I had already landed on the rooftop of my apartment building before I realised I still wasn't the slightest bit tired. After fighting someone like Lung I should have been as dead on my feet as Taylor had been, should have felt a deep longing for my bed. Instead I was as awake then as I was when I had first woken up. Was this what it felt like to be a… 'Noctis' cape? I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

On one hand, there were the obvious benefits. Assuming the trend held true and I really didn't need to sleep at all, that would clear up around an extra eight hours a day to do whatever I wanted. Want to patrol all night? Sure. Stay up all night playing video games? Great! All right so the second one was a holdover from both of my previous 'lives' but still the point remained.

But it was also disconcerting. The need for rest had been a constant in the thirty-six years of memories I had inherited. 'Inherited', because I wasn't either of them. I didn't know who I was, a disconnect from how it was becoming increasingly hard to remember either Myles' prior memories or Kieran's compared to the crystal-like clarity of my memories of the previous day. Was I truly human anymore? Or even a parahuman? Every time hysteria rose in me, I felt Invictus crush it back down.

Right, Invictus. Benefit of not being tired, maybe I could go and get a firmer grasp on my powers like I had kept telling myself I would do when I got the first opportunity to. If there was one thing that Myles had known about new capes, it was how dangerous their powers could be when they didn't understand them themselves. That was for normal capes, how bad would it be if I made a mistake with them? I knew I was very powerful, and very dangerous because of it. Lung could attest to that, and the street… and the buildings.

First, I had to make sure that Aunt Nessa hadn't come back for whatever reason while I was out. I took a deep breath, before I let go of my tight grip over my psychokinesis. What had previously been leashed to just over the skin level, enough to maintain the suit's presence and no more, rolled out in a bubble around me but I focused my attention on the apartment block beneath me.

It was indescribable, a flood of knowledge that hadn't been there before but just felt natural. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that my consciousness had expanded out of my body to encompass the entirety of my range. I could feel everything, and understand almost all of it, though I had to focus to get a more detailed image and understanding. Most inanimate objects were fine, walls and ceilings or tables were simple objects. Ones that I knew immediately I could recreate at will. However, things like computers or phones would require that I work to understand them. Fiddly little things that they were. And anything organic… those hurt my head just from looking at them. So much going on at once in one tiny little package, all it would take was pushing one thing wrong and, well, they'd die.

I pushed through the sudden influx of knowledge and looked in closer at my apartment. It was strange seeing it but also not. My 'sight' using psychokinesis was in actuality nothing like just looking at something. Now that I had focused on it, it was like looking behind the curtains of the universe, I saw the building blocks that made up matter and energy, and how they interacted at every turn. I could look at my bed and see how the molecules were bound together, or how light reflected off it to tell the human eye its colour. More importantly, I saw that the apartment was still thankfully empty. That was one awkward conversation avoided, at least for now.

Aunt Nessa was… distant. Myles had clung to faint memories, even compared to the others I got from him, of how she was before his my parents had died. Nessa had been a constant presence in the house, doting over me and helping out around the house. Then they died and she changed. I didn't have many memories of the time after the fire (Lung's fire), most likely Myles had repressed them, but what I did remember was that she had tried to help me. At first. Slowly she had grown further and further away from me. One day, she didn't come back from work. My aunt had come back the following day but didn't offer an explanation, only continuing as if nothing had happened. However, it quickly became apparent that this would be the new norm. With each passing month she would stay away overnight more and more. Now, it wasn't even like she was taking time away from me, instead it was more like she was just visiting me, and the apartment that had been ours was instead just mine.

There were times when Aunt Nessa still reached out. She still checked over my report cards and offered encouragement, but even when she did it was with only the barest traces of warmth. I honestly couldn't remember the last time that we had looked each other in the eyes. There were many times where I had considered just leaving it all behind, the apartment, her, hell even Brockton Bay. But I had been a kid, with no income and any insurance or money from my parents was held 'in keeping' by Aunt Nessa and Myles I still cared for her. She was the only family I had left.

