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I stabbed my shovel into the dirt, the wet soil giving way for the rusted blade. Deep into the skin of the earth it sank but I ran out of strength only half way. The shovel sticking out of the ground like a signpost. If I gave up and walked away now, I was reasonably confident that the shovel would stay upright.
I had a bad day today, Emma made jabs, verbal attacks that each day, slowly eroded my defenses and will, I could feel the walls chipping and threatening to tumble. I wasn’t sure how long it would take for my self restraint to fail. How many more days like this could I withstand before I lashed out suddenly and violently?
The locker was one thing but continuing with the bullying even after I got back from the psyche ward…
I gave up hope that my old friend was in there a long time ago.
Now I was just trying not to break.
It’s why I was here now, why I was removing the ground of the forest by Captains Hill. I was digging her grave.
Not just hers, but Sophia’s, Madison’s, Julia’s- fuck, anyone really.
It wasn’t an actual grave for them, I wasn’t planning on doing anything, it was more of a thought exercise, something to work out my frustrations on whenever I had a bad day. The catharsis of imagining the power I would have over my tormentors as they begged me for mercy combined with the physical effort of exerting myself.
It wasn’t hurting anyone.
It was preventing me from hurting anyone.
Win-win.
The sun was setting over the horizon, orange rays bouncing off the stale waves of the Bay, illuminating the floating base in a halo of burning sky.
There was something to be envious of when it came to heroes. They had power, they had money, they had fame. People loved them, all for the cost of bodily harm and what seemed like one bad day. The bodily harm thing could be easily solved by Panacea these days and I’d had my fair share of bad days.
It was so easy to slip into loathing when it came to parahumans, to capes. It just seemed so… freeing. They had it all and yet some people still chose to make the world a worse place.
Maybe I was being uncharitable, maybe some of them snapped the way I struggled against. I’d heard about monster capes, shunned by the world, unable to live a normal life. I could see how easy it would be to go down that path.
But I wasn’t a monster cape, I was Taylor Hebert, social pariah, ugly, average, unimpressive. Disliked. I didn’t have the power to level buildings or bring others under my whims. I was a teenage girl with a shovel digging a hole at 6pm.
So that's what I continued to do, levering dirt out of the ground and picking out rocks from my path downwards. It wasn’t particularly big right now, it looked less like a pit and more like an upside down cone just large enough for me to stick my leg into. I’d really need to work on widening the hole.
“What are you doing?” a voice called, I whirled around, bringing my shovel up between me and the figure like a weapon. It wouldn’t really stop someone like Lung or Purity or any parahuman or anything that actually wanted to get me but it was that little bit of extra security.
A couple trees away was a girl, hair cut short seemingly more out of convenience than any sort of fashion statement. She wore dirty cargo pants, small holes and tears pockmarked the fabric. Around her shoulders was an oversized shirt with a worn out and peeling Legend print, similarly damaged.
Around her fist was wrapped a chain that connected to the collars of two dogs. I didn’t know enough about dog breeds to comfortably identify them, but one resembled a Rottweiler. She was out walking her dogs.
The lines of a snarl held to her face despite her expression only showing a sort of confused disinterest.
She looked exactly like the type of person who might beat me up and felt a small rush of vindication. And then I remembered that she asked me a question.
“Digging a hole?” It was more a question, and I immediately felt a little stupider for not sounding as confident as I wanted but she didn’t seem to pick up on it- or if she did, she didn’t care.
“Why?” she asked, blunt and demanding.
“Oh- I- uh, I had a bad day” I stammered, she just stared at me as though telling me to elaborate “the digging is supposed to make me feel better”
She made a sound in her throat like a hum “okay”
—
Together we worked at the hole, her on her hands and knees scooping dirt away with her hands and getting the dogs to contribute too. I had her work on widening the hole for the moment and she didn’t seem to mind me telling her what to do.
Initially I asked her if she’d had a bad day, curiosity had gotten the better of me but she just snorted and ignored me, going back to clawing at the dirt so I’d just taken that as a sign she didn’t want to talk about it so I ignored her.
“Teammates yelled at me today” she started in a low voice, like she didn’t want me to hear “fucking stupid”
I was caught off guard, she didn’t seem like a team player.
“Yeah?” I replied in a similar tone of voice to her, not wanting to scare her off, if that makes sense. I kept shovelling away, acting almost like I didn’t care or like it wasn’t a big deal.
She grunted and continued “didn’t want to split the money more so I scared off some girl”
That… didn’t sound great. She gave off the energy of someone in the business of violence and in a world of heroes and villains, even the most unassuming person could be a major threat. Despite myself, I couldn’t stop my imagination running away.
“What’s the team for?” my mind was going in a certain direction and slowly, I felt the creeping tension climb in my chest and a new type of perspiration on my brow.
“Boss gives us jobs, breaking into casinos and stuff”
I swallowed, not entirely sure how I was supposed to act. This stranger just admitted to being a criminal. I should be calling the police or something?
I wasn’t struck through the heart with a lance of fear, there was no panic. This stranger was perfectly fine though a little rough around the edges.
She wasn’t trying to kill me or anything.
Besides, what could I even do to her?
I held out a hand, intending for a handshake but balled it into a fist when I saw the awkward angle we were at.
“I’m Taylor”
“Rachel” she bumped my fist with her own.
—
The next time I came to the hole, Emma had dragged up things I told her in my most vulnerable moments. How I’d confessed how truly fragile I was after Mom’s crash. She’d taken it and sharpened it, letting it slip between my ribs with ease.
It hadn’t even been 2 days since I last went to the hole. I’d left school early and stayed the entire day.
I didn’t expect to see Rachel again, but there she was, coming down a small path in the distance.
