Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Setting up a meeting to join the Wards had been a lot simpler than Taylor had expected. She'd kind of thought there would be a bunch of conversations back and forth, and then she'd need to demonstrate her power, and she'd have to wait for them to run a comprehensive background check, and then they'd do an MRI scan on her brain or something to make sure she had an active corona. Well, maybe not all of that, but she hadn't been expecting it to be as simple as making a single phone call to the PRT and setting up a meeting for the next Tuesday, after school.

It made sense, though, after she gave it some thought. The whole point of the Protectorate was to try and get as many capes working as heroes as possible, and that went doubly so for the Wards. Taylor herself had some feelings about the way they went about it—at least five of the Butchers would likely have ended up as rogues rather than villains if NEPEA-5 hadn't made it almost impossible to earn an income with your power—but right now, it meant that the barriers to joining the wards were practically non-existent. That was good, because Taylor was very much counting on that for her plan to work.

Most of the collective didn't like her plan very much, but Taylor had their memories of living with the Teeth and frankly it reminded her of a fraternity mixed with a Upton Sinclair-era slaughterhouse, with all the cleanliness that would imply. It seemed pretty fucking awful, honestly, and for some reason she didn't find herself swayed by arguments about the opportunity to 'do pounds of blow off a hooker's tits,' as Frenzy had so politely put it. Some of the collective were on board, though—mainly the ones who had an actual sense of humor. There was an uproar of protests at that thought, but she just banished most of them to small and disgusting insects in her swarm, and that worked pretty well for keeping them quiet.

By the time Tuesday rolled around, Taylor was practically jittery with nerves, although not so much for fear of being injured—she had about a half dozen brute packages, and as long as she could avoid asphyxiating like Quarrel she'd probably be fine. Rather, Taylor was jittery with excitement, like she used to get when she and Emma were about to pull off a new prank.

When school was out–she'd spent most of the time between classes avoiding the Trio, a task made substantially easier by a combination of bug senses, bloodsight, and danger sense–Taylor practically skipped out of Winslow and began jogging toward the PRT headquarters. She ducked into an alleyway—again, it was a lot easier to make sure she was unseen with all of those senses–and then she quickly changed into the temporary outfit she'd assembled. First went on a leather jacket, which she'd embossed with fifteen symbols using Knapper's power, one for each of the Butchers. The first Butcher got a pig's head, Devein got a syringe, Cordyceps a mushroom, Quarrel a bow, and so on. Right over her heart, she'd embossed a little spider for herself. Her jeans she kept as is, and she'd molded the blade from an actual Butcher knife into a suitable mask, which would probably be horrifically uncomfortable for somebody that could feel pain or wasn't a brute many times over.

The PRT troopers in the lobby turned to look at her as she approached, hands going to the triggers of confoam sprayers. Taylor did her best to project an aura of nervousness as she walked over to the receptionist at the front desk, who was watching her with wary suspicion.

"Er, hello," Taylor said. "I'm here to join the Wards? I've got an appointment for 4:30."

The receptionist just nodded, clicking a few times on her computer. "Do you know who you talked with before?" she asked.

Taylor thought back. "I think she said her name was Jessica Song?"

I think her name was Agent Bitch– was about as far as Devein got before he was punted into a fruit fly in a neighboring office building. He knew better than to try and tick her off like that, of course, he just delighted in being a pest.

The woman just nodded. "Alright, I see your appointment. Trooper Hernandez will escort you to the meeting room."

One of the PRT Troopers, looking pretty much identical to the rest of them in oversized body armor, walked over toward us. Taylor could read the little nametag that said Hernandez, at least. "If you'll follow me," he said, his voice thick with a Brockton accent.

"Sure thing," Taylor replied. She'd noticed that her own voice had started to shift in its accent a little bit, a consequence of constantly hearing and having memories of a mix of Brockton, Boston, New York accents from the voices in her head, plus a Brazilian accent (from Sepsis) and a Japanese accent (from Quarrel). The end result was still mostly Brockton, but it clocked as a little foreign. Not that there was much she could do about it, though—humans are kinda wired to pick up the accents of people around them, and Taylor was always around the other Butchers.

Hernandez led her toward an unmarked door off the end of the lobby, which opened with a few taps to a keypad. It was a little disappointing: for all that this was the PRT, their interior decorating was pretty similar to any number of other offices her predecessors had seen. They ended up going up two stories in an elevator, and then Hernandez led her down a hallway for a few steps before opening up a meeting room. There was a long table with about ten chairs, and sitting on the other side while looking over some papers was the unmistakable forms of Battery and Miss Militia, in a circuit-lined bodysuit and a camo jacket, respectively.

Hernandez gave them a short nod, then stepped out of the room. Miss Militia stood up, gesturing at the chair across from them. "Please, sit down. We just wanted to go over some preliminary details with you."

"Sure thing," Taylor replied, sliding into the chair. There was a black knife sheathed at Miss Militia's side, with a green inlay, and she felt like she was probably a little too obvious in looking at it.

The things we could do with that power… Absinthe said, a little wistfully.

I changed my mind. Taylor, you should rage blast her right now, Wendigo said, and got the mental equivalent of a flick on the head in response.

"Are you interested in my power?" Miss Militia said, not unkindly. It flickered into a burst of energy, green and black light, and then it appeared in her hands.

"Yeah," Taylor admitted. "It's really cool. Probably one of the best examples of the Sheindel Aggression Hypothesis, though."

"You're interested in Parahuman Studies?" the beflagged hero asked.

Taylor gave her a sheepish look. "I've got something of a vested interest, you could say," she said. "You're actually a big inspiration to me, though. You've got a power that's almost designed to be lethal, and yet you've managed to make a career out of being a hero with hardly any kills to your name."

"That's what the Wards program is for," the hero said. "Helping young parahumans with potentially dangerous powers learn how to use them safely."

Battery spoke up. "We should probably do at least somewhat formal introductions. I'm Battery, and you clearly know Miss Militia already. Do you have a name picked out yet? I can't guarantee that it'll be permanent, because occasionally Image has some concerns, but we do our best to respect people's choices."

"Er, yeah, I've got a name, although I imagine that they'll want to change it." Taylor took a deep breath, then said, "Hi. I'm Butcher." At least ten different voices began to laugh in her head, and she struggled to keep a smile from spreading onto her face.

The capes across from her froze, Battery's pleasant expression going rigid on her face. "That's… that name has quite a bit of baggage," she choked out.

Taylor chuckled, more amused than she probably should be. "You're telling me! I'm the one who has to deal with fourteen voices in my head."

Miss Militia's power was rapidly flickering between several different weapons—Taylor saw a shotgun, a saber, a revolver, and a blunderbluss, just to name a few, before it settled on a confoam sprayer, pointed directly at her. Battery's body was flickering with a ghostly blue light, which meant she was primed to release her charged energy.

Taylor just leaned back in her hands, holding up her arms. "I'm not here for a fight," she said.

Battery stared at her, and Taylor could see her noticing the embossing on the jacket and starting to draw the right connections. "Why are you here, then?"

At that, Taylor just stared at her. "To… to join the Wards? I thought that was obvious."

You're way too good at that, Frenzy said, a quiet amusement evident in his voice.

"Forgive me for saying this, but you seem a bit too sane to be the Butcher," Miss Militia said, her voice controlled. "If this is a joke, we'll need to have a long conversation about appropriate topics and times for that kind of thing."

"Not a joke, unfortunately," Taylor replied. "My original power let me control bugs within a radius, and that meant every bug in that radius. I was in the hospital for, like, a week as my brain had to adapt to dealing with that much information. The flip side of that is my power lets me multitask like crazy. I can already process the location and senses of like hundreds of thousands of bugs, including hearing a bunch of conversations going on, so having fourteen more voices isn't actually that bad." As she said that, she had a few spiders crawl out of her hair and down her body to the table, where they did a little jig.

Miss Militia took a deep breath when she saw the spiders. "Quarrel's autopsy suggested she died from asphyxiation after her airways filled with insects," she said, faintly.

At that, Taylor winced. "Okay, yeah, not my best moment. I was in Boston with my Dad when we got caught in the crossfire between the Teeth and one of Blasto's monsters. Quarrel went for my dad and, uh, I kind of panicked. I hadn't gone out yet though, or even tested my powers as much as I wanted to, so I didn't really realize what I'd done until suddenly there was a bunch of people screaming and I could remember what it felt like to drown on bugs."

Both of the capes across from her winced at that mental image, and Taylor realized that maybe admitting to killing somebody wasn't the best look—although Frenzy had been a lawyer before he triggered and joined the Teeth, and his memories made it pretty clear that her actions fell under the grounds of a justifiable homicide, given Quarrel's obvious lethal intent. She tried to change the subject anyways. "Oh, um, you guys wanted proof that I'm Butcher, right? I mean, obviously there are a bunch of powers I can't really show right now because they only work on people, but I can safely show you Mason, Howitzer, Sepsis, and Quarrel's powers," she said.

There was a moment as Battery and Miss Militia's eyes met and they seemed to have a non-verbal conversation, and then Miss Militia said, "As long as you can do it safely, go ahead."

Taylor nodded, then pulled off her mask. Both of the heroes stared at her. She blinked back at them. "What? It's not like this would stop you from finding out, if you really wanted to, and I'm already trying to join the Wards. I'm pretty sure that revealing my identity is part of that. Anyways."

She called on Sepsis' power first, draggin her finger down the center of the mask in her hands. As she did so, the metal began to turn black and flake off, decaying where she touched it. She'd used a relatively light touch with the power, so the decay didn't last all that long, and then she snapped the mask in two. With Mason's power, she molded both of the pieces of metal at once, turning one of them into a flat disk with a small hole in the middle, and the other into a metal dart.

Then she tossed the disk into the air, teleported backwards (she'd barely charged it up, so the accompanying explosion was incredibly weak, not even enough to singe the carpet) and then tossed the dart into the air as well. Quarrel's power took over, the dart and disk meeting right as they hit the table, the dart sliding cleanly into the bullseye.

The two heroes stared, speechless. Taylor gave a little bow, because Cordyceps had suggested it and she thought it was actually pretty funny, and then she pulled the chair out and sat down in it again. "So, uh, pretty sure that's proof I am who I say I am," she finished, kind of lamely.

"I'd say so," Miss Militia said, staring at her in shock. It was pretty clear that neither of the capes had fully believe she was actually the Butcher before then, but her little demonstration had neatly put to rest any doubts. To pull off that kind of stunt, she'd either need to be the Butcher or an extremely powerful trump, and there was no reason for a trump with that kind of power to pretend to be someone like Butcher.

"So," Taylor said, and the two heroes flinched a little. "Joining the Wards?"

Director Emily Piggot was a hard woman. She'd always been stubborn and opinionated, but life and tragedy had forged that raw iron into brittle steel. Ellisburg had shown her that all men were cowards at their core, and capes were no exception.

She could tell at once that the girl across from her was cut from the same cloth. Taylor Hebert was strong long before she killed the previous Butcher and inherited that monster's powers and memories. She'd been broken, as well, but had come out all the stronger for it—although riddled with fault lines, like all things that have been repaired.

"Why do you want to join the Wards?" Emily asked. She didn't see much point in wasting time, not with someone like this.

"I don't want to die," Hebert responded. Her voice was level, almost casual. "And I always wanted to be a hero."

"It's hard for me to imagine you wouldn't be more trouble than you're worth," Emily said. This was a verbal spar, but she had long experience in this arena.

"I won't dispute that," Hebert replied, with a faint smile. "All the same, the Wards charter requires that you take me on."

"I could trade you to another branch," she tried, but she knew it was futile.

"Really? And who exactly would take on the Butcher? Especially when I'm so reluctant to move from my hometown."

"Probationary wards don't have control over their postings," Emily replied.

"And why would I be probationary, exactly? It isn't like you have me for any crimes."

"The murder of Butcher XIV doesn't count?"

"Do you really want to go that route? It's a hilariously easy case of self-defense, given Quarrel's reputation and prior actions. Even if you managed to stack the deck enough to see me charged, the precedence that would set would be… inadvisable. And I can't help but worry that pushing too hard might see me less reluctant to work for the PRT. Who knows—you might end up driving me into the hands of some nefarious organization. It's happened before, as I'm sure you're aware."

Emily gritted her teeth. This was not a problem she'd been expecting to have to deal with, but it was one she had anyways. The worst part was, the girl had her over a barrel, and they both knew it. The Wards charter did require that any parahumans below the age of eighteen without a criminal record be allowed to join, and that any transfers away from their home must be voluntary (except in the case of a probationary ward). Trying Taylor Hebert for the crimes of past Butchers would be impossible, and trying her for the death of Butcher XIV would take more political capital than she had at her disposal or, indeed, was willing to spend. And frankly, she could admit that she would much rather have the Butcher where she could see her, rather than with the Teeth.

Of course, the Youth Guard would probably have her head if they found out Emily let the goddamn Butcher be around the other Wards, but she couldn't do anything about that. All she could really do is delay Hebert for long enough for the girl to get any psychotic breaks out of her system—that is, if she was going to have them. The girl was clever and well-prepared, and that was very different from the insanity that Emily had known from previous Butchers.

"Welcome to the Wards, Miss Hebert," she said, because there was nothing else to say. "I hope you won't cause me to regret this."

The girl's grin was entirely predatory. "I'm sure I won't, Director Piggot."

Chapter Text

Missy bounced in place a little as she waited for the new Ward to arrive. Miss Militia had seemed oddly distracted when she was telling them all about it, but she had mentioned that the new Ward was a girl. There had apparently been some issue that had delayed the actual onboarding process for two weeks, much to Missy's displeasure, but today was finally the day when the rest of the Wards would get to meet her.

Not that Missy disliked the rest of the Wards—sure, Dennis could be a pest and Rory had something of a stick up his butt—it was just that it was such a sausage party. She liked them, considered her team somewhere between family and close friends, but her age and gender meant there was something of an inevitable distance between her and the rest of them. She couldn't gossip about Arcadia, and despite her best efforts she really couldn't bring herself to care about the shooting games that Chris and Carlos loved.

Missy herself was one of two girls on the Wards, and Sophia really didn't count because she was nasty to everyone, especially Missy. A part of her also hoped that a new female Ward might take some of the pressure off of Vista to be the token 'cute' representative, although she wasn't exactly holding hope for that.

The mask alarm sounded, although everyone was already in full costume already. Dennis was slouched into one of the couches in full white plate armor, while Chris was perched precariously on the arm of the couch, fiddling with a circuit breadboard while they waited. Rory and Carlos had been sitting at the table, having a quiet conversation, and both of them stood up as soon as the alarm sounded. Sophia was being an edgelord, leaning against the wall and tossing a blunt crossbow bolt end over end, but she was a fuckhead so who cared about what she did.

Thirty seconds after the mask alarm went off (it could be extended if any of them had called out a manual override to give them more time to put a costume on), the doors to the Wards quarters slid open with a quiet hiss. Miss Militia came in first, giving the assembled Wards a tight smile, and then Missy saw the person following her.

Her first thought was that there had been a mistake, because the woman standing behind Miss Militia didn't look like a kid. She was tall, probably with a good four inches over Miss Militia herself, with a lean build that nonetheless rippled with muscles and strength. She was wearing a leather jacket that had several symbols etched into the surface and a pair of jeans that fed into a pair of combat boots. When she moved, it was with a confidence and surety that seemed out of place for a teenager. Her hair was long and loose, falling in smooth black curls, but her face looked young–what she could see under the metal mask. It was a very understated costume, and the mask really didn't conceal much, which was… an interesting choice, to be sure.

"Hello, Wards," the girl said, her voice a little husky but clearly young. "I'm very excited to be joining all of you."

Rory stepped over, holding out a hand for her. The girl took it, giving him a firm shake that left him wincing a little—no small feat, since Rory had a minor brute package. "We're glad to have you. I'm Triumph."

The girl gave him a faint smile. "Nice to meet you. I'm glad to be here—my last team kinda sucked, to be honest. I'm still working on my cape name, but the PRT really didn't like my first choice. For now you can call me Fifteen."

Miss Militia flinched at that, Missy noticed, but she didn't know what it was about. Carlos stepped up next, holding out his hand. "I go by Aegis. It's nice to meet you, Fifteen." He paused, as if debating whether to go on, and then he said, "Interesting name. Is there a story behind that?"

The girl laughed, and it was actually closer to a giggle. "It's not very deep. That's just how many powers I have." That got a reaction from everyone, mostly expressions of shock and disbelief.

"Bullshit," Sophia cut in, from where she was leaning against the wall. "You're really gonna come in here and pretend to be some kind of discount Eidolon?"

"Not Eidolon, no," Fifteen said, shaking her head, a small smile dancing over her wide lips. "And can I just say, it's wonderful to see you here, Shadow Stalker. Suddenly a lot of Blackwell's behavior makes way more sense."

That got both Sophia and Miss Militia's attention. Sophia opted to growl, settling into a fighting stance, while Miss Militia went rigid and one hand subconsciously went to her weapon. "I'm going to need you to explain that, Fifteen," she said, iron in her voice.

If Fifteen felt at all threatened, she certainly didn't show it. Instead, she stepped forward and collapsed into one of the armchairs in the room. "I know her in my personal life. Between my bloodsight, my sense of smell, and my rage sense, it's pretty clear who she is. Her anger is a… unique flavor. I'm sure Gallant can confirm."

"Go fuck yourself, Hebert," Sophia hissed out. Missy gasped, and she wasn't the only one. Unmasking somebody like that, even if they were ostensibly on the same team, was a big deal. It wasn't the kind of thing you did lightly, but Sophia always had a problem with keeping her head when she was pissed—which was unfortunate, because she was pissed a lot of the time.

Somehow, Fifteen didn't even take offense. She just reached up and touched her mask with her left hand—and then the metal began to flow like it was a liquid, rolling down her hand and forming a braided bracelet around her wrist. "Fuck me yourself, coward," she said, and Missy practically choked on her her own tongue. Then the girl turned to them, and Missy could see that she had bright green eyes that were sparkling with mischief. "Taylor Hebert, out of the mask."

Dennis let out an incredulous laugh. "Damn, girl, you've got some brass ones," he said. "Clockblocker in costume. I'd unmask too, but we've gotta get permission from upstairs first. That was a neat trick, with the metal." He held out his hand for her to shake it.

"Thank you, it's one of my favorites," she said. She went to take his hand and then, at the last moment, her body went rigid and, with a 'thump' of displaced air, she was standing five feet away from him. Small curlers of fire flickered off her body, disappearing rapidly. "Right, Clockblocker. Short term temporal stasis, combined with a reputation as a prankster." She almost sounded like she was talking to herself, an impression not helped by her snickering a few seconds later.

Something was tickling Missy's brain. The girl had mentioned bloodsight and an enhanced sense of smell, plus some kind of rage sense as well. Then she'd had some kind of ferrokinesis, and a short teleport as well. There was something about that combination which Missy felt like she could recognize—beyond just the sheer number of powers on display. Maybe the metal shaping just reminded her a little of Kaiser, and that was setting her on edge? That didn't seem quite right, though.

"Sorry about Clock," Missy found herself saying. She twisted space slightly, reaching the girl with a single step. "We've tried to housebreak him, but it never took. I'm Vista." She ignored Dennis' cry of 'Hey!' from behind her, holding her hand out for a handshake herself.

Fifteen, or Hebert, or Taylor—whatever she preferred—returned Missy's shake. Her hands were surprisingly smooth, without any calluses at all, but that didn't mean much where capes were involved. "It's great to meet you, Vista. I'm a big fan, to be totally honest. Your battlefield control is ridiculous, and you've got a great tactical mind. You have a strong power, but you don't use that as an excuse to rest on your laurels or use it as a crutch. It's inspirational."

Missy felt her cheeks burning. When was the last time she'd received a compliment like that? Actually, had she ever received a compliment like that? Had she ever had someone really acknowledge just how hard she'd worked to figure out new and effective ways to use spatial manipulation to fight and capture opponents? She couldn't remember it ever happening before.

"Oh, uh, thanks," she said, glad that her mask covered the top half of her face. "Your power seems really cool, too." The words just spilled from her mouth, and she kind of wanted to die on the spot.

Taylor gave her a strange expression, almost bittersweet. "Some of them are pretty cool. A lot of them are kind of nasty, though. My original power fell somewhere in the middle–bug control." The girl reached into one of her pockets and pulled out—was that a black widow? Missy recoiled instinctively, but the spider was unnaturally still in the girl's hand. Then it began to do a little dance on the girl's palm, rotating around with a series of little hops. Taylor looked down at it with a bemused smile, then she slipped it back into her pocket.

"How many can you control?" Rory said, his brow furrowing. Trust him to immediately assess the combat potential, while Missy was still dealing with calming her heart down from having a black widow that close to her. It had taken all her control not to expand space between her and the spider.

Taylor shrugged. "Haven't found a numerical limit yet, but everything within a couple blocks' radius," she said casually, like that wouldn't be an insanely strong power on its own.

"Wait, does that mean that you can keep the Wards area bug free?" Dennis said. Trust him to immediately assess how her powers could be used for mundane purposes. She'd once seen him freeze a slice of pizza in mid-air while he was talking just because he'd gotten tired of holding it up—only to forget about it a couple minutes later, until it unfroze and fell down onto the carpet.

"I can, yes," the girl said, smiling faintly. "Well, outside of my rooms, where I'll be keeping some terrariums, but I can keep the rest of the building free of all kinds of pests."

Bug control. Where had Missy heard about bug control, lately? She wracked her brain. There had been some insect-based biotinker in Nevada, she remembered, but they had made giant insects and controlled them with a brain chip. There was that one villain with centipede minions and ties to one of the smaller cartels in Mexico, but that was just a master projection. Oh, and there had been that report of a bunch of bugs acting strangely in Boston, during one of the Teeth's attacks where the… where the Butcher had… died… Oh god, bloodsight and matter manipulation. That teleport, with its distinctive burst of flame. Fifteen. It had been staring them all in the face, all this time.

Missy froze, her heartbeat spiking. Taylor's head snapped toward her, and the girl's eyes widened a little before a sad smile flickered onto her face. "Ah. I guessed that somebody would figure it out. Don't worry, Vista—Militia already knows, and I promise you I mean the Wards no harm. As best we can tell, it's my original power that keeps me sane. I had to spend a while learning how to deal with all those bug senses, and it gives me considerable more multitasking ability than my predecessors."

Rory had clocked that something was wrong, but he didn't make the connection. "What? What is it?" he asked, sounding a little petulant.

Missy desperately tried to get herself under control. She chanced a look toward Miss Militia, who just gave her a nod. So either Militia was compromised, or the PRT had done their due diligence and found that Taylor wasn't actually lying. "Alpha niner two six epsilon," Missy said.

"Phi rho four four eight," Militia replied, completing the day's stranger verification code. "I promise you, Vista, I would not have brought Fifteen here if I believed her to be a threat to any of you."

"What the hell is going on?" Rory asked, looking between the two of them. "Why did you invoke M/S codes, Vista?"

"It's my fault, I believe," Taylor said, with a light one-shouldered shrug. "Vista put two and two together and got four. Or, well, she put fourteen and one together and got Fifteen."

Missy licked her lips. "She's the Butcher," she said, quietly.

A part of her almost expected the girl to deny it, to come up with a good explanation that would make this all make sense and also not mean that Missy was in the same room as one of the most brutal and dangerous capes on the whole continent.

Instead, Taylor just raised her hands, that sly smile on her lips. "Caught," she said, softly.

And then the room exploded into chaos.

"Stand down!" Miss Militia cried out, her power shifting into two riot shields that she interposed between Taylor and the rest of the Wards, despite the fact that the girl hadn't attacked back once.

Three crossbow bolts, one panicked shout, several emotion blasts, one tinkertech force projectile, and a desperate flying tackle later, Taylor was unharmed and looking at the Wards with one eyebrow raised in an unimpressed expression. "Really?" she said, sounding disappointed and a little incredulous.

Taylor was unharmed, but that couldn't be said for the rest of the room. There were two crossbow bolts in the wall, a crumpled section from Chris' tinkertech blaster, and another crater where Aegis had hit it at full force. The girl–the Butcher, holy shit–had the last crossbow bolt in her hand, and she was spinning it absently just as Stalker had. The couch had been knocked onto its side by Triumph's shout, which had done precisely fuck-all to actually cause the Butcher to so much as stumble. Sophia had phased out of the room at some point, but the rest of the Wards had guilty expressions on their faces. Miss Militia waited until they had all stopped attacking, then said, "We'll be having words about this," and stomped over to check on Aegis.

Triumph looked a weird mix between terrified and ashamed. "I–I'm sorry. I panicked," he said. There was a murmuring of assent from the rest of the wards, all of them staring at Taylor. She had made it look easy, dodging everything like she knew it was coming a second before it did—oh right, didn't the Butcher have some kind of combat thinker danger sense thing? The girl hadn't even used any obvious powers, just ducking and weaving in smooth motions at the right time. She had grabbed Aegis' arm when he passed overhead, using his motion against him to throw him into the wall, but he was well known as an adaptive Brute so that was far from the worst she could have done without actually hurting him.

Taylor's eyes met Missy's and she gave her a look like, 'can you believe this shit?' Out loud, she said, "See, this is why Vista is my favorite. She figured it out and her first response was to actually assess the threat and gauge if Militia was being impersonated. She realized I wasn't acting hostile, and that it would be stupid to initiate hostilities if I was unstable and dangerous."

Once again, Vista felt herself flushing. Even the fact that the person complimenting her was the freaking Butcher didn't take away from the embarrassed pride she felt. "Thanks," she muttered, not making eye contact.

"Of course, Vista," Taylor said, smiling warmly and laying a comforting hand on Vista's shoulder. She gave it a light squeeze, and somehow it didn't feel condescending coming from her. Belatedly, Vista realized that she hadn't even tried to expand the space between them—she hadn't even registered Taylor as a real threat, in that moment. Then the girl turned back to look at Miss Militia. "Hey, Militia, I think I'm gonna take off for now. Give the Wards some time to come to terms with things without me looming over them." She paused, then said, "And uh, is Aegis alright?"

The Brute got on his feet. "I'm fine," he said. "Bit bruised, but I've had worse just sparring with Triumph."

Miss Milita, having finished her field check-up, nodded in agreement. "I don't want you to feel you feel unwelcome, Fifteen, but that might be for the best."

"You got it, M&M," the Butcher said, snapping a lazy salute. At the same time, the bracelet began to melt from her wrist and fell onto her face, forming a mask once more. Then there was a dull pop of displaced air and the girl was gone.

There was a long moment of silence left in her wake, and then Missy said what she was pretty sure everyone had been thinking. "What the actual fuck."

It said something about the state of things that Miss Militia didn't even reprimand her for that.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

When Eliza Woodsworth had decided to major in Parahuman Studies back in undergrad, she'd had dreams of discovering something fundamental and groundbreaking about cape powers, of being the next William Manton or Ezra Sheindel. Other times, she'd fantasized about using her research to take a heroic cape with a seemingly useless power and figure out some clever way that would unlock their full potential, giving the world a new member of the Triumvirate or something of that nature.

The grind of academia had crushed many of those dreams, in part because even with parahuman studies as a field only really being around for twenty years, it had attracted enough bright minds that any of the obvious or easily proven claims were already taken. Manton Limits, Sheindel Aggression Theory, the Trauma Response Heuristic, Nakamura's Variance Hypothesis—they had all been described and studied in depth by the time she started her doctorate program. She'd ended up doing her thesis on the tradeoff between range and force for telekinetic based inorganic shaker effects, which had been interesting enough although she'd been hard-pressed to come to any definite conclusions given that powers, by their nature, were mercurial and seemed to almost resist attempts to make any conclusive statements.

After she'd gotten her doctorate from Brockton U, she'd briefly considered academia before quickly finding herself snapped up by the local PRT. Sure, she wasn't making as much as she might in industry, but a lot of those jobs had people working uncomfortably close to organizations like the Elite. Eliza had been more than happy to take a safer position with the local government—and it wasn't like the pay was bad, to be fair. Good power analysts were always in demand, after all. At least she knew for sure that her work wouldn't be helping villains, this way.

And then she'd received an email from Director Piggot about power testing for a new Ward candidate. Not an uncommon request—it had been a few months since they'd brought Shadow Stalker on board, and the testing and subsequent analysis had taken Eliza a full two weeks. That was on top of her personal research, as well as the constant requests for villain and rogue power analysis, and the regular power testing that Dauntless' evolving abilities required. So yeah, Eliza had been expecting a new ward to be showing up any day now, and she was more than happy to take some time to get her hands on a new power. Despite the ennui that academia had instilled in her, tarnishing some of her younger dreams, it didn't change the fact that Eliza truly loved studying and trying to explain the unexplainable.

And then she had read further in the document, getting to the standard list of known previous aliases, and she stopped breathing.

Current name: Bumble

Previous known aliases: Fifteen, Swarm (Temporary designation given by Boston PRT, see case file #40731(c)), Butcher

Eliza's eyes were locked on that last name. "Butcher," she said, in a horrified whisper.

"What's that?" Jake said, from his desk a few feet over. The Parahuman Ability Analysis Department (PAAD for short) used an open floor plan, the better to facilitate discussion and conversation between the researchers that worked there.

"Holy shit the new Ward is the fucking Butcher," Eliza replied in a high squeak. She scrolled down to the 'known or suspected abilities,' and sure enough there was a list of fifteen known or suspected powers.

"No way," Jake replied, standing up and coming over. He leaned over her shoulder to look at the screen, which ordinarily she would have found a little irritating, but right now she didn't have the mental bandwidth to deal with that. "Oh my god. And she's sane?"

That was really the first question Eliza should have asked, she realized, but she'd forgive herself for being a little surprised first. Scrolling down to the psych eval, Eliza felt her eyebrows leap up on her forehead. "Apparently. Signs of minor depression, anxiety, and technically schizophrenia by the DSM-V but given that she actually does have voices in her head I'm not sure if that really qualifies for 'delusions' or 'hallucinations'. No sign of disordered speech, thought, or memory, which previous Butchers universally suffered from, at least from Butcher III on."

"Damn," Jake replied. "Okay. Okay, that's actually incredible."

Eliza turned to look at him. "Are you insane? What part of having to do power testing with the Butcher sounds incredible to you?"

He stared back at her, as if it was obvious. "I mean, memories of a bloodthirsty murderhobo, that's some scary shit, sure. But can you honestly tell me that you don't want to do research on one of the only known capes that's an exception to the Rule of Three? Not to mention, one of the only capes outside of Eidolon or the Glaistig Uaine that can actually use more than one discreet parahuman power at a time?"

She blinked a few times, considering that. She'd been so caught up in the danger of having the Butcher in her labs that she hadn't even considered the academic ramifications. "Holy shit," she said, quietly. "This… this could be revolutionary. We could learn so much about interactions between different power categories, about synergistic power effects and Brute layering."

"Now you're getting it," Jake said, with a sly grin. "I'm sure that the Director's gonna get a hernia over the whole situation, but this could give us data enough for the ten year's worth of research papers."

"Provided that the Butcher doesn't snap and kill us all," Eliza said, because it was still the Butcher.

"Provided that, yes," Jake replied, far more somberly, but his enthusiasm was nonetheless infectious.

~*~​

Taylor sat in the passenger seat of the PRT van. The radio was set to an 80s music station, and she was more than a little amused at the arguments going on in her head on whether the invention of the synthesizer was a positive or negative for the decade's music. Butcher, Sepsis, Basilisk, and Mimic all had very strong opinions on the matter, while Wendigo and Absinthe seemed to delight in being the devil's advocate at every turn. It was easy enough to see how having that kind of cacophony in her head could have easily driven her mad, if she hadn't spent over a week in a psychiatric ward as her brain adjusted to processing the senses and position of hundreds of thousands of insects all around her. It was obvious that whatever else her power had done, it had drastically increased her multitasking ability, to the point that she only had to spend a fraction of her attention on the argument going on in her mind.

Take On Me came on and she started to sing along. The trooper that was driving her—Hernandez, the same guy from when she'd first joined up—gave her a quick glance, but it wasn't long before he was singing along as well. He'd taken the helmet off when he got in the car, revealing a Hispanic man in his early thirties with a rather nice goatee. He had a nice voice, if a little scratchy. It was nice to know that he wasn't just a soulless government agent, because it would take a special kind of monster not to sing along to Take On Me. Even the Butchers were singing along, for the most part, because honestly you couldn't not jam to a bop like that.

The song was just about finishing up when they got to the power testing facility. It was a few miles outside of Brockton Bay's city limits, on what clearly used to be a farm before the PRT had swept in and bought it up for their use. The sign at the gates read "ENE Testing Range" on it, with a sign below it that read, "Extreme Danger, Keep Out." Or maybe it said "Extreme Keep Danger Out"—it was a little unclear, how you were supposed to read it. Either way, Hernandez ignored that, driving right in through the gates and toward the squat brick building in the center of the plot. Behind it, Taylor could see what looked like an archery range, with a set of round targets that each had a variety of cables trailing away from them. There were a few cars already parked out front, with three people standing there holding laptops and notebooks, alongside a cape she recognized as Velocity.

When the truck came to a stop, Taylor was quick to hop out. She was wearing her new costume, complete with a striped bodysuit and sinfully soft and fuzzy arm and leg warmers. It made her look pretty ridiculous, in truth, and she absolutely loved it (the fact that most of the Butchers despised the costume was completely unrelated, promise). Hernandez stepped out a moment later, sliding the helmet back over his head. "Alright, Bumble. We're running a couple minutes late, so let's not waste any time."

Taylor let herself fall into character—Glenn had suggested it would be best if she got used to being in character whenever she was publicly wearing the suit, so she wouldn't get caught out on patrol, and she could see the sense in it. "Okie-dokie!" she replied, and started to skip forward only to immediately trip over her feet and faceplant into the ground with a dull 'thud' and a plume of dust.

She let out a little shriek of alarm, then teleported with a minimal burst of flame, landing in a standing position a few feet away. "I'm okay!" she squeaked out. "You didn't see anything, right?"

Not this weakling bullshit act, Devein spat out.

It's fucking hilarious, Cordyceps replied. You're just upset because you died with a stick up your ass and nobody managed to remove it.

As the two of them began to snap at each other, Taylor tuned them out in time to catch Hernandez snickering a little. "Uh, no. Didn't see anything, Bumble."

"Phew," Taylor said, wiping of imaginary sweat from her brow. "And you don't think they saw anything either? I don't want to make a poor impression."

He looked over at the researchers, who were staring directly at Taylor with a look of bemusement. "...No, I doubt they saw anything either."

"Oh, man, that's a relief." She skipped forward again, heading toward the PRT's researchers.

It's a good use of my power, Howitzer said, quietly. Gets everyone used to you teleporting frequently without seeing it as the power multiplier that a warp mover brings to the table.

Thanks, Howitzer, Taylor replied mentally.

"Hey there!" she said, as cheerfully as she could manage. "I'm Bumble! I heard that you're here to pest my towers? Er, I mean, to power my tests? No wait, that's not right either." She scrunched her brows in a look of mock concentration. Spoonerisms were an easy bit of wordplay, but that didn't make them any less effective.

The researchers gave each other a quick confused glance. Their heartbeats had picked up rapidly on seeing her, so she knew that they were aware of the source of her power, but it was equally clear that her behavior had left them baffled. As far as Taylor was concerned, that was about as good a confirmation that her plan was working as any.

"We're here to test your powers, yes," the woman said, after a moment. She was a few inches shorter than Taylor, her reddish-brown hair reminding Taylor a bit of Emma, before she pushed those thoughts away. "I'm Eliza Woodsworth, that's Jake Hemmings, and finally we have Luke Rochester."

"Hey there," Jake said. He was about what she'd expected when she heard the words 'parahuman researcher,' a reedy white guy wearing a t-shirt for some cartoon she didn't recognize. He was practically bouncing on his feet with excitement.

"Pleasure to make your acquaintance," Luke, a tall bald Black man who reminded her a little bit of Samuel L. Jackson, raised one hand.

"The pleasure is all yours. Er, all mine. Wait, that sounds selfish. Um, maybe it's both of ours? Oh drat, I'm messing this all up. It's nice to meet you, is what I mean," she said. Once upon a time, she'd been an absolute chatterbox, spilling words out in a rapid jumble, before Emma had crushed that into the dirt. There was a certain catharsis in letting herself slip back into that mentality, at least a little bit.

Jesus fuck, you sound so stupid, Mason complained.

She does, doesn't she? Hazard said, delight clear in his voice. He'd been Butcher III, the only one who had been a current hero when he'd inherited, and he delighted in anything that pissed off the rest of the collective—much like Taylor herself. Nobody will give her even a crumb of respect, not until she's taken them down and they wake up behind bars.

From what she could tell, Hazard was right. Using her bloodsight, she could tell that the researchers had grown far calmer since she'd started her routine.

