Taylor frowned as she read the newspaper while hopping from roof to roof. The Brockton Chronicle was covering her escapades, sorta. There was a side-article a few pages back about Hooky's little arena; apparently the noise had gotten enough attention that the cops swung by. Bitch had no longer been on the scene when emergency services arrived, but by that point, carting out the casualties has been a bigger concern. No fatalities which...she wasn't sure how to feel about, to be honest; it'd suck if her actions got someone killed, but did Nazis really count as people? Well maybe a lot of the people attending were more fasc-curious than dyed-in-the-wool, so probably for the best they weren't dead while they still had a chance to be productive members of society.

Anyway, the real good news is that there wasn't a single dog there when Animal Control arrived, so Bitch had gotten away with all of them somehow. The bad news is, apparently a dogfighting arena that doesn't have dogs in it is lacking in reasons to investigate it for crimes. Honestly, between the fast response time when things went wrong for the Empire, and the lack of an investigation into a gambling den centered around animal bloodsport, Taylor suspected the force might have been infiltrated by Nazis. Dealing with that would probably require a careful touch, she didn't wanna accidentally hurt all the good cops trying to sort out the racist pieces of shit.

The main story of the paper was what had her thinking about the police, though. Apparently there were legal issues with her arrest methods, especially catching people who'd never gotten caught before and just happened to be hanging out with career criminals in the wee hours of the morning. Basically every person she'd captured the week before was walking free; some had outstanding warrants, but everyone that didn't had made the argument that they hadn't really been doing anything wrong when she'd caught them, and since she never stuck around to talk to the cops, it was their word against nobody's that the drugs found in their pockets hadn't been planted there by the evil Stranger who liked screwing with people. If she wanted to make something stick, they needed to be caught in the act. Or she'd need to change her approach...

She twitched, turning around midair, and a crossbow bolt flew between her and the newspaper. "Do you mind? I'm trying to read?" Alas, Sophia continued being exceedingly unreasonable and just fired another bolt at her. It warped around Taylor's deflection field and buried itself in the room flying by beneath her. She stuck a foot down and it caught the lip of the roof; momentum forced her body to swing around the roof's edge like a hinge, and her other foot made contact with the wall and now she was walking down the brick with no care for gravity. Sophia went flying by overhead, her own momentum not allowing for such hairpin turns.

Taylor ran down the wall towards a couple guys doing a drug deal; they froze for a moment at the sight of her until... "Relax fellas, boss sent me to meet our guys on the street. [Success] "Oh hey, can I borrow your phone for a sec actually?" [Success!] The drug dealer reluctantly handed over his unlocked phone. Taylor scrolled through his recent calls, making Knowledge checks to figure out which were like pizza delivery shit and which were getting in contact with his criminal network, and she made notes on her burner. A twitch to the left, a twitch to the front, and two more crossbow bolts failed to find purchase in her flesh. "Thanks a million my guy!" she replied cheerfully handing him his phone back. She took off down the street at a full sprint, as Sophia stalked her from the rooftops. The other girl just barely had enough self-control to not take potshots at her while she was ducking and weaving between people just going about their evening.

The scene repeated at several more locations, where one pusher after another had no issue letting her take down notes about all their contacts. Some were even polite enough to answer questions on the subject, how kind! She made sure to get a good selection from each of the gangs, wouldn't want any of them to feel unjustly targeted after all. All the way, her super Sense Motive was giving her an idea of which people were just desperate and had no other options for survival, and which were just the kind of person willing to get rich by walking over a hill of overdosed children. She'd make sure to spare the former when she got down to business.

En route to her last stop for the night, she paused a moment. She'd been talking with that last guy for a couple minutes, but not a single bolt had been fired. Had Sophia given up? [Success!] No, there she was, still tailing Taylor but at least trying to be sneaky about it. Taylor hopped up to the roof next to her, startling the ex-vigilante.

"Are you...out? Do we need to swing by one of your secret stashes?"

"Go fuck yourself," Sophia spat angrily. A quick Perception and...yup, she didn't have any more bolts. A quick Sense Motive and...yup, she'd been hoping to follow Taylor back to her lair.

