A/N: This took longer than I wanted for a host of reasons. The second biggest reason is that it wasn't very good. Thank you to Juff and to NotDis for being voices of reason and helping me as much as they have. If there's stuff that's wrong, let me know, I'd been keen to hear it. However, it might be stuff that I realize but I'm not brave enough to change root and stem, and delay forward momentum further.

Enjoy, if you dare.

3.3

Where do you go when every path is down?

"Can I have a minute, Triumph. Collect my thoughts before we go back?"

I didn't really hear his response as he backed off, too focused on the dilemma I was turning over in my head, probing it like a rotting tooth. Every turn in the maze ahead was down. Down into the mud and sticking. It was possible that the skyscraper's edge and the city's skyline were pushing my thoughts in a certain direction. It was possible that they weren't. Not everyone looked at the sky and saw the drop.

The important thing was to not see this turn as a betrayal, I thought, as my hands reached for my belt. Not on my dad's part and definitely not on mine. We were all acting on imperfect knowledge; we were imperfect people.

This wasn't a failure.

Often, I didn't know how I would feel about anything important until I found myself in the middle of feeling it. It was like that now. I had come with Shawn because I didn't know what to do with myself, I didn't know what the future was going to hold, and I had hoped that he could tell me.

If Shadow Stalker, Sophia, hadn't been in the headquarters then maybe I would've lasted a couple of days as a ward, with somewhere to lie low until my Dad was out and everything wasn't so close. The disgust that had overtaken me when I'd heard her voice from behind that stern mask made it clear though. I couldn't work with her, and her team. There was too much bad blood, too much weight. Even the big common room had felt claustrophobic, cloying, with her presence.

If I stayed, I would have been more paranoid about who was at my back than I was when Dad and I had fled from the ABB.

But when God closes a rooftop access-door he opens a skyline. Coming here hadn't been for nothing. Triumph's power thrummed in my chest, folding into, through, and between the other two.

My power had always been something I described to myself in terms of crystals or in terms of sounds—pitch, depth, harmonizing, that sort of stuff—Triumph's power was easily the most acoustic yet. It wasn't the ripple of a stone thrown into the scum of an oil covered pond, like Sophia's, or the shock that ran up your arm when you knocked your elbow, like Battery's. It sang. It put me in mind of instruments. It gave me one more regret to rest at Emma's feet — the loss of my mom's flute. My power worked on anything but, for the first time, I really felt that it would have suited mom's flute, something musical, and it was already gone.

As I thought, the wind swept through my balaclava and stung against my cheeks. The sky was gray but in the distance beyond the city the clouds looked to be breaking up, sunlight freckling the mountains. Through my colored lenses the afternoon looked warmer than before. It was time to look toward other paths, other ways forward.

There was one way forward that I had been thinking about since the night the bikers had chased me.

The fishing lines that I had twined together last week came out from my belt in a tangled mess. When I pulled at it, the snarl fell apart conveniently like the line was made from glossy silk, except for the knot that I had used on that night-time escape. My power at work, changing the material. I tied the cord at one end over my umbrella's crystalline suggestion of a handle and I pulled it secure.

Behind me, Triumph was on his phone, leaning against the wall next to the elevator door. Good.

The cord wrapped around my arm as many times as I could manage, while still leaving a good length of line loose between me and the umbrella.

Now or never. I thought about saying something, but it was better to just get away.

I backed up a few steps.

I had been able to use my umbrella to Mary Poppins float for a while now, using the same application of my power that let my umbrella accelerate towards me and away from me but I had never been able to fly. The way that I accelerated my power seemed to get faster the faster my umbrella traveled; meaning, I could about hold myself steady in the air, but if I wanted to do more than float I needed my umbrella to be moving fast enough before it took my weight that I could keep it speeding up, rather than having it stall. If I knew anything about cars then maybe I'd have been able to talk about torque or horsepower and been more confident that I wasn't about to make a terrible mistake. Maybe, once I'd charged it for a few more months, it'd be different. Maybe I was completely wrong, and I couldn't lift myself up with my own strength.

From the top of the PRT building I had enough height to change my mind and float if this didn't work.

