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Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warnings:

Graphic Depictions Of ViolenceUnderage Sex

Categories:

F/FGenOtherF/M

Fandoms:

Warhammer 40.000Worm - Fandom

Characters:

Taylor Hebert | Skitter | WeaverSherrel Bailey | SquealerEmma Barnes (Parahumans)Undersiders (Parahumans)Lisa Wilbourn | TattletaleAmy Dallon | Panacea | Red Queen

Additional Tags:

Alt-Power Taylor HebertVillain Taylor HebertPsyker Taylor HebertEarth Bet is a shitholeThe slope is steep and well lubricatedTaylor's boots have poor tractionPsychic AbilitiesPsychic ViolencePsychic BondPsychic MindfuckeryDubious Consent?Power PerversionPsychokinetic Tentacles

Language:

English

Stats:

Published:2023-09-20Completed:2025-01-28Words:289,573Chapters:27/27Comments:1,733Kudos:3,411Bookmarks:853Hits:236,812

A Ruinous Gift

Noodlehammer

Chapter 2: Realizations

Chapter Text

January 10th. Monday.

Taylor's fury had hardly abated since learning that the Bitches Three were going to get away with stuffing her into that locker.

The anger wasn't unfamiliar, but its intensity and persistence was. Normally when she got angry, it burned for a while before she suppressed it, leaving her feeling exhausted and depressed. This time that proved impossible. The rage continued to claw at her heart like a rabid beast, spreading away from the Trio and onto the system that enabled them.

Not that she'd had a lot of faith in it at this point anyway, but it had gone from mere disappointment to deep contempt. Hundreds of mental threads chewed over every time it had screwed her over and left her feeling stupid for ever expecting anything other than more failure from it. She had already tried that before, after all. Looking back on it, the only reason she had even bothered reporting the locker to the police was because her powers had left her feeling better than she should be.

Now it was time to return to Winslow and she didn't know if she'd be able to hold back if anyone messed with her. Doing her best to put the rage on the backburner, Taylor stepped into the school.

The minds of the other students pressed against her own. She could taste their thoughts as they looked at her and loathed it. Not all of them were hostile, but they all felt like they were looking down on her, as if they were somehow better than her, either through pity or contempt.

Taylor clenched her jaw and struggled not to stomp as she heard the phantom echoes of people laughing while she was shut in a tiny metal coffin filled with filth. In her mind's eye, she was a blazing tower of crimson flame in the midst of a placid, dark sea, buffeting the weak torches of the scum that thought so highly of themselves. They had no right to think themselves better than her!

The bonfire of her soul billowed, washing over everyone around her.

Ahead of her a senior with a shaved head swaggered down the hall. From the other direction came another senior, this one Asian, swaggering from the other direction. The junior division of the Empire 88 and Azn Bad Boys doing one of their typical displays of posturing. Both of their minds reeked of hostility.

Predictably, neither of the two idiots was going to do the sensible thing and avoid the obvious collision they were heading for. That would be too civilized, so naturally they went for an imbecilic dominance display by ramming shoulders into one another.

This kind of thing was so common as to be nearly tradition and it rarely amounted to much this early in the morning, but this time, Taylor saw the rage billowing from her get pulled in by their own anger, like iron shavings to a pair of magnets. Instead of the usual litany of racial (and other) slurs hurled at each other, a punch was thrown and the situation quickly descended into a real fight. Seconds later, more E88 and ABB idiots joined in and it turned into a proper brawl, more of the anger she'd released getting pulled in.

Taylor watched the whole thing happen with wide eyes.

That was another scary facet of her powers she had just discovered. Master type parahumans that could affect other people were especially feared thanks to the likes of Heartbreaker. It didn't really change anything, though. Taylor was still going to be a hero and this would be just another thing she'd have to keep secret.

She skittered around the fight as teachers arrived and managed to break it up. A half dozen boys were going to have some nice bruises, but nobody had pulled a knife, fortunately. It wasn't unheard of for gang members to carry them.

Less fortunately, the brief fight had also drawn the attention of her two least favorite people, a pretty redhead and an athletic black girl. Figures that Emma and Sophia would be drawn to the violence, vicious cunts that they were.

It was her first sight of them since she triggered.

Sophia was about what she expected. Her mind was like a dark cloud of malice, puffing itself up and trying to loom over everyone else. She had spouted enough nonsense about the strong and the weak and 'putting people in their place' to make it clear she wasn't right in the head. Tasting the shape of her thoughts only made her more certain that the most thuggish of the Trio was a genuine psychopath – it was the darkest and most twisted mind she'd ever seen.

Emma, however, was not what she expected. If Taylor had to pick one word to describe her former friend, it would be 'brittle'. There was a frailty to her, like looking at a glass sculpture that had been broken and glued together into something that looked vaguely like the original.

And judging by how the 'glue' had the same dark tinge as Sophia's own mind, Taylor could guess who had applied it.

Sophia had ruined her friend.

