19

Chapter 19

Notes:

To say that she was in a foul mood was like saying that Endbringers were a 'bit' tough.

There was a damn reason she hired Faultline to do this for her. Now, in front of something like a hundred troopers and at least two heroes, she'd been forced to use a bit of Syndra's power.

And now her head hurt like a bitch, again.

She had been expecting a migraine of the scale she'd gotten with Bakuda, but with her quickly growing soul, it seemed like her capability to use her Legends was getting better .

Still, she couldn't help but pace in tight circles the moment she touched back on the Bay, each breath an exhaled snarl of frustration.

And fucking Newter.

She wasn't sure if it was the Legends having fucked with her head or if she'd accidentally channeled a bit too much of Syndra's gloriously caustic, snarly personality, but the moment he said 'Summ's gal' she'd been sorely tempted to pop his fucking head like a grape.

She was still considering it.

Another problem that she should have taken care of earlier...

Trainwreck.

She quickly pulled her phone out, and texted him that she needed to see him in private, urgently, the moment they brought Canary back to Brockton.

Then realized she forgot to tell them that the drop-off point was canceled, and quickly sent a text message to Faultline telling her to just bring the cargo to her club, especially since one of them was so shaken she might need a day or two to digest things.

"Uh… Tay?" Lisa asked, and she hurriedly glanced up at her before continuing her pacing.

"Yeah?" She asked tersely, thinking and trying to stave off the anger.

"What's with the angry dragon impression?" Lisa asked, brow raised and Taylor let out another long, snarl-like sigh.

"I had to show myself. And a power. In front of a damn audience. And Newter, that bumbling fucking retard, he said 'are you summ's gal' when I went to save their sorry asses. So unless I got lucky and the heroes heard something else, they might know half my damn cape name already."

Lisa opened her mouth in protest, then seemed to rethink it, before slumping and sighing, kicking at the dirt at their feet as the city slowly entered mid-day below them.

"Okay, with your freakish obsession with secrecy, I can see why you'd be upset. But, look on the bright side. You got two capes, and Oni Lee at that, which wow what a fuckin' coincidence. I was certain that Alec had killed the motherfucker." Lisa said, and her curiosity peaked for a moment as she paused in her pacing.

"Who the fuck is Alec?" She asked, turning to stare at Lisa.

"I… should have been using his cape name but whatever, too late now. He's Regent. He was… a can of worms, actually. It took a while for my power to catch on, but eventually, I learned a lot about him, kept it to myself, until now. He was one of Heartbreaker's kids, escaped the bastard and worked with us. He was sandbagging, hard, and still more than carried his weight. All he needed was visual contact and he could make someone his physical puppet in a minute, max. The closer the better and faster. With us, he pretended he could just make people momentarily stumble and fall over at critical moments and such by gesturing with his hands and such. Kind of an asshole, but was fun. Still is, I think. Never saw him die nor hear about anyone saying he died. When Lung…" Lisa stalled, her brow furrowing a bit.

Taylor didn't offer empty sympathies for people she honestly didn't know, but she did keep her mouth shut in respect as she waited for Lisa to walk over whatever stumbling block she ran into.

"Right, when mister lizard decided to fry us, Oni Lee was on the opposite end from where Lung was coming from. They had us boxed in. We'd never have fought the assholes otherwise. Long story short, Regent volunteered to fight the asshole because he could keep him from pulling his grenade pins, clones included. He fought him for long enough to take him over completely, from what I got, then he tried to rush back and help us with Lung. Bit too late for that, but he did save me from getting torched by the rampaging asshole before he booked it. The question is, how the hell did the PRT get ahold of Oni Lee, and why is he still alive? Regent isn't the type to let a potential threat and trail like that live, not with who his father is." Lisa rushed out, her brows furrowing increasingly.

Then she looked to the side, and began to pace much like Taylor had.

Personally, she was still trying to work out the implications of having one of Heartbreaker's kids in her city. Or having had one.

Then Lisa paused, both hands over her mouth, thumbs pressing into her cheekbones.

"Alec was injured when he ran away. It's entirely likely he bled out or something, and Oni Lee was just working off his last commands until the PRT snatched him up because he was a Mastered drone. Or maybe he gave Oni Lee up to the PRT for protection. Maybe he's a Ward somewhere now…? It's not his style, but short of leaving the American continent, he must know his dad would pick up on the trail he left, it's not like he had many choices after this whole fuckup." Lisa rushed out, her hands dropping as her eyes widened, then she became far more animated, pacing in a small line as she kept her upper body turned towards her, gesticulating with her hands, progressively getting more excited and self-satisfied.