Her head turned and she saw me, she altered her path and made a beeline for me. Together we wordlessly dug, panting and sweating. We didn’t need to talk, that wasn’t the point of the hole, but it would be nice.
So I’d asked her about her day to not much response. I tried again but about her team, she’d just called them annoying and went back to digging.
Together we expanded the hole just large enough for me to stand in, though not quite big enough for her.
Then she left to go do crime or something and I went back home to deal with my thoughts.
—
I returned to the hole whenever school got too much, or whenever I needed to get my mind off of the events of the day. Which meant I was digging daily. It was becoming something of a routine at this point.
Rachel wasn’t there everyday, but she was there a lot. She was slowly becoming someone I thought of almost as a- an acquaintance I think. Together we could fit inside the hole with a little bit of squeeze but we didn’t mind the proximity, we’d gotten used to it. It made the days where she wasn’t here a little rougher. It wasn’t as though I missed her, more like it felt a little emptier. I enjoyed her presence. It made me feel a bit more secure.
Safety in numbers and such.
I was alone today.
Rachel had gone off to do whatever she does to pass the time, probably training the ever growing number of dogs she had.
So I was left with the crunching of dirt as I displaced it and the ringing thoughts in my head.
Crunch went the shovel as I drove it down. Over my shoulder I threw the particulates.
Crunch went the shovel. Again I discarded the debris.
Crunch crunch crunch. Each sound coinciding with rusted metal parting soil and grinding against tiny rocks.
Crunch- I pushed the shovel in. Crunch- I threw the dirt over my shoulder.
It took me a moment to realise that the sound didn’t match the action.
The dirt was supposed to crunch when I dug, not when I threw.
It took me a moment longer to notice that the crunch came from outside the hole. I raised my head and spotted a woman in a Cornell T-shirt and jeans walking toward me, a heavy looking backpack strung over one shoulder.
Cornell had been in the news lately if I remembered correctly. Something about bombs.
I discarded the thought and focused on the woman. She looked Asian or at least mixed. She wasn’t pretty, at least not in a way that you might attribute to some of the girls at Winslow. She struck me as someone who was more academically minded- I’d hesitate to say ‘nerd’ because of the associations the Trio had given the phrase but she certainly appeared as someone you’d expect to stay in working on some crazy science project rather than going out to parties. Her jet black hair was tied into a bun, she had pale blue eyes, thin lips with a nose that lent more clues to her caucasian half.
She swung the bag around to her front and started to unzip it without breaking stride. The ingrained response of being a resident of Brockton Bay was to panic, to assume she was pulling out a weapon. Because logically, that’s what someone would do.
I couldn’t throw the shovel particularly far and I wasn’t one of those people who could deflect bullets like you see on TV. So in that short moment, my mind reached out and grasped for the closest thing to logic it could find.
“Do you go to Cornell?” I asked, surprising myself with how normal I sounded. Not even a note of anxiety in my voice, completely unconcerned with this stranger.
She paused and stopped midway through unzipping the bag “I used to, yeah? Why?” she wasn’t as capable of hiding her emotions, confusion written across her face, brows furrowed. She had a hint of a Boston accent, likely grew up there.
I said nothing and gestured to her shirt.
She looked down at herself as though she’d forgotten she’d been wearing it “So?”
I hesitated for a moment, trying to think of a reason to keep the conversation going. “I’m thinking about college soon, I heard Cornell was good.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, but it wasn’t as though we could afford anything outside of Brockton Bay “You seem smart, why did you choose Cornell?” I continued
She seemed thrown off for a moment, good “It’s the best- almost the best.” she suddenly scowled as she corrected herself “they thought they were good, but everyone makes mistakes, everyone but me that is”
“It’s pretty close to Boston right?”
She frowned “are you stupid? Have you ever even looked at a map? It’s a 7 hour drive. Why? Got family there? don’t bother with them, it's pointless, you’ll forget about them when you get older” she kept interrupting herself with a new train of thought, a new statement.
“I don’t think so-” I tried to protest her point about family but she cut me off.
“The fuck do you mean ‘you don’t think so’?” she put on an imitation of my voice “it
is
a 7 hour drive, that’s a fact. If you can’t accept that then maybe you shouldn’t be thinking about Cornell- scratch that, maybe you shouldn’t get your hopes up with college at all”
“I don’t think I’d forget about my family.” I bit back, she recoiled slightly at my tone “my mom passed away a couple years back and I haven't forgotten her yet, I don’t intend to, everything I do it in service of her memory”
The older girl’s expression softened slightly, whether in pity or in guilt I couldn’t be sure. Maybe neither, maybe I was misreading her. It didn’t last long, she steeled her gaze and stomped over to me and sat herself on the lip of the hole, legs hanging off into the dip.
“What’s the deal with the hole? Burying someone?” she grinned, baring teeth. I shook my head.
“No, it’s something of a therapeutic thing. Do something physical to get my mind off of stuff, it helps. I got a friend-” the word caught in my throat for a moment “-who joins in sometimes”
“Hmm” she considered me, eyeing me up and down as though she needed to judge me “you been at it for a while?”
I gestured at the size of the hole. It was at the size where we needed to dig in little foot and hand holds to get in and out.
“I’m here every day normally. You’re welcome to join in if you ever feel like it” I’d grown used to the company, it wouldn’t be so bad to have another body down here with me.
She gave me a look of incredulity “yeah, sure, I’ll bring my own shovel if ever do” she dismissed.
I wasn’t entirely convinced she was being sarcastic but she got to her feet and left.
—
Together, me and Rachel managed to widen the hole to something she could lie down in. I had to tuck my head in if I wanted to do it but we were making some real progress with the hole. It had taken just over 2 weeks but I was getting real satisfied with the state of it.
We’d gotten to talking, something I’d learned she wasn’t super keen on. I could relate. It was mainly her just foul mouthing her teammates. Namely a ‘Lisa’. She seemed like an asshole, always needling, always sticking her nose into things.
