This overlaps with Monster 5.3, sort of. And 5.4 less sort of.

Chapter 14: Idle Thoughts

So hey we've found the Nine.

You'd think Taylor would want to jump in and attack them on principle, but actually she has us back off and follow them, waiting for them to do their next big challenge thing. Her reasoning? They'll split up, and they won't be expecting us. That they'll be split up is a good point -as we follow them, they rarely range more than 50 feet from each other, and we absolutely could not take them all at once- but I'm a wee bit skeptical about the 'not expecting us' part. Like okay yeah they won't be expecting us, but they will be on guard since they'll be provoking everyone into fighting them in one of their games.

It's also a bit more practical than I was expecting from Taylor. Makes me wonder what's going on inside her head, that sometimes she can hold off and wait for a less insane time to do things and sometimes it's just lol imma go after all of Ellisburg by myself.

... actually, I've never asked her about that. Was she alone? I've just sort of assumed...

"So Boss, why did you go after Nilbog in the first place?" I oh-so-casually ask one day as we're following the Nine from close to the edge of my range.

She grunts, not looking up from the tinkertech computer. I 'poke' her with some happiness, just enough she'll notice -and she can't complain since I'm keeping both hands on the driver's wheel exactly like she's insisted I should do- and she glances over and squints at me suspiciously. I don't bother trying to hide rolling my eyes at her. It's called curiosity, girl. Eventually she works through whatever her morass of irritation, anger, nervousness, and longing actually means and decides to actually answer my question. "I-" Words die in her throat and now I'm reading way more nervousness. Oh, now I'm really curious, and I poke her with a stab of fear. She actually jerks in her seat before glaring at me, to which I just shrug and pointedly roll my fingers that are totally still on the steering wheel. Just doing what you told me to do, Boss! She looks away, out into the window and wait isn't this that thing she did when she-

"I think I might've been trying to commit suicide," she says real quiet-like and matter-of-fact.

I almost, almost say ya don't think? But no, she's being all serious about this, that joke is just going to make her madder and probably she'll shut up and I'll never get the rest out of her. So instead I cheerfully declare, "Well then you fucking suck in the best possible way, 'cause he's dead and you're not."

Taylor snorts, blatantly trying not to smile and hahaha fuck yes I'm starting to kind of get her crazy sense of humor. It's nothing like Daddy's, which. Uh.

... shit, why have I been assuming Daddy's sense of humor is baseline? Aw fuck, this is going to take forever to unlearn, isn't it?

But back with Taylor! She's still sounding pretty grim as she continues, but the smile is in her voice and I can hear her tune being a bit more flute-y. "At the time I was just thinking... he's not going to get better. He makes minions, and as far as I was reading they didn't run out, didn't die unless you killed them. I had this idea that the Protectorate had a time bomb ticking down in their midst and they were ignoring it, that some day he'd hit critical mass or a plane flying overhead would tick him off or a natural disaster would break his quarantine or something and everybody nearby would be fucked. I think... I think if I'd not gotten powers, and read up on it? I'd have sent a letter to Armsmaster. But I had my power, I felt the itch to use it-"

I nod along at that, and Taylor gives me an odd look while feeling confused. Uh, okay? Then she goes back to staring out through the side door mirror.

"-and... I dunno. I had this feeling that if I laid it out for them and explained it in a calm and reasonable manner that they'd politely thank me and then shove my papers into a shredder after I'd left." I consider asking if that's something that happened at her school, and then decide I'd rather not encourage her to think about that whole thing. "And I felt like it needed to be done. Like... lancing a wound so you can get the infection out. It's bad now, but the alternative is worse. And if no one else was going to do it, and I maybe could do it..." She sort of trails off, and I think she's maybe getting lost in thought.

Still cheerful-sounding, I 'finish' for her. "So you decided to head in alone on maybe a suicide mission because leaving the situation alone was worse than maybe dying."

