The Other Way
Chapter Seven
Sophia Hess is Shadow Stalker.
There were probably noises in the room, but Taylor heard only those five words in her head again and again, echoing within her skull.
Sophia Hess was in the Wards. Hero.
I spent the last three months dreaming about becoming a cape to get away from you, and you've been here waiting for me this whole time.
She felt like her dream had betrayed her, the heroes had betrayed her, the world had betrayed her. But underneath it all, in the deepest, darkest corner of her mind, she felt ... laughter. She had felt optimistic, hopeful even, and the world laughed at her.
Of course. Of course she'd be here. Every time Taylor had found a refuge, a safe haven, an escape, the bullies would always find her.
She couldn't run.
She couldn't hide.
That only left ...
Someone put a hand on her shoulder, jolting her back to reality with Sophia's sneering face in front of her instead of just in her head. Below that sneer, the girl's jugular vein throbbed invitingly.
Taylor lunged at her, wanting to hurt her no matter the cost, but Sophia ... dissipated, turning into a shadow that Taylor passed through. Now behind her, Sophia grabbed her arm, twisted it behind her back, and slapped her into a wall.
Of course. She wasn't just fighting Sophia Hess, she was up against Shadow Stalker. But you're not dealing with Taylor Hebert anymore, either.
Shadow Stalker leaned in close and whispered something in her left ear, but between her partial deafness and the other noises in the room, Myriad had no idea what she said. She couldn't bring herself to care. She was too busy focusing on her bugs.
There weren't many here. The Wards HQ was clean, and she didn't want to introduce herself to the other heroes looking like one of the plagues of Egypt, but even a small amount of bugs hiding in cracks and corners, in vents and under rugs meant hundreds.
She didn't have anything that could sting and only a few bugs that could bite, but everything that could fly swarmed Shadow Stalker's face, covering her eyes and squirming into her mouth. Shadow Stalker spat and stepped back, loosening her grip on Myriad's arm enough for her to pull free and slam her elbow into Shadow Stalker's face.
Shadow Stalker stumbled backwards, stunned, and Myriad pressed the attack, not wanting to find out what would happen if she lost the initiative. She pulled her stun gun out from its compartment on her back, and two things happened at once.
The first was that Shadow Stalker went into her shadow state, becoming a black, vaporous form that Myriad's bugs passed through.
The second was Aegis. He flew through Shadow Stalker's incorporeal form and tackled Myriad to the ground. She struggled to break free, swarmed him with bugs, and even tasered him once (mostly) on accident, but for all her effort, he picked her up like she was nothing more than a child and carried her out of the room.
WWW
"So," Robert said, taking off his Browbeat mask. "What just happened?"
"New girl recognized Sophia from her civ life and tried to claw her eyes out," Dennis explained.
Robert considered that for a moment, then nodded. "Makes sense."
"And what's the deal, Dean?" Dennis said, turning on his friend. "When I asked you about the new cape you were recruiting, you told me she was crazy hot, not crazy."
"I didn't say that at all," Dean said. "All I said was that I thought you'd like her."
"Implying ..."
Dean turned to Sophia, ignoring him. "Sorry. If I had known that you two knew each other, I would have warned you both. Are you going to be okay with this?"
Sophia ran her tongue along her busted lip. Enjoying the taste of her own blood wasn't the creepiest thing about her, but there was stiff competition. "My shift is over and I'm not staying for the party. I'm out of here."
"That's great," Dennis said with a smile. "I love to see you go and watch you leave, so this works out really well for me."
Sophia flipped him off as she left, which Dennis took to mean that she was fine.
"So what's going to happen to Taylor?" Missy asked.
"That depends," Dean answered. "Fighting with a teammate is always a serious issue, but it's her first day and we don't know about her specific circumstances. On the other hand, if it turns out that Taylor knew about Sophia's vulnerability to electricity when she tried to tase her, then it's suddenly an issue of attempted murder instead of assault."
"Oof," Missy said. "I guess I should have tried to separate them."
"Don't blame yourself. I was the only one who had any warning about what she was going to do, so if anyone is to blame, it's me."
Dennis rolled his eyes at that. The only person who ever blamed Dean for anything was Dean. You could step on his foot and he's apologize for being in your way. "You're worrying too much. Carlos is just going to yell at her for hitting Sophia—and let's face it, we've all wanted to do that at some point."
"Not all of us," Dean said.
"Besides you, then. Anyway, the only way it's going to escalate beyond that is if Sophia drags the issue to Piggy, and she never does that."
"No," Missy said. "She prefers to deal with problems on her own."
Oh. Right. The only thing worse than a problem was one that Shadow Stalker had "solved."
"I'm going to check on Carlos and Taylor," Dean said, thinking on the same wavelength. "You guys wait here until I get back."
WWW
"Alright. First you're going to—"
"—can't believe this! She's a complete—"
"—calm the hell down, and then—"
"—monster! For two freaking years she—"
"—tell me what's going on—"
"—unending hell! And then I find—"
"—from the beginning!"
Taylor stopped, half from Carlos slowly losing his temper and half from the fact that she was out of breath. They were in a bedroom, but not one that looked like it had been lived in. One of the spares?
"Sophia Hess," she said slowly, "is Shadow Stalker."
Carlos nodded. "Yes?"
"Shadow Stalker," she continued, "is a hero."
"... and?"
"Do you not see the contradiction here? She sent me to the goddamn hospital as a joke, and—and she's been one of you this whole time!" One of you. It struck her that the Wards program worked with the schools, so Principal Blackwell and probably every teacher at Winslow knew who Sophia was. They knew what she pretended to be, saw what she did every day, and they did not care.
Or maybe ... maybe they were doing exactly what they were told to.
Dean knocked on the door and stuck his head in. "Is everything okay in here?"
"So far," Carlos said, "but we're just getting started. Taylor here is accusing Sophia of some sort of crime. Come in."
"What was it?" Dean asked, closing the door behind him.
It? Taylor almost laughed. As though it was only one crime, and not a year and a half of abuse. At the moment, she hated Dean almost as much as she hated Sophia. If anyone should have seen what she was, it was you.
Maybe Dean had seen what kind of monster Sophia was. Maybe they all did. Does anyone care?
"It," she spat, "could fill several books." She had filled several books, keeping track of every cruelty since the beginning of her sophomore year, for all the good it would do. "Assault, battery, theft, vandalism, a load of other crap that I don't know the legal terms for."
She wondered if Emma knew. It made sense. Even when they were friends, Emma was full of shallow vanity that her amateur modeling job did nothing to curb. If she had met a super hero while Taylor was at nature camp—no, not a hero. A cape. Celebrity law enforcement was a more apt term. If Emma had met a celebrity that summer, of course she would have turned against her and let Sophia remake her. If that was the case, then Sophia Hess was single-handedly responsible for ruining Taylor's life.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "If Sophia's on the team, then I sure as hell am not. It was nice meeting you all, but I quit." She had been sworn in about half an hour ago. This was probably some sort of record.
Dean stood in the doorway, blocking her exit. "Hold on. If you've seen her break parole, we need to know about it."
"No!" Taylor barked. "You don't get to talk. You always know exactly the right thing to say, and I do not need that right now!" She hesitated. "Wait, parole?" She turned back to Carlos. "What is she on parole for? Did she kill someone?"
"No," Carlos said. "We got him to the hospital in time." He looked away, as though realizing that he probably shouldn't have said that.
Taylor's jaw dropped. "So you knew she was a violent psychopath, but you still let her run loose?" She had left one of her bugs on Sophia's cape to keep track of her. The cape was currently lying on the floor in another room with the rest of her costume, so wherever Sophia was, she was naked. Or, more likely, wearing something else.
