31

Summoner by SomeoneYouWontRemember

Chapter 31Notes:

this has been SUCH a difficult fucking chapter to write and im not sure why

being sick for half a week prob didn't help

the next chap will likely be even harder to write for me but eh that's not for you to worry about

gib nice comments and/or criticism and ESPECIALLY ideas, i love reading them and I could def use your brain power, and unfortunately i am not yet able to create an international hivemind for my story to brainstorm stuff abt.

enjoy or dont, idk, this chap's a bit dodgy

Chapter Text

Mastering the last three Travellers was… an experience.

She had planned to be very very thorough but it just…

It was hard to convince herself she had to completely and utterly enthrall children, scared desperate children, who were all fairly innocent.

There was just something about whoever and whatever she considered a child that made her protective as hell.

So she'd gone easy on them, despite everything. She didn't work on them like Coil and Bakuda.

It made her question her so-called conviction, to not turn them into puppets.

There she was, prepared to kill them on the mere thought of them being Simurgh bombs.

And then all that emotion had time to cool down, and she was holding Sundancer, Marissa, after seeing her wide eyes and hearing her voice ask 'wait, who are you', hands on her shoulders as she crawled through her mind and feeling like she was being yanked in two directions.

She didn't want to Master them. She felt like she had to, but she didn't want to .

So she inched closer to the color of gray, and did the bare minimum so that they'd listen to her and accept how they felt about her.

Now here she was, flying atop the bay, not knowing if she had been having a bout of paranoia or was less resolved to do whatever it took to kill the monsters than she'd thought.

Both were not comforting to consider.

Guilt was an odd feeling.

And despite all her experience, she wasn't quite certain what it was about them that hit her so hard.

Maybe it was the fact that they were just like her, in a distant way. Torn away from their world, left alone without anyone to help, scared and lost.

Or maybe because she couldn't help but think of them as kids, despite them technically being a year or three older than her.

Or maybe it was Lisa's hesitance.

Whatever it was, she had... a moment of weakness. Frustrating, but perhaps not a bad choice, not yet. 

It wouldn't take much to firm up that resolve.

A glance at statistics, a thought of simple numbers. A vision of a brighter future, however distant, like she was an old man planting trees knowing full well she'd never get to relax under their benevolent shade.

But she let herself feel that guilt, feel that pain, because she needed to feel human. To not forget what that was like, to not block it out entirely, but yank it to the forefront.

Would it affect her decisions? It was likely.

The midday sun tried to shine through the cloudy murk, and she idly flew in zig zags, catching all the rays of sunshine peeking through the clouds as she thought, finding an odd serenity come over her, tired and guilty but also accepting of the circumstances.

She could have Teleported back home, but she felt like she needed a moment of rest, some time to breathe after Mastering five people in one day. About to be six, soon.

She had to pace herself a bit.

Eventually, she made it home, sliding under the door and materialising behind the couch and her father as he watched TV, nursing a cup of coffee while he lounged on the couch.

She walked around the couch, and tasted surprise.

"Oh, you're back? How was-"

She grabbed the cup, damn near wrenching it out of his hands to put it on the coffee table, and his emotions shifted to confusion and a dose of concern.

She leaned down, and despite the effort it took him, apparently, he met her eyes, his own wide in confusion.

Gold flashed, and she plunged into his mind.

The Mastering process was easy.

She spent a good while perusing through his connections.

Unsurprisingly, defeatism seemed like a thick coat, covering everything in one form or another.

He was a... weak person. She loved him, but the simple fact of the matter was that he was. His fifteen year old daughter endured so much worse than he, even before she was taken to live a hundred foreign lives. She'd endured a million times worse.

But she bent, and he broke.

She endured enough to break trees in half. She splintered and cracked, but eventually bent to endure.

He simply snapped like a toothpick. A monument to defeat.

Still, she loved him. It was mixed with frustration and anger, but still there.

Regardless, it was time to say goodbye.

She had a good template, from her mother's death.

Loss, acceptance.

If anything, his defeatism made it easier. He only had three friends, and while she genuinely soured and grimaced at the thought of taking him away from them, she had to cut the trail short, she had to give him a blank slate to move on from.

She had plans about their supposed disappearance as well.

So she took her time, carefully thinking and pinching, pulling and pushing.

