I've been played.

I can't kill Tattletale. She's come to me for help and she's being chased by a Nazi. That's all anyone will see, and she knows it. If I kill her, not only am I doing a Nazi a favor in public, but I'm also telling everyone that I will break the rules if you ask me for mercy. I don't want to be known as a loose canon. I need to project an image of stability, so no gouging the Thinker.

I can't attack Purity. First, I don't think Purity's in the wrong here. Tattletale did cross a line, and it's taking a lot of shattered ribs not to tear out her heart right now on principle alone. Second, starting a fight with Purity here is going to cause casualties. Lots of them. Instigating a mass killing is also bad for business, so no blitzing Purity.

I can't back down. If I do, it'd be taken as an implicit approval of the Empire's revenge, if not straight-up sympathy with their movement. I don't want to be known as a Nazi, and cooperating with Purity to any degree is going to get me branded as an apologist at the very least. Mr. Doe said to think of worst-case scenarios. White Rose, killer of the head of what used to be the most prominent Asian gang on the East Coast, who's spent a lot of time being seen with Nazis, letting a Nazi kill a teenager in cold blood in front of her? The press would have a field day. That means I can't leave Tattletale to her just fucking desserts.

Purity raises her hand and the glow around it builds in intensity. "I won't ask twice."

I need time. Time to think and figure a way out of this that doesn't brand me a murderer, a Nazi, or a stooge. A movie scene flashes to mind. It's stupid, but I don't have any better ideas.

"Parley."

The glow around Purity's hand dims. Slightly.

"What?" I can practically taste the shock in Purity's voice. I use her moment of surprise to position myself between Tattletale and the most dangerous Blaster in the North East. Now she can't kill the Thinker without killing me. Not the safest place for me to be, but maybe it will make her hesitate.

"Parley. Let's talk this out." I lift my hand from Tattletale's shoulder to her mouth and form a muzzle. Letting her butt in on the delicate negotiations that are about to happen sounds like an excellent way to get dozens of people killed. That, and if she lives through this I'm going to consider tearing out her tongue. "You have grievance with Tattletale. Tattletale claims she didn't do it." Both Purity and I think that claim is bullshit, but I need to stall and hope one of the passive bastards behind me calls the Protectorate. "Let's figure this out."

"I had a family. A life." Purity sounds furious but fragile, like a storm inside an eggshell. "A baby girl. A beautiful baby girl." Her voice cracks. "I didn't even get to say goodbye." Her hand doesn't waver, but her shoulders heave. I stand there, struck silent.

Oh hell.

Purity is a mother. And Tattletale took away her daughter, however indirectly.

I think about the pain of losing Mom. Then I flip the feeling around and try to imagine what it would be like for a mother to lose her child and turn the sorrow into hate, to want to lash out instead of withdraw.

In. Out. Mask on.

The public's opinion of me is becoming less and less persuasive as time goes on.

I feel a scrape on my hands and turn to look at Tattletale. She's pointing to her mouth, eyes pleading for release. I pull her close and shrink down my lifts enough that I can look her in the eye. She makes a talking motion with her hands. I lean over to her ear.

"Do you have a way to prove you didn't do it?" I whisper before releasing the muzzle.

"No, but I can-" I reform her muzzle before she can attempt to use her power to warp my mind. Then I turn back to Purity, a plan forming in my head.

"I can't let you kill her." No matter how much I want to. "Not here. And I can't let you drag her away, not when she came to me for help." I leave out the part where I really wish I could be the one to crucify her. "What if her loss was proportional?"

Purity laughs. Once. It's a dry, hopeless sound, closer to a sob than anything else. "I lost my daughter and my freedom. What can she lose?"

"A pound of flesh." Tattletale is tapping furiously against my backplate, but I ignore it. I'm trying to save her life. If she didn't want me to she should've ridden a dog off into the sunset with the rest of her team. "I can't let you kill her, but what about a hand? That, and a public de-masking." I motion to the surrounding cameras. Tattletale can live without a hand, and the face reveal would be a reasonable comeuppance. "An eye for an eye."

"That's not even close to a fair trade." Damn. Purity's hands begin to brighten again. "Now move."

Plan B.

I pull Tattletale into my arms and push out as much bone as I can, moving us into the bone and away from Purity, making the dome bigger even as I feel the silent light boring through it. Gotta get away.

We emerge from the sphere with the glare of an angry star shining behind us, and I waste no time sprinting away. It's only a matter of time before Purity realizes we've gone. I tear off Tattletale's gag.

