Enjoy!

Shadow 2.2

8:00

Sophia Hess didn't like being afraid. Fear indicated weakness. It paralyzed the body and mind in the face of danger. It was a plague that she had dealt with a lot while that man had been living in her house. She had been terrified the night she triggered, but her powers gave her a way out. A way to stop being the terrified Sophia Hess and to become the hero, Shadow Stalker. Instead of her being afraid, people were afraid of her. It was a nice feeling, to see them squirm under your gaze and realize that they had no power over what was going to happen to them as they begged and pleaded for mercy like the weak cowards they were.

The other Wards just didn't get it. They didn't have to live their whole lives being black in a city partially controlled by Neo-Nazis. They didn't have to spend the nights with a knife under their pillows in case someone decided they wanted your house. She could understand that their lives might have been miserable (people who triggered typically weren't paragons of mental stability) but they just didn't get what it was like for the people who couldn't afford to live in the nice part of town.

Dean liked to play himself as the white knight, the dashing hero of the story. He didn't get what the world was really like, he was the son of the third richest man in the city and basically got whatever he wanted on a silver platter. She tuned out his moralizing speeches to her about "how she should be a better person" and all that because he was an idiot. He certainly never had to worry about whether there would be food on the table for dinner.

She did reluctantly admit to herself that Dennis understood. Out of all the Wards, he was the one whose lifestyle before triggering was the closest to hers. He understood that out in this jungle of a city you sometimes couldn't afford to be nice or the dashing hero, but he always played himself off as the bumbling fool and the jokester, as if he could somehow hide the ugly truth of the word behind bad jokes.

Emma, she understood. She knew that out in the real-world people didn't get to be nice. The strong crushed the weak because they were strong because they had power. She knew what it was like to be weak once and she never wanted to be that again. Being strong meant you couldn't play being a hero, it meant you had to make the hard choices in life. Choices that could determine life or death.

Emma had impressed her when she had pushed back her fear in that alley to fight the gang members, so much so that Sophia had decided to become friends with her. And in return, she had helped Sophia by giving her Hebert as a punching back.

Emma had been convinced that together they would have been able to bring out Hebert's strength if they just pushed her a little. Sophia had been more than a little skeptical when she had met the girl, Hebert was nothing but skin and bones with a motor mouth, cowing when confronted with almost insulting ease.

But she couldn't deny that the sight of someone cowering before Sophia, not Shadow Stalker, didn't bring a pleasant feeling. It was a sign that she couldn't only be strong as Shadow Stalker, but that she could be powerful in her civilian identity as well.

This was a feeling that she was now desperately regretting.

"SH-" her curse was cut off as she was forced to dive off the building as a serrated spear that was about as tall as she was took residency in the spot she had occupied two seconds ago.

She supposed she should have seen it coming. The locker was a trigger-worthy event if there ever was one, being stuck inside a small space filled with garbage and everyone outside laughing at you after two years of being socially isolated from everyone. Yeah, she could see how that might make someone snap. But the thought that Hebert might actually become strong and push back was an almost completely alien concept to her. She had worked the girl so well that she had been reduced to eating her lunches in the bathroom rather than risk her wrath in the cafeteria. The thought that Hebert could pull something like this off was virtually unbelievable.

She had been excited when Armsmaster had announced that there was a new dangerous vigilante in town. One that wasn't afraid to get her hands a little dirty and deal with the criminal scum permanently.

In the small part of her mind that wasn't devoted to directing herself through the hazardous situation around her or dominated by terror, she realized that under normal circumstances she would have never done this. Coming alone to meet a new cape was beyond foolish. But after being forced to patrol with those entitled idiots for over a year the thought of being able to talk to another parahuman who understood was a breath of fresh air that she desperately needed.

Because she needed this. Even Emma's understanding was limited because she wasn't a parahuman. She didn't get what it was like to have this power thrumming under your skin, to know that you had the power to actually do something against the foot crushing your windpipe.

She had been so excited to meet a cape who understood what that the real world wasn't made up of knights in shining armor but filled with pain and fear.

The fact that she just happened to be Taylor Hebert was extraordinarily bad luck.

