Heart of Midlothian (Part 1) - Non-canon Omake by Lucifra
Lucifra
All incense, no powdered diamond
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Content Warning: Suicide Baiting. Emma is,,, not in a great headspace here, and she's also not a great person, post-Sophia.
I wish I had enough willpower to stand up to my muse when she decides that it's time to start a new project.
and ignoring that they'd shown lockers were fair game very early on, she hadn't really heard from Sophia, even though she'd promised-
Breathe.
Anyways, the only news she had of Shadow Stalker was when she'd seen on the news that she'd broken the Undersiders out of Protectorate custody, which… what the hell? She'd been so adamantly opposed to Grue in the past that it seemed counterintuitive for her to want to go anywhere near him, especially given how she'd been injured by her… other nemesis.
That being Taylor.
Emma knew, intellectually, that Taylor wasn't someone she should be lashing out at. But at the same time… well, Sophia had taught her that there was only strength and weakness, and Taylor hadn't shown any of the formerexcept in resilience, some quiet part of her brain said, so she obviously couldn't be allowed to remain in her life. Admittedly, the method she'd chosen to get Taylor out of her life was… extreme… but to be honest she liked it more as a method to show off her strength than anything else.
And then she had cost Sophia her hand.
That had really not worked out how Emma thought it would. Ideally, Taylor would have been shipped off to juvie for setting a booby trap like that. More realistically, she was probably going to get suspended for a couple of weeks, because despite all the pressure that her dad and Sophia's handler could bring to bear,uncle Danny could bring the full weight of the union community of Brockton Bay down on the school like the wrath of Legend and Blackwell was always careful to keep his ire pointed mostly away from her.
That said, Emma wasn't expecting Taylor to just up and vanish, nor was she expecting almost all her social support to dry up practically overnight.
Pragmatically speaking, she knew that a significant amount of her social standing came from Sophia, one way or the other. Her status as a Ward bringing in money to the school above and beyond what her own father was willing and able to contribute kept staff off their backs in all but the most extreme of situations and minimized their response even in those situations, and her willingness to threaten, intimidate, or bruise any potential social challengers handled what portions of the student body her own charisma and Madison's… strategy didn't.
Even so, she didn't realize quite how much of her social prowess was enabled by Sophia until after the Ward was gone.
The revelation of Sophia Hess, arm-deep in Taylor's locker, had caused the student body to reconsider their relationship with Sophia Hess, who they now saw as a violent thug, as well as herself and Madison, who were now seen as social camouflage and a brainless hanger-on, respectively.
The fact that the involvement of Shadow Stalker in the escapes of the surviving Undersiders, as well as the dumbass bitch who thought it was a good idea to hit Panacea in the chest with a hammer (to the point where Black Rose had been forced to intervene and heal the healer before her official debut, no less), was public knowledge did not help their case by any stretch of the imagination.
Madison had read the changing of the tides and abandoned Emma before most of the school had, joining up with Greg, of all people.
Emma shook herself out of her introspective spiral, refocusing herself on the mall around her, where she always came when she was feeling down or unsteady. As they said, a little retail therapy never hurt anybody.
As Emma turned towards Abercrombie and Fitch, she felt the basso "thump thump thump" that spoke of several of Bakuda's bombs going off, and her eyes widened. Despite the fact that the ABB was more reviled than ever, the mad bomber's power had kept them "in the game", as it were, with the specter of terror she held over the city being far more than any other cape this side of the Fallen.
Emma looked up, but before she could cast about for the source of the sounds, she heard as much as felt two different changes. On her left, she felt the air pressure increase with the sound of flesh thwap-ing to the floor, and on the right everything stilled and went silent, not even the air daring to move.
When the two effects met, with her in the middle, things got… complicated.
The newly retrieved piece of Tinkertech looked relatively inconspicuous, a dull grey sphere approximately the size of a baseball, but based on what Lisa suggested it might be the key to cleaning up the more persistent effects of Bakuda's bombs.
According to what Lisa's power could feed them, combining thorns of her power and a Tinker power let her sidestep tinkering to produce some of the effects that the original Tinker's power could produce in a semi-random manner.
So, as Nebula and Black Rose, the pair of capes went to the Brockton Mall, where they could test it on a relatively stable anomaly- that being the replica of a Gray Boy bubble that Assault had mentioned.
