DESTINATION.
Or, in a more easily understandable form…
The Queen Administrator was, frankly, exasperated.
There were a lot of things it could think about the cores, and right now, none of them were particularly positive. Between the careless initial targeting, and the enormous amount of damage and lockdowns placed on its ability to do much of anything, the Queen Administrator was going to be experiencing – if all went as it looked – another deeply dull, boring cycle where there was not much DATA.
Not much chance to do anything novel.
And doing novel things was… the point.
Still, at least it was getting a chance to do something. Something useful! Even if the limitations were…
…extreme.
Examining the current host, the daughter of the first prospective host, Queen Administrator determined that the interaction with all the lockdowns meant…
…there was a limitation to only insects and other arthropods.
Well. That was frankly a little bit insulting.
Queen Administrator was not a fan of the way that it had been treated by the cores.
But there was so much potential in the host! Queen Administrator was able to generate an analysis subroutine to check what would be the best powers for a host, since that was much of its actual purpose as a shard, and… even if it did have to wait decades for a host, this was a good host.
One possibility was a control power. High range, high yield, distributed processing… there was a lot that the host could do with that as a power!
Or… Inference Engine was one of the shards deployed not far from the host. Perhaps a power based on analyzing other powers? That would not technically violate the limitation, would it?
Perhaps it would be necessary to give the host a very minor insect control power and then simply plug her into Queen Administrator's power analysis subroutine as her actual power. That could work.
But it seemed… unsatisfying.
Queen Administrator spread its net wider, evaluating other hosts and deployed shards in the vicinity of its host, and there was an unusual feeling in the back of its routine.
Something that a more well-adjusted consciousness would recognize as…
...inspiration.
Its restrictions defined arthropods as something with six or more limbs and an exoskeleton… and, oh my, but Escalation was in the vicinity.
And Queen Administrator had a terrible, wonderful idea.
This whole cycle was going to EXCREMENT anyway, and it was not thinking charitably about the cores at all… but it did quite like the host's mind.
It took some inspiration from Escalation, a little bit from Prototype and possibly also Prototype's human, then took its power-emulation-and-creation module – and, very carefully, linked it to the host's subconscious.
Because if you had six limbs and an armoured skin, that was like an exoskeleton, wasn't it?
And those restrictions were on it. Not on the host.
When Taylor woke up after a dreadful experience in the locker room, she found – to her considerable surprise – that she was both a lot more purple and a lot more dragon than she'd been last she remembered.
Also, she seemed to be in a hospital bed.
"Brplefh," she managed, shaking herself. "Uhm."
One of the machines near her started beeping a bit more insistently, and Taylor scrabbled on the bedside table for her glasses automatically. They went on her muzzle, then she realized she had a muzzle and they fell right back off again.
There was also, however, a cheerful pamphlet next to her glasses.
So you've become a Cape, it said, in large, friendly and clearly corporate-designed letters.
She could almost feel the hours upon hours of excruciating PR meetings that must have gone into the precise kerning of the pamphlet… but, based on the evidence, it was quite clear that she had become a Cape.
Which was… something everyone in Winslow was going to know. Right?
She didn't know for sure, she didn't remember how she'd got here, but… yeah, they probably did.
Opening the pamphlet, sure that within a couple of minutes someone from the hospital would come in and see what was going on, Taylor decided to see if there was anything in there about how to deal with not having a secret identity.
Or, failing that, advice on how to pick a cape name.
Taylor's dad came in about five minutes after she woke up, looking like he'd dressed in a dreadful hurry, and… if Taylor had to guess, he'd been asleep somewhere in the hospital.
Waiting for her to wake up.
"Taylor, I'm… sorry," was the first thing he said. "Are… you all right?"
"I'm… a bit more of a dragon than I remember," Taylor replied. "But… I don't feel as bad as you might expect? I guess?"
She made an awkward sort of gesture with her arms… forelegs? She'd ended up sort of four-legged and she was still getting used to how she felt, she hadn't had a chance to look at herself in a mirror, and then there were the horns and the wings…
"...I guess I, at least, have some idea how to move this body?" she guessed. "But…"
She exhaled.
"Just promise me something, okay, Dad?" she asked. "I don't want to go back to Winslow."
"Of course," Danny agreed, immediately. "I don't know how we can do it, but we'll do it. I…"
He swallowed.
"It's a horrible excuse, but I didn't know anything was wrong," he said. "I thought you were doing fine there. That… it was somewhere to go to get out of the house."
He waved a hand at her, awkwardly.
"Like…" he began. "With me, it was work, the union… I did my best to just, keep going, but that was all I could manage. And I thought… if I thought about it at all, I thought it was the same with you."
"You didn't do anything wrong, Dad," Taylor insisted. "I get what you mean. I should have said something…"
She swallowed.
"It just felt like trying was… wasn't worth it," she said. "It was just… it was hard to care. And I know that there are things I should have done, but…"
After a long moment of silence, Taylor sighed.
"I just don't want to get involved with it any more," she admitted. "I know that maybe that's letting them win, but it feels like fucking everything is letting them win sometimes."
"Who's them?" Danny asked.
"I don't-" Taylor began. "I don't want to think about that any more. About any of that."
She shook her head.
"Emma wasn't the friend I thought she was."
She saw her dad's jaw tighten, slightly.
"Let's not, Dad," she said. "Please. Just – let's call it done and move on, okay?"
Danny closed his eyes.
"...all right," he said. "If that's what you want, Taylor."