The thought wasn't new – after she had stopped thinking that it was somehow her fault, it hadn't been any great leap of logic to guess that Emma's change had something to do with the abrupt appearance of the other girl. Her powers only confirmed what she'd already known and gave it more depth.

"Oh, Taylor, you're back!" Emma said, false sweetness dripping from every word. Her cracked and broken soul drew more of the disgusting black 'glue' from Sophia to hold itself together. "I hope you enjoyed your break."

Taylor didn't need to be psychic to grasp the subtext. They had zero remorse for what they did and intended to keep bullying her. If she hadn't already lost faith in them having any kind of basic human decency, she might have found that surprising. The only new information here was that Emma was doing this to make herself feel better.

That kind of pissed her off. Whatever had happened to her friend to leave her so broken, she would have gladly helped her through it. But instead of seeking comfort and support from her, Emma had let Sophia twist her into a monster that lived off of cruelty.

There had been a time when this insight would have allowed her to forgive Emma, but that time was long past. After her mother's flute and the locker, there was no more room for forgiveness.

Taylor managed to restrain herself to a murderous glare for now as she moved past the two of them and went towards her first class of the day, but of course it wasn't that easy. Emma looked a bit surprised, but Sophia took immediate offense and shoved her when she tried to pass. The force of it sent Taylor slamming into the wall, but it wasn't like before. Before, it would hurt and she would bruise.

Those two things were still true, but the pain was actually enjoyable and the bruise would fade quickly. What really got her mad was the notion that Sophia could get away with doing this to her. For so long she had tried to just endure this abuse because she had no way to fight back, but now that felt utterly unacceptable.

Taylor steadied herself and glared right at Sophia's eyes, clenching her fist with every intention of sending it flying at the bitch's face. The plan had been to get revenge later, but she was not going to be intimidated and pushed around anymore!

Sophia, being the violent psychopath that she was, took the glare as a challenge and punched her in the stomach, forcing her to fold over as the air was knocked out of her. A few days of heavy exercise wasn't enough to make her fit enough to shrug off something like that.

"Stay in your place, Hebert." Sophia sneered and walked off with Emma, the two bitches laughing in their usual self-congratulatory fashion.

Taylor's fury reached entirely new heights at this latest humiliation, the fact it was done in the middle of a crowded hallways only making it worse. Again, the only ones who bothered looking at her only did it to giggle or laugh. There was even a teacher present, although he had naturally missed everything like the useless lump he was.

Fuck waiting and careful planning, she needed to get even right now.

XXXXX

Math class with Mr. Quinlan was mostly an education on how to teach when hung over. Everyone knew that the man was an alcoholic – he didn't bother hiding it. The best thing that could be said about him was that he did his drinking at home instead of in the school itself.

To Taylor, he looked like a broken down grey shadow of a person more than a person himself. Someone who had already given up and was just going through the motions.

But most of her attention wasn't on the teacher. Emma shared this class with her and wasn't even trying to hide her glee.

Again, Taylor didn't need to be psychic to figure out what the redhead was thinking. Sophia had World Issues with Mr. Gladly right now and the desperate-to-be-popular teacher always let his class out early to score points with the students. They were going to ambush her as soon as class let out.

Not that she was going to let them, not anymore. Taylor focused her attention two desks ahead and one to the right.

Derek Hunt was a handsome and fit boy with sandy brown hair and blue eyes. He looked like the type of guy that should be going to Arcadia or Immaculata instead of Winslow, but here he was for whatever reason. Back when high school had just started and the bullying had been new, Derek had approached her with a friendly smile and talked to her. Taylor hadn't yet known how to identify the gang kids back then and been hopeful that she would make a new friend. Things had gone well for the rest of the day, but then Derek had asked if she wanted to come hang out with a few of his friends after school, mentioning that they could protect her from 'that nigger bitch'.

Suddenly, his questions on the origins of her last name had made sense and Taylor realized that he had been trying to recruit her into the Empire. She had meekly asked him not to talk to her again after burying the feeling of bitter disappointment. Fortunately, Derek had only looked annoyed instead of pressing the issue.

She was grateful that he had shown his true colors so quickly, because if he had been more subtle then she might have found herself being part of an Empire clique without realizing it, and extracting herself once she was 'one of them' would have been a lot harder.

Taylor hadn't had any interaction with Derek since then and she strongly suspected that he considered the abuse she was suffering at Sophia's hand to be a fitting punishment for her refusal of his recruitment attempt. Or maybe he was hoping she would eventually crack and come crawling to the Empire for protection. Maybe he didn't think about her at all.

Several copies of her mind began pondering how much of a boon Sophia was to Empire recruitment in Winslow. Then several more started pondering how she could use that against her. Then thousands more began thinking of every student and staff member that she knew of and trying to simulate their moves the same way she simulated her online chess games.

But that was a backdrop to her main focus. Derek, her potential instrument of revenge against Sophia. Or the start of it at least. She had never tried doing what she was about to do before, but the fury in her heart wouldn't allow her to do nothing.