She absently nods at that, and I take a moment to keep myself from shuddering. Ew. Who's willing to die for total strangers? Taylor, apparently. I mean, I guess that's cool if that applies to me too, but given the whole repeated threats on my life and all... plus, capes are weird. Maybe she's willing to do so for strangers and not for people actually close to her.

Still, this is useful. I was totally right about her going in alone, though I'd sort of... previously assumed she just thought she was that awesome. I guess this fits better with... uh... nearly everything else about her...

... actually.

"So was that why you went after dear ol' Daddy, then?" I keep my voice bland and smooth. Like tofu. Except I hate tofu. Uh. Like ice cream! Don't let on that I'm doing something other than making idle conversation because the Nine are being super-boring right now and why not.

Surprisingly, Taylor just kind of absently nods at that, emotions not flickering at all. I'm... not sure what I was expecting, but I was expecting something. I raise an eyebrow skeptically. "You really thought Daddy was a problem the Protectorate was ignoring?"

Taylor's gaze flickers toward me through the reflection, head not turning at all. She's confused again, why? "Yes?"

... oh god she's doing that thing again with the question-confirmation lameness. "Why?" 'cause seriously we were always in hiding, on the run, having to be careful or else Daddy would punish us...

Taylor turns to look at me again, eyes those of an innocent doe or whatever cute fuzzy animal people think looks innocent. "The Protectorate isn't just a bunch of superpowered thugs for justice. They've got trackers, detectives, super-fast searchers. They've got tinkers with remote-controlled drones and people who can put you down from a mile away. If they feel someone really needs to die, and they can get a Kill Order signed off on it, it's just a question of how much of a priority you are. Heartbreaker was a minor problem now, periodically kidnapping lone women here and there. He'd someday have an army of parahumans under his control, but he wasn't assassinating politicians or wrecking farms and factories or otherwise destabilizing the country."

My jaw works for a few minutes after that with nothing coming out. The idea that Daddy was small-time just -I can't. I was so certain we were getting by on our wits and powers, that the Protectorate was hounding us but couldn't get us because Daddy was just that good at this even though he was such shit in so many other ways, and yet I can't quite come up with a hole in what Taylor's saying, and the way she said it... she's not trying to convince me this is true. She's explaining to a very slow toddler why two apples added to two other apples equals four apples. This is obvious to her, and she's genuinely mystified that I don't find it obvious too.

Maybe I'm not as awesome as I think I am, either.

I seriously don't know how Taylor has the patience for this shit. I'm able to kind of cope because I'm juggling driving and talking to Taylor and tracking the Nine and studying their antics and then I have to collapse into sleep, but Taylor doesn't sleep and doesn't have anything to occupy her except the tinkertech computer and me talking. If I weren't me, I'd assume she's going crazy and just hiding it well. I am me, so I know she's... bizarrely fine.

I still don't get Taylor.

It's at least kind of fun operating at the edge of her squeamishness when I'm describing the Nine's behavior, and interesting. She doesn't have more than a passing queasiness when I start graphically theorizing about Bonesaw's gruesome surgery on still-aware victims, spiced by the occasional spark of serious let-me-break-something anger, but touching on the much less grotesque process of Shatterbird taunting her victim with false hope before finally killing them slowly actually has her seething, so much so she eventually forces me to stop the vehicle by the side of the road and vanishes off into the woods. I'm not entirely sure what she kills, but it wasn't a damn squirrel. And even once she feels like coming back, she's still all but vibrating with rage.

I scale back on the details of Shatterbird's activities after that. I'd rather not find out what will snap her control by being blendered after one word too many.

I mean. It's possible me delivering all this cheerily is contributing to the problem, but I'm pretty sure Taylor has largely written off my upbeat attitude as A Cherie Thing.

Cheery Cherie, heh. Imagining a goody-two-shoes Ward version of me is funny.

Her anger with Jack Slash is more of a slow burn, a constant background seething that isn't particularly affected by what he does. Which is a bit disappointing in an immediate sense, it makes it harder to guess why she's mad at him, but a bit interesting in its own right given no one else in the Nine draws that response from her. I'm pretty sure it's not actually personal...

