Chapter Text
Winslow was garbage. Nothing about that had changed, but it was where I was going to school for at least the next three weeks, so I went. Before I left the Pelham house to catch a bus, Sarah had provided me with a cell phone - a cheap prepaid thing - and told me it had the New Wave adults programmed into it. It was a loaner for emergencies only.
Given how much discomfort I had about cell phones after mom died, it actually made it easier to accept the thing if it wasn’t really ‘mine’. I wouldn’t have minded a way to keep in touch with Vicky and Amy, but they had their own day to deal with, anyway.
Cell phone or not, I had to face the reality of Winslow without my newfound support network. I really wasn’t looking forward to it.
I almost didn’t go. I could have chickened out. I could have found an excuse. I’d been shot at not two days before, and I’d almost seen Vicky die in front of me. I had seen dead bodies. I’d touched one of them, when we were checking to see if they were alive or not. It had been traumatic, but it also seemed like it was a lot longer ago than the two days it had really been.
Heck, I had literally ripped a guy’s arm off after he’d tried to murder me. That was a series of images and sensations I wouldn’t be forgetting any time soon.
Powers changed things. Powers changed me.
Suddenly, I wasn’t a powerless victim. If anything, I had to struggle with the fact that I had too much power and didn’t actually want to abuse anyone with it. It would be frightfully easy to turn a bunch of bitchy girls into much less bitchy corpses.
I think there might have been something to what Sarah was talking about with multiple-triggers sharing personality traits a bit, too. I knew I was experiencing a need to seek physical comfort from my trigger-mates - which didn’t bother me - but I also seemed to have picked up a touch of Vicky’s aggression and Amy’s droll snark. I wasn’t going to complain because I could use those things.
Then again, maybe that was just normal teenager stuff? They warned us about all sorts of ‘changes’ in health class, so maybe I was finally getting some of those? I had just been through a series of shocks.
Regardless, I arrived at school early and on a different bus line than normal. It was enough to avoid my normal welcoming committee, at least for one day. I had honors English for first period, which was nice since none of Emma’s cronies were honors material. Keeping my grades up had been the one thing I’d managed in middle school while dealing with everything, but they had been slipping lately. Between frequent thefts from my backpack and locker and my growing depression, I wasn’t doing so well.
If things continued to slide, I would probably be in regular classes before long, which would mean more access by Emma’s little bitches which would mean worse grades… It would be a vicious cycle, and one I intended to stop now. After class was done, I approached the teacher.
“Mrs. Jacobs, I know I’m missing work for the semester and I wanted to see about making it up. I’ve been going through some home stuff that is getting better and… well, I want to salvage as much of my grade as I can,” I said in the most even tone I could manage.
Mrs. Jacobs was an older woman, graying and tired, though she would probably have been called ‘handsome’ twenty years before. She seemed surprised that I approached her. “Taylor, I’m glad things are getting better. I haven’t looked at your grades in a bit - Thanksgiving was a bit hectic, but I’m sure we can work something out. Have you finished reading the Joy Luck Club? The paper on the themes is due next Wednesday, and I’m sure we can find an assignment for extra credit…”
I let myself relax and grin and agree. I hated to admit it, but I had never been very assertive about asking the teachers for help with the bullying. Emma was a bitch, but she was a clever bitch. The few times there had been a teacher present, she’d been painfully calculating in what she’d allowed them to see. Between that and the peer pressure of not being a ‘snitch’, I’d never really tried that hard to get them involved.
Teachers might not have been able to directly help with things they couldn’t see, but we could have probably found ways to work around the stuff that directly affected my grades. Was this newfound perspective a piece of Vicky? Amy?
It didn’t matter where the insight came from, I was going to take it.
Mrs. Jacobs wasn’t a bad person. In fact, considering the fact that she was teaching an Asian-focused novel in a school with a lot of junior Empire, she was a pretty courageous person. Now that I was asking her for help, she seemed almost eager to do so. I had to rush to my next class, but she promised to send me an email with the extra credit later that day.
Again, my lateness in leaving class meant that I didn’t run into one of Emma’s carefully choreographed ambushes. My next class, US History, did include a few of her hangers-on, but they weren’t the kind that would try anything without their master there to pull on their leashes. Leaving that class late due to needing to beg for extra credit to fix my grades also meant I was harassed before my next class - Chemistry.
