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Chapter Text

January 4, 2011
Taylor Hebert

“Hi!  Is this seat taken?”

That was how it started.  Looking back, it was the point my whole life went down a new track.  Those five words.  I looked up in slight surprise – most people ignored me on the Brockton Bay bus lines, and I ignored them – and considered the speaker.  A girl maybe a tad older than I was, an older sophomore or a junior, with clean, pretty, Japanese features, long, straight black hair, and surprisingly warm brown eyes.  Her clothing was neat but not fancy, although most people in Brockton Bay didn’t wear sweaters decorated with the Manhattan skyline.  Or fill it out as well as the new girl did.  They usually didn’t have New York accents, either, however pleasantly soft hers was.

“Uh, yeah, of course you can, I mean, no, it’s not occupied,” I answered, stumbling over my words like an idiot.  Like a dunce.  Just like everyone said I was.

Geez, Taylor, can’t you talk like a normal-

“Thanks!  Are you headed to Winslow High School too?”  The stranger’s voice broke into my inner monologue, which sounded painfully like someone I used to love like a sister.

I had to stop and stare again.  The idea of someone sounding that cheerful about Winslow High School was completely alien to me.  If there was one single point of agreement on objective reality between me and the rest of student body – I doubted there were two! – it was that the place was terrible.

“Yeah.  New in town?” I guessed as the bus started moving again.  She had to have just moved.  God help her.

“Mmhm.  Kind’ve unexpected,” she explained, getting settled with her overstuffed bookbag between her legs.  “Got my stuff from the school yesterday, but that wasn’t on the bus.”

“I just bet Principal Blackwell loved coming in a day early,” I commented, rolling my eyes.  The principal of Winslow High School and I were not on good terms, to put it mildly.

The new girl chuckled.  “No, she didn’t seem that happy about it.  Anyway, I’m Lily Hara.  Sophomore.”

Lily held out her hand, and I took it, shaking it like I’d been introduced to one of the longshoreman or other union types Dad worked with.  Her grip was firm, too, not limp or colt at all.  “Taylor Hebert, likewise.”  I wasn’t sure why I said it.  It wasn’t as if she wasn’t going to turn on me too.  I was the pariah.  Maybe I just wanted someone to talk to.  At least until-the-sudden yet inevitable betrayal after Emma and the rest of the bitches got their hooks in.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got homeroom with Mrs. Knott?  I didn’t exactly get a tour yesterday.  The principal was pretty eager to get out of there.”  Lily frowned thoughtfully, then added, “There was a weird smell in the hallway, too.  Maybe she was calling a cleaning crew.”

“I have no idea.  The idea something crawled in and died over the break doesn’t surprise me, though.”

“Me, either.  The place is pretty run-down for… well, it just surprised me.”

I wondered a bit at Lily’s sudden pause, and at what she’d been about to say, but didn’t ask.  It was too nice to have a civil conversation with someone my own age for once.  “Yeah.  Me too.”  Pausing, I hesitated over what to say next, then decided I’d better warn her.  “Be careful around some of the students, too.  Especially the skinheads.  We’ve, uh, we’ve got this gang in town-“

“The Empire 88, right.  And ones in red and green are the ABB,” Lily answered when I paused, nodding, her lips twisted in distaste.  “Both of them are pretty hard on queer types, too, I’ve heard.”

An odd thing to add, but I nodded.  I know Mom, being bi, among other reasons, hadn’t been a fan of either gang.  Dad wasn’t either, and he hated how they kept trying to get their hooks into the Dockworkers.  Keeping the Association clean after all the work his forebears put into avoiding getting entangled with organized crime, as long ago as Prohibition, was a real headache for him.

“Yeah, they’re bad.  Be careful.”  I hated that I felt like I had to warn someone with Asian ancestry, but it’d be all too easy for Lily to get dragged into the middle of that nonsense.  The ABB wasn’t as inclined to queer bashing as the Empire, but they were definitely misogynistic assholes, and lesbians were supposedly a ‘special order’ for some of the clubs they reputedly maintained.  Dimly, I wondered why Sophia never seemed to have trouble with the skinheads, despite abusing a white girl constantly.  Not for the first time, I decided that everyone involved just sucked.

Lily leaned back with a sigh.  “New York’s not as bad about that, but I had to move, and…”  She sighed, gesturing, and it drew my eye.  None of her clothes were red or green, although her backpack was a dark sort of hunter green trimmed in gray.  “It was just a whole thing.  I’m glad to meet a friendly face.”

I mustered a wan smile, warding myself against the betrayal to come, but it seemed to satisfy her, because she smiled back.  Lily really did seem nice.  “Yeah.”

To my surprise, we started talking about books.  Lily didn’t read a lot, but she liked genre fiction, and I liked to check that out of the library, although I knew better than to bring library books anywhere near Winslow.  Not after all the other things I’d had ruined.  Like Mom’s flute, dented and smeared with shit.  Even cleaned up as best I could, it felt like it was reminding me of my failures, hidden under the bed.

Hopefully, maybe, someway, somehow, I’d at least be able to talk to Lily occasionally without put downs, instead of this memory being ruined like that flute…

Still chatting amiably, we walked though Winslow’s doors, and I made my usual frown at the screech of an unoiled hinge.  Seriously, was the budget so far gone a little WD-40 was past them?

Before we could get by the office, though, I heard an imperious voice.  “Hebert!  In the office, now.”

Schooling my face into a neutral expression as I walked in, dimly noticing Lily following me, I looked to my left and spoke as respectfully as I could manage.  “Principal Blackwell.”

I’d say I hadn’t managed it from the expression on her face, but in my experience Carrie Blackwell had always looked pissy and annoyed.  “What the hell did you thinking putting all that in your locker, Miss Hebert?”

I blinked in surprise.  “My locker?  My locker was empty when I left last year.”

“Don’t play coy with me, Hebert,” Blackwell hissed angrily.  “Do you have any idea how much we had to spend cleaning that mess up?!  Or how much trouble you’re in for that!”

“For what?  I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, the anger rising, and I struggled to keep my voice level and calm.  The last thing I needed was detention for snapping at her.  Even if she deserved it.  Especially if she deserved it.

Blackwell glared at me, and it probably annoyed her she had to look up to look me in the eye.  “You know, all the tampons?  The animal waste?  The trash?”

“…what?!” I replied, surprised into losing my decorum for a moment.  “No, I don’t know.”

“It was your locker, Miss Hebert!  The locker you turned into a toxic waste dump.”

“The same locker I’ve complained about someone stealing things out of half of last semester?” I retorted acidly, my temper finally getting the better out of me.  “The same one you never checked the lock on?  The one someone stole some of my schoolbooks out of and left in your office, covered in juice?”

“I’ve had it with your attempts to get attention!  I’ve got half a mind to have you thrown in juvey for=”

A soft, calmer voice interrupted.  “Uh, Principal Blackwell, do you have any sort of evidence?”  Both of us blinked in surprise, then turned to look at Lily, who was still standing in the doorway to the school office.  “Taylor’s saying people have access to her locker somehow, and without evidence, the police can’t do anything.  Just like she can’t get the police to do anything without some sort of proof.”

Someone was taking my side?  That was novel, and I honestly had no idea how to react.

Blackwell didn’t, either, spluttering for a moment.  She seemed oddly willing to let Lily provide suggestions, though, whereas I always got steamrolled.  “Any fingerprints would have gotten lost in the cleaning.”

“Which is why you call the police first if you’re smart,” I muttered under my breath.

The principal glared momentarily, and I resolved to shut up.  “Fine,” she ground out after a moment, sounding like she was chewing on glass.  “But one more unfounded accusation, or one of your stories, Hebert, and I’ll-“

I glared back defiantly, swallowing the urge to say something, and Lily once again interceded.  “Why don’t you have her show me around?  If there’s something going on, maybe I can help?”

Blackwell’s fingers clenched, like she wanted to make a fist, but instead of upbraiding her, again the willingness to listen to Lily.  “Fine.  Show Miss Hara around.  And no nonsense, Hebert.”

Moderating my glare with a force of will, I swallowed, and somehow my voice was calm when I answered, “Yes, ma’am.  No nonsense, ma’am.”  The urge to add something cutting came to me but I just spun on my heel and left, pausing just long enough to see if Lily was behind me.

She was, matching me stride for stride despite being a bit shorter, her hand coming up from her pocket.  Still taller than Blackwell, though.  “So, uh, I know it’s none of my business, but what stories was she talking about?” Lily asked hesitantly.

I didn’t have time to come up with an explanation before a cloyingly sweet voice reached my ears, almost a purr.  “Oh, Taylor.  I’m surprised you came back.  Don’t you know no one wants you here?”

Looking over, I noticed Emma Barnes smirking at me but didn’t dignify the remark with a response.  They’d backed off towards the end of last semester.  At the time I’d been too grateful about them seemingly getting bored to wonder why.

“Can’t talk?  Do you think she fell mute?” some vapid girl whose name I didn’t bother remembering asked of the group at large.

“Means we don’t have to listen to her stupid voice anymore,” another of the hangers-on replied.

“Too bad she didn’t figure out how to shower, though.”

“You think anyone would touch that?”

“Must have, because she’s sleeping with gangers to get her drugs!”

“Or she’s just so pitiful that they’re giving ‘em away.”

“Gotta be getting paid to help pay the bills if you ask me.”

I ignored all of it, just striding through until someone stepped in my way.  Almost as tall as I was, similar in height to Lily, but more solidly built.  Sophia Hess, one of the other banes of my existence.  “Where do you think you’re going, Hebert?  The dumpster’s that way,” she commented, hiking her thumb.

“She’s showing me the way to Mrs. Knott’s classroom,” Lily’s voice cut in, edged with irritation.

Sophia looked past me to the new girl.  “Look, you don’t want to hang around with this worm here-“

“What, so I should hang around with the rest of you?”  Lily looked around but wisely didn’t say anything that could be interpreted as an insult.  “Thanks, but no thanks, I’ll take my chances with Taylor.”

Emma shook her head, smiling, but her voice was mournful.  “You don’t get it.  Taylor tells all these lies about how people are bothering her, when we’re just trying to be friendly.”

“I don’t think I like your idea of friendly,” Lily retorted, stepping up to my side.  “C’mon, let’s just get to class, Taylor.”  Taking the cue, I started to move, when Sophia started to shove me… and found Lily between the two of us.  Lily glared at her, and then Sophia acted like she was going to punch the Asian girl.  She just wasn’t there when it landed, ghosting to the side with perfect timing and leaving Sophia to stumble slightly when the wind up failed to connect.  Instead of commenting, Lily just rolled her eyes.

I made my retreat while I had the chance, Lily keeping up easily.  She was athletic, apparently.  I’d taken up running and other exercise my freshman year, just trying to get some release, but despite the longer length of my legs, Lily wasn’t having a problem keeping pace.

“That’s what you’re ‘telling stories’ about?” Lily asked once we were safely down the hall and around the corner from the coterie of bitches.

Unwilling to meet her eye, I nodded, keeping an eye out for Madison Clements.  She hadn’t been part of that posse, which made me wonder if she had another collection of them somewhere.

Lily frowned at that, then shook her head.  “Well, now you’ve got a witness.”  Then she gave me a devious little smile and produced a slim black rectangle from her pocket.  A mobile phone.  “And a recording.  Let’s just see what we captured, shall we?”

I stared at her, surprised at that.  “Wait, what?  You recorded them?”  Was that what she’d been doing in her pocket when we walked out of Blackwell’s office?

“Mmhm,” Lily agreed, that wicked little smile still on her lips.

“Let’s wait until we’re in Mrs. Knott’s classroom.  It’s not that far away,” I decided, angling my head in the right direction. “None of them have that class with me, so…”

“Lay on, MacDuff,” Lily answered agreeably, even getting the old MacBeth quote correct.

I mustered a faint smile and nodded, trotting along a bit more agreeably.  Even if Lily decided not to keep hanging around me, a recording might just be the thing I needed.

Once we were seated – I had a clear seat next to me, and Mrs. Knott had been very agreeable to putting the new girl there – Lily fished a set of earbuds out of her bag and handed me one side.  Plugging it in, she replayed the recording, and we listened to the playback, trading smiles.  It wasn’t the clearest thing in the worst, but it was better than I’d dared hope for.

“Just what are you two up to?” a voice somewhere between annoyed and amused came from behind us.  Nearly jumping out of my seat, I turned around guiltily, to see Mrs. Knott standing there.  “You know I don’t like mobile phones in my class, Taylor, as many times as I’ve chided others for it.”

Lily cleared her throat.  “It’s not her fault, ma’am, it’s mine.  I recorded some people hassling her and we were making sure it was good audio, that’s all.”

Mrs. Knott blinked at that, then reached for the phone.  “I see.  May I hear it?”  Lily surrendered it, and Mrs. Knott put in one of the earbuds.  Her expression tightened as she listened.

“I see,” she repeated in a rather different tone.  Her eyes flicked over to mine, and I shrugged a bit.  I’d told her about my problems, and she’d tried to help a few times, coming back rather silent and downtrodden each time.  “Keep doing this, and transcribe it, girls,” Mrs. Knott advised us finally.  “Make copies.  Once we’ve got a few days of evidence, I’ll take it to the principal.”  Another exchanged look.  Neither of us really expected anything to come of it, but at least we had something concrete we could point to.  Something I might be able to use another way, too.

Lily nodded.  “I will, I promise, ma’am.  Taylor, do you have an email account?  I can shoot you this recording right now.”

I rattled off my home account.  My school account was probably full.  Again.  Fucking hate spam.  “I’ve got records I’ve been keeping at home, I’ll transcribe this tonight,” I told her, smiling with that faint, pleasant, most awful feeling.  You know the one, hope.

Lily didn’t have all my classes, naturally, but she shared several of them.  There wasn’t a lot of difference in Mrs. Knott’s class other than having someone to help, of course.  She wasn’t as strong in the topic as I am; for one thing I was actually getting the advanced course work, but I’d had a conflict somewhere else.  It was nice, though, and it also kept Greg from rambling at me.  Honestly, the biggest difference was being able to share a locker so I didn’t have to carry everything constantly.  People were obviously getting into mine.

Math was nothing to write home about, with Quinlan rambling tiredly before he gave us word problems to work on.  I had to deal with Emma’s simmering resentment, but at least it was solo work, so Mr. Quinlan was keeping things quiet.  It limited her ability to bother me today.  English was more annoying, but Art was another quiet period without any of the troublemakers nearby.  Julia was fuming, and she tried to mess with my work, but the teacher intercepted her leaving the table.  Mr. Patrick wasn’t sympathetic, he just didn’t want to deal with accidents, and she got chewed out.

Chemistry could have been a horror – Emma’s memorable attempt to light my hair on fire last year came to mind – but fortunately, Lily and I shared that period.  I even managed to get her registered as my lab partner for the semester with Mr. White.  Even better, no lab on the first day of classes, which further limited Emma’s ability to mess with me, and Madison had been transferred out of that section for some administrative reason I neither knew nor cared about.

We spent lunch together, just talking a little bit about Brockton Bay up on the third floor in a stairwell at the back corner of the building.  I think Lily thought it was strange, but she didn’t protest, and it kept things peaceful.  It also gave me a chance to give her some ideas on who was who among the Winslow Bitch Herd.

Today had been too peaceful, honestly.  I was gonna get it, certainly, and gym worried me.  Fortunately, I saw a now-familiar face outside after a trip to the bathroom (mercifully juice-free this time).  “Oh, hey, Taylor.  You’ve got gym, too?”

“Uh-huh,” I replied, nodding, only to get shoulder checked by Sophia shoving her way past me.

“Clear the damn hallway, Hebert,” the other girl grumbled with a glare, even though I’d been standing against the wall.  Then she gave Lily one, too, as if daring her to say something.

Lily glowered back, watching Sophia leave.  “Have they been doing that all sophomore year?”

“Most of last year, too,” I replied, cringing a little at the admission.

“Sheesh.  I’ll look out for you changing if you do the same for me?”  Lily glanced off in Sophia’s direction.  “Let’s just say the girl posse around here has not made me feel especially trusting.”

I was almost pathetically grateful, and I hoped it didn’t show.  “Y-yeah, I’ll do that, of course.”

While I was changing, I could vaguely hear Lily rustling through her gym bag.  After I’d pulled up the pair of slightly ratty sweatpants I wore for gym, and was reaching for my top, Lily abruptly stuck her head in, with me wearing just my sports bra above the waist.

“Oh, hey, Taylor do you-“  Then she got a look, eyes widening slightly.  “Oh, wow, you look good.  Damn.”

I turned beet red, holding my top to my chest.  “You don’t need to butter me up!  What do you want?” I asked, utterly mortified.

At least Lily had the decency to close the door properly again, calling out, “Do you have a spare scrunchie?  I can’t find mine.”

“I, uh, I… I think so,” I answered, uncertain.  I was pretty sure I had a spare, if someone hadn’t stolen it.  Lily’s hair wasn’t too much shorter than mine, I could see why she’d want one.  Hastily pulling on my shirt, I shoved my glasses back into place and fixed my hair.  Once I had it into a ponytail, I reached into my bag and found a spare scrunchie.  “Here.”

Lily accepted it with a bright smile.  “Thanks.  I’m serious, though.  You should show those guns off, and the abs.”

Giving her a dumbfounded look, I spluttered out, “What?  I look like an emaciated frog.”

My new friend(?) gave me a puzzled look, shaking her head slightly as if she didn’t agree, then leaned in to whisper in my ear.  “Taylor, lil bit of advice.  When a gay girl tells you she likes how you look, she’s probably not BS’ing you.”  Lily walked into the stall, leaving me to process that.

I blinked, staring at her, and could feel my blush turning flaming red again.  The idea that someone had seen me without my shirt and liked it just… that didn’t… that didn’t make sense, right?  I’m a scrawny, overlong frog, my lips are too wide, my glasses make me look like a nearsighted owl, and… I’m ugly.  Everyone tells me that.  None of the boys have ever shown any interest, either, except Greg, and that’s just because I don’t tell him off as much as the other girls do.  My mother was beautiful, Lily had such pretty features, and I’m… just not, and I don’t.  She was just being nice, had to be.

Coming back out in sweatpants and a T-shirt with the hero Legend splashed across the back in a dynamic pose, Lily looked at me, then waved her hand in front of me.  “Taylor?  You there?”

Blinking again, I nodded my head and decided I didn’t really know how to react.  I was straight, after all, but at least she wasn’t insulting me.  Probably?  Lily just seemed too nice for that.

“Y-yeah, I… I uh…” I jerked my head, causing my ponytail to sway.  Too many people, and if anyone had heard that I was so going to get it.  “Let’s get out there.  I really hope it’s not dodgeball today.”

Lily’s eyebrows went up.  “You think they’re gonna go after you?”

“Try know they are,” I said sourly, trudging out and watching for Sophia.  She was usually the ringleader of anything that happened in gym class, because she was the athlete.

Several of them were waiting for me when we left, and I knew Lily had locked her phone in her locker before heading over here.  No way we were going to get a recording here.  The usual insults started up – I was too fat, too skinny, too ugly to get laid, whoring myself out, druggie, whatever.  Lily’s face twisted a bit, but she didn’t take the bait, just following me.

Fortunately, it wasn’t dodgeball.  Instead, we were doing Fitness Evaluation.  Timed sprints, push-ups, sit ups, pull ups, rope climb, nothing too crazy.  Lily grinned a bit, elbowing me.  “Show your stuff off.”

I gave her a puzzled look.  “Show what off?  I just do some exercise to keep fit.”

My companion gave me a searching look, then shrugged.  “Well, I guess we’ll see.”

