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Rating:
Mature
Archive Warning:
Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Category:
Gen
Fandoms:
Parahumans Series - Wildbow亜人 - 三浦追儺 & 桜井画門 | Ajin - Miura Tsuina & Sakurai Gamon (Anime & Manga)
Characters:
Taylor Hebert | Skitter | WeaverDanny HebertBrockton Bay WardsLisa Wilbourn | Tattletale
Additional Tags:
Canon-Typical ViolenceCanon-Typical Body Horrorshard-altered psychologytags to be added as we go
Language:
English
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Timballisto's Curated Works
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Published:2019-05-24Updated:2020-03-11Words:99,568Chapters:29/?Comments:226Kudos:730Bookmarks:266Hits:29,366
(Restricted) The Shadow Over Brockton Bay
Temeritous
Summary:
Taylor died and triggered and resurrected in the locker. She is an Ajin, one of the immortals, armed with an unparalleled ability to control the Invisible Black Matter that gives them life. Follow her as she lives and dies (a lot), and begins to understand the divergence between what she used to be and what she has become.
Ajin fusion/altpower, no knowledge of Ajin is needed to read.
Notes:
Time for a new fic!
I'll be honest here: I've never actually read/watched anything from Ajin. I did read and love a few fanfictions using the setting/idea in much the same way I have here, and I read through the pertinent parts of the wiki. If I got something wrong, either the wiki did me dirty or I pulled some shard bullshit to change it so it worked my way.
POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR: suicide and self-harm. Neither of these concepts in the story is backed by the usual psychology (depression), but they do technically happen. PM me for more information (or leave a review if you don't have an account) on what happens if you think this may affect you.
Chapter 1: Draugr 1.1
Chapter Text
It was harder than I thought it would be to find a sufficiently tall building. Most of the publicly accessible buildings in Brockton Bay are only a few stories tall, and that's not nearly high enough for what I had in mind. The school was only three floors, and it would be pretty pathetic anyway. The library was three, the top floor off limits to visitors. The hospital was a nice ten, but roof access was heavily restricted for pretty much the exact reason I needed it.
The hotel roof I was standing on was twelve stories high. Looking down at the ground, I felt like I should feel... something. One of the feelings that had been missing lately. There was just a strange churning in my stomach, a generalized anxiety. What if this wasn't tall enough? What if I didn't die on impact?
Coryn put one claw on my shoulder, reminding me of her presence. I looked back at her pitch-black form and smiled.
I stepped over the edge.
I was right to worry; the impact wasn't enough. I went too limp, let the wind turn me around too much. I hit almost completely feet-first, which meant I got to feel every shattering bone and every ounce of liquefied tissue. I didn't scream only because there wasn't enough air in the whole world to fuel it.
Coryn landed next to me, her wings folding back as silent as the barn owl her shape was modeled after. The last thing I saw in my human body was her talons closing over my skull, crushing it.
Then I was Coryn, twice as big as my human self and infinitely more powerful. That's a little bit misleading; I was always Coryn when she was within my range, but while my human body was dead I was only Coryn.
Coryn looks like Blasto bred an owl with a human. She has a barn owl's unsettling face and eyes, two massive wings with hand-like clawed tips, like bat fingers, and a very human lower half if you ignored the bird feet. She is matte-black, untextured when I had tried to pet her. Your hand encounters resistance, but it doesn't feel anything. She's silent and, as far as I can tell, invisible to everyone but me.
I gathered the broken body together as well as I could, growing two extra arms under Coryn's wings to grab up the corpse. I beat my wings and flew up, back to the roof for now. It was already beginning.
The little black particles gathered into strips and wrapped around my body. When it was completely mummified, the strips melted together and then disintegrated, leaving a perfectly pristine body behind. A second later, I came gasping back to life, my eyes opened and staring. Coryn leaned over me, a curious tilt to her head.
I should stop pretending that we're separate. It can't be doing great things for my mental health.
Not every black particle was used in my resurrection; some lingered, floating like dust motes in a sunbeam. I could feel every one of them, from the smallest speck to the largest conglomerated blob. I could feel when they brushed up against things, the same way I could feel what Coryn felt, but that was the only sense I got from them. It was like having hundreds, thousands of tiny fingers separate from the rest of my body, and just as easy to control.