She allowed herself to shift into her shadow state as she hit the rooftop below, phasing through concrete, insulation, and plaster to come to an empty room. It had clearly been abandoned for some time to the boards covering the windows were any indication. Shadow Stalker tried to calm down, but it was hard to do so when her heart was about to burst from her ribcage. Her powers had always provided her protection against most physical and some exotic attacks apart from electrical currents, a fact that had never bothered her because there was no villain in the Bay who used electrical attacks in their arsenal. That no name Grue could interfere with her power but she wasn't scared of him, he always ran when faced with stiff competition. But this…

Shadow Stalker rubbed her chest as a phantom pain of being literally torn in two set her chest on fire. It had felt like she was being ripped apart and stitched back together with pins and needles. Grue's powers were an annoyance, this was painful. She did not want to be on the receiving end of those shadow horses, especially if they could interfere with her powers like Hebert could.

Shadow Stalker yelped in surprise as the window closest to her exploded inwards as shards of glass and plywood scattered through the room. As she retook her physical form after making sure she wasn't about to get glass in her eyes she paled at the sight of the towering horse. Its sandy skin seemed to shift like buzz saws around the area that formed the mouth and its solid yellow eyes burned with a deep-seated hatred.

The horse let out a bone chilling neigh as it charged forward, its hooves crushing the glass and wood fragments that cluttered the near empty room as it raced towards her and blinding speeds. With a tremendous effort, Shadow Stalker managed to overcome her instinct to phase through the rampaging equine and managed to roll to the side.

As she rolled across the cracked hardwood floor she grabbed a piece of plywood debris and slammed it against the snout of the shadowy minion as it turned its head around to face her. Its head snapped to the side from the force of the blow and took off part of its snout as wooden splinters dug into it's from, but her victory was short lived. Instead of going down the horse repaired the damage done and slowly turned its head towards her. Shadow Stalker gulped at the look of annoyance and disbelief that had mixed in with the anger that dominated its eyes.

Shadow Stalker jumped back mere seconds before the horse lashed out once more, black teeth shining even in the lightless room. She took her incorporeal form and jumped through and out the wall, just narrowly missing having a bite taken out of her by the nightmarish horse. She heard a thud as the wall shook a bit while she floated down, the horse having apparently struck the wall at full speed. If the horses' bodies were made of the same material as Hebert's whip then she didn't doubt that they would be able to hurt her in her shadow state, which severely limited her close combat options.

Not that she wanted to get into close combat with one of those things. For all that they looked like a horse, they moved like wolves. Very vicious man mauling wolves.

As she retook her physical form on the street she took stock of her situation. She was in the slums, which meant that it was about thirty minutes to get to the PRT headquarters downtown, and that was if she went in a straight line. She doubted that Hebert was going to let her get away that easy.

"Leaving so soon?"

Shadow Stalker looked up to see Hebert standing out of a shadow on the side of the building, standing up straight as if she wasn't positioned horizontally in relation to the ground twenty feet below. Her dark robe seemed to almost melt into the darkness as she gave a wicked grin.

"Why we're just getting started," she said.

As if on some unseen signal the demonic horses poured off the roof, running down the building as if it was solid ground, their black forms glittering in the pale moonlight, their sharp yellow eyes burning the dark around them.

Sophia ran.

6:03

Shadow Stalker pressed herself up against the wall as best she could as she glanced out the cracked and stained window. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest as she eyed the monsters below. They appeared to be milling around, occasionally sniffing the odd thing or two as they continued their search for her, seemingly unaware that she was in the studio not fifteen feet above them.

She doubted that she had lost them, they had proven to be particularly skilled in tracking their prey. Every time she thought she had given them the slip and made a break for the PRT headquarters or one of the Protectorate patrol routes she was cut off and forced back deeper into Boogeyman's territory.

She had stopped referring to Boogeyman as Hebert in her head because that thing wasn't the wimpy Taylor Hebert that she had spent the last two years bullying. That creature was a monster.

"You shouldn't be that surprised," the monster's voice called out from the shadows.

Shadow Stalker's hand twitched to pull out the makeshift knife she had managed to make from a piece of broken glass. It was hardly the safest or most effective weapon, but Boogeyman wasn't giving her too many options. Any attempt to try and get a real weapon, one that made her feel comfortable and powerful resulted in her nearly being torn in two by Boogeyman's scythe.

