At My Fingertips Chapter 2 (original chapter Chapter 25)

The Next Day

Director Piggot's Office, PRT Building, Brockton Bay

Emily Piggot was generally not known for her tolerance of Parahumans who broke the law and abused their powers in her jurisdiction. This went doubly so for the rare occasion that a Parahuman 'hero' abused their powers. So you might imagine her reaction to the revelation that Shadow Stalker had bullied a girl for fifteen months solid without so much as a peep getting back up the chain of command. Not to mention the fact that the victim had hired Carol Dallon to investigate the case.

And now, with Sophia Hess having escaped from Juvenile Detention with the intent to commit triple murder, only to be beaten down by her bullying victim, she was even less happy.

"How did she escape from her cuffs?!" she demanded of Armsmaster and Miss Militia.

The Tinker shifted. "It was struck numerous times with a heavy object. Probably a rock or a stone. I have started to manufacture a far sturdier version that will not be nearly so easy for her to escape from, using some metals that Dragon has suggested."

"Good." Piggot nodded. "Miss Militia. You were first on the scene yesterday. You interviewed the girl and did research on her self-defense lessons today. Is it possible that she accomplished the defeat of Shadow Stalker without Parahuman powers?"

"Hess was -and is- very arrogant, Director." The Kurdish-American woman replied evenly. "She looks down on Miss Hebert, considers her very much beneath notice, in fact. Miss Hebert, I believe, is a highly driven individual who was weak before and has decided to become stronger physically in order that she never be put in the same position again. Her teachers in self-defense have noted that she is a quick learner and a hard worker. In all likelihood, the combination of Hess' contempt towards Miss Hebert, and Miss Hebert's newfound training in self-defense, combined together to lead to Hess' defeat. I sincerely doubt that Miss Hebert is any kind of Parahuman, otherwise she would have used her powers during this incident."

"Very well." Piggot nodded before looking sour. "And Brandish?"

"She is basically demanding an out of court settlement for the Heberts if we don't want another case plastered over the media." Armsmaster grumbled. "That isn't something we can endure again, Director."

"Our budget cannot take the payout." Piggot snapped back. "The Chief Director has made it clear that any payouts will come entirely from our own budgets and we are underfunded as it is!"

Lapsing into silence, the corpulent woman grimaced. "Arrange a meeting with Brandish and Mr. Hebert. We have to try and negotiate with them in order to salvage SOMETHING from this mess."

With Taylor Hebert

Hebert Home

Flexing my hand, I concentrated again and it faded slightly. Not into shadow, but just into intangibility. I had come home from the PRT Building and started experimenting with the power I had discovered this morning; I could make any single body part of mine intangible.

It had answered a question of mine, that being: is it only Striker effects that I can copy or is it ANY power? The intangibility only lasted about half a minute, but that was enough to be useful as a defense, if nothing else. I'd have to watch out for electrical attacks, as Hess had been weak to them, according to what I had observed from the special cuffs Miss Militia had used yesterday.

This lead to my conundrum…I had ALSO touched both Miss Militia and Armsmaster today, simply by shaking their hands. Armsmaster was a no-go, as he never had any exposed skin for me to touch, but Miss Militia? She wore fingerless gloves. Hell yeah, I had touched her skin.

What worried me was that my copied powers tended to be very much weaker than their originals, or at least a lot more limited. Miss Militia, according to her page on PHO, could 'create a green energy that could be used to create a multitude of weaponry' or so it said. If my version of her power was a great deal weaker than hers, or at least more restricted in what it could make, then I had better choose what I made carefully.

As I had a gun with reasonably easy access, I had tried to make that while staring at it, but nope, no gun in hand for me. I had found a picture of a WWII British Commando Knife online and tried that…and it worked. Which led me to trying to manifest two at once. Again, it had worked.

More experimentation later and I found my limit was ten kinds of knives. Not exactly a sterling arsenal compared to Miss Militia and her walking armoury, but it was something at least. Also, the energy wasn't green for me…it was silver. Why, I don't know, but whatever.

This led me to considering what I could do with my current skills, which wasn't a lot. I had Panacea's biomonitoring power, a weak version of Shadow Stalker's shadow form and a much more limited version of Miss Militia's weapon creation power. This wasn't mentioning my original psychometry power as well.

From my instructors, I had learned pretty much all of their skills at self-defense using my power. Sophia had been a treasure trove of information about all of her illicit stores of crossbows and live ammo, as well as knives, money and how to use and maintain her crossbow. I knew how to shoot a gun from touching the one that Dad owned, but only regarding shooting at stationary targets.

All in all, it was a pretty limited and scattered repertoire to be a hero with, especially as I didn't want to tip Dad off about the fact that I was planning on becoming a Hero. This required some thought…

Three Days Later

Shop, Brockton Bay

Sometimes, I had to wonder about how shitty my life was going to end up. Had I pissed a god off in another life or something?