There was something warm in the thought that he loved her and would remember her if she died, that he would be across the country and sometimes think about the daughter he lost, but that was cruel to him. It was perhaps just as cruel to lock his emotions in a way that suited her, and disallow him to move on naturally, but as far as she knew, he never would if she let him handle the 'moving on' part.

He would mope and rot away in a depressive spiral.

So she did the work for him.

She stopped eventually, checking things.

It had to be a bizarre experience, to talk to his daughter one last time while feeling and accepting full well that she might as well be dead, knowing she did it on purpose and not being able to feel discontent or confused about it. As soon as she was out of sight, he'd feel what he felt about her mother's death, without any of the lingering grief of a man unable to move on.

He would know she was alive, but feel like she'd died a long time ago. Acceptance, loss, a dash of melancholy and wistfulness. He could move on now.

At most, there would be a dull ache whenever he thought of his old family. Good enough to masquerade as a genuine reaction, should she come up in his future conversations or such, somehow.

Deciding that she'd twisted him up just enough to essentially be in a state of mind where he was optimistic for the future and sadly thankful for the past that existed, a work of mind-numbingly meticulous prods and shifts, she let go, released him, leaned back, letting Evelynn fade away.

Familiar breathless exhaustion moved through her, and her pulsing headache moved into a constant feeling like there was a knife embedded into her right temple, scraping against the bone of her skull.

Danny took a moment to blink awake, then stared at her, surprised. His brows furrowed, anger about what she did refusing to come, and just turning into confusion.

"Taylor?" He asked, softly, rising up off the couch to meet her eyes with something firmer than she'd seen in years.

She kept her face as earnest as she could keep it.

She probably just looked tired. And by god, she was.

"Tomorrow, you'll leave. Pack up everything you have. You'll go live in Houston. Some people will help you with it. We'll give you new papers and documentation, and you'll have a new job in some manufacturing management position or another. You won't be able to contact anyone you know, and everyone you know will think you are dead. You will keep it that way. Do not contact Kurt, Lacey, or anyone else. Danny Hebert dies tomorrow, and you get a new start. Try to make something of your new life, will you? Not many get that chance." She said, a mildly-intoned request, then licked her lips, swallowed.

He stared, wide eyed and silent.

Her phone rang in her pocket, and she spared only a moment to decline the call, glancing up again as she shoved it back down.

She ignored the ache in her chest as best as she could, and gave him a single nod of acknowledgement. Not respect, not quite.

"You…" She began, tasting the words, slow and pensive. "You were a good father, for a while. You dropped the ball, really hard, around when mom died, but, you're only human. And humans can be selfish, self-centered things when push comes to shove. I'm sure we both wish you did better, but no point crying over spilled milk. At least you left me with a lot of good memories, which is not something everyone gets. Thank you." She said, unsure of how to feel.

It was really moments like this that made it so obvious how disconnected and inhuman she'd become, a red flag waving itself in her face.

She felt more guilt over Mastering the Travellers than she did her own father.

She should be crying.

But all she felt was a numb sense of relief. That this awkward pretension of a functional family was done, she could stop wallowing in its murk, and he could start living again. 

"We'll probably never see each other again after tomorrow. Goodbye, dad. Take care of yourself. Move on. I love you."

Deep down under the aged resentment, she really did.

He was silent, his expression getting more subdued and sadly accepting as she went on.

His newfound hope for the future, warring with his understanding that she was true and absolute in her absence.

She turned, and walked upstairs.

She had a shopping list to make.

She grabbed a notebook, a pen, and flopped down on her bed, spent, her migraine sapping her thoughts and willpower. She powered through.

Six hours of nonstop scribbling and sketching later, she realized that calling the mess of a notebook in her hands a shopping list was an understatement.

Dozens upon dozens of chemical compounds, thousands of tools, machines, and lab-adjascent paraphernalia, pipes of dozens of sizes and types, valves, chemical equipment that thank fuck shared mostly the same names as in Runeterra, burners and distillers and rotary separation centrifugal stations, crystals of all kinds she could come up with to test if it was possible to make artificial mana crystals in Earth Bet, gigantic shipments of gold and silver and various alloys, good old piles of plywood, a modern forge hammer press, a standard industrial press, bench grinders and clamps and vices and metalworking benches, specialized furniture, sanitation and safety equipment just in case, piles of pure, clean metal, and syringes, and…

And this thing was sixty fucking pages, covered top to bottom.

