Stand Proud Chapter 6 (Original chapter Chapter119)
Skies of Brockton Bay
Looking down at the sprawling city that was my home, I scowled as I contemplated the task before me. Mush and Oni Lee had booked it once the PRT and Protectorate had shown up and now they were in the wind.
"I believe that interrogating unpowered members of their respective gangs might prove wise." Khepri suggested. "But we must prioritize on who we must go after."
"Mush." I said tightly. "He's the one who is easiest to get at out of him and Oni Lee, and he doesn't have Lung at his back ready to retaliate. Let's go and shake down some drug addicts and find the bastard."
There was more to it than that, though. I'd overheard a few people talking about it and most people agreed that it had been Mush who had started the fight in the first place by raiding an ABB front and taking their money. It didn't make Oni Lee any better, but at least the guy had been protecting 'his' turf rather than starting something.
So Mush would be the first to feel my wrath.
I tracked down a group of Merchants easily enough; the drug-addled idiots were really not smart in their locations for hideouts. A warehouse with most of the roof missing? Please.
Sending Khepri through and watching through her eyes, I didn't spot Mush anywhere, or the other two Capes of the Merchants. This particular place seemed to be some kind of flophouse, intended to give the Merchants a place to crash and sleep if nothing else. No drugs that I could see, which was a surprise, and only one or two people who were armed.
A perfect place to shock and awe, in other words.
I had Khepri fly out and then, using [Glorious Field], she smashed through the ceiling, with me just a second or two behind her, startling away the Merchants and making the guards gape in shock before they tried to raise their guns at me.
Khepri passed the ice beam power of [Gift of Khepri] on to me and I blasted the guns and froze just their muzzles, so when the idiots pulled the triggers, their weapons blew up.
Ignoring the pained screaming and turning to face the Merchants, I said, "Where. Is. Mush?"
"Fuck you!" one shouted and charged at me. Khepri intercepted him as I made Darth Vader's force choke gesture and lifted him by the throat. Over the sound of his choking, I stared around at the idiots, who were gazing at me in shock.
"I find your lack of faith…disturbing." I drawled before I had Khepri throw him back in time with my own hand motion. "I'll ask nicely one more time…where is Mush? I am not going to leave until either you idiots are unconscious or I have either Mush's actual location or a lead to finding it. Exactly how much pain you all go through to get to either of those states is entirely up to you."
That had a chorus of gulps coming from the ones around me.
"W…we don't know!" one gulped. "Mush'll be lyin' low, but he could be anywhere!"
"No what I want to hear." I said placidly. "Points for honestly though. Leave this place and don't return. If I so much as see you jaywalking I'll be on your ass so fast you won't know what's happened to you."
The guy gulped again and ran.
The rest were more…obdurate…but I did manage to get the locations of several more Merchant hideouts, flophouses, drug labs and even one of Squealer's little labs. With my business there done, I told them all to run as I was going to destroy the place. Once they ran, I had Khepri summon a zorb-sized ball of multicolored light in the center of the warehouse and left. Once we were at the very limits of my control radius, I had her detonate the ball, which completely annihilated the warehouse, plus damaging the two to either side of it.
Oops. Sorry, not sorry.
Focusing my mind, I sped off to the nearest Merchant base location that I had been told about to continue the hunt.
Three drug labs, two more flophouses and Squealer's abandoned lab later, I finally found Mush as I finished destroying yet another drug lab. Just how many of those placed did they have?!
The Merchant Cape had already gathered a bunch of debris, trash, dirt and god-knows what else into a giant body around his potbellied form. He looked a lot like a goblin, albeit a pale one.
"Fucking bitch!" he shouted. "Who do ya think you are?!"
"An end for you!" I hissed back. At seeing one of the two people responsible for the injuries suffered by my father, my rage blazed through my body like fire. "Thanks for coming out by yourself, Mush; I don't have to waste my time on your flunkeys anymore. The name's Khepri, trash man. Remember it."
With a hoarse shout, the fat little man charged at me. The hands of his golem body are, laughably, made from what looks like plasterboard and the remains of shipping crates.
'No point even trying to use [Einherjar] against him, he's too weak for her to care.' I thought coldly. 'Nor would it be satisfying to me. Khepri, use Skidmark's power!'
I love the fact that Khepri can obey my thoughts.