Even with several people helping, there was more than enough opportunity for my tormentors to make me miserable.  Whispered remarks while I was trying to do my exercises, someone even “tripped” over me while I was doing sit-ups.  They got yelled at, but I got stepped on and a sneaker stuck in my face.  Yuck.  Then came the mocking remarks about how I looked like a clumsy giraffe running.  I just took that as fuel to go faster, and was the second time behind Sophia, much to her annoyance.  (Lily came in third; clearly she worked out too.)

The worst of it came doing the rope climb.  Madison and Sophia had conspired to arrange a whole series of distractions and aggravations once I was a couple of feet off the ground.  Sophia “casually” bumped into me, trying to jostle me loose.  Madison pulled on the line, sending it swaying.  Julia pretended to fall over and distract the coach after I was even higher up, and two of the girls jerked the rope, making the sway even worse, and I didn’t dare kick one of them in the face.  For one thing, the effort might have caused me to fall!  These people are psychos.

Then Lily’s firm voice cut in.  “Knock it off, you two.  That’s not safe.”  She sounded like she was directly below me, and I felt the rope stop moving.  Maybe she’d grabbed it to steady it.

“So what?  It’s just icky Hebert,” one girl replied.

“Yeah, who cares if her skanky ass falls?”

“Maybe if she cracks her skull she’ll stop coming to school so we stop having to-“

“I said knock it off,” Lily snapped loudly enough to get the teacher’s attention once more.

“The heck?  Hey, new girl, why’re you grabbing the rope?” came the dulcet tones of a middle-aged white dude reliving his glory days at Brockton Bay’s worst football school.  Supposedly we’d been good… once.  Just like him.

Lily sounded aggravated when she replied.  “Steadying it, Coach Evans.  Someone grabbed it and sent it swaying, I’m making sure Taylor has a safer climb.”

Coach Evans grunted, and I could just picture his beefy, buzzcut face.  “Fine.  Rest of you, clear out.”

Grimly, I climbed up the rest of the way to the designated point, then came back down the way we’d been taught before dropping lightly onto my feet.  My hands were shaking just a little; I’d been up there longer than usual.

“Hebert, stand here take a breather,” Evans commented, glancing at me.  “New girl, get up there.”

Panting slightly, I just nodded, watching Lily take her turn up the rope.  She was slim, but I could see the well-toned muscles on her arms, and her T-shirt rode up a bit as she went.  Part of me wondered about her legs, if they were as sleek and toned as the rest of her underneath those sweatpants.  All I could tell was where her hips and rear filled it out.  Not too big.  Probably firm.  She had good technique, too, better than mine, definitely.  Wasn’t like I could practice this at home.

“Dyke,” Sophia whispered in my ear, shoulder-checking me from behind.

“Carpet muncher,” Madison added, although she was certainly looking up, too, the stinking hypocrite.

I didn’t snap back, but Coach Evans told them to get a move on instead of cluttering the area around the rope.  He didn’t give a shit about me, but student injuries ticked him off.  At least he cared about something, I guess.

Lily came back down gracefully, dropping onto her feet from a bit above the usual height before tossing her ponytail back over her shoulder.  She shot me a grin.  “Were you watching?”

“Yeah.  You must have practiced a lot,” I replied with a nod.  “Better than me.”

Something about that made her smile flicker momentarily; I didn’t have the first idea what.  It didn’t last long, though.  “Yeah, well, you’re looking a little better.”

“Thanks for making them stop, I thought I was going to fall for a hot minute,” I told her, mustering a wan smile of my own now.  Then I laughed a little.  “Guess you’re just my hero today.”

Lily’s lips curved up a bit more, and something mischievous twinkled in her eye.  Whatever it was about that, she didn’t clue me in, instead chuckling softly and answering in a self-mocking voice, “I’m glad I could be of service, citizen.”  She even struck a bit of a pose before she let out a laugh.

I smiled back.  It felt weirdly natural, instead of contorting my face like a shrieking baboon or yawning like a narcoleptic frog, the way Emma and the others kept taunting me about.  I didn’t say anything, though.  Not much to say, I guess.

Lily’s watchful presence kept the showers from being the usual agony of wondering if someone was going to douse my clothes or whatever.  I returned the favor, even though it got me shoved, and ignored the comments about ‘joining my girlfriend’ or the suggestion about how I was just in here to stare at other people’s bodies.  And then someone else made a cutting remark that it wasn’t like I had one.

My new companion popped out of the shower not long after, glancing at me.  Giving my expression a lingering look, she asked, “Were they giving you crap again?”

“You say that like they’re ever not,” I groused sourly, lifting Lily’s bag for her.  Absently thanking me, she shouldered it.  We headed for her locker to get our things for World Affairs, our last class of the day.  “By the way, Gladly’s lame.  He wants to be popular, and he’s pretty boring.”

“Yeesh.  I thought I came here to learn.”  Then she elbowed me, gently, friendly like, and added, “If I just wanted to hang out, I’d stick around you.”

I stared at her, not sure what to say to that, and just ducked my head.  “Y-yeah.  That… that might be nice.”

I did my best to tune out World Affairs and the petty annoyances, like Madison dumping pencil shavings on me, just noting it for my records.  At least there was nothing on my chair this time.  Lily was sitting nearby, and when we had a group project, we were able to carry the load even if Sparky was as useless as ever.  Her knowledge of New York and its cape scene helped a lot with our preparation for the Elite.  We didn’t have the “best” presentation, but we got an excellent grade, and Winslow’s slightly horrifying vending machines didn’t hold much appeal to either of us as a reward.  Yuck!

Lily caught my eye as we left the classroom, a mischievous twinkle back in it, and I noticed she had her phone in her hand, but she wasn’t doing anything with it.  Except recording, of course.  I didn’t smile, to avoid returning it.  Instead, I tripped over Madison’s foot, distracted as I was with Lily, landing face down.

“Wow, Taylor, you’re so clumsy!” Emma’s cloying voice came.  “Do you think you’re okay?”

The urge to curl my fingers into fists rose, but I just started to get up, right as a foot came down on my ass.  “Let her up, Sophia,” Lily cut in, glaring.

“Nah, she should just stay down there.  Worms like her are more comfortable wriggling on the ground,” Sophia chimed in, then added nastily, “Until someone steps on them.”

Silently, I gave in for a moment, just enough for Sophia to relax the force, and then shoved my way up, unbalancing Sophia.  She nearly tumbled off her feet.

“Taylor, why would you shove Sophia that way?!” Emma snapped at me.

Lily retorted sharply.  “You mean gotten up despite Sophia trying to put a foot on her butt?”

“You’ve got a smart mouth, maybe you oughta shut it,” Sophia growled as I got to my feet.  Lily gave her a glare but didn’t comment, aware she was being recorded.  “What, nothing to say, you coward?”

Lily just dusted me off without answering.

“Oh, hey, knew you were a dyke, Taylor, but shouldn’t you avoid the public displays of affection with your ugly little girlfriend?” Julia commented.

“I mean, they’ve gotta do it now with those baggy sweats.  Not like anyone would touch Hebert with her clothes off,” Madison added.  I saw Gladly leaving the classroom, and he must have seen what happened, but he didn’t say a damn thing.  Just looked at us and wandered off.  None of the coterie of bitches seemed to care about his presence, which spoke for a lot.  What a useless asshole.

A few more gaybaiting remarks and we were able to push through, Lily glaring down Sophia as if daring her to try something.  “No wonder you looked so weary this morning,” Lily commented to me once we were out of earshot.

“Yeah,” I replied, closing my eyes and taking a breath.  I looked at her and mustered a smile.  “Thanks.”

“Hopefully we got them on the recording,” Lily replied with a wink.

I nodded slightly, my smile just as fragile.  “Let’s get our stuff and get out.”

“You said it.  You want to hang out after school?  I’ve got an after-school job lined up, but it doesn’t start until later this week.”

My reticence to open up almost had me refusing but the thin, fragile reed of hope won out.  “Yeah.  That’d be nice.  You want to come over to my place?”  Dad wouldn’t mind, I’m sure.

I really hoped Lily wouldn’t be just one more person turning on me, like Emma.  I really hoped.

Chapter Text

January 4, 2011
Taylor Hebert

As we came closer to home, I motioned to get Lily’s attention.  “Mind the step, it’s rotten.”  I paused, realizing how that sounded, and then said, “Dad and I really need to fix that one of these days.”

Lily smiled, waving it off.  “Don’t worry about that.  You didn’t let me put my foot through it, after all.”

I ducked my head, uncertain what to say.  Was I just that unused to people being nice to me?  Or just treating me with simple human kindness?

On reflection, yes, yes I was.

I covered that bit of painful introspection fishing out my house key and opening the door.  Things were acceptably clean.  I’d kept things okay at worst, and Dad had started helping me properly again when he came out of the very worst of his funk.  Still, I felt a bit anxious, but Lily just glanced around our shabby, slightly run-down house before commenting sincerely, “It seems homey.”

I nodded, leaving my shoes in the rack near the door.  Lily did the same thing, then followed me upstairs to my room.  A neatly made bed, according to my preferred habit, laundry in the hamper, and our ancient clunker of a PC taking up much of my small desk.  A few fading posters of the Protectorate, including one of the Triumvirate.  The most notable feature, though, was the bookshelves, jammed with childhood favorites and some more recent acquisitions, and several library books on the windowsill next to my bed that I used as an extra nightstand.

Lily looked around once I turned on the desk lamp, focusing on the posters.  “I feel like you’re an Alexandria fan,” she commented with a little grin.

“And you’re a Legend kind of girl?” I guessed, remembering the T-shirt she’d been wearing during gym class.

“Guilty!” Lily admitted with a laugh.  “You would be too if you met him in person.”

I blinked in surprise.  Sure, she was from New York, but I didn’t expect her to have actually met a member of the Triumvirate.  Still, Legend was supposed to be the warmest and friendliest of the three.

Lily shrugged and added, “Besides, he’s kind of a personal hero.  It used to be a lot harder to be gay in this country.”

“Still is in this city, with the Empire around,” I reminded her glumly, reaching down and pulling off my hoodie to reveal the simple dark green long sleeve T-shirt I had been wearing underneath.  I hung the hoodie up in my closet, mentally wincing at the ratty or stained nature of some of its kin.  Then, with a considering glance at Lily, I removed a loose board in the closet and reached into the void space to retrieve the gym clipped manilla folder of notes.

The other girl peered at them, a bit surprised.  “What’s this, then?”

“My notes of everything they’ve done to me since September.  I need to get today added to the set, if you don’t mind letting me take care of that,” I told her in a flat voice whose very emotionlessness showed just how bitter and resentful I really was.  When Lily held out a hand, frowning, I let her take a look, and she flipped through the pages, skimming over them.  While she read them, I hit the power button to rouse the digital dinosaur on my desk from its slumber before digging the spiral bound notebook I’d been keeping today’s notes in out from my backpack.

“No, of course not.  I want them nailed to a wall.  Besides, pretty sure I made ‘em mad at me, too.”  Lily winked at me, and I felt a flicker of genuine humor in response.  Any trace of amusement was leeched out of her expression as she read over the papers.  “Yikes.  I can’t believe they’ve gotten away with all this.”  Then she paused.  “Well, with Gladly just turning his back on that scene earlier…”

“Yeah.  That’s pretty normal – no one sees anything and most of the teachers don’t give a damn.”  I shook my head.  “I’m surprised your folks moved into this district instead of Clarendon.”

Shifting a bit, Lily commented, “I’m a foster kid, it’s not that simple.  I’ve got local guardians.”

“O-oh.  Do you, uh, need to call anyone to let them know where you are?”

She shook her head.  “I sent them a text on the bus.  As long as I’m home on time, they’re not going to be bothered.  I was supposed to be at Arcadia, but the transfer fell through because of paperwork and I wound up at Winslow.”  Pursing her lips, she looked like she wanted to say something else but decided not to.

“I should’ve gone to Arcadia,” I told her bitterly, turning around and logging in before starting the occasionally annoying process of getting online.  The modem and our PC didn’t like each other, and sometimes I had to force them to play nice.  Not today, fortunately.  “Went to Winslow to stay with my best friend and, well…”

“Yikes.  She ghosted and left you hanging?” Lily guessed, crestfallen at the idea.

I snorted harshly at just how naïve that sounded, feeling the bitterness and betrayal seep into my voice as I explained, “Her name was Emma Barnes.”

Lily’s eyes widened in shock, and she started to say something but apparently couldn’t find the words.  All at once, I realized I hadn’t told anyone about that before.  A lot of people at Winslow knew, or could find out, if they cared to.  Emma and I went to middle school with some of them, after all.  As for me, I just never talked about it.  Not even Dad.  Especially not Dad, he didn’t need my problems.  He couldn’t fix them, and he’d worry at them, and walk on eggshells even as he kept trying to get more out of me and… urgh.  I couldn’t deal with that.

Still, when was the last time I’d talked to anyone as much as I had talked to Lily?  I couldn’t remember.

Finally, Lily settled on, “Wow.  Wow.  That’s harsh.”

I nodded, turning to my email and adjusting the aging speakers when they made a noise on being powered on.  Not for the first time, I reminded myself I really needed to replace them.  A little waiting and the recordings she’d made were playing as I listened once, then carefully transcribed them into the records.  The transcription was accompanied by a notation of the recordings, which I carefully made an extra copy of on the hard drive, then on a USB stick for good measure.

While I worked on that, Lily had picked up one of my books, a battered, beloved copy of Return of the King.  Apparently, she’d been reading the appendices.  “Done adding to the evidence?” Lily asked, smiling at me as she handed over the paperwork again.

“For the recordings and other stuff.  Gonna have to notate all the hate spam, too.”

Slender eyebrows went up on Lily’s face, her clean, Asian features evincing surprise before she shook her head.  “Is bullying on an actual course syllabus somewhere at Winslow?  Seems like some of these people are trying to go A+ in that class,” she commented.

To my surprise, I let out a harsh laugh, but there was some real humor in it, too.  Lily seemed to be good at breaking through my funk.  “If only they put the same effort into their actual grades they do in stealing my work.  No one had the nerve to try today with you watching everyone like a hawk, though.”

“Yeah, well, we prove some of this, I ought to be able to get someone to listen, I think,” Lily replied, scooting closer.  She read over my shoulder.  It was a bizarre combination of normal if disgusting spam (seriously, what am I going to do with penis pills, feed them to the local rat population?), degrading verbal abuse, and utter hate.  “…you’re actually counting the ones telling you to kill yourself.”

“Yep,” I replied, making tickmarks.  “At least no one’s threatening me physically today.”

“At this point I think we need to bust this for their good.  Some of these people need help.”

I glanced over my shoulder; she sounded sincere.  “You’re a better person than I am.  I could’ve thought that way, once, but…”  I shook my head.  “I don’t have it in me anymore.  I’m just so tired.”

Leaning over, Lily put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently for a moment.  “Hang in there.  We’ll make it better, Taylor, just you wait and see.”

All I answered her with was a single slow nod, trying to keep my doubts and fears off my face so she didn’t see them.  The slender reed of hope Lily was holding out to me was the sweetest chalice I’d ever been offered, but I feared the poison it might contain.  Part of me was bracing for Lily to turn on me; another was that she’d be ignored just like I was, whatever weird hesitance Blackwell had to ignore her the way the principal did me.  I just let out a sigh and leaned back once I was done with the email, turning to regard Lily.  “Sorry for long it took, I just wanted to make sure I kept the records up to date.”

“What’s that number beside your name in the email account, anyway?”

“They keep filling up,” I explained with a humorless smile.  “You’d think someone would ask about that eventually, but nope.”

“Unbelievable,” Lily murmured, shaking her head.  “Anyway!  I say we do something to get you out of that gloomy mood.”

“I usually go downstairs and work out a little, or go for a run, try to clear my head so I can read or work on homework without quite so much chasing it around.  Not much homework today, though, and it looked like rain, so…”  I spread my hands, feeling lame.

“What about listening to music, or books on tape?” Lily asked me, glancing toward my library books.

“Sometimes, yeah.  My audiobooks are down in the basement; I usually listen to them when I work out.”

Lily flashed a smile my way.  “Working out your brain and your body at the same time?”

“Something like that,” I replied, looking away and not certain why I was doing it.  “What kind of genres are you into?”

I wasn’t sure whether I was talking about the audiobooks or music, but Lily seemed to think it wasn’t the latter.  “Uh, pretty much anything.  I’ve heard a lot, bouncing around housing and living in New York.  A lot of local stuff.  I really like old jazz sometimes, or metal, or even rap occasionally.  Something with a beat to move to.”

“You like to dance?” I asked her, trying to visualize that.  Lily had a lean, athletic build, not unlike mine but more filled out.  That last part was hardly unusual; I’m a stick figure.  No paunch anymore.  I think.  Anyway, she’d probably make a good dancer, I decided, not that I really knew much about the topic.

“Sometimes, but I do parkour.”  Lily laughed softly at the blank look on my face, but for once it didn’t feel mean or mocking.  “Oh, wow, never heard of that, huh?”  I shook my head.  “Sort of like turning the city or park into an obstacle course, with some acrobatics thrown in.  I like to do it to music, at least in my headphones, so I can get some rhythm to things.  I don’t compete or anything.”

Sitting back, I tried to visualize that and just couldn’t.  “I guess I’d have to see it.”

Lily was smiling again.  “I’d love to show you sometime when it’s not gonna rain.  Parkour and poor traction aren’t really a great combination.”  That made sense, I decided.  Then she added, “You might like doing it yourself, you move really well, and you seem pretty agile.”

“I don’t know,” I hedged, very uncertain.  Me?  Doing anything acrobatic or athletic?  I just worked out and jogged.  Surely I wasn’t good enough to do anything like that.

“Don’t know until you try it,” Lily replied cheerfully.  “And hey, just having a running partner to spot me when I’m getting flashy would be great.  I’m glad I saw you sitting all alone on the bus, Taylor.”

Looking out my window and feeling bashful, I just bobbed my head.  “Y-yeah, you too.”

That made Lily’s smile widen a little.  I wasn’t sure why it did, but I kind of liked it.

We wound up listening to music for a while.  It was mostly classic rock, songs that I remembered my parents enjoying, especially Dad, and apparently at least somewhat to Lily’s taste.  Eventually, though, we relocated downstairs.

I flipped through to see what was on, then smiled when I found Yojimbo was about to start on our local movie channel.  Even better, it wasn’t even dubbed!  Subtitled, yeah, but not dubbed.

Lily frowned a bit.  “Wait, they’re running Japanese language films?”

“Uh, yeah,” I replied, glancing at her.  “We’ve had a Japanese émigré community practically since the end of the Edo Period.”  Lily’s frown deepened a little, and she tilted her head, clearly puzzled at that.   “What?  We’re not all white supremacists.  Those chucklefucks came along a lot later.”

“That’s not what surprised me, it’s just… since the Meiji?  Really?”

“Mmhm.  A few daimyo and their retainers decided to try their luck elsewhere, and they liked the weather here or something.  Caught on the wrong end of politics in the Meiji Restoration or so I’ve always heard.  Then more people came, especially after WWII.”

“Huh.  I never heard about that, but then, I guess I never heard much about Brockton Bay except all the villains.”  She cracked a grin.  “Hell, they practically don’t even put this city on the maps.”

I smirked a bit.  “Portland and Augusta are jealous.”  Well, it wasn’t quite that, but Brockton Bay did tend to get shafted from time to time in state politics.  Kind of a recurring trend here in Maine.  Some of the white power chucklefuck types occasionally called for us to secede and form our own state because yeah, that was ever going to get through Congress.