With no need to sleep, and no need to return to the apartment, I flew away from the building for the second time that night. I didn't really have a destination in mind as I coasted over the city, I only knew I was looking for somewhere that would be deserted enough for me to test out my powers without having to worry about being interrupted. In the city, that largely narrowed it down to the Docks due to its constant half-abandoned state. Any of the more residential areas were too risky, even as run down as they were, and I needed to avoid the area that I had fought Lung in. No doubt the PRT was already crawling all over the area.

That left closer to the actual docks themselves, namely the ship graveyard and mostly empty warehouses. There was some nameless feeling foreboding that came with the idea, from Kieran's memories, but I couldn't remember what it was about, and it wasn't like I had much choice in the matter. I could have stayed up in the air and tested myself up there but having more materials to look at would be much more useful, or maybe at home but I didn't want to risk breaking anything (else) there.

With little other choice, I made my way towards the many warehouses that I knew were near the bay at a sedate pace, skimming just beneath the clouds. I didn't want to be seen for this bit. In fact, I rose up into a cloud, feeling the damp air breezing over my field and dispersed the lower half of the suit revealing the trousers I had worn to school earlier that day. The top half I grabbed mentally and twisted, and the energy warped and flowed into a white T-shirt and black domino mask. The shirt wasn't perfect, it was featureless and unnatural, still without seams just like the suit had been and glowed gently with an ethereal light. Focusing further, I reached out further, looking harder past just the energy.

There! I could see the way that light was emitted from the shirt and how rays of light bounced off it. Carefully, I 'cut' the glowing lines that I thought denoted the glow and watched as the shirt instantly dimmed into a more normal matte colour. That was one problem taken care of.

All of that had been done while still moving, so when I exited the cloud leaving a small trail of wisps behind me, I saw that I was just about above a group of warehouses clumped neatly together. I cut my flight, free-falling down at a rapidly increasing speed. Even though I knew that I wouldn't be hurt by the stop at the bottom, it was still exhilarating, and I had to hold back a 'Whoop!' as I fell.

Just before I would have slammed into the roof of one of the warehouses, I stopped myself in a move that would've killed a normal person from inertia alone. I spun upright and gently alighted on the corrugated metal rooftop without making a sound. Again, I spread out my senses in a bubble, I still found the information to be somewhat overwhelming, but if I could focus in on something specific then it helped. Like the warehouse that was beneath my feet for instance. I saw how the metal was made up at an atomic level and how rust clung to it. It hadn't been used in a long time, something that was further backed up by the complete emptiness inside, other than stray pieces of metal that had fallen from the walls or ceiling and the occasional weed poking through cracks in the concrete. This place would do.

I looked down at the metal beneath me, searching for how it was held together. Satisfied that I could probably replicate it, although the rust would be harder, I flicked my wrist and a section of the roof slightly wider in circumference than my shoulder width disappeared. There was no transition, the matter had simply ceased to be. I examined the new hole before descending through it, the low light of the warehouse was no problem to my senses. Even without using my new psychokinetic senses, my enhanced eyesight easily pierced the gloom.

Once I had passed through, I hovered in the air about halfway between the ground and the newly broken roof. I looked upwards at the gap, and mentally grabbed the structure of the metal to its side before replacing the empty air that made up the hole with the metal. Between one blink and the next the ceiling was whole again, although the newly replaced section of ceiling had the exact same pattern of rust as the structure I'd 'copied'. Cool, I could Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V materials!

That was one test of my powers done but my priority was investigating Invictus. While psychokinesis was flashy, and much more importantly, dangerous, the power that changed my emotional responses and how I thought was much more concerning. Yes I knew the other one could blow up a large part of the city (perhaps I should have been more concerned that I didn't know how much damage I could do?) but Invictus changes my mind and how I thought and… that's the only thing I really had left of me. Whoever 'me' was.

So, I settled down on the ground with my feet crossed beneath me and focused inwards. Neither Myles or Kieran had ever really tried meditating, outside of the 'spiritual' classes in schools where they try and teach about religion through trying it out yourself, so I wasn't really sure what I was doing. I focused in on the constant thrumming that I had felt going through my body ever since I had 'woken up'. It wasn't actually a physical feeling, the human body and all its little systems and components was still a confusing mess to me, although with every passing day it was getting slightly more untangled. But I knew enough to guess know that nothing extra was going around my body.

