Beta: Edale

Arc 5: There is Knowledge

I brought my lightsaber down in a series of short, quick strokes. Each flowed into the next. Each was light and meant to deflect rather than negate. Form III. Soresu. Without conscious thought, I slipped into form V, the delicate and graceful deflection of my imagined opponent's blade leaving an opening that I capitalized on with murderous intent. My blade was already carving through my imagined enemy's flesh before I realized I had even switched styles.

I paused, my blade still outstretched as I remembered performing this exact maneuver back at Medhall. One of the guards had foolishly gotten in my way. I remembered the gentle feel of the resistance as the blade carved through flesh and body armor alike.

I drew myself back to a guard position, but did not start again. Instead, I let myself drift both in my thoughts and in the force. So much had happened in the past two and a half months, it was hard to believe sometimes.

I forced my thoughts back to that day when the trio had shoved me into the locker. It was hard to think about those times. It wasn't just that it was unpleasant, it was as if my power hated thinking about it. My power…. It hated weakness in all things, but above all, it hated weakness in itself. It hated weakness in me. It felt like there was so much to unpack in that notion that I didn't even know where to begin. Back then, before everything went to hell, I had just been relieved to have powers. I had craved them so much I hadn't really stopped to question why. And even when the oddities continued to mount, I still didn't question. I didn't have any reason to think that my powers were strange. For all I knew, everyone had complicated issues with their powers, and it was a thing that just wasn't talked about.

But now, I had a little more perspective, and I was slowly coming to the realization that there was something not quite right about my power. Or, maybe, there was something not quite right about me. I honestly couldn't say which idea was more worrying.

"You can come in," I said as I deactivated my lightsaber.

Marissa hesitated before stepping into the practice room. "Coil wants us." Her voice was smaller and more tentative than I remembered ever hearing it before.

"Does your power," I began suddenly, "did it… come with memories?"

The vague hope I had that maybe I wasn't unusual died even before she spoke. "No."

"Mine did," I went on. I deactivated my lightsaber and hooked it to my belt. I turned and looked at her. "And not just one or two memories. It's a whole lifetime's worth. It's a whole personality." I had never said these things to anyone before. I had barely even been willing to think it in my own head. I couldn't finish saying out loud my thoughts and feelings. Was this other person who had taken up space in my head – this Lord Vader – here to stay permanently? Would I become more and more like him everyday? It felt like, the more I used my powers, the more I let my anger fill me, the closer to the surface he came, and every time he did, he lingered a little longer. Even now, it felt like that violence was close to the surface. Like it was simmering just beneath my skin, and ready to be unleashed at the drop of a hat.

Something about my words seemed to cause a swell of fear in Marissa. Only, it wasn't directed at me, but rather it was diffuse and nebulous, as if I had touched on a trigger for her own emotional insecurities.

"Come on," she said, visibly compressing her emotions back down. "We should go."

I fell into step alongside her. I gave her a sideways glance as we walked. "Are you angry with me?" I asked finally.

"No, yes, I don't know."

"Mmm, that clears things up."

"Let's not talk about it now. We should focus on the meeting with Coil."

"You've been avoiding me."

"I've been… not avoiding you exactly," she said. "I just needed some time to think."

Before I could peel back any more of her defences, we arrived at Coil's office where the others had already congregated.

Coil did not hesitate to dive in. "Now that the empire's power has been broken, other gangs will be looking to muscle in on their territory. I'm not just talking about the ABB. I'm also talking about gangs from Boston and even further afield. In some instances, individual villains may even team up to form a new gang to come here if they think there's a place for them to establish themselves. For all the empire's faults, they maintained stability in the Bay. If we do not act to assert ourselves, we'll be inviting more conflict with other gangs. None of them will have the same level of investment in the city, and many of them are simply crazier and more violent than the empire. For example, I have it on good authority that the Teeth are interested in setting up shop here. I'm certain that no one wants that."

"So you want us to assume the empire's territory?" Trickster asked. There was no mistaking the dubiousness in his tone.

"Yes."

"But… does that mean we have to become Nazis?" Trickster looked around at the rest of us as if trying to picture us as the new face of the empire. "I mean, wouldn't all their territory be held together by Nazi ideology?"

"That's not the way it works," said Coil impatiently. "Only a very small number of the empire was dedicated to a political position. Many can be swayed by the promise of work and profit in the same areas that the empire engaged in."

"You mean drugs and guns," I said flatly.

"Less drugs and more extortion, actually. The empire promised protection to its members first and foremost. Only then did it indulge in feeding their vices. I don't care about the drugs. But you will seize and control the territory and defend it from any capes that try to take it from you. In fact, I would go so far as to say that you should refrain from selling drugs. Gambling, guns and extortion are all acceptable and encouraged."

"But," said Marissa hesitantly. "I don't know how to do any of that."

"Learn," replied Coil dismissively. "You'll have assistance through my network. Besides, it will not be hard. Both the PRT and other villains – namely Lung – will seek to test your defences. Your success will be measured in relation to your ability to repel these attacks and keep the people in your territory safe."

"It's your territory," I said suddenly.

"Excuse me?" He turned to look at me directly.

"The territory – it's not ours," I explained. "You want us to pretend it is. Why?"

"This city can be roughly divided into four camps. The empire and the ABB held the largest portions of territory. I held the third largest with the Merchants last. Since you went on a killing spree in Merchant territory, the Merchants have become even less relevant, and their territory has been slowly subsumed by the ABB. If I am known to consume the empire's territory, then I will be seen to be the largest and most powerful villain in the Bay, as far as the PRT is concerned. That level of conspicuousness is counterproductive to our long-term goals."

I nodded slowly. Coil's strategy made sense. I felt an echo of approval from my alternate as well. The PRT would be far less concerned with multiple smaller gangs than they would with one larger gang. This was an aspect of cape politics that I had not given much thought to before. The gangs had a sort of détente with the PRT, but did that blade cut both ways? If the gangs had a natural growth rate, did that mean that the PRT had one too? I would have to meditate on it, and consider what it meant for me in the larger picture.

Coil went on to discuss details before wrapping up the meeting. However, as the rest of the Travelers were filing out, I held back, sensing that Coil had something more to say. Marissa glanced back questioningly at me, but I waved her on, and gently nudged the door closed with my power after she was gone.

"We cannot hold the Bay by ourselves," Coil said. "It's time."

Ah, I thought with understanding. Dinah Alcott.

"You want me to collect her."

"Does it bother you?" he asked.

I exhaled as I thought about it. Did abducting a twelve year old girl bother me? I looked Coil in the eyes and said, "Are you certain this will help make the Bay safer?"

"Yes." There was no hesitation in Coil's voice nor in his force aura. He believed this one fact above all else. "You can't just chop off Butcher's head like you're doing with your other enemies. As powerful as you are, you can be taken down. No one is invulnerable. That's the nature of powers. And that means that every cape sociopath will be looking your way now and wondering if they're the one with that special something that can get past your defences. The Bay's going to turn into a charnel house if we don't take preventative measures."

In a way, Coil was not unlike the empire. Perhaps, in another world, if the empire had not been so baldly racist, I might have joined them. And yet they were what they were, and I was here where I was.

"I will retrieve her," I said finally.

Coil studied me for a long moment before relaxing. "When?"

"Tomorrow."

"It should go without saying, though I find with you it is better to be explicit. Do not be seen. The PRT already believes we are loosely affiliated. I do not want them to have any inkling that I am related to Dinah's abduction."

I nodded and took my leave.

~~JH~~

It was dark, and my force shroud was active as I lightly alighted atop the roof of the Alcott home. My senses were finely honed so that I knew the layout of the house, the location of the inhabitants and what they were doing. I even knew where the security cameras were located and could disable or jam outgoing communications if necessary.

Dinah was in her bedroom. I could tell from her force signature that she was tense yet expectant. That was good. It would make this process easier.

It was the work of a moment to float down to her window, pop the screen and slip through. She had a grim sort of resignation at the sight of me. She was already wearing a windbreaker and had a backpack propped between her legs.

I nodded. Whatever her powers were, it seemed to have aged her. There was a haunted look in her eyes, and there was no nervous or irrelevant chatter between us.

As I helped her through the window and floated us up through the roof, I couldn't help but ask, "Why? Why not just go to the PRT? You knew I was coming."

For a moment, we stood there on her roof, encompassed in a force shroud, Dinah looking at me with her sad eyes. "It makes a difference. Not much… just a little." She shrugged and looked away.

"Difference to what?" I asked.

