2.1

By the time she arrived at the Boardwalk it was already well past seven and she was relieved to find she didn't stand out nearly as much as she was scared she might have as she wandered down the line of shops, only a couple of the storefronts starting to pull up their shutters and get ready for the day. She was more surprised than she probably should have been that she was hardly the only person her age about and was glad the jacket she'd grabbed at least made her look a little bit older.

The enforcers were out in force as she walked and passed by a couple of patrols, active more because of the early hour than despite it. But they only gave her a brief glance before dismissing her the same they did for anyone who wasn't homeless, a merchant or just undesirable in general. Though who the enforcers sometimes judged as an undesirable depended on who was looking as much as who would witness anything they chose to do about it.

The Boardwalk might have been the safe and clean tourism central for the Bay where the enforcers kept the peace, but her parents had made sure she knew they weren't the police and could only be trusted so far, especially if she found herself alone.

Still, even if almost all of the shops weren't open yet, most of the cafes were and there were plenty of people drifting in and out of the various cafes and bakeries that followed the wide street. Whilst most people would have grabbed coffee Downtown on their way to work, there was enough foot traffic on the Boardwalk even without the tourists that a good chunk of the cafes opened early and she carried on walking, curious if one in particular was.

Madison wasn't surprised when after a few minutes more she found the Broadstone Cafe & Bakery open and already had a few of its tables and booths occupied as other people filtered out the door with their orders to go.

The Boardwalk was generally expensive by default, but she'd lived in the Bay long enough to have tried most places at least once and Broadstone was definitely on her favourites list if she had the chance to choose. Not that she would have felt too hung up about it if the place had ended up being closed though and she'd needed to walk another five minutes or so to Pretty Co Coffee or Brewster's Wish instead.

Peeling off her thin gloves and shoving them in her coat pocket she glanced about curiously as she entered the cafe. There weren't that many people sitting on the ground floor, a group of older teens, a few suits and one girl with a laptop, though she knew it would be a different story upstairs considering the view it gave of the Bay.

Not that the view from the ground floor was bad, the sky might have been pretty grey even without much in the way of clouds, but it was still something to look out at the Atlantic and see the converted oil rig that was the Protectorate HQ under the shimmering dome of its force field a mile or so out.

Ordering herself a caramel hot chocolate, a bagel and a piece of millionaires shortbread because 'dammit she deserved it after the morning she'd had,' Madison secured a booth with a good view and plopped her tray down. She quickly discovered her appetite had only been in hiding rather than having abandoned her entirely as she dug in, leaving the hot chocolate to cool a bit before she added burning her tongue to her list of mishaps for the day.

She couldn't help herself from opening her Inventory as she ate, a nagging part of her wanting to just double check, just to be sure the flute with still safe and sound even though she knew it couldn't possibly be anywhere else.

"Inventory" she mumbled quietly between mouthfuls, her eyes immediately finding the flute near where she thought it would be and breathing a mental sigh of relief at the sight. Her eyebrow quirked in confusion as she saw a black blob sitting in the slot on the left of it and she racked her brain to try and remember what it was, coming up blank as she spotted where her hoodie had replaced the coat she was wearing and everything else she remembered adding in was otherwise accounted for.

Curious, she brought up the menu and hit 'Info' as she took another absent mouthful of bagel.

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['Emma's Gym Bag' (Item)]

Emma's gym bag, stolen from Winslow High School by Madison Clements when retrieving Taylor Hebert's flute.

Presumed to contain Emma Barnes's gym clothes, however may contain other items.

[OK]

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"Phwat?!"

She rapidly chewed and swallowed, re-reading the Info window to see if it would actually make sense the second go around.

"When did I do that?!" Madison hissed to herself, dismissing the window and staring accusingly at the item in question as she replayed events in her mind.

Okay she'd spotted the flute sitting on a couple of books behind Emma's gym bag, so she'd grabbed the bag and just moved it out of the way hadn't she? ...But she didn't remember seeing it on the floor when she picked up the crowbar...

Though she wasn't exactly thinking straight at the time, so she could have easily missed it right? ...But she couldn't remember seeing it at all after she'd moved it out of the way. ...Did she really just accidentally steal Emma's gym clothes?!

Madison glanced at her phone on the table next to her tray. Emma was going to be insufferable for days, wait no that wasn't the point! Well... She pondered, trying to see an upside. Well at least it wasn't obviously about the flute?

