Upon This Star (Worm Semi-SI CYOA-based)

[Swordchucks]

I fumbled the phone to my ear and mumbled the groggiest of hellos.

"Danny, please tell me ya know somewhere uptown I can hide out!"

Sherrel. The voice on the other end of the line was Sherrel. I looked down at my phone and realized that I'd picked up dad's by mistake. Given that they were almost identical, it had been a natural mistake.

"Sherrel?" I asked. My brain was still catching up, but the tone of her voice was making it hurry. Dad was fumbling for his glasses and turning on the light. "What's wrong?"

"Uh, Taylor! Can ya put ya dad on?" she asked, her voice coming just a little too high pitched and fast to be natural, even for her.

"Taylor?" dad mumbled as he swung his legs over the side of the hotel bed and sat up.

"Here he is." I shrugged and handed the phone over. Dad put it to his ear.

"Sherrel?" he asked after a moment. "Calm down. You're where? Harlem? And who is after you? But why? I can call the police- okay, okay, I won't call the police. I'll… I'll figure something out and call you back."

He ended the call and clenched his eyes closed for a moment before opening them again and trying to look more awake.

"Dad? What's going on?" I asked. Dad was clearly reeling.

"Sherrel's in Harlem. She was apparently doing some street racing for a friend of hers - their car, not her truck. She won, but the other guys tried to rob her instead of paying up – I think. I'm not too clear on that part. In any case, there was a fight and her car got trashed. Now she's on the run. There's apparently a gang involved."

I was a little surprised at how not surprised I was. Sherrel was trying to reform, but I doubted she really knew how to reform. Street racing for cash fit her skillset perfectly, and while it wasn't exactly legal, it wasn't supervillain stuff, either. The fact that it ended badly also fit everything I knew about her perfectly, too.

"I've got the phone numbers of a couple of Wards, but I don't know them well enough to ask them to help her without also calling the police," I admitted. "Same for the Protectorate numbers, I guess."

Dad frowned. "She really didn't want us to call the cops, but the problem is that it's at least forty miles from here. It'd take a long time in the middle of the day, but the trains barely run at night, so it'll take forever to get there that way."

I considered it. Forty miles would take me more than an hour - maybe two - with a combination of web swinging and just flat-out running. The biggest problem with that plan was that I wouldn't exactly have a way to transport Sherrel when I got there. Plus the whole 'outing myself as a cape' thing.

"Did she say where her truck is?" I asked.

"No, but probably not too close or she would have mentioned it." He ran his hands through his hair nervously as he considered our limited options for helping. "I guess… well, we don't have a car, but your Gram does."

I frowned. "That's… Dad, it's the middle of the night and she's like seventy."

"She's not that old. And… if you make the call, I'm sure she'd agree to come help."

I hesitated. "Are you sure this is a good idea? We could still just call the cops. Isn't street racing just a ticket and a fine or something?"

Dad shifted uncomfortably. "Sherrel might have a couple of warrants out there."

It was my turn to sigh heavily. "Of course she does." I fumbled for my phone. "This is a terrible idea."

I made the call anyway, and Gram seemed surprisingly eager to help. I didn't want her getting into any danger, so getting me close enough to Spider-Taylor the rest of the way would be good enough. With that in mind, I put on my costume and covered it with my winter coat, just like I did back home. When spring hit, I was going to have to find a different technique, but for now it worked great.

Gram made surprisingly good time, and she pulled up in front of our hotel in a dark sedan much faster than I would have thought possible. I hopped in the front seat and gave her a quick hug.

"Thanks, Gram. We didn't know who else to call."

The older woman gave me a small smile. "You can always call on me when you need help, Taylor. No matter what it is. Absolutely anything." Then she turned back to the car and put it into drive. "Now, where are we going?"

Gram was a fast driver but not in the same way that Sherrel was a fast driver. Sherrel was wild and reckless while Gram was almost as fast but in a very controlled way. She took turns using the handbrake and I found out that 'drifting' felt a lot more disconcerting than movies and video games led me to believe. I had to force myself to let go of the armrest when I heard it creaking under my grip.

In the back seat, dad stayed connected with Sherrel via cell phone. She had to stay on the move because the area had been blocked off by gangs that were hunting her.

As we went uptown, the city started to gradually change from the shining downtown area to something that might have been more at home in the Bay - just taller. As we crossed 117th street, we were nearly run over by a car doing a hurried three-point turn in the middle of the street and going back the way we had come. As it got out of the way, it was easy to see why. The road ahead had was blocked by trash and cars, which were now a burning barricade. There was a gap in the middle big enough to put a car through, but it was guarded by a couple of men with obvious weapons in hand. They looked like they were on their way to an edgelord convention with all of the spikes and hooks they could possibly sew to their leather clothing.

