by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings. This one is another alternative power which articulates to Taylor in the same three parts.
Card CasterTaylor's grandmother, on her mother's side, was an itinerant fortune-teller. Taylor's mother, her daughter, was quite on the wild side (hence her stint with Lustrum) but it was countered by her early discovery of the joys of reading. Still, she inherited several things from her mother, including tarot decks. For Divination.
For Annette, chiromancy and taromancy weren't really efficient. She knew that her mother faked the act most of the time, using cues and cold reading micro-expressions to get by. But, sometimes, she would have a real reading, and end up quite shaken afterwards – and those clients rarely paid her, despite the toll on her health, because they weren't happy with the prediction.
Still, Annette loved the cards. And when she grew up, she learned to play with them – both with regular cards and tarot cards. When collectible card games started to appear, she bought in quite early. Even if some games had ridiculous rules, she loved beautiful cards.
And she, in turn, transmitted that appreciation to her daughter.
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Another necessary eventGoing to school with a deck of cards is innocuous enough to be overlooked by most people. After all, the thing was small enough to be hidden in a jeans pocket. It changed when the one doing that was already targeted by bullies, who could steal things directly from inside her locked locker. They had already stolen a tarot deck, so Taylor kept the memento to her dead mother safely hidden in her vest's pocket.
It didn't abate her bullies' cruelty, even when she reminded Emma that these were her mother's. Instead, her erstwhile BFF acquired a sinister smirk and tore them, one after the other, and threw the whole lot into her locker.
Torn as much as her cards, Taylor was held by Sophia, who pushed her against another locker in an arm lock. Only when her own locker was opened and the remains thrown inside was she released. She litterally plunged after the bits of paper… only realizing the depth of the trio's cruelty when she found herself on her knees in a disgusting sludge, her cards damaged beyond repair.
And then the door was slammed on her. When she wasn't released for hours, left in the smelly shit left by her bullies, she thought she was going to die there, and panicked.
Her trigger happened when nobody was around, which was thankful as all her card fragments became luminous and levitated away from the sludge, before turning whole again and transforming into the creatures they artistly depicted – as an item bought for its beauty in a natural museum, these were animals.
However, because the cards had been ripped, the animals turned away from Taylor, who only succeeded in grasping the last of them before it could phase through the door like the others. It was maybe the weakest one, but at least it allowed Taylor to impress her will on it, so that it could help her escape – it was an ant, and its acid dissolved the lock.
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Another necessary preparationOnce out of the contaminated locker, Taylor noticed that the other creatures had spread around the school. Thankfully, with her first capture, she acquired a sense of the others' position and relative power, and she worked her way up, using those she had already mastered to entrap and reacquire the others.
After the acid-spitting ant, she got the spider, and then the snake. The web and poison helped to defeat stronger animals, and she finally recovered her whole deck. With the power to summon the animals held within its cards.
By then, the school wore traces of the whole fighting episode, and she was covered in bruises as well as some of the disgusting matter in the locker. But she didn't care about that anymore: she wanted to go home, to clean, and rest, and tell her father everything.
As it happened, she didn't make it home, that morning. Rejected from the bus due to her smell, she started walking home when she was discovered by Sophia. Doubling back, the star athlete quickly reached her, and ran her down.
"What are you doing up, Hebert?" she mocked. "Oh, sorry, you're still crawling like the weakling you are."
Taylor locked her lips and called one of her cards mentally. The Spider was one she had used the whole night, and the creature had some wear and tear on it. But it successfully surprised Sophia Hess and surrounded her in a web that quickly covered the other girl's head.
Meanwhile, Taylor hurried away. She knew from recent experience that the Spider would return to card form, in her deck, some minutes later. She also knew that she didn't want to be found where Sophia was.
She suspected that it would take a few minutes for Sophia to attract some attention and be freed of her prison. She didn't envision the attack that came mere seconds after fleeing the place. A vicious punch to the kidneys, from behind, threw her to the ground in a great deal of pain.
"You think you can get me like that, Hebert? You got powers, in that locker? Attacking me is signing your death warrant, villain!"
"What? Villain?"
