Prodigal Daughter [Worm Alt-Taylor AU]

[Ack]

Taylor Hebert has had questions about her parentage for some time.

When she unexpectedly discovers her answers, it raises more issues.

Disclaimers:
1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.

2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. If I find something that canon does not cover, I will make stuff up. If canon then refutes me, I will revise. Do not bother me with fanon; corrections require citations.

3) I welcome criticism of my works, but if you tell me that something is wrong, I also expect an explanation of what is wrong, and a suggestion of how to fix it. Note that I do not promise to follow any given suggestion.

Index:
Part One: Random Thoughts (below)
Part Two: Summer Camp Blues
Part Three: Exceeding Expectations
Part Four: Twisted Sisters
Part Five: Brain Donor
Part Six: Back to Civilisation
Part Seven: Four-Part Harmony
Part Eight: First Foray
Part Nine: Preparing for Action
Part Ten: The Culprit
Part Eleven: Closing In
Part Twelve: Overdose
Part Thirteen: Lucky For Some
Part Fourteen: Wolf Trap
Part Fifteen: Lung Shot
Part Sixteen: Making an Impression
Part Seventeen: Outreach

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part One: Random Thoughts



[A/N: This is definitely an AU. A few dates and names have been changed around. You can pretty well figure out what's going on.]

[A/N 2: This fic beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

[A/N 3: I wasn't going to write this, but it's Christmas.]



I wonder if other people ever look in the mirror and wonder who their real parents are?

I used to.

I knew who my real mom was, of course. But she's dead now. I can see her every time I look in the mirror. Mostly, anyway. I've got her hair and cheekbones, but I've got my father's eyes.

Which aren't the same as Dad's eyes. He's got brown eyes, while my mom's were more hazel. Mine are pale blue, like winter ice. Dad needs glasses, too, but I don't.

Dad's tall and skinny, with dark hair, though he's starting to go bald. My hair's dark, too. So was my mom's. My father's was as well.

Mom was tall and skinny too, and I take after her, so people don't usually wonder if Dad is my real father. It's not totally unheard of for two people with brown eyes to have a blue-eyed baby, but I'm pretty sure I know what it means.

Of course, I couldn't talk to Dad about it. How do you even ask that sort of question, anyway? Excuse me, but do you know who my real father was?

This isn't to say that I spent all my childhood obsessing over who got Mom pregnant back in the day. Dad did a reasonable job of being a dad, and Mom was a wonderful mom, so I had it pretty good. I didn't daydream about having my real father swoop in and take me away to a better life … well, much, anyway. Though I sometimes wondered what Legend's real eye colour was, at least until I found out he was gay. I didn't wonder about Eidolon. He's cool and all, but not in a 'perfect dad' sort of way.

So I grew up and had friends and went to school and did all the things that kids do. Well … mostly. A lot of the time, I just liked to watch people. Not in an "I find them fascinating" way, but more in a "bugs under a microscope" way. Where everyone else obsessed over what Johnny was thinking when he did that, or what Raylee thought of them, I kind of just … knew. It wasn't a cape power. Well, at first I didn't know, but after I watched them for a while, I had it figured out. For the most part, it's because people are idiots. Predictable idiots, at that. Most of them can't fit two thoughts in their head at the same time.

After a while, this kind of made people boring to me. I couldn't get into a conversation without knowing what they wanted to talk about, and how it would play out. It was honestly a lot more interesting to curl up with a book, because in a book I only knew what the book wanted to tell me, when it told me.

I still had friends … well, one friend. Emma was pretty cool. Her dad was richer than mine, but she didn't mind sharing her stuff with me. This was kinda because her dad and my dad had been friends like forever, and partly because she felt sorry for me that I didn't have any other friends. I didn't mind, and it was nice having someone to talk to that wasn't me. Really, I agreed with myself all the time, and Mom had always told me it was a good idea to find people who didn't agree, so I could find out what they thought about stuff.

So yeah, I was pretty happy. Right up until Mom died.

When that happened, a small part of me died along with her. Dad died a little bit as well. He kind of went away for a while, which meant that I lost both of my parents right then. Losing Mom hurt more than losing Dad. I'd like to say this was because I knew Dad would come back, but deep down I knew better. Dad's not my real father, my secret thoughts went, not really. But I never admitted, even to myself, that I don't love Dad as much as I loved Mom. I'm not even admitting it now. Honest.

Things got shitty then. Until Dad remembered how to be a Dad again—let's be honest, he had to first remember how to be a human being again—I had to go over to Emma's parents so I could eat from one day to the next. Emma was really sympathetic, which reminded me why having friends and associating with people was actually a good thing. I even cried a bit, a couple of times.

Dad came around, eventually, but he was never really the same after. Which meant that he didn't really take notice when Emma … but I'm getting ahead of myself.

He started being a dad again, but we weren't as close anymore. I had to take care of myself more often, which wasn't so much of a hassle, because I was already used to doing that. He didn't even notice when I started taking walks at night. I didn't know why. I just felt that the walls were closing in on me, and I had to get out under the open sky. Not that I was stupid about it. I carried a short iron bar with me to start, then when some Merchant kids tried to rob me, I broke one boy's wrist and another boy's arm and when the last one tried to kick me, I broke his kneecaps and his shoulder. The other guys ran off but kneecap-guy didn't, so I took his knife, and the knives the other two had dropped. I thought about killing him, but I decided not to. My first kill needed to be important. To matter.

Knives felt much more natural to carry than iron bars, and they were a lot lighter, too. I started spending time down in the basement with illustrated books on how to fight with knives, practising the moves. It's amazing what you can buy online, these days.

But I still felt restless, so between bouts of stabbing my practice dummy (old shirts and sheets wrapped around two brooms tied together), I started to organise the basement. There were a lot of boxes down here, a lot of them Mom's old stuff. There was no way Dad was even going to touch the stuff, which I thought was stupid. Bugs would get in and ruin it and we'd lose it all anyway.

Maybe he wanted it to happen that way. I never thought of that till just now. Huh.

I didn't really have a plan when I started going through the boxes. Mom had talked about how she'd been a Lustrum follower back before she started going out with Dad, so I wondered if she had any souvenirs of those days. Lustrum had gone to the Birdcage after her followers started attacking men. Had Mom been in on that? I knew I didn't really relate to most people too good, not like I did with Emma. If she was like that too when she was younger, maybe she'd left something for me to learn how to be like normal people. Or at least, act more like it.

If nothing else, maybe she'd left behind a minion costume or something. That would've been kind of awesome, actually.

I don't hate men. I don't hate anyone. There isn't room in my brain for that kind of emotion. But it might've given me some kind of structure to base my life around. Instead, I found something totally different. I'm still working out if it's awesome or not.



September 8, 1994

Dear Diary.

Holy shit. My mom was actually the type of person who wrote 'dear diary'. I had to take a moment to recover from that. Then I kept reading.

I'm alive. I have to keep repeating that to myself. I've thought so many times over the last twenty-four hours that I was going to die, that I'd never see Mom or Dad or Danny again, but I'm alive.

Okay, now I was intrigued.

Butcher and the Teeth are gone from Brockton Bay. He'll be going soon too, I hope. Taking his people with him. Taking the Nine.

I had to read through that one a few times, until it sank in. My mom was talking about Jack Slash, of the Slaughterhouse Nine. There was nobody else 'he' could be.

Mom knew Jack Slash.

Mom knew Jack Slash.

Holy motherfucking shitballs.

Danny can never know what happened. It was so sudden. He was there, and I was there, and I thought I was going to die at any moment. It's amazing what goes through your head at a time like this.

Um … fucking what?

I don't even know why he saved my life. He could've let the Teeth kill me. But while the shots were smashing in through the window of the cafe and I was screaming and the broken glass was raining all around us, he grabbed me and pulled me down into the basement. A basement I hadn't even known was there.

Is she talking about Jack Slash? Did the most murderhoboish of murderhobos save my mother's life?

And we lay there, side by side, while they tromped around above us. And I held him so tightly. I was so terrified. He was just someone warm to hold on to. All I could feel was his arms and his heartbeat. I don't even know who kissed who first.

What … the … fuck?

I thought I was going to die at any second. You get crazy at a time like that. We didn't even get all the way undressed. Just far enough. And then we just … did it.

Oh, no. No. Fucking. Way.

And then just as we were finishing, the cavalry arrived and chased the Teeth off. Well, the Nine, anyway. He zipped up and kissed me, then made a 'ssh' motion. I stayed quiet while he climbed back upstairs and closed the trapdoor behind him.

Mom made it with Jack Slash? I had no idea what to think about that.

I'm alive. I'm glad I survived, but what happened between us ... it should never have happened.



That was when I had to put the diary down for a moment, and go attack the practice dummy for a bit. That was huge. I mean, mega-fuckballs huge. It was taking me all my time to assimilate it, and I'd spent an hour last semester planning how I could sneak into the houses of everyone in my class and murder them in their sleep so I could get top marks without trying. That didn't bother me at all. I mean, I never was going to do it, but I could have, and that didn't concern me at all. This was bothering me big time.

The worst bit was, I couldn't tell anyone. There was nobody I could tell. I could just imagine trying to talk to Dad on the matter. Hey Dad, guess what? Mom fucked Jack Slash, and I'm his kid. Yeah, that'd go down as well as Behemoth crashing a baby shower. If Mom was still around I might have tried to talk to her about it, but … yeah, nope. Unless going to her gravesite and yelling at a chunk of granite had ever done anyone any good … didn't think so.

About the only other person I could think of to talk to about it was Emma. Would Emma understand? She seemed to understand everything else about me. But would she be on board with me being Jack Slash's illegitimate offspring? Would she scream and run, or ask me for an autograph, or say something like 'yeah, right'?

Maybe there was something more, I decided. I wanted to get the full story before I said anything to anyone. So I started looking through more of her diaries. I learned a hell of a lot about her that I hadn't before, some of which I didn't want to know. She was a lot more graphic about describing the way she had sex with Dad, which I really didn't want to know about.

But then I managed to find some more, starting about a year later.



August 19, 1995

Dear Diary.

Welp, she still hadn't shaken that habit. Oh, well.

He's back. The others aren't with him. He's dyed his beard and mustache as a disguise, but I recognized him straight away.

Okay, 'he'? I'm wondering, here …

I was out shopping and he just stepped up beside me and started chatting, like we were old friends who spoke every day. Then he asked me about Taylor. I had to tell him.

Holy shit. Wait one turtle-fucking second. Jack Slash asked about me? I had to put the book down for a moment. To my astonishment, my heart rate was up. Wow. Like, wow. I never got excited over anything.

He sounded pleased, especially about how I'd named her after him. He wanted to see her. I was terrified he'd want to take her away, but what choice did I have?

I blinked. My middle name was Jacqueline. Mom had always told Dad and me that it was the name of a friend who'd died when she was just a child.

That was a lie?

She'd thought so much about him that she gave me his name?

Son of a horny hairy goatfucker. I was going to be running out of swearwords at this rate.

I brought Taylor out to see him. She was so tiny, only a couple of months old. The sunlight in her eyes made her screw her face up. He made a soft noise, then he poked his thumb with a knife and brushed it over her forehead. I couldn't help but think he was branding her with his mark.

I couldn't help it. I reached up and rubbed my forehead. I don't know what I was expecting to find. There wasn't anything there, of course.

He said he'd be back when he could, and to tell him if Danny treated me or Taylor badly. I said that he wasn't, that he was being a really excellent father, even though neither of us had really expected the pregnancy.

I had to snort at that. I bet.

I hope he never returns, but if he knows I'm taking care of her, then he won't attack Brockton Bay.

I hope.



The diaries continued onward. 'He' showed up every few days, then every week, then once or twice a month, for maybe two years. The last entry was when I was two and a half. There was even a faded Polaroid of Mom and a very young me, and someone who could've been Jack Slash, all smiling (or in my case, gurgling) at the camera.

Well, holy shit. That was proof, or as much proof as I thought I was ever gonna get. I put the diary back where I'd found it, slipped the photo into an old envelope, then took it upstairs in my pocket.

Dad was making dinner, which turned out to be mac and cheese. I reminded myself that he was stretched pretty thin at the moment, what with the Dockworkers being strapped for cash. "So, hey," I said. "Could I maybe go over to Emma's for a sleepover Saturday night?"

Emma and I did sleepovers every now and again. It wasn't a huge thing for me, but it was for her. She liked to do makeovers on me, and show me how to do makeup that brought my eyes out. We'd dress up in her clothing, and laugh like idiots at how they hung off of me—well, she'd laugh, and I'd smile a bit—and then we'd watch stupid shows on TV and stay awake way too late. Stuff that friends did. I could see now that she thought I was unhappy and she was trying to cheer me up, but she was wrong. I was happy, or at least as happy as I was ever going to get.

This time round, I had an ulterior motive for initiating the sleepover. With that photo, I could tell Emma and even prove it. My reaction to finding out had been pretty extreme for me, and I wanted to see what it would look like on a normal person.

"Shit, sorry, Taylor," said Dad, looking anxiously at me. "I know you love to go over to Emma's, but we had that summer camp organised for you, remember? Starts on Saturday morning, goes for a month?"

And of course, now I remembered it. I'd asked to go, not to get away from Emma, but to get away from people. To get out into the great outdoors, where I could walk into the woods and be totally alone and think my thoughts, and be myself, and if someone happened to push me too far and I had to kill them, I could hide the body a lot more easily.

Not that I wanted to kill anyone.

I still wanted my first kill to be important, after all.

So I put together a smile on my face to show Dad that it was cool, that I didn't mind.

And I really don't.

It'll only be a month, after all. And then I'll be back. And I can tell Emma all about Jack Slash being my real father.

And the look on her face is gonna be amazing.



End of Part One

Part Two

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Two: Summer Camp Blues


[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


Summer camp promised to be mega-fucking boring.

Or it would have, if I was really able to get bored. I was more concerned with the security on the place. All these restless teenagers and not one guard. Not so much as a pat-down on arrival. Mother of fuckballs, they didn't even search our luggage. I could've had the machete handle sticking out of my backpack and nobody would've noticed. Instead, I had to suffer the whole bus ride with it strapped to my leg.

Not that I wanted anyone to search my luggage, or my pockets. My good friend the iron bar was there to make my backpack heavier, and I had my knives in my pockets. I wanted to pass the time playing with the butterfly knife, but I wasn't sure enough with it yet to not be worried about losing fingers if the bus hit a pothole. Besides, somebody might tell the bus driver.

But seriously, they took a bunch of kids from Brockton Bay on summer camp, and didn't expect us to have weapons? Did they not do their research? Or maybe they did, and didn't care. For all I knew, they had hidden cameras set up to record us killing each other off or something. Not that I cared. I hadn't brought the weapons along for the specific purpose of attacking anyone, though that might be a distinct possibility if someone got in my face.

The machete wasn't there to kill anyone with. It was there to cut the bodies up if I had to kill someone. I'd bought it from a seedy-looking military disposal store on Friday afternoon. The guy behind the counter never even looked up from his issue of More Dakka Quarterly. I'd carefully strapped it to my leg and worn the baggiest jeans I owned, and nobody saw a thing. With the laxity of the observation on us, I could probably have carried a revving chainsaw on board and nobody would've cared.

The camp had a swimming pool setup with a slide, and rustic—read: "no running water"—cabins that we'd be bunking in. They also had woods. Lots and lots of woods. Each of the cabins had a cutesy animal name carved above the door: Deer, Squirrel, Chipmunk, Raccoon and so forth. I ended up in Chipmunk cabin, with seven others. There were four double bunks, and of course intense competition sprang up for the upper bunks. I didn't see why. The mattresses were so thin, anyone in the lower bunk could easily stab you in your sleep, right through the mesh that held the mattress up. Or, if they had a mind to, they could cut through the mesh and send you on a one-way trip to the floor. So I took the bottom bunk farthest from the door, but with a good view of it—because duh—and had a nap while the others argued.

A clanging sound roused me, and I sat up and looked around. The squabbling had more or less died down, though a couple of the girls were still glaring at each other. Instinctively, I checked my pockets for my assortment of knives—still there—and eyeballed my backpack for the red thread I'd stitched through the flap. It was still in place, so nobody had tried to go through my stuff. So far, anyway. I knew I'd need to find a place to stash my more lethal accoutrements, in case the organisers were more on the ball than they'd appeared so far and pulled something like a cabin search while we were on a nature hike.

Along with the rest of the girls, I left Chipmunk cabin and headed across the playground, or parade ground, or drill square, or whatever it was, in the general direction of the clanging noise. Which turned out to be a smarmy-looking guy wearing a camp supervisor polo shirt, standing outside the one building that seemed to have electrical power, hitting a hanging tyre rim with a metal bar. His was three feet long rather than one foot like I had, but I could see the appeal.

I wondered if he was the guy to go to if I wanted to change the name of the cabin. Chipmunks were cute and all, but they were basically striped tree rats. I was thinking of something that also had stripes, but had a lot more street cred; specifically, the honey badger.

"Good afternoon, campers!" he called out before I could step forward. "Welcome to Camp Puckatawney! I am the head supervisor, Mr Horton! I … am in charge here!" He stopped talking and beamed at us, like he expected a standing ovation.

Crickets, actual real crickets, sounded instead. Several of the kids snickered. I almost smiled.

Clearing his throat and losing some of his cheery expression, he went on. "Very well. With me are my deputy supervisors, Mr Barryman and Ms Gurney." He looked around. "Mr Barryman? Where are you? Ms Gurney?"

"Mr Barryman had to leave," someone said. Everyone looked to the corner of the building, where a newcomer had strolled into view, just in the process of tucking in his supervisor shirt. Behind him was a slender, graceful Middle Eastern woman, also dressed as a supervisor. "So did Ms Gurney. They got messages from home. A sick grandmother, I believe?" The man held out his hand to Horton. "Hi, I'm Mr Cutter, and this is Ms Bird."

Horton stared suspiciously at the pair. "I've heard nothing about this. Whose grandmother was sick?"

"Does it matter?" The man had blond hair, with a moustache and beard of the same colour. He smiled gaily at Horton, with the expression of someone who knew that they were going to win the game no matter what, because none of the other players knew what they knew.

Except that I knew it too. And the others around me were starting to suspect. In a moment, their fearful minds would make that last connection, and someone was going to do something very stupid, and get everyone else killed.

And in fact, that was his basic plan. I could see it in his posture, his unconcerned expression. He wanted the bluff to fail. That was why he'd gone with the most transparent ruse possible. Even the fake names were as obvious as Leviathan in the fucking Sahara Desert.

I wasn't playing, so I stepped forward. "Hello, father," I said resignedly. "I see you've got yet another girlfriend. Mom would be pleased—I don't think."

Everything skidded to a halt. Incipient panic was put on hold as everyone craned their heads to look at me. Even the crickets took time off to stare at each other and ask what the fuck is going on? Meanwhile, my father gave Horton an embarrassed look and came over to me.

"Ah … Taylor," he said awkwardly. "I didn't want you to know I was here. It was kind of supposed to be a surprise?" A surprise, I gathered, that was supposed to include the fact that Jack Slash was my father. Tough shit, father dear.

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, great fuckin' surprise. Pay off the other supervisors so you can show up in their place. Very original. And I see you're still shaving your beard in that stupid way. That thing might get a laugh—once. You don't need to make a life choice out of it. Jeez!"

My voice carried to everyone else and I could feel the tension in the crowd easing off. Nobody wanted to think that they were standing so close to Jack Slash, so when one of their own claimed the menacing stranger as a family member then tore a strip off of him, of course he was nowhere near as threatening.

Meanwhile, the line of bullshit I was peddling had pushed my father right off balance. The Middle Eastern woman—I had a really good idea who she was, given the idiotic name Jack Slash had given her—was watching him to see what he wanted to do. He waved her away and turned back to me.

"But Taylor, honey, I thought it would be nice if we could do something together."

He wasn't good at this, I suddenly realised. Jack Slash had a knack for talking to capes and confusing them, but with us unpowered plebs, he usually just pulled out his knife and slashed away until the problem was gone. Having to try to convince someone without powers or something, without any leverage to go on with, wasn't going well for him.

I grabbed him by the arm. Under the shirt sleeve, I felt a sheathed knife. Ooh, very nice. When I could afford it, I was going to get one of those. "Walk with me. Private talk."

"But—"

I didn't give him a chance to hang back. I stomped off to the side, dragging him with me. Once I judged we were out of earshot from the others, I turned to him. "What the hell, father? You get Mom pregnant, then you fucking vanish. All I know about what's going on with you is what I see on the news. What are you even doing here?"

I wasn't really angry with him. It took a lot of effort for me to stay angry, and I usually didn't consider it worth my time. But I was a bit irritated, and I let it show.

This wasn't a conversation he'd ever anticipated having, I figured. Someone who wasn't powered and wasn't part of his team, but who knew who and what he was, and was still willing to call him out for being a dick? It had to be somewhat out of his experience.

He rubbed at his lips. "Taylor," he began again. "You know who I am. You know who you are. These people—these cattle—are beneath you. They're your prey." He snorted, amused. "Join me, and we will rule the galaxy together."

I eyed him, unimpressed by his butchery of the Star Wars quote. "Sorry, not sorry. You already missed out on the Luke, I am your father line. Hard pass. I'm not exactly interested in an entry-level position in the Slaughterhouse Nine."

His grin wasn't particularly pleasant. "Maybe you'll change your mind once you've learned to love killing. You are my daughter, after all."

"Well, duh." I rolled my eyes. "I already know I'm a killer. I've known it for the last few years. I kind of got the hint when I started treating slasher movies like comedies." Not that I'd actually laughed at them, though I'd smiled a little. "But I'm not gonna waste my first kill on some nobody. If I'm gonna do this, I want to do it right."

He glanced over at the kids, who were still milling around in front of Horton. "What, so you didn't—"

"Come out here to murder people wholesale?" I interrupted. "Nope, not really. I came out here to practise pretending to be normal." Turning my back toward the kids, I pulled the butterfly knife from my pocket, I flicked it through the motions I'd practised in the mirror. "If I have to, I'll kill anyone who gets in my face, but what I really want to do is figure out what it really means to be me. Once I've done that, I can learn how to be them." Flicking the knife through its sequence again to close it, I slid it back into my pocket. Yes, Dad, I know how to use a knife.

"But why do you need to do that?" He seemed honestly puzzled. "Why hide what you are? Be loud and proud with it. Make your name drip blood on everyone's lips."

I snorted. "If you're used to the murderhobo life, sure. But if you want to stay around the same area for a while, it's easier if everyone isn't pointing fingers at you."

"Murderhobo?" He let out a startled bark of laughter. "Where did you get that little gem from?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." I made a rude noise with my lips. "So yeah, I'm not gonna say it hasn't been interesting meeting you, but would you fucking mind not upsetting my plans five minutes after you come back into my life?"

I considered stabbing him to make him shut up, but decided not to. For a start, there were people watching, and that might cause issues. Secondly, if the Nine were anywhere about, they'd definitely cause issues. And thirdly, he was probably better with a knife than me, so I'd probably end up being the one bleeding out on the ground instead of him. So I shelved the stab Jack Slash repeatedly plan for when we were nice and alone. And he was preferably tied up. Fair fights are for morons, especially if the other guy's a lot more experienced than you are.

"Y'knowww …" He drew the word out longer than I was comfortable with. "I'd like to see that. Hang around as camp supervisor and watch you try to interact with these little walking testosterone bombs until one of them pushes you too far and you decorate the camp with his guts. But I don't think so. I'm more of an instant-gratification kind of guy. So I'm gonna make you a bet instead."

"Oh, really?" I looked at him warily. "What kind of bet?"

He grinned again, showing more teeth than I ever had in my life, except maybe to my dentist. "Well, here's the thing. I've got an empty spot in the Nine, so I brought them along to do some incidental evisceration and bloodletting, and along the way I thought we could initiate you into the family business. That way, by the time you get powers—you haven't got powers yet, have you? Bonesaw thinks you don't, but she could always be wrong."

I shook my head, wondering where he was going with this. "Nope, no powers."

He wrinkled his nose. "Inconvenient, but fixable. By the time you get powers, you'll be totally one of us. And if you take too long to trigger, I'm sure my little Bonesaw could devise a way to make it happen. Make you the most monstrous of us all in the process." He beamed at me proudly. "I can't wait."

Crossing my arms, I did my best to give him an angry glare. "Well, I can. I don't want to be 'one of you'. I want to be one of me. So you can go find your next recruit elsewhere, because I'm not playing."

"Ah, you see, but you are." His grin turned into a feral smirk, and I realised that he'd been working toward this all the time. "So, our wager. We take all these little snotbags off a ways, and they get to run back to the camp in the dark, or hide, whichever they choose. Whoever gets back to the camp itself gets to live." From the look in his eye, he intended for that number to be 'zero'. "You get to go with them, or sit it out, whichever you choose. If you go with them, and don't get caught, you can go back to Brockton Bay and play out your boring little game of 'pretend to be normal'. If you sit it out, or get caught, which basically amounts to the same thing, you come with us and Bonesaw triggers you."

"That's not fair," I said flatly.

"Life isn't fair, little Taylor," he retorted lightly. "My parents locked me in a box so they could control my every move. At least I'm giving you a choice."

"Some choice." I rolled my eyes. "Either I participate in your little game, or I participate in your big game. I don't get not to play."

"But you still get the chance to go back to Brockton Bay," he pointed out, sounding amused. I had the impression he was laughing at me and my irritation. "All you have to do is not get caught."

I revised my opinion of how bad he was at talking to normal people; he'd backed me into a corner easily enough. The urge to stab him returned, but I held it in check.

"Okay, fine," I huffed. "I'll run your little gauntlet." I brought out my butterfly-knife, and flicked the blade out and back in again. "But I'll run it armed, and if any of your asshole friends tries to catch me, I will cut them."

Far from being angry, he laughed delightedly. "Oh, this is beautiful. By all means, run it armed. If you can take one of them down, that will be amazing." From the tone of his voice, he didn't think this was at all likely to happen. Deeper down, I got the impression that he was actually hoping that I might be successful. Did he want me to take out anyone who had gotten slack enough for me to tag them? No, I decided. He wanted me on the team, and killing another member was the quickest way to get there.

Either way, I hadn't gotten what I wanted, but I'd at least set terms that were more favourable for myself. "Good," I said. "Prepare to be amazed."

He smirked. "I'm always prepared to be amazed. But let the games begin." Turning, he drew the knife that I'd noticed earlier from its sleeve sheath. "Good afternoon, everyone! I'm afraid my daughter has misled you a little. Yes, I am her father. But yes, I am also Jack Slash. And may I introduce my lovely assistant, Shatterbird!"

The smashing of glass drew every eye to the large cabin. As we watched, shards of glass flew out of all the window frames toward 'Ms Bird'—I'd already figured out who she was—and wrapped around her, giving her a glass helmet and a costume akin to a wedding dress.

This was the moment of truth for Mr Horton. I looked toward him, interested in seeing what sort of useless defence he was going to put up for the kids under his care. Surely, he was going to … ah.

With a high-pitched scream that I would've been hard put to match, he turned and bolted toward the only vehicle in sight, a battered old truck with the Camp Puckatawney logo painted on the door. His route took him past the end of the big cabin, and that was where Crawler leaped out with a roar and landed on him.

I had to give the inhuman cape serious props. If anyone had asked me, I'd never have thought that anything that size could sneak so close to the campsite without being seen, especially given that he was pitch black in colour. In the dark, sure. In broad daylight? As if. But he'd done it anyway. And the bellyflop-ambush was pure art. Or was it more than that? When he stood up again, Horton was nowhere to be seen. Did he have a mouth underneath? Then again, did I care?

As Crawler let out a resounding belch in several tones at once—showoff—Jack Slash turned to the quickly-becoming-horrified bunch of kids. "All right, now that the irritating adult is out of the way, we're going to play a game. We're going to drop you off in the woods a ways. You can hide, or you can run back to camp. If you make it into camp and touch the flagpole—" He indicated the sad-looking flagpole with the even sadder-looking flag drooping from it, "—then you're safe. Run any other direction, or try to hide, and we might find you, or the wildlife might find you, or you might just starve to death." He gave them a broad smile, full of death. "Your choice."

As glass shards danced around the kids, herding them toward the truck, I joined the mob. More than one of them eyed me and then edged away after they saw the knife I was carrying. It didn't bother me. It took a lot to bother me.

I'd been wrong.

Summer camp was gonna be anything but boring.



End of Part Two

Part Three

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Three: Exceeding Expectations


[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


"Wait!" I called out, just as we were about to be loaded into the back of the truck. Everyone looked around at me, except Crawler. Well, he swivelled about half the eyes on that side toward me, which kind of counted.

"What is it now?" my father asked, exasperation plain in his tone. "You may be my daughter, but that doesn't mean I'll stand for time-wasting shenanigans." He spun the knife in his hand around a few times, making it glitter in the light of the setting sun. "That sort of thing is my shtick. Get your own."

"I just need something out of my backpack, in the cabin," I said. "I'll only be a moment."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. Shatterbird, go with her. I'll watch the rugrats." The knife spun again in his hand, and leaves drifted down from a tree on the other side of the camping ground. His message was loud and clear; there would be no running away. Of course, the fact that Crawler was crouching there and licking his lips (using several mouths at once) was also an extremely adequate argument against running off.

Not that I was trying to give the kids any such chance to escape. In fact, the more of them I had around me on the gauntlet back into the campsite, the better. I was just trying to improve my odds of getting back. Junior Slaughterhouse Nine member was not a career path I was interested in.

Looking somewhat bored, Shatterbird followed me into Chipmunk cabin. I sighed, wishing momentarily that I'd had the chance to get the sign changed. One more thing to be mildly annoyed at my father about.

"Well, go on. Get what you need to get." It turned out Shatterbird had a British accent. "Hurry up or you'll find out how many non-lethal ways I can cut you."

"Okay, okay, fine." I dragged my backpack out from under my bed where I'd kicked it, then shoved it in her direction. "Want to open it first, to make sure I haven't got guns or something in there?"

She hesitated, then nodded. "I suppose. You're his daughter, after all." Pulling the straps free of their buckles, she went to open the flap, only for the red cord to go taut and hold it closed.

I manufactured a stupid little giggle, and she looked up at me, annoyed. Muttering something under her breath, she yanked harder at it, just as I stepped back out of the way and pulled the switchblade from my pocket.

The paint bomb went off as advertised, spraying her with the kind of bright red dye that bank robbers hated. As she lurched back, clawing at her eyes, I lunged forward with the switchblade already clicking open. The blade passed between her arms and buried itself in her throat. She let out a gurgling cry, then sat down hard. At the same time, the glass that she still had wrapped around herself fell to the floor.

Pulling the switchblade out of her neck, I reached into the pack and retrieved the iron bar from the bottom. Briefly, I considered stabbing her again or bashing her skull in, then decided why bother? I'd beaten her ass, and we'd both know it from then on. Sliding the bar into my sleeve, I straightened up just as rapid footsteps approached. A moment later, my father appeared at the door to the cabin. He blinked in confusion at the sight of Shatterbird apparently covered in blood, and me more than a little splashed with it as well.

"Seriously, what the hell?" he asked. "I left you two alone for just one second. And where did all that blood come from? The human body can't lose that much blood and survive. Trust me, I've tested that theory."

"Paint bomb," I explained. "It's amazing what you can buy online." It really was.

"Okay, paint, right," he said. "I got that bit. But what did you do to her?" He pointed at Shatterbird, who was holding her throat with one hand and trying to rub paint out of her eyes with the other.

I was a little surprised that he hadn't already figured it out. "I stabbed her in the larynx. She probably won't drown on her own blood, and I don't think I got any important blood vessels. Bonesaw should be able to fix her up." I'd already worked out that the bio-Tinker had probably upgraded my father and the others so I wouldn't be able to simply stab them to death. It was what I would've done, after all. Which was one of the other reasons I'd chosen not to try to stab Jack, even when he got irritating. But there was a lot of leeway between killing someone and just disabling them.

"But you didn't even kill her. Why bother … oh. You did it so she won't be able to sing until then." The look of enlightenment on his face was replaced by a brief flash of annoyance, which was then superseded by a broad smile. "Well done, Taylor. Come along, our transport awaits."

A gurgle from Shatterbird drew his attention and he turned to her. "What was that? What are you supposed to do? Well, once you clear your eyes out, go and find Bonesaw and see what she can do for you. In the meantime, try not to get ambushed by an angry chipmunk, hmm?"

As we went down the steps outside the cabin, he shook his head in amused exasperation. "I can see I'm going to have to keep an eye on you, once you're in the Nine."

I snorted with something approaching amusement. "You still think I'm going to be joining your little play-group?"

His expression sharpened as he looked sideways at me. "You think you're not? Okay, so you sidelined Shatterbird. That was a cute trick, but it took surprise, and it's not going to work with anyone else." We approached the truck, where Crawler was keeping the rest of the kids penned up in the back. "Trust me, you are going to be in the Nine. Once the others find out what you did, they'll be twice as careful with you." Opening the passenger-side front door, he ushered me in.

I looked up into the cab, then back at him. "Don't you trust me to ride in the back with the others?"

"In a word, no." He smirked at me. "I wouldn't have survived as long as I have without being able to learn from my mistakes. You've proven yourself to be both sneaky and resourceful, so I'm personally keeping an eye on you until we get to the drop-off point."

Jumping out of the moving truck had been one of the several plans I'd been formulating, but that was okay. I still had a couple of tricks up my sleeve, so to speak. For now, I just hung on as the truck bumped over the rough track leading into the woods.

The truck wasn't going all that fast, but it still took ten minutes before it ground to a halt. Jack opened the door and swung out on to the ground. Looking over the seat at me, he plucked the keys from the ignition. Well, 'steal the truck and drive back to Brockton Bay' had been one of the ideas I was working on. All I had to do was teach myself to drive. Now, it seemed I also had to teach myself how to hotwire a truck. I knew I should've invested in that book I'd seen online.

Just as I climbed down from the truck, I heard a loud hssssss coming from the far side. Wondering what was going on now, I headed around the truck to find Jack pulling his knife blade from the truck tyre.

"Really?" I asked, both mildly irritated and mildly impressed that he was going so far with his preparations. "You're actually slashing the tyres as well?"

"I really am," he confirmed. "I don't know that you can't hotwire and drive a truck, given how resourceful you've been so far. But I'm pretty sure someone with your upper body strength can't change a truck tyre in the dark, without tools."

"Without tools?" I asked. Surely there would be a toolkit in the truck.

"I left them back at the camping ground," he said with a snarky grin, then turned and raised his voice. "Okay, you little wastes of oxygen, space and vital organs! Out of the truck! The campground is somewhere off in the woods! Maybe along this road! We'll have the lights on for you, so all you have to do is get there and touch the flagpole and you're safe!"

Having the lights on also meant they couldn't sneak in and touch the flagpole without being seen, of course. I didn't know how many of the others had figured that out. As they climbed down from the truck, their expressions showed varying levels of fear from "Oh shit I'm going to die" to "I want my mommy". I couldn't understand how they were letting fear rule them like that. Figuring a way out of this, and maybe taking a few members of the Slaughterhouse Nine down for shits and giggles, was where my head was at, right then.

