Enjoy!

Shadow 2.c

Miss Militia weaved through the early morning traffic with the speed of a woman possessed. Her motorcycle engine roared as she pushed it to its limits. Her gloved hands gripped the handles so tightly she could feel the grip of the handlebar twisting underneath her hands. She tried to focus on avoiding the surrounding traffic instead of the insidious and dark thoughts that edged their way into her mind.

Thoughts of seeing Ms. Hess and Thomas Hess strung up the side of a building made her heart pound against her ribcage so hard that for a moment she feared that it would burst out. She couldn't let that happen, too many people had already suffered because of the PRT and Protectorate's negligence of this whole situation.

"Militia, Dauntless, and Triumph are on their way, but it will be at least ten minutes before they catch up to you," Velocity said through her ear-comm.

"Understood console," she replied, her voice somewhat muffled through her scarf and the heavy wind resistance from her bike. Armsmaster had been in a meeting with Piggot when the call had come in and was still putting on his armor. Velocity was on the Rig for his turn on console duty and would take at least twenty minutes to get from the Protectorate headquarters to her position, even with his speed, and last she heard Assault and Battery were engaged with Rune and Krieg which would leave them occupied for the next fifteen minutes at the very least. That meant that she was the only hero that could possibly make it to the Hess apartment to stop this tragedy before it started.

There was a PRT van full of troopers right behind her, but it's bulky deposition meant that it had to wait for the clogged streets to part ways so that it could get through whilst she could move straight through the traffic with no issue.

As she made her final turn her insides clenched at the sight of the Hess' apartment complex. The door was shattered, a clear sign that the gang had already breached the perimeter and were making their way up to the Hess' apartment. Her engine roar cut off with a click as she parked in front of the building and dismounted with an ease that came from years of practice. She ducked through the broken door as she minded the shattered glass and made her way up the stairs. Her power flickered through a few forms before she allowed it to settle as a police riot shield. It wouldn't help offensively, but climbing up a set of narrow and noisy stairs without protection was just asking for an ambush.

As she made her way up the second flight Miss Militia paused. Lying before her, strewn out along the worn-out stairs was a dead body.

She would have liked to say that it wasn't something she saw too often, but Brockton Bay had no shortage of homicides, parahuman or otherwise. What was strange was that the carcass clearly belonged to an E88 member. With his brown shirt and pants, alongside his shaved head made it clear who this man once held allegiance to. His blue eyes were frozen in an expression of shock and horror as a puddle of crimson fluid coalesced underneath him.

The injury that had been the cause of the man's mortal coil being snapped was fairly obvious. A great hole had been punched through his torso that severed his spine and shredded his heart into tiny little pieces of muscle. From the way, the muscles fibers were positioned on his back the assailant most likely pulled out their blade after stabbing them. She bent down to check his pulse, but as she suspected he was already dead. His body was still warm and his lips were only just now turning purple, which meant that whoever had done this to him couldn't be that long gone.

Miss Militia pulled herself away from the dead man and continued to make her way up the stairs as cautiously as she could as her mind raced with possibilities of who could have done such damage. Whatever the weapon had been it had been thick and long, but at the same time, durable enough cut through bone and muscles. If anything, it reminded her of a lance as the way it pulverized the heart and nicked the lungs and liver suggested that it would have been huge, more like a cone or cylinder than a standard blade. But the thought of someone trying to sneak a medieval weapon into an apartment complex didn't make much sense. A parahuman power perhaps?

It wouldn't be impossible to think that someone in the complex had triggered out of fear and panic of being added to the death toll, but that didn't quite ring right with the Protectorate Blaster.

As she turned the comer to the next stairwell she found another body. This body was once again an obvious Empire member, with tattoos covering his bare arms. This time, however, instead of having his heart stabbed through, his head was no longer attached to his neck. The wound was a single clean cut with no evidence of any serration which told Miss Militia two things. One was that whatever weapon had done this had been very sharp, which didn't match with the injuries of the other body. This would have been an entirely different weapon, more along the lines of an ax than a lance. The second thing was that whoever had done this was strong. While it was certainly well within the capabilities of a normal human to perform a decapitation, it was usually while the target was subdued and not struggling and took some practice to get the blade to move through the bone on the first try.

