"They're around here somewhere," Lung growled, looking around. "Those monsters make too much noise, we'd have heard them leave. I'd have heard them leave."

He gestured. "You two. Up to the roofs. We'll flush the fuckers out."

The men he'd indicated began scaling an emergency fire escape, and Lung listened for any sound of his targets bolting.

"They won't get away with this," he added. "We're going to make an example of them, no matter what they try. No more tricks. You see the children, just shoot. Doesn't matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice more just to be sure. We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?"

There was a chorus of nods or affirmatives, and Lung nodded slightly to himself.

One way or another, he was going to prove that nobody messed with Lung. Certainly not some kids.

Then he heard a sort of soft thump sound. It was too soft for it to be one of those massive fucking dogs, but he pointed anyway. "There!"

The gunfire began, and he looked into the darkness as muzzle flashes lit up the night. But there was no sign of anyone, nor the black mist that might indicate that Grue was involved, and after a few seconds he clapped his hands sharply. "Stop firing!"

It took another few seconds to trail off, and Lung cuffed the last man to stop firing. "When I say stop, you stop."

"Yes, Lung," the man replied, chastened, and probably counting himself lucky that that slap was all that Lung had done.

Then, to Lung's surprise, something stepped out of the alleyway.

It was like a long-eared cat, with a coat so fine he could barely see it and big, pointed ears. But there was a dot on its forehead, one that shone like a gemstone or water drop in the light of the streetlamps, and the fine tail behind it forked at the tip.

Memories of the stories of his youth floated to the top of Lung's mind, and he wondered for a moment how a nekomata had come to end up in Brockton Bay of all places.

Perhaps it had followed the refugees from Japan?

I won't let you kill children, a voice said in his mind, without passing through his ears, and Lung saw red. He remembered the Yangban, the influence of the masters there, who turned capes into identical pieces on a gameboard and never exposed themselves to danger, and he pointed.

"Shoot it!" he insisted.

Half the gang members present opened fire immediately, and the gem on the creature's forehead lit up with a red flash. The bullets slowed, like they were hitting something as viscous as honey, and the cat darted to the side behind a dumpster – then the bullets all returned to their normal speed at once, and hit the alley walls or bounced down it with a clatter-clash of jacketed and unjacketed lead.

Lung stalked forwards to investigate, with the clicking of pistols reloading behind him, but before he was halfway a shower of glowing multicoloured darts shot up above the dumpster and flew towards him. They hit in a scattercrash of painful, razor-edged impacts that gave him half a dozen cuts, and Lung got angry.

And his power responded.

He was in a fight, and his power had always responded well to fights. He was Lung, and nobody could beat him in a prolonged battle – even Leviathan hadn't been able to, though Lung privately wondered if that was because the beast had simply not cared enough to keep fighting, with its objective complete.

This creature was not an Endbringer, though, and he was going to incinerate it.

Fire blasted out from his hand towards the dumpster, hitting it and melting halfway through it. The trash inside it began to burn, and another shower of multicoloured darts responded – this time many of them hitting the armoured scales forming across his chest and bouncing off.

He got a closer look at one of them, this time, and snorted when he saw it. A leaf?

"You think leaves will stop Lung?" he demanded, shooting out another blast of flame, and this time the entire dumpster exploded in a shower of metal and flaming trash.

Nowhere to hide, now.

What he wasn't expecting, when the smoke cleared a little, was for there to be something else behind the dumpster. The cat was nowhere to be seen, but instead a fuzzy creature like a shaggy dog or a particularly fluffy fox was growling at him… and, in the firelight now illuminating the alley, it definitely appeared to be coloured in bright red and yellow.

Then it stuck its tongue out at him, and Lung blasted a jet of fire at the creature. Flames enveloped it, but instead of bursting into flame it just basked in the fire – then flicked its tail, and a choking black smokescreen suddenly filled the entire alleyway.

Lung lunged forwards, punching out with one of his now-clawed hands, and got purchase on nothing but air. Growling, he turned back in the direction he'd come.

"Shouuot that thiingg," he said, words slurring as he ramped up more and more. "If you seeh it, shoouot!"

Gunfire opened up immediately, and Lung stalked towards the sound of the firing.

When he emerged from the smokescreen, he saw that his gangers were shooting in several different directions. Not rattling off entire clips, but shooting bursts at whatever looked like movement.

