Rise in Revolution (Chapter Fifty-One)

[tanadin]

 All from Tac's POV, including Shawn having a bad day and oh shit magic stuff. 

Chapter list: https://tanadin.dreamwidth.org/650.html
World map: http://tanadin.deviantart.com/art/Kaldriel-RiR-map-594639189

Chapter Fifty-One

Despite Everything

Street 21, Sector TZI. April 8, 2272. Time instance 842N.

Tac paused when she heard her name. She ran over the voices she knew, trying to identify who it was, until she turned and recognized the figure as Kyir, his voice finally registering in her head. He sounded tired, his voice less rough than normal, leading to her momentary confusion.

Kyir looked more disheveled than usual- his hair was messier, the bags under his eyes were more pronounced, and he seemed thinner somehow, like he hadn’t been eating. It had been weeks since Tac had really gotten a good look at him, and she had heard that he was in the medical wing for something, but she couldn’t see any signs of wounds on him. He didn’t seem to have the shimmer that people who had recently been healed with magic usually did, something that Tac had only been noticing in the last two battles or so, but something did seem different about him, almost like the shimmer but decidedly different, centered mostly around his eyes.

“Hello, Kyir.”

He stepped right up to her and she noted that he seemed to be jumpier as well, looking around more and fidgeting. “Shawn reminded me about getting you some new hands. Sorry I haven’t before now. I’ve been really busy and it slipped my mind. I’ll work on them as soon as I have a setup. I just...need time. Yeah. I need time.” Kyir looked around momentarily before shaking off whatever paranoia had gripped him. He nodded once, as if confirming that the interaction had happened, before turning and vanishing around the corner.

Tac watched him go, blinking in confusion. Well, he seems off. He apologized? She wondered if he’d been hit in the head before registering what he had said. Shawn reminded him? I haven’t talked to Shawn in...days, actually.

She figured she should probably thank him, even if she couldn’t thank Kyir at the moment.

...Of course, she had no idea where he was, and no way to really find out. She wandered around on the streets, looking for someone she knew to ask. There was no way she was approaching a random stranger- especially not a cyborg, even though they were more likely to know- to ask where Shawn was.

She almost ran directly into Sub and found herself smiling in relief, both from seeing that she was, in fact, okay after being shot several times during the battle and that she wouldn’t be wandering the streets for the next few hours. “Sub! You’re up!”

“Yeah!” Sub grinned at her. “You can’t keep me down! A few bullets haven’t stopped me before and they won’t stop me now!” She bounced a bit and had to pause to push her hat up out of her eyes. “You didn’t get too hurt, did you?” Her tone was suddenly more serious, with a hard edge that didn’t fit Sub at all.

“No, no, I’m okay,” Tac assured. “Only a few scratches and nothing that Scara couldn’t heal.”

“Good!” The cheerful note was back in Sub’s voice and Tac relaxed. While they might not be the closest of friends, Tac still was unnerved anytime that Sub wasn’t her usual bouncy self. She was always the glimmering lantern of hope in the night, and when even she stopped bobbing- either through injury or worry- it was a sign that something was horribly wrong.

Tac shook it off. Sub was fine, just worried about her. She asked about Shawn’s whereabouts and thanked Sub before walking away, subconsciously moving faster than she had intended. Something about Sub seemed different, and she couldn’t place what. Something had changed, and yet, she seemed exactly the same, if a bit worried. She had that shimmer about her, as well, marking that she had recently been healed with magic.

How didn’t I notice that before?

Now that she thought about it, a lot of people had seemed different lately- slightly changed, as if she was seeing something about them for the first time, but she couldn’t quite place it.

It was infuriating and more than a little worrying.

When she finally located Shawn sitting on a couch in a seemingly random building, she paused to look him over. He held a book, but his eyes were unfocused, attention shifted elsewhere and the book acting as nothing more than an excuse for his lack of reactions to the outside world. He seemed tired, as well, but his exhaustion seemed to be more of the mental or emotional kind, a dull ache flickering in the back of his eyes as his shoulders slumped.

