Reality Intrudes [Worm/Matrix AU]

[Blade4]

I am not sure how Morrigan would beat Hookwolf. I just know it will be hilarious and brutal. If she wanted to stir the pot hard she has practically grenade it. Though would be fun to see her play with new wave to ...

Though the fact they all but I ow it's Taylor could get ugly fast. The rules are unwritten and people are good at making excuses to ignore them at need or ego.

 

[The Unicorn]

Nice chapter, I liked Piggot's POV, although I find it interesting that she didn't even react to being informed that Armsmaster, after challenging an unknown cape, attacked the cape without warning or identifying himself.
While I wouldn't expect her to admit it publicly, the fact Armsmaster gave Morrigan a valid self-defense argument should have pissed her off if she thought that would matter.

 

[Ack]

Reality Intrudes

Part Twenty: A New Wrinkle

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Taylor

"Sorry, I forgot to ask last night. How'd school go? Any trouble?"

Taylor looked up from her eggs and thought about her father's question. "Well, they must've been telling the truth about Sophia, because I didn't see her or Emma there. And nobody else tried anything that I couldn't handle."

The fact that she'd absolutely handled three of Madison's minions like rag dolls (and scared the fuck out of Madison and the other two) wasn't something he needed to know about, in her personal opinion.

"Good." He offered her a pleased smile. "That's excellent. You think you'll be okay riding the bus in today?"

She shrugged. "I can't see why not. If anything does happen, I'll ask Principal Blackwell if she really wants to go for round two with you." Blackwell had not enjoyed the first 'chat' with Danny, so hopefully the threat would keep her in line. Alternatively, Taylor figured she could kick the asses of anyone who tried to fuck with her. Being able to do that was something she could definitely get used to.

Danny nodded, evidently unaware of the direction of Taylor's thoughts. "Hopefully she's gotten the message by now." He frowned, looking a little more serious. "Though keep an eye out for any new staff members, or transfer students wanting to be your friend. The PRT probably hasn't given up on recruiting you, and the Wards would be ideal for infiltrating a high school situation."

"Totally." Taylor applied herself to her eggs once more. Any staff member at Winslow who tried to get on her good side by actually making the other students behave would stick out like Behemoth on a rampage, and she'd developed an aversion to forming new friendships inside Winslow since Emma had tried to bait her with a fake one.

Yeah, good luck with that.

About the only way a PRT plant could get anything on her would be if they incited an attack on her (or were lucky enough to be in the right place at the wrong time) and watched her wreck some asshole's day without breaking a sweat. But even then, she didn't have Morrigan's reality-bending Matrix powers (or at least, she didn't think she did) so any beatdown she handed out would be perfectly normal. She wouldn't be using her fist to bust a fifty-thousand-dollar helmet, for instance.

Still, caution was probably a good idea. Madison might bring a bigger posse the next time, and all the martial-arts bullshit in the world wouldn't be much use if they hit her from behind, then kicked her ribs in while she was on the ground. And if not Madison, then maybe Julia or one of the others. It wasn't as though Emma had been alone in bullying her, after all.

She looked at Danny again. "I'll be careful, Dad. I promise."

The look he gave her was composed of worry and pride in equal mixture. "Don't try to be a hero. Just come home safe, okay?"

That was a sentiment she could definitely get behind.

When he spoke again, his tone was more thoughtful. "But I'm going to be having a private chat with Alan about Emma. She knows about Sophia, yes?"

Taylor nodded, recalling how Emma had shown zero surprise at Sophia's trick of going into smoke form. "She totally does. No idea if he's aware of it, though."

"Good point. I'll leave that aspect out of the discussion." He lowered his glasses so he could give Taylor a moderately stern look over them. "But at some point, we are going to be talking about what happened in that restroom, young lady."

Well, crap.

<><>​

Medhall Building Sub-Basement

Hookwolf

"So, what're we gonna be doing about the bitch in the long-coat?" Bradley popped the cap off the beer with his thumb, sending it flying across the room into the trash can. Without waiting for an answer, he chugged half the bottle in one go. After a sinus-tingling belch, he kept talking. "It's not like we can guard all our stash houses twenty-four-seven. Even with the ABB down and out, we ain't gonna have anyone to take and hold territory."

"Morrigan." Kaiser didn't sound thrilled at the revelation. "The PRT got a name for her last night. According to my sources, she put a note on Armsmaster's bike when she left it for him to find. This was after she danced rings around Velocity, blew up Coil's base, and then curbstomped Circus."

"Christ on a cracker." Bradley raised his eyebrows in honest surprise. "She doesn't fuck around, does she?" He was starting to wonder if he should re-evaluate his ideas about how to beat her. Someone who could do all that in one night was nobody's goddamn pushover.

