"Emma, what was so important that it couldn't wait until after my patrol?" Sophia demanded the moment she closed the door after slipping into Emma's room. "You know I was going to go fuck up those racist shit heads tonight. Maybe they won't be in the same place tomorrow, and then I'll be pissed!"
"I've got super powers!" Emma barely managed to contain her excitement, keeping her voice down so her father downstairs wouldn't hear her.
"Really?" Sophia demanded.
"Really!" Emma asserted.
"Well, finally! It took you long enough!" Sophia laughed. "So what did you get?"
"Magic!" Emma brandished a polished stick of wood in front of her, causing Sophia to laugh.
"What, you're kidding me, right?" Sophia leaned against the door. "Everyone knows powers aren't magic."
"Well, of course it's not magic," Emma replied with an eye roll. "But that's what that Loony person called it in her diaries."
"Come again? You've been keeping a girly diary?" Sophia laughed.
"No!" Emma yelled almost too forcefully, causing Sophia to smirk at her. Emma scowled for just a bit before smoothing out her expression. "So when I was convincing my dad to spring for enough money for me to buy that jacket I've got an eye on, he decided I needed to do some 'chores' to earn the money." Emma made the quotation marks with her fingers while putting all the teenager scorn she could manage.
"Dad was rambling something about me needing to understand the value of the dollar," Emma waved her hand as if it was supremely unimportant. "Some of my dad's firm's clients kick the bucket before their case is completed, so his firm ends up in charge of distributing their belongings to their family. Well, this Loony woman bit it from old age and she didn't have any family, her husband having croaked in an Endbringer battle a year ago or something.
"Anyway," Emma decided to cut out a lot of small bits because Sophia didn't look interested, "I read a page of one of her diaries where she talked about magic, so I decided to give it a try and…"
Emma pointed the wand she had found in Luna's belongings at her school bag on the desk across from her. "Wingardium leviosa!"
Emma and Sophia watched raptly as the bag floated up in the air. Emma had a gleeful expression while Sophia had a thoughtful expression. After a moment Emma let the bag drop back to the desk and Sophia crossed the room to sit next to Emma.
"That's some weak ass telekinesis," Sophia said, "but it could be useful in the right circumstances. So that stick is tinkertech or something?"
"Probably is, yeah. But this tinkertech is seriously wicked. There's a lot more it can do," Emma smugly replied. She held the wand straight up in the air and incanted, "Lumos."
"Great," Sophia drawled while staring at the lit up wand, "you can make yourself a target to get shot by gangbangers."
"Nox. That's just the beginners stuff," Emma insisted. "There's a lot of more useful things in the later diaries."
"Here, let me give the tinkertech stick a try." Sophia was quicker than Emma hiding the wand and quickly had it in her hand.
"Careful! There's only the one wand!" Emma was annoyed at Sophia's grabby hands but didn't dare show it. This was her invitation to the hero game after so long trying to trigger. And despite what she agreed with, Emma was convinced it wasn't tinkertech because it had no circuits or anything in it. But she wasn't going to go around telling people it was magic. They would think she was crazy, and Emma Barnes doesn't do crazy.
"Whatever." Sophia rolled her eyes. She pointed the wand at Emma's backpack and said, "Wingardium leviosa."
Nothing happened.
"The hell?" Sophia demanded, glaring down at the wand as if it offended her.
Emma felt really nervous, worried that Sophia would break the wand, but she didn't dare show it. She tried to coach Sophia through the proper motions to get it to work.
"You've got to get the right movements. You swish the wand downwards on the word 'wingardium', then flick it upwards on 'leviosa'."
No matter how much Sophia tried to get the spell to work, nothing happened. She couldn't even get the simple Lumos spell to work.
Emma suddenly remembered that when she had first picked up the wand, it had bonded with her in a great show of sparks. Maybe Sophia just didn't have the magic to use the wand? But how to tell her that without pissing her off enough to break the wand? Emma needed that wand like a fish needed water.
"Actually, I think it's been coded to my dna or something," Emma blurted out. She was relieved to see Sophia stop and think for a second. "There was some calibration happening when I first picked it up, so I don't think anyone else can use it."
"Fucking tinkertech is bullshit," Sophia grumbled but still handed the wand back to Emma. Emma felt immensely relieved.