"I hate you." I hope she understands the level of self control it's taking me to resist the urge to grind her into a paste of flesh. "Help me get us out of here."

"She's going to be distracted for maybe another few seconds, you need to get out of the open." She's whispering and her eyes are wide behind her mask. Good. Maybe now she'll be able to see the full scope of her fuck up. I dash into an alleyway and start thinking of alternatives. Take cover indoors? No, she'd just level the building around me. Underground, maybe?

"Right!" Tattletale hisses. I juke and a beam of light tears a nearby dumpster to pieces. I hazard a glance up. Purity's there, aiming another shot. I crash into the side of a building to avoid it. Tattletale hisses in pain. Right. Have to focus. I turn my attention back to the road.

"Stop!" I stab a pillar of bone through a window and halt my forward progress. My eyes sting as something way too bright passes in front of me and I hear the ground shatter. Fuck, I'm blind. Need cilia. I extrude some and keep running, Tattletale keeps telling me how to dodge, and Purity keeps destroying the scenery around me.

I'm not fast enough to outrun her, no matter how many extra limbs I grow, but she's not quick enough on the draw to beat my agility and Tattletale's direction. I keep moving away from the shop, away from population centers and towards the Docks, somewhere the collateral damage can hopefully be minimized.

I lose track of time. The outside world gets less and less sensible until there's only the ground beneath my feet, Tattletale's voice in my ear, and the occasional moment of blindness when silent white light takes my vision from me. Everything else fades into the background until it almost feels like I'm dreaming.

Then something goes crack crack crack. I briefly think it's bone, but there's no pain to go with the sound. Then the lights stop and there's only Tattletale's voice. It's different though. Less panicked. Less frantic. Something else. I come back out of the haze.

"-litia , it's Miss Militia!" She's almost hysterical, laughing too high and too breathlessly for anyone to mistake it for happiness. "Home free!"

I slow to a stop. Somewhere along the ride Tattletale had wrapped her arms around me and I had wrapped her in bone. Now only an inch of bone and her catsuit separate us. I slowly loosen the bindings and try to put my thoughts in order. I can feel the not-bone parts of my body trembling, maybe from adrenaline, maybe from relief.

What a rush.

When Tattletale lets go of me, she stumbles and hisses. My hand shoots out and grabs her by the shoulder.

"Thanks, you were holding me a little close there. Cut off the circulation, and now I've got pins and needles-"

"You used me." Now that I don't have a vengeance-seeking Nazi trying to spread my insides over a city block, it's time for a fucking reckoning. Tattletale looks up at my mask, smile back on her face, apparently unconcerned with her imminent dismemberment.

"And you liked it. Every second on the edge, every close call was like chocolate, a briefcase of money, and good sex all rolled into one. Not sure why you're not in the Wards, it's one of the only places- really? You don't like authority? No, more than that. You hate authority, hate having to trust anyone with more power than you, including-" I don't like where this train of thought is going. I decide to halt it. Her eyes widen as I grow a thin blade of bone in my free hand. Not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I'm real fucking sick of hearing her jabber. Now where to start?

"Okay, motivation is off-limits, got it. Hey, would you look at that, it's the authorities! Hello Velocity!" I stay my hand and turn. The local speedster is, in fact, here. He has one hand on his belt and the other on his ear, talking quietly to himself as he stares at the two of us. I look to the side. A few rooftops away, Miss Militia is looking at us, a very large and very scary-looking gun held across her chest.

I let go of Tattletale, and she stumbles back, eventually collapsing to the ground. I pull the blade back in, and close my eyes.

In. Out. Mask on.

When I open them back up, the hero has let his hand drop from his ear to his side. I look at him, then at Tattletale, who's sitting on her ass rubbing at her legs and glancing between the two of us with undisguised curiosity. I look back at the Protectorate hero.

"Hello Velocity." I keep my voice as casual as possible. As if he hadn't just seen me ready and willing to maim another cape who wasn't a threat. As if he wasn't considering bringing me in as well. As if this was just a regular Wednesday afternoon. He nods once.

"White Rose." There's a moment of silence. "Would you be willing to give a statement about how you ended up here?"

"Once I talk to my lawyer." Mr. Doe is going to throw a fit. I'm not sure what the fallout of publicly offering to mutilate a teenager for a Nazi is going to be like, but I'm going to assume not good. I needed his help twenty minutes ago. Velocity tilts his head.

