I was ready to face the dragon.

Of course, if I were straightforward about my intentions people might get the wrong idea, so I'd made up a ridiculous lie about taking up jogging as a hobby. Anyone who knew the first thing about me would have seen through it, but fortunately for me…

"Fine," said Dad. "Just be careful, it's late and there are some real creeps out there, alright kiddo?"

Nobody knew me. Not Dad. Not Emma either. She'd never believe that I would ever tug on the most decorated parahuman in the Bay.

"I will," I said, walking out the door without looking back, a little pep in my step. For the first time in years, I felt like there might be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Was I brave?

Yeah… no. If you think bravery is what convinces someone to fight a dragon you've lived a sheltered life. Nothing against you, I'd give anything to be so innocent again.

So why was I doing this?

Spite? Well… still no, but you're getting closer. Earlier today, Sophia had thrown my journal into a toilet. I'd risked my life for the information in that journal. It contained everything I needed to get my life turned around. And Sophia had thrown it in the toilet. Sophia had done worse of course, trashing a journal probably wasn't even top ten. I don't know why I'd let it get to me.

For whatever reason, I'd made the stupid, impulsive decision to go to a teacher. Mrs Knott. Before today, I'd almost liked her.

Then she'd given me Winslow's signature run around. All the typical bullshit. I had no evidence. It would be my word against hers. And what about the fallout for poor Sophia? Oh how awful, to be considered a bully, such a terrible label! Why it might ruin her entire life! We can't act without an obscene amount of evidence that you will never, ever fucking be able to get, so don't even try. Oh and one more thing.

Her dad's a lawyer.

Yeah, Mrs Knott hadn't been talking about Sophia. Emma. Fucking Emma, and her father Alan Barnes. Funny thing. I hadn't even mentioned innocent little Emma in my complaint, so how come Mrs Knott was bringing her up? Ain't that a damn hoot!

Hehehe…

So you see… Ya see they'd known all along! The principals, the teachers, they'd seen what was happening, the abuse poor Taylor Hebert was put through and it was perfectly fine. Perfectly acceptable. My dad wasn't a lawyer. I couldn't sue the school. Ya see, nobody cared. Not about me, not even about right and wrong. Just power. Who could hurt them and who couldn't. I couldn't, so I didn't matter.

Was that why I wanted to fight Lung?

To stoke my ego? To prove I was powerful?

Closer. I was poor, friendless, awkward, and had shitty grades. I did have one thing going for me though. Superpowers.

A C-list teleportation ability. I could mark solid objects with invisible stamps, and teleport objects between them. My power had a weight limit, the closer to the stamp the heavier. Up to three times my weight if I was within ten feet of a stamp, down to one pound anywhere within 150 feet.

So I know what you're thinking, and yeah, I thought it too. Just teleport some nails directly into Lung's brain, and presto- fight over! Unfortunately no. I couldn't teleport into solid or living objects, because of course I couldn't. Only into air and water.

Fortunately, I could sense where I could and couldn't teleport up to 200 feet within a stamp. Call it a stamp sense. Solid and living objects were no-no's which gave me a general idea of what was happening anywhere near one of my stamps.

That's how I'd found Lung's headquarters.

The initial idea had been to slap a gangbanger's coat with a stamp, and use it to teleport to their headquarters, thus verifying the location of ABB headquarters. Problem was, as the biggest loser at Winslow, I wasn't exactly in the know about what my classmates did after school, much less which were actual gangbangers.

I'd settled for slapping a teleportation stamp onto the sweater of an asian wearing red and green in the cafeteria and using my stamp sense to reveal any suspicious activity. To my pleasant surprise, most of the kids I'd thought were in gangs were just posers trying to fit in. It had taken me seven tries before I'd finally gotten a hit.

I'd teleported in on a scene of Lung testing an invention of a blue-eyed new cape on one of his henchmen… From outside the building of course, I'd peeped on them like a voyeur, and then teleported away before they noticed.

