I am Thou, Thou art I Chapter 5 (Original chapter Chapter 122)

The Next Day

My eyes snapped open and I looked around me at the unfamiliar surroundings. Then my memories of the previous day flooded back and I growled in anger. Coil, whoever he was, had sent men armed with Tinkertech rifles to capture me. If what Glory Girl had told me about regarding the 'Unwritten Rules' was anything approaching true, then this guy had taken a sledgehammer to them and shattered them rather firmly.

After running off and leaving Glory Girl to stand guard over the beaten mercs, I had travelled to the opposite side of the Docks area and found a nice little abandoned café with a storage room above it. There was even a bed there, albeit one that was covered in dust and junk. It had taken all of my energy to get the storeroom tidy and clean enough that I wouldn't die of dust inhalation or something before I collapsed onto the bed, utterly exhausted after an entire day spent either fighting or cleaning.

"You poor dear." Hestia said as she appeared behind me. "Honestly, if we ever face that Coil person, summon me to fight him. I will enjoy fighting him for daring to attack you."

"Thanks, Hestia." I smiled at my mother's Persona. "From what Glory Girl said though, the protectorate and New Wave aren't sure that he's even a Parahuman, so I doubt he's going to fight us openly."

"Humph. Cowardly snake." Hestia sniffed.

Chuckling at that, I sat and thought about what Igor had told me about Palaces last night. A Palace was created by a person's distorted desires. They couldn't be seen by ordinary people or even Parahumans; they existed only in a dimension that was both next to and at one with the real world at the same time, kind of like the colour spectrum.

Ordinarily, at least in the last world that Igor had visited, someone had to have a pretty distorted and corrupt heart in order to create a Palace. Here though, every single Parahuman had a Palace as a result of them being Mastered by their own powers. That kinda sucked, in my opinion.

Additionally, the Palaces tended to represent the Seven Deadly Sins, or rather, the one Sin amongst the Seven that the Parahuman that the Palace belonged to had in them most; Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Wrath, Envy, Pride and Sloth. An example Igor gave me was Glory Girl. Her Palace was likely one of either Pride or Wrath. In Sophia's case, it did not take a great deal of imagination to deduce that hers was Wrath.

All Palaces had Shadows inside them, a reflection of the inner thoughts and desires of the Palace Owner. Unfortunately, Palaces attracted the Shadows of those close to the Owner as well, who pledged loyalty to the Shadow-Self avatar in exchange for a gift of power and a place to roam within the Palace.

A Palace usually had a fixed geographical location, a building or place that it was rooted in, usually somewhere that the Palace-Owner frequented on a regular basis. As a result, the Rig out in the middle of the bay of Brockton Bay was in all likelihood the location of the Palaces of the Protectorate, while the PRT Building was probably the location of the Palaces of the Wards.

As to what I could do with the Palaces? Well there's the thing. I could infiltrate them and mess about with them, destroying the Shadows within them and weakening the power of the Shadow-Self Avatar. There was also a 'Treasure' inside of every Palace. If that was stolen, then the person to whom it belonged would confess any and all crimes and turn themselves in. That stunk too much of Mastering people though, so I didn't plan on doing that. Not unless it was Lung, Kaiser or Skidmark, anyway.

Uniquely for this world, there was also an Avatar that represented the Master Effect of the Parahuman to whom the Palace belonged. This…Shard Shadow, as Igor referred to it, was my main target. By fighting and defeating the Shard Shadow, I would permanently remove the Master Influence over the parahuman.

I would have to be careful though; attacking the Shard Shadow would bring the Shadow-Self of the Palace's Owner rushing over to protect it. If I accidentally killed the Palace's Shadow-Self Avatar, the person to whom the Palace belonged to would die as well…somehow. Don't ask me how, it would just happen.

Accessing them wasn't easy, even for a Persona user like me. I had to have a smartphone so Igor could download an app to it that let me access the Palaces. Thing is, even a cheap, refurbished smartphone is about $60.00 and I was barely capable of scraping together twenty bucks right now.