There was a blur, and then Velocity was standing there. She hadn't met him yet, but she recognized him easily, both from growing up in the Bay and from a few of the past Butcher's memories. "Alright, you can dial it back a bit, Bumble. I'm sure Glenn will be proud of the effort, but it'll be easier to get through the testing without the act."

Taylor felt like sticking her tongue out at him, so she did. She resisted the urge to blow a raspberry, though. "Spoilsport," she said, turning back to the researchers. "Alright, I've only been to one of these before, and that was about ten years ago in New York, so I'm going to be relying on you guys to run this, alright?"

"Sounds good," Eliza replied. Her heart had kicked up a bit when Taylor had referenced having other memories, but it seemed like the little act had at least convinced her that she wasn't about to get mercilessly slaughtered by one of the East Coast's worst boogeymen. "Now, we've got you for the next eight hours, so I'm hoping we can get the most out of this session."

Suddenly, Taylor felt an impending sense of doom that had nothing to do with Hazard's danger sense ability.

~*~​

"Why did I ever think this was a good idea," Taylor whined to Hernandez, as they drove back into the city.

He shot her a look out of the corner of his eyes, but kept most of his attention on the road, which she appreciated. Even if she would be able to walk away from a car accident unharmed, he had no such protection—and that wasn't even getting into what happened with her mom. "I couldn't tell you, Bumble," he said.

"I just thought it would be more interesting than that," she said, slumping against the window. "I mean, I didn't think it would be fun, but spamming Howitzer's teleport for thirty minutes absolutely sucked. I didn't even know I could still get motion sick. And that's not even getting into all the power interactions they wanted to test. I didn't think about how fourteen non-tinker powers would mean one hundred and eighty two possible interactions."

"Yeah, well, maybe you should have thought of that before you killed the last Butcher," the man snarked back, then froze as if he suddenly realized what exactly he'd said.

Taylor froze as well, then she burst into laughter, echoed by a dozen voices in her head as well. "Fuck, that's a good point," she said. "Kinda brought that on myself, really."

He snorted, and for a few minutes they just listened to the radio. After a moment, Hernandez said, "Look, I know it's not really my place, but I'm just curious." He paused, unsure if he should go on.

"Shoot," Taylor said, shrugging.

"Why did you join the wards? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm glad you aren't out there doing the whole murder-pillage Teeth stuff, but… I remember what it was like, being a teenager in the Bay. I'm not sure if I had that kind of power, I would have been able to go and join the heroes."

Taylor considered the question for a while. It wasn't like he was the first to ask her, but maybe it was just that he was the first person in a while to see her as a person first and the Butcher second, so she wanted to give him a more honest answer. "I'm not going to lie, I considered it. Thought about going to the Teeth and taking them over, using all that power as a force for good if possible. I was also thinking about doing the whole independent hero thing, hiding my powers."

"But?" His voice held no judgement, which she really appreciated.

Taylor sighed. "But I don't want to join a bunch of Mad Max wannabes, and I don't want to spend my whole life hiding. I just want to be Taylor, you know? And the only place I could think of where I'd ever get that was the wards. Not that there's any guarantee there, but… it's my best shot, I guess."

Hernandez hummed contemplatively, and then he said, "I can't say I exactly understand, but I think I can relate." Taylor smiled to herself, even as several voices screamed at each other in her head. Then the man continued. "Also, I'm definitely not cleared to know your civilian name."

"Eh," Taylor said, shrugging even though she knew he couldn't see. One of her hands went up and pressed against the glass of the window, and she moved it around as though it was surfing along the powerlines. "Secret identities are for squares."

He was silent for a long moment after that, long enough that Taylor thought he wasn't going to reply. Then he said, "You can call me Gabe, if you want."

"Nice to meet you, Gabe," she said, her eyes closed and her cheek pressed against the cool window.

"Nice to meet you, Taylor."

Chapter Text

"Morning, dad," Taylor said, slouching downstairs with a yawn. She was technically a noctis cape, since her various brute and regenerative powers effective gave her the ability to go indefinitely without sleep, but she still got emotionally exhausted. Not to mention she just liked sleeping. It was quiet in her head, when she was sleeping, even if the other Butcher's memories often bled into her dreams. She couldn't remember much about her dream last night, but she knew that it had featured Basilisk's mother and one of Wendigo's childhood friends.

"Good morning, Taylor," he said, looking up from his bowl of cereal. "Did power testing go well?"

She shrugged, stumbling over to the kitchen and pulling two carton of eggs from the fridge and a mixing bowl from a cabinet. One downside to having so many brute packages was that her body required about ten times the caloric intake as she had before. "Power testing was fine. Tedious, for the most part, but they figured out a few things that we hadn't thought of before. Turns out that Sepsis and Mason's powers interact in some strange ways, and I might be able to use them to craft monomolecular edges with enough practice. Not surprised the Butchers didn't discover it before, it requires a ridiculous amount of focus."

I'm pissed I never thought of it, though, Mason said. I could get things plenty sharp, but by the time I inherited I just saw Sepsis' power as a way to rot living flesh, since it was weaker than just reshaping things with my power.

That's kind of my fault too. It's just way more fun to rot people than wood or whatever, so I mostly used my power for that, Sepsis replied, with a mental shrug. With an effort of will, Taylor ignored the memories of all the people that Sepsis had used her power on.

I just wonder how one of those edges would interact with my own power, Mimic said, bemusedly. Think about the possibilities for razor spiders, Taylor!

Taylor snorted a little at that. I'm not going to mention that any time soon, unless everyone wants to spend the next whole week in power testing. There was a series of denials from the voices in her head, as she'd expected.

Her dad had taken the whole revelation about her having powers (and being the new Butcher) far better than she'd expected. It probably helped that he had found out about it when she had used her bug control to save his life. Of course, that didn't mean he'd been happy about it—he'd been furious that she'd hid her powers, and terrified that he'd lose her to the Butcher's collective. But they'd spent a week together in a hotel room in Boston as Taylor adjusted to her new power set and to having fourteen voices in her head, and in that time the two of them had several important conversations that had been long delayed. In the end, he'd done his best to adjust to her new status without freaking out too much (he still did, he just kept it to his bedroom where he didn't think Taylor could see—a futile hope, between bloodsight and her bugs, but an appreciated sentiment). In return, Taylor had agreed to join the Wards, so long as the local PRT allowed her to.

Setting the cartons down on the table, Taylor flipped them open and then ran a finger along each of the eggs. Rather than crack the eggs herself, she used Mason's power to bisect each of the eggs along the center. Then, one by one, she tossed the eggs into the air. Quarrel's power took over, causing the egg shells to fall apart and land in the trash can while the yolks and whites fell into the bowl. A whisper of Mimic's power, and a whisk animated by itself, growing spindly legs that gripped on the edge of the bowl and began to furiously stir the mixture together.

"Do you have to pull the whole Sorcerer's Apprentice act with every single chore?" her dad asked, but she could hear the amusement lacing his voice.

Absolutely, Cordyceps said. She was always game for any kind of power shenanigans, the more mundane the better. Some of the other Butchers were pissed that she was using their abilities to do anything other than murder and slaughter, but Taylor was pretty sure they were just upset they'd never figured out how to use Sepsis' disintegration power to clean stubborn stains from their cookware.

"I do, yes," Taylor replied out loud. Then she teleported into the chair across from him, making sure that there were almost no flames on her arrival. "What's the point in having superhuman abilities if you still have to cook eggs yourself?" Howitzer's power worked by taking time to charge up the explosion of her teleport, up to a maximum value—it actually reminded her quite a bit of Battery's ability, honestly—and the former Butcher had worked hard to figure out how to maximize the damage she could output with her explosive jumps. Taylor had been working hard at figuring out how to minimize the explosion instead, and had found that short jumps with almost no charge were weak enough that they would only cause a dull thudding noise and barely even singe the area around her.

Even as she sat down, behind her one of the frying pans grew a set of stubby metal legs and ambled over onto the stove, turning it on with a little proboscis. She'd been quite surprised the first time that they'd realized her power gave her perfect control over Mimic's creations, so long as they were suitably insectoid in nature. That had taken quite a bit of trial and error, but she'd gotten to the point where most of the time she could guide his power into animating objects with an insectoid shape, which allowed her far more versatility than either Mimic or she had originally had—the other cape's master effect on his creations had been weak at best, and that control hadn't survived the transference of the mantle.

"You're starting at Arcadia next week, right?" Danny asked, doing his level best to ignore the chaos going on in the kitchen. "Do you need me to drive you there?"

Taylor blinked a few times. "I'm fine taking the bus, Dad. It's only like thirty minutes, and I could probably teleport across the city in half that time if I needed to."

"Wouldn't that be… bad for your secret identity?" he asked, scrunching his eyebrows together.

She shrugged. "I mean, it wouldn't be ideal, but everyone knows the Wards attend Arcadia, and I would change into my costume beforehand. So long as I didn't start to close to home, I'd be fine. I'm debuting this Friday anyway."

He nodded. "Right, your debut. How are you feeling about that?"

She shrugged. Behind her, Taylor had some discreet insects monitoring the state of her breakfast. The pan jiggled a little on its stubby legs, keeping the eggs from forming too large of curds. "Honestly, I'm kind of excited. It's… fun to be Bumble. Way more fun than I expected. That being said, I've got lessons on how to be a humor cape this afternoon."

"Do you know who they're bringing in for that?" he asked, head tilting to the side.

She shrugged. "Maybe the PRT has a comedian on staff?"

Danny actually chuckled at that. "That would be a wild job description. 'Oh yes, I'm the official comedian for the Parahuman Response Team, here to make sure banter is appropriately witty.'"

She smirked. "You're joking, but after meeting Glenn Chambers I wouldn't put it past them. Still, it's more likely they're just bringing somebody in as a contractor."

"Maybe they're going to bring in Mouse Protector," her dad joked.

That caused Taylor to let out a full-on belly laugh. "Oh yeah, that'll be the day. God, can you even imagine?"

The eggs had finished cooking, and she had the skillet dump them over onto a plate before it hopped into the sink, ready to be cleaned. Taylor teleported back in front of the plate, grabbing a small bottle of hot sauce in a black bottle labeled with fifteen 'X's and a large warning sign of a skull, and then teleported back to the table. Each teleport seemed to be discharging a little less sound and flame, as she concentrated carefully on limiting the explosion.

Her dad gave her an unimpressed look. "Am I going to have to institute a no-teleporting rule in the house?"

You're the fucking Butcher, he can't stop you— and then the voice went quiet, punted into the void.

"No," she replied, a little sheepishly. "Just trying to get as much practice in as I can. It's too useful to not use as a hero, but I need to make sure I can use it without people immediately connecting me to Howitzer or the Butchers in general." She dabbed several generous dollops of hot sauce onto her massive heap of scrambled eggs.

Her dad's eyebrows rose. "Whew, I can feel the heat from here. What is that?"

Taylor gave him a lopsided grin. "Well, you know how I've got passive pain negation from Novocain? Well, with Basilisk's help we figured out a way to make something that gets around that problem."

That's absolute bullshit, Novocain said, still peeved that his power was being negated at all.

Tinkers are bullshit, came the discordant chorus, led by Basilisk with far too much glee in his voice.

Danny blinked a few times. "Basilisk is the poison tinker, right? Are you putting poison on your food?"

She made a little 'so-so' gesture. "To a normal person, yeah, this stuff would mess you up—hence the label. But 'poison' is kind of a broad term, you know? Broad enough for capsaicin to count." She took a bite of the eggs and enjoyed the burn against her tongue. "Oh yeah, that's got a kick to it."

At that, her dad shook his head, a bemused smile on his face. "Butcher XV, everyone," he said. "Menacing the innocent populace with her tinkertech hot sauce."

She beaned him on the head with a scrunched up napkin, Quarrel's power guiding its flight.

Taylor stared in shock at the woman standing in the dour meeting room at the PRT. She didn't know how to respond to this, and her head was mercifully quiet as most of the voices were shocked silent as well. Then they erupted into a mass of jeers, complaints, cheers, and guffaws. It wasn't that Taylor didn't recognize the person in front of her—it was just that she hadn't seriously expected this at all. Between the sheathed sword, the mouse-eared helmet, the shield with the iconic 'M' logo on it, and the flowing cape that flared out behind her, the hero was easily recognizable.

No fucking way, Devein said, scorn and horror clear in his tone.

No fucking way, Cordyceps said, in an awed tone. This is the best day of my afterlife.

I can't believe you actually called it, Taylor, Frenzy said, clearly amused.

"I was joking," Taylor said in a plaintive voice, almost whining.

"Were you? That's a great start!" Mouse Protector said, smiling at her with a wide grin—her mask only covered the top half of her face, leaving her mouth exposed. "Glenny-boy said that you came up with the idea of being a Jokester."

"Jokester?" Taylor asked, because Mouse Protector put clear emphasis on the phrase.

"Old term for a humor hero or villain," Mouse said, waving her hand dismissively. "There wasn't as much of a divide between the two, back in the day—it was before heroes were all snapped up into the government. There were more people who realized how silly it was to fly around in spandex throwing beams of light around, and more of us who just wanted to have a laugh. Then Behemoth showed up, everything kinda went all 'phbbt', and capes got all serious and didn't want to laugh at themselves anymore." She had made the onomatopoeia by blowing a raspberry.

Taylor thought back to Butcher and Hazard's memories, since they'd both been teenagers during that time. Hazard had gotten his powers shortly after Behemoth's first appearance in 1992, and by the time he'd entered the cape scene it had already sombered significantly, but both of them had vague memories of the lighter attitudes that had surrounded many of the first capes. "You didn't, though," she said.

Mouse Protector shrugged, a sheepish grin on her face. "I figured, when the world gets all sad and depressing, that's when we need a sense of humor most of all. Not to get too blue, but… my gramma was a Jewish girl in Germany back in the forties, and I'm sure you can connect those dots. She had a hell of a dark sense of humor, but she was always cracking jokes. Said it was the only way she could stay sane. I like to think of myself as carrying on her legacy."

Taylor didn't know what to say to that, and the voices in her head weren't exactly offering good suggestions. "Damn," she said, for lack of anything better. "That's a more serious reason than I would have expected."

The other cape shrugged. "Sorry, not trying to bring the mood down. Just thought you especially might appreciate the idea of using laughter to spite the darkness."

Taylor winced, despite herself. "I take it Chambers told you about my, um, condition?"

"You mean, being fifteen pounds of crazy bologna in a one pound bag?" Mouse Protector nodded. "Yeah, I got the gist. Shit luck, but that's life, you know? Seems like you're making the best of it."

"I'm trying, at least," Taylor replied. "Sorry, I just… you don't seem very scared of me."

The other cape blinked a few times, head cocked to the side. "Do you want me to be?"

You should be, you bit— Quarrel got as far as saying before she was pushed away.

"No! No, of course not," Taylor replied. "I guess I just got used to everyone looking at me like I'm some unstable monster that's going to snap and start slaughtering people at any minute." She shrank into herself a little as she spoke, because as much as she tried to hide it, the reactions still hurt.

"And you're wondering why I don't? A few reasons. For one thing, I'm a teleporter, and not to toot my own horn but—toot ta toot!" She mimed blowing a little trumpet. "I've got a way better range and cooldown than the Butcher. Plus Glenn seems to like you, and he's a smart cookie when it comes to people. And lastly, I've got a pretty good sniffer, and you don't smell untrustworthy to me." She tapped the mouse nose on her helmet.

Taylor felt a genuine smile start to stretch across her lips. She'd grown up watching the Mouse Protector cartoon, and it was clear that they'd done a pretty faithful job in capturing the woman's personality. "Thanks," she said, after a moment. "That means a lot."

"No problemo! Now—" she interrupted herself by vanishing abruptly. Ten seconds later, the woman reappeared, this time with a pair of scholarly-looking glasses afixed on top of her helmet and a hat on her head, the black kind with a little tassel worn by graduates and fancy professors. "We have a lot of ground to cover, and only a week before your debut, so let's make like a mouse and scurry on with it!"

She whirled on Taylor, holding a finger out almost accusingly. "What separates a humor cape from any other parahuman?"

She blinked a few times. "The… the humor?"

"Exactly!" she shouted, bouncing on her feet. "No matter what is happening, a humor cape must be funny. They can be useless or effective, approachable or sexy or a little scary, but when you watch them you want to laugh—and you can't laugh when you're scared for your life. For a villain, that might mean they look incompetent, or they might have a perfect record of civilian safety, but either way they aren't the kind of villain that makes you want to flee the scene. For a hero, that might mean quipping with villains and civilians, or it might be turning a deadly fight into a slapstick farce. Either way, it means that a jokester has to work ten times harder than a normal cape."

Taylor nodded, thinking through the implications. "Because you need to have total control of the battlefield, right? You need to account for any dangers, and mitigate them before people even realize they're happening?"

Huh, Mimic said, mulling it over. This could be more interesting than I thought.

It's a goddamn travesty is what it— Butcher said before he was quickly booted into the swarm. Taylor was hoping he'd learn better eventually, but she wasn't optimistic.

"You got it! It's hard work, and needs a reasonably strong power set, but I don't imagine you'll have much of a problem with that."

No we do not, Mimic said, smugly.

Wait, but not every cape with a comedy schtick fits that description, Howitzer said. There are those two schmucks here, yeah?

Taylor nodded in response to Howitzer's question. "And that's why people don't really like Uber and L33t, isn't it?" she said out loud, puzzling it over in real time. "Because they have a track record of injuring people when things go wrong. Even if it wasn't for how callous some of their stunts are, the fact that his tech can explode randomly means you could never be reassured by their presence."

"Dang, you're a smart cookie, aren'tcha?" Mouse said, nodding.

"It helps when you have fourteen extra minds in your brain," she said dryly.

She laughed, open and loudly, and it was just as free as I'd always thought it would be. "I'm sure it does," she said, once she'd controlled herself. "Uber and L33t…right, those are the video game guys, right? Yeah, that's exactly their problem. Well, that and the fact they're actual villains. A good comedy villain is stealing as part of the bit—they expect to be foiled, and if they don't, they make sure that they aren't stealing from people who can't handle the loss." She clapped her hands together. "We're getting sidetracked. We've got a whole syllabus to get through, and less time than I'd like."

Taylor's brow wrinkled. "Do you have an actual syllabus?"

Mouse Protector shrugged. "Yeah, somewhere. Had to make it to get this class approved by the PRT. No idea where it is now, though. I don't do great with formal structure."

"I'd never have guessed," Taylor replied, dryly.

"Shush, you," the woman said, though there was no heat in her voice. "Right then! Let's start by figuring out which powers you can use, and which ones are completely off the table."

Chapter Text

Taylor collapsed into the couch. The Wards quarters was more or less empty at the moment, although she was pretty sure that Shadow Stalker was somewhere on base. Well, no, she knew that Shadow Stalker was on base—in the gym right now, on one of the treadmills if her motion was any indication. Her insects gave her practically localized omniscience, but she was trying to give the heroes at least the illusion of privacy.

She was wiped. Mouse Protector really knew her stuff, but she was also a never-ending font of energy and a rather demanding taskmaster. Her education had been eclectic, a combination of studying popular comedians, black-and-white slapstick movies, other comedy capes, and Mouse Protector's own recorded fights, mixed with practicing her powers, theorycrafting about power synergies and interactions, sparring with Mouse Protector, and intense rounds of battlefield analysis and prediction. It was incredibly interesting and intellectually stimulating, but it still left Taylor feeling absolutely wiped at the end of each 8-hour training session. Fortunately, she only had one more session that intense before her debut tomorrow evening, but Mouse Protector was apparently going to be sticking around in Brockton Bay for a while—something about an issue with Ravager and an interest in seeing the start of Taylor's own career.

They'd refined the set of powers she could use freely, which she could use sparingly or in limited ways, and which were entirely off the table. There were fewer of the last than she'd expected: Butcher's pain blast, using Sepsis' decay on any kind of flesh, publicly consuming blood for Devein's healing factor, and Novocain's pain amplification were all barred, but everything else was fine in moderation. Absinthe's fear-based hallucination aura could be an effective distraction if not held for more than a few seconds, Basilisk could easily create effective and safe tranquilizers, and Frenzy's rage powers could be used in reverse to calm combatants or panicked civilians.

She had all of the Butchers pushed away right now—not to the edges of her swarm, like she used as a punishment, but automatically filtered out of her perception, the way she dealt with all the bug senses she didn't want to acknowledge. It was a bit of a trick, and she couldn't do it indefinitely—eventually it caused a feeling of strain and would fail, with what she was pretty sure would be a crippling headache if she didn't have her pain negation powers—but it was effective in the short term. The only reason she didn't keep it on more often was that the Butchers got more obnoxious afterwards, even the ones she kind of liked. Well, that, and because for all that they were mass murderers, Taylor kind of enjoyed the conversations. After the past two years of isolation at Winslow, it was almost a nice change. That being said, well, after the day she'd just had, some quiet was more than appreciated.

Her bugs caught a figure approaching, gnats automatically latching onto the head and critical joints. A moment of concentration gave her the dimensions of the figure, from which she concluded that either a random child had gotten loose in the PRT facility or Vista was coming in early. A few seconds later, the 'masks on' warning blared out, and Taylor responded by slapping on her new goggles from where they were lying nearby. She was wearing her new costume, complete with incredibly fuzzy arm and leg warmers—seriously, they were way softer than they had any right to be—and a tight yellow bodysuit with an internal hexagonal protective mesh that gave it the vague appearance of a beehive. Not that she particularly needed armor, with her cocktail of Brute powers that left her skin stronger than any non-tinkertech material could manage, but Youth Guard regulations didn't exactly take that into account, and it wasn't like she minded it. The antenna attached to her goggle mask bounced wildly whenever she turned her head, which was far more enjoyable than it had any right to be.

A few moments later, the door opened with a pneumatic hiss, and there was the short form of Vista—out of costume, but for a black domino mask. She was wearing the uniform of Forsberg Middle, a private school for the rich known to be a feeder for Arcadia, and she had a bookbag slung loosely over her shoulder. She stepped confidently into the room, only to freeze abruptly when her eyes landed on Taylor.

"Oh, hey," Taylor said, from the couch.

Space briefly wobbled between them as the girl's instinctive panic warred with her professionalism, then it stabilized. "Hey," Vista replied, and now she seemed to be fully taking in Taylor's costume. "Who'd you piss off in Image?" she asked, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

Taylor just laughed. "Nobody. Actually, I think Chambers and I got on famously."

"I knew you were a villain," the girl said snarkily, then looked mortified again. "I'm so sorry, normally I've got a better filter, it's just that—"

"It's fine," Taylor said, waving her hand. "Don't feel bad for joking around. If I had a problem with that, then I doubt I would have made it through the last week of Mouse Protector's workshop."

"Wait, is that why she's been here? I saw she was in Brockton, but I had no idea it was related to, well…"

"To the Butcher's debut?" Taylor replied, sardonically. "I didn't expect it myself. I pitched my hero persona as a joke cape, and Chambers took that and ran with it. Apparently he pulled some strings to get Mousey herself on board as a contractor. Not that I think she minds much, since she showed me what the PRT is paying her and it is absolutely exorbitant. Plus she gets the chance to punch Nazis, so. Win-win, apparently."

Vista took a moment to process all of that. "Wait, you're going to be a joke cape? Like Clock?"

She shook her head. "Not exactly. As far as I can tell, Clockblocker is a hero who likes to make some quips, but that's not the same thing. Trust me, I spent several hours with Mouse studying the difference. For a comedy hero, the humor and heroics always go together. Don't worry, though—the persona we settled on is far more slapstick than puns. It's part of why I went with the name Bumble to begin with."

"Bumble, huh?" Vista said, giving the costume another glance. "I think I can see it. So you're going to act incompetent, and then win anyway? That kind of thing."

"Got it in one," Taylor replied, and then she felt a small smile steal across her lips. "Okay, well, there is one pun I'll be making, but it's kind of a secret. See, when you 'butcher' something, that can mean that you mess up badly, which makes it a synonym to 'bumble.'"

Vista stared at her in absolute shocked silence for several seconds. "Oh god, you're not as bad as Clock. You're worse."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Taylor replied.

The young girl bit her lip, then seemed to make a decision. In one smooth motion, she reached up to pull off her mask. Before she could, Taylor's hand came out and wrapped around the girl's wrist. It felt fragile under her touch, and Taylor was acutely aware that her Brute packages would let her snap it like so much spaghetti. "Hold on," she said. "I won't stop you if you want to unmask, but I need to be sure you know what that means. It's not just me—if I die, every Butcher after me would know your identity as well, and whoever they choose to tell."

Vista gently pulled Taylor's hand away, and she let her. "I know," the other girl said, "but that's a risk I'm willing to take. You've already been nicer to me than Shadow Stalker, you already unmasked to us, and frankly if I have to be mask on whenever you're in the room I'll go crazy. Plus, it's not like the Wards identities are as secret as everyone likes to pretend—between school administrators, the youth guard, my parents, the PRT drivers, well, it wouldn't be too hard for anyone dedicated to figure it out."

Taylor blinked a few times. "Huh," she said, because that was pretty well reasoned. "That's kind of alarming."

The girl just shrugged. "Anybody who acts on it and attacks a Ward out of costume is just asking for Alexandria's boot being driven so far up their butt they can taste the soles." With that, she pulled off her mask, revealing a young face with a light smattering of freckles. She held out her hand. "I'm Missy, Missy Byron."

Taylor smiled at her, a wide and sincere grin that had become rare in recent years, and took the girl's hand. Missy's grip was surprisingly firm, for a girl her age. "Taylor Hebert, as I said before. It's nice to meet you, Missy."

"It's nice to meet you too, Taylor," Missy replied, smiling back. "I look forward to working with you."

~*~​

Alicia meandered down the halls of the Brockton Bay PRT office, whistling a little as she walked. The officer escorting her was giving her a nasty look out of the corner of her eye, but she couldn't be bothered. It probably didn't help that she was running about ten minutes late, and the officer kept trying to rush her, but Mouse Protector was not to be rushed. She was neither early nor late; she arrived precisely when she meant to. Or maybe that was wizards, she'd have to ask Myrddin the next time she saw him.

Okay, so maybe she really just wanted to tweak Director Piggot's nose a bit. Was that a crime? The woman just kind of rubbed her the wrong way—she was so serious all the time, it seemed exhausting. How could you spend your whole life working with people who put on masks and threw lasers at each other without appreciating how ridiculous the whole thing was? Frankly, Alicia felt it was her moral imperative to make the woman lighten up a little, or if that wasn't possible then maybe tick her off just a bit. It certainly didn't have anything to do with how the woman was just like all of the authority figures that Alicia had always fought with back when she was a Ward, no sirree.

"Director? You wanted to see me?" she said, opening the door and leaning casually against the doorframe. The woman looked stressed, but from Alicia's experience that was her constant state of affairs. Came with being the Director of the PRT in a town filled with Nazis and a rage dragon, she supposed.

"Mouse Protector," the woman said, with a tone of muted exasperation. "Please, come in."

Alicia waltzed in, grabbing the seat in front of the director's office and twirling it around, before sitting on it backwards. "So, what did you need me for? Because if it's about the nacho cheese incident on Tuesday, I was definitely no where near the cafeteria and have no idea what you're talking about."

"Bumble," the woman said, clearly experienced with ignoring non-sequiturs. It was probably that bastard Assault's fault, too, constantly cracking jokes and desensitizing the bureaucrats. "You had a week with the girl, at no small expense. I want to know if she's ready for her debut tomorrow."

At that, Alicia raised one eyebrow. "You doubt my methods?"

"I doubt that the Butcher can pull off a comedy cape routine, regardless of who is teaching her," the Director said. "If this whole campaign had come from anybody other than Glenn, I would have recommended immediate master/stranger protocols to see if they were actively trying to undermine the PRT."

"And yet, you still went along with it," Alicia replied.

The woman grimaced. "I've seen what happens when you make an enemy of Glenn Chambers, and it isn't pretty—especially when the Chief Director is backing him up. But just because I've been ordered to oversee a trainwreck doesn't mean I can't start damage control before it hits."

"No, Trainwreck is a different cape entirely," Alicia said, because she really couldn't help herself. "But I take your point. In any case, I'm sure you'll be happy to know that Bumble has my full Seal of Mousy Approval. That's not to say I don't want to stick around and help guide her moving forward, but in my experience she's been an attentive student, with an insightful and intuitive understanding of the demands for a jokester."

"You're kidding," the Director said, flatly.

"For once? No, I am not." She cocked her head to the side, looking at the director. "Sure, she's not going to have the same schtick as I've got, but that's a good thing. No toe-stepping, you know. We're going for more of a slapstick, bumbling buffoon angle–real Charlie Chaplin, you know?"

"And you think she can pull it off? That she won't go on a murderous rampage, in a few months time?" It almost felt like the Director was begging her for some sign that she could use to call off Bumble's debut. Alicia did her best to not take too much pleasure in denying her that.

In response, Alicia could only shrug. "Who am I to say? I'm sure you have psych evals that give you a better sense of that. What I can tell you, though, is that spite is a very strong motivator and that girl has a will of tungsten-carbide. And, well. There's that old saying, isn't there? " She smirked a little. "Comedy is just tragedy plus time, and Bumble has had far more than her fair share of both of those things."

Director Piggot gave her a dead eyed stare. "Thank you, Mouse Protector. You're dismissed."

In response, Alicia shot her a sardonic salute, and then a moment later she tugged on the thread of one of her tagged items—her suitcase, back in her home—and with a faint 'pop' she disappeared.

~*~​

Last chance to change your mind, Howitzer said, not unkindly. She didn't approve of the comedy plan, but she wasn't as virulently opposed to it as many of the others, and she'd made it clear that the decision was ultimately Taylor's own.

Fuck that, this is going to be hilarious. Even if the costume was designed by that rat bastard, Cordyceps responded.

Personally, I can't wait until other people start to put 'one and fourteen together', as you said, Wendigo said, a smirk clear in her voice. God, Kaiser's going to shit bricks when he realizes.

Hopefully that won't be for a while, Taylor replied mentally. They all ignored the seven muted voices that were only understandable as a very faint scream, pushed as far into the swarm as they'd been. Almost reflexively, Taylor pet at the fuzzy armwarmers—they were actually so soft, she kind of loved just wearing them.

"You doing alright?" Vista said, from where she was standing next to her. Aegis, Gallant, and Kid Win were in the little 'green room' as well, but they were giving Taylor a much wider berth, and looking at Vista with no little degree of shock.

"Sorry, just a little distracted," Taylor replied, shrugging one shoulder.

"By the…" Vista trailed off, tapping her head.

In reply, Taylor smiled faintly. "Yeah. I pissed off a fair few of them, doing this. I can ignore them fine, but it's a little distracting."

"God, that's so creepy," Kid Win said in a quiet whisper. He probably hadn't meant to be overheard, but more than a couple of her Brute powers had come with some level of sensory enhancement, and she was gradually learning how to parse her bug senses into speech as well. Not that she'd tell him that quite yet—she was waiting for a funnier moment to spring that on them.

A person in a suit was approaching the green room, she could see with her bloodsight through the wall, and Taylor turned to face the door a second before it opened, revealing a harried looking woman carrying a clipboard with an earpiece in. The woman's eyes quickly scanned the room, as though making sure everyone was present, before landing back on Taylor. "Bumble, you're on in fifteen. Makeup wants to see you for a last minute touch-up, so I need you to come with me. The rest of the Wards, head over to the stage and my colleague will tell you where to stand."

How dare some paper-pushing nobody command the— and there went Devein. She was starting to despair over either of the first two Butchers ever learning better.

Taylor stood up, enjoying the stretch in her back. "Lead the way," she said, cheerfully.

As she followed the woman out, the door swinging shut behind them, Taylor's enhanced senses heard Kid Win quietly say, "Holy shit. I don't know how you do it, Vista."

"Do what?" the smaller Ward asked.

"Just… have a casual chat with the Butcher," he said.

Vista snorted, her voice getting quieter as the room got further away. "She's just a teenage girl. She's got some extra baggage, sure, but what cape doesn't. Besides, she's way nicer than Stalker."

She'll a good teammate, Frenzy said, in his soft voice, surprising Taylor a little bit. The man rarely talked, but that just meant she usually listened when he did. She's loyal and strong.

Whatever Kid Win's reply might have been, it was lost as Taylor was brought to another room right next to the larger amphitheater where they would be doing the introduction. She'd seen the PRT do Ward introductions before, but she hadn't known that they borrowed one of the floors of the Brockton 7 News building for it until now. It made sense, though—the PRT building didn't exactly have ample room for the kind of space that would require, and it was easier to work with cameras and mics that were already set up.

The make-up artist turned out to be a rather nice woman in her late thirties named Janice with a surprisingly butch vibe for her profession, which meant that Taylor had to deal with a good third of the Butchers making lusty comments. Not that Taylor herself couldn't appreciate a nice figure, and she'd had some time to come to terms with the way her sexuality had been affected by her inheritance, but she didn't exactly intend to be jail-bait any time soon. Taylor just made polite conversation, doing her best to stay in character as Bumble, and given that they were just doing some final adjustments (she'd had to sit for a good thirty minutes earlier for the initial make-up application) it wasn't too long before Janice told her that she was good to go.

On the stage two rooms over, the gnats that she'd set up on pretty much everyone in her radius showed the Wards getting placed into suitably heroic spots in the background, along with three heroes—Battery, Assault, and Miss Militia. It was something of a show of force, almost certainly and unnecessary one, but it was more for PR reasons than anything else. Director Piggot arrived shortly afterwards, walking up to a podium, and then the cameras were rolling. The Director was making a speech—Taylor had read it beforehand, so she didn't bother straining to hear it now—and she was pretty sure that everything was going according to plan.

And then the woman with the clipboard was back. "Alright, Bumble. You've got your parts memorized?"

"Yup," Taylor said, stretching idly. She'd workshopped all of this with Mouse Protector (along with Cordyceps, Wendigo, and Hazard, her predecessors most inclined to helping with the plan) ahead of time, and she was a mixture of nervous and excited. The woman touched her ear piece, listening intently. Eventually, she apparently received the signal, because she turned to Taylor and raised her hand. Fingers counted down: Five, four, three, two, and—

With a crack, Taylor disappeared from the room and reappeared on the stage two hundred feet away. The Director was in the middle of her sentence, saying, "–Bay's newest ward, Bumble!"

Almost immediately, Bumble tripped and faceplanted right on the ground, falling into a spread-eagle pose, right where the cameras would get a perfect shot of her tumble. "Oof!" she exclaimed, and then she rapidly scrambled up to her feet. "I'm okay!" she cried out, patting herself down. She looked around, as if trying to figure out if anyone had seen her fall, and then her eyes met the camera and she froze like an innocent civilian before a rampaging member of the Teeth.

In an unamused tone, Director Piggot said, "Bumble, why don't you introduce yourself to the good people of the city?"

"Um, yeah! For sure, Miss Director ma'am!" Bumble replied. She made her way over toward the podium, stumbling once and teleporting a few feet forward in response before pretending she hadn't tripped up at all. Piggot stepped to the side, allowing her to stand behind it. "Hello Brockton Bay. My name is Tumble, and I'm here to bell you all about myself!" She paused, then frowned. "No wait, that's not it." Reaching into one of her suit's pockets, she pulled out a set of three-by-five index cards. Looking at the first one, she said, in a monotone 'reading' voice, "'My name is Bumble, and I'm here to tell you all about myself.' Right, yeah. That's it."

Bumble nodded, content in a job well done, until she heard the cough coming from beside her. "...And you're going to tell them about yourself?" Director Piggot said, with one arched eyebrow.

"Oh! Right, yeah. Let's see. Um, I like pistachio ice cream and reading and short walks on the beach. My favorite hero is… probably Mouse Protector, but I also really like Miss Militia. Oh, and one interesting fact about me is that I know how to weave baskets underwater." She turned to look at the Director. "Was that good?"

Piggot closed her eyes and reached a hand to her face, as if asking for patience. Taylor wasn't entirely sure it was part of the act, either. "That was… fine, Bumble, although I was hoping you might talk a bit about your powers."

"Right! My powers! Um, the power testing people said I was something called a crab-bag, I think, which is weird because only one of my powers has to do with crabs at all," she rambled.

"A grab-bag cape," Piggot interjected.

"A what now?" Bumble said, cocking her head to the side.

"A grab-bag cape. It means you have a collection of weaker powers."

"Ooooooh. That makes so much more sense," Bumble replied, nodding sagely. "Okay. So, I can go 'whoosh' for short distances, I'm really strong, and I can make stuff go all soft and squishy. Oh! And I can make bugs and spiders and crabs move around."

The Director took a deep breath. Turning to the camera, she said, "Bumble is a teleporting mover, a low-end Brute, an arthropod Master, and she has a Shaker ability to change the malleability of matter."

