What’s the weirdest, most fucked up ship you can think of? I’m not a shipper myself, but I know for a fact there’s a very prolific Sophia shipper over on the Sufficient Velocity forums who wrote a few Taylor/Sophia and Lily/Sophia fics, among many others. Anything else you can think of?
You want really fucked up? Try Coil/Dinah.
Coil sat in a black leather armchair, with a laptop set on the table beside him. Dinah was there, too.
Oh hey, it’s Taylor’s living reminder of why she’s doing this.
She sat at the base of the chair, on a cushion just beside Coil’s feet, picking at the threads of her white dress with a dazed single-mindedness that told me she had probably received her ‘candy’ pretty recently.
Eesh. The cushion also carries further “pet” vibes, and that still creeps me out so much.
“Undersiders. Tattletale informed me you were successful, despite complications. May I see it?”
Tattletale stepped forward and handed Coil the USB thumbstick.
v i c t o r y
He plugged it into the laptop, then turned the computer so the middle-aged man to his left could type away.
“Data’s corrupted, sir. Looks like the download was interrupted at the ninety-seven percent mark.”
Damn it, Dragon!
I did think it was a little odd that Tattle told Dragon that they successfully had all the files even though it was mentioned that the progress bar wasn’t at the end yet. Did I mention that? I don’t think I did, being distracted by Tattle’s frankness, but I should have.
He had hated these moments, before he’d acquired his pet and the assurances she provided.
The “pet” thing will never stop being creepy.
These were the times when he was most vulnerable, when he’d just started a fresh use of his power, his selves so close to one another.
“I must have hit my head. I’m being double.”
Geez, imagine the first time Coil discovered he had this power. Sounds like an incredibly confusing, mind-blowing experience.
It was sadly inevitable, unless he found a way to expand to a third world. Though he knew the chance of danger was miniscule, that his pet could not lie to him if she had wanted to, he still made efforts to distance the two worlds as much as possible.
Why can’t she lie? Is that a side effect of the precision and mathematical presentation of her power, or does her candy have some sort of truth serum or something in it too?
The first reality: “Captains, with me. Empire Eighty-Eight is divided, and I’m going to direct you on a series of strikes to ensure we deal as much damage as possible before the two factions can merge once more.”
Oh jeez. Without its leader, the Empire’s split. I bet one of the faction leaders is Purity.
Mix that with the public identities after Coil’s last strike, and it seems to me that the gang probably won’t ever return to what it once was. Maybe the two factions won’t merge, and we’re now going to have two smaller white supremacist gangs running around.
Second reality: He was waking up in an ordinary, slightly rundown home in the southwest end of the city. He prepared and ate his breakfast, then stepped outside in his bathrobe to pick up the paper and the mail, pausing to wave to the neighbors as they led their two girls out of the house.
I guess that’s why he was talking about being paranoid. One of him is having a normal day as a civilian, and even then he’s got a backup under maximum security.
The flooding hadn’t affected their neighborhood as much as others, but the schools weren’t yet up and running, so the mother and father would be taking their girls to work with them for a short while.
I hope by “work” you don’t mean your villainous antics.
That’s not a place for small kids, as we’ve had thoroughly demonstrated with Dinah. Not that I expect Coil to give his own girls the same kind of “candy”.
Nice to hear he’s got a family, though. 🙂
I’m a little worried that by the end of this sequence, one or both of those girls will be dead in the civilian reality.
He headed back inside, showered, then dressed in a button-up shirt, khakis and a silk tie. He got in his four-year old prius and headed into the city.
He evidently takes keeping his identity secret seriously. Coil would have plenty of money to spend on a newer car, and he has access to money laundering (as we’ve heard via Grue).
That, or maybe he just likes the Prius.
What was normally a ten minute drive took him three-quarters of an hour, as he was forced to detour around destroyed roads, fallen buildings, and reconstruction work, move with the other drivers in a perpetual traffic jam from the moment that he left the little cul-de-sac where his house was.
