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Foreboding 1.2
Taylor- no Boogeyman, that's who she was right now, watched with a detached interest as her Nightmares placed Mush's broken body at the foot of the hospital. As she watched the terror filled Mush involuntary twitch in agony and fear, she couldn't help but feel a stab of pity for the drug addicted parahuman.
Like her he had spent much of his life being an outcast, being bullied for being different until he finally broke. The pity she felt for him, however, was largely overshadowed by the contempt for his practices. Derrell had been a criminal long before he became Mush. The fact that he gave into his vices even more after he gained his powers only served to highlight the disappointment she felt for such a waste of potential.
Boogeyman watched as nurses rushed out of the hospital's glass doors, gurney in tow as the first one to reach him placed his hand on the Merchant's slightly mangled neck, no doubt checking for a pulse. The shouting became more urgent and directed as the nurse waved his compatriots to get the Merchant inside.
It had been more than a little tempting to let Mush die from his wounds, to allow his life to ebb away as the exposure from the frigid winter night whittled away what little strength he had. How easy it would have been to permanently remove his stain from the face of Brockton Bay, but right now he was more useful to her alive than dead in a ditch.
He would live to tell stories about her, passing on what would happen to criminals that strayed into Brocton Bay and the consequences of their actions. Besides, death might have been too much of a mercy for someone like Mush who regularly worked with those who forcibly addicted children to drugs in order to extort them for money. Even if he never held the needle personally their blood was on his hands.
No, he would live, but it wouldn't be pleasant. Her Nightmares had broken most of the bones in his body and had taken more than a few chunks of flesh out. Unless the hospital called for Panacea Mush wasn't going to be walking anytime soon and even if he was healed by the New Wave striker it would be unlikely that he would rejoin the Merchants. She had planted the seeds of doubt in his head about Skidmark and in time they would grow until his suspicion consumed him. He would never trust anyone ever again, not after a perceived betrayal from someone he had worked with for years.
In any case, Mush wasn't going to be a threat for quite some time and was no longer a primary concern of hers. In one fell swoop, she removed one of the two Merchant parahumans that might have given her pause.
"Let's go," she said, the PRT would probably be here soon to take a statement and figure out what exactly was going on and she didn't want to risk being spotted in case they brought a cape with them.
The Nightmare neighed in disappointment. Boogeyman knew that it could feel the fear the wafted off the hospital from all of those fighting for their lives and how tempting it would be to just stop and feas-
"Let's go," she repeated, this time harsher and more commanding. The Nightmare neighed in disappointment again but complied this time, trotting off across the rooftops in the opposite direction. Giving into her hunger pangs so quickly would set a bad precedent.
When she had first received her powers the knowledge that she would have to feed off of people's fears haunted her. How could she live with herself if she was forced to constantly keep people in a state of fear of her for own survival? She had been more than half tempted to starve herself and fade from existence entirely, erasing the stain on the Earth that was Taylor Hebert.
But then, with that happened with her dad…
The mere thought that the trio's machinations had led to her father's fate however indirectly stoked her with a burning hatred for her three tormentors more than she had ever thought possible. She had been prepared to send all three of them into eternal nightmares for what they did and she would have done it without hesitation.
But then she discovered that Sophia was Shadow Stalker and everything changed.
Oh, she still hated the trio, Emma, and Sophia in particular, but her new found knowledge brought with it a realization. The trio, they were just a symptom of the problem, an issue that had been devouring the city from the inside ever since the reveal of Scion during the eighties, maybe even further back than that.
The police, the mayor, the PRT and Protectorate, they didn't own this city, the gangs did, criminals, murderers, rapists and the like. They walked down the streets in broad daylight without a care in the world because they knew that they wouldn't be taken down. They were free to commit their depraved and cruel acts as long as they wanted to because they had power. It wasn't like the Protectorate or PRT would take down the parahumans that protected them, their containment might as well have a revolving door and the police had all but ceded control to the gangs and PRT.
It was the same issue with the trio, just on a smaller scale. They had power over Taylor and the school in the form of Sophia's ward status and the funding that was likely to come with it and they could get away with anything up to and including murder because the school was afraid of losing their funding.
It had taken quite a few internet searches and library books to find out what had changed since the reveal of parahumans, and having an aging librarian have a near heart attack for seeing a book float on its own, but she finally found the answer to the question that had clawed in forefront of her mind for weeks.
Fear.