Bumble's head cocked to the side. "Isn't that what I said?" She looked down at the cue cards. "Um, was there anything else, ma'am?"

"No, Bumble, that should do it," the woman replied, and she seemed as if she very much wanted Bumble off the stage immediately.

"Okie-dokie! Oh, wait, there was one other thing." Looking down and pawing through the index cards, Bumble stage-whispered, "Okay, now what was it that Mouse Protector told me to say again?" She scrunched up her face into a 'thinking' expression, then it cleared. "Right!" She turned, facing directly toward the camera. "I'm here to kick criminals' butts and chew bubblegum, and I'm all out of butts! Wait, no, that's not it. I'm all out of bubblegum!" She made a kicking motion with one foot, along with an exaggerated 'hi-yah!' sound.

"Thank you, Bumble, for that enlightening introduction," the Director said, a dry sarcasm in her tone.

"You're welcome, Miss Director Piggot Ma'am!" she chirped back, but she was already stepping away to join the rest of the Wards, who all moved a little to let her join their ranks, and everyone but Missy did their best to not make it seem like they were trying to put distance between themselves and her.

The director took to the podium again, and the rest of the press release was just the standard boilerplate about the Wards program which Taylor mostly tuned out, as she listened to the various reactions to her little performance from the voices in her head. Cordyceps and Hazard found it hilarious, Howitzer was quietly disapproving, Sepsis and Absinthe were (predictably) arguing over whether people would think she was genuine or see through the act, Mimic was sulking that she didn't end up using his power for the demonstration, and Quarrel, Butcher, Devein, and Novocain were all yelling their displeasure. Listening to their internal conversations, Taylor couldn't help but feel it was a little like people watching, in a strange way.

She was drawn out of her thoughts by a gloved hand on her own. Looking over, she saw Vista had tapped her to get her attention. When she met Missy's gaze, shielded though it was by the visor, the smaller Ward mouthed, "Good job," at her.

Taylor smiled and mouthed, "thank you," back, squeezing Missy's hand in a quick gesture of appreciation. Her debut had gone off about as well as she could have hoped for—now they just had to wait and see what the public response was.

Chapter Text

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♦ Topic: A New Thread
In: Boards ► Places ► Brockton Bay ► Wards
Miss Mercury (Original Poster) (Protectorate Employee)
Posted On Feb 18th 2011:
On behalf of the ENE Protectorate, I'm proud to announce the debut of a new member of our Wards team. Everyone, please give a warm Brockton Bay welcome to Bumble. She's eager to get on the streets and help the fine people of our city, and we're excited to have her on the team.

You can watch her introduction here: www.prt.gov/wards/brockton%20bay/bumble_press_conference.mov

For more information, you can visit her page as well:
www.prt.gov/wards/brockton%20bay/bumble.html

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Max Anders stood at the front of the table, a screen behind him. He always found it funny, how these meetings often paralleled those that he had with the Medhall board members. Right now, he was with five of the Empire capes in one of the gang's properties, an office building that had the 8th floor reserved for Empire matters. Hookwolf was on one side of the table with Cricket, while Krieg, Alabaster, and Victor were sitting on the opposite side.

"Krieg, I'll rely on you to arrange protection for our dealers between yourself, Crusader, and Stormtiger. If you need to move fast, feel free to call on Rune's services. Understood?"

Krieg nodded and said, in his moderate German accent, "Understood, Kaiser. It shall be done."

"Good." He nodded decisively, clicking forward to get the screen to transition to the next slide, this one containing a still from the Bumble video from the PRT's own website. "Then there's only one other matter to attend to. The Protectorate have acquired a new Ward, Bumble. I'll play the video now."

The video played out on the screen, from Piggot's bland speech to the girl's sudden arrival. Max watched it with interest; as the leader of the country's largest neonazi movement, he was always interested in seeing how the PRT ran their own propaganda.

Max cleared his throat. "What do we know about her? Powers, weaknesses, threat level."

Victor cleared his throat. "According to the director, she's a grab-bag with assorted weak powers: short teleport, weak brute, matter manipulation, and bug control. She's likely capable of being a nuisance, especially to our unpowered members, although I fail to see what she'd do against the twins, Krieg, or yourself."

"The girl's a r****d," was Alabaster's insightful contribution. "Seriously, why are we even worried? She can't even teleport without falling over."

"I find it unwise to underestimate our opponents, especially when they make it so easy," came Victor's dry reply.

"It's not underestimating if she's too dumb to get through a single sentence," Alabaster replied, with a sneer.

"She moves like a fighter." Heads turned to see who spoke, and Max felt somewhat shocked to see that it had actually been Brad.

"You? You're scared of a girl who named herself Bumble?" came Alabaster's incredulous reply.

Hookwolf snorted at that, shaking his head. "I never said I'm scared of her, asshole. But I know fighters, and she's got all the markers."

"She literally tripped over her feet," the pale man snapped back.

Hookwolf let out a growl like metal being crushed, lines of steel beginning to form beneath his skin. Max held up a hand, forestalling any further argument—if Brad wanted to tear Alabaster apart like a rottweiler with a chew-toy, he could do that somewhere that Max wouldn't have to foot the bill for the property damage. "Enough. Brad, what makes you think she's a fighter?"

The man visibly calmed himself, the roiling metal stilling slowly. He gestured to the screen, where the video had been paused. "Look at how she places her weight on her feet, how she keeps her balance. When she tripped, she broke her fall like a martial artist. That's instinct, the kind of thing you only get with practice."

"So she's a r****d who took took some ch*** fighting classes," Alabaster said, with a careless shrug. "She'd still go down to one guy with a gun."

Max pursed his lips, then turned to look at Cricket. In her modulated and flat voice, coming from the speaker in her neck, the woman said, "I agree with Brad. She is dangerous."

Alabaster snorted, shaking his head in disgust. "When did you guys turn into such fuckin' pussies?"

Max slapped the table, lightly, but it was enough to silence the bickering. "It doesn't matter right now. Fighter or not, the girl is a Ward. Killing her—even seriously injuring her—would bring down more heat than we need right now. If you run into her, handle her with caution, and don't expect her to be a pushover just because that's what she wants the world to think. Understood?"

He looked around the table, getting nods of agreement. When he got to Alabaster, the man sneered, but eventually nodded as well. "Fuck, fine. I still think… fine."

Kaiser nodded, pleased. "In the meantime, Victor, get some of our men to try and dig up more footage of her powers and her identity, if you can. Quietly, of course."

Victor nodded. "Understood."

Kenta was only distantly aware that there was a new member of the Wards. It did not matter much to him—they were not allowed to fight against him or Oni Lee, and it would not matter if they did. He was Lung. He was the Dragon. He had faced down the entire might of the Protectorate and had drawn them to a tie, forced them to retreat lest they face his wrath. Their acquisition of one more incompetent child would change nothing.

He watched the building in front of him burn down, the flames warm on his skin. It had once been a Vietnamese restaurant, and he could admit that they had made a damn good bowl of pho, but unfortunately they had also chosen not to pay him for protection. The owner of the building could only blame himself for what had happened next.

Thomas Calvert found himself more than a little irritated. He knew that there was something about the new Ward, Bumble, that had sent more than a few people into a panic, but he didn't know exactly what it was. He could access her basic PRT file, of course—he had the authorization for simple threat analyses and patrol details, things like that—but her full file was sealed behind level 7 authorization, which meant it could only be accessed by PRT Directors, Protectorate leaders, and anyone they give explicit permission to.

It was irritating, but not so much that he was really willing to spend more resources or timelines on trying to ferret out the secret. He was almost sure he knew what it was, anyway. It hadn't taken too much work to figure out that Bumble's civilian identity was Taylor Hebert, not after setting his Tattletale on it in a now defunct timeline. Coil had sources in all of the local schools, since most new parahumans triggered around high school, and it was often an easy way to find and acquire new resources, and so he knew that Sophia Hess—the civilian identity of Shadow Stalker—had been engaged in an extensive bullying campaign against one Taylor Hebert. It was the kind of scandal that could easily bring horrible PR to the PRT, and so he had tucked it away as a nice piece of potential ammunition for bringing down Piggot.

It was unfortunate to lose that threat before he got the chance to bring it to bear, but that was fine. He was a patient man, and he had access to far more dirty laundry that he could air when the time was right. For now, he put Bumble out of his mind and focused on bringing his other schemes to completion.

The cup of coffee fell from Lisa's limp hands, spilling over the table, but she didn't care. Her eyes were fixed on the phone in her hands—specifically, on the press conference that the PRT had just put out announcing a new Ward.

"Oh fuck me," she said, quietly. "Oh fuck, fuck, fuck."

Alec looked up from across the table, where he was curled up around a bowl of cereal like a particularly sluggish sloth. "Whas up?" he said, blinking the sleep from his eyes.

"Have you guys seen the new Ward?" she said, barely keeping the tremble from her voice. Automatically, she grabbed a paper towel from the roll they were using as napkins and began to wipe up the coffee. It helped, having something automatic to do.

"Yeah?" Alec said, his head cocked to the side. "Stumble or Bumble or something like that, right? Shit was hilarious."

From the kitchen, where he was currently making scrambled eggs, Brian looked over at her. "I haven't had the chance yet. Is she like Stalker?"

"Hardly," Alec replied. "Girl's being billed as a comedy cape. I doubt we have to deal with a second dark and broody running around with broadhead bolts."

At that, Lisa let out a little hysterical laugh. "Oh no, Bumble's far more dangerous than Stalker could ever dream of being. And I'm pretty sure she actually hates Shadow Stalker, but it's kind of hard to read her."

That got Brian's attention, his brow furrowing. "Wait, is she some kind of thinker as well? Or an anti-thinker trump?"

Lisa shook her head, staring at the video. Putting on a performance. Is enjoying the act. Hates the act. Hates Director Piggot. Friends with Vista. Wants to murder Vista and eat her flesh. Unconscious movements consistent with trained fighter. Slightly favors left leg despite no sign of injury; possibly psychosomatic. Movements consistent with at least two separate Brute powers, likely more. Trained in several styles of fighting.

Lisa winced a little, but she pushed her power further. Arthropod movement is irregular, confirms claim. Arthropod movement is incredibly precise. All seemingly clumsy arthropod movement is carefully choreographed. Using arthropods to displace physical sensations of anxiety. Currently monitoring the entire studio with arthropods. Currently monitoring the studio with parahuman sense, likely relating to cardiovascular or nervous system. Capable of killing everyone in the room before they could react. Could kill Lisa Wilbourn in at least twenty different ways before she could react.

"Fuck me," she said, as her power punished her attempts to lean hard on it with a sharper stab of pain. "And not exactly. Well, she's both a Thinker and a Trump, but that's not the problem."

Alec seemed to have reached the end of his patience, gesturing with his spoon and sending little splatters of cereal milk onto the table. "Christ Lisa, We get it. You're the smartest cookie in the room. Now stop with the run-around and just spit it out."

Lisa licked her lips. "You can't go blabbing this around. I'm serious, Alec, this is the kind of shit we can't go running our mouths with."

He raised an eyebrow. "This, coming from Tattletale?"

She glared at him. "Yes. And if I'm saying that you need to keep it quiet, what does that tell you?"

The boy just shrugged. "Fair point," he said.

Brian had plated his eggs by now, sitting down across next to Alec. "We won't say anything, but it sounds like this is info that'll affect the whole team."

Lisa's nose reflexively wrinkled in disgust when the man started to dump way too much hot sauce onto his plate, but that was an old argument and not one she wanted to relitigate right now. Instead, she decided to just lay all the cards on the table. "Bumble is Butcher Fifteen," she said.

Alec barely reacted, but that was usual for him. Brian's response was far more dramatic. He froze, fork half-way to his mouth, then slowly set it back down. "You're shitting me," he said.

Lisa shook her head, tabbing over to the PHO thread and scrolling down to Bumble's responses. If she'd had any doubt, the line about 'cutting her teeth' sealed it. God, she was practically daring thinkers to figure it out. And it made sense, too, because between being a Ward and being the Butcher, anybody with any sense would know not to go after her with anything even close to lethal force. "Not even a little bit. Somehow, she's stayed more or less sane after inheriting, although I have no idea if that would continue if she died again."

"What the fuck is she doing in the Wards?" Brian said, eggs all but forgotten. "And what does this mean for us going forward?"

"From what I can tell? It's her plan on how to not die early like her predecessors," Lisa said, shrugging a little. She pulled on her power a little more, ignoring the ice pick in her cranium with familiar practice. "And… honestly, not that much. She's keeping the kid's gloves on, near as I can tell. If we run into her, we're going to lose—that's almost guaranteed—but she's not going to actually hurt us unless we make her, and she's sandbagging enough that she'll probably let us go so long as we aren't hurting innocent people."

Brian let out a long, slow breath. "So we'll be going after the other gangs for the foreseeable future?"

Lisa nodded. "That, and well-insured businesses. Anything to keep the kid gloves on."

Brian nodded, then slowly brought his hot sauce egg monstrosity to his lips. After swallowing, he said, "This fucking city, man."

Lisa nodded in agreement. "This fucking city."

Idly, she wondered if Coil already knew who Bumble was. Well, she certainly wasn't going to be telling him, not unless he asked directly. The thought of what could happen if that man decided it was a good idea to try and seize control of Bumble for his own purposes was… chilling. She was certain he'd figure out eventually, but until then she was keeping quiet. No reason to draw the Butcher's attention unless absolutely necessary, she decided.

Emma checked her phone, a small frown crossing her face when she didn't see any new messages. It wasn't like Sophia to be ten minutes late, at least not without texting her first. She sent a quick text to the other girl, asking where she was, then slipped her phone back into her pocket. She took a sip of her caramel macchiato, eyes idly tracking around the café interior. It was a cute enough place, although the art on the wooden walls had a bit too much corporate energy for her tastes.

The bell over the door let out a soft ding, and Emma turned her head to see the familiar sight of Sophia. Honestly, the other girl didn't look that great. There were dark circles under her eyes, she moved with a certain caution that seemed more Shadow Stalker than Sophia Hess, and her braids were too loose, not tight against her skull like the other girl preferred.

Emma watched as her hero walked over to the counter, ordering something—well, Emma knew that it was going to be a simple black coffee, since Sophia had no patience for overpriced coffee shops and only went there because Emma liked them—and then drummed her fingers on the counter as she waited. She was impatient and jumpy, Emma could tell, far more so than usual. Something was clearly wrong. As soon as she had the coffee, Sophia walked over and sat down across from Emma.

"Hey, Soph," Emma said, holding out a fist.

Sophia gave her a tight smile back, bumping the fist. "Hey survivor," she replied.

"Problems at work?" Emma guessed, because that was usually what left Sophia stressed.

"You could say that," the other girl replied, tension clear in her frame.

"Is it your new coworker?" It was just a guess, but the way that Sophia's whole body went tight at that confirmed Emma's suspicion. "She looks like a wimp, from what I saw."

Sophia let out a hollow laugh. "She is," she said. "But also, she really, really isn't."

That left Emma more than a little confused. "What do you mean?"

"I can't talk about it, Ems," The other girl said. She licked her lips, eyes darting around them. "On an unrelated note, do you remember what happened to Hebert, last month?"

Emma paused, surprised by the shift in conversation. Of course she remembered what had happened to Taylor. "Do you mean on the first day of school, or that mess in Boston?"

Sophia took a deep breath. It was unsettling to Emma, to see the normally composed girl looking so unsettled herself. "Both, I think." Her fingers drummed on the table. "Okay, so there's some stuff that legally I can't tell you, but it would be dangerous not to tell you. Understand?"

Emma processed that for a moment, but her dad was a lawyer and she was well versed in that kind of technical speech. "Sure," she said, already starting to put the pieces together. It reminded her a little of doing puzzles with Aunt Annette and Taylor when she was younger, and how they would squabble over who got to do the edge pieces—no. She pushed that thought away, like she did all thoughts of her childhood with Taylor, the time when she had been weak and helpless.

Okay. What did she know? Sophia couldn't talk about the new Ward, Bumble. Given that she was more than free with her gripes about Vista, Clockblocker, and Kid Win in the past, that meant whatever was going on was bigger than just a personality dispute. And then she had immediately changed the subject to Taylor, which—

A piece of the puzzle clicked into place. "No," she said, in a somewhat horrified whisper. "It isn't—"

Sophia cut her off, holding up one hand. "I legally can't confirm or deny anything, Emma," she said, which was honestly confirmation enough. Emma's phone was back in her hands a moment later, searching up Bumble's image. The costume was ridiculous, and not something she'd ever expect Taylor to willingly wear, but if she looked past that Emma could see Taylor's distinctive long hair, could see her tall and gangly frame.

That couldn't be all of it, though. Sure, Sophia would be pissed to have Taylor as a coworker in the Wards, but that wouldn't leave her so frazzled or upset. There had to be something else going on, and she was going to figure it out.

Something tickled the back of her brain—a conversation she'd partially overheard between her dad and Danny Hebert over the phone, right after the attack. It had been an attack by the Teeth, if she was remembering correctly, that group of murderous Mad Max cosplayers led by the Butcher. A few more taps pulled up some of the local Boston news articles about the fight, refreshing her memory of what happened. People had taken notice of it because the previous Butcher died, from some kind of asphyxiation, although the body had been too decomposed to tell what had happened. There was some speculation that it had been some kind of accelerated time field that got the monster, since much of the body had been rotted away or consumed by scavenger bugs by the time they got to it.

By scavenger… bugs…

She tabbed back over to the PHO thread on Bumble, looking back to the known power section. Yeah, there was bug control, right there. She looked up Butcher's known powerset, and her eyes stumbled on the decay effect from Butcher IV.

Emma felt all the blood leave her face, and she looked up at Sophia. "She's…" Now her own lips felt dry. It was a bad idea to speak of the civilian identity of a cape in public, she knew, no matter how safe you might think you were. It was the reason she and Sophia engaged in this kind of run-around, to make sure that legally speaking Sophia wasn't breaking her probation in any provable way. Emma searched for the right way to phrase it, and then it hit her, because if pressed she could easily say it was just a fact. "Taylor is fifteen, right? Because she's about five months younger than me, and I just had my birthday."

Sophia nodded, solemnly. "That sounds about right. But you probably won't have to worry about that—I heard she got a transfer to Arcadia, and I think she's looking to put her past behind her."

A part of Emma wanted to flare up in anger at that—the part of her that had always thrown a tantrum as a kid when a toy had been taken away, and the part of her that had worked hard to tear Taylor down if only to prove that she was stronger. Emma was pretty sure that, once she'd processed everything, she'd be something of a wreck as she tried to reconcile the weak and pathetic Taylor she knew with a cape powerful enough to kill the fucking Butcher, and to stay sane enough to join the Wards. But a much larger part of her—a deep and primal part, the most fundamental survival instinct that she had spent the past two years cultivating—could only feel relief that she wouldn't have to attend school with an incredibly powerful cape who had a very good reason to kill her on sight.

She met Sophia's gaze, and made a decision. "On an unrelated note. We've got two pints of cookie dough ice cream in the freezer back home, the complete box set of Planet Earth, and half a bottle of Fireball that I found in Anne's room. You in?"

The look that Sophia gave her was like a drowning man being thrown a life preserver. "God yes," the other girl said.

Chapter Text

After the attack in Boston, Danny Hebert had called Winslow and excused Taylor for the next two weeks, citing a family emergency. It wasn't even a lie—she'd still been adjusting to inheriting the Butcher's mantle, and neither of them were certain that she would be able to attend school without murdering the girls who put her in the locker.

Joining the Wards had extended that absence another week, as well as finally getting Taylor a transfer away from Winslow High. That had been one of her mandatory requirements when joining, and frankly it was a minor enough item that Director Piggot had barely blinked when Taylor had brought it up.

Sure, she now had the combined knowledge of fourteen other individuals, including five with Bachelor degrees, two graduate degrees, and about three-quarters of a doctorate in Chemistry from Basilisk, all of which meant she could absolutely get her GED if she wanted, but the Wards had surprisingly strict policies about making sure their charges stayed in school at around the appropriate grade level. Enough Thinkers had tried to get around those restrictions with their powers that the legislation was fairly airtight. Abstractly, Taylor could admit that it made some sense: for one thing, letting Wards test out of school so they could work more would look terrible with regard to the whole 'child soldier' angle. There was also the whole thing about compulsory schooling being important for socialization, which was even more important for teenage parahumans who were by definition horribly traumatized.

And now, Taylor found herself in the strange position of, for the first time in nearly two years, actually looking forward to school. Sure, the classes might be a bit boring, but this was also an opportunity to make some friends with people who didn't know she was the Butcher and also weren't voices inside her head. She could put up with relearning elementary trig and redox reactions for that.

Her first impression of Arcadia was that it was substantially nicer than Winslow, in practically every way. No poorly painted-over gang signs, no decaying gray concrete walls or windows cracked and taped over. Instead, there was manicured grass and warm yellow colors and an inviting atmosphere that she wanted to distrust on principle.

"Have a good day, Taylor," her dad said. He'd driven her for her first day, despite her protests that she'd be fine with public transportation, but she couldn't help but appreciate the gesture for what it was. "It's going to be better than Winslow."

"Couldn't be worse, I guess," she replied, with a half-shrug, ignoring all the voices in her head booing her for tempting fate. "Have a good day at work, Dad. I'm catching a ride with one of my coworkers after school, and I should be back home by 7."

"I'll see you then, little owl," he said, hugging her tightly. She hugged back, far less tightly, since she had the brute packages to snap his back like a slim jim. Then he climbed back into their beat up old car and started to drive away.

She'd been instructed to arrive a good thirty minutes before school started, to give her time for administrative things and getting familiar with the school, and as a result the whole school felt eerily empty at the moment. Taylor had barely made it inside the door when she saw a familiar face—well, actually, a familiar cardiovascular system, since he'd yet to unmask to her. Gallant was standing there, next to a tall blonde girl that Taylor immediately clocked as Glory Girl. He froze when he saw her, then said something quiet to the other girl. For her part, the other cape turned and suddenly walked toward her, and it was only the lack of Hazard's danger sense that kept her from responding aggressively to the approach of what was clearly a popular girl.

"Hey! You're Taylor, right?" the girl asked, holding out a hand. "I'm Vicky, and over there is Dean. We were asked to give you a tour of Arcadia. First stop is the office."

It should be illegal to be that perky this early, Sepsis muttered.

That's not the only part of her that's perky, Cordyceps cut in, giggling even as she experienced the mental equivalent of a head-slap from Taylor.

Taylor took her hand in a firm grip. "Nice to meet you. I actually know Dean a little bit, from work." That seemed to genuinely surprise Vicky, which spoke somewhat well of Dean's opsec. Of course, the fact that Glory Girl was both publicly known to be dating Dean Stansfield and rumored to be dating Gallant spoke poorly of it, but the unspoken rules existed for a reason. Vicky began walking back toward Gallant, and then the two of them started to lead Taylor toward where her bugs had already mapped out was the main office.

"Wait, are you…" Vicky paused, lowering her voice and saying in a near whisper, "Bumble?"

"Now that would be telling," Taylor replied, with a little wink. She turned toward Dean next. "Nice to see you again, Dean," she said, going for the handshake as well, which he took nearly automatically.

"Nice to see you too," he said, his tone flat with buried emotion. "I thought you went to Winslow?"

"I did," Taylor replied, shrugging. "It… really wasn't very good for me, to be honest. Too many bullies. There were some concerns that things wouldn't go well if I went back."

She could see his heart beginning to beat faster at her statement. "Even with our other coworker there?"

Taylor grinned, a fierce and unpleasant thing. "Why would you assume she wasn't the problem?"

That seemed to really shake him. "How is she still alive?" he said, in a quavering voice.

"I'm not my predecessors," Taylor replied, to a chorus of disparaging agreement. "She's been twisted, and her little hobby didn't help things. She needs support and therapy, not an arrow through the skull."

Vicky had been watching their conversation like a tennis match, clearly displeased at being so left out of the conversation. "Wait, are you guys talking about Shadow Stalker? What did she do? And what do you mean, predecessors?"

"I'm a little surprised nobody told New Wave," Taylor said, arching an eyebrow. "Let's just say I've got something of a legacy behind me, and I'd like to keep it behind me."

More like keep it inside you, Wendigo said, teasingly.

Yeah, Taylor, how does it feel to have a man inside you? Absinthe cackled, before being punched down.

Puerile puns are beneath us, Devein replied with a faint sneer, marking one of the rare times that Taylor agreed with the unpleasant man.

Taylor's words seemed to resonate with Vicky, at least. "Oh, I get that. I mean, for me, it's more about my mom and the rest of New Wave, but I know what it's like to have expectations. Mom seems sure I'm going to be going to law school, no matter what I try to tell her."

"What do you want to do instead?" Taylor asked. It was a little pathetic that her social skills had atrophied so much that she had to rely on the Butchers' experiences for how to have a normal conversation, but she just ignored that unpleasant thought.

"Parahuman researcher," came Vicky's quick answer. "I'm actually taking a class at Brockton U on power expression right now."

That actually piqued Taylor's interest, more than she'd expected. "Yeah? Learn anything cool?"

Vicky nodded, a smile beginning to grow on her face. "Oh, for sure! Like, did you know that the reason why there are no true telepaths is because it would take a brain five times larger than usual to decode someone's unique neural patterns?"

Oh not that crock of shit again, Howitzer said, mentally shaking her head. How that dipshit managed to convince so many people with his pet theory I'll never understand.

Here she goes again, Absinthe said, rolling his eyes. Reviewing the memories, though, Taylor found that she agreed with Howitzer.

"Richards0n's Neural Density theory," Taylor replied, nodding. "Of course, that's complete bullshit."

She let out an indignant squawk. "What? How can you say that?"

"First, because it's assuming that you'd need to simulate the entire brain to extract any useful information, which isn't true." Taylor held up one finger, then continued counting up as she spoke. "Second, because it assumes that powers are constrained by physical laws, which is a laughable assumption. Third, because there are known parahumans whose powers would require equivalent mental processing: how do you explain Master powers that can directly modify how someone thinks, or precogs that can accurately predict hours or days at a time? What about the Faerie Queen, or the Butcher's ability to simulate fourteen other minds?" Dean made a choked little sound at the end, which both girls ignored.

Vicky paused, deep in thought. "Then how do you explain why there aren't any known telepaths? I mean, other than…"

"The Simurgh is only a suspected telepath, but there's little she's done that wouldn't be explained with advanced precog," Taylor replied. "And I don't know why there aren't any telepaths, but I do know that coming up with an obviously disprovable theory because the alternative is uncomfortable isn't the way to go about it. Elliot Richardson is a great writer, but he's a hack when it comes to actual research. Personally, I believe that true telepathy might violate the Sheindel Aggression Hypothesis, but that's just a theory." Well, admittedly, it was Howitzer's personal theory, one that she'd been conducting her doctorate research on before she had triggered and fallen in with the Teeth, but still.

Vicky stared at her for a while, then just shook her head, laughing a little. "Damn, you know your stuff. That felt like I was in one of Dr. Kugel's lectures. I'd love to talk more about this, but I've got to give you an actual orientation too." They'd reached the front office, and Taylor was close enough now to see the veins and arteries of the people already inside. "Alright, here's the office. Let's go and get your schedule, and then I'll point out where your classes are."

"Sounds good," Taylor said, smiling at the other girl. "Maybe we could talk more over lunch?"

Dean blanched at that, and cut in with a quick, "Um, I'm not sure if that's the best idea—"

But Vicky just waved him off. "C'mon, Dean. We're supposed to be student ambassadors, and that includes helping transfers get their footing and make new friends. It'd be more suspicious if I didn't invite her over for lunch."

Taylor resisted the urge to laugh, because she was pretty sure that wasn't at all why Dean had objected. Instead, she just took some small joy in seeing his defeated expression.

~*~​

Angela Wu had always been tall for her age and fairly athletic, which was why she'd been scouted for the basketball team back in middle school. That was when she'd met Vicky Dallon, who even then had been a cheerful and talented girl. Vicky had been somewhat famous, for being the daughter of two public capes, but that had gotten her as much disdain from the other girls as it did acclaim. For her own part, Angela had appreciated that Vicky was also a bit of a nerd, even if her interests lay in a very different area than Angela's own. They'd become fairly close friends and ended up going to Arcadia together, joining the JV basketball team, as well as sharing quite a few classes. Even after Vicky's rather public trigger event, Angela had stayed close friends with the girl.

Now Angela was in her junior year at Arcadia, and the coach had told her she was more or less a shoe-in for captain next year. And she did like basketball, to be sure—the competition, the exercise, the complex plays—but it wasn't her passion. Honestly, she was mostly still on the team because she was angling for a sport's scholarship. No, Angela's true passion had always been literature—specifically Victorian Novels. She'd stumbled upon Jane Eyre in the library when she was eight, and from then on she'd been hooked.

When Vicky had first mentioned that she was inviting a new transfer student to sit with them at lunch, Angela's first reaction had been mild frustration. Vicky took the whole 'hero' thing seriously, and that also meant she was constantly volunteering to help people out, including becoming an Arcadia Ambassador, which basically just meant she was one of the people that prospies shadowed and new students clung to until they got their feet. It was a little annoying, but Angela was well used to it by now.

Then she had actually met Taylor, and she'd found her curiosity piqued. Vicky waved Taylor over a few minutes into lunch, and the other girl ended up sitting across from Vicky and, coincidentally, right next to Angela. She was tall, nearly as tall as Angela herself, and she had the physique of a serious runner. Her face was a little plain, her lips a bit too wide, but she had a certain quiet confidence that gave her appearance more weight than it otherwise would. Frankly, the other girl ticked quite a few of Angela's personal checklist when it came to her type: sporty, tall, confident, and intelligent.

The latter she found out because Taylor was, apparently, just as much of a nerd as Vicky herself. As soon as she sat down, lunch tray in her hands, Vicky started talking at her about Thinkers and Masters, and Taylor replied by citing some study, and pretty soon the whole conversation was going well over Angela's head. She shared a bemused glance with the other members of the group—Josh, Louisa, Vicky's boyfriend Dean Stansfield (with the Stansfields, the last name was necessary). Vicky's sister Amy had already left for the hospital, apparently—it counted as her vocational work, but most people at least ate lunch on those days. Still, Angela figured it probably wasn't a great idea to go around judging the miracle healer for her schedule.

After a while, Vicky seemed to realize she was being rude to the rest of the table and reluctantly allowed Josh to change the subject, but it was clearly an effort for her. Taylor seemed to appreciate the diversion, although she hadn't seemed bothered about talking with Vicky either. Maybe she just didn't enjoy the attention?

"What's your vocay?" Angela asked her, curious. Vocay, slang for vocational track, were the extracurricular opportunities that Arcadia offered. Ostensibly, it was to help prepare students for graduation through real-world opportunities, but pretty much everyone knew that it was a cover to let the wards leave school when they needed to.

"Business," Taylor replied. "I've got an internship with a marketing team downtown. Yourself?"

"Human services," Angela replied. "Helping out some of the teachers at Eastwood Elementary. I want to be an English teacher eventually."

To her surprise, Taylor actually perked up at that. "Oh, that's cool! My mom was an English professor at Brockton U, actually."

"Was?" Josh cut in, around a bite of pizza.

Taylor flinched a little. "Uh, yeah. She died a couple years back. Drunk driver."

Angela cut in, before the boy could put his foot further in his mouth. "I'm sorry to hear that."

The girl gave a half-shrug. "It's fine, I'm… well I'm not over it, but I've come to terms with it at least. Anyway, I've always loved books, and I've thought a lot about following in her footsteps."

"What was her field of study?" Angela asked.

"The Brontë sisters," Taylor said. "She was particularly interested in the stark contrast in imagery and tone between Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, given that the authors had practically identical lives and education."

"That sounds really interesting. I love Jane Eyre, I've probably read it like twenty times, but it was such a slog to get through Wuthering Heights. I've always wondered why they're so different," Angela said, feeling herself really getting drawn into the conversation.

She ended up talking about the Brontë sisters, as well as their contemporaries like George Eliot and Charles Dickens, for most of the rest of lunch, and in the end they had traded phone numbers—she noticed that Taylor had a newer model of Dragonphone, and not many contacts, but she didn't want to interrogate her about it.

It had been clear, throughout the conversation, that Taylor was more than a little bit traumatized by something. There were little moments where she hunched over, as if expecting an insult, or where she paused for longer than usual. She'd at least said she had transferred from Winslow, and hinted that she hadn't had a great time there, and honestly Angela was pretty sure she could fill in the pieces from that. And yet, Taylor was also an engaging and interesting conversationalist, who seemed to know all kinds of interesting and random bits of facts and trivia, from details of the lives of Victorian Novelists, to intricacies of powers, to a surprisingly in-depth knowledge of Vietnamese cuisine when Louisa had mentioned that a pho restaurant had burned down over the weekend.

Dean had been strangely quiet all lunch, and he kept on looking over at Taylor, but maybe he knew a little more about what had happened at her old school and wanted to make sure she was settling in alright. Then again, Dean could be kind of weird in general sometimes, although he was unfailingly polite and kind, so nobody really faulted him for it.

They only had a few more minutes of lunch left when Josh brought up Bumble. Angela hadn't watched the debut live, but she'd seen the videos afterwards and she could admit to being a little interested in the new Ward, even if she normally didn't care much about cape news outside of making sure Vicky hadn't been hurt or killed.

"I'm just saying, I doubt she'll last long," Josh said, shaking his head. "I mean, a girl like that in Brockton Bay? That's just a bad match. I mean, isn't there the whole thing about cluster capes being weaker?" He looked over to Vicky, their resident cape expert.

"It's true that grab-bags on average have individually weaker powers," Vicky allowed, but she was wiggling her hand in a 'so-so' gesture. "But that doesn't mean they're actually weak. I mean, Mouse Protector's famously a grab-bag, but she's been on the scene for two decades."

"I mean, yeah, but she was also one of the first Wards. That doesn't count," Josh shot back, shaking his head. "Hey, Taylor, what's your take?"

Taylor looked up, apparently having been lost in thought. "Hmm?"

"What's your opinion on Bumble?" he asked. "Do you think she's strong enough last in the Bay?"

"I hope so," Taylor said, smiling slightly. "Besides, sheer power isn't everything. Even the strongest capes can be taken down by a bit of cleverness or a bad power interaction." For whatever reason, that comment caused Dean to flinch a bit, but Vicky just looked interested.

As the bell rang, signalling the end of lunch, Angela resolved to text Taylor some of her favorite memes about Victorian lit, the kind that none of her other friends would appreciate. Taylor was a strange girl, Angela decided, but then again they were all a little strange and nerdy in their own ways. She wouldn't mind having the girl sit with them again, and maybe eventually becoming an actual part of the friend group. And, well, Taylor was easy on the eyes and passionate about literature--Angela might spend some time figuring out if the transfer student was interested in girls as well.

Chapter Text

Honestly, Taylor hadn't been expecting to run into any actual villains on her first patrol. It was meant to be an easy route, around and through the Boardwalk, to familiarize her with the way that patrols worked and to familiarize the public with Bumble herself. It was very much not meant to be a field test of her combat abilities, but it seemed like that was the way it was going regardless.

For her first patrol, she had been assigned to go with Aegis and Kid Win. It made sense, to her—they could both fly, which meant that they could keep up with her teleports, and Aegis was the Wards' leader since Triumph had graduated a week before Taylor herself had joined. She could tell that the teen was still adjusting to his role as the leader, a task which she was sure her presence had not made any easier, but he had enough experience and natural charisma that she wasn't too worried.

The first half of their patrol went well enough. It was gratifying to see how many people's faces lit up at the sight of the Wards, and especially how many people had seen her debut video and were, if not exactly fans yet, at least excited to meet her. She ended up signing several notebooks and even a couple hoodies, and performed her pratfall routine a few times as well. She cracked a few jokes and made a couple puns, but her main appeal as a humor hero was in her slapstick, which required that she appeared far more earnest than her mousy mentor.

They'd wandered a few blocks off of the boardwalk proper when there was a faint crash in the distance, causing Kid Win and Aegis to pause, but Taylor's insects already knew what had happened. She'd been surveying everything in a three block radius, which meant she knew exactly when someone wearing a mask had surreptitiously stepped out of a car in an alleyway, walked fifty feet with a strangely graceful gait, and promptly materialized something incredibly heavy out of thin air right in time to shatter a large window.

The distinctive power use narrowed the possible suspects down to L33t, Circus, or an unknown. Given that they were alone, and weren't behaving with any of the spectacle that L33t preferred, she figured it was one of the latter two options. There was a man inside the building, and he shouted something when the glass first broke—Taylor couldn't hear well with this small of a swarm, but she could at least distinguish when someone was speaking—but a burst of heat that appeared over the unknown parahuman's hand, frying several of the gnats that Taylor had on them, caused him to bolt into the back. It also all but confirmed the cape's identity as Circus.

