the shower.

“Ahhhhhh…. Bliss,” Taylor moaned as the hot spray hit her body, humming to herself as she used her telekinesis to grab the graciously provided shower scrub poof ball thing (Taylor didn’t know what they were called but it was nice to have one again) and start vigorously scrubbing down her entire body, the sweet smell of citrus bodywash cutting through the haze of steam as she washed away the filth coating her like a shell. Even if she could have just disintegrated it all- this was important to her. To feel human again, not like the almost unfeeling partial-robot that she’d physically become.

It was wonderful. To shower again, feel the heat of the water running against her body, luxuriate in the action of the shower scrub cutting through the grime and watching the water run clear as it all vanished under a tidal wave of body wash and suds. A thick, perfume-like scent filled the shower cubicle as she continued with her cleaning, facial wash applied liberally and enough shampoo (almost half the bottle given that her hair now reached down to her knees) dumped into her hair to turn her mass of solid white curls into a puffball of thick, floral scented foam.

She washed her hair twice, running her hands, all four of them, through the tangled locks and making sure that there was no trace of dirt or grime left. She sighed happily as she cleaned out her hair, continuing to let the burning heat of the water wash over her inhumanly pale, almost silvery skin and draw out the smallest flush of red as she deactivated her heat resistance to better enjoy her shower. Conditioner came next, applied liberally until the bottle was almost half empty and every last inch of her hair was completely covered. Taylor didn’t know if she actually needed it anymore, but going through the routine felt nice, natural. A little piece of herself restored from the ashes of her old life.

She continued showering for a good, long while, soaking up the hot water until it began to run cold, then finally shut the water off and stepped out of the cubicle amidst a billowing cloud of steam. Towels floated over, luxuriously soft and fluffy as they dried her body and wrapped around her hair, followed soon after by a bathrobe that settled around her shoulders and tied itself shut, wrapping Taylor in a cool, soft embrace of silk that felt absolutely heavenly.

“Wow…” she murmured, slowly padding out of the bathroom, feet clad in soft cotton slippers as she made her way across the suite and over to the window, basking in the sunlight of early March. “Y’know what, Gorast?”

“Yes?”

She smiled, a genuine expression of happiness spreading across her face for the first time in what felt like forever. “After that shower and eating… I feel… I feel human again.”

 

Chapter 18

Time stood still.

She stared, almost hyperventilating at the sight before her. At the person before her. The three people in front of her, who hadn’t even noticed her presence. Taylor shuddered gently, clenching her fists as she cycled through a tumultuous storm of emotions all at once. Fear- The ever present sense of dread she felt at seeing the trio of faces that had so thoroughly ruined her life and actually killed her. Rage- The intense fury that demanded retribution for the wrongs that had been done to her. Panic- The lingering desire to run away, run away, run away so that they couldn’t find her, catch her, tear her down and break her piece by piece until nothing remained. Vindictiveness- The sheer need to storm up to them and show them just what kind of a monster they’d brought into the world with their cruelty. Sheer murderous intent- The kind that wanted her to storm up to the three girls and crush them all like insects-

“Taylor. I know this is hypocritical coming from me, but don’t do it.” Gorast’s voice cut through her emotions and cleared her mind in an instant, making her stumble in mid step as the sounds of the mall all came rushing back to her, firmly anchoring her in the here and now rather than what had been done to her in months long past. She breathed in and out, deeply and slowly, calming down the phantom sensation of her heart racing in her chest. She swallowed thickly and pressed a hand to her heart, trying not to lose her disguise, trying not to reveal herself, trying to keep herself together as she leaned against a support pillar and-

“Hey, are you okay?”

A voice cut through her musings again, making her blink as she realized that she’d started hyperventilating again, lost in her thoughts and almost blinded by the sheer amount of emotions and memories racing through her brain, unable to stop them.

The voice- focus on the voice. Taylor swallowed again and looked up- or rather down, since she was currently in the form of a tall-ish, mildly attractive mid-30s blonde woman, the shape compiled together just by looking out the window earlier and picking out a few traits to combine. She blinked slowly and tried to control herself, forcing her emotions down as she tried to maintain a shaky smile. Her fist clenched by her side, veins hidden by her clothes starting to pulse a deadly, murderous dark red as she looked at Madison Clements, who’d wandered away from the other two bitches that had ruined her life, and was now standing before her and looking at her with such a genuine seeming look of concern that Taylor almost thought it was real.

“I-I’m…” She took a shuddering breath and almost- almost- let loose with one of her vision powers, stopping only when Gorast directly took control of her powers and withheld them from her. She almost gasped at the feeling, the yawning, gaping chasm of where her powers used to sit driving a spike of ice into her imaginary heart and bringing her focus back to the present.

“I said don’t do it! We are a hero, Taylor! It might not be in my nature, but we will follow the moral code that we agreed upon! Are you really so pathetic that you would go back on your word- our word just for petty revenge against three insects that made you stronger than anyone could ever imagine!?”

“... fine.” Taylor finished, breathing out again and standing up a little straighter, still clenching her fist as the veins running over her body even when shapeshifted continued to glow a dark, bloody red, to the point that she almost thought they were shining through her clothes.

“Are you sure…? You look like you’re having a panic attack… Do you need some water or something?” Madison asked, stepping forward and into Taylor’s personal space- too close too close too close too close too close too close too close too close too close too close too close too close too-!

Taylor immediately lost control, pushing Madison away at the same time as Gorast finally returned her power, both girls yelping at the same time as they fell in opposite directions- Madison tumbling to the floor from the unexpected push, and Taylor falling through the support pillar, stumbling through to the other side as her disguise finally shifted away and left her standing there in her true human self, silvery pale and snow white hair, eyes of shining ruby red darting about as all sound seemed to come to a halt in an instant.

“T-Toa?” Madison whispered, clambering to her feet slowly with her eyes wide with disbelief, rubbing her collarbone and shaking with- with.

“Yo Mads, what’re you doing? Weren’t we gonna go?” Sophia called out, drawing Taylor’s attention in a flash as the Trio finally assembled all at once. Taylor gulped, eyes darting wildly back and forth, taking in the crowd around them, all openly staring while the Trio just looked at her with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“No no no no no no no, not again, not again!” Taylor whispered madly to herself, shaking and almost on the verge of running away, stepping back slowly before Gorast’s voice cut through her panic once again.

“Calm yourself, Taylor. They can’t hurt you. You’re stronger than them. Stronger than anything else on this pathetic ball of wet rock! You are a world renowned hero. They are nothing. Confront them with strength, not fear!”

“You’re right…” Taylor whispered to herself taking a deep breath as a sense of forced calm smothered her raging emotions, Gorast’s ever-present apathy and disdain for humanity blanketing her mind until she couldn’t feel anything but the smooth, vicious satisfaction of what she was going to do.

A slow, evil smirk overtook her face as she gathered her wits, stepping forward slowly as she changed her shape, bones melting and arms merging together until she was human again- human as she was. The strange looks of fearful concern on the Trio’s faces all at once melted away into pure, chalk white fear as her appearance changed. Long, sweeping curls of ink black hair, a pale, almost gaunt face. Glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, set slightly above a too-wide mouth with thin, pale lips. Her figure went from athletic and beautiful to skinny and almost twiglike, her hands changing from claw tipped fingers to the soft, pink nails of a human.

Her clothes stayed the same- the same old ratty, slightly worn out clothes that she’d come to replace, drab and baggy and draped over her frame like the robes of a long dead specter.

“You three…” Taylor muttered, holding the three girls’ legs in place with only a small, effortless flex of telekinesis. “Have a lot of nerve…”

She growled under her breath, snorting air from her nostrils as she towered over the three, watching dispassionately as they immediately began denying what they saw, shaking their heads and begging, full of fear and panic, unable to stop themselves from gibbering- save for Sophia in the middle, who was simply frozen with shock.

“So. What we have here is an amazing role reversal, isn’t it?” Taylor asked rhetorically, continuing to hold the three girls in place, listening dispassionately to Emma pleading for mercy, Madison begging for forgiveness, Sophia… continuing to stay silent, her mouth gaping open like a fish. “Here and now, I have all the power in the world and more influence in my little finger than you three have in your entire web of connections. I’ll be honest: The moment I saw you three just now, I almost thought about killing you. And honestly, if it weren’t for some stunningly effective self control measures put into place, you three would be very, very dead. But you’re not. And you know why?”

Taylor leaned in close, just enough so that all three could hear her.

“I’m a hero. And I’m better than you. Sleep.”

The three girls collapsed.

 

Chapter 19

“Why did I do that!?” Taylor all but wailed as she slammed her head against the wall of the cell that she’d teleported into and immediately locked by forcing the door shut and holding it there with magnetism, ignoring the banging on the door from a very confused PRT trooper asking her to please come out, the cell is meant for Master Strange confinement, not nervous breakdowns. “What the fuck is wrong with me!?”

“What!” THUD “Was!” THUD “I!” THUD “THINKING!?” CRACK

Taylor stopped and blinked as she suddenly found her face not resting against, but embedded in the thick, reinforced wall of the MS Cell, the dusty taste of concrete dust and paint settling in her nose and mouth as she pulled out, making her cough and gag as she spat the dust out and wiped her face. “Whoops.”

“Are you done with your tantrum yet?” Gorast deadpanned in Taylor’s mind, forcing the girl over to the sink and manually growing a new pair of arms to wash Taylor’s face. “You’ve spent the last fifteen minutes screaming and the only reason why is because you finally stood up to the worthless sacks of flesh haunting your nightmares and then put them to sleep! You didn’t even maim them, despite how close you were to losing your Spirit-damned mind before I intervened! I thought you’d be jumping for joy by now, not damaging government property in the middle of an unjustified freakout!”

“Yeah and I just left them there! I probably looked like a fucking villain doing that!” Taylor screamed into the mirror, punching the wall with both of her right hands and cracking it with a shower of chips and concrete dust as the image of Gorast flashed into existence, overlaying her own face with the Makuta’s.

“Then simply explain your situation, you Akilini-head! Your slow-think these days is just about as terrible-bad as when we first merged! Except somehow even more bad-worse since this is panic rather than depression!”

“Hey! I’m not an Akilini-head!” Taylor protested, then paused and blinked as Gorast seemed to reel back in shock at the fact that she’d just used Le-Matoran Chutespeak. “.... Wait. What the hell was that just now? Those weren’t Makuta terms you were using…. W-were you just…?”

“I spent some four hundred years as a Le-Matoran immigrant to Metru Nui as a vacation and picked up some of the dialect. Shut up.” Gorast’s illusory image grumbled quietly, turning away from Taylor and crossing her arms in a huff, her entire body visibly lighting up with embarrassment- veins of pink covering her the same as the veins of blue-ish purple confusion covering Taylor’s body.

“Weren’t you the ruler of the Tren Krom Peninsula, though?” Taylor muttered, stepping back from the sink and catching her breath, shaking her head as she sat down on the bed and rubbed her forehead. “How did you manage to spend four hundred years on Metru Nui with nobody wondering where you went?”

“I know you’re trying to distract yourself from the actual issues plaguing your mind. But very well, I shall quick-tell you about my time disguised as a Matoran. And for your information, this was right before the Great Cataclysm. There was not much in the way of things to do during that time, and I preferred the hands off method of rule.”