Dinah did not answer, and my question seemed to hang in the air. The force swirled and grew agitated momentarily before subsiding. And yet, when it did so, it felt as though something had changed. My vision of Dinah had shifted slightly. Gone was the scared young girl. Gone was the cape who was having to catch up in a world that didn't give a fuck about the people who occupied it.

In its own eldritch and inimical way, the force seemed to say that it was its will that brought us together, and it would be its will that eventually cut us apart.

I enclosed us in a force bubble and gently floated us over the houses until we settled on an unlit street three blocks away. A black SUV drove up after a moment, its engine unusually quiet in the otherwise silence. One door opened to reveal a darkened interior. There was the glint of steel – I knew it to be the barrel of a Glock – the kind favoured by Coil's people.

I caught a momentary questioning glance in Dinah's expression before it smoothed away. No doubt she'd used her power to answer her own question.

"I'll check up on you," I said as she scrambled in. "Make sure you're being treated right."

Dinah gave me an inscrutable look that I could not unravel even with the assistance of the force. A moment later, she was gone.

To my chagrin, there was no opportunity to check up on Dinah as she never made it back to Coil's base. It took me nearly a day before having to accept that Coil had squirreled her away somewhere else altogether.

~~JH~~

"Where's Zephyr?"

"Don't know, don't care," grunted the merc.

Trickster gritted his teeth and stormed away from the loading zone where trucks were coming in and out from Coil's base. He had a good mind to just start teleporting his way through the place. He was certain Zephyr was intentionally avoiding him. Her powers were weird enough that she could do it with ease. It was only his finely tuned sixth sense in all matters pertaining to Noelle that had him turning down the empty corridor that led to her room.

Found you, he thought with equal parts irritation and worry. What was she doing near Noelle anyway? The fact that he was looking for her specifically for that purpose when she had already beaten him to the punch only served to increase his unease.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, though he had the sense to pitch his voice low so as not to disturb Noelle. He was pretty certain that, despite the meter-thick steel door that separated them, Noelle's hearing was acute enough to hear what went on outside.

Zephyr turned to look at him. There was something disconcerting about her stare. He'd noticed it from the beginning, but it had only grown more prominent since then. It was as if she were mentally flaying him alive, peeling back each layer to peer at the insides with the same interest that a boy might have when plucking the wings off a fly. "I'm trying to heal Noelle."

And sell me a bridge while you're at it, he thought. However, he had the presence of mind not to say that aloud. Not that it mattered. Crazy cape was no doubt reading his mind or whatever anyway. "And?" he said, folding his arms. "What have you found out?"

"Not much," she admitted. Her gaze turned back to Noelle and went unfocused.

Christ, he thought. She's fucking seeing through the door or something.

"It would help if I could be in the same room as her. Maybe even touch her."

Those were not entirely unreasonable requests. Trickster had noted in the past that Zephyr's thinker power seemed to be most potent when she was closer to her target. And yet, the idea of giving Zephyr what she wanted – especially when it pertained to Noelle – it raised the hairs on the back of his neck. His instinctive response was to shout her down and tell her to get the hell away from his girl. But no. Zephyr had caused enough fracture lines between him and his group. If he shut her down here, it would only widen those gaps. Better to play along until she revealed her true intentions. That could only work to his advantage in the long run.

Trickster stepped past her, acutely aware of the aura of power that seemed to surround her. He tapped the code on the keypad, and the several tons of steel that separated them from Noelle began to rise.

~~JH~~

It was weird to think that I'd only been a cape for a scant few months. Even weirder when I thought about how I was still only fifteen. I still wasn't old enough to get a driver's licence. I wasn't sure if it were Vader's memories or the force itself, but I felt older in some way I couldn't quite define.

Still, nothing so far had prepared me for the nearly physical wall of power that slammed into me. It took all my effort to keep from showing any sign of strain. Whatever I had gleaned from my brief brushes with her had been from afar, and were a mere echo of whatever the hell was radiating from her directly.

By any objective aesthetic measure she was repulsive. In the force though, she shone like a hideous abomination. The force recoiled from her, twisting in ways that were painful and leaving an ominous void in its wake. I schooled my expression into one of controlled neutrality.

"Well?" asked Trickster impatiently.

"Don't rush me." I reached out with the force and gently touched Noelle's mind. Pain rage hunger guilt shame loneliness – I reeled back. For a moment, something vast and unknowable eclipsed my every sense. It loomed in the force – a colossus so large and powerful that it stood as a giant even in the sea of force energy that surrounded me.

When I managed to get a hold of myself, I realized Trickster was holding me up. We were outside the room – he must have grabbed and dragged me to safety. The door was halfway closed with Noelle pounding her body against the door, shrieking and roaring and wailing simultaneously through all her mouths.

"TRICKSTER BRING HER BACK HERE RIGHT NOW TRICKSTER RIGHT FUCKING NOW!"

For a moment the pounding and stomping stopped. From the last sliver of space at the bottom, her head appeared, her dark eyes devoid of humanity and replaced by a wild, bestial hunger. Our gazes locked. I shivered.

In the next moment, she was sealed away once more. I hastily shrugged Trickster's arm off, only to stumble and collapse to the ground.

For a long moment, my mind blanked as I tried to process what just happened. I felt numb all over. Even the force felt…. There was no word that quite described it. The force felt cold and sluggish.

"What the hell was that?" asked Trickster in a shaky voice.

Even he seemed to be at a loss. I imagined we were both processing the fact that he might have just saved my life. I turned back to stare at the giant steel door and the being that lay beyond. Even now, I felt it reaching out through some sort of nether space that was neither the real world nor the force, but rather some sort of dimension akin to hyperspace.

It was hunting me. Somehow, it gotten my taste through the force, and now it wanted more. And suddenly, in a flash, Noelle's insatiable hunger made sense, as if it were searching for something to consume, and the thing that they were feeding it was an imperfect substitute that only served to mollify it temporarily.

"I don't know," I replied quietly.

Something in my tone must have given him pause, because the sarcastic, churlish reply that I had learned to expect from Trickster did not come.

"Go on," he said in a suddenly weary voice. "Go on and get out of here."

Reluctantly, I did as commanded.

~~JH~~

I didn't know what Trickster said to the others after my ill-fated run-in with Noelle, but whatever it was, it only served to ratchet up the tension between me and them. No doubt after having had some time to think about it, he'd twisted the events to make me appear useless at best and harmful at worst. Not that it would take much convincing. Since my encounter with her, she'd grown more erratic. I sensed the tension in the staff as they moved through the base. Her presence seemed to leak out of the room despite the vault-like door and hang in the air, a menacing presence that could only be apprehended in the spaces between conscious and unconscious thought.

It was worse in the force. I could not unsee what I had seen. And whatever that being was that existed contiguous to our reality, remained, its voracious and all-consuming appetite growing and growing within the void in which it was trapped; its only outlet being Noelle's body.

Noelle's existence gave rise to so many questions that I didn't know where to begin. And where the force had been so powerful a guide before, here, in this arena where I needed it most, it seemed to fail me. I struggled to bring myself to a state where I could peer into the future, but when I did, the visions distended, as if the light that composed the images were being warped by some immense gravitational force.

The only conclusion I could come to was that Noelle could not be precogged. That I had run up against something that could rebuff my power in some way. The idea was unsettling. It was almost as unsettling as the realization that I would find no answers in the force.

And yet, with each passing day, the need for answers burned hotter inside me. All this time, I had thought myself strange for the manner in which my powers manifested. It had seemed axiomatic that I was the weird one. But now that I had seen Noelle, I had to wonder if it were really my powers that were weird, or if there was something not quite right about cape powers to begin with.

And the more that I meditated on that, the more I tried to peer through the veil to where the answers to my questions lay, the more I felt hunted. Something was out there. My mind kept returning to that eldritch colossus. Even in the confines of my own mind, it felt like that being was there, hooking into me with something that was not quite sight and not quite touch but rather something in-between. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something important to this revelation – something that was greater than me – something so great that it seemed to rival the force itself.

~~JH~~

"So this other personality," Marissa began tentatively. "What's she like?"

"He," I said as I sipped on my tea. We were sitting in a café near the boardwalk. Warm spring temperatures had arrived and looked like it was here to stay. The weather had been alternating between rain showers and bouts of sunlight, which was making the grass and flowers and trees come alive with life and color. We were in one of the sunny periods, which painted the street in warm light.

Marissa took a moment to digest this new aspect to my cape powers. "Does he… have a name?"

Did he have a name? He was Lord Vader in my head, but somehow, it didn't feel quite right. Another name seemed to bleed up from that wellspring of power – Anakin Skywalker. And yet, it felt old and disused, as if it were a name that had been shed long ago like the skin of some reptile. "Vader," I said finally. "His name is Vader."

