Stand Proud Chapter 5 (original chapter Chapter 119)

With Hookwolf

The chief enforcer of the Empire 88 paused as the girl shouted 'Einherjar!' out. What was that supposed to be?

A second later, a bubbling ball of silver the size of a grapefruit appeared between him and the bitch Khepri, apparently out of nowhere! It grew and grew until it was the size of an exercise ball, then it started to change.

Arms and legs emerged from it first, rounded and indistinct, then a head and finally a tail. In a flash, the details impressed themselves into the metal and Hookwolf found himself staring down a female with lupine features! She had the ears and tail of a wolf, with feet and hands that seemed to be a mix of lupine paws and claws combined with the fingers and opposable thumbs of a human hand!

'She…is mocking me!' the Nazi concluded as he eyed the unmoving puppet standing before him. Using some power to create a female version of him was not only insulting, but downright ridiculous.

"Einherjar, destroy Hookwolf!" Khepri ordered.

For an instant, nothing happened before yellow light entered the unmoving doll's eyes and she flexed her hands for a moment.

"Strong…fight the strong…" the golem said softly, with a metallic echo in its voice before blades sprouted all the way down its arms and it charged at Hookwolf, eyes locked onto him.

The original metallic wolf roared back and started to counterattack when a blast of ice cold light slammed into his front-right paw, vanishing to reveal that his paw was now encased in ice and frozen to the goddamned street!

It was at that point that the 'Einherjar' slammed into him like a dump truck, blades meeting his own and actually going through his steel body! His human parts were inside a 'core' in the center of his metal body, so they were in no danger, but he was shaken somewhat by how easily the doll had pierced through his Changer body, as if solid steel was simply cardboard to it!

Letting out another roar, Hookwolf head-butted the doll back a couple of steps and then unleashed a storm of blades from his chest, intending to impale it much the same way it had impaled him. Much to his shock, they stopped about a foot from the doll and even bent and blunted themselves on something!

His stupefaction lasted only seconds, but it was long enough for the Einherjar to charge forward and start to slam punches into his body, the numerous blades jutting out of its arms increasing the damage that it dealt him. Each one rocked him like he was punching himself or something!

Ripping his paw from the ground, he started fighting back against the Einherjar in earnest, scoring hit after hit against the blasted doll, only for the injuries he dealt against it to repair themselves in seconds, whereas any wound inflicted on him needed him to focus on closing it!

'Just what the fuck is with this projection?!' Hookwolf snarled as he ripped an arm off the blasted thing, only for it to vanish from midair and then regrow on the doll! 'No matter what I do it, nothing works! It's like it was specifically designed to fight me! Wait…is that what this bitch can do? Trump herself with a power designed specifically to defeat a specific parahuman?!'

If that was the case, then Stormtiger's defeat made sense; she had somehow negated his ability to sense things via the wind and then turned his own wind against him.

Deciding that this information was of greater priority than a pointless fight he couldn't win, Hookwolf roared again and body slammed the Einherjar away from him before turning tail and 'strategically withdrawing' from the area.

With Khepri

I had been watching the fight eagerly, looking for a chance to help Einherjar, but the two of them had been too close to risk any interference from my cryokinesis.

My jaw dropped as Hookwolf, the chief enforcer of the Empire 88, turned tail and ran away from a fight!

"Coward!" Einherjar snarled, but did not pursue him. Turning back to face me, she inclined her head to me. "Summon me to fight the strong only."

The next instant, she vanished. Huh…so she was semi-sentient and would only fight against people I deemed to be strong? That would explain why I couldn't get her to do anything when I summoned her the first time.

"That is a tricky power to wield, but now that we know how it ticks…" Khepri trailed off and I looked at her arm. The silver orb for Hookwolf's power had a white circle three-quarters of the way around it and I knew that one more use of [Einherjar] would make it permanent…and thanks to Hookwolf having only just left my radius of effect, that particular power was charged to the maximum.

"Just so." I whispered back.

"K-Khepri?" an incredulous voice spoke up from behind me, and I turned to see Parian peering around the cracked-open door to her shop.

"Parian. Are you OK?" I asked.

"I'm fine, but…you…you just fought Hookwolf!" the clothier said in awe.

"Having a power that can match him pound-for-pound helps." I replied, then winced as the Rogue tilted her head slightly, indicating curiosity.

"Yes, I think you left out the fact you're able to make another Projection." Parian said.

"I…may have left out a few portions of my power, yes." I allowed. "Two seconds."

Turning around again, I blasted the ground with my ice beam and froze the puddles of spirits solid before having Khepri pry them off the ground to dump in a nearby bin.

"Can I come in?" I asked. "I could use a coffee or something."

