The whole incident left a bad taste in my mouth. I'd risked revealing myself as a cape, and I hadn't really saved anyone.

I'd saved one girl, but would she actually live? I'd heard that damage to the lungs could kill or leave you with permanent debilitating breathing problems.

Even if Panacea managed to help the girl, her mother was dead. She'd lived in a shitty apartment in a dangerous building, which meant that she didn't have a lot of resources to fall back on. It wasn't likely that she'd have an inheritance.

The best-case scenario was that she had a grandmother or other relative to go live with. The worst was that she would end up in the system; which is what would happen to me if I gave up and turned myself in, giving up on any thoughts of revenge.

Hopefully there hadn't been anyone with a cellphone to get footage of me, or witnesses who could give my description. I'd seen enough crime shows to know how even small details were sometimes all it took to bring down a criminal.

The only good thing about the whole debacle was that I'd gained a fair amount of fire resistance, and I'd learned a new way to use my Inventory.

I was pretty sure that I had some sort of poison resistance due to Gamer's body, too, although I hadn't gotten a popup, because my clothes reeked of chemicals badly enough that I threw them into the corpse car with no plans to ever wear them again.

I couldn't even try to find out what happened to the girl I'd saved, not without arousing suspicions about who I was.

Worrying about things I couldn't change wasn't going to get me anywhere. Ultimately, it wasn't likely that I was going to be able to kill all eight hundred members of the Empire. Sooner or later one of them would get lucky and that would be the end of me.

But I wanted the survivors to remember me, and to remember Dad the next time they tried to victimize someone.

And maybe, just maybe, I'd get strong enough, fast enough that I really could take down enough of them to make a difference. I'd heard that the criminal gangs in the city had a balance; if I could make the Empire look weak, it was possible that I didn't have to do all the killing myself.

The ABB would be happy to capitalize on any weaknesses, and I wondered if any deaths from other gangs would attribute to me.

I'd been periodically checking the quest, and I'd noticed that the number of people I had to kill was moving up and down by ten r so on a daily basis. Presumably, if the ABB killed people, then I'd just have a smaller number left to complete my own task.

How I could start a gang war, I didn't know.

Should I attack the ABB and then leave some of the bodies from the Empire guys on the scene? That might work, assuming the ABB used knives instead of guns

Still, I was hardly an expert on staging a crime scene, and a mistake there might lead to me getting caught earlier.

I needed to go to a bookstore and find some skill books on forensics. My best bet was to make sure that no one knew where the crime scenes were, but there might come a time where I didn't have time for all of that.

Still, my first priority was getting ready for my part time job.

She'd asked that I shower, so the first thing I needed was to get some clean water from somewhere other than the bay. That was easy enough. I just had to slip into someone's backyard in the middle of the day and practice filling a single slot slowly from a water hose.

The water would not be warm, and I wasn't likely to enjoy my shower, but the truth was that I smelled like smoke and chemicals and I was going to need a shower anyway.

Water hoses are excruciatingly slow to fill up; I'd heard it could take all day to fill up a small swimming pool. The hose delivered about seventeen gallons a minute, which meant that I was there for half an hour watching and being afraid that a homeowner or the police would come and try to throw me out.

I went home and took a long shower. I had to bathe for a long time to get the meth fumes out of my hair, and the water wasn't even cold enough to give me any sort of resistances.

I did prove that I could control the amount I could release if it was a liquid or gas.

When I finally felt clean, I went to a bookstore in the area near White's, looking for more skill books.

There weren't any books about how to get away with crimes, which was sort of surprising giving the world we lived in. People were villains for all sorts of reasons, and I would have expected a Dummy's Guide or something.

"Taylor?"

I turned, startled.

My father's friend Kurt was standing near an endcap, staring at me.

"My God," he said, approaching me. "What happened to you? Where's your Dad?"

My mind raced.

This was Kurt. He wasn't just some Empire thugs that I could get rid of to conceal my identity. He was a good man, and he deserved more than to be thrown in a car on top of a pile of corpses.

"Can we talk outside?" I said, looking around. There weren't many people here, not at this hour, but all I needed was for someone to overhear us, and things would go badly for me very quickly.