"This explains a lot of other shit too! Oni Lee was a right bastard who as far as people knew was always an inch away from getting a kill order because he consistently tried to murder everyone, even Wards, so it was entirely likely the reason Lung didn't bust him out was because his transport was kept so confidential that few people would have access to it. It would also explain why they put him in the same transport as Canary. There are a lot of capes, especially Masters out there, with some really, really strong opinions on the whole Canary shitshow, especially with the kind of precedent it set that would push even more Master capes into villainy, so it would make sense to give the transport both increased secrecy, and security, and put two problems together for convenience. It could also explain why that cocky bitch got shoved into a trap." Lisa said with no small amount of vindictiveness in her voice, then jerked a finger at Taylor.

"It's one thing to check up on the transport files, it's another to check up on high priority transports with two capes of high interest, one being a hair away from a kill order and the other being a public shitshow. Could be their mole got caught looking into something too high-clearance to justify himself. I'm assuming the only reason Dragon didn't send an aircraft to specifically carry them to the Birdcage was because some stupid moron wanted to put a bait out there for some enterprising cape protestor that might try to free Canary. It would explain the plain clothes PRT agents with trunks full of foam. Or maybe they just did that because Faultline's mole tripped something up and Dragon was busy, I don't know, but! Yeah!" Lisa exclaimed, as if she was about to continue, then just emphatically spread her hands in triumph in a 'witness me' fashion.

Taylor just stood there and stared, digesting all of this information and slightly marvelling at how quickly Lisa could deduce things even if her power had little to jack shit to work with. A mix of brains, deductive reasoning, and power bullshit.

"Okay, that is… that explains a lot of small background questions I had, but there are two very important ones left. What the f- what is a kill order?" She asked, spreading her arms and hoping it wouldn't be as grim as it sounded, and Lisa blinked at her, before facepalming with an audible slap.

"I completely fucking forgot to tell you. And considering your Eidolon-tier bullshit, you might need to know this." Lisa said, before pausing for a moment, licking her lips and humming in thought as she stared at somewhere above Taylor's head.

"A Kill Order is a document issued by the PRT allowing for the murder of a cape with no legal repercussions. Usually along with a large publicly funded bounty. Basically, you really, really, really don't want a fucking kill order on you. Oni Lee was always on the edge because he kept trying to kill anything that walked and breaking the reasonable escalation of force rule, the third of the unwritten rules, remember? Yea that one. A Ward would accidentally wander too far during patrol or chase some petty crook into ABB territory without realizing, then a moment later they're fighting for their life against a fucking psycho. Nobody sane in the Bay wants that kind of heat. But…" Lisa trailed off, and rolled her eyes at the worried frown Taylor was wearing, because yeah, it was starting to sound like the moment anyone knew what she was up to and doing to capes, she'd be put on that order.

"Okay, so keep in mind that the PRT is in large part, a PR organization. They want to recruit wherever possible, and the more kill orders you sign off on, the less people are going to be willing to play ball with you. Generally speaking, the only villains who justify a kill order are those where, if you were to poll the local villain community, Arson Murder Mcjones is going to say, "Yeahhhhh, you need to put that motherfucker down." Just as a rule of thumb, I guess. Or an example."

Her frown deepened.

If someone polled this cape community by the time she was done with it, they'd basically give her a medal and a wary stare at best.

If they got here that late.

"Now usually, in a healthy, functioning city, aka, not fucking Brockton, it's not something that's going to come up with any frequency. Here we had five fucking candidates being whispered about before Night and Fog moved out, leaving Lung, Oni Lee, and Hookwolf. Still at least two more than most cities. Moving on." Lisa said, then her tone took a tone like she was reciting something or reading directly off a book.

"Once it's made, it's open season on the motherfucker who got it. Civilians and capes can put money into a reward pool, and it's essentially open season on the target, and anyone who's got permission and knows the general rules is allowed to go after them. What usually happens is that overeager villains looking for violence, crazy vigilantes, and crazy hero wannabes crawl out of the woodwork and start hunting, at which point the heroes mostly lay back and try to contain the inevitable collateral damage. One surefire way to get an instant kill order is to make anything that's self-replicating. Could be pink grasshoppers or something, the PRT doesn't care, if it's self-replicating, you get an instant kill order. So, yeah, if you were planning on using some bizarre dead cape to make your own personal army of minions, make sure they can't breed." Lisa deadpanned, then waited for some kind of reply.

It took a moment.

She sighed an explosive sigh, rubbing at her temples.

"Wasn't planning to, but whatever. Good to know. Second question. Any chance we could find Alec?"

Lisa blanched, then made a cutting motion with her hand.