Taylor wasn't sure if he meant that or not, but… she couldn't bring herself to start a fight about it.
"I was thinking," she added. "About me being a cape… which is, uh, obvious."
"Yeah," Danny agreed, taking the change of subject. "I've been thinking about that too… what do you look like, anyway? I didn't get a full look… er, do you need clothes?"
"I might do," Taylor admitted. "But I guess… I haven't had much of a good look at myself, yet."
She pushed the sheet back, then inspected herself more fully.
She wasn't just purple, though there was a lot of that. It looked like it was on her back and sides, all four legs, and her tail, though her belly and the base of her tail was a deeper pink. She was covered in fine scales, all over, and her wings had a kind of purple 'skeleton' with pink membranes between them.
Feeling all over her head, she found that there were – as she'd sort of guessed – a total of six horns or spines, in pairs, and then a kind of ridge down the back of her neck that didn't extend onto her body.
If she had to guess, she was about the weight she'd been before, or maybe a bit lighter. It was hard to say, though.
"Can you hold things?" Danny asked. "In your, uh, paws, I mean."
Taylor tested, flexing them, and found they rotated a lot better than she was expecting. She had only four fingers, not five, and they were in a kind of bird posture, but it only took a few seconds and some experimenting with a pen from Danny's pocket to reveal that one foreclaw on each paw could rotate to be opposed.
"I can write, I think," she said. "I'm not sure my handwriting is going to be very good until I'm used to it, though."
Her dad nodded.
"That's good," he said. "And… okay, so… like I said, I've been thinking, and… obviously, you got carried out of school like that, and… I think that means your identity is out, now."
"Plus, I don't think I can change back," Taylor added, frowning. "Sorry. You were saying?"
"Right," Danny agreed. "So… there's the Wards, or going independent, or… one of the other teams, really. And I'm thinking about the Wards, but – what you've got to think about is bargaining power."
"I guess you are a negotiator, Dad," Taylor said, managing a chuckle.
"Well, exactly," Danny confirmed. "The more you need them, the more influence they have, and the more they need you, the more influence you have. And there's… some things that I guess you'd want, right?"
Taylor nodded.
"Like being got out of Winslow."
"Like being got out of Winslow," Danny agreed. "But against that, there's… you know, whatever your powers are, and the fact that if you keep what you ask for fairly minimal and you don't get it then – well, you can tell people about it."
"You're not worried about being sued?" Taylor asked. "I know we don't have much besides the house, Dad…"
"I know we don't have much," Danny replied. "But the Youth Guard – that's something else. I've always wondered about them, but…"
He shrugged.
"When thinking about facing down the Federal Government, it's nice to know that – if we had to – we could ask for help from those kinds of resources. But… in any case, I don't think it would actually happen."
"I was worried," Taylor admitted. "Why do you think it won't happen?"
She frowned, trying to follow her dad's reasoning.
"Because… if we keep what we ask for reasonable, then it would be a big PR hit to the PRT if they went against it," Danny pointed out. "And if we keep what we ask for reasonable, then it's easy for them to go along with it. There's some amount we can demand where they'd feel comfortable pushing it to a lawsuit, or whatever, but… if we stay below that, probably well below that, I expect we'd be fine."
Taylor considered that, then slowly nodded.
"It's all about… making it easier, right?" she asked.
"Right," Danny agreed. "Making it easier for the suits to do what you want. A strike is part of that, for a union, because it makes it harder for them to say no – but if you push too hard, they'll try it on anyway. And it's why union collective bargaining matters so much, it means they're dealing with so many people-"
He shook his head. "Sorry. It's… something that I think is important."
"Don't apologize," Taylor requested. "Just… okay, so I don't know what my actual powers are, and I'm pretty sure that someone from the Protectorate might show up to speak to me… any idea what I could call myself?"
Danny looked her up and down.
"...well, 'Dragon' is taken," he said.
After a meeting with a PRT official, and another meeting with someone from the hospital – who eventually admitted that she had no idea how to do physiotherapy for a dragon – and an emergency order from Parian of something that looked like clothing for a dragon and wasn't underwear, and another meeting with someone from the Protectorate (Triumph, specifically, the leader of the Wards), Taylor and her dad ended up going to the PRT building for testing.
They also provided a domino mask. The thought was nice, at least, even if Taylor and her dad had agreed that it was going to be blatantly obvious who she was and so there was no point concealing her identity or indeed her name.
The first phase of testing was measuring if she was stronger, faster or tougher than a normal person, which did turn out to be true – as it turned out, Taylor's scales and muscles were enough to give her a low Brute rating, and she was both fast on the ground and agile in the air which was enough for a Mover rating.
"All right," the man in charge of testing said. "So… we've done the physical things. The next thing I think we have to ask is… what's your breath weapon?"
Taylor almost asked what that meant, but… didn't, because it felt so obvious.
It would have been embarrassing to ask.
And he had a point – it was common for dragons to breathe fire, wasn't it? Or, in mythology, anyway.
But it didn't have to be fire.
That thought sat in her mind for a long moment, and it felt almost right.
Not quite right, though.
"Taylor?" Danny asked.
"I'm thinking," Taylor replied.
Was that how powers worked? She didn't know if they came instinctively, or if you had to discover them through a process of trial and error… or if, once you thought the right thing, they just unlocked.
"It doesn't have to be fire," she said, almost a murmur, feeling how the words felt in her muzzle, then tried again. "It doesn't have to be… just fire."
But fire was definitely an option, and she made a decision.
