Coming out of the phone shop, Taylor played with her new phone with a smile on her face. It was a fairly basic clam-shell version but the sales droid had told them it was waterproof, solidly made, and had a very good battery life. That seemed to tick all the boxes as far as she was concerned. Danny had put his in his pocket to look at later, still apparently not entirely enthused with the whole concept even though it had been his idea.
They already had a decent albeit basic laptop from another shop, and were heading towards the local telco outlet to arrange an internet upgrade from the horribly slow dial-up they currently had. Passing the food court she noticed a somewhat older and very good looking blonde girl accompanied by a very attractive young man, whose dark complexion and good looks she caught herself looking twice at. Or maybe three times.
OK, so it was four times, but who's counting?
On the fifth time, she saw that the blonde had noticed, flushing slightly and looking away quickly. As they walked past she quickly glanced sideways to see a smug grin on the face of the blonde, which rather suddenly turned into a grimace of pain, then a very puzzled expression. Averting her eyes and raising her hand to cover them the young woman exhibited all the signs of a sudden attack of migraine, her companion talking to her in a low voice. Taylor felt sorry for her and deliberately didn't try listening in on the conversation.
"We should probably pick up a few disposable phones as well," Danny suddenly said as they passed a large outlet store, making her forget the blonde and turn her attention to him. "Just in case. These ones can probably be tracked, so if for whatever reason we need to make an anonymous call to the police or something like that I'd prefer not to have to throw away a hundred dollars worth of phone."
Nodding with a small smile, she replied, "That sounds like good thinking, Dad." She paused, then added, grinning a little mischievously, "You're really getting into this, aren't you?"
He gave her a long suffering look. "Not by choice, believe me. If I had any say in the matter I'd lock you in your room or a decent school until you were at least twenty, to keep you safe." She snickered when he smiled, reaching out and ruffling her hair affectionately.
"Hey, mind the hair," she griped, running her fingers through it. "I like my hair."
"So do I," he smiled again. They entered the store and wandered around, picking up various odds and ends that they needed, such as some more AA batteries to replace the ones that had been used earlier. Taylor spent some time looking at the better clothing in the relevant department, allowing the Varga to memorize the patterns, which he'd assured her was simple for him. She'd done the same thing at some higher end stores as well.
The ability to have any clothing she wanted with a thought was something she found both amusing and desirable, even though she'd never been much of a clothes-horse, unlike Emma. She abruptly found herself wanting to show off some really nice clothes to rub the bitches' face in it, but was sensible enough to work out that was a probably not a good idea.
The whole time they'd been out she'd been waiting for someone to notice her tail, wincing at first when anyone paused and looked at her as she went past. No one seemed to notice it at all, allowing her to gradually relax. Even the time she turned around in one store and accidentally swept half a dozen items off a low shelf with the appendage didn't attract any more than an annoyed shop attendant who put them back while muttering about shop stockers who piled things too high.
Finding themselves in the electronics department they poked around for a bit, coming up in the end with some really cheap disposables for about ten dollars each. Danny dropped half a dozen into the shopping cart.
Heading towards the tills Danny detoured through the entertainment section, browsing the DVDs on release and picking up one of the second Die Hard movie, which they didn't have. Looking across at the CDs, he stopped, then walked across to the classical music section, reaching out and picking up one particular one and studying it. Taylor curiously read the title, seeing it was something called 'Divenire' by a musician by the name of Ludovico Einaudi, a name she vaguely recognised. Danny looked sad.
"What's wrong, Dad?" she asked quietly. He didn't respond for a moment, then sighed.
"I bought a copy of this for your mother just before she died," he finally said. "She loved this guy. I threw it away after, it reminded me too much of her." After a long moment he put it in the cart. Taylor slipped her arm around his waist and held him for a few seconds.
With another sigh of regret he shook his head once then resumed pushing the cart towards the exit. Shortly they were leaving, crossing the mall to the shop where he then spent half an hour carefully going over the options with another sales droid, finally signing the paperwork for the internet upgrade.