"Nope, no, no nononononope, not happening. After all the fuss he's kicked up, he's either joined up with the PRT for protection, in which case, I do not want to be within the same city as him because Heartbreaker definitely has insiders on the PRT and he's going to try to grab him, or he's all the way up in Europe by now, maybe France or something. Assuming he's not, you know… dead." Lisa said, trying to pass it off rather casually, but the forced lightness of her tone as she spoke the last few words was so obvious she even seemed to cringe at herself.

She grimaced a little.

Her first thought was a forceful hug.

Her second thought was where the fuck that thought came from because as far as she knew she was never a touchy person.

Her third thought was to blame Mia for making her realize how touch-starved she'd been by brushing her hair back and practically knocking her out in seconds by doing so, and indirectly, probably, contributing to the creation of that thought.

Her fourth thought was that a hug would probably be a bit too much for people that had known each other for barely three days, even if they pretty much lived together for all three of them.

Her fifth thought was 'eh, fuck it'.

She stepped forward, and before Lisa's eyes could focus back on the real world, she'd grabbed her sleeve and yanked her into a hug, her tiny surprised yelp oddly comedic to hear.

"I know how it feels to lose people." She murmured.

And she did.

She'd lost hundreds of them.

"Hugs help." She shrugged, and Lisa, stiff as a board, quickly relaxed with a snorting giggle.

"You're really ruining any chance of professionalism between us, you know that?" Lisa spoke into her shoulder, muffled, not tall enough to have her mouth free, lazily throwing her arms around her.

"Yeah probably, but professionalism doesn't help here like hugs do. And just to ruin the mood before this gets mushy enough to rot my teeth and make me cringe in embarrassment hard enough to snap my spine into a pretzel, I'm gonna circle back to our original conversation and resume." She dryly spoke, and Lisa let out a short burst of laughter into her shoulder, before nodding.

"So, I was not talking about recruiting Alec. I'm talking about exactly what you said. Heartbreaker might hear of this somehow, and if he hasn't, I want to take Alec with us and let him know. I don't know if you've done any research on the guy, but I have, and he tends to squat on a huge compound in the ass end of nowhere in Canada, surrounded by hundreds of brainwashed people armed to the teeth, many of them ex-PRT and military. The problem is that nobody ever knows if he's actually there or if he's taking another secret tour across the country to grab new victims. So if I could lure him somewhere, not necessarily here, but somewhere, and know where he is exactly, I could just pop up a hundred feet above him and vaporize him in an instant. Just like that, before he gets close to Alec."

Lisa sighed.

"Taylor, I get it's like your whole thing to want to kill the baddies, but you're basically asking me to use my only surviving half-friend as bait. For fucking Heartbreaker."

She grimaced.

"Yeah, that… sounds a lot worse when you put it like that." She admitted, chewing on her cheek. "Sorry."

"It's fine. Look, it's just, even if you're confident in yourself, even if I'm confident in you, I just… I don't want to touch that with a ten foot pole. Too many ways for it to go wrong. If you wanna kill the bastard so much, just scout out his compound, wait for him to be in it, and then just nuke it off the map or something with one ridiculous power or another. I don't want to drag Alec into this again. Wherever he is, whatever the hell he's doing, I hope he's having fun and being a lazy bastard because that's what he wanted out of life, and I want him to keep doing it." 

She snorted out a light track of laughter.

"Sounds like a fun guy, honestly."

"He was a brat. Our bickering fits were legendary. Also, I've been talking into your hoodie for a while now and it's kind of getting hard to breathe." Lisa grumbled, and she let out a pensive humm, her mood very thoroughly restored by now.

"I don't knowwww…" She teased, in a bit of mocking rendition of how Lisa had teased her during that breakfast where she insulted her salting skills. "I've been hearing some mutinous whispers on the wind, something about you quitting? After such a fright, I'd rather keep you right there, you know." She dryly commented, and Lisa groaned.

"How on earth I didn't puke my guts out during that whole thing, I'll never know. Probably your physics-ignoring crap. I'm still mad at you." Lisa said, still talking into her hoodie.

"You don't really show it."

"Yeah… Hey Taylor?"

"Hm?"

"Are we friends? I'm pretty sure bosses don't tend to let their employees live with them, cook them breakfast, and hug them when they're feeling down."

"No, we are not friends." She started, and saw Lisa's eyes peek upwards from the scrunched fabric of her hoodie with a deadpan stare that screamed 'really?'

"We are best friends. Mostly through a process of elimination, honestly, I'm pretty sure neither of us has any other friends at the moment." She said, then grimaced as she realized how that might be a bit too insensitive to say, especially with that kind of wording. Process of elimination? Fucking really, Taylor?