The plan was to arrive at the mall, combine Lisa's power with Bakuda's, and then see if she could pull off some sort of power reset effect, or maybe teleport any of the victims out of the bubble, or some other bullshit effect that Bakuda had pulled out of her figurative hat that could undo at least some of the destruction the bomber had wreaked across the city.
Of course, Taylor couldn't have nice things, so the first thing she heard was Emma's voice shrieking something about a Stranger.
She was not expecting to hear a younger version of Emma's voice retort with "Well, if you don't recognize a version of yourself who didn't stab our sister in the back as anything more than a Stranger, then there's something seriously wrong with you!"
Taylor very carefully did not rush into the pseudo-courtyard of the mall, but when she arrived she saw two Emma's, one as she had seen her the last time she was at Winslow, but the other shorter, younger, and far angrier.
"Excuse me," said Taylor, trying her best to disguise her voice. "What's going on here?"
"Not now, Tails," said the younger Emma, "I'm dealing with this… disappointment."
The older Emma just gaped at Taylor like a fish. "W-what?"
Taylor's eyes narrowed behind her mask as she produced an extra thorn and touched it to Lisa's exposed fingertip. "Well then," said Lisa, no small amount of forced calm in her voice, "this is going to be a mess."
"That's right," said the younger version of Emma, "you tortured Tails so much that she got superpowers! Didn't you know how bad that has to be from talking with Sophia?"
"Her power is… well, she got the perfect one to slit her wrists with!"
Reality stuttered for a moment, with people shifting positions in between one heartbeat and the next, and then Taylor's mouth dropped open as she watched the younger version of Emma crack her older version across the face.
Then, a tattered, golden cape appeared, hanging from the younger Emma's shoulders, with a blue-white image of a bear's head appearing on it over and over again, and moments later she was abruptly flanked by two bears in Ursa Aurora's ghostly style, which immediately moved to hold Emma down.
"You're a disappointment to everything Mom and Auntie Anne ever stood for," said the younger Emma, glaring at her older counterpart with pity in her eyes. "On one hand, I want to hate you for what you did, but knowing what made you this way… I'm not sure I can really blame you."
She turned to Taylor. "Tails, I'm sorry for everything we've done to you. I'll make it better, I promise. Just… Take Ems home, please, and make sure Mom reads my note."
Her cape shifted, the bear heads shimmering and changing to a porter's cap even as the projected bears faded to nothing and Emma collapsed to her knees, one hand brushing against her cheek. Then, the younger Emma vanished with a sound not entirely unlike a gunshot and a brief sound of an intense wind.
No one talked, not when Taylor undid the Gray Boy bomb's effect or after, until they arrived at Emma's house, practically having to drag the unresponsive redhead to her home.
Before they could enter, the door swung open, revealing a distinctly unimpressed Zoe Barnes. "Taylor, come in. It's been too long. We need to have a… family discussion."
Ideally, she'd be able to handle the situation with Mom before anyone noticed. On a more practical level, she was still undergoing the mother of all existential crises after being created, whole cloth, from her older self not ten minutes ago, sorting through the jumble that was her memories of the last five years of Emma's life, and dealing with the issue of how the fuck to handle her brand new superpower.
One of those problems, at least, was relatively easy to handle. She shifted her mental focus away from Strider and towards Accord, the villain known for his ability to think his way to a solution for any and every problem he encountered.
Immediately, she felt the cape on her back shift, the design related to Strider vanishing in favor of Accord's mask. At the same time, Emmie felt her mind… not expand, per se, but it did definitely change in a way she couldn't quite quantify.
This time, when she refocused herself on her issues, they seemed… not less daunting, per se, but she felt better equipped to handle them.
The immediate issue was the note she promised Tails she'd write, which was something she could handle immediately.
Dear Mom, she wrote.
There's a lot of stuff you're not going to have context for in this note, and that's okay. Ask Tails and you should be able to get a mostly complete picture, or if she brings her blonde friend, you should be able to ask her.
Long story short, Emma was caught up in the wrong place (or the right place, depending on your interpretation), and she was in the exact intersection of the detonation of two of Bakuda's bombs. Don't worry, she's fine. Some weird interaction between the two bombs made me, which… well, I'm kinda-sorta a ten-year-old version of Emma with all the memories of what Emma is supposed to have. Call me Emmie, for now.