I spun my umbrella like a grappling hook and then let it fly, my power accelerating it quickly. I ran the moment it left my hand, and I jumped. There was a horrible, horrible second where the cord was slack and I was in the air. The street stretched out below me. The ground was far away, but there was nothing between us but air. My stomach felt like it was still on the roof.

The cord tightened. My left shoulder went numb, all at once. I jerked, tumbling through the air, the city and the sky turning around and around, but I kept my power firmly accelerating.

As I got faster my flying became more controlled, less jerky, straighter in the air, and I was more able to steer myself like I was a water skier or something. Except, horizontal.

The buildings zipped past me until they were all below me and behind me. With my right hand I caught my left wrist, and I pulled against it, spreading the strain of holding myself steady against the buffeting of the wind.

My left shoulder, most of my left arm, and the palm and fingers of my left hand felt like they'd been submerged into an ice bath. I could feel heat where I'd been stabbed in my stomach, and in my leg, which meant my ring was prioritizing and unable to take all the pain away at once. Which was worrying. But the view was amazing.

From up here, it didn't look like I was going fast, but the wind on my mask and the tears leaking from the corners of my eyes said something different. I could hear the cold air whipping by, and the sound of my jacket and my pants rippling at the speed.

It was fast enough. I stopped accelerating and carried on climbing higher, on the angle I'd accidentally created by not using my power when my throw was parallel to the ground.

I'd aimed myself at the mountains, passing through the corridor between the biggest of the city's skyscrapers. Ahead of me I could see New Hampshire reaching out further and further into the distance, and I could see small cars and the suburban homes of the city until they folded into the rural outskirts. I could even see Newfields, miles in the distance, where the motel was.

Ahead of me and to the right was Captain's Hill. I had reached the edge of Commercial Downtown, the center of Brockton Bay, already. The long street to the hill began somewhere beneath me, rising up to the Palanquin climbing up and then over the lowest spur of the hill's rise. I could see the building. It was a broad rooftop, half a block in itself, and completely flat. A broad target.

A chilly throb went through my fingers. Some of the windows in Newfields caught the light and glared at me. How long would it take to fly over the city, the country in between and then slow and land in the motel. What would I do with the money? How would I get changed and in without being seen? Although I'd beat Shawn or whoever they sent in a race there right now, why wouldn't they just radio in someone closer, and how much time would I get at the motel before they arrived?

I was doubtful that I'd be able to carry the money this way, and changing direction wasn't as easy as telling my power to do it for me.

I looked at the Palanquin again. I had a contact there, someone who had seen me both in and out of costume. It might be that I had to leave the money hidden for a day or two, but they knew I had it, and it might be possible that the half-capes or Spitfire could help me get it, on credit. And the place was like a fortress.

I just had to turn to get there.

I called my umbrella back. It slowed quickly, but momentum kept me going and when it zipped back to my numb fingers I fumbled it. Gravity started to change my flight into an arc, and reaching for my umbrella had me begin a slow somersault. Fuck. My heart had been in my mouth the entire time I'd been in the air, so there wasn't much more panic left to add. I still had more than a skyscraper's worth of air between me and the ground. Try again.

I called it again, more gently. This time I didn't try to catch it. I used my good hand where I gripped my numb arm and spun the rope to reel it in. The ground got closer. A quick glance showed I was below the top of Medhall's tower now.

It was hard to spin the umbrella when I was already in the air, and I caught the cord on itself. I untangled it quickly like I had on the helipad. I was halfway down now. Cars that had been smaller than my pinky nail when I'd been flying were now … bigger.

I spun it twice and threw it out and up, and put my power into it as hard as I could.

It worked, barely. The acceleration was slow, very slow. For a moment, I thought I was going to slow and then stall, but then it started to speed up again. I headed in roughly the right direction and made some height, and then I called it to me. This time I caught it. I opened it and floated towards the Palanquin's roof much more slowly.

My throat was as dry as an oven, and swallowing hurt. My mouth was the Sahara in summer, and my tongue had turned to sandpaper. I worked my jaw. I needed water. That had been … less controlled than I'd wanted. My feet touched down lightly on the chipped concrete of the club's roof.

