I am Thou, Thou art I

Unknown Location

I blinked as the darkness lifted. Where…where was I? And why did I feel so…constricted?

Looking down my eyes widened as I beheld my own body, wrapped up in a straitjacket and strapped to a table. I could only move my head by a very small amount to either side. From everything I could see, I was in a white room…oh. Oh god…had I been committed?!

"Raise her up, girls." A deep, and somewhat amused, voice said. With a jerk, the table I was strapped to tilted up into a vertical position and I was able to see who was talking.

He was sitting behind a desk in the middle of a circular room adjacent to my own. He wore an immaculate black suit and white gloves on his long, thin hands. His eyes and nose were inhumanly large, with the nose looking to be a good foot long. He was also bald except for a ring of hair around his head.

"Welcome to the Velvet Room, oh chosen one." He said with a smile. Although he jaw moved, his teeth didn't seem to move with them, which was unusual. "I am Igor, the master of this room."

"I hope you're paying attention to our master, inmate!" a growling, strident female voice said, and I looked down. Standing on either side of me were two small girls wearing what looked like blue and black officer's uniforms, including a cap. The one on my right, with her silver hair tied into buns on either side of her head, carried a collapsible baton in one hand and wore an eyepatch over her right eye, while the left-hand one, her hair tied into a braid, carried a clipboard tucked under one arm and wore an eyepatch over her left eye.

"Hm? Oh, these are my assistants" Igor said, noticing my gaze on the girls. "The one on the right is Caroline and the one on the left is Justine. They are wardens here."

He looked around with a slight frown. "Still…this room reflects the state of your mind, chosen one. My last case had his mind as a prison and he as a prisoner, while yours is a mental hospital and you a patient there. It shows just how close to truly breaking you have come."

"The prisoner is lucky our master intervened, otherwise that would be infesting you." Justine spoke up in a softer voice than her twin (?) and pointed at the opposite side of the room, where a shadowy figure was also locked up in a straitjacket and strapped down on a table. Unlike me, they were also surrounded in what I would say looked like a magic circle.

"Yes, a rather troublesome parasitic entity has infested your world, child." Igor said, throwing a distasteful look at the figure, which was struggling to break free. "The source of these things is why your world is on the brink of ruin. I refer to you as a chosen one, but being chosen does not matter; what you choose, does. Will you become a cog in the wheel for the strong, or shall you spread the wings of rebellion? That is a choice you must make, soon."

"Master, the time…" Justine said quietly.

"Ah yes, thank you my dear." Igor nodded. "Our time is almost up, my guest. When next we see each other, you shall either be broken or ready to start down the path of rehabilitation. Which path you choose shall be interesting indeed…hehehe…"

Everything went black.

Abandoned House, Brockton Bay

I woke with a start, my pained body protesting at my sudden movement. Looking around wildly, I let out a breath of relief that I could move and wasn't in a looney bin.

Looking around at my 'lodgings' I had to grimace. The place was an abandoned house in the Docks area of Brockton Bay. I had been living here for a couple of weeks, ever since I had been framed for a crime I didn't commit by that bitch tornado Sophia Hess…by Shadow Stalker.

As if the Locker wasn't enough, as if putting me in the fucking hospital for a week wasn't enough, a couple of weeks after I went back to the purgatorial hell called Winslow, my EX-best friend, Emma Barnes, had been stabbed in the shoulder…and the bloody knife had been found in my new locker. I wasn't given any opportunity to explain myself of course; I was the 'attention-whore who complained about things that didn't happen' to the staff at Winslow. Running had been my only option.

On the way out Sophia had intercepted me and I'd tried to body-tackle her…only to go right through her as she entered her Shadow State instinctively. That was how I discovered the bitch's secret identity. She'd clearly been operating off of pure instinct, as the look of realization at what she'd revealed to me was written all over her face.

She'd been so poleaxed at her misstep that I'd managed to run out of the building and away from Winslow. I'd headed back to my house, thrown some clothes in a bag, grabbed some cash and fled the only home I'd ever known. Dad would've tried, but he worked within the law whenever possible, so he would have tried to fight it legally…and failed.

It made me so fucking angry! I'd never even seen the goddamned knife before! I'd never even touched it! Surely the police could dust it for prints or something?

In the weeks since I'd run, I had almost been caught by both regular police and the Wards twice while food shopping. The first time I had ran into a series of alleys and lost the guy, but the second time had me running from Shadow Stalker and Kid Win. I'd gotten away from them only because two Empire Capes, Cricket and Storm Tiger, had shown up and forced them to retreat. I'd scampered off in the confusion.

Never thought I'd be thankful to Nazis for anything.

