At My Fingertips Chapter 6 (Original chapter Chapter 25, second chapter Chapter 110)

After School

Clothes Shop, Broadwalk

"Nope. Nein, non, njet, no way." I said, shaking my head adamantly.

"It's a skirt, Taylor, not a torture device." Amy said in amusement, the traitor.

I eyed the skirt that Vicky was trying to convince me to try on with scant and dubious favor. It was pink, it was short and it had frills. Nope. The only way that I was wearing that was if someone Mastered me.

"I haven't worn anything with frills since I was eight." I informed the flying Brute sternly. "And I haven't worn pink in just as long. It's also too short; I'd be flashing everyone if I had to kick with that on!"

"Oh yeah, you did say you took up some self-defense stuff." the blonde nodded. Apparently that third reason was more persuasive than the preceding two, much to my mild ire.

Victoria Dallon wasn't a bad person, so far as I could tell. She was outgoing, ebullient, and fairly likable. What she also was, unfortunately, was somewhat unable to read other people's intentions and actions properly. I'm screwing it up, putting it like that though, that makes her sound somewhat stupid, and she isn't.

Putting it simply, she had the black-and-white worldview that New Wave possessed (for the most part) regarding villains and heroes, and she tended to categorize people very quickly based on that world view. It was an either/or situation, with no place in it for Rogues. Independents were also a bit of shaky ground with her, in spite of the fact she herself was a part of an Independent team of Parahumans.

To her reasoning, if you were on the side of angels, why not join forces with the other good guys? This in spite of the fact that the Protectorate and PRT had basically done nothing to help Brockton Bay other than arrest and slow down its descent into the mire.

Moreover, she spouted her mother's talk about accountability and all that, but the knowledge that I'd accidentally taken from Panacea showed me she was something of a hypocrite, what with the occasional mugger than needed patching up from Glory Girl punching them too hard, with nothing on the news about it.

"Fine, fine. How does this one look?" Vicky pulled up another skirt, this one a lot more up my street. Still a bit more daring than I'd care to wear, but leagues better than the Frilly Miniskirt Monstrosity from earlier. It was knee-length, slightly loose and was a nice shade of blue.

"OK, I'll give this one a try." I nodded, taking the hanger from her. From what Amy'd told me, Vicky wasn't going to be satisfied until I tried something on. I didn't have to buy whatever I tried on, but showing willing was a the only way to get her off my back.

As I turned around to walk to the changing room, aforementioned girl nodded encouragingly at me. She'd had to endure Vicky's enthusiasm as well,and was looking between a pair of shirts, one of which was a bit too daring for her.

Might as well get this over with.

Later

Living Room, Dallon Residence

"So you met Taylor Hebert, hmm?" Carol Dallon, the unmasked Heroine Brandish, mused. The lawyer had just gotten in after work and was sitting in her usual seat and going over notes from the case she was going to take the next day. "What did the two of you make of her?"

"She really doesn't like the PRT." Amy said quietly. "Not a surprise, really."

"But they threw the book at Shadow Stalker when they found out what she'd done!" Vicky frowned.

"She was all-but-tortured by a probationary Ward for fifteen months, Vicky, and the PRT was blissfully unaware of it." her mother said absently. "From my interviews with her, I could see that her ability to believe in or trust in authority figures is basically at zero. A lingering dislike of the organization whose oversight failed her isn't entirely unexpected either. Rather, it would be unusual if she didn't dislike the PRT at this particular juncture."

"I suppose…" the blonde girl frowned a bit more. She was easy to anger and equally easy to forgive, so long as action was taken to apologize to her, so she had a bit of a hard time understanding people who held grudges. "She was pretty complimentary about this new vigilante too. Said it was about time someone stood up to the gangs."

"Her father's the Union Representative of the Dockworker's Association, so she's likely seen and heard her father complaining about what the gangs have done to the city." Carol informed the two. "Also, two years ago, her mother died in a car crash that was partially the fault of a fight between the ABB and the Merchants. She must be glad that at least one gang which helped kill her mother has been humbled."

"Dang. Sounds like the last couple of years really sucked for her." Vicky shook her head.

"Yes. Do try and keep an eye on her in-school." the lawyer said with a sigh. "While Arcadia's bullying problems are a lot less overt than Winslow by leagues, I do know that there's some degree of bullying happening under the radar, more subtle than a lot of the teachers can recognize. The last thing she needs is to have to worry about that kind of thing again in her new school."

"I'm not in any classes with her; Ames is in most of them, though." Vicky shrugged.

