Chương 17: Chapter 17: Pick a Scumbag, Any Scumbag
Guardian
a Worm/Destiny Crossover
Chapter 17: Pick A Scumbag, Any Scumbag
It took a month, in the end. A month for six miles of cable to be laid, for screens to be brought in and mounted on wall-attached stands, for furniture to be dragged down and assembled. John came by with a rented flatbed stacked high with training gear he wouldn't admit he bought for them; floor mats and heavy bags and weights and a treadmill or two. Everything a budding superhero team needed to stay in shape. A few days after that he brought in a rack of wooden practice weapons so he could work the two of them through their paces every day or two. They had some big, cushy swivel chairs that they spent a good amount of time racing from one side of their base to the other and more access to information than Taylor thought was legal. There was a pair of rooms set aside for the sole purpose of sleeping, to be furnished and decorated as each of them saw fit. It was a good start, but it wasn't nearly enough, and there was something preventing them from getting what they needed.
They'd run out of money. All of the cash Tattletale had pulled together selling 'insights' had looked so large as to be inexhaustible. It was certainly more than Taylor had ever seen in one place. It had also more or less flown out the window, given the speed it had been spent with. It had been a stroke of luck, really, that John had refused payment for the training equipment. They wouldn't have been able to pay him. It wasn't the most auspicious of beginnings, being broke before they really got started. That didn't really bother Taylor. What did was that she, not Tattletale – and she had her suspicions about why – had to be the one to go down to PRT headquarters and fill out a forest's worth of paperwork. You'd think the digital age would lead to there being less of that kind of thing, not more, but apparently not.
So that took most of a day. On the bright side, she did get a chance to say hi to Armsmaster and Miss Militia. She also got to meet the Director of the local Protectorate and came from that meeting with the distinct impression that Emily Piggot, the sole survivor of the doomed raid on Ellisburg, was a woman not to be crossed lightly. She wouldn't be at all, if Taylor could swing it. Leaving the building, with the setting sun shining directly into her tension-headache afflicted face, she had reflected that it was very forward thinking of her to preemptively take revenge.
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Her opportunity for gloating came sooner than expected. She was in the base, doing pull-ups as quick as she possibly could. It had been through some careful experimentation that she'd learned her increase in strength was based at least in part on her own muscles, which in turn separated her from most Brutes. Fitting, really, since she wasn't actually a parahuman. The difference was this: a Brute's strength came from their power, and no amount of exercise or training would increase it. A Brute with a rating of 5 would always be a Brute with a rating of 5. Taylor wouldn't. If she trained, if she exercised, her strength would grow. She was already superhuman, and with effort would go beyond it. It was something she was in favor of, given what she'd chosen to do with her future. When it came to hunting monsters, nothing less than the peak of her ability would be acceptable. She finished her third set of three hundred and dropped to the ground, arms sweating and burning with effort.
Since she had the base to herself, at least for now, she had her hood and scarf down, leaving her head completely exposed. She was breathing hard, but not wheezing, and she wiped sweat from her brow and went to gulp some water. It had taken a bit to design an exercise regime that would actually affect her, but between her, Tattletale, and John they'd been able to work something out. It looked like the combined schedules on an Olympic basketball team, but it worked. For now. Her keen ears picked up the sound of the far bulkhead door opening, though she'd taken pains to oil its hinges. The second door, now the only separating her from Tattletale – who else could it be – was motion activated. She snugged her scarf up under her nose and moved to finish her work out; a headlong sprint on the treadmill with the thing set to max speed and elevation.
Why work out in full costume? Because she'd be fighting in full costume. The door opened and admitted Tattletale, talking with exaggerated calm into a cell phone. Taylor bared her teeth, not really a smile but an expression of victory. Revenge was hers, a ha ha ha ha.
Oh, God, she'd been spending too much time around Sabah.
"...no ma'am, we have no villainous connections." Tattletale rolled her eyes and mouthed I hate you as she passed the treadmill. She couldn't see Taylor's bared teeth shift to an unrepentant grin. Taylor did it anyway. "Nor do we intend to develop any. I can't say for sure whether we'll commit to Endbringer battles at this time, ma'am. We're just getting started. Yes, we object to using our images for marketing or licensing purposes. Yes. Okay, then. Good evening." Tattletale snapped her phone closed and dropped it. She closed her eyes, massaged her forehead, then glared. "You gave the PRT my phone number."
"Uh huh!" Taylor's calves were beginning to burn, as were her thighs.
"You also made me our primary contact with the PRT."
"Yep!" Breathing was starting to be an issue. Her heart was starting to race. Good. She was a third of the way in.
"This is revenge for something." Tattletale's bright green eyes were narrowed and thoughtful, also slightly angry. "I don't know what, not yet, but..." she shook a finger at Taylor. "I will, and then my retaliation will be merciless."
