Taylor and I talked a bit while I waited to hear back. She wasn't really coherent, but one thing became glaringly obvious. She hadn't blacked out at all. She was in shock, sure, but she'd been conscious the entire time. That of course meant that...

She hadn't fucking triggered! I pulled her out too goddamn fucking early! Of all the fucking shitty things, I fucked up fucking canon by trying to be nice!

Obviously I had to fix this.

My Wards phone rang. I motioned to Taylor to stop and then I answered it.
"Singularity here."

"Singularity. This is Armsmaster. You reported a situation and a possible new parahuman?"

"Yes sir. I have her with me at my home right now."

"Can you bring her in to the PRT?"

I muted my phone for a moment and looked to Taylor. "Armsmaster wants to know if you're willing to come in to the PRT?"

She looked somewhat star-struck. "...A-armsmaster? Uh.. sure? Yes."

Fucking hell I'd forgotten that she actually has Armsmaster branded underwear or something. Total fangirl. Whatever. I can work with this. I unmuted the call.

"Yes sir. She is willing to come in with me. We're on the way."

"Excellent, see you soon." He hung up.

Mister Social, Armsy is not. Now back to my un-triggered Taylor Hebert problem. I could see a couple of ways forward, but I wasn't sure my best option here was. Either way, we needed to get to the PRT building sooner than later. Of course I could just give her a power, but I purposefully was keeping the game fair, to have a challenge of some sort – and this situation was exactly that, a challenge.

"Taylor," I said quietly, trying my best to inject a tone of gravitas and seriousness into my voice, "I need you stay calm, but I hear someone coming down the hallway. Whatever you do, if something happens, stay down and let me handle it."

"I...what? What's going on?" She was obviously very, very confused, very worried, and not all there mentally at the moment. Perfect.

I took a breath, composing myself, this was the fork in the road, once I did this I was committed to my path. I wasn't worried or scared, instead I felt... excited. Anxious? One of those anticipatory anxiety feelings at least. Scaroused, maybe.

I let my eyes go wide in "terror" as I focused my gaze behind her. She noticed, and with a look of shock and fright started to turn around.

And that was when I opened a portal right underneath her and dropped her into Earth's orbit.

-

And there we go! She'd passed out basically immediately! That was faster than I'd even hoped. I'd had her faced her away from, well, anything, so to her mind she (hopefully) went from my couch one moment to a sea of blackness and stars the next. I didn't want her to report suddenly being an impromptu satellite, after all. Oh, and as for what she did see - you know who else saw weird shit during their trigger? Miss Milflitia. Maybe this would give them something to bond over in the future.

So here's an interesting fact - a human body plopped into outer space does not, in fact, explosively decompress, or immediately freeze or any of those movie tropes. As space is a vacuum devoid of air or anything else, there's no atmospheric pressure caused by air molecules. Atmospheric pressure, in part, determines the temperatures at which liquids boil. No atmospheric pressure means the boiling point of liquids decreases significantly.

Given that 60% or so of the human body is made up of water, this was currently a serious problem for Taylor. As I watched her through my portal, the absence of pressure was causing the liquids in her body to begin to boil, rapidly transforming from a liquid into a gas. All the parts of her body that contained water were therefore starting to expand. Not cartoonishly or anything, it would probably take her a few minutes to die, not a few seconds like you'd see in bad sci-fi movies. Though I suppose the brain also includes liquid. So there's that. I decided to give her a few more seconds to percolate before I grabbed her and dragged her back. Hopefully the combination of shock earlier and the sheer rapidity of her trauma this time would rattle her brains a bit so she had even less of a chance of realizing what actually happened. Or else maybe she'd realize she had powers and know it was all done for her own good and be super appreciative. Either of those was fine by me, really.

Oh fuck, I was doing the internal monologue thing again while I had Taylor baking in orbit. Oops!

I reached through my portal (I was protected from space. thank you forcefield), and dragged the unconscious Taylor back onto my couch, closing the portal as I did so. She was obviously damaged and injured, but alive, as she started breathing as soon as air was available. How damaged? I had no idea, I wasn't a medic, but Panpan exists, so she'd be fine, right?