"We don't let her run loose. She's restricted to tranquilizer ammunition and she's not allowed to patrol on her own."
"So you know she's messed up enough to keep an eye on her in costume, but you just assume she'll behave the rest of the time just because she's not wearing a mask?" Taylor shook her head. She was angry at them, but she was angry at herself too. Against common sense and personal experience, she had decided to trust people, and why? Because they called themselves heroes? Anyone could do that, and now Taylor had outed herself to the last person she would ever have wanted to know about her powers. "Whatever. That's your problem. Deal with it for once."
Or don't.
And if you don't ...
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I'll custodiet the heck out of you custodes.
She turned to leave. Dean stepped out of her way for her to open the door—and destroyed her life in seven words.
"If you back down, Taylor, she wins."
Taylor froze, her hand on the latch, and at that moment she hated him as much as she hated anyone in her life. Because her last pride was that, even if she didn't fight back against the bullies, she told herself that at least she didn't back down. Because becoming a cape had never been about stepping up, but about running away. And, most of all, because he was right.
Dammit all, he was right.
She would never forgive him for that.
WWW
"Well, that could have gone better."
Dean shook his head after Taylor left. "No, I don't think it could have. You didn't see it, Carlos. It was like her head burst into flames as soon as Shadow Stalker took her mask off. I've never seen anything like it."
"And how was Sophia feeling during all this?"
"Sophia was ..." Sophia was unrestrained by nature, which made her easy to predict. Most of the time. "At first she was annoyed, but after Taylor attacked her, she seemed ... pleased? Relieved? Like she had wanted something for a long time and finally gotten it."
Carlos frowned. "So this is bad for Taylor, but good for her?"
"Unlikely. The sort of things Sophia wants ..."
"Ah."
"They usually aren't what she needs."
The previous Thursday, Shadow Stalker had been the only member of the team who hadn't fought the Undersiders during the bank robbery, and had been in a foul mood ever since. Well, a fouler mood. Officially Winslow High was too far away for her to arrive in time, but the truth was that she couldn't be trusted to work with the team when her nemesis Grue was involved, and she hadn't forgiven the team for holding her back. Now with this ...
"I'm not good at this," Carlos said abruptly. "I'm a soldier, not a leader."
"You lead by example."
"That's not leadership. I can fight. I can take a hit. But the rousing speeches, reading people ... you'll be better at this than I ever was."
Dean shook his head. "You're the hero. You saved Sophia's life when everyone else was starting to figure out what was going on. I'm just naturally manipulative." If he could have chosen his powers, he would have chosen something more physical, so he could stand against the monsters like King Arthur's knights, whom he had idolized as a child, or Chevalier, whom he had idolized as a slightly older child. But his father was the one paying for everything, so in the end Mr. Stansfield had chosen his powers.
"So what do we need to do about this? Besides make sure they never patrol together."
"Put me with Shadow Stalker tomorrow on her next patrol." His probation was only for one day, and was somewhere between a warning and a slap on the wrist. "As for Taylor ... I don't know. She needs the Wards more than she knows. In a few months, the team will mean as much to her as it does to Missy, but until she gets used to it ..." He shook his head, trying to recall every fact he could about the girl. "Maybe direct her toward some sort of legal recourse against Sophia? That should take a while, and give her time to cool."
WWW
Emily Piggot reached for her cup of coffee, but found the mug empty. Distressing, but not worth getting up for. She drank coffee for the rhythm of putting something in her mouth more than she needed the caffeine. She turned back to the report on her computer screen when she heard a knock on her door.
She ignored it. If there were an emergency, no one would wait to knock, and if it were important, it would be on her schedule or someone would have called ahead. She waited for the annoyance to go away and leave her to her job.
Instead, the annoyance opened the door and stepped into her office. It was a cape, female, wearing a black and grey costume. She was new, but the fact that she barged into Piggot's office was proof enough of that.
"And you are?" She knew, of course, but the moment you started remembering people's names they started feeling important, and capes had enough self-importance already.
"Myriad. I joined the Wards today. I was talking to the education lady, Mrs. Paulson, about how the schools and the Wards Program work together, and she said I should talk to you."
"I see." She focused on her computer, keeping her expression neutral. One job, she thought. You had one job, Paulson. Deal with the powered teenagers, and you can't even do that. She had more important things to deal with, such as the fallout from the Bakuda situation. One might think that villains would be less trouble after being put in a cage. Over a hundred people needed brain surgery and bomb disposal, and then Gallant had offered the PRT's medical professionals to all of Bakuda's victims, which the PRT was in no way capable of accommodating under such short notice. The boy couldn't help but make grand, heroic, and ultimately counterproductive gestures, not understanding that bad help was actually worse than no help. Bad help gave people something to complain about while no help encouraged them to deal with problems on their own.
"The Wards Program encourages the schools to be lenient on the Wards," Myriad said. "Too lenient. It's too easy for a Ward to take advantage of the system."
Piggot raised an eyebrow at that, but she didn't buy it. Heroes often talked about their ideals like they were reading a script (one that Piggot herself sometimes helped write), but they hid behind those ideals like they hid behind people. Myriad wouldn't have brought up leniency unless it inconvenienced her.
"Which school do you go to?"
Myriad hesitated, caught off guard. "Winslow High."
Winslow? Did they have any capes at Winslow? She typed the name into her computer, and Shadow Stalker's file came up. Ah. That clarified things. "I take it you've met Sophia Hess before today."
The girl's mask hid her face, but Piggot had years of experience reading body language, and Myriad's clenched fists weren't subtle. "She's a monster. If you knew what sort of sort of crap she pulls when your people aren't watching, you wouldn't let her get away with calling herself a hero."
All capes are monsters, Piggot thought to herself. Some monsters are useful. She pulled up Myriad's file to see what she was dealing with. The girl had been sworn in literally that day, so it was short. Arthropodokinesis. Not exactly the most marketable power, but Piggot would find a use for her, assuming she was willing to fall into line. Meanwhile, Shadow Stalker was on probation, which meant Piggot could send her to prison if she misbehaved instead of just firing her.
"Acerbic, abrasive, narcissistic, a strong tendency toward violence, and an overwhelming sense of entitlement," Piggot said. Most capes were like that, to one degree or another. Some controlled it better, others hid it better, but it was there in all of them. "We are always watching."
Myriad stared at her for a long moment, long enough for Piggot to reopen the report about Bakuda's remaining victims. Hadn't Myriad been involved with that? Yes, but that was only mentioned in Bakuda's file, not Myriad's. It was a devil keeping track of everything.
"You are, aren't you?" Myriad said. "You're watching, you just don't care. That's even worse!"
The girl was becoming irritating. Piggot didn't like capes and she didn't like children; putting them together was her personal hell. "We care about issues far more important than you can comprehend."
That was the thing about children; they expected the world to revolve around them. They assumed they lived in a world where they mattered when they were objectively expendable. Piggot herself used to think that way when she was young and naive. The capes themselves taught her how little she mattered in the end as they left her team to die while they escaped. She took some solace from the fact that even the individual capes mattered little compared to the system. The PRT chewed up capes and spat them out just like it did with the non powered officers, all for a good that was greater than any of them. All that mattered was that the system as a whole kept going.
And for that system to keep going, the people in it, parahuman and normal alike, had to do their jobs, and Piggot needed to get back to hers.
"Let's wrap this up, shall we? Has Sophia Hess killed anyone?"
"No, but—"
"Has she assaulted civilians with parahuman abilities?"
