Chapter Text
Still working on next bit of Acceleration², but got a brief bug for a one-off(I hope) side story that I churned out today rq to get it out of my system. This is unrelated to the current story, or even Acceleration proper, taking place shortly after a hat-wearing boogeywoman relocates a fairly new to her powers A!Taylor(so still 15) far from Brockton Bay...
I give you, I'm sorry I'm not gentle. (lol)
I was completely lost. I had a vague idea of what part of the world I was in, but finding books I could read that covered history had quickly told me I wasn't on my world. Wherever that woman who had accosted me on the way to school had sent me when she rolled up and spun me into a waltz before I found myself stumbling through a doorway, it was a world without, as far as I could tell, parahumans of any stripe.
Well, that wasn't entirely true. There did appear to be one, someone off in London, England, but she was the sole exception. Here I was, fifteen years old, on a strange, normal earth, with no one to talk to, and no place to stay. I had ways to fix the latter and to find food, but the former required learning Japanese as I was certain I was in Tokyo for some reason.
The moment when I had navigated the nearest pay phone and managed to try and call my dad and found nothing had been stressful. Almost as much as realizing that I hadn't just crossed to the other side of the world. That hat-wearing woman had somehow dumped me nineteen years in the past. Five years before I was born. Had Dad even met Mom yet, if he lived here?
At least my powers still worked; a fact for which I was extremely grateful. I had been here a few days and I wouldn't know what to do if I hadn't been able to work out how to manipulate atms for money. Surprisingly, no one seemed to bat an eye when I went to a hotel for a place to stay as if an American Teenage girl on her own wasn't unusual.
My uncharitable thoughts suggested they had plenty of derogatory thoughts about what I was doing on my own, but those were just a byproduct of being lonely, I was pretty sure. Everyone I had met, language barrier aside, had been very polite and helpful.
I was even making headway on the language, another thing I was grateful to my powers for. Whatever had happened after Emma and company had shoved me in that locker, my understanding of things had been enhanced. Math was especially my plaything, but it seemed to apply for language as well and I had been studying english to japanese textbooks exhaustively while taking time every day since I got here to just listen to people talking, getting a feel for the way they spoke.
Watching television had been helpful there too, with people who were live actors. Much like when people-watching, being able to see how they spoke was of immense value. Flipping a page in the book I was looking at, I stepped around a pair of people arguing, guided by the map in my mind showing me everyone's positions relative to my own. My eyes briefly flicked away as the girl's voice rose in an offended shriek at something the man in the obnoxiously tacky green sport coat had said. Seriously, my fashion sense was damaged from months of Emma's bullshit but even I could tell that was a bad combination. Did he dress in the dark?
Whatever, not my problem. I kept walking and soon the squabbling faded from my ears as I kept reading about the intricacies of spoken Japanese. A few more blocks and I felt something odd cross into the area of my power's effect. My power didn't seem to know what to make of it, sliding off in a way I couldn't quite grasp and drawing my attention away from the instruction manual. Ahead, I could see a jewelry store that dominated the block, its unfamiliar logo incomprehensible due to being in Japanese characters that I hadn't made a significant study of yet, focusing on the spoken words. My written was still extremely basic and none of the characters here were familiar.
A red headed woman in a dress stood by the door way, calling out enthusiastically to passers-by, presumably advertising a sale of some sort. Her attention skipped past me for a moment, then reversed back and settled firmly on me, singling me out. For a moment, I felt something ripple past my, my power again trying to grasp it before I shrugged. Whatever, the woman had probably just sized me up as a possible mark for whatever she was hawking.
Brightly smiling, she rattled off an energetic spiel in Japanese before I reluctantly shook my head and replied. "I'm sorry, I'm still learning Japanese."
The woman's expression went blank, utterly devoid of emotion and I felt a chill for some reason, as if she was angry and that anger had a palpable weight before her smile returned and she spoke again, in flawless english.
"Oh, no worries dear!" the woman said, catching my hand and leading me inside. "I was inviting you to take a look at our sale? Eighty percent off on everything! We're clearing out old stock at a steal!"
"Oh, I'm not looking for…" I protested as we crossed the threshold and for a moment, I was dizzy. What had I been saying? "I couldn't possibly…"
"Take a look at this piece," she was saying, guiding me expertly to a display case. I glanced at what she had indicated as the clouds shifted outside, sunlight filtering in to make the jewelry sparkle. Light danced in my eyes and I…
"Sure… that sounds great," I heard myself agree as the radiance of the jewelry drew my attention in. The woman continued talking, some sort of babbling about energy and something about a ruler before my awareness was swallowed up by the sparkling emerald ring.
*Gomen ne sunao ja nakute~ *
Clarity returned and it was dark and I found myself laying sprawled on a cold floor. I could hear voices, a rapid-fire exchange of Japanese that ended in a shrill scream. What was going on? Where was I? I remembered…
Cold ran down my spine as I recalled the woman talking and how her jewelry had sucked all my attention up. Some sort of parahuman! I pushed myself to a seated position, fury engulfing me
…all I found were a bunch of women laying unconscious, including a girl around my age with red hair. Above, I caught a bit of movement and glanced upward to the sight of a silhouetted figure standing in the huge open window high up the wall. The light streaming in made her little more than a shape as I blinked, pulling my glasses off for a moment to rub at my eyes before replacing them. Two incredibly long streamers of hair fluttered as the female figure turned and jumped away, vanishing into the night without a word.
What the hell?