"Hmm." She seemed to mull over the idea before saying, "Are you sure this other personality is real?"

"It's not something I constructed as a coping mechanism," I said, knowing where she was going. I had been through multiple traumatic events, so it was hardly a surprise that some sort of Freudian-style explanation wouldn't have come up. "I know an entire language. I know how to sword fight with a laser sword, that I built."

"Lots of cape powers come with pre-set information. That's part of the weirdness of powers." She reached over and clasped my hand in hers. "I'm not trying to – maybe I'm not saying this right." She shook her head. "It obviously bothers you – this other presence. I guess I'm just wondering if maybe it's not really as weird as it feels. Like, you know, maybe there's a more mundane explanation, you know?"

I smiled. She really was trying to help. "Maybe." But deep down, I didn't believe it.

"So when you're fighting," she said, and now there was a note of hesitation in her voice as she continued to speak, "this other personality comes forward?"

I nodded. "He's always there. Sometimes, something'll happen around me which sets him off. That's when the bleeding between him and me begins. It doesn't happen in a friendly spar… it's when I'm in danger."

"So he's like a guardian angel?"

I nodded slowly. "Yes… a rage-filled cybernetic, genocidal guardian angel."

Marissa was biting her lip in contemplation. "Is it getting worse?"

That was the question, wasn't it? I thought as I stared out the window at a mother pushing her baby stroller along on the sidewalk. Was it getting worse? In a way yes, but in another way no. "Vader killed a lot of people. Thousands in personal combat. He ordered the deaths of millions, possibly billions. Don't look at me like that. I don't know where he actually lived. Some sort of galaxy-spanning civilization. I guess when you kill so often and for so long… killing becomes a part of you." I turned and looked at Marissa, who was hanging on my every word. "The more I fight and kill, the easier it is. I don't need Vader anymore to kill Marissa. I can do it without batting an eye. Is it getting worse? I don't know. I'm changing, that's for sure. In the end, Vader killed even for small infractions. It's like it was the only way he knew how to deal with his anger. And anger… it was the only thing he knew how to feel."

"That's… terrifying," said Marissa. "I won't pretend it isn't."

"I know," I said. "And I don't see any way to stop it, to be honest. Maybe now that the empire's gone, I can rest."

"We'll stop it together," she said. "I'm not abandoning you to go through this."

"Because we're teammates?" I asked.

"More than teammates," she replied. "If you still want that."

"I do."

We sat in a comfortable silence as the first of the many painful discussions we needed to have was over.

"Noelle," Marissa began.

And now it was on to painful discussion number two.

"Noelle," I affirmed.

"You tried to heal her?" The way she phrased that made me certain that Trickster didn't portray my encounter with Noelle in a very flattering light.

"I didn't even get that far," I said. "I tried to use my thinker power to analyze her. The moment I tried though, she reacted… poorly."

"Trickster said that you nearly fainted."

I frowned as I tried to explain in a way that she could understand. "Imagine my thinker power is like trying to drink from a tap. In most cases, I have to put effort into opening up the valve to get some drips out. The more effort I put in, the more the valve turns, the more water flows." I glanced at her to see if she was understanding.

She nodded and made a go on gesture.

"I've gotten pretty good at controlling the valve," I continued. "But with Noelle, it was as if the valve was broken. The moment I tried to draw anything out, I was hit in the face by what felt like a firehose."

"Were you injured?" she asked.

"I was disoriented," I said, "but not harmed. But Noelle… she reacted violently. She wanted to-" I paused as I tried to settle on the right word. But there was nothing in my lexicon to describe what I had sensed in those moments we were connected. Finally, I settled on, "She wanted to have me."

"She hasn't been the same," said Marissa after a moment. She glanced down as though the answers to the meaning of life could be found in the remains of her latte. ".It's nothing obvious. She still smiles. She still looks burdened. But now, sometimes, there's a look in her eye, as though she's elsewhere. And sometimes, when she looks at us, it's like something else is looking at us through her eyes."

"Have you thought of seeing the heroes?" It was kind of a stupid question, but I had no better way to broach the subject. Of course they'd considered the heroes. But even I was startled by the vehement, knee-jerk response.

"No. Not the heroes. Never them."

"They have a lot of resources," I tried again.

"That's enough." Marissa's voice was sharper than I'd ever heard it. She seemed to realize this and forced herself to relax. "The heroes can't help."

She believed it with all her being. The absolute certainty was astonishing. I couldn't imagine what could create such a profound aversion to them turning to the heroes for help, but I knew there was no sense arguing. I simply nodded and moved on. "I'd like to try again," I said.

"Trickster won't agree to that."

I took a deep breath and said, "Do you blame me for agitating Noelle?"

In the force, I could tell that Marissa was confused and conflicted, but she rallied, her thoughts and feelings coalescing to try to answer the question. "You did what you thought was right. No one could predict how Noelle would react. Maybe we should have taken some more precautions, but we didn't. And that's Trickster's fault more than yours. He should have known better than to throw you into the room with Noelle. At least no one was hurt."

"And Noelle?" I prodded. "If I've… changed her in some way?"

"We'll deal. We always have." She locked gazes with me and added, "You can use your thinker power on people without actually being in the room with them, can't you?"

"Yes." I barely had time to wonder about the question before she barreled on ahead.

"Which means you can use your thinker power on Noelle, even if Trickster doesn't agree to let you be in the same room as her again."

The penny dropped. "You don't want me to touch her mind again."

"That's right."

I let out a long and slow exhale as I gathered my thoughts. It wasn't just about Noelle's well-being. I had questions of my own that needed answering, and in some way shape or form, Noelle was a stepping stone to helping me answer those questions. And yet, gazing into Marissa's solemn blue eyes, I couldn't help but say, "Of course. Not unless you give me permission."

She studied me a moment longer before nodding to herself. "Thank you."

"Of course."

~~JH~~

The territory that Coil assigned me was in the heart of the former Empire. Not only that but it abutted both the ABB and merchant territories, and also happened to be the poorer part of the city. All of this meant that it was the most violent and volatile area of town. When I had asked Coil about it, he had merely replied, "I have confidence that you are the most capable to manage it."

On the upshot, he'd strategically situated my territory so that it shared a long border with Marissa's. This also had the effect of placing Marissa squarely next to the ABB. I itched to find out what he'd learned from Dinah to orchestrate our assignments in this way.

My base was mostly underground, which I suppose was not a surprise. Given its size, it would be too conspicuous to be above ground. As it was, it had multiple exits, though one was a culvert that wound its way to the docks and not far from where my dad used to work.

Dad…. It'd been weeks since I last thought of him. Somewhere along the way, I'd somehow divorced my new life from my old. I'd started thinking of those days from before the break as the old Taylor.

One of the mercenaries that had been assigned to me, Martin, approached. "We're almost done here. The perimeter has been fully secured. We have surveillance on every square inch up to a hundred yards to the north and west. Unfortunately we could only get thirty yards out on the east and southern sides. There's a risk of someone stumbling on our gear if we press out further."

I nodded. "Good." Things were proceeding as anticipated then. Coil's people were efficient and capable, and had a refreshing amount of discipline for mercenaries. I didn't know if it was just that Coil had a careful vetting process, or if it was a cultural thing between my world and that of Vader's, or if it was just a bias on Vader's part to look down on mercenaries. Though not even Vader could deny the results wrought by such as the Mandalorians. "Call a meeting. It's time to discuss next steps."

I took my time making it to the conference room as I considered what I wanted to say. For the first time since getting my powers, I felt like I could begin looking to the future. Even though threats continued to encroach on all sides, I at least now had resources, and, maybe, a little time as well to meet those threats.

The conference room was fully equipped, and it took only a second to call up a map of our territory. Vader had been adept at commanding a room, but he'd already had the presence and reputation to do it. I had neither, and, moreover, Coil's mercenaries weren't impressed by capes. I had the feeling that they saw most capes as people with more power than sense. I intended to change that.

"Our territory abuts both the Merchants and the ABB, and our border with the ABB is longer than any other border with any other gang in the city. This means that Lung will almost certainly begin probing our defences with the intention of co-opting our territory."

"What do we do if Lung goes on a rampage?" someone asked.

"Then we will deal with him," I said decisively. "Hopefully he is not that type of leader. If he is smart, he will send his people into our territory and try to buy up property and businesses. He may have already started. With the decline of the empire, many who felt protected under their aegis may now seek to move; especially if ABB gang members begin knocking on their door." I overlaid information about various locations and businesses onto the map. "The green dots represent known affiliates of Coil. These are people and businesses who are friendly and will support us. The amber dots represent unknowns. These are people who have been non-committal in the past but who may be willing to support us in exchange for protection and other services. Finally, we have the red dots. These are empire die-hards."

