Chapter 4
- Location
- Oregon
There have been minor edits to the start of chapter one clarifying Taylor's behavior at Winslow shifting to be more confrontational as a recent development. If you want to go back and skim those, it should take you half a minute at most. All of the edits are before Taylor gets home.
To those wondering where I've been, mostly dealing with issues. Mental health, physical health, family, appointments, lawyers… My biggest issues these days are with anxiety, especially when there's some significant appointment I need to be keeping. I've been okay, but just not in any mood to write most of the time.
AT49 is about 4.4K words, and I'm past the big chunk of writer's block that had me unable to touch it at all for half a year. Hopefully that will be coming out soon. A significant chunk of my 'writing' time, since I didn't feel up to typing, was planning out a reboot for Refractions (one of the significant changes being that it has a name, now), more data on that possibly soon. You can always ask on the Discord if you're interested.
Oh right, plugs. Uhh, your Patronage would be appreciated… and I should really figure out some other support platforms at some point. I never remember to look into them at a time when I'm mentally stable enough to not wind up feeling anxious about it. Nothing new, really. I'm incapable of remembering to make appointments with any sort of office before like 8PM when everything is closed. Even writing notes and setting alarms usually doesn't help…
Bah, you're not here for that. Onward to post-timeskip!
It took a moment for my brain to register what I was seeing out the window. Covered in snow, I barely recognized the park where I'd broken up that cape fight just over a month ago. I stared as it passed by, then leaned my head back against the window. I didn't know where this bus went, just that it passed Lord's Market on the other side from Lord's Street, and generally wound north between the Trainyard and the Boat Graveyard. I'd never ridden past the Market before.
This was a thing I've been doing, lately. Every few days I'd feel the urge to buy a day pass in the morning, and just see where it took me. I'd get off at random connecting stops and hop on the next bus to come by. I'd seen more of the city in the past month than I remembered seeing in the past decade, watching out through the windows. People, traffic, the weather, the city… there was a lot to see just sitting around and letting someone else drive, if you didn't feel like spending the time on anything else.
One of my therapists called it melancholy, and the other said it was mild depression. One being a chronic condition, while the other could pass if I had more things to be happy about. Both of them encouraged me to go outside and meet people, find hobbies, and have fun. I wasn't sure I cared to, but that was probably my particularly bad mood today talking.
I'd just met with my trauma specialist yesterday, a nice middle-aged Latina woman named Penny, who usually worked with troubled teens in Manhattan. She was the first therapist we'd reached out to who was interested enough in my case to accept doing video calls. It helped that we'd only called places we thought wouldn't have gang ties, and that she almost certainly had no ties to any of the Brockton gangs.
We'd talked about Winslow and Emma yesterday, which probably explained my mood today. The first three meetings that first week were to establish that I wasn't murderous or suicidal, and to talk though the deaths on my conscience. It hadn't helped as much as I'd hoped, but it set some groundwork for dwelling on it less, even if I still had problems sleeping. I refused to stoop to sleeping pills, or anything I could wind up addicted to, but we'd already gone through too much melatonin and calming tea for my liking. I hated talking about anything in my life, but I hated not sleeping more.
So we talked about Emma. Everything she did, everything she'd had the other girls do, the few things their posse had gotten a few of the boys to do… There was a lot of skimming and summarizing involved. I still didn't want to think about it, let alone talk about it, but this just how therapy was supposed to work, right?
It helped that she treated my situation seriously. I'd gotten a few generalized stories without names from her, of the sort of things she usually dealt with. Rape victims, abusive families, suicidal depression, overstressed teen parents… sometimes combinations of them. Abuse was still abuse, she'd said. Different pain is still valid pain, and she helped people deal with the marks left behind, regardless of what caused them. I still felt conflicted, like there must be someone else who needs the time more than me, but I couldn't deny it was helping.
It wasn't quite the same with my other therapist. Her name was Jasmine, and she insisted I call her Jazz. She wasn't much older than me, somewhere in her early twenties, and very notably was not currently a licensed therapist. Technically she was still a student, but they couldn't find a full cape therapist with enough free time to take on a new client. So, when they asked if I was fine seeing a student, I hadn't objected to it. I get to see someone studying parahuman psychology, and she gets client hours with a cape, a win-win for the most part. I'd looked it up, and it wasn't that unusual for lower-risk patients to be handed off to what amounted to an apprentice working with the same practice, someone trying to become fully licensed but needed more study or time working with clients.
Jazz seemed very knowledgeable, but could be almost painfully cheery sometimes. Very much an optimist, who tried to reframe things as positively as possible. It clashed hard with my own pessimistic internal narrative, but for all the frustration it was probably a good thing, both of us skidding against the other like a set of brakes and evening each other out a bit more with each appointment.
Her supervisor was a woman named Jessica, whom I'd briefly met a couple times through the video calls. She helped with intake, and then tried to assure me that I could request a new therapist at any time if we turned out to be a poor fit. I didn't feel like taking her up on it, yet.
It was nice to have someone plugged into the literature on hand. They still didn't understand much about capes, but what I'd heard so far made sense. What I'd gone through was either a Trigger Event or a Crisis Point, depending on if you were asking the few laypeople who knew about them, the people studying capes, or the people trained to look out for them. A few of the established rules were a bit fuzzy around a second-generation cape, but there wasn't enough research to find patterns of which and by how much, just that we should expect the unexpected more often than usual with capes.
We spent a lot of our time talking about my relationship with Dad, who did fit several of the models better. Obsessive tendencies weren't rare, especially among Tinkers. Most of it was focused on Mom, but I'd been experiencing more of the overprotective streak since we'd left the house. Case in point, my little followers.
They were hard to spot from the bus, which was part of the point. As if it sensed I was thinking about it, the little sparrow that often took the role of my 'handler' dove into view. It was the least deformed of the set of birds Dad put together as monitoring drones, and thus the best option for signaling me if they spotted something I needed to know about. It didn't have a name. None of them did. Dad usually named his critters as a way to better tell them apart and remember which was which, but these were supposed to be mine, so he'd left their names to me.
I'd tried once or twice to think up lists of names to pick from, but it always felt wrong. Not just the names themselves, but the act of naming them. There was something off about them, and it made everything weird. Dad said it was nothing, but I think his power just didn't let him notice how some of them worked together better than they should, or did things before they'd be ordered to, or tweaked orders based on previous ones. I'd seen what went into them, and Dad had no issues rambling about what the things he was making could do, and they shouldn't be able to do that.
The bus stopped, and I found myself looking right where the sparrow had landed on a sign just outside the window. It looked almost normal, if not for the glint of a lens for one eye, slightly bigger than the other. It stared at me, and I stared back.
There was something in the back of my mind, quietly whimpering that looking too closely was dangerous. It didn't feel like me, reminding me of the sensation I'd felt when I was drawn to the cape fight. I just couldn't tell if my power was scared, or if it wanted me to be afraid.
Best not look too deeply, either way. Lovecraft might have been a racist bastard, but I'd read enough of his and similar work to understand that some things beyond knowing should stay that way. I broke eye contact first, and the bus trundled on.
I hadn't noticed any capes today. It was a much smaller part of why I kept wandering the bus lines like this, but after the first time I'd stumbled across one while riding, part of me wanted to know where they all were. A small and probably-powers-adjacent part of my brain. It begged the question of whether anyone else had powers as loud as mine, but I hadn't heard anything like it. Maybe no one wanted to sound crazy, so every cape unanimously decided to keep it to themselves. Maybe I was the crazy one. Maybe it was my powers in particular. Jazz had no data to point to, but was inordinately chuffed to have the slim chance of being the first person to psycho-analyze a power.
The bus hit a dilapidated, half-abandoned looking neighborhood, and turned around the block, stopping by one of the few places in the Trainyard still operating, before looping back and heading south again.
I continued to sit there and think, run through mindfulness exercises, and watch out the window. We passed a pair of weights in my power sense on our way past Lord's Market again. They must have just gotten there, and they were almost on top of each other. A couple out on a date? It was hard to tell from the bus, but I think they were moving around at a walking pace. It wasn't Mom and Dad, both because Mom was hard to hide conspicuously in a crowd, and that they were still the only ones with powers I knew well enough to pick out by feel.
That's the sort of thing that made it odd to not find any capes. In the end, they were people too, who had lives and maybe jobs outside of being a hero or villain. Sometimes I'd spot a Ward or Protectorate cape on patrol, or some random face on the street. More often they were inside or behind buildings. It was hard to imagine Lung or Hookwolf holding down a desk job, but Kaiser seemed like he could be someone important. Maybe he commuted to or from being Governor Mitchell, or maybe he was secretly Mayor Christner, or some other oily-feeling politician Dad had nothing but ill words for.
As far as I knew though, everyone besides the gang capes and Protectorate would have to worry about school or work, which meant they could be anywhere.
