Pyeknu
Cross-Dimensional Magical Sith Lady
- Location
- Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
- Jul 27, 2024
- #109
After a bit of a struggle, Part 11 is done and off to the pre-reader. Sachertorte, your scene with Contessa should hopefully come in the next part.
****
Brockton Bay, Phòng Trà Thái Nguyên Teahouse (a block from Sharon Blake's apartment complex), Friday 7 January 2011, 6:55 PM EST…
"Oh, Goddess, this is the most perfect jasmine tea I've EVER had!"
Hearing that gushed praise from the Mistress of the Mindless Legions, one Helena Đặng Hoàng Liên could only try not to blush so much that anyone currently visiting her teashop would scream out, "Don't point that at MY PLANET!" An Avalonian-Vietnamese/American who had been born in Los Angeles under the assumed identity of the granddaughter of one of the many "boat people" who fled that country at the end of the Second Indonesia War in the mid-1970s, she looked to be physically twenty even if her personal documents actually made her sixteen years older; given how physical aging slowed down with the bioroid race after puberty ended to an average of one-twelfth that of normal Terrans, such was understandable. Helena looked to be classically Vietnamese, with onyx-black hair and dark brown eyes that seemed both playful and all-knowing at the same time. Given the theme of her teashop, she was dressed in a traditional black áo dài with two dancing phoenix-like creatures displayed on the tunic below the waist level. She wore minimal jewelry…but given that she would most likely have a Lawgiver pistol stored somewhere on the premises, any petty thief who'd try to take from her would be in for a rude surprise.
"Many thanks, Thoughtmistress-prime," the adopted Angelino said with a glittering smile before placing the tea service she prepared for both Taylor Hebert and the soon-to-arrive Norinaga Haruto on the table before the insect mistress. While not seen as officially part of Sharon Blake's particular coven of bioroids, Helena was an affiliate; she had separated from her birth coven a decade ago, coming east to the Bay when the general Vietnamese diaspora began to probe deeply into the Commonwealth's second-largest seaport. She was also affiliated to the Red Dragon Society; two others from her birth coven were actual members of the group working under Jennifer "Bakuda" Tanaka as explosive research assistants. Much to Taylor's personal relief as she recalled the ugly fighting her old team had endured back on Earth Bet, the version of the explosive-making Tinker living in this dimension had a better head on her shoulders, having been given a much more stable support structure as she moved to adopt to her abilities and strove to make a life for herself well away from idiot parents who literally could never get a clue.
While Taylor wasn't going to get buddy-buddy with the members of the Akatatsu-kai anytime soon — they WERE an effective multi-ethnic Yakuza family, after all! — she wasn't intending to pick a fight with them either. Thanks to his having NOT endured something like the Chinese Union-Imperial in this universe — never mind there not being Endbringers that could destroy large islands here — Tatsuhito "Lung" Kenta was quite the civilized man, akin in his own way to Amelia Lavere's now-incarcerated father Adrian "Maquis" Lavere. Sure, there were the turf fights against the Empire Eighty-Eight, the Archer's Bridge Merchants, the Gold Moon Society and the many minor players active in the Bay, but Kenta and his subordinates didn't do anything that would bring down the wrath of the local PRT, much less reinforcements from Boston or elsewhere; despite each state's force answering directly to their respective governors, cross-border training exercises and operations were common.
And yes, just like on Earth Bet, there was the threat of the Quadrumvirate in the background in case things went TOO loud.
Hopefully, the new generation of Undersiders would change that somewhat…
Taylor perked as small swarms of insects she placed outside Phòng Trà Thái Nguyên picked up on a man smartly walking down the alley leading to the main doors; the teashop was located at the inner end of an old side street that had been turned into a cul-de-sac in the post-World War Two recovery of the Bay. Using her now-Avalonian telepathy-enhanced links to the various insects, she was quick to see he was Japanese, in his early thirties age-wise, had the badge of the Red Dragons on his jacket lapel and moved with the assured grace of an experienced street fighter. Remembering her father's description of the man, Taylor could only smile; much that she knew that things were NEVER black-and-white in this life, she was glad to note that this universe's version of the Dockworkers Union didn't have to stand virtually alone against the threats looming in this city.
The door to the teashop soon opened. "Chào bạn," Helena ritually greeted with a polite bow of her head.
"Chào chị," came the reply as the newcomer bowed thankfully in return.
Helena waved him over to where Taylor was seated in one corner of the room. "Security precautions have been taken per the Thoughtmistress-prime's request, Haruto-san. I'll activate a 'notice-me-not' field to ensure your privacy."
A grateful nod responded. "Cám ơn, Helena-chan," the Yakuza shatei returned before gazing on the woman in the hooded cloak for a second before his eyes widened as a slight tint of familiarity struck him. Realizing that he was staring at the leader of the Bay's new team of metahumans, he cleared his throat before walking over, bowing apologetically. "Madame Skitter."
She waved to the seat across from her. "Please join me, Master Norinaga," she bade, allowing some of her emotions to shunt into her various swarms to throw off her voice. "Fortunately, our delightful host has prepared some wonderful jasmine and chrysanthemum tea for this evening's meeting. I'm told you prefer the latter. How do you take yours, sir?"
"Plain, please," he affirmed, trying not to fluster at such a show of manners from a woman who had survived a holocaust that ranked equal to the Dawn of Power — memories of which she would have gained in her recent Gifting — before being rescued by Earth's true first human guardian. Nodding his thanks again as she poured him a cup of trà cúc, he then took a glance towards what was visible under the hooded jacket she currently had. "Organization XIII," he then advised.
A smirk appeared in the barely-visible part of her face. "From Kingdom Hearts. It wasn't a thing on Bet thanks to all the issues with capes and Endbringers and everything else, but it appeared on Earth Aleph; that was a parallel world in our multiversal cluster discovered by Professor Haywire back in 1988. I know there was a version of him here…"
"From what I've learned, he disappeared two years ago. No one's sure if he's dead or not. His last lab site down in Australia was found by a team from the Commonwealth Rangers, their version of the Specialized Warfare Regiment in Canada."
