8.20 Wheel
Tick-Tock
Honestly, I had absolutely zero clue as to how I had known that Femto-wearing-a-Griffith-skinsuit had been in the process of slowly being cooked in vivus to death as soon as I realized who I had been talking to in the ruins of Falconia.
And I have to admit that it bothers me a little. I have spent my entire time as a parahuman trying to manipulate every outcome in my life, and now I apparently have to deal with whatever mystical mumbo-jumbo allowed me to know that I had indeed been talking with the Princess Charlotte, that her daemonic boytoy – not that she was aware of it – was currently dying a very, very painful death, and exactly where it was happening.
Which is why I took the decision to make a little detour to see how trustworthy those new instincts of mine were, and the answer happened to be very.
Also, maybe I had been feeling a little bad about the poor girl who lost her kingdom, most of her people, and the guy she was madly in love with in the span of a few hours. And since I was the one to blame for, ahem, absolutely everything, giving her some form of closure had been the very least of what I could do.
One very, very smooth jaunt to Elfhelm later confirmed that this latest nonsense in a distressingly long list hadn't been full of hot air, and I got to lay eyes on a shocked Guts, his disbelieving little gaggle of misfits, and one spitefully gleeful Casca watching a demon king die in slow motion.
I only stayed long enough to burn the scene into my brain, before making a silent exit.
Yeah, I didn't explain shit to the locals. I could've, but what would've been the point exactly?
'Heyyy, wassup? Friendly Godslayer here! So, I just killed the evil prick running the show from behind the scene, and everything that happened over the past twelve or so hours is, well, my fault. But good news! You guys now get to decide your path in life, isn't that swell?'
Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it?
The locals didn't even know about the Idea and its role in their life. Hell, all Guts had to go on for a long time was Void's ramblings during the Eclipse Ceremony. The only one who'd be able to put two and two together would've been Skull Knight, and something tells me that the local afterlife getting forcefully emptied didn't exactly do him any favors either, if what happened to Femto and his Apostles had been any indication.
No, sometimes, the best you can do after causing a genuine biblical mess, is to make yourself discreet. The mere fact that Guts and Casca are now free of the Brand of Sacrifice should be enough of a clue for them to catch on that, at last, the nightmare was over.
And I'm honestly not interested in where it'll leave the both of them, and the Black Knight's companions.
My personal nightmare just had a slightly bittersweet conclusion – on account of all the collateral damage – and all I want is to make my way back home, take a hot bath, and cuddle with my lovers.
…And very possibly get yelled at a lot by a pink haired cutie pattootie.
You know what?
In for a penny, in for a pound.
Let's make a couple of detours on the way back, shall we?
***
"Thanks, Kyrie!" the Demon Huntress beams a smile as she gets offered a plate of mashed potatoes before going back to her previous discussion, "And I told you, Storm Man–"
"Stop calling me that," the blue clad man with slicked back white hair seated next to her gruffly says with a low glower, his red clad brother letting out a barking laugh while his son valiantly fights a smile.
"–I've got no idea who that chick is," the Demon Huntress carries on, completely unperturbed, "All I know is that I felt her once, years back, when she was way younger, and I just had that feeling that I knew her, even if we'd never met before."
"You never looked into it?" the son asks, his brows furrowed in puzzlement.
"I just chalked it up to magic nonsense at the time," the woman casually shrugs, "Plus, I was kinda busy trying to wrangle two apocalypses tied together with a pretty shitty bow, so–"
A flash of black lightning.
A shocked gasp.
The click of a blade being primed to leave its scabbard.
Two arms wrapping her in a loose embrace from behind.
The ghost of a touch of two lips on the Demon Huntress cheek.
"Thanks for the pep talk, sweetheart," in the corner of her eyes, she catches the blue clad man trying, and failing, to unsheath his blade, the strength of his sword arm failing to compete with the delicate touch of a leathery wing, "It helped clear out a few things."
Bemusedly, the Demon Huntress turns her head to give the one who just invaded her personal space a good look, her purple eyes getting drawn to the dark, halo-like crown hovering above her head and her mane of vivid red thick tendrils.
She arches an eyebrow.
Her hugger gives her a saucy wink with one of her shockingly warm brown eyes, all swallowed up in black sclera.
And the stranger is gone in another flash of black lightning, forcing the Demon Huntress to lean away from a catastrophically quickly unsheathed katana and the air blade it unleashes in its wake.
A pause.
"Well, that happened," she muses out loud, before shrugging and relaxing to better start digging at her chicken and its gravy.
The red clad brother snorts while the son tries to calm his lover down while her seat mate sits back down in a grumble.
"Really, that's all you're going to say, kid?" the red clad brother asks, one hand coming to scratch at his stubbles, his affected casualness betrayed by the steely look he gives her across the diner table.
"Weird, hot, edgy-looking, possibly slightly demonic chick I apparently share a bond with takes a moment to say thank you on the way back from whatever the fuck she's been doing – though I'd bet solid gold it involved some modicum of God slaying – and left just as quickly as she came," the Demon Huntress summarizes, "How the hell am I supposed to react to that besides eating before the food gets cold? Ask for her number? The worst she did was give Kyrie a scare anyway."