"A statement isn't something you really need a lawyer for. It's not," he fumbles for words before shrugging. "It's more of a 'I was on the scene and this is what happened.' You don't have to provide one if you don't want to," he clarifies. I sigh.

"I choose not to give a statement." Velocity processes that for a moment, but doesn't comment. Instead, he motions past me.

"I'd like to secure Tattletale now. If you would please step out of the way?" I move aside and watch silently as he walks over to the Thinker and explains a few things to her. She nods along and extends her hands. Velocity zip-ties them together and stands back up, looking towards me. "You can leave now if you want."

I nod and start walking back towards my shop. I need to run damage control, see if anyone was hurt, call Mr. Doe, and figure out how this is going to affect my business. I can already feel the waves of exhaustion from the multiple late nights that it's going to take to fix this.

About half a block away I stop and slap a hand to my mask before turning around and walking back to the hero. He waves at me cautiously. I sigh.

"Which way is Maroon and 125th?"


Once I'm back at the shop, I take exactly enough time to talk to the manager and confirm that no one was hurt before I get handed the shop phone.

"This is bad." Mr. Doe says. "You could've managed this better. On the other hand, at least you stood your ground against a Nazi."

"How sarcastic was that last comment?" I ask, pushing past a few concerned employees into the back room. "On a scale of 'you're fucked' to 'this is fine?'"

"Not sarcastic at all, and while this isn't fine it's also not a total disaster." I can hear the pounding of a keyboard through the phone. "You screwed up when you tried to negotiate with the Nazi and compounded it when you went for the Shylock method of bankruptcy, but saving a teenage girl from said Nazi probably brought you about even. We still need to write a press release and convince everyone that you're not insane and that your store isn't about to get strafed by an angry white supremacist." There's a pause. "Is it?"

I sigh. "Honestly? I have no idea. Purity's not going to be happy and she's at large, so maybe she will try to kill me. We didn't exactly have a chance to hash it out over drinks."

Mr. Doe makes a noncommittal noise. "Either way, it's probably for the best if the shop isn't open tomorrow. Or the day after. Maybe on Saturday, depending on how the employees are feeling. My advice? Go home, have dinner, and get some sleep. We'll assess damage and figure out the public response tomorrow. For now, just don't run across a Thinker's hidden base or an S-class threat by accident."

I laugh harshly into the phone. "I'll try." He hangs up after that. I give the employees who haven't left yet some bone souvenirs and leave my number and Mr. Doe's instructions with the manager. Then I go outside and head home.


Dinner is quiet, and Dad's been paying close attention to me throughout. After about ten minutes or so his fork clinks as he sets it down against his plate. He looks me in the eye.

"Taylor, are you alright?" he asks.

I sketch a false smile on my face, so fake that I know I'm not fooling anyone.

"I tried to make a good first impression with some people and it didn't turn out the way I wanted."

Dad frowns and takes another bite of his mashed potatoes.

"I know a thing or two about recovering from a bad start. Anything I can help with?" I imagine Dad trying to negotiate with Kaiser, or talk down Armsmaster. I almost laugh. I shake my head instead.

"No, not really. I've already asked someone for advice, and they told me to let it cool down for a few days before I try to do anything else about it. Something about letting people process."

Dad's face becomes thoughtful as he rubs his chin.

"I mean, there's merit to the wait-and-see approach. On the other hand," he lifts his fork, a few green beans speared on the end of it, "Waiting means that whatever impression you made, good or bad, is going to be the only image in their heads for a while. If you don't take steps to correct that, it's only going to become more difficult to fix in the future. Maybe try again? Take the initiative, set up a meeting, and see if you can't set things straight before they come to their own conclusions."

I take a bite of chicken and mull it over. I could go in for some volunteer hours at the hospital, or pull another 'petals in the park' stunt. Nothing controversial, just something to make sure that people know I'm not dead.

It's either that or laying low, staying hidden, and letting someone else tell the story.

I swallow the chicken. "Yeah, I think that could work. Thanks Dad." I put on another smile, this one a little more honest. Dad grins back.

"Glad I could help." The dinner is still quiet after that, but the silence isn't as heavy. When I go to bed, I think about booting up my computer and trying to justify my actions on PHO. I think about it, but I don't. That's tomorrow's problem. Instead, I change into my pj's, turn off the lights, and go to sleep.

I dream of dancing between flashes of light, chasing something, and being happy.