Taylor wasn't able to come up with any good ideas for how to reduce the number of enemies gunning for her (hopefully only figuratively) by the time Winslow let out.

The best she was able to come up with was to utterly destroy the Merchants, so Skidmark couldn't come after her, which said a lot about her state of mind.

Sure the Merchants were the least and weakest of the gangs, and were currently down their Tinker, but if they were that easy to fight someone would have wiped them out already.

They were like cockroaches.

The ABB was an even more ludicrous prospect.

It was known globally that Lung, their leader and one of only two Capes in the gang, had fought an Endbringer to a draw.

It was the most any individual had been able to manage against any of the Endbringers, even if it had done enough damage to Kyushu that the scientists had no idea how it hadn't been lost like Newfoundland.

There weren't many people willing to live there, not after so much damage had been dealt, but it was still a symbol.

In theory, if she could take down Lung (and probably Oni Lee, the other Cape), it would mean the end of the ABB, whereas with the Merchants she wouldn't be surprised if some of them didn't know Skidmark was supposed to be their leader.

But that would mean proving stronger than an Endbringer.

And she definitely wasn't that strong.

Yet.

So neither of her big threats were something she could deal with.

And then there was Emma.

As far as Taylor could tell, she hadn't made a debut yet.

The only new Cape she found any evidence of online was her, leaving her with nothing on her main enemy.

Or maybe her true enemy would be more accurate.

It was Emma who selected her as Nemesis after all, as her ongoing opponent for the duration of their contract.

The others, it would be conceivable that they could come to an arrangement, that she could make peace with them, but Emma was a different matter.

Not that she was going to make peace with them.

So, she had two gangs likely to be after her, Emma targeting her (and having the authority to organise fights with her), and she had to find a way to turn her reputation around to that of a villain.

… Maybe she should spend some time investigating what villains actually did?

It had seemed obvious enough when she was researching the conspiracy that she hadn't looked at what she'd be expected to do.

{}

A visit to the library, researching villain activities, and Taylor felt even more lost.

She had grown up hearing about the three classifications for Capes; Heroes, Villains and Rogues.

And Vigilantes, but they were basically a subcategory of Hero, just less official and at risk of arrest.

Heroes upheld the law, either getting paid by the PRT or not receiving money for their actions at all, while 'securing' the vaulables of criminals they ran into earned the moniker of 'vigilante'.

As did others things.

Frankly it sounded like some vigilantes were just villains with good publicity.

As for Rogues…

Legally speaking, the category barely existed.

In theory a Rogue was a Cape who used their power within the law to make money, without joining the Protectorate.

In theory.

But Nepea-5, a law that 'acted to protect unpowered workers employment', didn't have the loopholes it appeared to.

On an initial look, it appeared to have ways for Capes to legally earn money as long as they weren't competing with unpowered workers in the same industry, but looking deeper, making sone unintuitive connections, a different picture emerged.

There were amendments, not particularly publicised, that redefined the scope of the act to encompass all means of earning money as a Cape, beyond employment by the PRT.

Even New Wave was technically breaking the law, the adults holding jobs and earning money through them going against the hidden tenets of Nepea.

Hell, any Cape not working for the PRT had to be breaking the law, the money earned in civilian life criminal proceeds!

Sure, they didn't seem to go after anyone who made an effort to follow the facade of Nepea, but as soon as a 'Rogue' did anything else they could be taken in for (with the exception of Toybox, who existed in a legal grey area in a pocket dimension)…

Yes, legally speaking 'Rogue' was another word for 'Villain'.

Well, it looked like Brockton was a bit more lenient in this sense, waiting until a Rogue did something publicly known as against the law before moving against them, but that could just be a matter of PR.

And on that subject…

The most prominent villains were all in or associated with gangs of various kinds, focused on territory or other ways of making money, for the most part.

The Empire and ABB were good examples of the former, focused on their territories in the Bay and the 'protection money' they extorted, while the Merchants (and the Elite across the rest of the country) were examples of the latter.

The Merchants didn't care too much about territory, more focused on their supplies of drugs, while the Elite were basically examples of Rogues who were publicly known as villains.

