Having powers is pretty cool. Most of the time. What was irritating was the part where they seemed to be driving me up the wall when hearing people singing. Or speaking at all, now I come to think of it.
When I had come out of the locker, I had been overwhelmed by the sounds around me, to the point that I had blacked out. Now I was lying on my hospital bed three days later, recovering from a nasty case of blood poisoning and I was figuring out what my power was.
I could see sounds as waves of colour. Most were just barely visible, semi-transparent and ignorable. I quickly figured out it was because they didn't have any emotions behind them, because when my Dad came in not long after I woke up, his voice emitted sound waves of a particularly light blue, almost white, which I figured out meant intense worry.
Most of the nurses and doctors let off soundwaves of a light pink colour when they talked to me, indicative of their care for those under their charge. When they talked to Dad, they were a slightly darker shade of pink, which I guessed meant sympathy.
My power meant that getting sleep was…hard. I could close my eyes alright, but as long as I could hear, I got a little map whenever I heard noises. So I had a form of echolocation as well, with quite some distance as well. This did not lend itself to getting much in the way of sleep.
Something I noticed was that when someone told a lie around me, I could see the sound wave flicker and distort in dissonance. This would be useful if I became a Cape. Being able to tell if someone's lying or not would make tracking down bases and the like easier.
First though, I'd have to get home.
A Week Later
School sucks ass.
This was something I had come to know to be an absolute rule ever since my best friend since pre-K had stabbed me in the back. I hated going back, but until Dad could scrape together the funds for me to be home-schooled, I had to go to school, which meant Winslow.
My power wasn't very helpful in the rowdy corridors of the cesspool that the school was. Teenagers shaded the truth almost every time they opened their mouths, making most of the noise-colours they emitted dissonant and discordant. It was slightly sore to be surrounded by so many people and the sound they made, to the point I was developing a pretty bad headache as I slouched from English to Computer Studies. Mrs Knott was my favourite teacher at Winslow due to the fact she actually cracked down on any sort of bullying by The Trio's minions during class time. She had tried to talk to Principal Blackwell about my case, but had come back infuriated, saying she was being stonewalled for a reason she couldn't tell me.
Class was easy, as I had always been good at using computers, so when I finished the coursework assigned a good quarter of an hour ahead of schedule, I sent it off via the intranet to Mrs Knott and browsed PHO and a few other sites. I was in no danger of being seen doing this because I was in the corner and everyone sat well away from me, ostracising me unless classwork forced them to work with me.
Works for me this time.
It didn't take me long to figure out that I had a form of Sonokinesis, or sound manipulation. I hadn't had much chance to experiment with my powers with Dad being all protective and everything, so I typed up a small document with ideas gained from those other Capes who possessed some form of sound-based powers and mailed it to my private e-mail address, just about the only thing Emma hadn't known the password details about when she backstabbed me. I'd print it out at the library.
One thing I noted that I had was something called rhythm intuition, the ability to understand the rhythm of soundwaves. It was because of this that I automatically knew what sounds I was hearing and roughly what direction they were coming from.
The end of school came as a relief for me. I hadn't had much in the way of bullying today, just the usual comments about how thin I was and how ugly I was, yadda, yadda, yadda. Seriously, it was getting a bit boring to hear honestly.
Heading to the library, I quickly logged on to a PC, printed my e-mail out and left, heading home to cook dinner. I'd test things out tomorrow.
The next day, I got through school as painlessly as was possible, meaning enduring anything the Bitch Trio could throw at me. Emma threw jabs about how I'd been so pathetic after my Mom died, which made me angry.
"I'd like to see how you feel if it ever happened to you!" I snapped at her angrily.
Emma stepped back, shocked by my reaction. Sophia, however, smirked as she finally made me react to something.
"She wouldn't sit and weep like a pussy like you did though Hebert." The black girl almost purred with satisfaction.
"Well then she mustn't love her parents." I shrugged and turned to go.