"Pity. At least he wasn't driven crazy to provoke fights like my version of him was noted to have done."
Haruto blinked. "Why's that?"
A snort escaped the insect mistress. "Unlike capes here thanks to all the mesonium in this dimension, all of us on Bet were being pushed by the kimfombeke to fight anyone that crossed our path, all to create more data for that thing to collate and analyze in hopes of staying immortal," she snidely answered before sipping her tea. "I remember what you wrote about on PHO when I helped saved Parian from March and her friend. You mentioned that you wished I could have come here sooner. Why's that?"
A look of regret crossed his face. "That is a story…"
****
Earth Bet, the site of Brockton Bay, Friday 31 January 2014, 8:12 AM EST…
"What the damn HELL…?!"
Dot blinked as she gazed upon the human habitation standing alone and strong in the sea of ruins that had once been the Red Queen's home city. "Was this your home, My Queen?" the doll-sized reptilian humanoid quietly asked.
Blinking as she took in what was now before her, Amelia Dallon could only shake her head. She had overheard some of the refugees moving to pass through the dimensional portal between Bet and Gimel speak of a house that stood some distance from the site of downtown Brockton Bay, the place pristine and alive amidst a near-lunar landscape of destruction. Curious about this situation, she decided to use her day off from working alongside Riley Davis to check this out with her new friend. "No, my house was over there somewhere," the touch-biokinetic who had helped jailbreak Taylor Hebert's shard so she could lead the successful final charge against Scion many months ago muttered, making the effective grandchild of Nilbog look herself before turning back. "This was closer to the dockyard area. How the hell it survived when Scion came through…?"
"Someone might have rebuilt it," the daughter of the fourth Polka to live in Ellisburg then proposed.
Taking a moment to consider that, the former member of New Wave — of that group, all the other members of the Dallon family alongside Amelia's adopted cousin Crystal Pelham had survived Gold Morning; rumour had it that the living spirit of Crystal's mother Sarah was one of the bodiless thralls currently under the control of Ciara Coinmheadh wherever the infamous "faery queen" now based herself — hummed before nodding. "Most likely. Let's go see if someone's home."
"I can scout ahead."
"No, stay with me. Whoever did something like this has GOT to be a high-end Shaker for sure. I can protect you."
Dot nodded, inwardly shuddering as she felt the Red Queen's concern for her flow through her like a fresh breeze. Ever since they met a few weeks before, the former scout of her specific commune of survivors from the self-created realm of one Jamie "Nilbog" Rinke established many years before had grown very close to Amelia, allowing her own grief and sorrow at her former "king's" rejection of her offer to help escape the Wardens' control to wash free in the face of being able to serve someone who was the Goblin King's effective equal in so many ways. And while it hadn't helped much with trying to help stitch her new queen's family back together again — after experiencing the total devastation and mass slaughter of Gold Morning, shouldn't the survivors of New Wave reconcile and try to make a new whole again? — it was nice to have a true friend.
"O-ha!"
Amelia and Dot screamed out, spinning around…
"Wah! Look, Ayumu-chan! Look! What a kawaii little lizard she's got!"
"Yeah, Hinako-chan! Oh, and we found the local version of Amy-chan, too!"
…then both blinked in confusion on seeing two Oriental women, a teenager and a younger girl, standing a couple of yards away from them, they both giving the biokinetic and her companion a pair of wide-eyed looks. "Who are you?!" Amelia demanded, her mind racing as she realized these two had spoken what might have been Japanese…even if she and Dot heard English.
"Oh, we're just coming to look in on Taylor-chan," the older of the pair — dressed in a sleeveless grey bodysuit with white belt and buccaneer boots, a while lemniscate insignia over her cleavage — said, again with her lips NOT in lockstep with the sounds Amelia and Dot were hearing. "What'cha doing here, Amy-chan? Aren't 'cha supposed to be on Earth Gimel?"
"Um…people heard the house…"
It hit her.
"
WHAT?! KHEPRI'S HERE?!" Amelia shrieked in wide-eyed horror, her head snapping to and fro.«
No, Amelia, I'm not the girl people from here just DUMPED like garbage after she saved all your collective asses from Scion,» an annoyed and VERY familiar voice echoed over the scene, making Amelia turn as white as a sheet."Now, calm down, Sensei!" the younger girl — dressed in white with pink belt and boots, a red heart over her chest — scolded as SOMETHING invisible burst from her to wash over the two locals. "That's not your Taylor-san! That's OUR Taylor-san!"
Amelia blinked as she felt the terror at being so close to the one who had Mastered her and so many others so thoroughly wash away — the experiences from Gold Morning's climatic moments over a year before had been so burned deep into the survivors' souls that it was universally agreed to NEVER speak of Taylor Hebert publicly again — such replaced by a calm feeling that had rarely if ever been experienced by the biokinetic since her trigger event years ago. While a part of her instantly screamed out,
She's some sort of MASTER…! the other part of her seemed to dig deep into her memories to recall the brief time she lived with her father Adrian before the then-Brockton Bay Brigade attacked his home to put down the threat to Marquis forever. Shuddering as the warmth the then-widower crime lord always expressed for his only child flooded her, she blinked; in all her experiences, she NEVER met a parahuman who could do something like THIS so easily. And she was so YOUNG, too…!"What are you…?" she hissed out.
«
Amelia blinked. "You're from another MULTIVERSE?!" she demanded as she quickly took in the other woman's features. Save for those burning black-gold eyes and the faint traces of something dark pulsing through her veins, this was Taylor Hebert with a completely intact body. Of course, she could confirm things with just a touch on the skin but given that this person had mastered some sort of TELEPATHY of all things — something that shouldn't exist among capes — she wouldn't press to do that.
