Enjoy!

Shadow 2.4

The moment that the bomb Tinker agreed to listen to her Boogeyman knew that this would be one of the most difficult things she would do since she had gotten her powers. Because the truth of the matter was that she still didn't know how to talk with people.

Oh, she could talk to them just fine. She knew exactly what she had to say to get under their skins, to make them uncomfortable to make them feel afraid. She could do that as easily as one might breathe, but to hold an actual back and forth conversation with someone? It was a skill that she hadn't had as much personal experience with for the last two years or so as one her age normally would. Add in her powers which were constantly telling her the deepest darkest fears and terrors of everyone she met, and it was easy to understand why she was so concerned about this conversation.

"What do you want from me?" Jennifer Lin asked. Boogeyman could feel the undercurrent of resentment and anger as the woman asked her question. There was a spark of caution in her gaze as the initial excitement of her offer faded. Her muscles were still tense, ready to spring towards her completed works at a moment's notice. Boogeyman was confident of her ability to stop her, but she would rather not have to end this conversation with someone curling up into the fetal position.

"I just don't want to see your brilliance wasted on a thug like Lung," Boogeyman said with what she hoped was a calming and friendly smile. Jennifer visibly preened under the praise, straightening up as if she was being put under a spotlight, but there was still a good amount of skepticism and caution. Apparently, her tutelage under Lung's hand had taught her some valuable lessons about paranoia.

Embolden by the primary positive reaction Boogeyman pushed on. "I mean, look at this place," she said, waving her hands to indicate the run-down warehouse that the bomb Tinker was currently residing in. It wasn't really bad as far as abandoned warehouses went. That wasn't to say it was the Ritz or anything like that, she could still see some mold and rot growing in one of the corners, but it was by far superior to anything the Merchants had used. "A woman of your talent being forced to work in conditions like this, and for a man who can't truly appreciate what you're capable of? A man who can't recognize your true intelligence."

She could taste Jennifer's fear of being unknown, unrecognized, of being anything less than spectacular. It was a fear that had scarred her soul and actions, a fear that had broken her once. It was tangy and sweet and it was oh so tempting to dive in, to drive the spike in even further. The young woman before her was on the edge of the abyss, ready to take the first step off after being ignored by Lung for so long.

"Is this really how you want to live for the rest of your life?" Boogeyman asked as she pushed back her urge to break the young woman before her. It was more difficult than she wanted to admit. "To be denied your accomplishments, to live in poverty and fear under a monster's wrath?"

"No."

"I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you," Boogeyman said as she cupped her ear. A lie, she could hear Jennifer's denial just fine, but she needed the woman to admit her situation as provide her with an alternative. After all, the first step in solving any problem was to recognize that it existed. Something that the PRT and Protectorate seemed to be incapable of. The woman before her had been in denial of what she had been forced to become, allowing herself to reason that she could still become what she dreamed to be if she just kept her head down and listened to Lung. It was a lie she had told herself so much that she almost believed it.

"No," Jennifer shouted, her anger temporarily overcoming her caution. Boogeyman could see behind her visor her eyes had narrowed into slits of pure rage and resentment at her entire situation. "I don't want to have to work in this- this sweat shop!"

Boogeyman had to hold back a smile at the desperation coloring her words. While the media hadn't revealed anything about Cornell Bomber's identity to the public, one didn't get into that college lightly. The fact that she had been accepted, spoke of someone of intelligence and with a fairly decent background. She could feel the desire to be recognized for her accomplishments, her need to prove anyone that had ever doubted her capabilities wrong. To be forced to slave away like this at the behest of jumped up street thug, without any recognition or care for her services had to be severely out of the woman's comfort zone. Any longer and she was likely to try something... foolish.

Jennifer turned around and slammed her fist onto her worktable, making the entire thing rattle. Boogeyman froze as the sleeping guard twitched, but calmed down as he settled back down into his nap. She had to wonder if he was that stupid to fall asleep in a Tinker's workshop on a job that had to have been assigned by Lung himself.

"I don't want to live like this," Jennifer said with a short sob, the angry tension leaving her shoulders as her sorrow and sadness took hold. Boogeyman could feel the woman's terror as her mind played images of her working like this for the rest of her life. Being forced to make bomb after bomb without care, without consideration, without mercy. The fear that she would just be remembered as another subordinate of Lung, forgotten to all for what she had been before she had become a parahuman.