Typical villain behaviour I supposed. It also didn’t take very much research to find out that the Rachel who helped me dig a hole was the same Rachel who was also known as ‘Hellhound’. A parahuman, a scary one at that with the whole dogs from hell business.
I’d asked her about it but she just called me a bitch.
I was back at the hole on Monday. Madison had thrown juice on me during lunch while I tried to hide in the bathroom. I’d tried to stick it out for the rest of the day but it was the little things that were wearing away at me. The smaller aggressions, the pencil shavings in my hair, the glue on my seat, the ‘accidental’ shoves in the hallway.
Leaving school early was becoming something of a habit for me at this point. Mom would be disappointed but she also never had to deal with the likes of Emma, or Sophia, or Madison. It was so fucking frustrating! What was I supposed to do!
I saw the Cornell girl again. She seemed equally frustrated, she trudged towards me, baseball cap tilted down, hair in a ponytail, muted colours and baggy clothing like she was hiding. To my surprise she’d actually brought a shovel albeit in pieces. It was one of those ‘tactical’ ones that screwed together and had a bunch of extra features that all sucked on their own like a ruler and a compass and stuff.
“Nice to see you again” I didn’t smile but I gave a sort of nod of acknowledgement when she dropped into the hole. She set her jaw and then jumped into the hole.
“So, how does this work?” she asked, assembling her tool with practiced skill “got some kind of rule or system I should know about?”
I thought about it for a moment “No, not really. Just don’t smack each other with the shovel and it usually takes two to get out of the hole. Right now I’m working on digging a flatter incline so we can get out easier” I held out a hand “Taylor.”
“Alice.” she grasped it tightly like she was trying to show off.
Alice wasn’t as diligent or as strong as Rachel. She took breaks, she talked, she ranted really. The basis of the conversation was mainly around her coworkers and boss, she didn’t particularly like him I gathered. She thought him ‘a moron content with second place’. She went on and on about how controlling yet vague her boss was and how she’d never have joined him in the first place if she knew how lazy he was.
It didn’t take long for her to let slip enough for me to piece together that she might not be the most law-abiding citizen and given her attitude and general demeanor towards who I assumed was Lung, that she was a cape.
It put our initial interaction in a different light but frankly my ability to care was slipping day by day. I was already fraternizing with one wanted criminal, what was another?
I didn’t treat her any differently. I ranted and complained and vented all my frustrations with school and the trio and Dad. She listened, occasionally commenting here or there relatively unhelpful things like framing them or taking revenge. All things I was generally trying to avoid giving in to by digging the hole in the first place.
It was nice.
I didn’t realise just how much I missed talking to someone. Even if she was most definitely a supervillain.
The only issue was that I wasn’t sure whether she’d kill me or not if she found out that I knew. She didn’t seem all there most of the time, something she shared with Rachel.
“Fuck me, I feel way better” she patted me on the back “thanks, Curly” she’d taken to calling me ‘curly’ on account of my hair. It didn’t bother me enough for me to protest but it reminded me uncomfortably of school.
We were done for the day and she’d thrown a handful of hundred dollar bills at me. An eye watering amount of money for someone just be casually carrying with them, it only served to further confirm my suspicions.
“What’s this for?” I asked cautiously, was this hush money, was she telling me she knew that I knew?
“Payment, usually shrinks get paid for this shit, you deserve something for putting up with me for…” she checked her wrist, which was conspicuously devoid of a watch, at that realisation she looked up at the sky as though the position of the sun could tell her the time “like 4 hours”
“Thanks…?” I wasn’t sure whether this was a trap or not
“Eh, don’t worry about it, get yourself something nice” she gestured to my dirty clothes. With that she climbed out of the hole and waltzed off.
I was left with too much money someone who could barely fend off school bullies should be carrying.
—
The next time I saw an unfamiliar face at the hole was just after a ‘session’ with Alice. New girl looked just a little bit older than myself, somewhere between pretty and plain but leaning more towards pretty. She had a sprinkle of freckles across her nose and cheeks and wore the single most punchable smile I’d ever seen. It was a mixture of Emma’s ‘I know something about you’ grin and Sophia’s malicious glee.
I was immediately on edge. She seemed to pick up on that because her stance changed immediately and she dropped the smile.
I didn’t even bother waiting for her to introduce herself, she seemed to know where I was which meant someone told her and Alice hadn’t described someone that fit the description of New girl, which meant it was Rachel’s ‘Lisa’.
That meant she was also a villain, Tattletale if I remembered correctly. I’d bought another shovel with the money Alice had given me. Just in case Rachel ever wanted to use it. She never did but it felt like a waste to return it so I just offered it to Lisa, handle first.
She took it with a mixture of confusion and exasperation.
“I’m Taylor, Rachel comes here sometimes whenever she needs to work off some stress. You’re welcome to come here too at any time, I’m here every day.” I introduced myself
“Oh- I’m Lisa…” something told me she was used to being in charge of the flow of conversation “so, what are we doing here?”
“We’re digging a hole” I deadpanned
And just as the same had happened twice before, we got to digging. She got the hang of it pretty quickly, she was better than Alice but Rachel still blew them both out of the water.
I think I started getting the hang of letting people open up because she cracked about 2 hours in. The first two hours were filled with mainly questions but now she was talking about herself.
I wasn’t convinced that a large portion of it was particularly true but unlike both Alice and Rachel before her, she didn’t let very much slip.
She knew how to run her mouth. She liked it, that much I could tell. But it was far more of a back and forth, she wanted a dialogue so I provided. Much like Alice she wanted to seem like the smartest one around but there was far more restraint to it, I’d almost call it subtlety. She kept dropping occasional details that she shouldn’t know or questions that alluded to the fact she knew more than she let on.
