Alright. Ok. So I have powers now. Incredible.
Sure would have been great if those powers included flight, or super strength, or any strength at all. I hate this wheelchair. I must be the only wheelchair-bound cape in the whole east coast. Ugh. Why couldn't I be like Alexandria? I remember when I used to play pretend I always wanted to be Alexandria, and Emma –
emma.
It's so hard to think straight, when I keep running into her in my head.
But still,
powers. And it's not like I'll be stuck in this wheelchair forever. The physical therapist said it should be another month, and I'll be moving like my old self, but it feels so hard to believe. The mirror still showed little more than a skeleton with skin, the few times Dad wheeled me within view. So anyways, I have opportunities, now. Leverage, power. Hell, I could be a hero! What a thought, weak as I am. A hero. Can't fight criminals the regular way, of course – I'm not any better at that than anyone else – but just imagine what it would do to the E88 or Lung, if their phones, their computers, their bank accounts even, all report to me. What I could do to Sophia and Emma and Madison, if their emails danced to my – no. That's wrong. That's wrong, even though I want to so much, see them
suffer NO. I will not lash out.
If nothing else, I definitely can't afford to get
caught.
No matter what I do, everything I do is going to be a crime – vigilantism at best. I'm nowhere near ready to be a hero yet. I have so much preparation to do. How do I even be a hero like this? Hell, it's not like I can just waltz up to a mugger and – what – know who is boss is and ban his twitter account unless he puts his hands behind his back? No. I can't be that kind of hero, I can't be out in the streets, visible. Wait, I
really can't be visible, wow. I could be
such a good villain if captured and forced. I could log into a bank account and move money around, deleting the records of the transactions as I go. I could hack any secure website, change any data pretty much anywhere – I can't afford to be a target, ever.
(I could do those things even without a gun to my head.)
I ignored the part of me that whispered that, and pulled out a pad of paper to figure out what kind of hero I
can be.
Potential uses for power:
- Use my organizational analysis to find the locations of important parts of the gangs
- Use my organizational analysis to find moles in the heroes
- Use my organizational analysis to keep the peace in friendly orgs
- Hack the gangs and criminals to find their secrets
I hesitated a moment. But it
was a potential use.
- Hack financial organizations for resources
And, I guess to assuage my conscience,
- Hack and administrate social media sites for fun and games
Hey, I know how to have fun. Fun is when you harmlessly but annoyingly tease the moderators.
Ok, wait. I guess I should have expected this, but all the uses of my analysis power are on the side of good, and all the uses of my admin privileges are on the side of – well, let's call it self-interest. Maybe I should just avoid using my admin powers? Probably. So, I have an analysis power that seems to work on, well, any system. It worked on the school's administration, it worked on my family, it worked on all those websites. I can recognize which organizations someone belongs to, and see where they are based. Hell, once I connected to the websites, I could see
all the connections. I can work with that.
But. Not alone.
If I'm alone, I can see all that, but I can't do anything about it. I need a team, and I need the team to need me. New Wave's great, but secrecy? Not their thing. No, if I want to help the Bay with this, there's only one place to go. Only one team that can keep me secret and protect me, all at the same time. And if I want their help, Dad will have to know.
It was as I was having that thought that I heard Dad shout "Little owl, I hope you like slightly burnt meatballs on overcooked pasta!" I smiled, but it was a bit forced. I don't know why, but it was like pulling nails, this moment before I would tell him. Not the metal kind. I'd already bared my soul to him once this week, and I know, it was relief, like dropping a heavy backpack to the floor. But this moment before, this instant before he knew all my secrets, it
hurt.
And I don't like overcooked pasta, either.
So when he opened his mouth to ask how my afternoon was, I
almost didn't interrupt him.
"Dad."
He was suddenly worried, I almost chickened out right then. "Yes, Taylor?"
"Dad, I think I have powers."
Credit to him, he only froze completely for ten seconds.
He whispered. "Was it the locker?"
What? He must have seen my look of confusion, since he elaborated.
"You know Mom used to run with Lustrum, right? She told me how capes are made. One awful day, the worst day of your life, the peak of every bad experience all rolled into one, and in that horrible instant, you might get powers. Mom never heard what Lustrum's was, most capes don't talk about it. Makes sense, it's the biggest trauma of anyone's life. But the rumor in the movement was it involved some piece of human garbage who didn't hear the word "no", or didn't care. They never found his body.
So, you don't have to tell me what it was, but I'm guessing it was in the locker."
It made a lot of sense, but I'd come this far. I couldn't lie now.
"No, dad. Not the locker. It was today, at the meeting. When Blackwell decided it was me."
I'd only seen that look of incandescent fury on his face a few times before. When I'd told him about the locker, when a mugger made a suggestive comment about me, that road rage incident when that awful driver decided he'd rather take it out on the driver's daughter than on Dad himself. The mugger hadn't died when Dad was done with him, and the driver hadn't either – although everyone else on the freeway had sworn up and down that Dad hadn't touched the guy, and Dad would never say anything about it, I remember that day. I watched it all. How had I forgotten that Dad's temper wasn't copper, a friendly brown made green with age, but magnesium, slow to ignite but brighter than the sun itself?
He'd
always protect me. I felt warm.
But probably also I'd need to stop him from killing Blackwell.
"Dad, do you want to know what my power is?"
It was blatantly obvious that I was trying to calm him down, and I could see that he could see it. It worked anyway. He took a breath, took another. Nodded.
"I can see the structure of systems. Any system. Like, in the parking lot, when I looked at the school, I could see where the center of the administration was. Pretty sure it was Blackwell's office. And when I look at you, I can see the structure of our family, I can see the link between us and I can see what's wrong between us, and kind of how to fix it. And when I browse the internet, I can see
so much."
He clearly didn't know what to do with that. I'd never heard of capes that couldn't fight with their powers somehow, and from the look on his face, neither did he.
"Wait, so, nothing you can fight with? You're not going to try and sneak out and clean up the city?"
And get yourself shot went unsaid and clearly heard, from the tension in his shoulders. I wanted that to go away, so I laughed.
"Of course not, Dad! I also have another part to my power, but I can't use it to fight. I have some kind of admin access to every website I connect to. Like, if I am using the computer and I open up PHO, then not only can I see the whole branching network of servers and computers behind it and understand all of it, but I can edit it and change it. Doesn't work with anything else, though, just computers. But I'm not going costumed, creeping into the night. That would be insane, with my power. I figured it out quick, what I need to do."
He didn't look quite satisfied that the passivity of my power was the
only thing keeping me from risking my life, but that's Dad. And I could tell he wanted to ask, so I preempted him
"You're joining the Wards." "I'm joining the Wards."
Huh, we said it at the same time. He was grinning at me, and after a moment I noticed I was grinning at him.
"But. Dad. This is serious, now. I'm pretty sure my power has the potential to clean out every mole in every heroic organization, and if it can do that it can do it for villains too. Not to mention that if I can hack anything, then I can hack
anything. We can't ever let any villains know what I can do. They'll
want me. So don't go calling the PRT after dinner, or anything. Don't do anything. I bet you the PRT has leaks in it, I bet you everyone does. We need to do this carefully. I keep having these horrible images in my head, where you're kidnapped to make me rob a banking system, or I'm kidnapped and forced to ferret out moles in the E88, or terrible other things. So I've got to be a
secret. Ok, Dad?"
Now he looked green. Okay, maybe he's a little bit copper, too. Bimetallic.
He nodded, and we finished dinner. We talked it over and made a plan. Tomorrow would be a busy day.
For now? More physical therapy. I'll walk soon, I know it.
