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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:3,414Bookmarks:853Hits:236,851

A Ruinous Gift

Noodlehammer

Chapter 8: Devouring

Notes:

Thanks go to Alvor for helping polish this up.

Chapter Text

March 17th, 2011.

The raid had happened quite late at night, or early in the morning. Taylor wasn't sure what kind of sleep schedule the women they had taken had, but if it was anything like her own then it definitely wasn't a steady one. With that in mind, she didn't go visit them until well into the afternoon.

Once she showed up, the women were quick to present themselves as if they were soldiers on parade. Everything about their demeanor suggested that things would be expected of them, despite the short speech she had given them after the raid. Even the psychic impressions she was getting said that they were ready to do whatever they were told and expected to be punished if they disobeyed.

Taylor withheld a sigh and addressed them. "I will speak to you one at a time, and we will come to a decision on what you want to do. We will start with you, the blonde. What is your name?"

The blonde in question briefly had a deer-in-headlights look, something that was not at all flattering with the bruises on her face.

"Lydia, Ma'am." She replied haltingly.

"Lydia." Taylor repeated, caressing the woman's mind reassuringly with her intent to help. "Right this way."

It seemed to work, and the blonde relaxed a bit. They relocated to a room that had nothing much in it except a couple of chairs. To be fair, the entire building had nothing much in it aside from the cots they had put into it in preparation for using it as temporary housing.

"Before we begin, I must ask if you are Empire." Taylor prodded. "I will still help you if you are, I just need to know what kind of response to expect."

Lydia shook her head vehemently. "No, but since when do the fucking slants care about minor details like that?"

Okay, even if she wasn't Empire, Lydia wasn't bothering to hide her racism. Taylor wasn't surprised, having seen the deep pool of hate in her mind, nor could she really bring herself to comment after what the woman had been through. A few dozen mental iterations unhelpfully began pondering the self-reinforcing nature of racism.

"Alright. Would you like to be taken home, then?" She asked.

"Home… "Lydia repeated hollowly. "The Empire was supposed to protect my home, that's what I was paying them for. But when I needed them, they weren't there!"

The blonde was starting to cry and it was making Taylor deeply uncomfortable. She had no idea how to deal with this. It didn't matter how many mental iterations she threw at the problem, she couldn't find any words to say that would make this better.

Hoping that she wasn't making a mistake, she got up and went over to give the older woman a hug. Lydia latched on immediately and began bawling in earnest. While this was going on, Taylor began gently poking into her mind. She saw only flashes, but it was enough to get the picture.

Being awoken in the middle of the night and dragged out of her house, her last sight of it being one of the ABB gangers killing her cat just for giggles. The weeks of rape and abuse. Even the other women had been standoffish, treating her like an outsider and further isolating her. There had been no drugs involved, but Lydia still desperately clutched at the offered psychic lifeline.

"Would you like to leave Brockton Bay?" Taylor offered.

"Can I stay with you?" Lydia pleaded, terror gripping her mind at the thought of being sent away. "I was just a manager in HR, but I can be useful!"

Taylor couldn't think of any uses for a human resources manager right now, but there surely would be in the future. Aside from that, Lydia was an educated and intelligent woman, something that the Black Hand was currently a bit short on, given that their membership was made up of former Merchants and affiliates. There was bound to be something she could do.

"Of course, the Black Hand doesn't turn anyone away." She said and tightened her grip on the blonde's mind. She was clearly not ready to face the world on her own.

XXXXX

Many hours later, she was finishing the interview with the last of the women and whatever good feelings she'd had about helping Lydia had long since evaporated.

The blonde had been the outlier. All the others were there at least semi-willingly, if you stretched the definition of willing to the absolute breaking point. They came in two flavors.

Women with no families and no support, often illegal immigrants so they also had no documentation. That left them with little choice when the ABB approached them with an offer of 'employment' in one of their brothels. Lung considered all Asians in Brockton Bay to belong to him, so refusing wasn't even an option. According to him, everyone served the dragon in one way or another.

On the other end of the spectrum were women who did have families. Families that had no means of paying the 'tithe' that the ABB demanded for their 'protection', leaving them with no options but to give up their daughters.

There was no legal recourse for either one. The police had long since stopped going into Lung's territory and the PRT ignored non-parahuman crime. Taylor's feeling that Brockton Bay was carved up into multiple smaller chunks had been even more correct than she'd realized – Lung was effectively running a tiny warlord state inside the city. She'd briefly wondered why they didn't just cut off the water, power, garbage collection and so on, then realized it was to keep him there instead of moving to take over another part of the city.

In any case, the former set of women had asked to come work for her instead. While they hadn't had the sucking void of drug addicts in their souls, they had still been quite beaten down and left yearning for the comfort her psychic touch offered. None of them had any skills and they were desperate to not be freeloaders, so they insisted on continuing on as prostitutes. Taylor had at least been able to convince some of them to start working towards something else. Maybe if she could build up their confidence, they would gain enough self-respect to move on to a different lifestyle.

It was the latter set that was causing her worse consternation. They had people who would suffer if they didn't return.

"Are you sure this is what you want, Kotake-san?" Taylor carefully sounded out in Japanese.

That had been the first hurdle. Most of these women spoke very poor English, if at all. Only the fact that she had her head loaded with both the Japanese-English and Mandarin Chinese-English dictionaries had allowed her to communicate with them without a translator.

Simply knowing the words wasn't enough to make a fluent speaker of course, but it got her point across and she got some practice with the languages.

Unlike the Empire, she wasn't intending to get rid of Brockton Bay's Asian population after the ABB was dealt with. Knowing their languages and at least the basics of their culture would be necessary in order to deal with them.

"Yes, Psyker-dono." The barely twenty-year-old bowed her head. "If I do not return, the ABB will force my brother to serve them. He is a smart boy and wishes to be a doctor. I am of lesser value."

The same story as four other women she'd taken from the brothel. If it wasn't a brother, then it was someone else. The ABB was forcing the families they claimed to protect to engage in a cruel calculus of deciding who to sacrifice.

"I understand." Taylor kept the fury out of her tone, internally already plotting to make the ABB leadership suffer for this. The bastards were using the lazy dragon's power as a shield while they engaged in this kind of disgusting behavior. Simply handing them to the police wasn't enough, and she wasn't going to risk them getting away with it. Besides, they would have information that she would need to properly take over their territory.

Having their minds and souls violated would be a fitting punishment.

It would be one thing if they were only doing what they had to in order to survive in a city with a Nazi gang threatening them after arriving here as refugees, but this went way beyond that. It was the worst kind of exploitation, targeted at their own people no less.

