Chapter Text
No matter how many bugs she threw at it, the wall in the uncreatively named war room was always dirty. Somehow, possibly by magic, it just defied all sense of logic, given that the grime should've been easily handled via swarm of locusts, but no. There was a splotch the size of Taylor's torso, roughly resembling a frog on a unicycle, just, staring at her.
The room smelled perpetually like smoke. Not cigarette smoke, not even the relatively tolerable smell of a barbecue smoke. It smelled like burning, the sort that clogged you from nostril to pores, seeping into the towering metal cabinets, to the sad cyan bean bag that had been used precisely twice before Rachel at ripped it, to the bags pushed off to the corner that were filled to the brim with weapons, tinkertech, and worse, documents.
"I'm just saying, it's not that bad," Tattletale drawled, every syllable dragging on far longer than it had any right to do. "Just a tiny bit of stealing."
The end of the world somehow suited the villainess. That special Tattletale charm that made her utter bitchiness and need to antagonize everything under the sun now felt roguish instead of, as someone had put it very wisely, a more vicious version of Mean Girls. Not to mention the fact that for some reason only God and Lisa knew, which according to the blonde could very well mean the same thing if you got her hyped enough, she'd managed to snag a bandoleer that had been dyed a lovely shade of purple that fit snug across her hips.
Complimented the always humming pistol that had a constant sheen of blue to it.
With a heavy sigh, Grue glared at her through the thick visor, arms remaining crossed, as they had since the meeting had started. "From my territory, and my people. Knock it off."
Fingers tapping against the worn table, Skitter took stock of how far the meeting had devolved. As per usual, it had started off proper: with everyone sitting, Taylor at the helm by sheer coincidence, as the rest of the Undersiders took point on their own turns.
Lisa would be paradoxically to the point and somehow speak for far longer than necessary when called upon, her posture never resembling anything close to proper, while Brian would try to stay on track, but get caught up in trying to get everyone else to actually pay attention to give a report that wasn't just the sort you could get in a very fragmented email.
Alec would start bored and get worse, maybe even ending up fiddling with his prosthetic leg. Fiddling, of course, meaning he'd start poking Brian with it, or worse, trying to get Brutus to play fetch. Of course, that would lead to Rachel finally snapping from her barely contained disinterested frustration and start barking at Alec for being a prat, and that would lead, obviously, to Aisha poking her head in from wherever she went when she wasn't there, and that would lead to the whole thing devolving into just a hang out with pretensions of being a meeting.
Perhaps it wasn't the best use for their strategizing time. But it made Taylor smile inwardly. Never outwardly, because it looked weird and it wasn't as if the others should know she liked it when they derailed the meeting. But a small display of happiness in the privacy of her mind was allowed. As a treat.
"You don't even use them right," shot back Tattletale, pushing Alec away with her foot when he tried scrambling away from Bitch.
It had been a productive meeting for the most part though. Establishing what fronts needed to be addressed, where supplies needed to be gun, all of it took precedence to squabbling. Hell, if Taylor was honest with herself, she enjoyed the squabbling, just a little bit. Made the world feel like it was ending less. Every once in a while she'd try imagining what their lives would be if they weren't all so broken.
Probably more boring in some aspects, given the drollness that was going over orders in her territory and establishing communication lines and who would get the next shipment of tinker-tech weaponry to add to the front line, and paperwork.
Fucking paperwork.
One would think with the apocalypse going on, people would stop caring about bureaucracy, but no. It had to be fetishistic.
Or maybe revenge for not getting them out of hell quite yet.
The radio crackled, a thick thwang bleeding through the static, accompanied as always by the voice of their little songbird. She seemed to be taking the southern music route in the last few weeks, apparently after talking to a cape from Austin, which made every single link in their vox-line a beacon for headaches. Not in the literal sense, but Taylor barely tolerated most music. Being forced to listen to country because Lisa thought their meetings ought to have some pep, while dealing with the buzzing dim lights not a healthy head made.
"I don't- I use them well enough." Grue's inky smoke curled around the edges of the table as gestured to the map. It glitched out for a second, the shimmering green adjusting as another wave broke through one of the blockades. Grue was gesturing to somewhere in his jurisdiction, but Taylor was focused on seeing if the gambit she'd put forth earlier worked. "See? Not a single front broken. We've even begun making strides in pushing past the green line."
"Map's all green, big guy" Alec added helpfully as Rachel lifted him by the lapels. His one leg dangled under uselessly, as Brutus kept gnawing on the metal one.
"You think the people near Boston will make it?" Skitter asked the group, thousands of eyes surveying the building, the block, the walls that jutted out diagonally from what used to be Willow.
All of them, aside from Bitch who was still snarling, looked back at the map with a very specific type of quiet. The sort of quiet that came from hearing too many casualty counts, the kind of quiet that sank into bones, the kind of quiet that was all too common those days. Taylor had been used to this sort of quiet way before everything had gone to shit. Well, more to shit.
The Endbrigers and co. were not exactly nice before all hell broke loose.
