Earning Her Stripes

Part Eleven: Expanding Viewpoints

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal].

Taylor got on the bus, still thinking things over. She'd put on a sweater rather than her usual choice of a shapeless hoodie, more as an impulse than out of a plan to do anything in particular. Her entire outfit would fit under the protective cover—she'd tested it in the mirror—though she wasn't sure what to do with her hair. Currently, the protection turned it into either pure-white strands (striped with black) or a single shapeless mass lying over her shoulders. She needed to do better, but she was still working on how.

All the way to the library, she looked out the window at the city passing by, but she didn't register any of it. There were far too many options available to her, and she had no idea how to narrow them down to a single theme. Going tiger-striped with claws was definitely a possibility, but tigers weren't the only scary striped creatures out there. Honey badgers technically had a stripe, and so did a lot of other things. Regardless, she was going to leave the skunk concept well alone.

If she didn't want to go with the animal theme, she figured she could do a damn good impression of a robot. Impervious skin, a little circuitry pattern here and there, and an angular appearance. Also, being strong as fuck.

Not sure what to do about my eyes, though. Maybe get hold of some tech-looking goggles?

On second thought, it might not be the best idea to pretend to be an actual artificial intelligence. Nothing like that existed, as far as she knew, so it wasn't like robot rights were protected. Knowing people, they'd be just as likely to try to ignore her input and order her around. Not that they could do anything to her, but it would be uncomfortably like what her normal life was like.

Maybe pretend to be a Tinker in a powersuit? That could work. Well, right up until another Tinker tried to talk shop with me.

She imagined Armsmaster striking up a conversation with her about the intricacies of micro-quantum super-capacitors or whatever the hell it was Tinkers talked about, and shuddered. It wasn't clear what would be worse, trying to bluff her way through a situation like that, or coming clean and admitting she wasn't any kind of Tinker. Or refusing to talk about her 'tech' and being labelled as rude and unsociable.

Ugh. Hard pass.

The bus stopped at the library and she got out, then trotted up the steps. Her pack bounced on her shoulder, reminding her of her primary purpose here. Study first, check out my powers later.

And so, she studied. At this time of day, there were many tables free for use. Taking out her notebooks, she went through her textbooks one at a time, conscientiously reading ahead one chapter apiece. It was easy when there were no distractions, and she made sure she knew the material—making notes to help jog her memory—before turning to the next book.

She was in the middle of figuring out how to do a particular math problem—Mr Quinlan was crap at explaining stuff like this—when a tone sounded throughout the building.

"Cape fight outside the library." The head librarian's voice was firm and assured. "Locking doors. Please stay away from the windows. Cape fight outside the library." As Taylor looked around, heavy shades motored down to cover the expansive glass windows.

Of course, the few library patrons moved toward the windows to try to see what was going on. Taylor's first instinct was to do the same, but she paused in thought.

What if I could help? What if I could do something about it?

She was certainly strong enough, when aided by the protective cover, and so far it had activated reliably enough to protect her from all potential harm … well, except for the first time, and even then it had gone away after she passed out. The other bonus was that it provided an instant costume when needed.

The Central Library was old-fashioned in many ways; this included a lack of security cameras within the premises. Stuffing her books in her backpack, Taylor shoved them under a desk and out of sight, then called on the protective field.

It flowed over her, giving her sneakers the appearance of boots and adding the subtle illusion of bulk where it counted. Hopefully, people would see her as twenty-something instead of a tall fifteen. Pulling back her hair, she found she could stash it under the covering.

She went with the appearance of a helmet/mask combination, as Alexandria had made popular, leaving her eyes, ears and mouth clear for obvious reasons. Her power, she was fairly sure, would cut in to protect her vulnerable areas if the need arose. The 'costume' covered the rest of her body, including her hands.

Finally, she had the black colouration cover most of the supposed costume, with white highlights adding the hints of stripes here and there, mainly because she thought it looked cool.

The librarian looked around with some surprise as Taylor emerged from the stacks and fronted up to the desk. "Wh-where did you come from?"

"Does it really matter?" Taylor countered. "I need to get out there and help. I'm pretty sure you don't want me busting a window, so could you do me a solid and crack the door?" She found that speaking authoritatively and telling people what to do—even adults— was far easier when she had a mask over her face.

"Uh, I can't." The librarian grimaced. "I've got three emergency buttons here. One calls the police. The second one locks everything down, and unlocks everything on the second push. The third one unseals the Endbringer bunker in the basement …" She paused, evidently realising something. "… wait a moment."

