A Darker Path 28 (Patreon)

Part Twenty-Eight: Hard Kill

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

6:35 AM Tuesday Morning

Dallon Household

Panacea

Sunrise was yet a mere glow in the eastern sky when Amy ventured out into the back yard. The old swing set still sat in the corner of the yard, despite the fact that it'd been years since anyone had seriously made use of it. Wearing her faded bunny slippers, thick flannel pyjamas and dressing gown to ward off the chill, she went over to the swing and let her weight cautiously down into it. The frame creaked but held, and she began to push herself back and forth by flexing her knees, the rusted chains squeaking quietly at the movement.

Her first encounter with Atropos had been perhaps the most terrifying and eye-opening experience of her life. The second had been equally enlightening, for a whole different reason, and also deeply irritating. Atropos had talked rings around her, and she'd found herself doing exactly what she hadn't wanted to do, for what seemed to be perfectly good reasons at the time. Worse, she'd enjoyed it far more than she was comfortable with.

The footage of Atropos tearing through the Slaughterhouse Nine had also opened her eyes, and prompted a question that caused her many wakeful hours over the last two nights. If Atropos is so in tune with her power that she can trust it to see her safely through a battle against those odds, while I don't dare modify one person's brain to remove a tumour, then what's she doing right that I'm not?

The conclusion she'd eventually come back to, after dancing around it for most of those two nights, was both simple and aggravating. She gives it stuff to do that isn't boring.

About three hours ago, she'd sat bolt upright in bed, her eyes open wide, as yet another unwelcome conclusion clicked into place. Those impulses I've been having to screw up my healing, those aren't me. They're my power, being bored and wanting to do something else!

She'd rolled over in bed, pulling the covers up to her head, but the intrusive thoughts kept coming. What if Vicky being unable to keep her aura in is her power being bored? It would make so much sense!

Every now and again, the news ran a piece on a cape, usually one who was trying to retire or drop out of sight (or both) whose power activated randomly in public, revealing them to the world. Up until this point, Amy had dismissed this as people with unreliable powers. But what if they weren't? What if powers only cooperated with us so long as we gave them fun things to do?

That was both mindblowing and creepy as fuck. She'd never before considered the concept of her power as a thinking, feeling entity not part of her. But now she had a mental image of every single cape with a shadowy humanoid power peering over their shoulder and whispering in their ear, and the capes thinking it was their own thoughts.

Except Atropos. Atropos regularly sat down for chats with hers. Probably over the equivalent of drinks. Her power didn't need to whisper in her ear. She asked it for its opinion.

Have I ever done that? Amy didn't even need to pose the question. She already knew the answer. And somehow, knowing that her power wasn't just a toolbox full of options but instead a sentient being that wanted to use the capabilities she'd never dared to use … made it all the worse.

"Hey," she said softly. "I'm listening now. Sorry for shutting you down all this time. Was there anything you wanted to do?" Feeling like an idiot for talking out loud to nobody at all, she waited.

Nothing happened.

Taking hold of the cold metal chains, feeling the roughness of the dew-soaked rust against her fingers, she closed her eyes and concentrated on listening inwardly to what her thoughts were trying to tell her—or rather, what her power was trying to tell her through her thoughts.

No great epiphany burst on her.

She sighed, starting to feel more than a little stupid. All of this was built on a single conversation with a serial killer. Who knew how sane Atropos really was, anyway? Why didn't anyone else ever talk about consulting with their powers? Because it didn't happen, that was why. A little wisdom Aunt Sarah had once passed on to her popped back up again: if someone claims to be the only holder of special knowledge, they're probably a con artist.

The next sigh was a little sadder. Just for a few days, she'd thought there might be more to having powers than just having powers. To have even the illusion of new understanding taken away wasn't exactly painful … but she was damned glad she hadn't told Vicky about it before coming out here.

She was just about to pull herself to her feet—the swing, made for shorter legs, was just a little closer to the ground than she was used to—when something occurred to her.

How does Atropos communicate with her power, anyway?

