Taylor and Marvel Madness (Patreon)

"Penny for your thoughts," Richard Dawn said as he held a penny out towards the dark haired girl sitting across from him on the bus.

Taylor Hebert blinked when she realized the man in his early thirties with bright red hair was talking to her and was holding a penny. "Not sure they're worth a penny."

He flipped the penny to Taylor, dropping it in the middle of her palm. "Try it, sometimes talking to a stranger helps."

Taylor glanced at the man's almost painfully white suit that probably cost more than most people's cars and couldn't help wondering why he was riding the bus or when he'd sat down across from her because she didn't remember him sitting down and he certainly hadn't been there when she'd sat down. "Not sure how it matters, I doubt you'd believe me anyway."

"Try," Richard suggested.

"I have a group of girls trying to drive me insane or to suicide at school and the administration is helping them," Taylor admitted, feeling strangely better now that she'd told someone about her problem.

"I suggest cement shoes, you have a bay," Richard suggested, sounding only half joking.

"Pretty sure I'd be near the top of the suspect list," Taylor admitted as she looked around for the annoying beeping sound she could hear.

"If someone offered you the power to save the bay, would you take it?" Richard asked.

"Depends on the strings," Taylor admitted, annoyed at the beeping. "Do you hear that?"

Richard laughed. "Check under your pillow…"

Taylor blinked as she woke up to an annoying beeping sound and a young lady wearing a blue nurse's outfit hovering over her. "Who…" she trailed off as she remembered being stuck in her locker.

"Maggie," the nurse offered as she pushed the button to silence the alarm. "You're in Brockton General."

"How did I get here?" Taylor asked as she glanced around the hospital room. She glanced down at herself and realized that she was wearing hospital scrubs. 'Hospital scrubs which means that someone washed the crud off me.'

"The paramedics brought you in, you were…" Maggie trailed off, not sure how to bring up the locker.

Taylor pushed down the nausea as she remembered the locker. "Trapped in a locker?"

"Do you remember anything about the cape that rescued you?" an officer asked from the door.

Taylor turned to look at the average looking man in his late twenties wearing a police uniform. "Cape?"

Maggie scowled as she thought about Winslow. "Please tell me you found the people responsible."

"What do you remember?" the officer asked Taylor.

"The last thing I remember was getting shoved into my locker from behind when I was trying not to throw up from the stench of something rotting," Taylor replied, wishing she could forget the stench. "I must have passed out at some point because the next thing I know, I'm waking up."

"Do you have any idea who pushed you into the locker?" the officer asked.

"Emma Barnes was laughing which probably meant Sophia Hess shoved me, she was always pushing or shoving me, not that the teachers actually did anything about it," Taylor complained.

"Would you say that you hated Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess and Principal Blackwell?" the officer asked.

"She wasn't my favorite person considering the number of times Principal Blackwell ignored my complaints about the girls harassing me but the rest of the teachers weren't much better, why?" Taylor asked, starting to wonder what was going on.

"The cape pinned her to the lockers with a sword," the officer admitted, wanting a chance to see her reaction.

"What?" Taylor blurted, not sure she'd heard the officer correctly.

The officer relaxed when he realized that she wasn't consciously responsible for the attack. "She was telling him that he didn't have any right to be on campus and that she was calling the police. He told her that the police had already been called and that she was a pathetic excuse for a guardian of children and drove his sword through her chest, pinning her to the locker without killing her. Unless they've managed to remove the sword, she's probably still screaming about all of her crimes, misdeeds and search history," the officer explained.

"Officer," Danny said as he walked up.

The officer turned to look at Danny. "Danny."

Danny glanced between Vincent and his daughter, sparing the nurse a glance. "What happened?"

"A cape rescued Taylor from her locker, I was looking for leads," Vincent replied.

"Do you have any?" Danny asked.

"Not really," Vincent admitted. "Two of her classmates and the principal were attacked by the cape because they tried to stop him from helping. I was curious if Taylor had any information about the mysterious cape."

Taylor shook her head. "As far as I know, I don't know any capes."

Vincent pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up one of the video clips that showed the man's face. "Have you seen the cape before?"