And the incident with the idiots in the hall had given her an idea. Instead of just letting her anger burn, she pushed it towards Derek. All the hate and rage and desire to hurt Sophia, she pushed towards him.

In hindsight predictably, her hate was still part of her and took her along for the ride. She felt herself falling into Derek's mind, her hatred finding fertile ground in his soul. He already hated Sophia, but it was a different flavor of hatred to her own. It was old and sunk deep, more abstract and less personal. It wasn't even really about her skin color, so much as what it represented. Otherness, the enemy from outside. Not one of us! Because she was a threat and she proved it every day with her thuggish behavior, confirmed that the niggers were uncivilized monkeys pretending to be our equals! Because she was a cruel bully targeting me/a white girl.

Taylor sucked in a breath of air and physically reeled back in her chair, ignoring the snickers from Emma and a few others. The many other copies of her mind had started screaming in alarm as her thought process was polluted by the connection to Derek's mind. Their shared hatred had acted as a focal point and tangled their emotions, and with it their thoughts, together.

Okay, diving into other people's heads was dangerous. Good to know.

Some of her anger had been cooled by the experience and she felt a bit guilty about what she'd done. Messing with people's emotions definitely wasn't very heroic… but on the other hand, it was hard to feel too bad about it after the impression she'd gotten of Derek's mind. He was not a nice person by any stretch of the imagination, being a firm believer in the Empire's ideology. It felt so intrinsic to him that he could only have grown up with it.

That being said, he also wasn't the caricature she'd had in her head about the typical Empire 88 gang member. He wasn't just a hateful monster with no further depth. His hatreds were entwined with numerous other emotions, particularly love for his family and friends. Rather than being generically evil, he simply didn't believe that the people he considered his own could coexist with others and chose to dehumanize them in his mind. It was all very… human, which was why touching his mind proved so dangerous. As repulsive as the thought was, she was able to relate to him on at least some level. Taylor certainly didn't think she could coexist with Sophia either.

But his reasons weren't really important right now, just that he hated and that she had focused that hate

towards Sophia… for which Taylor found herself feeling a surprising lack of guilt. She thought that she should, but the only emotion she had for her was anger. Sophia Hess deserved whatever she got, even if it was the attention of the Empire 88.

XXXXX

Sophia knew that she shouldn't have done that. If Director Piggy got word that she was still giving Hebert a hard time, she'd make her life even more unpleasant. The PRT had already talked to her mother and got her to agree to move her into headquarters full time and had someone breathing down her neck practically 24/7. They were even talking about shipping her off to Arcadia so that the other Wards could keep an eye on her during school hours as well.

But Hebert just pissed her off, even more so now that she'd snitched to the cops. The pathetic queef was pure prey and it was her fucking fault that she had to deal with Piggy's bullshit. Sophia had found her arm moving before she could think better of it. And then the wimp had the gall to keep glaring, as if she had any right to be angry at for being treated like the weakling she was. Again, Sophia's arm had moved before she could think better of it.

She'd been lucky this time – nobody that mattered had been paying attention – but she couldn't keep doing it. That was why when she got Emma's message about ambushing Hebert outside of math class, Sophia decided that she would just stand there. Even Piggy can't make an issue if she didn't do anything, right?

Gladly – the useless fucker – let the class out early as usual and Sophia went to wait by Quinlan's classroom. The hallways slowly filled up with students and she held back a sneer. Sheep, all of them.

When the classroom door opened, Sophia knew exactly how it was going to go. Hebert would try to hide somewhere in the middle while Emma brought up the rear. Usually, Sophia would get in her way and they'd box the wimp in so that she couldn't get away while Emma tore into her. Hebert would just stand there and take it like the mouse she was.

The routine was so established, that Sophia didn't give more than a passing nasty look to the Empire 88 fucker that passed her by. He knew better than to start anything with her.

Except apparently he didn't, because instead of moving on like a good little Nazi, he gave her a hard shove that sent her stumbling a good half dozen feet down the hall. Sophia barely resisted the impulse to instinctively turn into shadow.

"What the shit?!" She screamed at the bastard. "I'll kill you, fucker!"

"I'd like to see you try, porch monkey!" He spat back and readied his fists.

Sophia saw red, completely forgetting about Hebert and Emma and the thin ice she was on with Piggy.

XXXXX

Taylor was having difficulty repressing a smirk. Any doubts she'd been having about the morality of using her powers to manipulate people had been considerably diminished by the glorious sight of Sophia and Derek beating the shit out of each other. All at her prodding.

Sophia was strong for her age and size and had actually given a very good accounting of herself, but she was still a fifteen-year-old girl of not very impressive stature against a considerably bigger guy. She obviously had some kind of technique and experience, but seemed a bit bad at dodging. Either way, both of them had taken a few nasty hits before the fight got broken up, then they'd been called up to the principal's office.

There was something gloriously right about doing things this way. This was the kind of hero she could be, a mastermind pulling strings in the background.

