Chapter 7: Debriefing, debriefing, and still more Debriefing

Taylor was standing at the door, looking at her father. She was in her costume, due to the lack of energy to take it off, and thus had her backpack filled with her civilian clothes. Her father was looking in her eyes, face completely blank, not a hint of emotion showing on his face. He was a tall, balding man, had somewhat of a weak chin, wore glasses, and had a temper that when boiling over, could shake up some of the toughest gangbangers out there. Taylor had witnessed it when she was younger, there was a traffic accident, and the other driver was a burly man who was obviously drunk. He had started to shout and insult her father, and when Danny Hebert saw that talking with the man didn't work, he started to lose his temper. The police had to pull him of the drunk driver. But Danny was a decent man, and didn't allow his temper to be shown in the house. He knew what it was like, having lived under his late father who had the same temper. But since her mother's death he had become a shell of his former self. Sinking so deep into depression that even after two years, he hadn't yet resurfaced. But it seemed like Taylor coming home wearing a costume had somehow dragged him forcibly back up.

"Hello Taylor. Let's have a talk."

That jolted Taylor out of her shock at seeing her father up at this hour of the night. She obediently went and sat on the opposite sofa from her father, still in her costume.

"How long?"

"How long have I had powers?" She asked. He nodded.

"Since the locker."

At hearing this, her father rose to his feet, started pacing around the room and after a few moments started to release a wave of colorful expletives that had Taylor so impressed that she started to take mental notes for the future.

After calming down for a bit, he said, "Fucking bastards. I shouldn't've listened to Alan. I should've went to the Union lawyers and asked about their opinion. I should've sued the damn school, and to hell with the consequences. I should've paid more attention to you, but I can't go back in time and beat my former self back into shape." It went by this rhythm for a couple of minutes, then he calmed down enough to sit down.

"Nice costume by the way, looks properly edgy."

"Thanks, I made it myself." Taylor managed to say.

"So this was your first night out?"

"Yeah."

"Sooooo, did you beat up a few drug dealers, stop muggeries?"

she decided to just rip the band-aid off, as they say, and so told him, "I took on Lung!" Her father choked on his spit, and started coughing. When he regained his breath, she didn't give him time to speak and told him all about her night. Following that, since she was on a roll, she told him everything since finding out about her powers after the locker. She told him about the bitch trio, the notebook, the making of her costume, what happened a few days ago and her subsequent outing tonight.

Danny sat there. silently, patiently waiting for her to finish, realizing that this was better released from her chest now than reach the boiling point. When she was finished, he remained silent for a few more minutes, a full scope of emotions showing on his face. Finally he said,

"That's it. I'm gonna pull you out of that damn place. it's obvious that it's very toxic for you, and they didn't keep their damn word that they'd stop messes like this from happening again. God knows you're smart enough to study at home. you did manage that scholarship at arcadia when you were in middle school."

Knowing it might sound childish, she said, "But then I'd let them win. They would cheer at the fact that they drove me out of the school."

"You haven't still told me who they are."

Taylor considered him for a moment, then said,"You must promise me not to do anything rash."

"sweetheart, why don't you say their names,-" Taylor interrupted him, "Promise me dad, I want to hear the words."

Danny studied her, and finally said, "Okay, I promise."

Taylor looked at him a little more, and then slowly, reluctantly, told him that it was Emma. that Emma, with Sofia Hess and Madison Clements were the ringleaders of the bullying for the past two years. Danny was sitting, stock still, and listened to his daughter tell him about what her best friend had done to her. Taylor started venting on him, and in her rambling let slip about her mother's flute without even realizing. It took a lot, but he managed to hold himself, and not go to Alan's house and beat the shit out of him and slapping his demon daughter for doing that to his wife's flute. He calmed down, stood up and went to his daughter, and grabbed her in a tight hug that he realized was too late coming.

Taylor hugged him back, the stress of coming very very close to death finally took it's toll on her body. a few minutes passed, and he asked, "Now tell me about what you did when going after Lung. think of it like Debriefing, speak about everything you did, somethings that you didn't do, and talk about those two capes that came to your rescue." So they talked about the night, and Tempest and Hurricane, and the arrival of Armsmaster, what she did after that, how the other two stood silent and let her give away the credit to Armsmaster. Then she talked about the exhilarating chariot ride through the Docks, and the keychain that Hurricane gave her.

"So they have the Greek theme down to the details. You said one of them had a lightning bolt and an eagle on his chest, and the other had a wave and a trident? The one with the eagle was named tempest and the one with the waves was named Hurricane. Tempest can fly, Hurricane uses a trident, and then there's the lighting. These clouds can't produce lightning. are you sure it came from the sky?" At her nod, he said, "So one of them summoned it from the barely cloudy sky. That's impressive. At the end you said that Lung seemed to struggle for breathing? and then one of Hurricane said that Tempest did it late?" and so they talked up to the early hours of the morning, and a little before dawn, they both went to bed.