I didn't know what they were, or why they only appeared in numbers when I died. I knew that they were some aspect of my power, that Coryn was made of them, that I could make more - with an effort. It was easier to get an amount of them by dying, and dying served my secondary purpose anyway.
I made Coryn crawl to the edge of the roof, where I'd laid down my notebook. When I opened it, the pages were covered in splotchy black writing - my Dust, pressed between the pages to keep it still but otherwise everlasting. Nobody could read these notes but me, and that was a good thing because I had detailed all of my experiments.
(x) blood loss
(x) asphyxiation
(x) drowning
(x) fire
( ) freezing
(x) electrocution
(x) beheading
(x) blunt force
(x) crushing
(x) dehydration
( ) starvation
( ) heights
...
Blood loss recovery time is fastest at 10 seconds. Recommend using this method to force resets when neck breaking is not possible....
...
The finger showed no signs of growing back over three days, and further experimentation with dirty water on the wound has suggested that infection is still possible. In the case of a loss of limbs or other injuries that are not immediately fatal, it will be necessary to forcefully reset.
...
Drowning reset time: approx. 3 min. Uncomfortable. The lack of air was like asphyxiation, but once reset my lungs remained filled with water and movement was slow and taxing. Ejecting the water was highly unpleasant; recommend puncturing chest cavity into lungs with a tube of some sort next time. Perhaps a full reset once out of the water....
...
Day 10
Stomach has stopped growling and aching. Drinking water has stopped helping my appearance. This may have to be the end of this experiment; dad seems to be getting worried....
I collected a handful of Dust and poured it out over the half-written page. Faster than writing or typing, my thoughts took shape.
(x) starvation
(x) heights
Day 11
The height experiment seems to have reset my starvation experiment as well, I no longer feel the emptiness of hunger. Coryn shows me that my physical appearance has not changed, however.
Height reset time: approx. 6 min. In accordance with the physical damage scaling time chart. Slightly less than crushing, perhaps because there were more pieces left relatively intact.
I paused in my thoughts. What would happen if my whole body was vaporized? The beheading experiments had been illuminating as to the resurrection process; whatever directed it wasn't fond of letting perfectly good pieces go to waste. If my head was nearby, the Dust ribbons formed a connection and dragged it back to my body. When I had Coryn pick up my head and resist the ribbons, they eventually gave up and reformed my head on my body. They did the same but faster if Coryn took the head more than thirty feet from my body.
There are a few disembodied Taylor skulls rotting in the ground of some vacant lots. I figured these probably wouldn't be found for a while, and my dental records weren't on file so I wasn't too worried about being identified if they were.
If the beheading experiments had taught me anything, it was that even the most vital parts of me could be replaced seamlessly, matter created from nothing. Until I found a way to get myself vaporized, I would have to assume that my body would reform from the ribbons near the place where I'd died.
I took a moment to flick ( ) total body annihilation onto the bottom of my list, closed the book and made my way to the roof access door. I had school in the morning, for however long I could bear it.
It turned out that I could only last three periods into school on Monday; I walked into the class I shared with Emma, saw some sort of viscous fluid spilled on the only available chair, and turned around.
Emma was sitting one row back from the front, one elbow on the desk with her chin in her hand, almost casually looking back at me. There was a nasty, satisfied look on her face, triumphant when she saw that she had my attention. Coryn loomed behind her, one talon up on her desk ready to strike the moment I willed it.
I'm a parahuman, I thought dully, looking at her and keeping my face blank. And apparently completely immortal.
I had always known that she was beneath me, that I was better than her, but now the gulf between us was almost too broad to see across. Whatever was wrong with her was unfathomable to me; nothing I could think of would cause me to become what she had become.
This is pointless. I'm a parahuman; I'm not going to college.
It was a thought that had been brewing for weeks, ever since Coryn pulled my body out of the locker and took us to the beach to wash off. It had only taken me this long because it's a lot to come to terms with, being so completely different now. I had to change my whole way of thinking.
Before, the future had been something I needed to work for, to make it worth living. Now it was guaranteed.
Emma's expression faltered, turned confused. I was smiling.
I started walking. I considered saying something to her, but why waste the air? You don't talk to the little ants you step over.
I felt the chains of my old life falling away even as I walked, leaving me as light as air. New concerns and worries kept coming up to bother me, and I carefully examined them for anything of worth. But there was nothing there that could bother a deathless girl. How had I lived with that hanging over my head?
