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TLV: IC Inbox

You've reached Timothy Stoker, leave a message at the tone and I'll get back to you.

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“And I work hard to stay right in that niche of expectation,” she responds with matching cheeriness.

"Oh, I'm sure you do," he says with a slightly firmer cheer. "Someone with your powers would get a lot more done staying under the radar like you do. Don't let anyone know how deep it all goes, keep the real tricks under your hat. In a bloody wasps' nest."

He's not mad, he just knows people.

She shrugs, casual. "It's not that deep. I know there's no keeping secrets from Himself upstairs, but I like not being Skitter here. I'm on the radar back home in a huge, international news kind of way, I have to sleep in my mask, and I am Skitter the Great and Terrible every waking hour, even to most of my friends.

"This is... nice. Between the absolutely torturous bullshit."

"Speaking from experience, absolutely torturous bullshit never gets any easier. You just start tuning it out." It and everything else that makes you feel literally anything. Or maybe it's just the depression. "Skitter the Great and Terrible, though, really? You sound like a dime-store wizard from a bad epic fantasy."

“That’s hyperbole. But at home, I haven’t been Taylor since my dad and I fought over me dropping out of school and I left. That was a few months back.

“Since then, it was Leviathan, rebuilding after Leviathan and staking out my territory, the Slaughterhouse Nine, with Bonesaw and Mannequin both coming specifically at me and my people and Shatterbird putting my dad in the hospital, Bonesaw’s stranger plague, the PRT declaring us enemies of the state with a pending kill order because of what Panacea did to Glory Girl even though that was firmly not my fault, and now the shit with Coil and the Travelers. Which is semi my fault because I betrayed him first.”

Through that, her body language goes quiet, arms crossed over her chest She’s pushing anything else out into the bugs. It’s not a good time for anyone to be in the greenhouse.

“From the Nine arriving in Brockton Bay to me landing here was… either ten or eleven days, I think. I don’t think I got to sleep more than twenty minutes at a time in there. Had to visit Coil’s pet surgeon twice in that time for me, four more times for other people. So at least the torturous bullshit here spaces itself out. Except for the emotional trauma of finding myself siblings with Boom-boom, it’s been something of a vacation until now.”

Edited 2021-11-20 16:45 (UTC)

He's aware there's a certain level of weight to being told any of this at all, and while he doesn't exactly have much context he's certainly catching on to the idea that Taylor's life is a goddamn hardship back home.

He's also vaguely aware that she's probably not fully here while she talks about it. She can certainly put her attention into bugs; he has to wonder if she can't push other things too.

There's one detail he's got to fixate on, though.

"We're really going with Boom-boom for him?" he asks, with a sly little grin.

She shrugs, the corner of her mouth turning up. “I’m trying names on for him. Think that one sets the tone I want.”

"Just so long as you're aware that it means 'giant piece of literal shit' to some people," he says brightly. "Like when a toddler soils its nappy. Sorry, diaper," he corrects, in a brief but horrible American accent.

Edited 2021-11-21 21:40 (UTC)

Now she’s never letting go of it. “You know I had to fight a grown adult man who voluntarily named himself Skidmark, yeah?

“Pretty sure his real name was John Seed.”

Okay that startles a snort out of Tim and he bursts out laughing. She's sharp, he respects that.

"First of all, as a warden, I should tell you not to say that to his face," he grins, but there's no weight to his words whatsoever. "And two--"

He's opened his mouth to comment further, but closes it when a though crosses his mind. "Wait, do all of you come with your hero names when you're dumb pubescent twats?"

“Yeah, mostly.” She shakes her head with a huff of a laugh. “I don’t get credit for Skitter, though. I got named by the evening news after baby's first bank heist. Only bank heist. But I do know a hero who is stuck with the name Clockblocker and that is every bit his own fault. And one of my best friends very aggressively goes by Bitch.”

Edited 2021-11-24 11:28 (UTC)

Sorry not sorry, he's laughing at Clockbuster. "Fucking incredible."

He lifts one leg and shifts his foot into his lap, getting comfortable again. "If your world wasn't another semi-literal hellscape, I've got to admit. I'd almost be jealous of you lot having powers."

Laughing at his name is half of why she likes that shitty little hero so much, despite how much of a nightmare he is to fight. Time powers are almost as bad as tinkers.

"No argument there. The powers are cool, but the world is circling the drain, burning while it does it, and most people have no idea."

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