"Oh, dear," Gram said as she peered over the wheel. She didn't sound particularly upset, just mildly annoyed. "Looks like the Teeth are back in town."

My heart sank at the mention of one of the most notorious street gangs in New England. The Teeth were violent, aggressive, and transient - which was, in some ways, their worst trait. They used to menace Brockton Bay before they got run off years ago. Now, they nipped at the fringes of New York and Boston. They showed up, menaced an area for a while, then moved on. The fact that they didn't try to hold territory for long made stamping them out very difficult.

"You can just drop me off here, Gram. I think I saw a way around them I can take, but it'll have to be on foot." I didn't want Gram getting hurt, and it would be relatively trivial to climb a building and evade them. I could pick up Sherrel, carry her out, and meet back up with the car somewhere safe.

"Nonsense! Taylor, get in the glove box and get me my nine."

For a long beat, I stared at Gram, not quite comprehending what she'd just said.

"Come on. Not the revolver, the semi-auto one."

Moving on autopilot, I opened the glovebox. Indeed, there were two guns inside the glove box, along with a wicked knife about the length of my forearm and a couple of spare magazines loaded with ammunition. I picked up the requested gun and ignored a weird feeling in the back of my head as I passed it over to Gram.

"There we go," she said as she checked the weapon over with a practiced ease. "I'd rather have a shotgun for something like this, but that's really awkward while you're driving. Now, let's ask the nice young men to get out of our way."

//\\o//\\

"Taylor, honey, hold the wheel steady," Gram asked as she rolled down the window and popped her seat belt.

"I thought you were going to ask them to move?" I asked as I put my hand on the wheel as requested.

"I am, but this is the kind of question you don't ask with words." She twisted around so that she was leaning half out the window and still somehow managed to get her foot on the gas pedal. The car lurched forward with a squeal of tires, and about halfway to the barricade, Gram's gun barked four times.

Audacity did have its place on the battlefield because I barely felt a tingle of danger from the gang members as we barreled toward them. I was a little too focused on keeping the wheel steady and my head down to see exactly what happened, but the bright light of fire went past our windows and we were clear.

Moving almost casually, Gram settled back into the driver's seat and took the wheel as she eased off the gas and I dared to look in the sideview mirror. I didn't see much interesting except the retreating roadblock, still blazing in the dark.

"I hate being old. I don't think I got a single one of them," she grumbled as she took a sharp turn and then turned into an alleyway, shutting her lights off and putting the car into park. "Back in my prime, it would have been headshots all around."

"I thought you were just trying to scare them out of the way," I admitted.

"You never shoot to scare someone, Taylor," Gram told me seriously. "Well, not if they have a gun of their own. If you're going to shoot someone, it's always to kill."

I hoped she was joking, but Gram didn't really joke and I was too afraid to ask more questions.

"Now, where is this friend of yours hiding out?" She changed the subject so naturally that I somehow doubted what I had just seen with my own eyes.

It took dad a few seconds to recover enough to spit out the last address he got from Sherrel. "Said she's on the top floor, front side, and they're going door to door looking for her."

"Not too far, and we're even in the right block. I guess I'll get to break out the fun stuff, after all," Gram said with a smile as turned off the car and climbed out. Some frantic mania made me follow her out and around to the trunk.

Inside, there were a couple of black cases, each long enough to hold a rifle. "You do much shooting, dear?"

"No," I said as the surreal situation just kept getting more surreal.

"Here you go, then," she popped open one case and pulled out a matte black pump-action shotgun with a shoulder strap. She produced another box and started loading ammo into it. "This one packs a bit of a kick, but you don't have to be that practiced to use it. Just make sure you want to kill whoever is in front of you if you pull the trigger and keep the safety on until you do."

"I don't need a gun," I said, a little desperation creeping into my voice.

"Nonsense," Gram declared and pressed it into my hands. "Teeth are anarchist vermin, dear. They would happily murder you and everyone you love if given half a chance. Exterminating them is practically a public service."

A part of me - the part of me that knew I was capable of murdering a baby if it was the right thing to do - had a moment where it realized where I got it from. Amy was going to have a field day with this information if I ever told her about it.

"Okay," I said numbly, not intending to actually use the gun but also not wanting to argue with Gram. I felt that tingle again. Those strange memories wanted to pour forth, but I was pretty sure that letting them in would make me end up naked. Again. I pushed them back down.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" dad asked, finally making himself known outside the car. He looked pale and I could tell that his hands were shaking.

