The early afternoon air was greeted with the sounds of metal creaking and concrete breaking. With a sigh Taylor crawled her way out of the storm drain she had just torn the grate off of. The cold wind buffeted her super-powered form. It had been snowing since the early morning and now there were several inches on the ground as Taylor exited the storm drains fully and began to make her way toward an alleyway. Fortunately the part of the city that she was in was a rundown neighborhood near the Docks. Given that she was near a group of apparently abandoned buildings it was no surprise that there was no one to be surprised by her appearance.

What she needed was a place to think. That was something that she found hard to do lately. Her enhanced hearing and smell had a lot to do with that. There was just so much more information than she was used to that it was hard to concentrate. It was like trying to think with two different heavy metal songs playing in your ears at the same time. In a city the size of Brockton Bay, though, there wasn't anywhere that was easy on such keen senses.

When she was well into the alley and away from any prying eyes she sat down in the snow. She ignored the rumbling of her stomach as she sat down in the snow. While her wolf form kept her warm in the cold weather (or at least kept her from freezing to death) it had a huge downside. After the first few hours of being in her wolf form, Taylor felt like she was starving. She could never remember being so hungry. She had no money on her and, while there was some stashed in her room, she couldn't bring herself to enter that place, not then and not now. That would mean confronting the fact that she was well and truly alone, and that was something she couldn't handle. Her only alternative had been to hide out in the storm drains and try to come up with a better plan while ignoring her growing hunger.

Long after night had fallen the only ideas Taylor had were the ones she had been trying to avoid: she would have to steal the food she needed or start going through a restaurant's trash for leftovers. Both thoughts appalled her for different reasons, but the ever growing hunger was making some of these decisions for her. However, rifling through trash for food appealed to her far less than the alternative, so she had found a convenience store to rob.

She had been hesitant at first, but the moment she had started tearing into a bag of jerky the gnawing hunger had been replaced with immense relief and joy. After that she had almost lost herself in a feeding frenzy. The only thing that had drawn her out of it had been when she had been shot by the cashier (it was hard to tell when she couldn't see that well, but it sounded like a gunshot). When she realized that the wound had healed almost immediately and given that the gun couldn't really hurt her she continued stuffing her face.

She knew it was only a matter of time before the PRT or Protectorate responded so she ate as fast as possible, only chewing enough for the food to fit down her throat. She would have liked to take some of it with her but she didn't really have anything to carry the food in. Not only that, but she couldn't really carry things well in this form.

Taylor took a moment to examine her hand. It still had an opposable thumb and was still capable of manipulating objects but the fingers were much stubbier and lacked a lot of her human form's fine motor skills. This form also seemed to be better suited to traveling in a quadrupedal fashion. She could stand up if she wanted but her balance wasn't what it had been. Besides, she was faster on all fours, something that she desperately needed whenever the heroes had shown up. And that had been how she had spent the last five days: hiding in the storm drains, almost always hungry, and running from the heroes.

It was shitty and demoralizing. She just knew that her life was over after the incident at school. She couldn't see how she couldn't have been outed and labeled a villain by now. She couldn't show her face in public without worrying about the heroes that she used to admire trying to apprehend her. The worst part was that she couldn't even visit her father in the hospital.

That thought had gotten Taylor contemplating her dad and she realized something that crushed her spirit. Their financial situation had not been great after her mom had died and, though he never discussed such things with her, she was pretty sure that their insurance wasn't that great and didn't know if it would cover his current stay in the hospital. Either way, now that there was no money coming in to pay for said insurance (or to pay medical bills) she didn't know what would happen to him. She thought for sure that Brockton General wouldn't just throw a comatose man onto the street or pull the plug on him, but that did little to silence the nagging doubt in her mind. And the fear had just grown.

No matter what the outcome with the hospital was, Taylor was sure that she would never see her father again. In fact, she thought his future looked grim. Once the full weight of that knowledge had come down upon her, she could feel her will to go on slipping, which brought her to her current place sitting in the snow in an abandoned alley. She was now considering what she should do next.

