Chapter 37: Chapter 37: The Ebb and Flow of Battle
Guardian
a Worm/Destiny Crossover
Chapter 37: The Ebb and Flow of Battle
There was just enough time to clean up and get something to drink, and maybe a snack, before someone came looking for her. He was a uniformed trooper, helmet carried in hand, with a high-and-tight haircut he hadn't gotten entirely used to. Well, she thought so anyway, based on how he kept rubbing his head. He found her looking for a place to sit and polish off her snacks and failing. Having thus interrupted her, he then just sort of stood there.
"Can I...help you?" She asked. He startled, as if embarrassed, cleared his throat, and nodded.
"Yes, ma'am. Just – are you that Guardian?"
Taylor stared. "M – maybe? Which – How many – what are you talking about?"
"The Guardian who went into Prestonville, ma'am." He explained in a rush, spilling his words out and looking like he thought she would interrupt at any moment. The she in question was too busy boggling at being called ma'am by someone she was pretty sure was older than her. "The one who gave half the bounty back."
Clarity dawned. It didn't help with the wide-eyed, slack-jawed confusion she was dealing with. "Yes. Yes, that was me. And my partner."
The trooper frowned. "Snitch? Uh, Insight? Holmes? Something like that?"
Taylor felt a small bubble of indignation at the idea that someone would forget Lisa. " Tattletale , yes."
He snapped his fingers. " That was it. For the life of me I couldn't remember. Sorry."
Another silence descended. It didn't last more than a few seconds, but those seconds dragged their heels. She thought she was done with awkward conversations. "So...why do you ask?"
Another startle. "Right! Um, my uncle – he was the guy in charge of the troopers who went in with you. He thinks really highly of you, and when I heard you were here and that someone needed to see you, I volunteered to be a runner. Ma'am."
"Someone wants to see me?"
He nodded. "Yes, ma'am. You're wanted in the command tent."
Her brows rose, surprise no doubt writ large on her face. "By who? And what for?"
"By Armsmaster, ma'am, and I don't know. Apparently I don't have the necessary clearance. Or any."
The granola bars went into some vest pouches. She held onto the water. "Lead the way, Trooper...?"
The trooper turned. "Blake, ma'am."
"Lead on, Trooper Blake."
"Yes, ma'am."
=+= Chapter 37: The Ebb and Flow of Battle =+=
The command tent had picked up a thick tension since she'd last visited. All manner of official-looking business was still going on. People came and went with various bits of paperwork, men and women with headsets were tapping away at computers and tablets, and there were a great deal of radio headsets being spoken into. Running above all this was that tension, and an urgency of motion that – while previously present – had increased. Something had happened. Something big. Armsmaster and Lisa were standing over one of those cube projectors, currently displaying the map of the city she'd seen before. By the looks of them there was a discussion taking place. One that was clinging to civility by its fingertips.
Trooper Blake caught her by the elbow before she could enter. Well, not so much 'caught' as 'gently tapped' but he got her attention, so it probably all evened out in the wash. She turned to see his face go through a series of small, powerful emotions, of which she recognized only two. Anxiety and gratitude. "Yes?"
He swallowed, the motion hidden by the collar of his vest/breastplate, but there was no hiding sound. Not from her ears. "I just wanted to say, before you go – um – thank you."
"What for?"
He shifted, weight moving from one foot to the other. "Well, I guess a lot of things, but mostly for bringing my uncle back."
Oh. That was...that was really...something. "You're welcome?" She tried not to let it sound like a question.
Trooper Blake's radio came to life. Clean and crisp and loud enough for her to eavesdrop. She was polite enough not to. A few moments of terse, muttered conversation followed before he nodded affirmatively. "Yes, sir. On my way, sir." Then, to her. "It was nice meeting you, ma'am. Good luck out there." He offered a hand, which she took, and then saluted her before leaving. She had to stand still for a moment and wait for the utter bewilderment to fade so she could move again. After that happened, she turned to go defuse the growing confrontation. Or make it worse.
Making her way towards the back of the tent, stepping out of the way of people as much as they stepped out of hers, gave her enough time to start piecing together what it was that Armsmaster and Lisa were arguing about. Because it wasn't a discussion anymore. No, this was an argument. A muted one, to their credit, but there were gestures and confrontational postures and a good deal of pointing. Armsmaster also had this stiffness to his posture that reminded Taylor of an angry cat.
She got there just as Lisa was finishing pointing out that, "...what's more, we have no way of telling whether or not it's a trap!"
