… Emily Piggot
Emily hated working late… but she hated it even more when she was forced to work late into the night.
The PRT office in Brockton Bay was about as functional as a trench. The white ceiling lights felt more like interrogation lamps than actual lighting, and the hum of the servers installed by Armsmaster sounded like a machine gun rattling nonstop.
She leaned back in her reinforced chair, which creaked under her weight, and closed her eyes for a second.
Reports. Always reports.
Gang activity in the Docks — active. Empire presence on the Boardwalk — escalating. Merchant turf dispute near Medhall — bloodshed confirmed.
The city's current state was basically a pressure cooker with a busted lid.
It was only a matter of time before everything went to shit, but of course, what really mattered to her superiors was that the Protectorate kept up the appearance of stability. That the press didn't ask questions that were too specific. That New Wave kept smiling during interviews. That the numbers looked good in a PowerPoint presentation.
And that capes didn't cause trouble past some invisible line.
Emily took a deep breath and opened the new report that had come in that same night.
>Unknown subject.
>Night activity in Empire territory.
>At least three confirmed confrontations in the last five days.
>No direct footage. Multiple inconsistent witness accounts.
>Witnesses describe position swapping, clapping sounds, and sudden "disappearances".
"Great," she muttered, her face twisting in disgust. "Another vigilante."
A rookie Cape, clearly. No costume, no known codename, no registration... and no attempt whatsoever to coordinate with the PRT.
Just another person drunk on some unknown power and apparently zero sense of consequences.
And as usual, going after the most obvious target in this city… the fucking neo-nazis.
Emily rubbed her temples, feeling the pressure building under her fingers. On one hand, she understood. Nobody was going to lose sleep over Empire goons. Even inside the PRT, there were plenty who quietly celebrated every unofficial casualty.
But that wasn't the point and it never had been.
Because the Empire didn't ignore insults, and they sure as hell didn't let cheap shots go unanswered. Every one of these attacks pushed the city another inch closer to collapse.
A retaliation here, a dead civilian there, and before anyone realized it, Hookwolf would be back in action. Or worse, Kaiser himself.
And then who would get blamed? The anonymous vigilante? Of course not!
It would be the PRT.
The ones responsible for keeping the peace and coordinating capes. For making sure the so-called Unwritten Rules kept functioning... even when nobody actually respected them.
Emily stared back at the monitor. A new section had been added to the report.
>There are rumors that the nighttime figure may not be inexperienced. Reports indicate precise movement, anticipation of attacks, and unconfirmed descriptions of instantaneous position swaps between objects and the subject. Possible teleportation? Or spatial manipulation?
She closed her eyes again and groaned. "Of course it couldn't be simple."
Emily hated capes, but not out of fear... only for pure pragmatism.
Capes ignored rules and rewrote them however they felt like, expecting the rest of the world to adapt. They completely disregarded the will of people like her.
And now another one of them was out there at night, playing vigilante in a city already balanced on a razor's edge.
She grabbed the phone and spoke.
"This is Piggot. Increase night surveillance. I want facial recognition cross-checked with Downtown cameras and reports matched against civilian records. Someone out there decided to stir the fire… and I want a name before this city blows up!"
She hung up and rested her arms on the desk, thinking about how many times she'd done this before.
Brockton Bay was never a city with a supervillain problem… it was a city that mass-produced monsters and scattered them into every alley, just to see how far they'd go.
… Elias Mercer
The night was quieter than it should've been.
I was sitting on the rusted rooftop of an abandoned warehouse, feet hanging over the edge, watching the streets. The wind came in from the sea, carrying that salty smell mixed with the old rust of containers that had been left there for years.
That's when something new showed up. One of those floating windows popped into the corner of my vision.
[New achievement acquired]
[Be recognized as a Cape]
[1 roll granted]
I felt my brain freeze for a second while I processed what the hell was happening.
The roulette wheel appeared and immediately started spinning like a carousel of promises.
In the end, it slowed down… spun one more time, just to show off… and stopped.
⟶ [Force Fields] – Unique Power
You can project defensive force fields around yourself or specific targets. These fields resist physical impacts, explosions, and certain types of energy attacks. Their durability varies depending on focus and energy invested.
I stayed quiet, letting the idea sink in slowly.