Lisa, surprisingly, let out a small soundless laugh, her shoulders shaking, and Taylor relaxed.

"Really, none?" Lisa asked, bumping her chest with her shoulder a bit as she sagged further onto her.

"Nope. Haven't had friends since I was like… thirteen or so, I think. Shit happened, I gave up, you know how it goes, probably."

Lisa hummed.

"Not sure I do, but this is the kind of girl talk that isn't spoken about on top of a dirty hilltop with drying reeds and your friend wearing a domino mask."

"How is this girl talk? We haven't mentioned a single crush."

"Ew, no. Not that kind of girl talk. And our girl talk better stay that way. Relationships with my power are fuckin' impossible. Go out on a date once, have your power tell you they're wondering if you're as hot as their sister under those clothes, and you'll never wanna repeat the experience again, trust me. If you start raving about hot dudes I'm walking back ho-" Lisa paused abruptly, jerking back a bit, enough for her face to be visible, her eyes staring through her shoulder in muted shock.

"Lisa? You good?" She asked, loosening the hug and walking back a little, hands on her shoulders, tilting her head down a bit as if to stare into her eyes.

Lisa startled a bit, then nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I just… I called your place 'home'. That's… man, it's been a while since I could call anything that, especially without thinking. Kinda gave myself whiplash." Lisa murmured, then huffed a bemused rush of air out of her nostrils.

"We are no longer best friends." She intoned, voice mock-serious, and Lisa glanced up at her, brows furrowed in bemused suspicion. "You're promoted to little sister. Congratulations, Tattletale." She half-joked, struggling to contain a smile.

She had expected some kind of laughter, or maybe an eye-roll, or maybe some teasing.

She hadn't expected Lisa's eyes to widen like dinner plates as she tried to take a step back, staring up at her in shock.

Nor had she expected those eyes to suddenly begin glistening with tears.

Her eyes widened, blinking rapidly down at Lisa, confused. Lisa blinked back at her even faster, trying to clear the tears out of her eyes, most likely. Her hands let go, backing up a bit to hover over Lisa's shoulders as she found herself in a very awkward and confusing situation, unsure of what caused it.

"...I… Lisa? Are you okay?" She asked slowly, genuinely confused.

Lisa opened her mouth, closed it. Gulped, nodded, and then raised a hand to take off her domino mask and shove it into her hoodie before pressing her pointer finger and thumb into her eyes, taking a shuddering breath as she turned her head downwards.

"Y-Yeah. Uh. Not- I'm not sure what the fuck this is, sorry. Just…" Lisa vaguely waved her hand, limp wristed. "Uh, I guess that's a fresh wound, still. I didn't think it was, I can usually talk about it just fine, but that- wow, I'm just all sorts of fucked up lately aren't I…?" Lisa murmured, before pressing her open palm into her face, letting out a long-suffering sigh mixing with a groan.

She continued to stare, unsure of what to say or what Lisa was even talking about.

"Uh, just to… clear up the confusion, my b…brother killed himself." Lisa said, ruining the confident tone she was going for with that brief, wavering stutter. "It's what made me trigger. He had a joke going on w-with me, when I was little. He'd tease me by saying I'm his little sister, not his favorite one, and then he'd give in eventually and s-say…" Lisa continued, voice growing heavy and thick, warbling.

Her hands lowered onto Lisa's shoulders, and that seemed to give her the courage to spit it out.

"He'd say 'you're now promoted to "favorite sister' when I'd stop being a brat and do something nice for him." Lisa warbled out, taking a shaky, wet breath.

Taylor tugged her into a hug, and this time, when Lisa hugged back, it was tight around her waist, her tears wetting Taylor's black hoodie.

"H-he was into military stuff, a-and he found it funny. So uh, yeah, the… thing you said. Immediately after what I said. Just really… kinda caught me off-guard. And you... already reminded me of him, for some reason. Sorry." Lisa sniffled, then pulled back a little, using the entire lengths of her right-hand fingers to rub at her eyes, back and front. "Fuck, this is embarassing. You're never going to respect me again." Lisa murmured.

Taylor did something she hadn't in a while.

She thought of her mother, well and truly.

She thought of all the people her Legends had lost, people she'd grown attached to as their lives continued, only to feel the pain of watching them get ripped away, even if she was but a spectator.

She thought of all the people that she'd been, the people she'd seen, a world that only existed in her limitless memories.

It was numb, to some extent. She'd experienced too much to feel strongly about it all, and the things she did feel, she kept them down in a repressed ball of emotions, just like Lisa hid her feelings behind half-sincere jokes and nonchalance. But something about this whole interaction blew the cap off, and the emotions were spilling out of an overfilled bottle for her too.

