Chapter Five: Pie In The Face…

Taylor stood in front of the mailbox, holding the package that was labeled for the local news network. She had already sent another one out, to a national network, but this one felt… heavier.

The skinny Esper looked at the manilla envelope with a small amount of contempt. What was this? Fear? Why? Of what?

She almost snorted as she thought it might be the 'fear of success' that she used to mock.

More likely, it was change. Most people, in any walk of life, hated change. Even those at the bottom of the heap would rather it stay the same than have a radical shift in their reality. Change was a gamble, after all. It could be good, or bad. Most were terrified that it would come up bad and make their life worse than they already felt it was.

Taylor, standing at the ready to change more than just her own life with her video, knew that there were several ways this could backfire. The biggest would be that no one would care. Just another bullied teen in a world being torn apart by monsters that pretended to be humans. So what? Why would anyone care about that? Why would they even put in the effort to listen, let alone end it?

Her hand trembled for a moment. Not out of sadness, or fear, but anger. Her brow scrunched together and her teeth were bared in such a way that a person might think a ragged blade had cut open the place on her face that a mouth should have been found.

If no one cared, she would make them care.

That was why she blurred all the names aside from hers. As much as this was about Vengeance, it had to be more heavily on the side of justice. The public would empathize with her more should she be trying to improve her school, rather than bury her personal bullies.

Oh, she was going to destroy them, certainly, but it had to look like she wanted more than that.

She took a deep, calming breath of the chilly, January air and slid the package into the mail depository on the corner of her street.

On her way home Taylor began to think about the next step.

If the public reacted to this half as well as she hoped, Winslow would go through a purge. Certain teachers that didn't particularly deserve it would be hurt, but at this point, she didn't care. Even if some the Faculty were less guilty than Blackwell, that still meant they were guilty. If they wanted to save their careers, they should have made a stand when it mattered.

+-9002-+

For Abigail Blackwell, the last couple of weeks had been… normal. The only bit of annoyance, the only source of minute dissonance, had been the Hebert brat. Little girl thought she was funny, making big, dramatic, vitriolic statements in her office. As usual, nothing had come of it.

And nothing would, had Blackwell a say in the matter. Hebert didn't know that the most physically violent of her bullies was a Ward. Didn't know that, in the last four months of the school year the gang fights and stabbings had dropped dramatically. Hebert didn't know that she was basically a sacrificial lamb to keep the sociopathic Ward happy with her position, rather than have her transferred over to Arcadia.

"Eggs and Omelets," Abigail mumbled to herself as she sipped from a glass of cranberry juice, "You have to break one to make the other."

Hebert was, unfortunately, the egg in this scenario. A more peaceful high school was the omelet.

"Eggs and Omelets," the woman repeated.

It had already been four days past the 'deadline' Hebert had given her and, to no surprise, nothing had happened.

The look in the girl's eyes had almost fooled Blackwell into thinking that she would do something stupid, like bring a weapon onto school grounds. There were more kids with weapons than not, so she'd be stopped by other students, gang members most like, before she could do any real damage, but it would be unfortunate and would bring the wrong kind of scrutiny to her school.

Still, it hadn't happened. Nothing had.

Nothing would.

The ringing of her home phone pulled her out of her musings.

She bustled over to the wall mounted phone near her kitchen.

"Hello?" she asked, "This is the Blackwell residence."

"You might want to turn on CNN, or the channel eight news," it was Hebert, "It's rather important." Before the educator could say anything in reply, the line went dead.

A lance cold fear shot through the woman and she all but ran to her lounge, turning on her modest TV and switching it to the local news.

"...Apparently members of the faculty were fully aware of the abuse going on in their school and did nothing to stop it," a female reporter said, a frown on her face as they showed a clip, "Right here," a laser pointer was used to outline a man, his face blurred out, "The analysts have pointed out that this is not another student, but in fact one of the teachers. You can see it as he makes eye contact here with the victim, looking directly into the camera. He can clearly see that this girl," another laser pointed to a dark skinned girl, "is kicking Miss Hebert, but turns away. Hold on," the woman said, putting a finger to her ear, "We've just received several calls, identifying the teacher in the clip. We will refrain from naming him here until our sources are confirmed, but it seems the public demands a response from the local law enforcement. A fair few are asking for intervention from the Protectorate, if only to clean up the school. I wholeheartedly agree," as she said that, the entire video began to play again, showing Winslow High School through Taylor Hebert's eyes. It was not a kind perspective.

"Oh, holy mother of god," the woman breathed out as she collapsed into her chair. It wasn't ten seconds later that her doorbell began to ring, almost violently. She looked towards the front of her house and could see a lot of angry faces through the stained glass windows.

+-9002-+

Sophia was sitting on her bed, glaring at her math homework. She hated math. Almost as much as she hated weakness.

It wasn't that she was bad at it. Quite the opposite really. She kicked more ass at equations than she did on the streets. But it was so boring! It never changed, or varied, or did anything different. There was only ever one right answer for any particular problem.

She wished she'd been called in for patrol that evening. It would have been far more entertaining.

The door to her room bulged inward, and was then blasted off the hinges by a large foot covered in power armor, before she could even stand up she was covered in an electrified net then hit with a tranquilizer. She was out before she was aware of what was going on, or why Armsmaster, of all people, was attacking her.

+-9002-+

"Daddy!" Emma shouted as she sat watching the news, her heart racing and her eyes wide, "DADDY!"

