Fics I Read 2.0

Main Content

Archive of Our Own betaArchive of Our OwnLog In

FandomsBrowseSearchAboutWork Search

tip: "sherlock (tv)" m/m NOT "sherlock holmes/john watson"

Actions

Entire Work ← Previous Chapter Next Chapter → Chapter Index Comments Share Download

Work Header

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 6: Liquid Justice

Notes:

The thanks for helping me polish this story up goes to Alvor

Chapter Text

February 24th. 2011.

Brockton Bay suffered from quite a lot of collateral damage. The sheer number of cars that had been crushed, burned, shot up, exploded, shredded or otherwise totaled over the years beggared belief. Many of these cars were then towed outside the city limits and left to rot.

Currently that worked to their advantage as Lodestone's spaghettified hands rearranged various pieces of junk over the safe Sherrel had built.

"Alright, that should do it." Larry said, turning towards Taylor and Sherrel and making finger guns after retracting the threads he'd turned his hands into. "Eh, ladies?"

The man formerly known as Mush was no longer naked and using only pieces of literal garbage to cover himself. Instead, he had, according to Sherrel, switched to using metaphorical garbage.

Wearing white pants, a white suit jacket over a pale blue shirt with the top button undone, a big gold chain and sunglasses, Larry looked like he was trying way too hard to be cool. Except, his definition of cool was also several decades out of date.

"Looks good, Larry. Thank you." Taylor said politely, ignoring Sherrel's exasperated groan. If nothing else, she was now completely certain that her light psychic touch didn't brainwash people, because there was no way she'd have wanted this even subconsciously.

"No problem, Boss." He grinned. Thanks to his minor regeneration power, his teeth actually weren't in terrible shape. "You can always count on me."

Taylor gave a small smile back, still getting a little thrill at the loyalty she could sense from him.

"Enough ass-kissing, let's go home." Sherrel broke in, sauntering over to their ride, which was one of her stealth-equipped cars. Amusingly, it was a station wagon instead of a big truck or anything really eye-catching.

They filtered inside and got comfortable, then Sherrel maneuvered out of the junkyard and activated the stealth generator. Then she turned on the sound system, blaring out some kind of repetitive electronic facsimile of music at bone-vibrating volume. None of the sound escaped the vehicle, of course.

"Can you please turn that shit down!" Larry yelled, trying to make himself heard.

"What?!" Sherrel yelled back, pretending that she couldn't hear.

Taylor just sat back and let them yell at each other. She knew that she'd have hated this kind of 'music', especially at this kind of volume, before her trigger, but now she liked it just fine and considered the yelling to be a nice addition.

It was still very early in the morning, so driving an invisible car wasn't a disaster waiting to happen. They encountered only a single other car on their trip to Larry's new apartment and the Changer gratefully fled the car when they arrived. Then it was just Sherrel and her driving back towards their own house in… well, pretty much the opposite of silence for about fifteen minutes

"Soooo…" Sherrel dragged out the word as they walked up the stairs. "You wanna come watch a movie with me? I just got this new porno that's supposed to be the shit."

Taylor was sure that if she wasn't dedicating iterations of her mind to precisely moving every part of her body independent of the rest of her cognition she would have missed a step. She was also able to process the shock of the offer in the background, allowing her to respond with perfect calm.

"Sherrel, porn is not an acceptable category of movie for watching with friends." She said. Alas, she could not control her blush.

"Why not?" The Tinker asked flippantly. "You know how porn gets boring after you cum? That makes it great for falling asleep. We set it up, flick our beans and go to bed. Works better than warm milk."

Taylor actually didn't know about how porn got boring after orgasm, because she had never watched any, but a dozen or so of her mental iterations spun off unhelpfully to ponder why it might be so. She could understand that Sherrel was trying to be helpful in her own degenerate way, seeing as it was something like three in the morning, but seriously!

"I'm sure I'll have no problems falling asleep, thank you." She replied.

"Hmph, we'll see about that." Was the ominously threatening reply.

Taylor sighed in exasperation and went to her own room. When she'd first come here it had been incredibly dusty, but otherwise fortunately still serviceable. A little cleaning and some of Skidmark's money pile spent on two computers and four screens made it into a proper workspace.

And there was plenty of work to be done. Taylor wasn't feeling sleepy yet, so she sat down and started on it.

The first and most obvious thing to do had been to take inventory of what kind of resources the Black Hand had. That mostly amounted to just over a four hundred thousand dollars in cash, drugs worth maybe five hundred thousand more if it all sold well and a few dozen guns. In terms of manpower, they had three capes, thirty-three men willing to commit violence on her behalf, forty prostitutes, and hundreds of 'affiliates' made up of hobos and former addicts. All of them were drawing strength from a psychic connection to her and shaking off the despair that had made them such easy prey for Skidmark.

It wasn't exactly the kind of force that could give the Empire or ABB much trouble, but Taylor was working on changing that.

As uncomfortable as the topic made her, the prostitutes had made it abundantly clear that they wanted to keep working. They even seemed eager to work for her instead of Skidmark. Since all her attempts to persuade them to find another line of work had only resulted in a handful agreeing to do so, Taylor had no more excuses. She now had a full grasp of all former Merchant assets and had to start making use of them.

Still, she'd be damned if she let the prostitutes do their 'work' in back alleys or condemned buildings. Louie actually had the most tolerable kind of agreement going with the landlord of his apartment building. Surely there were other places in the city that would be willing to offer a little discretion in exchange for a cut of the profits?

Thanks to her powers, she didn't need to look up her reference materials to keep their locations and work areas straight, so she was able to start looking up cheap motels and low-cost apartments in the not-great parts of town online. Once she had that information, she could start asking if anyone knew those places personally, or sending minions to talk to the proprietors about making arrangements. The idea of getting them some kind of training was also still on her mind.

There were no high class escort services in Brockton Bay, so an out-of-town organization would have to be contacted. She started using the computer on her right to look up escort services in New York and Boston.

On the matter of the drugs… She still didn't like that she was going to end up selling them, but talking to Sherrel had thoroughly disabused her of any notions that she could stop the drug trade, which her own later research into the topic had confirmed.