It took a minute for me to straighten up from where I hunched over against my umbrella. My heart was refusing to slow down, and the roof didn't seem solid as I stood on it. Second by second, my breathing settled, and my left arm became more and more noticeable. It was completely frozen and numb, and I could barely move my fingers without a chill shooting through to my shoulder.

Unsteady, I walked towards the roof access. There was a camera above it with a red blinking light. I didn't have a chance to even wave at it before the access door burst open and an orange lizard-man leaped thorough, followed by a morbidly obese man in a mask and a fishnet vest.

They were two of Faultline's crew. Newter, and Gregor the Snail.

Both of them were parahumans whose powers had changed them, monstrously. Newter's skin was the color of a carrot, and he had a long tail snaked out behind him. The Snail was more eye-catching. Newter was bizarre but well proportioned – not grotesque. Gregor the Snail was grotesque, his skin so thin that I could see through his mesh shirt to his bones and the shadow of his organs. The only exceptions were the large, black extrusions that peppered his skin; the shells that gave him his name.

"Hi–"

I didn't get a chance to say more. They didn't know who I was, or they did and they didn't care.

Gregor's hand came up and he sprayed something at me. My umbrella snapped open at the rare opportunity to do what it was made for and it bucked in my hand where the stream hit.

"Stop!" I shouted. I wasn't sure whether they couldn't hear me over the sound of Gregor's deluge, or whether they just ignored me.

The smell of the liquid reached my nose, strange and burning. I dashed back fifteen feet and flicked my umbrella dry, in time to see Newter pivoting as he flipped onto where I had been standing. He twisted as he landed to face me. He was fast, and agile, and I would have to be careful. With the umbrella blocking my view, I hadn't even seen him move.

"I'm not here to fight." I took another dash backward, and then a second. The rooftop was seriously large. Newter had already jumped and he came down within yards of me, not responding to what I was saying. I dashed to the side, zig-zagging back the way I had come.

They weren't listening. I clenched my jaw. This was so fucking unfair. "What the fuck is your problem," I snapped. No response. Could they not talk? Was it their mutations?

I had to maintain my distance from Newter. If I could keep away well enough then I could make it to the edge and jump. But that was stupid; while I was floating down I'd be a sitting duck for both of them and either of them would just pluck me out of the air.

Maybe if I made it to the edge then I could drop enough to come in through a window and then make it to the ground from there, but then I wouldn't be fast enough to run away from Newter, not on a straight, if he chased me.

A glance over my shoulder showed him leaping ahead of where my next zag would take me, predicting me. I stopped sharply and dashed backward instead, rushing for the roof edge.

I could aim for a passing car, something I could land on that would take me away from them. It might work, or, they could target the car anyway and someone else would get hurt. They hadn't been diplomatic so far.

"Can we talk?" I shouted. Again, Newter did nothing, but I saw Gregor the Snail out of the corner of my eye. Still guarding the roof access. He looked up at the camera above him, instinctively. It told me something, and that they could understand me.

I didn't make it to the edge of the roof. Newter leaped over me in a long arc that put him on the edge of the roof. I turned to him, and he shifted his weight, waiting for me to pick a lane in the next second, left or right or back. There was still one route open. I could just use my umbrella to get away. Go up. I just needed to make some space, or they'd catch me before I was high enough to be safe.

I dashed back as Newter pounced, but this time I threw my umbrella at him, and he had to twist, impossibly, in the air and foul his jump, and it gave me the space to evade him.

He jumped so far and so fast that his punches were going to hurt, and there was no way I was going to be able to beat him up close, even with my umbrella's tazer mode.

Gregor's heavy footsteps behind me showed he wasn't a runner. And that he'd decided Newter couldn't pin me down by himself. I'd turn it back on him. He was going to be my way of gaining time on Newter to take off, and fuck them for pushing me into this. If someone was watching this, then I'd give them a show. I'd make them wish they'd just been reasonable and talked to me.

I dashed at Gregor, putting myself maybe thirty feet from him, and hurled my umbrella forward as soon as it reached my hand again. I didn't put much of my power into it, enough to hit him and knock him over or to maybe break a bone, and then I chased after it.

