Chapter Text
~Prologue~
Taylor's scream sputtered as the filth drip into her mouth, then resumed twice as loud and kept going even as the bugs began to crawl down her throat. Trapped and with barely enough space to breathe, there was no way she could find the strength to to even try and escape her filthy metal coffin.
She was still screaming when darkness took her an-
She's floating in an infinity of fluid life, a primordial soup full of beautiful, colorful, terrifying and primeval sea beasts, unable to tell up from down, or left from right. Some creatures are swimming 'straight' while others do so upside down, or in any of a thousand other directions with no meaning against the blinding glow of the blue and green lights permeating everywhere and everything.
It took Taylor a full four seconds and a half to realize she wasn't breathing, then a minute to calm down and realize she's not drowning either.
""Taylor,"" two voices as one, or perhaps one with an echo? The sound comes from everywhere and everything. It makes Taylor feel as if the fish and the beasts are talking to her.
It came from inside her too. From her own lips, in the unknown, echoing voice/s.
Understandably, she kind of freakes out for a little bit.
""Taylor."" The voice/s repeat themselves.
Looking around, trying to understand what's going on, she remembers she's not breathing, so how is she talking?
""The world/humanity is in danger,"" the voice/s say, and Taylor can finally tell them apart. ""The World/Humanity needs you. You will be given power. Enough to save the World/Humanity.""
'Oh God this is my trigger event,' she realizes with a mix of fear and anticipation. This is what people talk about on PHO, isn't it? What parahumans don't like talking about beyond a passing mention. 'I'm getting powers! I'm gonna be a hero...!'
It almost makes the locker worth it.
"W-what are my powers?" She manages to ask as she crosses her metaphysical fingers. 'Something good, something awesome!'
""Love/Fury."" The voices reply, and there's an awkward pause before they talk again. ""Fire/Fire.""
'At least they agreed in the end, I supp- oh shi-!'
~I~
Armsmaster was the first Protectorate hero on the scene, and things were already bad when he got there.
Not only had someone posted video of a trigger event on PHO, thus outing a cape (and got a perma-ban for their trouble), the video clearly shows Sophia Hess (Shadowstalker) bullying a classmate by pushing her into a locker, and what little is seen of the locker's insides are disgusting to the extreme. Then it gets so much worse, because everything lights on fire in a second video, and as the locker sprays molten metal into Hess and her friends, she goes into her breaker state to dodge the blast before fleeing the scene through the nearest wall.
Worse still, Victor and Rune were already there when Armsmaster got into the scene,
~I~
thump-! thump-! thump-!
Despite Victor's shots pinging off his armor, Armsmaster moves into cover as to prevent shots from ricocheting on the Darwin Award Candidates recording the fight.
"This is not a show! Leave!" He calls out at the teens in his best authoritative voice, but is dismayed as barely half of them turn around and flee.
thump-! thump-! thump-!
The shots keep coming, pinging off the wall as Victor ricochets the shots at him.
"Rune!?" The nazi cape calls out to the E88's youngest member.
"What do you want me to do!? I don't have fucking digging powers!" Replies the teen.
Armsmaster pokes the tip of his right middle finger around the corner so he can use the microcamera hidden on it to peek at the situation.
In a word, its a mess. There's a score of unconscious, badly burnt teens laying on the ground, the hallway looks as if a bomb went off, and there's a person-sized, steaming hole on the ground.
Steaming, not smoking, as water vapor and a visible heat haze raise from it non-stop. The hallway's roof looks like it is starting to give, beginning to droop low as if bloated. Armsmaster can tell its actually beginning to melt.
Rune can't even get close to the hole, much less do anything about it.
"Shit!" Victor curses softly as he keeps ricocheting bullets unto Armsmaster's armor, while the hero stands there and takes it to prevent the neo nazi from accidentally shooting a kid. "Alright, we're going!"
Armsmaster won't mind admitting that a part of him, a rather large one, really wanted to run out and take the neo nazi capes down, but he has to prioritize rescuing the unconscious, wounded teens laying on the hallway, and if the villains are willing to go away so emergency services can rush in, he's more than happy to let them.
Then the hole erupts. A pillar of blue-white flames hits the roof and vaporizes it in a moment, the heat haze ballooning out and finally scaring away the last teens in the area as Rune screams and falls back, covering her scalded face and whimpering in pain.
Victor picks her into a princess carry, and jumps out the nearest window. There's no glass, as it already ballooned and burst out thanks to the heat.
