Spending Free Time with the Hydra (Free)
Polishing Drawing and Studying Animation, Preparing for Artistic Debut (Encounter)
Studying Physics and Parahumans, Going to the Library (Encounter)
Once amazing things stopped happening, it quickly became apparent to Taylor just how fast time could fly. There were no other huge revelations over the next several days, no large changes that rocked how she viewed the world or other people, just… a version of a normality, in a strange, strange way.
For once, Taylor didn't try to grind art levels or anything like that. She didn't try digging in deeper into the color thing, even once she had the time to do so. No, things changed slightly the day after she had brought over Brian and Aisha for training.
During her sleep, her mind had been harder at work absorbing the information that she'd learned through Data Sponge. Through it, she had a keener sense of how her body worked. More than that, she paid attention to the higher levels of stress-hormones in her blood, like adrenaline.
It was not healthy to have that much adrenaline in her blood. True, she had bled during a confrontation, but there were more stress hormones there than just adrenaline. Long-term stress hormones were in play as well.
Day after day of high-stress encounters wasn't sustainable for her. Just taking a step back and trying to think long-term made her realize that if she continued like this, she would burn herself out no matter what she did.
So… she tried relaxing, for the most part. She decided to stop thinking about the ITP and the tower, and Magister, and everything like that. Even if she failed Hunter's task, she needed to not go crazy, because she was now aware that Dad was more aware than he let on.
As she had predicted, Dad spent a bit more time in the attic now, so Taylor moved the hydra to her room as she had predicted. Getting a small space heater for it, though, cost her the rest of her pocket money, and the amount of eggs that the hydra needed was starting to get noticeable to Dad. Even if Dad could pay for the eggs (which would be difficult since managing a union wasn't exactly a high-paying job), it would be a stressor on the family's finances overall, and he would notice the missing eggs sooner or later.
It left Taylor with mixed feeling about the hydra. On the one hand, she was glad that it would be leaving soon, since it was very painful to deal with sparring-wise (even if the spars themselves were enjoyable). She also knew that hiding the hydra for more than a week would be near-impossible, both due to the hydra's needs such as spars and food (he admitted that he could heal off the energy requirements, but still demanded bounties of eggs for each of his sparring victories, much to Taylor's consternation), and because each time she left the house and didn't know if Dad was in the house, she made a gamble that the hydra would be able to, and willing to, hide itself from Dad.
On the other hand…
~
"Take that, you little worm!" Taylor growled, stomping on the hydra's back. Normally, she'd be horrified by anyone doing something like that, even to an animal as unappealing as a snake.
After the second time the hydra regenerated its tail (not its heads, its tail), she realized that it didn't matter. The hydra, for its part, loved the danger that Taylor constantly put him in with their spars, and its Regeneration was growing slightly stronger the more Taylor pressed him.
YES! MORE! MORE, MORE, MORE!
The hydra lunged at her, stabbing her in the arm with its fangs. However, as it sank its fangs into her, she caught it with telekinesis and threw a full-power hypnotic blast at it. The hydra shrugged it off, but with a bit more difficulty than usual. She tore it off, spraying blood and venom everywhere, and used the venom as a weapon against the hydra.
In other words, progress. And she could always clean the blood up later.
~
Combat Flow: 18 → 20
Hypercognition: 22 → 23
Telekinesis: 20 → 22
Telepathy: 12 → 15
Mental Shielding: 6 → 9
Data Sponge: 13 → 14
Inertial Sense: 15 → 16
Power Strike: 7 → 10
Power Strike: Acolyte → Novice
Inertial Absorption: 9 → 10
Inertial Absorption: Acolyte → Novice
Due to the spars, Taylor's levels in her arts grew massively. She also started integrating her Warrior arts into the sparring, since the hydra's regeneration was growing stronger and she needed to start practicing using Warrior arts in actual combat.
It wasn't as fast as she would have wanted in an ideal world, and Taylor acknowledged that she could be trying harder to practice. However, she also wanted to have a life worth living, after all, away from everything related to paths or superpowers.
After all, it wasn't like school was getting harder any time soon. Taylor quickly realized that, with every level that Hypercognition gave her, learning became just a bit easier than it had before. She didn't even really have to pay attention in class anymore, and whenever a teacher called on her, she had excellent answers.
All it really did for her was get her called a teacher's pet by all of Emma's gang. The fact that they called her an idiot a few days prior didn't seem to register with them at all. Taylor figured that continuity of the narrative wasn't something they were interested in.
Emma, though… she was silent. Her insults hurt more than ever, but she only tossed out one or two a day, rather than the half-dozen she'd thrown out before. Everyone else in Emma's gang stared at her with hatred in their eyes and heart, but Emma alone seemed… contemplative, in a way she simply hadn't before. There was still bullying, but she watched more than spoke.
It unnerved Taylor in a way she couldn't describe. She'd considered performing a casual investigation into what the whole deal with the colors were, maybe asking the hydra, but asking the hydra what 'colors' were in the Psychic Sense just made it moody and annoyed, so she dropped it to focus on the task and considered talking to Hunter about it face-to-face when she saw him next.