Taylor didn't understand everything, but she could see Sophia Hess pull a phone and place a call. And without batting an eye, or even having the slightest voice inflection, she kicked her a few times when she tried to get up.
Taylor tried to get another card out, but Sophia noticed the action and kicked the damaged deck out of her hands. And, in doing so, its case was destroyed, and the cards landed everywhere.
"You really like your cards, you baby!" she jeered when she noticed this. "Wait a second, aren't those the ones Emma ripped?"
"Noticed that, did you?" Taylor grunts from under her boot, and she then sent the order to attack.
A regular tarot deck has 78 cards, of which 22 are more uniquely decorated than the others. The spread cards were those, which included the Spider, the Ant, and the Snake from before. But there was also a Rhinoceros, a Lion, a Tiger, a Wolf, an Hippopotamus, and other dangerous animals. Seeing the whole menagerie closing in, Sophia took a step back. And when the closest feline pounced… she turned insubstantial to evade the attack.
That's when Taylor realized that she had bitten more than she could chew, perhaps. She was quite ignorant of the cape "games", but she knew all the heroes living in her town, and Shadow Stalker was quite distinctive.
And she had just outed herself in front of her. After having called reinforcement. After calling her a villain.
Sophia Hess, a Hero? No chance in hell. They must be particularly incompetent or ignorant not to have noticed the bullying she was subjected to, or plain evil to allow it.
Wanting to consult with her father, Taylor left the area, leaving Sophia pinned by a lion's paw. Alive.
But her father wasn't home. In fact, he had been held at work late, the previous day, because someone had left and had organized a little get-together. With beer. Once home, inebriated, he had found her daughter missing, and had resolved to find her. He took his car and drove all night. As bad luck would have it, he had stumbled upon heroes fighting Merchants, and had gotten a crossbow bolt to the stomach for his pain.
Yes.
She didn't realize all this at once, no: it came by fragments.
First, she waited at home. Second, she was surprised when a voice called her name outside: the PRT had come and surrounded her house, rifles drawn. Behind them was Armsmaster and a visibly smirking Shadow Stalker. Third, she was told to surrender.
With no Brute power, she complied, and was pulled in a van which departed quickly. She had just enough time to see Sophia saunter inside her home.
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Another necessary conflictThe rest of the story, Taylor got it from a girl named Lisa. Or Tattletale. When the van she was in was suddenly stopped and then rolled onto its side, she knew that something was wrong. Or quite different, instead.
Apparently, someone had followed on the current events around Shadow Stalker. Someone with a high Thinker rating, who was able to discern that the gangly girl that had been so grossly outed to the world before she could do anything, really, was innocent and soon-to-be officially declared guilty.
To prevent that miscarriage of justice, but also to gain the versatile power she could feel at Taylor's fingertips, the aforementioned Thinker, who was the aforementioned Lisa, planned for her team to "save" Taylor from the PRT.
It required many explanations, but the gangly teen finally accepted the situation. With the help of Lisa's team, Taylor… changed. She got dark contact lenses and cut her hair, called herself Sakura, and dressed like a businesswoman when in civilian clothing – it gave her some more years in appearance, enough to pass for an adult.
It was also Tattletale who made her realize that her powers with cards extended further than the ones she had triggered with. With enough training, any deck with pretty enough pictures could summon magical creatures… or cast spells.
She got a mix of cards from several games: Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, and the Animals from before. With them, she got enough powers to gain (or grant to allies) temporary powers: cards with armours granted Brute power; those with Wings granted flight; and so on…
Still wanting to prove herself as a Hero, Taylor stays after her new group takes Lung down (with her cards, and a lot of luck). But Armsmaster is a dick, and Shadow Stalker was with him. All good intentions flew through the window when the Ward mocked the newly-orphaned girl – she had recognized the girl's animals, after all. And Armsmaster was too stuffy to notice the actual harm his charge was dealing with those words. When she flew into a rage, he reacted by stabbing her.
The Undersiders had been nearby, ready to separate from their lucky charm, but seeing the result of their goodwill being squandered like that, they became enraged as well. Supernatural darkness quickly surrounded the two heroes, and the three dogs were dispatched inside.