She's got mixed feelings about Bonesaw and I seriously consider sharing some stories about what my siblings were doing when they first got powers, but then I remember her weird hangups about relationships and sex and decide that has higher odds of ending in a stabinating than if I were to start fangirling over Shatterbird.

Which.

Look, she's hot, okay? I can overlook a lot if you're hot.

Pretty sure Taylor would look at me like I'd turned into an alien if I shared that thought...

Burn-girl generates a bit of an interesting response, too. Makes me think of some of her emotional patterns when we're talking about me, actually. Very interesting. We're teammates now, is she thinking of recruiting the burninator? She did say her goal is to prevent problems. I... kinda thought that was a bit bullshit at the time, but she seemed to believe it well enough. So maybe she'd be okay with talking the burny girl into fighting alongside us for great justice if that would get her to stop murdering innocents?

If so, she doesn't bring it up when we start hashing out actual plans for how to handle the ambush. She wants me to go talk to the hot girl, she wants me to try to point her at the other Nine, but she doesn't actually ask me to talk her into turning in a meaningful sense. Just... getting her pissed off at the other Nine and blowing off her head if she proves intractable.

Hm. On the one hand, if this were Daddy, there'd be layers to the conversation, and if I were wondering if he wanted me to turn the girl the answer would be 'yes'. (And not just because she's probably a pretty girl) But this is Taylor, who's already gotten on my case about how she says what she means and means what she says and all that Dr. Seuss bullshit, so if she's not outright telling me to give turning the girl a chance she probably doesn't actually want me to do it.

... I could hedge my bets...

... shouldn't even be hard, probably, I'm pretty sure I've got a good handle on how she works at this point...

... and it would be nice to give Taylor exactly what she wants when she didn't ask for it just to see the look on her face...

... and I could use some other conversation than just Taylor, let's be honest...

"I can't actually bring myself to approve this, but I can't bring myself to say you shouldn't do it. So... whatever. Just don't lie to me afterward." Finally!

Seriously, she's so mad about Shatterbird reveling in other people's suffering, but the hobo following along and also reveling in people's suffering deserves waffling? Fie on you! (Whatever that means) Like okay it's not exactly the ringing endorsement I was going for, but at least she's not going to get on my case about it, probably. So I bat my eyebrows and ask, "A kiss, for luck?" when she's tangled up in switching to her costume because if she's not going to give me what I want I can passively-aggressively annoy her! (And possibly end up getting something else I want -like at this point I'd probably have dragged someone off to somewhere private just because it's been so long except I've had no free time and aaaa)

So okay, no (cape) costume -Taylor gets all confused over that. Right. I didn't talk as much about him, did I? "Gornboy is way, way too cautious. If he has a proper combat power I will eat a hat. Two hats." Taylor isn't taking me very seriously. "Twenty hats." She pretty clearly doesn't want to react, but I can tell I have impressed upon her the seriousness of my certainty. The funny part is I'm not even joking. Satisfied with that, I make a few last-minute touch-ups to my face. Maximum Innocent Teenage Girl Who Could Not Possibly Hurt A Fly As She Most Certainly Does Not Have Superpowers Nosirree. "So instead of being a scary obvious cape he might try to drive away from, I'm just going to be a girl on the town, who just so happens to make him feel things-" This plan most certainly does not have anything to do with me missing the touch of human skin or anything like that. No, seriously, gag me, gornboy is not getting any. "-and then I'll slit his throat in the privacy of his gornmobile."

Simple!

... aaaand then Taylor has one of her moments where she's uncomfortable with me being good at what I do. Again. Goddammit, Taylor... "You have your talents-" Stabbing things, mostly. And being kind of scary as shit, sometimes even intentionally. "-I have mine." Being awesome at everything, of course.

Anyway blah blah blah I give Taylor one last update on what's going on with the Nine and she heads off and now it's time for the gornmobile!

Knock knock knock. "Excuse me!" Knock knockknockknock. "Excuse me, sir!"

