I'm very happy that people enjoy this story. If nothing else, over the last few days I've learned that I can, genuinely write 5k words per chapter and have that out daily if not even faster. I don't know how long I'll be able to keep this up, but this pace is practically lightspeed compared to my last work which took 34 chapters and 3 years to reach the 90'000-word mark.


1.4 – In Service of Enterprise

To Taylor Hebert, it seemed as if no good deed went unpunished. When she'd come to the hospital that Friday to visit her Dad and give him an update on her cape progress, he'd looked much healthier than the week before, being able to move his legs a bit on the bed and sit up without any trouble. He suddenly looked much worse when he'd briefed her on the events of two days ago; how she'd protected her friend from a squad of ABB gangsters and took on three grown men (one of whom happened to have a gun) and won.

"Was there really nothing else you could do Taylor, perhaps run away like an ordinary 15-year-old" he admonished "You've known Parian for what, a few days? You were there as an employee; nobody expects a kid like you to die protecting company property"

"And stand aside? Let them extort her or burn the one home she has in this City to the ground? She's a good person dad, it wouldn't have sat right with me to do nothing" She sat on the same chair, holding a small folder "She's one of the few friends I've got, Emma hasn't spoken to me as a friend for over a year now and Betty moved to New York even before I started at Winslow. I won't let anyone lay a hand on her"

"I do seem to recall you sitting in the same position, telling me something about how your powers weren't much good for fighting. Has something changed? Will you be going out and fighting every night now?" he grumbled.

"Dad, I realised that, under the right circumstances, my power could give me combat skills when I'm trying to protect the person I'm serving. I still want to start my business, to help you out, and to stay out of trouble. It's not like I asked them to attack the store while I was there"

"But what if you get caught between jobs? What if you need to protect yourself, not somebody else? Will you be able to do that?"

"I… I don't know. I've only just realised that this is something I can do. Perhaps there's some way for me to get it, some workaround. Actually, would you mind agreeing to my service?" Danny frowned at that "You see, I'm definitely still 'in service' of the DWA, at least on the weekends. I'm also 'in service' of Parian when she has me help out in exchange for the costume she's made for me. I'm just wondering if I can have simultaneous contracts with several people"

"Are you sure that's something you want to try Taylor? What if something goes wrong?" he asked concerned.

"I can always just cease my service if it starts to hurt or whatever. It's not as if I need the consent of the other person to do so, the plan is for me to come work at the docks this weekend as usual and see what happens with the stuff I gain from being 'in service' of you. Besides, it would be helpful to have what is essentially a qualified nurse to help you around the house, you are leaving in two weeks right?"

"Yeah," he sighed "That Doctor said I'd probably be good enough for a wheelchair or maybe even crutches by then. We'll just have to see how things progress. But alright, I agree to have you in my service, just promise me that if things start to hurt this weekend you'll stop and see the first aid guy on duty"

"I promise Dad. Now then, I did say I'd show you my costume when I was done, but coming here in costume would out you as being my parent, so I just took a few at home, there's also been a few pictures of the aftermath of that fight, and honestly, I look really cool in this one" she gave him the folder and pulled out a particular picture; the one of her stood over the restrained gangsters.

Her father went mute as he looked at the photo, then the rest. "Is that really you Taylor? You look so much older; this is what you had Parian make for you?"

"Yeah, I figured it would make sense for what I'm doing and wouldn't be as threatening as something like a suit of armour or a mask that shows absolutely nothing of my face. That was her idea actually, at first, I thought that the ribbon would make things too hard to see, or wouldn't do as much as a proper mask for hiding my identity, but it's actually comfortable and I can still see pretty well when I've got contacts in"

"That's a good idea, if everyone knows you wear glasses, people might not think you could be this Servant cape in the news. Really, it does work to change up your look, you look much more… regal like this, if I'm using the right words"

"Yeah, I could barely recognise myself in the mirror, though I did look a bit stupid wearing those white trainers with it"

"Yeah, well, use your next paycheck to get some boots, alright? We aren't doing that bad for money, and I don't want you to neglect yourself. You've never asked me for much since Anne died, there's nothing wrong with being a little selfish you know"

They parted with a hug and Taylor headed home, she had to look for a suitable pair of shoes, do some more theorising about her power and then get enough sleep to look chipper tomorrow; with any luck, she'd get that thousand-dollar bonus by Sunday.