I looked each soldier in the eye. "The ambers need to be vetted. If we root out enemies among them, whether they prove to be either empire or ABB, then you will update the list to mark them as either a green or a red."

"If we run across an Asian homeowner or business, how will we know if they're plants for the ABB?"

"Make a note of the ones you are uncertain about, and report back to me. Some of them may prove to be antagonistic toward the ABB given some of their practices. We may find some unexpected allies of our own amidst the Asians. Of course, I will have to go out there and vet each one personally."

"If you do that, your whereabouts will become predictable," said Martin, concerned.

I nodded. That was an excellent point. "Which means we can expect an ambush – especially since much of the Asian population will already straddle the ABB's border. I'll expect reports on the ABB's internal organization and structure, along with their key assets, interests, and members. Lung may be powerful, but I doubt he wants to rule over a pile of rubble. Let's see what he owns of value that we can threaten."

"What do we do about the reds?" asked another.

"Those that aren't packing already will be encouraged to do so."

~~JH~~

Craig kicked the nigger bitch in the stomach. She curled in on herself. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but this did not stop tears from streaming down her face. Her boyfriend - a race traitor - was laying feet away, half-unconscious.

"All right," said Tony with calm that Craig envied. One day, he'd be tough as nails just like Tony when taking out this subhuman trash. "There ain't no telling when the cops're gonna come around, so we'd best finish this."

The girl was young. Honestly he'd hoped he could've stuck his dick in her, and he could've if he'd made a point about it. But really, it was cold out, and the alley smelled. He wasn't even sure he could get it up in these conditions. Next time, he'd push to have one of the bitches brought back to a warehouse or something. He pulled out his gun. He'd never shot a person before. But then that was the whole point. This was his induction into the empire.

"Put that away," said Tony irritably. "You gotta be able to do this right if you're gonna join. Lou, hand this dumb fuck a knife."

Lou, the third and last of their group, was a big, muscle-bound guy with small eyes set in a round face. He not only had the gang tats, but one that marked him as an ex-con. He pulled out a bowie knife. "Use this." He held it out, handle first. Craig took it and hefted it.

"Christ, I hope I don't get blood all over myself," he muttered. He'd never stabbed someone before. He didn't even know where to stick it, but asking that sort of question was like asking someone how to fuck a bitch. It just wasn't done.

He knelt down. The girl's lips were moving. Was she praying? Fucking hell.

She opened her eyes and stared almost cross-eyed at the gleaming metal blade. "Please," she said through her tears. "My parents."

Back on the farm, he'd once seen his uncle slit a cow's throat. He grabbed the girl by the hair, twisted her head so that her neck was angled downward, and then ran the blade across it. Her eyes bulged out of their sockets, and she let out a scream that quickly cut off as the knife bit into her throat. Craig let her head fall back to the cement. He wiped the edge off on her skirt, which had ridden so far up so as to expose her black panties. Next time definitely a warehouse he thought.

There was the echoing thunder of gunfire. Craig looked up to see the bitch's boyfriend - a white race traitor's head blown off. Lou holstered the hand cannon.

"I thought you said no guns."

"Don't be such a faggot. Come on, we gotta move."

Craig stood and followed the other two as they headed toward the mouth of the alley.

"That'll be a lesson to the other niggers and faggots that we don't need no fucking capes to police our area," replied Tony grimly. "If we don't do it, no one will."

They were a dozen paces from the alley when the lights ahead of them all winked out at once.

"What the-?" Craig asked, but Tony shushed him. Just his lucky night, Craight thought irritably. No doubt it was a fucking cape. There was only one that he knew of that made darkness. Supposedly it was a nigger too. Christ, what was his name? He glanced back at the mess behind him. The smell of cordite and human innards was filling the alleyway. That shit was a life sentence, assuming that the cape didn't go for vigilante justice.

Lou and Tony were just conversing. Tony just finished saying that it wasn't Grue - that was the cape's name - when a figure touched down at the mouth of the alley.

Whoever it was had a slim figure and wore a cloak with a hood pulled up. Both Lou and Tony drew their pistols and fired. Craig was a second behind. In the near darkness, he couldn't tell whether the bullets struck, though given how close she was, there was no way they could have missed.

"Out of our way, bitch," shouted Tony, though Craig could hear the concern in his voice. Not a lot of capes could shrug off bullets, and Craig knew that Tony used armor-piercing rounds that could punch through a flak jacket.

Craig squinted. There was a glint of something metallic in her hands. An instant later, a long beam of glowing green death emerged from what he now saw was the handle of her... a chill ran down his spine. It was her. The crazy cape that had demolished the empire capes. Craig instinctively took a step back. She wasn't supposed to be out here. He'd heard that she'd only gone up against capes, and even then, only when provoked.

"This is our fucking territory, bitch!" Tony shouted. He fired his pistol three more times in rapid succession. The glowing energy blade blurred into motion, making three quick swishes. The bullets should have struck true, but there was no indication of that whatsoever. The thought niggled that she hadn't been hit with them, but rather had intercepted them with her blade.

Tony and Lou seemed to come to the same conclusion, because they both began firing as fast as they could, no doubt hoping to overwhelm her. Craig watched, but did not fire. He knew, deep down, that it was useless. The cape was too confident. Too bold. She wouldn't have stood there taking it if she thought she had anything to fear. Craig wasn't sure exactly the thought process that led him to it, but he found himself turning and running. He heard Lou shouting at him, but he didn't care. That crazy bitch was going to kill them. If he could make it to the other end of the alley - there was still light coming from that street - if maybe Lou and Tony delayed her long enough...

His foot slipped on something, and he went sprawling hard to the ground. It took him a second to realize he was laying in a pool of the nigger's still warm blood. Faintly, he heard the distinctive hum of that energy sword in motion. Lou and Tony were shouting. Tony's voice cut off suddenly, and so did the sound of gunfire. The eerie dance of light off the brick walls to either side stopped. Craig didn't look; he didn't care. He scrambled to his feet and ran for all he was worth. He made it five steps before what felt like a giant fist sent him tumbling across the ground. He looked up. The sword was right there. He tracked it with his gaze, as if hypnotized. A moment later, it was a blur of motion. He felt himself rolling. The world was tilting crazily. When it finally came to a stop, the cape and her sword were several feet away, standing over his body. He tried to make sense of what he was seeing as darkness closed in around him. He was here, but his body was there... and then he was nowhere.

~~JH~~

"Twelve dead so far," said Armsmaster. He stood to attention in Piggot's office. Both Dauntless and Miss Militia were also present.

"She's racking up a body count," Piggot noted neutrally.

"All gang members," said Dauntless.

"I hope you're not suggesting that that excuses her conduct in any way," said Piggot.

"No, Director," said Dauntless quickly. "I'm only pointing out that it speaks to her mental state."

"Why there?" asked Miss Militia.

"Good question," said Piggot. "The fact is we don't know, but I'll give you three guesses."

"She's decided to settle down," said Miss Militia.

"I concur," said Armsmaster. "We have only a few data points so far, but preliminary conclusion is that she is hunting around an activity node."

Piggot sighed. "Like a serial killer."

"Similar," replied Armsmaster. "The only distinction is in the choice of targets."

"A vigilante serial killer. And a cape we really don't want to fight."

Silence filled the room. She wasn't surprised. Zephyr sounded like an absolute nightmare.

"If she's hunting," Piggot went on, "then she's patrolling. You need to get out there and intercept her."

"Alone?" asked Dauntless.

"You can fly," replied Piggot. "She cannot. However, evidence indicates she can easily leap from rooftop to rooftop. This means a flier is almost certainly necessary. Ergo, you're it, Dauntless. Unless you want me to send Aegis out there."

"No, of course not," he said. "But I remember what she did to Hookwolf."

"Try not to kill anyone she loves," said Piggot sharply, "and I'm sure you'll be fine."

Dauntless exhaled slowly. "fine. But I do hope that Protectorate support will be on hand if she proves uncooperative."

"She's a teenager," said Miss Militia. "there may be some merit in exposing her to the wards."

"For what? A recruitment pitch? Zephyr burned that bridge around twenty murders ago. The only reason we're involving the wards is if one of them has a power that will prove useful in capturing Zephyr."

"Is there a kill order for her?"

"No." Piggot drew out the word as if the act of uttering that one syllable physically pained her. "The higher ups are still dragging their feet. Besides, it might do more harm than good."

