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A Ruinous Gift by Noodlehammer

Warhammer & Worm Xover Rated: M, English, Crime, Words: 298k+, Favs: 3k+, Follows: 4k+, Published: Sep 20, 2023 Updated: Jan 28

2,397Chapter 22: Breaking Up Some Families

Kudos to Alvor for beta reading

XXXXX

April 26th, 2011.

Taylor hadn't thought it possible, but her opinion of Heartbreaker continued to sink the longer she was around him.

He'd come to Brockton Bay because he couldn't stand the 'insult' of having one of his children abandon him, but now he couldn't even be bothered to go out and do anything on his own. Instead, he sent Nicholas and Guillaume, his usual patsies by virtue of their age, to do his dirty work while he lazed about in the home he invaded and terrorized his other children.

Taylor had taken up the creepy role of a pseudo-mother for those kids as Heartbreaker had always intended. Having some random enslaved woman looking after them was clearly nothing new to the children. They were not shocked or upset or anything, really. They just looked through her as if she wasn't even a person. With the way their father behaved, she couldn't even blame them for it.

Still, she played along with this part of the charade and slowly sunk her psychic hooks into their minds. Heartbreaker had emotionally tortured every single one of them with the intention of forcing a trigger, including the fucking four-year-old. It had worked on all but one of them. Some were as badly damaged as Alec, most had already developed serious sociopathic traits, some were outright sadists.

Young sadists, but they were responding to her efforts to reach them, so maybe they were salvageable. Most of them at least. Nicholas might be a lost cause, but Guillaume turned out to not be too far gone. Must be a power difference. The ability to inflict paralyzing fear lends itself better to sadism than the ability to share the vision of whoever you touched.

Taylor was really looking forward to the payoff for this scheme. The urge to get started on making an example of Heartbreaker was rising, but it wasn't time yet.

She also learned what had happened with Cherie, the oldest of the Heartbroken. Alec had described his sister as a mean bitch, but had admitted that she might not be beyond saving when pressed further.

Well, that would be pretty hard now. Apparently, the stupid girl had joined the Slaughterhouse 9. She might have still been willing to try if Alec or one of the other kids loved her enough for it, but they didn't.

"Woman, attend me." Heartbreaker demanded, interrupting her effort to make dinner.

Taylor's face didn't show her feelings. She was well beyond the point where her flesh would betray her like that. Even parahuman Thinker powers wouldn't detect any spikes of emotion. Still, the Empyrean roiled with her anger.

"Right away!" She said pleasantly and moved towards the bedroom, not failing to notice the veiled looks of pity some of the children gave her.

They may have started off seeing her as just another of their father's brainwashed victims, but that was two days ago. Since then, she had been slowly burrowing into their minds and they had at least subconsciously picked up on the fact that she wasn't treating them as extensions of their father. No doubt all of their previous caretakers had fawned over Heartbreaker and given them minimal attention, so they were noticing the difference.

As soon as they were alone in the bedroom, Heartbreaker moved towards her, clearly intent on tearing off the tight dress she had been wearing, one that he had insisted she wear. A dress that was notably not appropriate for casual wear.

Taylor stepped out of the way and seized control of his senses, allowing his own degenerate thoughts to build a scenario in his mind. He went to lie down on the bed and started wiggling around like a worm on a hook, clearly fully gripped in the sensory illusion she'd trapped him in.

At least she was getting to practice that newly discovered aspect of her powers. Before her encounter with Velocity, even her multitasking wasn't enough to keep up with a living mind and deceive the senses in real time. Now she realized that she didn't need to deceive the senses in real time. Time was the greatest of all illusions.

A few minutes later, Heartbreaker groaned and ejaculated on the sheets, fully believing that he'd just had sex. Sexual prowess was another thing that he didn't have, because he never needed to develop it, though the utter tool thought himself the ultimate Casanova because all the women he had sex with praised him for his skills.

It was almost as if they were mastered or something!

Giving the already dozing idiot a look of contempt, just because she could, she returned to the kitchen and continued making dinner. The children blinked at her in surprise, seeing her still wearing the same, unwrinkled dress and with not a hair out of place. The obvious implication was not computing with their worldview, to the point where they dismissed it as her simply being very good at keeping up appearances.

"Would any of you like to help?" She kindly asked the usually somewhat listless children, continuing her efforts at bonding with them.

XXXXX

"I found him!" Guillaume's excited voice broke Nicholas out of his irritation.

"Where?" He demanded. Their father had punished them for failing to get Cherie back, and Nicholas had no intention of failing again.

"Just up ahead." Guillaume said. "He's just sitting on a park bench and looking at people."

That didn't sound much like Jean-Paul, but it wasn't like Nicholas had ever really known his very slightly older half-brother. Despite being born only a few months apart, they had never been close.

They approached the bench from behind, Jean-Paul giving no sign that he knew they were there. Coming from both sides, they sat next to him, pinning him in place.

"Sup, bros." Jean-Paul greeted flippantly.

"You're coming back with us." Nicholas said.

"Nah." The runaway brother responded, still flippantly.

"Jean-Paul, it's over." Guillaume tried to reason. "Father is in town, he came to get you back personally."

"That's what he thinks." Jean-Paul snickered. "Seeing his face when he figures out that he's been had is going to be amazing."

Nicholas felt a shiver of fear going up his spine. There was something wrong here. "Bluffing won't save you."

"Bluffing?" Jean-Paul sounded amused. "Man, you guys are pretty slow."

Before Nicholas could reply, he felt a feminine hand on his neck, and saw that there was another on Guillaume's.

"Hello, boys." A young female voice greeted.

Nicholas reacted by blasting her with fear. It wasn't really intentional, but the situation and the sudden touch had him jumpy.

She should have voided her bowels and run for the hills immediately. What actually happened was that the hand on his neck tightened.

"Now that wasn't very nice." She chided, vaguely threatening. "Is that how you treat the woman who's been cooking your meals for the past two days?"

Nicholas paled and slowly turned his head to look at her. She didn't look anything at all like the most recent woman that his father had taken. She was too young, too skinny, her hair too curly, her eyes the wrong color.