The house I was technically squatting in had been dirty as anything when I'd found it, but I'd tidied the inside quite a bit. I entered and left the place through a small hole in the wall leading in from the backyard, which I had covered with an old plastic outdoor tool chest that I'd cut the back off of. This meant I could leave the doors looking as filthy and untouched as they had been when I arrived. As a bonus, the windows were boarded up and whoever had lived here before had left the curtains, so the chance of someone seeing the small halogen torch I used to see around the place was quite small.

Still, I had almost nothing to do while hiding in this place. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, boring. I'm on the run, falsely accused of a serious crime, and I'm bored. Hoo-boy, was I a weirdo or what?

"Still…that dream…" I muttered aloud. It had to have been a dream…right? I hoped it was just a dream, because if it wasn't…if it wasn't then there was a chance that the Locker had done more damage to my mind than I had thought.

Later That Day

Director's Office, PRT ENE Building

"So you mean to tell me that the one person who is not on the authorised person's list that knows the secret identity of a Ward is still in the wind after two weeks?" Emily Piggot growled at the person on the other end of the phone.

"She was almost caught by one of my officers last week and by two of your Wards just yesterday." The man on the other end replied. The Chief of the BBPD, Jefferson Archer, could give as good as he got, especially when he had ammo to throw back. "It isn't for lack of trying that she isn't in custody, Director. Maybe you should keep a better handle on your Wards! Or even have someone else do their job instead of you trying to do your job and theirs at the same time. Good day."

Piggot blinked in shock He'd actually hung up on her.

Slamming her phone down onto its cradle, she eyed Armsmaster and Miss Militia. "So then…you were saying that there are…irregularities…about the Hebert girl?"

"More specifically, about the crime that she is accused of committing." Armsmaster replied gruffly. "Both the police and I have thoroughly examined the weapon in question; a homemade knife. Aside from the fact it was found in the girl's locker there is no physical evidence to link Taylor Hebert to it. No oils from the girl were found on it, no fingerprints were found on it and no bloody cloth or gloves were found near it."

"Which is strange, given how easily the assault weapon was found." Miss Militia added. "Someone smart enough to dispose of the gloves or cloth used during the attack to prevent blood getting on their hands or fingerprints on the weapon wouldn't be stupid enough to just shove the knife in her own locker."

"She could have panicked at what she had done." Piggot suggested, playing devil's advocate.

"In which case she would have thrown it into a nearby toilet and flushed it or something, not gone up a floor and across half the school to reach her new locker." The gun-creating Cape replied. "That doesn't even begin to address where she acquired the knowledge of how to make a knife. Her home computer's web browser shows nothing and the warrant we got Dragon let her track back up to a year ago with equally negative results."

"I agree that this is steadily looking increasingly like a very bad stich-up." The Director said after a moment. "What does the victim, Emma Barnes, say?"

"That she was in the bathroom washing her hands when the lights cut out and she was stabbed as soon as she turned around by someone she couldn't see." Armsmaster stated. "My helmet's inbuilt lie detector indicates she was telling the truth at a 98% probability. She genuinely doesn't know who attacked her."

"The questions we asked about Taylor Hebert at the school were received oddly." Miss Militia frowned. "It was hard to get a straight answer aside from the fact she is a loner who is an attention seeker. Getting anything else out of the students and staff was almost impossible."

"A conspiracy of silence, by the sounds of it." Piggot scowled. "In the military, this would point to a hazing campaign. With a highschool…"

"…bullying." Dragon finished as she appeared on a screen on the wall. "I have just finished trawling through Winslow's servers, as well as their records of grades. For the first two months of her time at Winslow, Taylor Hebert maintained a mid-to-high 'A' grade average. After that, it plummeted down to barely a C-. In addition, she had had to open multiple e-mail accounts due to someone sending an incredible amount of highly malicious mails to her accounts. Altogether she has over two-thousand malicious e-mails. In her first account."

"That…is not normal. Even for a malicious bullying campaign." Miss Militia scowled.

"That doesn't begin to touch on the fact that someone locked Miss Hebert in her own locker just over a month and a half ago, on the first day of the school year." Dragon's digital face scowled at this. "It was full of used and rotten woman's hygiene products which had apparently been in there since before Christmas. She was in there for well over two hours and she was unconscious for three days afterwards. They kept her in for four days to make sure she had no toxins or infections in her blood. It was almost certainly Trigger Event worthy."

"Good god." Emily Piggot whispered. She was used to hearing about the cruel and heartless things that humans could do to one another, but this? A girl who was barely fifteen had been apparently victimized for almost her entire highschool career and trapped in an enclosed space with what amounted to bio-waste for over two hours. "Did she Trigger?"

"She showed no signs of it for the week that PRT Agents watched her." Armsmaster replied.

