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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

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

A Ruinous Gift

Noodlehammer

Chapter 3: The Call to Villainy

Chapter Text

February 7th, 2011.

It had finally happened. Nearly a whole month since Piggy had confined her to base and she was finally allowed to go out on a proper patrol again. It had taken a lot of complaining to the Youth Guard, which she hated doing, but it was worth it to have that fucking shock anklet removed.

Even better, she'd been put on patrol with Kid Win. Out of all the Wards, he was the most useless and would be the easiest to get away from. And once she'd done that, she could ditch her gear, get to one of her hidden stashes, kill that little shit Hebert and get the hell out of Brockton Bay.

That last part still burned her, but there was no avoiding it. With how obsessed the PRT was with its image, there was no way they could let her go free.

"Console, Kid Win reporting from patrol checkpoint three." The Tinker spoke the fatal words.

"Acknowledged, Kid Win. Console out." Vista, the wannabe perfect soldier, said back crisply.

Sophia fired her crossbow into Kid Win's back without hesitation, phasing it through his armor. The tinkertech tranquilizers loaded into the bolt took effect immediately, knocking him out before he could do more than slur out a surprised word.

For just a moment, she considered cutting his throat as a final fuck you to the PRT, but decided against it. His armor monitored life signs and it would give her away. Conveniently, Sophia herself couldn't wear any electronics because they would fuck with her powers. That was what had allowed her to get away with her solo patrols for so long before.

She dropped both of her crossbows next to the insensate Ward and started stripping off her costume. Leaving her gear behind galled her, but there was no telling what kind of Tinker bullshit Armsmaster had put on them so that he could track them. You'd think that the no electronics rule would take care of that as well, but there was always a chance that he had something non-electronic that he could track.

Fucking Tinkers.

Now in her civvies, Sophia ran towards her nearest stash. The reason she had picked this point on their patrol route to put her plan into action was because it was very close to one such stash, just a couple of buildings over.

Jumping off a roof and shifting into shadow halfway down had her phasing into the condemned bakery. The place had been a favorite target for druggies just coming off their highs and looking for a quick meal. They'd kept robbing it until it went out of business and nobody had bought the place, which had made it a perfect spot to hide a stash.

Sophia reached into the wall and pulled out the bag, quickly checking what was in it. A change of clothes in a plastic bag, a little musty but serviceable, a hockey mask, exactly like the type she'd used as a solo vigilante, burner phone, a wad of money amounting to about a thousand dollars and a hunting knife.

She could already imagine gutting Hebert like a pig with it. That would teach the weak cunt to squeal.

Sophia quickly punched in the number for Emma's cell phone and waited impatiently while it rang.

"Hello?" The redhead asked hesitantly.

"Emma, it's me." Sophia said brusquely. "I need you to tell me where Hebert lives."

She knew the general area where it was, but not the exact location.

"Sophia? Where have you been? Is the PRT finally letting you out?" Emma asked instead of answering, relief in her tone.

Sophia had to tamp down on her anger and impatience. "Emma, I don't have time to talk. Just tell me where Hebert lives!"

"11th Ivory Lane." Emma's answer was more subdued than Sophia would like. "What are you going to do?"

"What I have to." She grunted. "I'll see you around, Survivor."

Maybe it was even true. After the worst of the heat died down, Sophia might be able to come back to Brockton Bay.

For now, she had prey to hunt.

XXXXX

Even if she was getting restless by the continuing lack of caping, life had actually taken a considerable uptick for Taylor. With Sophia gone from Winslow, Emma slowly imploding and Madison too much of a coward to act on her own, the bullying was conclusively over with.

Some of the other bitches still occasionally tried to cause trouble, but Taylor was well past the point of tolerating any of it. The last time they had done their 'block the hallways and gossip loudly' routine, she had simply bulled through them, making sure to apply elbows as she went.

Of course, the bitches had complained about it to Principal Blackwell, made up a whole sob story about how she'd viciously attacked them for no reason. They'd done the same thing after the last confrontation with Emma. Taylor had been spoiling for a verbal fight with the useless principal and would have gladly taken a suspension for it, but it seemed that Blackwell was less interested in covering for bullies if the bully wasn't a Ward. In fact, she seemed a little desperate to not have any more waves happening. School as a whole was starting to feel irritatingly confining and a waste of time.

Out of school, Taylor had continued her intense exercise regime and was starting to see some serious results. Her potbelly was gone, replaced with the barest hint of abs and her ass was starting to develop some shape. Her arms were no longer skinny, but lean with developing muscle, and her legs even more so. Still not much on her chest, but she was hopeful.

On the less tangible side of things, her information gathering was progressing well and she felt like she was getting a good handle on where to find criminal activity. She was grimly resigned to being a villain, but wasn't actually sure how to get a start on that. Being a hero was fairly straightforward even for an independent – just go out and patrol. Becoming a villain would presumably involve some criminal activity, but she wasn't going to go randomly mugging people or anything like that and she certainly wasn't going to join any of the existing gangs. Being a Thinker meant that she had to be careful.

What she wanted to do was go after Sophia, but that would mean picking a fight with the PRT and Protectorate. Not a winning proposition for an isolated Thinker with no resources. What she needed was to make it so that they couldn't easily find her or go after her first.

Soon, she would go out and start testing what she could do. The Merchants would be her first target, since they were both the least capable of retaliation and the easiest to find, ironically. She'd already identified a few likely starting points.

She was done with her workouts for the day and was instead crushing people in online chess after finishing dinner with her dad. She also had her hand down her pants and was languidly fingering herself while doing the aforementioned virtual crushing.

Multitasking! Plus, there was something about winning that really got her going these days. It helped that she could still dedicate mental iterations towards thinking of sexy things.

Her pleasant evening was rudely interrupted when a familiar, hostile mind pinged on her awareness, just a moment before a shadowy figure ghosted through the wall.

"I always knew you were pathetic, but jilling yourself while playing chess? That's a new low." Spoke an even more familiar, contemptuous voice.

Taylor had already moved, extracting her hand and spinning out of her chair. The many iterations of her mind, previously focused on the chess game and self-pleasuring, abruptly changed gears towards analyzing the situation.

The RAGE which had simmered into a cold hatred since the realization that the most violent of her tormentors was a Ward exploded into volcanic fury once more. Even the embarrassment at being caught masturbating was turned into more fuel for the anger.

XXXXX

Finding the house wasn't hard, nor was determining which window led to Hebert's bedroom. Sophia was in a hurry, so she only did enough recon to confirm that her target was there. Then she jumped up and went shadow, sailing more than a dozen feet upwards and through the glass and the wall like it wasn't there.

She hadn't come in with any expectation of what she'd see, but finding the whiny weakling fingering herself while playing chess of all things was still out there. The obvious conclusion was that Hebert really was a Thinker and was getting off on her own 'intelligence'.

"I always knew you were pathetic, but jilling yourself while playing chess? That's a new low." She spat out.

Hebert had started moving before she started speaking and was now poised on the other side of the room, staring back at her with a murderous hatred. Shit, if the little bitch had looked at her like that when they first met, then Sophia might not have written her off as a weakling.

"Sophia." Hebert said coldly. "Figures that the PRT couldn't even hold your leash properly."