But powers could cover for a lot of things, and he was suddenly certain that she was a cape. A cape that was apparently immune to Master powers.

"You're getting spaaaanked." Jean-Paul taunted childishly.

"Come on, time to go to your new home." The girl said, letting go of Guillaume so she could focus on pulling him along. "If you prove responsive to treatment, I won't have to kill you."

Nicholas and Guillaume meekly followed along. It was terrifying to have his powers be so completely no-sold. Nobody had been able to do it except for their father.

XXXXX

There comes a time in every successful criminal's career where it becomes more profitable to defend what he has than it is to take the risk of expanding his operations further. Centuries ago, this principle allowed a mere bandit to become a warlord, and a warlord to become a king. Nations and religions rose into prominence in this way.

When the Empire 88 first came to Brockton Bay, they were extremely brutal and violent. Allfather's sincere belief in the concept of white supremacy gave him a certain sense self-righteousness, but otherwise didn't make him at all special. The non-white population got the worst of it, but a simple accusation of 'race traitor' could justify anything if 'the cause' demanded it. Again, nothing special.

With Lung to act as a contrast to him, Kaiser had quickly found that it was more profitable to play defense. People were much more likely to side with him if he put himself in the role of the noble defender instead of the conqueror.

Kaiser somewhat overestimated his own cunning and people's stupidity, but his plan did work. When it was a choice between a gang of illegal immigrants rumored to be engaged in human trafficking and sexual slavery, the average person will grudgingly tolerate a white supremacist gang that had cooled off over time. It was also a case of 'the devil you know', information obfuscation, and simple self-interest.

The problem was that this took time. New dynasties were fragile things, surrounded by the enemies they made during their violent rise. The Empire 88 had dug itself into the city's culture, but the wounds they'd caused while doing so were still not healed. It wasn't hard to stoke up old resentment, not with the kind of baggage the word 'Nazi' carried with it.

In the wake of their last battle, Taylor turned herself and the Black Hand into a persistent nuisance. Where before, they would keep off the streets unless they were trying to provoke something, now hardly an hour passed, during both day and night, without her people being seen somewhere in or close to Empire territory. Often it was far more than that. Sometimes it was as innocuous as a bunch of guys shooting hoops while wearing white shirts marked with a black palm, other times it was Bitch dismantling Hookwolf's dog fighting operations with a pack of monster dogs, still other times it was Psyker in full regalia going to buy a bagel from a bakery deep in Empire territory.

As with many of her plans this new campaign served multiple purposes. The first was to mock the Empire and show the city how weak they were.

Second, it was a superior alternative to the crude strategy of burning down enemy business interests. If the Empire started a fight in the wrong place and wrecked something, it would be their fault. She was just there to buy a bagel, being a perfectly reasonable gang leader with a pristine reputation in regards to civilian casualties.

Third, it distracted them and forced them to react. In the past, when the PRT had managed to catch one of their capes, a common tactic used by the Empire was to cause an endless string of incidents that the Protectorate had to respond to. This left them weakened and exhausted when the time came to transport their captives to prison, making it that much easier to bust them out. Now they were having it used against them.

Watching through the eyes of Night and Fog, she knew that it was working. Kaiser knew exactly what she was doing and it was obviously pissing him off. He was a control freak, but he had only so much attention to spare and it was frazzling his nerves. His one attempt to simply ignore her antics had resulted in Psyker drawing a responding Assault into a passionate debate on the evils of the Empire 88, a mere block away from Medhall.

She was fairly sure that Assault was aware of what she was doing and going along with it. The PRT was still paralyzed with indecision on what to do about her, tied up by red tape as always.

And the longer this went on, the bolder the Black Hand became. The final straw for Kaiser was when Sherrel, wearing her Hot Rod costume but no mask, showed up in a skate park on the opposite side of the city that Taylor controlled, and started showing up the kids playing around there. Her power only gave her superhuman driving skill on things with an engine, but that was easily fixed by attaching one to the skateboard. Tony Hawk would have had to bow his head in defeat at the nonsense she was able to pull off.

The fact that she was an extremely curvy woman in a skintight catsuit certainly helped draw attention, as was her personality and parahuman status. Sherrel didn't really care about her civilian identity, so she was all for it.

It might seem like just a bit of harmless fun to those kids in the skate park. A chance to interact with a cape and ogle a beautiful woman. Kaiser, however, knew it for the insulting statement it was.

Look, my Tinker is out in the open, with no proper equipment, back up, or even a mask. What are you going to do about it? Obviously, it was a trap, but he couldn't just ignore it. His vaunted Empire was under siege, his image of strength tarnished, and he desperately needed an advantage. Being able to take the Black Hand's primary Tinker captive and either keep her for himself or use her to force some kind of concession was not an opportunity he could pass up.

XXXXX

April 28th, 2011.

It had taken a full day for Heartbreaker to even notice that the two kids he'd sent out hadn't come back. Indolent as he was, the man didn't have a great sense of time.

Taylor may have also helped that along by pulling and prodding at his thoughts. He had ranted and bitched about it. He might have taken it out on the kids or on her, but was instead trapped in a violent sexual fantasy and took a nap. Right now, Heartbreaker had once again completely forgotten about Nicholas and Guillaume, because he was being shown a livestream of Sherrel doing crazy tricks on her tinkertech skateboard.

That by itself might have been enough to attract Heartbreaker's attention, but clearly seeing Jean-Paul among the observers guaranteed that the video had his full focus.

"Where is that?" He demanded.

Taylor compliantly rattled off the address and offered to drive him there. He didn't wonder why a sophisticated woman of means knew the location of a skate park, assured of his hold over her.

She made a few extra turns to give the Empire time to arrive on the scene. Kaiser had sent Krieg, the Valkyrie Twins, and a dozen unpowered goons to collect Sherrel, which was just perfect. Heartbreaker had already been planning to 'collect' Fenja and Menja for his harem on his way out of town, because of course he did. In his mind, only he was man enough to have supermodel Nordic twins fawning over him.

Taylor didn't personally see what those two saw in Kaiser, but he was still leagues better than Heartbreaker. Kind of like comparing cow turds and horse turds, but still.