"It will, allegedly, be installed on Monday," he told her. He didn't seem to think this was particularly likely.
When they left, they stopped at the car to lock all the purchases in the trunk, before going back into the street outside the car park. "It's nearly four," Danny noted, looking up at the dark sky. "God, I hate the winter. It should be nice and bright at this time of day as far as I'm concerned, not nearly night already." Returning his attention to his daughter, he said, "Want to go and get a pizza? I still have some cash left."
"Sure, Dad, that sounds like an idea," she smiled.
Shortly they were happily munching through a couple of large deep dish pizzas, hers with extra chicken, his with anchovies, which made her wrinkle her nose. She'd been cataloging all the new scents she could detect the entire time, many of which would have been unpleasant before if she could have smelled them although now they were mainly only interesting. Anchovies still turned her stomach even so.
"How can you eat those things?" she asked with disgust, watching him nom down a slice of pizza covered in them. He grinned and picked one off the rest of the pizza, dangling it at her and making her recoil, her hand over her nose.
"They're really nice. A bit salty though."
"They're horrible," she protested through her fingers.
"You like fish, I know that. These are fish. What's the problem?" Tilting his head back he dropped the ghastly little thing into his mouth and chewed happily. Taylor gagged.
"Yuck. Those aren't fish, they're little slimy salty slices of hell."
The comment made him snicker, although it had no effect at all on his appetite.
On the way back to the car, a loud BOOM made her jump, spinning around to see smoke coming from an alley a few hundred yards away. Danny yelped and ducked behind a phone booth, pulling her with him. "What the hell was that?" she said, shocked.
"Something we should stay out of," he told her sharply, peering around the side of the booth with her below him. Both of them watched as a weird looking motorcycle roared out from the side street into the main road, swerving around a car which slammed to a halt, then stopping on the other side of the road. On it was a large figure wearing a costume she thought was vaguely familiar, possibly from a movie or something. She'd had the momentary idea it was Armsmaster but unless the master Tinker had rather suddenly rebranded himself it seemed unlikely.
Behind the bike was something even stranger. A ten foot high bipedal robot or something along those lines, with a pair of arms coming out the sides and mounting the most insane amount of armaments she'd ever seen, stomped along, a smaller man wearing a high tech suit visible inside the cockpit of the walking mech. He was driving it with aplomb, spinning the top section at the waist to point behind him, then releasing a small missile which screamed away down the alley. Another earth-shattering BOOM sounded.
"Oh, god, it's those two idiots," Danny sighed. She nodded.
The presence of a small floating ball which was covered in lenses and seemed to be darting around videoing the entire mess confirmed the identities of the two Capes as Über and Leet, a pair of video game themed small time villains. She was familiar with their work, having watched their Youtube channel on many occasions. Sometimes their videos were screamingly funny, sometimes they were cringeworthy, but she had a guilty like of them.
"What do we do, Dad?" she asked, as Über jumped off his futuristic motorcycle and unlimbered an odd looking pistol, which he leveled at the so far unseen opponent that was apparently in pursuit of the duo.
"Grenade!" a mechanical voice announced, just before he pulled the trigger twice. Two projectiles shot from the weapon down the alley, producing another pair of loud explosions. "Halt, Citizen!", he shouted in a loud commanding voice, thumbing a control, which made the weapon announce "Armor Piercing!"
"We do nothing except wait for it to end then leave quickly," he hissed in her ear. "Unless you really want the whole city knowing about you. There are more phones out there than there were in the store and they all have cameras on them."
She nodded quietly, conceding the point. In any case, she was interested to see what happened next. She'd never seen an Über and Leet operation live. So far it seemed rather loud. Sidling out from behind the booth a little further she watched intently, the end of her tail twitching about with her curiosity like a cat's.
"Interference with the operation of a Megacity Judge is a class one felony, the penalty for which is five years hard labor." Über's voice was confident and smooth, making her smile despite herself, the situation, and the sheer stupidity of it. He fired the gun again, several shots sounding in rapid succession, then ducked suddenly as a moped flew out of the alley at his head, missing and disappearing into the front of the book store behind him with a huge crash. "Hey!" he yelped, dropping the act for a moment. "I mean, Cease your activity, Citizen, or I will be forced to raise the threat level to lethal."