Either way, Taylor decided to mind her own business for a change and start actually working on hobbies. Something that would genuinely relax her again would be nice. She used to play instruments, but ever since Emma stole her mother's flute… no, she wouldn't go there again anytime soon. Drawing and art was far enough away from that to be an acceptable hobby.
She continued doing research online, learning stuff about perspective and tips and tricks offered by people online for construction of sketches. She also worked on her Drawing during class and whenever she had free time (which was often now that homework was a joke to her. Once the hydra badgered her enough to teach it Thoughtography, she would doodle alongside the hydra doodling with Thoughtography to practice its new power). The resulting increases to her Drawing was… well…
Tutoring: 6 → 9
Drawing: 6 → 17
Drawing: Acolyte → Novice
… insane, honestly. She didn't have the talent for it, but she didn't need the talent at the rate she was improving at it. Previously, her Drawings were better than they'd been before, but not anything that she wanted to write home about. She'd only been getting used to it as an actual artform rather than doodles on the side of her paper.
Now, though, she could draw things that looked remarkably lifelike. Nothing compared to some popular art that she'd seen on the internet, but enough that she could be moderately proud of it. While Thoughtography was helpful, she soon began to consider it 'cheating', at least as far as effort was concerned. Drawing manually seemed to get her experience for levels faster, even if using Thoughtography itself was infinitely faster than drawing manually.
She still hadn't uploaded any of her drawings to the internet. At first, it was because she was worried of their quality, but now… well, now, it was due to her inability to upload them to the internet. She didn't have the tools necessary for digital art, since her pocket money was now as dry as a bone, so she'd had to manage with her old box of colored pencils. Even while the quality was good, she didn't have a scanner to upload it to the internet.
She didn't want to sit around paralyzed by indecision and inability, though, so after school on Thursday, she asked the hydra for some advice.
Go to library. Bring hydra along. Read Books.
She sighed. "Even if people were okay with you existing, I don't think hydras would be allowed in the library—"
The hydra turned invisible. Because of course it could. She could see it using Clairvoyance, but she doubted that others could do the same.
"— assuming you were seen," Taylor said. "How long can you hold that?"
Can hold hours before need nap. Want to read books. Right… after learning Thoughtography, the hydra had learned Data Overwrite to correct one of its uglier doodles. Using Data Overwrite allowed the hydra to learn some of the data hidden in writing through interacting with it, though not all of it like Taylor could obtain using Data Sponge.
Thus, her – no, the – hydra was now literate, and it really liked reading fantasy books when it was too tired to battle or train.
"Fine, fine." Taylor said, nodding. "I've been wanting to go to the library anyway. We'll go the day after tomorrow, though, because it'll be on the weekend."
Go earlier?
"I still have school tomorrow, so… no, unfortunately, we won't have the time." The hydra hissed angrily at the word school. Supposedly, school meant no fighting and no partner-based training or tutoring for it, so she guessed it was understandable for it.
School stupid. Learn everything at library! Read books!
"If only I was allowed to. Stupid rules…" Taylor muttered. There wasn't any reason worth going to school for. There was nobody there that she liked as much as she would like a friend, and she had more than her fair share of enemies at school instead.
Unfortunately, the law was the law, rules were rules, and Taylor returned to classes the next day, a little annoyed. By now, she couldn't really draw in a way that would substantially raise her experience, so her skills were starting to hit a soft cap, at least with her ability to draw in a way that wouldn't make an attention-grabbing product.
Mental Shielding wasn't really pushed anymore, either; whoever was creating the 'colors' according to Psychic Sense was being… cautious, now. The colors had faded a bit more than they had before, so Taylor figured that there had to be some sort of reapplication. If it happened again, she'd launch into a more serious investigation.
She'd started practicing Telepathy again, trying to understand just where she was going wrong when trying to develop a telepathic connection with an ant that would work. While she could maybe last twenty seconds now before driving the ant insane, none of those twenty seconds allowed her to read its damn thoughts. She couldn't tell what was wrong, either. More than that, using Hypnosis instantly killed the ants, no matter what.
As classes ended, Taylor used Clairvoyance to evade the trio and their cohorts, before ducking into a room to do so. Winslow's workshop, a place filled with substandard materials. Right now, there were a couple of people working on building things out of wood and wood flue, but Taylor wasn't interested in any of it, so she slipped to the back of the room where there was only one other person, a large heavyset boy whose name Taylor didn't know that was working on whittling a wood block.
"Hi there," Taylor said brusquely, before quickly grabbing a pencil and paper to start doodling. The boy looked at her in shock, clearly not expecting her to talk to him; well, he was right in a sense, in that she wasn't going to talk to him while the trio were hanging around.
For maybe ten minutes or so, Taylor sat in silence next to the large heavyset boy, simply making idle drawings. Eventually, though, she started transitioning to making drawings as fast as she could; lots of little drawings that all looked alike. She hadn't gotten any Animating skill yet, though she figured that animation might involve the composition of hundreds of images that all looked extremely similar, and she was still just drawing.