"No one is forcing you to come with us," Gram said, the kindness she'd been showing me wilted in an instant, replaced by an icy coolness. "It'll be a nice chance for my granddaughter and I to bond."

"No, I'll go," dad hurriedly declared, though I could tell he wasn't sold on the idea.

"I suppose you're useless with a gun?" Gram asked in that same cold tone.

"I used to target shoot," dad defended weakly. I couldn't remember the last time he went and I didn't even think that there was a gun in the house anymore.

"Then get that revolver out of the glovebox and come on," she declared. Her own handgun vanished into a holster at her side as she opened the other case and pulled out a compact rifle with a forward-curved magazine and a thick barrel. It looked like something out of a movie.

"Like it?" she asked when she saw me eyeing the weapon. "We started seeing these just before I had to come back stateside, then I got pregnant with your mom and had to give up field work. By the time I got back into fighting shape, things were different and they turned me into a desk jockey. So much paperwork." She sighed as her hands ran over the gun. "Things are so much easier when you can just put your problems into a shallow grave."

"Are you sure about leaving the car?" I asked as we started down the alley. Apparently, we just needed to go down and cut through a cross alley to be behind the building Sherrel was in.

Gram shrugged. "It will be fine. It's stolen, anyway."

I stumbled. "Stolen?"

Gram shot me a look, but then directed a colder one to Danny. "Your mother didn't teach you how to hotwire cars? I know it's getting harder with the new security systems, but every girl should learn."

Danny seemed to wither under her gaze. "Annette and I agreed to wait until she was sixteen before we had that conversation. We tried to teach her how to make a Moltov cocktail when she was twelve, but she wasn't interested."

It was my turn to give dad a wide-eyed look. I didn't remember that. Wait, no… I sort of did remember that. We'd spent a day at the boat graveyard and I'd been too distracted by the fact that Emma had her first modeling gig to pay attention. What else had I missed?

"Always a rebel," Gram mumbled. "Even when her rebellion was being a square." She sighed again and stood up straighter. "Well, enough of that. Let's go kick some Teeth in."

When did Gram get witty one-liners? Today was so confusing.

//\\o//\\

The gun was heavy, not that it weighed me down very much with my newfound strength, but it had a kind of metaphorical weight to it. In some ways, my bare hands were more dangerous. Actually, in most ways my bare hands were more dangerous. Even my webshooters could be more deadly if I used them in the right ways.

However, there was just something about the purity of purpose in a gun that made it feel like a bigger deal. Unlike my hands and webs, the shotgun I was cradling in my arms was meant for only one thing, and that was propelling a person-destroying bit of metal - or multiple bits of metal, depending on what Gram had loaded it with - at high speed into someone or something with the intention of destroying it.

Dad and I had pretty much given Gram the lead in this operation when we'd been forced to call her. Even with the complications of needing to follow the roads, we'd made it to Harlem in half the time it would have taken me on foot. Given what else I'd seen, I had a feeling that she'd also probably have a good idea of how we could get away at the end.

My brain still hadn't entirely caught up to the reality of Gram being… whatever she was, though. She'd mentioned a desk job and shallow graves. That wasn't a combination that normally went together.

As we got to the last corner, Gram peered around it and then pulled back to us.

"There's one sentry, watching the fire escape." She turned her gaze to me. "Do you hear anything, Taylor?"

I strained my ears, but I did pick up on something. "Yeah, banging. Yelling, too. They're knocking in doors, maybe?"

"That's what it sounds like," Gram agreed and favored me with a small smile. We were apparently bonding. "And what does that mean?"

I thought about it for a second. "Well, possible collateral damage if shooting starts," I said. That was my main worry. I was carrying the gun as a peace offering to Gram - as ironic as it was that a gun was a peace offering - but I really didn't want to kill anyone with it. "And it means they're pretty sure they know which building she is in but not where, exactly?"

"See? You have good instincts." Gram smiled wider. "Now, how do we get to our target knowing the inside is crawling with Teeth and there's a sentry on the fire escape?"

I had a sinking feeling I knew where this was going as the answer was almost certainly not 'climb straight up the other side of the building'. "Neutralize the sentry."