I roughly dropped her to the floor, and then I opened a portal from inside my apartment to right outside the door to it, in the hallway. Bracing myself, I kicked my own door open and collapsed the portal immediately. I then used my powers to viciously fling myself backwards, as if I'd been hit my someone coming through that very door. I smashed into the island in my kitchen, dropping my forcefield just before I hit. The pain was explosive, and I screamed. I was fairly certain I'd just broken a rib or two. It never seems like a fucking big deal to break a rib in stories, but let me tell you, in real life it fucking hurts!

I pressed the emergency beacon on my Wards phone and then crawled towards Taylor. The pain was... exceptionally unpleasant, and I was hearing some gurgling sounds as I breathed. Well that wasn't great, but still, it would certainly sell the scenario I was painting here. I draped myself over Taylor's unmoving form protectively, and laid there to wait the imminent arrival of backup. After all, whoever had targeted her earlier in the school had just shown up to finish the job. They were obviously a parahuman with the ability to inflict horrible damage, internal and external. It was also obviously not Shadow Stalker, couldn't be! She can't boil people from the inside! Sophia was going to be soooo confused. I laughed, finding myself coughing up blood as I did so. Awkward.

Passing out was starting to sound like a good idea, so I decided to go with the flow and did just that.

-

POV: Emily Piggot

Today had been such a good day. Thing had been going so well for her. That is, as well as any day in the shithole that was Brockton Bay could go, at least. There were no gang fights, no emergencies. She'd actually been making a solid dent in the paperwork for once (and what did it say about her life that getting paperwork done qualified a work day as a good one?)

So, naturally, that was when Murphy reared his ugly head and shit hit the fan.

She turned her attention away from wishful thinking of a quiet day and back to Armsmaster.

"So let me make sure I've got the sequence of events correct. Early this morning, some girl we've never heard of was attacked at the same school two of our Wards are attending for reasons we don't know, being shoved into a locker with what you are terming bio-hazardous waste. Shortly thereafter, one of those same Wards rescued the girl, evacing them both to her civilian address. The Ward then contacted console for assistance, and you told them make their own way to the PRT building-"

"Well, ma'am," Armsmaster interrupted "given which Ward it was I made the assumption that transport-"

Emily slammed her hand down on her desk in anger, stopping Armsmaster's excuse it in it's tracks.

"YES, YOU ASSUMED, AND NOW I HAVE AN INJURED WARD, A LIKELY NEW TRIGGER, AND AN UNKNOWN PARAHUMAN THREAT LOOSE IN MY CITY!"

Armsmaster's mouth snapped shut, apparently realizing that discretion was the better part of valour with his commander as angry as she was.

Taking a couple of deep breaths, she calmed herself enough to address her subordinate again.

"So, then. After the Ward was instructed to make her own way to the PRT and to provide transport a girl who had already been assaulted, the two were attacked by an unknown parahuman or parahumans. My Ward had..." Emily flipped through the pages on the medical report in front of her. "...Four broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a concussion, and is currently unconscious. The other girl was, according to Panacea's report, boiled alive from the inside and barely survived, along with having other anomalous injuries she couldn't pinpoint the cause of, and a whole host of infections she had to heal. Did I miss anything?"

"No ma'am." Armsmaster answered. "After those events, a PRT response team and Velocity attended Ms. Breton's residence and found the situation as you described. Medical teams were dispatched, and both young ladies were rushed to Brockton General and treated by Panacea."

She steepled her fingers and looked intensely at Armsmaster.

"Colin, this is a shit-show. She hasn't even had her fucking debut as a Ward yet, so I doubt it was someone targeting her specifically. That, and her injuries were almost incidental damage, to get at someone else, while what happened to Ms. Hebert was ...far worse. I want you to go over Taylor Hebert's life with a fine tooth comb and figure out who would want to kill her, and why. They're obviously a cape, and a very capable one given what they did to Singularity and Ms. Hebert. Once either of them wake up, get statements immediately. Also, bring in Shadow Stalker, she goes to Winslow and may have some sort of idea about all this, even if it's not something she's consciously pegged as a problem."

"I'll take care of it immediately."

"Good, dismissed."

Emily Pigott watched Armsmaster leave her office, and then she leaned back in her chair with a deep sigh.

Today had been such a good day.