"I swear I will say nothing of you." The girl promised earnestly. Despite her decision to return to the ABB so that her family wouldn't suffer, her soul wailed in pain and clutched at the psychic lifeline Taylor had extended.

"No need for that." Taylor rebuffed gently. "Nothing you know can be used to harm me."

Despite Kotake-san's earlier words, she was relieved.

The enemy of my enemy might only be my enemy's enemy, but right now I will gladly crush the ABB in between us.

It would theoretically leave the people exposed to the depredations of the Nazis, but it wasn't as if Kaiser could send Hookwolf to go rampaging through the streets. That was the kind of egregious action that drew attention from the Triumvirate. No, at worst there would be unpowered E88 thugs starting to skulk around to test the waters. Taylor planned to make it firmly known that they were unwelcome before it escalated past that.

She had studied Kaiser's moves since he took over from Allfather, and a few things stood out. He was much more cautious than his predecessor, less likely to commit to any risky offensives. The original incarnation of the Empire had aggressively dug its claws into Brockton Bay, now it was acting more like a stubborn weed.

The Fifth Law of Power – so much depends on reputation, guard it with your life.

Taylor was reasonably sure that as long as she didn't damage their reputation, the Empire wouldn't engage in more than probing actions. That would buy her time to get established enough that she could weather the inevitable pushback when she really started acting against them.

Frankly, if the war against the Empire 88 could remain cold and low key, it would be all the more to her advantage. Kaiser was an experienced villain, but he was a ferrokinetic Shaker, whereas she was a psychic Thinker. If the conflict between them came down to a war of mental maneuvering, then she was confident in her eventual victory. Certainly far more confident than she was about taking on fifteen capes with three. More might join her at some point, but she wasn't going to count on assets not yet gained.

The ABB was a whole other animal. Because of Lung's arrogance and ego, they were isolated and contained strictly to their own territory. Because of the combination of Lung and Oni Lee, they were more dangerous than their small cape roster implied.

Taylor had already asked Sherrel to think about a vehicle that could kill Lung. The Tinker had started muttering something about a woodchipper… which would certainly work if the mental image it evoked was at all accurate, but might be a bit gruesome.

But killing Lung would have consequences. By all rights, he should have a kill order on his head already, but the PRT seemed awfully reluctant to pin anything on him.

Their reasons were easy to guess at – Endbringers. Somebody in the chain of command, probably the Chief Director herself, wanted Lung around to repeat his famous battle against Leviathan, so she stonewalled any attempt to deploy the Triumvirate against him. Never mind that Lung hadn't attended a single Endbringer battle since that one from what she'd been able to discover. Innocent people were being left to suffer because some bureaucrat thought they were acceptable sacrifices for a cruel cape's potential uses.

The familiarity of the callousness burned, more so because she knew that if she killed Lung as she wanted to, the PRT would throw a hissy fit and she wanted to keep them complacent long enough to be either pushed out of town or have their leadership replaced. She'd managed to keep the Master aspect of her powers mostly hidden for now, but once it got out they wouldn't see her as a potential asset against the Endbringers. All they'd see was a disruptive Master that had killed a valuable Brute.

It was an infuriating situation, but what else was new? She would just have to deal with it one step at a time.

XXXXX

March 18th, 2011.

Lung was seething, for he had been disrespected.

When his underlings had first informed him of the fall of the Merchants and the rise of the Black Hand, he had dismissed it as unimportant. The Merchants had been cockroaches and knew better than to challenge the dragon. Defeating them was no great achievement and certainly not worth his attention.

But they had challenged him, stolen what belonged to him, insulted him. Now they would have his attention, and they would regret it.

Foolishly, they had even given him the means by which to find them. Psyker proved herself a simpering weakling by releasing the whores she stole. Some of those whores knew to fear the dragon and returned to grovel for forgiveness.

"What powers did the bitch have?" Lung demanded.

Prostrated on the ground before him, the whore chosen to speak for the rest replied without lifting her head. "We did not see her use any, Great Lung."

Lung growled irritably, letting a brief burst of flame flicker across his fists. The brothel manager had been beaten to death, which anyone could do. No matter. If Psyker was strong enough to face him, then she would not have attacked like a thief in the night.

Turning away from the whores on the ground, he turned towards the other man in the room, the former leader of the local Chinese Triad before it had become part of the ABB.

"Find where her whores work." Lung growled at the man. "She thinks to steal ten from me? Take twenty from her."

XXXXX

Taylor was alone in her room, for a change not doing anything. She had been worried about the women returning to the ABB. Wanting both to look after them and get a glimpse at Lung, she had sat down and started meditating instead of doing any number of other things.

A pointless exercise, one would think, but she'd found that it helped focus on the Empyrean, helped shut out the physical universe. She'd done that as the women left, just making sure to breathe deeply and evenly while following the tethers that connected them.

Applying the lessons learned from what had happened with Emma, she rode along in their consciousness, careful to sit lightly in the back of it. And she was rewarded, as her mind filled with what they saw and heard.

Lung was an arrogant asshole. She had already known this from her study of him and Zheng Jie's memories, but seeing it through the eyes of those women, feeling their fear as he forced them to grovel to feed his own ego was enough to tell her everything she needed to know about him. It would be a genuine pleasure to humiliate him.

He had spoken his orders in Chinese, a language that she was finding even harder to understand than Japanese, but she had carefully noted down the sounds he made and then compared them to the dictionary she was keeping in her head. It took some time to separate the sounds into individual words and then translate them into English.

Then she had to take a few deep breaths to manage her rage. That flaming piece of shit didn't even care about the women she'd taken, that was obvious from his attitude. All he cared about was his damn pride. Again, as expected, but still infuriating.

His reaction was similarly also within expectation and had been accounted for.

The saying went that the best defense was a good offense. She could either wait for ABB thugs to start sniffing around and inevitably stumble on something. If Emma had been able to guesstimate where she could find the Black Hand, then they would be able to do the same, and she had a feeling that they wouldn't be too picky about which women they took to satisfy Lung's orders.

Waiting for them and then breaking their legs or something would as good as send up a flare, telling Lung where he had to show up and cause a scene to draw her out. That would give him the initiative, which was a bad idea.

Taylor had pulled quite a bit of useful information out of Zheng Jie's head. The ABB's operational security was crap, used as they were to relying on the threat of Lung to scare off attackers. And it was made worse by old feuds that still bubbled under the surface between the Triad, Yakuza, and other lesser known Asian criminal syndicates that made up the ABB. There were any number of people and locations that she could attack to keep Lung firmly on the defensive.

She'd already had some plans before they ever did the raid, but those plans had since then been refined.

Tens of thousands of mental iterations were taking stock of resources and planning out a succession of lightning strike raids that would throw the ABB into chaos and keep them from acting on Lung's petty spite. It would be as good a way to make her proper villain debut to the public as she could get.