I pushed past the bubble that was my invincibility shield (and didn't that make me sound like I was back in elementary school) and found myself staring at a ball of steel in my chest. It wasn't actually there, I didn't have a mass of metal blocking up my ribcage, but it also kind of was? That was confusing. It was there in some kind of spiritual sense then? Instead of a heart, the gleaming ball pulsed and pumped liquid of the same colour around my body. With each pulse the sense of steadiness that I had unknowingly grown used to renewed. So this was, at least metaphorically, Invictus? I looked ever closer, listening to the dull thumping of the metal.

It was soothing, a constant 'thud thud' that I could still feel in my physical body now that I was focusing in on it. The noise grew louder in my ears, increasing slowly until it rang out like a voice made of clashing swords.

I AM THE HEART

BORN OF STEEL

I flinched, almost reeling back out of my inwards focus as Invictus roared through my ears like a torrent. Was it actually sentient? Before I could ponder it any further it continued.

OUR SOUL TEMPERED

WE WILL NOT CHANGE FOR ANYONE

UNBOWED, UNBENT, UNBROKEN

As the last words were spoken, I was jettisoned out of the trance and physically thrown onto my back. That was… something. But even as I was left stunned, blinking up at the roof I felt information come pouring into my brain. You know that might've been the first time I'd felt pain in this new life and of course it was a headache from my own powers slamming my brain.

The information was, essentially, a bare-bones guidebook on Invictus. How convenient that they bashed my head in with it. Already the pain had started to fade though, and as lucidity started to return, I began sifting through the new knowledge. I wasn't sure if it was better or worse than I expected.

Invictus was apparently super powered willpower. If I made the active decision that I was going to do something, I was damn well going to do it and there wasn't anything that could stop me other than me changing my own mind. Pain, emotional duress, both of them and more were negated if I wanted them to be. An on-off switch for emotions? I could definitely see the use in it but, to put it in Worm words, I was effectively mastering myself…

I flicked the switch

Myles blinked slowly. This was new. He couldn't quite feel the emotions that had been there just a moment before. It was like a distance had opened up between himself and the me himself of before. He knew what he should be feeling, but he wasn't. It was honestly quite relaxing, not that he could feel the full effect of it. He still cared about everything he cared about before. His parents, Aunt Nessa, Brockton Bay to an extent… but detached from the effects of his emotions it felt more like they were characters in a TV show that he had watched growing up.

I flicked the switch

And I was back. Wow that was strange, not bad, just strange. I wonder if that was how it felt to be trapped inside your own body? No, 'trapped' wasn't the right word. I was still there, or a version of me at least, but I was in control. Definitely was oddly relaxing, letting my emotions drift away for a moment, although I wasn't sure what to make of my feelings for stuff here. More concerns to add to the pile. Felt like more of a mountain now.

I moved on quickly when I felt myself mentally reaching for the switch again, ignoring how natural and tempting it was to do so.

Invictus would passively step in to return me to a neutral state when it became detrimental to my decisions. Like with Lung, I realised, I had decided not to kill him and when I was going to it stopped me. No matter what I told myself now I knew that I would have crushed his throat, that I still kind of wanted to but I didn't, and I won't. Killing was a slippery slope, or that's what TV said at least.

Despite my worries about the effects that Invictus might have had on me, I was left thinking that it was a net positive. I wasn't naive enough to think that living a cape life, or any life on Earth Bet, would be without hardships; and the ability to just turn that off? Yeah that was appealing. Especially in his stake situations.

Pushing aside my worries, I stood and brushed myself down. I didn't think there was any muck on me due to my field covering my clothes too, but it was a force of habit movement. Whether it was Myles', or Kieran's I didn't know. There was still plenty of night to go and I had some fancy psychokinesis to train. Fun!

xOx

There's nothing quite like school to bring you down after you've bitch slapped a dragon and blown stuff up for half of the night before. Of course, I put it back together again afterwards but that's beside the point. Going from an action packed and actually fun night to monotonous classes, droning teachers and the typical high school pageantry was horrible. At least Sophia and her gaggle of teenagers weren't bothering me, she was however following me around the school at every possible moment.

