Taylor, Tinker.

[Krak-Quinn]

Tomorrow, winter break was going to end, some parents would be relieved while their kids would be dismayed.

Taylor Hebert was one of those kids, but it wasn't because she hated learning, in fact, she rather enjoyed it. What she was dismayed about wasn't school work, but rather her classmates, more specifically her bullies. She didn't remember all the faces and names of those who occasionally bullied her, but she did remember the big three.

The Trio, if you prefer, they had a catchy name, was made up of her ex-best friend Emma Barnes, a track jock Sophia Hess, and the 'cute one' Madison Clements. All put together they had beauty, brawn and brains. A triple threat that had zeroed in on her. Those three were at the center of a campaign to make her life difficult at every corner, and she couldn't do anything without some 'proof'.

She was grateful for winter break, she was able to relax for a while, until she realized just how much her life had changed. When the last night of break came, tonight, she couldn't bring herself to even think she would go to school tomorrow. She just knew that if she went to school, she would hate herself for it, for willingly going back and letting herself get tormented.

She had spent most of the night since getting into bed just thinking of what they would do to her. She had imagined scenario after scenario about the ways her bullies would welcome her back.

Would Emma use something Taylor had confided in her, back when they were friends, to humiliate her again? Would Sophia finally go too far and cripple her?

She just didn't know what to do anymore. Her best friend was now her worst enemy, and no one who went or worked at the school cared about what was happening to her. It felt like it was just a short while ago when Emma was her BFF and Taylor's mother was alive, but it also felt like it was forever ago.

She wanted to know what happened and what she could do to fix their friendship, but Emma wouldn't tell her.

She was all alone: no friends, no loving mom, and her dad was just a husk of his old self.

The whole world was conspiring to take away her happiness.

And they succeeded.

When she woke up, she didn't remember going to sleep, but the sunlight leaking through the curtains and blinds on her window confirmed that time had definitely passed without her noticing.

She turned over in her bed and looked at her clock. She was surprised to find the time was 8:23 a.m. She would be late for school. She jumped out of bed and tripped over her blankets in the process. She counted herself lucky her fall hadn't been excessively violent.

Lying there on the floor, she reasoned with herself that this was for the best, and that she deserved an extra day off.

She almost dozed off, trapped tightly in her covers, but then her eyes snapped open when she felt something tickling her brain. Taylor sat up and thought about what she felt. It wasn't something physical, no, it was like something had brushed against her thoughts themselves.

As she pondered, it happened again. This time it lasted a little longer, and she saw things. Light, movement, reactions, waves, shapes and other things she quickly forgot about. She could only recall her reactions to seeing them, and that she knew what she was seeing. Glimpses of technology were swimming around her brain.

She brought a hand up to hold her dizzy, aching head and slumped against her bed. She saw technology more clearly. The headache faded, and she took a moment to wonder what the fuck just happened. Her first thought was that she had an aneurysm or stroke, but then the hopeful thoughts came. Did she have a superpower?

She knew Tinkers existed, and they had the superpower to make advanced technology, she never really wondered what that meant, but now she did. She knew they didn't create things from nothing, so that meant they built them. Therefore, their superpower had to be the tech they made. So one could conclude that having vague imprints of technology brush against one's consciousness meant you had powers.

Taylor needed to test it, she needed to see if she could actually make something, so she got off the floor and changed her clothes before going downstairs. She cut through the living room and made her way into the basement. A flick of a switch illuminated the basement, and the dust in the air was visible.

Her father's toolbox was stored down here. She had only seen him use it a few times, mainly just the hammer and screwdriver. It didn't take a lot of searching to locate it. She could tell it was old, the faded red and rusty corners painted a clear picture. She opened it up to find a few wrenches, a handsaw, some pliers, a hammer, plenty of screwdrivers, a power drill, a measuring tape and a lot of loose screws and nails.

These tools were great for fixing things, but she wasn't going to repair, she was going to create. She needed different tools, or better tools.

An idea appeared in her head, and there was a weird sensation that flowed through her mind. It was like a cartoon light bulb lit up above her head, and her brain was channeling the electric current that powered the bulb. Her attention wavered. She could feel her body move, it knew what she had to do.

When she was done, the tools hardly looked different, aside from a few dents and grooves, but they felt better in her hands. She had hit parts of the metal bits with a hammer, tightened some parts with the wrench and fiddled with the screws and bolts. She was just doing what came instinctively, so, either she was delusional or she had powers.

Taylor wanted to actually use her new powers, if she wasn't delusional that is. So she needed to make something but she would require materials. She turned her head to look around the basement, and she realized she was sitting on the floor. She pushed herself up with her palms and inspected the junk that had gathered down here.

She didn't bother looking through the boxes, she knew those contained old clothes and paperwork. So she just moved those aside. After about ten minutes of searching, she hadn't found a lot, which made sense, but she did find an old microwave, a toaster, and a car battery.

Taylor also found an old bicycle, it was small and she remembered riding around the park with Emma. They laughed and played for hours. Memories like those made Emma's insults sting harder. She had also found a box with Christmas decorations. She didn't think her family had used them since before her mom passed away. She and her dad didn't really celebrate much of anything anymore.

She was struggling to lift the microwave before she realized she had no reason to. The best place to tinker would have to be down here. It was away from prying eyes, her dad didn't come down here often, and there was a workbench down here. It was perfect, but not in this state. She had to clean. She opened the small window to let the air in and went upstairs to get some things. She found the broom, and after a little bit of checking cabinets, she also found a duster

She also got a new lightbulb from the hallway closet. She took two extra so she would have more materials to tinker with. Then she went on a hunt and scoured every nook and cranny looking for materials. In the end, she found a few unused disposable cameras, a few batteries ranging in sizes and volts, and a lot of electric toys that she never played with anymore. She also found a box cutter. She dumped everything into a cardboard box before going back to clean the basement.

When she finished her descent into the basement, her first thought was to replace the bulb, but then she realized she had left it on and it had heated up considerably. She had to go back up and find oven mitts or wait until it cooled. She chose the mitts.

It was probably an hour later when she stopped and considered herself done, and after she was satisfied with her area, she moved on to her tools. She took the toolbox out back and washed the tools down with a hose and a rag. After drying them and taking them back downstairs, she saw the time. It was 1:00 p.m. She had about eight hours until dad got home — eight hours to prove to herself that she had powers.

Her station was complete. She set up on a workbench with big materials to the side, a box of materials underneath, and the toolbox sitting on top

It sure looked nice, but it was nowhere near her image of a true Tinker's workshop. However, that didn't mean anything. She told herself that she had to start somewhere, but then she asked herself: where could she go from here if she had powers? Eventually, her dad would catch her and make her join the Wards.

Taylor didn't want that. She could see the benefits of joining the Wards; she wasn't blind. She could have an actual workshop and materials — if only she signed up for another place filled with teenage drama and adult oversight.. She was already struggling to just stay in school, and she wanted freedom, so she was okay with her basement, but she didn't want to be caught by her dad.

If she wasn't crazy, then she needed to keep her tech small: stuff she could easily hide when she was not here. And when she did get some momentum building things, she would have to find someplace to build bigger and better things.

Now that she was done cleaning and thinking — and maybe stalling — she could try to build something that was actually Tinker tech

She stood under the light and tried to focus, to call upon the feeling she felt earlier. Still, nothing happened.

Worry grew in her heart; she had no idea what to build. Maybe she should have read up on Tinkers. She only knew what she remembered from cartoons, gossip, and mentions in class — that Tinkers built things that couldn't be built through normal means.

She tried thinking about Tinkers. There were obviously Hero, Haywire, and Dragon. Then she remembered discussions she had overheard: Kid Win was a Tinker, and Squealer was also a Tinker. She guessed Armsmaster was a Tinker, too.

Tinkers built power suits, portals, hoverboards, bikes, lasers, and halberds with plasma cutters. Tinkers made weapons and vehicles, so she guessed she could make a weapon. She decided to start small with something she could build fast and use to take down a villain non-lethally.

She felt the current run through her brain. She had an idea and hope. She took apart toys and a camera and cut open the Christmas lights. She took small bits that handled power from the toys and camera and some wire from the lights

Time passed by unnoticed. She only stopped because her stomach growled at her. Snapping back to the real world, she felt incredibly hungry, and her hands hurt — which wasn't surprising. She recalled the small shocks from wires and the nicks from metal; luckily, she hadn't drawn blood.

Looking down on her unfinished project, it appeared as if a child had made it, though that was mainly because she was reusing a casing from a toy. Ignoring the childish plastic container, it just looked messy, with too much wiring and connected bits exposed, but she didn't care about its appearance too much. She only cared that she was one step closer to proving she had superpowers. If what she built could do things that conventional science said it shouldn't be able to, that would confirm her hopes.

Her stomach growled again, reminding Taylor that she hadn't eaten since dinner last night, too engrossed in testing her potential power to notice throughout the day. She stretched and let out a yawn before climbing the stairs. The clock revealed the time to be 5:00 pm. Four hours had passed since she started working. Absently, she heated up some leftovers from dinner and ate her food quickly.

She didn't bother washing her dishes, just left them in the sink and went back down. She had shocked herself a lot, so she considered wearing gloves but threw that idea away; she needed her nails to hook onto the loose wires.

As she closed the casing, she felt the mental current fade. She was done. It wasn't pretty, but it was finished and about the shape of a thick TV remote, with the top and bottom open. It was pastel pink and dark blue with silver screws running down its length. She picked up the second piece. It was wires, junk, and a battery — all exposed. She slotted it into the bottom of the first piece.

It emitted a rising, high-pitched whine, and she could feel the energy thrumming inside it. Her thumb hovered above a button. If she pressed it, it would connect the circuits. This was it: either she had mashed bits and pieces together at random and would seriously harm herself, or Taylor was a Tinker and this was her first piece of Tech.

She pointed the thing — which would crush or make her dreams — at a wall and pressed the button. It buzzed, crackled, and then shot out a current of electricity. A smile grew on her face as she watched the electricity stop after two feet and loosely sustain itself mid-air.

She did it, she did it. She had superpowers.

The Tinkertech in her hand started feeling hot, and she noticed the electric arc starting to lash outside its designated zone, so she relaxed her finger on the button. The electricity shrunk and disappeared.

She looked at her Tinkertech stun gun and felt proud. Even though she didn't completely understand how it worked, she was glad. She doubted regular stun guns could shoot and sustain electricity from a distance. She would have to watch out for strong magnets when she uses it though.

Taylor imagined a mugger and pointed her weapon at him. She pretended to press the button, and the imaginary mugger spasmed and fell to the ground. For the next minute she aimed at imaginary villains and pretended to fire.

Her heroic fantasies abruptly ended when she heard the front door open. Her dad was home. She was torn: she wanted to show him her technology; she wanted him to be proud and congratulate her with a smile and a hug. But she knew he wouldn't care — he would only be concerned about her safety — and her heart raced with panic at the thought of being caught

Disappointed and panicked, she froze. She faintly heard the creaking of the stairs as he walked up to the second floor. She had time. She quickly and quietly packed the tools into the toolbox and scooped the toy scraps into her materials box. Then she closed both boxes, moved them away from each other, and snuck up the stairs

Her stun gun was tucked into her waist and covered by her shirt. She turned off the light before slowly opening the basement door. Then she sneaked her way around the kitchen. She had a choice to make: stay in the kitchen and find a reason as to why she was down here, or sneak into her room and not have to lie.

