Wakeup call - Chapter 2

“Lisa, let me go, I need to leave,” Taylor says, with all the patience of somebody wrangling a toddler and trying not to resort to physical violence. 

“Noooooo, stay!” I answer, with my best toddler impression. 

“You are being ridiculous.” 

“Me? You are the one deciding to risk life and limb on a whim! There’s absolutely no reason you couldn’t spend the morning in bed and—” 

“Lisa! I am just going to school!” 

“That’s what I said!”

Taylor looks at me like I have finally gone over the brink, which, to be fair, is pretty much the way I am looking at her. It turns out that letting a burgeoning friend engage in self-destructive behavior while you make it clear you are there for them when they need you (as you systematically plan to make yourself an indispensable part of their almost non-existent support network so they will help you when— 

Lisa Wilbourn engaging in self-deprecation and self-aggrandizing simultaneously as a way to avoid confronting her feelings of loss of control when it comes to—

Shut the fuck up! I mean, as I was saying: one thing to let a friend get hurt, quite another to let a lover get hurt. 

Heh. Lover. 

Oh God, I am blushing. And now Taylor is looking at me, and also blushing, which looks adorable now that I can see it almost frames her glasses, and the way the vivid red on her pale skin contrasts with the dark green of her eyes, and now I am blushing more, and so is she, both of us caught in a feedback loop of blushing that is making my brain divide by zero— 

“So, I wanted to apologize,” says Regent. 

“What?!” Taylor and I break out of the loop at once, yet our speech remains in synch. This may prove hazardous. 

Likelihood of power interaction vanishingly small, yet not zero—

I need to stop joking to myself. It only brings ever greater sources of stress. 

Alec looks at me weirdly, as if unsure of why exactly I am pulling at both my hair and Taylor’s wrist at seven in the morning while I try to bar her from the loft’s stairs. He’s also looking surprisingly alert for someone who just emerged from his bedroom about four hours too early for his usual routine. And he isn’t rushing to the bathroom. Something is up. 

No jokes about morning wood, Power. Have mercy. 

“For last night,” he continues his alleged apology. “I mean, it obviously was an important moment, and I shouldn’t have intruded as I did. The sanctity of the lilies should be ever preserved in this harsh world.” 

“What do floral arrangements have to do with—” 

“Taylor, sweetie,” I interrupt before she ends up too far down the rabbit hole, “you don’t want to know. Trust me.” 

“Philistine,” Alec haughtily remarks. Which may carry more gravitas if not said by someone wearing Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha pajamas. 

… Yes, I recognize her on sight. Bootlegging torrented subs from Earth Aleph counts as supervillainy. A very respectable, yet sinister, activity. Shut up. 

Lisa Wilbourn engages in deflection to avoid thinking about the possible parallelisms between the relationship between Nanoha Takamachi and Fate Testarossa and her own—

Fine, the traumatized dark magical girl attracted to the heroine with no regard for collateral damage is a blonde with green eyes. Don’t you also start with your shipping bullshit, that was disturbing enough last night. 

Lisa Wilbourn secretly pleased at the parallelism between—

For fuck’s sake, won’t you let me keep a shred of dignity?! 

“Anyway, Lisa obviously being an uncultured swine isn’t the issue, but rather how uncouth my behavior was, and the distress I caused you two in what should have been a quiet, intimate moment.” 

“Uh, apology accepted, I guess?” Taylor asks, looking at me as if I hold the answer to her question. 

She looks so cute when she’s being socially awkward… 

“Thank you, Taylor, for your tolerant, nay, magnanimous acceptance of my churlish and thoroughly inadequate behavior. But I must insist: at least take this, as a tangible token of my regret and my silent support of your relationship.” 

“You are talking weird. Being weird,” Taylor says, as she automatically takes the small object Alec hands her. “Why are you being so weird?” 

Object small and thin, likely cylindrical, symbolically related to romance—

Oh, motherfucker— 

“Guys? Why are you all up so early?” Brian asks, just back from his coffee run, as Alec’s smile widens to shit-eating proportions and Taylor looks dumbfounded at the chapstick lying in her palm. 

Alec looks at me, triumphant, and I am about to punch him just as he pushes the button of the remote hidden in his pajama pants and Katy Perry’s spine-tingling voice (I have needs!) blares out of his bedroom. 