Armsmaster's around the corner, and his HUD is telling him the air is too hot to breathe. He seals his suit and pulls the nearest extinguisher free from the wall and runs in to... find that the extinguisher does nothing. Worse than nothing its content are just chalk, and the dust burst that follows blows him back a dozen feet, armor and all.
As he slams against a wall at the far end of the hallway, he realizes there's basically no way any of the kids is still alive.
~Ignition 1.0~
A very startled and confused Taylor wakes up to the sound of gunfire. If you think a 15 years old girl living in the east short of the US shouldn't know what automatic gunfire sounds like, you'd be right. Except this is Brockton Bay.
She can move now, but it takes a little effort. She can't see her hand... hands? She's suddenly perfectly aware of her own body, and that's how she can tell she has ten hands. Nevermind ambidextrous, she's omnidextrous now.
She can tell her eyes are working, but she still can't see the hand she's holding in front of her open eyes. She's submerged... underwater? It doesn't feels like that, it feels thicker, much thicker, but not so much so she can't move, its just as if she was submerged in marmalade or syrup.
thump-! thump-! thump-!
Gunfire above her.
Being a sensible person, Taylor knows she should take cover. Run to safety, away from whatever-
'I have powers now.' She reminds herself. 'I'm a cape... I'm a hero!'
She still can't see, though, but she can move. She tries and stands up, and finds that whatever she's submerged in, it isn't bothering her in any way.
'I don't need to breathe,' she thinks, and somehow manages to orient herself, feel which way is up and swim in that direction. There's some thicker stuff at the edges, but her fingers find no purchase and little resistance as she heads for what she hopes is the surface of whatever she's swimming in.
Then she breaks the surface, and hears a girlish scream, and she can see light at the end of a small tunnel far above her head. No, not a tunnel, but a hole. She's at the bottom of a hole, or perhaps a well? What happened, and why is the water a bright red? It almost looks like... lava?
'I'm swimming in lava!?' Well, molten rock, dirt and... there's water falling in her general direction, but its flash-boiling as soon as it comes too close. Some burst pipes. She can see the water falling from burst... no, molten pipes. 'I melted the floor... I melted the floor!'
There's an explosion overhead, but the heat doesn't bother her, and she's barely aware of the blast's pressure wave in so far as she can tell its there, but that's all it is.
'I... I need to get out of here... maybe I can help?'
She reaches for the sides of the hole, and pushes, trying to lift herself out of the hole. With five pairs of arms, you'd think that'd be easy, but her hands find little to no resistance as they sink into the walls, and whatever's not instantly vaporized, melts down and adds to the lava pool around her.
Voices, she can hear voices overhead.
~I~
Velocity arrives unto the scene to find firemen and paramedics working together to evacuate Winslow High. There's over a dozen body bags, grim and serious as they lay on the street or are moved out of the way.
Winslow High is ablaze, and he can feel the heat from several dozen feet away. The firefighters are just standing there, watching impotently as the least reputable educational institute in Brockton Bay burns in a massive, gigantic pyre.
He spots Armsmaster, his boss sitting on just his bodysuit at the edge of an ambulance while the firefighters and paramedics do their best to stop the spreading fire.
"Jesus, boss. What the hell happened?" He asks as soon as he's out of his breaker state.
"Dust explosion. I tried using a fire extinguisher, and it was full of chalk."
"What?"
"Someone embezzled the money for real fire extinguishers. It happens sometimes," explains the leader of the Protectorate ENE.
"What are the firemen doing? What about fighting the fire?"
"Fire's too hot."
"What?"
"Above 2000 °C, water breaks down into hydrogen and oxygen. Both of which are flammable," explains Armsmaster. "Just more fuel to the fire. Is part of why you use controlled explosions to snuff oil rigs if they catch on fire. Snuff the air, suffocate the fire."
"I take it we can't just blow up Winslow High."
"You'd be correct, so the fire fighters are focusing on containment, creating firewalls and removing anything flammable from the area."
"Why aren't you wearing your suit?"
"Most of it melted down. Undersuit protected me, but can't walk into that until PRT van makes it here with my specialized gear."
"You have a special, anti fuck-you-I'm-heat-itself fire armor suit?"
"Made it to fight Lung."
"Fair enough."
It took a while, but as soon as the PRT van arrived, Armsmaster changed into his fire-resistant suit and was pleased to find it did indeed allow him to walk into the blaze. By now, Miss Militia, Clockblocker and Missy were also on-site.