Maybe she was still riding her high, but she decided to sneak into her room.

As the seconds seemed to drag and her heartbeat grew louder by the decibel, she walked along the edges of each step as she ascended. She could see the bathroom light on and knew this was the final stretch. She took a gamble. She held her breath and walked, trying to straddle the tightrope between quiet and slow or loud but fast.

One minute later, she was panting and exhausted, but she made it to her room without being detected. She hid her Tinkertech in a drawer and flopped on her bed. Then she dozed off, only to be woken by her father at dinnertime.

They ate and said good night, then she went to bed for real.

 

[Krak-Quinn]

This morning, her alarm had woken her up on time. She pressed the button to silence it and rolled her legs off her bed. She sat on the edge and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. A yawn escaped her mouth. She knew today would be the same as always, but then she remembered.

Taylor was a Tinker now.

She was completely awake now, and she rushed over to the drawer which should contain proof. She slowly opened it. It was there. Her Tinkertech was real and not just a dream.

She knew being a Tinker wouldn't change much at school, but now she had something she could escape to, and when the time came, she could even be a hero.

She went through her morning routine with a little pep in her step, not enough for her dad to notice or maybe that just said something about how little he paid attention to her.

Taylor reluctantly left her Tinkertech behind, hidden in her sock drawer, and caught a bus to school.

She knew something was off as soon as she walked through the doors of Winslow High. Whispers and snickers followed her everywhere, and she grew uneasy. She tried to distract herself with Tinker ideas, but that ended when she got to her locker.

It was open and empty. The stench of bleach was prominent in the air. It didn't make sense that a student would use bleach, so she guessed the janitor had been here. And if the janitor had to clean her locker, that meant it had been dirty. She doubted she had left it like that, so that meant someone else had done something.

Now she was suddenly very glad that she had skipped school yesterday, until she realized how it looked. Every time she tried reporting an incident without any proof, she was written off as an attention seeker, and since she couldn't prove anyone had access to her locker, she was no doubt blamed for this too. She quietly fumed and walked away. She knew it wouldn't work, but she hoped that if she failed to acknowledge it, it would go away.

Instead of a peaceful walk to class, she crossed paths with a pissed-off Sophia Hess. Taylor did her best to ignore her and tried to block out what she said, but she couldn't control her body's reactions. She winced and flinched with every verbal jab. She was shaking; Sophia probably thought she was shaking in fear, but in reality she was bursting at the seams with barely restrained anger.

She didn't really understand Sophia, the girl who had met Emma while Taylor was at summer camp and became Emma's best friend. And then the girl had turned Emma against her. While Taylor used to wish that Emma would come to her senses and be her friend again, she didn't really care about Sophia.

She knew the girl would beat her in a fight ten out of ten times; however, it would be so very cathartic to just punch her once. But Taylor didn't. She was going to be a hero, and heroes didn't harm civilians.

Sophia eventually got bored and left, and Taylor didn't go to class until she had calmed herself down. Her first class was computer science, a class she was doing fairly well in. When she finished her assignment, she took a quick trip to Parahumans Online to look up Tinkers.

What she read could be summed up as: Tinkers have a power that allows them to create and alter devices beyond what could be accomplished through normal means, sometimes ignoring physics. They also have a specialty, meaning they are very efficient in certain fields of technology.

The most common thing Tinkers made appeared to be Power Armor. They seemed to shove all their tech inside it. She didn't think that was going to be possible for her; she doubted she could assemble and sneak around a hulking suit of metal in her current workshop.

A little more reading revealed just how moronic she had been acting by not joining the Wards. Apparently, it was notorious for Tinkers to cannibalize their home appliances just to scratch the itch to build, and for them to run low on resources and energy. They eventually joined someone, heroes or villains, just to get materials.

She also did a little bit of research into the current Cape scene in her area. The major players for the hero side were the Protectorate ENE, the Wards, and New Wave. The major villain gangs were the E88, the ABB, and the Merchants.

There were also lesser-known capes: for the heroes, there were Sere and Dovetail; for the villains, there were Coil, Circus, Stain, Über and Leet, Trainwreck, and the Undersiders. There was also Parian, a rogue, and Faultline's Crew, who were mercenaries.

The rest of the school day continued with harassment and neglect. She was able to deal with most of it by focusing on her new powers. During lunch, she was able to make a projectile launcher out of a few school supplies she had in her backpack. It wasn't that impressive, but she was able to focus on it and ignore reality for a bit.

She dismantled it shortly after because she didn't want to get in trouble by being caught with a "weapon," but she kept the pieces in her bag.

During gym class, the insults she got made her think that maybe they were right to an extent. She was pretty weak and had almost no stamina. If she wanted to be a hero, she would have to change that.

At the end of the day, she rushed out and made sure to take a new route; she didn't want to deal with the Trio anymore that day.

She took a bus home but was in and out a moment later. She traded her bag for her wallet; she had formed the outline of a plan. The mall was busy. Teenagers just released from their schools were crowding the floor, so she had to worm her way through them and into a shop.

From her research, one of the main problems for Tinkers was resources—that is, materials to tinker with. Since her dad would notice if all their home appliances were gone, she had to buy some things. But since she didn't know what she needed, she decided to buy things that could be taken apart for parts. There was one thing she was certain she needed: a game station. From what her classmate, Greg Veder, had said, the parts were top of the line.

She brought all the money she had saved up with her that day—most of it came from her grandma—just so she could buy parts.

The sun had started to set as she walked through the doors of her home, her hands full of bags. She knew most of the space was being taken up by packaging, so she dropped the bags in the living room and went to get some scissors.

Getting home had been nerve-wracking. She probably looked like such an easy target, but luckily she had been able to navigate her way home without any complications.

She walked back into the living room and got to work unpacking everything.

Her haul was okay; she didn't buy too much and still had some money left over. She had bought: a game station, a few cheap disposable phones, a phone charger, a watch, two flashlights, a few laser pointers, some batteries, a hot glue gun, glue sticks, some electric tape, a few pens, paper clips, a small rotating fan, an RC car, and two handheld radios.

She threw away all of the instructions and packaging, then took multiple trips downstairs to organize her workshop. She finished at about 7:00 pm, and she wasn't in a rush to build anything. Fortunately, the weekend was starting then, so she could spend the entire day tinkering away.

She wasn't sure why winter break had ended on a Thursday, but she wasn't complaining.

She ate dinner before showering. Then she went down to the basement. She put on the watch and looked at the time; she had about an hour and ten minutes before her dad got home. It could be enough time to start something simple. She had already built something; now she had to see if she could alter something.

She looked around and chose the flashlight. She could feel the current again and lost herself as she unscrewed the screws.

…

…

The current rescinded, and she examined her work. It was hard to tell the difference at first glance, but if one were to open the shell, they would find it hard to see the thing as a flashlight.

A glance at her watch informed her she had a few minutes before Dad got home. She pointed the altered flashlight at the far side of the wall and clicked one button. The entire area in front of the light was lit up, and the reflection was nearly blinding. She clicked a different button; the cone shrunk to the size of a dot, an incredibly bright dot. She clicked the third button, and the intensity of the light dropped.

She had built a very bright flashlight/laser-pointer. She could probably blind someone for a while if she aimed for their eyes.

As she started packing away her things, she thought about the thing she would have to worry about—it was similar to her stun gun. It was battery powered and overheated if left on for more than a few seconds.

She used batteries as a power source, and until she made a new one (if she could), that wouldn't change soon. But for now she would just have to make sure she didn't overwork anything. Her tech mostly overheated because she was shoving too many things into small casings. But she only did that so it could work effectively. If she had better materials, she would fix this.

The rest of her night went smoothly.

When her alarm went off the next morning, she didn't waste any time getting up. Today was Saturday. She could spend the entire day working on something. She ate her breakfast faster than normal and impatiently waited until her dad left for work.

As she set up her workshop, she decided to make a big project; she had the materials and time. She wasn't going to do anything too wild, just something that would help her build more things. She took apart the microwave and the toaster and grabbed some bits from the material box. Then she went to work.

After hours of nonstop work, she was done. It took up the entire space on the table and looked like trash. If she had to guess what it appeared to be, she would probably say a miniature football field made of scraps. She grabbed the loose cables dangling off the edge and connected them to the car battery. Then she heard it start up with a low-pitched hum and sparking.

She started small and placed a screw in the center. A few seconds later, it was glowing red; then, after a minute, it was just a blob of heated metal. It worked.

Great! It worked, and now she could work with metal. She dropped a piece of plastic off to the left and waited. It didn't change. Good, it only affected metal. She unplugged the machine and waited until the red metal turned gray, then she scraped it off with the hammer.

She checked her watch. The time was 7:37 pm; she had spent the entire day working on this. She packed up her things and went through the motions until bedtime.

The next day, Sunday, she decided to try her hand at a power generator. The result had cost her a large chunk of her materials, big and small, but it worked. While building it, she was reminded of her stun gun, but this was more stable. Like her other works, the pieces were exposed and looked like something you would find in a junkyard. It had cables running off and let out sparks that crawled along the metal. It was too big to carry, and she had to build it on the floor.

In front of her were the bicycle pedals. She couldn't say exactly how it worked, but she knew it would convert kinetic energy into electrical energy and store some of it. If she held a light bulb near the generator, it would light up, which was neat.

Taylor was a Tinker now, and she needed to think of her future. She was obviously going to be a hero, but what did that mean? She had to stop crime and save people, but how would she do that? Her stun gun could stop a normal criminal, but against a Cape she was screwed. She needed to build better weapons, but that meant she needed a better workshop.

This was why Tinkers joined up or became thieves. She needed resources, but she didn't want to join the Wards or become a criminal. It wasn't stealing if she took from villains, right? Who would they report her to? They might develop a grudge against her, but she was going to be a hero. Why would she care what villains thought of her?

On Monday, after she finished her computer work, she researched the villains a little more. The villainous Tinkers in Brockton Bay were: Leet, Squealer, and Trainwreck. Leet and his partner Über were two video-game-themed idiots who live-streamed their crimes.

Leet's Tinkertech was all over the place with what he could build, but it had a tendency to go explosively wrong. Squealer was a Merchant and a crackhead; her specialty was vehicles.

Trainwreck was a Monster Cape who made crude suits. There wasn't much else about him.

Taylor decided to go after Squealer. Leet probably had security measures such as cameras, and Trainwreck offered her as much help as going to an actual train wreck would be. But Squealer made vehicles, so she definitely had resources, which probably weren't that guarded.

She read some more about the Merchants, Skidmark and Mush, and she mentally prepared herself. She had to hype herself up. She knew she was essentially attacking them on their home ground with just a stun gun and a flashlight.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Well, there's always the risk Taylor will get tracked by someone looking for Tinker-type purchases, but she's got to get started somehow. Curious to see how the story goes. well written so far.

 

[Mastersgt]

She was all alone.

No friends, no loving mom, and her dad was just a husk of his old self.