"I don't—"
"Then she is outside my concern. If you have a problem with her as a teammate, speak with Aegis. If you have a problem with her as a classmate, speak with your principal. If you have a problem with her out of school and out of costume, go to the police or, better yet, file a report to her parole officer. Hess has a hearing in June if you would like to present your evidence to people forced to listen to you. But whatever you do, stop wasting my time."
Myriad remained there. "This isn't about Shadow Stalker. This is about the system that enabled her. You know she's violent. You know she's cruel. For all I know you know she sent me to the hospital a few months ago because she thought it would be funny. She does what she does because she knows what she can get away with. You give her license, she becomes licentious. That has to change."
Piggot gave her a cold look. She had lost everything to her job, working for the PRT, and now this ignorant cape on her first day here thought she could tell her how to run things. She knew better than to rise to the obvious bait, but ... but right now she simply wanted to. Besides, she only had one chance to make a first impression. If she did it right, she'd never have to make a second one.
"Alright," she said, leaning back in her chair. "Let's play this out. You're in charge of several teams of heroes. What do you do?"
"I ... I hold them to a higher standard. Gallant told me that people need heroes to believe in, but that doesn't mean anything unless the heroes are worth believing in in the first place."
"So no special treatment. At the end of the day, the heroes get a paycheck, and that's it. But they decide that if they're not going to be treated like heroes, they're not going to be heroes. They quit or you fire them, one by one. Some become rogues, others become villains. The heroes that remain aren't sufficient to maintain order and are eventually pulled to places where they can make a difference, abandoning everyone left behind to the whims of monsters. Congratulations, Myriad. You stuck to your ideals, to your self-righteous indignation, and let countless people die."
"That ... that might not happen," she said, but she sounded unsure.
"Gary, Indiana; Gallup, New Mexico; Pueblo, Colorado," Piggot said, listing off just a few of the HOSV's in the United States alone. "It's happened before. Either you refuse to bend until you break, or you focus on the one thing that matters. If you want fame, become a hero. If you want fortune, become a villain. If you want to break the rules, become a villain. If you don't want the rules to apply to you, become a hero."
Myriad tilted her head slowly, thoughtfully. "You don't believe in them. You work with heroes, but you don't believe in them."
Piggot did much worse than that. She preached capes, she was a false priestess in the church of capes. She was the reason people all over the city hero-worshiped super-powered, charismatic lunatics. She was great at her job. It came from her limitless capacity for hypocrisy.
"Of course I don't," she said. "I know you." She glanced at the clock. It was getting late, and she was wasting time. "Back to the matter at hand, Shadow Stalker. If her arrangement is giving her an unfair advantage over you, then you may have the same set of privileges. Face her on equal ground. That should satisfy you, I think."
No one wanted injustice, at least, not as long as was against them. Injustice in one's favor, however, was always somehow earned.
"No." The word came out sharp and quick. Myriad paused before continuing, as though surprised herself. "No. When I'm not in costume, I want to be treated like everyone else."
Piggot paused and looked up at her, studying her for the first time since she came into the room, because this was the first time that the girl seemed worth studying. "Is that so. We shall see. Now go away. I have work."
Myriad took the hint and turned to leave, though it was far past a hint at this point. Piggot waited until she was at the door to interrupt her.
"Oh, and Myriad? I do not have an open door policy. In the future, schedule an appointment with my secretary before coming to see me. Or better yet, solve the problem on your own."
WWW
"So I'm thinking ..."
"Uh-huh."
"First of all, this whole thing is B.S. And you know it's B.S."
"You could argue that."
"I mean, all three at once? In the same country? At this point, we should just let them have it and move to Canada. I mean, screw America! I choose life!"
Chris winced. "You really don't want to let Miss Militia hear you talk like that. She doesn't wear stars and stripes on her costume for nothing."
"But seriously, all three?" Taylor squeezed the game controller in her hand as she glared at the screen. "Behemoth is in Houston, Leviathan's in Philadelphia, and Simurgh is in Chicago. What gives? I mean, I can't be everywhere, can I?"
"Nope," Chris said. "You have to choose one."
She scowled. I hate this game. But she wasn't cleared for active duty yet—bullcrap—and the only Ward left at the HQ was Chris. After dealing with Piggot and finding everything she had ever hated about adult supervision and government oversight, she had asked Chris how he dealt with feeling royally pissed at the world. Que Legends of Love. So far it wasn't working.
"The biggest city is ... Chicago or Houston? They're about the same, aren't they?"
"About."
"But Chicago could be quarantined no matter what. Simurgh protocols and all, like with what happened in Madison, so Chicago's gone. Though Houston isn't going to be that much better with all the nuclear fallout. Honestly if I'm going to cut my losses, I might want to just fly over to Philadelphia."
"Think less about the cities," Chris said, "and more about the other heroes in the cities. Namely the three love interests."
"Because they're staying there no matter what."
"Exactly. They're going down with the ship."
Taylor couldn't blame them for that. The whole thing was a hopeless mess, and when you were in a hopeless mess, the only thing you could do was decide where to take a stand. Besides, they were video game characters in a dating sim. They had a lot more anatomy than autonomy.
"Well, then obviously Philadelphia is out of the question. Legend can fly but Chevalier can't, so he'd only slow me down." Taylor chewed on her lip. "I'm going to be honest, I really don't understand Myrddin's powers that well, but at least he can fly. And do magic, apparently. Dimensional pockets or something. But Eidolon can do everything, so he's obviously the best choice. Right?"
Chris hesitated. "Well, I haven't actually played this game before."
"You may have mentioned that, yes."
"But you're over analyzing everything. I don't know if you want me to spoil the final chapter—"
"Yes. I'm not here for the plot twists, I'm here to win."
"Then keep in mind that this is a dating sim. You've been exploring the different romantic possibilities, but now it's the time to commit. No, it's the time to see if you have committed. You're going to abandon two people to die, and if you haven't maxed out the affection meter for the third one, he's going to die too. That's what Legends of Love is all about. Either you love your friends enough to save one of them—just one—or you watch the world end."
They stared at the television screen in silence, the choice left unchosen.
"This game is messed up," Taylor said.
"Absolutely."
"Did I max out anyone's affection meter?"
"Did you get a gratuitous shower scene back in chapter four?"
"No."
"Tough luck. Really it's next to impossible without having an open walkthrough in front of you the whole time."
Taylor sighed, got up off the bean bag (a more challenging seat to escape from had never been invented), and turned off the console. So far, her first full day as a Ward had been uneventful. Before going on patrol, she needed to finish reading the handbook of regulations that she had to live by, and some of the PRT experts had wanted to test her powers. Most of those tests had involved feeding cockroaches narcotics. The only productive thing she had done that entire day was replace the broken lenses of her costume, so yay, she could see again. She was still half deaf, but she barely noticed.
Tomorrow was her last day at Winslow.
"Hey, you go to Arcadia, don't you?"
He nodded. "We all do, almost. Missy's still in middle school and Sophia's in ... well, you know about her."
Oh, didn't she just. "What's it like there?"
He shrugged. "It's a school. There's a Faraday cage to block cell reception, which is kind of fun. When I first started going there, I began working on a Faraday bypass to shield the phone signal, but I never finished it. They got a work-study program with everyone leaving at odd hours to do internships and shadowing professionals, but that's just to cover us when we need to leave. Honestly I don't think I've ever stayed a full day, just because the PRT tutors explain things better than the teachers do, and I need more time to Tinker around in my workshop. Um, I actually do that a lot, I've just ... hit a block recently. What's Winslow like?"