"It doesn't really matter anyway," Emma pointed out. "You've got your badass power and your crossbow, so it's not like you need this thing. And it'll let me come on patrols with you, once I figure out how to use some of the more advanced spe…effects."
"Yeah, fine." Sophia grudgingly allowed. Even though what Emma said was reasonable, she didn't like to lose at anything. She was only a minute away from snapping that shitty tinkertech in half for not working for her, so it was probably for the best that she hadn't so her friend could finally come out and be the predator she'd been showing her she could be. "Well, let's bust that advanced shit out and see what it can really do."
The two girls spent the next hour combing through the diaries. Some of the effects of the tinkertech stick were really dumb, like a tickling charm. Others were badass like the entrail explosion curse. But they didn't have anyone to practice that one on for the moment, and no way was Sophia letting Emma hit her with a that girly tickling charm or some of the others they read about just to test them.
"Oh, em, gee!" Emma almost squealed. "Look at this, Sophia! This is perfect for Taylor!"
"What do you want to do to that loser?" Sophia laughed as she scooted over to read the book Emma handed her.
The entry Emma was pointing at was a ritual. "Wiggy witchcraft shit," Sophia muttered as she read the description of what the ritual did.
In order to target someone who wasn't present for the ritual, they would need to acquire something very precious to the target as well as a bunch of other symbolic shit to "empower" the ritual. The ritual was designed to "Show the target their place in the world."
If Emma and Sophia had actual spent any time reading about magical theory in the diaries, or read the extended background details about the ritual that came after the instructions, they wouldn't have misunderstood the purpose of the ritual. They had spent so long, over a year and a half, "showing" Taylor her place at the bottom that they were not able to mentally connect to the idea that the words "show a person her place in the world" had any other meaning than bullying a hated ex-friend that was prey.
So over the next week and a half Emma and Sophia gathered the various herbs and items. They already had Taylor's mom's flute, so they didn't need to break into Taylor's house to steal anything else.
Over the time they were preparing for the ritual, Emma and Sophia left Taylor alone but kept sending devious smirks her way. They could see that Taylor was getting antsy from all the looks they were sending her way during that time, knowing they were plotting something against her, but helpless to do anything about it. Taylor's helplessness just made the whole thing all the more deliciously fun. Taylor would never expect a tinkertech effect to come out of nowhere and attack her, putting her in her place.
Once they had everything needed for the ritual, Emma and Sophia waited for the weekend when Emma's parents were out on a date night. After pushing the furniture in the living room aside, Emma used a string and chalk to draw a circle. With Sophia holding the diary so she could see the symbols she needed to draw around the inside of the circle, Emma soon had everything drawn as it should be.
"You're gonna feel real dumb if this don't work," Sophia said with a laugh while Emma placed the various herbs that were needed in the circle at the appropriate points.
"You mean we," Emma countered.
"Nah, I'm just along for the ride. You're the only one that can make that tinketech stick work anyway, so you'd feel pretty silly going to all this effort and it not panning out."
"Whatever." Emma placed the Taylor's mom's flute in the center of the circle. She set one of Sophia's crossbow bolts just inside the circle pointing in. It was one of the lethal ones she used before being forced into the wards, not the stunning ones they made her use while on official patrol.
Opposite the crossbow bolt, Emma placed one of her makeup compacts. The ritual said that the items placed must have emotional significance to the ones they were connected to. Emma's makeup compact represented, in her mind, how she used her innocent appearance as a weapon to get away with bullying Taylor.
Emma was so good at it that even when a teacher literally watched her do something bad to Taylor, she just had to put on a little pout, act like she was the wronged party, and the teacher would automatically side with her over Taylor.
"That should be it," Emma said once she'd placed the last item in the circle.
"I'm surprised we don't have to do something like drain a chicken of blood," Sophia said.
"That would be so gross," Emma agreed.
Emma sat cross legged outside the circle in front of her makeup compact while Sophia sat across from her in front of her crossbow bolt. She touched the wand to the edge of the chalk circle and began pushing the magic into the circle. Emma felt it when the circle closed with a pop.
She then looked to the side and began chanting the words in Latin that she hadn't bothered to translate. All she had to do was recite some words verbatim, why would she bother?
If Emma had bothered to properly research the ritual, she would have learned that it was a custom designed ritual that Luna Lovegood had created for the purpose of two people being able to experience each other's life and view of the other. It was meant to show them their place in the other's world and how much they meant to each other.