… that sounded a bit villainous, didn't it? Was there such a thing as a mastermind hero? Taylor had never heard of one and something told her that the PRT and Protectorate would never allow it if she joined the Wards. Government types preferred to be the ones giving orders, as if they had any idea what they were doing.

Another reason to not do that. After getting a taste of power and control, she really didn't think that she wanted to give any of it up. The thought of having to get permission to use her powers was immensely grating. They were her powers and she would use them however she damn well pleased!

The rest of the day passed by blissfully uneventfully. Sophia had been called up to the principal's office and not returned and Emma had been too worried about her psycho friend to bother her. That left only the weakest part of the Trio and their hangers on.

Madison was easy to avoid until the last class of the day – World Issues with Mr. Gladly – which they shared.

Taylor felt new levels of contempt for both the teacher and her third primary bully. Both of them felt the same, like reeds swaying in the winds generated by other people.

Taylor assumed this meant that the cutesy little bitch had been bullying her in an attempt to fit in. She'd helped destroy her mother's flute to fit in. She'd helped set up the locker to fit in! That was somehow even more infuriating than if she'd been doing it out of pure malice like Sophia or because she was a pathetic broken mess like Emma, so that when class was over and Madison predictably stuck her foot out to trip her, Taylor didn't even try to resist the urge to let loose with a vicious kick.

The resulting cry of pain gave her a rush of satisfaction. Served the bitch right. There were still hundreds of instances of her mind stewing over every injustice done to her and it was not doing her temper any favors.

"Madison! What's wrong?" Gladly asked urgently. The popular kids were worth caring about apparently.

"Taylor kicked me!" Madison cried, actual tears gathering at the corners of her eyes.

"It's true, I saw it." Julia immediately piped up in support, even though she absolutely didn't see a damn thing.

"Taylor, why would you do that?" The useless teacher demanded.

"I didn't see her legs sticking out. She shouldn't be stretching them when people are walking." Taylor said, instinctively pressing her psychic presence against Gladly's, snuffing out whatever tiny amount of resistance he tried to put up.

Gladly folded immediately. "Right… you're right. It was an accident. Both of you be more careful next time."

The look of betrayal on Madison's face was incredible.

XXXXX

January 13th. Winslow High. Thursday.

Sophia hadn't come back to school since the fight three days ago. Taylor had expected that she would get a detention at the very worst for getting into a fight, given what she had gotten away with so easily in the past. Suspension or expulsion seemed very inconsistent with the established pattern.

The notion that the administration finally had enough of Sophia's shit was dismissed out of hand. A fight between a black girl and a known Empire 88 kid barely rated a raised eyebrow at Winslow unless someone pulled a knife. Something else was going on, and Emma probably knew what it was.

This thought was confirmed as Taylor left Mrs. Knott's computer class, the last class of the day, and ran into her former friend in the hallways. The redhead had clearly been waiting for her, along with a nervous Madison and a few other brainless hangers-on. Her mind felt noticeably more cracked than it had at the start of the week.

"Oh, hi, Taylor." Emma started with her usual sickly sweet tone. She supposed it would sound genuinely friendly to anyone else, but to her it could never be anything other than fake. "Excited to go back home so you can be ignored by your father some more?"

That was clumsier than normal. Emma must really be off her game. But it was true that, despite the brief closeness shared between her and her dad after she got out of the hospital, things looked to be backsliding again. Years of depression and habitual silence weren't easy to overcome.

Taylor didn't fully blame her dad for it. She didn't really know how to reach out either, especially with the secrets she was keeping. Even so, she still thought that it was for the best, for now. She was busy figuring out her powers anyway.

As Emma's posse of teenage bitches started their usual routine of loudly gossiping to each other about how ugly and pathetic she was, Taylor simply stared at her former friend. Before her trigger, the comment would have hurt, because it would be referencing to how Alan Barnes had needed to stage a bit of an intervention to get her father functioning again. It would have been a reminder of how close they'd once been.

Now… now, she could see the cracks in Emma's soul getting deeper, could taste the desperation behind the petty cruelty, and that took the sting out of it. It was hard to feel hurt or threatened when the one attacking you was so pathetic. Before, she would have floundered for a response and probably ended up staying silent, now she had millions of minds constantly crawling over every bit of interesting or potentially useful information and a response was easy to formulate.

"Why don't you take a break, Ems?" Taylor suggested, keeping her tone bland but staring her friend-turned-bully in the eyes. How had she never noticed the frailty in those green orbs before? They were like a shattered window. "Maybe go home and hug a stuffed toy like you always used to do when you were upset. There's no Sophia here to put on an act for."

The words, innocuous as they seemed, instantly ripped away Emma's façade of confidence. She flinched and the cracks in her soul grew more pronounced. It made Taylor's lips curl into a smile. Not so fun to be on this side of things, is it?

"It's not an act!" Emma nearly screeched, eyes bulging in her face. "I'm strong!"