A/N: let's not forget that it's the first night that Taylor went out. it's not like in a few weeks that she had fought Bakuda and blinded Lung and all those things. She's not yet hardened.

Percy and Jason returned to the warehouse, and found the rest had returned as well. After knocking out Lung, they had relayed what had happened, and said they had found the Girl. They sat down with the others, and Annabeth asked, "Well? What's your impression of the girl?"

"She's untrained, but she has a good head on her shoulders. If trained properly, she could make short work of most of the jokers around here." Jason said. Percy nodded, and said, "She was a bit awkward, but she prepared as well as a kid from a lower class family could manage. Her costume was well made, but still had a bit left to be completed. Didn't have a head piece, which was what made it obvious that she's a girl. We can take her under our wing, she'd fit right in. Oh, get this, she went and took in Lung on her first night out!! Man the balls on that kid. For a mortal it would be an impossible task, and yet she still took him, because she heard he wanted to kill children."

"What are her powers?" Leo asked, "It must've been something pretty powerful if she took on Lung on her first night out."

"You're gonna love this one, Annabeth! She controls bugs! we went there and saw a swarm of bees and spiders and mosquito and all the other creepy crawlies descend on Lung like a biblical plague, when he exploded and burned most of them to ash." There were a few disgusted faces in the crowd, but Annabeth and Reyna had thoughtful looks on their faces.

"If she has that good a control on her bugs," "But, how big is her range?" "Can she sense what the bugs sense?" "What about Locating?" "Damn, the potential is through the roof..." It went like this for a few minutes, then they said together, "I want her in." They looked at each other for the first time after their parallel musings, and shrugged.

"You did give her a way to contact us, didn't you?" Reyna said.

"Yes, I gave her one of those trident charms that I have. Thank Gaea for those... gods this is weird. Couldn't imagine thanking Gaea for anything before coming here."

Gaea had given them each a few hundred single-use charms shaped like a symbol of their divine parents. They had two uses, one, an emergency beacon to the giver, and another, a simple beacon to the giver as well. What Percy said was a small misdirection they had came up with to hide their real abilities. the emergency beacon had the ability to send a pulse that would paint a mental picture of the place the charm was to the giver, up to fifty yards. Gaea had helped them a lot with those, although it pained them to acknowledge it. They talked a bit more about the girl, the fight with Lung, and how it was like fighting one of the more powerful monsters. But with their new gear, they could take on the Manticore with just two of them and win.

When their debriefing had ended, Frank asked, "Well, now what?"

there was a bit of silence, and then Nico said the one thing that none of them wanted to hear.

"Now, we play the waiting game..."

the room was filled with groans and grunts of displeasure.

Lisa was a little concerned. Scratch that, she was more than a little concerned. she had withheld information from the boss. When he called and asked about the mission that night, she told him what he wanted to know. to her surprise, he hadn't asked about the boys that had come and beat up Lung like it was just a walk in the park. She had told him about the bug girl, as her power told her that he would have expected them to cross paths. The funny thing was, when she looked at those boys, it was like looking at two ordinary, non-parahuman boys. Her power told her that the armor that they wore was bronze, and that the swords were a very high grade alloy of steel. She saw that the trident appeared out of nowhere in the blue one's hands. Strangely, her power didn't tell her anything about that. No lead, no clues, just nothing. The same for the lightning, and the same for Lung's suffocation. She knew that it was because of the thinning of air around Lung, and that the lightning came from the sky, but her power was entirely silent about them.

She knew intellectually that the suffocation was caused by the golden one, and that the trident was teleported in, but to her power, they as well as hadn't happened at all. Even the flying didn't register anything. It was a novel experience, trying to do things the hard way. She had to use her own intelligence to think up on those. She hated to admit it, but Faultline was right. Somehow her power was made useless. One of the faults of a thinker power. You shouldn't get reliant on them.

She'd think about the two boys later. For now she better focus on the bug girl. She'd set up a post on PHO to draw her in. Maybe she could recruit her.

Oh how did she hate her damn boss. She'd been minding her own business, trying to steal from some rich cunts to weather the day, when he'd sent his goons to capture her. They had cornered her, took her to an empty alley, put a gun to her head and gave her a phone with the snake bastard on the other side.

She didn't initially want to enter the cape scene, but after a few month as a supervillain, she found out that she really liked it! it was pretty fun using her wits and her power to best all those big bad gangsters and supervillains. The only problem was the gun on her head. Maybe those two boys could pull out a miracle and after a good sob story she could convince them to get rid of Coil for her...

A/N: Damn it's pretty hard to write from Tattletale's perspective. she's gonna be a pain, I just know it.

If you can think of a name for the demigods to take as a group, please tell me about it. it's eluding me so far...