A half-dozen golden stars flicked up into the air from a nearby rooftop, landing with a wham-wham-wham all around where his men were and throwing up chunks of tarmac and debris. One of the impacts even knocked a man over, and he groaned as he hit the ground.

Lung didn't care.

He shot fire back at the direction the stars had come from, grumbling under his breath.

If he'd thought to bring Oni Lee, this would all be over now. But he was Lung, and he was going to tear down this entire block if that was what it took to win this!

For a moment, it seemed like maybe he had won this, as the stars didn't come again. But then there was an incredible blur of yellow movement, which darted off the rooftop and bounced back and forth between three buildings as it dropped down to ground level.

Lung could barely even keep track of it, let alone target it, and his attempt to lash out as it got nearby didn't amount to anything. It skidded to a halt in the middle of the gang, and he had just a second to get a look at it – a yellow creature with fur that was combed up into massive spikes – before it crackled with an electrical charge that exploded out in all directions, knocking gang members flying and sending them all tumbling to the ground.

Only the two on the rooftops seemed to have escaped the stunning attack, and they opened fire immediately. Bullets peppered the ground around the creature, one even hitting in a shower of sparks, but it sprang back into motion anyway… though not as fast as before.

Lung laughed, darkly. At least whatever this fucking thing was, it could be hurt.

Nothing happened for the next several seconds, and Lung looked around carefully for whatever was going to happen next.

As it turned out, that was a firehose-strength blast of water which knocked him flat in a cloud of steam.

Fire flashed around Lung's body as he ramped up further, pushing himself to his feet and boiling the water around him, and he shouted something incomprehensible.

He was LUNG! A dragon! He couldn't be beaten by anything as feeble as water – and where the hell were those two idiots on the roof?

Had they gone down while Lung was flat on the ground?

Heat pulsed in his heart and fury in his blood as his power drove him to get stronger, tougher. If he had to fight long enough he'd get his wings, and then his opponent would have nowhere left to hide.

It was immune to his fire? So what! He'd smash it against the ground and break it in half, then find and kill those fucking thieves and get his money back!

Then it started to hail.

Snarling, Lung ran to the nearest building and began scaling it hand-over-hand. His claws tore holes in the bricks and mortar, and chunks of both showered down below him, but in seconds he'd reached the roof – and, quick as a flash, something ice-blue spat shards in his face that blinded him for a moment.

Lung had had enough of this.

Fire exploded outwards, probably setting the building ablaze, and Lung stared through the roiling heat as he looked for the creatures – or single creature – that had been messing with him this whole time.

I want it on the record that I tried to reason with you, that same voice said again, and Lung whipped around to see.

The nekomata was back, standing on a nearby rooftop, and he roared before sprinting to the edge of the roof and jumping across the gap – and, while he was still in mid-air, the nekomata changed. It became a fluffy little brown creature like a fox mixed with a rabbit, then a moment later changed again to a kind of pink-and-white cat festooned with ribbons.

Lung landed with a crash, rolling to his feet and swiping out, and the ribbon-cat dodged out of the way. Then it fired out a rainbow-coloured beam of light at him, and to Lung's surprise it hit so hard that it launched him bodily into the air.

The ribbon-cat waited for a second, watching him as he crested and began to fall, and Lung twisted to be ready to absorb the landing. His opponent was already moving, though, jumping into the air above him, and it let out a cute little meow before hammering him into the ground with a sparkly pink beam that cracked the concrete.

Lung decided, mostly involuntarily, that it was time for a nap now.


"Fuck me," Lisa muttered to herself.

"Problem?" Brian asked. "Is the fight over?"

"Yeah," Lisa admitted. "But that cape… she's got a fuckton of powers."

She thumped the side of her head, then winced at the headache it gave her. "And my power keeps telling me that she's clearly hacked, whatever that means."


Taylor landed daintily, exhaled, then reverted to her base Changer form.

That had been a lot harder than she'd expected for her first night out… but, at the same time, she'd beaten Lung.

Even if she'd had more close calls than she'd like. Being shot had not been fun, even if she'd been able to heal it away in her water-form by using her power on herself.

A hailstone hit her on the muzzle, and she sneezed in a fluffy sort of way.

Right. Hail. She'd… probably better stop that at some point.