Gorast cleared her throat with a heavy sigh, groaning at having to recount that entire section of her memories- not really happy about having to tell about how she spent a whole four hundred years disguised as a male Le-Matoran since apparently Metru Nui’s only female Matoran were Ga-Matoran and she wasn’t about to pretend to be a water loving weirdo when she could be at ease with Matoran who liked being in the air as much as she did.

Taylor sat down as Gorast began talking, eagerly listening and feeling her worries and panic slip away under the sound of Gorast’s narration filling her mind, echoing in her ears with a sonorous buzz that kept her from thinking about anything else.

>*<

“It started about… Hm. There aren’t any good translations for how time was measured in Mata Nui’s body, but I suppose that’s what happens when everyone is but a small part of a giant robot. But there was a time about… oh… fourteen hundred years before my death when I wasn’t doing much of anything. Oh, sure, that no good, slow-think, Akilini-head, roodaka piece of kane-ra shit Teridax was still around giving orders, but he was pretending to be Turaga around that time anyway. I didn’t much give a shit. Life was slow, most of the matoran on my peninsula were used to me not doing anything except occasionally murdering Toa of Iron or Magnetism, I didn’t have much of anything to do and I was between assignments anyway. Ah- wait no, Teridax impersonated the Turaga near the end of that vacation. Hm, old age makes for slow-think and ever-forgotten memories, it seems… even though this happened only a millennia ago...

“Anyway. I took a vacation and posed as a Le-Matoran named Gizi, a scrap trader looking to begin a new life far away from the Northern Continent. And there, I quick-sailed from the Tren Krom Peninsula and up through the Sea Gates to Metru Nui. Ah, even for me, the queen of the Tren Krom Peninsula, the first view of Metru Nui is a grand sight… the shining towers of Le “Metru gleaming from the light of the Silver Sea, the vast web of chutes and tubes stretching across the sky- for a moment, just that brief moment… I was the Le-Matoran Gizi, coming to the city for the first time… nevermind the fact that I’d been there a few times before, but never before then was it so grand!

“You should have seen it- even the docks, where recycled scrap from the other Metrus was thrown out and taken to the other continents for reuse- it was full of buzz-flying transports and quick-talking Matoran, so much to do and see… It was different and amazing to look upon the holy isle of the Matoran without any designs or plots, to simply immerse myself in what these seemingly lesser beings had managed to create.

“It was actually quite hard to acclimate at first- the Peninsula was not as hospitable, and of course, I was the Queen of the land, not some Matoran slave, working to keep the Great Spirit content. The Le-Matoran of Le-Metru were… strange to me. Friendly, honest. Nary a scowl or a smirk in sight. There was, despite the city’s vast size and its massive structures, a sense of ease and simple zest for life in those towers and walkways. I loved it there. I could forget that I was a queen of a distant land, forget that I was going to take control of this pitiful world with my brothers, forget that I had killed Matoran for getting as close to me as these ones did. Instead, I could spend my days working in the scrap yards, touring the city, and just… existing.

“A small part of me was a bit confused, since I don’t think I had ever simply just… let myself be. There was some fear-dread about that. Even we Makuta were driven by duty as much as Matoran sometimes, and not having anything really to do was… odd.

“Of course, my vacation was very nearly cut short when barely after some thirty odd days, I nearly died because some akilini-head, slow-think, loud-talk moron forgot to check the go-lights and safeties on the test track and nearly smash-bashed my spirit damned body in half when he decided to swerve out of the way of a mata nui-damned phase dragon and crash-wreck a test bike directly into my perfect green ass. Fortunately, I managed to actually come up with a good enough excuse as to how I’d survived that without losing my entire damned body and only had to pretend to take a week off of work at the docks to “repair” my damaged arm and back plating. Idiot. What kind of slow-think moron tries to swerve to avoid a phase dragon!? They phase through everything! Hmph. Oh well. I was pissed off enough that I was this near-close to killing him in his sleep during that week while I was stuck in my vacation lodgings, but I suppose it was only a huge-big amount of luck and destiny itself that stopped me. If I hadn’t kept myself from giving him a swift hard-fall off the tallest tower in Le-Metru, then the little bastard- what was his name, Matau? Yes, that was it. Then that little bastard Matau never would have been a Toa and Mata Nui would have had to seek-find a new Toa candidate very rapid-quick.

“But the rest of my vacation was…. Passably normal, all things considered. Very boring by most standards, but for me it was the most relaxing four centuries I’d ever had…

“And then that bastard had to cause the Great Cataclysm and I had to quiet-sneak my ass out of Le-Metru and back to my fortress before the Vahki could stuff me into one of those spirit-forsaken orbs and stasis me for the next thousand years… although all things considered, if I’d ended up living in Le-Koro and forgetting that I was ever a Makuta, maybe I wouldn’t have died…”

>*<

Taylor blinked as Gorast’s narration faded off into a series of quiet grumbles in the back of her mind, staring up at the ceiling and wondering when she’d decided to lay down on the bed… and when she’d relaxed her hold on the door of her cell… and how long had Armsmaster been standing next ot her anyway (And why was he only wearing his chestplate, boots, and gauntlets)?

“Miss Hebert?” Armsmaster sighed quietly under his breath as he cleared his through awkwardly. “Are you… conscious?”

“... Uh… yeah? Sorry about the cell… I uh… kinda had a panic attack and… well…” Taylor managed to hide a blush through a quick illusion over her cheeks, but didn’t quite manage to hide the pink lines tracing over her body in time. “... Sorry about that.”

“... I’ll assume it’s linked to the incident at the Brockton West Mall approximately an hour ago?” Armsmaster almost deadpanned, his mouth contorted into what was almost a mix of a wry, knowing smile and a deep, deadpan frown.

“... Yeah.”

“I see. Well, the three girls you put to sleep have been taken to the PRT headquarters for safety’s sake. We’ll get their stories later, but for now, why don’t you tell your side of the story?” Armsmaster sat down slowly, having dragged over a folding chair along his way to the cell she imagined, and leaned forward. Idly, Taylor thought that he didn’t quite look complete without all his armor on.

Taylor sighed and breathed in, gathering her wits as she sat up and faced Armsmaster, finally speaking her story to someone that wasn’t the voice in her head. “Well… I guess it all started about two years ago now… back around the summer of 2009…”

 

Chapter 20

Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker.

The Ward.

The so called Hero.

Taylor wasn’t surprised anymore- oh sure, she hadn’t known exactly why the trio of bitches who’d ruined her life had managed to get away with everything more or less scot free, but the fact of the matter was there was literally no way for them to have gotten away with everything a long as they had unless there was at least some manner of willful corruption thrown into the mix.

She wasn’t even mad anymore- after all, what use was getting mad? Sure, she could go on a rampage, tear through the city and let her displeasure be known, but that was against the Toa Code.

Which, to be fair, she didn’t have to follow anyway since she wasn’t even a real Toa nor were there other Toa to even remind her of it, but still. It was the principle of the thing. She wanted to be a hero, after all, and being a hero meant being noble and just and all those other things that Toa were supposed to be.

She…

Taylor mulled it over quietly in her mind as she paced around in her hotel room, as she’d been doing for the last twelve or so hours. There was… There was a sense of irony to it all, she thought. That the people who tried so hard to break her down, tried so hard to ruin her life, who actually killed her… that one of them was supposedly a hero. And that, in doing so, in trying their absolute damndest to destroy her, lay her low, isolate her from all others, kill her, only made her stronger than anyone else could ever imagine, had only made her more influential than just about any other person on Earth Bet save for maybe the Triumvirate and maybe Scion.

She would have thought it funny if she hadn’t just had a panic attack about it the previous day, and then spent the last twelve hours letting her thoughts whirl around in her head. As it was, she was still undecided on what she actually wanted to do with the information, seeing as the PRT was already handling everything on the legal side- juvenile detention for Madison and Emma, hefty fines on their parents, Sophia getting thrown into the parahuman equivalent of juvie, her handler getting fired and blacklisted from all administrative positions she’d ever apply for again, etc etc etc.

Oh well. At least she’d actually managed to get some clothes in the interim- delivered by the PRT after she’d mentioned what she’d been at the mall for yesterday. She was… a little embarrassed at the lengths that people were willing to go through for her, the hoops that people were jumping through, the indignities that so many people were probably putting up with just to keep her happy… but honestly? She thought it was kinda nice. After all, she’d gone from a homeless nobody to a world renowned savior in the span of about a week, and from dead broke to swimming in cash at the same time.

So what if taking a small bit of enjoyment out of being able to order people around was probably against the Toa Code? Taylor thought, maybe, she deserved it. Just a little bit. Only for the small things, like getting clothes and food and maybe a smartphone and a laptop.

You know. The essentials.

Taylor paused, then looked around at her hotel room as a thought cut through her previous train of thought and immediately derailed everything in a messy crash, metaphorical train parts careening everywhere and causing Gorast to go into a spluttering cursing fit full of chute-speak as said metaphorical derailment triggered Gorast’s nightmare flashbacks of when she nearly got run over by an out of control test vehicle not once, not twice, but nearly fifty goddamn times during her time in Le-Metru.

“... Hey Gorast? Do you think I should buy a house?” Taylor asked idly, blinking slowly and taking in the sight of the various piles of new clothing scattered around the room from when she’d spent a good two or three hours trying on new outfits in the midst of her previous haze of thought and roiling emotions. “Because… I’m starting to feel kinda bad about just… living here. In a hotel room. That someone else is paying for.”

“Get a lair instead. A proper one, not just a house with an oversized basement.” Gorast answered, buzzing fitfully as she darted around the metaphorical space of Taylor’s brain and busied herself with organizing the absolute mess that had resulted when Taylor switched tracks too quickly- or… something. Taylor wasn’t sure what Gorast was doing, but she could feel her thoughts becoming slightly clearer as Gorast organized things into what she thought were shelves and/or filing cabinets. “And stop thinking so loud! Every new thought echoing through your empty head just makes more garbage junk data that I have to comb through and throw away!”

“... Junk data?”

“Yes, junk data. What, did you not realize by now that as both Makuta and false Toa your body no longer relies on an inefficient, failure prone storage system made entirely of organic neurons? Antidermis is so much more useful- after all, unless something leaks and dissipates off into nothingness we’ll never lose any memories and having a mostly mechanical body structure now means I can finally take advantage of the sheer amount of storage space our body holds to actually organize things for the first time in what might be forever!”

“.... I’m pretty sure I’m still flesh and blood right now, Gorast. Also, where the hell am I going to just find some kind of a lair? It’s not like people just build them and put them up for sale,” Taylor muttered, poking down at her arm and shrugging as she felt the skin and muscle deform under her finger. Sure, she was basically a room temperature heat sink now unless she actively decided to produce body heat, but she was… mostly organic right now, right?

“Our body is pseudo-organic muscle and synthetic flesh and the only thing still mostly organic about it is our nascent libido, which I’ve since turned off for the time being,” Gorast deadpanned, then seemingly rolled her eyes- which was a strange feeling to Taylor since she felt more than saw and just knew Gorast was doing so even though the Makuta was literally a voice in her head- as she switched back to the previous topic. “And as for a lair… hmph. We have all the time in the world. Build one yourself for all I care.”

“Okay but- Agh!” Taylor crumpled to the ground as a white hot flash of pain struck her between the eyes, blinding her as she screamed and fell to the ground and information started pouring into her brain at a rate that left her feeling like she was drowning, drowning, drowning-

Fuzzy images poured through her mind, blurry and indistinct at first but growing sharper over time. Time… time…. These were images of… of…

She saw a girl, freckled and with bottle green eyes, blonde hair and a smirk that some people would describe as vulpine but Taylor decided to describe as simply smug, though in the image her face was contorted into a mask of fear and annoyance, sheer attitude masking the terror she felt at the voice on the other side of the phone call.