Missy/Vista was proving exceptionally useful by creating distance between the burning Winslow High and the rest of town and preventing the rain of ash and sparks from spreading the fire to adjoining buildings, while Clockblocker/Dennis could instantly snuff fires up to the size of burning cars by freezing things in time, thus instantly denying the combustion process.
Sadly, entire buildings was too big an ask.
~I~
"Is anyone there!?" Armsmaster knew it was a rather pointless question, but it'd look good when the his body cam footage was accidentally leaked, to see him bravely walking through the burning building in search of victims to help. "Try and make noise if you can hear my voice! Kick, smash, make noise however you can!"
Of course, his own face was protected by the sealed suit, so it was his outer speakers making noise. And then he heard it. Against all hope, he heard a girl's voice, probably a teen, crying for help, crying from... the hole?
'The parahuman,' he realized. 'She melted through the floor.'
Immediately, he thought of Ash Beast, a poor bastard whose power is an eternal, self-perpetuating explosion roughly as powerful as a small nuke (if such a thing exists) that incinerates anything and everything he comes too close to.
Thankfully, the north african S-class threat moves at average, human walking speed. Thankfully, whatever power the freshly-triggered victim of Sophia Hess may have, its not quite that bad.
Hopefully.
~I~
She was treading lava, and she was okay!
'Alright, I'm definitively heatproof. Also, I don't need to breathe. Or it doesn't bother me to breathe... however hot the air down here happens to be. Wait, aren't I inhaling molten rock vapors? Can you get high off this stuff? I guess you'd normally die, right, so I may be the one case of someone breathing stone vapor, and-'
Taylor's mind was going a mile a minute as she tried to understand her situation. Right, she was treading on lava. It was easy, too, but she knew enough to remember that objects floated due to a density difference between them and the water around them.
There's a salt lake somewhere... or was it a sea? Apparently you can't drown on the Dead Sea because the salt content is so high the water is heavier than your body, so you just float no matter what. Surely, if a bunch of water with salt is dense enough for that, molten rock must be even more so?
As boredorm began to settle in, she tries laying down on the lava and... yup, she was floating. No biggie. Definitively fireproof. Didn't even bother her one bit.
Problem was, she really couldn't climb up. Her hands, and she had ten of them now, just kept melting whatever she came in contact with, so any attempts at climbing succeeded only in making the hole bigger. On the plus side, she was no longer trapped in a cramped space, but a cavern roughly as wide and tall as a Jacuzzi.
She looked at one of her hands... it was... her third left arm? With two under it and two more over it, it'd be her third arm no matter which way she counted, right? Her middle left arm, then? She decided that sounded kind of alright, so she was looking at her middle left hand now.
A visible heat haze is continuously pouring out of her hand, though it was kind of hard to notice since everything around her was distorted by a heat haze too.
Her skin looked kind of red, but everything looked kind of red right now, her hair included, which she wasn't sure how to feel about. To begin with, it was silky smooth now.
She loved her dark, curly hair. It was her one feminine trait, and it reminded her of her mom.
Then again...
'Jesus,' she thought, looking down at her own body, or trying to. Which was kind of hard with a pair of flesh melons on the way. 'These are a thing now. Do powers always come with a makeover of some kind?'
Yeah, power-induced puberty is not a joke. Looking down at herself as best she can, she can tell she didn't just hit puberty, she drove over it with a multi-track drifting freight train.
'Oh for fuck's sake...!'
Trueth be told, she has some very conflicting feelings about i-
"Is anyone there!?" Suddenly, she can hear a faint voice coming from afar. No, not from afar, from above. "Try and make noise if you can hear my voice! Kick, smash, make noise however you can!"
"Help! Help! HELP!" Taylor wasted no time calling out to whomever it was. If she could have thrown something out of the hole, she would have, but whatever she reached for either melted down or if she held to it for just a bit too long, vaporized.
Experimentally, she tried the voice's advice, and punched the nearest wall. As hard as she could.
~I~
TH-DOOM!!
'Earthquake? Explosion?' Armsmaster checked his HUD. He hadn't included a seismometer in his suit (it was mostly geared to fight Lung, after all), but he had one back at his lab. 'Not strong enough to register in the Energy-based magnitude (Me) scale. Probably a three or a four in the Richter scale.'
That was important, that was extremely important, as the Richter scale measures damage as perceived by the public, and while a 3 is barely felt by anyone, a 4 is actually strong enough to noticeably shake indoor objects, but not powerful enough to do noticeable damage.