"Hai, Hina, Ayumu-chan and Taylor-san are all from a different multiverse," the young, emotion-affecting Master — as Amelia mentally classified her as even if she knew her cape name and real name;
What type of cape culture did these people have?! she then wondered — calmly answered. "Our Taylor-san got upset at what happened when that silly Fortuna-san shot your Taylor-san after she saved you all from that silly kimfombeke…" — Amelia heard "worm leech" echo in her ear at the girl's utterance of that weird term — "…who wanted to kill you all thanks to that really stupid, stupid, stupid Jacob Black-san!"Amelia paled. "Oh, crap! You have
Jack Slash where you come from?!""
We HAD Jack Slash and his little gang until five years ago back home," Taylor answered. "Back then, a special team of military metahumans were sent out to deal with them quite TERMINALLY! Hard for a paedophilic bastard like William Manton to get away with having the effective 'ghost' of his own DAUGHTER running around helping kill people in cart-load lots when you could send a 7.62-millimetre sniper bullet into his skull to kill him. Ditto with Jacob Black and the rest of that crowd." She then gazed intently at Amelia before she whistled. "Damn! Those bastards got to Riley Davis?!""Uh…y-yeah!" Amelia sputtered before shaking her head as Dot moved to scramble onto her shoulder and hug her neck in a show of comfort. "So, what are you doing here?! What about OUR Taylor?!"
Taylor sighed. "
On Thanksgiving evening in 2010 — there's a difference of time scales between our multiverse; I know it's 2014 here — I was attacked and put into a coma by one of the gangs in my Brockton Bay. My body was infected with an element I know doesn't exist here, so I had to be isolated; not even my version of you could help purge it from me. After one of the most powerful metahumans of my Earth sensed what happened to your version of me, he put Contessa down, then had her shifted to my Brockton Bay to let her recover from Gold Morning. Since the element in my body can cause crippling harm to almost all in my universe…" — here, a disgusted sneer crossed her face, that making Amelia cringe — "…and since I was able to sense what happened to my counterpart and WHY it happened, I relocated myself here. You've got nothing to worry about from me, Amelia; you willingly HELPED my other-self put that monster down. Ditto with your cute companion there; nice to see that Mister Rinke's creations can do more good than harm." As Dot flustered at that compliment from this stranger, an evil smirk crossed her face. "As for the rest of the capes who couldn't be bothered to get off their collective asses, then help the defenceless NORMAL people who would have been cannon fodder to that thing, they won't get any consideration from me if they decide to take out their frustrations at 'Khepri' on me.""Oooh…!" Ayumu trilled. "You sure you don't want me to get Annie-chan over here to teach you some things, Taylor-chan?"
"Who's she?" Amelia wondered.
"
Oblivion," Taylor answered for the Goddess Who Walks Among Men. "As powerful a reality warper as Ayumu here, but she specializes in REMOVING metahuman and parahuman powers. She's REALLY GOOD when dealing with powers like yours, Amelia, so don't try anything to her if she shows up. She doesn't care for those monsters whatsoever."That made the biokinetic shudder as she felt the blood drain from her face. "
Reality warping…?!"Hinako snickered. "Ne, ne, Ayumu-chan! Do your trick! Do your trick!"
Ayumu smiled, raising her hand into the air. "Hai, hai…"
A titanic flash of blinding light then exploded from that limb, blinding Amelia and Dot…
****
Earth Shin, the former base of Bianca "Goddess" Jackson in White Rock, British Columbia (twenty kilometres southeast of Vancouver), that moment (local time: 5:19 AM PST)…
A gargled scream echoed through the well-built castle-like structure overlooking Boundary Bay which had served as the base camp for one of the most powerful parahumans ever to rise throughout the multiverse that had been targeted by the Entities, that making the middle-aged, brown-haired man asleep on his guest bed jolt awake, bone spikes instantly deploying from his forearms as he scanned around the room. Quickly recognizing the potential source of that shriek, Adrian Lavere bolted out of bed, allowing the spikes to eject from his body and land in his hands with long-practiced skill, he immediately racing out of his bedroom towards the private space that had been taken over by his fellow Birdcage inmate after the survivors of that ultimate prison relocated to Shin in the wake of Gold Morning. "CIARA!" the man also known as Marquis screamed out.
Doors in the guest wing of Goddess' former home base flew open, producing others who once also dominated the now-defunct Baumann Parahuman Containment Centre, they coming to Shin in Adrian's wake to rest and reorientate themselves in the quite altered circ*mstances many capes found themselves in regardless of what they had done before Gold Morning. "She sounded like someone just ripped away all of her 'friends'," Ellen Firestone declared as Paige McAbee — the woman also known as
Canary was vacillating between staying with her former dorm boss or joining the Wardens on Gimel — threw open the door into Ciara Coinmheadh's room, she then allowing her voice to produce a soothing medley to calm the shuddering Irishwoman down."Ciara!" Adrian called out himself as he moved to sit on the bed beside the physically younger woman, who was now hugging herself, shivering as if she was caught in the worst blizzard imaginable. A quick glance around the room revealed that none of her many ghostly "attendants" were in sight. "God! Were you attacked?! What's going on here, Ciara?!"
"Calm down, Adrian!" the woman known also as
Lustrum snapped. "Give her a chance to relax…!""
A true GODDESS…!"That made the people now gathering inside the room pause on hearing the strained yet still echoing voice escape Ciara. "What are you sensing, my Queen?" Paige then gently asked, making Ciara gaze upon her as she started to relax.
As Ellen nodded in approval of her former understudy's show of respect, the "green maiden" who long haunted the nightmares of PRT planners across North America and their counterparts elsewhere gestured. "
Behold, my friends…!"People turned to look to one side of the room, where a circular energy portal just formed…
…then they gaped on seeing the image of a normal family home and lawn surrounded by a sea of complete and utter destruction. "Wait…!" the militant feminist who had once dominated most of New England's radical liberals years before gasped. "That's Annette Hebert's home in Brockton Bay!" As the others stared at her, Ellen grimaced. "Taylor's late mother."
