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Rating:
Mature
Archive Warning:
Graphic Depictions Of Violence
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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
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Canon-Typical ViolenceCanon-Typical Body Horrorshard-altered psychologytags to be added as we go
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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:29,369
(Restricted) The Shadow Over Brockton Bay
Temeritous
Chapter 5: Draugr 1.5
Chapter Text
Glenn was a strange man. I was doubtful of his credentials at first, because what man versed in public presentation would dress like that, or get that haircut? But he was in the right place, on the other side of the television screen in the Wards' conference room, so it was probably the right guy.
"Lazarus, right? I've been over your file and we don't have a lot of time, so just tell me what you have in mind for a costume."
I'd thought this over last night, while sleeping. "Red costume, something like Aegis', to hide bloodstains when I get hurt or have to reset. Made of something hard to rip or tear - it doesn't need to be armored, since it's not like I'll stay hurt, but it's easier and probably better if all my bits stay together."
Glenn nodded along to what I was saying. "We've got costume materials that fit the bill. But it looks bad to send out Wards with no visible armoring, especially on the front line like you want to be. We'll also be trying to keep the... specifics of your resurrection power out of the public eye as much as possible. So, armoring: chestplate is a must, possibly an armored skirt - how do you feel about matching Vista? - and you can pick between other pieces. I'll send the mock-ups to your Ward email.
"My next point: the name. Are you really that attached to Lazarus? It brings some connotations that are less than ideal."
"I'm keeping the name," I told him bluntly, lip curling up a bit. "Back up, I didn't agree to any armoring. At best it's a waste, at worst it'll actively slow me down."
"If you refuse to wear armor, you'll have to be kept back from the front, play the pure Master angle and act only through your minion. We can't have you out there dying in front of God and CCTV."
"Fine," I agreed. I had no intention of actually doing that, but I was getting used to lying about my use of my own powers. The amount of people who thought they knew better than me was just astounding. "I'll do that, then."
Chambers paused and narrowed his eyes at me, apparently suspecting that I'd given in too easily. "Disobeying orders will get your pay docked, among other things."
"Okay," I said, and waited for him to continue.
After another moment's consideration, he finally did. "Next is costuming for your minion. Stranger ratings don't poll well, especially invisibility ones, so we'll be keeping that aspect to ourselves." He stopped talking, looking at me. After a split second of confusion I realized he was pausing to give me a chance to object.
I shrugged. "Fine by me." If I needed Coryn invisible again, it would be easy enough to shed any costume they put on her.
"...Right," he looked down at his file folder and muttered, "This she doesn't decide to fight me on." And then at full volume, "The minion will have to match your costume, but do you have any input on style or materials? I can see here that liquid paint didn't work but you had better luck with aerosolized."
"Spray paint all over, to make her visible, and then maybe like a tabard for the upper body," I said, thinking of Coryn's wings and tapered torso. It could probably look creepy to people who weren't used to it. "Has to be something open on the sides. Maybe something feathery for her legs, she looks like an owl."
"Hm," Chambers was scribbling in my file, the movement of his pen like he was sketching something. "We can work with that. I'll send some stuff along to your local PR, they'll be your main point of contact from now on. This is a complicated one, so your announcement will probably be pushed back to Monday, possibly later depending on your cooperation. Nice to meet you, Lazarus."
"You too, Glenn," I muttered, standing up.
"When you get out there, send Clockblocker in, will you?"
I hesitated. "Is he in trouble for something?"
"No more than usual, I just like to make him sweat. He made my job very difficult for a time."
My face broke into a grin; I remembered Clockblocker's rushed debut, the outrage and laughter around his announcement of his name. I had enjoyed it, but people with different ideas of 'proper' and 'appropriate' hero names had taken issue.
"Sure, I'll get him."
Dennis groaned when I told him, then slouched and dragged his feet on his way to the conference room.
"So, what's the verdict?" Carlos asked, waving me over to the couches. He was playing against Dean in some racing video game, his left hand deftly twitching a joystick to guide his car through a loop in the track.
"Damn," Dean grumbled, kicking at the low table as he concentrated. "Are you growing extra muscles in your hands? Super-reflexes?"
"This is pure human power," Carlos told him smugly. "So, how about it, Laz?"
"Just call me Taylor, Carlos. And never abbreviate my name again." It sounded so strange. "He wanted me in armor but I nixed that idea. Coryn will be getting a makeover, though."
"I get Lazarus, but where'd the minion's name come from?" Missy asked. She was sitting next to Dean, watching their race and apparently cheer-leading for him. Her homework sat open and untouched on the table.
