So, first snippet thing. Also it's really bad, but what the hell. Rune!Taylor (possibly with a snarky sidekick, at the end).
"I'm sorry Ms. Hebert, but you won't be allowed to make up the test." Mr. Gladly said, "If you want to skip class, try to make sure it's not on a test day next time."
I was unsure whether I wanted to scream, or cry. My freshman year wasn't even over yet, and it everything had gone wrong. "I wasn't skipping," I protested, trying to keep my voice even, "I got locked in the bathroom, and they wouldn't let me out!"
"Locked in a bathroom?" Mr. Gladly asked, his lips pursed nervously, "By who?"
"Sophia and Emma!" Only a hair beneath a shout, and those students who had yet to leave for their next hour looked up at us. Already I could tell, there was no point in this conversation. What I had seen for the past hundred times was already playing out again.
"Ah, well, that is a very serious accusation." Mr. Gladly awkwardly looked away from me, and the urge to shout only rose. At the first mention of their name, he's already prepared to overlook it! "Of course, you have to realize, it's just your word against theirs."
He spread his hands and tried to grin, but it just seemed forced. He kept talking, but I was already leaving. He wasn't going to do anything, he never did.
Halfway to my next class, I stopped.
Today was already ruined. What was the point of staying? As long as I was here with them, the Trio would just find a way to make it worse. It wouldn't even be hard to leave, skip for real.
As the bell rang, the hallways mostly emptied themselves. Mostly because if the gang kids started a fight, it would be between hours. Perhaps the only lucky thing about today was that no one else was around to see me as I walked through the halls, doing my best to keep in the tears.
It hadn't been so long ago that Emma had been my friend - my best friend. When Mom and I got in a car crash, Emma had been one to console me when Mom didn't make it. When Dad was falling apart, she got me to stay over at her house, and helped me learn to use my left hand, while my right was in a cast.
Now? She was practically my own personal demon.
"You're getting called out?" I was jarred out of my musings by the person I was thinking of. I had almost turned the corner blindly into Sophia and Emma.
"Yeah, they're outside waiting" Sophia said as she took a black duffel bag out of her locker. Gym clothes, maybe? "I mean, I don't even know why I have to go to these kind of things. They're such a waste of time."
"Hey, they're just trying to get back at you," Emma replied, "I mean, none of them have capture rates as high as Shadow Stalker."
Shadow Stalker? Why did Emma mention the new Ward?
"You know it. Not even the rest of the Wards combined." I could practically hear the grin on Sophia's face as she responded.
The idea that crept up on me made my stomach sink, and I couldn't help but feel sick. A metallic glint caught my eye as the two girls talked.
Nestled in Sophia's duffel bag was a mask. A stern faced woman that I recognized.
I fell to my knees, unable to believe.
Shadow Stalker was Sophia? That thug who had bullied me for the last eight months, who had stolen Emma and my mother's flute from me? I wanted to scream, yell at how unfair it was. My fists clenched at my side, I wanted to walk up next to her and pu-
My vision exploded, stretched into infinity and back.
I felt the ground beneath me, where the tiles were held together by grout, and where they touched the concrete below. It was like knowing where your hand was, even if it was too dark to see it.
"Sophia? What happened, did you trip or something?"
More by instinct than anything else I pulled at those tiles, yanked them towards me. As they tore themselves from the ground and floated in the air, my mind drifted dimly upon what had happened.
"Holy shit, Hebert?" Sophia yelled, fumbling for something in her duffel bag. "You're a fucking cape?"
I was a parahuman.
It didn't matter that Sophia fucking Hess was a Ward, and that everyone turned a blind eye to how she was nothing but a thug. I dragged myself to feet, and even more tiles burst upwards and floated around me. My power - I had a power - lifted them and I knew that with just a nudge I could send them flying in any direction I wanted.
"Hey, didn't you hear me!" When had Sophia gotten out a crossbow? "I said step back and put those on the ground!" She punctuated her demand with a shake of the weapon, already loaded with a bolt.
Fury rushed through me, who did she think she was? Her finger trailed towards the trigger and I threw a hand out towards her. My power responded, launching the suspended tiles at her.
Sophia - Shadow Stalker really, I supposed - fired a bolt and without really thinking about it I nudged one of the tiles into its path. The tile shattered as it knocked the bolt out of the way, leaving behind a handful of floating ceramic pieces.
The other eight tiles didn't get stopped. Sophia threw herself to the side and flickered into some kind of shadowy gas. It didn't matter. I put my hand on the brick wall of the school.
Sophia had come out of her shadow state and fired again. The wall flew apart, bricks tearing apart from the mortar they were set in, and one of them caught the bolt. Through the newly made hole in the wall, I could see outside. A dozen PRT officers raised containment foam launchers and fired.
Were they waiting for Sophia? Who warned them?
In the face of a dozen armed men, I panicked. All I could do was imagine Dad's face when they called him to see his daughter in jail.
My power reacted anyways.
The bricks floating around me pushed in front of me, and the containment foam splashed on them harmlessly. I tore at the ground beneath me, pulled frantically with my power.
I strained, and for a moment nothing happened. Then suddenly, violently, the block of concrete ripped itself from the ground and carried me upwards.
I didn't look back.
**
Some part of me wanted to go back and find Sophia, then finish our fight.
Every rational bone in my body screamed that was a terrible idea. The idea of braining Sophia, and possibly Emma and Madison too, with a brick or two was a nice one though.
When I fled, I hadn't really thought ahead. My first reaction was to head home, but that probably would've ended with a PRT squad knocking on my door. Or maybe with the Protectorate knocking my door down.
So instead of going home, or trying to find Dad, I just kind of… wandered. I ended up landing in one of the more abandoned parts of the Docks, I stuck to the more deserted alleys and side streets while I flexed my power.
Anything I could touch, I could lift and move around, and the time limit on it was at least a half hour long. I hadn't really tested range or weight limitations yet, although I did manage to move that dumpster.
Eventually though, I ended up tossing garbage at a wall, imagining that it was Sophia's face. I had checked the area earlier, and couldn't find anyone living around here anymore. As far as I could tell, it used to be an apartment complex, if a small one. Between the Dockworkers who would've lived here losing their jobs, and the ABB and Merchants struggling over territory, it really wasn't a wonder that an old building like this was abandoned.
"Hey there," a voice behind me called. I spun around, startled, and my floating array of old beer bottles and rocks swung around with me. Down the alley, having just come out of the stairwell exit of the apartment, was a boy. He didn't look much younger than me, although that might've been the fact I was pretty tall, He had that kind of pretty boy face, and curly black hair. "What have you got against my wall?" He asked.
I was split between just running and hoping he wouldn't remember my face, and sticking around to make sure he wouldn't tell anyone. Before I could really decide on either of them, he continued talking.
"Oh, my bad, I didn't introduce myself. Call me Alec-" He flourished a hand and my left arm spasmed at my side, "-Or Regent."
(Also, True Survivor is too beautiful for this world. "ERROR: HACKED TOO MUCH TIME".
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