Thanks Juff.
—
They bought her a plane ticket. They bought her a plane ticket, a hotel, got her a rental, and gave her an advanced check. Just to come in and discuss her powers with them. This America had a total of four capes —she was number five— and they wanted to know what she could do. All she had to do was send them a small plate of graphene, for which she had been reimbursed. She was now a moderately rich woman.
That all would have been amazing, except the first question was:
"Did you participate in the Gold Morning?"
Oh what a question that was.
"Yes, I'm originally from Earth Bet."
"We were aware of that; your father applied for asylum on his arrival. The portal was only active for a few weeks but it was difficult to ignore as whoever opened it put it right on the White House's lawn."
She snorted at that, and the government employee, Sarah, let a small smile appear on her face.
"We won't ask in what way you participated. There was very little loss of life on this Earth but from the stories we've heard from the thirty thousand refugees we know it was… harrowing. The accounts of the being that took the fight to Scion were enough to make me lose a couple nights of sleep."
Oh God.
"So what can you do?"
"Um… I have a multi-dimensional Shaker effect that translates certain kinds of positive and negative emotion into the ability to create substances. I have only just begun to explore the limits, as my power is very new and I just woke up from a coma. I was injured during Gold Morning."
"Is that what happened to your arm?"
She looked at the stump, almost having forgotten it was there.
"Yes." It was as good an answer as any really.
"So put it in layman's terms for me."
"If people thank me for something, even something I did in the past, I gain a charge, which is stored in a pocket universe. I can retrieve the charge from the pocket universe and create things from it. I also have a thinker power that allows me to intrinsically understand bureaucracy and paperwork, legal or otherwise."
Sarah nodded at her. "It's not the weirdest power we've heard of. It's not even scary, which is a big improvement over some we've heard."
Nope. Not terrifying at all. Utterly normal, believe it!
"So if I say: 'Thank you Taylor for taking your time to come out here.' Does that work?"
It did.
"Yes. That works just fine. I know it's multi-dimensional because a friend I had on Bet, who is on some other world now, recently thanked me in her memory for helping her out of a jam."
"Can you demonstrate?"
"More graphene?"
"If it's no trouble?"
Taylor chuckled a bit. No big deal, just dropping millions of dollars of material on a desk.
She reached and pulled some Ambrosia out of her Sanctum.
The government worker blanked out for a second. "Woah."
Oh right, mere mortals had that kind of reaction to it. She twisted her will against it — graphene wasn't necessarily hard but it was a specific configuration of something simple. She smoothed out the Ambrosia in the air and willed it into shape.
"There you are."
"I'll have the boys check this one out in the lab too."
"Of course."
"How much charge do you have right now?"
"Not much."
Huge lie.
"Okay, can you demonstrate your paperwork power to me?"
Taylor grinned.
"You work in an office of sixteen people. They all answer to a small office based out of the Pentagon, and while there is no direct chain to the military your department chair speaks to the Air Force Chief of Staff regularly in an oversight capacity. There are sixteen hundred pertinent regulations and directives that you fall directly under, most of them falling under the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act, but the rest are all directly tied with a new law pertaining to cape identities being legal entities, modeled after Bet's policy but not identical."
"Huh. Could you tell me what those regulations are?"
"A new regulation was created this morning. One I think is in direct response to me. New cape identities are also inherently businesses and bank accounts can be established that are tied to the new identity."
Sarah shuffled some papers around and pulled out a brief. Taylor took it from her hands and said, "This document details the talks with the US military on whether incorporating willing capes into the regular service structure as Warrant Officers would be a wise course of action."
"And you didn't even open it. Spoiler alert: It'd be a stupid idea."
Taylor nodded. "It would, Bet didn't because it would have become an arms race."
"Basically our argument too. Ideally we can direct capes to productive ends in infrastructure or law enforcement."
"Well, you don't have Endbringers here, so that sounds like an excellent plan."
Sarah paused. "It's hard to imagine. Were they really that bad?"
"They lived up to their titles. But at the very end they allied with humanity. It's strange."
"Even monsters don't want the world to end."
"Well… not most monsters. Bet had the kind of monsters that did want it to end. Bet was the kind of place where certain people wagered on which town the Slaughterhouse Nine would completely wipe out next. Sorry, that's pretty heavy"
Sarah chuckled, shifting with some noticeable discomfort. "I brought it up. The appearance of capes here has led to some worry that Endbringers might appear here as well."
"It would be unlikely. None of the other worlds Bet knew about ever had Endbringers."
"But now Bet is gone."
Taylor sucked in a breath.
"Oh, I'm sorry. That was thoughtless."
"No, it's fine. It just seems like a dream sometimes. I mean I was put in a coma during the end of the world and woke up in an America. It's… weird, and sometimes it's easy to forget this isn't my world. Bet wasn't a nice place, but even towards the end we still had shopping malls; it was still the United States. Though missing River City."
Sarah grinned. "And what a terrible loss."
"They're as bad as college football fans there."
Taylor grinned as Sarah laughed.
When did I become personable?
Taylor's eyes' widened. Sarah liked Khepri. She could feel the latent appreciation lingering now that she focused.
"So what do you plan on doing next?"
Taylor pretended to think it over for a moment. "I'm going to start a charity."
"A charity?"
"Oh yes, you see the kind of thanks matters. If someone pays me for something, they are thankful, but it's a transaction. If I give them something it's true gratefulness. I'm going to become a CPA. I've got a spot set out, since the boys in white coats are paying me for that"—she gestured to the graphene—"and I'll build a nice little building and start by balancing people's books. My power makes it really easy."
"Oh. Well… that's very kind."
Ha. Yeah. Kindness.
"I just have a feeling that it's going to be the start of something truly great."
—
Taylor shuffled around the small office, making the room appear as if she actually took time keeping it clean. She checked the calendar again; her next interviewee was coming soon. She needed help after the last month. She was maybe a bit too good at her charity work and was running out of hours in the day.
The knock came and she startled. She rushed to her chair and smoothed the papers around, quickly glancing down at the name again. Riley Davis; that name sounded familiar. She shrugged it off and said, "Come on in."
Maybe I should have opened the door for her.
The door opened and Taylor's brain stopped entirely.
"What the fuck!"
The young woman blinked in shock. "I'm sorry?"
Taylor's eyes traveled down her, taking in the woman's appearance.
"Are you from Bet?"
"Um… no?"
Holy shit!
"You look like someone I knew from there."
"Oh, was it a superhero?" The girl seemed excited and Taylor bit her lip.
"Um…"
Well this is an interview, lets see what she says.
"A villain. You even have the same name."
Her hand shot to her mouth. "Oh? Um… is that a problem?"
"No? Just caught me by surprise."
The girl composed herself and quickly rushed into the chair. "Tell me about her."
The statement was strangely demanding and Taylor found she couldn't really help herself.
"She was named Bonesaw."
"Oh god! I heard about her. How? I would never! "
"Do you know how people get powers?"
She shook her head.
"Something really, really bad has to happen to you. Imagine the worst day of your life, then distill it, concentrate it, boil it down into all of its worst parts and then multiply it over and over until it blots out everything good that has happened to you and could ever happen to you, then smear it all over, staining it all in that same dark color, and then you might be granted a superpower."
Riley paled. "I won't ever ask what happened to you."
"You're hired."
—
AN: I look forward to the meeting of the mirrors one day.
