Taylor soon settled into a routine. Wake up, eat, go to school, eat, come home from school, eat, undergo her PRT sponsored training, eat, shower, go to bed. Her dad visited most evenings, keeping her apprised of the ongoing renovation of the house, the investigations, and how the Union has a significant amount of work because of her rampage – at least that's what Blackwell's lawyers were calling it – through her former and alleged high school.
This evening, she had her first session with a PRT trainer in both
tai-chi and
aikido, something that would hopefully help her with her control and flexibility. That way she wouldn't be punching people through whatever available surface all the time, only when some brute needed it.
Right now in Brockton Bay, that was very few people. She had to be careful with most of the local brutes, because Dauntless, Aegis and Triumph all seemed kinda fragile. Vicky and a few others could take one of her punches (or so the testers claimed), and she didn't want to find out how durable Hookwolf or Fenja and Menja were, nor Lung. Not without assurances that seemed very unlikely.
It hadn't taken PHO long before a Juggernaut (the name PHO had given her after surprisingly little debate, along with a warning that making boob jokes about that name would be frowned upon) vs. <Insert Villain Here> thread to have started up. Right now, they were going back and forth about her versus the Protectorate in a sparring match. Assault with his kinetic control was seen so far as the most likely to beat her in a match, with a side-thread spawned to argue over some supposedly relevant math details. Both she and Assault agreed that if he won it would be because of the latter's experience and skill. If power alone was the deciding factor, he'd lose.
She made her way from her apartment – it was her last week in it – down to the locker room adjacent to Training Room Two. She changed into her workout clothes and headed out into the room. Three people were already there chatting. Neil Pelham – Manpower – was well known to residents of Brockton Bay, and was one of the few people in the city taller than her. With him was Vicky. And the third person was apparently their instructor.
"You must be Taylor?" the woman asked. At Taylor's nod, she continued. "I'm Julia Caine. I'm not terribly formal, so any combination of
Sensei Julia Caine is fine." The woman was slightly above average height, leaving her still more than a foot shorter than Taylor. Her black hair was cut short and neat, and her brown eyes were alert. She was wearing typical workout clothes, loose fitting and comfortable.
"I've asked Mr. Pelham to assist mainly because he's more your size, which makes things easier to start with."
"Vicky's told me about you," Neal said, extending a hand for a handshake. "I had problems keeping my strength under control at the start, but managed to get a handle on it through martial arts."
Taylor took the offered hand and shook it carefully.
"Everyone here is a brute of some kind," Julia continued. "I'm more defensive than strength and not powerful enough for the Protectorate, and you already know about Glory Girl and Manpower.
"With introductions out of the way, let's begin by warming up..." Taylor was soon introduced to the warm up stretches and the initial positions of
taijiquan.
- - - - -
After doing the warm up exercises, she was introduced to the basics of
aikido. And the mats. Several times. Taylor knew why she was going through this, but getting thrown by not only Manpower but by the instructor multiple times without achieving anything was beginning to make her upset... And realization dawned that this was
another part of the training. Discipline to keep her temper.
She pushed back up to her feet, took a deep breath, and exhaled. A couple of breaths later, she resumed her stance.
Julia nodded approvingly as she got back up. "Now here's how you avoid that," she said, and ran her through how not to get thrown every time. Slowly and carefully they went through the
kata, and soon Taylor was only being thrown every other attempt.
She'd take whatever steps forward she could get, since it meant failing less. And Vicky made a very satisfying whump when she hit the mat. Even better, the blonde didn't complain about it.
- - - - -
Around the PRT building in Brockton Bay, there were several cafes, fast food eateries and actual restaurants, all catering to the workers in the buildings nearby. Sometimes a few PRT workers would stop in for a meal before or after their shifts, but on-duty personnel used the cafeterias in the building.
One of these was a place called
Brockton Brews, who served some of the best coffee in the city and had some decent baked goods to go with it. Sitting at a table that had a very good view of the front of the PRT building was a rather good looking young woman enjoying her morning coffee and muffin. She was dressed in casual clothes like most young women who were between high school and college age, and mainly – like any number of ever-present cape fans – watching the coming and going of people from the PRT campus.
She ignored most of what her power was telling her; about the petty affairs, bank account details, who was lusting after whom. Occasionally a few tangential details about PRT operations, but nothing really major. Her boss had better sources of intel than her for that.
No, her boss wanted her to get information on any new parahumans in the Bay.
Like that obvious brute who'd been living in the PRT apartment block for the last two weeks. The girl was huge, and as Alec had snarkily said, "Obvious brute is obvious." She was a couple years younger than herself, only just being a sophomore in high school.
Sure enough, the girl was right on time, coming out of the door to the building several minutes before the bus arrived that would take her to Arcadia. She let her power analyze the girl, getting the usual sputtering, erratic results she had the last two times. However, turning her power on what the girl was
doing gave more accurate information.
Subject showing greater control of strength, some improvement in flexibility. Not breaking furniture constantly. Worried about her family. She typed that into her phone; it was something the boss would be interested in knowing.
The girl managed to squeeze herself onto the bus, taking a seat in the area normally reserved for people with disabilities because that's the only place she'd fit. The bus then drove off, and Lisa decided she needed to move on instead of hanging around the rest of the morning like yesterday. Wouldn't want to get too predictable in her patterns.
