2.2 Broken state of Shadow Stalker

Or
How I humanized the bitch and then told her about Eidolon

We ended up waiting for the kid to wake up and the big kid to come back.

Sophia cleaned her plate like she was starving to death and I was feeling whatever she did, so my mood gradually upped and she felt less tired and more inclined to talk about her brother. Well, I better never asked about him, that made her moderately angry.

The guy was a big kid as I already said, but that was obvious. I wasn’t going to say shit like “at his age I was already...” because of different circumstances, worlds and all that. I’m not a stupid ass, I’m quite a smart ass, and if you don’t praise yourself, who’d do that instead? So, yes, I’m an ass but smart one and I really wanted some action so I started with asking Stalker what she wanted to do after she feeds the little one.

I was all for visiting Downtown and Boardwalk, but she didn’t see any reason for her to disrupt her initial training regimen and doingnothingness after it's done. No Emma or other friends for today.

The kid’s pretty antisocial deep inside, so she doesn’t like all her weekend invaded by someone else’s whims and wills. And Emma’s exactly like that - somehow pretty and adorably cunning invader who likes things that Sophia just tolerates at best. But she's popular and wealthy and indebted. So, it's safe. Cold blooded and calculated but I expected nothing else...

I should stop reading her mind, really.

She doesn’t see Emma wrong and I do, but I don’t know a girl for real, so I have to make my own opinion without flashes of Sophia’s quite dulled care about that girl. Not as sociopathic as I thought her be, then.

All that arguing was basically about me getting to know the city and her unwillingnes to sate my curiosity. I was pretty much restless and she definitely had nothing to do today so why not?

It grew into a heated argument because I really ached for some action as her power nagged me, and then nagged me again and again. Sophia stopped disturbing the airflow in the room with her complaints when she understood that she’s arguing with that same air around her and can’t hit me in the face. Her fists were clenching and unclenching, jaw tight, so I gathered she seemed to think of violence.

Well, she fumed but couldn’t do anything with me being very much interested in the most famous places of Brockton Bay. We’d have to survive here, even try to prosper while it's still possible, and I don’t have all the access to her life and I don’t think I want this access at all. Apparently, it causes merging with her on some deep level and it would be great if I could avoid it as long as I’m able to. Forever, if I have any say in what’s gonna happen.

Don’t want to get into that shit, better just watch, really. Not my adventure, like, at all. Golden shit might hit the fan anytime if we butterfly anything, and there’s no Khepri yet.

The Universe apparently has no tankreds to endure the Scion, and Taylor Hebert right now is everything but her own canonical Tankred. Or Skitter for that matter.

Oh, well, these people are probably unaware of Warhammer 40k and I should refrain from even thinking of gods of Chaos. After all, I’m here in the Wormverse, for fucks sake. If it exists, I gather all the fiction shit might exist as well. So, no way I’m gonna say any sayings like “Blood for the blood God” even if it’s quite familiar for me to joke around that oldfag thingy. All that shit might end up in those ears whose owner no one ever want to notice nearby. I mean, who in their right mind ever wants Khorn to hear’em? Eh, I might know one dude out there who really needs that kind of audience, name’s Scion, but I doubt the aftermath would be better than the original Golden Morning.

Somehow I felt the deja vu feeling when I was thinking about Warhammer.

"Alright then."

I decided to tone it down and stop the argument.

"Are you eager to face the apocalypse unprepared, Sophia?"

"No?"

It was the right answer but it wasn't the right tone.

"Say it like you mean it! Why do you think they treat Empire 88 or other villainous groups that aren't moral at all with kids gloves? They think it will help them when the golden Apocalypse hits. Well, it will actually help but at what cost?"

"They will be the one to survive, those who are stronger are always..."

"They'll just get lucky. The golden boy misses them when he strikes and so they are lucky not strong. You cannot be stronger than the first hero."
I said it with sarcasm and would've airquoted it if I could.

"He is the source of powers."

"Fuck it sideways, why me!"

She groaned and put her face on her fists on the table.

"Why the fuck it's me who gets her ass blasted with that impossible info?! I can't believe it! I don't really think I can prove it without shitting on any survival instincts I still have enabled!"

"Everything screams you to run. You want to. But you can't. It's knowledge, not Lung. You are unable to run from knowledge."

"I still want to forget it, whatever you say."

