Upon This Star (Worm Semi-SI CYOA-based)

[Swordchucks]

I was scattered. It wasn't that I wasn't conscious but that I was so conscious - so overloaded with a million different things - that I couldn't muster a coherent thought. It grew worse and worse, as I unraveled, lost in those sensations. Then it was dark and I knew nothing for a time.

Then there was… something. I pulled back together slowly.

"-to think, here, on this star-"

Words from somewhere else. More of my senses started to return, but they still seemed alien and useless.

"-than being forgotten."

The speaker… I had a vague impression of height and white hair and nothing more. I wanted to turn my head and get a better look at him, but I wasn't even sure I had a head.

"-gift. One I wish that I had-"

There was the sharp, almost impossibly loud sound of fingers snapping and I was instantly aware. It was like someone had spliced the movie of my mind so that in one frame I was in an insensate daze and in the next I was wide awake.

Of course, the world I became aware of was less than ideal. For one thing, I was naked. Completely. For another, I was laying on something rough, sharp, abrasive, and wet and it felt pretty cold.

I raised myself off the ground - my palms pushing against the painful roughness of concrete - to find that I was in a rancid puddle in what appeared to be an alleyway. It was getting dark, too.

"What the hell?" I mumbled to myself as I struggled to my feet. Vertigo hit me in a wave, and I fell back to my hands and knees, retching into the puddle of what I now realized was the runoff from the nearby dumpsters. Trash juice. Yuck.

Nothing came out except saliva and I managed to sort out the sensation of emptiness inside of me. I was starving.

That realization was secondary to the fact that I was naked, in an alleyway I didn't recognize, and freezing. Oh, and covered in trash juice.

I stood up again and fragmented memories started to come back to me.

Brockton Bay. My name was Taylor Hebert, and I lived in Brockton Bay.

More memories with a distinctly different feel collided with those. Something… another world. Something called 'Worm'. Most of the details were missing, but both sets of memories were clear on one thing.

There had been a moment of pain followed by a horrible, all-encompassing shredding sensation before everything became so impossibly intense and I plunged into darkness.

I came back together with the snap of someone's fingers. Here. Lost.

I hoped I was still in Brockton Bay for what was probably the first time in my life. As bad as the Bay was, it was at least somewhat familiar. Not this alleyway, of course, but in general.

I managed to get a grip on my swirling thoughts long enough to come up with an objective. Something to focus on.

Objective #1: Find some clothes. I could deal with the fact that I stank later. I could deal with the cold later, too, but without clothes… well, I was a teenage girl in the middle of a city with one of the highest crime rates in the country. Bad things might happen to me either way, but the odds seemed a lot higher if I was naked.

I managed to get back to my feet and stagger to the dumpster. It was either that or the soggy cardboard box resting against it, and I wasn't sure the box would hold together if I tried to wear it. How did you even wear a cardboard box, anyway? Like, poke holes through it for your arms and then shove your head through the other end?

Focus. I needed to focus.

The door beside the dumpster must have led to a restaurant of some sort because what greeted me when I opened the dumpster was the overwhelming stench of rotted meat.

I was back on the ground, retching up nothing within a few seconds.

"-some bitch," I heard and raised my head to see a couple of guys looking into the alleyway curiously. They were tall and white - maybe hispanic - wearing puffy winter coats. They looked warm. "Shit, she's naked."

The second figure laughed. "Damn, girl. You must know how to party. What did you take?"

I coughed and tried to get back up, one of my arms crossing over my chest - which felt distinctly weird, now that I was touching it - and the other going to preserve the rest of my modesty. What modesty could be salvaged while coated in trash juice, anyway.

"I'll scream," I warned, unable to keep the quiver out of my voice.

The first figure raised his hands up, palms toward me. "Fuck, man, we ain't going to do nothing to you. How the hell did you end up naked out here in the middle of January? You live around here?"

I took a deep breath. "Maybe." I didn't want to give them information if I didn't have to. They seemed - well, not exactly nice, but they weren't attacking me. "Where's here?"

"Twenty fifth, 'bout half way between Lord Street and-"

Whatever he was going to say was cut off by someone yelling harshly in a language I didn't quite recognize but felt the intent behind. A threat, question, and accusation all rolled into one. The fact that I understood it, though I couldn't speak the words, was an even more alien sensation than being naked in the cold.

"Ah, fuck, man," the second guy said and turned around. "We're just helping my cousin out. Someone gave her some laced shit and she ran out of the apartment and got lost."

I immediately felt grateful to the young men - maybe twenty years old - that I'd known all of two minutes.

The voice got closer and it had friends. There were three of them, all wearing the red and green that everyone in the Bay knew marked them as members of one of the largest gangs in town. They didn't have visible weapons, but gang colors were a weapon of their own. Even the cops would think twice about messing with them because once you kicked the ant hill, the ants were all over you.

"Uh, yeah, my cousin's just helping me out," I stammered, though the look I got from my 'cousin' said I probably shouldn't have said anything.

Five sets of eyes were on me and I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide. Unfortunately, the only hole I had available was the inside of a dumpster and that wasn't much of a hiding place.

"Damn, she's hot," the asian guy declared and I really wanted to be somewhere else. "We'll help her get home."

"That's my, uh, cousin," my almost-savior tried again, though I could tell he didn't want to really push it. He had no idea who I was, but the Asian guy leading the trio apparently did. Helping me out might have been the right thing to do, but it could get him killed, too.

"We'll take good care of her," he repeated and his hand went into his jacket a little. It was a completely unsubtle hint that he had a weapon hidden there.

The two guys glanced at me and each other then at the gangbangers. There was a choice there and I knew how they were going to go. In their place, I didn't know what I would have done, but I really couldn't blame them for the decision they made.

"Just… uh… get her home," one of them offered lamely and the two sidled around the trio as they made their way out of the alley, never taking their eyes off the three gang members. I watched them go with a bit of sadness and a growing sense that I needed to act.

While the two moved past, the gang members turned to watch them go, no doubt to ward against a surprise attack. Apparently, the naked, shivering girl wasn't much of a threat. I took the opportunity to scan my surroundings. Time seemed to slow down as I took in the crumbling brick work of the alleyway walls - the building to one side clearly newer than the other. At the end of the alley, there was a chain link fence with some boards shoved through it - something I had never understood but seen plenty of times. There was also a fire escape, but the ladder was up. I'd never reach that.

With a desperate plan in mind, I waited till the gang members were turned the other way and took off running toward the fence. I was halfway there before they realized I was moving and my adrenaline gave me wings. I leapt at the fence and must have hit it almost three feet up before scrambling up with more speed than I would have thought myself capable of. Then I was over and falling off the other side into a different alley which was mercifully deserted.

I landed and rolled, springing to my feet - somehow, and kept on running. I had no plan or destination just… I needed to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

By the time I heard the distinctive sound of the fence rattling behind me as someone else started to climb it, I had hit the mouth of the alleyway and had to make a choice.

I didn't actually want to be running through the street with my ass - and everything else - bare, but the only other option was to stop in a completely unknown part of town and try my luck with hiding. I wasn't really eager to do that since the other guys almost certainly knew this part of town better than I did.

I went left as I hit the street, very aware that while it was getting dark, it was far from actually dark. The street was unfamiliar, but that wasn't that odd. It was a bad part of town, but that didn't really narrow it down much. Under normal circumstances, I mostly stuck to the parts of town that I knew.

Even the presence of the ABB didn't help narrow it down too much because I'd heard that there was an ABB presence pretty much everywhere that there was a significant Asian population. With the various forces driving refugees - Leviathan in Japan, the CUI in China, Phi Pop in Thailand, and others - there were little pockets of them all over town any time the neighborhood was bad enough to be affordable.

The adrenaline that was letting me ignore the cold and my state of undress faded quickly as I hit the end of the block. The buildings on either side so far had been squat apartment buildings and a couple of stores that were dark inside with their windows boarded up.

At the corner, I took a sharp right toward where I saw the flickering neon of an 'open' sign. The cold was making any choice that involved 'going inside' much more tempting than it otherwise would have been.

The sign belonged to a convenience store with heavy bars over the window and I steeled myself as I stepped through the doors with the soft jingling of the bells hanging from the inside knob. A gust of warm air hit me and I almost fell over in relief.

The place was tiny and cramped, which meant that the guy behind the counter had a good view of everything I was too tired to hide.

"You okay?" he asked in what sounded like Chinese. I didn't understand the words, but the meaning was clear.

"There were some guys…" I said and trailed off. It was really enough of an explanation even if it wasn't a good one. "Can I use your phone?"

He stared at me and blinked owlishly as though he was struggling to process what I'd said. I felt annoyance well up within me. I might have been naked, but I knew exactly how ugly I was even when I wasn't coated in trash juice. Him getting that distracted was just proving out the worst kind of stereotypes about men.

"Yeah, I guess," he said in rough English and started to fumble with the receiver of a cordless phone that had probably been purchased in the eighties given its size. "Boss has long distance blocked, so don't even try it."

As I reached for the phone, I felt a tickle on the back of my neck and paused. I turned my head just in time to see the door of the shop get kicked open by a guy wearing a hoodie that was pulled all the way up and a shotgun in his hands. The door bounced off the shelves behind it with a cacophony of abused bells.

"Gimme the money!" His voice was high, hysterical, and slightly slurred. I could tell that his hands were shaking even from several feet away and I was afraid that he was going to shoot someone without even meaning to.

Time seemed to slow down again, but it just meant I had more time to dread being accidentally murdered by this guy while completely naked and covered in filth. The door finally closed itself with a soft jingle.

"I'll get it! I'll get it!" the guy behind the counter yelled with one of his hands up in the air and the other groping for the cash register.

Just then, the robber's eyes landed on me and I shrank back. "The fuck kind of store you runnin' here?" he asked. His gun wavered to the side, away from the two of us.

"Here, take the money!" the clerk shouted, drawing the guy's attention back off me. I silently thanked him for the distraction but then things went to shit all over again.

"Hey, you seen a naked bitch?" a voice asked in Chinese as the door opened again, still loud but somehow more gentle than the last time I had heard it. "The fuck you doing here?" The second part was added on in rough English as his eyes caught sight of the robber. "This store has insurance!"

The ABB goon's finger stabbed viciously at a small paper lantern hanging in the window. It had red and gold designs drawn on green paper and looked rather pretty for something that was apparently a gang sign.

The gun swept past me - causing another shiver to shoot down my spine - and toward the gang member. The clerk dove behind the counter and I started scrambling toward the open doorway to the back of the shop. I'd just cleared the threshold when there was an impossibly loud roar - gunfire in a small shop was much louder than television had led me to believe. Dust exploded around me and I didn't bother slowing down to figure out where the shot had gone.

There was a door there, and I burst through it into another alleyway. One way was the street, but that was where the gang members were. I went the other way as quickly as I could, away from the gunfire which didn't seem to be dying down at all.

The alleyway I was running down split as another alley crossed it and I went right. I was thoroughly lost, but it barely mattered by that point.

Half way down that alley, I found myself with a choice. Ahead was another street, though I really didn't know which one. To the side of the alley, there was one of those awning style basement windows that had been left open just a crack. The room beyond it was dark.

The street meant more running and maybe finding help. The basement offered a chance to hide and the way I felt - starving, freezing, and with the worst headache imaginable - maybe take a nap.

Running was probably the smart decision. I'd met three people that had been willing to help, even if all of their attempts had been interrupted. I would surely find more, even if approaching more strangers while naked was mortifying.

However… I really wanted to rest. Even for a few minutes. I just needed to close my eyes and collect my thoughts. It'd be dark soon and then I would at least be a little harder to see. Part of me knew it was a dumb idea, but I pushed it aside and crawled through the window.

There was a drop inside, maybe five feet, but I managed it without much trouble and pulled the window closed behind me.

Inside, I could barely make anything out but as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I realized it was a sort of bunk room with a couple of small bare mattresses on narrow metal frames and lockers at the feet of them and a couple of shelves bolted to the otherwise bare walls. I opened one of the footlockers and found the most wonderful thing imaginable - clothing. Well, a couple of items of clothing. There was a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. I pulled them as quickly as I could. They felt divine, even if I knew they were kind of ratty and much, much too large for me. There were no shoes, but I wasn't going to complain.

The shelves held several boxes and cans. The cans were full of something powdery - one smelled like coffee and the other vaguely like bread - but the real find was the box of individually wrapped bars. I opened and ate two before I even realized I was doing it.

With that much good luck on my side, I should have crawled back out the window and went looking for help, but the bed looked inviting. The room wasn't exactly warm, but it was much better than outside and I really just wanted to sit down for a minute.

I sat down and tried to get my breathing under control. I needed to collect my thoughts, though the headache was making that difficult.

Instead of managing that, I ended up falling asleep.

Spoiler: Notes

I've been spitting out parts of this for a few days in my drafts thread and went to edit the opening scene into something cleaner. They'll come over here in a trickle, probably.

 

[Swordchucks]

The creature was almost graceful as its countless legs danced about, weaving a magnificent golden pattern into the very fabric of reality. The intricate, precise movements were even more impressive when the scale was taken into account. The creature was the size of an entire world and the reality it was spinning was everything. I reached forward with my tiny hand to touch a strand of shimmering, golden material, but as I grew closer, I felt myself spiraling away.

I woke up. I still felt like dirt, but a better kind of dirt. Dirt that was no longer sitting on top of a septic tank, maybe, though I still stank.

I said a silent prayer of apology to whoever owned the little bunkroom with the food I had stolen and the bed that I'd just gotten filthy during my nap.

I could tell from the window that it was dark outside, but I could think more clearly, at least.

My name was Taylor Anne Hebert. I remembered someone shoving me and not much else after that. A feeling of tightness. A feeling of despair. Then that feeling of being shredded into a million little pieces followed by the all-encompassing sensory overload and the void I'd been in until I woke up in that alley.

I was also someone else. Someone whose name and face I couldn't recall, though I knew they were older. Someone that remembered things that were implausible, at best.

To that other person, my entire world was a work of fiction and one popular enough that people wrote fanfiction about it. That was… insane, actually. I was pretty sure there had been someone with that kind of delusion thrown into the Birdcage a few years ago after they killed a bunch of people. It had been on the news.

Some of the things they recalled matched up with what I knew, but some of them didn't. Like, they remembered the Endbringers, which were very real, but they also remembered some sort of golden god called Zion or Scion that flew around rescuing cats from trees and destroying nuclear weapons. We didn't have anything like that.

The pounding in my head was still there, but a little less than before. I still felt like I wanted to vomit everywhere and sleep for a month, but I was starting to get a better handle on things. Those other-memories said I should be able to control bugs - see through their senses and make them do things - and knowing that made it much easier to get a grasp on it. It wasn't enough to make it useful - I could make the lone cockroach hiding in the corner of the room come to me and dance around, but trying to 'see' through its senses nearly caused me to pass out again. My limit seemed to be getting a vague sense of the insects within a couple of small rooms and commanding the ones very close by and not much else.

It came down to information overload. The other-me in those other-memories had apparently spent a week in a psychiatric ward after getting her powers. Waking up naked in an alley was at best a lateral move from that, though it raised more questions than it gave answers. How, exactly, had I ended up there? I still had no idea.

I was startled out of my thoughts when the door to the room opened, spilling the blinding light of the hallway inside. When did the hallway light come on? I hadn't noticed, most likely because I had been trying to concentrate on the bugs.

I rolled off the bed and into a crouch in a fluid motion even as a voice cursed. "Fucker left the window open again," a deep voice grumbled before there was the sound of a couple of slaps followed by the click of a light switch.

"Shit, what are you doin' in here?" he asked as he caught sight of me. There really wasn't anywhere to hide in the small room.

"Some ABB guys were chasing me," I offered, doing my best not to panic. My luck with strangers had been very mixed all night. Hot and cold. I hoped this one was… whichever of those two was helpful and not the other kind. "I hid in here."

He took a long moment to look me over, and I did the same in return. He was tall and broad shouldered with a bald head. He was dressed in a jumpsuit with a little name tag sewn to it. It read 'Steven' in cursive loops of blue stitching. "You look like shit and those clothes don't fit you. Promise not to steal anything else and I'll show you where the shower is. Don't think I have any clothes that'll actually fit you, but there might be something better than that."

I relaxed a little. I'd apparently lucked out again. "I promise," I offered.

He gave me a nod and five minutes later, I was scrubbing myself with a harsh industrial soap in a little shower that either had boiling water or just-too-cold-to-be-comfortable water with nothing in between. I did my best to not think about what was growing between the cracks in the tile, too, but being at least a little clean was heavenly. There was, unfortunately, not a lot I could do for my hair and I doubted the bald guy had a brush.

"Those guys take your clothes, too?" I heard from outside the door. The guy - Steven - had let me have some privacy, but I could tell he wasn't really trusting me. Not that he should have, given the circumstances.

"Probably," I lied. I still had no idea what had happened to my clothes, but I doubted they were involved. "I just know I woke up naked in an alley with a bunch of guys looking at me."

There was a grunt from the other side of the door.

"You don't have a phone I can borrow, do you?" I asked hopefully as I shut the water off and used the ratty, stained towel to get as dry as possible before pulling the oversized Brockton Bay sweatshirt over my head. I didn't have pants, but the shirt hit me almost at my knees and made a stupid-looking kind of dress after I tied it off with a spare belt. Shoes were a bigger problem as my only real option was a pair of oversized flip-flops. Still, it was worlds better than being completely naked and barefoot.

"Nah, work rules won't let me have one."

I sighed, not entirely able to conceal my disappointment. I wanted to ask if there was a phone in the office or whatever, but I didn't want to push my luck.

"If you're done, I'll show you out. Through the door, this time," he joked.

That did get a little grin from me. He'd given me a ton of help, though I was still a long way from home.

"So, I got really lost when I was being chased. Where am I, exactly?"

He gave me an address and after a bit more questioning I knew where I was. I was a long way from home - at least two miles, in a straight line and longer the way I would have to go - but not so far that it was impossible to walk, even in terrible shoes.

"Thanks," I told him, genuinely meaning it.

"I like helping out our people when I can," he admitted and I tried not to think about what he meant by 'our people'. It gave me a bad feeling, but he was being nice. I could pretend everything was fine till I was outside, at least. "Come on."

I followed along obediently, already thinking about how I was going to find a way home. Or a way to call the police to get a way home. Those both sounded like good ideas for different reasons.

We walked through a couple of hallways which had a large number of doors off of them or were lined with slightly rusty metal cages holding back the shadows of machinery and bales of what looked like metal. There were a lot of padlocks on doors, and it all felt very much like the basement of a warehouse. Eventually, Steven led me up a staircase and through another door.

Suddenly, things were much louder. The staircase opened up to a big open space and my suspicion that we had been under a warehouse was confirmed. Around us, there were dozens of people milling around. I caught sight of a lot of shiny bald heads, questionable tattoos, and muscles. The bad feeling from before grew in my guts and that spot on the back of my neck started to tingle faintly.

"You don't want to get involved." Steven said and nudged me. I'd apparently stopped to stare at the crowd, none of which were really looking in my direction. "Way out's over here,"

"Whatcha got there, Steve?" another voice, just as deep as Steven's asked and I realized he'd come out of a door behind us while I had been focused on the crowd. He was tall - even taller than Steven and the other guys - and muscular. He would have kind of hot in a feral way if it weren't for all of the scars on his bare chest. And the Nazi tattoos. And the metal mask. Both sets of memories whispered at me that I needed to get the fuck out of there, immediately. Control over a handful - a literal handful - of bugs wasn't going to work against Hookwolf if he decided I needed to be cut to shreds, and I was pretty sure he was that kind of psychopath.

Fortunately, Steven came to my rescue again. "Fuckin' Jerry left the window in the flop room open again. Some slants were chasin' her and she ducked in there to hide. Fuckers stole her clothes, so I gave her a shirt and was gonna show her out."

Hookwolf nodded affably. "Fuckin' yellow assholes," he spat, and I had to use all of my willpower to keep from flinching. I was not going to chide him for his casual racism because I was not a moron. "Want me to get a couple of the guys to drive you home?" he asked, turning back to me. "Pretty white girl like you shouldn't be out alone this late in this part of town. Go one block the wrong way and it's crawling with squints."

"I, uh, I think I can manage. I just need to find a phone to call my dad." I didn't stammer. I was too composed for that. That was… not entirely true.

"We're having a meeting here in a bit so no one has a phone on them that you can use, but there's going to be a party after. If you want to stick around… you could be my guest. I'll show you a good time."

I shuffled my feet nervously. He wasn't old enough to be my dad, but he was definitely too old for me. Somehow, I didn't think he'd care if I said I was only fifteen. "I have to get home," I said, instead. I tried to sound like I wanted to stay a little, but I wasn't a great actress and I had no idea if it came across. Even if the idea of cozying up to a Nazi disgusted me on the inside, it didn't do to let him know that. "Dad's waiting and I'm really late."

He gave a slow nod. "Family is important," he agreed and turned back to Steven. "Get her out and make sure everything's locked up tight downstairs."

"Thank you," I answered almost without thinking. The idea of thanking an Empire goon, even if he was being nice to me at the moment, went against everything dad had drilled into me. I could still remember him telling me not to give them an inch, but I didn't think my current situation fit in with what he'd been talking about.

Just then, the tingle at the back of my neck got intense and my head snapped around to a section of the wall. "Get down," I half-yelled and threw myself bodily at Steven, knocking us both to the floor with a frantic surge of strength just as that part of the wall exploded inward in a billowing cloud of dust and brick.

//\\o//\\

Time lost all meaning for a few seconds as I struggled to form coherent thoughts again.

That explosion had definitely not helped my headache.

I was missing a shoe. That was the first thing that hit me, which was an odd thing to focus on, but I had been barefoot all night and it was fucking annoying.

I was also laying on top of the mass that was Steven and his bell had been rung even more thoroughly than mine.

I rolled off of him and into a crouch, bringing my legs up under me so I could see the wider warehouse. There was still a cloud of brick dust obscuring the rather large hole in the wall and the power had been cut leaving the room to be lit by the baleful red glow of emergency lighting and the strobing blue lights on the other side of the dust cloud. There was a lot of shouting, but one voice was amplified over everything else.

"PRT! Everyone on the ground!"

I cursed internally. If it had been a few hours before, running into the PRT would have been fine. Great, even. Embarrassing, but great.

Getting arrested at a Nazi rally in a bad part of town without any underwear on? Definitely not on my wishlist for the day.

I made a snap decision. I was going to run.

Steven took that chance to groan, and I looked down at him. He was a Nazi - or at least a Nazi sympathizer - but he'd also helped me out as much or more than anyone else. Leaving him would have been the smart decision, but the pang of guilt that hit me said I wasn't going to do that.

"Fuck," I cursed and grabbed ahold of his jumpsuit with the intention of dragging him behind some cover, at least. He was surprisingly light, and I managed to lift him off the ground with one hand.

I had been putting things down to adrenaline, but lifting a man that was at least two hundred and fifty pounds off the ground with one hand was too much. I knew I was supposed to be able to control bugs, but maybe I had more powers than just that? The tingling on my neck when something dangerous was about to happen. The strength. The way time slowed down when I needed to think.

Those were powers, too, and while it was confusing, I was definitely not mad about them.

In the dim light, I caught sight of a blurred red form whizzing past me followed by a clatter. My neck-tingles screamed at me and my eyes went to a silvery cylinder - no bigger than my smallest finger - spinning on the ground. I jumped to my feet and kicked the thing away. It hit the wall just as it exploded into a splatter of yellow-white liquid that was much bigger than I felt a cylinder that size should have held. Containment foam, which meant the blur was probably Velocity, the local speedster. I didn't know a lot about capes, but I knew most of the local Protectorate lineup.

"Fuck," I cursed again and grabbed Steven's jumpsuit and threw him over my shoulder before making a dash for the door he'd said went outside. His weight didn't even slow me down, though it was certainly awkward to carry someone like that. How much had I been ignoring not to realize I had those powers all night?

There were other people running around me, some in the same direction. The other Nazis had the same idea to beat a hasty escape, it seemed. A handful had found weapons - bats and pipes - and were squaring up to support Hookwolf who had turned into a monstrous wolf and was doing battle with Armsmaster just in front of the new hole in the wall.

Someone in front of me got to the door we were all heading for and it opened to reveal flashing lights and more shouting. We were all idiots for thinking the PRT wouldn't have the doors covered.

I pivoted and turned back the other way, looking for the stairs I had come up earlier. Steven had retained enough of his senses to yell at the movement, but I didn't pause.

It was dark in the staircase which I didn't bother to walk down. I cleared it in one long jump and the darkness was much better than the flashing blue lights. My night vision wasn't perfect, but between that and my memory of the path we had taken, it was just good enough to find our way back to the room with the bunks.

"What the fuck," Steven said as I put him down on his feet. "You're a cape."

"I guess?" I said, still not sure of that reality myself. I fished for an explanation and realized I had an easy one for a Nazi. I didn't exactly remember the locker incident - thank goodness - but I had those other-memories that told me what had probably happened. "I wasn't yesterday, but there was a black girl and she tried to kill me. That was before I woke up in that alley."

He growled. "Fucking animals."

I let out a shuddering breath, feeling a little dirty at having used racism to my advantage. "Is there another way out of here?"

"Just those windows," Steven said. I glanced at them and at him. There wasn't much chance he was going to fit with the way they opened and I could tell that he knew that. "Go ahead and leave me. I'll pretend to be asleep when they come down here. I do legally work for this warehouse so they won't have anything on me."

I wavered. That did sound like an okay plan, but it felt selfish. "I think I can manage," I declared and pulled myself up to the window ledge with one hand and shoved the window all the way up until the hinges snapped. After that, it was just a quick snap to break it loose from its frame and drop it back into the room.

Steven whistled, obviously impressed. "Shit, girl. Kaiser is going to want to meet you."

He made it sound like an honor, but it felt more like a threat. A pragmatic part of my mind suggested it would be better if the Empire wanted to recruit me than if they wanted to kill me, but that somehow made it feel worse. Regardless, that could be the consequence of helping a Nazi out and I would just have to deal with it when - or if - it happened.

"Not right now. I still have to talk to my dad," I said, fishing for an excuse. Dad was… dad was going to freak out. Those other-memories suggested he'd probably want me to join the Wards or something, but that wasn't a path I could take while Sophia was there. I'd murder her. Given my new strength and knowledge of her weaknesses, it probably wouldn't even be hard. I had a bad feeling I would enjoy it, too.

He nodded at that and looked back to the now open window. "Can you, uh, help me up?"

It was probably a little comical to see me helping a man more than twice my size up to a tiny window high on the wall, but it worked after a bit of a struggle.

The tunnel was apparently far enough away from the front of the warehouse that the PRT hadn't set up anyone to watch that particular alley - I wasn't even sure if it was part of the same building, but maybe a conjoined basement under a different building. That kind of weirdness happened sometimes in the older parts of the Bay. If we'd taken the time to look, there was probably a sealed off old staircase that would have led down from the building above, but we definitely didn't have the time for that.

"Good luck," Steven said as he headed in one direction and I headed in the other.

I hoped I wouldn't need it.

 

[Swordchucks]

I was reasonably confident that if I had been able to go out the front door of the warehouse, I would have been able to find my way home. I knew where the warehouse was, more or less, and it would have just been a matter of following the street in a specific direction till I got somewhere more familiar.

As it was, though, I was back in the twisting maze of alleyways with one flip-flop and a sweatshirt-dress that was a lot better than being naked but extremely drafty. I was all turned around and had no idea where, exactly, I was except that one direction led to a bunch of cops, judging by the sound of not-so-distant sirens, and another direction led to ABB territory.

Going back and finding a cop sounded like a good idea, in general, but I was afraid that someone would claim I was with the Empire if I did that. It had been smoky and pretty dark, but Velocity had been close enough to drop a grenade at my feet. I had no idea if he could see me clearly when he was moving that fast and it seemed like an unnecessary risk. Give me a couple of days, a change of clothes, and a brush for the tangled mass that my hair had become and I'd feel a lot more comfortable about interacting with the Protectorate. Well, not really comfortable because they were still cops, but more comfortable at least.

I ended up tossing the remaining flip-flop before I left the alleyway. Being barefoot on cold concrete sucked, but walking with just one shoe was annoying in so many other ways. Plus it definitely made me look even stupider than the sweatshirt-dress.

I made it half a block away in a direction that was generally away from the sirens before I was nearly bowled over by a guy in a black leather jacket that came out of a different alley and ran straight across the street. That tingle at the back of my neck which I was learning to trust implicitly warned me in barely enough time to avoid him.

By the time I pulled myself away from the wall I had been forced to throw myself up against to avoid him, the sound of running feet from down the alley caused me to turn only to find three annoyingly familiar figures in red and green.

"You seen a guy-" the leader started to ask, but then his eyes locked onto my face and he started shouting. "Hey, it's that bitch from the alley! Your boyfriend almost shot us!"

They thought the strung-out robber that almost got me shot was my boyfriend? That wasn't very logical, but I realized that arguing that was probably a bad idea.

I didn't wait for the others to react before I took off running in the same direction as the guy that had just passed me. I had no idea why they were chasing him, but I had a bad feeling they were going to forget about him in favor of following me, instead. Good on the guy for getting away, but my night was already a ridiculous series of events and I just wanted it to end.

I gained some distance with my newfound ability to run at a pretty good speed - just another power that was serving me well, it seemed - and took a sharp left into another alleyway with the intent of doubling back to lose my pursuers. Unfortunately, the alleyway wasn't empty. In fact, it was full of five white guys with obvious Nazi gear on. Unlike in the warehouse, these guys had found real weapons from somewhere, including at least a few guns. One of them stood up from where he'd obviously been catching his breath and all six of us all looked at each other for a long moment.

"Hey, it's that bitch that showed up right before the raid," one of them said, obviously realizing who I was and, admittedly, my presence right before the PRT came crashing through the wall was at least a little suspicious.

"I didn't-" I tried, hoping to play up the 'scared white girl' angle long enough to put them between the ABB thugs and myself.

"Get her!" one of them yelled and that hope fizzled out before it could fully form.

Once again, I turned on my heel and ran back out of the alley. I could see the ABB guys were almost on me, too, and went down the street away from everyone chasing me.

The neck-tingles hit me hard, and I threw myself into a roll just before a gunshot sounded behind me. I had no idea which group that had come from and I wasn't going to stick around and find out. There was a puff of concrete dust a few paces ahead, in a line with where I had been standing.

"Stop shooting at me, assholes!" I screamed after I sprang to my feet and kept going. There was absolutely no way I was going to talk my way out of that one.

Strength, I had, and it came with a bit of speed, too, because I felt like the sound of pursuit was getting farther away as I ran. There were more gunshots but my neck-tingles didn't act up much and I started to think I was in the clear.

Of course, that's when a red blur crossed my path and turned into a man of fairly average height with a muscular build in a costume that left little to the imagination. He stopped a good twenty feet in front of me, but I suspected he could cross that distance before I could react. "Hold it right there. You're wanted for questioning in connection with Empire activity."

I stopped, surprised that I was barely out of breath from running at least three blocks. "It's just a misunderstanding," I managed, desperately wanting him to get out of my way. "A bunch of Nazis are chasing me right now, and they're trying to kill me. I think they might be shooting it out with a bunch of ABB guys that were… also trying to kill me."

That caused Velocity to stare at me. The visor on his helmet made it hard to tell exactly what he was feeling, but I imagined he was blinking at me.

That's when another gunshot sounded and he turned his head slightly, apparently looking past me. "Just… stay right here. I'll go deal with that."

"Alright?" I sort-of-agreed and he vanished in a blur.

I considered my options for a split second. I supposed running from a Protectorate hero would make me look guilty, but I really didn't want to get arrested. Or hit by a stray bullet.

"Fuck this," I decided, and started running again.

Two blocks later, I was both thoroughly lost and fairly confident that no one was going to try to kill me for the next few minutes. I wiped a little sweat off my forehead and tried to catch my breath. I wasn't physically winded, but the headache was killing me and I was emotionally winded.

Half-way across the street, my neck tingles suddenly became intense and I instinctively looked to the left. There was nothing there.

I stared into the darkness for a second, trying to figure out what I was being warned about when there was an impossibly loud car horn and then the air itself smashed into me with the force of a speeding truck. An invisible, speeding truck.

Time slowed down again, but all that let me do was feel the impact more clearly and how my body gave way against it. Zero out of ten. Do not recommend.

Then I mercifully fell into darkness.

//\\o//\\

What happened next was a jumble of conflicting images and sensations.

I remembered a formless black void.

I remembered a sky strewn with so many stars it was hard to wrap my head around their number.

I remember a man with white hair and a put-upon expression lecturing me. I didn't remember most of his words, though a few stuck with me.

"-you don't see the other one helping-"

"-you are a soul, you have a body-"

"-even a child! Though I suppose you are-"

When I swam back to coherence, I immediately noticed two things that were becoming all-too-familiar.

One, I was freezing. Two, I was naked.

I cracked my eyes open and saw the sky. Naked outside in the middle of the winter. Again.

At least it was daylight this time and my headache had lessened a little more. That overwhelming sense of sensation was still there - the feed from my power - but it was mostly being held back by the fact I refused to think about it.

I sat up with a start as events came back to me. My hands roamed over my body, but there were no shattered bones and torn skin from where I had been flattened by a speeding truck. An invisible speeding truck. Squealer, my other memories helpfully supplied. She was a Tinker with some gang called the Merchants that I had never heard of. If I ever saw her again, I was going to do something nasty to her, even if I was back to normal. If you didn't count the freezing and naked parts.

With that immediate panic taken care of, I took stock of my situation. I was outside, but it definitely wasn't an alleyway. No, it was more familiar than that.

I was resting under a tree in tall, dead weeds. I recognized the tree. I recognized the yard. I was in my own back yard. That meant I had made it home. Somehow.

Had it all been a dream? Being chased by the ABB, stumbling into a robbery, being chased some more, ending up at an E88 rally, getting chased by the cops, getting chased by the ABB again, then getting chased - and shot at - by the E88, then almost getting arrested byVelocity, and finally getting hit by a truck. It was a surreal, almost impossible set of events, but there were too many things consistent with my current reality to write it off.

Like the fact that I was again outdoors in the middle of the winter with no clothes on.

I stumbled up to the back door and found it locked. Not surprising. No one with any sense left their back door unlocked in the Bay.

I had to trudge back into the overgrown garden, count out the stones that edged the path, and look under lucky number twelve for the key. You also couldn't hide your key under the mat in the Bay. You had to get more creative.

Inside, things were blessedly warm. I couldn't stop myself from moaning as the heat washed over me, pushing away the cold. I could ignore the naked part for a few more minutes, but being not-cold was heavenly.

The house was dark. There were beer bottles on the kitchen table and some paper - probably bills - stacked up. I didn't spend much time on it as I crept deeper inside, wondering if dad was home.

He was, as it turned out. He was passed out in his recliner, a scatter of beer bottles on the floor around him. He'd taken the phone from across the room and rested it on one arm of the chair, the cord stretching dangerously across the path we normally walked in. It wasn't really a scene I was prepared for nor one I understood.

I looked down at myself and decided I would wake him up once I had a shower and got some clothes on. There was no scenario where being naked when I woke him up worked out better.

Ten minutes later, I was cleaner. I seemed to have only accumulated the dirt from waking up in the backyard and none of the grime I had built up from running around half the city barefoot. I didn't have time for the whole hair routine, but it got a rinse, at least. It didn't seem like it needed much. Dying was apparently a cleansing experience.

When I got out of the shower and went to brush my teeth, I got my next major surprise.

I looked… different. Well, that was an understatement. I looked hot. I still looked like Taylor Hebert, but a version of her that had been fed through all of those image editing programs they used to make models on magazine covers look even hotter. My glasses were gone, too, something I hadn't noticed in the rather dizzying events of the night. I was probably an inch or two taller, too, with visible muscles and padding in all the right places.

No wonder my boobs felt weird when I touched them before. They were both much bigger and had a new kind of perkiness to them that hadn't originally been there. The latter was a good thing because there was no way that any of my bras would fit now. I spent a minute or two in fascination checking out my new body and flexing my new muscles. Eventually, I got embarrassed at what I was doing and shuffled off to my room to find some clothes.

My room looked like someone had ransacked it. Most of my drawers were stacked beside whatever had originally held them with the contents obviously gone through and most of the contents of my closet were piled on my bed. Things weren't scattered everywhere, but it was clear that someone had done a thorough search of the room.

Given that my binders were stacked on the desk - the ones filled with my notes on the bullying campaign and now spread out everywhere - I had a bad feeling that I knew who had gone through my stuff and why.

I pushed the thought aside and rummaged through my clothes for something that fit. Mostly it didn't, but my style for the last year or so had been 'cheap and oversized and shapeless and good for hiding inside' and there were a few things I could squeeze into, even if they were decidedly less oversized and shapeless after my makeover. I even managed to rummage through the drawer that should have been in my bedside table and find an older pair of glasses. I popped the lenses out and put them on so that I looked more like the old me, even if it made me feel a little silly to wear just the frames.

I spent a little more time preparing than I strictly needed to because I was procrastinating. I needed to talk to, and I had a nagging suspicion that there was a lot going on I wasn't aware of. There had been more beer bottles in the kitchen and around his chair than he could reasonably drink in a couple of nights. Aside from the bits where I was being chased, I had no accounting for time since the day I went back to school from winter break - and even that was only due to my other-memories filling in the blanks.

How had I gotten from the locker to that alleyway? It was at least a mile away, maybe more. How had I gotten from that street - after being smashed into a paste by a speeding truck - to my backyard?

I had no answers. Getting answers required waking up dad, and somehow that seemed more daunting than the prospect of partying with Hookwolf had been.

//\\o//\\

"Dad, wake up," I tried as I jostled his foot. It took a few more tries, but his eyes eventually came open and he adjusted the glasses that were askew on his face.

"Annette?" he asked groggily and my heart hurt a little. Dad had never recovered from mom's death - neither had I - and I supposed the fact that I looked a lot like her didn't help things. If i changed my hair, it probably would have made it easier for him… but it wouldn't have helped me.

Before I'd been shoved in a locker and gotten some sort of cape-driven makeover, my hair was my one real source of vanity. It was kind of a living shrine to my mother since it reminded me of her every time I looked at it. It was like a living legacy in a way. I kept it long and took the best care of it I could because of her. In a very real way, it was a touchstone that got me through the last couple of years.

"No, Taylor," I softly corrected.

"Oh, Taylor." His thoughts seemed to finally connect themselves. "Taylor! You're back! Where have you been?"

I winced a little. "I don't really know… how long was I gone?" It was a terrible answer, but the only one I had.

"You didn't-you didn't come home on Monday, and I started to get worried. I called the police, but they said something about 24-hours, then I called Alan and he said that was bullshit, so I went down to the station and… well, it's been five days? I think? It's morning, right? One of the guys that used to work with the union before he joined up with the Empire gave me a call to tell me he thought he saw you Wednesday night and the PRT might know where you are, but they said they didn't know anything when I went down there."

There was a lot to unpack in all of that, but I focused on the basics.

"Yeah, it's morning. So, five days? I don't remember most of what happened. I was…" I had debated what to tell dad and had decided on a watered down version of the truth, but I still struggled to find the right words. "...attacked at school and then I woke up on what I guess was Wednesday night in an alleyway. It… well, it was a lot of stuff, but I got knocked out again later and woke up in our backyard. Somehow."

"Taylor, that's not…"

I nodded. "I know. I think I'm a cape now, dad." I admitted the last in a rush. I'd decided to level with him. The part of me that was entirely Taylor Hebert never would have done that. The part of me that was someone else, however, thought it was the best course of action. He'd either work with me or he wouldn't, but sneaking around him was just adding complication and uncertainty to my life that I didn't need. The worst case scenario was that I'd have to run away and fend for myself, but at least I'd know if I needed to do that now instead of when dad randomly found out in a few weeks or months.

Well, the real worst case scenario was that he did that and also told everyone in the world who I was and that I was a cape. I had a bad feeling that I'd already made my face known to a few people, but it could always be worse. I didn't remember giving my name and my hair had been a mess, but I'd shown off some cape-like abilities to quite a few people before I got run over. Hopefully people had been too distracted by my new boobs to really look at my face.

I winced again as I realized I had no idea if the whole 'dying and appearing somewhere else naked' thing left a body behind. That would be awkward. Dad hadn't said they found one at the school, but I could just see Sophia being the kind to dispose of a body. Emma was the kind to order it, but I couldn't see her getting her hands dirty to do any of the heavy lifting. The less said of her other useless hangers-on, the better, but Sophia was at least a capable monster.

There was a long moment of silence before dad threw himself out of the chair. My neck tingles didn't go off so I was caught by surprise and grabbed in a hug before I knew it. Without even having to think about it, I started hugging him back. I wasn't entirely sure how long that lasted, but there was some crying involved.

"I have to make some calls," dad declared after a long moment of awkward silence, doing his best to wipe his eyes while pretending he hadn't just broken down a little. "Why don't you-why don't you clean up a little? Your room is… well, I was looking for clues and… We need to talk."

"I know," I admitted. I didn't want to. I didn't even want to deal with putting my room back in order, not with my head still killing me and the awkward feeling in my limbs that seemed to come with returning from the dead. However, it would have to be done eventually since dad wasn't going to kick me out right off and I might as well do it sooner rather than later.

I disappeared back upstairs to take a second much longer shower and properly wash my hair.

I also had more time to mess with my closet so I could fully understand what I was working with. My selection of clothing before the makeover wasn't great, but now it was downright pitiful. My shoes still fit, at least, though I only had two pairs that were worth wearing and my 'good' shoes were missing. I'd worn those to school on Monday, I vaguely remembered, and I wondered where they had ended up.