Unfortunately, Chemistry ended with lunch, and that’s where my luck ran out.
There were four total lunch periods with some effort made to group grades together. It didn’t necessarily work smoothly for classes which included students from multiple grade levels, but it did mean that my lunch period was mostly populated with freshmen. Unfortunately, that was where the majority of Emma’s power rested.
I grabbed a lunch and sat down, hoping to finish before I could be harassed. I made it about half way through something that claimed to be a chicken sandwich when I felt someone beside me.
“Taylor, if I didn’t know better, I would swear that you’ve been avoiding me,” Emma’s unwelcome tone pierced through my illusion of peace.
“I knew I hadn’t smelled something today,” a more gruff voice announced and Sophia sat down beside me. She reached out for my tray - to steal something or tip over my milk or something - and I pushed her hand back.
“Emma, Sophia,” I returned through gritted teeth. I glanced around and saw that there were three or four more of their group lingering back a bit. I recognized one of them from history class and decided to throw a little confusion into the ranks. “Emily, you’re right, she does seem to be extra bitchy today. Thanks for the heads up.”
The girl in question’s eyes widened and Emma was distracted for a moment. I grabbed Sophia’s wrist to stop her from another attempt at messing with my food and turned my eyes to her.
“Sophia, I don’t know what she told you, but Emma and I never dated. You don’t need to be jealous. She’s all yours. I totally support your love.”
I let go of Sophia’s wrist and stood up suddenly. My chair went screeching back against the floor due to the sudden movement which made me realize how quiet the area around our table had gotten as people tried to listen in.
“I just remembered I have to go,” I blurted and quickly went to dispose of my tray before fleeing the lunch room entirely.
I had no interest in letting Emma pick on me, but I’d also made a disturbing discovery and needed immediate advice.
Sophia was a parahuman.
oOoOoOoOo
“Taylor? Is everything alright?”
I had broken into a run almost as soon as I got out of the cafeteria. My cell phone was in my pocket, fortunately, because the classroom where my backpack was currently located was locked. That left me to find an actually empty and unlocked classroom from which to make my phone call. It was a process that took an annoyingly long time, but even the teachers at Winslow weren’t completely vigilant about locking things up behind them.
“No. Yes. I mean, no one is attacking me right now or anything, but there’s a problem. A big problem.” The words kind of erupted out of me. I was busy spinning nightmare scenarios in my head and words were just kind of falling out.
“Taylor, take a deep breath.”
Her voice was commanding enough that I did what she said. It helped a tiny bit.
“Okay, sorry, sorry. I was just… so you know how my best friend completely changed over the summer, right? I mean, everything is fine, I go to camp, and I come back to find she has a new best friend and hates me? Well, I touched the new best friend today and it turns out she is a parahuman. If she’s a Master, that explains so much-”
Sarah broke in. “Touched her? Why were you touching her?”
“She was messing with my lunch, and I was fending her off. It was fine, they were just saying some stuff, but the important thing is that she has a parahuman power.”
“A full-on power, or a potential power, like with Eric?”
“Full-on. I didn’t get a good look because as soon as I realized what it was, I got out of there and found a place to call you from. If she is Mastering Emma, we need to-”
“Taylor, take another breath. We need to be very calm and careful about how we approach this. You don’t know for certain that she has a Master power, though I agree that it does seem suspicious. Do you have any classes with her for the rest of the day?”
“I-no. I don’t have any classes with either of them.” Honors classes were hard, but at least they offered me some solace. I hated to think of what would have happened next semester if I’d been forced into regular classes because of my falling grades.
“Good, good. If the worst case is true and she is a Master, then I agree that we need to do something, but I also think that if she has been Mastering your friend for several months, taking a day or two to investigate is safe enough. That is especially true if we want to preserve your secret identity and keep your friend safe.”
I took another deep, calming breath. Sarah was right. Even if Sophia was a master, she seemed content to keep Emma around for now. Upsetting things without a solid plan would be dangerous for me and maybe for Emma.
“Okay.” I breathed out again.