With that last bit in mind, I wandered up alongside Jack as he watched the kids huddle in a forlorn group at the back of the truck. "So, I'm guessing Bonesaw gave you some serious boosting," I said casually.

"Of course she did," he responded. "Looking forward to your tune-up? I'm thinking of a couple of auxiliary limbs, with knife blades permanently implanted on the ends."

"Not really." I straightened my left arm a little, and cupped my hand backward, toward my wrist. "Well, you're not dead yet, so they're obviously pretty impressive."

"Yeah, she reinforced my vital organs and major blood vessels," he said, sidling half a step away from me. "So if you're considering stabbing me, your blades aren't long enough or sharp enough to do any significant damage. Just saying."

All this messing around had brought the afternoon to a close. The shadows under the trees were now getting pretty dark, so he didn't spot when I straightened my arm just that little more.

"Oh, I'm not going to stab you," I said as the iron bar slid out into my hand. As a continuation of the same move, I swung the bar in a short arc which impacted solidly with his right kneecap. Even as I heard the bone crack, I saw his knife hand come up. Instinctively, I swung again and smacked the knife from his hand. Thrown off balance, he tried to put weight on that knee and went headlong. Impassively, I watched as he face-planted into a pile of leaf mould. Served him right for messing with my summer camp.

"Son of a fucking bitch!" he half-screamed as he rolled on to his side, pulling his knee up to his chest with both hands. "That fucking hurts!"

"And now there's only six people who can chase me in the dark," I said, sliding the bar back into my sleeve.

"You are seriously abusing your relationship with me here, Taylor," he snapped, visibly getting his temper under control. "I wasn't going to let anyone hurt you, but if you keep this up, someone's going to hit back and you won't be able to take that without powers."

"Well, I was done for now, anyways," I said. It wasn't exactly like I could kneecap Crawler like I had my father, after all. For someone whose kneecap had just been turned into a jigsaw puzzle, his recovery time was impressive. Kudos to Bonesaw.

"Well, points to you," he said grudgingly, manually straightening his leg out again. "I never said you couldn't attack us ahead of time, and I really should've been on my guard."

"Yeah," Crawer said unexpectedly, his voice resounding in half a dozen tones. "That was funny as fuck. It's gonna be a blast havin' you in the Nine, kid."

"Thank you, Crawler." Jack's voice was tight with anger and pain. He got his good leg under him and stood up, bracing himself on the side of the truck. "I appreciate your input."

The tone of his voice told me he meant the exact opposite of what he said. I supposed some people might find that amusing. It was, almost.

"So what happens now?" I asked. "When do we start?"

"Any time now," he said. He looked up toward the western sky, where the last light was doing more to define the horizon than to actually illuminate anything. Raising his voice, he addressed the kids. "There are five members of the Nine roaming around in these woods, and that's not including Crawler and myself. If they find you, they will kill you. You can split up and hope to slip past them, or bunch together and hope you can outrun all your friends when someone does find you." He gestured with the knife. "Or you can stand right there while I make steak tartare of you. Your choice."

Hesitantly at first, the kids began to slip off into the gathering darkness. I nodded to Crawler and slapped my father on the shoulder, ignoring his muttered curse when I caused him to put his weight on the injured leg. "Guess I'll go join them, then. See you back at the campsite."

Jack Slash gave me an irritated look. "I'll see you a lot sooner, Taylor. The Nine may be a blunt instrument, but they're a very effective blunt instrument. They've rarely missed, and never against an unpowered target."

"Yeah, but they've never gone up against me." If anyone else had said it, it would've been cocky. I was just telling the truth. I doubted that anyone who had been targeted by the Nine before had come to the fight as prepared as I was, given their habit of attacking from surprise or going after innocents. Besides, even if fear was a real thing for me, the only thing I had to worry about was being press-ganged into the Nine. And that meant I had options.

Ducking around the truck, I picked out the largest group of kids and headed in their direction.They were just shapeless blobs in the dimness under the trees, which meant that I was too. This was probably a good thing, because they might decide the whole situation was my fault and try to attack me. Well, to be honest, it kind of was my fault. More my father's, actually. But it wasn't like I'd invited him to crash the party at Camp Puckatawney, so screw anyone who tried to put this on me. And I really didn't want to waste my first kill on one of these little shits.

With relative ease, I slipped into the middle of the group. I had the switchblade—closed, of course—in one hand and the iron bar in the other, held up alongside my forearm. The butterfly knife was in my left-hand jeans pocket and the clasp-knife in the right hand one. And of course, I still had my secret weapon in reserve.

"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God," whimpered one girl, or at least I thought it was a girl. It could've been a particularly wimpy boy. I neither knew nor cared.

"We should run. We should hide," whispered a boy with a deeper voice than the first. "They can't search every inch of these woods."

"Yeah, they can," I said. "All they gotta do is wait till sunrise. We've got a better chance of reaching the flagpole. They won't be expecting anyone to actually try it."

I was bullshitting, of course. The campground was too tempting a refuge. There would be members of the Nine between us and there, just waiting for their targets to blunder by in the dark. All I had to do was avoid being caught long enough to get to the flagpole. I had zero investment in what happened to the others in the process. If they got away, they got away. In fact, I almost hoped some of them would, if only because it would frustrate the crap out of my father.

So, it turned out that an excess of confidence held more weight than a dozen logically sound arguments. I would've liked to think this was because they were just kids, but I had a strong feeling that this kind of idiocy wasn't something people grew out of. Well, the odds were that these ones weren't going to, anyway.

We skulked along the edge of the track, some of them trying to use the trees for cover while the rest preferred to walk along one of the wheeltracks. I could hear the sticks crackling under the feet of the ones in the treeline, and I stomped on a few myself. In a calculated risk, I stayed a little toward the rear of the pack, on the principle that we'd run into trouble from the front first.

And then we heard screams coming from ahead and to the right, accompanied by a flickering light through the trees. It seemed that some of the kids hadn't needed my brand of bullshit to come to the same erroneous conclusion as I'd fostered on the ones in my group. Collectively, we paused, crouching low by instinct. I smelled fresh urine, and calculated that our chances of being detected in the dark had just gone up by a few percentage points.

"Should we go back?" whispered the same boy who'd wanted to hide.

"Nah, she'll be busy. We can sneak past," I murmured back. I held no ill-will toward any of my meat-shields—I meant, companions—and was perfectly happy for them to survive, just so long as I could go back to Brockton Bay. But if it came to a choice between me or them, I'd pick me every time. I mean, who wouldn't? I'd be an idiot to do anything else.

As far as I understood things, the current lineup for the Nine held my father (duh), Shatterbird, Crawler, Bonesaw, Hatchet Face, Mannequin, the Siberian and Burnscar (who I was pretty sure was the origin of the flickering light). I hoped Jack had told Burnscar not to burn the whole forest down, because that could make things tricky.

Of course, Shatterbird and my father were out of the running at the moment, and Burnscar indeed seemed to be busy, which just left Crawler (who was somewhere behind us), Bonesaw, Hatchet Face, Mannequin and the Siberian.

"Okay," said a guy up front. "This is stupid. We should stay right here. They're just—"

I never actually learned what 'they' were just doing, because at that moment, a blurred tiger-striped form came out of the treeline to the left and disappeared into the trees to the right. With her went the mouthy guy and some other person, who hadn't spoken until then. Now he was definitely speaking, or rather yelling for help.

It would only be a matter of time before the yelling would turn to screaming, and I didn't want our little group to get whittled down any more. At least, not until I was close enough to make a sprint for it. "Shit!" I said, trying to sound fearful. "It's our only chance! Let's go before she comes back!"

There was enough truth in that to get everyone moving. Logically, we should've left behind whoever had lost control of their bladder, but I wasn't overly worried. From the smell of it, a couple had done more than piss themselves when the Siberian did her attack run. I figured the smelly ones would be picked off first.

The screams faded into silence behind us as we made good time. We took a turn in the track, and one of the guys pointed. "Look!" he whispered. "Lights! The campsite's just over—aaaaaaahhhh!"

In one of those miracles of perfect timing, a pair of mechanical hands had shot out of the nearby shadows and grabbed both him and the guy next to me, right when he was in the middle of his inspirational speech. They were dragged offstage to the sound of rattling chains and teenage high-pitched pleading. Given that they were of no more use to me, I put them out of my mind.

There were only three of us left now, and I tried to stay in between the other two as much as possible. We snuck through the trees, drawing nearer and nearer to our goal. We did the last dozen yards crawling on our bellies. More and more carefully we crept, until we could see the flagpole clearly while still staying out of the light. There was a pile of dirt near the pole, which I figured had been excavated so the Nine could bury some of the kids to confuse the issue about what Bonesaw had done with the body parts of the others.

"Okay," I whispered. "When I say go, we go. If all three of us make a break at the same time, at least one of us has to get through. Ready? Three. Two."

"One," someone said behind me. I looked around, and realised that I'd totally lost sight of the situational picture. Kneeling just behind my feet with her blonde ringlets lit up by the campground lights and fresh blood gleaming on her dress, Bonesaw smiled happily at me. I was sure she wasn't any older than ten.

Well, crap.

"Hi," she said, with a little giggle. "Thanks for bringing these two right to me." She patted the squirming mounds on either side of her. I looked again and realised these were the two guys who'd gotten this far with me. They were being wrapped up with some sort of gleaming cord by what looked like large mechanical spiders.

"Uh …you're welcome?" I wasn't quite sure what to say. She had me dead to rights, and I could see another spider on her back with its legs resting along her arms. The question was, why wasn't that spider on me?

"Oh, that's okay," she said in the same bouncy tone. "Now, you're probably wondering why I haven't got spiders on you as well."

I rolled over on to my side, the better to look back at her. Also, if I needed to throw the iron bar at her, my arm was now free. "The thought had crossed my mind."

Her smile widened. It was almost impossible to creep me out, but she managed it. Just a little, anyway. I wanted to ask her how she pulled it off. I had it on good authority from Emma that smiling was not my strong point.

"Well, it's simple," she said, with a hair-toss that I couldn't have pulled off in a thousand years. "I'm supposed to be a good girl and do what Mr Jack says. But you're Mr Jack's actual daughter, so he'll be spending more time with you than with me. Now, I could kill you or fix your brain so you let me spend more time with Mr Jack, but he'd know I did it and get mad at me, so I'm just gonna let you go."

"Won't he get mad at you for this, too?" I asked.

"Pfft." She wrinkled her nose. "He wants you alive. This is the best way for that to happen."

"Oh, okay." I turned back toward the campground. "Any idea where the others are?"

"Not really," she admitted. "But my spiders can feel Crawler coming this way."

That was as good a reason as any to make a bolt for it. Coming to my feet, I dashed out into the light. As I did, I threw the iron bar overarm toward one of the cabins. With any luck, it would distract the attention of any of the Nine lurking on site. I only needed a few seconds, and then I'd be safe.

The blood roared in my ears as I sprinted across the open ground toward the flagpole. Ten steps and I'd be safe. Nine. The bar clattered against the wood of the cabin. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four.

And the the pile of dirt erupted beside me. Even as I tried to twist away, a huge hand lashed out and clamped on to my ankle. I fell, sprawling, the switchblade flying from my hand. My hands reached out, straining. I felt the slightest brush of the flagpole against my fingertip before I was pulled away again. Dirt spilling off of his oversized, scarred body, Hatchet face stood upright, hoisting me by one ankle like a prize fish.

"Look what I caught!" he bellowed. "Our latest member!"

"No!" I shouted. "I touched the pole! I won!"

"No, you didn't, little girl," Hatchet Face taunted me. "You lost. I caught you."

I was not one for strong emotions. They had no place in my brain. I barely felt anger or hate. It was too much effort to go through. This was why the surge of frustration took me by surprise. I'd been so close to winning—I'd actually, legitimately won—and Hatchet Face was being a big cheating cheater! Now I'd be taken away from Brockton Bay, from where I wanted to be, just because Hatchet Face didn't know how to play fair.

I closed my eyes for a long moment, and when I opened them, everything had changed. I still felt anger and frustration toward Hatchet Face, but there was something different about him. Something different about the world.

Projecting out from Hatchet Face for several yards in all directions was a dirty-grey field that seemed to form a spherical shape around him. At the same time, a glowing red energy wove over his skin and throughout his body.

In contrast, I had a tight bubble around my head, made up of three different colours. One was white, the second sky-blue, and the third a slate-grey. Waves of Hatchet Face's dirty-grey field surged against the bubbles, but they held without fail.

The butterfly knife slid from my pocket and I snatched at it, but missed. Next to go was the clasp-knife, but I caught that. Hatchet Face laughed at me as I struggled to open it—the swivel almost certainly needed oiling.

I couldn't push out the sky-blue bubble or the slate-grey one, but I could push the white one out. It didn't do anything on its own, but I quickly realised that if I locked the white bubble on to either of the other two, I could use it to push them out.

Following my instincts, I locked the white bubble to the grey bubble, and pushed it outward. Hatchet Face's dirty-grey field pushed inward, making it harder to expand my bubbles. But I pushed outward anyway, revealing two interesting things.

The first was that as the slate-grey bubble expanded to cover more of my body, a red weaving of energy could be seen under my own skin. Not as intense as with Hatchet Face, but it was definitely there. I had a strong suspicion that I knew what this meant. A second later, as my arms were covered by it, the suspicion was confirmed as I suddenly found it a lot easier to open the clasp knife.

And then, as the slate-grey bubble expanded past my own body, the red energy in Hatchet Face's arm was pushed back. If that meant what I thought it did …

Pulling an abdominal crunch with my newfound strength, I reached up and slashed the blade down the leg of my pants. The tough fabric parted and I dropped the clasp-knife just in time to catch the machete as it came slithering out of its hiding-place, the wrapping sliced through. Hatchet Face's eyes widened and he dropped his axe. In a much more literal way than my usual ability to figure people out, I could see what he was about to do—shout a warning and grab for the machete—but before he could act on it, I twisted away and swung the machete at the arm that was holding me in the air. The blade was sharp; I'd made sure of it. It hit Hatchet Face's forearm, just inside my slate-grey bubble—and went straight through it.

I fell to the ground and rolled to my feet. Hatchet Face staggered back, his mouth still open but no words coming out. He stared as blood from the stump of his arm sprayed across my face. I wiped it off with my free hand and took a few steps away from him. Slapping the rough wood of the flagpole to leave a bloody handprint there, I turned back in triumph.

"I win."


End of Part Three

Part Four

 

[Ack]

Crossposted from SB:

Okay, as amusing as it is to watch people spitball ideas about what power set she has, I may as well put you out of your misery (as Jack Slash would put it )

Three sources:
Broadcast (bud)
Queen Administrator (ping)
Power Stomp! [my totally-not-made-up name for Hatchet Face's shard] (ping)

Power 1 - Trump: Nullify power (slate grey bubble) - PS! [Natural state is close around her head, protecting her mind from power effects.]
Note: will nullify powers in whatever part of the target's body is within the bubble. Once the bubble covers the target's brain, the target's powers are entirely nullified for the duration.

Power 2 - Master: Gentle Persuasion (sky blue bubble) - Bc + QA [works on anyone, including normals, inside the bubble; natural state is close around her head]
Note: She needs to speak out loud to use this. The power will make people more likely to follow her lead, or act on what she says, but there is no actual compulsion.

Power 3 - Trump: Expand Power Range - QA [white bubble; natural state is close around her head]
Note: This power can only be used to expand either the Nullify Power bubble or the Gentle Persuasion bubble at any one time.

Power 4 - Thinker: Detect Carrier Wave - Bc [She can consciously see the effect ranges of invisible powers, and where powers will take effect once activated]
Note: The visual effect of this will not obscure sightline of real-world items.

Power 5 - Brute: Minor Brute - PS! [Not to the level Hatchet Face is, but as strong as a muscular man.]
Note: This makes her much more durable, especially to blunt trauma. She will be pretty well immune to knives, being hit by cars, and being thrown off of buildings.

Power 6 - Thinker: See Intent - Bc + QA [Lets her see what people are immediately considering doing in relation to her. Works on normals as well.]
Note: In conjunction with Detect Carrier Wave, she will be able to see where powers are likely to strike when directed at her, and react accordingly.


Note also that I didn't go through the whole "if she gets this stimulus, she gets this power" routine. If anyone wants to retro-engineer it, feel free.

Click to shrink...

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter


Part Four: Twisted Sisters


[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


I lounged on the porch of the big cabin, eating a chocolate bar and drinking a can of soda. The chair I was sitting in was leaned back against the wall, making me wish there was a rail or something I could put my feet up on. But there wasn't, so I just had to make do with crossing them at the ankle and admiring the coloured splashes on my sneakers. When the novelty of that wore off, I raised my eyes and watched as my father strolled up to the cabin.

Even before I got my powers, I would've been able to tell he was pissed. Now, it was even more obvious, no matter how much he tried to hide it. I took a bite of my chocolate bar, and another drink of soda.

I knew perfectly well that soda was bad for me. But there'd been a whole fridge full of the stuff, with a glass front. When Shatterbird did her little trick, that left all the soda gradually warming up. I was just doing my bit to make sure not all of it went to waste. It didn't help that there'd been more than a few glass bottles in the fridge, which meant there was a minor ocean of soda on the floor in there, with a whole lot of bottle caps floating forlornly in it. Thus, the coloured splashes on my sneakers.

Jack Slash stopped in front of me and put his hands on his hips in a pose which he probably thought was intimidating. "And what do you have to say for yourself?"

I couldn't resist. Straightening out in the chair, I clenched my stomach muscles and let out the loudest belch I could manage. His jaw muscles twitched slightly and he breathed in deeply through his nostrils. I got the impression he wasn't used to having to control his temper like this. If he looked at it the right way, I was doing him a favour. This was good practice, after all.

Finally, he cleared his throat. I pretended to look attentive. The rest of the Nine had gathered in a group behind him, and I found it a little more interesting to look at their powers than pay too much attention to him.

Jack's knife power showed up as a laser-straight yellow line that led out from the knife he held in his hand. I wasn't sure what his other power was supposed to do, but it took the form of soft white fluffy clouds drifting outward from him. They strengthened when he talked, but even then they hit my grey bubble and just dissolved. Interspersed with them were blue marble-sized balls that spread outward from him in all directions. When they hit the others, they returned to him with bits of odd colour in them. The ones that came for me also dissolved when they hit the bubble. I wasn't sure what the clouds or the marbles were about, or if he even knew he was making them.

I couldn't really see Bonesaw's power, except for odd flickers of green around her scalpel as she worked on some of the ... well, I would've called them 'survivors', but they'd been captured so survival wasn't exactly guaranteed. Tinkers, I supposed, didn't show up well to my power.

I'd already seen Hatchet Face's power, with the dirty-grey field and the red lines through his body. He had a bulky bandage over the stump of his arm, and he kept a careful eye on me. Like with my father, I gathered that I'd given him a new experience. It was a pity that neither of them seemed to appreciate it.

Burnscar's power manifested as a flickering orange-yellow field that surrounded her hands. It didn't look particularly urgent, so I figured it was where she could project her fire if she felt like it, not where she intended to do it. Which was a good thing, because that area included the cabin where I was sitting. Shatterbird just had a spreading field that went a long way out, with a purple-red tinge, which I figured was her glass-control field. She had a bandage on her throat and glass was floating around her again, so I guessed Bonesaw had fixed her throat. Good for her. Maybe she'd learn from her new experience, too.

Crawler was just a big dark bulk in the night, glowing mainly red with a kind of yellow-orange cloud around each of his mouths. I wasn't quite sure what that was about, and I didn't really care. Mannequin didn't seem to glow at all, but that was probably because he was a Tinker who wasn't doing any Tinkering. And the Siberian had a weird negative glow, just a red outline around her body, with a wispy blue-white cord running off through the trees. It was pretty but like with Crawler, it didn't affect me, so I didn't care about that either.

"Well, it seems we have good news," he said brightly, trying a different tack. "You've already triggered with powers. That means Bonesaw won't have to try to make you trigger." The white clouds were piling out of his mouth and crowding around me. I watched with mild interest as they fizzled out of existence at the border of my grey bubble. More blue marbles manifested and suffered the same fate. "So, you qualify for full membership in the Nine. Given the special circumstances, we can even waive the initiation requirements. What do you say?"

I tilted back the can and drained the last of the soda, then tossed the can over my shoulder through the window into the cabin. Distantly, I heard the splash as it hit the lake of soda. Letting my chair fall forward so the front legs clunked on to the wooden porch, I stood up and stretched. I'd taken the opportunity to splash water over my face when I got the soda, to get rid of the feeling of hardening blood clinging to my skin.

"No," I mused. "I really don't think so. It's been interesting meeting you, but I'm not really interested in being a …" I paused, trying to think of the exact word I needed.

"Murderhobo?" he filled in, with a smile that didn't reach as far as his eyes. I got the impression he was less amused than he was letting on. "It's a funny word, but I'm going to have to ask you not to use it any more." More white clouds billowed out at me, but not a one of them came close to my face.

"I wasn't actually going to say that," I said. "I was thinking more like 'roving serial killer'." Tilting my head, I tried to give him the same sort of smile that Bonesaw used. "Come to think of it, 'murderhobo' does kinda fit, after all."

As I said the words, I saw the line of his blade blurring up toward me, even as it remained in place. I let the iron bar slide out of my sleeve as I kept track of where he intended to cut me. Nowhere lethal, but I would've gotten some nasty scarring out of it, and of course it would've been a humbling lesson that I wasn't anywhere near as good as I thought.

Except that I was. The blade swung in my direction, the bright yellow track scoring a path across the wood behind me with the sound of splinters springing free. Almost casually, I raised the bar to intercept the beam just as it would've crossed over my arm, then moved it to match the path of the damaging effect and contain it. Flakes of rust chipped away from the metal as Jack frowned with incredulity, looking down at the blade in his hand and then at my unmarked clothes and skin.

"So, it appears my daughter thinks she's smart," he said, addressing the assembled Nine behind him. "Let's see how good she really is." There was a spark of anger in his eye now.

Again, I saw his intent ahead of time. This time, he was going to swipe the cutting beam back and forth across my body faster than he thought I could react. But I acted first, locking the grey bubble on to the white one and pushing outward. It was a lot easier than when I'd been inside Hatchet Face's aura, and I was protected from head to toe before his attack ever reached me.

Still, the expression on his face was almost funny when I waved the iron bar back and forth randomly in front of me. He redoubled his efforts, watching the position of the bar and moving the knife to avoid it. His expression of confusion and irritation only intensified as my clothing remained whole and my skin failed to split. Of course, he couldn't see how his yellow knife-beam ended at my grey bubble, but I could. All he knew was that his normally infallible attack wasn't living up to expectations.

"Seriously?" I asked. "Is that all you got?" I was pretty sure I didn't really need the bubble. If I was right about the red energy weave, and I was pretty sure I had it nailed down, his knife beam would've done zip-all to me, but I didn't really feel like letting him wreck my clothes.

He ceased his attack on me, about five seconds before I would've smacked him on the wrist for being a dick. Of course, I was going to use the iron bar. Nothing says 'you fucked up' more vividly than a broken wrist.

Well, maybe two broken wrists.

I had to wonder if he'd pulled this shit on the other members, and why they let him get away with it if he did. Maybe the white clouds or the blue marbles had something to do with it. Some kind of Master effect? But they didn't seem like they were being puppeted.

Expressions chased one another over his face; confusion, irritation, resignation. Finally, he grunted and slid the knife up into his sleeve again. "You're a very annoying girl," he muttered peevishly. "I suppose I should have expected this. You're my child, after all."

"Well, you're not exactly father of the year, either," I retorted. "Or the month, for that matter." I rolled my eyes. "Seriously, my first real chance to get my head together, and you've got to stick your nose in with some twisted idea of father-daughter bonding. Not even Dad pulled that shit on me. I'm not joining the Nine. I'm going back to Brockton Bay."

He smirked, giving me advance warning of what he was going to say next. "Well, I can't force you to join. But you're going to have to make your own way back. We're not a taxi service."

"I could take her there," offered Crawler. "Your kid's pretty cool, Jack. I never seen anyone surprise the fuck out of Hatchet like that before. Or you."

My father turned, a look of real anger on his face. "No!" he snapped. "You're not taking her to Brockton Bay, or anywhere else. If she's not joining the Nine, she's on her own."

I could've sworn Crawler recoiled with a hurt look on his monstrous face. His reaction was a lot milder than I'd expected, given that he probably would've stomped anyone else to death, or eaten them, or both. But as the white clouds from my father surrounded him, he accepted the abuse without a murmur. I had to wonder about Master effects again.

"It's okay, Crawler," I assured him. "I appreciate it. And I'll figure something out. Even if my father is being a total douchenozzle about all this."

Jack turned angrily toward me and opened his mouth. I gave him the finger. He stepped toward me and grabbed me by the shoulder. "You don't talk to me like—"

I hit him under the breastbone with the heel of my hand, knocking him off his feet. He sprawled on the ground about two yards away from the porch, a look of astonishment on his face.

"New rule," I said mildly. "If you aren't gonna be giving me a lift, you don't get to tell me how to talk." I wasn't overly worried about getting back to Brockton Bay; my exploration of the cabin had located a landline phone. But he didn't need to know about that. Mainly because he'd probably cut the line if he got the chance.

"Whatever," he grunted, climbing to his feet. "Just stay out of our way. Everyone, collect what supplies you can find. As soon as you're done, we're moving out." He dusted himself off and shot me a glare. "If you haven't changed your mind by the time we go, we're leaving you behind."

It struck me that he wasn't used to having people defy him. The more it happened, the more pissed he got. For my part, I didn't give a shit about what people thought of me. The more people tried to tell me what to do, the more inclined I was to tell them to fuck off.

"Suits me," I said, and stepped off the porch and walked past him, ignoring the tension in his posture. Bonesaw's eyes widened as I approached her, but I tucked the iron bar back up my sleeve and gestured at her latest creation. "Need a hand?"

<><>​

"Just hold your finger there for a moment, please?" Riley waited until I was applying the correct pressure, then tied off the stitches. The subject of her 'surgery' twitched and tried to mumble something, but she jabbed it with a probe until it shut up. "Thanks. So what's it like living in Brockton Bay all the time? What's your other dad like? Do you go to school? Have you killed anyone there yet?"

I had to smile, at least slightly. Once Bonesaw—Riley Grace, as she informed me after we'd been chatting for a while—was sure I was serious about not going with them, she'd opened right up. For a notorious mass-murderer, she was quite the chatterbox. And she asked the weirdest questions. I figured spending the last four years as a murderhobo had led to an unusual worldview.

"Well, it's Brockton Bay," I said. "We've got gangs, we've got capes, we've got people. I guess it's worse than some places, better than others." I raised my eyebrows in her direction. "You've traveled more than me, so you'd know better about that sort of thing. Dad's well … Dad. He's okay as a dad. Goes to work, remembers my birthday, stuff like that."

I took a drink of the soda I had sitting beside me. Riley had asked the Siberian to fetch us drinks. She'd picked bottled water, because she said good girls didn't drink soda. I hadn't argued. Whatever a 'good girl' was, I was pretty sure I didn't fit the definition. "Yeah, I go to school. I'll be going to high school in a couple of months. Winslow. They say it's pretty shitty, but that sort of thing doesn't bother me. And I haven't killed anyone yet. Waiting for the right time and place and person, you know? I want to to be someone special. Not just a random nobody."

"Yeah, I get that," she sighed. "I didn't get to really have a special first kill. I think he was a cop who tried to shoot Mr Jack, then he tried to shoot me, then the Siberian caught him. She broke all his fingers and arms and legs, and gave him to me to play with. I was so nervous, I forgot to ask him his name. And then he was dead, and it was over. I used his brain in my first spider, but that one didn't last very long."

I heard a snort, and turned around. Shatterbird was standing nearby with a weird expression on her face. "What?" I asked.

Normally I could figure out why people acted oddly around me, but I had no idea what was going on in her head right then. Slowly, she shook her head, still with that expression on her face, and walked off.

Riley and I looked at each other, then at the Siberian, who was face-palming. "Do you have any idea what that was about?" I asked.

"None whatsoever," she said, and sighed. "I just don't get adults, sometimes."

I put my hand on her shoulder. Observation had taught me people found that sort of thing comforting. "Don't worry. I bet you've had plenty of cool kills since then."

"Well, I've definitely killed a lot of people," she agreed, cheering right up. "It's kind of what we do, in the Nine. I've tried to make it mean something, you know? Otherwise I'd be just some common murderer and like Mr Jack says, we're not common murderers. We're uncommon murderers."

"I can definitely see that." We admired her handiwork as it tried to shamble around. It was still getting used to its odd limb placement, but it would probably work things out in the end. "Actually, there was something I was meaning to ask you. A favour, really."

"Silly Taylor," she said with a smile. "We're practically sisters, and you're letting me stay as Mr Jack's favourite. What's a favour between sisters?"

I guessed when she put things like that, it made sense. "Well, I was wondering if you could show me how you smile like that. All creepy, I mean. I'm not good with doing smiles, but I'd like to learn how to do that one."

"Oh, sure," she said immediately. "Oooh, I could also do other things to make you seem creepy, if you want." Her face lit up at the idea.

I was definitely interested. "What did you have in mind?"

She gave me that creepy smile again. I leaned in to listen.

<><>​

"How you doing there?" she asked, leaning in close to my open mouth, her hands busy with her surgery tools.

I couldn't speak, mainly because I had two different things sticking down my throat, and my jaw was dislocated. Riley had shown me how to do that, after injecting the inside of my mouth with a muscle relaxant. So instead, I gave a thumb's up.

Off to the side, the Siberian watched us both intently, barely moving a muscle. I had to approve of her as a mother-figure. With her around, Riley didn't have to worry about anyone trying to hurt her.

"Good, good," she murmured. "I'm just dilating your throat so I can get at your larynx … that's good. You're an amazing patient."

I didn't try to respond. The itching from the corners of my mouth had nearly stopped, for which I was grateful. It had been a pain to cut them back an inch on either side, like Riley had suggested. She'd started cutting on the inside of my cheeks, but hit a point where her scalpel simply wouldn't part the flesh.

Eventually she'd politely asked the Siberian to do the job, which the silent tiger-striped woman had achieved using the nail on her pinky finger. It'd only taken a second and it hurt a bit, but the numbing agent Riley had already injected kicked in, and it was all good again. She said that with the treatment she'd given them, they were going to be healed over properly by the time I got back home.

It was the weirdest feeling, lying on my back with my head hanging off the edge of the porch while Riley did surgery way down at the back of my throat. This was so the blood wouldn't run down into my lungs, of course. My sinuses were going to be full of the stuff, but that was something I'd have to deal with later.

Normally, she would've gone into my larynx from the outside, but none of her cutting tools even scratched my skin, and when the Siberian ripped someone's throat out it tended to be irreversible. But apparently I was still squishy and cuttable on the inside, so she was going with keyhole surgery. I was fine with her doing it this way. Being able to change my voice from really high-pitched to normal to really low-pitched at will was gonna let me be so damn creepy.

"It'll only be a few minutes, and we'll be done," she said happily, but I wasn't paying attention any more. Because behind Riley, my upside-down view of the area in front of the cabin now included Jack Slash, my douchenozzle father.

"Wrong. She was done five minutes ago," he said, bringing his hand from behind his back to reveal my machete. I'd wondered where that had gotten to. "Daughter or no, she's too much of a danger—"

Oh, for fuck's sake. I just got comfortable. It wasn't even as though he could hurt me … or could he? He'd only tried with a knife before. The yellow cutting line for the machete looked positively vicious. I had my grey field compressed as hard as I could so I didn't cut off Riley's power, which meant that only my red weave was protecting me.

The iron bar was in my hand. It was an awkward angle, but I flipped it up and threw it more or less backward at him, as hard as I could. I didn't even expect to hit him, just make him duck long enough for me to get my grey field up and running again. There was a solid meaty chunk, followed by an equally solid thud, then Jack disappeared from my view.

Rolling on to my side, jaw still dislocated and surgery tools still protruding from my mouth, I propped myself up on to my elbow and looked at what I'd done. Jack Slash lay on his back, the machete beside his hand. Four inches of the foot-long iron bar protruded from his left eyesocket. The Siberian crouched beside him and touched the iron bar, then pulled her hand away again. Then she turned her head and looked at Riley questioningly.

I met Riley's eyes, then we both stared at Jack again.

Whoops.


End of Part Four

Part Five

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Five: Brain Donor



[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Imagine, if you will, the classic scene in the movie where the rough and ready hero of the piece is facing off against a bunch of street trash. Doesn't matter which movie it is. We've all seen one like it. The scene is such a timeless one that they replicated it in every movie they could, for a while there. They're even doing it with cape movies, now.

The scene goes like this: the hero, alone and looking outmatched and overwhelmed. There's usually a day's worth of artistic stubble on his face. Facing him: the aggressor, huge, intimidating, probably tattooed. They face each other, sizing one another up. This gives the audience time to start feeling fear for the hero.

And then the bad guy comes in with a rush. He's surely going to destroy the hero. The fight will be over before it's begun. The hero barely has time to move before his foe is on top of him. There's a flurry of blows, then the hero steps aside and the aggressor falls flat on his face.

The gang laughs at first, because everyone loves a good pratfall, and surely their guy'll be up in a moment, to hand the hero a well-deserved beating. And then the laughter becomes strained, as the big guy doesn't move. Finally, as eyes travel from the fallen foe to the hero standing over him, the laughter dies away altogether, and the gang begins to feel worry for the first time.

<><>​

That was the look I saw in Riley's eyes, right about then. She literally could not believe what she was seeing. It wasn't hard to understand why. The Slaugherhouse Nine had been around for decades, always with Jack Slash at the helm. No matter what the forces of law and order—and the forces of crime and chaos, for that matter—had thrown at him, he'd always ducked and dodged it, bounced to his feet, and annihilated his adversaries. To them, he must've seemed indestructible, unstoppable, immutable. A force of nature. Now he lay on his back, eight inches of iron bar wedged into his skull.

I saw one foot twitch, which was a pretty basic sign of life, but it was enough. Pointing at the foot, I snapped my fingers. This was fortunately enough to bring Riley out of whatever fugue she'd fallen into.

"What have you done, Taylor?" she demanded. "What were you—"

I snapped my fingers and pointed, again. With Riley's surgical tools down my throat and my jawbone dislocated, it wasn't that I didn't want to talk; I physically wasn't capable of it.

What was I thinking? I rhetorically completed her question. I was thinking I didn't want to find out if he can still hack me up with a machete. Not that I'd wanted him to die. Okay, he'd been acting like a total tool and yeah, Jack Slash would make a pretty boss first kill, but my own father? That would've made things kind of weird.

"Oh, crapola!" she gasped, seeing the twitch in his foot at last. "He's still alive! Siberian, make him invincible, then pull out the bar!" She jumped off the porch, leaving me with her surgical tools stuck down my throat. Fortunately, she hadn't started cutting on me yet. Small mercies.

