54

Chapter Text

She woke up at the same time as Taylor did, even though she knew damn well the girl had gone to sleep much later than her.

Unfortunate, but she expected that of Tay. Always restless.

Considering this was supposed to be a more simple day, however, as they got dressed and prepared to move forward with Taylor's idea of trying to free the Gray Boy victims, she couldn't help but think that her friend slash, uh, spiritual sister of sorts, looked far too pensive and conflicted for what today's activities were to be.

It was on the third time she noticed Taylor staring off into space that she spat out a sigh, and shoulder-bumped her, startling her a little with the sudden assault.

Taylor turned her head to frown down at her.

"What was that for?"

She shrugged, and sat on the gun case they used as a nightstand, pointing a finger at Taylor's nose, forcing her face to adopt a stern expression.

"You're doing the thing again. Overthinking. What is it? This is the least morally compromised and tactically complicated thing you've done in a while, I thought you'd be smiling like a loon all day."

Taylor's lips pursed, and she turned her gaze back down to the pistol she was strapping onto her waist.

Lisa dropped the finger, but kept her stare steady, still demanding answers without pressuring her… too much.

After a half minute of silence, Taylor sighed again, a good chunk of her soul seeming to leave with it as she deflated, turned, and dropped onto the bed, leaning forward to put her elbows on her knees.

"I don't know who I am." Taylor simply said.

She slowly nodded, somewhat blindsided because that was not what she was expecting to hear.

"I- do you remember when, on that hill after I saved you, or… maybe somewhere a bit before, I mentioned how I think I'm going to need someone to keep me in check? To counteract… me, I guess, to some extent?" Taylor started, eyes still on the floor.

Seeing as she was waiting for an answer, she mumbled a cautious 'yeah?', and resisted the urge to open the doors to her power.

"I think I said something about how I hoped you'd be that someone, but realistically, I realize that can't happen because you're not… different enough, to me. You agree too much. Your morals are just whatever is needed for you to feel good about yourself while still doing what's necessary for survival, and while that's perfectly fine, it's not what I feel like I need when it comes to a moral guide."

She bit her lip, because that assessment was both slightly hurtful, and completely, absolutely right.

At least she kind of got a hint to what this was about. Morals.

"The point I'm trying to get to, is that I'm… we're on a tight road. Our car is powerful, but shambled together like a Mad Max monstrosity, and I'm the driver. I need to be steady, both to keep us on track and so that our ride doesn't fall apart. I need to know why I'm doing what, how I'm going to do it, and somehow keep it all tightly confined to some semblance of pragmatism speckled with violent justice and a little bit of glitter where we can afford it, like today."

She slowly blinked at Taylor, expression pinching in confusion. Her mind could keep up, but it was… a strange trail of thought that Tay was dragging her down in.

After a few seconds of digesting that, she nodded with a leading, questioning humm.

Taylor scoffed.

"The road is tight, and I'm the driver, but I can't see straight, Lisa." Taylor mumbled. "I'm swerving along everywhere, crashing into the guardrails all the time, and you, the passenger, can't grab the wheel and correct me because of- many reasons I won't go into. When I started, I had a strict rule that I'm not going to Master any innocents. It wasn't even tempting or an idea in my head, I was simply, dead-set, that I would not do it. And do you know what I did a week later?" Taylor whispered, voice tight with frustration.

Several things slid into place, the puzzle forming a coherent picture for her.

"You Mastered Maria." She said, and Taylor nodded.

"Exactly. And I still don't know why. I don't- I know why I did it, but I'm wondering why I let myself do it. I'm not steady, Lisa. I- I thought I was, but what you said yesterday bothered me. Maria let us know that the Directors are talking about something together, so she was in my head all the time, and by the time I passed out for the night, I was just thinking about it all, about our discussion to Master some corrupt media heads, and all that, and the gangsters, and I realized something. I keep feeling like nothing is under control while everything is objectively as under control as it could possibly be, because I don't have control over myself." Taylor said, taking a deep breath like she was about to break out into a rant.

The picture was pretty clear at this point, and it was a little enlightening to her as well, because there was something about Taylor's decisions that kept nagging her, even if most of the time, they were damn sound ones, and now Tay was laying out what that feeling was in front of her.

Inconsistency. Not big, not glaring, but small things that would change or shift at strange times.