It would take someone with the power of Scion himself to force an end to the drug trade, and that was quite beyond her.

Just by going around with the former Merchant dealers, meeting most of their buyers and using her powers to take away the addictions of those who didn't want to be slaves to them, Taylor had already done more to reduce Brockton Bay's drug problem than any hero, vigilante or government initiative had ever managed to do in such a short amount of time. That at least soothed her sensibilities, even as she prepared to reorganize the haphazard selling of the Merchants into something far more efficient and potentially wide-reaching.

While Skidmark bought a supply of heroin and cocaine from a higher level dealer in New York, the Merchants grew cannabis and cooked meth locally. The urge to simply shut those operations down was there, but it felt juvenile and petulant, the remnants of a girl who'd thought crime could be punched away. The demand was already as low as she'd been able to make it, and cutting off the supply just meant that it would draw in some other dealer smelling an opportunity. One from the ABB most likely. Instead, she would bring up the quality and be more selective of who she sold to.

An obnoxiously loud moan from Sherrel's room got immediately shunted to a new background mental iteration for processing, but Taylor allowed herself an eyeroll.

"Goddamnit, Sherrel." She muttered, not pausing in her work.

The Tinker might not be a whore in all but name anymore, but a demure lady that did not make. Taylor could only be thankful that with cape identities being what they were, she couldn't bring any men over to the house.

Instead, she was making full use of her collection of toys and porn.

I might have to find a place of my own to live in… eventually. Right now there would be too many questions asked about why a fifteen-year-old girl was living on her own.

Not going to school – or to Winslow more specifically – was easily the best part of being a villain. The last thing she wanted was for some annoying busybody sticking their nose into her business because of her age.

Grabbing her work phone, she scrolled through the contacts list and called one of the dealers that had lost pretty much all of his clients after she was done talking to them.

The phone rang twice before he picked up. "Boss?"

"Blimp, got a job for you." She said authoritatively. When she'd first started speaking to the minions as their leader, she'd needed to effectively quarantine her self-doubt and social anxiety in a cluster of background mental iterations, leaving the rest of her able to project a façade of confidence and surety. Since then, she'd settled into the role and it came easier every time she heard them refer to her deferentially.

"Lay it on me." Blimp said eagerly.

Blimp was obviously not his birth name, but it was the only one he would give. At a height of 6'5'' and weighing just shy of five hundred pounds, he was a very large man. It was hard to deny that he shared a certain resemblance to a fat, slow, airship.

He had been a 'famous' pimp and drug dealer among the Merchants, known as Blimp the Pimp. In his own words, he was five hundred pounds of 'peak blackness', whatever that meant. Taylor hadn't dared ask.

"I'm going to send you a list of motels and apartment buildings in your general area. I need you to go talk to whoever is managing them locally if they'd be willing to host a few prostitutes in exchange for a cut of the profits. Be discreet and make it clear that it's just a business proposition, not a threat."

Blimp was one of the men who relied on her powers for mental strength, but he actually hadn't been a drug user before she got to him. No, the large man used his money to fuel his crippling hamburger addiction, because below the façade of the cheery fat guy was a man in despair, stuffing his face with junk food and unable to muster the will to care that he was probably on the verge of a heart attack.

It was a weird situation, but at least it confirmed that her powers weren't specifically tuned to drug addicts, she supposed.

"You got it, Boss. Uh… how'd you know I was awake? It's like four in the morning."

Taylor smiled to herself in amusement. "Powers."

That was another thing she was doing at the moment, exploring the limits of her psychic powers. Not trying to control, but simply allowing herself to gather impressions from those she was connected to. One of the most obvious uses for this was knowing who was sleeping and who was awake. As a minor side effect, she was also able to make sure that they all had pleasant dreams and restful sleep.

"Okay, I'll get right on that."

"Thanks, Blimp. I'll make sure you get paid for it." Because good work should be rewarded and even minions needed money.

"Cool. Talk to you later, Boss."

The call cut off and Taylor immediately scrolled further down the contacts list, having already planned who to speak to next while she was talking to Blimp.

"Steve. I hope I didn't catch you at a bad time?" She asked, already knowing the answer.

"No, I just got up." Steve yawned into the phone. "What can I do for ya, Boss?"

"We're restarting drug sales. We'll have to meet up later today so I can restock you."

"That's good." Steve sighed in relief. "Those Empire assholes were starting to get pushy."

Unlike Blimp, Steve had lost practically no clientele, because most of them were Empire. Specifically, they were Hookwolf's crew.

As Sherrel had said, Hookwolf really didn't approve of drug use and would beat the shit out of any of his people that he learned were using. Steve was one of the dealers that happily provided opportunities for that to happen, although he wisely stayed far away from the the violent cape's usual haunts. Taylor might be uncomfortable selling drugs, but selling to Nazis, who were paying for the privilege of poisoning their bodies and risking the wrath of the city's murder blender in the process was like winning three times in one and she found herself having remarkably little moral conflict about it. If only I could arrange for all of our buyers to be pieces of shit…

"Tell them that Skidmark left us a mess to deal with and that we had to clean house a bit, and that the drugs will be of higher quality now." She instructed.

Skidmark had made extensive use of the practice of 'cutting' the drugs with another substance to extend his supply. It was really the only way for him to turn a profit given how much of the supply the Merchants used up themselves. The Empire, being what it was, would be quick to believe the worst of a black man. That Skidmark really had been that bad was beside the point.

"That'll work." Steve snickered. "Talk to you later, Boss."

"Later." She hung up and opened up a document to start writing down some of the information currently swirling through her head.

Even with her powers, she couldn't keep it in her head forever and her long term memory wasn't any better than normal.

Alright, what else? I need to put people to work, but there won't be enough crime to go around with how we're reshuffling things and I'm not going to have them mugging people or committing armed robbery like Skidmark did. Well, not unless it's on the Empire and ABB, that is.

To work jobs, you needed skills. She'd heard her dad complaining about blue-collar workers losing jobs more than once. There had to be something in the vein of carpenters, masons, electricians, mechanics and so on among the impoverished masses that made up the people now relying on her for the strength to get back on their feet?