Force fields.
'With this… maybe I can stop more things from getting destroyed…'
It sounded amazing, but I swallowed that thought before it could soften me up from the inside.
Because even after everything, there was still a part of me that wanted— that needed to believe I could make a difference.
And now I had confirmation that I could still grow… but I also understood that the Roulette wasn't just a gift to use. It was an invitation wrapped in an elegant trap. A power that fed me as I fed it with exposure.
The Roulette responded to achievements, and only then would the next roll come. Only then would I grow and stack even more.
But to get more rolls… I needed to understand the limits of this new power.
How many bullets could a force field take? How much force before it shattered? Something like Über & Leet? The Merchants? Hookwolf, that living meat grinder?
Alexandria? The Endbringers?
'No. Not even close…'
Every power has a limit... just like Boogie Woogie, which burned through my stamina every time I used it.
So, if I wanted to keep myself alive, I needed to figure that out as fast as possible.
Which brings me to right now.
I'd already made enough noise over the last few nights, basically confirmed by the Roulette itself. There were already enough rumors spreading through PHO.
So I could already picture what came next. Not idiot goons, but the aberrations loyal to Empire.
And if I kept the same pattern as the past few days, it would only be a matter of time before I became part of a pretty grim statistic.
And since I had zero intention of letting that happen, I changed my route.
Tonight, my target wasn't the Empire. It was the other cancer in this city, the ABB — Azn Bad Boys.
Yeah, that was the name. A gang of criminals, killers, and dealers that somehow thought it sounded better with the energy of a Japanese high school boy band.
The name was ridiculous… but the members weren't. Especially the two that worried anyone in this city who still had a shred of sanity left.
Lung, the psychotic dragon who got stronger the more he got beaten down, and Oni Lee, a teleporting ninja with a thing for explosions.
A duo straight out of hell or, in this case, out of whatever Brockton Bay decided to call "normal".
That's why, as I moved through the Docks, I had to stay more alert. And that's how I noticed pretty quickly that something was seriously off.
The place felt way too empty.
I moved through containers and across rooftops.
I already handled Boogie Woogie like a second instinct, but even constantly mapping out possibilities didn't get rid of the feeling crawling up my spine.
'This kind of emptiness… feels like someone cleared the path…'
…Either they were waiting for something or someone.
Sure, the target wasn't me. But I wasn't the type to back off just because a few problems showed up.
...
The silence hanging over the Docks finally broke. It started with a muffled impact, then came the screams and then the buzzing.
I was already moving before I could properly think, cutting through the alleys with quick steps while keeping my body low, avoiding using Boogie Woogie. Since every use drained something out of me, wasting energy was the kind of mistake that got you zipped into a black bag before the week was over.
Until I reached the side of an abandoned warehouse and from there, the chaos took shape.
A group of ABB goons was surrounded by a grotesque swarm of insects. Flies, wasps, cockroaches... the whole damn thing moved like a pulsing cloud, like a living mind, suffocating the thugs as if it wanted to swallow them whole.
Two of them were already on the ground, writhing, covered by the swarm. A third tried to swat them away with his jacket, panicking.
And in the middle of it all…
Lung. The dragon and leader of the ABB.
He was bare from the waist up, his skin covered in tattoos that were already starting to shift. Scales were forming on his shoulders, and smoke was slipping out of his mouth.
With every breath, vapor came out of his nostrils, and with every passing second, his body kept growing.
Whatever was attacking him, he was taking it seriously.
The problem was that Lung isn't the kind of Cape you want to fight in a prolonged battle… he's the kind that only gets more dangerous the longer the fight goes on.
And the swarm was doing exactly what he needed.
Someone was making the classic mistake of thinking you could take down a monster with numbers... or worse, with insects.
I saw one of the goons stumble, trying to get ants crawling up his legs off him. Another screamed as a cloud of bees covered his helmet.
Lung roared as he twisted. The more scales grew, the more heat he generated... and insects weren't going to do much against that level of heat.
'Wait… insects…?' That's when it clicked.
The swarm looked controlled and if there was control, there was a Cape. And at that moment, only one possibility crossed my mind.
It was a stupid and very dangerous guess... but the possibility was there, and I understood possibilities.
If it was her… then she'd developed more faster than I imagined.