What I didn't see much of was fighting. The truth was, big cape fights just didn't happen all that often. Not ones big enough to be spotted from outside my range, anyway. I hadn't even seen small scuffles between unpowered gangers like I'd expected. Just the once that the bus was called to divert around a couple blocks, for reasons that only might have been gang related. It seemed most of it was small, or over quick enough it was hard to spot.
I got off the bus, hopping on the one I'd often used to take back to the house out of habit. The route didn't pass right by it, but what I could see a couple blocks away looked completely normal. No extra cops or vans, and no capes I could sense staking out the area. We passed right by the stop I used to disembark from nearly every day. The bus continued roughly south-southwest to the commercial sector, which was the best-off part of town aside from the Boardwalk and maybe downtown. Both of those had the benefit of not being gang territory, effectively held by the PRT and Protectorate and Enforcers depending on the day. The commercial zone, including the Towers, Mall, Medhall, and a bunch of other housing and office complexes, was the heart of Empire territory. Oddly enough it didn't feel like there was a gang presence as such, it wasn't like minorities were being lynched for going to the mall, but there might be issues I wasn't aware of if they tried to live there. The whole area was relatively clean, free of gang signs and with only the occasional homeless person.
Of course, I wasn't plugged into the seedy underbelly of the city. I probably just didn't know what to look for or where to go to find the issues. I was always just passing through, seeing exactly what the Empire wanted me to; a clean comparative utopia, if only the rest of the city would agree with them on anything. At least I think that was the message, which I would continue to steadfastly ignore. Better a wreck of a city we could actually fix than a Nazi city we'd need to tear down first.
This bus only came to three blocks from the edge of the mall at the closest, and I walked the rest of the way while keeping an eye out just in case. There were a few parahumans at the mall when it came into my range. None of them seemed to be traveling together, so probably not a PR event. I hadn't actually met any of the capes I sensed, when they were out of costume. Hopefully that trend would continue, in case things got awkward. I'd hate to find out someone like Julia was Rune and not be able to do anything with it, but more likely I'd never figure out who they were, just that they had powers.
I avoided the capes I saw around town who were in costume, being exclusively heroes who might recognize me despite changing my look. Mom and I fiddled with a few things, and Dad sent his animals to raid clothing and makeup shops on the off chance I'd be recognized if I did it. A part of me wondered if he just wanted to impress how useful having loyal and sneaky minions was, and another couldn't help but remember that he'd always been a penny-pincher, and it was hard to get cheaper than free. Mom wouldn't have let him just go around stealing from innocent local businesses though, so there was probably more going on that I wasn't seeing.
The biggest change to my looks was my hair. We cut it boyishly short, since I doubted there was a single picture of me without at least shoulder-length hair. It gave me the option to look more like a girlish guy if I wanted, or just layer on more changes to make myself unrecognizable. Today we'd gone for goth chic; black on black clothes with thick dark mascara, and the contradictory reputation as loner attention-seekers to help eyes roll off of me even if I caught them. The makeup magnified my resting bitch face to more of a constant glare at anything I was looking at, and most people I'd looked at in this getup had trouble meeting my eyes. Black also had the benefit of being especially toasty in the sun with it still being winter. All I really needed were jeans and a hoodie as long as I was back indoors before dark.
I was also wearing contact lenses, which took a while to get used to. I could see better than ever with us using my newer prescription for them, while my glasses were a couple years old. Surprising what you could get without questions if you knew your numbers and paid in cash around here. I could still see well enough with the old frames, and the exams were cheaper and more mandatory than updating the glasses. I was kind of surprised they'd survived Winslow, but I never took them off without keeping an eye on them, and no one ever aimed higher than my mouth on the rare occasions they targeted my face at all, accidental bloodying of my nose notwithstanding. I think there was more of a stigma around glasses, where the faculty might have to pay closer attention if those were broken, while they got away with ignoring trashed clothes, bags, and books.
This was all to say we gave fairly low odds even someone who knew me fairly well could recognize me unless I started talking to them, and about half of those were in on it. It let me do things like this, running around the mall just to wallflower my way through the minimum amount of human contact needed to stay relatively sane. Mom and Dad met up with Kurt and Lacey now and then, though I didn't care to know how or when, just that it was almost never at the bunker since we moved in. They can't lead people to a place they never go, after all.
I wandered around the first floor, mostly window shopping. I stopped in at a bath and body shop, meandering through their product stands until I came to hair care. I took my time looking before picking up more hair oil, which went right into my pocket after buying it. I didn't really want to lug any bags around, and this had little intention of buying much.
The next shop I went in catered to the 'edgy' scene crowd I was currently masquerading as a part of. Dark clothes all around, a wall of band tees, hoodies galore, and even small leather and lingerie sections. I spent the time there alternatively boggling or trying not to laugh at the thought of whoever might be keeping this shop open. It certainly wasn't anyone from Winslow.
Then I went upstairs and started wandering towards the food court, figuring I might as well eat while I was here. I passed a shoe store where I only slowed to look into the windows, a clothing store, a phone shop, a pretzel stand, and a different clothing chain, before I stopped in at a candy shop. I didn't buy anything, but had fun looking around for a few minutes. Maybe I'd grab something on my way out, if I still had a snack itch after eating.
After that came a knicknack shop for any tourists that weren't sticking to the Boardwalk for some reason, then another clothing shop, a movies-and-games store I ignored, and then a large emporium store that specialized in- you guessed it- clothes and shoes. I cast a longing glance back behind me, where I spied a small book shop on the other side of the building. I'd need to go around the building to get to it though, since we were on the second floor and the center of the building was open from the first floor. The little catwalk across the middle was about as far as just going around would be. Another place to stop on my way out, I supposed.
I looked around, scanning the crowd at the food court. One of the weights in my power sense had made it there before me. I didn't want to figure out who they were, but I wanted to actually run into them even less, which meant I needed to find them. All I could tell through the middling crowd was that it should be somewhere in a gaggle of girls standing near the food stalls.
As I got closer, I started to recognize some of them, and a squirming feeling began crawling up my stomach. Girls I vaguely knew from Winslow, which meant… sure enough, there was Emma. Sophia loitered next to her, present but not really part of the group the same way Emma was. I didn't see Madison, but she might be in the bathroom, and was small enough to be hidden by one or two of the others if not.
I bit back a groan and shifted to the side so no one would run into me while my thoughts were running like a train headed downhill. I was honestly surprised that it took this long to run into them. It just seemed like my luck that they'd pop up the first time I walked through the boardwalk or any of the shopping centers. But no, this had to be my third time through the mall this month without any hint of them until now.
They moved, and the weight moved with them. Peering along the mini restaurant fronts circling the food court, I stared incredulously as the dot firmly refused to shift away from them. One of them had powers. There was no other explanation. The group began splintering as it appeared no one could agree on what food to get, and the weight stayed with Emma and Sophia. It couldn't be Emma, could it? She was too much of an attention whore to keep her head down as an independent, or not try to stand out in whatever group she joined. But even as I thought that, the train stumbled on which cape I knew of she could be. She couldn't be Rune, and no one else matched even half as well as Sabrina the Teenaged Nazi as far as gender, body type, behavior, and skin color.
The pair split up a few moments later, and the weight followed Sophia to some sandwich place. Sophia was a cape. She had to be, but which one? Her I could see managing to avoid the spotlight. Was she in one of the gangs? Was she using her powers to threaten the principal into letting them get away with everything? It couldn't have gone much further than Blackwell, or I would have heard rumors. Gladly for one couldn't keep a secret to save a life, and I had serious doubts about the rest of the faculty as well.
It was just like her. Lording over everyone, pushing down anyone that stood out or annoyed her, strutting about like a thug. I took her power before the thought crossed my mind, the sick burbling fury lashing out while I was unable to care about stopping myself. Her power instantly struck me as odd. I felt safe. Like I could be untouchable and free, the second I flicked the new toggle in my brain. It just pissed me off more, that she got to go through life with what amounted to a security blanket, constantly comforting her. Making her feel powerful and invincible, while I had to suffer on my own.
The feeling seemed to get stronger, making me imagine my own power was trying to give me a hug. No, I don't hate you, I just wish I hadn't been forced to feel weak and helpless for almost two years, trapped between suffering and letting something terrible happen if I told Dad to cut loose.
The brief moment passed, leaving me with a now tempered fury. I wasn't alone. My power had my back, and my parents would support me no matter what I chose to do. Buoyed by the thought, I began stalking forward. If Sophia was with one of the gangs, she wasn't going to stop just because her favorite target was gone. She'd just shift that violent energy to someone equally undeserving of the treatment. She was a thug, and the only languages they understood were money and violence. Being unwilling to try paying the bully to play nice, it left a single option for trying to communicate.
Sophia was just starting to look around in confusion when I reared my hand back. I wasn't sure if she'd heard me or if she'd finally noticed her powers were gone, but it didn't matter. She still caught me in the corner of her eye quick enough to turn my knockout haymaker into a glancing blow by trying to duck away from it. I switched targets from the back of her head to her face, but only managed to snap her nose instead of catching her in the cheek or jaw as intended.
