AN: I know that I missed making a reference to the Time Warp...I really tried but this turned out less cracky than I had originally envisioned.
Just a Step to Your Left
Alec dropped onto the couch in the Undersiders' lair, breathing hard, his mask smoking on the coffee table beside him.
"Damn. Haven't had a close call like that in years. Let's not steal from Lung again, yeah? Got the blood pumping, but there's not much point in adrenaline highs without living through the adrenaline."
"We're good at running," Brian agreed, dropping his own mask, with a grimace, "but yeah, I agree. That was way too close." He peeled off his jacket, hissing. "Fuck. Rachel, throw me that burn cream when you're done."
His teammate grunted, and a few seconds later tossed him the tube.
Lisa had sat down at the kitchen table, her head in her hands, fingers kneading her temples. "I'm…not sure we did get away, guys."
"What, like we're dead and in purgatory? That would be cool. Kinda shitty afterlife though. I mean, I was hoping for more virgins or playmates. You guys are not what I was hoping for when it comes to the afterlife."
"Shut up, Alec," Brian sighed. "Lisa, what are you talking about?"
"There were too many close calls, all back-to-back. Statistically speaking alone, at least one of us should have died. That none of us are seriously injured? My power is going crazy, but it keeps giving me garbage. The best I can get is that someone helped us. Somehow."
Rachel nodded. "Makes sense. You find our helper, you give her some of the loot. Only fair."
"I don't think I'm going to be able to find them, but I'll keep it in mind." She groaned. "Dammit, I need to lie down. Whoever gave us the assist gave me a hell of a migraine. I claim first shower."
Amy stared at her sister, trying to comprehend just what Vicky was saying. She couldn't have heard what she thought she had heard. It was impossible.
"Ames, it was freaky, the guy spazzed out just before I hit him. But in a really weird way. It was almost like he had a seizure with how he started shaking. For a moment I thought he'd triggered."
"And that's what made you stop."
"It's what…It's what made me realize that I…" Vicky trailed off again, holding her arm and keeping her eyes firmly cast towards the floor of Amy's room. "I figured out afterwards that I hadn't actually triggered the guy, but…Amy, I could have! The things I've been doing, the people I keep calling you to help cover up, I've been - PHO calls me Collateral Damage Barbie! They're right! I'm just a fucking wrecking ball. I could have killed that guy. Yeah he was a skinhead and probably deserved it, but we're New Wave! We're supposed to be accountable. Aren't we?" She finished in a low voice that Amy had to strain to hear.
"I'm probably not the best person to ask about that, Vicky," Amy replied, almost as soft.
"Oh come on, you're perfect. You're so damn selfless. You keep going to help people all day every day. Screw Mom. I don't know what her problem is, but if she can't see -"
"I hate healing," Amy stated. The words were out of her mouth before she even realized she was speaking. Vicky's jaw snapped closed and her eyes opened wider than they had ever been before. Amy just let out a breath that it felt like she had been holding for years. "I hate it. I can't stand how they look at me. How some of them thank me and some don't. How some think that I owe them. That I didn't do a good enough job. How I'm expected to heal the same people who murdered our aunt and not give them cancer while I'm doing it. I hate how I can't take money for it because Mom already looks at me like I'm a villain. I don't want to heal people; I want to create things."
"Amy…"
Amy smiled, looking to the sky past her ceiling, feeling more free than she had in…than since her trigger. "I want to create things. I don't care about who my dad was. Carol can walk off a building for all I care. I'll heal in my spare time, but I'm going to build something with my power."
Hanah shook her head at her friend as she walked into his lab. "Colin, Bakuda's been captured. You need to sleep."
"There's something wrong with this data."
"Look at the pretty tinkertech bombs later. Sleep now."
"No, it's not - I'm not interested in the tinkertech."