I smiled as I recalled it. "I used to read this book series with my mom. The characters were all different types of owls, and my favorite of the main characters was a barn owl named Coryn. Since she looks like a barn owl, I named her after that one."
"How come she looks like a barn owl, though? I mean if you can change what she looks like, why not something cooler like a dragon?" Carlos asked. He thought about it for a moment and added, "Or, actually, like a dinosaur. A dragon might be a bad idea."
Yeah, I didn't need Lung getting angry that I stole his brand. "That's just her default shape, I don't know how or why. I guess I could change it if I needed to." But I wouldn't; Coryn's shape made me feel closer to my mom.
"Rematch," Dean said suddenly: the screen was showing replays of their race. "And this time, I want that car."
"Hey, I called next game," Chris complained.
"It's not the car," Carlos said. He stood up. "But no rematch and no next game, we need to start getting ready for patrol. Vista, if you don't finish your homework you know you'll be on console duty."
Missy flushed. "It's basically done already, it's easy stuff. Anyway, Shadow Stalker's late so she should be on console."
Carlos grimaced. "Actually, that's something I've got to tell you guys. Taylor, any idea when Chambers will be done with Dennis?"
"Right now," Dennis called out, strolling back in with his hands in his pockets. "He just wanted to check in I guess. Team meeting?"
"Team meeting," Carlos confirmed. He waited until Dennis drew closer, then took a breath and said, "I don't have much more information than this, but: Shadow Stalker is off the team. She might be going to juvie, or transferred to another Ward team, I'm not sure. All I know is she violated her parole somehow, and they're deciding what to do with her. We might not find out what."
"Sheeee-it," Dennis drew out the word. "Wonder what our pet psycho did this time. We were almost even on boys and girls for once, too."
She pushed me off a roof and killed me.
I thought about saying it, but I didn't. If I said it, the idea of me in their minds would include got killed by Shadow Stalker, and was a victim. I couldn't take that back, no matter how false the impression. And if I said I'd let her do it, they think that I entrapped her, and I'd be the bad guy.
Better to be silent. If I didn't tell them, they would never know.
The rest of the evening was spent with the Wards, first watching them get ready for their patrols - Aegis and Kid Win, Vista and Clockblocker - then watching them through the console screens. Gallant, on console duty, showed me around the system.
It was pretty simplistic, a nearly automatic process checking for red flags from police radios and emergency calls. I could see how Armsmaster had fallen to tinkering out of boredom. Gallant seemed to take console duty so responsibly that I began to doubt him; like he was trying too hard in reaction to my presence. There had to be a reason the video game controllers reached to the console chair.
We flicked through emergency services calls, landing on each long enough to ensure that a super-powered response wasn't necessary and then moving on. After one particularly high-strung call, where we'd listening to some nigh-incoherent screaming only to discover it was a domestic dispute, I noticed Gallant checking up on me out of the corner of his eye.
"It can be a lot sometimes," he offered, tipping one shoulder toward me. I was in a wheeled office chair, pulled up behind and to the side of his seat. "My first console shift, I gained some new respect for the actual nine-one-one operators. I don't have to talk to these people or even listen to them very long, and I still feel... well, it's hard not being out there helping."
Was that what this feeling was? I looked over to Coryn, who was pacing the floor, walls, and ceiling of the main domed room.
I was a little restless, I supposed.
"You just have to remember that we're here to help keep the others safe. There's a reason the Wards and Protectorate heroes have a longer lifespan than any other category, and it's because we work together and look out for each other."
Gallant, I decided, was too good to be true. No teenager was this genuinely nice; they were, in my experience, all about two steps from psychopathy.
I recalled Emma, friendly right up until she found someone else. Some people could pretend to be nice to you, to get under your skin and find out your secrets, until they had what they needed from you.
I smiled and hummed in response, as non-committal as I could make it. Gallant frowned, and too late I remembered what he'd told me about his emotion-sense.
But it isn't as good as mind-reading. I can think of something else, something that summons up the right emotions, while still keeping my true feelings hidden. It was too late to do it now, but from here on out I could try to control myself, not show him that I was watching him for deception.
And I was sure I'd find it, eventually.
"Need a ride home?" Carlos asked, tilting his head at the car that was waiting for him.
We were exiting one of the boltholes down to the Wards' quarters together; everyone left through different exits, so that there was less chance of us being noticed.