Taylor waited, unsure of why the Endbringer shelter was so important. She wanted to get out there and do something, not hide.

The librarian glanced around, then picked up a ring of keys. "The basement has a sidewalk coal hatch. We don't heat with coal anymore, of course, but deliveries still come in that way."

The implications were obvious. If deliveries could come in, people could leave the same way. Say, an aspiring cape who didn't quite feel up to breaking a window.

Taylor nodded. "Sounds good to me."

She followed the librarian through a door marked 'STAFF ONLY' and down a set of stairs into an echoing, musty basement. There was a pathway outlined in black-and-yellow hazard tape toward what she recognised as the armoured front door to the previously-mentioned Endbringer shelter, but they didn't go that way. Instead, the librarian led her to what she recognised as a sidewalk coal delivery hatch, as seen from the underside, and gestured to a ten-foot-wide sheet of diamond-textured steel plate. "Going up?"

"Going up," agreed Taylor. She stepped onto the plate and waited for the librarian to hit the 'up' button. The mechanism started rumbling and grinding as the plate rose toward sidewalk level.

When she was only halfway up, the double hatch above swung upward to the left and right. Hey, I'm strong. I wonder if I'm strong enough to jump that high?

It was worth a try. She crouched slightly, and jumped. A second later, she landed on the sidewalk outside, having cleared the opening doors by a good ten feet. Strangely enough, she was sure she hadn't exerted that much force. It had almost felt as though she'd jumped as high as she wanted to. Which was weird, but powers weren't exactly normal at the best of times.

The crashes and bangs, almost certainly stemming from the cape fight, were coming from just around the corner. Taylor trotted in that direction, hoping she looked like a serious cape instead of the pretender she felt like.

And then, just as she stepped around the corner, the crashes and bangs got a whole lot closer. So did the SUV that was bouncing end over end down the street toward her.

Later, she would remember that she let out a tiny shriek as the vehicle loomed over her. Flinging out her hands to protect herself, she fully expected for her protective field to snap fully into place then to turn off again once the SUV was a crumpled wreck. Just as it had with the car in the children's playground, the previous night.

But nothing like that happened. Opening her eyes—she hadn't realised she'd clenched them shut—she saw that the vehicle was still hanging over her head, that she was holding it there by one corner of the bent and torn hood. Her finger and thumb, clenched around a tiny twisted shred of metal, was all that had stopped the SUV in its doomed trajectory, and was now keeping it immobile in blatant defiance of everything she thought she knew about mass and leverage.

"Well, that's different," she said thoughtfully.

The vehicle continued to hold its position, for all the world as though the CGI animators of an action movie had paused the show to get lunch. She frowned as another memory percolated through her thoughts; when she'd first seen the SUV, it had been bright red, but now it was a medium gray. In fact, the entire vehicle was shaded in black and white rather than colour.

And now that she was querying the concept, she somehow knew every inch of the vehicle, and everything within it. In addition, everything that was shaded in monochrome by her power was somehow divorced from the real-world concepts of weight and inertia, so long as she was touching it. She knew instinctively that it wasn't as impervious as her protection field, but it was maybe ten times as tough and strong as normal.

Hey, I wonder if I did this with the needle, without realising it? It certainly felt familiar.

Slowly, experimentally, she lowered the SUV to the road; when all four wheels had made contact with the asphalt, she let go. It regained its colour and bounced a couple of times on its suspension, then one tyre blew with a muffled bang. She was pretty sure she wasn't responsible for the last bit.

The fighting sounded farther away, and sirens were starting to converge. A chopper flew overhead, and she thought she heard the distinctive sounds of Armsmaster's motorcycle in the distance.

Sounds like the PRT and Protectorate have it handled. Stepping up to a cape fight when she was the only one who could help was one thing, but she wasn't about to make an idiot of herself in front of the professionals until she'd learned more about her capabilities. That was even if she wanted to be a hero.

First order of business: getting my books back out of the library without making it obvious that I'm a cape. Walking in through the front door in civvies once they opened the shutters should about cover that, she figured.

Second order of business: going out tonight and learning a lot more about what I can do.

A slow smile curled across her lips.

She couldn't wait.

Later that Night
Hebert Household
10:35 PM

Taylor lay in bed, the bedroom light off and her eyes closed. With the covers pulled up to her chin, she breathed steadily; in, out; in, out. She hadn't moved from that pose since her father had cracked the bedroom door to check on her twenty minutes ago.