Was that what it was all about? Strength? Taylor's impulsive knee-jerk reaction was to demand to know how betraying your oldest friend and making her life hell was strong, but she still had many instances of her mind fixating on every aspect of Emma's relationship with Sophia that she knew of. It was easy to make the connection between Emma's visible mental damage and Sophia's 'law of the jungle' bullshit. Arguing morality would be pointless.

"Is that what she told you?" She instead asked softly, stepping closer and for once using her greater height to loom. For so long, she had hunched her shoulders and tried to hide that she'd almost forgotten that Emma was a good four inches shorter than her. Mentally, the difference was much greater still, her own soul a blazing beacon of power compared a tiny, cowering thing made of broken glass. "That the fear would go away if you attacked other people, like a chihuahua barking at bigger dogs and desperately hoping nobody would notice it trembling?"

Emma actually started trembling herself and it made the smile on Taylor's face grow. This was so much like her daydreams of revenge – the milder ones that she'd had before her trigger event – that she couldn't help but enjoy it. Being able to think about millions of things at once was amazing. Normal people were barely conscious and they didn't even realize it. She'd never have been able to come up with that chihuahua comparison on the fly without it. "Sophia enjoys being a rabid animal, but I don't think you do, Emma. You were always more of a scaredy cat. Do you still hide under the covers during thunderstorms?"

"Shut up!" Emma was definitely screeching now, and the shove she gave Taylor was more than a little desperate.

Taylor wasn't a very heavy girl, despite her height, but Emma also wasn't very strong. The shove sent her stumbling back a step, but that was all. Emma ended up stumbling further than that.

But the shove also pissed her off. Not putting any more thought into it, she returned the favor. Emma, already off balance, went stumbling to the floor with a frightened yelp.

"You wouldn't have the guts to do that if Sophia was here!" Madison accused in a high-pitched shriek, immediately backed up by the cronies.

"That's rich coming from a rat like you that doesn't have the guts to do anything at all by herself." Taylor shot back immediately, glaring at the cutesy midget and the Brigade of Lesser Bitches. "What, is six to one odds not enough for you? Need your pet psycho to hide behind so you can play cheerleader from the background, where it's nice and safe?"

There was a part of her that relished the idea of getting into a fistfight with the six of them. Tearing them down verbally had already been the most satisfying thing she'd ever done in her life, but capping it off with the crunch of broken noses and whimpers of pain would be perfection. She would probably get hurt, too, but that only made the prospect more enticing.

Madison squeaked and fled, the four extras scampering away with slightly more dignity and Taylor realized that she'd taken a threatening step forward. Their cowardice wasn't unexpected, but it was disappointing.

Emma, still on the floor, just stared at her with wide eyes, shocked and trembling.

With a snort of contempt, Taylor turned around and walked away, feeling little in the way of pity for her former friend. The bullying had been a crutch to prop herself up this whole time and now it was gone. She probably wouldn't last much longer, not without Sophia around to fill her head with delusional nonsense.

Funny how that would have made her heart bleed with sympathy not all that long ago. Now, all she felt was the grim satisfaction of watching a bitter enemy die by inches in front of her eyes. Her power never let her stop thinking of every wrong done to her whenever she saw Emma and it left her short on forgiveness. Trauma was no excuse for betrayal.

Putting all thought of Emma aside, Taylor left the school and focused on her upcoming cape debut.

Problem was, she had no costume, wasn't in good enough shape yet, and had no cape name picked out. As a Thinker, even with some extra abilities, she couldn't just patrol the streets at night looking for trouble. She needed more information.

Which was why, for the next week or so, instead of heading home after school, Taylor detoured into gang territory.

XXXXX

A rookie wannabe hero fresh off her trigger wandering through gang territory sounded like suicide, but reality was far less dramatic.

In the case of the Empire 88, she was just a random white girl strolling through some of the more affluent parts of town in the middle of the day. It's not like the Empire was going to piss in its own cornflakes by attacking her for no reason in broad daylight, and they had no idea that she was preparing to move against them.

The ABB was more dangerous, because one of the bits of common sense that any Brocktonite absorbed through osmosis was 'don't be a lone girl in ABB territory'. Fortunately, it was fairly easy to avoid the really dangerous parts of the Asian gang's territory by simply staying on relatively populated streets and going back home long before the sun went down. Winslow was technically in ABB territory, after all, so she was familiar enough with the practice.

The Merchants were harder because they had no territory, and were by no means on the same level as the other two. Their membership consisted of a loose collection of junkies, hobos, drug dealers and prostitutes populating the most rundown parts of town, where it generally wasn't safe to go at any time of day. If not for Skidmark, their leader, making noise every so often, they wouldn't even be called a gang.

Not that the ABB or Empire 88 had clearly defined territories either. There were no convenient cordons or checkpoints of armed thugs to mark it, nor roaming gangs of skinheads/Asians with red and green armbands. Even the gang markings on the walls weren't reliable. It was understood that Lung ruled the Docks and that Kaiser had the Commercial District and a big chunk of Downtown, but the actual borders were ill-defined and frequently contested.