She stared in dread at the half-consumed notebook.

She was going to have to triple the size of her bunker from a particularly big room to a small factory station, before all this stuff rolled into Coil's- or Lisa's, rather, base.

At this point, she realized that her life would likely be one with a perpetual power-usage headache.

Her "shopping list" done, and with her head feeling like a ball of leather stuffed with needles, she whipped her phone out, let her eyes go half-lidded, and began to read through her people's reports.

There was a lot, but within a few short minutes and some curt replies, she was caught up.

Then she went to Coil's still-ongoing series of texts.

She skipped straight to the Simurgh's case file, and idly got caught in the loop of wondering which fucking timeline this was in, because as far as she knew, he was still in base, but these files were basically copy pastes and he should be smart enough to know not to leave a digital papertrail.

Her best guess was that he had most of the things she asked for in his computer, already. She'd ask Lisa whenever she came back.

Back to the case file, she began to read through the Simurgh's exact abilities, pattern of behaviour, and most worryingly, her 'nudges'.

There was the first incident that truly tipped the Simurgh's hand, which she skipped straight down to, because even she knew about it.

Sphere.

Now, Mannequin.

It was so blindingly, insultingly obvious, that it almost looked like the Simurgh was taunting them. Saying 'this is why I'm here' without saying it.

Mannequin went from a figure of hope to a figure dedicated to killing people who were making the world better, especially Tinkers, hunting them. Sure, the profile could say something about his supposed ego, his supposed psyche, but it was too obvious to give the man- the creature that much benefit of the doubt.

Mannequin wasn't a person either. He was nothing more than an extension of the Simurgh's will and agenda, a puppet. One filled with fluff to give an illusion of fullness, when there was nothing inside at all.

The rest was not insignificant at all, either. She scrolled up, and began from the start.

The Simurgh's case file was the biggest of the three, because of the sheer amount of consequences she left behind, speculated and confirmed. It was nine hundred and sixty four pages long, going from oldest to newest.

The Endbringer directly led to a third of Europe collapsing through her descent into Switzerland, and the thread notes detailed how in horrifying detail. Diplomats being sent home from Switzerland in the dozens each to their respective countries, each of them nudging the dominos to fall into place to make several countries nearly implode.

An example was a diplomat from Greece. He was in Switzerland, a mere stop on the way back home from being in the UK, then left almost as soon as the Simurgh appeared. So did a German politician and a diplomat, on the same day.

In the following two years, this Greek diplomat went to run for Prime Minister. The German politician did the same in his own country a year before him. The Greek politician's main opposition was hospitalised by a tainted cigarette which, surprise surprise, had passed through Switzerland.

He took Prime Minister through sheer force of charisma and the sudden fortune of his main opponent being out of commission for months, then seemed to have a slow mental breakdown demanding absurdities from Germany, reparations in the billions for World War two, and causing diplomatic incidents that soured relations between the two countries until Germany decided to hit Greece with their full economical force and drive them into another economic depression in retaliation.

Considering that the biggest draw of Greece was its tourism industry, it had already been a country on the brink since Leviathan. That nudge just toppled the jenga tower.

But the strikes never stopped coming.

Another hit by the Simurgh, up in what used to be Kazakhstan, strained Greece further with refugees, and Germany locked the refugees with Greece in an act of seeming spite, making the country essentially enter bankruptcy and gut its military to compensate. A strike from Leviathan later, which hit Athens and killed almost everyone in the government, and the country was essentially left in chaos without the money or power to actually enforce order in any capacity, making it prime choice for many criminal elements to move in and hide amongst the ruins, making things worse.

Africa 2.0, warlords and the law of the land ruling masses of innocents.

Turkey went to capitalise and sent a "stabilising force" that swept away whatever was left, and at that point, it wasn't even considered an invasion despite the chronic enmity between the two nations, simply due to how bad things had gotten for Greece.

Then Turkey got hit by Behemoth, making the occupying force pull out and leaving Greece to stand on its own wobbling legs.

Too weak to enforce law, but too numerous to abandon, with four million residents living solitary lives in the forests or congregated in plains and valleys ruled by warlords.

