None of her clothes fit. It seemed like a rather trivial problem for someone of her powers, but all the clothes in her vault were either ridiculously gaudy or revealing. She thought of sorting through her mother's stuff, still collecting dust in a rabble of boxes in the garage, but the thought made her heart twinge uncomfortably and she'd already cried enough for one morning. She settled for some sort of white toga-sundress hybrid she'd found in her vault, but looking in the mirror she still felt like something was missing.

Aside her unique coloring, she still looked too...normal. Too Taylor-like. It was impossible to hide the changes that had overcome her, both physically and mentally, so she'd decided that the best way to ease along the transition was to embrace it. Her new powers apparently came with a taste for gold, because she felt a whole lot better with the simple addition of a gold armband, along with a gold and emerald Wesekh Collar, the necklaces of ancient Egyptian Pharaohs that from what she could tell conferred upon her some type of protection. As she put on a pair of golden earrings — because one can never have too much of good thing — she contemplated the fact that she hadn't known what a Wesekh Collar was before she'd put it on. Her power seemed to give her advanced knowledge of anything she'd pulled out of her vault, but things she'd never used were left vague, only coming out in response to a question or need. Fascinating.

Taylor sneaked out her window in classic teenage fashion — or, well, not really. Most teenagers didn't simply jump from a second story window and land on the ground without a stumble. She knew she couldn't avoid her dad forever, the only reason he hadn't found her already was because he'd stayed up so late waiting for her last night that he was still comatose a 9:00 AM the next day. But she was willing to give it a shot.

She wandered down the street, not really paying attention to where she was going. She sure as hell wasn't going to school today, it and everything associated with it was a waste of her time. She briefly entertained the thought of turning herself in and joining the Wards, she'd probably even be put into Arcadia High, a completely different world as far as the public school system was concerned. They received a lot of funding and acclaim for their well-known housing of the junior heroes. But the idea of being part of any organization without herself at the head, of being forced to endure superiors and paperwork and miles of bureaucratic red tape on the very lethal use of her powers left a bad taste in her mouth. She almost snorted at the thought. Superiors. Where did they come off with that kind of arrogance? (The irony of her statement wasn't lost on her, she simply dismissed it because at least in her case it was true.)

She found herself in the docks again, some part of herself drawn to it. Maybe it was the sea, maybe it was the human misery. She was still learning so much about who she was now, as a person. As a cape. Could she be a sadist? No. She didn't feel guilty about what she'd done to Hookwolf, but she hadn't enjoyed it. Fighting him? Definitely. Killing him? No. If anything she was slightly disappointed. He would have made a loyal servant.

She recognized, objectively, that she should feel guilty. A man was dead because of her. There was no second party to shift the blame to, no worthy ideal for which his sacrifice had been necessary. She'd been excited to have powers, intoxicated with them, and she'd want to prove a point, to herself, to her bullies, to the world. She wanted to prove she could be strong. The strongest. And she had. Hookwolf had gotten in her way, and she'd handled him like he was some second-rate cape off the streets. That thought made her smile. The way she'd dominated him, stretched out her powers and annihilated him sent a thrill down her spine. Maybe she was a sadist after all.

She was distracted by a homeless man pulling out a knife and stabbing her. She almost stood there and took it, but she wasn't wearing her armor and was unsure exactly what type of protection her necklace conferred. It could be anything from immunity to poisons to protection from long-range weapons, she had no idea. At any rate, he was moving so slow she couldn't really justify to herself that it was too much of a hassle to move out of the way and just depend on her treasure's protection. Reaching out with one hand, Taylor grabbed the knife between her thumb and forefingers, snapped it, catching the handle out of the air as it dropped from his shocked hands and stabbing him in the leg with what was left of the blade. A loud grunt followed by a whimper later and he was on the ground, crawling away from her back to whatever cesspool he called home. Maybe he'd get an infection, she had no idea how clean he kept his mugging knives. Revenge for the attempted-murder didn't even enter her mind. Would you go out of your way to squash a bug that couldn't even bite? Such a blatant crime in the middle of the street seemed to have shaken up even the normal residents of this part of town. These things usually happened under the cover of darkness. She supposed her jewels had made too fine a prize.

She flung away the knife-blade with a disgusted sound. The existence of such crime and squalor in her city annoyed her.

Wait a second. Latching on to that thought, she examined it for whatever had caught her attention. Ah. This was her city. She felt some form of possession over it. Her alien psychology was still very new to her, but one thing she'd quickly grasped was that she mainly categorized the world in one of two ways: things that were her's, and things that were not her's. She treated things vastly different depending on which side they fell of that very sharp coin. She admired her possessions, they were her treasures, special by virtue of belonging to her. They were her's and therefore they were part of her. On the flip side, anything she didn't own lost almost all value to her besides it's potential worth upon acquisition. Objects and people became dispensable and unimportant, and she had trouble feeling pity or sympathy for anything she didn't own.

She owned this city.

She looked around the dock, seeing the world with new eyes. The people here were destitute, they walked with their shoulders hunched forward, crushed under the weight of the world's indifference. The homes were almost dilapidated, several of them abandoned and others looking like they should be. Even the careless cracks in the sidewalk infuriated her almost beyond words. Crime was rampant, parahuman and human alike, and the government either unable or unwilling to do anything about it. Kids became part of gangs out of necessity, threatened or peer-pressured into it. Drugs and money and powers were the lifeblood of this world, keeping it alive and well as it indiscrimintly suckled off the city like a parasite. How did this reflect on her?

Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable. She would carve this city in her image, and anything that couldn't adapt could leave or die. This was her city. The world just didn't know it yet