I had just been shopping for food when three Merchants had busted in, drugged up to the eyeballs, and started waving pistols around and demanding money from everyone. Seriously? They were knocking over a small grocery store? What next, taking candy from babies?

"Hey, here's a girl!" one called to his friends and pointing at me.

"A bit o' candy and she'll be up for some fun." One smirked lewdly.

Goosebumps ran up my spine. They were planning on drugging me and using me as a sex toy? Oh hell no. Fuck this shit. Better dead than a druggie whore.

I sprang into action, smashing my knee into the first man's groin, then, as he screamed and grabbed at his abused balls, I grabbed his gun arm and made him shoot at his friends, hitting one in the arm.

"BITCH!" the last one shouted as his friend fell to the ground, clutching his shoulder and crying like a baby. He raised his weapon, but I brained him with a can of peas just as the pistol reached his shoulder's height. He staggered back and two of the watching people, who had gaped at me actually fighting back, shook themselves from their stupor, tackled the man and wrestled the gun from him.

"Someone call the police!" I shouted as I manhandled the first Merchant, still cradling his junk, next to his friends. As I did so, I quickly ran through his past, grabbing the current locations of Merchant bases and any useful skills that he possessed that didn't involve drugging people or cooking up said drugs.

"Already done." The shop owner said with a wavering sigh.

Later

Taylor's Room, Hebert Home

Dealing with Merchants? No problem. Dealing with an overprotective father on steroids? That was a whole other beast.

It had taken me forever to point out the statistical improbability of that happening in the first place, never mind the possibility of it happening again, to him. He had eventually calmed down and said that at least I wasn't in trouble.

For whatever reason, all of the people at the shop had said that the second Merchant had been shot by the accidental discharge of the first's gun; and that there was no footage on CCTV because the tapes were being changed.

It felt kinda nice that the people there were protecting me from possible legal action. Heck, I'd been acting in my own self-defense, so it was nice to have people looking out for me.

Dad, of course, had the full story and was pissed at me for 'risking myself' like that. He had sung a completely different tune when I had told him what they had been planning on doing to me. His current attitude was 'I'm pissed that you did that, but I'm glad that you did it too' kinda thing.

Fathers!

As to the knowledge that I'd extracted from the Merchant druggie, I now knew where four drug labs, ten stashes of drugs, three safe houses and several other interesting locations were in Brockton Bay. I also now knew the bare bones of how to wield a knife and a few pointers on using a gun. Not much, but the guy I'd taken the information from wasn't exactly as John Wayne in a Western.

I was now preparing to sneak out and pillage the shit out of the Merchant money stashes I knew about. I'd leave an anonymous tip with the BBPD about the drug labs because, for the moment, there was no possible way in hell I was going to single-handedly storm or infiltrate a drug lab without getting myself killed.

Outfit-wise, I was wearing black. Cliché, I know, but what works, works. After experimenting for the last three days, I had discovered that I did not require actual skin to skin contact for my psychometry to work; I merely required that any material between me and the target I was attempting to 'read' was thin. About the same thickness as rubber washing gloves or perhaps a smidgeon thicker was my limit for the moment. That's why I had spray-painted a set of ordinary rubber gloves black earlier on today.

Black trousers and t-shirt, with a black jacket and a balaclava ready to pull down, with my hair tied into a plait behind me, I was ready to go out. Dad was definitely asleep; I had made Mom's Recipe lasagna to calm him down and he always slept well whenever he ate it.

Sneaking out of my house wasn't something I had ever made a habit of doing before, but it was actually easier than I had thought. Jump down to the garage roof beneath my window and then drop down to the ground from that. Easy as pi.

The nearest Merchant place to my house was a drug lab, so I'd avoid it. That left a storehouse of sorts just a little way away. In a surprisingly sensible decision for the druggies, they kept their drugs in separate locations from their money and weapons. The one I was heading to was a weapons storehouse that, according to the memories of the drug addict I'd taken them from, was lightly guarded by only three Merchants tonight. Well, lightly for a given value of the word, considering they were armed with Uzis.

Still, it was the most vulnerable of all of the Merchant's places, and they were not the most competent of guards. When I arrived, one was out cold, one was in the middle of snorting a line and the other was in a daze, probably in a transition between consciousness and unconsciousness due to their drugs.

The place they were in was a standard, albeit abandoned, apartment. A bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. They were a in a decoy apartment. The actual weapon storage place was three doors over. Sadly, it was also watched via CCTV in the decoy apartment, so I'd have to do something about that. Fortunately for me, it didn't take long for the three morons to all be conked out on the floor.