"S-Sure. You did just save my bacon for the second time in three days, after all." The clothier said shakily. "Come on in."

A few minutes later, I had my helmet off and drinking a nice hot cup of tea as Parian looked on. Thankfully, she had thick curtains on all windows in her apartment.

"So what brought you over to my neck of the woods at this time of the night?" she asked eventually.

"Complete coincidence." I answered with a half-smile. "I decided to do my first patrol tonight and thought that the Broadwalk would be a fairly easy place to get my feet wet. I felt something was off as soon as I arrived though, so I decided to check your place out just in case and lo and behold, one gathering of Empire thugs and Hookwolf."

"I can't believe that Kaiser is breaking the Unwritten Rules like this though…" the Rogue mused. "Attacking a Cape in their home is very much in violation of them, and he tries to make himself out to be a reasonable man who upholds them."

"I'm guessing it was Hookwolf who organized the little pogrom tonight." I scowled. "He has a Birdcage sentence hanging over him, according to PHO anyway, so he's probably not all that concerned about following the rules as much as Kaiser is. Stupid bastard."

"He's smarter than he seems." Parian warned me. "He withdrew tactically tonight because he probably felt that delivering information about one of your powers was more important that weakening himself to defeat that projection of yours."

"How long were you watching for?" I wanted to know.

"Since just after you were almost shot." The clothier Cape replied with a shudder. "How the hell did you not even flinch when you had a gun pointed at your head? I wouldn't have been nearly so…so…sanguine about the whole thing! Cape or not, bullets will kill you, you know!"

"Part of my powers slightly deadens the emotional responses I have to what happens in combat." I answered with a shrug. "Besides, Khepri was floating in between me and the gun, so I knew I was safe."

"That's…wow." Parian shook her head. "So…OK. You beat down a bunch of Empire thugs with what looked like air bullets, created a second projection out of liquid metal strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Hookwolf and used some sort of ice beam as well. Just what the heck are your powers?!"

I hesitated before deciding to tell her. She had enough information to figure it out anyway, given enough time at least, so me telling her would just cut down on that. She already knew my real identity anyway, so if I could trust her with that, I could trust her with this.

"Khepri…is a Trump." I said slowly. "She has what I would call 'Power Copying and Synthesis', meaning that within a certain range around me, she can copy the powers of other Parahumans. If a Parahuman has multiple powers then she selects either the strongest one or the one that is of best utility to her and me. Once she has them, she…twists…the power to make it similar and yet different from the original. For example, the projection I used out there is called [Einherjar], and its original source is Hookwolf himself."

"That…that sounds like Triumvirate-tier powers!" Parian looked at me, shock in her body language.

"It isn't all good. I can only use each power four times before I have to find that Parahuman again to recharge, and I can only maintain any given power for up to fifteen minutes at a time." I snorted. "On the bright side, if I can learn the ins and outs of my mutated and borrowed power, I learn it for good. [Einherjar], as I just found out, can only be used against sufficiently strong enemies, so getting it to that point isn't going to be easy."

"So…you have my power as well?" Parian asked quietly.

"Kinda-sorta." I winced. "The version I got is a lot less precise and usable, but I can repair cloth. I've not used it a lot, and even though I have it, I'm not certain that there's a negative effect to the cloth that's repaired and I'm not anywhere near to being a good enough seamstress to do make the clothes and dolls that you can. Honestly speaking, admitting that kinda hurts my pride a bit…"

Parian managed to convey amusement at that. She must have practiced communicating her feelings via body language.

"So…how would someone like Eidolon work?" she asked.

"I…have no clue." I admitted. "The only Trump power I have access to is Othala's, and almost every power I've had has been changed differently, so what manifested with her may not be the case with Eidolon. With Othala's power, it changed quite a bit though; rather than six powers, I have three, but Khepri can gift all of them to me for ten or so minutes, and one of them for at least fifteen."

"That blows Othala's out of the water…but I don't think she can gift someone with ice powers, just fire." Parian said in confusion, before she nodded slightly. "Ah, that'd be the 'mutation' part kicking in, right?"

"Got it in one." I nodded. "The other two are high-speed regeneration and self-time acceleration. The last one's pretty hard to get used to, truth be told."

"Huh…can Khepri gift power to anyone other than you?" the clothier Cape asked curiously.

"I haven't exactly had a wide pool of people to test it out in." I answered dryly. "Khepri? Do you think it can work?"

"I have no idea." My Stand shrugged. "There's another five minutes or so left on Othala's power, so we can try one, like the cryokinesis one, and see if it works on her. Worst case scenario, it doesn't work. Best case, it does."

"Do you want to try?" I asked Parian, who jumped in surprise.