Who's this clown now? Butcher asked, because he'd been annoying during the briefing and Taylor had pushed him into the swarm.

Did you mean that literally, or was that an insult? Cordyceps asked, teasingly. Because I never thought I'd see the day when Butcher made a pun.

Fuck off, asswipe! Butcher snarled back, but he quieted down as Taylor started to apply mental pressure on his voice.

They were still a block and a half away. For a moment, Taylor considered not mentioning it, but her swarm radius was known and somebody would likely figure out that she had picked up what was going on. Touching a hand to her earpiece, she said, "Hello console! My bugs just noticed somebody into a jewelry store, and I'm like 80% sure they're not supposed to be there!"

Clockblocker's tinny voice came back. "What makes you say that, Bumble?"

"Well, they've got a huge hammer and they're breaking open all the glass cases," Taylor replied, shrugging a little.

"Sounds like Circus," Aegis said, on the channel. "She's a tricky customer, and even more of an escape expert than the Undersiders. Clock, you got her file?"

"Yeah, give me a sec," came the tinny reply, accompanied by the tapping of several keys. "Alright, Circus, yeah, here we go. Wanted for a series of low-stakes burglaries stretching back a year and a half, as well as property damage and assault, although nothing worse than bruises so far. Androgynous appearance, gender unknown but presumed female based on the costume."

"And their powers?" Taylor asked, slotting the information away.

"Looks like… huh, a grab bag. Known powers are enhanced reflexes and minor pyrokinesis, along with some kind of hammerspace or matter materialization effect that allows her to summon weapons at will. Suspected abilities are enhanced aim, proprioception, and balance, although that's unconfirmed since it could be at the high end of baseline human ability and that's a hard thing to determine in the field. Ratings are Striker and Shaker 4, with a probable Thinker 2."

"Are we clear to engage?" Aegis asked, and she could see him slipping into a more professional mindset.

"Threat level under 5 and no known reports of her attempting to seriously harm heroes, LEOs, or bystanders. Yeah, you're clear to engage," Clockblocker's voice said clearly in her ear.

Taylor nodded, even though the other Ward wouldn't be able to see it. She began to gather the friendlier insects from her swarm—moths and butterflies, bees, and beetles—and started to work on evacuating the surrounding buildings of civilians. Most of them were fairly empty, since Circus hadn't been particularly quiet when they entered the building by converting one of the windows into an improvised doorway through the judicious application of a hammer. There were still some people too close for her comfort—Taylor had a quite visceral understanding of civilian casualties resulting from cape fights—and it was these people that Taylor was doing her best to lead away from the fight. Fortunately, whether they recognized the insects as belonging to a hero or not, most people's reaction to an obvious and unknown parahuman ability was to get as far as they could away from it, so Taylor was able to clear the area by the time she and the other Wards arrived at the jewelry store. Well, except for the man who'd been in the back of the store when Circus arrived, but there wasn't much she could do about that.

"We're about a minute out, console," Aegis reported, as they turned a corner and the jewelry store came into sight. It had several large floor to ceiling windows out front, displaying several velvet lined tables covered with various necklaces and earrings, although one of the windows had been shattered and broken glass lay on the ground next to scattered jewelry.

"Copy that, Aegis," Clockblocker replied.

"I've got all but one civilian evacuated by my bugs, and I'm working on getting him clear as well." Taylor reported. "He's in the back, so try to draw the fight out toward the street. No other hostiles that I can sense within three blocks."

There was a short silence, as the other Wards realized what she'd been doing. "Well that's not terrifying at all," Clockblocker said, although probably he hadn't meant it to be loud enough for the earpieces to pick it up. "Uh, good work, Bumble," he said in a louder voice.

"Circus is an independent villain, so at least we shouldn't have to worry about her backup," Kid Win said.

I call bullshit, Frenzy said, in his quiet voice. A power like that, there's no way they've remained independent for a year and a half.

Oh come on, Absinthe replied, with a mental eye-roll.

Nah, Frenzy's got a point, Sepsis cut in. With that hammerspace, they could be making bank on secure transport of drugs or money for the Elite or any number of gangs. So why are they running around doing low-stakes jewelry jobs?

My guess? They've got a hidden backer, pulling the strings and keeping 'em out of jail. Mason mused. Could be the Empire, could be a bit player like Coil or the Undersiders, or they might even be a deniable asset for the PRT.

The discussion continued, drawing several more of the previous Butchers in, but Taylor let it drift out of her focus as she and the other two Wards reached the jewelry store. It was an interesting debate, but right now she was about to get into her first cape fight after inheriting, and she needed to focus—both to make sure she was following Mouse Protector's training, and to make sure she didn't slip up and fall back on her predecessor's bad habits that might result in dramatically eviscerating the burglar.

Aegis flew in first, Kid Win hanging back on his hoverboard with his tinkertech blaster in hand. Taylor followed a bit later, and finally got her first look at Circus. The cape was wearing a tight uniform stylized like a jester, in rich reds and purples that were layered into a stylish yet concealing costume. They looked damn good, especially since by all reports Circus never wore the exact same costume twice. The only incongruous part of their costume was the black dufflebag they were holding, which was currently unzipped and being stuffed full of jewelry.

Taylor's bloodsight let her pick up that Circus had both small breasts and male genitalia, which she absently filed away. Given that Circus had never explicitly made their gender preference known, it left Taylor with a bit of a dilemma.

Might be like me, Cordyceps mused. You know how I transitioned from a fungi to fungal?

That pun was awful, Basilisk replied, with a groan.

As always, Cordyceps is as much an advocate for trans wrongs as trans rights, Wendigo said, wryly. And besides, Circus could just as easily be genderfluid or non-binary.

I'm a little surprised you're all so accepting, Taylor said.

Eh, we all got a taste of gender dysphoria when Cordyceps and Wendigo inherited. Sepsis said, with a mental shrug. Besides, we may be monsters, but we've never been bigots. Well, most of us.

Fuck off, I was raised Catholic in the deep South, Absinthe shot back, although without much hear to his voice. I learned better eventually.

Fascinating conversation aside, they're currently robbing a jewelry store, and that means a fight, Taylor thought back to them. There was a chorus of cheers as she mentioned fighting, even as several voices complained about how lame it was that she was going non-lethal.

Aegis touched down next to her, and Kid Win brought his hoverboard to ground level a moment later. He touched a hand to his ear. "Console, I have eyes on Circus. She's inside of Gilding Jewelers on 33rd street, with clear signs of B&E and unlawful possession. We're moving in to engage."

"Copy that, Aegis," Clock's voice came back quickly.

Aegis flew forward, right through the shattered window, and touched down in front of Circus in a pose that was clearly meant to be intimidating. "Circus," he said, trying to project all his Wardly authority and disapproval. "You're under arrest for breaking and entering, destruction of property, and larceny. Please come quietly."

Taylor's bugs had already mapped out and evacuated all the nearby civilians, and her bloodsight just confirmed that she hadn't missed anybody. She could see the shop owner in the backroom, but fortunately he seemed to be smart enough to hunker down and wait for the fight to blow over.

For their part, Circus didn't look particularly impressed, setting down the bag and stalking toward the Ward. "Darling, I never come quietly," they replied, with a saucy wink. Then they whirled around and then reached behind their back, pulling out an absolutely massive wooden mallet with a cartoonishly large head, which they proceeded to slam into Aegis with a frankly impressive amount of force. Taylor could hear his bones crack and break under the impact, and if she wasn't aware that he was a powerful and flexible regenerator she'd probably have been worried. He flew backwards out the broken window, crashing into the asphalt about fifty feet away with a pained groan.

What a swing! Circus sends it clear down the fairway and onto the green! Cordyceps said, in an impression of a golf announcer.

Wouldn't a croquet or cricket joke would be more appropriate? Sepsis mused to herself.

Who the fuck even knows anything about cricket? Absinthe shot back. It's one of those fake sports the government made up, like curling or pickleball.

I do, Basilisk said, quietly. My dad was from India, so I grew up watching with him.

Taylor tuned out the resulting conversation, watching as Kid Win made a bee-line for the downed cape. It made sense: between her and Kid Win it was an easy choice for who should approach the villain next, and she would have been surprised if Win had let her near an injured Aegis anyway. Circus twirled the hammer around once, blowing imaginary smoke off the head, and then they almost seemed to tuck it in their pocket where it vanished without a trace, despite the physical impossibility of that action. The few gnats that Taylor had managed to sneak onto it disappeared completely from her senses, which made an extradimensional pocket quite likely.

Stepping through the now shattered floor-to-ceiling window that Aegis had passed through, Bumble made her way onto the scene. There was something she had to take care of first, though. "Excuse me? Before we do the whole fighting thing, could I ask your pronouns?" she asked.

Through her bloodsight, Taylor could see Circus raise their eyebrows underneath their mask. "Honey, I'm all woman," the other cape said, in a surprisingly smoky voice.

Yeah she is, Wendigo said, their lust clear in their voice, and several other Butchers cheered in agreement. Taylor did her best to ignore it, because she could deal with bloodlust and rage but she absolutely could not handle dealing with horny voices in her head.

"Good to know," Taylor replied. "And, uh, same. She and her and all that. I guess we do the fighting now?"

"I guess we do," Circus said. "I saw your debut—you're a brute, right?"

"Yeah, but why does that oh my god hammer!" Taylor cried out, disappearing in a teleport right before the hammer would have connected. She reappeared behind Circus in a stumbling fall that coincidentally happened to leave her next to the duffle bag that had been stuffed half-full of jewelry. She flailed in surprise at her fall, and one arm caught the bag and sent it skittering toward one wall, away from both her and Circus. Then there was the hammer coming down again, and Taylor's teleport had recharged enough for her to teleport back on her feet about fifteen feet away, close to the already-broken window.

"Aegis said you had a hammer space, but it feels like you're just going all hammer face on me!" she said—that had been one of Cordycep's contributions, but the pun had been too stupid not to use, even if it got her a bunch of boos from the other Butchers. As one part of her attention focused on quips and witty banter, another, much larger part was working to analyze the other cape.

Circus was good. That was the first thing Taylor noticed, from the decades of fighting experience that the Butcher Collective gave her. She moved with an easy grace, although the way her balance didn't so much as falter when she pulled out the hammer confirmed that it was a power effect.

Taylor weaved around the next few swings of the hammer, already starting to adjust to the other cape's fighting style. Circus seemed to rely on her ability to defy conservation of momentum with her hammerspace, but she was far from the first cape to have an ability like that—heck, the Butchers had scrapped several times with Chevalier, and manipulating weight and length mid fight was one of his primary tricks. Of course, as Bumble, she made sure to make it look like she was barely dodging the blows through lucky, fumbling movements, but she could tell that Circus was getting frustrated.

You have to get her away from the merchandise and the civilian, Hazard said, a little unhelpfully, because what did he think she was trying to do? What about the switcheroo gambit? Okay, that was actually a pretty good idea.

The next time the woman swung her hammer, Taylor stepped into the blow instead. She flared the surface level force fields from Novocaine and relied on her other handful of brute packages for the rest, then timed a jump backwards to go with the attack rather than against it. It was almost certainly overkill for a blow of this level, but Taylor didn't want to get into bad habits. The hammer struck her crossed arms and sent her flying out towards the street, just like Aegis. Unlike her fellow Ward, however, Taylor had access to a different mover ability than his flight.

She teleported right behind Circus, carrying all the momentum with her, and crashed into the cape butt-first. They went down in a tangle of limbs, rolling out through the broken window and out onto the street. She did have to use Mason's power once to stop a piece of broken glass from cutting into Circus's neck, but for the most part between the other woman's thick costume and Taylor's brute package they were safe enough.

"Oof! Did someone get the number of that bus?" Taylor called out, rolling off Circus and stumbling to her feet. The other cape performed a kip-up to leap to her feet, staring at Bumble with a wary expression.

"You're good," Circus said, her voice very serious.

Taylor giggled in response. "I'd hope so," she said. "I'm one of the good guys, after all."

I fucking hate that expression, Devein grumbled. Good guys and bad guys, like it's all that simple.

I agree in the abstract, Mimic said. That being said, you liked to make people watch while you drained their loved ones like a capri sun, so I'm pretty sure you're the bad guy no matter what.

Circus' expression grew more focused. "I suppose I'll have to take this a little more seriously," she said. One hand came off from the hammer, and a ball of flame erupted into being above her palm, hot and roiling.

Taylor looked at it, then she bit her lip. "Are you sure you want to escalate, Miss Circus?" She reached out with Mason's power, which as always was a bit more sluggish than Mason herself remembered, and took control of the ground beneath Circus' feet, making it roll slightly—enough to send a message, at least. There was a faint buzzing sound, too, as she summoned part of her swarm. Admittedly, only the more charismatic members, but the implicit threat was there.

Circus paused, looking at Taylor, and then at Kid Win and Aegis, the latter of whom had recovered enough from the first strike to be flying intimidatingly behind her. Kid Win was on the ground, his tinkertech pistol out and leveled at the villain—a sacrifice of mobility for better aim, something he struggled with while flying the hoverboard at the same time. Then her gaze flicked over to the jewelry store, landing on the duffle bag that was now well out of her reach. She gave a small nod. "Well, I'm not too proud to admit that I know when I'm beat." Then she whipped her hand around, and the small fireball expanded into a massive wall of fire, blocking their vision entirely. Taylor was mostly fireproof, as was her costume, and Aegis would be fine with time, but that wasn't true for Kid Win.

She reacted without even thinking, teleporting in front of the tinker and covering him with her body. Mason's power erupted from her, causing the ground behind her to stretch up and form a loose wall that the fire splashed against. What fire did reach her was far colder than she expected, and she realized a moment later that it wouldn't have done much more than singe even a normal person. That was the only thing that spared Circus from being hunted down and taken in.

Because yes, Circus had used the distraction to escape, racing back to the alleyway she'd first come from. Taylor still tracked her with her bugs and bloodsight, and so she saw the moment when Circus threw open the passenger door of the idling car and jumped in, just as the driver stepped on it and peeled away. She made a mental note that Circus clearly had access to some kind of help, and she was also more than a little skeptical that this break in, so close to the patrolling Wards, was in any way a coincidence. There would be time to examine that later. And yes, Taylor could have chased her down, but at the end of the day Circus hadn't seriously hurt anyone, and so she didn't deserve to have the full might of the Butcher on her tail. She'd played by the rules, so Bumble would do the same.

The Butcher does what he wants— Butcher said, right before Taylor took his advice and muted him, to the laughter of several members of the chorus.

Taylor turned back to Kid Win. "You alright?" she asked, even as she used Mason's power to smooth the impromptu asphalt wall back into the street. She felt Mason perk up a little, intrigued at Taylor's attempts to get the asphalt to lay exactly how it used to. The other cape had rarely been concerned with repairing things both before and during her tenure as the Butcher, and found Taylor's focus on it to be 'naive and childish, albeit rather interesting'.

"I'm fine," Kid Win said, staring at her in confusion. "You, uh, didn't need to do that."

She gave him a sheepish shrug. "Sorry about that! I just kinda… panicked, you know? Didn't mean to go crashing into you."

He gave her an incredulous look, then his eyes glanced over to Aegis in a 'are you seeing this shit?' gesture. Aegis just gave a slow nod.

"So, uh, do we help with the clean-up, now?" Taylor asked, tilting her head to the side.

"Oh, no," Aegis replied. "That's usually taken care of by the PRT."

Taylor frowned, just a little. "That doesn't seem really fair, though. And Miss Protector always told me to clean up after myself." She walked over to the broken glass window and reached out with Mason's power, using her insects and Mimic's sense of what he could empower to find all the glass shards. Then she flexed Mason's control and the glass shards turned almost liquid, although it stayed room temperature, and they all began to flow backwards toward the shop window. She kept concentrating on the glass, reaching out and touching it once enough had formed in the window to increase her control, and gradually began to shape it into a smooth, transparent window pane. The power had grown weaker since Mason died, so the glass still had obvious cracks where it had broken the first time, but that was just cosmetic. She pretended not to notice that the jeweler in the back had come out in time to watch her work, just as she pretended that it hadn't been her moth which had brought him out, and just as she pretended that she didn't know he was recording everything on his phone.

When it was about as good as she could get it, Taylor stepped back and wiped her brow. "Whew! That always wipes me out." She looked up then, as if just noticing the man. "Oh! Hello sir, I'm Wumble from the Bards! No, wait, that's definitely not right." Her brow furrowed in concentration. "Right! I'm Bumble, from the Wards! Um, I tried to fix your window, but I don't think I got it exactly right. Um, I think your jewels and gold and stuff are still in that bag over there."

The man surreptitiously hid his phone, although he didn't stop recording. "It's no problem, Miss Bumble," he said. "Thank you for trying, and for driving off that thief."

"Just doing my duty!" she said, with a goofy gesture that could charitably be called a salute, and then she teleported outside, appearing a foot too high in the air and stumbling into Aegis, who caught her on reflex and promptly let her go like she was a burning poker. The Butchers in her head grumbled and laughed, and Taylor just did her best to resist feeling hurt by his action. This was all part of the plan, after all.

"Circus was successfully repelled, but she escaped capture," Aegis reported back to Clockblocker.

"Copy that," came the reply. "Orders from above came in, we're cutting the patrol short. Bumble, the director said she wants to speak to you about something."

"Okie-dokie!" Taylor replied, a small but genuine smile crossing her face. Let's see what Director Piggot wants from me.

Chapter Text

Emily Piggot stared at Gallant in horror. He'd just finished reporting on Hebert's first day at Arcadia, and he'd brought some unpleasant news with him. "What the hell do you mean, Shadow Stalker caused her trigger?"

After the Circus fight, Taylor had just had her first brush with the way that bureaucracy handled cape fights. In her case, it had meant filling out five different forms as part of an after action report, although at least Aegis had been kind enough to guide her through the process. Several of the Butchers had complained about the tedious work, and it had been a bit distracting trying to split her focus between shoving them into her swarm and filling out the paperwork on a provided laptop, but surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly, really, given that the woman had been a Ward herself at one point) Cordyceps had been rather helpful when it came to writing the actual report. It had only taken her an hour to work through the papers, and she was pretty sure that with experience she could get it down to half of that.

Taylor was just waiting for the director to get out of a meeting, so she was kind of just killing time. She had amused herself for a while by practicing playing catch with herself across the common room, tossing one of the couch pillows back and forth across the room. Eventually, she wanted to be able to play ping-pong against herself, but her control over her teleport was still too shaky for that. It was good practice, though, trying to minimize the time between each teleport and getting better at shaking off the disorientation of suddenly being in a different place, with all the disorientation that created between her traditional and parahuman senses. Clockblocker, out of his costume and wearing a domino mask and a baseball cap to hide his identity, had less paperwork to fill out, just being on console, but he had still positioned himself as far away from her as he could get, shoulders hunched as he worked on a homework assignment. Aegis didn't pay her much attention, at least not outwardly, although there was a degree of tension in his body that belied his seeming nonchalance. Kid Win, for his part, didn't even pretend after a while, pushing his paperwork aside and focusing on her.

"What are you doing?" he asked, eventually.

She paused, taking a moment to catch her breath. It wasn't actually physically tiring, but there was a certain mental exhaustion that she felt strongly. "Practicing," she replied.

What the fuck does it look like she's doing? Sepsis snarked. Underwater basket weaving?

I did that once, Frenzy said. It was actually really fun.

Taylor blinked, as she and the rest of the collective 'remembered' the experience of Frenzy taking a class with his boyfriend back in college, where he'd gone out snorkeling in the Pacific ocean and learned how to turn strands of bamboo into a woven basket.

What the fuck, Frenzy, Absinthe said, which felt like a fair response to Taylor.

Kid Win gave her a curious look. "Practicing what, exactly?"

"A few things," Taylor replied. "Mainly my teleport, but also my situational awareness and using Quarrel's power without making it too obvious."

His brow furrowed. "Quarrel?"

"Oh, uh. Butcher XIV. Her power let her basically hit whatever she was aiming for. It's how she took out XIII, sending an arrow right through Wendigo's eye." Taylor demonstrated the power, picking up the pillow and tossing it casually into the air, before Quarrel's power took over, warping space strangely in a manner almost reminiscent of Vista's own power before it landed neatly on the sofa, looking just as it had before she'd grabbed it. "It's a bit too distinct for me to use that kind of drastic correction, especially since she was the most recent Butcher and the most likely for people to recognize the power. Kind of a shame, her power's one of the most interesting ones."

Piss off, it's not my fault you decided to be a pussy and join the weenie hut junior hero club, Quarrel snapped. Taylor didn't even bother to push the woman into the swarm, because that was honestly fair.

Kid Win gave her a long, considering look. "Huh," he said eventually.

"Huh?" she asked.

"It's just… sometimes I feel like I see you goofing off like that, or tripping and stuff during the fight today, and it's easy to forget you're probably the most deadly cape I'll ever meet. Then you say stuff like that and it just hits me." He shrugged, although he didn't look as scared right now. Aegis, for his part, had tensed up even more, although he was still studiously pretending not to notice what was happening.

"You're telling me," she said, shaking her head ruefully. "Like, I'm actually on pretty good terms with Wendigo, they're pretty chill most of the time when they're not winding someone up, and then I'll remember that they also regularly ate the bodies of the capes they killed to use their powers. And I can remember them doing it, and what human flesh tastes like."

Hey! I resemble that comment! Wendigo said.

Say what you will about the rest of us, but at least we weren't fucking cannibals, Novocain muttered under his breath.

Oh yeah, you just liked to torture people to death slowly while amplifying their perception of pain, Wendigo snarked back. I don't even get why the cannibal thing is worse than murder. They were already dead, I was just like, using the whole animal.

Please, not the 'cannibalism is actually the more moral option' debate again, Frenzy said, sounding tired already.

"That's like… super fucked up," Kid Win said, looking a little nauseous behind his mask.

"Yeah it is," she said.

He bit his lip. "What… what does it taste like?" he asked, in almost morbid curiosity.

"What the fuck dude," Clockblocker said from the other side of the room.

Taylor couldn't help the little giggle that escaped her. "Uh, it's kind of gamey, especially the muscles. Somewhere between pork and veal, I guess, kind of sweet and a bit bitter. Wendigo mostly ate it raw, though."

"That's so nasty," Kid Win said, staring at her with wide eyes.

"I know, right?" Taylor replied, shivering a little. "And honestly, Wendigo's one of the better Butchers, at least when it comes to wanton murder and stuff."

Hey! I was great at wanton murder! Sepsis said, with an imagined pout.

That's Taylor's point, dumb dumb, Absinthe said dryly.

Fuck you! Sepsis snapped back, and the two of them were gently pushed down as they started to squabble again.

"What the fuck," Clockblocker whispered, his face a stark white under his mask. Her bloodsight let her actually see his veins engaging in vasoconstriction and redirecting blood away from the skin and toward his organs as his body flooded with adrenaline. Actually, that reminded her that she should probably bring up the awkward situation her bloodsight had put her in.

"Exactly," she said, nodding at him. He flinched back, with a little whimper. "Also, um, is this a bad time to mention that I know all of your identities?"

Aegis froze, then turned to look at her. "What do you mean?" he said, his voice sharp.

"I've got bloodsight from Devein, the second Butcher. It's not exactly sight, cause it doesn't interfere with my vision, but that's the closest term for it. Point is, people's cardiovascular systems are pretty recognizable, especially because I can see when someone has an active Corona Pollentia. I, uh, don't know how much you know about parahuman neurology, but the Pollentia is uniquely adapted for each power and person, although certain power classifications have shared common features. Kind of like a fingerprint, I guess, so if I see your brain in here and then I see you again at school, it just kinda clicks."

There was a long silence after that, as the other Wards seemed to be processing what that meant, one that Aegis finally broke. "We already know each other's civilian identities, so you can tell us what you know."

That was fair, she guessed—extraordinary claims and all that. "Well, Kid Win is Chris Johnson, because he's in my US government class, and tinkers have really clear connections between their corona and their frontal lobes. Dennis is in Calc BC with me, and his corona's hooked into the cerebellum which is pretty usual for strikers. I don't have any classes with you, Carlos, but I've seen you talk with Dean a few times. Actually, I didn't even need to see your brain to figure that one out, because your cardiovascular structure is completely different than a baseline human."

"Huh," Aegis said, a concerned expression on his face.

"Should I be concerned that you're talking about the shape of my brain right after you were talking about cannibalism?" Clockblocker joked, although in a shaky voice.

Taylor probably should have been a little insulted, but it was clear that he was just trying to use humor to cope with a stressful situation, so she just laughed a little instead. "Oh, you don't have to worry about that. Brain is way too waxy and creamy for me."

Boo, Wendigo complained. Brain's delicious, like pâté or roe!

And I also don't like either of those, Taylor replied, dryly.

Dennis stared at her. "I really don't think that's as reassuring as you think it is," he said.

She blinked a few times. "I mean, also because you're my teammate and you kind of need your brain, but I thought that went without saying."

"Honestly, sometimes I've had some doubts about whether he's got one at all," Chris muttered.

"Hey!" Dennis shot back.

The conversation was interrupted then by the mask alarm for the Wards common room, which suddenly blared a warning. After thirty seconds, in which everyone straightened their masks and Taylor used her bloodsight to figure out exactly who was approaching through the door. A corona but it wasn't activated, and she could tell from the way the blood flowed around the man's left thigh that he'd suffered an old injury there.

When the door opened, she wasn't surprised to see a familiar PRT trooper standing there. "Bumble," he said, not unkindly. "The director can see you now."

Once more, Taylor followed Gabe Hernandez to the director's office. Of course, Taylor could have walked their blindfolded, quite literally, since that would do nothing to impede her bugs or her bloodsight. That also meant she could have just teleported to the woman's office, but she had the sneaking suspicion that such behavior would be frowned upon by the stern woman. "Good luck," Gabe told her, as they reached the unassuming office door.

"Thanks, Gabe," she said, with a small smile that he returned. Then she knocked once, waited for the 'enter', and went inside.

"Bumble," Director Piggot said, as Taylor entered the woman's office. "Or do you prefer Ms. Hebert in private?"

"Bumble as long as I'm in costume, ma'am," Taylor replied. She felt a little like that had been a test, but she didn't know if she'd passed or not. The woman was hard to read, sharp and acerbic, and yet she clearly cared deeply about the city and the people under her care, and Taylor couldn't help but respect that. She had the appearance and attitude of a woman who tried to take care of a body that was actively betraying her, which from what her bugs had picked up about her medical treatments probably wasn't that far off. Some of the Butchers had tried to make a few disparaging comments, but they'd been punted deep into the swarm, because frankly Taylor had put up with enough insults to her own appearance that she wasn't about to deal with that shit. Besides, Emily Piggot may have been overweight and out of shape compared to the average trooper, but it was clear that was only due to factors entirely outside of the woman's control.

"Understood." The director took a deep breath, as if bracing herself for the conversation. "There are a few things we need to discuss, and I thought it would be best if we took care of all of them at once. Let's start with the Circus incident on your patrol today."

"Yes, ma'am," Taylor replied. "Was there a problem with my after action report?"

The director waved her hand. "No, not really. It was surprisingly well written, for a Ward."

It damn well should be, Cordyceps grumbled. I didn't spend two years forced to learn that shit for it to be anything less than perfect.

"I've got some more experience than the average Ward," Taylor said, half joking.

To her surprise, Piggot let out a quiet snort of amusement. "I suppose you do, at that. In any event, that's not what I wanted to discuss. I was curious why you let Circus go."

"She escaped, ma'am," Taylor replied, trying not to bristle at the accusation.

"Don't play dumb with me, Bumble," Director Piggot snapped, that sharp edge coming into focus. "We both know that you have enough power and skill to have stopped her if you'd wanted to."

Hell, just the pain blast or one of Basilisk's poisons alone could have done it, Absinthe said casually.

Honestly, Taylor could probably have soloed with just her bugs if she went all out, Wendigo replied.

At that, Taylor leaned back in the chair and sighed. "I could have, yes."

"Then please explain why you didn't." The woman paused, as if debating whether to include the next part. "You're not in trouble—The Youth Guard would eviscerate me if I tried to punish a Ward just for failing to capture a supervillain. I'm just curious."

Taylor laced her fingers together, a habit she'd picked up from Howitzer, and marshalled her thoughts. "I suppose the best way to frame it would be to talk about what my objectives were, during the fight." The director inclined her head.

Honestly, having any priority other than 'putting your enemy six feet under' is just asking for trouble down the line, Howitzer cut in, with her usual blunt manner.

Jesus H. Rollerblading Christ, we are not having this debate again, Hazard said, the only one who had still been a hero at the time of inheriting. Heroes can't go running around murdering people all the time.

Several other Butchers tried to respond to that all at the same time, and Taylor did her best to tune out the squabbling argument that line of discussion descended into, focusing on her own conversation with Piggot. "So, I had five priorities that I was keeping in mind during the fight, in descending order of importance." She held up a closed fist, then began to raise her fingers to count off each one. "My first priority was to ensure that no serious harm came to civilians or the other Wards. My second priority was to minimize property loss and property damage. Third was to maintain my persona and not use the more dangerous, permanent, or lethal aspects of my power. Fourth, to prevent Circus from engaging in further criminal activity. Fifth, to physically restrain or otherwise capture her."

Piggot seemed to mull this over. "How did you come up with that list?" she asked. "I'm interested that you put the villain's safety above stopping their criminal activities."

"A mix of Mouse Protector's lessons, the Wards handbook, my inherited memories, and the current situation," Taylor replied. "If I'd been fighting someone with a record of lethal violence, or a villain attempting murder or assault, I might have behaved differently. As it is, Circus goes out of her way to not cause serious injury, so I returned the favor."

"She hit Aegis with a hammer hard enough to throw him forty feet away, breaking half his ribs in the process," came the director's deadpan voice. "And she shot a wall of fire at three Wards."

"Aegis is a known brute with regenerative abilities," Taylor replied. "And the fire was more flash than substance, almost certainly well below what she's capable of. Circus has almost never caused permanent damage to civilians, despite being more than capable of it."

Slowly, the director nodded. "So your claim is that you failed to capture Circus because it would have violated the more important priorities."

And because Taylor's a weak bitch— and there went Quarrel, into the dark.

"Exactly," Taylor replied. "Specifically, Circus has relatively powerful pyrokinesis. If I made a serious effort to capture her, she might well have felt like she had to use it, which would have set the store on fire and caused more property damage as well as risking the lives of any civilians in the nearby buildings. Given that I had already recovered the stolen goods that she hadn't already stored in her pocket dimension, I didn't deem that worth the risk."

Piggot let out a long, slow breath. "Well, I suppose I really can't fault you for that," she said, voice quiet. "Obviously, I'd prefer to have Circus in custody, but not to the point of risking people's lives or livelihoods, not without a track record far worse than she's got. And you did a good job of staying in character, so Image should be happy with you."

Taylor furrowed her brow. "Wait, how do they know that?"

"There was a security camera and video of the fight has already leaked, apparently," the director replied. "Which probably means that the owner of the store posted it online, but that's not exactly illegal."

Oh hell yeah, I love it when they catch us on camera, Cordyceps said, sounding more than a little excited. Remember when someone got that footage of our fight against Bastion in '09 and they edited it to have some hardcore death metal blasting in the background? Shit was great.

Yeah, but for Taylor they're more likely to edit in 'Yackety Sax' than 'Maze of Torment,' Absinthe said.

"Huh," Taylor said, feeling more than a little annoyed with herself for not noticing the camera. Still, it only served to prove what Mouse Protector had told her before: 'You need to stay in character, even when you're just with teammates or there's nobody around. Always act like someone is watching, especially when you think you're alone.' Taylor's reply then, that she really did always have fourteen people watching at least, had gotten her a playful swat upside the head. "You mentioned there were several things you wanted to talk to me about," she prompted.

The director nodded, her face setting into an even more displeased expression. "Shadow Stalker," she said.

"Sophia Hess," Taylor confirmed, nodding. "Gallant told you, huh?"

The director fixed her with a piercing look. "It's a concerning claim, and I can't help but wonder why you didn't bring it up directly."

"Would you have believed me?" Before Director Piggot could defend herself, Taylor carried on. "If the Butcher showed up, told you that one of the Wards caused her trigger event, and then asked to join? How do you think that would have gone down?"

"I take your point, Bumble," Piggot said. "Although in the future, I hope you can address your concerns through proper channels."

God what a fuckin' stiff, the original Butcher griped. This kind of shit is why I started the teeth in the first place.

"I thought it would be better optics if I wasn't the one to directly launch the investigation," Taylor replied, with a shrug. "An independent investigation into potential misconduct by a probationary Ward is a very different thing than an investigation opened up by complaints from a new Ward with questionable sanity against the only Black person in the local Protectorate."

"That's a rather cynical way to think about things," Piggot said, her voice unreadable.

"I'd like to think I have enough experience to justify being a little cynical," Taylor said, in an extremely dry tone.

The director gave her a brief nod of acknowledgement, then leaned forward a little in her chair, interlacing her fingers on her desk. "I'll be blunt, then. What do you want to happen to Shadow Stalker?"

Damn, she's really just going for it, Sepsis said.

She's a bitch for sure, but she's got a spine of iron, Howitzer said. I recognize her type, the stubborn motherfucker. You could hit her with a pain blast at full power and she'd bite her tongue off before giving you the satisfaction of a scream.

"I didn't think that would be up to me," Taylor said, raising one eyebrow and trying not to think of the memories that Howitzer's comment had conjured up.

"It isn't. That being said, we both know that if you'd wanted Stalker dead or hurt you could have done it at any time. Plenty of capes would do that to the people responsible for their trigger events, and that's before they inherited a legacy of murder."

Taylor adjusted herself in the seat. "What Sophia did to me was fucked up, but I've got memories of doing things so much worse in my head. It puts things in perspective, I guess. To answer your question, Director, I want Sophia to get help."

"That's a shockingly mature attitude," Piggot responded, with a tone of voice that said she did not believe Taylor's claim at all.

It's a weak ass attitude is what it is, Howitzer grumbled. You could have just killed those bitches and been done with all this bullshit.

Oh yes, I'm sure the PRT would just love it if the new Butcher killed their precious Ward, Hazard said, sarcasm heavy in his voice. I'm sure that would have caused no issues at all down the line.

I mean, we're more than capable of making it look like an accident, especially with Taylor's own abilities, Basilisk mused. I know that's not our usual style, but a bit of poison delivered by a flying insect and boom, problem solved.

Taylor shoved away the voices advocating for murdering her bullies, which was the majority of the collective, with a harder shove than she'd normally use—she wanted to be sure that she was truly herself for this conversation, without the bleed through from the murderers in her head. It had been one of the larger points of contention between her and the Butchers, right along with going back to the Teeth and her choice to join the Wards. Most of them had violently killed those responsible for their triggers, if possible, and the collective held what was very much a 'dismembered corpse for an eye' attitude toward revenge. The worst part, truly, was just how appealing that mindset truly was, because she'd seen what could happen if you left an enemy alive—several of the other Butchers had learned that abject lesson at the hands of their successor. But she needed to be more than the Butcher, and that meant mercy even—or especially—when it was personally difficult.

Taylor gathered her thoughts, made harder by having to split her focus to keep most of the voices quiet, and then quietly said, "Sophia Hess is a sadistic bully who delights in others' suffering, but she's not a monster. Not quite yet. She'd be a prime candidate for the Teeth, and I can see how easy it would be to make her into someone truly unforgivable, but I've also seen her track record as a vigilante and a Ward. She's been a genuine force of good for the city and for the victims of violent crime—at least when she can get past her stupid 'survivors and prey' philosophy." Taylor had worked herself up into a proper speech, now. "What she needs, what she's needed for years, is proper support and counseling to deal with her trigger trauma and an environment where she actually faces real consequences for her actions. That isn't Winslow, and that isn't Brockton Bay."

"It occurs to me that juvenile detention might serve those goals," Piggot commented. That prompted a flood of memories from the collective, ranging from relatively clean facilities that were only a bit stricter than a boarding school, to filthy hallways and dingy cells where fights broke out several times a day and only the strongest made it out unharmed, if only physically. She flinched, just a little, and did her best to hide her reaction.

Taylor shrugged. "It might, or it might reinforce her beliefs. Depends on the center, I guess. I will say that five of the Butchers spent some time in juvie when they were growing up, and three of them ended up joining the Teeth as soon as they got out because of it. Make of that what you will."

"What would you suggest, then?" Piggot's tone was soft and dangerous.

"Transfer her to another department, away from a gang that would kill her just for the color of her skin. I've heard that containment for Madison or Ellisburg is a popular punishment detail," Taylor replied, holding the woman's gaze. "Either way, though, get her a dedicated therapist—and not that stupid therapist rotation nonsense, someone that can actually connect with her. Put her in an environment where she feels like she can make a difference, but that actually holds her accountable for her words and actions. Remove her from the influences that have been enabling the worst of her behavior." Unspoken, but clearly something both of them knew, was that Brockton Bay desperately needed every heroic cape they could get, and trading Hess to another department might get them a replacement Ward or Protectorate member.