Miss Militia could feel her gut start to churn at the thought of one cape in particular who had recently shown a propensity for beheading. If Boogeyman was here did that mean that she wanted to get revenge on Hess' family herself and was just killing the Empire gang members because it was convenient for her?

Figuring out Boogeyman's real identity had been child's play for the PRT given the wealth of information that had been given to them in the form of Sophia Hess' unmasking, even with the facial recognition software on the fritz. That response had been far too heated for it to be anything but personal and combined with video evidence of her admitting her identity to Sophia, they had been able to determine that the new cape was one Taylor Hebert.

Of course, even armed with that knowledge they had found it next to impossible to find any form of leverage to use on the girl. It made Militia feel sick to think that they were trying to strong arm a girl who had been traumatized by one of their own members, but what Taylor had done was completely beyond the pale. As it was they had absolutely nothing to leverage her with, both of her parents were dead, one being quite recent in fact, and she had no other ties to hold her down. Sophia had apparently isolated her at school which left her with no friend to concern herself with. She was a crusader who had nothing to lose, which made her even more dangerous than they had thought possible.

Miss Militia steeled herself as she passed another body with an equally gruesome death. While the others had been clearly killed by human hands, this one looked like it had been…gnawed on. Militia paused as she reached the third floors stairwell as the sound of an unfamiliar voice filtered down to her level. The heroine could feel her muscles tense as she carefully made her way up the last set of stairs. She couldn't quite make out what was being said, but the tone was far too relaxed for it to be a civilian.

As she made her way around the corner Miss Militia kept her power on alert to change at a moment's notice.

"…to rip your precious little Empire to pieces and bring your whole system crashing down. My video to the city was a Declaration of War, but you? You're my declaration of intent."

As the cold voice spoke Miss Militia could hear the faint but panicked cries of another. Readying herself Miss Militia rounded the corner and brought her weapon up in a new form as she came face to face with the perpetrator of all these deaths.

"FREEZE!" Miss Militia shouted as she brought her weapon up in the form of a taser. They had some eyewitness accounts from the Merchants that Boogeyman had survived being blasted with a shotgun, but such accounts were unreliable given the panicked behavior of the eyewitnesses and the standard Merchant behavior of being drugged up to their eyeballs. Starting her way at the bottom and working up would be far safer than overestimating Boogeyman's resistance and accidently killing her.

The cape in question turned her gaze from the struggling Empire goon pinned to the wall like a fly in a display case as he struggled against her apparently iron strong grip. Miss Militia had seen a lot of horrible things in her life. She had seen beings that were monstrous on the outside as they were on the inside and those that looked all too human. She remembered each one of them in their own horrible glory as they waded through rivers of blood. Sometimes literally. She shouldn't have been unsettled by Boogeyman's offsetting appearance, and yet she couldn't help but twitch a bit as those cold yellow eyes stared into her very soul.

It was as if there was something about her mere appearance that set her subconscious on edge. That niggling little voice that warned children about the monsters in the dark.

"Miss Militia," Boogeyman said in a conversational tone with an expression that had far too many teeth to be considered a smile. "So nice to finally meet you. Tell me, does the Protectorate intend on showing up after I've done their job for them every time?"

"Put the man down now," Miss Militia ordered as she ignores the parahuman's words. She had tangled with people like Kaiser and Jack Slash far too many times to be distracted by whatever garbage they spew from their mouths. Boogeyman seemed to contemplate her for a moment, and Miss Militia feared that the situation would descend into conflict with a normal in the way when Boogeyman smiles.

"Very well," she said, before throwing the man into the floor with such force that the wooden floor cracked underneath the force of the impact. The man coughed painfully, the slightest trickle of blood trailing out of his mouth as he curled up in on himself as his body burned in agony. Miss Militia found that she really couldn't bring herself to feel too much sympathy for him, the man had come here with the intention of torturing and killing a Ward's family.