She was forced to repress a full body shiver at the thought of that blade. Even if she wasn't permanently hurt in her shadow state it still hurt just as much as the real thing. "Surprised about what?" Shadow Stalker asked as she nervously eyed every shadow in the very dark room.

"What you did to me was monstrous Sophia," she said, her voice echoing throughout the abandoned room.

Shadow Stalker froze as a hand wrapped around her shoulder. Even though her costume had protection from temperatures she could still feel the ice-cold grip that tightened as the voice whispered into her ear, "So are you really surprised it made a monster?"

Shadow Stalker let out a screech as she tore herself from the monster's grip and twisted so that she could slash her throat out. But all she caught was empty air and a taunting grin as she faded back into the shadows. Shadow Stalker heaved for breath but was given no respite as a handful of the demonic horses tore through the windows, showering her in glass.

The first horse fell out of pure luck. As she reflexively reacted to an attack from and attacker that she didn't have a clear view of she flailed her piece of broken glass around wildly. The horse lets out an ear-piercing scream as the shard of sharp glass struck one of its eyes, lodging itself inside. The horse's head collapsed in on itself and the rest of the body followed like a sand castle being washed away by the tide. But her victory was short lived as the two other horses clamped their jaws around her arms with their vice-like grips.

She thrashed with all the force she could muster, but the horses' grip remained tight around her upper arms. She lurched backwards as the two minions started to drag her to the other end of the room. She tried to pull herself up and regain her balance so she could resist, but her boots just kept sliding across the dusty floor with each attempt.

She took to her shadow state and then immediately regretted it as both of her arms lit up like they were being torn apart. Instead of floating harmlessly through the floor to escape she fell gasping on the ground in her physical form. She tried to push herself up to run, but she was pulled back by the horses as the shut their jaws around her ankles this time and started to pull.

She could hear the stomping of hooves and the grinding of teeth behind her as she was dragged deeper into the dark shadows of the building.

Sophia screamed.

3:18

Shadow Stalker cautiously poked her head inside the warehouse. It was an old empty thing, but the lack of anything to block her vision worked towards her advantage. Hopefully, it would be easier to keep track of all the shadows that surrounded her.

It was a nerve-wracking thing to step through the various shadows that blocked her path to the well-lit center of the room. She could still feel flesh being torn from flesh as millions of angry buzz saws ran over her face and neck as she was pulled into the darkness. She wasn't even sure how she had managed to escape but she considered herself fortunate that they weren't able to finish what they had started. She wasn't eager to learn what would happen if most of your skin was torn from your body.

"What's the matter, Sophia? Afraid of the dark?" a voice called out from inside the blackness. Sophia managed to keep herself from jumping in surprise at the sound of the taunting voice, but none the less felt very nervous as she eyed each shadow.

"Why don't you come out and show yourself?" Shadow Stalker asked with as much bravo as she could muster.

An amused chuckle echoed through the room that made her skin break out into goosebumps.

"Alright then, but I think you'll freak with what I have to show you," Boogeyman said in a childish sing-song voice.

Shadow Stalker tensed up as Boogeyman emerged from the shadows like a vengeful ghost. An amused but angry look was plastered on her face.

"Don't know how you're already so ugly," Shadow Stalker taunted. Perhaps not the best idea, but mocking Hebert for her appearance was old ground. It made her feel safer in the seemingly endless nightmare.

Boogeyman's face curled into a sneer that quickly gave way to a small smile. Her wrist flicked and something small skidded against the floor.

The clattering sound came to a stop as something bumped against her foot. Shadow Stalker looked down and what she saw made her blood run cold.

It was a toy car and an old one at that. Most of its paint had been chipped off and one of the wheels was obviously a replacement. The number thirty-three was scratched onto the hood of the toy replica to take the place of the sticker that had long since peeled off.

Normally she wouldn't care about some dumb old toy, but this one was different. This one she recognized. How could she not when she kept on tripping over it?

It was the same toy that her younger brother Thomas. It was just a stupid toy that he had always kept and one that she had mocked him for keeping on numerous occasions. But to see it here, in Boogeyman's hands meant…

No.