She saw another girl, another blonde- shorter this time, a child suffering from migraines and nightmares, numbers spilling from her lips and intensifying the pain as she scrambled to anchor herself in the present rather than the infinite futures.

A boy, almost a man, dark skinned and muscular. He was beside himself with worry, biting his thumb and pacing back and forth as he tried to think of something- anything that would let him get out of the dangerous situation he was in and help his-

A girl, the boy’s sister. Younger than Taylor, older than the smaller blonde. She dressed in loud clothes, had loud words. She wanted attention and her attitude masked the insecurities and hate clouding her home life. Taylor’s heart throbbed painfully at the sight of a mother and father willfully neglecting their only children, full of sympathy and rage.

More and more images flashed through her mind- visions of important people, of random people in the street. Heroes and villains alike, all of them feeling like they had some kind of connection to each other, one that nobody was quite aware of.

But the one that stuck out to her the most, the one that felt the most urgent, the most immediate, was a man dressed in a tight, black bodysuit. He was tall, and he was thin. A snake wound around his body, printed white upon his suit of black.

Something in her mind told her that he was important. That he had what she sought- or, perhaps, that he was something that needed to be removed and what he had was simply incidental to what she desired.

She did not know his face, or his age, or his crimes, but she knew his name.

Coil.

A cancer upon the city, subtle and dangerous, unseen and unfelt until it was too late. A would-be puppetmaster.

She awoke with a sense of conviction, a clarity of purpose and of mind. She stood smoothly, almost as if she weren’t quite in control of her actions. Her armor formed around her- it was different now, she thought. Pale silver armor over darker black and green, six wings, almost like a butterfly. The same weapons, the same four arms, but she was sleeker now, a bit more feminine and yet with more visible muscle definition all the same. She shone in the sun, mirror bright armor gleaming as dawn broke to the east, shining over the bay. She stared off into the sunrise and prepared to leap off her balcony, a single thought present in her mind.

Coil’s operation would not survive to see the sunset.

 

Chapter 21



Pathetic.



Utterly, truly pathetic.



Taylor groaned as she walked through the halls of Coil’s base, yawning quietly as she passed by the scores of mercenaries protecting the base- or at least, they should have been protecting the base, but the moment they all saw her, every single one of them simply put their guns down and kneeled on the ground with their hands on their heads, completely surrendering without a fight.



Sure, it was the sensible thing to do since she neither wanted to hurt them nor could actually be hurt by them, and all the mercenaries fighting her would just cause unnecessary damage to both base and human bones, but still.



She at least expected someone to put up a fight. Maybe even just one fool running up to her and punching her in the face only to find out how hard protosteel armor truly was. Something interesting, something spicy. Something that’d make a good story. But no. A complete rout was what happened instead.



Not a single round fired at her after she’d forced the door open with a combination of magnetism and telekinesis, not a single person going for the alarms- scratch that, one person just alerted the base that she was there and… to surrender arms.



Great.



Taylor sighed as she continued on through the base, pinching her brow as she went further in and further down, idly examining the construction of the hidden base and concluding to herself that, yes, this was quite a good base… but it was a tad bright. Oh sure, it was up to modern standards and everything- solid, reinforced concrete walls, all painted a stark, professional fog gray with green stripes mid-way up as an accent color and guide, but it was…



Well.



She was Makuta first and foremost and even now, in her Toa body, she still preferred something a bit darker. Maybe some muted grays, dim the lights a bit- the wall switches were already that nice energy saving type that you could slide up and down to dim or brighten the lights as necessary so she wouldn’t even have to replace any light bulbs. The floors were quite clean as well- sparkling clean, almost reflective. She almost wondered at what kind of janitorial staff Coil had but a quick peek into a cleaning closet revealed a simple, low maintenance, mass produced Tinker derived Drag-vac bot, sold in department stores all over the USA and Canada for an affordable price.



Nice.



With an approving nod, Taylor continued touring through the base, idly waving off the surrendering mercenaries and more or less telling them all to just get out of the base while they could. They complied all quite easily- it seemed that nobody wanted to get on the bad side of someone who could swallow entire cities with shadow and kill an Endbringer. Quite smart of them, really.



“Hmm… do you think this is our best option, Gorast?” Taylor asked idly as she ran her finger along the wall, tapping the thick stripe of jungle green paint that ran along the wall from hip height all the way to just above head height and tilting her head as she thought to herself. “I mean, it’s got a bit of an infestation going on here, and there’s a bit of disgusting filth that I need to get rid of, but it’s clean otherwise and honestly, it’s nice and spacious, it’s got a great location, and the color palette is pretty alright too, though I’ll need to change all this gray to a darker… uh... gray. Maybe black?”



“.... You are getting far too into the house hunting analogy,” Gorast deadpanned dryly from inside of Taylor’s mind, taking a slight bit of control and gathering the mercenaries’ weapons as they left, completely disarming both them and the vehicles in the private garage before bringing the weapons back down into the base and storing them in a nice, neat pile off in a corner where the armory was. “Can we get back to the part where we’re taking down the cancerous growth on the city that is Coil now or are we going to play around a while longer?”



“I’m getting to it!” Taylor huffed and rolled her eyes, stomping her foot childishly before ducking into another room- this one a men’s lavatory, which she gave a once over, shrugged, and backed out of. Nothing interesting to see. Just urinals and toilets. “Besides! You can’t just get a house without first making sure it’s all up to your standards!”



“True, true. Have you checked the cafeteria yet? Some of the mercenaries mentioned something called ‘quiche’. Their memories made it seem delicious.”



“If it weren’t for the fact that my body is a hyper-efficient miracle of biomechanics and is thus incapable of gaining weight, I’d accuse you of trying to get the both of us fat,” Taylor teased, chuckling quietly as she continued walking down the halls, humming a song under her breath and flexing her will a bit, cocking her head to the side and smirking a bit as all the mercenaries who’d been trying to leave found themselves locked in place, the unbreakable hold of her telekinesis settling around them tightly, but only enough to restrict movement and not enough to squeeze or pinch.



Coil’s predicament, though, was much more petty, as she’d simply locked the villain in her telekinetic hold and set him spinning around slowly like a globe. Was it unnecessary and possibly a bit cruel? Yes. Was it funny? Probably not to anyone but Gorast. Did he still deserve it for generally being a piece of shit? Definitely.



“Oh good all the mercenaries are cleared out,” Taylor clapped her hands together and teleported to the cafeteria, humming as she went through the now empty serving line and grabbed a heaping plate of still warm quiche, sitting down and deciding to take a break from exploring the base to instead indulge in an early lunch. Brunch. Whatever.



“This is going quite smoothly, all things considered,” Gorast murmured from inside of her mind, right before she started groaning and moaning in a way that may or may not have been faked just to annoy Taylor with the sound of her voice as Taylor dug into her quiche. “Mm- oh that’s good , positively singsong , even! Ooh- ah, as I was saying. The last time I tried to go somewhere uninvited without a disguise, I had to punch some slow-think Steltian after he smash-bashed me through a wall. Joke’s on him, though. I tore out his eye and beat the living daylights out of him for that insult! Ha!”



“... Somehow I get the feeling that, outside of your vacation, you solved literally all your problems through grievous bodily harm and/or outright murder,” Taylor deadpanned slowly, chewing on her quiche and scratching her chin before making the horrible decision to down it all in one go, stuffing the rest of it down her gullet and then making the equally terrible decision of going back to finish the rest of the quiche.



And the spinach rolls. And the chicken fried rice. And donuts. And the coffee. And the muffins. And the mashed potatoes. And the granola. And the salad. And the shitty kind of pizza that only corporations and schools ever seemed to have. And the steamed vegetables. And-



Taylor burped loudly, groaning as she slumped head first onto the table well over two hours later, having eaten literally every bit of food that the cafeteria had been serving before she came in.



“ Fuck me, why did I do that?” Taylor almost sobbed, her face twisted into an expression of pure disgust at the absolute food rampage she’d gone on- the only evidence of which was the small stain of sauce on her cheek, which subsequently disappeared as she grabbed a napkin and wiped it off. “Fuuuuck… I didn’t even need to do that!”



“It was there and it was all delicious. Two hours well spent in my opinion,” Gorast groaned from inside of her head, patting her metaphorical belly while Taylor just poked her own still flat armored stomach and thanked her lucky stars that her body just immediately converted everything into energy without any sort of waste being produced.



“Okay, now that we’ve gorged ourselves on pretty much everything still edible without preparations, let’s get back to what we were doing before,” Taylor grumbled quietly, groaning and grunting as she clambered to her feet and strolled back out into the base, making a show of being unsteady despite the fact that she felt no more full or any different from before, with only a slight extra bit of perkiness from the extra energy she’d absorbed from the truly ridiculous amount of food she’d eaten.



With a step through the shadows, Taylor appeared in Coil’s office with a vicious smile forming on her face, chuckling ominously as she slowly approached the now terrified villain. Shadows engulfed the room, wreathing her in an aura of black power as she seemed to grow and loom over Coil like an angry goddess.


“Hello Coil . You’ve been a very bad person. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve done?”

 

Chapter 22

“Okay so. We now have, in addition to the some billion or so dollars gifted by the UN for killing the Simurgh, another six hundred million dollars-ish spread across five bank accounts, about fifty-ish mercenaries on hire as various staff and base defenses, some actual on hire staff, more weapons than I’d ever know what to do with in the armory, an entire fleet of various vehicles ranging from armored cars all the way to a 2005 Honda Civic, the base codes for the entire lair, a bunch of blackmail material and leverage over several politicians, lots more stuff related to running a secret supervillain conspiracy thing… And also Coil’s last solitaire game. Which… um…” Taylor paused as she stared at the screen, trying to make heads or tails of the game. “How do you even play Solitaire anyway?”

“I don’t fucking know. It looks boring and terrible anyway so who cares?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Taylor slumped down into the plush leather chair that used to be Coil’s, the man left a gibbering wreck on the floor with his power drained away by her shadows and hunger, while she summarily took over his holdings and all his endeavors one by one. “... We should probably call the Protectorate about this… I don’t know how they’d react to me taking over a supervillain lair but putting Coil behind bars is probably something best done with actual help from the actual authorities who know the actual procedures for this kind of thing.”

“Perhaps. It would be best to see justice done, instead of leaving him drooling all over the nice clean carpets.”

“... We could eat him,” Taylor murmured, blinking slowly as the rather obvious thought filled her mind, not even realizing what she was saying until after she’d said it. “Just swallow him up into our shadows and make him vanish.”

“... That sounds like something I would have suggested when I was still alive,” Gorast muttered, immediately exercising her control and bringing Coil’s phone over to Taylor with a burst of telekinesis. “So by and large it’s an awful idea because when I was still alive I was a horrible bitch without any morality or form of mercy. Now call the Protectorate before any more of my memories start spurring intrusive thoughts in your idiot brain.”

“I’m pretty sure I only have you to blame for that,” Taylor sighed quietly as she dialed Armsmaster’s number, grumbling to herself as she began explaining that she’d maybe kinda sorta stormed into a notorious supervillain’s base, took over said base, completely took control of said villain’s entire operation and shut down everything, stole said villain’s assets, reduced said villain to a gibbering, powerless wreck, and then also co-opted part of said villain’s mercenary army into being an on-base rotating security staff and/or maintenance crew.