My jeans were mostly too small now because I had actual curves. The few pairs I could squeeze myself into if I held my breath before I buttoned them were more recent purchases. They were cheap and had an unflattering cut to them, but they still somehow looked good on my new body. I felt a completely irrational pang of jealousy at the new me's booty. It made no sense, but I kind of hated how hot I looked now.

I was a little better off with tops since I had been favoring oversized hoodies for a while and I had more of them to pick from. They weren't any more flattering or less cheap than the jeans had been, but at least they fit for a given definition of 'fit'.

The end result was that I had a fairly tiny pile of stuff that either fit or was too sentimental to get rid of with the rest split between 'try to sell' and 'donate to charity maybe'. The last pile was everything too stained or damaged by the bullying campaign to even bother with attempting to sell or that was close to being worn out. The 'sell' pile was mostly stuff I'd bought back when Emma and I were better friends and that completely failed to fit now. It was the more expensive stuff, if a few years out of date, and I thought one of the thrift shops might actually take it for credit if nothing else.

"I need to go shopping," I reluctantly admitted to myself and then chuckled a little at the absurdity of that being the thing I focused on.

I cleaned up the worst of the rest by the simple expedient of cramming the drawers back into their homes. It took a little shuffling of the contents, but it was easy enough, especially when I could lift even the heaviest of them with no real effort. There wasn't anything really important in there, just junk of various descriptions, so it wasn't worth worrying about.

What was more worth worrying about was the fact that dad had obviously been through the notebooks. He had mentioned talking to Alan so he either hadn't realized that Emma was behind most of it, or he'd chosen to ignore that until I could be found. Either way, it was something that would have to be addressed.

I flopped back on my unmade bed and stared at the ceiling. Dad would come and get me when he wanted to talk, I decided.

My mind went back to the whole alley-to-truck scenario and I cringed a little at the absurdity of it all. I definitely had powers now. I could jump several feet in the air, vault over a fence, and then manage to tuck and roll a landing on the other side. I had been in such a panic I had written my scaling of that fence off as adrenaline, but looking back, it had been the first superhuman feat of the night. Then I'd pretty much proven I was superhuman when I ripped that window off its hinges.

The neck tingles were apparently some sort of danger sense, too. I could sense when something bad was about to happen and a general direction, though it was a little vague on details. If I hadn't stood in the middle of the street trying to see an invisible truck, I probably wouldn't have gotten flattened.

Spiderman, other-me's memories whispered. Those powers were reminiscent of a fictional hero called Spiderman. Or Spider-man or some variation of that. There were some variations, though. For one, I didn't remember being bitten by a radioactive spider. For another, my powers seemed oddly weak for Spiderman. The versions other-me could remember all seemed to get their full powers right off, or near to it. Maybe I just needed to practice more?

Regardless, there were supposed to be spider-people in all sorts of realities and they had slight variants on the same powers. They were all totems of the great spider that wove the web of life. Could the powers I was supposed to have - controlling bugs - have somehow gotten me tied into that? It was possible. I had dreamed of a thing the size of a planet weaving something, though calling it a 'spider' or the thing it was weaving a 'web' seemed a bit of a stretch.

On a hunch, I closed my eyes and steadied my breathing. Mentally, I reached out to that bubbling ball of chaos I knew was my bug-control power and focused very hard on the concept of eight-legged spider creatures.

The resulting burst of sensation was more manageable. I could feel spiders… all the spiders. It was hard to judge distance through the power, but it felt like a lot. Thousands of them, even in the middle of winter. When I had tried using that power to sense bugs in general in that basement, I'd gotten disoriented from trying to extend the sense more than a room away, but if I was focusing just on spiders, it flowed much, much more easily.

Maybe there was something to the idea that I'd somehow linked myself to the spider-spirit when I got my powers? Wasn't one of the first signs that the new spider-person found themselves sticking to everything? I hadn't experienced that, yet, but I would need to experiment with it. Later. I couldn't bring myself to move right then.

The only thing was… how did Spiderman style powers explain the whole 'come back from the dead' thing? How did the white-haired man fit in with everything? Those dreams felt important, somehow. Those were something else going on and I just hadn't figured it out yet. Given that whatever the other thing was, it was the only reason I was alive - re-alive - I wasn't going to second guess it too much, but it felt like I was missing a huge chunk of information.

I was still turning over the possibilities when there was a knock at my door.

"Taylor, we need to talk."

I took a deep breath and got up. Dad was right. We definitely needed to talk.

Spoiler: Notes

I made some notes in the thread, but this is based on a CYOA with a "Worst Day" drawback. The MC has that one.

 

[Swordchucks]

I had decided to give dad a nearly-full rundown of everything that had been going on in my life. I started with the bullying, then hit the locker, and finally went through the events after I woke up in the alley. I didn't give him everything of course, and I softened up quite a few of the worst bits - like spending hours running around naked and the part where I got hit by a truck for being an idiot - but he got the most of it.

I shouldn't have been surprised that the hardest part to talk about was the bullying campaign. It had been bad, but my other-memories were useful in that regard. They gave me distance and even some emotional maturity that helped me fight through my own feelings.

Those memories also came with a more mature perspective that let me see how my own actions had helped things go on as long as they had. There were times when I'd made exactly the wrong moves that made it easy for the school to ignore what was going on, for instance. The school was far, far from blameless, but the tactics my bullies used had been tailored to make me seem unreliable any time I tried to complain. Then I had just stopped complaining at all which was even worse in the end.

"I don't think there's enough evidence to sue them," I admitted sourly. "At least, there isn't enough evidence that they'd throw money at us and quietly brush it under the rug. I don't even think there's enough to get them to push through a transfer to a better school, but maybe they would let me do homeschool, instead? If I have to go back to Winslow for any length of time, I'm afraid someone will figure out that I have powers because I really don't know how I got from my locker to that alleyway or who knows what."

"I'll have to look into it. I do know a few people…" Dad let out a heavy sigh. "And what about Emma?" He said her voice with a particularly sharp tone, though it might have been my imagination. She was a sharp note in my thoughts, after all.

"She was behind a lot of it, but… well, I think something happened that sent her off the deep end." Other-memories filled in that blank, at least. I certainly was not happy with her, but I kind of almost understood why she went crazy even if I sincerely wished I hadn't been the target of it. I wasn't going to forgive her, probably ever, but I could at least understand it enough that I wasn't going to go out of my way to murder her for revenge. Probably.

"I'm going to kill Alan," he grumbled, oddly mirroring my own thoughts but with a different target.

"No, Alan is your friend, and I doubt he has any idea what Emma's been up to. I-I think he'd back her up if you pushed it - you know how much he babies her - but I don't think he knew about it or approved. Keep being his friend, but maybe cool down a little before you try hanging out with him?" As long as I could remember, Alan had favored Emma. Some of it was probably that Emma's older sister, Anne, had fought with him over just about everything. Emma had said it was because they were too alike, but I never really saw it.

Emma was a much more agreeable child and her dad had responded to that by making her his obvious favorite. In retrospect, it hadn't done Emma any favors.

He sighed again. "I guess that's the mature thing to do. I just… I just hate that I never noticed what was going on. That explains why you haven't wanted to go over there in a while."

"I didn't want you to notice," I admitted. "I didn't want to break up your friendship, and Uncle Alan did a lot for both of us after mom died. It's not…" It actually was his fault, at least in part, but Alan was also the one that took me in when I couldn't do much more than cry and dad was a complete mess. He was the one that hauled dad out of his despair and forced him to be a functional parent again. I could be furious at his daughter and annoyed with him while still being grateful for those things. "He couldn't have known what Emma was going to do. He might cover for her after the fact, but I am sure he wouldn't approve, even if it's just because he's a lawyer and things could have gone really, really badly if she'd been caught."

We both lapsed into silence as we thought dark thoughts.

"Well, we both agree that going back to Winslow is off the table, don't we? Do you… have you considered the Wards? Rumors say they all go to Arcadia. It's supposed to be really nice."

"I've thought about it," I answered slowly. This was a topic where diplomacy seemed best. I really had thought about it before rejecting it. "I don't think it will work out. Sophia, Emma's new friend and probably the one that assaulted me on Monday? She's a Ward."

"Ah," dad said knowingly. I imagined that he had seen plenty of altercations between dockworkers over the years. "Yeah, I can see why that would be a problem. I'd say that working with difficult people is just part of life, but working with someone that has tried to kill you is an entirely different thing."

I nodded. "Yeah, I don't think I'd stop punching her in the face if I got an opportunity to start. If I was working with her? I'm sure I'd get that opportunity."

"Maybe we could go to the Protectorate or the PRT? Doesn't one of those groups have a responsibility to make sure the Wards aren't breaking the law? If they did something about her, maybe it would be alright?"

I honestly had no idea what I would do if I could join the Wards without dealing with Sophia. Wards had rules - which would suck - but Wards also had backup - which wouldn't. I had powers, but I also understood exactly how big the gangs in the city were. One person standing alone against them? It wasn't going to happen. "That's a big 'if'. If we had rock-solid proof, maybe, but with the way things are in this city… even if one of their capes is an asshole and causes problems, do you think they'd get rid of them for anything less than getting caught red-handed? Even if you count all the Wards and Protectorate, just the Empire has more capes than they do. They aren't going to toss one just because of some stuff that wouldn't hold up in court."

"Maybe not," he agreed sourly. "But they definitely can't do anything if they don't know. Maybe they could trade her off for a rookie from another team or something?"

I could tell he was joking, which caused me to grin a little, but it didn't seem likely to work.

I had no way of knowing if Cauldron was real or not - there was no Scion, so why would there be a shadowy organization dedicated to fighting him? It. Whatever. There was some evidence, of course. I had heard rumors of a villain called Coil, so maybe they did exist. Battery, too. Wasn't she supposed to be a Cauldron cape? And the Case 53s were their fault, too? All of that stuff was very real, which didn't make a lot of sense when I tried thinking about it.

Even if they existed, I had no proof that would convince anyone. I'd sound crazy, at best. I'd be targeted for elimination, at worst. I might have some sort of secondary power that kept them from noticing me with powers - those seemed common enough in the fiction my other-memories remembered - but if I started making waves there were all sorts of mundane ways they could remove me or at least make my life very difficult. Best not to draw attention I wasn't ready for.

"I guess… but they might also kind of recognize me from that Empire rally that I was accidentally at." Velocity had, afterward, but I'd been wearing the same clothes with the same messed up hair and no glasses. Maybe I could Clark Kent my way to plausible deniability? It might work.

"There is that. We can wait to approach them for a while," dad agreed, eventually. "About the rally… you didn't listen to what they were saying-"

"No, I know better," I declared. "One of them was nice to me, but they were gross. The way they talked about people…" I didn't have to fake a shudder. The casual racist statements. The statements I realized afterward were rooted in misogyny. The Empire always talked big about 'family values', but that meant something very specific to them. White families where the women knew their place. They certainly had female capes, but they never seemed to be in charge of anything.

He nodded again. "They are good at being reasonable. You can't let them get to you that way because their ultimate goal is to be unreasonable. The union has lost some people because of our stance on racist tattoos and language. There are probably some guys on the inside that wish they were Empire, but the second they let us know their leanings, they're gone. Dockworkers aren't known for being politically correct, but there is a line."

That seemed reasonable to me. "I haven't forgotten." It had been a topic around the dinner table quite a few times over the years, especially before mom died. Grandpa had been in the war and dad had lots of his stories to share, even if he'd died before I was born.

"Well, that's good, at least." There was a long moment of silence. "Taylor… I'm so glad you came home. I was so worried."

I wasn't crying. My eyes were just blurry. "I know. I'm sorry. I tried… I tried so hard, but things just kept going wrong. But I made it home in the end."

"Yeah, yeah you did."

//\\o//\\

After a long, emotionally draining talk, there didn't seem to be anything incredibly pressing to do with the rest of my day. At least, nothing I felt up to tackling. I was still under the weather with my head aching fiercely and dad was busy making phone calls to call off the manhunt he had apparently mobilized to find me. Well, that and he was recovering from drinking himself to sleep for a week. He wasn't enough of an alcoholic to do that at his age without facing some serious discomfort afterwards.

One of his many calls was to the school. Since it was still Friday, he was able to arrange a meeting for Monday afternoon. He pointedly told me that I wasn't invited, which was fine with me. It would probably give him some freedom to shout at people if I wasn't there and they wouldn't be able to use me as a distraction.

One thing I definitely needed to do was go out and find some better clothes, but I just wasn't up for it. Instead, I did a little 'light' power testing, mostly focused on the physical aspects of my powers. With one hand, I could lift just about anything in the house. I could also stick to walls if I wanted to, though it felt weird to do. I only ripped one section of wallpaper off in my attempt to figure it out, and it had been ugly and peeling to start with.

I was pretty glad that I didn't have the kind of spider powers that resulted in spinning my own silk, at least. That sounded like it would be really, really gross. I did, once I really thought about it, have a good idea of how to make web-shooters. I would need some parts and chemicals, but nothing I couldn't find pretty easily. None of it was the kind of exotic stuff that people claimed got new Tinkers caught either. I didn't think so, anyway. There were a lot of websites with advice on that subject, but I wasn't dumb enough to check them from my house.

It also wasn't exactly the highest priority thing. Being able to shoot webs could be handy, but I didn't exactly live in a city with highrises everywhere. Spiderman could swing through the city all the time because he lived in New York. In the Bay, that was possible within an area that was about three square blocks of downtown and nowhere else.

After I was done with that, I lay in bed with a pillow over my head and tried to get a grip on my newfound affinity for spiders. I could definitely sense them, but doing more than that was another level of challenge. My one attempt at seeing through one's senses resulted in a few seconds of blurry, impossibly wide vision with a small splash of color and sharp vision in the very middle. It ended in me having to throw up into a trashcan and hastily sever the connection.

I might have skipped the week an alternate version of Taylor spent in a psychiatric ward, but I certainly hadn't skipped the whole 'have to learn to use the power' part of things.

I had better luck with giving the spiders instructions. I didn't need to give them detailed commands, though I could do that if I concentrated. Instead, I could project general concepts like 'move to this place' or 'stay hidden' or 'weave a web here' to them and they would fulfill them as best as their little spider brains could manage. Getting them to do anything with any accuracy when I couldn't physically see them was very difficult, but I had a feeling it would get easier with practice.

Working with that mental power was even harder than my physical powers and I was soon exhausted. I went to sleep early and dreamed about school all night. At least, I thought it was about school. I couldn't remember any of the details, though I woke up humming an unfamiliar tune.

Saturday morning - because it was apparently Saturday now - I felt a lot better. I still wasn't one-hundred-percent, but I was a lot better than I had been. I still felt wiped out, but I could at least walk and talk at the same time without wanting to throw up.

Dad looked distracted as we shared a light breakfast and I tried to make conversation.

"Are you going to the office today?" I asked and he looked a little guilty. Apparently, I correctly guessed what he was thinking about. "Go on, please. I can fend for myself and I'm sure you have a lot of work piled up."

"I don't want to abandon you. I just got you back," he said with uncertainty. It was an unfortunate truth that dad tied a lot of his identity to his job, and forced time off always grated on him. Even when he'd been absolutely shattered after mom died, he'd still gone to work every day he was supposed to.

"I'll be fine. I need… I need to get out of the house, anyway. Go to the library. Go shopping for clothes. I'll be back before you are."

He frowned. "That… are you sure you should be out and about? After what happened the last time you left the house, I'm not sure it's safe. You'll probably trip and fall face-first into Lung's birthday cake or something."

I laughed nervously. "I… I really hope that was a one-time thing. If my luck was always going to be that bad, I don't think yesterday would have been so peaceful."

He mulled it over for a while, but he really couldn't afford to be a helicopter parent. At some point, he'd have to leave me to my own devices so he could go to work, and I was a cape now. I could get myself out of trouble. Probably. "Just… be really careful, alright?"

I nodded. "I will be."

Dad hesitated a few more times, insisted on giving me forty dollars, and then left for work. I breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled out of the driveway, though I felt a little guilty for that. The day we spent together was the most intensely 'together' time we'd had in a long time. It had been good for me, but I still felt relieved to be alone in the house again.

I closed my eyes and rolled my head back, facing the ceiling and breathing a long sigh of relief.

And then the moment was broken. I opened my eyes and headed upstairs to get a few things. I had stuff I needed to get done.

//\\o//\\

It was early afternoon by the time I climbed off the bus near the thrift shops I planned to start with. I had spent more time than I intended to at the public library - not the one closest to my house but one farther away - looking up information on how to get started as an independent cape. I had been rather embarrassed that the first step was 'log off immediately and use a VPN to reconnect', but I followed that instruction along with several others that would minimize my chances of being traced. The fact that I was using a public computer was already a step in the right direction.

The majority of the information I found had been for Tinkers. That wasn't exactly me, but I did need to build my web-shooters so I still devoured that advice. There was also the possibility that I might be able to make some things that people would want to buy, like spider silk. I had spent a few minutes looking up industrial applications of the stuff, but most of it was theoretical because the processes to produce useful quantities of synthetic silk weren't there yet. That wasn't a problem for me and it could possibly be an avenue for making money. It just wasn't something I'd want to risk getting kidnapped over.

I made a mental note to look into it later. Carefully.

When I was done, I took the bus to the Boardwalk, which gave me ample time to watch people on the way. There weren't a ton of tourists out given the time of year, but there were enough to be amusing. People came to the Bay because of the capes, and it seemed like they were either overly cavalier about being a victim of a crime or overly cautious. There wasn't really an in-between.

They were heaviest around the Boardwalk which was a tourist trap, but it was also one of the most active economic zones in the city for small businesses. The Boardwalk proper was protected by the Enforcers which were kind of a 'legitimate gang' that provided real security services. Stores off the main drag could contract with them, but most didn't bother. The big gangs didn't cause problems within a block or two of the Boardwalk and the Enforcers were known to make examples of the small-time groups that tried to move in on the general area.

The fact that you could quite literally see the glowing dome of the Tinker-created forcefield that protected the Protectorate base out in the Bay had to help, too.

In any case, if you were looking for a small business, like a thrift store, you'd find plenty in the area adjacent to the Boardwalk.

I was never much of a fan of haggling over prices, but it was a necessary evil if I wanted to have clothing. Over my first few stops, I managed to trade about half of the stuff I had brought with me for a nice, only slightly used pair of jeans, a pair of fashion glasses with clear glass lenses, and a new bra that actually fit. The salesgirl had been a little too into doing the bra fitting, but I couldn't argue with the results, even if I'd felt a little groped afterwards.

I'd hoped to stretch my trades a bit farther, but good bras were incredibly expensive.

The fourth stop I went into was the one where things went a bit nuts. There was a blond girl buzzing around the shop, piling things on the counter while the cashier tried to keep an eye on everyone. Another girl was staring at her phone and obviously waiting for one of the other two to get finished with whatever they were doing. I found the whole thing a bit distracting but tried to do some browsing, anyway.

Eventually, the blonde girl decided on three or four things from her pile, paid for them, and walked out, leaving the rest of the pile for the poor employee to put back. Her companion - the one that had been looking at her phone - watched her go, but instead of following, she let out a heavy sigh and went to help the salesgirl restock everything.

"Sorry about that. She's been having a rough time this week, and she's even more flighty than usual."

That got a tired laugh out of the cashier, but she didn't turn down the help. I considered offering to help, too, but that felt like it would be weird. I went back to what I was doing, mostly ignoring them.

A few minutes later, I heard a soft 'woah', and my danger sense tingled faintly. I turned and time slowed down as I watched the girl and a full rack of clothing falling in my direction. I could have just jumped aside, but if the other girl died or something, I would feel really guilty about it. As carefully as I could, I moved to catch her and get the both of us away from the rack a little. I wanted to make it look natural - like I had been closer to her than she realized and she'd fallen into me and we'd both ended up falling away from the rack - but that was kind of secondary.

It more or less worked like I expected, the two of us kind of falling over and to the side, the racks crashing to the ground beside us. I could hear the cashier yelling and time suddenly snapped back to full speed as I scrambled to my feet.

"Oh my god," the girl groaned.

"Are you okay?" I asked. She looked winded and a little panicked but physically alright.

I offered her my hand to help her up. As she took it, time seemed to slow down again as everything faded away.

Reality surged back as soon as it was gone, leaving me standing in a half-destroyed room with seven masked figures. All of them ignored me in favor of arguing between themselves though I wasn't feeling any danger.

At first, I couldn't quite follow what was going on, but then it all solidified for me. One of the figures - the one that seemed to oppose the other six - coaxed a small child out of a hiding spot.

"Brigade, meet Amelia."

"Oh, no," I mumbled to myself. "I shouldn't be seeing this." It felt like I was peering into something private. Something secret.

The scene played out for a few more moments as Marquis gave himself up to the Brockton Brigade and the Brigade started to discuss where his daughter would go. No one so much as glanced in my direction.

Then, just as abruptly as it started, I was back in that thrift shop. I was frozen with my hand in Amelia's - rather Amy Dallon's.

She was staring at me with suspicion in her eyes.

"What-Who are you?"

 

[Swordchucks]

"Uh, I'm nobody," I mumbled in a bit of a panic and pulled my hand free. She tried to hang on for a brief moment - probably out of reflex - but there was nothing a normal girl, even one with non-Brute cape powers, could do to hold me. "Sorry, I didn't… Just sorry…" I mumbled and beat a hasty retreat out the front door of the shop. The few items I had picked out in my attempt to shop had been discarded as part of my attempt to catch a falling girl.

I think Amelia - Amy - Panacea - whatever - tried to follow me, but wasn't waiting around. I headed out the shop and took a couple of quick turns then virtually flew up a bare brick wall to lose her. I was very aware that her sister could be flying around, but after ten minutes of crouching up against an air conditioning unit, I didn't see anyone. With the coast apparently clear, I headed away from the Boardwalk.

The first time I left my house, I ran into a cape? What kind of luck had I been cursed with?

I hugged my shopping bag like a stuffed animal as I rode the bus toward home, thinking dark thoughts. How did that vision of Amy's past fit in with Spiderman themed powers? There was someone… Madame Web? Something like that. Hadn't she been able to see the future along the web of fate or something? Could this be something similar but in the past?

I cursed my other-memories for being spotty.

"I have approximate knowledge of many things," I mumbled, earning me a strange look from the little boy clutching his mom's hand a couple of seats forward. Ironically, I only sort of knew what that quote was from.

There was something about the way that vision had presented itself that was striking a vague recollection of something, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I didn't think it had anything to do with Spiderman, though.

I got off the bus several blocks from home and took a circuitous route, just in case I was being followed. I tried to be casual about it, but I wasn't exactly skilled in the art of losing a tail. I did remember to look up, though, since fliers were a thing. Even more of a thing than normal, considering who might be after me, really.

I arrived at home without incident and waited just inside the door for a minute as I let my heartbeat settle down to normal.

"What is going on?" I grumbled to myself as I tossed a load of laundry in the machine, including my new purchases. I wasn't going to wear something from a thrift store without washing it first, even if it appeared new.

I needed to think and I needed to plan. Going out had been… well, not stupid. I needed to go out. I couldn't live like a recluse in fear of something happening. If I did that and some cosmic force really was out to get me, it would find me anyway and probably flatten the house getting to me.

My mistake was that I hadn't been prepared. A relatively peaceful day at home on Friday had lulled me into a false sense of security. When nothing happened at the library or the first store, I let my guard down, and that's when I ran into a pair of capes. In retrospect, it wasn't even a bad encounter. I had freaked out, but that was because in the heat of the moment, I had assumed Panacea had seen me peeking into her memories and thus wanted to kill me for learning her secrets.

In hindsight, that didn't necessarily fit with what had happened. She'd definitely sensed something, but maybe it was like when two Spiderpeople met each other, only it was just her? No, that still made no sense and I wasn't likely to know the real answer until I met her again. That was an event that I was vaguely sure would happen at some point, whether I wanted it to or not.

I collapsed on my bed with a groan. What if she was just really into me? I mean, that would be flattering, but I wasn't… okay, I wasn't not interested. I just hadn't considered it. I pushed those thoughts aside before I could go down that rabbit hole. If that was what was going on, it was better than the alternative where she was mad enough to give my asshole taste buds. I would deal with it when I got there.

I crawled back out of my bed and fetched a notebook and a pen to start a list.

Number 1. Why?

Why… why all of it? Why were my powers different? Why did I have a modified version of the powers that I - Taylor Hebert, anyway - should have? Why had I vanished from my locker? Had I died there or just disappeared? Did I leave a body behind? Had it been discovered by the school, in which case I was going to have to answer some really awkward questions, or had someone - Sophia - buried it in a shallow grave?

My head throbbed. It was like I was scratching at the right questions but I couldn't connect the pieces.

Where did the other-memories come from? They were definitely part of another person, but why had they been fragmented?

That question sparked a feeling. A desire that felt foreign, like it came from just the tatters of the being the other-memories belonged to. The desire was that I should live. It was an answer, but it just raised more questions.

I stabbed the pen into the paper where I'd only written one number and one word. I braced for more revelations, but none came. That desire faded and I was back to my new normal within a few seconds, but I had learned something important.

"It was intentional," I muttered to myself as I thought over the other memories. Was I in a story? Possible, but it didn't quite fit. Capes tended to only have one strong power or a bunch of related powers unless they were part of a cluster - a concept I only really understood because of my other-memories. I probably wasn't part of a cluster with Spiderman, which meant I had some seemingly unrelated powers. At best, that would make for a confusing story, though that couldn't entirely be ruled out.

I tapped the paper, still staring at the word 'Why?' which had no answers to give me. There were still several possibilities. The source of my other-memories remembered several framing devices where one could choose powers to mix and match along with parameters about the setting they would be used in. That seemed to fit, more or less, with what I was experiencing, but the problem was that there were simply too many of them for me to narrow it down.

"So, my reality was warped by some sort of game? And now I'm stuck with it?" I frowned at the other-memory of a one-armed version of me getting shot in the head on a different world after she'd done irreparable brain damage to herself in order to save the world. Truth be told, if that was the best life could give me otherwise, I'd take a little reality warping.

"Assume it's true. What does that mean?" I asked myself. A few things sprang to mind.

For one, it probably meant that whatever had warped reality was still twisting things, at least occasionally. My first night after getting powers had been a hellish onslaught of bad luck, and several of those frameworks would have allowed for such a thing. That part seemed to have run its course, but now… well, one data point wasn't a lot, but I had experienced a mostly peaceful day that included a random interaction with some capes that could be allies - or enemies, if I really stepped in it.

For another, it probably meant that there was nothing I could do about it. A force strong enough to alter a trigger event and then set all of those dominoes in motion had to be godlike, and I doubted I could do anything to an actual god. Other-me had managed to kill Scion, but he was hardly a real god.

I stared at my one-item list and flipped to a clean page to start a different list. I titled it 'encounters' and then listed off all of the people I had met my first night out and everyone that stood out since then. That first night was a lot. There was definitely something to the theory that I'd suffered a 'one night of terrible luck' curse of some sort.

Then today's encounter with the two New Wave kids… it had been slower. I hadn't been in that alley more than five minutes before the first guys had appeared and not more than ten before the gangsters showed up. It had been almost six hours between leaving the house and the New Wave encounter. Meeting them also wasn't strictly a bad thing. I'd discovered a new power, if nothing else, and while I think I pissed Amy off, my other-memories told me she was supposed to be bitter and surly, so that might not even mean much.

I heard the front door open and dad's voice yelling that he was home. I put the notebook down and got up to go see how his day had been.

No sooner had I walked out the door of my room than I turned around and came back inside. I closed the notebook and stuffed it in among a few others on my shelf, shifting a book in front of them to hide it a little.

No use tempting fate, right?

//\\o//\\

I stared at the piece of paper like it was going to bite me.

"I'm sorry, what?" I repeated softly, finally tearing my eyes off the paper and back to dad.

"You start on Monday," he repeated and my eyes drifted back down.

It was a letter inviting me to attend Arcadia. Just like that.

"I… how?" I asked after a long moment.

"Well, your dad does know a few people around town. I've been in Mayor Christner's office at least twice a month for the last few years, and while I wouldn't exactly call us friends, he usually answers the phone when I call," he bragged, puffing out his chest a little. "Did you know that Bernard Carter - that's the current superintendent of the school system - was his pick? It's become a bit of an issue lately because of that hazing scandal over at Westmont High? Well, I talked to him yesterday and let him know that Winslow is going to be his next ticking time bomb. In the middle of an election year, too."

It couldn't be that simple, could it? In that other world - the one with the glowing man - I had been stuck at Winslow… but maybe it could? In that world, dad had gotten the school to cover medical bills and promise to improve things all within a month or two. He hadn't known that Emma was the culprit until much later. By then, the deal had already been made so he no longer had any real leverage. Using what we had, even if it was weaker this time, just to get the transfer had apparently worked better. Or did my version of dad have more pull? Or was this another example of reality warping shenanigans at play?

I had no idea. It could have been any of those things or all of them in combination. The one thing I knew for sure was that going to Arcadia meant I wouldn't be able to avoid Amy Dallon for long. Did they make a greeting card for 'sorry I used my super powers to view the most traumatic moment of your childhood'? I only winced a little at the thought, but luckily dad wasn't paying that much attention to me as he continued his story.

"I had a quick discussion with him. Like you said, we don't have the kind of case that would make the school settle things quickly, and we don't really have an easy sum of monetary damages we could ask for. However, if we were willing to really put in the effort, we could probably get some concessions. The case would end up all over the news in the process, of course, because it would be so slow-"

"Dad, did you… did you blackmail the mayor?" I asked, both a little horrified and a little impressed.

Dad waved his hand. "Blackmail is such a harsh word. I think we came to a mutually beneficial arrangement. He's going to quietly investigate the situation at Winslow and make a big public deal about it as he fires Carter. They were planning to make a public statement on Monday, and they were still on the fence over whether or not they were going to back him. If the mayor claims it is all part of the same investigation, it's much cleaner and minimizes the damage to his campaign. He might even be able to spin it in his favor. If this came out after he doubled down on his guy… well, it would be a different story."

In that other world, if the same events were in play, it might have explained why the school was in such a rush to sweep things under the rug. The idea that other-dad had been able to get money out of the school system in just a couple of months was, in and of itself, kind of crazy now that I thought about it.

I pointed at the invitation which dad was still holding out in my general direction. "And he just… had an invitation to Arcadia on hand?"

Dad chuckled. "Not quite. He called the principal at home and they chatted for a bit before he sent it over. It took about an hour."

"In spite of the sacred code of teenagers everywhere, I have to - reluctantly - admit that I am impressed."

Dad laughed louder. "High praise, indeed." He then sighed. "Unfortunately, doing all of that meant I only barely got into the office today. Can you fend for yourself again tomorrow? I know it's a Sunday, but-"

"Dad, it's okay. This whole mess is-well, it's not really my fault, but I have more fault in it than you do. Do what you need to do."

"Do you need anything for school on Monday? How did shopping go today? No more gang members chase you around, I hope?" He tried to make the last part sound like a bit of a joke, but there was a bit of a nervous edge to it.

"No, nothing that bad. I did accidentally run into a couple of the kids from New Wave, but we didn't get into a fight or anything." It was my turn to try to play off a complex statement as innocent, and I didn't quite succeed.

Dad still frowned. "Which set? I think Alan works with one of the moms. If I didn't want to choke him, I could probably get her number - the mom, I mean - if you need to meet up with them or something. As long as you're not planning to try to join up with them."

I shook my head. "I think it's the same set, but I expect I'll see them at Arcadia on Monday. I don't think I would want to be part of that team, and things have been…" I made a wiggly motion with my hand. I had no idea exactly what I was trying to convey with it, but it seemed to fit. "... lately."

We chatted for a bit more before dad went to make dinner while I spent some time staring at the Arcadia acceptance letter.

Maybe it was all down to the timing? In that other world, maybe dad hadn't tried to get me transferred for a few weeks and by then the public relations crisis with the superintendent was over? It still strained credulity that anyone - mayor or not - had managed to get me a transfer in the course of an hour.

I sighed. It was probably whatever reality warping force kept trying to make my life 'interesting'.

"You can stop now. Really," I grumbled at the universe at large.

It didn't answer, which was probably better for my sanity in the long run

"Did you say something?" Dad did.

"Oh, just wondering what was for dinner," I covered. "Need any help?"

//\\o//\\

Nothing much changed on Sunday. In theory, I needed to get out and practice with my powers, but I was worried that doing so would invite the universe to mess with me even more. It was kind of a Catch 22 situation - I needed practice so the next time I needed to use my powers, I would be better at doing so, but if I went out to get better with them, I would probably need to use them right then.

With my head and body still aching - but less than before - I decided to give it another day or two before I risked it. I had enough to worry about with starting Arcadia on Monday - a thought that was so surreal that it still hadn't quite sunk in.

Instead, I spent most of Sunday digging through the old stuff that mom and dad had shoved into the attic and basement over the years. I wasn't lucky enough to find a whole wardrobe of clothes or anything - I was pretty sure that dad donated mom's stuff to charity because he couldn't stand looking at it anymore - but I did find an electric sewing machine from the seventies or eighties with a yellowing plastic case and a few items that would be useful for 'Tinkering' together my web-shooters.

Making your own costume and Spiderman-powers. Name a more iconic duo?

Unfortunately, sewing skills weren't really part of my powerset and the best I managed over the course of an hour was to turn one of my stained hoodies into a lumpier stained hoodie. I was a long way from making my own costume, and I didn't even have the right materials for it, really.

Poking around in the basement also gave me a chance to lift some heavy stuff. I still hadn't found anything that I couldn't lift with one arm, which matched up with what I expected. Balancing really heavy stuff on one hand - even if I used my other power to stick to it - was only difficult because it was awkward to balance some stuff.

After noon, I gave up on diving for junk and spent some time building a web-shooter. The actual web-shooter part went together better than I had expected with parts from several ancient appliances and an old alarm clock making up the bulk of it. Being strong enough to bend steel with your fingertips was very handy for that part.

I was pleased with my progress, though I still wasn't done. I still had to figure out a way to rig the mechanism to some sort of bracelet or wristband so I could actually use it and I hadn't even really started on the fluid that made it work in the first place.

My earlier assessment that I could make the web fluid with household chemicals was technically correct, but also undersold how complicated it would be to go that route. I strongly suspected that science-nerd Peter Parker had spilled a lot of the steps in his reality by being able to obtain the processed chemicals. In theory, I could go that route, too, but I knew from my reading that ordering chemicals on the Internet could land you on a Tinker watch list.

That left me with the process of cooking down a lot of household cleaners and other chemicals over the course of a few days. Not exactly ideal, but I wanted the web fluid. It was supposedly not Tinkertech, but it might as well have been with how complicated it was. In essence, it was a synthetic liquid spider silk with an activating agent that, when cooked over a low heat, transformed the whole mixture into the amazingly strong, short lived stuff that Spiderman used. It wasn't Tinkertech, but without a sample of the liquid before it was activated, there was no way anyone was going to figure out how to reproduce the formula. Well, unless a Tinker with just the right skillset got a sample of it, anyway. Even then, their version might be Tinkertech with all of the associated drawbacks.

Regardless, in the middle of the afternoon, I decided it was worth venturing out of the house to see what I could find. There was a janitorial supply place not too far from the house that I suspected had almost everything I needed, but they proved to be closed since it was Sunday.

Being on a nice walk was fine, though. It was cold, but I actually had clothes on so it wasn't so bad. The fact that those thoughts didn't even phase me probably said bad things about my mental health, too. I was a little worried about more improbable coincidences, but that was probably going to happen regardless. I was feeling restless, but I suspected it was more the nerves about my sudden transfer to a different school.

"Mew," a soft feline voice interrupted my thoughts as I wandered back toward home, taking a different route to see a bit of scenery and stretch my legs a little.

"He's in the tree," a tired voice offered when I looked around for who was meowing at me. "Old coot doesn't know how to climb down trees anymore, but he is insistent on running out any time someone doesn't close the door fast enough."

The woman was blonde and while she looked young, she probably wasn't that much younger than dad. She was bundled up against the cold and watching the cat from the front stoop of a brick-fronted duplex.

"Do you want me to get him down for you?" I offered. Maybe all of this thought of being a hero was going to my head, I realized. "I mean, if you want."

"If you could, but don't hurt yourself. I'll usually get my husband to get out the ladder to get him down, but he'll be at work till late. I was kind of hoping the old man would figure out how to get down on his own before that." She huffed and directed a look of annoyance at the cat who didn't seem to care.

I laughed awkwardly and decided it was a decent enough challenge. I could flex my powers a tiny bit and make it look innocent. "I'll give it a try."

I made things look much, much more complicated than they really were. Sticking to things was simple, and the cat really was old. He didn't want to be picked up, but he wasn't going to avoid me.

"Bring him inside, if you don't mind. I can make some coffee or cocoa for you as a thank you, and it's probably best that you don't put him down till he's on the other side of a door. He'll be right back up that tree if you give him half a chance."

I wanted to tell her no, but I was freezing and cocoa sounded good. I told her as much and I was soon sitting in a tiny kitchen sipping instant cocoa out of a chipped mug. It was good, if only because of the warming sensation. It felt good to do something nice for someone.

If I had any doubts that whatever effect was forcing me into improbable events was in motion, they were dispelled when the front door of the duplex opened and someone came in. "Mom, I'm home!"

The voice was familiar. The hair was familiar. Now that I thought about it, I could see the family resemblance, too.

"Close the door behind you! All the way, this time! The cat got out when you left. Again!"

"I'm sorry," the girl apologized as I watched the trainwreck playing out in front of me. "Do I need to get the ladder out for dad?"

"No, this nice young lady helped me get him down," the older woman declared and gestured toward me.

A pair of blue eyes landed on me and widened. "What are you doing here?"

I had honestly expected her to be more angry. Instead, she just sounded shocked.

"Hello, Madison."

 

[Swordchucks]

My initial reaction to Madison's presence hadn't been exactly what I would have expected. Part of me hated her. A lot. Another part of me - the other-memories - said that she was the only one of my tormentors that actually had the potential to change. To feel remorse and try to be a better person, even if it would come far too late.

It was probably those other-memories that kept me calm. I wasn't going to forgive her or even forget about what she had done, but fate was apparently handing me a chance to get some answers and I wasn't going to turn that down. As for what she was thinking? I had no idea, but I intended to find out.

"We haven't seen each other in a while, so why don't we take a walk and catch up?" I offered after Madison spent a long half-minute gaping at me. Spider powers were cool and all, but adult-ish maturity that let me not flounder around like a teenager all the time? Best super power. I put the half-finished mug of cocoa back on the table and got up. "Thank you for the cocoa, Mrs. Clements."

Madison didn't even protest as I nudged her to turn around and head back outside. I collected my coat and did the same, making certain to close the door firmly to stymie the efforts of feline escape artists.

"How are you-" Madison started, as soon as the door shut, but I shushed her.

"Let's take a walk," I said forcefully and either my tone or my look caused her to shut her mouth.

There was a little park back the way I had come earlier that day, and it had the bonus of being farther from my house. I didn't know if Madison knew where I lived, but I felt better with the distance, anyway.

"Now, talk. Why so surprised to see me, Maddie?" Madison flinched. I was being glib, but having the strength to literally twist someone's head off could do that to a gal.

"I thought you were dead," she said in a heavy whisper.

I nodded. That wasn't unexpected, but I need to understand more. "Why did you think that, exactly?"

She couldn't meet my eyes. "After… after we all went to class, Emma made up some excuse to go check on-on things. The plan was to just-that things were only supposed to go on for like half an hour. An hour, tops."

I frowned. I didn't really remember much about what had happened here, but that wasn't the impression I had from my other-memories. Then again, how long did it really take for someone to break when shoved into a tiny space like that? Other-me might have gone nuts in the space of five minutes. Maybe I did, too.

"And what happened then?" I prompted.

"Sophia got a text and then she made an excuse and rushed out, too. Then when the bell rang, they were still in the hallway acting like everything was fine and keeping people away from your l-locker. There was a mop and stuff beside it. I-I don't know what was going on, but she gave me a look and… well, she looked freaked out. I tried to ask what was wrong, but she ordered me to go back to class and I did. I looked out the window from my next class and saw Sophia dumping some bags and stuff in one of the dumpsters-"

"Bags? Like… big enough for a body?" That was one of my biggest worries - that I was leaving a string of corpses around town. I was going to get outed in a hurry if that were the case - or I could just stop dying so much. That was probably the better option all around.

"N-no, like, normal trashbags and stuff. I didn't get a good look, but I didn't… I didn't see enough bags for a body. I don't think," she stammered, fretting with the hem of her coat. "It was just… evidence, I guess? All of that gross stuff they put in there, probably? Then afterwards, Emma claimed that they let you out and you ran away screaming or something." Her staring at the ground intensified. "But she didn't make a video or anything of it, and I can't see Emma letting that chance pass. I can't… Along with the rest, it just didn't make a lot of sense."

"And no one noticed when I didn't show up for the rest of the week?" I prompted. Sophia being the one that had to clean stuff up definitely fit with what I expected. Unfortunately, I couldn't be sure if there had been a body or not - Sophia might have hidden it in a wall or something. She could do stuff like that, right?

"There were rumors…" she admitted. "Most of them were from Emma. She said you had a psychotic break and were in the hospital because-" she caught herself and stopped talking.

"I'm sure she made up something stupid," I agreed. Madison looked pretty scared and a dark part of me liked that. It felt - well, not exactly nice, but it felt satisfying. "And you thought I was dead?"

