After her talk with Lisa, who was the supervillain Tattletale, Taylor headed home. She had been given two thousand dollars as thanks for saving their hides, or retainer, if she decided to accept her proposal and work for their boss. In the middle of the talk, she noticed that two girls were watching them from afar. From that damnable smug smile of hers, Lisa had as well. When they separated, she turned to them and raised an eyebrow, the one with golden blond hair waved at her with a smile. She then went home, and told her father about what had happened in the day. She reluctantly told him about the two grand, and to her surprise he told her that she could keep it. "There's no point in not allowing you to spend them. We can't take them to the police, and throwing them out would be a waste. you should get yourself a phone. With how everything is progressing, you'd surely need it." He'd said. Taylor decided that getting a phone was more necessary than other things that she wanted. After that, they spoke about what to do with the future. Her father obviously wanted her to join Hurricane and the others, but the money had been nice too. In the end, after a few hours of thinking, she realized that the group was on par with the Empire eighty eight in terms of Parahuman numbers. That much support would be invaluable. So she went out that night, removed the head from the owl charm and waited for the chariot to arrive. This time it was Owls and Sickles who had come.
After a few pleasantries she entered the chariot and they rode to the base again. this time it was way smoother than the previous rides with Hurricane, though it was nearly as fast. They reached the warehouse, and went in to find everyone out of their armors, relaxing around the common area. Except for a Hispanic boy loitering around in the workspace set up in a corner. Taylor stood stock-still, and a few turned to her with an eyebrow raised. "Well kid, gonna introduce yourself?" this was spoken by a dark haired boy, who had sea green eyes.
After a few seconds of debating with herself, Taylor took off her mask and said, "I'm Taylor Hebert. what are your names?"
"Hello Taylor, I'm Percy Jackson. you know me as Hurricane. Owls behind you is Annabeth chase, and Sickles is Katie Gardener. The Blondie with the pretty girl are Jason Grace and Piper McLean. They're Tempest and Doves. The serious girl over there is Reyna, you know her as Praetor. Those two over there, are Travis and Connor Stoll, watch your pockets around them. Then we have the young couple over there, Nico Di Angelo and Will Solace, Ghost King and Doctor Sunny. My nephew and his girlfriend," He pointed to a hulk of a man, with Asian features, and a young black girl with hazel eyes" is Frank Zhang and Hazel Levesque, Bellum and Jeweler. and the last of us, the kid at the forge," He showed the Hispanic boy, who's hair was on fire, making Taylor's eyes go wide" Is Leo Valdez, our smith. he's Mr. Smith. Come and sit down, and tell us what you've been doing? tell us about that day with Lung."
So a few hours was spent in small talk, and the night that she fought Lung, her practice with her power, how she'd withdrawn from Winslow, and Percy told her about his own school experience, when he'd destroyed the school bus with a civil war cannon in elementary, and a few funny stories from the others. There was a lull in the conversation, and Annabeth and Reyna looked at her, and Annabeth said, " we have to make a schedule for your training. Now that you've withdrawn from school, we have more time in the day. You've been running in the morning for two months, yes? that's good. The girls and I will be coming with you. since you don't have school, we go running until you start to drop, then we run some more." Taylor gulped at the mental picture. "After that we can start studying. I can teach you the mathematics, physics, chemistry, and literature. The rest we can study together. After lunch, we'll start physical training, hand to hand, knife fighting, batons, swords, spears, and javelin throwing." Taylor paled a little. She forsaw a bruise filled future for herself.
"Don't worry now, you'll like the results. Come here Nico, let's spar for a bit. Show her what she'll be learning." Percy said. Nico stood up, and the both went to the middle of the training area. The others gathered around them, and Nico said, "Without Powers?"
"Yeah, or else we'd mess up the place. We don't want being waterlogged or torn up, or both."
They started circling each other, Percy with an olive leaf shaped sword, and Nico with a sword that looked like a machete, and then both surged forward. there was a flurry of slashes, parries, blocks, even punches and kicks that lasted a minute, when suddenly they were stuck in a swordlock. Percy was pushing Nico down, being physically bigger, when Nico spat in his face. Percy jerked back, and Nico seemed to have the upper hand when suddenly Percy made another bladelock, grabbed Nico's hands and pulled them upward before throwing him on his back and put his sword under his chin.
"Good job, cousin. you've come up nicely. You're as good as I was at your age. You'll reach me in no time."
"wasn't spitting in in his face cheating?" Taylor asked Annabeth.