"She stopped me from drawing my sword," the blue clad man calmly notes.
"That she did," she agrees with a nod.
A pause.
"I want to fight her."
The Demon Huntress starts choking on her food after swallowing wrong, and it takes her a moment to clear her airways.
"T-Try if you want, Storm Man," Sappho gives Virgil a grin after wiping an errand tear of laughter from the corner of her eye, "But something tells me you won't like the outcome very much!"
***
[She/They] had some regrets, or as close to the concept her damaged/partially alien mind could process nowadays, but at least she/they were alive to have them.
Diminished/Greater as she/they were, living was a continued struggle. Doubly-so since she/they had been put under lock and key after she/they took down [Scion/Zion/The Warrior/the golden moron] by essentially retreading a well-known path, except better/quicker/more effectively.
Compared to the original/the protagonist, she still had had enough presence of mind/willpower/understanding to surrender once the deed was done, which was the reason she had spent the last four years-three months-one week-five days-eleven hours-thirteen minutes-forty-seven-seconds and counting into this room.
Alone with herself/themselves. A world reduced to four walls, one chair, a hospital bed, an IV drip to sustain, a catheter to relieve, and stubborn will.
Which is why she/they are admittedly a tad slow/inefficient to react when a flash of dark lightning/a breach in the local dimensional makeup herald the arrival of a stranger/an anomaly in her prison/sanctum.
Her damaged/partially alien mind only very distantly registers the sound of glass shattering, moments before a green stream of esoteric energies slams into her–
–and Taylor, who also isn't quite Taylor, takes a huge, heaving breath for the first time in fore-fucking-ver, before slumping into her chair with her eyes scrunched tight as her awareness suddenly balloons, and her control over the chitinous realm returns with a vengeance and a grudge.
"Gods, that absolutely sucked!" are the very first words that leave her mouth, and she can't help but pause when she realizes that her throat doesn't feel like sandpaper, which it should on all accounts.
One simply does not spend four years and some change without a drink and gets to speak from the get go without having the very vivid impression that they've been gargling razor blades.
Ignoring the alarms starting to blare and the red light now bathing her surroundings, Taylor cracks an eye open to give the stranger a good look, before mentally pausing, hard.
"...If you're about to peddle me a funny looking stone, I'm going to have to say no," she deadpans while mentally starting to coral her skittering subjects closer and a whole lot faster.
The stranger snorts, something that sends her ears twitching and a ripple coursing through the carmine mess of tentacles passing as her hair.
The palette swap and ominous-looking crown are a nice touch, though. Kinda rings a bell, even.
"Nothing of the sort," she says, her voice husky in all the right ways for someone who just got out of a half a decade long dry spell, "I was on my way back home, and figured I could do you a solid," she pauses, then adds, "No strings attached, I promise."
"I see," Taylor does not, in fact, see, "So this," she gestures vaguely at herself, "Is all out of the goodness of your heart?"
"I know very well how the denizens of this particular multiverse can suck," the stranger calmly replies, and the Bug Master inwardly balks, "And I'm almost certain you did something particularly reckless to save them from their own dumbassery."
She supposes that 'particularly reckless' adequately qualifies reenacting Khepri, with the addition of one Amelia Claire Lavere as a glorified backpack for the entire battle's duration to keep her brain intact-ish.
Admittedly, scaring the Red Queen-to-be absolutely shitless hadn't been in the cards, and it had been a very big part of the reason no one had managed to fix her after she surrendered. The biokinetic hadn't wanted to touch her with a ten foot pole, and Bonesaw hadn't been able to help.
"Amy's a fucking cunt, and you can't rely on her for shit," she ends up saying aloud what she'd been thinking between two bouts of eldritch perspective for the past four years.
All she'd have needed to do was to suck it up for five minutes, and she'd have been right as rain, but noooo…
"I see," the stranger says, her tone amused as she ruffles her bat-like wings, "That does explain some things. Nonetheless, you should be back to, ahem, factory settings. Conceptual healing sort of stuff. You can go back to do Skitter–"
"Widow," Taylor cuts off as she stands up from her chair while cracking her neck, the motion oddly smooth and athletic for someone who hasn't done any exercise in ages, "I go by Widow."
"Charming," the corner of the stranger's eyes and lips quirk up, tentacly hair swaying in the air like the world's biggest anemona, "Say, I'm a little curious now; are you a baddie?"
Taylor's eyebrow quirks up even as she tracks the arrival of some very frightened troopers inside the max security wing that had previously entombed her.
She makes a deliberate show of looking the stranger up and down.
"Well, between the two of us…" she trails off with a smirk and an intent look at the winged woman's chest.
Again, the stranger snorts, before slowly shaking her head.
"I changed my mind," she says, making Taylor pause, "There is a price."
"Oh, yeah?" she replies, her traits turning eerily flat.
"Don't ever lose your cheek," the stranger winks, "The world's too boring otherwise."
Then she vanishes in a dark and silent flash of lightning, and Taylor is left slowly blinking as troopers get ready to breach into her room.
"Well," she cracks her fingers, her eyes narrowed as she readies her tide in the nearby airducts, "Back in the saddle it is."