I wanted to be able to talk, and I was starting to get a case of dry-throat, so I gingerly tugged at the gadgets. One didn't want to move, so I pulled the other one out, which ended up being a combo periscope, scalpel and flashlight. Its friend still refused to leave where it was until I pressed a lever by accident, and it collapsed into itself. In hindsight, that was what she'd been using to dilate my throat.

With those out of the way, I pressed both hands to my jaw and tried to remember how Riley had coached me in how to dislocate it. It took a little work and a lot of pressure, but it suddenly popped back into place with a click that nearly deafened me. "Ugh," I said. "Ah."

Looking around, I saw the other members of the Nine standing around, watching Riley as she worked on Jack. On their faces—well, on the faces that were visible and could actually show normal human emotions—I saw a mirror of what Riley had shown when Jack first went down, plus a smidge of something else. This wasn't surprise, or even anger. These guys looked lost.

"Hey, kid." That was Crawler, his multiple mouths making any observation into a bizarre harmony with himself. "You do this?"

"I didn't mean to." I didn't say it defensively. Defensiveness would've required a consciousness of guilt. I'd never felt guilty in my life, and I wasn't about to start. "He came at me with a machete, and I threw the bar at him. It was an accident."

"Well, shit." That was Burnscar, her voice as devoid of emotion as mine. We hadn't bonded over our shared lack of giving-a-fuck because we couldn't give a fuck. "What the fuck are we going to do now?"

"If you will all be quiet," Riley said, her voice tense with concentration, "I might just be able to save his life." She reached out and took something from her surgical case. "Bring me a brain. I need a brain to take matter from. I need to patch the gaps."

"How about hers?" called out Hatchet Face. I looked up at him, just knowing who he was referring to. Sure enough, he was pointing at me. "She did the damage, she can pony up the brainmeats to fix it."

"Not fucking likely," I retorted. "Jack was stupid enough to start shit, he deserved what he got." I scanned their reactions to what I was saying, and it wasn't promising. Hatchet Face and Shatterbird were openly aggressive, while Mannequin and Crawler seemed to be standing back and watching how things fell out. The Siberian glanced from me to Riley and back again, as if silently asking her what to do.

Fuck it. There was nothing for it but to see what the blue bubble did. I locked the white bubble on to it and pushed it out to cover myself. Maybe it was a force field or something.

"Well, you are the most convenient," Riley said. I had no time at all to react before I was both flat on my back and face to face with the Siberian. Her knee pressed into my chest, and her immovable grip held my arms to the boards of the porch. There was no emotion on her face at all, which I was cool with. What I was less cool with was the fact that she'd gone straight through my blue bubble without slowing down. There hadn't even been a humorous 'pop'.

Not a force field, then.

"Relax," Riley said, getting up and coming toward me. In one hand she held a small electrical device with a tiny, sharp-looking circular saw-blade. In the other, she had something that looked uncomfortably like an ice-cream scoop. "We'll be done in a moment, and I won't take anything important." She pressed a button on the device, and the little blade spun up with a high-pitched whee.

"Brute, remember?" I said, thumping my skull against the wooden boards. Trying to headbutt the Siberian probably wasn't going to work. "That thing won't even make a dent."

"True," she said, tilting her head. Turning off the cutter, she stowed it in a pocket of her apron. "It's a good thing I've got someone here who can cut through anything then, isn't it?"

"Huh. Point." I still wasn't a fan of donating any bits of my brain to Jack Slash, so I pushed out my blue bubble some more, in the hope that it would hold Riley back. She stepped right through, so there went that idea. I was starting to run low. The Siberian let go my right arm and held up her sharp pinky nail for me to see. I had no doubt that if I didn't do something really smart in the next few seconds, the unstoppable naked tiger-striped woman was going to commence unzipping the top of my skull like someone pulling the top off of a microwaved meal. Only with fewer sludgy carrots involved.

Which meant the time for talking was nearly over; if my next gambit didn't work, I was gonna have to push my grey field out to nullify the Siberian's strength, then make a run for it. The only reason I hadn't already done it already was because then I'd have the whole Nine after me, and keeping up either field was a little tiring. I knew for a fact that I'd run out of puff before Crawler did. It was time for the proverbial Hail Mary pass. "Just out of curiosity, do you really need human brains, or would any brain do?"

On the point of kneeling beside me, Riley stopped and looked at me with interest. Fortunately, the interest was directed at my words, not at the contents of my skull. "I guess not. Did you have a better idea?"

"Well, I was thinking, there's plenty of squirrels and chipmunks in these woods." I wasn't good at emoting, but I did my best to sound as though this was the best idea in the world. "One of those would fill the gap, right? And you wouldn't have to go digging through my brain. I'm kinda attached to it, you know? It's where I do all my thinking."

"Hm. That's actually a good point." She headed back toward Jack Slash. I was beginning to get an idea of what the blue bubble was about, so I started pushing it out as far as it would go. Leaning over, she looked into the cavity. "Yeah, I think a squirrel could just about supply enough brain matter for what I need." She turned to look at the Siberian. "Do you think you could catch one for me?"

"You've got to be shitting me," Hatchet Face said scornfully, just before the blue bubble expanded far enough to encompass him and Shatterbird. "Squirrels?"

The weight on my chest vanished. Siberian ran along the length of the porch, bisected the rail at the end with her body, and vanished into the darkness. I heard rustling in the woods, and the crash of at least one falling tree.

Shatterbird looked more dubious than disbelieving. "Is that even possible? Will he start doing things like climbing trees and storing nuts for the winter?"

"Pfft, no." Riley rolled her eyes. "Brains don't work like that. He's lost his eye, and the bar severely damaged the part of his brain that governs his sense of balance. If I wire that part of a squirrel's brain in there, it'll be able to take over, and his sense of balance will be better than ever. Apart from that, I can use other brain matter to patch some gaps. He'll be better than ever in a week or so. Oh, his language centres were also damaged slightly, so he'll be aphasic for a little bit, but I'm sure we'll manage."

I sat myself up and scooted my butt over so I was leaning back against the porch post. "So, are you gonna give him a new eye as well, or just slap a patch on it and call him One-Eyed Jack?"

"Hah!" The multi-toned bark of laughter came from Crawler. "I like that. We should do that one."

It seemed I was out of danger for the moment. The blue bubble apparently made people more likely to listen to me and think about what I was saying. It wasn't exactly Mastery—Hatchet Face didn't look any friendlier toward me—but at least the others weren't calling for Riley to dissect my brain any more.

I was fine with this, but it basically solidified my decision to go back to Brockton Bay. The Nine might joke around with me, but when it came down to a choice between me and my father, he'd win every time unless I got my blue bubble up in time. And I wasn't at all sure about how well it would work on him. I had a sneaking suspicion that if someone really wanted to hurt me, it wouldn't be enough to stop them from trying.

It occurred to me that I could simply kill him and take over the Nine—deliberately, I mean—and avoid the problem that way, but there were a couple of problems there as well. First, it would set a terrible precedent, and I couldn't guarantee that Riley wouldn't murder me in my sleep. Second, I really didn't want to be a murderhobo (murdering people inside Brockton Bay was fine; that way, I'd know where I was sleeping every night). Third, I still felt that claiming my father as my first kill felt more than a little weird. I'd pass on that whole deal, kaythanksbye.

"I dunno yet." Riley raised her head and looked around as more rustling heralded the Siberian's return. The tiger-striped form bounded out of the darkness and landed precisely beside Jack's prone form, going from high-speed movement to absolute stillness in an instant. I kind of wished I could pull off shit like that. Maybe I could; I could definitely practise. But I'd also keep my clothes on. The naked look just wasn't me.

The squirrel squeaked and struggled in her implacable grip, right up until she snapped its neck with a tiny krak. With the same pinky nail that she would've used to open my skull, she popped the top off the squirrel's head and offered it gravely to Riley.

I watched with interest as the bio-Tinker accepted the tiny corpse and dug the brain out of its bony cradle. She moved with quick, sure movements, slicing the bloodstained organ apart and implanting it piece by piece into the hole inside Jack's head. It took far less time than I would've thought; only minutes later, so it seemed, she was packing cotton wool into the eyesocket itself.

"So that's it?" I asked. "He's fixed?" Even though I knew what she could do, it hardly seemed credible. And with a squirrel's brain, no less.

"Not exactly fixed," she said primly, tossing the remains of the squirrel over her shoulder. Crawler snapped it out of the air and ate it while Riley wiped her hands off on her apron. "But he'll get better. Couple of days, he'll be able to walk. In a week or two, he'll be talking again. Once we're communicating properly, he'll let me know what he wants done about his eye."

"Oh, okay," I said. "Mind you, he'll still probably be pissed at me that I nailed him with that bar." He'd almost certainly be more pissed if it ever got out that Riley had fixed his brain with bits of squirrel, but that wasn't really something I was concerned about.

"Yeah, true." She smirked as she wrapped a bandage around his head. I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd been thinking about the squirrel thing, too. "We'll have him away from here by then, and you'll be back in Brockton Bay."

"Works for me." I got up and headed over, and helped her tie off the bandage. At some point, I'd let the blue bubble contract back to its normal size, but the others weren't renewing hostilities, which was fine with me. Crisis over, I figured. "So, hey. Still up to modifying my vocal cords?"

"Sure," she said. "Sorry about the whole brain thing. Just seemed like a good idea at the time, you know?" As she spoke, she helped me lie down on the porch where I'd been before my father tried his sneaky shit. "So tell me. Did you aim for his eye, or was that just a lucky shot?"

"Pure luck from beginning to end," I admitted as I let my head fall back. Holding up a finger, I wriggled around a little to get comfortable. "That's better. Yeah, I just figured I'd make him duck or something. Never in a million years thought I'd actually get him like that."

Riley laughed out loud. "Well, just between you and me? I'm not gonna tell him that. If he knew he got taken out by accident, it'd make him madder than if people found out that he's got bits of squirrel brain in his head."

I almost smiled at that. "I won't tell if you don't."

"Cool. Now, can you dislocate your jaw again for me, like I showed you?"

Obediently, I wedged my thumbs in behind my jawbone and pushed. With a loud click, it popped out of place again.

"Okay," said Riley. "Just hold still …"

I let myself relax as she pushed my jaw up out of the way, and slid the dilator down my throat again. Of all the things I'd thought I would be doing at this point in time, letting Bonesaw do surgery on my throat in the middle of the night didn't even come close to making the list. All the same, it was kinda fun.

Still, as interesting as summer camp was proving to be, I couldn't wait to get back to Brockton Bay.



End of Part Five

Part Six

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Six: Back to Civilisation


[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


The Next Day

I shook hands with Riley, ignoring the prodding of the retractable needle in her palm that kept trying to inject me with something. I was pretty sure she wasn't doing it on purpose. Or maybe she meant it as a joke. Which gave me ideas of my own.

"It was nice meeting you," she said, smiling shyly at me. "And I'm really glad you want to go back to Brockton Bay."

I knew she didn't want me around to take her spot as Jack's favourite, but I didn't take offence. My father could go screw himself, as far as I was concerned. Riley was happy with him, and I wouldn't have been. Or rather, I would've gotten irritated after a while and tried to kill him for real. I might even have succeeded, and then I'd be faced with the choice of either taking over the Nine or going on the run from them, and then where would I be? Not sleeping in my nice warm bed every night, that's where.

"Eh, Dad would probably miss me after a while," I said. "It's been interesting, though. Especially when we went swimming."

"While it lasted," she agreed with a roll of her eyes.

That morning, I'd wandered out of Chipmunk cabin—rather, Honey Badger cabin, after Riley had asked the Siberian to change the name for me—to find the Nine were still there. Riley had decided that Jack needed twelve hours of rest before he could be moved. We still had a few hours to go till midday, so we'd decided to go for a swim. After we located bathing suits that fitted us, we'd splashed around squealing in the chilly water for a while. The Siberian joined us (minus bathing suit, of course) but just stood there in the water, watching but not joining in. Riley loved the water slide; by my count, she'd come down it no less than thirty-four times, to my twenty-five. So I like water-slides, too. Sue me.

The rest of the Nine had taken a little time to notice us, but when they did, Shatterbird and Burnscar also wandered over in bathing suits. However, they didn't get to dip so much as a toe in before Crawler apparently launched himself from orbit into the pool with a multi-toned bellow of "CANNONBALL!"

Let me tell you: when Crawler pulls a cannonball, he puts his all into it. And he has a lot of 'all'. Half the water in the pool went AWOL, the slide was destroyed, Burnscar and Shatterbird were drenched and I found myself skidding to a halt twenty yards away. We located Riley on top of the main cabin, laughing so hard she could barely hold on.

Of course, Burnscar and Shatterbird then spent the next fifteen minutes chasing a still-cackling Crawler around the camp, doing more property damage than had taken place over the entire previous night. Which meant that I was the one who had to climb up and get Riley down, after I discovered that my newfound Brute strength didn't mean I could jump that high. Or rather, I had to climb down with her after the Siberian helpfully tossed me up on the roof. This also put an end to any more thoughts of using the pool; even if we'd been able to repair the slide and refill the pool in the short time they were here for, Crawler's acidic drool would've rendered any farther swimming into a very briefly exciting experience.

Note to self: never invite Crawler to your pool party. Someone else's pool party, sure. Just make sure it's someone you don't like. Also, being tossed anywhere by the Siberian is a weird-as-fuck experience.

But now the Nine were getting ready to move out, in a motorhome they'd liberated from somewhere. How they'd even gotten it up the road to Camp Puckatawney was a mystery for the ages. I suspected Mannequin may have modified it for off-road travel. In any case, Jack was already aboard and strapped in for the trip. Riley had said she was going to wait as long as possible to wake him up, so he'd be less likely to come back looking for me.

I'd offered to use my power to suppress Hatchet Face's power so Riley could reattach his hand, but he'd sneered at me and said he'd take his chances. I figured that was his option, so I hadn't pushed the matter. Besides, he was a cheat and a dick.

So I stood and watched the motorhome roll out of the campsite. Riley leaned out one of the windows and waved goodbye. I lifted a hand and waved back, and then they were gone. Dusting my hands off, I reached into my pocket and touched the going-away present she'd given me. Then I turned and looked around at the half-wrecked camp. I had to call for help, but first I had to set the scene.

<><>​

Three hours later, the first PRT chopper came swooping in toward the campsite. A second one orbited the area, obvious gun barrels protruding out the side door. From my hiding place under Honey Badger cabin, I watched as the first helicopter touched down briefly, dropping off heavily armed and armoured troopers. Brightly-coloured figures landed at the same time. Capes, obviously, but I didn't recognise them.

Under barked orders, they spread out and began to efficiently search the area. The capes lifted off again, out of my line of sight, probably backing them up from the air. Or at least, so I thought until someone yelled out something, and half a dozen troopers started converging on Honey Badger cabin. As per the plan, I huddled deeper into the dusty nest I'd dug for myself under the cabin, clutching at the carving knife I'd liberated from the main cabin.

The knife was just for show, of course. It was something the troopers could take away from me. My real weapons were stuffed in my pockets, strapped to my leg, or stored at the bottom of my new backpack. My old one, of course, had been thoroughly clogged with paint, so I'd swapped it out for another one.

As part of the cover, I'd set fire to Raccoon, Deer and Squirrel cabins, tossing all the incriminating evidence in there to go up in flames as well. This included my old pack. I didn't want to have to answer awkward questions about why I'd brought a dye bomb to summer camp. This wasn't something normal kids did.

"You, under the hut!" It was a masculine voice, calling through a bullhorn. "Come on out! We won't hurt you!" Unless I was a member of the Nine, was the unspoken addendum. Then they'd hurt me plenty. I didn't care either way; I just stayed where I was.

There was a sharp hissing sound followed by a loud thump, and I looked around to see a pair of boots made of segmented red metal standing right where I'd crawled under the cabin. The person wearing the boots crouched, revealing blue metal armour, red metal gloves, and a red helmet with elaborate lenses covering most of the front of it. "Hi," he said. His voice was also metallic, but wasn't the same one who'd called out before. I figured that one had to be PRT. "I'm Tracer. Want to come out so we can make sure you're okay?"

I didn't answer. I just burrowed down into my earth hollow a little more. Almost as an afterthought, I let him see my knife.

"Okay, then," he said quietly. Without looking away from me, he raised his voice. "Okay, guys, we've got a trauma victim here. Be warned, she's got a kitchen knife. I'm guessing she's having trouble seeing anyone as friendly, right now."

"Well, that's not exactly surprising," I heard someone say from behind me. "Is she injured?"

"Gimme minute," Tracer replied tersely. I saw some of the lenses turn in their mountings. "No fresh blood. She's active and aware, so I don't think she's got any long-term injury going on." He cleared his throat, which sounded like a food processor trying to puree a rock. "Honey, what's your name?"

It was almost time for me to capitulate, but I had to show one last spark of irrational fear. I shook my head and ducked down so that he could only see my eyes. My knife came up a little more, so that he could see my white knuckles around the handle. I could feel and hear the handle creaking under my grip.

"Subject is non-cooperative," Tracer reported. "Do it."

I was not given more than a second or so to wonder what 'it' was, before there was a gurgling hiss from behind me. Even as I twisted to see what it was, yellow foam engulfed me. I had to hand it to them; even though I'd intended to let them talk me down anyway, this was a smarter and more efficient way of getting me from under the hut. It also made my job of pretending to be horrifically traumatised somewhat easier.

They dragged me from under the cabin, then used something to dissolve the foam around my hand so they could disarm me. I let them go ahead and do this with only a token show of resistance. Once the rest of the foam had been dissolved, I climbed to my feet and stood there, silently staring at them. "Go ahead," I said. "Kill me. You killed everyone else. I watched you." I tilted my head back, exposing my throat. "Finish the job."

As hardened as the PRT troopers seemed to be, they flinched at my words. One stepped forward, his hands up in an unthreatening fashion. "We're not going to kill you," he said. "We're here to help. You're the one who made the phone call?"

I nodded, very slightly. "Prove you're not the Nine," I said. "You could be wearing those uniforms to trick me before you kill me. Jack Slash and Shatterbird pretended to be camp counsellors." I pointed at Tracer. "I think he's Mannequin."

"What?" If I was in the habit of expressing humour, Tracer's outraged voice would've made me chuckle, at least a bit. "I'm not Mannequin! Tell her I'm not Mannequin!"

"It's like you said," the PRT soldier told him. I could definitely hear the grin in his voice. "She's having trouble seeing anyone as non-hostile." He reached up and undid a latch, letting his faceplate swing upward. "See?" he asked. "I'm not Jack Slash, or any one of the Nine. My name's Lieutenant Forbes, and we're here to rescue you."

"Oh." I still wasn't showing any emotion; that is to say, my natural state of affairs. "I need to have a shower."

"Sure thing," Forbes replied, readily enough. "Sergeant LaSalle, front and centre!"

As he lowered his faceplate once more, a trooper who was even wider than him in the shoulders (though not quite as tall) trotted over to us. "Sir!" she reported in a voice that was definitely female.

"Escort the young lady to the showers, and bring her back here when she's finished." Forbes nodded to me. "Sergeant LaSalle will protect you."

"Oh," I said again. "Thank you."

<><>​

It turned out that fooling them was pretty easy with the assistance of my blue field. It even made LaSalle gullible enough to hand my new clothes in to me after I'd finished scrubbing off what I could of the foam residue. I transferred my weapons to their new hiding places, stuck the machete in the new pack (the handle just barely fit inside) and went out to greet my rescuers.

When Forbes asked me what happened, I told them I'd run and hidden when the Nine first showed up. I gave him a version of the truth about the gauntlet Jack Slash had set the kids, only I made out that nobody won, even the one kid who made it to the flagpole.

After the Nine left (I said) I'd sneaked out to make the phone call for help, then I'd gotten scared that the Nine would know I'd called and come back, so I got a knife and hid. I told them that I didn't know why they'd torched the cabins or wrecked the pool.

By the end of this, I was feeling fairly wrung out; maintaining the blue field to cover for any slips was more effort than I'd counted on. But I managed it, and remembered to ask them not to tell the news organisations who I was. The last thing I wanted was to be famous, after all.

Lieutenant Forbes gravely agreed that it would be better for my safety if word never got out that Jack Slash missed a victim. I would be discreetly transported back to Brockton Bay by the PRT, and reunited with my family. With time and therapy, he said, I would probably be back to normal in no time.

I had other plans.

<><>​

Five Days Later

"Ballet, horseback riding, modeling classes or violin. Pick one, Emma. One."

Emma smirked at her father's long-suffering voice from the driver's seat of the car, then grinned at me. Surreptitiously, she mimed reeling in a fish, then cleared her throat. When she spoke, her voice was pure innocence. "Or, or, or, maybe …"

I interrupted her, raising my voice to speak over her. "Mr Barnes, I think that was a wrong turn." We were now driving down a narrow one-way street, the type that delivery trucks trundle down.

"It's a short-cut, Taylor." He spoke much more gently with me than with Emma, as if I needed to be coddled. Which he thought was the case, and I wasn't really about to disabuse him of the notion. So long as they thought of me as a 'victim', it would shape their perceptions of me. "It's perfectly safe."

"No, it's not." I pointed ahead, through the windshield. "There's a dumpster in the way." I had my backpack on the floor between my feet, and I leaned over and reached right down to the bottom for my trusty piece of iron bar.

As I slid it into my sleeve, Emma turned and looked over her shoulder. "There's a van behind us!"

This surprised me not in the least. Ever since I'd spotted the dumpster, I'd expected something like this. Straightening up in my seat, I turned to look. Teenagers were getting out of the van. They wore red and green gang colours. "Huh. ABB. I didn't see any tags around here."

"Girls, you'd better hang on." But Alan Barnes didn't ram the dumpster. Instead, he rolled up to it and tried to nudge it out of the way with the car's bumper. Predictably, it didn't budge.

"Mr Barnes," I said. "Back up, now. Floor it. If you can push the van back into the street, we're free and clear."

"I can't run them over!" he protested. As I pulled the switchblade from my pocket, I glanced back again. The little shits were running after us. We weren't going to have a second chance to ram the dumpster.

"Daaad …" Emma had a high-pitched note of fear in her voice.

"We'll be all right." But he sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than her. "Call 9-1-1. Call the cops, now."

The first guy came up on the right. He swung something heavy and Emma screamed as her window shattered. The safety glass didn't cut her, which was my only real issue. As he reached in to grasp her by the hair, I popped the switchblade and swung it in a short arc, stabbing it through his hand and into the metal of the door. His scream was even higher-pitched than Emma's.

"Get down, Emma!" I snapped, pushing her to the floor. Yanking at the handle, I opened the door and scrambled out past her. The clasp-knife was ready to my hand and I pulled the blade open while the first asshole was still screeching and flailing with his hand nailed to Mr Barnes' car. Then I let the iron bar drop out into my other hand.

"What the fuck?" blurted the second one to reach the car. A blade snicked open and he swung at me, but I stopped short to let it go by. Then I swung with my bar at his wrist and heard the meaty crack that says someone's gonna be left-handed for the foreseeable future. Just to really fuck up his afternoon, I slashed with the knife and took two fingers off of his left hand as well. Brute-level strength was awesome. Then I kicked him in the crotch, also with Brute strength. After all, why let it go to waste?

Which reminded me. I linked the white bubble to the grey field and pushed it out, just to make sure that any ABB capes that showed up wouldn't have powers to go along with their shitty attitudes. And then I turned to the rest of the ABB punks and smiled. What with the extra two inches of mouth, the coaching Riley had given me on how to seem more insane than I was and the high-pitched giggle I gave them, I was pretty damn creepy.

As number one finally wrenched his hand free of the switchblade (blood spraying everywhere) and number two collapsed in his own personal universe of please-let-me-die, I observed the effect my preparations had on the ABB. With my head tilted forward and eyes opened wide, I could observe them from under my eyebrows and instil the impression that I had very personal (and very painful) plans for each and every one of them.

Which I did, but it was so useful to be able to project that kind of thing.

I took a step forward and giggled again, this time in a masculine basso. At this point, the guy with the bleeding hand tried to stab me in the back with my own switchblade. In fact, he made it all the way through my hoodie and shirt before my skin stopped it. I made sure he didn't have a chance for a second attempt, by backhanding him into the brick wall. In all honesty, he was lucky; after all, I could've taken his head off with the clasp-knife or the iron bar (same end result, one was just a little messier than the other). But if I was going to turn down Jack Slash as a first kill, then some no-name ABB punk definitely wasn't going to make the grade.

"Who's next?" I asked, Riley's modifications making my voice into a little girl's. The giggle seemed to be really paying off in spades, as was the enhanced smile. It was a pity that it was still light out, or I would've been able to use the other thing Riley had given me.

Still, it was definitely enough. The girl broke first. Letting out a high-pitched shriek, she ran off down the alleyway. I got in among the rest of them and started swinging, trying to make sure I did less than lethal damage. Several broken bones and a couple of shallow but painful cuts later, they came to the same conclusion as the girl. Limping, staggering, supporting each other, they retreated down the alleyway. Two were left behind, and I looked down at them, wondering exactly how best to make an example of them that they'd still survive.

A hand fell on my shoulder. "That was—"

Adrenaline flared in my gut. There was someone behind me. Someone had managed to sneak up on me without making a sound, which made them competent, which in turn made them dangerous as fuck. I didn't recognise the voice, which meant it wasn't a friend. I turned and stabbed, all in the same motion.

It was a girl about my height, wearing a black-painted hockey mask and a cloak. Whatever she was using for body armour slowed the knife down, but only for a moment before my enhanced strength punched it through. I saw her eyes behind the mask, watched them go wide as the clasp-knife went in to its full length. She pawed at my hand for a second, then fell backward as I let the knife go. Flopping to the ground, she arched her back weakly a couple of times, grasping feebly at the handle of the clasp-knife, gasping for breath that she just couldn't seem to draw in. I wasn't surprised; while assisting Riley with her surgeries, she'd shown me where the diaphragm was, and explained how useful it was to the act of breathing. It appeared I'd nailed it on the first try.

"Taylor, my god!" Emma put her hand to her mouth as she stared at the two unconscious gangers, as well as the dying girl. "What have you done?"

"She shouldn't have come up behind me without announcing herself." It made sense to me. "Sucks to be her. I mean, she's gotta be a villain if she's gonna dress like that, right?"

"She's not a villain!" Huh. Oh, well. Emma was always a bigger cape geek than me. "That's Shadow Stalker! She's a hero!"

Which put her in a weird place if she was going to be my first kill. I would've been okay with offing a villain—they usually had it coming—but killing a hero who'd been stupid enough to come up behind me? Not exactly what I'd been looking for. Still, if she was going to die anyway …

"Okay," I said. "I'll just put that knife in this guy's hand over here, and he goes down for stabbing her." I turned to Emma. "I mean, killing someone doesn't count as murder if it's the wrong person, right?"

"Yes, it does!" She was getting right in my face. This was totally unlike Emma. "What's gotten into you?" she demanded before I could ask the very same question. "You were always a bit weird, but since they cancelled your summer camp you've been smiling a bit funny when you thought I wasn't watching."

Huh. I'd thought I was more careful with practising the smile than that. At least the PRT's cover story about a 'cancelled' camp was holding up. But hey, this was as good a time to tell her as any. "Nothing, really." I decided not to tell Emma about Jack Slash being my biological father, at least until she calmed down. "So, we're cool?"

"No, we're not cool!" She turned to her father. "Dad, help me get Shadow Stalker into the car! We need to get her to the hospital!"

Wow, really? They were going to try to save her? On the one hand, it meant I didn't have to worry about having an idiot for my first kill. On the other, this was getting tedious. "Don't bother. She'll die before you get there." I knelt beside Shadow Stalker and rummaged through her utility belt. Two phones, neither one of interest to me, so I dropped them on the ground beside me. A pack of aspirin, which she didn't want right now, aspirin being a blood thinner. A tiny first-aid kit with a folded bandage. I pulled the knife out, wedged my fingers into the slit I'd made in the body armour and heaved, tearing it wider. Pushing the bandage on to the cut, I grabbed Emma's hands and placed them on top. "Hold that there and press down hard. Mr Barnes, can you do chest compressions?"

"It's been a long time since I did a first aid course, but I think I still remember how." He looked down at me as if he wasn't sure whether to shout at me or thank me for helping the idiot in black.

"Yeah, do that thing. You might want to call the paramedics too. The way I stabbed her, she'd never make it to the hospital." I got up to make way for him. "Anyway, I think I'll go home now."

"I don't care what you do!" Emma yelled over her shoulder as she pressed the bandage hard on to Shadow Stalker's torso. "Just go away! Forever!"

"Wow, overreaction much? Stab one idiot vigilante and suddenly I'm the worst person in the world." I wiped off the knife and folded it, trying to figure out where Emma's head was at. She was usually pretty chill with whatever I did. This hostility was totally out of left field. I didn't get it. She liked slasher movies just as much as I did, probably more, but she watched them for the jump scares. I tended to see them more as a cross between a comedy and a slapdash 'how-to' manual, with a lot of unnecessary screaming and human interaction thrown in, than actual entertainment. You don't enjoy things like that; you just watch them.

I suddenly realised what the problem was. This was like when Riley was going to take a sample of my brain to fix Jack Slash. They just couldn't see why acting like this was a bad idea. Linking the white bubble to the blue bubble, I pushed it out to encompass them both. "Guys, you're being unreasonable about this. I just did it to save you. I'd appreciate it if you didn't make a big thing about it." As I said this, I pushed hard on the field to make it as blue as I could.

Mr Barnes sighed as he started the chest compressions. Right now, he was using one hand because he was dialling his phone with the other. Really, he was taking this a lot better than Emma, even if I didn't understand why she was taking it so badly. "Taylor, I'm sorry, but I think you'd better go. We'll get help for Shadow Stalker, and we won't tell anyone who did this." He looked to Emma. "That's right, isn't it?"

Emma gave me a dirty look. "Sure, but I don't think we can be friends any more."

I shrugged. "Sure, no problems. See you around." Leaning into the car, I retrieved my pack. The nearest bus stop wasn't too far away, and I figured I had enough for the fare.

As I strolled off down the alleyway, I wondered how long it would take Emma to get over whatever it was that was bothering her.


End of Part Six

Part Seven

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Seven: Four-Part Harmony

[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Taylor

I got off the bus and strolled the two blocks to home. It was a pleasant walk, giving me time to think over what had happened with the gang and the idiot vigilante in the alleyway. The reasons behind Emma's reaction were still not entirely clear to me, but her behaviour had always been a little weird. It was like there was stuff that she was just unwilling to do, even if it benefited her. I'd read about this stuff called 'morality' and I guessed that must be what they were talking about, but I just couldn't get my head around the concept. Sounded self-defeating to me.

Emma and I had never clashed on the topic before, probably because I'd never had a real reason to hurt anyone around her. I guess I'd vaguely understood that she wouldn't like it, but I'd never put any thought into the why of it before. Anyway, she'd get over it. It wasn't like I was particularly butt-hurt over her decision to reverse the natural order of things and save Shadow Stalker's life. If she thought she was going to get something out of it, more power to her.

The fight itself had been … fun. I'd been concentrating too much on not fatally stabbing any of the gang idiots (only to nearly fatally stab the idiot vigilante who snuck up behind me. Which had to be embarrassing, for her) but in the aftermath I felt … happy. Like I'd been walking around with lead weights strapped on to my arms and legs all my life, and now they'd been taken off. I didn't want to run and dance and burst into song—that was reserved for Disney characters and people in musicals—but I felt as though the sunlight was warmer and the colours were brighter. Definitely something I wanted to do again, sometime. Preferably soon.

Of course, if I was going to do that, I'd need to do something to conceal my identity. I knew how this worked. It was why capes wore masks. If I went out and performed violence on idiots who got in my face, sooner or later someone I couldn't get to with my blue field would identify me, and Dad would get in trouble, and I wouldn't be able to sleep at home any more. And I'd feel bad about getting Dad in trouble, of course. But the trouble was, I didn't want to wear spandex. Bright colours really weren't me.

Of course, there were other options. Makeup, for instance. During our makeover sessions, Emma had demonstrated how with just a little effort, she could change her look to a spectacular degree. Not that I was thinking of spending half an hour rouging my cheeks and applying eyeshadow every night before going out to wander the streets in search of trouble to ambush out of a dark alley and bash the crap out of. Something a lot simpler was probably a good idea. Something that could pass as a skintight mask, but couldn't be pulled off of me, or be shifted to cover my eyes. Still mulling the idea over, I jumped lightly over the rotted step and let myself in through the front door.

"Taylor!" Dad started up from the sofa. "Are you okay? Alan called, said there'd been a problem!" He started toward me.

Oh, great. "Did he say exactly what happened?" I asked. If he took this the wrong way, I was gonna have to learn to climb in and out of my window. Being grounded just as I was learning fun stuff like this would really suck.

"No." He shook his head. "He said to ask you."

Which was perfect for my needs. "Oh, okay," I said. Rapidly, I thought back over what had happened, and tried to figure what Dad would freak out at and what he'd accept. "Yeah, we were out for a drive, and Mr Barnes took a wrong turn. Some ABB guys trapped us in an alley and broke Emma's car window. This vigilante called Shadow Stalker showed up. The gangers got the shit kicked out of them and ran for it, but Shadow Stalker got stabbed. Last I saw, Mr Barnes and Emma were giving her first aid. I didn't want to be there any more so I came home." Which was all true, for a given definition of 'true'. It just wasn't exactly what had happened. I was pretty sure Dad would be happier with this version than with the one that actually had all the facts in the right order. A happy Dad was a Dad who wasn't trying to ground me.

It had been hard enough getting him to let me out of the house after the PRT got me back to Brockton Bay. He knew that the Nine had attacked the camp, though he thought I'd managed to run and hide. Mr Barnes had been told the same thing. Yet, because Emma had never been interested in the name of the camp, we were able to tell her that my camp had been cancelled after Camp Puckatawney had been massacred, and she never knew the difference.

I have no idea why adults always insist that kids should tell the truth all the time. Do they really want to have to deal with this sort of headache all the time? Like the morality thing, it seems self-defeating to me.

"Oh." He seemed to deflate a little. "So nobody else got hurt? Did they touch you or Emma?"

I shrugged slightly. "None of us got hurt. The gangers never laid a hand on me or Emma, though one of the gangers got stabbed through the hand right in front of her. After it was over, she freaked out a bit, but nothing big. I figure she'll be okay in a day or two." I expanded my blue field and let it wash over him. "I'm fine, Dad. Nothing to be concerned about." Which was also true. If I knew anything about adults, it was that I was better off telling him what he wanted to hear rather than what had really happened.

"Oh, good." He offered me a weak smile. "I … I just worry, sometimes. If I lost you too …"

"Trust me, Dad," I said firmly as I clasped his shoulder. "I'm not going anywhere." I valued my warm sheets and soft bed way too much. "Just going up for a shower."

"Okay. Well, I might as well get supper started." He nodded toward the kitchen. "How does cannelloni beef sound?"

"Dunno. Have I eaten it before?" I didn't really care either way, but it was something Emma had said to her mom once so I'd added it to our normal father-daughter socialisation.

He snorted. "Three times in the last two weeks."