Dad made a small, helpless noise as Gram smiled and nodded. "That's my girl. Now, your old Gram doesn't have as much dexterity as she used to, but I think I can still manage this. What you want to do with a sentry, is come up behind them and get your hand over their mouth, nice and tight. Then," she produced a knife from somewhere. It wasn't the oversized monstrosity from before, but a narrower blade. "You jam a knife like this into their abdomen, just under the ribs and go up. You want to pierce a lung or his heart. If you don't get it on the first go, you just give it another try. Then hold on with your other arm till they stop moving."

My eyes must have been huge with the idea that Gram was planning to execute a guy for the crime of watching an alleyway. Well, he was also a member of the Teeth, which was a group that didn't really have any innocents in it, but he was just the lookout. "I have a friend that made me some Tinkertech," I blurted instead of what I was really thinking. Outing myself to Gram, even a little, was better than watching her murder a guy.

"Oh? Disintegration ray? Immolation beam?" Gram guessed, looking quite interested.

"N-no, it just makes sticky stuff, but I can use it to tie him up," I supplied.

Gram looked disappointed. "Well, do you think you can pull it off? The other Teeth aren't exactly listening, but if he starts shouting, it's going to turn into a fight."

"I can do it," I declared with more confidence than I really felt. Well, I did have some confidence that I could subdue the guy without killing him. It was the part where I stopped him from yelling – or actually killed him – that I was more concerned with.

Gram nodded. "Then show old Gram how it's done, alright?"

"Okay," I said as I sidled around her. I hesitated and then pushed the shotgun into her hands. I would feel better without it, if only because it would stop that buzzing of foreign memories from poking at me.

I glanced around the corner and caught sight of the guy. He leaned against a dumpster with a cigarette in his hand as he kept an eye on the fire escape much more dutifully than I would have expected, though I supposed that gang members in the Teeth that didn't follow orders didn't stay in the Teeth for long. Or alive.

I took a steadying breath as I waited for him to take a drag on the cigarette. I started moving, as quiet as a ghost. My spider-instincts came with a heaping helping of stealth skills, after all.

He let out the breath, making a bit of a shape out of the smoke plume. It also marked the point when he had the least breath in his lungs. I scuffed my foot enough to make a noise. He turned to look at me only to get his mouth plastered in webbing a second before I grabbed him and hauled him bodily back around the corner. I then webbed him entirely to the wall.

He had barely managed to make a sound and was definitely out of the action for a few hours.

I turned to find Gram watching me with slightly narrowed eyes. "Just a friend with Tinkertech, eh?"

I shuffled my feet uncomfortably as I realized that I'd just hauled a guy that had to weigh at least half-again as much as me down an alleyway with one arm and then held him against a wall - with one hand - while sticking him there with the other.

"Not the time for this," Danny said, becoming the voice of reason one more time. "Unless you want to have to kill the witness."

Or, maybe, the insanity was catching.

Spoiler: Notes

I'm off on vacation next week and probably won't be posting more parts of this story till the week after. I have a couple more in the can, but in anticipation for my trip, I've moved writing over to a different project because this story takes too much research to do without internet access.

 

[CrimsonIR]

I really like this version of Taylor's family. Surprisingly amazing!

 

[Kuriboh1233]

I can see the reason Butcher named the base the Teeth. Grams probably knocked some teeth outta Butcher 1 and he got inspired.

 

[Kraise]

O,O

This is amazing hahahaha, Miss Militia Grandma is inspired. Thumbs up all the way.

 

[Nadorai]

Oh wow, is it too late for Taylor to adopt a different Cape name?
Granma Training Montage when?
"Spider-Woman? No no, dearie. Too generic. How about Black Widow, much more femme-fatal and it really tells the boys you mean business."

 

[Xentiz]

Absolutely adore Grams. What on earth was she!? Hitman!? Spec-Ops!?

In other news, I just found this fic today and absolutely binged it- I regret nothing. Can't wait for future updates, this is rapidly becoming one of my more well-liked AU's out there!

It only needs more Amy (since Lisa isn't in the picture and Vicky is sadly -still- with Dean in this AU) and it'd shoot up in my personal rankings *nods*.

 

[Katalyxt]

Gram is a riot! Taylor could certainly learn a few things lol

 

[Swordchucks]

Since I was no longer as concerned about hiding my powers from Gram - at least, not entirely - getting up to the fire escape was easy enough. The last ten feet or so required a ladder to be lowered, which was easily solved by pulling a rusted lever loose. The riskiest part of the whole thing was making sure not to snap the lever.

Well, that and enduring the screeching noise it made when it lowered. Fortunately, no one came to investigate.

From there, we quickly ascended, doing our best not to be in front of windows longer than we needed to be, until we were at the top floor.

