Taylor the Shopkeeper
Summary: In a world without Endbringers, Taylor just wanted to run her store in peace. Thankfully for her, she's gotten quite adept at hiding the bodies.
XXX
Taylor sighed as she locked up the store.
Life just didn't ever seem to turn out how she'd imagined it would.
She chose the same high-school as Emma, because she didn't want to abandon her friend, only for her friend to abandon her. She'd always wanted superpowers so that she could be a hero, except now that she had superpowers she was morally opposed to ever joining the heroes. She wanted her mom back so that they could all be a family again, only to wake up from a coma to her father slowly dying.
It hadn't really been the stroke that had killed him. Rather, it'd been a steady stream of complications in the aftermath. Steady enough that no, their insurance didn't cover those kinds of medical costs.
Taylor hadn't really had much of a choice beyond selling the house. The house she'd grown up in, the house where her memories of her mother all played out.
That's capitalism for you.
Regardless, having sold the house, Taylor had still had enough money left over to invest in a small derelict shop.
It was far from the boardwalk, and it'd definitely been abandoned for a reason, but Taylor's new superpowers did have some uses. After all, there weren't a lot of places one could go in order to buy spider-silk.
Besides, if she had a provable income-stream, the social-services couldn't try to steal her away. She didn't want to end up in foster-care. Which was why she'd originally resolved not to join the Wards.
Then of course came the realization about Sophia Hess, Shadow Stalker, and Taylor had very much doubled-down on that resolve. She wasn't getting anywhere near the organization that had supported one of the people who were – however indirectly – responsible for her father's death.
Taylor's father hadn't had any heart-problems before she'd gone into a coma. Anger-issues, perhaps, not that he ever let Taylor really see that side of himself. But those heart-problems must've come from somewhere, and the stress of Taylor's hospitalization was probably a pretty damn good candidate to blame for it.
So, indirectly though it might've been, the Terrible Trio had killed her father.
Taylor didn't think she could go back to Winslow without murdering someone, and since social-services frowned on people skipping school without a very good reason, opening the store had been a good excuse.
She was still waiting for a few formal signatures, but she'd effectively already gotten past the actual red-tape. Her store was open, her identity as a self-employed rogue was firmly established, social-services couldn't touch her, and she was actually making money.
She wasn't going to retire as a millionaire or anything, but there were enough money to cover expenses and keep herself fed. For all that spider-silk was something of a niche market, there were enough people interested in its properties that Taylor was unlikely to have to worry about it.
The fact that her store was also a cape-shop meant that it was something like a tourist-attraction. Not nearly as much of one as what Parian had going for her, and the novelty would likely wear off in time, since Taylor didn't really have a 'secret identity'.
What was the point? It wasn't like she had anyone left alive who she cared about, so nobody could threaten them to get to her. And with it set up like this, social-services had been very hesitant to push her, likely worried that there'd be a PR shit-storm if she'd gone villain in the aftermath of how they'd handled her case.
Taylor really wished that the PRT and the Protectorate and the Wards had all been equally unwilling to approach her.
As it was, she'd been forced to very clearly state that if they didn't stop dropping by to complain about how she ought to become a hero instead of being a rogue, she'd get a restraining-order on them. She wasn't going to turn away customers, but there was a big difference between customers and people who pretended to look at her wares whilst monologuing about the joys of being hired by the government.
The sheer gall of them, to try and pressure her into joining them after everything-...
Taylor took a deep breath, before continuing to climb the stairs to the small apartment on top of her shop. They'd backed off, for now, and that was all she wanted.
No, that wasn't entirely true. But she wasn't going to fight for anything more than that.
She just wanted to be left alone. To go about her business, to run her shop, to pay her bills, and to maybe down the line find some fucking point to keep on kicking beyond stubbornness and spite.
Taylor scoffed. She wasn't holding her breath on that last one.
XXX
In truth, Piggot didn't exactly mind that the girl didn't want to join the Wards.
Oh, it would've been a relief from a PR-perspective, since it would've let them maneuver her into a position where she'd be less likely to spill how badly they'd handled Shadow Stalker's probation. But the truth of it was that parahumans were high-maintenance, and the girl's powers weren't exactly the kind of bright and flashy that they could really market.
Bug-control wasn't exactly a bad power, depending on how well she could control them and if she could see the world through them. Even just the potential surveillance-aspects of the power were impressive.
It wasn't the kind of power that would let her trade blows with Brutes or anything, but it would definitely come in handy. As long as nobody kicked up too much of a fuss about any privacy-laws that she might violate in the process of using her powers.
So, even if Piggot had sincerely doubted that the girl would be willing to join an organization that had been tangentially involved in society turning a blind eye towards her suffering? It had been worth reaching out a hand.
Had there been caveats to the hand? Of course. Had there been a whole bunch of non-disclosure agreements that she could be sued to high-heavens for ever violating? Absolutely.
Piggot hadn't gotten to where she was by pulling punches.
It was unfortunate that Miss Hebert had decided to reject the hand, but from the way she'd responded by establishing herself as a non-masked cape? No gang in Brockton Bay would want anything to do with her, excepting maybe Faultline's crew.
Combine that with what the Thinker-tank had to say about the girl's personality, and there was no way she was going to be joining the cape-scene at all.
As far as Piggot was concerned, this was a victory. Not much of one, admittedly, but considering the situation that Shadow Stalker's actions had put them in, it'd likely be the best they'd be getting.
The girl was now a firmly entrenched rogue, and not a potentially dangerous villain. Hell, she wouldn't even be going off to be an 'independent hero' or a vigilante, because that would put her shop at risk. The shop that she was relying on in order to keep her out of foster-care.
Some might say that a city could never have too many heroes, even if they were independents, but Piggot had seen a lot of new heroes get themselves murdered over the years. And that wasn't even mentioning how their actions might serve to destabilize the gangs in the worst kind of way, leading to a massive gang-war with the city and the people in it as collateral-damage.
So yes, Piggot was in fact counting this as a win. The girl still clearly disliked them, and she wasn't going to change her mind anytime soon, but despite what the PR-department had to say about it they weren't actually in the business in order to make people like them.