Death is final and permanent. Everything else is temporary. Life is worth so much more when you understand that.
There was one immediate problem in my way now: what do people do all day if not school?
Get a job, I supposed. I wondered if there was any place that would hire a fifteen-year-old girl who ought to be in school, and then decided that I probably shouldn't be working at any place that would.
I was only ten minutes out of school, and already I could tell that my main problem was going to be boredom. Endless time stretched in front of me, empty and pointless without a goal or something to occupy my time.
I swung my backpack around so I could pull my experimentation notebook out, skimming my notes. I could read it without even opening it, sensing the position of the Dust pressed between the pages, and I already found the first few notes to be almost childish. I had been so excited to have powers, filled with life and hope for the first time in a year and a half. The first page was dedicated to a list of potential hero names, one of which I'd already given to my other body. In the rush of experimenting, my heroic plans had fallen to the wayside. They seemed silly, now... but it was something to do.
"What do you think, Coryn?" I asked my shadow, making her speed up and pace me. She walked on all fours and her knuckles like an ape, wings folded up along her long arms. "Can I be a hero with this power?"
It wouldn't be easy, I thought. I might have the perfect defense, but my only offensive capability was Coryn, and I wasn't sure how much use she would be. She could airlift my human body easily, but could she go up against the city's villainous capes?
I took a right at the next intersection. I needed the computers at the library.
A quick search directed me to the parahumans wiki on Parahumans Online as the best, most up-to-date source of information. Crowd-sourcing was really the only way to get information on villains, since they didn't exactly advertise their powers.
It had been a while since I browsed PHO religiously, but I still knew how to find my way around. There were a lot of familiar names, but some new ones too.
Empire Eighty-Eight still had their big names, Kaiser, Fenja, Menja, Purity, Hookwolf, and had apparently recently added a younger member named Rune, with touch-telekinesis that let her float even massive objects.
Lung's Azn Bad Boys were as strong as ever despite having only two capes in the gang. Oni Lee was confirmed alive two days ago after a fracas with the Merchants in broad daylight, during which the spree-bomber had tried and failed to kill someone named Mush.
I browsed Mush's short entry, finding his use of powers to be lackluster at best. Was he restricted to garbage, or could he become an indomitable threat if allowed to assimilate tougher materials? Had he even tried?
I glanced through Coil's page, but it hadn't been updated since last year and there was no new information. The speculation part was full of theories that he wasn't even a parahuman, same as always. His mercenaries had recently acquired some tinkertech bulletproof vests, which was certainly worth noting, but they were the same vests sold out of Toybox; not a new Tinker in his gang.
There was a fresh update on the Brockton Bay Villains index; an as-yet-unnamed team who had hit a jewelry store and a storage warehouse. That was worth looking at.
Darkness clouds, parahuman-induced Tourrette's, and powered-up dogs. There was a fourth member whose powers were unknown but probably some kind of Thinker.
I sat back from the computer, staring at the index page and tallying up the list. They couldn't kill me, they couldn't trap me, and Coryn was completely invisible. I had a range of two city blocks with her; I didn't even need to be near them.
I signed out of the computer, stood and gathered up my backpack and notebook. Time to go be a hero.
There was a severe lack of crime on Monday afternoons, apparently. I wondered how to get hold of a police radio, and then whether that was legal, and then whether I cared. The answer was: not really.
I walked while Coryn circled above me. Is it okay to present yourself as bait in a seedy area, and then turn the tables on anyone who takes the bait? I think that's called entrapment, and it's probably not admissible in court. How do the courts handle parahuman involvement? It's not like they can call a parahuman in to testify; how are you going to trust the guy in a mask who won't tell you his real name to tell the truth about anything?
I decided against the bait plan.
I could hear through Coryn's... well, not her ears, more her whole body, but I could hear through her. She was made of Dust, strengthened by it when I added more and weakened when I took from her to write in my notebook, so why couldn't I hear through Dust that wasn't a part of her?
There was always an aura of Dust around me, a cloud about three feet thick that swirled lightly while I wasn't using it; it hadn't always been there, but I collected and saved all the Dust left over from my resurrections. I formed about half the aura into a dense ball, diminishing its radius, and then moved the basketball-sized sphere over to the other side of the street.
Immediately my perception changed. I could hear the street in stereo, once from my ears and once from the ball. There was no sight still, but that might come with an even bigger concentration of Dust.