She was considering just turning herself into the Protectorate. She thought that it was what her father would have wanted. Maybe they wouldn't just send her to the Birdcage for what she had done. Maybe they'd lessen her punishment due to the circumstances surrounding the event. Even if they did she couldn't seem to care. Her other option was to just turn back to human and stay in the alley until the end. Even if she chose life, she didn't see anything worth continuing for. She wouldn't feel any less hollow and alone.

No, either way she didn't see anything left to live for. She turned back to human and let the falling snow start accumulating on her. The air was just as cold as the last time she had tried changing back, but that was a good thing. It meant that it wouldn't take as long for hypothermia to set in. It wouldn't take as long for the end. The fact that she was nude also helped.

In minutes, Taylor was fighting the urge to curl up to try and preserve body heat. If she did it would just make the whole thing take longer. She decided that she needed something to distract her, so she decided to think back on her parents and the good times they had had. Back before her dad was put into a coma. Back before Emma had turned traitor on her. Back before her mom had died.

That last bit got her thinking about the time after her mom died. He had almost fallen apart afterward, leaving her without anyone to lean on when she needed it most. She tried not to blame him, she knew that he blamed himself for what had happened. Over time Taylor was able to piece together that her parents had gotten into a shouting match and that her dad had, for the first time, lost his temper with his family. After her mother had stormed out she had pulled out her cellphone. No one knew who she had been trying to call, but the result had been her fatal crash.

Then Taylor realized something. Despite the life seeming to drain out of her father in the aftermath (made all the worse by blaming himself), he had managed to continue on. Life had beaten him down and, though it had taken awhile, he got back up and he managed to push through the nightmare. Taylor knew that he would want her to do so as well. In moments, she was back to her wolf form and warm once more.

All she needed was something to focus on until…well she didn't know what or when, exactly. What she did know, though, was what she could focus on. She knew that she'd need money to keep her father's medical bills paid. Unfortunately, there were desperately few ways for a runaway, superpowered teen to do that and most of them would likely get someone hurt.

Taylor's further thoughts on the matter were interrupted when she heard gunshots. That had her interest peaked. She decided to head in that direction just in case someone was hurt. However, it wasn't long before her enhanced hearing picked up more.

"Hurry, Grue! We have to reach Bitch!" It sounded like a girl about my age.

"Agreed! I'm not dying to the ABB because you wanted to take this stupid job!" That one sounded male. As soon as Taylor heard him say 'ABB' she had taken off. She didn't care who the thugs were chasing or why, if the so called 'Azn Bad Boys' were involved, Taylor was getting involved. As she ran, Taylor heard another series of gunshots along with multiple people shouting in a language she couldn't understand. Then everything from that area just went silent.

As Taylor neared an intersection of two alleys she realized she'd have to slow down to make the turn at all. She didn't have time for that so she merely jumped and leapt off of the corner in front of her, continuing towards the where the gunshots had come from and leaving shattered brick in her wake.

She exited the alley just in time to run head long into a black fog. Suddenly she found herself without sound or sight to guide her. She skidded to a halt and felt her legs slip out from under her as she tried to regain her bearings.

Taylor's keen nose still worked, though, and so she began turning her head and taking deep breaths, trying to pinpoint as many scents as she could. She smelled three people near her, two male and one female, she thought. More importantly, though, she smelled many more people, though the scents were fainter. She figured that those were the ABB members and that they were farther away.

Taylor reared up on two legs and let out a surprisingly silent roar. Though she couldn't see, she could still smell, so she just moved toward the smell of gunpowder and started swinging through the darkness blindly. She knew that she'd eventually hit something.

Before long, Taylor's hand connected with something that proceeded to break. She thought it might have been a leg. About that time the black fog receded and Taylor saw…well, not much more, actually. She could tell that someone was curled up by the wall to her right with many more in front of her. She couldn't really make out faces, but she could tell they had the ABB red and green color scheme and that was all she needed to know.