If I was a normal teenager I would've never noticed. No matter what else I could have said about her, she knew how to track someone stealthily. Especially when she had all the advantages of packed corridors and noisy students. However, throughout the day I had been training my ability to move with my bubble of psychokinesis awareness expanded further and further. I couldn't actually tell any of the moving things apart, but I was actually starting to understand human bodies by osmosis if nothing else. So when one of those moving bodies starts fading through walls when there's nothing around it, just to keep following me, yeah I realised Sophia was tailing me.

I wasn't quite sure why though. Unless she was planning some elaborate revenge scheme to get back at me for knocking her down, which admittedly I wouldn't have put past her, I couldn't think of any reason why she was so set on tracking me. I'd already seen Emma and Madison looking kind of lost in the cafeteria, like they weren't quite sure what to do without the track star to lead them. Or well, Madison followed Emma around like a lost puppy and Emma just looked shell shocked by something. Did she know Sophia was Shadow Stalker? Annoyingly it was one of the many blank spots in the already murky memories I had gotten from Kieran. Or was I Kieran in Myles' body with his memories and Myles'-

Ugh. I was not prepared to go into that stuff, not yet.

Ultimately, the knowledge that Sophia was tracking me left me less surprised than I should have been when I opened my locker at end of the day to find a note inside. My locker which had been locked. And the lock hadn't been moved at all. Definitely Sophia.

The Roof

SS

Was she not even bothering to hide who she was? Although without Kieran's memories and my ability to sense her going through walls I probably wouldn't have had any idea. Still though this raised many questions of my own and answered only some of them. What did she want from me? Why had she approached me at school?

Then it struck me, she didn't really want anything from 'Myles'. Her derision and bullying showed that but if she knew that I was Invictus? It still seemed stupid to me to approach me like this, if I didn't know who Shadow Stalker really was then this would only clue me in further. Sophia never really was that rational, in either Myles' experiences or Kieran's wiki skimming. But did she not even care about the Unwritten Rules in the slightest? This was breaching them in a significant way, assuming I was right in that she was doing this because of my debut as a cape. Normally she was pretty direct, but she'd made sure to avoid me in her civilian get up today. Was Sophia Hess scared of me?

That felt better than it probably should have.

Did I go to meet her? I wasn't particularly afraid of her, while I wasn't sure how her weird shadow powers would interact with my field, I was certain that I was much faster than her. If nothing else I knew that I could dodge whatever she threw at me, or perhaps more accurately whatever she shot at me.

If I went though, I couldn't see any scenarios where I came out of it without practically admitting to being Invictus, especially if she was willing to attack me. Knowing Sophia, I thought it more a question of whether she was scared enough to not attack me.

But it was probably too late anyway. Sophia, Shadow Stalker, was up there waiting for me already. I could sense her there, and definitely not wearing her school uniform. Well, apparently it was either here or at home and I'd only just fixed the hole I put in the wall last night. I wasn't in any hurry to have to fix a Sophia shaped one too. Damn it, I really wasn't in the mood to talk to her. If I was then I would've checked myself into a psychiatric ward.

While I was picking up my stuff from the locker, I 'saw' someone else approach me from behind. I turned, to find myself face to face with Taylor. It looked like she hadn't picked up on the fact that I was there before, as she just stopped herself from slamming headfirst into my chest. She stopped abruptly; her head turned upwards to look at me. Her mouth opened as if to say something, then closed again. It looked like she had been crying, her eyes were slightly red and I could see some dried out tear tracks down her cheek.

Perhaps more importantly, now that I looked at her with my extra senses, I saw a cord hanging upwards from the back of her head. It constantly lit up with energy, and I noticed all the bugs in my range moving oddly in time with the pulses. That was… strange. Was that the link between parahumans and their passengers? Checking back with Sophia on the roof I saw that she had the same cord, although hers was dark and seemingly not in use with very little energy passing down it or back up. I was pretty certain that I was right in guessing what it was, but I wasn't going to mess with it.

"You all right there Taylor?" I asked.

She still didn't say anything, but her eyes moved down to my feet then up again, as if measuring my height with her eyes.

"No way. Are you..?"

