2.2

Several days laters…

"You have no idea how happy I am for you to make the trip out here kiddo. Thanks for the time."

"It's fine dad. I had time today on the weekend to spend" I said as the car came out front of the house. I looked back, seeing the smiling face on my father. I spent Friday night and all of today with dad, surprising him. Armsmaster had come in and informed me the schedules were being rearranged, leaving me clear yesterday and today, which let me head out to see dad. Short notice. I was fairly sure Ms. Washington had gotten on his case about it. It was a welcome relief, not only because I got to come home but because I had pulled off a few shifts of overtime through the week, mainly the two or three days after that girl, Aisha, figured out my identity.

She and her older brother, who met us at PRT HQ after we left Fugly Bobs. Signed whatever forms she had to sign. As for me? I spent roughly eight hours that day out on my shift. Just something, anything to distract my mind off what had happened. My cape identity has been figured out and my civilian identity exposed. I always knew it was, quite literally paper thin. Probably half the fire department and Police force knew that Taylor Hebert was a cape. My trigger had been one of the most public local events all year. Only now it seemed...so much more fragile. So much more out there.

How many others from Winslow had figured it out?

Thankfully, for some reason Aisha wanted, I think, to be friends. At least that was the impression I got when she asked for my number to keep in touch. She wasn't going after me out spite, or blackmail or what-have-you. Rather, she seemed...kinda grateful for me burning Winslow. She hated it like I did, although her reasons she kept to herself. So whether it be bad academics, a dislike for going to school, or something else, I didn't know. Either way, she was eager to...be my friend?

Talk about weird. And I'm fairly sure it'd be weird for almost anyone. Not just me and my socially inept self.

Could just be that she wanted to be friends with a cape. I'd have to keep an eye out. I knew people like that existed out there. Though I'd never actually met one.

But for the immediate future I just wanted to get my mind off of it, hence me going on a long long patrol in downtown with Clockblocker. I spent the following day nearly passing out in class due to lack of sleep.

And the time spent with dad was awesome. We ate ice cream, watched some movies, and I shared with him some of my adventures. Omitting my encounters with Oni Lee and Aisha of course. I could tell it was great for him too, as if he needed me there for a break. I could still see he was sad to see me go, but still, he was overjoyed to see me and acted like it. Like he did before mom died.

Yet, all good things must come to an end. He and I both know that and so here I'm in the living room, making sure I've got my stuff with me as we wait for the PRT van to arrive and drive us.

"You remember to call me tonight." He said.

"I'll call you tonight after I get off of monitor duty okay? Or...if I'm on patrol. Not exactly sure which one I have today."

"It had better be monitor duty." I hear him grumble. "I'm starting to think the civilian identities of those heroes are business CEOs. They're working you to the bone like they do the unions."

I laughed and smiled. "Maybe! I dunno." I shrugged.

(X)

When I finally did get back to base, it was to something of a surprise.

"Run that by me again?" I requested

"The Merchants." Carlos answered, leaning over the living room coffee table, Missy, Dennis and Brendan here too. Dean was cooking something, Chris was up in his room Tinkering. He'd already heard this. They all did. I was the one that was getting the update really.

Trust the one day I have off for something semi-important to happen.

"Shadow Stalker came back from her mission with info." He turned a page in the folder, revealing another with a picture stamped to the front. I recognized Skidmark, the Merchant's leader, such as it were. "Apparently, Dry Dust, that new Drug that's been making the rounds? Figure this. Merchants are the sole distributors for the bay. ABB and E88 don't even have an inkling on where to get it. Merchants get a shipment of it every three months. Always a random location for the exchange. Stalker, as our best infiltrator, is gonna be tailing them and telling us exactly where and when to hit them as the drop gets made."

"I thought Wards weren't supposed to fight other capes?"

"Says the girl who managed to solo Oni-Lee on her first night?" Dennis jibbed with a smirk.

"What am I, chopped liver?" Missy said, glaring over the rim of her cup.

"...Says the girl who managed to solo Oni-lee in one night while Vista handled the minio-ow!"

The smack to the back of his head from the girl that was halfway across a table made him stop. He grinned. I kept seeing just how absurdly powerful Vista could be against anyone she came across. A light hearted smack to Dennis' noggin could just as easily be a fist holding a taser...or a knife.