With the shimmer (to my eyes only) of a red field around her body, Khepri swooped in and started to pummel Mush's body with a barrage of punches so fast that they were blurs to my eyes. To give the Merchant Cape credit, he tried to redistribute trash from across his body to the part that my Stand was attacking, but Khepri was more than smart enough to change her angle of attack to a different area almost instantly. Trash was send flying from his body, only to be drawn back in by Mush's power.
'Dammit. The only thing this is doing is making the trash that makes up his body smaller.' I frowned, noticing the debris starting to gather. 'Khepri, fall back and use the last of Purity's power. Start blasting him, but focus on incinerating the trash around his body, not him.'
Obeying, Khepri invoked the very last part of Purity's power that I possessed, making an exercise ball-sized orb of light appear in the sky above the street where Mush and I were fighting. The Merchant Cape barely had time to widen his eyes before several light blasts were fired, striking his golem body in several places and blasting the trash and detritus like grenades had been set off in it.
Purity's power was the most powerful I had access to, and a part of me wept to waste my last charge of it on an idiot like Mush, but the rest of me was coldly certain that I was necessary to drive home the point that he was screwed. One of the properties of [Rainbow Light], the power I got from Purity, was that it could be tweaked to vaporize only nonliving matter if I wanted. No clue why that was, possibly another alteration that Khepri had made to the power, maybe based on Purity's name.
I activated that particular power, making the beams that Khepri was firing from the orb start to vanish the parts of the golem that it his, which made Mush start to panic. Without trash and detritus to form his golem body, he was completely and utterly helpless.
As the Merchant Cape turned to flee, shifting most of his remaining trash to his legs in order to run, I had Khepri come alongside me to grant me the cryokinetic beam power, which I used to blast Mush's legs. They froze solid and the small man fell to the ground, the legs shattering into pieces as he landed, which Khepri quickly destroyed.
Before the pathetic excuse of a person could do more than scramble to his hands and knees, I fired by beam four more times in quick succession, freezing his limbs to the street.
"Bitch! You f-fucking b-bitch!" Mush screeched, shivering from the cold.
I slowly floated around him until I was looking down at him. I so, so, so badly wanted to make him pay for what he had done, but in truth, Dad was partially to fault for what had happened to him as well. He shouldn't have tried to get that idiot out of the building.
What I had done was enough…maybe with a warning.
"This is your first and last warning, Mush." I said harshly. "Involve civilians in your pathetic little squabbles with other Capes again and I will not merely humiliate you. Keep it in mind."
Floating up and away, I left Mush screaming profanity at me, even as his power tried to draw more trash to him. A look at Khepri's right arm showed that Purity's power was fading, leaving just a crescent-shaped white line indicating the accumulated experience that I had accrued by using it.
This was disappointing, because I'd hoped that manipulating the light like that would have possibly tipped it over to mastery, but looks like I was going to have to go on a walk around town to try and find Purity again.
I eyed the dull brown and muted red ball that indicated where Mush's power was and decided not to use it unless Oni Lee was really a pain in the ass.
Turning towards the territory of the ABB, I sped off to repeat my tactics to discover Lung's right-hand man.
Later
With Armsmaster, On Patrol
It was a surprisingly frequent occurrence for Armsmaster to wonder about how long Brockton Bay had been able to last without self-destructing from a violent gang war. Statistically, it was amazing that the Protectorate and PRT had managed to keep things anything approaching stable, although several factors, including Lung's laziness, Kaiser's attempts at reasonability and the general ineptitude of the Merchants, had played their own parts.
Now the city was on a knife's edge away from a massive gang war. Starting with the dust-up between Oni Lee and Mush, and further continuing as the Independent Heroine Khepri tore through several known Merchant locations before defeating Mush in one-on-one combat.
Now she was starting on the ABB, and Armsmaster felt like cursing as there were signs that the Empire was going to make a play of some sort, whether it was to attack the Merchants now that one of their three Capes was in custody (picked up by Miss Militia) or against Khepri, who was vulnerable to a multi-cape assault (Armsmaster hated it when Assault wrote up assessment; there was always at least one sentence, no matter how serious the report, that involved jokes, puns or innuendo).
"Console to Armsmaster." Clockblocker radioed to him as he sped along on his motorbike. "Independent Heroine Khepri has started going after ABB locations in and around the Docks area. Director's orders are to move in and stop her from throwing any more fuel on the fire."
"Dammit!" the leader of the ENE Protectorate cursed. "What is she doing?! She's going to get every gang in the Bay baying for her blood! I'm en-route now, Console."