"Alright, so this is the dangerous part," Gram whispered to us quietly as we crouched outside the last set of windows. "We don't know who is inside. They probably aren't Teeth - I don't think they've gotten up this far, yet - but they might have a gun and not take kindly to us breaking into their place. To them, we're burglars, so they might try to take us out. We need-"

"Why don't we just go over?" I whispered back, pointing toward the roof. It was a good bit above where we were crouching, but I could get us up with only minimal effort. It was barely any farther than the jump to the fire escape had been. "I think there are fire escapes on the front side, too. We could just go up, over, and back down?"

Gram stared at me for a long moment. "Capes cheat," she grumbled. "Alright, so new plan. Danny, where is your friend hiding? See if she can get to a fire escape."

That part of the plan went off without a problem. I did a delicate, almost slow-motion hop with a parent under one arm and a grandparent under the other, and we skulked our way across the rooftop before peering over the other edge. A few minutes of dad texting back and forth later, Sherrel waved her hand out of a window.

We had another brief huddle on the roof as we talked about options. The safer solution would be for me to go down and get Sherrel before all of us going back across the roof and down the far fire escape – or, even better, we could cross to a different building and use that fire escape. Unfortunately, that required me to be willing to out myself to Sherrel, and I just couldn't bring myself to trust her, even if she was doing her best to reform. The other option was for me to lower Dad and Gram to the fire escape out of Sherrel's line of sight and for all of us to go down the front of the building. That's what we eventually settled on.

I let Dad and Gram down and then joined them. As I did so, Sherrel finished climbing through the window and I found myself feeling a pang of guilt. The look of pure relief on Sherrel's face at our arrival made me feel bad for doubting her. She had a cut over one eye and one of her cheeks was swelling into what would no doubt be a magnificent bruise in short order, and she looked exhausted. She started to say something, but Gram shushed her and pointed toward the street. That was the last thing 'said' before we started our descent.

Things went perfectly all the way up until they didn't. About halfway down the fire escape, the sound of squealing tires alerted us to more gang members arriving in a beaten up old pickup truck that swayed its way around the corner like it was overloaded. If we had been luckier, they wouldn't have spotted us, and we could have gotten inside one of the apartments for cover.

We weren't that lucky.

There was yelling as more people than should have been possible boiled out of the truck and someone started shooting at us. Even worse, some of the gang members from inside the building started running out to help, and our complete lack of cover meant we were doomed if we didn't do something.

"I'll distract them," I declared as I wrenched open the nearest window – heedless of the fact that it had been locked - for the others to dive through before pulling up my mask from under my jacket and diving off the fire escape. Someone - probably dad - tried to stop me, but I wasn't really listening at that point.

The fact that I had just impulsively outed myself to Squealer despite deciding that I really didn't want to do that only a few minutes beforehand wasn't lost on me.

Fortunately, my dive achieved my primary goal of drawing the attention of the gang and along with it their poorly aimed gunfire. When I didn't splatter on the pavement, there were several cries of 'cape' and they attempted to shoot me more. Also fortunately, Spider-reflexes were no joke, and I twisted and dodged without getting hit for the few seconds it took for things to change entirely.

"Good, I was getting bored," a deep voice rumbled loud enough to cut through the other shouting and occasional gunshot. With some dread, I realized that the back of the pickup truck hadn't been empty. Instead, an oversized person in equally oversized Teeth garb stood up and stepped out of the back of the truck to the street with a loud thud followed by the groaning of the truck's suspension finally being relieved of their weight. Whereas most Teeth contented themselves with collecting eyes, ears, teeth, and fingers from their victims, the big guy had gone all in on skulls and whole limbs. It was genuinely intimidating, though I didn't let it get to me.

"Who are you supposed to be?" I asked as I almost negligently webbed a couple of gang members to each other with their weapons pointed toward nothing important.

"I'm the one that's going to pull your spine out of your body and feed it to you before you die," he growled and squared up like he was about to enter a sumo match with me. I knew I was strong, but this guy - probably a guy from the voice, but with all that junk he was covered in, I couldn't be sure - was obviously a cape. I'd be shocked if he didn't have a pretty high brute rating.

"That's a really long cape name," I noted. One of the great things about powers that sped up my time perception in combat was that I had a chance to think of witty rejoinders while I was frantically trying to decide how I was going to do this. Dropping him into the sewer would have been ideal, but I didn't see a conveniently placed manhole. I nailed the last two regular Teeth holding guns with webbing, leaving just the big guy and a few others with knives and bats. Unfortunately, more could arrive at any moment. "You'll never sell any merch with a name like that. If you give up the whole murder hobo lifestyle, you should probably work on your branding before anything else."