The remaining thugs decided to flee, having decided that discretion was the better part of valor, but Taylor was faster. A stray backhand tossed one of the thugs across the street into a parked car with a series of cracks and snaps. He lay groaning on the ground as Taylor turned her attention to the third member.

The third thug, the one with the gun, had managed to put some distance between himself and the giant wolf-person. Taylor wasn't concerned, though. A casual leap and she was practically on top of the thug. She grabbed him by the back of his coat and lifted him off of the ground before slamming him back down. He may have been a battered and groaning mess, but Taylor made sure to take the gun from him just in case, casually crushing it in her hands.

After that it was a matter of hopping from on thug to the next, bashing them as she went. The last two had managed to duck out of sight while Taylor was busy with their compatriots. She might have chased after them but the smell of blood brought her mind off of that path and back to other matters. She gave a short roar of victory and turned to see that one of, what she assumed to be, the people running from the ABB was laying on the ground while holding his leg. Each one had a large duffle bag near them.

Taylor's attention was caught by movement in her peripheral vision. She wasn't entirely sure what she was looking at, but there were three, they were large (even larger than her) and monstrous looking and that one of them had someone riding it. When she caught a whiff, though, she realized that they were monstrous dogs. They were off to the side but were slowly moving in between her and the trio that the ABB had been chasing.

Taylor decided that approaching the group would probably be taken as aggressive by the person riding the giant dog, so she stayed where she was. It wouldn't do to start trouble with the people she had just saved. However, she wasn't going to just let this rudeness go.

"You're welcome." Though she had dropped back to a quadrupedal stance to appear less threatening, Taylor let her annoyance leak into her voice. Well, she tried to take an annoyed tone. Since her voice had become pretty inhuman it was hard to tell if it worked.

"Holy shit! The giant dog just talked!" the smaller guy exclaimed

"It ain't a dog, dumbass!" Bitch reprimanded him.

"Fine, wolf, whatever!" the figure seemed to shrug with the shoulder that wasn't supporting his teammate.

"S'not a wolf, either, stupid." Bitch's opinion of the guy seemed to be low.

"What?" was his only response.

The person on the ground grunted in pain as one of the other figures helped him up. "Stand down, Bitch. She saved our asses." He also sounded young.

There was a moment when Taylor thought that Bitch (Taylor assumed it was a cape name because she doubted the person commanding three monstrous dogs would let someone talk to her like that otherwise) was just going to ignore the order. Before long, though, Bitch relented.

She whistled and gave a command. "Heel! Back!" Her voice sounded more than a bit rough. The three monster dogs obeyed without hesitation. They stopped growling and began backing up a bit. "Wouldn't'a had to if ya'd brought me with," she groused.

"We aren't having this conversation right now," the injured one grunted. Taylor thought he turned to look at her.

The other girl looked at her compatriots and gave them an exasperated huff. When she turned back to Taylor her tone was much more cheerful. "We appreciate the help, by the way, despite how Bitch acts about it."

She pointed at the two guys behind her. "That's Grue and the one supporting him is Regent." She then pointed at the trio of dogs. "The one riding the giant dog is Bitch, though the PRT calls her Hellhound."

"Stupid name," Taylor heard the girl mutter. She probably hadn't intended for it to be heard, but Taylor's enhanced hearing picked up on it anyway.

"Oh!" Taylor thought that Tattletale seemed to grow more alert. "We've got a cape on the way! Few minutes at most."

"Shit!" Grue exclaimed. "Look, I want to make you an offer-"

"What?" Bitch sounded surprised.

"-But I don't have time to do it here. Follow us and, once we're under the radar, we'll talk in actual detail. Sound good?"

Taylor thought for a bit. On the one hand, these were probably villains, though that just meant that she would be in like company at this point. On the other hand, Taylor was confident that she could escape if things went south during the talk. Plus, whether the approaching cape was a hero, rogue, or villain, she didn't think that sticking around would be a good idea, either. She nodded. "Sure."

