Mistress of Forms
Level 0
Her nose fell off.
"Shitshitshitshitshit," Taylor chanted to herself. There was no blood, no pain. The nose was still connected to her face by a floppy windsock of flesh, but still…
It was disconcerting looking down and seeing it lying in her lap, feeling its small warmth through her jeans.
She stopped cursing and began concentrating, drawing her nose back up inch by inch.
A knock on her door. "You okay in there?" her father called.
"Ah, yeah, I'm fine!" Taylor called back, sounding faintly congested as the nose dangled across her chest.
"Alright, dinner in ten, okay?"
She felt his presence receding from her door and sighed in relief.
Her nose dropped in her lap again.
"Dammit."
Level 2
She could feel the Headway power vibrating in outrage but steadfastly ignored. She deserved. She'd fought pirates and gangbangers. Saved People. Was it too much to ask for a few perks?
It's not like she did much anyway. She'd just… filled herself out a little. She didn't try for Emma-the-Human-Cow levels. She didn't want to buy new bras and jeans after all. But… well, if she filled out her current bras a little more, if her backside pressed against the seat of her jeans and her belly was flat and she'd shrunk her ears and generally conspired to make herself look less like the pale, gangly spider she remembered… Who was she hurting?
She trotted downstairs for a snack. Her father was in the kitchen fixing himself a sandwich.
"Heya," she said cheerfully.
"Hey, kiddo," he replied. "You want a-?" He stopped, cutting himself off as he stared at Taylor, his face paling a little. His mouth opened, closed, opened again. His eyes ran wildly around the room, always slipping back to her face before being wrenched away.
Then he walked away.
Taylor stood there, hurt and confusion welling in her heart. Was it the nose again?
She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the microwave.
Her mother looked back at her, beautiful and sad and hurt.
Oh.
Level 4
Taylor was helping.
Sure, some armchair moralists might argue that breaking into a tinker's workshop in disguise so you can play with their toys didn't qualify as helping, but what did they know? Wasn't Taylor fixing a few of Kid Win's own projects after she'd fixed her personal forcefield generator? Hadn't she figured out his specialization and slipped it into his notes, writing modularity in red and hoping her mistook it for something he did in a tinker fugue?
She'd reimburse the PRT later with some pirate treasure… as soon as she found some. Maybe blueprints for a disrupter pistol would be more helpful? Did this universe even have energy crystals? Eh, something to think about.
Her justifications made, she hummed happily to herself and collected her newly repaired shield.
"Chris! There you are. Didn't you get the message? We have a situation that needs all hands."
She turned to the voice and tried not to ogle the beefcake wrapped in skintight spandex (or the tinker equivalent thereof). "Umm…" she said intelligently.
Aegis looked at her critically and sighed. "Tinkers," he muttered to himself. "Come on." He grabbed Taylor and dragged her away.
She could have resisted, of course. She could have torn off his arms and forcefed it to him. That would have blown her cover, however, so she was left floundering, wondering how to get out of this without having to fight her way through the entire PRT base.
Aegis was still talking. "It's bad. The ABB is on a rampage after that rogue took down Lung. Bakuda's set off a dozen bombs, with more going off every minute. We need every tinker we can scrounge up to disarm them."
Taylor could almost feel the Headway perk up and take notice, like a cat that had just heard a can-opener in action. Well, that settled that, now if she could only...
They made it to a non-descript briefing room. Automatic doors whooshed open. "Found him," Aegis said briskly. "Let's get-" he stopped.
Kid Win sat with the other Wards at a conference table.
Well….
This was awkward.
Level 6
Amy blinked. That… that was impossible. She checked again and almost sighed in relief. For a moment there, it looked like the parahuman she was healing… wasn't. A parahuman that is. Now that she looked again, she could see the Corona Potenta and Gemma nested like tumors in her brain.
She shook herself. If she was making those kinds of mistakes, she needed to take a break. But… Another patient called.
She answered.
Level 8
Victor caught the girl's arm in a lock and felt the small surge of triumph. Another foe defeated by his strength, by his skill, by his-
The arm went boneless and slipped like a fleshy tentacle from his grip. He stared down, all his stolen skill useless in the face of the impossible.
He was rather more equipped to deal with the spinning backhand that followed… If he hadn't been staring at his hands like an idiot. The blow took him full across the face. The world spun like a top and the ground rose up to meet him with a hard embrace.
The last things he remembered were the words the girl spat out.
"Never wrestle a Shoggoth, bitch."
Level 10
Taylor was beautiful. She had an angel's body, a thing of sapphire and pearl arranged in elegant lines, tailor made to capture hearts and shatter reason.
Her counterpart stood before her, golden-eyed and golden-skinned and shining with light, the sun to her moon. His face… his face spoke of heartbreak and the dawning of forlorn hope to being that had never felt it.
She drifted closer to him, not hurrying, just sweeping gracefully through the world like a queen. He moved toward her, inescapably drawn.