It would be illegal to have them doing off-the-books work that didn't get taxed, but that was of little concern to a villain. It would be a concern if she wanted to present a legal veneer like the Elite, but at the moment these people barely existed as far as the government was concerned. In fact, the government would probably prefer that they not exist. Once she had someone make a census of her people and what skills they had, she could start thinking of what kind of work to put them to. They were dispersed across the city, so talking to all of them would take some doing.

Fortunately, her power excelled at organizing things and she soon had a mental list of which people to send where. Most of them were still asleep at the moment, so she would need to wait a while before calling them.

By then she had found a promising escort service operating in Boston, going by the name of Erotic Emissaries. The name was a bit suspicious, so she dug around further and found rumors of a connection to Accord. Given that particular cape's reputed hatred of disorder, she could easily imagine him rounding up Boston's prostitutes and turning them into something more classy. Well, that was actually a bonus, as it would mean that they were not likely to object to taking money from criminals.

She started composing an E-mail with a request for tutoring, either via them sending a teacher to Brockton Bay or her sending girls to Boston.

On the other computer, she opened up another text file and started typing out which people to contact later, as she was planning to go to sleep soon and didn't want to lose track of them.

Using two computers at once like this hadn't really taken her long to get used to, as strange as she was sure it looked.

Both tasks were almost finished when a sudden wail split the air. Taylor could feel the tide of fear that swept through her people and through the city as a whole. The Empyrean shuddered with it in ways she had never felt before.

Endbringer siren.

There had been no announcement of a test, so it was the real thing. A thought that was confirmed when the first blast was followed by a second.

Taylor could imagine the people praying that there would be no third blast. The fear ratcheted higher as the wail continued on for five long seconds, making her throat feel as if she'd drank too much of a carbonated beverage without pause.

The lack of a third blast felt like the city being able to breathe again. Endbringer attack, but not here.

Not today.

Taylor heard Sherrel's feet stomping on the old wood of the house just before she slammed open the door to her bedroom.

"You're not going." The Tinker ordered, fear still permeating her mind and wearing only a tiny tank top with no panties. She even still had an XL-sized dildo in her hands, but the situation took away all amusement from the sight.

"I'm not going." She agreed reluctantly.

Taylor still wanted to do something about the Endbringers, or at least look at them with her psychic gaze to see if she could spot a weakness. The PRT had stopped publishing casualty numbers years ago, but with so many mental iterations, it wasn't hard to analyze the old statistics and realize that if things kept going like this, then humanity was done for. They could not absorb this kind of damage to their population, infrastructure, and even morale for much longer. And that was if no new Endbringers showed up.

"Okay, good." Sherrel deflated in relief, leaning on the door frame and vaguely gesticulating with the dildo. "Fuck, that's good. I was really afraid you'd be stupid about this."

"Sherrel, please put the dildo away." Taylor requested with a sigh.

The Tinker grinned. "Why? Does it bother you?" She punctuated the question by wiggling it in her direction. It was recently used, so some of the… fluid… on it sprayed across the air.

"It's gross." She grimaced.

"You really need to lighten up." Sherrel shook her head. "You know what they say: an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away."

"That is not how the saying goes." Taylor was a bit flustered because she was getting orgasms after her workouts… she just didn't want Sherrel knowing about it and trying to drag her further into degeneracy.

Not least because she knew that her power would make her enjoy it. That was a slippery slope if ever she'd seen one.

"Well it should." The Tinker grinned and snickered. "Alright, I'll get out of your virgin hair. Go call your dad or something. He's probably freaking out."

Yes, he probably was.

XXXXX

Danny had been existing in a state of constant terror ever since the Endbringer siren had sounded. The sound always made his gut clench with fear until it became clear that it wasn't Brockton Bay being hit, but this time he had a wholly different thing to fear.

When the phone rang, he picked up in less than a second, having been desperately waiting for it to ring. If he could have, he would have called Taylor himself, but she kept the phone she used to call him turned off until she needed it.

"Hey, dad." His daughter said.

"Please tell me you aren't going to fight an Endbringer." He begged.

"I'm not going to fight an Endbringer." She said tonelessly. It could have been taken sarcastically, but he got the feeling that she was being honest. That was good. "I just called to let you know, but since we're already talking I might as well ask you something."

"Okay, what do you need?" Danny relaxed. If Taylor had been planning to lie to him and go to fight an Endbringer, then staying to talk to him would be counterproductive.

"I'm starting up a census to see how many of my people have useful skills. You got any advice for finding under-the-table jobs?"

Well now, that was a bit unexpected. "You think there's going to be any?"

"Not in the core membership of my gang, but the Merchants had a lot of homeless and unemployed 'affiliates'." She explained, unpleasantly reminding him of the fact that his daughter was now a criminal gang boss. "I don't expect every former addict and bum to know a useful trade skill, but there has to be some. I don't want to run a gang of thieves, muggers, burglars and robbers, so I need to find something else for them to do."

Danny struggled not to say that she would still be running a gang of drug dealers, pimps, and prostitutes. It was an argument they'd had in the past and all it would achieve would be to have Taylor hang up on him. She wasn't willing to budge on the matter and was convinced that the PRT would never let her be anything other than a 'redeemed' villain in an absolute best case scenario. In her more paranoid scenarios, she expected the Birdcage or a kill order.

Sadly, Danny couldn't say she was wrong. She hadn't explained what exactly her powers were and the PRT didn't seem to know either, but she clearly believed they were the unfriendly kind. The kind that, when you took a look at any Protectorate or Wards roster, weren't there.

"Alright." He sighed gustily. "Yeah, I know a thing or two about under-the-table jobs."

Keeping the Dockworkers Union afloat with the state of the bay and maritime trade would have been impossible without some off the books work. He had principles and wouldn't take bribes from the gangs, but Danny was willing to be a great deal more flexible about keeping the government out of the loop if it kept his people fed.

"Great. I don't have any idea how many of my people know any trades, so a few general tips will do for now."

Danny wasn't sure how to feel about the note of command that was creeping more and more into Taylor's tone. She was settling into the role of gang boss far too easily for his liking, but he also couldn't help but be a little bit proud as well.