I couldn't recall any meals he'd made that I hadn't liked. "Then it sounds good." I constructed a smile for him then headed upstairs to my bedroom.

When I got undressed for the shower, I noticed that my sneakers had been splashed with blood, and that there was a spot of it on the back of my hoodie, surrounding a tiny hole. Switchblade. Right. Fortunately, Dad had been as oblivious as ever. Booting up my computer, I did a search for how to remove various stains, including blood. The instructions I got were very detailed, which made me wonder about the secret lives of the people offering them. I decided to get in extra baking soda and vinegar as soon as possible. Depending on how messily people sprayed if I hit an artery—seriously, couldn't they be a little more careful with their bodily fluids?—I figured I might have to spend time getting the stuff out of my clothes every time I went for a stroll.

I went along for my shower, humming a tune that almost sounded jaunty. Things were looking up.

<><>​

Sophia

Waking up sucked.

Waking up in a strange place really sucked.

Waking up in a hospital bed, with a pain in the middle of your gut, and tubes leading out of your arms, and another tube leading up your nose (and she was pretty sure it went all the way down her throat) sucked so hard it probably had its own event whaddayacallit like those black hole things had.

And then Sophia turned her head to the side, and saw Miss Militia sitting there reading a book while a nurse fiddled with something at the far end of the room, and she realised that she herself was out of costume and unmasked and holy fuck, the PRT knows who I am! and all the previous suckage was fucking nothing compared to this.

"Fuck," she rasped then regretted it, a lot. First, because talking revealed the fact that she had a case of dry-mouth that would make Leviathan give up in disgust. Second, because when she tried to inhale, it made the pain in her gut flare up. She wasn't quite sure why this was. Looking down at herself was hard when she was already flat on her back, but she was sure it wasn't good.

"Oh, good," said Miss Militia. "You're awake." She slotted a bookmark into place and closed the book. "I'd ask you how you were feeling, but I've been there a few times myself." A movement of the scarf over her face indicated that she was maybe smiling, but for all Sophia knew she was blowing a kiss. Her eyes flicked toward the nurse. "Before you ask, you have not been outed. You're currently wearing a domino mask, and access to this area has been limited."

Sophia took a breath; it was still painful, but she knew pain. Pain, she could deal with. "But you looked, didn't you?" She didn't care that her voice rasped like a three-packs-a-day smoker's. "You know who I am."

Miss Militia didn't hesitate, which raised Sophia's opinion of her a little. "Yes. It's need to know only, and that list is short. Mainly we did it so that if you passed, we'd know to notify your next of kin. But the doctor assures me that you're going to make a full recovery." Most people would've beamed at Sophia then, as if passing on amazing news. The older hero merely looked at her expectantly.

"Can I have some water?" Sophia was definitely thirsty, but the request was also a means to play for time. Whatever had happened to put her in this hospital bed, her memory was proving stubborn about. She needed to know exactly what had happened to her. No; who had happened to her. Someone had nearly killed her, and she wanted the bastard's home address. But all she had was a blank, except for two things. A pair of ice-blue eyes, colder than the rare winter bursts that tracked all the way down from the North Pole. And a glinting smile, inhumanly wide yet even colder than the eyes. Deep in her mind's ear, a giggle rang out and she shivered involuntarily.

"Certainly." But before Miss Militia could do anything, the nurse came over and picked up Sophia's wrist to check her pulse. At the same time, Sophia found a thermometer in her mouth. Moments later, the checkup was over, the nurse was gone, and Miss Militia was leaning over her with a squirt bottle in her hand. Carefully, she placed the nozzle between Sophia's lips and squirted a small amount of water into her mouth. It tasted divine and there was far too little of it, but Sophia wasn't about to whine.

Putting the bottle down, Miss Militia turned her steady gaze on Sophia once more. "Do you have any questions?" she asked. Her entire attitude said, I've got all day.

"Did you catch the one who got me?" Sophia hedged. She didn't want to admit that she was drawing a blank, and any clue might be a vital one.

"No." The answer was short and unhelpful, but then Miss Militia went on. "They said she left after she stabbed you."

Well, that was something … wait, what? "She?" It had been a girl who stabbed her? Through the heavy padding on her stomach? A moment later, she cursed herself for blurting out the word.

Miss Militia wasn't slow on the uptake. "How much do you remember about what happened?" she asked, her eyes intent.

"Not much," Sophia admitted reluctantly. "I was on patrol, and I saw a van follow a car into a one-way back street. I remember thinking that it looked like a potential holdup situation, because I'd seen a dumpster across the other end of the street a few minutes before that. But everything after that's a blur." Of course, she would've stopped to watch the action. If the holdup victims proved they deserved saving, she would've kicked some gangland ass. But instead, she got stabbed? Where the fuck had that come from?

"I've seen this before," Miss Militia noted. "Serious trauma, compounded by mild oxygen starvation to the brain before the paramedics could get to you. Your short term memory of that event was compromised. You might get it back, or you might not." She paused. "However, I wanted to talk to you about something else."

Here it came. "You want me to sign up for the Wards." Fiercely independent, she considered the Wards to be everything she didn't want to be. Subject to adult approval, rules and regulations imposed from above; shit, they might even take her crossbow away.

Miss Militia's eyes were serious. "I'd like you to at least consider it. Not just because of what happened this time. But because of the other incidents."

"What other incidents?" Sophia had never been stabbed before. She'd been cut once or twice, but nothing worse. That was why she wore the heavy padding. And if she saw a gun, she went to shadow straight away. Nothing could touch her then.

Which brought the question to mind: how had whoever stabbed her actually done it? Why didn't I ghost around the knife?

"Where you've hurt people." Miss Militia sat down and leaned in slightly. "There's concern that you're pushing the boundaries of acceptable vigilante behaviour. Not quite enough for the PRT or Protectorate to consider bringing you in just yet, but you're getting a reputation, and it's not a good one. My personal recommendation is that you either join the Wards, where you'll get formal training, better equipment and backup for your patrols … or … hang the mask up for a while after you're recovered and reconsider your options as per Shadow Stalker. Figure out methods and techniques that let you fight crime without hurting people so egregiously."

Sophia didn't know what that last word meant, but she could figure it out from context. "So, either play nice or join your team." She didn't sneer the last few words, but it was an effort. Miss Militia was just laying out options, after all. "Do I get a third choice?"

"Of course." The older hero leaned back in her chair again. Sophia hadn't seen where her weapon had been before, but it appeared in her hand as a short-bladed knife that danced across her knuckles in a glittering blur of motion then dissolved in a puff of green-black smoke. "You can always keep going the way you are, with the understanding that you are now on our radar." It was a fairly effective blend of threat and warning, while not quite being either. "At the end of the day, it's your choice. Take all the time in the world to think about it. We could do with an effective cape like you in the Wards. But in the meantime, would you like to meet the people who saved your life?"

"Saved my life?" Taken a little off-guard by the sudden change of subject, Sophia blurted out the words. This was definitely not something she'd expected to hear. People didn't save her life. She saved other peoples' lives. The ones who deserved it, of course.

"That's what the paramedics said. So was that a yes or a no?" It was hard to tell Miss Militia's expression behind her scarf, but Sophia got the impression that she thought Sophia should do it.

She nodded. "I guess." Whoever they were, they had saved her life, so they'd earned her gratitude. Maybe even her respect.

"Excellent. Just so you know, Emma held pressure on your wound while Alan gave you chest compressions. Neither of them has seen your face or knows your real name."

Which answered that question. Sophia watched as Miss Militia crossed the room and opened the door. An older man with fading red hair and a girl her own age with brighter red hair and striking looks entered. The girl held up her hand and waved, looking almost painfully eager to meet her. "Hi?"

<><>​

Emma

A Few Moments Before

"We need to talk about what happened." Despite taking the care to keep his voice down, Emma's father still glanced up and down the hospital corridor as if worried about being overheard. "About Taylor."

Emma rolled her eyes. "Enough about Taylor. I'm done with her. She's a fucking monster, Dad. Did you see her? Did you hear her?" Emma had done both, and the memory still sent chills through her gut. Before her eyes, her safely dull, boring friend had transformed into a terrifying, wide-eyed giggling maniac. With a metal bar in one hand and a knife in the other—where had she even got those weapons from? Had she been carrying them in the car?—Taylor had single-handedly turned the alley into a bloodbath. The shrieks of pain from the gang members, interspersed with those inhuman little giggles, were going to haunt her dreams for days.

Emma Barnes was, in her own eyes, an upright, moral person. She didn't condone cruelty toward animals, and she believed herself to be an authority on all things cape-related. Her father insisted that Taylor had saved them, but saving people was something a hero did, and whatever else heroes did, they didn't cut people up with knives or break their bones and giggle about it.

But even with all that, Emma might just barely have been able to overlook the transformation of her nice, safe boring friend into a horror movie slasher. So long as she promised never to do it again (and never slept over again). But then Shadow Stalker had appeared and Taylor had stabbed her! And when heroes accidentally hurt someone, they always turned themselves in to the authorities; it was the way things were done! But Taylor had just … waved it off. Like it wasn't even her concern.

When Emma and Taylor had first become friends, it was because Emma saw in Taylor the perfect BFF. In any social situation, Taylor would make Emma even more likeable and charismatic by comparison. She was quiet, she was boring, she was safe, she would never hog the spotlight. Despite a few odd habits—like never laughing ever—she made Emma feel like a superstar every time they went out in public. One of the things she never did was argue with Emma's points of view. Emma had assumed this meant she either had no opinions worth talking about, or that she agreed wholeheartedly with what Emma said.

The episode in the alleyway had destroyed that illusion forever. Taylor had not only ignored Emma's judgement of the situation but had even showed that she held other opinions she just hadn't bothered airing. It made Emma wonder how long Taylor had been silently mocking her from behind a bland expression.

Even then, the situation might conceivably been salvaged if Taylor had said just one word to appease Emma. If she'd apologised or done anything to show that she didn't want things to go the way they were. But she hadn't. She'd just taken her pack and walked off. Brushed off her guilt for stabbing Shadow Stalker. Worse, she'd brushed off Emma's absolutely justified anger at her. And if there was one thing Emma Barnes hated, it was being brushed off.

She wasn't going to tell anyone Taylor's darkest secret. Their years of friendship demanded that much respect. Also, her father had impressed on her the sheer blind importance of this. Also also, some small part of her shivered every time she thought of waking up to see Taylor's ice-blue eyes and too-wide smile—how had she not seen that before?—and gleaming knife-blade, very briefly.

They were no longer friends. That was a given. The very idea was unthinkable. No matter that she'd saved them, Taylor was a villain now, and there was no way Emma could be friends with a villain. Especially one who giggled while she cut people up. And if Emma was going to be a model—she had the looks, she just knew it—the optics of her being friends with a villain like that, however unlikely this was to come out, would utterly ruin her career if it ever became known.

So Emma needed new, cool friends. New, cool friends who (if she were to be honest with herself) might just help protect her from a certain giggling maniac with a knife, if it ever became necessary. Not that she'd ever said this specifically to her father. 'I want to visit her and see how she's doing' sounded more … humanitarian.

But heroes were cool. Heroes were powerful. And heroes protected people from villains.

The door opened, and Miss Militia ushered them in. Emma stepped into the hospital room and looked at the bed.

Shadow Stalker looked different from this angle. It wasn't just the missing costume or the domino mask. It was … everything. The medical paraphernalia, the hospital bed, the bandaged wound. Everything made her look more human. More approachable. Emma gave Shadow Stalker a little fingertip wave. "Hi?" She'd had this girl's blood on her hands, pressing down on the wound while her father pushed life-giving air into Shadow Stalker's lungs. It was an odd feeling.

"Hi." Shadow Stalker made a tiny effort to sit up, then winced. "I hear you guys saved my life. Thanks."

Miss Militia found a control that let the bed angle upward. It whirred upward until Shadow Stalker could look comfortably at them, then she stepped backward out of the conversation.

"It was the very least we could do," Emma's dad said. "We couldn't just let you die, after all."

"Yeah!" blurted Emma. She needed to be a part of this conversation. Shadow Stalker needed to know that she was there, instead of just lurking in the background …

… like Taylor used to do …

With a shudder, she dismissed that imagery. She was nothing like Taylor!

Shadow Stalker was looking at her keenly. "You okay?" she rasped.

Emma forced a smile on to her face. "Yeah. It's all just a lot to take in at once, you know? I mean, being saved by a superhero, saving the life of a superhero, getting to meet you in person …" She trailed off, not quite sure where she was going with this.

The vigilante's eyes came fully awake, attentive. "I saved you." It was almost a question.

Emma's dad gave her a firm sideways glance, and Emma wilted slightly. She'd pushed too hard and too fast with the praise. "Well, you were there," she amended. "You would definitely have saved us if that other girl hadn't been there." Ruthlessly, she crushed the tiny thread of guilt at referring to Taylor as 'that other girl'.

"What other girl?"

Emma blinked. Of all the questions she'd expected, that wasn't one of them. Did Shadow Stalker not recall what had happened? "The one who stabbed you. She was out of control. A monster. A maniac. She was giggling as she cut them. I think she was going to kill the last two, and you showed up, and she just … stabbed you. Then she just … left. Like she hadn't done anything wrong. Like it was no big deal."

Something shifted behind Shadow Stalker's eyes and she grunted as though she'd taken a body blow. "I remember. I think. Tall girl, dark hair? Blue eyes? Some kind of stick in her other hand?"

"I think it was an iron bar, yeah," Emma said. "Did you get a good look at her? Dad and me didn't. We didn't get out of the car till it was all over." It was one of the things he'd impressed on her to say.

After a long moment, Shadow Stalker shook her head regretfully. "I … no. Just the eyes. And that goddamn smile. And being stabbed." She frowned. "How did she stab me? It shouldn't have been possible."

If Shadow Stalker didn't know, then Emma definitely didn't know. "Took you by surprise?" Shadow Stalker had certainly seemed surprised at the time.

"No." Shadow Stalker shook her head again, but the surety in her expression seemed to be wavering. "No, I … I don't think that's it." She bit her lip. "I can go to shadow really fast, especially if I'm being attacked. And I was wearing padding. A knife shouldn't have been able to injure me so badly, not with a single stab."

The silence that followed was a little uncomfortable, until her dad cleared his throat. "Well, we'd just like to say that we're grateful you came to our aid."

"Yeah," Emma said, glad for the change in subject. "Who knows what she would've done if you hadn't shown up." She stepped forward and took Shadow Stalker's hand in hers. "Listen, if you ever want to chat or hang out or whatever, we can do that. I'm Emma, by the way."

"Yeah, I know." Shadow Stalker glanced at Miss Militia, then seemed to come to a decision. Some kind of unspoken communication passed between them, and Miss Militia moved to stand in front of the door. Careful not to pull out the tubes attached to her other hand, Shadow Stalker reached up to where the domino mask covered the top half of her face. It took her two tries to unstick it, then she peeled it off of her face. "Hi," she said raspily. "I'm Sophia. It's good to meet you."

And all Emma could think was eeeeee a superhero unmasked to me!

<><>​

Miss Militia

Hannah sat at her laptop in the Protectorate base. The standard opening lines for a PRT report stared back at her, requiring her only to put in the information to make it official.

Spoke with subject SHADOW STALKER in hospital room, she typed. Subject as yet unreceptive to the idea of joining the Wards, but in my opinion not entirely set against it. Subjects ALAN BARNES and EMMA BARNES visited SHADOW STALKER in hospital. SHADOW STALKER formed rapport with EMMA BARNES to the point of unmasking to her and ALAN BARNES. Potential point of leverage there; subject ALAN BARNES is a lawyer who may be made to see the benefits to SHADOW STALKER in joining the Wards.

No further information about fourth person in alleyway.

Recommendations:

1) Observation of SHADOW STALKER but no further attempts to recruit unless situation changes.

2) Discreet communication with ALAN BARNES regarding having him encourage SHADOW STALKER to join the Wards.

She paused, frowning. It looked as though there was yet another unbalanced cape in Brockton Bay. If the fourth person was even a cape; it was possible, though unlikely, that she was just someone who'd been pushed off the rails for any one of a dozen reasons in the last two months. This was Brockton Bay, after all.

3) Open file on potential rogue cape, code name JESTER. Described as tall, skinny, white female. Apparent favoured weapons a knife and a metal bar. Potential Brute, potential combat Thinker. Stabbed subject SHADOW STALKER through light body armour, despite latter's phasing ability. Tinkertech weaponry? Giggles during combat. Possibly emotionally unstable. If/when contacted, psych eval very strongly recommended.

She sighed and sent the report away. It would be nice if Brockton Bay made more sense at the end of the day, even once.

<><>​

Taylor

I huffed in through the back door and deposited my burden on the kitchen table with a thump. It wasn't that it was overly heavy (at least to me) but after a while it got tiring to carry. Still, I'd gotten all I wanted to get, so I was satisfied.

"Taylor, is that you?" I heard Dad get up from the living room couch, so I hastily hid the plastic tub on one of the chairs. When he got to the doorway, I was carrying the gallon bottle and the large carton to the cupboard under the sink.

"Yeah, hi," I said. "Just thought I'd get some supplies in on my way home from school." Nonchalance was pretty easy for me. I rarely expressed emotion at the best of times.

"White vinegar and baking soda?" he asked, coming over to where I was standing. "Wow, are you planning to clean the whole house out?"

With a tiny sigh, I expanded the blue field to cover him. It probably wasn't even necessary, but I didn't want an argument that would stick in his memory. "No, but we were running a little low, and it's good to buy in bulk."

"Huh, true." He turned and wandered back into the living room as I let the blue field drop. "I'll be starting dinner in half an hour. Do you have any preferences?"

"Um, cannoli?" I seemed to recall he'd made that not long ago. It hadn't been bad.

"If you mean cannelloni beef, sure," he said. I heard him sit down on the couch once more.

"I'm just heading up to my room," I told him, retrieving the plastic tub from the chair. "I've got homework to do."

A grunt was all the reply I got, so I snuck the tub past the door into the living room and went along the entrance hall before trotting up the stairs. Once I was in my room with the door shut and locked, I took the large plastic tub and unscrewed the lid. A smooth glistening white expanse looked back at me. It had cost more than a few dollars at a theatrical makeup outlet, but the amount was definitely worth it.

Pushing back my hair, I sat in front of the mirror and took a glob of the stuff on my fingers. It went on easily, feeling cool against my skin. Sweeping my fingertips across my face, I transformed myself from plain ordinary Taylor Hebert to … I didn't know what. When I was finished, a pure white visage stared back at me, framed by dark curls. I frowned at my hair. Maybe I could do something about that, too. I'd seen wigs in the theatrical shop, or perhaps a washable dye. But I'd deal with that later.

I grinned at myself in the mirror, then smiled, showing my teeth. Oh, yeah. That's what I'm looking for. The dead-white appearance was perfect. There was a reason mimes creeped some people out.

But I wasn't going for the mime look. From the back of my sock drawer, I retrieved the container Riley had given me. Opening it, I wet the tip of my finger then used it to pick up a coating of the faintly purple powder. Pulling my lips back from my teeth, I scrubbed my fingertip over the enamel surfaces, then ran it along my lips. After that, I took another tiny sample of the powder and braced myself, then touched it to each eyeball in turn. It tingled a little, but a few blinks took care of that. The faint grittiness dissolved into nothing as I rolled my eyes around behind closed lids. Then I closed the container and pulled the curtains. They were heavy curtains and with the light off, it was quite dim in the room. As I moved back to the mirror, details around the room became more clear, fading into focus out of the darkness. Placing myself in front of the mirror, I smiled.

My teeth glimmered with an eerie phosphorescence in the darkness, while my lips glowed the colour of blood. My eyes reversed the pattern in part; the sclera were now a deep black (though my irises and somehow my pupils were now glowing, the latter a deep red), framed in blood-red by the edges of my eyelids.

Riley had explained this to me. The powder was actually an encapsulated micro-organism that woke up and started producing phosphorescence in the presence of saliva (my saliva. Anyone else stupid enough to put this stuff in their mouth would go into convulsions and die horribly, with a big grin on their face). In addition, it changed the colour of the whites of my eyes and supercharged my retinas so they gathered more light when there wasn't enough to go around (and because Riley was Riley, made them glow at the same time). In the process, it turned me from 'creepy skinny girl' to 'what the fuck is that?'. She'd assured me that any kind of mouthwash or medicated eyedrops would bring things back to normal.

My smile widened. Brockton Bay was full of people who thought they were scary. Wait till they get a load of me.


End of Part Seven

Part Eight

 

[Ack]

Just to note: I created this image in HeroMachine. It's not 100% accurate, but it's a close approximation.

https://imgur.com/mRBHiOc

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Eight: First Foray


[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


Outside an Empire Eighty-Eight Stash House

Frankie "Hard" Knox had just one job, and he was good at it.

He'd played college ball once upon a time (before he was kicked out of college) and he was still a big husky guy. With his shaved head and tattoos (neither of which he'd had in college) he could scare the absolute fuck out of anyone who came too close to the stash house when he was on watch. For those who were too stoned to scare, he had a stun-gun. Unlike a lot of his buddies, he didn't get bored easily, so he could relax all day without falling asleep on watch.

His buddy Brett'd been in the habit of having a toke or two when it was quiet, and sneaking off for a little shut-eye. He'd warned Brett that one day someone was gonna catch him at it, and then there'd be hell to pay. That 'someone' turned out to be Hookwolf. Brett was still around, but he had a few new scars and he didn't do guard duty anymore.

So Frankie took his job real serious. He never stayed in the same position for more than fifteen minutes, and he took a little stroll every hour or two. Never out of sight of the steps he was guarding, but far enough to get the blood flowing again.

Mitch, his usual partner on this shift, was less full-on about the whole thing. But then, Frankie didn't like him. To be fair, Mitch was a bit of an asshole. He was also fifty pounds heavier than Frankie and a fuck-ton dumber, and Frankie was almost sure he'd once seen Mitch coming out of one of the brothels the ABB used to operate. In any case, Mitch hadn't been there to see Hookwolf drag Brett into the alleyway behind the stash house and beat him bloody. Frankie could still remember the look in his buddy's eyes when he realised just how fucked he was.

Which was why, when the teenage girl came wandering along the street, Frankie was the first one on his feet. She was maybe a tall fourteen or a skinny sixteen, but either way she was walking up to the wrong innocent-looking house that just coincidentally had two guys with shaved heads and Empire ink lounging out front. The thought struck him that she might be actively looking for the Empire, maybe to join. It wasn't a great move on her part, but understandable. With all the shit going down in the Bay these days, a body needed all the backup they could scrounge.

Still, this was the wrong way to go about it. Recruiting happened in schools (mainly Winslow because duh), video arcades and other places kids got together to do whatever kids did these days. He wasn't totally sure about the video arcades thing, but they'd been around in his annoying-little-shit days.

Walking up to a couple of Empire guys who were obviously on lookout duty wasn't the smartest thing to do but she probably didn't know any better, and he didn't really want to scare her off joining the Empire altogether. So he got up and moved a couple of steps toward her, the better to dispense a quiet word of warning and send her on her way.

She was definitely a skinny little thing, he noted absently as she got closer. Her shapeless grey hoodie was about three sizes too big; the hood had been pulled all the way up and over her head so her face was in shadow, while her hands were shoved deep in the pockets. A backpack hung off of one shoulder. Long dark curly hair hanging down out of the hood made for the only real detail he could see. The jeans she was wearing would've been tight on anyone else but hung baggily on her. Scuffed sneakers bore stains that he couldn't even begin to identify. It all added up to a picture of someone who was low on options. Perfect Empire material, in other words. So long as she was white, of course.

"Hey, kid." He didn't put on his usual scare-them-shitless act because she was just a kid. And while he didn't have any brats of his own—none that his girlfriends had ever admitted to, anyway—he did his best to put on a fatherly tone anyway. "This isn't a good place to be. Whyn't you head on home? I bet your dad's wondering where you are."

"Fuck her old man." Mitch lumbered up behind him. "Bitch thinks she's good enough to be out here, she can party with us." His hand gestured toward his pocket. "Got something here that'll make her feel real good, but she's gotta pay for it. So whaddaya say, girl? A little blow for a little blow?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Mitch," groaned Frankie. "Don't be such a goddamn pervert. She's about ten, for Chrissake." Any doubts about how much of a sick fuck Mitch was, were now long gone. Just for a moment, he was tempted to pull the stun-gun out of his pocket and give the asshole a dose.

"Fuck you and the whore you rode in on," Mitch retorted crudely. "If you're too chickenshit to get some when it's on offer, not my fault."

"But it's not—" There was an abrupt movement out of the corner of Frankie's eye. He was suddenly very aware that he'd taken his attention off the girl when Mitch started his shit. Turning back toward the girl, he caught a blurred impression of a pure-white face with a too-wide smile, then a Mack truck collided with his jaw. He didn't go out like a light—he'd earned his nickname the hard way—but his knees went all rubbery and he collapsed to the grimy sidewalk. His eyes were still open though everything was all fuzzy, like he was looking at it through water or something. It had been years since his bell had been so thoroughly rung, and he hadn't gotten any better at handling it.

He was still groggily wondering how a twig like her could hit like that when she answered the question. Using a short iron bar, she swung in at Mitch's knee. There was a sickening crack, and Mitch began to go down as the leg folded under him. The big guy was just opening his mouth to scream, his hand reaching toward the girl, when the iron bar blurred again. This time it was Mitch's wrist that broke like a twig. Mitch finally got his breath, and was half a second into a high-pitched wail of pain when the iron bar came back and smashed his jaw. Four seconds after the girl started moving, the oversized asshole was on the ground, out cold.

As the girl turned back to Frankie, she slid the iron bar up into her sleeve. "I'm guessing you're the smart one," she said in a high-pitched child's voice, ending with a deranged-sounding giggle. "I want to talk to you."

He was vaguely aware that normally he wouldn't be saying shit to anyone who'd just come up and smacked him down like that. But he had to admit, she'd pulled off a masterful ambush on him and Mitch, playing on their expectations to a fare-thee-well. Also, she'd called him smart. It was nice to have his talents recognised like that. Finally, she'd only hit him hard enough to ring his bell, but she'd put Mitch down like Hookwolf would've, only with more broken bones and less blood. He hadn't liked Mitch already, and the guy's performance from before had just been totally wrong on so many levels. The more he thought about it, the more he liked her style.

Even with all that, he still wouldn't have said a word to her, except for the implicit threat of the iron bar, and the certain knowledge that she was willing to break bones to get what she wanted. Telling him he was the smart one was just another way of asking him if he was going to be smart about this.

If he got crippled for holding out, he asked himself, would Othala help him get back on his feet?

Probably not, he decided.

Fuck it. It's not worth it.

"What do you want to talk about?" he asked.

If anything, her creepily wide smile got wider. "Your future." She leaned closer, and he saw with a shiver of visceral terror that her eyes were just blue irises surrounding a glowing red pupil, dancing in red-rimmed blackness. This wasn't a mask, and it wasn't trick contact lenses.

That was when he heard the click. Glancing down, he realised that she'd pulled out a big-ass clasp-knife and unfolded the blade while he wasn't looking. It looked really, really sharp. The tip was less than an inch from the fly of his jeans. "Please don't kill me," he whimpered. There was no shame in begging, he decided, if it kept you alive.

"Well, that depends," she breathed. "I've got a choice for you. One, you can get out of town, right now, or I will kill you the next time I see you. Two, you can try to stop me from going in there." She didn't explain the penalty for doing that, but another deranged-sounding giggle made his everything clench up. "Three … you can work for me."

He was certain he'd heard her wrongly. "What? Work … for you?"

She nodded earnestly. "If I'm going to do things right, I need minions. You're my first."

It sounded ridiculous. This was definitely the most bizarre recruitment he'd ever heard of. And yet …

And yet, she'd taken Mitch down without hesitation but she was offering him a job. He couldn't believe that he was actually considering this … and yet he was. "Uh … what's the pay like?" he asked, playing for time so he could get his head together.

"Half," she said simply.

"Half …?" He wasn't sure what she meant.

"Your second job will be to tell me all about your ex-boss and this stash house," she explained, as if it made perfect sense. "Your pay's half the money that's in there, or however much you can carry."

Frankie didn't know how much money was in the stash house, but he knew it was more than he'd see in a year. And she was offering him half …

Fuck it. Right now, he was more terrified of her than he was of Kaiser. Hell, even Hookwolf wasn't this pants-shittingly scary. (Of course, it helped that Hookwolf didn't giggle while waving a blade near his junk).

And yes, the money was a really big plus.

Taking a deep breath, he began to talk.

<><>​

Taylor

I dropped my blue field halfway through Frankie's spiel, and he never paused. It took him several minutes to finish giving me the information that I wanted, while I listened and made mental notes of what sounded important. When he finished, he looked at me. "Uh, you said that was my 'second' job," he said uncertainly. "What was the first?"

"Loyalty test," I said. Flipping the knife up, I caught it by the blade and slapped the handle into his hand. Then I pointed at the bulky guy who'd made the crude comments, who was still lights-out on the pavement. "Finish him off."

This was a detail I had to make sure of. Personally, offing someone just to prove myself (even if I meant to betray them later) wouldn't have bothered me. But most people suffered from that 'morality' thing, especially when it came to people they'd associated with.

In this case, it seemed that either Frankie didn't have much in the way of morality, or his work partner wasn't someone that he liked very much. Stooping over the big guy, he pulled the asshole's head back and slashed the knife across his neck. There was no faking the pool of blood that started forming under the guy almost immediately. After wiping the bloody blade on his victim's shirt, he straightened up and held out the clasp-knife to me. The loyalty test had been on two levels, of course. If he'd tried to stab me either before or after cutting the other guy's throat, I would've had to give him a failing grade.

"Thank you," I said, accepting the weapon with another high-pitched giggle. There was no point in not being polite when someone had just killed for me. It was also important to keep up the act. "You didn't waste time," I said, trying to make it sound like I was actually enthusiastic about the murder he'd just carried out.

He shrugged. "No sense in fucking around. Asshole was a sick puppy. Nobody liked him."

I had my answer. Still, most people would have trouble snuffing out the life of a total stranger, much less someone they knew. It seemed Frankie was made of sterner stuff. Of course, this meant that he wouldn't have any qualms about trying to end me if he ever decided that working for me wasn't worth the hassle. I decided to keep an eye on Frankie-boy, just in case.

The next item on the agenda was to actually go in there and get the money. The guys inside weren't exactly on the ball if they hadn't heard the (now) dead guy scream a minute ago. Frankie had given me a pretty good word picture of the interior of the stash house, and I had a rough idea of how many people I'd have to deal with. They'd be adult, armed with guns, and they'd be on guard once I kicked things off. Which meant I'd need an edge. Fortunately, I had one ready to hand.

"Frankie," I said treating him to a special smile just to make the sweat break out on his forehead, "do you know where the circuit breakers are in the house?"

<><>​

Frankie Knox

"Hall closet," he said automatically. "Halfway down the hall, on the left." His heart was hammering in his chest as she turned away. He was a grown man and there he was, almost literally shitting his pants when a teenage girl spoke to him. A horrifically terrifying teenage girl; but a teenage girl none the less.

When she'd told him to shank Mitch, the first thought that'd gone through his mind was no. Not because killing was particularly repugnant to him—he'd done it before—but because this would be a step he couldn't come back from. This would bind him to her more strongly than any mere oath. Once upon a time, he'd kicked the living shit out of some homeless black guy to earn his Empire colours, and this was more binding than that would ever be.

On the other hand, Mitch was a piece of shit and this girl definitely played for keeps. She wasn't some half-assed player pretending to be something she wasn't. If I don't, I'll probably end up right beside Mitch. And if I do …

All of this had gone through his mind in a split second, and he'd made his decision. Pulling Mitch's head back, he slashed the blade across, making sure to get both carotid arteries. And with that, the die had been cast. For good or ill, he was now working for her. Let's hope she's as good as she thinks she is.

"Good boy," she said in the little-girl voice that sent shivers down his spine. He was profoundly grateful that she didn't giggle as well this time. It put him in mind of every horror movie he'd ever seen. "Wait out here. I won't be long."

"You don't want me coming in with you?" The protest was torn from his lips. He didn't necessarily want to go in, but the very last thing he desired was to have her think he didn't want to work for her any more. Her pension plan, he suspected, left a lot to be desired.

"Don't be silly." Her voice was light and playful, but the burning eyes were at odds with the creepy-as-fuck smile. "You might get hurt, and I only just got you."

Turning away from him, she tucked her hair up into her hood, then climbed the steps to the front door. Dropping her backpack on the top step, she took hold of the door handle. It was unlocked, as he knew it would be. Pulling it open, she stepped inside then shut it behind her. He heard the click as the lock engaged. There was no immediate shout of alarm, which meant nothing really. As a teenage girl, she was able to look harmless right up until the time she started breaking bones.

Alone in front of the house, Frankie considered his options. He could raise the alarm, right now. Mitch's death could be blamed on the girl. But if they failed to take her down, he suspected he'd be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. She didn't look the type to take betrayal well.

Alternatively, he could make a run for it. He had a bit of cash, and he figured he could make it as far as New York and take up with one of the gangs there. The Empire were bro's but when it came to giggling maniacs with knives, a line had to be drawn.

Or … he could stay there and wait for her. She had promised him half the money from the stash house, after all. And who knew? Once he had cash in hand, a few more options might be opened up.

Despite the fact that he'd been expecting it, he was still a little startled when the lights went out on both floors of the house. Shouts arose here and there, but they sounded more like 'what the hell?' type shouts rather than 'intruder!' type shouts.

And then he heard the laughter. It wasn't the giggling. That made him want to scrub his ears out with bleach and steel wool. This laughter was deep and booming, and he was fucked if he knew who was doing it. A moment later, when he heard the first scream, he got a hint.

Random thuds and crashes became audible within the house. Interspersed with these were screams and shouts of panic. "What the fuck is that?" or a close variation was something he heard more than once. Once, someone or something fell down the stairs—the thump-thump-thud-thud-thud was unmistakeable—but most of it was a single impact or sound of breakage. And then, of course, she changed up her game and threw someone out the window. It was boarded up, as were half the other ones on the upper floor, but this didn't seem to bother her in the slightest. Glass shattered and a groaning man hit the asphalt amid clattering boards.

A moment later, the guy—it was Paulie, one of Hookwolf's asshole friends—started getting up. Paulie was big, bigger than Frankie. He was also tough as nails, and he was one of the men responsible for discipline in the ranks. As such, he'd beaten up Frankie on more than one occasion. Frankie didn't realise he'd moved until he was standing in front of Paulie. His leg drew back almost of its own accord, and launched his booted foot into the side of Paulie's head. Paulie went down again, but Frankie wasn't finished. Payback, he decided as he drew his boot back again, was sweet.

<><>​

"You done?"

Frankie looked around at the girl, then back down at Paulie's still form. He'd lost track of the number of times he had kicked the asshole in the face; teeth were scattered across the asphalt and Paulie's face was no longer recognisable. He wasn't even sure if the asshole was still breathing. Nor did he care.