An attack on some country she hadn't even known existed which locked down the entire subcontinent in a dick measuring contest for three years as every country chopped at the bits to be the first to 'help' the shattered nation by subsuming its territory, none willing to go to war but none willing to let go either, and that dick measuring contest led to a nuclear reactor exploding through an insane series of events that took six pages to summarise, which ended up killing a dozen thousand people and making half of Georgia lose power which broke the camel's back with general discontent the people had, which ignited country-wide riots about gas and electricity prices and corruption, which only got worse when the state of Georgia escalated into violence which escalated in a loop with arms dealing from surprise surprise, Greece, arming the rebels, eventually making the government collapse and fracture into three different factions.

All of which soon collapsed as well and marked the end of Georgia and that then rolled into several European nations having crippling social and economical issues with the massive influx of refugees from the countries collapsing all around them, which led to massively increased crime of all kinds, which led to Gesellschaft exploding from a small group to a massive powerblock with thousands and thousands of members as the natives of Germany and France and surrounding countries reacted to this huge influx of foreigners, which led to… it just-

It just…

That was just one example among hundreds of how the Simurgh destroyed every strand she touched.

Some attacks set up dominos that wouldn't fall for years, until another attack set up the perfect conditions for them to.

A man who had a power that might affect the Simurgh was killed in a plane crash directly caused by the flight network going haywire due to the Simurgh using a piece of radio-sonar-adjascent Tinkertech during an attack on a neighbouring country and making the plane fly straight into a mountain in the clouds. Thousands and thousands of miles away.

A seemingly random piece of debris used to defend against a Legend laser scattered, and its biggest chunk seemed to fly perfectly to kill an evacuating wonder child who had an IQ of one hundred and sixty six at the age of merely eight years old, back when Denmark still existed.

Denying the world of yet one more unforeseen genius before he could make anything better.

It never fucking ended. Every rock, every blink of the fucking Simurgh did something, and ruined a dozen things more.

Dominos, thousands, from seemingly small actions.

One attack built on another, then intersected with one of her brothers', then another intersected with her second recorded one ever and then her fifth with her seventh, and four threadmarks of the seventh attack caused immense damage to threadmarks noted by the third attack which led to another series of catastrophic disasters. Reading this made her feel so endlessly helpless.

The file's speculation section was even more bleak.

All those actions and dominos in Europe might have been nothing but a side objective of the Simurgh to create an unending conflict zone to separate Russia, Europe and Asia and heavily strain economies and land trade.

Without considering the theory that the other two Endbringers had gotten suspiciously more effective in their attacks since the Simurgh dropped from the sky, insinuating some kind of guidance or control.

It was so obvious that the Simurgh wasn't just a threat, she was THE threat.

There was nothing that even compared.

She had precognition on the scale of genuine, complete, omniscience.

The more she read, the more she felt that knot in her chest tighten.

She couldn't take the chance. Tomorrow, if Noelle wasn't immune to her Mastering, the Travellers would have to go, regardless of how much it hurt.

She would make sure it was instant and painless, if it came to that.

But, the Simurgh paradox left her indecisive, again. What if some bizarre power interaction could break her Mastering? What if her time cage broke and then the Mastering faded? Would she not have created the exact circumstances needed for Noelle to destroy everything she was trying to build?

The Simurgh paradox again. No matter what decision she neared, it felt like she was heading straight to what the Simurgh wanted her to do.

She was walking down endless spirals. 

Maybe it would be best to destroy all of them, objectively but not emotionally. Kill them all, Noelle included, and wash her hands of the entire situation.

But wouldn't the Simurgh want her to get rid of Noelle?

She wanted to fucking scream.

Fuck.

Seeing that her anger wasn't serving her migraine any good, she tuned out of the Simurgh's absurdly long file, and moved onto simpler things, like reading up on the local cape scene, present and past. 

But eventually, she found herself back in that file.

Reading every tragedy, every domino, every significant name that was directly or indirectly executed by the Simurgh, feeling that molten chain coil around her crystal heart, tighten around her lungs like an elastic band.

She wasn't sure when, but eventually, the bed dipped, and with a sigh that washed over her right cheek, an arm wrapped around her, bringing warmth back into her chilled limbs as Lisa shuffled into place behind her.