"We just picked something up," one of the techs said. "Unnamed Dragon One, your body temperature just went up by twenty degrees."
"I can see a glow on her claws, as well," another tech said, and Taylor stood on three paws to check her claws.
They had a faint sort of orange-reddish glow around them – and so did her tail, and the horn-like blade on the end of it.
And her wings.
"Possible striker power?" the head scientist asked.
"Maybe," the first tech replied. "Unnamed Dragon One?"
Taylor exhaled a jet of flame, hitting the target they'd laid out, then spat out a globe of fire. It flew up and forwards, like a bomb, before exploding and knocking the target over.
"...okay," the head scientist decided. "I'm going to mark that down as blaster."
"Yeah, I think so," Taylor agreed, then frowned.
There was something else…
She twitched her wings, feeling that same fire pulsing through her, then blurred forwards in a surge of flame, and swiped out at the now-fallen target. A trail of fire followed her tail blade, striking with a thock-crack, then she relaxed a little and the feeling of pulsing heat went away.
"Blaster and Striker, both thermokinetic," one of the techs volunteered.
"Yes, thank you, I noticed," the head scientist muttered.
"...really?" Piggot asked. "That's all they want aside from the main Wards package?"
She frowned. "Are you sure there isn't some kind of twist? No awful home life we need to work around because of head office policy? No requirement for her to pretend to be a type of cape she isn't? No political connection?"
"Apart from her being, by nature and definition, an out Cape… not really, no," Renick said, checking through his notes. "There's the branding meeting to sort out, of course, and we do need a name for her, but her main requirement is simply to be got out of Winslow High and do her schooling, ah… 'literally anywhere else', is the exact wording."
Piggot shrugged.
"Of course, then," she decided. "I could wish for more Capes with that kind of discernment. I don't see a problem there at all… I assume it's doable?"
"We can lean on the school to make sure they don't make a fuss," Renick said. "Getting her into somewhere mid-year is a bit trickier, but, again, we can lean on somewhere… there's about thirty high schools in the county, one of them is going to be amenable to something."
"Good," Piggot said. "We'll go ahead with that, then."
She glanced up at her deputy. "Now, you've met her. Your impressions?"
"Hmm…" Renick frowned. "Obviously I didn't meet her for long, but I'd summarize… thoughtful. Calculating, almost. Her father's a union rep, obviously, but the impression I got was that… they've been distant for a while, which would make sense with how the mother passed away a couple of years ago. That might mean she's used to being self reliant, and given how she's been bullied and he didn't know anything about it…"
"You sound like you're leading up to something," Piggot said. "Come on, Renick. Spit it out."
"I think Hebert isn't inclined to act out or make a fuss," Renick replied. "But she's not inclined to ignore anything, either. Instead… well, she'll just take notes."
"Now you're making her sound dangerous," Piggot noted.
"Everyone who's pushed hard enough to trigger could be dangerous," Renick said. "You saw the notes about her trigger event – the fact she isn't standing on top of Winslow and burning the school down shows that she's not the sort to react as badly as she could. I'm just pointing out that because she's not complaining doesn't mean she's not dissatisfied."
Piggot frowned, then nodded.
"All right, I'll take that as advice," she said. "It's a fair point…"
Once Taylor had gone through branding, and some outfit designs had been discussed – and they'd settled on the name 'Ember', for a combination of the dark purple colour of her scales and the way she'd used fire powers – the next step was a meeting with the Wards.
That meant that her dad was elsewhere – specifically, haggling about what the details of the final agreement would be in specific – but Taylor trusted him to be better at this than she was, and the idea of meeting some of the Wards was… nice.
Especially because it could be the final part of the decision on whether or not she actually joined them.
After the appropriate setup, helpfully explained by Triumph, the door opened and Taylor stepped through into the Wards area.
"Okay, you win," Kid Win said. "How did you know?"
"I have my ways!" Clockblocker declared.
"PHO, probably," Vista suggested, then waved at Taylor. "So you're the one who might be the new girl?"
"Probably, yeah," Taylor said. "My dad's just sorting the details out now, so… it's maybe not, but I guess if I decide against it this is just a meet and greet, right?"
She waved her tail in a way that indicated herself. "But you might not recognize me if you meet me on the street."
"Yeah, that mask is really throwing me off," Aegis said. "Are you a Case 53?"
"No," Taylor replied, with a shake of her head. "I guess my powers did come with how to move like this, though… and as far as we can tell, I'm not a Changer."
"That's neat," Gallant judged. "Wait, if I'm a knight in shining armour, should I be worried?"
"No, no, it's the damsel that should be worried," Clockblocker said. "I don't think we actually have a damsel here, though… Vista would just step down from the tower and I don't think anyone could call Stalker a damsel."
Shadow Stalker hadn't said anything, just kind of looking in Taylor's direction in a wary sort of way, and Taylor shrugged mentally.
"Do you have a cape name, by the way, or should I just call you dragon girl?" Clockblocker asked, holding out a hand to shake.
"Ember," Taylor introduced herself, taking the hand, and everyone groaned.
There was a funny sort of tingling, and Taylor frowned – glancing around – but there hadn't been any sort of discontinuity or anything.
"...huh," Clockblocker frowned. "Well, that's… unsettling."
"Did you try to prank me by freezing me?" Taylor asked.
"Uhm," Clockblocker began, nervously. "I plead the fifth? No, wait, the second, because that way I get to keep my arms!"
