To Be A Dork

Summary: A bored Taylor, a hopeful Greg, an apathetic Sparky and friendship. Bullet Hell ensues.

Greg sat down and passed Taylor his portable console. He'd just lost his last life. He absent mindedly cursed himself because he'd been distracted and been unable to dodge a very simple pattern.

Taylor laughed and shook her head. "You keep saying you're gonna beat my scores but it's not happening," she said, pressing the start button, selecting her character, and waiting through the start up sequence as she spoke.

By the time Greg finished grumbling nonsense, the level had started, and Taylor was already in the zone. Opposite to them, Sparky was banging a pair of sticks on the table, following the rhythm of the background music in the game Taylor was playing, absent mindedly.

Greg seemed distressed that nobody was paying attention to him, but resigned himself to his fate as he watched Taylor utterly destroy his confidence in his ability at playing games. For a moment, he considered cursing himself for ever introducing the girl to the ultra hard bullet hell genre, because he'd once thought that at least he was the best at something. Well, best in his class at any rate.

Then again, he'd never been so close to a girl that wasn't telling him to go fuck himself before. Admittedly, now that he actually had a girl in his proximity, he found it strangely... odd. He didn't really want to make sexual advances on her. Granted, Taylor had never been one of the pretty girls, but even she had been 'beautiful' (read, anything female and not over 300 pounds) to him before she'd actually finally agreed to sit down to lunch with him.

It was strange, but then again, she had systematically destroyed a great many of his misconceptions about life, just from the fact that she was a girl and could confirm that, yes, girls fart and pee too.

Taylor took a deep breath. She felt every muscle tense for an instant, and then she exploded into a flurry of movement. Three steps was all it took, she reached the ledge and jumped, arms to her side, letting gravity carry her as she turned her jump into a dive.

The world blurred. She was free from the ground now. Nobody bothered her. The only sound she heard was the wind rushing.

She saw him long before he ever saw her.

By the time the so called Hero, Dauntless, had prepared to grab onto her to slow her descent, she was ready. He was shouting something, but she didn't hear.

There was a sound not unlike a sonic boom and she left him reeling, turning on an almost ninety degree angle, adjusting so she was perpendicular to the ground, flying into the distance.

It seemed that her actions had apparently shocked the 'Hero', who had decided that chasing after her would be a good idea. She certainly hoped that his current speed wasn't his top speed, because that'd make the chase quite boring. He was fast, but he was fast compared to the groundbound.

He was gaining on her, and when he was close enough to hear him, he began shouting unintelligible commands - likely telling her to slow down or stop. She slowed down a bit and turned around to face him, flying backwards still. "I've heard you can shoot lightning from your lance, is it true?" Taylor asked him, as they both flew leisurely into the coastline.

"Yes, but what-"

"The rules are simple, hero boy. Every attack must be possible to dodge, and we stick strictly to non-lethal!" Taylor said, smiling to herself. Her hands itched. She gathered power into the tips of her fingers, and swept both hands across the air. A simple start - ten bullets, spread into two crescents of five that intersected. As expected, he dodged by going up.

She smirked and shot a single beam. A warning shot. The width of her finger. It nearly knocked his helmet off, crossing the distance between them in less than the blink of an eye. "If you play with the third dimension, I'll do so as well. For your own sake, dodge left or right, because you won't be able to dodge left, right, up and down at the same time!"

"Are you insane? Is this just a game to you?"

Taylor laughed. "Of course it is!" Taylor said. "Now if you really want a shot at capturing me-"

He exploded into speed, catching up with her an instant. "I'm not playing games, you're under-"

Whatever he was going to say was interrupted when she hit him with a relatively weak blast. It completely distroyed his breastplate, leaving sizable burns in his chest. She grabbed him by the remains of his bodysuit and held him up. "You lose," she said, idly. "Continue?" she asked.

Taylor yawned.

"Taylor, listen to me! We're going to the PRT right now!"

She was bored. "You can go if you want," she said, snuggling into her pillow. "Do whatever, I don't care."

"I- You'll come with me!" Danny shouted, his voice carrying across the house, intense and nearly booming in the empty rooms.

Taylor sat up on her bed, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "I don't want to."

"I don't care, I'm your father, you'll do what I say-"

Taylor laughed. "That's a good one," she said.

