บท 18: Chapter 18: F*cking Florida
Guardian
a Worm/Destiny Crossover
Chapter 18: F*cking Florida
In the end, there was nothing for it; they were going to have to drive. Fifteen hours in Tattletale's car, packed near to the gills with gear – most of it wasn't Taylor's – was an exercise in, among other things, patience. There was only so many times information could be gone over before it started appearing on the back of your eyelids, and she had passed that point somewhere in Virginia. Not to say that she in any way had not intended to memorize every scrap about Swamp Thing that Tattletale had gathered. Taylor was new to the whole tactics-and-strategy thing, but she knew that fighting in an area specifically tailored to her opponent's powers was a bad idea. Not for the first time, she thought about Thing's powers. A Shaker, one with control over swamp water – specifically that, something about chemical or bacterial composition – and mud in a radius around her, somewhere between thirty-five and fifty feet. Also, a Changer, the ability to transform into that humanoid, mud creature once she gathered enough material. To top matters off, she also had a Thinker power that let her sense anything her mud or water was touching.
If you were in her part of the swamp, she knew. That meant finding a way to lure Swamp Thing out of the Everglades. She had to find a way to draw her target out. But how? There had to be a way, she just hadn't found it. She sighed, a quiet hiss out through her nose. Her breath steamed the window her forehead rested against. "Gonna drive myself crazy before we even get there."
She'd mumbled them, but was loud enough for Tattletale's ears to pick up. Radio piping in hits from the late 1980s and 90s, fingers drumming merrily along on the steering wheel, it was something of a miracle she had been heard at all. "Something on your mind?"
Taylor lifted her head from the window, leaving a smear of skin oil and slight condensation behind, and shifted in her seat to face Tattletale. They weren't traveling in full costume because it would be ridiculous. Imagine a cape in full kit pumping gas and checking their phone, doing their absolute best to pretend that they weren't the epicenter of an earthquake of awkward. To avoid that, it was casual clothes for both of them, with some surprisingly comfortable domino masks to protect their identity. She shook her head. "Not really." A pause. "Well, maybe."
Tattletale huffed a laugh, changing lanes to skirt around a minivan going ten under the recommended minimum speed. "So long as you're clear."
Ears burning, cheeks dusted a light pink, Taylor grumbled. "What I meant was that I'm not really sure it's a 'share with your teammate' sort of problem."
A shrug. "Fair enough. But, uh, hey – you know, it is kind of a two way street with this sharing thing, and you just spent the last twenty minutes listening to me gripe about dealing with Pervy McCheaterface. So...yeah. It's your turn."
Pervy McCheaterface(not his real name) had been a serial adulterer with a good amount of money and an even bigger interest into getting into Tattletale's catsuit. He'd bought insights from her, usually about how close his wife was to catching onto him – she already had, and was preparing for divorce – and then tried to leverage that into some kind of weird sexual thing between the two of them. Man had a thing for capes. Or spandex. Either way, creepy. And pointless.
"Not sure they're on the same level." Taylor eventually divulged. " More like, driving myself up a wall trying to figure out this thing we've got coming up."
"What, the fight? Don't work yourself into a lather about it. Once we get there, we'll set up our own little forward operating base and work the details out."
Not exactly reassured, but content that Tattletale had a good idea in not obsessing, Taylor dug a book out of the pack at her feet and picked it up where she left off. It was a terribly written mystery-horror found on a truck stop rack, and a great amount of fun was had mocking the mile-wide cliches and flat, melodramatic characters. At least until Taylor got so disgusted that she threw it out the window when they were outside Charleston and insisted it was her turn to drive. Tattletale was laughing too hard to do anything but acquiesce.
=+= Chapter 18: F*cking Florida =+=
Taylor hadn't been to Florida since she was six, and her parents decided that it was part of every well-rounded childhood to get sunburned and sand-chafed in uncomfortable places. The end result was that the Heberts had spent a week in Naples getting their vacation on and discovered something about themselves; they were not beach people. Not even a little. Out of stubbornness and a willingness to suffer for their offspring her parents had stuck the week out and flown a cherry red, tired, and very cranky Taylor home, ne'er to return. Until now.