"Stay in the car." Heartbreaker ordered once they got there.

As soon as he swaggered out of sight, Taylor drove off. On the way back to the house, she swapped the fancy rich people car for a minibus and went to collect the kids. They would be living in new accommodations from now on.

Back at the skate park, her Psyker body was just waiting to come into the scene.

The Empire goons had surrounded the place, then Krieg and the Valkyrie twins had gone in to confront Sherrel and demand that she come with them. Alec was just another teenage boy in the crowd, recognizable only to his family.

Sherrel had only been trading banter with Krieg for a minute, still managing to insult him and insinuate that Kaiser wanted her for her body rather than her Tinkering, before Heartbreaker made his dramatic entrance.

"I'm afraid she'll be coming with me, as will those other two fine ladies and my wayward son." Heartbreaker declared, glaring at Alec.

Taylor could feel the waves of his power reaching out. Fenja and Menja instantly had their emotions rewritten with adoration of him. Alec was numb to it and now shielded by her own psychic protection. Sherrel was also hers and wouldn't be swayed so easily.

The real surprise was Krieg. Taylor had long ago noticed that his mind was unusually rigid and resilient, but now she could see him actually managing to partially resist Heartbreaker's power. His emotions were affected as normal, but he had apparently been conditioned to think and act in a certain way no matter how he felt. More of Gesellschaft's doing? His mind didn't feel as brutalized as Night and Fog's, but he could have consented to whatever procedures they had.

Huh, go figure. He was so racist that even a powerful Master couldn't change him. That would be impressive if he was dedicated to something less stupid. As someone who had devoured the souls of multiple people who all believed that their subset of Asian was the best, she had a unique insight into exactly how petty and small-minded that kind of thinking was.

Taylor stepped out of hiding, appearing at the top of the largest ramp with a click of her heel that echoed in everyone's ears like a gong.

"Now what do we have here?" She said ominously, flaring her presence in the Empyrean.

"Hey, Boss!" Sherrel and Alec waved.

Heartbreaker did as he always did and threw his power at her, demanding that she worship him. It hadn't worked before and it didn't work now.

Taylor made a yanking gesture and pulled him up to her, holding him up right in the air over the edge of the ramp. It was reminiscent of the Saruman and Gandalf scene atop Orthanc in the Lord of the Rings movie from Aleph.

Fenja and Menja cried out as the man they suddenly loved was yoinked away. Krieg controlled himself better and the unpowered goons had already been mastered into feeling mortal terror and running away. The kids using the skate park had left long before then.

"First you do not ask for permission to enter my city, then you fail to immediately present yourself to me, and now you attack me without provocation?" She listed out menacingly. "Clearly, you need a lesson in manners."

Saying that, she conjured up a psychic mass of pure pain, a sensation she was intimately familiar with, and hurled it at him.

"STOP!" Fenja and Menja yelled over Heartbreaker's agonized shrieking, going giant and leveling their weapons at her.

"Fenja, Menja, stand down!" Krieg barked. "Our mission is not to save him."

Huh, he'd dropped that cringe-inducing German accent. Maybe being mastered was an improvement for him?

The Valkyrie Twins ignored him completely, "Let him go!"

"Are you sure?" Taylor asked casually, stopping the torture. "If I let him go now, he's probably going to crack his skull open on the asphalt. Are you pleading that I give him a quick death?"

"Ifffff, you killll meeeee, hundreds of… people willl…. avenge meee." Heartbreaker managed to gasped and hiss out, soaked in sweat and teeth chattering. His pants were wet from where he'd lost control of his bowels. The fear wafting off him was even more pungent.

"Yes, your grand contingency in case the PRT or the Guild ever worked up the balls to kill you." Taylor drawled. "I wonder, what will your thralls do if they see you being tortured and begging for mercy? Will they reveal themselves if you ask them to do it in exchange for a quick death?"

Oni Lee was already present with the very expensive camera. Actually, Uber and Leet's Snitch was there as well. Those two idiots must have seen Sherrel doing tricks and thought to have a Tony Hawk's Pro Skater episode. That would have been less stupid than most of what they did.

Heartbreaker's eyes went wide and a few extra drops of piss trickled from his crotch. He was a weak man under all that unearned arrogance. It wouldn't take much to break him. In fact, he was already breaking.

"Don't!" Fenja and Menja cried out again, shrinking and falling to their knees. "Please!"

"That's going to get old fast." Taylor said in irritation. "Remove your brainwashing from them."

"I can't, that's not how my power works!" Heartbreaker babbled urgently.

"Then just make them view you as the most worthless piece of shit on the face of the earth. That should be close enough to the original. And you'd better put your back into it, I'll know if you don't."

His face tightened at the order, the ugly psychic wound that all naturally triggered parahumans had flaring. But the fear was stronger than his teenage indignation at being laughed at by the popular girls in high school. His power washed over the Valkyrie Twins again, rewriting their emotions a second time.

The bright and utterly fake love they felt for him turned into the blackest hatred Taylor had ever seen. It felt far more natural, because their souls hadn't had time to change yet from the heavy-handed alterations to their hormones and brain chemistry. It was more natural, because they suddenly realized the full weight of what had been done to them, and what would have become of them if she hadn't interrupted the proceedings.

Fenja and Menja jumped to their feet, clutching their weapons with white-knuckled grips. What could be seen of their faces was red with fury and they would clearly like nothing better than to tear Heartbreaker to pieces right then and there. Only the fact that he could just use his power on them again was stopping them.

"Much better." Taylor said.

It had always been part of the plan to have Heartbreaker brainwash a few Empire capes just to cause chaos in the ranks. She wouldn't have allowed anything to actually come of it, because none of the female capes in their gang deserved to become pets to a serial rapist, but their emotions would still be frazzled from the close shave. Just because Fenja and Menja now hated Heartbreaker didn't mean that they still felt the same for Kaiser as they did before.

"I'll leave." Heartbreaker spoke up, not doing a very good job of hiding his terror. "You'll never see me in Brockton Bay again. I won't even cross the border. You can keep my son if you want him."