Blood pounded in Sophia's skull and she tightened her grip on the knife. "You should've stayed in your place, Hebert. Now I'm going to gut you like the sheep you are."

She stalked forward, not really considering the taller girl any kind of threat. Even if she'd triggered, she was still a weakling. Thinkers always were. Her first swipe with the knife was more of a probing attack than anything else. She expected Hebert to jump away the same way most people did when threatened with a knife. That would have left her almost up against the wall with nowhere to go.

Instead, the other girl slapped her hand away and swung a vicious right hook at her masked face. Sophia barely managed to go into shadow mode in time to avoid having her bell rung. Only now did she notice that Hebert wasn't looking quite so skinny anymore. She was still lean, but her arms weren't twigs. That just made her angrier and she went back on the offensive, swiping the knife at her prey.

To her incredulity and frustration, Hebert was actually somehow able to keep up with her. She kept the knife away while trying to counter attack, and she refused to be herded the way Sophia wanted. There was something wrong about the way she moved, too, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

Fucking combat Thinkers.

Barely a few seconds into the fight, Sophia became aware of a pressure building in her head. Something was pushing through the pounding rage and hate she felt for Hebert and it wasn't gentle about it. Then she saw that Hebert's brown eyes had a blue-white glow lighting them up from within.

"The fuck are you doing to me?!" Sophia demanded as the pressure became painful. Something was digging into her head.

The distraction cost her and she ate a fist to the nose, only the mask keeping it from being broken. That punch had been unskilled, but way stronger than Hebert should be! Nobody went from stick-thin to athletic in a few weeks, not without powers. Was she some kind of Brute, too?

"I suppose I should thank you." Hebert growled darkly. "Animals are too simple and I didn't want to try this on just anyone. But with you, I'll have no regrets about flaying open that disgusting sewer you call a mind."

Hebert's psychic. The horror of the realization rushed through her like a wave of ice. For years, people had been nervously assuring themselves that there was no chance of a psychic Thinker/Master triggering, that only the Simurgh could do that kind of thing. That's how she figured out my secret identity. That's how she was able to dodge my attacks. That's why my head feels like it's being split in half.

Desperation now driving her, she threw all of her rage and fear and hate at the presence drilling into her mind. It helped a bit and that encouraged her to bull rush Hebert with a scream. She had to kill her. This wasn't about revenge anymore, it was about survival. Hebert absolutely had to die.

XXXXX

Taylor discovered unpleasantly that people could fight back against psychic invasion of their minds. Throwing powerful emotions against the attack seemed particularly effective. Still, she doubted Sophia could keep it up forever. She'd crack sooner or later.

The bull rush wasn't a surprise and Taylor braced herself to receive it. Her extreme multitasking allowed her to keep track of everything in the room from the largest piece of furniture to the smallest loose thread in the carpet, but it was still too small a space to really dodge anywhere.

An adjacent mental iteration noted that Sophia's scream had no doubt alerted her father and that he would soon be coming to investigate, putting him in danger as well.

Fearing Sophia's phasing powers and not really having any means of dodging, she grabbed at where she could see the ghostly images of her arms. To her surprise it actually worked, preventing the knife from going through her hands and into her neck. The knowledge that she could apparently use her powers to grab at the intangible was immediately shunted into the cluster of mental iterations permanently dedicated to thinking about what she could do.

Sophia was markedly less pleased by this development, as she continued to yell murderously. The crazed Ward unphased and pushed at her with all her strength, trying to overpower her. They crashed against the wall.

Taylor drove harder into Sophia's head, trying to push through the fear and rage and start tearing at her actual thoughts, making the smaller girl scream again and redouble her efforts to stab her.

Sophia was definitely the physically stronger of the two, but not by a huge amount anymore and Taylor was braced against the wall. Then things went wrong.

Sophia drove her knee into her right thigh and the already worn out muscles cramped hard, locking completely and sending her stumbling and sliding down the wall. The pain was nothing, but the muscle simply wouldn't obey anymore.

Sophia didn't waste the chance and quickly bore her to the ground, trying to drive the knife into her neck. Taylor hadn't been distracted by the stumble – could not be distracted with so many mental iterations keeping track of everything – so she never let go of the other girl's wrists.

"Just fucking die already!" The psychotic Ward screamed, struggling with all her might to push the knife down.

Sophia didn't hear or otherwise notice the door to her room slam open, but Taylor did.

"Taylor!" Her father yelled and rushed forward, but Sophia was still too hyper-focused on killing her to notice.

She did notice, however, when her dad hit her over the head with a… was that a meat tenderizer?!

It was a good thing that her incredulity was relegated to being just another mental iteration instead of displacing important attention away from fighting for her life. A secondary mental iteration noted that she'd used the mallet to make a couple of steaks earlier, which was probably why it had been there for Dad to grab.

Her dad, who had a very foul temper when roused, and he was in a room where the air was thick with rage. Seeing his daughter fighting for her life against a masked assailant trying to drive a knife into her throat, and so soon after the locker, could only ever have one response. The meat tenderizer came down on Sophia's head with full force.

He probably hadn't intended to kill her, but unlike in the movies, even a single blow to the back of the head could be fatal. Taylor felt Sophia's mind flicker, and her dad didn't stop there. After the first blow, he hauled the limp parahuman off her and smashed the mallet down on her masked face a good half dozen times more in a frenzy. Sophia's twisted mind separated from her body by the third hit, quickly fading into the dark sea that surrounded every mind. It briefly rippled before settling back into placidity.

"Dad, stop!" Taylor yelled, hearing the skull crack as she picked herself up. Her leg was still stiff, but the muscles were very slowly loosening up. From now on, she was going to tone down the exercising a bit. And stretch properly before and after. And maybe take up yoga just for good measure.

"Are you okay?" Dad asked shakily, eyes still wild as they flitted between her and the dead body in the room. He was shaking like a leaf in a storm.

"Yeah, she didn't get me." Taylor assured, keeping the anger out of her voice. A few dozen mental iteration spun out to examine the anger, as she always did with everything, and was surprised to discover that it was aimed at her father. He had stolen her kill.

"God, I killed her…" Dad swallowed thickly, now unable to tear his eyes away from the mess. "I should… call the police."

"No!" Taylor snapped immediately. "That's Sophia Hess, Shadow Stalker. She's the reason why the investigation got dropped. The PRT squashed it. If you call them, they'll pin a murder on us for defending ourselves from their pet psychopath."

Of this, she was absolutely sure. The PRT had already proved itself to not give a damn about truth or justice.

"What?" He froze up in shock.

"We have to hide the body." Taylor pushed ahead. "I doubt she told anyone what she was planning, but if they know her at all then they're bound to check here eventually. Get some blankets. I'll get some plastic bags and scoop this mess up."

Thank you, powers, for not letting me get queasy. The sight of blood and wrecked grey matter just looked kind of interesting at worst. Same for the smell. It was much more messy and pungent than she'd imagined it would be.

"Taylor, stop!" Dad snapped, a tinge of hysteria in his tone. His mind broke away from her. "We can't just cover this up!"

"We don't have a choice!" She yelled back, wanting to get through to him. "The PRT will claim excessive force or some other bullshit excuse to shift the blame onto us!"

