[DC 40 Knowledge/Local check vs Coil. 9+36=45. Success!]

[DC 40 Knowledge/Local check vs Uber. 12+36=48. Success!]

[DC 40 Knowledge/Local check vs Leet. 11+36=47. Success!]

[DC 40 Knowledge/Local check vs Parian. 15+36=51. Success!]

[DC 40 Knowledge/Local check vs Faultline. 4+36=40. Success!]

[DC 40 Knowledge/Local check vs Labyrinth. 19+36=55. Success!]

[DC 40 Knowledge/Dungeoneering check vs Newter. 8+17=25. Failure!]

[DC 40 Knowledge/Dungeoneering check vs Gregor The Snail. 2+17=19. Failure!]

...and, done! It only took a stable internet connection and several dozen Knowledge checks, a handful of which were failures, but Taylor now knew (basically) everything there was to know about the local cape scene! Or at least, everything about the people who were significant enough to get a mention on PHO's BB subforum anyway. But Taylor's a pretty strong cape, after her inspection of her abilities, and what are the odds of some other really strong cape just popping into existence the same week as her? No, any capes in the bay were almost assuredly known to the only forum on the entire internet.

Anyway, threats! Taylor had taken some notes about threats that would need to be dealt with. In the order they'd been discovered:

Threats:

Shadow Stalker

Cauldron

Victor

Oni Lee

Panacea

Tattletale

Coil

That word hadn't been crossed out initially, but when she'd left for a minute to use the restroom, she had returned to find some helpful soul had crossed it out for her! While she was 20 ft away with just a few thin walls between them! Without her hearing a single goddamn thing! Well, message received loud and clear, scary hat lady. Taylor crumpled the note up and tossed it in the trash; there was no need for it now that she'd finished going through the list of capes. And what a list it was!

Shadow Stalker knew somebody was a Master/Stranger cape that had affected at least Emma and possibly the secretary, that this cape was tangentially tied to the locker incident, and was at least capable of thinking the cape might be Taylor (as opposed to Emma, who had been completely fooled). If she brought that information to the Protectorate and PRT, Taylor would probably go to bed in her house, and wake up in a cell. Joining up was out of the question, but so was trying to take out Sophia; Ward-killers had short life-spans. Her best bet was to hope Sophia outed all of this to Piggot, only for Piggot to punish her and consider Taylor not necessarily a villain yet.

Cauldron was Nope not gonna even think about picking that fight.

Victor was a skill thief. Taylor was still iffy about murdering anybody (Sophia only being considered because of long-standing personal reasons), but Victor was somebody Taylor would need to take out at some point, and avoid like the plague until she was ready to do so. Most of the Empire wasn't a big issue; while her powers were rather lacking in ways of directly taking out tougher capes through straightforward combat, she could always lean hard on her social skills to convince people to surrender, or fight each other, or think they were toasters. For similar reasons, Lung was surprisingly a non-issue. Resistance to being mastered wasn't a noted power of his, so it wasn't going to be constantly ramping up while she had him coerced or controlled.

Oni Lee was the bigger concern because he didn't fight fair. Clone-spamming would leave her surrounded, getting attacked constantly while being unable to hurt the real Lee. She was pretty close to bomb-proof, but it wasn't perfect; it might take a few hundred normal grenades for most people to get through her health pool, but most people didn't just happen to have a few hundred grenades on hand. Oni Lee did, though. He had as many as he wanted.

Panacea...wasn't that a weird name to have on this list. But ohhhhh man what a fuckin' time bomb she was. Taylor had a million skill points spread around but not a single one in Profession (Therapist)! It was only due to her new permanently-calm mental state that she was able to sip tea while thinking about how she lives in the same city as a cross between Nilbog and Heartbreaker who's one bad family interaction away from diving headfirst into the deep end of the alignment pool. Taylor figured her social skills were good enough that she could maybe give the girl the therapy she needed anyway, but getting the healer alone long enough to actually have that effect would require the PRT to not be breathing down her neck come morning. Which...who knows at this point?

Tattletale was dangerous to Taylor primarily because Taylor wasn't actually a Master, but a powerful social Thinker. But so was Tattletale. Taylor was pretty confident in her skills against most people...but Sophia had seen through her disguise, and she wasn't even a Thinker. Even if she augmented her skills with items like what her Craft skills could give her, that would take a lot of time and money, and might still be a waste of time if the other Thinker was like 50 points ahead of her on Sense Motive or whatever. The best path forward was an alliance; Sarah wasn't going to actively make her weaker the way Victor would, and truth be told it might be good for Taylor to have one person in the Bay that she could have decent conversation with. The only problem there was...

...Coil. On the one hand, he was the final nail in the "for Pete's sake don't join the Wards" coffin, on top of Shadow Stalker and also how like a quarter of the local heroes were in cahoots with NOPE, SKIPPING THIS STATION ON THE TRAIN OF THOUGHT. Anyway, while he was quite a bastard, he was at least ostensibly against the gangs of the city, and more aligned with the heroes than villains. He wanted to rule, and to that end he wanted to keep order, and to that end he wanted to push out all the (other) villains. Taylor wasn't sure she liked it, but she could at least respect his commitment. Hiring ("hiring") Lisa at gunpoint wasn't doing him any favors, but it was better she was being aimed by somebody who had the Bay's best interests in mind, as opposed to just randomly making things worse for the citizenry.

No, Taylor's problem with Coil was more that he would probably try and get her working for him too, and he wasn't great at taking no for an answer. So best to stay off his radar for a little bit until she had made a name for herself and couldn't be disappeared into his Bond Villain Lair. In any case, while she wouldn't work for him, she was perfectly fine working with him, so long as he didn't do anything like...completely morally reprehensible. Like kidnap an elementary school girl, get her addicted to TinkerTech drugs to coerce her cooperation, and act vaguely pedophilic around her. Then he would have to die, obviously. Which would be pretty easy to arrange, because she knew where he worked, where he lived, and where he schemed, and none of them should be all that hard to break into - not for someone with a skillset tailor-made (HA) for breaking-and-entering. Speaking of "tailor-made"...

Taylor did a little spin before the mirror, taking in every inch. A tailored black suit with gloves, boots, top hat, and cape to match. A white Venetian mask that would cover the top half of her face. She'd dug into some of her mother's supplies and delicately applied some makeup - even beneath the mask, because why not take advantage of her new skills to the fullest? She'd styled it after some...well, not villain, exactly, but not a hero either...from some pre-Kyushu anime starring girls her age wearing skirts way too short. Anyway! That kind of outfit didn't interest her, but the phantom thief love interest...now there was a classy antagonist. Brockton Bay's villain scene could really use some class, and since becoming a hero wasn't in the cards...well, best to play the hand you're dealt.

The first order of business would be acquiring funds; she was good, but she needed to be the best she could be, and that meant Tinkering, and that meant acquiring materials or at the very least funds for buying materials. She could do a bit of work each day, take some cheesy shortcuts she found in the crafting rules, and hopefully have some nice upgrades in a month or two, as well as a reputation to be feared!

...actually, first order of business wouldn't be materials for "magic items", but materials for weapons. She wanted a sword and a gun! And probably a small shield to help defend her a bit more. Taking down thugs for the next month for their pocket change and going on a shopping spree at Joann Fabrics was all well and good, but she couldn't be a source of fear for ne'er-do-wells if she was limited to fisticuffs. For some reason, martial arts weren't a skill, what a ripoff! So off to rob a weapon store while unarmed!

With one last practice at an evil chuckle, Taylor swept the cape over her shoulder and stalked out of the house.