It ticked me off a little bit but I entertained her. She was at the hole and so I would treat her no different.
But all things come to an end and Lisa grew tired so she parted with a farewell. She’d toned herself down near the end, appearing far less performative than when she’d first arrived but she wasn’t completely comfortable with me yet. I’d told her to come back at any time and she’d given me a genuine, warm smile. One not of design but rather of emotion.
She’d left comfortable and it fuelled me. I liked it. I wanted to make others feel comfortable, feel safe. I wanted to let them be vulnerable in a way I couldn’t.
I hoped she’d come back at some point.
—
The hole was really something sizable now. We’d taken a small break from depth and started working on width, on breadth. It was something you could actually walk around in, a room almost. Soon we’d have to deal with the trees and the roots but it was really something comfortable down here. It was cooler in the shade of the tree canopies and walls around us. Lisa had come around to ‘check in on me’ every now and then but I was pretty sure she just liked being able to vent. It occurred to me that I should probably start bringing things that my companions might like, things like snacks or a thermos of tea. Sure, they’d all figured out that it was probably a good idea to have water on them but only Rachel ever had food on her and it was usually for the dogs.
I might have to ask them for suggestions next time I saw them, Lisa had given me the perfect place to store these things. A small wooden lockbox that I could shove in the corner of the hole. It was just large enough to use as a step but small enough that it could be carried around.
As I climbed out of the hole I saw some commotion happening at the edge of the treeline. Someone was running in a way that didn’t indicate a hobby. It was panicked, frantic running.
Someone was being chased.
Without thinking I jumped back down into the hole, grabbed the shovel and sprinted after them. As I got closer it became clear that the person being chased was small, young. Behind her were a group of 5 men in tactical gear. I didn’t get a chance to see if they had guns as I swung the shovel straight into the head of one guy.
He dropped like a puppet with cut strings. Off.
—
I was panting and bruised and frankly not enjoying my senses. With help from ‘Dinah’ I’d managed to barely sneak out some semblance of a win from that fight. I’d never been in a real fight before, it was fucking terrifying. Why did capes do this?
Speaking of Capes, I’d called the PRT, apparently the guys were attempting to kidnap Dinah for her powers. Fucking- who does that? Disgusting, I was tempted to go over and hit them with the shovel again but I heard the sounds of the PRT sirens getting closer.
Dinah was clinging to me like driftwood at sea and frankly I didn’t intend to let her go. She wasn’t okay, that much was clear. She was shaking and shivering and twitching. Apparently her powers came with headaches if she overused them and I could
see
the effects of it. I felt for her.
The sound of a souped up motorcycle dopplered towards us. A beast of a vehicle only matched by the figure riding it. 6 and a half feet of midnight blue power armour of the best Tinker this side of America, a man featured in every protectorate poster. Armsmaster.
He regarded me with suspicion at first “are you Taylor Hebert?” he asked. It was the name I’d given to the person on the other end of the PRT helpline phone call. It was my name.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak without my voice cracking. I’d long gotten over my hero worship phase but that didn’t mean anything when the real deal was right here in front of me. And he knew my name.
“It’s a brave thing you did” he approached me, giving a smile that made me sure he was popular with girls, a perfect ratio of teeth and lips. With a hand out he offered me a domino mask “for your identity.”
“Oh- I’m, I’m not a parahuman” I corrected him shakily.
“Very well, that only serves to make what you did today even braver. Still, you should take it, it would be too easy for someone to mistake you for one and approach you in public with ill intentions”
I swallowed and took it.
He got on one armoured knee, getting roughly eye level with Dinah “how are you feeling Miss Alcott?”
She just trembled, unable to muster up words.
“I’m here to take you home” he gave her a gentle smile and instead of responding she practically jumped onto him, gripping into his armour with everything she had left in her, slowly, soft sobs escaped her.
That’s when it hit me.
I saved someone.
I did something heroes do.
Me, Taylor Hebert, Punching bag of Winslow high.
I went home that day feeling like someone else.
—
“Wow- Taylor, I mean that’s incredible” I was going to have to tell Dad about the money at some point. I was making enough that it would make a noticeable impact on bills.
Initially I’d thought about just slipping the bills into his wallet when he wasn’t looking but that just seemed ridiculous in retrospect. So I’d taken advantage of the high I was riding from the day to tell him. I’d chicken out otherwise.
“And you trust them?” He asked. I wasn’t sure whether he’d freak out about his daughter meeting random strangers in the woods to dig a hole but clearly he saw things differently. Either that or the money changed his mind but he never was the type of person to place money above morals.
“I mean… they trust me” I replied, I appreciated them certainly but I wasn’t sure I trusted anyone anymore.
“I’m glad you’ve found a healthy outlet, I’m happy that you’re happy.” He smiled that tired Dad smile “I’m proud of you kiddo” and then he hugged me in a way he hadn’t since Mom died.
—
It was a couple weeks by now, a couple of the other members of the Undersiders, Lisa and Rachel’s team, had shown up every now and then but they didn’t stay particularly long, just trying it out. Brian seemed to like it but he had schedules and couldn’t spend as much time here as others. Alec just… didn’t care for it.
At one point someone who I was maybe 60% sure was Uber or maybe Leet showed up. They talked a lot about video games and other media but I couldn’t be sure.
Approaching the edge of the pit where I spent my days I spotted conspicuous blue power armour. Armsmaster was here and he wasn’t alone. Dinah’s small head appeared from behind the lip of the hole, her light brown mop falling over her face, she brushed the strands away revealing a pretty nasty bruise on her cheek and I noticed a handful of bandages on her arms and face.