'But attacking Lung in the Docks? Alone? That's basically suicide.'
Even if she was at the top of her game… the opponent was still Lung!
'She shouldn't be starting with low-level goons first?'
I stood there, my thoughts spinning.
'Ah… for fuck's sake!'
My mom was right when she said nothing good ever happens after two in the morning!
And now… Taylor was here; Taylor was doing this.
She was either crazy, desperate, or worse… actually thinking she could win.
But hope is a slow poison. It's what makes people step into fights they can't win. It's what turns them into names on unclaimed gravestones.
I froze for a moment, my head racing through possibilities and then, without thinking, my hands clenched into fists.
'…I should leave.'
That was, by far, the smartest possible decision.
'Let the two idiots kill each other.'
Be cold and logical. Be what life taught me to be.
…But I stayed.
Because as a Cape, I needed to draw a clear line between what deserved to be destroyed and what was still worth protecting.
'Even if it's stupid… even if she never knows… even if it changes nothing…' I took a deep breath, my eyes locking back onto the battlefield.
I couldn't let Taylor die tonight.
Not on my watch!
… Taylor Hebert
Taylor wasn't stupid. She knew that facing Lung alone wasn't just insane, it was basically a suicide attempt.
She knew what happened to rookie capes who went up against monsters like him without any kind of plan.
She knew that if she died there, the most the PRT would do was file a report with barely any ceremony and if she got lucky, they'd identify her body before it rotted away in some random alley.
She knew all of that, and even so… she was there.
In the middle of the Docks, with thousands of insects buzzing around her, forming a living storm made of nerves and fueled by her unresolved anger.
Not because she thought she could win, or because of some cheap sense of heroism.
It was because something stronger than fear was driving her… something more urgent than her instinct for self-preservation.
It was because of the children Lung had promised he would kill.
Out of everything, Taylor couldn't stand that idea… the idea of someone being crushed the same way she had been, day after day, with no one stepping in.
So she had a choice to act or be complicit by doing nothing… and Taylor had recently heard she'd already accepted too much.
So the swarm came down on the alley like a filthy, living wave. Cockroaches covered the walls, bees flooded into visors, wasps buzzed into ears until panic replaced thought, ants bit down, and flies dove into any exposed wound.
The smell of sweat and panic overpowered even the sea air.
The ABB was caught off guard and it was working. She could feel every movement, the insects acting like extensions of her nervous system.
She was the swarm, and for a few seconds… Taylor felt whole.
But then came Lung.
Taylor reacted by redirecting her swarm at him, trying to split the insects and overwhelm whatever weak points she could think of. Surround the head, attack the eyes, crawl into the nostrils, even go for that spot… all fair game.
But Lung pushed forward. The dragon cut through the swarm as scales spread across his skin like armor plating.
Taylor started backing up, her breathing breaking into spasms. Her heart already at war with her lungs... but Lung had already reached her like a living wall of fire and rage.
His clawed hand came straight at her.
And in that exact second, with the same certainty you feel pain right before impact, Taylor knew she was going to die.
No one would come, because no one cared. Not in this world… not in Brockton Bay.
Taylor was nothing more than a girl with a disgusting power and too much anger to fit inside one body.
So she screamed on pure rage, because she was someone who couldn't accept that ending.
And then—
An force field appeared between her and death.
Taylor dropped back onto the ground, eyes wide behind her mask, her head ringing with muffled buzzing.
Lung collided with something that hadn't been there before. She saw him stumble a step back confused, maybe for the first time that night.
And then the stalemate broke again.
CLAP.
In the blink of an eye, Lung vanished like he'd been pulled out of the world and something replaced him. In his place… a new figure appeared, wearing a dark hoodie, a disposable face mask, and a lean silhouette.
He didn't say anything, just standing between her and the spot where Lung had reappeared.
Taylor gasped, her hands trembling. The swarm stirred around her, just as confused as she was.
"Who… who are you…?" her voice came out weak and unsteady. She knew it was a stupid question to ask a Cape most of the time… but she couldn't stop herself!
The stranger didn't answer, just turning his head toward her for a second... and Taylor looked back at him.
Someone had helped her… something that almost didn't happen.
But the fight was just getting started... and a furious dragon was the opponent.
'What a great first night, Taylor…'