As best as she could while running all out, Taylor shrugged. She wasn't wasting breath on talking, but she communicated her sentiment with eyebrows. Bring it on.
"When you're done here, come over by the big screen. I have an idea on who our first target could be." With that, Tattletale sauntered off. It couldn't be said for certain if there was an extra sway in those hips or not. Regardless, Taylor almost fell off the treadmill.
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There was more space than stuff in their base, and Taylor didn't expect it to stay that way for very long. She padded over the bare metal floor to join Tattletale in the area of the first room that they'd just sort of decided would be where all the computers and tech were. Tattletale had her feet up on her desk, a tablet in her lap into which she was tapping commands at a pretty good clip. Above her head, the projector whirred into life and displayed a single image on the nearby wall. An image that required a second look, and a frown. "What exactly am I looking at?"
"Swamp Thing."
Taylor stepped closer to the image, narrowing her eyes. The black-and-white photo was showing a congregation of mud, leaves, wood, and what she suspected was bone that might – might look human. It definitely didn't look female, or gendered at all. In one of it's...paws...it had the lower half of a human body. Thankfully, the picture was poor enough to prevent her seeing anything too detailed. The upper half was disappearing into the monster's jagged, lopsided mouth. "She...eats people."
Tattletale hummed in agreement. "Yes, although it's more a reason of who she ate rather than the fact alone." She tapped her tablet a few more times, and an image appeared of a clean-cut man with intense, dark eyes and an overhanging brow. He looked like a bulldog. "This was Deputy Director James Tagg. He had gone to Prestonville because he'd heard rumors of a new cape there, and wanted to recruit them before anyone else could. He went in person because he felt the personal touch gave him a better chance of success."
"Did it?"
"No. Tagg was an asshole, and it got him eaten. After Swamp Thing was done with him – that's not him in the picture, by the way – she flooded Prestonville and disappeared into the Everglades. That would be the end of the story, except for two things. First, Tagg was on the fast-track to being made Director of his division – he may have been a dick, but he was popular among a certain group of government officials – so when it came out what happened, there was a very quiet, but very intense outrage. Tagg's friends in government started pressuring Director Costa-Brown to issue a kill order, make an example of Swamp Thing. She resisted. Tagg wasn't well loved in the PRT, and one murder does not a monster make. At least in her eyes."
Taylor turned to see Tattletale regarding her with a solemn look in those green eyes. "What changed?"
"A fanboat tour went missing. Then the rescue party went missing. A National Guard unit was sent in, and they lasted long enough to take that picture before they too vanished. The kill order was signed later that day. But since Swamp Thing doesn't have the media coverage or bounty of someone like Heartbreaker or the Nine, she gets to play Queen of the Marsh more or less in peace."
She brought her hands together, tapping her fingertips against her lips, pulling one between her teeth. No pacing, not yet, but it wasn't far away. "How much more do we know?"
Tattletale grinned. It wasn't pleasant. "I can write this bitch's life story. You name it, I'll find it."
"Everything." Taylor turned back to the photo of ruined, empty Prestonville. "I want to know everything about her. We find that, and then we use it to kill her."
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It took Tattletale less than two hours to find, ferret out, steal, and extrapolate the entirety of Swamp Thing's life. During that time Taylor sat cross-legged on her desk, idly twirling her knife between her fingers, and waited patiently. In body at least, her mind was – as always – a different story. This time her thoughts were focused towards her gear, or rather the lack thereof. She had her knife, and that had so far been more than enough, but now that she was stepping into the big leagues she was thinking something more was required. More, in terms of both offense and defense. But how did one go about getting such gear, especially while being broke?
"All right. The sad, angry life of Shanelle Parkman – now known as Swamp Thing – is ready for your perusal, O fearless leader." Tattletale put a wry twist on those last three words that made Taylor consider that perhaps she had been a little forceful.
"Thanks, Tales, and, um...sorry...about earlier."
Tattletale's eyes danced. "What are you talking about?"
Heat rose in Taylor's cheeks, and she wished she'd chosen to raise her hood instead of her scarf. "When I got all, you know, bossy."
A hum, and a playful tap of a finger on full lips. "Don't know what you mean."
She sighed. "This is your revenge, isn't it?"
Tattletale shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. If it wasn't, now is when I'd say something like – it's nothing to be sorry about, I got a little intense there, too. And if it was, I'd just shrug and say maybe, maybe not." A pause. Then, "You wanna hear this bitch's story or not?"
"Run it. Minion."
"Clever." It was said in that tone that meant the exact opposite of what was said.