Hanah froze mid-step. She glanced around the lab again, this time actually paying attention. All of Bakuda's equipment was sectioned off in a corner, with a heavy enclosure and warnings around it. Everything else in the lab had been there since before the mad bomber had started her destruction spree.
"Colin? What are you working on?" Hanah asked, her voice carefully modulated as if she were approaching a wounded animal.
Colin huffed. He tilted his screen so that she could see. "Seventy-eight bombs. Seventy-eight. Thirty-six of those were implanted into a person's skull."
"I've seen those reports, Colin."
"Not a single casualty. Every bomb inside someone failed or didn't explode until it was successfully removed."
Hanah frowned. That was unusual. "Perhaps her power had a strange version of the Manton Effect?"
"No. I've seen the videos of her early weapons before she came to Brockton Bay. She had fed a bomb to of her teachers. That one worked perfectly fine. There is something else going on here."
"Well what about -"
"And more than that," Colin said, interrupting her. "Every other bomb failed when it would have caused casualties as well. In fact, the only significant property damage was to Winslow High School. For a 'mad bomber' she either had remarkable self-control or -"
"Or there's a guardian angel," Hanah's eyes were wide and she openly staring at Colin's screen. "Seventy-eight bombs?"
"Seventy-eight."
"No casualties or property damage?"
"None."
"…How do we even begin to investigate this?"
Colin turned and met her gaze. His eyes were bloodshot, his expression haunted. "I have no idea, Hanah. But we need to figure something out. A shaker this powerful…"
"We need to find them."
Eidolon barely responded as Alexandria and Legend came up behind him. Instead, he continued to stare out at the ocean. His arms were crossed and his cape billowed under the influence of a useful, but dramatic wind power. It wasn't like he needed that slot for anything important at the moment.
"I've spoken with Armsmaster," Legend said. "He's certain that our good luck today was due to some unknown Hero. He's apparently been trying to track this cape down for some time now. From what he was saying, they've been active for weeks at the minimum."
"Whoever they are, they're making us look like weak, pathetic, fools," Eidolon snapped. "Was their goal to embarrass us? They've certainly succeeded!"
"Control yourself!" Alexandria said. "We just fought Leviathan, Eidolon, and there were zero casualties. If you see something wrong with that, then perhaps you are no longer qualified to count yourself as a hero."
He finally tore his gaze away from where the beast had disappeared to as it ran back to the sea. Glaring at his fellow conspiracy members, he scoffed, "Not a hero? Me? Who was the one who authorized dropping C-53s here? Who was the one who decided to let Contessa tell us that Manton was to be protected? Who was the one that allowed the Gesellshaft and Empire Eighty Eight to come back to power? I'm not a hero, Alexandria? The only person in this city who isn't a hero today is you!"
Legend stepped between them, hands held out, little glimmers of light dancing from finger to finger. Eidolon took an obscene amount of pleasure in knowing he'd riled up the goody two-shoes. Legend had kept his hands clean for too long. Better for them all to be dragged down into the muck. None of them were blameless, and if Legend wanted to help them save the world, he needed to be willing to do whatever it took.
"Eidolon, Alexandria, right now we need to focus on what's important, not fight each other."
"Not even an offhand backslap?" Eidolon scoffed. "We truly have corrupted you."
"David!" Alexandria snapped. "Legend, we will -"
"Talk about the Case 53s later," Legend grunted, turning to glare at her. "As well as every other item that you've been keeping from me over the years. If I have to have a meeting inside the bounds of this city between the three of us - with Contessa in attendance - to ensure I get actual answers from you, then so help me, I will. But," he paused to collect his thoughts, the light on his hands diminishing, "regardless of personal differences and private frustrations, the fact remains, that our unknown cape saved quite a few lives today. They are the hero of the hour. We should help try to find them."
"I intend to do no such thing," Eidolon stated. "Good luck with your coward. Fucking bitch can't even be bothered to show their face." Refusing to let himself care about their annoyed expressions, he lifted into the air and took off.