Turning, he headed toward the girl. He'd have to wash the blood off of his boot sometime, but not right now. "Yeah, I'm done. Him and me had history." He took stock of her, still smiling as creepily as before, and his respect for her rose dramatically. Her hoodie had a few new rips and tears, but apart from that she seemed to have taken down half a dozen of the Empire's finest with hardly a scratch to show for it.

She ignored Paulie and turned back toward the front door of the house. "Come on. Time to get paid." Scooping up her backpack, she led the way back into the house.

<><>​

Taylor

He followed me in, of course. I didn't know who the guy he'd been kicking was, and I didn't care. I led the way downstairs to the basement. In deference to the fact that Frankie couldn't see in the dark, I'd turned the breakers back on, so it was lit with a single yellowing bulb. Sprawled on the floor in front of a metal cabinet was a guy I'd had to hit half a dozen time before he went down. In the cabinet, behind a lock that I'd already busted open to see what was inside, was what he'd been protecting; stacks of money, and bags of white powder. I knew very little about the shadowy world of drugs, but I was reasonably certain that wasn't talcum powder.

Ignoring the drugs, and the way Frankie was staring at the big guy—honestly, you'd think he'd never seen a man who'd been beaten unconscious with the butt of his own sawn-off shotgun before—I started loading wads of cash into my backpack. There was a lot of money; I ran out of backpack before I got even a third of the way through it. Halfway through stacking the cash, I'd taken the can of lighter fluid from the backpack to make way for the money. Once I tightened down the straps, I picked up the can and checked on Frankie.

Not having had the forethought to bring his own backpack, he was looking around the cellar to find something to carry money in. Pushing aside a stack of guns, he unzipped a duffel bag and tipped out a dozen or more boxes of ammunition. Holding up the duffel, he asked, "I can fill this with cash, right?"

"Yes," I said. "Leave the drugs, though." The last thing I wanted was for my first right-hand man getting high at the wrong moment.

"Sure, uh, boss." He headed over to the cabinet and started scooping cash into it. I could see there'd still be some left, but he was very enthusiastic about making his share as large as possible. As he did this, I wandered over to the guns.

Nothing really jumped out at me, except for one chrome-plated monstrosity of a revolver. I held it up. "Frankie. What ammunition does this take?"

He glanced around. "The Anaconda? Forty-four magnum. I saw a couple of boxes in there."

"Oh, good." I rummaged around until I found the boxes he'd spoken of. I had to compress the money a little and loosen the straps, but I got the pistol and ammunition into the backpack as well. By the time I finished doing that, Frankie was stuffing the last wad of cash into the straining duffel.

"If you break the zipper, I'm not going to wait for you to find another one," I warned him. "Put the rest of the money and the drugs in the middle of the floor. And this, too." Picking up some boxes of ammunition, I carried them over as well.

It took a few minutes to finish piling everything together. Frankie took a pistol of his own and shoved it in his waistband, then selected a couple of boxes of ammunition for himself. Despite the dent we'd made in the cash side of things, it made for a pretty impressive pile. I grabbed the unconscious guard and dragged him out of the way behind the stairs, so he wouldn't accidentally die from what I was about to do next. Killing someone by accident is pure carelessness, nothing more. You can't even really claim it as a kill.

Frankie obviously hadn't thought things through, but when I started pouring lighter fluid over everything, he got the picture real quick. "Wait, what the fuck?" he asked. "You're burning it?"

I didn't bother answering him, especially as the box of matches I'd taken from my pocket answered the question well enough. I gestured him up the stairs, and he obeyed with some alacrity.

"But why?" he asked. "Why burn the drugs and the money? Why not, you know, take it all?"

"It's not about the drugs," I said. "It's not about the money." It was true. I didn't care overly much about either one, except as a means to get what I wanted. I struck a match, and it caught; the sulphur smell tickled my nostrils.

"So why?" he asked. He was at the top of the stairs by now.

"It's about sending a message," I said, and flicked the match into the pool of lighter fluid. I made my way up the stairs as the fire flared up behind me. With the concrete floor, and the basement rafters so high above the fire, I figured it probably wouldn't set the house alight.

The message, of course, was "I can do this all day." The loss of that money and those drugs wouldn't affect the Empire significantly on a day to day basis, but the psychological impact would be much greater.

The first round cooked off as I closed the cellar door, then several more went off in quick succession. This was going to be very loud for a while, which would hopefully draw the attention of the forces of law and order in this direction. During which time, I intended to be elsewhere.

I'd been thinking about the various villain gangs around Brockton Bay. One and all, they were flawed. The Empire ran on an idiotic delusion, while the ABB was based around a no less idiotic idea of some kind of universal 'Asian-ness'. Even the Merchants were addicted to the very drugs they dealt.

Strolling out into the night air with Frankie close behind me, I gave voice to my conclusions.

"This city," I decided, "needs a better class of criminal." I paused, then corrected myself. The amount of shit flowing through the streets was a problem that needed addressing. "No, scratch that. What it needs is an enema."


End of Part Eight

Part Nine

 

[Ack]

Depending on how this goes, they may release Marquis in hopes of getting control of the situation. Taylor has a pretty powerful combination of powers that shes barely scratched the surface on.

Click to shrink...

Heh. I did an earlier version of this for Another Way, but with a little work it will fit better here ...


She saw him, standing on the edge of the rooftop, looking out over the city. Such was his belief that she would not attack him, he had his back turned, even though he had to know that she was there. For a moment, Taylor had the impulse to push out her grey field and nullify his powers for a moment, just to shake him out of that supreme self-confidence. But she quashed it as unworthy. They were here under truce, after all.

"Jester." His voice was rich and deep. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

She moved to join him, feeling the gravel turning under the soles of her sneakers. "Your message said that you had something for me." As befitted the gravity of the situation, she refrained from giving her usual little insane giggle. As befitted the role she was playing, she didn't stop smiling.

Somehow, she suspected the giggle wouldn't freak him out anyway.

"I do indeed." This close, she realised that he wore evening dress, illuminated faintly by the glow from the city lights below. Unclasping his hands from behind his back, he gestured out over the city. "We both care about Brockton Bay. You want ... to give its people a better class of crime. I want it to work again. Those two aims can go hand in hand. Currently, we have been working separately, and occasionally at cross-purposes. I propose to put an end to that."

"How?" She was wary, on her guard. The iron bar up her sleeve would drop into her hand in an instant, should she choose to attack. If she pushed out her grey field fast enough, his powers wouldn't be able to get a grasp on her. Despite that, she was fully aware that he would probably win if they fought, here and now. Of course, he did have a strong reputation for never breaking his word and never attacking women or children ... but one could never be sure. The vast profits from running a city unopposed could undermine the strongest principles, given time.

"I propose a partnership." His voice was smooth and measured. "You handle the street level side of things, with assistance as needed from my forces. I handle the higher level politics, with backup from your parahuman forces as necessary."

She paused, searching his words for any tricks. "It can't be that simple."

"It won't be simple in any way at all," he assured her. "But if we are able to work without looking over our shoulders, if I can run interference on the PRT for you, if you can handle the street-level problems for me, it will be somewhat easier for the both of us."

"Your methods -" she began, then paused.

"Are harsh, yes, but I have found them necessary in the past," he went on. "However, I will not be kidnapping twelve year old children. I will not be seeking to betray you while pretending to be your ally. If I am your enemy, you will know it. I would prefer not to be."

"No murdering allies." She hadn't ever thought she'd be saying this out loud.

Carefully, he inclined his head. "As you say. No murdering allies. What, then, do I do with those who begin to cause more problems than they're worth?"

She turned her head to look at him fully. "Let them know that I'm working with you. If the problems persist, send them to me."

"Some would call that a more stringent punishment than my norm." His words were light, addressed to the city skyline.

"Doesn't matter. It's the way it's going to be if we're going to be working together."

"Of course." Again, he inclined his head. "So, then, shall we call it a partnership?" Turning to face her, he extended his hand.

"We've still got to work out the details, but sure." She took it. A fleeting thought crossed her mind that one or the other should really be wearing a joy buzzer, but she ignored it.

It was only a handshake, but it signified much more to Brockton Bay.

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Nine: Preparing for Action

[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


Frankie and I went our separate ways shortly after that. I got his cell-phone number and told him I'd be buying one shortly. With the assistance of my blue field, he didn't find that overly unusual. I also told him that I'd want a holster for the Anaconda the next time we went out together. He could pay for it with his money, and I'd reimburse him for it..

Carrying a backpack full of money through the night-time streets of Brockton Bay is more boring than it sounds. Barely anyone tried to mug me; I only had to break two wrists and a collarbone. The almost legendary ability of the Brockton Bay underworld to sniff out a dollar from two streets away seemed to have deserted them tonight. As Broken Wrist #2 staggered away, I wondered idly if I should've been waving around a neon sign saying 'I am carrying a lot of money!'. Still, my wrist-breaking technique seemed to be getting along nicely. The guy with the collarbone? Boy, did he complain. Probably because I didn't break his wrist instead. It wasn't my fault he had no idea how to block a swing.

When I got home, I snuck in through the back gate then dug my key out of my pocket. We had a spare key under a fake rock, but I'd made damn sure I knew where my key was. Pausing, I ran the iron bar under the hose to get rid of any incriminating bloodstains, then dried it on my hoodie. Then I headed for the back door. Once inside, I snuck upstairs and stashed my backpack under the bed. It took a couple of hard shoves, but I finally managed it.

I must've made more noise than I thought, because footsteps sounded in the hallway outside my room. "Taylor? What's going on?"

Well, fuckburgers. The eyedrops I'd gotten for this purpose sat on my dresser. I produced a loud and probably unconvincing snore as I grabbed them and hit each eye with a drop. Even if my mirror hadn't told the tale, the fading away of my night vision would've clued me in that my eyes were going back to normal. It was the work of a moment to grab the toothpaste tube on the dresser and squeeze a little on to my finger to smear over my lips and teeth. Toothpaste killed the bacteria just as fast as mouthwash did.

"Taylor, you don't snore." I couldn't tell if he was angry or amused. I needed visual cues to read him that closely. But doing this would require him to be in the room, which was exactly what I didn't need right now. "I know you've been out. Open the door. We need to talk."

The alcohol wipes sat next to the toothpaste. I started scrubbing my face clean. While it was technically possible to explain what I'd been doing to Dad and not have him attempt to ground me for the term of my natural life, I couldn't see any way to actually do it without overclocking my blue field (and I wasn't even sure about that). I didn't want him to ground me, because I'd ignore it and either he'd try to stop me (and I'd probably have to hurt him) or he'd want to talk to me a lot more, and I had no idea what answers would make him happy. Apart from promising I'd never do it again. I could never do that, of course. Keep such a promise, I mean. If I thought nobody was going to check on me, I'd make promises like that all day long. But I knew damn well he would check on me, and find out I was doing what he'd told me not to. Which would make him unhappy, which in turn would cause issues for me down the road. Not for the first time, I reflected on how morality was a self-defeating algorithm.

TL; DR: There were no good outcomes if he found out.

"I just went for a walk, Dad," I called back through the door. The downside of applying the drops early was becoming abundantly clear to me, even if nothing else was. The minimal light in the room made it impossible to see whether I'd wiped all the greasepaint off. "It's no big deal."

"Taylor, it is a big deal." I heard the handle turn, and realised I'd neglected to lock the door. It wasn't as though I could be blamed, of course; my understanding of the social contract in the household specified that so long as different excuses were employed, the parent was stalled from taking meaningful action. He'd bypassed all that and opened my door as if it held no specific significance.

"Jeez, Dad!" I injected anger into my voice as I tossed the wipes into the trash can beside my dresser. "I could've been getting changed here or anything! How about you ask permission first?"

He sighed. "If you'd been getting changed, you would've said so."

Note to self. Use that one next time.

He was still talking. "And we're way past me asking permission to look in on you. The topic is you leaving the house and going for a walk without asking if you can, without even telling me where you're going."

"Okay, sorry," I said, hanging my head to approximate guilt. "I won't do it again."

He shook his head. "Not good enough, Taylor. I need to know why you're going out. If it's important to you, if it's a good enough reason, I can take you there and make sure you're safe. But I can't do anything unless I know what's going on."

This was getting irritating. With an internal sigh, I locked the white bubble to the blue field and pushed them out to cover Dad. "It's really nothing," I said. "I was just going for a walk to clear my head. I had something to protect myself with, see?" Letting the iron bar slide out of my sleeve, I held it up to show him. I knew there was a reason I washed it before I came inside. I definitely didn't show him the clasp-knife in my pocket. Fortunately, it was too dark for him to see the rips and tears in the hoodie from the fight in the Empire stash house.

"Huh." He took the bar and hefted it a couple of times. "It's definitely heavy enough to do damage. Sure it isn't too heavy for you?"

I snorted in genuine amusement. That piece of rebar and I had been partners since long before I got powers. "I'm stronger than I look, Dad."

"Yeah, well, just so long as you don't turn around and tell me you're a cape as well." He returned the iron bar to me. "I don't like it when you go out like that, but the offer's still on the table for me to drive you where you want to go, just so you get there and back safely."

Okay, that was new. I had no idea Dad had anti-cape feelings. Was it because he had some vague awareness that I was the daughter of a cape? It didn't feel like that was the case, mainly because he hadn't actually come out and said it.

"What's wrong with capes?" I asked, trying to sound innocent. "Don't they protect us?" At least, that was what the average person seemed to think. Inasmuch as the average person thought at all. Between TV, beer and regularly staged cape fights, any given Brockton Bay citizen probably didn't have an original idea from one month to the next.

He turned his face away from me and lowered his voice. "I … your mother," he said reluctantly. "I … didn't tell you before, because you were too young. But …"

What was he getting at? Had Mom been a cape somewhere in between getting pregnant to Jack Slash and marrying Dad? There'd been nothing in the diaries about it. Had she died in a cape fight instead of a car crash?

"What about Mom?" I asked, rare emotion stirring my voice. "How did she die?"

He looked at me soberly in the dimness. "A cape killed her."

"Uh … you said she died in a car accident." I was pretty sure the newspaper had also reported it that way. Her being killed by a cape wasn't exactly something that needed covering up. Was it?

Dad sighed. "She was in her car, driving. A cape did something that made her crash. The police would never tell me which one, probably because they didn't want you to end up as an orphan because I tried to get revenge."

"So why didn't they arrest him and charge him with murder?" Or had they done it in secret?

"Because they didn't quite have enough evidence to make it stick. Only supposition. I guess the PRT just added it to the list of crimes he'd have to face once they got their hands on him. Whichever one it is."

Okay, this was just plain bullshit. "So capes get to murder my mom in broad daylight and then walk away? That's not fair. Where's the justice?" I was fully aware that I'd ordered a murder just earlier that night and probably condoned another one, but that was different. None of those guys was my mom. Besides, they were assholes. They asked for it.

"Exactly what I said to them, then." He clenched his fists at his sides. I didn't see any indication that he was going to attack me, so he was probably remembering the anger that he'd felt at the time.

I didn't get angry. I got even.

<><>​

With the assistance of the blue field, I managed to manoeuvre Dad into extracting a promise from me not to go anywhere at night without adult supervision, and not to do anything stupid while I was out. Frankie was an adult, so I was covered there. And of course, I wasn't about to do anything stupid. Everything I'd already done was according to a carefully-devised plan. Though I was thinking road flares for my next act of monetary arson, rather than lighter fluid and matches. If the match had gone out, I would've looked like an idiot.

Satisfied, he went back to bed. Once the bedroom door was closed, I turned on the light and inspected myself more closely. I'd gotten nearly all the greasepaint, though there was a large patch on my forehead that I'd missed. Fortunately, the shadow from my hair had concealed it. I finished cleaning up, took a quick shower, and went to bed myself.

<><>​

The next day, after Dad went to work, I spent a couple of hours online, then took the bus to the Lord Street Market. My backpack came with me, but I left the Anaconda at home. Somehow, I doubted that the enforcers would look kindly on a fourteen-year-old girl carrying a pistol that looked like it weighed about as much as I did. At the very least, they'd be jealous.

I'd never fired a gun before, but the online research I'd done had familiarised me with how they worked, how to load them, and common mistakes to avoid when using them. There were even videos on how to disassemble, clean and reassemble them. I knew that I wouldn't be an instant expert when I did get around to firing it, but at least I wasn't starting from a position of total ignorance.

Half the money I'd liberated from the Empire was now stashed in a plastic bag at the back of my underwear drawer. I figured I wouldn't need it all to get what I wanted. Rather than go to a mall and raise eyebrows by pulling out wads of cash for everything, I decided to make use of the Lord Street Market's rather more laissez-faire attitude toward that sort of thing. Also, the type of second-hand clothing I was looking for, I probably couldn't get at the Weymouth or Hillside malls.

What I wanted wasn't in the high-end area, anyway. I meandered through the market, making sure to keep my hands in plain view (though my trusty iron bar still resided up my sleeve, because why not) until I found the thrift shops. Given that I was dressed in ratty jeans and a hoodie slightly less well ventilated than the one I'd taken to the Empire fight, nobody looked twice at me. Which was exactly my intention.

It took a bit of looking, especially since I didn't know what I wanted till I saw it. In the end, I went through three shops before I found what I was after. Two things, which became three when something caught my eye at the last minute. I considered a ratty green wig, no doubt left over from some long-ago St Patrick's Day, but decided not to risk sharing it with creepy-crawlies. Bugs, I can handle. Bugs on my scalp, not so much. Still, the idea of green hair stuck with me.

The shop assistant, a kid about my age with terminal acne and a nametag that said 'Hello my name is GREG', looked up from his comic book when I marched up to the counter carrying my bounty. The first thing I laid across the counter was a huge red coat with tattered gold brocade on the sleeves. I guessed it was from a marching band or something. It was somewhere around what I figured Frankie's size to be, and would go a long way toward covering his tattoos. I didn't remember if he had any on his hands, but gloves would fix that.

I'd looked for a matching one in my size, but I was out of luck. The closest thing I could find was a velvet coat in faded purple. It wasn't really my colour, but it definitely didn't shout 'Taylor Hebert', so it went on the pile too. The buttons had come off of it, but there was an assortment on the counter so I'd have to get some of those as well. Some big plastic faux-gold ones caught my eye. I figured they'd clash horribly with it, which was just the effect I was after.

The last thing I slapped on to the counter was a wide-brimmed straw hat. It totally didn't match anything else I was going to be wearing, which made it perfect. I'd tried it on, and it slipped down a bit on me, but I figured I'd stuff some newspaper up inside. The idea was that it would cast a shadow over my face, to make the glowing eyes and lips and teeth really stand out. The more I could weird out my opponents before shit went sideways, the more chance I had of kicking their asses.

The kid looked over the assorted purchases and his forehead scrunched with the effort of thought. "Uh … cash or card?" he asked eventually, then yawned.

Way to go, kid. Present a totally professional outlook to the world. That's the way to get ahead in this utterly boring dead-end job. I shrugged as I matched the amount of spark and interest in his voice. "Cash, I guess. How much?"

He fumbled through my picks until he'd found all the price tags, then went through the laborious process of entering each price in turn on the geriatric cash register. When he hit the Enter key, it ruminated for several seconds, then popped up a price. It was less than fifty bucks, so I was good with that. To make things easier for him, I grabbed a selection of the buttons to push it as close to fifty as I could. Then I handed over the money and waited for him to figure out my change. Which he did on a calculator, because apparently fifty minus forty-seven fifty is a difficult sum.

I ended up spending two more dollars on a cloth bag to carry my purchases, because they didn't have plastic bags big enough to fit Frankie's coat in. That was fine with me. I left Hello-my-name-is-GREG perusing his comic book once more, secure in the knowledge of a job well done. That kid definitely had a future in retail. You go, Greg. Read that comic book. Improve your mind.

In comparison, getting a cell-phone was simplicity itself. I got the cheapest model I could find, not because I couldn't afford anything better, but because there was a good chance it would get broken. With that thought in mind, I bought three. The guy selling them didn't even raise an eyebrow, though he did manage to sell me chargers—one and a spare—and a case.

Walking out of the Market, I heaved a metaphorical and literal sigh of relief. Half an hour more in there and I would've been seriously considering committing some sort of atrocity just so people would leave me alone. I know I don't do people well. I mean, I can handle people. I just can't handle being around people without being able to tell them to go away. I'm still not sure why they haven't made it legal yet to maim idiots for getting in your face. Maybe if I set an example, people would see the light.

Next stop was a place I'd been before. There wasn't a huge demand for theatrical supplies in Brockton Bay—a haven of the arts, it ain't—which meant I couldn't shop around. Predictably, the counter attendant recognised me. "Hi!" she said brightly. "How's the play going?"

"Things are getting done," I said, totally truthfully but in a way that had nothing to do with the question she'd asked. "Just added another part so I need a few new things."

I picked up another tub of greasepaint—that stuff was so handy—as well as more alcohol wipes, then I started looking at other options. At first I was thinking of some sort of washable hair dye, but the shop assistant happened to mention that applying it then removing it repeatedly would damage my hair. Hair's hair, but even Dad would think it was strange if my hair started falling out or something. So I decided to think laterally, and picked up two wigs, one in curly black, one in curly white, as well as a washable dye. I was pretty sure I could find some way to soak the white one.

All this together came to somewhat more than the purchases in the Market, but that was fine. Money was just money. There was nothing special about it, and I'd certainly be able to get more. We were just finalising the price when I saw one more thing that I wanted to add to the list. The shop assistant blinked when I put it on the counter, but then she shrugged and rang it up anyway. "That must be some play you're putting on," she observed. "Let me know when you're ready for opening night, and I'll come buy a ticket."

"It's just a private thing," I said, stowing my purchases in the backpack. "But sure, I guess."

I escaped from the shop, swearing under my breath that I'd have to find another place, or maybe use my blue field more often when I was out in public. The last thing I wanted was for some normal person to take notice of my preparations.

Nothing untoward happened all the way home, and I spent the afternoon sewing buttons on the velvet coat while the white wig soaked in a bath of green hair dye. Washable it might be, but I wasn't going to be washing it if I could possibly help it. By the time I had finished my tailoring efforts, the coat was adorned with horribly mismatched gold buttons.

Dad came home in due time and seemed faintly relieved, probably due to the fact that I was actually at home, and not out and about somewhere. We had lasagne for supper; I'd taken the time to put that on while checking on the wig. I just had to hope that Dad wouldn't wonder why the bathroom wash-basin had a faint green tinge to it before I had a chance to scrub it clean.

Dad went to bed, and so did I. Pretending to be the dutiful daughter, I pulled the covers up and faked sleep. Following Dad's comment from the night before, I didn't try to snore.

Sure enough, about an hour later, I heard the floorboards creaking as he came out of his room. My bedroom door eased open and he leaned in. I didn't open my eyes or move, because he might've seen something. I'd made sure to leave one arm on top of the covers, so he could see it was me and not some made-up dummy. After a while, he closed the door again and went back to bed. I waited another fifteen minutes before I moved.

Pushing the covers back carefully, I climbed out of bed and put the dummy I'd made up in my place. The black wig, I carefully arranged on the pillow. When I went to apply the powder to my eyes, I stopped and frowned. I knew I couldn't hurt myself that way, but the instinct to not touch my own eyeball was so strong it usually took me several tries. With a little thought, however, I found that a cotton swab would do the trick just as well, making it easier to get dressed. After that, I put the rest of the makeup on, then tucked my hair up under the green wig and pulled the hat on. With the extra bulk of the wig, it sat just right.

With the Anaconda—fully loaded, now—and the money in the backpack, I picked up the bag with the stuff for Frankie and climbed out through my bedroom window. It was a short drop to the ground, and I found myself absorbing the impact with no trouble at all. After I let myself out through the back gate, I pulled out the phone and sent Frankie a text.

Fifteen minutes later, he pulled up at the location I'd designated; a small park several blocks from my house. He was my minion, but I didn't want him and Dad meeting. Dad would probably get the wrong idea, or even the right one. Either way, he wouldn't be happy.

"Boss." Frankie got out and opened the passenger side door for me. I spotted a large empty duffel bag in the back seat. Frankie had his head screwed on right.

"I like the way you think," I said. "What do you think of my new look?" I already had the smile in place.

He looked me up and down. "You look fuckin' terrifying," he said judiciously. "I like the coat and hair. It really sells the whole 'unhinged sociopath' vibe you got goin' on."

I gave him a giggle and watched him shudder. I still had it. "Thanks, Frankie. You say the nicest things. Did you get the holster?"

"Yeah, I did," he told me, opening the back door and reaching in. "Also got me some heavy artillery, just in case we needed it next time."

I took the holster and admired the pump-action shotgun and assault rifle that he'd acquired. "Good boy. You're thinking ahead. I like that. I got something for you, as well."

He took the bag I handed him, then pulled out the coat. Taking off his jacket, he shrugged the coat on in its place. "Nice fit," he said. "A bit gaudy, but I can live with that. What else did you get?"

"Greasepaint, like mine," I said. "And one other thing."

"A clown nose?" he asked, when he found the 'one other thing' that I'd picked up at the theatrical supply place.

"Sure," I said, and giggled again, just to remind him who the psycho in the room was. "Anyone looking at you is going to be seeing 'bald clown', not 'Frankie Knox, ex-Empire goon'. The nose just makes that a lot more certain."

He looked down at the coat he was wearing, and shrugged. "Well, I already look like a clown in this, so why not?"

"A rich clown," I pointed out.

He brightened. "True. So, I'm basically wearing a costume. Does this make me a supervillain, too?"

I giggled and patted his cheek. "Not quite. You're perfect as a minion. Leave the villaining to me, okay?"

"Okay." He started applying the greasepaint while I figured out the holster. By the time I had it arranged properly, so the gun would draw across the front of my body, he was all kitted out, including the clown nose. "So what are we doing tonight, boss?"

"The same thing we'll be doing every night, Frankie." I giggled. "Taking over Brockton Bay's underworld, one asshole at a time. But to begin with …" I paused to draw the tension out. "How do you feel about paying the police a visit?"

He grinned and racked the slide on the shotgun. With his pure white face, clown nose and red coat, he looked both ridiculous and scary. In other words, perfect. "Love to."

Getting a minion was definitely one of my better decisions.


End of Part Nine

Part Ten

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Ten: The Culprit


[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Of course, I wasn't stupid enough to attack the central Brockton Bay police station. It's always possible to dance on the wrong side of the line between audacity and idiocy and not have a solid dose of reality smack you in the back of the head, but people who depend on Murphy ignoring them are otherwise known as 'casualties'. I had no intention of being a casualty, so I had Frankie take me elsewhere.

In this case, 'elsewhere' was a police sub-station. Not big or flashy enough to attract the attention of any supervillains looking to make the nightly news, nor even large enough to possess an armoury of a size that would draw the attention of a cape gang. Tiny, in fact. Minuscule. Barely even there. A single small brick building with a single small front desk. The type of place you go into to report that your cat is still stuck up a tree, and the fire department has yet to respond.

Nothing important was kept there, so the place wasn't fortified to a fare-thee-well like it was in the main precinct houses. More specifically, nothing important to anyone else was kept there. It was where dreams (and careers) went to die. But it did have something that I dearly wanted to get my hands on, at least for a little while.

An internet connection to the central crime database.

Now, I'm no hacker. If I were, this narrative would be more about me typing in a darkened room, using one of those special Hollywood monitors that actively projected the characters from the screen across my face, while Frankie practised his ominous looming in the background. There would be 3-d representations of the firewall, including a totally unnecessary animation of the thing crumbling to fragments as I unleashed my unstoppable virus of digital doom upon it.

Come to think of it, I wish I was a hacker. That sounds kinda cool. (And I like the sound of 'unstoppable virus of digital doom'). But no, I had no idea how to do any of that (a single semester of Visual Basic does not equip one for breaking into the PRT servers, alas) so I had to make do with second best; gaining access to the criminal database the hard way.

Then again, kicking the door in and walking in guns blazing is way more fun than hunching over a keyboard in a darkened room (why do you think so many teenage boys play games where they can kick in doors, guns blazing, while they hunch over their keyboards in darkened rooms?). Other people, I decided, can do the hacking. I'll do the 'slightly unhinged criminal mastermind' thing.

For one thing, I was far better equipped for it. A sociopathic uncaring attitude about anyone but me and mine? Check. A hulking minion possessed of more firepower than was healthy for anyone around him? Double check. The ability to walk into a gang safe-house and beat the living crap out of half a dozen gangsters? Triple check. The will to impose my personal view of the world on Brockton Bay? You know where I'm going with this.

So, we drove the car through the front wall of the cop station and jumped out, guns hammering a leaden hail of death …

Well, actually, no. We didn't. Doing that was likely to result in a car unable to function as a getaway vehicle. And while it would've been amazing to boost a black-and-white for our inevitable high-speed escape from the forces of bore and snore-der, I was pretty sure they didn't have any stationed at this location. Pity, though. Sirens and flashing lights have a style all their very own. Maybe I could get Frankie to steal some and install them on our ride. Well, the siren at least; the flashing lights might draw attention even when they were off.

So, we pulled up to a nice, legal stop outside the sub-station. Then we got out and marched into the building, armed to the goddamn teeth.

There were two people in the front lobby. One was almost certainly homeless, sacked out on a bench in the corner. The other one was the desk sergeant, who seemed to be focusing on important paperwork rather than watching the door. We totally failed to be intercepted by some bright young detective, assigned here as punishment for refusing to let go a case of corruption against the mayor or the chief of police. Nor did a SWAT team, assembled against the chance of our coming to this very location, appear from nowhere to force us to take cover behind the plastic aspidistra. In fact, I was able to walk all the way up to the front counter and lean across it before Sergeant Oblivious finally looked up.

In the first instant that he saw me, I saw seven questions crossing his face. The first regarded my reasons for being there, while questions two through six involved my appearance. Number seven was undoubtedly phrased very much like "why has a scarily big pistol been shoved up my left nostril?"

"Hi," I said pleasantly, then spoiled it quite deliberately with a rather insane-sounding little giggle. I pushed my blue field out as far as I could, all the while giving him one of my very best smiles, tilting my head back slightly to increase the 'absolutely fucking nuts' quotient of his assessment of my mental state. A glance down at the 'paperwork' increased the width of my smile fractionally. "I'm sure you're busy and all with your crossword puzzle, but I've got a request to make. And by 'request' I mean that if you don't help me out, it's gonna be a closed-casket funeral. You get my drift?" I punctuated my meaning with a shove that did its best to embed the gun muzzle half an inch farther up his nose.

"Hngh," he articulated wittily, crossing his eyes to try to look at the pistol. From that, I read his absolute willingness to do anything that might prevent the inside of his head from becoming the outside of his head.

"Good," I cooed, then placed one hand on the desk and vaulted over it. By the time he reacted to my change in location, I had the pistol nestled gently behind his left ear. "Minion Number One, the duct tape if you will?"

"Sure thing, boss," grunted Frankie. He reached into one of the pockets of the overlarge coat he was wearing and produced the tape, then without taking his eyes from the homeless guy—I couldn't believe he hadn't woken up yet—tossed it to me. I caught it, then turned back just in time to catch the sergeant's hand beginning its creep down the desk. He was still willing to help me, he just wanted to call his buddies in on the action as well.

"Ah, ah, ahh," I chided him. "That sort of thing ends up with you pressing a panic button and me having to clean your brains off my gun. Now, we don't want that, do we?" He needed to know I was serious, so I pistol-whipped him across the face. Not hard, just enough to bloody his lips and loosen a few teeth.

Then I yanked him away from the desk, his chair castors squeaking in protest at the sudden movement. While he was still dazed, I attached the end of the duct tape to the chair and spun him in place so that the tape wrapped around both him and the chair, fixing him in place. I finished off by taping his arms to the chair arms. By the time I placed the (much depleted) roll of duct tape on the counter, he was all but married to that chair.

Looking more than a little dizzy, he spat blood and a tooth (I swear, that one was already loose) on to the floor, then stared up at me. "Who are you?" he asked. "What in God's name do you want?"

"Information," I said sweetly, ignoring the first question. I was me; that was all he needed to know. "But first …" Picking up the tape again, I plastered a length across his mouth. If I was going to go check the rest of the building for police officers, I didn't want him calling out useful information. Such as the fact that I was coming after them.

Only the fact that his eyes widened fractionally clued me in. I spun around just in time to see the door into the rear offices opening, with a gun muzzle edging its way through the gap. Shoving the chair one way, I jumped in the other direction. As the cop behind the door opened fire, I went into a shoulder roll and came up on one knee, reaching for my … for my … for my goddamn stupid pistol that I'd placed on the fucking counter rather than back in the holster. Which put it several yards away.

And then, proving that I was a certifiable genius in getting a minion, Frankie opened fire on the door. BOOM (shakalaka) BOOM went his shotgun, ripping chunks out of it. There was a startled (or maybe pained) yelp from beyond, and whoever it was stopped shooting. I scrambled for my pistol.

"I got this!" I shouted, making a mental note to raise Frankie's pay. "You hold the fort out here!" Snatching up the Anaconda from the bench, I headed for the door into the back offices.

When I got there, I realised it was an auto-lock variety, with a manual keypad on my side to prevent randos from wandering in there on a whim. It was also probably designed to prevent insane criminal masterminds from going in there with a definite purpose but only, and we need to be clear about this, if they're not carrying a pistol that could double as a small anti-aircraft cannon. I fired one shot into the locking mechanism and it ceased to be anything but bits and pieces on the floor.

Which didn't mean I was out of the woods yet. I had to assume that Mr (or Ms; this was the twenty-first century after all) Die Hard 2010 had already called for reinforcements. I wasn't going back to stop this from happening. No, what I was going back to do was make sure they didn't burst in at an inopportune moment and stop me from finding out what I needed to know.

I held back from leaping through the door willy-nilly. I didn't know that I wasn't bulletproof, and I didn't know that I was. Being shot in the lungs would sure as fuck give me a clue, but it wouldn't be one I could make proper use of. So I grabbed an office chair, wrenched the door open, and hurled the chair through.

Sure enough, there was a barrage of shots that punctured the chair in half a dozen places. I mean, wow. What had that chair ever done to them? Taking a double-handed grip of the Anaconda, I fired a shot of my own at the chair, blowing a hole in the gas cylinder underneath it. As according to physics, the high-pressure gas within immediately became low-pressure gas while escaping. Its temperature dropped dramatically, causing the water in the atmosphere around it to condense, forming a small short-lived cloud.

This wasn't enough to give me cover to charge, but it did give me cover to reach around the doorframe and find the light switch. Flipping the switch dropped the light level in the corridor, and then I launched myself around the doorframe. With my blue field pushed to its maximum and my high-pitched cackling echoing down the corridor, I was maximising my chances to succeed. Any one cop, I figured, would be frozen just long enough for me to reach them.

Except that there were two cops. A female one who was standing at the end of the corridor with her pistol raised in the Weaver stance, and a male one who was leaning out of a doorway, rubbing his eyes and looking around like he'd just gotten to sleep. I focused on the woman, trying to push the concept of I'm so scary you don't dare shoot into her head. So of course the guy had a gun.

I saw it come up and point in my direction. He fired. I spun around and fell to the floor, my pistol clattering out of my hand.