"Okay, the most important thing about working off the books is to not make it worth the government's time to investigate or intervene." He began. "You can keep it quiet up to a point, but after you pass that point you have to rely on nobody caring."

"This is sounding a lot like the conversation I had with Gearshift on how to deal with the other gangs." Taylor snorted.

Danny winced, knowing that he wasn't doing anything to dissuade her from a life of crime. "Well, there's a reason that so many people believe taxation is theft."

"Right, so I either make it too hard to dig into what the Black Hand is doing or too dangerous."

"Taylor, I know the urge comes naturally, but please don't start thinking of making an example of any tax auditors the IRS sends."

It was mostly a joke.

"I won't have to. I'm looking it up right now and it seems like the IRS already tried pulling an Al Capone on villains in the early days, buuut since that would involve unmasking the cape doing it... Well, these days they only try keeping capes from getting rich legally."

"But… wouldn't that encourage parahumans to become villains?!" Danny sputtered.

"And the rest get shackled to the PRT. Explains a few things, doesn't it?" Taylor deadpanned.

Yes, yes it did. Why was it that with every new thing he learned about the cape scene, he had a harder time criticizing Taylor for going villain?

"I guess that'll make it a lot easier for you to find work for your people, then." He said, feeling a little bit of absurd envy.

How much more work would he have been able to arrange for his boys if he didn't have to worry about the government cracking down on them? He'd always known that abandoning his principles and aligning the Dockworkers Union with a gang would have gone a long way to solving their money issues, at least in the short term, but he hadn't been aware that the government was being this hands off.

Taylor has a gang. The treacherous thought came.

It had been one thing to refuse association with Nazis or equally racist Asian thugs involved with forced prostitution, but this was his own daughter and, while still criminal, her gang was clearly looking to maintain a certain standard that none of the others cared about. It reminded him of Marquis from back in the day, whom had been rather cordial to the Dockworkers. They hadn't been affiliated in any sense of the word, but the man had accepted their refusal to align with him without any isssue.

But no, he couldn't do that. He hadn't spent so much effort keeping the Dockworkers above board only to do a 180 now.

But he could still help by giving advice.

XXXXX

February 27th, 2011.

Word came that it was Canberra, the capital of Australia, that had been hit by the Simurgh. Another city full of people walled off and left to die, fearing that the false angel had twisted them into time bombs that would go on to cause a domino effect of disasters if left loose.

As usual, many people speculated that those people had been deliberately left untainted by the cruelest and most terrible of the Endbringers, forcing them to imprison the innocent out of fear of her manipulations. The guilt of it, they claimed, was the Hopekiller's intention all along.

Taylor agreed, but couldn't find any solution no matter how many mental iterations she dedicated to the problem. If they didn't wall off cities, then the Simurgh would twist those people and use them to devastate the whole country. That had happened when she first showed up.

And if they walled them off only to later release the people, those released people would have Simurgh bombs hidden among them. That was the problem of fighting an insanely powerful precog – no matter what you did, you were always playing into their hands.

It made her want to lay eyes on the Endbringer and her victims more than ever. Maybe she would be able to see something through the Empyrean that others could not. As far as Taylor knew, she was the only psychic cape to have ever emerged. Did the Simurgh have a similar power that she used to twist people?

Plans for the future. She wouldn't be able to help against the Endbringers if she failed to even get her gang properly established.

It had taken a few days, but Taylor now had a mostly complete list of skills that the people aligned with her possessed. As expected, most of them were only good for unskilled manual labor in the legal job market, but there were some more interesting ones. A surprisingly large number of ex-military types, most of them old veterans from Vietnam, suffering from PTSD and screwed over by the government. About two dozen certified to operate heavy machinery such as fork lifts and road rollers, along with some truckers and bus drivers. A spread of plumbers, electricians, mechanics, computer technicians and so on. Several gardeners, two florists and single a hair stylist. All sorts of people, in other words.

But those weren't the ones that had captured her primary focus.

Jeffrey Blackwell – manager at DMV said the list she was given.

Taylor acknowledged that this man didn't necessarily have anything to do with the much hated principal of the cesspit that was Winslow High. Blackwell was a name that plenty of people probably answered to.

Still, she had to know.

Taking the list with her, she wandered over to the garage. She knew that's where Sherrel currently was thanks to the Rock n' Roll music blasting through the house. It was her 'Tinker jam', apparently. If the neighborhood wasn't half-abandoned by both the residents and the city, there would probably have been cops pounding on the door for being a public disturbance.

Taylor found the Tinker's legs sticking out from under the car and went to turn off the music.

"Taylor?" Sherrel immediately asked, rolling out from under the car. "You need something?"

Taylor silently handed her the list. "Take a look at this, 5th name from the top."

Sherrel wiped a greasy hand on her shirt before taking it, then squinted at it. "Blackwell? You think we might have someone related to Principal Cuntstain in our gang?"

"Maybe. I want to check it out." Taylor admitted.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Tay?" Sherrel suddenly grinned at her.

"I doubt it." Taylor replied dubiously.

"Look, you know how many guys end up on the streets after their wives clean them out in court? Our boy Jeffrey here might be just such a guy, and if he is then you can bet your ass that he's holding a grudge… and he knows where the bitch lives." The Tinker explained, grin widening.

"You want us to break into her house?" She wanted to be absolutely sure about this.

"Come on, you know you want to do it." The Tinker wheedled. "Think of it as delayed justice."

Maybe Sherrel was the Master, because that sounded incredibly tempting. Taylor was by no means happy about the fact that Principal Blackwell got away with her shit just because the PRT didn't want anyone drawing attention to the fact that their precious dead Ward had been a psycho.

The longer she thought about it, the angrier she got, and as was usual for her since triggering, the anger just wouldn't go away. It kept building and festering until it was a boiling, burning thing in her gut, making her psychic presence glow red.

She could see streaks of that fury flowing from her towards all the people depending on her for strength and knew that she could foist it off on them. She wasn't going to do that, though. So if she couldn't let others take away her fury and couldn't suppress it, then the only thing to do was give it an outlet.

It had always been part of the plan to either get the Winslow staff sent to jail for gross negligence and criminal conspiracy as they deserved or, much more likely, simply run them out of town once she had enough power over the city.