He's trying to ignore me. Normally he'd even be able to do so successfully, but I'm me. I can't tell exactly when he's looking at me -he's got all his windows tinted so you can't see anything at all- but I can make a pretty darn good guess of when his attention is sliding my way and try throwing in some lust. And like come on I'm young and attractive, so unless he's super-gay-

-wait shit what if he is super-gay I didn't come up with a back-up plan for that.

I try not to sweat too hard, and stick out the plan. It's not like he's reacting confusedly to the lust, just a kind of low-level frustration like he's used to these kinds of thoughts and finds them an annoying distraction. So he's proooobably not super-gay and I'm fine.

... I still need to stop throwing myself into situations with half-baked plans and hoping they work out, oh god.

Eventually the combination of knocking, talking, and needling his emotions gets him adequately annoyed to come over, open the door, and start to angrily demand- except he stops, and there's a rush of feelings and uh that's like paternal-type love or somethin' all mixed up with regret and fondness and bitterness and white-hot rage that doesn't seem to be aimed at me in particular.

I stop with the lust-needling. I'm not entirely sure what he's thinking, but I'm a little worried it would ring untrue in conjunction with his current feelings. He's staring at me like he's a bit lost, and I have the distinct impression his mind is primarily elsewhere. The man himself is... a dude. Older, got a bit of a bald spot, I can half-see a tattoo on the back of one of his hands, but can't quite tell what it's supposed to be. Deep age lines, pale and slightly flabby skin that has me thinking he's been avoiding the sun for years. He looks like some kid's grandfather who is aging prematurely.

Huh. I'd read him as younger. I was thinking he was twenty-something. I could maybe still work with lusting him, not exactly hard for middle-aged men to be attracted to teen girls, but from the way he's reacting I kiiinda suspect he's thinking of... family. Maybe his wife, maybe his daughter, maybe even a granddaughter if he's older than I think.

So I smile at him and start massaging his emotions so that when it provokes nostalgia and bitterness and anger I round off the anger and subtly emphasize the nostalgia and just sort of leave the bitterness alone. "Are you okay, sir?"

There's a surge of bitterness and anger and a pretty dang deep well of sadness and again I round off the anger and this time round off the bitterness and emphasize the sadness and his face goes straight from the beginnings of angry outrage to looking crushed. Not at the edge of tears, dude doesn't strike me as the teary type, but crushed. And sounding surprised -and in fact I can tell he's feeling a bit surprised- to admit it, he says, "No. I... no, I haven't been okay in a long time."

I make sympathetic noises and nod along and say, "We live in hard times don't we?"

"Well, yes. I suppose." Abort, wrong conversational direction, he's starting to get a bit confused and irritated!

I put out a hand on one of his and guess, "Lost someone, I take it?" And hahaha oh my god I got it right that was close. Again, anger, bitterness, sadness, crushing depression, and I edge off the anger and bitterness -a bit less blatantly than before, it's not really necessary- and push the sadness a bit harder.

Now there's tears in his eyes, and he wipes at them with the hand I'm not holding with a bit of an awkward shift because that was the hand he was leaning against the doorway with. I catch a glimpse of a tattoo on that hand too, some kind of bird? "Everyone. I... everyone."

Excellent. I start spinning bullshit. "I lost my grandma to cape bullshit, you know. Need a shoulder to cry on? Everyone can use a shoulder to cry on." Let me in let me in let me in so I can slit your throat out of sight.

There's a spike of suspicion and paranoia and bitterness but I don't let the sadness and depression level off particularly and slowly round the suspicion and paranoia off. Let him think whatever he thinks to explain his experiences. Sit and wait for him to come to a decision, making doe eyes at him like I have no idea what's going on inside him. Just a random good samaritan who has too big a heart and too tiny a brain, don't mind me. Finally, he mutters to himself, "So tired," and proceeds to break hand contact and go lurching his way deeper into his van, door left ajar. He goes and sits down at one of those van dinner table space things, leaning onto the table and rubbing at his forehead with both hands, muttering to himself.

