I ended up changing the section with Armsmaster in this chapter because I was unhappy with how I ended up portraying him. He is now less 2d I hope.

Chapter 4

Taylor arrived at her home and immediately started looking around for a costume, "I knew I should have chosen a better cape costume by now." She muttered as she rifled through her clothes.

Eventually she chose to wear the gray hoody that she had worn while practicing magic and some black jeans to hide some of her features.

She finished getting dressed and looked in the mirror. She immediately smacked her forehead in exasperation when she saw her reflection.

"What the goodness was I thinking? I look more like I'd be the one dealing drugs than stopping it in this outfit." She muttered to herself. She looked much more like a vagabond than a hero, with faded jeans and a slightly worn looking hoody.

She then tried on the domino mask to see how it would look.

Eh now she looked like a parahuman gang member on their first night out. Well, half of that was true for her. The mask did cover enough features to be safe though. No one would recognize her with this mask on. Even if she didn't want to go to the PRT yet.

Taylor glanced at the clock, it was 11:51. She decided to eat lunch before she went out to patrol and went downstairs to throw together a sandwich.

As she walked downstairs, she absently noted that she had forgotten to bring home the sack lunch that she normally brought at school. Eh, it wasn't her problem anymore, now it was the schools'.

As she ate her freshly made sandwich, Taylor thought about the weird… flashbacks? Were they flashbacks if she was sure that they had never happened to her? She was remembering more and more random pieces of what seemed like someone else's life. Having meals, playing games, hunting… monsters? Okay so they might be someone else's life, they could also be a random fantasy that she dreamed up while still face-first in her locker.

After finishing her meal, she decided to make a stop by the public library to check PHO for any similar cases before she started patrolling. Better safe than sorry, random confusion during fights could be deadly, even with her break gauge active.

As Taylor walked to the library she wondered where she should patrol today. Now that she thought about it, she had no idea how she should go about this besides going into one of the sketchier parts of Brockton Bay and look for violent crimes, maybe by the docks?

Eh, she'd decide after she looked up if there were any other capes with similar side effects to their powers.

After walking in the in the library and signing into one of the available computers, Taylor immediately got onto PHO. She hadn't made an account yet since she had only checked it during her computer class in school, she didn't have a computer at home, and since she only lurked and didn't really post. It was probably for the best that she hadn't made an account yet since she could make one with her cape name now. Well, when she decided on what she would call herself anyway.

After spending 4 hours on PHO, Taylor finally admitted to herself that this was probably a dead end. She had learned quite a bit more on the physiology of case 53's when she was trying to find posts related to their memory loss, but nothing about gaining memories of another life. It was odd though, the memories she gained seemed to only be beneficial and helped understand her power far sooner than she would have without it. Or they were pointless and involved eating pudding with what appeared to be a young, purple haired girl of Japanese descent. Odd.

Maybe it was a safety feature then?

She had learned that tinkers essentially get schematics inserted directly into their brain by their powers, and that they tended to follow themes, but not a whole lot else besides that on the tinker front. They didn't seem to understand their own technology beyond those blueprints if the posts were to be believed.

There was also the Butcher who had the mind of the previous butchers in their head, but seeing as Taylor wasn't being slowly driven to murder everyone that she saw, she doubted that that information would help her very much.

After signing off the computer, Taylor left the library and headed for her house to grab dinner. She had ended up not using midday to patrol or be a hero, but she kind of doubted that she would have found any obvious crimes in the middle of the day anyway.

Taylor ended up jogging home and arrived there around 5:24. Her Dad had beaten her home it seemed.

"Hey Taylor, you're back just in time to eat with me, go ahead and get washed up, dinner will be ready in five minutes."

"Alright, thanks Dad" Taylor called out.

She was poking at her food with a fork when she spoke up, "Dad, I don't think I can go to Winslow anymore."

"What do you mean Taylor?"