"It's because one week I can empathise with criminals and realize that although they're human scum, they're still people, not monsters, and the next I'm ready to enslave all of them, thousands of them, and can barely restrain myself from executing them on the spot. My mental image of them is once just thieves and drug peddlers doing what they can to live a comfortable life, and then rapists and murderers and scum that I should hang off the street lamps for all of Brockton to see. And it's not about them, it's just an example." Taylor handwaved aside an argument Lisa didn't even make, and steepled her fingers in front of her, except they were tight, nails digging into knuckles as her jaw tightened.

"I have lots of examples, because the more I spent the early morning staring at the ceiling, the more came to mind. Like A- the author of that binder. She was being a threat, and she's part of some huge conspiracy group, but should I really have Mastered her?"

It took her a moment to realize Taylor meant Alexandria, and her mind wandered to why exactly she refused to say her name or be a little less vague about her. Faultline had said something like Cauldron being able to hear being mentioned, even. Was that it? Could they hear keywords across the world or something?

She kept the doors of her power firmly shut, letting Taylor speak.

"I don't know enough about her to make a judgement, but I still Mastered her, and I can't take that back. I don't know what they even do. Their aim sounds heroic, from what I heard. Their methods of kidnapping didn't do them any favors but they didn't technically harm any of you. Regardless, that's another thing I can't take back. I beat her once, but she's still not someone to be underestimated, I can't release her." Taylor sighed. "I don't even know if I want to because she pissed me off so much."

A silent moment passed as Taylor gathered her thoughts.

"Another problem is that one week I vehemently tell myself I won't touch an innocent, then the next I Master a completely innocent PRT desk worker." Taylor huffed, brows lowered, eye-piercing brows hues glaring a hole into the floor. "One week I'm hesitating to Master Purity, and the next I'm cloning and enslaving villains without a second thought. I know why I'm like this. I know you do too. It makes sense that living as a hundred completely different people would fuck my head up, but I thought I was past that, to- to at least some extent." Taylor forced out, gesticulating with tight, snappy motions full of frustration.

She recognized that particular frustration. The frustration of a backslide. Thinking you got over something and then realising you absolutely had not gotten over it.

"But you aren't." She summarised, and Taylor nodded, a tired kind of sadness pulling at her lips.

"I'm not. But even so, I'm just… frustrated with it, because I still feel like I don't know who I am, what exactly I believe in, and if I'm like this, I'm starting to fear where I'm going to take us. It's not just morals, I struggle to keep myself as… as a single… person. As myself. Because I don't even know what 'myself' is. You make your decisions through your experiences, your lens of the world, your morals and ideas, because those things are who you are. When you have every experience, every viewpoint, every 'lens', so to speak, half the time you struggle to pick which lens to see things through, and the other half you slip and stumble between the options without even realizing." Taylor mumbled, clenching a fist like she could physically crush her uncooperative mind.

With a sigh, Taylor glanced at her.

"Back to the car analogy… morals wise, this is also a problem. One swerve too sudden, one yank of the damn wheel when it should stay still, and we'll tumble off the road and crash and burn. Maybe not literally. Maybe the organization will be just fine. But if I become just another blood-soaked warlord, just another fucking Heartbreaker in the process of trying to fix this world, then what the fuck is the point of all this? Does that not sound like the ever so classic tale of someone's path to hell being paved with good intentions? Will my story end with me being the only monster left to kill? Will I even fix anything, or will I make everything worse because I'll make mistakes at the wrong time that I can't take back? Will I even be able to make this space rock a little better If I can't define anything in my head? What is 'better', even? What is wrong, what is right, who is the enemy, who am I? I have ideas about all of it and they all make sense, but they keep switching because I slip into one mindset and the next without noticing, from beat to beat, from mood to mood, and I had convinced myself that I'd put my head back together, so until now, I just hadn't thought too hard about why I kept changing my mind on things. Why I did some things that in hindsight are just fucked up. I messed Bakuda's head up, and then I put a gun to her head to test her. I still don't know why I did that. I could have just asked. She literally couldn't lie to me." Taylor griped, and rubbed at her temples, jaw tight.

"And I'm the leader of all of this. I can't afford to be such a fucking mess, but I don't know how to fix it, because I spent four months in my own head and I only just patched up a general idea of who I was before I started all of this, and I don't have another year of sensory and social isolation to make myself a functional human. Do you have any idea how hard it is to bring significance and identity back to a mere sixteen years on this fucking planet when you have something like ten thousand in another? I couldn't even understand English for the first week I got back, even if I could remember all of it just fine. It all just… sounded like butchered languages from the other world." Taylor snarled.