And it sounded like a motorbike was on the way, so she'd have to talk to someone now…


Colin Wallis slowed his motorbike to a halt, and stepped off.

Based on all the available information, this was definitely the site of the sounds that had led someone to call in a possible cape battle, and it was a mess.

There were blast marks on buildings, expended bullets everywhere, and what looked a lot like claw marks up the side of one building that were still shedding mortar. There were odd-looking leaves on the floor. There was a scatter of slushy hail, and water running down the gutters into the nearby drains.

There were plenty of bullet holes. And there was the smell of a quite literal dumpster fire, which made Colin grateful for the filters he'd put in his nose.

After one battle with the Merchants, it was an obvious addition.

But more than that, there were the bodies. At least two dozen men, all unconscious or worse – though thermal imaging suggested unconscious – all around the area, some of them right next to the weapons they'd apparently been carrying, and a muscular man in a crater… and covered in dragon tattoos.

That was Lung.

Colin's gaze lingered on the unconscious gang leader for a moment, then lifted to the final part of the tableau.

An odd-looking pink cat, with big pointed ears and a gemstone on its forehead, visible in the light of the one remaining street lamp and illuminated by the white glow of his headlamps.

Good evening, the cat said. Armsmaster, right?"

"Correct," Colin confirmed. "Did you see what happened here?"

I was involved, the cat replied – probably a Changer cape, then. It was my first night out, but when I overheard him telling his men to kill children… I couldn't stand aside, not really.

"I see," Colin said. "And you attacked him?"

He had his men shoot at me, the cat told him. Then I tried to negotiate, and he attacked me. I fought back, and won.

Colin frowned. "Against Lung?" he asked. "That's unusual, especially so early in your career."

I did my best, the cat replied, flicking its tail.

The tail had two tips, which Colin noted down before continuing.

"You know," he said. "Being so successful so early might not be entirely a good thing. It would give you a higher profile, but that would also make you a target. And Lung is going to wake up at some point."

He rotated his halberd, pointing the butt at Lung, and fired out a tranquilizer round he'd developed in the past – calibrated carefully to work on Lung.

"If you think it would be better, I could take credit for the capture," he suggested.

The cat shook its head.

I appreciate the offer, but no thank you, it told him. I'm quite all right with the actual version of events… which is that I defeated Lung myself, but accepted your assistance in preventing his escape.

Colin considered that, then nodded in reply.

It was still not the safest thing for a new cape, but being involved in bringing Lung in would still raise his profile – which might at last mean that the ENE Protectorate got some of the extra resources he'd been arguing in favour of for years – and either way it meant Lung was off the streets.

With that taken care of, Colin moved to the next step on his checklist.

"Are you willing to come in for power testing?" he asked. "Many new capes don't know all the details of what they're capable of, and it can be a good start to a career in the Protectorate or to joining the Wards depending on your age."

The cat sat on all four paws, tail curled around them, and looked at him impassively for several seconds.

Not… yet, it said. Or, rather… I don't want to agree to power testing, and I'm not willing to join the Protectorate – or Wards, depending on my age – just yet.

"I see," Colin told it. "Is there anything you're willing to share about your powers?"

I'm quite versatile, it told him.

"And do you have a tattoo anywhere on your body?" Colin checked. "It's a good procedure to ask, when encountering an unknown cape who isn't fully human."

A tattoo? The cat replied. No, I've never got one.

"I think that's everything," Colin decided. "Except… do you have a name?"

Not… yet, the cat told him. Nothing's really seemed good enough yet.

There was a moment of silence.

Are we done?

"Yes," Colin confirmed.

The cat stood up, stretched, and shook itself out. Then it loped off into a nearby alley.

Colin moved to the right a little, to see if he could watch where the cat was going, but the alley was too dark and nothing showed up on infrared.

He did see an odd yellow glow, for just a moment, before it vanished.


Two hours later, after finishing the process of booking in twenty-two Azn Bad Boys gang members – and Lung – and passing on his report, Colin was in the middle of building himself a scanning infrared laser system for tracking targets in darkness when his phone rang.

He picked it up, and answered. "Armsmaster."

"And what kind of report do you call this?" Director Piggot demanded.

Colin frowned, thinking back over his report.

He'd composed it as an accompaniment to the video he'd included, detailing his complete interaction with the new cape from beginning to end.

"A comprehensive one?" he said. "With annotations."