She sighed and thought of her dear brother Terry who'd be the best in delivering any death sentences, so they come when you're already old and tired of living.

The little one has to wake up to make things move faster. That's her exact thought.

"What that means by the way? Are you going to..."

"I'm gonna do what you said, show you Brockton and all that..."

She felt tired again but that was somehow harsher than before.

"It's pretty much depressing to know I have to, as you say it, bully someone just to make them trigger right. I see it as showing her where's her real place in that world, educational really."

She snorted and shrugged.

"I never even hit her properly. It feels like she’s to thin to survive it. Not that I don't believe you, I might've come up with that bullying campaign you're thinking when you told me about Hebert triggering, but I really have better things to do than plan whatever that was… is… would've been."

"So… you don't think I'm accurate or what? I told you what I've read!"

She didn’t answer my question, but she didn’t need to. She thought it wasn’t what might have happened, and I thought that it could’ve happened if she had no other things to do and nowhere to burn off her steam. And, well, she was that same bitch who didn't feel bad about "showing someone their place".

"So, what if I say I'm going on a tour with you and in exchange you tell me everything you know about what might happen. You'll do it very fuckin’ slow and detailed, and I'm gonna write it down so I know what the actual fuck is happening!"

"I have a better idea. We'll make a really huge chart and you'll need a program for it… or A1 sheet of paper. Why's that you or your family never needed a PC before?"

"Boring adult you are, with your charts and programs" - she scoffed and answered my question about PC. - "It's not that common and not that cheap."

"No kongo almost slaves, I got it."

And, well, I really got it but she didn't. So, I felt a spike of rage in her chest and I cursed my wording. She was angry because of cultural misunderstanding.

"Meaning what, you fucker, what slaves?!"

"Whoah, calm down! It's about that shit you need for making some parts of computer or tablet or cell! I'm kinda fond of reading business and financial analytics journals, that's very useful for analysing whatever happens around or in the news on the other side of the world. News manipulate us and all that, and I don't like to be manipulated so I really feel better if I gather data and get to the answer myself. Masochistic, but my brain loves the exercise. So, Sophie, you do understand that cheap labor is profitable and all the corporations that need it don't mind using it. Especially when the production is corrupting the ecology, so their own people would reap their throats out for poisoning their children. Not literally, but that's not the point. So we usually joke around the slave theme when it comes up in the conversation, nothing special really. Cheap labour is almost like slavery, and we have nothing to do with what happened in the past because most of us are descendants of those slaves or slavers or both and it doesn't matter because of the USSR. Believe it or not, I had no real knowledge of Martin Luther King movement until I was your age and we touched the subject on history class. So I never thought I have to bear any hard feelings on that matter and I really didn't think that anything I say might be offensive."

"It didn't sound like referring to whatever economical shenanigans…"

"It's called globalisation." - I joked but apparently there was no word for that process here and she didn't get it.

"Okay, it wasn't that for me. I saw it as you were referring to some black people in Kongo as almost slaves. That's what I call nazi bullshit and you never do it again."

"I'm kinda thinking here, remember?! I don't think I would've told you anything like that with, you know, my own tongue, mouth and all."

She was ready to have my ass handed to me, or to attempt to, but the arrival of her long gone brother stopped her in her tracks and she suddenly remembered that she can't hand my ass to anyone.

Her thought processes are funny and I definitely can see her bullying Taylor because no one she had any reason to respect ever told her that's unacceptable and not only told her, but made her stop once, thrice, and had any care about her's or Taylor's wellbeing.

It's hardly a secret that not only the bullied suffers personally from the process of bullying but all the bullies as well even those who just stand by and let it happen. Teenagers only look like young adults but their brains and psyche aren't.

I was teacher for one and half year. The student I knew as the guy who had horrible memory with dates but he was never shy to answer what he knew and was quite positive at it, ended up being bullied. I gathered that much when I stumbled upon other kids beating shit out of him.

Apparently, that kid thought if his parents won't care why would teachers, almost strangers, care? His father told him just to man up and hit back and, well, that's the time when the boy did hit back.

Bullying works like real life sometimes.

You don't hit neonazi scum when they are together, you hit em when they're alone…

Oops, I did it again. That's her shadowing out of me, and I don't really want that to happen.

Well, the girl is funny and has a head on her shoulders at least about money and her early emancipation and whatever she does on cape scene didn't make her crippled yet. That's what I would've done with the money if I wanted my family as far from the cape scene as possible. As far from me as possible, too.