"Call me Cannonball," he growled in irritation. "Now-" he lurched forward far faster than I had been expecting, but I let my spider-sense guide my steps and I was already moving toward him in a countercharge, "-DIE!"

I jumped and Cannonball sailed past underneath me. Halfway through my path over him, I kicked down and back, using his oversized head as a springboard. I sailed across the street to cling to the wall of the next apartment building somewhere around the third floor.

Cannonball was almost knocked off balance, but he managed to right himself and proceeded to completely ignore the two balls of webbing I tried to use to glue his feet to the ground. Well, he didn't exactly ignore them so much as he tore loose foot-sized chunks of asphalt and smashed it flat with his next steps. I was pretty sure that trying to web him to anything else would end the same way if he had any kind of leverage.

Then he roared again as he charged at my new position. I was too high up for him to reach me, so he slammed into the wall below me. I had to jump away as the brickwork I was clinging to gave way and a significant part of the building's facade collapsed. I suddenly had a really bad feeling about this fight. Not so much for myself, but everyone in the general vicinity.

"Stand STILL!" he screamed at me.

"No!" I screamed back, cartwheeling away and leading him down the street instead of risking him crashing into another building. It limited how I could dodge, but if he collapsed an apartment block and killed a bunch of people, I was pretty sure it would be at least partially my fault.

I just had to figure out how I was going to beat him before he turned me into paste.

//\\o//\\

"Stop that!" I yelled as I grabbed yet another thrown object with webbing and yanked it to a stop before it could crash into an apartment window.

"Then come down here and fight me like a man!" Cannonball yelled as he hefted a dumpster and threw it toward me.

Even out in the middle of the street, it had been a lot easier to dodge his attacks before he realized I cared about collateral damage and started exploiting that. Now, we were just playing a game of catch. Every time he took his eyes off me for a moment, I would retreat farther so he was hesitant to charge any more buildings lest I disappear entirely. Leaving him to rampage on his own was bad, but after several minutes of our destructive stalemate, I wasn't convinced that my presence was making anything better.

However, I had finally managed to maneuver him exactly where I wanted him.

"You asked for it!" I cried as I dove toward him. He raised his arms in a boxing guard, but I tossed out a line of webbing near his feet and yanked to change my trajectory as I got close. With my other arm, I sent out another line of webbing and yanked the manhole cover I had been eyeing free. "Have a nice swim!"

I landed on my hands and then launched myself with all my strength back up at him with my feet poised to deliver a double kick to his chin. I was under his guard and right on target, the attack making him stumble backwards a step just as I had planned.

One of his feet went into the hole and he stumbled, falling.

Then he stopped falling, with one foot still on the pavement and the other in the hole. With a lurch, he pulled himself out of that predicament.

"That was your plan?" he asked with disdain.

"I thought the hole would be bigger. Or your ass would be less fat."

"I'm going to enjoy gutting you, when I get my hands on you," he rumbled as he prepared to charge me again. He was close, so it stood a slightly better chance of catching me, but that chance was still low.

The problem was that while he couldn't hit me, I couldn't really hurt him. He'd taken a full body kick to the chin, and aside from a momentary stumble, he didn't seem to notice. I was rapidly running out of options other than 'run away' and my faint hope that the local Protectorate would show up was fading fast. From the sounds I could hear in the distance, they were probably busy with other Teeth or worse.

"Hey, you ugly piece of shit!"

That had sounded a lot like Gram. We both turned in time to see something bright sailing through the air. I took an instinctive step back, but it hadn't been aimed at me.

The thrown bottle smashed into Cannonball's chest spikes, shattering and sending golden liquid splashing across his body. The flaming rag that had been attached to the bottle impacted the golden liquid an instant later and suddenly Cannonball was very much on fire.

"Holy shit!" I gasped as I discovered that while Cannonball had been very resistant to blunt trauma, he wasn't fireproof. A voice that deep screaming in pain was a distinctly unpleasant sound.

"Get in the car!" That one was dad, waving frantically at me from the passenger seat of the stolen sedan that we had arrived on the scene driving. Gram was already climbing into the far side of the back seat.

I glanced between Cannonball who apparently had the sense to stop drop and roll and the car. The most heroic thing to do would have been to stay and get him medical attention. On the other hand, one of my companions had warrants and we were driving around in a stolen car. Plus, the bad guy was in the Teeth.

I dove for the car without another thought, jumping into the seat beside Gram and yanking the door closed behind me.