They were there to do a job. They needed a good public image to do that job, true. But that was really just a means to an end, and as long as Miss Hebert wasn't actively trying to stir up a shit-storm on their doorstep, the disgruntled feelings of one rogue shopkeeper wasn't going to be enough to get in the way.
XXX
"Kaiser will hear about this!"
Taylor blinked, hesitating.
She'd been woken up by some thugs smashing a window in order to break in, and she'd maybe been a little bit overly violent with using her bugs to fight them off. They had bug-bites everywhere, and they'd long since dropped their guns in order to protect their eyes and air-ways.
Taylor had won. She'd beaten up the people who'd attacked her home, and she hadn't even been hurt from it, even if she would still need to fix the window.
But Kaiser...
Taylor didn't really think that Kaiser would go out of his way to avenge some random thug getting the shit kicked out of him mid-robbery. But it could work as an excuse for going after her for being a cape that wasn't under his thumb.
Taylor didn't really think that the E88 were all that interested in spider-silk underwear or whatever, but even if Taylor doubted that her powers were all that useful it was entirely possible that a gang would find some kind of use for them.
And obviously that would put her at odds with the entirety of the Empire. All those capes, all those thugs, all those white-collar sympathizers. No, that wasn't a fight that Taylor would survive. Or, at the very least, it wasn't one that her shop would survive.
If this guy ran off and complained to the rest of the E88, it wouldn't be all that strange for Taylor to wake up to Hookwolf paying her a visit. A visit that she wouldn't be walking away from.
Taylor's eyes narrowed. Well, if that was the case, then all that she needed to do was make sure that the guy never made it back to the Empire.
She could do that.
Taylor picked up a crowbar that the thugs had brought with them. It was one of those heavy iron ones. Perfect.
As they started to realize that something had changed, their worried screams were muffled by the spider-silk that Taylor made her bugs wrap around their mouths like a gag.
After this, she'd have to get rid of the bodies, but that wasn't so much of an issue. Plenty of Taylor's bugs would eat meat. In fact, Taylor doubted that there would be anything left of them beyond bones by tomorrow evening.
That was plenty of time to get her hands on something to crush the bones themselves into unidentifiable powder. And the police wouldn't even let anyone set up a missing-person alert before it'd been twenty-four hours.
Yeah, there'd be plenty of time to get rid of the bodies.
Taylor brought the crowbar down hard.
XXX
In hindsight, she'd underestimated just how much work was required to grind up bones.
She didn't exactly have some kind of industrial-powered grinder available, because those were expensive and might make people ask why a shop like hers would need one. In a fit of cleverness, she'd decided instead to purchase a sized up mortar and pestle. Big enough that she wouldn't need to do anything more than break a thigh-bone in half if she wanted it to fit.
It was an excellent excuse, since – if anyone asked – she could just say that she was using it to grind up bugs for one reason or another. However, it was also really tiring to use, and even if Taylor had started exercising long before she'd gone into a coma, her focus had been more about running away than for the sake of upper-body strength.
The fact that the bones hadn't exactly had time to 'dry out' didn't help matters.
Still, for all that it was exhausting and took her a lot more time than she'd expected, it wasn't like the police were banging on her door to demand to search her bug-infested basements for clues about some missing-people.
Taylor had even had time to look into what she might be able to do with bonemeal. She sure as hell wasn't going to sell it, because somebody could probably still check it and discover that it was made of human bones and not bug-carapaces or whatever. That left either dumping it somewhere, or 'using it up' somehow.
Taylor hadn't ever really had any interest in gardening, but she could probably be a very effective beekeeper, and bonemeal was sometimes used for growing flowers. However, it turns out that gardening was very much a complicated science that depended a lot on what kind of soil there was.
As in, Taylor really doubted the burying the bonemeal of two grown men in a small backyard garden would result in a healthy soil. They'd probably appreciate the bodies if Taylor had been burying them whole, but that would defeat the point of erasing all traces of them. So no, beyond a few samples of it, trying to use it up in gardening was definitely not on the table.
That left having her bugs try eating the stuff, which saw some moderate success. They could eat bonemeal a whole lot better than they could eat bones, but it very much wasn't ideal.
So, she could disappear a bit of it on her own, but not everything. No, she needed to find some place to dump it, along with whatever other non-edible things they'd been carrying. Like the crowbar, though at least she wasn't going to have to worry about micro-traces of blood or fingerprints or anything like that. Her bugs would take care of that much at least, and a nondescript crowbar showing up in some alleyway wouldn't exactly raise any eyebrows.
Flushing the bonemeal down the drain would just clog it up, and selling it or giving it away would be too risky. Shoving it into a plastic bag and throwing it into someone's garbage ran the risk of addicted dumpster-divers thinking that they hit the jackpot, only to be disappointed and possibly annoyed enough to look into it further.
That left dumping it in a corner of some unused warehouse far away from her own shop, dumping it in the ocean and hoping that she didn't kick-start an algal bloom, or figure out some way to efficiently have her bugs simply scatter it with the wind and hope for the best.
Considering that she was dealing with several kilograms of the stuff, Taylor didn't really think she could make her bugs scattering the stuff seem natural. However, Taylor sincerely doubted that dumping a few skeletons' worth of bonemeal into the ocean would be enough to radically shift the ecological balance.
Especially if she timed it with the tide going out.
XXX
A new cape was always a point of interest. Especially new capes who didn't get along with the PRT.
Lisa had dutifully reported what she could figure out to Coil, mainly because he already had enough moles that she wasn't likely to contribute anything of any significant value.
The girl had a history with Shadow Stalker, the girl was desperate to make money and stay out of foster-care, her powers were centered around controlling bugs, and she'd gone public with her real identity because she had nothing left to lose.
Rachel also didn't have a hidden identity, so it wasn't like that alone would be enough to deter Coil from trying to recruit her. Unfortunately for him, unlike Rachel, Taylor Hebert didn't really want anything except to be left alone.