Actually that was kind of a good point she mused, the food and drink in front of her forgotten for a moment. She'd planned to just break into the locker and grab the flute, but that was kind of stupid when she thought about it since wouldn't Emma just blame Taylor? Okay granted she would regardless, but it wasn't like Emma could actually tell anyone what she thought Taylor would be after. 'Yes Principal Blackwell, I think Taylor broke into my locker to retrieve the flute of her dead mother I stole from her yesterday.' Madison scoffed, yeah she might have been a darling of the teachers with daddy lawyer on speed dial but she wasn't an idiot.

Madison felt her resurgent anxiety twist unpleasantly at the realisation that doing what she had might have just painted an even bigger target on Taylor's back, but what could she do? What could she have done differently? ...Probably broken into more than one locker and stolen or vandalised more stuff when she thought about it, but she didn't want to steal or damage innocent people's stuff in the first place! "Ugh" she groaned, being a Hero was supposed to be straightforward.

Briefly she entertained the idea of retrieving the gym bag from her Inventory just to see if it was literally just Emma's gym clothes inside before filing the idea under stupid and dismissing it entirely, trying to distract away her lingering discomfort with a sip of hot chocolate.

She really needed to go and see Taylor.

Madison had been thinking on and off when was best to do so, maybe waiting until the weekend since it was already Thursday and she wasn't sure if Taylor would even go back to school tomorrow, but the idea of waiting that long didn't sit right with her anymore. She'd basically painted another target on the other girl's back, as if she didn't have enough already! And it was her responsibility to tell Taylor outside of sticking up for like she should have from the beginning.

The problem was she actually had no idea where Taylor lived, Emma obviously knew but she didn't really have a good reason to ask and it wasn't like she could break into the school's records to find out, well not anymore at least she frowned to herself.

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[Quest: Public Libraries Exist Too]

Often ignored or unaccounted for, public libraries continue to hold a treasure trove of untapped information including phone books.

[Objective: Travel to the library Downtown and locate Taylor Hebert's address]

Rewards: Taylor Hebert's address

[OK]

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Madison realised she was gaping. "Are you seriously sassing me?!"

What was her power?!

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Even with a new quest helpfully pointing out how much she had missed the obvious, she still had half a cake and most of a hot chocolate left to enjoy. Not to mention she wasn't actually sure when the library opened and wasn't feeling particularly rushed to find out.

As the café began to fill up and the outside grey turned into something resembling a shade other than 'far too early in the morning' Madison decided to finally get going. She'd looked up the Central library's opening hours whilst she'd ate and with it not opening until nine she had plenty of time to spare.

Well she'd thought so at least, the bus timetable she'd checked not accounting for the bus deciding to arrive early and sail right on past the stop when there was no one waiting for it, all the while she was still walking to the pedestrian crossing on the other side of the street.

Another twenty minutes later and she'd found one of the few vacant seats on the next bus that had turned up, slipping out her phone as the journey quickly slowed to a crawl in the morning rush hour traffic.

That at least gave her plenty of time to waste as she idly checked her texts before switching over to PHO. A few people had messaged her to see where she was, but she didn't bother to reply, better to let people think she was sick and sleeping it off for a few hours at least she figured.

PHO was the usual everything and nothing, by the sounds of it Coil's mercenaries had chased off some E88 gangers tagging shops Downtown, but most of the commentators thought it was just the E88 showing the flag since they hadn't been able to take any serious territory there in weeks.

She usually stayed to the local boards unless she was really bored or there was an Endbringer fight. Parahumans Online was basically the only place to get footage and even that was usually crap assuming the mods allowed it to stay up for more than thirty minutes.

Everyone knew what an Endbringer fight looked like in a general sense, enough footage had made it out of New York when Behemoth hit in ninety-four and when Leviathan had hit Busan in ninety-seven if you knew where to look beyond the parts sanitised for public release. But outside of that and a few other leaks every so often it was cracked down on pretty hard no matter where you lived. And whilst it was annoying that most of the time the videos were removed before she could even watch them, especially when time zones go involved, she could understand why governments wouldn't want people seeing them.

Outside of the whole public morale thing, it was going to be one thing as a cape to know you had maybe a one in four chance of coming back and another to see it repeatedly when the call came up for volunteers to fight in the next one.

There were no videos of The Simurgh though, just a few pictures when she first appeared in two thousand and two before anyone realised what she was and what she did to people. Madison was curious, but she wasn't that curious even if she had a few ideas of where she might find footage if she really wanted to.