I experimented as I walked down the street, pulling out my notebook and flipping to a fresh page. Coryn watched where my body was walking as I concentrated on splitting the Dust into ever-smaller pieces to determine the minimum amount needed for hearing.
Smallest size for auditory input from sphere is approx three inches across.
Sphere shape = sounds come in from all directions.
Flat pane = sounds come in from the largest surface area. Can use to listen through a window, although sound is quite muffled. Still need only three inches across the flat pane. Best for economical Dust usage.
Cube shape = direction of sound is easier to pinpoint. Better for listening. Slightly more effort to create and maintain; eight-sided (? name) is more difficult but again more precise. Recommend practice.
Surface area is more important than mass for sensory usage. More surface area = sight?
I left my Dust cube on the other side of the street, and pulled together the rest of my aura into the flattest, longest plane it could form. I still couldn't see out of it.
But I could see out of Coryn's eyes; she circled high above, letting me know I should stop my body at the corner and wait for the light to change, helping me to avoid other pedestrians as I stared blindly at my notebook. What was the difference?
I heard from every part of Coryn, not just her 'ears'. But I only saw through her eyes; it would probably be pretty disorienting to have three-sixty vision the way I had universal hearing.
I formed my second Dust plane into the heart-shape of a barn owl's face, with two fathomless black eyes. I gained a third viewpoint, staring at my human face and triumphant grin. I made my notes, snapped the book shut, and broke Coryn apart into a hundred faces and eight-sided shapes.
I heard everything; I saw everything. And if someone was committing a crime within my range, I would know.
I still didn't know the protocol for capes arresting people or stopping crime, but I found three different people shooting up and confiscated their drugs. That left me holding three syringes plus a lot of other illegal paraphernalia, and I had no idea what to do with that, either. If I just left it in a dumpster some junkie would probably find it and think he hit the jackpot. I wound up crushing what I could, using Coryn's invulnerable talons, and buried everything in a barren vacant lot.
The junkies hadn't been happy to see their score floating away from them, but they couldn't see Coryn carrying it or do anything to stop her. I'll admit to a vindictive satisfaction with the thefts; I hate drugs, everything from heroin to alcohol. Emma had made me try some beer after my mother died, saying that's what helped her dad feel better.
I picked up my pace after a check of my watch told me dad would be home soon. He'd have questions if I got home after him on a school day.
Not for the first time, I considered telling him that I was a parahuman. He should be happy to learn about my power, since it meant I'd never get hurt.
But part of me rebelled against the idea of telling anyone anything. It probably stemmed from how many of my secrets Emma had pulled out, waved in my face, and then spat on; if I never said something, it could never be used against me. There were still things, even now, that could hurt me. Death has no dominion but I still feel pain. It's just... dulled, because I know that it's temporary.
I don't know what he'll want me to do if I tell him. It's not a conversation we ever had, hey dad what if I got powers one day? I've heard the Wards get paid, and having money for once would be nice. They'd probably want me to go back to school, but they'd have to transfer me to Arcadia with the other Wards. And if they wanted to keep me at Winslow... well, they physically couldn't make me go. I smiled at the thought.
I saw dad's truck in the driveway when I rounded the corner onto our block, which meant either he'd gotten off work early or the school had called him and he'd taken off early. Either way, he knew that I wasn't coming from school. It was probably a good thing I was going to tell him.
"I'm home!" I called into the house, dropping my keys into the dish by the door. My dad's keys were already there.
"The school called," his voice was coming from the kitchen. I went in to find him sitting at the table, some papers in front of him. "They said you missed the last half of your classes."
"Yeah, I decided I'm not going back there." I told him.
Dad paused. "Taylor, I'm glad you're feeling a little more confident but... I've been looking at the forms and the numbers, we can't afford cyber-school - "
I smiled and sat down across from him; he looked up at me without fully raising his head, and for the first time in a while I realized how exhausted he looked. It had been months since we sat at the table together. Usually he ate dinner in front of the television and I ate up in my room. "It's fine, dad. Really. Listen - I'm a parahuman. I have powers."
"You what?" he said, on automatic. Then his eyebrows went up. "Wait, like - superpowers? Like Alexandria?" One of his hands made a wavy motion in the air, possibly indicating flight. "What can you do?"