I follow him in, quietly close the door behind me, and slide into the opposite seat from me. The noise prompts him to look up, and he's clearly surprised to see me. I can see the tattoos more clearly now, one of them is a fancy U and the other is a bird, doesn't really mean anything to me. Was this guy like a biker in his youth or something? The tattoos are bugging me. I lean forward and once again do my best to look and sound sympathetic while continuing to massage his emotions, keeping the anger and hostility and whatnot down low while amping up the sadness and depression and blah blah blah as slowly and subtly as I can. Wait, regret's in there now? Okay, sure, let's slowly amp up the regret too. What's he regretting? "You really lost everyone? That's awful. I don't want to imagine what that would be like." Mostly because I almost don't have to. I mean sure a bunch of the sibs are still alive and so are the aunts, but the only thing that kind of counts is that I'm hanging with Taylor, and she's... not a talker, for one...

Keep massaging those emotions. He's got the waterworks starting up a little again, and he shakily wipes away a tear and then looks at it with some shock. "You... remind me of her so much it hurts... she was so patient with me... even when I did..."

Yyyyep, reminding him of some girl who was totes important to him. I wonder if I even actually resemble her beyond being female or if it's just that I'm distorting his emotions so badly he'd be reminded of her by a dead fish? I've never really tested this particular range of my powers. Still need to get him more depressed and whatnot, though, while I'm 99% sure I'm right he's got no combat power I've still got my heart pounding from suddenly realizing that hey maybe he's gay and going to realize I'm Mastering him into lusting for the wrong gender and the plan is fucking ruined you fucking retard so I'm not exactly inclined to take chances anyway. I want him so depressed that cutting his throat feels like a mercy instead of something to try to fight off.

It takes way too fucking damn long. So much so I'm thinking he's got a power that does something to his mind, because when I've got him to the point that normal people start begging for an end to their futile and pointless existence, he's just tearily muttering half to me and half to himself about cauldrons and how it's all his fault he lost 'her' and somewhere in there he starts getting really off his rocker with talking about how he regrets trying to change this worthless world's fate, like old man gorn was ever a person of importance pffff, and even once he finally trails off and lays his head in his arms and says, "I just wish it would end," he's more coherent than he should be. Clearly not sane in the first place, but more together than he has any right to be.

So I give up, get the knife out, pull his head up out of his arms and look him sweetly in the eye and open my mouth to say something so I can distract him from getting the knife to his throat and dragging in one quick pull.

And then I start sweating when, looking and feeling betrayed in a weirdly resigned sort of way, he gurgles and gasps and chokes while some weird white shit start flickering nearby. Wait, those aren't shadows, it's white and black. Okay, odd. Flickery and weird and he's got a power and now I'm not so confident it's a non-combat power, so I take the bloody knife and jam it into the base of his skull.

He jolts, stops moving, and the effect -whatever it was- goes away with no fanfare whatsoever. Not even a sound.

Fortunately, the sink on his van works, so I'm able to wash the blood off without too much difficulty, dry it off with a towel, and stick it back into my purse. From there, it's just leaving, careful to block off the view from the doorway to his body without looking like I'm doing that, and then close it. Nobody is really paying attention, but my heart is still pounding from what feels like multiple mistakes that could totally have gotten me killed if I wasn't lucky as a clover. So. Probably-unnecessary caution.

And now it's back to my suit!

Shatterbird does her thing before I can get the full distance back. Stupid old man taking forever to become properly suicidally depressed. Jerk. Meany-face. Inconvenient.

Fortunately, since I knew it was coming in a general sense I was already pretty careful to keep myself largely away from glass. It's unfortunate she's out of my range right now, otherwise I could've predicted it way more exactly, I'm almost sure, but I still manage to throw myself into a bush and ow ow ow ow but it's not glass shrapnel punching through my eyes or whatever so it's all good! Just little cuts and scrapes, totally ignorable, and not even many because my clothes protected me decently well!