Probably doesn’t help that a bunch of road sections downtown got replaced by a lake, either.
To all appearances, he was an ordinary man leaving for work. His identity, fabricated, was complete, a real job at a real company, records going back ten years in health, taxes, dentistry, house payments and more.
As I was saying: He takes it seriously.
I had a suspicion he got her to cooperate with some sort of incentive. Figure out she’s unhappy at home, give her a place to stay and some sort of bribe.
Well… technically that is what he did. Though as it turns out, that bribe happened to be “candy”.
Either way, it’s more fitting with his methods to date, and it would have been short term or more benign. Not so bad.”
Yeah, it does fit into his MO, if we compare with how Coil gets others to work for him.
“Kind of off there,” I said, bitterly.
“I’m aware,” Tattletale answered, with just as much emotion in her voice. “I don’t like it either.
Yeeah, me neither.
He’s been around me enough, communicated with me enough, to have an idea of stuff that I won’t necessarily know or think to look for.
Filing this under evidence that Tattle’s Knowledge needs to be at least somewhat consciously targeted.
I didn’t even know she had powers, or how Coil would have found this out or found her. This is out of character for him. Ruthless, power hungry.”
I mean we knew he wanted power. That was a whole spiel he had back when he laid out his master plan. He’s power hungry, just relatively realistic about how much power he can maintain and thrive with.
The ruthlessness is more camouflaged.
“If it bothers you that much, tell him to fuck off,” Bitch cut in, sounding irritated.
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “We can’t just walk away and leave her like that.”
Ooooh.
Is this headed towards the Undersiders not only terminating their agreement with Coil but actively going up against him to free Dinah?
Because I really don’t think he’s gonna give her up through negotiations.
“And some of us are kind of relying on Coil for some major stuff,” Grue spoke. “Some of us have people we can’t leave behind.”
Ahh, right, Coil was helping Grue with the whole Aisha situation, among other things funneling part of his income through a seemingly legal employer.
I looked at him, surprised, “I don’t want to say your sister isn’t important, but… are you really willing to let Dinah stay in captivity, just for Aisha?”
…yes. I think Grue might be willing to do that.
In D&D terms, Grue strikes me as a True Neutral character, whereas Taylor is Chaotic Good. Sometimes the differences between their alignments on the axis of morality causes conflicts between them – Grue is sometimes inclined to not do the “Good” thing in favor of what keeps him and those closest to him safe, whereas Taylor has the heroic (”Good”) instinct to not only harm others as little as possible, but also put herself in harm’s way if it can protect innocent people.
As for the remaining Undersiders, Bitch is the only one I’m decently sure about, but she and Tattle both seem to be Chaotic Neutral (or Chaotic Dog and Chaotic Fun respectively). Regent might be True Neutral along with Grue.
Hehehe, yeah, that certainly became less of a “good sign” in retrospect. I’m about as dense as Alec sometimes. 😛
Tattletale nodded. Together, we headed around the walkway to the door we’d come in. We were halfway up the stairs to the hatch when Regent commented, “Well, that was surreal.”
“Not the word I’d use to describe it,” I replied, quiet.
What would you say, then?
“What’s her deal? Is she like Labyrinth? Powers fucked with her head?”
I looked at the others, then turned to look at him. I couldn’t help but let a little venom seep into my voice as I asked him, “Are you dense?”
Ah, I feel like Taylor picked up on the human experiment vibes too.
“What? She said she got headaches, Coil said it was hard on her, using her power, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to think there’s something going on mentally, especially seeing how she acted.”
“The candy she was asking for was a euphemism for drugs,” I spoke, and saying it aloud made it somehow more real.
Ahh, shit.
The drug comparison is yet another reason why I asked the question in the first place. If you look at it more like being under the effects of the drug at all times, the victim is not in a proper state to give consent, and under all laws I’m familiar with, having sex with a […]
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