The PRT, Protectorate, and police technically enforced the rule of law over the entire city, but in practice that was only as long as Lung or Kaiser didn't feel like contesting them. It didn't take infinite parallel processing to run the numbers and realize that the Empire villains significantly outmanned the heroes, or to remember that Lung had fought off the entire Protectorate when he first arrived, to say nothing of his famous one on one battle with Leviathan. The legitimate authorities actually controlled only a fraction of the city and struggled to keep the gangs contained, in truth only managing to slow their growth. It was probably only the threat of the wider national Protectorate taking an interest that prevented them from being more overt.

Taylor had long known these things by the simple expediency of being a Brockton Bay native. Observing these things through the eyes of a cape and prospective hero was a little different and brought new insights.

The most obvious thing was that Brockton Bay felt either like a city that had been carved into pieces, or multiple smaller cities mashed together into the space of one. With her psychic ability to sense minds and her Thinker mind-copies, Taylor began to see distinct divisions between the various gang territories.

The Empire 88 was indisputably the most prominent. They had been dug into the city like a persistent tick for twenty years, longer than even the PRT and Protectorate, and it had left its mark. The places where they were strongest were very… uniform.

Every shop and business had a clearly European or American aesthetic and any non-whites moving around were visibly(to her) more tense. There were no homeless people at all, despite the rather large population of them Brockton Bay had. Another common bit of wisdom that every Brocktonite knew was that the Empire 88 rank and file took great glee in beating up the homeless and driving them out of their territory, and that they came down like a ton of bricks on anyone causing trouble. Despite being controlled by a gang, she got a general sense of security from the people in the area, but it was a sense of security exclusive to 'the right sort'.

In comparison, ABB territory was a smorgasbord of various Asian influences popping up amongst the visibly decaying American character of the city, although much less entrenched since Lung had only been around for a couple of years.

The minds of the people were very different than the ones in Empire territory. A lot of them had a deep fear carved into them. She had seen things like that before, but never so widespread and common. Pretty much everyone she saw there seemed to be living a life defined by fear in some way. She couldn't be sure of the reason, but her money would be on Lung.

He wasn't protecting these people, or even making a pretense of it like the Empire did, he was just another bully.

Taylor still remembered how it had been before Lung showed up. The Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and other types of Asian gangs back then had been smaller, but growing rapidly thanks to the refugee crisis sparked by Leviathan sinking Kyushu. They had hated each other almost as much as they hated the Empire. Now, the impression she got was that Lung was basically just a heavy lid on top of that particular boiling cauldron. She also had her observations of Winslow's social dynamics.

Before her trigger she had never paid much attention to how the ABB junior division grouped up, but once she started looking it was obvious that they were dividing themselves by nationality. Not all of them, but enough for it to be visible if you knew where to look.

That was something that she might be able to exploit, once the time came to dismantle the ABB.

The second, less mundane, insight was the sensation of forsaken hope that permeated the city. People no longer believed it could or would ever get better. Taylor could relate.

It was exactly the kind of thing a hero needed to fix.

If she'd triggered with a different power set, Taylor might have considered that to be sufficient, or even excessive, information gathering for her impending hero career, but her Thinker ability thrived on knowing all the variables. The PRT and Protectorate might not be criminal gangs, but they were an important cog in the city's power dynamics, so she had to understand them and she knew just where to start.

XXXXX

January 22nd. Saturday. Mall in Downtown Brockton Bay.

Taylor glanced once again at the pamphlet in her hands. It was a bright, cheery thing. Come meet the Brockton Bay Wards! it proclaimed, with each individual page featuring a picture of a current Ward striking a heroic pose, their name and basic information written out right next to it.

It had been years since she'd gone to see a Wards PR event. She and Emma had begged their parents to take them and they'd giggled about getting autographs from Barrage, the Wards leader at the time. It was still in her desk somewhere, though she'd heard that Barrage had died fighting Leviathan soon after joining the Protectorate proper.

Pushing that recollection to the background, Taylor focused on the present. She was here to do recon and see if parahuman minds were any different than normal ones. If so, then it would be a lot easier to act against the villains of the city. All she'd have to do was keep strolling around town until she found one and figure out their identity from there.

It probably wouldn't matter to Lung or the Merchant capes or the likes of Hookwolf – they seemed like the type to not care much about civilian identities – but the more 'sophisticated' villains like Kaiser, Victor and Krieg were bound to be at least inconvenienced if they couldn't hide behind their masks anymore.

The mall wasn't exactly choked with people, but it was still a bit of a hassle to move through the crowds, so Taylor went up a floor to give herself a better view of the Wards.

All thought of her plans was pushed aside by RAGE as soon as she caught sight of them.