“What brings you here?” I asked, slightly wary of the hero by her side. Paranoia told me that he’d somehow figured out I was fraternizing with criminals and I was suddenly going to be whisked away from a soft bed and warm meals to some prison where my Dad would have to peer through glass to talk to me only to go home and waste away in an empty house.
She looked at Armsmaster, who turned his head to her and nodded a silent agreement “I wanted to thank you, Armsmaster is here for my protection” she started to climb in “I just wanted to know, why do you have the hole in the first place?”
I sighed “the hole is catharsis, it’s something physical to do while I stew on my thoughts. It has a decent bit of problem solving involved and every now and then someone comes by, they talk about their issues and I offer my 2 cents” I planted the shovel in the ground so that it would stay put “I’m no shrink but I’ve talked to a handful of capes and they like me enough to keep coming back”
It was Armsmaster who reacted the most to that, his face contorted into an unreadable expression without his eyes. Maybe confusion? I wasn’t sure.
“Who…?” he questioned, dragging it out with suspicion. I just shrugged, I didn’t really feel like answering a whole load of his questions unless he got involved.
“You’re welcome to come by any time, I’m here every day usually after 3pm but some days I’m here earlier”
“Well, I’m here now” Dinah looked down at her feet sheepishly, I just smiled and offered her the shovel I was using then took the spare one propped up against the wall near the lockbox.
“Armsmaster, you’re welcome to join in too if you’d like” I didn’t seriously expect him to take me up on the offer, but maybe one day…
“I’d rather not” he replied “I should stay on the lookout just in case whoever wants Dinah is still… around”
I just nodded and together me and Dinah started digging.
“How are your parents taking it?” I asked
“The powers or the kidnapping” she responded, I didn’t expect her to be so blunt about it but I supposed trying to tiptoe around the topic would get tiring.
“Both, but let’s start with the powers”
“They didn’t believe me” she groaned “at least at first, it took Armsmaster personally showing up at our doorstep to convince them and even now they’re skeptical”
“But…?”
“But they’re setting things up, a business, a question for a price, a set amount per day” she sighed, she didn’t sound particularly pleased, maybe she was tired or maybe it was just more draining than I thought.
“Is that what you want?”
“I mean… I don’t want to be a cape. I want to be a normal girl, I want to go to school and not have to deal with crippling headaches. I don’t want to be a target of kidnapping I want to sit in my room and complain about stupid things like boys or homework” she huffed
“I can understand that, the desire to have a standard life, one that you assume everyone else has.” I reassured “but I don’t think that will be possible for you right now, you can still live a happy and fulfilling life, it just won’t be the most typical one”
“What, like dressing up in bright colours and punching criminals?”
Armsmaster turned his head slightly
“If that’s what you want” she made a face “nobody’s forcing you to do it, you don’t have to. People like Parian exist. What better way to figure out your place in a world of capes than an organisation filled with them” I gestured to Armsmaster “though he might be a little biased”
The conversation continued for about an hour until Armsmaster was requested back at the big floating base of the PHQ. We touched on all kinds of topics from the definition of parahuman to speculation on the origin of powers.
I waved goodbye to her and went back to digging. She was a good kid, I wished her the best.
—
Armsmaster had come to the hole under the pretenses of ‘vetting me’ whatever that meant. It turns out he had a whole bundle of issues that I picked at until it dripped like a very soggy jenga tower.
I’d told him I didn’t even want to talk to him unless he grabbed a shovel and started digging when he first arrived. He disappeared for most of the day and I’d honestly thought he’d decided to give up, maybe he found my tone rude or something but it felt wrong. If he wanted to take part in the hole then he’d be welcome to but if he was just going to talk down to me from up above then I’d have to turn him away.
We’d given each other the most intense stare I think we could muster and eventually he caved and had returned with his halberd looking slightly different. It transformed, that much I knew from the posters and merchandising but into what was the gimmick.
It transformed into a shovel of course.
It was a permanent fixture within his signature weapon. Pride was a sin and I was going to hell for it but being able to talk to a figure with eyes on him in such a way felt powerful. And the fact he’d integrated it into his identity, his image, I could only hope it suggested that he planned to come back in the future.
He sunk his weapon deep into the ground, splitting a rock on the way in. I watched as he did it, I saw his stance, the way he held it with practiced control. He was a Tinker, he trained, he fought, he created. But without his equipment, he was powerless, another human in a world of superhumans.
It made sense he’d work on himself, push his muscles and his mind to the limit. He had to. The motors and mechanisms in his suit whirred and hissed imperceptibly as he worked the ground further. He let out a small grunt as he threw the dirt.
I let him ask his questions.
He had a few, many were well thought out but others were clearly a ploy to get me to tell him about the other Capes. I refused. It felt wrong to expose the secrets of another person who took part in the hole.
The conversation steered left and right, whenever I tried to get him to open up he expertly shot me down and whenever he tried to make ground on my own personal life I simply didn’t give him room.
“This is going nowhere” he decided. I expected him to give up and leave but he didn’t. He wasn’t an idiot, that much was clear. “I propose a trade, this is about trust and neither of us trust the other”
“I wouldn’t say that, I trust you.” I said quietly. I didn’t need to be forceful with him. He wasn’t Rachel.
“Do you?” he sounded doubtful. I knew he had some kind of lie detector in his helmet, at several points during our conversation he was able to discern lies about things he logically shouldn’t be able to confirm. Maybe he simply didn’t expect a ‘truth’ from his detector.
“I do” my shovel bounced off of a rock. I couldn’t keep up with the hero, his power armour let him go for as long as he needed, faster than I could. In a single scoop he could go further than I could in three and he’d be back before I’d even finished discarding the dirt of the first. “You’re a capable hero, I respect you, but I could hate you and I’d treat you no different as long as you’re here”
I walked over to the wall of the hole where the ground started to slope upwards. There was a tree in the way and we couldn’t move it. Alice had suggested using some kind of explosive to clear it away but I shot that down immediately. It would mess up the hole. I wanted that level of progress to be done by hand.