Even the Empire might weigh in if they smelled weakness. Hookwolf, for one, seemed like the type to pout if he missed a good fight. And Purity was known to harass them with some regularity.

And this new ability she had just discovered would be of incalculable value. If she could ride in the back of all her people's consciousness while they were out in the field, then she could coordinate them to an unheard degree.

Breathe in. Pull the Empyrean inside.

She had actually done this once before without realizing it, back when she'd first found out about Sophia being Shadow Stalker. She'd been so furious that her rage had agitated the Empyrean. Not wanting to influence people, she had pulled it back in until it felt like her blood was boiling. Now it was calm, but still made her whole body feel like an overcharged battery.

Breathe out. Let it ripple outwards in the wake of my mind.

XXXXX

Celia Laborn put on her best smile as she served the food she'd cooked, pointedly ignoring the confused or suspicious looks of her family.

"Thank you." Her husband, Brendan, said, but it was because he had been raised to be polite more than anything.

After the visit by the mysterious cape she now knew as Psyker, Celia found the desperate need for drugs absent. It had instead been replaced by an equally desperate need to fix the absolute mess she'd made of her life.

The biggest failure by far was her daughter. Taking drugs during the pregnancy had clearly left consequences, although thankfully nothing more serious than ADHD. The problem was that Aisha simply did not respect her in the slightest, outright resented her in fact. Celia could not handle her daughter even without the drugs causing problems.

After a few weeks, she had conceded defeat, swallowed her pride, and gone to Brendan, begging him to take her back even if only for their daughter's sake.

Brendan was a former military man. He liked routine, rules, and discipline. When they had been young, she'd thought him terribly attractive and could hardly keep her hands off him. That was how they'd gotten Brian. But then he had to go away for deployment and she'd gotten bored. A friend had invited her to a party, where she got drunk and high and it had all been downhill from there.

The way she'd behaved since then certainly hadn't helped and Brendan no longer liked or trusted her. It had taken hours of groveling to get him to let her move back in with him on so much as a trial basis, and he had piled on so many rules, conditions, obligations, and limits that she would almost need to ask his permission to go to the bathroom. He had obviously been trying to make her give up and leave.

And it would have worked if not for the overriding need to do right by Aisha, every bit as powerful as the drugs that had so recently ruled her life. Celia agreed to everything and thanked him for the opportunity. She learned to cook, cleaned diligently, spent time helping Aisha with her schoolwork, and always made it clear that she was willing to do anything Brendan wanted. Her good looks weren't completely gone, especially now that she was taking care of herself again.

"Thanks." Brian also said as she gave him his share, but he was obviously uncomfortable. The distance hurt, but she couldn't complain. Any love or respect he might have had for her had been long since ruined.

"Yeah, thanks." Aisha only muttered the words sourly after a stern look from her father. Gone were the trashy clothes she'd taken to wearing while Celia had been too high to care, replaced with a simple jeans and T-shirt combination.

The sudden parental attention had been met with resistance, but where Brendan had no idea how to deal with an unruly young girl without corporal punishment and Celia couldn't control their wild daughter, together they were able to make her listen. Hopefully, there was still time to do a little parenting before Aisha finished growing up.

"Now we say grace." Brendan declared, utterly ignoring the fact that he was the only religious person at the table.

Celia bowed her head as he spoke, but her gratitude went to the cape that had straightened her out rather than to God. She could almost feel Psyker's presence in the back of her mind, approving of what she was doing. It would give her the strength to put up with Brendan's distrust and her children's resentment for as long as she needed to.

XXXXX

Taylor blinked as she came back to herself, smiling. Celia Laborn was doing a lot better than the last time she'd seen the woman.

But damn, that family had some good genes. She'd already seen the young daughter during her house call and thought her almost unfairly beautiful for her age, but the son was also what Sherrel would call a grade-A beefcake. Tall, muscular, handsome.

The errant thought made heat pool between her legs. Now that she'd gotten a taste of carnal pleasure her body kept on demanding more, and there was only so much she could do by herself.

Might as well check on Emma, too.

XXXXX

Emma was sitting at her vanity, gently prodding at the huge bruise that covered most of her left cheek. It was ugly, but she didn't really mind it. Taylor had given it to her after all.

Her parents had initially been horrified and angry when she came home with the bruise and a busted lip, but she had managed to talk them down. Taylor's plan had gone of more or less without a hitch.

Confessing to the bullying had resulted in a loud screaming match between Mom and Dad as everything came out. In the end, they were left feeling sad and guilty for the ruined friendship between them and the Heberts, but also relieved that their daughter would no longer be associating with a supervillain.

Or so they thought. Emma fully intended to return to Taylor's side as soon as possible. It was where she belonged.

-Emma.-

"Taylor?!" Emma whispered in shock, looking around for the source of the whispery voice. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

-Look in the mirror.- She said.

Emma did as she was told and jerked in surprise. There, instead of her own reflection, was the face of her oldest friend.

"How…?" She couldn't even formulate the question.

"A new trick I figured out with my powers." Taylor smirked. "Neat, huh?"

"It's amazing!" Emma gushed, leaning closer. She tried to reach into the mirror to touch her, only to be disappointed when she hit glass.

"I'm not really there, Ems, I'm just making you see things." Taylor explained.

"Oh. Do you need me for something?" Emma wiggled excitedly on her chair.

"Just checking up on you." The parahuman denied, much to her disappointment. "Give it a few more days, then I'll call you back to me."

"Okay!"

Emma could hardly wait.

XXXXX

That had been much easier than with Celia Laborn or Kotake-san. They were still their own women, whereas Emma was hers. Where she had to take care with them to not push too hard or keep so light a touch that she slipped away, she could settle into Emma's mind with ease.

From there, manipulating her senses was child's play.

But if this skill could be applied to others…

Taylor could see so very many possibilities for something like that. She would need to practice more, but for now the ability to ride along in other people's minds was more important. If she fully mastered that, then she could control her territory to a degree nobody else could even dream of.

She wouldn't use it all the time, since it was an invasion of privacy, but it was too valuable to pass up. She settled back down to meditated, spreading her mind further afield.

XXXXX

Larry ambled out of the room with a happy sigh. It sure was nice to have his sex drive back. Sleeping with prostitutes wasn't the same as seducing a hot lady, but his mojo was returning.

"Did you give it to her good, my man?" Louie asked with a smirk.

"You know it!" Larry made finger guns in the pimp's direction.

"Hey listen, I've got an idea." Louie suddenly became shifty as he leaned in close. "You know how the boss wants to make our whores classier?"

"Yeah?" He nodded. Psyker had made no secret of her intentions to bring up the quality of both the prostitutes and the business as a whole. Larry actually approved.