"We may not be able to capture her," said Armsmaster slowly. "Her power set may mean that the only way to neutralize her is with overwhelming force. And that sort of thing tends to be lethal."

"If she dies then she dies," replied Piggot. "No one's going to look too hard if that happens. The one thing that's clear though is that Zephyr must be stopped. All these killings – people are likening her to the Nine." Her glare intensified. "And having a cape bogeyman like that in the Bay is bad for business."

~~JH~~

I stared down mystified at the array of implements on the bathroom counter top. I delicately picked up something that I was tentatively calling precision tweezers in my mind. It seemed to me to be a torture instrument of some kind. There were at least four brushes of various types. One must have been for the foundation or the blush or whatever. Another was for eyelids, maybe?

It was at times like this that I felt a pang for what I had had with Emma. In another life, she would have been here with me both mentoring and learning at the same time. She was always the girly one; probably a function of her natural beauty. Not like me. In the past, it had made me feel both grateful and inferior at the same time – a combination that had slowly distorted my psyche over the years. It was something I was still dealing with. Ten minutes of applying cosmetics and feeling increasingly like I was turning into a clown, and I finally gave up. Taking the plunge and dialing out on my cell phone. "Martin? No, nothing's wrong. Is Darlene free? Good, send her to my room please. Thank you."

Darlene was one of the few mercenaries that was also a woman. I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear – a nervous habit I thought I had rid myself of long ago.

A tap on the door and a shouted enter, and Darlene was there. One quick survey told her everything she needed to know. Thankfully, there was no expression of disdain either in her demeanor or her thoughts. I wasn't sure I would have had the control not to snap her neck if there were.

"That's way too much lipstick," she said, taking a damp cloth and wiping my lips. And I think you'd probably prefer tones that are a little more understated."

"I thought red lipstick was a classic," I mumbled.

"Honey, not with that skin tone."

My phone buzzed. I didn't need force powers to know it was Marissa wondering where I was. Another twenty minutes later – Darlene wasn't used to applying makeup to someone else – and I was studying my new look in the mirror. It was weird. I could barely even tell I was wearing makeup, but I looked noticeably nicer. My eyes popped in a way I couldn't quite describe, and instead of my mouth looking too wide, instead my lips just looked full-bodied.

"You're lucky," said Darlene, studying me critically. "You have a nice complexion, and smooth, even features. Lots of girls would kill for that. And the hair – that's model territory right there. Not to mention, the tall, slim form."

I was still having trouble thinking of myself as anything other than ugly, but I was coming around to the idea. In another life, this could have been the only thing I had to worry about. I glanced at Darlene, imagining that it was Mom there helping me with this. Something hot and burning prickled behind my eyes. I resisted the urge to crush it down as I did with all my negative emotions. I didn't want to grind this into the furnace that drove my force powers.

"Thanks," I said.

Darlene's smile was a little sad. "Any time, Captain."

~~JH~~

If I dared to think of myself as pretty, then Marissa was positively radiant. Her hair shined in the afternoon sun, which only deepened the blue of her eyes. I stopped before her, suddenly a little self-conscious as she gave me a quick once over. I was still woefully awkward at having a girlfriend. Marissa, who was just a few inches shorter than me, leaned up and gave me a kiss.

"You look lovely," she said.

I had to squash an instinctive urge to get defensive. Some old, beaten up part of me grated at the attention. I forced a smile and slipped my hand through hers as we headed out toward BB's very own spring fair. Somewhere in the process of getting our own territories, Marissa had bought a sedan.

"I didn't want to have one of the staff drive us," said Marissa, a little embarrassed. "It'd look conspicuous since we're kind of young to be having chauffeurs."

I knew, of course, that Marissa wanted to have this time be totally free of cape business. Privately, I believed that there was no escaping cape business, and that Marissa's hope was an illusion at best. Still, I wasn't going to be the one to burst her bubble. "I prefer it," I said. "It's more privacy and freedom for us."

The fair was close to the Boardwalk, being located in a park tangentially connected to what passed for Brockton's financial district. It was a warm and breezy day, pavilions fluttering almost constantly. The fair was busier than I thought it'd be. The lingering aura of fear from the fallout with the empire didn't seem to affect people's desire to come out. It may have even been spurring people on – a small island of normalcy amidst the craziness. I didn't think it was possible, but they'd managed to set up small rides on the ground. Marissa dragged me toward a miniature Ferris wheel.

"Seriously?" I asked, amused as we got in line.

"Hold here," she said. "I'll go buy tickets."

She vanished into the crowds. I tracked her with the force. My powers made me superhumanly graceful, but I knew that it was just that – my powers. Marissa's grace was all hers. She returned with tickets and an ice cream cone.

"Rocky road," I murmured as she held it out for me to take a lick. "You remembered."

A touch of red bloomed in her cheeks. "Of course I remembered. I care about the things you care about."

The emotions underlying her words seeped into me like the warmth of a summer sun. It soothed, as it always did, the raw hurting wound that never seemed to heal inside me.

For a moment, I stalled as I tried to tumble together some sort of response. All the words and phrases that I could come up with seemed like an imperfect facsimile. Words and phrases that would only cheapen the true sentiment inside me. Before I could settle upon the perfect words, someone shouted at us to move on.

The world snapped back into focus, the tunnel vision that had momentarily occupied me shattering to reveal the loud and cluttered world around us.

Marissa handed over the tickets to the bored yet impatient ticket-taker. He eyed the ice cream cone distastefully for a moment. A slight nudge of his thoughts, and we were passed without incident.

"I loved the slow rides when I was a child,' said Marissa wistfully as she climbed higher and higher. "It always felt like, up here, I could pretend I was in a bubble away from the rest of the world."

"Even if you were with other people while you were up here?" The question seemed to come out without conscious thought, and I regretted it immediately.

"Mostly," she replied. Sensing my thoughts, she added, "But now it's even better, because I can also share that bubble with you."

It was my turn to flush. She was going to be the death of me. She leaned into my lips. We were exposed up here at the top of the wheel – everyone could see us. And then she licked ice cream off the corner of my lip and sat back with a satisfied grin. "I love watching you squirm, you know."

"You're terrible, Marissa Newland," I said. I was sure she could see and hear the pounding of my heart in my chest.

"I deny everything."

We were on our second ascent. Marissa scooted closer to me as the wind picked up. Even with this brief shift in altitude, it was noticeably cooler. I hugged her close, her sheer physical closeness seeming to bleed away the stress that I carried with me as a part of my life.

Below, I could make out the mass of hundreds of minds all brushing against one another. All those thoughts and emotions had their own timbre to them, and together they formed a tapestry. Six distinct points were like flares in the dark – capes no doubt. I briefly wondered who they were, but quickly dismissed the thought. Marissa wouldn't appreciate me bringing up the topic, and it wasn't something I wanted to get into anyway. I was still keeping it a secret, as there was no telling what kind of response that revelation would provoke.

The ride slowed to a crawl as people were being released. Marissa popped the last of the cone into my mouth and then licked her fingers clean before we were ushered off the ride.

We drifted through the fair grounds. We were both the type to silently observe. Occasionally, Marissa would make a comment that often managed to be both part commentary, and part question. I kept one arm wrapped around her to keep people from trying to push their way between us. We dipped in and out of people's focus. It was a strange feeling having the lesbianness of our relationship noted. Invariably there was a spike of some emotion, though often too fleeting to fully capture and analyze. When I looked down, I saw that Marissa was studying me.

"You're elsewhere again," she said, but there was no accusation in her words.

"Sorry, I can't really turn it off, and besides… I don't want to. It'd be like closing my eyes or shutting my ears."

Marissa took the idea with equanimity. "What are you sensing then?" Again, no censure, only curiosity.

"It's hard to explain," I said. "People are preoccupied with enjoying themselves. It's funny, because I get a lot of people fixating on the idea of enjoying themselves, but not actually doing so. A lot are people gazing. We're attracting some attention, of course, and I'm sensitive to that."

"Bad attention?"

"Not malicious if that's what you mean."

"Hmm."

I'd spoken a second too soon, as I felt someone's mind sharpen upon me. The attention was swift and focused, and full of recognition. There was shock and fear, and a familiar brand of antipathy that I couldn't have mistaken anywhere. Emma. Of course she'd be out here prancing around. And if she were here, then her cadre of losers would be about as well. I flexed my fingers unconsciously with the urge to crush her windpipe. Her and Sophia and stupid cutesy little Madison with her sickening, cutesy little giggle.

"Taylor?" Marissa asked, concerned. "What's the matter?"