“Do you mind dealing with the tree?” We'd tried to expose the roots in some vain attempt to make the tree easier to move but none of us had super strength or power armour. I hadn’t gotten around to asking Rachel if she could use her dogs either so this was the best use case. “You’re a parahuman, you’re not invincible, that much I know”
Armsmaster hesitated, seemingly unwilling to take orders from a girl half his age but he complied nonetheless. The shovel in his hand contorted, metal shifting around, gears spinning and it was back into a halberd in no time.
“It’ll be easier to move if we cut the tree in half and move the trunk and shaft separately” he explained “you may want to stand back” he ordered.
Back I went and I watched him lever his hands back and in a single motion, cleave the tree in two. An obstacle that would have halted the expansion of the hole gone just like that. I hadn’t seen a cape actually use their powers, at least any of the flashy ones. It was a frightening reminder of the sheer might that someone could simply
acquire
.
It was like nothing could stand in their way. Not laws, not humans and often not even themselves. Only other parahumans could pose a threat.
“You’re strong- no you’re
powerful
, you’re effective” I told the hero “but you go up against people so unique, so unfairly capable that one day, someone might be a silver bullet”
He didn’t look at me as he dragged the upper half of the tree away “what’s your point?”
“Why?” I sat on an exposed stone “why put on a suit of armour and call yourself a silly name when you could armour several? It eliminates the risk, it could make you even more effective. Why
you
?” I hoped he didn’t misconstrue my question, it could easily sound like an attack on himself.
“My powers don’t work that way.” he explained “I have an innate understanding of how the technology works, others do not. After a while the technology degrades and doesn’t work the same, so I have to repair it, maintain it. I can’t simply teach someone to do the same”
“Then why not work as an engineer? Repair it when needed? Surely even a small squad of people in power armour could do more good than a single man, versatile though he may be”
He contemplated it for a moment
“Have you noticed how powers are almost always optimised for combat? Their users are at home on the battlefield. Tinkers work best with their own suits or weapons, Thinkers command others whilst in the middle of the fight, Masters always have some way of inflicting harm. Rogues are almost entirely nonexistent” I mused
He hummed disapprovingly “What are you trying to say?”
“Oh, nothing, I’m just pointing out things I’ve observed. Are powers given to those who are already like that? Or those who are more easily able to fall into that life?” I turned my attention to the ground beneath “or do they make the person that way? I’ve noticed it in someone who comes to the hole often. She has mannerisms that seem unnaturally fit for her powers, I’d say she was doing it intentionally if I didn’t know her that well”
He grabbed one of the exposed roots of the trunk and yanked it out, the fibers snapping like cold gum “I think you’re attributing intellectual design to something that really is informed by our own psychology. It’s well documented. It’s no secret that parahumans have a wealth of issues both mental and environmental but ultimately, we are our own people in the end. Our choices are who we are, not just our thoughts. Those who fall to a life of crime, do it because they choose to, though it may be necessary for them, everything in the end is a choice. As harsh as it may sound, the choice to lay down and die is exactly that; a choice.” he snapped another root “it is easy to fall and difficult to get back up” he snapped another “but going down that path in the first place is a choice. You can forsake your earthly ties like a monk in pursuit of the greater good, that is a choice, a painful one for many. Too painful even, hence why so many choose not to. But again, it is a choice not to act for the greater good.”
He snapped two more roots and threw them aside
“I may be optimised to fight in the field, but I do so because it is my choice. I choose to put my life on the line because I do not wish to make others do so instead of me” he grit his teeth and snapped one final root, then stabbed his halberd into the soil at an angle by the trunk. He placed a hand at one end of the halberd and one at the middle and then pushed down, tearing the wood from the ground.
“I did not choose to be a parahuman, but I would if I had the option to choose again. I would still take the bad day because ultimately, the suffering of one outweighs the suffering of many”
I felt my respect for the man rise dramatically.
“I look forward to your autobiography should you live long enough to be able to write one” I quipped. A throaty chuckle escaped his throat
“I hope get to write one”
—
I don’t know how they found out but somehow they did. One by one unfamiliar faces started to show up near the hole, ones much closer to my own age. The Wards clearly. Vista came in costume at one point, she had apparently become convinced that I was a cape, some sort of Thinker with a specialty in therapy.
Gallant it seemed, had been playing therapist for them, unsuccessfully I might add. I could see how someone with emotion sensing powers might be well suited for it but it took more than reading someone to help them. Frankly, I think they appreciated someone fresh, someone separate. They wouldn’t have to go on patrols with someone trying to pry out their secrets.
I could be a friend but at the same time I didn’t have to be. I was a neutral party.
Shadow Stalker was one of the last Wards I saw. She came in costume, a shadow in the distance drifting ever closer. I’d heard most of the complaints from the Wards about her, she was brash, hostile and stubborn.
She was definitely not coming here because she wanted someone to talk to.
I held out the spare shovel for her.
“Hello Taylor ” she spat my name like a slur. I’d given my name to the Wards and Armsmaster so it wasn’t surprising that she knew it, but it felt familiar, disgusting in her mouth “what’s all this for?”
“I imagine if you knew enough about it to know my name and where this was, you also know what it’s for, otherwise you wouldn’t be here” I held out the shovel for her again “take the shovel and start digging”
She pushed it aside “Y’know, you remind me of someone. A little rat in my school, she’s sad and pathetic all the time. Nobody likes her.” She got close to my face “I don’t suppose you know anyone like that?”