The others save Ciara nodded. "Wait! There she is!" Tatsuhito Kenta declared, pointing. "Your daughter as well, Marquis!"
Ciara gestured with both hands to focus the image on the people standing on the front lawn of the restored Hebert home. "It looks like the middle of the night there!" Adrian commented. "Bet and Shin have the same time-scales, right?"
"Indeed, they do, Adrian-san," Morikawa Akemi sternly declared. The normally taciturn fighter known commonly as
Black Kaze had also relocated to Shin even if the Wardens now on Gimel were demanding she move there to perform public service for the people as a way of removing any cloud of suspicion over her. "It should be well past dawn right now…"Ciara then screamed out again as a blinding flash exploded from the portal…
…which soon quickly faded, revealing the same scene…with the light of the MORNING SUN shining down on the property!
Silence.
More silence.
Still more silence.
Then…
"Okay…THAT'S a neat trick!" Cameron Holmes — who, as
Cinderhands, had been one of Marquis' faithful lieutenants in the Marche before both were sentenced to the Birdcage — breathed out TOO calmly."Turning
day into night and back again?!" Ricardo d'Alleva exhaled before gazing at the doorway. "Get Dodge here, now!"One of the several underlings who once answered to the man also known as
Galvanate just as one of the other members of the Tinker alliance known commonly as Toybox came into the room. Said group had secretly managed to avoid being killed by the Slaughterhouse Nine before their 2011 raid on Brockton Bay thanks to the judicious use of biomechanical clones, the existence of which really upset Riley "Bonesaw" Davis since she couldn't replicate same even with her own considerable skills; the group would use their own portal technology to ultimately relocate to Shin during the furor of Gold Morning. "Hey! What's going on?" Juan Hansen — known commonly as Glace — asked before he took note of the portal showing the Hebert home."Is Dodge up, Glace?" Ellen demanded. "We just saw something that he might be able to help explain to us."
The cryostasis specialist Tinker nodded. "Yeah, he just got up…"
"Hey, guys! What's up?!"
A young man on the cusp of adolescence walked into the room before stopping beside his co-worker. "Whoa! Great portal, ma'am!" David Rose —
Dodge to the outside world — immediately complemented as he looked on Ciara…then he paused on seeing the frightened look on the woman's face. "Er…what's going on here, guys?" the native of Manchester in New Hampshire then asked as he looked upon the other people now moving to comfort the Faery Queen.Adrian pointed. "That's Earth Bet. The Hebert home in Brockton Bay to be precise," the former leader of the Marche explained. "By the looks of it, Taylor Hebert — you'd remember her, I believe — has gone back home and rebuilt her house. My daughter's visiting her now, but we don't know who the two other girls in the jumpsuits are. The older one did something that turned DAY into NIGHT with some sort of energy burst." Ignoring David's gaping at him as the others — including a MUCH calmer Ciara — nodded in confirmation, he added, "You guys shifted yourselves out of our MULTIVERSE, well away from Scion's reach, after Jack Slash and his fools tried to shut you down after Leviathan hit Brockton Bay. The uniforms those two girls…"
David looked before he blinked, his eyes going wide. "Oh, sh*t…!"
Juan peered himself. "You don't think…?"
A shaky nod of the head responded. "Uniform type's right on, Juan."
"You recognize them?" the man known to many as
Lung demanded.Both members of Toybox grimly nodded. "Yeah, Oyabun! Just like Marquis said, right after we bugged out of Bet, we got ourselves into a different MULTIVERSE where we had counterparts," Juan explained. "In their multiverse, the Slaughterhouse Nine got wiped out by four way-old metahumans — that's a special kind of parahuman there — years ago! We wound up doing quite the exchange of knowledge between us!" As the older people in the room slowly nodded, the native of Sacramento pointed to the image. "In that multiverse, there's this planet called Yiziba; it's in the same galaxy as Earth, but in a different star system. Humans live there; their ancestors were shifted to Yiziba from Earth ages ago. Get this, though: Practically EVERYONE on that planet HAS TO BE a metahuman to survive in the local environment! The uniforms these girls are wearing are quite common there, especially among the younger generation…as well as those Earthlings who've become adopted of Yiziba."
People took a moment to absorb that. "So, what are two people from that multiverse doing visiting
Khepri of all people?!" Richard demanded, crossing his arms. As both Juan and David gaped before looking again at the woman in the black robe, the power-bestowing former mafia hitman added, "Given the way the retards in the Wardens want to forget she ever existed, I can see her moving back to her old home on Bet as a way of sticking the middle finger to those fools. Since it was Marquis' kid that gave her the power to help make that Scion bastard off himself finally, I can understand why she's living alone…""Wait a sec'…!"
That was David, who had shifted over to gaze closely at the image in the portal. Fortunately, his own experiences in dealing with pocket dimensions — which had helped both him and his peers avoid the Slaughterhouse so easily — allowed him to better take in everything said image was projecting since it did have 3D qualities. "You recognize them, Dave?" Juan asked.
"Yeah, both of them, man," David whispered. "Remember when our other-selves told us about all the heavy hitters on Yiziba?"
"Yeah?"
"Short one's
Suiki; an empathic Master who makes people feel VERY good whenever she's close to them," the dimensional-manipulating Tinker explained. "They call her the 'Spirit of Innocence' since she could probably even make Jack Slash act normal if she ever got close to him." As the others in the room gaped at that assertion, David breathed out. "The tall one's Infinity herself, man. The lady said to be able to REBOOT A WHOLE UNIVERSE if she got pissed off enough."The others all paled as Ciara whimpered…
****
Earth Bet, the site of Brockton Bay, 8:26 AM EST…
"Can't believe that…she literally warped the PLANET around…that's not POSSIBLE…!"
"
AH-CHOO!"Saeru Hinako yelped. "Bless you, Ayumu-chan! Who's talking about you?!"