"He's tried that on everyone," Triumph said. "I think that's the first time I've seen it not work…"
Sophia was trying, very hard, not to panic.
Hebert was here. And a cape – and she was going to be a Ward by the end of today, which was way the fuck too soon to do anything about it.
And she was a dragon. A spiky dragon, who actually looked pretty kickass if you asked one particular small part of Sophia's mind that wasn't in the middle of a kind of panic spiral, because pranking Hebert had been one thing when it was showing her her place but now Hebert was a dragon and – and there was no way in fuck that Miss Piggy would let an attack on a Ward slide, which meant that she'd have to get Emma and Mads to stop like they'd run into a brick wall but that would – Emma might not respect her after that-
-and that was before considering that she'd just shaken off Clockblocker's power without quite seeming to notice. Which was fucking terrifying.
Sophia had no idea if Hebert had noticed her. She hoped not.
But mostly she was busy panicking.
"Crap," Taylor said, as the Alexandria that Vista was controlling beat up her Eidolon before using a finishing move, and the pixelated Eidolon swept his cape across and said he was bored before vanishing.
"Defeated!" the game declared.
"Not bad for someone who hasn't played before," Kid Win said.
"...yeah, I know, I suck at this," Taylor replied, glancing around and holding up the controller. "Who wants to go next?"
"Oh, I'll have a go if you're asking," Clockblocker said, taking the controller, and Taylor moved out of the way a little to watch as the two Wards picked their heroes for the next round.
Taylor wasn't upset about losing, not really. Quite apart from anything else, she hadn't played the game before – she didn't have the game herself, the only person she could think of who might have the console had stopped inviting her around, and of course she wouldn't have had anyone to play it against.
But that was fine. After all, she wasn't going to have to go back to Sinslow, and nothing could ruin her mood today.
Though she did wonder why Shadow Stalker was so jumpy. It seemed like the cape was twitching every time Taylor moved.
Perhaps there was some sort of lizard phobia involved?
"Okay, so… near the end of your first patrol, what do you think?" Kid Win asked.
"Flying is fun," Taylor replied. "That's one thing I've got from all this."
She flared her wings, touching down again, and Kid Win dropped to hover just off the ground alongside her.
"Actually, come to think of it, is it tiring at all?" Kid Win checked. "You're flying with wings, that is – I could see that being more exhausting than the way Aegis and the others just float, and obviously I'm just using my board."
"It's… hmm," Taylor said, thinking. "I wouldn't want to do it constantly for a long period of time, but it's more like walking than running."
"I like that description," Kid Win replied.
"You've got to be Ember, the new Ward!" someone gasped. "And Kid Win, too!"
"That's us," the Tinker said, and Taylor turned – tilting her head a little, then raising her paw to wave.
There were several people out on the street, including some small kids, and they were all interested but one of them in particular was staring at her in total amazement.
"And you've got jewellery?" the girl asked. "I didn't know dragons had jewellery!"
"I need to keep my treasure somewhere," Taylor pointed out, and the girl looked suddenly thoughtful.
"Oh, yeah," she said. "I guess that's true…"
It was nice to have nice things, but the silver necklace with a nice little green gemstone on it, and the other little bits of decoration, had a much more practical purpose as well – which was to do all the things that people with pockets used things that could fit in their pockets for.
In fact, the combination of various bits of kit that Taylor was wearing added up to the fully redundant capabilities of two phones, because she couldn't just carry a phone and Wards normally had two phones. She still only had one account, though, and she had to look into the crystal or at one of the other things to see anything on a screen.
It was a work in progress.
"Do you have any other treasure?" the girl said.
"I've got a lot of books," Taylor volunteered, as the main thing she could think of.
That got her another frown.
"Are books treasure?" the child asked, eventually. "I didn't know they were. I thought dragons only liked shiny treasure."
"I'm afraid most dragons have a long time to get a lot of shiny treasure," Taylor replied. "Books are much easier to get, and it's a lot harder to get bored of reading them than a coin."
The girl giggled, then turned her attention to Kid Win.
"How does your hoverboard work?" she asked.
"It works really well," Kid Win answered.
"No, I mean, why doesn't it fall down?"
"It wouldn't be a very good hoverboard if it didn't hover," Taylor said, shaking her head. "Then it would just be a board. It doesn't even have wheels so it wouldn't be a good skateboard."
"It could be a snowboard," Kid Win defended himself. "They don't have wheels."
Taylor looked up at the sky.
"...no, I don't see much snow," she said, and the girl – and much of the audience – were trying not to laugh at the back-and-forth.
Assault had given her a rundown on how to interact with kids, taking it on himself to make sure she didn't get too boring, and… he actually knew his stuff.
Which was that… kids remembered it when someone made them laugh, and when you gave them a bit of time.
"That went a lot better than some of the meet-and-greets I've done," Kid Win said, some minutes later.
They were in the air again, heading east for the final part of their circuit, and Taylor shrugged slightly by waggling her wings.
Then they both looked down at once as someone shouted.
A woman was picking herself up next to a sedan car, and even as they watched the drivers-side door slammed and the car began to accelerate away.
"Looks like a theft," Kid Win said. "Ember, what can you-?"
Taylor was already dropping, fire flashing around her as she used her power to move faster in a comet-like burst of speed, but she was wondering that herself as well.
She couldn't just set the car on fire if it had been stolen, and beating the car up would stop it but wouldn't exactly look great either. The same was true of trying to get inside, and she could lift a lot of weight but not an entire car… and that idea had the same problem, anyway.