She yelled, catching the attention of Emma and the rest of the crowd. Then she brought her arms up to block the backhand swing I launched from my overextended fist. I dropped a little lower, changing the angle of the attack to knock her arms up so I could pop her in the slightly crooked nose with a quick left jab from my other hand. This knocked her off balance and stunned her into dropping her food. It didn't take much more leaning forward to barrel into her stomach, pushing her at least a meter back before slamming her into the ground.
I had to hand it to her, even with the air knocked out of her, she put up more fight than expected. I was sitting on her thighs, slapping her hands away as quickly as I could, and I was still only hitting her with every third punch I'd intended to do damage with through her broken guard.
Emma screamed a few seconds into me pounding Sophia on the ground, and a quick glance caught her tossing a food tray aside and charging in to help. She didn't seem to know what she was doing, though. The angle was all wrong, and it was pretty easy to lean over and hunker down so that she just bounced off my shoulder instead of tackling me off her friend. With her stunned on the floor for a bit, I went back to pounding Sophia's face until she stopped fighting back.
This was it. I'd won. I'd finally beaten her at her own damn game, and… sitting here, huffing and staring down at her as she looked up at me with fear in her one good eye… it felt hollow. Wasn't there supposed to be some catharsis kicking in? It might not've been a fair fight, but I wasn't sure I'd win a fair fight without using whatever her power was. Sophia had done a lot over the past year and a half. She'd kicked me down, shoved and tripped and bruised me, bloodied and nearly broken my nose twice, and nearly knocked a tooth from my mouth on several occasions. She deserved this. She'd earned it. I raised my fist one final time…
My body sagged as I let it drop to my side. "I don't get you." I said. "Why is this fun for you?" Cape fights I could understand, those were exciting by default. Fighting someone who could fight back was a challenge, and I could understand that. Beating up normal people? Picking on nerds and lonely girls who didn't want to fight back? Why?
Her fearful eye turned defiant, and she spat a huge glob of blood and spit into my face. I brought an arm up to wipe it away from my eyes, which gave her time to punch me in my side. It hurt a lot, and I think she was aiming for my kidney, but it wasn't enough to knock me off of her even when she tried to kick me off of her legs. I grabbed her shoulders, reared back, and slammed my forehead into her jaw. I could feel her head bounce off the floor, and she stopped fighting again.
I swayed somewhat unsteadily to my feet, wiping at my eyes again. "You fucking bitch!" Emma called, warning me she was back up.
Her fist was coming at me, and I took a moment to watch it. It was an overhead strike, aimed to come down on me despite me being taller. Maybe because I was still hunched over? I stood up straighter, figured out where her hand was going, and caught her wrist and forearm in my hands. I'd only seen this in movies, but if I really was a bit stronger than I should be…
I ducked down, pulling her wrist and shoving my other hand into her gut. Then I heaved my shoulders up against her chest and threw her as hard as I could. I was disappointed when she didn't fly across the room, but she did land on a nearby table hard enough to break the top off its bolted-down stand. She landed in a groaning crumpled heap on the floor.
That was it, I supposed. The whole Winslow chapter of my life, capped off in one shitty, confusing, unsatisfying food court brawl. I was starting to get angry again, just from how cheated I felt. I was supposed to feel better, less sad, satisfied, vindicated, or something, but all I felt now was angry that I'd gotten into a stupid fight for dumb reasons and had nothing to show for it besides bruises forming on my knuckles and my side.
"STOP!" I stopped swaying and glanced to the side, to find an unremarkable overweight mall cop advancing on me, hands empty and held wide in front of him. I wasn't impressed. He was big, but not really a threat. "Okay, we're all calm here. We need to get medical attention for everyone before the situation gets any worse, and-" He lunged, and I flicked the new toggle in my brain. I was just too done with today to care enough to do anything else. He fell right through me, landing in a confused heap after tripping over Sophia. I'd known the power would keep me safe, but I hadn't known how.
I looked down and saw my hands looked like shadowy clouds in the brief moment before the power flickered off. Where had I seen these powers before? I was sure now that they were familiar, but…
Mutters in the crowd caused everything to snap into place. Shadow Stalker. Sophia was Shadow Stalker. Sophia was a Ward. Well… shit. I guess I was in more trouble than I thought.
The mall cop was crab-walking backward away from me, terrified of the cape he'd just tried to take down. A glance at the crowd showed they were backing off as well as they could with more rubberneckers behind them blocking their escape. Quite a few of them had phones out, and a couple were still pointed my way. Fuck.
I used the power to drop through the floor, and started jogging to the nearest ground-floor exit. My hood was still up, and I had to hope that was enough to hide my face. Stupid, stupid. There were enough people that I couldn't really run without knocking into someone, and people seemed happy to hop out of my way at the speed I was going. I pushed through the doors and started down the sidewalk at a brisk pace that I hoped didn't look like I was fleeing the scene.
Movement in the corner of my eye pulled my head to the side, and I stopped. The glass display window full of mannequins promoting one of the stores inside provided just enough reflection that I could see something was wrong with my face. I jogged over to the nearest parked car and stuck my head next to the door mirror.
My face was covered in blood. No wonder people were jumping out of my way, I looked like a serial killer. I pulled my hoodie up and started wiping it away. My skin looked a lot better, and the black barely showed the blood soaking into the cloth. Now I just had to get out of here… It was probably too much to ask for the bus to arrive before a search party found me, but I didn't have a better idea. I still had Sophia's power, and I could phase into a car… but while I knew how to hotwire a car, I didn't know how to hotwire a car. It'd take me several times longer to figure out which wires I needed than it would for the bus to show up. I couldn't trust running around checking cars for spare keys. I might be able to steal a bike… but motorcycles had the same issue, and I didn't see any bicycles to try and phase away from their locks. I vaguely recalled a bike shop in the area, but running around looking for that wasn't any better than the other options.
I was still powerwalking toward the bus stop when I felt a weight quickly coming up behind me. It was soon joined by the sound of a car engine growing closer. I adamantly refused to turn and look. Had to act cool. Pretend to just be a normal shopper. Just the average pedestrian, nothing to see here, nope. Certainly not a violent goth girl, face smeared with blood and black makeup, with a red wet spot on the front of her hoodie, no… not at all. I was panicking. I knew I was panicking. The car pulled up, squealing very briefly as it stopped. I couldn't help looking.
"Get in." Said the honey-blonde girl in the driver's seat. Her window was rolled down, she was thumbing over to the passenger seat, and she was glaring at me. Naturally, I immediately swapped her power for a blank before she could threaten me, or Master me, or whatever it was her power did. I also instantly regretted it.
Frustrated. Angry. Afraid. Afraid of you. Afraid of someone else. Afraid for her life. Feels unsafe. Feels threatened. Was threatened. Is threatened. Threat to her life. Threat related to you. Threatened by you. Afraid of you. Afraid for her life. Needed to find you, to avoid threat to her life. Threatened by someone looking for you. Threatened by a villain looking for you. Is a villain. Is a villain looking for you. Is working for a villain that is looking for you. Wanted to find you. Is afraid of you. Doesn't want to hurt you. Doesn't think she can hurt you. Is afraid of you. Is trying to help you. Thinks she needs to help you to stay safe from her boss who is threatening her. Is-
"Fuck!" I spat, shoving the power back into the girl's head. I started rubbing at my temple, where a needle was starting to grind its way into my brain.
The girl winced. "Don't do that." She hissed, also rubbing at her head. "Get in, or wait for the bus. Pick one, already."
I glared at her, and now that she wasn't glaring back, my first thought was that she was actually pretty cute. Bright green eyes, a little button nose, freckles for days, and her hair tied back into a fancy french braid. What I could see of her figure from the door was pretty appealing as well, hidden as it was by a thick sweater.
She glanced back at me, then rolled her eyes. "Or stand there ogling me, I'm sure we both have all day."
I blushed, marched around the car, and got in. She started driving at a relatively sedate pace, idly reaching across me to open the glove compartment without looking. Within was a gun, which she again reached past to grab the bottle of aspirin next to it. In a deft show of dexterity or a great deal of experience with pain management, she opened the bottle one-handed, poured three pills into her palm, re-closed the bottle, stuck it back where it was and closed the compartment, and then swallowed the pills dry. Her left hand never left the wheel. Maybe twenty seconds later, she seemed to remember that she had a cup of coffee sitting in the cupholders between us, and took a swig.
"Sooo…" I muttered, about when Sophia's power snapped back to her without my input.
"Fuck you." She spat half-heartedly. "Do you have any idea how long I've been looking for you? And the very first thing you do is give me a migraine."
I took a moment to collect my thoughts before I replied. "You were way too convenient."
"Coming out of nowhere, here to save you, knight in shining cadillac, and my reward is an ice pick. I get it. Really, I do." She gave me a venomous side-eyed glare for a moment, before wincing and sagging a bit. "At least I didn't put a gun to your head first."