“I kissed a girl and I liked it, the taste of her cherry chapstick,” Taylor’s look blooms into horror as she sees the candy red of the traitorous plastic tube lying on her open palm. Before she thinks to close her fingers, Katy inexorably dooms us all. “I kissed a girl just to try it, I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it.” 

Alec is about to say something, to deal the final blow, just as I deal mine and bury my right arm in his solar plexus almost up to my elbow— 

Sudden stimulus to solar plexus certain to trigger a diaphragm spasm and render speech impossible—

Yes. That’s the idea, Power. 

Grue looks at me bewildered, yet absent of reproach (it is Alec, after all), and Taylor regards enough of her wits to close her fist and hide the incriminating evidence in her pocket. I start to breathe, just as Katy delivers the last, punishing blow: “Don’t mean I’m in love tonight.” 

I blush. Taylor blushes harder. Alec desperately gasps for breath so he can deliver a one-liner. Brian looks very confused. 

“… Coffee?” he asks while lifting the carboard tray in supplicating offer, hopeful for the return of a world that makes sense. 

Oh, sweet summer child… 

***

“Right, so the whole thing boils down to you not wanting Taylor to go back to Winslow alone and unsupported,” Brian asks, after I swear solemn vengeance on Alec with eloquent body language. 

“Yes, that’s the whole thing. All of it.” I answer, lying through my teeth. 

“Tell her she’s being ridiculous.” Taylor’s tone is unwavering, cold, rational. She’s offloading her embarrassment to her swarm. Cheater. 

“No, I think she’s right.” I am about to refute his point when he agrees with me without arguing. Uh. That feels weird. 

“What? Brian, don’t you start too, I can’t just drop out of high school just like that, I will be perfectly fine—” 

“You triggered there not that long ago, are regularly subjected to physical assault, and the place has more junior gang members than juvie while the ABB is still bombing the city. You are in very real danger whenever you set foot in that place, and not just as a random bystander, but as a target.” Oh, that’s what someone being reasonable sounds like. I should take notes so I can fake it. 

“Ahem. Yes. Precisely my point. Thank you for your input, Brian.” Nailed it. 

Taylor glares at me, obviously jealous of my quickly growing arsenal of weaponized maturity and level-headedness. 

“I am not dropping out.” Or digging in her heels like a particularly ornery badger. Yeah, one of those two. 

Taylor Hebert wants to avoid ceding ground to her bullies, as her own martyr complex makes her assign a non-trivial amount of her perceived self-worth to her enduring over a greater—

Yeah, I got that. It’s just frustratingly stupid, and I don’t know how to dissuade her. 

Malicious compliance can often—

Oh, that’s a good one. Thank you, Power. 

“Look, Tay, Brian’s got a point, so… Let’s compromise?”  

“A… compromise,” she says, as if the very word is anathema to her core. 

“Yes, a tiny, teensy one…” Brian looks at me with suspicion over the rim of his coffee cup, Alec sniggers from the sofa, and Taylor arches a very professorial eyebrow. 

Jeeze, everyone is a critic. 

*** 

“This is not a tiny compromise. This is so far from a tiny compromise it makes the Treaty of Versailles look like two friends arguing over a tip,” Taylor mutters into the hands-free system hidden in her lustrous, voluminous hair (not jealous, just… appreciative). 

“I am letting you march into a den of scum and villainy armed only with a stealth surveillance system and your objectively hot Big Sister monitoring you from the nearest café in this area, which, by the way, yuck. Be thankful I am calling this a compromise and not a gigantic favor you now owe me. Now, class is about to end, so stop talking to yourself, you weirdo.” 

By way of an answer, Taylor silently blows me a raspberry. Hmmm… That could merit a Stranger half, maybe? 

I keep working on my main laptop while the tablet propped up beside it shows me the feedback of the multiple cameras hidden in Taylor’s backpack, and I sip on what I dearly hope has at least a tangential relation to a coffee plant somewhere down its ancestry— 

Coffee content within the statistical mean of the composition of other caffeinated beverages consumed by Lisa Wilbourn. Subpar taste likely to be due to excessive roasting of the beans, aroma lost due to improper preservation, espresso machine having too low pressure—

My Power, ladies and gentlemen, the barista. 