"Is there any chance, any at all, that she somehow locked herself inside the locker herself?" the Director asked, despite the fact she knew the answer.

"Unless she was able to phase her arms outside and snap the padlock on her locker shut, then no." Dragon stated flatly. "The police report shows that there was damage to her elbows from trying to break out of the locker without success. Despite the fact she was likely shouting and screaming for the entire time, no student reported anything unusual and no staff member did either, aside from the janitor that let her out and called the ambulance and police."

"Shadow Stalker attends Winslow. Has she said anything?" Piggot asked with a moue of distaste at the mention of the former Vigilante. Sophia Hess was everything she despised in a Cape; arrogant, self-entitled, opinionated and contemptuous of anyone who wasn't a Cape.

Temporarily wiping the arrogance out of her when Armsmaster had brought her in had been a pleasure.

"Stalker has been…evasive, at best." Armsmaster replied with a deliberate pause in his sentence, letting the two women know he had searched for a more diplomatic way to put 'downright stroppy and unhelpful'. "She admits to knowing Miss Hebert, but dismissing her as beneath her notice as being 'prey' following her usual worldview. She avoids answering my questions directly because she is aware of my lie detector."

"So she's hiding something." Piggot mused. "Well for the moment, we should concentrate on getting Miss Hebert into custody and making her sign an NDA. Then we can get to the bottom of this mess. Armsmaster, I want you to build a bracelet or anklet that uses electricity to neutralize Shadow Stalker's Breaker form, just in case."

"I can do that." the Tinker nodded slightly. "Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. Dragon, can you write the software? That isn't my strong point."

"Of course." The world's best Tinker agreed with a smile.

"Very well then. Dismissed." Piggot sat back with a suppressed groan as the Capes left her office. Time for some more dialysis.

The Next Day

With Taylor, Streets of Brockton Bay

Dressed in drab, baggy clothing and a baseball cap, keeping my head down, I should have been almost unnoticeable to everyone. Nobody noticed someone in the background. Trust my luck that just as I was about to head back to my temporary home, the entire fucking Wards team is doing a fucking photoshoot at a mall I was passing by and Shadow Stalker spots me!

She was always good at finding me when I didn't want to be found and this was the goddamned jackpot for her!

I didn't even hesitate; I turned and ran. The sound of shouting and fuss came from behind me, but I just focused on running as fast as I could away from the Wards.

'I hate this! I'm not a mad animal, dammit!' I screamed in my head as I ran, hatred and resentment for Sophia Hess welling up in me. What had I ever done to deserve this? Why was this happening to me?!

Ducking into an alley just as an arrow whizzed past where my torso had been just a second ago, I turned the air blue with curses as I fled. Then I decided to save my oxygen for running.

I skidded to a halt as the walls of the alley ahead of me slammed shut, which could only mean one person. Vista, one of the Wards, was a space warper.

"Taylor Hebert, you are under arrest for assault with a deadly weapon!" a commanding male voice stated. Turning around, I saw the entire team of Wards blocking off the only other way out of the alley. Aegis, Gallant, Clockblocker, Vista, Kid Win and fucking Shadow Stalker as well.

"How does it fail to surprise me that you need an entire group of people to take me on, Sophia?" I laughed sardonically as I backed away from them.

That made the Wards flinch as I revealed my knowledge of one of their member's identities.

"Fuck you Hebert." The black-clad crossbow user sneered at me.

"No, fuck you!" I snarled back, finally pushed beyond my limits of tolerance by everything I had been through these past sixteen months. "What the fuck did I ever do to you to deserve being targeted by you?! You stole my friend, you made my school life hell on earth since the start of highschool and now you've framed me for fucking assault! What is your fucking damage, you psycho!?"

The Wards looked between me and Shadow Stalker with some confusion. Evidently they were unaware that their teammate was nuts. What idiots.

"Gallant?" Aegis asked.

"She really, really, really hates Stalker. Fears her a bit, but her anger and rage towards Stalker outweighs her fear by far." The armoured hero replied. "Also a bit contemptuous of us, possibly because we're associating with Stalker."

How the…?! Wait…Gallant was reading my emotions...fuck, an empath. Looks like his Tinker schtick was a bunch of bull.

"Look, let's just take her in." Clockblocker said seriously. "Miss Piggy can sort things out once she's in custody."

A pit formed in my stomach as I pressed my back against the wall in fear. Was this it? I was gonna be arrested for a crime I didn't commit and the one who framed me for it was going to be one of the ones arresting me…?!

'Is this as far as you go, girl?' a rough, female voice asked in my head as the Wards started to advance towards me. 'Are you willing to bow to the Reason of the world that says you are helpless before those in power? Are you willing to allow evil cloaked in the mantle of a hero to triumph over you?'