Settling back with Lily next to me, we watched a samurai with no name venture into a town beset with violence from warring gangs.  Over the course of the runtime, betrayals and turns of fate stacked up until finally both gang leaders were dead, one by the samurai’s sword, the other by the mayor’s, the town set free.  In hindsight, maybe this movie was a little on point for Brockton Bay, although somehow, I couldn’t see Mayor Christner or a member of his family clashing with the likes of Lung or Kaiser.

“Huh.  That was not what I expected, but it’s almost like an old western,” Lily commented, sitting up and stretching.  Her top rode up some, showing off her toned abs.

I blinked, feeling a faint pinkening on my cheeks and I wasn’t sure why.  Shaking it off, I replied, “I watched A Fistful of Dollars with Dad a few years ago, it’s an adaptation.”  For a moment, I felt a pang of memory.  That hadn’t been very long at all before Mom passed.  Had that been the last movie Dad and I watched together?  I couldn’t remember.

Lily tilted her head.  “I don’t think I’ve seen that, either, but I never really watched old movies much.”

“Stick around Brockton Bay, you’ll see plenty of Kurosawa films eventually,” I told her, pushing through the sadness.   “There’s a cultural museum with an exhibit about him, and Toshiro Mifune.”  I decided against mentioning the persistent rumors Lung had donated to it; that was never proven, and if he had, well, the guy was supposedly Japanese.  A man was entitled to remember his homeland.

Nodding, Lily gave me a hand to my feet. “I should probably get going.”

“You can’t stay for dinner?  I was going to start making pork chops…” I hinted, a bit hopeful she’d stick around.  It’d been so long since I’d had a nice meal with anyone other than Dad.  Besides, he’d like to see me with a friend again, I’m sure.  Not that I’m great with cooking, but I’ve learned to do some simple things, and occasionally Dad has the energy to help, or to teach me something again.

Lily licked her lips, looking torn, then nodded.  “Yeah.  That sounds nice.  I… don’t really know how to cook.  Never learned.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I promised her.  “Just give me a hand finding things and washing up.”

Relocating to the kitchen and washing our hands, I opened the notebook I’d collected a few recipes into and turned to the recipe I’d marked for Tuesday.  “Can you get the cranberry juice, onions, and pork chops out of the fridge for me?”

Making an affirmative noise, Lily located the requested items, while I got the skillet ready and retrieved the other ingredients needed.  Once I had the ingredients mixed, I browned the pork chops, then sauteed the onions, and got the juice simmering.  “That’ll be a few minutes,” I noted, looking at the recipe.  “Then we put the pork chops back in.”  Looking around, I found we’d forgotten the green beans I had originally thought to make, but located some black eyed peas instead, and set about making them for a side dish.

Washing some of the cooking implements, Lily kept an eye on what I was doing.  “That already smells nice.  I guess I haven’t had a lot of genuine home-cooked meals in… a while.”

“I try to cook occasionally, and Dad does at least once each weekend,” I answered absently.

I waited for the inevitable question about my mother, but Lily seemed to pick up on her absence and didn’t say anything.  Grateful for that, I went on, “I’m trying to get better.  You’re the first person other than me or Dad I’ve cooked for.”  It wasn’t like I did any cooking back… back before.  Just helped Mom.

We trailed off, and after I was done getting out the plates, I heard the sound of a car at the front of the house.  “That’s Dad.”

“Surprised you didn’t text him to tell him you’ve got a guest for dinner,” Lily observed quietly.

I shrugged.  “We don’t have cell phones.  Just… not a choice we want to make.”

From the look on her face, Lily found that puzzling, but she didn’t comment.  Instead, she just nodded, accepting the plates from me to set out on the table.  I got to the front of the house around the time he opened the door.  “Dad.  How was work?”

The usual question, and it got the usual answer.  “Fine.  How was your first day back at school?”  His face suggested maybe it wasn’t; he had trouble finding work for the Dockworkers in an economy like this.

Tentatively, I smiled.  “It, uh, it was nice?”

Behind his glasses, Dad’s eyes widened slightly.  “Good!”

“I made a friend, she’s staying for dinner.”

Dad’s lean, troubled face brightened up.  “That’s great.  I can’t remember the last time I saw one of your friends, like Emma,” he mused quietly, keeping his voice down so it didn’t carry.

Eliding over that, I just replied, “C’mon, she’s in the kitchen.”  I led him through, then gestured.  “Dad, this is Lily.  She’s in a few of my classes this semester.”

Lily straightened up, smiling brightly.  “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Hebert.  Taylor was a big help my first day at a new school.”  She’d been a big help to me, too, but I didn’t want to ruin dinner by explaining that.  Not that I ever did talk about the bullying.  That was my problem, not Dad’s.

“Mr. Hebert was my father.  Please, call me Danny,” Dad answered, shaking hands with Lily before washing up.  He fished out the silverware while I put the pork chops on to heat, with a meat thermometer in one.  “You just moved to Brockton Bay recently, or…?”

“Mmhm, kind of a weird family thing,” Lily answered.  I got the faint impression it was more complicated than that, but I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to talk about family.  I certainly didn’t sometimes.

Instead of pressing, Dad just nodded.  “Well, welcome to the Bay.”

“It’s… different from New York,” Lily commented with a shrug.  There was a smile in her voice when she added, “Can’t say I haven’t found someone to show me around, though!”

My cheeks heated a bit as I watched the pork chops do the same thing, and Dad chuckled.  Cooking the pork chops properly only took two or three minutes, and I hastened to deal with them as Dad got the black-eyed peas ready for table serving.  “Okay then!  We’ll need to let the pork chops stand for five minutes,” I announced, hopeful to avoid anyone embarrassing me.

Conversation over dinner was light.  We spoke a little bit about what we were studying, especially in computers class, which I, at least, was a lot more willing to talk about.  Lily even thanked me for giving her a hand in a subject she wasn’t as strong in.  Dad was talking up a possible contract with a fishing company that was looking to do more business at this end of the Gulf of Maine.  Even a little bit of extra business for the Dockworkers would be good, and it’d make it easier to justify the outlay of clearing the Graveyard, or at least getting part of the deepwater channel opened up.

“Well, I should probably be going once we get done with the dishes,” Lily said, checking the time on her phone.

Dad raised an eyebrow.  “And how are you going to be getting home?”

“By bus,” she replied, frowning thoughtfully at him.  “Why?”  Lily seemed like someone who could take care of herself, but wasn’t one of New Wave’s members killed while they were waiting for a bus?  I wasn’t sure I liked it any more than Dad did.  “I’ll be fine, really.  If it makes you feel better, give me your home number, and I’ll call once I get home, okay?  Or if I need some help.”

Mollified, a little, Dad nodded.  “Just be careful.”  Then he grinned a bit.  “If nothing else, I like knowing Taylor’s got a friend at school.  I haven’t seen anyone around for a bit.”

Lily caught my eye, surprised, and I shook my head slightly; I really didn’t want to have that conversation tonight.  Or at all, honestly.  She didn’t react past that, just answering, “Well, I certainly will be coming back if you’re going to cook again, Taylor.”

“I, uh, I can do that, sure,” I replied, surprised she liked it so much.  Was I blushing?

Later on, once I had everything squared away for the night, showered, teeth brushed, and ready for bed, I stretched out on my old mattress, looking out my window.  Thinking about today.  Despite all the verbal abuse, for the first time in a long time, I actually found I was looking forward to what tomorrow would bring.  Even the flicker of worry that Lily would decide I wasn’t worth the hassle couldn’t diminish that feeling.

The pessimist in me just knew that was going to make worse when – If, I told myself stubbornly – she turned on me, like everyone else had.  I genuinely didn’t think so, though.  Even if she did decide not to hang out with me anymore, I had her recordings.  That was something.  It was a start.

For once, I fell asleep with a bit of hope for tomorrow.

Chapter Text

December 21, 2010
Lily Hara

Lily could think of things she’d rather be doing on a Friday afternoon than attending a routine, boring, and underpopulated Wards team meeting at the main New York Protectorate building, but it beat something else she could have been doing.  (Like helping the janitors a few floors down.)  Besides, Legend was here, covering for Prism on her Christmas vacation, and he at least made them more animated than anyone else who might have been speaking.

Glancing down at the piece of paper in front of him, Legend’s rich voice came to the last item on the agenda.  “And finally, we have an opening for a Wards transfer-“

Lily’s hand shot up.  “I’ll take it.”

Mildly miffed, the Protectorate leader finished, “-to Brockton Bay, Maine.”

“I said I’ll take it, boss,” Lily repeated firmly.

Giving her an expression of concern, Legend gave her a considering look.  “You do realize there’s a gang of neo-Nazis, and another that recruits on Asian ethnicity?”

Forcing a wry smile to mask the revulsion using her PR lessons, Lily replied primly, “They probably won’t send me early Christmas presents, sir.”

“…why do I have a foreboding feeling about my email?” Legend said as Jouster shaded his eyes with a groan.  “March again?”

“The Teeth,” Lily informed them, shaking her head.  “Apparently Vex thought what happened last week with a bunch of Spree’s clones was ‘impressive’ and sent me a gift and an invitation to a tryout.”

Several people stared at her with expressions of disbelief, shock, and one or two cases of horror from the heroes who’d been present when she’d had to literally carve her way through the mob with her gloved, armored hands.  Her power made that survivable, and she hadn’t even had all that much gore on her thanks to her power making it all frictionless, but it had been a truly epic amount of blood and guts by the time she got done.  The thought the Teeth liked it was horrifying.

Legend had been the one to comfort her afterward.  He was usually distant from the Wards, too busy, but he cared, and he’d helped her start to come to terms with it.  “I see.  If you’re certain that’s what you want, I’ll give my approval for it.”

“Thank you, sir.”  Lily dipped her head, genuinely grateful.

“Do I even want to ask what she sent you?”

When she answered, Lily’s voice was clipped.  “I called the janitorial staff immediately.  If anyone’s wondering why our quarters smell like a bleach spill…”  Various Wards winced.  “Yeah.  If the Teeth want to recruit, I want out of town for a while.  No offense, everyone.”

“None taken,” Jouster replied with a frown.  He’d had his own run-ins with the Teeth, even had to run away from the Butcher’s minigun once.  Most of the gangs minded their Ps and Qs around the Wards in New York.  The collection of psychos, cannibals, and ne’er do wells known as the Teeth, not so much.

With an apologetic, whimsical smile, Lily added, “It is a full moon today.”

“Of course it is,” Legend muttered, shaking his head and apparently trying not to facepalm.

January 4, 2011

Still smiling to herself at the thought of the shy but surprisingly warm girl she’d spent her day alongside, Lily stepped off the bus without a problem despite the drop to the crumbling curb.  Glancing around, she noticed the man in the bus stop shelter had stood up, but he wasn’t going for the bus.  Instead, he was opening an umbrella, and when he turned around, she smiled.

“Well, well, the wandering girl’s returned,” the man said, smiling back as he moved to make it easier for her to shelter under the umbrella with him.

“Hey, Ethan!  You didn't have to come out to the bus stop to meet me with an umbrella.  Not that I don’t appreciate it, but…”  The teenager shrugged, not used to one of her ostensible caretakers being nice like this.  They set off on the way to the two bedroom apartment he and his wife occupied.

Ethan Stuart chuckled.  “Nah, but if you catch a cold, Jess'll never let me hear the end of it.”

Shaking her head, Lily replied in a dust dry voice, “Well, I wouldn't want you to get in trouble with your wife on my account.”

“Exactly, kid.  I should get in trouble with her myself!  Made a friend today?” Ethan asked cheerfully.  He usually was, in Lily’s experience.  Even when he was working.

Feeling her smile turn a little bashful, Lily glanced away.  “Yeah, I think I did.”

“Huh.  Seems like maybe a little more, or that you want her to be,” he observed.  Lily hadn’t been expecting just how observant he was from his reputation.

“Well, Taylor was checking out my ass a little when I did the rope climb in gym.  I think.  Taylor’s nice, but…”  Lily trailed off, not sure how to say the next part.  Or even if she should.

His voice more concerned, Ethan asked, “But?  The you trailed off, that’s a little ominous.”

“It’s not her, unless there’s something I don’t know, and she doesn’t seem like that type.  It’s like she’s the designated class pariah for our year or something.”

“No one likes her?”

Lily started to shake her head, then made a so-so gesture instead.  “Sort of.  A bunch of the girls are bullying her pretty hard.”

“This is something she told you, or…?” Ethan asked, clearly a bit concerned.

The teenager snorted derisively.  “Try I’ve got recordings of it.  Didn’t really like the vibe when we had a conversation with the principal, and she’s… well, almost painfully shy, or withdrawn.  So, I put my phone on record in case something happened, and…”

Ethan chuckled again.  “Knew you were a smart cookie.”

“Yeah.  Taylor’s pretty smart, too, I think, but she’s fragile.  Been through a lot.  But when she smiles…”

“Hey now, it’s early days.  Don’t go falling for her just yet.  But definitely be there for her, Lily.  Sounds like she needs a friend pretty bad.”

“I’m just… I’m trying to be the hero I’m supposed to be, right?  The one she needs.  And gonna keep this jock from getting physical with her if I have to.  Besides, I need a friend too.  It was nice to just hang out, be normal, without any of the… well, you know.”

Ethan nodded, his expression thoughtful.  “Yeah, I do.  A jock, huh?”

“Yeah, some kind of track star or something, I think.  Her name’s Sophia Hess.”  Lily rolled her eyes dramatically.  “Really fit, but her personality…!”

“Puts the bitch in bitchy from what you’re saying?” he asking, smiling.

Lily chuckled.  “You said it, not me.”

Ethan nodded.  “Mind letting me hear those recordings?  I’m curious just how bad it is.”

“Oh, yeah, sure thing.”  Having a Protectorate hero’s take on this wasn’t a bad idea.  Besides, Ethan might have one or two useful ideas about how to go about turning this into some sort of useful action.

January 5, 2011

Lily checked her costume one last time in the mirror to make sure everything was on right.  Being told to report to the director unexpectedly first thing after school was a little nerve-wracking.  She was pretty sure she hadn’t done anything, but you never quite knew, and Director Piggot had a reputation as a hard ass.  Supposedly she’d come up out of the field teams the hard way: Promotion when she got too shot up to fight.

Deciding there wasn’t anything else to adjust, not without the rest of her gear – carrying a full-size arbalest through the corridors, or any of her other loadouts, was overkill if she wasn’t on actual guard duty – Flechette settled her visor into place, adjusted it, and stepped out of her room.

Trading nods with Vista, who was manning the console, she announced, “On my way up to the director’s office.”

“Huh.  Did you not get an intake meeting or something?” Vista asked, glancing away from the status feed.

“No, I met her Thursday, the day I got here.  No idea what’s up, but it’s good to know this isn’t normal.”

Vista shook her head.  “Not unless you’ve screwed up, badly, or something happened on patrol, which, well...”  Flechette wasn’t on the local patrol rota yet, of course.  They wanted to separate her arrival further from Lily Hara’s.  “Deputy Director Renick usually handles us day-to-day.”

Not exactly comforted – Vista had been a Ward here for years, she’d know these things – Flechette waited for the door to unlock and walked to the elevator.  A few moments spent wondering how much the PRT spent on Tinkertech elevators, and why the muzak was so bad with that outlay, and she was on the upper floor.  Go down the corridor, knock on the outer door, report to the secretary, and then she was ushered into the presence of the lady herself.

“Flechette, reporting as ordered, ma’am,” the teenager announced.

Piggot didn’t look up from what she was doing on her PC, but the heavy set woman in the crisply pressed blue suit pointed at a guest chair.  “Just a moment.  I want to ask you some questions about Winslow when I get done with this email.”

Blinking behind her visor, Flechette did as instructed, getting her thoughts in order while she waited.

It didn’t take Piggot long, and the wait didn’t seem like a power play.  She certainly wasn’t just reviewing Flechette’s record, not from the mutter about someone named Calvert.  Once she was done, the director steepled her fingers, considering the Ward.  “Now then, Flechette.  I understand you had some run-ins with your classmates yesterday.  What happened?  Start from the beginning.”

Flechette felt like someone had dumped ice water into her bloodstream, but she did as ordered.  Meeting Taylor on the bus, the conversation with Blackwell she’d butted into, offering to keep an eye on Taylor, getting a recording to prove things one way or the other.  The scene outside World Affairs yesterday, what she’d observed at Taylor’s house about things including the voluminous records her new friend was keeping.  Today had been more of the same, with a random attempt by Sophia to shoulder-check her instead of Taylor, and some cutting remarks her way.  A few suggestions she should be working for the ABB that way, for instance.  (Very racist in Flechette’s opinion, although she kept that part to herself.)  Pranks in World Affairs, including the juice on her chair as well as Taylor’s.  Then there were broken safety locks.  At least one fire door didn’t open at all, according to students, and another didn’t lock from the outside.  Or the gang tags.  The place was kind of a trash heap.

All through it, the director asked occasional questions, asking her to clarify a point, or probing for additional details.  “I see.”  Emily Piggot pursed her lips, then nodded slowly.  “I don’t have to tell you that this kind of situation can lead to a trigger for a teenager.”

It wouldn’t be the first time, Flechette knew, and she shook her head.  The Winner Blaze in Aleph had made the news last November, right before Thanksgiving.  A bullied teen triggered with what was, by Bet standards, a comparatively minor Shaker power and used it to burn down their high school in rural South Dakota.  There had been casualties, and not all of them were guilty.

“I… I’m not an expert on that, director, but I’ll try to be there.  She needs a friend.”

Piggot nodded seriously.  “I’m glad you stepped up to help someone in need.  That’s the kind of behavior we expect out of Wards.  Some of this is outside the PRT’s remit, but the school system receives funding for several schools for Wards certification, and that comes with a degree of oversight authority.  I’d expected sending you to the school might turn up something, but this is rather more than I anticipated.”  She paused, thinking for a moment.  “Send me those recordings.  I want to get a feel for how bad this is.”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.  Should I try to get a copy of Taylor’s records?”

“Not unless she offers you one.  We’ll get a copy of them from the school board.”  Raising a finger, Piggot added, “Make sure she provides them with a certified copy, not an original.  She needs to retain her own records, just in case.”

“I’ll tell her that, ma’am,” Flechette promised, bobbing her head, then fishing out a small notepad she carried on patrol to make a note of it.  “I’m going to put this with my regular clothes before I leave.”

“Good thinking.”  Piggot glanced at the clock, then said, “You’ve got console duty soon.  Dismissed.”

“Ma’am.”  Another acknowledging nod, then Flechette beat a hasty retreat.  The director was firm, but she seemed fair so far.  Of course, Flechette hadn’t done anything to get her angry, either.  That might be an entirely different version of Emily Piggot, one she’d prefer not to meet.

January 6, 2011

If the highlight of Lily’s week so far had been meeting and hanging out with a cute new friend, the highlight of Flechette’s was probably going out to the Rig for the first time.  The Protectorate facilities in New York were nice, but there was something about a converted oil platform with a force field and a literal rainbow bridge that just had a whole different vibe.

It was sort of inconvenient to everywhere else, though, Flechette readily conceded as she rode into the place with Ethan and his wife Jess, better known to the public at large as the dynamic team of Assault and Battery in their red and blue costumes, respectively.  “You know, it’d be nice if we had windows,” she remarked, glancing around the PRT truck they were riding in.

“Don’t encourage him,” Battery replied, though she was smiling a little as she said it.  “Why are they hauling you in, anyway?”

“Gear consultation with Armsmaster; something about my arbalest,” Flechette replied with a shrug.  “Probably someone doesn’t want me punching holes in the building facades or leaving metal poles sticking out when we don’t have a shaker handy who can fix these things for us.”