"We're not." Carlos finally answered. "We're there as back up. 'Just incase.' The merchants have Skidmark, Squealer and Mush. Armsmaster by himself could kick all three of their asses. But we don't know how many, if any, capes will be in the group that drop off the drugs. Its unlikely they'll have so many that between Miss Militia, Armsmaster, Velocity, Dauntless, Triumph, Battery and Assault that they'll actually need our help, but Piggot wants no mistakes. Even two well working parahumans can make everyone's life hell tomorrow. Imagine if these guys show up with a duo like Night and Fog. Not pretty. Even if we're just there to pull out wounded, Piggot's putting us on call."

"I understand." And I did. Dealing with unknowns in any plan, sucked. You had to account for almost anything. Piggot's thoughts on "accounting for anything" seemed to boil down to "Throw enough bodies onto a target until it stops being a problem."

Simple. But I couldn't really think of anything better at this point. Not if they wanted to stop the spread of this "Dry Dust" drug before it got out of hand. The news stations were starting to pick up on the problem as it was expanding from the Merchant held territories into less run down neighborhoods now. If we didn't want a city full of junkies by the time the next delivery of the stuff came in three months they'd have to be hit hard enough to not *want* to come back to the bay.

"So…" I ventured, the curiosity gnawing at me. "Is Shadow Stalker here?" I hadn't heard good things about the Ward, but I'd eventually have to work along side her. Might as well meet her now.

"No." Carlos shrugged. "Piggot barely even waited for her to finish her report before sending her off again. She must really be worried about this stuff. You'll probably meet her after things settle down with this Dry Dust thing."

"Unless its a nefarious plot from Miss Piggy to keep our two most rated T for Teen members from meeting up and making Glenn start frothing at the mouth when he finally gets here."

"Rated T for Teen?" I raised an eyebrow.

Denns raised one right back. "Uhhh...Yeah...creepy faceless demon statues from hell aren't exactly found on a saturday morning cartoon Tay. And Stalker shoots people. Repeatedly. Preferably in the face, knees, or crotch. I'd say rated M for Mature but she's got tranq-bolts to shoot people in the face with now and your creepy ash statues from hell are actually nice-healing creepy ass statues from hell."

"They're not creepy." I mumbled. "And who's Glenn?"

"...The fact that you can say that with a straight face is absurdly disturbing…"

I rolled my eyes. "My statues aren't creepy Dennis. Who's Glenn?"

"Oh no, I wasn't talking about your statues that time. The fact that you, unlike us you fortunate, innocent child you, can say with a straight face that you don't know who Glenn is is disturbing in the way that it reminds me of how much happier I'd be if I were you!"

"Would you just-"

"Glenn's the Public Relations expert." Carlos said diplomatically.

"No. Glenn's the lunatic that would have us fighting with nerf guns if it would help our public image." Missy said as she slurped down a gulp of tea.

"Nah nah! Plastic swords!" Dennis snickered.

"You're giving him too much credit!" Brendan spoke up, apparently this was a subject that even got him going. "Wiffle bats."

I smiled as they laughed, even Dean was sporting a smile over in the kitchen.

"Hey." I said. "Speaking of using stuff to fight, my dad actually suggested a few neat ideas for you guys."

"Your dad did?" Vista asked, looking up from her cup.

"Yeah." I smiled, genuinely proud of my father for the first time since I could remember. I looked at Carlos. "Well, actually, it'll need help from Chris or Armsmaster since a lot of his ideas revolve around using some kind of tinker tech. But basically-" I pointed at Carlos. "Why don't you use Tinker tech gloves to enhance your fists? Like taser gloves?"

"Wards can't use weapons." He smiled. As though he'd gone over this himself. "Otherwise we're at risk of looking and becoming child soldiers Tay."

I could feel my face scrunching up. "That...makes no sense…" I flatly replied. "We're meant to fight Endbringers. That's what every hero and Ward does whenever they come around. Even the villains."

"Yeah but its not the same-" Dean called out from the kitchen.

"Damn right its not the same." Missy answered and I had a feeling I'd just rebooted something of an old argument. "We're expected to go and fight the things that can level cities in just a handful of minutes. But because some soccer moms get a bug up their ass we've got to hamstring ourselves because they think people like Lung, or Kaiser will just turn themselves in if we ask nicely enough."

"Missy, language!" I could tell Missy just rolled her eyes at Dean's minor scolding.

"We're not supposed to be fighting them in the first place." Brendan pointed out.

"But we do." I said, backing Missy up. "Fact is I got into a fight with a parahuman on day one. What about all of you? How many parahuman fights have you all been in since you started?"

"...Lost count." Carlos admitted with a small smile.

Dean was frowning where he leaned over the kitchen island looking at us. I plowed on ahead though. "So yeah. Why don't you use something like Taser gloves? Why don't you-" I looked at Dennis this time." Walk around with something you can throw to hold onto someone?"

