Fragmentation 1.1
Taylor wasn't sure what to think of her powers. On one hand it got her away from what she considered to be a place 'not to be mentioned ever again', but on the other it was really fucking weird. At the moment, Taylor had no idea how her powers were related to one another. She knew that most parahumans generally had one or two powers, and she had initially thought of herself as a Brute after head-butting herself out of her locker and not wincing in pain. Maybe she could fly as well?
However, as she was stepping out of the locker, she stepped on one of the bugs that had been… present… and something popped out its body.
Its tiny, cockroach, body.
It had looked like a first-aid kit, about the size of a tissue box, but when she went to pick it up to examine it, it vanished. With it, the worst of her injuries.
"I make healing boxes," Taylor murmured to herself "that come from killing bugs?"
But then, her power's oddity presented itself to her again, and after killing a few more bugs, this time on purpose, a wrench appeared.
"What."
Taylor wasn't exactly sure what had startled her more after the wrench popped into existence; the wrench teleporting to her hand, the janitor opening the door to her left, or the fact that she was in front of her house five seconds later.
After cartwheeling away.
"What."
Taylor had decided that night to ignore her power's oddities, as she looked at the puddle that had formed on her way home, in favor of going to sleep. She knew her dad would understand. He always told her the value of a good night's sleep.
Dad had been the one to pull her together after mom's death. Once he realized that she was in as much, or perhaps more, pain, he had changed from(and there really wasn't a nicer way to think this) a moping wreck, to an irreplaceable pillar of support.
His change might have also had to do with the Boat Graveyard being melted by an anonymous cape a few days after her mother's death. The ABB had claimed that Lung had done it to foster goodwill in the city after one of his rampages had hit a hospital in the Chinatown district, but her father had always said the crime lord had never cared about the city before and likely hadn't done it. Even with the threat of Leviathan lurking beneath the waves, the open sea had added a boost to the economy that had been desperately needed, and jobs began to open up. After the majority of the Dockworkers became employed, her dad's mood had skyrocketed, and he crawled out of the pit he had been in after the car crash.
She knew he genuinely cared for her well-being, even after he'd discovered she'd been hiding something about her status at school. She also understood he respected her privacy, even if it conflicted with her grades. But keeping powers from him was different than hiding some bullying. She was far more reluctant to reveal when she got powers than the fact that she had them in the first place.
Skipping over the rotted step they never replaced, Taylor creaked open the front door to find her father staring at her. Moments from stuttering out explanations, she was interrupted by his voice.
"Are you going to tell me where you've been or do I have to guess?" Her dad asked her with a critical expression. She started to say something when she was interrupted, again.
"Look, Taylor, you don't have to reveal exactly what happened, but can you at least answer three things for me?"
Taylor nodded meekly before her father sighed and brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
"First, where have you been for the past six hours?"
"Well I've..."
"No no, not yet. Let me finish first."
"Alright."
"Second, why do you smell like some of the Merchants that stop by to harass the Dockworkers?"
"Um"
"And third," He stared at her very intently for a few seconds, as if deciding how to phrase what he was thinking.
"Why do you have gills?"
"Gills?"
"Gills."
"I have gills?"
"On your neck."
"Um, well, I can't say I know myself, but I think it's the same reason I got this wrench," She held up the wrench that she had 'picked up' earlier "from a fly."
"You got a wrench from a fly?" he asked incredulously.
"Somehow" Taylor whispered under her breath.
"So you have powers."
"I'm pretty sure?"
"Don't powers generally have a theme?" Her dad was very confused now, as if he had ordered a slice of pizza and had gotten the sauce above the cheese.
"I'm pretty sure mine are different" Taylor said.
"Are they now?"
"I'm pretty sure."
"And how would you know that."
Putting her hands on the table, Taylor spoke to her father with a seriousness in her voice comparable to a doctor telling his patient he shouldn't have touched the glowing barrels with the trefoil labels.
"Because I have the inexplicable urge to play a guitar."
"What."