Caroline had, in her sarcastic and caustic way, reminded me that the gangs were a good source of income if I was still bent on being a hero, despite what Sophia had done to me. Which I was. So, tonight I would go out and hunt gang members to fleece for cash. While I could do it during the day, I preferred to not risk getting caught by the Wards again. Doubtless people were now on the lookout for me even more than they were before.

For the moment, I decided to eats a couple of the granola bars that I'd stashed in my bag and then do some more cleaning. Like my previous hideout, the windows and doors of the café and loft were boarded up, so I had to enter and leave through a hole in the roof of the room next to the loft. There was a limit to what I could do in that room because my ersatz entryway looked out on an alley, and I didn't want to risk being spotted again. I had no clue how those bastards had found me, but once bitten, twice shy.

Later

With New Wave

Carol Dallon had rarely been so angry since Marquis had been sent to the Birdcage. The information that Victoria had brought back in the form of Taylor Hebert's bully diary was making her spit fire.

"Just look at all of this!" she exclaimed to her sister, who was also pretty angry. "The sheer number of daily incidents is more than some schools have annually!"

"Arcadia has PRT supervision, so you can't really count it, Carol." Sarah reminded her sister, although the amount of petty spite in the incidents she was reading was intolerable. "Look here though; she tried to apply for a transfer to Arcadia and the secretary just put it through the shredder!"

"Why though?" the lawyer asked, truly baffled. "I know Stalker's type; she would have just switched to another target once Taylor Hebert left Winslow. Why would the Winslow staff deliberately ensure that Taylor stayed put?"

"As a sacrifice." The unofficial leader of New Wave said with certainty. "To keep Stalker's target within range and not affix too firmly onto other students. There were other targets, I'm certain, but none who soaked up as much of Stalker's aggression and attention as Taylor did. 'Why sacrifice more than was necessary?' That's what they were thinking."

This prompted a steam of invective from Carol that turned the air blue around her.

Used to her sister's temper, Sarah shuffled through the pages before coming to an entry close to the end of what Taylor had written. "Carol, have you read this entry for January 8th?"

"No, what does it say?" her sister asked once she regained control over herself.

"It says that Winslow forced her father to sign a contract that paid for her hospital fees in exchange for not suing the school." Sarah replied with a scowl "And there's a copy of the contract here."

"Give." The command was harsh.

Snatching the contract copy out of her sister's hand, Carol scanned it. "It is legal, although I'm certain I could challenge it based on the fact that Mister Hebert was essentially blackmailed into signing this…document."

The tone in which she had said 'document' was as if she had said 'child molester'; very disgusted and condemning.

"You might want to talk to Mr. Hebert before you start filing trial proceedings, sister mine." Sarah said dryly. "Even if nothing goes to trial, we should talk to him anyway. Any information about what his daughter is like can give us a clue to help her. Coil went after her and he's classed as a low-level threat compared to the big three gangs."

"If he has access to Tinkertech weaponry now, I think we can bump him up to a mid-level threat at least." Carol said dryly. "What I want to know is how he tracked her down. She was very, very careful in her choice of hiding place; isolated, abandoned and not within notice from the gangs. He must either be a Thinker of have one in his employ to track someone down so quickly after she was revealed."

"Yes, and the fact that he sent two squads of heavily armed troops rather than a recruitment pitch means that either he's planning on forcing her into his clutches or eliminate her completely." Sarah mused worriedly. "Taylor…no, Joker is out there and completely vulnerable."

"Not completely." Carol corrected her. "Remember what Vicky said about this new projection of hers having the ability to heal her as well as use some sort of combustion-based power? If she has access to more than one projection, then we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg of her power. She may be an Eidolon-ite."

"Even Eidolon isn't invincible and he has had years to learn how to use his powers." Sarah countered. "And Joker has only been a parahuman for just under a week and a bit. There is absolutely no way that she has a high-level of control of her powers yet. The fact that she got shot in the shoulder in the first place shows that much."

"Vicky's partly to blame for slowing her escape, Sarah." Carol reminded her. "Had she not interfered, I wonder what would have happened to Joker."

"A running fight with men armed with laser rifles tends not to end well for the one on the receiving end of the laser rifles, Carol." Sarah rolled her eyes. "It's somewhat of a good happenstance that she ran into Vicky when she did, despite the fact she was shot once. Better once than a dozen times."