They approached me as I lay on my back, breath gurgling in my throat. "What the fuck?" asked the guy. My heels kicked a few times, and I lay still.

"No time," said the woman. "There's another one out there." They crept forward to the end of the corridor. I silently got to my feet and crept after them. They didn't look around because my blue field was reinforcing their knowledge that of course I was dead.

I'd been fully aware of the laser-line of his gun's projected attack, of course. As he'd swung the weapon toward me and the line had turned red in anticipation of his squeezing the trigger, I'd twisted aside. The bullet had barely whisked past me, tugging at the fabric of my coat, close enough that they'd thought I'd been hit.

"Surprise!" I giggled as I grabbed the guy. He screamed like a little girl—really, he should've checked me for life signs—but didn't have time to do more than struggle before I used him as a club to hit the woman. They both went down, but I kicked them each a few times, just in case.

I dragged them both out to where Frankie guarded the front lobby, and dumped him there for him to guard. Then I went back and retrieved my pistol, and checked the rest of the building for inconvenient police officers. There were none, which was lucky for them. I was all out of fucks to give, and I was willing to put holes in police officers until they fucked off and left me alone.

With the two holdouts securely duct-taped—together, in a highly compromising position, because I never hold a grudge—I finally managed to sit down at the terminal. Reaching out, I ripped the tape off of Sergeant Oblivious' mouth. "Okay, then," I said cheerfully. "I'm gonna need some passwords, here."

"I can't—" he began, then stopped, mesmerised, as I waved the pistol in his general direction.

I giggled, this time low and deep and creepy as fuck. "Yes. You can." I indicated the other two. "Well, one of you three can. I only need one password. Who wants to volunteer?"

They stared at me stubbornly. It seemed my blue field needed a helping hand, so I sighed and shot the guy's kneecap out. The woman screamed, the guy screamed louder, and the sergeant wet himself.

"I've got a whole lot of bullets," I announced. "You guys have got a whole lot of joints. I'm pretty sure you'll run out before I do." I gave them another giggle. "But hey, keep holding out. You don't need kneecaps to talk." Reaching out, I rested the muzzle of the pistol on the sergeant's damp groin. "Or, you know, anything below the waist."

When I ratcheted the hammer back with my thumb, he started talking. With his careful instructions, I was able to get into the system with relative ease. I hummed an off-beat tune as I manoeuvred through the options. Finally, I reached the one I was after. Unresolved cape crimes, August of 2008. I flicked through them one at a time, until I reached the one that held the most significance to me. It only took me a moment to absorb the details of the report, and the name of the cape that the cops had decided was responsible for my mom's car going out of control and crashing.

I had my name. To throw any investigators off the scent, I checked a few more reports, then figured out how to empty the cache files. Standing up, I stretched my arms over my head to crack my back.

"All-righty," I declared. "We're done here. Let's go, Minion Number One." Taking my pistol in hand, I vaulted over the counter once more.

"Wait!" It was the sergeant. I stopped and turned, looking attentive. "Who are you?"

"Hmm." I put my finger on my chin. "Minion Number One, who am I?"

Frankie grinned unpleasantly. "You're the boss."

I mimed a finger-gun at him. "Goood answer."

Leaving the cops where they were—and the homeless guy now huddling under the bench with his face turned to the wall and his hands clasped firmly over his ears—we traipsed out into the night air. Distant sirens, coming closer, indicated that moving along was probably a good idea.

"So, boss," Frankie said as we got in. "You get what you needed?"

"Yeah," I said. "I know who we're going after next."

He started the car and put it in gear. "Who's that?"

I grinned, showing all my teeth.

"Skidmark."


End of Part Ten

Part Eleven

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Eleven: Closing In


[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


"Skidmark, huh?" Frankie shook his head. "Always thought he was a braindead sonovabitch. So how'd he do it?"

I looked across at him. "She was driving, and didn't know there'd been a cape battle between the Merchants and the ABB. The cops think Skidmark laid down some of his skid-fields over the road. The fight moved on, but the skid-fields hadn't dissipated by the time she drove around the corner. Her car basically got thrown at a lamp-post. The cops never told Dad it was Skidmark because they didn't want him going after the asshole and getting killed."

Mom had been one of the few people I'd had any sort of emotional connection with. Skidmark had taken that away from me. I didn't like people taking things away from me. But in a way, I was happy.

I'd finally found my meaningful kill.

<><>​

This wasn't to say I was going to go all murder-happy on his junkie ass. Once I had the information I needed, I was going to do this subtly. To help me do this, I had an extremely reliable minion in possession of an unreasonable amount of firepower and the wherewithal to pummel the average drug dealer into unconsciousness. Finally, I had the means to engineer Skidmark's final exit in such a way that I wouldn't have to sully my hands or clothes with his blood (there would be ample time for that sort of thing later) yet would leave absolutely no doubt as to who was behind his abrupt demise.

The next bit of information I needed, of course, was where to find him. How was I going to find him, you ask? I'm glad you asked. Pulling off that little trick would be simplicity itself. You may note that I mentioned earlier that Frankie (aka Minion Number One) was capable of pummelling the average drug dealer into unconsciousness? Let's just say, that particular word choice was not entirely accidental.

We went and found a drug dealer.

As Frankie explained it, there were several inherent problems with running a gang that centred around dealing drugs, rather than anything more creative. One: a drug dealer who samples his own product is a moron. Two: the Merchants all sampled their own product. Three: if you want to sell drugs, your dealers have to make themselves visible for the buyers to find.

Of course, they don't simply sit around hoping that people such as yours truly aren't about to come at them out of the darkness. Dealers go armed as a matter of principle. The principle here being "don't steal my stuff, asshole". And that's where we come to four: in order to actually sell the shit they peddle, they have to come within arm's reach.

Which was right where I wanted them. Or rather, him. 'Him' being the dealer Frankie spotted lurking near the mouth of a dark alley as we cruised slowly down a crap-littered street. I would've just taken him for your average run-of-the-mill night-time would-be mugger, but Frankie knew better. This was fortunate; if I'd been on foot looking for a drug dealer, I probably would've beat the shit out of him and moved on without a backward glance.

Frankie had removed his clown nose and I'd pulled my hat down over my eyes. This served to make me look older, and made sure the dealer didn't see the more striking aspects of my appearance before it was too late. We didn't do anything about Frankie's whiteface makeup because inside a darkened car at night, there wasn't a lot to see.

So, acting like a hesitant customer, we cruised slowly past on the first round. Frankie eyed the surrounding area, looking for any sign that this asshole might have backup. From under the brim of the hat, I scoped out the interior of the alleyway, my enhanced vision picking out some very interesting details that would have otherwise been hidden by the darkness.

"Didn't see anything off," said Frankie once we were past. "But if he's got product on him, it must be inside his jacket, because I didn't see it anywhere else."

"It's in the alleyway, inside a cooler," I said. "Right beside a guy sitting in a camp chair with a pump-action shotgun resting across his lap. Probably where they stash the money from each sale, too."

"Probably," he agreed with a nod. "So how are we gonna do this?"

"We don't need the bodyguard," I decided. "Just the dealer. Was it just me, or did his hand not move far from his right jacket pocket when we drove past?"

"It wasn't just you." Frankie nodded. "So, probably a pistol in the jacket pocket. He's most likely got a knife on him somewhere as well."

"That really, really won't be a problem," I assured him. "Let's go around the block. This time, pull in so he thinks we want to make a buy." I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a wad of cash, which I happened to know was composed of tens. Half of it I peeled off and handed over to Frankie. "Forgot to give you this earlier. For the holster."

"Awesome," he said happily, tucking the money away. "We gonna rob these guys too?"

I tilted my head, considering the idea. " … nah. You can have whatever he's got on him, though."

"Works for me." He grinned widely in the darkness. "Gotta say, working for you is never boring."

I grinned back, somewhat more widely. With, it has to be said, glowing teeth and lips. "I aim to please."

He shuddered and turned his attention back to the road. "That's still creepy as fuck."

I giggled, making it high-pitched. He shuddered again.

<><>​

On the second pass, Frankie slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road. I still had my hat pulled down over my face, but the cash in my hand showed through the window so the dealer could see we were interested. I raised the brim just far enough to see that the bodyguard was still sitting in his chair. Then I focused on the dealer's feet, getting closer. The right hand stayed close to the pocket of his hoodie, which hung down as if there was something heavy in there.

I pushed out my blue field as far as I could. The longer they both stayed happy and unawares, the better for us.

"Evening." His voice was rough, and I was pretty sure the gust of breath held smoke that wasn't from tobacco. "What'll it be?"

Frankie had briefed me on this. "Got weed?"

"Fuck that noise," he said dismissively. "Go see th' fuckin' Empire. We only sell th' good stuff."

"Fine," I said. "Eight-ball. How much?"

"Now we talkin'," he said, much more enthusiastically. "Hunnert dollars. You got?"

In reply, I held up the wad and waved it enticingly. "I got." Spreading the notes, I counted off ten, giving him a good solid look at the money. What was left over, I put aside. "How about my eight-ball?"

"Money first." He came closer, reaching out with his left hand.

I held the cash out, then just as his fingertips came into contact with it, dropped the money and grabbed his wrist. With strength that he would never have been able to match on his best day, I heaved hard, pulling him in and smacking him face-first into the window frame. He groaned and slumped, and in the background I saw the bodyguard start to get up. "Go, go, go!" I ordered Frankie.

"You got him?" asked my loyal minion, even as the car peeled out of there. Behind us, I heard a distant "Hey!"

"I got him," I said, and it was true. I had a good grip on his left arm. The rest of him, however, was still hanging outside the car, being dragged along like a rag doll. I hauled on the front of his hoodie to pull him in through the window, then had to make a frantic grab as he started to slide out of the garment. As I leaned halfway out the window, I managed to snag his belt with my right hand, dragging his back around to the car. Then I renewed my grip on his arm, this time taking hold of his upper arm.

He began to wake up, clawing at my arm, but I ignored the distraction. What was his right arm doing? I couldn't get that gun out of my mind, and I was still uneasily certain that I wasn't as bulletproof as Hatchet Face.

"Need a hand?" yelled Frankie. He must've been looking my way, because we swerved perilously close to a parked car. Junkie McDrugface nearly lost a leg when he flailed the wrong way; I heard a crack and a muffled scream.

"Shit! Watch the road!" I shouted back. "I got this!" I wedged my way back into the car, then started hauling our involuntary passenger in through the window as well. This didn't go too well, even though I'm the opposite of bulky and Junkie McD was pretty scrawny too. The big problem was that he kept on struggling, especially considering I couldn't risk loosening my grip on his left arm.

At this moment, his right hand came into view with a pistol in it. This was, as 1984 would've put it, 'double-plus ungood'. While his intent was to point it at me and fire repeatedly, in reality he was waving it around frantically, with the same grasp of precise aiming that Skidmark reportedly had of basic hygiene. As far as I could see, his chances of shooting one of us were about equal to those of accidentally getting himself. And I'd gone to too much trouble to let him off the hook that easily. I could see the yellow threat beam pointing out from the barrel of the thing, sweeping across the scenery like Glory Girl following a laser pointer.

(I don't know that Glory Girl would fly after laser pointers like that. But it's kind of funny to think about. Or it would be, if I found things like that funny.)

The last thing I wanted to do was haul Junkie McD into the car while he was holding a loaded pistol. I'd probably (maybe) be okay if I got shot, but Frankie was the coolest minion ever, and I was not okay with him being hurt or killed by accident. Bracing myself with my knees, I let the idiot drug dealer slide out the window again, then stuck my own head and shoulders out into the slipstream after him. I must've done it at the wrong angle this time, because my hat whipped off an instant later, followed by my wig, then a string of curses. Foul-mouthed? Me? I have no idea what you're talking about.

Letting go his left arm so that I was only holding him by his belt, I lunged for his right arm. He saw this and flailed it out of reach, pulling me off-balance. A grip on the back of my coat steadied me, and I decided Frankie deserved another raise. Who's a good minion? You are. You're a good minion. Yes, you are.

"Closer to the cars!" I yelled.

I had no idea what was going through Frankie's mind right then, but he did exactly what I told him. The car swerved toward the closest parked car, and I reached for Junkie McD's right hand once more. Predictably, he swung it away, to prevent me from grabbing it. Right into the rear window of the parked car as we roared past it. There was a crash of shattering glass, the crack of bone breaking, and a high-pitched shriek from J McD. When I looked next, he didn't have a gun any more. Mission accomplished. "Okay, stop!"

Frankie brought the car to a halt. I dropped Junkie McDrugface on the asphalt, where he lay in a groaning heap. Then I climbed out of the car, breathing hard. "That was far harder than it should've been," I said. With a certain amount of self-restraint, I decided not to kick him. For one thing, because he had at least two broken bones, and he wasn't the most robust of physical specimens. I didn't want to kill him by accident. Well, not before I got the information I needed, anyway.

"At least we got him, boss," Frankie pointed out loyally. "You want to ask him the questions, or you want me to do it?" Somewhere along the way, he'd put his clown nose back on. His look was pensive as he peered down at our involuntary passenger, like he was deciding exactly which bones to break first.

I considered his question, then made my decision. "I'll go first, then if I can't get answers I'll turn him over to you." Pushing out my blue field, I leaned over Junkie McDrugface and hoisted him up by the front of his shirt. "Hey, you. Got a question for you. Answer it and we'll go away."

It took a few seconds for him to focus on me, then he belched. I pushed him away just in time before he puked all over himself. Whatever it was he'd eaten, I had serious doubts about its shelf life. It reeked. His shirt was going to need serious washing. Or maybe just some lighter fluid and a match.

I frowned in mild frustration. We really needed a cosy little HQ to be doing this sort of interrogation in. Someplace we could take our time and get it right. I shook him by the shoulders; his head lolled back and his eyes wandered all over the place. "Hey, you," I said more firmly. "I want answers. You understand?"

His eyes, when they focused on me, held a spark of intelligence once more. He wasn't as hostile as he could've been—my blue field was doing that much. But he didn't seem eager to talk. In fact, he seemed downright unhappy. This may have been due to the fact that he had a broken wrist and probably a broken leg.

Always keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times, kids.

"I need a hospital," he moaned.

I leaned close and gave him a nice wide smile. "Well, if you're a good boy and answer my questions, I might be able to help you out there," I said soothingly.

He recoiled slightly. "F-fuck," he groaned. "Who the fuck are you?"

I rolled my eyes in a show of impatience. "No," I said slowly. "How this works is I ask the questions and you answer them. Now, where can I find Skidmark?"

"I, uh, um …" He raised his eyes to mine. "Promise you won't kill me?"

Just for shits and giggles, I treated him to another smile. "I won't touch a hair on your head," I said. "Just give me what I want."

"Okay." He grimaced. "Skidmark usually hangs out in the back of a bar on—fuck!"

Either the Brockton Bay city planners had gotten really creative with their street names, or he was reacting to the back window of our car shattering. I was going to go with the latter, especially as it had been really loud, combined with the sound of a shotgun going off and a motorbike revving its engine.

The shotgun was in the hand of the bodyguard we'd left behind. He was astride the motorcycle I'd heard and riding at us, hell-bent on rescuing his comrade (or possibly just fucking us up for interfering with his gang). As I watched with a certain amount of admiration, he used the handlebars of the bike to work the slide on the shotgun—I had to learn how to do that—and fired again. He wasn't particularly accurate, given that he was riding a motorbike one-handed, but he didn't have to be. Shotguns were cool like that.

"Get down!" yelled Frankie, as pellets smacked into the back of the car parked on the side of the road. A stray one stung my shin, but I didn't care. As he dived behind the car and unslung the assault rifle, I hauled out my own personal artillery cannon. Holding the Anaconda two-handed, I thumbed back the hammer and pointed it right at the bodyguard on the bike. He racked the slide on the shotgun and pointed it directly at me. Our eyes locked. Harmonica music played. A tumbleweed rolled across the street between us.

The Youtube videos I'd watched had explained that the Weaver stance was the most reliable way to get your shots on target. Two-handed, legs braced, pistol at eye level. Not held sideways, no matter how cool it looked. Front sight lined up with rear sight (helped by the fact that I could see exactly where the shot was gonna go), and squeeze the trigger.

That damn bodyguard was getting awful close, and his aim-line was square on my breastbone. Just as it turned red, signifying incipient danger, I squeezed the trigger.

The Anaconda went off with its characteristic boom, jerking up a little despite my strength. But the bodyguard didn't fly backward off the bike at all. This was because just before I pulled the trigger, I'd braced early for the kick, and the aiming line of my revolver had dipped slightly. As the front wheel of the motorbike dug in and the entire bike performed a forward flip, I realised that the heavy .44 calibre bullet had gone straight through the front wheel hub, which then seized up altogether.

I watched with mute admiration as the bike took to the air, dumping the rider as it went. Stepping to one side, I grabbed hold of the window frame of the car and held out my other arm in a classic clothesline pose. As the motorbike soared overhead, the bodyguard hit my arm and folded around it, the shotgun clattering from his grasp and skittering across the asphalt. My shoes skidded a foot back then stopped as my butt hit the side of the car. I let the bodyguard fall on the street beside Junkie McDrugface, as Frankie popped his head out from behind the car to take in what had happened.

The motorbike hit the asphalt a good thirty feet away and tumbled over and over. I looked down at the bodyguard, then at the dealer he should've been guarding.

"Okay, Frankie," I decided. "Your turn."

<><>​

The back of the car hadn't suffered too much from the first shotgun blast. There were a few pockmarks, but the taillights hadn't been damaged, and the plastic bag Frankie had tied around the license plate was still in place. I straightened up from my inspection as Frankie came up to me. His methods had been brutally efficient and I'd learned a lot from watching him.

It turned out that druggies were smarter than we'd thought. Each of them had a phone on him with the ability to locate the other guy's phone. The bodyguard had been following us from the moment we'd gone out of sight. It was just lucky he'd decided to come at us single-handed rather than call in the troops. Score one for drug-fucked judgement.

"Well, we got our location," I said brightly. "What did they have on them?"

He grinned and held up a thick wad of cash. "Fourteen hundred in the cooler." It had been secured to the bike with tie-down straps. "Plus a couple of knives and the shotgun." The phones we'd crushed underfoot, and we hadn't bothered going back to collect the pistol. We'd look for the hat and wig on the way back. Not that it would matter to Skidmark one way or the other, but if I couldn't find them I'd be that little bit more irritated when I got to his hideout.

"Nice," I said, and strolled back with him to where the two druggies—unconscious or dead, I wasn't worried either way—lay on the asphalt. The cooler sat open beside them; Frankie handed me a road flare. I pulled the tab and tossed it into the cooler. As the smoke started to rise, Frankie and I got back in the car.

"So how are we gonna take out Skidmark?" he asked as we drove away.

I held up a single eight-ball of white powder I'd taken from the cooler. "With style."


End of Part Eleven

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Twelve: Overdose

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

The aforementioned "bar on—fuck!" turned out to be a much more prosaic bar on Seventh, near the corner with Main. I was obscurely disappointed; part of me had been busy laying imaginary bets that the street actually sounded something like 'fuck'. Fucqua, or Fuchsia, or maybe even Phuket. But it was plain, boring old Seventh. Not that I would've laughed if it had turned out that way, but my faith in the absurdity of the world took a distinct hit.

Frankie stopped the car down the block a ways, and we got out to survey the target. I had my trusty Anaconda in its cross-body holster, while Frankie had his shotgun slung over his shoulder, under his coat. I'd found the wig hanging jauntily on a radio antenna, but no matter how much I looked for the hat, it had apparently soared off to wherever it was that odd socks and New Years' resolutions went to. It didn't matter; I'd get another hat.

The city, on the other hand, was going to shortly find itself bereft of any Skidmarks. Not that I thought anyone would complain. Some police precincts may even celebrate. Discreetly, of course. It wouldn't do to be caught being happy that one psychotic lunatic had disposed of another. The differences between myself and Skidmark, of course, were numerous. Hygiene, lack of a drug habit, teeth that weren't green, more than three working brain cells, a sense of villainous style, my choice in companions, and of course the fact that I hadn't used my powers to accidentally murder someone's mother.

If I'd had to use my powers to deliberately murder someone's mother, then sure. I'd put my hand right up for that. But as it happened, I hadn't. In fact, I hadn't murdered anyone (as yet) which meant I was far in advance of Skidmark as far as morality went. An unbiased observer might decide that the very act of planning his murder might cause a slump in my theoretical morality rating, but I honestly couldn't give a diseased sewer rat's left testicle about whether or not my actions were moral. I'd already been through the whole 'morality is a zero sum game' thing in my head, and decided I wanted nothing to do with it.

If someone fucks with me or mine, I kill them. That's the beginning and end of my morality.

<><>​

Frankie and I skulked up the street, keeping to the shadows. Halfway there, I decided 'fuck it' and strode up the pavement like I owned it. My brief stint being hunted by the Nine notwithstanding, I had no special skills at being stealthy, and with Frankie at my side, trying to sneak actually drew more attention than just walking normally.

Besides, this was Merchants territory. If some drug-fucked loser looked out the window and saw a white-skinned green-haired girl and a big bald guy with a clown nose, there was a strong chance that he'd give his drug of choice an extremely dubious look instead of hauling out his phone and dropping a dime on us to Skidmark.

With that in mind, I marched along the sidewalk to get to the front of the bar, then cupped my hands around my eyes to peer in through the glass of the window. This was where the powder Riley Grace gave me came in handy. With my eyes treated by it, I could see the room in far more detail than if I'd been straining to make details out of the darkness at any other time.

"Looks shut," I said in a conversational tone to Frankie. Interesting trivia: whispering actually carries farther at night than ordinary voices, and is more noticeable. It's the hissing aspect. "Which puts him in the back or upstairs."

Frankie was a stolid, steady guy who probably hadn't even thought about leaving the Empire until I showed up, but he was taking to being my Number One Minion like a large, ugly well-armed duck to water. I wasn't quite sure if it was my habit of throwing money at him, the fact that I didn't fuck around, or his exalted placement in my two-person organisation. Whichever it was, he seemed positively eager to maintain our situation. "Upstairs, I'd say," he rumbled. "There'd be an office at the back, but no place to shoot up or sleep in any comfort."

Which was yet another point in favour of keeping Frankie on. That was something I wouldn't have known. "Okay, fine." I threw in a little giggle, just to ensure he hadn't forgotten he was working for me. "How'd you know that, anyway?"

With my enhanced vision, his shudder was easy to see, but his voice was steady when he replied. "Robbed the place once, back in the day. Might be a guard out the back, but Skidmark and his people will be upstairs." He paused thoughtfully. "We burning the drugs here, too?"

"Nope. We want people to be absolutely sure it's him." I waited until he turned his head questioningly toward me. "I'm gonna be in and out, five minutes. Then we go."

His brow wrinkled slightly, but he didn't question my statement. "Need a hand with the guard?"

"No, I—actually, yeah, why not?" While I could no doubt deal with anyone left on guard duty, it occurred to me that Frankie's talent for applied violence could be put to use making sure that nobody was going to raise the alarm if they had two guards. I'd still kill Skidmark either way, but the way I wanted to do it was ten times as creepy and horrifying—and thus that much more appealing to me—than just murdering him face to face.

We eased down the alley to the back of the bar. I took point, because I could see in the dark far better than Frankie could. I had my trusty iron bar out, instead of the knife. Bruises and broken bones were easier to survive than accidentally slashed arteries, after all.

(Yeah … 'accidentally'. We'll go with that.)

When I stuck my head around the corner, it turned out my caution had been warranted. Two Merchant goons (well, I might have been doing them a disservice by making a broad assumption that two guys wearing raggy clothing, smoking weed and drinking from a cheap bottle of booze were Merchants. But I don't think so) were slumped on the back steps of the bar.

Taking a deep breath, I pushed out the blue bubble as far as it would go. In this case, it covered them both nicely. Then I stepped around the corner of the bar. "Oh, hey, guys," I said with a cutesy little finger-wave that I'd copied off Emma. "Nice night, isn't it?"

They stared at me blearily, probably more affected by the booze and the weed than by my attitude-altering bubble. I just strolled right past the first one and approached the second one before they began to react.

My green hair and white skin weren't totally unusual; these were the Merchants, after all. Some of them had tattoos and piercings that I wouldn't have inflicted on my worst enemy. But the sight of my eyes, all the wrong colour and glowing to boot, must have finally tipped them off that something was seriously wrong on Planet Wasted.

"Hey," slurred the first one, starting up off his seat on the steps. He began to raise his arm to point at me. "You aren't—"

He didn't get any farther, because he was looking at me, which meant he wasn't looking at Frankie. Or rather, he wasn't looking in the right direction when Frankie came around the corner and picked him up, then pile-drove him into the ground. There was a distinct crack, and his neck took on a bend which made sure it didn't matter which way he was looking.

While the other guard was still goggling at me and Frankie, I swung the iron bar in a short arc which terminated on the side of his jaw. This time, the crack was from the guy's jawbone ceasing to be a single contiguous item; he flopped onto his side and took no further interest in the proceedings.

I paused, waiting to see if the scuffle had aroused any attention from upstairs. Nothing of any note happened; not even a neighbour yelling out to keep the noise down. Gotta love Brockton Bay. Nobody hears nothin'.

"Okay," I said quietly. "Wait here. I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Want me to come up?" he asked, purely as a matter of form. He didn't sound overly worried for my well-being. If I had to guess, he was more interested in seeing exactly what I had intended for Skidmark.

"Nope, stay here." Once I gave the order, I knew he'd comply. He was dependable like that. It might've helped that he was the single most well-paid minion in Brockton Bay.

"Sure thing." He moved into the shadows and settled down to wait, shotgun in his capable hands. I knew full-well that he was going to guard those steps far better than the Merchants ever had.

The door was locked, but a quick check through pockets got me a key. I slid it into the lock, and it turned; albeit reluctantly. Rolling my eyes, I tut-tutted in mild exasperation. Would it kill them to oil this thing occasionally?

Once I had the door unlocked, I carefully opened it, then prowled inside, iron bar at the ready. It didn't take long to locate the stairs and I went up them, pausing at each creak to listen for movement above.

No such movement happened. Halfway up the stairs, I glanced around, then retrieved two items from my pockets and tipped a little of the contents of one into the other. Then I put the first item back in my pocket and shook the second one up so that it was well and truly mixed together.

Once I was ready in that regard, I went the rest of the way up the stairs and started looking for Skidmark. This was harder than it would originally have seemed, even with my enhanced night vision, because I was constantly distracted by the smell. It seemed to consist partly of the rank odour of a place that was never cleaned, overlaid by the stench of unwashed humanity, with an extra added edge of drugs exuding from their pores.

By the time I found the person I figured was Skidmark—big black guy lying tangled on the only mattress in the place with a white girl—I was about ready to kill him just for making me endure the smell for so long. But I didn't beat him to death and I didn't shove every drug in the room down his throat, much as he richly deserved either fate. No, I had something more fitting in mind for him.

Using a random plastic bag I found on the floor, I went around methodically picking up everything on the small table beside the mattress, except for the grimy mirror. It, and the razor blade lying next to it, I left exactly where they were. Beside it, I put down the eight-ball I'd gotten from the Merchant dealer, complete with the little tiny extra I'd added to it. The bag full of drugs, I stashed behind a busted chair so he wouldn't see it immediately. The eight-ounce baggie, on the other hand, would be immediately visible when he woke up.

With that out of the way, I prowled around, looking for any money they had on hand. Frankie had definitely earned himself a bonus tonight, and I didn't want him thinking I was a stingy boss. There were a couple of rolls of cash in Skidmark's discarded clothing, so I took those. Each of them was easily worth a few hundred, maybe a thousand. If Frankie had any sense, he'd disinfect the money before using it; I had no doubt the ambient aroma had impressed itself on the cash. As it was, I was going to have to thoroughly launder the coat and the wig before I used them again.

Slipping downstairs again, I let myself out the back door, then relocked it. Frankie emerged from the shadows, shotgun ready in his hands but pointed at the ground. "Everything go okay?" he asked. "I didn't hear anything."

"Everything went fine," I said. "Here. Bonus." I tossed him the rolls of cash, and he caught them out of the air. "Let's go."

We started back down the alley alongside the bar. "So, you offed that druggie asshole?" asked Frankie quietly.

"Nope. Never laid a hand on him." Without turning my head, I kept talking. "He's alive right now, but he'll be dead in eight hours or less. By tomorrow night, everyone will know it was me."

"Damn, that's hardcore." His voice held deep respect. "How you gonna do that, boss?"

I giggled, just for fun. "Now, now. Girl's gotta keep some secrets." Lifting my arm, I sniffed myself. "Fun's over for tonight, though. I desperately need a shower."

"You got it, boss."

<><>​

Late the Next Morning

Adam Mustain woke up with a typical post-binge migraine. Pushing Sherrel aside, he got to his feet and stumbled off to the bathroom where he pulled down his Y-fronts and let go in a noisy splash. The toilet refused to flush when he'd finished, but that didn't surprise him. It hadn't worked since Squealer had partially disassembled it to get parts for her latest … whatever the fuck it was.

When he left the bathroom, Sherrel was stirring. Looking around with her usual bleary-eyed lack of comprehension, she sat up when she saw the one baggie left on the drug table. Where the rest of the shit had gone, Adam had no idea. They'd gotten so fuckin' wasted last night, he wouldn't have been surprised if someone had shoved it up their ass.

That wasn't to say he was gonna give her dibs on the blow. He was the leader of the Merchants, which meant he had first claim on any nose candy by default. Flicking out a skid-field, he whipped the baggie off the table, just before she got her meat-hooks on it.

"Hey!" she yelled, looking upset and reaching for it again. "That was mine!"

"Suck my dick." He put out two fields next; one moved her back, and the other pulled the baggie toward him. With it came a crusty sock, two Fugly Bob's bags, a beer can and half a dozen rat turds. Brushing the rest of the shit aside, he plucked the eight-ball off the floor. "Mine now."

Heading over to the table, he squatted down and tipped the white powder out on to the mirror. Squinting, he wondered why it looked a little bit purple, then shrugged. Between the shit in his eyes and the crappy light in the room, it could've been green with red polka dots and he still wouldn't care.

With moves that had been perfected by years of practice, he used the razor to shape the powder into several lines. Throwing out a skid-field, he pulled his clothing to him and went through the pockets for his cash. Nothing turned up, which made him frown. "Okay, which knob-gobbler lifted my stash?"

"I didn't do it," Squealer whined, sniffling and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "Come on, can I have some?"

"Need a straw," he said. "Where's my cash? Need something to roll up, here."

"I dunno." Sherrel dug into her bra and located a grimy, crumpled five. "Will this do?"

"Gimme that." Adam snatched it out of her hand and made a tube out of it. Fitting the makeshift straw into his right nostril, he blocked his left nostril and hoovered up the first line. The tingle as it hit the back of his nose made him roll his eyes up in sheer pleasure. "Fuck, this is amazing shit. Who'd we get this from?"

As he sat down, fireworks still going off in his brain, he felt Sherrel taking the five from him and kneeling beside the table. "Whoa, fuck, man," he burbled, a broad grin stretching his lips. "I have got to get more of this shit. It's a total headspin."

"Fuck, shit, yeah," Sherrel giggled. Adam was vaguely aware that she'd flopped over on to her back. "This is the best yet. We need to double the price on this shit. They'll be climbing over their grandmas to buy it."

The tingling continued, getting more and more intense. Adam couldn't stop smiling. He giggled a little. "Double? We'll fuckin' triple it. Quad … quad … fuckin' four times. Five times."

Sherrel started giggling too, sounding hysterical. Mush was chuckling wetly in the background. Adam found the high was so hard that he couldn't really see anymore. There was a coppery taste in the back of his throat. Something wet and warm was rolling down his face. The tingling was making his head pound. His smile was so wide it was starting to make his face hurt.

The first seizure caught him by surprise. He jolted, his muscles screaming and locked, but all he was able to do was gurgle through the blood in his throat, his cheeks aching from the unchanging smile.

His fingers clawed, he scrabbled at the filthy floorboards, gouging up splinters. Muscles tensed, his heels drummed against the floor.

He couldn't breathe. An incipient giggle couldn't get out of his throat.

As the consciousness faded from his brain, he still couldn't figure out what was happening.

Why the fuck am I smiling? It's not that fuckin' funny.

And then there was nothing.



End of Part Twelve

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Thirteen: Lucky for Some

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Miss Militia

"Did you hear? Skidmark's dead."

Hannah looked over at Armsmaster's pronouncement. They were both on treadmills in the capes-only exercise room in the Protectorate HQ base. He showed no particular emotion at the revelation, but then, he'd never been overly demonstrative at the best of times.

"Well, that's a shocker," she said dryly. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that he OD'd on something. Meth? From his looks, I always figured that was his go-to." She wouldn't be treating the death of a human being in such a cavalier fashion in public—PR mandated that heroes be seen to be kind, caring and above all empathetic—but as far as she was concerned, there was nothing there to be empathetic for. At best, the man had been a drug-fucked cape who occasionally used his powers in vaguely unethical ways. At worst, he'd been a wannabe gang lord who sold hard drugs to schoolkids. There was a word for someone like that: scumbag.

"I'm not a hundred percent sure," he admitted.

Surprised, she let the treadmill slow as she looked over at him. "Excuse me? Are you going to explain that statement, or do I have to call Mike-Sierra on you?"

He snorted at the half-joking reference to Master-Stranger protocols. "The signs point to murder. Him and Squealer and Mush. The cops got an anonymous tip-off that led them to his latest crash-pad. One dead guard outside, one with a serious concussion and a broken jaw. Inside, they found all three capes, dead, as well as two of his followers. They'd had seizures and haemorrhaged from their eyes, ears and noses. The pain must have been intense, because they all clawed at the floorboards so hard they tore the nails clear off their fingers. Oh, and all of them had arched backs and a fixed grin on their faces." His voice was meditative as he continued. "I'd never really understood the word 'rictus' before today. Now I do."

"So, blood work?" she prompted him after a few seconds. "Tainted drugs? Some sort of targeted neurotoxin? Were they forced to take the drugs?"

"That's what all the evidence says so far," he confirmed. "Not the forcible ingestion, though. No sign of restraint or bruising consistent with that. Besides, time of death is some hours after the door guard. The investigation officers found a bunch of drugs, all untainted, in a bag behind a chair. At a rough guess, everyone else bolted after they realised their boss was dead." He shook his head. "It looks like someone took out the door guard, walked in, moved the drugs, and left a bag of contaminated cocaine. That's the most prominent drug in their systems. We tested what little cocaine residue was left, and found traces of a foreign substance. The chemistry is extremely complex, to the point that it's almost biological in nature. Chances are, it's what killed Skidmark, so we're treating it with the utmost caution."

"Wait, they left poisoned drugs so Skidmark would kill himself?" Hannah shuddered. "That's … cold. That's also someone leaving a very definite message."

"Yes, but what's the message?" Armsmaster asked. "I can kill any cape I want?"

"No." Hannah was recalling a report she'd filed not so long ago, under the codename 'Jester'. "Remember how Shadow Stalker got stabbed by someone who'd been fighting ABB? She and the girl with her said the attacker had a really creepy grin and was giggling and laughing all the time. I'm thinking this might be her, making her mark."