The whole world was conspiring to take away her happiness.

And they succeeded.

Click to shrink...

ngl, was a lil bummed when her tinker abilities did not immediately give her something to resolve what was stressing her enough to trigger... like, some kind of tech to get her mom back, which would also help her dad. Or something to help her get Emma back to her old self... Not for her to make a taser, then immediately start planning on attacking some other Tinker/gang.

 

[Krak-Quinn]

ngl, was a lil bummed when her tinker abilities did not immediately give her something to resolve what was stressing her enough to trigger... like, some kind of tech to get her mom back, which would also help her dad. Or something to help her get Emma back to her old self... Not for her to make a taser, then immediately start planning on attacking some other Tinker/gang.

Click to shrink...

I mainly wrote her Trigger Event in a way that ticked a few Tinker specialties boxes to hide hers from the audience. She already had a few issues, but it was the acceptance of her inability to do anything about her problem that caused her to Trigger.

The 'And they succeeded' line is her resigning herself to her life. She wasn't mourning her mom, her friendship, or even her father, she saw the world as her tormentor and she knew it was pointless to even try and fight against it.

The moment she gave up, she gained powers. Right now it's just a shiny new toy.

I wished I could explain more, but that's story content for the future.

 

[Jao]

She tried thinking about Tinkers, there was obviously Hero, Haywire and Dragon. Then she remembered the discussions she had overheard, Kid Wid was a Tinker, and Squealer was also a Tinker, and she guessed Armsmaster was a Tinker too

Click to shrink...

Kid Win*

There were also lesser known capes, for the heroes they're Sere and Dovetail, and for the villains there's Coil, Circus, Stain, Über and Leet, Trainwreck and the Undersiders. There was also Parian, a rogue, and the Palanquin Crew who were mercenaries

Click to shrink...

Faultline's Crew*

Their team name doesn't change to Palanquin until the events of Ward.

 

[Krak-Quinn]

Kid Win*

Faultline's Crew*

Their team name doesn't change to Palanquin until the events of Ward.

Click to shrink...

The first one was a mistake, but for the second one Taylor was referring to the nightclub by name and the crew there, but since it can cause confusion I've changed it.

 

[Krak-Quinn]

Taylor was hardly paying attention throughout her classes, her mind occupied with trying and failing to imagine ways she could deal with the Merchants.

For Skidmark, she could probably blind and then stun him, but she didn't know how well that tactic would work against Mush, who could form a body around himself out of loose material. If her electricity was blocked, she would be in major trouble.

After she had sat down in the cafeteria for lunch, a blonde girl sat down across from her. Around November last year, the 'Trio' had scaled down their harassment a bit, probably because Sophia had some kind of track event in another state and was gone for a bit.

She hadn't really paid much mind to the reason beyond that. All she knew was that she could eat lunch without being physically disturbed for a bit. It seemed that had ended today though.

"Sorry about not being here on Friday. I, uh, ran into a door." The girl spoke in a friendly manner. Layers of concealer caked her left eye, and from the rims a pink bruise was barely visible.

Taylor didn't say anything, as she was mostly confused at first, but then she assumed this girl was just here to mock her for something.

"But what about you? Why weren't you here Thursday? I missed you, Tay." An almost imperceptible twitch of her lips and eyes gave away her irritation.

This seemed like mockery of some sort for her absence, but it also seemed to be about something else. "Did you need something?" Taylor snapped. She didn't have time for whatever this was. She had to keep thinking of possible scenarios until she could beat Mush.

"No, no, I was just worried about you. Why weren't you there?" The sudden sharp return to the question after the refusal was pretty stiff.

After looking a bit closer, past the makeup and faux concern, Taylor finally recognized this girl. "Julia, I don't have time for your games. What do you want? What can I tell you so you'll leave and I can eat in peace? And does it matter what I say? No matter my answer, it'll be twisted in the worst ways until it's unrecognizable."

This girl, Julia Barbara, was a classmate and occasionally she participated with the bullying when her friends started it. She wasn't the direct cause of anything harmful or even an eager player, but she knew the game. She and her friends seemed to amuse themselves by verbally insulting Taylor until she fled from them.

"Tay, c'mon, we're friends aren't we? Just tell me why you were absent. Did someone say something to you or anything?" Her teeth were clenched, her knuckles white as her hands squeezed against the rim of the table, a facsimile of a smile plastered on her face in a feeble attempt to conceal her boiling emotions.

Taylor could feel her heart pumping. An itch clawed along her nerves as it reached her brain. She could tell this girl was volatile, that she was about to burst. The want to understand this situation had tapped against her brain. Flashing lights of red, white and pink made her dizzy.

"Just leave me alo—" The buzzing in her brain was irritating, so she had attempted to tell this girl to leave her alone, and then a fist smashed into her face.

It wasn't too good of a punch. The flat of Julia's fingers in a fist met Taylor's cheek; it was more like a slow forceful slap than a proper strike with knuckles. Still, the sudden strike did have enough force to push the inner walls of her cheek against her teeth and send her falling out of her chair.

Julia seemed to be screaming more at the silent crowd watching them than at Taylor.

Emma, Sophia and Madison were among the crowd, but unlike usual, they didn't appear to be satisfied. Irritated, pissed, and annoyed glares were burning a hole in Taylor and Julia.

The coach for a different year had eventually come up and escorted both of the girls to the office. Taylor, for her part, was still mostly confused about the girl shouting the obvious and seemingly looking for approval from the crowd.

Julia was given a month of suspension, and Taylor was given a warning not to start fights on school grounds. Her cheek had swelled a bit, but no blood was drawn and she was given an ice pack, then told to head back to class.

When she exited the office, since lunch was over and she hadn't eaten anything yet, she headed to a vending machine. Most of the snacks were gone, but there were some rather unorthodox snacks remaining. She bought a dried vegetable bar and then ate it on the way to class. She did have to be careful not to let any sharp bits graze against her inner cheek.

"Miss Hebert, you're late." The teacher stopped reading from a book and spoke to her as she entered the classroom.

"I was at the main office. They only released me after the bell had already rung." She answered as she switched which hand was holding an ice pack against her cheek, her fingers having gone cold.

"Do you have a slip?"

Taylor blinked. "No, but you can che—"

"Because you don't have a slip, I'll still be marking you as tardy today. Don't do this again. It takes up your and everyone else's valuable learning time. And if you're going to be late in the future, get a slip."

"…Understood."

"Good, now take your seat. You remember what page we covered last Friday, right? We're picking up where we left off."

She didn't remember. Even though it had only been three days, she couldn't remember what they had learned those three days ago. She wasn't surprised, since she did have some stuff a bit more important to be thinking about. "Yes." Admitting she forgot would just paint her in an unfavorable light, so she lied. She could just peek in on her desk neighbor to know the page number.

Hungry eyes watched her as she took her seat. The social sharks, hyenas and vultures had all smelled the fresh blood of newborn drama and were waiting for everything to unfold with anticipation.

Taylor wouldn't snap. She wouldn't.

There had been enough drug-fuelled students who had bad trips and caused trouble that most people were used to it by now. It had also caused a wave of students, who had seen the lax punishments, to gain a semblance of confidence that they could go off on people and not be in too much trouble if they didn't physically harm someone.

To her classmates, she was just a girl teetering on the edge of breaking, of being entertainment to distract themselves from class with.

Even as rage boiled beneath her skin, she remained calm and sat down. She jumped up with a yelp immediately. A flat thumbtack had been left for her as a surprise.

Giggles and snickers, barely contained, echoed within the class, and the teacher told her not to cause a scene.

She wouldn't snap.

…

…


After school ended, everything had been a blur as she left and then arrived back home. She didn't care anymore. She didn't need a plan. The Merchants were just junkies with slightly more power than a human, and she could handle them.

When her mind became clear again, a pile of clothes was strewn out before her. The boxes containing old clothes had been ripped open and were scattered around her.

Blood dripped from her fingers from small pinpricks. A needle and a box of other sewing equipment were dumped next to her knees on the ground. Her mother had kept a sewing kit, but it had been stored away and she hadn't felt like disturbing the boxes of her mother's things to search for it.

As Taylor stood up to wash away the blood running down her fingers, she stopped as she found a patchwork uniform in her lap.

Made from mixing, matching, and stacking various materials, it could hardly be called clothes. It seemed like a fashion statement that stated its designer was blind. It was mostly dark colors and patterns, with the occasional colorful patch.

she had no memory of her thoughts as she made this, she knew it was meant to be her uniform. She cleaned up her mess after washing her hands, and then she got dressed. It was a padded full body suit of fabric, with boots, gloves, and ski goggles stitched on. And there were deep pockets along the sides of pant legs, with small pouches around its waist.

In between some layers of fabrics, there were some thin metal plates at strategic parts of her body. Her bike frame had been melted with some other spare metal bits, taken out of the melting field, and smashed with a hammer while it was cooling and then dunked in a water-filled pan before being inserted.

She didn't look very heroic, but she wasn't too bent out of shape about that as this was literally thrown together from normal material and once she got a better workshop then she would also upgrade her costume too.

And when she changed costumes, who was going to stop her from changing her persona too? It wasn't like she needed to inform anyone of her change, and it meant any grudges she caused in this persona wouldn't apply to her new one.

Of course, that meant she'd also have to ditch her first weapons when she changed, but she was planning on doing that anyway.

After stashing away her costume, she restlessly waited for her father to arrive home and then go to sleep. He stayed up until midnight watching some old documentaries about insects.

…

…

…

Brockton Bay seemed like an entirely different place when the sun was gone and lights lit up the streets. Taylor wasn't in the habit of going out after dark, so even the shadows of passing cats seemed scary to her.

As she crept down the sidewalk in a dark hoodie pulled up over her head, her costume in a backpack that she was clutching the straps to, her heart pounded in her ears. The rushing of blood pumping through the veins near her ears almost made her deaf.

That was an exaggeration really, but it honestly felt like reality to her. She traveled through small pockets of light surrounded by a sea of darkness. The unknown existed all around her.

Her only protection was the stun gun tucked into her waistband, but even then she wasn't confident she could yank it out in time to defend herself. She was scared.

When she was a child, the city seemed as scary as anything else to her, but the reassurance of her parents had helped with that, but they hadn't prepared her for the truly terrifying. As she became a teenager, her personal problem seemed to drown out everything else.

Parahumans had seemed like a foreign concept to her life. Even though they were plastered everywhere, her focus had been on just making it through the day.

As a child, she was frightened by the existence of villains but the existence of heroes overpowered that fear. To a kid, heroes were paragons of justice, unfaltering in their heroism, and the embodiment of strength.

As she grew up, and learned of the history behind parahumans, her views naturally changed as well. In 1989, a hero named Vikare died of a brain embolism after being clubbed while trying to stop a riot over a basketball game. They weren't invincible. They had powers but were still humans, most of them anyway.

Their humanity was also showcased by their actions, or more aptly, their sins.

Heroes who went mad took advantage of their abilities and positions. But even without becoming villains, they could commit crimes like any other human. The case of a hero in a 'relationship' with someone underage had made its rounds a while ago.

The line between being a hero or a villain was simply having powers and then working with or against the law. Cops weren't heroes and criminals weren't villains, simply because they didn't have superpowers, because they were human.