The rueful way she said it made me think there was some history there. Maybe that boss of hers? "Who are you working for?"
"Coil." She spat, then a few moments later added, "Fuck that guy."
I thought back to what Dad' said about him. "Yeah, fuck that guy."
We drove in silence for a few minutes while I ruminated and she focused on controlling her headache. "Lisa." She stated into the silence. "So you can stop pronoun-gaming about me."
Lisa, then. "What is your power, anyway?"
"Sherlock Holmes on crack."
"Cocaine, actually." I prodded with a small smirk.
"Go fuck yourself." She jabbed back. "It connects dots. Sometimes the dots are wrong. Usually they're right, even when they have no business connecting from what I can see. I get a few hours a day out of it if I keep a handle on it. Or I could firehouse facts for a few minutes, which I learned not to do pretty damn quick." The last she hissed angrily, and I gave her a small apologetic smile. That was as close to saying sorry as I'd get, and I had a feeling she knew it. I had no way to know her power would do that, and had good reason to feel threatened by a cape rolling up and all but abducting me given my options at the time.
Quite frankly, if her own power hadn't stabbed my brain with the fact that she wanted to help me, and hated the boss that told her to look for me, I would be treating this as an abduction, just waiting for the first chance I could get to either run away from my captor or take her down somehow. "So, what now?"
She grimaced, not answering immediately. If I had to guess she was debating how much to lie to me, given the fact that I could- at any time- swipe her power back and spend a second or two sussing out if and to what degree she was lying. "I… need to choose. Between you and my boss. I need to know if you can take him down, and how much collateral damage I'll have to deal with if we do."
"If he's a cape, it should be as easy as finding him, unless he has an army of goons or something."
"The army of goons is going to be problematic, yes. I haven't managed to suborn nearly enough of them. He seems to notice half the time when I do, and shuffle employment around with other merc-using villains. His power shouldn't let him do that."
I opened my mouth, thought about it for a second, closed it, and finally clicked my tongue in thought to buy myself another moment to put thought to words. "Well, that sucks. What even is his power?"
"Some precog bullshit even he doesn't understand. Thinks he's the center of the universe, so of course his power creates and destroys universes." She scoffed. "I'm about eighty percent sure he just picks two choices, his power shows him both, and somehow that translates into him picking the one he likes and making it happen, all in a way that to him looks like he's living two lives and playing god with them."
"That doesn't sound so bad, but I'm sure there's context I'm missing for why that's terrible."
"Generally, if you target him at home, he'll actually be at his base playing Bond villain. If you assault his base, he'll be busy at work playing nice with the PRT. I don't know who he is, but I know he's got connections there. Makes the most sense if his connection is himself."
"If I didn't already have reasons to not like the PRT…"
"I know, right?" Lisa turned down a street that'd lead us closer to my bunker than the one we'd been on. Then she seemed to notice my apprehension about it. "So, where are we going?"
"We're far enough away now, I can get out whenever and be fine."
"Fair enough." She pulled over near another bus stop. "We should trade numbers, meet somewhere else once you've cleaned up." I hesitated again, not knowing if her boss had the tech or connections to track a phone just from its number. "Or at least take my number, and contact me an hour or so before you want to meet. I might be busy with my boss, but otherwise I can drop everything to be there. You can throw the burner out after you call- before we meet even- if you want."
I didn't have a good argument against that suggestion, and so I relented. Paranoid enough now to worry about Tinkertech trackers somehow working with pre-prepared ink or paper, I used a fingernail to scratch the number into the back of one of the receipts in my pocket. She just smiled condescendingly while watching me do so, since I knew if they were willing to go that far, they could probably leave a tracking fluid soaked into the seat cushion or something, and I was already fucked if so. Still, it made me feel a little better, and she didn't actually say anything about it.
We said our goodbyes, hers including a saucy wink that almost had me swapping her power back in to see if she was trying to play honeypot now that she knew I thought she was cute. I decided it wasn't worth the headache when I could just watch out for it either way, which just had her smirking wider.
She drove off, and I scrubbed at my face some more with a different part of my hoodie. Then I walked a few blocks to a different bus route, and continued riding near-randomly for another two hours, just in case I was being followed. By then my hunger was starting to get the better of me, and my skin still feeling grungy wasn't helping with that. So, I took a circuitous path back to the bunker to check in with my parents.
To those wondering where I've been, mostly dealing with issues. Mental health, physical health, family, appointments, lawyers… My biggest issues these days are with anxiety, especially when there's some significant appointment I need to be keeping. I've been okay, but just not in any mood to write most of the time.
AT49 is about 4.4K words, and I'm past the big chunk of writer's block that had me unable to touch it at all for half a year. Hopefully that will be coming out soon. A significant chunk of my 'writing' time, since I didn't feel up to typing, was planning out a reboot for Refractions (one of the significant changes being that it has a name, now), more data on that possibly soon. You can always ask on the Discord if you're interested.
Oh right, plugs. Uhh, your Patronage would be appreciated… and I should really figure out some other support platforms at some point. I never remember to look into them at a time when I'm mentally stable enough to not wind up feeling anxious about it. Nothing new, really. I'm incapable of remembering to make appointments with any sort of office before like 8PM when everything is closed. Even writing notes and setting alarms usually doesn't help…
Bah, you're not here for that. Onward to post-timeskip!
It took a moment for my brain to register what I was seeing out the window. Covered in snow, I barely recognized the park where I'd broken up that cape fight just over a month ago. I stared as it passed by, then leaned my head back against the window. I didn't know where this bus went, just that it passed Lord's Market on the other side from Lord's Street, and generally wound north between the Trainyard and the Boat Graveyard. I'd never ridden past the Market before.
This was a thing I've been doing, lately. Every few days I'd feel the urge to buy a day pass in the morning, and just see where it took me. I'd get off at random connecting stops and hop on the next bus to come by. I'd seen more of the city in the past month than I remembered seeing in the past decade, watching out through the windows. People, traffic, the weather, the city… there was a lot to see just sitting around and letting someone else drive, if you didn't feel like spending the time on anything else.
One of my therapists called it melancholy, and the other said it was mild depression. One being a chronic condition, while the other could pass if I had more things to be happy about. Both of them encouraged me to go outside and meet people, find hobbies, and have fun. I wasn't sure I cared to, but that was probably my particularly bad mood today talking.
I'd just met with my trauma specialist yesterday, a nice middle-aged Latina woman named Penny, who usually worked with troubled teens in Manhattan. She was the first therapist we'd reached out to who was interested enough in my case to accept doing video calls. It helped that we'd only called places we thought wouldn't have gang ties, and that she almost certainly had no ties to any of the Brockton gangs.
We'd talked about Winslow and Emma yesterday, which probably explained my mood today. The first three meetings that first week were to establish that I wasn't murderous or suicidal, and to talk though the deaths on my conscience. It hadn't helped as much as I'd hoped, but it set some groundwork for dwelling on it less, even if I still had problems sleeping. I refused to stoop to sleeping pills, or anything I could wind up addicted to, but we'd already gone through too much melatonin and calming tea for my liking. I hated talking about anything in my life, but I hated not sleeping more.
So we talked about Emma. Everything she did, everything she'd had the other girls do, the few things their posse had gotten a few of the boys to do… There was a lot of skimming and summarizing involved. I still didn't want to think about it, let alone talk about it, but this just how therapy was supposed to work, right?
It helped that she treated my situation seriously. I'd gotten a few generalized stories without names from her, of the sort of things she usually dealt with. Rape victims, abusive families, suicidal depression, overstressed teen parents… sometimes combinations of them. Abuse was still abuse, she'd said. Different pain is still valid pain, and she helped people deal with the marks left behind, regardless of what caused them. I still felt conflicted, like there must be someone else who needs the time more than me, but I couldn't deny it was helping.
It wasn't quite the same with my other therapist. Her name was Jasmine, and she insisted I call her Jazz. She wasn't much older than me, somewhere in her early twenties, and very notably was not currently a licensed therapist. Technically she was still a student, but they couldn't find a full cape therapist with enough free time to take on a new client. So, when they asked if I was fine seeing a student, I hadn't objected to it. I get to see someone studying parahuman psychology, and she gets client hours with a cape, a win-win for the most part. I'd looked it up, and it wasn't that unusual for lower-risk patients to be handed off to what amounted to an apprentice working with the same practice, someone trying to become fully licensed but needed more study or time working with clients.
Jazz seemed very knowledgeable, but could be almost painfully cheery sometimes. Very much an optimist, who tried to reframe things as positively as possible. It clashed hard with my own pessimistic internal narrative, but for all the frustration it was probably a good thing, both of us skidding against the other like a set of brakes and evening each other out a bit more with each appointment.
Her supervisor was a woman named Jessica, whom I'd briefly met a couple times through the video calls. She helped with intake, and then tried to assure me that I could request a new therapist at any time if we turned out to be a poor fit. I didn't feel like taking her up on it, yet.