"Leave?" Taylor echoed, putting maximum menace into her tone. "What makes you think you are getting out of here alive?"

"Yeah, Dad, why would we let you go?" Alec grinned. "Hey, Boss Lady, we should cut his nuts off and pickle them. They'll be a collector's item!"

"I could have a minion bring up one of my cars. We could roadhaul him in circles around the city until there's nothing left of him but a leg." Sherrel got in on it with the suggestions.

"We should pull his arms and legs off." Fenja said darkly, glaring at the increasingly more terrified Heartbreaker.

"Roast him over an open fire." Menja had her own suggestion. "We can get Othala to give him regeneration so it lasts longer."

"Stop, I can only get so erect!" Alec cried, comically clutching his crotch.

"Jean-Paul, please don't let them do this. I'm your father!" Heartbreaker pleaded.

"Wow, he really went there." Sherrel said, amazed.

"Yeah, he's got the spine of a wet fart." Alec chuckled. "Watch this. Hey, Dad, squeal like a pig and I'll think about putting in a good word for you with the boss lady."

Heartbreaker sweated profusely, looking between his son and her. Taylor stared at him impassively and he cracked in seconds, starting to make pig noises.

Sherrel burst into hysterical laughter. "Holy shit, that's amazing! Do a cow!"

Taylor once again offered no sign of what she felt about this, just looming ominously and holding the Canadian Master in the air. She wasn't even psychically pressuring him, but his will was already bending.

"I could be useful to you!" Heartbreaker pleaded, pride making him look for an escape to being toyed with and humiliated. "I could make this city completely yours in a matter of days."

"This city is already mine." Taylor said, slowly manifesting psychic chains.

It was the same principle as the tentacles she used for fun, but these chains glowed an ominous black-purple and had vicious spikes along their length. And they were forged of pain.

Heartbreaker stared at them in terror and tried to wiggle away, but they snaked around him and squeezed, making him howl in agony as the Chains of Torment attacked his soul.

Taylor pulled them away after a few seconds, giving the man a moment to recover. Once he was down to merely shaking like a leaf in the wind instead of trying to curl into fetal position, she explained to him the facts of life.

"Nobody will help you. Nobody will argue on your behalf. Unlike the heroes, I have no restraint on my actions. You will be tortured for the entire world to see until you command your thralls to surrender to their local authorities, and then you will be tortured for another week just to be sure. For every disaster and death caused by any of your thralls, your execution will be put off for another week. You will not die until I allow it."

Heartbreaker was shaking now, his eyes rolling madly in his sockets. He had already cracked.

"Okay! I'll tell them all to give themselves up!" He babbled. "Please don't hurt me anymore."

"What did I tell you, wet fart." Alec chimed in, breaking the heavy atmosphere.

Taylor wasn't sure if she should be disappointed or relieved. Torturing Heartbreaker, was releasing so many delicious and strong emotions into the Empyrean. It was a feast that she was enjoying tremendously, but she knew that she shouldn't. If there was a more clear cut case of what Father Douglas had warned her to be wary of in regards to her powers, she couldn't think of it.

XXXXX

April 29th, 2011.

Brockton Bay now had the dubious honor of hosting the first ever villain torture livestream. It had a chat where people could make suggestions, which they were doing with enthusiasm. Some had asked for where they could make donations, but Psyker had been canny enough to not take the easy money.

There had been a furious debate about trying to shut this down, but the final decision had been not to. The Black Hand was hosting their own streaming website on their own server, which made the practicalities difficult, but what had truly tipped things over was the fact that it was working.

The police, PRT, and Guild were swamped with calls from hundreds of mastered victims, all of them desperately begging them to do something, or at least confirm that they had given themselves up so that Psyker would stop torturing Heartbreaker and give him the merciful death she promised.

They were probably the most well behaved and cooperative group of people that law enforcement had ever had to deal with. The very love and adoration that had been forced on them was now being used as a lever to neutralize the threat they had posed.

Emily Piggot was not at all happy about this. Their own protocols prevented them from extracting a Master as powerful as Heartbreaker even though they knew where he was. And Psyker damn well knew it. She was using their own procedures to co-opt them into being tacit accessories to a public display of power and cruelty. The PRT director also hadn't missed the fact that the teenage supervillain was using this as a way to assert her dominance over the city, framing it as Heartbreaker trespassing on her territory without asking for permission to enter it. And all of this on the heels of maneuvering them to cooperate with her against the Empire.

The only silver lining, such as it was, was the fact that nobody was feeling any sympathy for Heartbreaker. The man had made a career out of being the most contemptible kind of scum and now the world was gleeful at the chance to hear him squealing in pain and begging for death. Oh, there were people saying that torturing a man and livestreaming it was evil, but only in a general sense. Only a few tried to say this was too much even for Heartbreaker, but they were quickly shouted into oblivion.

The PRT would probably get booed out of the city even if they could raid the place and take Heartbreaker into custody.

Emily was afraid that this would attract all sorts of violent psychopaths to the city. Someone like Jack Slash and the Slaughterhouse 9 were certain to have their interest piqued, and they'd been keeping awfully quiet for a while now.

There were others as well. The unstable Butcher might very well take Psyker's declaration of ownership over Brockton Bay as a challenge to return to their old stomping ground.

To say nothing of how the Empire would react to this.

She really hoped that Miss Militia would be able to get something out of Psyker, something that they could work with and act on.

XXXXX

This time, there was no excessive back up with her. Hannah walked up to the Hebert residence alone, with only a tiny tinkertech camera hidden as a button in her shirt. It was a slight risk, but every analysis agreed that Taylor Hebert was not likely to initiate violence. Coming to that conclusion had taken entirely too long in her opinion.

"Hannah, good to see you again. Come in." She was greeted at the door like an old friend.

"Ms. Hebert." Hannah nodded, making a conscious effort to relax. Or at least look less tense.

"Please, call me Taylor." The teenager requested, leading the way inside. "It's only fair since I'm already calling you by your first name."

Yes, without being invited to do so. Presumption papered over with politeness.

"Very well." Hannah agreed, deciding not to make an issue of it. There were much bigger concerns at hand.

"Make yourself comfortable while I go get the tea."