"Well I've been thinkin'… why don't we diversify our assets, if you know what I mean." The pimp grinned, gold teeth flashing.

"No, I don't know what you mean." Larry replied, confused.

"I'm saying we should get into the porn business." Louie explained. "I think we've definitely got some potential here, and bitches always want to be movie stars, right? But what would really put us on the map is you."

"Me?" Larry gaped incredulously. "You want me to become a porn star?"

"Just imagine it!" Louie cajoled. "You'd get to fuck so many bitches, and with your powers we could do some of Japanese tentacle shit! Can you turn those things into dicks by the way?"

Larry blinked, having never considered doing such a thing. Looking at his hand, he activated his power and turned it into the fleshy strands that he used to control objects. They were as easy to control as his fingers, but prehensile and regenerated quickly if damaged. For the first time since gaining his powers, he tried reshaping them.

The strands twined together into something vaguely dick-shaped. He knew instantly that it wasn't actually a dick, but it did look like one, if you squinted.

"Holy shit!" Louie exclaimed. "How many of those can you make?"

XXXXX

Taylor pulled away, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Her minions were thinking of breaking into the porn industry with parahuman powers. She wondered what the politicians and their NEPEA-5 bill would make of that one.

Why did it feel like she was trying to swim upstream to keep her gang respectable?

The worst part was that it wasn't even a bad idea. She could immediately see the potential profit, as well as the possibility of getting more women out of prostitution. Pornography had to be at least a step in the right direction, right?

Even she knew that porn was notorious for its horrendously bad acting, but maybe she could turn it into an opportunity for those involved to get creative and learn some skills. Get them to work on a script and take acting classes that would turn a trashy porno into an erotic movie or something? And it would give some people jobs working the cameras, setting up scenes, and so on.

Couldn't hurt to try, but for now, she had to keep practicing her powers.

XXXXX

March 19th, 2011.

Both the ABB and the Empire 88 rank and file had gotten used to a certain back and forth. They all knew better than to escalate past the point where their parahuman leaders would disapprove, but they also knew that if the other side went too far, that said parahumans would step in to kick some ass.

Because of this, then hostility between them was generally expressed by swaggering through 'border' neighborhoods, spraying gang tags, robbing businesses, mugging the other side's civilians, petty vandalism, the occasional rape if they caught a woman out in the open, and getting into small scale fights.

Sometimes, these things pissed off a higher up and things escalated, resulting in a cape brawl, which would inevitably draw in the Protectorate to break it up.

It was a fragile equilibrium that balanced upon Kaiser's politicking, Lung's dismissive arrogance, Coil's meddling, and the PRT's weakness. Anyone who bothered to think about it could see that it would take very little to upset it, but few people did so. Low level gang members were especially not known for their deep thinking and forethought, so they settled into the routine, such as it was.

That was why the ABB was caught completely off guard when they were hit by a succession of brutal, seemingly unprovoked attacks.

Thugs swaggering through the streets were jumped and beaten to a pulp. Hidden drug or weapon stashes were raided, cock fight arenas, which some ABB gangers organized because Hookwolf's people tended to take all the dogs, were attacked and vandalized. Apartments belonging to ABB members were broken into and burgled.

There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to it, and the only thing left behind were posters with a black hand mark stuck to the walls.

In the most notable event, Lodestone showed up at a warehouse that stored a lot of the ABB's guns that were being saved for a potential big confrontation with the Empire.

Calls for help were made and Oni Lee was dispatched to engage him, but the teleporter found himself stymied by the sand armor. His knife and gun were both useless, and even the grenades did nothing much. Lodestone likewise wasn't fast enough to strike at him, leaving the two parahumans deadlocked in a pointless fight.

Far away from the action, Taylor meditated and telepathically coordinated the assault. She staggered the attacks so that Lung was being buried in reports of them, and by the time he sent the response to the first one, the second was already demanding his attention. No individual attack was anything serious, aside from Lodestone's attack on the warehouse, and she didn't let any of her unpowered people stay long enough to get bogged down with a fight, but taken all at once it looked like she was committing to an all out assault.

Less than ten minutes of this and Lung predictably lost patience with answering the phone and listening to his men telling him that they'd had the shit kicked out of them. He ordered his driver to bring the car around, intending to patrol around his territory and essentially hope to encounter the Black Hand attackers by blind luck.

Just as planned.

Taylor and Sherrel had been sitting in stealth in the APC close to the Ruby Dreams casino, which Zheng Jie had known was close to where Lung actually lived, as well as being his favorite haunt and biggest cash cow. He would want to drive past it to check on it.

"That one." Taylor said, pointing at the black Cadillac cruising through the street.

"Oh yeah! Buckle your britches, bitches, cuz this shit's getting wild!" Sherrel hollered gleefully and stepped on the accelerator.

After rally sliding through a few turns, the APC was barreling perpendicular down on Lung's car just as it was obliviously going through an intersection. Seconds before impact, Sherrel turned off the stealth generator and gave Lung just enough time to widen his eyes before the armored front crashed into the passenger door of his car. There was a horrendous metal crunch and the Cadillac went spinning out of control, hit the sidewalk, and flipped over onto its roof.

The driver survived, fortunately, although the risk of him dying had been deemed acceptable. He was ABB after all, and trusted enough to drive Lung around.

Taylor stepped out of the APC and waited in the middle of the road while Sherrel backed up and disappeared around a corner. She wasn't really gone though, just re-engaging the stealth and sneaking back onto the scene.

It didn't take long for Lung to tear his way out, looking somewhat worse for the wear but already regenerating and utterly pissed.

During the fight with Sophia, Taylor had used her psychic powers to attack like a Brute – trying to smash through the obstacles in her way. She knew better now. Thinkers had to work around obstacles… or turn them back on themselves.

Instead of trying to pummel Lung's rage into submission, she piggybacked on it deeper in his mind. It was conveniently very similar to Sophia's, so she didn't even have to get a feel for how he thought. No doubt he would be furious at the comparison, but for all his fearsome reputation, Lung was a simple creature. Just another cruel thug that grew arrogant from his power. He wanted to kill her because she dared challenge his delusions of self-importance, just like Sophia. The only difference was that he was particularly enraged by the fact that she was a woman.

That felt important, so she latched on to it and rode the feeling deeper, seeking the reason for it.

"Should have run away, little girl." He growled. "Gonna kill you."

Memories flashed by, a succession of women humiliated and killed by Lung. But the image of one loomed over them all like an ominous specter, a dark-haired woman wearing a sharp suit and a fedora. A source of fear and loathing. Her own dark hair and the fancy coat was reminding him of her.