He could pay her enormous amounts of money, he could promise her that the social-services would never look at her again, but... in many ways, Taylor Hebert already had that.
Having gone public with her identity in the way she had, and establishing a business for herself, Taylor was pretty much untouchable in the eyes of the social-services. And unless her powers suddenly stopped working, or someone figured out how to replicate what she was doing with technology, she was never going to have to worry about paying her bills.
So, she was highly suspicious towards any authority-figures – which would obviously include Coil, if he tried to recruit her – and she didn't really have any point of leverage to be used against her. Not unless they wanted to try threatening her shop in order to get her to do things, and that could easily backfire.
Simply put, she had a very useful power, but she wasn't even remotely worth the effort of trying to recruit. In no small part because she was visible enough to the public that everyone would be able to see it if they tried to strong-arm her into something.
With that out of the way, Lisa had simply filed the new cape under 'useful things to know about the Brockton Bay cape-scene' and gone on with her life.
Up until some Empire-thugs apparently went missing.
It wasn't the first time a couple of thugs bit off more than they could chew and ended up in body-bags, and whilst the lack of traces were a bit unusual, it wasn't like anyone were really trying to look for them.
The police were always struggling to keep a lid on the gangs, same as the PRT and the Protectorate. So a couple of thugs going missing? That was a couple of more thugs who wouldn't be actively causing problems for the people the police actually cared about.
Turns out, the police were really passionate about punishing crime, and very reluctant to do their actual jobs.
In the end, the only ones among the police who actually cared about a couple of Empire-thugs going missing were the Nazi-sympathizers who wanted to find some kind of racial minority to arrest for it. And even they had more pressing priorities.
So, a couple of thugs going missing in Brockton Bay. Who cares, right?
Except for a tiny little unconfirmed rumor about where those particular thugs had been planning to take their nightly activities to.
Lisa only really caught the tail-end of it by accident, and if the police had heard it, they definitely hadn't cared enough to do more than scoff at it. But when Lisa looked into it-...
Well, there was a broken window, and the fracture-patterns on the glass didn't look like someone throwing a brick at it. Looked a lot more like someone breaking it with a crowbar or something in order to get inside.
The glass on the ground had all been meticulously cleared up, to the point where Lisa couldn't see anything strange about the area around the shop at all. But even if there weren't any traces, Lisa's powers helpfully chimed in with how easy that kind of clean-up would be for someone with perfect control over bugs.
And after having caught a brief glimpse of the actual shopkeeper in question, Lisa took a perfectly calm breath, and then she turned and walked in the opposite direction of that shop.
Lisa really didn't want to see what kind of traces her powers might end up not-finding in Taylor Hebert's basement. After all, as long as Lisa didn't know a single thing, she wouldn't be a threat to Hebert's ability to continue running her store in peace.
Therefore, Taylor Hebert was perfectly innocent. And Lisa was never going to go anywhere near the girl ever again.
XXX
Originally, Taylor hadn't really been planning to do anything more than sell a bit of spider-silk and other awkward-to-get things that her powers made easy. In truth, there'd been a few requests that weren't half-bad ideas.
Basically, if bugs happened to be infesting a place where they shouldn't be, Taylor could move them out of there for a fraction of the cost it might take to fumigate a place. She could also do it within a fraction of the time and hassle, which was in truth the main reason people called for her.
It wasn't the kind of thing Taylor would do willy-nilly, because the truth of it was that just removing bugs from someplace meant that new bugs would move in. After all, those first bugs got inside somehow, and they'd stuck around for a reason.
Removing the bugs without also patching up their entry-points or dealing with what had attracted them in the first place, basically meant that the bugs would be back in force within the week.
So, Taylor's role was in many ways to point out to construction-companies that there was a bug-friendly entrance somewhere, or that someone had been hiding crumbs underneath the rug. Whatever they might need to know in order to keep the bugs from coming back.
She also helped a lot with people who had termites, or similar infestations. Not so much with people who just didn't like the idea that their basement had spiders in it. For their own peace of mind, it would probably be better that they fumigated the place, rather than watch Taylor parade the hundreds of bugs out for them to see and be horrified by.
She did help keep an eye on the local hospitals though, since it was important that they remained largely pest-free. Taylor wasn't being paid to fix the situation as much as she was being paid to monitor it, but she did also make sure that anything particularly harmful to humans got diverted away. Preferably straight into the sea, to make sure that they wouldn't simply come back once she left.
Taylor might not like the heroes and the capes or even really the police, and she might have a lot of things to say about how the rampant capitalism within hospitals should never have been legally allowed or supported. But even if she disliked the system, she could appreciate the people trying to work inside of it.
Just because the hospitals demanded ludicrous sums of money to do it, didn't mean that they weren't saving lives. And Taylor wasn't going to begrudge someone a right to a paycheck.
Would she piss on a CEO who was on fire? No. Absolutely not.
Would she help a rude and overworked nurse hold open a door? Of course.
The working-class had to stick together. That was one of those lessons her father had taught her. Her mother had probably had opinions about it as well, considering, but Taylor hadn't really been old enough to understand or remember them.
Regardless, for all that Taylor wasn't overly fond of being away from her store, it was both an income and a decent advertisement. And though she always worried a bit about if she'd return home to find that her basement-bugs had devoured themselves, they'd so far remained perfectly docile, despite leaving her range.
Taylor's current working theory was that some orders she could give would 'stick' with her bugs. She could have a bug follow someone around, but the moment it left her range it would do what it wanted. But, perhaps because of constant exposure to her powers, the bugs in her basement had never acted out even when she'd left them alone for hours.
Which was good, because carnivorous insects tended to prey on other insects if they could. Spiders being perhaps the most infamous example. And it would be a shame to lose that many black-widows to in-fighting.
XXX
On the whole, probably the least unpleasant gang was the ABB.
That wasn't to say that the ABB was in some way pleasant, but for all that they demanded protection-money and were perfectly willing to assault innocent people on the street, they weren't Nazis. They also weren't going around forcing drugs on people, and then exploit them after they got hopelessly addicted.