At some point the road leading to Prestonville had been blocked off. Three concrete K-rails were laid end-to-end across the road, bleached and crumbling under the elements but enough of a deterrent for anything but spray paint. FUCK YOU SWAMP BITCH was sprayed across the side of one is artful, looping letters, with a clenched fist punching out of the C in 'bitch'. The town they'd passed through to reach this was a one-horse town if ever there was one. One gas station, one post office, and a restaurant in the center of town, and a spiderweb of roads leading out to a scattering of homes. They'd managed to pass through unmolested – nobody curious as to why two teenage girls in masks were driving towards an abandoned town.
Taylor had pulled the car over in front of the turn-off for Prestonville and stepped out. A wet, muggy breeze had picked up, tugging at strands of hair that she wished she'd put up in a ponytail or bun. The road beyond the rails stretched out over the horizon, bordered on one side by trees and the other by a wet, marshy plain. Not quite swamp, but close. It was overcast, and hot. Behind her, the passenger door opened, dispensed Tattletale, and closed with a metallic thump. She didn't look away as the other girl joined her. She didn't know what she was looking at, or for. She was just staring down an empty, neglected road.
"Hey, Guardian?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm not strong enough to push that rail out of the way."
"I'll get it. Just...in a minute." Taylor wasn't sure why she wanted that minute. From the impatient shifting beside her, neither did Tattletale. After the seconds ticked past, she brushed her palms and went to heave one of the half-ton K-rails out of the way.
=+= Chapter 18: F*cking Florida =+=
Abandoned towns, Taylor decided, were incredibly creepy. Prestonville was no exception. The lawns were either overgrown, spilling over their neat boundaries in tangles of weeds and seed blades, or yellow, drowned, and dead. The sidewalks were caked with dirt and cracking, crumbling like the K-rails three miles back down the road. Green sprouted through the cracks, moss and white-capped mushrooms doggedly reaching for the sun. It was a similar story for what remained of the roads. The same thick caking of mud, long dried, almost burying the asphalt beneath it. Here and there were clumps of growing something. It was the buildings that really made the creep factor. Most didn't have doors. Almost none had windows. A few were missing roofs. They dotted the place, rotting and water-stained, like tombstones. Marking where a life ended. The Everglades taking back land.
The silence wasn't the worst of it, because this skeleton of a town wasn't quiet. It was also mostly bugs. They hummed and buzzed, little wings carrying them about their buggy business, creating a concert of sorts. Every minute or so a bird would call out, warning or invitation as the situation dictated. It wasn't human life, but it was life. So it wasn't the silence that sent a razor's edge of tension down Taylor's spine. Something did, something that had her curling one hand around the handle of her knife while embers of purple Light flickered in the palm of the other.
"Guardian?" Tattletale paused, looking around. She'd turned the car off and stepped halfway out. The keys were still in the ignition. If a quick getaway became necessary, they were ready. Tension was slowly binding itself into Taylor's muscles, and a rising certainty that something was wrong. "Everything okay?"
It was like back at the K-rails, only this time, because she was in the middle of it, surrounded by it, that she could name it. "We're being watched."
She heard Tattletale's heart skip a beat. "What? How? There's one one else here."
Taylor shook her head, turning a slow orbit on her heel. "Don't know how, exactly, but...we're being watched." She chewed her lip, and closed her hand. The Light flickered out, her bow returning to its place within. The grip on her knife, however, remained. "We can't stay here."
There was a moment of silence. "We were never going to." Tattletale's voice was full of disbelief, not directed at Taylor, but inward. As if she couldn't believe she'd forgotten to say this. "I just thought, you know, we might want to get a look at the place. In person." A pause. "Which seems stupid, all of a sudden."
"We should leave." Taylor barely recognized her own voice. Calm, flat. Sharp. "Right now. We should leave and not come back until we're ready to fight."