Before today, her 'power theorisations' had essentially just been glorified brainstorming sessions, but she'd read in a PHO post that meditating on their power worked for some Thinkers. Taylor concluded that if it was BS like much of the advice on that website, she'd be down a few minutes and then return to her brainstorming. If not, then it could lead her to a major breakthrough in learning about her abilities.

She sat cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, a single-lit scented candle covered the room with a pleasant aroma of flowers as she crossed her eyes and tried to think of nothing but her power.

At first, she just felt a bit stupid, sitting in her PJs on her cold bedroom floor when she could be doing something useful. But then something changed, she could feel the power in her head moving about, doing something.

"Hello?" she tried before silencing herself. Her presence had been acknowledged, somehow, she could feel her power direct its attention to her, curious.

"I'm just trying to learn more about what I can do, I don't know who you are, but could you help me?" The presence sat there, as if pondering, leaving her thinking whether she'd even felt anything to begin with.

And then a book landed in her lap, shaking her out of the trance. An actual book! She could feel the weight of it in her hands, the faux leather of its cover. Taylor could swear she'd seen it before, it had been one of the fancy blank notebooks her mother had for writing projects or scrapbooks.

Her door had been opened and the ladder to their house's attic was down, investigating further she found a cardboard box in the back, the tape roughly ripped off and the contents, a set of various hardback books, were in a mess. Looking down she could see that her PJs were covered in dust.

Opening the book, she was met with that same neat handwriting her power had granted her.

Taylor reasoned that she must have misunderstood something. Clearly, she'd sat down and tried to meditate, then ended up somehow speaking to her power, then woke up holding a book. If the handwriting was really hers then why did she not remember writing any of it? Or of climbing into the attic and ripping a box of mom's stuff open.

But what other explanation was there, her clock read near to midnight and there didn't seem to be any other explanation. Despite how outlandish it sounded to her, she had stood up, retrieved the notebook and written for several hours before sitting back into her position and waking up.

It was late, far later than she'd usually go to bed. She could look at the book in the morning when she was sure this wasn't some odd dream.


She'd left the still-present book on her bedroom table, being too concerned with not being late for work to peruse whatever she'd written last night. She'd gone to the warehouses, said hello to Morgan and then got to work cleaning the warehouses, it was relaxing to just work; no need to face the events of last evening.

But she did regret deciding not to bring it along to read during lunch, she was making good time to have everything done tomorrow, so she'd planned to take her lunch easy and relax; it would have been an ideal time to read it.

And there it was, just sitting there on the concrete block she'd been relaxing on. Taylor froze, then poked the book. The faux leather still felt the same, but she noticed a pink sticky note prodding out of the pages.

Greetings Host

Due to unfortunate circumstances, the merging process was not entirely successful and some of the knowledge which was meant to be passed to you could not. As such I have taken the liberty of helpfully summarising the aforementioned knowledge into this book.

It has been established in your mind as a cognitive entity, allowing you to still 'read' it despite not being directly incorporated into your neurological architecture.

Please do not make any further attempts to contact me

Taylor read the letter, then read it again. She did not know what to think. The note suddenly vanished. Had her power just written her a note? Could it even do that? Up until now, she'd put the 'powers are granted by something' hypothesis as a possibility, it had always seemed unlikely that evolution would just randomly give one in a million random superpowers, but up until now she'd never thought much about it, like how one doesn't question that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West.

She opened the book on the first page, there was no foreword, no index.

Chapter 1 - The Default Contract of Service

Except where the host expressly alters the contract of service between them and another, the agreement between them shall be:


She'd actually gone a little over her lunch break reading, but stammered back to cleaning the warehouse as soon as she noticed, praying that nobody had noticed her staring at her two empty hands for what felt like an hour; that would no doubt earn her a one-way ticket to the psychiatric ward. She could reasonably guess from the name that 'cognitive entity' roughly translated to 'thing only you can see and touch', thus far it appeared to be an accurate assessment. She'd practised placing the book on the other side of the warehouse as she worked, then willing it to come to her, suddenly the leatherbound notebook would be within arm's reach. The same apparently went for putting it away, it did not require constant attention, but if she went off to do something, it would no longer be resting on the spot where she'd left it.

Having completed her cleaning of the two warehouses, she said goodbye to the dockworkers and hopped onto the bus home, reading her invisible book the whole way to the amusement of the driver.