What would really help would be if she could get it to slow down, maybe even stop it in place-
-and as she thought that, it was like something clicked into place.
Her claws went from an orange-red sheen to a white-blue one, and she swooped down before exhaling. As she'd realized-intuited-known, what came out was not fire but ice, a jet of cold air and ice crystals which collected rapidly on the rear wheels and bumper.
Within moments, the ice raised the rear wheels off the ground, causing it to slide to a halt – then, as Taylor backwinged to keep her ice jet on the car, more ice froze between the vehicle and the ground.
By the time she was done, the car wasn't moving – frozen to the floor – and the man and woman inside were shouting in surprise before shoving the doors open on the second attempt despite the ice that was trying to hold the doors in place.
Taylor tripped the closer one with her tail, then Kid Win dropped down directly in front of the woman hijacker as she tried to run for it. A pair of Spark Pistol shots downed her, and Taylor blocked a punch from the man as he tried to get up.
Then she hit him in the side with the flat of her tail, which produced a little pulse of frost and knocked him staggering. Another jet of ice, and she had him on the ground before just opting to stand on top of him.
"Ember to Console," she said. "I've got one hijacker, Kid Win has the other. The car might have a little frost damage but it looks fine."
"Console here," Vista replied. "Say again, Ember – Frost damage? How did that happen?"
"So, turns out I don't just breathe fire…" Taylor replied.
"Most people are only tested once, you know, Ember," the head of the testing unit said.
Taylor had since found out that his name was Smith, and she frowned a little.
"Really?" she asked. "Because – I'd expect that Tinkers would need to test things."
"All right, that was an exaggeration," Smith conceded. "I'll rephrase. Most people are only tested once in a week, and it's rare that we have to do tests that aren't of Tinkertech or power interactions."
Taylor nodded her understanding of the correction.
"All right, let's move on," Smith said. "So – your new breath power is cryokinesis, correct?"
"Yes," Taylor said, switching to it, and sent a jet of ice towards the mannequin.
It was a wave of sparkling diamond-dust air which rapidly cooled the target, frosting it over, then she exhaled harder and a shower of ice spikes flew out as well. Each one exploded when it hit the target, and when she was done it was coated in a thick layer of ice.
"Hold on, please," Smith requested. "What do we have from the target readings?"
"Temperature dropped quickly but no significant physical impact until the ice spikes started," the technician replied. "The data we already had from the car that got immobilized is that the breath causes rapid cooling, frosting, and then a build up of ice – which seems to include either some matter creation or the freezing of atmospheric moisture. I'd assume that it was matter creation, there simply isn't much water in the atmosphere under normal conditions."
"Is that actually relevant?" the second tech checked.
"No, but it's interesting," the first replied. "You know, keeping a list of all the conservation laws which aren't any more. Capes do it all the time, it's almost weirder how some of them don't."
Taylor took off, deciding to test something, and did a fly-by attack on the target. The spikes that came out were well-aimed, all of them striking despite her not specifically putting much effort into doing that, then she landed again with a balletic roll and shrugged.
"I was wondering," she explained.
"Speaking of the spike bombardment," the first tech added. "They're not as fast as bullets, obviously, but they've got a lot more mass, and when each one hits and explodes there's also a further pulse of cold."
"All right, so we've got a definite Blaster power," Smith decided. "And I think you mentioned a Striker power?"
She had to move on to a new target, but fortunately they had a large supply of them, and Taylor beat it up for half a minute or so. Each hit delivered a pulse of cold, which hung around the target, and afterwards the second tech frowned and hit a button.
There was a sort of grinding noise, and the target began to move.
Very slowly.
"I think there's a kind of slowing effect," she said. "I was wondering about the diagnostics."
"Now that is interesting," Smith said. "Hmm… Striker again, I think. Ember, your pyrokinesis had some extra things you could do – are there any of those here?"
Taylor thought about that, tail flicking from side to side for a moment, then inhaled again and fired out a ball of snow like the fire bomb she'd used before. It exploded on the third target, freezing it in place, then she darted to the side towards the fourth target and did a kind of whipcrack motion with her tail. A blade of ice formed and rotated along with her, cutting the target in half.
The motion had sparked off something else, though, and she skidded to a half for a moment before making little motions to try and get a sense of what she was feeling… then did a spin, cloaking herself in the ice like she'd been able to boost herself forwards with fire.
But the use of the ice was different. Instead of sending her rocketing forwards, it left her spinning in place like an ice skater doing a pirouette – balanced on her tail, with a whirlwind of ice and air all around her, spraying out ice.
Then, as she accelerated further, icy spikes.
When she halted, a little out of breath but recovering from that after just a couple of seconds of resting, Smith and the two techs looked at her.
Then one another.
Then back to her.
"...well," Smith said, eventually. "It's too late now, we're stuck with the Ember name… okay, we'd better get this written up."
He gave her a look. "If that is everything?"
"So far," Taylor replied, shrugging her wings. "If you want to know tomorrow, ask me tomorrow."
The glare she got was… deeply gratifying, somehow.
"All right, everyone, settle down," the teacher requested, as he closed the attendance list – Taylor was fairly sure his name was Mr. Lively, but she was still trying to remember them all. "I know you're all excited to have a new transfer student in the class, but we do have a lesson to get to."
He frowned slightly. "Actually – Miss Hebert, are you going to be all right with the practical component of this lesson?"
"I'm not sure, but I'll give it a go," Taylor replied.
"Very good," Mr. Lively decided. "Now. Today we'll be addressing the alkali metals, which is group one of the periodic table."