She wasn't sure when she curled up into a ball facing the wall, but now she realized it, just one hand clutching the phone extended in front of her.

She quickly found where she last left off, and kept reading.

Lisa shuffled, laying her head on Taylor's, reading with her. The pressure helped her migraine, a tiny bit.

Five minutes passed.

Ten.

"You're scared." Lisa softly said.

"Yeah. Overwhelmed in general, because today has been a fucking day, but also scared." She murmured. "You can read what I'm reading. I can see why this is classified. It makes it all feel so fucking pointless. Like resisting her is so futile it's not even morbidly amusing. I hate this fucking apathy everyone feels, but just reading this makes me feel like I might as well lie down and die. And that just makes me angrier. I'm… I'm not trying to kill an Endbringer, I'm trying to kill a god. An omniscient god that knows everything. And my only hope of not having this backfire horrifically and kill us, is the vague hope that my power fucks with hers. And I have six of her fucking pets in our base. Largely innocent children. I'll do what I have to, but… but I don't know what the fuck that is." She growled, her fingers going white around the shaking screen-

A hand extended past her, and grabbed her wrist.

The screen stopped shaking, even as her fingers continued.

"Taylor. Simurgh paradox, even though the word paradox doesn't really make sense but whatever-"

"I know, Lisa. But-

"No." Lisa said, voice soft and firm, forcing her wrist downwards until her phone was screen down on the bed.

She gave a token struggle to turn it over, before slumping.

"Taylor, listen. I know this is particularly fucking with you because of your paranoia, so you need a second opinion, if not a third and fourth. There is no need to worry about what you cannot change."

She got that sense of deja vu pretty often, but this was a particularly strong case. She felt like if someone simply made the walls wooden, she'd been in this exact situation before. She couldn't even remember from which Legend that errant memory was.

But it made her pause and listen more than she might have otherwise, because it was one thing to know that and another to hear it.

"If the Simurgh can predict you and is targeting you, then we're all already fucking dead and there's nothing you will ever do that will prevent it. But if she's not capable of predicting what I think are a hundred-something capes, which we see inside you in huge rotating clusters, in another world, independent times of death in another fucking timeline, all that, simultaneously, then whatever you do, she's fucking blind. You have either lost already, or you have nothing but victory ahead. Your power doesn't work like any other power I've ever heard of. Even the PRT's power section makes it sound like what you have is either immensely unique or downright impossible. Agonising over this will just make you miserable. So act like she can't predict you, because if she can, then no matter what you do, we're both fucked and done for so you might as well just give up on saving the world."

She took a moment to do some meditative breathing, in and out, clearing her mind with ease and well-practised effort.

A minute of silence later, she nodded, slightly.

"Yeah. You're right. I've either lost already, or I've won. The outcome is not something I can actually change if I've lost. So, let's act like I won. Like the Simurgh can't predict me. In that case… I suppose nothing's changed. I'm still going to the ABB meeting tomorrow until I get Lung, then I work my way to the Empire, and eventually take the Merchants." She murmured, more of a recap to soothe herself than something that needed to be said.

Lisa rolled back around her with a sigh.

"Good. We need to get you an emotional support cat you can evilly stroke while you sit on your throne made of spikes."

The joke didn't fall flat, but it wasn't funny enough for her to laugh in her current state. She simply huffed in amusement, and clicked the phone off as they settled into bed.

"Did you do it?" Lisa asked as she used her hair and neck as a pillow.

"My dad?" She asked, and Lisa snickered.

"Could have worded that better on your end, but yea."

She made a face.

"Yeah. He's… ready to move on. Update on SS?"

"Coil said he'll use both timelines, he should have her here by tomorrow morning. Mind explaining that plan to me oh Miss Cryptic?"

Mid day. The ABB meeting was in the afternoon, and her power testing was… actually around that timeframe as well. She'd only have a few hours in between to schedule for.

"Tell you tomorrow morning. The two people I asked for?"

"The scumbags you wanted for whatever reason?"

"Hm." She hummed affirmatively.

"They'll have them in base by morning."

"Okay. Our new apartment?"

"No fucking clue. Can't decide. Need your opinion. Also gotta stop wearing your clothes, they don't fit me and they're not my style. I'm going shopping tomorrow after you tell me of your plan. Then imma go out looking for Spitfire the entire day I think. I'm getting closer. She's somewhere around Merchant territory."