"I haven't mentioned all of it, but the bullying has been getting worse, and I-I can't put up with it anymore. They even have the principal basically eating out of their hands now. I was going to try to just ignore them and be the bigger person, but if Blackwell won't even listen to me… "

"… alright honey, we'll set something up for you if it's that bad and you really think that it's for the best."

"Thanks Dad, I love you."

"I love you too Taylor."

Later that night when her Dad was asleep, Taylor decided that she was going to patrol the docks. It was pretty obvious when she entered the more shady part since the pedestrians went from tourists and salary workers to drunks, prostitutes, and gang members.

She had been patrolling for about half an hour when she noticed a couple of Asians walking around in the red and green of the ABB. She decided to follow them figuring that even if they didn't do anything, then they might lead her to a gang safe house that she could call in.

She followed them, and ended up being led to a large group of other ABB members, there were about twenty other gang members there, all wearing red and green in some way. But that wasn't all, there was also, "Lung." Taylor gasped under her breath.

Everyone knew who Lung was, he was famous to even those who didn't pay attention to PHO as the man who managed to fight against the Leviathan to a standstill until it retreated.

She decided to listen in, if Lung was involved, then this wasn't something little that she could just ignore. Taylor silently moved a little closer to listen to what they were saying.

Lung was snarling, "…the children, just shoot. Doesn't matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure. We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?"

There was a murmur of assent.

Crap, this isn't something that I can just report to the police later, he's killing children?!

Someone else lit up a cigarette, and then leaned over to light a cigarette for the guy next to him. In those moments that his hand wasn't cupped around the flame, Taylor saw the gathered faces of just a dozen or so of the gang members gathered around Lung. In hands, waistbands and holsters, she could see the dark metal of guns reflecting the orange flame. They were mostly likely all armed with guns.

Damn it, if she had to face off against guns, then she would need a better brute rating. They probably wouldn't even bruise her with her break gauge up, but she didn't want to test how long it would stay up. She knew what she needed, "I can do this, Defensive Cheer!" she whispered to herself, and she felt a surge of energy go into her break gauge and into her skin, fortifying her even further.

Alright Taylor, think, you need a way to get their attention. Well, I have an idea and my break gauge should stand up to bullets now, but it's a risk.

"Alright, let's head out." Lung was saying.

Well, now was good of a time as any. Taylor stepped out and formed a small sphere of electricity in one hand and held Gehaburn in the other. "I'm afraid I can't let you do that." She said, trying her hardest to seem nonchalant, and not nervous out of her mind.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Lung asked the gang members, some of whom opened fire. They stopped after they saw that it didn't seem to affect her.

"Damn, she's a brute. You guys head back for now, I'll deal with this and meet up with you in a couple of minutes."

Lung turned back to face Taylor, "So you're a brute huh, let's see how you stand up to my fire!" Lung shouted as he hurled a basketball sized fireball at Taylor's head.

Damn it, this might be bad if this is the weakest he'll be in a fight. I'll try negating it! Taylor thought to herself, and she sent out a burst of ice magic focused of the flame.

The ice attack seemed to mostly work, it did reduce the fireball to the size of a baseball, but Taylor doubted that her weak ice magic would help once Lung ramped up a bit more.

I need to end this and quick! Taylor readied her sword and swung at Lung, "Slash Wave!" she shouted as she let out the burst of energy.

The hit struck Lung straight on and caused a slash to open up on his chest and for him to stumble back from the force of the impact.

Did it work, was that enough to take on Lung? Then Lung stood up straighter, and roared. His chest was already healing and being covered in scales. He rushed at Taylor, his hand was looking more like a claw now, and had scales forming a razor sharp point.

Lung charged straight at her, seemingly intent rushing her, as Taylor swung Gehaburn at his arm.

He didn't bother avoiding it, probably thinking that his scales would deflect the sword strike. They didn't.

Unfortunately, now that Lung knew her sword could cut him fairly easily, he was taking care to avoid it. Now he was dodging it completely or, more commonly, slapping it aside by the flat of the blade.