I ignored Marissa in favour of searching Emma out with my own two eyes. There she was - about fifty feet away. She was gesticulating to a security guard, her finger pointing conspicuously in my direction. Seriously? Didn't she get the memo? I was a powerful and violent cape who might have a grudge against her for getting my dad killed. A quick scan of the crowd revealed her family just feet away. Mr. Barnes was looking particularly awkward. I caught his gaze, but he looked away almost immediately. I'd never really thought about it, but how much had he known of the abuse I suffered at his daughter's hands? Had Emma hidden it from her family? What excuses did she make to keep Mr. Barnes from talking about it with my dad. My dad… I studied Mr. Barnes more carefully. Had Mr. Barnes attended the funeral? Had there even been one? Part of me wanted to go over there and demand answers. Part of me wanted them to give me an excuse to unleash apocalyptic vengeance upon them. I could do it. The force swirled around me, ready within an instant to shatter bone; to knife into the minds of these vermin and rip their petty little secrets from them.

"Taylor!"

It took physical effort to tear my thoughts away from the Barnes family and back to Marissa. She was full of worry, and that seemed to center me. She was flicking her gaze back and forth between me and the Barnes. No, not the Barnes. The security personnel that were approaching. Christ, did Emma even bother to tell them I was a parahuman? I wasn't about to slaughter random guards, but she didn't know that. The desire to grind her under my boot surged once more.

"Ma'am," said the first security guard. "I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you to leave."

These were enforcers on loan from the Boardwalk. I'd heard rumours of their use of excessive violence in the darkened alleys away from the eyes of the wealthier citizens of the Bay. It took only a touch of the force to verify that sadistic brutality was just a hair trigger away for them.

"Make me-"

"We're leaving!" cried Marissa half in irritation and half in exasperated fear. "Come on, Taylor."

"Hey," said one of the guards. "Don't I know you from somewhere?" He made to grab my shoulder.

"Touch me, and I'll turn you to pulp right here and now."

The guy paused, confused, but recognizing the unfiltered malice in my voice. The other guard seemed to realize who I was, because his fear levels shot through the roof, adrenalin flooding his body. He shakily grabbed his partner and dragged him back.

"Tay, we gotta go."

I let Marissa pull me along. The force came to me on instinct, adjusting the minds of the people around us so that our path was cleared for our escape.

That bitch. That fucking bitch. I didn't know who I was angrier at – Emma for ruining my day, or Marissa for running away, or myself, for letting Emma win again. The urge to turn around and bore a path through all these cretinous bodies like a proton torpedo was growing and growing. I could kill them with a single thought. How hard would it be to parcel out the force to simultaneously burst the veins inside all their skulls? Hundreds of them, all dead and expelling blood – a carpet of corpses leading right to the feet of my hated tormentor. And to think just that morning I had-

I was suddenly encased in Marissa's warmth. Again, she pulled me back from that cycle of unending rage. She was hugging me.

"Taylor, please."

Jerkily, I raised my arms and hugged her back. We were standing on the sidewalk just outside the fairgrounds.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay." The lie was almost convincing. "Just don't let him take over."

Him. Vader. That's who she was referring to.

"I… won't." I took deep breaths and began counting prime numbers in my head. I was at sixty-one when I felt I was fully in control once more. When I felt I could say it and mean it, I said, "I'm good now."

Marissa held on another five seconds before letting go and searching my expression. She reached a hand up and ran her fingers gently around my eyes. "Your eyes… I could've sworn they turned yellow. And that look – it was the same that time with Night and Fog."

"I'm good now," I repeated. "Thank you. I'm not certain what I would've done if you hadn't been there."

"What happened? Did someone recognize you?"

I could hear the unasked question in Marissa's words. She wanted to know if the simple act of being recognized was what almost sent me into a murderous rampage of a bunch of innocent civilians.

"Someone from my past," I said finally. Seeing that Marissa was still not wholly satisfied, I added, "Someone from my trigger."

Comprehension was swift followed by understanding and pity. If anything could serve as a trigger for a murderous rampage, it would have been that.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry I ruined our date."

"You didn't," said Marissa, cupping my cheek in her hand. "And it wasn't you. It was whoever that was that sent the enforcers after us. And our date wasn't ruined. It's just taking an unexpected detour."

I smiled. "You're too good to me."

"Come back to my place, and I'll show you how good I can be," she said coyly. She ran a delicate, manicured finger down my arm, leaving behind goosebumps.

And just like that, all my anger vanished and was replaced by desire. Where I'd been anxious and awkward before, I was all determined and aggressive. I leaned forward and kissed her, holding her in place with force-enhanced fingers. I wasn't sure if it was just me, or if I had used the force in some way on an unconscious level, but when we broke apart, her eyes were dilated, cheeks flushed and lips swollen slightly from us kissing.

"Let's get out of here."

~~JH~~

"I told you before I don't want no trouble," said the man angrily. His name was Saro, and he ran a jewellery store in the middle of my territory, one which I was certain was used to launder money for the empire. He was marked as an amber, but my men had reported back that he was hostile. Of course, that had been before I had excised the imperial remnant. I waited crouched and shrouded on the hood of a car as my men approached Saro. He didn't strike me as being any more amenable now than he had been before. That was fine with me. My anger from the fairgrounds this morning had been sidelined but not extinguished. It was a fire that craved fuel, and Saro, it seemed, would serve well enough in that capacity.

"You think you and your fucking guns scare me?" Saro said. "Don't fucking pretend, you're-"

"You're what?" I cut in, my voice projecting unnaturally in the otherwise still parking lot as I landed lightly in front of him.

He took an instinctive step back. He didn't show it, but his fear was palpable. "Who the fuck're you?" His question was merely reflexive. I could tell from the recognition in his eyes as he gave me a quick once over.

I let his question hang in the air a moment – just enough to underscore the fact that I was choosing not to answer before I took control of the conversation. "Tell me, the sniper in the second storey window," I began. "Is that… your son?"

The muffled crack of a silenced rifle resonated momentarily in the open air. Saro had taken another step back and looked ready to bolt. His eyes were wide, and his body was vibrating with the need to flee, but he dared not.

"I suppose you think that standing there will distract me long enough to let your son escape," I mused. I held my hand out. The deformed remains of the armor-piercing round hovered there.

"What – what do you want?" The man was already broken.

"You will cooperate with my men, who will be going through your business records – everything from accounts to inventory to agreements. We will evaluate your business and then buy it from you."

There was a momentary flash of hope in his eyes before reality settled in.

"Buy it?"

"The price will be fair," I said casually. I let the bullet drop to the ground. "However, there will be costs levied. My time, you see, is very valuable, and your recalcitrance has forced me to waste some of it. I trust you won't force me to waste any more. Everyone has more to give, and I'm very good at finding new ways to take from those who owe me."

There came a strangled cry from the building. The window shattered as a man was half-yanked through the glass.

"Charlie!" Saro cried. He raised a hand as if to catch his son. His gaze had gone wild, and his skin was turning shiny with sweat.

"Go on," I said. "Save your boy… and remember."

Saro gave me one final, desperate look before running to the building to pull Charlie to safety.

"Follow him, and notify me immediately if he gives you any further trouble."

I turned away from the scene. That had not been nearly satisfying enough. I was filled with the desire to shed blood, to drive my adversaries to new heights of pain and despair. And yet, giving in to that urge would not accomplish anything except provide me with momentary satisfaction. It would disturb my men, and it would diminish my territory. I needed my subjects healthy and prospering. Afraid, yes, but not so afraid or injured that they couldn't function. My territory was a delicate and complex machine, and it required a delicate and complex hand. The killing would have to wait.

I leapt onto the roof of the building and froze. There was a cape inbound. A second later, Dauntless came flying into view, his arclance poised in front and crackling.

"Zephyr!" he shouted. "Stand down! You're under arrest!"

He was firing a bolt of electricity at me before he finished shouting. My lightsaber was in my hand, the blade extending from the hilt to catch the bolt and reflect it back at him. He was fast enough to deploy his shield to absorb the blast, but was forced back as I darted forward to try to disarm him. He met my blade with his arclance, an eye-watering shower of sparks spraying in all directions. I deflected his weapon upward and got inside his guard with a kick to his stomach. He flew back a step with the force of the blow, robbing it of its momentum. Then he was on the offensive, using his speed and flight and longer reach to try to tap me with his arclance. My sword work was impeccable, and he only managed to exchange a flurry of fast blows before disengaging. He shot three bolts in rapid succession at me. I deflected all three with staccato strokes of my blade. One bolt struck a car; another, a streetlight. Both died instantly, the energy blast frying the delicate circuits within.

"Give up, Zephyr!" he shouted. "The others are on their way. You can't take us all!"