Now here was an opportunity to get started.

"We go talk to him. If he is Principal Blackwell's ex-husband or something, we'll talk about this some more." She decided.

XXXXX

February 29th, 2011.

As it turned out, Sherrel had been right on the money. Jeffrey was indeed Principal Blackwell's ex-husband and he was indeed holding a grudge.

Not that Taylor could blame him. She had been unsurprised to learn that their divorce had been acrimonious, and that the bitch principal had falsely cried domestic abuse to ruin him. He'd lost all rights to the house, the car and been saddled with alimony he could have barely afforded to pay even if he hadn't been fired after being 'outed' as a domestic abuser. Because he wasn't able to pay alimony, he'd been jailed, which certainly hadn't increased his ability to pay it, and shortly thereafter ended up on the streets.

Taylor recognized him as one of the people who had been drinking themselves to death.

Sherrel's suggestion that they go rob the house that had once been his had filled him with joy.

"What about security?" Taylor had asked, since the house was in a somewhat nicer part of the city.

"There's an alarm system, but the lazy bitch never changes the code." Jeffrey had scoffed. "I can get us in, easy."

And that was that. Taylor, still burning with anger, didn't object when Sherrel called up a crew of men and prepped two slightly altered moving vans. They rolled out towards the house at one in the morning and made it there without issue.

The lights in all the houses were out as they quietly parked in front of the Blackwell residence, but Taylor still strained her psychic powers to check for any minds that felt awake. There were none, but that was no reason to be careless.

"Let's do this quick and quiet." She instructed. "Donny, you stay here and keep watch. Call us if anyone looks like they're paying attention to the house."

"Got it, Boss." The man acknowledged and settled into the driver's seat.

The rest of the 'crew' for this job consisted of herself, Sherrel – or Gearshift on the job – Jeffrey and three other guys to act as muscle.

"Jeffrey, do your thing." She ordered the man as they approached the front door.

"Just a sec…" He said absently, looking at the keypad for the alarm. With visible nervousness, he typed in the shut-down code and chuckled slightly when it beeped. "Figures, still the same code."

Taylor nodded at him tensely and gently urged him away so their 'lockpick expert' could actually open it up. It took him a few nerve-wracking minutes. Well, nerve-wracking for her and Jeffrey. Gearshift and the other two guys in the group were standing around like they did this every Tuesday. They might very well have been doing this every Tuesday under Skidmark.

Finally, the lock clicked open and they filed into the dark house.

"Jeffrey, lead the boys up to the bedroom. Gearshift and I will stay down here for now. Gag her and tie her up, but don't hurt her." Psyker ordered sternly.

They acknowledge quietly and went about their task, while the two parahumans stayed down on the ground floor.

"Look at all this shit." Gearshift said quietly, voice full of contempt. "Big ass TV, expensive stereo system, fancy furniture,… no way is Principal Cuntstain paying for this on a teacher's salary. Bet she's got a nice car, too"

"You think she's been stealing from the school?" It was easy to guess what the other woman was getting at.

"Has to be." Gearshift nodded firmly.

"Winslow is in bad shape." Psyker mused, recalling broken cameras, non-functioning metal detectors and who knows what else.

There was a commotion from upstairs, the heavy tromp of feet no longer trying to be quiet and a struggling woman screaming into the duct tape over her mouth. The mind it belonged tasted like a carbonated drink, bubbles of fear permeating every thought. She might have felt bad about it, if she couldn't remember screaming for help while being trapped in a metal coffin that reeked of rotten blood and her own vomit, terrified and nauseous as the insects crawled up her body.

Blackwell deserved to be afraid for enabling the three bitches that did that to her.

"Got her, Psyker." Jeffrey announced with a grin as they dragged the principal down.

Blackwell was only wearing a warm night gown over her thin frame, her horrendous blonde bob cut askew.

"You're in charge of robbing the place." She told the man who used to live here. "I need to have a word with her."

"Home office is down the hall and to the left." He advised.

Nodding at him in thanks, Taylor grabbed Blackwell by the elbow and frogmarched her in that direction, ignoring her muffled wailing. Once inside, she roughly pushed her onto the carpet. Hands and feet bound, Blackwell had to wriggle like a worm just to look at her.

"Principal Blackwell." She said, reaching up to remove her facemask. "It's been a while." Taylor finished, staring down at the woman whose negligence, incompetence and possibly outright corruption had let her bullies have free reign.

Blackwell's eyes widened and she mumbled something into the duct tape, probably her name.

"Yes, I've become a villain since we last saw each other." Taylor said, squatting down to loom over the woman. "Funny thing about suffering – sometimes it creates parahumans, and those parahumans tend to hold grudges against the source of their suffering."

Taylor had no fear of revealing her face to the principal. The PRT already knew who she was thanks to Sophia. Whether Blackwell reported her as Psyker or as Taylor Hebert, the end result would be the same. The possibility that she would share that information with someone else was judged to be miniscule. The principal was too much of a coward to seek extra-legal revenge.

Blackwell's mind seemed to fill with static, terror blanking out most everything else. She desperately tried to wiggle away. A stench of ammonia filled the air as the bound woman pissed herself in fear. It smelled like justice long delayed.

Blackwell tried to say something and started crying. It made Taylor smile, which made the woman even more terrified for some reason.

"This all could have been avoided if you'd just done your job." She said casually, reveling in the sense of power. Knowing that there were no true heroes and that you had to find your own justice in the world was so… liberating. It was okay to punish the scum of the world, because that was clearly the only way it would ever happen.

Blackwell mumbled some more, maybe an apology judging by the shape of the words.

"I'm not going to kill you." She said, watching the pathetic bureaucrat freeze. "But you'll have no peace in my town, just like I had no peace in your school. This will happen again and again and again, until you leave. Maybe one day, something worse might happen. You can never be sure about these things. Understand?"

Blackwell couldn't nod fast enough, desperate to agree.

"Good. Oh, and do keep your mouth shut about my cape identity. "Taylor squeezed the principal's mind as she gave this order, implanting it as a compulsion. "You wouldn't want to make me any angrier, would you?"

No sense in being careless.