More missiles shot from the mech war machine that Leet was piloting, while a crowd of people gathered at a safe distance and recorded everything on their phones. Taylor looked around and formed the definite impression that the residents of Brockton Bay were not entirely normal, being apparently more blasé about the live weapons fire than they should be. Shrugging she went back to watching.
The cape they were fighting finally made an appearance, a statuesque blonde in a white and gold outfit, wearing a tiara, but with no mask, hovering a foot off the ground. "Glory Girl," Taylor said in a low voice. She was a little overwhelmed, the young woman was beautiful to a level that would make Emma green with jealousy, and from the way she was standing, knew it.
"Why the hell are you two fuckwits robbing a pawnbrokers?" the heroic cape demanded loudly. Über pointed his pistol at her and fired once, making her step back a couple of feet. She floated sideways and ducked the next shot with ease.
"We are in the process of reclaiming stolen goods, Citizen. Please stand aside and allow us to go about our business or I will have no choice but to place you under arrest."
"I'd like to see you try, you twit," the blonde sneered. She ducked another missile from the mech, which shot past her head and impacted on a car on the main road, the vehicle promptly exploding enthusiastically. Leet, from what she could see of his face under the high tech visor through the windscreen of his machine, winced.
"If you insist, young lady," Judge Über said in a deep voice, sounding suddenly amused. He fired again at her, then again, tracking her across the face of the buildings as she tanked the first shot then avoided the rest. Taylor wondered why she didn't simply let them all bounce off her rather than allow them to hit the scenery and damage it. She was famously bulletproof, so it seemed odd to her.
Taylor could see what was going to happen several seconds before it did, watching wide eyed as Über neatly maneuvered his blonde opponent into a crossfire from Leet's mech, that didn't have any bystanders near her. Just as she ducked the last shot, Leet fired again. This time instead of a missile a large cylindrical object shot out of one of the arm cannons, unfurling into a net of metal cables which wrapped around her. She dropped to the ground and struggled but the net held, for long enough at least for Über to casually walk over, produce another, smaller cylinder from somewhere, then pull a pin on it and drop it at her feet.
He stepped back smoothly and watched with a grim smile visible below his visor as the grenade went off with a splortch sound, a mass of yellowish foam boiling up Glory Girl's legs to above her waist. Taylor recognized it as PRT issue containment foam, something strong enough to hold even the New Wave heroine for some time. She'd seen it used on the news a couple of times.
The foam set solid with a faint crunching sound, causing Glory Girl to yell obscenities at Über, who ironically saluted her then turned away while holstering his pistol. His eyes ranged across the crowd and she could see a small smile on his lips when he looked at her. She couldn't help smiling back, the entire thing was very well done, the way he'd allowed Glory Girl's own confidence to walk her right into his trap.
"They're idiots but I have to admit they have style," Danny sighed softly. She glanced at her father, seeing he was also slightly amused. "But that's going to make New Wave go after them twice as hard next time. They completely humiliated that poor girl."
"She walked right into it, Dad," Taylor commented. He nodded, still watching with the rest of the bystanders.
"It was a tactically sound move indeed," the Varga rumbled inside her head, sounding like he found the entire thing immense fun. "This Über person is a good warrior although his choice in costume is dubious."
"Sentence executed," the imposing Judge Über commented loudly, looking pleased. His head came up as a sound in the distance made everyone look, to see several PRT vans with sirens blaring round the corner a few blocks away, the familiar form of Armsmaster's own bike in the lead. "Ah. Well, our task here would appear to be complete." He looked around at the crowd recording him. "Remember, Citizens, to go against the instructions of a Judge invariably brings trouble. Obey the Law." He snickered, and Taylor could see Leet laughing in his mech. She found the comment pretty funny herself under the circumstances.