"Comprehensive?" Piggot repeated. "It's just you talking at a cat for five minutes, halfway through which you break off and fire a dart to hit Lung in the ass. Is the stress of the job getting to you?"

Colin looked blankly at the phone.

"The cat was talking to me," he said, but even he was aware that – by itself – that was not actually a very good defence.

"I'm sure," Piggot replied, sounding sarcastic. "I'm putting in a meeting in ten minutes, where we're going to go over this properly."

Colin's phone beeped as the call ended, and he looked at his half-finished LIDAR design.

He was going to have to come back to that later. And see if he could fit it in his helmet without crowding out anything else.


PRT parahuman internal threat report – not for redistribution


Sphynx


Sphynx was encountered close to midnight on April 10-11 2011. The encounter was recorded and is attached for completeness.

Sphynx is a pale pink feline around 2 feet tall, with an additional 1 foot of height added by ears. They are either hairless or have a fine coat, and have the following distinguishing features:

- almond-shaped eyes.

- fur (?) tufts roughly level with eyes,

- large, triangular ears. These are mobile as is normal for feline ears.

- red dot on forehead. This is made of a reflective substance, and did not change in shape or nature during the recorded interview but did occasionally reflect street lights.

- bifurcated tail, with the bifurcation occurring between 50% and 70% of the way along the length.

Sphynx may not be capable of speech, but can communicate in an unknown fashion. This appears similar to normal speech for those present, and may reflect either a Stranger ability (covering audio recordings), a Master ability (causing those present to believe a statement or conversation has taken place) or some other unknown ability.

In discussion with Armsmaster (PRT ENE), Sphynx indicated that they were unwilling to undergo power testing at this time, but did not close down the possibility. They also indicated that the option of Protectorate or Wards recruitment was open in future, but not currently.


Note that powers assigned to Sphynx are poorly constrained, but Sphynx's threat level should be assumed to be high. Sphynx was encountered in the area of 22 unconscious members of the Azn Bad Boys gang, along with the Azn Bad Boys gang leader Lung, all of whom they claimed to have defeated. Expended bullets, fire damage, masonry damage and other damage in the area all back up the claim that there was a major altercation in the area.


Estimated or conjectured threat ratings:

Mover 3 – during encounter, Armsmaster was unable to track Sphynx's exit from the area after their conversation was complete. In order to move to the far end of the alleyway, a Mover rating of 2 or 3 would be required.

Shaker 2 – conjectured. Leaves, ice and water were all found around the site of the altercation with no other known source. They may derive from Sphynx's power, but the properties of this power are unknown.

Brute 4 – conjectured. Lung was found driven into a crater in the road forming the impression of a humanoid somewhat larger than himself; if Sphynx was responsible for causing this then a Brute rating would be warranted.

Master 2 – conjectured, one possible explanation for the conversation mentioned.

Blaster 3 – conjectured, site of altercation had some unusual scarring.

Changer 5 – assumed to be the case, when questioned Sphynx denied having the tattoo that is known to identify Case 53 capes.

Stranger 2 – conjectured, other possible explanation for the conversation mentioned. Separately a Stranger rating would also explain the exit from the discussion location.


Footnote:

The PRT ENE analysis department would like it to be known that we would appreciate more information. We are guessing here.

Lung has been singularly uncooperative in giving any details about what happened.


Taylor's tail swished powerfully from side to side, propelling her through the water, and she approached her destination – then slowed down, letting her ruff act as a brake, before she actually bumped into the side of the huge ship.

Up close, it was really big, and Taylor exhaled. "Vaaap…"

Was it really something she could move?

Then she reminded herself of her plan, and dropped underwater with a subtle plip.

The water wasn't very clear, but it was enough, and with moonlight from the waxing moon filtering down through the water she could see the holes in the side. They were big, but… not impossible, Taylor decided.

All she had to do was to seal them up, add ice, and maybe get rid of water, and then the awkward container ship would be moveable.

Appearing above the water again, Taylor accelerated to swim a circle around the ship.

On the far side from the main city, she slipped in through a hole in the hull, then found a spot where one of the decks was half-in and half-out of the water.

Jumping out, she changed briefly back to her base Changer form, then transitioned into her ice-elemental form instead. The deck was slick beneath her paws, but she balanced just fine, and her tail flicked back and forth a little as she thought about what she was going to have to do.