She touched his cheek and smiled so sweetly Jack Slash would weep to see it. Zion merely stared down, a seed of confusion amidst the roil of alien emotion.
She changed. Her perfect, ivory flesh rotted away, her crown of shining hair falling in patches, her eyes, like stars, becoming gaping, bloody pits. Decay chewed away her lips, baring her teeth in a death's head grin. Her torso bubbled with tumorous growths that bulged into knotted tentacles and bound Zion's limbs.
And then her hand, rotted to a skeletal claw, lashed out and punched through Zion's heart.
Golden Morning was officially canceled.
Taylor and the Radioactive Nuka-Colas.
Taylor Hebert was exploring the Mojave Wasteland, she found a lot of weird things about this Earth, how Radioactivity made a lot insects giant, and more dangerous, she knew that biology does not work like that, the Super Mutants, Ghouls, a gang of Elvis impersonators (they were happy when she told them the name of the King they even let her join their gang), or that a horde that looks like a badly researched movie version of the Romans was invading the Mojave.
But today that Taylor found really weird, when she was buying something from a shop.
"Did you found anything you are interested?" Said the Owner of the shop.
"What is that?" Taylor said pointing toward some Nuka-Colas that were glowing with different colors.
"Those are some flavors of Nuka-Cola though they are radioactive" The Owner said with a straight face.
"Radioactive! What were the people from before the War thinking?" Taylor said in an outburst.
"Don't know kid maybe the one who had the idea was high on Mentats, or some shit, tough I never found the appeal of drinking a radioactive Nuka, do you want to buy some of them?" The Merchant spoke.
"Maybe not."
"I will give you a free Rad-Away, and if you drink them all I will give you something special."
"…ok, let's see, *choosing* the Nuka-Cola Victory, please." Taylor said pointing toward
"Ok" the shop owner said with a smile.
Taylor drunk the Nuka-Cola, and felt she could make more efficient actions, but ruined a bit her Senses, she also gained Radio activity resistance.
"Weird, well give me the Nuka-Cola Quartz" Pointing toward the Withe one.
"Is your call kid"
Taylor drunk the Nuka-Cola Quartz, and felt she could see better in darkness, and she felt her body being a little stronger, also another level of Radio activity Resistance again.
"I drink all the Radioactive Nuka-colas, I won the Weapon."
"There still another one, wait here."
"…."
"Thank you for waiting here is something you will not find anywhere else." The man presented to Taylor a Nuka-Cola that glowed blue.
"Nuka-Cola Quantum I think I saw some billboards that said Quantum" Taylor told the man.
"It was supposed to be sold here but the war sent those plans to shit, I got some boxes inside, don't know how these boxes reached here maybe there was a confusion and send the wrong boxes, thank you easily distracted workers."
*Some time before of this conversation in Washington D.C. also known as the Wasteland The Lone Wanderer found some boxes of Nuka-Cola Victory, and Nuka-Cola Quartz, The Lone Wanderer decided to taste one bottle of each flavor, and the rest were sent to Girdershade, and gave them to Roland, but enough of The Lone Wanderer, and we are back with Taylor who finished drinking the Nuka-Cola Quantum*
Taylor felt she could do more actions more efficient, nothing about messing her senses, she also gained another level of Radiation resistance, and she also gained a new Perk Nuka-Power."
"Well girl a promise is a promise." He hands Taylor what was promised to her.
Then a woman enters the shop, and sees the bottles of Nuka-Cola, and for some reason she enters the conversation.
"Hi, I had heard stories that there are some people who have turned this type into powerful type of bomb, a special Cocktail, or that makes your Urine glow."
The man answered.
"It must be some high tales that people tell just to impress other people, or hallucinations produced by consuming some Chems, tough the Secret group that owned the old nation did exist, so there has to be a grain of truth."
Taylor in that moment decided to leave the store, she went to a lonely place, and teleported back to her home, but then she felt the need to use the Bathroom.
-Some moment later-
"Dammit it glows!"
-A lot of time using Rad-Away to get rid of the radiation-
"Now that I have fixed that, maybe drinking those sodas wasn't a good idea, but if the story of 'that' is true maybe the other two may have a grain of truth."
-Some time later-
*There are several explosions of three colors (Orange, White, and Blue)*
"Wow didn't expected these improved bombs where this powerful, good choice I used this land where nothing grows, well time to use the new bomb."
"But Ma'am should we—"
"Of course we are going to be very far away from here."
*Taylor plants the new type of Nuka-grenade (that she named the Troika Nuka-grenade) on the floor, and got really far away, and in a safe place, and exploded the bomb.*
[Insert I don't want to set the world on fire]
The explosion was quite exotic, and a lot of beings of the universe that Taylor has visited felt a sensation, sadly Bakuda felt it to.
-In Earth Bet-
"I feel I got a rival, time to make my explosives more powerful."
"Fuck." Was the answer of all the ABB members that were near Bakuda.