"Stand down, Boogeyman," Miss Militia ordered, a small kernel of hope that this entire situation could be resolved peacefully burning in her chest. That hope died as Boogeyman only scoffed at the demands.

"Oh, do you intend to arrest me for doing what should be your job?" the parahuman asked, her hands clasped behind her back. Miss Militia could feel her muscles tense as Boogeyman started to move around the small room. She didn't make any threatening moves but instead circled around her like a vulture eyeing a piece of meat. Miss Militia could have shot her then and there, but she still had no idea if the taser would work and was hesitant to bring a stronger gun in an occupied by civilians. There was no telling who she could hit if her shot missed and went through the relatively thin walls.

"Murder, torture, demasking a Ward- that alone would be enough to sentence you for the rest of your life, never mind everything else you've done," Miss Militia said with a cold look on her face. She couldn't afford to let her judgment be compromised, nor could she allow the parahuman to know how conflicted she was about this. But from the look on the woman's face she knew exactly what she was thinking.

"And yet you're hesitant to pull that trigger, and not just because you're afraid you'll miss," Boogeyman said with a curious look on her face as if she was a puzzle that she just couldn't quite figure out.

Thinker? Miss Militia thought as she examined the cape. They were still waiting on the Think Tank to get a better grasp on what her powers were, but that didn't mean she couldn't add in her own thoughts. Still, as useful as knowing what her powers were she had a more pressing issue to deal with.

"…I know what Sophia did to you Taylor," Miss Militia said in an extremely quiet voice. There was a brief flash of shock and surprise on Boogeyman's face, but it was quickly schooled back into a more neutral expression. Even so, Miss Militia could still see a faint glint of genuine surprise in the cape's cold eyes.

Technically speaking this like this was against protocol, negotiating with villains that threatened hero's identities was prohibited. But given the circumstances and the need to get the young woman to calm down Militia was willing to bend the rules a little bit.

"So, you know," Boogeyman said in a completely toneless voice. "You know how much of a failure you and the PRT are."

Miss Militia could feel her guilt coiling in her stomach like an angry snake. As much as she wanted to deny it, there was no way to get around the fact that this girl's suffering was partly her fault. While Piggot held direct authority over the Brockton Bay Ward, she was the one to interact with them. That technically should have been Armsmaster's job, and while the man was okay with kids, he spent too much time working in his lab to be an effective day to day leader.

Even if her PRT handler hadn't flagged anything as suspicious with Sophia (and she was going to have words with Ms. Smith when Piggot was done with her) she should have still caught on that something was wrong. She always made it a habit to review the Ward's files every week and while she had noticed the personality discrepancies between Sophia's school life and her Ward life, she hadn't thought anything of it. She knew more than a few capes who acted differently in costume than their civilian identity, it was just far easier to get act out when people didn't know who you were.

She had always assumed that Sophia simply expressed herself more in her cape identity because she felt free from her civilian constraints. And while the girl had never really talked about her trigger event, which was more than understandable, Miss Militia had a fairly good idea of Sophia's trigger event was and what it entailed. That feeling of helplessness and being trapped by one more powerful than you. So, she had taken Sophia's bad attitude in stride, viewing it as a coping mechanism for a broken girl, and understanding that trying to clamp down on it completely would leave Sophia in an even worse mental condition than before.

Had she known what she knew now, she would have never let the girl off the hook that easily. Triggering was something that all parahumans understood, no matter how evil or insane they were, they all understood what it meant to go through a trigger event. It was being forced down to the lowest moment of your life, and then being forced down even more, past the breaking point, past all rationality. It was the moment that you looked into the abyss and it looked back.

Miss Militia had been consumed by the abyss once, in those fields in a place that had once been her home. She could remember the blood and screaming as she used her powers to lash out against the warlords that had turned her life into a living hell. And she remembered.

She remembered everything, of how an instant felt like an eternity, of how the entire world seemed to fall out underneath her as everything shattered and the Beings came down from the heavens and gifted her the power to save herself.