One thing she wanted to avoid was the ship capsizing. That would be… bad. But she could definitely use ice to seal up the holes in the hull, even if it would mean getting wet.

Taking a deep breath, Taylor plunged into the water.


Most of an hour later, Taylor had managed to make significant progress. Working methodically back and forth, plunging into the water and delivering ice before changing through her base-form to her water-form, swimming back to the surface and getting started again… it was awkward, but the only form that was getting cold was her base-form, and something about it was like the satisfaction from making visible progress on a big project.

It was a good thing the water was so cold, because she didn't want to have to deal with re-freezing the ice.

Plunging into the water again, she swam towards the bow, scanning back and forth, then her underwater eyes lit on something.

A stopcock, jammed and rusted open.

Returning to the surface, Taylor jumped onto a floating slab of ice – one of several she'd put around the ship – and changed back through her base-form to her ice elementalist.

Dropping underwater again, she found the stopcock, then focused icy power in her muzzle. Exhaling, she built up a mass of ice around the stopcock entry point, then briefly became an extremely damp dog-fox-rabbit-thing before switching to the vulpine-mermaid of her water-form.

Time to see if she'd missed anything.

Taylor concentrated, and began absorbing the water.

She'd half expected it to result in feeling tired, from doing it to so much water, but instead it just made her feel healthier. Not stronger, exactly, but like she was getting a nice relaxing nap.

The water level was dropping visibly, as well, and the ship groaned and creaked as Taylor absorbing all that water meant that it got lighter and lighter. It trembled, swaying a little as it began to float, then there was a rushing sound from near the stern and it rocked much more noticeably.

Taylor sighed, and began swimming towards the stern to find where water was coming in from.


Most of another hour later, the leaks had been stopped up – all of them, one by one, as they emerged – and Taylor had finished mostly draining out the water stored in the old container ship.

To do the rest of it would take far too long, enough time for her early plugs to melt, and it was floating anyway. That was the actually important bit.

Shaking herself off, sending a few drops flying in all directions, Taylor went through her base-form to her psychic-cat one, then climbed up so she was on deck. Then higher, so she was in the rotting remains of the ship's bridge.

Now, where to put it?

Sending it out into the open sea would be… well, littering. And impolite. It'd sink, sure, but it seemed a bit final, and wasn't steel supposed to be valuable if you could actually access it?

Taylor inspected some of the steel around her, and winced. Well, sure, it was rusty, but… maybe there was something useful?

Considering, Taylor stroked her chin with her tail tips, then decided on what she was going to do.

She could make waves. That was a thing her water-form could do. So if she just pointed in the right direction…


"Dad?"

"Huh?" Danny Hebert mumbled. "Taylor?"

He looked over at his bedside clock, somewhat blearily. "It's, um. Four in the morning. How come you're up?"

"Uh," Taylor replied. "It's… kind of embarrassing, but I wanted to tell you… I'm a cape."

Danny stared.

"A cape?" he repeated.

"Yeah," his daughter agreed, then turned into a fuzzy little cat-rabbit-fox-bunny thing.

Danny stared.

"Vee!" Taylor yipped, then changed again into a leaf-eared animal like a sort of lean fox. Then back to the fuzzy thing, then into a pink cat with fine fur and a two-tipped tail.

This is the only form where I can actually talk, after a fashion, Taylor told him. I… didn't want to bother you, but I screwed up.

"Did you get in a fight?" Danny asked, worried. "Did you get hurt?"

Taylor shook her feline head.

No, dad, she said. But, I wanted to help you out. I was moving the ship.

She didn't need to specify which one.

"You… how?" Danny asked. "That thing's huge, and it's sunk."

Yeah, but I have a form that can do ice, Taylor told him. And another that can do water… so I froze over the holes in the hull and drained it. But then I had a… power interaction, I guess. Anyway, the ship's in one of the docks.

She flicked her tail, looking down, and her ears made an embarrassed shape. Concertina'd into one of the docks. It went faster than I was expecting.

Danny stared at her, for several long seconds.

"...okay," he said. "I'm… going to think about that. In the morning."

Taylor nodded, then changed back into her fuzzy form. Then into something else, a sort of black-furred rabbit-thing with glowing rings on its flanks, tail, ears and head, and padded out of the room.

She shut the door behind her, which was nice.