"Take that back, you bitch!" Emma growled. She stamped forwards and grabbed my shoulder, spinning me around to glare in my face.
"The truth hurts, doesn't it?" I told her sweetly, "I find the idea of someone not crying when their parents die to be pathetic…if they loved them to begin with. In your case, your track record of dumping someone for something better doesn't exactly help your case."
Emma was enraged, but physical confrontations had never really been her style. She clenched her teeth and fists in her anger and hissed out, "You'll pay for that, Hebert!"
"That's about as likely as you three paying for everything you've done to me, Emma." I said sadly and left.
I went home from the scene and left a note telling Dad I was out for a walk, which was true. I did neglect to tell him I was going to the Boat Graveyard to practice my powers, but that was pretty much par for the course these days. Dad and I were somewhat estranged thanks to Dad all but going into a coma after Mum died.
The Boat Graveyard took up a nice chunk of the northern docks area and it was the perfect place to test out my powers to see if any were offensive or defensive. Strange noises and the like came from this area all the time, so I wasn't worried about being discovered. Just in case though, I wore a balaclava to hide my identity.
Running down my list, I found that singing like Canary did nothing that I could see, but I did find a way to mute an area. All I had to do was walk around a room (or cargo hold), talking as I did so with one hand on the wall and the whole room became soundproof.
Perfect for heavy sound testing.
I discovered that my primary method of offence was a sonic shriek of some kind. I could modulate it so it could vary between lightly pushing a crate along the ground to reducing self-same crate to splinters. I could build it up before releasing it, turning it from a sonic shriek into a kind of sonic cannon, powerful enough to dent solid steel after only ten seconds of build-up.
As a direct result of finding out about these facts, I discovered I was immune to my own power; none of the shrieks I let out were harming my eardrums whatsoever.
I experimented with altering my voice, and found I could make myself sound like anyone. I flashed between Dad, Emma, Mr Gladly, Armsmaster and a couple of other people that I knew.
After getting stuck with trying to create things using sound, I got frustrated and jumped on the spot. When I didn't land, I saw a pair of Ω-shaped wings on my back. I zoomed around the cargo bay, giggling like a loon. I had always wanted to be an Alexandria-type Cape, mainly because she was the only female member of the Triumvirate, but also because flying was a cool extra power that that type of cape had commonly.
A bit of experimentation taught me that I could make the wings emit sounds or even music as I flew. I amused myself by flying around the cargo bay to the sound of Wagner's Walkürenritt and the Earth Aleph soundtrack of Superman.
Returning to earth (or the deck), I discovered I could mute any sound that I made. The rustle of clothes, the sound of my hair, steps on the ground…all of it utterly muted. Useful.
After running through a few more ideas that didn't work, I started to make my way back home. It was dawning on me that I was a Parahuman now and that I had the chance to do some good in Brockton Bay; maybe push the gangs back in the Docks area across the bay, give Dad's Dockworker's Union some relief.
First things first, however; costume and name.
A Month Later
Putting together a costume for being a hero is not easy, unless you happen to be rich.
Fortunately, I happened across a boarded up costume shop near the edge of the Boat Graveyard that I immediately annexed as my base. It was in the little demilitarised zone between the ABB and Empire 88 territories, so it should be safe from patrols and the like so long as I'm careful. Whoever had owned the shop had apparently left in a hurry, leaving internal doors wide open and money still in the cash register. The place was full of dust, so it had to have been abandoned for at least a few years. Checking the address out online revealed that it had belonged to a man who had mysteriously disappeared at the same time as an indie hero called Wolf Star had been killed by Lung. His family had left the Bay for parts unknown after that.
They had left behind all sorts of Halloween costumes and masks, so I was spoilt for choice. I decided that the first thing to do was to tidy the place up a bit, so I could walk around and not have a coughing fit from the dust getting disturbed.
The shop included a small apartment upstairs, which was also abandoned, and a basement apartment, which was in need of serious cleaning. The whole shebang took me three weeks to clean, which I am religiously hoping will not happen again.