"… you're really fast," the boy said. He was very soft-spoken, even as he continued carving with precision.
"Thank you," Taylor replied, just as brusque as before.
"… I'm sorry," he said.
"You didn't do anything wrong," Taylor said, even as she got a little annoyed. "It was just a compliment."
"N-Not about that," he said, speaking as though he had a frog stuck in his throat. "About… what happened."
The tip of the pencil cracked. "I see. Thank you." Emma and the others were still hanging around the entrance to the shop room, though a couple of them had left. Once they got bored, Taylor could finally leave. "I… accept your condolences."
"T-That's still not what I meant," the boy said, accidentally making a small mistake as he worked. He started working around it, but he spoke regardless, almost inaudible over the chattering din of the much louder occupants of the room. "I'm…" But then he stopped speaking and turned to the block.
Taylor wasn't having it, though. "What do you mean, that's not what you meant?"
The boy nearly avoided another mistake. "I…" He gulped. "I was there. I saw it shake. The locker."
Taylor's chest went cold.
"I'm… I'm sorry. That redhead stopped anyone who tried opening the door, but… but other than a couple of people, nobody even attempted. They either looked away or just… watched. Even I just… watched…" The chisel and wood block laid down. "I'm… I'm sorry."
A part of her wanted to rage and scream. I'm sorry? As if an apology could change anything?!
Emma and her cohort had finally left. Taylor could leave too. She could forget this ever happened.
She didn't want to.
"But it's too late for apologies, isn't it?" the boy then said, bowing his head. "They're just words, after all."
Taylor mutely nodded. "I'd have preferred empty condolences," she said, accidentally tearing through the paper as she drew. Still, as she looked at him with Psychic Sense, there was little-to-no color in his consciousness. This was him. Was everyone ignoring her earlier this week just because of the color?
"Is it… to late to give them?" he asked.
"Probably," Taylor answered.
"Is there… anything else I can do?"
Taylor was about to say no, when she took a second to actually think about it. "I… I'm running low on cash," she admitted. "Do you know of good ways I could make money using my drawing skills?" she asked. "I've thought about maybe doing commissions for people online, but I don't know how to advertise my artwork to wider internet."
The boy's eyes lit up. "Oh, definitely! There's this website that you can go to called ''Lancerr' that allows you to advertise for freelance work. You should be able to find something there." He paused. "That being said, if you're going into drawing, maybe going into digital would be a better long term move overall."
The boy was more animated as he spoke about methods of artistry and of making money using artistry. Taylor made sure to note all of it down, deciding to open an account on 'Lancerr' to start making some money back.
"… you might need to cut your prices early on to get customers for a good reputation, though. If you're a nobody, then people won't want to get your stuff. Trust me, I know from experi…" The boy then trailed off. "Sorry," he said, bowing his head. "I… sorry."
"No, no problem." Taylor held out a hand. "Do you mind if I come back here for advice every now and again?"
"I… I don't mind," the boy admitted. "I… I think your name was Taylor, right? That's what the redheaded girl said when she stopped people from opening the locker."
Taylor's lip thinned. "Yeah." The boy winced, but Taylor decided to allay his worries. "I'm not angry with you. Just… pleasantly surprised some people decided to try and save me, even if she stopped them. You're the only one who's actually apologized, too."
The boy's eyes widened. "Really?"
"Really."
"… huh. That… makes me feel a little better," he admitted. "My…" The boy then gulped. "My name's Isaac Franklin. I'll pay you back however I can."
A nice cut-and-dry deal. "I'll take it."
Isaac took her hand, and they shook on it.
~
Isaac's advice hadn't been awful; Lancerr was a legitimate website, from what she could tell from the website review website and testimonials from PHO. After getting permission from Dad, she opened an account and connected it to a checking account that Mom had previously opened for her to use in the future, though, unfortunately, she still didn't have any digital artworks to post as examples of her work.
So, the next day, on Saturday, she took some of her more recent, high-quality samples, and, with the hydra, went to the library.
Books! Time to read! Once they arrived, the hydra immediately went off to go and read. Taylor opened a small telepathic connection to it to warn it if any person came near it (she wasn't going to hold full faith in the hydra's invisibility), before heading off to the library's scanners. They weren't free, but Dad supported her idea of making money and gave her some coins with which to use as payment for access to the library's printers.
Uploading her artwork to the website left her stomach tightening as she waited for a response. After ten minutes, though, she realized that it was more than overly idealistic to imagine getting a response anytime soon. She'd wait and see for now, and she'd hope for the best.
That left her alone, though. The hydra was off reading an Earth Aleph import, something called 'Harry Potter'. He was getting a little bit faster, too, as he was already on the second chapter even though they'd only been here for an hour.
She sighed. So… now what?
…
Time to do some research, she decided.
Brian had blindsided her with his knowledge of 'trigger events'. She didn't know enough to tell if he was bluffing or not, so she decided to start surfing various wikis about parahumans to see what she could learn.
