I tried writing a couple of chapters for a Gravity Falls x Steven Universe x Ben 10 fic (With a bunch of OCs) before even posting any of it to my account, and that not only took a bit of time but also kinda exhausted me.

So now I'm getting back to this story and writing a little more of it. But do please read the aforementioned story if you're a fan of Gravity falls, Steven Universe and/or Ben 10. It's called 'Aliens, Gems and Monsters, Oh My!' and you can find it in my posted stories.

Also, Worm story idea; Taylor has a dog that somehow has a shard and activates its powers. Begins helping Taylor and the girl in question has no idea what's happening.

Oh, by the way, I'm still alive and so is this story.

And now back to Taylor.

When Taylor left home (making sure to follow Valka's instructions and calling her father first), she had already planned to go out in her alternate persona and see what ruckus she could cause. Be that intentional or unintentional. She had to admit to herself, it felt fun to be who she now was. Not a few months ago she was a sullen, borderline depressed teen girl, but now she felt much happier. Much more… full. She wasn't sure if that was due to Valka's influence, getting away from her old school, or having what was most likely the strongest set of powers in the world.

Perhaps it was a combination of all three.

But the true scope of her powers had yet to really dawn on her, and Taylor knew that. Valka had displayed very little to her personally, but even from just the minuscule glimpses, Taylor caught she couldn't even begin to describe how reality-warping strong the oldest Eternal's powers were. It was like she took reality as a mere suggestion whenever the mood struck her.

And so, Taylor had decided to be responsible, something she was rather good at doing despite her new attitude instilled somewhat by Valka. Whilst she'd let herself have fun when she'd like to, doing her duty as a superhero stood paramount.

But fortunately, there wasn't anyone currently in danger that Taylor knew of, so she allowed herself to enjoy having fun. Which currently came in the form of frightening people by leisurely strolling through Brockton Bay.

Taylor chuckled mentally to herself every time someone caught sight of her and were startled backwards. She knew it was somewhat mean to scare people like this, but it was also too harmless and fun to really stop. And it was also really easy since all she had to do was anything she did normally, but as Styx. Well, that and try not to laugh aloud every time someone almost fell over from seeing her.

Other reactions varied from indifference to awe. By the time most had gotten over her just casually walking down the street, they had whipped out their phones to quickly take pictures of the new superheroine. Whilst it hadn't yet been publicly or officially announced that she had defeated Lung, (or that he even had been defeated,) enough concrete rumours had spread across PHO that it was basically an open secret that she was 'The Dragon Slayer'. So it came as no surprise to Taylor that people wanted to take pictures of her as Styx.

but now, her walk had taken a metaphorically different direction. When a girl with dark-blonde hair and freckles splatted across her face fell down after being bumped into, Taylor found herself compelled to go over to help her. Maybe it was sympathy from her new heroic mantle, or perhaps empathy from being the one in the position of having trouble and nobody helping. Either way, Taylor still felt she ought to help for some reason or another.

"Need a hand?" Taylor asked, stopping in front of the girl, who at closer inspection seemed to be around her own age.

"If you wouldn't mind." The girl replied, looking up to meet Taylor's gaze and stopping short. Her eyes widened upon realizing exactly who was helping her up. She appeared frozen there like a deer in headlights, absolutely lost for words staring up at Taylor.

"Are you okay?" Taylor asked, once again praising the cosmos for the perfect ability to hide her mirth.

"Uh... yeah... fine..." The girl responded as she finally, and gingerly, took Taylor's offered hand as the latter pulled the former up. "Thank you."

"No worries! The Name's Styx."

"Uh, yeah. I heard about you..." the girl made an effort to both maintain eye contact and try to look just about anywhere other than Taylor's skull. Jeez, was Taylor's form really that off-putting? Shaman had seemed fine-ish with it.

Maybe this person had pyrophobia?

What Styx was unaware of was that Lisa did in fact not have pyrophobia but was instead simply terrified of the one thing in the world that she couldn't read. Lisa would occasionally admit to herself that she relied on her power a little too much, but who could blame her? It was practically ingrained into her now. Not to mention how much it fuelled her 'smarter than thou' attitude. But now, it was gone with the wind as she stood in front of the person who caused it to leave.

For the first time since she was called Sarah Livsey, she felt completely and utterly powerless, both literally and metaphorically.

But now, two paths had appeared in front of her. One led her away from Styx and to a definitively safer path. The other led further into the rabbit hole and had the slim possibility to pay off more than handsomely. But without her safety net (and often safety blanket), Lisa was left in the dark about which decision she should make. As it stood, her chances of picking the best option were just about 50/50. A flip of the coin. But there was just one, singular factor that tipped the scales of one option just a smidgen.

