Taylor Hebert walked out of Winslow in a decidedly foul mood. Being made the butt-monkey of the entire damn school was not her idea of fun, especially when one of the ringleaders was her ex-best friend.

Emma Barnes had been a sister in all but blood to her and had somehow turned into her worst nightmare over a year and a half ago. The bullying and soul destroying had culminated in The Locker Incident two months ago. Ironically, it had given her Parahuman powers, which would have severely pissed off Emma and Sophia. Ironically, Madison had never said she wanted powers and was actually slightly scared of Capes of all flavours.

Today, Sophia and her minions had tried to soak her in juice. Fortunately for Taylor, part of her powerset was a minor ability to alter probability in her favour, so she had made Sophia and Madison drop their bottles of juice on themselves. That had made them go away to dry off, amid dire threats from the pair of them. Emma had stuck around to make some more comments about how pathetic Taylor was before following her friends.

'I will figure out what the hell is up with Emma becoming such a bitch at some point.' The bespectacled girl swore as she got onto the bus headed home, 'But for now…I have other things to do.'

Later

Abandoned Building Near Taylor's House

Becoming a hero, Taylor mused, wasn't just about having cool powers. It was also about public relations, although not to the extent that the PRT and Protectorate seemed to take things. Useless amounts of publicity, precious little actual crime fighting going on.

Take her costume. She was dressed in a snazzy light purple outfit; long and flexible purple trousers, an aqua turtleneck shirt with a purple flight jacket over it and a dark purple cape attached to the jacket at the shoulders. She also wore black pumps on her feet, a purple half-face mask and a wide-brimmed fedora-like hat to complete the look. Her hair was tied back in a braid that kept it out of the way.

All in all, she looked…dapper, she supposed.

Aside from her probability manipulation abilities, Taylor had a scattering of other powers. She was what people on PHO referred to as a 'grab-bag' cape, otherwise known as 'wannabe Eidolons' to the more snobby Cape Chasers who viewed her type of powerset as weak, and she could, to be fair, see why they would think so.

She was a Tinker, who seemed to have the specialty of 'customised and personalised crime fighting gear', which meant that only she could use the things she built. That had been tested and proven when she accidentally left an invention of hers out in the open at her house and her Dad had picked it up, been unable to use it and thrown it in the bin.

Taylor had been a lot more careful after that. And speaking of her inventions…

She picked up a belt, coloured multiple shades of purple, and slipped it on. The clasp at the front was marked with her new identity's initials that came together with a solid click as they met. The belt contained all the little tools of the trade that she might need, from a medical kit to zip-ties made of a special polymer that was greatly resilient against knives and other sharp objects.

She had kept well away from junkyards when she had been gathering her materials. It didn't take a genius to see that the gangs and the PRT would be watching them for aspiring Tinkers scavenging for parts. Instead, she had engaged in some grey-area housebreaking, otherwise known as breaking into abandoned and derelict houses and scrounging around for parts there. It really was surprising what hidden treasures people left behind when they moved house or the like.

Moving to her worktable, she picked up her gun and examined it. It was purple, as most of her things turned out to be, and looked more like a toy gun than anything else. It was in fact a gas gun, able to fire canisters of different types of gas at the enemy. It also stored all of the ammo in a sort of hammerspace pocket inside the main housing of the gun, and Taylor didn't have a clue how it worked.

Spinning it around, she shoved it into the holster at the small of her back before striding over to her pièce de résistance, the Ratcatcher, as she had coined it. A motorbike really strained the definition of 'crime fighting gear', but as she needed a way to get to and from the main part of the city, she had managed, somehow. The bike was, you guessed it, purple and had secret compartments bristling with things that might be useful, especially if she ever dealt with Squealer, the Merchant's Tinker.

It ran on solar energy batteries that were charged during the day, or even the night thanks to moonlight being just very weak reflected sunlight, and had almost no exhaust fumes. What little that was emitted was reduced as much as was possible.

"Let's get dangerous!" She purred as she swung a leg over her bike before roaring out into the night.

Later

Brockton Bay Docks

"Lonnie, Paulie, c'mon!" Steve hissed. The man had spent a couple of days canvasing the warehouse he was currently in and had figured out that there was no night watchman and that the security system was so outdated that a geriatric gerbil could get around it. Having determined all of that, plus making sure none of the three big gangs had anything to do with the ownership or contents of the warehouse, he had enlisted his two friends to help break in and steal from it.

The only problem was that his two friends were Grade-A morons. They were stumbling around like drunken sailors and arguing about who got what loot.

"But Stevie!" Paulie whined. The boy was almost twenty, built like a linebacker, but unfortunately hadn't seemed to have aged mentally since middle school. He was lazy, greedy, immature and got on Steve's nerves a lot of the time, but he was also his oldest friend and had his back a lot of the time.

"No, we divide the loot after we get it away!" Steve snarled quietly, "No, shut it! Grab the damn crate and get moving! Lonnie, that goes for you too!"

"Yeah." Lonnie nodded dully.

Steve wondered for a moment what evils he had committed in a past life to get saddled with these two intellectual dwarves. Steve wasn't a genius by any means, but Lonnie and Paulie were most definitely on the bare cusp of sentience. Seriously, he was carrying the can here for all three of them.

"Hey, what's all the smoke?" Lonnie asked a moment later.

'Please don't tell me that these two idiots managed to set something on fire!' the suffering leader of the trio prayed to whatever deity that was watching as he turned around. Then he frowned.

A purple cloud of…something was leaking in through the open side door that they had forced open to gain entry. It wasn't smoke, but other than that, he had no clue what it was.

Suddenly, from behind him, he heard a dark cackle, making him spin around and raise the crowbar he had in his hand, just as an explosion of the purple smoke appeared a few feet away.

"I am the terror that flaps in the night!" the laughing voice boomed, making all three of the teens in the warehouse step back automatically.

"I am the watchman that never sleeps!" a vague outline appeared in the smoke and stepped forward, making Steve start to hyperventilate.

'Ohshitohshitohshit!'

"I am Darkwing!" the Cape proclaimed as she dramatically flared her actual cape, "Now then boys; are we going to do this the easy way or the real easy way?"

Something I wanted to try. Reviews please!

Mover: 3 (Able to teleport up to ten meters in any direction. When exiting the teleport, she unleashes a large cloud of purple gas beforehand, which is harmless and is generally speaking for dramatic effect.)

Shaker: 3 (Possesses two types of probability manipulation. The first type is controlled consciously and increases the chances of her enemies making mistakes that benefit her or acting stupidly. The second type is controlled subconsciously and manipulates probability to decrease the chance of her getting hurt by either her own actions or her enemies or even pure happenstance.)

Tinker: 2 (Specialty: Customisable and personalised crime fighting equipment, weapons and, at a stretch, vehicles) (Carries sub-ratings of Mover 2, Blaster 1, Brute 1 and Thinker 3)