Moaning, Kasuga Ayumu reached up to rub her nose. "Dunno, Hinako-chan…eh?"
As a mumbling Amelia Dallon tried not to curl into herself while also not giving in to the VERY understandable urge and run away from the most powerful of all the Children of the Forge, the native of Wakayama allowed her Sight to extend out, easily probing through the dimensional veils in this multiversal cluster to seek out whoever had triggered her nose like that. A second later, she locked in on the mental probe being sent her way by someone who was quite powerful in her own right, which allowed her to Gaze right at a bedroom in a big castle-like structure overlooking a beautiful bay. Noting some of the familiar faces inside, the Goddess Who Walks Among Men gestured to make a circular motion with her finger to Taylor Hebert's right…
"A-ri-ri?!" the Spirit of Innocence called out. "Ah! Amy-sensei! There's your dad!"
Amelia and Dot both awked, then looked left…
"
Hello, Amelia."…before both relaxed on seeing the considerable crowd of former Birdcage residents in a bedroom, surrounding a wide-eyed and clearly intimidated Ciara Coinmheadh. "Ah…hi, Dad!" Amelia called back with a wave. "Are you still on Earth Shin?"
"
Goddess' former base in White Rock," Adrian Lavere answered as he gently patted Ciara's shoulder in reassurance before he focused on the woman in black. "I will say, it's damn good to see you alive and well, Taylor.""
What happened to you, Taylor?!" Ellen Firestone then demanded. "After Scion destroyed himself, you disappeared…!""
You're mistaking me for the woman who helped you all fight that thing, Aunt Ellen," Taylor answered, her voice making Ciara gape before she lunged off her bed and through the portal to land nimbly on the lawn nearby. "HEY!"As the people back on Earth Shin gaped, Hinako lunged over to place herself between Taylor and Ciara. "
STOP!"The Irishwoman screamed out as the Niigata-jin's incredible empathic aura washed over her, banishing all the terror she felt on sensing someone with the power that matched — Nay! LAUGHED AT! — that of the errant "parents" to the faeries who had given so many people, herself included, such great power. As a sense of total calm overcame her, Paige McAbee got up and jumped through the portal herself, she moving to kneel close to the older woman, her hands reaching out to grasp the redhead's shoulders. Seeing that, Hinako nodded. "Now, you should have asked Taylor-san nicely to come visit her, not scare her like that!" she then moved to scold Ciara with a wagging finger before she pointed at their host. "Say you're sorry!"
That made Ciara yelp before she muttered out an apology, that act making both Amelia and Paige — never mind the others now coming through the portal from White Rock — gape in disbelief on seeing a CHILD scold the likes of GLAISTIG UAINE without any fear of retaliation. Though, once they sensed the Spirit of Innocence's powerful aura, they were quick to realize how easily it was for the Niigata-jin to do just that. "Damn!" David Rose breathed out. "They sure got your nickname right, kid."
"'Spirit of Innocence', Dodge?" Cameron Holmes asked, crossing his arms.
"Yeah! Can't you feel it?"
"Uh…Oba-chan, you better not touch Taylor-chan yet."
That was Ayumu, who held out her hand to stop Ellen from moving to embrace the counterpart to her late subordinate's daughter. "Why not?!" the woman also known as Lustrum demanded. "What happened to her?!"
"
It's something that doesn't exist in this multiverse, Aunt Ellen," Taylor answered. "As I just told Amelia and warned you before your friend jumped through that portal Ayumu made right now, I'm not the woman you know, but her counterpart from a different multiverse who got into her own metahuman trouble sometime ago."People gazed at her. "So, you and our Taylor swapped places?" Juan Hansen affirmed.
"
Effectively, yes. I isolated myself here because of the element now filling my body and making my eyes look like this. Physical exposure to this stuff in quantity can drive almost anyone insane," she affirmed, pointing to her glowing orbs.David and Juan exchanged looks. "That's ebony mesonium, right?" the former asked, wariness appearing in his eyes.
"
Yes," Taylor answered. "Fortunately, Ayumu here and another person who found ways to master that materiel came here to help me get this under control. At the same time — no thanks to Contessa — I decided to come here to screw things up for the idiots who decided it was alright to dump my other-self out of this multiverse like so much GARBAGE!""
CONTESSA?!" Ellen exclaimed. "What the hell did SHE do?!"Taylor pointed to her head. "
Two bullets in the back of the skull to break the link between her shard and herself."Silence.
More silence.
Still more silence.
Then…
"
You mean, after we helped the other you merge properly with her faery, she was ATTACKED by that COWARD?!" a pale Ciara demanded as she got to her feet, moving to stare directly at the taller woman's eyes. "That MONSTER tried to SLAY Queen Administrator?! How…?!" She then stopped before gazing at Hinako. "Wait! That Dark Gaol…!"Taylor gaped as Hinako stared at the Irishwoman. "
You tried to probe into the DARK GAOL?!" the former demanded. "The UNDERTAKER'S YARD?!" A chuckle escaped her. "Well, there are fancier way of committing SUICIDE…!"A shrill whistle echoed over the scene, making people spin towards the front door of the Hebert home…
"Clearly, some people need reveal scenes here," Annie Whitman — dressed in her onyx black-and-dark grey uniform with two-tone crossed lemniscate insignia on her chest — said as she stared in amusem*nt at the crowd standing there. "I brought in some tea and coffee since you don't have much in the way of foodstuffs here, Taylor, so why don't we all come inside and relax."
Ayumu beamed. "Did you get the good cake from the Dairi Burger, Annie-chan?!"
The Sweet Valley native chuckled. "Of course I did, Ayumu!"
With that, the Infinite One moved to head inside after the Show-Stopper. The people who just came in from Earth Shin exchanged looks before Ellen waved them with her to head inside. Amelia stayed back, allowing Dot to hug her tightly even if she was quick to follow Taylor into the building. "Um…were we friends…?" the biokinetic quietly asked, finding it easier to control her well-ingrained fight-or-flight urges now that she had spent some time close to the Spirit of Innocence. "The other me and you?"