Oh, for white people who fit into all the 'correct' labels, the E88 might seem like decent enough folk. However, considering how very narrow that 'correctness' tended to be, and how very enthusiastic the Empire was about 'cleaning up' the people who didn't fit into their envisioning of a perfect world?
The Empire was probably responsible for about a solid eighty-percent of all the violent crime in Brockton Bay. The Nazi-sympathizers would argue otherwise, but they also tended to exclude any violent crime where the victim was a non-white person when counting it.
As a white person, Taylor should probably feel safer with the Empire at her back than she did with the ABB or the Merchants, but Taylor had curly hair. Honestly, she was probably as white as they came, but she had just enough of a vaguely Jewish-seeming appearance that she trusted the Empire to not attack her about as much as she trusted a rabid dog to not try to bite her.
She'd been bullied by a black girl, of course the wannabe-Empire kids had paid attention to her. And Taylor had seen enough of them sneer at her for her appearance that she was very aware of the kind of 'perfect world' their xenophobic obsessions would lead to.
So yes, out of all the gangs in Brockton Bay, the ABB were probably the least unpleasant. They were violent and demanded money and obedience from literally everything around them, but that was the end of it.
If you paid their protection-money and politely kept out of their way, they were unlikely to do anything to you. In fact, by how their business-model was based around protection, the very act of attacking someone who'd already paid up was a risk that even their lowliest of thugs would hesitate to commit to.
After all, if they scared away their 'customers', then Lung might decide to have a word with them.
Taylor would've still disliked them out of principle, even if they hadn't had their own streaks of violent crimes and drug-dealing and what-not, but she could appreciate that at least they weren't Nazis.
She wasn't going to be paying them protection-money, but then she wasn't really anywhere near ABB's territory, so that wasn't going to be making all that much of a difference.
She was in a gray zone mostly in between the E88 and the Merchants, close enough to the patrols from the heroes that either side were unlikely to start a gang-war in her backyard, for all that they'd both claim the area.
So it came as not much of a surprise when she was woken up by a couple of drugged-out Merchants who wanted to rob her store.
And well, Taylor might've gone a bit overboard with the insect-bites, but-...
But it wasn't like she didn't know how to get rid of bodies.
XXX
Despite what others might expect, Piggot didn't actually mind that Lung had managed to escape before Armsmaster's new sedative had properly started to effect him.
It was less to do with any belief that Lung was secretly a good person, and more with the understanding that Lung was a stabilizing influence on the city. He wasn't a good influence on the city, but he was a stabilizing one.
The E88 had more capes than even the local Protectorate, and the ABB were pretty much the only major roadblock for being able to aim all of their villains against the heroes.
Three powers were inherently more stable than two, because with a third power involved neither side would be willing to fully commit or risk leaving themselves open to the third one. That was how the heroes had managed to keep things mostly stable for years now, and the ABB was nothing without Lung.
Capturing Lung would've been a powerful move from the heroes, and it would've been good PR, but on a practical level it would've sent the entire city spiraling off into a gang-war that the heroes would've been unable to stop. And, unless there'd been a significant amount of new triggers during it, the end result would inevitably have been the Empire standing tall.
In truth, capturing Lung would mean to surrender the city to the Empire, and to allow them to provide a unified front that would outnumber the heroes. By all accounts, the E88 would be more akin to warlords than gang-members, and Brockton Bay would effectively be lost to villains.
So, despite what others might expect, Piggot was perfectly fine with Lung managing to escape to continue being a thorn in the Empire's side. Especially since Armsmaster had managed to bring in several other villains who'd been fighting him.
The Undersiders were a small-time group with very little to their name, and though their capture wasn't much to brag about, it was a useful kind of demonstrable victory against the villains from a PR-perspective.
However, it came with a little bit of a snag. Namely, their Thinker, Tattletale.
The girl had been very willing to tell them anything they might want to know, and had in return merely asked for them to make sure that she wasn't assassinated in her holding-cell by their 'boss'.
Coil wasn't an entirely unknown name, but honestly the Undersiders had more of a reputation than he did, which was saying something. The fact that Tattletale claimed him to be a cape with some kind of power over probability, and with a crazy amount of connections and moles even within the PRT itself?
If the girl hadn't been a high-end Thinker, Piggot would've merely assumed that it was someone who could bluff enough to convince a teenage girl. Aiming a gun at someone and telling them that they had nowhere to run was a very classic bluff for keeping someone obedient.
A Thinker would've been able to see through that level of bluffing however, unless there was an actual truth backing it up. Which would imply that Tattletale's worry about being assassinated wasn't all that farfetched.
Piggot didn't particularly mind rearranging schedules a bit to make sure that a trustworthy person kept watch over the girl at all times. And if someone managed to actually look the other way for long enough that the girl was killed? Then that wasn't going to see the person fired or fined, so much as it was going to see the person in prison for murder.
Piggot didn't have any patience for traitors.
XXX
The Undersiders would get broken up, but at least they weren't getting sent to prison. As far as Lisa was concerned, that was as much as she was going to be able to give them.
Yeah, Alec annoyed her, and Rachel wasn't exactly pleasant to talk to, but they'd kept her alive for a couple of months now so this was mostly just repaying that favor.
Alec was one of the Heartbroken, he had a record of prior violence, and his actual power was definitely worrying. In light of that, keeping the guy out of the Birdcage was something of a miracle. A miracle that Lisa succeeded at mostly because their arrest had been very uneventful and the public didn't have a clue about Alec's actual identity.
Rachel was just... a bitch. She didn't like people, and didn't care who knew about it. She also had a record of violence, which would've easily seen her sent off to juvie. Thankfully, before someone could separate her from her dogs – and likely inevitably put them down before Rachel made it back out of juvie, just in time to go on a roaring rampage of revenge – Lisa managed to convince them that her powers could still be useful far away from the cities.
It wasn't exactly an easy sell for either of them, and if they ever stepped out of line they'd probably have an express-lane straight to the Birdcage, but it was all that Lisa could give them.