"Sounds like a plan." Tattletale dropped back into the car and started it. The rumble of the engine was oddly loud and reassuring. Some of the tension coiled throughout Taylor's body faded. Some. "We have to inform the local PRT Director what we're going to do, anyway. Better late than never, eh?" The last was delivered light and fragile.
Taylor had barely gotten in the car before the engine roared, dragged them in a semi-circle, and peeled them out of town. Tattletale's hands were shaking, trembling where they clenched the wheel. Concern cast some doubt on Taylor's earlier certainty. "I could have been wrong. Something about that place rubs me the wrong way, is all."
"You weren't wrong." Tattletale's voice was as steady as her hands weren't. "We were being watched, and it was Swamp Thing doing it." Her lip curled back over her teeth in a snarl. "Now she knows we're here. Damn it."
=+= Chapter 18: F*cking Florida =+=
Taylor was waiting to feel foolish. Now was certainly an appropriate time. The shadows of Swamp Thing and Prestonville should have faded in the light of the city and the drab construction of the PRT building. Failing that, they should have been banished by the reluctantly accommodating nature of the Director for the region. Alfred Jones had done his best to talk them out of their intended purpose and then, having failed that, offered a copy of every Swamp Thing related piece of information on file. An offer they graciously accepted. After all, as Tattletale had said as they were leaving, there had yet to be such a thing as too much information. But, for argument's sake, and because it was actually happening, let it be said that, sitting cross-legged on her hotel room bed, she still did not feel foolish. There were more than a few reasons to explain away her earlier mood. The mounting weight of what she was about to do, the nature of an empty town, that kind of thing.
Papers rustled over each other as another manila folder, chock full of facts, was thrown to the floor. Across from Taylor, sitting on the room's other bed and surrounded by more of the same, Tattletale made a sound of disgust. "I can't – I can't believe it."
"Are they wrong, or something?"
"No!" Another was picked up, the pages fanned through. "Everything in here says exactly the same as what I found. Hell, some of it is what I found!"
Taylor's brows furrowed. "Then...what exactly is the problem?"
A sigh. The folder was laid to the side. "There isn't one. My preconceived notion is being shot full of holes, and I don't like it." Tattletale sniffed, scratched the side of her nose. "Okay, never mind that. Um, before we start going over all of this, there's uh... there's something I want to bring up."
A multitude of scenarios raced through Taylor's brain. Most good, some bad, and a few deeply pornographic, though she ignored those. Largely. "What's on your mind?"
"Well, it's like this. We are about to risk life and limb together, and if there was ever a good reason to um – what's the word? – unmask, to each other, this...would be it."
This, Taylor noted, would be the second time a life-threatening scenario would engender her learning a cape's real name. Granted, the finer points of the two situations couldn't be more different, but the flavor was the same. And, on top of that, there was something...more...to this. Something that made her cheeks burn and her stomach flutter. Eagerness? Anxiety? She wasn't sure what doing this would mean, if it would mean anything other than itself. Crushes were fun, though by now it might – might – be a little bit more than a crush. Maybe. Tattletale cleared her throat. Oh. Right. "Yeah, you're...you might be onto something. So. Um." She mustered her courage, calling on all of her bravery, and peeled the domino mask off her face, breathing out in relief as she did. "I'm Taylor. Taylor Hebert."
Tattletale didn't say anything. She wasn't blinking, either. Maybe her power was overloading her with how plain Taylor was? Wouldn't that be nice. It wasn't until she in turn cleared her throat, dusting pink across Tattletale's cheeks and down the curve of her neck, that she did anything. Clever fingers stripped the mask away, peeling off the strings of spirit gum left behind.
Oh.
Freckles.
God, Taylor was hopeless.
"Nice to meet you, Taylor." There was a bright smile and dancing, green eyes. "I'm Lisa Wilbourne."