And as she stared at Taylor Hebert she couldn't help but feel sympathy for her. Even knowing the deaths that could be laid at her hands and her treatment of Sophia, she couldn't help but understand. She was a woman who had been something that most people couldn't understand, that most people didn't want to understand, and had come out broken. She had been granted the power to push back against those who broke her and raise herself from the dark abyss that she had been thrown into by her tormenters.

"Was is worth it Taylor? Everything you did to Sophia, was it worth it?" Miss Militia murmured. Taylor Hebert's eyes locked with hers and she saw something in those cold orbs that sent a frightened chill down her spine. There was something wrong with her, wrong and cold and old.

And dark.

There was no logical reason for her to feel like this, but it felt like she was staring into the heart of a black sun, as if all light was being sucked into Hebert, never to be seen again. She could feel something wrong with her memories, the dreams she once had as a child, dreams that she could remember in perfect clarity thanks to her powers were fading away. Dreams of her father and mother and all the village, dreams that she had clung onto more than anything to get her through the dark times were being shrouded by a dark fog. It blanketed its self over those memories, drawing them into its thick mists the more she tried to bring them to the surface.

"Yes," Taylor said, breaking Miss Militia away from her realization. The capes voice was as cold as the arctic winds as she stared down the heroine, her hands clenched into fists. "It was worth it. Sophia, she took everything from me. My friend, my family, my life, she is responsible for all of it. She took away what was most precious to me, so I did the same to her," Boogeyman snarled, her expression one of rage and hatred. "I took away from her what she valued most all, her strength."

"It doesn't have to be this way Taylor," Miss Militia said as she desperately tried to grab ay straws in hopes for a peaceful resolution, or at the very least to stall for time so the others could get here and assist her. She didn't want this to devolve into mindless violence and ruin any chance Taylor had at getting the help she needed.

"Oh, I think it does," Taylor said with a humorless smile. "The PRT and Protectorate have created a system that does nothing but perpetuate the suffering of the city. You allow countless civilians to suffer under the tyranny of the villains because you're all too cowardly to make any real change. You claim you're trying to save us when your own members go on campaigns of torment for their own amusement."

"Sophia was an anomaly," Miss Militia said as she struggled to keep her power in its taser format. She could feel it struggling to turn itself into a more powerful form at the perceived threat to her wellbeing, but she didn't want to have to escalate the situation any more than she already had. "I promise that what happened with Sophia will not happen again."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Taylor said with an ugly sneer. There was a glint in her eyes that suggested that she had previous experiences with promises that had been broken. Miss Militia could feel her throat go dry as she stared into those cold eyes, and despite herself, she could feel her gut coiling in fear.

"We didn't know about Sophia, Taylor. If we had it would have never gotten this bad," Miss Militia said as she tried to maintain her composure.

"Oh? And if you did find out what Sophia had been doing, would you have told the public? Or instead, would you have buried it so that nobody would ever find out how much you've all failed? I doubt that you would have even taken her off the roster, would you? After all, what's a hero to a single useless civilian?" Taylor asked in a mocking tone that dug a knife of guilt into her gut. While she was hardly privy to all of the PRT's secrets, she knew that more than a few had been sacrificed to create a greater good and save many more lives.

"That wouldn't happen," Miss Militia said with as much honesty as she could muster. She knew that she was lying of course. The PR team would have never allowed Piggot or anyone in the PRT or Protectorate let the world know what one of their Wards had done underneath their very nose. They couldn't afford to have such bad press with the shape that the city was in, and such an event would have repercussion across the entire country. She knew that they were more than capable of suppressing a story like that, but it didn't sit right with her then and it didn't sit right with her now.

But if she had to lie to get Taylor to calm down and come back to the base and sort this entire mess out then it would be worth it. She couldn't see another teenager wallow through the blood and darkness as they sought for the light.

"It wouldn't be right if that happened," Miss Militia said. She had to show Taylor that she understood what she was going through and that she wouldn't be alone if she just came with her to the Rig.