"Oh? She must have done well on the placement tests then." Carol raised an eyebrow. "Her middle school grades were good enough to get her an academic scholarship to Arcadia, so it isn't a surprise she passed the tests so well after studying without being bothered by bullies. Very well. Look after her, Amy."

"Of course." the adopted daughter nodded slightly.

"Speaking of the vigilante, what's going to happen to Squealer and Skidmark?" Vicky asked.

Carol grimaced. "Both of them are going to be shipped out to different prisons on the same day. The Merchants will doubtlessly try to grab at least one of them, but this way, they can only retrieve one at best. Mush can only be in one place at a time, after all…"

"If they're too close together though…" Amy said worriedly, with Vicky nodding along. Mush could move pretty fast in his golem, so if he hustled and the two transports were close together…

"One will depart from the north of the city, while the other will depart from the south." the adult heroine reassured both of them. "Director Piggot is determined to be rid of at least one of them, according to Miss Militia. It's simply a question of which convoy Mush will choose to hit."

"If Squealer wasn't working on something on the side…" Vicky muttered.

"The new vigilante blew it up." Carol smirked slightly. "It was some abomination of a tank made out of a garbage truck. From what I understand, Armsmaster just stared at it blankly for a few minutes because of how inefficient and clunky the design was."

The three Dallons exchanged amused looks at that. Armsmaster's dislike of inefficiency and time wasting was almost meme-worthy for those in the know. Assault actually had made a few meme pictures of it, unbeknownst to the ENE leader.

"Well, at any rate, good job keeping me up to date with things, girls." the lawyer sighed. "For the moment, I believe a nice cup of coffee is in my future before I make dinner. Where's Mark?"

"Having a nap in your bedroom." Vicky said with a sigh. Her father's depression since he'd gotten laid off from the gym wasn't helping matters. Not as if he could help it, but she really wished he could just wake up already.

"I'll go and see him in a moment." Carol nodded. "Make a start on your homework once you've both finished changing. That means no phone calls to Dean, Victoria."

"Yes, Mom." the blonde girl sighed.

That Night

Mnemosyne's Base

I looked in bemusement at the floating disk in front of me. It had formerly been a bent-out-of-shape manhole cover, presumably damaged in a fight between Brute Capes or something, and I'd decided to test out whether the state of the initial material was taken into account when I used my version of Dauntless' power on it.

As it turns out, it didn't. The manhole cover had turned into a silver telescopic disk that could expand and contract like the iris of a camera. It could contract into a disk the size of a dime and expand into the size of a small car if need be. It also weighed almost nothing to me, regardless of what size it was. Interestingly enough, so long as I used Rune's power on it when it was the same size as its original form or smaller, I could still fly using it even when I made it extend to its maximum size. A nice little exploit.

I had been tempted to use a harness to empower with flight, but I discovered a slight problem with that; a harness was fricking expensive. The only kinds I could see in the shops were for mountain climbing and for people who used them for job safety on heights. That was leaving aside child harnesses and bondage harnesses, of course.

I hadn't known anywhere in the Bay even sold the latter. My face had turned bright red when I'd accidentally navigated to that web-page...

Ahem. Anyway, another point was that I could justify buying the camping stuff to anyone who might spot me by saying I was stocking up in case of power outages or something (they had happened), but a harness wasn't something I could easily explain away like that, especially since neither Dad or I were known for either rock climbing or for needing it for Dad's work. It wasn't likely that someone I knew would see me buying one, but it was more probable than with the camping stuff.

"Time to pay the ABB a visit." I muttered. I was already wearing my costume, with a further addition; a hooded poncho. Like the rest of my costume, it was black and had been altered from the wool it had once been. It now felt like a synthetic fiber of some kind and had shrunk somewhat, going only down to my stomach at the front. There were also slits in the sides that let my arms be free to grab my weapons without getting tangled in it.

The power it possessed was for just in case I fell from a high building or from my disc; it would slow the speed of my descent by three-quarters and let me control my position in the air while that effect was active. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Minutes later, I was soaring above the rooftops of Brockton Bay, a grin practically splitting my face in half . As a little girl, I'd dreamed of being an Alexandria-type Parahuman, flying through the sky and punching bad guys. I had both parts now, just...not in the way I thought I would.

Funny how life winds up, huh?

The Azn Bad Boyz held a fairly large chunk of territory in Brockton Bay. Not in areas as affluent as the Empire (for a given value of 'affluent' in Brockton Bay), nor in areas as destitute as the Merchants' territory, but in areas somewhere in between. My own neighborhood fell into the exact same bracket, which made me feel relieved that the ABB rarely claimed residential areas as anything more than recruitment and possible selling locations for their drugs.