He nodded, and we both headed outside.

His car was nearby, and I nodded toward it, and he let me in.

"Drive," I said shortly.

He pulled out into traffic.

"What's going on?" he asked. "Where's your Dad?"

"He's dead," I said.

The car swerved and almost hit someone in the oncoming lane. I felt ashamed at the thought that this might have solved my problem for me.

"What? "he asked.

"The Empire killed him," I said. "They tried to kill me too, but it didn't take."

"But why?"

"They wanted the Dockworkers and he wouldn't play ball." I said. "I expect that they're going to try to put one of their people in Dad's old job."

His lips tightened. "There have been some people nosing around. We've been keeping the job open for him, but…why didn't you go to the police?"

"The Empire doesn't know I'm alive," I said. "Most of them don't know what I look like. If I go to the police, then they'll know and they'll come after me."

"Just tell them where his body is, then?" Kurt said.

"If I do that, they'll wonder where the second body is," I said. "And then they'll come after me."

"Are you on your own?" he asked. "I know you haven't been to school."

"I'm a cape now," I said. "I triggered when Dad died."

I help my hand out and a cup of steaming Ramen noodles appeared. I made it vanish a moment later.

"Still, you could come and stay with me and Lacey," he said.

"They'll be watching all of Dad's friends," I said. "They may have tapped your phones."

"Why would they…" his eyes widened. "Their people didn't come back."

I was silent and looked away from him.

"I can't call the police," I reiterated. "Or go to anybody in my old life. They'd hold you hostage to get to me."

"You aren't out doing anything dangerous, like fighting crime, are you?"

I shook my head.

"I'm just keeping my had down. I've got a place to live and an honest way to make money, and eventually all of this will die down. I plan to go back to having a normal life someday."

He looked troubled.

"I just wished there was something I could do for you," he said. He thought for a moment, and then he pulled over onto a side street.

He reached into his wallet and pulled out three hundred dollars in twenties.

"It's all I've got on me," he said.

"No," I said. "I couldn't. I know how hard it's been for you and Lacey over the last few years."

"Your Dad was the one who got me my job in the first place," he said. "I wouldn't have anything if it wasn't for him."

I hesitated.

"This is a loan," I said. "I'll make sure to pay you back, with interest."

I would, too. I'd heard that the gangs had a lot of money in stash houses, and once I was strong enough to start hitting those, my money problems were going o be over.

"You aren't…prostituting yourself, are you?"

My head snapped around, shocked.

"I've got a job!" I said. "A legitimate job!"

"It takes documents to get a job," he said.

"Well, semi-legitimate," I admitted. "I'm getting paid under the table. It's better than being on the streets, though, and it's only part time, but I don't have a lot of expenses."

He shook his head.

"Your Dad wanted me and Lacey to be your Godfather and Godmother," he said. "It's in his will."

"You aren't of any use to me dead," I said. "Maybe when things blow over."

He was silent for a moment, and then he closed his eyes.

"Is there at least some way I can communicate with you?"

"I know where you are," I said. "And if I think it's safe, I'll get in contact."

There was an awkward silence, and I opened the door. He was staring at me.

"I promise things will get better," I said.

Then I released some of the water from my inventory to splatter on the other side of the car. His head snapped around, and I leaped upward to cling to a loose brick on the wall. I clambered up the wall like a monkey; after all this time I'd gotten my climb skill up to a hundred percent, which had doubled my speed, and made climbing easy.

He got out of the car and looked around. Like most people, he didn't look up, and by the time he did, I was already on the roof out of sight.

I waited until he closed the passenger side door and drove off before I let myself lean against a wall.

Fuck.

I could only hope that he took my warnings seriously. If he started trying to insist that Dad was dead, he was likely to get himself and Lacey killed.

People would give up all sorts of information under torture, and that meant that I needed to move up my schedule if I was to kill as many of these people as I could before they caught up to me.

Maybe what I should have been looking for was a book n disguises.

Again, I couldn't change what had happened, not without killing Kurt, which I did not want to do. I'd have to trust him.