"It's a ghetto school," she replied. "Half the kids are part of some gang or another, and you have to ignore the people selling drugs in the bathroom because they carry knives too and they don't like you looking at them. My ninth grade biology teacher got stabbed last year, but I hear he ... lived. Probably."
"Yikes. What does Sophia do?"
Taylor tensed and looked away. "Anything she can get away with."
"Like what?"
"Oh, you know, theft, vandalism, harassment. As long as she's not actively stabbing someone, she can get away with quite a bit." She pulled my hair back so hard it hurt, shoved me in, and locked the door behind me.
"Oh," he said. "That's uh ... huh. I kind of figured that if there were so many gangs there ... I mean, she's always so into beating up criminals in costume, so I figured ..."
"What?" she snapped. "That she was deeply passionate about justice?"
"That or violence," Chris said. He gave a weak chuckle. "Violent justice? Viotice?"
Taylor shook her head. If Sophia wanted to be a hero out of costume, it would be harder, sure. She would need to be discreet and wouldn't be able to use her powers at all. As a force for good, a single, unpowered teenage girl was next to nothing, but she still could have been a hell of a lot better than she had chosen to be.
"No, I don't know what she's like as Shadow Stalker, but at school she's just a bully, a henchwoman to another bully."
Chris cocked his head. "Huh. Okay, I can honestly see the bully part, because she's kind of a jerk, but I can't see her henching. She nearly bit my head off when she thought I held a door open for her, and that was an automatic door!"
"It doesn't sound like she has a lot of friends here," Taylor said. Not that she cared one way or another.
"Friends?" Chris repeated. He scoffed "We're barely teammates. No one likes her, we barely tolerate her, and the only reason she's still here is because the alternative is prison."
It felt good to hear him say that. Some of the bullies tried to look like they were decent human beings, if only to help get away with things. Madison's whole shtick was acting cute and cuddly, but Sophia never put the same effort into an innocent facade. Some people thought she was hot, but no one thought she was nice. Taylor was glad that the heroes could see through her, at least to that degree.
On the other hand, was that it? They met with a deranged psychopath every day, and all they felt was mild annoyance? Or did they not care that Shadow Stalker was a violent thug and long as she only hurt people they didn't care about? Or did they already try to get rid of her only to have Piggot shut them down too until they were forced to cope?
"Are you transferring?"
"Hm?"
"To Arcadia. Are you changing schools, or are you planning on staying at Ghetto High?"
If she was going to have to put up with Sophia at work, there wasn't a chance in hell that she would keep dealing with her at school. "I just need to get the principal to sign off on something and I'm gone. I wouldn't stay at Winslow if you paid me."
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"For the record," Shadow Stalker said, "I like your other car better."
"It's in the shop," Gallant said as they drove down Boardwalk. It was a freaking waste of time. Nothing happened on Boardwalk but tourists, and if Shadow Stalker wanted to put up with people without punching them in the face, she'd go hang out with her friends. "Anyway, I wanted to talk to you."
"Of course you do." Freaking field therapist. As if she didn't get enough of that crap from Hammond and Yamada and all the other quacks.
"Specifically," he continued, "about Taylor."
Freakin' Hebert. "What does she want?" She thought about all the things the girl could do to her, now that she knew about her cape life. Badmouth her to the team? Like Sophia gave a crap. Exist at her? That was closer to the mark.
"I was hoping you could tell me that. I've met her twice, and only in costume. You go to school with her, and from what I've seen you two seem close."
"Close?" she repeated. "Like hell!"
"A close hostility. People often keep their enemies closer than their friends," Gallant said, adopting the tone he used when he thought he was being clever. "I'd like to know what you think of her."
Shadow Stalker shifted in her seat. "Okay, fine. She's a sad pathetic loser and she runs home from school crying every day because she sucks at life. Seriously, I wish she would just kill herself already so I wouldn't have to look at her anymore."
"Uh-huh," he said, entirely unperturbed. As usual. The whole time she had known him, he had only gotten perturbed once, and even that had been wholly disappointing. "Is there going to be a problem working with her?"
Shadow Stalker shrugged. "Only if she makes it one. Honestly she's so much like the rest of you people it's like she was made for this team."
"Because we're also sad pathetic losers?"
She shrugged again. "You said it, not me."
He chuckled, a response calculated specifically to irritate her. Really, the guy was worse than Battery.
She kept talking, if only to shut him up. "She's weak. Not just her powers, but on the inside. She's not a fighter, she's a born victim. If you want someone to put on a costume and dazzle the crowds, she might be able to do the circus thing with enough practice, but if you want someone to get the job done? She'll get in the way every time."
"I see." He still sounded amused. "She beat Bakuda Friday night."
Shadow Stalker raised an eyebrow at that. "I thought that was you and the pipsqueak."
"Vista and I brought her in. Myriad took her down."
She gazed out the window. Were they going to fight anyone today or just chat? "Sure she did." More likely Gallant just wanted to give Hebert credit as a way of welcoming her to the team. He coddled people and tried to make them feel good about themselves when most of the time what people needed was to face the truth—the truth that they just sucked.
"Would you like me to tell you about it?"
"Knock yourself out," she said, pulling out her phone. Maybe Emma was having more fun than she was right now. She doubted it was possible for her friend to be having less. "You have my undivided attention."
"It started off as a normal patrol. Nothing fancy, just the standard routine."
"Uh-huh," she said, logging into Facebook and checking her notifications. Ugh, why do I have so many friends? I don't even like these people.
"She seemed disappointed, to be honest, like she had expected us to do a lot more than we do."
Shadow Stalker raised an eyebrow at that, but didn't reply.
"Then Bakuda contacted us. I don't know how she found us. I guess she just put out as many eyes on the street as she could until she got lucky. She blamed Myriad for Lung's capture and wanted revenge."
Shadow Stalker looked up from her phone. "Seriously? Taking down Bakuda is one thing, but you can't expect me to believe Hebert took down Lung."
Shadow Stalker was a predator to her core, but she knew where she stood on the Brockton Bay food chain. She hated being stuck with the Wards, but she put up with them because she couldn't fight off all of the heroes at once. Lung, well, could.
Gallant shrugged. "I don't know all the details. You could ask Myriad herself when we get back, or even Bakuda. Or Lung himself. Anyway, Bakuda had implanted bombs inside countless people, and threatened to start blowing them up unless Myriad gave herself up. I wanted to wait for backup, but not Myriad. As soon as I had my back turned, she stole my car and drove off to deal with Bakuda and the entire ABB by herself."
"She did what?" Shadow Stalker said. "That's why your car's in the shop?"
"Uh-huh."
"That skank!" Shadow Stalker had wanted to steal Gallant's car for nearly a year now. "Go on."
"I called Vista to help out, but by the time we caught up with her Bakuda already had her surrounded. Three gang members had guns pointed at her, maybe a hundred more were standing around the intersection, and Bakuda was there too, carrying a grenade launcher and explaining how she was going to execute her."
Shadow Stalker waited for him to go on, but he didn't. A dramatic pause. Bastard. "Then what?"
"Well," he said slowly, building up the suspense. "You've known her for a while. What do you think happened?"
You're so annoying. Shadow Stalker knew what she would do. She'd go into her shadow state where bullets couldn't hurt her. Explosives still could, so she'd get in close with Bakuda so the villain couldn't blow her up without hurting herself and then ... tranquilize her if she still had her gear. Otherwise she'd have to steal someone else's weapons, kill Bakuda, and explain to Piggot how her actions were justified on account of her life being in danger. But really what she'd do was not get in that situation in the first place.
"Knowing her, I'd say she died horribly, but we both know she lived, so ... I don't know, curled up in a fetal position and waited for you and Vista to come rescue her?"