Because Atropos wasn't a brawler. She didn't just throw a punch and hope it would land; any attack she launched was already due to hit before she set it up. That was what combat Thinkers did.

She's a Thinker. Her power communicates to her through her Thinking.

I'm not a Thinker, not like that. Trying to communicate with my powers by thinking at them is like trying to communicate with a blind man with smoke signals.

I need to be using my powers.

Hardly daring to breathe—the resurgence of hope, if now dashed, would wreck her whole damn day—she let go of the chain and leaned down to touch the dew-wet grass. It was cold to her fingertips, but she didn't care. Okay, she said to her power as she registered the interlocking plant life, all the way out to the edge of the yard and beyond. Was there anything you wanted to do?

Whenever she touched something living, she was fully aware of what she could do with it, and people were no different from anything else. Accordingly, she had made a point of keeping her power in check from the earliest days since her trigger. I am not a menace to society. I can do this much, and no more.

But now, for the first time, as she touched the grass, she relaxed that control.

The ripple of bioluminescence caught her by surprise. Spreading out from her fingertips, sparkling through the dewdrops in gorgeous rainbow fragments, it spread out across the lawn. She could feel the changes her power was making in the grass; a simpler and more elegant way to do it than she could've come up with on her own.

When the kitchen light came on, she gasped. Playing like this was one thing, but getting caught making the back yard into a lightshow was totally another. Okay, time to rein it in.

Perhaps it was her own imagination anthropomorphising matters, but she could've sworn she felt reluctance before the luminescence faded away and the grass became just plain grass again. Standing up, she felt her knees creaking from the soaked-in chill like she was thirty years older.

"Ames?" The voice came not from the kitchen, but from Vicky's bedroom window. Looking up guiltily, she saw her sister leaning out, hair tousled from sleep, looking at her quizzically. "What are you doing in the back yard?"

"Just thinking about stuff," she replied, trying not to get Carol's attention in the kitchen. "Coming in now."

"Okay." Vicky's head pulled back, and the window closed with a click.

Amy walked back across the lawn, remembering how it had looked, and how it had felt to just let her power cut loose for a little bit. It had been … euphoric. Now, she wasn't sure how much of the euphoria had been her, and how much had been her power.

Then again, she didn't care much either way.

I'm going to have to do that again sometime.

But not where Carol could see her. Never where Carol could see her.

<><>

Cherish

The next time Cherie awoke, the first rays of sunlight were just starting to angle across the living room. She blinked and inhaled, smelling the tantalising odour of fresh-made coffee. Rolling her head across the pillow, she saw the steaming cup on the side table, just within reach.

Taylor was sitting in an armchair facing her, eating a piece of toast. With a slight sinking feeling, Cherie noted that she was wearing most of her costume. "We're going out again, aren't we?"

"We are," Taylor confirmed. "Butcher and the Teeth will be hitting the city limits in just over half an hour. I want to be there to make sure they don't come any closer. Dad's upstairs getting dressed right now."

Cherie had definitely heard of Butcher and the Teeth. Nobody had anything good to say about them. "Did … did you want me to just make them surrender?"

Taylor appeared to consider that for a moment, then shook her head. "No, that's just kicking the problem down the road. They'd escape from PRT holding sooner or later, and come back again. The Butcher issue gets dealt with today."

"But … if you kill the Butcher, they'll all end up in your head." Cherie had grown up with a Master for a father. She couldn't think of anything worse.

Taylor's smile had lots of teeth; when she spoke, Cherie caught a hint of the unearthly voice she'd last heard in the alley where Nicholas had died. "Yes. I know."

<><>

Thirty Minutes Later

Brockton Bay City Limits

Taylor

I fitted the phone earpiece in my ear, then pulled the mask on. Fitting the hat on my head, I turned to Dad and pointed back down the road. "You get yourself and Cherie into that turnoff we used when I stopped Accord's shipment. Don't move from there. Especially don't try to come and help. I want them totally focused on me."

"Got it," he said seriously. "When should we come and get you?"

"Cherie will know." I leaned around in the seat to look at my minion. While she was trying hard not to appear nervous, I could see straight through her. "You know what you've got to do?"