It was nice to have someone plugged into the literature on hand. They still didn't understand much about capes, but what I'd heard so far made sense. What I'd gone through was either a Trigger Event or a Crisis Point, depending on if you were asking the few laypeople who knew about them, the people studying capes, or the people trained to look out for them. A few of the established rules were a bit fuzzy around a second-generation cape, but there wasn't enough research to find patterns of which and by how much, just that we should expect the unexpected more often than usual with capes.
We spent a lot of our time talking about my relationship with Dad, who did fit several of the models better. Obsessive tendencies weren't rare, especially among Tinkers. Most of it was focused on Mom, but I'd been experiencing more of the overprotective streak since we'd left the house. Case in point, my little followers.
They were hard to spot from the bus, which was part of the point. As if it sensed I was thinking about it, the little sparrow that often took the role of my 'handler' dove into view. It was the least deformed of the set of birds Dad put together as monitoring drones, and thus the best option for signaling me if they spotted something I needed to know about. It didn't have a name. None of them did. Dad usually named his critters as a way to better tell them apart and remember which was which, but these were supposed to be mine, so he'd left their names to me.
I'd tried once or twice to think up lists of names to pick from, but it always felt wrong. Not just the names themselves, but the act of naming them. There was something off about them, and it made everything weird. Dad said it was nothing, but I think his power just didn't let him notice how some of them worked together better than they should, or did things before they'd be ordered to, or tweaked orders based on previous ones. I'd seen what went into them, and Dad had no issues rambling about what the things he was making could do, and they shouldn't be able to do that.
The bus stopped, and I found myself looking right where the sparrow had landed on a sign just outside the window. It looked almost normal, if not for the glint of a lens for one eye, slightly bigger than the other. It stared at me, and I stared back.
There was something in the back of my mind, quietly whimpering that looking too closely was dangerous. It didn't feel like me, reminding me of the sensation I'd felt when I was drawn to the cape fight. I just couldn't tell if my power was scared, or if it wanted me to be afraid.
Best not look too deeply, either way. Lovecraft might have been a racist bastard, but I'd read enough of his and similar work to understand that some things beyond knowing should stay that way. I broke eye contact first, and the bus trundled on.
I hadn't noticed any capes today. It was a much smaller part of why I kept wandering the bus lines like this, but after the first time I'd stumbled across one while riding, part of me wanted to know where they all were. A small and probably-powers-adjacent part of my brain. It begged the question of whether anyone else had powers as loud as mine, but I hadn't heard anything like it. Maybe no one wanted to sound crazy, so every cape unanimously decided to keep it to themselves. Maybe I was the crazy one. Maybe it was my powers in particular. Jazz had no data to point to, but was inordinately chuffed to have the slim chance of being the first person to psycho-analyze a power.
The bus hit a dilapidated, half-abandoned looking neighborhood, and turned around the block, stopping by one of the few places in the Trainyard still operating, before looping back and heading south again.
I continued to sit there and think, run through mindfulness exercises, and watch out the window. We passed a pair of weights in my power sense on our way past Lord's Market again. They must have just gotten there, and they were almost on top of each other. A couple out on a date? It was hard to tell from the bus, but I think they were moving around at a walking pace. It wasn't Mom and Dad, both because Mom was hard to hide conspicuously in a crowd, and that they were still the only ones with powers I knew well enough to pick out by feel.
That's the sort of thing that made it odd to not find any capes. In the end, they were people too, who had lives and maybe jobs outside of being a hero or villain. Sometimes I'd spot a Ward or Protectorate cape on patrol, or some random face on the street. More often they were inside or behind buildings. It was hard to imagine Lung or Hookwolf holding down a desk job, but Kaiser seemed like he could be someone important. Maybe he commuted to or from being Governor Mitchell, or maybe he was secretly Mayor Christner, or some other oily-feeling politician Dad had nothing but ill words for.
As far as I knew though, everyone besides the gang capes and Protectorate would have to worry about school or work, which meant they could be anywhere.
What I didn't see much of was fighting. The truth was, big cape fights just didn't happen all that often. Not ones big enough to be spotted from outside my range, anyway. I hadn't even seen small scuffles between unpowered gangers like I'd expected. Just the once that the bus was called to divert around a couple blocks, for reasons that only might have been gang related. It seemed most of it was small, or over quick enough it was hard to spot.
I got off the bus, hopping on the one I'd often used to take back to the house out of habit. The route didn't pass right by it, but what I could see a couple blocks away looked completely normal. No extra cops or vans, and no capes I could sense staking out the area. We passed right by the stop I used to disembark from nearly every day. The bus continued roughly south-southwest to the commercial sector, which was the best-off part of town aside from the Boardwalk and maybe downtown. Both of those had the benefit of not being gang territory, effectively held by the PRT and Protectorate and Enforcers depending on the day. The commercial zone, including the Towers, Mall, Medhall, and a bunch of other housing and office complexes, was the heart of Empire territory. Oddly enough it didn't feel like there was a gang presence as such, it wasn't like minorities were being lynched for going to the mall, but there might be issues I wasn't aware of if they tried to live there. The whole area was relatively clean, free of gang signs and with only the occasional homeless person.
Of course, I wasn't plugged into the seedy underbelly of the city. I probably just didn't know what to look for or where to go to find the issues. I was always just passing through, seeing exactly what the Empire wanted me to; a clean comparative utopia, if only the rest of the city would agree with them on anything. At least I think that was the message, which I would continue to steadfastly ignore. Better a wreck of a city we could actually fix than a Nazi city we'd need to tear down first.
This bus only came to three blocks from the edge of the mall at the closest, and I walked the rest of the way while keeping an eye out just in case. There were a few parahumans at the mall when it came into my range. None of them seemed to be traveling together, so probably not a PR event. I hadn't actually met any of the capes I sensed, when they were out of costume. Hopefully that trend would continue, in case things got awkward. I'd hate to find out someone like Julia was Rune and not be able to do anything with it, but more likely I'd never figure out who they were, just that they had powers.
I avoided the capes I saw around town who were in costume, being exclusively heroes who might recognize me despite changing my look. Mom and I fiddled with a few things, and Dad sent his animals to raid clothing and makeup shops on the off chance I'd be recognized if I did it. A part of me wondered if he just wanted to impress how useful having loyal and sneaky minions was, and another couldn't help but remember that he'd always been a penny-pincher, and it was hard to get cheaper than free. Mom wouldn't have let him just go around stealing from innocent local businesses though, so there was probably more going on that I wasn't seeing.
The biggest change to my looks was my hair. We cut it boyishly short, since I doubted there was a single picture of me without at least shoulder-length hair. It gave me the option to look more like a girlish guy if I wanted, or just layer on more changes to make myself unrecognizable. Today we'd gone for goth chic; black on black clothes with thick dark mascara, and the contradictory reputation as loner attention-seekers to help eyes roll off of me even if I caught them. The makeup magnified my resting bitch face to more of a constant glare at anything I was looking at, and most people I'd looked at in this getup had trouble meeting my eyes. Black also had the benefit of being especially toasty in the sun with it still being winter. All I really needed were jeans and a hoodie as long as I was back indoors before dark.
I was also wearing contact lenses, which took a while to get used to. I could see better than ever with us using my newer prescription for them, while my glasses were a couple years old. Surprising what you could get without questions if you knew your numbers and paid in cash around here. I could still see well enough with the old frames, and the exams were cheaper and more mandatory than updating the glasses. I was kind of surprised they'd survived Winslow, but I never took them off without keeping an eye on them, and no one ever aimed higher than my mouth on the rare occasions they targeted my face at all, accidental bloodying of my nose notwithstanding. I think there was more of a stigma around glasses, where the faculty might have to pay closer attention if those were broken, while they got away with ignoring trashed clothes, bags, and books.
This was all to say we gave fairly low odds even someone who knew me fairly well could recognize me unless I started talking to them, and about half of those were in on it. It let me do things like this, running around the mall just to wallflower my way through the minimum amount of human contact needed to stay relatively sane. Mom and Dad met up with Kurt and Lacey now and then, though I didn't care to know how or when, just that it was almost never at the bunker since we moved in. They can't lead people to a place they never go, after all.
I wandered around the first floor, mostly window shopping. I stopped in at a bath and body shop, meandering through their product stands until I came to hair care. I took my time looking before picking up more hair oil, which went right into my pocket after buying it. I didn't really want to lug any bags around, and this had little intention of buying much.
The next shop I went in catered to the 'edgy' scene crowd I was currently masquerading as a part of. Dark clothes all around, a wall of band tees, hoodies galore, and even small leather and lingerie sections. I spent the time there alternatively boggling or trying not to laugh at the thought of whoever might be keeping this shop open. It certainly wasn't anyone from Winslow.