He needed to think.
Thomas sincerely hoped this PRT meeting would have some useful information. He had been using his Coil timeline near constantly to search for more information on the unknown cape in the city, and yet, nothing had been revealed. Tattletale had no information, none of the other gang members he'd captured and interrogated had details, his people hadn't been able to triangulate anything.
Even worse, his efforts to secure Dinah Alcott had been stymied at every turn. He was growing increasingly certain that it was vital to recover her at this point. Or kill her if that continued proving impossible. The girl was directly interfering with his powers now. Four times his timelines had collapsed while trying to capture the brat. There was a tangential possibility it was related to her parents since only the timelines where he'd elected to let his people kill them had been the ones that ended with him face-down on his desk with a migraine. Further testing hadn't borne out anything to support that hypothesis though.
No it was the brat. He needed her. She would lead him to the probability manipulator. She would be under his control. Or she would die. It was as simple as that.
"Alright, Armsmaster, consider me a believer in your theory now." Thomas barely managed to stop himself from rolling his eyes at Piggot's words. Now she believed the Tinker's constant harping about an unknown city-spanning Shaker? Get with the damn program Emily. The entire city had been searching for the hidden little coward for weeks. Once people stopped getting seriously hurt, gangs started to notice.
Idiot. Yet more reason why he was more qualified to be the Director.
"I imagine it would be hard to keep ignoring their existence after the Leviathan battle." Oh was Armsmaster snarking back? So the man wasn't a robot after all. Well, wasn't that interesting?
"What have you found?" Piggot asked, apparently choosing to ignore the spark of life from the automaton.
"I've reviewed footage from the battle. This clip is of Battery. I was staring right at her as Shimmer Step's power affected her."
Miss Militia spoke up. "Shimmer Step?"
Armsmaster grimaced. "They needed a name and 'Shimmer' was taken. I didn't want to give them something off-putting. Shimmer Step seems to fit with the ability expression."
"We can discuss the name later," Piggot said. "Show the video."
"Of course. This is slowed to one-quarter speed. You can see Battery here, directly in the path of Leviathan's tail." The video started to play and a distinct shimmering field enveloped Battery. It was gone between one frame and the next, but so was Battery. As soon as the field had vanished, she was slightly offset from her original position. Thomas' eyes narrowed. This meeting suddenly became far more intriguing than the paperwork in his secret base that his other timeline was dealing with.
"I've calculated the distance that Battery was moved by Shimmer Step's power," Armsmaster continued. "It was only six inches. Yet, that six inches was the difference between being flattened and surviving without a single scratch. Observe." Several more frames advanced and Leviathan's tail slammed into the ground. As it lifted back up, it was clear that Battery had been deposited just outside of the impact point.
The woman in question gasped. "Holy fuck! I didn't even - I mean I -" She stopped, clenching her shaking fists and letting out a long, shaky breath. "I didn't feel a thing. I felt the force of the impact and the water echo from the tail was a bitch and a half, but I had been charging so it didn't do much. Still, I would never have survived a direct hit."
Thomas renewed his vow to find this 'Shimmer Step'. She was going to be useful.
"Their ability appears to work based on probabilities. A quantum mechanics concept transcribed to a macro scale. I believe that Shimmer Step shifts you to a probability wave where you are no longer in danger. If there is any chance that you would have been able to survive a situation, no matter how remote, Shimmer Step moves you to wherever it was necessary for that reality to have happened."
"Where are we on finding them?" Piggot asked.
"I am currently attempting to track comatose patients in the local hospitals. While evidence of Shimmer Step's power has been growing increasingly hard to ignore, the cape themselves still remains a mystery. It's highly unusual for a cape to be hidden for this long by choice. Dragon and myself are nearly certain that they're in a vegetative state."
"Like Labyrinth on steroids?" Assault asked.
"Essentially yes."