"This just makes it all the more important that we put an end to her before she circles back around to us." Krieg's tone was clipped and impatient. "She dealt with the ABB and Coil in just a couple of hours. Even if she goes after the Merchants next, it's not as though they're an actual gang. They'll hold her up for a day, maximum. After which, we're the only significant criminal organisation in Brockton Bay."

Kaiser nodded thoughtfully. "She's already been chipping away at us. The stash house cost us Alabaster and Victor, and benched Othala even though she wasn't there. Last night bumped Stormtiger, Fenja and Menja off the roster for the duration."

Bradley finished off the beer; the bottle joined its cap in the trash can. "Gotta talk to O, boss. She's never gonna get back at the bitch who killed Victor if she doesn't help put Tiger and the others back on their feet."

"I believe I will, yes." Kaiser sighed. "Also, I'll speak to Purity and see if she's willing to come back in. Assist us in our hour of need. If she can bring Night and Fog with her, all the better."

Krieg cleared his throat. "Is throwing more bodies at the problem really the best solution, or do you have a deeper strategy here? Not many of us are reliably bulletproof, and we have ample evidence that she is a remarkably accurate shot."

Kaiser's lips thinned. "Yes, I do indeed have more of a strategy than that." He glanced from Bradley to Krieg. "Talk to every one of our people who have children in school. I want the names of every skinny white teenage girl with black curly hair, with or without glasses, in every school in Brockton Bay. Once we have that list, we can narrow it down. And finally, we're setting a trap tonight." As he explained, Bradley grinned.

Morrigan might have taken them by surprise twice, Bradley figured, but third time was definitely going to bite her in the ass.

<><>​

Miss Militia

Hannah looked out at the suburban house as the trooper behind the wheel slowly drove down the street. The number was prominently displayed on the rusting mailbox, and the street name was obvious on the sign at the next corner, so it was definitely the correct address. She knew the trooper in the back seat would be covertly getting footage of the house that they could study later, but she gave it a good eyeballing herself.

There was a front door as well as several windows; although there were steps up onto a small porch, the foundation sat low to the ground, suggesting a basement. And indeed, she spotted ground-level windows next to an untended flower garden. The house sat still and quiet, unsurprising given that Taylor would be at school and Danny at the Dockworkers' Association offices.

Without being told, the trooper turned the corner so she could examine the side and back of the house.

Small trees lined the fence for part of the way, but she spotted a second-floor window on the side of the house. There were more windows on the back of the house, along with a back door and small porch. The back yard was the size of a postage stamp, with a chain-link gate closing off access to the street.

"Two vans," she decided. "If Morrigan is indeed Taylor Hebert, and she's sneaking out without her father's knowledge, we need two different viewpoints to cover all the potential exits."

"Yes, ma'am," agreed the trooper in the back seat. "Rules of engagement?"

"Observe and record only." The Director had been firm on that respect. "No technology that can look through the walls. If we get evidence that she's Morrigan, then we can get the warrant to search the house, but not until then. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am. Entirely understood."

"Please make sure everyone on the surveillance detail knows it." Director Piggot hadn't been able to get a warrant to search the house—not that Hannah had expected her to—but they were free to watch the place like so many hawks. And if either Danny or Taylor Hebert did anything illegal outside the house, they were fair game.

"Ma'am."

"Good. Drive on." Unless Morrigan did something particularly egregious tonight, Hannah wouldn't be returning to this area, but the pieces had been put in place and the operation set in motion.

While it had been made clear that her command of the ENE department of the Protectorate was strictly temporary, pending Armsmaster's return, she was damn well going to do it right while she was in the hot seat.

<><>​

Taylor

Computer Studies was bullying-free, but that was par for the course. There weren't enough of Emma's coterie in Taylor's class to make a concerted effort, especially in the advanced section. The most they could do was fill her school inbox with abuse, which Taylor doubted would stop any time soon. Anyone could be brave when there were no consequences to be had.

Or are there?

On a whim, Taylor typed a line on the screen: Can you do something about these idiots filling up my inbox? She left it there for a few seconds, then backspaced it and returned to the current project: a basic data-to-graph display program.

There was no immediate reply, which disappointed her slightly but didn't surprise her. Neither did Morrigan appear out of nowhere to talk to her; Taylor was pretty sure that trick took a lot of prep (and also some privacy). The project didn't take long to finish, so Taylor saved her work and opened a window into PHO to see what was going on there.