"I… suspected Sophia did something. She's… she's dangerous." She looked up and there were tears in her eyes. I couldn't quite feel bad for her, but I did feel a little guilty for enjoying her suffering.

"Well, I'm not, and I'm not coming back to Winslow." I didn't feel the need to explain anything further. "But you're right about Sophia. If I were dead and she thought she'd get something out of it by hiding my body? She absolutely would have. She'd do the same thing to you, too."

Madison screwed her eyes shut, the tears coming faster. "I didn't want to believe that, but…"

"It wasn't just a bunch of harmless pranks," I admonished. "Someone that was less stubborn than me would have killed herself by now, and that would have been partially your fault." It was blunt but true in a way. I'd never even really considered it, but I could see how someone else in that situation might have.

"I'm sorry," she whimpered.

I just frowned. "I don't care if you're sorry," I said. I wasn't being exceptionally harsh, just matter-of-fact. "I'm… I won't say I'm over it. I'm actually pretty mad at you, but I don't think it matters in the end. I'm going to leave here in a few minutes, and if I have my way, we'll never see each other again. The thing you should be thinking about is how you let things get this out of hand and how you can be a better person going forward."

I let out a short, harsh laugh before I continued. "I used to think of you three as the 'trio'. You know that Emma has a dozen cronies, but it was always you, her, and Sophia that did the worst of it. Both Emma and Sophia are broken in ways that neither of us will ever be able to fix. You're the only one of the three that's going to wake up one day and realize that you were the bad guy in the story of your own life. When you do? Then you're going to regret it forever."

There was a long moment of silence, and I shivered as a few flakes of new snow started to fall.

"I think I already realized that," she admitted. "After you vanished, Emma and Sophia were almost in a panic for a few hours and then they were back to normal. I wanted to pretend that they were telling the truth and everything was fine, but something about the way Sophia was carrying that bag - disposing of the evidence." She shuddered. "You're-you're right. I can't… I am the bad guy. I'm so sorry."

"Again, I don't really care." I kind of did care, though. Watching Madison cry made me feel… something. Not good, exactly, but not bad, either. It was… satisfying in a dark way to have one of the trio admit that they had been wrong to treat me the way they had, even if it was the least of them. "If you are really sorry, change. I know I wasn't the only person to suffer from the bullying campaign, and with me gone, Emma's going to find a new punching bag."

"What… what am I supposed to do?"

I had some ideas, but those were what might have worked for me. Madison was a very different person in a different situation. "Figure it out for yourself." I took a deep breath and let it out, the fog pouring out as the cold stole the moisture from it. "Just… have a good life, Madison. One you won't be ashamed of."

I turned to walk away, but Madison's voice stopped me. "Wait! What… what should I tell them?"

I didn't turn back around, but instead shrugged. "If I were you? I wouldn't tell them anything. Pretend I was never here and when Emma eventually finds out, it won't be your problem."

I didn't stick around to wait for further protests, but walked back home, the snow swirling around me as the weather picked up a little.

//\\o//\\

I was in a dark mood that evening. Dad, with a newly forged ability to pay attention to me, picked up on it almost immediately and asked if I was alright.

"I guess. Saw someone from school today, and apparently I vanished last Monday. Emma told everyone I ran away screaming and somehow no one questioned that or the fact that I didn't show up the rest of the week."

Dad frowned and took his glasses off so that he could use his other hand to rub at his temples better. He had a temper. I knew he had a temper. He tried not to show it around me, but I had seen him fighting with it from time to time.

"Alright. You're definitely not going back there. Even if I didn't already get you transferred. I was going to cancel that meeting with Principal Blackwell, but I might just keep it so I can go yell at her."

That mental image made me chuckle, breaking my bad mood a little. It would be a petty waste of both of their time, but it might be cathartic for dad. If the mayor really was going to clean house, Blackwell would be getting yelled at a lot in the coming weeks, anyway.

"You don't need to miss more work for that."

"That's true. Her incompetence has already made me miss enough work." It was his turn to grin. I grinned back, even though it wasn't really funny - the fact was that we'd both had a hellish week that was caused by bullying that the administration had been willfully ignorant of. With my other-memories, I was pretty sure that they weren't actively malicious, just… callous and indifferent. My suffering had not been a priority for them. They were busy and didn't want to know about the bullying, so they just didn't know about it.

It's where the fact that I'd let myself stop reporting the bullying worked against me so much. Without being informed over and over and over, how could they possibly know it was still a problem? Nevermind that they'd brushed aside every past complaint. Nevermind that there had to be some gossip floating around about it. Nevermind that at least some of the worst incidents had been recorded - badly - and posted all over social media. They didn't want to deal with it, so they just didn't.

It made me a little mad, but mostly sad. Winslow had been a good school, once. There were trophies on display in big cases - now with bars over them, of course - and pictures of the place when it had opened sixty years before. Then the demographics changed. White flight kicked in - coming to the Bay a bit later than a lot of places, but still coming. Money trickled away from the docks and into the suburbs which just made more people leave the city proper.

Eventually, the only people living on the northside of town did so because they worked there or because they couldn't afford to move. Well, that or they were a stubborn idiot like Alan Barnes. I remembered hearing him rant on more than one occasion about how he didn't plan to move no matter how bad the neighborhood got.

The modern Winslow was a sign of that slow rot. A festering boil that was a sign of the infection underneath. It was something I wished I could fix, but it was beyond what one person could reasonably do.

"You're brooding," dad said as he poked me in the forehead.

I swatted his finger away. "Sorry, just… thinking about that school."

Dad nodded. "I get it." He clapped his hands making me jump a little. It also distracted me from my dark thoughts. "Are you ready for tomorrow?"

I fidgeted. "I'm a bit nervous, but it has to be better than going back to Winslow."

"Low bar, there," dad agreed. "Do you need anything? It's a bit late on a Sunday, but there are probably stores still open."

"I'm just going to wing it, I think. Most of my school supplies are missing and probably in the trash." It grated on me a little, but it was just more insult added to my injuries. I had heard that Arcadia relied on computers much more than Winslow, in any case, so I might not even need much. "If I need stuff, we can go shopping tomorrow evening. I just want to get through my first day."

"Sounds like a plan," he agreed.

That night, I dreamed of the vast creature again, this time recognizing it for an aspect of the Spider though I didn't remember much of what actually happened in the dream. I woke up wondering if it was a memory or if the Spider was actively trying to communicate with me. Or if it was just a product of my cosmic connection with something vast and ancient and powerful.

Getting ready for school felt like preparing for my own execution.

Well, that was overly dramatic, but I still had a lot of anxiety brewing. What if Arcadia was just as bad as Winslow but with better PR? What if my luck kicked in and Hookwolf was my gym teacher? What if Amy Dallon came after me with an axe? What if Arcadia had a brand new invisible bus program and one of those ran me over?

I had enough new clothes to get me through a day at Arcadia, though I continued to 'hide behind my hair' a bit and wore the fake glasses. I could always claim I got contacts if I ditched them, and they did make at least some difference to my face as part of a disguise.

I paused to check myself out in the mirror before I left to catch the bus. I was… cute. Actually, I was kind of hot in a 'dressed down nerd' way. Intellectually, I knew that I had some self-esteem issues brought on by the bullying and just natural body image issues, but there was something about my power-induced makeover that broke through that.

"I'd date me," I decided and then blushed at the fact that I had said that out loud. It didn't quite feel real. It was like I was wearing a 'hot Taylor' costume. Maybe I would flirt a little today? It could be fun. No one at Arcadia knew me as old-Taylor, so I could be a completely different kind of Taylor. A fun one. A happy one.

I blushed and giggled at the thoughts and forcibly turned away from the mirror. That bit of embarrassment aside, it was time to go. It was time to face my first day at Arcadia.

I really hoped that my luck just stayed strange and didn't decide to try to get me killed again.

//\\o//\\

"And this is the cafeteria. They serve breakfast up till the first bell in the morning then they serve lunch during fourth period," my guide said, gesturing toward a series of four pairs of double doors that were currently all open. A few early arrivals were seated at the tables, splitting their attention between eating and chatting with friends or various other activities.

"Is the food any good?" I asked, trying to keep my tone level. How, exactly, I had ended up with a Ward to show me around on my first day was anyone's guess, but I had a strong suspicion it was yet another stroke of 'luck' . Red hair. Named Dennis. Thought he was funnier than he really was.

"Stay away from the chili, but the rest is generally pretty edible. If you're going to study hall after, it's better than starving, anyway. If you've got early dismissal, it's kind of down to personal preference as to whether you wait and get something after you leave. The taco place half a block over is always packed, though."

I nodded at that. "Early dismissal is work study, right?"

Dennis nodded. "That or university credits or volunteer work or a few other things. Like, half the school has something to do in the afternoon, though you might get stuck with study hall for a bit while you figure something out. Most people try to do the work study programs because they don't pay a lot, but they do pay."

It was a little weird talking to someone that I only knew through other-memories. Dennis was… more charming than I expected. He was still a teenage boy, of course, with all of the rough edges that implied, but he wasn't mean or spiteful. The other-memories had expected more of that, but those other-memories mostly depicted Dennis in tense situations. Maybe he just wasn't good with pressure?

"How did you get stuck giving newbies the tour?" I asked as we walked back toward the office. The invitation letter had asked me to show up early and I was being integrated with the school very quickly. I already had my schedule and knew where my classes were, more or less. If my 'luck' was going to grease the wheels of bureaucracy in my favor, it might not be all bad?

"You're just a sophomore, so you don't have to worry about it yet, but you need twenty community service hours before you graduate. There's a whole big list of stuff you can do both inside the school and outside, but giving tours is on there and I'm usually here really early, so I signed up for it. I've only been doing it since school started in the fall, and I'm already halfway through my required hours." He seemed proud of that, and I had to admit that it sounded interesting.

I laughed. Not a snicker or something dainty, either. I snorted. And giggled. I squeezed my lips shut in embarrassment. So much for new-Taylor being smooth. "Sorry, I was just trying to imagine Winslow forcing its students to do community service that a judge didn't order. They'd get shot."

Dennis winced. "Wow, ouch. Winslow, huh? We hear horror stories. Arcadia is crowded - in an hour or so, there are going to be people everywhere - but we definitely don't have those kinds of problems."

He looked around. "Look, don't tell anyone I asked, but is there going to be a new Ward showing up soon? The rumor is that they all go here, so everyone's always trying to figure out who might be one and I have to be the first one to ask."

Caught off guard, I laughed again. This time, it was more ladylike. The absurdity of a Ward pretending to try to figure out if I was also a Ward was not lost on me. "No, I'm not going to be a Ward."

Dennis deflated a little at that, and I had to admit, he was a good actor. "Well, I had to ask. I didn't think so, but if you were, that would be pretty cool."

"Oh? Why didn't you think I'd be a Ward?" I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me. I mean, he wouldn't have said that if he didn't have an answer better than 'I would have gotten the memo about a new teammate', right?

"Well, when we get new students and then a Ward is announced, it's usually not so last-minute. I got a call at home on Saturday asking if I could give a tour today, and that's not normal. We also tend to get a group of new students with a similar body-type to the new Ward all at the same time." He looked around like he was checking for listeners, but we were still mostly alone in the hallway. "If it were me, I'd still do all of that and then I'd then have all the Wards go somewhere else, like Immaculata. Think about it. Everyone knows they go to Arcadia, so who would even suspect?"

"That's a good point," I agreed and nodded like I was actually thinking it through. He was definitely more cunning than I expected for someone that chose Clockblocker as a cape name.

"Anyway, here you are back at the start of the tour. My deed is done. Best of luck on your first day. Remember to just close your eyes, lie back, and think of the Queen," he declared, opening the door for me with an overdone flourish.

"I'm always thinking of the queen," I said as I walked past him. It wasn't my most witty of comebacks, but at least it was something. It did earn me a small chuckle, most likely out of pity at how lame I was.

If only the 'coincidences' had ended there.

My first class was fine, but my math class after that had me seated at the same bench as a boy named Chris who had a math-related learning disability. Then for my fourth period class, a charming older boy named Carlos insisted on walking me to lunch.

Having to pretend to know nothing about people - even if I only knew a tiny bit - was starting to get exhausting. At least I was almost out of Wards to run into by 'accident'. I just had Dean - Gallant - left to go and he'd probably be with Glory Girl.

"How's your first day treating you?" Carlos asked as we moved through the crowded hallway. Arcadia really was packed. My classes were even bigger than they had been at Winslow, and it seemed like there were always a bunch of people in the halls, even when they should have been in class. There was apparently something about the place that blocked cell phone reception, too, though I didn't have one to worry about.

"Not bad," I said and searched for something else to say. Carlos was kind of hot and I kind of wanted to flirt but was finding that I barely knew how. "How has it been for you? I mean, your day in general, not your first day since it wouldn't be your first day."

That got me a chuckle and I blushed. New-Taylor was the very definition of smooth. As long as you looked at the part of the definition that listed opposites, anyway.

"Not bad," he said, repeating what I'd said and smiling handsomely. It was a little annoying how effortless he made being charming seem. If I had any hope of flirting successfully, I was going to have to find someone even more hopeless than me to try it on. Or I could try an outfit that was a little more daring. That sounded like it might work.

Lunch was taken in one of four slots during the fourth period in order to keep the number of students being served down a little. After that, I had study hall for the rest of the afternoon along with the other kids at sophomore year or higher that didn't have a reason to get out of school early. Assuming I didn't get outed my first week, I thought I would probably find one of my own. Maybe I could be an intern somewhere like Medhall? That thought seemed vaguely amusing to me, though I couldn't quite figure out why.

Oh, wait, wasn't that the Nazi front com-

"You." A voice nearly growled from right beside me. I turned my head to see exactly the person I had least wanted to run into on my first day. It was Amy Dallon and she looked annoyed. She wasn't trying to murder me with a fire extinguisher, at least.

"Yes. Me." I agreed amicably.

"Come with me. We need to talk."

 

[Swordchucks]

"What, exactly, are we going to talk about?" I asked as I hopped up on the exam table of the nurse's office. Amy had led me there rather forcibly and let us in without another word. "Are we even allowed to be in here?"

"I have permission to use this room as I see fit," Amy grumbled and fixed her eyes on mine. She looked like she was perpetually tired, which fit with what my other-memories told me about her. "And I want you to tell me why I can't read you."

I blinked. The bit in the thrift shop had been a bit chaotic. At the time, I'd assumed she was aware that I'd read her memories, and had been avoiding touching others ever since. However, I didn't know that for sure, and now Amy was asking about something completely different. "Read me? Oh, you mean with your power. Do you just… go around reading everyone? That seems rude." Given what had happened when I touched her, that seemed hypocritical, but I wasn't going to confess to that.

"Not on purpose," she ground out. I was starting to realize that she was just like that. Perpetually sour. "It takes a few seconds for me to see anything more than a vague impression, which I don't do without consent, but I still feel something. When I touched you, there was nothing there. Are you even alive?"

My thoughts raced. Technically, I had died at least once - probably twice - so was that what was happening? On the other hand, many of the framing devices my other-memories knew of involved some level of protection from Thinker abilities, and her power's scanning function might count. Both paths apparently had the downside of outing me when certain powers came into play.

I decided to be blase about it. "I don't actually know. Are any of us really alive?"

She spent a moment staring at me incredulously, then her eyes narrowed. "Are you a cape?"

There it was. The question I had been expecting to come out first. There wasn't much point in denying it. I was the one person that just happened to be immune to Panacea's amazing biokinesis and I was a mundane human? That was even more unbelievable than the telenovela that my life had become. On the other hand, I gained nothing with an outright admission and someone might be listening in.

"That would seem to be a possible explanation for the facts at hand, but I don't really want to have that conversation in a public place," I said. "Running into you this weekend was just a coincidence. I'm not out to hurt you or anyone else, and I just want to get through school."

Amy's eyes stayed locked with mine before she let out a deep sigh and looked away. When she looked back in my direction, she looked a little guilty. "I'm sorry. I'm not used to the whole… identities thing, and I guess I might have overreacted a little," she admitted. "I don't meet a lot of- I mean, I don't just stumble into a lot of… special people by accident. It's usually only on purpose, and I usually get some warning first."

An odd thought bubbled out of my other-memories, but I pushed it aside. What even was a 'shatterpoint'?

It sounded dumb, but on second thought, the concept behind it did sort of fit even if I didn't like the term. This was a moment where my choices could potentially have far-reaching consequences.

Amy Dallon was a ticking time bomb, or she would become one pretty soon. Right now, she might be a grumpy jerk that acted before she thought, but that was just annoying. In a few months, after the pressure ground her down and the job was finished by an Endbringer and the Slaughterhouse Nine? She'd become a monster.

My memories were hazy on the exact details of that, but I knew that she'd broken her own rules, done horrible things to her sister, and then let herself go to the Birdcage in remorse. Her sister obviously didn't deserve that, either.

On one hand, it wasn't my problem. Not directly, anyway. Even if only because my actions would be different, future events would be different to some degree. Amy might not break at the same time or in the same way.

On the other hand, I could try to help her. One of the things that was killing her was her dogged insistence on helping people. She might be doing it for some of the wrong reasons, but the fact that she was doing it at all was worth consideration. Down that path, I'd have to deal with the fact that she was the victim of abuse in a situation where addressing that in any normal way wouldn't work out very well.

Even before that thought had finished forming, I knew I was going to try to help. I wouldn't be taking any of her shit while I did it, though. A mischievous thought hit me. The old Taylor Hebert would never have gone with it, but I wasn't exactly that girl anymore. It helped that I now realized that Amy Dallon couldn't use her terrifying powers on me while I could use my annoyance powers on her.

"Well, now I'm going to have to explain to people where we ran off to with you looking so intense. Was it so that you fell in love with me at first sight?"

Amy's look wasn't amused. "Maybe you could tell them that I had to fix your raging case of gonorrhea which was so bad that it was about to go airborne and I panicked?"

I snickered. "I like mine better." My attempt at flirting with Carlos might have ended in disaster, but Amy was definitely lamer than me. I could outdo her, especially using my secret weapon. Weapons.

The outfit I had put together that morning had a couple of layers to it and I pulled off the top one, leaving me in a very tight undershirt. "Come on, tell me you wouldn't want to date these-I mean me?" I took a breath and rolled my shoulders back slightly. Hot-Taylor powers, activate!

Amy's eyes flicked down and then back to my eyes. I could tell she was struggling a bit. "You're an unknown par-person that I do not trust. It would be insane of me to agree to that." Her eyes flicked back down and I could see just the faintest blush on her cheeks.

"Alright, if you really want," I said sadly as I pulled my overshirt back on, though I was inwardly very pleased with myself. The problem with my earlier attempt had definitely been that I didn't leverage my boobs enough. It was a distraction, at least. "We could get together and get to know each other better, though. Maybe build up some of that trust you don't have."

"That still sounds like you're trying to get me to go out with you," she said softly. She seemed a bit flustered and it was a tremendous ego boost. Old-me had never made anyone flustered. "This would have been easier if you were a robot assassin sent from the future to kill me before I could form the resistance."

It was my turn to blink. My other memories supplied some details and I took a wild guess. "Wasn't that a movie?"

"You've never seen The Terminator?" she asked, suddenly less standoffish. Apparently, she liked movies?

"So, you're asking me to watch a movie with you?" I almost chirped. "I thought you weren't interested, but now you're asking me on a date."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she let it out.

"Okay."

"Uh… okay?" I asked, suddenly confused.

"Yes, okay. We can go on a date. You can come over to my house where my cape family will be nearby to murder you if you actually are there on a mission from the future to kill me. And I will expect you to reveal some of the things you do not wish to talk about in public." She opened her eyes and fixed them on mine.

I squirmed. "I never actually expected you to say yes."

"So you're backing out? All talk?" she said and a little smirk grew on her lips.

"No, I'm still in, I'm just… surprised." I was surprised and I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to date Amy Dallon. I had thought about it in high-minded 'help her stay a hero' terms, but the actual reality of it? I mean, she wasn't ugly and she seemed smart enough to carry a conversation, when she wasn't being a bitter little shit. Maybe it was my heroic duty to show her a good time?

Yeah, that sounded lame, even in my head.

"Good," she said as she straightened the collar of her shirt. "I'm surprising. You'll get used to it. Tomorrow night at seven. Eat first."

Then she was gone and I was alone in the nurse's office.

"Okay, then. That happened."

//\\o//\\

"So, how was school today?" dad asked over dinner.

"Fine. Peaceful. Except, I might have met three of the Wards, and I have a date with Panacea tomorrow night." I leaned into the absurdity. It was my only option at this point.

Dad snorted. "So nothing happened, then?" He obviously didn't believe me. Clearly, he still believed that reality made sense. How naive.

"Uh… no, I met three Wards and I have a date with Panacea tomorrow night. I don't actually think she likes me very much, though." I repeated more slowly.

Dad took his glasses off and put them on the table, beside his plate. Then he closed his eyes, leaned forward, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I really wish I were joking," I offered, trying to sound conciliatory.

"Why do you have a date with Panacea if she doesn't like you that much?" He hadn't opened his eyes.

"Well, she's apparently a boob gal, and after I got my powers, mine-"

"Which we aren't going to talk about. I've spent days pointedly ignoring any possible changes to your appearance just as I have since you were nine. As your father, I have no desire to stop now in the absence of a pressing need on your part that I momentarily take notice after which I will promptly forget all about it. You will always be my little girl and no amount of growing up will change that."

I opened my mouth to push the matter, but decided I should probably let that one go. Dad had been through a lot lately. "Well, she apparently gets a vague sense of the biology of everyone she touches and when we met on Saturday, we accidentally touched. She couldn't see mine and was convinced that I was some sort of robot from the future sent back to murder her-"

His eyes popped open and he stared at me. "What, like in The Terminator?"

"I guess? Anyway, we had a chat and I told her I wouldn't talk about it at school, so now we're going to meet at her house and watch that movie together."

There was a long moment of silence. "You don't have to be on a date to watch a movie with someone. Also, I didn't know you were…" he trailed off, not really able to finish the thought.

"Maybe? I don't really know." I almost started talking about how I kind of liked boys, too, but decided dad wouldn't want to hear that. Plus, dating Amy Dallon was more of a public service than something that got me hot and bothered. "It's mostly just a cover story for why she hauled me off like that, though."

Dad let out a long breath. "Well, at least you can protect yourself if someone causes trouble over it. There are a lot of people that can't mind their own business in this town."

"I guess I really can't join the Empire now. Darn." I tried to put just a tinge of disappointment into my voice which was hard because I felt none. The Empire went after everyone 'other' and there was no faster way to being 'other' than to be gay. Well, for gay men, anyway. The way they treated gay women was equally disgusting but more complicated.

"Anything else I should know about?" Dad sounded tired. I couldn't imagine why.

"Oh, yeah, uh… I'm not cooking meth."

He closed his eyes again and leaned his head back. "Why is it important for me to know that you aren't cooking meth?"

"Well, because I'm going to be making something for my powers over the next few days and it kind of involves distilling a bunch of household stuff into something more useful. To the uninformed observer, the kitchen might… look like a meth lab for a few days." After school, I had stopped at that janitorial supply place and they did have almost everything I needed. I still needed a 'cartridge' I could mix the stuff in that would stand up to the pressures involved, but I had everything for the fluid itself.

"Just… don't burn down the house." Dad allowed with a heavy sigh.

"I'll try," I agreed. I don't think it filled him with confidence.

That evening, I spent some time trying to get a better grip - mentally - on spiders. Earlier that morning, my horrible headache had faded so quickly, it was like someone flipped a switch. It seemed oddly around the time I would have been shoved into the locker but one week later which probably wasn't a coincidence. I had been so busy and distracted that I hadn't even noticed it was gone until I had some quiet time during study hall.

Without the brain pain, I decided it was a good time to start working on my other power. Well, the other power I could use on demand, anyway.

Compared to what my other-memories said about my canon power, It felt like everything else had been greatly tuned down in order to expand my spider control powers. Whether it was part of being a Spider Totem or just a thematic coincidence, I had no way of knowing, but it did mean I wouldn't be choking anyone with biblical plagues of flying insects.

In most ways, it seemed like I was actually weaker because of the change. Spiders were cool and amazing, but having a more versatile swarm with bees and wasps and air-dropped spiders was much more versatile than just the spiders. On the other hand, if I really did have a full set of Spiderman powers, I didn't really need an offensive swarm the way other-me had.

My range for other bugs seemed to have been cut down to about a tenth of what other-me would have had. I could sense insects out to a range of three or four houses instead of three or four blocks. On the other hand, it felt like my range with spiders was much, much bigger. I wasn't entirely sure how much bigger because there were simply so many of them.

Progress was slow, but I felt like it was noticeable. I certainly wasn't going to be dropping a spider swarm on people, but spiders were very good at getting places and remaining unseen. Once I had a full grasp on the power, I felt like I would have a powerful information gathering network beyond just my more immediate danger sense.

Eventually, I turned in for the night and dreamed of a man with white hair talking to me about things I didn't remember the next morning.

//\\o//\\

My second day at Arcadia was completely uneventful, and that made me very, very nervous for a reason other than my upcoming 'date'. Amy had found me at lunch to make sure I knew her address - which I didn't - and reiterate that I should show up around seven.

After school, I realized I had absolutely nothing in terms of 'date clothes' to draw on. Not that I would have had anything suitable prior to my makeover, but I definitely didn't afterwards. I tried to figure out who I could call for help and came up blank. Well, after I discarded my initial terrible idea to enlist Madison's help. She did owe me, but I also didn't want to be anywhere near her. I was doing my best to be the bigger person, but there were limits.

In the end, I realized that I was overthinking things. I wasn't even sure if I was going on a real date, and even if I was, I wasn't sure if I cared about making a good impression. I picked my best school outfit - which was the one I had worn on Monday - threw it in the wash so it would be clean and tried to make up for my lackluster outfit by doing something with my hair and nails.

I hadn't bothered to paint my nails in years, but it had been one of the few skills I had learned from Emma that really stuck. I was pretty pleased with the result and it helped a bit with my self-confidence.

Hair was… well, I figured that braiding hair was a lot like building a web, so I tried having a bunch of spiders do the work for me. That was much more complicated than I expected because the spiders that were big enough to do the work were also more territorial so I had to suppress more of their instincts than usual. In the end, it took twice as long as if I'd done it by hand, but the result was probably better than I could have managed alone. Being able to - for short bursts - get a look at the back of your head was nice.

Makeup was another area where both mom and Emma had tried to get me to learn for years but I had never really seen the point. Now that I was older - and powers had given me a face worth showing off - I kind of regretted that. Still, I knew the most basic of basics and had some stuff that hadn't dried out so it only had to be washed off twice before I got something I was happy with. It really didn't take much to make me look like a completely different person, but in a good way.

As a final piece of the transformation, I decided to leave my glasses at home.

Dad still wasn't home when I took an apple out of the bowl on the counter for dinner and caught a bus across town to face my fate. The downside of having so much time to prepare is that I also had time to question what I was even doing. I was going on a 'date' with Amy Dallon that wasn't much of a date. I'd be lucky if she didn't punch me at some point - or have her sister do it. That was a bigger concern, though I was pretty sure I could escape if it came down to that.

Not that I wanted to be in a situation where I was on the run from New Wave. That just sounded like a-

"Hey, what's happenin'?" a voice said and I turned my head to find a guy - a bit older than me but not by that much - looming over me, trying to give a charming smile that wasn't working so well.

Oh, yeah. Bus harassment. Old-Taylor didn't have to deal with that. The perils of being Hot-Taylor truly knew no end.

"Going to see my boyfriend. He just got out of jail," I offered casually. Emma had told me a story about using this one and it was pretty clever. "They couldn't make the murder charge stick."

There was a long moment where he didn't look like he believed me. On one hand, if I was lying, I clearly wasn't interested. On the other hand, if I was telling the truth, he could be getting himself killed. His brain was probably trying to do the math where my hotness and the risk had to balance out. Finally, it came to an answer. "Yeah, have a good time, then."

Then he was gone and I was back to brooding and planning.

The trip to the Dallon house took a lot less time than I had hoped. I was a few minutes early so I took a quick walk around the neighborhood to get my bearings - and plan an escape route if needed. Gathering up a few excess spiders as I went also seemed like a good idea.

I took a long breath before I raised my hand to ring the doorbell, but the door opened before I could get that far.

Victoria Dallon stood there, her mouth hanging open as though she had meant to say something and forgot what it was.

"Uh, hi? Is Amy home?" I asked after the silence seemed to be stretching on entirely too long.

"Y-yeah, just a minute," she stammered and proceeded to shut the door in my face.

Was it something I did? I wondered. Regardless, it was a long five minutes before the door opened again with an agitated Amy behind it.

"Sorry about-" she started and then trailed off, too.

"This is getting weird," I grumbled.

"S-sorry, sorry, it's just… you look different. Different good. Really good."

I laughed as I realized what was going on. With great Hot-Taylor powers came great Hot-Taylor responsibilities. Plus a massive ego boost. "Thank you, you look very nice, as well, Ms. Dallon. May I come in?"

Amy looked down at the hand holding the doorknob as if she was just realizing how doors worked for the first time. "Oh, sorry, I-Come in, please. Can I take your coat?"

A few minutes later, I was sitting on a couch in the home theater in the finished half of the Dallon family basement. I only knew that part because you had to walk along the little hallway that led there was also unfinished.

There was a projector and some equipment behind a big leather couch with a couple of large armchairs to the sides and a big fluffy rug out in front. It was cozy.

"So, you're Taylor?" Vicky asked as she settled down beside me on the couch. She had recovered much faster than her sister and volunteered to show me downstairs. "I haven't seen you around, I don't think? Where do you go to school?"

"I started Arcadia yesterday," I said. "Before that I went to Winslow, which was pretty terrible."

Vicky winced. "Yeah, I hear stories."

I wasn't really making secrets about my school situation, so I divulged more. "The reality is probably worse than you've heard, but less blatant. It's not all open violence and drug deals - though there is some of that. I got a transfer because someone tried to kill me the first day after winter break and no one bothered calling my dad to let him know. He knows the mayor in passing and managed to call in a favor."

"Oh, wow, yeah, you won't have to deal with that at Arcadia, probably. There are some strict policies about violence. Still… how did I miss you for two whole days?"

I grinned. "You didn't? I mean, I've seen you at least three times in the cafeteria. I just… dress down at school so I look different."

She ran her eyes over me, frowning. "Yeah, I guess you could pull it off if you really tried. Just… I'm impressed that you did."

"Oh, I realized that on the way over when some guy started hitting on me on the bus," I revealed like it was a secret. "That doesn't happen normally." I paused for a beat. "I played the 'my boyfriend just got out of prison for attempted murder' card and the idiot still had to think about it!"

That got a laugh. "Oh, wow. That's a good one, though I get recognized a lot, so it won't work as well for me."

"I brought popcorn," Amy declared as she came in the doorway with a big bowl of popcorn and a handful of canned drinks. She settled them down on the low table beside the couch.

Vicky looked between her sister and me. "I'll just… go upstairs. Dean is going to pick me up in a bit so we can go bowling."

Dean was the one Ward at Arcadia that I hadn't met, which was probably just as well. If Thinker powers didn't work on me, he would probably realize something was going on with me as soon as he realized he couldn't see my emotions.

"Have fun," I offered with a little wave.

A few seconds later, the door clicked shut and I was alone with Amy. I had been having fun up until then, but this was the part I was dreading.

"Let me start the movie," she said, not looking at me. "We need to talk, but this should give us some cover."

I nodded. It was time for a very difficult conversation.

 

[Swordchucks]

"I thought we were going to watch the movie?" I asked and laughed lightly. I was really nervous and doing my best to cover for it.

"That's the cover story," she said and flopped down on the couch beside me. "I still have questions. A lot of questions, but you do look very nice tonight."

I laughed again. "We will see if you still think so in an hour." I hesitated, all of the humor draining out of me and I pushed on. "First off, I'm a cape."

"I guessed that part," Amy said in a deadpan voice. It was good to see that she was still herself, even while she was blushing a little.

"I wasn't a cape… eight days ago? Nine days ago? Depends on how you count. Anyway, when I went to school - at Winslow - last Monday, I wasn't a cape." I gestured to myself with both hands. I did that little trick I'd seen Emma do from time to time and rolled my shoulders back slightly so my breasts were more prominent. The movement caused Amy's eyes to go to my chest and when she realized what she was doing, she blushed and pointedly looked away. "I didn't look like this, either. I mean, sort of, but this is like the old me turned up to eleven."

"Your trigger event changed your body? And you remember your life from before?" Amy's brow furrowed, as she thought through the implications. "It seems like there are Case 53s everywhere, but you don't hear about it too much otherwise. Then again, I've been asked to look at a lot of Case 53s, so maybe it just seems more common because of that."

I nodded. "Yeah, still have all of my memories. I'm pretty sure Canary didn't always have feathers in her hair, so it's not like I'm the only one." I was also pretty sure that Canary's power came from Cauldron, but that wasn't something I wanted to bring up. Alabaster might have been a better example, but no one was really sure what he looked like when he wasn't publicly being a Nazi "Anyway, I don't entirely remember my trigger event. Someone shoved me into a locker and locked it. They'd… prepared it with gross stuff, too, so I'm not complaining about not remembering that part. Then, on Friday, I woke up with powers."

"Friday? You were in there for the whole week?" she asked, obvious confusion on her face.

I shrugged. "I honestly have no idea what happened after that. I might have woken up on Wednesday, but that was… anyway, the next thing I am absolutely sure of is that I woke up in my backyard on Friday." I was about ninety-nine percent sure that Wednesday had happened, but it really didn't make for a coherent tale.

"Well, that sucks," she offered. "What… what power did you end up with?"

The way she asked made me think there was probably some cape taboo I wasn't aware of. I didn't actually care if she knew, but I wasn't going to spell out everything, either.

"Spiders, mostly. I can control spiders and I have the proportional strength and speed of a spider. Oh, and I can make some Tinkertech that lets me project webbing."

"That's… oddly well-themed for a grab-bag cape." Amy said and I could tell that she was relaxing a little. Spider powers had to be less intimidating than most master and stranger powers. "But how does the fact that I can't scan you fit into that?"

I shrugged. "No clue. How does the makeover fit in? I mean, I'm not complaining, but I have like three outfits I can actually fit into right now." I did the chest thing again and Amy blushed.

"It's very nice," Amy agreed, then coughed and covered her mouth in embarrassment.

I turned back to watch the movie for a moment. Some guy with an 80s haircut was being chased around a store by some cops, but I had no idea why or who anyone was. I was definitely stalling.

"Why would I be upset with you for any of that?" Amy asked after a while.

"Well, not for any of that," I admitted and took a deep breath. Here it went. "During that week, while I was unconscious, I had a vision. Well, a lot of visions, really. About the future and the past."

"Oh," she said and her expression grew troubled. "What did you see?"

"A lot of stuff. In those visions, you were a hero and you helped save the world."

"But?" she asked quickly. She could apparently sense I was leaving out a lot of things.

"But you did some bad things in the middle. There were some extreme circumstances and you made amends as best you could, but people got hurt."

Amy's expression grew stern and she frowned. "Not that I don't believe you… but I don't believe you."

There were a lot of things I could say to that, but I'd thought something like this over quite a bit. I didn't want her to actually try to kill me, but I would have to use information that was verifiable. "I know that you are adopted."

Amy huffed. "A lot of people know that, or at least assume."

"I know who your real parents are."

That caused her to freeze. "I don't want to know that."

I shrugged. "Then I won't tell you. It doesn't matter one way or the other, you are your own person."

She was silent for a long moment. "Tell me something else from your visions. Something… else."

"I know the identities of most of the capes in the city, but it seems rude to use those since it's possible to figure them out other ways." I thought. "Oh, wait, here's a freebie because he's the worst. Coil is a PRT consultant named Thomas Calvert. He was at Ellisburg with the current director before he got his power, which is to simulate two timelines and pick the one he wants. He uses alternate timelines to do very bad things and he thinks he's a villain in a movie complete with a secret underground lair which has a self destruct mechanism. He likes to blackmail and kidnap people into doing his bidding."

Amy frowned. "That doesn't help… but I'll remember it anyway."

I nodded. The obvious knowledge to share was right there. "Your power isn't quite what you tell people it is. You can heal people, but you are actually an unrestricted biokinetic. Your power can affect brains but-"

"That's all an open secret, at best," she interjected. On screen, someone was shooting someone. "I threaten to make people shit out of their mouths way too often for no one to guess I can do more than just heal. As for the other thing… I'm always specific to say that I don't mess with brains, not that I can't do them."

I stared at her for a long moment, very grateful that I seemed to be immune to her power. "That aside, I agree with you for not doing brains. Your power lets you do a thing, but it isn't going to create new information out of nothing. If you put someone's brain back together, but the data is gone, would that even still be them?" I shrugged. "Just cutting off that one type of treatment doesn't change the amount of good you can do and it gives you a line that you shouldn't cross because you know that when you start messing with brains, you're changing who that person is."

Amy fidgeted. "I'm well aware."

I wavered. I had considered the real bomb and had been trying to avoid it because I knew it wasn't going to go over well.

"A bigger secret is that you are nearly obsessed with your sist-"

I felt a hand placed over my mouth. There was a wild, slightly panicked look in Amy's eyes as she crouched beside me. I hadn't even really seen her move and my danger sense hadn't so much as tingled.

"That's a secret," she said, though it sounded brittle. I didn't try speaking for a moment, but when she didn't remove her hand after a ten count, I did the first thing that popped to mind. I licked her palm. She pulled her hand away, glaring at me. "You licked me!"

"It worked, didn't it?" I kept my grin small because I could feel how serious the atmosphere was.

"You can't tell anyone." It was a plea more than a command this time.

"I won't. I understand why you would come to feel that way, based on your childhood, and it's okay. It doesn't make you bad or wrong and it's something you can overcome with time and effort. As long as you don't act on it, no one even has to know."

There was a long, long moment of silence as she stared at me with unshed tears in her eyes. The panic was giving way to something else. "Fine," she said in a voice that said she really didn't believe me as she sat back, withdrawing to the farthest corner of the couch. "What do you want from me? Are you… are you going to blackmail me? Is there someone you want me to heal? I'll… I'll do it."

"No, I'm not blackmailing you. In my visions? I was a villain. I did worse things than you. My powers were different and I did what I thought was necessary, but I hurt a lot of people. A-a lot." It was hard to put a number on exactly how much harm other-me had caused in order to save the world, but it had been a lot. "I'm getting a chance to be better. To do better. I want you to have that chance, too. There's no one I want you to he-actually, I take that back. There is someone I want you to heal, but it's voluntary. I just want you to do it in a specific way."

Amy's pensive look intensified.

"The next time you see Clockblocker, I want you to hit him on the back of the head. I'll let you use your judgment on how hard, but I'd suggest very hard. Then, I want you to say to him 'What kind of a moron doesn't ask their friend, the healer, to fix their father's illness?'. I don't know exactly what is wrong with him, but I know he's needed at least one bone marrow transplant and I really don't think that's beyond your capabilities."

"Wait, really?" Amy's eyebrows furrowed. "He's never said - wait, how do you know… Oh."

"Yeah, I said I knew most of them and that includes the Wards. Think of this as your counter-blackmail on me. If you wanted to get me killed, just tell everyone that I know all the cape identities. I already told you Coil's, but that's because I hate him enough to risk it. In the visions, Coil knows all of the Empire identities and he releases them, framing the PRT for that. It causes absolute chaos, which is why I'm not going to breathe a word of that information to anyone. I doubt Lung would care much, but the Protectorate and Empire definitely do."

"Is this… is all of this why you 'ran into me' on Saturday?" she asked after another moment of digesting what I'd said.

"Not at all. That really was a coincidence. I had no idea I would be immune to your power and you're one of the most dangerous capes in the country if you decide to be. Even now, I'm risking my life and my father's life by letting you in on these secrets," I admitted. The stress was starting to get to me, too.

"Because I deserve a second chance," she said doubtfully.

"You do. You made some bad choices, but in the visions, you tried to make amends. You're a good person, deep down, and you are slowly killing yourself because you don't believe that you are. I can do more good for the world by helping you relax than I could by going out and beating up any number of criminals. Well, not counting Bakuda. I should probably do something about her," I trailed off as I realized there were a few pretty urgent things coming up.

"Who is Bakuda?" Amy asked, apparently just as distracted as I was.

"Oh, she's this new Tinker that Lung is going to recruit soon, and then… well, no, that would be different. Anyway, her specialty is bombs, including implanting bombs into people she kidnaps and turning them into suicide bombers. Really nasty, brings the city to its knees. However, she only got really bad because Lung wasn't there to rein her in, though she could probably take him out in time and it would all happen, anyway, just later…" I shook my head to clear the thoughts away. "Like I was saying, I wanted to give you a second chance. I don't… I can't work with the Protectorate. They'll want to shove me into the Wards, and one of them was the one that shoved me into that locker. I am not going to be joining any of the gangs, Faultline's group is only a half step above a gang, Uber and Leet are colossal assholes, and the Undersiders are secretly Coil's minions."

"That's a lot to take in," Amy said and stared at the screen for a while, watching someone chasing someone. "You know, you didn't have to put on the seductive act for this."

I coughed and I could feel heat rising on my cheeks. "I ah… it's not an act? I mean, it is, but only because I have no idea how to actually be seductive. I might have gotten a little carried away because you're cute and I wouldn't mind… uh… you know. Just seeing where that kind of thing goes?"