"But you'll never kill her." She said, eyes sparking with eldritch power.

Lung recoiled as if he'd been struck, his menacing advance halted. "What do you know about her?!"

"I know she ripped your balls off a long time ago, and you never got them back." Taylor used the most contemptuous tone she could manage. "All the women you've hurt, a vain attempt to get back at her. Pathetic, and weak. You're no dragon, you aren't even a man. Just a beaten dog hiding in a corner and snapping at anyone that comes close."

It had been a guess, but more memories flashed past. A fight, the woman in the fedora practically dancing through a gang of Asian men, taking them apart like they were children. A haymaker, perfectly countered, momentum manipulated, face forced into a pile of cocaine, suffocation, panic, mortal terror. A permanent wound left in the psyche, his trigger event.

Lung literally swelled with rage, gaining several inches of height and flames starting to lick over his skin. When he spoke, his voice was pitched lower, more guttural. "For that, you die screaming."

Beneath her mask, Taylor couldn't help but smirk in amusement. Even if he managed to make good on that threat, the thought of being burned alive wasn't even slightly intimidating. "Cute, but I'm afraid you've forgotten something important."

"What?" Again he stopped, suspicious and on guard for tricks. He had faced Thinkers before.

But no amount of wariness was going to save him from the invisible APC and its armored front bumper that crashed into him from the side.

"That." Taylor snorted, having never stopped coordinating her assault on ABB territory, nor cut her psychic contact with Sherrel. The Tinker had been ready to run him over at any point.

While Lung was busy picking himself up and regenerating the multiple broken bones he'd just gained, she opened the passenger door again and stopped halfway inside to address him. "Get out of my town, mutt. We have enough problems to deal with without a pathetic coward like you throwing tantrums."

His rage spiked at being called a mutt and another bit of understanding sparked in Taylor's mind. He was half-Chinese and half-Japanese, and had been subjected to prejudice from both sides of his heritage since the day he was born. She had unwittingly poked at an old wound in a way that being called a slant or a gook by the Empire could never achieve.

She also realized that this was why he had forced all the disparate Asian groups into a single gang despite the ancient cultural enmities between them – he hated them all and wanted to see them grovel.

Whatever her intentions with the insult, the accidental racism infuriated him and he roared at her unintelligibly, gaining more height and metallic scales growing out of his flesh.

"And now the chase is on." Taylor said, shutting the door.

Lung escalated in reaction to the level of threat he was facing, and she suspected that a retreating enemy wouldn't trigger his power nearly as much.

"Fuck yeah!" Sherrel grinned, accelerating backwards and doing a spin, switching gears with perfect timing and barely losing speed.

Taylor climbed up to man the lightning cannon, carefully watching the staggering form of the ABB leader as he gave chase.

"Motherfucker!" He roared angrily, gradually stabilizing as his bones popped back into place.

"Have you considered therapy?" She called out to him. "It can't be comfortable living with that inferiority complex of yours."

His response was a blast of flame that dispersed before it reached them.

"He's supposed to be immune to fire, but man are you roasting him." Sherrel laughed, always keeping at least thirty to forty feet of distance between them.

Taylor saw that he was losing speed and decided to encourage him a bit. Pulling out her pistol, she emptied the clip at him. Most of the bullets missed, because she wasn't exactly a crack shot, but a few hit the mark. All it did was make him angry, but that was the point.

"Take the next left!" She said to Sherrel, pulling information from the people she had spread across town to act as her eyes.

-Boss, Oni Lee fucked off!- Came the urgent report from Larry.

Taylor was immediately on guard for the teleporter. It would have been ideal to keep him distracted in an unwinnable fight with Lodestone, but the possibility that someone would tell him that they had engaged Lung had been taken into account.

"Shields up!" She ordered and ducked down, watching as the shimmering force field covered the car.

Just in time, too, as Oni Lee appeared on top of the force field seconds later. He could move across the entire city in minutes if he had long enough sight-lines and they hadn't been all that far away.

Taylor launched the strongest psychic attack she could muster against him even as she registered his curiously small mind in the Empyrean, not willing to take any chances.

… and experienced something akin to missing a step, or shoulder ramming an open door. Oni Lee had no defenses at all, no identity or ego. In fact, he wasn't even a person anymore, just a collection of muscle memory and instinct. Literally no more intelligent than a dog and with barely a tenth of the initiative of one.

Taylor completely overwhelmed what little was left of him, devouring his skill with weapons, how to use his power, and spoken knowledge of Japanese, which was all he had left. And then she found herself seeing the world from two perspectives. It was very strange looking at yourself while looking at yourself.

In that moment she knew that Oni Lee was not a teleporter. He did not move himself to a new location and leave behind a clone – he cloned himself and died a few seconds later, losing a bit of himself with every use.

Sending her new puppet body away before anyone could suspect anything, she continued with the task at hand.

"Shield down again." Taylor ordered. "And take another left."

The brief sight of Oni Lee had galvanized Lung, and he hadn't needed further encouragement to keep up the chase. His powers meant that he didn't really get tired, so he had been sprinting the whole time, and he was ramped up enough that that he could go over thirty miles per hour. They had covered a decent distance.

And in his rage, he'd forgotten yet another important thing – cape brawls drew Protectorate attention. Taylor had been pulling them this way and that with her distractions and now it was time for the endgame.

As Sherrel turned the corner, they came pretty much directly under their only flier and rising star, Dauntless. The Greek-themed hero saw the tinkertech APC being chased by an enraged Lung and flew towards them.

Taylor cranked the lightning cannon to full power, making the tesla coils spark and glow. Then she aimed carefully at the charging Brute and fired, sending a coruscating arc of electricity slamming into him. Lung roared in pain as he was sent flying down the street, his skin becoming a patchwork of lichtenberg scars.

He was immune to fire, not electricity.

"Put that trash away for me, will you, Dauntless?" She shouted up to the hero as they drove away.

Dauntless was clearly conflicted as he looked between them, gripping his arclance. But in the end he decided that securing Lung was the better option.

"That. Was. Fucking. Awesome!" Sherrel yelled as Taylor settled into the passenger seat. "Was firing the lightning cannon as good for you as it was for me? Because I think I came a little."

"Yes, Sherrel, it was very satisfying." Taylor chuckled, long since used to the Tinker's proclivities. "I think I might have overloaded it, though."

"Pfft, who gives a fuck?" The blonde dismissed. "We just wrecked Lung's shit. That's worth a little repair work."

"Hopefully the Protectorate will be able to actually keep hold of him, now that we did all the work for them." Taylor sighed, not feeling terribly hopeful about it. She had sensed that Lung was still conscious as they left, so he was probably going to get away

"Hey, what ever happened to Oni Lee?" Sherrel asked suddenly. "That's why you told me to put the shield up, right?"