He seemed slightly different as well, similar to how Sub had, but it seemed centralized around his enchanted bracelet. It seemed to almost shimmer, the grinning skull dangling from the chain warping slightly around the edges and for a brief moment flashing into a color that Tac couldn’t describe and couldn’t recall. She blinked and took a half-step back, apparently making some quiet noise or movement that snapped Shawn out of his trance and drew his eyes towards her.

“Hey, Tac.” A weary smile pulled itself across his face.

“What’s wrong?”

Shawn blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You look like you haven’t slept in a month and have just learned that your sister died. What’s wrong?” Tac sat next to him, crossing her arms and ignoring how her makeshift fingers caught on her clothes. Soon.

“I’m just...tired.” With a sigh, his very bones seemed to get heavier, drawing him further downwards and making him look more troubled than before. “I’ve learned a lot of magic lately and have been devoting a lot of energy to that.”

Now that he mentioned it, he did seem to have some kind of residue about him, similar to the shimmer of those healed by magic but different in its nature.

“You were never like this before.”

“I didn’t know what I know now.” Tac opened her mouth to ask, but he continued, dropping the book on the floor as if forgetting it existed in favor of crossing his arms. “I’m dead, Tac.”

“Well, yeah. We determined that. You’re a zombie.”

“I knew that, but I didn’t know what that meant. This-” he unfolded his arms and motioned at himself- “is an illusion. I’m not...I’m not me anymore. I’m a half-rotted walking corpse that shouldn’t be able to think and move, but here I am, defying all that we know about life and death. You can animate corpses again, but they're not people- they’re mindless servants of the one who summoned them. And then there’s me- a vulnerable soul locked in a prison of rotting flesh that should have been left in the dirt back in SOV.”

“You’re more than that.”

“No, I’m not. Tac, my limbs just... come off! And Geek just...sewed my arm back on, after that last fight! I’m not alive, I’m...I’m... Dammit, Tac, look at me!” He pulled off the bracelet and his form shimmered, the residue shifting to a direct eminence of something, the hue of his skin changing from pale to green and shifting from alive to sickly and undead. His eyes darkened from their usual blue to almost black, with a red light behind his irises that threatened to glow at the faintest provocation.

And yet, she didn’t see fury or death in his eyes. Only sorrow and a bad case of self-hatred. He couldn’t keep up the eye contact, though, and looked away.

“What am I?” he whispered, the words ripping themselves from his throat and drifting on the air in shreds.

“You’re Shawn,” Tac told him, voice equally quiet. “And that’s all you ever need to be.”

“I’m not Shawn anymore. I’m just-”

“I’m going to fight you. What makes you not Shawn? The fact that you’re pretty much undead? The green skin? The eyes, the magic, what? None of that defines who you are, it’s just what you look like, and the illusion does that just fine if you’re that upset about it! I’m no less me because I don’t have any hands, am I?” Tac held up her ‘hands’ for him to see, the light glinting off of the sharp metal and jagged edges. “I’m still Tac. And you’re still Shawn. No matter what happens, you’re always you.”

Shawn sighed quietly, running the chains of the enchanted bracelet across his fingers. “I guess you’re right.” He slipped it back over his wrist, his appearance flickering and the odd something around him fading to a dull pulse centered on the bracelet. “Thanks, Tac.” He smiled slightly.

Tac couldn’t think of a verbal response to that but she smiled in return, her eyes being drawn to the pulsing of the bracelet. “Doesn’t that drive you crazy?”

“What?” Shawn followed her gaze. “The bracelet?”

“Yeah.”

“Not really. I’ve gotten used to wearing it.” He shrugged. “Easier than learning to carry the shotgun.”

“That pulsing doesn’t bother you?” How didn’t I notice it before?

“Pulsing?”

“Yeah, the…” Tac made a vague hand gesture. “It gives off some kind of weird...shimmer. In pulses. It’s stronger when you’re wearing it, but when you take it off, you’re all…” She made a vague hand gesture. “You really don’t notice?”