Assault snorted, shaking his head.  “Yeah, that’d be a problem.  Halbeard’ll sort you out with something, I’m sure.  Or at least have some efficient ideas.”

Battery gave her partner and husband a millisecond glare, or so Flechette assumed; the body language in the costume was the same as when Ethan had started punning back on New Years.  “Don’t encourage the Wards to call him that,” she grumbled in Assault’s direction before looking back at Flechette.  “Anyway, I’m sure he can help.  Or he’s got contacts with other Tinkers or distributors.”

“Just… be aware he’s not always the most personable,” Assault commented, his voice unwontedly serious.  “The boss means well, and he’s great at finding ways to leverage someone’s powers.  Stay on track, ask questions and give your opinion on how you think something’ll work, you’ll do fine.”

Flechette nodded, thankful for the tip.  She’d never met Armsmaster and was excited to meet another of the top heroes in the Protectorate.  Assault walked her to the section given over to Armsmaster’s lab and fabrication facilities, knocking, then tossed the Protectorate leader a two-finger salute.  “Boss, brought the new girl over, as requested.”

“Precisely on time,” the man in the blue domino mask and workshop coveralls commented, finishing up an adjustment in a mechanism that Flechette belatedly recognized as one of Armsmaster’s famous multi-function halberds.  Setting down his tools, he turned to her, holding out a hand.

Taking it, Flechette looked him up and down.  Even in just a pair of work boots, Armsmaster was taller than average, certainly taller than her, projecting an air of fitness even in the loose coveralls, and his close-cropped hair and goatee were neatly trimmed.  Possibly with a machine of Tinker manufacture, she couldn’t help thinking, but several years of experience with PR lessons kept her lips from turning up.  “It’s good to meet you, sir.  I’m Flechette.”

“Likewise.  Legend spoke well of you when we discussed your transfer.”  A bit surprised, and gratified, Flechette followed him when he walked to another worktable.  “I’ve examined your arbalest and can maintain it, but I have some alternative loadouts to discuss with you.”

“Because it can be a bit hard on the buildings,” Flechette agreed with a nod.

“Which is why I built this for you.”  Reaching over and picking up a small device, Armsmaster pointed it at a reinforced wall and triggered it, launching a grapnel at – of all things – a repurposed commissary chair, battered with age and misuse.  That last part was probably why it had been made available.

The hero’s aim had launched it at one of the metal poles, and the grapnel automatically coiled around it, then the rope started to wind.  Without being fixed to the floor, the chair was pulled toward him, stopping a few feet away when Armsmaster hit another button and it automatically retracted.  “This grapple launcher will require training and timing, but I’m told your power should assist you.”

Impressed, Flechette reached out, examining the device and keeping her fingers clear of the controls.  “It definitely should,” she agreed.  “Wouldn’t want to try this on the street without practice, but it should work.  It’ll really make a difference when I need to ascend to do some roof running.”

Armsmaster gave her a small smile.  “I’ve prepared a training regimen and programming, as well as a user manual; the device is derived from a series of mechanisms I’ve used in my armor.”

Flechette looked back up at him.  “Oh, wow.  Thanks.”

“I have two other things for you to look over.  The first is this.”  Examining the hand crossbow, Flechette glanced up.  “This is one of the spares for Shadow Stalker, but with your skill at timing and aiming, it should be serviceable to give you some ranged capacity, while still being functional with your Striker ability.”

“Those times it’d be a good idea to use it,” Flechette commented just a bit archly.  She was relieved to see Armsmaster nod, his expression serious.  Not everyone took seriously just how stupidly lethal her power could be; one or two had learned the hard way seeing March’s version used on them.  (Hopefully that psycho bitch would stay in New York…)  Remembering that incident with Spree, she repressed a shudder; anyone who hadn’t realized how dangerous her power was had gotten the point.  Unfortunately, that included Vex.  (Speaking of people she hoped would stay in New York!)

Armsmaster seemed to be brusque and impersonal, but that was okay; she’d dealt with worse.  Bastion down in Boston, for instance.  “I agree, we should minimize use, but I can see some cases where it would be useful – search and rescue, for instance.”  His expression flickered; Flechette suspected he could think of a few of the local villains who might be suitable, too.  He might not be wrong, as little as she really wanted to find out.

Looking back down at the crossbow, she noticed something about the ammunition.  “Tranquilizer darts?”

“Exactly.  And some modifications to your costume to assist in vertical movement.”  Picking up a boot, Armsmaster touched something on a glove that was still resting on the table and then put the boot sole down.  “Try to lift it.”

Eyebrows up, Flechette did as requested, only for the boot to stick to the surface.  Another touch of Armsmaster’s finger and only the balls of the feet stuck, where she’d apply pressure climbing.  He made another motion and it came free, making her stumble backward slightly in surprise at her balance abruptly changing.  “Okay, that’s neat.  What is it?” she asked, flipping the boot over and looking at it.  The sole looked normal enough at first glance but something about it just seemed… Tinkery.  Maybe it was what she’d just seen and it was all in her head.

“Work from one of my colleagues in San Francisco by the name Opus; he calls them gecko pads.  Dragon had a breakthrough in reproducing them, and I was able to engineer in a more reliable and efficient control setup, although we’ll need to figure out the best interface for you.”

“Is it just the boots, or…?” Flechette asked.

Armsmsater shook his head.  “Gloves and kneepads.  I’m studying the technology to possibly integrate into my armor, but the weight limits are a challenge there.  For you, however…”

Nodding slowly, Flechette commented, “Yeah, just a slight difference in build there, and the costume weight…”  She gave him a smile and, after a moment, Armsmsater returned it, almost uncertain.  “I really appreciate you taking the time to look at this kind of thing for me, sir.  But, uh, the gecko pads… well, I can use my power to do that kind of thing.  Never a bad idea to have a second option, though, especially if I ran into a power negater or something,” she hastened to add.

“No, it’s not.  I saw that in your file and picked you to field test this gear along with Aegis,” Armsmaster told her.

“Because he flies,” Flechette realized, nodding.

“Exactly.  If it’s successful, we can roll it out to someone like Vista, who benefits from height.”

Flechette nodded slowly, thinking about it.  “I can see that.  I’ll definitely have to give it a try.”

“Of course.  Take the grapnel and get some practice in today; you’re not scheduled for patrols until we have your equipment load ironed out.”  He paused, then added just a touch awkwardly, “I look forward to working with you in the field, Flechette.”

“Same to you!” Flechette answered enthusiastically, accepting the grapnel from him along with… oh, wow, the manual even looked professionally printed.  This man was switched on when it came to building things, wasn’t he?  “Looks good, I’ll give the safety section a read and then run through the tutorial.”

“Good, dismissed.”

Flechette came to a parade rest, then set off before it occurred to her that she needed to find someone and ask for directions to the training area.

Chapter Text

January 7, 2011
Lily Hara

The day started off with a bit of a surprise for Lily and Taylor.  They’d met up on the bus, as usual, and after the requisite stop at Lily’s locker and horrific comments – today’s special feature, the suggestion that Taylor was drugging Lily to get her to hang around and do other things – they scurried off to Mrs. Knott’s classroom.  Mrs. Knott was at the door and motioned them inside, closing it behind the two of them.  Lily’s eyebrows went up; that was unusual.

“Good morning, girls,” she said, nodding to each of them.  “I had a call last night from Superintendent Wilkes.”

“Of the school system?” Taylor replied, blinking in surprise.  Lily supposed that was unusual, then.

Nodding her head, the computers teacher motioned them toward her desk.  “I’m not sure how he found out about your case, or that I’m involved, Taylor, but he wants me to provide the evidence to him personally, not Principal Blackwell.”

“That’s good, right?” Lily asked, frowning thoughtfully.  Unlike Taylor or Mrs. Knott, she knew Director Piggot had become aware of the situation – probably Ethan’s fault, if she had to guess – and while the PRT likely didn’t care much about the bullying of Taylor, per se, passing it along while they were dealing with something else?  She could see that, especially now that it involved one of the Wards.

The cynical thought that the only reason anyone was doing anything was a Ward being involved crossed Lily’s mind.  Still, Taylor hadn’t deserved any of this, and if she could stomp it out?  Well, heroism wasn’t putting on a cape and doing flashing things, it was doing the right thing for someone in need.

Shaking off the reverie, she realized the other two were looking at her.   “Uh… what was that?  Sorry, maybe I’m still waking up,” Lily said, rubbing the back of her head awkwardly.

“Your recording from this morning, Lily,” Mrs. Knott repeated, smiling a bit.  “Taylor?  I’ll get copies of those papers, and give them back to you.”

“Good,” Taylor replied, nodding.  “Can you hold onto them until the end of the day, though?”  She gave Lily a glance.  “I don’t trust them not to somehow get into your locker, either.”

“That’s probably a good point, if we don’t know how they’re getting into yours,” Lily commented with a nod of her own, retrieving her smartphone from her pocket to send the recording over.  “If they just have the key, that’s one thing, but picking the lock somehow?”

Taylor nodded again, looking optimistic.  “Exactly.”

“I’m happy to keep track of them,” Mrs. Knott told them, heading for the door to unlock it.

By the time Lily caught up with Taylor before gym on Friday, she found the taller girl was surveying the gym with a flat, emotionless expression.  Looking into those jade green eyes, though, Lily saw an emotion she thought several good days had erased from them: dread.

“Dodgeball.  We’re playing dodgeball,” Taylor murmured like she was delivering a line in a horror movie.

Lily wasn’t sure if Taylor was talking to her or just emoting out loud, but she hesitantly touched Taylor’s shoulder.  “It’ll be okay.”

The mask-like expression turned to Lily.  “You don’t understand, Sophia’s gonna try and murder me out there.  We’ve pissed her off this week.”

“Don’t borrow trouble.  And if they do…”  Coming to a decision, Lily shrugged.  “I’m just gonna have to strut my stuff.  We’ve got this.”  Her power would work with dodgeball, very nicely.  Petty?  Yes.  Satisfying?  Absolutely!

Taylor didn’t seem reassured, but she still let Lily guide her toward the locker room.  As had become habit, they took turns watching over each other while they changed out, Taylor’s hair up in a braid, Lily wearing hers in a long ponytail.

“You sure you don’t want to show off those abs?  Might distract a few people, make them miss,” Lily teased, trying to rouse Taylor from her funk.  The taller girl just shook her head, failing to blush at Lily’s teasing for once.  That was something Lily took as a sign of Taylor’s mounting distress at what was coming.  Teams were drawn up, and Lily subtly did her best to avoid notice so she was on Taylor’s team.

While Coach Evans and Coach Kilgore weren’t looking, Sophia caught Lily’s eye, hiked her thumb at Taylor, and made a slashing motion across her throat.  Okay, fine.  You want to play it that way, bitch?  Let’s play dodgeball, Lily decided, baring her teeth in something no one could mistake for a smile.  That seemed to take Sophia off-guard.  Good.

Madison and Emma immediately launched salvos, followed by a few of the other hangers on.  A moment’s glance and Lily casually snagged Julia’s attempt out of the air, the most likely to land while Taylor shied away from the rest.  After catching crossbow bolts, this was nothing.  She sent the dodgeball back with a bit of English on it that caught Madison right in the belly, sending her staggering backward as Coach Evans called her out.  The cutesy girl pouted and flounced off toward the bleachers.

Instead of ghosting away and grabbing one or two balls to return them, Lily took pains to make dodging the attempts from a few of the others to bring me down look as bad as possible.  At one point, she even came down, slapping her hand down, and used it to balance in something that looked like she’d nearly fallen but actually let her duck under a ball hurled by Sophia that looked like she wanted to break Lily’s nose with it.  Maybe Taylor had a point being worried about Sophia’s revenge.

I’ve got an answer for that if that’s how she wants to play it, the Ward promised herself, eying the angles as Emma and Sophia moved in proximity to one another.  “Stumbling” away from another one and drawing derisive laughs – it helped a lot she didn’t care about anyone’s opinion but Taylor’s and also didn’t have Image breathing down her neck to present a display of competence – Lily caught a ball bouncing off the floor and lined up her next volley.  Dodgeball was a game of timing and angles, and where some Thinkers were masterminds and plotters, Lily Thinkered in the moment, instinctively feeling the timing and seeing the angles and vectors of everything around her.  Honestly, this wasn’t a bad training exercise for her powers; making it look bad just meant throwing some parkour showmanship on and getting creative.

Waiting until the precise moment, Lily twisted and sent an overhand lob flying. With a power like hers, the Protectorate had drilled her in throwing things, and balls were easy mode compared to Tinkertech nonsense by someone who thought of aerodynamics as interfering with the creative process.  Sophia realized a moment too late what was coming when the ball hit her dead-on in the chest.

Even as Sophia was glaring at Lily with a hate that convinced the Ward she’d made it onto the list right beside Taylor, it bounced off to careen into Emma’s rear end.  The redhead went stumbling forward, landing in an ungraceful pratfall that set several of her own teammates to pointing and laughing.

To help sell the act it was anything but intentional, Lily even stepped over and offered the redhead a hand.  Emma slapped it away, baring teeth in a face marred by smeared makeup.  “Get your hand off me, bitch.”  Angrily, she shoved herself up to her feet, stalking off toward the bleachers in a way that suggested anyone who got in her way might get attacked.

Okay, wow.  Someone’s got some anger issues, Lily decided as she stepped back across the line to her own side, avoiding the ball Julia sent her way as if it was by sheer chance.  It hadn’t been her intention this time, but Coach Kilgore yelled at Julia for throwing at someone who’d been showing good sportsmanship.

Taylor snagged a ball headed for her and gave Lily a wary glance.  “They’re going to go after you next.  You know that, right?” she asked, frowning.

“Can’t be any worse than faceplanting the time I tried a flip in Central Park and didn’t have the traction,” Lily replied with a careless shrug, putting her eyes back on the game.  She was genuinely unconcerned, though touched by Taylor’s concern for her safety; the other girl was a sweetheart who didn’t deserve what these bitches had put her through.

If this collection of delinquents were the type to girl posse her with knives out, they’d probably have shanked Taylor by now, right?  Still, she made a mental note to keep an eye on Sophia and Emma.  If anyone in the Winslow Sophomore Bitch Society was psycho enough to jump her, it was probably one of those two.  (As opposed to Madison, who for all her cutesy antics and pranks was about one step up from a yapping purse dog in Lily’s opinion.)

Lily cut the antics back for the rest of the round with the main offenders off the board, but she kept an eye on them as she worked her way through the rest of the round.  Once they reset, it was clear a few of them had scores to settle.  She leaned over to Taylor.  “I’m going to set you up for a couple of shots – get the main bitches out of play and don’t worry about me.”

Emma, Julia, and Madison bracketed Lily with balls, but their timing was sloppy, even by normal standards, let alone Lily’s.  The Thinker just stepped a little to the left, then ducked, snagging Madison’s ball and doing a handoff to Taylor as she ducked sideways, attracting more red rubber balls of rage..

Taking the ball, Taylor narrowed her eyes in concentration and picked her moment with care.  With the advantage of not being targeted by a half-dozen obsessive bullies, her hand-eye coordination came into play, and the red sphere sailed in a neat arc that terminated in Emma’s overdeveloped chest.  The redhead made a ‘whoomf’ sort of noise and stumbled backward in shock, landing on her ass.

Several more balls came her way, and Lily did her best to look like an idiot without actually getting taken down before one of the other girls nailed Julia.  They might think of Taylor as the class pariah, but natural competitiveness was their ally, and Madison soon followed, shooting Lily a baleful look.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lily saw Sophia lining up a shot, glaring angry.  Okay, time to make this look good, she decided.  Catching one ball, she pretended to not notice Sophia.  Her pass to Taylor came off a moment before Lily was hit in the side, and she “stumbled” before heading for the bleachers, out of the game… and with a perfect view of Taylor bouncing a ball off of Sophia’s hip as the track athlete took her eye off the other side in favor of giving Lily a vicious smirk.

Lily managed not to be smiling too sweetly at her when Sophia came stomping up.  “Get distracted?”

Looking like she wanted to take a go at shoving Lily right off the bleachers, Sophia stomped past without acknowledging her further.  Lily watched her go.  There was a cat-like combination of sinuous muscle and graceful motion, but if Sophia was cat-like, she might also be a bit rabid.  Then there was Sophia’s delightful personality, yeesh.  Putting that aside, she turned her attention back to the dodgeball game.  By the end of it, Taylor had managed to survive the rest of the round by dint of a couple of the other girls realizing she had good aim when she wasn’t busy dodging for her life.

Sauntering back down and helping stack dodgeballs in the box, Lily flashed her friend a grin.  “Hail the victorious survivor.”  In the corner of her eye, Sophia twitched, but she put it out of mind.

Taylor seemed less inclined to ignore Sophia, but she still smiled shyly.  “Yeah.  That was-“

“Now you listen here, you flower puff-“ Sophia said, coming at them and shouldering Taylor out of the way on her way to shove Lily.  Lily just yielded with the push, sending Sophia off-balance, and the two of them watched Sophia faceplant in the box of red rubber balls.

Before anyone could say anything, Coach Evans bellowed in his dubiously mellifluous voice.  “Hess!  Quit goofing around and pick up those balls!”  Sophia growled something profane under her breath and started grabbing for the scattered balls in the angriest possible fashion.  Lily and Taylor took the cue to escape while they could.

Leaning over as they went into the locker room, Taylor gushed a bit.  “That was so cool.  I haven’t seen anyone get the better of Sophia like that.”

Taylor’s bright smile was all Lily could have asked for, and she smiled back, blushing a bit.  “Yeah, well, maybe I do alright when I’m not tripping over my own feet.”

“Or maybe when you are,” Taylor observed with a secretive smile.

Maybe I’m showing off a bit to her.  And maybe I’ve got it bad for her, Lily reflected, trying to decide how to answer.  She’s smart and sharp-eyed, too.  I need to be careful not to blow my cover.

“Winning girl gets the shower first,” Lily commented, hiking her thumb.  “I’ll keep watch.”

Taylor nodded, still smiling, and started letting her hair down out of its ponytail.  “Thanks.”

Another day down, another stint in the mediocre purgatory of Winslow High School over with, the last of the recordings provided to Mrs. Knott and Taylor’s records back in her possession, and Lily rolled her shoulders a bit as she watched Taylor hop off the bus from the Boardwalk after a quick stop at Taylor’s place to drop off their things.  Her eyes flicked up to that long, curly, frankly gorgeous hair as it waved a little from motion and a sea breeze, then back to her friend’s face.  Lily got the impression Taylor didn’t like her looks, but to Lily, they were striking and expressive.  (To say nothing of those abs, damn.)  “So!  What kind of stuff is there to do?”

“Kinda depends on how much money you want to spend,” Taylor admitted, looking a little chagrined.

After the attempt with the juice in the bathroom yesterday Lily could see why Taylor’s savings were a bit pinched.  Having to replace ruined clothing or even a whole backpack was a problem, and she didn’t have an after-school job.  Couldn’t exactly sign up at Lily’s, either.  “Hi, I have no powers at all, I’m just here for the bennies” was not going to go over with PRT HR, and Lily’s lips twitched at the idea of it.

Taylor not having to go through all of that was one of the reasons she was looking forward to this situation improving.  Only one, though, because honestly, dealing with it herself was kind of exhausting.  Lily could see why Taylor looked so hunted and beaten down, even if the girl refused to talk about it much.  Then there was the way the two of them had to go to the bathroom in pairs to ward off prank attempts.  That had gotten old in a hurry.  She sort of understood why no one wanted to get involved, but Lily just couldn’t stand back and watch this go on.