"Ah, yes. There has been a bit of a… development."

"You did something freaky again, didn't you?"

"… Yes."

XXXXX

Back at the lair.

"Alright, this is definitely freaky." Sherrel pronounced, circling around the body of the unmasked Oni Lee. "It's weird being so close to this guy and him not trying to stab anyone."

"There is no 'this guy' anymore." Taylor spoke through the formerly ABB assassin, making the Tinker jump back in shock. "His power hollowed him out, so that when I attacked his mind I just… consumed what little was left."

"Hollowed him out?" Sherrel asked, puzzled.

"He's not a teleporter." Taylor explained with a shake of her head. "His power lets him clone himself at a location he can see, then he crumbles to ash. He was literally killing himself every time he used it and it shaved a bit of him off every time he did it. Years of that and the only thing left was the stuff he used all the time – combat instincts and comprehension of Japanese so he could take orders."

Unspoken went Taylor's suspicion that Oni Lee had taken a dip in the Empyrean every time he died, before being yanked out and into his new body. No matter how perfectly his brain was cloned every time, his soul had been washed clean bit by bit.

"Man, what a shitty power." The Tinker shivered and looked at Oni Lee again. "So you ate his soul?"

Taylor couldn't even disagree, because that's exactly what she'd done. She'd seen it, Oni Lee hadn't sunk into the dark waters of the Empyrean, but had instead been overwhelmed and consumed by the flame of her own soul. It was what would have happened to Emma if she hadn't stopped. It was what would happen to her when she died. "Yeah, I ate his soul."

"That's metal as fuck."

"I thought you'd be at least a little unnerved by it." She eyeballed the Tinker, wondering if this easy reaction was due to the psychic link.

"Sounds to me like you put him out of his misery." Sherrel shrugged. "Just don't do it to me and we're good. If you want to eat me, you just have to ask nicely."

Aaaand things were back to normal. Taylor sighed and rolled her eyes. "I'll be in my room, plotting. Now that I've got Oni Lee's body under my control, I need to adjust a few plans."

"Hey, wait a second." Sherrel's voice took on a sudden cajoling tone. "What are you going to do with him in the meantime?"

"I was going to use him as a separate set of hands and eyes. Why?" Taylor asked suspiciously.

"… Would it be masturbation if you used him to fuck yourself?" The Tinker asked, clearly in deep thought. "Would it still be gay if you fucked me with him?"

Those were all questions that Taylor had banished into the background. She wasn't sure about the answers, but what it would definitely be was weird. "Alright, first, I'm not using Oni Lee's body like a sextoy for you, Sherrel."

"But I'm so horny right now, and he's right there." The Tinker whined. "Come on, do your favorite minion a solid."

"Control the thirst."

"Easy for you to say, you had your cute love slave over a couple of days ago. I haven't had a proper fucking in weeks."

"Second." Taylor forcibly changed the subject. "I couldn't do it even if I wanted to. I have to actually focus on making his body breathe. All the autonomous systems still work, but it's otherwise not responding to stimuli."

"And that means…?" Sherrel tilted her head.

"No erections."

"Aw man…" The Tinker pouted.

"You'll have time to satisfy your urges soon. Our timetable is considerable shortened with Oni Lee added to our forces, so you won't need to keep working all the time anymore."

In fact, a lot of plans suddenly became tremendously easier with this development. For one thing, Lung was robbed of any quick response ability. And Taylor now had a secondary body to work through, even if at a reduced capacity. Lung was effectively neutered as a threat, even if he escaped being incarcerated by the PRT. It was easily the greatest boon to fall into her lap since taking over the Merchants.

The prospect of taking on the Empire, previously daunting due to the difference in sheer number of capes, was suddenly a lot more manageable as well.

And the newly discovered ability to devour souls and use her extra mental iterations to puppet the emptied bodies… it would horrify the PRT and the general public if it become known, but it had such incredible potential. Could she do this to long term coma patients with no hope of recovery?

… Actually never mind that. Going to a hospital and eating people's souls sounded incredibly ghoulish and the kind of thing that would instantly earn her a kill order. It would give her an image on par with the Slaughterhouse 9.

Who else was in a state where becoming part of her would be a mercy? Whose souls were weak enough to be devoured?

Millions of mental iterations spread out, considering every person she could remember.

… Could she reach Gray Boy's victims? Those poor people that the deceased member of the Slaughterhouse 9 had trapped in time loops, to suffer eternally? They would have endured years of endless torture by this point. Taylor couldn't imagine that they had any will left, or that they wished to continue on like that for potentially thousands or even millions of years.

She wouldn't be able to use their bodies, but finally giving them peace would be worth it. And she would get their skills out of the bargain.

More mental iterations started planning a road trip. She would have to look up all the sites where Gray Boy had left his time bubbles.

"Fine." Sherrel sulked, aiming a sullen glare at both her and Oni Lee, which just felt like being glared at twice. "Bet he has a tiny dick anyway."

XXXXX

March 19th, 2011.

Coil was sitting at his desk in his underground lair, having just finished reading the preliminary report on Psyker's surprise assault on the ABB.

That she had attacked the ABB wasn't the surprising part. He had, after all, given her information on several of their holdings, along with the Empire's, to see what she would do.

No, the surprising part was the sheer scale of it. The raid on the brothel was fairly normal for the actions of an ambitious young cape. If things had gone normally then Lung would have responded to punish the loss of face. Coil would have helped his tentative ally, offering information that she could have used to fend him off. It would have created a small debt that he would have been able to capitalize on.

Instead, Psyker had decided to double down and triple down, launching a series of skirmishing raids on the ABB that left the Asian gang floundering for a response, before attacking Lung personally and humiliating him in ways nobody had done since his arrival in Brockton Bay. The Protectorate had likewise been caught off guard and failed to mount an effective response.

The level of aggression was unusual, and the scale of the organization on display was beautiful and left him at a loss as to how it had been achieved. Even if Psyker could keep it all in her head, how had she translated that into a real world application?

For that matter, how had she even gained information on so many ABB holdings? Coil had found no hint of an information gathering network being developed.

She was entirely too precocious. The decision to consolidate her power and reorganize her new gang had been admirably measured and the results impressive. That a new, teenage cape thought of anything aside from what was immediately in front of them was already noteworthy, but the sheer level of control Psyker had demonstrated over her minions was something else. He would not have thought that so many drug addicts, whores, and miscellaneous lowlifes could be brought to heel so sharply.

