When you think of powers, you think of lasers and hulking brutes, of flashy and obvious powers. It stands to reason, doesn't it? Powers like Lady Photon's or Miss Militia's

My power…yeah, let's just say that it isn't like that.

December 15th, 2010

Winslow Highschool

My story begins, as most do on Earth Bet, with violence. Leviathan showed up out of nowhere, completely out of whack with the system that the PRT had worked out for the attacks that the Endbringers carried out. There was no warning; no time to run. One minute, I was enduring the usual bullshit from the Bitch Trio, the next I was waking up in a hollow made of rebar, concrete, fallen lockers and dead bodies, with several soaking wet and terrified students, including Emma, one of the Three Bitches, around me.

On the upside, Sophia and Madison were gone. Dead or missing, I didn't give a hoot.

On the downside, I still had to deal with Emma. Oh well.

I made my way out of the wreck that was Winslow Highschool, dodging falling masonry and crumbling walls as if I had a sixth sense of where not to step. The assorted girls and boys followed me like lost lambs, which was ironic considering they had considered themselves oh-so superior to me just…how long ago was it? My watch had smashed and there were still clouds covering the sky from Leviathan's presence.

Once we were out, I turned to see the group that had followed me. "Anyone still have your cell phone?"

Four of them, including Emma, raised their hands.

"Call your parents and find out if they're OK." I told them, "Then give them to the rest so they can find out."

"What about you?" one person questioned.

"My Mom is dead and Dad works…worked at the Dockworker's Union." I answered quietly, "Their office was right on the edge of the Docks…where Leviathan came from. He's…he's almost certainly dead."

Don't break. Don't cry. Don't let them see you hurting. Don't give them the satisfaction.

"Oh…" the boy looked stricken, "S-Sorry…"

I shook my head and looked around. The school was a total write off. Most of it had been smashed flat, with just the section we'd been in still anything approaching intact. The buildings around the school ground were pretty much totalled as well. Had Leviathan physically walked through this area?

Seeing some honking great footprints nearby, the answer was decidedly yes.

A few minutes later, Alan Barnes' expensive car screeched into the parking lot and the man himself threw himself out of the vehicle to crush Emma in a bear hug. I smirked at her slightly mortified expression.

"Emma! Thank god!" Alan yelled.

"Daaaaad!" my tormentor whined.

"I think he has a right to be worried, Emma." I put in sweetly, "Considering Leviathan walked by here himself."

"Taylor?" Mr Barnes looked over at me, "You're alive too!"

"Just lucky." I shrugged, "What time is it? Last I checked it was just after lunch and then I'm waking up in rubble."

"Leviathan was here yesterday, Taylor." Mr Barnes said carefully.

My eyes bugged out of my head, with the rest of the survivors not a moment behind me. "I was knocked out for over a day?!"

"We were." One girl I didn't recognise corrected me, "I was the first to wake up and that was no more than an hour ago."

"Holy shit." I said, Emma nodding in dumb agreement with me. "How the hell…?"

"No clue." Mr Barnes shook his head. "A trip to the hospital might be in order…once all this quietens down."

I looked out at the city and doubted it would be quiet in Brockton Bay for quite some time. Looking at Alan Barnes, I asked the one question that had been burning in my mind since I saw him.

"Mr Barnes…my Dad…is he…?"

Alan shook his head. "He's alive, Taylor. He was in a meeting with the mayor at the time, and most of the Dockworkers were at the train yard when Leviathan struck."

I felt myself go limp with relief. He was alive. My Dad was still alive. Thank god.

I shook myself out of my stupor. "Thank you." I said softly.

"No problems." Alan smiled, "Now, what say we get you home? Danny's gone out of his mind with worry since yesterday…not that I was much better."

He had kept hugging Emma the entire time and she was wriggling in order to try and escape his grip.

"Having fun, Emma?" I asked with a smirk.

"Oh, shut up, Taylor!" the redheaded pain in my ass huffed.

A Week Later

The last week as been…hectic, to say the least. Leviathan had taken the entire world off guard with his second attack in two months, which had sent Thinkers the world over into a tizzy. In the meantime donations had been sent in to help get the Bay back on its feet.