She opened her mouth to reply, but Taylor opened hers too, so she shut up and let her friend rant, let it all out.

Maybe she could help by listening. It was all she hoped for, honestly.

But fuck, this was so, so incredibly outside her depth, even more so without her power.

The least she could do was get up and sit next to Taylor, which seemed to calm her down a little, but she still seemed to be fuming at the situation as she huffed, and gesticulated at the open air.

"And I don't know what to do about it. I need- I need concrete lines. Moral ones, mostly. I used to think I'd only master criminals who had hurt or killed people, then I extended that to practically all 'hard' criminals, financial ones too, and I'm- I'm worried where I'm going to take us because I can't trust myself to stay consistent. Am I going to end up mastering people who smoked pot at the wrong place and time? They're criminals too, aren't they? Are scummy businessmen game too?"

In her opinion, fuck yes, but she wanted Taylor to finish her rant.

"They're not criminals, maybe not provably, or technically, but they're definitely greedy leeches that only make the world a slightly shittier place to be in. Propagandists like the media industry we have? What about career politicians who are only in it for the money, mouthpieces for whatever company tells them that they don't want Parahumans messing with their business? God I hate NEPEA-5 so fucking much." Taylor grumbled, then kept rambling, "But if I extended my standards to that as well, I'd have to Master half the fucking government too. It's- I don't know where to stop." Taylor said, voice thick with frustration..

She pursed her lips.

"This isn't new. You've been thinking about this for a while." She observed, tilting her head.

Taylor made a so-and-so gesture with her hand.

"Not exactly. I was more thinking on the outside fringes of it all. Then I had a day or two to relax and let my brain catch up with all the work and chaos, and then I started thinking about why I was so eager to save Gray Boy's victims, and it led to all… this, these thoughts, that all of a sudden crashed down on me yesterday. Or technically today." Taylor summarised, voice subdued.

She chewed on her cheek, sitting next to Taylor as she thought.

Where does she stop, huh?

A minute of silence passed, thick and unresolved, until she came to a rather simplistic conclusion.

"Honestly, you might not think I'm a great moral guide, and you'd be absolutely right, but I can certainly book-keep it for you. Like, how hard can it be? Just tell me what you want generally, and I'll try to get you to focus whenever you stray. Just because I'm an immoral bitch doesn't mean I can't be your moral police." She pointed out.

Taylor side-eyed her sceptically.

"For example, where do you stop? At shitty, terrible fucking people. You defined criminals and monsters as who you want to be going after, a lot, but going after criminals is playing by the law's standards and labels rather than your own. And you've also stated rather exhaustively how you could give less than a singular, granular fuck about the law and don't view it as legitimate. So why did you constantly bring up criminals and gangsters as Mastering targets? The law's labels are not why you want to Master them. You want to Master them because they're terrible people who don't deserve to keep hurting people, not because they broke laws you don't even think about. Did you notice that discrepancy?" She asked, and Taylor turned to blink at her in surprise, before that shifted to anger.

"Fucking Crownguard mentality mixing with all the other shit. How did I not notice?" Taylor grumbled to herself, hissing out a sigh as she rubbed her brow.

She had no clue what the fuck that meant, but alright.

"Businessmen? No need to go after anyone with a factory, that's psychotic, but when you have large corporations with a history and pattern of unethical, evil behaviour, like gold mining companies based here in America using slave labour and private military groups to make money off-shore, then yes, go for their CEO's, maybe we can put their damn money to use making the world better instead of letting them hoard it all till society collapses. Maybe we aren't worthy of being the arbiters of justice, judging who deserves what, but in a world that's this much of a shithole, even you and I can do way better than what we currently have. Who else is making you hesitate? Politicians? Go for all of them, they're all ten times the criminal a gangster is. They're fucking scum!" She pointed out, reasonably, throwing her hands up, and Taylor snorted, a smile tugging at the edge of her lips.

"So what if you have to Master the whole fucking government? At least you'd bring about real change. Fucking go for it." She encouraged with a heated husk, on a roll by now.

Taylor turned to blink at her incredulously.

She kept her stare, wide eyed, brows high, as if to say 'well? What's your objection?'.

"Are you trying to tell me you'd do any worse of a job than the current system?" She asked, incredulity so thick in her voice it was practically a joke. "Take over, why the fuck not? If you want change, real, country-wide change, you might have to. If not you, then your other capes like Accord and Coil and me, we three can probably single-handedly run the entire country ten times better than whoever the fuck the current president is. Dean-something? It's not like they do anything but pad their pockets and look pretty for the cameras."