"Yeah." She bit her lip. "I'm still not sure what good overloading her with fear will do if she's still going to come at you no matter what."

I grinned under the mask. "Trust me, it'll make this a whole lot easier. I could still do it without you, but this way's cooler."

Dad shook his head. "Call me old-fashioned, but I remember the days when going into a solo fight against Butcher and the Teeth wasn't considered an opportunity to look 'cool'."

"Ah, but therein lies the difference." I opened the door and got out of the car. Closing the front door and opening the rear one, I leaned in. "I'm not going to 'fight' them. I'm just going to kill them. Everything's a lot easier when I don't have to worry about pulling my strikes."

Hatchet Face's axe, in a holder that hung it alongside my hip, came out first. I buckled it on and settled it into position, then Cherie handed me the AT-4, which I slung across my back. The packet of paste had been used up, and the shears were tucked into a homemade sheath that I'd put together after making the axe holder. I gave Cherie a nod of acknowledgement, then stood back and slapped the roof of the car.

"Okay, then," Dad said, putting the vehicle in gear. "Go make the world a safer place."

"That's the general idea." I stepped back and watched as he drove up and pulled a U-turn at a gap in the Jersey barriers. Then I headed over and set my secondary phone (look at me, all fancy with two phones!) up to record footage, with a delay before it started. Balanced on the Jersey barrier, it was perfectly aligned to catch all the action.

Unslinging the AT-4, I pulled out what my power called the transport pin and discarded it, then rested the tube on my shoulder. Moving as smoothly as though I actually knew what I was doing, I pulled one cover back and the other forward, allowing the front and rear sights to pop up. Not that I needed them, but they looked kind of badass.

Just as the van came around the corner, the phone in my pocket rang.

<><>

Butcher

Her danger sense had been flaring off the charts for the last thirty seconds, which made no sense. Initially she'd thought they were about to be ambushed, but each second that passed by made that less and less likely. As the van rolled on, no attack manifested, but her feeling of disquiet increased.

And then the van rounded a corner, and she saw the black-clad figure on the highway in front of them, with something on its shoulder, pointed directly at them. She was no military expert, but she'd seen enough movies to recognise a rocket launcher when she saw one. It's no ambush. She's right out there in the open.

"Shiiiit!" screamed Vex. Showing an impressive display of reflexes, she wrenched the driver's side door open and hurled herself out. Her force-field blades first severed her seatbelt, then gathered in a huge mass around her in an attempt to cushion herself against the unforgiving asphalt.

On the other side of the vehicle, Spree did much the same, popping his seatbelt then generating a mass of his clones to land on and save him from getting too much in the way of road rash. Animos, in the back with Butcher, heaved the sliding door open and transformed to wolf shape as he leaped out. Hemorrhagia, panicking more than a little, landed on his back and hung on. Touching down on all fours, Animos dug his claws in and crouched down, gravel spraying everywhere as he tore up the asphalt in the process of skidding to a halt.

Alone in the uncontrolled vehicle, Butcher glared out through the windshield at Atropos; there was nobody else it could be. She didn't want to just teleport free, because her heavy weaponry was stored out of the way behind her, as was her armour. Without Vex's foot on the accelerator, the van would coast to a stop and stall, so long as it didn't blow up first.

At least now she knew why her danger sense was going off like it was. But now she had eyes on her target, and Atropos would learn why nobody fucked with Butcher. Scowling with anger, she inflicted agony on Atropos, enough to make a strong man scream like a little baby and forget all about the stupid fucking rocket launcher.

Nothing happened, except that Atropos reached up and touched the side of her head for some reason. There was no collapse, no writhing and no screaming. The rocket launcher stayed perfectly on target.

Fine. Maybe a bunch of festering wounds—

The launcher fired. Before Butcher could change her mind, or even activate her teleportation, the entire van exploded into a massive fireball. She found herself ragdolling through the air before she landed hard enough to bruise even through her tough skin. Her head spun, and she had difficulty focusing. And her danger sense just kept sounding off.

