Trying to imitate Sophia's suit was harder than I'd thought, and after a while I gave up on the idea entirely. I probably could have afforded the hockey mask she'd used when she first worked as a vigilante, but the black bodysuit wasn't something I could afford, considering that my life savings amounted to thirty nine dollars.

Her modern suit was even more out of the question. The mask and metal gauntlets were well out of my price range, and I didn't have any skill at metalworking or ironically, as a tailor.

Her cape was intimidating, but I could think of too many ways that it could be grabbed or even used to strangle me. I had no intention of leaving myself that vulnerable.

The best I could do was a black hoodie and black jeans that I already owned. I found a metal face mask that covered the lower half of my face. It had the lower half of a skull painted on it, and had apparently been used for paintball. I'd pretended that I was joining my non-existent boyfriend's paintball team, and the owner had been helpful. With large goggles and the hoodie, I was unrecognizable.

Better yet, when I shifted into my shadow form, the painted skull looked particularly disturbing. In the light it wasn't so bad, but in the darkness of my bathroom it looked particularly grotesque.

The goggles didn't hurt my peripheral vision, although the hoodie did.

There were motorcycle helmets that had visors that didn't hurt peripheral vision. When I made more money I planned to get one, and maybe even some motorcycle armor. It wouldn't protect me from bullets but it would help in hand to hand combat.

Eventually I hoped to get actual Kevlar vests. There weren't any restrictions on minors buying armor in the state and you didn't even have to show ID. However, while cheap vests could be had for as little as a hundred and fifty dollars, police grade vests could be more than three thousand dollars.

In all, my costume was extremely cheap and looked it. Worse, it wouldn't protect me at all.

Without the phasing power I didn't have any particular skills at fighting, and I'd never been in a fight in my life if you didn't count being regularly hit by Sophia.

It wouldn't have been as bad if I'd been a Master; I'd looked up the PRT classifications. As a Master I could have allowed my minions to do the fighting for me and I wouldn't have had to do it all myself. I fantasized sometimes about having powers like that of Hellhound. I wasn't sure if she summoned the giant dog monsters she used or transformed them, but with minions like that I'd have been able to make a real difference.

As it was I was going to feel naked going out on my own. I hadn't even had enough money left to buy pepper spray, although I did manage to find a huge, heavy wrench in the basement. It was going to have to do.

With Sophia getting more and more vicious since her powers had disappeared, it was getting harder and harder not to fight back. As she had years of fighting experience, that was likely to result in my having broken bones unless I outed myself as the cape who had stolen her powers.

I felt on edge, and the urge to go out and do something even before I was fully prepared was almost unbearable.

All the studying online, looking up the local parahumans and parahuman laws wasn't going to help me much on the street.

I managed to hold off for a week, before I finally found myself giving in.

It had taken dad more than an hour to fall asleep. Fortunately I was able to slip soundlessly down the stairs in shadow form. I'd have gone straight through the wall; experimentation showed that I could have drifted downward from the second floor without getting hurt, but dad's bedroom was the one facing the back yard while mine faced the street.

I'd had unpleasant shocks trying to go through walls before; apparently Sophia's powers didn't work well with electricity. It made my initial plan to slip through walls and attack people a little harder, but I'd have to adapt.

It was seven blocks to Lord street, and at first I slipped down the alleyways. It wasn't impossible that I'd see crime here, but unlikely. I didn't want to be seen until I got some distance from home.

The last thing I wanted was to get dad killed because I was out trying to be a hero.

Even if anyone saw me, all they'd see from far away was a teenager in a hoodie. The pipe wrench I carried was almost four feet long, and I found myself using it like a cane as I got tired of carrying it. I'd need to rig up some kind of holder for it because carrying it around all night was going to be tiring.

Still, its solidity and weight gave me a confidence I wouldn't have had otherwise. I wouldn't have wanted to be out this late without it, or at least something like it.

As I walked through the darkness, I wondered how I was going to find crime. Velocity was able to speed through the city until he saw something. Other heroes probably had police scanners; the Protectorate definitely did.

What were the odds that I was even going to see anything? Even in a city like Brockton Bay there weren't crimes on every street corner. If there had been Alexandria or Legend or Eidolon would have been sent to clean house.

It seemed longer, walking in the silence than it did during the day, and I found myself alert to every little sound. I could hear dogs barking in the distance and the sound of cars from adjacent streets. The last thing I needed was to get mugged before my hero career even began.

Why was I doing this again? It wasn't like I had an offensive power and I couldn't even afford a crossbow like Sophia had, assuming that they'd sell it to a minor anyway.

Finally I reached Lord street. The market wasn't far, even though the stalls had all closed by ten. Walking through the abandoned market was eerie, like walking through a post-apocalyptic world where everyone had vanished. It felt like I was the only one alive.

The Merchants were the gang that had control of my neighborhood, which was a relief. Of all the gangs, they were the least dangerous, although that wasn't saying much. There were plenty of murders in dark alleys committed by merchants over drug deals gone bad, but at least they weren't as organized as the Empire or as vicious as Lung's gang.