The fight was actually fairly even for a while since Taylor was managing to slash at him whenever he got too close, and her break gauge was blocking the damage that did leak through. But Lung just kept ramping up, he was now almost entirely covered in scales.

Then Lung covered himself in his fire and rushed her and she didn't manage to block, or swing at him in time. His scaled hand slashed at her stomach and her break gauge didn't completely protect her, he sliced through her sweatshirt and caused her to fly back into a building three meters behind her.

When she impacted with the building, it happened. Her break gauge was empty. In an instant Taylor felt the full onslaught of the heat that was being held back.

This was going to be the end for her, she had failed yet again. She had tried fighting the Lung and was now paying for her stupidity.

"No." Taylor felt an overwhelming rush of her energy come over her, "No! I don't care that you're Lung!" the energy surged up and surrounded her for a few seconds and when it came down, she felt … different, but stronger and more powerful now. "I'll stop you anyway! As the Goddess of Planeptune I won't allow you to kill children!" Taylor wasn't sure why she had said that, but it had seemed to fit perfectly.

Everything about Taylor felt more sleek and powerful now, she felt like she could take on the Slaughterhouse 9 and win!

Even though Lung was completely covered in scales and looking inhumane he still looked… amused? Wait did he just laugh at her?! "We'll see who's laughing soon Lung."

Lung narrowed his eyes again and roared. He spat another gout of flame at her and then rushed at her.

Taylor let her instincts take over, "May the CPU's bless us, Offensive Cheer!" Taylor shouted as jumped into the air and flew over Lung's head. She felt an influx of the power she released, in her body making her stronger as she flew back towards Lung. Taylor gasped to herself softly, wait, she was flying! With the powers of a flying mover and a high level brute, she could be the next Alexandria and- . No, Bad Taylor! Focus on the fight that you're in the middle of!

Taylor landed on the street behind Lung and started preparing one of her attacking moves that seemed second nature. As she did so she glanced down noticed that her body and clothes had changed. Significantly.

Taylor wasn't very happy with her normal physical appearance. There was nothing horribly unattractive about her, but she was just plain. Unlikely to ever stand out for her looks. Her lips were a bit too big for her face and her chest was not at all in proportion to her ninety fifth percentile height at five foot eight. Those reasons were why she tended to wear t-shirts and hoodies that didn't show off her figure.

Now, however, she was wearing what appeared to be high tech styled leggings, similar sleeves, and what could pass as a black and lilac themed, tinker tech bikini that was showing off her flat stomach and the flare of her hips. Was it tinker tech? Usually they have to build it themselves… Also, what the goodness? She was now at least one cup size bigger than she was before and she had more of the model type hourglass figure.

Her lilac hair was gently flowing down her-. Why is my hair a different color?!

Taylor was so caught up in her newly changed appearance that she barely managed to deflect Lungs scale covered hand that was lunging straight towards her throat. She managed to hit his arm aside with the flat of Gehaburn, but still had her shoulder scraped by his claw, and was tackled with a significant portion of his mass and that sent her flying backwards towards a building that she would have collided with were it not for her newfound flight capability. Even without that, his attack took out a sixth of her newly reformed break gauge.

No more holding back.

"Limiter release. Output maximized. I'll use everything I have with this!" Taylor shouted and she lunged forwards, slicing upwards with Gehaburn against Lung's scaled torso. Lung's scales held against Gehaburn for a brief second before giving in and being cleanly sliced through.

The attack wasn't finished yet however. Taylor moved with the swing away from Lung for about a meter before she rapidly changed directions using her flight and swung at him again. This strike slashed through his back, severing his part of his spine and causing him to roar in pain and anger.

But Taylor wasn't done yet, Lung didn't even have time to fall to the ground before she reversed directions and sliced through his flesh again. And again. And again. Each time she came at him from a different angle and he was helpless in defending himself against the rapid series of attacks. Six time she came at him from different angles and sliced through him.