Styx was a wildcard. And if there was anything that Coil hated most, it was wildcards.

She was new, proven to be incredibly powerful, power still unknown and had so far shown heroic tendencies. Perhaps if Lisa was able to explain her sob story, she'd help her get rid of the black and white snake.

The only problem of that plan looped around to being her initial problem; she still couldn't get a read on Styx. In any other scenario where she possibly found a powerful out, Lisa would use her power to make sure she'd say exactly what the person needed to hear to help bail her out. But with radio static when it concerned Styx, Lisa was back to the coinflip chance of if Styx would help her or not.

Oh well. Coil was going to kill her one way or another, may as well take the chance of fighting back.

"Um, if you don't mind, could I just walk with you?" Lisa tried to ask like a normal person, having forgotten particularly how to after over-reliance on her powers. It was affecting her more than she initially thought.

Styx leaned back and tapped her… chin? Teeth? It was hard to tell what her intended motion was without a bottom jaw. "Yeah sure. Don't see why not." She shrugged. "So long as you can entertain in the meanwhile.

Lisa felt an unknown feeling (fear? Relief? Anticipation?) bubble up inside her.

"So," Styx began as they started walking together, "I'd assume you live in Brockton because we honestly don't have many reasons to visit." She chuckled.

"Uh, yeah. I do. But I actually moved here about a year ago." Lisa answered. She hoped she wasn't sweating under Styx's hollow gaze. It felt as if her fiery skeletal sockets were boring straight into her soul to pry out every last little secret in her. Was this how other people felt when Lisa used her power on them?

"Yeesh. Can't say that was the best move." Styx commented.

Momentarily forgetting just how frightened and on edge she felt, Lisa wasn't able to stop herself from barking out a muffled laugh. It was honestly funny in a macabre sort of way how right Styx was, without even knowing it.

"So, what do you do then? Still in school?" the flaming heroine continued.

"No, I got my GED already. Now I'm a… business consultant." Lisa answered. It technically was true. It was simply far more involved, and criminal, and she didn't get a choice in it.

Styx let out a whistle, emphasizing just how impossible it was for her to do that, let alone speak. "Fancy girl. Must be pretty smart to get out of school at your age."

Lisa let out a smirk. "And how exactly do you know how old I am?"

"I don't. Just a guess." Styx said. She was now walking backwards with her skull resting on folded arms, still staring at Lisa.

"Oh yeah? And what's that?"

"Hmmm… fifteen."

"Sixteen, nice try."

"So I was one year off then. Drat. Still impressive at such an age."

"Thanks." Shame tickled the edge of Lisa's mind from Styx's praise. She'd more used her powers than her own knowledge to obtain her GED. But Lisa pushed the feelings away and focused on gathering information on Styx the old-fashioned way.

Well, that's what she would have done if an explosion didn't suddenly erupt from further down the street.

Quickly bringing her arms up to shield her face from both the heat and tiny debris, Lisa squinted as she tried to make out what had been the cause of the combustion.

"Well, that doesn't look good." Styx offhandedly commented. She turned her skull back to face Lisa. "I should probably stop that, shouldn't I?"

Lisa couldn't reply, because as the colours of both ABB and E88 uniforms began to peak through the dust cloud her stomach sank. She had never been caught in the crossfire of a gang brawl without her edge, but now that she was the reality began to sink into her.

'Man, I am feeling a lot of new feelings today and a lot of them are pure bullshit.' Lisa thought to herself.

In an act of primal instinct, Lisa turned to Styx to see if she could somehow protect her. But instead of finding the simplistically-costumed flaming superheroine, there was an empty space. Swinging her head back in front of herself, Lisa quickly spotted Styx charging into the fray. Along with spotting someone who gave her even more reason to get out of there even quicker.

Crusader was leading the E88 side of the battle. He was one of the harder Empire capes to deal with due to all his ghostly copies of himself. Since they couldn't be hit by anything but sure as hell could hit you, they posed a significant danger to anyone without a brute rating since they could just saunter up and stab their target with no resistance.

So even as Lisa saw Styx unhook her battleaxe from a camouflaged harness on her back, Lisa knew that it'd do little work on the phantom crusaders. But Lisa had forgotten one thing about the flame-faced cape who she was recently speaking with. They were the one person they couldn't predict.

"Hey! Mind if I borrow that?!" Styx shouted out as she moved towards Crusader. Not waiting for an answer, she reached out her free hand towards the Empire cape and before anyone knew properly that Styx was even there, Crusader's iconic 10-foot spear was now in the clutches of Styx.