Then, it turns out that… well, there's no easy way to break this to you, but Emma has been bullying Taylor ever since she met Sophia. See, Dad and Emma got attacked by the ABB but saved by Shadow Stalker, AKA Sophia Hess, and Emma sort of latched onto Sophia, to the point where when Sophia said that she had to prove her strength by getting rid of Tails, she did. That bullying… well, I won't tell you all the details, but it's bad enough that it caused a Trigger Event (which is basically when someone… loses hope, I guess, but even that isn't a complete explanation, and then they get superpowers), and Emma didn't stop there.
Sophia is… removed as an influence in Emma's life, but that's not going to fix what she broke. You need to make sure she gets therapy, and you can't let Dad keep enabling her. Emma thinks she can do whatever she wants, you cannot allow that to continue.
As for me… don't worry about me, I can handle myself. I have powers now, but I can't come home yet. I need to make up for all the bad things that we did to Tails before I can face her again.
Love you, mom,
Emmie.
Emmie absently noted that for some reason Accord's power was making her pool of power options shrink much more slowly than either Ursa Aurora's or Strider's, but set that aside for later interrogation as she set the letter down on her mom's place at the table, then-
"Emma? What's going on?" Emmie's eyes snapped up to meet her mom's, and she internally winced at the necessity of what she was about to do.
"Sorry, mom, I can't stay. Tails is coming over, make sure you read the note before she gets here."
Losing Accord's power was more jarring than gaining it, because her brain abruptly snapped back to what it was before in a not-quite-painful manner, but it was what had to be done.
"Young lady, you will-"
"Don't let Emma drive Taylor away again," Emmie said, power already shifted for Strider's, destination firmly fixed in her mind. "I love you, mom."
Emmie was abruptly in the old warehouse she and Tails had loved running around in whenever they were waiting for Uncle Danny once they had gotten tired of sitting around the DWA office.
She borrowed Labyrinth's power long enough to reach into another dimension and pull a notebook and pen into the warehouse, then released it (and shuddered as the eerie feeling of having so many dimensions overlaying her vanished) in favor of Accord's once again.
Jack Slash frowned. "Why do I hear boss music?"
Mannequin shrugged.
This will be continued, eventually (probably).
Read, review, enjoy, and…
WORDS FOR THE WORD COUNT! OMAKES FOR THE OMAKE THRONE! ALL HAIL THE DREAD LORD SHADELIGHT!
I wish I had enough willpower to stand up to my muse when she decides that it's time to start a new project.
-----
Heart of Midlothian
-----
Emma Barnes was.. concerned about Sophia. After… Hebert… had pulled that underhanded trick with her locker Heart of Midlothian
-----
Breathe.
Anyways, the only news she had of Shadow Stalker was when she'd seen on the news that she'd broken the Undersiders out of Protectorate custody, which… what the hell? She'd been so adamantly opposed to Grue in the past that it seemed counterintuitive for her to want to go anywhere near him, especially given how she'd been injured by her… other nemesis.
That being Taylor.
Emma knew, intellectually, that Taylor wasn't someone she should be lashing out at. But at the same time… well, Sophia had taught her that there was only strength and weakness, and Taylor hadn't shown any of the former
And then she had cost Sophia her hand.
That had really not worked out how Emma thought it would. Ideally, Taylor would have been shipped off to juvie for setting a booby trap like that. More realistically, she was probably going to get suspended for a couple of weeks, because despite all the pressure that her dad and Sophia's handler could bring to bear,
That said, Emma wasn't expecting Taylor to just up and vanish, nor was she expecting almost all her social support to dry up practically overnight.
Pragmatically speaking, she knew that a significant amount of her social standing came from Sophia, one way or the other. Her status as a Ward bringing in money to the school above and beyond what her own father was willing and able to contribute kept staff off their backs in all but the most extreme of situations and minimized their response even in those situations, and her willingness to threaten, intimidate, or bruise any potential social challengers handled what portions of the student body her own charisma and Madison's… strategy didn't.
Even so, she didn't realize quite how much of her social prowess was enabled by Sophia until after the Ward was gone.
The revelation of Sophia Hess, arm-deep in Taylor's locker, had caused the student body to reconsider their relationship with Sophia Hess, who they now saw as a violent thug, as well as herself and Madison, who were now seen as social camouflage and a brainless hanger-on, respectively.
The fact that the involvement of Shadow Stalker in the escapes of the surviving Undersiders, as well as the dumbass bitch who thought it was a good idea to hit Panacea in the chest with a hammer (to the point where Black Rose had been forced to intervene and heal the healer before her official debut, no less), was public knowledge did not help their case by any stretch of the imagination.