Maybe.

Kinda.

Sorta.

Hypothetically.

So could he pretty please prepare a cell for Coil so she could just drop him in, please and thank you?

Armsmaster sighed as Toa hung up before he could even really ask when the hell she had found Coil’s base in the first place and why the hell she couldn’t have notified the PRT earlier, then rubbed his forehead and winced as a random spike of pain flashed through his skull, accompanied by a street address depicting a parking garage somewhere a few miles from the PRT HQ building as well as an unlocked panel in an elevator hiding a secret button.

Armsmaster groaned quietly to himself, filling out an automatic request form and logging Holding Cell 6 as being soon to be occupied by the villain Coil, watching the cameras in said cell until said villain popped out of a shadow mere minutes later and onto the bed inside the cell with an unceremonious thump and what looked like a puddle of drool.

Okay. Good. That was one thing settled. Now…

“This is Armsmaster,” he spoke calmly, pressing the button connecting his workbench intercom to Miss Militia’s office two floors up and six doors down. “I’m submitting myself for Master/Stranger confinement due to abnormal psychic contact with the parahuman known as Toa. Most likely benign, but until further tests prove that true, I’ll be unavailable until I’m cleared for duty. While I’m unavailable, follow up with Toa at the address I’ll be sending you.”

“.... Copy that…?”

Miss Militia raised her eyebrow as Armsmaster cut the call seconds later, a text alert pinging on her work phone with an address that she recognized- the parking garage across the street from one of the smaller malls in the downtown area, right outside the financial section of the city. About five miles from the PRT HQ building, six miles south of City Hall. About a half hour drive from the Rig if traffic was good.

With a shrug, Miss Militia stood and headed down to the Rig’s garage, pulling on her motorcycle leathers as she walked out of her office, quickly speed walking down the halls and down the elevator, grabbing a spare helmet from the locker beside the door in the garage and activating the switch to extend the hard light bridge before revving the engine of her motorcycle and roaring out across the bridge.

>*<

“Oh, Miss Militia’s here!” Taylor blinked and looked up as a touch of something swept across her mind and drew her attention away from the massive pool she’d carved into one of the larger, empty storage bays- it’d once held a bunch of spare office supplies, but she’d moved those off into different parts of the base. Idly, she wondered why Coil had a single three story tall storage depot in his base instead of having more storage closets scattered around, but she figured that maybe it was for vehicle storage and then just never got finished or connected to the surface. Or… something.

Anyway.

Point was, she’d carved a massive, perfectly circular pool into the middle of the storage bay and dumped all the weapons she’d confiscated into it and… uh.

Taylor blinked as she stared at the shimmering, glowing liquid that filled the pool now. She wasn’t really sure when she’d spaced out but she knew somehow that she’d spaced out for the better part of about twenty minutes after flooding the pool with weak, diluted acid. So…

Hm.

“.... You know, I’m starting to think that I should be concerned about the fact that I keep spacing out,” Taylor muttered to herself, crossing her arms and sitting down at the edge of the pool, knowing full well that if she’d dipped any part of her body into it there was a larger than average chance that she would die a horrible, agonizing death even with the same stuff already filling her body. Energized Protodermis was, as Gorast’s memories of the stuff revealed, quite the bitch to deal with.

Granted, she was full of the stuff now and she wasn’t dead yet so…?

Taylor shrugged and huffed quietly, quickly teleporting up to what she was more or less calling the “public” entrance of her new lair, waiting patiently for the elevator to descend. Moments later, the doors slid open with a quiet ding, revealing the form of Miss Militia, who seemed both quite surprised by the fact that there actually was a secret base hidden under a parking garage and that Taylor was actually standing there.

“Welcome!” Taylor waved and put on a smile, forcing it a little bit due to the fact that she hadn’t really smiled in front of another person in what seemed like ages, bouncing a bit as she tried to put on more of a personable, energetic face than she normally did. “I was kind of expecting Armsmaster but uh… Hm. Right. So um… Do you wanna go to the office? Get some coffee first? Oh, we could do this in the cafeteria if that’s okay with you?”

“I think…” Miss Militia murmured as she looked around, pursing her lips slightly behind her bandana as she took in the various mercenaries scattered about the main foyer- most of them lounging around on various folding chairs or playing cards, some of them looking her way but otherwise mostly just content to stay out of the way of their new boss. “Yes, coffee would be nice. Thank you.”

 

Chapter 23

“... Where are the other mercenaries?” Miss Militia suddenly asked, looking away from the screen and over to where Taylor was sitting calmly in the air, waiting for Miss Militia to finish reading the reports that Coil had compiled- some hundreds of excessively complicated PDFs full of charts and graphs that she could only really understand due to having literally pulled the knowledge out of the man’s head. “The employment registry says that Coil had two hundred and twelve mercenaries on payroll, all of which were supposed to be on-base due to recall and bunker-down procedures, but right now you stated that you only have fifty five, even including the on-staff medics and cooks. Forty two if we don’t count non-combatants.”

“.... The other mercenaries….?” Taylor blinked slowly and floated over, her wings buzzing slightly but not fast enough to actually lift her into the air- she was simply floating as she pleased. She hummed as she looked over the registry, navigating through to compare and contrast which ones she’d kept and which ones seemed to have vanished.

She blinked again.

“... Every single mercenary that’s unaccounted for is guilty of multiple crimes outside of, well, working for a villain. Murder, rape, larceny, robbery, pedophilia, manslaughter, embezzlement, assault and battery- oh, wow I just noticed how awful those two hero names are with each other-, child abuse, spousal abuse- the list goes on and on but those are the more common charges.” Taylor spoke quietly, just loud enough for Miss Militia to hear the faintest whisper of pure, lethal disdain in Taylor’s voice. A cold, dripping emotion suffusing her words with nothing short of purest intent to kill. Miss Militia shuddered a bit, swallowing thickly and thanking the fact that her bandanna covered half of her face and her leather jacket kept the cold sweat from showing.

“... I don’t know where they went. But I can’t find their minds anywhere on the planet,” Taylor finished, sitting back and rubbing her chin, her lips pursed into an almost cute pout as her wings fluttered gently on her back- Miss Militia wasn’t entirely sure, but she had a sneaking suspicion that Taylor wasn’t even aware of the fact that she’d sprouted wings a few minutes ago.

Wait.

“.... Oh no.”

“Oh no?” Miss Militia blinked, scooting her chair back and staring at Taylor, who seemed to be in the middle of having a furious debate with herself- quite literally, since she could see Taylor’s lips moving even though she was completely silent, either speaking too quietly for Miss Militia to hear or deliberately silencing herself to achieve the same effect.

Either way, Taylor came out of it looking pale- her almost literally porcelain features taking on a cast that was distinctly sickly despite her currently mechanical nature, looking over at Miss Militia with a haunted gaze.

“... I think… I may have made a terrible mistake,” Taylor gulped slightly, then began explaining how, while she had been traipsing through Coil’s base, she’d been holding all of Coil’s mercenaries inside of their vehicles or out of sight in the parking garage proper, keeping them from just leaving en masse. Almost all of them had tried to leave in their own personal vehicles, and since all of them were alone in a confined, darkened space…

“... I don’t have any conscious recall of using my powers, and I would have known if they activated on instinct, but something… I think something activated my shadow powers without me realizing it. I was spaced out for a good while twice today already, so…” Taylor pursed her lips, then abruptly stood and headed for the door. “Sorry to cut this short, Miss Militia, but I really need to check on something. Could you get one of the guys to escort you out? I promise I’ll explain once I figure this out but it’s… not gonna be pleasant to watch.”

“What? Hold on-” Miss Militia followed after Taylor, one hand held out awkwardly as she tried to catch up with the younger girl. She furrowed her brow as Taylor raced through the corridors of the base, with Miss Militia following along at a steady clip until the two of them found themselves in a large storage bay- about large enough to hold several vehicles at least, and almost three stories tall. She wondered what the purpose of such a room was when Coil had it, but apparently Taylor had turned it into a… pool… of some kind. One that glowed with an ethereal silver color and filled the air with an almost audible hum of indescribable power.

Miss Militia gulped silently, walking forward as if in a trance. She stopped at the edge of the pool and stared down into its depths, blinking slowly even as she just barely heard the sounds of Taylor’s distress just barely a foot away.

It was mesmerizing.

A shining sea of infinite possibilities, of infinite power and infinite purpose, a substance that could make and unmake entire worlds. She swallowed thickly and knelt down by the pool, reaching forward slowly, slowly, fingertips just barely about to brush the surface and-

“No!”

Taylor screamed as she violently shoved Miss Militia away from the pool, a burst of telekinesis lashing out and pinning the heroine to the wall for a brief moment before letting go. “Don’t! Touch it!”

Miss Militia groaned and shook her head, slowly pushing herself off the ground and wincing at the bruises that were surely now forming along her back. “I… what is that stuff? I’ve… never seen anything quite like it…?”

“It’s Energized Protodermis. I don’t know what it’s made of and I don’t know what it wants, but what I do know is that if you’re not someone that it has specifically chosen to transform, you will die horribly the moment it touches you.” Taylor stood between Miss Militia and the pool, keeping her wings spread wide to block the heroine’s view, just in case she had the bright idea of trying to touch a pool of eldritch liquid again.

“.... Noted…” Miss Militia muttered, stepping away from the pool and focusing once again on Taylor, taking a deep breath as her weapon flickered with an air of uncertainty around her hips in response to the emotions flowing through her mind. “Ah, um… did you… find out what happened to the mercenaries?”

“... Yeah. I did.” Taylor sighed, wings drooping as she trudged forward and led Miss Militia out of the room, locking the door shut behind them so no one else would fall in. “I don’t know why, but for some reason, when I threw all those mercenaries into my shadow, whatever it was that activated my power chose to throw them all into the pool… to… to feed the Energized Protodermis. That must have been why I spaced out earlier…”

Miss Militia just stared blankly down at Taylor, blinking slowly as she tried to process what she’d just heard. “... Ah.”

How the hell was she supposed to respond to the fact that apparently, for some godforsaken reason, the person who was potentially the single most powerful parahuman on the planet didn’t actually have full control of her powers, and said powers apparently decided to murder some hundred fifty people to feed a fucking pool of what seemed to be eldritch liquid metal?

“... Feed…?” she settled on asking the simplest question, coughing awkwardly into her fist to clear her throat when her first attempt at speaking came out as a feeble almost-whimper. “What do you mean… Feed?”

“.... Okay so-” Taylor chewed her lip and raised a single hand and pointed a single finger upwards, her other hand gripping her chin while she crossed her second pair of arms. “I think… I don’t really have any concrete evidence of this, per se, but while I wasn’t specifically conscious, my mind still saved memories of what I was doing, and um… Okay. The thought process was… I was kind of… following what I felt was right? Like… there was this really big sense of Destiny that I had to follow, one that really needed me to carve out that pool in that room specifically, and… I had to fill it with raw materials, right? I dumped in all the weapons in the base and also I think maybe a few cars, filled it with acid and… well. Metal, for mass and substance, some kind of liquid, for a base… and… organic material… for raw potential. So… so I think that, while I was taking over the base, I was… partially already fulfilling that sense of Destiny by grabbing a bunch of mercenaries. And then I carved the pool and I spaced out and… I don’t really remember seeing anything, but my mind went blank and my shadows dumped out the mercenaries into the pool and when I woke up all of the stuff in the pool was Energized Protodermis.”