Even as Clockblocker rattled off an acknowledgement, the Tinker swerved around a corner sharply and headed to the Docks area. He also changed his radio to a very specific frequency.
"Dragon, have you been monitoring the situation?" he asked calmly. "If so, what's your analysis?"
"I have, Colin." The world's greatest Tinker replied. "By the looks of it, Khepri deliberately drew Mush out by raiding several of the Merchants' locations; drug labs mostly, but a few communal sleeping quarters and what appears to be an old lab of Squealer's as well. If she's going after the ABB now, it could be that someone she knew was hurt in the clash between Oni Lee and Mush this morning."
"How many were hurt?" Armsmaster asked quickly. He had heard some of it before, but it had been in between zooming around putting out fires, so his memory was a bit iffy about the particulars.
"Two dozen received light injuries, cuts, scrapes and bruises, with a dozen receiving moderate injuries." Dragon replied almost immediately. "About five were seriously injured, with one man in a coma and another, the most prominent, received severe injuries to one side of his body and is thankfully unconcious as a result."
"Who was that last one?" the Tinker asked, swerving easily through traffic as he spoke.
"Daniel Hebert, the Union Representative of the Brockton Bay Dockworker's Association. He received his injuries by saving a subordinate." Dragon informed him. "Without intervention from Panacea, he'll never walk again."
Armsmaster winced. Those had to be some bad injuries. "Is he on the waiting list?"
"A priority case." The other Tinker confirmed. "He is, as I said, unconscious due to the pain and stress of his injuries. Panacea's heading to the Hospital he's in right now, so hopefully he'll be healed before he wakes up."
Sparing a moment to silently thank whoever had prioritized severe injuries for Panacea's valuable time, Armsmaster refocused on the task at hand. "Dragon, I'm coming up on Khepri's last known location. Can you investigate any possible people connected to those who have been injured that fits Khepri's general height and apparent age? We have to talk to her."
"By breaking the Unwritten Rules? Colin, I don't think-" Dragon started.
"By proving that if we can do it based on our knowledge of who was wounded today linked with Khepri's own actions, then someone else, such as the Empire, could do it as well." Armsmaster replied firmly. "She fought Mush to complete defeat, Dragon. Miss Militia found his hands and feet encased in ice and frozen to the surface of the street. Panacea's going to go to him either tonight or tomorrow to fix his frostbite. If she's press-ganged into the Empire…"
"Ice? I thought you said she has some kind of invisible projection?" the other Tinker asked in confusion.
"It isn't outside of the range of possibility that her projection has some other powers besides being invisible and intangible." Armsmaster stated. "In fact, I would be surprised if it had no other powers."
A good example of a projection that was partially similar to Khepri's one was Crusader; his 'ghost army' were utterly immune to being hit by anything inorganic, instead being intangible to inorganic matter, meaning that armor and obstacles were completely useless against them. The selling point of Crusader's power aside from that was that he could make more than one at a time, which made taking the original Crusader down a priority in a fight.
Khepri's projection may have some sort of cryokinetic power in addition to its invisibility and intangibility, which just upped how powerful she could be if she had the right training. That made it imperative to get her into the Protectorate or Wards, whichever applied.
Armsmaster's thought process stopped as he turned into a street and saw what had to be the absolute worst case scenario situation for Khepri.
Lung and Oni Lee were confronting her. The Dragon of Kyushu was already ramped up to quite a good level, metallic scales and claws out, with nascent wings sprouting from his back and a tail starting to grow, while Oni Lee had his knives out and his distinctive black bodysuit was scratched and torn in places, which was surprising; the tele-duplicator was notoriously hard to pin down thanks to his suicide bomber tactics. The fact that Khepri had somehow managed to get one or more hits on him was very impressive.
As to the golden-armored Heroine, she has a couple of scuff marks on her armor, and her helmet had a long score down the side of it where Oni Lee had likely gotten in a good cut at some point. Other than that, she looked surprisingly intact and healthy; Oni Lee looked more beaten up than she did.
Lung roared and charged forwards, flames licking down his arms, even as Oni Lee crumbled into ash and appeared behind Khepri. The next moment, the tele-duplicator was beaten back by something that wasn't there, not even able to pull a pin from one of his bandoliers of grenades before crumbling to dust and appearing in front of Khepri, one blade aiming at her neck…only to bounce off of something.