The book was not all that long, only taking her a few breaks to finish due to all the legalese she had to read. For a supernatural book on her specific power, it seemed to be very particular about certain rules being followed or terms included, like para. 231(b)(ii) of her Default Contract of Service, which provided that she could not disclose any information obtained from 'another' while in their service would lead to an 'appropriate punishment', which, according to para. 451(a) would involve a sum of agony inflicted commensurate to the breach. She was not looking forward to testing that.

As for how many she could be in service of, Chapter 4 provided some explanation, confirming that while there were no hard limits on the number, it would become increasingly painful for her depending on the 'weight' of the sum of provided knowledge. Whatever that meant; she could not even find a definition for 'weight' because there had been no glossary.

Taylor had not felt pain, or even discomfort while being in the service of both her dad and the DWA. She'd thought about the sort of care he would need once he'd returned home and her power was helpful enough to provide a lot of detail about the accommodations, she could make to ensure his adjustment was comfortable, then being happy to provide her a recipe for something that could be used to clean the old lightbulbs which had lit the warehouse.

She had been rather surprised to read in Chapter 12, that she did have a set of powers available for her use while not 'in service', it was essentially a package of knowledge which would help her to find work: Advertising, Interview Practice, Contract and Business Law…

She would no longer need to find a lawyer for her cleaning company, she could file everything herself and save hundreds in fees, even take advantage of a few tax breaks set up for enterprising rogues under recent NEPA 4 legislation.


Taylor Hebert did not feel very well, while her powers had given her a tiny Brute rating, clearly, that could only do so much, and while she did manage to have all the paperwork done for 'Foremost Ltd' to post on the way to work, she was noticeably slower as she worked on the final warehouse; filled with several old forklifts and trucks that must have been in use at some point with the Association.

Given that she only had the one warehouse to do today, Taylor decided to go a little further than she'd had time for before; once she'd taken care of the dust and dirt, she would have a look at the vehicles and see if any could be brought back into running order. She could already feel mechanical and engineering knowledge in the back of her mind, primed and ready to be used once everything else was clean.

There was also her future relationship with the DWA to consider. Her costume had been left in the bag Parian had provided, tucked under the bed for good measure, so she'd worn her usual working clothes. But, if she was going to go all in on the cape persona of Servant, it would be good to start being seen in it, like when she was working. But if Taylor were to quit and then Servant was to apply for the same position the very next day, the only way she could be any more suspicious is if she wore a large badge with 'Totally not Taylor Hebert' on it.

Well, provided Benjamin was good to his word, she'd have a bit over a thousand dollars in seed capital for 'Foremost Ltd". Besides some flyers and the actual cleaning supplies, setting up the whole venture would be relatively cheap, only about $200 with the lion's share going to buy 10'000 A5 flyers she'd put up on lamp posts and through letter boxes. She still had to set up a bank account to actually receive payments beyond cash for her Cape persona, but that could be done on Monday.

Taylor turned from the floor, having already taken care of the dust and looked to the vehicles. The first she got to work on was a Ford F-100, the vehicle was deceptively lacking much exterior rust, but on the underside, there was enough for her to conclude that the frame itself had likely corroded to a dangerous level; a damn shame since a car like this would have been perfect for keeping her out of Brockton Bay's terrible public transport system. Perhaps she could get a driving test booked and pass her licence, her power would make it easy, but then her number plate, insurance and licence would be attached to Taylor Hebert. She'd have to look up how other capes got around without outing themselves in such an obvious manner.

Leaving a written note on the Ford, specifying the issues and recommending it be used for parts before a trip to the scrapyard. Taylor turned to the next vehicle, a John Deere Model 4440, which was likely getting shipped to a farm someplace upstate before something happened to the owner or folks just forgot about it. The tractor looked to be in relatively good working order for something that must have been at least in its early 30s, all that had to be changed was the oil, some of the fluids and the lights on it had to be replaced with modern LEDs to comply with state law.

She continued to check each vehicle, leaving notes summarising her recommendations and what costs would be likely if the DWA chose to bring them into service or sell to a collector, farm or anyone else who wanted these.


Thomas Calvert, known to a highly select few as the supervillain Coil and one of the four masters of the City of Brockton Bay, was currently looking over a few inconsequential reports in his capacity as a consultant to the PRT. In his other timeline, his mercenaries had just shot one Taylor Hebert/Servant dead as she'd walked to a spigot to fill a bucket full of clean water. The sniper confirmed his kill, then ran off, at which point he closed the timeline.