"Interesting idea, but no. The first thing, the most important thing she did was let Bakuda think she won. The woman was a megalomaniac, so that was easy. All Myriad had to do was surrender, keep her head down, and act defeated. Bakuda let herself get caught up with her own gloating and didn't notice Myriad's bugs positioning themselves and disabling her men's guns. When Bakuda caught on that something wasn't right, she told her men to fire, but they couldn't. She told her men to attack, but their faces were covered in spiders. She tried to use her grenade launcher, but by then Myriad was close enough for close quarters combat, hit her in the face with her baton, and tasered her in the eye."
She tried to imagine Taylor Hebert doing that. She couldn't. Hebert didn't back down, which was annoying, but she didn't fight back either which was even worse. "Hebert doesn't stand up for herself," she said. "That's not who she is. She's too weak."
"Maybe," Gallant said. "But she stood up for a complete stranger instantly and unswervingly. Heroically, you might say. I imagine that Bakuda saw her the same way you do. Beaten. Defeated. But underneath it all? She's just patient. There's a saying I remember that may or may not have been by Oscar Wilde. 'Give a man a mask and he'll show you his true face.' You may have gone to school with her, but did you ever really know her? Because if you did, I think you two would have been friends."
Shadow Stalker stared at him and struggled to find the right string of expletives to accurately describe her disgust, but then she remembered something. Emma used to be friends with her way back when, and Emma wasn't a complete idiot. Shadow Stalker had always taken Hebert for a worn out prop that Emma didn't need anymore, the ugly friend to make Emma look better in comparison, but ...
"She really went for the eye?"
Gallant nodded. "I was pretty far away when it happened, but I heard there's a video floating around Youtube that shows it. Oh, she also bit Bakuda with a black widow. I'm still not sure why, but Bakuda was on pain killers all day yesterday complaining that she wasn't getting enough pain killers."
That Shadow Stalker could understand. If someone put her on her knees, she'd make sure they spent a long time screaming after that. But for Hebert to do that ...
"So is there a point to all this, or are we making small talk?"
"My point is that you and Myriad have a history together that I'd like you to forget about. Move on, start fresh, and for the good of the team, don't provoke her."
She rolled her eyes. "I'll treat her like any other teammate."
He sighed as he pulled up to a house she didn't recognize. They weren't on Boardwalk anymore. "I suppose that's the best I'm going to get. We're here."
"What's the mission?" Knowing Gallant, it was probably going to be something lame.
"To console a grieving mother who lost her son in Bakuda's attack." He hesitated. "Would you like to wait in the car?"
She gave him a flat look behind her mask. Yup. Lame. "Do you want me to come in?"
"I'd rather you didn't," he admitted.
"Then I'll wait in the car."
WWW
Emma was in her room scrolling through her Facebook feeds, trying to come up with just the right veiled insult to help Rebecca develop an eating disorder. What's a polite way to say that you almost fit into that dress? Maybe imply that it would look better a size smaller? Or a size larger.
Her phone buzzed. Sophia. "Hey super hero. What's up?"
"If anyone asks, you figured this out on your own, but Hebert's a cape."
She blinked. "Wait, what?"
"Hebert's a cape. Bug powers. Joined the Wards yesterday, so that was awkward."
"Slow down, Sophia. I need time to process this."
"Yeah, well deal. She knows who I am, I know who she is, and the rest of the team is all gaga for the new girl because she took down Bakuda over the weekend."
"Okay, okay." She wanted to think that Sophia was joking, but this didn't mesh with her sense of humor. "Who's Bakuda again?"
"Bomb Tinker. Took a college hostage a while back and took over the ABB after Lung went down."
Even though her best friend was a super hero, Emma had never been much of a cape geek. But she knew the ABB. She didn't she them in the corner of her eyes or wake up screaming in the night or let a single encounter with them ruin her life—not anymore—but she knew them.
Nose ... Eye ... Mouth ...
She swallowed. "And Taylor? What are her powers?" Taylor has powers.
"Controls bugs. Don't know what the technical term is, but there's probably a kinesis in there somewhere."
Emma looked upward to where a moth was fluttering around her ceiling light. She took a deep breath and steeled herself. "You know, that is so her."
"Huh?"
"Don't you think? Small wriggly things you step on. Really there should be a rule that it doesn't count as having powers if you can be defeated by a can of Raid."
Sophia laughed. "That's perfect! I'm going to have to use that some time."
Emma smiled, and it almost didn't feel forced. "The real issue is that she knows who you are now. What can she do with that?"
"She can't reveal my identity without going to jail." She hesitated. "Again, you can't tell anyone what I told you."
"Got it." Could Taylor get Sophia arrested now that she had friends in law enforcement? She doubted it. Their pranks were mean, but they were hardly criminal, and a good lawyer (thanks, Dad) could get most of her accusations thrown out from lack of evidence. On the other hand, Sophia was still on probation. "Is there anything she could do to get you thrown off the team?"
"Maybe. If she complains to the right people. It all comes down to who's more useful. I've been here longer, I look better in costume than she does, and bugs are gross. Besides, they can't kick me out without admitting that they made a mistake bringing me in, and the PRT never makes mistakes. Officially. But if she gets the rest of the team to stand with her, well, I'm only worth so much trouble."
"Can she do that? Can she vote you off the island like some reality TV show? Who decides this?" Officially, the Wards dealt with their own issues, but unofficially, the PRT director had a lot of say.
There was a pause.
"Oh man, I can't believe I'm getting into a popularity contest with Hebert of all people."
"Look on the bright side. You can't lose."
"With these judges? Kid Win hates me, but I don't know if he hates me enough to do anything. Vista hates me too, but she does whatever Gallant wants, and he'll try to be on 'everyone's side' or some such bull crap. Browbeat probably hates me, but I can't read him at all. Aegis will stay neutral because he's the leader and he has to, so he'll hate me quietly. Clockblocker hates me, but he has a thing for me too, so he won't try to get rid of me."
Emma considered that. She wasn't any good in a fight, but as far as civilian sidekicks went, she liked to think that she pulled her weight. If she were Taylor, she'd do everything she could to turn the team against Shadow Stalker, and it didn't sound like the team needed much turning. Of course, Emma wasn't Taylor. Taylor was Taylor, and Taylor ate lunch in the bathroom because she had no friends and large groups of people freaked her out. "You could skip the contest if you convince Taylor not to push the issue. If you grind her nose in the dirt enough, she'll stop fighting back entirely. She might even quit the team. I mean, you've seen her at school. She's nearly there already."
There was another pause. "That won't work."
"Why not?"
"A couple reasons. She's Gallant's pet project right now, and if he decides that she's a damsel in distress, he's going to go full knight-in-shining-armor on my butt. Hell, I'm going to have to leave her alone at school too until he finds something else to stroke his hero complex with."
"Yeah? Well, that game was getting boring anyway." Taylor has powers. "We can play with someone else for a while. You could do the opposite, then. Encourage her. Get her to take risks. If she bites off more than she can chew and gets hurt, she might decide that being a hero isn't any fun. Then she'll quit, and she'll be out of your hair."
"Yeah." She laughed. "If she dies, she'll be out of everyone's hair."
Emma felt something twist inside of her, but she kept her voice steady. She was Sophia's friend now. Taylor would have to deal with her own problems. "But who knows how long that will take. Until then, you'll need to try to be nicer to your team."
"What, like bring them cookies?"