Taylor's expression shifted to a more guarded, skeptical stare.

"Ask anyone when the last time they felt like their vote mattered, on any fucking level, when the last time they felt like it changed anything or that their elected official represented them. Ask any Parahuman if they feel like their vote matters when your favourite piece of legislation, NEPEA-5, literally fucking forces all of them to either join the PRT, starve, or be criminals, and then we wonder why humanity gained superpowers and not a single thing in the average person's life has improved, why there are so many villains. Taylor, you don't need to know where to stop, because that's horseshit and we both know that even if you did know when to stop, you'd still keep pushing. It's not in your nature to stop, you've literally not once pulled back from anything so far."

Taylor seemed to think about that for a second, then bob her head in agreement with a wry, hesitant kind of amusement. 

"That is true." 

She took her hand, gave it a squeeze, then raised their intertwined hands into a fist, at chin-height.

"You won't stop anyway, so fuck that. What you need to know, it seems like, is when to not swerve. If you can't see straight, I might not be able to yank the wheel because you can be one stubborn psycho sometimes, but I can try and be your eyes, right? I might be an immoral bitch- sorta- but I can sure as hell keep a list, so don't count me out yet. Wanna make up some moral rules? Some lines?" She pushed, amped up, and Taylor's lips twitched further into a half-smirk, eyes shining with… pride?

Not in herself, obviously. Which meant she was proud of Lisa.

The fuck did she do?

Pushing those thoughts aside, she dropped their hands, brain running a million miles an hour.

"It's not that hard. Can't be. You're struggling more on rules for how to Master people, right now, right?" She said, and reached down under the bed to dig out a sketchbook that Taylor used for the tattoos running up and down her arms, a pencil conveniently in the binding as she flipped it open, and began to list numbers.

"Okay, so. No mastering petty criminals, Master all politicians because those fuckers don't have souls anyway, not in Bet at least. I'm sure Aleph is better. If we're thinking of going after corporations or people in power we'll dig real deep to make sure we have moral justification for it… sound good so far?" She asked, and side-eyed Taylor, who seemed to be re-evaluating her with a thoughtful look.

Taylor slowly nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, sounds good so far. Rather surface-level and basic if I'm to be honest, and the problem is more to do with my judgement and worldview shifting like liquid all the time, but it would help."

She snorted, writing things down.

"Then we're fucking doing it. Also, sidenote, we need a better sense of identity. Maybe if you can't keep yourself believing the same things, the organization having a stable mission statement would help you focus. And your whole, 'fight to the bitter end, never give up, kill your demons' thing is pretty inspiring and grand I'll give you that, but as an organization it doesn't really pull. It's just kind of just a more brutal, militaristic version of hero messaging. We should focus on something a little more… specific? Unique?" She suggested.

Taylor shook her head.

"That's just the message for the general public that doesn't care about powers, and it'll do. The real draw will be in our advocacy and push to protect and include capes into society. I want geokinetics building irrigation systems, dams, houses, doing road maintenance, building bridges, for example, fire powers doing wildfire prevention and land clearing, Tinkers trying to work with scientists to improve the world rather than making another piece of shit cannon or fist-fighting petty criminals for drug money because the PRT and the government decided it's illegal to mess with 'industries' due to corruption and lobbyist scumbags. Our draw to capes will be the fact that we're going to protect them from the government and in return, they'll turn this city into a gem. Rogues will flock here once they realise we'll be their shield for a normal life. Did you think I was considering a visit to Parian just for costumes or something? I have a pitch ready." Taylor asked, genuinely curious.

She shook her head with a snort.

"Honestly, yes. I should've known better."

Taylor continued to endlessly impress her.

Never doing a single thing at a time. It was baffling how she could do it with such immense consistency.

Somehow she always just set things up so that when she went to do anything, she'd achieve a half dozen things at once. It took a particular kind of labyrinthian genius to do that, and it was in stark contrast to her more… surface level self. Growling, getting annoyed, having doubts and worrying about her morals, those only seemed to be the coating on top of a spiked ball that could outmanoeuvre seemingly anyone but… Accord. Probably.

Though she'd never say it out loud, not in a million years, she honestly hoped she could one day have that kind of skill. She was getting better, improving, but Taylor seemed to be made for it.

By her Trigger, no doubt, but still made for it, to lead and command.