Taylor stared at the red haired man from her dream as he hit Sophia with some type of ball of lightning that made her thrash on the ground and scream. "I've never seen him before in my life but if you figure out who he is, I'd love to thank him."

"Any other questions?" Danny asked.

"Do you have any proof that Hess is the one that shoved you into the locker?" Vincent asked.

"No but considering the rest of the crap she's done over the last year and a half, I wouldn't be surprised," Taylor admitted.

"Do you have evidence?" Vincent asked.

"Just a journal filled with dates, times and descriptions of what they put me through," Taylor complained.

"Can you drop copies off by the station?" Vincent asked, figuring it would help even if it was circumstantial at best.

Taylor looked at her father. "They're at home."

"Does tomorrow work?" Danny asked.

"That's fine," Vincent assured him. "We're just trying to sort things out."

"Are you going to be able to arrest them?" Danny asked hopefully.

"Between the footage of the confrontation and your notes, we should be able to send them to juvy, with any luck we'll be able to arrest some of the teachers but I can't actually talk about that part of the investigation," Vincent told them. "Word of advice, don't sign any settlement until you've talked to a competent lawyer that specializes in suing schools or government programs."

"I'll keep that in mind," Danny said.

"Walk with me for a minute," Vincent said as he started walking down the hallway.

"Are you…" Danny trailed off as he realized that asking if she was okay was stupid.

"I'm alive," Taylor said, not sure what else to say. "I'll be here when you get back."

"I'll tell the doctors," Maggie said as she slipped out after Danny left to talk with the cop.

Taylor waited for the door to close then checked under her pillow, feeling sort of silly doing it until she found a manilla envelope. She pulled the envelope out and looked at the words in black permanent marker that were written on the front, 'Demon Queen of Escalation, A.K.A. Taylor Hebert'.

'What the hell?' Taylor asked as she opened the envelope and found a three by five notecard and a postcard with a Christmas tree and a lot of presents on it. 'Happy Holidays?' she mused as she flipped the postcard over. 'You've been chosen to defend your world from a great and terrible evil, as such you've been given the ability to copy powers. This power has several limitations, namely the fact that you can only emulate one power at a time and that you need to be within ten feet of the use of a power to learn to duplicate the power. It also takes eighteen seconds to study a power so you'll have to get creative in combat. Bob from the Powers Division managed to pull a couple of tricks so you should have several powers you can emulate. Best of luck, you're going to need it.'

Taylor was about to dismiss the postcard as a weird joke until she realized that she had a mental dial in the back of her mind. 'There's something there,' she mused as she tried to mentally grab the dial. She froze when she 'grabbed' the dial and realized she had an extremely vivid mental image of a mostly empty prize wheel. She quickly counted the spokes of the wheel. 'Sixty three slots and Bug Control and Creation are taking up two of the slots.'

She looked at the notecard, noticing that the handwriting was different. 'Your Duplication ability has sixty three slots that you can fill with powers. Once you fill all of the slots you can replace an old power with a new power. One of the powers you can emulate is a Power Creation ability, it gives you the ability to hand out powers. Once you're emulating the power, you should get a sense of the powers that you can hand out. I don't actually know which powers you'll be able to hand out because each person is different, hopefully you got some useful powers. There's a small chance that the Creation ability will fail, just keep trying. It can last a couple of days or ten times that amount, it seems to flip between the two. There's also a small chance that the test subject will acquire the ability permanently. There's also a small to moderate chance the ability fails to activate, just try until it works.'

Taylor flipped the notecard over. 'P.S. Just because your emulation power is temporary, doesn't mean the effects are, Bob.' She barely had time to process that thought before she heard the door start to open and the envelope and the cards turned into sparkles and vanished. She turned to look at the door as the nurse walked into the room with a change of clothes. "Can I get out of here?"

"As soon as you get changed," Maggie replied as she walked over and set the change of clothes on the bed next to Taylor. "The doctors would normally want to keep you for a couple of days of observation but Panacea cleared you."

Taylor sighed in relief, glad that she wasn't going to have to deal with medical issues from getting stuffed in her locker with rotting shit. "I'll have to remember to thank her if I get a chance."