Then, when she realized how low-quality they were, she decided to bite the bullet and start finding free scientific papers online discussing the matter. She'd never really attempted to go farther beyond what she'd been taught about science in class, so she was a bit overwhelmed by the statistics and stuff like that at first. Once she started consulting wikis to start cutting through the jargon of the papers, though, things started making sense.
There wasn't too much known about superpowers, really, considering how new they were and how hard it was to get parahumans to cooperate with studies and experiments. There wasn't a complete dearth of information, though. One of the first things that Taylor noted was something called a 'Manton-limitation', a common trait among powers that prevented them from being used on people or other living things, noting that the few capes that weren't Manton-limited, such as Narwhal, or Endbringers like Behemoth, had 'highly lethal implications.
Immediately, she remembered using telekinesis to lock the hydra's head in place, to boil her blood and to stop it from boiling too. Her stomach dropped as she then further remembered what Hunter had told her about 'psychic lobotomies'.
Knowledge of Manton-limitations was something she desperately needed to learn about; quickly, she started digging deeper into various theories and papers posted on various websites.
She waded through theories and half-baked methods of trying to engineer triggers (drugs were surprisingly unreliable even if the pain was massive) and heritage-based studies into parahumans and psychological patterns among them, some of which referenced people from her hometown, before finding something that made her stomach tighten.
The two Coronas; the Corona Pollentia and the Corona Gemma (technically, there was only one, but there were debates whether the Gemma should be considered as part of the Pollentia or its own separated structure). The Corona Pollentia was what allowed people to obtain powers, and it massively grew in size whenever someone triggered (with the few lucky 'before-and-after' studies after the subjects happened to trigger). While tons of people had a Corona Pollentia, one that was active and one that wasn't were surprisingly hard to tell apart.
The Corona Gemma, or just Gemma, meanwhile, was what allowed for the 'muscle memory' of powers, what allowed for parahumans to actively use their powers. It lit up with activity whenever a parahuman was actively choosing to create fire or make someone turn into glass with a touch or whatever.
Taylor simply stared at the study, before taking a deep breath. Fuck. Fuck. Please, please…
… yes!
Using Clairvoyance, Taylor looked at her own brain. It wasn't easy by any means; Clairvoyance tended to want to 'avoid' Taylor looking at her internal organs, but she pushed it to do so. With it, she saw that, yes, she indeed had a Corona Pollentia.
That immediately gave her leeway with other actual parahuman clairvoyants. While she couldn't tell if it was active or not, it was small enough compared to the studies that she figured it wasn't active. Other parahumans, though, would look at it and figure 'Hey, if she has powers, she has to be like us', rather than her powers coming from a completely different source entirely.
Still, just to double-check, she swept through the rest of the library using Clairvoyance, trying to see other people's brains. She ended up having to walk around, her Clairvoyance not strong enough to see the minute details of people's brains at a distance, even as it leveled up twice as she did so.
Clairvoyance: 18 → 20
The number of people that had a Corona Pollentia in the library was surprisingly small, but she was able to confirm that she could see them. Now, she was able to tell who had the potential to be a parahuman…
… more than that, though, she realized something else. Only those that had a Corona Pollentia in their brain had the strange psychic distortion in their head that she had seen in Aisha. It didn't look like the pulsing purplish-black mass she'd seen in Sophia and Brian, but the distortion was in roughly the same spot; spatially, it was in the same location as the Pollentia as well.
If so… then the simplest explanation would be that the distortion of the psyche was the Pollentia's natural activity. Then, what was the purplish-black thing…
… her stomach tightened. She'd briefly had the thought before; why Brian had been so knowledgeable about parahumans, to a point that would involve a bit of research just 'for safety reasons', and that strange coldness about him…
… no. Not yet. She wasn't sure, but she would find out sooner or later. The Protectorate offered tours of their Rig, and once Taylor got enough money, she could afford one of the tours to test her theory. She had to be careful, either way; pissing off a potential parahuman was the height of—
"Can I help you?"
Taylor was dragged away from her thoughts by a teenager with the figure of a beanpole looking at her. He was in the middle of reading through a thick book on the history of relations between Earth Bet and Earth Aleph, dense with information even though it didn't go too far back in history.
"Uh, no, I was just interested in your book," she said.
That was the wrong thing to say, as the beanpole boy's eyes lit up. "You're interested in Earth Aleph too?" he asked. "Can you imagine it? A whole other dimension just like our own!"
Taylor blinked. "There are more dimensions other than Aleph, though," she said before she could stop herself.
"Oh, definitely. Take a look at this," he said, quickly dragging her over and flipping to a section earlier in the book that he was reading. "The portals originally were designed to connect three different dimensions, but before the portal to the third dimension could be constructed, the authorities caught its creator. But those were the only two dimensions that we know exist according to that guy; imagine how many other dimensions there could be, waiting for humans like us to explore. I think that there's alien-like life on at least a few of them, since Aleph existed before we were connected to them, so if there are points where timelines diverge and dimensions fork, then logically there would be different plants and animals on Earths where evolution went differently. How history changes due to the timeline shift fascinates me, though; what causes timelines to go differently? Are quantum fluctuations changing the amount of matter and antimatter between dimensions? It might be, and the uncertainty principle contends that observation collapses probabilities, so…"
Taylor could do nothing but just listen to the beanpole boy as he spoke. Partially because he barely stopped to even breath, and partially because… well, she was interested.