Blackwell frantically shook her head and Taylor put the mask back on, becoming Psyker again.

Leaving the petrified principal on the ground to marinate in her own piss, she went back to overseeing the robbery of the house. It was going well.

"Bitch has some great stuff, boss!" Raul, a big Hispanic guy barely into his twenties said enthusiastically, carrying out a stereo speaker.

"Of course she does, she went on a spending spree with my money!" Jeffrey growled, looking like he wanted to throw the TV remote at the wall. "New bed, new couch, bigger TV,… all the shit I kept telling her we don't need. New kitchen… she doesn't even cook!"

"So she divorced you because you wouldn't let her spend money?" Raul asked rhetorically. "That's cold, bro."

"Apparently, that's considered emotional abuse if you have a good enough lawyer." Jeffrey retorted bitterly.

Suspicion suddenly flared in Taylor's mind. Alan Barnes was a divorce lawyer.

"Do you remember the lawyer's name?" She asked.

"Some ginger son of a bitch named Barnes." He replied after taking a moment to think back. "Really lived up to that joke about gingers having no souls, didn't give a shit at all that he was ruining my life with the way he was making me look in court, as long as he won."

That sounded like Alan Barnes alright. Taylor couldn't believe she'd once thought he was a good man and considered him an uncle. It also further explained why Principal Blackwell didn't want to do anything about the bullying – the divorce had been happening during the initial months of it, back before Sophia was a Ward.

"Figures." She sneered under her mask.

"You know the guy?" Jeffrey asked.

"I knew his daughter. She's just as bad as him."

"Figures." He echoed, shaking his head and turning back to Raul. "Whatever, just help me carry out the TV."

"Now you're speaking my language."

Taylor dodged out of the way of their last pair of hands for this job as he shuffled out the door with his arms full of blankets. A weird thing to steal, but at least they'd be useful.

"Hey, Psyker!" Gearshift's head popped out from around a corner, beckoning her forward. "Come over here. I found something for you."

Curious, she did as asked and found herself led to the garage. Inside the garage was what looked like an almost brand new car, an Audi if she recalled her brands right. The paint was still black and shiny.

"What do you think?" The Tinker asked, eagerly waiting for a response.

"It's a nice car, I guess?" Psyker replied, putting an interrogative twist to it.

"It's yours." Gearshift declared.

Psyker paused. Obviously, they were going to steal the car, but hers?

"I don't know how to drive."

"Psshh!" The older woman waved off dismissively. "It's easy, I'll teach you right now. Get in."

Seeing as the other parahuman wasn't going to be taking no for an answer, She took the offered keys and sat down. Gearshift, meanwhile, took the passenger seat.

"Now, the first thing you gotta do is adjust the seat to make sure you're comfortable." The blonde instructed. "Enough leg space that you can move them around, but not so much that you have to slide down the seat to reach the pedals."

Despite her skepticism, Taylor found that driving a car really was pretty easy. Of course, she could cheat outrageously by dedicating a mental iteration to every individual task, thus allowing her to pay attention to the road while her muscle memory was still undeveloped.

XXXXX

Emily found her deputy waiting for her when she came into work. Renick looked like he was about to deliver bad news.

"What is it?"

"Burglary at Blackwell's house." He said simply and he didn't need to say any more. Just the fact that it was the PRT dealing with it already implied a lot.

"Psyker?" Emily asked anyway.

"Psyker." Renick confirmed. "She led a team comprised of a woman matching the description of Squealer that she called Gearshift, Blackwell's ex-husband, and several more men as muscle. They took practically everything that wasn't nailed down. It was done quiet with none of the usual hallmarks of the Merchants."

"So she wasn't just spewing hot air." Emily grunted, displeased.

When Psyker, whom they had immediately known was Taylor Hebert, had sent that letter to the PRT, she'd known it for what it was – a long-winded way of telling them to get the hell out of the way. Villains did it all the time in one way or another, posturing to the lawful authorities. Brutes picked fights, Blasters made explosions, and Thinkers talked. Invariably arrogant and infuriating and completely unacceptable. That it was in this case also an implied rebuke for allowing Shadow Stalker to cause her trigger event changed nothing.

Emily hadn't expected Psyker to accomplish much before getting killed trying to play gang boss, but the girl had surprised her. Whatever powers she had must be pretty good, because the crime rates in Merchant infested territories had dropped like a stone as the gang was reorganized.

There had been sporadic sightings of Psyker all across the city, with everything suddenly becoming more calm immediately after. Muggings, assaults, rapes, drug deals were way down. The homeless bums and prostitutes had disappeared, there were no joyrides in kludged together tinkertech vehicles, or rampaging trash monsters on a bender.

Emily wished that she could say this was a good thing, but she knew better. Parahumans were always bad news, always. The speed at which this one was consolidating power implied either an extremely high powered social Thinker or a Master of some stripe. The security footage from the mall hadn't been able to reveal anything, aside from the fact that Hebert had been there. Even the concerning name could be either a boast or a misdirection.

If the Merchants had held any territory before, then they would have probably been attacked by either the E88 or ABB while they were transitioning into the Black Hand. As it was, the more established gangs would wait for their first move before launching a brutal retaliation to teach them their place.

If the Black Hand survived, then they would be acknowledged as one of the 'official' gangs in the city. Emily had seen this song and dance before. The task of juggling this powder keg of a city never changed.

"The Endbringer Truce is over, and so is the unofficial grace period." Renick observed.

Emily grunted in agreement. "We'll need to keep enough manpower ready to respond to whatever she does. Psyker might be more sober than Skidmark, but she's still a teenager. Whatever she ends up doing, it's bound to be stupid and reckless."

XXXXX

March 5th, 2011.

Taylor had spoken to the prostitutes several times since that first meeting, now with the intention of gauging their potential and willingness to learn new things. The saying about teaching an old dog new tricks seemed to apply and it was mostly the younger ones that were willing to put in the effort. The older ones generally felt that there was no point and were, somehow, content to remain cheap whores with cheap clientele. There was an almost perverse sort of pride to it, taking on the worst of the profession so that the younger ones could get the better parts.

"I'm sure you must be wondering why I asked to speak with you today." She began.