"We're lucky to have her," Maggie agreed as she headed for the door. She stopped at the door and gave Taylor a reassuring smile. "I'll be right outside if you need something, just leave the scrubs on the bed."

"Sure," Taylor replied as she grabbed her clothes and headed for the bathroom as the nurse left. 'Bug control or the ability to give people powers, that's not exactly a hard choice,' she thought as she worked on getting dressed. 'I'm going to need a team or people I can trust. Yeah, because that worked out last time. Do I have anyone I can trust? Dad, that's about it. I'm going to need to do research, is copying powers illegal? Does giving people powers make me responsible for their use? Can I sell powers?'

'I don't even know which powers I can hand out,' Taylor reminded herself as she finished getting dressed. "Knowing my luck, they'll suck," she muttered as she walked over to the bathroom mirror and looked at herself in the mirror. 'Only one way to find out.' She grabbed the mental dial and 'twisted' it so that it was pointed at her Power Creation ability. 'No physical changes and my eyes aren't glowing, I'm probably fine.'

She walked over and dropped the scrubs that she'd been wearing on the bed. She grabbed her socks and boots then sat down in the chair and started putting them on while she waited for her power to finish settling in. "Oh!" she blurted when she realized she had a large list of powers that she could hand out. 'Invulnerability? Flight, Power Manipulation, stealth?'

"Are you okay?" Maggie asked, wanting to make sure Taylor was okay or at least as okay as someone that had just been stuffed into a locker filled with biological waste could be.

"I'm fine," Taylor assured her. "I'm just putting on my shoes," she said as she finished tying her laces and stood up, doing her best to ignore the collection of shiny powers that were practically screaming at her to test. She took a quick look around the room to make sure her father hadn't left something then walked over to the door and opened it. "Thanks for the help."

"That's what I'm here for," Maggie assured Taylor as Danny walked over. "Did you have any problems with the desk?" she asked Danny, wanting to make sure everything was fine before she clocked out.

"No, we're good," Danny replied, feeling like he was lying because he wasn't even close to okay with the situation, let alone good.

"In that case, I'm going to clock out before something explodes," Maggie said, only half joking as things always seemed to go wrong at the end or near the end of her shift.

"Best of luck," Taylor told the nurse, distracted by the list of powers she was 'looking' through.

"Ready?" Danny asked Taylor, noticing that she looked distracted and wondering if he was making a mistake checking her out.

"Yeah, I need a shower," Taylor replied as she headed towards the main desk.

0o0o0

Danny muted the news when Taylor walked in with wet hair and wearing a different set of clothes. "Better?"

"Yeah," Taylor admitted, feeling better now that she'd taken a long and very hot shower.

"So Emma?" Danny asked.

"No clue," Taylor complained as she sat down on the couch. "Everything was fine until I left for camp and then she decided to make my life hell. I tried to tell the administration and they ignored me or threatened me."

"They threatened you?" Danny asked, doing his best not to raise his voice.

"Said I didn't have proof and that I'd get in trouble if I insisted on lying, reading between the lines, they basically said they'd have me arrested if I didn't shut up," Taylor complained.

Danny took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration. "I'll call a lawyer in the morning."

"I'm not going back," Taylor blurted.

"Correct," Danny agreed, not seeing a point in subjecting his daughter to retribution considering he was planning on suing the hell out of the school district. "There should be some type of home school program, worst case, you can drop out and take the G.E.D."

Taylor sighed in relief as she realized that she never had to go back. "Thank you."

"I'm sorry that I checked out for a while but I'm trying," Danny told her.

"Thanks," Taylore replied, not sure what else to say.

"Can you get the journal?" Danny asked, knowing he needed to look at it before giving a copy to the police but not actually wanting to look at it.

Taylor winced as her imagination conjured a scene of her father going over to Alan's house so he could beat the shit out of him. "Can I have your keys?"

Danny briefly considered arguing before he realized that looking at the journal would probably push him over the edge. "Fine, we can deal with it in the morning. Is there anything else I should know about?"

"I'm a cape!" Taylor blurted before she could change her mind.

"Shit," Danny muttered, wishing he was surprised. "What did you get?" he asked as he put his glasses back on.