"As you say." Carol nodded. "Well, we had better be about it, I suppose. I have to have this diary photocopied and then placed in a safe place to prevent it from being misplaced."

"Considering everything that's happened to Joker up until now, that's a very sensible idea." Sarah complimented her.

"Why thank you. I do have them from time to time, you know." Carol smirked at her sister before leaving with the book.

"And I had better go and speak to Danny Hebert." Sarah sighed. She really felt for the poor man. His wife was dead, his daughter on the run for a crime she didn't commit and that was after being practically tortured for fifteen months by almost the entire school. She had to wonder how he was coping…

With Danny

Slumped forward on his chair, Danny Hebert buried his face in his hands as he once more cursed how helpless he was in the face of what his daughter was going through at the moment.

First he had collapsed in on himself when his beloved wife Annette had passed away in an accident, utterly abandoning Taylor emotionally right when she needed him the most. Then he had been left completely unaware that she had been all but tortured at that damned school for well over a year, and by her former best friend to boot!

Now, most recently, she had fled from school and her home due to being accused of stabbing Emma with a knife! The idea that Taylor would do such a thing was impossible for him to believe; despite what Emma had done to her, Taylor would never stoop that low. She would have left Winslow before lowering herself to harming someone. No, his little girl had been set up, framed, by someone.

And he was completely helpless to do more than repeat statements to the police that said that Taylor would not have attacked Emma like that in the first place and if she had, for whatever reason, attacked Emma with a knife, she wouldn't have been stupid enough to stuff the knife into her locker afterwards.

'Taylor fled because she knew that I would try to fight this legally…something she couldn't trust would be successful.' He thought darkly. 'And, god damn it, she was right. Legally fighting this with Alan Barnes on the warpath is pointless. I just hate how helpless this makes me!'

Removing his hands from his face and clenching them almost hard enough to draw blood, Danny Hebert felt his anger, rage, despair and hopelessness welling up around him.

"Not yet…this isn't the time or place for it." A male voice whispered into his mind without him noticing. "Find your daughter, and then unleash your rage upon her foes. Then, and then only, shall I sign a contract with you, oh desperate one."

Feeling his emotions draining out of him, Danny let out a sigh before looking up with determination. He did not have the time to be sitting around feeling sorry for himself. He'd been a piss-poor father for most of the last two years and he was damned if he was going to let it continue any more. He was going to go out there and find his daughter and talk about what to do about this situation!

…grumble…!

…as soon as he had eaten. And had a shower. And shaved, for that matter.

That Night

Docks Area, Brockton Bay

Dressed in my costume as Joker, I leapt from building to building as I searched for unsuspecting members of the three gangs to beat into the ground and rob.

OK, that sounded a lot more villainous than I intended it to, but the point remains. I need money, the gangs have money and I intend to facilitate the transfer of said cash to my custody. I'd use it better, the gang members in question would be incapacitated for a while and I'd be able to start de-Mastering the heroes of the Bay once I could buy a Smartphone.

"Who shall you be using tonight, Contractor?" Velvet asked. I had switched back to her before leaving my hideout as she gave me an advantage. This was something that I had only just found out about last night. Each Persona gave me a Passive Skill in addition to their attacks. Velvet's [Calamity's Legacy] gradually passed down her combat skills and passively enhanced my body to be as strong and agile as hers was, Hestia's [Home and State] gave me increased skills at housework and increased speaking skills and Arachne's [Spider Weaving Goddess] gave me insanely good weaving skills, on top of being able to produce and use her own nigh-unbreakable thread. An ability I'd already used to weave a few very nice coils of rope to deal with securing any gang members I beat up.

"Arachne, I think. I haven't used her in battle yet." I replied. "Besides, out of all of you, she had the best non-lethal attacks, which is something I'll need tonight."

"Very well." Velvet nodded. "Should you need myself or Hestia to step in, however, do not hesitate to call us forth."

"I will, Velvet." I promised her. She was a comforting presence at my side and always gave me good advice, so I had no reason not to make that promise.