I scowled “I don’t appreciate your tone, and I certainly don’t appreciate your language” I sized her up, I was taller than her and so she had to look up at me, it was a small thing but it helped. “You might have powers or fame out there” I pointed to the exit of the hole “but that means nothing here. You came to me, you’re in the hole and that means we’re equals. I don’t give a shit who you are behind the mask, right now you are a visitor in my home and I find your behaviour unappealing”
She scoffed “so what? You think this hole means anything? It’s the project of people who can’t handle their emotions and have to go crying to mommy” her hand went to her hip and she pushed aside her cloak to reveal her crossbows “this is power, the ability to kill a man and the choice not to. The strength to hunt, to fight back, to survive”
“To fight back?” I bit back “your power is to run away, to hide- hell you can’t even show your face. You’re scared of people being able to do anything to you and your power reflects that. I’ve met enough parahumans to see a link between a trigger event and their power” my voice got low, quiet and I put my face next to her ear “what scared you enough that you needed powers to face it?”
She said nothing for a long few moments, just stared from behind her impassive mask, her breathing got heavy and she reached up to her face and clicked the mask off.
Behind the metal facade was my greatest nightmare. Sophia, one of the trio. It was her. Her face stretched ugly with a grin.
“You want to see my face? Then look” she spat on the ground “I am more than you, I will always be more than you. I’m a hero, and you wish you could be me” her body faded into a black mist and suddenly she was gone, gliding away with speed I couldn’t hope to match.
I was left there in the hole, body painfully tense, hyperventilating, blood rushing in my ears, eyes beginning to water.
My space. A safe haven, somewhere I could retreat from her. She knew where I was, where I could hide.
I didn’t cry. No. I got angry.
I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. I went down and down and down into the earth. I didn’t go home that day. I stayed there as the sun dropped from the sky. I stayed there as the moon took its place and predators came out to prowl. I heaved and sweated and panted and kept going . I didn’t bother making it wide enough for others to get into. It was my own grave. I just kept going down.
The hole got further and further and further from the surface. If someone fell in they would certainly get hurt, severely. I kept going.
Irrational though it may be I felt like if I went down far enough then she wouldn’t be able to reach me.
I screamed as the haft of the shovel snapped, the wood splintering and my hands bleeding from the shards.
I took to my knees and kept going. Just digging. It was the only thing I knew how to do at this point. I didn’t know what else I could do. I couldn’t go outwards without the hole collapsing in on itself. I was stuck. So I just went down.
Exhaustion set in and where anger and frustration pushed me along now sat lethargy. I wanted to lie down, I wanted to rest.
So I did. I slumped against the interior of the hole and my eyes shut. When I opened them again it was day. Beams of light streamed into the prison of my design.
I don’t know for how long I sat there, stewing in myself. The filth clinging to me, mud caking my skin and marking my clothes.
“Hello?” A young voice called from a distance “Taylor?” Dinah had come to see me again, and if I listened carefully I could hear the faint whirring of Armsmaster’s power armour.
I heard a sharp inhale and the whirring of Armsmaster’s armour rose sharply in pitch. There was a thud of heavy boots hitting the ground and the beam of light that made its way into my hole was blocked out. I looked up and saw Armsmaster, his helmet and visor peered down at me.
“Taylor… are you okay?” He asked, there was none of that confidence, none of that self assurance. It was partly shock partly concern. I don’t think he expected to see me in such a state. I had wiped blood on my clothes because it lost me traction. I could only imagine I looked like a murder victim.
“Yeah” I breathed, sucking in a breath and climbing to my feet “I’m- I’m okay I think”
Without me even having to ask for help, Armsmaster stuck his hand into the hole, palm open, welcoming. He wanted me to take his hand.
“Let me help you” he said softly
I took his hand.
—
I told him all. What Sophia had a hand in doing to me. I spilled it and cried it. And when I expected him to ask me for evidence or to dismiss me he didn’t. He simply nodded and took me home.
It was a shock for dad to see me arrive at our front door with a small child and a major hero. He was brought into the loop.
Armsmaster hadn’t told us much, only that an investigation would be underway.
Over the next couple weeks I was called into the PRT building to give statements and evidence like my notebook. I told them about my mothers missing flute, the locker, everything.
The investigation turned up a wealth of incriminating evidence even traceable back to her Wards phone. Broadhead bolts when she was supposed to be using tranquilisers. Her old costume already assembled. Even mentions of a body.
Apparently Sophia was already on thin ice. She was a probationary Ward and this was apparently enough to not only get her probationary status revoked but also to kick her from the Wards entirely which meant she was going to be sent directly to juvie.
I was invited to the trial, Emma and her father Alan had shown up naturally. Alan might have been a lawyer but he was a divorce lawyer. This sort of situation went entirely over him and he was steamrolled in court. Emma attempted to paint me as some sort of pathological liar who’s word could not be trusted and frankly she got the ear of the jury at first.
That was until the rest of the Wards showed up.
And in a matter of weeks she was gone.
No more Sophia.
But I wasn’t so naive to assume that the bullying would end. No, but it would get a lot easier to deal with.
—
I think I had become something of a fixture in the cape community. More and more people came to see me and some of them weren't even trying to hide who they were. Most of them were just curious as to what it would be like, not a whole lot of them really respected the idea but a handful thought it engaging or at least relaxing to dig the hole with me, even if they weren’t sharing all that much.
But it wasn’t just teenagers who came to see me, a woman named Kayden had come to talk about her children and her husband. She hadn’t shared very much but it was clear she was/is in a relationship with another cape, most likely a villain and she was having difficulties getting away. She’d obviously had a lot of biases and… opinions which made me think of the Empire. At another point a younger woman by the name of Sabah had arrived, she just wanted a place she could relax for a little bit, she wasn’t as into the digging part but then again, I supposed it wasn’t for everyone. At one point Lung himself had shown up, shirtless and masked. Frankly I wasn’t entirely sure what to do so I just gave him a shovel and asked him if he wanted to dig with me. He’d just snorted and left but the whole situation had a weird atmosphere. It wasn’t just capes either, a PRT agent(?) had come to check out the area. See what was so attractive about it to the people he worked with. We’d gotten talking and I realised just how much crossover there was between the agents and the capes. In fact, it was even more dangerous for the agents since they couldn’t just rely on powers. It turns out, he’d been there in Ellisburg when Nilbog first emerged, he’d told me about how they pulled the capes out first and left the troopers to die.