He'd gotten far with the rather unique means of information gathering his powers allowed, he had a plan to kill or subvert almost every single Hero, Villain and everyone of note in between. Once he headed home for the day, he'd be writing up his plans for the Rogue known as Servant. He still needed more information about her powers, but as far as Tattletale could reason, she had some Thinker power which gave her all the knowledge necessary to be useful to someone she was employed by. A useful and versatile power certainly, but, as he'd learned when he'd kidnapped and personally tested her, it did not reveal secrets in any way, though it could help if to a much lesser extent than that of his Tattletale.

The girl leaned toward being a hero but was hardly a threat, he could tell that much even without his underling's usual snark, but she seemed confident that Taylor could be convinced to work for him as a parahuman asset. Probably not as a full part of his plans, lest he risk her learning too much, but he could throw some jobs in the direction of the cleaning company she was trying to set up; she needed money for her father's medical bills and he had plenty enough.

He'd theorised that with her power, the girl could potentially repair tinkertech, but with her refusal to be employed by him when kidnapped, and the fact that what drugs he'd had prepared seemed to leave her in no mental state to establish employment to him; testing that would have to wait. However, if it was true, it could save his organisation millions and make him less reliant on Toybox.

He picked up his work phone and called an Italian place not far from his listed home address about getting a pulled pork and corn pizza with a stuffed crust delivered around the time he got home, paid with his card and got back to his job.


For a 'head honcho' Benjamin's office was actually rather plain, with a picture of his family on the wall, a calendar on his desk and an outdated model of desktop computer behind which the man himself stood, smiling at her.

"Mr Benjamin, all 6 of the warehouses you've charged me with cleaning have been cleaned. I have also left some recommendations as to the state of the vehicles still standing in Warehouse No. 6, most are unfortunately bound for the scrapyard but some could still be useful after a visit to the mechanic"

"You have our utmost thanks Taylor" he held out his hand for her "When I first hired you, I'll admit that I wanted to do something for Danny, I didn't expect you to have even one warehouse done within a month. Well, I'll eat those words now. I've seen your work and I'm sure even an industry pro would have trouble finding anything to complain about. You've also done it faster than any quote I've gotten from the big companies. You have my sincerest thanks"

Taylor smiled and shook the outstretched hand "It was a pleasure working for you Mr Benjamin. I'll also admit that the reason I came to the DWA specifically was since I wanted to do some good for the organisation that was like family to my father the way he spoke about it"

"Well then, I have a reputation for keeping my word to maintain. Here you go, your paycheck plus the thousand-dollar bonus we agreed. Will you be continuing to work for us after this?"

"I'm afraid I must tender my resignation, Sir. Dad will be leaving the hospital soon and I need to be there for him"

"That's fine Taylor. Pass along a hello to Danny for me, I need to have some buys go down and take stock of the warehouses and your recommendations" waved Benjamin as she left his office, then the DWA business and headed home.

She did not so much as withdraw the envelope until she returned home. Sure, inside was a cheque rather than cash, but she didn't want to take any risk that she'd lose it and have to return to beg for another.

Changing and then making herself some light dinner, she went up to her room to eat and order the posters. She'd managed to find a bank in town that offered their services to Rogues and had come by in costume to get everything set up for herself. She still had to deposit today's cheque, but that would be safer to do after school tomorrow when the streets were a bit livelier. For now, she'd be placing the order for her flyers to be printed and paying the first half, which would allow her to put up a few on her way back from the bank.

Her 'Chapter 12' powers actually did come with some skill in graphics design, so she'd managed to use an edited version of one of the pictures of her outside Parian's shop, albeit with her trainers digitally modified to look something like a leather shoe. It seemed she would have to add shoe shopping to tomorrow's after-school itinerary.


The first email she'd ever gotten as Servant to ask about the cleaning service was clearly an attempt to entice her into some scam scheme, offering to invest her business earnings and promising a return of 70% within two years. It did not take her power to realise that, as Dad had told her once, "If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't" and that sounded about right as she deleted the email.

A few days later, she had her first proper cleaning job as Servant. A 'Mr Morrison' had requested that she come and clean one of the apartments in a residential block he owned so he could put it back on the market. It took a little back and forth but they'd agreed a price of $350 for a deep clean and disposal of any trash which may have been left around the place.