As I left the Market behind, heading in the direction of the boatyard, I finally heard something I shouldn't have heard.

In an alley off the beaten path I saw two men beating up on what looked like a homeless man.

I hesitated. Someone who was truly heroic would call out for them to stop, giving them a chance to give up.

Unfortunately there were two of them and I couldn't even see if they were armed or not. I couldn't afford to give up the luxury of surprise.

I shifted into my shadow state, and in the darkness of the alleyway I was probably almost invisible. The men were preoccupied with what they were doing anyway and .it was easy to sneak up on them.

As I began to swing the pipe wrench, I became solid at the last minute hitting the man closest to me in the right shoulder. The shock of the impact almost made me drop the heavy wrench, but I heard a sickening crack in the man's shoulder. He screamed and staggered away, even as the other man turned and swung at me.

I'd thought the Merchants would have been too drugged out to be very alert, but these men seemed relatively aware of what they were doing.

The man who was uninjured swung a sock at me. From the look of it it was filled with quarter rolls and was what he had been using to beat the homeless man who was laying on the ground groaning.

The sock passed through me, and I had a moment to wonder if it was clean and if this meant I somehow had particles of dirty sock floating through my gut.

I swung at him, but he grabbed the wrench, almost pulling it out of my hand. It took a moment for me to phase the wrench out of his grasp, and that was enough for him to hit me in the upper part of my left arm with the sock. My entire arm instantly felt numb, and I panicked.

Slipping through the fence on the side, I found myself in someone's back yard. There weren't any motion sensor lights, for which I was grateful. There wasn't a dog, for which I was even more grateful.

The man that had attacked me apparently didn't want to quit. He was struggling to climb the fence. I waited, and the moment I saw his face over the top of the fence, I smashed him with the wrench. He fell backwards, groaning.

I pushed forward, through the fence and passing through his companion.

He grabbed for me, even though his shoulder didn't look any better than mine was.

I turned and rammed the wrench into his gut. He bent down groaning, even as I felt myself being grabbed from behind. The man I'd hit had his hands around my neck, and I gagged and struggled to breath for a moment before I remembered to shift into my shadow state.

Enraged, I stepped back and swung my pipe, hitting him in the back of the head with a satisfying crunch.

His friend lunged forward, only to get hit as well. He went down.

I swung the pipe wrench, which it him in the back of the thigh. I heard another cracking sound. I hit him again, and when I heard the other man stirring I hit him again.

Part of me wanted to keep hitting them both, but the sight of blood on my hand stopped me. If I continued I'd kill them, and my chances of ever becoming a hero would be gone forever.

It didn't look like either one of them was going to get up soon. I bent down to check; I was already regretting hitting them in the head. Head injuries could kill, even if it was a pipe that was swung by a girl.

They were both breathing, although I wasn't sure how much damage I had done.

I felt exhausted suddenly, even though the fight had only lasted for much less than a minute. I needed to start training; real fights would require that I have endurance.

"Are you all right?" I asked the man they had been attacking.

All he did was lay on the ground and groan.

I crouched down and rifled through the men's jackets. One of them had a cell phone; it was one of the new smart phones. It took longer than it should for me to figure out the interface; I'd only had flip phones before dad had banned them after mom's death.

Finally reaching the Brockton Bay police, I tried to speak in a deep voice.

"Two men were beating up a homeless man in the alley two streets north of the Market. All three of them need medical assistance."

"Are you a parahuman?" the dispatcher on the telephone asked. It was a required question because the PRT had jurisdiction over any case that had a parahuman even peripherally involved.

The last thing I wanted was to involve the PRT. They undoubtedly knew that Shadow Stalker no longer had her powers, and for a hero to suddenly appear with the exact same powers wouldn't require much of a leap for them to them to have some really pointed questions for me.

"Just a concerned citizen."

Before she could say anything, I ended the call.

I stared at the phone, wondering if I'd be able to get the telephone number for Skidmark or Squealer. They were able to track these things, weren't they?

A moment later the telephone in my hand rang. Looking at the number I realized that it was the police calling me back. I realized suddenly that I had probably left fingerprints on phone, so ignoring the ringing I frantically rubbed it on the sleeve of my hoodie. I dropped it on top of the man who I'd beaten unconscious, and I decided to get out as quickly as possible.

My arm was still numb, and I was sure it was going to be massively bruised in the morning. I'd have to remember to wear long sleeves, else Emma was going to start talking about me being a Merchant whore.

I grabbed my pipe wrench, which had blood on it. I rubbed it on the back of the first man's shirt trying to clean it off as well as I could. I started jogging out of the alley. The last thing I needed was for the police to catch me with a bloody pipe wrench, especially if the men were injured worse than I'd thought they were.

What was wrong with me? Before tonight I would have said I didn't have a violent bone in my body. I'd been attacked by Sophia before, and this simmering rage hadn't been boiling beneath the surface waiting to get out.

Was there something wrong with me? Was it the powers? Was this why Capes seemed destined to fight each other all the time. Maybe Sophia's power was damaged somehow?