I'd written all about it in the journal- the location, an action plan for defeating Lung, and so much more- and I hadn't been able to stop Sophia from flushing it down the drain, just like I hadn't been able to stop her from turning my best friend against me, or stuffing me into a locker full of month-old, used tampons. I was pathetic, and my life was such a goddamn joke that half the school had left me in there to rot. Emma had smirked at me when I'd finally returned from the hospital. They'd almost killed me, and nothing had changed.

Nobody had cared… Nobody cared… Nobody would ever care…

And somewhere along the line, I'd stopped caring too.

So why fight a dragon?

Because why not?

Oh and one more thing. I know you're fucking thinking it, but it's not true. This is exactly why I could never tell Dad what was happening. I'm not planning on commiting some elaborate suicide. Killing myself would mean defeat, and I would never let Emma beat me. I had an airtight plan to take down Lung, and yes it would work.

It would work, it had to, there was no reason to think it wouldn't.

Of course, Lung was the most decorated cape in Brockton Bay, and I'd only had my powers for a couple of months, but… My plan would work. Probably. I thought so at least. And no, I'm not just saying that.

So yeah, Lung was screwed. He may have faced down an Endbringer, but he'd never had to fight me before, and I'd once almost managed to scratch Sophia, so…

… um…

There really were a lot of Asians in the Docks. I know, I know, brilliant observation there Tay. Kyushu had been attacked by Leviathan, and nine and a half million had died before the Endbringer retreated. Tens of millions of refugees, and almost a hundred thousand had fled to Brockton Bay. It had been a good day, relatively speaking.

Most Endbringer attacks ended in total annihilation, and nine and a half million dead was a hell of a lot better than a hundred million, which was what people had expected at the time. Compared to much of the world, even much of the United States, Brockton Bay was thriving.

The Docks weren't a pretty place. The last three buildings I'd passed had been abandoned, men loitered in packs of red and green, women didn't wear quite enough clothing to be considered anything other than sexual objects, and I couldn't escape the smell of rancid garbage. It had been different when I was a child, better. But for all the refugees were poor, for all crime in the streets, they could at least take solace that they were in one of the better cities.

The Bay had been unimportant enough to avoid getting nuked after the Simurgh had announced her presence by taking control of the launch codes. Two billion dead, major tech cities destroyed, Boston and Washington devastated. It had taken just a few days for the various militaries around the world to denuclearize, but the damage had already been done. It had been a blow in other ways as well. We'd never be able to build conventional weaponry against the Endbringers, our only hope was to rely on the capes. But even Eidolin was no match for an Endbringer.

It was a grim reality of earth bet. We were being exterminated slowly, with no solution in sight.

There was a famous earth aleph comic about an Alexandria cape named Superman. He was an alien who could fly, was invincible, and could shoot lasers. He dedicated his life to saving humanity. Little things, like flying around saving cats from trees, to big things, like fighting monsters on par with Behemoth. A nice fantasy, I could see why it had grown so popular. Nobody like that existed here. Made people desperate. It was sad. Some people even idolized a murderous psychopath like Lung. Not me. I planned to beat him.

The tennis ball in my pocket held one of my teleportation stamps, the other was connected to a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. It had been a hassle getting a stamp down there. I'd sent a fan letter to the London Protectorate, complete with a teleportation stamp attached to it, teleported to the airport using that stamp, reapplied the stamp to the back of the cargo airplane, and teleported back to my bedroom. From there, I'd waited for a few hours, gotten a rock, and teleported back to the airplane halfway through its flight to London. I'd almost been knocked out by the 300 mile per hour winds, but I'd managed to move the teleportation stamp to the rock, and teleported comfortably back to the bedroom as the rock and with it my other stamp free fell into the ocean. I hadn't even crashed against my bed as I'd been afraid of, as my speed seemed to carry over relative to my teleportation stamp. Since I'd been falling with the rock, my speed relative to my teleportation stamp had been zero, which was apparently what mattered when teleporting.

I'd had to replace the stamp I'd been using to track the ABB with the one on the rock on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. It'd have been nice to be able to track their movements, but I couldn't beat Lung without the Atlantic stamp. Now the only difficulty would be getting a stamp close enough to Lung to teleport him. He'd have to be within ten feet of the ball, and I'd have to be within two hundred. I had to be within two hundred feet of the stamp to activate it, even if I wasn't a part of the teleportation myself.

