A Darker Path Pt 3 (Patreon)

Part Three: The Challenge

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Winslow High School

The Scene of the Crime

Armsmaster

Colin ran his multiscanner (he had refused to call it a 'tricorder' despite Dragon making puppy-dog eyes at him over their video link) over the deceased teen before him. "Subject was not moved post-mortem. Stress patterns on cloth, left hand side of body, indicates that a large rounded object, possibly a human knee, was used for impact that shattered ribs. Microfibre deposits on the fabric indicate that the assailant may have been wearing blue jeans, design uncertain. Speed and power of blow suggest that the assailant was conversant with Muay Thai or a similar martial art. The assailant's grasp on subject's broken arm was used to improve accuracy and striking power."

He paused between sweeps and sat back with a sigh. It was important to be impersonal and objective at a time like this, so that all possible information could be utilised to nail the perpetrator to the wall. However, it was hard. For all that he wasn't great at social interaction, he'd worked with Shadow Stalker in the field and she'd shown skill and efficiency in her work. Her death would be a tremendous loss to the team.

"You okay?" asked Battery, who was sitting across the room, fiddling with Stalker's phone. The Wards-issued one, which had also been in Stalker's pocket, had been put aside as being less likely to hold any details pertaining to what had happened here. "Want to take a break?"

"No." He shook his head. "She was one of ours. I'll see this through." He ran the scanner over Shadow Stalker's body again. "No defensive wounds or offensive marks on her hands or arms. No bruising to suggest that she may have been restrained for the beating. No taser marks. A very faint scorch mark on her skin beside her collarbone, of unknown origin and age. Larynx crushed with a single blow, the profile matching a spear-hand strike, as used in several forms of karate and other martial arts styles."

"That can't be easy to do." Battery shook her head. "The finger bones and joints are designed to be flexible. Hit at anything but the perfect angle, and you'll never play the piano again. I've seen it more than once." She tapped the phone screen, and sat up straight. "I think I've got something. Saved texts, pointing to a pattern of bullying someone."

"Bullying?" Colin's head came up. "Is that conclusive or inferred?"

Battery frowned. "Let's see … what r u doing with her bag? … am in art class atm. was thinking i can fill it with paint when teach leaves room. put it in lost&found. her art midterm is inside so she might look for it and find it and be all yay i found it and then she looks inside and sees its fucked. There's more, but is that conclusive enough for you?"

"It certainly doesn't sound good." Colin's lips thinned. "Keep looking, and see if this establishes a pattern or was a one-off." He ran the scanner over Stalker's heart region. "Cloth stress patterns are distinct enough to get a print here. I originally thought she'd been punched in the chest, but it was a kick. Or a downward stamping motion, after she was on the floor."

"And that's what stopped her heart?" asked Battery, still scrolling through the phone. "I always thought that sort of thing was a martial arts myth, along with the nose bone going into the brain."

"I've looked it up," Colin replied. "It's possible, but you have to be either exceedingly good or lucky—or extremely unlucky, depending on your intentions—and deliver the strike just when the heart is at a vulnerable point in its beating cycle."

Battery lifted her eyes from the phone and stared at him. "You have to gauge their heartbeat? I'm going with 'lucky'."

"Or a cape," Colin reminded her. "All the evidence points the same way. This has to be a parahuman."

"Several things wrong with that scenario, boss-man." Battery leaned back in her seat, the phone temporarily forgotten. "There's no indication that any of the capes in the city, even the Empire Eighty-Eight ones, knew who Stalker was. And even if they did, killing her in the middle of the school just added needless difficulty for them. They could've literally just stabbed her in the street and pretended it was a mugging gone wrong. And then there's the other thing."

"Other thing?" Colin frowned. He didn't like missing details. "Such as?"

"This room." Battery gestured at the classroom. "Your scanner already picked up that she was alone in here for a little time before she was killed, right?"

"Yes." Colin wasn't sure where she was going with this. "So …?"