She didn't think he expected her to sneak out, mainly because he didn't know she had powers. Danny Hebert was reasonably good at dissimulation when it came to negotiating on behalf of the Dockworkers' Association, but he'd never been able to hide his motivations from her. They'd enjoyed a pleasant supper, and she'd told him most of what she'd done for the day, leaving out any mention of her powers. It helped that she hadn't known which capes were involved (Menja, Purity and Lung) until she saw the news later.

She was still considering when she'd tell him about them. He'd have to be told sooner rather than later; otherwise, it would be unfair on him. But she wanted to learn everything about her powers and figure out what she was going to be doing with them, before she filled him in. That, she figured, was only fair on her.

Finally, the sound she'd been waiting for drifted to her ears. Her father didn't snore loudly, but it was clearly audible in the otherwise silent house. Pulling back the covers with a gentle swoosh, revealing the dark sweater and jeans she was wearing, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. She already had socks on; it took just a few seconds to slip her feet into her sneakers.

Sliding her window up, she climbed out onto the ledge and then hung on by her fingertips—it was so damn easy now—while she pulled it down again. Then she let go and felt herself almost drift downward, landing gently on the grass alongside her father's car. A gentle hop took her over the fence, and she paused a moment to get her bearings.

She'd heard rumours about new capes going to the Boat Graveyard to test their powers out. The trouble was, if she knew that with her limited understanding of cape etiquette, so did everyone and their henchman. But that was okay; she had other ideas for testing her powers, and while she might get to the Graveyard eventually, that wasn't in her plans for the night.

Pulling her hoodie up around her head and tucking her hair under it, she called up the protective field over her clothing. As an afterthought, she extended a mask over her eyes and tinted everything black. Then she crossed the street and stood on the sidewalk, eyeing the roof of the house opposite speculatively.

If I can jump twenty feet straight up without even trying …

Another gentle hop got her to the top of the paling fence and she found herself balancing on top of it with ridiculous ease. Then she kicked off again, floating upward in a feather-light arc until she landed on the rooftop. With an inward whoop, she ran along the roof-ridge and launched herself toward the next house. This time, she only touched down with a single footstep before leaping toward the next house.

It was harder to get used to than she'd expected. Her brain kept telling her to expect being heavy, and she had to explain otherwise to her powers. Being super-strong was also a new state of mind; did every Brute have this problem to begin with? In contrast, the protective cover was something that showed up automatically.

If I'm not careful, that could end up being a problem.

Brockton Bay's suburbia passed by beneath her in a blur. She had no idea how fast she was going, but she was only touching down on every fourth or fifth house now. The laws of physics were little but an amusing suggestion to her as she skimmed dreamlike across the rooftops.

And then she came to her current goal. Pausing on the last rooftop before the open area began, she eyed her target across the parking lots and sports fields. Under the chilly moonlight, it lurked, monolithic and ominous. In all honesty, it looked far more badass at night than it did during the daytime. When the sun was up, it just visually reeked of failure and decrepitude, like a meth addict passed out in an alley with urine-soaked pants, only slightly less appealing.

Winslow High School, be it ever so disgusting.

Gathering herself, more for the psychological benefit than the physical, she leaped high and far, covering half a mile in just a few seconds. With barely a crunch of gravel, she landed on the roof of Winslow, right next to the roof access door. Theoretically, it should've been locked, but years of having the door jimmied open to allow access for smokers and users of other substances had left the mechanism in a sad state of affairs; Taylor personally knew that a good shake would open the door from either side. Not that it would've stopped her if she actually wanted to go inside, even if it had been six-inch-thick hardened steel.

I'm never attending this hell-pit of despair and corruption again. What's the easiest way to manage that?

Standing on the roof, she considered her options. With the strength at her disposal, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she could demolish the school in its entirety, given enough time. But this would be a long, boring task. Finding every last load-bearing structure would take forever, and she wanted to be home in time to get at least a few hours' worth of sleep.

The image came back to her of the SUV suspended above her by a fragment of metal, and she looked around thoughtfully. Jumping lightly down to the ground—she was definitely getting the hang of this—she looked through the parking lots serving both staff and students. Just to make sure of things, she completed a circuit of the school to ensure that no stray cars were parked in odd places around it.

There were no vehicles parked near the school at all. No lights shone through any windows. There was no indication of anyone, anywhere inside Winslow.