TH-DOOM!!
TH-DOOM!!
TH-DOOM!!
Alright, people would definitively feel that. Windows would rattle, and some stuff may fall down and break. Right now, he was just grateful it wasn't any stronger, as he felt in his teeth and bones, and it was coming from... the hole?
"Hello?" It was definitively a girl's voice.
TH-DOOM!!
"Can you hear me!?" It is coming from the hole.
TH-DOOM!!
"I can hear you!" He called back in a rush. "Are you injured?"
Thankfully, the shaking stopped. It'd be a while before anyone associated the Taylor Hebert's trigger even with Brockton's Bay brief January earthquake.
"I don't think so... I just can't climb up. Pl-please call for the PRT. I... I just got my powers and I'm... I'm scared..." she finished softly enough Armsmaster's armor just barely managed to pick it up, but it did, and it was displayed on his HUD as everything was logged and recorded. "Everything I touch just melts down, so I can't climb up."
"Wait, miss. Are you sure you're uninjured?"
Powers typically don't injure the person using them, but collateral damage is a different thing.
"I mean... I'm basically floating in lava, and I'm okay?"
"...alright. Are you in danger? The school is burning, so if you're not actually in danger, it may be safer for you to remain where you are."
"Is everyone alright?" The worry in the girl's voice (and Armsmaster decided it was definitively a girl. Too young to count as a young woman, but not so young as to be a child.) was noticeable, and it helped assure Colin that the girl was not malicious or insane.
"Everything will be alright. We'll begin working on getting you out of there as soon as the fire is under control and emergency teams can approach, miss...?"
"Taylor... I'm Taylor. Wait... th-that's my... uh..."
"Miss, I need you to remain calm, can you do that?"
"I... yes? What's going on?"
"Your... trigger event was leaked as video, miss."
"..."
"Miss?"
"Well... I mean, I have ten arms now, so its not like a mask was going to do me any good, I guess." Then she adds as an after thought. "Who are you?"
"I'm Armsmaster, from the Protectorate."
"...Ar- you're my favorite hero..." again, Armsmaster's armor picked it up, though it was faint enough Colin was quite sure she didn't mean for him to hear that. Still, he couldn't help but feel the corners of his lips tug up a little bit.
"Alright, miss Hebert, I need you to remain calm, can you do that?"
"I- yes, I can... are... were there any wounded? I didn't mean to, but when Sophia pushed me into the locker, I- I-"
Armsmaster frowned. He'd definitively need to have a chat with miss Hess.
"That is part of public record now, miss Hebert. It was caught on camera, and there are some very serious legal repercussions for those who cause trigger events. Miss Hess is likely to face some time in a juvenile detention center, and there's a good chance she'll have to finish her sentence in a jail after she turns eighteen."
"Oh. Uh... what about... what about Emma and the others?"
Armsmaster looked at the charred bodies lying near the hole. He gave it a few moments of thought. This girl's life had already been shattered by Shadowstalker's act of cruelty, she didn't need more on her plate.
"I'm afraid that Victor and Rune from the Empire Eighty-Eight were the first on the scene after your trigger event. There were shots fired, and people got caught by ricochet when I arrived."
"Oh God. Emma... she... I..." Then she said to herself. "We used to be like sisters..."
'Yeah,' decided Colin. "No need to tell her she almost certainly vaporized her best friend.' The girl was traumatized enough as is.
"Miss, I am going to check the rest of the school for anyone who may be in danger, then I'll come back to talk with you. It may be a few hours before we can get you out of there, so don't panic, understood?"
"I... I understand, sir."
After that, it was a full three hours before emergency rescue teams could approach, but that's because it took that long for the school to finish burning down to the point there was simply nothing left to burn, nothing left that could fall on top of anyone.
Armsmaster completed a tour of the burning school, and went back to stand by the hole where Taylor was still trapped. He stayed with her while using his HUD to work on ways to pull her out.
Daniel Hebert was summoned to the school, and though he couldn't approach the hole to talk to his daughter, his presence nearby did a great deal to keep Taylor calm.
~I~
"..and the journal is under my mattress in my room, I... oh God, I wanted it to end, but I didn't want Emma to die!"
Armsmaster had quickly jury-rigged some equipment and moved it as close to the hole as possible to let Taylor talk to her dad. Behind Daniel Hebert, the Wards were standing in silence, their expressions clouded and grim.