The fear of never seeing her parents again.

The small part of Taylor Hebert that hadn't quite died yet felt for the woman. Taylor had lost her parents as well, and she knew the pain of being isolated, of being forgotten. She could understand the woman's fear and pain and terror.

She was tempted to place her hand on the woman's shoulder in a comforting gesture but decided against it. She could still feel Jennifer's uneasiness about her, and her recent experiences with physical contact hadn't been that pleasant. Boogeyman could see the barest edge of what looked to be a pretty nasty burn scar poking out from under the woman's sleeve. She could feel the Tinker's desire to be free from her imprisonment, but at the same time, she was scared witless by Lung.

"You don't have to fear him," Boogeyman said. It was somewhat ironic that she, someone whose existence was literally sustained by fear, was telling someone that they didn't have to be afraid.

"Of course, I do," Jennifer retorted with a hiss as she grabbed her hair in her hands as if she was going to tear them out by the roots. "You think you can take him?" she asked, turning around to look Boogeyman in her off yellow eyes. "Lung isn't a man, he's a monster wearing a human suit. What are you going to do, hide under his bed? Monsters don't feel fear."

Boogeyman tried to ignore her irritation of Jennifer's dismissal of her abilities as she gave the young woman a smile that made her flinch. "Monsters do feel fear, Jennifer." Boogeyman leaned in until her lips were inches away from the woman's ears. She whispered to the Tinker so quietly the woman had to strain her hearing just to make out the words.

"That's why they're monsters."

"I can help you," Boogeyman said as she tried to keep a smirk off her face as Jennifer released a full body shiver at her whisper. "I can make sure that people recognize who you are, that they know that you're more than just another parahuman. More than just another criminal. You can be more than just Bakuda," Boogeyman said as she glanced to the worn gas mask lying on the table. "You can be Jennifer again."

Boogeyman could feel the desire rolling off the young woman as she continued to tell her about all she could accomplish if she joined her. She could feel the need for her to be recognized, for all her work to be validated. She could feel it all boiling under a pot of fear and anger, almost ready to snap, but not quite there.

"All you need to do is help me, and I can free you from Lung," Boogeyman said with a smile as she stretched out her palm for Jennifer to take. She could feel her elation rise as the young woman started to hesitantly move her own hand to accept the offer. That elation dried up as quickly as snow in the Sahara as the woman brought her hand back towards her chest and took a cautious step back.

"Cut the crap," Jennifer growled, her coal black eyes narrowing behind the visor of her welding mask. Though she couldn't see her face Boogeyman could tell the woman's expression had morphed into a vicious looking sneer. She could feel the anger bubbling off every word as hands clenched into trembling fists. The rage that had been held in check by her fear of Lung had risen to the surface, memories of such offers from the past coming back in full force.

Boogeyman could feel the victory that she had held so close slipping through her fingers. The budding trust and confidence that she had been building up melted away like rainwater as Jennifer took a cautious step back from her. Boogeyman managed to keep her irritation from showing as she tried to placate the angry Tinker. "I want to help you, Jennifer. I want to-"

Jennifer cut her off with an angry snarl. Her entire form was shaking with barely contained rage as she spat out, "No, you want me to help you. You want to use me like Lung did!"

While Boogeyman wanted to argue that she was wrong, that she misunderstood her intentions, the woman wasn't exactly wrong per se. She did want the Tinker's capabilities to try and help in her crusade, but at the same time, she wanted to obtain her services in such a way that would be beneficial to Jennifer. But she could feel the woman's resentment at her offer, at the implication that she couldn't accomplish what Boogeyman was offering on her own. The weight of countless dismissals and denials of her capabilities rested on her shoulders.

"Jennifer, I just want to hel-" Boogeyman started to say in a placating manner to calm the angry young woman down. She took a step back and held her palms out in a non-threatening manner, but the bomb Tinker seemed to care for none of it.

"I don't need you," she hissed. The anger and fear that had been slowly and steadily boiling had finally snapped, but not in the direction that Boogeyman had wanted. Instead, it was now a frothing mess as the Tinker's rage toward her situation encompassed not only Lung and the ABB, but Boogeyman as well. Instead of being seen as a bringer of freedom she was now just another slave driver like Lung, interested only in using her abilities to their advantage.