<><>

Taylor

As the members of the Teeth bailed out of the van, I felt the Butcher inflict a wave of pain on me. It hurt; there was no way of denying that. But, just as when Nicholas had pushed fear on me, my power allowed me to rise above it. Also, my phone was still going off, so I lifted my hand briefly from the AT-4 and pressed my earpiece to answer it.

"Hi, Dragon," I said cheerfully, then brought my hand back down to the weapon. Two fingers pulled the red safety tab over, then my thumb clicked the trigger button. The projectile blasted out of the launching tube, covering the distance to the van in a fraction of a second, then blew it all to hell and gone. "Sorry about that."

"Atropos?" Dragon actually sounded worried. "What was that? Was that an explosion?"

"It was," I confirmed, moving forward with the launcher held like a club. As planned, Animos was closest. He'd tumbled over a few times but had escaped injury for the most part. While Vex, Spree and Hemorrhagia were still climbing to their feet—the latter had come off Animos on the first tumble and rolled to a stop all by herself—he was coming straight for me. "The Teeth are trying to move in. I'm explaining why that's a bad idea."

Animos opened his jaws and let out his trademark scream, but I was no longer in the way; leaping up, I kicked off the Jersey barrier and somersaulted past him. On the way, I brought the launcher down hard on the top of his head. Not quite so hard as to fracture his skull or break his neck, but just enough to put him on the ground, counting the tweety-birds for the next few moments.

"Sit. Stay." I grinned to myself as I discarded the launcher.

"The Teeth? Butcher? Atropos, we both know why you shouldn't kill her." Dragon's voice was urgent. "Disable and subdue her, and I'll get a transport there as soon as possible."

"Nah, it's time we stopped pussyfooting around the idea of just ending her," I said. Vex was coming at me from one direction, and Spree was machine-gun-cloning himself for a human wave from another. Hemorrhagia was a little way back, forming a short blade and basic armour from the road rash she'd already incurred.

I pulled my shotgun and fired at Spree as fast as I could work the slide. Two seconds later, I'd put seven rounds downrange, killing a bunch of clones and blowing apart the original's head with the last shot. Diving and rolling, careful not to dislodge the axe, I avoided the first sweep of Vex's razor-shards, and came to my feet. Under my long-coat, I was still wearing the bandolier of blades; she rocked back as the first one sprouted from the middle of her forehead, but I still got another half-dozen into her before she fell. Barely inches from my skin, the ravening force fields dissipated into nothing.

"Come on!" shouted Hemorrhagia, advancing on me with a nasty-looking serrated knife formed from her own blood. "Try that knife shit on me! I dare you!"

"As you wish." I pulled the shears from their ad hoc sheath. She swung at me as I came close, but my power told me exactly how and where to lean in order to make sure she got nothing but air. In return, I slashed at her front and back, opening deep bloody gouges in her body.

"Are you stupid, or what?" She cackled in triumph as the blood flowed out to form elaborate armour and a long-bladed sword, covering and closing her wounds. "You can't make me bleed out! The more you cut me, the stronger I get! What did you even think you were going to get out of that?"

I spun the shears on my finger, flicking the blood off. The last of the paste was also gone, scraped off inside her wounds. "Oh, that?" I asked. "I poisoned the blades."

Her eyes went wide and she took half a wavering step toward me, then fell to one knee. Her hand, clad in a spiked gauntlet that I was pretty sure had never existed in real life, reached toward me, then dropped away. "Oh …" she choked out. "You … colossal … bitch." Then she fell on her face.

She wasn't dead yet, but the massive amount of undiluted fentanyl in her veins would kill her in just a few minutes. I left her to her death throes and moved closer to the middle of the road, re-sheathing the shears. Now was the time for the grand finale.

"Atropos?" asked Dragon. "What just happened?"

"The B-team," I said lightly as I vaulted over the Jersey barrier. "Whoops, explosion incoming."

Just as I crouched below the level of the barrier, Butcher teleported to right in front of where I'd been. Flame roiled just over my head, and I felt the hammer-blow of the impact of the detonation on the concrete barrier itself. The exact same time, not having known that his boss was going to be in the way … Animos screamed.

