I wandered through a blurry world, colours washing over me and passing me by. I stopped when the colours were all the same, and stood there until they came back. I wandered some more, and found a place already swimming with browns and greys. Why was I here? Clarity tickled the edge of my universe, and I turned inwards to gaze at my Thorns.

The Queen hung at the centre of my being, a monolithic diamond core that the others had fallen from. What had once been my world was pierced open, and I saw myself - tall, skeletal, gaunt and speckled with dots of silver from some unknown injuries.

The Funerary Thorn was a circle of black spines, weeping constant black tears which burst with the sound of church bells. The ripples spread across the star-filled void, and silenced their nuclear roaring. A shadow of my self was reflected in its dark facets, and I turned away.

The Ashen Thorn was a perfect sphere that cut through my existence, and left shimmering shards of memory and reality in its wake. I busied myself putting them back together. It felt right. Then I saw my hands, and beheld the Traitor. A stern-faced woman with red hair. It felt wrong, loose, and I couldn't remember why.

I put some more memories together, and moved the Ashen Thorn away from my past, moving it to the outer edges of my world. Then I sent it screaming out into reality in a burst of static beams.

The Traitor's Thorn mumbled away about chemical bonds, physics, extradimensional spaces and the like. What it boiled down to, ultimately, was how to build an invisible fortress out of a shipwreck. After all, if I was going to be a villain, I was going to do need somewhere to rest, and image was important. Or at least, it seemed important when I began...

I looked at the half-complete structure before me. It had seemed so important just a few moments ago, a monument to my determination. I left it where it was, jagged edges cutting nothing and half-finished engines slowly winding down again. There was Clarity, nudging at the edges of my mind, and I shied away from it back into the Blurred non-existence.

Colours flowed by again, until I left the drab, metal-filled wetlands behind me.

I was in rather a lot of pain. Then I was not. I looked down at the silver flowing through the glass of what had been one of my appendages. The amount of pain seemed disproportionate for something so small. Worlds spun within me, stars burned out and up and... sideways. Some of the stars were burning in a distinctly sidewards fashion.

Then they flowed down my arm, and I stopped to watch silvery plasma flow through my limbs. There was no screaming from the glass statues around me. I frowned, and took a step. My leg shattered, shearing apart from the force of my step. I should have waited, I supposed. People might come here soon, and take me back to the Heroes who would...

I paused. I couldn't figure out what they were going to do next. I went back to feeling pain, and realised that my belly hurt. I looked down, and frowned. Silver flowed into flesh, and glass crinkled before falling off and away. But unlike the rest of me, it still hurt. My leg regrew and I staggered along and out of the glassy wastes.

The light refracted in oddly calming and pretty ways. I sat down nearby to watch while I waited for the growing to stop. I didn't leave until the the sirens came closer.

I looked curiously at the screen. My face flashed back at me.

"Taylor Hebert, on the run after causing the Winslow Incident where multiple students were exposed to complete deafness for over a hour..."

I blinked and the world blurred.

"Also suspected to have been behind the explosion that turned multiple individuals into glass statues after she was seen departing the area unharmed..."

The world became a colourful riot around me. Blues and greens became dominant, when Clarity, accursed cold and painful rushed over me. I paused, standing on the sand, and looked around. Parian's shop was nearby, but that was not where the wave had come from. Then I spotted him. He was charging me on his motorbike, halberd already lowered. People were screaming, distracting me. A wave silenced them.

Armsmaster was still approaching at speed, and a moment later his halberd smashed into my chest, yanking me off the ground. A blaze of grey static later and I was free, dropping and rolling away. I sent tentacles of static out after him, and he cursed as he sped away.

My stomach still hurt, even as the pain in my chest faded away. I walked into the ocean, where he could not follow.

Colours. I was on my back, and staring at the endlessly shifting colours above, and within. A buzzing filled my head, and weird black spots drifted across the sky. The pain in my stomach hadn't gone away, and I had come back here to this half-finished fortress. Armsmaster had reminded me of why I wanted it in the first place. Clarity floated across the sky, and walls of glass rose around the unformed labyrinth I had once intended as my lair.

Deep within me, something flowed up. Like and unlike the Gallant rains, a flood of... something. Anticipation? Nervousness? Excitement? I rose, and gazed out as Clarity flooded my world, leaving it sharp, frozen and clear. Grey flares of static curled around me, and then a bullet tore through my head, ripping out my eye.

Silver flowed, and I sent a scattering of grey projectiles out to cut through the covers of my enemy. Shining barriers appeared, and my static fizzled against them. I frowned. That was... something. An inconvenience certainly. I pursed my lips, and created a bigger ball of static, and then hurled it at the shields, where I let it erupt, scything through the ground and the water.

Mini-Interlude: The Heroes at the Harbour.

Shielder groaned as the massive orb crashed into his shield. "Damn. I though her eye was gone." He grumbled. "She's recovered already." Miss Militia said, flatly. Neither of the two where very happy to be here, trying to kill a child. Shielder muttered angrily as a dozen curving beams slammed into different parts of his shield. Then Purity dropped out of the sky like a falling star, blasts of hellish white light tearing into the boat their target had been in and turning into molten slag.

The gathered heroes stared at the pile of metal. Then the first of the tinker engines exploded, and things promptly got... weird.