While she hadn't focused on it as much as drawing, once she'd made sure the hydra was behaving, she'd gone and checked out some physics books from the school library to read. They weren't too hard, but they gave her some more context into how atomic physics worked. She still wasn't a master of physics, by any means, but she could at least follow along as the beanpole boy's rambling grew increasingly technical.
"… because of that, whether Haywire's technology works through quantum fluctuations or through hyperdense mass creating holes in spacetime that allow dimension to connect to each other, it should be possible to take quantum entangled particles and see if the entanglement holds between dimensions, or whether quantum entanglement can't hold between dimensions. Oh, but no one had tried it, so I want to…"
It was only then that the beanpole boy remembered that Taylor existed. "… uh…"
"No, continue," Taylor said, waving her hand. "I assume that you're going to try and take the particles between the dimensions to see if entanglement holds, right? If so, it means that the quantum field is unified between dimensions, while if it isn't, it means that each particle in a dimension 'belongs' to that dimension." She then frowned. "But if entanglement holds, what's to say that the dimensions don't have separate quantum fields, and creating the portal just makes a composite field out of both dimensions' quantum fields?"
The beanpole boy stared at her. For a second, Taylor wondered if she was seeing hearts in the boy's eyes, or if it was just a trick of the light. Then, his eyes widened. "I guess that's the case… but if someone manages to figure out how to communicate between dimensions without exciting the quantum field… no, but communication relies on the quantum field, then…"
They kept the discussion up for a while. Taylor struggled to keep up as well as she would hope to, but her ability to guess what the boy meant with the terms had more 'hits' than 'misses'. She couldn't tell you what a 'fermion' was, for instance, but she could guess that it was small and had something to do with holding mass. It allowed her to fake understanding enough to pay attention and get the gist of what the beanpole boy was saying.
By the end of their two-hour long discussion, the beanpole boy's voice had grown hoarse, but there was a giant, silly smile on his face as he spoke to Taylor. By the end of it all, Taylor's head had begun to hurt, but the reward…
Hypercognition: 23 → 26
… well, it was definitely hefty. Hypercognition was on full-effort during the conversation she'd had with the beanpole boy; while a portion of it had dealt with keeping up with the conversation, most of it had gone to deciphering just what the boy was actually saying, uncovering the actual meaning of his words through context clues. She know she had a lot more topics to study, and a sharper idea of how the physics she had learned already worked.
"… so, if there's a slight change in the matter-antimatter creation ratio between dimensions, that would be more evidence to the existence of separate quantum fields," he said. As he did, he checked a nearby wall, and his face grew crestfallen. "I… have to go home," he said. "Will you be coming here tomorrow?" he asked hopefully.
"Sure," Taylor shrugged. It would be good for her Hypercognition either way. "I'm Taylor Hebert."
"Alexander Hampshire. But, uh… call me Xand, okay?" he requested.
"Sure thing," she told Xand. Xand eagerly waved at her as he left, before running off, excited. He was definitely a weird guy, but Taylor found that she didn't mind too much.
She checked the 'Lancerr' website again, and to her delight, she'd gotten a IM asking for a commission. It was for porn, sure, but she wasn't a prude (she could see through clothes easily enough now that the allure of nudity had just kind of… dried up), and as she haggled, they were willing to pay a nice price for a 'sexy Alexandria' pose, enough to make back the pocket money she'd spent over the last few weeks.
As she left the library, the hydra ranting about Harry Potter's author's bias against snakes and 'practicality', she found that today was a good day.
And then she got a message from Magister.
Don't want to rush you, Taylor, but I overshot my estimate a little bit. If you don't come to the tower soon, I'll lose control over the dimensional connection I established with it last time, and I'll have to throw you in whenever the opportunity shows up again, with about as much warning as last time.Click to expand...
Shit. Shit.
Why human so upset? Human still fight later today, right?
"I…" Taylor groaned, thinking of what to do. Magister had said two-to-three weeks last time, and it had been around twelve days since she last went into the tower. If she overshot her estimate, then… damn.
She wasn't exactly prepared, though she was far more prepared than she was last time. She could be a little more careless due to the hydra giving her healing-venom, though she doubted it would forgive her for not taking him too. But… well… that was an option too, but that risked her task if things went catastrophically wrong.
Drawing: Acolyte → Novice
Power Strike: Acolyte → Novice
Inertial Absorption: Acolyte → Novice
Combat Flow: 18 → 20
Tutoring: 6 → 9
Drawing: 6 → 17
Hypercognition: 22 → 26
Clairvoyance: 18 → 20
Data Sponge: 13 → 14
Telekinesis: 20 → 22
Telepathy: 12 → 15
Mental Shielding: 6 → 9
Inertial Sense: 15 → 16
Power Strike: 7 → 10
Inertial Absorption: 9 → 10
Make Final Preparations, Take the Hydra With You
You couldn't risk failing Hunter's task, but the tower was more important than that was. The hydra was as strong as you were, and more importantly, it had abilities to heal both itself and you. With it, you wouldn't be as worried about surviving the tower. It might even enjoy the experience. Still, it would involve risking the hydra's life, and it was a lot harder to risk someone else's life than it was to risk your own.