“... Ah.” Miss Militia nodded along with Taylor’s explanation, pretending that she understood everything while really understanding absolutely nothing at all. Good thing she was wearing a body cam to record everything.

“.... I’ll… I think that’s um… everything for now. Oh- actually, one more thing. Director Piggot wanted me to ask if you’ll be available for power testing this Friday, Around three in the afternoon?”

“Uh… yeah. I don’t think I’ll be doing anything that day?”

“Great, great. I um… suppose I’ll see you then.”

With an awkward wave and the sinking feeling that she really ought to be more horrified about the probably painful deaths of over a hundred fifty people even if they were criminal scum, Miss Militia left the lair as fast as she physically could without drawing attention, her motorcycle roaring out into the streets mere minutes later as she made what was going to be the first of some very long phone calls.

 

Chapter 24

“Okay, so, I know I’ve said this before,” Clockblocker- or, since he was unmasked at the moment, Dennis- said, his hands held up in surrender as everyone else at the table groaned. “But does anyone else-”

“-find it completely horrifying that we have an S+ class threat living five miles away from us,” Missy finished, groaning loudly as she stuffed an entire slice of pizza into her mouth, chewing noisily and burping in the most uncouth manner possible. “Yes, for the love of god Dennis, we know. We’re aware of the Toa shaped elephant in the room. We get it. Why are you bringing it up now?”

“Because she’s coming here for power testing, duh.” Dennis answered, burying his face in his hands and sighing, shuddering a little bit at the thought of being anywhere near the six and a half foot tall so-called Endslayer.

“Wait. What.”

“You didn’t know?” Dean spoke up from the other side of the dining table, looking up from his phone with a slightly pained look on his face- apparently, he and Glory Girl were going through yet another out period. Wonderful. “She uh… Miss Militia told us that she was coming here like… three days ago.”

“... When you say here do you mean here here or do you mean PRT HQ here? Because… uh...” Missy asked, slowly turning her head to stare at the large black stain that was growing from the wall in the single most disturbing manner she’d seen since the last time she stayed up late to watch horror movies when her parents were asleep.

If she suddenly felt like curling into a ball and hiding under her bed covers from the residual trauma, well that was her own damn business and nobody else’s.

Fortunately for the shiver of fear crawling up her spine, the tension was immediately broken by two hundred pounds of disheveled biomechanical teenager tumbling through the shadowy hole in the wall, screeching like a pterodactyl and tripping over her own wings even as she struggled to pull on an oversized t-shirt and pull up her sweat pants. Over her armor. Which covered everything already.

“Ahh! I’m late I’m late I’m late I’m late!” Taylor cried out, flailing and tumbling as she sprung to her feet, hair flying every which way as she shifted from her human-ish form into her Toa form, her second pair of arms ripping through the sides of her shirt even as her armor fully manifested and her wings flared out and finished ripping said shirt to shreds… along with her ratty sweatpants.

“... I’m… uh….” Taylor blinked and stared at the Wards, who stared back silently with their mouths hanging open. She gulped and slowly turned to look at the clock on the wall.

“.... I’m…. early.”

She groaned and sunk to the floor, burying her face in all four of her hands at the revelation that not only was she early, she was also in the wrong place, two hours before the scheduled time, and also she’d shredded not only her hastily grabbed clothes without remembering that she could just shapeshift, but also the Wards’ couch, the left armrest torn to tatters of faux leather and stuffing probably in the midst of her wild tumble out of her own shadows.

She sighed and flopped back onto the floor, going the extra mile and cocooning herself into a ball of self pity with her wings.

“Someone please kill me.”

“... I don’t think that’s physically possible,” Missy muttered to herself, then blinked when Dennis snickered and she realized that yes, she did in fact say that out loud. Fortunately for her slowly dwindling sense of personal dignity, Taylor just kept groaning on the floor, still covering her face with her hands though she’d shifted back to her humanoid form- which, thankfully, was actually wearing clothes, shapeshifted on though they may have been.

“... Uh… right,” Carlos started as Chris lightly poked him in the side, making him jump suddenly and look away from where he’d just been staring blankly at Taylor, who at this point had gone from being curled up in a ball to just staring blankly at the ceiling. “Well uh… you might have gotten into the wrong place but it’s uh… nice to meet you Miss Hebert. Welcome to the Wards HQ.”

“I’d say it’s nice to meet you but I think I’m just gonna pretend that I didn’t just fall through the wall like a total dork,” Taylor responded, though she did shake Dennis’ hand when he offered it and-

“... What the fuck?” Dennis sprang back, staring at his hand as if it had betrayed him, while the Wards all gasped as one, some of them glaring at Dennis.

“Dennis what the hell!? Did you seriously try to use your power on her!?” Missy almost shouted, springing out of her chair and glaring at Dennis, who gulped and winced guiltily.

“W-well… it didn’t work anyway, so…?” Dennis shrugged at Taylor, who just looked at her hand in confusion and shook it out a bit, wondering what the big deal was.

“... What um… What was supposed to happen?” Taylor asked slowly, deciding that, whatever Dennis had just tried to do, it couldn’t be that bad if nothing happened, right?

“He tried to freeze you in time as a prank,” Missy answered, scoffing quietly and lightly thumping Dennis’ arm. “Which obviously didn’t work, but still.”

“Right. Dennis, I know I’ve been lenient with you so far since you’ve only done it once before, but I am going to have to report this to the Director,” Carlos sighed, rubbing his forehead and wishing that he didn’t have to have this discussion. “In the meantime, Miss Hebert-“

“Actually, if it’s not too much trouble, could you just call me Taylor? We’re about the same age after all… it just feels kinda weird for you to call me ‘miss’.” Taylor interjected, one hand held up almost as if she were asking a question in class.

“... Right. Sorry. Taylor, I’ll call someone to escort you to a waiting area. It’s Friday so it’ll either be Assault or Battery depending on if they’ve switched off again or not,” Carlos walked over to the console area, tapping something on the keyboard and sending off a message while Dennis just sat down and groaned, accepting his fate with all the gravity of a man headed to the gallows.

Which, considering everything, might actually be accurate. Or at least, that was the impression she got from doing surface scans of the area, and the general feeling she got from who she presumed was the Director- that seething mass of bitterness and impotent rage a few stories up inside of an office labeled “Director Piggot”.

“... Well… okay then. Sorry about bursting in like that- I um… had a burst of inspiration and I spent the last few days… um. Yeah,” Taylor coughed awkwardly and shrugged, with only Chris nodding along in solidarity. “Actually um… do you guys have a shower here? I should probably clean myself off a little before uh-“

“Looks like it’s Battery today.”

“-Battery gets here.”

“I’ll take you there!” Missy raised her hand and immediately motioned for Taylor to follow her. “The girl’s locker room isn’t too far from here- I’ll lead the way. Do you need any spare clothes? A mask maybe?”

“No I think I’m good…” Taylor almost mumbled as she followed along, not really used to being around other people and already feeling slightly overwhelmed just from having been part of an actually friendly conversation between peers for the first time in what must have been weeks. “I uh… I can shapeshift and there’s really no point in hiding when I’m already publicly outed anyway…”

“Oh uh… alright.”

Taylor shrugged and followed Missy silently, the two of them continuing on in awkward silence for a short while as Missy led Taylor around the corner, through a hall, and into a small locker room with several shower stalls and lockers.

“Here we are. If you do need anything, though, don’t hesitate to ask,” Missy smiled a bit awkwardly and left to go stand outside the door, leaving Taylor behind in the locker room.

Well alright then.

 

Chapter 25

“This is a fucking disaster waiting to happen,” Piggot groaned, dropping her face into her hands and sighing as she tried very hard to not pop a blood vessel and/or require parahuman healing any more than she probably did. She pointedly did not look at the goddamn report sitting in front of her- a mere three page physical printout detailing, in single spaced, ten point, Times New Roman font, the seeming extent and breadth of powers that one Hebert, Taylor A. Alias: Toa, possessed.

Just shy of supersonic flight, telekinesis with a range limit of well over city sized and a weight capacity measured in skyscrapers, laser eyes, heat vision- which, apparently, were two separate things- the ability to flash freeze or flash boil water just by touching it, to say nothing of what she could do to living tissue, acid powers strong enough to eat through Teflon, shadow powers capable of both mass transport and complete battlefield control- the list went on and on. She glared down at the unofficial report, mentally tallying up the scores represented and thinking to herself that she was honestly better off putting a bullet in her head rather than living on a planet where there was someone who could read her mind from across the continent.

At least the girl seemed to prefer human standards of propriety and legality still, since other than that little blip where she’d irreparably traumatized a notorious supervillain (fuck you Calvert, you smarmy bastard) and also killed well over a hundred fifty of said villain’s mercenaries (She’d have felt bad but half of them were apparently pedophiles anyway so fuck ‘em), she’d pretty much kept to herself and didn’t so much as jaywalk. Despite the fact that she could fly. And teleport. And god knew what else- She had enough fucking threat ratings that she even made Eidolon look pathetic, and wasn’t that just fucking amazing?

A Stranger perfectly capable of becoming completely invisible to the point that not even their most sensitive equipment could sense her until she started moving, and capable of becoming so utterly silent that even the sound of a feather hitting the ground made more noise.

A Mover capable of crossing the planet in mere seconds, shadow teleporting from the PRT HQ all the way to the APR HQ and back, the only significant time delay being how long it took her to snap a picture of the sign in front of the APR building.

A Shaker capable of ripping apart the city with telekinesis, collapsing buildings with gravity warping powers, vibrating them apart through sonic manipulation, controlling the weather to a degree that she nearly created a tropical storm over Brockton Bay within minutes, and about six other completely ridiculous things all at once.

A Blaster capable of shooting high powered chain lightning, setting things ablaze with a glance, carving through solid steel plate with laser eyes, disintegrating through just about anything with blasts of plasma and acid, even shouting things apart just by screaming.

A Striker capable of disintegrating things on a molecular level, a Master capable of controlling just about every plant and animal within a city sized radius, a Breaker who could go completely intangible to literally just about everything they could throw at her without killing her and turn into a cyclone, a Thinker that could read minds from at least across the city if not further, a Brute so invulnerable that the tester they used broke before it made her flinch, a Changer capable of shapeshifting into just about anyone or any thing within a particular mass range, a Trump capable of no-selling Clockblocker’s touch- just about the only thing she wasn’t was a Tinker, and even that was debatable considering she’d mentioned setting up a workshop in the time between when she’d taken over Coil’s lair and her power testing. And of course, the apparent ability to just straight up eat Endbringers.

Emily groaned again and debated pulling out the whiskey she kept hidden in her drawer, wondering not for the first time if it was actually worth getting Panacea to heal her if only so she could properly drink.

No. Calm thoughts, Emily. Calm, collected, quiet.

Emily breathed deeply as she all but chugged her cup of coffee and prepared for dialysis, groaning as she heaved herself from her chair and flung the paper report into her trashcan/shredder combination for proper disposal before grabbing her coat and heading down to the medical bay.

Idly, in the back of her mind, she wondered what Toa was even doing at the moment anyway, since she hadn’t been seen outside of her lair since Saturday night… which had been nearly a week ago.

