Chapter 32: Formalities and Plan(s)

Guardian

a Worm/Destiny Crossover

There were strangers in the base.

Clean, dry, and with rather less hair than before, Taylor left the bathroom to an unusual scene. Her dad had commandeered one of the beanbag chairs that had – somewhat mysteriously – appeared a few weeks ago and was bemusedly working out the various functions of a tablet computer. She sympathized. Only Lisa seemed able to fully utilize the thing, and that was only because she cheated and used her powers. He looked up when the door hissed shut behind her, a wide smile blooming across his face at the sight of her whole and unharmed. She grinned back.

As he stood, struggling somewhat to escape the confines of the beanbag, she saw Lisa breaking off her somewhat overly animated conversation with the strangers. One of them was a tall – nearly as tall as Taylor, but not quite. Ha. – girl with very pale skin and equally black hair. Long, swishy hair that Taylor looked at with envy before the sword at the girl's waist caught her eye. It was long and thin, strangely elegant, with a slender hilt that was clearly fit to its bearer's hand. Her costume, such as it wasn't, consisted of form fitting jeans, a white T-shirt, and a brown leather jacket she'd thrown over one shoulder to dangle nonchalantly from a single finger. Overall, combined with her lithe figure and muscle tone, she looked like a dancer.

The second stranger was rather short, but broad. Squat and thickly muscled the way Taylor imagined a wrestler might look. His head was shaven and he had a rather magnificent beard in shades of black and brown. His wildly gesturing hands were callused and dirty, like a craftsman's. He didn't have a sword, which Taylor found oddly comforting. There was a boxy, gun-shaped device on a table near him, however. Maybe he'd brought that. He wasn't wearing a costume either – cargo pants and a tank top that revealed a number of shiny burn scars on his arms. What's more –

That could wait. Right now she had a dad to hug. And hug him she did, throwing herself into his arms and feeling them wrap tightly around her. He squeezed her tight, kissed the top of her head and murmured "You scared the sh – crap out of us today, kiddo."

She felt a rush of bundled emotion, so tightly woven that identifying it was impossible. It brought tears to her eyes, prickling and stinging to be shed. "I'm sorry." She mumbled into his shirt.

"No, no, don't be. It's all over now. We're just glad you're safe." He took her by the shoulders and pushed her back to arm's length. His eyes were shiny, suspiciously so, but clear. He took a deep breath. "I think – yes – I think you've waited long enough."

With that, her dad spun her around and pushed her headlong into the hottest, most searing kiss she'd ever been part of as Lisa practically climbed her, wrapping arms and legs around Taylor. She, in turn, dropped her own hands to Lisa's thighs to support her girlfriend and proceeded to do her level best to kiss away the anxiety steaming from every pore. No matter how long it took. After a long minute – with tongue – Lisa broke the kiss to bury her face in Taylor's shoulder and took a deep, shuddering breath.

Lips tingling, face burning, Taylor brought a hand up to card through Lisa's hair. "I'm okay." she murmured, lips brushing the curve of Lisa's ear. "I'm just fine."

"I know." Lisa's lips traced the words into Taylor's collar. Somewhere in the depths of her mind she took note of the note of the fact that her dad was right behind her. Fuck it. "Saw you earlier, remember? I couldn't do this earlier. It was overdue."

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Her dad, followed by Sabah, came down the stairs into the base with arms full of bags that seemed to contain nothing but delicious smells. Taylor made a noise so indecent it made Lisa – enthroned on Taylor's lap – turn slightly pink. While the other two were gone retrieving what had better be food, efforts had been made to make a table out of chairs and an exercise mat. That didn't work – an obvious thing to see in hindsight – the decision was made through consensus that everyone was just going to sit on the floor and be happy about it. The strangers, volunteering because Lisa flat out said she wasn't going to move and therefore trapping Taylor, made a circle out of the beanbag chairs and some folded jackets.

"As the oldest here," Sabah made her argument, setting the food bags in the center of the circle, "I motion that I get first pick of the beanbags."

"Motion denied," Her dad dropped into the most comfortable of them with a grin. "because I am the oldest person here. Anyway, we've got Chinese food, Thai, barbecue, burgers, and... you may even be able to get some of it before someone eats it all." He then looked directly at his daughter, making it clear who that would be.