"That feels like a lot of accommodation for someone in clear violation of her probation," the Director said. "If she didn't have powers, she would have been in juvie already. I'm not convinced I should be giving her special treatment just for being a cape."

"In fairness, it's the same as what I want for the other two girls who led my bullying as well," Taylor said, and then she sighed and leaned back in her chair. "On one hand, I do want to see them punished. There's a part of me—and it's not a small part, Director—that wants to drop Hess down the darkest pit I can find and lock her away forever. There's another fourteen parts of me that are uncomfortably familiar with murder and make it sound really appealing, despite my best efforts. On the other hand, Hess' actions were enabled by a systemic failure of her home life, the school system, and the PRT's oversight, and just throwing her away and tossing out the key is uncomfortably close to absolving those mistakes for my liking. And, as a final point: Sophia isn't a true monster, not yet, and I'd hate to see her become one—especially when we both know what at true monster in capable of."

The Director went rigid. It was a low blow, perhaps, but Taylor's insects had picked up references to Ellisburg before and she'd gone digging. None of the former Butchers had been part of the initial raid, since few enough were heroes, but Director Piggot had some small amount of notoriety as one of only two unpowered people that survived that fiasco, and reading even the heavily redacted file on the incident that she had access to as a Ward was a harrowing experience. Still, Taylor had said what she needed to say, and she relaxed her hold on the voices.

Just like I've always said, Howitzer was saying. Woman's got a spine of steel.

How can you tell, when it's hidden under so many layers of lar— Devein said, and then got slammed into the swarm with extreme prejudice.

Serves him right, the asshole, Basilisk commented.

That's a little hypocritical, coming from the guy who melted someone's face off with tinkertech super acid, Frenzy said, sounding unimpressed.

Oh, like you're any better? Basilisk bit back. You liked to rage-blast couples until they fought to the death and made bets on who would survive,

Boys, boys, you're both pretty, Wendigo cut in. Let's just accept that you're both assholes, and that Devein is somehow an even bigger asshole than anyone else.

Bold words from the face eater, Novocain said, although there was a teasing note in his voice.

The argument carried on from there, but Taylor tuned it out as Piggot started to speak again. "You've made your point, Bumble. I'll take your advice under consideration. Now get the fuck out of my office."

"Ma'am," Taylor said, standing and giving the woman with a polite nod. Some of the Butchers were clamoring at the woman's language, but Taylor didn't mind it that much—it didn't feel like an insult, as much as a more honest reflection of herself than the Director would normally show to a Ward. She walked out of the room even as Director Piggot was picking up the phone and starting to make a call.

Gabe was waiting there, casually leaning against the wall. "Hey, Bumble. Things go alright?"

"I'm not sure," she replied, honestly. "Better than they could have gone, that's for sure."

He gave a quiet chuckle. "That's all you can really hope for, in the end."

She gave him a weary smile, the kind that she wouldn't ever let herself show in public when she had to keep up her Bumble persona. "I guess it is, yeah." She liked Gabe, she thought to herself (and the fourteen eavesdroppers who she couldn't really avoid). Gabe was good people. It was so easy for parahumans to fall into playing the grand game of capes and forget that unpowered people mattered just as much. That was a trap that plenty of the Butchers had fallen into, before and after their inheritance, and Taylor wanted to make damn sure she didn't let herself go down that road as well. "So, how's it going with Paula? Got anything special planned for Valentine's day?"

Gabe gave her a wry grin. "I've got a few ideas," he said, as he started to lead her back down to the Wards' quarters. "There's this fancy Italian place that recently opened near Lord's Market that she's been wanting to go to for a while, but it's been booked out for six months straight. Thing is, I may or may not know one of the chefs, and they may or may not owe me a bit of a favor, y'know?"

Taylor nodded, her smile more genuine this time. It was good to remember what the heroes were trying to protect, after all.

Chapter Text

Kamil Armstrong had been having something of a difficult past month, although that wasn't exactly unusual. The Butcher's death, and the lack of a new Butcher returning to the Teeth afterwards, had resulted in an unpleasant power vacuum, the fallout of which had consumed most of the Protectorate and PRT's resources for the past month. The good news was that they'd avoided a second round of the Boston Games and the Teeth were, effectively, defanged and defunct. They still had a minor presence, but without their immortal boogieman many of their capes had either been killed or fled the gang and, often, the city itself.

Accord had been quick to seize more power over the criminal elements in the city, although he was far from the only one to do so. A group called the Travelers had used the chaos to set up shop somewhere around Castle Island, Blasto and Poison Apple had been seen outside their normal radius and apparently picked up a third member named Dryad with some kind of plant manipulation powers, and several minor villains from nearby had tried to set up shop, although none of them were successful.

The latter number included both Damsel of Distress, who had come back for a second go at starting a gang, as well as a villain from New Jersey who went by Ravager. Fortunately, those two problems seemed to have solved each other, since the two of them had clashed several times before they both stopped showing up at all—he suspected that they'd ended up killing each other, given how lethal both of their powers were, but all he cared about right now was that they weren't making trouble in his city.

Things had only just started to settle down, but he'd finally felt like things were in control enough to dial Protectorate and PRT patrols back to normal operating hours, rather than the overtime they'd all been pulling trying to keep the powderkeg from going off. Which, of course, was just when Kamil's secretary told him that he and Bastion, the leader of the Boston Protectorate, had a video call scheduled in the afternoon with Armsmaster and Director Piggot from Brockton Bay, as well as Legend and Director Wilkins from New York. That wasn't particularly unusual, on the surface—between Boston, New York, and Brockton Bay, that represented the leaders of the PRT and the Protectorate for the three largest districts on the northern East coast, and they were geographically close enough for issues in one district to easily cross over to another.

What was less usual was for Director Piggot to call the meeting, since the woman was usually too busy dealing with problems at home for her to spend much time concerned with the other districts. Privately, Kamil found himself agreeing with many of her gripes, but like so many things, it was outside his ability to actually redress those issues.

Bastion was already in the conference room when Kamil arrived. He was standing rigidly, a tall and broad man, and the plated armor shaped to imitate a stone wall bulking out his form even further. The cape gave Kamil a tense nod as he came in. "What do you think Brockton wants now?"

"Probably the same thing they always want," Kamil replied, sighing as he slipped into the chair at the head of the table. "More people, more heroes, and fewer problems."

"Don't we all," Bastion grumbled. The man was a competent leader, but there was a persistent rage to him that Kamil worried would get him in trouble one day. He'd done what he could to temper it, but at the end of the day he only had so much power over the actual members of the Protectorate. "I don't know how she expects to take without giving anything back."

Kamil winced. "I don't think she has much to give back," he said. "Have you ever compared villain and hero numbers between our cities? Brockton has around the same number of villains to deal with as we do, but because PRT and Protectorate resources tend to be allocated per capita we end up with almost twice the number of heroes and three times the PRT staff than Brockton Bay."

Bastion frowned. "It can't be that bad, can it? I mean, they've got that independent hero group too, right? Neo Wave or something like that?"

The director shook his head. "New Wave, and that's complicated. From what I understand, they barely patrol, since they all have their own jobs and lives. Helpful in emergencies, but not much outside of that."

"Damn," Bastion said, furrowing his eyes. "If it's that bad, how the hell has that place not already gone HOSV yet?"

Kamil took a deep sip of his coffee, closing his eyes to savor the flavor. One of the perks of making director was that he could send somebody to get him real coffee, not just the burnt stuff from the canteen. "Three reasons, from what I can tell. First, Armsmaster is a terrifyingly efficient and versatile cape, which lets him act with the effectiveness as three or four capes on his own. Second, for all that New Wave isn't as directly active, the presence of Panacea means that injuries which would be crippling for other departments can often be walked off. Third, Piggot is stubborn enough to draw water from a stone, and for all that she hates it she's quite good at playing the game of capes."

"That sounds unsustainable," Bastion said, after a moment. He sounded more subdued than Kamil had often heard the man.

"It is," he replied. "Any peace that's so reliant on three overworked people is tenuous at best. And Emily knows it too, which is why she's been so desperate for help for years. And I'm sure that with Panacea off on her good will tour for the past couple of weeks, she's been feeling the pressure even more than usual."

"Are we going to help them, then?" the cape asked, crossing his arms.

Kamil gave him a thin smile. "I'll do what I can. My hands are tied on many resources, and we both know that Boston is still in a fairly precarious state. Still, things have been settling down recently, so maybe we'll have some more leeway."

There was a beeping sound, a click as the door locked and a small bronze ball covered in strange markings in the center of the table whirred to life. It looked like it belonged on the set of a fantasy movie, but it was just an anti-eavesdropping device made by a Tinker in Philadelphia who had leaned into the 'magical artificer' theme. A few moments later, the opposite wall of the room was covered by a crisp projection of a screen, projecting the figures of Legend and Director Wilkins across one half of the screen. Wilkins was a small woman in stature, although people underestimated her at their own peril. She was a little rigid in her worldview, in his opinion, but she was extremely competent and effective, and reportedly well enough liked in her own department. Legend was Legend, of course, the same face that adorned thousands of advertisements and lunch boxes and posters, but he always looked a little more human in these meetings.

Kamil had barely finished greeting his New York counterpart when Piggot appeared on the other half of the screen, Armsmaster standing rigidly in his power armor to her side. "Good, everyone's on." The next couple minutes were spent in obligatory pleasantries and procedures, but he could see that it was taking a toll on Piggot. Eventually, it got around to Piggot herself.

"I've been better, but that has to do with why I called this meeting. I've got good news, complicated news, and very bad news. What do you want to hear first?"

"Is anything urgent?" Legend asked, at once.

The ENE Director made a pained expression, but she shook her head. "Not exactly, no."

"Let's hear the good news first, then," he said, with a faint smile.

The woman scoffed. "Sure. Alright, good news is we've got a new Ward, Bumble."

Legend nodded—he'd always been good about keeping track of that kind of thing. "She's going the humor route, correct? I remember a memo about contracting Mouse Protector for her training."

"She is, yeah." A few taps and Piggot pulled up a picture of a young woman in a cute and dorky bee inspired outfit. "So the good news is, she's got the potential to solve quite a few problems for us."

At that, Legend's brow furrowed. "Director Piggot, I feel I need to stress that the purpose of the Wards program is not to resolve issues that should be taken care of by either adult heroes or the PRT."

Emily just shook her head. "That's not what I'm saying, but just let me get through the rest of this and it'll make sense."

"Go on, Emily," Kamil said, crossing his arms. She shot him a glare, but he could see the barest hint of a smirk on her face. It was rare for her to show it, but he knew that she could be a bit of a drama queen when the mood struck—usually when it paired with some schadenfreude against someone that had routinely denied her more support. He'd done his best to stay out of that category, but it wasn't always avoidable.

"So, complicated news. Armstrong, I understand you've been pulling your hair out over there looking for the new Butcher, so I'm glad to inform you that I've found her."

Kamil froze, staring at the screen. Yes, he'd been desperately searching for the Butcher, as his several rather hefty bills from WEDGD could attest. It had seemed far too good for the monster to just disappear, and given that it wasn't uncommon for the new Butcher to try and make a mark with a particularly large and abhorrent act of senseless violence, he'd been quite concerned about what XV's debut would entail. After the Teeth had started to disband, he'd only grown more concerned—how much more violent would the new Butcher be, if they also had to restore their gang and the seat of their power?

After he got his voice back, panicked questions just poured out: "Are they in Brockton? How many are dead? How did you discover them?"

Emily's smile this time held no humor. "Well, that's the funny thing. She just walked in, told us, and said she wanted to join the Wards."

Armstrong blanched, looking back at the picture on the screen. "No…" he said, too quiet for the mic to even pick it up. Bastion, standing next to him, looked confused as he looked between Armstrong and the screen, and then he froze as he made the connection as well.

"This isn't the place for jokes, Director Piggot," Director Wilkins said, heat in her voice.

"And I'm not a woman who often makes them," Emily shot back, somewhat snidely. "Apparently, that's more Butcher XV's expertise."

"To be clear," Legend said, the authority in his voice cutting over everything else. "Director Piggot, you're claiming that the identity of Butcher XV is your new Ward, Bumble."

"That is correct," the woman said, with a solemn nod.

Somewhat predictably, Director Wilkins did not take that particularly well. "What the hell kind of madhouse are you running down there? If you have the Butcher in hand, why haven't you just birdcaged them already?"

"Three reasons," Piggot said, and her voice was steel. "First, as you ought to know, sending the Butcher to the Birdcage is an atrocious idea. Second, because Butcher XV has not, to my knowledge, committed any crimes, despite having motive and method to do so. And third, because I do not wish to make an enemy of a teenager who is likely the fourth most powerful cape in the country."

"How could she become the Butcher if she didn't commit murder?" Wilkins said, clearly latching onto the one piece of that she could actually try to debunk.

"She made a rather compelling case for self-defense," Piggot said, her tone rather dry. "It's hard to argue that fighting back against a parahuman deliberately set on murdering you and your father can be anything else."

Legend's gaze was considering. "You believe she's sane, then," he said.

"As much as any person with that kind of power can be," Director Piggot said. If Legend picked up on the implied slight, he didn't respond to it.

"And you really think she's that strong?" he asked, which—yeah, that was fair.

Piggot shrugged. "It's hard to say, but she very well might be. Bumble has access to fifteen different powers, each of them strong enough in their own way to kill the previous Butcher gestalt. The only thing that kept the Butcher weak and, to some extent, manageable in the past was that their madness left them too inhibited to properly utilize their abilities. Bumble has no such issues. Power testing is still ongoing, but preliminary ratings give her at least a 5 or higher in nine categories—ten if you include a 'blaster' rating for how Quarrel's power synergizes with a minigun. She's only missing Stranger and Breaker to complete the set."

That shouldn't have been news to Kamil—he'd seen threat reports for the Butcher before, of course—but it had always been taken with a grain of salt, to some extent. Yes, the Butcher was dangerous and unpredictable, but they were also inherently stupid and inefficient by the nature of their madness. Without that? Yeah, he could see how they would start to edge up into Triumvirate territory.

Then something upsetting occurred to Kamil. "That's not the bad news, is it? That's just the complicated news."

And at that, Piggot's expression turned fully into a grimace. "Yeah, it is. The bad news is that our newest probationary Ward caused Bumble's trigger."

The call exploded into noise as everyone besides Piggot and Armsmaster all began speaking at once.

Angela stepped out of her beater of a car, slamming the door shut behind her because it wouldn't lock otherwise. It was a clunker, with enough accumulated mechanical issues that fixing them all would cost several times more than the car itself was worth, but she'd gotten it for a steal when her cousin had gone off to college out of state, and it more or less ran, so that was all that mattered.

The Boardwalk always inspired an interesting mix of emotions. On one hand, it was also one of the safest places in the Bay, so long as you looked enough like a paying customer, due to the private security force known as the Enforcers and the relative proximity of the Protectorate Headquarters. Living in Brockton Bay, there was something of a constant tension that she could never quite escape, the creeping worry that at any time a fight between capes or the gangs might break out, but on the Boardwalk that feeling was… well, not exactly gone, but certainly lessened. On the flip side, that safety also came with a correspondingly high price tag on everything from clothing to sandwiches. It also catered primarily to tourists over people actually from the Bay, which made her want to dislike it on principle.

Still, even if she didn't exactly have the budget to shop here regularly—she wasn't Vicky, with her endless money dispenser of a boyfriend—it was still fun to walk around, maybe buy an overpriced espresso, and do a little window shopping. The bell gave a cheery chime as Angela entered The Daily Grind, one of several independent coffee shops that lined the Boardwalk's length. It had an interior designed to look a little like a rustic wood cabin, and soft indie folk was being pumped through the speakers. A cursory glance around the place saw no fewer than eight people in their late teens to mid twenties with laptops open in front of them. She also saw a tall girl with a wide mouth quirked up into a little smile looking at her, and Angela gave Taylor a little wave even as she was walking up to the counter to place an order.

Five dollars and eighty five cents poorer, and one salted caramel latte with a leaf pattern in the milk richer, Angela sat down across from Taylor. "Hey there," she said, smiling at the other girl. "Fancy seeing you at a place like this."

Taylor gave her a smile. "Oh yes, imagine running into you at the place we agreed to meet," she said in a dry voice. "Is Vicky with you?"

"No, but that's not surprising. She's chronically late, so she'll probably be here in fifteen or so. Anyway, how's your day been?" Angla took a sip of her latte. It was, unfortunately, absolutely delicious, which still didn't justify the price tag but made it harder to be upset about it.

"It's been alright," Taylor replied, shrugging. "I've got a half-shift at work on Saturdays, which was kind of interesting."

"Oh yeah, you mentioned that you're doing your vocay with a marketing team, right?" Angela asked, nodding along. "What company is that? I don't remember if you said, before."

Taylor gave her a wry grin. "I didn't. Don't go spreading this around, but I'm interning for the Public Relations division of the PRT."

She almost dropped her latte. "No way! Wait, is it like, a secret? Are you not supposed to be telling me?"

The other girl shook her head. "No, it's not a secret exactly. I mean, there are parts of the job that are covered by an NDA, but that's different. I just didn't want to add fuel to the rumors that I'm a Ward."

Angela rolled her eyes. "Oh, yeah. Don't worry about it, that happens whenever anyone transfers in. Never mind that not every Ward goes to Arcadia, or that transfers happen all the time for all kinds of reasons. Nobody really takes that kind of thing seriously. If you believe the rumors, then like an eighth of the school is Clockblocker, and every girl who's transferred in since last October is secretly Shadow Stalker, or Vista, or Bumble."

Taylor laughed, and it was deeper and richer than Angela had expected. Her heart skipped a little, and she thought about how nice it would be to hear that laugh again. "So which one would I be, then?" she said, teasingly.

"Hmm," Angela said, tapping her chin dramatically. "Well, I think you're a little too tall to be Vista," she started with.

"Ah, but what if I'm just shrinking space to look shorter?" Taylor said, raising an eyebrow.

"That's not how her power works," Angela said, with a laugh. "Plus, it's pretty well known that Vista hates looking like a kid. I mean, she doesn't say it in so many words, but there are enough 'Vista scowling when someone calls her cute' compilations on YouTube to make that pretty clear."

"It's the perfect disguise," Taylor said, nodding sagely.

"Oh my god," Angela said, laughing. "Okay, so not Vista. I don't think you really fit Bumble, no offense—I mean, you're funny, but it's all dry wit and sarcasm, not like… slapstick and stuff. Plus, you feel kind of… I dunno, too dangerous to be her?"

"Too dangerous?" Taylor asked, her brow furrowing.

She couldn't help the blush that formed on her cheeks. "Not in a bad way! But, like, I've known a few people who do martial arts. You've got that kind of energy. Intense, you know?"

"Oh, that makes sense," the other girl said, nodding. "Yeah, I do some MMA and kickboxing."

"That tracks," Angela said. "Anyway, I think that really just leaves Shadow Stalker left."

A strange smile flickered across Taylor's face. "I'll take that as a compliment." A small silence fell over them, not an uncomfortable one, just a natural lull in the conversation. Angela sipped on her latte, and once more was irrationally angry that it wasn't worse, because she really wanted to be pissed about how much it cost.

"What about me?" Angela said, after a moment.

Taylor looked at her, blinking a few times. She could be a bit spacey, but Angela had learned that was more because Taylor seemed to get distracted by the wandering of her own thoughts than anything else. That wasn't even a bad thing, since it often led to pretty interesting conversations. "Hmm?" Taylor asked.

"Which Ward would I be?"

Taylor smiled. "Oh, that's obvious. You're clearly Gallant, with a voice changer to protect your secret identity."

"Shut the fuck up," Angela said, but she was laughing. Her phone went off with a 'ding', and she pulled it out to read the text message. "It's from Vicky. Apologizing for running late, blah blah blah, wants to meet in 30 by that stained glass shop on the corner of Willow. God, you'd think being able to fly would make her more on time, not less. " she said, even as she was quickly typing a message back. "Apparently she's bringing Dean with her. That cool with you?"

There was a strange expression on Taylor's face, but it cleared up a moment later. "Oh, if Dean doesn't mind, then it's fine with me."

"If he's got a problem with it, then fuck him," Angela said. She'd noticed that Dean had some kind of issue with Taylor, although he was polite enough to not say anything. "He's the one tagging along, so he can suck it up and deal with it."

"Thanks, Angela," Taylor said, with a soft and strangely vulnerable smile. Angela felt her mouth go dry and she took a sip of coffee to cover for it. Taylor wasn't perhaps conventionally attractive, but she had a hell of a sleeper build, and sometimes she would move in just the right way and she would just be so… striking. That was the only word that she could really find for it. It was terrible for Angela's heart, but like a bee drawn to a flower, she couldn't quite bring herself to pull away.

They headed out of the coffee shop, walking side by side. Taylor had an easy gait that projected confidence, and Angela did her best to match it. She was acutely aware of Taylor's hand, swinging just a few inches away from her own, and how easy it would be to reach out and interlace their fingers. She didn't, of course, for a hundred different reasons, but the thought wouldn't leave her mind.

They took their time walking the length of the Boardwalk, doing some casual window shopping. Taylor had gotten excited at a candle shop called Scents and Sensibility, and she'd made Angela smell several different overpriced candles that all smelled vaguely floral. Honestly, Angela didn't think she herself really got much out of it, but it was cool to see Taylor talking about all the different nuances between the candles. They also had an obligatory stop at the small used bookstore, which toed the line between grungy and fashionably weathered, and Angela ended up getting a weathered scifi paperback called Babel-17 that was printed in the 60s, although it was one that Taylor apparently swore by.

There were a few street performers out and about, drawing small crowds around them. A woman with a saxophone was crooning a jazz rendition of a Bad Canary song, a man in a sparkly waistcoat was putting on some kind of contortion and juggling performance, and they even saw Parian, doing a puppet show for a crowd of young kids, parents, and interested tourists in front of Stitch & Thyme, a boutique clothing store that sold distressed jeans and shirts which each probably cost more than Angela's entire monthly paycheck. There was a sign next to her that said the store even had several outfits that had been assembled by Parian herself, with a promise for a custom power-aided fitting, and honestly Angela didn't even want to think about how much those would be going for, especially with how cape crazy some tourists could get.

She had to admit, it was pretty cool to see Parian's power in person. Sure, she'd gotten pretty used to seeing Vicky float around whenever she could get away with it, but seeing Parian take purple patterned fabric and telekinetically fold it into a life-size cat plushie in under a minute was something else entirely. It felt more real, somehow, if also more alien. The performance was pretty mesmerizing, too, for all that it was clearly aimed at a younger demographic. It took her a few minutes to figure out that Parian was acting out scenes from Alice in Wonderland, with herself acting as the titular Alice and the plushies standing in for all the other characters. It was strangely effective, especially since the fabric nature of her creations lent itself well to the Wonderland aesthetic. The Cheshire cat was particularly neat, since Parian accomplished the disappearing and reappearing aspect of the character by literally deconstructing and reconstructing the plush in front of their eyes.

About the time Parian got to the Mad Hatter's tea party (the Mad Hatter being represented by a floating hat and levitating suit jacket with nothing inside), Angela looked over at Taylor to make sure the other girl hadn't gotten bored. To her surprise, she saw that Taylor was watching Parian with an expression that seemed a little longing and a little pained. Her mouth was moving a little bit, as though she was whispering something under her breath, but no words came out.

Angela bumped her, gently. "You alright?" she asked, quietly.

Taylor blinked a few times as she came back to herself. "Oh, yeah," she said. "I just—it's really nice to see a parahuman power used for something like this. I feel like we often look at capes and just see heroes and villains and all this fighting. It's easy to forget how much potential powers have for truly unique expressions of art."

"Nerd," Angela said, affection ruining any effect her teasing might have had. "But, yeah. I get where you're coming from. This is really, really cool."

"It really is," Taylor said, nodding. "Actually, I might need to speak to my boss about this kind of thing. It would probably be a good look for the Wards."

"Oh shit, I can't believe I forgot where you were working," Angela said.

Taylor just winked and tapped her lips with one finger. "One sec," she said, pulling out a small 3-inch notebook from the back pocket of her jeans and dashing something down with a pen. Then she was slipping away through the crowd to the small hat box that Parian was apparently using for donations. Angela watched as she dropped a ten dollar bill into the box, along with a folded slip of paper she'd torn from the notebook. Parian had the mouse doll nod in thanks, although she didn't interrupt the performance.

"Alright, let's go and meet Vicky," Taylor said, rejoining her, and somewhat reluctantly they left Parian's show and walked toward the end of the Boardwalk. The conversation seemed to just flow easily between them, from a discussion on writing implements used during the Victorian era, to opinions on NEPEA-5 and the role of parahumans in small and large businesses, to a playful debate over whether condiments on a burger should go above or below the patty (and she didn't care how striking and clever Taylor was, putting ketchup on the bottom bun was a sin). It wasn't just that Angela liked what she'd seen of Taylor, but also that Angela found she liked who she was when she was around Taylor. It put a warmth on her cheeks and in her chest, and sent moths fluttering around her stomach.

They met up with Vicky and Dean outside of Jellyfish Glassworks, which she had to admit was probably the most visually striking shop on the whole Boardwalk, with all the hanging stained glass windchimes of different marine animals that were suspended in front of the shop. Vicky noticed them first, turning and waving them over, while Dean's head snapped toward them and then flinched as soon as he saw Taylor. Angela felt her mood sour a little—honestly, what was that boy's problem?—but he did his best to mask his reaction, so she wasn't going to call attention to it.

"Hey, guys! Sorry I'm late, there was a car accident on Wentworth while I was flying over, so I had to stop and help out," Vicky said, her cheerful tone a little at odds with her excuse.

Angela noticed Taylor flinch when Vicky mentioned a car accident. "Was everyone alright?" Taylor asked, her tone a little tense.

Vicky didn't seem to notice. "Oh yeah, everyone was fine. Well, the guy in the rear car broke his collarbone, and the side of the car was pretty crumpled so I had to tear it open, but I got him to the EMTs and they made sure he was stable. There were no head injuries or anything like that, thank goodness."

"Thank goodness," Taylor repeated, and Angela saw some of the tension leave the girl. Right, she'd mentioned on the first day of class that she'd lost her mom in a car accident, hadn't she? It was probably bringing back memories she didn't want to think about. Then Taylor's confidence was back, like it had never even wavered. "Panacea's still out of town, right?"

"Oh, yeah, she is," Vicky replied, rolling her eyes. "The Protectorate's got her on this whole goodwill tour, going all around the country and healing a bunch of heroes that have long term injuries. She acts like she's pissed off about the whole thing, but I'm pretty sure she's just happy to have an excuse to take two weeks off school and eat at a bunch of fancy restaurants on the Protectorate's dime. Plus, y'know, the donations she's getting from the Protectorate are gonna fund New Wave for like, the next year."

"Nice," Taylor said. "How much does she get, from that?"

Vicky shifted, looking a little awkward. "Well, technically—nothing? But like, that's because it's illegal for parahumans to charge for healthcare services, cause that's a direct violation of NEPEA-5. But New Wave is a non-profit organization, so we can kind of get around that restriction if people donate to it instead. That money's got to be earmarked specifically for New Wave heroic activities, though."

"Huh," Angela said, because she hadn't talked much about this with Vicky before. "That seems… I get why they'd write the laws like that, but that seems like it would suck for Amy. What about merchandise?"

"That's different, legally," Vicky said, shrugging. "Selling merch that contains the likeness of a cape is specifically excluded from NEPEA-5, probably because that's how the heroes make a lot of their money, so that's just regular taxable income. I don't really know all the nitty gritty, though. Mom's the lawyer of the family, she's the one who takes care of all that."

"A lot of the business protectionism clauses of NEPEA-5 were written to exclude heroes," Dean offered. Angela figured that the Stansfields probably knew quite a bit about legal loopholes. "It was written when the Elite were trying to buy up and consolidate their control over a sizable number of the Fortune 500 companies at the time. It was meant to protect American industry and big businesses, but it also ended up making it substantially harder for any cape to go into business with their powers."

"That's not an accident," Taylor said, her tone casual but certain. "The PRT had their fingers all over that bill, and there's pretty strong evidence that they changed it to try and make joining the heroes seem more appealing. Of course, if it also drove more capes into villainy, that just helped consolidate their power and worldview."

"That's a conspiracy theory," Dean said, quickly.

"Sure it is," Taylor said, meeting Dean's gaze. Her tone conveying that she very much disagreed. Dean looked away first. Instead of arguing, Taylor turned toward Victoria. "Does Amy usually sit with you guys at lunch?"

"Oh right, she actually left for the tour right before you joined Arcadia," Vicky said. There was a flicker that crossed over Taylor's face, but it was gone the next moment. "Yeah, Amy usually sits with us—actually, I think you'll get along with her really well. She can be kind of a grump at first, but you don't seem like the kind of person who'd let that scare you off."

"I look forward to meeting her," Taylor replied. "I've got some experience dealing with grumpy people, to be honest." Dean let out a sudden sound halfway between a choke and a cough, but he waved off any assistance.

Any further conversation was interrupted by a small growl coming from Vicky's stomach. The girl flushed, then said, "Sorry, can we talk about this over lunch? I kind of skipped breakfast this morning, and flying around burns more calories than you'd think."

"Sure it does, Vicky," Angela teased, rolling her eyes and ignoring Vicky's indignant squawk.

"There's a pretty good okonomiyaki place a few blocks away," Taylor said, with a half shrug.

Dean furrowed his brow. "Okonomiati?"

"Okonomiyaki," Taylor corrected. "It's like… a savory cabbage and pork pancake? That doesn't do it justice, though. Trust me, it's really good."

"I'm down!" Vicky said, bouncing on the balls of her feet—although when Vicky bounced, she actually floated a few inches up off the ground before falling back down.

"That sounds great," Dean said, with a practiced smile on his face. The worst part of Dean was that he actually was genuine most of the time, but he was so good at putting on that smile that you could never exactly tell.

"Angela?" Taylor asked. "Does that sound good to you, or do you want something else?"

"Oh, yeah. Sure," Angela said, shrugging. It was hard for Angela to ignore the little voice in her head that said they were going here because of her—because it was an Asian restaurant, and she was Asian, so of course she'd know what it was and want to go there. Never mind that she'd never had 'okonomiyaki' or that it sounded Japanese when her own parents had immigrated from Chengdu, China before she was born. It was an old fear, born from old pain and careless assumptions, and she wanted Taylor to be better but it was hard to just dismiss the possibility out of hand.

They walked a few blocks over, following Taylor's lead. The restaurant they ended up at didn't look like much from the outside, just a plain wooden building with a sign written in Japanese. She recognized a few of the characters, like the one for 'big' and 'taste,' since there was an overlap between hanzi and kanji, but if Taylor was expecting her to act as any kind of translator she'd be out of luck.

"Welcome to Osaka no Aji," the hostess greeted them as they walked in. Her English was heavily accented—not uncommon in Brockton Bay, since it had been one of the main American cities to take in refugees from Japan after Leviathan sank Kyushu, and the subsequent earthquakes and tidal waves had devastated much of the rest of the country.

Taylor smiled and bowed back. "Ohayō! Yonin desu, onegaishimasu."

"Douzo kochira e," the woman said, smiling in return, and gesturing for them to follow her. The restaurant was mostly empty, although there were a couple older men sitting at one of the tables with a beer and a large sauce-covered dish with some kind of shaved flakes on top. They were sat a few tables away, and the woman began to place menus in front of them—in English, thankfully.

"Sumimasen. Nihongo menyū onegaishimasu," Taylor said to the woman.

"Hai, shōshō omachi kudasai," the woman said. "Nihongo jōzu! Doko de manabimashita ka?"

Taylor laughed a little, ducking her head. "Īe, madamada desu. Zenzen jōzu janai yo. Eto… tomodachi kara mananda."

"Sugoi desu ne," the waitress said, smiling at her. "Ima nihongo menyū o motte kimasu."

"Arigatou," Taylor replied, smiling back. Then she seemed to notice Angela and the others staring at her, and she hunched her shoulders a bit. "What?" she asked.

"You didn't say you knew Japanese!" Angela said, giving her a playful punch in the shoulder.

"I didn't?" Taylor asked, her head tilting to the side. "Oh yeah. I guess it just never came up?"

"That's so cool!" Vicky said. "Where did you learn?"

"Someone I used to know," Taylor replied. "She grew up in Takatsuki, in Osaka, but she moved here after, well. You know."

"Do you still keep in touch?" Angela asked, trying not to feel a small flare of jealousy that really had no place in this conversation.

Taylor winced. "Oh, um. She passed away recently, in Boston. We had something of a quarrel before she died, and I've always regretted it." She looked down at the table, playing with her fingers. Dean looked pale—did he have a similar experience with a relative?

Ordering went smoothly enough, especially with Taylor there to help translate questions and advise them on menu items. It was, as always, kind of hot to see Taylor acting with such casual competence. It had become very clear that she'd brought them here because she had a real passion for the food, and when their meals came out—Angela had ended up getting the same thing Taylor got, 'modern style' which apparently meant there were noodles sandwiched between the pork and cabbage, and it was honestly absolutely delicious.

She was having a hard time not falling for Taylor Hebert, and the girl really wasn't making it easy on her. Worse, from the looks that Vicky and Dean were giving her, she wasn't being nearly as subtle about it as she hoped. And yet, somehow, Angela really couldn't bring herself to regret a thing.

Chapter Text

Taylor worked in her lab, waiting for the notification that the new Wards had arrived. Any member of the Protectorate with any rating in Tinker was automatically given a lab space and a small budget for materials, which could be increased substantially based on the practicality and utility of their creations. Since Taylor had both Basilisk's poison-based tinker power, as well as her own minor tinker rating for being able to mass produce spidersilk, she'd also been given her own lab. Most of the equipment she needed was relatively standard glassware and chemicals, the same as any other chemistry lab, and a host of terrariums for her insects and spiders. The rest of the equipment were a little more specialized: a crucible, sheets of glass that she could use Mason's power to shape into more specialized glassware, an actual beehive in one corner and a small garden of lethal flowers next to it, since poison-infused honey was a particularly potent ingredient for many of Basilisk's poisons.

Of course, since it wasn't public knowledge that Bumble had a poison power, they'd had to come up with a way to justify purchases. At the same time, there were a number of Butcher powers that had been categorically struck off from being used by Bumble, foremost of which was Basilisk's poison-based tinkertech, as well as Absinthe's fear aura, Frenzy's rage aura, and the first Butcher's pain blast. At the same time, one of the most clear cut results from parahuman research was that powers needed to be used. And so, Malady was born: a 'shadow' member of the Protectorate, which was a term given to certain tinkers and thinkers that supported a given Protectorate and PRT operation without often going into the field directly. The expense for the laboratory had ended up under Malady's sign-up bonus—and, conveniently enough, Malady happened to use insects frequently in 'her' work, which gave Bumble a very good reason to be seen frequently in the lab.

They could have just had the space look like a normal chemistry laboratory, but Taylor had talked it over with Image and they'd agreed to fork over a little more money to stylize it to fit the Malady persona. The acid resistant table had been given a finish to look like rough wood, several of the more exotic pieces of glassware were hanging on the walls as decoration, and she'd been happy to use the powers of Sepsis and Mason to create an artificial layer of rust or tarnishing over most of the metal tools, albeit one that was carefully designed not to inhibit their function. The end result looked like a cross between an alchemist's workshop, a witch's hut, and a mad scientist's laboratory. Taylor loved it, and plenty of the Butchers enjoyed the look too.

Naturally, Malady needed a different costume, for the few times she would appear in public. They hadn't quite settled on a final design, but she'd been going back and forth with image on the design and it seemed like the 'plague doctor chic' aesthetic had been firmly locked in. She was currently wearing the most recent design, black robes with silver chains and belts strewn around in a manner that toed the line between chaotic and organized, while also leaving plenty of belt loops for a variety of vials with different poisons and materials, and of course a classic plague mask that would make her look a bit like a crow. Honestly, Taylor loved it. She enjoyed being Bumble, and she enjoyed the misdirection she was pulling off, but she still had all the parts of the chorus that loved the brutal apocalyptic aesthetic that the Teeth had embraced, and while Malady wasn't quite there she would have still fit in just fine.

Taylor hummed to herself as she worked, considering the changes that had come in the past week. Sophia was in the doghouse, that was for sure. A cursory investigation into the girl's digital communications had been enough to corroborate most of Taylor's own accusations, although they didn't have enough evidence to conclusively put the locker incident itself on the probationary Ward. From her bugs' senses, Taylor had been able to eavesdrop and pick up that there was also some evidence that Sophia had been going out on unauthorized patrols, although they didn't have enough to really pin her to the wall over that either. That didn't really matter, though—there was more than enough smoke for the Director to conclude that there was indeed fire, and Piggot had been quick to arrange a transfer for the Ward to the New York division, unofficially for Ellisburg guard duty.