Tattletale, or more accurately Lisa in that moment, laid a hand on Taylor's shoulder. "They'll make it," she blatantly lied, the grin as fake as it was cold. Lisa had very little in the ability to care for the 'necessary' losses in war.
Skitter wasn't any better, but she couldn't help the churning in her gut whenever she thought about it. It was squashed away almost as soon as it deigned to rear its head, but even that carried with it a feeling of queasiness. Like stomping on a bug that was just a bit too juicy and visceral, the cracking wetness making her stomach turn. Nausea crept through her body and faded just as quickly.
No time for sentimentality. At least, not that kind.
"They will," Taylor concurred, before looking away, eyes fixating on the stain.
It was moving, she swore, even if no one else saw it. Enemy action? Aisha fucking with her? The exhaustion of not sleeping for the last two days setting in? Who knew at this point. Definitely not Taylor, but she'd pay good money to know. Not that money mattered all that much anymore in any sense of the word.
Money didn't stop the tide of deaths sweeping over the planet, and as much as no one wanted to go sweep the streets as civilization clung by its splintered fingernails to existence, someone had to do it. Annihilation didn't need dusty streets. Made it harder to shoot, and sneezing in the Skitter mask was as fun as it sounded.
Country and static still seeped from the radio, with Mcabee's prattling on about keeping steady with a drawl that was ill-suiting at best and actively offensive at worst. The voice was gorgeous, Taylor wouldn't argue that, but it still jarred when the singer just-
It didn't matter. The point of having Mcabee take point on the radio and even vox-network was to keep up the morale of the common folk out there, and she did just right. And there was something to it. Powers obviously, but something that just made Taylor feel a bit less antsy.
Maybe it was the simple fact that people wanted music at all. That even walking to the gallows, people wanted something to hum.
But did it have to be country?
Half a dozen of the thousands of eyes that were of Taylor caught a blur of white and gold racing through the block, blobs of human shaped things waving as sound reverberated in her skull. It was rare the day that Skitter didn't use her bugs' senses, her senses really, but even now, getting used to all the sensory input was a pain. Her brain wasn't built for it, and powers or not, trying to parse whatever a spider perceived was a losing battle with any semblance of sanity.
Regardless, the golden-white blur sped along, narrowly dodging shapes and infrastructure with the grace of a ballistic missile.
There was a flutter behind the blur that Taylor knew was a cape that had long since lost its luster.
"We have company incoming," she noted, eyes still locked on the stain and the blur all at once.
No one groaned, but it was a close thing. Alec snapped back the leg into place, Bitch barely looked up from her now crouched position petting Brutus, Grue stood tall and broody, and even Taylor adjusted her stance to be something more professional, slipping on the Skitter mask. The world went slightly yellow.
"Blue or white?" Tattletale asked from behind a mug of coffee. The lucky Thinker had been hoarding a stock for herself since the whole of humanity had started going down the gutter and seemed to relish showing it off.
"White. She's racing through the compound, with no resistance.”
With a scoff, Lisa muttered, "Everyone’s clearing the runway. I'm going to start docking their access to luxuries."
Brian didn't even look up from the map, the thick black visor not reflecting a single bit of the green-light. "Which ones? Because there ain't many, Tattletale."
Because mercy sometimes could still make an appearance on Earth Bet, the door slammed open before Alec could curse the room with whatever he'd been about to say.
There was always a certain trepidation when Glory Girl hovered into a room. Most people would cry ‘parahuman power!’ and settle for that, but those people were cowards and not worth listening to. No, it was the distinct combination of her presence, size and the factual awareness that if she wanted, no one could really stop her.
At least not before she took one of them down.
So there she was, blonde hair cut into a sloppy wolfcut that somehow came across as charming, dry blood clinging to her knuckles and boots in a way that spoke of a couple of days without washing. Or weeks. It could be weeks.
“Undersiders-” Glory Girl looked over the table, face grave, shoulders tense, “-you’re all here. Perfect.”
A leather clad glove tapped nervously. A dog bristled. Bugs crawled and churned.
Alec stared unabashedly, because he had no shame.
“Reports finally came in. We’re going to have to reduce the rations again,” the blonde hero reported with frustration.
Groans all around, with Brutus whining the loudest. Taylor wasn’t quite sure when the dog had learned what that meant, but it had to have been between the fourth and twelfth time they’d had to cut rations, because he’d only started acting up when those words were groused out around that time.
Not to be outdone by the dog, Alec commenced the typical whining. “That sucks. No, I refuse, actually.”
“This isn’t something you can just-”
“Not listen, Barbie, I refuse to eat even less. How will I keep my physique? My charm?” Regent gestured to his flamboyant self with the enthusiasm of a dead sparrow. “I already sacrificed pizza nights last time we cut supplies!”
“Those were banned seven cuts ago, Regent,” Grue huffed, the grinding of his teeth audible even over the bitching. Then, he turned to Skitter, something unthinkable just a few months back. “Dock his personal supplies twice over.”