Taylor glared, a glare that said if I weren't tired, and also stuck, you'd be in for it. By nature of being her dad it slid right off him. That, and he wasn't exactly wrong. Then food was being passed around as people asked for this or that, and Sabah struck up a conversation with the girl stranger, and her dad drew the boy stranger into a discussion of the day's revelations. Lisa refused to move, so that Taylor could feed herself. So, after a quick bit of bickering, they reached a compromise: Taylor would keep her arms around Lisa, and Lisa wouldn't use her eyes to devastating, pouting effect. Relationships were about compromise. Even if this one felt somewhat one-sided.

On the plus side, food. Taylor ate everything Lisa gave to her, and together they demolished an order of pad thai, which was spicy enough to keep Taylor awake for the conversation that seemed to be brewing. Largely because there was an extent to which a person could be referred to as 'stranger' after sharing food, and that had been reached. To that end, Taylor waited for a pause in the small talk and pounced. "So, I don't actually know who you guys are."

The boy stranger frowned. "We introduced ourselves, though." The frown vanished as understanding dawned. "Which you weren't here for. Gotcha. Well, my name's Roo."

"Roo?" Her dad asked. Roo nodded.

"It's short for Prudence. Yes, I'm an Indian man with no accent named Prudence. There's a story, but I don't feel like telling it right now even though I probably will later, so...suck it." He coughed. "Or – or don't. Um." He turned to the girl next to him. "Help?"

"There's no helping a case of foot-in-mouth as bad as yours, Roo." They spoke with the ease and familiarity of people who knew each other quite well. "And I'm Foil. Well, not really. But. You know. Names. Foil'll do, for now."

Roo and Foil. She smiled. "Cool. I'm Guardian. We can all do the real name thing later, except for you, Roo, because you don't seem to care."

Roo clarified. "That's cuz I'm not a cape. Genuine normal person, here."

Foil snorted. He threw an egg roll at her, which she ate. "So," she spoke between mouthfuls, displaying a lax approach to table manners. Fitting, since there wasn't a table. "can we talk for a minute about how crazy it is that the country's gone to war against one person?"

"I can't promise I'll stay awake." Taylor felt obligated to add. "So can we maybe put that off until we've all gotten some sleep? Do you guys actually have somewhere to stay?"

"Yeah." Roo picked through his plate of pulled pork, selecting the choicest bits to eat with his fingers. "Lil – Uh, Foil has an apartment here, and a couch she's letting me sleep on."

"Cool." A massive yawn ripped free. "Okay, time for bed. Tails, that means you have to get off me."

"Don't wanna."

"Tails..."

A huffy sigh. "Fine."

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Then it was tomorrow. A new day, a new dawn, and a brave new world. A world of news stations reeling from a State of the Union address delivered while Taylor was sleeping in, revealing what she'd already known; an emergency session of Congress had voted unanimously to declare war against Jaime Rinke. She could almost imagine it: the reporters on the edges of their seats, mere feet from one of the world's most powerful men, clutching tape recorders and tablet computers and already planning how to tackle the question of the day. Just who was Jaime Rinke? It was almost amusing – almost, because there was nothing amusing about this – to imagine their slight disappointment when Jaime's other, more notorious identity was revealed. She imagined the blood draining from their faces as they were told.

It would the second ever mobilization of the US military on its own soil. The first, of course, being the hunt and decimation of the group of villains called the Slaughterhouse Nine. Though they numbered twelve at their time of extinction. That memory would be fresh in the minds of these reporters, because they would have done their research beforehand. They would know that the running battle left a fifteen mile swathe of Arizona – dubbed the Scar – uninhabitable from the aftereffects of so many powers and weapons being used. They would know that last time it took twelve villains and the eradication of a dozen towns in Washington state, and they would feel fear down to their bones as they wondered about how terrible one man would have to be for war to be declared upon him.

And all of that before breakfast.

There was a Lisa-burrito on her couch. It was watching TV and eating a bowl of cereal while her dad was having a quiet, intense discussion with someone on the living room cordless. Too hungry to eavesdrop, Taylor only passed through on her way to the kitchen. She stopped only to kiss her burrito girlfriend good morning – coffee and cornflakes. Delicious – before going to pull out enough ingredients to get a good eggs n' bacon breakfast going. Orange juice and everything. A proper breakfast. If Granddad Hebert were still alive, he would have called it a soldier's breakfast and refused to let her clean up any cooking debris. He had been a hard man, roughened and shaped by life, but she'd never doubted he loved her.