"Maybe. I've got another suspect in mind. If it turns out they're all the same person, it'll simplify things a lot." Armsmaster nodded to himself. "Earlier last night, a couple of people wearing clown makeup invaded one of the smaller station houses and worked over the officers there pretty good. They all survived, and they described the one in charge as being a petite woman with glowing eyes, and a grin that was way too wide. And she giggled and laughed a lot." He paused before dropping the final bombshell. "And she didn't take a thing. All she did was get on the computer system and look up old cases."

"Skidmark." It wasn't exactly a huge leap of logic.

"My thoughts exactly. The trouble was, we don't know which case she was looking for. The last one she looked at had nothing to do with him. But the ones that do … well, there's a lot of them. He has to have upset half of Brockton Bay at one point or another."

"Unless she was just trawling the files to see who she wanted to kill next, and he caught her eye." Hannah didn't really like that as a concept, because it didn't give them a pattern to go on with. Random villains were the worst. "What are the Director's thoughts on this?"

He snorted again. "Unofficially, she's shedding no tears about the fact that Skidmark and his fellow capes are deceased. I believe the actual quote is 'and not before time'. But officially, we need to track down whoever did it and arrest them as soon as possible, before the other gangs start getting nervous that someone might be gunning for them next."

"I can actually see her point there," Hannah noted. "This sounds like it was very smoothly done. No matter which way you slice it, there's a cape out there who's proven that they will remove someone like Skidmark from the scene, just because they can." She looked Armsmaster in the eye. "Do you honestly think that they'll stop now without targeting someone else, villain or hero?"

"If it is indeed the girl in the alley, she's already shown she's willing to stab a hero and just walk away." Armsmaster pursed his lips. "No, you're right. Even if she thought she had a good reason, people like that are adept at thinking up more good reasons to keep stabbing people. Or poisoning them, for that matter."

"Well, it's not like many other capes have a drug habit," Hannah offered. "Have you figured out if it needs to be inhaled, or can it be ingested or injected as well?"

"I'm not at all sure if it needs drugs at all," Armsmaster said. "We'd need to test it on something living to be sure, but it seems to have gone straight in through the sinuses. Didn't even need to reach the lungs. For all we know, it just needs to be sprinkled on steak or something similar."

"And then you die in agony, with a horrible grin on your face." Hannah shuddered. "Yeah, we need to locate this girl soonest. If only to find out her plans."

She didn't say what had to be on both their minds. If this mystery cape was going to make a practise of murdering capes (even villains) in their private lives, then every cape in Brockton Bay (especially villains), would soon be after her. And that didn't even bring the Birdcage into it, as such activities almost certainly would.

"I'll get the Jester file to you, so we can correlate data. What name were you giving your suspect?"

"I was going with Rictus, actually."

"Villain-sounding name."

"That's what five counts of murder one gets you."

"True."

The rest of the exercise period went by in silence.

<><>​

Lung

Leaning back in his most comfortable chair, Kenta switched channels in an effort to find something a little less vacuous than the normal pre-digested American TV pap. A news channel caught his eye and he stopped clicking, just in time to catch the image of Skidmark's face, the discoloured teeth on full display in a grin that seemed more than half grimace.

He listened to the commentary with half an ear, most of his attention aimed at the image on the screen. Skidmark had bled from the eyes, he could see, as well as the nostrils and possibly the ears. He'd seen all of this before, just not usually in the same person at the same time. The grin was also more than a little off-putting; for a man who had made it his practise to be the most terrifying cape in the city, that was saying something.

The PRT spokesman came on screen and spoke for several minutes, managing to say nothing at all in that time. No leads at this time, appeal to the public for information, blah blah blah. When the news switched to another item (a feelgood shot showing Glory Girl getting a kitten down from a tree without actually breaking the tree) he muted the sound then sat back, thinking.

Skidmark had been, in anyone's parlance, a waste of space and oxygen. If he'd ever seriously faced Kenta, he would've died in that moment. But he hadn't. The man, though clearly stupefied by far too many hard drugs (Kenta could vaguely sympathise with that) had yet possessed the common sense of a brain-damaged lemming, given that he'd never tried to take on the ABB.

Still, someone had killed him. Murdered his entire crew. The news didn't go so far as to state it out loud, but the implication was right there. Someone had tampered with the Merchant leader's drug stash, and Skidmark and his people had died as a result.

Kenta couldn't actually see himself benefiting as a result. The Merchants had never posed a threat to the ABB, or held territory that the ABB couldn't take from them by the simple expedient of walking onto the turf and staying there. They'd never really been a serious gang, so much as a bunch of overdoses waiting to happen. And by existing, they'd provided every other gang in the city with a veneer of reverse gentility. "At least they're not as bad as the Merchants." They'd been an example of what the cape gangs in Brockton Bay could really be like.

Now, the contest had suddenly devolved to be between the ABB and the Empire Eighty-Eight. Coil's gang barely even made the radar most days, and jokes like Uber and Leet weren't worth mentioning. And of course, there was someone out there who thought it was a good idea to kill capes in their own safe spaces.

The conclusion was obvious. For several very good reasons, the interloper had to die. He didn't yet know who they were, but that was only a detail. His people would ask questions until they found someone who knew the answers.

And then whoever this … this 'Smiler' was, would die.

He, Lung, had spoken.

<><>​

I sat on the sofa and watched the news on TV. Normally I ignored it, as I ignored everything that didn't personally concern me, but I wanted to see what they made of my handiwork. Nothing had come of the stash house where I'd recruited Frankie, but this was the first time I'd gone out to make a splash. I'd finally gotten to murder someone, and it was a righteous kill. Skidmark had taken my mom away, so I took him away.

When they showed the pictures of Skidmark, after the mandatory warning of sensitive images (which almost certainly were calculated to make more people tune in, rather than fewer) it was everything I'd hoped for. He'd died in agony and confusion, wondering why his body was betraying him like this. The only thing better would be if I'd been able to crouch beside him and whisper in his ear, "This is me. I'm doing this for my mom." But I could deal. I'd even got Squealer and Mush at the same time, so bonus points right there. Go me.

A smile almost crossed my face as I leaned back against the sofa, ignoring the shot of Glory Girl getting the kitten out of the tree. I'd done it. Skidmark was dead. I'd avenged the death of my mom, only a couple of years late. The only way more fitting would've been if I'd run him down in a car then backed up over him a few times, but then again, I'd used the tools at hand and put my calling card out there at the same time. Everyone would see that grin in their nightmares and wonder, "What did Skidmark do to deserve that?"

Uncertainty was an amazing weapon.

<><>​

Panacea

"You alright there, Ames?"

Amy turned at the question, interrupted in her quest for finding a snack in the fridge. "Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Eh, I dunno." Vicky dismissed the question with a flick of her hand. "You've just been a bit off since you got home. Like something's bothering you. One too many hangnails to fix at the hospital?"

"No, actually." Amy returned her attention to the fridge and spoke over her shoulder. "The PRT asked me to come in and evaluate what happened to Skidmark." She shuddered. "Scary shit."

"Wait," objected Vicky. "Skidmark's dead. You can't fix dead people."

"That's true." Amy selected a banana and closed the fridge door, then looked seriously at her sister. "Don't spread it around, but we've discovered that if they put electrical impulses through a fresh cadaver, I can read the body. I can't fix it—there's nothing for my power to grab onto—but I can definitely determine the cause of death."

"Man, that's creepy Frankenstein stuff right there." Vicky floated up alongside Amy as they headed for the lounge. "So what killed him?"

Amy shook her head. "Some kind of weird pseudo-biological stuff. Definitely engineered. Dissolve it in water and it'll pass straight through cell membranes and go looking for your central nervous system. Triggered the equivalent of a grand mal seizure in Skidmark, only it kept going until he died, with a targeted effect that left him grinning like a loon." She shuddered. "As far as I can tell, the effect will be one hundred percent fatal in humans, even in tiny doses. The immune system doesn't even recognise it as a threat."

"That still sounds all kinds of creepy," Vicky agreed. "Can you make people immune to it?"

"I honestly have no idea," admitted Amy. "I'd have to see it at work on a living subject first. But it's … well, you know how viruses aren't really alive?" She sat down on the sofa and picked up the remote.

"Yeah, you might've mentioned it a time or two," Vicky said, floating down to sit beside her. "Is this thing like a virus, then?"

Amy shook her head. "Yes and no. It's less alive but more malignant. Like the difference between a tiger and a Tiger tank. I have trouble reading its structure in a dead body. And to be honest, I don't know if the victim being alive would help all that much."

"So how long does it take to kill someone?" Vicky just had to be morbid.

"You don't want to know." Amy closed her eyes and put down the remote. Slowly, she started peeling the banana by feel.

"Yeah, I do. An hour? Less?"

Amy took a deep breath then let it out again. "About one minute, is my best guess. Of which thirty seconds is utter, horrific agony. Your heart rate goes through the roof, your blood pressure spikes and you haemorrhage out of your everywhere. And you end up grinning so hard you tear muscles in your cheeks."

Vicky was silent for about a minute. Amy finished peeling the banana and took a bite. "Well, fuck," Vicky said quietly.

"You asked." Amy raised her eyebrows.

That got her a dirty look, but then Vicky nodded. "Yeah, I did. Next time I ask a stupid question like that, remind me of this one, okay?"

Amy snorted. "You'll still want to know."

"No, I won't." Vicky turned on the TV.

"Yes, you will."

"No, I won't."

"Will."

"Won't."

"Will, and change the channel. This show's shit."

"Won't, and no it's not. Your taste is shit."

"Yeah, it is. Change it or else."

"Or else what? You gonna make me?"

"If I have to."

"Hey, no using your power to make me extra ticklish!"

"No flying in the house!"

"You started it!"

In the ensuing argument, the issue of Skidmark's untimely demise was entirely forgotten.

<><>​

Kaiser

"Did you hear Skidmark was dead?"

Max looked over at where Krieg was sitting. "Yes, I heard. Good riddance to bad rubbish."

"So, what were we going to do about it?" The question was blunt, almost challenging.

"Nothing." Max sat back in his seat. "He's dead, we're not, everyone can move along in the knowledge that Brockton Bay is just that little bit less of a shithole than it was this time yesterday."

Krieg wasn't letting this go. "Max, he was executed. By a cape. That's right against your Unwritten Rules. It could be one of our capes next. We can't risk that."

Max rolled his eyes. "No, it won't. And do you know why it won't? Because Skidmark wasn't an actual gang leader. He was a junkie with powers. He didn't have a base, and he didn't have an organisation, not like we do. He was one bad trip away from walking up to Lung and punching him in the mouth. He was low-hanging fruit, James. We are not. We are organised, we have safeguards against people finding where we sleep, and most importantly? None of us are moronic enough to be such habitual drug users that we'll grab the first baggie of cocaine that we see and snort it. In short, he died of stupidity."

"Yes, those are all good points," Krieg acknowledged.

"And yet, I hear a 'but' on the way." Max raised an eyebrow. He'd practised in the mirror.

Krieg sighed. "Yes. 'But …' we don't know that this cape will only use a poison that mixes with illicit drugs. They might have one they can use to dope beer with. Or walk up and stab someone with a syringe … yes, alright, that one is a little hard to pull off and survive," he conceded, holding his hands up. "But food can be tampered with. Alcohol. All we really know right now is that there's a cape who successfully assassinated three capes with a substance that left them with nightmare-inducing grins on their faces, and we don't know who they are, what their intentions are, or who they intend to kill next."

"True." Max couldn't argue with any of those points, no matter how much he might have wanted to. "Though in the Empire, we've all got reasonably secure secret identities, and I can't see someone dosing Hookwolf's beer and getting away with it." He smirked. "Lung, on the other hand, has far fewer people than us, and nowhere near the organisation we do. If you were a new cape, ambitious, who'd just taken out the crappiest gang on the block, would you immediately move onto the biggest and most dangerous, or go after the other stragglers first?"

"So what you're saying is we should wait and see if they go after the ABB or Uber and Leet first?" Krieg's tone was thoughtful. "That sounds like the kind of thing that could backfire on us if we're not careful."

"So we'll take precautions," Max agreed. "But at the same time, we won't panic altogether. Hell, depending on who it is and why they're doing this, we might even see about folding them into the Empire. Wouldn't be the first time."

"Hmm." From the sound of it, Krieg still had his doubts. But he didn't voice them, so it didn't matter.

"Excellent." Max dusted his hands off. "Next order of business?"

<><>​

Later That Night

The car pulled up at the right spot, and I climbed in. Frankie pulled out onto the road as soon as I was settled; he had his greasepaint on, but the nose was sitting in the centre console.

"Evening, boss," he said cheerfully. "So who are we going to fuck up tonight?"

I giggled. "You know me so well, Frankie. But to be honest, I'm going to need your input. Skidmark was more personal than business, but now we need to start hurting the other gangs. Do you have any problem with hitting the Empire?" I figured he hadn't, given the enthusiastic way he'd gone along with my attack on the stash house, but people have been known to get cold feet.

"Fuck, no," he said. "I was just a warm body to those assholes. You been nothing but good to me. You wanna hit the Empire where it hurts, I'd say the dog fights. Shitloads of money come in, all the time. Downside, you're gonna be up against Hookwolf at the very least. Maybe Cricket, too."

I smiled, allowing the expression to cross my face until I was grinning wider than a human should be able to, showing glowing teeth inside glowing lips. "How about you let me worry about the capes."

He shuddered, and most of it wasn't even feigned. "Sure thing, boss. The other big thing we could do is hit the ABB. They got this illegal casino that the city doesn't really wanna risk raiding in case Lung takes offense. Ruby Dreams, or some shit like that. Upside, fucktons of money all in a small area, and no Hookwolf. Downside, Lung or Oni Lee might show up." He shrugged. "Just saying."

"If I could make the ABB capes not a problem, you think the two of us could take the casino?" Here was where I was relying on my faithful minion's understanding of how these things worked.

Slowly, thoughtfully, Frankie nodded his head. "You know, boss, I think we could just about pull it off. Is that what we're gonna do?"

"That's the next question I had for you." I looked at him seriously. "If you were Kaiser or Lung, and you heard about me killing Skidmark, what do you think I'd do next?"

"Um … shit." Frankie rubbed his forehead. "Lung's likely to want to come after you. He's an asshole like that. Kaiser thinks he's chill, but he's just an asshole too. He'd probably hold back to let you take out some of his rivals. They'd both expect you to go after Lung. Maybe not the Ruby Dreams, but the ABB in general. I mean, it makes sense. Lung might be scary powerful, but the ABB's got just him and Oni Lee. Knock them out, that's another gang off the streets."

"Yeah, I can see that." I rubbed my chin and grinned. "So, when and where is the next dog fight?"



End of Part Thirteen

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Fourteen: Wolf Trap

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Hookwolf

The technically-abandoned warehouse was anything but abandoned right then. People were arriving in dribs and drabs, filtering in a few at a time. This was partly to reduce the chance of law enforcement spotting a large gathering, and partly because trying to get them to arrive all at once was probably fucking close to impossible at the best of times. Far more men showed up than women did, though the chicks who turned up had that same hard-edged look in their eyes that the guys did. There was something deeply visceral about watching two finely-honed killing machines trying to tear each other's throat out in the ring, that no other sport could really match.

He'd left word for his door guys to keep an eye on the women coming in, making sure that they were accompanied by men he knew or that he knew them himself. There'd been that one fucking debacle that he hadn't been there for, where Bitch of the Undersiders herself had walked in as bold as brass, sat near the dog cages, then when everyone was watching a match, had made every single dog in the place grow to monster size. That had been early in her time in Brockton Bay, and she hadn't done it since, but the injury count had been horrific.

He didn't think she was going to try to hit the dogfights tonight, but it was a good idea to keep the precaution going. Nobody knew when the cops might try to infiltrate the place, no matter how bad an idea that might be. If the PRT took a hand—they still wanted to stuff him in the Birdcage, after all—things might get a little problematic. But when it came down to it, 'problematic' was what he did best.

A tall, bulky figure passed nearby, and Bradley frowned slightly. The guy was wearing Empire ink, and in fact Bradley thought he recognised him, but the girl at his side couldn't have been any older than sixteen. She was also wearing a hideous purple top that did absolutely nothing for her, but he wasn't there to hand out fashion advice. He wasn't the morality police either; if the guy wanted to get busted for banging an underage chick, that was up to him. But in public like this, it kinda made the Empire look bad.

At least he knew for a fact that it wasn't Bitch; that girl would make three or four of this one. She wasn't drunk or drugged, from the way she was looking around with alert interest. As Bradley moved toward the pair, he caught a flash of ice-blue eyes and the hint of a calculating stare. It wasn't interest in him so much as asking and answering the question, 'could I take him'? And he couldn't be certain, but he could've sworn she was looking directly at him when she asked herself that.

The last time he'd had someone look at him in that manner was Cricket. This did not make him feel any better.

As he moved up to the pair and put his hand on the guy's arm, he went through a mental list of the capes in Brockton Bay who could pass for skinny teenage girls and had the stones to think they could take him. The only one that came to mind was Circus, which also didn't make him feel any better. Though what that androgynous freak would want at one of his dogfights, he wasn't sure. The only think he could think of was the money, and Bradley didn't think the take would be worth getting on the wrong side of the Empire.

"Hey," he said as the guy turned to face him. Bradley knew him alright; he guarded stash houses from time to time. Couldn't think of his name, and he couldn't be fucked asking. "Mind telling me what you're doing bringing your side piece in here tonight? She couldn't be out of fuckin' high school."

He was more than a little surprised when the girl put her hand on her companion's arm and spoke up in his stead. "It's okay. He was just showing me where the restrooms were."

Oh. Well, that was okay, then. Bradley nodded. "Sure. No problem."

He turned away back toward the entrance, totally missing the glance at his back, and the tiny grin on the girl's face.

<><>​

Taylor

I sat in an inconspicuous area of the stands, pushing my blue bubble out as far as it would go. Everyone who saw me sitting next to Frankie, eating the hotdog that he'd gotten for me, only got so close before they decided that everything was okay and I didn't need to be bothered. The dogfights were ongoing, though I didn't care about what was happening in the arena. Dogs were dogs. That is, they weren't me, or anything I owned.

Frankie nudged me and I looked down toward where the bookies were still gathering cash. He'd clued me in that they took the money and stashed it out back once a certain amount came in, so nobody got tempted with itchy fingers. The way it was arranged, there was always two sets of eyes watching the money, and each load had an itemised list with it. If a load was light, or missing its list, there were only a couple of guys to question. Hookwolf had struck me as someone who was probably good at questioning people. People who weren't me, anyway.

And there they were, working their way down the back of the line of bookies, even as fresh money came in. Bulging satchels went into plastic shopping bags; one carrier, two guards. The carrier just had to worry about the money. The guards worried about people trying to take it.

Frankie and I slipped out of our seats, ducking down behind the stadium seating that had been hastily erected for the dogfights. We had privacy here, or as close to it as people could get in a building full of neo-nazis drinking booze and watching blood-sports. Moving as quickly as I could, I delved into my bag and pulled out the container of greasepaint. Frankie didn't have anyplace he could carry one easily, so I handed mine over. He took two big globs on his fingers and started applying it as I took the wig out and began to stuff my hair under it.

By the time Frankie was done covering his head and arms with the greasepaint, I had the wig and the bio-powder finished; he handed the container back over and I began to apply it to my own face as he pulled on the gloves I'd given him. We'd decided not to go with the jackets, because that made us too conspicuous, but I had my Anaconda in my bag and he was carrying a pump shotgun under his arm, wrapped in his Empire jacket.

The whole exercise took about thirty seconds, mainly because we'd practised. I was congratulating myself as I put the last touches on the greasepaint, knowing we still had time to catch up with the money guys. But then Frankie, in the process of putting on his clown nose, froze and looked past me.

"Okay, Circus, end of the fucking—" I would've known those gravelly tones anywhere. Turning, I looked into Hookwolf's metal-masked face. He broke off what he was saying and stared back at me, no doubt taking in my glowing pupils and lips, then blinked. "You aren't Circus."

"No shit, Hookworm," I retorted with a giggle. Stretching my lips until my smile was at its full width, I let him see my teeth as they glowed in the semi-darkness. "I was going to leave you 'til later but hey, gift horses and all that."

"What the goddamn fuck are you?" To my everlasting—well, not joy, exactly. More like mild satisfaction—he took a step back, then started sprouting blades out of his everywhere. I took a moment to wonder if it hurt, then decided that I just didn't care.

Gliding forward, I linked my grey field to the white bubble just as he lashed out at me. I got my arm up in time so he only shredded my sleeve and not my whole top. Metal screeched and blades snapped off against my skin, clattering to the concrete floor. Then I pushed out the grey field.

It was a pity he was wearing that wolf mask, because the look on his face when all the metal retracted into his body again would've been amazing. Well, mildly amusing, anyway.

I stepped forward again and swung at him with my fist, aiming somewhere around his gut area. All of a sudden, my combat sense lit up, showing that he was going to knock my arm aside and try to get me into a lock. I was a lot stronger than I had been before, but was I strong enough to overcome a big tough guy with leverage on his side? Maybe, but this wasn't the time or place to find out. At the last second I pulled the punch back and watched him settle into a combat stance.

"Nice trick, girlie," he grated. "You missed one detail, though. I was fighting long before I got powers. I can tell you've never been a fighter. An' I got ways to deal with people who can't be cut."

There was motion behind me, then a sharp red line cut past me to the middle of Hookwolf's chest. I glanced over my shoulder to where Frankie had his shotgun, still wrapped in his jacket, aimed at his former boss.

Giggling again, this time in a deep bass, I stepped in the way of the shot, hoping Frankie got the hint. While mayhem was definitely the order of the day, I didn't want gunfire this early in the piece. Dipping my hand into my bag, I came up with my trusty length of rebar. It had served me well in the past, and beating down some piece of shit racist trash asshole was exactly what it was made to do. Then I let the bag slide off my shoulder and fall to the ground as I moved forward.

"That's cute," I said. "You want to know who I am?"

"Don't know, don't care," he retorted, but I knew he was lying.

My grin got wider. "I'm Jack Slash's kid." Then I pounced.

I'd like to say that the fight was like a ballet, a deadly sparring contest between the grizzled veteran and the enthusiastic newcomer. It's tempting to relate a series of feints and jabs as we felt out each other's strengths and weaknesses before true battle was joined. Mano a mano, expressing the true art and science of combat.

It was nothing like that.

I went in without finesse or grace, aiming a punch to his 'nads with my left hand and utterly ignoring his defences. He blocked the punch and smashed me in the face with one of his own. I saw it coming, so I was able to brace for it. My head rang a little, but my right arm was still moving. The bar, in my right hand, smashed into the side of his left knee with enough kinetic energy to entirely destroy the joint. It bent sideways so fast that it hit his other knee, and he promptly fell over with a scream that was only half an octave away from being 'girly'.

As he went down, I kicked him in the face then kept kicking until he stopped moving. Heavy hard-toed boots are good for that sort of thing. I heard several snapping and crunching sounds while I was doing this, and the mask was bent all to fuck, so I figured that he wasn't going to be getting up for awhile, if ever. Either was good for me. If by some bizarre chance he survived and wasn't stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of his natural life, I'd be happy to kick his asshole up through the top of his head any time he felt like it. We could make it a weekly event. Put it on pay-per-view.

Picking up my bag and dropping the bar back into it, I turned to Frankie. "All righty then," I said with a high-pitched giggle. "Let's go see about that money."

"Holy fuck," muttered Frankie. "You just fucked up Hookwolf."

"Oh, was that who it was?" I flicked him a glance to let him know I was kidding, and giggled again. "Well, he's roadkill now. Let's move."

"What you told him back there," he said as we moved toward our target. "Were you fucking with him, or are you really …?"

I gave him my creepiest grin. "What do you think?"

He shuddered. "Wouldn't fuckin' surprise me in the slightest."

The rest of the heist was almost an anticlimax. As the money guy went out through into the back area with the guards, Frankie and I went straight after them, with my blue field telling them everything's fine, we're all good here. I clocked one guard with my iron bar and Frankie butt-stroked the other in the back of the head with his shotgun. They both went down, and I grabbed the shopping-bags full of money from the third guy.

"Hi," I said with a giggle, grinning as widely and creepily as I knew. "Just making a withdrawal, kaythanksbai."

The money guy was at least six feet tall, covered in tattoos and had muscles like he bench-pressed brick outhouses for fun. He wet himself right then and there, stumbled backward, and landed on his ass. "Fuck!" he shrieked.

That was when two more guards came out of the side room I hadn't spotted yet. One had an AR-15 and the other carried a shotgun that could've been the twin of what Frankie was carrying. They stared at us, glared at us, then raised their weapons.

(Well, I did say it was 'almost' an anticlimax.)

Frankie and I reacted identically. He was probably working from experience, but I could see where the bullets were going to go. As the two red danger lines (the shotgun diverging into a long skinny cone) came up to point at us, Frankie dived left and I dived right. I let the money bags fall, because money isn't great for blocking gunfire, and I wasn't entirely sure that I was bulletproof yet. Especially against a weapon that's one step down from a fucking M-16.

This time, when I reached into my bag, I wasn't going after the iron bar, or even the folding knife. My hand closed around the grip of the Anaconda and I lifted it, bag and all, as the rifle's threat-beam swept toward me. When its aimpoint was over the guy with the rifle, I pulled the trigger, not even caring that the pistol was still in its holster or that the holster was in the bag.

There was a BOOM, coincident with Frankie letting loose with his own artillery, and the bag was blown half off the pistol. The goon with the AR-15 stood there for a moment, apparently wondering how the .44 calibre hole had appeared in his breastbone. Then I shot him again, this time in the middle of the face. Of course, this blew a second hole in the bottom of my tote bag, but the world isn't perfect and we can't expect it to be.

My guy folded like a cheap suit—that is, untidily as fuck—and I looked over at Frankie. He was just getting up, a satisfied look on his face. His guy was down as well, with bits missing via the double-ought loads Frankie had been sporting. "You okay, Frankie?" I asked, just to make sure. "No holes that shouldn't be there?" I got up and pulled the Anaconda all the way out of its holder. Facing the doors we'd come in by, I made ready to shoot anyone trying to butt in on our business.

"No worries, boss," Frankie assured me as he went to kick the shotgun out of the hands of the guy he'd shot. "Lou could never hit for shit, anyway. Did you want the rifle?"

I looked over my shoulder at the AR-15, then down at the Anaconda now out of the bag. "Nah, I'm good with what I got. Knock yourself out."

Frankie grinned, scooping up the rifle and slinging it over his shoulder. "Gotta say, you give the best bonuses."

I giggled. "Stick with me and we'll go places." It seemed nobody had heard the shots, probably due to the rising torrent of noise in the building, but it was probably unwise to wait around too long. Slinging my (now somewhat perforated) tote bag back over my shoulder, I scooped up the bags of cash, keeping one hand free for the Anaconda. Most of the money would go to Frankie again, of course. I really didn't need all that much for myself. "So, we've got two options. Leave quiet or leave loud. What's your choice in the matter?"

"Well, I guess we could leave quiet," he mused. "But … oooh yeah. Whaddaya think of this, boss?"

I followed his gaze, to where a light cloth had been draped over something with a very familiar shape. "Ooh, is that what I think it is?"

He chuckled darkly. "Oh, I know what the fuck it is." Whipping the cloth off, he revealed an absolutely gorgeous motorcycle. I'm no expert, but where it wasn't gleaming chrome it was exquisite paintwork. Featuring on each side of the fuel tank, a running wolf.

My eyes widened and I forgot to giggle. For the first time in a long time, I actually wanted to laugh. The urge passed after a moment, leaving a light-hearted feeling behind. I grinned viciously as I ran my hand over the smooth metal. "Let me guess. This is Hookwolf's ride?"

"The one and only." He pointed at the ignition where the key proudly jutted from the slot, a tiny wolfs-head ornament dangling from it. "Who else is so damn sure nobody's gonna boost their hog that they leave the keys in it?"

I looked at him and he looked at me. We both had the same thought. "Okay," I said. "This is too good to just leave here. We've gotta either torch it or take it. And I dunno how to ride a motorbike, so you're gonna have to."

This time when I giggled, Frankie laughed out loud.

<><>​

So that was how we burst out of the back room on Hookwolf's bike, Frankie driving with me on the pillion seat. The motorbike engine howled, I cackled loudly, and Frankie ploughed into the crowd with not a care in the world. The cash had been shoved in the panniers before we started off.

Holding on with my knees, I had my Anaconda in one hand and the AR-15 in the other. We could always get more ammunition, after all. As we tore across the warehouse floor with people scrambling and dodging out of the way, I fired randomly into the crowd to encourage them to get out of the way faster. After all, people who tolerate nazis still make perfectly fine targets in my book.

Or, to put it another way, we were in a target-rich environment and I was taking full advantage of it.

And then we were through the crowd and out the doors, leaving just the roar of the motorbike and the fading sound of my laughter as we rode off into the night.

If that didn't piss Kaiser off and spark the next phase of my plan, I figured, nothing would.



End of Part Fourteen

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Fifteen: Lung Shot

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Kaiser

Max raised his hands and rubbed at his temples with his fingertips. "How could this even happen?" he demanded. "How did it happen? Why didn't Bradley just kill them all?"

Melody, her Cricket face-cage in her hands, shrugged and glanced at Stormtiger. Max glared at them both. "Why weren't you there?"

"Because he said he didn't need us to babysit him, and if you've seen one dogfight, you've seen them all," Stormtiger said defensively. "That was always his thing, not ours. But I talked to the people there afterward. There was a big guy with a white face, like clown makeup, and a red nose. And a chick with green hair, white skin, a crazy grin and glowing teeth. She was just shooting into the crowd. Four people died and about twenty more got hit. Some pretty bad. And that's not counting the guys in the back room."

"That doesn't explain how Bradley died." Max was holding onto the barest edges of his temper. "His neck was broken and his skull was in pieces. Someone kicked his mask in so hard, it was pushing bits of his face bones into his brain. But they found bits of his blades nearby, so it wasn't by surprise. So tell me how it happened."

Stormtiger spread his hands. "I honestly have no fucking idea. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it myself. Do we have any idea who this new cape is? The one with the glowing teeth?"

Max let out an aggravated sigh. "We've got a police report and a PRT report." Unspoken was the understanding that neither the police nor the PRT would willingly share their reports with either the head of the Empire Eighty-Eight or the CEO of Medhall. "They've got reports of a man and a tall girl or a petite woman of that description, but wearing gaudier outfits, invading a police sub-station. They roughed up the cops pretty bad, but nobody died there. The police took some good images off the security cameras. Black and white, but you work with what you've got."

"And the PRT report?" asked Stormtiger.

"Skidmark." Max didn't have to say anymore.

Cricket's eyes opened wide, and Stormtiger wasn't far behind. "Fuck! She was the cape who did that?"

Max shrugged. "The PRT seems to think so. With the giggling and laughing, and the fact that Skidmark and his crew all died in agony with grins on their faces. They're calling her Rictus."

"Hookwolf didn't have a grin," Stormtiger said carefully. "At least, we don't think so, once they got his mask off."

Max had seen the photos too. He wasn't going to be eating rare steak for awhile. "There's no way we can tell, after the mess she made of his face. The big guy called her 'Boss' and she called him 'Minion Number One'." There was no way he was going to call anyone 'Boss'. "We'll call her 'Rictus'."

"We'll fuckin' call her dead meat." Stormtiger smashed a fist into his palm. Cricket nodded in agreement.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Max looked at the both of them. "Now, how in hell did those two get into the building? If they stopped to put on makeup, why didn't anyone see them and make a fuss? Did anyone you talked to see anything suspicious?"

Stormtiger shook his head. "Nada. I asked around. One of the guys on the door caught a bullet, but the other one swore up and down that no girl who looked like that walked in with anyone."

Max gritted his teeth. "This 'Rictus' has made us out to look like fools. She walks into a gathering of our like-minded friends, literally beats Bradley to death, and steals his motorcycle along with about a quarter of the night's takings. And then shoots up the place on the way out. It's a slap in the face. Lung must be laughing himself stupid."

"Stupider," Stormtiger said automatically, then caught himself as Max glared at him. "Sorry, boss. Just slipped out. But yeah, it's not a good look for us. You think it was a targeted hit?"

"I don't know what it was." Max smashed his fist on the desk. "But we need to find this 'Rictus' and her minion, and make a very public example of them. Otherwise, the ABB and Coil are going to decide that it's open season on us. And we can't afford that, not with Bradley gone."

Cricket decided to put her two cents in at that point. "Not a targeted hit," she said, holding the buzzing device to her throat. "Rictus is going after the gangs. First Merchants, now us. Next will be ABB."

Max considered her words, nodding slowly. "That kind of makes sense. I'll get Krieg to send out a feeler to the ABB and propose a meeting, so we can all go after her at once."

"Right now?" asked Stormtiger. "Lung's got no reason to. He's just going to ignore us and keep pushing into our territory."

Max recalled the glowing eyes and too-wide manic grin on the girl at the police sub-station. "Not after she hits his operations, he won't." He liked to think he had a feel for people, and that girl made the skin on the back of his neck itch.

"You think she will?" asked Stormtiger. "Nobody in their right mind's gonna risk turning all the gangs in Brockton Bay against them."

Cricket put the buzzer against her throat again. It was nearly impossible to create inflection, but Max understood it as a question anyway. "Who says she's in her right mind."

Max nodded. "Exactly."

<><>​

"It's a nice bike," Frankie said, running his hand possessively over the fuel tank. "Can I keep it?"

I eyed it critically. "Sure. You got anyplace you can stash it that anybody who sees it isn't gonna instantly know you're the one who stole Hookworm's bike? Because that sort of thing never gets found out by people."

He grimaced unhappily. "Ugh, you're right. I'd never be able to ride it around town."

"Uh huh," I said brightly. "On the other hand, how do you feel about using it to utterly piss off the ABB?"

The disappointed look vanished off his face. "I'm right down with that, boss. You got a plan?"

I grinned widely for his benefit. "More like I've got a notion, Frankie. It's your input that's gonna make it into a plan."

As I launched into my explanation, I spared a thought for the fact that neither one of us had a place we could call our lair. This was starting to cripple our 'acquire illicit goods' capability. There was only so much money, and so many guns, that could be stuffed under someone's bed before people started noticing. Motorbikes, even the really small ones, were right out.

By the time I finished explaining the bare bones of my plan, Frankie's grin was almost as wide as mine. "Well, what do you think?" I asked. "Doable?"

He nodded. "Fuckin' totally. It'll take a few days to organise, but I can stash the bike out of sight 'till then. Once I get that sorted ... party time." Showing his teeth, he rubbed his hands together. "They are not gonna know what hit 'em."

"Sounds good to me." I slapped him on the shoulder. "And once we've got a proper hideout, we'll get a bike with an even better paint job, so you can store it there."

"Damn right," he agreed.

<><>​

Afternoon of The Next Day

"Dad?" Wandering over to where Dad was watching TV, I plopped myself down on the sofa. It was time to brush up on my being-a-daughter skills, and find out useful information at the same time. I supposed I could've asked Frankie, but I didn't want to have him think I didn't know anything.