In contrast, Brian only really wanted to get his sister away from their drug-addicted mother, and with a few transfer-papers he was on his way to some other random city to join their Wards. Hopefully, the guy was better at keeping his sister under control than he'd been with the rest of the Undersiders. He was a good guy, but he wasn't exactly what Lisa imagined qualified for parental.
And for herself, she would never have to see Brockton Bay – or her biological family – ever again, and the clues she'd managed to figure out about Coil's identity seemed to have aimed an investigation in a direction of one Thomas Calvert. Which had given enough of a result that Lisa wouldn't have to worry about getting assassinated anymore.
Good times.
They'd even gotten healed by Panacea, which had been great. Except for the moment that Lisa's power had started telling her about the girl's family-life.
Lisa couldn't-... Lisa really wasn't in a position to help anyone at all, but she couldn't just turn her back on that. Not after she'd seen what that kind of life had done to her brother. She couldn't turn away and pretend that she didn't see it. She couldn't.
Yeah, she was a Thinker, and Thinkers couldn't be trusted not to manipulate people. Fine, whatever. But as long as she could just-... Even if all Lisa could do was scratch enough of the surface of it all that Amy could notice a way to get out on her own?
Lisa couldn't turn her back on that.
XXX
Amy didn't particularly mind healing up the heroes from time to time. She didn't really like it either, but then she hadn't ever really liked healing people.
Healing people was her job. It wasn't a fun job, it wasn't a rewarding job, but it was something. And it wasn't as if she had anything better to do with her time.
Friends? What friends? All she had on that front were people trying to cozy-up to Vicky, or cozy-up to Panacea, whichever. She wasn't really interested in dating anyone either, and so her hobbies were mostly relegated to following Vicky around or grabbing a book.
Spending time with Vicky was great, but following her around everywhere made Amy feel like some kind of leech, so she'd rather not do it.
Healing up a bunch of low-end villains who'd tangled with Lung and decided that they'd prefer to join up with the Protectorate? Amy hadn't exactly been thrilled.
In hindsight, she probably should've rejected it out of hand, because it turned out that one of the villains were a Thinker who liked to talk too much.
Alright, so Amy knew that Carol wasn't exactly a model-parent, but she didn't want to hear some shitty Thinker tell her how to live her life. What the fuck did she know, anyway?
The bitch certainly seemed to know how to press her buttons though, and now all the shit she'd said was constantly gnawing at Amy. It was really pissing her off.
Amy took a deep breath and pushed that aside. Getting worked up about it would be exactly what that bitch wanted, and she wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. She was just going to have to figure out some way to prove her wrong.
She couldn't deny that Carol wasn't a fantastic parent, but the woman wasn't abusive. It wasn't like she hit Amy or anything, and she was nice to Vicky. If she wasn't super-nice to Amy, then clearly that was her own fault. Or, at least, the fault of her powers.
Biokinesis didn't exactly have the best track-record.
Amy shook her head. She'd been caught in this constant loop inside of her head for days now, and clearly she wasn't going to be able to break out of it on her own, so she just needed to have someone else prove how wrong the bitch had been.
Preferably without having them figure out exactly what she'd been told, which meant that she couldn't rely on New Wave. They knew her too well to not be able to guess that something was up if she started asking them weird questions.
So, she needed an outside person to ask. And she needed a reasonable subject to bring up those kinds of questions.
Amy frowned to herself as she spotted a rogue who sometimes came to 'help out' the hospital. Amy didn't really think there was a lot of helping involved, considering that she demanded money for it, and the girl probably just filled the hospital back up with insects after she'd taken her money so that she could do it all over again.
With a power like that? She certainly seemed the type.
But she was classified as a rogue, and part of what that bitch had been going on about was how Amy needed to 'widen her horizons' or some bullshit like that. Something about how her view of the world was too black-and-white.
Amy kind of really doubted that there was any truth to that, but hey, if she talked to the creepy insect-rogue then she could prove it. She wouldn't even really have to ask any incriminating questions about anything at all.
XXX
Taylor wasn't entirely sure what had made Panacea approach her, but – even if she was kind of rude – Taylor wasn't going to reject one of the few heroes of Brockton Bay who hadn't been involved with the hypocrisy surrounding Shadow Stalker.
Still, being asked about moral and ethical stuff from possibly the greatest healer in the world, when Taylor had killed people and gotten rid of their bodies? At this point, Taylor could admit that she probably wasn't the best person to ask for that kind of stuff.
Not that he was going to tell Panacea about any of that. She'd get arrested.
"If the bugs are there, then they had a way of getting in and a reason to want to be there." Taylor shook her head. "I can get them to leave when I'm nearby, but they'll come back afterwards. That's just nature."
"And you're asking for money for it?" Panacea raised an eyebrow at her, clearly unimpressed.
Taylor shrugged. "If they want to pay for it or not, that's up to them. But I'm not exactly made of money, and it's not like it's super-important to keep a couple of spiders out of the basement. They've got cleaning-staff for that."
If they had malaria-mosquitoes? Oh, Taylor would definitely volunteer to wipe them out from the city, because she wasn't going to stand back and just watch people die because she wanted a bit more money. But nobody was actually going to die from having a few bugs running around.
At least as long as they made sure to not have them contaminate the food and that kind of thing. And again, people had been doing that for centuries before Taylor showed up. She could maybe make it a bit easier, but unless she wanted to stand guard for the rest of forever, all she could really do was relieve the pressure and point to how they were getting inside.
If the hospitals wanted to waste money on that kind of stuff? That was entirely up to the hospital.
"So it'd be fine if I started asking for money, since there are surgeons who can do the job instead?" Panacea asked, eyes narrowed.
"That's-..." Taylor frowned, trying to find the words. "That'd be up to you? Nobody is going to think less of you just because you're getting paid. Equal pay for equal work and all that, you know?"
Honestly, at this point it felt more like some kind of interrogation than a conversation, but Taylor's only options were to keep the conversation going or make up some excuse and legging it. And she wasn't going to run away over something like this.
XXX
Taylor Hebert hadn't at all been what she'd expected.