I didn't know who or what was talking but I knew implicitly the answer to this question: No. No, I was not going to just sit back and allow Sophia Hess to have me arrested for something she likely did!

'Very well.' The female voice said, sounding warmer this time. 'I have heard your resolve and thus, I shall answer it!'

"Argh!" I screamed as a splitting pain drove through my head. I clutched it as I almost went blind from the agony seeping through my skull.

'Vow to me…I am thou, thou art I!'

With Vista

When Taylor Hebert screamed and started clutching her head, I just thought she was acting up, but when Gallant staggered, I knew something was wrong.

"She's in agony!" he hissed. "It's like someone's driving a rail spike through her head! I can feel it like a beacon, she's in so much pain!"

"Tch. Typical fucking Hebert." Shadow Stalker sneered. Vista shot the only other female Ward a look. From what little Hebert had said, she believed that Stalker had been the one to set her up for the stabbing thing. Given Shadow Stalker's usual attitude, and the fact she had been conscripted into the Wards with a body count, Vista could actually see it.

Hebert screamed again. Vista really hoped she didn't die.

Back with Taylor

When I screamed again, I felt something welling up in me.

'I am Thou, Thou art I…thou who shall rend asunder all who stand in your path in the name of your own justice!' the female voice called out, almost chanting. 'Call upon my name and unleash your unstoppable rage! Show all the strength of thy unbreakable will to ascertain the truth of the world, though all shall condemn thee for it for all time! Let the Reason of the world tremble, for thy Emotions shall make them crumble and be as dust in the wind!'

The pain redoubled and I screamed for a third time, my glasses falling off and clattering to the ground. My eyes shot open and what seemed like a massive heartbeat thrummed through my entire body, even emanating outside of my body and sending the Wards stumbling back.

I blinked as a mask suddenly seemed to appear on my face. I somehow knew that it was a half-face mask, made to resemble a pair of wings. One was a white bat-like Devil Wing, while the other was a black bird-like Angel Wing. I then felt as if it was suffocating me to have it on my face…I had to get it off!

Clumsily grasping it with both hands, I tugged once, and then twice before pulling a third time with all my strength. It felt as if I was ripping something bonded to my skin off, and judging by the blood that I felt crawling down my face once I ripped the mask off, I had indeed taken most of the skin off the top of my face by removing the mask.

And yet…once I did remove the mask, the trapped, stifling, suffocating feeling that had been choking me to death since my mother's death and had been intensified by The Locker…vanished. Completely. In its place was an upsurge of power that exploded over my body in black-tinged blue flames that coated my whole body.

The flames covered my clothes, changing them. My baggy jogging trousers became skintight black leather that I somehow knew would nonetheless not inhibit movement. My running shoes became open-toed calf-high boots. My t-shirt and baggy hoodie became a skintight black leather tailcoat with a high collar. The tails of the coat flared out to either side and were ragged. Strapped to my right arm was a metal gauntlet of some kind. My hands were covered in black fingerless gloves.

I felt the mask reappear over my face, but it didn't feel like a prison anymore…more like a connection. To what, I didn't yet know.

Finished changing my clothes, the fire leapt from my body and formed a pillar to my side. It formed a vaguely human figure that coalesced into a larger than life woman. She wore a coat similar to mine, but that was where the similarities stopped. She wore ragged black shorts, ragged remnants of tights, a torn bodice of some kind and had long black hair tied near the bottom with a bandage. Like me she wore a metal gauntlet on her right arm, but she also wore armored boots and her left arm was entirely covered in bandages. She wore a look of complete indifference on her face and her dark amber eyes wandered over the frozen Wards before coming to rest on me.

"I am the Lord of Calamity, Velvet Crowe!" the woman declared, looking down at me. "I am the soul of rebellion that resides within you, the soul of the rebel that defies the world! If you so desire, I shall consider granting you the power to break through this crisis. What say you, Holder of the Trump Card of the Arcana…what say you, Joker?"

A smirk crossed my face. "Velvet, give me your power! I will not be bound here!"

The answer came to me easily. I didn't even have to think about it.

"Humph. Very well, my contractor." Velvet clenched her left arm and it exploded with black and red darkness that formed into a large black and red claw. "As your Persona, I shall cut a path for you!"

And this is where I'll end the first chapter. Ain't I a stinker? ^_^

I'll leave you with this little analysis.

Persona Name: Velvet Crowe

Arcana: Fool

Level: 1

Strength: 3

Magic: 2

Endurance 3

Agility: 3

Luck: 1

Absorbs: Curse

Resists: Physical (Close Combat)

Reflects: None

Weak Against: Physical (Ranged Weapons), Bless

Initial Skills: Eiha (Minor Curse Damage to one foe), Blade Dance (Light Physical Damage (CC) to one foe)