"Er…O…K…?" Parian said with a tilt of her head. "It won't backfire and hurt me or something, will it?"

"At worst it won't work and I'll get a headache or something." I said with a shrug. "I've experimented with [Gift of Khepri] to see if it could pass at least the high-speed regeneration onto inanimate objects and every time she tried it, I got a seriously bad headache that lasted a couple of minutes. You'll be perfectly fine."

Reassured by my words, the Cape clothier stepped away from the counter. "What are you going to try to give me?"

"The cryokinesis power. It doesn't affect your body nearly as much as the other two, so it's the safest to try out." I replied. "OK Khepri…use it."

At my word, my Stand reached out with the red hand that manifested when using Othala's power and touched Parian on the shoulder gently. When it came to powers, a layer of clothing was no barrier whatsoever and as I had no headache, I could assume that the use of [Khepri's Gift] has worked like a charm.

Parian pointed a gloved finger at an empty glass on the table and blasted it into an ice cube. I tried to do the same, but it looked as if each power could only be held by one person at a time, so I could technically spread my powers out among three different people, although I can imagine the headache that would give me.

With a pleased sound, I noticed that the red glob on Khepri's left arm indicating Othala's power had shifted into the shaped of the Odal rune, indicating my mastery of Othala's power. This was really turning into a productive night.

"Nice, I mastered it." I fist-pumped. "That makes two powers I've mastered in one night, and I have a clue on how to master Hookwolf's power to boot."

"Glad that my store being attacked was so beneficial to you." Parian remarked dryly.

The Next Day

CEO's Office, Medhall Building

"Wolf, you have just stepped on a very fine line." Max Anders growled. He was seated behind his desk, wearing a very finely made suit and his hair was expertly slicked back. He was also very, very mad.

"What?" Hookwolf snorted. He stood indolently in front of the desk, arms crossed. "I almost burned down a shop. Fucking wow."

"No." Max, secretly Kaiser, said faux-calmly. "You almost murdered Parian in her civilian guise as she lives above that shop, you blithering idiot!"

"…oh." The enforcer said. After a moment of consideration, he shrugged. "No harm, no foul?"

"Sadly it doesn't work like that, Wolf." The millionaire sat back in his chair and eyed his chief enforcer. "Parian sent word to a nearby branch that she's claiming the two blocks around her shop as a no-go zone for Empire 88 members as recompense for your breach of the Unwritten Rules…something which I am forced to accede to, in order to keep in line with my established policy of reasonability."

"WHAT!?" Hookwolf roared.

"You fucked up, Brad." Max said with a quelling glare. "It is a very well fucking known fact that she has an apartment over her shop and stays there more often than not, something that absolutely anyone could have told you if you had bothered to do more than get pissed at Stormtiger being captured by the PRT and organizing a pogrom. You dropped the ball, you broke any sort of rapport that Parian had with us and you are the one carrying the can for this. I cannot emphasize how fucking stupid you have been here. Even the Empire can only protect you so much from your 'Cage Order and if it's upgraded to a Kill Order, then you become too much of a fucking liability to work with. Get it?"

"Yes." Hookwolf ground out.

"OK…then we are going to break Stormtiger out when he's transported to his prison, which will be inside of the next week at most." Max said, shifting to a less aggressive topic. "You, Rune, Fenja, Menja and Cricket will be taking care of it, so keep your head down until then."

"Got it." The enforcer nodded.

"So what did you find out about the newest player in the game?" the secret leader of the Empire asked.

"She's…fucking weird." Hookwolf growled. "At first I thought she had some kind of counter to Stormtiger, but I think she's some kind of super-Trump who can generate a power to counter a parahuman that she faces. No clue if the power's permanent or if it's a one and gone deal. I don't even know if it reacts to multiple opponents or not, but in a pit fight, where things are one-on-one? She'd be damn near unbeatable."

"In which case, the simple solution is to face her with more than a single Cape." Max said with a nod. "Even if she develops a hard counter to one of them, it won't affect the other so long as they aren't like the twins, anyway. Tell the others to engage her with a variety of powers and overwhelm her. Then we'll see what colour her skin is and take it from there."

Both men smiled knowingly at one another. Max Anders and Brad Meadows, while high-ranking members of the Empire 88 as Kaiser and Hookwolf, believed in the fascist, Neo-Nazi philosophy of the organisation about as much as they believed in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus; not at all. It was a convenient tool to use to control the lower-ranking members and a few of the Capes that came from families with long association with the Empire, nothing more.

Similarly, Max gave not a damn about the Unwritten Rules, not really. No actual villain did. They were, however, seen by the masses, the Heroes and the Rogues as something of a sign of civility and trustworthiness, which is why Kaiser went out of his way to seem calm, reasonable, approachable and, above all, a strong adherent to the Unwritten Rules…at least publically.