“No! Tac, what are you talking about?”

“You’re all shimmery when you take the bracelet off! A lot of people are, recently, and I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before! It’s gotten more and more obvious lately, but when people have recently been healed or had a spell cast on them or something they look strange for awhile. You don’t see it?”

“No! I don’t!” Shawn looked confused and a little bit concerned, getting to his feet. “I think we need to see someone about this. Someone that actually knows what they’re talking about.”

“Maybe.” Tac didn’t get to her feet, shrugging slightly. “It’s not really important. It’s not like it’s affecting anyone but me.”

“That makes it important,” Shawn insisted, grabbing her forearm and gently pulling her up. “Come on. We need to talk to someone about this.”

“Who?”

Shawn grinned. “I have no idea. Let’s see who we run into.”

~~~

“You’re seeing what now?” Emma demanded.

“Shimmers,” Tac supplied, making a weak hand gesture. “Around...magical stuff, I guess.”

Cataclysm frowned. “Residues? Magical people? Enchanted objects?”

Tac nodded.

“What about when people cast spells? Can you tell what they’re going to do?”

“I...I don’t know.”

Cataclysm turned away from them and summoned a fireball in his hands, launching it at the wall. It arced up and looped around before hitting the ground. He turned and raised an eyebrow.

Tac only shook her head. “No, I just saw it...I don’t know! I can’t tell what it’s going to do! What’s going on?”

“You’re seeing the magical energy on things,” Cataclysm told her, crossing his arms. “It’s a similar ability to what Corvus had. He could see the ley lines of magic- he could tell when something was magical, what it could and was going to do, and could predict what a spell was going to do or what it was capable of even before it was finished being cast. It seems like you have a much, much weaker of this ability, so weak that you can’t even see the ley lines.”

“What…”

“It’s a magical ability. You must have developed it by spending so long around magical beings or other magic-users. It’s pretty common, although some humans never develop any abilities.”

“I did,” Shawn noted quietly. “I guess it’s just your turn.”

“I can...see the magic on things?”

“Yep. Congratulations. You can identify anything magical and how powerful it is, but you don’t have the faintest inkling of what it will do. Your ability might get stronger in time, or it’ll stay pretty useless and just be annoying for the rest of your life. Magic is kinda dumb that way.” He shrugged. “I would advise not mentioning it to Kyir. It’s so similar to Corvus’ that it might set him off thinking about Corvus again, and that won’t help him.”

“Will it interfere with any hand replacements I get?”

“It shouldn’t. It’s a pretty passive ability, so the magic it emanates is pretty faint. It’s of a relatively low frequency, as well, and it seems that lower frequency magic affects cybernetics less, no matter how invasive they a-  are you okay?”

A shiver ran down Tac’s spine.

Cybernetics.

Of course. Kyir specialized in robotics, so anything he made that attached to her body technically made her a cyborg, rough ‘hands’ that she currently had included. She shakily lifted her hands to look at them, clenching them into rough fists.

Right. I’m a cyborg, technically. The word ‘cyborg’ had been ingrained in her for her entire life as a bad thing, something evil and destructive, something irreversible and monstrous.

And, now, she was one.

“Tac?” Emma’s voice cut through her haze and she shook it off, wrenching her gaze from her hands.

“Yeah. I’m okay.” I’m not okay. Shawn’s glance told her that he knew, but he didn’t press the issue, something that she was grateful for.

“...If you say so.” Cataclysm looked suspicious as well, but chose not to remark on it. “Anyway, you’re developing a minor magical ability, it shouldn’t cause any problems, and you shouldn’t be worried. Any questions?”

“No.” The word felt like a spike through her tongue, not exactly a lie but burning nonetheless. “I’m good.” The real lie, oddly, didn’t have the same effect. I’m used to it by now. I’m okay. I’m always okay. That’s what I say, at least.

She mumbled some goodbyes and made her way down the street, a bit faster than she had intended. Shawn trailed along behind her, but they both remained silent, wondering what they had become.