She'd arrived in good time with one of Dad's toolboxes filled with cleaning supplies, receiving more than a few looks on the bus there, though she'd gotten on a few stops after the one she usually took so it wasn't as obvious she lived in that area. The apartment itself was located in one of the tall blocks that made up much of the Downtown residential area, though clearly one of the nicer ones based on the manned reception.

"Good evening, I'm here at the request of Mr Morrison to clean Apartment D31, I believe he should have left a note to say I'm coming?" Servant spoke up, causing the receptionist to glance up from his screen.

"You are… Servant? Well, it seems he has left a note, I'll lead you there and let you in, though I must ask that you do not wander around the building. No offence, but we don't need a crowd of cape groupies gathering to see you"

"Of course, I may have to step outside if I require more cleaning supplies, but I don't expect that will be necessary" she replied. The receptionist led her to an elevator, then through a few plain corridors and to a door labelled D31 in clean, golden letters.

"Alright, I'll leave you to it" he headed back to the elevator "There'll be a phone inside, you can call reception if there is any trouble"

Taylor set down her toolbox and surveyed the scene, it was a studio apartment, with a single bedroom off to the side and a bathroom behind its own door. The latter two looked fine, just a bit dusty and the sheets needed washing since clearly, at some point someone had been sleeping here. The main issue was the kitchen/living room area, whoever had left did not bother to wash the dishes, or empty the refrigerator and freezer. That meant the bulk of today's work would be taking care of the mould that had developed, and getting rid of all the expired and rotten produce.


She'd had to make a trip outside to purchase the proper fungicides, but otherwise, the job had progressed smoothly. Her employer had come by and confirmed that he wanted everything that wasn't furniture or an appliance gone, so she'd taken all the bedding and remaining bathroom products and tossed them into the building's trash chute system. She did the same with the foodstuffs, cans and everything else in the kitchen while the mould spray did its initial work. For someone who'd been brought up in the sort of household were throwing away something like some Tupperware was practically heresy, it was a shock that people could be so wasteful: The bedsheets would have been fine after a wash, much of the canned food was still in date and could be donated to the homeless, and the cutlery had no issues at all. But, if this was what her employer ordered, it would look bad to argue against what he did with a clearly abandoned property.

The various Aflatoxins infesting the fridge and sink took a few more sprays and then a final wipe down with bleach to get rid of the worst of the smell, the rest would be taken care of by the white vinegar she'd left in a mug on one of the shelves. Sure, she could return in a few days and remove them but she imagined that Mr Morrison would prefer not to have to pay for that.

Some two hours later, she invited her employer to see the work. The landlord had been impressed, even if he did frown a little when she explained the cup in the fridge. He confirmed that the job had been done to his satisfaction and that the money would be transferred within 2-3 working days, signing the receipt she'd written out.


Taylor did not feel tired when she went home, sure there had been school, and then she'd worked for two hours on cleaning a mouldy studio apartment. But she could not help but be excited, because this business of hers was making actual money. It was true that with what she'd spent on the cleaning products plus the fliers, she had not actually escaped the red and made a profit just yet, but if she had one more job like this, she would be making a profit, though this would be somewhat cut into by taxes, permits and everything else, that could not take away the feeling of pride when she saw that receipt being signed.

She did not go to sleep right away, there were still accounts she had to type up for April 15th, and she wanted to record her experiences and analyse what she'd been missing in her tool bag. Some more bin bags would be nice, but if most of her jobs would involve cleaning some kind of mould or other, she should probably bring at least some general-purpose cleaners to save her going to a nearby corner shop in costume to pick them up. She wouldn't deny that she liked the attention of people looking at her, but she really didn't want to experience some of the aspects of cape fan culture which terrorized New Wave, or even some of the Protectorate heroes.

As Taylor finished up her typing and laid down, she had an errant thought; it had been a while since she'd last talked to Parian, perhaps she should call and ask if the shop needed cleaning again?


And that's a wrap!

Danny gives Taylor his support and she is now technically in his service. Taylor discovers that she is not limited by the number of folks she can be in service of and now has a book only she can see and feel, perhaps she should talk to a psychologist about that…

Anyway, I wanted to say that there is a limit on Taylor's service, but it is not numbers. Rather it is the amount of information, for example, if she entered into the service of every single person in the US, she'd probably have a brain aneurysm and die as it is.