"Hm, alright. Feel free to move fifty grand into your account for shopping or whatever else. Goodnight." She said numbly, exhausted in every way possible, physically, emotionally and mentally.

Lisa shuffled, wiggling around her, trying to find a decent spot, then sighed.

"...Wanna swap?"

Wordlessly, she wriggled around as Lisa did the same.

This is much more comfortable, she thought as her arms closed around Lisa.

"I should make you shorter again." She mumbled, rubbing her cheek on black hair. "That extra inch I gave you is ruining the logistics-"

"Shut the fuck up, Taylor." Lisa grumbled sleepily.

Sleep did not come nor pass easily, but at least she was comfortable and warm during the following night.

After an exhausting workout session which ended with a run, a shoddy but quick breakfast, and a couple hours more till sunrise, she was ready to put the plan to motion.

During those early hours however, she was thinking.

Thinking of the simple fact that she could read people really well. That she could see through them, to some extent. It was nothing but experience, but endless, mind-breaking perspective.

And she hadn't been utilising that skill too much, if at all, because it required empathy, or at least sympathy.

So, despite her actions not changing, she deigned to feel that empathy, if only to be able to read people more than skin-deep.

So it was with less excitement and more weary resignation that she woke up a bleary-eyed Lisa and began to explain.

Who gave her a sleepy, confused look, while Taylor herself simply wiggled into fresh clothes after her shower.

"I mean, the plan is good, I guess, but why Shadow Stalker? I just don't see the connection. Seems random. Which, great misdirection and a heap of confusion, I suppose, but all it's going to do is put a target on Coil's back, and by consequence, ours."

She tugged the shirt down, and tilted her head at her… little sister.

"What do you… wait." She paused, half-turned squinting. "Did I not tell you?"

Lisa gave her a deadpan look.

"If you have to ask, yes."

She hummed, nodded.

"I… thought I did. You know that I triggered at my school right?" She asked, and before Lisa could ask, she bulled through.

"Well, the short gist of it is that I had three girls at my school, trying to bully me to suicide for no apparent reason. They'd gotten scarily close to succeeding a couple times. My trigger event was getting shoved and locked into a locker filled with months worth of fermenting and festating rot and garbage, including used period pads, what I'm pretty sure was spoiled food, and something plastic that had filled the locker with fumes that made me high. By Sophia Hess. One of the three main players in the game called 'ruin Taylor's life'. The PRT found out about her activities soon after, because after such a public shitshow, they interrogated everyone. And people's lips walk the talk real quick when parahuman bullshit is involved."

Lisa blinked up at her, rising up on her elbows, eyes wide in horror.

"I… yeah that- that would do it. Holy shit T, do you need a hug?" Lisa asked, curious and concerned.

She snorted, waving her off.

"I definitely wouldn't mind, but I don't need one. Been through much worse in the lives of my capes. The locker itself barely registers anymore. Regardless, that's why we're using Hess for this."

Lisa licked her lips, and nodded.

"Well, uh, I feel like I shouldn't let you be so casual about definitely traumatic experiences but I don't know what to say to that. Moving on?" Lisa offered, and she let a smile form on her face.

"Yeah, lets."

Lisa cleared her throat, "Yeah, with that added bit of context, the plan is really good."

She shrugged in genuine humility.

It really wasn't a good plan. It was simple, quick and effective enough, but it wasn't what she could consider good.

"Eh, it's… passable. Now, get something comfy from our luggage, 'cause our transports are coming. I'll go wake up dad."

Lisa groaned, but began to roll to the edge of the bed like a slug.

"I got you coffee and donuts, so hurry before they're cold!" She added as she closed the door shut behind her.

"Thank you!" Lisa yelled through the door, and Taylor felt her lips twitch into a brief smile before that dropped as she knocked on her dad's door.

Her two scumbags were quickly brought to the house through the back yard in breathable army boxes with some help from one of her men as Lisa and her father rode off in different vehicles. One to the closest airport, the other straight to their base until they could apartment hunt.

As safe as the base itself was, it was too depressing to live in. Cold concrete walls and military cots surrounded with ammo boxes were not good for mental health.