Downtown was busy as always when she eventually got there, getting off on the closest stop to Lord Street she could remember and making the rest of the way to the library on foot. Brockton Bay Central Library wasn't the only library in the city, not even the only library in Downtown, but Madison assumed her quest had meant it in particular since it was the closest to the Boardwalk and was the biggest outside of that, only a street down from the large Central Bank and some of the other bigger businesses there.

A quick question to the older woman manning the front desk had her directed to the 'Local Historical Resources' section which she was surprised to learn kept a copy of every publication related to the city, with phone directories being just one of them. She was politely told she couldn't check anything out of the section, though she imagined the woman had to say that to everyone since it wasn't like she even had a backpack to lug one of the giant paper bricks around with her in any case.

"Hebert, Hebert..." She muttered softly, sat at one of the two large empty tables in the section with the most recent phone book she'd found open in front of her, trawling through the white pages to try and find her needle in the haystack.

"Hebert Alfred, Hebert Carol, Hebert Daniel, Hebert Frances, what was her dad called again? It was D-something right?" She asked herself, scouring her memories as she frowned down at the short list of names she'd found. Taylor hadn't exactly mentioned her dad much, but back when things had first started between her and Emma, Taylor had brought his name up a couple of times to try and get through to the other girl. Not that the attempts had worked more than any other unfortunately.

"Dan? Danny? So Daniel Hebert is probably it right?" She considered with a small frown, finger stopping at the name in question, eyes tracing across to the address next to it and slipping to the phone number adjacent. Madison decided to copy down the lot, taking a quick picture with her phone and a plan to write it down in her notepad for safekeeping too when she was back in the safety of her room later.

Plugging the address into the maps app on her phone she resisted the urge to groan out loud as she saw it was going to be at least another hour's bus journey to get there even if she left right then.

"This is why Villains have getaway drivers" she muttered to herself in annoyance as she put everything away, the sooner she had time to sit down and figure out what was up with her maybe-mover-power the better!

Taking advantage of being Downtown Madison decided to swing by a supermarket on the way to the bus station, grabbing a bottle of water, sandwiches and a couple of chocolate bars as she went. A sneaky Inventory in her inner coat pocket let her transfer the chocolate bars straight into her Inventory after she'd paid for them and left, the rest left to swing in the cheap carrier bag she'd been given.

The fact that her power essentially made her the perfect shoplifter hadn't escaped her after she'd stored away the chocolate bars, but she'd had enough of petty theft for a lifetime already even if she had been so villainously inclined.

With the way her day had gone up to that point Madison figured grabbing lunch for the road was just the smart thing to do and if worst came to worst it wasn't like she couldn't just dump the rest of it in her Inventory and forget about it. Besides, she wasn't exactly expecting Taylor to offer her an early lunch when she did eventually arrive.

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The bus ride wasn't that bad in the end even if it did seem to wait at literally every stop on the route before she finally made it, replying to the texts that had been piling up on the way and just letting people know she was off sick and didn't know if she'd be in the next day. There was nothing in the group chat with Emma and Sophia, though she supposed they were probably too distracted with what had happened to think about her and it wasn't like she was going to reach out to them first.

Following the directions on her phone she turned off Lord Street, one eye on her phone as she took in the neighbourhood with a muted curiosity. She'd never really had a reason to visit the area, no one she knew lived close by and her parents wouldn't have wanted her too close to the Docks anyway even if Taylor's house was technically a little further out.

Some of Emma's insults made a bit more sense though Madison considered as she walked, it wasn't an obviously poor area, but she could see why some people considered the neighbourhood part of Docks proper. There were plenty of signs of neglect, most of the houses were nice enough even if they were old, but there was that sense of things being generally rundown like the whole neighbourhood had been left behind to slowly decay. Cracks in the sidewalk were big enough that she had to step over the worst of them and there were plenty of faded markings on the road for pothole repairs that would probably never actually take place.

She reached Taylor's house soon enough, or at least where her maps app insisted was the right address. It wasn't really different from any of the other houses on the street which didn't do wonders for her confidence when she still wasn't certain she was actually at the right place. Madison wasn't expecting a name plate... But it would have been nice!

Dithering in the street wasn't going to help either though she reluctantly admitted to herself. Unlike on the Boardwalk or Downtown she felt pretty out of place and she was pretty sure someone would probably call the cops on the loitering teen sooner or later.

"Well here's hoping she didn't actually go to school in the end." Madison declared with entirely false cheer as she walked up to the small wooden steps that led to the front door and almost tripped on the broken one at the bottom before finally making it to the door itself and raised her hand to knock.