It grated against her instincts to sit down while nominally in enemy territory, but she ignored that and did it anyway. This wasn't going to be a physical confrontation, which was honestly a little out of Hannah's wheelhouse, and she had volunteered for it. There was at least some kind of minimal rapport between them, and that might be enough to get something from the teen villain.

Taylor returned with a tray that had a teapot and two cups on it, as well as honey, sugar, and milk.

"I had this blend imported from India in my quest to get my dad to stop drinking coffee. No success so far, so I'm hoping that at least someone will appreciate a good cup of tea." The young villain explained, setting the tray down on the coffee table between them and pouring the tea.

"That must have been expensive with global trade in its current state." Hannah commented.

"Oh, it was." Taylor nodded, picking up her teacup and holding it in a way that had to be scalding her fingers. "I'm hoping to get started on cleaning up the Boat Graveyard soon. With everything going on, I haven't been able to spare Sherrel's attention for the creation of a tinkertech salvage boat, but things will hopefully settle down soon."

She wasn't even trying to hide the vehicle Tinker's identity. Not that the PRT hadn't already known it, but still. Sherrel Bailey hadn't been any kind of priority when she was with the Merchants, certainly not worth the backlash of going after her in civvies. Nowadays, her threat rating was considerably higher, although her actual behavior was much more restrained.

"Is clearing the Boat Graveyard important to you?" Hannah asked.

"Very important." Taylor nodded seriously. "A port city with a blocked port is a disaster, and something that should have been taken care of a long time ago. I'm frankly a little baffled as to why Kaiser didn't do it. The Empire has a combination of powers that would have facilitated it. Even if he didn't care about the increased potential for smuggling operations, it would have netted him a lot of good publicity."

"It would have risked provoking a confrontation with Lung and the Protectorate." Hannah pointed out.

"Perhaps, but that would only have been to his benefit. He could have criticized you for stopping him from doing a public service."

Which was no doubt what the Black Hand would do if the Protectorate tried to stop them. Hannah had to wonder if the conversation had been steered in this direction deliberately, or if Taylor had simply seen an opportunity and taken it.

Was it always her intention to warn them about her project in this manner, or would she have passed on the word some other way if Hannah hadn't come here?

This felt like another one of Psyker's PR traps. If the Protectorate did nothing, they would be called useless. If they tried to stop the Black Hand, they would be jeered at as mindless defenders of the status quo, no matter how bad the status quo was. And if they could by some miracle get permission to actually help with the clean up, they would be cooperating with villains.

The only way out was to clean up the bay before the Black Hand did it… which might be Psyker's plan in the first place, to manipulate them into doing something she wanted done without having to expend any effort of her own.

Thinkers could make people paranoid. Hannah was glad that it wasn't her decision to react to this information.

"He must not have thought of it, or maybe he thinks that it hurts his opposition worse than him." She said, mostly just for the purpose of giving a response.

"Probably." Taylor agreed, sipping her still scalding hot tea.

The Black Hand was changing the battlefield between heroes and villains, that much was clear and obvious. Instead of fights on the streets, it was turning into a war of reputation and image. You would think that the heroes would have the upper hand in this kind of fight, given the control they had over the media, but it wasn't as much of an advantage as it should have been. Psyker wasn't trying to be a hero to the people, she was trying to be an honorable criminal and the people she was appealing to were already distrustful of the government.

Hannah had never been particularly good at smalltalk and didn't know how to organically steer things in the direction she wanted, so she decided to risk being blunt. "Is torturing Heartbreaker part of your plan to clean up the city?"

"Yes, actually." Taylor smiled. It was the proud smile of someone that knew they were doing the right thing. "I needed an acceptable target to showcase that I'm not afraid to get some blood on my hands. Everyone hates Heartbreaker, and your waffling on what to do with him gave me all the justification I needed."

If they had a viable way of neutralizing the damage all of Heartbreaker's hidden thralls would cause in the event of his death, someone would have long since put a sniper round through his head. The man could be slippery, but he wasn't that slippery. Brutal, prolonged torture as a method of forcing said thralls to give themselves up had never been an option. Once again, Psyker had found a way to turn an enemy's strength into weakness.

"And it doesn't bother you to torture a man?" Hannah asked.

"There's no need to fish for hints about my mental state, Hannah, clumsy as you're being about it." Taylor finished her tea. "By the standards of normal humanity, I am quite insane and fully aware of it."

That left Hannah stunned, and her reply was less cautious then it would have been otherwise. "If you know that you're not mentally sound, then why not give yourself up and let us help you? The Wards have an excellent psychiatric program."

Taylor snorted. "Now you're just being disingenuous. That ridiculous policy of rotating therapists does more harm than good. Besides, me being insane by the standards of normal humanity simply means that your understanding of the human mind is lacking. History is replete with figures who were thought insane because they understood too much. Let you help me? I am not the one who needs help. The only way I would join the Protectorate is if you made me the boss of both it and the PRT."

The sheer arrogance of it was staggering. "That would never happen."

"I know, hence me being a villain. Too bad, really. The things I could have done with the PRT's resources… " Taylor said with a very deliberate covetous tone. "Ah well, creating a criminal shadow empire will take longer, but the end result will be the same."

"We'll stop you." Hannah said defiantly. If the girl insisted on being a villain, then she would be brought in and sent to prison.

Taylor gave her a look of amused pity. "Silly hero, I've already won. The only options you have left is to concede defeat or petulantly flip the board, and you can't do the second without tanking your reputation."

Hanna really didn't like the sound of that. "Would that have anything to do with how you managed to be both at school and at the confrontation with the Empire the other day?"

"What the eyes see, the mind believes." Taylor smirked, taking another sip of her tea.

As she was considering how to ask what that was supposed to mean, the front door rattled.

"Taylor, are you home?" Danny Hebert called as he entered the house.

"Over here, Dad." Taylor called back. "We have a guest."

"Oh?" He said curiously, looking at her and obviously wondering who she was.

"This is Hannah, she's a PRT agent." Taylor revealed. "Here to talk to me about my dastardly villain ways."