Lisa wanted light and sound and presence around.

Taylor wouldn't mind that either.

Her father would be better off. A bit of Lulu's work made him more handsome and as hale as Lisa, almost, as well as giving him a face to match his new papers and not tag any face-recognition algorithms in case Dragon got on her case.

The woman was brought to Taylor's room, the man to her father's.

Despite the fate she was planning to inflict on these two people, she took a moment to read the summary report of why Coil chose them. She wasn't sure why.

The first had raped his girlfriend's child. Eleven years old. Released a week ago after a five-

She read that again, brows raising in complete and utter fucking bafflement.

A five year sentence? Just FIVE years?! For-

She took a deep breath, and got back on track.

Man, Coil sure knew how to pick them, huh?

The woman's file simply said that she was a nutjob obsessed with joining the S9 despite being a normal human, and had been a semi-notorious serial killer down in New York before she had to flee here to escape the hunt. Coil had been keeping an eye on her in case she could be used, and she seemed content with murdering and abusing animals in Brockton until he called on her. 

Well, goodbye guilt. You weren't here for long, and you left even quicker.

She opened her phone, and checked her and her dad's files, one last time.

No dental records, because no criminal history. No fingerprints either, because neither of them had ever been arrested or put into that system. No DNA, because of the same reason. The PRT would have collected her DNA after power testing for their researchers to check, but that hadn't gone through.

Blood types matched with medical records, should they dig deep enough.

Perfect.

She turned into Lulu the Fay Enchantress again, and made the woman into a perfect copy of herself, then crossed the hall to turn the man into her father, keeping out of sight of the only other person in her house, then picking Evelynn again.

She did bother to learn her driver's name. James. Built enough to carry a heavy man in a military-camoed bodybag like a suitcase.

Her preferred driver stood at the bottom of her stairs, having been told to be very careful about bootprints, a crossbow on his leg as he idly looked around. 

She didn't have too much time before the drugs began to wear off, but she had some, so she quickly turned back into herself then to Evelynn, holding her phone.

Calling would get her an answer much faster.

"Yes?" Lisa asked, the rumble of an engine barely audible in the back.

She would have called Coil directly, but apparently calling and talking to him directly over the phone was damn impossible while he was using his power. Even a phonecall was enough to trigger that ridiculous reaction he described. There had to be a pretty thick filter between them for his power to not send him into an overstimulated seisure.

Having to talk to him through at least one liaison would get annoying fast, she could tell.

"Is SS at base?"

A pause, a shuffle, a muted murmur from afar.

"She will be soon. Thirty minutes."

Eh, a believable timeframe.

She closed the phone, and took a deep breath.

"James."

She doesn't need to say more.

He instantly took a brisk walk up the stairs, and walked with her into her room.

She grabbed a t-shirt out of her closet, forced it into the limp hand of a body that looked like hers but wasn't, and there's probably something profound and symbolical in what she is about to do, but as James holds the limp woman up next to the closet, one arm around her waist and the other holding her head steady, every inch of him covered, she doesn't think about it; she has a job to do.

She has an awkward, earnest teenager with great potential and a good future as a Hero to kill.

The Precision Rune locked in.

She gave herself Sophia's fingerprints, adjusted, or rather, fondled, the bolt, took aim, and fired.

A tiny drop of blood splattered on her lip as the crossbow bolt sank deep into her body double's head, and before she ccould second guess the impulse, she licked it off.

Then she grimaced, because that would have tasted much better if she was Rengar, and that's where she cut that line of thinking off and focused on the moment.

She jerked her head to the other room as she tossed the crossbow to him, reflecting on the slight power boost she felt from killing the woman and stacking her Rune's effects, for perspective. It was a small boost, but workable.

James let the woman drop to the ground in what looked like a natural way, one armed, carefully checking his steps, then reloaded as he followed behind her.

They walked into her father's room, and she did her best not to even look at the man who wears her father's face as she and James carefully shove him under the blankets, like he's just sleeping.

She took the crossbow, touched the bolt all over again, and then made the mistake of looking at his face.

Her chest tightened, and anger rose to meet that unfamiliar feeling.

She couldn't be weak. She couldn't afford to.

So she didn't give the crossbow to James as she should. She simply took far too long steadying the shot, fixating on her father's face.