"You're right," Boogeyman agreed, desperately clutching to the last chance she had to get the woman on her side. "You don't need me, but I want to help yo-"

"I don't want your help," Jennifer spat with enough force to make the snoozing guard stir in his sleep. For a moment, Boogeyman feared he would wake from his disgustingly peaceful dream, but he settled back down a few seconds later. "I don't need help from a nothing like you," Jennifer said caustically.

Boogeyman growled back, her own irritation finally reaching the breaking point. "I'm a nothing?" Boogeyman asked sarcastically, giving the woman a bone-chilling laugh. "You're more of a nothing that I'll ever be. Because no matter what you do it's not going to be Jennifer Lin they recognize or respect, it's going to be Bakuda."

The bomb Tinker flinched behind her visor even as her skin started to turn red with rage. Even though her face was masked by her welding visor Boogeyman could tell she was about to interject with her own commentary and cut her off. "You will never be more than you are now Bakuda. You will always be remembered as nothing more than a slave of Lung, a convenient tool that he found. Nobody will remember who you were before this or even care if you told them."

The part of Boogeyman's mind that wasn't focused on trying to break Jennifer was screaming at her to stop. She had come her to try and make friends with the imprisoned Tinker, not terrorize her. And yet, despite being her original plan, Boogeyman couldn't help but revel in the frightened, wide-eyed gaze of the Tinker as she was slowly forced back. She could feel the sweet fear and terror rolling off the young woman's entire form that was so appetizing to her.

Boogeyman loomed over the shivering woman as she backpedaled into her workbench. "And when you look back on this day, know that you had a chance to be more than just Bakuda. That you had a chance to be Jennifer again, and you let it slip through your fingers because you were too afraid to admit that you couldn't solve the problem on your own," Boogeyman said as the oppressive shadows seemed to draw in closer. She could feel the quick panic breaths from Jennifer as her eyes widened in fear as she towered over the Tinker.

"Because in the end, you weren't smart enough," Boogeyman taunted.

In that instant, several things happened. Jennifer's fear quickly shifted into a pure blinding rage at the insulation that she wasn't intelligent enough to solve her own problems. Her hand reach out behind her and wrapped around her half-finished bomb even as Boogeyman retreated into the shadows with a dark laugh. The unfinished Tinker creation clattered uselessly against the floor as the young woman fell to her knees, slamming her fists against the ground.

"I'll show her," she muttered under her breath, unheard by all but her.

"I'll show them all."

"ARGGG!" Boogeyman screamed as she slammed her fist into her desk. The force of the blow was so great that the wooden fixture cracked in two and collapsed into an utterly useless pile of splinters on the floor. But Boogeyman was too angry at herself to care about something as banal as a piece of furniture that she had taken from one of the Merchant dens.

She had failed. Jennifer Lin had completely rejected her offer and declared herself as an enemy. Hardly an auspicious outcome for her. But that wasn't what angered her the most. What got her really angry was how close she had been to getting the Tinker to accept her help in dealing with Lung. She had felt the uncertainty and anger that had been swirling around in her brain and how close she had been to taking that one step over the edge.

But then Boogeyman opened her mouth and everything had been shot to hell.

She had pushed too hard, too quickly and paid the price for her eagerness to get the bomb Tinker on her side. What she had hoped to be a comforting and reassuring statement of what she would do for the woman had been interpreted in a less than stellar light.

"I was so close," Boogeyman said, her voice echoing through the nearly empty warehouse. Only a few of her Nightmares, including Phobia, were residing in the building, the others spread out in other abandoned buildings in the former Merchant territory to throw people off her trail. She paced the open room, hands clenched by her sides as she went over the entire conversation in her head, looking for some way that she could salvage the situation.

Unfortunately for her, nothing came to mind. She had scared the Tinker too much with her talk about how she would be forgotten while working under Lung, and now the woman seemed convinced to prove her wrong.

Boogeyman took a seat on her torn up chair with a sigh. It wasn't the most comfortable or prettiest of things, but it served its purpose. The shallow green fabric of the seat was frayed and worn in many places, and almost half of it was covered in stains of some kind. Boogeyman squeezed the armrests of the chair in an effort to calm herself down. She could feel the wiring and internal fabric of the chair give way as her superhumanly strong fingers dug into the piece of furniture.