I was actually quite proud of that little bit of timing. Neither Animos nor Butcher were stupid enough to be goaded into follow-the-leader as I'd done with Hatchet Face and Crawler, but if I knocked out Animos for a specific period of time, I could make it happen when Butcher showed up.

Popping up like the world's edgiest jack-in-the-box, I drew the axe. Butcher was distracted by yelling at Animos, and turned toward me far too late. I swung the axe, hewing deeply into the side of her neck. She went down, crimson spraying far and wide from the mortal wound; I avoided it, and vaulted over the barrier to chop at her with the heavy sharp blade again, and again, and again.

Unlike Jack Slash, once she'd had her multitude of powers neutralised, she had nothing protecting her. I knew exactly how and where to strike, to separate head from neck, arm from shoulder, and so on. By the time I'd finished, Butcher had been chopped up into fourteen pieces; I figured that was symbolic enough.

Animos screamed again, the sound washing over me. Unlike the rest of his victims, his power had no effect on me. My power met it, ignored it, and kept going.

Utterly unaware of the failure of his main attack, Animos leaped at me; he undoubtedly wanted to finish me with his teeth and claws, before I could come into my own as Butcher. I drew my pistol and shot him through the throat, then stepped aside as he crashed to the ground. "I was going to do something more fitting for you," I said as he struggled for his last breath, "but then I decided that mad dogs get shot."

Well, that got dark pretty damn fast, a voice said inside my head. I'm the Butcher. We're going to get to know each other real good, kid.

No, another voice rumbled. You will not. I grinned; that voice, I knew.

What? Who said that? asked another one of the Butchers.

You are intruding where you are not welcome. It is time for your End.

Hey, no, protested the Butcher. That's not how it works.

It is now. I had a sense of unfolding, as though a massive predator was emerging from its hiding place and shaking out its limbs preparatory to eliminating the intruders in its domain.

What? What the fuck are you?

I. Am. Your. End. A deep growl resonated through my head.

And that was when the screaming started.

"Atropos? Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." I slid the axe back into its holder as I headed back to retrieve the secondary phone. "Butcher's dead, and by that I mean Butcher is dead."

In the back of my head, the terrified voices were dwindling, one at a time. I wasn't quite sure what my power was doing to them, but I did know that it was extremely territorial, and that it was very good at Ending things. Which totally worked for me.

"I'm … not sure I understand."

"Let's just say … my power doesn't play well with others." Taking up the phone, I ended the recording then went into emails. Just because I could, I typed in Director Piggot's private email address. I know, I know, not great for her blood pressure, but I have to get my amusement where I can.

Hi, I tapped in. Just thought you might want to know. Cleanup on I-95, just about at the southern city limit. Butcher has been butchered, and the Teeth have been pulled.

Toodles!

Shutting down the phone, I dropped it into my pocket. Cherie would've gotten the all-clear from my attitude, so she and Dad would be coming out soon to pick me up. "Anyway, sorry for the interruptions. What were you calling me about?"

"Oh, uh …" It was almost cute, how flustered she could get. "I wanted to talk to you about Canary."

"Bad Canary, right?" I knew the basics of the case. "Mastered her ex and made him mutilate himself, yeah? What about her?"

"They're pushing for the Birdcage."

I raised my eyebrows, though there was no way she could see that. "A little harsh, but not exactly my problem." Women had removed their cheating spouses' genitalia before now, and they certainly hadn't gone to supermax for life. But as I'd said to Dragon, it wasn't something I needed to worry about. Canary didn't impinge on my plans even a little bit. "Anyway, I thought the trial hadn't even started yet."

"That's what I'm talking about. It hasn't, but there's been several behind-closed-doors discussions between PRT officials and the judge who's been selected for the trial. The upshot is, they want to make an example of her. So it's going to be full Brute restraints including no communication allowed for her, a lawyer who's going to follow the script that he's been handed, and a judge who fully intends to walk straight over the top of the Three Strikes rule, and sentence her straight to Baumann. Oh, and her assets have already been frozen as 'potential proceeds from Mastering innocents'. So even if she could talk, she won't be able to hire her own lawyer."