"We can be friends," Amy declared after what felt like a long time. "Or I guess we can be allies to start and see if we can become friends. If that's… if there's something else, later, we'll see."

I nodded. "Do you want to start the movie over? I think I missed pretty much everything."

That earned me a weak little grin. "Sure."

//\\o//\\

"So," dad said, drawing out the word as we finished up breakfast the next morning. "How was your date?"

"It went okay, I guess." I shrugged. At no point had she actually tried to murder me, and that seemed like a good thing. "It could have gone a lot worse, at least."

When I didn't jump to offer more information, he tried again. "Do you think you'll be seeing more of her?"

I sighed. "Yeah, I think so." Things had ended pretty well, all things considered. When the movie was done, she had driven me home in a battered but newish minivan that she referred to as the 'New Wave Mobile' - jokingly, I assumed. Calling it a date was a bit generous, but it had been an activity that two people engaged in together and those two people were, at least theoretically, capable of being attracted to each other.

"That's good. Just… don't feel like you have to get together with the first girl that asks. There are plenty of fish in the sea."

I chuckled and decided not to mention that I had done the asking. Repeatedly. "In the teenage cape sea? I think that's more of a puddle." If I avoiding the Wards and gang members, then the pool was even shallower. Not that I needed to date anyone, of course. I could just be single forever, which had an appeal of its own.

"You can go out with non-capes, you know?" dad suggested gently.

"I'll consider it," I said without really meaning it. After that first day, my life had calmed down from 'deadly chaos' to just 'weirdly eventful', but it was still more than I wanted to subject a defenseless non-cape to. I'd worry all the time that they were going to get kidnapped or worse. Even a cape with limited combat capabilities like Amy - until she built an army of monsters to do her bidding, anyway - could do a whole lot more to survive in those kinds of situations than a non-cape.

He reached out and ruffled my hair, annoyingly. "Aw, you're starting to grow up."

I swatted his hand aside. "Stoooop," I whined, though I was actually kind of okay with it. Interacting with dad since I'd gotten my powers had been strangely comforting. It was like a tension had released, probably because he'd spent a week thinking I was dead. Which I had been, sort of, but I got better.

School was fine, again, and I had no idea what that meant. Had the chaos really backed off? Was it just waiting for me to let my guard down like it had before?

There were still Wards lurking around every corner, but I was getting used to that. Aside from his first day duties, Dennis hadn't approached me again, but I saw both Chris and Carlos in classes. Chris was a sweet boy, but he needed to grow up a lot before I would consider him attractive. Carlos was definitely attractive, but after my flubs on the first day, I didn't really feel like trying again. The fact that I was theoretically something with Amy might have been a factor in that, too.

The only event that really stood out that day was seeing Amy, very briefly, at lunch. She seemed okay, which was good. We basically just said hello to each other and then went on about our business, but it was a friendly 'hello'.

That afternoon in study hall, I browsed the big binder that had all of the open placement options for students, but it was slim pickings. The only options that paid were the work-placement options, and they were all taken. I considered the others - mostly volunteer work - to be at best a lateral move from using the afternoon to study. Someone else might have called it boring, but I found it peaceful. I hadn't had the time to just sit and read at school since middle school. Emma had seen to that.

If nothing else, study hall gave me time to practice my spider control powers. Arcadia was relatively close to the PRT headquarters, and if I could get used to using bug-senses, I'd be able to spy on them with near-impunity. Assuming their exterminators missed some spots, at least.

It was a skill that was improving slowly, but I felt like there was progress being made. I suspected that I probably wouldn't end up using it as a primary skill in a fight, but there were successful heroes out there that had built their careers on less useful powers. Lots of them.

When I got home, it was time to check on my web-fluid meth lab which I had basically put on hold while I had my date the night before. I was getting close to the point where I was ready to make the cartridges, though that left me with a different quandary. My understanding of the science wasn't amazing, but the fluid, once mixed and cooked, would be under a lot of pressure. You couldn't just use a regular test tube to hold that kind of thing.

I was pretty sure Spiderman had ordered pressure vessels online in at least some versions, but Earth Bet was a very different place from any of the places portrayed by Marvel. I'd end up on a watch list and possibly under investigation under suspicion of making explosives if I tried to buy something like that.

That left me with the prospect of making the tubes myself. Given my strength, that was possible - bending steel with my fingers was trivial if I tried - but I still needed to experiment with how to bend things so that they would hold a seal and work with the web-shooter mechanism when my fluid got to the final stage. Ideally, I would wait till I would be home for a long time so I could monitor the progress of my experiment which meant waiting for the weekend.

Before bed, I practiced sewing a little more, though it didn't go particularly well. Being able to make my own clothes would have removed a major issue since I was approaching the end of my wardrobe after just four days. I was getting better at it by tiny increments, but not fast enough to actually help.

That night, I dreamed about sewing, which was much less frustrating in my dreams. In fact, I rather enjoyed it in my dreams, though half the work just seemed to do itself. There was a quality to the dreams that felt vivid. Alive.

In the morning, I felt like I had been exercising hard all night, with a deep burning of exhaustion in my muscles. Then I discovered that the scraps of cloth and ruined clothing that I had been practicing sewing with were gone, and in their place were three new outfits. They appeared to be of high quality and tailored to my exact specifications. Even more mysteriously, they were made of very nice fabrics unlike anything which had been in my practice piles.

"What the hell?" I asked myself and the universe at large.

As usual, there was no answer.

 

[Swordchucks]

"We need to talk," I whispered into Amy's ear as I sidled up to her at lunch. It wasn't lost on me how our roles were reversed from a few days before.

"Okay," was all she said before we vanished off to the nurse's office.

"I wanted to talk to you, too," Amy declared as she closed the door behind us and turned the little lock. "I talked to you-know-who and confirmed the thing. I'm going to take care of it on Sunday." She paused and took a deep breath. "I believe you and your crazy stories now."

I had almost forgotten about telling her about Clockblocker's father. Rather I hadn't put together that it was a crucial bit of proof that Amy would have wanted to check out. It was a relief that she didn't think I was crazy, at least, though maybe I still was. "Well, good. Because things keep getting crazier." I fished one of my new shirts out of my backpack and tossed it to her.

She fumbled a bit and caught it. "It's a shirt," she said in puzzlement and then her brain caught up with her fingers. "It's a very nice shirt. Wow, this must be expensive." She lowered it. "I, uh, I can't accept-"

I snorted a laugh. "It's not a gift. It's more weirdness. I made that. Last night. In my sleep."

Amy looked at it again, turning the shirt from side to side and admiring the quality. "That is weird. I didn't know you could sew."

"I can't. Well, I couldn't last night. Today, I'm like an expert seamstress, which is still weird, but not as weird as my overnight session." I huffed at the absurdity of it all. "I woke up this morning and I had somehow turned a bunch of cheap old clothing and sewing scraps into three complete outfits, and I mean complete outfits. Two tops, two bottoms, a dress, three bras, three matching sets of panties, two pairs of socks, a pair of tights, and three new sets of shoes. All of it looking like I knocked over one of those fancy places downtown."

Amy's look of puzzlement grew. "That's… improbable, at best."

"I know! And they all fit like a glove. Look at this!" I pulled up my shirt - the last of my old outfits - to reveal one of my new bras. It was like I was getting hugged by a cloud and felt amazing.

Amy's eyes widened and she froze. It took several long seconds before I realized what was wrong and I blushed a bit as I lowered my shirt. Still, validation that I was attractive left me feeling pleasantly warm. "Sorry about that. It's just… it fits so well that it's amazing."

"I, uh, no, it's fine. Sorry, you just caught me off guard." It was Amy's turn to blush and look at the ground.

"I wasn't thinking. It just… well, if I can figure out how to make stuff like this on demand, I'll make you one and you'll see what I'm talking about." I coughed. "Anyway, I felt like I had run a marathon when I woke up, but it's been getting better. Ever since, you know, I haven't really been physically tired, even after running for miles. It was weird."

"Does it…" Amy frowned as she thought. "Is there some relation to spiders?"

"In the vaguest sense, maybe? Spiders make silk, but they don't really make clothes out of it. It certainly didn't seem like I had any special gift with it before last night and the dreams, and I've been trying to sew off and on for a bit."

"Then I have no idea. Powers can be weird, though, so who knows?" Amy's blush intensified and she fell silent. "Actually, I wanted to ask you… tomorrow is Friday, and Vicky usually tries to drag me along on a double date with her and Dean. I usually say 'no', but I can only push her off so long and I figured maybe she'd at least get the hint and stop trying to set me up with random guys if i brought a girl, so, uh, maybe-"

"I'd love to go with you," I agreed. "I even have a dress that is worth wearing on a date, so that's good?"

Amy nodded, seemingly a bit distracted. "Y-yeah, that's g-good. I'll let you know where tomorrow and we can figure out how to get you there."

I checked the time on the big clock on the wall. "I guess we should go if we want to get anything to eat before we have to go… actually, where do you go in the afternoons?"

"Vicky and I both have 'work study' with New Wave. It's kind of stretching the rules, but I don't really care. Most of the time, I just go to the hospital and do some healing." Amy always looked a bit tired, but talking about healing really brought that out in her. It made me feel a little sad for her.

"As long as you set healthy boundaries. You don't want to be like the rainbow fish."

"Rainbow fish?" she asked, clearly confused.

"Yes, the children's book about the fish that was born with natural talents and then everyone pressures it to give them away, taking and taking and taking, until the rainbow fish has nothing left." It had been a topic mom had enjoyed. Children's books that clumsily taught lessons which were close to being good but somehow also ended up completely unhealthy were more common than one would think.

"Oh, I thought that was about sharing," Amy said.

"It is, but it's sharing without healthy boundaries. Just like the Giving Tree is about an ungrateful little boy that takes and takes and takes until the tree that loves him is nothing but a forgotten corpse. Little bastard probably complained about having to remove the stump, too."

That got a laugh out of Amy. "You have a unique perspective, but… thank you for caring about that kind of stuff. Just… thank you."

I smiled. Maybe I could talk her out of self-destruction at least a little bit?

//\\o//\\

I was straight up not having a good time.

After my magical clothes-making on Wednesday night, I'd had another bout of magical Tinkering on Thursday night, resulting in a pair of web-shooters that were much more streamlined than my crude attempt to do by hand. Included was also a series of cartridges pre-loaded with the web-fluid and ready to go. How, exactly, I had gathered up all of that material in my sleep was baffling, but I had dreamed of hammering, forging, and brewing things all night. It had to be related.

That led to Friday night's double-date, which I knew, intellectually, was just a 'friend' date, but the reality was more grating than that. I knew I was hot in my new dress. The looks I got from Vicky, Dean, Amy, and even random passerbys said I was hot. However, that didn't stop Amy from spending most of the evening staring wistfully at her sister.

Intellectually, I knew we were just friends. We were two people that had agreed to be allies and maybe leave the door to dating open at some point in the future. Intellectually, I knew that Amy was fighting against a multi-year infatuation and a quietly abusive childhood. That wasn't just going to vanish because someone claiming to be from the future told her it was a terrible idea.

I knew all of that intellectually, but emotionally, it still hurt a little to have her effectively snub me for the girl she shouldn't ever have.

It was also the first time something hadn't gone to plan, more or less. Sure, I kept getting random surprises and weirdness, but outside of that first day - which was seeming to be more and more the exception and not the norm - things were mostly within certain boundaries of sanity and had been going my way. Mostly.

"So, how's it going?" Dean asked when the sisters vanished somewhere together. We were at a bowling alley of all places, between games. I'd begged off actually bowling because I wasn't sure I could avoid putting a ball through the ceiling.

"It's fine," I said, though I didn't really feel it. Dean was nice and actually a pretty good guy, from what I had seen. After a few weird looks which I guessed meant he realized he couldn't read me, he'd just kind of rolled with it.

"So, you and Amy…" he trailed off, leadingly.

I shrugged. "Not really. We're just friends."

"Ah," he said and turned to watch a young woman, maybe twenty, celebrating a strike in the next alley. She looked like she'd just come from her job cleaning somewhere. "I just assumed."

I straightened my dress. "I just wanted to get dressed up a bit. I don't… I'm just coming out of an ugly duckling phase. It's nice to have something to show off, you know?"

Dean laughed and smiled, reminding me that he really was handsome. It was like the universe gave him a lackluster power in an attempt to balance some sort of cosmic scale. "Oh, I know. I was five foot even through most of middle school, then the summer before high school, I gained ten inches. It was like a whole new world opened up for me."

"That's a lot," I agreed. Two inches had been enough to throw off almost all of my clothes, but I'd also gained inches in other places that Dean probably hadn't. Then again, he did have a pretty broad chest, though his build could probably be best described as 'lean'. A beat of silence passed. "Do you ever think about the future?"

"Who doesn't?" he replied. "I'm a senior, so that's pretty much all I'm thinking about."

I remembered something about his family wanting him to go to college and eventually take over the family business but he wanted to go into the Protectorate. Glory Girl was planning to follow him or something, too. If Leviathan hadn't done his thing, there would have been a different set of explosions in the Dallon and Stansfield households.

"I guess that's true. I just realized earlier than I was looking at afternoon programs and I wasn't even considering the university classes. My mom was a professor, and I didn't even think about continuing with my education." It really had been bothering me. Even before I had been shoved into that locker, my dreams of being able to leave for college somewhere far from the Bay had been slowly drifting away as my grades got worse and worse.

"You don't have to go to college," he said with quite a bit of passion. "There are good, important jobs that you can do without a degree, despite what a lot of people think. Firefighters and police officers, for instance, don't have degrees and they are some of the most important-"

"Miss us?" Vicky interrupted as she flopped down on the other side of Dean. Amy looked sheepish behind her.

"More than you can imagine," Dean declared with an over-the-top sigh. He threw his arm around her as she giggled. That just led to Amy cutting an annoyed look at the two of them before she came to sit beside me.

"Everything okay?" I whispered to her softly, blocking her face from the view of the other two by moving around a little.

"Yeah," she grumped, though her expression said otherwise.

I nodded. "It's okay," I said as I leaned back, stretching. Louder, I asked the group a question. "Are we done bowling or do you guys want to bowl another game?"

"I think I'm done," Amy grumbled.

"I could do one more, but I'm starting to get hungry." That was Dean.

"Feed me, kind sir," Vicky oozed as she leaned more into his embrace. No wonder Amy hated seeing them together. With that realization, I suddenly felt like a jerk for being annoyed that she wasn't drooling all over me - respectfully. The path to a better future did not, in fact, rest within my pants and I was an asshole for thinking that it might.

"Sounds like it's time to go get something to eat, then," I chipped in. Dean caught my eye and nodded. I was mildly annoyed that I liked him. It seemed so cliche, but he really was likable.

A bit more than an hour later, I found myself crammed into the area that Dean's car jokingly considered a 'back seat'. Technically, it sat four, but it was clear that the emphasis had been on the front seat passengers, performance, and then everything else. It was fine, no longer than I was probably going to be in the car, though it was a little uncomfortably close with Amy after my recent thoughts and realizations.

I had seriously considered catching the bus, but Dean had offered to drop us off back at the Dallon household and I kind of wanted to talk to Amy before I headed home. I was thinking through that conversation when my danger sense blared at me.

"Look out!" I managed to scream just before there was a horrible crunching sound and then the world tumbled into chaos.

//\\o//\\

"Alpha target secure-"

My world throbbed. Everything hurt and there was a ringing in my ears that seemed impossibly loud. I was upside down, too, which didn't help.

There was another tremendous crash and I felt my world lurch a few inches to the side. Everything rocked. Someone female screamed.

"Bravo target present."

Everything smelled like smoke.

"Neutralizing. Prepare for capture."

Another scream, then an electrical crackle.

"Bravo target secure."

I tasted blood.

"Charlie target?"

"No time. We have to move."

I managed to get my eyes open and memories pulsed at me. Dean's car. I remembered being crammed into the back of Dean's car, but it had certainly looked different before. Now, the roof was even lower and irregular - crushed in by whatever impact had flipped the car. Or by the impact of being flipped. The turn indicator was stuck and kept signaling a left turn that we were never going to make.

Dean and Victoria were both gone, Victoria's entire door ripped away from the car while Dean's looked like it was pried open.

I looked to the side and saw Amy, still hanging limply in her seatbelt, just like I was.

"Thank goodness for seat belts," I slurred. After mom's accident, I had been religious about using the things. Then again, my entire left side felt like it had been shattered and I couldn't move my arm without a ton of pain.

"Fuck," I hissed as I fumbled with the belt. It wouldn't release, so I broke the buckle with a twist of my wrist and fell onto the jagged roof of the car. I hadn't exactly thought that through.

The roof of the car - now the floor - was jagged and crumpled and scattered with shattered glass that cut into me. I regretted my decision, but felt the need to get us away from the car. Movies had taught me that crashed cars would blow up, and I knew that my danger senses didn't always kick in with enough warning for stuff like that.

"Amy, wake up," I whimpered as I tried to shift around and get off my left arm. Something was definitely damaged - badly sprained if not broken - and the fact that I was immune to Amy's healing touch suddenly seemed like a double-edged sword.

Amy didn't wake up. She didn't even stir when I gently patted her cheek.

"Don't… don't move someone…" I struggled to remember details from a first aid lesson from long ago. I failed. It wasn't even really a class, just a brief thing at nature camp which spent most of the time talking about poison ivy. I should have made some first aid training a priority.

"Fuck," I grumbled and tried to force myself to focus. I needed to get Amy free of the car. Coming up with a plan - a bad plan, but the only one I had - I shifted around as best I could before releasing her buckle.

Dead weight hit me and I screamed as my left side made it clear that it did not approve of that treatment. However, I had cushioned her fall, and that had to count for something.

The next few minutes were hellish. I managed to crawl out of the overturned car with Amy on my back using just one arm while getting sliced up by broken glass and jagged metal.

I made it about five more feet before tipping her to the side and rolling onto my back, weeping from the entire experience. Every part of me coursed with pain. "Amy? Are you… are you okay?" I asked.

She didn't answer and after a long moment, I managed to roll onto my side.

The car had gone off the side of the bridge and crashed into a storm culvert that led into the bay. There were only a few of those in town - a relic of a works project to reduce flooding during storms that hadn't quite caught on. The fact that we'd somehow ended up getting knocked into one was terrible luck.

Memories from when I was groggily hanging in the car came trickling back to me. It hadn't been luck. Someone had planned it.

"Amy, wake up," I whispered and managed to get up enough to check on her now that we were sprawled out on the ground. I could already feel the lancing pain fading a little - Spiderman had a strong healing factor, I remembered distantly, so maybe my Amy-immunity wasn't that big of a problem.

Amy didn't answer and I realized with some horror that she wasn't breathing.

"No. No no no no no," I babbled. I had no idea how to fix this and Amy wasn't supposed to die in a ditch. This hadn't happened in that other world. How? Why was it happening now? Was it my presence? Did I change something?

Had my idiotic insistence on 'fixing' things made them so much worse?

"Please, no, please don't be dead."

The sirens seemed so far away. They weren't going to be able to fix this even if they arrived immediately.

Reality flickered. I remembered my hands, covered in blood.

No, they weren't my hands.

I remembered a prayer. A begging plea.

Moving my hands as those hands, I started to say the words. They should have been gibberish, but I could feel their meaning.

"This soul has not finished its time. Return this body to life."

Nothing happened, but I felt… something.

Mentally, I reached for that feeling. It was like trying to scoop out liquid flame with my bare hands - only it wasn't my hands doing the scooping but my brain. It hurt so very, very much, but I pushed on.

"It is not time for this soul to depart. Return this body to life."

A trickle. I managed to catch a trickle of that liquid flame and it burned its way through me in an agonizing pathway from my head to my hands.

"It is not time for this soul to depart. Return this body to life."

More of the flame flowed. The pain was unbearable. I thought I had known agony before, but that was nothing. It was a pale imitation of the coursing fire inside of me. I coughed and when I wiped at my mouth, it came away sticky with blood.

Going on was almost unthinkable, but the thought of stopping was worse.

"It is not time for this soul to depart. Return this body to LIFE."

Somehow, there was yet another plateau of pain that I had yet to step upon. That was where I stood for one long moment, frozen between one moment and the next. The liquid fire poured out of somewhere and through me, tracing a line of misery between my brain and my hands.

In its wake, I felt cold and ached with a bone-deep pain that made me regret everything.

"T-taylor?" Amy gasped, and I looked down.

It had worked. She looked confused and injured, but she was alive.

"W-why are you n-naked?" she asked groggily.

I looked down, seeing that my chest was covered in crimson and nothing else. My nose was bleeding and I was cut up pretty bad.

"Not again," I moaned as the exhaustion made my brain swirl with confusion.

Mercifully, I passed out a few seconds later.

Spoiler: Notes

If you're 100% sure you've figured out the powers, feel free to ask for confirmation in PMs so the game isn't spoiled for others

 

[Swordchucks]

The white-haired man didn't seem as annoyed as usual, though my ability to remember our conversation was just as fragmented as usual.

"-of course, the other one didn't-"

"-paltry trick, but I suppose it is a start-"

"-even without a shred of that troublesome-"

When I finally woke up, I felt much better than I would have expected. I was in a darkened room, alone and naked under soft sheets. I felt like I'd worked out very hard and had several aches and pains, but otherwise I felt fine.

I shouldn't have felt fine because I also remembered the events of the car accident and my subsequent… actions clearly.

We had been attacked by someone. Someone that intended to kidnap Gallant - no, not Gallant. They had intended to kidnap Dean Stansfield and had tagged Glory Girl as a secondary objective and Amy as a tertiary objective. That order… made absolutely no sense from a cape perspective. It made a lot of sense from a non-cape perspective.

Dean was valuable. His family had money and certainly enemies. Glory Girl was considered to be a powerhouse of a cape and the most likely one to rush in to rescue her boyfriend. Taking her seemed like a risk, but New Wave wasn't likely to go in guns blazing, either. Panacea had likely just been a target of opportunity and a victim of chance. I couldn't see them really wanting to kidnap or kill her if they were concerned about retaliation since she was well liked amongst both capes and the general public.

So, someone had kidnapped Dean Stansfield, snatched his cape girlfriend, and left anyone else in the car behind because they needed to make their escape. It had obviously been planned, then, and planned fairly well. I wondered if they understood how much damage ramming Dean's car at just that moment would have caused? They killed Amy and they probably came close to killing everyone in the car with that stunt.

What concerned me most was that this series of events didn't match with any of my other-memories, and I had no way of telling if that meant they hadn't happened in that timeline or if they had happened differently because of my presence. Maybe it hadn't happened at all? Maybe Amy had begged off the double date and Vicky and Dean hadn't done the same things, leading to a failed attack? Maybe it still happened, but Vicky had saved the day?

It wasn't worth worrying about because I had no way of knowing for sure which one was true. I had to focus on what had actually happened in my current reality and what I was going to do about it.

I took further stock of my situation. As my night vision adjusted, I vaguely recognized the room. It was the guest room in the Dallon house. I had seen it in passing during my previous visit but there were really only so many candidates for where I could have ended up.

Deciding that it was probably safe to get up, I clicked on the bedside lamp and immediately noticed the chair which had been put between the bed and the door with a pile of clothing on it and a note on top of that.

"Best I could do. Put on the mask and come downstairs. A." I read softly.

The clothing turned out to be a set of gray sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt along with underthings, a pair of flip-flops, and a half-hood mask. The underwear was apparently stolen from Victoria since it almost fit and we had similar builds. The rest was oversized - apparently for a man about my height but a good deal broader - but not the worst. The half-hood wouldn't do much to hide my identity from anyone that knew me, but it was better than nothing. It was certainly better than those cheesy domino masks they sold to tourists on the Boardwalk.

I got dressed and headed downstairs barefoot. The flip-flops didn't fit right and I decided I was better off without the slapping sound following me around.

The Dallon family dining room was transformed from the room I had seen before. There were chairs pulled in from the kitchen and a whiteboard taking up one side while the table was piled with maps, file folders, and binders. Most of the Dallon and Pelham families seemed to be in the room.

The adults were clustered around the table, sending text messages or talking on the phone or reviewing files. Eric was wrapped up in a sleeping bag against one wall, looking tired and worried while Amy was fretting over her phone. I don't think she even really saw the screen of it with her zombie stare. The only ones missing were Crystal - who I believed was off at college - and Vicky - for obvious reasons.

"You're awake," one of the women - Sarah, I assumed, since the other older woman had the stronger resemblance to Victoria - stated and got up to walk across the room. Everyone turned to look at me and I suddenly felt very on display. Amy gave me a little wincing smile that lasted for a second before she let it go. I took it as an apology and gave her a little nod back. "I don't believe we've been introduced."

"No, I-I don't think we have," I agreed. I hadn't even met Brandish and Flashbang even though I was pretty sure they had been home when I had visited Amy's house on previous occasions. "You can call me" - don't say Spiderman -"Sk-" not Skitter, either - "Uh… Weaver."

"It's good to meet you, Weaver." She then proceeded to introduce everyone in the room by their cape names. "Panacea tells us that you two know each other and you pulled her out of that wreck, getting pretty hurt in the process."

From a certain perspective, those things were true. "Y-yeah, There was a lot of glass and stuff. I got pretty hurt."

"She also told us that she can't heal you, but she managed to cover for you with the police after she realized you were healing on your own. It's been-" she looked at the clock "-four hours and you look fine, so I guess he was right."

"I'm kind of a grab-bag cape. I have a degree of Thinker immunity and a bunch of other stuff that's related to spiders. Part of it's a brute package which apparently includes rapid healing - which I didn't know about until, well, now. Part of it is that I can control spiders." I again decided it was better not to talk about coming back from the dead or raising the recently dead which was a thing I could apparently do now.

"You have a master power?" Carol - Brandish - cut in.

"Mostly just spiders. I can sort of do other bugs, but they have to be really close by for that to work and it's harder." I cringed inwardly. Master was something of a dirty word, even when it wasn't a power that controlled people.

"Do you just control them, or can you use them for scouting?" Brandish drilled in more intently.

"I can see through them if I really concentrate. More than a second or two gives me a huge headache, and most of them don't have great vision." Jumping spiders and wolf spiders had, so far, been the best little scouts. They just weren't as common as the other kinds.

The adults shared a series of looks that I took for an unspoken conversation. "That might be useful," Sarah - Lady Photon - said after a moment. "First, is there anything you can tell us about the actual crash or the time after?"

I related what I had heard before cutting my seatbelt loose. "And then they must have left. I managed to get Amy and myself out of the car and then I passed out."

The last part got a few looks - I assume because my story didn't include how, exactly, I had ended up naked - but they let it pass. I honestly had no idea why I had ended up naked, either. I barely even remembered that part because of the roaring everything-ache I was experiencing at the time.

"That helps confirm what we already know. Not long after the 'accident', Dean's father received a ransom demand for fifty million dollars. He is stalling them because he really doesn't have that much available money, much less in the form they're demanding. We're afraid that the kidnappers are going to get antsy before then or after they get the money, they may decide to just split after making sure there are no witnesses."

I grimaced. It seemed plausible, if terrible.

"Fortunately," she continued, "We have something on an understanding with Faultline. As long as she doesn't take jobs in town and keeps the rest of her work to mostly property damage, we ignore her presence in the city. She either realized that this one is going to lead to us kicking in doors all over town - including hers - or she has a personal score to settle. It doesn't matter much which one it is, but we will take it because she sent us this information."

She handed me a folder with a series of faxed documents inside. I flipped through them and found them to be profiles on two capes along with a list of about a dozen locations on the outskirts of Brockton Bay.

Lockdown, real name unknown, was a power nullifying Trump with a minor Thinker power that made him an exceptional shot with ranged weapons. He could shut down the powers of a single cape, and the effect lasted for a while, but if he used it on a second cape, the first one got theirs back almost immediately. The file indicated it was likely that he had at least some military training because of the way he had handled previous jobs.

The second file was for Stockton, real name James Abner, who was a mid-tier Brute with more straightforward powers than Lockdown. His public identity was known because he had a fairly public trigger. He had been a police officer in Kansas City up until some sort of altercation that led to him being gunned down on the street in broad daylight. He had gotten up, after, and gone on a revenge spree that left him on the other side of the law.

The two of them had apparently been partners for several months and had performed a number of kidnappings and assassinations. Sometimes they worked as a duo and sometimes they worked as a small team with other mercenaries.

"Why are you showing these to me?" I asked carefully.

"Because you can collect information through your power, and we don't know which of those locations they're actually being held at." That one was Carol, cutting in agitatedly.

"I've been a cape for less than two weeks," I admitted. "I don't know if I'll actually be able to help much."

"You're still the best hope we have. None of us have abilities that are useful for covert operations, and the Protectorate has to requisition out of town resources for a delicate operation like this. It could be days before they are ready to go and the longer things drag on, the less likely we are to get everyone out alive."

I nodded. It wasn't even really a question of whether or not I would help. I barely knew either of them, but Vicky and Dean had been nothing but nice to me. If I was willing to risk my life for a snarky, bitter shrew like Amy, then I would risk it for them.

"I will help any way I can," I declared. "Can I get Amy to drive me by my house so I can tell my dad and get a few things? I don't want him to worry more than he probably already is."

Brandish looked like she was going to object, but Lady Photon gave the answer. "Of course. Just… try to be quick."

//\\o//\\

Up close, Amy looked even more tired than I was used to. She always had a bit of 'racoon eyes' going on, presumably from her poor sleep schedule, but it seemed especially bad as we got into the van.

We were on the road before either of us spoke.

"What-"

"Why-"

We both paused as we tried to talk over each other. "Go ahead," I suggested.

"Okay. What happened after the crash? Why did you end up naked? Why were you bleeding everywhere? Not the cuts, but everything else, I mean."

"The crash happened pretty much exactly the way I said it did, but you were hurt. Really bad. You were - I didn't think you were going to make it." I corrected myself before I said she was dead. I wasn't certain that she had actually been dead, just that she had stopped breathing. There was a bit of a window there between the two things. "I used something I haven't tried before and it kind of hurt me in order to heal you. I think. I have no idea how it actually worked."

"I…" Amy trailed off as she paid attention to the road for a moment. "I think that explains some of what I felt. It wasn't-That just explains it. The only thing I don't understand is how your clothes vanished."

I laughed nervously. "That's kind of a side effect of my powers, sometimes. I have no idea why it happens, it just does."

"That kind of sucks," she offered with a touch of sympathy.

"It is far from ideal." I agreed. "Now… why did your parents - well, all of New Wave - just accept what I was saying? I would have expected them to be more forceful with a new cape that just happened to be hanging around their daughters when something like that happened."

Amy looked like she was collecting her thoughts for a moment before she answered. "You didn't see yourself when we got you home. I had to burn some favors with the BBPD to pull that one off, by the way, and you're probably going to have to make a statement in a few days. To the PRT, too, once they get their investigation really moving."

"See myself?" I asked. I knew I'd been naked and a bit cut up, but that was about it.

"Yeah, you were covered in blood, like all over. Since I didn't have any injuries and there was a big bloody smear on the ground from the car to where we ended up, it's pretty clear that you sliced yourself up pretty bad getting me out." She took her eyes off the road long enough to swat me on the shoulder. It wasn't very hard. "You tore yourself to ribbons, you idiot. Did you even know you could regenerate when you did that?"

"I kind of suspected I might heal fast, but not as fast as I apparently can."

She huffed. "I'm used to this from Vicky, but I can put her back together when I need to. I can't even see how hurt you are. If I hadn't noticed your cuts sealing up on their own, I would have had to let the paramedics take you, and then where would you be?"

I shifted uncomfortably. She was right. If I'd healed like that in a hospital, I probably would have woken up to a PRT greeting party.

"You're right. I'm an idiot."

Amy rolled her eyes, though she was still focused on the road. "Yes, you are." She paused for a moment. "But you saved my life, so thank you."

A few minutes passed and we got closer to my house.

"So, if I was covered in blood, who cleaned me up?" I asked innocently.

"Me, but it was strictly in a clinical capacity." She was still blushing a little, though.

"Okay," I teased, but decided to let it go for the moment. There was always time for teasing when lives weren't on the line.

Eventually, we pulled up to the house and I glanced at the clock. Four twenty five. Dad was going to kill me.

"You want me to come with you?" Amy asked after a minute when I didn't move.

"It… might be a good idea. Dad wouldn't kill you, too."

Amy chuckled tiredly. "Alright, come on."

Dad was again in his armchair with the phone pulled across the room. He must have been waiting up when he fell asleep. At least there weren't beer bottles everywhere this time.

"Dad, I'm home," I whispered as I shook his ankle.

"Tay-Taylor? Where have you been?" he asked groggily.

"It's complicated, but New Wave needs my help with something. Glory Girl was kidnapped and I think I can help find her. Panacea came with me so we can get some stuff from my room before we go out to look for her."

That took some of the heat that was about to come out of his rapidly awakening mouth.

"Hello, Mr. Hebert," Amy offered softly and I momentarily directed a look in her direction. She had sounded… polite? Nice, even? I wasn't aware that she could be anything other than abrasive, even to the sister she was apparently in love with. Maybe she thought that was part of her charm?

"Oh, ah, hello. Oh, your sister's the one… yeah, okay." He fixed me with a look. "Taylor, do what you need to do, but we're going to have a long talk when you're done."

I fidgeted from foot to foot. That didn't sound fun at all. What I actually said was not what I was thinking. "Okay, dad. Sorry for not calling sooner." Before he could say anything else, I turned and hurried up the stairs.

"I'll just… go see if she needs any help?" I heard from downstairs as I stepped into my room.

It didn't take but a second to find my web-shooters which were stuffed into the bottom drawer of my dresser behind a rumbled Easter dress from when I was six or seven. Then I went to my closet and pulled out one of my new outfits, but I hesitated. It wasn't much of a costume.

My eyes lit on the sewing kit and the rest of the 'dispose of' pile of clothing from before. I still had a bit left over, and it was about what a costume would require along with the skills to do the work. What I didn't have was the time.

Then again, I'd managed to make three full outfits including parts that weren't really 'sewable' in a single night. In the morning, I'd just felt exhausted in a way I was slowly realizing felt like I was feeling after healing Amy.

Was it related?

I reached out a mental 'finger' and found that liquid fire waiting for me. It felt much closer than before, almost eager to be drawn on.

"What are you doing?" Amy asked as she stepped into the doorway. I'd already picked up the needle and thread.

"I'm just going to try something. If it doesn't work right off, I'll worry about it later, but I want to try."

Amy hesitated. We were in a hurry, but a few minutes couldn't hurt, right?

I focused on the scattered fragments of my dreams about sewing as I mentally felt for the mental fire. Something shifted and then things became a blur.

//\\o//\\

"I'm naked again, aren't I?" I asked as the blur finally resolved itself into reality.

"Yep," Amy declared, a note of exhaustion in her voice. She was sitting in the rickety chair in front of my desk with an unlit cigarette between her lips. She wasn't even blushing.

"How long…"

"How long were you whirling around naked, grabbing stuff and then making reality kind of weep for itself as you turned it into something else? About half an hour."

I looked down at the pile of material in front of me. It was exactly what I had been picturing when I started. Basically, a version of Spider-Gwen's costume with the white replaced with a slate gray tone which was more practical for sneaking around. "And you watched me the whole time?"

"I was a bit worried about you when you ignored me trying to talk to you, so yes, purely for clinical reasons. If you want to repeat that sometime when I'm not worried sick about my sister, I'm game, though."

I immediately felt bad. Amy was kind of a jerk, she was also worried for Vicky. I'd just taken a half hour to make a costume when there really wasn't any time to waste. I would have been embarrassed by being naked in front of Amy, but it was frankly becoming normal by that point. I was finally starting to understand how some of the other girls acted in the locker room, I realized.

My disappointment in myself was tempered by the fact that the costume itself was amazing. It was perfectly cut and stretchy in all the right places. It was also thick enough to wear outside in January while still looking like it was painted on. Somehow.

"Sorry, I had no idea it would take that long, I just… it was vain of me. I'm sorry." I genuinely meant it. I hadn't expected the creation of my costume to take that long, but I should have. I'd just been so excited to try a new thing that I had forgotten we were in a rush.

Regardless, I couldn't help but feel a bit of excitement as I worked my way into the new costume. It was sinfully tight, even with the padding, and made me look amazing. It also made me look a little indecent, really, but that was the price all spider-people paid for the enhanced mobility of a form-fitting outfit. Once I had the side of the suit zipped up, I fit the sleek web-shooters into place and put the spare cartridges into little pockets cleverly hidden by the costume.

"It is what it is, I guess. Let's just get going."

Five hours later, we had visited and dismissed eight of the locations on the list. If I had a good idea of the area I needed to check on - mostly by being able to see the outside of the building - it was fairly simple to scan the spiders inside each to guess the conditions. All of the locations provided by Faultline were being maintained to some degree and that meant enough heat that all of the spiders hadn't died off to the cold. No wonder other-me had waited till March to make her debut - the number of living bugs in the Bay in January was kind of pathetic. It definitely wasn't 'Biblical plague' levels.

It was late in the morning - nearly to noon - when things finally changed.

"I think I've got something," I gasped as I let the link drop for a moment. Looking through spider eyes was intense, but it was getting easier and easier the more I did it. Necessity was the mother and all of that.

"What did you see?" Manpower asked from the front seat of the van. He had taken over a shift driving me around while I scanned places.

This one, in particular, was an old machine shop that had once made chains for ship anchors. The rust on the sign outside made it clear how long that particular industry had been missing from the Bay, but someone was keeping the heat on judging by the number of bugs inside.

"There's a garage area with one big SUV inside. Dark color and tinted windows, I think. Then there's a kind of cage set up in a big open area. I could make out two figures lying down and not moving."

"Are they…" he trailed off, not willing to ask.

"I don't think so. There were weird stands beside them, so maybe they're sedated? Give me a few minutes and I'll try to get a better look." My head was hurting, but I'd had worse - I'd had worse in the last twenty-four hours, even.

"Please. I think I saw a motel a couple of blocks away. Can you look from there?"

I nodded. "Yeah, once I get to 'know' the spiders I'm using, we can go… I don't know exactly how far, but two blocks shouldn't be a problem."

A few hours later, I was 'relaxing' on the bed in a motel room that smelled faintly of alcohol and stale cigarette smoke as I repeated the last few details of my exploration for the team. Someone had hauled in the white board and a pretty accurate layout of the building was described there, including points of entrance, the current positions of the four people guarding the captives, and the captives themselves.

"Alright, I'm convinced we're in the right place," Lady Photon declared. "We need to call Armsmaster and request Protectorate support."

"Um," I interjected and kind of lost what I was going to say when everyone looked at me. "That… may not be the best idea?"

"What do you mean?" Flashbang asked, though not unkindly.

I didn't know that Coil was involved with this - though I was pretty sure that everything in the Bay was a Coil plot until proven otherwise - but he was far from the only person that could bribe the PRT or the cops. "I just mean, can we trust them? Stockton is known for having police ties and they seem to have planned everything. Do you think…"

That got frowns. It was Brandish that finally answered. "We have to make the call. There are certain agreements in place, especially for things like this," she said, though she didn't sound happy about it. It occurred to me that she was probably talking about Gallant's status as a Ward. The Protectorate would be chomping at the bit for an operation to rescue him. "However, we can request that it just be a Protectorate response."

That got some grunts of agreement and I had to agree that it at least reduced the risk. I felt like I could probably pull off the rescue part - most Spider-people were exceptional at stealth - but I was aware that I had never actually done something like that before. If nothing else, it would be a hard sell for the group.

Ten minutes later, my spiders told me that there was a lot of movement going on inside the building. They were packing up in a hurry, but hadn't gotten to the hostages yet.

"Shit, they know something is up," I declared and got to my feet. "We need to go, now!"

 

[Swordchucks]

"What? How?" Flashbang asked, startled.

"It doesn't matter, I have a spider on all four people inside and they are moving around like crazy." It was annoying that they had been tipped off somehow. Had someone in law enforcement made a call? Had the simple fact that the Protectorate was scrambling been enough to get them moving?

Everyone was on their feet in seconds as Lady Photon grabbed the board with the layout on it in one hand. "Alright, Manpower, you're going through the front. Flashbang, once the door is open, saturation bomb the inside. The hostages should be far enough away that your concussive bombs won't hurt them and if you can blind Lockdown, that would be for the best. Brandish and I will come in the opposite door approximately five seconds after we hear the explosions. Panacea, you will wait outside the building behind the next corner. Shielder, Weaver, you're to protect her at all costs."

"I should go in," I interjected. "There's a sealed off ventilation grate right above the cage and I can get through it with no trouble."

Lady Photon hesitated. "You're an independent, so I can't exactly order you around, but I'm warning you that we aren't used to you. We might catch you in the crossfire."

"I'm good at avoiding stuff like that, plus you've seen me heal," I rebutted. I wasn't too worried about an accident and one more person looking out for the hostages had to help.

She looked like she was going to say no once more.

"Let her help," Brandish declared. "Just get my daughter back."

That seemed to be all it took and there were nods as the whole team piled out the door. No sooner was I out than I took the lead. Most of the New Wave capes couldn't fly, which set their pace. I hadn't really had a chance to test out my full speed, but running all out and using walls and rooftops for a boost was exhilarating. The buildings weren't suitable for web swinging, but that hardly mattered.

No sooner had I reached the building and raised myself up to vault onto the roof than I had my danger sense go off. There, just in front of where I would have landed was a trip wire leading back to a gray-green block against the wall. For a moment, I hung in mid-air as I relied on my arm to hold me in place in a kind of handstand before reversing my momentum and flipping back to the ground.