Or rather a lack of fear to be precise. Before the advent of heroes and villains, the United States government had a monopoly on power. Criminals and people feared what would happen if the broke the law because they knew that they wouldn't be able to compete with the power of the police and other law enforcement agencies. Countless hours of research showed that the rise of parahumans ended the government's monopoly on power. What use were a pistol and handcuffs when a person could fly and break steel with their bare hands?
Throughout all of this what Boogeyman had found the most baffling was that nobody really liked to acknowledge this. Oh sure the civilians would comment on how the PRT and Protectorate weren't actually doing anything productive in the long term, but nobody in actual positions of authority and power seemed to want to acknowledge that they were no longer in control. Instead, they tried to pretty everything up and bury their heads in the sand to any evidence they weren't in control anymore while criminals ran whole parts of cities with impunity and monsters like Endbringers and the Slaughterhouse devastated entire population centers without pause.
Ineffectual fools, Boogeyman thought with a growl as her Nightmare shifted underneath her, responding to her emotional state. The heroes were willing to sacrifice civilians to the fires of anarchy and allow psychopaths like Sophia to roam the street in order to maintain an illusion of authority. While they got to hide in their little fortress on the bay and ride out the rot that consumed the city, all of the civilians suffered.
She was done suffering for their sakes.
People on forums said it would be impossible for anyone to bring the city to heel. Most had grown up in what was a dying city and had known nothing else. Others simply didn't think that it was possible for any real change to happen, that the gangs had simply been in charge for too long for anyone to make any real headway.
She would show them the error of their ways.
If the gangs wouldn't fear the heroes, then they would fear her. She was going to have to be more than just another parahuman vigilante, she had to make herself a myth, a legend. She would become something that would be so feared by the criminals that infested this city like rats that none of the would dare commit any crimes.
She would flood the city in darkness and nightmares just like he had to countless worlds at the end of the Golden Age. He would…
Boogeyman hissed, bringing her hand up to her forehead as it throbbed in pain. What…what had she been thinking about?
The Nightmare beneath her neighed in response to its master's sudden shift in mood.
"I'm fine," Boogeyman hissed as her eyes scrunched up in discomfort, "Keep going."
The Nightmare snorted as if it disagreed with her assessment of her well-being but complied and continued its path towards the more gang-infested part of town. Satisfied that her mount was listening Boogeyman took a breath to relieve her tension as her headache faded away. She had been getting them since she got her powers and she still had no idea what they were. Images ghosted through her mind so fast and fleeting that she couldn't make out what they were, like trying to catch water with her bare hands no matter how hard she tried she couldn't bring them to the forefront of her mind.
They're not important.
"I guess they're not," Boogeyman muttered to herself as she mused on her power's peculiarities. She supposed that so long as she had powers that made a difference it didn't really matter if she had to endure a little discomfort. It wasn't like it was anything worse than what the trio did to her.
Whether it was important or not she was going to have to put it on the backburner for the time being while she worked on the next phase of her plan.
"Stop," Boogeyman commanded with a tug on the reigns. The Nightmare responded immediately, coming to a dead stop. It pawed the rooftop with nervous anticipation while Boogeyman dismounted. "Wait here."
Her form became nothing more than a shadow as she slipped through the cracks in the roof, weaving her way through insulation until she reached her destination. She allowed herself to become tangible again as she examined the child's room she had invaded.
It was rather nondescript; the walls were almost bare of anything resembling personal property. A single half broken drawer with peeling white paint was really the only thing that stood out in the bare room. A child who couldn't have been older than nine was snoozing on a rickety old bed that looked like it was being held together by duct tape. Her dark skin stood out against the permanently stained grey bed sheet that only managed to cover about two-thirds of her body, with only her ripped pajamas to protect her from the cold winter air that seeped through the cracked walls of her house.
Despite the seemingly destitute nature of the child, her dreams were strong, like a lighthouse in the middle of a stormy night they shone past the dark that crept at the edges of her subconscious, fighting back against a level of cynicism that was surprising for someone of her age.
It had been… difficult at first, to do this to children. It was one thing to give her tormentors and gang members their karmic justice, but to subject innocent children to their nightmares was something different.
Still, it was something that had to be done, she needed power and children's nightmares gave her a far greater boost than most adults. She wasn't sure why exactly, but it wasn't something she could change. She could only try and minimize how many children she visited each night otherwise she would never be able to grow stronger. She would have preferred to feed off the better to do children, the ones who didn't live in poverty fearing every day for their lives and the lives of their families. But that would mean more travel time between her feeding grounds the Merchant's territory and it would undoubtedly bring more scrutiny upon her activities from the PRT and Protectorate than she wanted right now.