Taylor wondered, as Tattletale prepared a PowerPoint presentation, of all things, why they were bantering and bickering like this. All lighthearted and not at all heavy and solemn. Maybe it was like a few months ago, when she hit the Merchants for the first time. The half hour before had been full of her dad and Sabah doing hilariously terrible Top Gun impressions into their radios to keep her calm. This felt like the same thing – using humor to lessen the weight of what they were about to do. She was brought out of her musing by her partner clearing her throat, and beginning."So. Shanelle Parkman was born to Dante Parkman and Juanita Arantes twenty-eight years ago in Prestonville General Hospital..."
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Shanelle's life had been hard and painful, almost from the very beginning. Her mother abandoned her when she was six, saying it was because of Shanelle. Two years passed before her dad started drinking. Another year before he started hurting her. By the time of her tenth birthday something was already broken in Shanelle Parkman's little head. The onset of middle school, and of puberty, did her no favors. The hormonal firestorm that swept through her left her feeling angry, distant, and confused. She had a few dedicated bullies that made an effort to add alienated and unwelcome to that list. This continued for the next three years, and on her fifteenth birthday it seemed like – however briefly, things might turn around. She got herself a boyfriend, and was carried away on the joyous waves of puppy love. Her dad stopped beating her, started a twelve-step program and tried to atone. It worked, too. For a little while.
Disaster struck. Her boyfriend cheated on her, openly, brazenly, with one of her former bullies, who returned to their old activities with a vengeance. School became hell and her grades, which were mediocre at best to begin with, began to slip. Her dad fell off the wagon, and that very night broke her arm and two ribs. A year passed, and Shanelle's already tenuous grasp on stability wavered when she was mugged at knife point by a girl in a ski-mask. Failed by her father, who refused to believe that she'd been robbed, she filed a report with the police. She named who she suspected robbed her, because the girl's efforts to disguise her voice were lackluster at best.
She was ignored, sent home with a token promise of investigation. It was that night that she went to the Walkway – an elevated, quarter-mile wooden path in a loop in one of the milder sections of the swamp. She looked down into the fetid, stagnant water and thought about falling in. Vanishing into the mud. She felt alone and worthless and that the entire world cared not a whit for her, so why not fall and end everything?
It was more than enough. Shanelle Parkman's grasp on stability, on sanity, shattered. Losing her mind and gaining powers in the same moment, her entire being obsessed with thoughts of revenge and of punishment. A week later one of the girls who bullied her fell off the Walkway and drowned. Nobody believed her boyfriend, Shanelle's ex, when he claimed that the water and mud rose up and dragged her in, burying her alive. He drowned three days later in the exact same place. The police suspected a parahuman's involvement, and Shanelle to be the culprit. Their suspicion reaches James Tagg, who saw an opportunity.
The rest? History.
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"This is..." Taylor felt something shift in her gut. Something like nausea on a level deeper than physical. She wanted to throw up as well, but that was sort of secondary. She pushed her chair away as she stood suddenly, violently. Seat spinning, it rolled away across the room and was forgotten. Tattletale rose to her feet then – cautious and slow – as if to avoid spooking a skittish and dangerous animal.
"Guardian?" It was her voice – not the tone, but the concern and rising worry – that flashed Ghost across her thoughts. Her throat tightened, and her eyes burned. She was breathing fast, jaw clenched. "Everything...okay?"
Words were still beyond Taylor for the moment. She shook her head, hair flying. It took a force of will to slow and deepen her breaths. The silence dragged out for a minute, Tattletale seemingly content to wait in peace, and the sting of tears slowly faded – though one escaped, trailing down her cheek to soak into her scarf. The constricting lump in her throat took another minute, and then she was finally calm enough to talk. "That girl. Shanelle – Swamp Thing – whatever," she waved a hand at the projected image of Shanelle Parkman's learner's permit. "That was me. I was in the same place as her. It could have been me on that screen."
Tattletale's eyes widened for a half-second. Later, Taylor would reflect on the girl's poker face, but now was too upset to do so. When Tattletale responded, it was halting. Cautious. "It could have. But – it isn't."
Taylor wasn't really listening. "Switch out 'being abandoned by Mom' for 'Mom being dead', turn my dad into an alcoholic, abusive jackass, and it's like looking into a mirror." She sighed shakily. "Why did Shanelle do those things? Why didn'tI?"
A shrug from Tattletale. "I don't really have an easy answer, and I'm not entirely sure there is one. I mean, her story isn't too much different from mine, either. But we're in here, and she isn't, so..." she shrugged. "Choice, maybe? She chose to let all that shit break and we didn't? Were we just born with a better, stronger moral compass? I don't know."