Armsmaster's reply came with the kind of forced patience that came when someone was actually rather close to running out. He tapped the air near the projector cube, and the map changed to an overlay of the city with strange, fungal-like blooms of red and orange spread around the place. "Thermal scans show the highest concentrations of the enemy under the Bellagio, the Wynn and the Luxor. Our Thinkers indicate that not only do they not have the strategical capacity for deception – " Lisa opened her mouth. He kept going. "– on this level, but that it is more than likely they have concentrated their forces under the Bellagio."
Lisa made a tiny, frustrated sound. "Your Thinkers are basing that decision on this one piece of information. We haven't given them enough time to go over anything else! There's witness reports, seismograph readings, drone video and pictures. There's so much more to go through. They just need more time!"
"We don't have enough time!" There it was. The frustrated growl undercutting his voice. "They're replicating too quickly. We have to strike now, and destroy the hive, before they reproduce in such numbers to overwhelm the quarantine."
"Without more information, people are going to die." Lisa wasn't backing down. "People who wouldn't if we just gave the Thinkers more time."
"If we wait too long, it won't matter. We're already outnumbered, by then it will be too late. We'll be outfought and overrun."
"I think," Taylor drew their attention, snapping their heads over to her in an ironic unison. "that you wanted to see me, sir?"
"Yes." Armsmaster's voice evened out, regaining the calm command she associated with him. "The situation is becoming...precarious. The enemy numbers are growing faster than we can cull them. The General that Director Costa Brown is liaising with recommends an immediate strike. She agreed, and passed down the order. In four hours time, six teams of three will conduct an infiltration and demolition attack on three primary targets. At the same time, the quarantine forces are going to conduct a unified push half a mile into the city."
"So..." Taylor put two and two together and, wouldn't you know, came up with four. "You want me on one of those teams?"
"No. I, and by extension Director Piggot, want you to lead one of these teams."
=+= Chapter 37: The Ebb and Flow of Battle =+=
Okay, so maybe her math was bad. She looked to Lisa, who – out of spite, she suspected – shrugged. No help at all. There were so many reasons this was a bad idea that Taylor didn't know where to start her objections. That being said, she did come up with something. "I...I've never led anything before in my life. Why me?"
Armsmaster seemed to have expected the question. What she could see of his expression didn't change. "You, more than any parahuman here, have combat experience against the enemy. You have experience and ability in navigating their subterranean tunnels. You have proven yourself to be capable, reliable, and efficient."
Well. That was...flattering? But still. "All good reasons to make me a member of a team! Not leader."
Over the course of the brief conversation Lisa's eyes, focused on the air between Taylor and Armsmaster, had gone wide. Then, narrow. "There's another reason."
Armsmaster didn't even try to act like she hadn't worked it out. "That's not relevant to the discussion – "
"I disagree." Lisa drove over him. She didn't raise her voice, but harden it. "It's extremely relevant. They're giving you a team as a test. They want to see how you do in a leadership position."
Now Armsmaster's expression changed to a truly impressive frown. "I really think we should stay with what's in front of us."
"I agree." Taylor found herself saying, although distantly, consumed as she was with equal parts confusion and worry. "So. Tell me why."
Armsmaster growled. He was beat and he knew it. Which didn't mean he was going to spill the beans, as was evidenced by him saying, "It's. Not. Relevant." Then he took a deep breath, turned a glare as impressive as his frown on Lisa. "And I'd appreciate you not undermining me in front of everyone." Then back to Taylor. "Now, your team and objective are on this tablet. Study it like your life depends on it, because it does. Now if you'll excuse me." At which point, he handed over the tablet and left the command tent.
"He really does have the personal skills of a robot." Lisa's quiet grumbling came from Taylor's left.
"You didn't exactly rise above the situation, you know." She kept her voice gentle, but the reproach Lisa clearly picked up was very real. She also had the decency to look embarrassed.
"Okay yes, I jumped into the argument ball pit. But that doesn't mean I was wrong. And I'm enough of an adult to see that he wasn't, either. I just – I just knew you were going to be part of the attack. So I figured that...the more detail we had, the safer you'd probably be."
Taylor gave her a one-armed hug. Lisa leaned into it, resting her head against Taylor's shoulder and wrapping an arm around her waist. After a moment's quiet, she said, "You're sweet. A brat, but sweet."
Lisa thumped her in the stomach with a free hand. "Shut up. Team leader."
=+= chapter 37: The Ebb and Flow of Battle =+=
Taylor had commandeered a metal folding chair and an unobtrusive corner of the command tent. She nibbled on one of her granola bars to quiet the grumbling beast that was her stomach and reviewed the tablet she'd been given. For all of Lisa's misgivings about a lack of information, there was a hell of a lot to cover. More than she possibly could in the – she checked the clock on the city map – three hours before her mission departed. So she made damn sure she had the highlights down pat.