Player Advice: Message Hunter and ask permission to take the Hydra on an interdimensional field trip
Click to shrink...
Don't want to rush you, Taylor, but I overshot my estimate a little bit. If you don't come to the tower soon, I'll lose control over the dimensional connection I established with it last time, and I'll have to throw you in whenever the opportunity shows up again, with about as much warning as last time.Click to expand...
Shit. Shit.
Why human so upset? Human still fight later today, right?
"I…" Taylor groaned, thinking of what to do. Magister had said two-to-three weeks last time, and it had been around twelve days since she last went into the tower. If she overshot her estimate, then… damn.
She wasn't exactly prepared, though she was far more prepared than she was last time. She could be a little more careless due to the hydra giving her healing-venom, though she doubted it would forgive her for not taking him too. But… well… that was an option too, but that risked her task if things went catastrophically wrong.
Still… she had almost died the last time that she'd gone to the tower. Even if things barely went better this time, she could easily wind up with a worse fate if things didn't align just the way they had before to let her live. She needed all the help she could get, especially now that the Corrupter was treating her like a pawn on a board.
"Say, uh, hydra… assuming there was a really dangerous tower full of enemies, would you want to try and help me conquer it?"
…
"Forget I said anything—"
YES! The hydra's voice was panicked, but it then became quickly excited as Taylor waited for it to continue. Yes! Yes! Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes! Towertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertowertower!
Taylor, briefly, wondered if she'd broken the hydra. It slithered and wriggled all over her with, apparently, sheer delight at the thought of scaling the tower. Briefly, Taylor wondered if, maybe, Magister should have gone to the hydra with the ITP and the offer instead of Taylor. The hydra was far more eager to test its mettle, after all.
"I'm going to ask permission from Hunter, first," Taylor said.
Nonononononononono… no…
Taylor winced but continued to message Hunter.
Hunter, sorry, but I'm doing something kind of dangerous. Is it okay if I bring the hydra with me? It wants to come, and I think doing the dangerous thing will make it happy.
She waited with bated breath for a response. Eventually, it came.
I didn't think you were the type of person to be reckless like that. I have no problems, but whatever happens to it is your responsibility. I won't be afraid to hold you accountable.
A knot tied itself in Taylor's stomach, but she couldn't pay attention to it as the hydra slithered faster.
YESYESYESYESYESYESYES! TRUE BATTLE! BATTLEBATTLEBATTLE!
"Are you addicted to fighting?" Taylor asked, raising an eyebrow. "It'll mean that we don't get to spar today, since we'll be busy."
That was the wrong thing to say. WE'RE DOING IT TODAY!
"I mean, yeah… the day after tomorrow, you're leaving, aren't you?" The hydra's slithering stopped. "Remember, this was a one-week thing. Tomorrow's your last full day, and while it's been… honestly, it has been a pleasure, you have your home, and I have mine."
Human make no sense. Hydra new home here.
Taylor shook her head. "No," she said. "That's not the case."
The hydra's grip on her tightened. Hydra new home here! The hydra's voice was louder, more declarative. It curled around her to look in the eyes, before its eyes began to pulse. Hydra new home here!
Mental Shielding: 9 → 10
Mental Shielding: Acolyte → Novice
The attempt at hypnosis, though, was a bit too weak. "Sorry, but no," Taylor said, shaking her head. She couldn't even begin to explain. Still… "We'll have a spar today, then go to the tower tomorrow." Taylor was far too tired to try and attempt the tower tonight, and the hydra was as well. She also had to make sure that she had everything. She wasn't going to go immediately, but she wasn't going to delay it by too much either.
… hydra new home here.
Something tugged at Taylor's heartstrings, but she ignored it. "Let's go home."
~
Taylor would have thought that the spar that night would have been less enjoyable that night, since it had been her and the hydra's first verbal spat in a long while, and one that didn't end on a 'high note'.
She was wrong. The hydra went all-out, and Taylor was beginning to get the impression that it was trying to make the most out of the spar while it could. It would be one of the last spars that she had with it, after all.
And it was, by far, one of the most enjoyable ones so far. Even as the hydra went all-out, so did she. Telepathic attacks, telekinetic projectiles, telekinetic barriers, and even using her inertial powers when she saw the opportunity. None of her arts leveled up, but she didn't need them to level up when she was able to bring everything together the way she had to counter and combat the hydra's powers.
As the battle ended for the night and Dad returned home, though, she found herself feeling… morose.
"Is there anything wrong, kid? You seem out of it."