"Drive!" dad yelled, though it was unnecessary. Sherrel put the pedal down and we were soon rocketing off into the night. We didn't even slow down for the apparently abandoned flaming barricade as she put us straight between the cars at high speed.

"See, Taylor? That's why we learn to make Moltov cocktails," Gram said with no small amount of self-satisfaction as she slumped against the far door. "Gram's getting too old for this kind of stuff."

"T-thanks," I managed as I pulled my mask down and pushed a few strands of sweat-soaked hair away from my face. The adrenaline had already started to fade a little, but given that Sherrel was driving, it didn't fade all that much.

Gram patted me on the knee. "You should have told me you were a cape, dear. There were all sorts of better plans we could have used from the start."

I shrugged and looked away for a second, feeling a bit of guilt. "You could have told us that you used to be… whatever that was."

"Touche," Gram said, but she was smiling. "I used to work for the CIA, fighting the good fight. Well, that was the propaganda. Even if I was good at my job and enjoyed the work, it wasn't exactly heroic. Still, stemming the tide of Communism was worth it, even if Washington kept tying our hands."

I grimaced at the thought. As Taylor, I'd never learned that much about what the CIA got up to in the Cold War, but other-me had. It wasn't pleasant. "Is that why you and mom never got along?"

"Your mother?" Gram asked, a little puzzled. "No, it had nothing to do with politics - well, it did, but not that way. Your mother was brilliant, but also a naive idealist. I tried to talk some sense into her, but it never took. She couldn't understand that her mother understood perfectly well what it was like to fight for a cause, so she refused to take my advice."

"You mean Lustrum?" I asked, trying to put together the pieces.

"Yes," Gram grumbled. "Can you believe the idiocy of those girls? They were going after rapists and castrating them, which was fine, but they were just leaving them alive! If I told her once, I told her a thousand times - you don't leave witnesses."

Of course she did. "Yeah, that was… silly of her."

Gram nodded. "Of course! I mean, there's value in leaving someone alive as a warning every now and again, but you make damn sure they can't identify you. You don't win a war with half measures, and if you're going to do one, you do the whole village, so the leftovers don't retaliate." I felt a little sick. "When that all blew up in their faces, she decided to run off and shack up with a Unionist. Half a step away from Commies, the lot of them."

From the front seat, dad made a faint noise of disagreement, but didn't say anything. We lapsed into silence after that. Gram was looking out the window with an expression of tired sadness while I was busy trying to completely adjust my worldview.

"I just want to thank ya for savin' me," Sherrel said after a while. We were back on Long Island, somehow, and no cops had run us down. "Jerry, tha bastard, bailed as soon as tha guy we beat in that race started making noises about his gang. I really need tha money, so I stuck around and tried to get him, but then that big bastard smashed in the front of my car. I had to hoof it, and they almost got me."

"Sherrel," I started, but she cut me off.

"Don't worry, I can keep a secret! Ya can trust me! I'm a cape, too, see? A Tinker, though, so I ain't able to just punch my way out of trouble like you." That part came out in a babble and dad gasped softly. I was somewhat surprised he hadn't put it together before then, considering her insane driving was almost certainly power-related.

"Thank you for telling me," I said. "I already knew, though."

"What? You knew?" she asked, turning halfway around in her seat to look at me. Her driving never wavered, though.

I rolled my eyes. "I keep an eye on the cape scene back home, so it's not like it's hard to figure out. Too many coincidences." I hesitated to mention anything specific because I didn't know how public Squealer's cape identity had been. Instead, I took a deep breath. "I think you should join the Protectorate. I know Armsmaster pretty well, and if those warrants aren't for multiple-homicide, I'm sure he can make them go away if you'll work for them. They will probably do a lot more than just that, too."

She turned back to watch the road. "I'll think about it," she said and then the silence returned.

//\\o//\\

"It's only been two days," I grumbled as I took a few steps into the house and flopped face first onto the couch. "It feels like we have been gone for forever."

"It was certainly a long two days," dad agreed as he walked in the door behind me and collapsed into his favorite chair.

After we had made our escape from the city, Sherrel drove us back to the parking lot near the train station on Long Island where she had left her truck. That had no doubt seemed like a reasonable precaution when she was planning to go street racing all over town, but it had done her no favors when she needed to make a quick getaway.

Before we got out of the car, Gram had extracted a promise from us to visit 'soon', though she hadn't specified when that would be. After that, she'd sped off in a hurry - probably to ditch her stolen car - and we had climbed into the truck.