For all that she demanded money for her work, she was quite possibly the most vocal anti-capitalistic person Amy had ever met. Apparently, her late mother had been an activist, and her father had been the head of the Dockworker's Union, so she'd grown up with some very strict rules about making sure that the workers were actually being paid for their labor.
Not to mention the fact that, when her father finally died from complications in the wake of a heart-attack, he'd left her deep enough in debt that she'd been forced to sell her childhood home to cover the bills.
That had honestly come as a surprise to Amy. The girl had lost her father to something that a ten-second visit to Panacea would've immediately fixed, and yet she didn't blame Amy for it.
Just-... She'd just looked tired, when Amy had awkwardly pointed it out.
"There's no way you can save everyone." Taylor had shook her head. "I'm not saying not to try saving a few. But unless you're going around actively attacking people? You're not responsible for fixing the world."
She'd then paused and briefly got into a rant about how it was every person's responsibility to vote, and to join a union if at all possible. Something about how individuals couldn't be expected to dedicate every moment of their lives to a cause, but an organization could do that easily and far more efficiently.
All in all, Amy wasn't quite sure what to think about Taylor Hebert.
Her power was creepy, she demanded money for her services, she wouldn't piss on a CEO on fire but would actively fight for workers' rights, and her answer to Amy not saving the only remaining family she had left had been-...
It was like she'd been more worried that Amy would feel bad about not having helped, than she'd been upset about the idea that Amy had chosen not to be at the hospital at the time. Amy had even tried to provoke her by admitting that she'd probably just been slacking off in her room that week, and Taylor had just-...
Taylor had just kept telling her that Amy wasn't responsible for saving the world.
If she had the power to literally save the entirety of the world from certain destruction? Then alright, refusing to show up was kind of a dick-move. But if she needed to basically kill herself in order to use that power? Then she could do whatever the fuck she wanted.
Everyone may have a responsibility to try to leave the world a slightly better place than they'd found it, but making the world a better place wasn't exactly something that could be measured. Perhaps your role was just to make sure that your pets were safe and happy.
It didn't matter if Panacea could heal people, because even if she could do it, that didn't mean that she had an obligation to do it. Or rather, just because she could do something once didn't mean that she had any kind of obligation to dedicate the rest of her life to doing it forever.
And that was-...
For the first time since she'd triggered whilst desperately trying to keep Vicky alive, it felt like-...
Amy couldn't find the words for it, but it felt like she just wanted to crawl into a bed and cry.
XXX
What would Taylor have given to have her dad back?
It was such a pointless question. She couldn't have him back. He was dead. Life didn't move backwards. The only path available was one that continued forward.
There might be insurmountable obstacles, but that didn't matter, because turning back wasn't possible. Either the obstacles could be overcome, or she'd die. That was just how life worked.
Taylor had learned that lesson with her mom. That didn't make it hurt any less to lose her dad, but she'd pushed through pain before, she kind of knew how to deal with it now.
People didn't become stronger by growing older or anything, they just figured out how to deal with things that they previously didn't. Sometimes, that just meant that they knew when to use a hammer, and when to use a crowbar.
In light of that, the first time was always the worst, because you didn't have any kind of frame of reference for what was happening or any idea of how to deal with it. So, perhaps it made sense that Taylor had somehow managed to keep going when her dad had died, despite completely breaking down in the wake of her mom's death.
She hadn't loved him any less, though their relationship had admittedly been pretty distant for a long time before he'd died.
Talking with Panacea hadn't exactly been pleasant, but it'd been a sort of relief to be able to talk about her dad again. She wasn't exactly in contact with any of the dockworkers, and it wasn't like she had any friends to turn to for casual conversation, so even if it had hurt-...
If Panacea had been there to somehow save her father, what would've happened? Well, probably a lot of things that didn't happen. Maybe Taylor would've even tried to join the Wards? Not that she thought that that would've ended well, once she'd inevitably spotted Sophia.
In the end, that potential reality didn't matter, because Panacea hadn't been there, and Taylor's dad had died. Oh, she could absolutely blame the world and Panacea for that. She could scream herself hoarse with fury.
But that wouldn't change what had happened. All it would do was make Panacea the scapegoat.
Perhaps if he'd died because the doctors and nurses who'd dealt with the heart-attack had done something wrong, or refused to help him. Perhaps then there would've been some kind of point for Taylor to make her voice heard.
As it was, the hospital-staff had done everything that they could, and it hadn't been enough. Oh, but Panacea could've done even better, and-... Except, Panacea couldn't save the whole world. Sometimes the world had to save itself.
Taylor didn't blame Alexandria for not swooping in to rescue her from her bullies. That would've just been absurd. Hell, she didn't even really blame Armsmaster or the Wards for not putting a stop to it.
She wouldn't go anywhere fucking near the PRT or the Protectorate because apparently they attracted corruption like a corpse attracted flies, but she didn't really blame the people who were only tangentially involved with Shadow Stalker's probation. Not really.
She really didn't like how they'd covered it up for the sake of saving face, but she wasn't going to rant and rave about it. She wouldn't mind punching a few of them, but again that was just her own feelings. Punching them in the face wouldn't suddenly make anything better.
So yeah, maybe Panacea could've swooped in and saved her dad, but she hadn't. It didn't really matter if she was saving lives elsewhere, or napping in front of the TV, or getting high on weed. Panacea had her own life, and demanding that she dedicate it to saving just one more person was basically just a slippery slope until Taylor was demanding that the girl single-handedly save the entire planet.
Even doctors had different shifts. They weren't always at the hospital. Or, at least, they shouldn't be. Taylor wouldn't be surprised to find a bunch of doctors being forced to work themselves to death at the whims of some rich person going on about 'lean production', or whatever bullshit they were spewing out these days.
The point was that people were more than their jobs. And so demanding that people somehow drop everything in their lives just to get to work? No. Just no.
And no, that didn't somehow stop being a shitty thing just because you added a few more numbers to their salary. Taylor was very aware of the importance of unions, and she was equally aware of why business-owners were so obsessed with discrediting them.