Madison had read the changing of the tides and abandoned Emma before most of the school had, joining up with Greg, of all people.
Emma shook herself out of her introspective spiral, refocusing herself on the mall around her, where she always came when she was feeling down or unsteady. As they said, a little retail therapy never hurt anybody.
As Emma turned towards Abercrombie and Fitch, she felt the basso "thump thump thump" that spoke of several of Bakuda's bombs going off, and her eyes widened. Despite the fact that the ABB was more reviled than ever, the mad bomber's power had kept them "in the game", as it were, with the specter of terror she held over the city being far more than any other cape this side of the Fallen.
Emma looked up, but before she could cast about for the source of the sounds, she heard as much as felt two different changes. On her left, she felt the air pressure increase with the sound of flesh thwap-ing to the floor, and on the right everything stilled and went silent, not even the air daring to move.
When the two effects met, with her in the middle, things got… complicated.
-----
Taylor was glad she had managed to grab a thorn based on Armsmaster's power already, so she could use it (in conjunction with a thorn from Lisa's power) to retrieve and disarm the detonator on one of Bakuda's bombs.The newly retrieved piece of Tinkertech looked relatively inconspicuous, a dull grey sphere approximately the size of a baseball, but based on what Lisa suggested it might be the key to cleaning up the more persistent effects of Bakuda's bombs.
According to what Lisa's power could feed them, combining thorns of her power and a Tinker power let her sidestep tinkering to produce some of the effects that the original Tinker's power could produce in a semi-random manner.
So, as Nebula and Black Rose, the pair of capes went to the Brockton Mall, where they could test it on a relatively stable anomaly- that being the replica of a Gray Boy bubble that Assault had mentioned.
The plan was to arrive at the mall, combine Lisa's power with Bakuda's, and then see if she could pull off some sort of power reset effect, or maybe teleport any of the victims out of the bubble, or some other bullshit effect that Bakuda had pulled out of her figurative hat that could undo at least some of the destruction the bomber had wreaked across the city.
Of course, Taylor couldn't have nice things, so the first thing she heard was Emma's voice shrieking something about a Stranger.
She was not expecting to hear a younger version of Emma's voice retort with "Well, if you don't recognize a version of yourself who didn't stab our sister in the back as anything more than a Stranger, then there's something seriously wrong with you!"
Taylor very carefully did not rush into the pseudo-courtyard of the mall, but when she arrived she saw two Emma's, one as she had seen her the last time she was at Winslow, but the other shorter, younger, and far angrier.
"Excuse me," said Taylor, trying her best to disguise her voice. "What's going on here?"
"Not now, Tails," said the younger Emma, "I'm dealing with this… disappointment."
The older Emma just gaped at Taylor like a fish. "W-what?"
Taylor's eyes narrowed behind her mask as she produced an extra thorn and touched it to Lisa's exposed fingertip. "Well then," said Lisa, no small amount of forced calm in her voice, "this is going to be a mess."
"That's right," said the younger version of Emma, "you tortured Tails so much that she got superpowers! Didn't you know how bad that has to be from talking with Sophia?"
"Her power is… well, she got the perfect one to slit her wrists with!"
Reality stuttered for a moment, with people shifting positions in between one heartbeat and the next, and then Taylor's mouth dropped open as she watched the younger version of Emma crack her older version across the face.
Then, a tattered, golden cape appeared, hanging from the younger Emma's shoulders, with a blue-white image of a bear's head appearing on it over and over again, and moments later she was abruptly flanked by two bears in Ursa Aurora's ghostly style, which immediately moved to hold Emma down.
"You're a disappointment to everything Mom and Auntie Anne ever stood for," said the younger Emma, glaring at her older counterpart with pity in her eyes. "On one hand, I want to hate you for what you did, but knowing what made you this way… I'm not sure I can really blame you."
She turned to Taylor. "Tails, I'm sorry for everything we've done to you. I'll make it better, I promise. Just… Take Ems home, please, and make sure Mom reads my note."
Her cape shifted, the bear heads shimmering and changing to a porter's cap even as the projected bears faded to nothing and Emma collapsed to her knees, one hand brushing against her cheek. Then, the younger Emma vanished with a sound not entirely unlike a gunshot and a brief sound of an intense wind.