Her voice trailed off uncertainly as she bit her tongue to stop herself from continuing. I saw hesitation warring with curiosity and surprise in her eyes. There was a stilted silence, or as close to silence as one could get at the end of the day in a high school. We were still surrounded by kids chatting together, going home or getting their own things from their lockers. It wasn't a good place to have this conversation, assuming that she had just worked out what I thought she had.

"Am I what?" I kept my tone light, but the question was serious. She couldn't ask without telling me that she was the other cape last night. I knew anyway, but she didn't know that I did. Probably.

Taylor hesitated. Her foot stepped backwards slightly, like she was split between continuing or running away before I saw her set her jaw and lean in a little closer.

"Invictus?" She whispered, quiet enough that even without the thrum of noise around us no-one would have heard her unless they were right next to us. I paused, considering denying it for a moment. Was there much point though? I didn't think she'd believe me anyway if she was able to work it out just by seeing me. If she, and more importantly Shadow Stalker, knew then what were the odds that the PRT knew too. And if fanon and the wikis were correct, then at least Coil knew too.

"I guess my height is a bit of a giveaway," I let out with a deep sigh. Maybe it really was inevitable, or I should have disguised myself better last night. A seven-foot new trigger that admitted he was a teenager. There aren't many people my (body's) age that were that tall in the first place, let alone my sudden growth spurt which was obvious byproduct of gaining my powers. It wasn't so much a trail of breadcrumbs to my 'secret' identity as it was a glowing neon sign, "You're bug girl then?"

Taylor's eye twitched slightly at the name. She couldn't blame me, what else was I going to identify her as? Whatever her feelings on the name were, she pushed past it and nodded slightly, warily side-eyeing the closest students. None of them reacted, too absorbed in their own conversations and I had spoken quietly enough anyway.

"You remember what I said about the Rules then?"

I kept what I said vague enough that I could be talking about anything really, my senses told me that nobody was listening in anyway, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Still, I saw that Taylor had gotten the confirmation that she wanted as her eyes lit up, although I couldn't make out anything specific in the torrent of emotions that passed beneath her eyes. She nodded again.

"I looked it up as soon as I got home," her voice was still uncertain. There was also a tone of disbelief that she was talking to someone else, someone that she sort of knew, outside of costume about this stuff.

"Then you should have known that trying to get conformation is a big no-no." Her eyes widened an almost comical amount and she opened her mouth to say something. I held up a finger to forestall whatever it was before gesturing at myself, "Luckily I'm pretty nice, or at least I like to think so. And my… proportions are a bit hard to hide," at least for now. I was pretty sure that if could get a thorough enough understanding of human biology then I could effectively biotinker too. Naturally, I wasn't in a hurry to let that particular piece of information out, "We shouldn't talk about this here. Unfortunately, I apparently have an urgent meeting to get to right now. Tomorrow after school?"

She paused for a second, considering what she wanted to say.

"The, uh, people we helped last night reached out to me on PHO in Mrs. Knott's class," Taylor seemed to be reaching hard to avoid saying whatever it was outright, "said they want to meet us, or at least me. Today."

Oh, the Undersiders had still done that? What was Coil's game here, or was it Lisa's? I took a few moments to think about it while Taylor fiddled with the bottom of her hoodie. She didn't have her bag with her for some reason.

"Did they specify a time?"

I wasn't about to let her go alone if I could help it. There were a depressing number of holes in Kieran's wiki surfing knowledge, more and more as time went on, but I knew that Taylor joining the Undersiders was one of the major things that started her descent into villainy. I might not have thought that they were that bad (for villains) but I wanted to help the world with my powers, and more importantly for right now, Taylor.

"In about an hour at, uh, the place we helped them at," she looked at me uncertainly. Somehow, I got the feeling that she very much wanted me to come too and I remembered her social… issues. She suffered from a critical lack of self-esteem and social ability after being the pariah at Winslow for so long. Nobody wanted to be associated with Sophia and Emma's prime target.

That didn't leave a lot of time to talk to Sophia and drop my stuff off at home.

"Push it back another hour if you can. They want to meet us, not the other way around so they should be willing to wait. If that's okay with you?" When she nodded at me I continued, "Meet you there, or?"

"Yeah that sounds great! I mean, uh, good yeah," I had to hold back a laugh at her overenthusiastic response, she had seemed oddly more confident in herself when in costume, "They said they'd be in 'casual wear' and not their costumes but…"

I hadn't remembered that.