"You got an itch you need scratched?" Stacy cackled, still thinking she was a comedian. "I'm not usually into girls, but if it's for the boss…"

"I'm sending you to Boston." Taylor continued, not allowing herself to be interrupted. With what she regularly had to deal with these days, the insinuation didn't even make her blush.

"What?! Why?!" They all cried out.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it." Stacy was quick to backpedal.

"We'll work harder!"

"This isn't a punishment!" Taylor said sharply, cutting through their sudden panic. "You've all made it clear that you don't intend to stop prostituting yourselves, so I've been in communication with an escort service about arranging a training course for you. The course will last for two weeks and will teach you a variety of skills that will raise your value."

"You're… sending us to hooker school?" Katrina, nicknamed the Winslow Bicycle, asked incredulously. Then she became incredibly amused. "You're having me skip regular school for two weeks so I can go to hooker school?"

Taylor took a deep breath, exasperated by their ability to make everything sound crass. "You will learn more than just sexual skills. A high class escort needs to be able to provide a wide variety of services to satisfy her clients. And you're not learning anything useful in Winslow anyway."

The odds of Katrina ever making use of her high school diploma or going on to college was very low. If she ever changed her mind about her choice of lifestyle, there was enough money available to the Black Hand to give her options.

"Not true, I'm learning which Empire punks have the smallest dicks."

"But not as small as the ABB punks, right?"

"Well yeah, but they're Asians. Everyone knows Asians have micro dicks."

"Uh, Boss?" Nikki, a strangely reserved girl considering the line of work she was so willingly in, spoke up with something other than crude humor. "Are you sure about this? I mean, we're just whores, not escorts or anything."

"You can do better." Taylor frowned at her, displeased by the show of poor self-worth. The fact that it reminded her of herself before she triggered, if in a different way, may have had something to do with her feelings there. "I've already paid for it an arranged for your stay in a hotel."

"A hotel?!" Katrina exclaimed, sounding both shocked and excited. The others were similarly excited and began talking about it as if she'd arranged for a trip to Disneyland.

"I am so going to fuck the bellboy." Lucia, the tiny Latina that seemed to think Taylor was some kind of mafioso princess because she had a vocabulary, swore.

"Room service for room service." Her friend Paula agreed.

"How much did you pay for this?" Nikki spoke up again, frowning. "Hotels aren't cheap and I can't imagine the training course would be either."

"Just under twenty thousand dollars." Taylor admitted.

It would have been a mind-boggling amount of money to spend casually not very long ago. Now that she'd resumed drug sales and prostitution, it really wasn't that big of an expense. Sherrel's Tinker budget was a much bigger drain, because cars were not cheap even if they were used.

The girls, however, looked blown away.

"Twenty K?" Katrina echoed in disbelief. "I'd have to suck like… a thousand dicks to get that kind of money."

"Good to see that Winslow is still teaching math the right way." Stacy snarked, herself a former student of that most prestigious institution.

"Oi, fuck you, bitch."

"Girls!" Taylor cut in sharply, not wanting this to devolve into a cat fight. "The money isn't an issue, your commitment is. I expect you to take full advantage of this opportunity and learn everything that they teach you. Do well and you will find your lot in life improving."

Her intention was to gradually phase out as much of the street-level prostitution as possible. By this point her eyes had been opened to the fact that some people would always sink to the bottom rungs of society of their own volition, but she could at least give options to those that didn't want to stay there. These young women that still had time to become something other than cheap whores were just one such initiative, but admittedly the one that she was the most personally invested in.

"Umm, do they teach about BDSM?" Nikki asked, face burning.

Taylor took a deep breath as the other four girls ooohed at her as if they were twelve and she'd just admitted to a crush. "I'm sure that supplementary and specialized lessons can be arranged afterwards."

It would take more research on her part, and probably finding some leather-clad pervert she could pay off to act as a teacher, but she'd already learned so many things about the sex industry that she'd never expected to learn that the prospect wasn't particularly daunting.

"Wait, seriously?" Stacy asked. "Fucking YES! I've always wondered how to get paid for stepping on a guy's balls with a pair of leather bitch boots."

Well, at least they were eager for their upcoming trip to Boston now. Manners, poise, and etiquette were part of the lessons, so they would at least learn to behave themselves a bit better.

Hopefully.

XXXXX

March 14th, 2011.

Coil had come through, both with the promised guns and information. The former military men of the Black Hand were already tasked with training the ones with no other skills. Taylor wasn't intending to just gun down the opposition, but the ABB and Empire normals also carried guns sometimes. If they drew on her people, they would be met with an appropriate response.

Meanwhile, Taylor and Larry went to check out the information. Coil's tip off had included the location of one of the ABB's brothels, one of their meth labs, one of Hookwolf's dog fighting rings, and one of the Empire's drug stashes.

Obviously, the snake was intending to use them as pawns to clear out his enemies. That much was never in doubt. Taylor hadn't stopped thinking about Coil and what kind of ulterior motives he might have. There was little known of him publicly, people weren't even sure if he was really a parahuman. The only thing known for sure was that he employed professional mercenaries.

Mercenaries were expensive, so where was he getting his money? It wasn't from drug dealing or prostitution or extortion or any of the usual gang activities. The only answer was that his revenue was either hidden behind legal business, or it was coming from outside Brockton Bay. It was something she would need to figure out before moving against him.

But just because Coil was a backstabbing snake didn't mean that his information wasn't useful. Right now, Taylor was staring at the ABB brothel. The building was rather inconspicuous, the kind you could pass by without a second glance.

"You sure this is the place?" Larry asked dubiously.

"It is." She confirmed. To her psychic sight, the building was soaked in misery. "Think you could take out the wall there?"

"With how you showed me I can use my powers? Easy." He said confidently.

When he was still Mush, Larry didn't care to explore his powers. If Skidmark told him to do something or else get cut off, he would just grab whatever random crap was lying around and cover himself in it. Taylor, on the other hand, had plenty of ideas for touch-ranged kinetic manipulation and a Changer ability to turn his body into spaghetti. And not just for combat either.

"Then I think we have our target." Taylor said.

"Is this really a good idea?" Larry's voice held a certain apprehension. "I mean, this is Lung we're talking about."