… Damn, now I want to try it. 

As I muse (and not smile disturbingly, no matter how hurriedly the waitress just passed by) on what the properties of Power-brewed coffee may be, I realize Taylor has been detained when exiting her classroom by two girls who need no further introduction: Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess. 

“Seriously, Taylor, it’s for your own good. Why do you insist on coming here? Do you want the ABB to finish the job? Is that it? I mean, I can understand wanting to die in your circumstances, but at least you should be more proactive about it.” 

My blood runs cold. 

There’s a part of me that expects Taylor to stand up and punch her in the throat as she takes out her combat baton to finish the job. A part of me that expects her to coldly state how many deadly spiders the redhead currently has on her body and what their horrific venom will do to a grown man. A part of me that expects her to be Skitter. 

But it is just a part. The rest of me isn’t surprised when the cameras shift, and I can see her shrink into herself, as if hiding from an incoming blow. 

I am going to hurt them. 

“Taylor,” I whisper, “repeat after me…” And I unleash my Power. 

Keeping my eyes open is an effort of will as I am suddenly bombarded with knowledge of everything that surrounds me—third tile from the left on top of the toilet door cracked and blackened, disrepair due to economic downshift—everything within reach of my senses—left shift key in laptop keyboard worn down due to nervous tic, stress rising steadily since confronting Lung—and I focus it on the two girls—Sophia Hess silent, affecting boredom, checking Emma Barnes progress, personal investment on Taylor Hebert’s low self-esteem—on the two girls I am about to destroy. 

I channel my Power through inadequate means, cameras and microphone losing too much detail, but I manage to direct it in all its terrible magnitude at them, and, for a moment, I Understand them. 

They say knowing someone is loving them. It usually is, but I can make exceptions. 

“Emma… I don’t think I am the one in danger,” she repeats the words after me, following my directions in—Taylor Hebert emotionally distraught, latching onto external guidance—yes. Later. Now I am fighting. 

“Oh? Are you insinuating something, Taylor? Are you going to fight back for once?” Question masks insecurity. Afraid of Taylor Hebert showing strength, Taylor Hebert direct threat to self-image.

“Me? No, I am far too weak—” Sophia Hess contemptuous. Despises weakness. Perceives herself as having overcome weakness, as always having been strong. Contradiction not resolved—“but you, Ems? You are far too beautiful.” 

“What, are you a lesbian now, Taylor? I should have known, what with your mother being a feminist…” Emma Barnes laughing as a way to mask distress. Unsure about conversation, wants to take back control. 

Oh, Ems, sweetie… No. 

“Me? Maybe bisexual, but you? No, I think you are straight, which is good, seeing as you are flaunting your good looks while coming to school in the middle of a brewing gang war.” 

“And what is that supposed to mean? You throwing in with the Merchants now? Sucking a dick for half a joint?” Cruder insults. Emma Barnes resorting to harsher aggression due to unsolved trauma. Avoidant strategy.

“You always tell me how ugly I am, Ems, I am not the one who should be worried about sucking gang dick.” 

They all freeze, even Taylor hesitates for half a second before finishing her line, but she sees the wide-eyed stare coming from Emma, the absolute stillness coming from Sophia, and something relaxes inside her. She stands straighter, taller, towering over the two monsters, and I could cheer with joy if my temples weren’t pounding so hard. 

Just a bit more, Power. We are almost there. 

“I don’t think you have to worry about the Merchants, they keep away from the rich kids that don’t buy product, and you are too white for E88 to bother you, but the ABB…” Emma flinches, actually taking a step back. I have her. “The ABB would do anything to get their hands on you. They would put you on a farm and get every single dollar you are worth out of you. “ Taylor hesitates, tone wavering, unsure of her capacity to inflict such cruelty, of how unheroic all of this is. Then I see Emma’s head twitch, hair falling to the side and hiding her ear, nose wings flaring, eyes blinking rapidly, and I whisper reassuringly: “Taylor, just a last push, honey, I promise it will be worth it. Repeat after me.” 

“And you are worth a lot of dollars, Ems. I would say it would cost… an eye and an ear.” 

And Emma Barnes falls down. 