Soon after, I found my first group of 'customers', a group of the Empire 88 knocking over a drug store. There were five of them. Fortunately, Arachne had the right kind of attack to deal with them. Dropping down in front of them as they left the store with their ill-gotten gains, mostly expensive over-the-counter medicine and a few prescription medicines, I started my attack.

"Persona Change: Arachne!" I shouted, calling forth my new persona to my side. "Attack!"

"As you will it." The multi-limbed woman stated. "Be crushed by my might, lowly ones! [Magry]!"

Before the men could so much as drop their purloined produce, they felt the weight of gravity upon them increase, dropping them to the ground with grunts of pain.

"And while you are on your knees…[Binding Thread]!" Arachne continued mercilessly. From her hands, or rather, from hidden spinnerets in the wrists, jets of thread shot out at one man, sticking him to the ground, totally except for his head.

"I'd recommend giving up." I remarked with her arms crossed.

"F-Fuck you, bastard!" one man spat out as he forced himself to stand up again.

"Arachne." I said with a sigh.

"Kneel. [Gry]!" The Persona barked, pointing one hand at the defiant man, who was promptly slammed back down to the street beneath him.

"Gaaack!"

After that demonstration, the rest gave up meekly. Binding them with the rope she had weaved, I smirked as I then rifled through their pockets for cash. Between them, they had about $200, which was way more than I expected.

"And why, pray tell, are you boys knocking over a drugstore when you could probably buy everything you just tried to steal?" I had to ask.

The idiots couldn't even answer. If I had to bet, it would be something like 'we didn't want to waste money' or something equally as stupid. Seriously, Nazis are so…!

"The name's Joker, boys. Remember it." I informed them. "I hope to do business with you again."

"What business, you just robbed us!" one thug exclaimed.

"The Vigilante Act allows me to take cash from criminals that I capture." I answer with a grin. Apparently I looked intimidating as the man shut up and cowered. "You broke into a store and took things without paying for them. Guess what that makes you guys?"

With that, I grabbed the cheap cell phone that I took from one of their pockets and called in the capture before dropping it and booking it out of there. Now having more money than I had a need for, I would have been content to head on back to my hideout, but I spotted more Empire grunts a few blocks away, this time trying to steal a car. You could tell by the fact they'd smashed a window to get in and were currently hotwiring it. That just wouldn't do.

Five minutes and another $250 later, I finally decided to head back to my hideout again after hogtying and calling in the three idiots who thought that stealing a car was OK just because the owner was stupid enough to leave it out in the open at night in Brockton Bay. Seriously, some people…

Roof hopping took me around and back towards my hideout, but the sound of large things jumping in pursuit of me made me change course and head to the dockside warehouses. After finding one that was reasonably abandoned, I turned and awaited my pursuers. It didn't take long for them to show up.

Mounted on some kind of mutant dog-rhino-things, there were four of them that hopped off of the monsters they were riding. One was dressed in bike leathers and a motorcycle helmet, one looked like a reject from a dodgy renaissance faire with a sneering mask covering his entire face, one looked like a hobo with a cheap dime store mask and the other was a girl who wore a purple bodysuit and domino mask.

"Following a lady home is awful impolite." I called over to them.

"Brutus! Judas! Angelica! Kill!" the hobo barked. Despite the gruff voice, I was surprised that the hobo was actually a girl.

The beasts charged forwards with barks, howls and slobber coming off of them.

"Arachne!" I shouted.

"Crawl on the ground! [Magry]!" My Persona shouted as she appeared above me. The dog-things were slammed down into the rooftop and through it, dropping into the warehouse below us. The hobo girl snarled at me and leapt down through the hole they made, probably to check on them.

"…Tats? What the fuck?" Motorbike Leathers asked, apparently addressing the girl in purple.

"Her projection can control gravity." 'Tats' replied. "She just formed a powerful gravity force and slammed it down on them from above."

That kind of deduction was a bit too quick for my liking. A Thinker, probably. Shit, this was going to be a pain.

"Who are you people?" I asked with a frown, unseen to them thanks to my mask.

"We're the Undersiders. Word on the street has it that there's a nice little bounty on your head." The renfaire reject replied. He was twirling a scepter in one hand. "Sorry, but needs must and all that crap."