"But you don't trust them? Probably smart, they are still villains and it wouldn't surprise me for, hm, Tats to trick someone. Still I don't think they'd break the Rules so blatantly as to come in costume if you're not. I guess in the end I'd go with whatever makes you more comfortable."

That seemed to make the decision for her as she nodded firmly, "Will you be going… dressed up?"

I chuckled slightly.

"I don't know yet. It seems like my 'secret' isn't quite so well hidden," I eye her significantly, "and Tats has probably worked out who I am already, or she could have if she tried."

Taylor raised an eyebrow in surprise, "You know her?"

I shook my head, "I know of her. She's good at… thinking if you catch my drift."

Her eyes widened in understanding and I continued.

"What's the best way to contact you? Have access to PHO at home?"

I knew she didn't have a mobile phone, Taylor was the protagonist of Worm so Kieran had naturally read up a lot on her wiki page. Something to do with her mother's car crash being due to a phone. I didn't remember if she had a cheap computer or anything at home, and it was 2011, ten years back from Kieran's memory and I didn't remember what computers were like back then. Taylor hesitated before shaking her head with a vague expression of shame on her face? Was she ashamed that she didn't have enough money for one or something?

"No but I can get on it here or the library easily enough."

"That's fine, contact me on there when you get their response to pushing back the meeting. I assume you can guess what my user-name is?" I wink at her, and she smiles slightly giddily before stopping herself again. Happy to be sharing in secrets again after far too long, "Then you can also drop me a message whenever you want to meet in general. 'Dressed up' or otherwise."

Taylor blinked rapidly at me, as if she hadn't comprehended what I'd just said before her gaze closed off slightly. I guess openly talking about friendship set her off? Emma really did a good job of fucking her up, that was horrible.

"C'mon Taylor," I laughed lightly, "we 'slew' a dragon together and know each other's secrets. Seems like a solid start to a friendship as I've ever seen."

Her posture slowly became marginally less guarded again, but she stepped back away from me. It wasn't like I'd expected to instantly be best of friends or anything but that still kind of hurt. I liked her well enough and it really had only been an open offer of friendship.

"I'll message you," her tone was still noticeably brisker than it had been a moment ago and her shoulders were tensed slightly as she turned and walked away quickly, long black hair whipping behind her. I watched until she went round the corner, before switching to my psychokinetic senses and saw her exit the school.

"Well that could've gone better," I said to myself dryly, "time to go see what the stalker wants."

xOx

When I got to the rooftop, I found Sophia tapping her foot impatiently while watching the only door. She was fully kitted up in her official Wards outfit. A black cloak, and an equally black bodysuit protected by bits and pieces of similarly painted metal. The dark mask that covered her face that Myles had always found creepy whenever he saw it adorned her face, her eyes wouldn't have been visible behind the cold metal mask to a normal human but I could see the angry (slightly panicked?) brown eyes underneath. Two crossbows were strapped across her back

My psychosenses (and yes, I was going to call it that from now on, shut up, it's cool) focused in on her Cord. Just like with Taylor, it was like a tether of some kind, leading out of the back of her head and away… somewhere. I'd bet good money that their Cords would lead right to their Corona Pollentia, but I didn't know enough about the biology of it to locate it.

"Took you long enough," Sophia's voice was tinny through the metal, and slightly distorted. A voice changer maybe?

"Well naturally I was a bit worried about who the mysterious 'SS' could be," I feigned an overly nervous voice before returning to a deadpan, "but it was just you. How disappointing."

Capes that have been in the business for a while had really mastered their body language, especially those like Shadow Stalker who wore a full-face mask. Which made it very clear that she was glaring at me murderously, with her fists clenched and one inching towards the handle of a crossbow on her back. She stopped herself though, and forcibly relaxed her hands by her side. I heard her take a deep breath in and then out.

"We need to talk."

It sounded like she was talking through gritted teeth, the very idea of being forced to talk instead of shoot galling to her. That if nothing else finally confirmed to me that she knew who I was. Shadow Stalker had no reason to talk to me outside of costume.

"Oh? About what? Am I in trouble?" My voice was dead calm as I stared into the eye holes of her mask.