"I have a list of powers in my head that I can hand out, do you want the ability to fly?" Taylor asked, hoping she could talk him into helping her test her powers since she didn't have anyone else.

"Have you tested them on a lab rat or pet yet?" Danny asked.

"Not yet," Taylor admitted. "I've had them for less than two hours and I didn't want to test them in the car."

"Probably for the best," Danny agreed. "There's a spider near the ceiling, can you give it flight?"

Taylor focused on the spider in the corner and tried to activate her power. "Nothing, it's like the spider isn't even there."

"It might not work on bugs," Danny mused, unwilling to point out that she might be imagining things.

Taylor focused on Danny and gave him Body Resistance, fairly sure increasing his durability would help keep him safe in case something went wrong with the rest of the tests. 'At least that felt like it did something.'

Danny frowned slightly as he felt like a cloud had moved and he'd been hit with a beam of sunlight for a second. "What was that?"

"I gave you the ability to shrug off bullets," Taylor replied cheerfully as she picked up a wooden coaster and tossed it at him, hitting him on the arm.

"Was that really necessary?" Danny asked, a touch annoyed at Taylor for tossing a coaster at him.

"Did it hurt?" Taylor asked, hoping that she wasn't imagining her power.

"Not even a little," Danny admitted after thinking about it for a couple of seconds. "How much of a brute rating did you give me?"

"Probably enough to ignore small arms fire," Taylor replied as she used her power and gave him the ability to walk on air.

"Weird, it's like there's a switch in my mind," Danny said as he stood up, flipped the weird mental switch and formed a translucent path a foot over the ground. He stepped onto the translucent ramp, finding it strangely solid. He took a couple of cautious steps then twisted the path into a ramp that dropped a couple of inches. "Okay, this is pretty cool, what else do you have?"

"Give me a minute, I'm testing something," Taylor replied as she worked on learning how to duplicate his Skywalk ability, figuring it would be a good test of her Duplication ability. She smiled when she felt the Skywalk ability slot into place next to her Power Creation ability. "I think I figured out how to duplicate the Skywalk ability."

Danny stared at Taylor. "What do you mean by duplicate?"

"I mean my actual power seems to be the ability to copy powers and emulate one at a time, my ability to hand out powers is one of the abilities I can duplicate. If I'm understanding everything I 'see' when I focus on my Duplication power, I have sixty three slots that I can fill with powers."

Danny stared at Taylor. "And you wasted a slot on a crappy mover rating?"

"I can toss the powers I don't want to emulate," Taylor assured him as she focused and gave him True Flight. "Let's try actual flight."

Danny blinked as he realized he had another mental switch. "How many powers can you hand out at a time?" he asked as he floated off the ground, letting his translucent path vanish.

"No clue, let's run some tests," Taylor replied cheerfully as she gave her father a Force Field. "That should give you a Force Field."

Danny flipped the new mental switch and created a translucent blue force field across the doorway. "That's useful, I can think of a couple of times this would have made dealing with some of the gangs easier."

Taylor picked up a pillow and tossed it at the Force Field, causing the pillow to bounce and hit the ground. "Don't drop the field," she said as she jumped up and walked over to the force field so she could learn to duplicate it.

"Sure," Danny replied as he floated back over to his chair, happy that Taylor had trusted him enough to tell him about being a cape despite their current issues.

Taylor smiled as the Force Field settled into another slot after eighteen seconds. "You can drop the force field. Do you think capes would let me copy their powers if I gave them a couple of temporary powers?" she asked thoughtfully.

"Probably depends on the cape," Danny mused as he dropped the force field. "Can you copy the brute rating?"

"I'd probably have to hit you with something, you have to use a power for my ability to copy it," Taylor explained as she mentally went down her list, ignoring several powers because she didn't want her father reading her mind, spying on her or setting the house on fire with Fire Control. "I'd give you the ability to turn people into animals but you'd probably turn Alan into a donkey right now."

"Or a mule," Danny mused. "He should have noticed that you weren't around and called me. I should have noticed that Emma wasn't around but I wasn't in a good place, I'm not sure what his excuse is."

"No clue." Taylor frowned when she tried to give her father a Danger Sense and failed. "Do you want a Danger Sense ability?"