Honestly, Lily was amazed at Taylor’s considerable self-control and stalwart stoicism to endure all of that without lashing out more than she had.  A few stray remarks and flashes of anger made it clear Taylor was bottling it all up; probably not healthy, but she hadn’t tried to throttle someone, either.  Personally, Lily was pretty sure she’d have resorted to violence by now in Taylor’s shoes, dislike of blood or not.  The knowledge she could probably wipe the floor with them might have something to do with it, though.  After March or the Teeth, Sophia Hess just didn’t rate on her personal threat meter.

Shaking off her ruminations, Lily replied, “Let’s just look around, then.  I’m holding onto my money for now.”  She had spending cash – some of her Wards stipend went to her – but she wasn’t looking to use any of it today, just hang out with her friend.

The pair of them browsed a few shops, and Lily paused in front of one shop, staring at a dress.  “Is that price tag right?” she asked, frowning.

“Mm?” Taylor answered, not looking at the dress, but rather people-watching for a moment.  Following Taylor’s gaze, Lily caught sight of Greg Veder arguing with some skinny, curly-haired boy – or was that a skinny girl? – and another one with blue hair about some video game or other.  The blonde in a seafoam green sweater that went well with laughing green eyes and an adorable splash of freckles across her nose as she people watched right back was far more interesting than the boys, frankly.

Then Taylor looked, and the sound of her voice drew Lily’s attention.  “Mmhm, yeah.  If you want to do clothes shopping, as opposed to browsing, go to Lord’s Market.  My mom and one of her friends always told me and Em, uh, someone I used to know that when we were younger.”

“Yikes,” Lily commented, shaking her head and not missing Taylor’s stumble over Emma’s name.  She didn’t pick at it, though.  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

A pair of men she took for some kind of rent-a-cops gave them the eye, and Lily looked back blandly.  One had a shaven head, and with her timing, she caught the upper edge of an eagle’s wing as he moved.  Charming, someone might’ve hired an Empire sympathizer for private security.  Still, he didn’t say anything.  Catching Taylor’s attention again after they passed, Lily asked, “What’s with the goon squad?”

“The Enforcers?  They’re private security hired by some of the merchants.”  Taylor glanced at them for a moment, then mentally dismissed them.  “Best not to look like we’re panhandling but they don’t bother teenagers.  Usually.  Unless they decide you’re shoplifting, I think.  I don’t really spend that much time here, honestly.”

Lily nodded, making mental notes.  The Boardwalk saw Ward patrols occasionally, judging from the schedule (not any today, though), and it’d be good to have an idea what was where before she had to make a public debut in town.  There did seem to be a certain number of teenagers around.

“You know, I did have a question for you,” Taylor mused as they strolled from the fancy dress shop over toward one of the wooden walkways, looking out toward a well-maintained beach.

Definitely a tourist area, Lily decided to herself, noting how clean it was as she glanced over at the actual boardwalk.  She’d seen beaches that weren’t maintained that well in a few spots back in New York, but anywhere tourists went?  Usually pretty spotless, at least if the locals wanted the money to keep coming in.  “Sure, shoot.”

“There’s a, uh, one of the junior superheroes, the Wards, who supposedly disappeared out of New York.  People on PHO were discussing rumors she’s coming up here,” Taylor mentioned, leaning against one of the railings and looking out to sea.

Lily decided there was one thing missing from the view – there were very few boats out there.  There were one or two, but for a former port, even minor traffic was absent compared to New York.  Apparently the ‘Ship Graveyard’ had choked traffic to the point even small craft had problems, if she remembered the scuttlebutt correctly.  “Not sure who you’re talking about, I don’t remember anyone going missing before I left to come up here,” she replied absently, turning it over in her head.

Belatedly she realized someone was off the roster in New York recently, though.  It was just that someone was Flechette, and Lily knew exactly where the JV league superheroine in question was, so it didn’t seem mysterious to her.  Not that Taylor would have any idea Flechette was right next to her.

Deflect, deflect, deflect, Lily decided, but before she could, Taylor was speaking again.

“I see.  She seemed… interesting.  I think her name was Flechette?  I saw a video of her doing some of that, what’d you call it, parkour?”  Taylor glanced at Lily, licking her lips.  “I really enjoyed it, she seemed… like really athletic, and the sense of timing!  It was incredible to watch.”

“I’ve never gotten to sit back and watch Flechette put on a display except on a video,” Lily told her friend, honestly.  It was a little hard to do when you were the one putting on the show, unless your power was like Prism’s or something.  “She does some of that stuff from what I’ve heard, though.”

“Or swinging from buildings.  It was awesome to watch but that seems dangerous.”

Finally, something she could deflect about.  “Yeah, it does.  You’d need a lot of timing and precision to do that safely, without splattering yourself on the pavement or something.”  Things Flechette had in spades.

Nodding, her face serious, Taylor went on, “I don’t know if I could wear a skin-tight costume like that.  It was very… fitting.  I just don’t think it’d look as good on me as it did on Flechette.  She looked great.”

Trying not to look too pleased at the idea of Taylor looking at her in something that tight, Lily cast about for something to say.  “Uh, yeah.”  That was very lame, in her opinion.

Taylor glanced at Lily, then added, “I dunno, you seem like you could wear it, and it’d look nice.”

That’s because it’s my costume, Lily very carefully did not say.  This was somewhere between mortifying, gratifying, and the kind of conversation that would be hilarious to tell the other Wards about later.  Much later.  Maybe after they all graduated to the Protectorate and then retired in a few decades.

“Honestly, Flechette seems like your type.  I’m surprised you don’t have a poster or something of her.”

A line from something she’d seen a clip of on YouTube once went through Lily’s mind.  Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!  This was getting way, way too close to the line, as gratifying as it was that Taylor noticed anything like that.

“She’s, uh, yeah, she’s cool,” Lily told Taylor.  “Don’t knock yourself, though.”  She remembered that glimpse of Taylor in just a sports bra above the waist; this girl really was way too hard on herself.  Maybe a little more strength work in the arms to balance out what she knew were strong legs, but they could work on that.  Together.  If the abs didn’t distract Lily too much because, again, damn.

Taylor seemed very dubious, just nodding, hopefully oblivious to the reddening across the bridge of Lily’s nose, and looking uncomfortable at the compliment.

Casting about for something to deflect Taylor’s attention, she remembered something else, and glanced off toward the PRT HQ.  “Uh, say, isn’t that Miss Militia?  I heard she’s doing a PR patrol today.”

Looking, Taylor frowned.  “Uh, maybe?  I think I see someone, but my eyesight isn’t great at that distance.”  Then, mumbling, “Even with my glasses.”

Lily smiled.  “C’mon, let’s get autographs.”  She wasn’t really that into capes, personally; familiarity had long since worn off the wow factor.  Militia had seemed pretty cool when they met the other day.  They’d talked over angles and projectiles some, too, comparing notes about how certain kinds of non-gunpowder weapons worked.  It had been very enjoyable, really, and she was looking forward to working with the older cape in the field sometime.

Taylor, though, seemed at least a bit wowed at it, even if Lily had only known about the patrol because she had seen the schedule the day before.  “Sure, that sounds nice.”

Digging around in her pockets, Lily came up with a small 3x5 notepad and a pen as they trotted down the street, having to stretch her stride just a little to keep up with Taylor’s longer legs once the girl was really going.  Her new friend really didn’t give herself enough credit for her own fitness.

By the time they got there, Miss Militia had already dealt with a few tourists and one star-struck little boy, but she caught sight of Lily.  Above her star-spangled bandana, the Protectorate hero’s eyebrows went up very slightly.  Taking a guess, Lily interpreted it as, Really?  You’re doing this?

Lily grinned and shrugged, tilting her head at Taylor, who didn’t seem to know what to say.  She was doing her best to convey, For my friend here.

If she was reading the older woman’s body language and the crinkle of her eyes correctly, Miss Militia was amused.  She took a casual pose, leaning back against the railing of the Boardwalk, and the customized fatigues she wore were tight enough to show she kept in shape, not that Lily hadn’t already known that.  Leaving aside the fitness standards in the Protectorate, Miss Militia’s reputation for getting around battlefields was excellent, and she most definitely was not a Mover.  “Good afternoon.  Is there something I can do for you, citizens?”

To Lily’s surprise, Taylor spoke up.  “We, uh, we’d like autographs.  Please.  If that’s not too much trouble?”  Obligingly, Lily offered the notepad, but Miss Militia just shook her head, reaching into a cargo pocket on her fatigue pants and extracting a pair of glossy photographs.  She extracted a Sharpie from the same pocket, then their names, dashing off a signature on the back of each one with a practiced ease that Lily could only envy.

“Just out enjoying the Boardwalk today?” Miss Militia asked as she was signing Lily’s.

Taylor looked just a bit starstruck; she didn’t seem to really intensively follow capes, from their conversations, but she wasn’t immune to meeting one as famous as Miss Militia.  She also missed the byplay entirely, not realizing that Miss Militia was finding out what one of the Wards was up to.

“Mmhm.  New in town, and my friend here thought I’d like to see it.”  Lily’s smile broadened a bit, and she added conversationally, “She was right.  The oil rig over there is so different from the Protectorate building in New York.”

Miss Militia nodded, then commented with a laugh, “It is.  The commute’s a bit harder, though.  I miss the subways sometimes.”  Of course, she’d lived and worked in that building herself in the past.

“Mm, they can be convenient,” Lily agreed, accepting her own autograph and opening her wallet to tuck it behind her ID cards for safekeeping.  Her own tone was a bit mixed; she and subways didn’t have the greatest history, and she wasn’t sure if Miss Militia knew that.  Taylor certainly didn’t, and Lily didn’t want to talk about that day, of all days, right now.  It was far too nice a moment.

For a moment, after they were done getting the autographs and headed on their way, Lily wondered if the girl was a parahuman with some sort of Stranger power to jam gaydar combined with just being Like That, a little.  It would be the second most useless power she’d ever heard of, of course.  (That rogue in Cincy with the power to measure the height of grass in a three-hundred-foot radius who got busted for NEPEA-5 working for an HOA management company would probably be hard to ever beat out for #1.)  Then she caught Taylor looking her way again, watching her move, and smiled.  No, this girl was just… in the closet.  Mentally.  In a safe room in an Endbringer shelter for good measure, maybe.

Which makes sense, considering all the shit she’s gone through, Lily reminded herself, reflecting on just how many of the remarks seemed to center on Taylor’s orientation.  Maybe Emma had realized Taylor was gay and freaked out about her best friend having a crush on her?  I’ve heard of worse.  Been through worse.  Considering the abuse Taylor had suffered, that felt weird to say even in the privacy of her own head, but it was hard to top, well… her sister.  Maybe she was closer to mind after Militia’s subway comment.

For a moment, Lily remembered that, remembered her head being held out, seeing the oncoming subway train, not just thinking but knowing it was going to…

Taylor’s soft voice intruded on the flashback.  “Hey, Lily, you okay?”

For a single, horrifying moment, Lily saw Taylor on the tracks, about to get run down, held down by her sister, before she jerked her head, blinking.  “Y-yeah.  Just… got lost in my head.”  Admitting to Trigger flashbacks, or even their close-but-more-anonymous cousin PTSD flashbacks, was not really a conversation she wanted to have with Taylor, not today.  “Can we, can we sit down?  Somewhere away from the Boardwalk?”  The drop toward the beach was somewhere she didn’t want to be right now.

“Sure, of course.”  From the tone of her voice, Taylor clearly didn’t get it, but she also didn’t ask questions, didn’t pry.  She just led Lily toward…

Lily almost had to laugh when she saw the sign.  A bookstore.  Of course Taylor herded her friend toward a bookstore for a quiet moment to collect herself.  It was a kitschy place, clearly aimed at tourists – the knickknacks and books on local lore in the windows were way too obvious not to be – but it was just such a quintessentially Taylor thing for the bookworm to do.

Smiling, Lily strolled in after Taylor and engaged in a little light browsing.  If nothing else, knowing what to look for at the library would be nice.

Chapter Text

January 8, 2011
Emily Piggot

In theory, Emily Piggot worked Monday through Friday, with Deputy Director Paul Renick on an offset schedule of Friday through Tuesday to cover the weekend.  (That was one reason he dealt with the Wards; their schedules were weighted toward weekends.)  In practice, both frequently wound up in the office on their days off for one reason or another.  This weekend’s reason had Piggot in an especially irritable mood, not that it was much of a surprise.  Not after her conversations with Assault and Flechette earlier in the week.

Flipping through the photocopied packet the school board had couriered over, Piggot’s expression was flinty.  “Do they actually monitor students at Winslow?” the PRT administrator asked in an acidic tone.  “I know teenagers get up to things, but you’d think they weren’t going to class with all this.”

Renick smiled humorlessly.  “At least only one of the problem children is ours, Emily… and so is the one who brought it to everyone’s attention, finally.”

“You’re right, but the fact her handler didn’t report anything – or any of the maintenance issues they’ve found! – doesn’t encourage any faith in the handler’s judgment.  Either Mayrant’s an idiot or she’s not.  There’s plenty here, including attempted complaints earlier this year.”

Picking up on where she was going, Renick nodded.  If the handler was an idiot, she was useless.  If she wasn’t an idiot, she was something worse.  “After I saw the sheer volume of complaints, and the initial review from the inspector last night, I gave the order to have Mayrant’s finances audited.”

Grunting in satisfaction, Piggot put down the paperwork.  “Anything back from the audits on the grants for school improvements?”  She’d ordered those herself after hearing from Lily Hara first-hand.

“They were all disbursed on time and signed for by Principal Blackwell.  Exactly where the money went from there we don’t know.  Yet.  There’s a lot of oddities in the school’s accounts.  We’ve got a couple of agents working with the school board, and I reached out to an old friend in the Hoover Building about the possibility of embezzling or other financial crimes.”

Renick must have felt strongly if he’d involved the FBI already; those kinds of investigative instincts and his good contacts with the rest of the federal alphabet soup were why Piggot had tapped him as the deputy director.  She had other people who could juggle the burning Molotov cocktails in the city; what she needed from her deputy was someone to help her stop idiots and criminals from lighting more of them and flinging them around while she kept the city intact.  It wasn’t like Brockton Bay was short of kindling, literal or figurative, and the Graveyard had inhibited the city’s ability to bounce back the way a few other port cities had of late.

“I want to hear what the FBI has to say about it.  Carrie Blackwell?”

“Carrie Blackwell,” Renick agreed with a nod.  “The board already terminated her for the condition of the school.  What about Shadow Stalker?”

“What I’d like to do is toss her onto the walls of a containment zone somewhere, but I’m not sure I trust her enough,” Piggot admitted bluntly.  She’d never been a fan of bringing the volatile, violence-prone Breaker onto the team, preferring to have the girl routed somewhere with more resources and fewer fires, but Piggot had been overruled from above.

Shaking her head, she went on “No, our choices are juvenile detention and in-house punishment.  The Youth Guard is going to howl if we throw her back into juvey, and they’ll fight us all the way through proving things in court.  We’ve got enough disciplinary reports that Flechette’s recordings and the other allegations from the Hebert girl can justify us coming down hard short of that point, though.”

Renick narrowed his eyes, not inclined to dispute her analysis.  “What did you have in mind?”

“First off, I want Hess out of Winslow.  They clearly can’t handle her right now.  I know Arcadia doesn’t have capacity right now – if they did, we wouldn’t have found out about this,” Piggot pointed out.  There was a solution there, but Renick was more hands-on with that area than she was.

“Immaculata?  It’s a stricter environment, and they’re obliged to take at least one Ward if we ask,” Renick suggested.  It was a condition of the grant programs.

Piggot nodded.  “Exactly what I had in mind.  Warn them she’s a hard case and we want to hear about it if there are problems.  Any problems.  The lack of that is what had my hackles up to begin with.  Oh, and Paul?  Hess is going to be wearing an ankle monitor when she’s not on duty.  I don’t like these rumors of unsanctioned patrols and Hess gave us what we need to play hardball, so we’re going to play hardball.  Get it done before she goes home today, my authority.”

She saw Renick’s eyes widen.  “That anklet’s not going to go over well with the Youth Guard, either.”

“We’ve got more than enough to tighten up her juvenile detention restrictions.  Did you read those emails?  Listen to what they were saying?  Or think about that locker?” Piggot asked him flatly.  It was his job to remind her of those things but this time she wasn’t in the mood for it.  “I think we got very lucky; they were probably planning to shove the Hebert girl in there.  Old pads would be enough for blood poisoning without anything else if she got scratched up.”

The deputy director winced; apparently, he hadn’t made that particular mental leap.  Renick wasn’t as hard-bitten and battle-scarred as Piggot was.  Sometimes that was a good thing – he was far better at dealing with city authorities, or other federal agencies – but sometimes it limited his imagination when it came to human depravity.  Well, he hadn’t dealt with the kind of hazing she had in the field ranks, and she’d deliberately picked him for his soft skills and lighter touch.  He knew that, too, and had selected one or two subordinates who’d spent time on the sharp end.

“That might just have killed the poor girl,” Renick murmured, shaking his head.

“Without prompt hospitalization or even Panacea’s attention, it very well could have, Paul.  That’s a point I intend to make to the Youth Guard if they push too hard, and Sophia’s apparently one of the ringleaders of the bullying.  Yank her, and whoever replaces Blackwell will have an easier time putting an end to the rest of it.  Especially with Flechette in a position to keep her eyes on the situation.”

Renick nodded, pursing his lips.  “What do we tell the other Wards?  Flechette hasn’t even met Shad-“

Piggot’s phone rang and she frowned, punching the button to put it on speaker.  “Piggot.  I’m in a meeting, what is it?”

“Senior Sergeant Chapman, ma’am.”  Her detachment’s senior NCO?  What was he calling her over?  That wasn’t his desk line, either.  “I’m down in the gym, and Flechette and Shadow Stalker are sparring.  Getting kind of heated; those two do not like each other, director.  Stalker’s used her powers but she’s not getting off easy.”

Goddammit, of course they’d run into each other right now, Piggot thought to herself, irritated.  By chance, the schedule had it so that two of them hadn’t interacted as Wards before today, a coincidence she’d taken advantage of when she sent Flechette to Winslow to get an unbiased look at things.  She hadn’t thought about having them isolated from each other today, though.  Maybe that had been a mistake.

The fact Flechette apparently held her own in a fistfight with someone who could turn to smoke was interesting, though.  Piggot had a loose idea of what the girl could do.  If Flechette hadn’t done anything Chapman noticed as an overt power (and hadn’t involved carving Stalker up like a Thanksgiving turkey, for that matter; the girl’s Striker power was extremely lethal), this suggested there was a wrinkle Piggot either didn’t know about or hadn’t picked up on.

“Break it up, top.  Tell Stalker I want her in my office and escort her up here, right now – no cleaning up, no nothing.  Right now.”

“Break it up, Stalker to your office right now, yes, ma’am,” Chapman repeated back as if she was giving orders in the field again.

Right before she heard the beep of the line closing, his deep voice called out something firm, commanding, and irritated in that special way good senior NCOs had.  The bitter, battle-scarred former field officer behind the director’s desk nodded in satisfaction.

“Well, it looks like I’ll be informing Miss Hess of her new circumstances ahead of schedule,” Piggot announced pleasantly with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.  “Do me a favor and arrange some face time for Miss Hara with the two of us when I’m done with Hess, will you, Paul?”

Renick looked at her.  “About Stalker, about whatever Flechette was doing to counter Stalker’s power, or about that little sparring match of theirs, ma’am?”

“All three.  I’m glad you caught that bit about her power,” Piggot added with a slightly more natural smile of approval.  He might not have worked as a trooper on the sharp end, but Renick had seen more investigations into bizarre parahuman nonsense cross his desk than she had, either as an administrator or a field investigator.  It was good to know his brain was still working.

