hatch 1.1
October 10th, 2010
In the hull of a dilapidated tanker, a figure sat curled up in a fetal position. She was a fairly mundane girl, not particularly muscular, but not fat either, she was simply mundane but for two things. Two long, yellow ears sticking out the top of her glorious mane of yellow hair. Oh, and her hair, that wasn’t exactly what most would consider normal. But well, few would really notice it at first glance, the ears were a lot more prominent.
Her sobs echoed through the rusted hall of the ship, ringing of metal and forming a chorus of despair that perfectly suited the girl's current mood. But it was not only tears that she shed, for each drop that fell from her eyes was accompanied by a small jolt of electricity springing from her body to the ground. Tiny, little more than sparks, but they were there, and they were enough for her to be tracked.
“Taylor Hebert.” A sudden voice thundered throughout the ship, boosted to an almost painful degree by the so-called hero's blue helmet. “You are under arrest for attacking Winslow highschool and outing the ward known as Shadow Stalker. Please come with us quietly or we will be forced to subdue you.” The protectorate ENE’s leader received no reply, even the sounds of sobs and sparks vanished, leaving nothing but a silent tension that wrapped around all present. Armsmaster felt it most, as he would be the one most likely to be attacked, if the girl held a grudge with them, it would hopefully be directed at him. None of the local heroes could counter the girl's power reliably, so if anyone was to get hurt it should be him. This mess might not be his fault, after all he handed over control of the wards to the Director years before shadow stalker had even appeared on the cape scene, but he couldn’t help but feel some sense of responsibility. So to make at least some of it right he would bring the poor girl in, she might have every reason to hate them, but she would never get the justice she deserved if she ended up charcoal.
The silence stretched on for minutes, and the strain in the air grew until certain members of the PRT’s capture team were starting to grow impatient and nervous. To them, who dealt with parahumans far more dangerous than the girl in the tanker, it was utterly perplexing why Armsmaster was willing to wait for a response. For in the minds of the troopers it didn’t matter that the girl was a victim, it didn’t matter that her so-called ‘attack’ was in self defense. She was a parahuman and that meant she was either with them or against them. Simple as that.
As harsh as such a world view was, when they live their lives constantly losing their friends and even family to parahumans, it becomes very hard to continue seeing them as people. When they are working with them it is easier, they see how the heroes try their best to help the city and that forms a sense of mutual respect between the troopers and most heroic capes. Asking the troopers to see the villains, the very people who take those closest to them on a regular basis, as anything other than an enemy, well such a thing is quite a tall order.
Regardless, none of that was known by Taylor Hebert, and even if she did know she wouldn’t care. For it did not change what had happened to her, nor did it make what was still happening to her any less painful.
A shaky voice rang out through the hull of the ship, freezing the fidgeting troopers instantly. “So that's how you are doing this? Not even pretending that you care about the truth.” Those who knew the girl's story winced, but did not lower their weapons. Sympathy could be lent when their lives were not in danger from an unstable cape.
Armsmaster opened his mouth, though whether it was to offer denial, explanation, or even comfort to the girl before him would never be known, not even to the man himself. For before he could even decide what to say, the sound of bare feet slapping against the floor announced Taylor Hebert's emergence into the light.
She wore a green tank top under an electric yellow jacket lined with some strange white fur. Despite the fall chill overtaking the city her only form of leg covering were shorts that only made it halfway to the teens knees. Her hair, one a pitch black that was like a starless sky pinned to her head, was now a definitely unnatural shade of yellow. Most striking of all however, were the two long ears sprouting from the top of her head. They were the same yellow as her hair, but in the center the yellow was overtaken by a black reminiscent of her original hair color.
Her bright blue eyes held a fury that made armsmasters heart sink, for he knew from experience what it meant. There would be no avoiding a fight, not when the girl had that kind of fire in her. A fire that hungered for justice, for rights to be wronged, and for an evil that was active far too long to finally face the punishment it avoided for all this time.
Armsmaster knew that fire, knew it quite well in fact. For it was the same fire that had once drove him to near suicide in his attempt to find a way to kill an endbringer. A fire that could not be reasoned with, that could not be truly stopped by others, the only way for such a fire to go out would be for the girl to let it burn out on her own. Still he would not give up, for he was a hero, even if he questioned his right to bear such a title.
“Taylor, please. Don’t do this. Let us help you. You can’t last on your own like this.” His voice was soft, almost pleading.
She didn’t care.