"Fucking Sophia..." Gallant reached under his helmet to rub at his eyes for the umpteenth time.
That pretty much resumed the Ward's feelings on the situation.
"Its... its alright, Taylor. That's over now, I oh God I wish you had told me..." Danny whimper-growled as he leaned unto the table holding the microphone and speakers on his end.
"You were... delicate. Since mom died."
"I'm such a failure. Taylor, I'm so sorry, I should have... I should have... I'm sorry. I love you kiddo."
"I love you too, dad."
Missy was actually trembling in rage. Had been doing so for at least half an hour now. Gallant wasn't sure how much longer that would go before the girl was simply too exhausted to stand.
"Goddammit Sophia," he mumbled to himself.
Assault was standing by, and he was not cracking any jokes.
Kiddo, listen, Armsmaster's the only one that can get close enough to do anything, so he's working alone in getting you out," explained Danny. "Its still gonna take a while. Do you need anything?"
"Uh... yeah, I can hear someone working up there. Armsmaster, is that you, sir?"
"Yes miss Hebert, I'm here." Everyone could hear Armsmaster though the speakers now.
Everyone included whoever many people would later hear this operation's leaked audio logs. It was a massive PR move on his behalf, even if it painted Shadowstalker in the direst of light.
Well, he handed over the Wards to Director Piggot months ago. If Hess broke her parole, it wasn't under his watch. No black record on his career. No, he was the compassionate, experienced hero regretting ever letting go of 'his kids' now. He could already tell he was gonna have to take them back after this mess was dealth with, but not so far into the future anyone would have doubts about why the local Protectorate leader felt he had to do so.
He was running multiple line-generator AIs to make sure he came across as compassionate and inspiring to whoever reads the logs, later.
"Miss Hebert, do you mind if I call you Taylor? As we already stablished, your civilian identity is pretty much non-existent anymore."
"I... sure."
"Taylor, are you hungry? Thirsty? I'm not sure if we can lower anything to you without it catching on fire or turning into steam..."
"I feel fine, actually. I'm just... floating right now."
"On the lava?"
Soft chuckle. "Yes, on the lava."
"Taylor it takes about two thousand degree celsius to melt rock. Steel's melting point is somewhere between fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred degrees celsius, so I'm having a bit of trouble coming up with something strong enough to reach you that is also flexible enough you can use it as a rope to secure yourself with. Please be patient."
"Yes, I understand."
"If you are feeling bored, maybe you could try testing your powers?"
"Sure, I... yeah, alright."
A column of blue-white fire burst out of the hole, reaching several hundred feet into the air, visible from everywhere in Brockton Bay, and lighting the sky for dozens of miles in every direction. It also dropped Armsmaster on his ass, though the hero chose to make no comment on that, busy as he was with all the emergency notifications his armor was screaming at him in the aftershock of a thirteen foot tall cloud of vaporized rock that poured out of the hole as a powerful enough geyser to glassify the tunnel's walls.
"...what was that?" he asked as calmly as he could.
"I just tried a soft blast on the wall of the hole. Why?"
"That was a soft blast?"
"Well, it kind of pushed me back a little bit, but yeah. I'm pretty sure it was a soft blast. I mean, I only used one hand, and I wasn't trying very hard..."
"Taylor, my God," her dad's voice came through the speaker laying on the ground some distance from the hole and thankfully, behind a slab of bright-red stone. "Don't use two hands! Whatever you do, don't use two hands!"
"How about ten?" She joked softly.
"NO!" This time, it was multiple voices, as every Ward present, her dad, Battery, everyone within hearing range, and Armsmaster all shouted at her together.
She meeped softly, but didn't try again.
"Oh-okay... she whimpered. "Uh, the hole's a lot bigger now. I kind of melted the wall... ah, I can feel the bottom now. I'm standing up. Yup, lava's only up to my ankles now, this feels a lot better and... ugh, I'm beginning to sink into the ground."
"You're probably liquefying the rock. That means your body temperature is definitively above two thousand degree celsius," replied Armsmaster.
"How much is that in Freedom Units?"
"Three thousand six hundred and thirty-two farenheit."
"So, that's a lot."
"It is."
"Maybe I can try making the hole bigger? If I angle it down low enough, I could just climb out."
"That's... a possibility. But Winslow is surrounded by residences, and doing that would spray vaporized stone on an unknown number of them."
"So what if I only used a few fingers? You know, go really slow?"