Her team – and didn't that give her a flutter of razor-winged butterflies, her team – would be taken by helicopter to the roof of the Bellagio. They would be joined there by a second team and the six of them would move hard and fast through the building into the underground tunnels, find the hive, and destroy it using the lovely Tinkered explosives as provided by resident demolition experts and capes. According to the tablet, it was the design of an unholy union between a Tinker called Bakuda and the Army Corps of Engineers. Attached to the mission briefing were floor plans, likely tunnel entrance and exit points, several mapped routes, and estimated enemy strengths and positions. Also the times at which various parts of the mission were supposed to start. It was a fairly comprehensive piece of work.
As for her team...
Well, it was both good news and bad.
The good news was that one of them was a familiar face. Foil had, according again to the tablet's notes, insisted on being a member of Guardian's team. Taylor wasn't sure how to feel about that. The bad news was the third member of the team was a complete unknown. There weren't any notes for her to consult, just a name. Grace. Were they new to their powers? If so, what were they doing here, instead of somewhere safe to practice them? To make a long series of questions short: who were they and why were they on her team?
A few minutes of fiddling with the tablet answered none of her questions, so she put it aside and went to go pester someone until they talked. If it worked on her dad, she reasoned, there was nothing keeping it from working on a high ranking official with superpowers. Probably nothing. Of course, that proved harder to practice than she might have thought. With the scale of the upcoming operation, there weren't a whole lot of people just sitting around with nothing better to do than help her out. Pity.
It didn't sit right, having such a mystery on her hands. Especially when that mystery involved her team – gah, still weird – and she would soon be relying on this person to not get anyone killed. That being said, it was becoming increasingly clear that finding this mystery person would be like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.
So she cheated. She found somewhere near the middle of the camp, took a seat, and listened like she'd never listened before. She opened herself to a flood of sound, a hurricane wall of pure noise that over the course of a few minutes slowly sorted itself into something she could understand. What she was listening for was any mention of the word 'grace'. There was quite a bit of it. It took her a while to sort through the prayers, the adjectives, the band Three Day's Grace, and a whole bunch of other things until –
This. "...just not sure this is a good idea, Grace." That was an older man's voice. Worried, stern, accented in a vaguely Asian manner.
"You've said that before." A young woman. Smoky, hoarse. Like that girl Taylor had met once who had colic as a baby really bad. "I'm doing this, grandfa – uh, Senior. I have the ability to help, don't I? Doesn't that mean I should?"
Found you . Taylor grinned in satisfaction.
=+= Chapter 37: The Ebb and Flow of Battle =+=
Grace, it turned out, was a whipcord of muscle wrapped around a small tornado. When Taylor found her, she was doing pull ups on the tent bar while arguing with an old, white-haired gentleman. She had spiky black hair and pale, violet eyes that reflected the desert sun. When she saw Taylor coming she smiled, did another pull up, and then dropped to her feet. She was shorter than Taylor by a good six inches. "So," she put her hands on her hips. "you're the one who's going to lead us through dire straits, huh?"
"Looks that way." Taylor looked beyond her to the old man, who didn't look all that happy. "He your partner?"
Grace grinned cheerfully. "Nope." The old man grumbled in what could have been Korean just as easily as it could have been Japanese or Chinese. " But he thinks he's my conscience."
Taylor decided to skate right on ahead to the point. "So, since you're on my team, I –"
"Want to know my powers and why no one knows anything about me?" Grace finished.
"Well, yeah. Wouldn't you?"
"Yep!" There wasn't a time period where Grace was still, Taylor noticed. She was constantly doing something. Tapping her fingers, shifting her wait, bouncing on her toes. That last one went on for almost a minute while silence stretched between them.
Then the old man said, "She wants you to tell her, girl. Do it."
Without looking away from Taylor, Grace pointed back at him. "Don't you 'girl' me, old man. I saved your butt out there and you owe me." Then, to Taylor. "It's actually pretty simple. I got my powers when the whatever-they-ares attacked the city. I was here with the old man and while we were sneaking out, boom. Powers. I'm on your team because apparently what with all the injuries and...stuff, there just aren't enough people to go around anymore."
"Grace." The old man said. She rolled her eyes.
"Fine. I also volunteered. Good enough?"
Probably not, Taylor thought to herself, but had long since become socially aware enough to keep it to herself. Also, there was a huge amount of things left unsaid. Still. She wouldn't be on the team if someone with a great deal of ability authority hadn't decided she was capable. There was one final mystery to solve, though. "Close. What are your powers?"
Grace looked especially proud of herself. "I'm basically the best ninja ever."
The old man groaned. "You're Chinese."
"So I'm the best Chinese ninja ever."
The old man grumbled.
=+= Chapter 37: The Ebb and Flow of Battle =+=
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone