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Shadow 2.3

6:42 A.M.

"Well?"

Madison Clements shivered as Tay- no Boogeyman walked out of her shadow. She whimpered as she placed her cold hands on her shoulders, not enough to hurt her, but enough to keep her from doing anything stupid.

Not that Madison had plans to do anything. Boogeyman had thoroughly erased any form of resistance from her days ago. Having a shadow horse, or Nightmare as she apparently called them, watch her in her sleep was more than enough to dissuade calling for help.

And after watching the video she couldn't help but feel that she had made the right choice.

She didn't like Sophia that much. She had hung out with her in the past because of her relationship with Emma who was one of the top dogs in the school, not because she was appealing as a conversationalist. She was just too aggressive; everything was an argument to her and her sadistic streak was rather frightening. She had been okay with calling Hebert names and socially isolating her but the locker was way beyond anything that even in her wildest dreams would have thought appropriate.

She had protested and threatened to go to the principle if they didn't let Hebert out, but then Sophia had threatened to break her legs and while she doubted that she would have done it there was a glint in her eyes that made her comply.

Then Hebert disappeared.

The pile of garbage and filth that had been shoved inside was still present in the locker, but there wasn't any sign of their classmate. Emma and Sophia thought that one of the other students who they had bullied from time to time when they wanted some variety from Hebert had let the girl out and pushed it out of their minds. Madison's imagination hadn't been so easily assuaged.

Nightmares of Taylor dying in the locker and having her cold corpse shoved into a dumpster by Sophia haunted her subconscious. She had read up on what being exposed to such toxic material like the ones they had filled the locker with would do to a person if left untreated for an extended time.

She had gotten plenty of nightmare fuel from reading those.

She supposed the fact that Sophia was Shadow Stalker explained a lot of things about her. Why the school never seemed to come down on them when they were bullying Hebert even if it started to get physical. Even if it was right in front of the teacher's view. Why she always preferred physical threats and actions over verbal ones.

It made her stomach churn at the thought that someone like that was considered a hero. But even then, witnessing what Boogeyman did to Sophia made bile rise in her throat.

For the past few hours, she had gotten to watch in HD glory as Sophia Hess was physically and psychologically tortured to the breaking point. It was disturbing to see how Boogeyman played her like a fiddle, pushing all the right buttons at just the right times. She had been forced to throw up near the end, when Sophia broke down completely, leaving her an empty unresponsive shell of what she used to be.

"I-I downloaded the last file," Madison managed to get out. She didn't want to do this, even to someone as morally bankrupt as Sophia. But the video had been a warning as much as it had been a part of the plan, "do what I say, or this will happen to you".

Not that she needed any more evidence that working against Boogeyman would be a bad idea.

"Are they ready to send?" Boogeyman asked, her fingers curling around her shoulders in a subtle warning of what would happen to her if her answer was no.

"Yes," Madison managed to squeak out. "I-I have them all ready to send."

For the past few weeks, Madison had been forced to wear a recording device at school. Boogeyman had ordered her to tease as much information about the bullying as she could out of the other students. Honestly, it hadn't been that hard. Even though Hebert had been missing from school during the time after the locker, those that had been part of Emma's clique had been all too eager to add their own two cents in an effort to get in the redhead's good graces.

Getting Sophia and Emma to talk about the "brilliance" of the locker took even less effort.

It was disturbing how gleefully they talked about ruining Hebert's life as if it was all a game to them. Even more so, that merely days before she had been one of them, all too eager to throw Hebert under the bus to get a good laugh and some social standing.

But Boogeyman hadn't been satisfied with mere recordings. She had Madison scour the entire school, searching for anyone who had taped the events on their phones for posterities sake. She gave her journals filled with hundreds of instances of bullying to scan and passwords to email addresses choked full with hate mail and death threats. And as Madison started to compile them onto her computer she realized the full scale of what she and the others had wrought upon Hebert.

It was sickening in the least to read through and realize just how much they had ruined this girl's life, and for what? A laugh or two to amuse themselves.

"You know what to do," Boogeyman said as she pulled back from Madison's shoulders, giving the younger girl a little room to breathe. Madison paused as she started at the bright monitor before her. Gigabytes of data all compressed into a single email ready to be blasted across the bay. A single email that would ruin her life and the lives of dozens of others as the knowledge of what they did was made public to everyone.

Her finger hovered over the send button. If she did this, then she would be arrested. She would be complicit in revealing a Ward's secret identity and who knows what charges she would get from everything she had done at the school. Pushing the button would effectively end her life as she knew it.

Yet, part of her wanted to push it. She wanted to get over this guilt that plagued her every night as she tossed and turned in bed whilst the yellow-eyed Nightmare looked on. This would be a chance for redemption, an opportunity to do something right for once.

The click of the mouse as she depressed the right key held a certain finality to it. In the half second, it took the computer to process the instructions of the mouse and carry them out, the email that contained virtually every instance of bullying that Taylor Hebert had been subjected to for the past two years was sent to every news outlet in the Bay and beyond. It was sent to the school board and other various education watchdog organizations. Now it wouldn't matter if Winslow ignored what was going on inside its halls because now everyone knew what they were doing.

"It's done," Madison said, slumping in her seat in sweet relief. She turned back towards Boogeyman, who was sitting on the edge of her bed with a strange glint in her yellow eyes. Madison felt her throat clench up at the unnatural stare, but she still managed to squeak out, "I-it is done, right?"

"Well Madison, that depends," Boogeyman said, her voice as dry as the desert. "Do you think two weeks of assistance under duress will make up two years of torment?"

Madison would have gulped if her throat hadn't gone so dry. Boogeyman had yet to move from her cross-legged position on the edge of her bed, but something in the atmosphere had changed. It was colder, tenser, dangerous.

"I helped you," Madison argued, her voice a faint whisper. For a moment, she saw Boogeyman's eyes light up in a flash of anger, but it disappeared as quickly as it came.

"You helped me because the alternative was worse," Boogeyman said as she stood up in a slow deliberate manner. Madison felt her knees start to quake as the grey skinned parahuman towered over her. "Not because of the guilt you felt for what you did."

Madison opened her mouth to explain that she had no choice, that she had to keep quiet, but was cut off as Boogeyman swiped her hand in the air. "You took the easy path because you don't have the will or courage to take the harder way. If I hadn't come here you would have kept silent because it was easier for you to do, wouldn't you?"

Madison wanted to say no, that she would have come clean, that she would have told her parents what their little angel of a daughter was doing at school.

But she knew she wouldn't have.

Because Boogeyman was right, she would have kept quiet. She would have trotted along with her life as best she could while the soul-crushing guilt of what she had done weighed down on her. She wouldn't have told her parents that their darling little angel was actually a demon, and they would still cling to the illusion that she was a good daughter, a good person.

Madison felt tears streaking down her cheeks as she stared up at Boogeyman who had a carefully blank expression on her face.

"I didn't- they made me," Madison tried to choke out through the fitful sobbing that overcame her form.

"In the end, they did force you," Boogeyman agreed, but there was not a trace of mercy or compassion hidden away behind that stone-cold expression. "But in the beginning, they didn't."

Madison tried to grab the hem of Boogeyman's robe to sob into, so she could explain why she had done all of those horrible things. But Boogeyman took a step back as her arms stretched out, and all her open hand caught was empty air. She fell to her hands and knees on the floor crying as Boogeyman continued to speak, uncaring of her current state.

"At first you did it because it felt good," Boogeyman said as she stared down at the shaking brunette. "It felt nice to see me squirm under your gaze, glancing over my shoulder to look out for your next prank. It felt nice to indulge in all of those dark thoughts that you had suppressed over the years until it became a habit."

"Please," Madison begged through her watery tears.

"That's how it happens, Madison. You start off small- a spitball here and there, but you just keep on doing more because it will never be enough. That's how angels can become devils. That's how you became a monster."

Madison said nothing as she silently cried onto the hardwood floor. She shoulders shaking with the silent sobs that wracked her entire body.

"But I suppose I'm not entirely without mercy," Boogeyman said. Madison's head shot up, hope swelling up in her heart. "I'll give you a choice, you can go tell your parents what a little devil their angel has become, or…"

Boogeyman's hands slunk into her robes and pulled something out. Madison felt her heart skip a beat at the sight of the pistol. It wasn't the first time she had seen a gun, anyone who lived in the Bay for a few years had seen more than their fair share. She didn't recognize the type of pistol other than it looked a lot like the ones in secret agent movies.

"You can take the easy way out and just end all your guilt right now," Boogeyman said as she tossed the cold lifeless thing onto her bed. The black metal stuck out like a sore thumb on her sky-blue sheets.

"I'll leave you to make your choice, but we both know which one you're going to choose," Boogeyman said with a small smirk as she slipped back into the shadows. Madison shuddered as she forced herself to her feet. Her blue eyes locked onto the deceptively innocent looking pistol that laid in her bedsheets as if it wasn't a tool of death and destruction.

Madison wasn't sure how long she spent staring at the gun, but the next thing she knew she was holding the pistol in her hands while she sat on the edge of her bed, contemplating her choices. She could step outside of her room, wake her parents up and tell them what a horrible human being she was, forever tainting her in their eyes. Worse still, she would be subjecting them to retaliation by the Empire. A white girl helping a black girl to bully a white girl, it didn't take a genius to see that the Empire would jump all over that headline.

Images of Molotov cocktails crashing through the windows filled her mind as her parents were burned alive. Thoughts of her mother being stalked and raped by a group of gangbangers while her father was gunned down outside his workplace.

But if she was gone it might mitigate what would happen to them, it might keep them from getting killed because of her actions. They might never forgive her, but at the very least they would be alive.

The barrel was tasteless and cold as she shoved it between her lips. The cool metal brought a chill to her mouth that did nothing to help with the hot tears that streamed down her face.

It was like Boogeyman said, they both knew she would take the easy way out.

She shut her eyes as she squeezed the trigger like she had seen in the movies as she waited for the deafening bang that would end her miserable existence.

*Click*

Madison cautiously opened her wet eyes at the noise that defiantly didn't sound like a gun going off. Nor did it feel like her brain stem had been ripped apart by a piece of metal traveling at hundreds of miles per hour.

She squeezed the trigger again.

*Click*

Madison tore the gun out of her mouth and frowned as she fumbled with the part of the pistol that housed the bullets. She managed to wrench it open to find it not full with life taking bullets, but a rolled-up strip of paper.

Sliding the paper out into her palm she unrolled it to see a message that made the hot tears of despair well up inside her once more.

Did you really think I would let you off that easily?

Madison shrieked in rage and misery that her way out had been taken from her. She threw the gun to the side, uncaring for the loud thud it made as it struck the wall. Her hands cupped her face as hot tears and snot ran down her face once more. All she wanted to do was for this to all end.

The world shattered.

Beings vaster than she could comprehend filled the sky in a dance she could not understand.

Destination.

Agreement.

Trajectory.

Agreement.

"Has she moved?" Boogeyman asked as she emerged from the shadows next to one of her Nightmares. The first light of dawn was starting to creep over the horizon with an almost glacial slowness, but it still felt like she was being put in front of a tanning bed. It didn't hurt yet, but it was irritating for the time being.

The demonic horse shook its head with a snort.

"Good," Boogeyman muttered as she stared at the innocuous looking warehouse below, the only sign that something wasn't right was the pair of guards that stood outside the main door.

She did feel a brief pang of guilt for doing what she did to Madison since the girl did feel genuinely guilty for the part she took in her suffering. But that guilt was largely overshadowed by the anger she felt for having to spend the last two years of her life subjected to Madison's laughter and immature pranks.

Feeling guilty doesn't wash away your sins, Boogeyman thought with a bitter edge.

At any rate, she was done with Madison for now. She had played her part and would now spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder like Taylor used to every day in school. Right now, she had other concerns to deal with.

Like the new Tinker, the ABB had picked up.

The Cornell bomber had been a pretty big attention grabber on the news a few weeks ago. A new Tinker blowing up part of a highly-respected school - that was bound to turn a few heads. Boogeyman's first thought had been to simply eliminate her and remove the threat in its entirety when a thought struck her.

What if that had been me?

She didn't expect to get any real public appreciation for what she was doing, but what if the first action after getting her powers hadn't been to hide away but to go Carrie on Winslow? Would they had vilified her as a psychotic villain because of one bad day and disregard everything that had led up to it? Could the Cornell bomber be just like her, someone who had been bullied and isolated for years on end? It wasn't like anyone had died in the explosions that had leveled part of the college, and she doubted that the woman in question had joined the ABB willingly, it wasn't like most people could say "no" to Lung.

So here she was, getting ready to have a discussion with the infamous Cornell bomber in her own workshop.

Was it a risk? Yes of course it was. The Cornell bomber could actually be a megalomaniacal psychopath who implanted bombs into people's heads for the fun of it. But if that was her down there wouldn't she have wanted someone to hear her side of the story?

And it wasn't like this was an entirely selfless act. She was willing to commit to this risk because the Tinker might be useful in her goals to rid the city of the gangs. As much as she loathed to admit it, even in the secrecy of her own thoughts, she couldn't do this all by herself. There was always going to be the one cape that she wouldn't be able to beat or the one angle she hadn't considered. Even if it was just to have someone to act as a sounding board for her ideas that wasn't spawned by her powers.

"Go back to the lair," Boogeyman ordered. The Nightmare neighed and shifted back into the shadow, eager to get away from the growing dawn light.

Boogeyman dived into the shadow, twisting through the sheer empty nothingness of the shadow zone until she reached her target. She emerged from a dark spot on the wall in utter silence as shadows ran off her form like tar. As she stepped into the well-lit room she took a moment to take in her surroundings.

The warehouse had been converted into a very crude workshop with haphazardly assembled equipment scattered around the multitude of tables that had been set up to accommodate the bomb Tinker. The parahuman in question was hunched over one of the tables, welding mask on as small sparks and wisps of smoke emerged from underneath her power tools. Aside from her, the only other person in the building was a single middle-aged man who looked like he had dozed off while listening to his music if the headphones sticking out of his ears were any indication.

Boogeyman approached the Tinker cautiously, careful not to disturb her or her slumbering guard. Once she was about five feet away from the parahuman she cleared her throat.

The cape's shoulder slumped in response as the welding torch she had been using cut off. "Dammit Lee, I'll have the next batch done when -GAH!"

Boogeyman had to hold back an amused smirk as the cape almost jumped a foot in the air in surprise at her appearance. It wouldn't help her case if dear Jennifer thought she was being mocked.

"Who the fu - how did -" Jennifer sputtered, eyes wide behind the tinted glass of her welding mask. Boogeyman could see the woman's hand twitch towards the half-finished product behind her before thinking the better of it. A faint trace of fear wafted off her form at thought of the device going off while she was still in the blast radius. Boogeyman's could see her eyes flicker over to one of the completed devices on the other table as she considered the odds of reaching it before her head was removed from her shoulders.

Boogeyman raised an eyebrow. "How did I get here? The short answer is that I used my powers. The longer answer is that I used my powers. As for why I'm here? Well, Jennifer, tell me, do you want to spend the rest of your life wasting your brilliance by being forced to work for a jumped-up street thug?"

She would see the woman's muscles relax a bit as her eyes narrowed behind her mask in contemplation. There was still a healthy dose of fear but it was largely overshadowed by a burning hatred at the mention of the Dragon of Kyushu.

"I'm listening."

8:21 A.M.

Armsmaster could hear the servos of his suit grind against each other in protest as he clenched his hand at the sight of one of his Wards lying in a hospital bed. Her right hand was being suspended above the rest of her body by a sling to prevent the wound from bleeding out. Her face was red and scratched all over like she had been hit in the face by a weed whacker. But as much as he hated to admit it, his Wards were used to be injured. Brockton Bay villains didn't tend to pull their punches, and with Panacea in the city to heal any truly serious injuries the villains were far more willing to cut loose on the kids than they would in New York or Seattle.

"How is she?" Armsmaster asked the weary looking doctor as she passed through the door. He knew Dr. Jones from personal experience, she was the primary medical examiner for the Wards and local Protectorate and as such was well aware of the risks involved in heroing.

Dr. Jones sighed, "Physically she's stable. She has a few injuries that I'm worried about, particularly her hand, but since Panacea is going to come in and heal her up I don't foresee any complications. Mentally…that's a different story."