Nothing jumped out at her about Morrigan being a new cape in town, thought in the 'Reported Sightings' thread, there were mentions of 'an Armscycle lookalike' being ridden around town by an unknown person in a long-coat and hat. The blurry footage of her riding the bike up the side of the building was dissected at length by some, and derided by others as being 'obv fake'. One poster, calling himself Void Cowboy, had posited that it was some new cape who had beaten up Armsmaster and stolen his bike for a joyride, but he was being laughed at by nearly everyone.

There were threads mentioning some kind of upheaval in the ranks of the ABB and the Empire, but only in the vaguest of terms. Any mention of the deaths of Victor and Alabaster, and even the capture of Lung and Oni Lee, were conspicuous in their absence. Even the explosion of Coil's base (and the subsequent takeover of the site by the PRT) was thought to be a result of an attack by the ABB on the Empire's Downtown turf.

The temptation to correct everyone's misapprehensions was strong, but Taylor shut it down. She wasn't sure precisely how anonymous a PHO account really was, and she had no desire to out herself to the PRT just because she couldn't keep her mouth shut online.

It was getting close to the end of the period, so she closed the PHO page, double-checked her project, and sent it in. She was just sliding her textbook into her backpack when the bell went, allowing her to shut down her terminal and be among the first out the door. World Affairs was likely to be her most problematic class, especially if Madison had grown a backbone since the confrontation in the restroom, so she wanted to get in early.

<><>​

World Affairs Classroom

Madison

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Madison glanced from the glue-covered chair to the door and back again. She'd had to duck out of Math class a couple of minutes early (Mr Quinlan hadn't even noticed) so she could get to World Affairs in time to treat the chair. This was her last chance to put Hebert back in her place. Physically correcting her was totally off the board, so pranking the fuck out of her was the only remaining option.

On the upside, Madison was a past master at pranks. However, on the downside, she'd seen Hebert go all Chuck Norris on three girls at once, and she wasn't in love with the idea of that happening to her, hence her question.

Julia gingerly touched her jaw, which Madison didn't blame her for. Hebert had well and truly rung her bell with that one elbow-smash, and she'd been dizzy for a good ten minutes afterward. This close, Madison could see the concealer covering the bruise.

"Sure," Julia said, with a vindictive curl to her lip. "What's she gonna do? Beat us up with witnesses all around, and Mr G right there?" The fact that Mr Gladly wasn't actually looking at them as he prepped for the lesson didn't seem to worry her.

"Okay, yeah, good point." It was a fact that every time Hebert had complained about them, it hadn't been hard to counter-complain, with their voices drowning hers out. If she actually started getting violent with them in Sophia's absence, they could maybe even get her expelled. Emma would have to be happy about that, whenever she returned to Winslow.

That Emma would be returning to Winslow was something Madison maintained as a matter of faith. Between her own strong will and her lawyer dad, nothing ever kept her down for long.

The classroom door opened, and Hebert strolled in. Madison pretended to be in close conversation with Julia, while they both covertly observed her. Come on, don't look. Just sit down.

When Hebert dropped her backpack alongside the desk, Madison felt an inner squee of malicious joy. It's working, it's working! But then Hebert grabbed the chair and took a step over to where Madison was sitting. "Hey, I think you got our chairs mixed up." She spoke in such a frank, disarming tone that Madison was taken totally aback.

"No, Taylor," she began once she'd figured out what to say. It was supposed to be a condescending speech about how that was definitely Hebert's chair, and how she should sit down because class was about to begin, but she never got past the second word.

Between one instant and the next, Hebert's free hand moved, and Madison's wrist was in the grip of what felt like a steel vise. Worse, Hebert was twisting it so that her wrist, elbow and shoulder locked up in direct sequence. Nerves were pinched in a way that sent a cascade of agony up her arm and out into her body. Madison's eyes and mouth opened wide with pain, though her throat closed until her voice was just a tiny squeak. Hebert lifted, and Madison stood up obediently, because she had no desire to make the pain any worse.

Madison was vaguely aware of Hebert pulling one chair out from under her and replacing it with the other, but she absolutely was not paying attention to that, because her entire universe was centred around the white-hot core of searing magma that had replaced the nerves all the way down her left side. Then Hebert guided her down again and released her wrist; the entire ordeal had taken just a few seconds, but twinges of shock were still chasing each other up and down her arm as Hebert took her chair back over to her desk. It was only when Hebert sat down that Madison was able to pay attention to anything other than her arm, and she felt the glue squishing out from under her new denim skirt.

"Thanks, Madison." Hebert smiled and waved. "Much appreciated."

"Mads!" hissed Julia. "What the fuck? Why did you let her take your fucking chair?"

"Ahem." Mr Gladly actually said the word out loud instead of clearing his throat like a normal person. "If I can have your attention, please?"