"I'd reply in kind but apparently that's a Birdcage offense," Taylor retorted. "Well since you're no fun now, I suppose I'll see you later." And with that, she stepped into the shadows and melded with them, disappearing from all senses.

Taylor got about halfway to her lair when her ears perked up; somebody was having fun a couple blocks over! She switched directions to join the party and found Glory Girl being harassed by Crusader and Rune. "Fear not, fair maiden!" she announced loudly. "I'll fend off this rapscallion's advances, don't you worry!" She ignored Glory's girls indignant protests as she fell towards three ghostly Crusaders. For most people, Crusader was a huge issue; not only could he not be touched, but his ghost's weapons would slide straight through people's armor. Of course, there were a few key differences between Taylor and most people.

1) Crusader and his ghosts were, at the end of the day, not anything remotely like Brutes. They could only survive blows from Brutes and Changers because nobody could touch them; if someone managed to make contact, they'd fold like wet paper. Similarly, they were decent combatants by normal standards, especially when ganging up with no regard for their own safety, but they weren't really able to contend with Movers or Breakers that could outmaneuver them.

2) Taylor's Touch AC was higher than that of anybody else in the Bay except maybe Velocity.

3) All magic weapons have a 50% chance of affecting incorporeal targets normally.

The conclusion of these differences, naturally, was that Taylor's sword cut through Crusader's ghosts like hot butter, even without being a Ghost Touch weapon. Every time a new one popped into existence, she would unpop it with just a few sword slashes. Her hearing was acute enough that she could hear him swearing up a storm from where he was hiding inside a nearby building, so she started making her way towards his real body. Pop-unpop, pop-unpop, pop-unpop, pop-unpop, all the way to the Nazi! He'd started running away, spamming clones to try and slow her down, but it didn't help. Her movement abilities were probably her weakest, but at the end of the day she was still a Mover and he wasn't, so it didn't even take a minute for the man to get boxed in. The flat of her blade ensured he wouldn't be making more trouble anytime soon. She grinned to herself as she attached several zipties to his real body; it was too bad for him that even if he summoned up some ghosts, they couldn't affect nonliving materials. He'd be stuck like this until someone carted him away.

"Hey!"

[Will save. Success!]

Taylor turned, favoring Victoria with a dazzling smile. "No need to thank me, just doing my part to clean up the trash."

"I'm taking you in. You can't just run around twisting minds however you please!"

"Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," Taylor replied, sidestepping the Brute's grasping hands. Glory Girl was fast and could almost connect with her, but it was nothing she couldn't handle.

"It doesn't work like that, it just scares people real quick," the heroine retorted as she grabbed for Taylor again. [CMD vs CMB. Success!] It was too bad, really. Victoria was strong, and fast, but that wouldn't be enough to lay a finger on her.

Taylor considered digging into that particular issue, then discarded it. She had other things to do tonight than tear the girl down and build her back up, and she didn't really want to mindwhammy heroes if she could help it. Sophia didn't count, of course. "Did you at least secure Rune before charging off after me? I'd hate if she set Crusader free and this was all for nothing." Glory Girl ignored her and just kept throwing hands. How inconsiderate! "Well this has been a lovely one-sided conversation but I'm going to get going. Give my best to Amy!"

"If you so much as look to her-"

Aaaand Taylor disappeared into shadow. Stranger powers made everything so much easier!

[...]

Taylor settled into a chair back in her stolen lair. She had about another hour before she usually stopped her patrol, but that didn't mean she was finished. She took out the burner and consulted her notes: a list of phone numbers, each provided by a local gang member, each linking them to several other people in their organization. To every single one of them, she sent the same text.

Boss wants us to go to the Boat Graveyard and clear out some trash. Make sure to bring protection, it's gonna get dusty.

[Bluff vs Sense Motive. Success!]
[Bluff vs Sense Motive. Success!]
[Bluff vs Sense Motive. Success!]
[Bluff vs Sense Motive. Success!]
[Bluff vs Sense Motive. Success!]
[Bluff vs...]

It took several minutes, even with copypasting, but by the end of it, she was satisfied. Tomorrow's newspaper headlines should be much worse for all the main gangs, and since the area was basically abandoned, it minimized the possibility of innocent bystanders. Win-win!