The important thing, in Taylor's mind, was that Sophia was finally facing some form of punishment, and that she would no longer be in the Bay. Of course, Taylor also hoped that she got the help that she needed, despite what the Butchers in her head might want, but that was outside of her control. She'd done what she could, and she refused to spend any more time agonizing over the fate of Sophia Hess.

Taylor poured seven milligrams of an off-white powder—snake egg shells, dried and crushed—into a beaker, and then added twenty-three milliliters of a solution of manchineel sap dissolved into hydrofluoric acid. By all accounts, the interaction should have just created a useless mess, but Basilisk's power meant that the resulting solution was a pale purple fluid that contained the blistering effect of the Manchineel sap, the delayed activation and deep tissue penetration of hydrofluoric acid, and the penetrative power of a snake bite. This was a poison meant to be used on Brutes and Changers—she was specifically thinking of Hookwolf or Lung, since it would be able to slip through metal and scales and leave lingering damage behind, not activating until well after Bumble was clear from the scene. Not very nice, admittedly, but they weren't particularly nice people.

Carefully, she started to stir the solution with a polished stick made of chokecherry wood, making sure to move at a steady pace of 34 rpm. The other good news about Sophia being moved away was that they were getting a couple new Ward transfers on a temporary basis as a result. Weld was coming from Boston, a Ward and Case 53 whose body was made almost entirely out of metal. He was capable of absorbing any metal that touched his body, as well as reshaping his body itself into weapons, shields, walls, and anything else he needed.

We fought Weld a few times, Novocain mused. His power seems simple at first, but it's got good utility, and it's pretty hard to hurt him at all.

He wasn't affected by Mason or Mimic, he's immune to most of my poisons, and shrugged off Frenzy's aura like it was nothing, Basilisk mused. The only things that actually worked was Wendigo's power, for some reason.

Beneficial Manton Limit Duality, Howitzer chimed in. Pretty rare, and usually only seen in changer forms or certain lucky Case 53s. It's when they count as in-organic for organic based powers, and organic for inorganic ones. The opposite is Adverse Manton Limit Duality, where you're both organic and inorganic for the purposes of powers, which is actually far rarer.

Taylor absently nodded, reaching for three of the dried atropa bella-donna berries from one of the glass jars on her workstation. She dropped them into a mortar and began to grind them down with the pestle. Due to his BMLD, Weld could no sell most of their abilities: Butcher's pain blast, Devein's bloodsight, Absinthe's hallucinations, Frenzy's rage blast, and most of Basilisk's poisons were completely ineffective against the Ward, and on top of that his Brute rating let him tank most of the Butchers' direct attacks, and his ability to reform his body by absorbing metal let him recover from Sepsis' decay. That wasn't to say she couldn't hurt or kill him, if she really tried to, but that was true of pretty much every cape that she could think of.

Oh sure, and what would you do against someone like Alexandria? Mason said, a little scornfully.

Taylor's brow furrowed. Quietly, she said, "I mean, she still needs to breathe, right? Between my bugs and Basilisk's power, I'm sure we could figure something out. And that's not even getting into what we could do if I ate someone with an All-or-Nothing kind of power beforehand." She liked speaking out loud to the other Butchers, when she was alone—it helped it feel a little less like she was just another voice in her head.

Holy shit, Sepsis whispered, sounding awed.

Taylor, do you seriously have plans to kill every cape you know about? Novocain asked, sounding somewhat taken aback. I mean, now that I'm looking for it, I can see that you do, but damn, girl.

Taylor felt her brow furrow. "Of course. I mean, knowing someone's weakness is just as important when it comes to protecting them as it is when you want to murder them. Didn't you guys do the same thing?"

I did the same thing, before I inherited, Howitzer said, and she sounded approving. It's just common sense.

Fuck, if you'd gone villain you would have been terrifying, Sepsis said, her voice a little wistful. It would have been glorious.

And you don't feel like that goes against your whole 'heroic intentions' bullshit? Butcher asked, incredulous.

"I don't want to die young, and I'm not the kind of person who enjoys crazy parties and drugs and stuff like that, so the Teeth were out." Taylor said, feeling herself get a little annoyed. She'd thought they'd already been over this. "The Wards were the next best option, and it helped that it pissed you guys off. That doesn't make me naive, though. I know what the world's like, and I'm more than prepared to kill again if I need to."

The berries had been reduced to a fine powder, and she took a tiny handful of it and placed it on her tongue. It tingled, a little, but between Basilisk's dramatically improved poison resistance and Cordycep's own power, regular poisons were pretty much useless against Taylor. She made a face. The dried berries had lost some potency in their preservation, which meant she had to add a fourth berry if she didn't want her resulting poison to be suboptimal. She ground that one up quickly too, then stirred the powder into the poison.

Huh, Cordyceps said. I mean I knew that, but… I guess it's easy to forget, with all that was going on. You play the perfect little Ward so well it's easy to forget you're still a Butcher.

Taylor felt her lips quirk. "That's kind of the point," she said, shaking her head.

The second transfer was from New York, a cape named Flechette who was apparently something of a rising star amongst the Wards. She was being transferred to Brockton Bay ostensibly so she could scout out different Protectorate headquarters for when she graduated from the Wards. Taylor's bugs, however, had picked up rumors of a long-standing conflict between her and a villain named March that apparently was related to the move as well. Taylor didn't know much more about the young woman, although she seemed to be an actual grab bag with a primary striker power that allowed her to imbue objects with some kind of 'physics defying' ability, along with some minor thinker powers for aim and timing, which lent her the ability to dodge bullets and snatch arrows out of the air. It seemed pretty powerful, and also a pretty potent anti-brute ability—one that would almost certainly be effective against, say, a cape with six different brute powers and a previous proclivity for firing parahumanly accurate arrows.

The poison had turned a deep purple color, shot through with streaks of solid silver in a manner that felt quite wrong for a liquid with such low viscosity, but that was powers for you. It was just about complete—it would need to rest for a few hours so that some of the contaminants could precipitate out, but that could happen off the heat. She carefully transferred the solution from the beaker to a smaller glass vial, making sure to get every last drop transferred over, even using Mason's power to morph the glass and push the poison out.

There was a knock at the door to her lab, a quick shave and a haircut pattern. "One moment!" Taylor called out. She smiled to herself, pushing a cork in the top of the glass vial and sealing it with wax from one of the candles. For whatever reason, Basilisk's power often responded better to less technically sophisticated methods of preparation and storage. She didn't know why, and the power testers weren't able to come up with a consistent explanation besides 'powers are bullshit,' but it was another reason to stick more heavily to the Malady theme.

The knock came again as Taylor pulled the heavy gloves and apron off her body, dropping them in a basket in the corner. Her bugs had already picked up on the person outside, the figure easily recognizable as Kid Win through the laser pistols strapped to his side. A look with her bloodsight through the wall confirmed it, letting her see the web of his corona pollentia that clearly lined up with a Tinker.

With a twist of Howitzer's power, Taylor teleported out of her lab and next to Kid Win, with only a small wash of heat and a faint 'pop' sound to mark the teleport—she was getting better about controlling the explosive aspect of the power all the time. "Are you looking for someone?" she asked, casually.

Kid Win jumped a little at her voice, whirling around. "Holy shit!" he cried out, his blaster practically leaping into his hands and rising up before he recognized her. "Don't do that!"

She snickered. "But you guys fall for it every time! Honestly, you should be thanking me—I'm training you in case we ever run into an enemy teleporter."

He gave her a deadpan expression. "I doubt that'll help much against Oni Lee."

"That's a defeatist attitude," Taylor replied, with a half shrug. "If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail."

"Is that also why you turned the pillow right next to Clockblocker into an animated bug monstrosity, right when he was leaning back on it?"

Taylor let out a snort at the memory. "Nah, that was just because it was funny. Well, and payback for him trying to get me with the old 'handshake freeze' routine." That had been Mimic's idea—he had used to love playing pranks with his power, although the results had tended to be quite a bit more bloody and lethal.

You can't tell me the Snapping Sneakers incident wasn't hilarious, the cape in question said, pushing forward a memory of him animating the shoes of a group of Empire members, back in the 90s when Sepsis had still been the Butcher. His power had apparently taken the 'tongue' of the sneakers rather literally, turning the interior into a mouth with sharp teeth that quickly began chewing on their wearer's feet. Taylor could admit that it was pretty funny, although she also knew she was far, far more desensitized to the horrors of violence and gore than most people.

Kid Win smiled, despite himself. "I really didn't know his voice could get that high," he said.

"I know, right? I honestly think he's got a promising career in opera, if the whole superhero thing doesn't work out," Taylor said.

"Is that the final costume?" he asked, looking over her robes and mask. "Kind of spooky, not gonna lie."

She smoothed them down almost reflexively. "Close to it, at least. I'm guessing you came to get me because the transfers have arrived?"

"That's the size of it, yeah," he said, with a little shrug. "Well, that, and I kind of wanted to talk with you."

They started to walk toward the Wards' quarters. "What about?" she said, casually.

Oh my god if he confesses to her I'm going to lose it, Cordyceps said, her voice more than a little gleeful.

That's not happening, Absinthe said, dryly. He's better at hiding it, but the boy is still scared shitless of her.

Some people are into that, Wendigo said, with the mental equivalent of a wide toothy grin.

"I've been thinking about the Circus fight," he said, after a moment. "When she shot that wall of fire and you jumped in front of me."

"What about it?"

He bit his lip for a moment, as though he was nervous to ask. "Just. It was pretty heroic, you know? And I couldn't get it out of my head. And then I realized that the only reason it stood out so much was because I wasn't expecting you to be heroic. The whole fight, I kind of kept expecting you to murder Circus, or go on a rampage, or something."

That got the Butcher's hackles up, and she had to shove several down that were calling for Kid Win's blood for the disrespect. The irony, apparently, was entirely lost on the chorus. She just stayed quiet, letting him get to his point.

He didn't quite meet her eyes. "And I realized, y'know, I wouldn't think that way about Aegis or Vista, or even Shadow Stalker. I was acting like you were a villain before I gave you a chance to show you weren't."

Taylor couldn't help the small quirk of her lips, hidden behind her plague doctor mask. "It's fine, Chris. Really. I get it."

"It's not though," he said, shaking his head virulently. "You're trying to be a hero, and I know that must have been a hard decision, harder than it was for any of the rest of us, and nobody's giving you a chance."

"I think you need to give yourself more credit," Taylor replied. "I spent most of the past few years around people who made it very clear that I wasn't wanted, and I know what it feels like. That's never how it felt with the other Wards. And besides, trust is something that you earn, and my situation means it will just take longer. That's fine, Chris. And if I've earned some from you, well, I'll just do my best to repay it."

They reached the Wards quarters, checking in with two retinal scans. No alarms went off, since they were alone and both keyed into the system, so they both stepped inside. The rest of the Wards were already there, and Vista even gave Taylor a little wave as they entered, and Taylor waved back. It wasn't where she wanted to be, but it was a start.

Lily felt the familiar sensation of Strider's teleportation, like she'd taken a step and missed a stair. She didn't quite fall over, but it was disorientating, and even with her power assisted balance she took a moment to recover. She'd been teleported a few times before, but it never really got easier as far as she was concerned.

Two heroes were standing outside of the helicopter landing pad that Strider liked to use, a man with rust red body armor of the same color and a visor over his eyes, and a woman in a skintight dark gray costume with deep blue lines like a circuit tracing the surface and a matching helmet. Lily recognized them from the briefing she'd received back in New York—Assault and Battery, members of the local Protectorate team. Assault stepped forward, a wide smile visible underneath his helmet.

"Hey there! You must be Flechette and Weld, right? Because otherwise I'm pretty sure I'm at the wrong helipad," he said, his tone jovial.

"That's us, sir," Weld said, from her right. He looked at first glance like nothing more than a buff teenage guy, except for the fact that his entire body was made of a silvery metal. He'd warned her to keep her arbalest away from him, since he absorbed any metal he touched unconsciously, and she'd promptly switched it to the left side of her body. Still, he seemed like a nice guy, even if she'd only known him for the few minutes between the time when he teleported in to New York with Strider and the second teleport to Brockton Bay.

Battery spoke up next. "I'm sorry that Armsmaster wasn't able to meet you, but he's currently on patrol so you'll have to make do with us. I'm Battery, and the lout who thinks he's funny is Assault."

"I don't think I'm funny," Assault said, putting his hands on his hips dramatically. "I know that I'm hilarious."

"Keep telling yourself that," Battery replied, in a dry tone. "Anyway, we're here to give you both a tour of the facilities, and then we'll get to introducing you to your new team."

"Sounds good, ma'am," Lily said, walking forward and falling into step beside Weld.

The tour was pretty standard, all things considered. It was clear that Assault considered himself something of a comedian, and equally clear that Battery was happy to serve as the straight man for his jokes. The research she'd been able to do on the Brockton Bay team suggested that the two of them might be married or at least a couple, and seeing them interact in person made her understand that perspective. Otherwise, the facilities were pretty much like every other PRT building that she'd been in: floors of cubicles for the analysts and bureaucrats, a wing for PR complete with a basic set for photography, the armory for the PRT troopers and a massive on-base gym that could be used by any employee, although there was apparently a more limited but far more private gym for the Wards' exclusive use.

All of those were things that Lily was expecting, since it seemed like PRT offices tended to follow relatively standard structures. She noticed that Brockton did look less state of the art than the New York branch, though. Computers were a few years older, the paint was faded in places, and there was far less obvious tinkertech. There was also a general attitude that felt more stressed than she was used to, but that made sense as well given the amount of villains that Brockton had. Still, it beat the time she'd spent two months in Virginia, where she wasn't sure that they'd updated their offices since the turn of the century.

And then, it was time for the part of the tour that Lily had honestly been dreading: meeting her new team. She was honestly more than a little scared about this new assignment. Sure, it got her away from March—at least temporarily—but Director Wilkins had read her in on the situation in the Bay. The fact that one of the Wards was the newest Butcher, and nobody seemed to be particularly concerned about that, meant that she was walking into meeting her new team feeling less like a kid on their first day of school and more like a soldier marching onto the battlefield.

Their biometric signatures were already in the system, but since they weren't flagged as knowing the civilian identities of the other Wards, the mask warning still rang out. Thirty seconds later, the lock disengaged and the door swung open, revealing a familiar room that looked more like an apartment than anything. There were several couches, a TV with a VCR and a selection of gaming devices hooked up to it, and a small kitchenette unit. On one side of the room was the console, composed of a futuristic looking desk with a keyboard and several more buttons, switches, and sliders built into it, with six monitors suspended on the wall above it. Nothing really stood out, to her—Wards quarters were pretty much the same across the country, in her experience, with minor differences to suit the spaces. Doors to the side would lead to a hallway with personal rooms, the private gym, and a larger padded room that would serve as a training/sparring facility, although she didn't know which doors led where yet.

Lily's eyes flicked over the Wards inside, looking for the Butcher—for Bumble. There was a guy in power armor she recognized as Gallant, and another in a red and gold body armor that she was pretty sure was Kid Win. Then there was the boy in a white suit covered with clocks, which could only be the unfortunately named Clockblocker, and a larger guy in a tight red bodysuit that she recognized as Aegis, the current leader of the Wards. The only girl she could immediately see was Vista—Lily hadn't even needed to look her up, because Vista was one of the most popular Wards in the country, with merch even in the New York City PRT gift shop. The last figure was tall, wearing black robes that fully obscured their figure, and a hooded mask with a stretched beak. Taken together, the whole outfit made them look like some great bird. When she couldn't spot the signature black and yellow color scheme of Bumble's outfit, or the goofy dangling antenna, it was like a weight had come off Lily's shoulders.

She'd almost expected Assault or Battery to introduce them, but the two older heroes hadn't even come with them into the room. It made some sense, she supposed, that they let the Wards introduce themselves without explicit oversight. In her experience, Protectorate heroes tended to be fairly hands off when it came to Wards social dynamics, unless they were needed

"Hey there," Lily said, waving to the group. "I'm Flechette. Just transferred here from New York. I'm a striker/blaster, but my power's pretty weird."

"I'm Weld," the man said, from next to them. "I was in Boston, before now. I've got a decent brute rating, so I mainly serve as a tank, but I've got a passive changer power that absorbs metal. It's kind of a pain, but it can be really useful for disabling guns and knives."

"It's great to have you here," the large guy said, stepping forward and giving Weld a firm handshake. "I'm Aegis, the current leader of the ENE Wards. Let me know if you have any questions or complaints, and I'll be sure to address them."

Lily took his hand next. It was firm but not overly strong, like he didn't feel he had anything to prove, which she privately filed away as a good sign. Aegis continued, saying, "I've got some basic flight and some automatic biokinesis that lets me fake a brute rating, but it'll be nice to have a proper brute on the team. And another blaster is always helpful—ranged support keeps everyone safer." He smiled at her, and she felt relieved. Aegis seemed like a good guy, someone who focused on complimenting their abilities rather than seeing them as interlopers.

There was a round of introductions, then. Most of their powers matched up with what she'd read online, although she'd been a little surprised that Gallant was just an emotional thinker/blaster, and not actually a tinker at all. Well, she was pretty sure that he'd be accurately counted as a human master, but the PRT tried to avoid using that label for their Wards or heroes, in her experience, and it was marginal enough that she understood why he said that.

Then they got to the black clad Ward. Lily had noticed that the others in the room, especially Aegis, Clockblocker, and Gallant, were giving them a decent berth. The unknown cape had been watching Weld, their expression entirely obscured behind what Lily could now recognize as a plague doctor's mask, and they didn't introduce themselves until Vista warped space and gave them a sharp poke in the side.

"Oh, right," the birdlike cape said, whipping her head back around to face Lily. And it was a she, as near as Lily could tell—her voice a little muffled but distinctly feminine. "Uh, I think we've settled on Malady for this identity, and we're going with a poison based Tinker/Shaker for powers." Then she was reaching up and pulling off her mask, revealing a girl with a wide mouth and long luxurious hair. She had what really should be rather plain features, except that somehow the way she held herself meant they came off as striking instead. She was a couple years too young for Lily's taste, and not her type besides, but that didn't mean Lily couldn't appreciate beauty when she saw it. The girl was still speaking, she realized belatedly. "Outside of costume, you can just call me Taylor, though."

And then it really hit her that this girl had just unmasked almost immediately upon meeting her new teammates. It was a level of trust that staggered Lily, although she wasn't quite willing to return it yet. "That sounds like a difficult power," she said, instead.

"I guess," Taylor shrugged. "I mean, that's why I created Malady, though, she's not really going to be patrolling as much. My more serious poisons are only really for high powered brutes or A-class threats and higher, and I probably won't see combat as Malady except in those situations. Otherwise, I'm mainly hoping to support the Protectorate with paralytics and sedatives, things like that."

Lily nodded, although she understood some of the other's hesitation, now. "You have full control over your shaker power, though, right?"

The girl nodded. "Oh, for sure. It's not actually a poison effect, it just looks like that. I can create fields of pain and pain negation, as well as rot through anything that gets close to me. But I've got a tight grip on all of that, trust me."

Something about that description seemed suspicious in Lily's mind, but she also knew that nobody could control what powers they got stuck with. "Hey, all powers can be dangerous," she said, placing a friendly hand on the girl's shoulder. "My power can be insanely lethal, if I'm not careful with it. What matters is how you use it."

"Thanks," Malady—Taylor, really—told her, with a wry smile. "That's what I've been trying to tell myself, too."

Aegis clapped his hands, drawing attention. "Right, well, now that introductions are out of the way, we've got some pizza and soft drinks here for a bit of a welcome party." His voice was cheery, although his expression looking a little strained. Was he prejudiced against Malady? Maybe there was a history there that she didn't know, but that didn't seem entirely in character with how accepting he'd been before. Still, she resolved not to judge either of them too badly until she learned more details. That was a lesson she'd learned the hard way.

The welcome party was a nice affair, as far as those things went. Kid Win had put on some music, largely pop with some hip-hop and rock mixed in, but it was played at a volume that wasn't too loud. At first, there was the standard awkwardness of teenagers trying to get through icebreakers and small talk, but it wasn't long before conversation began to flow more naturally. For some reason, Lily found herself talking with Malady the most out of any of the Wards. Some of that was because Weld had been drawn into a Mario Kart game with Clockblocker, Aegis, and Kid Win, while Vista and Gallant talked about some reality decorating show they both watched. It was kind of obvious that Vista had a puppy crush on the boy, but the preteen also seemed mature enough to not let that get in the way of being friends and teammates.

Taylor turned out to be a pretty good conversationalist. She'd clearly lived in New York for a while at one point, too, and they spent some time talking about the city: their favorite delis, the best play they'd seen off Broadway, and griping about the L train. The conversation continued from there, though, drifting into places they'd like to visit, where Lily wanted to work after she graduated to the Protectorate, and what she might want to do if she wasn't a hero (a thought that had, admittedly, been weighing heavily on her mind as of late). For whatever reason, Taylor was just an easy person to talk to, and Lily would have been more than happy to be on this team if it wasn't for the one thing that hadn't been addressed yet.

About an hour into the welcoming party, Lily felt like she couldn't really ignore the elephant in the room anymore (or that wasn't really in the room, as the case might be)."Can I ask you something a bit awkward?" Lily said, lowering her voice.

Taylor's brow furrowed. "I can't promise I'll answer, but you can certainly ask," she said, a little cautiously.

Lily had been trying to figure out the best way to phrase this, but eventually she realized that she just had to bite the bullet. "Before I left New York, I was debriefed on the state of Brockton Bay," she began. "And, as part of that, I heard that one of the Wards, Bumble, was the new Butcher. I guess I just wanted to ask you what it's like, working with her. And if I should be worried, I guess."

The other girl froze, and for a moment Lily wondered if she'd hit a sensitive subject, and then she dropped her face into her hands and groaned. "Oh my god, I'm such an idiot," she murmured, voice muffled by her hands. "They're never going to let me live this down."

"Hey, it's fine," Lily said, trying to reassure her new teammate and potential friend. "I don't blame you for not warning us, or anything. I don't know if you're allowed to talk about it or something."

"No, that's not it," Taylor said, finally lifting her head. "I mean, I assumed that you guys would be briefed anyway. I just… kind of forgot that I was in this costume, at the moment."

Now it was Lily's turn to furrow her brow. "What do you mean?"

Taylor took a deep breath. "Malady is an identity I created, with the help of the PRT, so that I could use some of the less palatable parts of my power without linking it back to my public facing identity, and I realized that I completely forgot to introduce myself with my usual cape name. God, it makes so much sense why you've been weirdly approachable so far."

There was a fuzzy picture forming in Lily's mind, putting together the way that Taylor kept talking about 'creating' Malady and some of the powers that Malady had, and she was pretty sure she didn't like it. She was also pretty sure she didn't like just how self-deprecating Taylor sounded, there. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean, I am Malady, but I'm also Bumble," the girl said. "That's my main identity, and the one that I use on patrols. So, uh, I'm not sure how well I can actually answer your questions."

Lily froze. That fuzzy picture cleared up, all the puzzle pieces slotting into place, and making an image that made both too much sense and no sense at all. Taylor had been nice and welcoming, and had asked her about her experience as a Ward. Taylor had insightful comments on Flechette's power and the research around grab bag capes. Taylor was the latest in a line of mass murdering insane maniacs, who had built a reputation for wanton violence and cruelty that was second only to the Nine. Something about this did not compute.

"You really don't seem insane," Lily said, once she'd found her nerve (and her voice). She felt strangely calm, for some reason. She should probably be feeling her fight or flight instincts surging to life, being this close to the Butcher, but she just… didn't.

"I mean, technically I've got voices in my head," the other girl said, with a smirk that was half obnoxious and half just sad. "I think that makes me some kind of schizophrenic, at least. But, uh. To answer what you're actually asking, we think that it's because I have a master power over arthropods, and it comes with power-assisted multitasking. It means I can't really get distracted by the voices or memories in the way the other Butchers did, plus I can kind of push the more annoying ones into my swarm, for lack of a better word."

"Huh," Lily said, because what else do you say to that? "I guess none of the other Butchers were masters, then?"

"Well, technically, Frenzy—uh, that'd be Butcher IX—had a Master's in Art History," Taylor said, with a little grin. "But no, not in the power sense. The closest they had was Mimic, Butcher V, but he couldn't directly control his minions so he was really a shaker."

"Huh. So Malady…"

"Yeah," Taylor replied, nodding. "Malady's there so I can use some of the less palatable Butcher powers, the ones that we couldn't work into the Bumble identity. I'm sure you know how it feels when you don't use your powers for a while. Unfortunately, I have that, times fifteen."

And yeah, Lily did know. She'd been terrified of her striker power when she'd first discovered it, afraid of just how lethal it could be to decouple anything she touched from reality, and she had tried to not use it at first. After only a couple weeks of suppressing that aspect of her power, she'd been left jittery and irritable, and it only got worse until she gave in and finally used her power on a pinecone, which she ended up tossing straight through a tree. "I'm so sorry," she said, because she couldn't imagine how rough that would be.

"Thanks," Taylor said, with a wry grin. "But it's honestly fine, more or less. I'm actually doing way better now than I was before I inherited."

"I imagine that's not the usual way that goes," Lily said, dryly.

Taylor laughed at that, a full head-thrown-back guffaw that drew some attention from the other Wards. "No, it really isn't. You've got a talent for understatement, Flechette."

And it was so stupid, but it wasn't like Lily had anyone else to protect, so she said, "You can call me Lily, at least in private."

Taylor froze, staring at her in shock. Then she was blinking rapidly, and Lily could swear she saw a few tears form in the other girl's eyes before they were wiped away. "Ah, thanks," she said, her voice just a tad shaky. "I look forward to working with you, Lily."

Chapter Text

Taylor was humming as she walked down the hallway, travelling with the flow of the crowd toward the lunch room. She'd found herself humming a lot more since inheriting—making noise herself seemed to help keep her focused on her own mind rather than the continual conversations happening between the Butchers in her mind, and it often got some of the more musically inclined Butchers to hum along. Recently, she'd been working with Frenzy, Howitzer, and Mimic on four part harmonies, and they'd been helping her with converting their humming sounds into noises from her bugs. She had an idea of one day being able to play a whole concerto with just her insects, but that was a ways off.

Do you think that a large enough crowd of teenagers moving toward food works like a fluid, like sand? Basilisk mused idly, as Taylor approached the doors to the cafeteria, set in the center of the 'H' that made up Arcadia's structure.

I think it's closer to a gas, Mason said. They're in a state of high pressure in the classroom, and when the bell rings they all burst out and fill up every available space.

But that doesn't explain why they gather around the food, Mimic pointed out. For my money, it's more like a ferrofluid that flows toward a magnet.

Oh damn, that's exactly it, Basilisk said, and somehow made the sound of snapping fingers. Taylor wondered a bit about how the collective made those sounds without any bodies, and that probably had some deep implications about the way that Butcher's original power interfaced with linguistics, but she couldn't be bothered to think too deeply around it now.

She'd taken to using gnats to track the position of everyone around her. They were kind of perfect for the task—they were only 1/16th of an inch in length, which meant they were small enough to be practically invisible so long as they didn't land on actual skin, each female could lay up to 200 eggs, they fed on fungus in the soil as larvae and nectar from flowers as adults (which could be easily replaced with sugar water), and even though they were weak fliers they had more than enough mobility to get wherever she needed them to, and they were pretty much everywhere to begin with. With her range, it was easy enough to tag everyone with a gnat on their shirt, shoes, and backpack without anyone getting suspicious.

You have to know how ridiculous that is, Hazard said, conveying a mental pout. I thought my power was pretty good for predicting attacks, but you can monitor everything in a three block radius around you.

It doesn't help against any attacks coming from outside my range, Taylor countered. And rather than looking at the two abilities in a vacuum, I'd rather focus on how well they work together.

That's fair, Hazard replied, good naturedly. God knows I'm happy you're going the hero route, but girl, you would have been hell on wheels as a Butcher.

So you all keep telling me, Taylor replied, dryly. Personally, I'm hoping to be hell on wheels as a hero, too.

I'm sure you will, Howitzer cut in, with a surprising degree of affection in her voice. I doubt the villains in the city will be content to leave your hapless act alone. They will discover the steel beneath the velvet in due time, I imagine.

Thanks, Jenna, Taylor said, feeling genuinely touched, and received the mental equivalent of a warm smile back.

Her gnats were how she knew that there was someone new sitting with Vicky at the lunch table, well before she actually arrived. Taylor was confused for a moment, until she remembered Vicky mentioning that her sister had been traveling around the country and was supposed to be back today. Since Taylor had packed her lunch today (Absinthe had worked as a chef before he triggered, so she was more than capable of cooking for herself, and the collective always whined when she got cafeteria food) she skipped the line and made her way straight toward Vicky's group.

She sat down next to Angela, giving a quick greeting to Vicky, and then she saw Amy—and she froze. Unbidden, a surge of memories burst forward: a tall man with a noble brow and a crooked grin, with long wavy brown hair that fell over his back in waves. His voice, deep and masculine, rumbling in her ears after they had made love, and his beard brushing against her ear sending shivers down her spine. His hands on her arms, dancing in his mansion of a house, feeling loved even as she knew it was temporary, even as she was planning to go to his enemies. His dark eyes, peering through a mask of bone, when they met on the battlefield after she had joined the Teeth, hatred and love warring in his eyes.

Her own face, with her short curly hair and a nose that was absolutely covered in freckles, staring back in the cracked mirror in the middle of the Teeth hideout, a test with two damning lines in her hand. The swelling of her belly, throwing up in the morning, feeling like her moods had been seized by some emotional master and were being yanked around without her control. Giving birth in a shady clinic that looked the other way at her stolen money. Trying to raise her little Amelia alone, trying to be a good mother, even as she began to have trouble walking, as her speech started to slur and and her legs began to falter. Deciding to take the only chance at extending her life she could come up with. Meeting him one last time, watching as he saw Amelia for the first time and seeing the love for his daughter in those warm eyes, and knowing this was the right choice even as her own heart was breaking. Killing Hazard with a touch, inheriting the mantle and taking the Teeth to Boston, away from her daughter, and then a blur of madness and blood and bones until she fell to Mimic's traps. Then hiding the memory of her daughter, as much as she could hide anything from the Butcher—refusing to think about her, refusing to feel all her love and loss, because she would keep the Teeth away from her daughter.

It was all so sudden and vivid, a flood of memories it took her a few moments to realize they were coming from Sepsis. Several years of a life that the woman had been hiding away, but seeing Amy—seeing her Amelia, all grown up and almost an adult—undid every last barrier in a second. She was staring at Amelia, she knew that, but she also knew that the rest of the group was staring at her.

"Are you alright, Taylor?" Angela asked, sounding a little concerned. "You're crying."

Taylor reached up and touched her face, and yes, there were tears streaking down from her eyes. "Allergies," she said, after a moment, trying to get herself under control. Then Sepsis provided a phone number, pushing it to the front of the collective consciousness. "Left my medicine at home. I think I've got to make a call." She watched Vicky give her sister a pointed look, but Amelia ignored it—in fact, the girl seemed to be shrinking into herself, pointedly ignoring Taylor entirely.

Angela gave Taylor a questioning look, but didn't argue. "You'll have to go outside—there's a faraday cage around the whole school."

Taylor nodded, absently. She'd known that, at least in theory, but that was very far from her mind at the moment. She stood up abruptly, uncaring of how rude it might make her seem, and quickly walked out of the lunch room. Emotions were roiling inside of her—bleed over from Sepsis, her own shock, betrayal and anger and delight and bloodlust from all the other Butchers.

She barely paid attention to where she was going, but somehow she made it out one of Arcadia's back doors, stepping into the parking lot for the teachers. She kept walking until there was nobody around for a good forty feet, and then her phone was in her hand and a number was being dialed.

"Who's this?" a gruff voice picked up on the third ring. The voice was older and had more of a rasp than Sepsis remembered, but it was still unmistakable.

"McGuire," she said, her voice flat. Sepsis—Eloise Woodworth, right now, the woman behind the mask—was riding high in her mind. "This is Woodworth."

"Fuck you," he said without a moment of hesitation. "Woodworth kicked it in '97."

"And how did she die again, asshole?" Taylor shot back. There was a long pause.

"Oh shit," he said.

"Oh shit is right," she replied. "Don't worry, McGuire, I'm not coming for you or anything like that. I just want to know what happened to my daughter."

"Really? You're asking me now?" his voice crackled down the line, his own anger sharp even over the phone. "Where the fuck were you when Jacques was attacked in his home and hauled off by the Brigade?"

"I was trying not to let a group of murderous assholes that all hated each other decide to track down my daughter," she snapped back. Sepsis' mind was so close right now that she couldn't quite remember if she was Eloise or Taylor. "It happened before—Absinthe killed Devein's sister and her husband, and Basilisk killed Frenzy's ex-boyfriend."

Bastard deserved it, Basilisk muttered, in the back of her mind.

Maybe so, but it wasn't your fucking choice, Frenzy said, snarling. Taylor pushed both of them down, because she couldn't deal with that right now. For good measure, she also pushed down Devein and Absinthe, because their furious cursing was getting distracting.

"What's changed, then?" McGuire asked, a touch of fear entering his voice again at the reminder of who she was. That was fair—McGuire was a tough man, with balls of steel and a spine that would break long before it bent, but he wasn't stupid. The Butcher was one of the most feared capes on the East Coast for a damn good reason.

"I did," Taylor said, feeling a bit of separation finally reinforce itself between her mind and Sepsis. "I'm a swarm master with a multitasking focus, which kept me from going mad. Now stop fucking around and tell me what happened to Amelia after Jacques was taken."

He let out a long exhale, and she could easily picture the cigarette between his lips. "I'm guessing you already know, if you're calling me."

"I need to know for sure," she snapped back.

"Legally speaking, the girl disappeared," he hedged. "I looked into it, but I had heat on me too by that point and I couldn't dig as deep as I'd like."

"You know what actually happened. Don't yank me around, dickweed," she said, her voice sharp.

"Fine," he replied, letting out another huff of exasperation. "A couple months after Marquis goes down, the Brigade unmask and rebrand as New Wave, and the whole family is suddenly famous. And what do I see, but Carol Dallon's got a little girl with Jacques' hair and Eloise's eyes and freckles, who just so happens to be called Amy. Heat's died down enough at that point for me to do a little digging, and what do I find but a fresh set of adoption papers for a girl that seems to have appeared ex nihilo."

"I want the whole file you've got on Amelia," Taylor said, after a moment. "Birth certificate, adoption papers, news paper clippings. Everything."

"What do you want it for?" he said, his voice guarded.

Her anger flared. "What the fuck do you think, Evan? If I wanted her dead or hurt, I could have done that easily. She's my daughter, you ass, and one of the only pieces of family I might have left. I want to make sure she's alright."

"Yeah, yeah," he said, taking a drag on his cigarette, but she could already hear him beginning to type away on his computer. "This a good number to reach you?"

"It's fine," she said. "Thanks."

"I'm not doing this for you," he said, acerbically. "But Jacques asked me to take care of his kid, if anything happened, and I couldn't do much then. I'm only doing this to right the scales, a little."

"Sure you are," Taylor said, but she couldn't help the small smile on her face. "Thanks, McGuire. I'll buy you a drink next time we meet."

"Don't fuckin' mention it," he muttered, and then there was a click and the line went dead.

She laughed a little—yeah, seemed like he hadn't gotten any less fearless with age. It took serious cajones to hang up on the Butcher.

Then she let herself feel everything she needed to feel. It was strange, how much Amy really felt like her own daughter. She'd known abstractly that she had inherited the emotions and memories of the other Butchers, but most of them had relationships with family that started at complicated and only went down from there. The pure love that Eloise held for her daughter was unusual, and it had blindsided Taylor completely. Despite knowing that it came from the other woman, though, Taylor couldn't help but feel it like it was her own.

Amy had looked tired, she thought. Tired, and withdrawn, and now that she thought about it some of the things she'd heard about Panacea's work at the hospital were more than a little concerning. And she was being raised by Brandish, and the first four Butchers had a pretty good idea of just what that woman was like—admittedly, their perspective was somewhat biased, but still. Taylor could admit she was concerned. Still, she could be wrong—maybe Amy was fine, maybe she was perfectly happy and she just had a case of resting bitch face. There was no sense in getting involved in Amy's life, not until she was sure that her presence would actually help. She'd do her own research, and see what she could dig up.

Amy Dallon was in a bad mood, but that wasn't particularly unusual. She'd enjoyed the little PRT-sponsored tour around the country, for the most part, but that had largely just been because it got her away from Carol and the tedium of normal hospital work. Now that she'd gotten back, she was stuck with both of those again, which meant she was back to sneaking out to Brockton General again just to get away from her mom. Well, and to assuage the guilt she felt whenever she wasn't healing.