"She came at you with a knife, it was self-defense." He argued desperately.

Taylor wanted to scream. He wasn't listening! She could feel that he was still panicking and not thinking clearly, his mind too small and slow to properly process what had happened. "The truth doesn't matter to these people, Dad! They'll twist things around until they get whatever result they want!"

Especially if they learned that she was a parahuman. They'd use this as an excuse to pressgang her into the Wards. Come to think of it, that was probably what they'd done with Sophia, wasn't it? Shadow Stalker used to be an independent vigilante with a reputation for violence that suddenly 'decided' to join the Wards.

In her frustration, she prepared to force him to listen, but then they both froze as the sound of a jet engine roared into range, rapidly getting louder and then abruptly cutting off. Everyone in Brockton Bay knew that sound – Armsmaster's bike.

XXXXX

Armsmaster gunned the throttle on his bike, rushing across the city at extremely unsafe speeds. At least it was late enough for traffic to be minimal.

After Kid Win's locator beacon had showed him not moving from their last checkpoint call in, Vista had contacted him again to check in, only to receive no response. That report had quickly made its way to him, along with the fact that Kid Win had been on patrol with Shadow Stalker.

Alarm bells had immediately begun ringing in Armsmaster's mind. The girl had been on what passed for good behavior with her lately, but Armsmaster certainly didn't trust her anymore. If what she did got out, his career would be set back by years.

Running with the assumption that Shadow Stalker had made a break for it, Armsmaster had dispatched Velocity to go check up on her most well-known associate, Emma Barnes, while a PRT operative called her mother. Armsmaster checked their last known location in the meanwhile.

He had just confirmed that Kid Win was unconscious next to Shadow Stalker's discarded gear when Velocity called in to report his findings. Barnes had been reluctant to part with the information, but with parents and a Protectorate hero pressuring her, she caved. Hess had indeed contacted her, demanding to know the location of Taylor Hebert's house.

Going after the girl she had spent so long victimizing instead of escaping would be idiotic, but very much in character for Sophia Hess. Her psychological profile emphasized a pathological obsession with winning.

Armsmaster regretted allowing her to go on patrol again, but it had made sense at the time. The next Endbringer attack was due in about a month and as per usual, there was a spike of villain activity.

Keeping Shadow Stalker confined to base was just so inefficient.

Pushing aside his frustration with the problematic Ward, Armsmaster swung his bike to a stop before the Hebert residence, jumped over the steps and smashed through the door instead of knocking or asking for permission. It was technically illegal, but he had cause to believe that there was an immediate threat to the residents. He could pay for a new door.

The TV and lights were on, with every indication that someone had been there not long ago and left in a rush. It gave him a bad feeling.

"Protectorate!" He shouted clearly, not waiting for a reply as he searched. "Is anyone home?"

A man appeared at the top of the stairs. He was tall and skinny, with thinning dark hair, glasses and a weak chin. More worryingly, he had a shellshocked expression on his face and a bloodied mallet clutched in his hand.

"Drop the weapon!" Armsmaster demanded, bringing his halberd around into a ready position. Out of habit more than anything, as he didn't really expect a fight.

The man, Daniel Hebert most likely, did as he was told, letting the mallet fall from nerveless fingers.

A teenage girl showed up behind him. Taylor Hebert, Sophia's victim.

Unlike her father, she was far more composed. Her expression flat as she stared at him.

"You're late." She said, as flat as her stare.

Armsmaster's jaw clenched involuntarily at the disrespect. He sympathized with what the girl had been through, but he had to prioritize.

"Where is Shadow Stalker?" He demanded. There was only a miniscule chance at this point that the Heberts didn't know that Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker.

"Your pet psychopath? Her corpse is cooling in my room, where she tried to kill me."

"Taylor!" The girl's father warned, putting a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged him off impatiently.

Armsmaster grimaced. He hadn't really held out much hope of Shadow Stalker still being alive after seeing the mallet, but this was still a horrible mess. "Both of you will be coming to PRT headquarters with me."

XXXXX

Fuck that!

Taylor just knew that if she went with Armsmaster now, the PRT would have its claws on her until she was a legal adult, possibly even longer. There were definitely enough clues around for them to figure out that she was a parahuman. The thought of being under their thumb was intolerable.

But Armsmaster wasn't going to take no for an answer. His mind was rigid and unyielding, with the strongest will she'd encountered so far. There would be no swaying him.

Mind made up, Taylor bolted back towards her room. It pained her to abandon her father, but she wouldn't be able to help him if she was caught, too. Besides he wasn't a parahuman, so the PRT probably wouldn't care about him. She would check what was going on with him later, somehow.

"Taylor!" She heard Dad yell behind her, confused and panicked, followed immediately by Armsmaster's demands to halt.

Hah! As if!

She'd already been plotting an escape since the moment they'd heard Armsmaster's bike, so it was just a matter of executing the plan. She burst into her room, grabbed Sophia's knife, opened the window and quickly climbed down.

Armsmaster barged into the room after her, but he was too late and his power armor was too heavy to follow after her that way. He had to go back out the front door.

It wasn't ideal. Taylor had only been wearing a thin T-shirt, sweatpants and no shoes or socks when Sophia had attacked her. Definitely not appropriate clothes for winter, but she'd have to make do.

She dropped the remaining distance down to the ground and started running, enjoying the sting of the cold, rough asphalt on the soles of her feet in spite of the situation. The occasional pebble provided an extra prick.

She heard Armsmaster stomp out of the house and curse viciously as his armored leg smashed right through the rotten first step. Heh, who would have thought that thing would come in handy? Still, he was quick to extricate himself and jump on his bike again.

Taylor pushed aside her rising panic and focused on escaping. There was no way she'd be able to outrun a tinkertech motorcycle. She couldn't even outrun a regular motorcycle! Hiding was the only option. It was winter, so the sun had set hours ago and it was as dark as it was going to get. Thanks to Brockton Bay being a shithole, a lot of the streetlights were out, either smashed or simply not replaced after they burned out. Plenty of darkness to go around, but Armsmaster probably had alternate vision modes and scanners in his helmet, so that would be of dubious help.

Taylor dashed through one of their neighbor's yards and jumped over a hedge, where Armsmaster couldn't easily follow and would be forced to go around. With line of sight broken, she rushed for the first good hiding place she could find, because it definitely wasn't going to take him long to catch up.

The hiding spot in question was an abandoned house one more street over, another thing that Brockton Bay had plenty of. It had been abandoned for years and what little of value was left inside long since looted. Nowadays, it was a semi-popular place for hobos to squat, especially during winter. They were generally left alone as long as they didn't cause trouble.

Taylor sprinted through the doorless front entrance, instantly catching the attention of the hobos huddling in the corners.

"You saw nothing, I was never here." She commanded, grasping at them psychically.

These were broken people, lost in despair. Some were belligerent and angry, but it was a thin anger born of depression. Others had what felt like empty, gnawing holes in their souls that radiated a desperate need. She'd seen this before but resisted the urge to poke at it, not wanting to experiment on random people. She reached out now and all of them clutched at her psychic touch rather than rejecting it and, not having time to think about it, Taylor pressed on their minds hard to enforce her order.