Climbing back down unseen was another challenge, since cars kept passing by, but I was working hard to improve my stealth skills. I'd learned that I really enjoyed doing the disappearing act, and getting that skill to its highest level was probably as important if not more so than working on my combat abilities.

Looking at my watch, I realized that it was getting to be close to time before my shift.

Stepping behind a trash dumpster, I switched to one of the uniforms in inventory instantly. I didn't even feel the cool air on my skin like some of the magical girl transformations.

I then walked to White's, slowly and casually.

I noticed that the Empire goons on the street nearby were treating me differently than they'd treated most of the women around. There were no catcalls, no harassment. They simply nodded toward me respectfully.

Apparently, that was the value of working at a place their bosses liked to eat at. There must have been a moratorium on bothering us, sort of a perk of the job.

I was there five minutes early.

The owner looked at me closely before finally nodding grudgingly.

"So, you showed up," she said.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Every job here is important," she said. "If you lose the customer's trust, you lose the business. Everything has to be spotlessly clean, and it has to run like a well-oiled machine."

I nodded.

I'd been responsible for cleaning during Dad's depression. I'd cooked too.

"I'm going to start you as a dish washer," she said. "And if that goes well, we can see about getting you something better."

Crap.

I'd hoped to be able to listen in on conversations in the restaurant.

My disappointment must have shown on my face, because she said, "Did you want another job, princess?"

I hesitated, then shook my head. I could use the money, and there might be opportunities here. If it was a total bust, I could always just leave.

At the very least, it would help me get used to the faces of the people I was planning to kill.

"Joseph, show her how we clean the dishes," she told a lanky teenager who looked to be a couple of years older than me.

When she left, Joseph said, "Don't worry about her. We all start out washing dishes, and it's actually an important job. Nothing will turn customers away faster than dirty dishes."

"I was kind of hoping to bus tables," I admitted.

"That's one step up the chain. The boss says that everybody should learn how to do all the jobs in the business. That way, if you should open your own restaurant later, you'll know how to make it successful."

"Does it bother you that all the Empire guys come here?"

"Bother me?" he shook his head. "Do you know how often the average restaurant here in the Bay gets robbed? I worked at a couple of those, and sometimes it seems like people are holding them up every other week."

He handed me a cup and showed me how to clean it.

"I've worked here a year, and I haven't seen a single person shot. My last two jobs I had guns held on me five times, and I saw two people murdered. I'm safe here, even from the Empire guys as long as I wear this uniform."

I nodded slowly.

"Besides, if it wasn't for the Empire, Lung would have taken over the whole damn city. He loves putting white girls in brothels. No, you are much safer here."

I was quiet as he spent the next half hour showing me how to clean the dishes.

The next few hours were full of mindless drudgery. The kitchen was apparently hot enough that the staff was all sweating, but I barely noticed it.

I was the only one not sweating.

"I don't know how you aren't burning up back here," Joseph said. "Everybody else is taking smoke breaks to get out of the heat."

"I need this job," I said. "And I'm used to the heat. I used to live with my grandmother, and she was cold all the time."

"You don't anymore?"

I looked at him, and he looked away.

"Right."

"So, I was thinking," he said. "There's this thing happening at eight, and I was wondering if you might want to go."

"What kind of thing?" I asked.

"A sporting event," he said. "With some betting."

"What kind of event?" I asked.

"Well, it's kind of like mixed martial arts…MMA, but more informal."

I hesitated.

"Are you asking me out to the cage fights?"

"Yeah?" he said. "I wanted to show you that some of the Empire guys aren't as bad as the media and the PRT likes to pretend."

"How would we get there?" I asked.

"I've got a car," he said. He looked down. "It's not a great car, not on my salary, but it'll get us to where we're going."

I pretended to consider, but inwardly I was elated. He was going to show me where the cage fights were. Once I'd been seen there, and knew how to get in, I'd be able to go again.

This might even be better than listening in on conversations in the restaurant.

"Does it cost a lot to get in?" I asked.

"Cover is twenty bucks," he said. "But I know you haven't had your first paycheck, so I'll pay this time."

"All right," I said.

I was going to the fights, wearing a uniform that would leave me unmolested. At last, things were beginning to roll!