"No, it wasn't cheating. In a few months you'll learn, ' it's only cheating if the other guy does it.' There's no such thing as a fair fight. Only the loser would want that. If you don't cheat in a fight to the fullest extent of your power, you've already lost. Keep that in mind for the future."
They returned to their seats, and Taylor said, "I can't always come to the warehouse like this. People will get suspicious."
"Don't worry, we'll be studying at your home. We'll come with you and meet your dad, then tomorrow we start the schedule. Where have you reached on your helmet?"
"Didn't have much time on my hands. It's slow going."
"Then until your helmet isn't complete, you shouldn't go out in costume. Now that you've told your dad, you can speed up your operation. You should gather some of the spiders around here and all the way to your house and put them to use. it'll speed up your work."
Shortly after, Annabeth and Piper came with her and they drove home in an old F150 and waited till her father came home.
Danny came home to see an old f150 in his driveway. He entered, and was met with the sight of her daughter sitting with two teenage girls around her age. They were speaking with each other, and there was a light in Taylor's eyes that had been missing in the past two years. They looked at him, and Taylor said, "Dad, this is Annabeth Chase and Piper McLean, my friends from the deal with Lung. It was their boyfriends that found me that night. Annabeth, Piper, this is my dad, danny Hebert. He was encouraging me to join you in the past nights."
"Hello Mr. Hebert. It's nice to meet you. Taylor has told us a lot about you." The blonde one, Annabeth said.
"It's good to meet you two. And thank those young men for me later. They saved my Taylor's life."
"We'll tell them when we go back. So Taylor decided to join us, and we've decided to train her a bit, make her complete her costume, before we let her into the streets again. I wanted to ask that we come here every morning to pick her up for a run, and then use your home for a bit of work."
"but what about her lessons? She should study for homeschooling and take her tests."
"Don't worry about them. After the morning run we wanted to use your house to start tutoring her in her subjects. She won't slip up on her studies because of training."
Danny accepted, and after the girls left the house to return to their base, he turned to Taylor and said, "Whatever those girls tell you, listen to them. I haven't seen eyes like theirs very often. Only hardened veterans have those eyes. Whatever they've been through must have been pretty terrible. It shows a lot of inner strength that they're still here and function normally."
The girls were at the Hebert house, and there was a call about the Undersiders doing a bank robbery. they'd hired another villian in Circus, and had taken the bank costumers hostage. Leo had hacked into the police and PRT and Protectorate central comms, with the help of Annabeth and Daedalus' laptop, that Tartarus had given them when he first came to the camp. It was a nifty piece of programming, going so deep in the coding that you had to dismantle the software to the ones and zeros to find it.
A couple of minutes later, they heard that the wards had come to the scene, and left them to it. But there was a niggling feeling on the back of Nico's mind, That they should be there. He told the others, and Percy said,
"Can you shadow travel us there?"
"Yes I know a spot that isn't noticable. We can go there."
"Alright two is enough. Those wards kids are gonna be there too."
So they shadow travelled to the bank. The experience was a lot smoother compared to the other times they went through the shadows. It wasn't just from Nico's skills growing, but because the shadows didn't seem overly hostile too. It seemed that Erebus' blessing had made the shadows more accepting of them. They reappeared in the bank, to witness one of the hostages using a fire extinguisher to hit a blond girl in a purple spandex costume in the head. Then a clown came and took the fire extinguisher and punched the girl in the stomach. Seeing that, Percy and Nico drew their swords and attacked. Percy went for the clown, and Nico for the girl in spandex. She raised a pistol and pointed it at Nico's chest, and pulled the trigger. Faster than eye could see, Nico deflected the bullet into a wall and was in front of the blonde and had slapped her in the wrist holding the gun, making her drop it. He then dropped his sword, put her in a chokehold, and held her until she lost consciousness. He turned towards Percy, to see that the clown was holding his own, attacking with a big clown hammer and then breathe fire at him. The clown had superhuman balance, jumping this way and that, never falling down for more than a second, and suddenly was in front of Nico, headbutting him and taking the blonde. Then Percy was there, kicking the clown off and then the clown just abandoned the blonde and ran out of the bank. Percy and Nico decided that it was enough, and in a spontaneous decision, picked up the blonde.
"She may have important info." Percy said.
As they were about to sink into the shadows, they saw a white missile come through the glass doors, breaking them down. They had time to lock eyes with her, with a spandex clad bottom hanging in front of Percy, and they were into the shadows.
Victoria Dallon was pissed. She had been eating lunch, when she found out that the central bank was being robbed by the Undersiders. Since her sister was now in the bank, that was understandable. Her boyfriend, Gallant had called her and told her that the wards were making a perimeter around the bank, and some of the Undersiders were coming out to fight them.