Because of those points, he had to be seen to punish Hookwolf, which he was doing by giving chewing him out and putting him under all-but house arrest, and placating Parian, which agreeing to her demand of a neutral zone would accomplish. He would mentio0n in a missive that it would 'be temporary until a more satisfactory solution presents itself' which would tell the clothier that he wasn't done with her yet.

"Now, I have a meeting of the Medhall board in a few minutes, so we will have to call this short." Max said, noticing the time. "Get in touch with our people inside the PRT and find out all planned routes for Stormtiger's prison convoy, as well as which route his actual transport will take rather than the ones the decoys will take."

"On it, Max." Hookwolf nodded and left via the hidden elevator that Max's father and predecessor in the Empire 88, Allfather, had installed in his office. It was an old one and could use a bit of modernization, but it was a good and solid one that had served the Empire well for such secret meetings as had just happened.

For a minute or two more, Max Anders looked out over Brockton Bay from his chair, a thoughtful and troubled expression on his face.

'This…Khepri...is proving to be something of a mystery.' He mused. 'Taking down Stormtiger is one thing, but managing to fight Hookwolf to a standstill is quite another. Whoever they are would make an excellent pawn if I can get my hands on them and persuade them to the cause. If they don't fit the Nazi stereotype or are obdurate, however…well, accidents happen.'

With a wolfish smirk, the leader of the Empire 88 stood up, adjusted his suit, tightened his tie and waltzed off to talk of the ever-growing profits of his business empire.

With Taylor

Hebert Residence

Last night had been wild, even by the standards of Brockton Bay. Still, I had come away from it smelling of roses, metaphorically speaking. Two powers mastered with another well on the way to being mastered, the gratitude of Parian and I have my debt to her waived completely because I'd saved her a couple of times.

I was starting to get nervous; I hadn't been lucky in a consecutive manner like this since my mother had died. To be honest, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and for karma to reassert itself.

Unfortunately for me, it didn't take long for that to happen.

I was in the middle of finishing my math coursework when the phone rang. Answering it, I discovered that it was Kurt, my godfather and a member of the Dockworker's Association.

"Taylor? You OK?" he asked immediately, worry in his voice.

"I'm fine. What's wrong?" I asked as Khepri floated around me.

"Taylor…it's Danny…there's been an incident and…he's in hospital." Kurt said tightly.

My head felt light as I asked, my voice sounding distant to my own ears. "I-Incident…what…what happened?"

"…there was a dust-up between Mush and Oni Lee nearby and it spilled over into our area of the Docks." Kurt said with a sigh. "Danny had us evacuate as soon as it looked as if the fight was gonna go our way, but one stupid dumbass went back in to get something and Danny went in to drag his ass out before the idiot got himself killed. When Mush crashed into the building, the first guy got out fine…but Danny's left arm and leg have been crushed. He's been put on the waiting list for Panacea because without her help, he's going to be crippled for life."

No…Dad…!

The rest of the conversation went by in a blur for me, so much so that I can't remember most of what Kurt and I talked about. As I put the phone down, my ears were ringing and I was breathing heavily, but it wasn't because of shock, or the symptoms of a panic attack.

I was furious.

"Khepri…!" I said in a voice that trembled with my anger.

"This cannot be allowed to stand, Taylor. Those scumbags have no right to involve your father in their stupid squabbles." My Stand said with a scowl. "Suit up and we shall show them the error of their ways."

"Damn right we will!" I growled and dashed a tear that had formed in one eye. I could let my sadness overwhelm me later; for the moment, Mush and Oni Lee had to pay for almost taking the last of my family from me.

Suiting up as quickly and efficiently as I could, I sped out of my house invisibly, Khepri at my side as I went on the offensive for the first time in my short career as a Cape.

So yeah…poor Taylor. Life always throws curveballs her way. And I actually feel kinda sorry for Mush and Oni Lee next chapter…heheheh. ^_^

Some of you will no doubt wonder 'why doesn't she heal Danny with the mutation of Panacea's power that she has?' The answer to that is rather simple; she lacks Panacea's instant comprehension of the target's biology, and the arms and legs of a human are immensely complex things, with muscle, blood, bone and cartilage all over the place, interconnected in very specific shapes, patterns and other ways. And Danny's left arm and leg has been crushed, meaning that Taylor would have to rebuild literally every bone in them from the ground up, which would take a long time and she'd need to do a lot of studying and practicing to get it right. All-in-all, it's just easier to let Panacea do it.

I'll do two more chapters of [Stand Proud] before moving on to another ficlet…randomly chosen, of course. Keep frosty and review!