Well, it wasn't a total loss at the very least. Jennifer had been spurred to rebel against Lung just as she had originally hoped, it just wasn't with her as she had planned. She doubted that Jennifer would be able to do much against Lung by herself, but at the very least it would lead to some internal strife in the ABB. Perhaps there was a way that she could capitalize on it?

If only she was better at talking with people…

As the stray thought passed through her head Boogeyman couldn't help but let out a stark humorless laugh that made her Nightmares shy away in fear. Boogeyman felt a wide smile stretch across her lips. "I guess Sophia did get one last victory after all. I get to spend the rest of my life alone."

It was a sobering thought that bothered Boogeyman more than she would have liked to admit. Spending the rest of her life without any real person to talk to other than creations of her power seemed like a lonely way to live. But…it was an existence she could easily see happening to her. Thanks to Emma and Sophia her last two years of social development had been pretty much stunted by the fact that she hadn't been able to make any friends. They had done their best to make sure that everyone in the school knew that trying to be her friend would be the equivalent of social suicide, leaving her alone and isolated. She didn't even talk to her dad for most of that time with how depressed he had been over her mom's death. And now, with her powers screaming at her the fear and terrors of everyone she met, how could she possibly hope to be able to make a real friendship that wasn't based on fear of her?

You don't need them.

Part of wanted to agree wholeheartedly. She had been shown time and time again that friendships brought pain and suffering. Emma had once been her sister in all but blood and now, now she was little more than a manifestation of everything that Boogeyman thought was wrong with Brockton Bay. A pretty white girl with a decently wealthy family, and powerful friends in the form of Shadow Stalker made sure that she got away with everything.

"Let's see how many friend will help you now," Boogeyman muttered under her breath. Sophia Hess had been revealed for what she really was, a broken little girl trying to prove to the world that she was anything but that. Madison Clements, a coward too scared to go against anyone that was stronger than her. She had stripped Emma of the two people in Winslow that were probably her only legitimate friends.

The rest were mere parasites looking to work their way up the school hierarchy. They held no vested emotional attachment to Emma or even the bullying. They had all just gone through the motions so that they weren't going against the crowd. When the police and PRT came, they would turn on Emma so fast they might have all been mistaken for Movers. Emma was about to lose what little fragment were left of her support network, leaving the traumatized girl isolated and alone. Boogeyman felt a strong urge to go over to the Barnes' house right now and start mocking her former best friend for all that she could. She could just imagine it now, Emma's eyes red and blotchy as tears and snot ran down her face whilst she desperately tried to deny what was going on around her.

But no, for now, she would wait until the PRT and police started to investigate Winslow. She couldn't let her eagerness to see Emma as a broken wreck of a human being ruin her revenge. She had waited two years for this, she could wait a few more days.

But even as she thought about how she couldn't wait to see her ex-best friend suffer, she couldn't help but feel a brief pang of longing. Even after being burned so badly, she still wanted to feel that same type of camaraderie with someone besides creatures of her own creation. She could feel that sense of loneliness and desire for companionship resonate with something inside of her as she leaned back against her sickly green chair.

"I don't suppose you have any ideas?" Boogeyman asked as Phobia approached her seat. The Nightmare's only response was to snort with a soft head shake. "I thought not," Boogeyman said with a sigh as she shifted her weight to make herself more comfortable. It wasn't like there was much she could do to help with that, the chair she had stolen from the Merchants was almost certainly older than her and hadn't been taken care of very well.

"Let's see how Sophia's doing," Boogeyman muttered to herself as she picked up the television remote. The T.V. in question was just as old and worn as her chair, having been taken from the same Merchant den. It was a small boxy thing that was thicker than it was wide with two antennae sticking up out of the frame. It didn't provide much in the way of quality, its colors only fulfilled the bare minimum requirements to avoid making the screen look black and white, but it worked.

It took her a moment to get the television to respond to her button pushing, seeing as the remote was just as in as bad a shape as the rest of the equipment she had gotten from the Merchants. After a few frustrated buttons presses, she finally managed to turn the television on and set it to one of the local news outlets.

On the screen, a man with salt and pepper hair stared back behind a half circle desk. Beneath him, the words 'Teenage Tragedy' were plastered on the screen in big obnoxious red letters. She had to snort, that was the best title they could come up with?