Oni Lee vanished in a crumble of ash just as Lund charged up, only for Khepri herself to unleash a double-handed blast of ice at him, covering his chest in ice, not that it stopped lung. Khepri flew up into the air just in time to avoid being body slammed by the giant dragon.
Floating in the air Khepri let out a sigh. "Lung, you are not the one I have a bone to pick with, Oni Lee is. Fuck off so I can beat him into the asphalt."
The Dragon of Kyushu responded with a garbled response that was almost certainly an expletive of some sort as he turned around and looked up.
"Fine. I'll just lock you down while I take care of Oni Lee." Khepri growled. "[Einherjar]! [Variable Golem]!"
In a flash of light, a silver blob appeared, slowly transforming into a metallic lupine-humanoid mix. Dropping to the ground to land on the asphalt of the road in a classic three-point stance, it looked up at Lung.
To the left of the silver girl, the asphalt bulged, rose up and became an armored woman similar to Khepri, albeit in a more classic 'knight-type' armor, complete with stylized breastplate and sword and shield. Also, it was three times the height of the average person. Beneath its feet, the asphalt had vanished, having been sucked up into the golem.
"Sic 'em!" Khepri ordered, flapping a hand in Lung's general direction.
"A truly strong opponent…by your command, my master!" the silver girl -Einherjar?- shouted in what had to be exultation and she charged towards Lung with wild abandon, with a large number of sharp blade extending from her arms and back.
The knight simply nodded once before charging along in her compatriot's wake, shield held out in front of it, sword held horizontally parallel to its eyes.
Khepri, now completely ignoring her visible projections, looked around and spotted Oni Lee atop a building and started blasting at him with the ice beam, to which the lieutenant of the ABB responded by teleporting a dozen copies of himself around her, all poised to pull the pins on their grenades…
…only to be knocked back by a wide-area barrage of what looked like compressed air bullets.
Shaking his head, Armsmaster cursed himself for getting caught up watching the fight. Goddamn bystander's syndrome.
As Lung smacked around the asphalt knight and metal wolf-girl and got larger, the Tinker dismounted from his motorcycle and called in the situation. This could get seriously out of control if something wasn't done about it, soon.
"Armsmaster to Console, Khepri is here and engaging both Lung and Oni Lee. Repeat, Khepri is engaging Lung and Oni Lee." Armsmaster said urgently into his radio. "Requesting all available backup."
"Console to Armsmaster, roger that." Clockblocker said seriously, a welcome change. "Miss Militia, Velocity, Assault, Battery and Dauntless on route to your location now."
Both knew that it was likely to be useless. Lung had fought and defeated the entirety of the Protectorate ENE when he had arrived in the Bay several years ago. Of course, members had come and gone since, so the only member of the team who had been here all the way back then was Velocity.
'Still, a speedster, a Tinker, a gun creator, a dynokinetic, a Breaker/Mover and an item-Trump weren't exactly an ideal team to face the Dragon of Kyushu at maximum power.' Armsmaster through as he eyed the violent combat taking place before him. 'I have to try to de-escalated this situation, and fast.'
Getting involved in the melee combat situation around Lung was a big no-no though. As much as Armsmaster had confidence in his armor and halberd, the blows that the three combatants were exchanging were strong enough to rip it (and him) apart.
Taking a closer look, he could see that the wolf-girl projection was regenerating from the swipes that Lung managed to hit her with almost as fast as they struck her, while the asphalt knight…the asphalt knight was drawing the asphalt out of the road's surface in order to regenerate, and if the spot the knight golem was standing on happened to be bare of the stuff, it drew the asphalt to her from up to a meter away!
'Wind bullets…a silver wolf-girl…a golem that draws substances to it….no…surely not…' Armsmaster thought in shock. He shook his head. 'I can think about it later. For now, I need to fight.'
The aerial duel between Khepri and Oni Lee came to an abrupt end just then as Khepri scored a solid hit on her opponent with her ice beam that sent the ABB Lieutenant slamming into a building. She was quick to blast him with more ice until the only exposed part of him was his head.
As Khepri started to float closer, Armsmaster felt a thrill of alarm go down his spine. She wasn't going to..?!
Thankfully, she wasn't. She floated in close to Oni Lee and leaned in. Armsmaster could tell that she was saying something to him, but not what it was. Then she moved away from Oni Lee and fired her ice beam at Lung, freezing his tail to the ground and surrounding it in ice.