She paused for a second, foot starting to tap quickly on the ground again like she was struggling to stay still.

"Don't play dumb. I know who you are."

I raised my hand to my mouth in over exaggerated shock.

"The Shadow Stalker knows my name?" Sophia said nothing but I was sure she was still glaring, "What does a Ward want with a high schooler like me?"

"Cut the bullshit, Invictus." She ground out.

Wow she really just did that. Was she actually insane enough to just ignore the Rules like that? Tense silence descended on the rooftop as I closed my expression of. My realisation that my identity staying secret was probably a lost cause anyway meant I wasn't as bothered by it as many others would have been, but that was no reason to let her know that.

"Say I was a cape, this 'Invictus', wouldn't this be breaking some very important Rules that capes play by?"

Sophia scoffed loudly, derision dripping from the harsh noise.

"Yeah all those assholes would be mad about it. And what? None of them do what it takes anyway. Point is, I know who you are and this my turf."

She gestured grandly down at Winslow in an all-encompassing sweep. I raised my eyebrow at her. Did she really know that for all that she knew who I was, I knew her secret identity too? It would make sense. Follow me around for the day to look for any sign that I knew more than I was letting on, rushed this meeting because she was worried about what I was going to do now that I had powers. It seemed too direct for me… but that was Sophia to a tee.

To reveal that I knew or not to. Honestly, having the knowledge that this 'intimidating' figure was actually Sophia while she had no idea that I was clued in was quite funny. Then again, I wasn't so good a person that I would miss up a chance to get back at someone that had tormented me for all of one of my high school lives life.

"Really Sophia?" It was intensely satisfying watching the Ward stiffen up abruptly, "You're telling me, who is supposedly a cape, that you want to get into a territorial pissing match? A cape that you're terrified of enough to try and track down and call out immediately after they debut?"

I stepped towards her, and she stepped back. From the way she immediately tensed up and stepped forward again she knew that she'd just shown how afraid of me she was.

"It's not quite so nice on the other end is it? Knowing that you're weaker and can't do anything about it." I stopped just outside of her reach, arms still relaxed at my side, composed, non-threatening and completely unworried, "What did you even expect to happen here Sophia?"

Her shoulders flinched at her name and I could hear her gauntlets creaking from how hard she was squeezing her fists.

"Did you think I'd just leave school? Let you keep up your bullshit? The moment I became Invictus, that I got these powers, you lost all yours here," My words were biting, tearing into her and she flinched with all of them, "So no Sophia, this place is not your anything. It never should have been and never will be again. Get your act together hero, or I'll make you."

I turned abruptly, from her angle completely unworried about any attack on my back. In reality my psychosenses were observing her from every angle. I watched as the cord out the back of her head lit up, and her physical body started to change into her shadowy breaker state. Dark metal fingers reached for a crossbow. She unslung it quickly and silently, if I hadn't been watching her with my powers I never would have known she was aiming what definitely wasn't a Ward approved non-lethal bolt at my back. I saw her finger twitching in minuscule squeezes on the trigger, but she didn't fire yet.

"Why did you let him go?" Sophia spoke up just before I got to the door, "Lung."

"I didn't?" I answered, not reacting to the bolt that had changed course to aim between my eyes.

Sophia let out an angry grunt.

"You know what I meant, why didn't you kill the bastard?"

At that I paused, looking away over her shoulder into the distance. Little did she know that I'd been asking myself the same thing ever since last night. Sometimes, when I really focused on it, I could still feel his scales crunching beneath my fingers. It worried me how much it didn't worry me that I wanted so badly to kill a man. That I still did. Eventually I rolled my eyes back to meet the dark themed capes eyes beneath her mask.

"Because I want to be better," I decided on. Better than this city and the villains that killed endlessly. Than the PRT and heroes who couldn't or didn't do anything about it. Better than Earth Bet entirely. This world had been doomed, and the people in it knew it too. The Endbringers, the Slaughter House Nine, endless monsters and villains. But that had been before me. Even if it was just a little at a time, even if I didn't have a real plan or perfect memory of canon, I could- no, I would make the world a better place.

Sophia sneered; her body language screamed it.