Danny Hebert wasn't supposed to be home yet, but Taylor didn't look at all surprised.

"Hello." Hannah said, hiding her discomfort with this turn of events.

"Hi." He said back neutrally, turning to his daughter. "Is this about the Heartbreaker thing?"

"Among others." Taylor nodded. "By the way, you're now a grandfather."

Danny Hebert crashed into a doorframe and Hannah twitched violently enough to spill some of her tea.

"What?!" The elder Hebert squawked in shock.

"Heartbreaker brought all his kids with him because he was paranoid that another one might try to run away." Taylor began explaining calmly, pouring herself another cup of tea. "They're terribly unsocialized and dangerous to be around, so I've adopted them. Well, except Regent. He'd take entirely too much enjoyment out of calling me mommy."

Ah. The PRT had been wondering what had happened to Heartbreaker's children. Hannah had been supposed to ask about that as well.

"You're fifteen!" Mr. Hebert yelled, then paused for a moment as he seemed to realize something. "Are you having sex?!"

"Yes." Taylor acknowledged, just staring at him.

The man balked at the simple reply and had to visibly restrain himself from shouting. "Taylor, you're still a child yourself. You can't adopt a bunch of kids."

"The legal documentation I forged says otherwise."

She wasn't even trying to pretend that any of this was legal. And the worst part was that Hannah suspected she would be getting away with it. Not like CPS could come to take a gaggle of cape children away from a villain. And if the PRT was capable of acting so blatantly, they would have already done so for other reasons.

Psyker was essentially playing chicken with the PRT and Protectorate. They could bring in enough force from other departments to root her out, but would it be worth the price? So far the Chief Director had told Piggot that the answer was no, because the Black Hand was a very low harm villain organization. Despite their rapidly increasing power, they were not causing mass casualties or collateral damage, which was keeping them lower on the national priority list than they honestly should be.

"Taylor, taking care of a child is a lot of work." Mr. Hebert tried a different tack. "And that's just one. How many would this be?"

"Fourteen." Taylor replied.

That was another fourteen potential capes added to the Black Hand. With a single stroke, their roster had nearly doubled. And though their powers were not well known, those were likely to all be Masters and Thinkers. Director Piggot was going to have a fit.

"Fourteen!?" Danny Hebert exclaimed.

"Heartbreaker raped a lot of women." Taylor said, giving Hannah a pointed look.

It was a look that questioned why he had been allowed to live for so long. The Protectorate cape didn't react. Heartbreaker had never even been in her area of responsibility.

Many people raged at them that they should have killed the Canadian Master when he was first starting out, as if it was that easy. The PRT and Protectorate had barely been getting started then, and they hadn't heard of Heartbreaker until he was already too big of a problem to easily deal with. It wasn't like today, with the internet and cameras everywhere.

"Yeah, I heard." Danny scowled in obvious disgust, then took a deep breath. "Do you need any help with them?"

"They could do with a father figure that isn't a piece of shit." Taylor agreed, showing no surprise at the offer.

"Mr. Hebert, that's dangerous." Hannah tried to warn.

He let out a hollow chuckle. "My daughter is already a supervillain with plans to take over the world for its own good."

"Go big or go home." Taylor nodded sagely.

"What do I have to lose?" He finished fatalistically.

She was not going to be able to talk him out of it, and there was honestly nothing to gain from continuing this line of dialogue.

"Take over the world, huh?" She said leadingly.

"None of the people currently pretending to be in charge are doing a good enough job for my liking. Nor are the people who are actually in charge." Taylor replied.

"What do you mean by that?" Hannah asked, confused and a little bit alarmed.

But Taylor just smirked and sipped her tea. "You wanted to know about Emma?"

Hannah twitched. Yes, she had wanted to ask about the shift in her relationship to Emma Barnes, but how did Taylor know about that?

Forcing down her unease, she replied. "We've noticed that your interaction with her is less adversarial these days."

Their observer in Winslow had initially reported that Taylor was quite hostile to her former friend and bully in school. That was as expected, but now they were suddenly best friends again.

"Strange that Alan Barnes hasn't talked to you." Taylor hummed. "He was always one to use the law to get what he wanted."

"What does Alan have to do with anything?" Danny Hebert asked angrily.

"The Barneses came here around a week ago while you were at work. They wanted me to release Emma from my dastardly clutches. They still refuse to acknowledge that their daughter was broken and poorly pieced back together."

That sounded vaguely ominous. "What do you mean?"

"When we were children, we would often play at being heroes. I'd tie a towel around my neck and pretend to be Alexandria. Emma preferred to play the damsel in distress, though. She liked getting rescued. My arms got quite a workout trying to lug her around in a princess carry. As you well know, she got to experience what it was like to be a damsel in distress for real."

"We do." Hannah nodded. Shadow Stalker saving Emma and Alan Barnes from the ABB thugs had been a major point in favor of giving her a probationary Wards agreement despite her psychological profile.

"Well, it wasn't as much fun as playing pretend, and Shadow Stalker wasn't much of a savior. Emma was always a fragile soul, and trauma left her very suggestible to Sophia's poison. I tried to fix her after I found out the full story, but the combination of guilt and a Cinderella complex has left Emma a bit… fixated on me. Her parents finally noticed and thought that confronting me about it would be a good idea."

Hannah hid a wince. Civilians confronting villains, even if they knew each other… it never ended well.

"When was this?" Mr. Hebert demanded, poking his head out of the kitchen.

"That son of a bitch has some nerve." The elder Hebert seethed.

"It did backfire on him. Emma lives with me now."

"Lives with you where?" Hannah jumped in, because it was obviously not here at the Hebert residence.

Taylor grinned. "You don't think I'll actually tell you that, do you?"

"Taylor, why would you even want that little traitor living with you?" Her father demanded.

"Every successful villain needs a beautiful girl obsessing over them. I'm collecting tropes." She joked.

"But Emma? After what she did to you?" He insisted.

"I've already punished her to my satisfaction for that. She's been well behaved and respectful since then."

There was a rather chilling implication in there.

"Is that how you keep your gang under control?" Hannah fished.