The three of us had gone back to our hotel, which we still had for a few hours before we needed to check out. However, none of us could sleep, and we eventually decided to just get up and drive home early. The remainder trip had mostly been done in silence as we processed the weekend. At the end, Squealer - Sherrel - had dropped us off but said she wanted to take a drive and 'clear her head'.

She wasn't alone in her need to get her thoughts together, either. Sherrel had survived multiple murder attempts stemming from her inability to resist breaking the law and street racing for cash. Then she'd been rescued at the last minute and had her secret identity as a cape revealed to people she only somewhat knew.

To be honest, I had a feeling that Sherrel didn't really know how to be a law-abiding citizen. I'm sure that she realized her Tinkering was too expensive for a mechanic's wages and had been looking for extra cash the only ways she knew how – by breaking the law. That was one reason why I was so eager to get her talking to Armsmaster about the Protectorate. Tinkering was expensive, and from what I heard, Tinkers had even more urges than other capes. Sherrel needed a team that could fund her projects or she was going to end up getting into even more trouble trying to do it herself.

For his part, Dad had just discovered the younger woman he was flirting with was a cape and a bit of a criminal. He had also found out that Gram hated him not because he was a bad influence but because he was a labor organizer and Gram was apparently an ex-CIA murderer. Also, he'd been shot at a lot more than he was used to, which couldn't help anything.

Then there was me. I'd outed myself to both Gram and Sherrel, and I'd also been in a cape fight against a guy that had absolutely killed people before - there was no way the body parts hanging from his costume had been Halloween props. Then there was all the stuff about Gram, which was huge and annoyingly not as surprising as it should have been. The fact that mom had apparently not gotten out of Lustrum's gang 'before it got bad' was almost a trivial revelation compared to the rest.

"So… you knew about Sherrel the whole time." It was a statement that broke the silence. I had already admitted to knowing about it, but I could detect the question buried in it.

"Yeah," I confirmed. "I wanted you to form your own opinions, though. She… is not what I expected her to be. I mean, she's trying to reform, at least, and I think it would be great if she succeeds."

There was a long beat of silence. "Wait, the angel she hit…"

"Yeah, that was me," I said. "I don't think we should tell her that."

Dad made a noise of agreement, and the silence came back for a while.

"Did you know that Gram was… well, all of that?" he asked eventually.

"I had no idea." I pulled a cushion on top of my head, but it didn't really help anything. "It… explains some things, though."

It explained entirely too many things, really. If Gram thought it was the right thing to do, she would have shot a baby. She probably had.

"I guess it does," he agreed, though he was almost certainly thinking about different issues than I was.

"Are we going to go visit her?"

Dad snorted. "Do you think we have a choice? She might come looking for us if we try to avoid her."

It was my turn to make the grunt of agreement. She probably would.

Eventually, we drifted off to bed. The last day of excitement - starting very, very early in the morning - had left us both exhausted and returning home had finally let some of the anxiety bleed away.

I was almost asleep when I heard the front door open and a little while later there was a conversation. Given the pitches of the voices, it was surely Sherrel and dad.

I considered checking on them – either in person or with spiders - but decided I didn't care that much as long as they weren't screaming. Finding out what they had talked about could be a problem for tomorrow-Taylor.

Spoiler: Notes

Blah blah blah, I'm sick and was on vacation. Chapter 21 requires a lot of rewriting and I'm kind of stalled right now so this story is likely on hiatus for a bit. I'm nowhere near done with telling the story, though, so expect it to revive at some point.

 

[GrimmKenway8646]

"See, Taylor? That's why we learn to make Moltov cocktails," Gram said with no small amount of self-satisfaction as she slumped against the far door. "Gram's getting too old for this kind of stuff."

Click to shrink...

Ah yes Moltov, Earth Bet's counterpart to Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov.

Spoiler: Notes

Blah blah blah, I'm sick and was on vacation. Chapter 21 requires a lot of rewriting and I'm kind of stalled right now so this story is likely on hiatus for a bit. I'm nowhere near done with telling the story, though, so expect it to revive at some point.

Click to shrink...

Awww, hope your brain juices work and you find a good pace to work with.

 

[Swordchucks]

Ah yes Moltov

Click to shrink...

I was wondering why the spell checker said that was wrong.

I blame the cold.

 

[unwashed heathen]

Not sure I get why Taylor's powers keep making her naked. Is that part of the CYOA?

 

[Biigoh]

Not sure I get why Taylor's powers keep making her naked. Is that part of the CYOA?

Click to shrink...

Hello, please note that posts after a month is considered necromancy and against the rules.

Please pay attention in the future to the last post dates.