Being a parahuman, people were forced to choose a side to fight on. Or so it was the case in the early years of chaos before order was implemented. Now, Rogues could exist: parahumans who didn't fight against or to uphold the law.

Taylor didn't have to fight against injustice. She didn't have to become a hero. She could just find some company to take her in. Tinkers were always highly sought after; even if their tech couldn't be recreated, some information might still be gleaned from it to help further research.

She didn't have to stalk the streets into the bad parts of town late at night. The surrounding buildings had begun to show signs of disarray, shattered windows and graffiti across every surface. She dipped into a dark alley, then after ensuring no one was watching or inside, she hid behind a dumpster as she changed.

She didn't know exactly where Squealer's workshop was, but she didn't want to be spotted around here with her face exposed. So from here on out, she was going to be in costume. Her clothes were stuffed inside her bag and she hid it beneath a dry dumpster.

In her left pocket was her stun gun, and in her right pocket was her flashlight. She had yet to build replacement power sources, so instead she brought some spare batteries in a small pouch next to her deep pockets.

The snug feeling of protection encasing her skin had made her feel safe, even though it wasn't anything too special. There now existed a separation from the dangerous outside world and herself. With her face covered, it also erased the recognition of her as Taylor. And with a mask over her face, she had become a new person.

The reason, her reason for not becoming a Rogue was simple, stupid even: she just didn't want to still be Taylor to anyone who knew about her power.

If she was still just herself after gaining power, she'd just be bringing her baggage along with her everywhere. Taylor the Tinker—her normal identity would be first. Taylor, the girl who lost her mom, the girl who lost her friend, the gloomy girl whom no one liked, oh and she's also a Tinker.

Without a name, without her past, she could be someone new.

 

[Krak-Quinn]

Taylor's costume definitely didn't look pretty, more like a mismatched patchwork quilt than anything, but it was otherwise excellent. She was well insulated from the cold, and still her body could breathe pretty easily, so she wouldn't overheat either.

She wouldn't particularly believe she had made this within a few hours, mostly because the measurements were perfect and didn't restrict any sort of movement. But also because the idea that she had made this outfit didn't really make too much sense to her.

Her understanding of Tinkers was mostly focused on their technology, but she did know that other fields of science qualified. The distinction between a Tinker and a Thinker, was effects that were external or internal, as in if the superpower lent itself towards making something, it was probably a Tinker.

Thinkers were mostly just 'smart' in different ways. They focused on using information and knowledge without actually creating anything. Of course, she hadn't taken a class for parahuman distinctions or scrawled the internet for clarification, so most of her knowledge was second hand information she haphazardly complied.

Whatever the case, the idea of a Tinker tinkering with clothes didn't make too much sense to her, she probably would have understood it better if there had been some sort of electronic gadgets involved. But there wasn't, the material of her outfit didn't do anything special, and it had no built in features.

Her boots didn't make too much sound as she stalked over crowded rooftops, and gazed at her surroundings in search of something that gave away the location of a junkie's Workshop.

She didn't really have a clue otherwise, the capes of the Merchants didn't really belong anywhere, they just sorta blended in with the homeless and destitute. All she really knew was that as long as no one else laid claim, they had probably settled down there.

Beggars and hookers sparsely lined the streets and alleyways, sleeping in cardboard boxes and hollering at passing cars.

When her fear of being out in an unfamiliar area at night faded, she found herself feeling out of place. Just wandering around and hoping to stumble upon a bright neon sign indicating Squealer's Workshop, hadn't produced any results. And watching the less fortunate was souring her mood.

"If you want more, then pay more. It's that simple."

"But I'm paying the same as last time! So why am I getting less than last time?"

Two voices barely rose above the low city sounds a short ways off. As they argued loudly, during their heated exchange, Taylor quietly snuck over in their direction.

"I got other customers. If you don't have the cash to buy more, then don't waste my time." A man, dirty and disheveled, pushed away an even dirtier man into a pile of trash bags.

The building she was on top of was only a single story high, so the men weren't that far away. If they jumped they could probably reach the edge.

Reaching in her right pocket, she withdrew her flashlight and shone a blinding cone over the two men. Their reactions were a bit different than she anticipated, they panicked instead of freezing.

One man leapt away deeper into the alley, smashing into trash cans, and the dealer threw his hands up desperately and shouted. "I'm white! Don't fire!"

A moment of confusion passed, but Taylor decided not to dwell on it, this dealer had seemingly completely surrendered, she could focus on that. "Where is Squealer's Workshop?" She hoped her voice didn't crack or waver, her heart was beating a bit too loudly for her to fully hear herself speak.

"Two blocks left and three blocks up from here! The green warehouse!" The dealer shouted as he kept his gaze down to the ground.

The other man was trying to crawl away without being noticed.

Taylor withdrew her stun gun from her left pocket and took aim. She did appreciate the prompt answer, but she hated drug dealers a whole lot more. Drugs in general were just below bullying on her personal scale of things she hated.

Lives and families could be, were, ruined by them, and yet that didn't stop the dealers from selling them. People's minds and bodies fell apart, withered by drug abuse and addiction, all for a short high and a quick buck.

Unfortunately, it wasn't like doing anything to the Merchants would stop the sale of drugs, the ABB and E88 also sold them.

With a crack and buzz, an arc of electricity swam for the dealer. His body spasmed slightly as he fell over unconscious. While the arc was still present, she whipped it over to the crawling man. Stray strands of electricity did branch out when it came near the metal of trash cans and dumpsters, but the majority of it shocked the man until he too went limp.

She carefully climbed down the rooftop, checked to see if the men were still breathing, then she took out their drugs and spilled them over the ground. As she left, she was also richer by $820, having decided to recuperate her expenses. She wasn't broke, but she wouldn't have made any big purchases anytime soon.

She had already decided that her next project, barring any urgent or necessary tools, she wanted to see what she could do with a laptop and a desktop. Though, if she did find Squealer's place and snagged some tools or materials, she would probably have to shift her priorities and see what she could manage.

With a clear destination, her mind was freed up from just observing her surroundings, and she began wondering just what else she could be making. Her power didn't provide any sort of instructions or anything similar, and so far she had just been winging it, hopping from project to project.

She knew why, but she really hadn't stopped herself. If she wasn't troubled by anything, then she probably wouldn't have built anything beyond her stun gun. She just needed to confirm she had powers, and then if nothing had pushed her for more, she would've spent an untold amount of time writing down her ideas, an outline for her future.

And yet she didn't, she rushed through everything, now she was almost out of materials and she needed more if she wanted to keep rushing. Each time she built something, gave herself over to the current running through her brain, she felt better afterwards. A little less troubled, refreshed as if her issues weren't really hers.

Reality was less pleasant by comparison, her school bullies were seemingly testing the waters, having apparently given up on the grace period and were ramping back up to regular levels. The incident during lunch was still the big thing, but it was the flathead thumbtack that stood out the most in her mind.

Taylor could handle a girl being rude, hitting her, and acting weird, but leaving something on her seat anonymously was truly troubling. It was just the start, the spark of something bigger. Although she hated her bullies, mainly the Trio, just a step behind them she hated the shifting faceless crowd of onlookers who laughed at, or ignored, her suffering.

She could deal with the bullies who spoke and acted in her face, at least she could write down those incidents and blame someone, but when the crowd of students blurred together and mocked her behind her back, she didn't know what to do.

Who would she blame when she didn't know who was responsible? When not even she could serve as a witness? She already faced the issue of having no evidence or people to support her claims, but at least she could pinpoint the people behind her harassment.

It was so easy to picture anyone of the Trio as a queen bee, but she knew they didn't actually have any real influence out of their circles, their cliques. It wasn't like TV shows or movies, there was no such thing as the most popular girls in school, the best real life could mimic was a vague outline of social hierarchy.

And even then, Winslow High had substantial issues with gangs that came with some religious and heavy racial issues, additionally they also had to deal with rampant drug abuse. Everything further blurred the lines and boundaries that teenagers were supposed to unconsciously agree upon.

The most common piece of advice from older students was simple: just keep your head down. Don't involve yourself with any trouble and focus on yourself.

Emma seemingly circumvented any issue with standing out because she had a lawyer for a father, and she was friends with Sophia.

As a black girl at a school with fledgling white supremacists, she did have to deal with some issues, but those didn't make themselves known after the second month in their first year. Sophia had been cornered in a hallway and attacked, but she dodged all their hits and had kicked them in their balls as retaliation.

Since no one was severely hurt, and because she had been ganged up on, she was only given a week of suspension. No one picked on her anymore, besides a few whispered remarks when she wasn't around.

Madison mostly went unbothered because she played up a cute harmless image of innocence, and anyone looking to take advantage of her would have to deal with Emma's dad and Sophia.

It still didn't fit, or answer any of her concerns, but in fact it hardly mattered to Taylor. All she knew was that her bullies could make a scene harassing her, and the bystanders would only see the outcome, her as an acceptable punching bag.

You wanna be friends with the Trio? Call Taylor a bug-eyed frog stretched upright. Stick your foot out in front of her path. Dump your trash on her desk. Shove her if she's in your way, and even if she's not. Ridicule and mock her within earshot. Make her life miserable at every junction.

A tension was straining her muscles, a current was buzzing in her brain, she needed immediate relief, but she couldn't build anything right now, so that left one other option.

Her simmering anger, her boiling rage, the pent up emotions she kept suppressed as she was bullied. She was certain one day she would break, though unfortunately, she was also certain that she would most likely harm herself before she took out her rage on others.

A green warehouse with black tinted windows was just a street across from her.

Her heightened emotional state was almost on the verge of being a panic attack. Her mind was trapped within her memories of being harassed and made to experience a living hell, the threat of her bullies wasn't present yet she could never feel safe.

A paranoia, the sort that made her eyes dart across faces as she walked down the hallways of her school never left her. The sort that made her worry about every corner she turned and every action she took, that sort of paranoia had ruled over her mind.

Her lungs felt heavy, like she was breathing in heavy gas, and her blood felt like boiling molten lead. Her mind ached, her vision wavered, she was in danger. Pushed to her limits, even when she was left alone, her own mind could never accept the possibility she was safe.

The current was zapping her thoughts now, building up in pressure and squeezing against her brain.

Panic attacks were caused by perceived threats that weren't really present, the mind confusing the body with conflicting information. So she simply needed to change gears, her bullies: the Trio and faceless crowds weren't here, but the Merchants were.

Parahumans, villains, superpowered criminals. A man, a man, a mask, it was covering his nose and eyes, he was turned away and pissing on a wall.

Flight or fight, it wasn't a choice. If Taylor didn't want to be consumed by the current rampaging in her mind, she needed to release it, she had to silence her worries, expel the emotions she kept locked away. With wavering steps, she stumbled forth, her mind a haze as she held her stun gun.

A man in a blue mask and suit jolted, his cry cut short and his piss splashing everywhere as he spasmed and collapsed. Skidmark was down, just two more to go.

Adrenaline had sped up her already rushed mind, but it simultaneously slowed down her thoughts. She needed to walk, to move, to fight. She needed to consider her every step, because now she wasn't dealing with schoolyard bullies, she was dealing with real scum.