Oh yeah, and I could only teleport from one stamp to the other, I couldn't do any self-referential teleportation within one stamp's range. Because I didn't exactly want to teleport to the bottom of the Atlantic, I couldn't teleport myself until after I'd taken care of Lung and could afford to replace the stamp in the Atlantic. So that was basically the game. If I got within two hundred feet of him without him noticing, I won. If he noticed me, he'd win. Luckily, I knew their headquarters which gave me a big advantage.

I'd place a stamp by the door, hide behind the nearest corner of the building, and teleport him away as soon as he left the building. With any luck, I'd also be able to get Oni Lee, and whoever the third cape was as well. If not, that was what the tennis ball was for. I'd replace the seal in the Atlantic, place it on the ball, throw that fucker for all I was worth, and teleport to its location, reapply stamps wherever, and repeat. In summary, Plan B was to turn and run with my tail between my legs. I was a teleporter though, with limited extrasensory abilities extending almost a city block, so it wasn't a bad plan. Probably.

Alright, I was only about a few blocks from their headquarters. I squeezed my tennis ball. I could do this. I could do this. Go time.

The street was unlit, so I noticed all my careful plans coming apart through my stamp sense rather than my eyes. Lung was on the move, walking parallel to me two streets over, and he had about thirty mooks with him. I sensed that the gangbangers were holding things in their hands. Guns.

I squashed the impulse to teleport them away. Guns were light, and they were already within my range. Lung wasn't, and he was a lot more dangerous than the guns. He'd notice if I disarmed all his grunts, and then I'd lose the element of surprise.

Do the smart thing Taylor.

Unexpected things happened. Lung was near me, yes, but he wasn't going to cross my path unless I let him. Walk away Tay. Try again tomorrow. Get the ambush ready, execute Plan A on a day where they started in their evil lair like I'd expected.

They'd stopped.

It would be very wise, I was sure, to take this opportunity to escape. But how could I, when I noticed that the building separating me from them had a perfectly good fire escape? Like an automaton powered by sheer stupidity, I was on the roof looking down at them, cursing my idiocy and lack of discipline.

Follow the damn plan you idiot! Are you trying to get yourself killed?

I crawled closer, so I could hear what they were saying.

Lung snarled, "...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?"

Well fuck.

I'd like to say that I said "YOLO!" and tossed the ball down at Lung, killed the bad guy, and saved the day. Actually no, that would've been dumb as hell. At least it'd have been ballsy though, and somehow still not half as dumb as what I actually did.

ooOoo

"Fuck," said Tattletale, slamming down the landline in her team's evil hidden lair. She slammed it a few more times for good measure. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

"Eloquent," said Regent. "This is exactly why I follow you over Faultline, aside from the fact that she refused to offer me a job. Faultline may keep her team better informed, may reward them with ten times the pay, but she doesn't have your je ne sais quoi. And I do mean that literally."

Feigning sarcasm. Concern actually genuine. Concerned about who? He ran away from his father. A villain. Heartbreaker. Worried he's coming to ge-

Grue and Bitch had wandered over as well. Great, looked like they'd be having an impromptu team meeting. Her outburst had been a mistake. She didn't like lying to her team, but she liked living more. They had a freedom she lacked. They didn't have dirt on him, they could leave and Coil wouldn't pursue. And if they left, well, she'd either be stuck in some room, forced into dependency on hard drugs, or she'd just be dead. Not quite sure which Coil would choose, not quite sure which she'd prefer.

Tattletale summoned up a smile. "He told me Lung and Oni Lee were going to try to kill us tonight."

Grue and Regent shared a look.

"Well it's been a pleasure," said Regent. "But it appears our time together is at an end. Brian, you want in on a pair of train tickets to Philly?"

Grue hesitated.

"You can't seriously be considering staying," said Regent. "Sure we've had a few scrapes with Lung, but we've never had him pissed off enough to come after us in our lair. If he wants us dead, we'll have to fight him eventually. It's not a battle we can win. So we do what we always do. Bail. This time it just means moving on to another city."