He waved a hand at me and my legs buckled for no apparent reason! Stumbling, I still drew and fired my handgun at him, clipping him on the edge of his left shoulder.

"FUCK!"

"I thought you said all she had was an intimidation piece?!" Leathers snapped at Tats.

"It is! It's a fucking cheap replica BB gun!" Tats insisted as she went over and helped staunch Renfaire's wound and wrap a crude bandage around it with pieces ripped from his fluffy shirt.

"You really shouldn't rely on a Thinker for all your information." I informed them. "As you can see, BB gun or not, I can shoot real bullets."

"Gravity control, a projection, athletic abilities beyond the human norm and a bullshit power like that? What are you?!" Tats asked. "And I'm not 'Tats'; it's Tattletale."

Fucking Thinker.

"You could be Alexandria for all I care." I replied sharply. "I've already been attacked by Coil and his soldiers and driven out of one place to live, so I'm not about to let you four do it to me two days running."

"Wait, you were attacked in your hideout?" Motorbike Leathers asked sharply. "That's against the-"

"-Unwritten Rules, yes." I finished for him. "As I was heading back to my place just now, I presumed that you were planning on doing the same thing. You work for Coil, right?"

Given the fact they had tracked me down so fast, plus the fact that they had some intelligence about me, they had to have been looking for me specifically. The only person who had made a serious attempt at capturing her, Wards aside, was Coil, so it made sense if they had some sort of relationship with the leader of those mercs from yesterday.

"We don't know who our boss is." Renfaire grumbled.

Given that Tattletale was so tense abruptly, I doubted that that was true for her. Given Coil's blatant violation of the basic rules of Cape society though and I would bet that she may have been recruited in a similar manner to how he had tried to recruit me.

"Not true; Tattletale there knows." I pointed out. "Anyway, if you guys are done, I really want to just go right now. I need my beauty sleep after all."

Then I heard the sound of more rushing feet and the rattle of equipment and sighed. "Of course. Fucking Coil. It's never simple with Capes is it?"

"Tats, what the fuck is going down?" Motorbike Leathers asked sharply.

"I had no choice, Grue." The Thinker replied tightly. "I do not want a 9mm lobotomy, thank you very much."

Looking around at the warehouses surrounding the one I stood on, I saw the rank upon rank of armed mercenaries, some armed with Tinkertech weapons like the last lot had been, while the rest were equipped with standard military-grade semi-automatic rifles. Capes before me, sea at my back, armed men surrounding me…yeah, this was gonna be a tough one.

"Bitch, get up here with your dogs, now!" Grue shouted, making me blink. What the…?

"That's her Cape name." Tattletale informed me tersely. "Bitch, as in female dog."

OK, that made sense, but it was a crap name. Also, fucking Thinkers.

The three monster-dogs leapt up to stand in front of the Undersiders, Bitch (really?) riding one.

"Undersiders, keep her contained so she can be finished off." A gruff, somewhat muffled, voice ordered from the mercs on the right hand side. "Orders from your boss."

"Looks like I'm not running out of enemies." I sighed before twisting around and snapping off a shot at where I thought the man who had just spoken was. A scream pierced the night as one man fell from the roof, his kneecap pierced through by my bullet.

Not stopping, I charged forwards while maintaining my rate of fire. "Arachne!"

"Kneel, scum! [Magry]!" My Persona shouted and the mercs found themselves crushed by gravity.

"Open fire! Kill the bitch!" someone from the other side shouted and the rattling bark of guns filled the night, along with kzapp sound of laser fire.

So, that's where this chapter ends. I think two more and I'll go on to something else. People really seem to like this crossover, which is both good and bad. It's good, because I like that people like my writing, and bad, because people want me to make this a full story. With as many as I have on the go, that ain't happenin' for a while, folks.

So, regarding the stats of a Persona and how they affect Taylor. Most Persona stats at the moment are under ten, which is a negligible addition. At twenty-to-thirty, they start to register as being on the Parahuman Threat Assessment scale. Also, they only apply to Taylor while in a situation she considers to be combat. In addition, the amount of trust, empathy and camaraderie between Taylor and the Persona in question plays a part.