After the sixth strike she landed three meters in front of him and reversed directions again, in the blink of an eye. This time, her sword was positioned to stab straight through his chest instead of dealing out a glancing slice. Sword met scale again, and the sword won. There was a sickening sound of flesh giving out and bones cracking.

"Celestial Severance" Taylor said spitefully, Gehaburn still impaled in Lung's chest.

Taylor might have gone a little bit overkill in this battle, but it was Lung after all, he could take it. Anyone who had seen his PHO page knew that the longer he was in a fight, the faster he healed and the bigger he got. Since he was nine feet tall and his wounds were already visibly healing when she stabbed him, he would recover fine.

And then Gehaburn started glowing in a malevolent shade of purple.

In an instant Lung started shrinking down to his human size and the blood pouring out of him increased. Gehaburn glowed even brighter and the life faded from Lung as he collapsed, completely unmoving on the ground. The sword seemed almost hungry and starved for Lung's… was it his power or his life force it was trying to consume?

Oh no.

I heard footsteps coming up from one of the alleyways near me.

I-I did this. Damn it, I knew that Gehaburn could have this effect and I did this anyway.

"Hey, hey are you alright? Thanks for the save there we really, oh, oh shit…" the feminine voice suddenly said, going from a smug tone to a regretful and suddenly sympathetic one.

Taylor felt soft arms wrap around her, "Shit this is my fault; I didn't know that your sword had a weird life draining ability or I would've had my team interfere with the fight." She felt the arms around her squeeze a little tighter when she said that. It was … nice. It reminded Taylor of the hugs that she got from her mother long ago… before she became a murderer.

"Listen, I'm Tattletale, this is the rest of my team: Regent, Grue, and Bitch is back there with the dogs." Taylor looked at Tattletale as she spoke, Tattletale was a couple of inches shorter than her with dirty blond hair and a domino mask, and was motioning at each of her teammates in turn with the names, "we don't have a lot of time left before PRT gets here and they don't like us very much. They won't like that you killed Lung either, even though it was self-defense. Do you want to come with us before they get here?"

"N-no, I'll stay here, they deserve an explanation." Taylor said softly, still staring at the ground.

Tattletale looked at her and winced before stating, "Alright, be careful though, they might try to pin the whole incident on you. You should also do something about that cut on your shoulder so it doesn't get infected." Tattletale and the rest her team jogged out of sight, into a different alley where the dogs were being kept.

That was right, Lung had cut her shoulder a bit, "Healing powers, come to me." One softly glowing green light later and she was good as new.

Distantly, Taylor heard the sound of a motorcycle approaching her, the noise of the engine stopped and she heard slow, but measured footsteps approaching her.

"Identify yourself, Hero or Villain?"

Instinctively she blurted out the first thing that appeared in her head, "I'm Nepgear" Taylor said. She wasn't sure why she had handed out that as her cape name, but it seemed to fit.

She glanced back down at Lung's motionless body, "I'm a hero…" she said softly, even though she didn't really believe that anymore. Not after this.

I just wanted to protect the kids he was after.

He paused, "How long have you been a 'hero'?" he asked, his armor shined lightly in the moonlight making him look even more heroic.

"T-tonight was my first night out…" Taylor said before looking back at Lung's corpse.

Armsmaster sighed deeply, it sounded odd hearing such and ordinary sound coming from such a well-known hero. Taylor looked back at him and saw that he no longer had his halberd at the ready.

He walked over to the curb of the road and patted the spot next to him, "Come on, go ahead and sit down. There are a few things that we should probably talk about."

"Um, alright." Taylor walked over to where he was sitting and sat a few feet away from him.

"It'll be for the best if you join the wards."

"I don't -" Taylor started to say.

"You don't have to agree to anything right now or even tell us your identity, although it looks like that doesn't matter much to you since your costume doesn't have a mask."

"Huh?!" Taylor said intelligently, she looked around for a mirror and saw a large window. She jogged over to it and looked at her reflection.