Why bother with safety-measures that cost money, when you could just replace the people who got killed with new people? It wasn't like workers were really 'people' after all. Not in any way that actually mattered.
So again, seeing Panacea almost begging her to blame her for her dad's death, just because she hadn't been there to save him?
Sometimes, it was so easy to forget that Panacea was barely a few years older than herself. She'd always seemed like some kind of untouchable saint, or something. But right then, all Taylor could imagine was what it must've felt like to deliver the news that someone had died.
How many people had Panacea been unable to save? She couldn't do brains, after all. How many times had she been screamed at for failing to save someone's loved one?
In the face of that, Taylor couldn't-...
Even if Panacea was rude and kind of mean, even if she'd make a perfect scapegoat, Taylor couldn't blame her at all.
XXX
It was just another day, just another few small things from Carol treating her like she was an explosive waiting to go off.
Amy had shrugged it off before, and she'd been expecting to shrug it off again. Except she couldn't. Not really. Because Tattletale had been right. Because Carol was the one in the wrong. Because even if Amy could probably take it, it still hurt.
And Amy didn't actually deserve having someone treat her like that. Especially not the person who should be a parent to her.
Parents were supposed to love their children unconditionally, not be constantly picking out faults so that they could have an excuse not to.
So Amy silently turned and went to her room, and then she grabbed a bag and shoved as many clothes into it as she could manage. She hadn't exactly been planning this at all, but she could probably ask Vicky to help pack up the rest later. Right now she just needed to get out.
"What do you think you're doing?" Carol glared at her as she came down the stairs.
"I'm done. I'm leaving."
"And where are you going?" Carol demanded.
"You've already made it very clear that that's none of your business, Carol." Amy met her glare with one of her own. "It's not like you're my mother, after all."
And then she walked past her and slammed the door shut.
XXX
Taylor really hadn't been expecting much of anything to happen in the wake of talking to Panacea.
She hadn't exactly looked happy about their conversation, but she also hadn't started yelling at Taylor either. She'd just looked a bit wrapped up in her own head, and considering what they were talking about that wasn't really such a bad thing.
Taylor couldn't say that her own moral code was somehow 'better' than someone else's. Especially after she'd very deliberately killed people and gotten rid of their bodies.
It was hard to claim the moral high-ground over a girl who volunteered at the local hospital, even if Taylor hadn't basically been a serial-killer at this point – even if she could maybe argue that it'd been in self-defense.
Still, Taylor had probably run into the darker side of capitalism a lot more than the daughter of a lawyer, and sharing what knowledge she'd gained from that wasn't a bad thing.
Regardless, the full impact she could imagine having on Panacea from that conversation was to maybe hear that Panacea changed around how she volunteered for the hospitals. As in, if she got paid for some stuff and not other stuff, or if she took more weekends off. Small things.
Taylor did not expect to open her door and find Panacea in non-cape clothing, carrying a bag, and looking like she'd been crying.
But-...
But Taylor was never going to knowingly turn her back on someone who clearly needed help.
She'd been screwed over too many times by people pretending not to see her, to ever ignore someone else in turn.
XXX
It was obvious that something had happened with New Wave.
One moment everything had been the same as normal, and the next moment Panacea had decided to move in with a 'friend'.
There'd been a quick investigation into a possible Master-power being involved in the sudden change, but nothing like that had turned up. As far as anyone could tell, it was just regular teenage-drama.
The general public hadn't noticed however, and New Wave hadn't released an official statement yet, likely hoping that Panacea would simply come skulking back home within the week.
Piggot wasn't nearly so optimistic.
Capes were a fickle bunch. Unreliable at the best of times. And whilst Piggot would love to assume that everything would go back to normal, she'd seen enough foolhardy stubbornness over the years to guess that Panacea wouldn't be coming back unless they physically dragged her.
And considering what a PR-nightmare that would be, she could only hope that they wouldn't be foolish enough to attempt it.
So far, Panacea had individually agreed to help out the heroes in cases of emergency. Not as Panacea of New Wave, but merely as Panacea. So she definitely seemed to be settling in for the long haul.
No, something had happened with New Wave. Piggot didn't know what it was, and so couldn't exactly determine the likely long-term fallout for the group, but in all likelihood it would be another nail in the coffin for the movement that New Wave had originally been hoping to start.
Accountability for capes was a great idea, and Piggot was all for it. But revealing their identities like that was-... Outside of whatever idealistic world they'd been hoping to live in, it was obvious that it was a movement doomed to failure.
More worrying was the fact that the 'friend' that Panacea had gone to live with was Taylor Hebert.
As in, the rogue with probably the biggest reason to hate the PRT in the Bay, even if the girl was fairly good at keeping a lid on it.
Of course they'd had someone keep an eye on Miss Hebert, but she'd suddenly jumped much higher in their list of priorities. Not that Piggot really expected a lot of things to change.
In truth, the only difference between Panacea working as a hero, and Panacea working as a rogue would be that they'd have to actually pay her. So, unless she started charging exorbitant prices, which didn't seem to fit with her previous behaviors, there wasn't much point for them to worry about it.
After all, unless she joined the Empire or the like – which was highly unlikely given her blatant disgust with the Nazis – Panacea wasn't exactly someone they had to worry about turning villain. Mainly because it was really hard to do things like robbing a bank by threatening to heal people.
If only every parahuman power could be as harmless as that.
XXX
Living with Taylor was... different.
They'd managed to cobble together a guest-room that Taylor had previously been using for storage. It was still filled with boxes, but there was a bed in there as well now.
Actually, a lot of Taylor's apartment was filled with boxes. Apparently the girl had tried to grab as many things as she could from her childhood home before selling it, and things had become understandably cramped as a result.
Amy didn't really understand why Taylor would so desperately latch on to things that had belonged to her parents, but then if Vicky had died-... Yeah, Amy didn't really want to imagine that, but she could guess that she'd be a bit obsessive over her things in the aftermath. At least to the point of refusing to get rid of them.
Besides, for all that it was cramped, it was surprisingly cozy.
It was also blessedly free of bugs. Those were all in the basement. Enough of them to make it impossible to guess what colors the walls were.