If it wasn't for her paranoia and the convenience of it, she was sure Taylor could achieve everything she'd achieved now without even Mastering a single soul.

It would just take her way too long, and she was not the type to wait around.

She pushed those thoughts aside, because her inner admiration could wait, and her ego was starting to prickle due to it.

"Okay, back to Mastering rules. What other worries do you have?" She asked.

Taylor paused, and thought in silence for half a minute, before sucking air in through her teeth, hands open on her knees.

"I'm worried that I'll become like Heartbreaker. I fucked up with Bakuda, and she's basically like a dog when it comes to me. It's- kind of endearing, which worries me, but I can't even feel bad about brainfucking her into a completely different person. I feel like I should, even if she was a psychotic maniac before. I never enjoyed the fact I did it, but after that, I guess my subconscious has been on high alarm. It would explain my slightly overzealous hatred of Heartbreaker. I can't even look at him without wanting to crush his throat with my bare hands. Which would be a normal response to have for a normal person, but with how desensitised I am, it's very abnormal for me." Taylor confessed, lip curling at the mere mention of him.

"Huh… very self-aware of you. I mean it took you a while, but you figured it out. So, hold on." She added, scribbling. "Don't be like Heartbreaker. What does that mean? What aspects of him do you not want to be?" She asked, the soft scratch of pencil on paper overlaid on her voice.

Taylor took a deep breath.

"No Mastering at random, no Mastering for personal pleasure or for vanity. No… relationships of any kind with Mastered anyone. They can be allies, tools, maybe equals, but never anything more. Uhm… no Mastering for hedonistic crap. No innocents. If I think of Mastering someone like Maria again, just slap me or something."

She snorted, smiling.

"Sure thing. One sec."

Taylor hummed, and leaned on her, staring down at her hastily scribbled rules.

"... Do you really think you can do it? Keep me in line?" Taylor asked, curious.

"I can do my damndest to try. If you're having doubts, you can just ask where to draw the line. I fully support Mastering corrupt, criminal, possibly Elite-aligned rich propagandists, for example. It doesn't really sound like a moral dilemma there." She gave out an example, and Taylor hummed in agreement.

"And what about the gangs we have? Many of the members are just people who, theoretically, just wanted to feed their families and themselves. You could easily have been one of them, had things been different. And not all of them had the job of being killers or whatnot. Maybe many of them just grew weed, or something."

That… did give her actual pause. Genuine pause, even as her hand kept writing.

Features pulled into a mild frown, she worked her jaw, thinking.

"Is this a more… empathetic moment for you, or are you going to go back to wanting to execute all of them in a few hours?"

"I think both. See the problem? I can't be indecisive when I'm in charge of something this large. Answer the question, please?" Taylor said.

She sighed.

"If this is going to bother you, then how about this… gangs work off reputation. Even with the normals. Everyone who's done something fucked up or worthy of 'respect', like bringing in victims for Lung's sex trafficking, or, I don't know, lynched a brown guy, they're bound to have bragged about it, or have everyone they associate with know about it. The Empire is very organised, and Lung's gang is spread, but his lieutenants should know everyone under them. Just Master the lieutenants, check to see what people did what, and if there were a few people who just… cleaned the club or something, or grew weed, just don't Master them and kick them out of the gang entirely. I'm telling you, that's going to be very few people. You can't really be in a gang like these we keep around, and still keep being a decent person." She reasoned.

Taylor hummed thoughtfully.

"Write that down too, maybe?"

She nodded, and kept writing.

So on and so forth, it went. Taylor would pose a moral question, or something she'd constantly waffle about, going from yes to no depending on the day, and she'd try to help her resolve it to some extent, ground her, give her a flat board to bounce her morals off of.

It took the better part of two hours, and her hand hurt by the end of it, but Taylor's worried, mile-long stare seemed to have now been replaced for a mild, proud smile, directed at her with unnerving intensity.

She glanced back as she put the notebook back under the bed, quirking a brow in question.

Taylor silently huffed a laugh through her nose, then as she rose back up, leaned close with open arms.

She kind of paused for a moment, not expecting a hug out of nowhere, but as Taylor yanked her forward and squeezed her, seeming to let out a year's worth of stress with the sigh that washed over her shoulder, she relaxed, warmth blooming in her chest.

Blinking at the curly hair in front of her, only just a little longer than shoulder-length, she snapped out of it, and hugged back, squeezing back with… a small portion of her strength. She had to remember she was a mild Brute now.