Without another word Grue climbed onto one of the monster dogs (with help due to his injured leg) and Tattletale and Regent got the duffle bags secured and then Regent mounted a dog with Grue and Tattletale had her own to ride. Grue took a moment to wave Taylor forward and then the group headed off with Taylor following on all fours.

They quickly turned onto a side street and then another. The buildings flew by at a rapid pace. Taylor thought that she'd have trouble following any of it if she were in human form and had her glasses. As it was, they were just a continuous, indistinct blur. Eventually the five teens turned into an alleyway and came to a stop.

"I think this should be far enough. Tattletale?" Grue asked.

After a moment the girl answered. "Yeah, we'll be fine."

Grue let out a sigh of relief. "Good. First of all, I'd like to thank you…what is your name, anyway?"

"Fenris," Tattletale supplied. "The PRT is calling her Fenris, if I'm not mistaken." Taylor was a bit surprised to find out that the PRT had already come up with a name for her. It made sense, though. She had made an extremely public appearance and had continued to cross paths with the PRT since then. They weren't going to simply refer to her as 'that wolf girl.'

"Thank you for the help, Fenris. Now, let's get down to business. We've been looking for more members-"Bitch gave an annoyed grunt at that, "-and, frankly, you look like you could provide some much needed muscle."

"Fuck that!" Bitch said aggressively. "I'm plenty of muscle."

"Given the strength of the capes in the city there's no such thing as enough muscle," Tattletale interjected.

"How can we trust her?!" Bitch demanded.

"If she was going to turn on us then she had a great opportunity to do it earlier," Grue explained. "Since she didn't I doubt she'll do it now. Besides, you aren't the one making these decisions. This is something that affects all of us. So what do you two think?"

"Why do you think I'd even want to join you in the first place?" Taylor asked before the others could respond.

"You followed us, didn't you?" Tattletale asked as she hopped off of the dog she had been riding.

"So?" Taylor asked.

"So, if you didn't intend to at least hear us out then you wouldn't have followed us in the first place," the girl explained. "Look, before we go any further I think I should go over the benefits."

"Go on," Taylor said after a moment of thought.

Tattletale raised one hand and put the other on her hip. "Well, for one thing, we're a much better choice than any of the other organizations available to villains in this city, if I do say so myself."

Taylor was a bit annoyed that they had immediately pegged her as a villain. However, she supposed that was accurate, now, so she decided not to contradict the villain.

Tattletale continued her sales pitch. "And you at least won't have to worry about being forced into service by the E88 or the Merchants or worse. We also have a pretty awesome base, though that's all I can tell you about it for now. Then there's the pay." That caught Taylor's attention.

"We're paid two grand a month," Tattletale provided.

"That doesn't sound like much for what you do," Taylor growled out in her monstrous voice.

Tattletale just chuckled. "That's just what we get paid to be on call, basically. We also get paid for every job we do on top of any loot we manage to nab along the way." The girl ended her statement by gesturing toward the bag strapped to her ride. "All in all, we usually bring in a good haul every month."

Taylor quickly realized that the answer to one of her problems had practically fallen into her lap. With this she could make sure her father would be taken care of, no problem. All she had to do was make a small leap and admit to herself out loud that she was now a villain. Since her other options weren't any better, that wasn't a hard decision.

"All right, I'm in," Taylor confirmed.

"Like hell you are!" Bitch shouted. "We've been doing fine without anyone else."

"This affects all of us, Bitch!" Grue interrupted. "You don't get to make this decision by yourself!" He took a calming breath and addressed the other two members of his team. "What do you two think?"

"I think she could be helpful," Tattletale supplied.

"I'm always for having someone else to do the heavy lifting," was Regent's vote.

"Then it's settled," Grue began.

"Hell no!" Bitch almost lunged from her dog.

"I told you this isn't your decision!" Grue reprimanded her. "We," he gestured to himself and the other two members. "Have decided that she'll be a good fit for the group." Rachel backed down, but she didn't seem to be particularly happy.

After a moment, Grue seemed to be content with her acceptance. He turned back to Taylor. "As I was saying, Fenris, welcome to the Undersiders."