"Right," said Grue. "You're right. I know you're right. We're small time and we do small time jobs. We're below the concern of anyone really dangerous, that's how we survive. That was always the plan. Nothing lasts forever."

Concerned about Lung. Does not believe survival through conflict with ABB is likely. Deal with Coil over sister makes him want to stay. Does not want to abandon her. Not again.

Again?

Triggered while scared stiff as stepfather beat sister. Didn't lift a finger, just wanted to hide. Explains sensory deprivation of power. Darkness allows him to hide. Silence blocks her screams. Overly masculine persona to run from his obvious cowardice.

"Boss is testing our balls. He wants to see how we handle pressure," said Tattletale. Namely whether or not she would turn on him. Yeah she'd been embezzling funds, making some overtures to his mercenaries, but she wasn't prepared yet. She'd thought she'd have more time. She should've seen it coming, all these jobs in ABB territory, of course Lung would eventually do something about it.

Stupid, stupid, stupid Sarah. Should've seen it coming. Was it strange that she was angrier at Coil for getting one over on her than at Lung for his responsibility in her ineluctable death?

Fuck it, she'd just rally the troops like she always did.

"When the dragon comes for us, what do you do? Fight or flight… Or freeze," said Tattletale. "Anyone can talk big. Anyone can think big. But you don't know what kind of a man you are until you're actually in the situation."

Regent snorted. "Guess I'm a pussy then."

Yeah, Heartbreaker junior wasn't someone she could emotionally blackmail. Of course… He was also probably no stranger to jumping through hoops to please the whims of a selfish asshole.

"He wants to see if we can survive this. Just tonight. Then he'll send help," said Tattletale. "If we can prove ourselves, he'll give us bigger and better jobs. More money."

That was for Bitch.

"I do love money," said Regent. "But I love living more."

"Perfectly reasonable," said Tattletale, smirking. She loved this part! "Keep it on the dl, but boss is a precog and a miserly bastard. He can see a future, and he's not going to throw us away needlessly."

Well, he certainly wasn't going to throw them away. Actually, he probably would. She'd just told them his powers, and she was pretty sure their lair was bugged…

She winced. She'd made a mistake. Fuck it, she hadn't meant to, it was just so fun to reveal that last critical piece of information! She'd say it was better than sex, if she didn't find the idea of copulation utterly rebarbative.

"In other words," said Tattletale. "He's just fucking with us. As long as we're working for him, fate will always be on our side."

Grue let out a breath, and shook his head. "Okay. I can't believe I'm considering this, but how exactly are we going to survive a night with the entire ABB gunning for our heads?"

Tattletale smiled. "We take initiative! Bring the fight to them! Lung is strong, but he's not exactly mobile. If we can take out Oni Lee they can't do shit to us. We're gonna be fine, ya hear?"

What? It was a good plan, relatively speaking. It could work. In theory. Maybe. Lots of things were possible. Maybe Lung would stub his toe and die, and everything would work out perfectly.

Clearly, Coil wanted her dead. Not so much as to do it himself, and possibly risk alienating her teammates, but if Lung were to do the work for him he wasn't going to stop it. Did he expect her to run to him begging for protection, eager to become some controllable junkie? No, he wanted something far, far more terrible from her.

He wanted her to admit that he'd outsmarted her. And then he'd just kill her anyway.

Lisa shot her team a vulpine smile.

So yeah, they were all definitely gonna die.

ooOoo

I lobbed the ball underhanded, while I quivered near the edge of the building and hoped that Lung and his goons didn't notice me. If I'd have played softball, or maybe just been a more sportsy girl in general, the tennis ball might've hit Lung. Or at least gotten within ten feet of him. Instead, I missed wide right by at least the length of a couple city roads. The athletes on television really underselled how damn hard it was to throw a ball accurately. Or maybe I should've known that everything would go wrong. It always did.

Like Emma whispering into my ear, a thought inexorably floated to the surface. I'd known this would happen. I'd made plans, but I'd known they wouldn't work, not against Lung. I'd been dressing up what I'd actually been trying to do, because I hadn't wanted to admit what I was doing. Why I'd gone to Lung, instead of taking a few handfuls of aspirin.

I'd just been too scared to do it myself.