One deep, calming breath later. "I don't either. It's just...we were calling her a bitch earlier, and for a minute I refused to think of her as human, and now..." She chewed her lower lip. "now I feel like the bitch. But – but it doesn't change anything, does it? We can wonder about it until we're blue in the face, and it won't alter the fact that Shanelle – Swamp Thing – killed all those people. And that we are going to kill her."
Tattletale's green eyes locked onto hers, searching for something. "Sounds like you haven't changed your mind."
"I haven't. It just hit me, you know? Everybody on our list, every cape with a kill order, they all started out as someone else. But – who they are now? The world will be better off without them."
A silence fell, one that stretched for a seeming eternity, but was more likely half a minute or so. Tattletale nodded, then poked a thumb over her shoulder. "I'm gonna...I'm gonna go start putting things together. If you need anything else, um – come find me, or give me a call." She started towards her desk, turning back. "For what it's worth, I think we're doing the right thing." A wry twist of her lips. "Obviously."
Taylor huffed a laugh. The reassurance was more welcome than she was willing to admit, and more effective than it probably should have been. She waved her hands at her partner. "Away with you. I – " in one her pants' many pockets, her phone trilled. "– have a phone call to answer, apparently." She dug it out. Though how I get signal twenty feet(ish) underground is a mystery for another time. "Hey, John."
"It's John." His voice rumbled, static crackling, in her ear. She fought the urge to laugh, or maybe roll her eyes. No matter how many times they talked about how Caller ID made identifying yourself somewhat unnecessary, John always started phone calls the same way. He did so, she suspected, because he wanted to. "Heard you were headed out soon. Got something I want you to take along. Can you meet?"
Taylor looked around the base – their base, now. The air was still a little tense, still a little emotionally charged. Clearing out for a while could only do good. "Yeah, I just finished up here. Your dojo?" She called it a dojo because it annoyed him. Slightly. Just like him continuing to beat her ass in training annoyed her. Slightly.
"Not a dojo. See you in ten." Then he hung up.
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The case was as about four feet long, and a bit less than two wide. The shell was black, lacquered plastic with a shiny aluminum hinge and clasp. There was some minor scuffing on the corners, white scratches faded by time and a recent cleaning. It had been waiting for her when she reached John's – having gone home to change first. She looked to John, getting a nod from him that she interpreted to mean open it. So she did, sliding her fingers along the cool metal to the clasp, flipping it open with a rasping clack, and lifting the case's lid.
It was beautiful. A beautiful, beautiful bow. Unstrung, it formed a loose M in the felt interior. The wood was polished and a warm brown, with a single streak of a darker shade winding 'round it from tip to tip. Worn brown leather was wrapped around the grip in the middle and without knowing how, she knew it was for left or right handed shooters. Her lips parted, a happy gasp escaping her, then curled up into a smile. She wanted to touch it, to run her fingers along its smooth, sanded length. "It's yours." John's voice rumbled from above. "Go ahead."
Taylor reached into the case and curled her hand around the bow's grip. The leather flexed beneath her grasp as she lifted it out of the case. It was both lighter and heavier than she was expecting, and it fit her perfectly. Joy raced in her heart, something fierce and primal inside her. The Hunter in her was practically singing with joy as she held this. Then something else raced through her, and things got a little weird.
In her soul, where her Light dwelt, there was a surge, both terrifyingly unfamiliar and known to her. It was like when she wreathed her knife in lightning, only not. That was like harnessing a storm and binding it, turning its fury on her enemies and moving with the speed and freedom of the wind. This was the light of darkness, the void that only became noticeable when there was Light to illuminate it. It was the power of emptiness. A grasping nothing. A beckoning oblivion. It was awe inspiring. It was terrifying.
It poured through her, this Void Light, down her arm and into the bow. She watched as bands of deep violet coursed from her hand into the wood – wrapping around it like chains and sinking in. It happened again, and a third, great rushing pulses of energy until the bow was its own brilliant source of purple luminescence. Then it began to change. The curves of the bow flattened, thickened, and its entirety lengthened. She was left gasping, feeling strangely empty. Then it caught fire, the grip she was holding remaining solid while on either side were flickering lengths of violet flame. There was a string, too, also made of flame. She ached to touch it, draw it back and let fly...what? He had no arrows.
She did it anyway, and was only somewhat surprised to see another length of violet flame materialize – an arrow. Her heart was pounding, thundering in her chest, and she let go. The arrow lanced out, flashing through the air to impact the far wall of John's place. It crumbled into a ball, roiling and curling around itself before vanishing with a rush of air. In shock, she opened her hand. The bow vanishing, and that feeling of emptiness vanished. She knew that she could call her bow to her at any time. Unless, probably, she was using her knife.
There was silence. She could barely hear herself breathing. John may as well have been a statue. Then it was broken. By her.
"What the fuck was that?"
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