She spent the time between preparation and eating remembering some of her favorite grandpa-isms. When she was done, she plated up her eggs and bacon, poured herself a massive OJ, and carried it all back to the living room just in time for BREAKING NEWS to explode across the TV screen in blisteringly bright fonts. She pushed Lisa's feet off the couch and sat down just in time for the anchor return – visibly shaken – and announce that Las Vegas was under attack.

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The helicopter was flying high over the streets of the neon city, darkened buildings weakly reflecting the light of the pale morning sun. There were running figures everywhere – pouring out of buildings, spilling up onto rooftops, and racing down car-cramped streets. Both fleeing and pursuing. Predator, and prey. Taylor saw the screamers with their long-legged lope, and maybe it was a trick of the light or some thing with the camera, because they looked bigger than the ones she'd fought. Acted smarter, too. They worked like a pack of jackals, herding and isolating and surrounding the people they chased. She narrowed her eyes, breakfast forgotten, at the sight of some strange flash of light she saw in the swipe of a screamer's claw.

Out onto the roofs, behind the ones who'd run up there, came the shooters. Bigger, brighter, more powerful. She watched their purple flame burn a fleeing woman to ash as the man next to her tried to jump to an adjacent roof. He failed. The camera cut away before his limp body could hit the ground. The 'copter banked away from the Strip towards the more residential areas, while the weak voice of the reporter talked about a resistance being put up by local heroes, the Mafia and their assorted parahumans, and the Vegas Police Department. They had set up a perimeter in six blocks around the police station and were trying to get as many civilians inside it as possible.

It was a sight, to see that much power brought to bear against Nilbog's monsters. They hit an oncoming horde of screamers like a freight train – Brutes and Changers and Tinkers in powered armor stopping the charge dead. Movers and triggermen flitted above them, pouring all manner of ranged fire into the seething mass. Behind the line, people fled to relative safety. They were holding. She found herself urging them on. Lisa's hand sought out hers, wrapping around and squeezing tight.

Her voice was a shocked whisper. "Fuck me. Was this what it was like?"

Taylor nodded. "More or less."

She meant to continue, and was kept from doing so by her dad's strangled swear. Her attention was jerked back to the TV in time for a quintet of the larger shooters, followed by a mass of smaller ones, erupt from houses to the side and behind the established line. "Come on," someone was whispering. "turn. Watch your flanks!" She didn't realize it was her until Lisa stroked her thumb across the back of Taylor's hand. The big shooters spread out, taking cover behind abandoned cars before lifting their gun-arms and loosing a volley of massive orbs of violet fire. They were followed by mass fire from their smaller counterparts.

It tore the line apart. Screamers died by the dozen. So did the heroes. Oh, they fought like demons, but the line had broken. There were too many. At some point, the order to retreat was given, because the Movers scooped up the triggermen that were still alive and fled. A flanking maneuver. A fucking flanking maneuver. These things were smart – smarter than they should be.

The camera swiveled to zoom in on one of the big shooters. It looked up. Raised its arm. Fire filled the screen. Cut to static. The anchor reappeared, looking as if he'd just been sick. "My God," He passed a hand over his face. "ladies and gentlemen..." A visible effort to compose himself followed, and his voice steadied. "Ladies and gentlemen, this incredible heroism we've just seen...God be with those men and women. And with us all." A pause. "We go now to the Protectorate headquarters in Maine, where Alexandria is giving a first-ever press conference."

The camera cut to a woman in black. She spoke, but Taylor wasn't listening. Blood was rushing in her ears and she felt – something. Like rage and heartbreak and the inferno of determination. She was breathing hard through her nose. "Lisa."

"Yeah, baby?"

"Do you have Foil's number?"

"Yeah."

"Call her."

"Taylor..." Lisa sounded...sorrowful. Taylor closed her eyes as they burned. "Taylor, look at me."

Taylor swallowed past the growing knot in her throat and met her girlfriend's eyes. Oh, wow. Her mouth spoke of its own volition, spilling thoughts as they came. "We have to – that can't have been for nothing."

She became aware of her dad's presence, warm and soothing, behind her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "It won't be."

Breathe in, Taylor. She did.

Breathe out . She did.

She cried anyway.

She shook in the arms of the two people she cared for the most. Then she dried her tears and went to work.

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