No!

That wasn't true! I really did want to defeat Lung, I really had thought it was possible!

My stealth had been good at least. They didn't notice the ball until it hit the ground. A few of Lung's goons shot at it, until Lung slammed one of his trigger-happy henchmen into the pavement.

"Fool," Lung whispered. "A harmless ball. The blonde bitch is trying to distract us. Wait. Listen. Hear her skittering."

Well, the ball wasn't close enough to teleport him to the bottom of the Atlantic, so there went that plan. It had also stopped rolling, so I couldn't exactly use it to run away. Plan A and Plan B had both failed, so yeah, I guess it was time to improvise.

"You say I skitter," I bellowed idiotically. "I'll show you skitter, you um… Fuck you!"

With that I flipped him off and put a teleportation stamp on the roof.

Nice one Taylor. Many have compared my improvisational skills to a pile of shit. Not quite fair to the pile of shit. Afterall, a pile of shit didn't get you killed.

"I don't have time for this fool." Lung sighed. "Shoot her."

Lung… Not an idiot. Probably should've realized that from his decade of combat experience. Would've been nice if he'd tried to engage me in close combat so I could beat him though.

I was tempted to teleport their guns away. But no… Guns were more liable to miss than in the movies, and they could barely see me. Lung was still the bigger threat.

I fled to the center of the roof, away from their gunfire.

"You scared, pussy," I taunted again, trying to fight off panic. "That why you won't come up and fight me like a man? You scared of a little girl?"

"A little blonde girl in this city is known for maiming petty thieves," said Lung mildly. "Size, sex, misleading in my experience. Afraid? No. Cautious? Yes."

I really should've played more softball growing up. I had a sinking feeling that my only opportunity to win this battle had been a more accurate throw at the beginning. Or better yet, I could've come up with a plan that didn't require me to magically develop an aim in a life-or-death situation.

"Men," Lung commanded, his gravelly voice assured. "Surround the building. If she gets near the edge, shoot her. If she tries to escape through an entrance, shoot her. If she jumps, wait for her to hit the ground, then shoot her."

Fuck, fuck, fuck! If only my power weren't so fucking lame. If I could teleport within the location of one stamp, rather than having to jump from one to the other, I might be able to make a fight of it.

Armsmaster? Miss Militia? Nobody was going to save me. I was going to die.

Goddam him and his nefarious lack of idiocy. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Stop trembling Taylor, and think! I was going to die! About something productive! Well on the bright side, it turned out that I wasn't actually suicidal, I was absolutely sure that I didn't want to be murdered tonight. I'd do basically anything to avoid it. And to do that I had to…

Get a stamp within ten feet of Lung. Whatever it took. And don't rely on aim. Can't. Mitigate your weakness then. Alright, I had Plan D, but it really sucked, so let's move onto Pl-

Lung languidly lit the building on fire. Plan D then. Okay, keep track of him Taylor, you're probably going to only have one shot at him, and ten feet isn't as wide a margin as you think.

Okay… Okay. No more thinking. Action. Plan D. I put my stamp on a rock, and threw it in the direction of Lung. It didn't get close enough to hit him, but that wasn't the point.

"The fuck!" Said a goon.

I'd teleported their guns away, safely to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Okay, now phase two. I reapplied the stamp to another rock, held it in my hand, and launched myself off the roof. Not my best plan, but now that I'd shown my hand, I really had to hit Lung before he realized what my powers were. Unfortunately, my suicide jump didn't land me anywhere near him, and I slammed into the pavement ineffectually.

Lung still seemed bewildered by my impersonation of a fly splatting on a windshield. I threw my rock at him. He blasted it with fire, which didn't much affect the stamp at all, but unfortunately blew the rock back in my face.

I flung myself out of the way of the fireball. Naturally, I took off a shoe, and heaved it at him.

He blasted it away, but the shoe had just been a feint, the real stamp was on my mask, which I'd chucked well above him. Out of his sightline. People were bad at looking up.

And just for a moment, he was in range. I teleported him to the other stamp. A rock that had settled in the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. A pit of dread welled in my stomach.