In fact, it was suspicious. He hadn't thought much of the PRT speculation about her having a Master rating, not when he had already interrogated her about the nature of her powers in a discarded timeline, but it made him wonder…

Could she really exert so much control with just her admittedly powerful Thinker ability? If she was older, more experienced, and more established, Coil would have believed it easily, but a fifteen-year-old girl barely a month into villainy? Could she really be cunning and ruthless enough for it?

Well... she had killed Skidmark without much in the way of remorse or hesitation, and he knew that she had beaten the ABB brothel manager to death. Clearly, ruthlessness was not a problem. Maybe she was just a natural talent at being a villain?

He wondered if she was ruthless enough to do what had to be done even when it got innocents hurt, however.

Coil had recently learned of yet another powerful Thinker in Brockton Bay, this time a precog. A child by the name of Dinah Alcott. She had been complaining of crippling migraines and claimed to be able to predict the future.

Thankfully, her parents were as dull as rocks and hadn't recognized the obvious signs of a parahuman, too wrapped up in their troubled marriage. They had instead dismissed her claims as lies and attention-seeking.

Coil would have missed her existence entirely if she wasn't the mayor's niece. Keeping tabs on the local government was something that any mastermind had to do. A few timelines had confirmed it, as well as the nature of her powers, although they had unfortunately also revealed his existence to Dinah. She had not, however, told anyone else, perhaps divining that it wouldn't help or even make things worse.

Coil wanted her, he wanted her badly. This time, there was no chance of a soft approach and her powers didn't require her to be free. She would be kidnapped and forced to serve as his pet oracle. Only he could make best use of her powers.

If only he had known what Psyker was planning to do, he could have used it to create a big enough stir to attempt a kidnapping today. Her lack of reliance on him for advice was frustrating, but also proved that there would have been no point in trying to get her to work for him.

Now something else would have to be arranged. Nobody could be allowed to know that he had the girl. In his discarded timelines, the Protectorate was quick to respond to an attack on the mayor's family if they got even a whiff of parahuman involvement, and they didn't let up. Even Dragon got involved as they started tearing Brockton Bay apart in their search for her. She had to vanish without a trace.

Lung had managed to escape from Dauntless, Psyker's final shot having allowed him to escalate instead of knocking him out. He would be desperate to avenge this defeat. It would be easy to whisper a location to him and send him on a rampage, but how to use it to draw the full attention of the PRT and Protectorate without having it traced back to him?

Or maybe he was thinking about this from the wrong direction. Psyker seemed intent on grinding the ABB down to nothing in a hurry. He could help her along with that, create a sustained problem that would occupy everyone's attention.

After all, it wasn't like Lung had lost much combat power with this. He still had himself and Oni Lee. Provide information, offer to get her in contact with the Undersiders if she wished to hire them as extra muscle, goad the Empire into throwing in…

Now there was an idea. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Grue's mother had mysteriously turned her life around recently. Coil knew that she had tried it before, only to fall back into her habit within days. This time it had been weeks and no sign of a relapse.

This was a problem, because if Grue didn't need his employment and influence over official records to get his sister out of a bad home situation, then he would walk away. He had already confirmed as much in one of his discarded timelines.

That would not do. People did not simply leave his service.

His mercenaries were all professionals, but most of them would still balk at what was needed for this situation. That was what he had Creep for. The twisted man would positively relish the chance to attack a family in their home. And his proclivities would make a fine punishment for trying to leave him, even if Grue would never realize it was a punishment.

It would be simplicity itself to disguise it as an Empire 88 attack of opportunity on a black family on a chaotic night. Having Nazis running around the city was incredibly useful like that.

It was all coming together now. The abundance of chaos would distract from his kidnapping of Dinah Alcott, Grue would be brought firmly back into the fold, his Tattletale would receive a sharp reminder why it was a bad idea to defy him, and Psyker would raise her profile even further, thus making herself a target for the Empire and PRT, which would in turn give him the opportunity to put her into his debt.

And if it didn't work out, he could always just discard the timeline and try something else. Accord would no doubt be willing to organize a PRT fundraiser in Boston that would require the presence of the entire Brockton Bay Protectorate, along with Piggot. They were too desperate for resources to turn it down.

XXXXX

March 20th, 2011.

Having two bodies to work with was incredible, even if sleeping was kind of weird now.

She wouldn't be able to fight with him the way he had fought, because she had to re-possess every fresh clone. That made rapid clone jumps in close quarter untenable, but there were other ways to use Oni Lee. Subtler ways.

Simply having another set eyes and hands was far too valuable to lose. And she wanted to keep him secret for now. Ideally, nobody would ever realize that his body was being possessed.

The ringing of a phone made her fingers pause on the keyboard. That particular phone connected to only one person.

"Coil." She greeted her treacherous ally.

"Psyker." He returned in the same tone. "You don't do things by halves."

"It would have been unwise to do a foe such a Lung a small injury." Taylor replied, injecting some humor into her tone.

"Machiavelli?" Coil's eyebrows audibly rose.

"It seemed appropriate." She shrugged.

In truth, Machiavelli's writings were just one of the things she had studied in her efforts to master her role as a supervillain gang boss. It wasn't like she could google 'how to supervillain' or 'how to run a criminal empire' and get a step-by-step guide.

The Prince, The 48 Laws of Power, The Seven Keys to Power, Rules for Rulers. All of these and others she had read. Not all of the advice therein was relevant or applicable. Some of it she outright doubted or disagreed with, but the general gist of it was an invaluable starting point for a young girl who'd suddenly found herself in the deep end.

In this particular situation, it was Machiavelli's advice in The Prince that she was following. The early chapters warned against disadvantaging yourself by shying away from conflict. Machiavelli may have been speaking in terms of armies and kingdoms, but it was still applicable. It was why she had decided to continue on the offensive against Lung instead of backing off and hunkering down after the raid on the brothel.

Taylor couldn't help but remember the sixteen months of bullying she had endured. She'd tried every means of avoiding conflict then, and all it had done was worsen her suffering. What she should have done was to immediately begin preparing to strike back with overwhelming force. Emma, Sophia, and Madison had done her numerous small injuries, for which they should have been punished with crippling injuries, be those injuries physical, social, or legal.

And it wasn't like she hadn't had options, she had simply been blind to them, rendered helpless by the dictates of a social contract that had already betrayed her.

"I must admit that I haven't read it myself." He chuckled.

Maybe if he had, he would have recalled that any 'prince' was cautioned against courting ruin by making others powerful. Whatever game Coil thought he was playing, he should have cut his losses and tried to eliminate her immediately.

"I'm sure you didn't call me to discuss our choices of literature." She prompted.

"Quite right. Since you seem intent on toppling the ABB wholesale, I hope you realize that you will then have to openly contend with the Empire without the distraction of Lung." He said.

"I have plans for them."