Besides, wouldn't the security of their safety and future be well worth a few nightmares?
She tapped the sleeping girl's forehead and frowned as her dreams of picnics and wildflowers became fire and ash. Her small smile changed into a fearful frown as she drew herself closer together as if she could protect herself by shielding herself from the nightmare. While Boogeyman didn't feel nearly the same amount of satisfaction she had felt witnessing Emma's suffering as black sand poured out from under her eyelids and formed a small Nightmare, she couldn't deny that feeding off of fears felt good.
Each nightmare was a small spurt of power, tiny and almost insignificant on its own, but when combined with the nightmares of others the change became obvious. She had never felt this alive before she had gotten her powers.
It was exhilarating.
It was also terrifying. If she didn't restrain herself from feeding indiscriminately what would she become? She could imagine it now, Nightmares flooding the streets and tearing through buildings to get a quick meal while she stood on high and watched. It wouldn't be that hard, as far as she could tell she didn't seem to have any hard limit to how many Nightmares she could make or how strong she could get other than the amount and intensity of the fear that she and her minions fed off of.
Still, she couldn't allow her life to be consumed by what-ifs, not when she had the power to make some real change to the city.
"Go," she said as she gave a minor mental nudge to the newborn Nightmare to go join its brethren in feeding. As the Nightmare slipped into the freezing night Boogeyman considered how her actions would be viewed here.
She had no doubt that the PRT would label her as a villain no matter how much good she did. The mere fact that she would be doing good would no doubt play a part in her classification as a villain after all PR was their lifeblood. If someone else came in and started doing their job for them they would have to do everything in their power in order to avoid being seen as incompetent. They might even try to press-gang her like they did to Sophia, but Boogeyman wasn't going to let that happen, not now and not ever.
She wasn't going to become a stooge for the very same organization that had allowed her city to continue its downward spiral. She wasn't going to trade off effectiveness for appearance.
Easier said than done, Boogeyman thought with a grumble as she slipped back into her shadow form and rejoined her steed on the roof. While the lack of meaningful effort from the PRT had certainly assisted the gangs in their hostile takeover of the city they didn't get this far by being as incompetent as their counterparts. They had years to dig in and fortify their positions. The Empire alone probably had a close to five hundred members, not even including over fifteen parahumans with a few more that rotated in and out from around the country.
Their primary competitors, the ABB, didn't nearly have as many men or parahumans to hold their territory but they did have Lung, the man who drove off Leviathan. What the ABB lacked for in numbers and equipment they more than made up for it with the sheer strength of their boss.
She had been more than a little tempted to take the fight directly to them and drive out the two biggest gangs in the city but then her survival instinct that she had relied on for the last two years of Winslow managed to get past the haze of her power trip and remind her of the reality of her situation.
Even with the feeding, she had been doing she only had a couple dozen Nightmares at the moment, though that number was growing quickly. She was strong, but she doubted that she would be able to pit herself against the likes of Lung or Hookwolf and live to tell the tale. So she fell back on a lesson that her mom had taught her when she was younger.
If you find yourself confronted with a problem too big for you to solve, break it down into smaller problems and you might find the solution. Of course, Boogeyman doubted that her mom was thinking about taking on gangs when she was helping with her math homework but the lesson still applied.
She couldn't take the Empire of the ABB on now, it would most certainly be suicide. But just because she couldn't take out the biggest players yet that didn't mean that there weren't smaller gangs that she couldn't take out first.
One of the reasons that she had chosen to target the Merchants instead of the Empire or ABB was because they were almost universally despised. They were considered to be the scum of the Bay, even by the other gangs. However many drugs the Empire and ABB sold the Merchants sold more, and worse ones. However violent and desperate their foot soldiers were the Merchants were more so. They weren't comprised under a single ideology or the fear of one parahuman, but their collective desire for drugs and other illicit ventures. They were hedonistic slaves to their desires and didn't care about anything but their next fix.
One of the other reasons that Boogeyman had chosen to target them first was because of their organizational structure. From what Boogeyman had read trawling the PHO forums, unlike the other gangs they didn't really have a strict organizational structure. They had lieutenants of sorts that answered to Skidmark and the other parahumans that ran the gang, but they were constantly changing, constantly in flux. If the police captured one lieutenant, then Skidmark would just choose another mook to do his bidding through without much of a fuss. They were less lieutenants and more errand boys. It made it almost impossible to make any real operational damage against the gang without taking out their parahumans.