"So, nobody sits alone in an empty classroom unless they're reading a book or playing on their phone or doing something to pass the time. Unless she was waiting for someone. And that someone, when they came in, was the person she was waiting for, or she thought they were. Because otherwise, she would've ghosted out of there. Instead, she got close enough to have CQC initiated on her and get her ass beaten like a one-legged piñata."

Colin took a moment to wonder if Battery wasn't picking up some of Assault's more irritating turns of phrase. "Not initiated on her. She initiated it. The broken elbow, that came from a punch that was redirected and the joint over-extended. Whoever killed her, she thought she could beat them. She couldn't have been more wrong."

"Okay …" mused Battery. "So, how's this for a sequence of events. Someone passes word that a mutual friend wants to meet her here. She comes and waits. A cape with a Stranger ability, pretending to be that friend, comes in. They talk and either she twigs that it's not them, or they deliberately rile her up. Combat Thinker bullshit martial arts ensues, they somehow manage to prevent her from ghosting away and she dies of a punctured lung, a crushed larynx and a stopped heart."

Tilting his head, Colin considered the scenario as laid out by his subordinate. "It fits the facts at hand, certainly. Now all we need is a motive for this Thinker-Stranger martial artist to want to murder her at all, much less inside a school. Was there anything more on the phone?"

"Funny you should ask that," Battery said. "From what I can see, this has been going on for at least a year. No name for the victim or victims, just 'H'. Oh, and I've gotten several pings on the phone since we got here. Most of them are from her friends asking where she is, but this one here says that if Stalker's looking for 'T' she's in math class." She paused, looking pensive. "You know … bullying has always been a reliable motive for wanting to kill someone."

"So you're thinking this 'T' or this 'H' could have something to do with Stalker's death? Maybe hired an outside cape with a Stranger ability and sneaked them into Winslow?" Colin massaged his beard with thumb and forefinger. "I'm still blanking on why they'd choose to do it in the middle of a school."

Battery snapped her fingers. "Because this way you have several advantages that you don't elsewhere. One, you can reliably have her go of her own accord to a location of your choosing, where there are no witnesses. Two, she'll be off-guard. In school, she'll be thinking 'Sophia Hess', not 'Shadow Stalker'. Three, there's no cops, security guards or working CCTV. Four, if she and her little friends have been getting away with bullying people for so long, it's a sure bet that the staff just don't care. Nobody pays attention. And five … well, out there on the street, she wasn't the biggest fish, not by a long shot. In here, she was. This was her territory, or so she thought."

"Valid points, certainly," he agreed. "I just can't help wondering if there isn't something we're missing. The vital clue, as they say in detective stories."

She snorted indelicately. "You and I both know real life isn't as convenient as that. But I do think this bullying is a strong lead. Especially as it's her co-offenders who've been trying to text her. I'm thinking we can get a warrant for their names and addresses, and have a little chat with them."

"That is the next obvious step, yes," Colin agreed absently, leaning over to peer at the soles of Shadow Stalker's shoes. "Hmm. That's interesting."

"What's interesting?" asked Battery. "Did she tag the perp after all?"

"No." Colin tapped the controls of the scanner. "I just compared tread patterns, and Stalker is wearing an identical type of shoe to the perp. Same size, too."

"Really?" Battery sat up again. "Hey, just on a wild hunch. How tall's the perp?"

Colin allowed himself a smile. His scanner was already calibrated for measuring that sort of thing, from the angle of the blows. "I make it five ten, plus or minus half an inch. Why?"

By now, Battery was standing. "And Stalker's about the same height, yeah?"

"Almost exactly, yes. Why ..." Light dawned. "You think the Stranger became Stalker?"

"It's a possibility. Now, those microfibers you found, would they be a match for her jeans?" She pointed at the skinny jeans Stalker was wearing.

Colin barely had to check. "Almost identical. Down to the same brands of detergent and fabric conditioner." He shook his head. "That can't be a coincidence."