“I’ll see to it.  I want to hear Chapman’s account of that before we sit down with Flechette, make sure that really was just a spar that got a little heated,” Renick decided with a thoughtful frown.  “Flechette didn’t strike me as a hothead, though.”

“No, but she’s been dealing with Hess for days, without any restraint Stalker might be showing here.  I suspect she’s gotten close to the Hebert girl, too.  My guess is Chapman’s right, and they took the opportunity to get a swing or two at each other to work out some grievances.  It wouldn’t be the first time young people have had a ‘frank exchange of views’ to air out some grievances in a sparring match.”

Raising an eyebrow like he thought he was playing a Vulcan at a sci-fi revival, Renick replied drolly, “Some insight from your misspent youth, Emily?”

Piggot gave him a small smile.  “Something like that.  Anything from our feelers to the other schools?”

“No, ma’am.  Arcadia and Bayview both handed over the full disciplinary files.  There’s a few minor things in some of them, but nothing we didn’t already know about.”

“Whereas Stalker’s full file had a lot of surprises.  The school board may find that of interest.”

This time, Renick’s expression was slightly sharkish.  “I already brought it to their attention.”

“I knew there was a reason I kept you around,” Piggot replied whimsically and he chuckled.  “Go on.  I need to get rid of the chairs in front of my desk.”  Keeping Stalker standing there was one of those subtle little ways to emphasize Piggot’s displeasure.

Chapter Text

January 8, 2011
Lily Hara

Lily walked into the Wards area wearing a domino mask, tossing a wave to the silver-armored figure manning the console.  “Gallant, right?  I’m Flechette.”

Gallant inclined his head respectfully.  “Good morning, Flechette, it’s good to meet you.  I’ve been looking forward to the opportunity, and I’m glad to have you here in Brockton Bay with us.”

Smiling at him, Lily replied, “I’m glad to be here.  Made a friend at Winslow, and it’s a different vibe from down in New York.  Betting you’re a student over at Arcadia, right?”

“I am.  I’m graduating and aging out over the summer, too, so it doesn’t look like we’ll be classmates.”  Gallant spread his hands, seeming like he wanted to add something else, then glanced over at a chirp from the console.  “I’d better get back to this.”

“Sure thing,” she said cheerfully, going over to check the chart.  No changes.  Kid Win and Shadow Stalker were out on patrol, she was here for training with her new gear, and it looked like Vista was supposed to man the console later that afternoon while Aegis and Clockblocker (such a guy name!) did a patrol through one of the more dangerous routes.  That suggested that either Shadow Stalker or Kid Win weren’t senior; Lily recalled that Stalker was fairly new in the Wards.  A vigilante who’d gotten hauled in for excessive force?  Yeah, that was it; she’d been more interested in the other girl’s powers.  The history sections available to other Wards were always vague, and she wouldn’t be the first vigilante Lily had worked with since she signed up.

Wandering into the quarters, Lily left her bag on the bed, tucking her phone and athletic earbuds into her pocket, then reached up and watched her reflection lift long, dark hair into a bun.  For what she had in mind, keeping her hair out of her way was vital.  So was mobility, which was why she’d chosen athletic underwear, yoga pants, and a loose-fitting, cheap long sleeve T-shirt.  If the outer layer got her power applied to it for adherence, that could sometimes be a bit rough on something not designed for it like her costume.  A quick, power-assisted speedrun of her gear locker and she withdrew the grapnel line, then the gecko gloves and boots.

One last check in the mirror, and she was out.  “Headed for the gym,” she called to Gallant.

He gave her a thumbs up before frowning.  “Isn’t that part of your costume?”

“Getting a feel for things without the armor in the way,” Lily explained with a shrug.  “Armsmaster wants to change up my loadout, so I need to exercise with it, work out how to move.  Roof running under fire is not the time for on-the-job training, trust me.”  She decided not to mention the time she’d had to do that to dodge Butcher’s minigun.  At least that was before Quarrel had inherited; XIII’s bullets had been easier to avoid but she’d seen a Teethaganda video of Butcher hitting fifty targets with one pull of the trigger.  Lily had learned to use a handgun; even by her standards that was pure fucking bullshit.

Gallant nodded, and she wished she could see his expression.  “I’ve seen Vista when she gets moving.  Even tried to follow her, once.  Took me an hour to scrub my lunch out of my armor.”

Now Lily really wished she could see his expression, but the rueful shake of the head was emotive enough; he must have practiced to get that kind of thing across in that armor.  She was impressed at the guy’s aplomb, too; it took self-assurance to admit to something like that so readily with a stranger.

“Fortunately, I don’t get motion sick.  I used to occasionally, but my power seems to take care of that.”

Shrugging, Gallant turned back to the console.  “I don’t, either, usually, but Vista’s space warps are something, let me tell you.  Be careful, they can really mess with you.  You ought to see about experimenting with them alongside her sometime.”

Nodding, Lily made a mental note of it.  She appreciated the warning, and honestly, he didn’t have to add the embarrassing part.  She decided she liked Gallant.

Once she was down in the gym and all stretched out, Lily donned her gecko gloves and approached the gymnastics bars.  Tapping the earbud, she skipped the slow-paced song in the playlist – honestly, wrong one, but she wasn’t changing it up now – in favor of something harder-hitting.  A hard percussion line started up, and Lily’s lips twitched into a grin.  “My Sharona”, covered in metal.  Good enough.

Then she was off, running for the first bar.  Caught, spin, momentum up to the first one.  Timing and angles, eyes flicking from spot to spot, her world just timing, angles, bars, and music.  The song ended and went to another one, the synth riff unmistakable.  The upbeat sound of “Walk of Life” kept Lily smiling as she swung, reaching the top bar, then, with more momentum, did something no normal, sane person would do – flinging herself at the padded wall intentionally.

Lily spun in the middle of her trajectory with practiced ease, taking the hit with her legs applying her power to her sneakers where they contacted her skin above the short socks.  Her sneakers stuck briefly to the material of the padding, though the impact still rocked in, and she ran along the wall for several strides in an arc that took her lower before kicking off.  Again, a mid-air twist, again a precise landing, a skip and jump off the top of the monkey bars to run along the top.  She came off the top over the head of several troopers in athletic clothes in a flying leap that left her atop the piled-up spare mats, then Lily came down the side of them, kicked off, and fell into a deliberate tumble on another safety mat to spring back up on her feet.

To her surprise, the troopers were clapping.  “Day-umn, that was something,” the tallest of them, a dark-skinned, broad-shouldered man more than twice Lily’s age said, grinning ear to ear below his clean-shaven head.  Maybe older than that; he had the unmistakable air of a lifer about him.  “Please tell me you’re a Ward or something, miss.  If you aren’t, I’m gonna have to bust you a rank for that crazy shit.”

“Yep.  Flechette, I used to be in the New York office,” Lily replied with an easy grin, shaking his hand.  “My power makes that kind of thing easier, and if I have to I can punch my hands in to get a handhold or apply friction or something.”

“Senior Sergeant Chapman.  Glad to hear it.  Otherwise, that was a little nuts.”

“Making sure I’ve got it before I break out the grapnel launcher to practice on the bars.  Is that going to be a problem, top?”  If Lily remembered correctly, the term had migrated into the PRT from the military for first sergeants, or something like that; the ranks were equivalent.  They were some of the most senior troopers found in any field complement; not guys to mess around with.

Chapman shook his head.  “Give us a clear space for PT and sparring, and we’ll make it work.”

Lily nodded once.  “You got it!  I don’t want to get too far from a horizontal surface anyway, so over there should be clear if that works for you?” she suggested, pointing towards one wall.

“About where I was thinking.”  The senior sergeant nodded, then motioned for the others to move over.  “You heard her, boys.”

Lily watched them go, idly reflecting that if she’d been into guys some of the younger ones might have been good-looking, and then went over to pick up her grapnel.  Maybe one of them would do something silly because he got distracted watching her; that was always good for a laugh.  The time Jouster mis-triggered his speed boost and ran into a wall when he got distracted watching her spar with Prism had been hilarious, especially when he gave himself a shock with the aglet of his own shoelace.

Coming down from her latest experiment with the swing line, which had led to her literally walking on the ceiling, Lily did some wall and object running, using the bounces off the gymnastics frame and mats to slow her descent.  A black-skinned girl with a weirdly familiar hairstyle and build had entered, watching Lily come down from the ceiling from behind her domino as she did her stretches.

Once her feet were back on the floor, Lily gave her a companionable wave.  She was probably a Ward.  “Morning,” she called out cheerfully.

That earned her a grunt.  “Nice moves.  Guess you’re the new girl?”

The other girl’s voice was maddeningly familiar.  She wasn’t Taylor, obviously, or most of the others she’d met.  Most of Winslow’s student body was white or Asian.  Lily thought about it and shrugged; not her problem.  She offered her hand.  “Yep, I’m Flechette, good to meet you.”

“Shadow Stalker,” the other girl answered, not moving to take Flechette’s hand, instead headed to the speed bag.

Well, someone’s a grumpy goose, Lily decided, watching her go.  Even her walk struck Lily as familiar, graceful and athletic.  I swear she reminds me of someone, but probably best not to push.  Not like either of us is going to unmask in here anyway.

Most of Chapman’s people had filed out, although the senior sergeant himself was pumping some serious iron, and one of the other guys was spotting him on the bench. Lily removed the grapnel and the belt she’d hung it from, her gloves, and the kneepads before stripping off the now-sweaty T-shirt, doing some cooldown stretches.  She was done flinging herself around the room for now, having gotten a rhythm for the grapnel and done some basic sanity testing with the gecko gear.

Putting her leg up near her ear, Lily discretely checked out Shadow Stalker’s form as she punched.  Powerful, but not a lot of technique.  Probably more of a self-taught brawler than someone properly trained, which made sense.  Stalker was a street vigilante, and she hadn’t been with the program that long.  In Brockton Bay?  Really only last semester.  Apparently, the camp in San Diego hadn’t done anything about her attitude, and it wasn’t focused on combat skills.

Or maybe she just doesn’t like me for some reason, Lily reminded herself.  Honestly, Stalker reminded her of a grumpy cat who didn’t… like… anyone…

The feline comparison caused it to click into focus.  The maddening familiarity of voice, build, even her hairstyle, attitude, and how she moved.  Shadow Stalker was Sophia Hess.  Goddammit, it fit together too well, right down to why she thought she was better than everyone around her.  That attitude was corrosive but hard to avoid sometimes; unless you cultivated a certain humbleness, things could go to your head, and it wasn’t like the company Sophia kept would help much, unlike Taylor.

Lily thought about going over and calling Hess out on her shit, but better to leave it be.  The school board was interested, and while she hadn’t had a clue Stalker was involved, in hindsight, it was obvious Director Piggot did.  Probably even Assault; he’d recognized the name, Lily remembered.  No, Sophia Hess was already set up for the fall.

Unfortunately for Lily’s good intentions, Hess had been watching her, too, and she came back over.  “Say, don’t I know you?” she asked, giving Lily a long, lingering look.

“I must have one of those faces,” Lily replied mildly, doing her best not to show she knew exactly who she was dealing with… and trying not to give away who she was.

The confident smirk on Hess’s face told her she’d been recognized, not that there’d been too much of a chance Sophia wouldn’t.  “C’mon, spar with me.  I want to see how good you are.”

Lily’s common sense said to get out of there.  Lily’s pride, and her aggravation after several days of Sophia’s fucking bullshit, said Go for it!  As with a lot of teenage decisions, it wasn’t common sense that won out.  The opportunity to take Sophia down a peg personally wouldn’t come along every day.

“Sure, why not?” Lily agreed, grabbing for the gloves for the padding.  “These are from my costume, you have an issue with that?”

Sophia sneered.  “You’re going for hand protection?  Pussy.”

“Look, you want finger joint issues when you get older, that’s a you thing, don’t drag me along, Stalker,” Lily replied mildly, heading for the appropriate section of the mats.

Sophia’s dark eyes glittered as she looked back, scoffing.  “I don’t plan on getting old and slow.  Like any of us are gonna live long enough in this city, anyway.  These streets eat people alive.”

Didn’t it ever occur to you that your job as a hero is to change that?! Lily thought in Sophia’s direction, and it probably showed on her face.  She wasn’t about to debate philosophy with someone whose entire personality screamed ‘edgy rabid teenager’, especially not on a sparring mat.  This wasn’t a martial arts movie, and Lily was hardly some wise old master.  The PRT had people to knock sense into Sophia’s head.  Or juvey, if she was too stupid not to waste her second chance, which, well, Sophia Hess.

Lily wasn’t fresh, she’d just been exercising, but she was fit, and she’d had time to cool down and catch her breath, so she wasn’t too far off, either.  More than that, she had a feeling she had a clearer idea what she was dealing with, and her opponent probably didn’t realize just how razor sharp Lily was.

If there was one good thing about March, it was the way the obsessive bitch’s determination had forced Lily to up her game and refine her own skills, use of her powers, and natural athleticism to avoid her crazy stalker running her through.   Or kidnapping her and trying to elope in Vegas.  Or flaying her skin off.  Or trying to recite love poetry over swordplay and getting way too excited about it.  Honestly, predicting what March wanted any given encounter was kind of like playing roulette, only with explosives and sharp objects.

Not to mention those psychos the Teeth, or all the other idiots and assholes the Wards occasionally ran into like the Adepts or the Uptown Punks.  The Big Apple had an endless supply of those, and if it didn’t have Brockton Bay’s cape population per capita, it was more than big enough to make up for it.  Lily also just had a natural knack for running into trouble on her patrols sometimes.

That flashed through Lily’s mind as she settled into a fighting posture on the balls of her feet, watching Sophia.  They squared off, watching each other for a moment.  Lily wasn’t going to move first; let Sophia come to her, float like a butter-

Sophia launched herself forward, reminding Lily that the girl was a sprinter for a reason as she ducked aside to plant an elbow in the small of Sophia’s back.  Not expecting either the dodge or the pointy elbow, Sophia stumbled forward a bit gracelessly, but she recovered, whirling around.  Lily could have exploited it – she saw the opportunities, knew the angles, felt the timings – but she was holding back.  They hadn’t agreed to brawl with powers.

“Well, at least you know how to fight back.  That pathetic little queef you hang around with doesn’t get that,” Sophia taunted her.

Lily wasn’t sure if Sophia was just being a bitch or trying to get in her head, but she didn’t take the bait either way.  Instead, she tossed out some of her own; Sophia wasn’t the only one who could play head games.  “It’s not my problem you have bad taste in friends.”

The look on Sophia’s face told Lily she’d scored.  A fast jab at the face and Lily just tilted her head, shifting sideways, and blocked the punch for her gut.  Sophia pushed the initiative, driving Lily back, and the taller girl yielded for a couple of steps and moving to rob two more blows of their energy… until she didn’t, letting Sophia over-extend herself and then twisting Sophia around and slamming her face-first into a stack of mats she’d maneuvered them toward.

To Lily’s shock, Sophia turned into something like shimmering purple-black smoke, ghosting into the mats and twisting in a sinuous mass.  She reformed in time to catch the surprised Ward off guard with a backfist to the cheekbone, but Lily twisted away from the follow up blow.

“Do you really want to play with our powers?” Lily asked, reaching up and feeling the contusion.

“What, you’re scared?  We both know you’re too goody-goody to use your power on me anyway,” Sophia goaded with a wicked smirk.

Sophia wasn’t wrong about using Lily’s Striker power directly, to be fair, but Lily just smirked back.  “Am I really, now?  You sure about that?”  Someone had forgotten – or hadn’t learned – that Lily was also a Thinker… and her primary power had plenty of other uses anyway.  Lily wouldn’t need them, though.

Baring her teeth, Sophia came at Lily again, but this time, Lily didn’t hold off.  The idiot telegraphed like she was a Western Union customer, and she didn’t even realize it.  Lily caught Sophia’s arm, preparing to apply a compliance hold.  The ghosting out of it didn’t catch Lily by surprise this time.  Instead, she just ducked through Sophia’s vaporous form, glancing sideways to keep the Breaker in her vision… and to learn how Sophia’s power looked when she was coming out of it.

A neat, precise dodge turned what should have been a blow to the back into something that just sent Lily’s ponytail fluttering.  Lily retaliated with a stomp even as Sophia was moving, catching her by surprise.  “Here I thought you were a ghost.”

A wordless noise of anger was Sophia’s reply.  She hurled herself forward and Lily slipped sideways neatly.  An attempt to tag Sophia again as she went by met Breaker smoke, and this time, Lily timed it, watching how Sophia’s smoke flowed and flickered... and her fist flashed forward.  Right as the other Ward materialized, she ate a punch to the soler plexus that doubled her over, her breath spilling out.  While Sophia was stunned, Lily caught her by the arm and jerked her upright, twisting her around and sending her to the ground face first before backing off to avoid any tricks.

“You’re not invincible.  Don’t assume your power will protect you if you mistime it,” Lily pointed out coldly, just backing off.  She could see Chapman was paying attention now but ignored it; let him watch.  Lily wasn’t going to cross any lines here, and if Sophia did, well, that’d just make getting rid of the bitch’s odious presence easier, wouldn’t it?

Falling back into a defensive posture, Lily let Sophia get up.  “I’m going to beat your head in, you little worm.  Make sure you know who’s boss.”

“Isn’t that Director Piggot?” Lily replied in the mildest tone she could manage as Sophia came forward.  Another precise angle and this time she had Sophia in an arm bar, twisting to make it painful.  Then came the moment Sophia turned to smoke and Lily hurled herself forward into a graceful tumble… that turned into a kick that caught Sophia’s wrist, making the Breaker curse.

Coming back onto her feet, Lily grabbed for Sophia’s arm, preparing to throw her, only for more smoke to appear.  She danced sideways to avoid Sophia’s next movement.  The rabid girl was getting smarter, having realized Lily could somehow anticipate her reappearance.  Their next clash was purely physical, but when Lily broke off, did some footwork to set herself, and then came to a halt to spin into a kick that caught Sophia completely by surprise, doubling her over once more.

Sophia came up, shaking her head like a punch-drunk fighter, and she threw a punch that would have knocked Lily’s head off if she’d been dumb enough to put her head in front of it.  Instead, Lily slipped sideways, delivering an elbow to Sophia’s midsection that contacted nothing.  Sophia tried to move into Lily’s blind spot but Lily cut the angle, aware of her, and while the timing wasn’t quite as good because of the awkward movement, Lily delivered a shove to Sophia’s back between the shoulder blades.  It was enough to knock Sophia off her feet again from the surprise and impact, sending her sprawling.

“Enough!  Break it up, you two!” Chapman bellowed, and the other trooper came up beside him.

Lily spun away instantly but apparently Sophia wasn’t ready to yield.  She came forward, sensing an opportunity, and Chapman plucked her off her feet like an errant kitten, tossing her into the pile of mats.  “I said break it up, Stalker.  Director’s orders, she wants you in front of her desk.  We’re going to escort you up there.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Sergeant Chapman, sir,” Sophia said caustically in a tone that was guaranteed to get on the long-service NCO’s nerves.  The deliberate misstatement of his rank wasn’t doing her any favors, either.

Lily didn’t miss the slight pinch around Champan’s eyes, but he didn’t retaliate, just making a seemingly courteous “after you” gesture.  She traded nods with the other trooper and went to get her things.  Good God, Sophia Hess was a heinous bitch.  Maybe she’d learned a lesson about appearances but somehow Lily doubted someone just being able to work around her power was going to fix that.

By the time Lily was done showering up, changing into her favorite sweater, a nice light pink one, and a skirt-and-tights combo suitable for the gloomy weather, there were orders waiting for her.  Vista had replaced Gallant at the Console.  “Hey, Lily.  Director Piggot wants to talk to you.”

