-Taylor Hebert-
I stood up and just short of bolted out of the class door as the last bell of the day rang.
I thought of how this day had gone while making my way toward the exit.
Sure, Emma still had thrown jabs at me and sent occasional smirks my way while Madison and her cronies had been tittering at me under their noses like a pack of hyenas. But otherwise, today had been pretty mild.
They hadn't spilled juice over my seat nor vandalized it with markers where I had to take my time to clean. There hadn't been a confetti of pencil shavings raining down on me as I had been sitting. Hell, there hadn't been something as simple as crumbled paper containing words of juvenile insults thrown my way.
All those factors alone had been enough to put me on edge, but the single element that had pushed me off that edge had been the fact that I had barely seen Sophia today.
She hadn't been there to throw insults at me alongside Emma, however with less finesse she would have done. Nor had she been there to accidentally shoulder-check me, nor merely standing beside Emma silently with her all scowling glory. The only times I had seen her had been in the classes we had been sharing today. Otherwise, she had been gone-in-the-wind throughout each and every break.
The last time it had looked like they had finally been off my back, I had learned in the most… nastiest way possible that it had been an illusion created by some twisted anticipation on their part.
Thus, believing this had been another case of the calm before the storm, I had left the premises of the school with haste.
Just as I was thinking that maybe I had let the paranoia get to me a little too easily because I'd been walking for a few minutes now without any issue, life felt like throwing another curveball at me.
There were two boys some dozen feet ahead of me. One of them saw me and shook the other's shoulder while pointing a finger at me.
I didn't know them by name, but I remembered them from being on the track team and hanging out with Sophia from time to time.
The moment they started walking toward me I turned the other way, only to pause and see three more guys from the track team heading my way.
I dived into the alleyway to my right without much hesitation and started running, which had been the correct course of action, considering I heard their footsteps speeding up, running after me.
"Hey! Wait up!", "Don't make us run after you for nothing, bitch!" I ignored their shouting and jeering as I turned right at the intersection.
If I could run up to the main street again, they might have given up on chasing me. Thinking that, and hoping they hadn't been smart and meticulous enough to cut my way with other people, I made another right.
As I managed to make my way out of the alley into the street and turned -left this time-, I risked looking back.
Unfortunately, they were still after me. The few pedestrians my pursuers and I passed along were quick to give us a wide berth.
Provided, I didn't expect anyone to offer a helping hand, it was a notion I'd been disillusioned out of for a while, but I'd hoped even the possibility of that happening would have been enough to be dissuading.
Alas, it was not.
If that didn't work, my only hope was to go through alleys again in the hopes of losing them. With that, I dived another left into the alley.
God, these alleys had always looked like, whether in movies or from the few times I'd used them personally, claustrophobically narrow. Which had been precisely why I'd chosen to enter one again in the hopes of shaking off my pursuers.
I wasn't sure if it was specifically this set of alleyways or if it had always been this way and I had misjudged before, but now it looked like this was awfully wide enough to let a couple of guys comfortably chase down a hapless girl.
It must have been a couple of minutes of me just running and zigzagging through alleys amidst the yells and profanities of my pursuers.
Why is this happening to me?
I was starting to think that the chase was part of the fun for these guys. Otherwise there wasn't any other explanation for how a group of athletic, track team boys couldn't catch up to a very unathletic me.
What did I do to deserve this?
But even that was gonna end soon. I'd been getting winded for the last minute now and feeling the burn in my lungs. I was beginning to feel that annoying, stabbing exhaustion pain on my side too, slowing down my waning pace even further.
Will it ever end?
I felt my eyes tearing up, my vision getting blurry. And not wholly from exhaustion.
How is it fair?
I didn't need this right now.
Where is the justice in this?
As I was preparing to shunt my emotions into various bugs in my range not only to escape what I was feeling right now but also to harden myself against whatever humiliation they would inflict on me, I heard it.
A sort of thumping sound and rustling of clothes, followed by a couple of surprised shouts of anguish.
"The fuck? What the hell, man!?" I heard one of my pursuers yell indignantly as I stopped and turned around to take in the strange sight.
The intervention had been done by a man who had one of my pursuers' necks stuck between the wall and his forearm while he had another one in a headlock in his other arm. They were struggling very hard trying to get out of their predicament as the other three were watching warily, punching, kicking and clawing wherever they could reach, to no visible effect.
I could see why.
The guys chasing me didn't look like slouches when it came to physicality, but the man they were against was absolutely dwarfing them. I wasn't sure if he quite hit the seven-foot mark, but he was definitely above the six and a half. And with a decidedly broad-shouldered physique, he must have been weighing twice as any of his current opposition.