Dad wasn't very happy that I had refused his offer to pick me up, but he respected my wishes. We were slightly closer now than we had been, and I was beginning to realize that I missed some of the freedom I'd had when we barely spoke. Now he was interested in my life, which was fine, but refused to admit that I'd grown up while he looked the other way. I didn't need him hovering over my shoulder.
"Nah, I like walking. Don't worry about me."
"I would, but I know you," Aegis said with a grin and a jerk of his head. He was actually saying, I know your power. "See ya!"
"Later," I called back to him, and then set off walking.
Around the corner, there was a girl leaning against the building, waiting.
"Are you looking for me, or just anyone?" I asked her, stopped a few feet away. Coryn stepped soundlessly to her side, ready for a sudden move.
"You, specifically," she said, raising her head from her phone. "Hey. I'm Lisa."
"...Taylor," I said after a moment's thought. She'd managed to intercept me from a place that no one should be able to, which meant she could probably figure out my name. "How'd you know I'd come out here?" Precognition? It seemed fair to assume she was a cape, but I had little beyond that.
Her lips quirked up a bit, and when she shook her head her blond ponytail swished. "Not a precog, just a really good guesser. Of the available exits, this is the one where Aegis' mom's car was waiting for him. The guess was that you'd be leaving with him instead of one of the others."
Thinker, then. I ran through a mental list of Brockton Bay's known thinkers, and there were no good results. She was either an unknown or a villain.
"Not going to ask? Hm. I can't decide if you're shy or cautious. You're a hard read, Taylor."
"I'd talk if I had a bit more context," I allowed. "Right now this feels like a really weird ambush... Tattletale."
She clapped her hands together once, softly. "Ha! Knew you'd figure it out. But did you know I was the one who sent you the file on Sophia Hess?"
I didn't, and I hadn't even thought about it too much. It made sense to me that a person like Sophia had enough enemies that eventually one of them was smart enough to figure it all out.
"Yeah, and I love what you did with it. My boss thought you'd use it to blackmail her, but he's not as good as me at reading people."
"Why did you give me that file?" I asked. I thought she wanted me to feel indebted, and I didn't like the idea of being manipulated like that.
"Shadow Stalker was a murderous psycho who needed to be taken off the street," Tattletale said, sobering a little. "She took the game too far."
"The game?"
"You know, this," she motioned between us. "Heroes versus villains, cops versus robbers. If everything is going right, we're all just playing a game. Counting coup, like Native Americans. We don't kill each other, we only lock up the really dangerous ones, because we need all hands on deck for the Endbringers and the S-Class threats."
"Only if everything is going right," I noted. "What about if it's not?"
"Then you get bad times. Seriously, look at parts of Europe, Asia, all of Africa. Compared to those places, North America is a solid ten. Some of that's because of the PRT and the Protectorate, but it's really just that they know to enforce the rules of the game. It's all a balance."
"Okay." It made sense, it fit with what we were taught of recent history and what Miss Militia had told me about the unwritten rules of being a cape. "But why are you telling me?"
She shrugged. "I wanted to meet you. Make contact. Somehow, you're exactly what I expected and nothing like I thought at the same time. Don't worry, this isn't some kind of blackmail or recruitment pitch. There just aren't that many people in our line of work, you know? It's good to make friends where you can."
"And I guess since we're just playing cops and robbers, you and I can be friends," I said, unimpressed and letting it show. I was beginning to think she wanted a spy in the Wards.
She laughed at me again. "Not like that, no. Trust me, next time we run into each other we'll be enemies, for as long as you're with the Wards. But if you ever get tired of playing for the cops, remember me over here with the robbers, alright? I could use a friend who doesn't die."
For some reason, that rang truer than anything else she'd said this evening.
She smirked at me again, waved, and sauntered away in the opposite direction of the one I needed to go.
I watched, but nobody followed me home. It took me a long time to fall asleep that night, and my Dust watched everything within my range while I slept, but there was nothing to find. It seemed like Tattletale truly believed in the unwritten rules, at least in following their spirit if not the letter.
She didn't threaten my civilian identity; she'd given me her name first; and once I thought about it, I could understand giving me Sophia's identity. Sophia had been able to do what she did because of her place as Shadow Stalker, which meant she bridged the gap first. She broke the rules and so, as Militia had said, they no longer protected her.
What would happen if I broke the rules? What could they do to a deathless girl? Would even the Birdcage hold someone with infinite lives to spend breaking through its defenses?
A week ago, I'd nearly despaired at the thought that I would need to spend eternity constantly searching for something to do. Now the future had never looked brighter.
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