A sad smile crossed the other woman's face. "
We were friends with benefits." As the biokinetic awked on hearing THAT escape this woman concerning her other-self, Taylor added, "Given what a total MONSTER your adopted mother was with you — my version of you — well, any refuge from being made to serve as New Wave's 'healing robot' was always welcome. Thank the Goddess for Margo Black having stumbled onto the whole mess your family was in after my version of you triggered." A disgusted snort escaped her. "She believed EVIL is GENETIC?! How stupid can you be?!""Hai, hai, Taylor-san! Oba-san needs a good spanking, Hina thinks!" Hinako affirmed, nodding in agreement.
As Adrian smiled on hearing of her daughter's other-self's fate, Amelia and Dot exchanged wide-eyed looks…
****
Brockton Bay, Phòng Trà Thái Nguyên Teahouse, Friday 7 January 2011, 7:24 PM EST…
"Wow…I don't even know what to say to you, Haruto-san."
Hearing the woman seated across from him address him with the standard native honorific, Norinaga Haruto smiled before sipping his tea. "I just hope that Amelia-sensei finds some way to help purge poor Taylor-chan of the ebony mesonium now in her body." Here, the Yakuza shatei shook his head. "We still haven't identified what gang it was we fought that evening…"
"Coil, maybe?" the Mistress of the Mindless Legions then proposed.
He gave her a curious look. "Why him, Madame Skitter?"
She sipped her own tea. "In my universe, he kept himself away from the standard clashes between gangs like the Empire, the Merchants and the Azn Bad Boys; they're sort of like the Red Dragons here with the Gold Moon Society's ethics. At the same time, he was more than willing to instigate fights between them to keep the tensions high in the Bay. The end goal being to eventually see the other gangs destroyed, thus allowing him to become the king of the underworld here." Seeing him scowl on hearing that, she gave him an apologetic shrug. "In my universe, the Oyabun suffered hideous mental torture at the hands of the Chinese after Kyūshū was destroyed by Leviathan; that was one of the 'Endbringers' we had to deal with for decades." As he nodded — he had read Isaac Thomas' general background information on Earth Bet which was released to Parahumans Online shortly after Skitter made her presence known in the Bay — she breathed out. "Of course, much that I'd prefer to have a city free of crime and prosper as it did back in the old days, that sort of utopia can never exist. In the face of all the options, I'd prefer people who are civilized when it comes to civilian bystanders, not a pack of white supremacist trash like in the Empire, sex slavers like what the Gold Moon Society unleashes, or drug traffickers like the Merchants. Which will be a relief in my eyes." As he gave her a curious look, she smirked. "I fought my version of the Oyabun on my first night out."
His jaw dropped before humming. "You overwhelmed his regeneration with poisonous insects, you mean."
"And I had help from Rachel Lindt's transformed dogs," she added.
He nodded. "Hai, I've met Rachel-san in passing. What happened to her when she triggered was so wrong."
"Which I hope to see corrected as soon as my new team has established itself," she finished before gazing at him; given she was wearing protective goggles over her eyes, it was enough to break up her physical features — what of them was visible from under her cloak's hood — that he hadn't realized who she really was. "Taylor's alive and safe now."
Haruto gaped. "How?!"
"Early yesterday afternoon, she — having gained enough control over the mesonium in her body thanks to the precautions that Amelia and Doctor Death took to keep her isolated from infecting anyone else — sensed what happened to a close friend of mine back home. That was Tattletale's counterpart." As he tensed, the former warlord of another Brockton Bay sipped her tea. "THAT Tattletale was killed in her apartment where my old team resettled after the effective destruction of Earth Bet by Scion…and because the parahuman shard that empowered her also empowered her counterpart here, it was enough to see her Gifted with Reverend Leno Lu'umlo's help. The psychic backlash of that convinced Taylor to teleport to Earth Bet. Specifically, to the site of her counterpart's house in Brockton Bay, the scene of the first attack by Scion against humanity in America."
He took a moment to absorb that. "What happened to the other Taylor-chan? The one from Bet?"
An amused smirk crossed her face. "You're talking to her."
Silence.
More silence.
Still more silence.
Then…
As Helena Đặng snickered from her place behind the counter nearby, Haruto gaped as the Mistress of the Mindless Legions reached up to pull her hood away, revealing a head of VERY familiar curly brown-black hair over an angular face crossed with quite wide lips and pierced by knowing green eyes. As Taylor Hebert tapped one side of her combat goggles to have them morph into a pair of normal reading glasses, the Yakuza shatei tried not to faint. "I…you actually…HOW?!"
Sensing what he was talking about, Taylor shrugged. "My pushing a kimfombeke into killing itself so impressed Lord Rjazán' of all people that he intervened when I was to be put to death." As his shock turned to outrage, she held up her hand. "I was in a very bad way at the time this happened, Haruto-san. I had to get my shard jailbroken by my Amelia Lavere to help me force people into fighting that thing. In effect, I became the ultimate Master, an Endbringer in all but name."
He took a moment to absorb that, then shook his head. "Gods! Why did it get that bad there?!"
"Because there was a super-Illuminati group in the shadows who — while understanding what the kimfombeke wanted to do with humanity in my multiverse — so flubbed up the plot script that when the reveal scene of what they had in mind got out into the general public, the Protectorate there (which they helped establish) lost a ton of street credibility." Here, Taylor closed her eyes. "Never mind the fact that their main intelligence-gathering agent — a very high-end Thinker known as 'Contessa' — had a shard which was an open book to Scion. People had to think WAY outside the box to put that thing down and save all the normal people who never triggered or couldn't trigger into becoming parahumans across ALL the Earths in my home multiverse. Literally TRILLIONS of lives in that multiverse were at stake at the end. Getting my shard jailbroken so I could force capes to help fight that thing to the point where we could drive it to destroy its mate's corpse — which, to her credit, Contessa had helped kill around the time she triggered — then, through all the shards Scion could tap into it, I forced it to keep staring at that corpse to the point where it decided to end its existence." Here, she rubbed her forehead. "I gave up my humanity to save humanity."