So then I get into the back of the truck (Wincing at how its windows have been blown out), and hide under the tarp and start getting switched, silver undersuit on, into the main suit, start the boot-up sequence-

...

Start the boot-up sequence-

...

Fuck, start the boot-up sequence-

You FATHERFUCKING PIECE OF SHIT, don't you fail on me now! Fuck, the plan needs the suit to kill Hatchet Face!

Okay, no, deep breaths. We have two such suits, I can just hop into the other one and-

...

Its helmet dumps out little shards of glass when I go to grab at it. That's... that's the interface. The bit that lets me control the suit, see out into the wider world, everything.

I make an attempt to boot it up anyway, ignoring how sirens are starting to go off and people are screaming and otherwise panicking, the inconsiderate jerks, but no-go. I can't, like, boot it up and then just take the helmet off and wear a mask or something. It just plain won't work. And mix-and-matching the other helmet to this suit also doesn't work.

Fffffffuuuuckkkkk.

It's okay! It's... great! Everything is... fine. I mean, look on the bright side Cherie, it could have failed in the air and killed you! That would obviously be way worse, no duh, no arguing.

... on impulse, with a wince of dread, I check on the tinkertech computer. Surprisingly, its screen is fine.

Well, that's something, if not remotely the thing I need right now...

So I switch back into my civilian-ish clothes, hop out, and get jogging. And after like two minutes change my mind, brute-force a random dude in the middle of revving his motorcycle into allowing the poor innocent waif who desperately needs to go check on her grandmother to 'borrow' his motorcycle, and speed off into the deeper city.

Burny-girl next.

I am going to totally pretend it was a deliberate decision to show up as a normal person and not look obviously combat-ready.

It's kind of amazing how well it worked to just walk up to Mimi and ask her why she's so mad, looking like a complete retard of a big-hearted person who's genuinely somehow oblivious to the screaming and the dying and other such insanity around us. Pay no mind to me subtly twisting everyone to be disinclined to come 'save' me or otherwise interfere. Probably can't dissuade a cape that way, but the regular folks are pretty easy to amp up their fear and blah while downplaying their concern for a fellow human being until they give into the obvious plan of fleeing in terror. They don't have a reason to be confident in their ability to actually help, after all.

Mimi is her name, by the way. She apparently hates being called Burnscar. I make sympathetic noises and share my own opinion of how awful it is to get stuck with a nickname you don't like, and Mimi's cigarette burn-marked face jiggles up and down in a fiercely angry motion. She's just so glad I get it, she says in a bit of a monotone while her eyes glow with a literal inner fire and I can tell her actual emotional state is almost as flatline-y as Taylor's is when she goes squid.

I think I'm sort of 'supposed' to be scared, some primal lizard part of my brain focusing on the disconnect between her tone and her words and deciding something is Wrong as a result, but I suppose I'm way too used to knowing that what people are actually experiencing is often disconnected from what they present as experiencing. Mimi's emotional range being connected to how much fire is around her is interesting, but I can't quite find it disconcerting. A bit of talking makes it pretty clear she's still her either way, much more so than, say, Taylor is when she goes squid, and it's just that instead of going 'I don't like this person they make me mad I think I'd like to hurt them no wait I'd feel bad if I hurt them' she just has that first bit with the wanting to hurt and then goes and does it, and only later looks back and remembers and feels all guilty and other such bullshit.

Like, honestly. I often feel the urge to do shit to people, and then I just go and do it. And if I don't, it's not because I feel bad. It's because, hey, doing that will get the Protectorate on my ass in no time flat!

Mimi sort of blinks at me sharing this revelation, and then she gets all squintily suspicious in this amusingly flat and unemotional way it's honestly adorable and flame goes up her arm and I interrupt by saying, "Hey, if another cape team, just hypothetically speaking here, if another cape team was interested in having you aboard, how likely would you be to leave the Nine anyway?"