"Tragedy struck Winslow High today as it was discovered through leaked documents that the local Ward Shadow Stalker had been abusing her power granted by the Wards Program in order to bully her classmates," the reporter, whose name she didn't know or care about said in a no-nonsense, professional fashion. "Among these victims was the daughter of the now deceased head of the Dockworker's Union, Taylor Herbert."

Boogeyman felt her muscles tense and the chair creak underneath her grip at the mention of her dead father even as they mangled her last name. The news anchor, unaware of the spike he was driving through the teen's heart carried on with his report.

"Sources indicate that this abuse had been going on for some time, culminating in a young teen being locked in her own locker alongside various used women hygiene products and other garbage," the reporter said without so much as a twitch as they displayed an image of the disgusting prison she had been placed into weeks ago. It was a low-quality photo taken from a student's phone, but it did little to detract from the disgusting nature of the so-called "prank".

Boogeyman felt her teeth grinding against each other at the reminder of the hell she had gone through. She would be lying to herself if she didn't admit that the experience had scarred her. She could still remember the noxious stench that assaulted her nose, the sick, oily feeling that covered her flesh as she struggled to free herself. She could still remember the exact moment the two titans had started their dance before they had been consumed by the darkness and shadows.

She could remember all of it.

Boogeyman took a deep breath to calm herself, she couldn't allow herself to fall into the very fear she used to break others. Not after all that she had been through, not after all she had done, not before all she was going to do.

"…PRT and Protectorate have yet to make a statement, but have assured the public they are doing everything in their power to help the situation," the news anchor said, cutting through the haze of thoughts that Boogeyman had found herself trapped in. She had to snort at the man's statement about the PRT trying to help. It was almost comical to think that the PRT would do something that might tarnish their reputation in some way. She didn't doubt that they were doing everything in their power to try and wiggle their way out of the mess that had found themselves in.

Not that they would be able to, she and Madison had collected far too much evidence of Sophia's wrongdoings for them to be able to deny the existence of the bullying. Either the PRT denied what was happening and looked like idiots as they buried their heads in the sand, or they accepted the accusations and took a significant PR hit.

She watched the anchor for a few more minutes before shutting the television off. They weren't bringing up anything she didn't already know herself and would serve her no purpose to dredge up memories better left forgotten. The anchor had mentioned that the police were starting their own investigation of Winslow independent of the PRT's. The thought of Blackwell being dragged off in a set of handcuffs did bring a smile to her lips. Maybe she should visit the lackluster principle one last time. It was enough to take the edge of the frustration from not seeing her message to the city being played on the news just yet.

She supposed that made sense since it revealed Sophia's identity as Shadow Stalker and the PRT would do everything in their power to try and suppress such information, but all that did was make it all the more frustrating. She had tried posting the message on PHO under her old account, but it had been quickly removed by Tin_Mother and other moderators once it became clear what the message was about and the identity that it revealed. Not that it mattered in the long run, eventually her message to the gangs would get out. She had sent it to every news outlet in the city, eventually, one of them would cave in and post it if only to increase their ratings.

Her musings were interrupted as a Nightmare burst out from a shadow with a hurried but deliberate pace.

"What is it?" Boogeyman asked, no longer slouching in her seat, but standing upright and at attention. The Nightmare neighed, pushing an image onto her mind. In the image, Boogeyman saw that the Nightmare in question was one of the ones she had sent to keep an eye on Sophia's family. While she did hold some bitter feelings towards Sophia's mom for not keeping her daughter in check, she didn't want to see her life end at the hand of the scumbag Nazis who would no doubt want to make a lesson of her and Sophia's little brother.

"What's going on?" Boogeyman asked as she called her power to focus and prepared to make the jump to Sophia's apartment complex. The Nightmare snorted again, pushing another image into her mind. This time Boogeyman got a good view of a rather large group of Empire goons making their way the building. She growled, a wave of irritation washing over her. If this had happened a couple hours earlier then she would have just jumped in and torn the group to shreds. Now because the Sun had risen over the horizon and was casting the city with its blinding, burning light she was going to have to get creative.

"Come on," she said to the few Nightmares that were stationed alongside her as she dived into a shadow. "We have work to do."

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