"What did you do?" Shadow Stalker asked, her voice a low growl, her mind racing through all the various things that she would do to Boogeyman if she had harmed one hair on her little brother's head.

Boogeyman just grinned as if it was all one big joke, "So you do care about someone besides yourself. I was beginning to wonder. I mean, I would have thought someone as weak as Thomas would have been under your attention."

"What did you do to him?!" Shadow Stalker screeched in a terror filled voice that only someone who was an older sibling would be able to understand. A chill went up her spine at the realization that she hadn't talked to her mother or her younger sibling since this morning, which meant that Boogeyman could have had all day to work whatever horrors she could devise.

Boogeyman's smile just widened. "The real question is - what did you do, Sophia?"

Shadow Stalker roared.

It was a primal thing, borne of fear and desperation. She charged the smirking Boogeyman, uncaring that she lacked any weapons aside from her fists. She slammed into Boogeyman with her entire body, knocking the surprised monster to the ground.

Then she started to punch.

It felt like punching a brick wall and would probably end up hurting her fists just as much, but it felt good to feel her tormentor's head snap to the side as she struck her in the cheeks again and again. After a few more moments, she stopped. Her knuckles felt like they were on fire and she could feel a slight trickle of blood run down on the inside of her costume, but the monster below her wasn't moving.

Shadow Stalker turned around at the sound of snorting and growled at the sight of about a dozen of Hebert's minions standing down the street, glaring at her with their yellow eyes. They twitched and padded their hooves against the asphalt, but they made no move to take her. Shadow Stalker pulled herself off Hebert and started to scream at the minions.

"What are you going to do now?!" she shouted, her voice bouncing off the surrounding buildings. They outnumbered her but she didn't care. She was still on the euphoric high of the adrenaline rush that had allowed her to beat some sense back into Hebert. She proved her wrong, she was still strong and Hebert was still a weak little pus-

Shadow Stalker's train of thought derailed as a small noise caught her attention. Turning back around to the prone Hebert she saw that the girl wasn't as unconscious as she had thought as her shoulders appeared to be shaking. For a second she thought that Hebert was crying (as would be fitting for someone as weak as her) only to realize as the girl pulled herself up with a huge grin on her face that she was laughing.

Shadow Stalker took a step back despite herself as Hebert loomed over her, wide grin etched onto her features. Shadow Stalker realized with a dry throat that she had never actually recognized how tall Hebert was compared to her. It was almost freakish in a way how she was a good head and a half taller than her despite being the same age.

"You know that beating you just gave me?" Boogeyman asked, her eyes filled with cruelty and mirth. She leaned down into Shadow Stalker's face until their eyes were mere inches from each other. "It tickled."

Out of pure reflex Shadow Stalker's right fist shot out to strike Boogeyman in the face. But instead, her fist stopped dead cold as Boogeyman caught it in her iron tight grip. Shadow Stalker pounded and clawed with her free hand and feet, but Boogeyman's hand remained firmly wrapped around her fist.

"I've been thinking," Boogeyman said in an amiable tone that set Shadow Stalker's teeth on edge as she redoubled her efforts to free herself. Her free hand clawed against the girl's chest, but she didn't appear to be very concerned. "Since you weren't strong enough to keep your weapon, and you aren't strong enough to hurt me, you don't need this hand, do you?"

It only took Shadow Stalker a split second to recognize what Boogeyman was implying.

"Wait don-" her plea for mercy was cut off by a blood curling scream as the twenty-seven bones that made up her hand were shattered. She fell to the ground screaming her lungs out as she clutched her now useless hand against her chest. Bits of bone tore through her skin and gloves while blood poured out of her wounds.

"What's the matter, Sophia?" Boogeyman taunted, her cold voice just barely worming its way through the cloud of pain the shrouded her awareness. "Isn't this what you believe in? That the strong can bully the weak. Because right now you seem pretty weak to me."

Shadow Stalker did nothing to respond but sob harder as her broken hand was wracked with nearly unbearable pain.