The first couple of nights, Amy had been very aware of how many venomous and poisonous things were down there. But through the process of desperate rationalization – Amy didn't exactly have anywhere else to go after all – she'd gotten used to it.
She still wasn't going to go down into the basement without Taylor, but that was just common sense. She didn't want to step on an important bug or something.
Taylor herself was also... an experience.
She didn't exactly smile a lot, and she definitely had a bit of a 'resting bitch-face' going on, but she wasn't unfriendly. A bit awkward, and often uncomfortable about it, but Amy got the feeling that Taylor was also incredibly lonely.
The closest thing to 'friends' that Taylor had were a few regular customers who'd show up, order their things, and leave.
It was a bit like looking at a very warped image of herself. Except for the fact that Taylor looked a lot better in a sleeveless tank-top than Amy did. Sure, Amy had more potential cleavage, but Taylor's arms looked like she might be able to bench-press Amy. Not to mention that the girl had legs that went on forever.
Well, it wasn't just there that they were different. For all that Amy was pretty sure that they had a similar level of 'bitterness' at the world, Taylor never really seemed to be rude or mean to anyone. Stoic, yes, but she had a willingness to 'do good' that Amy couldn't match.
Amy healed people because it was something to do. She didn't like doing it, but she'd been doing it for long enough to make it a habit, and at least it kind of made her feel like she was doing something other than sit in Taylor's guest-room and stare at a wall.
In comparison, Taylor actually seemed to care about people. Even if she didn't want anything to do with the heroes or villains.
XXX
Taylor didn't really know what to think about living with Panacea-... or, rather, living with Amy.
Her apartment wasn't exactly small, but there was still a lot less space than there'd been in the house she'd grown up in. And for all that most of it had either been covered in boxes or just gone unused since she'd moved in, sharing the space with another person felt kind of uncomfortable.
In some ways, Taylor and her dad had been avoiding each other for years before he died. Not necessarily consciously, but in hindsight it was obvious that they'd 'missed' each other an awful lot more than seemed possible through coincidence.
Things had never been the same between them after her mom died, and apparently they'd come to some kind of silent agreement to just avoid each other rather than confront that awkwardness head-on.
Taylor couldn't exactly say that she was proud of that, but it wasn't like she could really do anything to change what had already happened.
In comparison, living with Amy was almost claustrophobic.
But a warm house with solid walls could be described to as claustrophobic too, if it was compared to wandering around blindly in a freezing blizzard. Just because it was strange didn't necessarily make it a bad change.
Amy still went to school, and she still volunteered at the hospital, whereas Taylor rarely left her store. They bought groceries together, and whenever the hospital decided to ask Taylor for her services she'd usually walk there with Amy.
It was kind of funny how unused to exercise Amy was. Apparently, having a sister who could fly – and who owed you enough favors to regularly 'volunteer' to play taxi – was hell on your cardio.
Taylor wasn't sure exactly how much Amy and her sister talked these days, seeing as Taylor had no clue what they got up to at school, but she could guess that it wasn't much. Supposedly, Amy didn't want her sister to catch flak for siding with her, seeing as her sister would still be living with their mother.
Not that Amy actually called the woman 'mother', which was pretty damning as far as relationships went. Adoptive daughter or not, you'd think that even if they didn't get along they'd still consider each other parent and child.
Honestly, it kind of gave Taylor hives to imagine what it must've been like to grow up with a mother who didn't see you as their child. She'd lost her mom, and she wasn't ever going to be able to shrug that off, but at least she could say that her mom had definitely loved her.
XXX
What a mess.
Piggot sighed as she looked through the reports. It wasn't technically her problem to deal with, for once, but even if New Wave was independent they were still heroes.
New Wave had finally decided to release an official statement about Panacea breaking off from their group.
The statement included all of the regular nonsense that such statements needed to contain. Things about wishing Panacea well, about how it absolutely wasn't because anyone had lost their temper and tried to rip the other person's legs off. The usual platitudes.
That was all well and good, except for how Panacea was the adopted daughter of Brandish, and New Wave was a family-team. In other words, for the adopted daughter to suddenly strike out on her own whilst the rest of the family stayed together? It made some heads turn.
The fact that Panacea was also quite possibly the most publicly appreciated member of New Wave, due to her volunteering at the local hospitals? The media-outlets were smelling something, and even if it wasn't blood, they were definitely circling it like sharks.
Piggot still wasn't sure what the conflict had been about, seeing as all members of New Wave were keeping their mouths shut on the matter, same as Panacea. But she could guess that it was likely related to Brandish.
For all of their drama, teenagers rarely ran away from home without a reason. It might be a dumb reason, or it might be a perfectly justifiable reason, but generally the reasons tended to circle back to their parents.
Parents who weren't giving them the attention that they wanted, parents who were punishing them for things that they didn't think they deserved to be punished for, parents punishing them beyond their willingness to suffer through-...
Certainly, there was a possibility that it was related to Glory Girl, but Piggot had it on decent authority that those two got along just fine, so Panacea running away was unlikely to be directly related to her sister.
That left the parents as the likely instigators. And whilst Flashbang could perhaps be suspected, Piggot had met Brandish.
Between a depressed man who seemed to be doing his best, and Brandish's many opinions about what was 'right and proper', it didn't take a rocket-scientist to guess at where the problem likely came from.
Teenagers always had a lot of opinions about being told what they could and couldn't do.
Now, for all that Piggot could guess that it was a personal conflict between Brandish and Panacea that had caused the girl to leave, she didn't actually know what the conflict was about.
Had they been fighting about Panacea's curfew? Her grades? Her efforts as a cape? Had she been skipping out on chores? Had she had sex with someone she shouldn't have?
Piggot didn't have a clue, and she didn't really care.
New Wave was a hero-group, and Piggot would've been nominally inclined to support them, even if the heroes of the Bay hadn't already been horrifically outnumbered. But Panacea wasn't Piggot's responsibility, and as long as Panacea remained firmly on the heroic side of things, Piggot wasn't going to rock the boat further.
XXX