Laserdream and her mom looked at me.  I felt like I should say something.  Give condolences?  Tell them that their family had died well?  I couldn’t think of a way to put it that didn’t tell them something they already knew, or anything that wouldn’t sound horribly offensive or insincere coming from a villain.

Awkward…

“Let’s go get that-” I stopped, both because I suddenly felt that something like motherfucker was too crass, and because I wanted to bend down to pick up Armsmaster’s Halberd, the one with the disintegration blade, grabbing the pole of it with my good hand. “Let’s go get him,” I stated, lamely.

Ooh, that might come in handy. Even if it doesn’t quite manage to sever Leviathan’s tail, it can still be used on other things.

It took some doing for Laserdream to lift me without pressing against my broken arm or touching the blade. She wound up holding me with an arm under my knees and the crook of her elbow at my neck.

Alright, now imagine the two of them exiting a church like this, both dressed in wedding dresses on top of their cape outfits. Neither one of them know how they got there.

(Trickster is hiding in the bushes, snickering to himself. Meanwhile, a newlywed lesbian couple find themselves wherever Laserdream and Skitter were just a moment ago, and suddenly in their underwear.)

She held the Halberd for me.  I resigned myself to being cradled – there was no dignified way to be carried.  She had morning breath, a strangely mundane thing – she’d likely been woken up at half past six in the morning by the sirens, hadn’t had time to brush her teeth or eat before coming here.

I guess in one way, the early meeting with Coil was helpful for Taylor.

Lady Photon – Photon Mom to Brockton Bay residents and the local news media – bent down by Armsmaster.

I suppose the evident heartbreak she’s dealing with is one reason for the change in how Taylor refers to her in the narration. This is a newly widowed and, uh, de-sonned and de-brothered woman, and Taylor is painfully aware of that fact. Least Taylor can do in this situation is mentally refer to her by her proper name rather than the nickname she doesn’t care for.

She created a shaped forcefield tight against his shoulder, lifted him with a grunt.

Not sure what that’s supposed to accomplish. Stop the bleeding, I guess?

“Take him,” Lady Photon’s voice was strangely hollow, though firm.

“No.  I’m a better flier, and more likely to hurt that thing in a fight.  I’ll take the girl and help against Leviathan.”  Laserdream had a little more life in her voice than her mother did.

Makes sense. Besides, it might be a bit less awkward for Taylor to be carried by someone closer to her own age.

The girl.  Like I didn’t warrant a name, or it wasn’t worth the effort to remember.

To be fair, they haven’t actually asked what it is yet. Which, alright, is kind of rude, and there are better ways to refer to someone whose name you don’t know. All I’m saying is she might not be using your name because she doesn’t actually know.

A part of me wanted to stand up for myself, a larger part of me knew this wasn’t the time or place.

After a long few seconds of deliberation, Lady Photon nodded.  She looked like making that decision aged her years.

Poor Photon Mom doesn’t want to lose the one child she has left. 😦

More than anything else, though, the two of them had the look of people who had seen half their immediate family brutally and senselessly torn apart over the course of one terrible hour.

Literally all the men we know of in that family.

These women are not having a good day.

As though they’d had their hearts torn out of their chests and were somehow still standing.  It wasn’t that I had seen anyone in those circumstances before, but that look existed, and they had it.

I like this analogy.

It was painful to look at.  It reminded me of when my mom had died.  I’d been in a similar state.

The feeels– And just as I paste that into the liveblog post, Nyan Cat starts playing.

Maybe I should switch to a less varied, more fitting playlist.

Her daughter had a stylized arrow pointing down and to her right, on her chest, with a half dozen lines  trailing behind it, over her left shoulder, one line zig-zagging across the others.

Fitting.

The entire design gradually faded from a ruby red to a magenta color in much the same way her mom’s did.  Similar rows of lines with the zig-zag overlapping them ran down her legs and arms.

A starburst can look both like a shield and as a bunch of lasers going in all directions, whereas this design is unambiguously lasery.

She didn’t dye her hair in her ‘color’ like her younger brother did -had, past tense-, or wear the tinted sunglasses, but she did wear a ruby red hairband over her wavy hair, to ensure she always had a coquettish sweep of hair in place over one eye, and to pull the magenta, red and white color scheme together.

Is this the first mention of Shielder’s blue hair in the actual text, or did I miss that earlier?

Anyway, I like Laserdream’s design. 🙂

Lady Photon and the eighteen year old Laserdream landed beside Armsmaster, making a small splash as they touched down.

Hi there.

I’m sorry about your losses. I never really knew them, but they all seemed like good men.

You could see the family resemblance.  They weren’t supermodel good looking, but they were attractive people, even with their hair wet and plastered to their heads and shoulders by the rain.

I guess some people manage to rock even that look.

Both wore costumes with a white base color, had heart shaped faces, full lips and blonde hair.  Lady Photon’s costume sported a starburst on her chest, with several of the lines extending around her body, or down her legs, going from indigo to purple as it got further from the center.

Nice.

Also, notice how Taylor’s narration is calling Photon Mom by her preferred name all of a sudden, now that she’s actually up close?

Her hair was straight, shoulder length, held away from her face by a tiara shaped much like the same starburst image on her chest.

Tiara, huh? Sounds familiar. *gestures to the photon niece*