It really opened my eyes on how the world treated parahumans compared to normals.
How little someone like me mattered.
I wasn’t a fighter, so I wouldn't fight. I knew English and I could talk. So I talked. It was all I needed to do. And if it made me less of a target in the eyes of the Bay’s capes then all the merrier.
Glory Girl was one of the few capes whose powers were openly demonstrated. She had dropped down from the sky and cleared away pile upon pile of dirt. Brute strength really was one of those incredibly useful powers. But that wasn’t the most memorable thing about her, no, it was the invisible thing about her. It was how my own attitudes changed in an instant. My own emotions weren’t under my control.
It was her aura. A master effect that wrapped her. It was terrifying, not just the effect of the aura itself but the knowledge that she could just
change you
like that, without even realising.
We were able to talk at length, she was far more educated than I would have expected from someone with her track record. She knew a lot about parahuman psychology, enough that I felt a little insecure in my reputation as someone for capes to talk to.
She really was a nerd in a cheerleader outfit.
But I couldn’t say I missed her when she flew off at the end of the day.
“I’m looking for Taylor” someone called into the hole. I was resting on the lockbox, my back to the wall of the hole “Taylor Hee-bert” she dragged out the first syllable of my surname.
I took a gulp of water and stood up. I've become far more fit in recent months. My arms sported corded muscle, the gut I’d poked at in the mirror for weeks had flattened. I wasn’t my ideal’ body but I was getting there. I was… satisfied with myself.
“I’m here!” I walked into view of a young girl, freckled face and mousy brown hair compressed by a hoodie. “Feeling up for some digging?”
She looked apprehensive at first but eventually gave in and I helped her down the slope that led into the hole. The whole thing was now large enough and deep enough that it could probably be considered a mine or a quarry or something. It was genuinely dangerous to stand near the edges because falling in could legitimately kill you.
“Who might you be?” I asked gently, she seemed nervous so being confrontational wouldn’t help me here. Some people liked a challenge but others didn’t. She hesitated so I quickly amended “you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, just give me a name or make up one. Something I can call you by”
“Amy” she whispered
“It's a nice name” I replied, offering her the new and improved shovel I’d bought recently. People had apparently gotten it into their heads that I expected money so I’d had to insist every time that if they were giving me money, it was a donation. But they hadn’t stopped forking over the bills and I appreciated that. It meant I could get better equipment and tastier snacks. “So what brings you here?”
She swallowed loudly “I- I don’t know what to do” her breathing got shallow and quickened. The hands that clutched her shovel gripped it with white knuckles and trembled “I think I fucked up, I think I fucked up badly”
It was that moment I realised that Amy had brought a bag with her. Not a small bag either, a large camping bag, something someone would take when they needed to carry a lot at once… or didn’t expect to be home for a while.
“Amy, it’s okay, can I touch you” I started moving my hand to her chest, intending to coax her breathing into slowing down but she flinched away before I could make contact.
“No! I- I don’t want to…” her voice got quiet like she was afraid someone else might hear “...change you”
“Okay, I won’t touch. Just tell me what happened” I sat down on the ground and gestured for her to follow.
“I-” her lip quivered and she started rubbing the back of her hand “at the hospital, I got distracted, and-” her voice caught “I k-k-” she swallowed again
“Hey, you don’t have to say it. I think I understand” I didn’t want her to have a breakdown.
She shook her head “Carol was just, going on and on and on today, and she wouldn’t leave me alone. It was like she was looking for any small thing to blow out of proportion and so I left to go to the hospital and I couldn’t stop thinking about it- about her and then- fuck” she whispered the last word.
I think I was beginning to get a clearer picture.
“She- she was right, I was always going to mess something up in the end” Amy said, not to me but rather herself.
“People are bound to make mistakes eventually. And even if it is absolutely your fault, it doesn't accomplish anything running away from it. You’re Panacea, you’ve saved hundreds, thousands even” I held out a hand for her to take “Doctors don’t save even a fraction of what you do and they make hundreds more mistakes. A wrong diagnosis, an improper administration of a dosage, an incorrect prescription.”
“A doctor can’t create a virus that kills all of humanity on a whim” she muttered
“Do you want to do that?”
She recoiled “no!”
“Then don’t”
“You’re not understanding me, I have so much power, so much responsibility. I HATE IT! I’m constantly waiting to make some mistake that lets me finally fucking stop and when I do its just…” she stared at her hands “did I do it on purpose?”
I gave her my hand again
“Hold my hand,” I told her calmly.
She eyed it like there was a spider on my palm “were you not listening?”
“I was”
“And you still want me to touch you?” she scoffed in disbelief.
“I trust you”
“Why?”
“I just do”
She waited a moment and then carefully inched her fingers out and brushed them against my skin.
“I’m still alive am I not?”
She brushed her fingers against my skin again.
“It was an accident, Amy. But you look tired. Come with me” I led her to the edge of the hole where we could rest our backs against the wall “rest, you’re exhausted. I’ll stay here with you until you wake up”
“What do you want from me?” she questioned, suspicion permeating her tone.
“You approached me first. I just want company”
Her back hit the wall and she slid down onto the ground. And then exhaustion overtook her and Amy was asleep, her head lolled against my shoulder.
And I stayed with her the whole time.