Then I went upstairs and started wandering towards the food court, figuring I might as well eat while I was here. I passed a shoe store where I only slowed to look into the windows, a clothing store, a phone shop, a pretzel stand, and a different clothing chain, before I stopped in at a candy shop. I didn't buy anything, but had fun looking around for a few minutes. Maybe I'd grab something on my way out, if I still had a snack itch after eating.
After that came a knicknack shop for any tourists that weren't sticking to the Boardwalk for some reason, then another clothing shop, a movies-and-games store I ignored, and then a large emporium store that specialized in- you guessed it- clothes and shoes. I cast a longing glance back behind me, where I spied a small book shop on the other side of the building. I'd need to go around the building to get to it though, since we were on the second floor and the center of the building was open from the first floor. The little catwalk across the middle was about as far as just going around would be. Another place to stop on my way out, I supposed.
I looked around, scanning the crowd at the food court. One of the weights in my power sense had made it there before me. I didn't want to figure out who they were, but I wanted to actually run into them even less, which meant I needed to find them. All I could tell through the middling crowd was that it should be somewhere in a gaggle of girls standing near the food stalls.
As I got closer, I started to recognize some of them, and a squirming feeling began crawling up my stomach. Girls I vaguely knew from Winslow, which meant… sure enough, there was Emma. Sophia loitered next to her, present but not really part of the group the same way Emma was. I didn't see Madison, but she might be in the bathroom, and was small enough to be hidden by one or two of the others if not.
I bit back a groan and shifted to the side so no one would run into me while my thoughts were running like a train headed downhill. I was honestly surprised that it took this long to run into them. It just seemed like my luck that they'd pop up the first time I walked through the boardwalk or any of the shopping centers. But no, this had to be my third time through the mall this month without any hint of them until now.
They moved, and the weight moved with them. Peering along the mini restaurant fronts circling the food court, I stared incredulously as the dot firmly refused to shift away from them. One of them had powers. There was no other explanation. The group began splintering as it appeared no one could agree on what food to get, and the weight stayed with Emma and Sophia. It couldn't be Emma, could it? She was too much of an attention whore to keep her head down as an independent, or not try to stand out in whatever group she joined. But even as I thought that, the train stumbled on which cape I knew of she could be. She couldn't be Rune, and no one else matched even half as well as Sabrina the Teenaged Nazi as far as gender, body type, behavior, and skin color.
The pair split up a few moments later, and the weight followed Sophia to some sandwich place. Sophia was a cape. She had to be, but which one? Her I could see managing to avoid the spotlight. Was she in one of the gangs? Was she using her powers to threaten the principal into letting them get away with everything? It couldn't have gone much further than Blackwell, or I would have heard rumors. Gladly for one couldn't keep a secret to save a life, and I had serious doubts about the rest of the faculty as well.
It was just like her. Lording over everyone, pushing down anyone that stood out or annoyed her, strutting about like a thug. I took her power before the thought crossed my mind, the sick burbling fury lashing out while I was unable to care about stopping myself. Her power instantly struck me as odd. I felt safe. Like I could be untouchable and free, the second I flicked the new toggle in my brain. It just pissed me off more, that she got to go through life with what amounted to a security blanket, constantly comforting her. Making her feel powerful and invincible, while I had to suffer on my own.
The feeling seemed to get stronger, making me imagine my own power was trying to give me a hug. No, I don't hate you, I just wish I hadn't been forced to feel weak and helpless for almost two years, trapped between suffering and letting something terrible happen if I told Dad to cut loose.
The brief moment passed, leaving me with a now tempered fury. I wasn't alone. My power had my back, and my parents would support me no matter what I chose to do. Buoyed by the thought, I began stalking forward. If Sophia was with one of the gangs, she wasn't going to stop just because her favorite target was gone. She'd just shift that violent energy to someone equally undeserving of the treatment. She was a thug, and the only languages they understood were money and violence. Being unwilling to try paying the bully to play nice, it left a single option for trying to communicate.
Sophia was just starting to look around in confusion when I reared my hand back. I wasn't sure if she'd heard me or if she'd finally noticed her powers were gone, but it didn't matter. She still caught me in the corner of her eye quick enough to turn my knockout haymaker into a glancing blow by trying to duck away from it. I switched targets from the back of her head to her face, but only managed to snap her nose instead of catching her in the cheek or jaw as intended.
She yelled, catching the attention of Emma and the rest of the crowd. Then she brought her arms up to block the backhand swing I launched from my overextended fist. I dropped a little lower, changing the angle of the attack to knock her arms up so I could pop her in the slightly crooked nose with a quick left jab from my other hand. This knocked her off balance and stunned her into dropping her food. It didn't take much more leaning forward to barrel into her stomach, pushing her at least a meter back before slamming her into the ground.
I had to hand it to her, even with the air knocked out of her, she put up more fight than expected. I was sitting on her thighs, slapping her hands away as quickly as I could, and I was still only hitting her with every third punch I'd intended to do damage with through her broken guard.
Emma screamed a few seconds into me pounding Sophia on the ground, and a quick glance caught her tossing a food tray aside and charging in to help. She didn't seem to know what she was doing, though. The angle was all wrong, and it was pretty easy to lean over and hunker down so that she just bounced off my shoulder instead of tackling me off her friend. With her stunned on the floor for a bit, I went back to pounding Sophia's face until she stopped fighting back.
This was it. I'd won. I'd finally beaten her at her own damn game, and… sitting here, huffing and staring down at her as she looked up at me with fear in her one good eye… it felt hollow. Wasn't there supposed to be some catharsis kicking in? It might not've been a fair fight, but I wasn't sure I'd win a fair fight without using whatever her power was. Sophia had done a lot over the past year and a half. She'd kicked me down, shoved and tripped and bruised me, bloodied and nearly broken my nose twice, and nearly knocked a tooth from my mouth on several occasions. She deserved this. She'd earned it. I raised my fist one final time…
My body sagged as I let it drop to my side. "I don't get you." I said. "Why is this fun for you?" Cape fights I could understand, those were exciting by default. Fighting someone who could fight back was a challenge, and I could understand that. Beating up normal people? Picking on nerds and lonely girls who didn't want to fight back? Why?
Her fearful eye turned defiant, and she spat a huge glob of blood and spit into my face. I brought an arm up to wipe it away from my eyes, which gave her time to punch me in my side. It hurt a lot, and I think she was aiming for my kidney, but it wasn't enough to knock me off of her even when she tried to kick me off of her legs. I grabbed her shoulders, reared back, and slammed my forehead into her jaw. I could feel her head bounce off the floor, and she stopped fighting again.
I swayed somewhat unsteadily to my feet, wiping at my eyes again. "You fucking bitch!" Emma called, warning me she was back up.
Her fist was coming at me, and I took a moment to watch it. It was an overhead strike, aimed to come down on me despite me being taller. Maybe because I was still hunched over? I stood up straighter, figured out where her hand was going, and caught her wrist and forearm in my hands. I'd only seen this in movies, but if I really was a bit stronger than I should be…
I ducked down, pulling her wrist and shoving my other hand into her gut. Then I heaved my shoulders up against her chest and threw her as hard as I could. I was disappointed when she didn't fly across the room, but she did land on a nearby table hard enough to break the top off its bolted-down stand. She landed in a groaning crumpled heap on the floor.
That was it, I supposed. The whole Winslow chapter of my life, capped off in one shitty, confusing, unsatisfying food court brawl. I was starting to get angry again, just from how cheated I felt. I was supposed to feel better, less sad, satisfied, vindicated, or something, but all I felt now was angry that I'd gotten into a stupid fight for dumb reasons and had nothing to show for it besides bruises forming on my knuckles and my side.
"STOP!" I stopped swaying and glanced to the side, to find an unremarkable overweight mall cop advancing on me, hands empty and held wide in front of him. I wasn't impressed. He was big, but not really a threat. "Okay, we're all calm here. We need to get medical attention for everyone before the situation gets any worse, and-" He lunged, and I flicked the new toggle in my brain. I was just too done with today to care enough to do anything else. He fell right through me, landing in a confused heap after tripping over Sophia. I'd known the power would keep me safe, but I hadn't known how.
I looked down and saw my hands looked like shadowy clouds in the brief moment before the power flickered off. Where had I seen these powers before? I was sure now that they were familiar, but…
Mutters in the crowd caused everything to snap into place. Shadow Stalker. Sophia was Shadow Stalker. Sophia was a Ward. Well… shit. I guess I was in more trouble than I thought.
The mall cop was crab-walking backward away from me, terrified of the cape he'd just tried to take down. A glance at the crowd showed they were backing off as well as they could with more rubberneckers behind them blocking their escape. Quite a few of them had phones out, and a couple were still pointed my way. Fuck.
I used the power to drop through the floor, and started jogging to the nearest ground-floor exit. My hood was still up, and I had to hope that was enough to hide my face. Stupid, stupid. There were enough people that I couldn't really run without knocking into someone, and people seemed happy to hop out of my way at the speed I was going. I pushed through the doors and started down the sidewalk at a brisk pace that I hoped didn't look like I was fleeing the scene.