Battery nodded. "Okay, so the word was passed, Stalker came here to wait, and the Stranger showed up. Then they morphed into Stalker, which would almost certainly have goaded her to attack."

That made sense. Shadow Stalker had always had an intense prideful streak. "It's probably the only way they could guarantee she wouldn't cut and run if faced with a shapeshifting cape."

"Very true." She pinched her lower lip in thought. "The question is, who? The Empire Eighty-Eight's got a bunch of strong melee combatants plus one hell of a motive, and Uber could make himself skilled enough to do this, except that there's not a Stranger rating between them, and I strongly doubt Cricket could pass herself off as being school-age, even with all of Victor's makeup skills at her disposal."

"No, but Leet could probably build a device that let Uber become a teenage girl." Colin shook his head. "Still, we should rule out Uber and Leet for this. No video game link, and they've never murdered anyone before."

"The Empire, on the other hand, would totally do this, but how? Unless they made a deal with Leet for his hypothetical Changer device?" Battery's tone showed she wasn't being entirely serious.

And that was when Colin had the inspiration. "Not Leet. But Othala can grant powers."

He couldn't see her expression, but her voice gave the impression of a frown. "Not Changer or Stranger abilities."

"That. We. Know. Of." He emphasized every word. "Sure, they let us know about the invincibility, the flight, the superspeed, the regeneration and the pyrokinesis. That's all combat-useful, and it doesn't hurt to let us wonder what power Victor's got today. But if they kept a Changer or Stranger ability under wraps, that lets them do recon and espionage without ever being suspected of being able to do it …"

Battery nodded. "It all fits together. If anyone can kill that fast and efficiently, it would be Victor or Cricket. And once they were done, they changed to look like another student and walked out of the school."

"Cricket," Colin decided. "Her ultrasonic attack would be ideal for stunning Stalker long enough to get the lethal blows in, and I suspect she would be able to detect a heartbeat precisely enough to time her kick down to the instant."

Slowly, Battery sat down again. "So, it's just the Empire Eighty-Eight being douchebag Nazis again," she concluded. "And I was certain it was about the bullying. It was such an understandable motive."

"I'd keep checking into it, if I were you," Colin advised her. "It might still play a part."

"Just not as an important one as I thought." Battery wrinkled her nose. "But I know one thing for certain."

"What's that?" asked Colin, beginning to pack away his equipment.

"The Director's not going to be happy with this, no matter who turns out to be responsible."

He nodded thoughtfully. "Very true."

<><>

Boardwalk

Madison

They sat together at one of the small tables that dotted the Boardwalk as the sun lowered toward the western hills. Emma clutched her chocolate shake so hard with both hands that if the surface had shown any more liquid, it would've been rippling from the shudders that passed through her from time to time. Madison had never seen her so thoroughly rattled, though she had an idea how Emma felt.

"Sophia's dead." Emma spoke the words quietly, her teeth chattering on the last word as she shuddered again.

Madison felt her throat close up over the words. She forced herself to swallow her mouthful of iced coffee shake; if she spat it out, she was afraid she'd puke. "Y-yeah," she whispered, knowing she had to face reality eventually. Nobody had said Sophia was the person who had died, but someone was dead, and she wasn't answering any of her texts. And of course, she'd been going to confront Taylor. "I told her not to go. I told her. You saw me."

"You told her," Emma agreed. She raised red-rimmed eyes to look at Madison. "You really think Taylor would kill her? That she could?"

"Taylor hates her." Madison had been doing a lot of very uncomfortable thinking on the bus from Winslow. "Hated. Like she hates us. If she could have, she would have. And I'm damn sure she could. You didn't see the look in her eyes when she was sitting there eating lunch. Not giving a damn that I was hardly able to breathe."

"So what do we do now?" whimpered Emma. "Sophia was tougher than any of us, and she was a cape. If Taylor could kill her, she could murder you or me in her sleep. In our sleep."

Looking at the frazzled mess that Emma had become, Madison suspected Taylor wouldn't have to raise a hand. Just shouting 'boo!' at the right moment would probably give Emma a heart attack.