She's not sure why she tortured herself like this, staring right at that face instead of just pulling the trigger and leaving, instead of telling James to do it, but something inside her demanded it.

Maybe she was trying to force herself to face the truth, that as far she's concerned, she really has killed her father, cut him out of her life in a way not so dissimilar to simply losing him in another way. Or maybe she was just trying to satisfy that vague sense of background guilt via self-punishment.

Regardless, eventually, in the respectful silence of her current preferred subordinate, a sharp twang sounded out with another meaty impact.

The man in the bed jerked once, a crossbow bolt going through one ear and out the other, stabbing into the bed.

Her stomach clenched painfully as she steadied her breath.

She handed the crossbow to James, who mutely took it.

"Bring me the gas and leave."

James did as she asked, walking downstairs. She walked out the room, closed both doors in the hall. She felt James' soul walk around the back, to his motorcycle.

The sun was about to rise over the horizon any minute now.

He walked back to the house, inching across the rocky path instead of the grass or mud, avoiding leaving footprints, came up to the back yard's door, then skirted around to his bike, and drove off.

She floated downstairs, opened the door, and grabbed the gas can.

Any more than one wouldn't be terribly realistic, after all.

She didn't know if it would work, but she turned on the gas too, then went upstairs, trailing a line of gasoline from her bed, to her father's, then down the stairs, where she stopped being meticulous and just swung the damn thing around, a strange emotion like relief and grief bubbling into her.

There were no pictures left of mom.

Dad took everything of mom she hadn't taken.

Beyond some memories so distant they might as well be prehistoric myths in her mind, there was nothing left here.

Even so, something about this ached.

She soaked the edges of the carpets, made sure to splash a bit of gas on everything flammable to make sure the fire caught.

Then she tossed the gas can aside.

She flashed back to herself to pocket the phone she had been holding onto while using Evelynn as a cover, then dug out a match, and swapped back to Evelynn, shifting into her gangly self like a snapshot.

She flicked the match, and stared at it, the scent of gasoline filling her mind.

It burns out in her hand, crumbling to ashes. For a moment, her mind is blank as she gently rubs the ashes between two far-too-smooth fingers. A flex of will gives her a different set of fingerprints, something that isn't Sophia's. She doesn't try to think about why.

She took out another match, struck it against the matchbox, and dropped it on the floor.

She stood straight and looked on serenely as the flames burst to life around her, crawling and flashing across the liquid, sometimes flashing up with thwoom sounds and other times just flickering into life.

She took a deep breath, not particularly bothered by the flames licking at her shoes. 

It smelled like burning memories and freedom from a past that doesn't feel like it's truly hers anymore. Threads severed. Chains to the past, cast into a forge and broken.

Or maybe she was simply being overly sentimental over a setup and a cover up that doesn't need to be that way.

She licked her lips, needlessly.

"I know you wouldn't have been particularly proud of me, mom. But I also know that souls have nowhere to go here. There is no afterlife in Earth Bet. No Spirit Realm nor undead mists. You are not listening. I am talking to myself because the idea of pretending with naivety soothes me. I can see how people fall into delusions. Insidious and welcoming. But the human mind is not suited to considering nonexistence. The idea itself is too alien to consider. So even if I know you don't exist in any capacity, not anymore, I can't fathom where you might be. I have seen The Void, but not the true nothingness it leaves behind, because nothing intelligent nor alive truly can."

She was rambling, wasn't she?

She looked up at the ceiling, watching the flames rise and lick at chipped paint and dusty fake plants at the edges of her vision.

"I just hope that nonexistence is as soothing and calm as I imagine it to be, because you deserve to rest. And I hope that my monologue will please the petulant child in me that demands that an afterlife exists even if I know it doesn't. It's... Look at me, making this about myself…" She trails off, and scoffs with a faint, bittersweet smile as the flames crawl towards the center of the ceiling, barely hearing herself over the crackling of flame.

"I guess I'm selfish. Because you aren't listening." She whispered, only for herself to hear.

An afterlife might not exist, not here.

But she could fix that too, couldn't she? For some.

She turned into smoke, and flit through an open window, rising up into the sky to watch the dawn.

Surprisingly quickly, the first fire truck arrived.

She didn't look down.

She flew off to meet the girl cursed by a witch's brew.