But pain gave way to terror as she managed to see through the veil of tears that had obscured her vision to see that Boogeyman and her minions were standing over her with very eager expressions. Shadow Stalker held back a choked sob as she returned to her shadow state. The pain immediately lessened as her body lost its corporeal form and her broken hand ceased to exist as a solid structure.

She phased through the floor with all the speed she could muster as the horses closed in. She could hear them slamming against the floor as she floated down a story below them. But instead of retaking her much faster physical body to flee from her pursuers she chose to remain as she was. It would hardly be ideal, but at the very least she wouldn't have to deal with the pain and sight of a mangled hand.

Unfortunately for Shadow Stalker, her reprieve was short lived as Boogeyman tore out of the many shadows that dotted the room, scythe in hand. She barely had any time to recognize the threat before said scythe cleaved her into two pieces.

"You don't get out that easily Sophia," Boogeyman said with a grin as said Ward was forced to retake physical form while the phantom pain of being cut in half forced her to her knees.

Sophia pleaded.

0:09

She wasn't sure how long it had been. Four hours? Five? All she knew is that it had felt like an eternity. She had torn a piece of her cloak off to use as a makeshift bandage for her broken hand. It still hurt, but she had been forced to push through it to avoid even greater suffering from Boogeyman capturing her.

She wasn't exactly sure when she had given up trying to get away to the PRT, maybe it was the third or fourth hour, but Boogeyman had made it very clear that she wasn't getting away until she decided she was done playing with her.

She limped down the empty street slowly as she clutched her shattered hand close to her chest. Her legs flared in pain with each step, a result of running for so long with little to no rest. Her body was wracked with pain as she forced herself to moved further and further down the street. She kept to the sideway, but as close to the spotty streetlights as she could. She had learned her lesson about stepping into the shadows.

Her ribs still ached from those punches and she was pretty sure one of them was broken because it hurt each time she breathed.

Her footsteps faltered for a moment as something caught her eye.

Just inside a ring of light surrounding a functioning streetlight was a payphone. Shadow Stalker's spirits soared as she raced towards the phone will all the speed she could muster, even as her body burned and screaming in protest.

All she had to do was call the PRT emergency hotline and then they would come find her. Even if Boogeyman interrupted the call they would still be obligated to investigate and the blood trail she had left would at least indicate that something was wrong.

Her breath caught as she reached the outer ring of the light and stretched her hand out to grab onto the glorious black receiver that called to her.

"AUUGH," she cried out as she fell to the ground. Her mask protected her face as she slammed into the ground, but she could feel her sides flare up again as her injured ribs protested at the harsh treatment. She moved to drag herself over to her freedom which laid only a few feet away, but she started to feel something pulling her back. Shadow Stalker felt tears form in her eyes at the sound of the taunting voice.

"Come now, Sophia. We can't have you ruining all the fun, can we?" Boogeyman said with what Shadow Stalker assumed as a sick grin plastered onto her face. Shadow Stalker screeched in terror and pain as she tried to pull herself away from the walking nightmare. She desperately clawed at the asphalt with her hands even as her broken one left a bloody trail behind it, flaring in agony the entire time as shredded flesh and shattered bones scraped against the ground.

"Please," Shadow Stalker sobbed as her efforts to unite with the payphone remained unsuccessful. Boogeyman only laughed at her shrill pleas for mercy.

When she finally came to a stop she desperately tried to scramble to her feet to make an escape, to reach the freedom that taunted her by staying just out of her reach. She made it to her knees before she was kicked back down. She groaned in pain while she curled in on herself to try and provide herself some modicum of protection.

"It's really amazing isn't it," Boogeyman said as she circled her prone form like a vulture. "How you can see someone every day, but never really get to know the person behind the mask they put up."

Shadow Stalker gurgled in protest as Boogeyman's hand wrapped around her throat and heaved her off her feet. Shadow Stalker let her arms fall limply to her sides. She already knew that trying to break Boogeyman's grip would be an exercise in futility. She could probably get out using her shadow state, but she would be subjecting herself to the intense pain of phasing through whatever Boogeyman's body was made of and the pain of being torn in half.

"You have two masks, Sophia," Boogeyman said as she pulled the Ward's mask off her face. Shadow Stalker felt a welcome rush of cool air hit her sweaty face, but it was tainted by the slasher smile that Boogeyman was giving her. She seemed to eye her mask like it was some sort of stranger creature.