Lisa blinked.

Crusader blinked.

The E88 thugs blinked.

The ABB thugs blinked.

"…What?" Styx asked with a shrug, unsure as to why everyone was staring at her.

"Hol sie!" Crusader screamed, pointing at her. Obeying the command, his ghosts began moving forward. "You lot, keep showing those kooks the place they belong." He ordered his grunts.

Shaking herself out of her bewilderment, Lisa scurried away to take cover. Finding a suitable and sturdy location around a wall, Lisa made sure that she was still in the perfect position to monitor the fight. As she peeked back around the bricks, she could see Styx dodging swipes and stabs from the incorporeal phantoms. Noticeably, she was not retaliating, which meant she had knowledge about how Crusader's powers worked. She was also slowly but surely dancing her way towards Crusader proper, still holding onto his spear much to the Neo-Nazi's fury.

Hopping over a dual-sweep from two ghosts, Styx fluidly transitioned into a split-kick despite not doing anything to the intangible soldiers. Lisa, having noticed it, determined (even without her powers) that Styx was a trained fighter, so much so that just her muscle memory allowed her to perform moves. That'd make fighting Grue difficult if she could respond to attack instinctively, especially with a brute rating strong enough to handle Lung. Well, that was if the Undersiders were ever unlucky enough to even face Styx in a fight.

"Grahh!"

Lisa's attention snapped back to the fight and was mixed parts distraught and relieved from what she saw. One of the phantoms had caught Styx off guard, impaling her through the chest slightly to the left of its centre. Right through the heart.

"And that is what you get, you idealistic cunt." Crusader sneered.

Styx, seemingly in one last act of defiance, snapped the currently tangible spear by sharply turning and then proceeded to tear the remainder out of her chest. The discarded spearhead vanished into whisps of smoke-like substance before it even hit the ground.

"H-hey," Styx coughed out, "the show's not… not over yet…" and then she collapsed to the ground. Her fire went out as the jawless skull of a head tumbled a foot or two away from the body.

'Well fuck.' Lisa thought. It was the unfortunate likelihood of most solo capes. Without backup in the form of an organization or team, the odds of surviving all that long were slim to none because other people wanted your powers to help them or wanted you dead so that you couldn't pose a threat. Styx's happy-go-lucky attitude and high confidence that Lisa had seen were likely the last nail in the coffin, not taking this line of work seriously enough and expediting Styx's death to only her second expedition. So now Lisa had t- 'what the heck is that.'

Lisa's lamenting was swiftly cut short when lightning began to crackle around Styx's corpse. Slowly, at first, but obviously getting more and more potent in a short period of time. Then, as if pulled by invisible strings, Styx's body rose up and her skull magnetised back to her neck. Reaching a crescendo, the lighting surged through Styx's body as a burst of energy exploded out from her, the fire surrounding their head coming back at full force as it erupted into a pillar of fire before dying down to its normal form. The lightning and the energy faded as they left a completely unblemished Styx standing there defiantly. A gloved hand raised to smooth over the hole in the firefighter jacket.

"Encore, anyone?" Styx quipped.

Lisa quickly followed suit of her power and began short-circuiting.

'What…'

"...the fuck…!?"

"Just happened?" Styx cockily finished everyone's collective thought and exclamation. Flourishing her axe and Crusader's spear, she tilted her body forward and everyone clearly knew that if Styx had a face, she'd be smirking. "This." And she charged again.

But this time she was striking the phantoms.

Each time one of Crusader's ghostly apparitions came close enough to Styx, the arm she was carrying her axe in began to trail thick, ash-like smoke. Then she swung the axe, leaving a somewhat beautiful trail behind, as the weapon sunk into the ghost. Actually, sunk into the ghost.

In a similar fashion to the spear tip earlier, the ghosts quivered and disappeared into wisps of unknown smoky substance that scatter everywhere before evaporating completely.

"Seems that any intangibility can touch you ghosts, Crusader," Styx remarked, pausing her onslaught. She raised up a hand, allowing it to become smoking and revealing it had also changed to an ash-like texture with faintly glowing embers in it. "Oh, and thanks for that power by the way. I think the aesthetic really suits me."

Watching Crusader take an apprehensive step back before Styx charged again, Lisa resigned to the fact that she really didn't like today. Even when Styx finished up with Crusader and turned her attention to the, now fleeing, unpowered grunts she simply wanted to go back to her 'private' apartment and wait for things to become normal.