"You're not better, you're exactly the same. All that power," She thrust the crossbow and the point of the bolt towards me, "given to someone useless like you. Another failure of a hero who won't do what's necessary."

"Even if I fail, at least I can say I tried," my eyes are cold, "I'll help you too, you know. Even if I have to drag you kicking and screaming."

"I don't need your help!" The girl exploded, and her finger clenched on the trigger.

The bolt flew towards my face. Shrouded in Sophia's power, I wasn't willing to let it hit me. With my psychosenses I could see the trail that led back to her, that linked it to her breaker state and presumably gave it its special properties.

I reached out and mentally grabbed the trail. The energy burned like nothing else I had ever tried so far, a power so beyond anything else I had touched. Near limitless energy flowed through it and Sophia, a tie back to a shard of a greater power. An image of a great worm like being, an Entity, flashed across my mind. It was so big that I simply couldn't comprehend it, it was spread across vast swathes of dimensions, traversing through space. Was that the vision that people saw when they triggered? Was that Scion's true form?

I shivered even as I tore the link with a herculean effort. The bolt returned to normal in time for my hand to snap up faster than humanly possible and catch it out of the air. With a clear crack, I snapped the metal bolt and threw it at her feet. The two halves clattered against her boots.

"What," Sophia's voice was shaky, and came out in great breaths of air and rapid inhaling, "what was that?"

I didn't know whether she was referring to her power cutting out on the bolt due to my interference, or if she had seen the vision too but I didn't answer either way. That was perhaps the first attempted attack in this new life that was a legitimate threat to me, I didn't know for sure that it was, but the intent and possibility were still there.

"Do not," if before my words and eyes had been cold, this time they seethed with the frost of an iced over wasteland devoid of warmth, "do that again. Ever. Even if the PRT are failing, at least some of them are trying. You called them failures, but you failed before even reaching the starting line."

I turned and left through the door back to the school, Sophia didn't say another word. Looks like there had been no need for me to ask Taylor to delay the meeting with the Undersiders. I had been worried that the meeting would take too long. But it had only been a few minutes and I was already fucking done.

The range on my psychosenses wasn't pushed high enough to see the golden man looking down at me from up in the sky, unblinking and otherwise unmoving. By the time I got around the corner of the block to head home, he had disappeared in a glowing golden blur.

xOx

I had cooled off on the journey back, a relatively short journey at the anger fueled pace that I had set off at. Sophia was a problem. A bitch too. But in the end, she was a relatively minor one that I didn't need to get worked up over. I meant what I had said though, she was a horrible person, but she was also broken. If nobody else would try and fix her then I would and see where she goes from there. Clearly the PRT weren't actually doing anything to help… as usual.

Still, that was a future problem. I had plenty of time to get ready before the meeting. I'd check through PHO for anything new and see if Taylor had updated me on whether she'd been able to push it back or not.

It was as I started climbing the stairs up the apartment building to my floor that I noticed something strange in my sensory bubble. Someone was outside my door. This wasn't that unusual; people pass by my door fairly frequently. But this person was waiting outside the door to my apartment. It didn't look like an adult, they were very short, if I had to guess they were perhaps 12 years old?

And they were a parahuman.

The same Cord that Sophia and Taylor had out of the back of their heads dangled upwards from the child's too. Just as I reached the same floor, it flashed with light and I tensed. However nothing untoward seemed to happen, it didn't change her body at all or have any outward effect. Instead her head just glowed brightly for a second before dimming back to normal. Was that… a thinker power? God this was all so confusing, and my head thrummed from looking at the Cord.

Cautiously I rounded stepped out into the corridor, only to see this little brown-haired girl's face light up.

"You're going to save me!" She proudly explained, voice still the high pitch of a prepubescent child.

What.

"The numbers told me so." Dinah Alcott blinked up at me with those big innocent eyes that only children could really pull off.

No, seriously, what the fuck.

A/N: So that took a little while. I moved over to a new computer and started going to the gym so had a bit less time than I was used to. I wrote most of this chapter today and some of the plot elements kind of just snuck up one me so we'll see where that goes. I wouldn't expect chapters to be this long in future updates but honestly, who knows? I struggle to write dialogue, especially for someone like caustic characters like Sophia.

Let me know what you think!