Sarah let out a breath, too. “Alright, good. Now, you need to finish out your day like normal. Do your best to avoid both of them and I will have Neil come pick you up after school. As long as he stays in the van, he’s less recognizable than me.”
I just had to avoid two teenagers for the rest of the day. How hard could that be?
oOoOoOoOo
“Hold her still,” Emma gloated as she fumbled to get the cap off of the marker. The slabs of brainless muscle on either side of me - only one of which was Sofia - grunted as I fought against them with everything I had. I wasn’t exactly sure what she had planned, but I was not interested in finding out.
The struggle really wasn’t getting me anywhere. Outside of walking to get places, I had exercised exactly zero days since the end of summer camp and against a couple of track athletes? It just wasn’t going to happen.
The fact that I had to divert a good amount of my attention toward not slotting in a power - Lady Photon’s power had ‘recharged’ at some point during the afternoon, so I had a choice between that and Manpower’s untested ability - or just using my tentacles to pull them off of me - and possibly limb-from-limb - didn’t help anything.
Apparently, standing up to Emma at lunch had been enough to raise her ire, and I’d been cornered as soon as I stepped out of my last class by the traitor, several of her cronies, and a few recruits from the track team. Now, we were behind the gym and I was trying to figure out how to get out of this mess without someone getting seriously hurt - myself included.
Just then, my cell phone started ringing. I hadn’t thought to silence it earlier since I had never really had a cell phone before and forgot that was a thing you needed to do. It caused a pause in the action, though.
“Oh, what do we have here?” Emma asked, suddenly gleeful. I struggled some more, but she got the phone out of my pocket. “A cell phone? Taylor, for shame. Don’t you remember how your mommy died?”
“Don’t-” I managed through gritted teeth, but Emma kept on. The phone stopped ringing, but quickly started back up again.
“Oh, they want to talk to you. Is it your pimp? A sugar daddy?” She pushed the answer button. “Hello? Oh, no, she’s too busy to come to the phone right-”
“Behind the gym!” I yelled before Sophia put her hand over my mouth. I licked it, not enjoying the taste of whatever was on it, but hoping to gross her out. She shot me a look of disgust, but otherwise ignored my tongue sliding across the insides of her fingers.
“Sorry, she will have to call you later.” Emma pushed the button to end the call, dropped it on the concrete covered ground, and then stomped on it as hard as she could. “Oops?”
I very nearly gave up on resisting the desire to go spider-Carrie on them, but then Sophia’s power finished resolving itself under my power. Intangibility, flight, evasion. There didn’t appear to be a Master component at all, but there were quite a few things that felt malleable to my power. There was something different about how my power was acting, too.
Before, when I had been intending to aid others, I had felt ‘boundaries’ which defined the power’s strengths and weaknesses. None of them had seemed dangerous, though messing with some of them had seemed unwise. This was different.
This was like being in a control room where most of the buttons were marked ‘do not touch’. Those beneficial boundaries were still there, but there were many more buttons which weren’t. That one over there? Some sort of safety to do with oxygen. There? Some sort of limiter on duration. Over there? A dial that turned a weakness up and down.
In the middle of it all was a big, tempting button. It seemed to be at the very middle of the whole web and I knew that it was a bad, bad idea to press it. Well, a bad idea for Sophia.
I pressed it. Hard.
Metaphorically.
Sophia whimpered and then I was only being held by one person. That would have been a better thing if the remaining person and I hadn’t been overbalanced and ended up falling down in a heap with his heavy body crashing on top of me.
“What’s going on back here?” I heard a voice yell and then there were kids running in all sorts of directions. The idiot on top of me managed to smack my head against the asphalt in his haste to get away and I couldn’t do much more than roll over and dazedly stare at the fallen marker, my now-broken cell phone, and my glasses which looked like someone had stepped on them.
“Taylor, are you okay?” I heard and managed to turn my head to the side enough to recognize Neil.
“M’fine,” I managed. I wasn’t really fine. People that were really ‘fine’ didn’t slur their words like that. I just didn’t want him to worry. He’d been a good guy to me. He let me look at his power when he didn’t have to.
“Shit,” he mumbled and fished a cell phone out of his pocket.
oOoOoOoOo
I didn’t really catch what happened for the next little bit, but the fog eventually cleared up and left a nasty headache behind.