Luna had designed the ritual after she and Harry Potter had accidentally fallen through worlds into Earth Bet so she could show Harry how much he meant to her, that she wasn't "settling" for him just because he was the only wizard in the world.
Due to not properly understanding the theory of magic, Emma didn't realize that all magic is directed by the intent of the caster. With Emma not properly understanding the intent of the ritual, it opened up the way for the intent of other things to influence the ritual.
Emma was using the wand of a very unique witch to power the ritual. While wands were not alive in the traditional sense, they were magic and so they took on a sort of life of their own. Harry Potter had seen that in his second year at Hogwarts with Arthur's Ford Anglia.
Luna Lovegood was a witch that strove to live up to her name. She focused on the positive over the negative. Even after being bullied for three years at Hogwarts by her house, she was able to forgive them when they matured enough to realize how wrong they were.
A wand that rested in the hands of such a caring witch for over a hundred years would naturally take on the qualities of its witch. And without Emma providing the proper intent, Luna's wand stepped forward and provided.
Emma could feel/hear a thrumming sound growing louder as the circle was charged with magical energy. She grew excited, knowing that it was working.
She felt it when the ritual reached full capacity and was about to be released.
Taylor sighed out as she gratefully sank into the hot bathwater Saturday evening. Even while relaxing in the tub and reading a book, she was able to mentally direct her black widows in the basement to spin silk.
Her power to control bugs might not have been all that impressive, but there were some nice side effects. The main one being her ability to multitask. That and her ability to tap into her bug's senses had been what caused her to spend the first week after the locker incident adjusting, which from the outside looked like she had snapped and gone crazy. She just wasn't used to having so many sensory inputs all at once, nor splitting her mind into millions of different parts to control all the bugs.
But she'd sorted all those issues out and was quite used to it by now. In fact, being able to connect with her bugs and offload some of her emotions to her swarms had actually helped her gain control over how she reacted to her personal tormenters.
Now that she thought of them, Taylor couldn't help but frown and wonder what Emma and Sophia were up to. Madison had been her usual juvenile self, pulling small pranks here and there like pouring glue on her seat or trying to trip her in the halls.
But Emma and Sophia had left her alone except for sending her smug, calculating glances. She knew they were up to something, but she hadn't been able to discover it yet.
Taylor was still having a bit of an issue eavesdropping on people's conversations through her bugs. The way they sensed the world was just so different and she wasn't quite there yet at coming up with a "translation" for what her bugs heard. She made a mental note to herself to practice that more in the future since she could see how listening in on the bad guy's plans could help her in her hero career.
Taylor sat up abruptly in the bath, alarmed at the thrumming sound that was surrounding her. She didn't know what it was, but it couldn't be anything good. Taylor lurched out of the bathtub and grabbed a towel to wrap around her body while the thrumming sound grew louder.
She had only made it to her room and grabbed up the can of spray mace when the thrumming reached a fever pitch.
Something seemed to grab Taylor and yank her away in a direction she couldn't describe.
There was a long moment of confused motion while she seemed to pass by two objects, and then she found herself sitting on a hard wood floor, split into two.
To say Taylor was shocked to be simultaneously staring at both Emma and Sophia's faces across from each other was an understatement.
With a shout of shock, Taylor rolled to the right and up to her feet, taking up a defensive stance. And then she froze in shock when she saw Emma and Sophia doing the exact same thing in her double vision.
Cautiously raising one hand, Taylor watched as both Sophia and Emma did the same thing. Realization at what was happening seemed to break the last barrier in her mind and she could now feel both bodies she was occupying. It was only the practice she had over the past couple months of multitasking with her bugs that allowed Taylor to not flip out or go crazy over being in two bodies at once with all the sensory input doubled up.
Taylor straightened up both bodies and had them begin looking around to find clues as to what the hell was going on. Emma's body looked down at the ritual circle while Sophia's body noticed that she was in the Barnes' house.
Taylor tried not to let that bit of information get to her, but the Barnes' house had been her home away from home that she grew up in for 14 years, and seeing it being desecrated by Sophia's presence hurt her. Even a year and a half after Emma went crazy and began making her life hell and Taylor was still hit with the odd longing hope that her friend would come back to her and things would go back to the way it was.
Taylor knew that her best friend was gone and she was never coming back. So she pushed down any useless emotions seeing the Barnes' house brought to her and wondered how she would figure out what was going on.