She tugged Lisa back onto her shoulder, and hugged her tight. She took a deep, shuddering breath, feeling tears prick her own eyes.

"I… I'm sorry. I uhm. I lost my mother in a car accident. My dad too, pretty much. He stopped being a person until my trigger happened. Even now, he's… more of a house decoration, honestly. I lost my best friend too, shortly after that. She betrayed me. No reason, just did it. I… the… the capes I turn into?" She asked, ignoring the blaring alarms in her head telling her this was stupid and she should never even dare say what she was about to.

Lisa's arms tightened around her.

"They uh… I'm pretty sure they were from an alternate Earth. And I have their memories. No, not just… not just that. I lived through their lives. Start to finish. That's what fucked me up and sent me to the asylum. Living something like a hundred lives in a few seconds during my trigger vision. And I got attached to the same people they did as I lived their life through their eyes, you know? I've lost… brothers, friends, wives and daughters and sons. I lost myself too. I call myself Taylor Hebert, but I'm more of a… fucked up ball made of something like a hundred different people and creatures, forced back into a shape roughly resembling what Taylor Hebert was before she triggered." She confessed, for the first time saying it out loud, then let her chest quiver with emotion as silent tears ran down her face from her cold, empty eyes. 

"That's... heavy. Christ... It makes a lot of sense, now- now that I think about it. I was, uh, starting to suspect my power wasn't as off as I'd thought about w-what it said. That's... holy f-fuck that is beyond messed up. So much worse than my stuff. I'm so sorry. Even if I'm not sure what we're saying sorry for." Lisa mumbled, and Taylor laughed, a wet, slightly unhinged thing as she hugged Lisa tighter, and let her jaw tremble, thousands of faces rushing through her mind.

Yone smiling as he bent down by her side to teach her how to hold a sword, the very thing she would eventually kill him with, soft wheat fields swaying in the wind behind him, wind that called to her, to Yasuo, The Unforgiven.

Salmiel and Khanara, offering her, Riven The Exile, smuggled booze in the barracks with an easy smile, reminding her that the Invasion of Ionia was but a step away, that their death might come by morrow, unknowing in how prophetic their words would be, but only for themselves.

Ghufnar and Nirem, stout, hard-faced warriors that had followed her from her first trembling speech as a teenager in the howling mountains of the Freljord to her very last speech as a Queen in the crumbling chasm of the Howling Abyss while the void watchers broke through their restraints and the walls of ice came tumbling down as if the blue sky was breaking above them, their beards streaked with gray from age, men she'd grown up with by her side.

Names, faces, places. Five, ten, a hundred.

She grit her trembling jaw, feeling the thin barrier that disconnected her from the jumble of memories to her newly crafted self thin and turn translucent, her fingers clawing at Lisa's back as she choked her sobs down into silent spasms.

If she was squeezing Lisa too tightly, if she was leaning on her a little too much despite being the taller one, if she was shaking like a leaf too stubborn to make a sound as it crumpled, Lisa didn't comment on it.

"Man… we're both such a fucking mess, aren't we?" Lisa sighed, and Taylor nodded into the side of her head. 

She agreed.

She was such a mess that even now, she was thinking of things she had to do, reasons she should not waste time on this... whatever this was. Bonding experience, venting?

"If you were serious though... I'll take the promotion. You can be the serious, mean, older one. Fits with having a couple hundred years of memories. And I can be the smug, smart brat of a little sister." Lisa suggested.

"T-t-t-then we c- can play hou-house?" Taylor tried for a joke, warbled and stuttering with sniffles and shudders as it was.

They devolved into a wet giggling fit agaisnt each other.

Notes:

you think updating twice in a day is my limit?

you fool.

you fucking buffoon.

you subhuman troglodyte.

i have no limit.

my words are many and my coffee beans even more.

my power is limitless and as chaotic as my sleeping hours.

you structure your sleep like a fool while i drop dead on my keyboard and wake up in my kitchen two hours later eating bread like a true sigma male, already back on the grind to write nerdy stories on the internet for no particular reason.

you write words, but I?

the words enslave me and force themselves into existence upon these rambling ragged pages.

we are not the same.

anyways, might upload a third time today idk, the coffee is keeping me alive rn

and I know, i know, plot should move forward, we have shit to do, but i dont wanna skimp out on character relationships and developments just to write a rushed but rather soulless fight story ;d

next chap is chore stuff, chaps after that will be first day as ward, then canary meetup.

Also a bit of this chap Abt the kill order stuff was taken off wildbows reddit answers.