He didn't do what I expected, didn't try and dodge or protect himself from the blow. Instead, both of his arms out wide like he was trying to catch a soccer ball, foam sprayed from his palms in streams to either side of him in two long arcs, and then the umbrella hit him right in his open chest and did … nothing. To him.

I had forgotten the line tied to my left arm and it wrenched at me and made me stumble, almost pulling me off my feet. I dashed sideways reflexively, and called my umbrella to me, just as Newter went over my head. Newter was lucky, he landed just after my umbrella and the tether made an arc that would have garotted him.

Gregor's foam expanded, I noticed. What had been a thin line rapidly swelled to be a foot high and a foot across in two long strips. He hadn't missed my attack coming, I realized. He had guessed instead that the attack wouldn't hurt him and he was hemming me in, stopping me moving sideways so Newter and he could pin me in a corridor.

It hadn't worked. My dash had taken me through it like it wasn't there. This was my opportunity, I realized; I had all the pieces.

I stepped closer to the expanding foam and threw my umbrella at Gregor the Snail. Newter leaped at the opportunity, literally, to catch me without having to dodge it himself. I jumped to the side and, ducking down, I called my umbrella back as fast as I could before it was even halfway towards Gregor.

My umbrella passed through the foam as easily as I had and I didn't try to catch it, letting it fly over my head. The cord trailing behind caught Newter's chest and spoiled his jump. As it followed my umbrella it sprang straight like a rubber band and catapulted Newter into Gregor's foam. I dashed to change position but it was done. Newter was stuck.

"Oh crap." His voice was younger, and more American than I'd expected. He sounded like any boy at Winslow could have.

"I hope you learn something from this." I could've said more but Gregor was still free and I didn't want to risk him being able to free his teammate from the foam if I lingered to make a point. I headed for the roof's edge.

I was disappointed. I had assumed that Gregor would rescue his teammate rather than pursue me. Instead, he stepped around the far end of his foam-trap and started spraying something greasy instead, in a great gout that made the roof look shiny and slick.

He began one stream near Newter with his left hand and with his other hand he arced the stream to cut off all the roof to my left, starting from the edge. The foam hadn't worked so he had decided on oil instead, to stop my running. Maybe my umbrella pulling me almost off my feet had given him the idea.

The clearest patch was near the Snail as he worked from outside to in.

I dashed towards him in a flare of my power then ducked and stepped under and sped forward again as he moved to spray me directly. The second dash carried me to the roof access and I kept my momentum. A leap took me to the wall and then I took a step up and swapped to my metallic power to get the purchase on my sneakers to run up onto the top and out of his line of sight.

I managed the second step up the wall. On the third step, two things happened. Gregor sprayed the wall with grease before I could reach the edge, and my arm, my shoulder, and my wrist exploded into searing pain; the ice turning into blistering fire.

I fell. The switch back to shadow for my items was instinctive but that much pain took a moment to get over and I landed on my bad shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I slid on the grease and tried to stand on feet that wanted to go in different directions.

Gregor was next to Newter. He barked something out in a strange accent, something like 'dose'. I was hit by what felt like water at the same moment that I noticed Newter sticking his fingers into the stream.

Suddenly my legs weren't my own, the sky was cerulean and everything else became candy floss.

I'd been so close.

It wasn't all at once, but eventually I was aware enough to realize that I was aware. The dimensions seemed off, the light, but less and less so by the second. I swayed and sometimes bounced in a way that had me thinking I was at sea. I was certain that I'd just been on a boat, somehow, but I was now sitting on a chair. The swaying was still there, though; that wasn't me.

"This will help, though I don't know how you'll drink it."

Something landed on my legs, legs that felt miles away and second-hand.

I let a couple of the charges flowing into my items thin and die without thinking. In a second, I was a little more myself, a little less lethargic. I was in the back of a van. There were very thin windows at the top of each side, letting in light. We swayed again, turning right, I realized. The whole of the back of the van was empty except for me, a thick crate, and Faultline. She sat still, on top of the box, with her legs crossed. A white cable was in her hand, attached to the crate she sat on then over my shoulder to something at the back of the van in one taut line.

My arm was still blizzard cold. I gently pulled at the part of my power I associated with my umbrella. From the crate below Faultline there was a gentle thunk. She tapped a steel-capped heel back and made a louder clunk. A moment more and she spoke.