“Ow,” I groaned once I was pretty confident my tongue was going to move the way I wanted it to. I was still on the ground behind the gym with Neil - Manpower - keeping a vigil over me as we waited for… something. “What happened?”
“You got hit in the head,” Neil said. He’d made a phone call or two while I was out of it, so it must have lasted a while. “It looked like an accident when they started panicking, which is probably my fault. Sorry.”
“That explains the heada-” I grumbled as I started to sit up.
“Don’t try to get up,” Neil admonished and knelt down and used a hand on my shoulder to gently stop me from rising. “You shouldn’t move after a head injury if you can help it. Not until someone can check you out.”
“Alright,” I agreed. That did sound, vaguely, like something I had learned in health class. It wasn’t like I wanted to get up that much, anyway. The ground sucked, but trying to to stand up with an intense headache wasn’t much better. “Are my glasses alright?”
Neil picked them up off the ground and looked at them. “They aren’t great. We can worry about that later, though.” He put them back on the ground. “I called a friend in. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Why would I mind?” I asked, still feeling a bit groggy. It seemed to come and go in waves.
As if in answer, the back door to the gym opened with a thud as a number of people came tromping out at just that moment. Again, Neil’s hand kept me from getting up, and once he was sure I was going to stay put, he stood up to greet them.
“Manpower,” a woman’s voice greeted and one of the group stepped forward. It looked like Neil gave her hand a shake, though everything was pretty blurry without my glasses. She had something colorful in her head area.
“Miss Militia, I’m glad to see you,” he returned and that definitely explained the colorful head thing. She always wore an American flag scarf as a mask.
Another figure in a dark colored shirt came past and knelt down beside me. From the little white cross on his shirt, I guessed he was a paramedic and the way he looked into my eyes and gently touched my neck and head area confirmed it.
“Are you in any pain?” the paramedic asked and I grunted noncommittally.
“Yes, headache. Place where head hit the ground, too,” I managed to say without slurring. I really was doing better. “I was really out of it for a bit, but that’s fading.”
“Good,” he said and proceeded to shine a light into my eyes.
“Tell me what happened?” I heard Miss Militia asking from the other side of the men. A couple of big black blobs which were probably PRT troopers were spread out, taking pictures of the area, too.
“I have been looking into reports of a parahuman vigilante working in the area. Some signs point toward them being the right age for high school. Miss Hebert here,” he gestured toward me and I gave a weak wave, “has been helping me with my inquiries. I was supposed to meet her after school today and gave her a cell phone so that we could arrange a meeting. She was late, so I called her and someone I didn’t recognize answered the phone. I overhead a scuffle and someone yelled about being behind the gym. The call and when I tried calling back, it wouldn’t connect, so I walked around here to see what was going on.”
He paused and took a breath. “When I arrived, I saw around a dozen teenagers. Most of them had their backs toward me, but I got a clear look at three of them. One was a black female, with long straight hair that was holding Miss Hebert’s left arm. The second was Miss Hebert, who I mostly identified after the fact, and the third was a teenager with red hair that was looking at the rest and so facing me. The black girl must have sensed something was up because when I came around the corner, she turned to look at me before I announced myself. Then she got a terrified look on her face and ran straight toward the wall of the gym and through it. That set Miss Hebert and the large boy that was holding her other arm tumbling and she struck her head.”
“At that point, I announced my presence, and the rest of the teenagers ran away. I chose to remain with Miss Hebert and call for you. I didn’t think it wise to let her move before she got medical attention.”
Miss Militia said something which I didn’t catch. The paramedic had distracted me by moving me onto a board thing before he and another man dressed in the same kind of shirt lifted me onto a stretcher. I was wheeled around the side of the gym to a waiting ambulance and the paramedics left me to wait for a bit. Most likely so that I could be questioned, which I was.
Fortunately, Neil’s story only contained a few fabrications and if I focused on what I had actually seen, it was fairly straightforward. I filled in the part where I’d been basically forced around behind the gym and named all of the people involved that I knew. “I didn’t see much toward the end,” I admitted. “After Emma broke my phone, things got kind of crazy.”