"Like what? Rope?"

"Maybe. There's also…" Hold on. I reached into the bag I'd brought from home, the list of things dad had written down that might work.

Pulling it out I read aloud, easily understanding my dad's sharp angled handwriting. "Crazy string, Bolas, a chain with a weight at the end, one of those sticky stretchy toys that look like oversized hands I can't remember the name of, foam guns, rope, wire-"

"Did your dad seriously just suggest crazy string?"

I turned and glared at the smile on Dennis' face. "Why wouldn't it work?"

He opened his mouth...then after a second, shut it with a click.

"Let me see that list!" He all but yanked it out of my hands.

I smiled.

"What about me?"

I turned to Missy. "Well, tasers, knockout tranqs. Anything that you can get your hands on really. You just showed that you can hit Dennis over the head across a table. Imagine if you had a brick."

Dennis, suddenly shivered. The look on Missy's face at my observation made it rather obvious why he did.

"Thats….really…" Dean sounded off from the kitchen. Just from his tone, I could tell he didn't really approve. He shook his head. "You'll have to get those ideas cleared through PR first regardless."

Evidently he knew how to pick his battles.

"There is one thing though Tay." He said, keeping my attention on him. "When we go after the Merchants, you're probably gonna have to hold back on your fire a lot."

I raised an eyebrow, Carlos turned around in his chair to look at Dean. I couldn't see his expression, be it pleased or chagrined at Dennis lecturing me as though he and not Carlos were the team captain.

"Hear me out." He said. "You've got a lot of firepower, but seeing as how we don't know where the exchange is gonna be it could be in a residential area, or a Merchant warehouse. If they're making drugs there, drug chemicals mixed with fire means-"

"Big boom." Brendan finished for him, nodding to himself.

"And big boom means dead people." Dean continued.

"And dead people isn't something Wards do. Ever." Carlos this time, turned to look at me. "I can agree with that. So yeah Tay. Sorry but tomorrow, unless we're in a deserted place, can't use your firepower."

"But I like explosions!" Dennis complained actually pouting in his chair. Though I did notice he hadn't put down the list of things he could potentially use.

"Isn't it odd though?" I ask curiously. "I mean, why can't we use lethal force if necessary? I mean, policemen do."

"Yeah, normal human policemen? Us? We're parahumans. We have to be held to a higher standard. If parahumans use lethal force to subdue criminals day in and day out, we would only make enemies. Too many. Less than two percent of the world's current population consists of parahumans. And that's a generous estimate by all accounts. And only a fraction of us would be genuinely unthreatened by a big enough mob of humans. Remember the Burning of London?"

Ah yes.

The Burning of London of 1985. The cradle days of parahumans. The start of the "Golden Age" as it was called.

A cape, named Inferno, engaged in a coup d'etat to overthrow the government of the U.K. and establish a 'Might is Right' rule, with parahumans on top and normal humans at the bottom.

At the time, they had one of the best barrier Parahumans on the planet in Chrysalis, who had been isolating whole locations, literally conquering the cities of England block by block. Rumor and speculation suggested that they'd been preparing to make a barrier that would let them encompass all of Great Britain. Pure propaganda now of course. We know enough about capes today to know that that kind of range was all but impossible. Another cape, Magna, had the power of magnokinesis, control over magnetic forces. So she'd had complete control over metal and other forces, she could also fly and make a small force field of repelling magnetism. With those two at Inferno's back, an army of well paid mercenaries, a ton of support from the other parahumans there in the U.K. that had reached a swell due to the anti-parahuman sentiment rising in the country through the early years; he'd all but flattened English resistance.

It was the whole of the European Union that came down on London like the wrath of god, the war had raged on for almost a month.

Doesn't seem like a lot, but when the reality is that its more or less just three people holding off a world Superpower and winning. The single month lasted for a bloody eternity. Plus with over a million normal human casualities, many were considering just letting Great Britain be, as anti-war and anti-parahuman riots were at an all time high. Doesn't help that Inferno had his sights set on France and Belgium next. It could have been the beginning of a dark age of parahuman rule over humanity.

What had brought it to an end though, were the heroes.

Our heroes, specifically.

Alexandria, Myrddin, Eidolon, Legend and of course, Hero. It was one of the only recorded sightings of him fighting another cape before his death at the hand of the Siberian. Eidolon had been the one to end it of course. The last to arrive, and from there it was over. Done with. The legendary trump class-cape had just marched into London and destroyed the three capes that were probably as powerful then as the Triumvirate was today. Inferno, Chrysalis, and Magna were referred as 'Dark Triumvirate' in modern times, similar to how the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy were in World War 2.