The New Wave team was only reaching the spot where Panacea was supposed to wait - though said cape was lagging behind, no doubt because of her foul smoker ways which I would have to lecture her about later.

I got in front of them. "Traps. Almost stepped into a boobytrap on the roof. Tripwire leading to something nasty, I think."

There was a scatter of cursing and exchanged looks. "We don't have a choice, but we will be careful. Thanks for the warning." That was Manpower, who was going to be leading the charge.

I nodded. "Just wanted you to know," I finished lamely before turning around and rushing back to the rooftop. Spider-sense made it trivial to locate tripwires like that, though they seemed to only be around the edge of the roof and an old skylight that was boarded up. I'd seen the skylight and dismissed it during my scouting since it dropped into an area that was pretty much walled off with boxes and getting through that way would be loud.

The ventilation duct wasn't a great entry, but I could carefully break the heads off the screws that had been used to put the plate over it to keep it closed and get it open with only minimal noise. As I did, I heard voices drifting from below.

"Maybe it's a false alarm?" a deep voice asked.

"Maybe, maybe not. We are moving either way. The drone showed half the Protectorate moving out, but the police scanner is quiet. What else could it be?" The second voice was higher pitched, but confident.

There was some swearing.

The high pitched voice continued. "Go help Ryan load up the truck. I'll get the hostages ready to move. We are moving as soon as we get loaded. Best estimate is that we need to be rolling twenty five minutes after they move and we've already used fifteen."

Yet more swearing came from the other guy. "And New Wave?"

"They aren't going to act as long as we have the girl. Last I heard, they were driving all over town and looking in all of the wrong places, but they drive around in a couple of beat up old minivans. Do you have any idea how common those are in this city?"

There was some more discussion, but it was lower in volume and I was busy trying to crawl through the ventilation duct. Once upon a time, it had carried toxic fumes out of a forge or the like, so it was fairly large. It was also a long time disused so it was filthy. Getting past the fan without making a huge amount of noise was the worst part. I ended up prying the blades back and thinking really thin thoughts as I pushed past it. Finally, I was at a mesh grate in the ceiling and got my first 'live' view of the place.

As I had already gathered through the scattered views from the spiders, the center part of the old workshop had been cleared out and replaced with a cage and two cots. Each one held an unmoving figure and had an IV stand next to it. That part wouldn't have been so bad if there wasn't a man in military fatigues moving between them.

I hesitated because I didn't know if I was looking at the cape or not. If I tried to jump the cape and he shut my powers off, then I'd be in real trouble. Fortunately, I knew a distraction was coming.

It was only seconds between when I had that thought and when I felt the whole building vibrate with a resounding boom. Manpower had arrived.

//\\o//\\

Down below, the man drew a big black handgun out of a holster on his waist. I'd seen guns before - even had them fired at me - but for some reason, that gun seemed bigger. More deadly.

It was probably because he was looming over two helpless hostages when he drew it.

"Sorry kid. Girl's still useful to keep her moronic family off us, but your dad fucked up. Should have paid us when he had the chance." There was another bang from the direction of the front door, but the man ignored it as he started to level the gun at the unconscious form of Dean.

In a bit of a panic, I punched the mesh grate, sending it falling to the floor, and launched a glob of webbing at his hand, hoping to take the gun out of action. I mentally cursed the fact that I hadn't had a chance to practice with my web-shooters before using them in a real fight as the web narrowly missed its target.

The man didn't even hesitate. He pivoted smoothly, putting his body half behind the hostage-holding cot and brought his weapon up, steading it with both hands before firing two rounds in my direction. My danger sense was the only thing that saved me from gaining some new holes as I did what I should have done all along - trust in my spider sense and reflexes to get me to safety. Without even consciously thinking about it, I launched myself out of the duct toward the ground, twisting in mid-air to land in a crouch as another pair of bullets whizzed by.

"Watch where you're shooting!" I yelled, though I didn't think he cared. Was I wasting breath on banter? Was that part of the whole Spider-man thing? It didn't really matter, but if I could get him talking, that would stall for time. Time was definitely more on my side than his.

"Who are you working for?" the man asked. "I can make you a deal. Help me get out of here, and I'll give you the hostages."

"You know you're not getting out of here. The whole place is surrounded," I retorted and tried to creep my way around to the side to get a clear shot at him, but there wasn't a lot of cover.

There was a second crash as the rest of New Wave poured in from the back entrance.

"Fuck," he growled and suddenly moved. I sprang to my feet just in time to see him hoist Victoria over his shoulder. "No time to play, then." He turned his attention to me and I felt something skate across my mental perception. It was like fingertips gripping at slippery glass and not quite finding purchase.

His gun turned in my direction and he fired one more shot. Again, I let my spider senses kick in and evaded the shot easily.

"Where did they fucking get you?" he asked loudly as he backed away. "Bring you in specifically to counter me? Fuckers should have just paid the ransom."

It was slowly dawning on me what was happening. I was apparently immune to his power nullification ability, which had probably just saved my life.

"Go ahead and put the girl down, then. I'll be the one to capture you. I won't let that one's mom turn you into a Jack O'Lantern." With more confidence, I stalked a bit closer, but not too close. He still had a human shield.

"Got a different idea," he raised the gun in my direction again and I tensed in preparation for a dodge. His arm tensed and waited for my spider senses to kick in, but they never did. With horror, I realized that I hadn't been his target. "Why don't you hurry and get your little payday to the hospital? Gutshots can be fixed if you're fast enough."

Indeed, red was blossoming across the thin sheet over Dean's still form. "Oh, you bastard," I ground out, but realized I didn't have a ton of choices. Even taking Dean to Amy - Panacea - meant I'd be out of this fight.

"Same goes for you two," he yelled and brought his gun to bear in a different direction. I glanced that way to see Brandish and Lady Photon trying to creep close while remaining in a bit of cover. Given that Lockdown seemed to take 'nullify powers, fill with lead' as a battle strategy, I couldn't say it was a bad plan. "I'll let the girl go as soon as I'm good and far away from here. Unless you want to see what her insides look like, I suggest that you just let me walk out of here."

There was another boom as something big went sailing past us into the far wall. It was Stockton, who had apparently just lost his Brute brawl with Manpower.

"No, how about you put her down and we don't have to hurt you," Flashbang declared as he too also entered the scene.

"Well, isn't this a standoff, then." Lockdown waved the gun around some more, trying to keep everyone in view. "Let's just talk-"

Then he screamed in pain. His finger convlused on the trigger and a bullet bounced off a piece of rusty old machinery as he collapsed to the ground, Victoria's body rolling off of him as he did. "Swhat y' get, asshole," she mumbled clearly in the sudden silence which was then broken by Lockdown's pained whimpers. I walked forward to kick the gun away and saw that his legs were bending in the wrong directions. Apparently, Victoria had regained enough consciousness that her newly returned powers let her punch him. Carrying a Brute was probably a terrible idea.

"Fuck, Dean!" I exclaimed as I remembered the other thing I was worried about. Dean had regained enough consciousness, as well, that he was whimpering softly in pain. There was so much blood and I actually doubted that we had enough time to get him back to Amy, but I had to try.

Snatching him up, I ran toward the front, taking idle note of the two unmoving heaps that were the other mercenaries and the wrecked SUV that they'd intended to escape in. Two long leaps had me where I needed to be.

"Is Vicky okay?" were the first words out of Amy's mouth and I resisted the urge to shake her.

"She's fine, just half-awake. Dean got shot," I announced as I placed him on the ground.

To her credit, she didn't hesitate to reach out and start stabilizing him. "That was unlucky, went right through a major artery," she declared as her attention seemed to drift far away. "I can… get him stable, but it's going to take a few minutes to fix this."

I sighed in relief that she could fix him at all. A part of me was also very glad that I didn't have to try raising him from the dead. Being naked in front of Amy's entire family would have been mortifying.

//\\o//\\

By the time the Protectorate was on-site, both Dean and Victoria were lucid and ambulatory, though weakened from having Amy mess with their systems so much. Dean was definitely feeling the worst of it because he had needed healing in addition to having his system flushed of the sedative which had been in the IV. The kidnappers had at least been smart enough to procure some Tinkertech drug that wasn't likely to kill someone because they did the math on dosage wrong.

The bad guys had been stabilized by Panacea who made sure that they would remain unconscious for the next twelve hours or so. Given the reason we had been trying to capture them in the first place, no one objected when she declined to do more than the bare minimum to keep them alive. Odds were that Lockdown wouldn't walk for a very long time, if ever, but I was alright with that. He'd tried to shoot me several times, and he did shoot Dean.

After the crime scene was secured, one of the New Wave adults called in the situation to the Protectorate to fill them in on the current state of things. Five minutes later, Velocity was the first to show up, his red blur zipping around the building and vanishing back up the street a few moments before Armsmaster's characteristic motorcycle came into view.

The rest of the Protectorate team rolled into view after that in an armored personnel carrier. I knew about them from the other-memories, but I'll admit that I was struck with a bit of hero worship to see them all in the flesh. The only one missing was Triumph, but I wasn't entirely sure if he was still in the Wards or not.

Velocity performed some additional reconnaissance of the site while Miss Militia used their vehicle's communication system to coordinate the PRT response. Armsmaster had apparently already set it in motion after getting the all-clear from New Wave. Assault and Battery took over sitting on the prisoners while Armsmaster took statements from everyone involved.

I was a little nervous when it was my turn, but Brandish stayed firmly beside me. She had been almost nice to me ever since Victoria's rescue, and as Armsmaster dismounted his motorcycle, she leaned over to whisper to me. "Just try to relax. Don't give more information than you need to, but remember that the Protectorate are our allies. Do you mind if I reveal some aspects of your powers?"

I looked between her and the approaching man in powered armor. He really was tall, though I wasn't sure how much of that was him and how much was the armor. "I guess not," I whispered back. Brandish didn't actually know about my odder powers, just the Brute package and the spider control, so it was safe enough to let that out. Probably.

"Brandish, good evening. You, I don't think I have met," Armsmaster noted as he approached the pair of us with a little nod. I got the feeling that he was sizing me up. "I'm Armsmaster, head of the Protectorate ENE. Your costume is very nice."

My costume did look nice, and that probably threw off assumptions. As a rule, capes that were just starting out had really shitty costumes unless they had a power-based way to make them like I did. It was a compliment, but also a bit of an opening question.

"Thank you," I said, somehow keeping my voice even. My other-memories were so scattered on Armsmaster that I had no idea what to expect, but it was kind of a big deal to have the undivided attention of the man who led the local Protectorate. "I'm Weaver. I'm new."

"Nice to meet you." Armsmaster was more friendly than I'd expected. He wasn't robotic at all, really, so I was probably just as full of questions as he was.

Armsmaster turned his head slightly to look at Brandish. "She was working with New Wave on this case. She has a shaker ability that is good for information collection."

I looked from one to the other. Shaker ability? I remembered, vaguely, that Glory Girl's aura was considered a Shaker ability instead of a Master power. Its effects were kind of in a gray area between the classifications and politics pretty much determined how those kinds of powers got rated. Calling my spider control power a Shaker ability was a bit of a stretch, but probably a harmless one.

"Y-yes, I wanted to help," I added lamely, wishing my mouth didn't keep moving on its own.

Armsmaster gave a small smile. "It's always good to meet new heroes. You sound young, but I've never been the best judge of that kind of thing. Are you a minor?"

I glanced to Brandish who gave me a small nod.

"Yes, I am. My f-family knows where I am, though." I almost said father, but caught myself at the last moment. There was no need to out myself, even a little bit.

"That's good, at least. If you have issues, I would highly recommend coming to us for help. The Wards program exists to give young heroes the assistance they need to grow and stay safe." He sounded genuine and I took the business card he offered me. It had a few phone numbers with neat little labels describing each. "If you need help, we're just a phone call away. You should also call the non-emergency number listed there and provide them with your contact information so that they can alert you to important events."

"I don't have a cape phone right now, but once I get one, I will." I agreed. He was giving the soft sell on the Wards, though whether that was because Brandish was standing right there or for some other reason, I had no idea. Then I realized that there were a number of things I needed to tell him about the maybe-future. Oh, and to put him on Sophia's case. "I… actually, there's some stuff I want to talk to you about, but off the record. Could we maybe set up a meeting for that kind of thing?"

He seemed to think about that for a minute. "I'm sure we can arrange something. Either call my direct line on the card - it goes to an automated system which will most likely route you to my voice mail - or ask a member of New Wave to do so."

I nodded and then I was kind of out of the spotlight as he asked Brandish questions about what had happened that evening. It seemed a little odd that she was doing the talking and not Lady Photon, but she was also the lawyer out of the two of them. From the way she precisely explained facts and added in key phrases like 'we believed that the only way to avoid harm to human life' made it clear that she knew how to phrase things for police reports to best keep everyone out of trouble.

Eventually, the PRT and BBPD arrived to process the scene, the Protectorate cleared us to leave, and the paramedics cleared both Dean and Vicky to return home. Dean left with the police while I piled into the Dallon family van to go back to their house. The Pelhams had their own battered minivan and headed out to their own home.

Vicky had the back bench to herself and was promptly asleep. Her body had been on a rollercoaster, even with miraculous healing. That left Amy and I in the individual seats in the middle.

"Thank you," she said softly as we rode back. "I know I was bitchy earlier, but you came through in the end."

"You're welcome," I said back, just as softly. It felt good to be appreciated.

 

[Swordchucks]

The inside of the parked minivan was hot enough that the few snowflakes that fell onto the windshield turned to water immediately, forming big drops that made the lights of passing cars distort until it looked like we were inside a kaleidoscope.

"Do you know what you're going to tell Armsmaster?" Amy asked. I could detect a bit of an edge in her voice.

"Nothing about you, if that's what you're worried about." I didn't know if she was or not, but I wouldn't do that to her. Other-her's crimes were not hers. "Other than that and Shadow Stalker being a murderous bitch, I'm not sure yet. I'm starting to doubt that my visions are all they're cracked up to be. This whole thing - these last two days - weren't part of what I expected to happen, but I don't know what that means."

"Do you think it's because you changed things?" she asked.

"Maybe. Maybe the kidnapping was going to happen in the visions and it just happened differently. Maybe it didn't happen at all. I really have no way of knowing, but what if the future parts of my visions are all wrong?" I was confident that at least part of the 'past' of those memories was accurate, but that was all.

"Then you're no worse off than every other precog in the world," Amy said as she rolled her eyes. "Armsmaster's been in the Protectorate for a long time. I'm sure he's used to dealing with precognition and how unreliable it is. You could just tell him more stuff and let him assess it like he would any other tip."

"I guess that's fair. I'm just… what if I try to avoid a bad thing but end up making a worse thing happen? Like… you would have died the other day if I hadn't been there, but at the same time, if I hadn't been there, you might not have been in that situation at all."

Amy bopped me on the arm. "Well, I'm not dead. Unless you somehow caused those assholes to plot to kidnap Dean, then it's not your fault. If you managed to change things for the worse that time, maybe you'll change other stuff for the better? Unless you're going to hide in a bunker somewhere, you are going to end up changing things, and even if you did that, your absence might just change things. You can't know, and you might never know."

I sighed. "You're right, I'm just… I'm beating myself up because you nearly died."

It was Amy's turn to sigh. "Look, I know I'm… I'm still in the middle of stuff right now, but I think it was better - I mean, I think you've done an overall good thing for me. Even aside from the part where you literally raised me from the dead."

I snorted at the way she dismissed that little thing. "I don't think you were technically dead at that point. Given how hard it was to fix you, I don't think I could bring someone back from being really dead." I remembered the words I'd said as part of the thing where I fixed her. They'd been in that strange language and had referenced souls. How long did a soul stick around after the body died? I really had no idea, but I suspected it wasn't very long.

"Oh, no. You can only bring the recently deceased back to life. What a pathetic power. How will you ever get a date for the cape prom now?" Her deadpan tone got me to snort again.

"Fine, point made. I guess it's a bad idea to worry about what I can't do. What I can do is pretty cool." I felt lame saying it, but it was true. Other-me could have found the hostages faster by utilizing more kinds of bugs, but other-me probably couldn't have done more for the actual rescue effect. Not during the coldest part of the year when there were barely any bugs to call on, no matter their type.

"If you want to, we could get together and talk through exactly what you want to tell Armsmaster about. You're also on the hook for giving the police a statement about the accident, though it's mostly a formality at this point."

That was a detail I had almost forgotten about. Amy had managed to whisk me away before I woke up, which was probably for the best. "I was hoping we could just skip that?"

She shook her head. "Those jerks are going to go to trial, hopefully, and it'll probably be part of the evidence. If they don't question you, someone's lawyer will start asking why and… well, it's just better that your statement be in there. We can go over how to word things so you're not technically lying." She must have caught the slightly surprised look I was giving her. "What? Carol might not be a good mom, but she is a good lawyer. She gave us all a crash course as soon as we got our powers. She may want to do the same thing for you."

"I was under the impression that she didn't like me that much."

Amy rolled her eyes again. "She doesn't like anyone that much." She paused and seemed to think better of it. "Except maybe Vicky. Anyway, you saved the life of one of her daughters while crawling across actual broken glass and helped save the life of the other one. You've earned some points with her - with the whole team, really."

"That's good, I guess?" I said, still trying to process the concept. Carol Dallon hadn't exactly been mean to me, but she'd certainly been gruff. Then again, Amy was a prickly bear, too, and we got along.

"And that actually brings me to another thing. If you're going to hang out with my family a lot, you're going to need a cover story." She took my hand in hers awkwardly. "So, I think we should date."

"Uh," I answered intelligently as I tried to process that concept, as well. "I didn't think - you know."

"I'm still working on it, so it's just for the cover story. We don't have to confirm it or anything, but if we just don't deny it, the rumors will take care of the rest."

While it did make logical sense, a tiny part of me was disappointed while a bigger part was relieved.

"Okay, then. Dating." I then did the most romantic thing possible and reached over and shook her hand.

//\\o//\\

"... and, uh, that's when I got here," I ended lamely, having only edited the story somewhat to remove the worst bits - like the crawling over broken glass part. Dad had been waiting for me when I got home, though it was fairly late on Saturday night when I finally got there. Amy and I had spent a few more minutes in the parked van chatting awkwardly before she'd brought me the rest of the way.

As my story finished, dad was silent for a long minute before letting out a long sigh.

"I'm just glad you're alright." I relaxed a little when the first words out of his mouth didn't involve calling me an idiot. Then he surprised me even more by pulling a plastic shopping bag off the counter and dropping it on the table.

"What's that?" I asked curiously.

"Something I should have done sooner, I think." He pulled two of those plastic clamshell things out of the bag, the kind that hang on store shelves with items in them. When he placed them on the table, I could see what they were. Cell phones.

"Oh." I glanced from dad to the phones and back.

"Yeah."

The silence hung in the air heavily as both of us thought dark thoughts. Cell phones had been a topic neither of us had brought up since mom died. The fact that dad had gone out and bought two of them was a big thing. I wasn't quite sure why he'd done it, yet, but I suspected.

"Friend of mine at work knows a thing or two about prepaid cell phones. Pay in cash somewhere away from your house, preferably the kind of place that sees a lot of traffic and doesn't have good cameras and it's almost impossible to associate your name with them. It isn't an absolute defense, since there are other ways to track them, but it's a good start." He slid one of them towards me.

I could tell it was one of those prepaid flip phones that were known for being cheap. Disposable. I took the thing in my hands nervously and found that someone had already opened it. I pulled the phone out.

"I programmed the numbers into each other. This one," he tapped the other phone, "Is in yours under 'base'. If you're home, it should probably stay off. In fact, you should take the battery out of it when you're not using it."

"Your friend?" I asked as I looked it over some more.

He nodded. "Yeah. We'll probably need to trade them out every so often. I want you to carry it when you're out and might be doing cape things. It'll keep mine on when you're out like that, too. I just… I need you to be able to reach me."

I wiped my damp eyes. It was a big gesture and it made me sad that I'd worried him so much. "I will," I agreed.

He nodded. "And we can see about getting you a personal cell phone for when you're not out fighting the good fight or whatever you call it. I thought you'd rather pick your own out than have me do it for you."

I hugged him. Not with all I had - that would have killed him - but with probably a little more force than I should have, given his grunt. I relaxed and we stayed that way for a while.

"Taylor, I appreciate the gesture, but are you about done? It's late and I'm exhausted."

I laughed and let him go.

That night, I dreamed about fairy dust and flying but I forgot most of the details when I woke up. I was somewhat relieved that I hadn't turned all of my furniture into giant gumdrops or something equally embarrassing.

By the time I woke up, there wasn't a whole lot left of Sunday. I saw dad for a few minutes before he headed out to meet someone about some project or other and had the rest of the day with the house to myself. I considered calling Amy, but it seemed like a bad idea. We were 'dating' for a given value of dating, but I still wasn't sure I liked her much. It seemed like that was mutual, though there was a bit of physical attraction there. Probably.

We would see each other on Monday, anyway.

Instead, I decided to stay in the house and experiment. I had been pretty busy and distracted for most of the week and hadn't really sat and examined the whole 'create things while in a trance' aspect of my powers. I knew that they were related to memories, but I didn't understand much more than that. Well, except for the part where I lost my clothes while doing them.

Though even that seemed like it was odd. I didn't sleep naked and my first rounds of sleep-crafting hadn't resulted in me waking up naked. When I tried using the crafting consciously, though, I lost my clothes. There had to be some sort of trick to it that I wasn't getting.

Regardless, there were some things I could figure out.

First of all, the crafting was tied to memories, but definitely not my memories. After I had experienced each of the crafting bouts, I had been left with some new skills, but those were entirely mundane. Those new skills seemed to be restricted to performing tasks with only the most basic of tools, too. For instance, I could sew by hand but that didn't extend to the sewing machine. I could also work with metal - files, hammers, basic forging, and the like - but I didn't seem to have any weird knowledge of running industrial machines.

That all led to a second discovery. There had been two bouts of sleep crafting, but there were actually three sets of skills. Sewing was obvious, but the other two were metalworking and chemistry. That last one was even stranger because it didn't come with any additional knowledge about chemistry, only the mechanical processes of mixing and refining chemicals using fairly basic tools.

Then there was the fugue state itself. That's when I focused on those memories that weren't mine - and not in the same way that the other-memories were mine but not mine. These were something else entirely. I didn't remember much from the fugue, but while in that state I was clearly capable of doing something weird to matter. I needed something to work with that vaguely resembled my final product in terms of composition, but that seemed to be the only restriction.

More annoyingly, I needed a very good idea of what I was making before the fugue state would help me with it. I could make a new set of kitchen knives - the old ones had needed to be replaced for years, anyway - but I couldn't make a car engine.

By the end of the day, I'd conducted a number of experiments, losing several scarves and gloves in attempts to retain my clothing while in a fugue. I managed to transform the remainder of my closet into well fitted, high quality clothing - though it wasn't particularly fashionable since I didn't know fashion - and produced a few other small items like those kitchen knives.

What I didn't have was a solid idea as to what was actually going on.

Or why I kept ending up naked.

//\\o//\\

"So, how was your weekend?" Chris asked softly as he closed down his workstation in math class. We had a substitute teacher for the day, so once we were done with our work, we were allowed to talk quietly which, surprisingly, was actually what was going on. Arcadia and Winslow were wildly different sometimes.

I looked up from the novel I had been killing time with. I didn't really have many friends and that was fine with me. "Not too bad. I didn't learn how to magically turn lead into gold or I wouldn't be here today." I had actually tried that one, but even the fugue didn't seem to be able to pull that one off. Or I hadn't wanted it enough or I hadn't asked it right or… who knew? "Well, except for the fact that I was in a car accident on Friday."

Chris winced sympathetically. He was actually fairly empathic, which was a trait I wouldn't have ascribed to a Tinker, but there you went. "That sucks. Was everyone okay?"

Amy and I had discussed the matter a little. I was going to have to give the cops a statement which was going to appear in an official report, so denying I had been there entirely would be silly. Acknowledging it and playing it down so that if it did hit the rumor mill, it wouldn't be obvious that I had been hiding it seemed like the best choice. If it became a big deal later, I could always claim to have been traumatized and didn't want to talk about it. Which I didn't, so that was even the truth. "In the end, yeah, but only thanks to Panacea. How was your weekend?"

Chris chuckled. "Annoying. My part time job wasn't so part time. There was a big thing and everyone had to come in and work pretty much the whole weekend."

It took a second before I connected the dots. Chris was a Ward, so he was probably sidestepping the truth just like I was. That the Wards had been called in and put on standby after one of them had been kidnapped made sense. Dean had been rescued by lunch on Saturday but there had to be some worry that it might be part of a larger plot. Given how dumb and convoluted cape plans could be, they weren't entirely wrong to worry about that, either.

"That also sucks. Dad is always going in at weird hours for weird stuff, so I get it. You would think it would be against union rules or something, but he works directly for the union so it's a weird gray space." A mischievous thought hit me. "Say, are you guys unionized at your shop? If not, I can get you some literature on it. Might stop them from calling you all up like that."

Chris's eyes went wide in a brief moment of panic before he smothered it. If I had to guess, he'd just pictured himself trying to dictate terms to the PRT Director who both rumor and other-memories said was a hardass that didn't like capes that much. "Oh, that would be hilarious. I mean, watching the person that told management about that. I'm sure we could bury them in a shoebox afterwards." He chuckled to cover for the fact that he wasn't entirely joking.

"Offer still stands," I declared and changed the subject, or at least tried to. Chris and I didn't have a whole lot in common. He was more into video games and Internet culture than I was. He also wasn't much of a reader. It was really unfair to him, but he reminded me of Greg Veder in a very vague way. It wasn't in a bad way, though. Not really. Greg, for all that he was an idiot and a bit of a creep, did try to do the right thing every now and again. He was just a coward that backed down at the first sign of personal danger so his follow-through sucked.

"Uh, so, I wanted to ask… some friends and I get together on Thursday evenings to play games and I was wondering if you would be interested in joining us?" he asked nervously toward the end of the period.

"Games?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Y-yeah, dungeons and dragons, mostly," he said and hurriedly continued on. "I mean, I noticed you were reading a fantasy novel and thought you might be interested."

I glanced down at my novel which did, indeed, have a dragon on the cover. My other-memories insisted that I say yes, if only to see what it would be like. Of all of the memories to be mostly intact, why did they have to be the turbo-nerd memories? The rest of me was more reluctant, but I had to admit that I was interested in seeing what kind of trainwreck it would turn out to be. Would it be an all-Wards game? Would it be like one Ward and someone from each of the major gangs with Coil running it? Would it be a front for opium smuggling? The possibilities were endless.

"Maybe? Where do you meet?" I asked after a bit of a pause to think.

"Oh, the big public library a couple of blocks from here? We met in one of the meeting rooms there. Evan's mom - he's one of the other players - she works there and lets us hang out after hours if we promise to clean up after ourselves."

I ran the name Evan through my brain and didn't come up with a memory of a cape with that name. Opium smuggling, then?

"I suppose, just let me know the details. I'll have to ask my dad."

Chris seemed more than a little surprised that I'd agreed. "Oh, that's great! I mean, I'm glad you said yes."

That's about the time I realized that Chris might have a bit of a crush on me. It seemed obvious in retrospect, but in my defense, I wasn't really used to that. Maybe that was why he'd reminded me of Veder? Ew.

I almost asked if my girlfriend was invited, but calling Amy my girlfriend seemed a bit much for our actual relationship. I'd just have to find a way to let him down easily later.

 

[Swordchucks]

Talking to the police was unsettling but ultimately uneventful. I said true things, didn't add extra details, and it was over in about five minutes. The fact that the culprits were already caught and hostages rescued probably helped a lot with that. I still wasn't certain that the entire plot had been uncovered but it wasn't like the Protectorate was going to tell me what was going on with their investigation without a good reason.

That was a thought that reminded me that I needed to call Armsmaster and set up a meeting. I wasn't entirely sure about everything I was going to tell him, but I was sure enough about parts of it that I wanted to meet sooner rather than later.

Later that evening, I let dad know I was going out and left the house dressed as a cape for the first time. Well, mostly. I had a heavy winter coat over top of the rest with the hood pulled up which made me look like just a random person. A few quick alleys and some climbing and I was well away from the house and halfway across the docks much faster than I would have thought possible.

I put the battery back in the phone and waited for it to power up as I fished Armsmaster's card out of my pocket.

First, I called the PRT non-emergency number and registered my cell as contact information for Weaver, but let them know it wouldn't be available that often. They didn't seem to care - or maybe that was just normal for solo independents?

After that call was done, I called Armsmaster's number and navigated my way through his surprisingly robust menu system until it asked me to leave a voicemail. I did so and stuffed my phone into my pocket as I decided that maybe I should kill a couple of hours before going home in case Armsmaster called me back quickly. I didn't have any real hope of stumbling across a crime to thwart - it was too cold for most street crime - but I did need to get used to moving around the city in my costume. I stuffed my winter coat into a dry spot under a piece of air conditioning equipment on a rooftop and took off.

Again, I was faced with the reality that most of Brockton Bay just didn't have the building height necessary for web-swinging, but it did have plenty of things to climb and jump off of. My jump distance, especially with a running start, was very long and clearing a city street was almost trivial. Something about the power made for soft landings, too, which meant that my running around was almost entirely silent and much less destructive than I would have expected.

I eventually ended up at the boat graveyard, one of the Bay's most infamous landmarks. The rusting hulks of the graveyard - some still floating, some not - had been a silent memorial to the collapse of the Bay's shipping industry and the violence that had come out of it. Some of the boats were derelict remnants of shipping companies that folded. Some were left to rot after the protests made moving them too difficult. A few had been intentionally sunk during the protests.

Whatever the reason, the remaining ships were arrayed along the beach and near the shore of the northern part of the docks. There were forty or fifty of the things, some of them massive in size, and all of them abandoned.

I had been there a few times, but now I was looking at the hulks with new eyes. There was a reason that some of that fiction from my other-memories used them for power testing or hideouts. The area was desolate. With shipping reduced to much lower levels, the working docks were farther south or north and the area near the graveyard itself was abandoned. There weren't even many squatters in the area because of the lack of access to food and pretty much everything else.

"Well, when in Rome," I mumbled to myself as I dropped off a partially collapsed warehouse and walked toward the shore. I'd been curious about my strength and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to test it out.

Half an hour later, I knew some things. For one, I couldn't pick up an entire ship. That had seemed a little silly in retrospect, but it had been the first thing I tried. For another, I could pick up an empty shipping container with both hands. It wasn't a massive strain, but I also wouldn't be throwing it very far. According to the lettering on the side of one of the ones that still had lettering, that meant I could lift a ton or two, and because I could do it with just human-shaped hands, I had to have some sort of secondary power that let me keep objects together. Otherwise I would have just torn off the edge or the things would have snapped in half due to the way I was supporting them.

I definitely couldn't lift one filled with water, though, so I had an upper limit that was somewhere between two and ten tons. Probably. I wasn't sure if the maximum payload on the side of the thing would apply to having it full of water or not.

I also discovered that web swinging around the rigging of the old boats was a fun but somewhat useless exercise. No wonder Spider-man always loved doing that, though. It was the next best thing to flying.

Around that time, I saw the headlights of a car approaching and decided it was probably better to not be there in case they were gang members looking for the source of the strange noises I had been making.

I was feeling pretty good about the fact that I had managed to go out in costume without running into trouble as I did extreme parkour on my way back to where I'd hidden my coat. That was, of course, when fate had me notice a figure crouched on a nearby rooftop. The figure was wearing a heavy leather jacket with a fur collar and a cheap dog mask as it - she - stared at a nearby warehouse over the edge of her current hiding place.

It only took a second to realize who I was looking at and put together possible reasons for her to be there. The question was… what was I going to do with that information?

//\\o//\\

"What are we watching?" I whispered as I peered over the edge of the building.

"Empire," came the low, forceful reply.

There was a long beat of silence before her mind seemed to catch up to the fact that someone had just snuck up beside her and asked her a question. Rachel Lindt, better known as Hellhound or Bitch, jumped backwards, almost stumbling over her own feet in the process.

"I figured Empire. Dog fighting ring? Going to trash it?" I pushed on like it was the most natural thing in the world. I didn't even turn around to watch her, though I was keeping tabs on her out of the corner of my eye.

"Who are you?" she growled back at me.

"Weaver," I supplied, still not quite looking in her direction though turning a bit. I remembered some of the details of her trigger and how it had affected her brain - leaving her with poor human empathy and stuck on canine social skills. I didn't have an exposed mouth, so worrying about showing my teeth wasn't a thing, but eye contact was.

"You're new." Simple, direct. Bitch was kind of refreshing like that.

"And you're not, but you care about dogs. I like dogs. Empire assholes hurt dogs. Empire assholes need a smashing. We're in agreement on that."

Something about that calmed her down pretty quickly. She came back to the edge of the building and squatted down, though out of arm's reach of where I was this time. "Saw them moving cages. No dogs yet."

It was a freezing cold Monday night. No one was going to a dog fighting ring on a Monday night. "Thursday? Friday?" I asked.

"Dogs will be here Thursday." Then the event would probably start on Friday at my best guess.

It wasn't ideal, given my other commitments, but this seemed worth ditching dungeons and dragons over. "When were you going in?"

"Thursday night. Late."

I watched the warehouse a bit more, but the inside was still cold. They hadn't bothered to keep it warm and all of the spiders inside were babies still hiding in their egg sacs. If I wanted to use eight-legged scouts, I'd have to bring some in from outside and preferably once they had heaters running. There was no chance they were going to leave the place freezing cold while they were holding an event, at least.

"Middle of the night?" I asked and got a grunt. "Can I help?" That got me another grunt, which I took as agreement. "You have a way to move the dogs once we get them out?"

"Friend with a truck."

That seemed insufficient for a bunch of dogs that had been conditioned to fight, but she was the canine expert. I wasn't going to question her judgment on that front. "Alright, I'll see you then. Take care."

I crawled back two steps before getting to my feet and nonchalantly walking off the other side of the roof. After that, I took a round-about path toward my coat and then home. I couldn't recall if she could track by scent or not, but I was leaning toward 'not'. I did make some amateurish attempts to throw off my trail, anyway, just in case they would help.

I also remembered to take the battery out of my cape phone a few blocks away.

Dad was waiting up when I got home, though it wasn't that late - just past eleven.

"How did it go?"

"Not bad. I talked to the PRT dispatch and left a message for Armsmaster. Then I went poking around the Boat Graveyard for a while. Figured out I can lift at least two tons, maybe more but not a lot more."

Dad whistled. "That's still a lot."

I nodded. It did seem like a lot from a normal perspective, but it was kind of on the bottom rung for comic book superheroes. Then again, I didn't exactly live in a world full of comic book superheroes. A couple of tons was probably somewhere in the mid-tier for Brutes.

"Then on my way home, I ran into a supervillain and we decided to team up."

There was a moment of silence before dad let out a big breath through his nose. He pulled his glasses off with one hand and rubbed at his eyes with the other. "Explain." He sounded tired of my shit.

"There's a girl and she was in a really bad situation as a kid. Someone was going to kill her dog and she got the power to make dogs grow big and mean, but she can't control them. She saved the dog, it killed some people, she's been on the run ever since. I don't think she's killed anyone else, but I'll probably ask Armsmaster about it if I talk to him first." I really was blurry on some of the details. "Anyway, I saw her casing a warehouse and dropped by to ask why. Some goons were setting up an Empire dog fighting. She's planning to hit the place Thursday night - which reminds me, someone from school invited me to go play dungeons and dragons Thursday after school. Do you mind if I go?"

"Dungeons and dragons? People still play that?" he asked then realized I'd distracted him. "Sure, you can go do that. Now back to the Empire thing. You're going to break up a dog fighting ring on Thursday night with the help of a known villain, even if she didn't really mean to be a villain?"

"I would like to. I'll probably bring it up to Armsmaster, too, assuming I see him beforehand. She's on the list of people that deserve a second chance, I think, and who doesn't want to save a bunch of doggos from bloody deaths?"

"You make it hard to say 'no' to you, sometimes." He made it sound like that was a bad thing. "I'm just glad you're not running off without telling me. Again."

I didn't wince. I hadn't been in any real place to inform him when I was in the car accident. Afterwards, I hadn't exactly given him an option when I went off to help New Wave because I hadn't wanted to give him a chance to make the wrong choice, but I did tell him. "I don't intend to get hurt, but you know how these things go. At least I'm not out punching muggers, right?"

I left unsaid the fact that muggers were in short supply due to the weather. They were probably pretty rare in the summer, too, but I had a feeling that my luck meant I'd stumble across any mugger that wanted to mug if they were out and about. Which they currently weren't.

//\\o//\\

Tuesday morning passed without much incident, but at lunch, Vicky was back.

"Mom got tired of her moping around the house and made her come back to school," Amy informed me as we shared the same side of a lunch table a bit away from where Vicky was crowded by well wishers and those with questions about what had happened. "Dean is still on house arrest, as far as I can tell. According to Vicky, his dad's really shaken up about the whole thing though Dean says that he's fine."

"I think I'd be shaken up, too," I admitted as I watched the crowd come and go. Vicky did look a bit worn but the attention seemed to be a net positive for her. With her absent on Monday, Amy and I had eaten together, and we'd just kind of done it again even with Vicky back.

Amy pushed a few of her peas around with her fork. Arcadia's cafeteria food was pretty good, but it was still cafeteria food. The peas had not been a great choice. "Yeah, I would, too."

I put a hand on her shoulder, and she flinched just a little before she apparently decided that it was okay. I gave her a reassuring pat. "Going to the hospital this afternoon?" I asked by way of changing the topic.

"Yeah, probably. I'm… I'm trying to have set hours," she grumbled bitterly and let out a long breath through her nose. "You're right about boundaries. It's just hard. Every hour I'm not there is an hour I could be helping people."

"I know." I did know. I had an ability that let me raise the dead within some limited timeframe. How many lives could I save if I hung around the hospital all day and used it when it would work? It was more than zero. On the other hand, even if there wasn't the whole 'end up naked' bit, that would probably drive me crazy. "Do you mind if I come over tonight? After you're back, I mean?"

Amy raised an eyebrow at that, but nodded. "Yeah, around eight? Mom's made a big deal out of family dinners since, you know."

That afternoon, I wasted some of my study hall time researching the particular brand of dungeons and dragons played on Earth Bet. Chris had sent me some links and a login for some sort of online character creator. I followed them and found the differences between what I found and what my other-memories expected to be fascinating.

The original company had sold the license to a Seattle-based company in the late 90s. They'd published a third edition. That's where things diverged. In the other-memories, that same company went on to publish a 'half edition' in mid-2003 and yet another edition a few years later.

On Bet? Leviathan smashed Seattle in early 2003. That didn't kill the game, but it did kill that company. What would have been the 'half edition' got released but without the company around to support it, it didn't go very far. After a few years in legal limbo, the license landed with an entirely different company who then published their own version. It was wildly different from the 'fourth edition' of my other-memories. For one thing, there was a definite cape vibe with the abilities available to the different character classes. They were called different things, but pretty much every type of cape was represented by its own 'ability tree' that different character classes had access to to different degrees.

For instance, a barbarian could pick up anything in the Brute tree but only low level stuff elsewhere. Fighters had Mover and Striker abilities while Rogues had full access to Stranger abilities. Wizards were, as always, broken with access to spells that imitated pretty much everything and then did unique things on top of it.

I had no idea what character I wanted to play by the time the day was open, but it did give me something to think about when I wasn't busy worrying about other, real-life stuff. I was thinking about it enough to head downtown after school and pick up some dice and a nice little leather bound journal at a comic shop.

After dinner, I took the bus over to Amy's house and put the battery in my cell phone once I was far enough from the house to check my messages. Armsmaster had gotten back to me with a voice mail. I was to be in a particular parking garage downtime at nine o'clock the following night - Wednesday. Having a time set for the meeting was both a relief and another source of anxiety.

It was also a lot of why I wanted to spend time with Amy that evening.

I was thinking about how that conversation would go when I rang the bell and it was probably why I barely registered a faint tingle of spider-sense which was my only warning before Victoria Dallon grabbed me in a big hug almost as soon as she opened the door. I made a very articulate squawking noise in my confusion.

"Thank you," she said as she sat me back down on the ground. When had she picked me up? "Thank you for saving my sister."

My brain caught up with the scenario and I fell back on our practiced story. It wasn't like I wanted people to know about my powers, after all. "She wasn't actually that hurt, I just got her out of the car."

"You got all cut up and ruined your dress," she rebutted. "That was a great dress, by the way. Where did you find it? I'm going to insist on replacing it."

"It was a thrift store find," I improvised. "That's actually where I met Amy. Saturday before last? You were there."

Vicky's forehead creased in thought for a moment, and then she winced. "Oh, you were in that store. I was fighting with Dean about- you know what? Not important. I was in a mood. Amy bitched me out already because I was kind of being a jerk that day. I'm sorry if I was mean to you or anything."

I'd done my best to stay out of Vicky's way that day. I wouldn't even have interacted with Amy if she hadn't been in danger of being squished by a toppling rack of clothes. "It's fine. I'm sorry you had to go through the whole kidnapping thing."

Vicky's lips twisted into a grimace. "Yeah, it wasn't fun. Not at all. Even if things worked out in the end, it's still… a lot, you know?"

I nodded, though I wasn't entirely sure where her head was at. "Not exactly, but yeah."

She took a steadying breath and then smiled again. "Anyway, Amy's upstairs. You have my blessing, by the way."

Blessing? I realized what she was implying and felt my cheeks heating up a little. "Uh, thanks?"