“That’s alright, Miss Hebert.” Miss Militia was either well trained in talking to victims or she was just a kind person. Or maybe both. Regardless, I felt a little better about the whole thing, even if my head was killing me.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Well, we’ll put a watch on Miss Hess’s known address and pick her up if she comes home. If she’s really the vigilante, then there are a number of pointed questions we would like to ask her. Being involved in this mess definitely doesn’t help her case any. Do you know if she has any close friends?”
I shook my head and immediately regretted it. “Just Emma. No one else seems to like her much.”
Miss Militia nodded again. Even up relatively close, she was still blurry since my glasses were terribly scratched and wearing them was more disorienting than not wearing them. “As for the rest, my report will serve as a police report. What ultimately happens to those involved will depend on a lot of factors, but I would expect the school to come down on them at the very least. You will probably be asked to speak to a detective at some point, and your wishes will be taken into account.”
I frowned a little. My revenge fantasy of having Emma locked up didn’t seem very realistic. What had she really been caught doing? Intimidating me and breaking a cheap cell phone? Her lawyer daddy would get her off of those charges in a heartbeat. On the other hand, I was just tired. I didn’t need vengeance - I needed to be done with the bullshit - and this could be the lever that made that happen.
The hero left soon after that and I made the trip to the hospital where I had to go through an x-ray before being released. My dad was there to pick me up which shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did. He looked tired, but his smile at seeing me was genuine.
“I can’t leave you alone at all, can I?” He laughed a little as he helped me into the truck.
“Apparently not,” I admitted. I wondered how much those hospital-grade aspirin had cost? Something to worry about later.
“I’m just… I’m just glad you’re alright. When Mrs. Pelham called me to let me know you were at the hospital, I panicked a little. Was it something related to, you know?” he asked.
I had learned my lesson about shaking my head so I just responded verbally. “No, it was a stupid accident. It was… well, Emma and I aren’t really friends anymore. She and some of her new friends were picking on me and… it was a whole mess.”
I proceeded to tell him a little about what was going on. Not much, though, because I didn’t want to put too much on him. I wasn’t his fault, for once.
When the car stopped, I was a little surprised that it was in front of the Pelham household instead of ours. “I know… I know things have been rough, but I think I needed another shock. When you almost… when things happened a couple of days ago, that was a pretty big shock. I’m not… I’m not in a great place right now, Taylor. I’ve started looking for a therapist, and that’s a really hard step for me to take.”
I let out an appreciative sound. That was a big deal. I didn’t know much about grandpa Hebert, but I got the impression that he wasn’t the kind that would have approved of his son seeing a therapist, no matter how much he needed it. Dad had never exactly talked badly about therapy, but he had also not really considered it, either.
“I haven’t actually started yet, but I have some recommendations and I think we should probably see a therapist together once I get my head back on a little better. I’m… I’ve messed up a lot, Taylor.”
I reached out and placed a hand on his arm. “It’s okay, dad.”
He laughed sadly. “It’s not. It’s really not… but I want to make it okay. It’s been really unfair to you, and that’s not alright. I love you and… well, I love you.”
I pulled him into a hug - gently. “I love you, too, dad.”
Internally, I was struggling with an entirely new issue. When I touched dad for a few moments, I could feel the faint attention of a power-granting-thing. It was different from when I touched Eric, but unmistakable.
What was I going to do with that information?
oOoOoOoOo
“Are you okay?” It was Amy that got to me first, to my surprise. I had barely stepped into the Pelham house before she was right in front of me. I heard dad make an amused noise from behind me.
She didn’t even hesitate before pressing her hand against my neck, her eyes immediately getting that slightly glazed look that indicated she was using her power. “Some soft tissue damage, evidence of a mild concussion.” I felt my headache diminish but not go away entirely. All of my other pains vanished one by one, though. “There, you’re as fixed as I can make you.”
That’s when her eyes narrowed, took half a step back, and she smacked me in the shoulder. Hard.
“Ow!” I gave her a hurt look. It hurt a little, but not that much.
“You deserve that. Why, exactly, did we get a call that you’d been in a fight at school and had to go to the hospital?” Vicky asked from the other side of Amy. She didn’t look happy, either.