Spotting the book lying on the ground open to a page that had a drawing of the chalk circle on the Barnes' living room floor, Taylor figured that was a decent place to start investigating.
Before she could pick up the book, though, the next step of the ritual began. Taylor found herself pulled into two different memories. She could only watch and feel the feelings of the two girls growing up in very different circumstances.
Taylor already knew most of what she saw and experienced in Emma's life, at least up until the ABB attack that seemed to break her mind and where she was saved by Sophia/Shadow Stalker. Emma latched on to Sophia and her predator/prey philosophy on life in order to push away her own feeling of being so helpless.
In the back of her mind Taylor raged in frustrated anger about learning that Sophia was Shadow Stalker. The school administration's refusal to help her suddenly made sense.
Sophia's life, though, was quite different from what Taylor knew from her own life. Sophia grew up in a broken home with her mother having a series of different men coming through her life, until one stuck around long enough to become a sort of step father.
Sophia triggered when a gang shot up the car she and Steven were driving in. It was only her breaker state that allowed her to survive the hit.
All her life Taylor had been a reader thanks to the influence of her mother. It allowed her to understand character motivations, different philosophies on life, and she could generally empathize with characters that were very different from her. While she could understand where Sophia was coming from, Taylor still couldn't forgive the bitch for stealing her only friend from her and twisting Emma's mind into something foul.
When the playback of Emma and Sophia's memories ended, Taylor found herself still inside Emma and Sophia's bodies, lying on her backs. She now knew that the book she'd spotted earlier was her best bet for finding out a way to counteract this ritual. The version of her in Emma's body picked up the diary to begin reading while the version of her in Sophia thought about what she was going to do once she ended this body swap.
'Are Sophia and Emma gaining my memories even as I gained theirs? That would mean they now know I triggered. How in the world am I going to handle this, especially with the influence Sophia has with the Protectorate and the PRT? She can spin a bundle of lies and get them to come attack me.
'Or with the way Sophia is like a mad dog, I wouldn't be surprised if she came to my house to kill me personally. This will require a bit of thought.'
While she was thinking, Taylor suddenly wondered if she could control Sophia's power. Reaching for that mental switch that Sophia had, Taylor suddenly became a mass of shadows. A moment later she flipped the switch and reappeared as Sophia's body.
Emma felt the moment the ritual took effect. She was incredibly surprised, though, when she felt something clamp onto her and drag her in a direction she couldn't describe.
If she had a mouth she would be screaming in fear.
'This wasn't supposed to happen! It was supposed to target Taylor!' Emma screeched in her mind in a panic. She felt a presence pass by her and only then became aware that there was another presence next to her, hurtling in the same direction as her.
A moment later she landed in a body. Taylor's body.
But she wasn't alone in Taylor's body. Somehow Emma could feel/sense/hear Sophia's thoughts.
A moment later her mind crashed as the sensory input of millions of bugs hit her mind. Just like it had done for Taylor when she first triggered her power, Emma and Sophia's minds were buried under the deluge of millions of different inputs. Their brains weren't able to handle it in the short term and they were lost for a short time.
Their sanity being threatened under the sheer weight of sensory input was saved, for the moment, by Emma and Sophia's consciousness being drawn by the ritual down into Taylor's memories. Just like Taylor experienced the life and times of both Emma and Sophia, the two girls experienced everything that Taylor did growing up.
The two girls had a very different reaction to experiencing Taylor's memories. Emma was reminded of her all the good times in her wonderful childhood with her best friend. She then experienced how Taylor felt when she was betrayed by Emma. While she was experiencing the year and a half long bullying campaign, Emma's soul wailed in sorrow and grief to have been the cause of her best friend's torment.
Sophia, on the other hand, got more and more angry the longer she "suffered" Taylor's memories.
'I'm not prey, I'm the predator! I'm not prey, I'm the predator!' Sophia kept up the litany in her mind while raging against the emotions she felt from Taylor.
Taylor hadn't even read one sentence of the diary when she was dragged back down into the memories of a lifetime.
Normally the ritual would have ended when the two people that were exchanging life experience finished. But Luna's wand didn't want her beloved master to be forgotten. So the intent of Luna's wand dragged the participants into the memories of the wand's owner, Luna, from the time she bonded with her wand at 11 years of age.
Taylor didn't experience Luna's witnessing of her mother's death, but the grief and sorrow that Luna felt was familiar to Taylor. Added on to how Luna's father acted and how her mother was missing, Taylor accurately guessed what the cause was, even if she didn't have the details.