“Help me. Help. Me. HELP. me. Help. ME.” She slowly sounded out the words, using different inflections each time before shaking her head, somehow not making her hair any less spiky in the process. “Nope, no matter how I say it, the idea doesn’t sound any less ridiculous.”
“Taylor please-”
“NO!” She cut him off with a fierce gesture and a sharp glare, causing the troopers to raise their foam launchers before he waved at them to stop. “I’m talking now. You got to talk, quite a bit in fact, and now it's my turn.” she drew in a deep breath, visibly holding it for a second before releasing it in a harsh burst. “Over the course of the last month you and your organization have been, whether out of malice or sheer stupidity, systematically destroying my life.”
He opened his mouth to interject but a shark crack of lightning cut him off before a single word could leave his lips.
“I’m not done.” Taylor bit out, electricity crackling in her hair and across her fur jacket. “Not only did you out me just hours after I was fucking assaulted in my school, not only did you shelter the bitches that caused me to trigger in the first place, NOT ONLY did you let the people who nearly burned my fucking house down off without even a month of jailtime, but all of that apparently wasn’t enough for you was it?” She lashed out and struck the wall in anger, her fist going straight through the rusty steel without even a token resistance. No that wasn’t enough, cause I hadn’t broken yet, I was still going and you couldn’t have that. So in one final fuck you, you take my dad into ‘protective custody’ after he tried to call you out for your bullshit.” At the end of her rent the girl's voice had trailed off into little more than a whisper, Her entire body trembling.
Armsmaster only starred in pity and sorrow at the girl before him, at the abused, despairing child that was lashing out at everything around her in a desperate attempt for any kind of justice. In one last, desperate attempt to solve this without any more violence he reached out his hand not holding his halberd to try to touch the girl.
This was the wrong thing to do.
He was sent flying backwards, slamming into the insulated truck that they brought for transporting Taylor Hebert. Half a year ago such a blow would have disabled him for at least a minute, but after his work with dragon and the rest of the guilds tinkers his suit was leaps and bounds ahead of what it once was. The troopers stood stunned for a second, before they fired their foam at the girl who had finally reached her limit. It didn’t matter, by the time the foam had reached her original position she had already moved to stand across from Armsmaster as he pulled himself back to his feet.
“I hate you.” The words that came out of the energetic girl were unnervingly cold. She was so hyper, so bombastic and cheerful even during the month she was pursued and yet when she spoke now there was no emotion. Not even the hate she supposedly felt for him, just a total void where there should be emotion. “All I wanted, all I ever wanted, was to be a hero. But you people won't let me.”
The troopers tried to foam her again, but once more she disappeared before the streams could even reach half way. This time she reappeared on the top of the truck she launched him into, denting the hard metal beneath her feet. Every second there was a loud crack of lightning jumping from her hair and clothes to the van below. She looked down at Armsmaster, only her eyes showing how truly furious she was.
“I have to hold back so, so much.” She disappeared and reappeared on the next van with a crack of thunder and a screech of tearing metal. “Every time I use my power I have to be constantly aware of what I can and can’t do to people. Because I never had time to learn safely, because you stopped me from having that time.”
disappear, crack, reappear.
“Then, after you took my father, I came to a realization.”
Disappear, crack, reappear.
“If I can’t win, then I just won’t play. I tried so damn hard to be a hero, but you won’t let me. And at this point, I'm done trying, I’m done holding back and letting you bastards walk all over me.” At the end her voice was cracking, trembling with her barely repressed emotions that Armsmaster couldn’t even begin to understand.
Her words made the experienced cape stiffen and prepare for an imminent attack, but to his surprise she did not move to strike him or any of the troopers. Instead she simply disappeared with a loud crack of thunder, but this time she did not reappear.
There was no chance for them to capture her, with the young capes mover rating she could be half way across the city by now. This mission was a failure, and Armsmaster couldn’t help but repeat the last words Taylor had said before she disappeared. He hoped that she wasn’t going to start killing, but there weren’t many other ways for her rant to be interpreted.
As he drove back to the Rig on his motorcycle, he dreaded what would come next. The chief director was unpleasant to work with on the best of days, and as her attempted cover up of the Hebert disaster continued to unravel she had only become harder to deal with. Even Director Pigot had her objections silenced by the domineering woman. He wanted so badly to do something to bring the bigoted woman to justice. But with how the PRT and Protectorate was structured it was almost impossible for a Protectorate leader to oppose a PRT director, much less the chief director herself. All he could do was prepare for the inevitable chaos that would come next, because even if he couldn’t stop the disaster he would let Bonesaw operate on him before he let one of his get killed because the chief director pushed Hebert too far.