“I’ll just go see Mrs. Pelham, then,” Dad declared and walked around our little tableau. The three of us paused to watch him go.
“I’m sorry.” I really meant it, too. Vicky and Amy had so much concern radiating out from them - even if there was a bit of anger in it - that I felt really bad. “It wasn’t really my fault. I…”
“You mentioned that you were having some issues, but issues don’t usually result in going to the hospital.” Vicky definitely sounded annoyed.
“Well, there are some girls that pick on me and I usually just take it, but today I got a little… sassy.”
“Sassy.” Amy didn’t look impressed. “Really?”
“Snarky?” I shrugged helplessly. It was hard to describe what had happened. “I might have spent most of the day avoiding them and when they cornered me at lunch, I kind of heavily implied that the ringleaders were dating each other and picking on me because one of them thought I was the other one’s ex? They took it personally.”
Vicky made a kind of half-snort, half-grunt noise like she was trying to avoid laughing. “And that’s how you ended up in the hospital?”
I smiled, but it was definitely forced. “Kinda? That was actually an accident? They recruited some track guys - one of the bullies is on the track team. The dumber one and one of the guys were trying to hold me still so the one that used to be my friend could draw on my face with a marker. I kind of maybe figured out that the dumber one was a cape and… turns out my power works a little differently when a cape is hostile.”
That made Amy’s annoyance turn into a frown. “Differently how?”
I shrugged again, unable to find the right words. “I just… I get more things I can fiddle with, I think? I pushed on some part of her power and she ran off - straight through a wall, according to your uncle. It was so sudden that the big dumb idiot she had holding my other arm fell on top of me. That’s actually how I got hurt.”
“All because you were sassy?” Vicky asked, shaking her head with a small grin playing at her lips.
“The sassiest.”
oOoOoOoOo
Dad gave me a hug before he left. “I want to spend some time together later this week, maybe. Do you think you’re up for it?”
I nodded. I didn’t even have to think about it. “Yeah, that would be… nice.”
“Yeah, yeah it would. I’ll… I’ll arrange it with Sarah.”
I tightened the hug a little.
oOoOoOoOo
“I can just get new glasses,” I protested, though I didn’t do anything to stop Amy from holding my hand.
“Yes, the solution that is inferior to me fixing your eyes in every way. Now hush and try to read the letters on the card.” She had a point. I had no idea who would pay for the new glasses and I really did hate to feel like a burden. Plus, not having them knocked off in a fight would be very helpful.
“There are letters?” I asked. The card Vicky was holding up on the other side of the room kind of just looked like a blob.
“This… might take a while.”
oOoOoOoOo
“Let’s go over it one more time,” Sarah said gently and I let out a huge sigh.
“We’ve been over it three times,” I grumbled. The second time, I had actually read it out from where I had written it all down, with a bunch of annotations, redactions, and edits suggested by the adults. None of the facts were changed, just the way I worded some things to be more detached. I could still get across what I felt about the events in question, but I had to do it in a round-about way.
“Yes, but you might have to testify in court. Writing reports like this will be good practice for when you become a hero, too. New Wave have to give statements to the police all the time, and the Protectorate have to file reports for practically everything they do.” She was being understanding but firm on the subject. The revised tale did sound like something out of a police procedural, so maybe that was a good thing?
At least round four was occurring without Carol’s help. She had been there for rounds two and three, but after asking me a bunch of questions about the people involved, she left with the rest of her family. She had been… well, not friendly, but helpful. For her, anyway.
“Maybe I should just be a vigilante. They don’t have to do paperwork, right?” I was kidding. Mostly.
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Not at first, no, but there comes a point when it catches up to you. You either realize that most of the people you ‘arrest’ are walking free because you aren’t following the right procedures - like being available to testify in court - or you get caught crossing a line and have to work on your own court case. New Wave started out as a group of ‘freelance heroes’ which is to say that we were very well behaved vigilantes.”
I vaguely remembered something about that. Brigade of the Bay or something?
I sighed dramatically. “Fine.” I made a point of only glancing at my notes this time. “At approximately three pee em on Monday, November thirtieth, I was approached after the end of my last class by a group of four girls and two boys of which I could readily identify Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess…”
oOoOoOoOo