"Ye gods above…!" he breathed out before perking. "Wait! You people were in contact with a parallel Earth; 'Earth Aleph', you called that world, right?" As Taylor nodded, Haruto sat back in his chair. "So, you people understood the concept of a multiverse before this Gold Morning event. Why not place you in isolation where you wouldn't threaten anyone, then send in people you trusted — like your Tattletale — to be with you and help you regain control over yourself? Why try to kill you?"
She shook her head. "That would have been the kind solution. Unfortunately, what sense of kindness that existed between capes back home was in VERY short supply by the time Gold Morning happened." Taylor then finished her jasmine tea before holding up a hand to signal to Helena for a refill. "So, your version of me has gone back to where I once lived to find ways of hurting the people who hurt me while she learns how to get some control over the ebony mesonium in her body. Fortunately for her, Infinity has gone over to help her with lessons, as has Suiki and even this Rittmeister von Taserich person I've read about." Ignoring his stunned look, she shook her head. "A man who's lived TWENTY-FIVE MILLENNIA…?!" she breathed out. "Wow!"
Haruto exhaled as Helena came over with a new carafe of tea for the insect mistress. "Amazing that so many Yizibajohei accept someone like the Rittmeister even if he demonstrates a classic definition of 'death cheating' in your people's eyes."
"Well, it was the luck of the fight scene for him. Besides, he was forced to fight the Old Ones alongside those ancient nature spirits that General Raeburn's Power Jewel helped make sentient in this 'End War' of theirs." As he nodded, she poured herself a new cup of tea. "To believe that Buffy Summers is alive here. Lucky thing she's Gifted as Virago. Can't wait to meet her."
"I take it vampires and other things that go 'bump' in the night don't exist on Bet, Thoughtmistress-prime?" Helena asked as she moved to get a new carafe of chrysanthemum tea for Haruto.
"Not to my knowledge," Taylor admitted. "It was an Aleph television series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Loved watching it with my mother when I was a child; Mom always loved to critique the writers for all the mythological things they got wrong."
All three people chuckled. "We know about the Slayers and the Watcher's Council that support them since the demon-possessed vampires that Summers-sensei fights all the time do make it to Japan," Haruto confessed before taking a deep breath, then he nodded his thanks as Helena came back with the carafe, then refilled his cup. "Our Taylor-chan? Will she be safe there?"
Taylor gazed at him, quickly sensing the guilt that had been rampaging through his heart for months start to rear itself back up once more. "You told me that this Kiryū Kazuma is said to be the best normal fighter in your old family back home, right?"
"Hai," he affirmed with a nod. "If he was there, Taylor-chan would have been saved…!"
She tapped the table. "You're not him, Haruto-san!" she sternly declared.
"Still…"
"No!" she sternly declared. "What do they call Kiryū-san again? The 'Dragon of Dōjima'?! Just like they call the Oyabun here the 'Dragon of Kyūshū'?! You are not EITHER of those men!" she concluded, pointing at him. "You're your own person, Haruto-san! It's ultimately unfair to YOU of all people in the long run to hold yourself up by their standards."
He gazed at her, then seemed to deflate, the slight touch of acceptance now surging through his heart. "Your counterpart's father said that to me on Wednesday when he went to visit his child at the hospital."
"And if she was here, she'd probably say the same thing," the insect mistress insisted. "You're a good man, Haruto-san. And maybe once this whole issue with what's going on back in my multiverse is settled, she'll come back here and tell you that herself!" She then shrugged. "Until then, well…" Here, she sighed. "My other-self had the potential to trigger; both Amelia and Vicky told me that after I woke up across the street on Wednesday morning. But then again, if she's able to master the ebony mesonium inside her like Doctor Death and the Rittmeister has, she doesn't need to trigger. She just needs to burn off all the negative feelings she got — most likely from those members of the Übermenschen Gruppe who were killed here in the Bay during those two fights with the Liberty Legion back in World War Two — before she could be safe around people once more. And…" Here, tears brimmed in her eyes, which made him reach for a handkerchief to hand to her. "Well, I had to become an Avalonian since my old body was too banged up from what I went through on Bet before and during Gold Morning to survive for long. You know about tre'cha, I believe?" At his nod, she wiped her eyes, then sipped her tea. "If something happens and she can't come back — I hope she does even if things don't look good now — well, my adopted people know ways to acquire the memories of others. Before she teleported herself to Bet, I was planning to do that so she can live on through me. I'll be her living legacy."
An amused smile — the first one he felt since this meeting began — crossed his face before he sipped his own tea. "I'm surprised that you know of those last words from Zack Fair, Taylor-san."
She shrugged. "Like I told you about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we had access to an alternate Earth — one that never really had to put up to capes — which had a plethora of video games which became quite popular on Bet thanks to both legal and illegal trade between there and Aleph. All the Final Fantasy series up to two years from now here made their way across; a very good friend of mine from my old team back on Bet loved playing them, including Crisis Core. Even if it wasn't high literature like what my mother loved to teach at university, those sorts of games did have very good background storylines."
Haruto chuckled. "Your mother here is like that as well," he noted. "You should hear her complain about Shakespeare…"
"Dick jokes," she cut in. "For the culture of the late Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Century England, but still dick jokes." As Haruto laughed, Taylor sipped her tea. "And don't get her started on Romeo and Juliet. Dear Goddess…!"
Both laughed. "Do the Dockmaster-prime and the Thoughtmistress-prime know about you?" Helena then asked.
"They were there last night when I had my meeting with Colonel Piggot, the people from the Men in Black, plus people from…" — here, Taylor caught herself just in time — "…the Joint Specialized Warfare Command as well."
Haruto hummed. "For the one called 'Omen' you mean?"