XXXXX

Sophia had not been having a good two weeks since her fight with that Empire asshole. Piggy had immediately pulled her out of Winslow and put her on a homeschooling program. As promised, she was already barred from anything but console duty and PR events, but now she didn't even have school to escape to. Her new handler – the previous one having been sent to shit duty in a containment zone somewhere from what she'd heard – had specific orders to give her exactly zero slack. Literally the only things she was allowed to do in her free time was study and exercise. There had even been a children's book left in her room titled Kindness is my Superpower.

If she didn't know better, Sophia would think that Director Piggy was trying to be funny. She did know better, though, so she knew that the bitter fat bitch was mocking her.

In short, it was fucking torture. So bad that she was seriously considering making a run for it. They probably wouldn't brand her a villain right away to protect their precious reputation, but evading a highly motivated Protectorate and PRT would be hard. Maybe hard enough that she'd have to skip town, which would mean abandoning her family. That was something she wouldn't have really considered before, but her bitch mom had hung her out to dry as soon as Piggy told her about Hebert. She'd always known her mom was weak, but she'd still expected better. Either way, Sophia still had some supply stashes around town with money and clothes, so skipping town wouldn't be all that hard if she worked fast enough.

But not until they removed the tinkertech shock anklet, which they wouldn't do until they let her go back on patrols.

And she'd have to pay Hebert a visit before she left, since this was all her fault. Sophia didn't lose and that worthless little bitch would have to be taught that the hard way.

"Wow, Shadow Stalker!" An excitable little kid ran up to her. "Can I have your autograph?"

Sophia was glad that she at least had a full face mask so that she could scowl as much as she wanted. "Sure."

She signed the stupid autograph for the stupid kid and let out an aggravated breath, automatically looking around both to check for threats and in the futile hope that some kind of distraction from this PR hell would present itself. She'd even take Uber and Leet and one of their stupid fucking stunts right about now.

Instead of Dumb and Dumber, though, she caught sight of curly black hair and a ratty grey hoodie. That being the source of much of her current woes, her eyes were immediately drawn to the owner of those features. Somewhat to her surprise, it actually was Hebert. In that split second moment before recognition, she'd honestly expected it to be some other pathetic twat that just had similar hair and bad dress sense.

Hebert was glaring at her, a look so nasty that it was obvious even from a distance. Sophia would almost be impressed by it if she didn't know what a loser Hebert was.

Then alarm bells started ringing. Why was Hebert glaring at Shadow Stalker?

Cold sweat beaded on Sophia's skin as the most likely reason came to mind. Her secret identity was blown. But how? There shouldn't be any way for her to find out!

Sophia's mind raced, going back to the day she got into a fight with that Empire shithead, the first day Hebert came back after the locker prank. The weakling had been acting strange that day, she now remembered. Glaring and angry instead of just moping like she usually did. And then, just as they were about to put her in her place, that fight happened. Awfully convenient now that she thought about it.

Did the wimp actually trigger because of that stupid locker prank? It should be impossible, she hadn't for a single second contemplated the idea that Hebert could become a parahuman, not with how weak she was. But… she'd heard of some pretty pathetic trigger events. Vista had triggered because of her parents arguing for fuck's sake. It made sense. Weaklings didn't take much to trigger, exactly because they were weak.

Fuck, Hebert is a parahuman. Has to be some kind of Thinker if she found me out this easy.

Normally, she'd tell the PRT about it and they'd haul the dumb bitch in and make her join the Wards. She still almost did that, but then she remembered a bit of her Wards training that she'd actually paid attention to.

Deliberately causing a trigger event was a federal crime because of the potential damage it can cause. Entire towns had been lost to trigger events before. Piggy had been pretty clear on the fact that they were spin-doctoring her 'crimes' – although Sophia didn't agree that hunting prey was a crime – but this would be too much. Her case would probably get passed up to Legend as the head of the Protectorate and all he'd see was her rap sheet and send her right to jail. And Piggy only cared about getting as many parahumans under her thumb as she could. If it helped her get Hebert into the Wards, she would absolutely throw Sophia under the bus.

"Shadow Stalker, something caught your eye?" Aegis asked, making her look at him.

"No." She grunted back and glanced back to where Hebert had been hanging over the guard rail in the upper floor of the mall, but she wasn't there anymore.

Fuck, she really needed to kill Hebert as soon as possible and skip town before the shit hit the fan. Fighting a parahuman whose powers you didn't know was normally stupid, but it was Hebert. How tough could she be?

XXXXX

Taylor apparently only thought she'd been angry after hearing that the police had dropped the investigation into the locker, because it was nothing compared to the seething pit of fury she felt upon what she'd discovered at the mall.

Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker.

With that realization, many, many things started falling into place.

Why the staff at Winslow was willing to go so far out of their way to protect the psychopath, why Sophia was such a good fighter, why the three bitches had temporarily backed off a bit six months ago, only to escalate with a vengeance about a week later and most importantly, why the investigation into the locker had been dropped so abruptly. Why Sophia had seemingly been pulled out of school.