"No, that's too obvious. Just, I don't know, insult them less and maybe offer a grudging compliment or two. That could help them remain neutral when Taylor starts badmouthing you and spreading mean, vicious rumors." Or if she just started telling the truth. Framed the right way, the truth was plenty mean and vicious all by itself.
She groaned. "Man I hope Hebert dies fast. Anything else?"
"Yes. You need someone on your side who will stand up for you. You said that Clockblocker had a thing for you, right?"
"Oh no. Not a chance, Emma."
"I'm serious. It sounds like half the team wants you gone already, and Taylor hasn't even done anything yet. You need someone on your side making dramatic statements like, 'If she leaves, I'm leaving too!' Besides, Clockblocker carries weight. He's the next person in charge after Aegis and he's a Striker, what, seven? The only Ward stronger than him is Vista, and I think you have a better chance of seducing a seventeen year old boy than a twelve year old girl."
Sophia muttered something incoherent. "This had better be worth it. I'll try to smile at him without puking."
"Just remember, as long as you're making out with him, you don't have to hear him talk."
"Screw you, Emma."
She'd had more rewarding friendships in her life, but it was moments like this that made it all worthwhile. "And one last thing."
"Dammit."
"No, this is an easy one. Let me know when Taylor makes a public appearance in costume. I need to unravel her secret identity on my own, right? The sooner the better."
"Oh. Sure. I heard that someone caught her fight with Bakuda and put it on Youtube. I'll let you know if anything else comes up."
"Right. I'll see you tomorrow. Oh, also, if you could catch someone notorious, it would help a lot."
There was a pause. "I've put away more bad guys than the rest of the team put together."
"Yeah, but most of those were thugs that no one ever cared about."
"You never complained about that before."
That was the thing about unpowered criminals. You knew they infested the city, but you never worried about them, until they were dragging you out of the car window and talking about which part of your face they were going to mutilate. That was how they had first met, though it irritated her that Sophia would remind her of that. As though she could ever truly forget.
"This isn't about me, this is about you. You work best from the shadows, but right now, you need the spotlight. You need people talking about you, thinking about you, so if your team tries to get rid of you it will cause more of a scandal. So ignore the nameless mooks for a while and see if you can take down someone, well, not nameless."
"What, like Uber and Leet?"
"Okay, you could. I guess." They were technically super villains.
"No wait, you could be onto something. I've been hunting the Undersiders for ages without anyone caring, but those guys hit up a bank just last week. Beat up the rest of the Wards all by themselves. If I caught one of them on my own, that could be just what I need."
"Okay, that sounds good." Emma was the last person anyone should talk to about fighting super villains, but it felt nice that Sophia was listening to her advice. On the other hand, hadn't Sophia already fought the Undersiders before? Like, more than once? Oh well. That was her problem. They were friends, but as friends they respected each other's boundaries. Emma didn't tell Sophia how to be a super hero, and Sophia didn't tell her what to wear.
After she hung up, Emma set to hunting down Taylor's Youtube video. Bakuda got her a few pages of episodes from some Indian soap opera or something, but sorting the videos by upload date got her what she wanted. The camera was shaky, the video grainy, and the audio barely audible, but it got the job done.
The video started with an image of a charred corpse, and it just stayed there. Eew, she thought. Why would you show us that? Well, the video was age restricted.
She skipped ahead until the camera panned away, and paused when she saw someone that might be Taylor. She had the same long, black, curly hair, and the black and grey costume did nothing for her stick-thin figure. The costume suited Taylor, in that it wouldn't have looked good on anyone. There was no style to it, no recognizable insignia. It was like Taylor thought, "Hey, I like black because it makes me look edgy, and I'd rather not get stabbed too much."
Okay. I've seen you, I recognized you, and I'm done. After all, I got better things to do than watch some loser-nerd ... Hold on. Hadn't Sophia said that Taylor won this fight? It didn't look like she was winning. Emma pressed play. If Taylor talked, she'd be able to recognize her voice.
Bakuda did most of the talking, though, and the sound was so bad the villain came through like a robot.
"... bulbous head with itty bitty fetus legs," she said, with Taylor kneeling on the ground and surrounded in front of her, "or bloated hands with arms too small to lift them. Maybe you'll end up some lopsided Quasimoto freak that not even a Case 53 would touch, and do you know what will happen next, Worm? I'll keep you like that. I'll show you off to my friends, rivals and all my enemies so everyone will know what happens when you mess with the ABB, and after you've gotten used to being a freak, after you start to think that maybe the life of a grotesque is still a life?
"Then I'll kill you."
And yet ... and yet despite a super villain threatening her with death and worse, Taylor looked bored. Emma couldn't see her face, but she could imagine her wearing the same expression she always had all those years ago whenever Emma had tried to explain to her the changes in fashion trends. Back then, Taylor would smile politely as if to say, "I'm glad you're enthusiastic about this, but I'm mentally reading a book right now."
That's not fair, Emma thought. I've seen you break down in tears far too many times from so much less than this. What, were you just faking it this whole time?
Then, in a surreal turn of events, Bakuda answered her phone and Taylor did the same. She really is not concerned at all. Also, when had Taylor gotten a phone? The Hebert's had an unspoken rule against cell phones ever since Taylor's mother died ... though maybe they were over it now.
Bakuda took Taylor's phone away, upset by her lack of interest in her own execution, and ordered her shot. Then ... nothing happened.
Then everything happened. Taylor rose, and the three men who'd had her at gunpoint fell back as a swarm of insects appeared out of nowhere, surrounding her so much she was nearly lost in the haze. She beat Bakuda to the ground in a matter of seconds, took out what looked to be a knife—and stabbed her in the face.
She straight up murdered someone on camera, Emma thought, watching Bakuda's body go through a violent, cadaveric spasm.
The comments section argued that Taylor was tasering her instead of stabbing her, but Emma didn't buy it. She rewound the video a few seconds just to be sure, and caught something that she hadn't heard the first time around.
"No more games."
The one sentence Taylor had said the entire time, and Emma recognized the voice. It was colder and harder than anything Emma had ever heard from her before, but it was Taylor's all the same.
Taylor ... has powers. The idea finally began to sink in.
Why?
Why her?
It wasn't fair.
What was so great about Taylor?
A thought echoed back at her, a reflection of the first. What's wrong with me?
People close to capes were more likely to gain powers, and Emma had been Sophia's best friend for nearly two years now. Powers manifested in moments of extreme emotion, and no one could say what Emma went through, destroying everything she used to be to become who she was. Meanwhile, Taylor had spent the last three years being the emotional equivalent of a grey blob.
Besides, Emma would have made a great super hero. She had already designed a hundred and one costumes that looked better than anything the heroes of Brockton Bay were wearing, and she looked perfect in anything she wore herself. More than that, she was a fighter. On ... on the inside, at least, where it counted.
Why her?
Emma went to bed that night feeling very, very small.
WWW
"So then I said, 'I don't want any special privileges,' and I stormed out of the room."
It was Monday, and Taylor had just gotten back from her morning run when she decided to give Lisa a call. She couldn't tell her anything about Shadow Stalker without revealing her secret identity—it was a strange world where Sophia was a hero and Lisa was a villain—so she told her about Piggot.
"You what?"
"Yes." Taylor stopped and considered Lisa's tone. She didn't sound as impressed as she was supposed to. "Wait, was that wrong?"
"Okay, look. I don't want to call you an idiot because it's not your fault you didn't trigger with super smarts, but that was the stupidest thing you could have done."
"Wait, so you do think that the director's a double agent?"
"Yeah, forget about that Dinah kid for five seconds; let's focus on the person who really matters right now."
"Right, that's ... that's, um ..."
"You."
"Huh." Taylor tried to wrap her head around that concept.