Thomas frowned. He hadn't considered that. If Shimmer Step wasn't intentionally eluding him, but was instead helpless in a hospital…
He was just calling his mercenaries into his office as Coil to deliver the new marching orders when the door to the PRT conference room opened. Piggot spun to yell at the intruder. Armsmaster frowned.
Thomas only saw a brief glimpse of dark-brown hair before the click of an empty gun sounded throughout the room. His eyes widened and his head snapped towards the door. Then he froze solid.
"Dinah! Get back here, that room isn't on the tour!"
His target - one of his targets at least - tried to shoot him again. Again the gun clicked. Shouts rang out. Assault vaulted over the table, but was knocked aside as he and Battery collided with each other. Velocity tripped and went sprawling over the floor. Armsmaster's halberd wouldn't unsnap from its harness.
"No!" Dinah shouted. She threw the gun aside and sprinted towards him, closing the few feet from the door before Thomas could reach for his gun.
Not that he would have done so. No, there was no possible way he was going to damage his prize. Not when she was right here. All he had to do was get his own agents to take her into custody when her tantrum was done and then -
The knife she had produced from her belt planted into the chair close enough to leave a trail of blood along his cheek.
"LET ME KILL HIM!" Dinah shouted. "You've saved me so many times! Let me kill him and end this nightmare!"
There was another knife, and another scratch.
Dinah screamed again. Before a third knife could land, she was pulled off of him by Miss Militia. The girl snarled, her hair wild, spittle flying from her mouth.
"Let me go! Let me kill him! He's been trying to kidnap me for weeks! I found his name with my power and I only keep getting away because the Bay Angel keeps saving me! I'm tired of running from mercenaries every day! I'm tired of no one listening to me! Why won't you let me kill him?!"
No. This wouldn't do at all. They'd look into him now, whether he was able to get Dinah off the premises or not. It would almost certainly be worse for him now if she did disappear. He had the intel he needed. He didn't need this timeline anymore.
He tried to drop the timeline where he went to the PRT building, only to be hit by an intense migraine that left him gasping for air. And, more importantly, the wrong timeline ended.
"What?" he wheezed. A hand on his head and a glare directed at the brat. "What did you do?!"
"Not me!" she hissed. "You're so stupid! How do you keep paying for your dumb goons who can't even shoot straight? The Angel messes with your powers, you stupid shit-head! Haven't you noticed how every time you tried to kill my parents she moved them away from those - those - I don't know a good curse word!"
"Child, please calm down, so we can discuss what is going on!" Miss Militia tried to say over Dinah's continued shouts.
"I have asked enough questions to be able to figure things out, but you're so stupid you keep doing the same thing over and over again! I'm sick of being kidnapped after school! I'm sick of being kidnapped from home! I'm sick of you trying to kill my parents! I'm tired of wasting questions on you Thomas Calvert! Let me kill him!"
He growled, splitting timelines, and in one of them finally pulling out his gun. This brat thought that she could speak to him that way?!
He pulled the trigger, a click resounding. Screaming in rage, he tried again and again. Emptying the entire clip, and each time, the weapon just ejected an unfired round. Before he could do more than stand and grab one of the knives from the chair to continue venting his frustrations, his head split open again.
And again, his timelines collapsed.
Dinah immediately settled down in Miss Militia's arms while Thomas groaned on the floor. The other heroes were openly gaping at him.
"Okay. I suppose that works too," Dinah said, chuckling. It was not a happy sound. "Thanks Angel. I still would have preferred to kill him, but this is okay."
Armsmaster entered the meeting room with Gallant beside him. Deputy Director Renick was already present, along with their guest, Danny Hebert. After both capes were seated, Renick was the first to speak. "Mr. Hebert, thank you for meeting with us. We're aware that you must be busy."
The thin man snorted. Leaning forward and placing both hands on the table, Danny lifted an eyebrow at Renick. "Meeting with you? I've been trying to get a meeting with you people since before Leviathan. It's funny how it's only now, nearly two months after the fucker came and went that you found the time to take my call."