"...that may work, but I'd rather extract you myself. Lets minimize any chance for collateral damage, shall we?"
"Right, right."
Now that Taylor could walk around in the orange-glowing cave, she came to a sudden realization.
"I'm... kind of nude."
"I highly doubt your clothes were fireproof, so that much is to be expected, Taylor."
"Ah I mean... I just noticed. As in, it doesn't bother me. I know it should bother me, but it doesn't. We're talking about getting me out of here, and I think I should be mortified by the idea but it really feels okay?"
"It isn't unknown for trigger events to alter a person's thinking and mannerisms, Taylor. Still, I should probably work on a fireproof blanket too."
"No hurry, I- uh."
"What is it?"
~I~
Dissociative disorders are mental health conditions that involve a disruption or disconnection in a person's memory, identity, emotion, perception, behavior, or sense of self. Taylor doesn't know that, but she does know that she should feel somewhat worried about being out and about without clothes.
Emma had taken her clothes during PE once, and used them to clog the toilet, forcing her to go home in shorts and a t-shirt. Sure, that wasn't particularly nude, but it was still mortifying at the time. And yet now that she was completely nude, she felt... at ease? Natural? Comfortable. She was comfortable in her own skin, and didn't feel any need to cover up.
She didn't hate the idea of clothing, she just didn't care. Still, it sounded like it'll delay her getting out of the hole, and she was already bored.
After all, she'd been there for the better part of the day already, and there was nothing to do. It was just a hole. Sure, an incandescently glowing one, but that little tidbit lost its shine several hours ago.
Still, she should probably do something about it? The nudity thing. It would delay her getting out.
"No hurry, I- uh." All of a sudden, she can feel lines of cloth wrapped around her neck, falling down her body, and... is that a tiara, like Glory Girl's?
"What is it?" Asked Armsmaster.
She looked down at herself... just... it was literally just a few lines of cloth in purple and violet before eventually fading into red-white at the tips. Nowhere near enough to provide any sort of modesty, really. More like... decorations? Still, it was something.
"I think I just manifested a suit." She paused for a moment. "I mean, its about as much cloth as a one piece swimsuit in total, but... uh, I wonder why it isn't catching fire."
"Power-generated items are not particularly rare if you just found your breaker form. Any other changes?" Asked Armsmaster, taking notice that Taylor was already hot enough to melt and liquefy stone before going into a potential breaker form, not to mention resistant enough to float and walk around in lava with no issues.
"My nipples are on fire." She said matter of fact.
"Beg your pardon?"
"Taylor, what?" Her dad spluttered after coughing for a moment.
"My nipples are on fire... uhmm... no, its more like, the tip of my breasts are on fire? Its bright blue-white, can't really see through it, either. Doesn't hurt, tho."
"Bright blue-fire is can reach between two thousand five hundred and three thousand degrees Celsius. That's about as hot as a welding torch, and indicates you may be burning the oxygen around you to make them." Explained Armsmaster.
"And in freedom units?" This time it was Danny talking. Of course he was familiar with welding torches. Any DWU man would be.
"Four thousand five hundred to five thousand four hundred Fahrenheit." Supplies Armsmaster. "That's not really important, though. What's important is that you were already hot enough to make the distinction between water and gasoline a mostly theoretical one, Taylor. I'm gonna need you to leave your breaker state if we want to get you out of here. I don't think we have anything that you could use to climb, or..."
Taylor was floating before him. Or more accurately, she was hovering right above the hole.
Sure enough, the total amount of cloth on her would probably amount to a one-piece swimsuit, but only if you took the long and thin stripes, then sewn them together and didn't melt in the process. Right now, though?
Right now, and much like her ankle-length white hair, they were floating around her, pushed up and away on the hot drafts created by the blasts of blue-white flames coming out of Taylor's hands and feet.
Though, only half her hair was white, and that was the half facing away from her, because the half facing in her direction was full of stars in a purple-pink night sky.
Just like she had said, the tips of her breasts (and her groin) were aflame with blue-white flames bright and thick enough to provide something loosely approaching modesty, but it wasn't the impossible sensual, soft curves of the girl that drew Colin's gaze, nor was it the impossible starry sky he could see in her hair. It was her eyes. Glowing red gems that shone with mirth, and it took him some work to pull away from the girl's gaze, or at least to remember to talk.
"Hm. Welcome back to Brocton Bay, Taylor," he said, reading from the AI prompt in his HUD.
"Happy to be back~" she replied with a smile.