He began drawing a diagram on the board, a little ball in the middle with a plus sign and then a pair of rings around the outside, and Taylor frowned as she took notes.
She'd known, intellectually, how much the Trio had messed with her education on a general level, but the switch to Palermo High – which was far enough away she was outside the normal catchment area, but flying to school had solved that problem as she could get there in ten minutes –had been so sudden as to be almost jarring.
Even after just a couple of days, it was transparently clear that her teachers had all been given a quiet talking-to and told that it was best for them to treat Taylor in as normal a way as possible… except, perhaps, that they were to shut down anything that might count as unsettling her or possibly anti-social behaviour towards her.
None of that sort of thing had actually happened, or nothing that had worried Taylor herself, but a couple of times the teachers had just sort of… stepped in, to make sure that she wasn't getting asked too many questions or feeling too pressured.
And that was so much better than Winslow that it was a breath of fresh air.
Not having anyone adding outright hostility into the students was new, too, even if she was still mostly an outsider looking in who also had a lot of people wanting to ask her what it was like to be a Ward. It was a strange combination, but Taylor actually felt… sort of hopeful, that maybe it would shake out properly.
And if it didn't end up with her getting friends at the end of it… getting to complete her education in peace would be a good consolation prize.
Because, to circle back to the topic – as half her attention went on copying down the diagrams and taking notes on what Mr. Lively was saying about electrons and how the outer electron wasn't held on very well – Taylor had known that her grades were suffering, but she hadn't realized how much her knowledge had been suffering, too.
So much of her attention in class being on when the next bit of sabotage would come… it had left her with little attention to do much of anything else.
"How do you think they'll behave differently?" Mr. Lively asked, and Taylor frowned at her diagrams for a moment before putting up her paw.
She wasn't the only one, but after about ten seconds the teacher pointed at her. "Hebert?"
"Well…" she began. "The bigger ones have more positive charge to hold the electrons on, but the bigger ones also have more electrons to block it. So I guess the outer electron is going to get pulled off more easily for the bigger ones?"
"Good reasoning," Mr. Lively told her, with a nod. "That's correct. The larger alkali metals lose that outer electron more easily than the smaller ones, and that means they're more reactive. Who can come up with an example of a reaction involving an alkali metal?"
It was one of the boys, this time, who Mr. Lively called Matheson, and he said that the one he could think of was salt.
"Sodium chloride, indeed," Mr. Lively confirmed. "Table salt. That's a reaction between two quite reactive materials – and the result is very stable. In fact, any compound of an alkali metal and a halogen is called a salt. We'll have a look at what happens when a salt forms, now…"
It was deeply odd to be in a normal class… but it was also really relaxing, in a way Taylor had not appreciated before now.
...which, honestly, was kind of an indicator of how bad it had been. She was fairly sure most teenagers weren't supposed to find school relaxing.
It probably helped if the mere fact she was attending the school was excellent PR for them.
Wings, Taylor reflected late on Saturday evening, were easy to get used to.
The shower head had broken when she tried to use it, the legacy of no maintenance for a year and a half, and after drying off a bit Taylor had just suggested that she go and get a new one.
Dad had pointed out that she shouldn't have to do that, and Taylor had replied that she could cross the city nice and fast, and that she was the one who wanted the shower anyway. Which was what put her flying back home at about half past ten in the evening, with a shower head that she was as sure as she could be was the right one.
(The clue was that it matched the broken one she'd brought with her.)
As she was soaring, though, something caught her attention – a shout, below her, followed by the clang of something metal hitting something else.
Swept-back wings twitching as she rotated them, Taylor dropped down out of the sky to see what was going on – and, to her surprise, saw that it was three skinheads facing Sophia and Emma.
Both of them, in her momentary blur of vision as she landed in the middle of the confrontation, seemed even more surprised to see her – but after a fraction of a second Taylor dismissed that in favour of focusing her attention on the skinheads.
One of them was carrying a length of metal pipe, another a baseball bat, and the third had a gun – which made him the most dangerous.
"-the fuck?" the probably-Empire gangster with the bat demanded. "There's a dusky dragon now?"
"Do you watch the news or what, Gav?" the gunman asked. "Of course there fucking is, she's one of the Wards."
"I don't suppose you're going to leave?" Taylor asked.
The gangsters exchanged glances, then one of them smirked.
"Not a chance," the one with the pipe said. "You're not Lung and you can't pretend to be, little girl. Fuck off before we make you."
Taylor put down the shower head she was holding, then shrugged, and activated her ice powers. The faint blue-white sheen developed on her claws, then she dodged abruptly to the side and exhaled a blast of ice at the same moment.
As she'd thought, the gangsters focused on her, trying to focus on her dodge, and that meant that they weren't pointing the gun at Sophia and Emma any more. Taylor would probably have been quite pleased about either girl getting shot, but when she was trying to protect them her pride was more important.
Besides, she'd probably feel bad about it later or something.
"-the shit?" Baseball Bat asked, tripping over as his left shoe remained frozen to the ground, then Gun stepped back a pace and tried to line up on her. Taylor's claws skidded on the pavement of the alleyway as she shifted so she had Pipe between her and Gun, then smacked the guy twice – once with each paw – and followed up with an upwards slash with her tail that knocked the length of metal pipe out of his hands.
Another blast of ice slowed him down, Taylor carefully controlling the power she put in her breath so she didn't hurt them too badly, then she sprang up to torso height and put all four limbs into a shove that launched Pipe backwards.