=+= Chapter 18: F*cking Florida =+=
Time to go back. No avoiding it any longer. She, Taylor Hebert, a Guardian and Hunter, was going to go to the abandoned ruin of Prestonville, lure out Swamp Thing, and kill her. This was how.
There were three cars. Two of them were filled with volunteer PRT agents, come to give assistance where and when it was needed. The third had her and Lisa in it, towing behind it a trailer with a dizzying amount of tech – this would be Lisa's command post. A mile behind the three car convoy were a pair of ambulances. Their job was to come in after everything was over and confirm that Swamp Thing was a) genuinely Swamp Thing and b) genuinely dead. Or, if everything went to Hell, their job would be to identify her body and the bodies of the agents who died with her. She tried very hard not to think about that part.
As to how they were going to draw Swamp Thing from the Everglades...it wasn't complicated. A Tinkered earpiece radio connected her to Lisa, guaranteed against everything up to a point blank grenade detonation. Through this Taylor would be fed everything she needed to say to drive their target – she found it easier to thing of Swamp Thing as such and not sad, broken Shanelle Parkman – into a blind, murderous rage. The idea being that she would too angry to think straight and leave the place where the deck was stacked monstrously in her favor. As plans went, it didn't exactly fill Taylor with confidence, but then again neither did charging headlong into the swamp to fight somebody with power over them. The latter was guaranteed suicide. The plan could go either way.
No one said this would be safe, she reminded herself, or smart.
Their plan had failed to account for something, it turned out. A mistake. One made by them. Because Swamp Thing had known they were coming, she'd been given time to prepare, and she hadn't wasted it.
"Shit." Taylor wasn't much for swearing, but today seemed a good day to start. Beyond the K-rail barrier, the road had been rendered completely impassible. It buckled into split, jagged peaks and rose in hillocks of cracked asphalt. Sinkholes, exactly too long and wide for a car to pass over, covered the road like landmines. Puddles sat, rippling in the cool breeze, and it was no bet that if the water were to be analyzed, it would be from the swamps. Her right clenched into a fist, loosened, and clenched again. There was a tremble in her fingers, but not in her voice. "I guess...we're walking."
On her left, Tattletale only sighed. To her right, the captain of the PRT team swore loudly and walked back to the trucks barking orders at high speed. She turned to look at her partner, her friend, and her massive, lesbian crush, who looked back with somber eyes and said, quietly, "It's just gonna get worse from here."
There was a pit of fear in Taylor's stomach. A racing heart in her chest. She didn't want to take that first step onto the broken road. She also did. Very, very much. The Guardian in her, the Hunter in her, itched to run down the road, find Swamp Thing, and laugh in its face as her knife turned it into ash. The oncoming battle sang in her blood. You were made for this , it chorused, now step forward .
Taylor stepped onto the broken road, and began to walk. Behind her, eighteen PRT agents and Lisa followed her. Right into the jaws of a beast.
=+= Chapter 18: F*cking Florida =+=
She thought Prestonville had looked bad before, and it had, but had nothing on its current state. The entire place was a maze of mud walls and gaping holes in the ground. Every few feet were what looked like reservoirs full of filmy green water. Thunder rumbled overhead as the twenty of them paced into the town. The agents had their guns up and were checking every direction. Even down, with a handheld ground-penetrating radar. Lisa had her pistol in one hand was staring intently at everything she could, cataloging, inferring, extrapolating. Taylor had drawn her knife and ignited it. The sizzling hum at her was reassuring and steadying. Her bow flickered in the palm of her hand, not quite drawn, but not quite put away. Every nerve in her body thrummed. Her muscles were tense.
The town was quiet. Unnaturally still.
It was broken by the roaring sound of an oncoming wave, the bellowing war cry of the soldier, "CONTACT RIGHT!", and the mud wall to Taylor's right exploding inwards, whirling in on itself and coalescing. Legs, body, hands. Mouth. No eyes. Thunder rumbled over head. Swamp Thing took a step forward, and chaos spilled free.
=+= Chapter 18: F*cking Florida =+=
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