"I use many methods to control my gang. No single approach works for everyone." Taylor answered. "Now, I think it's time for you to go back and report on your findings. I gave you enough intel to keep you busy analyzing while I continue taking over the city."

It was true that the PRT liked to thoroughly go over every scrap of information before committing to a course of action. Going in rashly had backfired more than once in the past. Director Piggot had personal experience with it in Ellisburg.

"You can't really believe you'll succeed." Hannah said as she stood up, unwilling to let that statement got unchallenged.

"I'm sure you've already asked yourselves what I'm hiding if I'm willing to tell you this much." Taylor smirked over her second cup of tea. "It's a doozy."

XXXXX

Meanwhile, at the Dallon house…

New Wave meetings could happen at either the Pelham or Dallon house, depending on the circumstances. This time, Sarah Pelham – or Lady Photon to use her cape name – had wanted to get a look at the situation in her sister's family, so she had argued to hold it at the Dallons.

The situation was worse than she'd feared.

"Amy, put that away!" Carol barked angrily.

The healer didn't even look up from her phone, from which muted screams of pain were coming. Instead, she just snorted. "Why? It's not like I'm part of the discussion."

"You're watching a man get tortured!"

"I'm watching Heartbreaker get tortured. It doesn't count."

"Yes it does!"

A particularly loud scream from the phone, despite the low volume, made everyone cringe. Everyone except Amy.

"Amy, please put the phone away." Sarah requested.

"Again, why?" The brunette asked, but did at least mute the sound entirely. "You all are talking about launching an attack on the Black Hand. The only thing I'll do is put you back together after you get your asses kicked."

"Wow, no faith in your family at all?" Crystal joked.

"There's only six of you, seven if Mark works up the willpower to get off the couch, and Psyker will probably be expecting you."

"Why would she be expecting us?" Neil asked, confused. "Aside from that one encounter with Vicky, we've never fought the Black Hand before."

Which was telling in and of itself. The new gang in town was a much smoother operator than the Empire 88, never mind the ABB and Merchants that they had replaced.

"She told Kaiser that she had over six thousand plans for dealing with him." Amy said pointedly. "You think she doesn't have plans for everyone else?"

That was a fair point. Still, an unusual amount of faith in a villain.

"She had to be exaggerating." Vicky spoke up. "Who would even make that many plans?"

"Thinkers." Amy shot back wrily. "Just because your brain starts cooking if you try to think beyond 'Vicky smash!' doesn't mean everyone else's does, too."

"Hey!" Vicky protested indignantly, pouting. Crystal and Eric laughed at her.

"So, what? You want us to just not do anything?! Let them take over?" Carol demanded heatedly.

"Honestly? Yes."

Silence. Nobody could believe that Amy had just said that.

"Panacea, please explain." Sarah said calmly before Carol could explode.

"Do you know how many people hurt by the Black Hand I've had to fix since they became a thing? Not a single fucking one. If we push them out or send them to prison, either the Empire is going to expand or some new villain is going to come to town. Psyker isn't flooding the streets with drugs, running sex rings, murdering minorities, or even extorting money from businesses. Rape statistics have cratered and it's actually safe to walk the streets in their part of town at night. This is as good as it's ever going to get, and you want to fuck it up."

"I knew this was going to happen." Carol seethed. "As soon as you learned about Marquis you started becoming like him."

Sarah suddenly remembered that Marquis had once made a similar quip about how the heroes would never be able to get rid of villains, and how he had done more to keep the streets safe than them. It was a bit of a stretch to connect it to what Amy said just now, though.

"This has nothing to do with my father, you stupid cunt." Amy sneered right back. "Give me one example of the heroes managing to permanently clean a place of villains. Just one! You can't, because either new ones move in immediately or they wait for the heroes to be transferred somewhere else. Fucking Eidolon can't keep Houston free of villains. But this isn't even about heroes fighting villains, is it? This is about you and your trust issues that Psyker is inadvertently poking at."

"Alright, that's enough!" Sarah shouted before things could escalate any further. Carol's face was changing colors at an alarming rate and she looked ready to commit murder.

Amy just scoffed and crossed her arms. A tense silence choked the room.

"Amy, you know that we can't just let villains do whatever they want." Sarah ventured.

"There are villains and then there are villains." The healer countered. "I'm not saying we should smile and wave if the Slaughterhouse 9 passes by, but I'd rather have Psyker controlling the criminal underworld than Kaiser, Lung, Accord, or whoever else would step into the vacuum removing her would leave."

"What makes her so different?" Sarah pushed.

"Aside from everything I listed out earlier?" Amy asked sarcastically.

"Ames has a connection with them." Victoria blurted out.

"Vicky!" Amy growled.

"Sorry, Ames, but this is really getting out of hand." The blonde Dallon said apologetically. "Her girlfriend, Miki, works in one of their business. She hears things and shares it with Amy."

"I knew she was bad news!" Carol said triumphantly.

"Shut up, Carol!" Amy snarled.

"Could you please explain, Amy?" Sarah asked calmly, giving Carol a look.

The healer looked mulish for a moment before sighing and beginning to talk. "Miki works in a massage parlor that the Black Hand took over from the ABB and cleaned up. She also lives in that part of town. As far as she and a lot of other people living there are concerned, things are a lot better since Psyker took over. If you guys try to pick a fight with the Black Hand, they won't thank you for it."

"The people living in Marquis' territory didn't thank us either. They'll get over it." Carol said coldly.

"Wow, that's so heroic!" Amy gushed sarcastically. "But where was all this energy when Lung was around? When was the last time you got so worked up over the Empire? Or do you only care when a villain is trying to be trustworthy and reliable?"

"VILLAINS CAN'T BE TRUSTED!" Carol roared, a plasma blade manifesting in her hands.

"CAROL!" Sarah shouted, ready to throw up a shield.

For several seconds, there was no sound except heavy breathing and the crackle of plasma as her wild-eyed sister slowly realized what she was doing.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Amy said quietly. "I would have understood if you put my father in the Birdcage because he was a multiple murderer, but you did it because he was making you uncomfortable. And then I was making you uncomfortable, because I was his daughter. Go fuck yourself, Carol, you self-absorbed bitch. And fuck New Wave, too. I quit."