"Newter's power is non-toxic, and minimally addictive. You'll be fine."

So that's what that was. Everything came back to me.

"You made them attack me, for no reason. You were the one watching on the camera."

The van swayed and I rocked in my chair. Right, again. I bet there would be another right soon.

"Yes and no and yes in order." She didn't seem inclined to say more. There was an ember still burning in my chest, and despite my position—tied up in a van by a supervillain, with no-one aware of where I was—I didn't feel like rolling over.

"That's bullshit."

"Don't drop onto a person's roof in costume without notice if you don't want trouble. Use the door like everyone else."

I mulled that over. It wasn't the full story, the van swayed again as I thought, another right turn. I could come back to it.

"We're going in circles?"

Faultline was dressed in a garish costume, with what looked like plaid skirts draped over her arms and legs in loops that covered hints of body armor. She had a long ponytail and her mask was a welding mask with cracks cutting through the visor. Two of them lined up so that her eyes could be seen and they speared me to my chair.

"Not circles, not exactly. If this was a plane then they'd call it a holding pattern, and what we'd be holding is 'time', time where we are burning gas, and therefore money, to figure out how we're going to put down. Safely. The van is giving us a little time where we get to decide which way's better, which method costs less. You understand me? This is extra time where we decide what I am going to do about you."

I had one leg zip-tied to the leg of a chair, but I was otherwise unrestrained. I adjusted my weight, digesting what she had said.

"I think I understand."

"You've already caused a significant amount of trouble for me, and for one of my crew. The escapade you roped Spitfire into facilitating was sloppy and she, and therefore I, are implicated in events I don't want to be implicated in.

"Being a crew who gets paid to do things to people with powers or to people, with powers, sometimes that's necessary — unfortunate implications, I mean, but, and it's a big but, my crew looking like an amateur outfit that's under-equipped, unprepared, and outsources? That's never necessary, that's never acceptable. Do you understand?"

"–" I strained, quiet, against the zip tie on my leg until I noticed the pause. "I think so. This wasn't a mistake, you knew who I was when I landed."

"You have cost me."

"So it's a shakedown? You want to see how much money I can get you."

"Shakedown? What are you, a 30's gumshoe? You cost me something more valuable than money. You cost me reputation."

I was glad I didn't scoff while she was speaking. For a moment my jaw moved on its own, but the rest of me froze as Faultline's voice grew more and more intense.

"Reputation?"

"Reputation. It's how this whole cape game works, it's what holds the house of cards up and it's more delicate than yesterday's newspaper scooped fresh out of the Atlantic. Reputation."

"I —"

"If the next words out your mask aren't 'I completely and eternally agree with you, Faultline', then it's better you don't say anything at all.

I took her advice. She noticed.

"Reputation…

"Clearly you don't understand, so I'll add this to your invoice. Powers are dangerous and reputation is money. You can have powers, but what you need is reputation. Reputation is what you earn, what you save, and what you spend so that powers are only for the checks your mouth has been writing that you don't have the reputation to cash, and when that happens you had better hope that you can cover what should've been credited.

"Reputation is why cape teams don't die inside of a year like most independents. It's what lets you walk away from other capes because the chump that leaves it up to powers is already dead. You're just still walking. Whether you're Legend, or whether you're Leet. Different bank balances, same currency. I've seen it time after time, in city after city. You understand me?"

"I understand," I said. "If you'd dosed Legend, you'd never put him in this chair and wake him up."

"You're not wrong."

"So, I owe you … reputation."

"You're damn right you do," Faultline said, "and, broad strokes, there's two ways to settle up. I imagine you can guess one of them, so the question is…" She nodded her head at the cable in her hand, "Do you feel plucky, kiddo?"

"I feel …"

I paused. Weighed it over.

"I feel like you'd rather make a profit than a net loss. If it's all about reputation though, about writing cheques people know you can cash, then to pay you back…"

I couldn't see her face. I could be completely misreading the room, misunderstanding the speech, misapplying the concept.

Faultline's non cable-holding hand waved at me to continue.

"Then, to pay you back, you need my reputation to feed into yours. And, after this week, I've got one."

"Oh yeah, you've got one. That's the problem."