Armsmaster's bike roared around the block less than ten seconds later and he went directly for the abandoned house. Right, of course he did, it was the obvious place to go.

Taylor forced her breathing to slow down and focused on Armsmaster's mind. Ever so gently, she tried to divert his attention away from this house.

There's nothing here. She went somewhere else. You lost her. She whispered to him, unsure if it was accomplishing anything.

"Have you seen a girl pass through here? Fifteen years old, dark-haired?" She heard the Protectorate leader demanding of the homeless squatters after stomping through the doorway.

The reply was too low for her to hear to her, but it felt and sounded like a denial. The hobo answering him even seemed to believe it, thanks to the psychic pressure she was exerting. Armsmaster grunted and stomped away, accepting the hobos' words as truth immediately. Seconds later, his bike was roaring through the neighborhood again.

Taylor stayed where she was until she heard him drive back to her dad, then bolted deeper into the city. The minds of the hobos pulled at her and seemed to be begging her not to go, but she had no time to investigate this odd phenomenon – she had to get out of the area before the PRT goons showed up to lock it down.

XXXXX

Emily stared at Armsmaster, contemplating the extent of this fresh new clusterfuck. A Ward was dead after going completely off the reservation and attempting to murder the girl she had spent the past sixteen months abusing.

On the bright side, they could easily separate Sophia Hess from Shadow Stalker in this situation. Hess dies as a criminal in her civilian identity while Shadow Stalker gets reassigned to some remote posting and then disappears from the public consciousness.

It would be simple enough to arrange and had been done before. The only fly in the ointment was the victim of this debacle.

"Could she be a parahuman?" She asked, already suspecting what the answer would be. Problems in Brockton Bay only came in two flavors; complicated and extra complicated.

"I would say it is highly likely." Armsmaster said with tightly pursed lips. "The locker incident and the bullying campaign leading up to it was prime material for a trigger event and her history doesn't suggest anything that would have allowed her to fend off Shadow Stalker for even a short time, especially unarmed against a knife. Her internet history also shows a sudden intense interest in capes and powers, as well as various strategy games. And, of course, she managed to elude me."

The last bit might be a bit arrogant, but Armsmaster was legitimately a hard man to escape from when he was on the hunt. Sophia had learned that the hard way, but Taylor Hebert had succeeded where the now dead problem child had failed. Granted, Armsmaster hadn't known she was a parahuman at the time, which had been a big factor in his decision to not continue pursuit, but the point stood.

"So, most likely some kind of Thinker. Wonderful." Emily growled sarcastically.

That was just what a powder keg like Brockton Bay needed, a teenaged Thinker playing at mastermind.

Emily was sorely tempted to spin it as Hebert murdering a Ward and then hunting her down before she could blab. It would have left a bad taste in her mouth, but it would have let the PRT cover its ass. The murder of a Ward was the kind of thing that could justify an extreme response and measures not usually available. But no, it was too risky. Not only was the father not likely to go along with it, which would force them to 'disappear' him if she went that route, if she failed and the truth still got out, then the PRT ENE was finished. They'd never recover from the blow to their reputation and Brockton Bay would be abandoned. And multiple Protectorate capes would also have to go along with it, which she was not sure they would. She'd played it safe for years and was not going to gamble now.

She dismissed Armsmaster and made her way down to the interrogation room. There, Danny Hebert sat with a distant look in his eye. He had been afforded a chance to change his clothes and wash the blood off his hands, but it was clearly still on his mind.

"Mr. Hebert, my name is Emily Piggot, director of the PRT ENE." She introduced herself, sitting heavily in the chair across from him.

"Should I call a lawyer?" He asked.

"This conversation won't be about what happened with Sophia Hess." Emily told him and then decided to just go right for it. "Mr. Hebert, were you aware that your daughter is a parahuman?"

They didn't know for sure that she was one, but the circumstantial evidence was quite heavy and pretending you knew more than you actually did was a tried and true strategy for ferreting out information. Even if they turned out to be wrong, they could just go 'oops, sorry' without any harm done.

By the shock on his face, the answer was a resounding 'no'.

"Taylor, a parahuman? Are you sure?" He asked faintly.

"Yes, and as you might imagine, we'd like to talk to her. Do you have any idea where she would have gone?"

"If it was a few years ago I'd have said Emma's house, but that's not the case anymore." He sighed, then his expression sharpened. "You're the reason why the police investigation into that disgusting locker 'prank' got called off."

"Yes." There was no point in denying it. "They would have stumbled on Sophia's cape identity if we let it go through."

"So what if they did?" He demanded. "Does my daughter matter less because she isn't… wasn't a parahuman?"

"Of course not." Even though it sometimes did feel that way. "But unmasking a cape carries a lot of consequences. Sophia's family, at least, would have been in serious danger if she was outed."

"But you kept her in the Wards." Hebert's tone had turned angry now. "Instead of at least handling her punishment in-house, you let her get away with it!"

"She was being punished." Emily raised her own voice. "Tonight was the first night she was allowed any kind of freedom since then. We didn't expect that she'd use it to go completely off the reservation."

"Well you should have!" He snapped. "My daughter suffered a year and a half of abuse at the hands of your crazy Ward because you couldn't be bothered to supervise her properly, and now she's running around Brockton Bay barefoot in the middle of winter!"

"She wouldn't be if she didn't run away at the first sight of a Protectorate hero." Emily countered with a scowl. "It makes me wonder what she has to hide."

"Don't you dare try to turn this back on her!" Hebert yelled, surging to his feet and slamming his hands on the table. "She ran away because she didn't trust you not to screw her over again, with damn good reason considering your track record!"

Emily clenched her jaw and glared. Convincing him that the Wards were the best place for his daughter was going to be hard, she could already tell.

XXXXX

Her body was even more sore, her feet felt like they were on fire from the cold, rough ground, and she was freezing cold.

But there was no time to be enjoying herself. Taylor already knew that she had put her body through more abuse since triggering than should be possible, but all it had done was make her stronger. This, at least, assured her that she was enough of a Brute that a little exposure wasn't going to kill her.

The problem was that a barefoot teenager in nothing but a T-shirt and sweatpants in the middle of winter drew attention and she needed to disappear.

Brockton Bay was good for that at least. People disappeared all the time, so much so that the police couldn't keep on top of it all. The trick was doing it properly. She had successfully evaded notice by the PRT, now she had to decide where to hole up for the night.

She hadn't dared go further north, because that was where the ABB was. That was not the kind of disappearing she wanted to do.

South towards Empire 88 territory was only slightly better in her current condition and at this time of night. Her investigations told her that the Nazi gang was more 'civilized' during the day. After it got dark, the odds of running into the stereotypical tattooed skinheads rose considerably. Looking as she did right now, they were more likely to rape and/or murder her, and justify it by saying that she was Jewish because her hair was dark and curly. There had been a few geniuses like that in Winslow, or the expert etymologists that had compared He-bert and He-brew and decided there was a connection there. Even if they did help her, they would expect her to join them in 'fighting the good fight' or whatever they called it. And if it got out that she was a parahuman…. Yeah, no. Too risky.