Bringing her ringing phone up to her ear without even checking the contact, and watching Styx fly between both the E88 and ABB like a pinball, Lisa pressed the answer button. Offering no greeting, she waited for whoever was calling to make themselves known.

"I'm moving the bank heist to Friday," Coil said flatly and immediately.

WHAT.

- - - - - Lazarus - - - - -

Coil sat back in his seat after concluding his call with Tattletale. Secretly smiling, he ruminated over the information that had been presented to him by his borderline insubordinate subordinate. Tattletale had run into Styx whilst in her civilian identity. But it was the gang fight the rookie hero had gotten involved in that the most information had been pried from.

First and foremost, it seemed that Styx's brute rating was even higher than initially anticipated and favoured a transfiguration type. Like the cape Koschei in a way, but immediate revival and no intelligence degradation. He'd have to call off any preparation to kill the cape, as that had now been proven ineffective. More focus would have to be on discovering who they were as to create leverage.

The other piece of information was slightly more troublesome. Styx's demonstration of gaining the exact power she needed to combat Crusader was a cause for concern. This was because, mixed with the effective immortality that Styx possessed, the hero could plausibly gain an indefinite number of powers.

When Coil thought about all of it together, the more is seemed like someone had added Crawler, Eidolon and Koschei to a blender, mixed them together and poured them out into a Styx-shaped mould. If he couldn't bring the cape under his purview, he might just have to treat the up-and-comer as an obstacle to avoid rather than his usual resort of aggressive means.

And thus, it was a good idea to have the Undersiders rob the bank sooner rather than later. With Styx still early into the game, she would unlikely notice that the robbery would actually be a distraction rather than a deliberate attempt at a monetary gain. And with a target too juicy to avoid, she'd be clear and out of the way for him to execute his intended plan. Sure, he might have to sacrifice the Undersiders if Styx proved capable enough, but he'd simply extract Tattletale from PRT custody before she had time to spill anything and have her permanently relocated to his base. If he couldn't get Tattletale out, he could always have her killed like planned.

All in all, things were proceeding as desired.

- - - - - Lazarus - - - - -

"Pingles."

"Nope."

"Coated peanuts?"

"Nope."

"Chocolate wafers."

"Nope."

It was fifteen minutes after the gang fight had been… forcibly concluded, and now with PRT on the scene and performing clean-up. Meanwhile, Clockblocker was trying to guess Styx's favourite snack food, much to the amusement of the present Vista. The two Wards had jumped at the chance to meet Styx and counted themselves lucky school had already let out for the day when Styx began her skirmish.

"Charcoal?" Clockblocker guessed again.

"What? No. Why would you even have guessed that?"

"I don't know, you've got that whole…" Clockblocker gestured to all of Styx's face, "…Thing, going on."

This comment swiftly earned him an elbow in the ribs courtesy of Vista. This time, it was Styx's turn to make a stifled chuckle at the other two capes.

"Well, ignoring snack-brain up here," Vista jabbed a thumb up at the older boy, "it certainly has been nice meeting you, Styx. I can count on one hand how many cool girl capes that I've met in this city."

"Let me guess, Miss Militia, Mouse Protector, Battery, Shaman and Asura?" Styx made an assumption as to whom Vista was referring to.

The young blonde cape tapped her chin in thought. "Okay, make that two hands."

"Oh?" Styx asked, assuming she had been correct in the five she had guessed.

"Well, gotta count me, of course." Vista proudly proclaimed. "And you as well now, unless you aren't as cool as I first thought?"

"Well, I think I'm pretty cool." Styx nodded. "What do you think, Clockblocker?"

"Oh don't ask him!" Vista groaned, tilting her head back and most likely rolling her eyes.

"No, no. I want to hear his answer. It'll… help me build an opinion."

Clockblocker gulped. "Wow, geez, no pressure. Now let me think… I can definitely say that you're intimidating? Scary? Maybe a little badass?"

"But what about cool?" Styx cocked her skull to the side.

"Uhhhm... sure. You're cool. Got that whole 'undead firefighter' thing going for ya." Clockblocker nodded. Both the young female capes giggled at his nonchalant response.

"Alright guys, this has been fun. But I'm gonna head off now. Places to be and all that." Styx said to her two new acquaintances. Whilst neither could see Styx's real face, both Wards could certainly feel the smile she was giving them. The hot-headed teen cape casually waved her goodbye as she began strutting off as if she hadn't just walked out of a gang fight.

Vista and Clockblocker continued to wave as they watched Styx disappear.

"Asura's going to be so mad she didn't get to meet her," Clockblocker whispered to his shorter companion.

"We probably should have warned Styx that she wants to take a friendly swing at her." Vista agreed.