"What's this for?" She mumbled, confused, but overall happy with how this talk turned out.

"Helping. Being reasonable. Being here for me, in general, and now. I'm really not used to that. Thank you." Taylor said, voice flat as usual, but tinged with warmth.

Her face split into an involuntary grin as she dug her chin into Taylor's shoulder.

"Sisters help each other, right?" She chuckled.

Some small corner of her mind flared to life, and unbidden, the thought came forth.

Don't die like my first sibling, please.

She squeezed a little harder as if she could physically keep her there and present, feeling that familiar worry she experienced the entire time Taylor was off hunting Heartbreaker.

That was a dumb thought, though. Tay was about to go off on a simple rescue mission. No need to be worried about her.

Taylor snorted.

"We were both pretty emotional when we said that, so I didn't know how seriously to take it afterwards, or how seriously you took that. Nice to know, now. Regardless, thank you. I underestimated how much you could help me. Not Nexus, me."

"Well, it's you I care about, not Nexus. Mostly." She reasoned.

Taylor hummed in acknowledgement, but said nothing further.

Eventually Tay pulled back with a contented sigh, and straightened her back.

"Now… I should probably get going, and you should probably ready things up for our little… website launch, I suppose?"

She nodded.

"It's already up and running, we'll put our message in it after you're back and can sit down to really think of how to word it for the average normal person. And after you hopefully free those people, since we're not certain it'll work." She reasoned.

Taylor nodded, eyes returning to their more hard, inscrutable look.

It was time for business.

Without much preamble, Taylor rose, picked the odd ninja guy, and after a few seconds of doing some odd hand signals, building light and sound, she vanished.

Time for her to do her own part, she reasoned, so she rose, finished clasping the weapons on her harness, tightened her belt, and walked off back to her office.

She immediately ducked out of the way, the moment Shen's teleportation was done.

To her great approval, her minion wasn't slacking off, a series of loud ' pops' entering her ears as she felt her minion jerk his waist sideways, trying to spin and shoot her.

She spun with him, keeping her back to his, then pulled her left elbow forward only to snap it back and slam into her minion's shoulder, adding to his attempt to spin around, the unexpected momentum tripping his feet up.

Moving forward a foot to separate from him, she spun in the opposite direction, her right hand grabbing the elbow of his supporting gun hand and shoving her foot between his own fumbling ones as her left hand dove for the gun itself.

Her hand clamped down on the slide right as it fired a foot or two from her shoulder, preventing it from slamming back forward, locked all the way in the back.

He stumbled down onto his knees sideways, and his finger yanked at the trigger again with a dull, ineffective 'click' as he jerked his upper body back, on the floor, readying to kick her away.

Then he got his first chance to look at her, and he froze, brown eyes blinking in bewilderment, bushy brows pulled down in aggression.

"Are- are you-" He rushed out, befuddled from his brain telling him she was the waif of a girl who'd Mastered him, while his eyes told him a very different thing.

"One of Sam's associates." She spoke with Shen's calming voice, and the man groaned in relief, letting go of his gun to slump on the floor.

"I'd have appreciated some kind of warning, sir ." He grunted, flexing his wrist in her hand.

She yanked him up, ignoring his quiet, grunted 'whoah' as he hurriedly untangled his foot from hers.

"You got it yesterday. How far away? Have you scouted the site?" She asked hurriedly.

He tucked his shirt back into his pants, and nodded, eyeing the gun holes in the walls around them.

"Yes sir. I can take you right there. We should probably go. Gun's got silenced subsonic twenty two rounds, but it's not exactly whisper-quiet." He noted, hurriedly reaching for his jacket on the bed.

She understood about half of what he said, but nodded regardless.

"Go on your own. I'll follow from afar."

He glanced at her, and nodded, hurriedly zipping up and grabbing his backpack.

"Makes sense." He grunted, and wordlessly yanked the door open, stomping towards his car.

She turned into Evelynn, and followed him down the highway, then off to the side, through a shockingly long, patchy road.

The first site where Gray Boy claimed the most victims, was also his first attack. Likely something about making a good entrance.

The early morning sun of the midwest American desert beat down on the endless line of cracked, peeling asphalt, half-buried under fine sand, but after half an hour on the road, flying along the car below, she spotted a small mottled series of blocky shapes in the far distance, perched atop a slight, curved hill, and sped ahead of her guide to reach it first.

The Rune of Precision sharpened her eyesight enough to drink in all the little details.