Lung was a regenerator, almost impossible to kill, and if you didn't kill him he transformed into a dragon, so I'd pulled out all the stops even if I somehow knew it'd be futile. A person like me just didn't beat a legend like Lung. Still though, I thought my power was more dangerous than it first appeared. The stamp was under about 9000 feet of water. About 1000 miles from any land. If he somehow survived the pressure, he'd suffocate, if he didn't drown, the expanding nitrogen in his blood would kill him, and if he survived that, he'd still be liable to dehydration and exhaustion. But somehow, I knew he'd make it out, I'd only have made him angrier, and everyth-

Huh?

He was dead? The pressure had killed him, I sensed it through the stamp. I'd killed Lung.

Huh.

Well… Maybe I'd feel something after I'd dealt with all of his henchmen, who were currently trying to murder me. Although probably not, I'd probably just be dead.

Funny thing. My teleportation stamps could move things between them in two different ways. One way was how I'd been using them for most of this fight, direct teleportation. The other way was as a portal. Rather than teleporting objects between locations I could simply connect the two locations together, in small circular portals. The portals had the same range as my teleportation, they needed to be no more than about 100 feet from a stamp, but had the additional limitation of needing to be on the same surface as the stamp. When I used the portal technique underwater, I was essentially creating a faucet. The portals were limited to inorganic solid surfaces.

I'd looked up in an encyclopedia the pressure at the bottom of the Atlantic. Near as I could tell, it was about 10,000 psi. For reference, a water jet cutter has a pressure of… 90,000 psi. So yeah, I wasn't going to be able to cut through steel anytime soon, but some soft-ass flesh shouldn't be a problem. I'd tested it on one of my rats I'd captured when I'd first started experimenting with my stamps, and had been quite satisfied with the results.

I placed my hand on the ground, reapplied the teleportation stamp from the mask to the concrete, and opened up a pin-sized portal in the pavement underneath the nearest goon's left foot. A geyser of seawater ripped right through it. One down. I repeated the process a dozen times, incapacitating the men nearest me before they could so much as let out a cry about their fallen leader.

The henchmen continued to swarm me, they must've seen me jump from the building, and I dispatched them easily, teleporting their guns away, and opening portals beneath their feet. The geysers sent them tumbling, legs broken, until I adjusted the portals to be smaller, still enough to tear through their feet with ease. Soon I had thirty moaning men beneath me, and a fucking burning building next to me. Umm…

Now what was I going to do?

I cannot emphasize enough how little I'd considered the absurd possibility that I might actually win. I mean, I wasn't an idiot. I'd been fighting motherfucking Lung for christ's sake, he'd fought a damn Endbringer and lived to tell the tale, only a fool of the highest caliber would think that some newbie cape with a piddly ass teleportation power could beat him.

So what the hell?

Even if I'd defeated Lung, surely one of his henchmen should've taken me out. I mean, I'd been bullied for years, and nothing I'd done had worked then. It would've been the height of foolishness to think that I'd somehow be good at caping of all things.

Well… Well?

Still not dead. I'd still um… Won?

Um…

Okay then. Lung down…

Next up was… Kaiser, I guess?

Um sure… Sure?

Okay really now, how the fuck had trying to solo half the fucking ABB actually worked?

Um, but what to do about the dying henchmen? Call the PRT? Yeah right, good one Tay. I'd killed Lung, and he didn't have a kill order. I might actually be birdcaged for that. Oh fuck. Oh fuck, I'd killed somebody. Yeah he was a monster, and no I didn't really feel guilty about it, but I really really didn't want to go to jail. I mean, I had like, years of life in front of me apparently, because my plans for the future had all been mucked up on account of them actually working.

Could I claim self-defense?

No, no, once the PRT knew how my powers worked, they'd know it was premeditated. But it really wasn't fair. Yes, I'd meant to kill Lung, yes I'd meticulously planned out how to do it, but, your Honor, I really hadn't thought it would work. I'd expected… Well I'd expected that something would go wrong, like everything else in my life did. I mean, I was puny Taylor Hebert, the biggest loser at Winslow High, ask anyone and they'd tell you: she really shouldn't have been that competent your Honor.