Taylor may have accepted that she'd end up being a 'villain' no matter what, but she'd be a villain on her own damn terms!

The cold night seemed to keep the streets mostly empty at least and she only had to hide from a couple of people. Another thing Brockton Bay was good for – smart people didn't stay out after dark.

But that didn't help her figure out what to do. She needed some more clothes and a place to stay until morning at least. Robbing a clothes store was considered and discarded – every shop in Brockton Bay had heavy duty metal shutters installed over equally heavy doors.

Finding a shelter of some sort was her best bet.

But that wasn't as easy as it sounded either. Taylor had noted several such places since she'd started investigating the town, and they were definitely not safe. The ones in ABB territory were by far the most dangerous for young girls. The Empire didn't tolerate homeless on their turf, so the shelters they did have were extremely suspicious. Going into PRT controlled territory in her current situation was also a bad idea.

Frustrated rage burned in her heart. She wouldn't be in this pickle if not for Sophia Hess ruining things again. Now, instead of starting her cape career anonymously and from a secure position, she was starting off homeless and with the PRT knowing who she was. They would investigate her internet history, look at her hospital stay, reread the police report, and easily guess that she had triggered in the locker.

In the end, she decided on a church a few blocks away from Emma's house that she recalled had a reputation for charity, although that had been years ago. Hopefully it was still the same.

Far from ideal, but short of trying to Jedi mind trick a motel attendant or running towards the woods to spend the night among the trees, it was her best bet. If that didn't pan out… then she might be forced to try her luck going up against the Merchant affiliated pimp she had identified as a potential weak link during her information gathering expeditions. She remembered him having the same sucking hole in him that the hobos she'd so easily influenced earlier, but she'd rather not confront him dressed as she was. To say nothing of the possibility that he might simply not be there.

She made it there without incident, thankfully, and stared at the place. It was an old building and had clearly seen better days, just like the rest of Brockton Bay. With a deep breath, Taylor hid the knife in her under her shirt and tried the door, letting out a relieved exhale when it opened. The distinct smell of a church – which she had always liked even if she'd never been religious – filled her nostrils.

Why the door wasn't locked became immediately clear – she wasn't the only one seeking shelter in the church. There were already several worn down men and women in ratty clothes sitting or even lying down on the pews. Their looks of pity at her underdressed, barefoot state made her burn with humiliation and she ducked her head before picking a spot far away from everyone in the corner of one of the front pews to sit. She dared not touch their morose minds, some of them having the familiar gnawing holes in them.

Taking a deep breath now that she could relax for a moment, Taylor admitted to herself that she might have been stalling. She still had no name picked out nor costume prepared. There had still been a part of her that had wanted to be a shining beacon of hope in the darkness. A hero that people could look up to.

But heroes didn't get angry at their fathers for stealing their kills, and that was the only emotion she felt about Sophia's death. Not horror at seeing her skull cracked open like a ripe melon, not regret at what things had come to, not guilt at being part of it. Just a kind of amusement at the thought that Sophia had gotten her brain tenderized by a mallet, and anger that it hadn't been her hand swinging it.

Did I actually want to be a hero?

Less than two hours ago she would have said yes, that she definitely wanted to be a hero and was only going into villainy because she was being forced. Taylor now took a long, hard look at herself with this new perspective. Hundreds of thousands of mental iterations examined every memory she had, going back to before her mother's death, looking at them from every angle she could imagine and came to a conclusion.

I just wanted my life to matter.

The bullying campaign and the schools' refusal had made her feel worthless for so long. Getting powers had been a way out, a way to escape the seemingly inescapable misery of her life. Early on, her plan to deal with the bullying had been to endure it and then leave them behind, taking to heart the saying that the best revenge was a life well lived. Over time, that optimism had faded, but she still wanted to be better than her bullies. The definition of 'better' had simply changed. Being a hero would have allowed that… until she learned that Sophia Hess was considered one. Things had taken a darker turn then.

But the realization was a relief, like something heavy she'd been carrying along with her falling away. All the grating restrictions she'd expected to operate under suddenly didn't matter. She would be able to fully leverage her powers, without fear of what people would think.

Fuck being a hero. They were useless at best and hypocrites at worst.

The Brockton Bay Protectorate needed no explanation, not with Sophia part of their junior division, but even independent hero teams were useless. New Wave had a grand total of one big achievement on their resume, that being the capture of Marquis, but that just let other, worse criminals move in on his former territory.

Back when the bone manipulator had been a power in Brockton Bay, the Empire had been much smaller. He had helped drive out the Teeth and the Slaughterhouse 9 and was known to have an ironclad code of conduct. The Nazis hadn't been able to lay claim to any kind of moral high ground with him around. Nothing of worth had been accomplished by the so-called heroes removing him from play.

So Taylor would be a villain, not held back by stupid rules and bureaucracy. She'd take territory and run it as she saw fit. By default, she couldn't do worse than Nazis and human traffickers. The thought filled her with an anticipation that imagining herself as a hero never did. She would do more, be better, more important than Emma, Madison and Sophia. She would be the most important person in the whole goddamn city.

Footsteps made her look and she saw a priest carrying an armful of blankets. He looked to be around eighty years old, quite possibly more, clean-shaven and bald with deep wrinkles and thick glasses, but his mind was radiant and strong. It glowed with more kindness than anyone she'd ever looked at before.

"Thank you." Taylor said awkwardly when he handed her a blanket, quickly covering up her bare feet when she saw him looking at them.

"It's no trouble." He said in a kindly tone. "Wait here just a moment, please. I'll be right back."

A paranoid part of her feared that he was going to call Child Protective Services or some other governmental agency and she almost made another run for it. The only thing that stopped her was the brightness of his mind. Still, she couldn't help but be suspicious.

Thankfully, her fears went unrealized, as the old priest came back a few minutes later with a plastic bag hanging off his arm and a basin of water in his hands. An entirely different set of fears materialized when he ignored her helpful hands reaching for the basin and knelt down to place it on the ground, and then reached out for one of her very dirty feet.

Taylor suddenly remembered that the washing of feet was a religious rite practiced by the Catholic Church. Something about humility? But wasn't that supposed to be a ceremonial thing and not something the priest did for some random girl that just walked through the door? Whatever the case, it was easily the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to her. Somehow, it was a hundred times worse than anything Emma had ever managed to concoct, in a wholly different way.

"You don't have to do that." Taylor rushed to say, blushing harder than she ever had in her life.

She tried to pull her feet away, but he just shot her another kind, yet also strangely stern, look. "Young lady, please don't be difficult."

If his mind wasn't so bright, she would absolutely have continued to be difficult, but his good intentions were disarming. Left at a loss for words despite running a billion mental iterations and not wanting to make any more of a scene, she let him grab her foot and dunk it into the warm water. Then he started scrubbing off the filth she'd accumulated while running across the city.

So, this is how I die. Taylor thought dully. Heart attack from sheer embarrassment.

At least she was feeling something other than anger for a change. She'd almost forgotten what that was like recently.

"You really don't have to do this." She muttered, still feeling as if her face was going to catch fire.

"I know, but it reminds me of what's important." The priest replied. "These are bleak times, so I believe it is more important than ever that we cling to our virtues and do good where we can."