They had been getting closer and closer to my home over the past few months though, mostly thanks to my own efforts against the Merchants and Empire. Time to give them something else to think about aside from territorial expansion.

Finding ABB thugs wasn't hard; they were all over the place in their own territories, strutting around as if they had nothing to fear.

Time to remedy that.

I didn't just jump any random group though; I stalked and monitored several groups before I found an ABB lieutenant. All members of the ABB wore red and green somewhere on their bodies, either as clothes or as a sewn-on patch on their clothes, but territory lieutenants were the only ones permitted to have armbands of red and green. Generally, they were the ones that Lung trusted (or permitted) to protect the individual territories while he acted the part of the lazy dragon.

What? You picked up a few things after scanning the memories of several Protectorate members.

I followed him as the guy, a fairly handsome guy with an ugly arrogant attitude, as he made a show of patrolling the outskirts of his territory, which was a good block closer to my house than it was before I got my powers. He also had several hangers-on/bodyguards that I wasn't comfortable in taking on by myself, at least not out in the open. My preference was for indoor combat when at all possible when faced against superior numbers, so they didn't all scatter and surround me.

Eventually, the man headed back into the middle of his assigned territory and dismissed his hangers-on before entering an apartment above...was that a Chinese takeaway? I landed atop a tall building nearby and collapsed my disk to its compact form before looking around for any possible spotters or lookouts keeping an eye on the place.

Just a casual glance allowed me to spot three on the street level, and two more in apartments from overlooking buildings, and I suspected that there was a third in the building I was currently using, maybe a fourth in a building on the opposite side of the man's home.

I frowned at this. What kind of lowly territory lieutenant would have this much security? Out of the entire ABB, the only one who should have any kind of serious security should be Lung, and this guy was the wrong body type for him. Then again, the ABB had been formed by Lung when he gathered together every single Asian gang in the Bay under his banner, which had included Yakuza, Kkangpae and Triads, so it wasn't much of a stretch to imagine that the former heads of those organizations had kept their old security measures under the new management.

Now that the likely reason for this heavy security was determined, I had a choice to make. Should I go for him, or should I look elsewhere? Although the ABB was a bit more of a pressing danger for my personal safety, as well as being disgusting for their kidnapping and selling of young women, it was a bad idea to make it seem as if I was antagonizing them by going after one of the territory leaders when I hadn't done anything like that with the Merchants and Empire.

Then again, the Merchants were so disorganized that they didn't have anything like territory leaders. Stupid druggies.

Reluctantly, I decided against it. There was too much security and it was too well organized. I'd have to find some less well protected prey.

As I left, however, I promised myself that one day, the ABB wouldn't have this kind of protection for anyone, let alone their top bosses.

Later

ABB Warehouse

Again with the warehouses. Did these gang morons seriously have no better idea for hiding weapons and ammo than in rusty and run-down warehouses?! At least the Merchants had tried with the first place I'd blown up. And for the Merchants to have outdone the Empire and ABB in ingenuity, that was quite shameful for the other two.

Well, whatever. So long as I could get my hands on weapons, ammo and the like before blowing the shit out of the place, I'd accept the lack of innovation and originality on the part of the gangs.

This place had been protected by a full ten-man unit, all armed with knives, chains, clubs and whatnot. One had even been wielding an actual katana, which I'd decided to take with me. If infusing his power into a spear had given Dauntless his Arc Lance, I would be interested in seeing what infusing my power into a katana would give me.

Out of the weapons and stuff inside the warehouse, I had plundered quite a bit of it. Plastique explosives, detonators, remotes for those detonators, ammo for my various guns, throwing knives and belts for carrying them, various grenades from regular to flashbang to fragmentation to smoke, laser sights and a dozen other things I had grabbed out of curiosity.

I had finished setting up the bombs that would blow this place sky high when one of the ten idiots that I'd beaten down managed to wriggle free...no, he'd actually managed to dislocate his wrist and thumb in order to get it out of the handcuffs I'd used to restrain him. He was obviously either desperate or had a high enough pain tolerance to let him do that.

He creamed at me in what I think was Japanese before charging at me with a fist drawn back. What an idiot. I'd beaten him once, what did he think was going to happen this time...unless he was just distracting me...

Dodging his fist, I smashed a kick into his sternum as I scanned the area, including his fellows, but found nothing. No unexpected things showing up, no mysterious people coming to attack me...was this guy just an idiot after all?