That being the case, after pulling down my balaclava, I entered via an open window, went to the CCTV setup, which was really rather nice, and disabled it, removing the drive and throwing it down the toilet of the apartment. Hopefully, the idiots would think that they had done it.

Palming the key to the place, I snuck out of the decoy and to the actual storehouse. Getting in was easy…and oh boy, either the Merchants were planning something big or they were better funded and equipped than the scuttlebutt on PHO made them out to be. The apartment was full to bursting with semi-automatic rifles, handguns, revolvers, grenades, RPG's, ammo for all of the above and even a goddamn sea mine for some reason!

I just had to facepalm at the sight of it. Why? What possible use could a gang of druggies have for a mine made specifically to sink ships at sea?

No, no, Taylor…keep it calm…it's only a fucking mine, just keep yourself calm. Phew.

OK, panic over…let's get to looting.

I grabbed two handguns as a start, along with ten magazines of ammo. I also grabbed a backpack to carry all of it in. The next item on my 'shopping list' was flashbangs. The Merchants never used any, so why they had ten crates of them was beyond me. Ah well…they won't miss a dozen or so.

Out of the corner of my eye, I also caught sight of a bulletproof vest, which I threw in as well. As the last piece, I chose a six-shooter because…well, it looks cool.

Looting completed, I contemplated what to do with the rest of it. No way was I gonna leave it here for the Merchants to use. I could call it in to the BBPD, but would it even be acted on? It isn't as if this place was all that hidden and the memories of the druggie told me it was kind of an open secret that the Merchants had a place in this building. What to do…?

As I left the place fifteen minutes later, walking down the fire escape, I smirked. A quick recon had shown that the Merchants were the only ones in this building, or at least on the three floors above and below the weapons storage apartment, anyway. So, I'd figured out a quick and easy way to rig an explosion in the place involving a candle (which they actually had for some reason. Why?), string, a weight and a single grenade. It was set up so that when the candle burned through the string, it would pull the pin from a grenade, which would hopefully set off a chain reaction and demolish the apartment and its contents.

Strangely enough, I felt absolutely no guilt about any of this whatsoever…not the breaking and entering, not the stealing and certainly not the arson and/or illegal use of military grade ordinance inside a city that I was planning. Strange.

I was several blocks away, raiding one of Shadow Stalker's stores of supplies when I heard the explosion. Whirling around, I whistled at the size of the explosion. As I had anticipated, it hadn't hit the Merchants' decoy apartment…at least, I don't think it did…and I could almost see the three morons being jerked awake by their bosses demanding to know what the hell was going on and why their very expensive stash of weapons was a blasted ruin.

I nodded approvingly and went back to stealing Sophia's hard-earned cash and ammo, even as the sirens shrieked and the police and fire services screamed towards the apartment block, which was now on fire.

The Next Day

Kitchen, Hebert Home

"Morning, Dad." I said from the stove as he stumbled into the room. "Paper's on your place at the table."

"Thanks, kiddo." He rumbled, blinking blearily. He was never a morning person when he had a deep sleep.

After having a couple of cups of coffee, he was awake enough to read the headlines of the paper, which screamed about an explosion at an apartment block, with 'sources' within the BBPD confirming that it had been a cache of weapons belonging to the Archer's Bridge Merchants. There had been no fatalities and not one wounded 'miraculously' due to the abandoned state of the building.

"Jeez, these bastards must have had a lot of hardware stored up for that kind of effect." Dad said in disbelief as he looked at the picture of a massive hole in the side of the apartment building. "It says here that a sea mine was discovered three floors down…lucky that it was empty."

"Wait, a sea mine?" I asked with barely feigned disbelief. I still had no idea why they had one. For the internal explosives, maybe? "As in an actual mine intended to sink ships?"

"Yup." My Dad confirmed, equally as baffled as I was. "Wonder where the heck they got one from? It isn't as if they're just lying around in junkyards."

Shrugging, I placed his breakfast in front of him and then grabbed my own. "So what's the plan for today?"

"I'm going to see about transferring you to Arcadia." Dad said grimly. "The PRT wants to meet me and Brandish today. As she predicted, they're way too underfunded to pay out and way too on the edge to suffer a media shit-storm like last time."

"Just…don't go too far, OK?" I asked with a sigh. "Sophia and her supervisor were the ones in the PRT that did the worst stuff and they're being punished for it. Like it or not, we need the PRT and Protectorate to handle the Capes in the gangs."

"I…understand." Dad said, very begrudgingly. "I don't like it, but…I understand. Also, I'm proud of you for being so mature about this."

I blushed. "Daaad!"

Seriously, did fathers practice how to embarrass their daughters as a hobby or something?! Jeez…

Until Dad was satisfied with my circumstances, I was not going anywhere near Winslow…not that I wanted to. The place was a building full of nightmares for me and if I ever had the chance to firebomb the place with impunity, I would gleefully take it.