"Like Spiderman? That sounds useful," Danny said thoughtfully.

"Give me a second." Taylor scowled when she failed the next three times. 'Random chance or is there something wrong with the ability?' She tried and failed a couple more times before she got it on the sixth try and she felt the ability sink in. "Okay, that should do it."

Danny shrugged. "I'm not sensing anything new."

"Let me know if that changes," Taylor told him as she tried and failed to give him the ability to cast an Enhancement spell. 'Okay, that's getting annoying.' She tried again and smiled when the ability sunk in. "Okay, that should let you increase people's abilities, turning them into brutes or making them smarter."

Danny blinked a couple of times as he realized that he'd need some ingredients to get the best use out of the 'power' that Taylor had given him. "We're going to have to hit one of the new age shops if you want me to use the ability on you, it won't last if we don't use a ritual."

Taylor glanced at the clock on the wall. "It's early enough to hit the mall."

"I'm going to need some scratch paper to make a list," Danny said, needing a few minutes to wrap his mind around the idea that his newest ability might actually involve magic. "Grab a knife from the kitchen, you need to copy a brute rating."

"Sure," Taylor replied as she headed into the kitchen to grab a knife so she could pick up Body Resistance. 'It's not as good as Invulnerability but I'm going to need someone else to help boost my power when I give it to him, being a basic brute should be good enough.' She grabbed the annoying serrated knife out of the knife rack and headed back into the living room. She handed the knife to her father. "Here."

Danny carefully tested how sharp the knife was then lightly ran his finger over it, wanting to make sure the cut wasn't too bad if it turned out his daughter was wrong about the ability. He stared at his finger that was left without a mark then put more pressure on the blade with his finger. "You might have a point about the brute rating."

Taylor shivered as she watched her father drag the knife back and forth on his hand. "We need a better way to test that," she complained as she worked on copying his ability so she could duplicate it in case she needed to be bulletproof.

"Is that enough?" Danny asked.

"Should be," Taylor assured him as she worked on studying the echo of his power. She smiled as the Body Resistance ability dropped into a slot in her Duplication ability. "I should probably give you a Power Detection ability." She skimmed through her list and gave him the Power Detection ability. "That should let you figure out which powers you have and might let you figure out how long they'll last."

"That would be useful." Danny flipped the new mental switch and tried to figure out what his ability was telling him, finding it a bit of a confusing mess thanks to the number of powers he had and the fact that he could sense that Taylor had powers. "That has a bit of a learning curve," he complained as he tried to sort through the confusing mess of auras that were clinging to him.

Taylor focused on her father and worked on copying his detection ability, figuring it would be nice to be able to figure out where the local capes were, if only so she could avoid the worst of them.

Danny flipped the switch on his Power Detection ability, turning it off before it gave him a headache then walked over and grabbed some scratch paper from the desk. He sat down at the desk and started making a list of the ingredients that he'd need for the enhancement ritual.

Taylor sighed in relief when the ability filled a slot. "How much is it going to cost to do the ritual?"

"I don't know," Danny admitted. "The most expensive part of the ritual is probably the candles or the incense but I haven't exactly kept up with the prices so I couldn't tell you and we're going to need a white canvas tarp but we can reuse that so that's more of an investment."

"Investment? How many people are you planning on using the ritual on?" Taylor asked, wondering what her father was planning.

"You're going to need a team and I have a number of friends in the Union that could use a hand," Danny pointed out. "Speaking of ways to generate money, can you give me any powers that can deal with the cargo ship that's blocking the bay?"

Taylor mentally reviewed her collection of powers. "I'm not sure we'd be able to shrink the cargo ship considering the size but we can probably scrap it by teleporting sections to an empty lot."

"We're going to need costumes," Danny mused.

Taylor gave Danny a copy of her Molding ability. "I'll get some aluminum cans and some plastic, you can make a couple masks with the Molding ability."

Danny focused on the new mental switch and realized that the Molding ability would let him casually fix the broken step using a chunk of two by four. "Your ability is insane."

"It almost makes up for the last year and a half," Taylor muttered as she headed for the garage to grab some beer cans and plastic so her father could make a couple of masks so they wouldn't get recognized when they dealt with the cargo ship.