Taylor had no real rebuttal to that. She might have thought him a pervert if his radiant soul didn't preclude any such suspicions. The rest of the foot washing proceeded in silence that she was almost sure was awkward only on her end. Once the priest was done, he dried her feet off with a small towel he had in the paper bag he brought along with the basin.

He stood up with visible effort and handed her the rest of the bag. "Here. I doubt they'll fit you well, but it's better than nothing."

Curious, Taylor looked into the bag and saw that it contained a frumpy grey sweater, two pairs of socks and some very old looking men's shoes.

"There's some money in the socks." The priest whispered to her, clearly not wanting the others to hear. "Enough to buy some better fitting shoes and maybe a cheap coat."

"Thank you." She said, just as awkwardly as the first time. "I'll pay you back for this, I promise."

Because this was a lot more help than she was expecting. At best, she had been expecting to hide somewhere until she could get her hands on some shoes so that she would be less conspicuous. Having to rely on charity was deeply uncomfortable, but she wasn't in a position to turn it down.

"If you want to repay me, then be good to others where you can." The priest said, sitting down next to her. "I'm an old man and I don't need much, but there are so many people in this city who do."

"Yeah." Taylor muttered, thinking of all the ugliness that made its home in Brockton Bay now.

"It didn't used to be this way, you know." The priest's voice turned sad and wistful. "Brockton Bay used to be a city with a strong community, people who stood by each other."

Taylor couldn't remember it ever being like that. It had already been a gang-infested hellhole when she was born. For someone as old as him, it must have been heartbreaking to see it fall apart.

"Maybe it'll get better." She said, not sure if she really believed it. Despite her plans of driving the other gangs out of town and holding it against any newcomers, she knew damn well that the odds weren't exactly in her favor. There were so many villains and she was only one girl.

Her eyes drifted up to the crucifix looming above and behind the altar. Inanimate objects normally had no presence in the dark sea beyond the physical world. But in the Christian idol, she could see remnants of hope and belief making tiny ripples. They were mostly just stale dregs, though. The newer emotions focused on the cross were desperation, anger, bitterness and despair. It felt like a memorial to better days, a tombstone for a city on the verge of dying.

"It will, as long as we keep strong in the faith." The priest said, seeming to truly believe it. "The Lord will not allow His children to fade from His great plan."

Taylor wasn't sure she believed that, either in God or his supposed plan. It had simply never been an important consideration in her life. But… she would try to believe that things could get better, if only because she felt that she owed the priest for his kindness.

XXXXX

February 8th, 2011.

Emergency Wards meetings were always bad news. Always.

They were especially bad news when Director Piggot was this angry. She might not look like it to the others, but to Dean Stansfield, Gallant while in costume, she was both furious and afraid. Most likely just concerned, but his powers didn't distinguish between different flavors of fear, forcing him to guess from context.

"Yesterday, during her evening patrol with Kid Win, Shadow Stalker went rogue." The director started without preamble. She was never one for beating around the bush. "She attempted to murder a civilian and was killed in self-defense."

Dean could see the shock and horror overtaking his teammates. He felt much the same. Sure, Sophia always seemed to be angry, but he didn't think she was capable of murder!

"But why?!" Aegis sputtered. He was newly elevated to the position of Wards leader, after Triumph graduated into the Protectorate.

"You don't need to know that information." Piggot shut him down hard.

"It has something to do with why she was confined to base, doesn't it?" Vista guessed, scowling. She'd hated the older girl since day one, admittedly not without reason. Sophia had insulted her and not gotten any nicer over time. "She finally fucked up enough for you to yank her leash and she went to get revenge on whoever reported her."

Vista also had the mouth of an old sailor. Dean had never been sure if this was another of her attempts to seem more mature or if it was because of her parents. At twelve, Missy was by far the youngest of the Wards. She was also the longest serving one, having triggered at seven. The dichotomy of being a child and 'the old lady of the team', as he'd heard it described by one of the PRT troopers, was a constant source of frustration for her.

Normally, the powerful space-warper wouldn't be so confrontational with the director, but having Sophia on base all the time meant that Vista had to deal with her more, as she preferred to stay here rather than with her parents. Dean had tried to play peacemaker like he usually did, but it hadn't really worked. If anything, both of them had just gotten angrier.

"You don't need to know." Piggot growled slowly, making it clear that the subject was closed.

"Ma'am, are you sure it was self-defense?" Dean asked hesitantly. "I mean, Shadow Stalker wasn't a pushover and with her powers I just can't see a civilian getting the better of her."

"What do you know?" The director demanded, eyes narrowed. She was always suspicious and quick on the ball, even if she refused to consider his empathic sense reliable.

Dean hesitated again. He always hesitated when it came to talking about what he saw with his powers. Even though he could see emotions, he couldn't see what caused them or where they were directed. It was too easy to get the wrong idea, and his early attempts at trying to talk to people about their emotions had told him exactly how much they appreciated having their privacy violated.

Amy hated him to this day.

"There was something at the last Wards event." He said reluctantly. "I saw a spike of fear from Shadow Stalker, so I looked at the crowd to see what spooked her. I just barely caught a glimpse of someone's emotions as they left. There was a lot of anger."

Dean normally hated looking at large crowds of people. To him, crowds were a rainbow mass of emotions. It gave him a headache if he looked at it for too long. Not the infamous Thinker headaches, fortunately, but unpleasant all the same.

Whoever that person had been, they had been furious to a rare degree. Intensity was another thing that he had some trouble determining. Most of the time, people didn't feel just one emotion, so the way he judged intensity was by how all-encompassing it was. Fear and anger were especially hard to judge properly, because they were the most intense of all emotions, always flaring brightly and pushing everything else aside.

Amy was yet again a fine example of why he didn't speak of it. If his empathic sense was to be trusted, then his girlfriend's sister was constantly on the verge of either a murderous rage, running for her life, or killing herself. Nothing had come of it so far, and every time he had tried to help had just made things worse.

Piggot paused and nodded, notably not pressing for further information. She must already have an idea of who it was, judging by the hint of satisfaction showing through her anger.

"Shadow Stalker will officially be reassigned to a different Protectorate branch." She changed the subject. "If anyone asks, her family got a better job opportunity and she went with them."

Pretty much the boilerplate story for when Wards got reassigned for whatever reason, even if the real reason was far grimmer this time.

"So, Sophia's dead, huh?" Clockblocker said pensively after the director left. "Not gonna lie, I'll miss her ass."

Vista snorted. "I won't."

"No, I mean I'll miss her ass. It was her best feature."

Dean had caught some lust from Clockblocker when in Sophia's presence more than once.

"Dennis!" Aegis exclaimed disapprovingly. "Have some respect, she was one of us."

"Was she?" Kid Win asked skeptically. "Because she was bitchy from day one and sure as hell didn't hesitate to shoot me in the back."

"Just give it a rest already, Carlos." Vista spoke up again, irritation in her tone. "The bitch is dead and you don't have to mediate with a corpse."

Dean winced. Maybe he'd been underestimating how much Sophia's constant presence in headquarters had been wearing on Missy's nerves.