Taylor nodded. She was going to do so anyway, but conceding the idea to Brian was a good social move if she ever saw one. Probably. No matter how many war fronts she’d seen, Taylor hadn’t quite figured out how to interact with people quite yet. At least, not people who weren’t directly under her. Or against her.
Or about to be swarmed by chitin and stingers.
Point was, she was trying, and hadn’t been ousted yet.
Turning to Glory Girl, Skitter tilted her head to the side. “Just our sector or the Northwest?”
The frown that flew across the blonde’s immaculate face answered that ten times over. Sighs all around, more whining from Alec and Brutus, and a sense of resignation crawled over the room, bloated and impossible to ignore. Country music blared through the static as the news of how utterly boned they all were sinked in, which made the whole sight of them all the more pathetic.
Which in itself was saying a lot, given that everyone in the room was clad in enough weaponry, flashy outfits and advanced tech to level a good few blocks. Or maybe a small town. Overall, the level of firepower present in the war room, combined with the wet puppy attitude was, well, pathetic.
Unwilling to sit in the feeling for longer than entirely necessary, Taylor pressed a button on the radio, cutting the belting lyrics Mcabee was twanging about.
“Interrupting this broadcast to let you know that rations have been halved across the Northwest until further notice,” she declared steadily, emotionless. She could faintly hear her own voice repeating throughout the speakers, cutting into every single vox-line and radio set up across the nearby sectors. “Godspeed. Humanity stands.”
Country music resumed with a crackle of static.
Accompanied, bafflingly, by the sounds of cheering and hollering not just from the rest of the compound, but from the streets. For a moment, everyone exchanged looks.
Then Tattletale laughed. Not even her normal laugh, more like a surprised bark that seemed to catch even her off guard. “They think we’re back to half rations.”
Oh.
“That’s stupid.”
“Yep!” the blonde agreed, popping the ‘p’ as loud as she could. “But that’s humanity for you.”
Not an argument she would win. And besides, maybe the short lived moral boost would help. ‘Every little bit helped, said the old lady as she peed into the ocean,’ her dad used to say.
“You’re such a bitch,” Glory Girl snapped with a frown. “They’re trying to find something to hope for!”
“And you are still looking for a boyfriend that doesn’t leave you every two weeks in the apocalypse,” Tattletale shot back with a smirk. “How is Dean doing these days?”
Without hesitation, a screaming match erupted across the table. It always did with those two, though they’d been getting more creative as the war wore on. It was enrichment for Lisa and Victoria didn’t seem to particularly mind, given that she kept coming back and had yet to punch Lisa clean through the skull. Maybe she was into it. Taylor didn’t really understand their dynamic, and valued her remaining, insubstantial sanity too much to try.
No surprises either when Brian piped up with an attempt to descalate, only for both of the blondes to start sniping at him in turn.
Turning away from the madness rapidly getting out of hand in the room, Taylor looked outside, to the madness that they’d been surviving, living through for God knows how long.
Battalions of humans surged forward a couple blocks down, a walking line of artillery and gunfire that wouldn’t stop. There wasn’t even time for the smoke to less or cloud the sky, when soot, blood and muck seemed to drag it down. Thousands of them, so many that it looked like they were crawling over each other to get to the violence, baying for blood that didn’t belong on their sweet Earth.
Tanks and war machines with silly names, because tinkers had the naming abilities of a wallaby with a business degree, trundled forward, over what used to be parks and schools and home, now just another extension of an endless battlefield.
Overhead, an endless swarm of drones that seemed to dwarf Taylor’s own pelted a green tide that wouldn’t stop. A tide full of teeth and howling war cries that were as ridiculous as they were terrifying, clamouring for violence like she would for food when starved.
Giant structures that Taylor refused to call machines stomped through what used to be Brockton Bay, trading blows and bolts that shook the earth and fundament. One missed a punch, and accidentally decimated an entire street.
More paperwork.
Her many eyes spotted dashing figures cutting through a swath of greenies, ridiculous helmets gleaming with arcane light, as if lighting had taken a form that could speak and elected that the most entertaining way to spend their day was to turn into living blender. Then it vanished into a gap in space, because sometimes life was unfair, and everyone had flashy powers and she got bugs.
A mortar shell cracked against the energy dome that surrounded the compound, erased from existence in a blip. Immediately, one of the turrets inbuilt into what used to be the Rig shot what Taylor would only ever describe as a bolt of nuh-uh-I-win, followed by a squeal of metal and the sound of half a dozen demonic screams.
A flutter of gigantic feathers, pale as the driven snow, brushed the windows, followed by a rattling of her entire soul. Typical.
The skies were rarely blue now, but she could glimpse a tiny bit of it between the crimson, the shrapnel and the ash. It reminded her of what they were fighting for. A blue sky above Brockton once again.
“-gonna give him blue balls more like!” Lisa cackled from behind Rachel.
“You’re impossible!”
“Then how am I here, you Dorito shaped barbie-wannabe?”
Taylor sighed.
Blue skies. They would fight for blue skies and a planet that was theirs by right. No retreat, no surrender.
As long as humanity stood.