On second thought…

Emily shook her head. No, even in idle speculation, she didn’t want to know.

That way laid madness and probably a heart attack.

>*<

Taylor groaned as she wiped her brow and sat back, tossing yet another failed Kanohi to the side with a clang of protodermis against concrete. The half broken mask slid across the floor, propelled by a telekinetic push, until it fell into the pool of protodermis from whence it came, dissolving away quickly thanks to… some process that Taylor wasn’t aware of and wasn’t sure she wanted to be aware of.

The pool room had undergone some modification in the past few days, now housing a large workshop setup around the edges of the room, while pool in the center had become deeper and shrunk a bit- the energized protodermis now forming twin crescent shaped pools with a path through the middle, with three smaller pools of liquid protodermis in the center- two of them barely three feet across with the center-most pool about six feet across. Something about the symbol that the pools formed seemed important to Taylor, but it took a back seat to the niggling, wiggling feeling in the back of her skull, a promise of futures to come, driven on by her experimentation into both the creation of Kanoka disks- which, surprisingly, Gorast knew how to make (“It was a long four centuries and I took an apprenticeship under a Kanoka maker for a good seventy five years or so in between shifts at the Moto Hub.”)- and Kanohi Masks, which… Taylor didn’t know anything about making, nor did Gorast, but apparently letting Destiny guide her hands was a pretty good start… though if she’d had better disks and more practice, maybe she’d actually make a functioning mask instead of the dull, scarred, pitted hunks of scrap that she had to keep recycling.

Oh well. At least Kanoka were sort of easy. Choose one of eight preset molds, pump in some protodermis, carve away the excess and pump in a little power, bingo bango, brand new shiny Kanoka of the 500 series. Taylor wasn’t really sure why, despite the fact that she was nowhere near Le-Metru, all her disks were stamped with the Le-Metru symbol and the appropriate code, but it wasn’t that important anyway. What was important was trying to consistently get her carvings correct to produce the most high quality Kanoka she could with the highest power, so she could make a surplus of them for when she inevitably fucked up her mask making and had to start combining disks again.

That aside, though…

Taylor yawned quietly as she put her tools aside and stood up, cracking her joints as she walked over to her workbench proper and her tools floated into their proper position. The Visorak horde whispered quietly in her ears, the dull chatter of thousands of blades gnashing together as the colorful Rahi patrolled through the halls of the lair filling her mind with a soothing background noise as she listened to their reports.

A clogged toilet fixed by a Suukorak, some Vohtarak shoring up the load bearing pillars with steel-hard webbing. A team of smaller-than-usual Keelerak viciously hunted down every last rodent that called the store rooms home. A Boggarak playing fetch with her staff.

She was glad for the spiders, honestly. Frightening though they may have looked at first, they acted as a bridge between her and the people staffing the base, and honestly having them around lightened things up immensely.

But, honestly… it wasn’t really what she was looking for. Not as a long term goal. She pursed her lips as she flicked through the news reports for Brockton Bay, sighing over the fact that, due to her basically setting shop right in the middle of the downtown area, the entire E88 had mobilized, more or less, and now there were gang fights popping up all over the north side of town as the Nazis clashed with the ABB and the Merchants, and she’d even heard of news of Nazis in the south getting shot up by scout groups from the Teeth and ABB in the north getting accosted by Accord’s Ambassadors.

All in all, a thoroughly untenable situation that had to be stopped.

But her mask making… something told her that it took precedence. Maybe it was the sparks of future vision she got after that girl- Dinah Alcott, the mayor’s niece- came up to her and freely offered her power up in exchange for taking away the pain it caused her. Maybe it was the sparks of Destiny that rippled through her body in response to the pools of Energized Protodermis undulating behind her.

Maybe it was that strange, insistent presence in the back of her head- half formed and already wanting to be let out.

So she compromised.

Instead of her, it would be her Visorak. Instead of her, it would be her army. Her horde. Her shadows.

Her daughters.

Taylor turned back to the pools of Energized Protodermis, taking a deep breath as she threw in a few objects- Chunks of refined protodermis, each one as big as a basketball and heavy as an engine block. A store bought plastic mannequin, just as a form pattern. A few drops of her own antidermis, just to speed along their development.

And finally, one last ingredient.

Kraata.

Taylor grit her teeth and stared down into the depths of the pool, bracing herself for the pain.

Her claws unsheathed as she drove her fist into her chest, screaming as she cracked through the protosteel of her armor and into the shadows of her purest essence, forming a new being from her antidermis and bringing it squealing, squirming, shrieking to life as she pulled it from the gaping wound in her chest.

Once. Twice. Thrice.

An uncountable amount of times. More protodermis, scrapped Kanoka, half formed masks, all joined the slug-like Kraata as they fell into the pool one by one by one.

Forty two daughters for forty two powers.

Taylor fell to her knees, delirious from the pain of gouging out what might as well have been her own heart.

She smiled, though, guiding her kraata through their development and feeling them take shape, feeling them mutate and grow and turn into her shadows, her daughters.

They burst from the pool, multicolored, sinewy creatures of inorganic muscle and bone. They held staffs with which to channel their powers, their serpentine heads daring around as they took in their surroundings.

Her daughters. Her Rahkshi.

Taylor grinned and sat back, her mind slowly shutting down into a deep sleep as her Rahkshi filed out to fulfill her commands.

Take the Horde.

Patrol the streets.

Protect the people of Brockton Bay.

Destroy the villains.

 

Chapter 26

Skittering and writhing, the shadows of the Makuta. Clicking and screeching, the stealers of life. They spilled out into the streets, those forty two Rahkshi and uncountable Visorak, enforcing her will, protecting the citizens, destroying the villains that plagued the streets of Brockton Bay.

Or at least, they would have, if Gorast had not taken control in a blind panic and stopped them from leaving the lair, all forty two Rahkshi and those hundreds of Visorak stopped with only the mildest telekinetic grip, a gentle hand from their mother to tell them to wait for but a moment while their creator figured some things out.

“Are you a FUCKING IDIOT!?” Gorast shrieked inside of Taylor’s mind, lambasting the other girl’s mental avatar while their body slept and recovered from the strain of creating so many Rahkshi at once. “Don’t answer that, akilini-head! Your stupid slow-think brain just made forty two Rahkshi and sent them out all at once! Do you know how fucking stupid Rahkshi are when they’re freshly made!? Do you!? Kraata are like stupid, violent babies! Sure they may develop rapid-quick but even now, even with extra essence poured in for extra intelligence, they are stupid and not wise to the ways of the world! They are violence! They are death! They’re not exactly the brightest masks in the storehouse if you get what I mean!”

“... But-” Taylor tried to protest, only to flinch back as Gorast projected her own memories at Taylor, filling the mental space between them with images of death and destruction, countless dead Matoran, corpses stacked high in macabre mountains. Rahkshi, shrieking and cruel, tearing apart the world around them with single minded obsession and no sense of subtlety at all.

Collateral damage ranging from collapsed buildings all the way to razed villages, shattered landscapes, desecrated jungles.

To say nothing of what the Visorak hordes had done that would make even the scores of Rahkshi Gorast had made look pale and pathetic in comparison.

Taylor gulped and shuddered, suddenly aware of the fact that not only had she made creatures that were, to a tee, excessively violent even when acting without orders, but had almost given them command of an army of spiders capable of razing entire cities to the ground.

“Now you understand,” Gorast sighed and rolled her eyes, crossing her arms and hissing under her breath. “Now you understand what you almost unleashed upon the city. I’ll say this- you had good intentions about it, at least, and that would have tempered their rage… but not enough. They are Kraata. They are Rahkshi. They are the essence of Makuta, and they are every bit as sociopathic and murderous as I would have been in life, even with your mind being the one to create them.”

“... I didn’t know,” Taylor murmured quietly, then pursed her lips and sat down, shuddering as she imagined the damage that would have been done to the city if Gorast hadn’t stopped the Rahkshi. “But… I can’t just get rid of them now. What are we going to do? Is there any way we can… I don’t know… train them out of their instincts?”

“You would sooner train the Visorak to become household pets.” Gorast deadpanned, then paused and furrowed her brow with a thoughtful frown. “.... Bad example. They already are household pets when they’re well fed. You know what I mean.”

“... Well there has to be some way,” Taylor sighed, then blinked as the half formed presence in her mind made itself known- an invisible push against her mental body, one that begged for attention and offered up a solution.

Data packets.

Uploading data packets to the minds of the Kraata, giving them an artificial development and letting them learn morality according to how Taylor viewed the world. Accelerating their development using Taylor’s own memories as a base and letting their own naturally enhanced intelligence go from there.

It was a good plan, in all honesty. Taylor nodded slowly as she mulled it over, already picking and choosing the memories she’d had, the feelings attached to them, the emotions she’d tried to repress and never really quite managed to.

A loving embrace from her mother, kind words from her father.

Abhorrence of the criminals who only sought to harm others because they could. Pity for those who had no other choice.

The desire to protect more than harm, the desire to destroy those that would cause so much unnecessary suffering to others.

The names of villains in the city, the names of people worth protecting.

Memories of good people and bad, memories of good days and bad. A full range of emotions felt, from the greatest heights of joy to the lowest pits of despair.

Taylor sighed as she compiled the data packets together, pursing her lips as Gorast conversed silently with the half-formed presence. It was… an odd existence, Taylor thought. It wasn’t truly alive in the sense that she or Gorast were, even as it was continuing to grow and develop. It was… to the memories that Gorast had provided her, the presence felt like a Ce-Matoran, although she got more of a sense of it being pale white like a Ko-Matoran rather than blue and gold like an actual Ce-Matoran.

… then again, it’s not like souls really had a color beyond actual color preference.

Taylor shook her metaphorical head- she was getting off track. With a quiet mental sigh, she returned to the complex task of processing data packets to send off as informational streams and quietly thought to herself that Gorast would have been much better suited to the task, what with her actually being used to this kind of work. But no, Gorast was helping the half-mind reformat its sapience files or something. Taylor wasn’t really sure what was going on, but she assumed that it had something to do with essentially reformatting old files into a new data type and replacing an OS with a completely different, new one that would work way better than the old, botched together type..

Or something.

Taylor was definitely sure her programming terminology was way off there, but whatever. Programming terminology couldn’t capture all the nuances of trying to shift a mind from a semi-organic base to a Makuta’s antidermis existence anyway.

As she finished assembling the necessary data packets and finished packaging them off for delivery, she slipped out of the mental space within her antidermis and metaphorically rose back to the surface, reactivating her previously comatose physical shell and healing over what little physical damage remained from her having ripped forty two Kraata from her chest just barely five minutes prior.

“... Huh. All of that only took five minutes?” Taylor muttered quietly to herself, brushing off the confused queries from the Rahkshi waiting by the exits of the base and instead returning with the data packets she’d spent the last while creating, wincing as she felt the Rahkshi all collapse as one, slumping to the ground as the Kraata controlling them went dormant to process the sheer amount of new information.

“... Whoops. Guess I should have given some warning first,” Taylor murmured, then shook her head and picked herself off of the ground and turned back to her workbench. The Kraata would take some time to assimilate the information anyway, and the Visorak would wait for their commanders until they woke up, so she figured she had some time to get back to the subtle, frustrating art of trying to make Kanohi out of what may or may not have been jury rigged together Kanoka of substandard quality.