No one talked, not when Taylor undid the Gray Boy bomb's effect or after, until they arrived at Emma's house, practically having to drag the unresponsive redhead to her home.
Before they could enter, the door swung open, revealing a distinctly unimpressed Zoe Barnes. "Taylor, come in. It's been too long. We need to have a… family discussion."
-----
Emmie (not Emma, not after what the other-her had done to that name) was, to put it bluntly, panicking.Ideally, she'd be able to handle the situation with Mom before anyone noticed. On a more practical level, she was still undergoing the mother of all existential crises after being created, whole cloth, from her older self not ten minutes ago, sorting through the jumble that was her memories of the last five years of Emma's life, and dealing with the issue of how the fuck to handle her brand new superpower.
One of those problems, at least, was relatively easy to handle. She shifted her mental focus away from Strider and towards Accord, the villain known for his ability to think his way to a solution for any and every problem he encountered.
Immediately, she felt the cape on her back shift, the design related to Strider vanishing in favor of Accord's mask. At the same time, Emmie felt her mind… not expand, per se, but it did definitely change in a way she couldn't quite quantify.
This time, when she refocused herself on her issues, they seemed… not less daunting, per se, but she felt better equipped to handle them.
The immediate issue was the note she promised Tails she'd write, which was something she could handle immediately.
Dear Mom, she wrote.
There's a lot of stuff you're not going to have context for in this note, and that's okay. Ask Tails and you should be able to get a mostly complete picture, or if she brings her blonde friend, you should be able to ask her.
Long story short, Emma was caught up in the wrong place (or the right place, depending on your interpretation), and she was in the exact intersection of the detonation of two of Bakuda's bombs. Don't worry, she's fine. Some weird interaction between the two bombs made me, which… well, I'm kinda-sorta a ten-year-old version of Emma with all the memories of what Emma is supposed to have. Call me Emmie, for now.
Then, it turns out that… well, there's no easy way to break this to you, but Emma has been bullying Taylor ever since she met Sophia. See, Dad and Emma got attacked by the ABB but saved by Shadow Stalker, AKA Sophia Hess, and Emma sort of latched onto Sophia, to the point where when Sophia said that she had to prove her strength by getting rid of Tails, she did. That bullying… well, I won't tell you all the details, but it's bad enough that it caused a Trigger Event (which is basically when someone… loses hope, I guess, but even that isn't a complete explanation, and then they get superpowers), and Emma didn't stop there.
Sophia is… removed as an influence in Emma's life, but that's not going to fix what she broke. You need to make sure she gets therapy, and you can't let Dad keep enabling her. Emma thinks she can do whatever she wants, you cannot allow that to continue.
As for me… don't worry about me, I can handle myself. I have powers now, but I can't come home yet. I need to make up for all the bad things that we did to Tails before I can face her again.
Love you, mom,
Emmie.
Emmie absently noted that for some reason Accord's power was making her pool of power options shrink much more slowly than either Ursa Aurora's or Strider's, but set that aside for later interrogation as she set the letter down on her mom's place at the table, then-
"Emma? What's going on?" Emmie's eyes snapped up to meet her mom's, and she internally winced at the necessity of what she was about to do.
"Sorry, mom, I can't stay. Tails is coming over, make sure you read the note before she gets here."
Losing Accord's power was more jarring than gaining it, because her brain abruptly snapped back to what it was before in a not-quite-painful manner, but it was what had to be done.
"Young lady, you will-"
"Don't let Emma drive Taylor away again," Emmie said, power already shifted for Strider's, destination firmly fixed in her mind. "I love you, mom."
Emmie was abruptly in the old warehouse she and Tails had loved running around in whenever they were waiting for Uncle Danny once they had gotten tired of sitting around the DWA office.
She borrowed Labyrinth's power long enough to reach into another dimension and pull a notebook and pen into the warehouse, then released it (and shuddered as the eerie feeling of having so many dimensions overlaying her vanished) in favor of Accord's once again.
She had plans to make in order to atone for what she'd done to Tails, after all, and she'd need to write them down.-----
Semi-canon addition:
Semi-canon addition:
Jack Slash frowned. "Why do I hear boss music?"
Mannequin shrugged.
-----
And that's that!This will be continued, eventually (probably).
Read, review, enjoy, and…
WORDS FOR THE WORD COUNT! OMAKES FOR THE OMAKE THRONE! ALL HAIL THE DREAD LORD SHADELIGHT!
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