Her paranoia spikes almost as bad as Taylor's does at her worst, her eyes shooting in every direction, and then once she's convinced herself that, I dunno, no Nine are going to show up and try to kill her she leans toward me and I can totally tell she's trying to be intimidating but even though intellectually I know she could probably kill me in a matter of seconds if I provoked her I've been hanging around Taylor for months at this point so it's just sort of adorable. Again. "You're a cape trying to recruit one of the Nine. You're an idiot."

I grin breezily at her. "It's really my boss who is maybe interested in you, I'm just the messenger, hey how do you feel about your coworkers? Jack? Bonesaw? Crawler? Shatterbird-" Ah-hah, I was sorta maybe thinking she didn't get on so great with Shatterbird let's leverage that now that we've gotten the idea of hey maybe skiving out on the Nine in her pretty little head (I mean okay the cigarette burns aren't exactly appealing but if you look past that she's honestly got a decent little face and if I were a tiny bit stupider I'd probably have kissed her when she leaned in to be intimidating), so now it's time to initiate The Plan The Boss Actually Explicitly Discussed With Me I Think I Can Never Tell With Her Oh God.

Her face hardens, she starts trying to say something about how I'm going to burn long and slow for daring to treat the Nine with so little respect, and I just keep talking. "You know, I actually think Shatterbird-" Anger spike, spike it harder. "-is kinda the meanest of the Nine-" Anger spike, resonates with her, push it harder. "-and I was curious what your opinion was, just an informal poll sort of thing, care to share, it'll only take a moment."

Her face hardens and this whole thing is kind of interesting because on an absolute scale her anger isn't really all that high but since her emotional range is all kinds of warped with no checks and balances she's already starting to lose interest in me and get fixated on Shatterbird. "That bitch-" Anger spike, push it harder. Burnscar's hands clench, her gaze locks on something in the distance, and suddenly she's stepping right into a nearby fire and WOOSH is gone. Yep, I'm tracking her just fine, trail of teleports riiight to Shatterbird's current location. Looking for myself... I can't see anything obvious myself, but maybe the light glinted off of Shatterbird just so?

Hahahaha wow what a rush that was surprisingly easy and oh hey my hands are shaking and maybe I was actually not holding up nearly as well as I thought I was.

... now hopefully she saves Taylor, because, uh, I've been a wee bit worried by what I've been overhearing with my power for a while now...

I make a point of paying no mind to the people all about who are mostly just sort of staring at me and I can totally tell from their emotions they're probably thinking something in the vein of 'What the FUCK' and that's fine. It's not like I have a proper civilian identity anyway. No biggie! Plus, I haven't actually done anything parahuman-y in front of them, just talked to a member of the Nine like it ain't no thing.

...

Wait, they'll probably take that as evidence, won't they?

Oh well, no big deal. Might need to get Taylor to handle more of our shopping in the future...

And with that I'm back to the motorcycle and get going off in Taylor's direction. Which is also Shatterbird and Burnscar's direction. They're fighting, Shatterbird is all outraged but darkly pleased, I think she was wanting an excuse to do something to Burnscar, and Burnscar has a weird flat enjoyment too mixed in with the not-actually-that-strong anger that's driven her so impulsively. Interesting. Really curious how Taylor will handle her if the whole 'steal a Nine member' thing pans out. And... Taylor is kind of panicking a little at this point...

... and here we are!

"What the fuck, Cherie," Taylor says oh-so-calmly (It's called sarcasm, look it up) once she breaks free from the chaos and reaches me and I open my eyes so she's not the squid anymore.