"She was being targeted by Coil directly due to her precognitive powers," Taylor admitted. "She's Vista's age. You know about the incident down by the Boardwalk yesterday afternoon, don't you?"
"The one where Leno Lu'umlo-sensei directly interfered? Hai, I do," he affirmed with a nod before a disgusted scowl crossed his face as he recalled meeting the costumed Missy Byron once on the Boardwalk. "To attack CHILDREN…?!"
"We've confirmed who he might be under the mask. Most likely, he's the same as the one I got to know VERY WELL back home." She sipped her tea as he gaped at her before giving him a shrug. "My path to here is a LOT more complicated than what I've hinted at so far on PHO, Haruto-san." Shaking her head, she then wryly smiled. "Well, no matter what's happened to me to date, I'm not wasting the chance Lord Rjazán' gave me after I came through Gold Morning. I'll live for myself AND your version of me as well, Haruto-san. I'll be the hero that I've always wanted to be since I was a child." She then reached over to gently squeeze his hand in reassurance. "As much as I hope you'll be the warrior you can strive to be."
Haruto gazed at her. "You know of him, don't you? The Kage Hakairyū?"
"I know only of his birth name: Tsuchiryū Hikage. He's from f*ckushima on Honshū. Other than that, nothing. He's done a lot to hide himself from even the rimrae umale and their assistant observers in Japan and America."
"Well…"
The explanation takes about ten minutes. At the end of it, Taylor scowled before shaking her head. "A 'chaos dragon', he's been called?" she wondered. "Why would he become something like that?"
"We don't know," Haruto breathed out, shrugging. "Even if most Yakuza are outcasts for one reason or another from mainstream society, Hikage-san takes it to incredible extremes at time. Perhaps he's become like the Joker is often depicted in local manga here. I fear that he just wants to see the world burn for the entertainment value."
"'Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war'," Taylor quoted the famous line from Julius Caesar. "Well, if he wants to be the bringer of havoc and chaos, you'll have to become the type of dragon that wishes to protect. A guardian dragon."
He took a moment to consider that, then an amused smile crossed his face. "Shugo-ryū…!" he breathed out the Japanese translation of that phrase the Mistress of the Mindless Legions used. "I like the sound of that."
"Then, here's a toast," she proposed, hoisting her cup in salute. "To the Dragon of Brockton Bay."
He blushed as Helena clapped her hands in approval…
****
Headquarters of the Nagasaki Shipping Company (near the southern ferry terminal, east of downtown across the Essex River), 8:43 PM…
"Lung."
"It's me, Oyabun."
Tatsuhito Kenta perked before smiling. "Ah, Haruto-kun!" he greeted one of his better normal subordinates in their native language. "How went your meeting with our new insect mistress?"
"It went VERY well, Oyabun," Norinaga Haruto affirmed, the background noise indicating he was now in his apartment directly overlooking the estuary of the Essex River near the Boardwalk. "I've got some surprising news about Taylor Hebert-chan."
He perked, remembering the gangly yet accepting teen who had been raised exceptionally well by the current "king" of the local dockyards and one of Ellen Firestone's wiser former lieutenants. "Is she alright? Did Zetsumei-sensei heal her?!"
"No, but Taylor-chan did gain some control of the mesonium in her blood," his subordinate declared, making Kenta gape in surprise. "And she was quick to attune to Madame Skitter for VERY good reasons. She revealed herself to me."
The veteran Yakuza street fighter-turned-Brute/Changer metamorphic fire user blinked before his jaw dropped. "Skitter is…?!"
"The Taylor Hebert from this Earth Bet version of the planet," Haruto finished. "Our Taylor-chan sensed what happened to her when she was nearly EXECUTED for becoming too powerful — after she gained the power to help drive one of those monsters you saw when you triggered to KILLING ITSELF! — and was rescued by Lord Rjazán', the Undertaker and Hinako-chan. Given what she sensed from her other-self, our Taylor-chan teleported herself to Earth Bet to reprimand the capes in that multiverse concerning how their Taylor-san was treated after saving TRILLIONS of helpless civilians, Oyabun!"
Kenta took that in, then breathed out, "Do Danny-kun and Annette-sensei know?!"
"They know and are welcoming of Taylor-san, plus know what happened to their real daughter," Haruto explained. "Taylor-san vows the assistance of the Undersiders team she's forming to help deal with Hikage-san."
That made the older man nod in understanding. "So, you've decided."
"Hai, Oyabun, I have. Please contact Kiryū-san. I'm ready to walk the path of the dragon."
"I'll contact Kazuma-kun as soon as I can, Haruto-kun…"
To Be Continued…
****
WRITER'S NOTES
Translation list and source language (all Vietnamese unless indicated): Phòng Trà — Teahouse; Áo dài — Literally "long shirt", this is the standard national garment worn by natives of Vietnam, composed of a long-split tunic over silk trousers; Chào bạn — Form of greetings to a friend of the same age; Chào chị — Form of greetings to a sister or young lady; Cám ơn — Expressing thanks; Shatei — Literally "younger brother of the house", this is the mid-level field rank for yakuza (Japanese); Trà cúc — Green tea scented with chrysanthemum leaves.
The Japanese title Zetsumei-sensei when applied to Margo Black (Doctor Death) is taken from the funny manga/anime series Sayonara Zetsubō-sensei by Kumeta Kōji. Effectively meaning "doctor of extinction" in this context, it was a nickname devised by lead female character Fu'ura Kaf*cka when it came to the older brother of lead male character Itoshiki Nozomu, Doctor Itoshiki Mikoto. All the members of the Itoshiki family (the family name being written with the characters 糸色, literally meaning "thread of one's mood") get nicknames in this series based on the single-character collapsed version of their family name (絶, literally meaning "without") combined with a different reading of their given name. In Mikoto's case, his given name is written with the lone kanji 命 (literally "lifespan"), thus combined with 絶, we get Zetsumei (literally "without life").