"Very well, I will trust that you know what you are doing. If you need help, I can get you into contact with some more parahuman muscle. The Undersiders, Uber and Leet, and Circus are all willing to work for hire."

The mention of Uber and Leet made her expression briefly dip into a scowl. Those two morons had beaten up a few prostitutes in some asinine Grand Theft Auto skit not long before she took over the Merchants. She didn't, strictly speaking, have any grounds to hold a grudge over it since it happened before those women were hers, but she still didn't have a high opinion of the gamer villains.

Circus was a minor villain known for small scale armed robbery. A grab-bag cape with powers of superhuman athleticism, minor pyrokinesis, and a personal pocket dimension.

The Undersiders were a similarly minor villain gang. Four members, small scale robbery, a reputation for being good at running away.

The kind of villains that the PRT considered to be minor nuisances. Every city had them – villains that were safe for the Wards to engage without any real risk of injury. A paranoid and suspicious mind might even think that they were allowed to stay free so that the Wards would have someone to practice against before they graduated into the Protectorate and expected to face against the more dangerous ones.

Taylor was sufficiently suspicious to believe it.

Their presence was not really necessary, but it would help obfuscate the Oni Lee situation.

"They could be easily incorporated into my plans." She said. "How quickly can a meeting with them be arranged?"

"I can make it happen by tonight."

"Then please do so."

As they agreed on a location, Taylor pondered what kind of scheme Coil was running. That he was trying to use her as a patsy against the other gangs was obvious, but he didn't seem to care about taking territory for himself. That could only mean that he was working a different angle.

What was he seeing that she was not? That was something she would need to find out before the sudden and inevitable betrayal.

XXXXX

Brian checked the messages on his phone and frowned when he saw that he had one from Tattletale.

Boss is sending us to talk to Psyker, tonight. Job opportunity. Good money.

Normally, it would be the money he was interested in, even if he would be leery of being hired by someone as aggressive as Psyker and her Black Hand. The way she had gone after Lung and the ABB yesterday was a bit more energetic than a street level villain like him was comfortable with.

But the chance of getting to talk to her wasn't something he could pass up. Tattletale hadn't been able to scare up much information and he was getting increasingly concerned about his mother. She was just so different all of a sudden that it could only be a Master influence. Just because the change was good didn't mean that he could ignore it, not when it was targeted at his family.

He'd even agreed to sleep over yesterday in a vain attempt to get a read on things, but the only thing he'd really figured out was that Aisha was going stir crazy.

Case in point, the door suddenly banged open and his sister jumped at him, wild-eyed.

"Bro, you gotta help me!" Aisha whisper-screamed, feet hanging in the air as she held on to his collar. "They're outta control, talking about replacing my video games with books."

The word was spat with such venom you'd think she was being forced to read the local Empire 88 newsletter.

"It wouldn't kill you to read something from time to time." Brian said hypocritically, knowing that he wasn't much of a reader either.

"Yes it would!" Aisha hissed back like an angry cat. "They're already making me dress up like a fuckin' nun."

Giving her T-shirt and jeans a skeptical look, Brian decided not to point out that when left to her own devices, his extremely under-aged little sister seemed to think dressing up like a hooker in training was a good idea. In this regard, he was definitely going to ignore her woes.

"You've wanted Mom off the drugs for years. What did you think she was going to be like?"

"Not like this!" Aisha wailed. "She's one step away from giving him a blowjob while Dad micromanages my life! I need some breathing space or I'm gonna explode! Take me to your villain lair with you!"

Brian sputtered in shock. "W-what? Villain? The hell are you talking about?"

Aisha finally let go of his collar and lowered herself to the ground, a demonic expression of mischief on her face. "What, did you think I didn't know my big bro was a villain, Mr. Grue of the Undersiders?"

Brian grimaced. "How did you find out?" If it was something anyone could do, then that was a big problem.

"Dude, you never give a straight answer when anyone asks what you're doing." Aisha snorted. "And you came home once smelling like burned leather about a year ago."

Brian grimaced some more. That had been an unfortunate encounter with Circus. A minor scuffle that they both walked away from, but the grab bag had singed him a bit. He couldn't believe Aisha remembered a detail like that, though. Where was all this intelligence in school?

"Then there's your recent stabbing." She went on, getting smugger by the sentence. "The stabbing that you never went to the hospital for."

Yeah, because Tattletale knew a much more discreet back-alley doctor. Hospitals were dangerous for villains, especially villains in full costume.

"And that mouthy blonde friend of yours." Aisha did an admirable job of imitating Lisa's vulpine grin. "She looked grossed out when I asked if you were banging her and you're too much of a stiff to just be friends with someone like her."

"I am not!" He protested, but Aisha just barreled forward as if he hadn't said anything.

"And she was so goddamn smug with her snark, like some kind of fucking tattletale."

"Alright, fine, I get it!" Brian had heard enough about all the clues he'd dropped. "Just keep your mouth shut about this, alright?"

"Sure." Aisha chirped. "As long as you take me to meet your gang."

Brian absolutely didn't want her meeting either Rachel or Alec, for a variety of reasons.

"Couldn't I take you to an amusement park instead?" He bargained.

"I need to meet the people you're running with, see if they're up top snuff." Aisha sniffed, not giving his suggestion the time of day.

"I might be leaving the Undersiders soon." Brian admitted.

He'd gotten a little bit fond of them, but they were always a means to an end, and kind of a pain in the ass. The only reason he hadn't left already was because he was still leery of what Psyker had done to his mother. This meeting would be an opportunity to address his concerns, and one last job before he dropped out of the team.

"What, why?!" Aisha suddenly whined.

"Because I only joined up with them so I could make enough money to get custody of you." He explained. "If this thing with Mom turns out to be the real deal, then CPS wouldn't let me take you away from them even if I wanted to."

"You're not thinking of joining the Protectorate, are you?" She asked, making a disgusted face.

"Hah, no." Brian chuckled. "It's a lot safer to be a low level villain than a hero of any kind, as long as you know what kind of trouble to avoid."

That many capes didn't was a whole other matter.

"Good, because being a hero is lame." She nodded sagely. "They wouldn't let you wear black leather or that skull mask, either."

Not exactly Brian's biggest gripe with the Protectorate, but it was true. "Yeah. Anyway, that's why there's no point in meeting my team."

"No, I definitely need to meet them." She insisted. "If you're leaving then we need to have a going away party, make sure there are no hard feelings."

It was an obvious ploy, but not necessarily a bad idea. Alec wouldn't care and Tattletale would understand, but Rachel would definitely hold a grudge. She'd see it as abandoning the pack. A small going away party and maybe letting her have some of his share of the take from this last job might pacify her. He'd rather not have her hold a grudge if they ran into each other in masks in the future.

"I'll think about it."

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