Surprisingly enough, Lung, the Dragon of Kyushu, had been instrumental in driving off the beast that destroyed Kyushu. He had evidently taken the attack of Leviathan personally and had ramped up to the size of the monster in seconds of engaging in combat with him. The tussle between them had apparently been epic, if brief, and Lung had thrown the second oldest Endbringer out of the Bay, stormed after him and then really gone to town on the bastard. Enough so that Leviathan had retreated after five minutes of it.

Everyone now knew: do not fuck with Lung. Because he is LUNG.

Why they underestimated him before, I have no clue. He is the only Parahuman on the planet to have successfully faced down an Endbringer on anything like an even keel before and walked away from it. Underestimating someone like that, even after years of indolence, was nothing if not foolhardy.

One of the good things to come from the basic levelling of a good half of Brockton Bay, including Winslow, was that Sophia Hess was confirmed to be dead. She had been electrocuted about a block from Winslow by a falling power cable. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person.

Madison was, surprisingly enough, still alive. She had had a length of metal through one leg and was in the hospital. As for Emma…

Well, I was in her bedroom right now. Dad was talking with Alan about something and he'd brought me to see my 'best friend' while the adults were talking.

She was sitting on her bed, legs and arms crossed stiffly and pointedly not looking in my direction. I was leaning against the door with my arms crossed. After ten solid minutes of this, I had had enough.

"Emma, this is getting stupid." I sighed, "I want the truth. Why have you been doing all of this crap to me and what did Sophia have to do with it?"

Looking unnerved because of my directness, Emma stammered out, "I-I don't know…what you're talking about."

"Bull. Shit." I said flatly, making her jerk in surprise. I usually don't swear unless I'm emotional, which she well knew, so she could tell that I was being serious right now. "I go away to Summer Camp, call you and get cut-off halfway through talking to you and the next thing I know when I get back, you're all over Hess like a love-struck lesbian and spouting the same strong are predators, weak are prey bullcrap that she spouted. It does not take a genius to join the dots. Now I'll ask nicely one last time…what. The Fuck. Happened to you?"

I had walked as I spoke, until I towered in front of her. Emma wasn't short, exactly. Rather, I was just a fairly tall girl. In times like this, being tall was something of an advantage. It gives an intimidation factor.

Looking up at me, Emma gulped but refused to say anything.

With a light push of my hand, I sent her sprawling on the bed before I straddled her waist and pinned her hands to either side of her head. She feebly struggled, but not seriously. She knew I wasn't going to budge until she spoke up.

"Hess is dead." I told her softly, "If she was threatening you or your family, you don't have to worry about that anymore."

That, for some reason, made Emma laugh, in a slightly unhinged way. "You've got it all wrong, Tay…she saved my life. Dad's too." She said once she calmed down a bit.

She then told me the whole story. How she had been attacked by members of the ABB, how she had fought back and been saved by Shadow Stalker…by Sophia Hess. Most of all, how she had latched onto Sophia as a lifeline following almost getting her eye cut out by the sadistic gang members. How she had taken Sophia's stupid survival of the fittest philosophy and had tried to 'purge her weak past,' including me.

"Emma…you idiot." I said slowly and in disbelief, "She fucking brainwashed you. She messed with your mind and brought you down to her level…almost."

"Sh-she didn't…!" my possibly still-friend protested, "Whu-what do you mean 'almost'?"

"Then why haven't you thrown out any of the things I've given you over the years?" I said, nodding at the cuddly animals lined up next to the window. I had also spotted several friendship bracelets and other handmade knickknack jewellery that I'd made for her over the years on her vanity table. "You know what I think? I think that, no matter how much you said wanted to cut me off, excise me, or whatever the hell she had you thinking, you just couldn't bring yourself to do it. You've known me and I've known you for so long that the good memories have to outweigh the bad. They were a source of strength for you. What were you thinking when you fought back against the ABB?"

"I…" Emma hesitated, "I…didn't want to die, I…I wanted to…see you again..!"

With that, she started to cry. Finally, she allowed herself to break down, to let the sorrow and anguish she had forced down since that incident over a year ago free.

I got off her and cuddled her as she cried. Admitting that had been hard, I knew. But at least she was finally bleeding off the stress, anger and hate that had been filling her up like poison. Now she could begin to heal.

A Week Later

In the week that had followed on from Emma's admission of why she had been a Grade-A bitch to me for most of a year, things had changed between us yet again. Too much had passed between us for us to recapture the childhood friendship that we had once shared, yet, with the death of the one who had caused us to be at each other's throats in the first place, things had started to heal between us.