It looked like any other small town, really, if it was trashed to hell and back, then promptly abandoned. 

Judging by the circular pillars of brick randomly strewn about the town, the best the PRT did for the time bubbles was to surround them with hasty walls so that no curious tourists could come and gawk at the poor bastards trapped inside.

Because yes, people were fucked up enough to do that.

As she neared, a sound crept up. A faint almost whistle-like keen, which turned clearer as the distance closed.

Screaming, high pitched and desperate, echoing off the distant spines of sandy rocks, passing like a whisper through the fields of reeds, cacti and tumbleweeds, before meaninglessly echoing out to the lifeless expanse beyond, as if to make it ever so clear, that no help would ever come to save them. 

The scream abruptly cut off, and changed into a stuttering wail, before it built back up to the same scream, a mere whisper from so far.

Ten seconds later, it did it again, a broken record, except there was no tin nor static, just the rawness of a torn throat.

She knew this would be grim work, but something about the scene she slowly descended into crept into her soul like a worm, vile and violating. It was downright haunting.  

No wonder the city wasn't fenced off. It likely didn't need to be. Who would approach a place this eerie?

As she got closer, more subtle sounds became clear.

Mostly screams, joining the loudest, in a mangled choir, disjointed and off-key. 

Sobs and pleas, garbled and desperate.

A particularly hitch pitched voice, screeching 'mommy!' over and over, just barely audible from the opposite outskirts of the town.

She had to pause as that particular sound reached her ears, her emotions sparking like a short circuit, flaring out wildly.

At the forefront, was a grim sense of hatred. The desire to stomp on Grey Boy's skull until it was paste with her bare foot, to pin his soul into Thresh's lantern and flay him for time immemorial, to pull him apart with meat hooks then stitch him together again just to see how many times she could do it until the only form she could make out of his parts was a ball of mangled flesh and skin-

But he was dead.

She'd have to settle for the living.

She'd get to the Nine soon enough. They'd show themselves eventually. 

With that inner fury momentarily shoved aside, she switched to the Rune of Domination, and sped up, counting the bubbles, noting the story laid into every scar within the city.

Cars torn in half, buildings charred. Small plaques denoting the victims, words of prayer within little memorial constructions, clearly parts of the aftermath.

Makeshift barricades in doors, bars and bakeries, torn through with sheer force. Jack must have had a Brute with him.

There were tons of discoloured sections of asphalt, so soaked with blood that even now, it remained, in dark brown, disjointed puddles, smears and mocking smiley faces drawn on windows.

Taunting messages written in blood, painted over sloppily with whatever paint was at hand, likely by the families of victims who couldn't bear to look at them.

She eventually turned her head from it all, and rushed for the most heart-rending of all the sounds.

She found it eventually.

It was within yet another pillar of red brick, walled off from the world outside, just tall enough to be impossible to climb up without a ladder and leave some sky visible for whoever was inside.

The edges were it was the most obvious that it was a bubble. The elevation had changed since this happened, the sand had receded, leading to the soil just off the side of the gravel road seemingly being elevated a couple inches in the bubble.

It looked like a nightmarish snowglobe, almost.

She descended, and formed at the top of the brick pillar, balancing on the thin barrier as she took in the scene below, her ears unable to pick up anything but the screeching.

The scene was predictably horrific.

A woman with casual clothes torn into a thousand pieces, shuffling like a zombie on the floor, covered in blood, her tendons clearly, cleanly, cut through.

From up top, she could see a red line on her neck, oozing a stream of red, a river of it, as the mouth moved meaninglessly, voicelessly..

And trying desperately to help her up, was a little girl with stumps for fingers, desperately trying to grasp anything so she could pull her mother up, what little scraps of cloth she could grab peeling and breaking apart, slick with blood and tattered, her fingers unable to grasp a hand or hook into anything.

A death by a thousand cuts, and a predictably cruel game.

Jack Slash did this.

When she got her claws on his soul, she'd make sure he paid for every moment of agony a million-fold.

With a deep breath and a prayer to no god in particular, she used Evelynn's feelers to break through the bricks, smashing them apart and away, clearing the way, a small layer of red brick dust coating the top of the bubble as she tore it all away.

Once it was all rubble, and she was eye-to-eye with the bubble itself, a small one, just barely six feet tall and ten feet wide, she switched to the Rune of Sorcery, and summoned the Nullifying Orb, nervously gnashing her teeth.