Movement in the corner of my eye pulled my head to the side, and I stopped. The glass display window full of mannequins promoting one of the stores inside provided just enough reflection that I could see something was wrong with my face. I jogged over to the nearest parked car and stuck my head next to the door mirror.
My face was covered in blood. No wonder people were jumping out of my way, I looked like a serial killer. I pulled my hoodie up and started wiping it away. My skin looked a lot better, and the black barely showed the blood soaking into the cloth. Now I just had to get out of here… It was probably too much to ask for the bus to arrive before a search party found me, but I didn't have a better idea. I still had Sophia's power, and I could phase into a car… but while I knew how to hotwire a car, I didn't know how to hotwire a car. It'd take me several times longer to figure out which wires I needed than it would for the bus to show up. I couldn't trust running around checking cars for spare keys. I might be able to steal a bike… but motorcycles had the same issue, and I didn't see any bicycles to try and phase away from their locks. I vaguely recalled a bike shop in the area, but running around looking for that wasn't any better than the other options.
I was still powerwalking toward the bus stop when I felt a weight quickly coming up behind me. It was soon joined by the sound of a car engine growing closer. I adamantly refused to turn and look. Had to act cool. Pretend to just be a normal shopper. Just the average pedestrian, nothing to see here, nope. Certainly not a violent goth girl, face smeared with blood and black makeup, with a red wet spot on the front of her hoodie, no… not at all. I was panicking. I knew I was panicking. The car pulled up, squealing very briefly as it stopped. I couldn't help looking.
"Get in." Said the honey-blonde girl in the driver's seat. Her window was rolled down, she was thumbing over to the passenger seat, and she was glaring at me. Naturally, I immediately swapped her power for a blank before she could threaten me, or Master me, or whatever it was her power did. I also instantly regretted it.
Frustrated. Angry. Afraid. Afraid of you. Afraid of someone else. Afraid for her life. Feels unsafe. Feels threatened. Was threatened. Is threatened. Threat to her life. Threat related to you. Threatened by you. Afraid of you. Afraid for her life. Needed to find you, to avoid threat to her life. Threatened by someone looking for you. Threatened by a villain looking for you. Is a villain. Is a villain looking for you. Is working for a villain that is looking for you. Wanted to find you. Is afraid of you. Doesn't want to hurt you. Doesn't think she can hurt you. Is afraid of you. Is trying to help you. Thinks she needs to help you to stay safe from her boss who is threatening her. Is-
"Fuck!" I spat, shoving the power back into the girl's head. I started rubbing at my temple, where a needle was starting to grind its way into my brain.
The girl winced. "Don't do that." She hissed, also rubbing at her head. "Get in, or wait for the bus. Pick one, already."
I glared at her, and now that she wasn't glaring back, my first thought was that she was actually pretty cute. Bright green eyes, a little button nose, freckles for days, and her hair tied back into a fancy french braid. What I could see of her figure from the door was pretty appealing as well, hidden as it was by a thick sweater.
She glanced back at me, then rolled her eyes. "Or stand there ogling me, I'm sure we both have all day."
I blushed, marched around the car, and got in. She started driving at a relatively sedate pace, idly reaching across me to open the glove compartment without looking. Within was a gun, which she again reached past to grab the bottle of aspirin next to it. In a deft show of dexterity or a great deal of experience with pain management, she opened the bottle one-handed, poured three pills into her palm, re-closed the bottle, stuck it back where it was and closed the compartment, and then swallowed the pills dry. Her left hand never left the wheel. Maybe twenty seconds later, she seemed to remember that she had a cup of coffee sitting in the cupholders between us, and took a swig.
"Sooo…" I muttered, about when Sophia's power snapped back to her without my input.
"Fuck you." She spat half-heartedly. "Do you have any idea how long I've been looking for you? And the very first thing you do is give me a migraine."
I took a moment to collect my thoughts before I replied. "You were way too convenient."
"Coming out of nowhere, here to save you, knight in shining cadillac, and my reward is an ice pick. I get it. Really, I do." She gave me a venomous side-eyed glare for a moment, before wincing and sagging a bit. "At least I didn't put a gun to your head first."
The rueful way she said it made me think there was some history there. Maybe that boss of hers? "Who are you working for?"
"Coil." She spat, then a few moments later added, "Fuck that guy."
I thought back to what Dad' said about him. "Yeah, fuck that guy."
We drove in silence for a few minutes while I ruminated and she focused on controlling her headache. "Lisa." She stated into the silence. "So you can stop pronoun-gaming about me."
Lisa, then. "What is your power, anyway?"
"Sherlock Holmes on crack."
"Cocaine, actually." I prodded with a small smirk.
"Go fuck yourself." She jabbed back. "It connects dots. Sometimes the dots are wrong. Usually they're right, even when they have no business connecting from what I can see. I get a few hours a day out of it if I keep a handle on it. Or I could firehouse facts for a few minutes, which I learned not to do pretty damn quick." The last she hissed angrily, and I gave her a small apologetic smile. That was as close to saying sorry as I'd get, and I had a feeling she knew it. I had no way to know her power would do that, and had good reason to feel threatened by a cape rolling up and all but abducting me given my options at the time.
Quite frankly, if her own power hadn't stabbed my brain with the fact that she wanted to help me, and hated the boss that told her to look for me, I would be treating this as an abduction, just waiting for the first chance I could get to either run away from my captor or take her down somehow. "So, what now?"
She grimaced, not answering immediately. If I had to guess she was debating how much to lie to me, given the fact that I could- at any time- swipe her power back and spend a second or two sussing out if and to what degree she was lying. "I… need to choose. Between you and my boss. I need to know if you can take him down, and how much collateral damage I'll have to deal with if we do."
"If he's a cape, it should be as easy as finding him, unless he has an army of goons or something."
"The army of goons is going to be problematic, yes. I haven't managed to suborn nearly enough of them. He seems to notice half the time when I do, and shuffle employment around with other merc-using villains. His power shouldn't let him do that."
I opened my mouth, thought about it for a second, closed it, and finally clicked my tongue in thought to buy myself another moment to put thought to words. "Well, that sucks. What even is his power?"
"Some precog bullshit even he doesn't understand. Thinks he's the center of the universe, so of course his power creates and destroys universes." She scoffed. "I'm about eighty percent sure he just picks two choices, his power shows him both, and somehow that translates into him picking the one he likes and making it happen, all in a way that to him looks like he's living two lives and playing god with them."
"That doesn't sound so bad, but I'm sure there's context I'm missing for why that's terrible."
"Generally, if you target him at home, he'll actually be at his base playing Bond villain. If you assault his base, he'll be busy at work playing nice with the PRT. I don't know who he is, but I know he's got connections there. Makes the most sense if his connection is himself."
"If I didn't already have reasons to not like the PRT…"
"I know, right?" Lisa turned down a street that'd lead us closer to my bunker than the one we'd been on. Then she seemed to notice my apprehension about it. "So, where are we going?"
"We're far enough away now, I can get out whenever and be fine."
"Fair enough." She pulled over near another bus stop. "We should trade numbers, meet somewhere else once you've cleaned up." I hesitated again, not knowing if her boss had the tech or connections to track a phone just from its number. "Or at least take my number, and contact me an hour or so before you want to meet. I might be busy with my boss, but otherwise I can drop everything to be there. You can throw the burner out after you call- before we meet even- if you want."
I didn't have a good argument against that suggestion, and so I relented. Paranoid enough now to worry about Tinkertech trackers somehow working with pre-prepared ink or paper, I used a fingernail to scratch the number into the back of one of the receipts in my pocket. She just smiled condescendingly while watching me do so, since I knew if they were willing to go that far, they could probably leave a tracking fluid soaked into the seat cushion or something, and I was already fucked if so. Still, it made me feel a little better, and she didn't actually say anything about it.
We said our goodbyes, hers including a saucy wink that almost had me swapping her power back in to see if she was trying to play honeypot now that she knew I thought she was cute. I decided it wasn't worth the headache when I could just watch out for it either way, which just had her smirking wider.
She drove off, and I scrubbed at my face some more with a different part of my hoodie. Then I walked a few blocks to a different bus route, and continued riding near-randomly for another two hours, just in case I was being followed. By then my hunger was starting to get the better of me, and my skin still feeling grungy wasn't helping with that. So, I took a circuitous path back to the bunker to check in with my parents.
Tried to make the timeskip feel like time was skipped. Very much not the same Taylor we left off, she got worse over the next couple days, hit miserable rock bottom about the story thus far, and the parental units decided to do something about it. This is Taylor after about a month of recovery.
For those who got it, yeah. Jasmine Fenton. I needed a spare-apist, and the version of her from Queen Phantasm (Worm/Danny Phantom) came instantly to mind. It's still in very rough planning stages, despite the fact that I started planning it about two years before I started AT. It's likely still a close second for amount of planning behind it, after AT. I just wish I had a story arc planned for it, to make it feel worth writing. Incredibly pleased with the setting fusion, I just wish I had somewhere I wanted it to go past chapter three or so.