Taylor was actually far more concerned with Oni Lee. Lung might be powerful, but he was slow. With Sherrel's cars, they could just hit an ABB location and then drive away before he even got there. Or even run the rage dragon over and then flee. A teleporter was harder to escape from.

"Unlike Skidmark, I won't be satisfied skulking in back alleys and abandoned buildings." She replied, putting Blackwell's – now her – tinkered up car into gear. The scouting mission had gone so smoothly largely because of its stealth generator.

Left unsaid was that she was getting antsy. Organizing the Black Hand had been an interesting challenge, but it was starting to become a bit stale and she needed something more.

XXXXX

In a different, much nicer, part of town, a different teenage girl was also not sleeping.

Emma Barnes huddled in her bed, anxiously clutching her old stuffed bear.

Taylor was a cape, she was sure of it. The signs had been there. The attitude change on her first day back, the way she suddenly stood up for herself, the way her eyes burned with contempt.

Emma hadn't seen it then, though, so she had kept trying to put her down even after Sophia got restricted to PRT HQ. It had backfired every time, because of course it did. You didn't bully a cape. And then that night.

Sophia had called her, demanding Taylor's home address. The next day, she learned that her friend was dead. Taylor had killed Sophia, killed the predator… become the predator.

Emma thought she had become the predator once. After the ABB attacked her and Dad in that alley two years ago, she thought she'd put weakness behind her and become strong, just like Sophia had taught her. But Sophia had been wrong, terribly, horribly wrong. Taylor wasn't prey at all, she had been a sleeping predator and now she was awake. Ditching Taylor hadn't been getting rid of weakness, she'd just made a dangerous enemy.

The next time she had heard of Taylor had been when there was word about a new gang boss on PHO and the news. Psyker, who had beaten Skidmark and taken over the Merchants, renaming them the Black Hand. She hadn't been sure if that was Taylor, not until she'd heard a rumor about Principal Blackwell disappearing after her house was robbed by the Black Hand.

The nightmares were back, but it wasn't Asian thugs forcing her to eat her own hair and asking which part of her face she wanted to have cut. Now it was Taylor leaning over her, asking 'mouth, nose, or eye?' with that cruel little smile.

Emma hadn't gone to school in… a while. She had no idea how long it had been actually. The days blurred together because she had trouble sleeping. She could barely muster the courage to leave her room long enough to go to the bathroom. Every night, she expected to hear the door being broken down as armed thugs stomped into the house, taking orders from a tall teenaged girl with curly black hair and eyes full of hate.

Sophia had told her what it meant to trigger, that capes didn't forgive those who put them through it, told her how she had hunted down her stepfather and cut his throat open after she recovered from hers.

Taylor had already come for Sophia and Principal Blackwell. She would come for Madison and Emma, too. Her mom was talking about getting her psychiatric care, but that was dumb. She didn't need psychiatric care, she needed to find a way to survive.

Her house wasn't safe. This wasn't like with the ABB thugs, who probably wouldn't have come here. Taylor knew where she lived, and had a personal grudge. Hiding wouldn't work.

Running? Emma could imagine herself running for the rest of her life, always looking over her shoulder. Taylor would want revenge. Even leaving Brockton Bay probably wouldn't work.

Fighting? That hadn't worked for Sophia and she had been much stronger than Emma.

But Sophia had been wrong about Taylor being weak. She clearly hadn't been as wise to the ways of the world as she'd thought. Maybe Taylor wouldn't kill her. She had always been quick to forgive back when they were still friends. Maybe, if she didn't force her to come looking and went to apologize, showed that she wasn't a coward by presenting herself, Taylor would at least listen. Maybe she could offer to be a minion, make herself useful.

She'd been useful to Sophia, controlling the Winslow social scene. Her now dead friend and mentor had been very blunt and straightforward. Without Emma's help picking out clothes and managing her image, Sophia never would have been popular. Taylor wasn't any good at that stuff either and she was a villain now, in charge of a gang.

From what she'd heard, the Black Hand was very different from what the Merchants used to be. That made sense. Emma knew that Taylor hated drugs – it was why they'd so often insinuated that she was going to become a Merchant crack whore, she recalled with a cringe.

All capes had an image they wanted to portray. Even losers like Uber and Leet had their video game theme. Emma had been fascinated by the cape scene since before she met Sophia, and doubly so afterwards. She'd wanted to join Sophia on her patrols, but just couldn't keep up. This could be an opportunity to become part of it. As the leader of a new gang, image would be extremely important for Taylor. Maybe, if she could prove that she had her own strengths and was more useful alive, Taylor would keep her around as a minion instead of killing her.

Maybe.

Actions

↑ Top ←Previous Chapter Next Chapter → Comments (41)

Kudos

Foulfangs, Kanepilos, OhYesGetSnuckUpOn, GoofPoof, VRiLL, CookieB, starlasshadow, ConvergentSyzygy, Nickhugh, Araelli, Hydra_Thunder, Yokho, Actular, Aloreal, JGroos, Yadr, 5_seagulls_in_a_coat, Far4r, Sioban_Avayandir, IcelandicDragon217, Juan_E_Bravo, Ignotus, Vgreed, WickedOwl, ThievingHeaven, VociferousV, Governance, jabberwocky112, DaofatherHandsome, rosiekitsune, Penguinsrule24, eykebly, Yopmir, Anzomi, Segoz, twil, Ragnarok573, Claywind, TylReggae, LenaraSys, Artic0101, dlove021305_L, FaZe_BUD, Altronza, Telsiree, NorkTheFork, SuperHardDK, Windcrow, AzrelRazgriz, Prokolipsi, and 1890 more users as well as 1471 guests left kudos on this work!

Comments

Post Comment

Note:

All fields are required. Your email address will not be published.

Guest name

Guest email

(Plain text with limited HTML ?)

Comment

10000 characters left

Footer

About the Archive

Site Map

Diversity Statement

Terms of Service

Content Policy

Privacy Policy

DMCA Policy

Contact Us

Policy Questions & Abuse Reports

Technical Support & Feedback

Development

otwarchive v0.9.423.1

Known Issues

GPL-2.0-or-later by the OTW