Judge Über hopped back on his bike, started it, then zoomed off, the giant mech striding off behind him with diminishing clomping sounds. Seconds later, Armsmaster roared past with his jaw set grimly, hot in pursuit. Two of the PRT vans followed while the remaining one stopped, disgorging a number of uniformed agents who began taking statements from the nearest in the crowd. One of them unlimbered some sort of backpack sprayer with which he hosed down Glory Girl, who by this time was purple about the general facial area with impotent rage. As soon as she was free of the sticky goop she rose into the air, dripping with goo, and shot off down the street after the fleeing villains without even thanking him.
"We should probably go," Danny said, pulling her away from watching as the PRT officers wandered about looking officious. "I don't really want to get caught up in this any more than we are, it could take hours."
Taylor nodded, following him and the rest of the crowd who had apparently come to the same conclusion. When they were safely back in the car and heading home, she rolled the window down for a moment, listening. She heard more explosions in the distance, ones she thought were Leet's mech missiles, other that were Uber's grenades, and a whole series she couldn't place. It terminated in an almighty boom that even at this range made her jump. Silence fell.
Rolling the window up she looked at her father. He'd obviously heard the last explosion although the rest were probably too faint for normal hearing. "I think that was the end of their game," she said wryly. "I wonder if they got away?"
"I wouldn't be surprised," he chuckled. "They seem to pull an escape off more often than seems plausible. Even when they get caught they escape in hours."
"I'll have to check their Youtube channel when we get the internet upgrade," she laughed. "I'm curious to see if I can see us on it."
"One good thing came of all this, we have proof that no one seems to see your tail," he said after another few minutes. She looked at him, then down at the end of the appendage in question which was tucked into the footwell, nodding.
"Seems like it. That's good."
When they arrived home, she took the laptop upstairs to begin setting it up, connecting it in place of the ancient machine she had under the desk. The dial-up was so slow she couldn't actually download any upgrades without a wait long enough for her hair to go gray, but she soon had it running well enough to allow her to start poking around on the PHO board, looking for comments about the scene they'd just witnessed.
She could hear the complex strains of music being played by a real expert coming up from downstairs, reminding her of when her mother was alive. Annette had loved classical music.
"Your form of music is very interesting, Brain," the Varga noted after the CD Danny had bought was on its third track. "Very complex, but at the same time, oddly simple. It is... relaxing."
"There are many forms of music on this world," she absently said out loud in a low voice, while clicking a link to another thread which had more reactions to Uber's little stunt earlier. "Mom liked that form very much. I like it as well, but not to the extent she did." She listened for a while, then added, "Although it does grow on you."
Eventually she was laughing helplessly at some of the things people were saying. Glory Girl's reputation had taken a definite hit, which made her feel a considerable amount of sympathy for the young woman, but she couldn't deny that some of the people posting on the board had a way with words.
Except for one guy called XXVoidCowboyXX, who was clearly an idiot of the highest order. She resolved never to reply to any of his postings, it seemed to just encourage him. This was obviously a bad thing.
"This person is a total fool," the Varga commented at one point as she was scrolling through the thread. She nodded with a smile. "Someone should do something about him before he lowers the collective intelligence of your species any further."
Laughing, she replied, 'If we had to deal with every idiot on the internet no one would ever be doing anything else.' There was a soundless grunt of annoyance, but she could tell the great demon was enjoying reading the PHO boards as much as she was. He suggested several things to look up, which kept them both amused for hours.
Danny played the entire CD three times, then went to bed. She could hear him cry for a little while, then fall asleep, blinking back a few tears of her own, but happier than she'd been for a long time.
Lisa looked around the food court while Brian fetched their order from the teriyaki place, idly cataloging the various issues different people had. That business man was having an affair with two different women, who themselves were having an affair with each other, none of them the wiser. The couple to the right were apparently laughing and happy, but they both knew the woman had a terminal disease. She winced sympathetically at that one.
Over to the left was a group of teenaged boys who were whispering with their heads together, glancing at an older man. They were going to rob him when he left the mall. Wondering if she should do anything about that, she looked up as she felt Brian's presence beside her, picking up on what would normally be subconscious cues but to her were like shouting.