"How so?"

Dr. Jones shook her head, making her long dark brunette locks cascade down her shoulders like a waterfall. "I'm no psychologist, but I recognize a suicidal patient when I see one. She was trying to get to one of the knives before we managed to sedate her, I suggest you place her under guard so she doesn't try anything…drastic."

There was a faint trace of distaste underneath her words. Not so much at what Sophia had tried to do to herself, but rather the situation as a whole. Frankly, Armsmaster had to agree with her. The fact that Sophia had apparently been attacked on her way back home and was never reported missing was disturbing in of itself, the fact that attack was apparently so bad that Sophia had decided that taking her life would be a valid solution was even more so.

"Doctor, was there any evidence of…," Armsmaster paused as he considered how he wanted to word the question.

Fortunately for the Protectorate hero, the dark-skinned doctor understood what he was getting at. "No, we didn't find any obvious signs of sexual abuse, but whoever got to her did not pull their punches. They wanted her to suffer and they wanted her to live through it," she said with an angry glint in her dark brown eyes.

"…I see," Armsmaster said while his lips pursed in distaste.

"Even after Panacea heals her I'm going to want to keep her here for 72 hours, regardless of what your Director wants," Dr. Jones said with a slight sneer. Armsmaster frowned but nodded in agreement. It was well known that Doctor Jones and Director Piggot didn't get along very well with the dark-skinned doctor's rather vocal complaints about having untrained children fighting murders and monsters.

"Thank you, Dr. Jones," Armsmaster said with as much sincerity as he could muster. Doctor Jones nodded and walked off towards the front desk, leaving the tinker alone to his thoughts as he considered who was responsible for placing one of his Wards in the hospital.

The Empire was the most obvious suspect given Sophia's heritage and Kaiser had been making noise since the Merchant's destruction, but to attack a Ward? Kaiser was many things, but stupid was not one of them. He had to realize that attacking and brutalizing a Ward in any fashion would result in the full force of the Protectorate being brought down on him so fast that his head would spin. It would gain him nothing but the ire of the entire Protectorate and for what?

A frame up then? It would certainly make sense if someone wanted to have the Protectorate focus on the Empire. He dismissed Lung as a candidate right off the bat, the Asian parahuman had never shown any inclination towards such deceptions before. He might even take it as an insult to his power at the idea he was considered to be too weak to try and take the Empire out all by himself.

Coil then? The snake had never been an outright instigator of conflict, but he had shown great skill in playing sides against each other in the past. Still, this seemed a little too far out of his usual MO. Maybe…

"Sir!"

Armsmaster turned to see one of the PRT troopers whose name he didn't know running up to him with a pale face.

"What," he asked as he tried unsuccessfully to keep the frustration of the whole situation from seeping into his voice.

Fortunately, the PRT trooper didn't seem to notice, but his wide-eyed panicked expression did little to ease Armsmaster's nerves. "Sir, you need to see the news right now," the trooper said in a slightly out of breath voice that did little to detract from the urgency of his tone. Armsmaster frowned but complied with the request moving over to an empty room to switch on the television monitor held aloft on the wall. It took a few moments to get the blasted aged thing to turn on, all the while his power was going on about how he could fix it and make it more efficient, which certainly didn't help his concentration as he tried to find the right channel.

When he did, his blood went cold.

Breaking News- Brockton Bay Ward Shadow Stalker Implicated in Bullying Campaign!

The headline flashed out in a bright yellow obnoxious font that made his eyes want to bleed. He didn't really hear anything the woman was saying on the screen, instead turning towards the PRT trooper who was now shaking in his boots at the sight of his now enraged boss.

"Double the guards at Shadow Stalker's room now," he growled in a tone that brooked no disobedience. The PRT trooper nodded shakily as he ran off with speeds that made Armsmaster wonder if he had a Mover rating as he turned back to the situation at hand.

He activated his helmet radio and connected directly to the Director's office. There was a faint click as Director Piggot answered her phone.

"What?"

Armsmaster felt his lips purse into a thin line as he stared at the screen before him as images of a locker filled with rot and garbage flashed behind the somewhat green looking reporter.

"We have a problem."

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