She flew as fast as she could, to see that they had beaten most of the wards, and she was about to barrel into the bank, when she saw Circus jumping out and telling the others that they had to run. That there were other Parahumans in the bank, having teleported there somehow. They jumped atop the monster dogs of Bitch and ran away.
"They left one behind, Tattletale. She's still inside. We don't know what happened to make Circus run for it."
"Whatever it is, my sister is in there. To hell with it, I'm going in." She then flew headlong into the glass doors of the bank, and came inside to see two boys in Greek armor take Tattletale and vanish into the shadows. She stood still for a minute, then heard her sister groan in pain.
"Owwww, my stomach. That bastard had a strong punch."
"Amy! what the hell happened? who were those two that took Tattletale?"
"I don't know, I was too busy getting punched in the stomach. I tried to stop them, hit Tattletale in the face with a fire extinguisher, and then Circus punched me in the gut. While I was down, two guys attacked them, one of them was fighting Circus, and the other went for Tattletale. She shot at him, then he slapped the gun away and choked her till she became unconscious. then Circus came to pick up Tattletale, they didn't let her, then they took Tattletale and sank in the shadows."
The rest of the wards came in, and Victoria told them what she knew, and the wards went back to the base, being humiliated and dejected.
Lisa came to consciousness to darkness. she quickly deduced that it was because of the bag on her head. She was on a chair, and couldn't move, because they had tied her to the chair. She still had her clothes on, so that was a bullet dodged there. She was near the sea, the smell was obvious. She tapped her feet, and her power told her that it was a small room,from the clues that it picked up from the echo. She heard voices getting near, and paid focus to listen.
"Gods damn it Seaweed brain! Why in the name of Tartarus did you pick up that girl and bring her to our godsdamned base??! what Information could she have that would be enough to kidnap her?" It was the voice of a girl, there may be feelings of fond exasperation in her voice?
"Hey it was a spur of the moment thing! It was a good idea at the time! And she had a gun. Why would a supervillain need a gun? unless they're one of the squishy ones, and those are bound to have info." A boy. Definitely her boyfriend. has the same voice as Hurricane.
"Now who did you pick up? please don't tell me you picked the green eyed blonde one."
"..." Doesn't know how to answer, yeah no shit, power.
"Percy, what did you do?"
"... We may have brought the green eyed blonde one."
"Hey don't pull me into this. It was your idea."
another male voice. younger.
"Shut up both of you. she may be awake."
Lisa pretended to be unconscious, and the door was opened and three persons moved in. from the sound of their feet, it was two boys and a girl.
"Don't bother pretending to be unconscious. I know you're awake."
The bag was yanked off her head, and she blinked a few times, thankfully the room was a little dim and found herself staring into the eyes of the blonde girl who had been following Taylor and her the previous day. She was about to smirk at her, when
Will punch you if you smirk
And decided against it. they studied each other for a few seconds, then without taking her eyes off her, she said, "Go and bring Reyna. Maybe we can make her sing." The boys both left, and Lisa was left alone with the girl.
"Now what the hell am I supposed to do with you? I can't let you go, your fucking boss would know where we are in a week and killing all those assholes would be tiresome. Now, Why don't you convince me to keep you around." Is bluffing. trying to loosen lips.
Lisa looked at her a little for effect, and then launched a sob story of how she ran away from home because of abusive parents, feels sympathetic. Happened to her. how she was living on the streets, stealing from people to get food, is softening, feels kinship how when she came to Brockton Bay she was picked up by Coil and made to work for him with the threat of her brain decorating the pavement if she didn't accept, how she didn't want to be a villain, how she would be a good girl and don't put a toe out of line if they just got her out of the city... etc. etc.
"Don't lie to me Lisa. I know you enjoyed being a supervillain too much to leave it behind once you're free of Coil. The only reason that you hate Coil is because of the gun on your head. You like the thrill of being the mastermind behind everything, being the smartest person in the room. Now, try again."
Lisa was so shocked that it showed on her face. She had bypassed her power completely. Nothing showed on her except what the girl wanted to project to her. She was silent for a few moments when the other girl who had been following them showed up. So this was Reyna. She had a hard face, showing no emotion, and stood a few feet apart from the blonde girl, so she had to turn her head completely to look from one to the other.
A few minutes passed, and she finally cracked. Her power wasn't giving her anything, not a peep about those two, and she was at her wits end. She told them the truth about the Undersiders, the situation of everyone on the team, how Coil had leverage on each of them. They stared at her a little more, then left the room.
A/N: Damn this chapter was a hard one.
next, we'll deal with Bakuda.