 

[Swordchucks]

"Are you… okay?" I asked. I'd told Amy about what her sister said, and she'd buried her face in her arms and not moved for a few minutes.

"Yeah," she mumbled, but it was muffled. After another moment, she raised her head and just looked tired. "I know… I know that part of the point of all of this," she gestured between the two of us, "is to get past it, but it's just hard. I'm… Every day is a struggle."

I sank onto the bed beside her and cautiously put my arm around her shoulders. She didn't flinch that time. "I'm sorry. I know it's hard." I took a deep breath and let it out. "In my visions, other-me shot a baby once."

Amy suddenly sat up a little straighter and looked at me with a furrowed brow. "Explain."

"I… The baby was being kidnapped by some very bad people. They were going to do… well, I don't know exactly what, but I'm sure it would have been horrible. Other-me saw shooting the baby as the merciful option. I-I think I have that in me, somewhere. I could do really, really horrible things if I thought it was for the best." There it was. A confession. I'd danced around other-Amy's crimes and it had been enough to start her down a better path, but I'd never really told her what other-me had done.

Amy held my gaze for a long moment and I looked away when the eye contact started to make me feel really uncomfortable. "That's not the only thing other-me did - it almost doesn't rank with the really bad stuff - but somehow it stands out because it was just such a stark example of what I'm capable of."

I looked back when Amy laughed a moment later. "Maybe we do deserve each other," she grumbled bitterly. I tried not to be offended.

The absurdity of it was a bit amusing and it caused me to crack half a smile. "Yeah, maybe." I gave her shoulders a bit more of a squeeze and then moved away to give her space.

A few minutes of silence let some of the tension dissipate and I decided to dig into what I wanted to talk about.

"I ran into Bitch the other day," at her look, I realized that it sounded bad and backtracked, "that's her cape name. The PRT calls her Hellhound. She's wanted for murder, but it wasn't really her fault. Anyway, she's planning a raid on an Empire dogfighting ring on Thursday night and I agreed to help out."

Amy frowned slightly at the thought. "Vicky would be all over that, but there is no way that mom would go for it so soon after the kidnapping thing."

I nodded. "I kind of figured. It's probably better to not spring more capes on Bitch, anyway. Her power has her messed up, and she doesn't understand human interactions very well. I'm going to at least mention her to Armsmaster as a villain he could subvert - actually, is that subvert? When you get a villain to go good?"

Amy thought about it for a moment. "I… have no idea. Convert, maybe? Reform?"

"Convince her to reform, I guess. She's a member of the Undersiders right now, but they're pretty much all reformable given the right incentives."

"More of your visions?" Amy asked.

"Yeah." I chuckled again. "Dumb-ass other-me decided she was going to infiltrate their team and take them down from the inside. Ended up just becoming a villain."

"Dumbass," Amy snickered and banged her shoulder into mine.

I chuckled again. "Yeah, definitely. Oh, that reminds me… we should probably have a talk with Vicky about excessive force. Has she been calling you to put criminals back together after she almost murders them?"

"No… but that definitely sounds like something she would do. And it sounds like something I would do, too." She thought about it for a moment. "I'm not sure how we'd actually approach the subject, though. Not and have her take it seriously."

"We might have to wait till she does it for the first time. In the worst case scenario, if she does something you can't fix, I can probably raise them from the dead."

Amy laughed again, putting her head in her hands. "That is the most surreal thing I've ever heard."

"A little bit, yeah." I resisted telling her something even more absurd just to prove the point. She had already seen my magical sewing while naked routine, which I kind of thought was worse. "Anyway, back on subject, I'm going to help her with the raid after my dungeons and dragons game on Thursday night-"

"Wait, your what?" Amy broke in with a strange look on her face.

"Oh, ah, yeah, one of the guys in class invited me to play with his group on Thursday evening?"

"H-how? How am I the cool one in this relationship? I mean, this fake relationship?" Amy burst out into laughter. It didn't sound as bitter or forced as before.

"I'm plenty cool," I protested lamely. I was definitely lying. "Do you want me to see if they have a spot for you, too? I'm sure you would have a good time."

"No, I'm good." Amy snorted again. "I can be the cool one, and you can be the dork."

I stuck my tongue out at her. "Fine. Anyway, that's my plan for Thursday, but I am going to talk to Armsmaster tomorrow night."

"Have you figured out what you're going to say?" she asked curiously. She didn't seem nervous about it, which was good since I'd already promised not to talk about other-her's crimes.

"Not entirely. I'm going to start with some stuff he can verify, and then go to Shadow Stalker. I'm… I think I need to unmask to him. He's going to figure it out pretty fast if he actually investigates her, and if I can talk him into keeping it a secret, then maybe he can do the investigation in such a way that it doesn't point back to me?"

"Are you sure about that? Unmasking is a big deal. I mean, people say it's a big deal, and I can guess why. Being a public cape is kind of exhausting."

I nodded. "I know. I'm just-I think my identity is pretty thin if you know what you're looking for, anyway. Shadow Stalker has definitely tried to murder more than one person, but how many of them have the same body type as Weaver? Add to that the fact that I kind of vanished from school after my trigger and there are kind of maybe some reports of me streaking around town on Wednesday night and being at Empire rallies-"

"Stop. Explain." Amy demanded again, though she was starting to sound tired. I really was dropping all of the bombs tonight.

I laughed nervously and began to explain the entire thing on Wednesday night. It was something I had glossed over during our initial talk.

"That is the most absurd story I have ever heard, but somehow, I believe every word of it." Amy shook her head in exasperation.

I could only shrug. "I'm not absolutely sure it wasn't a dream, but with my luck, it was very real and Dauntless has photographic proof."

Amy sighed. "Yeah, maybe unmasking is the best course of action."

//\\o//\\

"You're on time," was the only response as the window to the unmarked white van rolled down enough for me to see that Armsmaster, armor and all, was seated inside. "Do you want to do this here?"

I looked around the abandoned parking structure which certainly looked empty. My spider-sense also seemed to point out when people were watching or listening in if I was trying to avoid notice, but I wasn't quite ready to rely on it fully. "Is the van clean? You swept it for listening devices?"

That got me a curt nod. "I took precautions. You indicated that the conversation needed to be private."

I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. I was sure that he had backup nearby, but if he was willing to have a private talk, that would have to be good enough. I'd been over the possibilities for this conversation several times, and it seemed like the best course of action. However, knowing that didn't stop my stomach from twisting itself into knots.

"Yeah, it has to be private. Very private." I steeled myself and opened the door before climbing in. "Everything I say is strictly off the record, right?"

Armsmaster paused for a moment, his bearded chin giving away little of his thought process. "Depending on what it is, yes. There are some things you might say that I won't be able to keep quiet about, of course."

I closed my eyes. "Yeah, okay. I understand that. You're going to want to do stuff, and you kind of have to. This… Most of this isn't personal. I'm not going to tell you I've got an abusive home life that I need the Protectorate to help me get away from it or something like that. I'm a grab-bag cape and one of my powers is that I get visions of the future and the past. I know… I know a lot of stuff. Secret stuff."

"A bold claim," he agreed neutrally. He wasn't expressing overt doubt, but he also wasn't expressing belief.

"Yeah, and that's why I'm going to give you something right off. Something that no one knows but can be verified pretty fast." It had taken a while to settle on an opening gambit, but I was pretty confident in the one I had picked. "Kid Win doesn't know his Tinker speciality, right? Well, it's modular design. The stuff he makes is meant to come apart and go back together like building blocks. He's also working on something he calls an Alternator Cannon - or he will be soon - and is likely to deploy it when he shouldn't."

He stilled and I could almost see him thinking. "I will have to verify, but… yes, it seems possible. Likely, even. And you saw this in a vision?"

I nodded. It was the way I'd been referring to my other-memories and it was as close an explanation as I could give without seeming insane. "Y-yeah. After I got my powers, I got a bunch all at once. Now, I still get them occasionally when I come into contact with someone, but it seems to be both rare and random."

"Okay, then what else did you see?"

I shifted nervously. This was it. "No recordings, right? Not in your armor or the van or anything?" I thought my senses might warn me, but I didn't want to risk it.

"None, as you requested."

"Alright," I reached up behind my head, ignoring how Armsmaster shifted into a slightly more defensive position when I moved. A quick tug of the fastenings that were normally protected by the hood of my costume and I pulled my mask forward and down. "My name is Taylor Hebert. I'm unmasking to you because if you act on what I'm about to tell you, you will figure it out in short order, anyway. I don't want to join the Wards because a Ward tried to kill me, which is why I gained powers in the first place."

That certainly had his attention. "Explain everything." It was a firm command, almost demanding. I had no intention of doing anything else and over the next five minutes, I explained in some detail exactly how I'd been bullied for over a year by Sophia Hess and Emma Barnes before their final act of shoving me into a locker and leaving me there until I triggered.

By the time I was finished, Armsmaster's lips were pursed into a hard line. "If this is true - and I'm sure I'll be able to verify at least part of it very quickly - then she will be dealt with."

"I don't," I started but had to pause to collect myself further. This had been another item I had thought long and hard about. "I don't really care what happens to her, as long as she isn't here to attempt to kill me again. Transferring her out of town would be fine. Put her on a quarantine zone in the middle of nowhere or something. I do think it is imperative that she be separated from Emma Barnes. They both have issues and they feed on each other in the worst ways, but I really just want them to stop hurting people."

Armsmaster seemed to take that well. "A noble sentiment, but if this were to become public and we didn't prosecute her fully, it would be an even bigger scandal."

"Yeah, about that…" I put my mask back on. I had debated on the next item a lot, both in my own head and with Amy. "In my visions, there is a cape that goes by the name of Coil that is trying to subtly undermine the local Protectorate and PRT. He may not have started moving fully yet, but he will within the next few months and it will be bad for everyone. His power is precognition of a sort - he is able to simulate two timelines, gather the data from both, and then choose the one he wants to keep. He has used it to thoroughly compromise the local PRT, both people and systems, and he probably has more limited ways to tap the Protectorate stuff as well."

"To what end?" Armsmaster asked and I found it encouraging that he would ask that instead of trying to poke holes in my claim.

"He is a PRT veteran currently working as a consultant by the name of Thomas Calvert. He wants to wreck things so that he can get himself installed as the next Director in order to fix them. At the same time, he intends to push the gangs out of the city so that he has control of both the criminal and legitimate sides of the cape scene in town. It would effectively make the Bay his own personal kingdom." I wasn't going to name names for the most part, but Coil could get fucked.

"That would be… very bad." Armsmaster seemed to have a talent for understatement.

"It's complicated, too. In the visions, he has been collecting the identities of the Empire. I think he intended to use them to remove them as a threat, but he also had something set up so that after he died, they got released. The Empire didn't take it well. They went berserk and tore the city the rest of the way apart. That was - actually, I kind of skipped it, but in the visions, Lung recruited a cape named Bakuda. She's a bomb tinker that did something at Cornell, I think? Anyway, she can make bombs that emulate powers, like Gray Boy bubbles. After Lung got captured, she went on a bombing spree that almost destroyed the city. Between that and the Empire going nuts, Leviathan attacked the city and everything just kept getting worse." I felt like the words were just spilling out of me by that point. I realized I'd left out quite a few important items but decided it would just be too much to give him at one time.

"You can see the Endbringers in your visions?" he asked. Of course he would know about the blindspots most powers had. Without Zion around, I hadn't been sure it was a thing, but apparently so.

"Yes, at least the initial vision could. The next attack will be the Simurgh and it will target Canberra, Australia. Unless it changes targets, anyway - the Simurgh is a powerful precognitive and attempts to preempt its attack might cause it to alter its plans. If I wanted to get more up-to-date predictions, I would probably have to get into close contact with one of them, and that seems like a terrible plan."

That earned me a soft snicker and a deep exhale. I could almost feel the nervous energy. "I agree with that assessment."

"That's the most immediate stuff. There's a lot more, but I'm sure you need to verify some things. Oh, the other thing. The Undersiders are working for Coil though most of them don't know it. I think you can subvert pretty much all of them with the right approaches. I ran into Bit-Hellhoud the other night and I'm going to support her in taking down an Empire dogfighting ring tomorrow night."

That earned me a frown. "I would have to advise against that. I'm aware of her history, and she's dangerous."

I shrugged. "Part of my grab bag is a Brute package. I think I can take her if it comes down to it, but I doubt I'll need to. She's very canine focused and if I'm helping her rescue dogs, I don't see us having any conflicts."

For a moment, I thought he was going to protest more, but it passed. "You have all of the contact numbers. Call it in, if nothing else."

"Sure," I said with a nod. "I think that's enough for one night. Once you get everything verified, leave me a message and we can meet again. Just… try to keep my name out of any reports. I think I have a degree of Thinker immunity, but I'm not sure how far it goes."

"I'll do what I can," he agreed, already lost in thought. "I'd still like for you to consider joining the Wards. Maybe not today, but once I've finished looking into your claims."

"After Shadow Stalker has been taken care of, I'll consider it. I suggest you start with checking the text message history on all of her phones - she has multiple. She's kind of an idiot about covering her tracks, and I'm sure there's something in the terms of her probation that would let you do that. I really don't think I could keep from twisting her head off if I had to work with her." I wasn't sure what I would do once Sophia was out of the way, really. The Wards were a safe space, in theory, but that would also mean taking orders. I wasn't sure I was a 'take orders' kind of gal.

I would have considered the Wards an issue because of the whole 'teenage drama' angle, but it seemed like I was hanging out with half of them on a regular basis anyway.

"I'll be in touch," Armsmaster said and offered me his hand.

Without really thinking about it, I reached out to shake it. Our palms touched - well, my palm touched the gauntlet of his suit - and that's when the world faded away.

//\\o//\\

Sometimes, I was a bit of an idiot. I had mentioned to Armsmaster not ten minutes before that I randomly got visions when I came into contact with people - and then I went and touched him. My only defense was that I had only had it happen one time, almost two weeks before, so I wasn't necessarily expecting it. I had let my guard down.

Unlike the animated scene I had been thrust into with Amy, what appeared before me was more of a frozen diorama. It was outside and on a city street, though submerged in a considerable amount of water. The buildings to either side were shattered, but the most striking thing about the scene was the collapsed bulk of Leviathan, the distinctive end of one of Armsmaster's halberds protruding less than a foot out of its back, very close to the center of its torso.

There were a number of capes around, though they were not really in-focus of the vision. The only two that stood out were the ones closest to Leviathan.

One was Armsmaster, his armor damaged and one of his arms hanging limply with blood dripping from it. The other was me, standing with her hands over her face and completely naked.

"Why do I always end up naked?" I whined, but the fact that Leviathan was dead seemed to make that a secondary concern. Public nudity to murder an Endbringer? It seemed like a fair trade.

The surrounding street definitely looked like the Bay, but it was difficult to tell with all of the destruction.

I moved through the area as a ghostly watcher. Viewing the scene from different angles didn't tell me much more, though as I got closer, I could see that Armsmaster was smiling with blood-stained teeth.

Even unmoving on the ground and apparently dead, the body of Leviathan was intimidating. Photos and videos of the Endbringers were less common than you might think, and very little of it was close-up. They struck without warning and tended to wipe out most of the devices which might have captured recordings of them. What did survive was mostly relegated to the dark corners of the Internet, though the Protectorate probably had better stuff. No one really wanted to see images of the things that could decide to level your city at the drop of a hat.

Even if I had sought out more videos of the thing, I don't know that I would have been any better prepared for how big it looked in person - for a given value of 'in person'. It was sleek, yes, but no amount of sleekness could make a thirty foot monster any less massive. The fact that the halberd in its back had managed to reach its core - which I had expected to be closer to its tail for some reason - was impressive.

Before I was finished gawking, the scene dissolved and I was back in the van.

"Are you okay?" Armsmaster asked.

I pulled my hand away from his. "Yes. Random visions are annoyingly random."

"Ah." There was a beat of silence. "I had expected my gauntlets to be a sufficient barrier. What did you see?"

"I…" I hesitated. Would telling him cause an issue? I still wasn't entirely certain of what I saw and the fact that it was proof that I was getting more 'visions' that didn't line up with my other-memories was disconcerting. Also the whole naked thing. Again. "Visions are changeable. Even simple differences between now and when the vision comes to pass could change things entirely."

"I know that," Armsmaster stated. Of course he did. He had to deal with precognitive Thinkers all the time.

"I'm not going to tell you exactly what I saw, because of that. I don't-You're working on nano-thorns, right? For your halberd? For use on Endbringers?"

Armsmaster inhaled sharply. He'd taken most of what I'd said stoically and seriously, but this one seemed to shock him a little. "You couldn't know that. I've only just started sketching designs."

I nodded. "I shouldn't know that, but I do," I corrected. I tried to shake off the mix of emotions the vision had let me with. Terror and mortification were kind of fighting it out, though there was also a sliver of hope. "My visions said it might work. I think… I think there's more to it than that - maybe a lot more - but your halberd is definitely a part of it. The rest-Too much could change for it to be of value."

That got me a gruff nod and a serious look. "I think we'll be talking again sooner rather than later."

I nodded. "Y-yeah. I'm just going to… I'm going to go and take a walk and try to forget about what I just saw a little bit."

I had trouble sleeping that night. What had it meant that I'd gotten a vision from touching Armsmaster but hadn't from so many other contacts with people over the last couple of weeks? Why had I seen the future instead of just the past? Why had it been a moment frozen in time instead of a full scene playing out? Again, why was I naked?

Even with all of that weighing on my mind, I managed to soldier through my day. At lunch, Amy teased me a little about how much of a nerd I was, but I didn't mind. I was starting to develop a sense of when Amy was being a bitch for real and when she was just teasing. I was sure that the fact that I was kind of starting to like it a little probably didn't say good things about me as a person.

By that evening, I was starting to feel more myself, which was good because I had a game to play. The dungeons and dragons session started out a little awkwardly but things relaxed pretty quickly after the initial bumps.

I kept forgetting that my powers had given me a makeover and even when 'dressed down', I was still a pretty girl instead of the vaguely female mass than I had been before. In some ways, the stark change made it easier to deal with. It sometimes felt a bit dissociative - like the 'new me' was someone else I was inhabiting or a costume that I was wearing - but it did help to push my old body issues to the side.

Intellectually, I knew that new-me was attractive, but I also kept forgetting that fact at the weirdest times. When I wasn't expecting the looks I got, it could be a bit startling, and I think I intimidated people a little. That same thing happened when I showed up to play one of the nerdiest games imaginable.

Fortunately, Chris's gaming group - Brandon, Evan, and Mei - seemed nice enough after they got over their initial surprise. Brandon was the DM and went to Arcadia while Evan and Mei went to Immaculata. The four of them all went to the same middle school, which was how they knew each other, so I felt a little like an outsider. Mei was the other girl in the group, and I got the feeling that she and Evan might have a thing though I wasn't certain. She gave me some sharp looks, but when I showed no interest in Evan, they gradually cooled down.

By the end of the night, I was also pretty sure that none of them were secretly capes. They didn't have the bearing - the attitude - I associated with capes. Chris didn't either so maybe I was fooling myself about that being a reliable tell, though. For all I really knew, I was hanging out with Lung's children or something.

The session was pretty light, all things considered. It was mostly a chance for the others to recap what had come before and for me to introduce my new character, a rogue I'd named Skitter because I was terrible at coming up with names for things in either timeline. The group was protecting a village from some recent threats and it turned into a roleplaying heavy game where I was introduced as a freelancer that the village had hired on before the party had arrived on the scene.

The three hours or so the game was set for almost flew by. When everything wrapped up, Brandon was sure to remind me that the next session was the following Thursday as we said our goodbyes. Chris walked me out after.

"So, did you have a good time?" he asked shyly. He didn't seem to have a lot of friends from what I'd see, though part of that was probably because he had to keep distance from his fellow Wards to avoid giving away secret identities.

"Yeah, it was fun," I said and then asked the question that had been on my mind all night. "Are Mei and Evan…"

"I don't think so? I think Mei is into him, but I'm pretty sure that Evan is gay. He can't really admit to it what with his parents being so religious, but…" Chris seemed a bit out of his depth on the topic.

"Ah, yeah, that sucks. You'd think after Legend lasered through so much of the bigotry, it would be better, but here we are." I gestured expansively as we walked out the front door. "The city of Nazis and people that secretly agree with them."

"I-I don't know if i would go that far," Chris protested weakly.

"I'm being hyperbolic," I admitted with a grin. "I know there are lots of good people here, but sometimes… sometimes people suck. It makes you want to punch a Nazi."

Chris chuckled. "I guess that's always the morally acceptable thing to do. Do you maybe want to go get something to eat?"

I checked my watch. "No, actually. I've got something I have to go do. I'll see you at school tomorrow, right?"

He nodded, "Uh, yeah, tomorrow then."

He sounded a little sad, but I still turned and walked away. I had a Nazi-face-punching appointment to get to, though if everything went according to plan, there wouldn't be all that much punching to do.

 

[Swordchucks]

"Protectorate emergency, who am I speaking with and how can I help?" the calm, cool voice on the other side of the line answered.

"This is Weaver, indepen-" I was interrupted by the need to throw myself out of the way of an incoming chunk of asphalt bigger than my head. "Independent hero. I'm on Elm and-" I sprang back to my feet and started moving again before another projectile could tag me. "Elm and Fifth."

"Stand still and let me kill you!"

"There's kind of a cape fight going on." I almost fumbled my phone as I did a one-handed cartwheel to get out of the way of a blade of condensed wind that carved a gash in the road where I had just been.

"Who are the combatants?" the voice asked, just as calm as ever, but I could hear typing in the background.

"Stormtiger and Rune." I bounced off a wall and kicked an incoming steel trash can back at the female of the pair. Stormtiger's blade of air cut it in half before it got close, but the trash that exploded out of it gave me a little visual cover. "I saw Hookwolf and Cricket earlier, but I think they're chasing Bit-Hellhound."

The actual takedown of the dog fighting ring had gone well. There had only been a small number of guards and once the dust settled, Grue had showed up with a moving truck for the doggos. We'd piled as many of the cages inside as possible and Bitch had loaded them up with dogs that weren't likely to eat each other.

Unfortunately, we'd apparently missed some sort of alarm, because before we could get moving, a bunch of capes had come out of nowhere. I'd done my best to distract the more mobile ones while the truck made its escape.

"Hookwolf and Cricket are not with you?" the dispatcher asked.

"Gotcha!" I yelled as I managed to line up a shot and nailed Stormtiger with a big glob of webbing. I gave it a yank and he lost his footing, sailing in my general direction. "N-Oh, come on!"

Stormtiger righted himself in mid-air using his wind power and hurled more blades of wind in my direction. My webs were strong, but something cutting at them from the side was probably the best way to get through them and I dropped the now useless strand of synthetic silk as I dodged. The blades gouged more deep furrows into the side of the building I'd been hanging on to before I jumped to safety.

"Can you repeat that?"

"Sorry. Trying to not die." Why was I apologizing? Habit, I guessed. "No, just the two-and we're on Elm and Sixth now."

Rune had apparently taken advantage of my distraction to send an entire dumpster hurtling toward me. I jumped on top of it and then leapt upward, using a strand of webbing and a telephone pole to send myself arcing up and away from the fight.

Down below me, I spotted a red blur go past and start harassing Stormtiger. "I see Velocity now. Thanks for the help!" I ended the call and stuffed the phone back into my pocket before reversing my flight with another web and rocketing back toward the fight.

My fighting retreat had been, at least in part, to draw capes away from the moving truck. I had only partially succeeded, but Rune and Stormtiger were the most mobile of that quartet and thus the best ones to bait away from a retreating truck. None of them were exactly slow, but those two would certainly have been the hardest to evade.

Velocity blurred away from Stormtiger just as I got close enough to fire a double web shot at him. I was getting better at making the webbing do what I wanted it to, but it was deceptively complicated. Real spider silk wasn't actually sticky, instead relying on a separate substance spiders secreted at the same time they spun the silk in order to get that effect. Synthetic spider silk had both properties baked into one package, more or less, but it depended on how you fired it from the web-shooter as to how sticky it actually was.

The balls I launched at Stormtiger's face? Super sticky, and he was just dazed enough from Velocity's barrage of punches to get hit by them. He staggered back, his arms wrapped to his sides by the webbing but not quite out of the fight as he propelled himself away with a barely controlled gust of wind.

As he stumbled back, Rune apparently saw that the fight was going against them and swooped lower on the big chunk of plywood that she was using as a mount. As she did so, she launched the protective shroud of debris which she had been relying on to keep my webs at bay in my direction. I dodged and by the time I was able to focus on them again, the two of them were making their own retreat.

I almost chased after them for a moment, but hesitated. That moment was long enough for the blur that was Velocity to reappear from wherever it had vanished to. "I'd let them go. Hookwolf apparently gave up on catching your friends and is headed back toward them. Taking them all on at once sounds like a bad idea."

I let out a deep breath and pushed down the dog-like instinct to chase something that was running away. I really hoped he couldn't recognize me as the girl that had kicked away one of his grenades, though I was kind of curious why he hadn't used one of those on Stormtiger or Rune. Maybe it was a special occasion kind of thing? "Alright, yeah, bad idea."

"So, I know this isn't your first night out… but care to make a statement on what exactly happened?" he asked, his tone a little more serious than before.

"I think I said most of it on the phone. I happened to run across Hellhound a few nights ago while she was casing a warehouse that the Empire had been scouting out. Tonight, they were full up with dogs and just a few guards, so I agreed to help her get the dogs out. We tied up the five or six guys inside, and loaded up the animals. Apparently we missed an alarm of some sort because before we could get away, Hookwolf, Cricket, Stormtiger, and Rune showed up. I managed to get those two to follow me while the van and dogs hopefully got away." I shrugged at the end. I had a bad feeling about talking to the cops, in general, but I wasn't going to lie, either. "That's when you showed up."

Velocity took that in for a moment. "You really should consider joining the Wards. That kind of operation isn't something you should do without backup - real backup, not just a couple of small-time villains that are going to cut and run at the first sign of trouble."

I winced, though it was hopefully hidden by my mask. It was an uncharitable way of looking at things, but annoyingly true. "We both know that the Wards aren't really allowed to pick fights, and that dog-fighting rings aren't high on the Protectorate to-do list." There were other factors, of course, but those were good reasons, too. No amount of ruining dog fighting rings would change the world, but it couldn't hurt to try.

"You should still think about it. It's entirely too easy to end up in a really bad situation while you're trying to do the right thing." He nodded in the general direction to some of the destruction that had been left behind by our chase. My other-memories were in wholehearted agreement with that. "I doubt the Empire at large is going to come after you for that, but Hookwolf will remember it. He's a murderer several times over with a Birdcage order, so don't think he'll go easy on you just because you're a hero or a teenager or something."

I gave him a nod back. "Warning noted. I really didn't go out tonight with the intention of getting in a cape fight, but I don't have the best luck with avoiding trouble."

"If it can go wrong, it will," he agreed. I recalled, vaguely, that he had a military background. "At the very least, you should call in your operations before they go sideways. As an independent, we might not be able to help you directly, but we may be able to offer other kinds of support. At the least, we could have assets moved closer in case of a sudden surprise like that."

I almost objected that I had meant to call them beforehand, but I'd been a bit late and when I arrived, Bitch had wanted to start immediately and I'd kind of had to pick between helping her or stopping to call it in. Then the operation had gone fine and I was going to call it in after, but that's when Hookwolf arrived. Hindsight and all of that.

The sound of distant sirens underscored what he was saying and I took it as a warning for the next one, because there would certainly be a 'next one'. Response times weren't instant and being caught out without backup could be really bad. "I'll remember that."

//\\o//\\

"I believe I told you to call it in before you stirred up half of the Empire," Armsmaster admonished, more gently than I would have expected. This time, I'd joined him in an unmarked sedan sitting in a small lot near Captain's Hill late on Saturday night after I left Amy's house. We'd mostly just hung out in her family's home theater and watched a couple of movies, but it had been a good time. After she was done calling me an idiot for the whole Empire thing, of course.

"I don't think it was quite half," I defended lamely. I'd already been dressed down by Velocity, dad, and Amy for the debacle, so I wasn't really up for offering much pushback. "I realize that I made a mistake, and I think I told Velocity as much."

He gave me a gruff nod. "I will spare you the lecture, then." He pulled a few items from the console between the seats, handing them to me.

I took them and found a flat leather square just a little bigger than a phone and a fairly thick book about the size of my palm. "What's this?" I asked curiously as I tried to get a good look at the book in the dim light.

"Affiliated cape starter pack. More or less." The leather item turned out to be a holder containing a sort of identification card with Weaver on it, a bunch of official looking stuff, and identification numbers. The cover of the book had something about 'affiliates' in the title, but it was too dark to read much more. "You're in the Protectorate system formally. The identification should help with the police until you're better known. The handbook is a primer on proper procedures for making an 'enhanced citizens arrest' and where your liability starts. It would be a good idea to study it before you go poking any more gangs."

"Does this mean my visions panned out?" I asked. "Oh, and why didn't I know about the affiliate option?"

His lips twisted in distaste. "Yes, your information was correct. At least, it was correct enough for me to extend to you some trust. I'm not at liberty to discuss ongoing investigations, but they are very ongoing." He emphasized the 'very' part and I had a feeling that a lot of heads were going to roll. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. Being vindicated, even if only a little, was good. "As for the affiliate program, you are in a special situation where it's actually a decent choice - at least for the moment. Normally, I'd never advise someone to remain independent. This city is a meat grinder for independents, heroes and villains alike."

"Okay," I said, accepting the judgment. I'd done some research and there did seem to be a lot of independent capes in the Bay that popped up, were active for a short while, and then were never heard from again. I was sure that some of them ended up moving away or joining a team and rebranding, but there were more that just vanished. Given how my first outing had gone, I was pretty sure that I knew why. "Oh, I forgot to mention some stuff about Coil during our last meeting. The big thing is that he has a bunch of bases around town, but the big one is an Endbringer shelter - officially not finished or off the records or something - under a big part of downtown. It's also wired with a self destruct which will do a lot of damage if it goes off. Oh, and the thing that releases the Empire identities, though I'm not sure if he has that ready to go yet or not."

I hesitated for just a moment before picking my next topic. "Undersiders. Right. They work for him. Tattletail is their link to Coil and he's forcing her to work for him at gunpoint. She's a bitch, but her Thinker power is strong. Strong enough to at least partially analyze Endbringers. It's basically super-charged deduction and inference. The main weakness is that if it's provided with garbage data, it can reach entirely incorrect conclusions. She'd be easy enough to subvert by guaranteeing her safety."

"Grue is next. He's got an abusive family and he's turned to crime to protect his little sister. He isn't a bad guy aside from that." I didn't say anything about how he was apparently my type, though. "He generates darkness that can also block sound and maybe electrical signals. If you can provide him with safety for his sister, he'd almost certainly work for you."

"Then there's Hellhound, though she calls herself Bitch. Doesn't understand people, but does understand dogs. Get her friends to join up and then bury her in dogs to train and protect and she'll turn in a heartbeat. She's very pack oriented, though, and slow to trust outsiders. I'm sure that if you have looked into it, you're aware that the murders she committed were accidents." I was actually not sure how it would be possible to get that resolved, but it wasn't my problem.

"Last is Regent." This one was tough, I realized, because Armsmaster might decide he was better off dead than alive. "He's one of Heartbreaker's kids and might also have been called Hijack." Armsmaster apparently knew the name because he stiffened. "Powerful human master, though it takes a fairly long time for him to get control of his targets. He's a sociopath and a hedonist but not a complete monster. If you get his friends to turn and provide him with a comfortable place to live and video games, he'll stay out of the way, at least."

"I see," he said, his goatee almost but not hiding the look of distaste on his face. If my other-memories were right, the Protectorate had known barely anything about the Undersiders even after the bank robbery. Having a full rundown could only help. "That is all very good information to have."

"Oh, yeah, another urgent thing. Do you know if Miss Militia has contact information for Mouse Protector? Or, I mean, does anyone? In my visions, one of her enemies… Ratter? Raver? Something like that. Anyway, she tries to get the S9 to kill her and they basically make the pair of them into a conjoined monster thing. She should probably get out of town before that happens. If not, we'll have to deal with it whenever the nine show up here."

"The nine are coming here?" he asked hollowly.

I hesitated. I wanted to leave Amy out of this one. "There are people here they would try to recruit. Hookwolf is one of them. However, in the visions, they didn't show up until the city had descended into chaos for other reasons. Bakuda was the start of that."

"That was something else that checked out. There was a credible bomb threat at Cornell two days ago that was dealt with by the New York Protectorate. I reviewed the report and sent them a suggestion that she be given a high priority for capture because of her potential for mass destruction." Inside, I realized I'd made the right call in going to Armsmaster. He was well respected in the Protectorate and his warnings would carry more weight than mine.

"She's only going to get worse," I added.

"Is that everything?" he asked after a moment.

"Everything urgent, I think. Oh, while we're talking about the nine, the Siberian's a projection belonging to a guy that follows them around in a van and Jack Slash's real power is communication which he uses to basically ruin people psychologically. The rest of them are pretty much what you'd expect, though Bonesaw has the potential to be reformed if you can get rid of Jack Slash." I wasn't clear on all of the details on the nine, but I did remember van-guy.

There was another long moment of silence. "I did ask." He let out a heavy sigh. "That's all?"

I hesitated. I needed to drop the Dragon bomb at some point, but this didn't feel like the best time to bring that up. "Everything for now."

"Good. I'll be in touch. If you remember anything urgent, leave me a voicemail. I have the system set to route your messages for high priority review."

"Can do," I said as I slipped out of the car and into the night.

//\\o//\\

"So, you and my sister, huh?" Victoria - no, Glory Girl - asked as we both crouched on a rooftop. It was a few hours past dark on Sunday evening, which really wasn't all that late since it was the middle of January.

I shrugged. "Yeah, I guess." Amy and I weren't really dating, but also weren't not-dating. We did hang out together once or twice a week, though there hadn't been any double dates since the kidnapping. My understanding was that Dean was still on house arrest when not at school even if Vicky seemed to have recovered for the most part.

"Aw, don't be shy. I think it's adorable," she declared and then stopped herself from saying anything else. "Oh wait, there they go."

Down below us, a beat up brown sedan pulled out of a warehouse without its lights on. Someone pulled the building's doors closed behind it as it rolled down the wide alleyway. It paused at the cross street for a moment before pulling out with its lights on. Vicky scribbled something down in a little notebook she normally kept in her pocket.

"What's that about?" I asked as I watched it go.

"The lights? I think it's something to do with hiding from flying capes. I think some stupid cape show convinced people it worked." She rolled her eyes.

I snickered softly. "Obviously not, then."

"Nope. You get a read on how many are still inside?" Vicky asked as she looked back over the edge.

"Two I can find, maybe more." I was again reminded that other-me waiting three months to go out had been for practical reasons as much as anything else. Not even cockroaches could stand going outside in the Bay in January, so I was limited to what was already inside a building or could somehow get from inside my costume to the building without having them freeze to death along the way. Fortunately, if people were present somewhere for any length of time, they kept it warm enough for there to be at least a few present.

"And the drugs?"

"No clue. All I have are a few house spiders and they don't have the best vision." Give me a jumping spider for scouting any day. The scary spiders like black widows were cool and all, but their vision wasn't the best. In some situations, their vibration sensitivity was better than seeing, but spotting a stash of illegal chemicals wasn't one of those situations.

"Ah, well. With my luck, it's just a couple of guards and like an ounce of weed. Not worth the risk. Want to go follow that car? I'm pretty sure we can catch up."

I looked after it and shrugged. "Nah, I think I'm good. Got school tomorrow… actually, you do, too. You should probably get some sleep. This new drug ring will still be there tomorrow."

Vicky chuckled darkly. "Did you let mom corner you? You sound just like her."

I fidgeted. Being compared to Brandish wasn't the best thing in the world, but I supposed it was acceptable in this context. I just felt like I'd rather spend some time with dad than running around in the cold. "I'm just a responsible person."

"Gah, I think I'm starting to see why Amy likes you. You're as boring as she is," she teased.

Of the things I would call Amy, 'boring' wasn't very high on the list, though I supposed she was pretty quiet. "I guess," I hedged. It wasn't so much that I was quiet, but the reality of engaging in a real crime fighting operation - not the 'go in and punch a guy' kind, but stakeouts and tailing cars and freezing half to death in the process - did not live up to how cool the movies made it look. "Beats being in trouble, right?"

"Yeah, I guess. We can meet up later, and I still want to replace that dress. We can drag Amy along and play dress-up."

I hesitated. As annoyed as that would make Amy - and I found that thought very amusing - it sounded like exactly the kind of thing she didn't need while she was trying to get some space from her sister. "I'll go, but we should probably leave her out of it. She'll be grumpy."

Vicky nodded solemnly. "I'm afraid that your case of 'being boring' is terminal."

I rolled my eyes, though she couldn't see it under my mask. "Catch you later."

"Later!"

Parkouring my way across town was always fun. It was almost like meditation and it certainly warmed me up enough to ignore the cold. It also gave me time to think.

There were three big gangs in town - if you didn't count the government funded ones, anyway. The ABB were scary because their limited roster of capes were high end and had few qualms about killing people that crossed them. The Empire also had some fairly strong capes on their side and a great deal of teamwork. They were always poking at each other, but it never got that serious. The ABB didn't really have the manpower to expand and the Empire didn't really want to hold territory full of non-white people.

The third group in town was Coil and his shadowy mercs. What I'd given Armsmaster had probably increased what was known about the man by at least tenfold, if not more. Their crimes tended to be more sophisticated and their territory was the largely commercial district downtown. It wasn't really prime real estate for either of the other gangs and the one thing people did know about Coil was that trying to assault his men was like grasping at shadows. They faded away and any gains the other gangs made were snatched back later with surgical precision.

There were dozens of smaller gangs, too, ranging from just a handful of people to a few dozen. They were often non-white and non-Asian - though not always - so they slipped through the cracks and held little patches of turf or ran small hustles that the big gangs ignored for one reason or another. It was those groups that eventually got pulled together by Skidmark to form his Merchants.

The new drug ring that Vicky was tracking was probably an early sign of that consolidation. Squealer had a propensity for invisible vehicles, and such things made moving drugs much easier. It also made it easier to run over idiots that stopped to gawk in the middle of the road, but I wasn't bitter about that or anything.

I realized I hadn't mentioned Squealer and Skidmark to Armsmaster. I also hadn't mentioned the Travellers. None of them were exactly 'urgent', though, so it was probably fine.

I took a round-about way to get home and dropped into the back yard, hopefully unseen. Inside, I knocked the snow off my shoes. It was mercifully warm and I could smell dinner which, judging by the oven light being on, was waiting on me.

"Dad, I'm home!"

 

[Swordchucks]

"In here, honey!" I heard from the other room as I walked toward the living room. "I have a guest over, if you want to go get cleaned up first."

"Ah, gotcha!" I called back and glanced down at myself. My heavy winter coat pretty much turned my costume into street clothes, but if I took it off, that deniability vanished fast. Fortunately, my habit was to leave the coat in my room which meant the odds of accidental exposure would have been low, but I was still mildly annoyed that dad hadn't messaged me.

I turned and went upstairs to change. I also took a minute to wash my face and brush my hair since being in and out of the cold had left me a bit sweaty and rumpled.

I assumed that dad had some of his work friends over. Kurt or Alexander stopped by fairly often for a beer, even on a Sunday night, and sometimes Kurt brought his wife Lacey with him. They were all familiar to me, periodic presences throughout my youth, though less so since mom died.

The person sitting on the couch was none of those people. For one thing, she was probably younger than any of them, looking to be around thirty, give or take. Her blond hair was stuffed into a messy ponytail, and despite wearing a bit too much makeup, she wasn't unattractive. She also wasn't terribly attractive, either, but I had been hanging out with Vicky's family too much lately to have a good barometer for that.

"Taylor, this is Sherrel," dad said from his spot in his armchair. There were a few beer bottles on the coffee table.

"Hi," she greeted, her voice more high pitched than I would have assumed. The poor woman probably couldn't get taken seriously with a voice like that. "Ya must be Taylor. Danny told me all about ya."

"Hey. Nice to meet you." I fidget a little. I had no idea why this woman was in my house this late on a Sunday evening.

"Your mom used to tutor Sherrel while she was in college. She was at our wedding."

I felt a pang at the mention of mom, but that fact still explained nothing.

"Yeah, then I… well, life can take a bad turn, ya know? I wuz… well, God sent me a second chance and I wanna take it." She sounded like she really believed that and I had no idea what to do with that information. "I called up ya dad cuz I was looking for ya mom - which I'm real sorry about, by tha way, she was a badass - cuz I needed advice. That was a week ago? Two?"

Dad nodded. "About that, yeah. Anyway, Sherrel's a mechanic. I had her come by the office and she fixed up that old generator we had in the closet since I started working there in no time. We don't exactly hire mechanics very often, but unions stick together - it's kind of our thing. I made some calls and got her an interview with Bruce Flynn. He's over the shop that keeps the city buses running."

"An' I got tha job!" Sherrel chimed in happily, raising one of the beer bottles in the air in a mock toast. "So I brought some beer ova to celebrate."

"Wow, that's great," I said, forcing myself to smile. The hamster wheel between my ears was already turning and I had a bad feeling I knew exactly what new wrench was being thrown into the gears of my life. Overall, it seemed to be a good wrench, at least. "I'm happy for you."

"I ain't worked a legit job in years, so I'm real happy!" Sherrel chirped again, downing beer like a pro. "Wan' a beer? There's still a few left."

Dad coughed and I shot him a grin. "Nah, got school tomorrow, but thank you." I looked between the two of them again. "You said that God sent you a second chance… how did that work?"