The big thing that seemed to have changed since she was gone was the addition of a new person to Vicky's friend group. Amy only kind of knew Taylor—Vicky had mentioned that she'd joined their lunch table, and Amy could tell that she made Dean uncomfortable so that was a plus in her book—but none of that explained her strange behavior in the cafeteria on that first day, the staring and crying before running off. The girl had been quiet for the past week, although Amy had occasionally caught Taylor staring intently at Amy when she thought the healer wasn't looking. It had set her on edge, but she figured that she had healed someone the girl knew, or maybe she'd lost someone because Amy hadn't been there or hadn't been fast enough. Or hell, maybe she was just a cape nerd. Well, Taylor didn't act the same way around Vicky, so that probably wasn't it, but whatever. She'd deal with it if Taylor brought it up, but otherwise she did what she did best and ignored the problem, because honestly Amy had way too much to deal with already.

They didn't share any classes, meaning she only really saw the other girl at lunch, and Amy was an expert at deflecting conversation away from herself and toward Vicky. That the two seemed more than capable of spending the whole lunch period talking about cape nerd shit was just a bonus in her book. Taylor had tried a few times to engage Amy in conversation, but frankly Amy just didn't have the juice in her social battery to make nice with one of Vicky's new friends.

So she'd mostly put Taylor Hebert out of her mind—at least until the girl to turned up outside of her last class, looking like she was waiting for her.

"Amy? Do you think we could talk?" the girl said, staring at her with uncomfortably piercing eyes. "Uh—in private?"

Amy's temper flared–there was usually only one reason somebody wanted to talk to her in private. "Listen, if you're here about healing, there's a waitlist at Brockton General that takes care of that–"

The girl held up her hands. "Woah, woah! No, I'm not here for that at all. I actually was hoping I could speak to you about your parents."

That was… unusual. Amy gave her a suspicious look. "If you wanted that, why don't you just speak to Vicky? You guys seem on pretty good terms."

"Not your adopted parents, your birth parents," the girl said, and Amy tensed up. She didn't know much about who her actual parents were, but she'd worked out that her dad was a villain. Anybody coming to talk to her about him was probably a bad sign. At the same time, though, she couldn't deny that she really was curious about it.

"What do you know about them? How do you know about them?" she asked, despite herself.

"That's… honestly, a bit complicated. And something we should really talk about in private." Taylor shot a look at the other students around them, several of which were clearly rubbernecking.

Amy glared at her, but it didn't seem to have any effect. "Yeah, sure," she said, after a moment.

"403 is open," Taylor said, leading the way without hesitation. Amy followed behind, a little reluctant, but she couldn't deny she was a little curious about her parents. Well, she was pretty sure that she didn't really want to know whatever it was, but she also knew that not knowing would almost certainly be worse. Still, Amy wasn't stupid—she pulled out her phone and sent a text to Vicky, saying she was meeting with Taylor and to come find her if she didn't respond within 15 minutes. Not that she really thought the lanky girl would do anything, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Room 403 ended up being one of the extra chemistry lab rooms. Amy was pretty sure it was supposed to be locked, but Taylor just opened it and ushered her in. It was a little surreal to see the large space without any students or teachers. At least all the glassware and chemicals were locked up.

Taylor let the door swing shut, then turned to Amy and held out a hand. "Uh, I should probably formally introduce myself first. Taylor Hebert."

"Amy Dallon," Amy replied. She took Taylor's hand, mostly because it would tell her a lot. "You're a parahuman," she said right afterwards, not letting go.

The girl–the other cape–just nodded, with a kind of pained smile. "I am, yes. Bumble, from the Wards."

That wasn't the only thing she was picking up from the touch, though. Taylor's biology spread out in front of her, and it was really weird. There was the corona gemma and corona pollentia in the girl's brain, of course, but her skin was also stronger than it should be, and there was a knotted layer of subdermal tissue that her power somehow read as fungal, yet the girl's body wasn't rejecting it at all, and there was something strange going on with her bones and joints that reminded her a little of the hollow bones of a bird.

"What the hell," she muttered to herself, her power doing the metaphorical equivalent of gawking.

Taylor let out a rueful laugh, but she pulled her hand out of Amy's grip. "That's part of what I want to talk to you about. Can we sit down?" She gestured to one of the lab tables, where they'd be able to sit and talk with each other.

Amy nodded, still processing the girl's biology. It reminded her a little bit of Aegis' more extreme changes, but it seemed far more permanent–well, except for the thing with the bones, her power had read that as largely temporary. But it was weird, that was for sure, even for a parahuman–it was pretty rare for powers to modify the body like that, especially in such strangely disparate ways.

The girl took a deep breath, then crossed her fingers and fixed Amy with an unwavering look. "Okay, I should probably start with the beginning. Do you know who your birth parents were?"

"No," Amy admitted. "I mean, I have some theories, but I was too young to remember much. I never met my mom, and my Dad was just Dad to me."

Taylor nodded, as if she'd been expecting that. "You were born Amelia Claire Lavere to Jacques Lavere and Eloise Woodsworth, although those last two are better known as Marquis and Sepsis."

Amy jerked backwards, staring at Taylor with wide eyes. "What?"

The other girl grimaced a little. "I'm sorry, I'm sure that this can't be pleasant to hear, but I think you deserve to know the truth."

"What you say is the truth," Amy fired back, almost reflexively.

"That's fair. I have proof, but some of it won't make sense until I explain the whole story," the girl said. She slipped a phone out of her pocket and tapped a few times, before sliding it over to the girl. "That's a birth certificate for Amelia Claire Lavere, including the legal names of her parents. And that," she said, swiping the page to the side and showing a different form, "is documentation for the adoption of Amelia Dallon by Carol Dallon, dated to 2000—three days after Marquis was captured, signed by a judge that owed New Wave for saving his wife's life."

"How did you get access to these?" Amelia asked, looking over the pages. Certainly it seemed accurate, although she was sure somebody could fake them pretty easily. Then again, she could also probably get access to them herself, so there wasn't much point in doing that. It still didn't prove the claim about them being Marquis and Sepsis, though–not that she recognized the latter name, but it sounded pretty villainous. A part of her thought that it sounded strangely familiar, like she should recognize it, but she didn't.

Taylor shrugged. "They're all publicly available, technically. I reached out to the lawyer who used to represent Jacques Lavere in his civilian identity and got them from him. Somebody went to some effort to bury those documents–nothing illegal, though, and nothing that stopped a dedicated seeker."

Alarms were blaring in Amy's head, but she was too curious to do the sensible thing and signal the invisible alarm app on her phone. "Alright, I'm not saying I believe you, but I'll hear you out."

The other girl nodded, taking a deep breath as if to center herself. "Sepsis was a mercenary who mainly specialized in break ins and sabotage. Her power allowed her to rapidly decay anything she touched, spreading a field that would drastically age anything caught inside of it. Unlike Faultline, her power could easily effect both organics and inorganics, although it had a more limited range. When used on flesh, it would cause exiting bacteria to rapidly reproduce and create a spread of rot and necrosis, hence her name."

Amy flinched. "That sounds… horrifying."

Taylor shuddered a little, as if she had seen the power in person. "It really was, but it's worth noting that she didn't often use her power like that. At least, not then. Anyway, in late 1993, Eloise was hired for a job by a new villain who was rapidly rising in power, a man named Marquis. She did a few jobs for him, during that time, and they had something of a whirlwind relationship. It wasn't exactly a romance–I don't think that Eloise was really capable of that, and certainly not at that time in her life–but they slept together several times and unmasked to each other, before Eloise took a job that had her traveling out of state and the relationship fizzled out."

Amy could see where this was going, and she didn't like it. It was one thing to know that you were adopted, and another thing entirely to know that you were an accidental result of a wild fling between two notorious villains.

"A few months later, a new gang was forming in Brockton Bay, with an ethos of hedonism and wanton violence. Today, you'd recognize them as the Teeth. Sepsis was… dissatisfied with her lot in life, and had a degenerative neuromuscular condition–Lou Gehrig's disease–that meant she was unlikely to live longer than another five years, at best. The idea of living her last few years in that kind of unrestrained state was deeply appealing to her. She knew that she'd likely die earlier than that, living the way she did, but she was the kind of person who'd rather go out fighting, on her feet, than dealing with a slow and inevitable fall."

Amy blanched at that. "She joined the fucking Teeth? The Mad Max cosplaying assholes that go around murdering people?"

At the outburst, Taylor sighed and leaned back in her chair. "I wish I could tell you that they were better back then, but that would be a lie. Eloise was…not exactly suicidal, but she knew she was going to die soon anyways, and that changes priorities. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, Amy. Neither Sepsis nor Marquis were particularly good people. Then again, I might be biased, but I don't think they were particularly evil people either, as far as villains go. Neither of them delighted in killing, and they had people and things they cared about."

Taylor must have seen how Amy felt about that, because she changed the subject quickly. "Regardless, it wasn't long after she'd joined the Teeth that Eloise realized she was pregnant. The Teeth were the kind of 'ride or die' gang where she couldn't exactly leave, and she didn't want to either. At the same time, she didn't want to get an abortion either–a part of her had always wanted to make a mark on the world, and a daughter could be as much a legacy as anything else. She brought the baby to term, took care of her as best she could for a couple months–and she did love you, Amy, in her own way. But she knew that she couldn't take care of an infant long term and the Teeth were no place for a child to grow up–so she contacted Marquis. He was more than happy to take the child in, and even if he disagreed with some of Eloise's choices he was honorable enough to respect them."

Amy had picked up on something curious, and she asked about it because that was easier than trying to process everything else the girl was saying. "You sound like you're really familiar with Sepsis, but from everything you're saying it sounds like she died years ago," she said. "What gives?"

The other girl flinched a little. "That's, um, one of the things that's better explained after I finish the story. I think I should explain what happened with Marquis first, because that's the easier one. So. Jacques took you in, and from all accounts he did truly love you. This next part is a bit of speculation, but from the records I've found on the damages to the house and your sudden adoption, along with what Jacques shared with his lawyer before he was birdcaged, I'm almost certain it's what happened. Marquis never intended to give you up, but when you were about six years old the Brockton Bay Brigade found out who Marquis was and launched an assault at his home. He only gave in when Brandish threatened to destroy the closet that he was protecting–the closet where you were hiding–and he made her promise that she'd take care of you afterwards. In any event, Marquis went to the birdcage, and Amelia Lavere quietly came Amelia Dallon."

Amy wanted to deny it, but… she had memories, of darkness and screams and then the smell of burning wood as a brilliant sword sliced toward her head. She'd thought they were just a recurring nightmare, brought on by some horror movie she'd watched with Vicky when she was too young, but as Taylor talked it was like she was conjuring up the memories. Raised voices, and her muffled crying, and strangers in the house, and Daddy's face and he was also crying and that was wrong, Daddy shouldn't cry, and…

Amy blinked tears from her eyes, forcing her feelings down with long developed skills of emotional repression. "Okay. Okay. So that's what happened to me. Where was my mom during this?"

Taylor nodded, leaning back in the chair and interlacing her fingers. "Eloise was dead by then," she said bluntly, and Amy nodded–that was what she'd expected. But Taylor continued on. "As Sepsis' condition deteriorated, she began to get more and more reckless. At the same time, the current Butcher for the Teeth was a former hero named Hazard, who had been driven to madness by the two Butchers before him, and he was practically insensate. Sepsis decided that Hazard needed to be put down, before he caused any more damage."

At that, the healer's mouth dropped open. "No," she said, in a horrified whisper.

Taylor nodded, her face grim. "Yeah. Sepsis challenged the Butcher and killed him, taking on the mantle. She held it for around nine months, before her ALS weakened her to the point that Mimic was able to take her out by animating a whole host of bear traps into minions, and even Hazard's danger sense wasn't enough for her to make it out alive."

"My mom was the Butcher?" Amy asked, rhetorically.

"Um, I mean, not at the time she had you?" Taylor said, sounding almost sheepish.

"That's not the point!" Amy yelled. She was breathing hard, and at some point she had stood up from the table. Oh God, her Mom had been the Butcher. She knew about the Butcher and their Teeth, abstractly. She'd healed a few people in Boston on her recent tour around the country, people who had gotten on the wrong side of the Butcher before the latest incarnation was killed.

The idea of being related to that monster was just… horrifying. There was something that Taylor hadn't explained about all of this, though, and it nagged at her—in part because it was easier to focus on than that reveal. "How the hell do you even know all of this? Does the PRT have all this stuff on record, or something?"

Taylor shook her head. "No, not that I know of—certainly not in my clearance level. I have… let's call it a personal connection to Sepsis."

Amy blinked a few times. "What do you mean? Is she your Aunt or something? Are we related?"

"No, not really. Well, yes, in a way. Kind of?" Taylor bit her lip, and she looked to be hesitating. "I want to tell you the whole truth, but I also don't want you to freak out."

"Yeah, that's super reassuring," Amy said, falling back on snark because this whole thing was starting to freak her out.

Taylor laced her fingers together. "Sorry, I'm just trying to figure out how to tell this. I guess I'll start at the beginning. I triggered back in January, after some bullies at my old school did something… it was bad, that's all I want to say. I had a psychotic break as my brain adjusted to my powers, and when I got out of the hospital I didn't want to go back to school. My dad had a trip up in Boston for his work, and we agreed it would be good for me to get out of the Bay for a bit. And it was, until we got caught in the middle of a Teeth attack."

"Oh my god," Amy said, despite herself.

"Yeah, it was bad," Taylor said, with a grim smile that held no amusement at all. "I'd barely gotten a handle on my power at that point, but I had enough control to defend us. You might have seen that I control bugs, and I was too panicked to think clearly, especially when the Butcher appeared and went for my dad. I threw my whole swarm at her, and I ended up getting enough in her mouth to suffocate her."

Amy was emotionally and mentally exhausted, from everything that Taylor had been telling her, which is the only reason why it took her so long to put the pieces together. When she did, Amy felt herself freeze, blanch, and tense up all at the same time. "You killed the Butcher," she whispered.

Taylor–no, fucking Butcher–nodded, as if that was at all an appropriate response.

Amy felt her anger overpower her fear, loosing her tongue. "Why the fuck did you come here? Is this some kind of sicko initiation attempt? Are you trying to kidnap me? Because let me tell you, Butcher or not, if you hurt me you'll have the entire force of New Wave and the Protectorate and hell, the fucking Triumvirate coming down on you like a goddamn hammer, you understand?" At some point, Amy had stood up, the chair skittering back behind her.

At her words, Butcher's face fell, and she made to reach for Amy's hand, only to pause when Amy violently pulled her hand back. Then Amy thought better of it, because she was a Striker, and she reached over to grab Butcher's hand. She could read the girl's biology, and suddenly the weirdness made sense, because this was the result of a cobbled together amalgamation of fifteen different powers. She could also send a signal that would put the Butcher into a permanent coma, if she wanted to. She didn't know why she didn't, because that would definitely be the right thing to do. However, her grasp of biology also meant that she could read all the thousands of microexpressions and neural expressions and biochemical responses, which meant she'd know if the Butcher lied.

When Taylor spoke this time, her voice was sad. "No, it's not for anything like that. Amy, I promise you, I don't want you anywhere near the Teeth—hell, I don't want anything to do with them. But… being the Butcher, it's not just like having voices in my head. I have their memories, their thoughts, their emotions. I might be able to handle it better than my predecessors, since my power made me far better at multitasking, but in many ways I've become everyone who came before. And when I see you, I still feel Eloise's love for her child. And I'm worried about you, Amy."

She sounded sincere, but that didn't mean anything. But she also could read the responses of Butcher's body, and she knew that the cape was being completely sincere. She let out a disbelieving giggle that sounded insane even to her own ears. "You really expect me to believe that the Butcher is worried about me."

A flare of anger crossed over the girl– monster– Butcher's face, before she smoothed it over. "Yes, I do. Because a girl that I can't help but see as my daughter is self-destructing and nobody is doing a damn thing about it."

"You're younger than me!" Amy cried out, as if that was at all the point. "I don't need this patronizing bullshit from you!"

"You're burning yourself out at that fucking hospital and everyone's happy to let you!" Taylor shouted back, her fingers curling into claws–and that wasn't metaphorical, Amy's biosense could literally see claws emerging from the girl's fingertips before the Butcher seemed to force them away. She pulled her hand out of Amy's grip, standing up as well with her hands clenched to the side. "I looked into it—you're practically working a full time job on top of school, and from what I know of Carol I very much doubt you're getting any real emotional support!"

"I'm helping people! Does that disappoint you? Would you rather I be a monster like you, like my dad?"

"I'd rather you not be working thirty hours a week on top of school, at one of the most stressful jobs possible, while Carol fucking Dallon is content to let you destroy yourself for some good PR!"

"It's not your fucking choice! You abandoned me when I was a baby, you don't get to come back now and pretend you give a shit!" Amy yelled.

"I didn't want to do that, but there wasn't a better option! You think I didn't love you, from the moment that I first saw those two lines on the pregnancy test, and the whole time I felt you grow inside me? You think it didn't destroy me to give you up? But I knew you'd be better with him, and that I was too much of a fuck-up to give you what you needed! And I regret it, because I didn't get to see my baby grow up, and now the people calling themselves your parents are failing you as badly as I did!" There was a dull buzzing that echoed Butcher's yells, and faintly Amy remembered that the she had said she could control bugs.

"You don't get to come here and try to control my life, you fucking psychopath!" Amy screamed back at her.

"I don't want to control your life, Amelia! I just don't want to see you miserable, and I know you have been!"

"Get out," Amy said, tears of rage and terror filling her eyes. "Go the fuck away from me," she repeated, her voice cold.

Taylor stood up abruptly, her body tense, and then it seemed like her anger just slowly bled away, her shoulders falling and the claws retracting. Now she just looked vaguely sad. "The PRT already knows I'm Butcher," she said, quietly. "You can tell your sister, if you want to, but I'd ask you don't tell the rest of New Wave."

"And what are you going to do if I tell them?" Amy snapped. "Are you going to silence me?"

Taylor actively flinched away at that, and Amy almost felt bad. "No, Amy. I'd be upset, but I wouldn't hurt you. I'm trying to be a hero, too. I just don't trust Brandish or Lady Photon to act responsibly, given their track record."

After a long silence, as Amy just stood there and tried to process all of her emotions, Taylor sighed. "Here." One hand slipped into her pocket, and Amy tensed, but the girl only pulled out a slip of paper with some numbers on it—a phone number, Amy realized belatedly. "That's my personal cell. Feel free to contact me about anything, anytime."

Then Taylor was walking out of the room. Amy might have been able to grab her, to stop her from escaping, but she didn't. Taylor was a Ward, apparently. She was Bumble, and even if Amy had been on a tour around the country she hadn't missed the girl's debut, since Vicky wouldn't shut up about it in their texts. She was also Butcher, with a legacy of mass murder and memories of being Amy's biological mother. And part of her wanted to say that didn't count for shit, that family wasn't about blood but about love and shared connections, but it wasn't like Carol Dallon made a very compelling case for found family.

Eventually, an alarm went off on Amy's phone, letting her know that it was time to get to the hospital for her shift. On autopilot, she started to make her way toward the front of the school, where Vicky was probably waiting for her. She didn't know what the right thing to do about all of this was, or what the reasonable response to Taylor's confession would be. But the slip of paper with Taylor's number on it found its way to her pocket, not the trash can, and she supposed that counted for something.

Chapter Text

"Hey dad? I need to talk to you about something."

Danny looked up from the bank documents he'd been pouring over. The settlement from Winslow had been welcome, but it was going to be a nightmare figuring out how that effected the household income for taxes. He was pretty sure that it shouldn't be taxable, but it was a little unclear whether the payout fell entirely under personal injury given that there was a component for the payouts that had to deal with emotional distress and academic dishonesty. It was all over his head, and he couldn't exactly ask Alan Barnes for help with some of the legalese, which meant that he would almost certainly need to get an actual accountant for help.

Still, that could wait. Taylor had rarely initiated conversations before the incident in Boston, and she was only slightly better now (and Danny really didn't want to think about how gaining the memories of fourteen serial killers seemed to have made his daughter both happier and more sociable). Instead, Danny set down his pen and gave her his best smile, although he could tell that it was a little strained. "Sure, Taylor. What's going on?"

Taylor fidgeted a little, and he watched her absently crack the knuckles on her left hand—a new habit since Boston, which was another thing he didn't want to look into too closely. After a moment, she pulled the chair out across from him and sat down. In an almost apologetic voice, she said, "Well, the short story is that I'm kind of a mom now, and I wanted to ask you for advice."

Danny paused as his brain processed that. He blinked a few times, trying to make sense of what she was saying. Terror and sorrow and fury all danced through his chest, but none of those emotions quite reached his voice. "Who's the father?" he asked, in a deceptively calm voice. Perhaps not the most pressing question, but it was the first one his brain latched onto.

"Marquis," she said, as if that made any sense at all.

He tried to process that, as well, and wasn't able to. "I think I'm going to need the full story, little owl," he said.

~*~

Amy couldn't fall asleep.

That wasn't an usual state of affairs for her, but right now she wasn't agonizing about how many people might be dying while she was away from the hospital, or worrying about her unnatural feelings toward her sister. Instead, she just couldn't get Taylor's words out of her head. Amy had already known her father was likely a villain, but to discover that he was Marquis? She'd heard plenty about the man from Carol and Aunt Sarah, and even if they were definitely biased, he had sounded like an absolute monster. A principled monster in his own way, maybe, but a monster nonetheless. It was a hard pill to swallow, and that was only half of it.

Amy knew of the Butcher, in the way that anyone who lived on the East Coast knew of the quasi-immortal cape. She'd healed some of the damage that the previous few Butchers had inflicted, including wounds that had been exasperated by the decaying power that came from Sepsis. And yeah, there was no doubt the girl was the Butcher, not when the oddities of her biology matched up so perfectly with the details she'd found online: the fungus under the skin fit for Cordyceps, the strange integration of different animal biologies fit with Wendigo, and the toughened skin that seemed to be designed to resist extreme thermal change and concussive force lined up perfectly with Howitzer.

Amy turned over from lying on her right side to lying on her left, and then she flipped her pillow over as well for good measure so she could lie on the cold side. Idly, she wondered whether there was some tinker out there that could make a pillow that was always perfectly cold, and if they needed any healing. Then she pushed that thought away, because it wasn't helpful right now, and it sounded an awful lot like demanding payment for her power, which she frequently heard from Carol was both unethical and illegal.

God, Carol would have an absolute conniption fit if she found out. Actually, that was too tame a word. Amy knew that Carol hated the Butcher and the Teeth nearly as much as she hated Marquis and the Empire. If she found out that the newest Butcher was back in Brockton Bay, and that she was claiming that Amy was her daughter, Carol might just go and murder the Butcher herself, and holy shit that might actually be Amy's personal hell.

And what was Amy even meant to think about the fucking Butcher saying that she thought of Amy like a daughter? And why did that feel more real, more sincere, than any of those rare times when Carol had said the same thing? Fucking hell, where did Butcher get off saying that kind of thing?

She turned over again to her right side again. The pillow was too warm, but when she flipped it over the other side wasn't cool yet. The sheets felt too rough on her skin, even if she normally never paid any attention to them.

Fuck it. Butcher had said she could talk about it with Vicky, right? And hadn't Vicky been the one who had sat with the fucking Butcher for lunch over the past three weeks without ever noticing? It was time to make this whole thing as much her sister's problem as her own.

~*~

Danny had set the tax documents entirely aside, because there was no way he'd be in any mental space to deal with that for the rest of the day. The story had spilled from Taylor in one long stream, a mix of rehearsed details that he eventually realized were what she'd told to Amy, and a spattering of miscellaneous details and asides that he was guessing she had omitted from that conversation. It was clear that she felt a lot for Amelia, and regardless of whether those were feelings that Taylor would have had before Boston, he could tell that wasn't going to change any time soon.

When she reached the end of the story, he took a moment to marshal his thoughts. "Huh," he said, eventually. "I'll be honest, even with everything else going on in your life, I really wasn't expecting to become a grandpa this soon."

"Well, I wasn't exactly expecting to become a mother at fifteen," Taylor said, a little petulantly. "Much less to a girl a year older than me."

"I don't suppose you did. You seem to be taking it alright, though."

"It's far from the first life-changing event I've gone through since the start of the year," she said, her tone dryer than the Sahara, and Danny coughed to cover his surprised laugh. That had been another surprise—Taylor's sense of humor had changed by inheriting, but it seemed to him that she had gotten a fair bit funnier, which he really hadn't expected. He pulled himself together, though, because she had come to him for a reason.

"Well, I guess my first question is what you're looking for from me, Taylor," Danny said, scratching at his five o'clock shadow as he thought. "If you're looking for emotional support, then I can definitely give it to you. I could also give you some parenting tips, but given that Amelia is older than you I'm not sure how much help I'd be."

She cracked her knuckles again. "Do you think I made the right choice, telling her?" she said, after a moment.

"I can't answer that for sure," he said, softly. "It's not exactly a situation I've run into before. However, from what you've said, it seems like Amelia needs some more people in her corner, and I can tell that you care deeply for her. Telling her might end up causing more problems than it solves, but I think the better question for you is if you feel like you could live with yourself if you hadn't said anything."

Taylor's response at that was immediate, an immediate head shake. "No, I couldn't. Dad, she's working herself into the ground, and I'm pretty sure she's dealing with severe depression and self-loathing. I couldn't just watch that happen from the sidelines without trying to do something."

"I think that answers your question, then. And for what it's worth, I'm proud of you for trying to help her. Let me know if there's anything your old man can do to help, too." He paused, as something occurred to him. "Still, you should probably inform the Director about all of this. It's not the kind of thing you want to blindside your boss with."

Taylor froze, then dropped her head into her folded arms resting on the table with a dull 'thunk' sound. "Fmrck mrh," she muttered into the table.

"Sounds about right, from what I know about the woman," he said, somewhat unhelpfully.


~*~

Amy knocked softly on Vicky's door. When there was no answer, she knocked a little louder, and was rewarded with the sound of a chair being pushed back. It had never been a question about whether Vicky was up this late, of course. Her sister had always been something of a night owl and it was quite rare for the girl to get to bed before midnight. Amy herself was the opposite, tending to get tired around 9 or 10 pm. Of course, her bouts of insomnia meant that she didn't always fall asleep then, and that had been exacerbated by getting powers and becoming aware of just how many people died while she wasn't there to heal them, but that didn't change the fact that her body wanted her to both fall asleep early and wake up early.

A few seconds later, the door swung open and there was Vicky, floating an inch or so off the ground without seeming to even be aware of it. She was wearing an oversized shirt and short shorts, and she looked so radiant and beautiful in that moment that Amy had to bite back a gasp. Then Amy grabbed hold of her attraction for her sister, that horrible incestuous urge that she couldn't seem to shake, and she stuffed it as far down into the depths of her mind as she could.

Vicky blinked a few times, looking down at her. "Ames? Is this urgent, because I'm kind of in the middle of—" she said, and then she cut herself off as she seemed to take in Amy's expression. "Nevermind, it doesn't matter. Are you okay?"

Amy tried to say that she was fine, but the words wouldn't come out. Unbidden and unwanted, she found that tears had started to track down her face and she couldn't make them stop.

"Okay, shit, this is serious," Vicky said, almost to herself. "Alright, I think this calls for HCIC protocol."

That comment startled a laugh from Amy, which was apparently enough to set her off. HCIC was short for Hot Chocolate and Ice Cream, and it was a protocol that Amy herself had coined after helping Vicky through several of her break-ups with Dean.

Amy started crying harder, and now she was letting out little choking sobs that seemed to concern Vicky even more. With a practiced move, Vicky swept Amy up into a bridal carry and carefully flew the two of them out of her room and down the stairs to the kitchen. Setting Amy down at one of the chairs that faced the bar table that separated the kitchen from the dining room, Vicky flicked the adjustable kitchen lights onto their lowest setting. She got milk from the fridge and poured some into a pot to start it boiling, and then she grabbed the carton of Chunky Monkey from the freezer and set it on the counter.

While Vicky was dealing with procuring sweet treats, Amy tried to get herself under control. Slowly, she was able to knuckle down the overwhelming feelings that had taken her by surprise. Eventually, she was able to stop the tears, and it left her feeling just kind of numb instead. She tried to focus on watching Vicky flit around the kitchen, and tried not to watch Vicky's butt, and tried not to think about what Taylor had said, and tried not to think about how Carol had chewed her out for like ten minutes today for going somewhere alone with a random and unknown person. Amy was just glad that she'd remembered to cancel the alarm in time, otherwise she'd probably have gotten a much longer lecture on following protocol and not causing false alarms.

There was a phenomenon in the field of behaviorism that she'd learned about last semester—she'd been excused from taking biology for obvious reasons, and partly out of an attempt to figure out why she was so fucked up, Amy had decided on psychology to fulfill her science credit. About fifteen years before Scion appeared, there was this one scientist who did this experiment where he shocked a bunch of dogs, giving some of them the ability to turn off the shocks by pressing a lever. The ones who weren't able to control the shocks learned that the pain was inescapable, and later they didn't even try to escape from the shocks even when all they had to do was jump over a wall. The guy had called it 'learned helplessness'.

Amy sometimes felt like one of those dogs, especially when it came to Carol. When she was younger, she'd tried so hard to make Carol proud, to get the woman to treat her the same way that she did Vicky. The thing was, no matter what she did or tried, Carol seemed to only find some new thing to criticize her over, and that had only gotten worse after she'd gained her powers. Carol hadn't even thanked her for saving Vicky's life, she'd just immediately started talking about how dangerous Amy's powers could be and how important it was that she kept them under control. And Amy could admit that she'd more or less given up on trying to please Carol—the only reason she was still going to the hospital all the time was because it was the only way to quiet, even temporarily, that little voice in her head that told her she was a monster and that her inaction was killing people. And now that she knew that she was the daughter of two of the most notorious villains in the city's history, could she even say that Carol was wrong?

Amy was shaken from her thoughts by the clink of a mug being set down in front of her, filled to the brim with hot cocoa and topped with a heap of mini-marshmallows. Vicky had another mug in her own hands and, as Amy watched, took a quiet slurp from the top.

"Spill," Vicky said, and when Amy didn't immediately answer she went full speed ahead into a rambling series of questions. "Is this about what happened with Taylor? Because I heard that she wanted you guys to go somewhere alone, and Jennie said she knew a guy who'd been close by who heard some yelling. Did she ask you to heal someone or something? Cause I know that you hate it when people do that. Or wait, did she ask you out or something?"

"Ew, no," Amy said, almost automatically, then realized how that would look. "Uh, not because I'm homophobic or anything, or that Taylor's unattractive, because she's definitely not, but—it's complicated. Actually I should probably start at the beginning. But you have to promise not to tell Carol."

"What? Why not?" Vicky said, her brows scrunching slightly.

"Like I said, it's complicated," Amy grumbled. She took another sip of her hot chocolate, wiping off the chocolate mustache with the back of her hand. One thing she liked about hot drinks was that there were hardly any microbes in them for her power to pick up on. One time she'd tried a probiotic drink and she'd almost fallen over from the sudden influx of information. "She told me some stuff, and said I could tell you, but she didn't want Carol to know—and frankly, I don't want her to know either."

Vicky bit her lip, hesitating for a moment, before she caved as Amy had known she would. "Yeah, fine, I won't tell mom. Now spill."

"Do you know that Taylor's a Ward?" Amy said. "That she's Bumble?"

Vicky's brow furrowed, but she nodded. "Yeah, she told me when we first met. Are you sure that she's okay with you discussing this with me?"

Amy nodded. "Like I said, she told me I could tell you all of this. But, uh, what do you think about Bumble?" she asked, looking down. "Like, as a hero."

For all the Vicky was energetic and excitable, to the point that she often exuded something of a golden retriever energy, she was far from stupid. Her eyes narrowed in focus as she considered the question. "Well, I don't know all that much about her work as a hero, but from what Dean's told me and what I could see on that video in the fight with Circus, she seems competent and fairly restrained."

"Restrained?" Amy asked, blinking a few times.

"Yeah," Vicky said, with a shrug. "I mean, I can think of like five pretty nasty ways she could have ended that fight with her bug power alone, and that's not even getting into her brute powers or that matter reshaping field. She didn't do that, though, and she actually repaired the shop's window afterwards, apparently. You have any idea how rare it is for a Brute to show up to a cape fight and end the encounter with no collateral damage, much less a lower level of collateral damage than when she started? And that's doubly true when you're talking about a new and inexperienced Brute."

"Well, that's because she's not inexperienced," Amy said, resting the cocoa between her fingers and focusing on the warmth. "Fuck, I don't know how to put this without freaking you out."

"Just say it," Vicky said, a concerned expression crossing her face. "Because if you don't I'm just going to invent reasons to freak out, and they're definitely going to be crazier than whatever the truth is."

"Taylor's the Butcher," Amy said, the words just spilling out in almost a continuous ramble. "She's the Butcher, and she inherited like a month ago. Oh, and also one of the past Butchers was my mom, and that was why Taylor was talking with me today. She said she's worried that I'm working too much and don't have enough support."

Her sister just stared at her for a long, long moment. Slowly, she set her half-empty mug of cocoa down on the counter. "Okay," she said, eventually, staring at Amy as if waiting for her to say the punchline. "You called my bluff. I doubt even I'd think up something that crazy."

Amy laughed, and the sound that came out was a touch too hysterical to be taken as actual mirth. "Right? I mean, she just showed up and—you know how I can do my whole polygraph routine when I'm touching someone?" Vicky nodded, most likely remembering all the times she'd served as a guinea pig while Amy had learned to pickup on the differences between truths and lies in her biokinetic sense. "Well, Taylor let me touch her hands pretty much the whole time, and I could tell that she believed everything she was telling me. She even had my birth certificate and records of my adoption."

"Can we go back to the part where Taylor's the Butcher?" Vicky said, her voice taking on a slightly strangled tone. "Like, this is the Taylor that I've been having lunch with for the past two weeks? The one that somehow manages to be effortlessly cool and hopelessly dorky at the same time? She's the newest avatar of the mass murdering Mad Max cosplaying serial killer?"

"That's what she said, and she wasn't lying," Amy said. "And more than that, her biology confirmed it as well. She had the fungal network that I'd expect from Cordyceps, the animal parts from Wendigo, and the fire-resistant skin that would come from Howitzer."

"Fucking hell," Vicky said, staring up at the ceiling as though it would reveal some secret that could make it all make sense. "Does the PRT know? What about the other Wards?"

"Yeah," Amy said, with a shrug. "At least, the PRT definitely does. I'm pretty sure the Wards do as well, given the way Dean always seems like he's about to shit himself whenever she's nearby."

"Oh my god, that makes so much sense," Vicky said, one hand coming up to massager her eyes. "I was trying to figure out why he always got so freaked out around her, and the best I could come up with was that she was triggering his arachnophobia or something."

Amy couldn't help it—she burst out into laughter. "Oh my god, I could totally see it," she said. "The great Gallant, taken down by a jumping spider and a couple quips."

Vicky gave her a gentle shoulder whack. "If we've all had our fun at my boyfriend's expense," she said, mock threateningly, and Amy threw up her hands in surrender. Then, suddenly, her eyes went wide. "Oh my god," she said, her voice a mix of horror and admiration. "Holy shit, Ames, what a fucking troll."

"What? What happened?" Amy asked.

"She…" Vicky started to laugh, then, and her next sentence was interspersed with giggles. "She said that she learned Japanese from a friend that she'd had a Quarrel with, right before she died! And Dean was right there, and he couldn't say anything."

"Oh my god," Amy said, as it clicked. She'd been in Boston on her tour, and she'd heard what happened to the last Butcher—who she recalled was named Quarrel. "Oh my god." And then she was giggling, and that turned to full blow belly laughs, and soon the two sisters were practically collapsed against the kitchen counter as they tried to keep their giggle fit from waking up Mark or Carol.

Eventually, once they calmed down, Vicky got a thoughtful expression. Quietly, she said, "She's sane, though."

Amy nodded. "I heard plenty about the Butcher on my tour, y'know. Healed several of their victims, including people who had been injured by Sepsis' power. My biological mom's power, apparently. But, yeah—from the stories they told me, it sounds like no Butcher has been capable of so much as completing a full sentence since Howitzer. By all accounts, Taylor should have gone mad with the inheritance, but she just… isn't."

"Powers are bullshit," Vicky said, and Amy couldn't really argue about it. "The mom thing, though. How are you feeling?"

