Chapter 47: Turn the Screw

Guardian

a Worm/Destiny Crossover

Chapter 47: Turn the Screw

By the end of her time in Las Vegas, there wasn't a single piece of Taylor's costume that remained untorn, unstained, or intact. After coming home and sleeping for the better part of fourteen hours, she'd taken the remnants to Sabah and it had promptly been declared a lost cause. So they'd put their heads together and come up with a new idea. An evolution, so to speak, to reflect the new, dangerous times she found herself in. Before heading in to meet with the PRT, she picked up the result. She liked what she'd found.

Quick first impression: sleeker, darker, deadlier. A full helmet in addition to a hood because she, and this was a direct quote, "got punched in the face way too much." The coloring trended more towards grays and dark greens. Whereas before her chestpiece resembled a vest-corset mating, this new one was more along the lines of ballistic vests and breastplates. Her gloves covered the length of her forearm, leaving the tips of her fingers exposed for things like holding a knife and loading a gun. The material of her cloak was more like that of a canvas duster than the cloth it was before. She was also finding places to hold various tools. Little loops that were clearly for magazines, clips for knife sheaths, pockets to hold stuff, that kind of thing.

All in all, she thought as she admired herself in a mirror, it looked less like a costume and more like armor. The kind of thing a warrior would wear. She approved, all the way down to her Light.

She ran to the PRT buildings instead of driving – well, being driven, she still didn't have her license – so as to get a good idea of how her armor felt to move in. It was to Sabah's immense credit that despite the added weight and stiffness, she had no harder a time than before. She covered the distance quickly, pausing on a roof with a good viewpoint to get a look at what was going on.

It looked like a disturbed beehive, mixed with a broken-open anthill. Parahumans in brightly colored outfits, suits of powered armor, or in the centers of brightly coruscating coronas of energy flew to and from the building in large numbers. More flying parahumans – more parahumans in general – than lived in Brockton Bay. The ground around the building hosted a similar scene. Cars came and went, all of them black with tinted windows and government plates. Men in armored uniforms were loading and unloading parcels. There was a half-moon of metal, thirty feet wide and half again as tall, set into asphalt at one side of the vast parking lot. Within that space was a field of sky-blue energy. Some of the cars and trucks would drive into it and disappear, and others would appear from it trailing wisps of turquoise ether.

Taylor dropped to the ground and made her way inside. It was a very strange feeling to be recongized on sight, let alone be allowed entry to a high security location with nothing more than a nod and armed escort. She'd gone through airports with more hassle. As they rode the elevator up, she turned to ask one of her escorts, "What's going on?"

There was a quick exchange of helmeted glances between her escorts before one of them turned to her. "You weren't told?"

"Not everything. Something's happening in Pittsburgh, something bad. That's all I was able to get."

"Well." The same guard rolled his shoulders as if settling his vest more comfortably on his person. She sympathized. "That's not wrong. Word is that containment has failed and we're all coming together to try a Hail Mary to save the city. It's on a whole other level of fucked."

=+= Chapter 47: Turn the Screw =+=

Director Piggot's health seemed to have made a turnaround in the weeks since their last meeting. She wasn't quite so enormously fat, though a great deal of weight still hung from her frame. Her skin, once a waxy gray, had become a clearer, slightly healthier white. Her breaths seemed to come easier, and her eyes burned with furious purpose. For all of that, though, all she said when seeing Taylor was, "Guardian. New look?"

Taylor touched her helmet before nodding. "My friends were tired of me getting punched in the face."

The Director made a sound that could have, given time and proper care, been a chuckle. It was not. "Understandable. Please, have a seat." Once Taylor had, she continued. "I imagine you're somewhat unclear to the specifics of what's happening. Sadly, I won't be able to give you as much information as either of us would like. We're on a war footing."

"I understand." Taylor did. She remembered how fast things had gone in Las Vegas, and she'd only been aware of – at most – half of what was going on. Further, she'd only been part of things. To be in control, in part or in whole? It'd be insane. "What can you tell me?"

"I can tell you that of the original six cities attacked, or perhaps infected, by Nilbog's creatures, Pittsburgh was the one with the smallest parahuman response. As a result, the creatures were able to establish a much more secure position than in any of the other cities."

She frowned. "Why was the response so much smaller?"

The Director's answer was simple. "Manpower." At Taylor's tilted head, she elaborated. "It's not much more complicated than that. Parahumans are, by their nature, capable of extraordinary things. But with a few notable exceptions, they cannot be in multiple cities at once. Since multiple cities were attacked at once, choices had to be made. And now, as a result of those choices, we stand a very real danger of losing Pittsburgh entirely."

A jolt of panic ran through Taylor. If the monsters managed to break free, there was no counting how much death they would cause and how far they would spread before they could be destroyed. "What's being done?"

"Several things. The most pertinent, and the reason I asked you here, is that the Protectorate is reinforcing the soldiers and parahumans in the city. I want you and your team to be a part of my division's response."

"Why? I mean, why us?" Never mind that Taylor didn't think of her and her friends as a 'team', not in the way the Director meant it. There were times to bring that up.

"You've proven yourself to be an especially capable and effective young woman, for one thing. For another, in terms of casualties suffered, yours was one of the five Las Vegas strike teams to only suffer comparatively minor injuries." The Director sighed. "I realize that's a large burden to bear, but there's more. Of all of the parahumans to encounter Nilbog's creations, you are the only one to – however briefly – encounter him."

That...she didn't like to think about that. The darkened, bloodstained cavern, gleaming orange in the witchlight of a massive crystal. That voice, booming and sepulchral and utterly, utterly insane. She nodded, and tried not to let the memory put a shiver in her voice. "He was – it..."