Whatever the guy was about to spout further, it was cut off by the man. "Do you know, from outside, how a group of punks chasing a girl throughout dank and dirty alleys looks like?" The query he uttered with a deep and clear voice was asked calmly, if not outright sincerely.
As the manner the question was asked set a tranquil eeriness in the air to the point that even the two in his clutches ceased their struggle, he continued with the same calmness while somewhat lacking the previous semi-joviality. "That it looks like a group of punks is chasing a girl throughout dank and dirty alleys."
As the tension became so thick that a knife could cut it, the free guys looked at each other before the apparent ring-leader spoke. "You don't want to do this, man."
The reply was swift. "I think I know what I want better than you do, champ." The guys he had in his hold started struggling again. "The real question here is-" The man suddenly applied pressure to their throats in a way that the purpose of their struggle switched from release to trying to breathe. "-what do you want?"
There were a few seconds where the only sounds were the guys struggling and apparently failing to breathe. "C'mon, man. Their air supply is thinning as we wait. They are gonna pass out soon, and I'll be left with two empty arms again. Who knows what I'm gonna do with them after that."
As the leader agonized in indecision for a few more seconds, he briefly bit his lip nervously before reaching a decision. "Okay, okay! Let them go, then we are gonna go."
"Hm. Continue making smart decisions like that, and you're gonna make far in life," was the reply he got before the man shoved his captives toward their friends, releasing them in the process.
As they were coughing and heaving from nearly getting choked out, one of the free ones -to the right of the leader- attempted to make a move to the giant man before getting held by the leader. "Stop it, it's not worth it."
"Listen to your buddy," the man supplied cheerily. "Or don't, and make my day." The cheerful tone didn't drop in the second half of the sentence, but despite that -or more likely because of it-, it came off as even more threatening.
The aggressive one waited a few moments before uttering a grunt, "Whatever." And with that, they turned around and left.
As I was processing what just happened, the man approached me. "Hey, it's okay. Breathe in from the nose, hold it in for a fraction of a second, then breathe out of the mouth, all slow-like." His voice was decidedly more gentle as he spoke.
And after hearing that, I realized I was still sucking air in like a fish out of water. Applying what he said, I felt my breath and heartbeat stabilize.
"Feeling better?" He asked.
I sucked in air one last time before answering, "Yeah. T-thanks. For the advice. A-and for the rescue. For everything, really." I could feel my face getting hotter and hotter with every verbal stumble of mine. God, had it been so long ago I had had a normal conversation that I'd forgotten how to have a normal chat?
He laughed good naturedly. "It's okay. Don't even mention it." He mimed looking left and right. "Let's relocate to a place less hospitable toward rats and vermin, shall we?" I just nodded, not trusting myself to not put my foot in my mouth.
He asked as we made our way to the street, "Which way you headed?"
I pointed to the left. "This way."
"To the bus stop?" He asked.
"Yeah."
He paused a little and said, "Let me accompany you, then."
"You- you don't really need to," I said hastily.
"Nonsense." His reply was immediate. "I won't sleep easy tonight if I don't see you board the bus safely."
He said it so naturally and matter-of-factly, too.
I felt my mouth dry as I did my utmost best not to speak with a squeak. "Thank you. Really appreciate it." I'd like to believe I was at least half-successful.
He just made an agreeing 'hm' sound as we started walking.
We walked for a little while as I was racking my brain choosing between the awkwardness of silence or the inevitably worse awkwardness brought by my attempt to use my apparently very rusty social skills.
It looked like the feeling of awkwardness was one-sided as he asked a question casually, "The guys looked like our age. You know them?"
Now that I got to look at his face close-up, I could see that his features were really youthful, so I could believe that we were in the same age bracket. "Only insofar that we go to the same school," I answered.
"Is it Winslow?"
"Yeah." Was I coming off as lame with my short responses? I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind. "Are you familiar with the school?"
I think I made it even lamer. What kind of weird question was that?
So it surprised me when I got a little chuckle out of him. "That's the worst part! I'm new in town," he answered. "To what degree can a high school be a shithole that even a newcomer hears about it?"
Yeah, he could say that again.
"So, Godspeed to you in making it out of there alive and graduating at the end," he offered with a smile.
When was the last time anyone offered me their good wishes, not out of placation or pity, but out of genuinely wishing my well-being?
I clamped down on the instinct of replying with another 'thanks'. He didn't say it just to hear a thank you, and I was starting to feel like a parrot with the word. I'd rather we continue with the conversation.