Good.

Taylor moved to the nearest corner of the massive building. Crouching down, she drove her fingers into the brick-work at just about ground level, on each side of the corner. Then she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Concentrating.

At her mental urging, her power swept over Winslow, giving her an inner-eye knowledge of every room, door, chair, book and ceiling tile in the building. She knew where everything was, and the fact that there were no people in the entire structure. This had already been her supposition, but it was good to have confirmation.

She pushed her monochrome field until it covered every inch of Winslow above ground level. While she could've pushed for everything including the foundations, she decided not to be greedy about it. It didn't seem to take any more effort than the SUV had.

Then she stood up … and tore Winslow clear out of the ground.

It was a hell of a lot noisier than she'd expected. When tens of thousands of tons of concrete, brickwork and rebar separates from its foundations over a shearing plane covering nearly fifty thousand square feet, all at once, it makes a sound akin to a cannon shot mixed up with the world's biggest rock crusher. Her protective covering snapped over her ears and still she heard it, transmitted through her own flesh from her mouth opening. By the time the echoes started reverberating off the nearest houses, she was standing with the entire school held at chest height, using no more effort than if she was carrying a lunch tray through the line.

She was tempted to see if she could hurl the entire structure into orbit, but that would draw altogether too much attention to Brockton Bay. So instead, she tossed it upward lightly; in this case, 'lightly' meant 'with enough force to make it go about ten feet in the air before it comes down'.

And down it came, with all the force and inevitability of a thousand outraged lawsuits, slamming into its own erstwhile foundations with the second tremendous BOOM of the evening. Lights had already started to come on here and there in the surrounding houses; now, there were a lot more. Walls ruptured outward, windows simply exploded, and when her ear-coverings receded she was sure she could hear bits and pieces of the school collapsing in on itself. But what she'd just done had most assuredly drawn the attention of all the authorities, so it was in her best interests to not be present when they arrived.

Fortunately, she had that bit covered.

Half an Hour Later
Miss Militia

Hannah rode her motorcycle up to the mass of police and fire vehicles clogging up the parking lot, then pulled into an as-yet unused corner and parked it. Taking her helmet off, she slung it on the bike then moved through the crowd with purpose; the double-bladed battle-axe slung over her shoulder served to clear the way with admirable alacrity. A few enquiries led her to the person she was looking for: Armsmaster, who was currently loading esoteric equipment back into the capacious panniers of his own highly customised ride.

"Militia," he greeted her without turning his head.

"Armsmaster," she replied. Jerking her head toward the mass of rubble before them, she raised her eyebrows interrogatively. "How big was the bomb, and was it anything exotic?"

"It wasn't a bomb," he said bluntly.

She bit back her immediate denial of his conclusion, and eyed the remains of the school more carefully. Colin wasn't the most social of people, and could be abrupt at times, but his reputation as a Tinker was formidable. His tech did the job, and did it well. For him to come to that conclusion, he must have detected something.

Her examination of the demolished building yielded no further insights. "Okay, I'll bite. If it wasn't a bomb, then what was it?"

"Not sure." He packed away the last of his equipment. "But there are no chemical traces of any known explosives, and an analysis of the stress-fractures on all the pieces of rubble I was able to identify indicates that whatever destroyed it came either from above or below, and hit the entire building at once."

Hannah considered that. "So ... either it got stepped on by someone wearing a size one million large, or the ground somehow smacked it from beneath." She hated that either one was actually plausible.

"I considered that too, but then I had to factor in the double pulse." Colin's tone was didactic now. "There weren't two impacts, because the debris spray pattern would be different. My personal theory is that someone utilised a ranged force field or tractor beam equivalent, and hoisted the entire school into the air. When it was about fifteen to twenty feet up, the hoisting mechanism was either deliberately or accidentally released, and Winslow fell that distance; the overall observed damage would fit that distance."

"Mmm." Hannah twisted her lips under her flag-print scarf. "So, you figure we're looking for a Tinker with a hate-on for Winslow?"

"Or schools in general," Armsmaster replied. "But we can stick with Winslow for the moment."

Hannah rolled her eyes. This was as blatantly obvious as cape activity could get. Which meant the PRT had to claim jurisdiction. The suspect pool was simple: everyone who hated the school. Which in the event probably meant about half the teaching staff and ninety-nine point nine percent of the student body.

I'm just glad I don't have to sit through all the interviews.

End of Part Eleven