I could if I were prepared to kill, but against heroes… no. Not heroes. I drew the line there, and no amount of murderous impulses was going to make me break that rule.

I hefted the wrecked car into the air and threw it at him.

The move was sudden and violent, and it would have turned an ordinary person to paste. But Dauntless had no doubt trained with my powers in mind. He pivoted in mid-air and used his shield to deflect the vehicle over him. A whisper-faint touch of the force had me throwing my lightsaber. It transformed momentarily into a fan of whirling death. With his shield occupied and a car still sailing overhead, he had to jerk sideways to try to avoid the blade from skewering him. Not that skewering him had been the objective. The blade of the lightsaber contacted his left boot, and, with the force, I forced it to drag violently across the side, cutting through the material even as brilliant showers of energy obscured my weapon from view. A moment later, the lightsaber was arcing back to my hand, and Dauntless was spinning out of control, his balance shot as the corona of light that surrounded the damaged footwear dissipated. A gentle nudge and he clipped the edge of the roof before tumbling over the edge, his arclance flying uncontrolled from his hand.

I could have gone after him. He was defenceless now. But what was the point? I didn't want to kill him, and besides, it would take time for him to charge his boots again to enable him to fly. He was no threat.

I turned and sprinted into the darkness, leaving Dauntless and the approaching heroes behind.

~~JH~~

Days passed without event. I was pruning the dissident elements from my territory, and was slowly but surely establishing my dominance. Protection money was starting to flow in. Coil's accountants seemed to be able to work miracles. I heard rumours of thinkers working behind the scenes, the most significant of whom was the Number Man, but I never met any or even encountered them.

I'd had no further encounters with the heroes. This was not a coincidence. I was going out of my way to keep an eye on them so I could avoid them. They were my enemies, but I harboured no ill will toward them. I was starting to see Coil's plan in its fullness, and I approved. There was a balance of power between heroes and villains. One could simply not have a city without both. Coil intended to control the city much as a feudal lord would. We were his dukes and earls, overseeing his interests and paying a tithe. In their own way, even the heroes were dancing to his tune, as he used them to help maintain order. One large villain gang was an invitation by both heroes and other gangs to muscle in, but multiple smaller gangs were not. I was certain Coil had his fingers in the Protectorate pie as well. All the while, his power would spread, his influence expanding throughout the city and possibly beyond, unseen by any except perhaps the most high level thinkers. And even that he was taking steps to address by gathering thinkers of his own to act as a buffer.

I didn't know if his plan would ultimately prove to be sustainable. It relied on others not realizing that he was masterminding the multiple disparate groups. A secret like that seemed somehow fragile. But then again, perhaps he had some further goal in mind – some further plan or goal that I couldn't see.

I settled down on my bed and closed my eyes. My thoughts expanded and grew diffuse as I settled into the force. I hadn't had much opportunity to do this since I joined Coil. There'd been too many distractions between settling in, learning the dynamics of being on a team, building my lightsaber, breaking the empire, and taking control of a territory. And, of course, Marissa. Just the thought of her softened the hard, jagged parts that still existed inside of me.

Despite the stability and seeming prosperity, I couldn't help but feel that it was somehow an illusion – that this steady life, and all the little happinesses I enjoyed, were all a hair's breadth from collapsing around me. I didn't know if this was just me being paranoid – a remnant of my old self, who had ceased believing that anything good could happen to me – or if it were a premonition through the force. For this reason, I was returning to this neglected aspect of my power.

When I'd first begun exploring my powers, I'd sometimes thought of the force as a river. Understanding it through the metaphor of water seemed to come naturally to me. Maybe it was because I lived in a port town. Maybe it was because my head was full of my dad's dreams of being out on the water. Now though, as I deepened my connection, I had to concede that the sensation of submerging myself in water wasn't quite accurate. It wasn't really that I submerged, but rather that I diffused through the pools of ether so that, when the ebb and flow of the waves and eddies that swirled within its depths fanned me outward, my whole being expanding to become less distinct but greater. It wasn't a submerging… It was a merging.

The Bay opened up before me. My consciousness spread out like syrup across a pancake. It ran to every corner, and seeped into the pores of the city beneath; blanketing it, but also becoming a part of it. Capes were bright little points in the murk, like lights shining out from the bottom of a swimming pool. There were around thirty of them. Some were more familiar to me than others. Marissa was the most sharply defined. I didn't even need to focus on her to know which one was hers. On the edge of town Dinah's signature lay quiescent. She was probably sleeping. I ignored her for now. There was nothing I could do for her, and the fact that Coil had outsmarted me still irritated me. I couldn't see Dinah without explaining how I found her, and if I couldn't produce a satisfactory explanation, then Coil would inevitably discover that I could out capes. If not on his own, then through interrogating Dinah. The only reason he hadn't already tried to dispose of me was that he either hadn't yet asked the right question, or because he was confident he could use me beforehand. It was just another reason for me to learn and understand my powers more fully.

Kilometres away, in the other direction, there was another signature that I also knew intimately – Noelle. It pulsed like some hideous, beating heart. There were no words to describe it. If a star could be made of oozing, stringy flesh, and if it could be gnawing on itself in an eternal spiral of numb starvation, then that would be what Noelle felt like. The force seemed to wither and die in its presence, causing a kind of corona of emptiness around it. Just the act of focusing my attention on it had the effect of agitating it. I pulled my attention away just in time. The force quivered as it momentarily redoubled its efforts to locate me. So long as I wasn't trying to sense it in the force, it was as blind to me as I was to it.

And yet, I needed to know. It wasn't just idle curiosity either. There were secrets that beckoned to me. Secrets about my own powers, and possibly powers in general. Even now, after thirty years, parahumanism was still almost totally a mystery… at least to the general public.

I let myself drift on the currents. Every time I was dragged further from Noelle, I nudged myself on a tangent back. It wasn't quite in her direction, but it wasn't quite away either. I couldn't look at her directly, but maybe, with a little luck, if I just happened to float by, I could catch something. And surely, if it were just the currents of random chance that brought me and Noelle together, it wouldn't really count as breaking my promise to Marissa, would it?

Some time later, a current carried the fabric of my consciousness perilously close to that void. A hand's span closer, and I would be in its sphere of influence. I let my sense of self-preservation go, trusting that I would not be caught to the will of the force, and instead opened myself to the deeper currents.

Whereas before, visions were tumultuous yet comprehensible, here they were a jumble of fragmentary images. Glistening naked bodies, contorted faces, screaming, a severed eyeball, a dead world, a thousand cubic light years of space compressed a billion fold, a fractured black hole – the images went on and on, each more otherworldly than the one that preceded it. In the end, there emerged that sense of hunger. It grew and grew, encompassing everything, consuming people and things and worlds and stars and even the fabric of space-time itself-

I jerked back to consciousness. Part of me had brushed against the void-space, and suddenly the force was twisting around me like a maelstrom. I dragged myself back from the edge as quickly as I could. The force rippled. Things like distance and time and speed were less strictly defined here, but even I could tell that the creature was raging so powerfully, that it felt like the whole of the force was undulating like a cracked whip.

An interminable time later, I receded back into my own body, my awareness contracting and the connection to the force shrinking. There was a lingering sensation of phantom pain that the force could not soothe away.

The buzzing of my cell phone drew me from my introspection.

"Yes?"

"Boss," said Martin, the faint sound of traffic telling me he was outside somewhere. "I think we received a message from the ABB."

I was pretty sure Martin wasn't talking about receiving an email. I sighed. "I'm on my way."

~~JH~~

The force still felt frayed and unsettled by the time I reached the border between my territory and that of the ABB. The buildings here were broken down and empty – a consequence of being on the border between empire and ABB for so long. Only the most desperate would attempt to occupy such a space, which meant more often than not merchants.

In the middle of the street, three people hung suspended in midair, expressions of pain etched in every line of their body. There was a mother, and her two children. All were Asian. The mother was in the process of having her skin melted from her body in slow motion.

"Bakuda's work," explained Martin, eyeing the hideous sight as I approached.

"How long will the effect last?"

"Unknown. We've never seen a bomb of this character before."

I remembered the singularity bomb from months ago. It seemed that the tinker's repertoire was growing ever more exotic.

"She must have used two bombs concurrently to achieve the effect," I murmured as I circled the blast zone. The fact that the victims were a family and that one of them was very young, and the fact that they had been raised into the air – like a showpiece that was being put on display – it was all calibrated to make a statement of power, and to cow those who thought to escape the ABB.

Of course, I realized in retrospect. Many of the people in Lung's territory who perhaps were not sanguine about being there likely felt they couldn't leave, given that their options were either the merchants, the empire, or the rich parts of town. Now that the empire was gone, more than one family was likely wondering if my territory could serve as a safe haven from the dragon of Kyushu.