Careful steps, each made with precision, led her over to the open door of the warehouse. Loud screeching could be heard, the sound of metal screaming as more metal scraped against it, shooting off a shower of bright orange sparks.

Taylor could barely see a sliver through the door at the work going on inside. A woman, with dirty blond hair bunched up in a loose ponytail, wearing a welder's mask, a white tank top that squeezed her large bust, and cargo pants cut short with a satchel filled with tools hanging on her waist, was present.

Black marks of oil and grease littered her exposed skin and clothes, and in gloved hands she was holding a blowtorch with her left and a large power drill with her right as she worked on a vehicle. A nearby set of speakers was blasting a rap song that was barely audible beneath the sounds of her work.

 

[Jao]

One man leapt away deeper into the alley, smashing into trash cans, and the dealer threw his hands up desperately and shouted. "I'm white! Don't fire!"

Click to shrink...

Do they think she's apart of E88?

 

[Krak-Quinn]

Do they think she's apart of E88?

Click to shrink...

Sorta.
They were suddenly blinded by a super bright light from above, their thoughts aren't complicated.

 

[Krak-Quinn]

It was Squealer inside, Taylor was certain of that. It wasn't just the fact that a dealer gave her this location, that Skidmark had been outside, or even the fact that the woman was dressed up, no. She was certain this was the Tinker villain entirely because of the vehicle they were working on.

In a rundown area like this, the door hinges would probably creak if she tried to slowly open it, so she decided to observe everything she could see before she barged in. Even if the sound of a rap song on full volume was nearly fully masked by Squealer's work, she didn't want to risk losing the element of surprise.

The warehouse was lit up by a few large metal pendant lights hanging from the ceiling, the gleaming underside of the curved metal plates were shining bright cones that illuminated nearly every corner.

Junk — probably the best word to describe it — was lining every inch of the walls and floors. It was only the immediate area around the vehicle and a pathway through the large doors that was clear-ish. Puddles of grease and oil littering the ground were shining vibrant bright hues as they reflected light.

The warehouse was pretty large, so the fact that it could be this cluttered was actually impressive. Though, once she examined the junk a bit closer, Taylor was able to see that there were actually machinery and industrial tools mixed in.

Everything was a mess, but the more she looked over everything the more she could see that technically it was an organized mess. The piles of materials were sorted, granted it was in an arbitrary manner but still. A thick grid of girders was spanning the interior, and hanging from it were chains and more junk.

And the centerpiece of everything, the vehicle that seemed to embody the warehouse itself. Taylor couldn't pinpoint if the ride had been a car or truck, the frame was a bulky bulging mess. The windows were mostly metal with small patches of glass covered in metal shades, and the tires followed a similar pattern to the windows, as dark rubber was barely visible between the gaps of the metal casing.

Of course, she could only see the rear end and one side of the vehicle, so she couldn't be certain that the front was better or worse off. Nevertheless, what she could see was something that probably wouldn't drive if it had been assembled by a normal person. If a normal person got behind the wheel and did manage to start it without it stalling, they probably wouldn't be able to steer it.

An amalgamated melted and mashed together junk, a chaotic mockery of engineering.

Taylor didn't know much about cars, she didn't really even have the inkling to be driving anytime soon. When she envisioned herself behind the steering wheel, her palms started to sweat and she wanted to vomit. The details behind the car accident that took her mother's life weren't clear.

Not because the facts were ambiguous or hidden, but simply because the mention of how exactly her mother died wasn't shared with her young self. There was no court case or anything like that, so it obviously wasn't a legal issue, no drunk driver or any other party involved. Annette simply died because she was on her phone while driving.

She had seen car crashes in action shows or movies, but those people always survived, her mother had died. She had nightmares after, of her mom screaming and shouting as metal crunched around her. She knew her mother had probably died quickly, her father had said she didn't suffer — for all that meant.

Her heart was pounding, her palms were sweating, this was a bit more intense than imagining herself behind a wheel, she was dealing with a villain. She had examined all that she could see, there was no reason to hesitate. A simple wooden door, which just by existing caused her to stop, to stall.

Skidmark had been exposed, out in the open with no cover, he probably could have noticed her approach and attacked her back, but he didn't. Still, she had walked right up to a villain and took him down, and now because of a flimsy obstacle, she had to rework up her nerve.

She gently opened the door. Any sort of noise was completely drowned out by the deafening sound of metal screeching and of fridge sized speakers blaring a rap song. The floor was vibrating slightly in sync with the music, small loose scraps were bouncing along as if they were dancing.

Each step inwards, closer to the villain, required twice as much resolve as the previous one. Disorientating, seemed to be the most suitable word for the atmosphere inside, the sounds were drowning out her thoughts and the air was itching her nose and throat.

The air, the thin smoke in the air, more and more of it was clinging to her mask with each breath. The urge to cough was building up, which only made her act faster.

The metal junk everywhere would probably attract most of the electricity from her stun gun if she wasn't close enough.

Taylor gulped, swallowing her saliva and smothering her desire to cough, her gaze was on the ground ensuring her footing didn't disturb anything. Her path brought her slightly around the back of the woman, and she could see exactly what she had been doing.

The bright orange sparks were blinding, leaving behind dark blue specks in her sight, as Squealer was seemingly focusing the nozzle of the blowtorch against the hole she was simultaneously drilling. The power drill wasn't merely a handheld, no it was as bulky as a toaster, and it was connected by a thick cable to a large canister.

She could see what the woman was doing, intended to do, as along the body of the vehicle were warped circles seemingly welding the plates of metal in place. Heating the metal and drilling into it would probably only damage the metal if a Non-Tinker was doing it. But for some inexplicable reason, physics seemed to gloss over whatever Tinkers built.

Taking in a deep breath to calm her nerves would probably make her cough, so instead she held her breath as she raised her left arm and aimed at the Tinker villain. She clicked the button, the new sounds couldn't overpower the old sounds to make themselves heard, but she could feel the vibration in her grip.

Buzzing, cracking, sizzling, popping. Electricity sparked as smoke poured off the small weapon, the plastic casing melted and clung to her gloves. She didn't feel much pain, from the electricity or melted plastic, her costume had protected her.

It had also probably protected her from the heat, as in the overheated weapon in her grip, the warning signal that her stun gun couldn't handle any more stress had been ignored.

Earlier, she had fired it down from a rooftop to the two people below her. The most optimal range of her stun gun was just four feet, but she had overcharged it to reach the men. It had probably cooled down enough for another shot at Skidmark, but she couldn't remember if that was also an overcharged shot.

Regardless, her stun gun broke. The sounds hadn't been too loud, barely even audible, but Squealer stopped working and lifted her head up.

Another rush of adrenaline, fight or flight, but this time her ranged weapon wouldn't work and a hurdle of junk would block any attempt to rush up close. She didn't have another weapon to take down a person, she didn't know how to fight barehanded.

She couldn't fight, she was powerless. Flight had won, she had no choice, she had to run. A single blind step backwards, retreating, had caused her boot to dislodge something as a pile of junk collapsed.

Squealer swerved around instantly to face her.

Almost reflexively, Taylor withdrew her flashlight and attempted to blind the villain, instead she saw a blur as something swam through the cone of light. The heavy gas tank end of a blowtorch smashed into her forehead. Her brain jolted and her thoughts skipped around as the world spun.

"Who the fuck do you think you are!?" Squealer screamed, her voice squeaky and a bit muffled by the welder's mask she wore so bright sparks didn't blind her.

After the hit to the head, Taylor stumbled a bit but she didn't collapse, although she did trip over junk while trying to stay upright. She fell down hard on sharp edges, fortunately her costume absorbed most of the force and it didn't give way to the pointy ends. Still, she was positioned awkwardly and a bit dazed as she tried to get up.

Any attempt to grip something for leverage, or step on something, only made the junk give way. She was flailing about as if she was drowning, unable to pick herself up in her panic. The sound of heavy steps out of sync with the music caught her attention.

Squealer was rushing over, having apparently leapt over a pile of junk and was stomping as she lugged a thick sledgehammer behind her.

The world seemed to slow down to Taylor, she couldn't escape, not in time to avoid being hit. And if she was hit, she would probably be stunned with pain and then she wouldn't escape the next hit and so on. She would probably die if she tried to escape. Flight had lost, fleeing was impossible. She couldn't fight, but struggling was her only choice.

Her left glove was stuck in place by the melted plastic clinging to it, and she had dropped her flashlight after being hit, it was still shining brightly nearby. She felt around desperately, for something small enough to fit in her hand and heavy enough to do some damage, she found a metal elbow pipe.

She didn't have any leverage, no wiggle room to use her entire body, so she could only throw with the strength of her right arm. It wasn't the best throw, but it was good enough. It smashed into Squealer's face, it didn't do any damage but it did dislodge the mask.

"Bitch!" The villain stumbled and stopped, the visor portion of the mask wasn't over her eyes and she probably stopped because running blindly in here was dangerous. She didn't give it a second thought as she ripped the mask away.

Taylor had rolled while her opponent had paused, allowing her body to fall along the path of least resistance and she landed on the ground closer to Squealer. After her world stopped spinning she was kneeling down a few feet away from the villain.

Squealer was almost pretty, her facial structure and features weren't too bad but poor hygiene and drug abuse had a way of changing a person. It probably wasn't the best time to be criticizing her enemy's face, not when they were running again and raising a sledgehammer into the air.

The path behind and to her sides was blocked, and she probably couldn't leap over them to safety, not far enough to out pace the woman who would chase her. Her only option was a frontal charge, stopping the woman before she swung down the sledgehammer.

Taylor didn't know what she would do next, she barely knew what she was doing as she kicked off the ground in a sprint and dove towards the woman.

The weight behind her head, of the raised weapon, and the force of a teenage girl slamming into her, had caused Squealer to fall backwards. Fortunately for her, she didn't land on her sharp junk, but instead on the flat ground behind her. Small pieces of junk didn't make the landing comfortable, but it wasn't deadly.

Taylor tried to find her footing, in an attempt to kick off the ground again and run off, but an arm reached up and her neck was caught in the crook of an elbow.

Squealer rolled over, dragging the teenager and then pinning her to the ground. "You messed with the wrong bitch, dumbass!" She screamed, her voice still squeaky but not muffled any longer. And she retrieved a hammer from her toolbelt.

There wasn't enough time between Taylor recognizing the weapon and her being hit on the side of her temple with it. Her eyes did swim a bit as her head jerked, but her costume had redirected most of the blow so it didn't do as much damage as it should've.

Before she could be hit again, Taylor's knees tried throwing the woman off balance as her right arm tried wrestling herself free. Unfortunately, she was an unathletic teenage girl, and the fully grown woman on top of her was probably familiar with lifting heavy materials, so her struggle was fruitless.

"Hahahaha! Dumb fucking bastard! What kind of moron are you!? Attacking me in my warehouse is just asking for trouble." Her laugh was grating, and her mockery wasn't any better. "Skidmark! Skidmark! Skids, I've caught a rat scurrying about! Get inside!"

When silence was her only response, the woman used both hands to grip Taylor's head and smash the back of it against the ground multiple times. Again, it didn't do as much damage as it would have if she wasn't wearing her costume, but it still disoriented her something fierce.