Sophia was cold-bloodied in one thing and hot-headed in other - pretty much human and even understandable. I mean, her power is a nagging piece of crap, and I have the pleasure to feel it on my virtual spiritual skin all the time I'm here.

So, the only thing I must admit about myself and all the changes in my opinion on the matter, I got achievement unlocked - the huge bitch, who made Taylor's life hell, that huge bitch - successfully humanized.

***

The TV was on, and it was the morning show.

I thought they usually talk about health and children on weekend morning shows, but this one was about how capes must work with hero organisations instead of being rogues. I know nothing about the USA television broadcast but that seems a bit harsh to talk about when it's a sunny Saturday morning. As sunny as it can be in Brockton Bay, really.

“Well, Sophie, that’s something straight out of cat’s life, apparently.”

I just had to comment their opinion. Almost everyone was saying the same thing but differently. Go to Protectorate for help, don't be pendejos.

“What do ya mean, cats?”

She muttered that question under her nose because her brother might hear her, he was putting scrambled eggs on his plate. She poured cherry coke into the glass. Where did she get it? The answer is - someone is adorable and that was unexpected.

When her brother came back he knew that she'd be angry for him wasting more than hour on buying milk. He knew that even before he came back, that's why he didn't even put his jacket off when he already handed her the bottle while saying "you're grumpy today, so cherry up." Sophia felt warmth then and smiled at him, even if her initial wish was to hit his shoulder and tell him he's an idiot. That made me choke on whatever witty thing I wanted to say - her brother was kinda awesome and she thought just that. I never had one, so I thought the same.

Terry thanked her for food and went to his room with his plate. That made me free to talk again and make it a dialogue not a monologue. The first thing she asked was something very much trivial and no less frightening.

“I don’t really drink from glasses. Why did I even decide to pull it out and drink out of it?”

“Well, that’s my fault, I guess. If I have a cup to drink from, I’ll use it. Even if it’s fuckin’ Redbull, really. “

“What the hell is Redbull… oh, okay, we don’t have that one here. Many others caffeine drinks at our service, no reason to worry really. How do you think I'm still alive?“

“It’s sugar that does the deed, not caffeine. Even coke looks up on Redbull if we talking about sugar. And it’s austrian, so I suppose when…For that matter just let me make a citation of my favourite man Roger Zelazny out of his Trumps of Doom I reread just before I appeared in your walnut-sized brain. When the most recent fecal missile met the rotating blades… I mean, when the fallen angel arrived in Switzerland, countries nearby were apparently a little bit butterflied.“

“Fecal missile, huh,” - she mirthlessly chuckled and got back to her previous question. - “So, what’s with cats?”

“They tend to shove their shit under the rug and pretend it doesn’t stink. That’s what cats do. That’s what empowered people in your country do. I don’t mean anything when I say it about your country, so don’t even start on me being russian and shitting on democracy here, okay?”

“I didn’t…”

“So then, don’t. American high horse fuckin’ disturbs me in any world my consciousness is, so sorry if I stumbled upon your thought process and caught you thinking I don’t like your country because I’m russian.”

“You do understand that I know about your country two things for sure. Their mafia have the child slave trafficking in Anchorage. That was on the news, one of the operations of the local Protectorate that went good. And the second thing is they apparently don’t fight each other if they are criminals, or whatever. I was interested in cape scene when I triggered. You know the Internet, one leads to another and so on...”

“Oh, I know, and it’s even worse when you have your own laptop. So, I’ve read about the last one when I got to reading the wiki on Wormverse, that's how we call it. I remember nothing about what really matters, but damn it’s hard to forget how that guy who wrote the thing, McCrae or Wildbow, captured what any sane person would’ve done for making real use of parahumans while not being one and not letting them band up into something as powerful as Protectorate is. Fuck it, Alexandria herself is a chief-director of PRT, how’s that good? Well, it is good for her and the power she has over everyone, but really I prefer honest to god criminal code for criminals and elimination of all threats to society by all parahumans involved than all that brainwashing with heroics you get here. One more thing, could you even imagine that Eidolon is the one who created Endbringers because he needed worthy opponents and was fucking bored out of his ass?”

She wasn’t speaking and her thoughts went numb. How to undone what I said? My monologue was too overwhelming, I see.

I think I broke her.

Figures.

She didn't even gulp her coke down.