“Okay… first thing’s first…” Taylor sighed to herself and began moving her equipment around, heat vision flashing and plasma bursting to existence as she began to work once more, blobs of protodermis rising from the pool and becoming molten as she guided them through the effects of her powers. “Start with the Protodermis, guide it through the purification process and prepare the disk molds…”

 

Finally got around to drawing some art of Taylor in her Toa form.

Spoiler: Toa

Chapter 27

“I’m gonna keep it level with you: I think I just about pissed myself,” Assault spoke up from the end of the table, his voice heard clearly throughout the otherwise silent room as the assembled heroes and PRT commanders watched the live feed from hundreds of cameras. Spiders, hundreds of them, pouring from the shadows between alleyways, from under cars, from rooftops, from the sewers. Giant, mechanical beasts with glowing eyes, massive mandibles that looked capable of shredding through steel, four wicked legs ending in spear-like points, and saddle shaped indents in their backs that seemed to hold propeller-like objects, the purposes of which were entirely unknown.

In any other city, it would have been the cause for a city-wide evacuation. Thousands of mechanical beasts swarming the streets as though the Machine Army had evolved into new form and broken free of its quarantine zone? The implication was terrifying.

But the new beasts held all the same aesthetics as Toa, the End Slayer. Sleek, biomechanical forms that seemed to replicate musculature and organic shape, compound curves that gave everything a futuristic, aerodynamic design. A sense of gentleness despite the clear, vicious intent of their spines and spikes and claws.

Gentleness. A completely incongruous concept when paired with the rest of the spiders’ traits, but considering that the hordes of spiders seemed to be doing not much else other than climbing buildings and stopping people from running into traffic as they ran away from said spiders, well. They certainly acted gentle, what with how they, instead of yanking people around or otherwise being violent with them, instead made web barriers around the sidewalks and made themselves physical barriers blocking off crosswalks.

And then they came.

Assault gulped as the things crawled from the shadows not long after the spiders- tall, sinuous things with bodies that could only be described as a perfect robotic fusion between sex and death. Or in other words, they looked like Xenomorphs made real. They were tall, almost capping out at nearly eight feet tall, not counting the spines on their long, tail-like heads. Even hunched over, they towered over the crowds, their staffs crackling with strange energies as they seemed to guide the robotic spiders around. They were fewer in number- about forty in total, as the camera feeds showed, and each of them seemed as though they only appeared every few miles.

A clear indicator of territory, especially with how each of them immediately began directing the spiders in their section around, hovering high into the air and landing on top of tall buildings, waving their staffs around as they began speaking in a strange, clicking, whirring, mechanical language that sounded more like R2-D2 than anyone probably would have expected. The hissing and shrieking were expected, though. Assault shuddered at the sound coming through monitors, swallowing thickly and feeling goosebumps race down his spine.

He could tell that just about everyone was about as horrified as him considering that not a single person had reprimanded him for his outburst- instead, he actually saw some of them nodding along to his statement, their own faces ashen pale as the forty robotic monstrosities began using their powers, aided by the spiders- almost a hundred of them per territory.

Which didn’t sound like a whole lot in theory considering that Brockton Bay was a pretty big city with just over two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, but the spiders were at least about the size of a person and were apparently tough enough to handle getting hit by cars with no injuries and strong enough to actually stop cars in their tracks.

So. Yeah.

“Well. Now you know what’s going on,” Director Piggot finally spoke up as she shut off the live feed that Dragon had been displaying, returning the screen to showing said Tinker’s avatar as she rejoined the conference. “I’m going to go on record and say this: I don’t like this. Not one bit. Within the span of five minutes, someone- who we can only assume is Taylor Hebert, alias Toa, has laid claim to the entire city. And as shown, seems to have enough in the way of ground forces to actually enforce said claim.”

She steepled her fingers in front of her face as she gave every person in the room a harsh, stern glare. “Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to say that this is what we’re up against, I’m going to ask all of you to stay out of the way of these… creatures. We all know what Toa can do when sufficiently motivated, and if these beings actually are hers, then there’s a high chance that they either have access to some of her powers, or are sufficiently connected to her that she can tell if they’ve been harmed. So in short: If they cooperate with us, do your best to make sure that none of them have reason to take action against us. If not, then stay out of their way until we know what they are capable of. If they decide to start committing crimes, then I’m allowing combat, but until we have enough reinforcements to justify a literal war against an army superpowered mechanical spiders and their xenomorph ripoff commanders, I suggest the cautious approach. Understood?”

A chorus of assent rolled around the room- even those that hadn’t directly seen what Toa had done in Canberra had heard the news and seen the footage, watched in disbelief at the sight of a city covering dome of darkness and stared slack jawed at the death of an Endbringer. None of them wanted to be on the receiving end of that kind of firepower, even in part.

“Good. Meeting adjourned. I’d say have a good day but there are spiders in the streets and some of them are the size of cars.”

Slowly, the assembled heroes and commanders filed out, most of them ashen-faced, the rest bearing grim expressions as they started planning on how best to deal with the army now occupying their city.

Armsmaster, though, simply wondered- if Toa had sent out an army to (hopefully) act as a crime deterrent in her stead… what exactly was she doing that required her undivided attention?

>*<

“God DAMMIT!” Taylor groaned loudly as she spiked yet another failed Kanohi into the center pool in the room, throwing her tools aside and groaning as she floated over another set of Kanoka disks, fusing them together as they approached and beginning the process yet again. “I’m only doing the same fucking combinations that are in your memories! How hard could it fucking be to carve a goddamn mask!? Even a faulty one!? But no! All I’m getting is junked up, stupid fucking garbage! Why won’t any of these WORK!?”

“Patience is a virtue, Taylor. Your mask carving skills are getting better by the day. Don’t give up just because you can’t carve a mask first try. Let Destiny guide your hand and tools. Don’t try to force the shape into existence, let it happen in as much, or as little time as you need.” Gorast answered sagely, her voice slightly distant due to the fact that she was still helping shape the half presence in her mind into a fully fledged existence.

“... Fine. God, your memories of mask making did not prepare me enough for this,” Taylor sighed, leaning against her workbench and rubbing her forehead as she checked over the Kanoka for flaws. She managed a smile when the Kanoka itself seemed to be flawless, almost no impurities at all other than the ones necessary for both structure and function. Both the 548 Remove Poison and the 557 Enlarge disks were nearly perfect, and the resulting fusion was even moreso. Good. Very good.

With a dramatic sigh and a roll of her eyes, Taylor began her work anew. Sparks flew, metal clanged, and a quiet tune echoed through the room as Taylor began working on carving out the mask she envisioned in her head, slowly but surely, cutting and shaping, letting it take form bit by bit by bit. Destiny guided her hand, steady and true and-

“Fuck!”

Her hand slipped.

“GOD! FUCKING! DAMMIT!”

 

Chapter 28

They prowled the streets as one, slithering and slinking, three Rahkshi hissing and clicking, whistling to each other as they spoke in the Matoran language, chattering nonstop even as their horde followed along behind them, the Visorak all screeching and crying out in their own, harsh language.

It was a loud, noisy racket. A warning heard for several blocks.

It was not enough to save their targets.

Krahrahk, the Rahkshi of Shadows. Sulehrahk, the Rahkshi of Mind Reading. Faahrahk, the Rahkshi of Magnetism. The three of them moved together through the shadows, pulses of psychic energy emanating from the pink Rahkshi’s armor and reverberating through the area, hunting through the surface thoughts of the people around them and revealing their true intentions as her sisters split up to encircle the area, their swarms baying for blood as they followed their masters.

A man who sorely regretted the swastika hidden on his right shoulder, who begged forgiveness from God for the crimes he committed for the sake of keeping his family fed and with a roof over their heads.

A woman who was recruited at a rally, who didn’t agree with the ideology but felt it safer than not paying for protection money.

A couple who turned the other way when the thugs came about for protection money, not daring to cover the tag that stained the wall of their tiny grocery store.

All thoughts were laid bare to Sulehrahk, master of the mind. It- she saw all the pain in the hearts of the people victimized by the Empire, all the pain of the ones forced to kneel, who felt powerless to resist and so could only watch in regret as the villains had their way.

No longer.

Sulehrahk hissed viciously, spines rattling upon her back as she shared the information with her sisters, the long tail that housed her Kraata lashing viciously with rage as she took in their despair and transmitted it to the others.

Krahrahk raged, barely held back as her claws flexed and her staff began to bubble with darkness. But she restrained herself, her face plates shifting and flexing as she stalked through the alleyways towards their true prey.

They were not here to hurt. They were here to mete out justice. To perform as the mother intended. To fix this broken city one broken body at a time.

Their first target revealed itself to Sulehrahk. An open book of a mind, containing barely more than violence for the sake of violence, a pitiable existence that lived only for the next fight, who had no sense of ideology or right or wrong and only cared about life so long as he got paid and was allowed to fight and fuck as he pleased.

Brad Meadows.

Hookwolf.

Sulehrahk cackled viciously as his mind became known to her, hissing and spitting and laughing with pure schadenfreude at the thought of what came next.

Faahrahk shook her spines as she stomped forward, the three Rahkshi reconvening together into one group, all surrounding one building.

Faahrahk screamed, and the Visorak screamed with her, a loud, vicious, deathly sound that screamed of imminent violence and bloodshed. It wasn’t even a fight.

As soon as Faahrahk blasted down the door, the other two broke down the walls they faced and charged into the warehouse turned dog fighting ring, throwing hapless civilians aside with nothing but utmost efficiency- those that could be redeemed were merely rendered unconscious, paralyzed as the Visorak used their Rhotuka to capture and cage them with the electric netting of Suukorak, dragging them away from the building and webbing them up for retrieval. For those that were guilty of other crimes, of being vicious and cruel, utter wastes of human life, there was no quarter. They were thrown into the horde, kicking and screaming, begging for mercy until they were webbed up and paralyzed, thrown aside like so much refuse and battered around by the Visorak in the rear.

There were twenty people in the warehouse, and of them all, three were caged, the rest webbed up and used as toys for the horde- human soccer balls more or less.

The Rahkshi dearly wished they could have imparted more violence upon those wretched beings, but they could not. Not with the mother’s orders ringing in their minds.

But with those called villains rather than mere criminals?

Faahrahk screeched joyfully as she threw the one known as Hookwolf around, slamming him into walls and bashing him against the floor. His metallic form was nothing but a toy to the black and yellow Rahkshi, who controlled the mass of spikes and hooks as if it were child’s play. She was vicious and cruel about his punishment, even as she played around and battered him. Hooks tore themselves from his flesh, then stabbed back into his core. Blood splattered against the walls and the ground, blades gouged rents into his body when he tried to retract into his human form.

He screamed and spat curses, fear flooding his mind as, even in his human form, he was powerless to attack. His mask turned against him, the metal covering his face and suffocating him, enveloping his skull and dragging him around the room, smashing him into crates and furniture, cages coming to life and bashing him with their bars and locks and hinges even as the dogs were released and his battered, broken body was tossed among the angry canines, who began tearing at his flesh and ripping him apart further.

Sulehrahk, Krahrahk, and Faahrahk all watched impassively as the villain screamed, his flesh marred by bite marks, gouges in his flesh and deep, bloody scratches from where the dogs had clawed at his skin and broke through. Silently, they waited until he was sobbing on the ground, unable to move or even use his power from how much pain he was in, blood pouring from his innumerable wounds to the point that he looked less like a human and more like a sack of butchered meat.

There was no more enjoyment to be had.