As the ABB guy slammed into the wall with a silent scream of pain, I looked at him as he held on to consciousness by a hair. "Effort is fine, as is vigor, but both are pointless without results. You should have tried to slip away when you got free rather than attack me."

"Akuma...!" he spat before falling unconscious.

Devil? Really? Oni Lee fit that description with his mask better than I did, what with his mask and murderous habits and all. Whatever.

After I duct taped him into a more secure bind and booted him and his friends outside to a safe distance away from the warehouse, I set the timer and left, taking flight on my silver disk. I didn't stick around to watch the fireworks though; I headed towards the limits of ABB territory, intending on doing a patrol arc to beat up any ABB idiots who were roused by the detonation of quite a few of their hard-earned weapons going up in smoke.

"Villain spotted!" a cheerful and familiar voice shouted as I felt something piercing through the air towards me, something human-shaped.

I reacted to the incoming force of the girl heroine known derisively as Collateral Damage Barbie. Glory Girl of New Wave.

With Glory Girl

Swooping towards the dark figure standing atop a flying disk, the flying brick blinked slightly when the figure swung around to look at her with unerring and unhesitating speed, as if they had known her position even as she'd shouted. Weird.

'Ah, doesn't matter. I'll take this guy down to make it the perfect day.' she thought happily. Amy had hung out with her at lunch, alongside the new girl who'd been bullied by Shadow Stalker, she'd seen her mother relax around Amy for once, and her Dad had remembered to take his medicine for once. Taking a villain down would be the cherry on top.

Much to her shock, the 'villain' swerved out of the way of her punch before punching her forcefield right where her kidneys were located as she went past. She was really glad that her forcefield was almost always active, otherwise that would have hurt!

"A forcefield?" the black-clad figured said in surprise. The voice was obviously altered somehow, perhaps a voice-changer in the mask?

"Yeah. You might wanna give up, because you aren't getting through." Glory Girl said as she came around for another pass.

"I'm not a villain!" the figure insisted.

"Pull another one." the blonde scoffed. "You're flying around like Rune. You Empire?"

"Five." the shadowy figure said, dodging away again. "Four. Three. Two. One...boom."

The last word the black-clad figure said was drowned out by the large explosion from the warehouse area behind them. Glory Girl's mouth dropped open as she looked at it, then at the figure standing atop their silver disk. It took a moment before she managed to get words out.

"You...you're the vigilante that's been attacking the gangs and destroying their storehouses and shit!" the girl said in shock.

"The name's Mnemosyne, don't let it wear out." the vigilante snarked waspishly.

"Why are you blowing things up? You're just riling the gangs up!" Glory Girl said with a frown.

"Because nothing the PRT, the Protectorate or New Wave has done in the last decade has done anything but slow down Brockton Bay's decay." Mnemosyne replied, heat in their voice. "If prevaricating and deescalation don't work, then taking the fight to the gangs is the only choice left. I refuse to see my home destroyed because some of the villains might be useful in Endbringer Fights. My home is what I'm concerned with, not the wider world."

While a lot of what was said sounded selfish, Glory Girl couldn't exactly disagree with a lot of what Mnemosyne had said. The more the years went on, the more Brockton Bay became a crime filled hellhole.

"Still, what you're doing is making the gangs become better at keeping hiding themselves!" Glory Girl persisted, even as the ABB warehouse burned in the distance. "You're driving them underground!"

"Then I'll fight them in the darkness, where they should have been for years." Mnemosyne replied dismissively. "You aren't going to persuade me to act differently, Glory Girl. Either you stand aside and let me go, or I will make you."

Setting her jaw stubbornly, Glory Girl of New Wave clenched her fists, her aura lashing out in an attempt to inflict fear on the person opposing her, but she could see there was almost no effect other than some tension in their stance.

"What you're doing is well-intentioned but wrong." she said with a growl. "I'm going to smack some sense into you and make you wake up from your little fantasy."

"If you can, please do better than Squealer, Skidmark, Rune and Stormtiger did." Mnemosyne shot back smoothly as they readied themselves for combat, not-so-subtly reminding the flying brick that they had fought some Parahumans before now.

"Dude, I just have to exist to be better than two of the Merchants." the girl known as 'Alexandria Junior' snorted.

Then she attacked.

And that's it for this chapter. Whoo, that took a bit to get on paper (metaphorically speaking), but it was worth it.

Just to let you all know, for those interested in my Code Geass story anyway, I have a poll up about it. Go and vote if you want.