"I…" Taylor sighed. "I need to take another long walk tomorrow, Dad. I have some thoughts that I need to deal with. I'll be going to the library." She'd still need to talk with Xand, as she'd promised she would, but that would take place after her jaunt into the tower. "Just drive me to the bus station and I'll be able to go by myself."
"Sure thing, kid." But Dad was still frowning. "Are you sure that you're okay, though?"
"I'm fine," Taylor said in a listless, almost unconvincing tone. Dad frowned. "I…" She then sighed. "I feel… frustrated, Dad. Frustrated and… confused."
"Want to talk about it?"
"No," Taylor said, shaking her head. "No. Not… not yet."
She finished her food, then started walking upstairs. She spent an hour or two working on the commission for the 'sexy Alexandria' request that she'd gotten, completing it with a flourish of her pencil. Tomorrow, she would upload it and get some more money, once she returned... with the hydra…
…
She dropped the pencil and sighed. "Why do I feel so…" Down? Was that the word? Her eyes trailed over to look at the hydra napping in the corner of their room, the door locked to prevent Dad from sneaking in uninterrupted.
She enjoyed spending time with the hydra; reliably so, in fact. Even when they weren't sparring, even when they were just doodling or practicing powers, the hydra was curious and responsive in a way that allowed her to be open… open, in a way that she'd only ever been with Emma before. She felt free around the hydra.
… was it reciprocated? Did the hydra enjoy spending time with her? Taylor tried to think about how, over the past week, the hydra had begged Taylor to stay away from school, to take it to the library, to do all these things with it. It enjoyed spending time with her. She knew that. She trusted that…
… and yet…
… she opened the task for the Psychic path.
To train in the 'Psychic' Path, you must complete the task set by your mentor in the 'Psychic' Path
Task: 'Make a Friend' v2
(4/1) Person/Being You Reliably Enjoy Spending Time With
-(0/1) Person/Being You Trust to Reliably Enjoy Spending Time with YouClick to expand...
She stared it… and then laughed.
"Of course," she said softly, feeling something harden in her heart. "Of course."
Even if Senior was right, even if she was the type of person to want to open her heart to others, she… she just couldn't. Every time she thought about the hydra wanting to spend time with her, that first impression it had of her blared in her mind; that of dismissal, of it thinking her beneath it.
It 'enjoyed' spending time with her because she'd put on a strong façade, and because she'd been patient with it. Take away that strength, take away that mask she'd put on around it, and the hydra would get bored of her, just like how everyone else would. Even with it on, she was only hoping that she could pacify it. A part of her still was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
With a painfully wry grin, she dismissed the task. Whether she was wrong or right, she couldn't tell. She wasn't going to commit either way; that would lead her open to the same pain that Emma had exploited in her, twice now. Having the task for two weeks now had, inevitably, changed things.
Now, she didn't think that getting friends was impossible. Now, she knew that it was impossible. She didn't know if she was unlikable or ugly or whatever, but it didn't matter, because, no matter what, she wouldn't let it happen.
She… she would make sure of it.
…
… no matter what.
~
The sound of raucous laughter filled the air as she was being beaten to a bloody pulp, as Aisha, Xand, and Isaac beat her to a bloody pulp, their eyes a cold, heartless silver. She tried fighting back, but there was no use. She could only curl up and cry.
And around her coiled the hydra, as silver as platinum, not a speck of mercy in its eyes as, bit by bit, her lungs began to give way.
She heard a scream that was not her own, and seconds later, her body finally gave way.
~
The next day was cold and cloudy, and she woke up feeling exhausted, the dream playing on in her mind. It was a dream… just a dream. It had to be.
Still, she knew that she didn't have time to waste.
She grabbed what she could; crowbar in her backpack, a can of Mace, and a granola bar. She also grabbed some things she'd forgotten to bring last time; a bottle of water, and a first-aid kit, in case the hydra was temporarily incapacitated. She wouldn't use her 'clothes bar' again, not this time around. The hydra slithered into her backpack, hissing with discomfort at the crowbar's cold metal but staying silent soon after as Dad drove the three of them to the nearest bus station.
"Stay safe, okay?" Dad asked.
"S-Sure thing," Taylor said, looking straight at Dad. "And Dad…" she started saying, before she could stop herself. "I love you."
"… love you too," Dad said, furrowing his brows before driving off. Taylor didn't know why she said it, other than… well, other than her forgetting to do so last time. One of her bigger mistakes, really.
She walked to a nearby fast-food restaurant, entered the stall, locked the stall's door, and put down an old pair of shoes to make it look like she was taking a crap in case someone swung by while she was still in Magister's tower. "You ready?" she asked the hydra softly.
Ready, the hydra said, slithering out of the backpack but remaining coiled around Taylor's body protectively.
Taylor composed her message to Magister.
I've gotten ready, Magister. I'm bringing along the hydra as well for support. Whenever you're ready, send me to the tower so that we can get started on this again.
The message came back instantly.
Spectacular news! Good luck!
That was the last thing that Taylor was able to hear before the world began to warp around her.
~
When Taylor came to, she felt that something was wrong, immediately so. The hydra unwound around her, hissing with annoyance.