"We do nothing," she said, trying to sound like she knew what she was talking about. "We're alive, right? That's because we didn't go with Sophia. Because we didn't go after Taylor again. She told me that's two, right? If we step over the line one more time, we're dead. All we have to do is never step over the line."

Emma looked over her shoulder convulsively, the movement a whole-body twitch. "Wh-what if she's just playing with us? Waiting 'til our guard's down? And then one day, we turn around—"

"No." Madison grabbed her friend's wrist. "Stop. Listen to me." She waited until Emma was looking at her. "Are you listening?"

Emma took a couple of ragged breaths, then two more. "Okay, I'm listening."

"Good." Madison leaned over the table slightly, so that she could slide her hand around the back of Emma's head, her fingers entwined in Emma's hair, then looked Emma straight in the eyes. "Taylor doesn't 'play'. She doesn't draw it out. If she wanted us dead, we'd be lying in the morgue alongside Sophia. So the only way we're going to survive this massive clusterfuck we've managed to turn our lives into is never be a threat to Taylor Hebert, ever again. Think you can manage that?"

There was a twitch as Emma tried to turn her head away. Madison didn't let her. Too much depended on this.

Finally, Emma nodded. "Y-yeah. I can do that. I can. Leave it with me."

"Excellent." Madison drew a deep breath and let it out again, feeling her heart rate decrease slightly. Letting go of Emma's head, she sat back into her chair.

"Um." Emma began to look agitated again. "Cops. They're gonna want statements. What do we say?"

Jesus, why ask me? "Uh, we tell the truth. Except if they ask if we think Taylor did it. Then we say no way, she wouldn't hurt a fly. Okay? Got it?"

It was the right answer. "Got it," Emma replied. "She wouldn't hurt a fly."

"Perfect." Madison tried to think about the next step. "And right now, we've got to pass the word, to everyone. Julia, Stacey, their friends, anyone who ever helped us with a prank. Taylor's off limits. Hopefully, we can get the message out in time to save their lives."

"Okay, right." Emma pulled her phone out, then stopped. "But … but what do we say? We can't just tell them 'Sophia's dead, don't be next'. They might decide to tell the cops. Worse, Taylor might think we said to call the cops."

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck." Madison bit the words off as she tried to think. "Okay, tell them … because the cops are all over the school right now, we're gonna back off on Taylor. Keep our heads down. Hopefully by the time the heat dies down, they'll have forgotten about her."

"Yeah-yeah. Good id-idea." Emma bit her lip as she started texting.

Madison got her own phone out and opened a text to Julia. 'Hey, just so u kno, with the shit goin on rite now, we're steppin back with T. No sense attractin attention. Let every1 kno, ok?'

She really, really hoped this would work.

<><>

That Evening

Taylor

I didn't want a costume, not really, but I knew at some point I'd probably need one. Mainly because at some point I was going to be in public with the need to get some asshole to step out of my way, and I'd require a good costume to get their attention and a good name to keep it. A lot of the Paths I was considering were going to be a fuck-ton easier to complete if I had a costume and a name.

Okay, power, I get it. You want to show off. Fine, I'll do it.

I already knew what name I was going to go with. An education that included the classics had not gone wasted. All I needed was a matching costume. It would be edgy as fuck but then again, I had the power to murder anyone who pissed me off. The only way I could get any edgier would be to include the words 'blood' or 'stryke' in my name, and add a few dozen pouches and a stupidly-oversized gun.

Not that I had any particular issue with acquiring a stupidly-oversized gun. It would be the ultimate party accessory, for a given definition of 'ultimate', 'party' and 'accessory'.

However, I'd have to wait until later to get one. Right now, I needed to acquire the costume and set the scene for my grand entrance into the Brockton Bay crime scene. The trouble was, I couldn't just ask for a path to 'end my lack of a cool costume'. My power apparently didn't work that way. It wasn't there just for me to get stuff. I'd have to work for it.