The ashes of London was the birthplace of the Protectorate in the United States and its equivalents throughout the world. The President had been quick to sponsor the heroes and encourage any parahuman to register their names to be "Defenders".

It had been a rocky start, and a paper thin pretense to the US and virtually every other country to be arming themselves with living, breathing natural disasters to be unleashed on other countries.

Either the Triumvirate, in hindsight, were too caught up in the upswell of government sponsorship, or they figured to milk it for all it was worth.

Of course, before anything else could be made of the PRT and Protectorate's role in the government's future aggressive foreign policies, Behemoth came and the whole status quo of the planet changed.

Inferno was killed in the end of the London debacle course. There was no Birdcage at the time. And no Endbringers for anyone to have any incentive at keeping him alive. The cost in lives totaled at about seven hundred thousand people in London alone. That's not including in the military casualties or the riots that had erupted through the UK, parahuman driven or not.

It also taught humanity a lesson. Parahumans are dangerous. They could be the next step in the evolutionary chain. After all, the Neanderthals went extinct shortly after the Homo Sapiens came around. This time, Parahumans are the new Homo Sapien, and the old Homo Sapien the neanderthal.

"So you're saying I need to hold back, more than because I can do damage, but because people will be scared of me?"

"Fire based parahumans are not popular in the public eye." Dean stated firmly. "Inferno, Ash Beast, Burnscar. Look, Tay." Dean rubbed his temples. "All I'm saying is to hold back a little. You can use your fire, but not in the quantities that happened when you triggered. Bouts of flame or mini-fireballs are nice, but if you go too far and kill, its going to hurt you a lot. The only high level fire controller that's a good guy is Firestorm is on the other side of the globe, in Australia. I'm not Glenn and I'll say your image is delicate as hell until you can get a few good guy notches under your belt. They don't want another 1985 happening."

"I'm not going-"

"I know believe me. But what about normal people? Public perception is vital to the PRT."

"Its everything to the PRT." I heard Dennis mutter beside me, too low for Dean to hear.

"The public vote in the politicians to pass the policies that benefit them. The politicians support heroes in protecting the peace. When the public doesn't like a select hero or heroes that remind them too much of dangerous threats, that will affect reelection, and by proxy, funding for the PRT and then that will affect you."

"Basically you're being shit on from so high you'll swear God's taken a personal interest in your life." Dennis snickered.

"Dean you're blowing this completely out of proportion." I muttered, rolling my eyes. Dean gave me a stare. "My power is ash and fire. I'm gonna use it on someone or something at some point in my career. It's fire. Even when its not being hurled at you its still largely dangerous."

"People thinking about Inferno have the same idea."

"Alright that's enough. You've made your point." Carlos said, stepping in before I could retort. "Taylor won't go too far. I trust her and so should you."

"I do. I'm just giving her a heads up. I'm her friend here after all."

Dean has been helpful to me during my time in the Wards. Especially the other day during my almost-freak out. It feels like he's too high strung about this. But I guess he had his reasons. And he has been doing this longer than I have. My goal is to be a hero, and what better satisfaction is proving to be a heroic icon to the people when using fire and -not-creepy ash statues? "So then." I turned towards Carlos. "What's the plan?"

"Well, we're back up as I said and our job is handle any fleeing Merchants and assist the PRT normals and police force in subduing and arresting the druggies."

"And if they use lethal force? Like guns and stuff?" Dennis asked with a smirk. Dean gave him a look while Carlos gave the emotion affecting hero known as Gallant a look.

"Primarily, we're going to be set up into two teams. Me, Dean, and Brendan will be in one team. You, Missy, Chris, and Dennis in the other. New Wave is on call. Also a 'just incase'."

"In other words." Dennis 'whispered' to me again. "Piggy wants sole credit if it goes down good, but wants something to have on hand to catch her ass if it all goes to hell."

"Browbeat and myself are the heavy hitters in my team." Carlos said "Dean's on crowd control. You and Chris are the heavy hitters on your own team while Missy's on crowd control with Dennis. Missy is, again as the most experienced Ward here, in charge. If New Wave shows up then we'll tell you on comm."

I nodded. "Got it. So...When do we get started?"

"Tomorrow." He answered. "We're not sure when but So-I mean Shadow Stalker will contact us when she's tailing Skidmark or whoever's gonna pick up the drop."

"Almost slipped there with Stalker's name there Capy."

Carlos glared.

"Is she very private?" I found myself asking.

"Extremely." Brendan answered drolly. And that was that.