“Hey, Missy.  Did she say what it was about?”  Inwardly, Lily felt a bit of a chill.  Maybe Piggot was about to come down on her for that brawl; she did have a reputation for a hardass, after all.

“Nope, just that she wanted to see you before you left.”

“Got it.”  With trepidation as she tromped upstairs, Lily presented herself to the director’s personal assistant.  “Flechette, reporting as ordered,” she said tersely.

The smile wasn’t reassuring; Piggot probably wasn’t the type to delegate an ass-chewing.  “Go on in.”

Lily nodded and then proceeded through the door to face the lion.

Emily Piggot and Deputy Director Paul Renick were waiting for her, standing up from where they’d been talking at Piggot’s desk.  The director strode forward, and for all that she was taller, Lily didn’t feel like it as Piggot inspected her face.  “Hmm.  That’s going to be quite the bruise in the morning,” the director noted in a neutral tone that didn’t cause the Ward to relax at all.

“Yes, ma’am, it will be,” Lily agreed readily.  At least it didn’t make her face hurt much.

“Where are you going after this?”  Again, her tone was mild.

“To my friend’s house, ma’am.  I was just going to tell her it was an incident at work.”

Nodding, Piggot pointed toward the small collection of chairs off to the side, around a small table.  A more informal setting for casual discussions.  Probably not the place Lily was going to get an ass-reaming, then.  “If you were on the patrol rotation, we might do something more about it.  If you have to go out, put some concealer on.”

Lily nodded; it was standard policy.  The fact crossed her mind that she might not know how to use makeup properly if the PRT hadn’t taught her just for the sake of keeping up appearances.  Brockton Bay reportedly had a miracle healer named Panacea but something like this wasn’t worth going to her over, especially when Flechette wasn’t on field status.  She took her seat when the director pointed, and crossed her legs demurely, waiting for her superior before saying anything.

To her surprise, it was Renick it spoke up next, not Piggot.  “I spoke to Senior Sergeant Chapman about the altercation in the gym.  He mentioned it was a sparring match that got a little heated.”

“She challenged me, and I decided to accept.”  That was a good reason.  Not the real reason, but a good one, and it didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.

Piggot chuckled mildly.  “Don’t bullshit me.  I came up out of the field ranks, Miss Hara.  I know what you were thinking, and that wasn’t all of it.”  She let Lily stew for a moment, the dread curdling in her stomach, before going on.  “He also said you didn’t go for the head, although you did fold Stalker over a couple of times after she invoked her power.  How did you manage that?”

“Her power… I could sort of see a pattern?  Get a timing to her emergence?” Lily explained, frowning thoughtfully.  “It’s hard to explain, but I could just judge when she was going to come out, and at what… angle, sort of.  Once I realized that, the next step was exploiting it.”  That was a normal term for the PRT – identify a chink in a cape’s defenses and then came exploitation.  She gathered that, like a lot of the field troopers’ vocabulary, it came from the military background a lot of the early troopers had.

The director nodded once, looking thoughtful herself.  “I see.  Stalker is slippery to get hold of.”

Lily shook her head, speaking up before she thought better of it.  “Respectfully, ma’am, I have to disagree.  She isn’t.  Her Breaker form is, but she relies on it.  She telegraphs heavily and doesn’t seem to have enough grounding in proper technique, I think.  Even without leaning into my… other advantages, I was keeping ahead of her pretty easily.  I imagine she’s too used to ambushing someone.”

With some directors, that could have been perilous, but Piggot just nodded.  “Point taken, and I’ve heard something similar before.  She’ll have to work on that.”  Changing topics, she went on, “I imagine you’ve worked out who she is.  Chapman thought that was a little personal.”

Put that directly, there was only one answer.  “Yes, ma’am.  I have reason to believe she’s one of my classmates at Winslow.”  Even here, she didn’t unmask Sophia without direct orders.  That wasn’t done.

It was Renick’s turn to speak up.  “She is.  You two have gym together, and I believe there was a minor incident in your gym class yesterday.”

Well, shit.  Did someone question the coaches?

“Dodgeball, sir.  She and a group of other girls have been bullying a friend of mine, and I… didn’t let them get away with it.  My power makes dodgeball a little easier than people think.”

Piggot’s lips curled up.  “Thinkers always think they’re subtle.  Be careful not to over-rely on that, Miss Hara.  Chapman didn’t realize what you were up to, and I only recognized the signs because I know your profile, but do it enough…”

“Yes, ma’am, I realized I let myself get a little carried away yesterday, but…”  Lily shook her head, ponytail swaying.  “Taylor was dreading going in there.  She thought they were going to hurt her after my presence had defanged some of their usual nonsense that week.  I wasn’t going to let that happen.  We can’t prove any of that, so we didn’t write it up for the school board, but you didn’t see her face.”

“No, you can’t, but what you two can prove is damning enough,” Renick put in, and Lily turned to him.  “You do realize you can’t speak of Stalker’s ID?”  Lily nodded quickly and Renick smiled thinly.  “Good.  She’s being moved to Immaculata, as it seems that Winslow is not a positive environment for her.”

Lily kept the instant refrain that it wasn’t a positive environment for anyone to herself, but the way the adults smiled at her, she suspected they’d had similar thoughts.

“Immaculata is stricter regarding student discipline, and we’ll be more proactive in monitoring her behavior after the clear failure of her handler to… deal with things,” Piggot added, giving Lily a lingering look.  “Everyone is under the microscope for now while I ensure we don’t have other problems.”

“Yes, ma’am, understood.  Stalker is one of the ringleaders, but…”  Lily trailed off.  Everything else about the situation was outside the PRT’s jurisdiction.

Renick chuckled, and his grandfatherly look seemed… sharper.  “Carrie Blackwell is no longer employed by the city school system.”

The news made Lily blink.  “I’m sorry, sir, could you explain?”

“Other things have been brought to light in the school’s paperwork, on top of the student disciplinary issues you’ve proven.  The school superintendent is taking a hand and has already made it clear some punishment is coming down on the other proven participants.  In addition, given her… experiences… Miss Hebert will be moved to Arcadia next year, with you.  She qualified academically, I understand.”

“Taylor’s mentioned that, yes,” Lily answered, nodding as she tried to grapple with the implications.

Piggot smiled thinly.  “Keep your eyes open.  Winslow should be improving, but if it doesn’t, I don’t want things to just go unnoticed or get buried again.  So does the incoming school administration.”

“Yes, ma’am.  I’ll make sure they hear about it if there are problems.”

“In the meantime, keep your head down, stay out of trouble, and try not to make waves when school reopens,” Piggot went on.

Lily blinked again, surprised once more.  “Reopens?”

“Inspections and emergency repairs.  I understand interim coursework will be available online Tuesday.”

“I can’t say I’ll mind not attending for a week.  Is my schedule here being increased?”

“No.  It would make it too obvious where you attend, although most of the other Wards probably know you’re not at Arcadia by now,” Renick answered, shaking his head.  “You’re welcome to use the gym or other facilities on your own time, of course.”

“I’ve got plans to go jogging with Taylor tomorrow, but I’ll swing by at least a couple of times next week to use the machines, probably, not just my shifts,” Lily informed them.  “Still getting used to not living on base.”  She flushed a bit as she realized she’d just given away what a change her living situation was.

Piggot smiled slightly.  “I’m glad to hear Assault and Battery are making you feel at home.”

“They are, ma’am.  Honestly, other than Winslow, Brockton’s been pretty good for me so far.”

The look that passed between the adults wasn’t an encouraging one.  “That’s an unusual sentiment in this city, but I hope it stays that way,” Piggot said mildly.  “Dismissed.”

“Ma’am,” Lily said, standing up.  She gave Renick a polite nod, and he just smiled genially with a gentle shooing motion.

Walking into the Wards area and wishing (not for the first time) that the PRT used a less annoying buzzer for the mask alert, Lily was humming pleasantly.  She started to give Vista another nod where the blonde girl was at the Console, following reports from the Brockton Bay Police Department and a patrol by Triumph and Velocity.  Then she paused, because Vista had company the blonde appeared to be doing her best to ignore.  Slouched next to Vista was Sophia, still dressed in her exercise clothes, and judging from the position of her arms and the thunderous look on her face, she was in mid-bitch session.

“Vista, Shadow Stalker,” Lily said mildly, using their cape names in case they hadn’t unmasked to each other and preparing to take her leave.  She was headed for Taylor’s, and even if Taylor and her father were out or something, sitting on her front step reading a textbook would be more pleasant than dealing with Sophia.

“You!  This is all your fault, you sniveling little weasel!” Sophia snarled, launching herself off the chair she’d been crouched across and using her power to do it without having to clear the furniture.

Lily took a step back.  Ceding room to Sophia might just make her think she’d won a point in whatever bizarre, bitchy game the girl was playing, but she didn’t really want another scene here.  Discretely, she reached her hand into her pocket and triggered the fast record function she’d set up on her phone, just in case.  “What are you talking about?” she asked, frowning.  Maybe it was just about Immaculata?

Looking like she wanted to haul off and slug Lily, Sophia pulled up the cuff of her yoga pants.  Lily’s eyebrows went up slightly when she saw the tracking anklet blinking; this one was slimmer than usual, but it was still unmistakable.  “This!  Everywhere I go, I’ve gotta wear this damn thing unless I’m in costume!  I can’t do track like this!  Hell, I can’t use my power like this!”

“Okay, and you think I have the authority to have a tracker put on you… why, exactly?” Lily asked mildly.  It didn’t escape her attention that Vista was watching them, although the preteen was at least trying to be subtle about it.

Sophia snarled, trying to loom over Lily only to be stifled by the fact that Lily was the same height, and this time, the Asian girl didn’t yield a millimeter.  “Oh, don’t tell me you weren’t bitching to Miss Piggy all week about me putting that stupid cow you hang around with in her place.  That queef Hebert is nothing!  She’s a worm.  No one listened to her.  Must’ve been you.  I had a good thing going.  Now I can’t even go anywhere, and I can’t see Emma or Madison at school because they’re sending me to the nuns!  I ought to beat your ass.”

Stifling the urge to point out all she’d done was hand over recordings of Sophia’s own words, Lily instead did her best to keep her voice level.  “This isn’t the gym, and I’m not interested in another sparring match today, so if you’ll excuse me, please, Sophia…?”

Drawing back her fist, Sophia was clearly getting ready to do something, and Lily started running the angles in her mind to avoid her… and then she felt a spike of disorientation as Sophia was abruptly a couple of hundred feet away in a room that stretched grotesquely like an Escher painting.  Hastily dropping the attempt to calculate anything – it felt like her head was full of spinning Jello if she looked in there and leaned into her power – Lily rubbed her temple and glanced over to where Vista was sitting.

“Well, that seemed wonderfully civil, but I figured I should separate you two,” Vista drawled, and Sophia’s attempt to sprint forward saw her running in place as the space under her stretched and compressed like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon.  Or maybe that race in an old book with, uh, the Ruby Queen?  Taylor would know the one, surely.  Lily would have to ask her.

“…okay, that’s kind of cool,” Lily commented, genuinely impressed.

Vista gave her an urchin-like grin under the visor.  “Go on, get out of here.”

“You can handle her?” Lily asked, unwilling to abandon a teammate to deal with Sophia at full froth.

The blonde made a dismissive motion.  “If she doesn’t back down, I’ll just call it in to Main Console and then walk my little doggie over there to the Deputy Director’s office and make her his problem.  She knows it as well as I do.”

Lily tilted her head, trying to figure out how that would work.  A few ideas presented themselves, but she just shook her head, dipping her hand into her pocket and stopping the recording.  It sounded like Missy had a handle on things, and she knew the little blonde didn’t want anyone babying her.

Vista’s grin got even more mischievous.  “You were recording it, weren’t you?  That’s how you got her so mad at Winslow, I bet.  I’ve gotta remember that.”

“Mmhm.  Turns out paranoia is a survival trait at Winslow,” Lily noted ruefully, grabbing her stuff and making a mental note that Missy Byron wasn’t someone to play stupid games with.  “Maybe a new principal will improve things.  Anyway, thanks for breaking that up, I owe you one.”

Vista shot her a thumbs up.  “You’ve gotta show me how you do some of that crazy stuff you were doing in the gym sometime.  I can’t do that, and space is my personal plaything.”

“I’m not sure I need to give our local space witch even more tricks, but I can show you a thing or two, sure,” Lily promised, smiling at her, and Vista just grinned again, clearly amused at the nickname and pleased at the recognition.  She’d been uncertain she would get along with someone three years younger, but Missy was pretty cool once you got to know her.  She waved at Sophia and dipped out the door, heading for the discrete access tunnels she’d been pointed to by the advanced access course.

Chapter Text

January 8, 2011
Taylor Hebert

Music blared out of the speaker in the basement, neither excessively loud nor notably soft.  It was enough I couldn’t hear much of whatever Dad was doing up on the ground floor of the house except occasionally when he was moving around.  Or maybe that was the magic of Ronnie James Dio’s magnificent voice right at the moment, singing about being the last in line.  Either way, it was background noise, something to help occupy my mind as I went through my labors.  I didn’t even have my glasses on; they were on a shelf under the stairs, along with my T-shirt.  I heard heavier footsteps for a moment, even thought I heard a voice, but wrote it off as a trick of the music.

With the exercise bench under my shoulder blades, arms spread a bit to help support me and balance my weight, I lifted my rear off the ground until I was horizontal, knees at a 90-degree angle, squeezing my glutes, then dropped to the cold, uncarpeted floor of the basement.  One, two, three, four, five, six-

A loud, sudden clatter off to my right made me jerk suddenly, nearly losing my balance before I managed a semi-graceful slide off the bench and rolled up, squinting.  “Wha- who- what are you doing down here?!” I yelled, trying to cover my torso as I was wearing just a sports bra above the waist, my legs splayed a bit in dolphin shorts.  Exercise kept me warm, even in the cool depths of the basement.  Whoever it was, they were too short and had entirely too much hair to be Dad.  Besides, he didn’t wear pink very often, and whoever it was had a pink top of some kind.

Lily Hara’s voice answered.  “Easy, Taylor, it’s just me.  Guess you didn’t hear me come down the stairs.”

I jerked my head, my heartrate starting to slow down.  Lily had been coming over this afternoon, that was right.  “What was that noise?”

I saw the blurry shape of my friend rubbing at the back of her head, and her voice was rueful.  “I, uh, I tried to sit down, and, uh, missed.”

“What do you mean, you missed?”  Picking myself up the floor, I gave her a puzzled look, then stepped over to help Lily up.  She certainly wasn’t on the old chair she’d knocked over.

“I mean I lost track of where the chair was.”  Taking my hand, Lily pulled herself up.  I got the impression she was staring at my face, then she mused, “You know, you look different without your glasses.  And, uh, damn, Taylor.”  She glanced up and down to convey what she meant.

My face burned with redness that had nothing to do with exertion as I abruptly remembered how little I was wearing.  I was comfortable with Lily, astoundingly so for someone I hadn’t known for even a whole week, but still.  When I spoke again, my voice was a pitiful squeak.  “You missed the chair because you were looking at me?!”

“…yes.  And earlier I was thinking smugly about this boy back in NY who ran into a wall in the gym, too,” Lily admitted, giving a self-effacing little laugh.  Looking around, she found my glasses and handed them to me.  Once I had them back on, she added, “There’s that cute bookish girl I know.”

“Gwah!”  The blush was not going anywhere and I jerked my head.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.  I stay covered up because I look terrible!”

I didn’t mind that Lily was gay.  Did she have to pratfall over me, though?  I’m not “have a pratfall” pretty!  I’m a gangly, lanky stick with a frog mouth; everyone knows I’m ugly, they say it all the time.

Lily gave me a frown and reached over to get me my T-shirt before I could ask.  I took it from her, grateful for having someone with that sort of thoughtful kindness around me, hauling it over my head, popping my arms out, and then pulling my ponytail back out and shaking it loose.  Even just that slight fabric and having my skinny torso covered, my lack of any ‘assets’ covered up, made me feel vastly better.

Still frowning, Lily looked me in the eyes.  “Look, I can tell you’re not comfortable talking about how you look, Taylor, so I won’t push, but I wish you wouldn’t talk about yourself that way.”  Her voice was serious, genuinely concerned.

I looked away, closing my eyes, and then hit pause on the CD player.  “Why do you even care what I say about my looks?”

Giving me a serious look, Lily seemed to be weighing what to say.  Finally, she sighed.  “It just… it sounds like that crap everyone at school says about you.”

“Why not?  I am ugly,” I pointed out.  I was bitter about it, sure, but that didn’t make them wrong.   I was ugly.  Had to be.  Ugly and unlovable.  Everyone leaves.  Maybe this was when Lily figured that out.

The fear of that grabbed my heart.  I didn’t want her to leave.

To my relief, while Lily was still frowning at me, she didn’t leave.  “Like I said, I won’t push,” she told me after a moment.  “You were clearly serious about working out, too.  What else do you do for your legs?”

Highly relieved to be on more comfortable ground, I answered, “Uh, bridges, squats, that kind of thing.  I don’t have the most fixed routine.”  When she turned her head, what I’d initially taken to be a shadow caused by the basement’s dim lighting turned out to be a livid bruise on her cheek.  “What happened there?”

Lily let out a self-deprecating laugh.  “Minor incident at work.  Don’t worry about it, it’ll heal quickly enough.”  Then her laugh turned into something wicked.  “Oh!  Guess who I ran into earlier.”

Puzzled, I tilted my head.  I had no idea.  “Uh… Mrs. Knott?”

“Try Sophia Hess,” she answered with a cat-that-caught-the-canary smirk.  “Someone’s in an ass-load of trouble.  Got herself some ankle jewelry and everything.  The kind that comes with a tracking device.”

Feeling suspicious, I gave Lily a look.  “She didn’t punch you because we got her in trouble, did she?”

“No, that was before I found out,” Lily told me after hesitating a moment.  Had Lily gotten punched by Sophia for some other reason?  She was still smirking, though, so I decided to put it aside.  “We’re not going to be dealing with her around Winslow anymore, either.  Apparently, she’s getting punted to Immaculata.”

“Huh.  I’m kind’ve surprised she wasn’t there before, then.  They’re a Catholic school.  Strict and maybe kind of pricey from what I’ve heard.”

Lily shrugged, not looking concerned.  “Some sort of ‘troubled youth’ program, maybe?  Her finances aren’t my problem, and now she’s the nuns’ headache instead of ours.”

“You’re right, either way, we won’t have to deal with her anymore, so that’s nice,” I decided, smiling back.  Something else occurred to me.  “I wonder if anyone’s told Emma and Madison yet?”

“God, can you imagine the look on their faces if they hear it from us when we get back to school?”  If anything, her smirk was even broader now.

“Keep smiling that way, your face might get stuck,” I teased Lily, and she burst out laughing.  That felt nice.  She had a very nice laugh.  Wait, since when do I think someone has a nice laugh?

Lily shook her head, still smiling.  “You being silly.  I like it.”

…why am I blushing?

“Anyway!  You want to keep going down here?” Lily asked, inspecting the equipment.

“Have you worked out today?” I asked her, glancing over.  She sure didn’t look like she was dressed for athletics right now.  A light pink cardigan over her white shirt, a knee length skirt over tights all in black, and Oxfords.  A practical mix for Brockton’s weather if you added a jacket, and a nice look on her long, slim figure, especially those toned legs.

…I’m blushing again, I think.

“Mmhm.  Lot of parkour and cardio, plus some weights.”