Okay, remember to not call her Mimi. Yet. "Burnscar is iiiinteresting, boss. I can still generate feelings in her, temporarily, enough to influence her direction, and oh man she gets more impulsive the more fire there is in the area." I mean it's really more accurate to say she doesn't have checks and balances and whatnot but I'd have trouble explaining all this to a normal person and frankly I'm not sure Taylor is physically capable of getting what I'm talking about here except in the most general of terms. Taylor's all impatient for the full story, though, not asking questions and just pushing me to keep talking. "So I managed to talk to her, because she's quite the talker-" Aaaand Taylor spikes anger and outrage and a bit of protective concern which is kinda awesome except I think she's seriously considering stabbing me quick damage control! "-oh come on don't be like that I totally knew what I was doing. So anyway! I got to talking and it turns out her relationship with the Nine is not so good but Shatterbird in particular apparently grates on her for whatever reason mass-murdering psychopaths get mad about when they're roomies and so I just... made her mad every time Shatterbird's name got mentioned." I mean, sorta, I only did it once when it was her name but close enough we probably shouldn't linger here too long, right? "And then she had this idea aaaall by herself that she'd go and kill Shatterbird." Not that she told me or anything, but she's pretty clearly trying so it's not a fucking guess. "Two birds with one stone!"

Taylor gives me one of her fish-eyed dead stares that she does when she hates me with every fiber of her being but considers the sin too unimportant to actually berate and/or threaten me over.

I blatantly roll my eyes at her. "You're just jealous of my kickin' rad skills." I'm not even joking there's actually a bit of jealousy in there. For some reason. Not sure what, honestly. "Oh, and I totally killed the gornhobo. I mean, I had to quit with being flirty because I reminded him of a wife or daughter or something of the sort-" Good god man she has a name don't just call her 'her' like her her-ness is the only thing that matters! I still don't know if it was a daughter or wife or grandma or what! "-but then it was just a matter of making him feel even more sad and then going in, listening to him cry about blah blah witch's brew and 'fate of the world' and other crazy hobo nonsense while I made sympathetic noises until he was finally so far gone I could slit his throat without him noticing or, really, caring that much. There was this totally weird flickery effect nearby for a bit, all white and black and stuff, but then I jammed the knife into the base of his skull and that stopped. So yeah he definitely had some kind of power, but I win. No twenty hats of eating for me. What's my prize?" Is it a hug? A hug would totally be nice and help with the temptation to smooch people I shouldn't be smooching.

Taylor pointedly crosses her arms, making it obvious she's not going to give a hug. Dangit. "Cherie, the idea is we'd deal with Hatchet Face using the suit's gun. Neither of us can deal with him on our own."

SPLIT-SECOND DECISION TIME!

Do I

A: Tell Taylor that our shit is broken and I honestly couldn't do what she wanted me to do, possibly giving her a heart attack distraction while we're in the middle of some very dangerous shit or

B: Go with my original plan to pretend this was all totally intentional and there's nothing to worry about because I'm awesome.

B.

Of course it's B.

"No no, boss, you got it all wrong, we've got Burnscar now! I just need a minute to aim her at the guy after Shatterbird is toast -heh- and she'll reduce him to ashes without ever getting into his stupid radius." Might also get a chance to raise the topic of asking her to join our silly little murder-team, too! But let's not mention that juuust yet I'd like to gauge Taylor's feelings about this first. Oh wait right Crawler is coming this way. Should maybe mention that. "Unless Crawler gets here first, I guess."

"Crawler is coming here? Now?" Oh wow I've not seen Taylor make that expression before. Or felt her panic quite so completely and blindly before. Wait, she didn't want to fight Crawler because she's terrified of him? Huh, that's interesting.

But whatever it's fine he's going slow what with all the capes trying to fight him. "Yeah, I think he noticed Shatterbird and Burnscar are fighting each other and got curious. We got a bit, though, he's not that fast." Though. "Okay admittedly I thought Shatterbird would already be de-" Uh-oh. "Shit."

Fuck, Burnscar is falling out of the sky and if I'm reading through her stupid-ass power correctly she's being distracted by a whole fuckton of pain and Shatterbird is doing that thing she does of being all cruelly delighted that she finished off her latest victim. Fffffuck I got her killed I was looking forward to her being a teammate! Dangit, dammit, fuck, stop fucking reminding me vaguely of Jean-Paul it's fucking different we're not even related and I hadn't actually befriended her or anything shut UP brain!

Fuck, we need to get away before Shatterbird finds us.