It was only as they were leaving the conference room that he realized that Director Piggot had never answered his question about how a supposed civilian had gotten the better of Shadow Stalker.

XXXXX

The first thing Emily did after getting out of the meeting with the Wards was talk to her deputy.

"Go talk to the mall where we held the last Wards event. Tell them to hand over their security tapes." She ordered.

"What are we looking for?" Renick asked.

"Hebert." Emily replied curtly. "She might have been there."

"You think she somehow lured Shadow Stalker into a trap?"

Emily doubted it. The evidence all pointed to Hess' attack being a surprise. Still, if it could get them even a tiny bit of leverage over the Bay's newest parahuman pain in the ass, it was worth investigating. Plus, they might gain some insight into her powers.

"Maybe."

XXXXX

February 8th, 2011.

Sleeping on a church pew was uncomfortable-but-not-really in that way that only her powers could make things. It was more like she'd just traded one kind of experience for another, and neither was more unpleasant than the other. In fact, the church pew might be a little better than a bed simply because it provided more sensation.

Of course, it helped that her power made the aches and sores feel pleasant. She'd slept late and vacated the church as awkwardly as she'd entered it, bidding the kindly priest goodbye with a final thank you.

Now here she was, standing in the changing room of a none-too-cheap department store.

It was objectively stupid to have even bothered entering this particular store. The priest (whose name she'd never ended up getting, to her embarrassment) hadn't given her that much money, only a hundred dollars. The sensible thing to do would have been to find a second-hand store and get as much mileage out of that money as possible.

Buuuut she'd still had several hundred mental iterations churning over the issue of her cape costume when she'd caught sight of a hooded trench coat and it had given her ideas. Over the past month of acclimating to her powers, an image of the kind of cape she wanted to be had slowly built in her mind. Having not gotten the Alexandria package she'd yearned for as a child, flashy displays of strength were out of the question.

Myrrdin over in Chicago was a bit of a joke for insisting that he was a wizard, but he was cool in his own way. He could have picked a different theme, but he somehow made the wizard look work. Taylor's powers lent themselves especially well towards mystery and the mastermind trope, and she could either try to fight it or lean into it.

And there was a certain appeal to being a behind-the-scenes mastermind, as her experiments in Winslow had revealed.

That was why she was contemplating the shin-length trench coat. It was a navy color, such a dark blue as to be only a few shades removed from being black. Double-breasted and made of thick, high-quality wool with a big hood attached. It was fancier than anything she had ever even considered wearing.

Taylor had always been a bit of a dork and she knew it, favoring plain and comfortable clothes. Emma had been the fashionista.

But this wasn't about fashion, this was supposed to be a cape costume and she very much liked the hood. With a proper mask, this would be a pretty cool look.

The problem, of course, being that the coat cost considerably more than a hundred dollars and she still needed to get some shoes and socks at the bare minimum.

She sensed a mind approaching the door of her changing room with intent, filled with suspicion.

"Hey, are you okay in there?" The voice was as suspicious as the mind behind it.

Taylor opened the door and locked eyes with the store attendant. She was a woman in her mid-to-late twenties with a bad blonde dye job and the falsely-pleasant-but-actually-permanently-irritated expression of retail workers everywhere.

"Yes?" Taylor asked. "Is there a problem?"

She knew exactly what the problem was. Every employee in this store had been looking at her like she was a thief since the moment she stepped inside it. In some ways it was understandable, seeing as she wasn't exactly projecting an image of wealth with the priest's old sweater and ill-fitting shoes. In all other ways, Taylor was completely fed up with being looked down upon.

"Just checking to see if you were alright." The store attendant lied. Badly.

"Just trying on this coat." Taylor kept her own voice polite even as she pressed her will against the older woman.

Retail workers were not exactly bastions of mental strength, so it wasn't hard to basically bludgeon the woman's suspicion into submission. Blue eyes softened and her expression slackened ever so slightly.

"Okay." She said, and went away.

There were plenty of reasons why using Master powers on random people was unethical, but she really wanted this goddamn coat and she was now committed to being a villain so she might as well act like it. The store was big enough to afford a little loss. If she was feeling particularly conceited, it could even be called a donation towards her campaign to rid Brockton Bay of gangs, which the store would surely benefit from.

Taylor folded the coat over her arm and went towards the shoe section, picking up two packs of generic socks on the way.

Shoes… her father had always told her to never look at the price tag on a pair of shoes. Good, sturdy, comfortable shoes were worth forking over a little extra for. Taylor was already way over budget with her coat, so that advice was even more relevant. Now she just had to pick a pair.

Everything with heels was immediately discarded. She'd never worn them and certainly wasn't going to start now, embarrassing fantasies of being a femme fatale type of cape notwithstanding. She had neither the curvy figure nor the body confidence and social skills to pull that off, and had already decided on a look anyway.

Her go-to type of shoes had always been comfy sneakers, which she reluctantly conceded was also not a good choice. Even her very limited mastery of fashion was enough to know that sneakers paired with the fancy coat would make her look like a kid playing dress up, rather than a cape to be taken seriously.

That really only left one category of shoe as a viable choice. Boots.

The last time Taylor had worn boots, they had been a sunshine yellow rubber affair, which was obviously out of the question. Anything flashy and fashionable would be too flimsy to survive the rigors of cape life, so that really left only combat boots as an option.

The store she was in unfortunately didn't have those, but they did have some biker boots that were just a slightly flashier version of combat boots, steel toe cap and all. That was a little embarrassing, but mostly just because it was so out of her comfort zone. In the end, she settled upon a nine-inch high pair with thick soles, strong laces and some entirely decorative buckles.

They cost about as much as the coat, and were definitely not something she'd ever buy normally. In a way, that just made them more suitable for her cape outfit, as it would be the start of a new, different life.

Or so she reasoned it to herself.

Looking down and picking at her ratty sweatpants, Taylor frowned. The coat would mostly cover them, but she still didn't feel great about wearing something so lame as part of her cape outfit.

Numerous mental iterations, traitors that they were, pointed out that biker leathers would actually fit well with the boots and provide at least a little protection, as well as looking a lot cooler. Those same mental iterations even went so far as to remind her that she actually had the legs and ass to not embarrass herself in them nowadays.

She'd even gotten independent confirmation that it wasn't just her imagination, sort of. Greg Veder, Winslow's resident master of verbal diarrhea, had loudly proclaimed that she had 'legs for days' and 'a really tight ass', before suggesting that they go on a date.

It had been a struggle not to psychically lobotomize him. Greg was harmless, like an excitable puppy that didn't understand tact. Unfortunately, he was the creepy type of puppy that tried to hump your leg if you didn't hit him over the nose with a newspaper. Now that she wasn't getting bullied anymore, he had thought it was safe to ask her out, hence the urge to psychically lobotomize him. He didn't even realize that his blatant cowardice might piss people off.

Yes, Greg was harmless, but not very tolerable.

Anyway, leather pants…

Another benefit of her mental multitasking was the ability to easily construct pro and con lists without actually having to write anything down. This allowed her to conclude that leather pants had multiple pros and only one con, that being her own embarrassment at the thought of wearing them.

Scowling with determination, Taylor snatched up a pair and went to try them on, which revealed another pro for the list – leather pants felt really good to wear. Whether this was normal or her powers being weird again, she suddenly had another reason to take them.