Translation: someone would have to die.

Fortunately, I was just fine with that, especially since the suggested target was already someone who desperately needed it.

Following the directions of my power, I dressed carefully; gray hoodie, black jacket over the top. I kept Sophia's skinny jeans and sneakers on, though. She might be gone, but her stuff could still go out and do more good than she ever had. As a final touch, I tied a gray bandanna around my neck, that could be pulled up in a pinch to act as a mask.

Dad was snoring gently as I walked past his bedroom door, my feet somehow hitting every non-creaking floorboard. Downstairs I went, then through the entrance hall and kitchen to the basement. I didn't need to turn the light on, because I knew exactly what I wanted and where it was. Dad's big toolbox held roughly one metric ton of tools, but I just needed two of them; a flat-head screwdriver and a pipe wrench. Armed with these, I snuck out of the house.

I bypassed three separate cars parked on the side of the road until my power directed me to one in a side-street. The screwdriver popped the door open like a magic trick; when I got inside, I discovered why I'd been nudged toward that one. The spare keys were in the centre console, under a scrunched-up tissue, which made it possible to start the car without needing to hotwire it.

Not that I had any idea how to hotwire a car, but I was pretty sure my power did. However, hiding the fact that the car had been hotwired was a lot harder than just using the keys and putting the car back afterward. What do you know; my power was capable of subtlety.

I didn't know how to drive a car, but I studied my hand and foot movements as I cruised through the darkened streets of Brockton Bay. It was what I suspected actors went through when they watched themselves pulling stunts on the big screen. Kind of like an out of body experience, but not really.

When the car finally pulled up on a side street, I wasn't certain where my power had taken me, but I had an idea. The two guys wearing red and green gang colours, and the one in the brightly painted demon mask, kind of spelled it out to me. I was in ABB territory, and that was Oni Lee.

Well, I'd already known who I was here to kill. This just verified it.

It seemed to be a late-night shopping area, with venues open up and down the block. The one Oni Lee and his followers were loitering outside was a dressmaker, I guessed. Something to do with making clothes, anyway. Still, not my problem.

I got out of the car and strolled toward the trio, the handle of the pipe-wrench cold against my arm. I knew I could let it slide down and bring it into action in less than a second, but until then, I was a harmless teenager. Even my body language was all about 'ignore me, I don't matter'.

Invisibility: it's an art, not a super-power.

Even so, I only got within about three yards before they finally took notice of me. That was fine; three yards was plenty close enough. One of the enforcers took a step toward me. "Back off, bitch," he ordered.

End this interference.

The pipe wrench slid down into my hand, and I laid it across the side of his head. He was already unconscious when he hit the ground.

The other ABB mook was still gaping when I threw the pipe-wrench. It smacked him in the forehead and sent him over backward.

Interference: ended.

Oni Lee was fast, I'll give him that. He was halfway through pulling his pistol when I reached him and kicked him hard in the groin. Then I twitched the pistol from his grip, straight-armed it back behind me, and fired a shot. As the version in front of me crumbled to ash, along with the pistol I was holding, I turned to see the newer one fall over backward with a bullet-hole in the middle of that stupid demon mask.

Bending down, I retrieved the pipe wrench, then straightened and swung it hard enough to break the forearm of the third guy, who'd just come out of the shop. He howled and dropped the knife he'd been trying to stab me with, and I hit him with a backswing that dropped him unconscious on top of Oni Lee's ash.

Pulling the bandanna up over my face, I bent down again and pulled the wad of protection money out of the mook's pocket. Then I pushed the door open and stepped into the shop.

The shop owner was understandably worried. I held out the cash and said something fluently in a language I didn't understand. Or rather, it was the language I didn't understand, but I knew what I'd said. 'The reign of Lung is coming to an end. Here is your money back.'

She stared at me and didn't accept the money, but she did reply to me. My power helpfully provided a translation. 'Without Lung, who will protect us from the Empire Eighty-Eight and the other gangs?'