She’s screaming her lungs out, hysterically tearing at her hair as tears run down her face and her face reddens from lack of air. She’s a broken doll who has finally realized the cracks were there all along, and she can no longer fake as if she was still whole. She’s a ruined shell of a human being, a caricature of what she may have grown up to be in a kinder world. I have, for all intents and purposes, killed this Emma, but the other one? The one that held Taylor as she cried for her missing mother, the one who listened to my lover’s secrets and dreams long before I came into her life? She died a long time ago. 

One down, two to go. 

Sophia Hess disgusted at Emma Barnes. Sophia Hess no longer sees Emma Barnes as peer. Sophia Hess understands reason for Emma Barnes’ breakdown. Sophia Hess knows Taylor Hebert doesn’t have access to that information. Sophia Hess suspects—

Shit! 

“Taylor!” I yell, as I stuff my laptop in my messenger bag and grab my tablet. “Taylor, run!” 

She does. 

I run as fast as I can, leaving behind an alarmed waitress as I rush towards Winslow and keep frantically checking a tablet that shows me a livid Sophia Hess running after Taylor. 

Winslow High School floor plan typical of public schools designed as possible Endbringer aftermath shelters. Winslow High School has a low budget. Emergency exits unlikely to be guarded, nearest one is in—

Thank you, Power. Thank you. 

I push open the emergency door held unlocked by a convenient stone, with minimal protest of its rusted hinges, my bag banging against my thigh with every frantic step, and I check the tablet to see Sophia has dragged Taylor to an empty bathroom. 

“I am coming, Taylor, I am coming. Please be okay.” 

She doesn’t answer. I hurry. 

“Well, Hebert, it looks like you and I are going to have a chat.” Sophia is pulling Taylor’s hair, throwing her head back, and cradling her throat in the nook of her elbow. 

Formal combat training, non-lethal on principle—

Yes, I know. On principle.

“You see, I don’t think a dumb bitch like you would have actually checked, so I am going to clarify things for you before we decide how are we going to do things moving forward. What you did back there?” 

My feet pound the vinyl floor as I rush to the toilet that is farthest from my point of entrance on this floor, because of course it is—

Sophia Hess knowledgeable about parahumans—

Yeah, she would be! 

“What you did back there is assaulting a civilian with a parahuman power. Because Thinker bullshit still counts.” 

Fuck! 

“So I fucking own you now, Hebert. I can get you thrown in jail with a call or…” The cameras shake as Taylor starts frantically fighting, and a glint of metal comes into view. “Or I can fucking kill you right here and now and claim self-defense.” 

“Taylor! Please, don’t, not now—” But my warning comes too late, and Sophia screams as a swarm starts tearing into her. 

I throw the door open just in time to see Shadow Stalker using her power to break free and Taylor stumble toward me. 

I want to hold her against me, hug her, tell her I will protect her, that everything will be all right. 

I take out my gun and point at the sociopathic monster that nearly killed Brian just as she regains her solid form. 

“Don’t move. Or do, because I am itching for an excuse.” 

So she flashes back to intangibility and orients herself towards Taylor, knife ready. 

But I know Stalker. I have fought her, seen her patterns, studied her for the very likely event that she would try to come back and murder my teammate. I know what to do, and I won’t hesitate when instead of coming after Brian, she’s coming after my Taylor. 

Taylor Hebert shaken by events, will obey orders without hesitation. Sophia Hess using swarm as visual cover while she readies movement, about to—

“Taylor! Throw your backpack at her, now!” 

And a backpack full of cameras, a spare laptop, and a cellphone rigged to emit to my tablet sail through the air toward Stalker, who stands there in contempt, secure in her shadow form. 

A shadow form that is vulnerable to electricity. That spasms in agony as she is hit by a backpack full of active electronics and backup batteries. 

She flickers solid. I shoot. And Sophia Hess falls to the floor with one knee shattered, her pained sobs a poetic contrast to Emma’s emotional screams. 

And now I hug Taylor, and I kiss her as hungrily as she kisses me, not even the lancing pain on my temples able to stop me from doing so. And she latches onto me like somebody adrift at sea, like somebody who knows her world no longer makes sense and desperately needs someone to guide them. 

And I just volunteered for the job. 

God help us all.