It was when I was cleaning the basement that I stumbled across what must have been Wolf Star's hidden base. Not entirely sensible to hide the entrance to your hideout in the basement of your own house, but maybe it was just an emergency escape hatch for his family or something? Whatever.
The base was two levels deep, with a couple of other entrances going out into the sewers and an abandoned building, obviously intended for stealthy exiting. Wolf Star had been a Tinker, but he's also had the power to control earth, a useful Shaker ability. Presumably he'd used the latter power to dig out this base, and then Tinkered his way about it until it was locked up tighter than a drum.
New plan; take over this place. Problem was, the power was out and I was no Tinker. I was walking around the place, looking for something that might be a possible power source when I spotted a large room with a big lever on one wall.
It had a hazard strip around it and a sign above it emblazoned with 'Main Power Switch' in big block capitals.
Suspicious.
Why would a Tinker leave a big lever like that lying around when they could use whatever device that their kind of weird techno skills that they had to turn it on and off. This just screamed obvious booby trap.
Making a mental not to see to that room, I ignored it and headed into another room that had all the vibes of a command centre of some sort. A big table in the centre, computer consoles all over the place, the works. One was elevated and I presumed that that meant it was the command console.
Trotting up to it, I scanned the buttons, of which one was lit. With none of the other buttons looking likely, I pressed it.
Immediately, a whirring groan came from somewhere and all the lights, inactive until now, flickered into life. The screens powered up and the logo of Wolf Star, a snarling wolf in mid-leap atop a yellow starburst, appeared on them.
"System Online." A mellow baritone said from the speakers. "Identify yourself intruder."
"How'd you know I wasn't your creator?" I asked curiously.
"My creator's marriage partner shut me down in tears, so I can presume that something untoward happened to him." the voice –an AI?- replied.
"Wolf Star was murdered by Lung, the Dragon of Kyushu, almost four years ago." I said carefully.
"I…see." The voice said sadly, "Now, please identify yourself or I will be forced to incapacitate you."
A turret lowered itself from a hole in the ceiling. It had an odd looking weapon on it and it was pointing at me!
"I am a recently Triggered Parahuman." I said carefully. I was very grateful I had looked up terminology for how Parahumans received their powers, "I want to be a hero, so I was looking for a place to use as a hideout and I found the abandoned shop upstairs…"
"…which led to you discovering the entrance to this complex." The AI finished for me, "Very well. For now, I will treat you as a guest hero. I am Quirinus, the AI in charge of this complex. What should I address you as?"
I smirked at that. "Call me Sound Bite."
So yes, she is a broad-spectrum sound-user, as well as having a more flexible and powerful version of Triumph's power, without the Brute rating. For all those interesting in the second chapters, I'll be starting on them once I finish the list I have of powers that I'm interested in writing for Taylor. Seven more to go…
Mover: 3 (Able to create wings made of sound to fly at high speeds.)
Blaster: 5 (Able to fire sonic shrieks from her mouth at varying intensities. Able to charge up the shrieks into a sonic cannon of considerable power. The sound thus emitted by either shriek or cannon can be modified to cause more damage to any inorganic material so long as Taylor knows what it is.)
Shaker: 3 (Able to create an area where the sound if muffled. No sounds can be heard from without or within the barrier. Immune to any and all backlash from her own sound-based powers. When flying, can broadcast and music or noise she knows across a wide area via them. Able to broadcast her voice over a large area.)
Thinker: 5 (Able to use a form of echolocation using sounds not of her creation. Able to modulate her voice's tone and pitch to sound like anyone. Able to see sound as a coloured wave, which also allows her to see the emotion behind what the person is saying. Can also tell when someone is lying via this power. Can induce headaches if in a large crowd of people lying. Instinctively knows the rhythm of soundwaves and can tell the origin of all sounds that she can hear, as well as roughly where they came from.)
Stranger: 3 (Able to voluntarily muffle and neutralise any and all noises she makes.)