I smiled under the bandanna. 'They will also be going away.' I offered the money again.

She accepted it, but gave me a look of suspicion. 'And will we be paying you for protection?'

'No,' I said, 'I don't require payment. But I would like a costume, if you could help me out there?'

It was weird, standing there and discussing what I wanted in a language I didn't even speak. In the end, it seemed they had everything I needed; gloves, a broad-brimmed hat, a long-coat and knee-high boots, all in black. Under all this went dark clothing with a black tie over a charcoal-gray vest for that formal look. And, as a final touch, a black morph-suit style mask. It would cover my entire head, with a hole at the back to pull my hair out through. I'd be able to see and breathe through it, but my features would be obscured to anyone trying to make them out.

When I left the shop, the three mooks were still lying there groaning. Conscious now, it seemed, but in a lot of pain. That wasn't my problem. I paused to loot Oni Lee's corpse of his pistol and grenade bandolier—those things could come in so handy—and then went back to the car.

I hummed to myself as I drove back across the city toward home. I'd found myself in an interesting situation. My power wanted to end things and kill people, and I was somewhat inclined to do so myself. And if I wanted something for myself, I had to do it in such a way that I used lethal moves on someone.

On the other hand, I wasn't being forced to kill. As I'd proved with Madison and the mooks, I could pull my blows and not actually deal a killing strike.

Could I have done that with Oni Lee? Possibly, but that would've been a stupid move, mainly because he would've kept trying to kill me thereafter, and I didn't really see a need to keep him alive. So in that aspect, my power and I were in perfect harmony.

When I got back to where I'd stolen the car, no alarm seemed to have been raised. I parked it and locked it up, leaving the keys exactly where I'd found them, and wiping every exposed surface. I wasn't stupid; anyone who watched a crime show knew about fingerprints and stuff like that.

Sneaking back into the house was just as easy as sneaking out had been. Carefully, after re-locking the back door, I snuck upstairs. I was sweaty and tired and needed a shower, but there was one final thing I had to do.

My computer spent its own sweet time booting up while I removed my costume, one piece at a time, and stored it away carefully at the bottom of my closet. Then I sat down and flexed my fingers.

Kill any chance of this being traced.

The next few minutes was a blur of typing and selecting options from menus that I'd never known of before. When I finally got onto the PHO boards, as far as I knew, I was logging in from somewhere right across the city, using an IP address owned by the Medhall corporation. Which was pretty cool, I had to admit.

I'd thought about this on the car ride back home. I had the name picked out, and the costume, but I also needed an introduction. While I was setting up the new account, I went over in my mind exactly what I was going to say. A little bit of research capped it off, and I was ready to roll.

Good evening, Brockton Bay, I announced. I'm a new cape on the scene, but that doesn't mean I'm new to the city. And as anyone who knows the place will admit, it's a shithole.

Who's to blame for this, you ask? Well, that's easy. The gangs. It's literally in their best interests to keep the cops looking the other way and the heroes chasing the small fish so the big fish can keep shitting in the water all day long.

Well, I'm done with accepting that. So, here's what I've got to say. The gangs are no longer welcome in Brockton Bay. It's time for you to leave. The door's thataway.

I am specifically calling out the Empire Eighty-Eight, the Azn Bad Boys, Coil's crew and fuck it, the Merchants, because they sell drugs to schoolkids and that isn't cool either. The other gangs in the city, I do know who you are but you're not on my list yet. You'll keep.

So, the leaders of those gangs I just named: Kaiser, Lung, Coil, Skidmark. You have twenty-four hours to either a) leave town for good or b) surrender to the PRT. In twenty-four hours from midnight tonight, if you haven't all done this, I'm going to kill one of you that hasn't. Just one.

Then I'll start the clock again.

TL: DR – Kaiser, Lung, Coil, Skidmark. GTFO or die.

Oh, and Lung? Yeah, that was me.

Your move.

With a flourish, I typed my chosen cape name.

Atropos.

Part 4