I suppose the Interludes always were the unpredictable ones.

The wind blew hard from the north, cold, blowing my hair into disarray.  I pushed my hair out of my face, tucked it behind my ear.  When I gave Lisa a sidelong glance, she was putting her hood up.

Yeah, Taylor should’ve brought warmer clothes.

I wonder if Lisa saw the weather and had her power tell her how it was likely to develop.

She spoke without looking at me, “I’d go on, ask about whether you prioritize friends or morals, talk about how you’ve grown as a person in so many ways since joining us, except my power informs me that you just settled on a decision.”

I suppose so.

She was right.  As I stared at the monument, a goal was crystallizing in my mind, a focus.  I knew, now, what I wanted to do.

But what? Make the world better, not as a hero, not as a villain, but something in-between?

I had to change things.  I had to be better than them.  Than Armsmaster, Sophia, Coil, and all the others.

“Yeah,” I replied.  She turned to glance my way.

Sounds like I’m at least somewhat on the right track.

“And does this plan feature the Undersiders?”

I gave her my answer.

…fucking hell what a cliffhanger.

I’m guessing “No”, unless Taylor’s found some kind of plan that could benefit the Undersiders enough that they’d be willing to leave Coil behind to help her out. Brian and Rachel in particular would be difficult to get on board with that, even if they weren’t currently disappointed in and/or pissed at Taylor.

I stood away from the railing, stuck my hands in my pockets to keep them warm.  “Never.”

Yeah, no, this is not something Taylor is willing to budge on.

“Never’s pretty final.  If you’re so certain, what do you have to lose by hearing everyone out?  Hearing me out?  I’ve got coffee and lunch in my bag, we can sit down, talk it all out.  If you’re willing, we can then go meet the others.  I’ll talk to them with you, back you up, keep Bitch from murdering you.”

I guess that’s fair enough? The main thing Taylor has to lose here is her mood, I suppose. And her life if Lisa and Brian fail on that last thing.

I shook my head, turned and rested my back against the railing, looking at the memorial, rather than the city.

So many dead.  So pointless.  What was wrong with this world, that it was this fucked up?

It’s written by an author with a penchant for fucked-up-ness.

That people like Sophia and Armsmaster were heroes?  That there couldn’t even be a proper funeral for the people who had given their lives, because of a small handful of grandstanding idiots?

That first one comes from people defining themselves as heroes or villains. Well, I suppose Sophia is an exception on that front, given her arrangement with the Wards, but you get what I mean.

“Maybe you don’t know what you want to do because what you really want to do is come back.”

Not gonna lie, I’m not discounting that option. Maybe it’s possible to mend relations with the other Undersiders.

I didn’t reply for a minute.  The quiet was disturbed by the noise of not-too-distant helicopters moving over the city, some capes flying alongside them as guards.  It would be another drop of much-needed supplies.

Nice. Though the necessity of guards for the supply helicopters has some nasty implications for what some of the villains are up to.

I sighed, “They wouldn’t have me, and those guys won’t budge on the thing with Coil and Dinah.  Not really.”

Fair enough.

“Probably not.  I mean, even if they took you back, you’d have to eat crow, accept a few concessions, like Coil’s ‘pet’.  There’d be no more playing around.  You’d have to go all-in, from here on out, if you expected to convince them you were legit.”

Yeeah.

I shook my head.

“You want to be forgiven for what you did?  It’s not going to be easy.  There’s going to be a sacrifice on some level.  And that starts with giving up that stubbornness, being willing to talk to them.  To talk to me.

I suppose so.

You might even change your mind, find yourself able to look past thing with the girl, for the sake of having friends, doing the things you want or need to do in other areas.”

I mean… it’s unpleasant, but it might be a necessity.

Question is, does Taylor want to be friends with people would would be willing to look past that whole situation? Judging by the end of Buzz, that’s probably a no.

“Become a hero?  Strike out on your own?”