Danny decided, very deliberately, to finish sleeping before thinking about this.


There was a lot of news attention about the thing that had happened to the docks, where a container ship had been abruptly moved out of the way, and Taylor sort-of-guiltily didn't do anything significant with her powers for the next few days.

Part of that was that her dad was still working out what to think, and had asked her to at least not go out looking for trouble. Part of that was that they were still talking through what Taylor should do with her powers from now on, whether she should actually go ahead and join the Wards or stay independent, or even try becoming a DWA mascot, team pet and general helper.

That might not work depending on what the law actually said, but finding out specifically what the law said about that kind of thing without potentially outing Taylor was… difficult.

Internet searches would probably be okay, so long as it wasn't focused too specifically. Or maybe that was just paranoia talking – Taylor couldn't tell – but it was easier to just… wait, for now.

She had taking down Lung on her scorecard, and even as the only thing on that scorecard that was still a major achievement. A bit more mid-range stuff and she'd be in a much better position to become a Ward, or maybe strike out as an independent… even if Danny did like the idea of Taylor having someone to look out for her.

That meant she had to handle school, with the Three Bitches, but now that Taylor had gone out and made a name for herself – or, her alter ego – it was a bit easier to treat what they were doing as less… significant.

She knew that everything they said about her being worthless was wrong. She wasn't. And she knew that she could fight back, if she wanted to… and that not fighting back was an exercise in self-control.

And Taylor Hebert was not going to give the Three Bitches the satisfaction of getting one over on her.

Not when she could spend her evenings showing dad what she could do, or just lounging around the house in one of her nine forms, or slip out into the night to work out a little more of what she could do.

Not when it was all part of her secret identity.

Not when fighting back would mean they'd win.


After school, that Thursday, Taylor was on the way home when she saw a cape going overhead.

She only got a good line of sight for a moment before the person she was seeing went out of sight over the rooftops, but that was enough to let her identify the cape. White outfit, blonde hair, flying cape – in Brockton Bay, that combination meant Glory Girl.

She hadn't looked like she was flying around for pleasure, either. She was going somewhere important.

Taylor frowned, then came to a snap decision – she wanted to help.

Ducking into an alley, she looked around to make sure nobody was watching her – no sign of security cameras, no windows – then changed. She took on her Changer base-form for a moment, then changed to her high-speed electrical-form and jumped between the two walls of the alley to get up onto a rooftop.

That gave her a run-up, and she sprinted across the rooftop and jumped across in a blur of yellow and black. Then the next, and the next… it was a long way to jump, each time, but her electric-form was by far her fastest and she could manage it.

As she approached downtown, however, she caught sight of something – something concerning.

She was closing in on two other capes, overhauling them rapidly with her superior speed, and she recognized them both. One was a man in loose pants and a tiger mask, the other was a girl in a black and red robe, and they were both riding on a chunk of concrete as it flew through the air in exactly the same way that chunks of concrete usually didn't.

Stormtiger and Rune. Capes from the Empire Eighty-Eight, the actual Nazis that were one of the gangs in Brockton Bay.

If they were going to get involved with whatever was going on with Glory Girl, it wasn't going to be for altruistic reasons.

Jumping across two more rooftops until she'd nearly caught up, Taylor skidded to a halt, then switched to her base-form and then to her feline psionic form.

Hey! she broadcast out. Are you going anywhere I should know about?

"What the-?" Rune said, looking around as her power floated smaller rocks into a pattern, then pointed. "There!"

"That's that cat the PRT was talking about," Stormtiger said, quietly, but Taylor's ears picked him up anyway. "The one who their reports say stopped Lung."

"Lung?" Rune repeated. "Really?"

"Yeah," Stormtiger agreed. "Doesn't look it, though… I think we can take it."

He grinned. "I say we fuck it up."

Honestly, Taylor hadn't expected anything else.

Her gem lit up slightly, and when Rune opened proceedings by flinging three of her head-sized rocks Taylor caught them with a burst of her own telekinesis. Then Rune dropped to a nearby building, focusing her power to rip up several more chunks of the facade even as she threw bits at Taylor, and Stormtiger stepped off the descending concrete slab to hover in mid-air supported by a whirlwind of air.

Taylor took aim, and fired a beam of psychic energy at him. He dodged to the side, and it hit him a glancing blow that spun him around – then he charged at her with a swirl of wind blades forming claws from his hands, and Taylor dropped the rocks around her to slap at Stormtiger with a burst of raw telekinesis.