I realized something. "That's why you attacked me, and filmed it. You were distancing yourself and proving you beat me, that you didn't approve what Spitfire did for me… But then I almost won."

She shifted her weight and the cable in her hand jerked. The back of my seat moved and I felt my center of gravity shift as whatever it was attached to pulled at my chair slightly.

"We can refine it," I said.

"Sounds expensive," she said.

"In the short term. If you didn't agree then we wouldn't be having this conversation. I came to you because I needed something to help me out this mess, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. I guess you're going to tell me that you already know."

"Well, first, you need a doctor for that arm — one that won't call the police if you turn up in a mask, or call the CPS if you turn up without one. You've got a nasty dislocation, and you don't seem to even feel it."

Now that I knew what to look for… My arm did seem longer than I was used to. I wiggled cold fingers sluggishly.

"What else? What do you get?"

"Second, I need reparations. Spitfire works for me, she took your call, she facilitated your operation, and she represents me and all my crew. Tattletale died. Spitfire needs to show empathy, respect, to try and keep a neutral relationship with the Undersiders, but she can't safely go to the funeral alone in case I'm not reading the temperature right. You'll go with her."

"I can't do that. I can't go. How would that help? Why don't you go? Her family won't want me there."

"Her family won't be there, her team will be. All of my crew turning up will be threatening, you two turning up with us at a cautious distance — that's respectful."

I shook my head.

"It's the deal. Third, I need you to get an education. It helps nobody, and especially not me if we are to entangle ourselves this way, if you are a blunt hammer and every problem is a nail. None of this works for me if you can't learn to be more discriminating and demonstrate restraint."

"Why? If I've already cost you, why are you willing to do this, to entangle us more?"

"You almost got past Gregor and Newter, you have a good head on your shoulders when you're on the field. Spitfire told me what you can do, what you can become. You've got potential, and it's the sort of potential I might be able to bet on."

I shrugged, then regretted it. "Maybe. But there's more, isn't there?"

"Fourthly — lastly — if we do well together then I want you to consider joining my team, and until this arrangement comes to an end, if anyone asks, then you are emphatically trying out. Later, if you and the crew don't gel, and we go separate ways, I want you to keep me in your phone, I want you to be able to call me and ask for a favor and know I'll consider it, and give you a fair price. The same way that I'll be sure that I could call you and know you'll do the same for me."

I mulled it over. "I need somewhere to stay too, somewhere safe."

"The Palanquin is not the only place I own."

I took a deep breath.

"You have a deal then, for now."

Faultline nodded. "For now," she said.

I didn't have to see her smile to know she would be wearing one beneath her mask. Her eyes showed her victory. She turned and tapped her knuckles three times against the panel separating us from the driver. We turned left, then began to slow before pulling to a stop. The engine died.

The side door to the van revealed the front entrance to a medical center as one of her henchmen pulled it open. He came in and snipped my zip tie free. He helped me stand, unsteadily. Not all of Newter's power was gone.

"I've got to know," I said to Faultline, as she rose to her feet, "what does the cable do?"

Faultline's power appeared as a bright light that crackled with pale electrical sparks. The cable in her hand snapped and the chair I had been sitting on sprang backward with the opening of the van's rear doors, the crate with my umbrella following after it.

"You'd have let me go?"

"Reputation is everything. My crew is professional. My crew is strong. My crew lives in Brockton Bay but prefers to work elsewhere. We don't kill, except in self-defense. Without that, everyone we faced would try and kill us. It's important, and it's what you almost cost me, my peace and my safety, and that of my team, who I care about.

"Because, do not mistake my words here… I'm not doing this to help you, or because I like you. I don't. You made my crew and my club become linked to the death of big Villains in our own city, on both sides of the divide. You've made me acquire risk. Pay up, earn me the reputation to match, or I will divest."

I didn't say anything to that. The implication was clear. If the villains of the city were looking for revenge on her team for Spitfire's part in the compound raid, and I wasn't living up to her speculation…

She was a mercenary, and I was a calculated cost-benefit.

Her lackey led me into the clinic and I heard her slide the van shut behind me and the side-panel door lock shut, loudly.

It closed more to me than I realized, then.