He was red, nearly turning purple, as he took a step towards her. Maybe he thought it was threatening or something. "You, you-"

"I what?" Taylor asked, yawning again. "If you don't have anything interesting to say, can you just fuck off? I'm trying to sle-"

The sound of skin on skin, of flesh on flesh, rang across the room.

Danny Hebert looked at his own hand, horrified at what he had done.

Taylor looked at him. Then she laughed. "Oh, this is rich. You roll over when the school fucks over and destroys my life. You roll over when they expel my friends because they were trying to help me. You roll over when your so called friend lies his ass off to protect his daughter, but when your own daughter tells you to fuck off because she wants to sleep, then Big Man Danny brings out his hands, huh?"

"Taylor, I- I- I can't- I'm-"

"I really don't care," Taylor said. "You know what, fuck this, and fuck you, I'm out of here. See you never, probably."

Taylor patted her now full belly, as the nervous waiter handed her the bill. She paid him with some of her illegally obtained drug money. Just because it'd previously belonged to a bunch of crackheads didn't mean it wasn't just as valid as any other money. Even if it was a little bit dirty.

She left the restaurant in a better mood.

As she left, she saw Victoria Dallon, AKA Glory Girl, walking into the restaurant with her sister, that millionaire boyfriend of hers, and some pretty boy that was also probably wealthy.

Glory Girl saw her, and seemed to be itching for a fight.

Taylor yawned. "If you're eager for another round, I'm always game." Taylor blinked. "Hey there Amy. So she hasn't realized yet, huh."

"Realized what?" Victoria asked, somewhat surprised, shocked out of her reverie.

Amy turned red. "It's nothing, just... ignore her."

"Wait you know each other?" Victoria asked.

"Kinda," Taylor said. "I mean, who doesn't know 'Panacea'?" Taylor said with a smirk.

Amy glared at her. "She's even worse when you get to know her," Amy said. "Unfortunately I don't have a choice in the matter."

"Is... is she blackmailing you?" Glory Girl's boytoy asked.

"None of your business," Amy said, rudely, "what do you even want, you bitch?"

"Well if we're gonna be like that, then I'll be going," Taylor said, sniffing at her. "Can you at least tell your sister so she doesn't arrange you dates that leave you even more of an irritable bitch than usual?"

"Eat my ass," Amy grumbled.

"No thanks, I prefer sausage," Taylor said. "Speaking of which..."

She took off into the sky.

"What just happened," the boy Victoria had invited into a double date asked.

Taylor looked at the Simurgh.

The Simurgh looked back.

"You know the rules," Taylor said. "Everything must be escapable. Everything must be nonlethal. If you break the rules, so will I. And I'm not limited like you are, so we both know the result of that, yes?"

Slowly, almost calculatingly, the Simurgh nodded.

Taylor smiled widely. "Okay, girl, it's time to show me what you've got!" she said, taking a figurative step back and setting off at a sedate pace, the Simurgh in pursuit. Then Taylor used her first attack, creating massive patterns of bullets in the sky, which the Simurgh deftly weaved and bobbed through, while shooting back with her own invisible, telekinetic bubbles of force.

Taylor sat on the couch.

"Look, not that I mind your friends crashing at my place, Greg, but I don't think harboring a well known villain is a good idea. Especially since they know you're her friend."

Greg's mom was scolding him while they were eating. Taylor sat at the table with them after a few moments.

"Hey there," Greg said. "How you feeling?"

"Eh, been worse," Taylor said. "Will probably be way better once my flu's gone. Also, don't worry about that, I'm sure the PRT is going to be way less focused on going after me, since I handed them the Undersiders on a platter."

"It went that poorly?" Greg asked, wincing. He still remembered looking up pictures of Tattletale.

"It was going really well until one of them sicced her dogs on me. I didn't take that shit from the guy that spawned me, I'm sure as hell not taking that shit from some upstart teenagers in the shitty part of a shitty city," Taylor said, a bit of vicious anger creeping into her tone. It was strange how deeply the thought of being betrayed in a place she'd been invited to in good faith angered her. "Eh. I'll explore some options."

Greg offered her spaghetti.

"Actually, I was in the mood for some Asian Cuisine... I wonder if the Tofu place is open still..."

It was. She ate next to a funny Korean man that was apparently trying to break into the market of standup comedy. She wished him well.

AKA: Taylor finds solace in 2hu, and becomes a 2hu herself.