Experiencing Luna's life through her wand gave Taylor a perspective she didn't have before. The steadfast way that Luna simply endured without allowing her anger and negativity flow was a revelation to Taylor. Experiencing how Luna finally made friends in her fourth year of magic school cracked a thick shell of distrust that Taylor had built up inside her.
If Luna, who had suffered bullying for a year and a half longer than Taylor had, could open herself to the possibility of trusting others and making friends, then maybe she could too.
Taylor watched Luna's life with interest. She was especially impressed at Luna's ability to endure when she was imprisoned at Malfoy Manor and tortured.
After Voldemort died and the death eaters were imprisoned, Harry Potter went back to Hogwarts for his seventh year. With Luna in the same classes as Harry, the two of them grew closer over the year, but something was still missing in their relationship. They were two broken souls that had a hard time making that final connection.
Shortly after graduating from Hogwarts the two of them were on a date when an unexpected vortex opened up beneath them. Luna and Harry found themselves transported to another world almost a century in the past.
The new world they were stuck in, Earth Bet, didn't have a magical society or government. The two of them only had a seventh year's education and despite their best efforts, they could not find a way to go back home.
Luna did know enough about arithmancy, runes, and rituals from her family's books to design the ritual that allowed her and Harry to share their innermost selves with each other. The one that Emma and Sophia, in their madness and arrogance, used on Taylor.
Due to the ritual that Luna and Harry performed, the two of them were finally able to connect heart to heart. Unfortunately the two of them had been cursed and potioned by their enemies to be infertile, so they could never have the family that the two of them wished for. Instead they adopted orphans over the years to build a family.
When Scion arrived and people began triggering with powers, Harry and Luna were already far too old to get involved in the hero/villain cape game. They remained in retirement.
But when the Endbringers showed up, neither Harry nor Luna could stand by and do nothing. They found out that their magic could barely affect the Endbringers, so they began working on search and rescue to save who they could from the Endbringers.
Unfortunately Harry got caught by Behemoth five years ago and killed, leaving Luna alone. She continued to do what she could, but was killed by Leviathan a year ago.
When Taylor finally came out of the memories of Luna Lovegood, she found herself back in her own body, wrapped up in a towel, collapsed in the hallway outside the bathroom. The comforting presence of her bugs was in the back of her mind.
She got up and hurried to her room to dress. She had no idea what would come of this ritual that told her Sophia's secret identity and told Sophia her bug control powers, but it couldn't be anything good.
And aside from wanting to get Luna's wand and diaries away from Emma so she couldn't do anything else to her, Taylor wasn't going to leave her mother's flute in enemy hands. Who knows what else they could do to her with access to magic?
So after dressing Taylor tore through the house, grabbed her dad's keys, and left from the front door. By the time her dad followed her outside, she was already tearing away in her dad's truck. Thankfully both Luna and Harry learned to drive, and that knowledge was doing her a world of good.
She didn't know what would await her when she arrived at the Barnes house, but she was sure it would be a fight. At least now she knew Sophia's weakness in her breaker state. Electricity. She didn't know how she would use that against Sophia, but she was sure her swarm of bugs would give her a smokescreen and an advantage over the other girl.
Emma's mind nearly broke from experiencing Taylor's memories. Every time she bullied Taylor, it was as if the gangbangers from the ABB were tormenting her all over again.
Experiencing Luna's memories, even he bullying that she went through, was disconnected from her own life and gave her a reprieve.
And feeling the aura of kindness and love that Luna actively cultivated to live up to her family name, Lovegood, was like a soothing, healing balm on her soul.
Experiencing the life of someone that lived to be in her early hundreds gave her a sense of distance and proportion. She no longer felt so afraid of a little hardship. Even if she was scarred and mutilated, there had been plenty of victims in the blood war that carried on with dignity afterwards. Why should she be such a coward when all things would pass in time?
When she surfaced from Luna's memories in her own body, she felt relief. She looked over at Sophia and no longer felt admiration. She felt a little disgust at the angry girl and plenty of sorry that she let herself be taken in by Sophia's twisted life philosophy.
"I'm not the prey, I'm the predator. I'm not prey, I'm the predator!" Sophia continually chanted to herself.
"You're a crazy bitch is what you are," Emma muttered. The moment the words were out her mouth, she knew she had made a mistake.