Krahrahk hissed dispassionately as she stomped on the man one last time and let the shadows drag him away, tumbling him through the unrealm that was the space between spaces until he landed at the feet of Vorahk, the Rahkshi of Hunger with a dull, wet thump.

Vorahk made a face that almost resembled a smile, plates shifting and flexing as the black and silver Rahkshi began to glow a sickly, deathly purple, its staff taking on the same hue as its claw-like prongs stabbed into what remained of Brad Meadows and began draining his power, his life force, his energy.

The man screamed, agony racing through his nerves as his strength and power began to ebb away, his body shutting down as his organs began to fail one by one.

The last thing he saw was the horrible, terrifying sight of Vorahk’s faceplates sliding open and exposing the squirming, shrieking, eldritch Kraata within, screeching wildly and drooling over his face as it drained away his life and left him as an empty, desiccated husk.

Meadows, Bradley. Alias: Hookwolf.

Status: Deceased.

 

Chapter 29

The way that Visorak hunted was nothing like the way Rahkshi hunted.

This was known- they were two completely different kinds of existences despite their shared love of murder, and thus had different methods.

But it was one thing to know it intellectually, and another to see it in action.

Under only the lightest guidance from Sulehrahk, the horde descended upon the streets of Brockton Bay, guided along the buildings and the alleyways like a multicolored tide of death. There was no quarter given for their victims. There was only the gnashing of teeth, the snapping of oversized jaws, the shrill, endless shrieks of their hunting cries.

They were an army, and they behaved like one. The Rahkshi were focused, diligent, an unstoppable force that unerringly sought and destroyed all that stopped them from their path.

The Visorak were no different, but where the Rahkshi were silent, focused killers, the Visorak cried for blood, baying and calling into the night as they smashed through windows, battered down doors, tore down walls and trampled through ceilings.

They were unstoppable and they gave no thought to those that they were commanded after.

Pedophiles. Rapists. Murderers. Abusers. Drug dealers. All that and more- those who caused suffering for the sake of suffering, those who preyed upon their own kind as if they were beasts in the jungles instead of a society.

The Visorak descended upon them all in a swarming tide, webs spewing from their bodies and Rhotuka paralyzing them, venom mutating them, sharpened fangs and claws killing them rending their bodies into nothing more than food for the horde.

Their capes fared little better. Visorak were immune to the whistling that came from Cricket’s mouth, unable to be pierced by her kamas, unable to be stopped by her guns. She tried to run.

She tried to hide.

It was futile.

No one could run from the horde. No one could hide from the horde.

The Visorak tore her hiding place asunder brick by brick, left her paralyzed from their Rhotuka spinners, and tore her limb from limb. Her screaming, limbless body had been given to Vorahk to drain, then fed to the horde as just another scrap of food.

Crusader fared the same, his ghosts fading away before the energy draining Rhotuka of Roporak, his body torn apart by the others and his corpse desiccated by Vorahk.

Victor was no challenge, neither were Fenja or Menja, Krieg or Othala. The horde consumed them all one by one, tearing through their ranks, destroying their safehouses and hidey holes, ripping them from their beds where they felt safe and ripping them apart with no mercy, no quarter.

They swarmed and swarmed and swarmed, thousands of multicolored shells glittering in the low light of the streetlamps and passing cars, webs spun between buildings, and walls shattered in their wake. Criminals, tied up for the police to find. Scum, torn to shreds with only a hint of blood left on the ground. Capes, mangled and chewed on, flesh rent from their bones until barely anything left of them remained, their desiccated, mummified faces being the only thing left untouched, covered by the remnants of their torn up masks.

Kaiser proved difficult for the swarm, though. Metallic blades impaling the members that came forth, even knocking the nearly invulnerable Vohtaraks around until they were flipped over and rendered useless. Walls of steel that blocked their spinners and gave the man cover. Domes that kept them from reaching him even as they broke through bit by bit. They screeched and shrieked and howled as the man fought back against the horde, but in the end, even that was futile.

All the horde had to do was wait until Faarahk and Vorahk arrived and shredded the foolish organic being apart with magnetism and drained his husk, then the horde feasted upon his flesh as they had with all others.

And they moved on. Hunting, prowling, skittering, seeking. The horde rolled through the city as one, baying for blood and filling the night with the sound of thousands of shrieking buzzsaws.

They were unstoppable, unmatched. Stealers of life that overwhelmed all with their strength and their numbers. Not even the ABB could stop them.

Even when the black clad Oni-Lee dropped grenades among them, they persevered, their Rhotuka crashing into and destroying his clones before they could kill any more of their number. Even when the mad bomber Bakuda flung strange effects and devices into their horde, they were too numerous to fully stop- only delaying the inevitable as miniature black holes and time stop bubbles and pain grenades rained down.

The swarm was innumerable and endless. Hundreds of thousands strong and even the members solely manifested in the city were enough to eventually overwhelm both Oni Lee and Bakuda with the aid of Faarahk and Kaularahk, the Rahkshi of teleportation.

Lung proved a mite more tricky, in theory.

In practice?

A single Kahgarak was enough to send the draconic villain to the realm of shadows along with Krahrahk and Vorahk, and the villain’s massive corpse had rolled into the streets mere moments later, desiccated and torn to shreds.

The Merchants fell even faster once the Empire and the ABB had been destroyed- the vast majority of their members tied up and shuffled through the horde, squirming in their webs until Kiirahk, Rahkshi of quick healing, simply touched them and healed them of their ills and addictions and Vairahk, Rahkshi of Sleep, rendered them unconscious. The capes- Skidmark, Squealer, and Mush, were pathetically easy to remove. Squealer passed out and soiled herself just upon seeing the swarm, Skidmark had fallen to a single Visorak pouncing on his back, and Mush fell to a single Rhotuka before the foul man could even gather a trash golem.

The swarm had hunted. The horde had fed.

The streets had been swept clear of the gangs that plagued it so, and the low level criminals had been delivered to the appropriate authorities. All save for one small group, right in the middle of the Docks, which the Queen Mother had instructed to leave alone… for now.

So they complied. The prey would be allowed to live a while longer.

They had hunted. They had fed.

The Visorak swarm was content.

They returned to the shadows, ready to be called on again as their Queen Mother commanded them.

 

Chapter 30

“I… can’t imagine the PRT is gonna be happy about us harboring two quote unquote ‘ex-Nazis’ when we’re also technically still villains,” Brian muttered awkwardly at the sight of Rune and Purity- Cassie Herren and Kayden Anders, respectively, as they stood outside the door to the Undersiders’ loft. That one of them was still in costume and looking rather roughed up and the other was mostly fine and wearing nothing more than a hastily thrown on jacket over her pajamas was telling regarding the circumstances in which they’d been in a few hours prior… not that Brian had a leg to stand on when it came to judging people’s outfit choices, considering that he was still wearing his leathers and helmet after he’d almost ordered the team to just cut and run and hope for survival a mere few hours earlier.

But no, that option was entirely off the table now- even moreso when Tattletale had pointed out that not only were the spider monsters not attacking any of them despite viciously pouncing on and tearing to shreds the local pedophile (he’d have been sorry for old man Roberts but again, the man was a pedophile) but they were actively avoiding the loft save for when one of the spiders climbed over the fence in order to pat one of Bitch’s dogs with its massive, claw tipped leg.

He was surprised the dog had survived that, honestly, but apparently the spiders were…. Friendly-ish.

In the sense that they didn’t go out of their way to cause undue suffering to the people who didn’t deserve it but still.

Giant spiders the size of small cars, and a couple of them the size of pickup trucks.

And apparently, from what he’d been told, the army had not only killed every single villainous cape in the city (well, from the gangs. All the minor ones had been at worst paralyzed and piled up in compromising positions like Uber and Leet, or utterly traumatized to tears via a giant spider shrieking in their face with its horrible terrible industrial grinder mouth full of teeth and knives and death) but had also rounded up every criminal (most of whom were doing so out of desperation or fear or some other third thing) and murdered a bunch more (the really shitty ones), and also even broken into the houses of several city officials and made a show of webbing up their bedrooms and screaming at them.

All of which, while both absolutely terrifying and also in some cases cathartic and even kinda funny, didn’t really explain why, again, there were two ex Nazis knocking on his safehouse door and begging for sanctuary.

“.... You wanna explain to me why you’re here? Actually- no, first of all, how the hell did you even know our hideout was here in the first place?” Brian asked, trying to rub his face before awkwardly realizing that he was still masked, and thus just made weird squeaking sounds as his fingers slid across the plexiglass of his motorcycle helmet’s visor.

“.... The spiders told us to come here?” Rune gulped a bit, looking over her shoulder and shivering at every shadow, clutching a surprisingly girly looking backpack to her chest and almost hyperventilating at the thought of the spiders coming back. “T-they…. One of the robot things… they um… they said that you were… acceptable to them… a-and that their boss would want to see us later?”

“... And you didn’t try running.”

“The robots are still out there” Rune whispered almost frantically, stepping forward with a manic look in her eyes as she tried to see something, anything out of the ordinary. “They know when we’re trying to run away!”

“.... And what’s your take on this?” Grue sighed, looking over at Purity, who held a baby in her arms and also seemed to have a preteen kid behind her for some reason.

“... Well, considering that I’ve been trying to turn my reputation around, the Rahkshi were actually pretty nice to me and offered me a job instead of threatening to rip my entrails out and scatter them over a city block,” Kayden deadpanned, idly rocking her baby as it woke up and burbled. “But yes, I was told to come here instead of staying in my home. I figured it would be safer to come here than disobey orders.”

“.... Uh… huh…” Grue sighed and shook his head, turning away and motioning for the two women and kids to follow him into the flat. “Well… come on in then. We don’t have a whole lot of room but I guess we can find… something…”

As he led the group of what might technically be considered refugees up the stairs, he just found himself thankful that Bitch was still on her walk for now and that Lisa had gone back to her own apartment half a hour ago and wasn’t around to-

“So they grabbed you too?” Lisa asked from where she was lounging around on the couch with an icepack pressed over her entire face, Alec next to her and playing some shooter game or another while Bitch just glared at the corner next to the balcony doors from the opposite side of the room, all three of her dogs whimpering quietly around her. Grue just sighed heavily again as he slumped down into one of the armchairs, pulling off his helmet and rubbing his temples at the sight of the pitch black robot staring menacingly at the other teens from the corner, a dog sized spider held in its arms almost like how a Bond villain would hold a cat.

Behind him, Cassie screamed and tripped over her own robes as she tried to run away from the robot, scrabbling away on the floor and creating a cacophony of sound that caused Kayden’s baby (Aster, as she’d informed him while they were climbing the stairs) to start wailing, which in turn caused Bitch’s dogs to start barking, which caused Alec to start complaining, which caused Lisa to start groaning and kicking Alec in the side-

Brian groaned and dropped his head into his hands, looking pleadingly at the pitch black robot and desperately wishing it had enough mercy to kill him, or at the very least make everyone else shut up.

Unfortunately, the only thing he found was open schadenfreude, twisted metal plates sliding about as the damned thing chittered gleefully at the comedy before it and the spider thing in its arms shrieked like a blender, only adding to the noise level of the over-occupied flat.

“.... I hate. Everything. About this.” Brian sighed, resigning himself to the fact that, yes, this was in fact his life now.

Well.

At least he didn’t have to deal with Uber and Leet as well.

The doorbell rang.

“FUCKING REALLY!?”