And yet the message no doubt had a further meaning, or at least an implication. The method of punishment was important too. Lung was testing me. He wanted to know if I could defeat his tinker's creations. One way or the other, it would set the stage for our future interactions.

I pressed one hand to the edge of the time bubble. It was warm and smooth; not unlike a glass bobble. While I could see into the future and the past, I had no special power to alter time and undo this effect. At least, nothing I knew of at the moment. I certainly couldn't save the victims from death. Already the mother's left leg was nearly liquefied, and the teenager's foot was taken. The only one not yet afflicted was the infant, whose wide-eyed and curious gaze stirred something inside.

I had to help these people somehow. I closed my eyes and reached out with the force. The time distortion didn't extend to the force, but the minds of the people were frozen. I could no more reach out and touch their minds than I could reach out and touch the minds of the dead. The force swirled in time to my agitation. Something of my frustration seemed to leak over to my other half, who responded. A memory bubbled up and gripped me. It flashed through my mind – lightsabers clashing faster and more furiously than anything I could do and then… in an instant, the enemy vanishing and reappearing a dozen paces away. Even through the memory I sensed the majesty of it – teleportation. And yet I also knew that it was a power that was almost totally beyond me. Vader himself wasn't adept at it, and there were simply no cheat codes to learn it. Especially when I sensed the approach of armed men and a cape.

"Lung inbound," said Martin. His voice remained calm and steady, but his feelings betrayed him. No one wanted to tangle with Lung, and as powerful as I'd proven to be, no one believed I could take him. I itched to prove them wrong, to express my dominance, but I also knew that, even if lopping off Lung's head had the effect of killing him, I would still only be revealed to be a one trick pony. I couldn't dismember every problem I came across. I needed to be better than that – for myself, for the people in my territory. I glanced at the family trapped in the time bubble. I needed to be better for everyone who was counting on me.

I closed my eyes again and reached out. There was a way, and I had to learn it now. Force teleportation didn't work like a Star Trek transporter beam. It was instantaneous. There wasn't even a pop of displaced air like in the Harry Potter novels. That meant it likely had to do with folding space. And it wasn't like walking through a door – the entire body had to pass through it at once. I reached out and began to experiment.

~~JH~~

There were times when Martin really fucking hated capes. In his experience, they were loud, obnoxious, and full of an undeserved sense of self-importance. Normally, he took a philosophical approach to the whole thing, figuring that it was nothing personal to any given cape but rather an artifact of a normal person being granted amazing powers. That kind of shit would go to anyone's head. It only got to him when his own life was on the line.

Martin gestured to his men to fall back ten feet to form a loose perimeter. He wanted them able to scatter and run at the drop of a pin. Zephyr had decided to mentally check out of the real world, assuming her placid look of communion was any indication. Meanwhile, a long black car was casually rolling down the street, giant headlights glaring like the eyes of an angry dragon as it approached.

"Confirm," said Martin calmly into his radio. "Lung is on approach."

"Confirmed," came the grim voice of the designated lookout. "Lung is in the vehicle."

"What of the secondary cape?" Not that it mattered. Bakuda didn't need to be present to be dangerous. That was the problem with tinkers. At least the third in their posse wasn't around anymore – apparently thanks to Zephyr.

Martin wouldn't have called himself a racist, exactly, but well, if the chips were down and it was a choice between the empire and the ABB, he'd choose the empire. Whatever their faults were, they didn't traffic women – at least not openly. And they at least put up a pretense of being civilized. The ABB were animals, and they reveled in it. Big fucking surprise. Their leader turned into a dragon. Not that anyone couldn't be an animal. The empire had had Hookwolf for Christ's sake, but there was a difference between employing one and being employed by one.

Despite all that, Martin was happy with Coil. Even if he were a cape, which Martin still wasn't sure about, he would be one of the few good ones. Except to the extent that he put Martin under the control of this crazy bitch who thought it was a good idea to take a nap standing while Lung approached – correction Lung was now getting out of his car.

Martin resisted the urge to raise his pistol and start firing. The gun was tinker-made and supplemented the acceleration of the armor-piercing round with some kind of electric coil that made the bullet travel at Mach 3. Even if he drilled a hole right between the gang leader's eyes, he had no doubt it would only piss the man off. Martin had been around long enough to know better than to think Lung could be taken by surprise. He'd once seen Hookwolf jump him from behind without warning. There'd been a good fifteen seconds in which he'd started to believe that Hookwolf had managed to kill Lung – right up until Lung had torn through Hookwolf's mass of grinding blades in a shower of molten steel.

A glance at Zephyr confirmed that she'd moved, but not in any meaningful way. Now she was pressing her forehead up against Bakuda's weird time bubble. The look of placidity had been replaced with one of concentration.

A dozen of Lung's flunkies had materialized out of the surrounding alleys and buildings, and were fanning out around him. They were all armed, but to Martin's eyes they were not a significant threat. Even though they had the numbers advantage, he and his men were better trained and better armed. He'd lose a couple if it came down to a firefight, assuming Lung let them get that far.

"You are intruding on what is mine," said Lung. His voice was powerful, and carried across the distance well.

There was a moment of silence in which none of his men spoke. Of course, it was expected that Zephyr would conduct the negotiations, never mind that she was a teenage girl. But apparently she was too busy. Martin took a step forward, aware of all eyes focusing on him. "This is not your territory."

At this distance, it was hard to tell, but Martin was certain that Lung was unhappy. The air around him shimmered with heat. It took him a second to realize that Lung was probably offended by the fact that Zephyr wasn't the one addressing him.

"Whose territory is it?" Lung stepped forward. "And who will stop me from taking it?" He continued to walk, his men remaining stoically behind.

Martin had to concede that he and his men were dead if they stayed. And Zephyr definitely if she didn't move.

Martin reluctantly lifted his radio to give the command to retreat, only to discover that there was only static. He stared dumbfounded at it, but the air of smugness radiating off Lung told him everything he needed to know. His fucking tinker could jam signals. Either he shouted it out or he stood his ground, or he just ran. None of them were appealing options.

He was about to shout and run when the sound of a baby crying cut through the tension. Martin turned and stared at Zephyr, who was holding a baby. His gaze flicked back to the time bubble. The mother and teenager were half-consumed, the look of agony still etching itself across their faces. But the baby was gone, having been transported by magic into Zephyr's arms. She was staring at the child, a strange look that was part softness and part befuddlement on her face.

Even Lung stopped to stare at the sight.

"You tried to kill this baby," said Zephyr. Her voice managed to both be quiet but to also carry across the street. "That makes me very unhappy."

"This is my territory," said Lung. "They are mine, and I will do with them as I see fit."

He made to take another step forward. What happened next happened so fast that Martin had to piece it together from context. There was a deafening boom, and a shockwave buffeted his clothes. The ABB grunts across the street were gone, having been crushed by a massive pile of rubble. The building behind them was gone as well, having been transformed into an avalanche of masonry that had buried them. Lung had turned to stare blankly at the carnage. The sheer magnitude of the destruction coupled with the speed of it terrified Martin on a visceral level. A glance at Zephyr gave the impression that she was barely even paying attention, still engrossed by the baby, who was tugging on one of her fingers.

Lung whirled around, his body flaring in a corona of white hot fire.

"It could have just as easily been the building on the left." Zephyr's voice was still mild.

The words meant nothing to Martin, but the cascade of emotions playing across Lung's face – confusion, surprise, fear, and finally, impotent rage – told him enough.

It was only later when the videos were posted on PHO and the discussions were flying fast and furious that Martin realized Bakuda had been in the other building – that Zephyr had chosen to spare her life and to turn her into a hostage that forced Lung to back down.

"This is not over," he growled.

Zephyr shifted the baby to one arm and drew out her lightsaber. She carved a line in the ground that made the asphalt bubble and hiss and pop. "If you or yours so much as puts one toe over this line, I'll consider it a declaration of war."

Lung stood in place for long seconds, vibrating with fury. Martin let out the breath he didn't know he'd been holding when the gang leader turned and stalked away. Martin's gaze fell to the pile of rubble and the haze of dust that still surrounded it. She'd flattened a dozen men in an eyeblink. They hadn't even had a chance to realize they were in danger before they were dead. As far as Martin knew, there was no cape in the Bay that could do that except maybe Bakuda.

As they packed up to go, he realized belatedly that had been part of the message too – that Zephyr could do what Bakuda did – kill so fast and hard that Lung would never see it coming.

Sometimes, Martin really fucking hated capes.