Somehow, I doubted that my brilliant defense would stand up in court.

Ahh fuck it. I'd never really trusted the PRT anyways. They were better than the villains, but they were the ones who'd let Brockton Bay become such a shithole in the first place. And they really had let it, hadn't they? I'd been the one to stop Lung. Me. Not them. I was under no illusions. I wasn't the Michael Jordan of capery. Armsmaster, Assault, Velocity, Miss Militia, Aegis, Clockblocker, and Vista all had better powers than me. They'd failed because they'd tried to do things legally, take him alive, give him a trial. I hadn't bothered. I'd gone for the kill. The PRT would've never approved of my methods, the general public wouldn't have either, even Mom and Dad would have hated what I was doing.

All that moralizing, all that hand-wringing, and what was there to show for doing things the right way? A decade of gang rule. Girls sold into sexual slavery, teenagers sold hard drugs, decline of legitimate business, increase in armed robbery, rape and hate crimes. I knew I was supposed to feel guilty about killing Lung. I just didn't. I didn't feel proud either. It felt more like I'd completed the first paragraph of a five-page essay.

The PRT didn't want me? Fine. I could do a lot more good on my own.

So um… Time for Plan E?

I located my mask, and put it on. I placed a hand on each and every henchmen. Near the middle, I replaced my Atlantic teleportation stamp with one on the pavement. I walked to the side of one of the abandoned buildings that wasn't actively on fire, and applied my other teleportation stamp to it, pretending to lean against it to catch my breath. I'd effectively defanged myself, but they didn't know that. Soon I was facing the ABB forces I'd decimated.

"Lung is dead," I said flatly. "I'm a teleporter. A strong one. Anyone I mark, I can teleport anywhere, and sense whatever they're doing. It took me a while to mark Lung, but once I did, he was dead. You'll never find the body. You might think I'm restricted by line of sight, or weight or something else like most other teleporters are."

Without warning, I teleported one of the goons behind me fifteen feet above the building, and let him crash down. I repeated the process a few more times to make sure I got my message across.

"I've marked each and every one of you, just as I did Lung. I could kill all of you," I said softly. "But I'm new to this. A soft Arcadian suburban girl. You might've thought I was some wannabe cape from my fight with Lung. My childish taunts. He was right, I was trying to trick him. Didn't work. But this is the real me. I'm Everywhere."

I laughed quietly. "So it didn't matter. He's dead. It wasn't all a mask. I am a soft Arcadian girl. Somewhat. I'm what you might call an idealist. I believe in redemption." I couldn't help but laugh at my lies. "For some. He was Lung. A parahuman. A cape. You're not. You don't have superpowers. Lung is scary. Excuse me. Lung was scary. So what choice did you really have? Fear. Such a powerful influence. I've learned that much. You will find your family. You will leave this city. You will tell no one of my abilities. In return, I will give you this second chance. I will allow you to live. Violate my terms, and well… Lung would love some company, I'm sure."

"Am I understood?" I whispered.

The men, each and every one of them, nodded. I saw terror in their eyes. Of me?

Really?

They were scared of poor, weak, pathetic Taylor Hebert? The powerless girl who'd not been able to escape the abuse of three dumb bullies, no matter how hard she'd tried? The girl so ineffectual, so stupid, that she was failing out of fucking Winslow? I'd fucking gotten my own mom killed, she'd been rushing to pick me up from school, distracted, that's why she hadn't noticed the truck that'd t-boned her through the window. Hehehe. The girl who'd finally given up, finally summoned the courage to end it all, and had instead somehow toppled the most decorated cape in Brockton Bay?

I couldn't help but chuckle, laugh, cackle hysterically at the absurdity of all. Although admittedly my laughter was drowned out by the roaring fire beside me. It billowed a dark smoke you didn't normally see in a camp fire, from burnt plastic and electrical wiring probably. A rare sight, which I'd caused. Was it good? Bad? My near flawless victory was probably a sign of the apocalypse.

"Good," I murmured, and started to limp back home. "But remember…"

With my back to them, without breaking stride, I dropped one last henchmen from the building. He landed with a wet thud, a wail of pain ripped from his throat.

"I'm always watching."