"What the fuck did you do to him!?" Squealer screamed, mostly with anger and a hint of worry. Then she stood up and kicked the dizzy girl between the legs. Without wasting a second after the hit, she dragged a hanging chain off a girder and looped it around the struggling girl's neck before she hooked it into a pulley and yanked it harshly.

Taylor almost screamed, yelped really, as she was strung up by her neck with a metal chain. Her costume did have some metal bits inserted along her neck, mostly to guard her arteries but now they were pushing against them. Her legs kicked out desperately, the toe end of her boots just barely finding ground as her struggling caused her to sway.

Her left hand still had useless fingers stuck in melted plastic, so her right hand clawed at the chain to relieve the pressure around her neck. With both hands full, she couldn't even attempt to free herself. She hadn't seen how the chain was wrapped around, and she couldn't feel around it without risking passing out and then probably dying.

As she calmed down, no longer in a dizzy panic and blind struggle, Taylor noticed she was all alone in the warehouse. One foot at a time reached out trying to find something she could use for leverage, if the chain had a bit of slack she could probably escape, but there was nothing in reach. Dread was rising in her mind as her adrenaline was fading.

The music had stopped, so the sounds of an angry man approaching rapidly from outside as he swore and cussed were very audible at that moment.

 

[aidansidhe]

... was this meant to be a Bad End fic? Because wow. That was a perfect storm of goddamn stupidity and awful luck.

 

[Krak-Quinn]

Skidmark. He's here.

The rage preceded him, a crackling aura of foul language and fury. "Fuckin' cocksuckin' piece of shit! Motherfuckin' tased my ass!" Skidmark stormed into the pool of light near the doorway, limping slightly, his cheap blue mask askew, revealing bloodshot eyes narrowed to furious slits. He scanned the cluttered space, then his gaze snapped to Taylor, dangling like grotesque holiday decoration. "The fuck is this?!"

"Some dumb little rat tried to sneak up on me!" Squealer snarled as she walked in behind him, wiping oil and sweat from her forehead with a filthy forearm, leaving a fresh smear. "This da' little bastard took you out?" She gestured dismissively at Taylor.

"Yeah, this little prick! Walked right up while I was waterin' the fuckin' hydrant!" Skidmark stomped closer, peering up at Taylor through the slits of his mask. The stench radiating from him was overpowering – stale sweat, cheap liquor, and something acrid and chemical. His eyes narrowed further, taking in the bulky, shapeless silhouette of Taylor's layered, padded costume, the stitched-on ski goggles obscuring her eyes, the ill-defined chest and waist hidden under chaotic fabric and thin, concealed metal plates. "Look at this mess. Like a hobo found a craft store dumpster. Who sent ya, fuckface?" His voice was a low, dangerous growl.

Taylor clamped her jaw shut, heart hammering against her ribs so hard it almost echoed in the sudden silence that followed the stopped music. Don't speak. Don't make a sound. Just breathe. The chain dug deeper. She squeezed her eyes shut behind the goggles.

"Some kinda fuckin' mute?" Squealer spat, stepping closer to Skidmark. "Or just playin' dumb?" She shoved Taylor roughly, making the chain rattle and sway. Taylor gasped, the pressure spiking briefly around her throat before her toes found purchase again. The sound, muffled by the fabric over her mouth and nose, held the faintest tremor, but neither villain noticed over their own aggression.

"Probably scared shitless. Look at 'im shake." Skidmark sneered. "Yeah, you should be tremblin', ya little cunt. Attackin' me? In my fucking territory? Who the fuck do you work for? Coil? Some Empire cumstain? Spill it!"

Taylor remained silent, focusing on the rough texture of the chain under her desperately scrabbling right-hand fingers. Her left hand was still trapped uselessly inside the melted plastic casing of her ruined stun gun, a constant, throbbing reminder of her failure. Her muscles screamed from holding herself partially aloft. Fear, thick and suffocating.

Squealer grabbed a short metal pipe from a nearby pile. She tapped it rhythmically against her palm. Clink. Clink. Clink. The sound of it hitting her ringed fingers was unnervingly loud in the tense quiet. "You hear the man? Start talkin'. Who sent you snoopin' around here?"

Silence. Taylor's ragged breaths hissed through the makeshift mask.

"Fine," Skidmark snarled, the word dripping with malice. "Play tough guy. See how tough ya stay when I peel that ugly-ass hood off your fuckin' head, then your face." The threat hung in the acrid air. Unmasking. It was every cape's nightmare, worse than death. Followed by murder.

Squealer grinned, a yellowed, unpleasant sight. "Yeah, let's see the face behind the crappy Halloween costume. Then maybe Skids can give 'im a personal tour of Brockton Bay Harbor." She hefted the pipe. "Real scenic this time o' year. Deep."

Now. Now or never. Panic exploded into pure, blinding desperation. Taylor couldn't fight them chained. Couldn't outrun them weak and cornered. But the warehouse… the warehouse was Squealer's lair, filled with her volatile, messy chaos. Taylor's flailing gaze, frantic behind the goggles, darted around her limited field of view. There. To her right, kicked slightly during her earlier struggles, wobbling precariously near Squealer's feet – a large, half-full metal solvent canister. It smelled strongly of pungent chemicals even from here. And just beyond it, still glowing faintly orange where it lay on the concrete after being dropped in their scuffle, was the heavy nozzle of Squealer's industrial blowtorch.

Taylor didn't think. She kicked. Hard. Off-balance, chained, she swung her booted foot with every ounce of terrified strength she possessed. Her heel connected solidly with the base of the wobbling canister. It tipped.

Squealer had a split second to register the movement. Her eyes widened – "Hey! You fuckin'–!" – before the heavy canister crashed onto its side with a resonant clang. A torrent of clear, pungent solvent gushed out, directly onto the still-hot blowtorch nozzle lying inches from her worn work boots.

WHOOSH!

The ignition was instantaneous, terrifyingly violent. A jet of fire erupted upwards, catching Squealer's pant leg and roaring towards her tool belt. She screamed, a high-pitched shriek of pain and shock, staggering back, swatting wildly at the sudden flames licking up her leg. But the solvent flowed. Quick, greedy rivulets of fire raced across the oil-stained concrete floor, following the path of the spilled liquid straight towards piles of oily rags, stacks of paper blueprints, and discarded wooden crates.

"SHIT! FIRE!" Skidmark bellowed, momentarily forgetting Taylor. Squealer screamed again, stumbling, trying desperately to tear off her burning pants leg as the flames began to climb a nearby pile of rag-covered engine parts. The smell of burning oil and solvents thickened instantly, acrid and choking. Smoke, thick and black, began coiling upwards from multiple points.

Chaos. Beautiful, terrifying chaos. The dangling chain suddenly jerked as Squealer, instinctively recoiling from the spreading flames around her feet, knocked it off its securing point near her workstation. It snapped taut, then gave slightly – not enough to free Taylor, but enough to momentarily slacken the chain's grip on her neck by a precious inch. It was the chance she needed.

Grunting with effort, Taylor shoved upwards with her legs, lifting her body just enough to free the pressure on the chain's choke-point. She twisted violently, fingers scrambling for the improvised collar. Her right hand found a link near her jawline, fingers hooking under it and pulling it hard away from her throat. The metal dug into her fingers, but she barely felt it. She sucked in a desperate, ragged gasp of air – air laced with smoke and the stink of burning plastic and wood.

The chain dropped away. Taylor crashed heavily onto her knees, then scrambled forward, low to the ground, instinctively moving away from the growing fire that greedily ate its way towards more rags, an old wooden pallet, and then the rubber treads of a partially dismantled forklift. The heat on her back was intense. Squealer was shrieking curses, throwing a bucket of greasy water onto her own leg with a hiss of steam, oblivious to anything else.

Taylor focused on the open door, a rectangle of twilight seeming impossibly far away through the thickening smoke and shimmering heat haze. She lurched to her feet, stumbled over a pile of bolts, then broke into a wobbly run.

"The fuckin' rat! Stop!" Skidmark's roar cut through Squealer's panicked screams. He had recovered first, eyes blazing with fury through his mask. Taylor dared a glance back. He wasn't pursuing; he was standing amidst the chaos, eyes locked on her, rage radiating off him in palpable waves. He gestured violently with one hand towards a massive, rusted engine block sitting precariously on a metal dolly nearby.

"Run that way, cunt?!" Skidmark snarled. A shimmering, translucent field bloomed across the floor beneath the engine block – one of his force fields, Taylor realized with a jolt of terror. She'd seen recordings: things accelerated wildly across them. His power.

With a grunt of effort, Skidmark shoved the towering engine block onto the floor. Instantly, the several-hundred-pound mass of solid metal shot across the invisible repulsion surface like a cannonball, aimed directly at Taylor's retreating back. It seemed to happen in horrifying slow motion and terrifying speed simultaneously. The air screamed as it displaced it.

No time to dodge. Pure instinct took over. Taylor spun, trying to get her bulk between her vulnerable core and the incoming projectile. She raised her right arm in a desperate, instinctive block.

CRUNCH.

The sound was sickeningly loud, even over the roar of the spreading fire. Pain unlike anything Taylor had ever imagined exploded through her right forearm, hot and utterly consuming. The force lifted her off her feet, twisting her violently in the air. She saw a flash of greasy rafters.

THUD!

She slammed into the metal wall with brutal force, the impact driving the breath from her lungs and jarring every bone in her body. Stars burst behind her goggles. She slid down the wall and landed in a heap, crumpled on the floor. Agony radiated from her arm, a pulsing, vicious beacon in a world gone dim and grey. The bone below her elbow felt… wrong. Broken. Shattered, even. A high-pitched whine filled her ears.

Through the haze of pain and smoke, she saw Skidmark's satisfied sneer, already turning towards Squealer to shout something. Squealer was spraying a fire extinguisher wildly at the blaze consuming her workbench, screaming incoherently. Neither was looking directly at Taylor now.

Move. Or die here. Burn or bleed out. The thought pierced the fog of agony. Adrenaline, the only ally she had left, slammed through her system like a lightning bolt, smothering the blinding pain under a wave of desperate, frantic energy. Her arm didn't hurt, it just… pulsed, hot and heavy and useless. She couldn't feel the fingers. But the raw, animal need to escape overrode it.

"FUCKIN' BRUTE!" Skidmark's furious scream chased her as she shoved herself up from the floor, gasping, using her left arm and the wall. She staggered, stumbled, then found her feet. The path to the door was clearer now, Squealer's panicked firefight driving the flames in a different direction. Taylor didn't run, she lurched – a jerky, off-balance sprint powered by terror and adrenaline. She plunged through the open warehouse door and into the blessedly cool, smoky night air.

Streetlights blurred past her. Alley entrances seemed like gaping mouths. She didn't head towards home; not directly. She needed her bag. Needed her clothes. Needed to not be caught as a cape bleeding out in a patchwork costume. Her mind was a single line of code: Go to the alley. Get the bag. Change.

Reaching the dank alley where she'd stashed her backpack beneath the dumpster felt like crossing a desert. She practically fell to her knees, scraping them raw on the gritty pavement. Sweat poured down her face inside the suffocating costume, mixing with tears of pain she hadn't realized were falling. Her right arm was cradled uselessly against her chest, a dead weight radiating sickening heat.