"We have been very busy, Mr. Hebert," Gallant said, apparently trying to calm the man. Armsmaster didn't need emotion-sensing to be able to tell that wouldn't work. Danny was a very angry man. And if he was right, then he had every reason to be.
Armsmaster hoped Danny was right. It would make things so much simpler.
Before Danny had time to respond to Gallant, Armsmaster hurried to speak. "Mr. Hebert, let's not delay this further than it already has. I understand that you believe your daughter has triggered despite the fact that she is currently just listed as a missing person?"
Danny turned his attention to Armsmaster slowly nodding. "I've done my research, Armsmaster. I understand what trigger events are. Taylor disappeared only three days after her mother died."
Renick shook his head. "Sir, not to sound callous, but this is Brockton Bay, and teenagers run away all of the time."
"Her mother died three days before Lung went on his last rampage."
Anything that Renick was going to say as a follow-on died. The man's expression visibly paled. Armsmaster just nodded, his suspicions growing more certain. He'd been the one to find Danny's reports to the BBPD, and then the later ones to the PRT. He'd been the one to call for this meeting.
"Sir, this is likely a sensitive topic, but I must ask, how did your wife die and was your daughter present for it?" he asked.
Danny closed his eyes, his shoulders slumping and his head falling forward. "It was a freak accident. We were just going for a walk at the park. Taylor had been depressed. One of her friends has had trouble recently, you see, and my wife…There was a lot of shouting with our friends to convince them that their daughter needed to speak with someone. Taylor has missed her friend desperately. We thought that going out while the weather was nice would…help."
"And it didn't."
"They said that it was built-up rust; bad maintenance. That the wind was just a little bit too strong. None of that fucking matters. What matters is that Annette was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and when that thing fell, she didn't get back up."
"And your daughter was different afterwards?" Armsmaster prompted.
"Not immediately. It was just after the funeral where I noticed it. She was distant, it was hard to get her to focus. When she looked at me, it was like she was looking -"
"Somewhere else." Armsmaster flipped through several screens on his HUD, pushing out commands with the girl's photo attached. He needed to find her before news of this got out.
"Yes." Danny looked back up, meeting Armsmaster's eyes. "I was trying to contact the same therapist that Alan was using for Emma when I realized she was…gone. I looked everywhere. I called in all our friends. None of us could find her. I contacted the BBPD, they just filed her away as yet another missing girl."
Gallant leaned forward, his armor creaking. Armsmaster would have to remind Kid Win to ensure that the proper maintenance was performed. "Okay, I'll definitely admit this is sounding a lot like what I'd expect for a new cape. But what made you think that, Mr. Hebert?"
"It was after I started hearing that the boys in the DWU weren't worried about the gangs anymore. A few of them had gotten in scraps, but walked away without a scratch or a bruise. When the gangbangers came after them at home, the gangs were the ones arrested. Actually arrested. Not 'out on the street in a few days' arrested like normal. That was my first clue. Then I started reading PHO, and there were all these rumors about a new Shaker that was saving capes and normals left and right. Except no one had ever seen her. And then Leviathan hit."
"And you knew," Armsmaster finished.
"I've checked the missing persons list. It's steadily gone down, since my daughter got powers. Almost every day there are fewer people up there. Whether they get home, or their remains are found, they're still crossed off. Do you know how many people are still left on that list now?"
Renick frowned. "That can't be…"
"I know what you're thinking; it's not just Taylor. But it went from hundreds of people down to just a dozen. And Taylor is one of them. A city this big? And that's it?"
"Mr. Hebert," Armsmaster said. "You don't have to convince me, I believe you. Outside this room, you should refer to your daughter as Shimmer Step. Do you have any idea where she might have wandered? We know she is still alive, but we have reason to think that she is in a vegetative state while attempting to help the people of this city and extend her influence throughout it."
