Scrap Metal Philosophy 17 (Patreon)

Scrap Metal Philosophy

Chapter 17

-VB-

Taylor wasn’t sure still.

Even with dad and Alan telling her that she was doing well, she still felt like something was missing. The entire experience of being a hero was rewarding. She saw that when she rescued a man from being robbed by thugs. She kept the Docks safe by working with the police.

Think about why you are trying to be a hero.

Her chest tightened a little whenever Alan’s words popped up with each instance of dissatisfaction.

Was she really …?

She shook her head.

She didn’t have time to doubt herself right now. She was wearing a mask and being a hero! As long as the mask was on, she was a hero and thus acted like one.

Taylor, not the hero Danaina, will think about it later.

She paused when she saw a pair walking toward her. It was a young boy and his father. When they spotted her, the boy quickly pulled at the father, and the surprised man didn’t get the chance to stop himself or his son.

“Hi!” the black boy giggled as he looked up at her. “What’s your name? I’m Danny!”

Same as dad. She snorted quietly and faintly enough that she was sure no one heard it. Crouching down to the boy’s eye level, she told him.

“My name’s Danaina,” she said. “It’s another name for Monarch Butterflies.”

“What’s that?”

“They are very big butterflies. They are as big as your hand!”

The boy gasped in shock.

She supposed that this wasn’t bad either…

Then the man saw something.

“Miss,” he whispered without taking his eyes off of what he saw. He pulled his son closer to him. “Behind you.”

She paused before turning around and grimaced when she saw the red and green of the Azn Bad Boyz.

“Go,” she told them and the father took off running with his son in his arms.

Tay - no, Danaina stood up and squared her shoulders like dad taught her. She pulled the colorful butterflies away and slowly began to amass a swarm of wasps, flies, and mosquitos. They remained out of sight for now.

The ABB group comprised seven gangsters and all of them had some kind of weapon, though she didn’t see any guns.

But just because she didn’t see a gun didn’t mean that there wasn’t a gun.

“What are you here for?” she asked them bluntly as the few “offensive” bugs she kept on hand began to crawl out of her pockets and all over her.

One of them shivered when they saw a long centipede crawling over her face and around her hair.

“Lung wants you to leave,” the leader replied equally as bluntly. “You are intruding in his territory.”

Banter was never something she did. She knew that she used to talk at people, Emma included, so that’s what she was going to do right here.

“I haven’t seen you commit crimes right now, so I can’t arrest you for your gang colors,” she replied. “So leave. If Lung wants me to leave, then tell him to go get a life. A grown man like him shouldn’t be playing at being a baby warlord.” She tilted her head. “Or would you like to say hi to my sWarM?” she asked and mixed in the chittering of her bugs at the last word.

That got all of the gangsters shivering as they looked around because the chittering sound had come not just from her but all around them. They quickly huddled up when they saw that there were bugs everywhere, and some of the bigger clumps of them, crawling and chittering around each other, activated all sorts of shivers in them.

“W-We’ll be back,” the leader of the group panicked and ran away, and the rest of them quickly followed suit.

She snorted.

“Remember, Taylor,” Alan said to her after one tortuous training session with Silly. The gynoid looked polite, pretty, and great on the surface, but underneath it, she was a mass of saws, rusted metal claws, and dripping oil.

“Remember… what…?” she gasped.

She hated being chased by a metallic monstrosity. She hated it.

“When someone bigger than you comes and threatens you, don’t forget that I’m here to help, okay? So don’t be afraid to fight.”

… Well, now that she just challenged Lung, she wasn’t so sure. After all, Lung was Lung. Coil and the Protectorate was one thing. Lung was another.

Did she just … make life really hard for herself and Alan?

… No way. Alan was very strong. It’s not like even Lung defeated all of the Protectorate in under fifteen minutes, which Alan did!

-VB-

Alan stared at her with raised eyebrows.

“What did you do?”

Dad looked at her for a second before raising his hand up and facepalming.

“W-We can beat him, right?”

Alan continued to stare at her as if she was a particularly dumb child. He took a deep breath in as he set his fork down and then turned to her fully.

Then he facepalmed like dad.

“You realize that it is not easy fighting Lung, right?” he asked her as he looked back up with a frown. “It isn’t as if he doesn’t cause widespread collateral damage, right?”

She wilted a little.

“And you’re definitely not going to stop being a hero, so we’ll have to fight him. Worse, he might send Oni Lee first to cause a mess first, which would only increase the collateral damage first.”

“B-But I couldn’t just let the gangsters just walk over people!”

“You could have just swarmed them with insects when they made a move. That way, it would have been clear t-. No, I am overthinking this. Maybe Lung wanted a fight with you in the first place. You are an independent hero in his sphere of influence.” He paused. “Was this always going to happen had you been a hero in the Docks?”

“Maybe,” dad replied as he looked up as well. “Independent heroes do tend to go missing more often in the Docks than anywhere else. The Empire just kills them, especially Hookwolf.”

Taylor didn’t feel so sure now.

“So … we can’t fight him?”

“We definitely can,” he replied. “But it’ll mean that you will make your association with me very clear. If it doesn’t, then everyone will at least see that I am active. It will ruin some of my plans of keeping my head down… and any other method of letting you win against Lung will draw too much attention to you.”

“Then what can we do?” dad asked Alan.

Alan pondered the question before grinning. It was rare to see him grin like that.

“I doubt that Lung will attack so quickly. He knows you will be alert for at least the first week. So I have one week to upgrade Silly here to be on par with Lung,” he said as he looked to the gynoid, who’d been acting as the maid for the family.

Silly stopped collecting the dishes and raised an eyebrow. “I suppose that it would fall within my parameters of protecting Taylor, father.”

“Good, good. Just … don’t be sad if you end up really weird.”

“How weird?” Silly narrowed her eyes.

“Well…”