Then there were smaller villain teams, and sometimes loners, who didn't hold territory and just… did various small time robberies.

Oh, and got into fights with heroes and other villains.

Well, sometimes villains took hostages or conducted blackmail, and then there were the 'terrorist' villains and mercenaries, who launched attacks on places or groups for ideological reasons or pay, but she wasn't going to emulate the Fallen.

So…

Joining a gang or a team was out of the question.

That would tie her up as a villain permanently, rather than just while she was under contract, and Taylor wanted to be able to help make the world a better place.

Leaving all forms of theft.

Or blackmail, in theory.

Right, where should she strike next? What did she consider a target for theft that would leave no doubt about her being a villain, that wouldn't go against her morals?

A wild thought went through her head about targeting an insurance company, or one of the groups involved in the counter-protest that actually created the Boat Graveyard, but those weren't reasonable ideas.

The second no longer had any holdings in the city, having sunk the work prospects of the original protestors rather than try and match inflation in pay and then fled the city, while the first didn't hold the money on them.

No, they kept it in the bank, where it was insured (hah) by the government.

Who declined any responsibility to clear up the Graveyard, while denying anyone else the authority to deal with the problem themselves.

Stealing from the bank would simply remove reduce the wealth the government claimed from its people under false pretenses.

Taylor blinked, shaking the thought from her head.

While some of the money from taxes may not be used for its intended purpose, the majority surely went where it was needed.

But… as a daughter of Brockton Bay, that 'some' did seem a bit larger than average.

And, beyond the government, this would be a near victimless crime.

So, how to plan a bank robbery…

{}

If any of the other members of Cauldron had been watching, they would have seen Contessa, Fortuna, pause in order to update one of her paths.

It would be an easy assumption to make that she was working on The Path, of Cauldron doing all they could to triumph over their foe alone.

But that wasn't precisely the case.

First, it was Tyche.

The young woman who had received Path to Victory had put everything of herself into their desperate attempt to make their own luck and save the planet.

And the other bearer of her name had answered.

If Fortuna had possessed greater independence, rather than suborn herself to the paths, more of her may have remained to become a part of the greater Tyche/Fortuna.

But now her body hosted only Tyche.

And Tyche had her own Path to salvation.

After resolving which side of the Tyche/Fortuna entity would take priority, she had sought to revive another to win the war.

Of all her brethren, some were dismissed by reason of lacking a useful domain, others by reason of personal dislike (not that there were many who liked Ares in general), still others by an inability to place them somewhere they could regain dominion over their domain in time.

In the end, only her sister was left.

Nemesis.

Hardly a less than ideal situation, and in fact one that Tyche appreciated for the justification in bringing Nemesis back.

And now the host of Nemesis, still separate for now, was putting herself at risk.

For a moment, Tyche considered sitting back and letting it happen.

She wasn't truly Nemesis yet, but her sister was awakened once more. Even without further actions from her, Nemesis should reach the level of power required to triumph in time.

Fortunas hand fell, as if by its own will, to the cornucopia by her side, a divine artefact mistaken by the figurehead leader of Cauldron as a relic of the bodies village.

It marked the domain of the gifts of fortune, the role she had chosen to embody in this incarnation, unlike the ball of unsteady fortune or rudder of guiding fate, held by the greater part of herself.

She had been in no place to draw out the power of the rudder before the Simurgh had sealed the domain beyond her grasp, an act that should have been, from the knowledge of generations of Tyche, impossible.

If Fortuna had been capable of being a proper host, Tyche might have been able to draw on further domains, as Nemesis would, but instead she was left with one.

And if she stepped aside now, left the host of Nemesis to these greater risks, her connection to her domain would be crippled, next to useless until she could recover.

Leaving her no choice in which Path to Nemesis she would walk.

And she had until night to deal with the protections left in place since the chosen bank had held mafia money, since supplemented with Cape age defences.

And not all conforming to the common standards of nonlethality…

AN: The Ancient Greeks had a much better attitude about tax, it being a matter of pride to spend as much as possible on public works rather than avoid paying anything.