She finished her coffee and muffin before leaving for her next assignment of the day, which would be going over the data she'd collected overnight and coming up with a report.
While walking, she considered the matter of her boss. He'd put their little team of capes together and pointed them at various targets. He'd supply some resources for them, and allowed them to keep a percentage of any assets confiscated.
She'd never met him in person. She knew he had hired a lot of mercenaries, who performed small precise operations in the region. A number of these had been directed towards any or all of the three main gangs in the city. Their own jobs were pointed at small-time crooks and minor parahumans, with the occasional poke at the main villains.
The boss had made good on some of his promises and was clearly working on the rest. Brian had an official and above-board job and was getting help on getting custody of his sister; their mother was being investigated by CPS. She and Alec had basically been given new identities, and Rachel was having her case looked into. So far, enough evidence had been uncovered that they might get her involuntary manslaughter charge reduced or thrown out.
Life was good, thought Lisa Wilbourn.
I just hope the doom chicken doesn't drop the other shoe from orbit.
- - - - -
From another vantage point, someone else was watching, too. Victor had noted the first appearance of the excessively large teenager when she had debuted on PHO, having proven to be unstoppable by Shadow Stalker, who had been a minor thorn in the Empire's side. Now he was following up, trying to predict which way she'd move.
Kaiser had said that as a small favor to the girl, for whom the unwritten rules were nearly tracing paper transparent, they wouldn't go to any lengths to determine who her parents were, nor make a recruitment attempt. She had, after all, dealt with one of the Empire's problems. Victor suspected Kaiser also didn't want the girl doing anything similar to her debut to an Empire cape.
"This is hilarious," Victor muttered as he closed the curtain and put down his binoculars.
"How so?" his wife asked, from where she worked at a computer in the small office.
"OK, you've got a girl who triggered. As part of her trigger, she had a growth spurt. To the point where she can't realistically have a secret identity," Victor explained. "Because it makes putting her civilian identity and cape identity together ridiculously easy."
"Dear, didn't Max tell us not to go looking for her identity?"
"For her
family. Nadine, how many nearly seven foot tall teenagers are there in Brockton Bay?"
Nadine typed something into her computer. "There are currently two. One is a girl, Taylor Hebert. The other is a young man, David Atwell. Panacea will be treating him for a recently diagnosed tumor in his pituitary gland." Nadine realized what she'd just done, and facepalmed.
"That was far too easy," she muttered.
"I think the only people who may not know who she is," Victor continued, leaning back in his chair, "are the Merchants because they're just that oblivious. She hasn't gone out as a cape yet, so we're not going to bother her. And if she doesn't target Empire interests, probably not after, either."
"So how soon until Brad sticks his foot in it again?" Nadine asked.
"Hopefully not for a while," Victor answered. "Coil's men gave him a pretty stern warning the last time. He's still healing from taking a sniper's bullet through his right eye. Max has just about had it with his lack of discipline."
= = = = =
"So Taylor?" one of her classmates asked.
"Yes?"
"You think about going out for any sports?"
She sighed; she had known this question was coming. Fortunately, she had a ready made answer, and the best part of all was that it was mostly true. "A certain track star at Winslow kind of turned me off to the whole sports thing," she explained. "Also against doctor's orders. So, yeah, no sports for me for a while. Unless there's a tiddlywinks team?" Left unsaid was the fact the school knew she was a parahuman, and as such, was not allowed in competitive sports activities. It wasn't like there were too many other students with similar restrictions. Mainly Vicky and Amy, even though the latter wasn't a brute.
She could do laps around the track and other non-competitive activities, and did her warmups (Julia-
sensei had stressed the importance of stretching and warmups. Also, to quote Vicky, "Cramps suck.") with everyone else. She still had to do the basic physical fitness assessment, too, if only to prove that somehow her quite visible physique actually did what it was supposed to instead of being just for show. For deniability there was a cap on lifting, and she got to practice making it look harder than it was.
After warm-up, she would either do her yoga exercises, or help the coach keep score or time or anything else needed for whatever competitions were going on.
She was not looking forward to the swimming portion of PE, something she
was allowed to participate in because there wouldn't be any racing unless you tried out for the school team, just individual evaluations. She didn't know whether or not her new body would sink or be able to float or if her power would do something peculiar. Something she'd better find out – in private. Hopefully she could schedule some testing time in the PRT gym.
- - - - -
Done with school for the day, and having said goodbye to Vicky and Amy, Taylor got off the bus at the public library. She needed to use the reference section for some homework, and then spend some time on the computers looking things up and reading her email. Hopefully, she could find a phone large enough for her much larger hands so she didn't risk breaking the library's computers. Sure, she had a stylus so she could hunt-and-peck without hitting the wrong keys, but she used to be a touch typist, damnit.
Her few inquiries were soon complete. She was going to meet her father and they would be going to dinner at Tony's tonight, a nice family run Italian restaurant a couple blocks away from the PRT building. Her martial arts class was before dinner, so she could get that done and have a nice evening with her father.
Then, from somewhere in front of her, she heard an unbelievably loud engine and people yelling and shouting in a panic. Not close and no visible cause, so she only slowed slightly as she continued walking forwards towards her destination when she was suddenly faced with something that looked like it might have started off life as a commercial truck, and now resembled something you might have seen in that Mad Max movie. The only thing she could do was cover her face with her arms before the road-going terror hit her.
There was a brief flash of crimson…