She dodged away at the same time, then a rock caught her in the side as Rune took advantage of her distraction.

The blow sent her rolling away across the rooftop, going between two air conditioners, then she focused as she came back upright and channelled sunlight. The bruise on her flank faded away, and a beam of psychic force made Rune's next shot explode into gravel.

Taylor didn't leave it at that, though. She picked up the gravel, whirling it around herself as a shield, then fired it all at once at Stormtiger as he charged towards her.

The aerokinetic Shaker shielded his face with his arms, losing sight of her briefly, and Taylor fired out another beam of psychic energy from the gem on her forehead. This time she hit Stormtiger in the ankle, tripping him up, and he growled in rage before springing back upright and getting distance.

"Rune!" he called. "No more fucking around. Let's make this one count."

Taylor used her psychic beam on one of Rune's rocks on the rooftop as she saw it tremble, then hit the other few in quick succession so they couldn't be used against her. That gave her a lot more gravel to work with, and she picked up the lot with a mental effort.

Carrying this many things at once with her telekinesis seemed like… not a strain, exactly, but it was getting to the point where it was going to be a strain if she kept adding more things to do.

Rune and Stormtiger conferred for a moment, then Stormtiger set off to the left and began circling around Taylor at a distance. Air swirled towards him as well, building a mass of high-pressure air, and Taylor turned and stepped back to make sure she could see both E-88 capes at once.

She could see what was going to happen, as Rune lifted up a large hunk of masonry torn from the building. Rune was going to fling something big and heavy at her, while Stormtiger attacked her from the other side – a simple pincer attack, where she couldn't ignore either of them or lose.

So, instead, the moment Stormtiger looked like he'd committed, Taylor hit Rune's floating concrete platform with a burst of psychic energy.

Rune had only just started accelerating her weapon, and she stumbled as half her concrete platform broke away. The remaining half wobbled, and on top of that Rune's power lost its grip on everything else and she dropped the chunk of masonry. There was a double crash, making Taylor wince, but she spun to face Stormtiger and focused her telekinesis as her opponent tried to blast her with a torrent of compressed air.

Taylor had to drop the gravel to do what she was trying to do, but she caught the air current in a psychic grip and jumped into the air with a self-motivating push at the same time. Stormtiger passed just below her, not expecting that, then Taylor released the air current again and let it shove Stormtiger hard just as he tried to slow down, sending him cannoning into Rune and knocking both of them out of sight onto the roof next door.

Taylor considered going after them, but instead she ran to the edge of the roof as soon as she landed. There was a big pile of concrete and masonry in the middle of the road, which fortunately hadn't hit anyone, and she remembered what dad had said about all the damage capes did and just left lying around in the street.

She jumped down to ground level to help clean up, using her telekinesis to move the bits of rubble out of the roadway.

It took longer than she'd expected, and by the time she was done the Nazi capes had clearly left.


Coil put down the phone, and rubbed his temples.

Tattletale had told him about how well the bank job had gone, and the answer was… not especially well, but not terribly either as far as Tattletale was concerned. They hadn't stolen any of the actual money in the vault, but none of them had been caught, and they'd at least managed to snag the cash from an ATM in the chaos from Grue's darkness and Bitch's dogs everywhere.

And he was going to have to take that, because – for no reason he could readily understand – in the timeline where he'd been doing what he'd actually aimed to do that day a two-ton lump of masonry had fallen out of the sky onto the snatch van… turning the engine into an expensive, thin piece of scrap metal.

Whereupon that pink cat cape had opened the doors of the snatch van to make sure everyone was all right, and found a trussed-up preteen girl in the back.

Coil had sworn very loudly, then dropped the timeline and split again, but his second attempt hadn't worked out. The times and distances simply hadn't worked out right, and there'd been a gun battle with police instead of a clean grab.

So now he had a moderately capable escapologist team, but no Dinah Alcott.

Still. He'd recover.

He always did.


AN:


This is one of the things that came out of my NaNoWriMo sprint.

Taylor's got the Changer form of Eevee, which can evolve. But her power is to change into Eevee and back to her human form – so nothing stops her from changing into Eevee again when she's, say, Espeon, in order to get access to a different Eeveelution.

Plz nerf.