I had tried pushing the power onto other people to see if I could get rid of it, but I had no idea if it was even possible, much less how to do it. It certainly hadn't worked when I'd tried it on Greg Vedar.

If I was going to go out again I had a lot more work to do. I had beaten two men viciously and I wasn't certain whether this was going to happen every time I went out or if it was a one off thing. A taser and pepper spray might be the kindest thing I could get for the people I was attacking.

Also, the pipe wrench hurt my hands when I was hitting people. I needed something lighter and possibly less likely to crush skulls.

Waking up the next morning I realized that my entire body felt like one bruise. My shoulder hurt and I had stretched muscles I'd never used before. Looking at myself in the bathroom showed a massive bruise on my upper left arm. I was lucky it hadn't been broken, and my arm didn't feel like it moved as well as it should.

I'd have to be careful with it, especially in gym class until it healed.

Rushing out before I was ready had been foolish. I'd never been athletic, and just a minute of actual combat had left me exhausted. Carrying the pipe wrench all the way home had been excruciating, especially since I couldn't change arms.

I needed to start running for endurance, and I needed to work on my upper body strength. The fact that I was so relatively weak was probably the only reason the men I'd attacked hadn't died, but if they'd been more prepared I'd have been in trouble.

"Taylor," Dad asked as I slowly came down the stairs. "Are you feeling all right?"

"I'm feeling a little achey," I admitted. Hopefully he'd think it was from the flu and not because I'd been beating up random thugs.

As much as I hated Sophia, the thought that she'd been doing this since she was thirteen with nothing more than a crossbow and a gut full of anger had to be respected.

"You don't have a fever," he said, walking up to me and putting a hand to my forehead.

"I overdid it in PE yesterday," I said. "Got a little competitive, tripped and fell. Didn't even feel it until this morning."

"Was it the bullies again?" he asked, his face darkening. He'd spent more than a year completely in the dark about what had happened and I could tell that he felt guilty.

I shook my head and smiled. "For once no. This time it was actually my own fault."

He stared at me for a long moment, as though trying to see if he believed me. Finally he relaxed and asked, "You need to see a doctor?"

We both knew we didn't have the money to see a doctor.

"I'll be fine," I said, shaking my head.

It was Saturday so I'd have a couple of days to heal up before I had to head back to Winslow.

"I'm supposed to meet Kurt and Lacey at the Market; Lacey is buying things for a wedding and Kurt wants someone to talk to while he's holding all the packages. Would you like to come?"

I hesitated. I hadn't been close to dad for a long time, not since mom died and he'd spiraled into a deep depression. We'd hardly spent any time together, becoming strangers in our own house.

While I really wanted to do nothing more than go to bed and obsess over my sudden violent streak, I knew that I needed to spend time with my father.

"Window shopping? That fits my budget!," I said, forcing a smile. "Let me get dressed."

An hour later we were walking along the market with Kurt and Lacey. It was very different now that it was filled with people than it had when it was deserted last night.

Lacey tried to get me interested in what they were buying. I smiled and tried to pretend to e involved, but mostly I kept thinking about the sounds the pipe had made when it had hit the men the night before.

Was I as much of a thug at heart as Sophia? Had I enjoyed hurting those men?

Was this what she felt when she was hurting me?

I heard the sounds of screaming before I saw what was wrong.

Walls of stone were rising at both ends of the market, trapping everyone inside. A massive fireball appeared over our heads and I could feel the heat.

"Everybody get down!" a tall black man said.

There were two other men with him. One was a skinhead, but the tattoos he had weren't anything like what I saw with the Empire 88.

It didn't make sense. None of the gangs would be bold enough to attack the Market; the Protectorate would have to respond in force.

None of them were in costume either. They weren't even bothering covering their faces.

"Get down on the ground and take out your wallets slow and easy like. Anybody tries anything funny and we'll see how you like being barbecued or buried alive."

The skinhead grabbed a motorcycle and lifted it over his head. He threw it against a wall where it fell.

My mind raced. I didn't have my costume and with dad here I couldn't get involved. The chances of him getting injured or killed were too great. I decided that I had to stay still and wait for the Protectorate, even though it grated on my.

"You!" the skinhead said, pointing at me.

The others pointed at several other people.

"Start collecting wallets," he said. He threw a reusable shopping bag at me. "And make it quick. You wouldn't want me to have to start breaking some bones on daddy, would you?"

He pointed to Kurt instead of dad, so at least he wasn't that observant.

I could probably gain the powers of at least one of them when I handed them the bag, but doing it in front of a crowd of hundreds wouldn't exactly be doing my secret identity any good.

After that I'd have to deal with the other two, and if they threw a fireball at me and I managed to slip into my shadow state, the people behind me would still get hurt.

I stood up and grabbed the bag, gritting my teeth.

"Not as afraid as everybody else, are you girlie?" the skinhead asked. "Well you should be."

I felt a sudden wave of terror; looking up I saw a familiar figure in a white gown. Glory girl was floating above the Market, and beside her were Kid Win and Aegis.

The skinhead looked up and snorted.

"What is this, Halloween?"