"This fight's over, Lung. I've accomplished what I set out to do." She called to him firmly, as her projections reluctantly backed away from the leader of the ABB. "Oni Lee has been punished for involving civilians in his fights, just as I punished Mush. Stand down and retrieve your subordinate before he freezes to death."
Surprisingly, that actually made Lung pause to look at his lieutenant closely. Oni Lee was trapped in ice, up to his neck, and it was clear that he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.
'Odd…why not teleport away?' Armsmaster mused. 'Unless…hmm. More food for thought.'
Lung snarled, but moved over to Oni Lee and busied himself with melting the ice that bound him. If nothing else, then Oni Lee was a useful subordinate for the Dragon of Kyushu, so sacrificing him unnecessarily would not be a wise idea. Armsmaster had to wonder if Khepri had thought that out in its entirety beforehand, or if it was fortuitous happenstance? Whichever way it was, the situation was essentially deescalated right now, provided that Khepri left.
"Armsmaster!" Miss Militia pulled up on her bike and strode over to stand next to him. "What in the world?"
Cursing as the two projections vanished alongside Khepri, Armsmaster turned to Miss Militia. "Evidently, something about Oni Lee and Mush's fight this morning offended Khepri's sensibilities, so she, and I quote, 'punished for involving civilians in their fight', end quote. I watched the majority of the fight myself and it revealed a lot of interesting details about Khepri's powers."
"Interesting how?" his second in command asked warily.
"In the incorrect Chinese proverbial sense." Armsmaster replied grimly. "'May you live in interesting times' indeed."
Later
Director's Office, PRT ENE Building
"So, to summarize today's events, people." Emily Piggot massaged her head. "Firstly, Oni Lee reacted to Mush attacking an ABB front near the Docks and it escalated into a fight with over… forty casualties, including light, moderate and seriously wounded, among the civilians."
"All of the wounded are either completely healed and heading home, or stable and on the road to recovery." Miss Militia reported smoothly.
"Well that's SOMETHING good, at least." The Director huffed. "After that, the new Independent Heroine Khepri went on what amounted to a rampage through both the Merchants and ABB until she found and defeated both Mush and Oni Lee. Do we have any idea why she would do this?"
"Ninety percent probability of someone she knew was caught up in it." Armsmaster offered immediately. "The ruthlessness of her actions makes it likely that it was probably one of the moderately or seriously wounded people."
"Lovely, a vigilante with an axe to grind." Emily said sourly.
"Strangely enough, I don't think so." Armsmaster disagreed. A video popped up on the screen on the wall, showing Khepri declaring that she had 'punished' both Oni Lee and Mush. "She specifically hunted down Mush and Oni Lee, in that order, because of what they had done and she declared that she had fulfilled that mission. I believe that unless they repeat their actions regarding civilians, she will only fight them if she comes across them committing a crime. I won't say she won't be a bit harsher and warier around them, but with Oni Lee, that isn't exactly a bad thing."
"True enough." Piggot allowed. "Now, on to the tricky part…what the hell kind of powers does she have? That is a lot more than an invisible projection!"
"A silver human-wolf hybrid that can sprout blades from her body, at least Brute 5, Changer/Striker 2." Miss Militia rattled off. "A golem made of asphalt that can regenerate by absorbing asphalt, that makes it a Brute 4 or 5, with a possible Trump rating if it grows stronger by absorbing asphalt. Flight, definitely Mover 4 for the speed and maneuverability. That ice beam was definitely a strong power, Blaster 4 at least."
"She also beat Oni Lee back with what looked like a barrage of compressed air bullets." Armsmaster added. "Blaster 4 at the very least. Something that I noticed was that there's a pattern emerging here."
"How so?" Piggot asked.
"She fought Stormtiger and has access to compressed air bullets. I heard earlier today that Hookwolf tried and failed to firebomb the Dollhouse two nights after Stormtiger was taken into custody. Rumours say that he was stopped by someone who used compressed air bullets, and now we see Khepri using a lupine-human projection." The Tinker listed, seeing the realization dawn in the eyes of the two women. "And she recently defeated Mush, and is now able to summon a golem made from asphalt. I should note that she referred to it as her 'Variable Golem' which implies to me that asphalt isn't the only substance that it can be made of."
"You are suggesting that she has the power to…what, copy powers from other parahumans?" Piggot asked with a hard look.