The Director nodded. "Quite." The older woman took a breath and laid her hands flat on her desk. "There's more information I can offer, but it's all behind a barrier of confidentiality. If you agree to join the response, there's a briefing this evening."

Taylor remembered the promise she made. The furious, gleaming brand in her hands and the wrathful Light inside her. There was really only one thing to say. "We'll be there."

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In the gray hours of the early morning, a spring breeze blowing cool and brisk, the Pittsburgh Containment Wall looked imposing and formidable. At least, from a distance. It was only when she got closer that Taylor saw the scars. Fire had scorched meters-long swathes of ash down its length. Black, molasses-sticky ichor mixed with the ash. Numerous craters, pits dug into the wall itself by some acidic substance. The defenders themselves, an electic mix of uniformly armored military soldiers, Protectorate troopers, and costumed capes. All of them weary, many of them wounded. None of them whole.

"The wall and its defenders, have been under continuous assault from the enemy forces within the city. For the last six days, an attack has come every four hours. Two days ago, the gap shrunk to every hour and forty five minutes. Earlier today, when the emergence of a new type of creature made air support riskier than it was helpful, the gap shrunk even further to every half hour. By our most optimistic predictions, an attack will come within ten minutes of our arrival."

Taylor was reassured by the familiar weight of her weapons in various places on her armor. Her knife, loyal and dependable and utterly unrecognizable from the kitchen knife it'd started life as, rode horizontal at the small of her back. In their sheaths on her breastplate were short-handled, wide-bladed throwing knives. Her gun, sleek and black and gold, was solid and reassuring on her thigh. The newest addition to her arsenal was in a shoulder worn baldric – which she hadn't known existed until two hours ago – and hung on her opposite hip. Lily's former sword, gifted in good faith and changed by Light. It had begun life as a dull, blunted fencing blade, made lethal by the application of Lily's power.

Her own had done something different. The fire she'd poured into it, as hot and relentless as the sun, had infused the blade's center with a swirling comet's tail of red-and-gold. The blade itself had flattened, curving gently at the tip, and gained a single, razor edge. In the depths of her mind where her nerdiness dwelled, she'd started calling it Howl, for the sound it made when it cut the air. The sword was thin and slender and hers . No matter what Lily said.

"Upon arrival, team leaders will make contact with the commanding officer, General Daniel McKnight, and receive their orders. A counter-offensive is being planned, a final effort to retake the city. If it fails, and the area remains under enemy control, the President and Congress have authorized Eidolon and the military to utterly destroy everything within its walls. Your tablets and briefing packets should contain information on the state of the defenses and the new types of enemy you'll be facing."

Taylor led Lisa and Lily to the command tent, easily identified by dint of being larger and busier than every other tent. Armsmaster's word rang in her ears. The city wouldn't fall, not if she had anything to say about it.

=+= Chapter 47: Turn the Screw =+=

There was a ten-minute countdown ticking away in her head. In everyone's head. Ten minutes, the briefing had said, at most. It certainly went a ways towards lending wings to people's feet. Lisa, laden down with her own weapons of war, stole one last kiss "for luck" before heading off. In turn, Lily followed her to the armory.

Taylor found her fingers itching for what she saw. Rifles by the dozen, stack neatly against the walls. Crate after crate of ammunition. Pistols and shotguns and enough explosives to put a serious hole in the world. As she saw all of that, all those instruments of death and destruction, she felt right at home.

Beside her, Lily ran her hand over the array of knives – ranging from switchblade short to machete long – and said, "I wish I was as brave as you." She chose a blade with an odd inward curve. A chopping, hacking thing, it would be ruinous in her hands. It went into a sheath at her hip. After a moment's consideration, she took a second. Then a bracer of throwing knives. And a machete.

Taylor paused in her perusal of the guns. Next to her, patient and watchful, the quartermaster kept quiet, his only reaction to their youth being a raised brow. "Am I brave?"

Lily snorted, strapping the bracer to her forearm. "Of course you are. What else could you be?"

Taylor ran her hands over a thickly barreled shotgun. She took it down and hefted the weight. Solid. Reassuring. She slung it and the accompanying sling of shells over her shoulder and went to the rifles. "I don't know. I don't think it's bravery to do this if you're not afraid."

"You're not?"

She shook her head. The last rifle she held had been obnoxious to use. Granted, she'd been underground at the time. Tight spaces, confinement, and all that. She'd still ended up with a broken wrist. It hadn't slowed her down all that much, she recalled. Either way, she took one of the rifles – an M4, the quartermaster quietly informed her – and went to start loading magazines. Lily joined her after a moment. "I think that when I gained this – my power, it changed something inside me."

Dark eyes regarded her through a domino mask. "You think it made you fearless?"

She shrugged. "No. I still get scared. Just...not of this. It doesn't scare me anymore. I don't think being brave is doing things you're not scared of."

Lily smiled, a small and quiet thing. "If you're about to quote the Duke, I'll kick you."

Taylor furrowed her brow. "Who?"

"Are you serious?"

"No."

Lily punched her on the shoulder. Then took a deep breath. "Come on, Guardian. Let's go save the world."

As if on cue, a siren began to wail. Feet began to pound outside the armory and Taylor led Lily to join to rush to stand atop the wall. From its pinnacle she could clearly see the tide of shrieking, hideous creatures. She loaded a magazine into the M4 and armed it. Her Light sang within her. All along the wall, soldiers and troopers did as she had, while the assembled capes began to gleam and glow and glimmer with their various powers.

Just before the defenders of man poured wrath onto the screaming horde Taylor whispered something to herself. "Eyes up, Guardian."

And it began.

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