"Here you go," he said, handing her a tray, which she took with a smile, then sitting down opposite her with his own. She deliberately suppressed her abilities so she wouldn't get far too much information about the way the food had been prepared such as the hygiene or lack thereof of the people making it. It was a somewhat repellent byproduct of her power, unfortunately.
"Thanks, Brian." Opening the box she picked up the plastic fork and began eating, listening as he related the latest annoyance caused by his sister being difficult, something the damn girl had down to an art form.
Still listening and putting in agreeable grunts at the appropriate times to make him happy, she looked up, watching people passing on the other side of the waist height dividing wall that separated the food court from the rest of the mall.
An obvious father-daughter pair was slowly walking past, talking to each other. She could see the resemblance even without her power. The girl was glancing at Brian with what seemed to be more than casual interest, making her smirk a little to herself and look at her friend and team mate with amusement. He was, of course, completely oblivious to the effect he seemed to have on some women. It was one of the things she liked about him. For a so-called 'villain' he was something of a gentleman.
Studying the brunette she engaged her power, wondering what it would say about her target. Instantly she found herself puzzled. The information she was getting about how the girl held herself and walked was… weird. Nonsensical, in fact.
Trying for more on the girl herself, her interest piqued, she got a sudden impression of something vast looking at her with a certain amount of disapproval. She flinched, feeling a wave of power-induced migraine jump out of nowhere and slam into her brain like a brick to the face. There was also a sort of mental static out of which she could only get intermittent flashes of information.
Dangerous.
Not hostile.
Dangerous.
Hiding something in plain sight.
Really dangerous. Do not threaten.
Her migraine increased to blinding levels and she closed her eyes, her face twitching.
"Are you OK, Lisa?" Brian's concerned voice penetrated the fog of pain the blonde was in, making her nod, then shake, her head, regretting both motions instantly.
"Not really, no," she said in a faint voice. "Do you have that bottle of Advil?"
"I thought you said painkillers don't work," he said in a low voice, despite that rummaging around in his coat pocket.
"They don't work very well, no, but to be honest I'll take anything I can get right now," she muttered, holding out her hand. He shook two tablets into it. "More."
A little reluctantly he gave her two more. "That's it, any more than that and you're going to have problems." She nodded slightly, placing the tablets in her mouth, chewing which made both of them wince, her from the incredibly bad taste and him in sympathy, then flipped the lid off her Coke and drank the entire thing. Putting her head on the table she waited.
After ten minutes or so she felt well enough to look up. Her head still hurt like hell but she at least didn't want to take the pistol in her handbag and put the muzzle in her ear now. "Ow," she said.
"What the hell brought that on?" he asked curiously, still looking concerned.
"I think I saw something I wasn't supposed to," she sighed. "I don't know. Just… if you see a tall fifteen year old girl with long curly brunette hair, brown eyes, and a wide mouth, turn around and walk the other way. I think it would be healthier."
Obviously very confused, he merely nodded, watching as she put her head on the table again and closed her eyes once more. After a moment he reached out and stole her nearly untouched meal, eating it while he waited patiently for her to recover.
"Hey, look at this."
Über, real name Randall Martins, looked away from his huge TV at the sound of his partner's voice. Pausing the game with the press of a button on the controller he got up and wandered over to the workbench on which an elaborate computer rig was set up, their little floating camera ball connected to it.
"What's up?" he asked curiously.
His old friend and literal partner in crime Leet, or Kevin Sherrill, pointed at one of the monitors. "Look. I was editing the show together from the footage from today and I saw something weird." Randall watched the video segment play, grinning at his recorded self in the Megacity One Judge's costume exchanging comments with Glory Girl. Rubbing his bruised chin he reflected with some chagrin that winding the blonde up like that, while extremely funny, had been a little over-effective. They'd been lucky to get away more or less undamaged although his bike was a write off. It had exploded all by itself just before he'd managed to hit the self destruct to cause a diversion. Luckily, the unscheduled violent disassembly had still worked to that end.