Sherrel sat up straighter, almost proudly. "Alright, so, you have to understan' that I've been in a bad place for tha last few years. I done some stuff I ain't proud of an' all. Anyway, I was on something… I don' even know what it wuz, really. Anyway, I was drivin' and all of a sudden, there was a guy all in gray in front of my truck. I don't know where they came from or nothin'. Anyway, I wuz too fu-err, too messed up to tell until it was too late and I hit 'em."

Suspicions confirmed, I still couldn't stop myself from asking a question. "Were they okay?"

"That's tha thing! I got my truck stopped and got out to look, and they wuzn't nowhere around! I looked at my truck and there was a big dent, but nothin' else! I thought I killed someone, but no matter where I looked, nothin'! I even called up the cops tha next day, but they hadn't seen nothin' neither." Her voice got softer. "I think it was an angel. Swear to God, I think it was one a them angels sent to give me a message. After that? I ain't touched nothin' harder'n beer, and I ain't gonna. Got a straight job and everything now."

"Wow," I said, nodding. "That's amazing. I'm glad you're turning things around. It must be hard for you."

"First few days, I felt like real shit, but it's gettin' better. Every time I think about goin' back, I remember that thump. What if tha next time, it ain't an angel but a person? What if I get some poor asshole - er, I mean, person - killed because I ain't watchin' what I'm doin'?" The genuine distress in her high voice would have been comical if this wasn't a real thing that was happening right in front of my face. As it was, I had no idea how to feel.

I made a gentle noise of agreement and a few minutes later, Sherrel declared that she needed to get home so she could be at her new job in the morning. Dad insisted on walking her out.

I busied myself with cleaning up the beer bottles and finally getting to eat my dinner out of the oven.

"So, you like her, don't you?" I asked when dad came into the kitchen a few minutes later. He was smiling.

"Ah," he sounded guilty. "She's nice. I mean, she's too young for me, obviously."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "No, by all means. I mean, she's nothing like mom, so it's not like you're trying to replace her or anything. It's… it's good that you're making new… friends."

Dad actually blushed a little. "Well, nothing will probably come of it, but I'm glad you're alright with it."

"Yeah," I said. Dad dating a reformed Squealer that had killed me and thought I was an angel was not anything I had foreseen, but it was actually not that bad. If nothing else, I didn't think the Merchants were going to go very far without their Tinker. "I think it'll be okay."

//\\o//\\

"Who?" Amy asked, confusion on her face. We were back in her family's home theater on Monday night.

"Squealer. The Tinker for the Merchants?" I tried again.

Her brow wrinkled as she thought about it. "That doesn't help. I have no idea what that is, either. Are the Merchants a gang or something?"

I sighed. I hadn't realized how much of a non-entity the Merchants actually were before Bakuda started tearing the city apart. In retrospect, it made sense. They were drug dealers that got high on their own supply, so their decision making was suspect at best. If they hadn't had a large opportunity served to them on a platter in the form of a gang war, they probably would have fizzled out like all of the other small gangs eventually did.

"Drug dealing gang. Not that important," I admitted. "Squealer's a vehicle-based Tinker. Big ones that can turn invisible and other stuff."

"I just… I mean, that sounds like it's neat, but I just can't get past the name."

I snickered. "I know. I suspect it's a double entendre. A reference to tire sounds and also, you know."

Amy made another face. "I don't, but if she and your dad keep dating, you might find out for sure."

That ruined my mirth, and I gagged. "Oh, gah. Do not - just no. Do not say that."

Amy grinned viciously. "Oh, the thought of your dad and some woman getting-"

"Stop!" I declared and shoved my hand in between us so I didn't have to look at her. I thought I was going to be sick. Well, not really, but metaphorically.

"I'm sure he has needs-"

"Nope!" I declared and put my fingers in my ears like a reasonable adult.

That just made Amy laugh harder and after a few minutes she declared a truce.

"If she is going to stick around, I might give her a once-over," Amy declared. "Long-term addiction can leave you with all sorts of nasty issues. Probably be a good thing to clean those up."

I stared at her for a long moment. "You really are a good person, Amy."

She looked away, a guilty look flashing across her face. "I don't… I'm just being selfish. Your dad is cool, and if I can stop him from getting herpes or worse, it seems like something I should do."

I rolled my eyes, though she couldn't see it. "Thank you, anyway. It's a nice thing to offer."

"I guess." She didn't sound like she meant that. "Anyway, let's pick a movie."

I almost ruined the moment by blurting out something else, but instead let the subject change and had a pleasant evening.

The next day, things went normally until after lunch when one of the office assistants pulled me out of study hall to go to Mister Nguyen's office. I wasn't exactly sure what his job was, but his title was 'Academics and Extracurriculars Coordinator'. I hadn't seen the man since the first day of classes, but he was the one that had given me my schedule and assigned the 'assessment modules' I had been working through when I wasn't working on homework in the afternoons.

His door was closed, but I didn't have to wait long.

"Taylor, please come in," he called from inside the office a little while after I arrived. I shuffled in and took one of the offered seats. The older Asian man put down a folder he had been reading and gave me a friendly smile. "How are you today? Everything at Arcadia is up to your expectations?"

"Uh, yeah?" I offered. I hadn't had any problems at school. I had a couple of people I would call friends, a double handful of friendly acquaintances, and everyone else pretty much left me alone. It was actually kind of great.

"Good, good. I've been looking over your academic module scores, and I have to say that they're much higher than I was expecting based on your scores from Winslow. You're really tearing your way through them, too."

I fidgeted nervously. I'd never liked praise that much, and I couldn't quite shake my dislike for school administrators. It wasn't Mister Nguyen's fault, though.

"I did see that you haven't submitted a request for an alternate afternoon program, though. Do you just not see any that appeal to you or are you having that much fun in study hall?" he chuckled lightly at his own joke. It wasn't especially funny, but I chuckled along just to be polite.

"None of them really appealed to me, and I kind of like the quiet." It was true enough. A few hours of uninterrupted time to do homework, read, or putter around on the admittedly restricted Internet was very nice, really.

"That's fine. You're not the only student that feels that way, I'm sure." He shuffled through manila file folders on his desk. "It's a bit early to tell, but if you keep burning through those modules, we'll have to see about giving you something meatier at the end of the month. There's an opportunity to get some class credits, and you might even end up skipping a year if you work at it."

I made a vaguely positive noise. A month ago, I had been facing the reality that I might be held back a year, but now I might skip one forward? Things had certainly changed.

"Ah, here it is," he declared as he pulled a folder out from amongst the rest. From where I was sitting, they all looked the same. "As nice as it is to talk about your progress, that's not why I wanted to see you today. In fact, I need to ask you for a bit of a favor."

He put down the folder again and kept talking. "One of the work-study programs we have is to work in the local school district, mostly the elementary and middle schools. One of the young ladies working at Arcadia Intermediate had an unfortunate meeting with a patch of ice and will be on crutches for the next several months. For most of her duties it's not that big a deal, but there is one thing that's a little beyond her right now. In the afternoon, she is one of the crossing guards, which is mostly just twirling a sign and directing traffic so the kids can be a bit safer. I've gotten a couple of other students to cover three of her shifts, but I have two more days to fill."

"You want me to be a crossing guard?" I asked curiously. I wasn't inherently opposed to it, but I felt like this was the hand of fate at play again. It felt like I was being set up and I wasn't sure if I should follow the rabbit to Wonderland or not.

"Just two afternoons a week - Tuesdays and Thursdays. You'd need to leave here by a quarter to three and you'd be done a bit before four." He glanced inside the file again. "Unfortunately, it's only two hours of work a week, and at minimum wage. Normally, it's part of the work-study which is more worthwhile, but I am in a bit of a bind here - both in terms of schedule and budget."

I considered it. Two hours a week wasn't much of a commitment, but it also wasn't much money. Did crossing guards really get paid so poorly? Never mind, of course they did. Then a thought hit me, from my very first day of school. "Would it count as my volunteer hours?"

"Normally, no, but an exception can be made since you really would be helping us all out. Does that mean you'll do it?" He looked rather relieved and I wondered if I was the first one he'd asked or if he had already been through a bunch of people and was getting desperate. There weren't that many kids that did study hall, which was one of the reasons it was so peaceful and quiet.

I did some quick mental math. Dennis had told me I'd need twenty volunteer hours, and two hours a week for three months would probably cover it. Also, if this was my weird luck pushing me into yet another spot, it was bound to be interesting. Probably weird, but interesting.

"I guess I'll do it."

//\\o//\\

"... I'm sure I'll remember more stuff, but that's everything that is local," I finished. My third clandestine meeting with Armsmaster had covered the other big players in town. I'd hinted that I knew identities, but he hadn't been interested. It was probably just as well since knowing identities would lead to escalation.

This time, I had also given him everything I could remember about the Travellers, which wasn't that much. I did remember a fair bit about Echidna and Trickster, but that was about it. It would have been easier if I could write everything down, but I wasn't sure things I wrote down would be immune to Thinkers like I appeared to be. Having Contessa find a report in my room titled 'here's how Cauldron is behind everything' would probably make my life really hard and possibly brief.

"Thank you for the information." He took a breath. "Now, I still can't talk about internal matters, but I would suggest that you and your father take a weekend trip, preferably out of state."

"What part of the weekend?" I asked. If he was telling me to get out of town, they were probably about to move on Sophia. It was a sensible precaution since I was one of her known victims.

"Being gone by Friday afternoon would be best. Depending on how things go, it might be safe to come back Saturday night, but I'd plan on waiting till Sunday afternoon to be sure. I'll leave you a voicemail when it's all clear."

I nodded. "Yeah, I think I can swing that. Uh, do you suppose I could drop in on the Protectorate base in New York? We've got family down that way and a tour might be fun."

His lips pursed for a moment as he considered it. "I can get you a number to call. It's a different division, but Legend is an excellent leader and I'm sure he'll be happy to have someone show a new cape around even if he isn't available to do so personally. Just don't let him talk you into signing up too easily."

I chuckled. "Don't worry. If I'm going to end up on the team, it'll be here in the Bay. It's going to be hard enough to get my dad to leave town for two days, much less get him to actually move."

Armsmaster relaxed, just a fraction. "You really should consider joining up. Strongly. I would hate for you to end up trapped in a situation you can't escape."

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back. Armsmaster sounded genuinely concerned, though I was sure it was at least a little selfish. Having me forced to work for a gang would be bad for everyone. I had no intention of doing that, but the gangs didn't exactly play fair. Being in the Wards wouldn't be the best, but it would certainly be better than some of the ways I could get trapped. "I have been considering it. I've also been keeping my head down."

"You've only been a cape for two weeks and you've already been in two major cape fights."

"It's been a bit more than three weeks," I defended lamely.

"That's still a lot for a new cape. Many don't even go out as a cape for their first month."

"In my defense, I didn't go looking for either of those fights." It was impossible to escape the fact that he had a point. "I'm being more careful."

"Good," he stated with emphasis. "If your precognition continues to be as accurate as it has so far, you can do more good with that than by punching any number of capes."

I didn't mention that the last vision I'd received - the one about stabbing Leviathan - had involved me doing something directly, though I didn't know exactly what that was. Because I had been naked in the vision, I had left that part out.

"Point taken. I'll try to keep out of trouble." From a purely pragmatic point of view, it was a good point. No amount of punching muggers would fix a broken system, but precognition was the kind of power that might be able to help with that. On the other hand and from a more personal point of view, getting the cape equivalent of a desk job where I only got to use my precognition sounded terribly boring.

"And when that inevitably doesn't work, please call it in as soon as possible."

I was starting to pick up on Armsmaster's sense of humor. It was very dry and a bit jaded, but it was there. I chuckled. "Fair enough."

With that, we were done and I slipped away into the night. I hadn't gotten far before I got a text from dad that let me know I needed to 'change' before I came home.

"This is your fault. She's going to be there, isn't she?" I asked the universe at large. As usual, I got no answer.

Indeed, when I got home - changed out of my costume on the way - I found an oversized, beat up pickup truck with a tarp covering a bunch of stuff in the back sitting in our driveway. It made dad's perfectly normal car look like a toy in comparison.

Dad looked a little guilty when I came in the front door. "Sherrel needs a place to stay for a few days. I offered our couch."

I took a deep breath. "Did she say why she needed a place to stay?" I was pretty sure I knew. Since she was going legit, she couldn't exactly crash with the other Merchants. I was surprised that they hadn't run her off sooner, but maybe her workshop had offered her some insulation from that.

Dad shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "I didn't ask. I… your mother would have told me not to ask. I just asked her if she was safe and if she needed any help. Well, and offered the couch."

I found myself nodding. Mom really wouldn't have wanted him to press the matter. She was very sensitive to domestic violence issues. My other-memories supplied that she'd run with Lustrum for a while, and I nearly stopped dead in talking to dad as that revelation slotted into place. It made a lot of sense, but was still surprising. "Alright, it's fine, but I'm afraid I have to make it complicated. My…" I looked for a word, "advisor suggested we take off Friday afternoon and not come back till he calls, which might be Saturday but could be Sunday."

That made dad frown. "Is something happening?"

I was the one shuffling my feet. "I think they're going to address the school issue. The one at Winslow."

Dad nodded with dawning understanding. I'd told him all about Sophia and Shadow Stalker. "Ah. Well, I suppose we could-"

"I was kind of hoping we could go visit Gram. After that, I was hoping I could take a train into the city and take a tour of the local Protectorate, too."

He traded his frown in for a wince. "You don't ask for easy stuff, huh?" Dad and Gram had never gotten along. Gram wasn't the easiest to get along with in the best of times, and dad had committed the unforgivable sin of marrying her only daughter. The last time I had seen her was at mom's funeral. "If you make the call, we can go, but I want to stay in a hotel. It's the off season so it shouldn't be that bad."

I had expected as much. Dad wouldn't want to accept anything from Gram and she probably wouldn't even offer.

"As long as we can afford it." I was being a bit selfish since there were obviously other options that were a bit more affordable, but there must have been something about dying that made me want to reconnect with distant family.

"If your… advisor thinks it is necessary, we will make it work."

 

[Swordchucks]

"Alright, so here's the plan. We're going to set up a meeting with their leader, right?" I said as I looked at the rest of my team. "And I'm going to walk in, right? And I'm going to say hi and say I found a really nice knife. Then I'm going to take it out and show it off, like this." I made the gesture of holding up a knife in one hand. "Then I'm going to say 'oh, let me show it to you' and I'm going to walk toward him, but then I'm going to stumble, but I'm not really going to stumble. That's a trick. When I 'fall', I'm actually going to stab him. Right in the eye. And then I'll be all like 'oh no, it is a terrible accident'."

Four sets of eyes stared at me for a long moment.

"That's the dumbest plan I've ever heard," Mei grumbled and the rest let out a collective chuckle.

"No, no, it'll work. I've never seen it fail," I declared, pushing what I knew was a terrible idea because I found it amusing.

"Have you ever seen it succeed?" Chris asked curiously.

"Well, no, but it has never failed!" I flipped through the pages of my character sheet. I knew it was absurd, but if you couldn't have absurd plans, why even play? It was just a game, after all. "Besides, I have 'Impractical Planner'. It makes my plans more likely to succeed."

"That's… a fair point," Evan said as he genuinely considered it. "That'd make the odds a little less impossible, but it's still really unlikely to work."

"Well, why don't you guys think about it for the week? We're close to time and I think we should call it," Brandon interjected, and I glanced at the clock. I hadn't realized it was getting so late, which was really the best sign that I'd been having fun.

Everyone said their goodbyes and I walked out with Chris.

"Mom is working late and I need to bring her something. It's like a block from here." Chris said as we hit the street. "Want to walk with me?"

I checked the time again. It was late, but I had some time before dad started to worry. Not having the teenager Tinker wandering around the streets of downtown alone was also probably a good idea. "As long as it's not too far, sure," I agreed.

"It's not," he assured me and we headed back toward the center of town a little. The buildings got taller and I realized that this was one of the areas where I actually could get some web-swinging going. It would just be over a small area, but it still looked fun.

Eventually, we ended up at one of the mid-sized office buildings. The main doors were locked up tight, but there was a smaller door that Chris got us buzzed through. Inside, there was a short corridor to another door and a wide glass window with a slot at the bottom that looked into a security office. There was someone inside there.

"Hey, Bob," he greeted the older security guard behind the glass.

"If it isn't little Christopher Woods," he greeted amicably. He looked like he was about sixty with a scattered head of white hair and a pot belly. "Going up to see your mom?"

"She forgot her lunch," Chris declared and pulled out a smaller bag from his backpack. "Again."

Bob chuckled. "She does seem to make a habit of that. Who is your friend?"

"Taylor," Chris said and I nodded.

"Taylor Hebert," I supplied.

Bob nodded and punched some stuff into the computer terminal in front of him by pecking at the keys with his index fingers. "They changed the rules again, so I need to see your IDs."

Chris had his out in a second but it took me a minute of digging through my bag to find my Arcadia ID. I hadn't exactly expected to need it.

He checked them over and a few minutes later, we had our pictures taken and he passed a couple of badges on lanyards through the hole. They were bright orange and just had 'visitor' written on them. "You're clear to go up to fifteen. These don't work anywhere else, of course."

With another buzz, we were on our way. The elevator required a badge swipe to get in and then another to pick our floor.

"Seems pretty high security," I commented as the floors ticked by.

"They added a bunch of stuff in the last year or two. There's some big data science thing up on the top few floors now and they apparently handle a lot of sensitive stuff." Chris fidgeted with the badge a bit. "Just a week ago, getting through security was a lot simpler, but now they have Bob logging everyone into the system."

I nodded. I vaguely recalled that the Undersiders had done a bunch of espionage missions before Skitter came onto the scene, so maybe the businesses in the Bay were getting more security conscious? It would make a degree of sense.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened, letting us out onto a fairly small, nondescript waiting area. There were some chairs to one side and a curved desk with a computer - currently off - behind it. There was an empty feeling to the area, though all of the lights were on.

Chris was apparently accustomed to the setup, however, since he walked around behind the desk and picked up a phone, punching in a four digit number. There was a quick conversation that amounted to 'we're here' and then he hung it up.

"So, ah," Chris started as we waited. The silence was apparently getting to him. "What do you do for fun? I mean, aside from D&D?"

I considered that for a moment. What did I like to do for fun? Running around the city as a cape was certainly fun when you could move like Spider-man, but it wasn't really a hobby kind of thing. "I read a lot," I admitted. It seemed like a safe thing to say, though kind of boring.

"That's cool," Chris said, fidgeting. "Anything in particular-"

I was saved from more awkward small talk by the door opening and a short, slim woman in her late thirties walking through the door. "Thank goodness," she declared and gave Chris a big hug, deftly snatching the lunch bag out of his hand as she did so. "I swear I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on."

"Mom," Chris said pleadingly and I immediately recognized the tone. No one likes it when their family embarrasses them in front of their friends.

His mother seemed to notice me for the first time. "Oh, sorry! Don't mind me. Just very happy to see my lunch." It was a little strange to have a grown woman babbling at me, but she was. "I'm Melanie, Chris's mother. You must be one of his friends?"

"I'm Taylor," I supplied. "I go to school with Chris."

"That's nice," she said and then seemed to run out of steam. "Anyway, I have to get back to what I was doing, but thank you for bringing my lunch - well, I guess technically a late dinner, but they still call it a lunch break, so maybe it's both."

"You're welcome, mom," Chris said and started backing away. "Taylor has to get home, so we're going to go. See you in the morning."

"Okay, have a good time, you two. But not too good a time, right?" Melanie declared and I felt myself heating up in secondhand embarrassment for Chris.

"Bye, mom!" Chris declared as he ran to the elevator.

I couldn't help but chuckle. "Bye, Melanie. It was nice to meet you."

She laughed too. "Nice to meet you. Make sure Chris behaves, will you?"

"I don't think I can promise anything," I said as I, too, headed for the elevator.

We were half-way through the elevator ride when Chris finally spoke again. "I'm sorry about my mom."

"It's fine." It really was. She'd reminded me in the vaguest ways of my own mom, but not enough to make me sad. "She obviously really cares about you."

That just seemed to make him more embarrassed. "Y-yeah, I guess."

We returned the badges to Bob and walked outside.

"So, ah, are you doing anything this weekend?" Chris asked as we made our way to the bus stop.

"I'm going to New York to visit my grandmother," I said. I'd been thinking about the trip a bit and I was actually getting a bit excited. As much as Gram didn't like dad, she did like me in her own, rather stiff way. I'd just have to make sure that Sherrel was never mentioned in her presence - which was another conundrum. I wasn't entirely sure that leaving Sherrel in our house alone for a weekend wouldn't result in a smoking crater on our return.

"Oh, uh, that's cool. Maybe we could do something next weekend or something? I mean, aside from D&D?" he suggested.

"Maybe," I waffled. I did need to get a personal cell phone and a Tinker would be a good person to have along on that kind of shopping trip, right? Maybe I could bring both Vicky and Chris? That seemed like the closest thing I'd have to a group of experts.

Still, I had to survive the trip to New York first.

My bus pulled up at that moment. "We can figure it out next week?" I offered.

"Sure, have a safe trip home!"

"You, too!" I declared and got on the bus.

//\\o//\\

I was once again prepared for the black void. The only silver lining was that this time, I would focus on what happened as I died so that I could better understand what was actually happening to me. Hopefully.

I just hated that dad was going to die with me.

"Taylor, are you alright?" I could still hear dad's voice, even from the other side.

"Taylor?" I could still hear him, and I finally gave in to temptation and cracked one of my eyes open. Despite all of my expectations, the truck had not crashed yet. We were still zipping along entirely too fast and Squea-Sherrel was weaving in and out of traffic like she was driving a sports car and not an oversized behemoth of a pickup truck.

"I'm fine," I gasped out, closing my eyes again as we very nearly scraped the paint off the side of a family sedan. The look of horror on the driver's face would be with me forever.

Things had been fine all the way up to the freeway, then she'd hit the gas and I'd felt my soul leaving my body. For a moment, I had dared to hope that Sherrel was going to be an ironically safe and sane driver. Those hopes were dashed as soon as she revved the engine and we rocketed forward. She wasn't just laying into my expectations but positively wallowing in them.

The woman in question, meanwhile, was cackling with glee. "Hang on to ya horses!" She whooped as she got out ahead of the traffic line and punched it even harder.

"Are you sure you're okay? You look a little pale?" dad prodded, amusement thick in his voice.

"How are you so calm?" I said. I didn't whimper.

"You only remember your mom's driving from when you were a kid. Having you really caused her to mellow out. Well, that and the street racing tickets were really destroying our insurance premiums." Suddenly, we were going at a normal rate of speed and I dared to glance out the window to see a police officer sitting beside the road, no doubt trying to catch speeders. As soon as we were safely out of his sight, I was sure we would be back to top speed again. "You get used to it. It's almost… nostalgic in a way."

"What if I don't want to get used to it?" I asked. I could handle hurtling through the air under my own power at speeds that would probably kill a normal person if they crashed, but Sherrel's driving was something else.

"Don't worry, I ain't never wrecked!" Sherrel laughed again. "I'm an amazin' driver!"

"I thought you hit someone?" I couldn't stop myself from saying. I didn't mention that it had been me.

"That was an angel! Besides, aside from a little dent, I wuz fine!"

Somehow, we arrived - alive - at the hotel on Long Island. We were a full hour earlier than we should have been, which was made even more ridiculous by the fact that there had been a pretty long ferry ride in the middle. I passed out almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

"You sure you're okay, kiddo?" Dad seemed like he was in entirely too good of a mood for the experience we had been through the previous day.

"I'm fine," I grumbled as I picked at one of the slices of the orange that was making up the majority of my breakfast. The hotel's idea of a 'continental breakfast' was a couple of boxes of half-stale donuts and a fruit basket. It wasn't the worst, but it wasn't great, either.

"We'll go see your Gram when you're ready."

"Yeah, I just have to go back to the room to finish getting ready." I was dressed enough for breakfast, but Gram was very particular. I was going to put on a nice, modest dress that I'd Tinkered up just for the occasion and put on just a bit of makeup. I'd spent several hours on the Internet watching makeup tutorials to brush up on my dusty, rarely used skills. "Sherrel isn't coming with us, right?"

That got a laugh out of dad. "Taylor, I'm too young to die. Especially not like that. It would be slow and messy."

I laughed, too. The idea of Gram and Squealer hanging out was kind of hilarious.

"I'm pretty sure your Gram thought that I was the corrupting influence on your mother and not the other way around."

"Sure, blame it all on mom," I agreed in a dry tone.

"Well, I did look good in a leather jacket, but I never got up to half of the stuff she did. It's a miracle she graduated without getting convicted of anything. She only got out of Lustrum's gang because she was busy running away from property damage charges. She was just lucky that she did before things started to get bad."

My other-memories had filled in a few items about mom's past, but this was new. I wanted to doubt it… but it kind of fit. "Please tell me she didn't kill anyone."

"She didn't kill anyone," dad agreed with a flat tone. Then he laughed. "I'm pretty sure she actually didn't kill anyone. At least, I'm sure she never did on purpose."

I sighed as I realized that Amy and I had a bit more in common than she knew. She still hadn't asked me about her father, but it would come out some day. "Yeah, I'm going to go get ready before you decide to tell me that Legend is my real mother or something."

"Well, I did spend a semester in coll-"

"Nope!" I beat a hasty retreat from the breakfast area before my father could assault my sensibilities with more lies. Definitely lies and not true things. Not at all.

Two hours, a bus ride, and a mile-long hike later, I was standing at Gram's front door with dad behind me. The house was large but narrow, built on a narrow lot only slightly wider than it was because some developer had been intent on squeezing in as many houses along the shore as possible. I remember seeing pictures of Gram and Gramp living in a little row house much closer to the city, but after Behemoth, they'd moved farther out and gotten a tiny bit of coastline in the process.

With one last moment to steel my nerves, I raised my hand to ring the bell.

//\\o//\\

Gram was old. That was the first thing to hit me when I saw her again after so long.

When I was a kid, I remembered her as a quiet older woman. She didn't smile a lot, but she was always nice to me. She never quite matched up with the way mom and dad talked about her, but that's probably because I was her grandchild and not her child. In those memories, she was kind of an austere counterpoint to Gramp, who had been loud and affectionate.

We hadn't visited them that often. A sane driver took four or five hours to make the trip from the Bay to their house, so it had been a 'special occasions' kind of thing, at best. The fact that mom and Gram had fought so much in her youth meant that the bar for a sufficiently 'special' occasion was pretty high, too.

The most recent memory I had of Gram was at mom's funeral. She'd been wearing all black and the thing I remembered most was that I never saw her cry. She'd looked sad and hollow, but she'd never collapsed into tears like I had. At least, she hadn't let me see it.

Now, a couple of years later, she just looked old. She had to be in her late sixties, which would make anyone look a bit old, but it seemed to be more than that. I supposed that with Gramp gone, she was alone most of the time, which couldn't help anything. What did old people even do for fun? Did they have fun?

That impression changed somewhat when she realized who I was and her face lit up into a broad grin. "Taylor, you look lovely!"

Then she did something I never would have expected. She stepped forward and hugged me. Over her shoulder, I shot dad a helpless look, but he was just as confused as I was.

The next few hours were awkward, but kind of pleasant. Gram really was lonely and happy to see me. I got the impression that she had wanted to reconnect for a while, but she didn't know how to reach out to my father. Given how rocky their relationship had apparently been, I could understand that. In the end, I was left feeling a little guilty that I hadn't insisted on reaching out to her before, but mostly happy that we had made the trip.

She insisted on taking us out for lunch at a little seafood place and that's when we parted ways.

"Going into the city?" dad asked, still in a bit of a daze from the strangely nice version of my Gram. Personally, I was just relieved that she hadn't turned out to be a supervillain or something, though it was really too early to write that possibility off entirely.

"Yeah, I brought my stuff," I said and patted my backpack. It was one I had modified myself to have a cunningly concealed compartment on the back which I could use to stash my costume and web shooters. I could even reverse the whole thing and it mostly blended in with my costume, though I had to take anything out of the main pocket before I did that. It was a generally superior option to stashing my stuff under a vent, at least.

"Just… try not to get into too much trouble?" He didn't exactly tell me not to get into trouble, because that would have been nearly impossible given my luck.

"I'll try to keep it down to minor trouble," I agreed. "Actually, maybe it's you I should worry about. Where did Sherrel disappear to?"

Dad shrugged. "She said she had some business to take care of and she'd be back tomorrow morning for the return trip. I… didn't ask for details."

I winced. Squealer doing business in New York City didn't sound like a good thing.

Dad must have mistaken my wince for something else because he laughed. "It won't be that bad. You just aren't used to freeway driving. She's actually remarkably good at it."

I bit back the reply that it was no doubt part of her Tinker power since that would just be rude. I was letting dad make his own mistakes with Sherrel, though I hoped he wasn't trying to date her in any serious capacity. She was in recovery and probably on the rebound, neither of which made for a great relationship partner - at least, that is what my other-memories indicated. Personally, I was in no place to talk since I was fake dating a girl that only kind of liked me. We were barely even friends.

I should probably have told him that she was a cape, but as long as she was genuinely trying to get her life together, I figured I would let it ride for a bit.

A bit later, I called the number that Armsmaster had provided and talked to someone at the local Protectorate. To my surprise, I was directed to the Jamaica transit station instead of in the city. My other-memories were pretty scant on the New York Protectorate in general, though their website had been pretty helpful. I knew a few secrets about a handful of them, but for the rest, I was limited to what the PR team had released on them.

That's why I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked into the train station and found a young man in blue and black power armor leaning against the railing casually signing autographs. As he spotted me, he said his goodbyes to the handful of people, mostly older kids with annoyed parents in tow, that were gathered around asking questions.

"Weaver?" he asked as he came closer. At my nod, he offered his hand. Without thinking about it, I reached out to shake it, and as if to prove why I kept forgetting not to do that, absolutely nothing happened. His armor covered him completely from head to toe, though his chin and mouth were free. "I'm Hardback. Current commander of NYC Wards Team Three."

"Which one is Team Three?" I asked curiously. In my research, I'd seen mention that the NYC Wards operated in a number of smaller teams based around their specialties, but the details had been light.

"We're the heavy hitters. Older Wards with combat-oriented powers of some sort," he said with a small smirk on his face, obviously proud of his status.

"That's cool," I said as I looked him over. My first glance said 'Tinker', but a second look said that wasn't quite right. His armor looked too perfect - too precisely fitted. He could have been an extremely specific Tinker, but my guess was something else. "Shaker or Breaker?"

That got a little laugh out of him. "Good eye, but I can neither confirm nor deny any theories about the specifics of Ward powers." He recited the last part, which I strongly suspected came from a training manual of some sort. "Want to see the HQ?"

I nodded and he gestured for me to follow him. We didn't head for the street or even for the passenger section of the station, but rather to a 'Police Use Only' door off to the side of the platform. He waved his hand at a sensor and it opened for us. Beyond that door was a staircase which led to a sheltered part of the rail platform.

"A… motorcycle? With metal wheels?" I asked as I looked over the machine parked there. It looked like a regular bike, but oversized and with wide metal wheels where it should have had tires.

"More or less. There's a Tinker that works with us named Rush Hour. He's a genius with anything related to mass transit, and he built these bikes specifically for Team Three. They are designed to run on the railroad and subway rails to let us get around the city as quickly as possible."

"How do you keep from running into trains?" I asked as I looked it over some more. After riding with Sherrel, I assumed the bike could handle a little detail like that.

"There's a computer system built in that handles all of that. It's actually the most complicated part of the bikes." Hardback pulled a helmet out of a compartment at the back of the bike and held it out toward me. "Want to go for a ride?"

Memories of my last trip on the freeway almost made me say 'no', but this looked like it would be a very different experience. Almost in spite of myself, I nodded. "Yeah, let's go."

 

[Swordchucks]

I whooped in pure joy as the RailCycle did yet another rail change to avoid an oncoming subway car. We were blazing through the subway system at incredible speeds with me riding behind Hardback. If I couldn't cling to things, it would have been a bit awkward, but as it was, I found the ride exhilarating.

Whereas being trapped in a tin can while Squealer hurtled through the streets had been terrifying, riding on the open back of the cycle was just fun! I supposed it had to do with the fact that I was pretty confident I could jump clear of any real danger on the cycle. The fact that we were zipping through the 'exotic' scenery of subway tunnels was just an added bonus.

Eventually, however, the trip was over and we pulled into a very small station that didn't look much like the others we had passed through. In fact, the station looked armored and brightly lit, with cameras everywhere.

"This is the Protectorate HQ station. There are a couple of special trains that run here from the big hubs, but you need to have authorization to use those," he declared as he parked the cycle next to two others just like it. "It's one of the perks of the job."

"Yeah, I can see why," I declared, trying to look as dignified as possible as I straightened out my costume a little. I had a feeling that I was completely failing.

"I won't lie, part of the reason I wanted to be on Team Three was because we get access to the bikes," he said with a grin that made the fact that he was still a teenager quite clear.

"It was pretty cool," I agreed neutrally. If it hadn't required me to move to New York, an offer that included getting to ride those RailCycles often would have been pretty tempting.

From the station, it was a short elevator ride to a manned security station where we got checked out by a couple of guards. After that, we boarded a slow-moving tram to get to the building itself. Of course the Protectorate HQ wouldn't be built directly over a vulnerability as obvious as a subway station.

"So, what's Brockton Bay like?" Hardback asked as we watched a short section of tunnel moving past at about the speed of a slow jog. The tram tunnel was much smaller than the subway tunnels had been, though it was a lot nicer to look at with bright paint and Protectorate logos everywhere.

"Well, I haven't really spent much time at the Protectorate base, so I can't comment much. They've got an old oil rig with a big glowing shield which seems pretty cool, but I doubt it's as polished as this," I gestured out the tram's window. "Outside of that… I haven't had much time to check out the streets here, but I assume you have fewer Nazis. Probably fewer dragons, too."

"Can't say I've seen much of either." Hardback chuckled dryly. "But you can probably just wait a while and we'll get some of each. There's pretty much always something new going on in this city. It seems like there's always a new villain or gang popping up, only to disappear a week later. Sometimes they pop back up later in another part of the city and sometimes they're just gone. The only groups that seem to stick around for long are the cultists and the capitalists."

"Capitalists?" I asked curiously.

He nodded. "The Elite. They're…" he paused as he looked for a way to describe them. "They tend to focus on selling their powers more than street crime. The PRT has contracted with them on a few things, like the force field you have in your city. What they do is still technically illegal, so I can't exactly endorse them, but they aren't the worst. I hear that we're lucky that way, though. Apparently, the Elite groups in other cities aren't as well behaved."

That did sound vaguely familiar. The tram arrived at the other end of the tunnel and we boarded another elevator. "I see. And the cultists?"

He snorted at that one. "They call themselves the Adepts. They believe that parahuman powers are magic and they have all of this mystical stuff about getting and making them stronger with rituals and stuff. It's creepy and dumb, but they suck in a lot of people that desperately want to be capes or want to make their powers better. They even pull in some former Wards and Protectorate members that should know better."

I didn't really have anything to say to that, other than to make yet another mental note not to mention shards to anyone. If powers even came from shards in a world with no Scion, anyway.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened.

"Welcome to the New York City Wards!" Hardback declared as he stepped out ahead of me and gestured expansively. "Well, the lobby thereof, anyway."

I followed him and I had to admit that the lobby was pretty impressive. Posters covered most of the walls showcasing the twenty or so local Wards in their glossy, PR best. I'd already seen many of the same photos on the web when I'd gone looking earlier.

The vast majority of them didn't register with my other-memories at all, though a few stood out.

"To be honest, most of us operate out of the Protectorate substations scattered around the city. HQ is where we go for big meetings, PR functions, and the like. That said… There are usually a few people here at any given time. Most of the Protectorate works out of this building if they don't have a specific reason not to, and Saturdays are a good day to meet up with your cape mentor so it's likely to be busier than usual. The mentor thing is a big deal for our newer or younger members, or ones with specific kinds of powers," he lectured as he led me to a set of double doors at the back of the room. They opened to the side automatically at his approach to reveal a big open room with lots of seating and a few tables. It looked kind of like a cafeteria crossed with a lounge crossed with a conference room.

Indeed, there were a few of the Wards present, looking considerably less glossy than the posters in the room we had just left. I found myself slightly surprised that there had been no delay at the door to allow everyone to mask up, but I supposed that the rules in NYC must have been different. The overall team was probably too big for them to allow Wards to unmask to each other, though I bet there was a lot of that in smaller subgroups.

"Weaver, right?" asked a particularly deep voice for a teenager. He was fairly tall, though not as broad as Hardback. He was just as armored, though where Hardback's armor looked like it was forged in place, his was much more medieval. He had some sort of spear - broken into halves - on his back.

"Yes, and you're…" I tried to remember names I had read on the Internet. There hadn't been that many wearing heavy armor and I had already met Hardback. "Jouster, right?"

He nodded. "Got it in one."

"Hey, hey, hey, no trying to poach the prospect," Hardback butted in. He tried to make it sound jovial, but I immediately caught on to the tension between them. Whether that was because of me or not, I had no idea.

"There is no dibs in Ward team recruitment," Jouster rebutted. "It's all power suitability and personal preference. Plus, who wants to be a tunnel rat if they don't have to be?"

"Tunnel rat? I'll-"

A soft, fake cough interrupted the brewing argument before it could get started. I recognized the deep purple, skintight outfit and visor immediately. I didn't even have to see the quiver on her back or the oversized monster of an arbalest sitting on the table beside her to know who she was.

What was it with the Protectorate's PR team and putting teenage girls into the tightest outfits possible while giving the boys more armor? They had even done it to Sophia to some extent, and she had the sex appeal of a rusty screen door.

"You both read the same brief that I did. Weaver is just taking the tour today. She isn't signing up, and if she was, she would probably be doing it back where she actually lives." Both boys had the good grace to look sheepish at the reminder, which made me pretty sure that they hadn't been fighting over me so much as they had been fighting with each other. She stood up and moved to shake my hand.

"Flechette," she offered. I reached to take her hand but stopped myself at the last minute. This was exactly the kind of event that led to me getting sucked into another vision, I realized. Instead, I turned the attempted handshake into an awkward fist bump.

Much to my chagrin, that did nothing to stop the vision from happening.

//\\o//\\

Despite my momentary brush with idiocy, I had been at least a little prepared to have a vision before I touched Flechette's hand. That seemed to make a difference - or I was somehow getting better at having visions - because there was a moment of vertigo followed by several images that flickered by in a rush.

A young girl, maybe seven or eight, crying as she watched someone walking away.

Myself, massive sword in both hands, standing over something white and unmoving. I was naked, of course, because why wouldn't I be?

A slightly younger Flechette wearing a purple leotard that was much less skin-tight and much more covered with white arrow shapes than her current costume. Visor on, she had a hopeful expression on her face as she walked into the Wards lobby.

Flechette - older - in a very compromising position with a person with dark hair.

There were more, as well, but they fuzzed out before I could make sense of them and the display settled on a single sequence to show me.

"Lily, meet your new sisters, Mary and Alice." It was an older woman speaking as she introduced a younger woman - just barely a teenager - to two girls a little older than her.

There were some awkward hellos before the woman left the room and the older girls dropped their smiles.

"Listen up, you do what we say and we'll get along." That was Mary, I thought. The other one nodded. "No one sticks around here for long, though, so don't get too comfortable. If you make trouble, they'll get rid of you in a heartbeat."

"I won't be any trouble," Lily promised, the sincerity and pain in her voice making my heart hurt.

For a moment, I felt what Lily felt. A desperate need for acceptance. Fear of being rejected. Resignation to being cast aside yet again.

No wonder she'd slotted herself into place as Parian's lieutenant so easily. If future-Lily was anything like past-Lily, she would have latched on to the first person to show her real love and held on with both hands, no matter the consequences.

As quickly as it started, the vision faded away and I was back in the room, still giving a fist bump. I put my hand down awkwardly.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Weaver." I did my best to keep my voice even. I had a feeling that few people would appreciate me peering into their past and future as much as Armsmaster had. Then again, I'd more or less told him that his project could kill an Endbringer, which was the kind of news almost any Tinker would be happy to have.

"Want to see more of the Wards area while our noble team leaders have their… discussion?" She made it clear what she thought of the posturing going on between Hardback and Jouster, both of whom made indignant noises.

"Sure," I agreed. "Later, gentlemen."

Apparently sensing the way the wind was blowing, Hardback cleared his throat and nodded his head toward a corner of the lounge area with several computer terminals. "I'll just be over there if you need anything."

Jouster didn't even say that much, just gave us both a curt nod before wandering off on his own.

When both of them were gone, I snickered. "Thanks for the rescue."

Flechette grinned, which was very visible as her only head covering was a tinted one-way visor. "No problem. I think it's something that just comes with being the team leader of a combat team. Before Hardback, Adamant was the leader of Team Three, and he got along with Jouster about the same." She led us over to a table a bit farther into the big room.

"Are those the only two combat teams, then?" I asked, still not sure how all of this worked.

Flechette held up a hand and pointed to each finger as she named a team. "Team one is the lancer team, and they are the combat-focused ones with high mobility. Team two is the sidekick group, and that's mostly the new members or the ones whose powers benefit the most from working alongside the established heroes. Team three are the heavies, and they're combat-focused like team one but without the mobility. Team four are the younger capes that don't want to be sidekicks, and they do foot patrols in the safer parts of town. Finally, there is team five, who are the desk jockeys."

