2.9
Danny was worried.
He and his daughter had been eating dinner, spaghetti with meat sauce, and she'd been just about to say something when suddenly every part of her body tensed, wire taught, her pupils pinpricks, eyes wide, breath catching.
"Taylor?" he asked, concerned.
He waved a hand in front of her eyes. She blinked rapidly, and she put down her cutlery. She furrowed her brow, confused.
"Taylor, are you okay?" he said.
"I… I know this sounds weird, dad, but I just suddenly got a feeling."
"Feeling?" he asked, beginning to feel just as confused as Taylor looked and sounded like.
"As if a million voices cried out and were silent. Or as if someone were talking about me, actually. You know, that someone just stepped on my grave feeling? I feel itchy, restless. As if I have to do… something. Something big."
Taylor had been very into Star Wars lately. Any movie with a big and flashy villain, really. Strange.
"What do you think about TH- I mean, the Techno Queen?" Taylor asked, wincing at the villain's name. There was a bill in the works that was going to make correctly pronouncing the Techno Queen's name illegal. There had just been so many noise complaints.
He was stumped by this abrupt subject change.
"Well… she's not really a villain, I guess." He said.
"Excuse me?" And now her eyes were razor sharp and focused on him, as if he had just said something of extreme interest to her.
"Well, there was that one time when she turned in Coil and saved a young girl from getting kidnapped."
"Villains often foil each other! And she kidnapped that very same young girl again later for herself!"
"Yes, and then she did again, and again, and again. The young girl has continually kept on getting captured, and then rescued without a single scratch once."
"That's just because the heroes are so determined to serve justice!"
"What about that time she donated to that fundraiser?"
"That was a tripping hazard!"
"She saved that Canary woman from getting imprisoned."
"Aha! That's a crime all right! Going against the law like that, just to help a fellow evil-doer-"
"But following investigation proved that the trials were horribly biased, it was all a setup. She saved an innocent woman."
"And made her one of her evil subordinates."
"She helped in the Endbringer fight."
"That doesn't count! Everyone helps in the Endbringer fights."
"Not everyone, actually. You need courage to go through with it. And there was that time she helped Lung warn off villains from Brockton Bay."
"A challenge more like! Recklessly endangering the entire city, practically begging for villains to come and use the city as a battlefield!"
"Taylor, did the Techno Queen do something to personally offend you?" Danny asked, curious. "You're really monsterizing her here."
"She robbed a bank!" She ignored him.
"For one bagful of money, and leaving all of the heroes involved completely unharmed."
Taylor looked at him, shocked.
"So… you're saying that you don't think THE TECH- I mean, you don't think that the Techno Queen's really a villain?" she asked in a small voice.
"Well, not in the strictest sense, no. Only technically, really."
"And this is the opinion of the majority of the public?"
"I'd say so, yes."
And then a very dark look entered Taylor's eyes. Danny was almost a little scared by it.
"I haven't been subtle enough. I went too far in the direction of harmlessness. I'll have to fix that. I'll show them. I'll show them all." She whispered in an ominous voice.
And then she stood up and headed for the door.
"Taylor? Where are you going Taylor?" Danny called out.
"I've got some things to do, dad! Important things."
She slammed the door behind her. Danny heard her laugh on her way down the driveway.
It wasn't her normal laugh.