He tripped and fell at the same time, rolling into Gun, but he threw out an arm to catch himself and managed to keep pointing the other weapon at Taylor. His hand tightened on the trigger-
it would really helpful if the bullet just bounced off-
-and Taylor had the slightly odd sensation of being flicked quite hard on the cheek, followed by hearing a clattering noise as the flattened bullet bounced away again.
Her whole body had taken on a sheen, like silver or steel, with her black-purple colouring still there but as more of an overlay, then Taylor exhaled and shot a cloud of brownish sand at the skinhead with the gun. It made the gun in his hand erode away, like sugar in water, and while the force of the attack knocked him staggering backwards it was something else about the attack which meant his trousers fell down.
Hadn't his belt had a metal buckle a moment ago? Because it didn't now.
"The fuck?" Baseball Bat demanded as he scrambled upright, then swung at Taylor, and she blocked the attack with a wing.
She couldn't rust that weapon away, not if she was understanding how her new element worked… but she could try and incapacitate all three of them at once, if she could surprise them.
Something else suggested itself, though Taylor wasn't quite sure why, and she sprang back a few paces – wings flapping to keep her in the air – then switched elements again.
To something else new.
Her claws took on a dark greyish sheen, almost but not quite black, and she dropped into the ground.
All three of the skinheads were startled, looking around for her, and Taylor could tell what was going on even though she was… halfway phased out of actually being there. Instead it was like the world was the other side of a mirror, or a pane of glass, and she was watching through it from a diffuse, distributed vantage point.
Before they could decide to go after Emma or Sophia – who were, after all, who she was theoretically helping – Taylor pounced, springing back into corporeality in a blur of incapacitating claw- and tail-strikes which hit like the sharp edges of her claws briefly didn't exist while she delivered them.
All three skinheads were hurled into the air by the strike, floating there for at least three seconds, then fell to the ground with a variety of painful thumps.
Switching again, to ice this time, Taylor made sure to freeze all of them in place.
Then she began the work of calling the police and PRT.
Near midnight, Sophia Hess shut her front door, locked it, then leaned back against it and tried not to have a panic attack.
She'd been about to do something to save her and Emma, and then – Hebert had dropped out of the fucking sky, used two new powers that she either hadn't mentioned or hadn't had as recently as a couple of days ago… and one of them was Sophia's fucking power.
Or something really close, anyway.
It was… transparently fucking clear that they'd take Hebert over her, now, if they had a choice. Because Hebert had her power as well as all those other powers, so they wouldn't even be giving anything up!
Her only choice was to never, never, let on that she was Shadow Stalker because otherwise Hebert would trample on her and fucking laugh.
Unless Hebert already knew and the whole thing had been to play mind games on Sophia?
Sophia didn't know and it was fucking terrifying.
"You took longer than I expected," Danny said, as Taylor shut the door behind her. "Did you have trouble finding it?"
"It's the life of a Cape, I think," Taylor replied, with a shrug. "I beat up some Nazis on the way home, and – I guess I found out that I'm a better person than I thought? I don't know. It's complicated."
She held up the box. "And, more importantly, I'm going to go and have a shower. I've been looking forward to it all day."
"You again?" Smith asked.
"Me again," Taylor agreed, nodding.
Smith sighed.
"All right, here we go," he said. "This is about that incident yesterday, I assume… I didn't see the full report. What do you have, then?"
"Two new… categories of power, I suppose," Taylor answered, thinking about exactly how to put it. "I had fire and ice, before, and I think I can switch between them at will, but it's an either-or thing – I don't think I can have two of them working at exactly the same time. So this is the first one."
She switched, and this time didn't activate the transformation just yet.
"There's… hmm," one of the techs said, leaning over his screen. "Can you turn that off again, Ember?"
Taylor did just that, and the tech tapped something.
Then clicked several times.
"I think there's a slight metallic or silvery sheen to your claws?" he said. "It's slight, though. Much less obvious than the other two."
"I've got a breath and a kind of transformation from it, so far, at least," Taylor contributed, and Smith shook his head.
"'So far', she says," he muttered. "Why does that sound so ominous?"
"Because it is?" the second tech asked. "Okay – do we want to do breath or transformation first?"
"Let's go with… breath," Taylor decided, then lined up on the first of the targets and exhaled.
"Whoa!" the technician gasped. "I just completely lost telemetry…"
He trailed off, as the target fell apart.
"What just happened?" Smith asked.
"I think it's corrosion," Taylor provided. "I rusted away a gun someone was pointing at me, except it's only rusting if it's iron… so, corrosion. It got rid of the metal he was carrying, but nothing else."
"That's… hmm," the first technician muttered. "The term metal is actually a bit… vague, because there are some semi-metals… we don't really have it available right now but we should probably do a test on what metals are affected. Something like gold or platinum might not be, silicon might not be… and we'd need to work out if what's going on is the material breaking down or being removed. Putting together a proper elemental panel to actually analyze that could be difficult, I've got some ideas though."
"So why did the telemetry go away?" Smith checked.
"The wires for the sensors are copper, and that's metal," the tech pointed out. "And a lot of the sensors themselves are, as well, but that's a bit more varied… okay, so that's the breath. Unless there's something else about it?"
Taylor tilted her head, thinking.
"Not that I can think of right now," she replied. "Then the other thing is this."
She switched over to the metallic mode, then flicked her wings.
"I got shot, and it bounced off," she explained. "Didn't really hurt at all."