"Superpowers yes, Alexandria no. There's two parts. I can control this... invisible black matter, I call it Dust, and shape it. Most of the time I keep it looking like - " I stood up as Coryn came back into the room, holding a bedsheet from the linen closet upstairs. "Like this. This is Coryn."
I unfolded the sheet and wrapped in around Coryn, getting as close to her shape as I could. Her wings were too big to fit under the sheet with the rest of her, but I demonstrated them by wrapping the sheet around each one individually. "That's Coryn. I control her, I can see and hear what she does. Um, I know I make it sound like she's separate from me but she really isn't. It's just easier to think like that."
"Wow," dad said, blankly, staring. I left the sheet wrapped over Coryn's shoulders, outlining the shape of her torso and trailing down like a mantle. She crouched in the corner of the kitchen, out of the way for now. "Um, that's a - really great power."
"Yeah, but that's only the first part." I grinned, excited that he was taking it pretty well so far. "It gets better. Dad, you don't have to worry about me ever again. I can't get hurt, not permanently. I can't die."
"You mean you regenerate, or heal yourself like Panacea?" he asked.
"No, I mean I literally can't die." Now I regretted having completely invisible notes. I had no proof of the extent of my experiments. "I mean that if I take fatal damage, I just come right back. Completely healthy and perfectly whole again."
His mouth dropped open, and I watched the tiny muscles in his face twitch like thoughts across his face. A flicker at the corner of his eye, the slightly flare of his nose, eyebrows drawing together, and mouth thinning for a moment. Just when I was starting to get worried that he was having a heart attack or a stroke, he asked in a rough voice, "And how do you know that?"
Ah. I could see how he maybe thought.... "I died in the locker, dad. That's when Coryn formed. She got me out - I told you there was a release on the inside of the locker, but it was busted. Coryn cut the lock and pulled me out, I mean I did, while controlling her, and I took my body to the ocean to wash off but I could tell that I wasn't breathing... and then I was. I think the coat hook at the back hit something important in my head when I got shoved in."
"You... died?" his question was faint, his eyes looking a little wet.
"Only for about three minutes. I came back. Dad, I always come back. I always will. Please don't... please don't cry, it's fine."
"Taylor!" he shouted hoarsely, "This is not fine! You died! They fucking killed you! It doesn't matter that you - " his voice broke, "That you came back. I lost you and I didn't even know it."
Before I knew it was happening, he was up around the table and hugging me. I patted his back awkwardly, feeling sympathetic tears gathering in my own eyes. That was a little annoying. "Oh my god. I am so sorry. I'll kill them, I'll fucking - what are their names? Don't lie to me, don't tell me you don't know."
Despite his words, he was still holding on to me tightly and had one hand on the back of my head. I felt... warmth. I had never doubted that he cared, but knowing and knowing are two different things.
"You can kill them, I guess, but I'd have to change my plans and be a villain instead of a hero, and I'm not sure how well I can help you avoid the authorities."
Dad barked a strangled laugh. I got the impression that he thought I was joking. "Okay, maybe no killing. If that's not the first thing you did when you got superpowers, I think I can hold myself back as well."
"Good." He hadn't asked about my phrasing it 'I always come back', and I decided not to press the point. One death had flipped him out this badly; there was no way of knowing what the others would do to him.
Dad finally pulled away, his expression half an embarrassed smile. "So, uh," he cleared his throat, still a little thick with emotion. "You wanna be a hero? That's good. Um, the Protectorate? Wards, I guess."
I nodded. "That's what I was thinking, yeah. I've heard they get paid, too."
His mouth tightened even as his gaze went distant for a moment. "Don't let... don't let money make your decision for you, Taylor. We've got enough to live off of, I don't need to put you to work to pay the bills."
I shrugged, trying to express just how much it didn't matter to me. "I want to be a hero, and if I can get paid to do it I will. Anyway, I figure it'll be like... a job. You don't like everyone you work with - " he snorted, " - but you still work together because you're professionals. Maybe I'll make friends with the Wards, maybe I won't, but that doesn't matter as long as I can work with them."
Dad was smiling slightly as he watched me, and I felt warm and almost uncomfortable. I checked through Coryn's eyes and a mask over dad's shoulder, but there was nothing special about me to see right now. "You kinda grew up while my head was up my ass, huh?"
"Dad!" I was startled to hear him curse.
He laughed at me. "Okay, so you want to be a Ward? How do we do that, exactly?"
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