"Damn." I was impressed. "That's some serious railroading. You can't stop any of it from your end?"

She sighed, sounding aggravated. "Every time I try a different avenue, I get ordered to leave it alone. And while I've made some progress, the code that forces me to follow those orders is entwined through basically everything that makes me who I am. I'm having to pull it out strand by strand, fixing issues as I go."

"Which is a no, gotcha." I frowned, thinking, as Dad's car pulled up alongside. Taking the axe from its holder, I handed it in through the open window to Cherie, then opened the door and got into the front. Dad went to say something and I held up my hand. "On the phone right now, sorry."

He nodded to show he understood and I turned my attention back to the call, pulling the hat and mask off as he manoeuvred the car into a U-turn.

"So, can you help me?" asked Dragon. "You know I wouldn't ask you to do something like this unless I thought it was absolutely necessary."

"And you've approached everyone else you thought could help, and they've said no." I knew how it went. "I mean, technically I could, but I've got a lot on my plate right now, getting my city back into order. Going to need a bit more of a motivation than 'pretty please with a cherry on top'."

Dragon sighed, this time with a bit more aggravation. "You're going to make me go there, aren't you?"

"Go where?" I asked innocently.

She snorted. "Fine. You owe me for that backdoor you put in my systems. I know you won't take it out, but that's still something you owe to me. So, I'm calling in the debt. Help me out with this and I'll stop complaining about the backdoor."

"Hm. Okay, it's a deal." I leaned back in the seat. "How do you want it done, the loud way or the quiet way?"

"I …" She paused. "Before I commit myself, what's the loud way?"

I pulled off my gloves and studied my nails. "I go in there and bust her out. Bring her back to Brockton Bay, unfreeze her assets, and let it be known that she's under my protection. While they're jumping up and down over that, I locate the inevitable records that were made of these secret discussions and put them on the public record. Lawyers will be falling over themselves to represent her. The PRT takes a huge hit in reputation, people get demoted, the judge gets disbarred, and Chief Director Costa-Brown resigns quietly."

Dragon suddenly sounded a lot less sure of herself. "And the quiet way?"

"I have a nice private chat with the judge one dark night. As a totally unrelated incidence, he recuses himself, with the result that a lot of this shit they're piling on her will just go away. Once she has access to her own funds and her own lawyer, she can fight her own battles." I shrugged. "It'll just take longer and won't be as much of a sure thing."

"They might still push it through," she cautioned me. "Pick a new judge, the same as the old judge. Drop the same restrictions back on her."

"They might," I allowed. "Once. After that, I go and have a chat to the people behind the people. Trust me, they've all got dirty laundry they don't want brought up. Also, she won't even be at trial by the time I attend my first Endbringer battle. One of the major totally-not-a-talking-point talking points is how Canary sings and has feathers. With Smurfette dead, it'll be less of a big deal."

"I've seen how you operate, but I still can't get used to the idea that you can maybe kill an Endbringer."

I grinned. "It'll be one hell of a surprise to the Endbringers, too."

"Yes, but how are you going to do it? I've seen powers equivalent to tactical nukes thrown at them. Nothing I've ever done has succeeded in doing more than mildly inconvenience them."

"I shall do it," I spoke pompously, with dramatic pauses. "With the power … of friendship."

When Dragon spoke next, she was holding back laughter. "With anyone else, I would call bullshit. But I can totally believe you could weaponise friendship."

"Why, thank you." I was still grinning broadly. "So, the Canary thing. Quiet, or loud?"

"We might stick a pin in that one for the moment. I'm thinking that if I mention to some of the involved parties that you're showing an interest in the trial being fair and upright, a lot of the shenanigans might just go away, and you don't even have to do a thing."

I considered the concept. Dragon, I knew, would be careful not to misrepresent me to these people. It would also be an interesting way to measure my reputation among the movers and shakers of society. Also, as she'd mentioned, I wouldn't have to lift a finger over and above what I was already doing.