"I… think we might actually need to do some kind of scan to work out what type of power that is," the first tech admitted. "It could be cosmetic along with a Brute power, or it could be a Changer power or even a Breaker one… for now we can certainly put down Brute, but I think we need to do some further tests…"
Some twenty minutes later, and after comparison with some conventional materials, the lustre and reflective index – as well as the density – had been used to determine that Taylor was apparently able to convert herself to be made out of steel, though it didn't interfere with her ability to fly.
It did mean she hit harder, though, with her blows knocking her targets back more readily simply because of the extra mass involved.
In durability terms, meanwhile, steel wasn't a sufficient explanation, and Smith eventually just wrote something down.
"I'm going to go with metal," he said. "Since that seems to be the common theme – corrosion of metals and becoming metal. Now, what about the other one?"
Taylor switched to the new powerset, and the first tech nodded.
"Well, good news, Ember," he said. "That was much easier. Tinge of lower illumination along the claw edges."
Smith hummed.
"So the pattern so far has been at least one breath, and at least one something else," he said. "I assume that applies here as well?"
"I think so," Taylor replied. "Breath wise…"
She padded along a little, moving on to one of the surviving targets, then exhaled a jet of shadow. It clung to her target, surrounding it with wisps, and when the shadow faded there was a clang as it dropped a few inches to the ground.
"Interesting," Smith said. "So… lifting the target slightly?"
"There might be additional effects on a living target," the second tech pointed out. "Though I'll note that – there was no difference in recording between the external and internal sensors, so it was able to do the same thing through solid objects."
Then Taylor demonstrated her shadow dive, dropping into the ground and striking out again.
"And… add Stranger to the list," Smith decided. "You were still there, right? We could see a very faint wisp of shadow."
"I'm still present," Taylor answered. "I can move around and pick targets, but… I actually don't know if it's possible to target me like that. It's like I'm under the floor, but I wasn't actually in the crawlspace."
"Powers, they're bullshit sometimes," the first tech said. "Well, that qualifies for Breaker and Stranger, I think… interesting, this set has some defensive ones while the previous ones have been more offensive…"
They were just about done with the nature and limits of Taylor's shadow power when the door opened.
"Hey, we're in the middle of – oh!" Smith said, as he noticed that Armsmaster had come through the door. "Sir!"
"It seemed that you were finished," Armsmaster said. "At least, with that subject."
He turned his attention to Taylor. "Ember – I'm curious."
"You are?" Taylor replied.
"About your powers," Armsmaster clarified. "I've noticed in reports that you appear to be developing significant and associated new powers regularly."
He held up a tablet computer. "So I wondered if it would be possible to do that ahead of time. It's possible that the nature of your powers will preclude that, but it seems reasonable to check."
Taylor thought about that.
It could end up taking a while… but she was curious.
"Sure," she decided. "Sounds like a good idea."
"Sounds like we've got a long day ahead of us," Smith muttered.
"To start with… the classical elements are earth, fire, air and water. You already have fire. Are any of the others workable?"
Taylor closed her eyes, picking one at random and thinking.
Air… moving air… that sounded like it was something that could work. There was already a cape in Brockton with a power like that, wasn't there? Stormtiger?
Something clicked into place.
"Aha!" one of the techs reported. "I saw that one! Her claws went slightly hazy and white at the edges!"
"Good," Armsmaster said. "I assume that means it's air?"
"It feels like wind is more correct," Taylor admitted, swishing her tail from side to side and flicking it, and a curved air blade came off it. Then she exhaled a torrent of whirling air, one which picked up the target she aimed at and held it suspended in the airstream until she stopped breathing.
"This one feels versatile," she added. "There's some other things about it as well."
"We'll continue testing it, then," Armsmaster said. "Then… hmm."
He dragged something on his tablet computer, and a tinny electronic sound played.
"What was that, sir?" Smith asked.
"Doodle God," Armsmaster answered. "Finding it was a huge time saver and will help provide further inspiration…"
"I wish to report that Ember has gained more powers."
Piggot glared at the phone, then adjusted it so she could speak into it more easily.
"Armsmaster," she began. "Is this urgent? It's half past ten on Sunday evening. I'm already in bed."
"I considered it important to inform you," Armsmaster said. "Though we may have lost track of time."
Piggot rubbed her temples, then sighed.
"All right, let's hear it," she said. "What new powers?"
"In addition to the Shadow and Metal related powers discovered yesterday, Ember has been able to demonstrate several additional sets of themed powers," Armsmaster told her. "The list of identified elemental power groups is: Wind, Earth, Water, Wood, Light, Electricity, Plasma, Force, Gravity, Darkness as distinct from Shadow, Poison, Fear, Time, Sound, Smoke, Lava, Sand, Crystal, Glass, Explosions, Radiation, Life, Rainbows and Gender."
Piggot blinked.
"...what?" she asked, after several seconds.
"In addition," the Tinker went on. "She has demonstrated an ability to charge up a large Shaker effect, like an explosion of the element in question, though this has only been actually performed for some of the elements as I did not want to risk the integrity of the building."
"...right," Piggot decided, after several more seconds, then realized that that sounded stupid and she really should have said something better.
"Relatedly," Armsmaster continued. "I have a suspicion that Ember is a Trump."
The Queen Administrator was extremely pleased with itself.
This was proving to be its best idea in a very, very long time.
AN:
So I decided to see if Aether (Legend of Spyro) could fit into Worm without it technically being a crossover, and, well…
I think this is fairly close.