I shook my head, stressed the words, “I don’t know.”

“No hard feelings if you want to go that way.

I mean, solo heroism is an option, but it seemed like Taylor got a bit sick of the “heroes” in general last chapter.

Again, I can talk to the others, ensure they don’t go straight for revenge or any of that.  We don’t hate you, now, hurt as some of the others might be.  Except maybe Bitch.  She probably hates you.”

Heh. Very reassuring.

“Really, I don’t know,” I told her, exasperated, “I don’t like or even respect any of the heroes I’ve met, I don’t even see the point of it.  As villains, we faced down other villains.  It wasn’t so different from what I’d be doing as a hero… but what did we really accomplish?  What does anyone accomplish, if all we end up with is this?” I gestured out at the cityscape stretching out below us.

It depends on how you see it. Do you see a broken city, or a surviving city?

That said, we do know that Endbringers seek out places with lots of tension, violence, etc. I don’t know to what extent that’s public knowledge, though.

Other than that… I guess “fun”. This seems like a prime opportunity to call back to 3.6 and Tattle’s theory of the game of heroes and villains.

“No?  I mean, I knew you hadn’t gone home yet, but I thought maybe that was our fault, you protecting your dad, staying away from places we’d know you frequent.”

Ah, now the comment about making the others leave her and her dad alone makes more sense.

“I’m still hurt, still mad at him.  Mad at myself, too.  I guess, more than anyone, I expected my dad to understand, to give me the benefit of a doubt.

He kind of did, for a while.

And going home would be going back to the way things were, which is the last thing I want.”

Oh yeah, the escapism is still on.

I suppose the Shadow Stalker revelation doesn’t help either.

“So you don’t want to go home, you obviously don’t want to go to the Birdcage, and you turned down an offer to join the Wards.”

A revelation which Tattle might not know about yet.

Though I did suspect that she found out when Taylor and Tattle met eyes last chapter…

I hesitated, “Yeah.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

Taylor is kind of stuck now.

What even is she going to be when she finds out what to do? 

Hero? Villain? Civilian? Rogue?

Those last two seem unlikely. This is a story, after all.

“So everything I’ve been through, all of this, it’s-”

“My fault, pretty much.  That’s why I’m saying I’m sorry.  I mean it, too.”

I sighed.

I see.

But I mean, this doesn’t remove Taylor’s agency in actually accepting the offer.

“It’s okay,” I told her.  “I think… I think if it happened again, I’d still want to be part of the group, want to have met you guys.  I’d want some stuff to go down differently.  Dinah, my dad, having things come out like they did after the battle with Leviathan.”

Yeah… it’s not been without its problems, but it’s been fun.

“We can’t take back what happened,” Tattletale said.  “But we can try to fix it.  Some of it.  You could go back home.  Face the music.  Tell your dad some or all of what happened.  You could go somewhere else, or I could convince the others to leave you and your dad alone, if you wanted to do that.”

They’re not already?

“I’m not ready to go home just yet.”

She’s not willing to face the music. She’s not ready to find out what sort of genres Danny has gotten into while she was gone.

Danny, at home: *plays Evanescence, Good Charlotte and My Chemical Romance loudly over every speaker in the house*

She shrugged, smiled a little, gave me an apologetic look with a tilt of her head, “And my plan worked out.  Of course.”

Sort of, at least.

…

Did Coil make one reality where he told the chosen Tattletale what he’d just learned, and one where he didn’t and tried to let the delayed arrival do its thing without alerting Tattle to Taylor’s presence?

“Of course,” I replied, dryly.

“It might have ended there, but then Grue mistook you for a villain, and you didn’t correct him.

Ah, right. And Tattle couldn’t– wait, yes she could. Anyone else sworn to secrecy on Coil’s powers couldn’t, but Tattle could blame her power for knowing it.

It was interesting enough that I played along.

This sounds more like Tattle anyway.

The idea of recruiting you came when he was finishing his introductions.”

Nice.