Feel weak! Even worse!
Even worse… Taylor tried using her power and winced at how much weaker she was now. Previously, her powers were stronger in the tower. Now, they were the weakest that they had ever been.
Oh, she was stronger than she was the last time she had been in the tower, but not by as much as she was on Earth, and nowhere near as much as she would have been had the tower acted like last time. The power differential was now massive and a large headache. It felt like her head was filled with fog, though the sensation passed as time went on and she got accustomed to things.
"What the hell?" she asked. "Why am I so weak?"
She tried bringing up the panel for her messages to talk to Magister about this.
Error: Cannot establish connection with server. Please contact your nearest Interdimensional Training Program representative or try again later.
The knot in her stomach began to grow tighter. How was she supposed to even ask for help now? What was she…
… shit.
"It's a trap," she muttered under her breath, even as she heard the faint sound of deep, malicious laughter around her. "It's a trap. We fell for it, hook, line, and sinker."
The Corrupter hadn't been standing idly by while she'd been trying to develop her powers. He'd gotten additional control over Magister's tower and had started turning things against her.
Why had she been so stupid?! Even though she knew that the Corrupter considered this a game, she hadn't thought about what moves he would make! It was the biggest mistake in the book, as far as she was concerned.
Suddenly, all the preparations she'd made felt like ashes in the wind. She thought that she'd prepared for what the tower could throw at her. Maybe she had prepared for what the tower could throw at her. She couldn't prepare for what wrenches the Corrupter could throw into the works.
"We need to leave, now," she said, the twisting of her stomach reminding her that she was in way, way over her head.
How?
That… that was a good question.
"We need to explore, at the very least, and get our wits about us," she said, looking around. The place where they had landed seemed to be inside of a prison cell, with dozens of perpendicular bars barring them from leaving. "We don't know how much the Corrupter… that's the guy who's made everything like this… had messed things up for us."
"Or you can just relax," her voice said. Out of view. Taylor hadn't turned on her Clairvoyance due to the effort involved in doing so, but immediately did so, finding a mirror image of herself just barely within the range of her weakened Clairvoyance. Soon, though, it walked into her range of physical vision and let her see its body, a mirror image of herself except for its eyes glowing silver.
Immediately, Taylor had a sense of déjà vu, before recalling her dream the previous night. "You have been receiving prophetic warnings, haven't you?" the mirror image of herself asked, staying just out of reach of Taylor's physical grasp. "You know what is coming, what must come if you don't change your future. Stop playing the role of the pawn in our game and just enjoy yourself for a change, why don't you?"
"I… shut up!" Taylor ran at the mirror image and pulled it towards herself with Telekinesis, before slamming her fist into its stomach with a Power Strike through the bars of the cell.
Telekinesis: 22 → 23
Power Strike: 10 → 12
Her silver reflection laughed, even as it fell apart with its stomach crumbling into silver shards. "You will be unable to stop the inevitable, no matter how hard you try. I look forward to seeing you try." Her silver reflection then crumbled to dust and gas, leaving her and the hydra alone.
The hydra hissed approvingly. Good job!
Though Taylor was flattered, it was buried under a mountain of dread as she saw the gas blow away in an invisible wind, the dust collecting in a small pile. Off in the distance, she could hear that merciless laughter once more.
"That was the Corrupter, talking through that… that thing," she said, trembling a little as she tried to get a grip on things. "We're being toyed with." Worst was that she felt the Corrupter had only started showing off his toolbox of tricks, and how much of that toolbox was left was something that she wasn't sure of.
When fight?
She laughed hauntingly. "Soon," she said. "I don't think that the Corrupter will let us leave easily." But that wasn't a plan, and it wasn't anything that Taylor could use to try and escape. "For now, try to do so reconnaissance, why don't you? Meanwhile, I'll try and escape in my own way."
The hydra tilted its head. Acid, burn bars?
"Tempting, but… no, not yet. For now, leave and try to find your way out on your own. If you find any of those weird silver-eyed things, feel free to kill them."
Kill puppets?
"The puppets," Taylor agreed. "Go ahead."
The hydra hissed with delights, before slithering out through the grate, leaving Taylor alone with her thoughts. A part of her wondered if, maybe, she should have tried to let the hydra free her, before dismissing the notion. Even if she needed the hydra to escape, she'd let it come back. It was more than strong enough to handle those strange puppets that the Corrupter had thrown at her.
More concerning to her was her current weakness, and her lack of direction regarding where she was, what she had to do, and what she even could do. She had to wait for the hydra to get back, and in the meantime, she'd test out her arts and see which ones were affected by the Corrupter's meddling.
PathlessPsychicWarriorCombat Flow: (20/30) (Novice)
Cartography: (5/10) (Acolyte)
Ciphering: (4/10) (Acolyte)
Drawing: (17/30) (Novice)
Keyboard Dexterity: (11/30) (Novice)
Tutoring: (9/10) (Acolyte)
Mental Shielding: Acolyte → Novice
Mental Shielding: 9 → 10
Telekinesis: 22 → 23
Power Strike: 10 → 12