Taylor couldn't blame everything in Winslow on the PRT – according to her research, Shadow Stalker had only become a Ward about six months ago, which was well after the bullying had started. Still, it meant that they had turned a blind eye to it afterwards, which meant that they wouldn't have cared about it before either. They might have been incompetent enough to not know what Sophia was doing before the locker, but not after.

That, along with killing the investigation, crystallized something in her mind. The PRT and Protectorate were not her friends. She'd already known that being a psychic type Thinker and Master class cape would make things hard for her, but with this new revelation, it became clear that even that had been far too optimistic.

Like in one of her chess games, Taylor could envision the potential paths into the future narrowing down with this new information, disappearing one by one as she discarded options now that she was armed with the knowledge of how corrupt the PRT was. Unfortunately, all the paths she could see led to becoming a villain.

She didn't want that, but could see no way of avoiding it. If the PRT was willing to have a psychopath like Sophia in the Wards and protect her at the expense of innocents, they certainly wouldn't balk at running a smear campaign against a heroically-inclined cape with an unsettling power. If anything, this incident only lifted the veil on exactly how much influence the PRT had on the perception of capes in society. They would give her the Canary treatment if she tried to play by their rules.

It was with a growing certainty that Taylor realized that her only two choices were to either not use her powers or become a villain, and the first wasn't really viable. Were there even any actual heroes out there, or was the Protectorate just another gang of capes vying for control?

Did Alexandria break people's knees if they talked back to her? Did Eidolon tolerate criminal gangs so he could collect tribute from them? Did Legend kick puppies for fun? It disturbed her that none of that felt impossible anymore. What kind of shadows did the shining light of the Triumvirate hide?

It would even somewhat explain the poor state of Brockton Bay and why monsters like the Slaughterhouse 9 had been able to operate with near impunity for decades. If the Protectorate and PRT weren't real heroes that wanted to help people, but just another organization locked in a power struggle with the openly criminal gangs, then of course they weren't going to bother really doing anything.

Alexandria could have smashed apart the gangs in Brockton Bay in the space of an afternoon. A few days tops if she needed to put some effort into finding them. She could probably do the same to most of the gangs in the country, but when was the last time Taylor had heard of her doing any decisive smashing? The big name gangs just seemed to keep getting bigger.

Of course, it all made sense if the Protectorate was just another gang.

Was the world really that far gone? Africa and the Middle East had collapsed into anarchy with dozens of parahuman warlords fighting for dominance. South America was well on its way there as well. Russia wasn't doing too great either ever since Behemoth trashed Moscow. Japan was a shadow of its former self since the sinking of Kyushu. China had been taken over by a blatantly tyrannical regime that considered human rights a quaint and outdated notion. Nobody knew for sure what the Yangban did to its capes, but there were stories…

By comparison, Taylor had thought that Europe and North America were doing pretty well, but was it all just a big illusion?

More importantly, if the difference between a hero and a villain was all about who controlled the media, was there even any point in trying to not be too scary? Shadow Stalker was always going to be her enemy and the PRT clearly wasn't going to admit that one of their 'heroes' was a monster, so they would pretty much have to paint Taylor as the villain if they wanted to keep their narrative.

It had taken all of her restraint to not attack Sophia then and there, with only the extremely public venue and the presence of the other Wards stopping her. Instead, she'd burst into a run. She wasn't in her exercise clothes, but that didn't matter.

Setting a brutal pace that wasn't quite a sprint, but much more than a jog, Taylor ran. People stared after her, probably wondering what the crazy girl was running from and the thought just pissed her off even more. Everything was pissing her off right now.

Clenching her teeth hard enough to hurt, Taylor pulled her fury back in, until it felt like her body would burst from the rage it was containing. Even if it was looking like being a villain was inevitable, starting her cape career by emotionally influencing a crowd of random people wasn't what she wanted.

The storm of rage writhed and roared, but she kept firm hold of it. Her body was in agonizing pain. Her muscles felt like they were being torn apart and set on fire at the same time. That was fine, though. The pain felt good and distracted her from the urge to brutally murder Sophia in front of the entire mall.

Taylor ran faster. Her destination was home, but she didn't want to deal with stop lights on pedestrian crossings, so she turned sideways if she encountered one. If necessary, she even circled the whole block just so that she didn't have to stop. This just about doubled the distance back to her house and Downtown wasn't exactly a small ways away, but she did eventually make it home.

Breathing hard, drenched in sweat, starving and trembling from the abuse she'd put her body through, but home. Her rage had burned out from the physical exertion and the pain she was suffering now was of a more mundane nature.

She ignored the roars of her stomach for the moment and stomped into the bathroom. Her dad wasn't home yet, working on Saturday as usual, so there were no awkward questions to answer. Getting her sweat soaked clothes off was a chore, but one that had become somewhat familiar.

She was flushed with sensation and tempted to go for a masturbation session (an angry one) to finish off her impromptu workout, but her stomach gave another roar of protest.

Right, quick shower, then food and we'll see if I'm still in the mood after that.

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