"Imagine that you joined a villainous organization bent on world domination, and the evil mastermind offers you a carrot for when you're good, and a stick for if you're bad. Only, he doesn't show you the whole stick, he just hints at it, because the more you know about the stick, the more likely you are to find a way to get around the stick. So he wants you to focus your attention on his big, juicy carrot instead.
"But the thing is, you want to focus on the carrot, too. You love the carrot. You need the carrot, the whole carrot, and nothing but the carrot. Because as long as he only needs the carrot to control you, the stick is slowly rotting away, lost in his shed somewhere, and when he finally does need the stick, he doesn't even know where it is anymore. So deep-throat the carrot, because no matter how much you have to suppress your gag reflex, it beats having a stick shoved up your butt."
"Um ..."
"Besides, carrots help you see in the dark."
"... What?"
"Because of all the vitamin A."
"Okay, I get what you're saying—mostly—but I do think you could have come up with a better way of phrasing it."
"Girl, when you get a better idea of what you've gotten yourself into, you'll know that there is no better way of phrasing it."
"What I've gotten into? You mean an evil organization trying to conquer the world?"
"No, I mean the one that's already conquered it," Lisa said. "This hemisphere at least."
"... Oh." Taylor wanted to say something like, "But they're heroes! They're the good guys!" But with Piggot's casual acceptance of corruption and Sophia being, well, part of the freakin' team, Taylor ... couldn't. "So you're saying that I should go back to Piggot and tell her that I changed my mind and want to get away with everything short of murder just like—just like the others?"
"No, that's no good. You already burnt that bridge; going back now will look suspicious. You'll have to find some other carrot to fellate."
"You need to come up with a different metaphor."
"Fame, fortune," Lisa continued, ignoring her. "No, not fortune. You guys work for peanuts. Networking? Could you take advantage of your position to promote social changes that you pretend to care about? Or something?"
Taylor remembered the abandoned ferry project that her father had been working on a while back. "Maybe, but that sounds pretty complicated. Can't I just be, I don't know, really enthusiastic about helping people?"
Lisa let out a long-suffering sigh. "No, that kind of behavior just weirds them out. If you owned a business and your accountant was madly in love with math but refused to cash in his paychecks, you'd assume he was either up to something or just nuts. You're not volunteering at a soup kitchen, you're part of the system, and the system wants people it can control. That means it needs to see you as dependent on it instead of the other way around."
Taylor hung her head. "You know, I used to think I was really cynical. Then I met you. Okay, um, let's see. I'm transferring to Arcadia, and I'm pretty happy about that. Winslow is like hell, only worse."
"Okay, yeah. That could work. Just remember to flaunt how much you like Arcadia so word gets back to your corporate masters."
"Right." She hung up the phone and, for the first time that year, thought about what she was going to wear to school. It usually didn't matter. Most of the time, she left home looking like a bowl of oatmeal with varying degrees of brown sugar, but today was a special occasion. Her last day of Winslow High! It was like going to Hitler's funeral.
She dug through her closet, looking for something bright and cheerful, something eye-catching that said, "So long, suckers! I'm going away forever!"
She didn't have much like that. Finally she found the clothes Lisa had bought her, still in the bag. They didn't suit her at all; in fact they suited the exact opposite of her, which was exactly what she was going for. She squeezed into a pair of jeans so tight she didn't even need to wear a belt with them and pulled on a sky blue crop top that showed off the figure she didn't have.
She looked at herself in the mirror, which she usually avoided, and decided she looked ridiculous. But that was okay. People were allowed to look ridiculous once a year, and she hadn't dressed up last Halloween, so she was fine. Besides, with the exception of Sophia, when was she going to see any of those people again?
She turned to leave, stopped, looked at her reflection again, and tore the tags off her clothes. Okay. Now she was ready.
WWW
School was ... strange. Today was like wearing a shirt that had shrunk in the wash and no longer fit; still the same thing, but if felt wrong. Maybe it was the sense of hope, that this place had an exit now and Taylor wouldn't be trapped in here forever. She hated feeling hopeful. It always felt like she was being tricked.
She handed her transfer papers into the principal's office. This was her first day back since her suspension, and she had thought about skipping the rest of the day and coming back later, but she changed her mind. No, she was staying, staying to say goodbye to everyone she hated.
She spotted Sophia before Sophia saw her, as usual. Taylor had despised her before, when she only knew her as a bully, but now? Now she knew Sophia as a false hero, a fraud, a hypocrite. Her Taylor wouldn't say goodbye to, not today. Maybe after Sophia's next parole hearing, though she doubted that she would get much justice there. Most of the people who knew about it enough to show up would only know Shadow Stalker, which said a lot about how dedicated they were to finding out the truth. But Taylor would show up, say her piece, give the system one last chance to do its job, and if that didn't work, well ... she'd figure it out from there.
Sophia gave her a cold, calculating look, even though most of the time she'd never admit that Taylor was worth calculating. That worried her. Sophia was the only one who might know that Taylor was leaving. What was she planning? Some going away present?
Taylor planted a few bugs on her just to keep track of her. A fly in her hair, an ant on her shoe. She promised herself when she first got her powers that she wouldn't use them on her bullies, but this was okay. She wouldn't attack them with her bugs, but surveillance was fine.
Emma in her second period math class was harder to read. There was a flash of ... something when Emma first noticed her, but it vanished behind her eyes so quickly Taylor couldn't be sure if it had been there in the first place.
How much do you know?
She was almost certain that Emma knew about Shadow Stalker, less certain that Madison and the others knew, but did Sophia tell Emma about Myriad?
Let's find out.
In the middle of a lecture about sinusoidal functions, Taylor took over a fly, flew it over to Emma, and had it land on the back of her hand. Normally, she'd brush it away and be done with it, but today ...
"EEEAAAHH!"
She screamed and nearly fell out of her chair—and looked Taylor right in the eye.
That cretin.
If Mr. Quinlan had better hearing, Emma might have given him a heart attack, but instead the old teacher finished drawing a graph on the chalkboard and calmly turned around. "Yes? Was there a question?"
Some people looked at Emma and a few sniggered, but no one answered.
"No? Very well then. Can anyone identify the amplitude, midline, and extrema of this function?"
It shouldn't have bothered her that Sophia had revealed her secret. Sophia knew, and she was the last person Taylor would want knowing, so adding Emma to that list was barely worth mentioning. Still, being a cape was supposed to be the one thing that was hers and hers alone. She knew that she was sacrificing some of that when she joined the Wards, but still ... she felt violated.
It doesn't matter, she told herself. I'm never going to see her again after today. It doesn't matter.
Biology was uneventful, as was Mr. Gladly's world issues class. Madison gave her outfit a few confused looks, but when Taylor landed a bug on her she didn't panic like Emma had. Okay, so only Emma knows. That meant that Madison probably didn't know about Shadow Stalker either. Taylor tagged her with a bug all the same. Whatever her bullies were planning for her, it was likely to be big and would involve all three of them together.
Lunchtime. She realized that today was the first time she was in school for lunch since the trio had poured juice on her in the bathroom, despoiling her previous sanctuary. Should she go to the cafeteria, one last time? She toyed with the idea, but its only virtue was its own idiocy, and she disregarded it. Instead, she went out through the front door and walked away.
She had missed more classes last week than she had attended, and that taught her something. No one really cared or noticed if she skipped school. She ate her lunch on a bench at a bus stop about half a mile away from Winslow, and still had enough time to read before she had to head back. I should have thought of this my freshman year.