Oh well, plans for the future.
On Taylor's hair: she kept it long in canon as an homage to her mother. Short hair would have absolutely been easier to clean, take care of, and been less of an issue for potential physical bullying. This Taylor is still interested in connections with her mother, but it isn't the ironclad edict that was held to in fanon, not that I know how much of one it actually was canonically.
This Taylor, with her mother's support, is okay with cutting her hair. A lot of this story is just exploring what changes if Annette isn't some monolithic ideal the family holds on to out of grief.
Attention-seeking Goths: I've always considered myself a goth. I like dark shirts, dark shoes, dark pants, and being alone (most of the time). Usually I'm just wearing blue jeans and a black jacket, or a long-sleeved black button-up left open like a jacket over whatever shirt, if it's too hot for thick layers. Usually blue, gray, green, or occasionally red shirts under that. A splash of color to make the rest more ignorable. Because I liked dark clothes, but didn't want attention.
The people wearing designer blacks or lace or leathers, though? The ones in the dark makeup, screaming with their clothes and attitudes how different and sad and misunderstood they are? Nope. Those are the Goth Chic crowd. They want attention, usually so they can make a show of ignoring it. I have never understood those people. Busy being depressed and overstimulated by crowds over here.
Like, I tried it briefly in high school, thinking that was a way I could actually get chicks that wasn't too far out of my wheelhouse, but it never worked. I gave it up as too much effort pretty quick, and never really grokked the appeal.
For those worried about the depression, I am currently about as mentally healthy as I've ever been. Therapy, pills that seem to be working, physical therapy to try and get a leg up on starting exercise, trying (and not really succeeding) to eat better, hobbies other than reading fanfiction and vegetating to videos when I'm too melancholic to read…
I still need to be in a mood to write, which is why this has taken so long, but honestly I've been doing surprisingly well this year. Just need to steer myself back into writing more (which I hope has happened since writing this part of the AN, if I'm posting it.)
I added a bit of filler between arriving at the mall and getting to the food court, for pacing purposes. This tweaked the reveal just a little, and I already wasn't terribly happy with it.
Taylor needed to be angry enough to throw fists, but I didn't want it to feel like a berserk button. Might have been too long between mentioning the Winslow therapy talks and the rationalization to violence, but I don't think swapping things around would make those bits better.
The confrontation here was probably affected by me bungling the one in AT, writing myself into a corner and then, not being sure what to do with it, decided they just ran and left town rather than get bogged down trying to figure out something new for it that wouldn't mess up something else. So we get kung-fu 'beating the shit out of Sophia' action. Also further use of Taylor's weak Thinker powers, thinking faster when not moving and intrinsically understanding angles and trajectories. A pair of Thinker 1-2 powers that mesh into a solid 2-plus-ish when applicable.
Now, Emma and Sophia should be able to beat a Thinker 2. Sophia is a combatant trained to fight capes who has some manner of backup, that's solid best-a-3 territory, especially if Sophia used her power. However, not only were they ambushed, but the phasing got yoinked. Add in the Brute 1-2 rating, and Sophia stood very little chance even if she could start getting hits in.
(Rating of 1: lucky untrained civilians can probably handle this. Rating of 2: A large group of untrained civilians or a trained civilian can probably handle this. Rating of 3: a group of trained civilians (cops) or someone trained to fight capes can probably handle this. Rating of 4: a group of trained cape fighters (PRT) is required. Rating of 5: A group of specially trained and geared PRT troopers can handle this. 6+: some flavor of 'requires cape support')
Lisa was always going to show up soon, but original plans had her finding Taylor here and then tracking her for a few days now that she knows to check bus lines, cornering her in a less emotionally charged setting.
Then I decided that was pussyfooting and wordcount padding, and so here she is. Pacing for this story was always supposed to be pretty quick, it's partly an experiment to see if I can keep something to just novel length, and there are still a bunch of plot beats to hit along the way.
But I DO intend for there to be a bunch of these longer introspective segments to hopefully keep things from feeling too rushed.
I stuck this up for open beta in the discord for a couple days before posting it, but I'm not sure anyone actually looked at it. No feedback… must be good feedback? I dunno.
Patrons had access to it before anyone else, and if you want to nudge things while they're in progress that's the way to do it.
For those who got it, yeah. Jasmine Fenton. I needed a spare-apist, and the version of her from Queen Phantasm (Worm/Danny Phantom) came instantly to mind. It's still in very rough planning stages, despite the fact that I started planning it about two years before I started AT. It's likely still a close second for amount of planning behind it, after AT. I just wish I had a story arc planned for it, to make it feel worth writing. Incredibly pleased with the setting fusion, I just wish I had somewhere I wanted it to go past chapter three or so.
Oh well, plans for the future.
On Taylor's hair: she kept it long in canon as an homage to her mother. Short hair would have absolutely been easier to clean, take care of, and been less of an issue for potential physical bullying. This Taylor is still interested in connections with her mother, but it isn't the ironclad edict that was held to in fanon, not that I know how much of one it actually was canonically.
This Taylor, with her mother's support, is okay with cutting her hair. A lot of this story is just exploring what changes if Annette isn't some monolithic ideal the family holds on to out of grief.
Attention-seeking Goths: I've always considered myself a goth. I like dark shirts, dark shoes, dark pants, and being alone (most of the time). Usually I'm just wearing blue jeans and a black jacket, or a long-sleeved black button-up left open like a jacket over whatever shirt, if it's too hot for thick layers. Usually blue, gray, green, or occasionally red shirts under that. A splash of color to make the rest more ignorable. Because I liked dark clothes, but didn't want attention.
The people wearing designer blacks or lace or leathers, though? The ones in the dark makeup, screaming with their clothes and attitudes how different and sad and misunderstood they are? Nope. Those are the Goth Chic crowd. They want attention, usually so they can make a show of ignoring it. I have never understood those people. Busy being depressed and overstimulated by crowds over here.
Like, I tried it briefly in high school, thinking that was a way I could actually get chicks that wasn't too far out of my wheelhouse, but it never worked. I gave it up as too much effort pretty quick, and never really grokked the appeal.
For those worried about the depression, I am currently about as mentally healthy as I've ever been. Therapy, pills that seem to be working, physical therapy to try and get a leg up on starting exercise, trying (and not really succeeding) to eat better, hobbies other than reading fanfiction and vegetating to videos when I'm too melancholic to read…
I still need to be in a mood to write, which is why this has taken so long, but honestly I've been doing surprisingly well this year. Just need to steer myself back into writing more (which I hope has happened since writing this part of the AN, if I'm posting it.)
I added a bit of filler between arriving at the mall and getting to the food court, for pacing purposes. This tweaked the reveal just a little, and I already wasn't terribly happy with it.
Taylor needed to be angry enough to throw fists, but I didn't want it to feel like a berserk button. Might have been too long between mentioning the Winslow therapy talks and the rationalization to violence, but I don't think swapping things around would make those bits better.
The confrontation here was probably affected by me bungling the one in AT, writing myself into a corner and then, not being sure what to do with it, decided they just ran and left town rather than get bogged down trying to figure out something new for it that wouldn't mess up something else. So we get kung-fu 'beating the shit out of Sophia' action. Also further use of Taylor's weak Thinker powers, thinking faster when not moving and intrinsically understanding angles and trajectories. A pair of Thinker 1-2 powers that mesh into a solid 2-plus-ish when applicable.
Now, Emma and Sophia should be able to beat a Thinker 2. Sophia is a combatant trained to fight capes who has some manner of backup, that's solid best-a-3 territory, especially if Sophia used her power. However, not only were they ambushed, but the phasing got yoinked. Add in the Brute 1-2 rating, and Sophia stood very little chance even if she could start getting hits in.
(Rating of 1: lucky untrained civilians can probably handle this. Rating of 2: A large group of untrained civilians or a trained civilian can probably handle this. Rating of 3: a group of trained civilians (cops) or someone trained to fight capes can probably handle this. Rating of 4: a group of trained cape fighters (PRT) is required. Rating of 5: A group of specially trained and geared PRT troopers can handle this. 6+: some flavor of 'requires cape support')
Lisa was always going to show up soon, but original plans had her finding Taylor here and then tracking her for a few days now that she knows to check bus lines, cornering her in a less emotionally charged setting.
Then I decided that was pussyfooting and wordcount padding, and so here she is. Pacing for this story was always supposed to be pretty quick, it's partly an experiment to see if I can keep something to just novel length, and there are still a bunch of plot beats to hit along the way.
But I DO intend for there to be a bunch of these longer introspective segments to hopefully keep things from feeling too rushed.
I stuck this up for open beta in the discord for a couple days before posting it, but I'm not sure anyone actually looked at it. No feedback… must be good feedback? I dunno.
Patrons had access to it before anyone else, and if you want to nudge things while they're in progress that's the way to do it.