"What?" Danny asked, jerking upright. "My daughter is what?"
"We need to find her before she is hurt. Her power has likely sustained her, but it's unlikely it can go on indefinitely. We also need to ensure that she is not captured by anyone who would have more nefarious intent. We need to find your daughter. Quickly."
"Tell me how I can help."
"Everyone, thank you for coming," Legend stated, his voice thick and heavy even as it carried over the assembled crowd. "I understand that some of you are worried, some of you are scared. Behemoth is known as the Hero Killer for a reason. That is why I don't say this lightly when I tell you to stay, at a minimum, 32 feet from him if you are not completely immune to energy abilities. Remember, Behemoth can bypass the Manton Limit at will within that range, and while he is slow, he can move quickly in bursts. This is why the recommended minimum range is at least 100 feet."
"Why do we even care?" One of the local capes, Circus, said. "We all know that Shimmer Step is going to protect us anyway."
Legend winced. That was what they had been afraid of: that people would grow complacent. "I realize that you have quite a bit of faith in Shimmer Step, however, we cannot trust her to save us from our own mistakes! We haven't even been able to locate her yet. We must approach this fight as we have approached all others. And -"
"Yeah, it's not like an Endbringer has ever attacked the same place twice, anyway." Who was that? Regent? Was he the one who was supposed to be Heartbreaker's child? "Big guy must have gotten annoyed that we beat up his little brother."
"Everyone, please," Legend said, waving his arms for silence. "We must focus! There will be several teams setup. I want you all to…"
"Hey, listen up!" Armsmaster's face twitched as Tattletale's voice crackled out of his armband. The echo from all of the nearby armbands certainly didn't help his frustration. "Behemoth was sandbagging before! All of them were! He's not doing that anymore! The kill aura is double what it was! Minimum! Stay the fuck from him! Shimmer Step keeps moving everyone who gets closer! More than that, he's got a target! I can't tell where, but he's angling directly towards a goal! Dollars to donuts, it's our guardian angel! If anyone's got anything that can fuck him up, use it NOW!"
"What does she think we've been doing, hitting him with BB guns?" Armsmaster growled.
"Well, at least now we know why those lightning blasts and magma bombs are registering as so much more powerful than the last fight," Pyrotechnical commented. The woman looked at the cannon-like creation resting in and sighed. "This thing is going to be useless. I calibrated it based on Behemoth's old specs. If he's ramped up, I got nothing that can help. Think we can call over more pyro guys? I might still be able to do something if I team up with them."
"There's some in Grid E6." Armsmaster folded his halberd and got back onto his motorcycle. "I'm going to try and extrapolate where he's going."
Pyrotechnical held Armsmaster's gaze. "You're trying to save Shimmer Step."
"I've been trying to help that girl nearly since she triggered. If anything positive comes out of this nightmare, I'm going to at least find her and make sure she is taken care of."
"We haven't lost anyone yet, Armsmaster. She's still watching over us."
"I know." He sped off before she could respond.
Behemoth's roar cut across the city barely a minute after he started driving. It was blessedly cut off with the crack of an explosion. Something that his HUD scrolled as a shot to the mouth from Alexandria.
Shimmer Step was definitely looking over them, as he knew for a fact that Behemoth could easily redirect Alexandria's punches back at the cape herself. That she had gotten off a surprise hit and distracted the beast was miraculous.
Even more so when a bomb exploded on one of his arms trapping it in a time bubble just before he could clap them together.
While Behemoth started to tear its own hand off to free itself of the stopped time, Armsmaster used the direction of his last two attacks to further narrow the trajectory. Tattletale was right. Since the Endbringer's emergence ten minutes ago, the creature had continued on a straight line path directly towards the Docks.
No. Not the Docks.
Armsmaster inputted several commands and overlaid the trajectory of the initial few attacks, the ones that had been redirected. He corrected for their initial angles. Then he added in the Endbringer's other attacks.