I took a moment to imagine Lily, doing parkour, and decided I really wanted to see that sometime.  Maybe dressed like I was.  Earlier.  That way I could watch her form, of course, really get an appreciation for how she moved.

…why am I still blushing?

Lily went on, smiling, “I can spot for you, though, or just let you finish up and subject myself to your dad’s sense of humor while I set things up for our pair project.”

Giving myself a shake, hoping it’d shake off my weird mood and maybe then the blush would go down, I told Lily, “Go on up, I’ll be there in, uh, maybe a half-hour?  I’d like to shower.  If you don’t mind, I mean.  I don’t want you to get bored.”

Grinning, Lily shook her head.  “Being around your dad’s such a terrible burden, but I’m sure I can endure him somehow.”

I looked at Lily, my expression serious.  “He’s… doing better.  This week, I mean.  The last few years have been… hard for us.”  I could see she didn’t understand; we hadn’t talked about this.  Well, now wasn’t the time for it.  “Dad gets lost in his head a lot, but he’s been more animated.  More involved.  I’ve been doing better, too.”  I gave her a small smile.  “Thanks.”

Blinking at me, Lily said, “I’m not sure what I’ve got to do with your dad feeling better, but I’m glad to hear it.”

“Just… just keep being you, please,” I said, my voice soft, closing my eyes.  Don’t go away.  Don’t turn on me.  Don’t hurt me.  I could almost hear the cutting remarks, see the cruel smiles, listen to the jokes about how I thought anyone would ever be my-

Warmth around my hand, pressure.  Lily was squeezing it, I realized.  “I will, Taylor.”

I nodded, looking away, not wanting her to see my eyes were wet.  “Th-thanks.  I, uh, I won’t be too long, okay?”

“Take as long as you need, I’m not in a hurry,” Lily assured me with another squeeze before she let go and headed up the stairs.

To my relief, when I came down from my shower, Lily was still there.  I’d checked going up, too.  Maybe I was too used to the cruelty and apathy at Winslow, but I’d half-expected her to disappear.  Ghost me.  And then laugh at me with Sophia that’d I’d ever believe there would be consequences for them.

“Hey, Dad.  Who was on the phone earlier?” I asked, shaking my hair loose a little more.  I’d had to take the time to wash it, and that had taken longer than I’d expected, but Lily was just lounging on the couch reading one of Mom’s old books.  She’d called those ones her “gay stash”, I wasn’t sure why.  I saw the cover; it was one of the ones with the lesbians, and the swords, and the rocket ships.  She waved but just looked over to where Dad was… huh.  Reading the newspaper, instead of just watching the news.

“The school system.  Winslow’s being closed for a week, and they approved a transfer to Arcadia starting your junior year.”  Dad frowned at me.  “I didn’t know you’d requested one.”

“It was, uh, last year.”  I licked my lips, not sure how to say this.  “Winslow isn’t a great environment, so I tried to get it approved, and then I was going to tell you?  But Principal Blackwell shredded it in front of me and told me to get real.”

I saw Dad’s expression flicker.  His temper.  He took a moment and nodded, but his deceptively mild tone when he spoke again didn’t fool me. “I see.  Do I need to have a talk with your principal?”

Lily’s amused chuckle interrupted me trying to come up with an answer.  “Kinda pointless If you ask me, sir.  I heard at work she got canned.  Safety violations or something and they’re doing remediation work on the school, plus bad handling of some student issues.”

My eyebrows climbed up my forehead a little.  First Sophia, then she heard about Blackwell getting canned?  That’s some gossip to run into, but I couldn’t say I minded at all.  Apparently things got interesting wherever it was she worked; I vaguely recalled it being some place called Thompson-Rosewell-Parker, or something like that.

Dad’s eyebrows went up, too, but he had something else on his mind.  “So that’s why the superintendent was asking if the Dockworkers had any capacity.”

“Probably, yeah.  The place is kind of… well, it’s not in great condition,” Lily explained diplomatically.

“I see.  It’s probably for the best that Taylor’s transferred, but what about you, Lily?” Dad asked, frowning a little.

“I was supposed to be at Arcadia anyway, but it fell through until next semester starts, so…”  Lily grinned at me.  “This way I don’t have to leave my friend behind.”

I waved my hand, gratified to hear that, but I wanted clarification.  “Woah, woah, wait, go back a second.  Blackwell got fired?”

“Mmhm.  She fucked up.”  I’m not sure even German had a word for how much schadenfreude was packed into Lily’s grin now, and then it occurred to her to glance at Dad a little nervously.

Dad just laughed, shaking his head.  “If you think that’s going to offend me, you haven’t spent nearly enough time around longshoremen, Lily.  Taylor’s undoubtedly heard worse from them, too.”

“Like that time Kurt hit his thumb with a hammer when I was 10,” I reminisced, smiling.  At the time, it hadn’t been very funny, between Kurt swearing and howling and waving his thumb around like it was going to fall off, and Mom simultaneously trying to get him to stop moving around so she could apply first aid and giving him hell for swearing in front of Emma and me.

“I remember your mom telling me about that.”  Dad’s smile was shadowed, but he shook it off.  He looked at Lily, then at me, and for a moment, I was worried he was going to ask about Emma, but he didn’t.  “Anyway, just remember not everyone likes language like that.”

Laughing softly, Lily rolled her eyes.  “Oh, yeah, I know.  I guess I got a little too relaxed with Taylor.”

“Or maybe it’s influence from what you’re reading?” Dad asked with a sly smile.

I had the distinct pleasure of watching my self-possessed, confident friend – and okay, maybe she was also my hero lately – pinken a little at being caught with a book from Mom’s stash of gay novels.  She opened her mouth, closed it again, and seemed to be at a loss for how to respond.  I wasn’t sure, either.

Chuckling, Dad shook his head.  “Annette would prefer they were enjoyed by someone who would properly appreciate the subject matter.”

Lily’s blush darkened another shade.  “I, uh, well, um, yes.  Maybe I find the main character relatable?” she hedged, trying not to come out and openly admit her orientation to Dad that way.

“…you do fencing?” I asked, tilting my head and giving her an out.

“Tried it some back in New York, at least,” Lily replied, clearly grateful.

Dad nodded, smiling genially at me.  “Mmhm.  I’m sure that’s all.”  He wasn’t buying it, I knew he wasn’t buying it, he knew I knew, and I was pretty sure Lily knew he wasn’t, either, but he let her off easy.

“Must be nice attending a high school with, you know, funding,” I grumped, leaning against the back of Dad’s armchair and stretching a little.  “I’m looking forward to trying it sometime.”

Lily nodded.  “Winslow’s a dump.  I’m not sorry I wound up there, considering the company I get to keep-“  My cheeks burned a bit, and I saw Dad laugh.  “-but other than Taylor and Mrs. Knott?”

“Yeah, I’m going to miss Mrs. Knott.  Especially after the help she gave us this week.”

Thinking about it, Dad commented, “Personally, I’m not looking this gift horse in the mouth.  Anyway, Taylor, is there anything you need to tell me about school?”

I froze like a deer in headlights.  Lily giving me an expectant look didn’t help, either.  For a moment, I considered telling him.  “…no, there’s not,” I decided, shaking my head, doing my best to ignore Lily’s frown.  “With Principal Blackwell gone, and someone competent doing their job?  I don’t think there’s anything we can’t handle.”

“If you say so,” Dad said, giving me a thoughtful look before standing up.  “Anyway, I’ll stop cramping your style.  I’m sure you don’t need your dreary, boring old dad hanging around you, and I need to check who’s available.  Which means going into the office.  Is there anything you need me to pick up?”

“Just the grocery list,” I told him.  We didn’t usually go shopping on Saturday afternoon, but if he was out, why not?

Dad nodded.  “If I don’t catch you again tonight, it was good seeing you again, Lily.”

“You too, Mr. Heb- Danny,” Lily corrected herself when he raised an eyebrow.

Dad smiled at the correction.  “See you later, kiddo.”

I rolled my eyes at him calling me that, then watched him leave.  When I looked back at Lily, she was smiling at me.  “Whole week off from school!  Well, home assignments, but no having to go to school.”

“Yeah.”  I paused.  “You want to study together this week?  I’m sure they’ll send us assignment packets or something, and it’d go faster with a friend.”  It always had back in middle school, before… well, before.

“Sure thing!” Lily answered brightly, sitting up and stretching, catlike.  Then she sprang off our lumpy old couch with an easy grace that was enjoyable to watch.  “In the meantime, we’ve got that pair assignment.  I set out the stuff before I went browsing.”

“Oh, good.”  I smiled at Lily, and she smiled back.  It was so nice having a friend again, and this would’ve been hell with one of the other girls in my class.  Even Greg would’ve been difficult.  Our assignment was to analyze a significant parahuman and talk about how they had impacted their community.  “Uh, I was thinking we might want to go a little off the beaten trail on this one.”

“How so?” Lily asked, tilting her head.

“What about one of the Teeth?  I found articles about how they shut down the zoo when they were in Brockton-“

Lily’s face shut down, and I stopped talking.  I’d said the wrong thing.  I didn’t know what, but… oh.  Right.  The Teeth.  In New York.  I braced myself for the insult, to be berated for my foolishness.

Instead, she just shook it off, her dark hair shimmying with the motion of her head.  “I… we can do that, but… I’d rather not,” Lily said finally, her eyes shadowed.  “Just… I don’t want to think about the Teeth for a while, okay?”

“Of course, that’s fine,” I told her in a rush.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t think, that was-“

“It was a good idea!  You couldn’t have known I’ve, uh, run into them.  There’s nothing for you to apologize for, just some unpleasant memories,” Lily cut in, mustering a wan smile.

The Empire and ABB had been ruled out explicitly; Gladly was an uncaring, popularity-obsessed dipshit, but not a total moron.  Either of the current major gangs in Brockton Bay was just asking for trouble.  The Triumvirate or Dragon were too obvious.  The Teeth basically destroying the Brockton Bay Zoo in a carnivorous feast just seemed like something weird and interesting.  Fortunately, I had a backup plan, and had prepared for that, too.

“What about Armsmaster, then?  I found something good about him, too,” I suggested.

Lily tilted her head.  “That’s… interesting.  You’re thinking about him as something other than a hero, aren’t you?”

She got it!  “Yeah.  That’s obvious – he was a strike team leader and then came to Brockton Bay – but I was thinking about how his engineering work has changed things.”  She kept up that curious head tilt and I went on, “He’s got patents, non-Tinkertech stuff.  Uh, battery manufacturing, I think.”

Her eyebrows went up.  “I didn’t know he did non-Tinker engineering.”

“Most people don’t, it’s not really public, at least… well, not just regular people, but if you dig around?  He worked with Dragon and some chemist and electrical engineer named Colin Wallis on battery designs.  The IP was traded to Aleph for some of their patents on solar panel manufacturing processes.”  Although nuclear was being studied again these days, renewable energy sources were a big thing.

“Really.  Can I see some of those articles?”

“Yeah, I’ve got them here,” I said, reaching for the folder I’d put the printouts in and handing them to her.

Lily blinked in surprise.  “These are from serious academic journals, aren’t they?”

I rubbed the back of my neck, under my hair.  “Mom was a professor at BBU.  I spent time there, as a kid, and the librarian let me keep my login after, uh…”  I swallowed.  “After Mom… passed away.”

My friend lifted her head up, and her voice was warm and empathetic.  “I’m so sorry, Taylor.”

“It was a few years ago,” I said softly, feeling awkward.  “Drunk driver.”  And a cell phone, but that… didn’t matter.  Not the way the accident played out.  Still, Dad blamed the phones, and I got why, even if I didn’t agree with him.  “It’s just been me and Dad ever since.”  I managed a wan smile of my own.  “Like I told you earlier, it’s been better this week.”

“I’m glad to hear that, at least,” Lily said after a moment, smiling back gently before she looked at the journal articles I’d printed out Thursday, while she was working.

One was an economic discussion of the impact of the W-D crystallization process and its applications on Aleph’s renewables industry as well as what Bet had received.  Another was a heavy load/discharge study of the batteries’ durability from Cornell, assisted by Dragon.  The third was an economic comparison of the implementation of renewables vs. maintaining fossil fuels and hydroelectric, and projected environmental costs, based on information from Aleph studies in their United States and Europe.  That wasn’t direct, but the trade from the first article was crucial.  I’d saved off some others, but these were the most relevant.  Mr. Gladly probably wouldn’t be impressed by a chemistry journal deep diving the crystal structures and ionization pathways; that wasn’t relevant to the assignment.

Whistling when she was done skimming them, Lily commented, “Wow.  This is a real impact.”

“Yeah.  Armsmaster’s a hero – he’s made two worlds better, a little, not just what he does in the streets.”

Lily nodded.  “Not that Brockton Bay’s going to be putting up a solar farm any time soon.”

I snorted.  We got a fair bit of sunlight during the summer, but Brockton Bay’s climate tended toward cloudy and muggy.  “They’re doing some stuff further south, near Portland, but it’d be better somewhere like the Midwest from what I’ve read, or Texas.  Armsmaster’s patents improved the manufacturing cost and energy density; compared to lithium-ion batteries, they’re cheaper for longer output times.  They’re less prone to fires, too, supposedly, but I don’t have a good article on that.”

“Maybe we should try to catch Armsmaster and ask him,” Lily suggested with a puckish grin.

My eyes widened.  “What?!  Seriously?  He’s busy, he doesn’t-“

Lily laughed merrily, shaking her head.  “I’m just teasing, Taylor.  Oh, wow, the look on your face!”

Cheeks burning, I made a harrumphing noise.  I was smiling too, though.  This was… different.  So different.  Just being gently teased by a friend instead of the cruelty and harassment.

We got to work, Lily asking me things, and gradually, as she did that, she started taking notes for the outline.  The two of us went back and forth, refining the organization, and Lily did her final version of the outline, handing it to me for review.

“I think this is everything, yeah,” I told her, eyeballing the contents and mentally ticking the boxes on what we’d discussed.  Then I reached for a protective sleeve.

Lily seemed slightly surprised but didn’t complain; she’d seen me pulling schoolwork out of these all week.  I’d learned some lessons from the many times I’d gotten doused with water, juice, and at least once I’m pretty sure it had been cat urine; anything important, protective sleeve.  It had helped, some.  Once I was done, I handed it back over.

“You’re staying for dinner in a while?” I asked Lily hopefully.

Lily looked at me.  “You don’t have to cook for me, Taylor.”  That wasn’t a no, and I thought she might look hungry.

“No, but I enjoy cooking.  When I can get into it, anyway.  Besides, I’ve got a pot roast on, and I could use a second opinion on the side dishes,” I offered, trying to entice her into sticking around.  I had too much dignity to use puppy dog eyes, though.  Probably.  Maybe.  Well, not yet, maybe after the second rebuttal…

Smiling back, Lily nodded; it hadn’t taken much to convince her.  “Sure.  Ethan and Jess are working, so it was going to be a freezer meal for me.”

“I started cooking because I decided I didn’t like those and dug out Mom’s old recipe book, then watched a few videos and found a few recipes online,” I replied with a shrug.  Dad hadn’t been too hard to persuade, and he had eaten some of my earlier… experiments.  That was a good word.  A better word than ‘disasters’, although you could use that one too if you were uncharitable.  I certainly had, and to be fair, even at my worst, he hadn’t said anything negative.  “I haven’t tried a pot roast before, so you may still be getting the freezer meal, but…”

Lily raised her eyebrows.  “Oh, I see how it is.  You need a captive audience to be your guinea pig.”

My cheeks flushed.  “Hey, it’s not like that, I wouldn’t-“ I started to protest defensively.

“Easy, Taylor, easy,” she assured me, smiling.  “I’m flattered you trust me to be your taste tester, really.  The pork chops were great, I’m sure this’ll be good.  What’d you have in mind for sides?”

“Uh, a few things, depending on what you want to eat.”  I headed for the kitchen, washing my hands, and then opened my recipe folder.  “We’ve got some dried black beans I was thinking of fixing, maybe with some toasted French bread?  I wasn’t planning to eat for another hour and a half, so…”

Lily smiled placatingly, washing her hands.  “That’s fine.  It sounds simple.”

I nodded, flipping to the right page in my notes.  “Yeah, it’s stupidly simple, just beans, water, and a little kosher salt.  I just keep it written down so I don’t do something dumb.”  I checked the slow roaster was still going strong before looking back at her.  “I found a recipe for hot honey beans I wanted to try but I need the cayenne pepper sauce for that, and Dad won’t be back for a bit.  Or I could make bruschetta,” I suggested, pausing and eying the recipe.  “Dad liked that over Christmas…”

“Just do what you want, I’m easy to please.  So, uh, the easy beans, then?” Lily told me cheerfully, sniffing at the roast.  “That smells great, by the way.  What else is in there with the, uh, pork I think?”

“Carrots, potatoes, and onions, mainly,” I answered, setting the oven to preheat from memory before turning back to the beans recipe.  “The beans are in that cabinet up there, there’s an open bag of the black ones.”

Lily found the beans after a bit of searching and brought the bag over while I got out our old Dutch oven and cleaned it briefly.  She watched, curious, as I got the heat going and boiled the water, then sprinkled in salt with the remaining half pound of beans.  Once I was satisfied everything was right with a bit of stirring, on went the top, and the whole thing went into the oven before I cleaned the spoon.

“…really is that simple, huh?” she asked, sounding surprised.

“Mmhm,” I answered, setting the egg timer.  “We just need to check to make sure there’s water covering the beans in a half-hour.  Like I said, that one’s stupidly simple, but it’s an easy thing to put on while I do homework and let something else cook.”

“If you know what you’re doing,” Lily pointed out with a smile.  “And can’t burn water.”

I tilted my head, frowning at her.  “…you can’t do that, not without raw potassium or splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen or something first, that’s not how that kind of chemistry works.  I mean, are you a parahuman who can burn water?  I’ve heard powers are weird like that sometimes.”  That just didn’t compute.

Lily smiled tolerantly at my rambling, shaking her head.  “Nope, I’m not, that’s a figure of speech.  I’m just… bad at this.  ‘Set fire to a microwave making popcorn once’ bad.”

“Oh.  Mom and Dad taught me some of the basics,” I answered quietly, thinking back to happier times.  Also making a mental note that Lily wasn’t allowed in my kitchen without supervision, or at least not near the microwave.

“Yeah, mine… didn’t really teach me much, except, well...”  Lily’s voice was tense as she trailed off before she took a breath and let it out.  I guess she really didn’t like talking about her family; I wondered why, what they’d done to hurt her.  “Anyway!  Anything else I can do to help?”

“No, not right now.  Little early to toast the bread, don’t you think?” I commented, trying to make it a joke to lighten the mood.  It wasn’t much of one, but Lily smiled a bit anyway.  “We’ve got some vanilla ice cream and fudge for dessert.”

“Home-made fudge?” Lily asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“Err, no, store-bought.  I, uh, I could try making some next week, if that’s-“ I started to say.

Lily just raised a finger, interrupting me mid-train of thought.  “Easy, Taylor.  I’m not about to start asking you to put yourself out.  I was honestly planning to grab dinner on my way home, so you’re already going above and beyond here.”

I nodded, looking down.  “Sorry, I’m just, I…”

“Just don’t be silly about it.  You don’t need to buy my friendship with food,” Lily told me in a voice laden with amusement and indulgence.  “Doesn’t mean I won’t eat it, just don’t feel like you have to.”

“Okay,” I said, mustering a tiny smile.  “I, uh, I never used to cook.  For others, I mean, back before...  Maybe I’m feeling out how that works with a friend.”

Taking an appreciative sniff of the roast again, Lily grinned and told me, “Well, I, for one, am happy to help you figure it out.”  My smile got a bit wider at that.