"No, it wouldn't be right," Taylor agreed slowly as she gave her a look that made Miss Militia feel as if her outer layers and masks were being stripped back so that her very soul was being laid bare before her. "But you wouldn't do anything to stop it, would you?"

Miss Militia opened her mouth underneath her American flag scarf to protest, to argue that she wouldn't sit idly and allow someone's right to justice to be trampled underneath the boots of bureaucracy, but she was cut off by a sharp wave of Taylor's hand that almost made her pull the trigger on her taser.

"Don't try and lie to me Militia. It might not sit right with you, but you would still do it, wouldn't you? If you were ordered to by your superiors, you would go through with it." Taylor waved her hand and rolled her eyes, "Oh, it might make you feel sick to your stomach and make you hate yourself with the passion of a thousand stars, but you would still do it- so long as it was for the greater good, wouldn't you?"

Miss Militia could feel her throat go dry as words poured out of Taylor's mouth. Words that she wanted to ignore and deny but she found that she couldn't. The silence that filled the space was absolutely deafening to her ears.

Taylor smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.

"That's what I thought. You don't get to claim the moral high ground when you're drenched in the blood of your victims," she said, her words callous and cruel. "At least I admit what I am. You? You hide it behind a mask of friendliness and understanding that draws people into your lies. You mold them into ways that suit you, hiding the truth behind your façade of friendliness so well that even you didn't notice what you have become."

Miss Militia tried to butt in, to derail the momentum that Taylor had collected, but she was swept away by the deluge of hate filled words that hit her as hard as an Endbringer.

"You're all so willing to sacrifice pawns to get to your goals, justified that the cost will be well worth the sacrifice," Taylor said, her lips stretching into a fang-filled smile. "Congratulations Miss Militia, this time, you're the warlord giving the marching orders."

Miss Militia froze at the words, her face slipping into a mask of cold rage whilst her mind whirled with possibilities of how Boogeyman could have known about her past. Her power shifted from its taser form into a pistol. But not just any pistol, the first weapon that she had ever manifested formed within her grip in response to her heightened sense of fear. The gun rested her in her hands like an old friend, a comforting blanket that had saved her from death all those years ago. She could feel her fingers twitch in a desire to pull the trigger, but she had to restrain herself. Help was only a few minutes away and all she had to was let Boogeyman keep on insulting her to stay in place.

I can handle a few insults. Militia told herself in the dark recesses of her mind. If she had a little more conviction she might have convinced herself of her lie.

"I suppose it's ironic that in the end, you became the very thing that shaped you," Boogeyman said with a wicked grin. Her eyes had flickered to her new gun for a moment, but she remained undaunted. "How does it feel Miss Militia? To be on the other end of the minefield?"

Memories that Miss Militia desperately whished that she didn't have to remember with perfect clarity bubbled to the surface. Memories of friends being forced to march to their death came to the forefront of her mind, and for that single instant, she was no longer in an apartment complex. She was back in that forest, staring down at one of the monsters who had killed everyone she had ever loved.

The deafening crack of a single pistol shot brought her back to reality.

Boogeyman's head shot back and for a horrible moment, Miss Militia thought that she had killed her. That feeling quickly gave way to relief and a growing dread as Boogeyman brought her head forward until they were eye to eye. Miss Militia paused as the bullet that she had shot right between Boogeyman's eyes with pinpoint accuracy be pushed out as flesh knitted itself back together with shadows and darkness.

"Nice try, but no," Boogeyman said with a wide unhinged grin. She then shot forward, arms outstretched to engulf the Blaster. Miss Militia tried to move out of the way, but the younger parahuman was far too fast for her to dodge.

"Urk!" She grunted as she was pressed against the wall. She didn't feel anything break, but she would be surprised if she didn't have bruises when this was all over. Her weapon wielding hand was being pinned to the side by Boogeyman's other hand, but it didn't really matter since she could just summon her weapon to her free hand. She wasn't sure if a stun gun would do anything, but an electrical discharge might distract her long enough to break free of her grip.

"I don't think so," Boogeyman growled as her hand shot up from her arm to wrap around the green pistol still resting in Militia's hand. Militia tried to summon her weapon to her free hand, but she could feel her heartbeat race as she realized that she couldn't move her weapon. She could only watch in horror as Boogeyman squeezed.