"You have one for your cape persona, and one for your civilian identity, but neither of them are who you really are, are they?" Boogeyman asked as she threw her into the side of a building. Shadow Stalker grunted as she hit the brick wall and slid to the ground, unmoving as Boogeyman stalked forward. "That's all I'm doing really. Removing you masks so the whole world can see how weak you are."

Boogeyman dropped the mask to the ground and Sophia flinched as she crushed it under her foot. The hockey like mask that had defined part of her existence shattered into a dozen pieces. Boogeyman's yellow eyes seemed to glow in the dim lighting as Sophia pressed herself against the wall as tightly as she could, tear streaking down her face.

"Because that's what you are - weak," Boogeyman said in a mocking tone as if she was speaking to a small child.

"It's almost disappointing really," Boogeyman said in a conversational tone as she drew herself closer to the shaking girl. "I was expecting something more interesting to show itself when I tore away your masks. A monster, a psychopath maybe. Something that would make me understand why you did all those things at Winslow. Why you thought it was a good idea to hunt people down like animals. Why you got a power that only let you run away."

Sophia cowered as Boogeyman drew herself closer, to the point where their noses were almost touching. For a long moment, Boogeyman did nothing but stare at her with a cold and empty gaze. To Sophia, it felt like they layer of her very being were being pulled back so that the monster before her could get a good look of what laid beneath. Then finally she spoke in a near whisper, her words as chilling as the arctic winds.

"The truth. You're just a scared little girl."

Sophia broke down sobbing.

She wasn't sure how long she spent with tears streaking down her face and snot running down her nose, but when she managed to pull herself back together enough to see Boogeyman was still staring at her with those cold eyes. Sophia couldn't help but squirm at the disappointing gaze that her former punching bag gave her like she had been expecting fireworks and got a sparkler instead.

"Please…just get it over with," Sophia said, her voice raw and raspy. Hours ago, if someone had asked her if she would be willing to die she would have shot that person in the throat. Now, after eight hours of what could only be described as torture, she was more than ready if it meant that Boogeyman would just end this. She couldn't stand the thought of not being able to protect herself, of being able to fight back. She didn't want to listen to what Boogeyman had to say anymore, she couldn't.

"You thought I was trying to kill you?" Boogeyman asked in faux surprised tone. "Oh Sophia, it was never about avoiding death, it was about surviving."

"Wha…" Sophia managed to gasp out, clearly confused.

Boogeyman just smirked, "I never said anything about killing you, Sophia. I mean, as if I would let you off that easy. No, it was about seeing if your masks would survive. If Shadow Stalker and Sophia would survive if they were brought to the edge."

Boogeyman's smirk stretched into a wide bone-chilling grin. "They didn't."

Sophia flinched again as Boogeyman gave a hearty laugh at that. "This is my victory, Sophia. I showed your true self. Now you get to live with that for the rest of your life," she hissed.

"It-it's over?" Sophia asked, her heart swelling up with hope. A hope that was quickly crushed by Boogeyman's crackling.

"Over? No, not over. Never over. Tonight, I showed you who you really are. Now, I'm going to reveal to the world what's beneath your mask, so that you can live for the rest of your life aware that everyone knows that you're just a scared little girl, Sophie."

She recoiled at the mention of the pet name that man had given her while under her mother's roof.

"I'll leave you to yourself then," Boogeyman said as she backed up from the sobbing girl. Sophia paid no attention as she let out a single wordless cry as she shrunk in on herself. She didn't notice as Boogeyman faded back into the shadows, nor did she notice when PRT vans pulled up a few minutes later asking her is she needed medical attention.

All she did was sob for the power that she had lost, for the confidence and security that had been taken from her.

Gone was the Shadow Stalker who was the terror of criminals. Gone was the Sophia who ruled Winslow with fear.

In their place laid a young woman who had been broken and never healed. Who had endured torment from a man that her own mother had invited into her house. A girl who used her anger to hide her insecurities from the world around her.

She sobbed because she knew that Boogeyman was right.

And that was the most terrifying thing of all.


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