Amy let out a hollow laugh, so unlike the actual joy she felt before. "How am I supposed to feel? I mean, it's not like I've got a great track record with Carol, y'know." She could see Vicky feel the urge to defend her mom, and she could see when her sister mastered that urge and stayed silent. Amy appreciated that discretion. After all, for all that Carol was ostensibly better to Vicky than she was to Amy, well. Even a second generation cape didn't just trigger in the middle of a basketball game out of nowhere.

After a moment, Amy continued. "Vicky, is it wrong if a part of me is happy? I mean, I know that Sepsis was a mass murderer and a villain, but… Taylor seems nice, and the way she was talking, about how much time I was at the hospital, and how she was worried about me for my sake, because a part of her still loved me. It just, I dunno. I was angry in the moment, but it kind of felt nice."

"No, Ames, that's not wrong at all," Vicky said, and she floated over to pull Amy into a tight hug.

"Y'know, I thought that your dad was the villain," Vicky said. "At least, that's what it seemed like the few times mom talked about it."

"He was as well, apparently," Amy said, with a half shrug. "Marquis."

"Damn."

"Yeah."

Amy swirled the last of her cocoa around in her mug. The house was silent around them, and outside the Dallon household snow was gently falling in the January night. When Taylor had told her everything, it had felt like the end of the world—or the end of her world, at least—but somehow, when she told everything to Vicky, it seemed just a little easier. Maybe this would be okay. Maybe she could reach out to Taylor after all, and maybe the other girl might actually be able to help. Amy knew she was burning out, she'd seen it plenty in the nurses and doctors at the hospital, she just didn't know what to do about it. But it occurred to her that, just maybe, if a girl with fourteen supervillains in her head and a long legacy of murder still managed to be a hero, it might not be too late for Amy herself.

She was taking a last sip of hot chocolate, although at this point it was honestly half melted marshmallow, when Vicky spoke again, her voice syrupy with calculated innocence.

"Since we're sisters, does this mean I should call Taylor mommy?"

Amy coughed in shock and a melted marshmallow came out of her nose.

~*~

Emily Piggot grimaced as she went over the damage report. Cape fights often caused damage, that was just the natural consequence of battles between people with phenomenal powers and less than phenomenal control. Fortunately, repair funds didn't come from the PRT or Protectorate budgets so long as she could demonstrate that members of those organizations had taken all reasonable precautions to prevent collateral damage. Unfortunately, that also meant their organization had to clearly demonstrate, for every recorded instance of parahuman caused damage, that it had been both caused by a villain, and that there was no reasonable way that the heroes on scene would have been able to safely prevent that damage. The companies that offered villain insurance to buildings were willing to jump on even the barest hint of preventable damage, and while those cases were usually settled by their legal team long before they saw a courtroom, it still tied up resources that she really couldn't afford to lose. At least there was more leniency for the actions of the Wards, in part because those same insurance companies rarely wanted to face the combined legal force of the PRT and the Youth Guard.

Currently, she was looking over damages caused in a recent skirmish between several members of the Protectorate and four members of the Empire. A concerned citizen had called in an Empire initiation happening near them, which had resulted in Dauntless, Assault, and Battery responding and apprehending the gang members and their recruits. That, in turn, had led to a swift response from Krieg, Fenja, and Menja, who had been flown in by Rune. In the end, they had rescued the six people who had been kidnapped and would have been maimed or killed for the initiation, but the fight had ended up damaging not just the abandoned office where the initiation was taking place but also several of the nearby buildings. That was almost a foregone conclusion when fighting two women who could grow as large as an Endbringer as well as a teenager who could and did telekinetically throw cars and manhole covers with wild abandon. The Damage Response Division had done a good job on the write up, fortunately, and she didn't spot any obvious errors or mistakes. She rarely did—they were damn good at their job, a product of having ample experience in a city like Brockton Bay—but given just how disastrous it could be for the budget when they screwed up, Emily made sure to always read the reports before they were sent out to the city and the appropriate insurance agencies. That, and reading those reports kept her grounded and made sure she never forgot the very real cost of cape fights.

A soft knock at her door caused her to check her watch and then grimace. She'd worked straight through lunch, apparently, and it was already time for her 1 o'clock appointment. Closing out of the report, Emily shifted slightly in her seat as she prepared to deal with one of her most troublesome Wards, although admittedly not by any of the girl's own efforts. "Come in," she called out.

Bumble walked in, fluffy antenna bouncing in a chaotic and ridiculous manner. "Hello, Director," she said, smiling, but there was a nervousness to her that Emily didn't like. Well, she was always on edge when one of the ENE capes requested a meeting, and especially when it was one of the Wards.

"Your request said that you wanted to talk about something sensitive," she said, inclining her head in greeting.

"I did. Or, well, I do, I suppose," the girl said, taking a deep breath. "It has to do with Amelia Dallon."

Emily cocked her head to the side, just slightly. "Panacea? I wasn't aware that you had met her."

Bumble shook her head. "Well, I haven't met her in costume yet, but we both go to Arcadia and I usually sit at the same table as Victoria Dallon. She was gone for the the first two weeks after I'd joined the Wards. I'm sure you're aware of that, since you were the one who arranged for her to be out of the city to keep her safe from the Butcher."

The last part was said calmly, and Emily did her best not to react, but she couldn't control the way that her heart rate had jumped. She considered denying it, but if the girl had worked out this much already, she doubted that it would do much good. "I did, yes," she confirmed, keeping her expression and tone carefully neutral, even as one hand snuck under her desk to hover by the emergency button. It wouldn't do much for her, if Butcher decided to attack her, but it would at least warn the rest of the PRT.

The girl looked confused for a moment, and then let out a little laugh. "Oh, I don't blame you for it, Director. In fact, I'm glad that you were looking out for her welfare, even if it's just because she's too valuable of an asset for the PRT to risk. I imagine you would have done a similar thing to the other Wards, if you were able to figure something out in time."

Emily winced internally. Yes, she'd looked into getting the other Wards away for a time, but her hands had been tied by legislation and, ironically enough, Youth Guard imposed protections related to civilian identities and prejudicial treatment. She was only able to get Panacea out because she wasn't part of the Protectorate, and even that had burned a substantial amount of political capital to pull off, but she'd weighed that against the need to have the healer stay safe and capable of healing victims in the wake of a potential Butcher attack and found it well worth the price. Still, she'd felt the failure to protect the other Wards strongly.

"What did you want to discuss about Miss Dallon?" Emily said, choosing to move past that land mine of a conversation.

Bumble took a deep breath, looking serious and a little sad despite her bright and goofy costume. "I recently found out that one of the past Butchers was her mother."

Well. That had certainly not been on Emily's bingo sheet this year. "I see," she said, keeping any judgement clear from her tone. "I'm afraid I don't quite understand why you felt the need to tell me that in person."

Bumble leaned back in her chair. "Being the Butcher isn't exactly a neat and tidy process," she started, her voice quiet and almost contemplative. "I mean, I guess that's obvious, but even with my capacity for multitasking, it's still complicated. I don't just inherit powers and memories, I get their personalities, their preferences, their affections and opinions and everything else that makes up a person. Most of the time, I'm pretty good at keeping all of that separate from me—from Taylor Hebert—but the best I can do is draw lines between myself and the others, and those lines can get pretty blurry."

"That's not the most reassuring thing I've heard," Emily said, dryly.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," Bumble replied, wincing. "I'm still in control, and I'm not about to go off killing people just because I get a little, uh, soupy."

"Soupy," she repeated.

"Soupy," Bumble confirmed.

Emily closed her eyes and asked the uncaring universe for strength. "I assume you're asking for permission to tell her your identity?"

"Ah, well." Bumble looked almost embarrassed. "You know that old saying about how it's better to ask for forgiveness?"

At that, Emily closed her eyes and fell back on some of the breathing habits she'd learned from her therapist after Ellisburg, when she'd kept having panic attacks. "You already told her," she said.

"I did, yes." Bumble looked remarkably unrepentant.

Emily considered it. She looked over the situation, turning it over and trying to figure out which of her plans and responsibilities had been affected by that change. "Should I assume that Brandish knows?"

"I asked Amy not to tell her," the cape said. "I don't know if she'll follow that request, but given what I know about their relationship it seems likely. I'm guessing that Glory Girl knows, though."

"Right," Emily said. "Technically speaking, your secret identity is your own business, and you may reveal it to whoever you desire so long as it doesn't put other hero's identities at risk. Moreover, given that Panacea is both an open cape and an independent hero in good standing, I don't anticipate there being any problems with her knowing your identity, nor in any connection you might seek to forge with her in your personal life." With her legal responsibility out of the way, Emily fixed the cape with a stern gaze. "That being said: in the future, if you wish to reveal your identity to someone, there is a specific procedure that we highly recommend members of the Wards or Protectorate follow."

"I understand, ma'am," Bumble said, nodding respectfully.

Emily felt one of her eyes twitch. "Completely unrelated, I've decided to assign you twenty hours of work with the PR department for this upcoming month, given the popularity you've experienced following your debut. Is that agreeable to you, Bumble?"

It was a soft punishment, but given that she couldn't technically punish the girl for telling the Dallon girl about her identity, it was as much as she could do. And honestly, she wasn't even sure if it was a punishment—most of the Wards hated PR, but from what she'd heard Bumble had something of a knack for it.

"That sounds acceptable, Director."

"Get out of my sight," Emily said.

"Ma'am," Bumble said, and with a faint pop of displaced air she was gone.

Emily stared at where the cape had been and let out a deep sigh. "Never should have let her and Mouse Protector meet," she mumbled to herself.

A part of her wanted to leave work, go to the nearest bar, and get black out drunk on cheap scotch until she didn't have to think about superheroes, supervillains, and the reincarnating serial killer that had little respect for authority and an unusual family connection to Brockton's resident miracle healer. Her shot kidneys wouldn't thank her for that, though, so she'd just have to settle with getting through the day and relaxing with a nice lemonade shandy and some old episodes of the Great British Bake Off.

Still, no matter how stressful or unpleasant it was to be the Director of the PRT ENE, she could admit that, at the very least, it was never boring.

Chapter Text

Vicky loved flying. That probably wasn’t very surprising—after all, it wasn’t at the top of everyone’s dream power list for nothing—but even more than her cousins or Aunt, Vicky was in love with the act of flight. There was just something so utterly liberating about soaring through the air, letting all her petty daily struggles fall away with the ground below. Her forcefield even negated some of the other complaints she’d heard from other flyers, like the wind making it hard to keep their eyes open, or bugs being splattered against her face.

Amy, by contrast, did not love flying. Vicky knew that because she could always feel just how tense her sister would go in her arms whenever she flew her around. Not that Amy ever complained, but Vicky wasn’t stupid. She didn’t hate it, at least, or maybe just saw it as a necessary evil, but that made some sense. After all, Vicky’s powers were made for flight, and there was ample evidence that parahuman powers interfaced directly with the brain to make their use seem intuitive and, often, pleasurable. She wondered, idly, how that must work for the Butcher—did the inheritance come with novel neuron growth to accommodate the new powers, or was the cape stuck with the neural interface for their original power? Could that contribute to why powers seemed to be weaker in subsequent Butchers, and perhaps even the mental instability? Did something about Taylor’s original power have something to do with why she hadn't gone mad? 

Vicky was honestly still trying to come to terms with the idea that sweet, dorky Taylor was also the Butcher. It just didn’t compute. Well, there were some things that made some more sense. How Taylor seemed to know so much about so many random places and bits of trivia, or how she seemed to be more knowledgeable about Parahuman Studies than Vicky’s own professors. And Taylor did move with a grace that at times came off as almost predatory, but that could just as easily been from dancing or something. But she’d been friends with Taylor since her transfer to Arcadia, and Vicky knew that the last Butcher had been killed several weeks before that.

And more than that, Vicky had been watching Bumble’s career with no little degree of interest! She’d watched her introduction, seen the clips of the fight between Bumble and Circus, and had perused several videos of Bumble interacting with civilians in her cheerful and goofy way while out patrolling. She’d been more than a little impressed by the other cape, to be honest. Vicky wasn’t really sure if she was more or less impressed now, knowing just how strong Bumble really was. After all, Vicky herself was more than aware of the learning curve that came with Brute powers, and the massive property damage that could accompany it.

Below her, Vicky saw the boardwalk rapidly approaching, and she angled into a descent. Amy held on tight, her arms wrapped around Vicky’s shoulder. There was a small parking lot a few blocks off the boardwalk proper that was usually fairly vacant, and Vicky had taken to using it as a more private place to land. She flew down, twisting in mid-air as she got close, and setting down gently on the cracked asphalt. Amy slipped out of her arms and then unbuckled herself from harness that was attached to Vicky’s chest. A moment later, Vicky was unstrapping the harness as well, slipping it into her shoulder bag. Just because Vicky could carry Amy safely and did it in emergency situations didn’t mean that she didn’t take precautions with her sister’s life, after all.

“How are you feeling, Ames?” she asked, as the two of them made their way over toward the cafe where they’d agreed to meet Taylor.

“How the fuck do you think I’m feeling?” came the acerbic reply. Amy looked down at her feet, kicking a bit of asphalt across the road. “We’re about to go and meet the Butcher, and oh yeah, she apparently has memories from my dead mom, who was also a villain.”

“Sounds like you’re anxious,” Vicky offered.

Amy’s glare could have stripped paint from the walls, but Vicky was used to her sister’s more acerbic behavior. “Yes, I’m anxious, are you kidding me? How are you not anxious? Why are you even okay with us going here on our own without backup?”

And, well, Vicky couldn’t really blame her. Amy had been gone for the two weeks when Taylor had first transferred in, and she hadn’t exactly seen much of the girl outside of that. That didn’t stop her from rolling her eyes. “We don’t need backup, Amy. Taylor’s nice, she’s not going to hurt us or anything.”

“Did you forget about the part where she has fourteen insane murderers in her head?” Amy said, the last part coming off as a hiss.

“No, I didn’t. But I also didn’t forget about the part where she’s a Ward, and she hasn’t hurt anyone since she inherited. And I’m pretty sure the PRT’s been on the lookout for that kind of behavior.” Vicky wrapped an arm around her sister, pulling her into a hug. “But I don’t think that’s really what’s bothering you, is it? I mean, you yourself said she was telling the truth when she said she wanted to be a hero. And you still don’t want to tell Mom.”

Amy bristled for a moment before she slumped into Vicky’s side. In a much quieter voice, she said, “I don’t know what she wants from me.”

“From what you said, it sounds like she wants to be family,” Vicky said, matching her sister’s tone.

Amy sighed. “I don’t… I don’t know how to be her family, not really.”

And Vicky was about to say something about how that didn’t make sense, because Amy had a family, but then she considered how her mom treated her sister and thought better of it. Instead, she said, “I’m pretty sure there’s no guide-book on how to connect with someone carrying the imprint of your dead mother in their head,” Vicky said, lightly. “Which also means there’s no wrong way to do it.”

Her sister snorted. “Bet I find it anyway,” she muttered.

And that, well, Vicky couldn’t let stand. She reached over and gave her sister a light noogie, ignoring Amy’s yelp of irritation. “Don’t talk about my sister like that,” she admonished, lightly.

Amy grumbled a little, but now they were reaching a more populated area and neither of them felt comfortable carrying on with the conversation. Besides, it was really a retread of the conversation they’d been having for the past few days, ever since Amy had told her about Taylor in their kitchen. Vicky changed the subject, complaining about the bullshit homework assignments that Mr. Trellis had been assigning them in Econ. Her sister made vague sounds of agreement, but Vicky knew that if there was something Amy really wanted to talk about instead she would have brought it up. 

A few minutes later, they had made their way to the coffee shop and entered, the bell ringing cheerfully above the door. And there was Taylor Hebert, sitting at one of the tables with her long legs crossed at the ankles and her hair falling around her shoulders, wearing the same comfortable t-shirt and jeans combo that she seemed to favor. She seemed to be just relaxing with a latte in front of her and an old-looking book in one hand. As they entered, she looked up and met Vicky’s gaze with a little wave. Vicky waved back.

Vicky got a decaf carmel macchiato with two extra pumps of carmel, and she categorically refused to feel bad about it. Amy got a triple espresso, despite it being nearly 1pm, but apparently constant access to cheap hospital coffee had wrecked her sister’s caffeine tolerance and also her taste buds, since she preferred her coffee black. It made Vicky shiver just thinking about it, to be honest. The café was pretty dead right now, only Taylor and a single barista, and ordering went fast. It was only a couple minutes before their orders were ready, and then they were sitting down across from someone who might very well be the most dangerous cape in the country, outside of the Triumvirate—and even then, there was some debate.

Taylor gave them a small smile as they sat down, sliding a small bookmark into place and set the book down. “Hello Vicky, Amelia.”

“Hey Taylor!” Vicky shot back, because despite all the revelations this was still the friend she liked to geek out about parahuman studies with—and honestly, it made some sense now why Taylor was so knowledgeable on the subject. “Whatcha reading?”

The girl twisted the book around so Vicky could read the spine. “Frankenstein,” she said, with a casual half-shrug. “I’ve found myself interested in the subjects of family and monsters, lately, and Frankenstein himself is an interesting case study.”

And something about that caused Vicky’s brow to furrow. She’d had to read Frankenstein back in middle school, and that wasn’t right. “Wasn’t Frankenstein the doctor, though? I thought the monster didn’t have a name.”

Taylor’s grin turned mischievous. “Ah, you’re correct that the creature doesn’t have a name, at least not one that’s explicitly given. Well, given he sees himself as Victor’s son, in a way, it’s not unreasonable that he would claim the family name as well. But there’s a saying I’m fond of: knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the name of the monster, but wisdom is knowing that Victor Frankenstein is the monster. Although really, both of them behave plenty monstrous during the story.”

“I suppose you’d know about that,” Amy said irritably, and Vicky winced. She knew that when Amy felt vulnerable, she tended to draw a spiky shell around herself, but it could be pretty abrasive for people who didn’t know her.

“I would, yes,” Taylor said, a complicated expression crossing her face. After a moment, she sighed and said, “You know, the hardest part of the inheritance wasn’t all the voices or the violence—although that was horrible, don’t get me wrong. The hardest part was realizing that almost every one of my predecessors had people they loved and cared about, passions and preferences. They might have been horrible people, but they were still terribly human.”

“Almost every one?” Vicky asked, even if that wasn’t really the point. Sue her, she was curious.

“Well, Two and Twelve were both diagnosed sociopaths, so they didn’t exactly feel love like everyone else,” the girl said with a shrug. “But the others… it’s hard to reconcile how someone can take so much pleasure in death and destruction, and in so many other ways seem completely normal. It’s an uncomfortable thing to realize.”

Amy crossed her arms. “Aren’t you worried about being overheard?”

Taylor just shrugged. “By who? The barista’s been listening to an audiobook on psychology since she gave you your drinks, and I can track everyone within a thousand feet of us. I did a sweep for bugs, too, although I’m less confident about that—and if someone’s got a tinkertech mic set up, then we’re screwed to begin with. But that would be a risk pretty much everywhere, so.”

Vicky took a moment to run through what she knew about the Butcher’s power sets, trying to figure out how she could know all that. Her eyes widened. “Wait, did you get all that just from your bug control?”

Taylor brought up her hand in a ‘so-so’ gesture. “Partly, although I confirmed there were no other capes nearby with Devein’s bloodsight and I checked for tech around us with Mason’s matter manipulation.” She gave the two of them a wan smile. “But that’s not really what you want to talk about, is it? How are you two holding up? I know this is a lot to drop on you all of a sudden.”

“I’m fine,” Amy snapped, almost reflexively, before Vicky could reply.

Taylor’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t have to be, Amelia,” she said, softly. “You can be hurt, or confused, or angry.”

“Alright, then I’m pissed!” Amy said, slapping the table for emphasis. “Where the fuck do you get off trying to tell me what to do, or be my… my mom? You’re younger than me! And why do you care, when you’ve never actually met me before, and meanwhile Carol doesn’t—” she cut herself off.

Vicky felt frozen, like she always was when Amy brought up their mom. And Vicky knew that the way Mom treated Amy wasn’t right, and she tried to do what she could to help her sister, but so often she just didn’t know what would actually help Amy and what would make the whole situation worse.

Taylor didn’t hesitate, though, reaching across the table and grabbing Amy’s hand. It was both a gesture of comfort and an expression of intense vulnerability, putting her biology under the control of a biokinetic. Even if Taylor didn’t know the entirety of Amy’s powerset, she had to know that it would be easy enough to knock her out. But if she felt any fear, she didn’t show it. “I don’t know why Carol acts like she does,” she said, her voice soft. “I don’t know why she can’t see what a brilliant daughter she has, why she can’t see how much you’re giving up to help other people. But I can tell you one thing: whatever is wrong between you two, that’s on her, not you. She’s the one who adopted you, and she’s the one who agreed to be a parent. If she’s not able to do that, then that’s her fault.”

And Vicky almost wanted to speak up, to defend her mom, but it wasn’t like anything Taylor had said was wrong. Carol Dallon was an… okay mother to her, although even Vicky could admit she could be both controlling and neglectful at times, but she was really terrible to Amy. The constant pressure and criticism, the unending suspicion, the lack of consideration toward what Amy even wanted. It was bad.

Taylor was still talking. “If you ever need to get away, or you just need a break or something, then I’m here for you Amelia. My house isn’t anything special, but my door will always be open to you. Always. And if you need anything else—protection, a good lawyer, help with your inheritance, even just a friendly shoulder to cry on—it’s yours, Amelia. I promise.”

Vicky looked over at her sister and felt her heart almost stop. Amy was crying, now, although she wasn’t making any sounds. As soon as she noticed, the healer’s face scrunched up into a mask of frustration and she scrubbed at her eyes with her free hand, but she made to effort to pull back from Taylor. “Yeah, alright,” she managed, although she didn’t quite manage her normal grouchy tone. “I’ll let you know. But, uh, what was that about an inheritance?”

And with that, an almost mischievous smile slipped onto the other cape’s face. “You didn’t think that a crime lord like Marquis would let all his assets go down with him, did you?”

Amy’s brow furrowed. “That’s dirty money, though,” she said.

Taylor shrugged. “Not technically—legally speaking, it’s all just squeaky clean cash.”

Vicky had to interject, then. “It doesn’t matter if it’s legally clean, it’s still blood money! I’ve looked into Marquis—most of his money came from protection rackets and drug trade. You can’t just expect Amy to take that without any question!”

Taylor gave her a look that felt at least a little judgemental, enough that Vicky recoiled a little, before she set her attention back on Amy. “I’m not saying what to do with it. If you want to, you could donate it, or try and reinvest into the areas of the Bay that have been most affected by organized crime. Hell, you could set it all on fire, although that might not be the most financially prudent decision.” She spread her hands out in a conciliatory gesture. “The money is there, though, and it’s yours. A birdcage sentence is treated as a death sentence for the sake of a last will and testament. Much of Marquis’ wealth was seized at the time of his arrest, but he was careful to keep a certain percentage of his income completely unconnected from his criminal endeavors, and he had a good lawyer that kept that from being taken through asset forfeiture. There’s just under nine million dollars in liquid cash, plus another fifteen million or so in bonds, stocks, business ownership, and real estate.”

Vicky felt her mouth drop open. Beside her, Amy looked just as shocked. “Fifteen million?” she said, her voice coming out as almost a squeak.

“Did you know that you hold a majority ownership in Fugly Bobs?” Taylor asked, with a wry smile.

“I what?” Amy asked, and this time it definitely came out as a squawk.

Taylor just laughed. From her pocket, she pulled out several sheets of paper that had been folded several times over. “Here, this is an overview of the financials. It also has the number for Jason McGuire. He’s the attorney that took care of Marquis’ estate, and he’ll be more than happy to help you out. You wouldn’t ordinarily be able to access most of the money until you’re 18, but there are some exceptions in place for capes. It’s mainly to preserve secret identities of Wards and Protectorate members, but you’ve got some advantages as an open cape, since the laws weren’t exactly written for your situation.”

“What the fuck,” Amy said, quietly, letting go of Taylor’s hand to take the paper and look it over. and Vicky couldn’t help but echo the statement. That was a lot of zeroes and a lot of different investments.

Taylor just shrugged, clearly unrepentant for all the chaos she was causing. “Anyway, that’s not what you came to talk about, is it?”

“I don’t know what I came to talk about,” Amy replied. It sounded like she was aiming for irritated, but to Vicky’s ears she just sounded kind of lost. “I don’t even know why I’m keeping your secret from Carol and Aunt Sarah. I mean, you’re the Butcher! I shouldn’t feel… I dunno, safe around you!”

“I can’t control that any more than you can control what powers you have,” Taylor said, softly. “I was caught in the middle of a Teeth attack while in my civilian identity, with my Dad right there. I didn’t even realize that the cape attacking me was the Butcher until she was dead and I suddenly had all these new voices and memories in my head. All we can do is play the hand that life dealt us, and that’s what I’m trying to do now.”

Vicky grimaced. She’d always had a problem with acting first and considering the consequences later, a problem that had gotten even worse since she’d developed superpowers. If she’d suddenly been attacked out of nowhere, especially if her family was at risk, she might well have lashed out with a lethal amount of force. And she had no illusions about her own ability to control a collective mass of voices that were all telling her to slaughter and bathe in the blood she spilled.

Taylor steepled her fingers. “On that note, though, there’s something I want to talk to you about, actually. It might be a bit upsetting, but I think it’s something we need to discuss.”

Amy scoffed. “What, do you have any more life changing news to drop on me?”

A faint smile crossed Taylor’s lips. “Not as such. I just have to ask you a question. Your power isn’t really healing, is it?”

Amy went rigid right next to her, and Vicky wasn’t much better. “What do you mean?” her sister asked, voice flat with anger and fear.

The other girl just sighed. “Pure healers don’t exist, Amelia. Not really. Every known healer’s power is at best an incidental effect of their true ability. Self-regeneration is relatively common, and there are some capes like Othala that can temporarily transfer that ability to others, but an ability that exclusively serves to reverse damage to other people? That would violate Selinsky’s third maxim of power expression.”

Vicky’s brow furrowed as she tried to remember Selinsky’s maxims. They were just observed characteristics of powers, deliberately kept relatively broad, but they were notable for having almost no exceptions, which was a rarity in the field of parahuman studies. “The third maxim is that every power must give the user an ability to cause more harm than they would be capable of without it, right?”

Taylor nodded. “And when you take that, and add just how powerful Marquis was and the nature of power inheritance, and the way that strikers tend to compensate for reduced range by drastically increased power on contact, well. It paints a picture, you could say.”

Amy hadn’t moved since Taylor had started on this topic. In fact, she barely seemed to even be breathing. Vicky reached over to put a comforting hand on her sister’s shoulder, only for Amy to jump in surprise. Her eyes were wide and her pupils were blown, fear writ large across her face. Vicky turned back to Taylor, a surge of protectiveness giving her voice more of a bite than she intended. “Even if you were right, why do you want to talk about it? What do you get out of it?”

The other girl held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Nothing. Well, if my theory is correct on what your power actually is, I thought we might be able to do some tinkering together at some point, but that’s not the reason I brought it up. Do you know Selinsky’s fifth maxim and its corollary?”

Vicky paused, a little thrown by the question. “The fifth maxim is… the existence of a neurological drive toward power use, right? I don’t know the corollary, though.”

“That’s the one,” Taylor said with a nod. “In less academic speech, it’s the observation that powers need to be used—failing to do so can result in restlessness, anxiety, depression, and in particularly bad situations psychosis, migraines, and a drastic reduction in impulse control. The corollary is that powers need to be used in their entirety. It’s been particularly relevant for me, since I’ve got so many components to my power that each need a certain amount of attention. I actually have a theory that part of my predecessor’s insanity was due to an inability to satisfy certain power usages.”

“And what does this all have to do with me?” Amy asked, apparently having recovered enough to join the conversation again.

“If your power isn’t just healing, but that’s the only thing you’re using it for, then you’re likely suffering from power deprivation,” Taylor said. “Have you experienced any of the symptoms I mentioned?”

Vicky wanted to say no, because of course she would notice if Amy was dealing with anxiety or depression, right? But Amy wasn’t replying and her face had gone pale, and Vicky had a sinking feeling in her gut that she might have missed more than she thought when it came to her sister.

“Maybe,” Amy admitted, after a moment. “I… I keep getting these urges, when I’m healing. I want to do more, to reinforce broken bones so they can’t be broken again, or to create a better liver that won’t, or to…”

“To do something worse, right?” Taylor said, her voice terribly understanding. “You want to twist them into a monster, and give them claws and fangs, or venom glands, or something like that?”

Amy flinched, pulling into herself, but after a moment she nodded. Vicky was floored—Amy hadn’t mentioned anything about this at all. Was Amy seriously thinking about, what, going all Nilbog on her patients? But Vicky kept herself from saying anything, despite her instincts telling her to defend her sister. If Taylor was right, and the theory seemed sound, then this wasn’t Amy herself wanting to do those things. It was power deprivation, pure and simple, and Amy was suffering from the psychosis part. That wasn’t her fault, and comparing her sister to Nilbog or Bonesaw wouldn’t help anybody.

“It’s fine, Amy. I promise.” The other girl’s voice was so soft, so terribly sad but laced with far too much understanding to read as pity. “Trust me, if anybody understands what it’s like to have power urges that disgust them, it’s me.”

“What kind of urges do you get?” Amy asked, in nearly a whisper.

“Oh my God, all kinds,” Taylor said, shaking her head and giving a little rueful smile. “I want to painblast people whenever they piss me off, or rot their skin from their flesh. I want to drive people into a frenzy when they’re in front of me in a line, and give the bigoted old man down my block visions of nightmares until he’s a gibbering wreck. All my brute packages make me want to punch down trees and rip people in half, and Basilisk’s power is always pushing me to turn things into horrible poisons.”

“But you don’t,” Vicky said. She tried not to let on just how alarming it was to see her friend talk about killing people horribly with the same casual ease she would discuss a book she liked.

“I don’t, no. Surprisingly enough, the PRT frowns on that kind of behavior.” That got a little chuckle from both Vicky and Amy, which was probably what she’d been going for. “But to manage the urges, I have to use the powers in other ways. Frenzy’s rage control can also be used to reduce panic in a crowd and sap anger from my enemies. Absinthe’s hallucinations are useful for training my teammates to recognize master effects. I like to use Sepsis’ decay to carve little statues in marble and steel. And for the pain blast—well, there’s not much I can do with that, but I have some rats that I subject to it when I need to.” At Vicky’s frown, Taylor winced but didn’t back down. “I know it’s distasteful and I don’t like causing pain, but it’s necessary. Otherwise I’d have to deal with power withdrawal, and that could be far worse.”

“But I don’t have multiple powers,” Amy said, narrowing her eyes. “I’ve just got the one, and I use it all the time.”

Taylor shook her head. “You use it for one thing, and that’s not what it wants to do. You’ve got some flavor of biokinesis, right? I mean, I’ve looked at the things you’ve been able to heal, and curing cancer or fixing genetic disorders isn’t something you can do with any kind of simple regeneration or harm-reversion ability.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Amy nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I can control any biology that I touch, although I can’t generate matter from nothing, not like…” Not like Marquis, she was going to say. A part of Vicky thought it was reckless to just be telling Taylor this, but then again she did trust the girl. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t put together most of the pieces already.

At Amy’s confession, Taylor just nodded. “That’s about what I suspected. Using that kind of power just for healing is the power equivalent of getting in a fighter jet and just driving it around the tarmac. I’m sure it does some for your urges, but it’s never gonna be enough.”

And finally Amy snapped, because that was how she always reacted to being made vulnerable. “So what, should I just abandon the hospital? Let all those people die that I could have saved, just because I’m too fucked up to just do my stupid fucking job?”

Taylor reached out again, taking Amy’s hand in her own, and now that she knew Amy was a true biokinetic that seemed to express even more trust. “No, Amelia. I’d never ask that of you. But can I just ask—how much of the time you’re at the hospital are you actually treating fatal injuries?”

Amy squirmed a little but didn’t let go. “I dunno,” she muttered. “Maybe four, five hours per week?”

Taylor nodded. “Five hours per week, out of thirty hours there. And even then, how many of those people would survive with medical care without you?”

Vicky started. “Thirty hours?” she asked. That seemed like way too much—wasn’t Amy only supposed to be doing like ten hours a week? Although she could admit that she hadn’t exactly been tracking Amy’s work hours, and her sister had a habit of getting there early and staying late if she could get away with it. And neither Amy or Taylor seemed to be reacting to that number, so maybe it was real. God, how much of Amy’s struggle had she missed?

“Like… maybe half of them?” Amy replied, shrugging a little. “But I mean, if I can help, I should, right?”

Taylor nodded. “Of course you should. But right now, you’re burning yourself out, and you’re just making your power deprivation even worse.”

“So what do I do?” Amy asked, tears in her eyes now, and Taylor’s expression went so fond and gentle that Vicky couldn’t help but feel like an intruder in this moment.

“What do you think you could make, if you gave your powers free reign?” she asked, softly. “What kind of medicine could you create? What kind of improved sutures or bandages could you tinker up? Could you make something that seeks out cancerous cells and destroys them, or converts them back to healthy cells? How much could you do, Amelia, if you spent less time destroying yourself to heal people one by one, and spent more time working with your power to save millions at once?” 

And Amy, she looked like she’d just had a religious revelation. “I could, uh,” she said, blinking rapidly. “I could create a moss that would adhere tightly to the wound and promote surface blood clotting while also producing an antibiotic to stop infection, and it would be able to stay in place on chronic wounds without needing to be changed frequently.  It wouldn’t even be hard, I’d just need the biomass—”

And almost before she finished speaking, a small stream of flies seemed to emerge from beneath the table, landing in Amy’s hand. They started to liquify, which was deeply disturbing and strangely fascinating for Vicky to watch. Soon there was a soupy puddle of something brown on Amy’s hand, and then it started to change, small purple tendrils growing up and interweaving. A few moments later and there was a purple patch of something that was unmistakably moss sitting on Amy’s hands.

Amy let out a laugh, sounding half-incredulous and half-delighted. And as much as it was nice to hear that from her sister, it also sent a pang through Vicky’s heart because when was the last time she had heard her sister laugh like that?

“That was so easy,” she said, in an awed whisper. “And it was so fun! And I can already see ways that it could be improved, other applications of a similar moss. And I could mess with the growth rate, too, so it would regrow rapidly as long as it has the right nutrients, that way it could be mass produced. Although I’d have to do some testing, and I’d have to be careful that it wouldn’t result in increased antibiotic resistance—” She cut herself off, looking up to see Taylor and Victoria both watching her. She flushed, but the smile didn’t leave her face.

“If you want, I can make sure you get resources and a proper lab,” Taylor said. “It’s standard procedure for affiliated heroic tinkers, and you definitely qualify. You’d probably need to have some oversight and make sure that your creations aren’t harmful, but I imagine you’d want to make sure of that anyway.”

“Yeah,” Amy said, quickly. “Yeah, I would. I mean, I’ve had nightmares about accidentally creating a plague or something. But a lab would be incredible.”

“That wouldn’t be ideal, no,” Taylor replied, with a smile. “And from what I know about Carol Dallon, it might be a bit of a struggle to get her to agree to this, but Jason McGuire can help you out there too. He’s a lawyer, so he should know how to talk to your guardian in a way she understands.”

“That would be great,” Amy said, not looking away from the moss. “If I could get this approved, then… did you know that the fatality rate for people with chronic wounds is around 70% over the course of 5 years? Most of that comes from infections that set in. If they were wearing this instead, though, that problem could just be gone. Just like that. And I never even thought about it, because it’s biotinkering and that’s…”

She trailed off, but Taylor seemed to understand. “It’s scary, I know. But like I said earlier, I’ve been thinking a lot on the nature of monsters. I mean, if Legend or Alexandria or Eidolon wanted to, they could each cause destruction and death on the scale of an Endbringer. But that doesn’t make them monsters, anymore than the existence of Bonesaw or Nilbog makes you a monster for being able to modify biology.”

Amy nodded, and if she was blinking away a few tears, well. Both Taylor and Vicky pretended not to see it, because they didn’t need to put Amy back on the defensive.

“Oh, and Vicky?” Taylor said suddenly, as if she’d just remembered something.

Vicky dragged her attention away from her sister’s face with some difficulty. Seeing Amy looking truly happy was such a rare thing that she’d wanted to commit it fully to memory. “Yeah?” she managed.

“I’m got some unofficial PR time lined up for revealing my identity to you two, and I had an idea for it that would work better with some more capes. I wanted to know if you’d be interested in joining in?”

Vicky’s instinctive reaction was to say ‘no,’ because as a rule of thumb New Wave didn’t want to get involved in the PRTs PR campaigns. But Taylor was clearly dedicated to helping Amy, so she figured the least she could do is hear Taylor out. And as Taylor explained her idea, Vicky couldn’t help but grin widely, because it sounded way more fun than she’d expected.”

“Oh fuck yeah,” she said. “I’m so in.”