"We are not!" That was proclaimed by a girl with a pair of oversized goggles and a tool belt as she sat herself down at the table beside us. "Some of us are grease monkeys. Kitbash, by the way."

"Weaver," I replied, with a nod.

"Fine, yes, Team five is made up of Thinkers and Tinkers that are more inclined to work out of their labs here or inside one of the Protectorate bases instead of going out on patrol." Flechette was probably rolling her eyes, though I couldn't tell due to the visor.

"We're the smart ones," Kitbash agreed smugly. "We get to be heroes at a nice temperature year round instead of sweating or freezing." She turned her head to the side and fixed her gaze on me. "Pop quiz. If you were a NYC Ward, which team would you be on, Weaver?"

I thought about it for a second. "Probably team one," I admitted. "If I could resist punting Jouster off a building, anyway."

Kitbash laughed. "I like you. We should be friends."

"Easy as that?" I asked, laughing lightly but pulling out my cell phone. "Trade numbers?"

Kitbash's phone appeared in her hand, and Flechette pulled hers out as well. "Cape phone, right?" Flechette asked, suddenly struck by a bit of indecision.

"Yep," I agreed, which made her relax a little.

"Good. Your costume doesn't really scream 'newbie', but it's better to ask. Capes out themselves in the dumbest ways sometimes."

Like by having their powers spontaneously make them naked, I didn't say. "Yeah, that'd be silly," I covered, instead.

We traded numbers and then chatted for a while. Kitbash was loud and a Tinker. Her specialty was taking existing items, even Tinkertech, and making them into something new. It wasn't reverse engineering like Dragon since the result was still standard Tinkertech, but it did mean that she was able to maintain the stuff instead of the original Tinkers. Apparently, it was a huge asset when it came to repurposing equipment seized from villainous Tinkers.

"Weaver, did you want to see the rest of the building?" Hardback asked a bit later, and I was surprised to see that we had been talking for an hour. I couldn't even really remember what we'd been talking about.

"Wow, I should probably do that," I agreed. "That was the whole point of coming in for a tour, wasn't it?"

That got polite chuckles from everyone.

"I can show her around, if you have something else to do," Flechette offered.

"As long as you don't go poaching her for Team One," he grumbled, but he was still grinning.

"No danger there, I live five hours away and don't plan to move," I declared, which seemed to be good enough.

"I'm going to get back to my workshop, too." That was Kitbash, who was making a bit of a show of getting up and stretching. "If I'm outside it too long, I might turn to stone."

"Nice meeting you - both of you," I offered.

Flechette stood up and then offered me her hand with a grin. "Shall we?"

I grinned back. "Sure," I said and took her hand again. This time, I wasn't barraged with visions.

//\\o//\\

The NYC Protectorate was huge, and not just in terms of manpower.

I had seen the roster on the internet and known that there really were a lot of capes involved in the organization - both in the regular Protectorate and the Wards - but it was more than just that. On some level, I had expected the wide, thirty story building the Protectorate occupied to be shared with the PRT or other agencies, but no. The PRT had their own building across town.

The building was all Protectorate from top to bottom. In fairness, some of the groups within the NYC Protectorate were national in scope - like the Image division - but a lot of it was needed just to directly support the capes in a city the size of New York.

"Most of the rest is just the same. Lots of boring offices and bunk rooms and labs," Flechette said as we finished our walkthrough. I hadn't seen many Protectorate members, though I did get to meet Prism and Astrologer. I didn't run across Legend, the one my other-memories actually knew a bit about, but that wasn't too surprising.

"So, uh," I didn't know how to say it and it was bugging me. I'd only just realized something, and I was dying to know. "Do you think Kitbash was flirting with me?"

I was embarrassed before the words even left my mouth.

Flechette paused for a moment as though considering the question. "Probably not. She's… well, she doesn't do social skills too well. It's a pretty common thing with Tinkers, I think. She comes across as flirty a lot, but it doesn't seem to mean anything. At least, I've never known her to actually make a move on anyone."

"Oh, okay," I said, letting out a deep breath. I'd realized that, from a certain perspective, she might have been hitting on me.

"Me, on the other hand, I was definitely flirting," she said as she turned to lead the way to the elevator.

I stumbled over my own feet and sputtered, which just made Flechette laugh.

"Very funny," I grumbled as I caught up to her.

"I thought so, yes," she agreed, grinning really big. "I mean, unless you're interested…"

It was my turn to laugh, though mine was considerably more nervous. "I'm not," I said before I could think better of it. While I was pretty sure Flechette would be fun to go out with, I was equally sure that she'd get really serious really fast. "At least, not right now. I'm kind of seeing someone, though it's not really serious."

That just made Flechette's grin a bit broader - more relaxed. She pushed the button for the rooftop level. "That's cool, too. I'm always looking for new friends, especially cape friends."

"Well, good. Cape friends," I agreed.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened to another security station, this one more compact than the one I had originally come in through and also more high-tech.

"Tinkertech scanners," my guide supplied as I looked at all of the equipment. "Looks for explosives and a few other things, as well as confirming identities and authorization. They have the same setup on all of the entrances, but there's not enough space up here to hide it all in the walls."

"Why do you need space on a rooftop?" I wondered, half to myself.

My question was soon answered as we stepped outside and found that the rest of the roof was taken up by hangars, landing pads for helicopters, and an area that was marked off for teleporters.

"So you said you'd fit on Team One, right? Think you can make it across Manhattan on the rooftops?" Flechette asked, her voice raised just a little bit to get over the wind.

The buildings around us were of a wide variety of heights. The thirty floor height of the Protectorate headquarters was actually a fair bit taller than the average building surrounding us, though things got a lot taller to the west - northwest - whatever, across the island.

"That's 30th street," Flechette said, pointing to the street below and then to the water a block to the east. "And that's the East River. The PRT HQ is also on 30th street, but on the Hudson." She pointed back across Manhattan. "It's about twelve blocks - maybe a bit less than two miles. Think you can keep up?"

I grinned. "Lead the way!" I declared. I was already liking the sound of this.

"Let me radio for permission, first. You aren't going to go splat as soon as we start, are you? Because I'll have to sit through all sorts of retraining if you do."

I laughed and gave her a double thumbs-up like the complete dork that I was.

She stepped away for a moment and talked into her hand before coming back and unslinging her Arbalest. "We're clear. Just follow me!"

She looked down the sight of her weapon as she took aim at a protrusion on a nearby rooftop. Then she pulled the trigger and one of the oversized bolts she used went flying, trailing a long chain like it weighed nothing. The bolt sank into the thing she'd been shooting at and she shifted her grip before leaping off the roof with a whoop.

A quick shot of webbing and I was right behind her, screaming in joy as the world flew by with the wind whipping at my costume. The exhilaration of flight mixed with the surety of my spider-instincts to give me the freest feeling I could ever remember having.

This was the kind of chance I didn't have back in the Bay. Outside of a small area of downtown, we didn't have large stretches where it was nothing but tall buildings on account of the geography and a general lack of city planning during the Bay's early years. Here, though? Each block of buildings had a unique topography with highs and lows and all sorts of things built into or sticking out of the rooftops. Then the space between the blocks required a web-swing.

Despite being a normal human in some senses, Flechette's grapple-swinging was well practiced and I followed her lead. Crossing individual rooftops was largely an exercise in parkour, but the elevation changes, and the gaps between them, took more finesse.

"No fair!" Flechette yelled at me as she landed on a building beside me. We were up six stories from the building we had started on, and it had taken her a particularly tricky jump to cross the gap. She had been forced to wind in her chain in mid-air and the bottom of her swing still came entirely too close to the ground because she needed the extra momentum to gain height.

I had just used a web on the skyscraper across the street and another web from my opposite hand in an almost effortless transition.

"You should have two crossbows!" I happily suggested. The whole experience really was amazing.

"I can't… actually, maybe I could," she grumbled. "Not now, anyway. Three more blocks." She pointed to the PRT building which was now clearly visible with the giant silver PRT letters on the side. "Race you!"

Before I'd finished understanding what she said, she fired another dart past me and went swinging away, clearing two whole buildings in a single leap.

"Hey!" I yelled and took off to follow her as fast as I could. I had the advantage when it came to parkour, but she knew where she was going better than I did and her grapple was much faster than I would have expected.

She won, but only by a hair. I felt like I probably could have pushed past her a couple of times, but I really didn't care who came in first, as long as it was close. By the time we collapsed, laughing and out of breath, on the roof of the PRT building, I was exhausted but very happy with my day. I definitely understood why Spider-man would web-swing everywhere he could go. It was pretty amazing.

I was still feeling pretty great about my day when I collapsed into bed that night, though I had a nagging feeling that something was coming. I'd been in New York for an entire day and nothing too strange had happened. I'd been halfway expecting to have to fight half the capes in the city or something silly like that.

Instead… I'd met some people, shaken some hands, flirted a little, and generally had a fun time.

Of course, I had to be woken up in the middle of the night by a ringing cell phone.

 

[Swordchucks]

I fumbled the phone to my ear and mumbled the groggiest of hellos.

"Danny, please tell me ya know somewhere uptown I can hide out!"

Sherrel. The voice on the other end of the line was Sherrel. I looked down at my phone and realized that I'd picked up dad's by mistake. Given that they were almost identical, it had been a natural mistake.

"Sherrel?" I asked. My brain was still catching up, but the tone of her voice was making it hurry. Dad was fumbling for his glasses and turning on the light. "What's wrong?"

"Uh, Taylor! Can ya put ya dad on?" she asked, her voice coming just a little too high pitched and fast to be natural, even for her.

"Taylor?" dad mumbled as he swung his legs over the side of the hotel bed and sat up.

"Here he is." I shrugged and handed the phone over. Dad put it to his ear.

"Sherrel?" he asked after a moment. "Calm down. You're where? Harlem? And who is after you? But why? I can call the police- okay, okay, I won't call the police. I'll… I'll figure something out and call you back."

He ended the call and clenched his eyes closed for a moment before opening them again and trying to look more awake.

"Dad? What's going on?" I asked. Dad was clearly reeling.

"Sherrel's in Harlem. She was apparently doing some street racing for a friend of hers - their car, not her truck. She won, but the other guys tried to rob her instead of paying up – I think. I'm not too clear on that part. In any case, there was a fight and her car got trashed. Now she's on the run. There's apparently a gang involved."

I was a little surprised at how not surprised I was. Sherrel was trying to reform, but I doubted she really knew how to reform. Street racing for cash fit her skillset perfectly, and while it wasn't exactly legal, it wasn't supervillain stuff, either. The fact that it ended badly also fit everything I knew about her perfectly, too.

"I've got the phone numbers of a couple of Wards, but I don't know them well enough to ask them to help her without also calling the police," I admitted. "Same for the Protectorate numbers, I guess."

Dad frowned. "She really didn't want us to call the cops, but the problem is that it's at least forty miles from here. It'd take a long time in the middle of the day, but the trains barely run at night, so it'll take forever to get there that way."

I considered it. Forty miles would take me more than an hour - maybe two - with a combination of web swinging and just flat-out running. The biggest problem with that plan was that I wouldn't exactly have a way to transport Sherrel when I got there. Plus the whole 'outing myself as a cape' thing.

"Did she say where her truck is?" I asked.

"No, but probably not too close or she would have mentioned it." He ran his hands through his hair nervously as he considered our limited options for helping. "I guess… well, we don't have a car, but your Gram does."

I frowned. "That's… Dad, it's the middle of the night and she's like seventy."

"She's not that old. And… if you make the call, I'm sure she'd agree to come help."

I hesitated. "Are you sure this is a good idea? We could still just call the cops. Isn't street racing just a ticket and a fine or something?"

Dad shifted uncomfortably. "Sherrel might have a couple of warrants out there."

It was my turn to sigh heavily. "Of course she does." I fumbled for my phone. "This is a terrible idea."

I made the call anyway, and Gram seemed surprisingly eager to help. I didn't want her getting into any danger, so getting me close enough to Spider-Taylor the rest of the way would be good enough. With that in mind, I put on my costume and covered it with my winter coat, just like I did back home. When spring hit, I was going to have to find a different technique, but for now it worked great.

Gram made surprisingly good time, and she pulled up in front of our hotel in a dark sedan much faster than I would have thought possible. I hopped in the front seat and gave her a quick hug.

"Thanks, Gram. We didn't know who else to call."

The older woman gave me a small smile. "You can always call on me when you need help, Taylor. No matter what it is. Absolutely anything." Then she turned back to the car and put it into drive. "Now, where are we going?"

Gram was a fast driver but not in the same way that Sherrel was a fast driver. Sherrel was wild and reckless while Gram was almost as fast but in a very controlled way. She took turns using the handbrake and I found out that 'drifting' felt a lot more disconcerting than movies and video games led me to believe. I had to force myself to let go of the armrest when I heard it creaking under my grip.

In the back seat, dad stayed connected with Sherrel via cell phone. She had to stay on the move because the area had been blocked off by gangs that were hunting her.

As we went uptown, the city started to gradually change from the shining downtown area to something that might have been more at home in the Bay - just taller. As we crossed 117th street, we were nearly run over by a car doing a hurried three-point turn in the middle of the street and going back the way we had come. As it got out of the way, it was easy to see why. The road ahead had was blocked by trash and cars, which were now a burning barricade. There was a gap in the middle big enough to put a car through, but it was guarded by a couple of men with obvious weapons in hand. They looked like they were on their way to an edgelord convention with all of the spikes and hooks they could possibly sew to their leather clothing.

"Oh, dear," Gram said as she peered over the wheel. She didn't sound particularly upset, just mildly annoyed. "Looks like the Teeth are back in town."

My heart sank at the mention of one of the most notorious street gangs in New England. The Teeth were violent, aggressive, and transient - which was, in some ways, their worst trait. They used to menace Brockton Bay before they got run off years ago. Now, they nipped at the fringes of New York and Boston. They showed up, menaced an area for a while, then moved on. The fact that they didn't try to hold territory for long made stamping them out very difficult.

"You can just drop me off here, Gram. I think I saw a way around them I can take, but it'll have to be on foot." I didn't want Gram getting hurt, and it would be relatively trivial to climb a building and evade them. I could pick up Sherrel, carry her out, and meet back up with the car somewhere safe.

"Nonsense! Taylor, get in the glove box and get me my nine."

For a long beat, I stared at Gram, not quite comprehending what she'd just said.

"Come on. Not the revolver, the semi-auto one."

Moving on autopilot, I opened the glovebox. Indeed, there were two guns inside the glove box, along with a wicked knife about the length of my forearm and a couple of spare magazines loaded with ammunition. I picked up the requested gun and ignored a weird feeling in the back of my head as I passed it over to Gram.

"There we go," she said as she checked the weapon over with a practiced ease. "I'd rather have a shotgun for something like this, but that's really awkward while you're driving. Now, let's ask the nice young men to get out of our way."

//\\o//\\

"Taylor, honey, hold the wheel steady," Gram asked as she rolled down the window and popped her seat belt.

"I thought you were going to ask them to move?" I asked as I put my hand on the wheel as requested.

"I am, but this is the kind of question you don't ask with words." She twisted around so that she was leaning half out the window and still somehow managed to get her foot on the gas pedal. The car lurched forward with a squeal of tires, and about halfway to the barricade, Gram's gun barked four times.

Audacity did have its place on the battlefield because I barely felt a tingle of danger from the gang members as we barreled toward them. I was a little too focused on keeping the wheel steady and my head down to see exactly what happened, but the bright light of fire went past our windows and we were clear.

Moving almost casually, Gram settled back into the driver's seat and took the wheel as she eased off the gas and I dared to look in the sideview mirror. I didn't see much interesting except the retreating roadblock, still blazing in the dark.

"I hate being old. I don't think I got a single one of them," she grumbled as she took a sharp turn and then turned into an alleyway, shutting her lights off and putting the car into park. "Back in my prime, it would have been headshots all around."

"I thought you were just trying to scare them out of the way," I admitted.

"You never shoot to scare someone, Taylor," Gram told me seriously. "Well, not if they have a gun of their own. If you're going to shoot someone, it's always to kill."

I hoped she was joking, but Gram didn't really joke and I was too afraid to ask more questions.

"Now, where is this friend of yours hiding out?" She changed the subject so naturally that I somehow doubted what I had just seen with my own eyes.

It took dad a few seconds to recover enough to spit out the last address he got from Sherrel. "Said she's on the top floor, front side, and they're going door to door looking for her."

"Not too far, and we're even in the right block. I guess I'll get to break out the fun stuff, after all," Gram said with a smile as turned off the car and climbed out. Some frantic mania made me follow her out and around to the trunk.

Inside, there were a couple of black cases, each long enough to hold a rifle. "You do much shooting, dear?"

"No," I said as the surreal situation just kept getting more surreal.

"Here you go, then," she popped open one case and pulled out a matte black pump-action shotgun with a shoulder strap. She produced another box and started loading ammo into it. "This one packs a bit of a kick, but you don't have to be that practiced to use it. Just make sure you want to kill whoever is in front of you if you pull the trigger and keep the safety on until you do."

"I don't need a gun," I said, a little desperation creeping into my voice.

"Nonsense," Gram declared and pressed it into my hands. "Teeth are anarchist vermin, dear. They would happily murder you and everyone you love if given half a chance. Exterminating them is practically a public service."

A part of me - the part of me that knew I was capable of murdering a baby if it was the right thing to do - had a moment where it realized where I got it from. Amy was going to have a field day with this information if I ever told her about it.

"Okay," I said numbly, not intending to actually use the gun but also not wanting to argue with Gram. I felt that tingle again. Those strange memories wanted to pour forth, but I was pretty sure that letting them in would make me end up naked. Again. I pushed them back down.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" dad asked, finally making himself known outside the car. He looked pale and I could tell that his hands were shaking.

"No one is forcing you to come with us," Gram said, the kindness she'd been showing me wilted in an instant, replaced by an icy coolness. "It'll be a nice chance for my granddaughter and I to bond."

"No, I'll go," dad hurriedly declared, though I could tell he wasn't sold on the idea.

"I suppose you're useless with a gun?" Gram asked in that same cold tone.

"I used to target shoot," dad defended weakly. I couldn't remember the last time he went and I didn't even think that there was a gun in the house anymore.

"Then get that revolver out of the glovebox and come on," she declared. Her own handgun vanished into a holster at her side as she opened the other case and pulled out a compact rifle with a forward-curved magazine and a thick barrel. It looked like something out of a movie.

"Like it?" she asked when she saw me eyeing the weapon. "We started seeing these just before I had to come back stateside, then I got pregnant with your mom and had to give up field work. By the time I got back into fighting shape, things were different and they turned me into a desk jockey. So much paperwork." She sighed as her hands ran over the gun. "Things are so much easier when you can just put your problems into a shallow grave."

"Are you sure about leaving the car?" I asked as we started down the alley. Apparently, we just needed to go down and cut through a cross alley to be behind the building Sherrel was in.

Gram shrugged. "It will be fine. It's stolen, anyway."

I stumbled. "Stolen?"

Gram shot me a look, but then directed a colder one to Danny. "Your mother didn't teach you how to hotwire cars? I know it's getting harder with the new security systems, but every girl should learn."

Danny seemed to wither under her gaze. "Annette and I agreed to wait until she was sixteen before we had that conversation. We tried to teach her how to make a Moltov cocktail when she was twelve, but she wasn't interested."

It was my turn to give dad a wide-eyed look. I didn't remember that. Wait, no… I sort of did remember that. We'd spent a day at the boat graveyard and I'd been too distracted by the fact that Emma had her first modeling gig to pay attention. What else had I missed?

"Always a rebel," Gram mumbled. "Even when her rebellion was being a square." She sighed again and stood up straighter. "Well, enough of that. Let's go kick some Teeth in."

When did Gram get witty one-liners? Today was so confusing.

//\\o//\\

The gun was heavy, not that it weighed me down very much with my newfound strength, but it had a kind of metaphorical weight to it. In some ways, my bare hands were more dangerous. Actually, in most ways my bare hands were more dangerous. Even my webshooters could be more deadly if I used them in the right ways.

However, there was just something about the purity of purpose in a gun that made it feel like a bigger deal. Unlike my hands and webs, the shotgun I was cradling in my arms was meant for only one thing, and that was propelling a person-destroying bit of metal - or multiple bits of metal, depending on what Gram had loaded it with - at high speed into someone or something with the intention of destroying it.

Dad and I had pretty much given Gram the lead in this operation when we'd been forced to call her. Even with the complications of needing to follow the roads, we'd made it to Harlem in half the time it would have taken me on foot. Given what else I'd seen, I had a feeling that she'd also probably have a good idea of how we could get away at the end.

My brain still hadn't entirely caught up to the reality of Gram being… whatever she was, though. She'd mentioned a desk job and shallow graves. That wasn't a combination that normally went together.

As we got to the last corner, Gram peered around it and then pulled back to us.

"There's one sentry, watching the fire escape." She turned her gaze to me. "Do you hear anything, Taylor?"

I strained my ears, but I did pick up on something. "Yeah, banging. Yelling, too. They're knocking in doors, maybe?"

"That's what it sounds like," Gram agreed and favored me with a small smile. We were apparently bonding. "And what does that mean?"

I thought about it for a second. "Well, possible collateral damage if shooting starts," I said. That was my main worry. I was carrying the gun as a peace offering to Gram - as ironic as it was that a gun was a peace offering - but I really didn't want to kill anyone with it. "And it means they're pretty sure they know which building she is in but not where, exactly?"

"See? You have good instincts." Gram smiled wider. "Now, how do we get to our target knowing the inside is crawling with Teeth and there's a sentry on the fire escape?"

I had a sinking feeling I knew where this was going as the answer was almost certainly not 'climb straight up the other side of the building'. "Neutralize the sentry."

Dad made a small, helpless noise as Gram smiled and nodded. "That's my girl. Now, your old Gram doesn't have as much dexterity as she used to, but I think I can still manage this. What you want to do with a sentry, is come up behind them and get your hand over their mouth, nice and tight. Then," she produced a knife from somewhere. It wasn't the oversized monstrosity from before, but a narrower blade. "You jam a knife like this into their abdomen, just under the ribs and go up. You want to pierce a lung or his heart. If you don't get it on the first go, you just give it another try. Then hold on with your other arm till they stop moving."

My eyes must have been huge with the idea that Gram was planning to execute a guy for the crime of watching an alleyway. Well, he was also a member of the Teeth, which was a group that didn't really have any innocents in it, but he was just the lookout. "I have a friend that made me some Tinkertech," I blurted instead of what I was really thinking. Outing myself to Gram, even a little, was better than watching her murder a guy.

"Oh? Disintegration ray? Immolation beam?" Gram guessed, looking quite interested.

"N-no, it just makes sticky stuff, but I can use it to tie him up," I supplied.

Gram looked disappointed. "Well, do you think you can pull it off? The other Teeth aren't exactly listening, but if he starts shouting, it's going to turn into a fight."

"I can do it," I declared with more confidence than I really felt. Well, I did have some confidence that I could subdue the guy without killing him. It was the part where I stopped him from yelling – or actually killed him – that I was more concerned with.

Gram nodded. "Then show old Gram how it's done, alright?"

"Okay," I said as I sidled around her. I hesitated and then pushed the shotgun into her hands. I would feel better without it, if only because it would stop that buzzing of foreign memories from poking at me.

I glanced around the corner and caught sight of the guy. He leaned against a dumpster with a cigarette in his hand as he kept an eye on the fire escape much more dutifully than I would have expected, though I supposed that gang members in the Teeth that didn't follow orders didn't stay in the Teeth for long. Or alive.

I took a steadying breath as I waited for him to take a drag on the cigarette. I started moving, as quiet as a ghost. My spider-instincts came with a heaping helping of stealth skills, after all.

He let out the breath, making a bit of a shape out of the smoke plume. It also marked the point when he had the least breath in his lungs. I scuffed my foot enough to make a noise. He turned to look at me only to get his mouth plastered in webbing a second before I grabbed him and hauled him bodily back around the corner. I then webbed him entirely to the wall.

He had barely managed to make a sound and was definitely out of the action for a few hours.

I turned to find Gram watching me with slightly narrowed eyes. "Just a friend with Tinkertech, eh?"

I shuffled my feet uncomfortably as I realized that I'd just hauled a guy that had to weigh at least half-again as much as me down an alleyway with one arm and then held him against a wall - with one hand - while sticking him there with the other.

"Not the time for this," Danny said, becoming the voice of reason one more time. "Unless you want to have to kill the witness."

Or, maybe, the insanity was catching.

Spoiler: Notes

I'm off on vacation next week and probably won't be posting more parts of this story till the week after. I have a couple more in the can, but in anticipation for my trip, I've moved writing over to a different project because this story takes too much research to do without internet access.

 

[Swordchucks]

Since I was no longer as concerned about hiding my powers from Gram - at least, not entirely - getting up to the fire escape was easy enough. The last ten feet or so required a ladder to be lowered, which was easily solved by pulling a rusted lever loose. The riskiest part of the whole thing was making sure not to snap the lever.

Well, that and enduring the screeching noise it made when it lowered. Fortunately, no one came to investigate.

From there, we quickly ascended, doing our best not to be in front of windows longer than we needed to be, until we were at the top floor.

"Alright, so this is the dangerous part," Gram whispered to us quietly as we crouched outside the last set of windows. "We don't know who is inside. They probably aren't Teeth - I don't think they've gotten up this far, yet - but they might have a gun and not take kindly to us breaking into their place. To them, we're burglars, so they might try to take us out. We need-"

"Why don't we just go over?" I whispered back, pointing toward the roof. It was a good bit above where we were crouching, but I could get us up with only minimal effort. It was barely any farther than the jump to the fire escape had been. "I think there are fire escapes on the front side, too. We could just go up, over, and back down?"

Gram stared at me for a long moment. "Capes cheat," she grumbled. "Alright, so new plan. Danny, where is your friend hiding? See if she can get to a fire escape."

That part of the plan went off without a problem. I did a delicate, almost slow-motion hop with a parent under one arm and a grandparent under the other, and we skulked our way across the rooftop before peering over the other edge. A few minutes of dad texting back and forth later, Sherrel waved her hand out of a window.

We had another brief huddle on the roof as we talked about options. The safer solution would be for me to go down and get Sherrel before all of us going back across the roof and down the far fire escape – or, even better, we could cross to a different building and use that fire escape. Unfortunately, that required me to be willing to out myself to Sherrel, and I just couldn't bring myself to trust her, even if she was doing her best to reform. The other option was for me to lower Dad and Gram to the fire escape out of Sherrel's line of sight and for all of us to go down the front of the building. That's what we eventually settled on.

I let Dad and Gram down and then joined them. As I did so, Sherrel finished climbing through the window and I found myself feeling a pang of guilt. The look of pure relief on Sherrel's face at our arrival made me feel bad for doubting her. She had a cut over one eye and one of her cheeks was swelling into what would no doubt be a magnificent bruise in short order, and she looked exhausted. She started to say something, but Gram shushed her and pointed toward the street. That was the last thing 'said' before we started our descent.

Things went perfectly all the way up until they didn't. About halfway down the fire escape, the sound of squealing tires alerted us to more gang members arriving in a beaten up old pickup truck that swayed its way around the corner like it was overloaded. If we had been luckier, they wouldn't have spotted us, and we could have gotten inside one of the apartments for cover.

We weren't that lucky.

There was yelling as more people than should have been possible boiled out of the truck and someone started shooting at us. Even worse, some of the gang members from inside the building started running out to help, and our complete lack of cover meant we were doomed if we didn't do something.

"I'll distract them," I declared as I wrenched open the nearest window – heedless of the fact that it had been locked - for the others to dive through before pulling up my mask from under my jacket and diving off the fire escape. Someone - probably dad - tried to stop me, but I wasn't really listening at that point.

The fact that I had just impulsively outed myself to Squealer despite deciding that I really didn't want to do that only a few minutes beforehand wasn't lost on me.

Fortunately, my dive achieved my primary goal of drawing the attention of the gang and along with it their poorly aimed gunfire. When I didn't splatter on the pavement, there were several cries of 'cape' and they attempted to shoot me more. Also fortunately, Spider-reflexes were no joke, and I twisted and dodged without getting hit for the few seconds it took for things to change entirely.

"Good, I was getting bored," a deep voice rumbled loud enough to cut through the other shouting and occasional gunshot. With some dread, I realized that the back of the pickup truck hadn't been empty. Instead, an oversized person in equally oversized Teeth garb stood up and stepped out of the back of the truck to the street with a loud thud followed by the groaning of the truck's suspension finally being relieved of their weight. Whereas most Teeth contented themselves with collecting eyes, ears, teeth, and fingers from their victims, the big guy had gone all in on skulls and whole limbs. It was genuinely intimidating, though I didn't let it get to me.

"Who are you supposed to be?" I asked as I almost negligently webbed a couple of gang members to each other with their weapons pointed toward nothing important.

"I'm the one that's going to pull your spine out of your body and feed it to you before you die," he growled and squared up like he was about to enter a sumo match with me. I knew I was strong, but this guy - probably a guy from the voice, but with all that junk he was covered in, I couldn't be sure - was obviously a cape. I'd be shocked if he didn't have a pretty high brute rating.

"That's a really long cape name," I noted. One of the great things about powers that sped up my time perception in combat was that I had a chance to think of witty rejoinders while I was frantically trying to decide how I was going to do this. Dropping him into the sewer would have been ideal, but I didn't see a conveniently placed manhole. I nailed the last two regular Teeth holding guns with webbing, leaving just the big guy and a few others with knives and bats. Unfortunately, more could arrive at any moment. "You'll never sell any merch with a name like that. If you give up the whole murder hobo lifestyle, you should probably work on your branding before anything else."

"Call me Cannonball," he growled in irritation. "Now-" he lurched forward far faster than I had been expecting, but I let my spider-sense guide my steps and I was already moving toward him in a countercharge, "-DIE!"

I jumped and Cannonball sailed past underneath me. Halfway through my path over him, I kicked down and back, using his oversized head as a springboard. I sailed across the street to cling to the wall of the next apartment building somewhere around the third floor.

Cannonball was almost knocked off balance, but he managed to right himself and proceeded to completely ignore the two balls of webbing I tried to use to glue his feet to the ground. Well, he didn't exactly ignore them so much as he tore loose foot-sized chunks of asphalt and smashed it flat with his next steps. I was pretty sure that trying to web him to anything else would end the same way if he had any kind of leverage.

Then he roared again as he charged at my new position. I was too high up for him to reach me, so he slammed into the wall below me. I had to jump away as the brickwork I was clinging to gave way and a significant part of the building's facade collapsed. I suddenly had a really bad feeling about this fight. Not so much for myself, but everyone in the general vicinity.

"Stand STILL!" he screamed at me.

"No!" I screamed back, cartwheeling away and leading him down the street instead of risking him crashing into another building. It limited how I could dodge, but if he collapsed an apartment block and killed a bunch of people, I was pretty sure it would be at least partially my fault.

I just had to figure out how I was going to beat him before he turned me into paste.

//\\o//\\

"Stop that!" I yelled as I grabbed yet another thrown object with webbing and yanked it to a stop before it could crash into an apartment window.

"Then come down here and fight me like a man!" Cannonball yelled as he hefted a dumpster and threw it toward me.

Even out in the middle of the street, it had been a lot easier to dodge his attacks before he realized I cared about collateral damage and started exploiting that. Now, we were just playing a game of catch. Every time he took his eyes off me for a moment, I would retreat farther so he was hesitant to charge any more buildings lest I disappear entirely. Leaving him to rampage on his own was bad, but after several minutes of our destructive stalemate, I wasn't convinced that my presence was making anything better.

However, I had finally managed to maneuver him exactly where I wanted him.

"You asked for it!" I cried as I dove toward him. He raised his arms in a boxing guard, but I tossed out a line of webbing near his feet and yanked to change my trajectory as I got close. With my other arm, I sent out another line of webbing and yanked the manhole cover I had been eyeing free. "Have a nice swim!"

I landed on my hands and then launched myself with all my strength back up at him with my feet poised to deliver a double kick to his chin. I was under his guard and right on target, the attack making him stumble backwards a step just as I had planned.

One of his feet went into the hole and he stumbled, falling.

Then he stopped falling, with one foot still on the pavement and the other in the hole. With a lurch, he pulled himself out of that predicament.

"That was your plan?" he asked with disdain.

"I thought the hole would be bigger. Or your ass would be less fat."

"I'm going to enjoy gutting you, when I get my hands on you," he rumbled as he prepared to charge me again. He was close, so it stood a slightly better chance of catching me, but that chance was still low.

The problem was that while he couldn't hit me, I couldn't really hurt him. He'd taken a full body kick to the chin, and aside from a momentary stumble, he didn't seem to notice. I was rapidly running out of options other than 'run away' and my faint hope that the local Protectorate would show up was fading fast. From the sounds I could hear in the distance, they were probably busy with other Teeth or worse.

"Hey, you ugly piece of shit!"

That had sounded a lot like Gram. We both turned in time to see something bright sailing through the air. I took an instinctive step back, but it hadn't been aimed at me.

The thrown bottle smashed into Cannonball's chest spikes, shattering and sending golden liquid splashing across his body. The flaming rag that had been attached to the bottle impacted the golden liquid an instant later and suddenly Cannonball was very much on fire.

"Holy shit!" I gasped as I discovered that while Cannonball had been very resistant to blunt trauma, he wasn't fireproof. A voice that deep screaming in pain was a distinctly unpleasant sound.

"Get in the car!" That one was dad, waving frantically at me from the passenger seat of the stolen sedan that we had arrived on the scene driving. Gram was already climbing into the far side of the back seat.

I glanced between Cannonball who apparently had the sense to stop drop and roll and the car. The most heroic thing to do would have been to stay and get him medical attention. On the other hand, one of my companions had warrants and we were driving around in a stolen car. Plus, the bad guy was in the Teeth.

I dove for the car without another thought, jumping into the seat beside Gram and yanking the door closed behind me.

"Drive!" dad yelled, though it was unnecessary. Sherrel put the pedal down and we were soon rocketing off into the night. We didn't even slow down for the apparently abandoned flaming barricade as she put us straight between the cars at high speed.

"See, Taylor? That's why we learn to make Moltov cocktails," Gram said with no small amount of self-satisfaction as she slumped against the far door. "Gram's getting too old for this kind of stuff."

"T-thanks," I managed as I pulled my mask down and pushed a few strands of sweat-soaked hair away from my face. The adrenaline had already started to fade a little, but given that Sherrel was driving, it didn't fade all that much.

Gram patted me on the knee. "You should have told me you were a cape, dear. There were all sorts of better plans we could have used from the start."

I shrugged and looked away for a second, feeling a bit of guilt. "You could have told us that you used to be… whatever that was."

"Touche," Gram said, but she was smiling. "I used to work for the CIA, fighting the good fight. Well, that was the propaganda. Even if I was good at my job and enjoyed the work, it wasn't exactly heroic. Still, stemming the tide of Communism was worth it, even if Washington kept tying our hands."

I grimaced at the thought. As Taylor, I'd never learned that much about what the CIA got up to in the Cold War, but other-me had. It wasn't pleasant. "Is that why you and mom never got along?"

"Your mother?" Gram asked, a little puzzled. "No, it had nothing to do with politics - well, it did, but not that way. Your mother was brilliant, but also a naive idealist. I tried to talk some sense into her, but it never took. She couldn't understand that her mother understood perfectly well what it was like to fight for a cause, so she refused to take my advice."

"You mean Lustrum?" I asked, trying to put together the pieces.

"Yes," Gram grumbled. "Can you believe the idiocy of those girls? They were going after rapists and castrating them, which was fine, but they were just leaving them alive! If I told her once, I told her a thousand times - you don't leave witnesses."

Of course she did. "Yeah, that was… silly of her."

Gram nodded. "Of course! I mean, there's value in leaving someone alive as a warning every now and again, but you make damn sure they can't identify you. You don't win a war with half measures, and if you're going to do one, you do the whole village, so the leftovers don't retaliate." I felt a little sick. "When that all blew up in their faces, she decided to run off and shack up with a Unionist. Half a step away from Commies, the lot of them."

From the front seat, dad made a faint noise of disagreement, but didn't say anything. We lapsed into silence after that. Gram was looking out the window with an expression of tired sadness while I was busy trying to completely adjust my worldview.

"I just want to thank ya for savin' me," Sherrel said after a while. We were back on Long Island, somehow, and no cops had run us down. "Jerry, tha bastard, bailed as soon as tha guy we beat in that race started making noises about his gang. I really need tha money, so I stuck around and tried to get him, but then that big bastard smashed in the front of my car. I had to hoof it, and they almost got me."

"Sherrel," I started, but she cut me off.

"Don't worry, I can keep a secret! Ya can trust me! I'm a cape, too, see? A Tinker, though, so I ain't able to just punch my way out of trouble like you." That part came out in a babble and dad gasped softly. I was somewhat surprised he hadn't put it together before then, considering her insane driving was almost certainly power-related.

"Thank you for telling me," I said. "I already knew, though."

"What? You knew?" she asked, turning halfway around in her seat to look at me. Her driving never wavered, though.

I rolled my eyes. "I keep an eye on the cape scene back home, so it's not like it's hard to figure out. Too many coincidences." I hesitated to mention anything specific because I didn't know how public Squealer's cape identity had been. Instead, I took a deep breath. "I think you should join the Protectorate. I know Armsmaster pretty well, and if those warrants aren't for multiple-homicide, I'm sure he can make them go away if you'll work for them. They will probably do a lot more than just that, too."

She turned back to watch the road. "I'll think about it," she said and then the silence returned.

//\\o//\\

"It's only been two days," I grumbled as I took a few steps into the house and flopped face first onto the couch. "It feels like we have been gone for forever."

"It was certainly a long two days," dad agreed as he walked in the door behind me and collapsed into his favorite chair.

After we had made our escape from the city, Sherrel drove us back to the parking lot near the train station on Long Island where she had left her truck. That had no doubt seemed like a reasonable precaution when she was planning to go street racing all over town, but it had done her no favors when she needed to make a quick getaway.

Before we got out of the car, Gram had extracted a promise from us to visit 'soon', though she hadn't specified when that would be. After that, she'd sped off in a hurry - probably to ditch her stolen car - and we had climbed into the truck.

The three of us had gone back to our hotel, which we still had for a few hours before we needed to check out. However, none of us could sleep, and we eventually decided to just get up and drive home early. The remainder trip had mostly been done in silence as we processed the weekend. At the end, Squealer - Sherrel - had dropped us off but said she wanted to take a drive and 'clear her head'.

She wasn't alone in her need to get her thoughts together, either. Sherrel had survived multiple murder attempts stemming from her inability to resist breaking the law and street racing for cash. Then she'd been rescued at the last minute and had her secret identity as a cape revealed to people she only somewhat knew.

To be honest, I had a feeling that Sherrel didn't really know how to be a law-abiding citizen. I'm sure that she realized her Tinkering was too expensive for a mechanic's wages and had been looking for extra cash the only ways she knew how – by breaking the law. That was one reason why I was so eager to get her talking to Armsmaster about the Protectorate. Tinkering was expensive, and from what I heard, Tinkers had even more urges than other capes. Sherrel needed a team that could fund her projects or she was going to end up getting into even more trouble trying to do it herself.

For his part, Dad had just discovered the younger woman he was flirting with was a cape and a bit of a criminal. He had also found out that Gram hated him not because he was a bad influence but because he was a labor organizer and Gram was apparently an ex-CIA murderer. Also, he'd been shot at a lot more than he was used to, which couldn't help anything.

Then there was me. I'd outed myself to both Gram and Sherrel, and I'd also been in a cape fight against a guy that had absolutely killed people before - there was no way the body parts hanging from his costume had been Halloween props. Then there was all the stuff about Gram, which was huge and annoyingly not as surprising as it should have been. The fact that mom had apparently not gotten out of Lustrum's gang 'before it got bad' was almost a trivial revelation compared to the rest.

"So… you knew about Sherrel the whole time." It was a statement that broke the silence. I had already admitted to knowing about it, but I could detect the question buried in it.

"Yeah," I confirmed. "I wanted you to form your own opinions, though. She… is not what I expected her to be. I mean, she's trying to reform, at least, and I think it would be great if she succeeds."

There was a long beat of silence. "Wait, the angel she hit…"

"Yeah, that was me," I said. "I don't think we should tell her that."

Dad made a noise of agreement, and the silence came back for a while.

"Did you know that Gram was… well, all of that?" he asked eventually.

"I had no idea." I pulled a cushion on top of my head, but it didn't really help anything. "It… explains some things, though."

It explained entirely too many things, really. If Gram thought it was the right thing to do, she would have shot a baby. She probably had.

"I guess it does," he agreed, though he was almost certainly thinking about different issues than I was.

"Are we going to go visit her?"

Dad snorted. "Do you think we have a choice? She might come looking for us if we try to avoid her."

It was my turn to make the grunt of agreement. She probably would.

Eventually, we drifted off to bed. The last day of excitement - starting very, very early in the morning - had left us both exhausted and returning home had finally let some of the anxiety bleed away.

I was almost asleep when I heard the front door open and a little while later there was a conversation. Given the pitches of the voices, it was surely Sherrel and dad.

I considered checking on them – either in person or with spiders - but decided I didn't care that much as long as they weren't screaming. Finding out what they had talked about could be a problem for tomorrow-Taylor.

Spoiler: Notes

Blah blah blah, I'm sick and was on vacation. Chapter 21 requires a lot of rewriting and I'm kind of stalled right now so this story is likely on hiatus for a bit. I'm nowhere near done with telling the story, though, so expect it to revive at some point.