Oh, speaking of shitholes…
"By the way, the way you sent them running with their tails tucked between their legs…" I looked at him as a whole with a cursory, up-and-down glance, the 'up' part involving craning my neck quite a bit. "I guess size helps quite a lot, huh?"
I hoped I came off as cool with this.
"It does, yeah. And it did this time, too. But not all the way."
I tried figuring out what he meant by that, then I remembered what had happened toward the end. "You mean the guy who tried to walk up to you?"
"Got it in one." He smirked. I didn't know why that made something flutter in my chest. "He thought he could take me regardless of the size difference."
"Could he?" I asked.
"I mean…" His grin got a little wider as he paused, and with that… Yeah, I didn't know what was wrong with me. Maybe I was getting excited over finally having a normal social interaction after so long? That could be it. "He thought I was as vulnerable as anyone else when it came to getting stabbed."
"He had a knife?" I asked, hopefully hiding the tremor in my voice well. One of the guys chasing me had a knife? What would they have done to me if they had caught me? Would they do something so awful that I'd be forced to reveal I had powers? Would my dreams of being a Hero have died before I even started?
"Yeah, a pocketknife is what I'm g- Whoa! That one zipped by me like lightning!" Hearing the exclamation, I realized I'd started sending my emotions to insects without even realizing, and the one my rescuer was referring to was a horse fly -though I didn't know which subspecies considering I hadn't deep-dived that far in my research quite yet- that was going haywire due to my involuntary outburst.
I released the emotional aspect of my power as I spoke, "Sor-" What was I saying sorry for?! Was I gonna go 'Sorry, my bug control power got out of hand and you almost got smacked in the head because of it'? Really? "I mean, he did give up in the end though, right?" That was such a botched recovery that even I could detect the slip-up with my abysmal social skills.
Bless his heart -that was apparently as huge as he was- though, he continued as if he didn't even hear it, "Yeah, but not because of my size."
"Then why?" I asked.
"Think about it," he said. "Size matters, but so do the numbers. However you look at it, I took a considerable risk going against five people by my lonesome. So why would I do that? What assurances did I have that gave me the confidence to walk out of that encounter unharmed?"
That was a good question actually. "What assurances did you have?" I hoped I didn't come off as suspicious. The last thing I wanted was to alienate the only person who was willing to interact with me cordially for the first time in a long time by acting like an ungrateful, paranoid asshole.
"That's the neat part." And the smirk was on his face again. "I didn't. But, they didn't know that. They couldn't even fathom the idea that someone might see a person in need and be unwilling to be a mere spectator unless they had a backup of sorts."
They weren't the only ones to think like that. I wagered he was one of the few who thought like 'anyone who was in my place would do the same' and not realizing how wrong they were to think that.
"So? Then why did he give up? What did he think that you had?" I asked.
His smile got wry. "That I was with the Empire."
As I studied his contours closely; fair skin, green eyes, auburn locks peeking out of his beanie, nose with a straight bridge, sharp jawline, strong chin, lips that were neither too thick nor too thin, whose corners were getting upturn-
Wait, what?
And with that, I realized I was studying a little too intensely as I brought my focus from his features to the expression they were supporting, which was a bemused sort of smile.
I coughed into my fist, trying the chase away both the strangeness of the situation and the heat that had been creeping from my face all the way down to my abdomen.
We are still in winter.
I tried getting out something to have us move along, "That was fucked up of them to assume." God, I hoped I wasn't being overly crass.
And he was right back to smiling fully. "Right!? I'd rather he swing that knife at me than insult me so horribly!"
I couldn't help but let out a giggle.
And like that, we continued talking.
I was still getting used to socializing, so I let him do most of the talking, which let me learn about him a little more.
Firstly, his name was Tyler. He was a wandering street musician who had been traveling the States from west to east, his recent stop being here, Brockton Bay.
Apparently, he had grown up in an orphanage, 'the best one in Cali,' he said, 'if not the whole America.' And he had been emancipated two years ago through a convoluted government program. Since then, he had been travelling and playing across the continent, earning enough to take care of himself.
Apart from that, we were just chatting about random stuff. As I was listening to him say how he couldn't wait to get his hands on his newly commissioned guitar this weekend, I saw my bus turning around the corner.
Tyler glanced at the bus as well. "Is that yours?"
"Yes."
And it was now that I realized we'd arrived at the bus stop a while ago and had been waiting for the bus, talking away the time without realizing.
When was the last time I was having so much fun that it felt like time flew by?
As the bus was approaching, I wanted this to last just a little longer. "What's up with the bag?" I asked.