She used her neck and chest to hold her melted stun gun as her hand slipped out its prison, and wormed its way out its sleeve. With her good left hand, she yanked at the pack.

Getting out of the costume was torture. Every movement jostled her shattered arm. She clawed at the Velcro seals along the back of her suit with trembling fingers. Ripping it off felt like shedding a layer of burning skin. Her right arm screamed when she had to contort it to slip the suit down over her shoulders. She bit her lip until it bled to keep from crying out. Shoving the bulky, scorched costume into the backpack felt like a victory won in blood.

Dressed again in her hoodie and jeans, looking like any other kid caught out late, the illusion was shattered by the sheer, obvious wrongness of her arm. It hung limp and swollen beneath the sleeve. The adrenaline shield was crumbling rapidly, and the pain was returning with a vengeance – a deep, grinding throb that threatened to swallow her whole. She clutched the backpack strap with her good hand, gritting her teeth against a wave of nausea. Home. Get home.

The walk home was a blur of freezing night air, icy pavement under her worn sneakers, and relentless, escalating agony. Each step sent shockwaves up her arm. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably, partly from cold, mostly from shock and pain. She stuck to the darkest, emptiest streets, shoulders hunched, head down. Nobody bothered her. To the few passing cars and weary pedestrians, she was just another shadow limping home. A million times safer than being a cape in Squealer's warehouse, infinitely more terrifying because the pain was all hers now, undiluted. The image of the hulking engine block flying towards her kept replaying behind her eyes. Crunch.

She slipped into the familiar, dilapidated house olike a ghost, wincing as the old front door hinges groaned too loudly. The living room was dark. Relief warred with fresh dread. Had he already gone to bed? Or was he waiting?

The kitchen light snapped on. Danny Hebert stood silhouetted in the doorway, squinting in the sudden brightness, his face drawn with tiredness and now, sharp concern. His eyes locked onto her slumped posture, her pale, sweat-slicked face, the way she cradled her unnaturally swollen, crooked arm inside her hoodie.

"Taylor? Jesus Christ!" His voice cracked. He surged forward, stepping over the faded threshold between kitchen and living room. "What happened? Where the hell have you been?" His gaze raked over her, noting the grit on her jeans, the slight scorch marks on the backpack strap she still clutched.

Words felt like stones in her dry throat. She'd practiced the lie while walking, chanting it to the rhythm of her throbbing arm: Stairs. Park. Accident.

"I…" Her voice was a thin rasp, barely recognizable. "Park stairs. Lost my balance. Fell… all the way down." She flinched as he reached gently for her arm, unable to help it. The movement jostled it, sending red-hot pokers of pain up her nerves. "Slipped. On something. Think it broke." She forced the words out, looking down at her feet, unable to meet his frightened, worried gaze. The guilt was a separate, heavy pain in her chest. "Hurt… bad."

Danny's face tightened. He looked at her arm, clearly trying to assess the damage without touching it. The unnatural angle just below the elbow was unmistakable, even beneath the fabric. A deep sympathy warred with paternal frustration in his eyes. It settled into grim concern.

"The park stairs," he repeated, his voice low and strained. He sighed, a sound heavy with exhaustion and helplessness. "Okay. Okay. Can you walk? We need to get you to the hospital. Now." He moved carefully to her left side, putting an arm under her shoulder, supporting her weight without touching the injured limb. His touch was awkward, hesitant, but solid. An anchor in a swirling sea of pain and deception.

The emergency room was a bright, buzzing nightmare. Too many people, too many noises, smells of antiseptic and stale coffee assaulting her senses. Bright lights stabbed at her eyes.

The triage nurse, efficient but weary, took one look at the arm and the pale girl leaning heavily on her father and fast-tracked her. X-rays were a blur of humiliating poses where she had to twist her ruined arm onto cold metal plates, biting back screams and vomiting once, her stomach revolting against the sheer overload of agony. The doctor's face was professionally neutral as he held the ghostly images to the light, pointing out jagged fracture lines snaking through the radius and ulna like broken branches. A displaced mid-shaft fracture. Complex. Nasty.

"You're going to need surgery," he stated matter-of-factly, already writing notes. "Plate and screws to stabilize it. We can get you scheduled soon, but for now…" He turned to a tray as a nurse efficiently cut away her sweatshirt sleeve. "Pain management is priority one."

The needle sliding into her undamaged left arm was cool. The morphine that followed was a tsunami of cold relief washing over a landscape ablaze with pain. It didn't eliminate it, but it pushed it far away, behind thick, cotton walls. The grinding, vicious agony faded to a heavy, dull throb. Taylor gasped, a shudder running through her entire body as the blessed relief hit. She hadn't realized how every fiber of her being had been clenched tight against the pain until it uncoiled slightly.

The world morphed, and her body felt light, as if she was floating away. Time melted, people's blurring by, after a while she was guided into an operating room, and she fell asleep sometime around there.

She woke up dizzy, exhausted and sluggish where it mattered. Around her arm was a heavy plaster and fiberglass. A cast had been molded, cradling the reconnected pieces of bone like fragile eggs filled with screws. It felt alien, huge and clumsy. Doctors explained what had happened, what would and should happen, but she wasn't listening, fortunately her father was absorbing every word like a sponge.

Oxycodone pills they pressed into Danny's hand for later, alongside the stern instructions, were tiny promises of continued numbness.

In the passenger seat of her father's car, as the sun rose, she took the first one as they drove home. The morphine was still humming in her veins, softening the edges of the world. The oxycodone joined it smoothly. The heavy throb receded further, becoming distant, manageable. The sharp spikes, the grinding depths, were cushioned.

But something else happened as the chemical haze deepened. The buzzing current in her brain – the constant, subtle hum of potential creation that had filled her thoughts since she'd that morning – it frayed. Dimmed. The vague shapes, the potential solutions to her tech problems, the instinctive knowing of how things could fit together… it was all muffled, distorted.

Trying to remember the specifics of the solvent canister kick, to think of how she could build a better stun gun casing to resist melting, was like trying to see through thick, muddy water. The clarity, the focus intrinsic to her power had been fractured, just like her arm. The narcotics numbed the pain, but they also numbed the one thing that had made her feel strong.

She stared out at the passing blur of Brockton Bay's streets, feeling hollow inside the chemical cocoon. Pain free, but powerless. Her right arm, trapped in plaster, was a heavy monument to her disastrous choices. Her mind felt just as immobilized.

 

[Krak-Quinn]

She sat in the dimness of the basement, the workbench before her a landscape of rejected attempts. Scattered screws, stripped wires bent into useless shapes, the disemboweled husk of the game console lying in pieces. Her left hand trembled as it held a screwdriver over a small circuit board salvaged from the radio. Her right arm, encased and useless, throbbed dully against her ribs, a base rhythm underlying everything.

The plaster cast, its itchy embrace, the clumsy weight that dragged her down, the faint, medicinal smell that clung to her skin, it was a constant, humiliating reminder of her failure. But worse was the fog inside her skull, thick and cloying, where her power used to hum.

Focus. Taylor gritted her teeth, trying to summon the current. That beautiful, electric flow of understanding and intent. She stared at the components, willing a connection. For a fleeting second, it almost sparked, a ghost of an image: a micro-soldering iron modifying the board, repurposing its frequency modulation into… into… what?

Before she could grasp it, the image dissolved into migraine-inducing static. Like radio interference overwhelming a weak signal. It didn't feel painful, precisely, not like her arm. It felt like a profound absence. A hollow buzzing where inspiration should be. The blueprints flickered and scattered before they fully formed, leaving only frustration and a bone-deep weariness.

"Stupid," she hissed, slamming the screwdriver onto the bench hard enough to make the scattered components jump. The sharp crack echoed in the stillness. Her breathing came in short, sharp gasps. Aggression bubbled up, hot and sour. She wanted to sweep the entire mess onto the floor, to scream, to break something else to match the broken parts inside her. The tinkerer's calm, the meditative flow that used to be her escape, was locked away, corrupted by the chemical haze of the oxycodone. She needed that flow. Without it, she was just Taylor – powerless, broken Taylor.

Winslow was a different kind of torture. The cast, a symbol of injury, served as a beacon for the Trio. Madison's giggles were shriller than usual whenever Taylor struggled to navigate doorways with the cumbersome plaster. Emma's gaze lingered on it, her smile a razor blade wrapped in silk – a calculated pity that cut deeper than scorn. "Poor Tay-Tay," she'd murmur just loud enough to carry, "you were always so… clumsy."

But Sophia was the worst. Her attacks were less physical with the cast as an obvious, reportable injury, replaced with something more insidious. Passing periods became gauntlets. Taylor would be navigating the crowded halls, the cast making her slow and awkward, when a presence would materialize behind her.

Sophia's breath would ghost hot and unpleasant against her ear. "Weak," the word would slip in like a knife, barely audible over the din. Or, "Break the other one, Hebert? See how well they put you back together then." Another time, as Taylor hesitated at the top of a stairwell, overwhelmed by the press of bodies and her own clumsiness, Sophia's voice slithered close: "One little push. You know you'd bounce, right? Or maybe… splat. Like your mom."

Your mom.

The words struck with physical force. Rage surged through Taylor, obliterating the drug-induced haze for a split second. Anger, volcanic, consuming. Her left hand balled into a fist. Every instinct screamed, Shove! Send her tumbling down! Her body tensed, coiling.

Sophia must have sensed the sudden, volatile shift. A flicker of surprise crossed her face, quickly masked by disdain. Taylor, vibrating with barely contained fury, met Sophia's gaze. The impulse was right there, her good arm trembling with the effort of holding back. She saw it, Sophia's smirk faltering ever so slightly, a crack in the predator's confidence. Taylor breathed in sharply, the air burning her lungs. She wanted to do it. Needed to. The injustice of it all, the relentless torment… it demanded release.

But pushing Sophia down the stairs would be the end. Confirmation of madness. Expulsion. Juvie, maybe. Her father's face, exhausted and worried, flashed behind her eyes. She choked back the scream tearing at her throat. Slowly, deliberately, she unclenched her fist. Her knuckles were white. She turned away without a word, pushing blindly through the crowd, leaving Sophia standing at the top of the stairs. The suppressed rage simmered inside her, a toxic brew that the oxycodone did nothing to dull.

Later, alone in the school's grimy bathroom corner stall, Taylor stared at the serrated edge of the box cutter she'd pulled from her bag. Frustration wasn't a strong enough word. The pressure had been building with nowhere to vent. Her power was blocked. Her body was broken. She was trapped.

She pulled up her sleeve, exposing the pale skin of her left arm above the cast. What if…? What if she could fix it? The idea blossomed darkly. Images flickered, not clean blueprints, but visceral, organic flashes: filaments of bio-metallic thread knitting bone fragments together; microscopic nanites scavenging calcium from her bloodstream; a temporary chrysalis grown inside the cast, dissolving both the cast and the need for surgery…

The images were grotesque, utterly alien to her previous tinker thoughts, yet unnervingly detailed. It felt possible. Horrifying, repulsive… but possible. Her power was suggesting it. Bio-Tinkering. She stared at the skin. The urge to make the first cut, to release the pressure, to see if her power could truly work within her… it was terrifyingly strong. She could feel the phantom tingle just beneath the skin, waiting to be unleashed. Her breathing hitched. Her hand trembled, the box cutter hovering centimeters from her flesh.