"Yeah?" He looked over at me, then blinked. "Huh. That's a nice outfit. When did I buy that for you?"

I experimented with a normal smile. It didn't feel too weird. "I've been saving up my allowance. You like it?" It was something I'd picked up when I was shopping for costumes for Frankie and me. The shop assistant had seemed to think it was okay.

"Yeah." He nodded. "I'm glad you're doing nice things for yourself. Hoodies and jeans only go so far. Did you want to ask for an advance? That outfit must have just about cleaned you out."

"Uh, no, actually." I dug in the little handbag I'd picked up. No time like the present to start showing a different façade to my cape face. "While I was out, I found this on the ground. I was wondering what I should do with it."

'This' was one of the rolls of cash from the Empire hit. It was forty-nine twenties, secured with a rubber band. When Dad recognised it, he snatched it from me, his eyes widening. "Jesus Christ, Taylor! Where did you find that?"

"Kicked into the gutter, just near the intersection of Laramie and Oakes," I said at once, pushing out my blue field to cover him very slightly. I knew as well as he did that there was a large gas station on that corner, and it was right smack in the middle of Empire Eighty-Eight territory; all that I needed now was for him to connect the dots I was laying down for him.

He ran his hand through his thinning hair, then pulled the rubber band off the cash. Lips moving silently, he counted the stack, then counted it again. "Jesus," he muttered again, then looked at me. "Taylor. I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me honestly."

I shrugged. "Sure." I knew exactly what he was going to ask.

He tapped the roll. "There's one twenty-dollar bill missing. Did you use it to buy that outfit?"

"Haha no, Dad!" I'd practised the little laugh in front of the mirror, and I hoped it didn't sound too awkward, or too unlike me. "I used my own money. Besides, I only found that yesterday." All of which was true. The money Frankie and I had liberated from the Empire stash house had become our money as soon as we walked away from the building. Kaiser's name wasn't written on it or anything. "I just wanted to know what I should do with it. Hand it in or keep it, or what?"

He stared at the cash, and I could see the temptation in his eyes. Nine hundred eighty dollars would pay off a few bills, or keep us in food for a little while. I was actually curious as to which way he'd go with this. Money didn't mean all that much to me, mainly because having stuff wasn't a big deal. If I wanted or needed something, I could take it. No big.

"Did you see who dropped it?" he asked, carefully putting the rubber band around the roll again. "Or was it just there when you saw it?"

"No, but a bunch of guys on motorbikes rode off just before I got there," I said. "You know, skinheads. Those guys." I ran my hand over the top of my head in illustration.

"Right." He nodded, and I could tell he was buying the story. Empire skinheads liked to ride around on motorbikes looking tough and wearing leather, and if one of them paid for gasoline from a roll of twenties that fell out of his pocket when he got back on his ride … well, too bad, so sad.

"So should I hand it in?" I asked. Before he could give the obvious answer—of course I should—I added the stinger. "Who to? The gas station attendant or the cops?"

And that was the trouble. He knew as well as I did that whether I handed it to the attendant or to the police, the chances were that even if the putative owners never showed up looking for it (because I knew damn well they wouldn't) I'd never see it again. And I'd been so honest in handing it over, too.

I almost felt bad for manipulating him like this, but I did have a purpose in mind. At the same time, I was curious as to what Dad's limits were. I knew that my real father didn't really have any, but I also knew that Jack Slash was a douche-nozzle and a murderhobo, so I didn't feel any real reason to follow in those blood-spattered footsteps. Before I committed to taking Dad on as an adult role model, I wanted to know what his moral stance on all this was first.

If that sounds a bit mercenary, hell yes. I'll be mercenary all day long. Morality for morality's sake has always been a loser's game, as far as I'm concerned. But give me a good solid reason to be moral, and I'll … think about it.

Eventually he sighed, tossed the money in the air and caught it again. "Well, it's probably the proceeds of some kind of criminal activity, so whoever had it doesn't deserve to get it back. Which makes it finders keepers, I guess." He held up his finger warningly, as if to forestall an excited grab for the money. "However. I don't want you blowing it all at once. So I'll be augmenting your allowance with twenty bucks a week, okay?"

Huh. I'd actually been expecting him to 'confiscate' it altogether. Score one for Dad. But this was the cue for my next gambit. "Okay, cool. Uh, Dad, can I ask a weird sounding question?"

He shrugged. "Sure. Weirder than handing me nearly a thousand bucks and giving me a heart attack?"

"Well, not that weird, I guess." I indicated the money. "If they're riding around with cash like that, and it's stolen or something, how would they put it in the bank? Wouldn't the bank be on the lookout for stolen money?"

"Oh, that's easy." He tucked the roll into his shirt pocket. "They get it laundered."

I blinked. "What, washed? That doesn't make sense."

"You grew up in Brockton Bay and you've never heard of money laundering?" He raised his eyebrows as if in disbelief.

"Oh, money laundering. Yeah, I've heard about it, but I don't know what it is." I really did, but I needed more details.

He sighed. "This has become a very strange conversation. If someone's got a load of illicit cash, they take it to a money launderer. That guy takes the cash and gives them back legitimate currency, minus a markup for the guy's profit. He then takes the cash and pulls some sort of sleight of hand to change it out for clean money."

"Oh." I increased the intensity of the blue field. "Like what would he do?"

Dad blinked. "Uh, well, one way to do it is to go into a casino and buy a heap of gambling chips. Then wander around the floor, gambling a bit here and there, then go back an hour or so later and cash them all in. You get back all new cash, fresh out of their reserves."

"Huh." That made a weird sort of sense. "Thanks, Dad. I learned something today." I dropped the blue field.

"You're welcome." He tapped the pocket with the cash in it. "It's always best to be honest about things like this."

"Absolutely," I said, lying through my teeth. I knew better than to press him on where to find someone to launder my rightly-earned gains, but now I knew more about the topic than I did before.

We settled down to watch TV, though my mind was barely on what I was seeing. Inside my head, I was turning over ideas and making plans.

<><>​

Three Days Later

"Okay, you ready?" I sat astride Hookwolf's motorcycle, the engine rumbling under me. Even though I was tall for my age, it was difficult for me to get my feet firmly on the ground on either side of the bike, but I could just about manage it.

"You sure you want to do it this way, boss?" The concern in Frankie's voice carried through clearly. He knew how tough and strong I was, and I scared the crap out of him on a regular occasion, but he was still worried about my welfare. Aww, who's a good little minion. You are, that's who.

"Absolutely," I replied with a too-wide grin and a creepy giggle. "I'll bail out just before the bike goes through the door. You just make sure you do your thing."

"You got it, boss." Frankie nodded firmly and hefted the AR-15. "Whenever you're ready to go."

Well, that was my cue. The bike was already in first gear so I flicked the switch that had been taped to the handlebars. Then I gave it a little acceleration while letting out the clutch, just as Frankie had shown me. We'd practised starting off like this until I was confident that I could do it properly, every time. It was a little unwieldy, given the extra stuff we had strapped onto it, but I was strong enough to handle it.

I started off strongly, changing up twice before I'd gone ten yards. The ABB guards lounging outside the front of the entrance to the Ruby Dreams casino straightened up, reaching for pistols. Frankie, who had run off to the left, lined up the AR-15 and shot them both down as I swerved to the right. I had to say, for something that wasn't quite an assault rifle, it made a mess of them.

With the guards dead, I opened the engine way out and accelerated for the doors, changing up as fast as I could. By the time I was fifteen yards away, I'd left the pedals behind and I was crouching on the seat. At ten yards, I let the handlebars go and leaped up and backward as high and far as I could go.

The bike kept on going; about half a second after I abandoned ship, it hit the doors with a tremendous crash and busted on through. I tried to land on my feet and almost managed it, but rolled over and over before standing up anyway. My jacket had a new hole in the elbow which honestly made it look cooler. As I was dusting myself off, Frankie came running up with his shotgun and the new Panama hat that I'd bought. At least my wig had stayed on, this time.

"Damn, boss, that was badass." He grinned at me and handed the hat over, just as part of the frontage blew out with a rolling BOOOM. Bits of debris rained around us. Frankie ducked; I ignored it.

"Your timer was pretty good, too," I observed, drawing the Anaconda. "How did you manage to get hold of so much C-4?" I figured I might have to try this trick again sometime. High explosives solved so many problems.

"Most of it wasn't C-4," he confessed. "A little bit attached to the timer, but mostly ammonium nitrate mixed with diesel fuel. Bulky but effective. And once the gas tank ruptured, that went up too."

We went over to the doors, which were basically hanging off the hinges, and peered in. My danger alert didn't ping to anything bad about to happen to me, so I took a deep breath of non-smoky air and stepped inside. "Knock knock!" I called out, and added a cackle for good measure. "Anybody home?"

Nobody seemed up to opposing us, though I did hear what I thought might be pained groans. Oh well, it wasn't me groaning so I didn't care. I raised the Anaconda as the smoke began to clear somewhat. Most of the lights had been shattered by the explosion, but some were still operational, and some of the machines were on fire, giving me enough light to see by. A roulette wheel was embedded in the far wall. And that's double-zero, to the house.

"Okay," I said to Frankie. "Let's grab what we can, and skedaddle."

Lung was gonna be so pissed.

Just as planned.



End of Part Fifteen

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Sixteen: Making an Impression

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Kaiser

"Are you certain this is a good idea?" Krieg shifted uneasily in his seat. "If Lung gets the idea that we are weak because you called this meeting before he did, who knows what he is likely to do."

Max sighed. "Bradley may have been one of our strongest capes, but he was by no means our only strong cape. Lung has Oni Lee. Yes, the ABB is slightly stronger against us than they were before, but they also just lost a good deal of face with the damage to their casino and the loss of a certain chunk of their clientele. Even the survivors are likely to go elsewhere, now that Lung has betrayed his inability to prevent this Rictus from attacking at random. He wants her taken down just as badly as we do."

"Yes, this is true." Krieg stared out the window of the limousine at the passing scenery. "Still, I cannot help but wonder if we're making the wrong move, somehow."

"You worry too much." Max poured a measure of aged Scotch into his glass and toasted Krieg with it. "Yes, Lung is an uncivilized savage who barely knows what to do with what he has. How many men does he have in the ABB? Seventy? Eighty? We can muster that and more on an off night with half our members still guarding our safe houses. If he tried for a coup, we would beat him down. Our men would decimate his. Yes, he could hurt us, but we would hurt him more. By the time we were done with him, the ABB and Lung himself would no longer be an issue in this city, and he knows it."

"And Oni Lee?" Krieg refused to concede the point. "That damned man is a menace. He makes it so much harder to get close to Lung. He'll dance through our men, leaving grenades behind at every step. We would take him down, but I doubt very much that the price would be worth it."

"Oh, it probably wouldn't be," agreed Max. "This is why we tolerate the presence of the ABB in Brockton Bay. Besides, their very presence provides a convenient example of what the city faces if we were ever to allow them free rein. Who's more likely to contribute to our cause; someone who thinks he has nothing to fear, or someone who's just seen half a dozen men wearing red and green walking down the street?"

Reluctantly, Krieg nodded. "So how are you going to play this?"

"A simple information exchange," Max said candidly. "If we see her in our territory and we can't bring her to battle, we push her toward ABB territory. Then we drop a dime, as the saying goes, and wish Lung's forces all the luck in the world bringing her down. Should they encounter her in their territory, they will do the same for us." His expression became hard and ugly. "She will learn very quickly that attacking everyone merely serves to win you many enemies and no friends."

"Ah, so you think she may have been banking on the old saying 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'?" Krieg tilted his head. "Does she perhaps believe that the Empire and the ABB are too much at odds to ever cooperate?"

Max laughed and drained his glass. "If she does, then she will find herself sorely mistaken. I'll make a deal with the very devil himself if it will get me ahead in this world."

<><>​

Lung

Kenta was uneasy. The city was out of balance. With the demise of the Merchants, people were having to find another gang to say, "At least they aren't as bad as …" and all too often, it was the ABB being pointed out as the bad example. Worse, the woman that the PRT called 'Rictus' had not been satisfied with merely destroying one gang. She had gone on to very publicly attack both the Empire and the ABB, stealing substantial quantities of money from both gangs in the process.

Descriptions of her varied, but the common denominators were easy to pick out. Rake-thin build, unsettlingly high-pitched (or sometimes low-pitched) laughter, a grin that was too wide for the face; and glowing eyes, lips and teeth. The bone-white skin and green hair could easily be the product of theatrical makeup, though he wasn't certain about the rest of it. Perhaps it was all a product of a particularly unpleasant Changer power. The reckless attitude certainly suggested someone was drunk on their power.

Later reports had her accompanied by a large man with equally white skin and a clown nose, armed with a shotgun. Kenta wondered how she kept her minion in line; in his experience, mastermind-style villains (especially those that were much smaller and weaker than their henchmen) were prone to having their gangs jacked out from under them by ambitious underlings.

A few of his younger members, once word of Rictus got around, had come to him and spoken of an experience they'd had with a terrifying woman who had taken on half a dozen of them with a knife and an iron bar, cackling like a demon and immune to knives. According to the youngsters, she had been at least seven feet tall, but her eyes did not glow, nor was her skin pale white. Her hair was indeed long and curly, but it had been black at the time. Still, she had sent them fleeing in abject terror, bleeding from non-lethal wounds and nursing broken arms and hands.

He was inclined to discount the extreme height of the woman and the invincibility to blades, but the rest was interesting. If it was true and they were not remembering wrongly, then she was merely an ordinary cape using a few cheap gimmicks to sow awe and confusion among her enemies. Very effective gimmicks, he was willing to concede, but gimmicks all the same.

The deaths of the Merchants was a wrinkle he had yet to figure out. She could've killed his people but had chosen not to, and yet the Merchants were poisoned with their own drugs to the point that they died writhing in agony, grinning like maniacs. Perhaps, now she had established her place in the city, she'd decided it was time to make her mark?

Kenta was all for enterprise; he himself had started with little and now had much. But he drew the line at someone using their enterprise to profit from him. Whatever agreement Kaiser wanted to reach regarding the disposition of Rictus, Lung would agree to, so long as it wasn't too one-sided. He suspected it would not be; after having lost face almost as badly as the ABB had, the Empire would be prizing revenge over and above any petty idea of scoring points against the opposition.

The Empire would still be there tomorrow, and they knew how the game was played. Rictus did not, but she would soon learn.

Death, after all, involved a very final kind of lesson.

<><>​

Kaiser

Max allowed Fenja and Menja to precede him into Somer's Rock, if only for form's sake. He was already armoured up, and if Lung wished to try anything the Asian crime lord would find Max ready for him. But he didn't think it would go that way.

They gave their drink orders to the new waitress, who also appeared to be deaf—really, he wondered, where do they find these people?—and settled down to wait. Soon enough, Lung arrived, along with his demon-masked underling. In keeping with the tradition of Somer's Rock, only handguns and hand weapons were on display; no grenades or other explosives.

The waitress reappeared again with the drinks as ordered, looked to see if Lung and Oni Lee wanted anything, and was sent away empty-handed. It appeared the leader of the ABB was not interested in idle courtesies. That was fine; Max was interested in getting down to brass tacks as well.

He gestured, and Victor unfolded a map of the city, which he laid on the table and used ashtrays from surrounding tables to weigh down. Each of the places where Rictus had clashed with the Merchants, the Empire or the police were marked. There was also a discreet cross at the location of the Ruby Dreams casino.

"These are where we know Rictus has struck," he said bluntly. "Do you have any more?"

After a moment of hesitation, Lung leaned across the table and touched the map at a certain point. A thread of smoke arose; when he took his finger away, there was a distinct scorch mark left behind. "She attacked some of my people in that alley."

Max had to give the man points for style. "Good. The more we know, the quicker we'll be able to take her down. Now, she's known to only go out at night, so that's when we'll concentrate our forces." He ran his finger along one of the main arterial roads that ran clear through the area where she'd been operating. "If we run quarter-hour patrols along …"

He paused as he realized that the waitress had come out again and was looking at the map with interest. A slim hand reached out holding a pencil, and made another cross. It took him a second to register that the location marked was Somer's Rock. Another few seconds passed before it came to his attention that she now had white skin, green hair, and glowing eyes and teeth.

She smiled, altogether too widely. "Say, anyone here know what the pencil said to the paper?"

"Fuck!" yelled Alabaster. "It's her!" He ducked around Cricket, who was apparently just goggling at her audacity, and made a grab for the slim girl.

Moving fluidly, as though she had all the time in the world, she jammed the pencil into his left eye. Then, while he made an ugly sound of pain and clawed at his eye, she grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed him face-first into the table. He convulsed and went limp; holding his head still, she struck him sharply at the base of the neck, snapping his spine with a spiteful crack.

Looking up as she released him to slump bonelessly onto the floor, she managed to smile even more widely than before. "I dot my eye on you. Get it?" Then she threw the tray across the table like a lethal Frisbee, catching Oni Lee in the throat. He subsided to the floor, making choking noises.

"Somebody get her!" yelled Max, finally breaking out of his shocked stupor.

The girl, halfway across the room, glanced back and tossed a handful of light metal objects across the floor. For a moment, Max suspected caltrops, but a second glance ruled that out. They appeared to be bent metal pins attached to circular ring-pulls. Still, they were worryingly familiar …

"Grenades!" yelled Victor, just as the girl yanked a handful of strings that had been tied up under the counter.

Familiar round shapes bounced into view from under tables and chairs right across the room, accompanied by (but entirely separate from) their attendant spoons. At that moment, all thought of revenge was superseded in favour of self-preservation. Even Lung, Max suspected, might not survive this.

The problem was, there was only one door (the one at the back was too far away to reach in time) and they probably had between three and five seconds to get out of the building before it was filled with all kinds of explosion. Worse, the windows were barred.

"FUCK!" That was Lung; without a second glance at his stricken henchman, he ran directly at the nearest window, smashed his hands through the glass, and grabbed the bars. With a tremendous effort, he pulled them apart and started scrambling through.

Cricket and Victor, both possessed of near-inhuman reflexes—why didn't Cricket react to the presence of Rictus in our very midst?—went for the door, with Krieg, Othala, Crusader and Stormtiger close behind. Max had just enough time to be glad he hadn't brought Purity or Rune along—someone had to mind the base—before Fenja and Menja grabbed him. He was farthest from the door—I just had to sit with my back to the wall, didn't I—but instead of trying to cover the distance, they held him between them and started growing.

When he realized that they were preparing to shield him from the blast with their own bodies, he slid his hands up under his helmet and clamped them over his ears. This was going to hurt, a lot, but maybe they'd survive it?

At the very last second, it dawned on him that now he knew where all those grenades which had been taken from that one safe house had ended up.

Fuck.

<><>​

Taylor

From a safe distance, Frankie watched as I trotted out of the cloud of smoke. "Lung?" I asked.

"Got shot out of that window like a big ugly bullet from a gun," he said laconically, indicating a pair of legs sticking out of a hole in the frontage opposite. "Looks like it took off a couple of bits on the way through." He raised his assault rifle. "I can go and make sure he's dead, if you want."

"Nah, leave him." I turned my gaze back to Somer's Rock proper. The building was still standing, but more fire and smoke were rolling out every opening it was possible to come out of, plus a few new ones it had recently acquired. The front door was open, with bodies were sprawled in front of it. Some were moving feebly, while others weren't.

"But we could kill 'em all right now, boss," he said, clearly not understanding my point.

I giggled, just to get his attention. "True, we could. But that's not sporting. Alabaster and Oni Lee were my targets this time around, and I got them both. If we get greedy, one of those capes might just get up and surprise us. We can always get them later. Besides, you left my calling card, right?"

"Yeah, boss." He gestured at the two cars that were parked in front of the building; one belonging to Kaiser and the other to Lung. Each of them had a crude representation of a grinning mouth full of sharp teeth spray-painted on the hood. Nobody would be in any doubt as to who had done this.

"Excellent." I giggled again as I turned to the actual Somer's Rock staff that we'd tied up and dragged out before all this started. The ties were loose, so they could get out of them relatively easily; it was a measure of how intimidated they were that they hadn't tried. "Now, I could kill you all, but I don't feel like it. Leave town. Leave the state. If I ever see you again … well, you'll wish I hadn't. Very briefly." I pushed the blue field onto them to leave them absolutely certain that I meant it, then let them have a deep ominous chuckle. "Get me?"

They all nodded frantically, tears running down their cheeks. I was pretty sure one of the brothers had wet himself.

"Good." I tossed a bag of money at their feet. There was maybe twenty grand in there; chicken feed, after what we'd taken away from the Empire and the ABB in recent days. "Here's your severance pay."

As Frankie and I walked away toward where we'd stashed our car, I tilted my head to listen to the sound of incoming sirens. "Aww, they're playing my tune. How sweet."

"Boss?" Frankie looked at me curiously. "How come you didn't kill them too? I mean, we coulda."

"Two reasons, Frankie." I grinned at him, just to watch him shudder. "One, they never done nothin' to me. Two, they say everyone dies twice. Once when you actually die, and the second time when the last person forgets your face. You think they're ever gonna forget my face?"

Frankie shook his head definitively. "Nope." From the tone of his voice, I heard the words he wasn't saying. Me neither.

"Good boy, Frankie." I patted him on the arm. "Good boy."


End of Part Sixteen

 

[Ack]

Prodigal Daughter

Part Seventeen: Outreach

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

"Okay, stop here."

Obediently, Frankie pulled the car to a halt and I got out. The lookout point atop Captain's Hill was deserted at this time of night, fortunately for anyone who might have been up here; I might have been tempted to pretend we were a travelling mime show, and who knew what that might have led to. Strolling over to the railing that gave us our best view of the city, I sighed happily as I picked out the tiny pillar of smoke marking where Somer's Rock had once been.

"It's a great view isn't it? So much possibility."

Frankie didn't answer at once. He was learning to think before he spoke. I appreciated that about him; an obedient minion was good, but a minion who was capable of self-improvement? Pure gold.

"Yeah," he said at last. "Lotsa things wrong with the place. I dunno what you're thinking all the time, or even most of the time, but you think big, an' you don't step back from doin' what you wanna do. Anyone can fix this city, it's you."

I considered that. "You know, Frankie, you're almost there. I wouldn't say I wanted to fix Brockton Bay though, because that'd make it sound like some of the stuff I want to change is bad, or what I want to change it to is good. Let's just say, I want to remodel it. Change things up. Make life exciting. But not stupid exciting, like it is now." I spread my arms. "Fun exciting." Then I let out a full-blooded cackle, not because I thought it was funny, but because I felt it needed to be said.

With my laughter still echoing out over Brockton Bay, I turned to my minion. He had taken a step back while I was enjoying my maniacal laughter, but he met my gaze squarely. "Well, Frankie," I said quietly. "What do you say? Are you in?"

Slowly, the most evil grin I'd ever seen—apart from the one on my own face in the mirror—crept across his face. "I reckon they got it coming, boss."

My grin grew to match his, then exceeded it—thanks to Riley, I had an unfair advantage—and I reached out and patted his arm. "I knew there was a reason I liked you."

We stood side by side, looking out over the city. An errant breeze teased the ends of my green wig. Eventually, Frankie broke the silence. "So what are we gonna be doing next, boss?"

I giggled. "Recruiting." There was a nerdy kid in some of my classes who would've fit the school-shooter profile almost exactly if he didn't yabber on incessantly about some computer game or other. I figured he'd only need a few nudges before he'd be helping me out all on his own.

"Recruiting?" Frankie almost sounded hurt. "Ain't I good enough to be your minion anymore?"

"Frankie. Frankie, Frankie, Frankie." I reached up to pat his cheek. "You're the best minion a homicidal maniac could have. But I'm thinking I might need stealth minions, and you're a lot better at the really loud stuff. You'll always be my Minion Number One, I promise."

"Oh. That's okay, then." I pretended not to watch as he surreptitiously wiped away a tear. "Thanks, boss. You had me worried for a bit, there."

I giggled. "Oh, trust me, Frankie. If I ever decided to retire you, it wouldn't hurt a bit."

For some reason, that made him look … relieved? Minions were weird.

<><>​

Cruising through the streets of Brockton Bay, I found it peaceful, almost restful. The gang activity was basically zero out tonight; the Merchants were gone, and I'd torn through the Empire and ABB's little secret villain strategy meeting like a honey badger driving a combine harvester. Everyone had to be keeping their heads down, looking around for what might happen next. In the meantime, the cops were likely wondering where everyone was. You're totally welcome, guys.

Just on a whim, I told Frankie to swing through Downtown before dropping me off near my house. Not for any particular reason, just so that I could enjoy the fruits of my work. But just after we passed the hospital, I spotted a girl walking down the street.

It was a nice neighbourhood, so she was probably safe. But what was a teenage girl doing, walking around in the middle of the night? She wasn't dressed right to be a hooker, and it was the wrong part of town for that anyway. And then my power sense kicked in, and things became a lot clearer. All over her hands, over every part of exposed skin, flickered a kind of blue fire. I was looking at a parahuman. And if my general skill at reading people wasn't totally messing me around, a parahuman who was shitted off with her general situation.

"Frankie," I said. "Don't slow down, but do you have any idea who that is?"

As a good minion should, he followed my instruction to the letter. The car didn't even swerve a little bit as he followed the line of my pointing finger. It took him a few seconds, then he blinked in surprise.

"Damn," he said. "What's Panacea doing out this late?"

"That's Panacea?" I asked, honestly surprised in my own turn. Well, as surprised as I ever got. A little curious, maybe.

I didn't make a habit of watching for New Wave on TV, so my mental image of the team costumes tended toward a lot of white and gold. This girl wasn't even wearing any of that. Her costume of choice seemed to be a sweater, baggy jeans and a band to keep her frizzy hair out of her eyes. And of course a chip on her shoulder the size of the Forsberg Gallery.

I had a brainwave. "Go around the corner just up there and drop me off," I told Frankie. "Then wait for me two blocks up."

"Okay, boss," he said automatically. "What are you gonna do? We gonna kidnap her?"

I admired the way he showed he was willing to do just that if I wanted him to, but then I shook my head. "Nice idea, but nope. Just gonna talk to her. See if we can have a meeting of the minds."

He nodded firmly, as though the idea of me deciding to have a midnight chat with the most famous healer in the world caused him no qualms whatsoever. Which meant he either had an immense amount of unshakeable faith in me, or he was irredeemably stupid. I was gonna go with 'faith'. Which was kinda touching, in its own way.

He pulled over as directed and I got out, leaving the hat and wig behind. As the car drove off, I strolled back to the corner. Leaning against the wall, I closed my eyes and listened to the footsteps coming closer and closer. She passed me by; showtime.

Opening my eyes, I pushed off the wall and set off after her. My stride was longer than hers, so in just a few seconds I was alongside her. Just for shits and giggles, I used my blue field the same way I had in Somer's Rock, to keep her oblivious of anything amiss. Right up until I was alongside her, whereupon I replaced it with my grey field (I'm audacious, not idiotic) and greeted her in my brightest tones. "Hi! Nice night for a stroll, isn't it?"

"Jesus shit!" she squawked, and jumped sideways. Not bad distance either, considering she'd done it so spontaneously. Note to self: that was almost funny. I will have to try it again. "Who the hell are you? Where did you come from?"

Well, she didn't seem prone to attack by instinct, so I replaced the grey field with the blue again. "Hey, chill. Just wanted to say hi. Big fan of your work, actually." I gave her an encouraging grin.

"What—wait …" She stared at me. "I know who you are. You're Rictus!"

I giggled, going for the unsettling vibe. This was a new one on me. "I'm who again now?" Was she setting me up for some weird joke?

The giggle had its effect, but it didn't put her off her stride. "You're Rictus!" she insisted. "The new cape, the one who killed the Merchants with that biotoxin!"

"Well, yeah, that was me," I admitted proudly. "So they're calling me Rictus now, huh? Nice name. I like it." I shot her my creepiest grin just to show her how much I liked it.

She shuddered, but not as much as Frankie did. It seemed our little Panacea was made of sterner stuff. "What do you want with me, anyway? If you're here to try to kidnap me, I promise you will not enjoy the outcome!"

"Hey, hey." I held up my hands in mock surrender. "No kidnapping here. Promise. I just wanted to talk. A little chat, girl to girl. You vent about your problems, I vent about mine, we go our separate ways. Deal?"

"Well …" She eyed me suspiciously. And well she should, because I had ulterior motives dribbling out my ears. But with the blue field up and running, it was hard for her to maintain it. "… okay, fine. But the moment you try to bribe me to join your gang, I'm outta here."

I repeated the mock surrender. "No bribes, promise. Just talk, nothing else."

"Hmph. Okay." She started walking again, and I fell into step alongside her. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

"Me?" I shook my head. "I'm here to listen to your problems, o healer of the masses. Tell me: what is it that has gotten most thoroughly up your nose today?"

"Nothing." She said the word defiantly, but I was pretty sure Frankie could tell she was lying from where he was sitting in his car, two blocks away. "I'm fine."

Ohh boy. This one's gonna be a doozy when it blows. Inner me went and got some popcorn, while I piled on the blue field some more. "Aarre you suurre?"

"Well …" She had to be pushing against some major habits by opening up, so I let her take her time. "There is one thing …"

There was more than one thing but I held my tongue, contenting myself with an encouraging smile.

I had to give her full credit; when she opened up, she did it with style. I learned about how she was adopted (kind of obvious in retrospect, really) plus chapter and verse about her foster mom's passive-aggressive style of parenting. How her sister was given preferential treatment all the time, though she didn't hate Glory Girl for being the golden child, but actually loved her …

Had I mentioned Panacea had a chip on her shoulder? It was more like a rock the size of Captain's Hill. Each time I thought she'd run dry, she managed to dredge up another wellspring of resentment, until I was left wondering exactly how the city had not been turned into a festering plague pit by now. Well, more of a festering plague pit.

"And I know I can't heal everyone who needs it," she ranted, gesturing animatedly as I strolled alongside her. "You don't have to tell me that. Anyone who does the math can figure it out. But does Carol acknowledge it? No. I've got to do my bit to keep New Wave looking good, so anytime there's a news story about someone only I can heal, guess what, I'm there. She's drilled it into my head so much that I literally get up and walk to the hospital in the middle of the night just so I can heal a few more people and sleep better after I get home! How ridiculous is that?"

"Pretty ridiculous," I agreed. "But you know, we've got a lot in common, you and me. I mean, if we look past the obvious differences like how I murder people and you save lives."

"Okay, well apart from that, how so?" she asked. Having gotten a lot of the anger out of her system, at least temporarily, she was actually listening to what I had to say.

I ticked off points on my fingers. "Real dad not in the picture. Real dad is a notorious supervillain." I paused at her quizzical look. "Oh, didn't I tell you? My father's Jack Slash."

She tilted her head and eyed my features carefully. "Yeah, I can believe that. Though I'm pretty sure that glowing effect is Tinkertech."

"Oh, sure," I agreed. "Riley made it for me. You know, Bonesaw. My kind of adoptive sister. Something else we've got in common. Plus, we've both got kinda distant stepdads. Barely anybody really understands us or respects us. Am I right?"

She rolled her eyes and let out a heartfelt sigh that was more of a groan. "Oh, god yes. Carol doesn't trust me for what she knows I can do. If she knew what I could really do, I don't think she'd come within fifty feet of me."

I shrugged. "Dad would probably be a little skittish, too. That's the trouble with secrets. Keeping 'em is a hassle, but not keeping 'em would be a bigger hassle, y'know?"

She peered at me. "So how do you do it? How do you just … handle it all?"

"Hm. Good question." I thought about it for a few moments. "Murder, I guess. That's a good way to blow off steam. A good, well thought out end to someone who desperately needs it."

"I can't just murder someone!" She sounded almost scandalized.

"Sure you can." I grinned at her. "Nobody but you knows exactly how your power works, right? So when the person you're supposed to be healing is a real scumbag, like you told me, all you gotta do is make their injuries worse before you start making 'em better. They got to you too late, too bad, so sad. Or it's a brain aneurysm or a blood clot or something. You could totally do that, right?"

"Well, I could, but … I'm a healer." She looked conflicted. "Everyone trusts me to heal them."

"Perfect." I dusted my hands off. "That way, nobody will suspect you."

She suddenly looked very thoughtful indeed. "Still … we don't get too many of those," she said. I heard what she wasn't saying: How am I going to blow off steam the rest of the time without killing my other patients?

"Oh, I get that," I agreed. "But, you know, me and Minion Number One go out from time to time to spread our own personal brand of chaos. If you were interested, you could come along as someone who wasn't Panacea. We pretty well target the people other scumbags think are scumbags. No innocents there. Plenty of chances to see what your power can really do. What do you say? It might be fun."

By now, my blue field was barely more than a suggestion. I'd needed to ramp it up in the beginning to persuade her not to run screaming, but now she seemed genuinely interested, despite all the goodness and light propaganda that had been crammed down her throat. Or maybe because of it.

She raised her eyebrows as she looked over at me. "I thought I said, no bribing me to join your gang."

"What bribe?" I asked ingenuously. "I said nothing about pay. I just invited you along."

"Hm." She eyed me. "Well, I might just take you up on that. Or I might not. We'll see."

By which I knew she meant she was going to talk herself around to it in remarkably short order. "That's fair. See you when I see you, Pan-Pan."

"Not if I see you first, Rictus."

With that, we waved goodbye and I turned down the side-street to where Frankie was patiently waiting with the car. I watched her walk on, and when she was out of sight I got into the car and sighed happily.

"How'd it go, boss?" he asked as he started the vehicle.

"Better than I expected, actually," I said as I set about putting on the wig and hat again. "She could be tons scarier than me if she ever really let loose." I giggled. "And that part of her is so close to the surface, it'll only take a little tiny push to send her over the edge."

"And you're just the person to do that, right boss?"

I gave him a fond smile. "You know me so well, Frankie."

<><>​

The Next Morning

I am the night.

Sophia kept her face calm during the outprocessing period; fortunately, they had a form for 'healed by Panacea' which sped the whole deal up by quite a lot. She answered the questions with the right answers, and wrote the correct things in the correct spaces. All she wanted to do was get out of the hospital, retrieve her spare costume, and take to the rooftops once more.

The night is me.

Where before she'd considered herself to be the worst thing to be found in the shadows, now she knew differently. She'd seen the news footage about the new cape called Rictus and how they were connected to the deaths of the Merchants, and the bombing of both the Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB. Capes had died in both of those instances, including the previously thought unkillable Alabaster. In her mind, she was absolutely certain she knew who was responsible. The inhuman grin, the cackling laughter haunted her every time she closed her eyes.

I'm coming for you, Rictus.

She had almost died herself, and been reborn with a new purpose. Rictus and her were now nemesi … nemesises … whatever it was called. The battle lines had been drawn and would endure until one or the other of them fell. Maybe I should rebrand, name myself after a creature of the night. An owl or something. Change out my crossbows for thrown weapons. Maybe boomerangs or bolos, something like that.

However she did it, she would make sure Rictus regretted ever messing with her.

Of that, she was certain.


End of Part Seventeen