Green energy crumbled like tin foil under the parahuman's grip as her fingers dug into a mimicry of metal. Militia watched as black sand spread from Boogeyman's fingertips like a poison, corrupting everything it touched. The bright vibrant green that Miss Militia had come to associate with her powers gave way to a thick black void that sent chills down her spine. As her gun lost form she could feel something in her the back of her mind rebel and recoil in horror as the worst headache she had ever felt was unleashed on her.

It was like her head was being crushed open by a jackhammer as she fell to the floor screaming. As the pain started to fade away and the spots cleared from her eyes Miss Militia stood up to face the smug looking parahuman. Miss Militia could feel her lips curling into a frown as she tried to reform the pistol that had once saved her life. But instead of her power responding to her call, it flickered and sputtered like static on a T.V. screen as if it couldn't comprehend what she was trying to do.

Her panic faded as she made if form a rifle loaded with rubber bullets, but she couldn't help but feel that a part of her had been violently torn from her. While she preferred not to think about her past, that gun had always been a calming presence to her, an assurance that she was free and safe. To feel it ripped away from her like that…

"What did you do?" Miss Militia asked Boogeyman, her voice cold and hard as she tried to hide her sheer terror of being disarmed like that. It was an unsettling and alien experience that made her skin crawl and made her mind feel like it was being run over by sandpaper.

If Boogeyman was at all concerned with the elder cape's words she didn't show a single sign.

"Why? Scared?" Boogeyman asked with sadistic relish.

Miss Militia looked at the parahuman straight in the eyes. "Of you? No." Oh, Boogeyman may have spooked her with whatever she did to her powers, but she wasn't scared of the parahuman herself. She had been through hell and came out victorious. She had faced madmen who would slaughter towns and cities with but a passing thought, she had faced nightmares made form, monstrous figures who only brought death and destruction. She didn't back down then and she wouldn't back down now.

Boogeyman reeled if she had been physically struck, her eyes widening in surprise. It was a strange expression, as if the parahuman had been struck in the gut by some invisible force. She quickly schooled her features into a more neutral expression as she locked eyes with the Protectorate Blaster. "Perhaps," she muttered with a devious glint in her eyes that Militia didn't like. "But you're terrified of yourself."

Miss Militia tried to hide her reaction, but Boogeyman apparently caught her stiffening shoulders. "Scary, isn't? To wake up one day and realize that you're a monster," Boogeyman said in a rather conversational and relaxed tone.

Miss Militia could feel her lips curling into a sneer as her weapon struggled against her to change into something more deadly to face the threat. She was just about to give in too when the sound of wailing sirens filled the room.

"Hm. Sounds like the PRT are here to ruin all the fun," Boogeyman said, but Miss Militia found she couldn't see any real sense of urgency in the cape's words. More as if she was amused by the whole experience. "I think I'll take my leave." The young parahuman that had once been Taylor Hebert gave her a wide grin that showed off all of her unsettling fangs. "I'd wish you sweet dreams, but when I'm done there won't be any left."

There was something about that threat that sent chills of Militia's spine as if her body took notice of a threat that she could not. She moved to pull the trigger, but in an instant Boogeyman was gone, having dived into the nearest shadow. After an instant of keeping herself on guard in case of an ambush, Miss Militia allowed herself to relax and slump against the wall as the sound of creaking stair and thumbing feet signaled the arrival of the PRT squad.

"You don't get to claim the moral high ground when you're drenched in the blood of your victims."

But even as the friendly faces of the agents rounded the staircase, Miss Militia couldn't help but feel something curling in her gut as Boogeyman's words echoed through her mind. The Blaster let out a deep shuddering breath as she allowed her weapon to turn into a much smaller knife form.

"Are you alright ma'am?" One of the agents asked her. His face was concealed by a visor, but she could hear the concern in his voice. Miss Militia felt her grip tighten around her weapon as she considered the question.

"…No, I don't think I am."

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