Sophia's bloodshot eyes locked on Emma and she snarled, "I'M THE PREDATOR!"
Sophia threw herself at Emma, bowling the slighter girl over. First and nails rained down on Emma's face as she struggled to protect herself while yelling at Sophia to get off her.
"I'M THE PREDATOR!" Sophia continued to yell.
Sophia snatched up the crossbow bolt on the floor and stabbed Emma in the neck. Blood spurted out of her neck. The shock prevented Emma from feeling the pain, but she began to feel faint, her vision going to blackness.
She felt a connection with Luna's wand, and with a desperate effort of will, the wand was suddenly in her hand. Emma briefly thought of using a stunner spell, but she didn't want to leave her mess behind to threaten Taylor, her friend, even if Taylor was no longer her friend after what she had done to her.
Emma focused all she had and cast the first harmful spell that came to mind, the entrails exploding curse. She had the satisfaction of seeing Sophia's shocked face that Emma got one over on her before she faded away.
Sophia struggled to go into her breaker form, hoping that she could put herself back together. But she couldn't concentrate and faded too fast. She mocked herself with a little laugh that even prey had sharp teeth before she faded away.
Taylor was three blocks away from the Barnes' house when she was able to control the bugs in the vicinity. She still had a bit of an issue getting the proper input to translate to her human brain, but she was sure her bugs were smelling/tasting blood.
Nobody was moving in Emma's house, so she didn't come in hard. Instead of screeching to a halt in the driveway, Taylor parked normally. She hopped out of the truck and walked steadily towards Emma's house, instinctively casing a low level unlocking charm on the door.
Just before entering the house, Taylor paused and looked at her hand in puzzlement. Apparently she was now capable of casting magic.
Shaking the jumble of thoughts from her mind, Taylor opened the door and immediately smelled the blood.
Taylor stood at the edge of the living room for a long time and stared in shock at Emma and Sophia's dead bodies. It was obvious they had killed each other, but she had no idea why they turned on each other.
Carefully stepping around the blood stains, Taylor retrieved Luna's wand. It gave her a muted reaction, nothing like what it did for Luna or Emma. But she could work with this.
She went to the door and cast notice-me-not spells on the door and around her dad's truck. She then retrieved all the boxes that had Luna's diaries in them and floated them to her dad's truck, sure that no one would see her doing magic through the notice-me-not spells.
Before leaving the Barnes household, Taylor made sure to scrub away her own DNA so that she wouldn't be linked with this crime scene.
Using Emma's memories, she then headed to where Alan kept the boxes from Harry Potter before organizing them. She took those diaries and wand away too, and was surprised when Harry's Holly and Phoenix feather wand bonded with her.
Before arriving home, she pulled into a pharmacy and bought some pads. She would tell her dad that she had a female emergency, it always seemed to work for Luna. She then shrunk all of Luna and Harry's boxes and stored them in her expanded pocket.
Her story of needing emergency feminine supplies worked on her dad. She would eventually tell him everything, from the bullying to the ritual to Emma and Sophia killing each other. But she would wait until after the investigation ran its course.
She then made a batch of magically thick hot chocolate and shared it with her dad. She needed the comfort while she processed the huge change the ritual brought to her.
Taylor stood under a tree and watched from a distance the Barnes family put Emma into her grave. She felt a strange blend of emotions that she couldn't immediately parse. Emma had become quite the bitch over the past year and a half, but now that Taylor knew the reason she only felt a sense of sorrow that Emma wasn't able to overcome her trauma.
If only she knew then what she knew now, maybe Emma wouldn't be dead.
Taylor didn't know for sure, but she liked to think that the reason Emma and Sophia had fought and killed each other in the end was because Emma had pulled herself out of the gutter that Sophia dragged her into.
She felt an arm wrap around her shoulder and looked up into her father's solemn face.
"You okay, Taylor?" Danny asked, concern filling his voice.
Thanks to the help of Luna's memories, Taylor was already mending her relationship with her dad. It was tough going, but she was determined to continue communicating with her father and showing her love to break down those barriers that had built up between them.
Now the main thing she had to consider was whether she wanted to join the Wards or remain an independent hero. The world with the Endbringers and the gangs was still just as dark and depressing as it was before, but now she felt like there was a light directing her towards having a hopeful attitude.
"I'm not," Taylor said. "But I will be."