Which also proved to be the gang's greatest weakness. Without Skidmark, Squealer and the now near catatonic Mush the gang would fall apart. The gang would dissolve into groups bickering over what to do and who was in charge. It was what her entire plan hinged on to work. Boogeyman knew that the PRT and Protectorate had to know this, they had thinkers, both parahuman and not, that were far smarter than her. There was absolutely no reason that they couldn't have figured out how to remove the Merchants. It wasn't like anyone was going to miss them. So why hadn't they taken them down already?
"I don't suppose you have any ideas do you?" Boogeyman asked as she stroked her steed's snout. The sand had a very strange texture, rough but smooth, elastic but solid. It gave under the pressure of her fingers a little bit, but she could still tell that the Nightmare in question was more than capable of mauling a man, as evidenced by what they did to Mush.
The Nightmare in question only snorted in response.
"I thought not," she murmured as she continued to pet the Nightmare, Emma's Nightmare to be precise. The Nightmare had grown in size at a rate that had astounded her. Within a few hours, it went from the size of a small cat to being one of the largest Nightmares in her herd. Even knowing how much Emma had given herself into her fears it still surprised Boogeyman how fast the creature had grown.
On occasions like this one, she would find herself talking to it even though she knew that it was incapable of responding and even if it did was it probably wouldn't care about anything except feeding. She supposed it said something about her that the closest thing she had to a friend was the personification of her ex-best friend's fears.
"But why?" she asked, bringing her attention back from her personal steed and to the question at hand. As far as the Boogeyman could tell the Merchants didn't really have anything going for them that could prevent the PRT from taking them out in one fell swoop. While their three, no two capes weren't exactly weak they weren't the brightest bulbs in the sockets by any stretch of the imagination. Skidmark certainly had a low cunning based on the fact that he had survived this long in Brockton Bay with the likes of the Empire and the ABB trying to crush the life out of him, but it still didn't add up.
From what Boogeyman had found most of the Merchant's parahumans weren't suited for dealing with surprise attacks or quick battles. They all required a certain amount of time to build up their power enough to actually become a significant threat. Skidmark needed time to stack his strips on top of one another to exert sufficient force and Squealer needed time to build her vehicles and unlike Lung who also needed to build up steam they didn't have anyone with an easily spammable power to run interference for them during the early fight.
The PRT could have set up an ambush at any time and wipe them off the face of the map but they didn't. The research she had done had shown that the PRT knew that they weren't in control anymore, but she had never witnessed them actually try to get back in control at all. Boogeyman knew that they practically worshiped the status quo and PR, but could they be that worried about rocking the boat that they didn't want to risk changing anything. Were they really that concerned about maintaining the illusion of control than actually achieving control?
Deep down, past all the layers of resentment and anger the little girl that had once been Taylor Hebert, the girl who had dressed up in her Alexandria costume for over a week after Halloween wanted to scream no. That the heroes were doing everything they could to stop the bad guys and save the city. But the woman who was now Boogeyman ignored that voice.
"I suppose it doesn't matter why they're doing it does it," Boogeyman asked. Emma's Nightmare neighed again in agreement. In the end, it didn't matter. She was going to make a difference, not the Protectorate. She was going to drive out the gangs from the city, not the Protectorate. She was going to fix this broken and dying city, not the Protectorate.
As she remounted her steed Boogeyman stared out at the city.
If one simply looked at the docks they could see the difference between it and downtown. Only a smattering of lights from houses and other assorted buildings could be seen in the distance, whether it was from wear and tear or the owner's option to keep it from being seen as a target, but there was a significant difference from the downtown area. Downtown was lit up like a Christmas tree, signs of life emitting from every corner of every building. A sign of the wealth and the assurance of safety that they possessed, totally unconcerned about the suffering of those only a few miles away.
But for all of the wealth those who lived in downtown possessed, even they couldn't escape the slow but inexorable death grip that was strangling the city with its vicious uncaring claws. The city was dying, there was no denying that fact, but it wasn't dead. People like her father and mother had put their lives into trying to better this city through whatever means they could. Whether it was just spending an extra hour or two after class to assist a troubled student, or to try year after year to revitalize the ferry they had never given up on this city.
And neither would she.
She wouldn't allow the Protectorate's uncaring nature to destroy her home.
"Come on," Boogeyman said, her yellow eyes filled with a new light as she tugged on her steed's reigns. "We still have work to do."
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