The shape of her cheeks and eyes were more similar to her face that her memories of Nepgear's. She was also taller than Nepgear ever was and her nose was a little bit more defined. I'm beautiful now. Taylor thought to herself, as she wondered how long she could stay in this form. Activating it seemed to take a good amount of her magic, but if the result was looking like this… Well she wouldn't be missing her old body; that would be for sure.

Her facial features now had a distinctly Japanese look about her, though the fact that her hair was lilac and her eyes were a vivid sky blue seemed to contrast with that. Her skin now was smooth and unblemished, her face was perfectly symmetrical, and her bright blue eyes with what looked like power symbols instead of pupils only made her look more exotic.

Her outfit was… Wait. Taylor felt her cheeks heating up. She had fought Lung wearing this? It had seemed perfectly natural at the time, but now that she was thinking about it, her outfit looked like she was wearing a risqué bikini. The crystalline wings with a design reminiscent of circuitry were exactly the same shade as her hair and made her outfit seem a little less like lingerie.

Taylor kind of wanted to change her processor unit into something a little more… modest, but ever since she had activated her HDD form, it was if a block had been broken. She now understood just how much better her Processor Unit was since it was aerodynamic and form fitting, there wasn't a need to add more material to it. Taylor was remembering more and more of Nepgear's life and while a great deal of it wasn't very useful, apparently the technology was very far ahead of Earth Bet.

Armsmaster called out, interrupting her train of thought, "Are you saying that you didn't build your costume?"

"I don't think I did," Taylor paused; ever since she had transformed, a lot more knowledge about her abilities were flowing more freely into her mind, "But I think I understand how it works now."

Taylor could almost see his raised eyebrow as he skeptically asked, "So you aren't a tinker, Nep-'gear'?"

Taylor was about to deny it, but a schematic of a full dive virtual reality headset that she had memories of designing came to her mind, "I-I'm not sure…"

Seeing Armsmaster manage to look even more incredulous, Taylor hurriedly blurted out "My power came with a lot of memories of how to use it; I also know how to make some technology and how this processor unit works." She motioned at her outfit as she said that.

"I see… Anyway, if you're reckless enough to challenge Lung on your first night out then you need to be backed by the PRT. You won't last long otherwise."

"He said he was going to kill children, I couldn't just watch!"

Armsmaster frowned, "That doesn't sound much like Lung, he's involved in a lot of illegal activities but I've never heard of him outright killing innocents, especially not in person. Anyway the ABB will be out for your blood once they find out that you killed Lung. You should get a mask first and foremost, maybe even leave the city since Bakuda and Oni Lee will probably try to blow up your family if she find out your identity."

Taylor flinched, the other capes of the ABB had slipped her mind completely.

"One of the safest options for you right now is to join the wards division of the protectorate. Your actions here will have major consequences and you'd be safer with the PRT. Now that Lung is dead the E88 won't hesitate in taking more of the ABB's territory and there could be serious civilian casualties. Bakuda was a loose cannon even while being under Lung's control, now she'll have free reign to try to control of the ABB and their territory. Another ward on patrol and in the response team would do a lot for helping the city."

Taylor didn't really want to join the wards yet, but when Armsmaster put it like that it didn't sound like she had a choice. "I'll think about it," Taylor said inwardly thinking of the conversation she'd need to have with her Dad before that could happen.

Armsmaster stood up, "Alright the sooner you get in contact with us the better," he started walking back to his motorcycle, "remember what I said about a mask though."

"Oh, that's not an issue right now, my face and body is different in this form." Taylor called back to him, I didn't mention that to him yet?

Armsmaster turned back around and looked at her oddly, "You're a changer?" he turned back and got on his motorcycle, "Well anyway, you'll get your power tested if you do decide to join the wards and we can find out more about it then."

As he rode away on his motorcycle Taylor was nervously thinking about the future.

Crap, now gangs are going to be after me and I probably have to join the wards. How do I tell Dad about this?