In his fair winter assembly of boots, pants, jacket, and bonnie, the shopping bag with flower motifs slung over his shoulder looked out of place.
He proudly patted the bag, not the least worried about how he looked, which I found really endear… -ing…
Oh god. Is that-
"The ingredients for some mean brownies," he said with a charming, wide smile.
Charming? Am I really…
Yeah, I had also learned that he was 'one hell of a mean cook'. Again, his words.
As the bus stopped, I said, this time much more seriously and with as much sincerity as I could inject in, "Thank you, for everything you've done."
His smile turned small, but for some reason, it felt bigger. "You're welcome, Taylor. I had a good time talking with you. Take care."
"You too." We waved at each other, then I stepped into the bus. As the bus finally started moving, I looked out to see Tyler standing there, looking at the bus until it was out of view.
As I put my hand to my chest to feel my pulse beating rapidly despite today's chase being well behind me, I didn't know what to make of my feelings.
But for the first time, I didn't have a single urge to push a heart-quickening emotion onto bugs.
____________________________________________________________________
-Tyler Swift, The Unfortunately Named Chaos Bearer-
After watching the bus finally disappear, I looked at one of the notifications, though 'looked at the notifications' was a bit of a misnomer. I was less seeing and more paying attention to something deep within me.
Feat Achieved!
"Rescue" Taylor Hebert from getting duct taped to a dumpster!
BronzeRandom Ticket
Huh. This was the first time I was seeing quotation marks in a feat. That meant she had been bound to escape on her own just like in the original timeline. Also surprisingly, Taylor had been almost on the money in the original work when it came to the intention of her chasers.
Let's see what I got.
[One Size Fits All]
|Common Trait|
Your partners no longer feel any discomfort with your physical features, this extends to your phallus somehow fitting inside of them even if it reaches ludicrous sizes.
Hell yeah! Show your haters, Taylor!
All the hentai jokes aside, this was extremely useful for me. I hadn't been a slouch in my past life when it came to phallus size department, which had been important in my profession, but this guy whose body I was inhabiting, was a different kind of beast.
He had a pants anaconda almost a foot long, and that had been before I got the Spartan-plus treatment. Now it was a little over a foot, 32 centimeters, which I had measured. This guy completely passed through porn star territory to directly hentai protagonist territory.
By the way, I wasn't sure I would ever get used to being capable of seamlessly using imperial measurement units.
Anyway.
It hadn't been the end of the world. As a playboy-turned-gigolo in my past life, I knew how to wield my equipment proficiently even at that size. But that didn't mean it was anywhere easy. I had to be extra careful, extra meticulous, to not accidentally hurt my partner and make it enjoyable for her, which I could manage. But that requirement for extra care came at the cost of reducing my own enjoyment.
It wasn't as bad as I was making out to be. I was still capable of getting my rocks off just fine. However, losing the luxury of wanton movement had a discernible negative impact on my pleasure.
With this though, that problem was completely solved. Hell, I just regained the hope of getting deepthroated! Because this damn thing was way too thick to slide down any woman's throat.
Thanks for enhancing my sex life, Taylor.
I looked at the second feat.
Feat Achieved!
Befriend Taylor Hebert!
BronzeRandom Ticket
And?
[Shitty Copper]
|Common Item|
A bag of infinite shitty copper sourced from EA Nasir. Only contains 1000 tons of copper at a time and replenishes every 24 hours.
Taylor, if I were your hater, I would use this god-awful roll to fuel that hate even further.
…
Whatever, we can't be winners all the time. Now, the final feat.
Feat Achieved!
Become Taylor Hebert's crush!
Silver Random Ticket
Uff. I thought I was picking up some signals. But that quick?
Though as I thought about it further and further, it made sense. In the original work, Taylor was desperate and affection-starved enough to develop feelings in a few days for a literal villain just because he wasn't awful to her and was her type.
If I looked at it from that lens; I was not a villain, I had rescued her, we'd had a nice chat, and I was attractive…
Yup, she hadn't stood a chance.
So what'll be the fruit of this love?
[Free Flier]
|Common Trait|
You are a master of flight, flying is as natural to you as walking or breathing, as long as you are capable of flight that is. Flight using abilities costs less energy.
Such a 'completely useless right now but may become insanely good in the future' roll.
Whatever. None of this had been in the plans for today anyway.
From sleeping at my client's house in my world to meeting the protagonist of a grimdark fictional story, and now on my way to bake brownies for my maybe-girlfriend in this world…
I let out a chuckle.
Crazy how that happened.
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