Chapter 2

Taylor finally got home and once she got inside she found a note on the table.

Taylor,

I have to work later than usual tonight, I should get home by eight o clock. There's leftovers in the fridge.

Love,

Dad

"I barely see him anymore, it's barely like we even live in the same house" Taylor mumbled to herself as she grabbed the bowl of leftover spaghetti from the fridge and dumped some of it onto a plate. "Well whatever, at least I can get in some practice time with my powers now." Taylor put the plate of spaghetti and meat sauce into the microwave and started heating it up.

"Alright I know I can use magic for at least healing and I thing I can use some magic with my sword, but can I do anything else with it?" Taylor asked herself as she waited for her food to cook.

"Right now what I need is practice and to learn the specifics of my powers." Taylor pulled her food out of the microwave and sat down at the table to eat it. "I'll have to go somewhere else besides here so I don't accidently blow up my house…"

Taylor glanced at the clock, it was already 6:23. She was glad that at least it was a Friday so she didn't have to worry about school tomorrow.

The first thing that she needed was a costume, there was no way that she could become a hero like they did in new wave, with their identities being common knowledge. They could come after her and her Dad at any point so a mask was a must. I never want to lose anyone else that's close to me. Especially not after the other CPUs she absently thought to herself.

Taylor had finished eating at this point so she put her dishes away and went upstairs to see if she had any costume material clothes.

She looked through her dresser and closet and sighed. The best thing that she had was an old, gray, form concealing hoody.

"Well I guess it's not like I'll be fighting crime in this." Taylor mumbled to herself, "As long as I get a real costume within like a week or so, then I should be fine."

"I'll go and buy a cheap mask anyway just to make sure that no one recognizes me for now."

Her plan decided, Taylor decided to head over to the boat graveyard, since there usually wasn't anyone over there, and there was ample amounts of broken boats, sitting around and perfect for destruction. If she destroyed them a little bit, it would be like she was helping the city by disposing of a few of the ships.

Yes.

Alright, so it might still be considered vandalism, but she wasn't overly concerned. No one used that area and there were always plenty of reports about capes using the area to fight each other.

Taylor wrote a new note for her Dad and put it on the table before leaving the house and going to the bus stop to head to a Halloween mask store and the boat graveyard. She was trying to think of new ideas for uses of her magic.

The only other cape that she had even heard of having magic on PHO was Myrddin.

Myrddin… was not the most respected of capes on said forum.

Nobody was really sure what his power was since he could fly, use banishment, and had access to some kind of pocket dimension, but claiming to have magic seemed like a bad plan overall.

Eh, she could just call it energy and claim that she could shape it at least. It wasn't necessary for people to know exactly what her power set was. Although usually the names of capes was based on their power set, so what would her name be?

Warlock? No too masculine and I don't want people thinking that I'm crazy for claiming to use magic she thought to herself.

Maybe something sword related? I guess I could call myself Gehaburn after the sword I carry. Yet somehow just the idea of naming herself after the sword filled her with revulsion.

She seemed to know instinctively that the sword itself represented power, but at the cost of the lives of others. It would be alright to use, but she still regretted having to be near it so much.

The bus stopped and Taylor got out and headed to the Halloween store. The store was nearly empty and the employee behind the register wasn't really paying attention beyond nodding in her direction when she came in. Taylor looked through what they had, and ended up buying a cheap, mass produced, domino themed masks that they had. She reasoned to herself that she could buy a better one later when she had saved up more money and had a proper costume set up.

When she got out of the store she put the mask away in her hoody pocket, no point in wearing it or carrying around a cheap bag.

She then got on a different bus and headed down towards the boat graveyard.

The closest stop that the bus loop had to the boat graveyard was a couple blocks away so Taylor got off on that stop and jogged all the way into the graveyard.

When she got there she noticed that she wasn't the least bit tired despite jogging several blocks. She was in decent shape before she got her powers, but not good enough to not feel that jog at all.

Huh, I guess I have a bit of a brute rating then. She thought to herself.

"Okay" Taylor put on her new mask and walked further in, materializing her sword as she did so.

She walked in front of one of the boat hulls, "Let's see how sharp this sword is" she muttered to herself and swung at the hull.

It sliced through it easily and Taylor's eyes widened. "Crap, how I going to use this sword non lethally against criminals?"

She could maybe use the sword against the cape members of the ABB and E88, but against rapists and robbers? Well okay, maybe against rapists too.

Eh she may as well practice with it more to see what she can do.

She leaned back and held her sword in a ready position. She seemed to instctively know what to do next.

The edge of her sword started glowing slightly and she swung, "Slash Wave!" Taylor shouted as she swung her sword.

A glowing wave of energy shot from her blade, damaging the ship's hull where it went through, but not outright cutting through it, and staying together for about fifty feet before it seemed to lose its cohesion and dissipated.

Huh, that seemed to take more energy than healing did. To make sure Taylor cast heal on herself again. Sure enough heal seemed to take about half the energy that Slash wave did.

Well, whatever, maybe she could be another Panacea even if being a hero didn't work out.

Next she decided to try using her magic try to make an electric attack like a Taser so she could have an easy way to disable common criminals.

Three hours later Taylor decided that she definitely did not have an affinity for electric based magic. She had managed to make some weak electricity gather in her hand, but to do so had cost her more energy than using slash wave, and she had no good way to test if it was at Taser level or not.

She had even managed to shock herself with it while testing. Luckily most of it had been stopped on a weird force field that seemed to be permanently around her, so it was only at the level of a static shock. She ended up deciding to call her force field a break gauge since it only seemed to majorly reduce damage, and something about that name just felt right.

Since her energy levels seemed to be down to about an eighth of way full Taylor decided that that was enough practice for today and headed home.

When she got home her Dad was already asleep so she ended up just changing and heading straight to bed.

Taylor smiled as lay there. She was going to be a hero and nothing could ruin it.