She focused on the victims for a moment, some disgusted part of her unable to look away.

A blonde little girl, chubby-faced. A slim, light brown haired woman, hair thick with blood, face pretty and angular, slack in shock and thick with grime and blood.

Nameless people, but if this went wrong somehow, she'd remember their faces at the very least.

She approached slowly, just to make sure nothing went awry, and nothing much seemed to happen, until she got close enough for the sand and dirt suspended in the bubble to suddenly stop floating in its place, and limply drop.

And that was all it did. It didn't disintegrate or explode or anything.

Feeling hope swell in her chest, she switched her form to that of Shen, hopefully a more comforting presence.

She took another step, then another, using the falling sand as her indicator of how close she was, and once she was on the edge of reaching the duo, she had a realization.

Sand was very different from living, moving tissue. If she unfroze one section of someone, but not another, would it break off? They were both still moving. Would they just be sliced into sub-atomic, bloody mist?

She didn't know.

So, she quickly fashioned a small pouch out of the twisting binds of her uniform, and dug out one of her smoke bombs, instead putting the orb in its place, at the small of her back.

Taking a deep breath, she visualised the placement, and Flashed forward, right next to the girl and her mother, an instantaneous snap.

She didn't waste time, one arm grabbing the woman's forearm, the other grabbing the girl's wrist, and with a deep, deep crouch, she kicked back, yanking them out none too gently, a loud pop denoting she pulled the woman's shoulder out of its socket, the girl's wails replaced for a startled scream as she was yanked back.

She took another step back, and another, almost running backwards until she was sure she'd cleared the bubble.

The bubble twisted and snapped as she exited, bending light into a strange knot with a bizarre whistling sound, but she only saw a blink of it before she turned her eyes to the woman at her feet, and cast Heal, innumerous wounds closing, shoulder snapping back into place.

She switched to the Rune of Inspiration, the Nullifying Orb vanishing from her grip, and hurriedly cast her second Heal on the girl, fingers growing back with a burst of green light.

The girl's scream settled for a hyperventilating rasp, wide unseeing eyes sliding over everything around her like she couldn't believe she was in the real world again.

The woman jerked with a ragged, frothy gasp, clumsily flailing to try and get up, reaching for her child.

She let both go, and stepped back as the woman burst into sobs, yanking her unresponsive child into her arms.

The little girl jerked, then twisted, immediately vomiting as she tried to turn her head away, seemingly only trying to escape.

Instead of a happy reunion, she only got to watch the girl have a breakdown, thrashing and screaming even harder, wailing like she was being skinned alive, without rhyme or reason, and her mom desperately trying to hold her still as the girl lost her voice, then kept wheezing until even that sound faded.

Even still, the girl twisted and kicked and huffed empty like a wild animal as her mother babbled apologies at her.

It felt like a private moment she was intruding on, so she turned her head away, to stare at the rising, merciless sun, its malicious glare matching her own.

I can't wait to destroy you, Jack.

Her gaze wandered to where the bubble once was, and paused, staring at the strange twist in space that was left behind.

She glanced at the duo, then sidestepped them to draw her knife, and experimentally put it into the odd twist.

Before her very eyes, the knife bent like liquid, its midsection disappearing, its tip appearing ten inches to the side in a distortion.

Her brows furrowed in confusion, and after glancing back again to make sure that things were calming down with the duo, she ducked down to put her eyes at the same level as the distortion.

Then she blinked in confusion as she realized the distortion was moving.

It was hard to wrap her head around. It was like a crumpled napkin, torn through with a serrated blade, except every fold of paper was a glass container within which light and seemingly space itself were moving meaninglessly.

It… kind of looked like a space distortion that was gutted.

Everything she knew about magic told her that when such damage happened to a spatial distortion, it should violently explode. Magic interwove with space like weave within fabric, it could simply not hold steady when the subject it was supposed to be keeping in place was in strips and pieces.

This did not do that. It seemed entirely unbothered with the mangled half-shape it had crumpled itself into.

She couldn't even understand its exact shape. It was not in the shape of where she moved through. So perhaps there was a core in the middle she messed with, somehow, and it ruined the entire bubble?

It wasn't collapsing, it didn't twist or move back, it just seemed like it was trying to move something that wasn't there. It was bizarre. Like watching a jenga tower built into a spiralling zig-zag, yet somehow not tilt nor fall, without a power or a trace of magic in sight. The blatant defiance of the laws of existence was somehow personally offending to her.