"What in the world is it, Emm-" the man almost thundered at his darling daughter. He was stopped short however when he saw the video, starting with Taylor Hebert's opening speech.

"My name is Taylor Anne Hebert, and this is what happens when your school doesn't care if you live or die, just because you aren't rich, or popular," the teen took off her hoodie in the video, showing that she was wearing a very modest bra that helped to show off all the sores and bites and bruises, "I was stuffed into a locker filled with insects and biological waste," pictures were shown, just long enough to build horror in the viewers, "And the faculty did nothing. It has been more than two weeks. Supposedly, no evidence can be found to identify the perpetrators of this heinous act. I am not an investigator, but I can only surmise that this kind of terrorist attack- it can not be considered anything less than that- would leave some kind of evidence behind. The only way that nothing could be found is if the staff itself is complicit in the assault.

"Fearing this was the case, I proceeded to record the video you are about to see. The locker was the worst of it, but there is evidence here that, not just I, but several other students have also been outright attacked at the school and the faculty has, not only allowed it, but in three separate cases encouraged it."

The images and narratives that followed showed exactly what Taylor had already said. At one point, it showed a member of the faculty gesturing to another student while talking to a teenager wearing the colors of the ABB. the young man then gathered a pair of his associates and proceeded to beat down the unfortunate student the teacher had pointed to. The camera swiveled back to the teacher to see him calmly walking away while reading something in a folder.

"Oh, my god," Emma breathed out, "That was Mister G." She didn't know why she was surprised. The man had a… singular view of the world. It had helped her more times than she had bothered to count against Taylor. Why should it be different for any of the other kids that had been targeted?

+-9002-+

For one Brent Gladly, the night was going well. He was on a date with his lovely wife in one of the ritzy parts of town, he was a teacher that was loved by all his students, and he was making a difference in the world, one impressional mind at a time.

Which was why, all that considered, he was extremely surprised when he was punched in the face by a man screaming about his son.

Gladly had just exited the restaurant with his wife when the large man had come up and drilled a fist the size of a coke can into his nose. The sickening crunch was indicative of a broken nose, and the man didn't stop there.

"This is for my son, you bastard!" the man yelled and punched him two more times before he was tackled by a pair of officers, still screaming about killing Gladly.

The teacher himself was already out cold and missing a handful of teeth. It wouldn't matter much to him when he woke up that his assailant was being held fully accountable for the assault. It wouldn't even register to him that he would have to have some serious dental work done to ever have something resembling a nice smile again.

The only thing that Brent Gladly could think about was the notice of dismissal from his teaching position and a letter revoking his teaching certificate.

The man cried for an hour.

+-9002-+

When Sophia Hess woke up it was to the sterilized light of a prison cell. Rather than the comfortable clothes she had been wearing, she was clothed in an orange jumpsuit.

"What the fuck?" she hissed, sitting up.

"Sophia Hess, Shadowstalker," a digitized voice came out of the wall, "Welcome to the Bauman Parahuman Containment Facility."

"Oh, fuck no!" the black girl said, shifting into her shadow form and attempting to phase through the wall. She was immediately zapped, with barely a handful of volts, and was on her back when the digital voice finished its pronouncement.

"Better known as the Birdcage, the inescapable parahuman prison."

+-9002-+

Taylor and her father sat on the couch in their living room, watching the news. Taylor had an almost malicious grin on her face.

It had been two days since the news report. Taylor's worry that no one would care was far from the reality. Just that evening, the reports of the ongoing purge of Winslow showed that Blackwell had kept secret more than anyone could have guessed.

Apparently the ABB were using the school, not just as a recruiting ground, but to mark down targets for their enforced prostitution ring. Blackwell knew and had agreed that she wouldn't say anything as long as the girls weren't actually taken while on school grounds. The uproar that alone caused would have seen the woman lynched, but there was more.

Oh, god was there more.

Taylor's favorite part of the report had been the revelation that one Mister Gladly had been assaulted by an angry parent for his 'blatant negligence and outright dereliction of duty,' as it had been worded by the reporter.

Rumors stated that the man wouldn't teach again, ever.

Taylor wouldn't particularly mind if that were the case.

"What now?" Danny asked, not quite grinning as his daughter had been.

"Now?" the girl hummed in thought for a moment, "I guess now I use some of the more personal videos of bullying to destroy Emma and Madison. I might even wait until they try attacking me first."

"And after that?" the man urged, "You have to live for more than revenge. I mean, yeah, you aren't trying to kill anybody, but there is that whole saying about those who seek vengeance needing to dig two graves."

"I know, and I agree," she said, "But I have goals. Long term and short. To get to the long term goals I need to complete the short term. Short term is the unrectifiable end of all bullying upon my person, in particular."

"As long as you've been thinking about what comes after."

"I promise, I have."

She had. She'd never tell him, but Taylor knew exactly what was in her future. She was going to use her abilities to strike from the shadows- literally- to end the threats in this city. Permanently.

Seriously, she had no intention of killing Emma and Madison. Death would be a welcome escape by the time she was done with them. One that she would see to it that would come only when she deemed it fit.

The villains, maybe even some of the heroes if Sophia was the kind of people they deemed one of their own, however would be little more than dog meat. Again, quite literally.

Taylor grinned at the thought, then licked her lips. She was feeling mighty hungry.

+-9002-+

AN: so, this chapter was short, and mostly just filler. It is as seen, the fallout of her revealing the state of the school to the world.

I wanted to get all of this out of the way in a separate chapter from what happens next, because it is rather important.

Please Enjoy!