Sophia was right to fear Grue's shadows: unable to transform while inside, she was promptly chewed and spat, and then trampled to death. Armsmaster lasted a bit more, but with three mutated lizards going at it, he promptly lost a leg, then his arms. Grue saw all this, but he didn't remove the shadows, because he knew that the Protectorate hero had cameras everywhere on his outfit. And a direct link to his friends (a link his shadows blocked, for now).
"Lisa, is Sakura alright?" he asked.
"Yes." was the answer. They had trained together, and Taylor, now Sakura, was able to summon a healing potion, as well as a healing minion (a phoenix) to retrieve a perfect health. "Rachel, Regent, bring Lung closer." she added.
Grue nodded. Sometimes, things were better left unsaid. Lifting Armsmaster's halberd (with the man's own hands, because the weapon wouldn't answer otherwise), he stabbed him several times, ending with a decapitating strike.
Armsmaster and Shadow Stalker would be praised as heroic heroes for having dealt with Lung in a definite manner. Only the Canadian Tinker known as Dragon would know that it wasn't the whole truth, because she had been following Armsmaster until the end – or, at least, until he was surrounded by Grue's shadow. And she knew that shadow as being Grue's, and that Lung was restrained at that time. But she also knew that Armsmaster had reacted in a really vile manner by skewering an innocent girl. That Shadow Stalker, a girl known for her violent tendencies, had outed the girl, and looted her home after having her arrested, was only more damning evidence that Armsmaster had failed to curtail her.
Dragon didn't say anything. And Lisa noticed. And she contacted Dragon herself, using encrypted means of communication – because her power told her it was better that way. The two of them ended up working together, leaving Coil and the Dragonslayers in the dark.
Speaking of Coil, Lisa had Taylor use her spells to subvert the man's goals. Now, he was an equal partner to Lisa, the two of them working to improve the city… without committing atrocities on the way. Such as resorting to kidnapping to secure a precognitive's abilities, when simply inviting her home, as a friend, would do. It required having an asset of the same age to invite her over, but Coil and Lisa found one quite easily, in the person of Vista: already starting to get insane from not using her powers due to regulations tied to her age, the young girl was ready to become a rogue.
Having started to kill, the Undersiders' core group had no problem taking the same measure again and again. They took down Oni Lee by the same expedient of immobilizing him in the shadows (his teleportation required line-of-sight, the incautious PRT website advertised) and having the dogs eat him. Taylor got Bakuda like she had gotten Coil: by subverting her to their cause – she was helped in her choices by Lisa, who had determined that having her with them was better than simply killing her, because of the dead (wo)man's switch which would have destroyed most of the city otherwise.
In the process of always improving themselves and their whole group, Lisa sent Taylor, with Brian, to New Orleans: there were rumours of a parahuman there, named Gambit, who also played with cards.
They met, fought for a bit, and then fought together against a bigger threat – Leviathan striking the coastal city. Using enlarged minions and healing totems, Taylor was able to help stem the tide and push the Endbringer back to the waters. Now adult (because the events outlined above didn't take a single day to accomplish, or even a year), there were many offers afterwards for her to join the Protectorate. She shunned them all.
Afterwards, she exchanged a few tips with Gambit: the man learned how to summon minions, and Taylor learned to have her cards act as weapons, by themselves.
Sure, her new taste for spicy cajun food was quite problematic for a while, when she returned to New Hampshire, but it was mostly because there was no restaurant with that theme.
So she decided to open one, doubling as a gaming den for card players – and even if there were some tables dedicated to poker (and some legal gambling), it wasn't the only game played.
Gambit came a few times, too, exchanging recipes and game ideas. Seeing (and liking) the tall girl's inventiveness in both, he proposed that she followed him back to Lousiana in a permanent manner.
It left the young woman in quite the quandary, as she had started to like Brian very much, during their own trip south. But she would choose…
…one day.
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To be continued… although it's a long shotAuthor's Notes: Submitting this one, I got a typo and inserted the "Cart Caster" chapter. And now I want to write something about the superpower of taking the marts' carts… and melt them down. It wouldn't go anywhere, though.