"It looks good. What's the problem?"
"Here, in the background. See that tall girl with the nearly black hair? About fifteen, sixteen, maybe?"
Über leaned in, peering at the monitor. After a moment he nodded.
"What about her?"
"Watch." Kevin scrolled back through the video frame by frame with a jog wheel on the keyboard. Randall kept his eyes on the girl, who was moving in reverse, going back behind the phone booth she'd apparently been hiding behind. "There. See it?"
"Not with you," Randall was forced to admit. Leet sighed heavily.
"OK. Look here." He put his finger on the monitor, right at the girl's feet. "Now watch carefully." He wound the recording forward again, then stopped it. Flipping it back and forth a few frames, he looked over his shoulder at his friend. "Please tell me you can see that."
Randall watched a few cycles of the recording, then slowly nodded. "What is it?"
"A tail."
There was a long pause.
"A tail?" Über's voice was puzzled.
His friend nodded. "Yes. A tail. A great big tail like you'd expect to see on a dinosaur."
Squinting at the monitor, Randall shook his head. "Are you sure?"
"YES, I'm sure," the smaller man insisted in an irritated manner. He clicked the mouse, bringing up another clip. "Look, you can see it better here." Sure enough, this time Randall was forced to admit the girl did indeed have a tail, coming out of an apparently tailored opening in the rear of her pants. The way she moved it seemed completely natural.
"Hmm. That's a bit strange," he said slowly.
Leet looked over his shoulder at him and rolled his eyes. "A bit strange. OK, let's go with that. But, you want to know the really strange thing?"
With a shrug Über replied, "What's the really strange thing?"
"Look at this." His partner clicked on another recording, showing the scene from a different angle. "This is something one of the crowd recorded and posted on PHO. Look, there's that girl again, really clearly. What do you see?"
Carefully studying the video as it played, Über suddenly reached out and paused it. He leaned close to the monitor for a moment.
"I see a distinct lack of tail," he commented slowly.
"See? I said it was weird, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did."
"She's obviously a cape, although I don't recognize her. Maybe a case 53 I guess. But how is she hiding that tail? No one in the crowd seems to see it. As far as I can see any normal camera would miss it completely as well. The sensor in the snitch is very unusual, and even then it's only just making it out. I had to boost the gain a lot and run some signal processing on it to see it that clearly. It's a damn good trick."
Randall unpaused the video and played it some more. Suddenly he saw something else. Hitting the space bar he stopped it again, then studied the man next to the girl.
"What do I do with the recording?" Kevin went on. "I don't want to out a cape, but this is one of the best parts."
"Delete that part, anything with that girl in it," Randall told him firmly. Kevin looked up at him, a little puzzled by his expression.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"See that guy there?" Pointing at the tall balding man with glasses who was standing next to the girl with the part time tail, he waited for his friend to nod. "That's Danny Hebert, the de-facto head of the Dock Worker's Union. He's a decent man."
Kevin studied the man for a moment. "And?" he asked, still sounding puzzled.
"That girl is his daughter. Look, you can see the resemblance very clearly. She must have triggered recently." Über sighed. "I don't want to be the one who outs her. And I really don't want to be the one who pissed Danny Hebert off."
"He's just a normal, isn't he?" Kevin asked. "I remember him now, we did a little job for the DWU a couple of years ago. He seemed pleasant enough."
"Oh, he is, although I think he's been depressed for a while. I heard his wife died or something. But the point is, he has a bit of a temper. Like, get him on the warpath and you'd better hope he doesn't meet you down a dark alley bit of a temper. Causing his daughter any trouble would not go down well." Randall smiled grimly. "Normal or not, he'd be a problem. So, aside from any other reason, let's not poke that particular sleeping bear, OK? Delete the recordings. We have more than enough aside from that angle, right?"
Kevin nodded slowly. "Yep. We're covered. This show will be one of the best yet." With a few quick motions of his mouse, he made the files go away.
"Good. And thanks."
Über slapped his partner on the back and went back to his game, leaving the smaller man rubbing the impact spot and muttering something rude.