Everything was aiming for a single building. An old apartment building near the Docks. A building that was marked as condemned.
One that used to be a sorority dorm.
Armsmaster pushed his bike faster, redlining all readings.
Behemoth roared again. The ground shook. Armsmaster didn't have to look behind him to know that the beast had leaped. It was a race now. Armsmaster should win. He should. And yet. And yet…
The ground shook again.
Armsmaster skidded his bike to a stop, leaping off of it even before it had stopped moving.
He charged up the stairs, the ground shaking again. The air heated to a stifling degree.
Reaching for his armband, Armsmaster pressed both buttons, shouting, "I need a teleporter to my position! I've located Shimmer Step! We are being targeted by Behemoth! Send assistance!"
His helmet was showing the heat signature from a single body. It was lying on a bed inside a room just a few steps away. His shoulder slammed into it, splintering the wood. It was hard to breathe through the heat. The ground shook again.
A crack sounded behind him. He didn't turn, hoping that whichever teleporter had came was smart enough to follow him.
There.
Taylor Hebert was there, lying on a ratty bed, her hands folded over her chest, her hair splayed around her, glasses askew, her body had a persistent glittery shimmer over it. Exactly like those who fell under the effects of her power.
He had just hoisted her into the air when the roof of the building flew off.
"Holy shit!"
Armsmaster didn't know the cape who had come to assist. He didn't know the man's name or how much he could carry. But he could save this girl, and that was what was important. Armsmaster twisted on his heel, thrusting Taylor Hebert towards the cape.
And then a shimmer registered in his visor. A shimmer over Behemoth. It was there and gone. Behemoth opened his mouth, his remaining hand raised with lightning crackling.
And a telephone pole appeared just below Behemoth's throat.
The Beast faltered. Armsmaster stared, not daring to breathe. The shimmer appeared over the Endbringer again. Behemoth tried to turn. This time it was a steel beam that was lodged through its throat.
Three more shimmers, three more items joined the first two.
The red light in Behemoth's eye dimmed. The lightning dancing on its fingers grounded out. The air lost its warmth.
And with a crash, Behemoth toppled to the street, moving no more.
"Is he…did she just kill an Endbringer?" the teleporter whispered.
Armsmaster could only nod as he looked down at the girl in his arms.
"Let's get you home child. I think you've earned your rest."
AN: For reference on what happened at the end, what Taylor did was set things up so that Flechette and Ballistic could work together and shoot things through Behemoth's core.
Yes, this was a minor AU where Annette had survived until she died in front of Taylor and Danny in a freak accident. On top of Emma having already had her mental breakdown (which the Barnes were forced to notice because Annette saw immediately that Taylor was upset) Taylor didn't take things well and ended up triggering with a power that let her alter outcomes to other potential probabilities.
The way I have envisioned this, she has a less restricted shard than normal, probably one from Eden, which is why she is able to cover an entire city and why she was able to affect Endbringers.
With Dinah, she let Dinah get close enough to Coil for Thomas to out himself. Taylor's power doesn't actually interfere with his, it's just that his shard isn't accounting for her. It's doing it's precog thing, but as soon as Taylor actively changes stuff in a way that it didn't anticipate, the vision breaks down and he's locked into what he had actually been doing. Which was usually the worst option because shards like conflict so it just assumed he would choose the route with more conflict when he wasn't actively making a choice himself.
For where she had gone, Taylor ended up going to an old sorority house that Annette had been a part of. It wasn't the dorm Annette had used, but it was a local branch, one that Taylor had been taken to as a kid and vaguely remembered. She wanted to be closer to her mother, so she went there as she was in the process of falling into her fugue.
Where things go from here, I see Armsmaster, Danny, and probably one or two others being able to finally wake Taylor up. She'd still be able to drop back into her trance and extend her field/awareness, but she'd have more control over it afterwards.