The rest of the day was ... nerverackingly dull. She kept on waiting for the trio to do something, but they didn't even shove her in the hallway. Taylor tagged Julia, Samantha, and another dozen girls that often joined in on the trio's pranks, watching their movements throughout the day, but there was nothing. They would congregate periodically, but never around her. If anything, they avoided her.
What are you planning? she thought for the umpteenth time. The worst parts of the day for pranks were lunch time, which she had already survived, and right after school.
And right after school, Taylor finally caught on. Her bugs on Emma, Sophia, and Madison sensed them go into the bathroom together, do something, and run out. The smart thing to do was to go to the principal's office, grab her transfer papers, and never come back. The dumb thing to do was to wander into the bathroom where she could be easily trapped by her bullies one last time.
Still, she was curious. She waited until the trio and their lackeys were out of sight and crept in. There was an overturned waste bin in the bathroom, garbage strewn across the floor, and the syncopated sound of sobbing coming from one of the stalls. Taylor did the math and let out a sigh.
Her bullies had found a new target.
You're done here, she told herself. This isn't your problem.
She stepped into the next stall over and sat down on the toilet seat. The sobbing next to her went quiet and tried to pretend that it wasn't there.
"It's been a while since I cried over their pranks," Taylor said to the silence. "I would get angry sometimes, but most of the time I would just shut down and not be there. Life can only get so bad when you're dead inside. But, it can't get much better either."
She waited, and eventually the silence spoke back. "You're ... who are you?"
"Their previous target." Taylor didn't need to say any more than that. Everyone in the school knew who she was, if only to know whom not to know.
"Oh ... oh God, no. Am I the new you?"
Taylor didn't much like the way she phrased that, but being the new her wasn't something Taylor would wish on anyone. Who was this new victim? A friend of one of the bullies? It would fit their modus operandi. Or maybe the trio had just picked someone at random now that Taylor was on her way out.
"No. They might see you that way, they might not, but no matter what they do to hurt you, never let them define you. If I can give you any advice with dealing with them, it's that. Know who you are, and don't let them change that."
The girl fell silent again, and for a moment Taylor thought that she came on too strong. Maybe she was overreacting. Maybe this was a one time only thing and Taylor was needlessly scaring her.
"What are they going to do to me?"
"Anything they can. I started making a list last September of everything they've done, and so far I've filled up several notebooks with everything from verbal abuse to psychological torture. Death by a thousand cuts any way you look at it. Expect them to put you in positions where you can't fight back without making things worse for yourself, and then expect them to take your passivity for permission to go further."
"So what can I do?"
Taylor looked for some silver lining, but found none. The truth was that in a year and a half, Taylor had done very little to stop them. Get super powers and transfer to Arcadia. "There's a lot you can try, but I haven't found anything that worked for me. They'll outnumber you and coordinate their lies, so telling a teacher won't do anything besides make the bullies more cautious and vindictive. There are plenty of gangs in the school that market violence, so if you have enough money you could hire some thugs to rough them up a bit. I wouldn't condone something like that, but I'd understand it. Though Emma and her friends might just pay them off to turn on you, and that would just escalate the problem. Whatever you do, don't hire any of Winslow's junior E88's to go after Sophia. That ... that wouldn't end well." Taylor pictured the scenario in her mind. Oh, those poor Nazis.
"They wouldn't work for me anyway," she said. "I'm Jewish. And I don't have the money anyway."
"That's probably for the best. Second option, if you can't fight back, avoid them. Stay home from school for a year or two and come back after they graduate, or just drop out entirely and study for the GED. It might not look good when you're trying to get into college, but the bullies will make your grades suffer if you stay."
"Is there a third option?"
"If you can't fight back and you can't back down, the only thing left to do is endure. Don't lose hope. Remember that the school day ends at three and the semester ends in June, and you can make it till then. Have something on the weekends you can look forward to, and ... and have friends. That one is important. Even if your friends can't help you fight back, having friends willing to suffer with you helps, though people like that are rare." Taylor used to think she had someone like that. She turned out to be wrong.
The girl fell silent again. It was a lot to process, and Taylor hadn't given her any good news. "Why me?"
Taylor smiled despite herself. "Do you have any idea how many times I've asked myself that exact question? Was it because I was ugly? Awkward? Unlikable? What was wrong with me? I never found the answer, but I did find a better question. Do you really want to stare into the abyss long enough to understand it? Some people are just monsters. But I can promise you—"
Stop.
You've done your time.
Go home, let something horrible happen to someone else because God knows you've had your turn.
She swallowed. She imagined what it would be like to go to Arcadia, a place where no one knew her except for the few Wards already there. She'd be able to start over and make friends with people who didn't identify her as the omega tier loser, and every now and then she'd pass by Dean or Dennis or Carlos or Chris or Robert in the hallway, and they'd share a knowing smile with each other before passing by. Taylor held onto that dream for one last moment ... and let go.
"I can promise you that you won't have to go through it alone. I'll always be here to pull you out of the locker so you won't have to wait for the janitor to pass by. It's not going to be fun, but you could survive anything as long as you have someone with you."
Damn you, she thought. I was free! Damn you for making me stay here!
"Thank you," she whispered.
"Don't mention it."
Even now that she had a way out, she couldn't leave, not if it meant Sophia, Emma, and their pack doing to someone else what they had done to her.
No.
She took that sentiment, flipped it over, and grabbed it by the hilt. She wouldn't leave if it meant that the bullies would just move on to torment someone else.
"Hey, can I ask you something?" the girl said.
"Sure."
"What's your name?"
"What?"
"I mean, I've only ever known you as Locker Girl. Um, sorry."
Locker Girl? Huh. "It's Taylor. You?"
"Charlotte."
"Well, Charlotte, are you ready to get out of here?" She forced a smile. Most of her smiles were forced these days. "Class ended at three; you don't have to be here anymore. There has to be something terribly wrong with you if you're hanging around this hell hole by choice."
After she got home, Taylor called the principal's office and asked her to cancel her transfer. Winslow High, it seemed, wasn't done with her yet. And she wasn't yet done with it.
WWW
A/n And that's a wrap.
Piggot was a challenge to write because she's both fairly ambiguous and a fan favorite. She's easily the best PRT director we've seen, if only because she only opposed Skitter as a villain, so the bar isn't exactly high. My personal interpretation of her is that she expects capes to be entitled and corrupt and uses their innate pettiness to control them, and when that works the cycle reinforces her perception of entitled, corrupt capes. In her interlude, Shadow Stalker described her as "useful" in the same way Emma was useful, and, oddly enough, she's also the most entitled and corrupt member of the team.
I know a lot of people were hoping for a climactic battle of good versus evil, and I hope you weren't too disappointed. Though honestly, I've read too many fics where Hero Taylor has to do nothing more than point her finger at Sophia in front of the Wards and accuse her of being a huge jerk, and then they ship Sophia off to juvie for the rest of the story. I understand wanting to focus on other issues, but it all seems too neat for me, especially when appealing to authority has never solved anything in Worm.
I would like to thank Edale and Shea for helping sift through the internet for official Wildbow statements relevant to this story. I have no idea how to navigate Reddit or SpaceBattles, and apparently that's where all the good stuff is. Also, I would like to thank everyone for reviewing this story. If you enjoy it quietly, I'll never know, but if you leave a detailed review telling me what worked for you and what didn't, that will make me both a better and more motivated writer.
Edit: I've redone Piggot's scene to make her come off as less of a jerk and to let Taylor do a better job of making her accusations. It was actually fairly controversial the first time around, so hopefully this version makes it a bit better.
Edit: I've redone it again, this time writing the scene from Piggot's perspective. Hopefully, it's slightly better.