Looking at herself in the mirror, she had to admit that they didn't look bad at all. They weren't skintight, but rather the somewhat thicker and looser type that were meant to prevent road rash in case of a fall, which spared her from looking like a wannabe biker skank. Plus, the coat would cover most of them anyway.

Surrendering to the inevitable, Taylor decided to take the damn pants. And if she was taking leather pants, then it didn't make sense to not take a leather vest as well. It was the closest thing to armor that a civilian could easily buy anyway.

The last item on her list was a mask, which was a problem. If she bought a mask, then she might as well announce her parahuman status to the cashier. How the hell did any independent manage to get their hands on a mask without immediately outing themselves was suddenly a good question.

In the end, she settled for emulating Miss Militia and bought a few simple black scarves that she could use to hide her face. Nobody would think anything of someone buying scarves in winter.

The cashier looked at her very dubiously as she tallied up the cost of the coat, pants, vest, scarves, boots, socks, bras, panties and shirts.

"That'll be $639.37." The woman stated blandly, staring at Taylor with a 'how are you planning to pay for this, you hobo?' kind of look.

It was a truly cringe-inducing number, one that would have had her blanching in horror if she was actually planning to pay for it.

Taylor gave the cashier a single ten dollar bill, stared her in the eyes and pressed against her mind. "This should be enough."

If this Jedi mind trick failed now of all times, she would be extremely embarrassed, so she put quite a bit of force into her psychic push.

The cashier took the blatantly wrong amount of money with a polite customer service smile, punching 639.37 into the register, never looking at what she'd been handed. "Thank you for your purchase, please come again!"

Taylor made a non-committal sound in her throat, grabbed the bag with her 'purchased' goods and walked out of the store, relieved. Now she just had to recover her knife from where she'd stashed it.

XXXXX

The rest of the day was spent settling into her temporary lair. It was a crumbling building in the docks that had no utilities and was thus only good for its walls, but her stay there would be very temporary.

With that done it was time to pick a target, and there was no reason to deviate from her plans from before Sophia attacked her.

The Merchants were the obvious choice. The Empire 88 and ABB were too dangerous to take lightly, and harder to find despite having a more established territory. Merchant street pushers were easily identified by their generally unkempt appearance. Sometimes they even wore blue, the 'official' Merchant colors, one of Skidmark's futile attempts to give his gang 'legitimacy' according to PHO speculation.

She was both scared and eager to get started, but there was one more thing to do before she could; try to get into contact with her dad. She had to know if the PRT had decided to hold him or something.

Calling their house was probably a bad idea – it was a crime scene and she had no idea how long it would be before they cleared out. She'd call his cell phone, but Dad had hated cell phones ever since Mom using one while driving. The only other place she could call was his office at the DWU.

Although slowly being phased out, it wasn't impossible to find a payphone in Brockton Bay, especially in the older sections of the city. Finding a functional one was slightly harder, but still not impossible. The phone barely had time to let off a single ring before it was picked up.

"Hello?" Dad's cautiously hopeful voice answered. "Danny Hebert speaking."

"Dad?" Taylor said back.

"Oh thank God!" Dad sounded as if he'd slumped over the desk. "I was hoping you would call me here. Are you okay? Do you need me to pick you up?"

"I'm fine, someone helped me out." She replied and braced herself for what was coming. "And no, I don't think it's a good idea for you to pick me up."

"Taylor…" There was a complicated mix of emotions in his voice, but worry seemed to be the predominant one. "You're a cape, aren't you?"

Taylor wasn't surprised, but still unhappy. "I was going to tell you, but I wanted to understand my powers better first."

"Right. So why don't you want me to pick you up? You're not being charged with any crimes, kiddo."

"The PRT would come up with something as soon as they had their hands on me, I'm sure." Taylor sneered scathingly. "They're just like the gangs. They'll call me a villain if I don't join up with them, but all they really care about is getting more capes under their thumb, no matter how good or bad those capes are. I wouldn't be surprised if half of their current lineup used to be villains."

"I wish I could say you were wrong." Dad sighed. "They pretty much told me that they'd keep your name out of that girl's d-death as you don't say anything about her being Shadow Stalker."

"Yeah, that figures." She snorted, unsurprised. "Let me guess, they tried to get you to sign me up for the Wards, too?"

"They did." He confirmed. "Cited statistics on the life expectancy of independent capes and the likelihood of being pressed to join the gangs, then moved on to the benefits of being a Ward. They also implied that any deals you got would be a lot less generous if you committed any crimes."

"Crimes such as refusing to sign up, no doubt." She scoffed, feeling a glow of happiness in her chest that he had refused to sign anything.

"Taylor, listen…" Dad began. "I get why you don't want to sign on with the government after everything that's happened, but please don't go out there alone. Even if they were doing it to pressure me, those statistics are the real deal. Independent capes rarely make it more than six months on average, a lot less than that in Brockton Bay. I don't know what powers you have, but this city is full of monsters. I'm staying with Kurt and Lacey until the police clears out of our house. Can you go there or come to the DWU and we'll talk in person?"

Now for the hard part. Taylor took a deep breath before answering. "I can't, Dad. The PRT probably has you under observation and they'd be all over us as soon as I showed up. They're corrupt and only care about the law when it suits them. They warned you about the danger of me being pressed to join a gang, but that's exactly what they'll do."

What she didn't mention was the danger of the other gangs. If the PRT kept being pushy – which she knew they would be – it wouldn't take the other gangs long to figure out that she was a parahuman and then her dad would be in danger from them as well. They might even do it on purpose to deprive her of choices. It was just too risky for her to be around him right now. And that's if they don't outright have moles in the PRT, which was a distinct possibility. A likelihood even.

The only way she could protect her dad was to stay away. One day it would be safe again, after she drove the gangs out of the city.

"I can't help but notice that you aren't saying anything about not going out alone."

Taylor pointedly said nothing. The silence would speak louder than any words.

"Taylor, please don't do this."

"… I can't just do nothing."

More importantly, she didn't want to do nothing. Another reason why she didn't want to go back to her dad right now was because she knew he would get in her way.

"Sometimes, I really wish you weren't so much like your mother." He groaned helplessly. "Alright, if I can't change your mind then at least call me every day, more than once a day if you can. The worry is going to drive me insane otherwise. I'll even get a cell phone. And be careful! Don't try to take on too much at once. There's plenty of empty warehouses on the docks if you need a place to hide. And stay away from other capes!"

"Dad, I get it, I'll be careful." Taylor interrupted before he could start adding more restrictions that she might have to ignore.

"… You sure I can't convince you to just come home?"

"Sorry."

"Right." He sighed in defeat. "So… did you pick a cape name yet?"

Another thing that her powers were good for. She'd had thousands of iterations going over every bit of information she had on her powers, and thousands more mixing and matching syllables to come up with something appropriate. In the end, only one name had felt right.

"Keep an eye out for Psyker."

Now that she was committed to villainy, there was no point in hiding her powers. She'd obfuscate the details, but no more than that. She'd already had a sixteen month course on what being harmless got you. It was time to try being too scary to be fucked with.

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