I didn't know if things between us would ever be as they were before. I didn't know if they could. Emma had, regardless of how or why, done some awful things to me and that could never be undone.

What made things between us better was something we had both been hiding from one another; the fact that both of us had gained Parahuman powers. Emma, irritatingly enough, had gained the ability to create what she called 'shadow golems' from darkness that poured from her hands. None of them could be larger than she was, but with a bit of imagination (and my help) she had a positive posse to draw upon in a pinch.

Me? I gained the ability to make traps appear. No, you did not mishear me. I make traps appear. With a bit of testing, I found out that my limit was four blocks in all directions. Yes, even up or down.

The traps could be made of physical things or a mental trap, which kind of worried me. Master-class Capes were looked upon with suspicion and distaste by most people. Thanks a lot Heartbreaker.

The physical traps, once Emma and I made one out of nowhere and pulled it apart, were greatly dependent on what I wanted. If I wanted a way to make people slip, it might give me a device that made the surface above it frictionless. There again, it might choose the good-old-fashioned oil slick route. One time it even generated a banana peel.

I rapidly came to the conclusion that my power was a snarky bastard.

As I said, my power could make any kind of trap I could imagine, and plant it wherever I wanted within my radius of effect. Exploring this, I discovered that I got some kind of crude 3-D mental map of the radius that I had, with glowing points indicating the traps I had set up. I could also dismiss my traps on a whim, so long as they were within my range, and they automatically dismissed themselves once their effect was used up.

The exceptions were the capture traps. Cages, snares, pits…that sort of thing. Only once the trapped person was released could they be dismissed. A safety feature, at a guess.

I also had lethal traps. Lasers, Masers, Grasers, arrows, poison gas…you name it, I could make it. It made me go pale when I realised I could turn four blocks into a literal death-trap zone.

My 3-D map also showed me where any and all traps set up were, even ones I didn't make. It was how I had escaped Winslow, avoiding the possible cave-in scenarios by treating the place as one giant trapped location, albeit subconsciously.

I had trapped the area around our house, as well as Emma's place, as the gangs, the parts of them that were left over, were starting to fight over the scraps again, although it was interesting to note that they did not rip off the Red Cross convoys and deliveries. Or even the warehouses that were used to store the relief goods. Looks like even the gangs knew better than to bite the hand that feeds them.

Speaking of, the gangs had been hit hard. Lung, obviously, was OK, but Oni Lee was dead. Killed in his sleep. His own fault for sleeping during the day, if you ask me. Victor, Rune and Cricket of the Empire were dead, as was Mush of the Merchants. Coil, a two-bit villain by all accounts, had been squashed by Leviathan after the Endbringer smashed his hidden base to pieces. The entire gang of villains known as the Travellers were also dead, aside from Sundancer, who had joined Faultline's Crew to replace Gregor the Snail, who had been the Crew's only casualty.

Because of the state of the Bay, there had been signs of old enemies showing up. The Teeth, led by Butcher XIV, had shown up, swiftly followed by Accord's Ambassadors. The city was going to go down a bloodier path than ever before it got better.

A good thing two new heroes were going to take to the streets soon. Shadowmancer and Ensare were going to change things.

Unlike a few of my other ficlets, this isn't really based on any character or whatever. I just figured, hell, wouldn't it be interesting to take a power than seems rear-echelon and turn it into a front-line power? Especially with the Queen of Escalation at the helm. Some might argue that she earns a Tinker rating here, but I disagree. She doesn't make them herself by hand; she imagines an outcome and her power creates something to accomplish it. Yes, even a lowly banana peel.

A lot of people don't like Emma-redemption fics, but I do. At least, ones where it happens before The Locker. Afterwards, no way in hell. Before that though, there is a chance. Say what you like, I do like redeeming people that deserve it.

Shaker: 8 (Possesses the ability to create, control and dismiss traps within a four block radius. The technology varies from basic snares, tripwires and pits to lasers, teleportation grids and electric cages. The creation is instantaneous and they can be placed anywhere within the radius of her control. The traps do not vanish once they leave the radius of her control, but follow the activation criterion given to them, whether that is pressure-plate, tripwire or what have you.)

Thinker: 5 (Possesses the ability to sense any and all traps inside of her radius of control, whether they are her own traps or someone else's. Even natural traps or accidently created manmade traps count. Ambushes by ordinary humans or Capes do not register, however.)