That was when Madison realised that not one person in the classroom—not Mr G, and not even Julia, who was sitting right beside her—understood what Hebert had done. And now her prank had rebounded on her in full. Instead of inflicting the glue on Hebert, she now had glue all over her own skirt, and everyone would know what had happened when she stood up. And if she didn't stand up now, she'd be glued to the chair by the end of the period.

For the first time ever, she fully understood the meaning of the phrase 'damned if you do, damned if you don't'.

And she hated it.

<><>​

Morrigan

"Well, damn." Leaning back against the wall in Operations, I watch the show while eating gruel. "Kid's got game." The joint-lock is one I recognise; I've used it myself from time to time. Gotta say though, the chair-switch is slickly done, and that's all Taylor Hebert.

Loki rolls his eyes. "Yeah, well, that game's about to come to an end. Bluepills are closing in on her, because someone couldn't spell 'opsec' with three tries and access to a manual of field regs. The PRT's been picking up on the breadcrumbs you've been laying down, and they'll be watching her house as of tonight. On top of which, that gang with the stupid name—Embolism Sixty-Nine or whatever it's called—has kids at school scoping out every girl who looks even vaguely like her. Plus, they're apparently planning some kind of trap for you when you do go out. How are you gonna deal with that, Motormouth?"

"Same way I deal with everyone else who wants to pull shit with me," I retort. "Make 'em regret it so hard they never try it again."

Brave words, I know. Up until now, I've been able to make them work. This time, though, I'm faced with a unique challenge: a Matrix server where I can't just log out to escape my problems.

Step one will be to break protocol just a little, partly because I can, and partly because I love the look of utter bogglement on Loki's face whenever Captain Hornblower okays my latest idea.

<><>​

Winslow Cafeteria

Taylor

For the second day in a row, Taylor was eating lunch in the cafeteria like a normal student, and it felt weird as fuck. Emma wasn't there to trade cutting quips with Madison just loud enough for her to hear, and Sophia wasn't there to upend her food tray when she was distracted by Emma.

Even sitting with her back to the wall, she didn't feel entirely at ease. She was used to being ignored by the rest of the student body—excluding those who were determined to make her life hell, of course—but now she could swear she was being watched by some of the older students. The weirdest thing was, she was pretty sure she'd never even interacted with them before. She sure as hell didn't know their names.

Wards, she decided. They have to be Wards. It seemed that her father's prediction of the PRT putting people in the school had been right on the money.

Should I make eye contact and show that I'm onto them, or pretend total unawareness and try to convince them that I'm not Morrigan? It was a tricky question, and one that she was entirely unequipped to answer.

At that moment, a phone rang in her backpack, startling the crap out of her. Wait, did one of them slip a phone into my bag when I wasn't looking? It struck her as something a super-powered kid might do.

Picking the pack up, she searched it for the source of the sound, finally locating it in one of the side pockets. The second surprise came when she pulled it out; it was an odd-looking model, identical to the one Morrigan used. Okay, now I've got zero idea of what's going on. Frowning, she flicked it open and held it to her ear. "Uh … hello?"

"Hey, Taylor." It was Morrigan's voice, brisk and cheerful as ever. "Had to bend protocol a bit for this, but I needed to talk to you directly and I figured this would be less disruptive to your day than if I jumped into your head and wrote you a note."

"Ah." Taylor blinked as she assimilated this. "Okay, so … you're aware that I'm currently being eyeballed by some people I'm fairly sure are Wards, right?"

"Hah, nope. They're not Wards. Those are Empire Eighty-Eight kids. Well, their parents are Empire, but you get what I mean. Seems Kaiser's passed word to look for girls of your basic description."

"Ah." That put a whole new (and somewhat terrifying) complexion on the matter. With a supreme effort of will, she restrained herself from either hiding under the table, bolting from the room, or looking directly at any of the people covertly observing her. "What do I do?"

"Right now, Kaiser's just got them collecting names, so you don't do anything that might make you stand out from anyone else." Morrigan sounded as serious as she ever got. "That includes not kicking their asses, no matter how tempting it might be."

"Right. Got it. Don't kick their asses." Taylor figured she could handle that part. "Was there anything else?"

"Yeah, actually. The PRT's put your house under surveillance, and the Empire's planning a trap for us tonight. This whole gathering-names thing is in case that doesn't work out. I gotta say, Kaiser's thorough as fuck."

"Um …" This was sounding more problematic by the second. "A trap …?"

Morrigan actually laughed. "Don't worry. We got this. Letting them set a trap for me is the best way I know of for them to willingly get together so I can kick their asses all at once."

Taylor would have protested at this point, but she'd seen Morrigan in action. "Okay, but what about the other thing?"

"Oh, the PRT surveillance? That's easily dealt with. So, when you get home, this is what I want you to do …"



End of Part Twenty