Saying that, she stood up and stomped off to her room. Vicky and her own kids followed behind in a mild panic, either to escape the uncomfortable atmosphere or talk her down.

Sarah wasn't sure if that was going to be possible, not after seeing how deep the rift between mother and adopted daughter had become. Or perhaps how deep it had always been. Not after seeing Mark just sit there and watch it all happen as if it was a particularly boring bit of TV drama.

Not after seeing the cornered look on her sister's face, the sweat beading on her forehead and the almost panic in her eyes. Sarah had really thought that Carol had dealt with what had happened to them better than this.

This meeting was supposed to be about the Heartbreaker situation and what, if anything, New Wave was going to do about it. Well, now they weren't in any shape to do much of anything.

XXXXX

Amy furiously threw things into her bag, mostly things with sentimental value. Taylor was rich and could take her to buy everything else. There wasn't actually that much, just a few pictures she'd taken with Vicky and the occasional gift from her. There was little to nothing from either Mark or Carol.

"Ames, are you sure about this?" Vicky asked with a slightly panicky edge.

"Yes, I'm fucking sure!" She growled, still angry. Why the hell had she even stuck around for this long?

Right, because Taylor told her to make sure she wanted to cut ties before doing it. The manipulative bitch probably knew exactly what would happen, but hadn't wanted her to have any doubts.

Amy felt a familiar mental tickle like an itch in her brain. The psychic had no doubt sensed her anger.

'Need an extraction?'

The question was not a question, but an impression, a certainty of knowledge. Just like she knew where to find water if she was thirsty, she knew that Taylor could come get her.

'Yes. And stay the fuck out of my head!' She yelled back mentally.

The mental presence faded with a rush of amusement. Amy felt like she should be upset about having tabs kept on her, but couldn't really muster the feeling. She'd ask Taylor about it later anyway.

"Why don't we calm down and think things through a bit more?" Crystal suggested hesitantly.

"I've been thinking about this for years already." Amy snapped at her. "I hate working in the hospital, I hate being an unmasked cape, and I hate having to put up with Carol's hypocritical bullshit! I am done!"

Fuck, but that felt liberating to say. She'd fantasized about doing it often enough. Usually paired with flying off into the sunset with Vicky to live out a pseudo-incestuous happily ever after, preferably on a nude beach while sipping drinks out of coconuts.

It was a daydream, it didn't have to be fucking realistic!

"But you are an unmasked cape." Eric pointed out, just as hesitant as his older sister. "You know the gangs won't leave you alone. Are you going to join the Wards or something?"

"Maybe I'll join the Black Hand and go villain." Amy said mockingly.

"Ames!" Vicky squawked. "You can't go villain just to spite Mom!"

She wasn't. She was going to join the Black Hand because Taylor's advice and help had let her finally relax and stop feeling like she was on a downward spiral. She was going to go villain because she didn't need to be called a hero to be a good person. She was going to go villain because she was done jumping through hoops to reassure a neurotic bitch of an adopted mother and a paranoid, corrupt government that she wasn't going to set off a zombie apocalypse.

She was going to go villain because Carol was going to snitch on her to the PRT as soon as she recovered from the shock.

"Whatever, I'll figure something out. Right now I just need to get out of here." She said instead, stomping back down with her mostly empty bag.

The adults abruptly stopped talking when she made it back down, all of them looking at her like she was either a scared or rabid animal. It made her skin crawl.

"Amy, where are you going?" Aunt Sarah sounded alarmed.

"Out of here." She responded curtly, making a long circle around the room to avoid getting near Carol.

"You're too young to be living on your own." Her adoptive mother said. She was unnervingly calm, and there was a dangerous inflection in her words. "If you leave without my permission, your little girlfriend will be charged with kidnapping."

"Is that really how you want to play this?" Amy asked, backing off into a corner so that she could see everyone.

"If I have to." Carol said. No, she wasn't Carol right now, she was Brandish.

Looking around at the awkward Sarah and Neil, the slightly attentive Mark, and the resolved Brandish, Amy had a feeling this wasn't going to end on a reasonable note.

"Miki would say it was worth it." She doubted that Taylor was super attached to that identity. And giving the finger to someone trying to use the law for their own ends was a favorite pastime of hers.

The look on Brandish's face spoke of impending violence.

"Amy, please be reasonable about this." Neil pleaded. "We can talk this out."

Taking a deep breath, she turned the germs in her mouth into an invisible sleeping gas. "You foisted me off on the wrong family ten years ago."

"You should be grateful we took you in at all!" Carol snapped. "We could have left you in the foster system."

Amy just stared at her dispassionately. There was no reason to say anything when she was just waiting for them to fall asleep. With every breath, more sleeping gas was filling the room.

The tense standoff seemed to drag on forever, but then Mark's head lolled. A couple of seconds later, Aunt Sarah swayed and collapsed the the floor. Carol was next, barely managing to slur out a surprised noise. Uncle Neil, with his huge body, took the longest, but not that long.

"Ames?!" Vicky asked from the top of the stairs. She and the Pelham siblings were still out of the soporific's range. "What did you do?!"

"Put them to sleep." Amy answered. "They'll wake up in an hour or so. The sleeping gas will dissipate in a few minutes."

"Since when can you do that?" Eric asked, bewildered.

"I'm a full biokinetic, I can do just about anything with biology." She admitted, again feeling that addicting sense of liberation. It also gave her a thought.

Walking over to Mark, she put her finger to his head and took a look at his brain. His depression was such an easy thing to fix in the end, just a chemical imbalance, and Taylor had encouraged her to play around with her brain. She was confident now that she wouldn't screw anything up.

"What did you do to Dad?" Vicky asked, concerned, but still not really suspicious.

"Fixed his depression." Amy smiled. "He was a good dad at first, so it's the least I can do for him."

That it would probably aggravate Carol just added a bit of schadenfreude to it.

"Oh, that's cool." Vicky smiled awkwardly. "Can I come visit you?"

It was probably a bad idea to have Vicky anywhere near Taylor. There was no telling what the manipulative villain would maneuver her sister into.

"Sure."

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