Then cold horror washed over her. Cutting open her own arm? What was she thinking? This was madness. Sophia's voice echoed: weak. Was she proving her right? She slammed the box cutter shut with shaking fingers and shoved it back into her bag. Leaning her forehead against the cold tile wall, she focused on breathing.

The approach came a few days later. Taylor was slanted and shouldering her way through the crowded hallway near the row of dented lockers before lunch when she felt a presence shadowing her, different from Sophia's predatory aura. This was desperate, twitchy.

A boy she vaguely recognized from a math class last semester – Jason? James? – slid into her path. He was rail-thin, hollows carved deeply under eyes ringed by dark shadows. His pupils were unnaturally wide, pinpricks. The sharp scent of stale sweat hung around him. He licked dry, cracked lips.

"Hebert, right?" he mumbled, voice low and raspy. He kept glancing furtively down the hall. "Look, uh… heard about the arm. Sucks." His eyes darted down to the bulge of the cast beneath her hoodie sleeve. "Hospital gave you stuff, yeah? The good shit?"

Taylor stopped, frozen. The haze lifted a fraction, replaced by icy clarity. He hadn't been clumsily expressing sympathy. He didn't look like a user chasing his next fix; he looked predatory. He had the jittery energy, but underneath it was calculation. His eyes didn't glaze with need, instead it was the cold appraisal of an opportunistic dealer. A Merchant dealer? Probably. They infested Winslow like roaches.

"Yeah," Taylor said flatly. Her voice sounded cold, even to her. Rage, colder and quieter than the explosion against Sophia, but just as potent, coiled in her gut. They did this. They broke her. They took her tools, her chance. And now their scavengers want her painkillers? Her only escape?

"I got cash," he whispered, leaning closer. She could smell sour breath mingling with the sweat. "Better than pawnin' 'em or flushing 'em. Hundred for the bottle? One-fifty, even. I don't care if a few are missing."

Taylor saw the engine block hurtling towards her. She smelled solvent and burning plastic. She felt the chain biting into her neck. She heard Skidmark's mocking voice. All of it condensed into a single point of hatred aimed at this pathetic vulture.

"Fuck," she said, her voice devoid of all inflection, staring directly into his dilated pupils. "Off." She didn't raise her voice, but the utter dismissal, the absolute venom behind it, made him flinch back as if struck. He opened his mouth, perhaps to protest or threaten, but the look in her eyes – a reflection of the dark, desperate fury simmering within her – stopped him cold. He muttered something unintelligible and melted back into the flow of students, disappearing quickly.

The encounter left her trembling. Not with fear, but with a simmering rage that felt dangerously close to overflowing. Her fractured arm was hobbling her body, strangling her power, transforming natural Tinker frustration into something volatile and dangerous. She felt brittle. Like a cracked chemical vial ready to rupture.

It happened again later that week. Sophia, emboldened by Taylor's previous restraint or simply seeking to break her, cornered her near a deserted stretch of corridor during a class change. With a calculated shove fueled by her runner's strength, she slammed Taylor backward into the cold cinderblock wall. Taylor's cast struck first with a sickening thud, sending a lance of fresh, breathtaking agony up her arm.

"Still moping around, Hebert?" Sophia sneered, "Like a kicked puppy."

The pain was blinding. It mixed violently with the impotent rage that had been building for days, weeks, years. The chemical buffer of the oxycodone seemed to vaporize. Taylor's vision tunnelled, focusing solely on Sophia's face inches from her own, the mocking cruelty in her eyes. Her good hand came up, fingers curling instinctively into claws. Her body screamed: HIT HER! SCRATCH HER EYES OUT! BREAK HER ARM TOO! It was a physical compulsion, primal and undeniable.

Her fist clenched. Muscles coiled. She could feel the tendons straining. Her breath hissed through her teeth, a sound like escaping steam. She slowly pressed her knuckles against Sophia's left ribcage, trembling with the effort of containing the blow. Every fiber demanded retaliation.

Sophia's eyes flickered down at Taylor's clenched fist against her ribs. There was surprise again, quickly masked by contempt, but also a flicker of… caution? Confusion? She felt the tension vibrating through Taylor.

But Taylor held. Immobile. Trembling violently with the sheer effort of staying still. Powerless. Against Sophia's physical strength.
Against the crushing weight of consequences she couldn't escape. She couldn't fight. She couldn't build. She was trapped in a cage of her own making and circumstances. The moment stretched. Finally, Sophia backed away with a snort, feigning boredom, but her retreat was slightly quicker than usual.

"Freak. Fake predator," Sophia muttered over her shoulder, but Taylor barely heard it. She rolled and leaned her forehead against the cool cinderblock, gasping, sweat beading on her skin despite the chill. The urge to hit something, to destroy, lingered, a tremor deep in her core. She glanced down at her cast. The need to act, to use her power, to be anything other than helpless, felt like an itch scouring her mind.

A teacher eventually noticed her standing there, pale and shaking. "You alright, Hebert? Need the nurse?" Their voice sounded distant, tinny.

"No," Taylor rasped, pushing off the wall. "Fine." She walked away, her movements stiff and jerky.

A girl whispered to her friend as she passed: "What's wrong with Hebert? Looks like a junkie itching for a fix."

That comment stuck in her head like a burr. She started researching. Not capes this time. Addiction. Withdrawals. The physical dependency the articles described – the tremors, the agitation, the desperate craving – mirrored the jittery restlessness consuming her whenever she couldn't tinker. Her power wasn't chemical, but the need for it felt frighteningly similar. An intense, physiological imperative for an escape only it could provide.

But alongside the horror stories, she found narratives of people – often damaged, desperate people – trapped by substances that first offered solace, then chains. People seeking an escape from pain, poverty, trauma, only to find themselves imprisoned even tighter by the thing they thought would free them. Squealer, wasting away behind her welder's mask, sacrificing everything for… what? The ability to build escape vehicles that never truly took her away? Skidmark, perpetually enraged, riding a chemical tide that amplified his worst instincts.

She felt a sliver of unexpected, unwelcome sympathy. She wasn't like them. She wasn't taking substances to escape reality; she was taking substances to escape pain, trying to reclaim the thing that was her escape, her reality. But the trajectory… the trapped feeling, the desperation… it resonated uncomfortably.

Her Tinker headaches – the crushing static, the psychic absence – weren't merely an annoyance, they were devouring her sanity. She needed to build. To problem-solve. To feel the current flow. The frustration of having the knowledge but being unable to execute, barred by a broken arm and a clouded mind, was driving her mad. It was a different kind of craving, but its intensity was undeniable.

Her failed raid on the Merchants felt like a cosmic joke. She'd risked everything, broken herself, for nothing. She had less than when she started – no stun gun, no flashlight, an evaporating reserve of materials, an injured body, and a father whose worry now hung like an additional shackle. Danny monitored her pills with quiet intensity. Asking how her pain was. Ensuring she didn't push herself. She saw the lines deepening around his eyes, the helpless concern when he thought she wasn't looking. Each hesitant question felt like a nail pinning her down, preventing the risky actions survival might demand.

Survival. The word echoed in the hollow space where her blueprints used to be. Survival needed resources. Survival needed a workshop. Survival needed power.

One night, deep in the early hours, the house silent but for the creaks of settling wood, Taylor sat in the basement's chill, not at her bench, but on the bottom step, her cast resting heavily on her knee. The faint smell of damp concrete and old tools filled the air. Pain lanced through her arm despite the oxycodone – a sharp spike that pierced the lingering fog. The Tinker static roared back in response, chaotic and useless.

She stared into the gloom. She needed materials. She needed a safe space. She needed leverage. Ideas flickered, desperate and half-formed: scavenging in junkyards (risky, visible), robbing a hardware store (detestable, and risker, no plan), trying to sell a minor tinker gadget anonymously (impossible with her current output).

Then, like a bolt from the blue, the epiphany formed, cold and hard as the concrete beneath her: Infiltrate the Merchants.

The thought slammed into her with the force of Skidmark's engine block. Offer Tinker services. She could build for them. Weapons? Vehicles? Defenses? They were desperate, chaotic, barely functional. A Tinker could be invaluable. It could buy her sanctuary. Give her access to materials she could only dream of. Provide a dedicated workshop, hidden in their territory, free from her father's worried eyes. They had warehouses filled with scrap and stolen goods. Skidmark and Squealer clearly understood Tinker value, however crudely. They'd hoard her like a golden goose. She could exploit their greed, their need, and build herself back up. Learn their movements, their secrets, their weaknesses.

The thought repelled her on a fundamental level. Work for them? The scum who broke her? The dealers poisoning the city? It felt like self-betrayal. She was supposed to be a hero.

But survival demanded compromise. Didn't it? The heroes had protocols, oversight, Wards membership requirements. The villains… they offered freedom, if you squinted hard enough through the grime. She wouldn't be one of them. Not really. She could gather intelligence. Learn everything she could about the cape scene from the inside – Empire operations, ABB movements, any rumors. Most importantly, she could understand her own power, its true limits, its true breadth – away from restrictions, fueled by stolen resources.

And when she was strong? When she had built herself something truly unstoppable? That was the crucial part. The escape plan built into the infiltration. She'd gather every scrap of intel, every weakness, every dirty secret. Then she would turn on them. Systematically dismantle them from within. Sabotage their vehicles. Render their drugs inert. Trap them with their own security systems. She would hand them over to the Protectorate gift-wrapped, along with the intel to break every other gang in the city. It wouldn't be heroic rescue work. It would be a scorched-earth annihilation. Her vengeance, meticulously built.

She hugged her knees to her chest, careful of the cast. Disgust warred with a terrifying sense of liberation. Joining the lion's den meant getting close enough to slit its throat. The repulsion was visceral, the idea of touching their filth, breathing their air, pretending camaraderie with monsters. But the desperation… the gnawing void where her power used to be, the escalating fury threatening to consume her… it screamed yes. Sanctuary. Materials. Power. Knowledge. Vengeance.

It was a monstrous path. The most compromised choice imaginable. But as she sat in the chill silence, broken and furious, imagining the endless, suffocating weeks ahead trapped at Winslow, trapped in her pain, trapped by her own impotence… the alternative felt like slow death.

After another sleepless night shadowed by phantom blueprints dissolving into static and the dull ache that permeated her bones, the resolve crystallized. It became cold, sharp, and painfully clear. She wasn't about to embrace villainy, not entirely, a tactical surrender for the promise of devastating retaliation was all this was. The disgust remained, a hard knot in her chest, but it was outweighed by the cold, relentless logic of survival and the promise of utter destruction.

She would find them. She would join them. She would become their temporary architect. And then, when the time was right, she would bring their entire rotten world crashing down.

 

[chiefnewo]

Looks like this Taylor is just as deluded as canon Taylor. As if the merchants will let her in without showing she's one of them!

 

[theoretisch cool]

I can already see it. She will become one of the leaders of the merchant