…wow…I was really pissed at Winslow, wasn't I?

Anyway, without school to occupy my time, I finished up all of my housework once Dad left before experimenting with the powers I had some more. Much to my delight, my intangibility was not weak against electricity like Sophia's was. Instead, I just couldn't phase whichever body part I had intangible through anything thicker than the average human torso. Whenever I tried, my intangibility shut down before it could pass through the surface.

I was uncertain about the exact thickness that stopped me from phasing through stuff, but Mom's old dressmaker's dummy was about the size of an average woman and it was something I could pass through. Maybe it was actually the density of the target? Or maybe its mass? I needed to do more testing.

I had stashed my ill-gotten gains in an empty house nearby; it was safe to do so, because the place had been abandoned since I had been eight and no one had ever come to even look at it in all that time. Before returning home, I had handled the guns, drawing more knowledge of how to use them with each touch until I discovered that, somehow, I could use my psychometry to 'see' through the barrels of the guns, meaning I could just stick my hand around a corner and fire accurately. It was a really, really useful power to discover.

With my powers, I wasn't an Alexandria-type or Legend or even Eidolon. They were weak and not entirely useful a lot of the time, but that simply meant I'd have to fight smarter, not harder. Attacking weaknesses in the stances of others and taking advantage of opportunities offered by their resulting actions was how martial arts and self-defense worked, so I had to translate that to the gangs.

Capes aside, the three big gangs relied on firearms for the majority of their unpowered muscle, although that was more the Merchants and Empire than the ABB. The latter gang relied on the threat of Lung's wrath to keep any attacks on them to a minimum, instead preferring close combat weapons a lot of the time.

So, then. I had to deprive them of their weaponry, or at least force them to expend capital to replace what I stole or destroyed. Even although America gave all of its citizens of legal age the right to own guns, that didn't mean that they were by any means cheap, especially military grade firearms like assault rifles, and especially on the black market likely.

For a while, I could probably play it off as improper storage of materials, especially with the Merchants, but even they would eventually twig to the fact that someone was playing a guerilla campaign against them. The Empire and ABB were not stupid by any means and would twig to it sooner. In that situation, directing them towards one another would also be an idea, at least until they realised someone had manipulated them into that as well. That would be the most dangerous part of the operation.

By then, I'd have to have more skills and powers to have a chance against them. Stealth, determination and luck wouldn't last forever. Relying on it would be foolish to the highest degree.

As I cooked lunch and contemplated everything I'd come up with so far, my mind turned to something a bit more trivial, but also rather important…my Cape name. Every Cape needed one, and a fair few were restricted to one side of the hero/villain spectrum, such as Crimson, as the only one to bear that name had been a member of the infamous Slaughterhouse Nine.

In the Bay, there were also limits due to either the ethnic makeup or fascist beliefs of some of the groups. Any Asian names were a no-no thanks to Lung beating people who weren't Asian who took Asian Cape names. Any German, Norse or remotely Scandinavian names were a no-no thanks to the Empire 88. Street-slang names were a no-no too, thanks to the Merchants.

So yeah, there were limits. But I had an advantage; my mom had been an English Professor, and I had a whole host of books to draw upon, from Huckleberry Finn, to the Iliad and Odyssey, to Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. Not to mention history books, because mom had liked to know the mythology behind the things she read.

By the time Dad pulled up outside, I had decided on a name. From Greek Mythology, I took the name…Mnemosyne. The name of the Titan Goddess of Memories, who gave birth to the Nine Muses of the Arts.

Dad came in looking tired, but triumphant. The PRT had made a number of concessions to reduce the amount of direct monetary compensation they'd have to pay. First, I'd start at Arcadia next month, while studying for the entry tests. Next, I'd get to visit the Wards Base and meet the Wards themselves. The PRT would also pay half of the bill for Arcadia, which was a biggie. Finally, they'd also pay a single lump sum.

The PRT Director, Emily Piggot, had also written me a letter, promising me that they were doing a complete overhaul of the way that the Wards were supervised to ensure what had happened to me would not happen to anyone else. She also thanked me for being mature about where I laid the blame for Sophia's actions.

What I was most excited about was the fact I was going to see the Wards. Vista, Clockblocker, Kid Win, Aegis, Gallant…and there was someone new, wasn't there? Anyway, if I could get my hands on their powers (literally) it would be way safer for me in the future.

I couldn't wait.

So, this got some good reviews when I posted the initial chapter. How does this one stack up by comparison? Oh, and a list of her powers and their ratings.

- Panacea's Biomonitoring power – Striker 2

- Shadow Stalker's partial intangibility – Breaker 2

- Miss Militia's weapon creation ability – Shaker 2 (Sub-rating Striker 1)