"Not exactly. Hookwolf Changes into a wolf, whereas the projection she refers to as 'Einherjar' is a separate entity." Armsmaster disagreed. "I think that she generates powers based on who she has fought; the powers don't end up being the same as the source, but similar enough that if they are particularly distinctive, you can recognise them."
"That…that does sound probable, given the evidence." Miss Militia nodded slowly. "What about her ice beam and flight? Are those more powers she got from someone or a part of her original power set?"
"I have no idea, but Khepri only got her costume from Parian a few days ago, and I haven't heard of any of the fliers, Heroes or Villains, being attacked." Armsmaster replied with a sigh. "The flying part would fit in with the Khepri mythos, as the sun rose into the sky as Khepri, but the ice beam? I don't see the connection, but I also don't know of any cryokinetics in Brockton Bay, or even in any neighboring town or city. I think the closest one is outside of the state of Massachusetts, actually."
"So we have a powerful Parahuman, independent, who isn't hesitating to stir things up if something happens that offends her sense of…justice? Morals? Sensibilities?" the Director massaged her temples again. "God. This might turn into one hell of a clusterfuck, soon. The few videos of Khepri fighting Lung and Oni Lee, and apparently winning, have gone viral, literally. Her armor is golden, giving her a decided resemblance to Scion, which is getting the Fallen riled up, not to mention those idiots at the Church of Scion."
None of the three people had any liking for the idiots who worshipped the Endbringers, nor any degree of great tolerance for the debatably more idiotic fools who worshipped Scion. The Fallen made the Endbringer Battles, those that were fought on American soil anyway, very difficult as they protested people 'fighting their gods' and other such nonsense, not to mention their clashes with the Church of Scion.
"Fortunately for us, if there's one thing that Lung and Kaiser agree on, it's that those lunatics are to keep themselves out of the Bay." Miss Militia said firmly. "They will react to any sightings of the Fallen or the Golden Order before we get reports."
The Golden Order was another name for the Church of Scion. Mostly because they painted their faces gold. Just about the only saving grace was that there were almost no Capes in the Church of Scion; it cut down on what the zealots could get up to.
"That's one damn fine silver lining, Miss Militia, but I'll take it nonetheless." Piggot sighed. "Right. So. Khepri. All members of the Protectorate and Wards are directed to engage in conversation with her and they are to firmly stress how a powerful Cape such as she is cannot survive alone against the likes of the Empire. Lung and Oni Lee are one thing, but if the Empire mobilized against her in force…"
"I'll see to it." Armsmaster nodded. "But you do realise that it is likely that she will refuse."
"I am aware." Piggot said sourly. She knew that Master-class Parahumans had a strong need for independence and/or a lack of need/respect for higher authority (which amounted to basically the same thing in her opinion), so Khepri, now that she had several successful engagements under her belt, was not likely to bow to anyone else's opinion on her effectiveness. "The effort must be made, however."
"Understood." The leader of the Protectorate ENE nodded.
"Good. Now, I had better start dealing with the reports for this brouhaha." The Director sighed and reached for her computer keyboard.
And that's an end to this chapter.
So, I have to say, when you people have an opinion, you really make it known. There were a LOT of people questioning me about why Taylor didn't just use Othala's power to heal Danny. I would ask that you all actually check the reviews that have already been written before you write your own to see what has been written already. I got it after the third one.
There are two answers to why Taylor didn't use Othala's power on her father. First, she had no idea if the regeneration would heal him. The regeneration is very, very quick, but that does not mean that it is powerful or as encompassing as Panacea's power is. Othala heals broken bones, yes, cuts, bruises and the like too, but a crushed bone is something that Taylor (and I for that matter) have no clue as to whether Othala's original regeneration power could handle it, let alone the [Gift of Khepri] version. If you can pinpoint somewhere in Worm where she healed an injury of that severity, point it out.
The second reason is, frankly, because she had a mad-on. Any and all thoughts of helping her father were brushed aside and making the bastards who had hurt him in the first place feel the pain. Add into the fact that she had been told that Danny was on the list for Panacea to heal him and you have one Roaring Rampage of Revenge, courtesy of your Friendly Neighborhood Queen of Escalation. ^_^
As before, here are Taylor's new powers, including Oni Lee's.
Mush: [Variable Golem] – Master 5 (Sub-ratings of Brute 4, Striker 2 and Trump 2)
Oni Lee: [Blink and Flick] – Mover 5
Unused Powers: Lung, Miss Militia.