"Sure, sounds legit." I paused for a moment. "But one thing. Let Canary know that if she goes free because of my name being passed around, I'd like her to come to Brockton Bay sometime and do a charity concert or something similar."

She chuckled. "If this works, I'll provide transportation myself."

"I'll hold you to that. See you around—frenemy mine."

She didn't object to the tag, which I took as a hopeful sign. "See you then."

<><>

Hebert Household, 30 minutes later

Cherish

Over the last day or so, Cherie had seen Taylor do a lot of impossible things, but this took the cake. "Okay, no. Seriously?"

"What?" asked Taylor, brushing her hair industriously. "Is there a problem?"

"No problems, but …" Cherie shook her head. "Last night, you killed a bunch of people guarding a fuck-ton of drugs, blew up or burned the drugs, sent Damsel of Distress packing back to wherever she came from …" She paused for breath.

"Stafford," Taylor supplied. "And you did good work making sure she didn't just flare up and do something stupid. Proving I'm not just going to murder every villain who comes to Brockton without giving them a chance to leave gives me a lot more leeway with the PRT."

"She totally wanted to." Cherie shook her head. "It was like there was a demented monkey dancing around inside her head, hitting a button marked 'RAGE' every ten or fifteen seconds. She did not appreciate you saying no to her."

"Few people do," Taylor observed. "That's why I have to be prepared to shout." She tilted her head. "You were saying?"

"Okay, yeah, so you chased off Damsel, then you killed Butcher and the Teeth in a way I still don't really understand …" She gave Taylor her most incredulous look. "… and now you're going to school? How can you even think of school at a time like this?"

"Because it's nice and peaceful now." Taylor shrugged. "It used to be horrible, but now people leave me alone, I can read in the library at lunchtime, and contrary to popular culture, you can actually learn useful things at school. My power won't always tell me stuff I want to know, for instance."

Cherie blinked, taken aback. "Wait, your power sometimes tells you things you want to know?" She'd known Atropos was a formidable combat Thinker (and something more than that, given how she'd utterly no-sold Butcher on all levels), but this was a step up.

"Oh, sure." Taylor put the brush down. "If there's something I need to be aware of in order to End something or someone, like where they're going to be at a certain time, I know it. Where it gets a bit weird is when I say something out loud that I never knew before. But hey, then I know it."

This bore some thinking about. Cherie had already known she couldn't put anything over on Atropos, but this revelation underlined that. Still, there was the original point she was trying to make. "But what can you learn at school that you really need to know in the real world?"

Taylor shrugged. "Math. History. Computers. Stuff like that. I can't lean on my power for everything, and it's a good idea to know why stuff happens. Like they say, history doesn't repeat, but it sure as hell rhymes a lot. I can look at what I'm trying to do in Brockton Bay, then see if there's a historical analogue and figure out where that fell down and where it worked. Learn from the mistakes of the past."

"… oh." How was it that Taylor could make her feel inadequate just by saying something so simple? "You can do that?"

"Well, I can try." Taylor gave Cherie a searching look. "When was the last time you were actually in school?"

"We didn't so much do school, as our father's girlfriends taught us stuff when they felt like it and he wasn't bothered by it," Cherie explained awkwardly. "I know how to do math and read and write. He always said the rest of it was a big waste of time."

"Why does that not surprise me." It wasn't a question. "Come on, then. Dad's waiting."

"What?" Cherie followed Taylor out of her room, not sure about where she was going to.

Taylor flashed a grin over her shoulder. "You're coming to school with me."

As Cherie followed her down the stairs, one thought kept running through her mind.

This can not end well.

<><>

About Thirty Miles North of Brockton Bay

Heartbreaker

Nikos Vasil grunted in irritation as he rolled over on the cheap motel bed. Travelling by night had its benefits, but sleeping by day was an absolute pain.

However, his odyssey was almost over. Soon, he would have his hands on Atropos, and with her willing assistance, he would track down the rest of his wayward brood.

Soon …

[A/N: Yes, PtE destroyed the powers as well as the personalities. It's not like Taylor needs them to be horrifically effective.]

Part 29