AN: If you were wondering about the inspiration behind this, it was primarily the fic Heels Over Head. I read most of it, but couldn't really get in to it due to Taylor's power simply making things too easy, essentially being defined as "counter enemy shard". Taylor doesn't need that, and it feels almost insulting to her character to imply otherwise. But I still liked the idea to some extent, so I thought about it, twisted it, and...

-One Week After the Locker-

Monday. The very first day of my return to school. While I hadn't exactly been optimistic, I'd hoped that maybe the fact that they'd recently laid me up in the hospital would convince my tormentors to lay low for a while.

...I really should've known better. I back away as Sophia and Emma slowly advance on me, their movements steering me towards the top of the stairwell. I can see Madison standing ready at the bottom, holding a container full of... something to pour on me when I inevitably end up forced down to her level.

Of course they weren't going to take it easy on me. Just because I was laid up in the hospital for days by their last effort, why would that mean anything to them?

Sophia steps forward, a malicious looking sneer on her face, and for a second I wonder if their goal really is to outright kill me.

-and then a flood of information cascades into my mind. All of a sudden, I'm completely aware that I can produce a dull, gray, strangely immaterial type of mist from any opening present on my body. Outside forces won't affect it, nor will it affect them. The thicker or denser the mist, the harder it will be for any living thing, myself included, to enter or pass through it. It will revert to the properties of normal mist if I get too far away from it. It can be shaped, condensed, twirled, expanded...

What is- how do I-

I don't get the time to think about it much longer, because at that point Sophia weakly shoves me, trying to urge me down the stairs. Still dizzy from the abrupt influx of knowledge, I topple completely.

I don't think the trio had been expecting me to let myself be pushed. At the very least, they hadn't thought I wouldn't even attempt to move or break my fall, because when I wake up in the nurse's office, I find that I don't appear to be covered in whatever was in that container, nor is my bag or its interior. Maybe they figured it was pushing even their luck to be potentially caught at the scene of the second major incident to befall me in the span of two weeks. Hopefully I won't need to be hospitalized again.

At the moment, I don't even know if I care. I'm fairly certain I somehow gained powers, superpowers, on those stairs. Which would mean I'm a parahuman, and I suddenly have an awful lot to think about.

Thoughts of all the research I need to do fly through my mind. I know relatively more about parahumans than people who just paid nominal attention in history class, but if I now am one then it almost certainly isn't enough. Is this really happening? I feel exhilarated, and terrified, and not a little angry, what the hell am I supposed to feel or think about this, god my head hurts right now, how did I only just notice that-

Further thought on the matter is mercifully put on hold, as the nurse notices my state of wakefulness and decides to check on and inform me of my injuries.

Fortunately, it seems I didn't break anything during the fall, getting off with a massive bruise covering most of the left side of my body and possibly a light concussion. Not that any concussion can really be treated as "light", but considering how badly I vaguely remember landing at the bottom of the stairs, it's easy to think how it could have been worse. As I don't seem to be slurring, dizzy, or nauseous, instead -merely- possessing a massive headache, I'm going to go ahead and count myself lucky.

The nurse flatly tells me that there is approximately zero chance of my being able to do any schoolwork like this, whether I have a concussion or not. Thus I'm being sent home for the day, my dad having already been called to come pick me up. Great. More for him to worry about, and this right after the locker. I wasn't even back for a full day. Though, on the plus side, if I do have a concussion then I also have a legitimate reason to not come to school again for a little while.

...the fact that I almost prefer the idea of a brain injury over having to come to school says a lot about the current state of my life. A revelation I immediately decide not to dwell on, if at all possible.

I haven't forgotten about my power, but with the nurse in the room I can't really test anything yet. Just thinking about it is making me antsy, despite the headache, so when she finally leaves the room for a moment I don't waste any time.

Quickly checking to make sure I'm alone, I reach for the power in the way I somehow know exactly how to do, and-

...It's gone.

What the hell?

I have no doubt my dad was utterly furious upon receiving the call from the school, as after the locker incident he could pretty easily surmise that this was no accident. By the time he arrives though, he just looks worried and worn down. It's as if he aged five years during the drive over. It doesn't help that when he tries to hug me, it just makes me cry out in pain, which leads to him walking me to the car acting like I'm some piece of fine china, supporting my shoulder and watching me as if I might shatter in to pieces at any moment.

I'm not going to, but I can't really object to the support.

As we drive home, he talks to me in brief snippets about inconsequential things, obviously trying to keep his anger in so as to not explode in front of me again, instead focusing on trying to cheer me up. A nice gesture, but a wasted effort on me at the moment. The conversation drifts by me in a haze, either due to the potential concussion, or because I'm too focused on figuring out what happened to the powers I'd had, and then just as suddenly not had.

It doesn't make any sense. Powers don't tend to just up and leave, at least not so far as I'm aware. So what happened? Did I just have some sort of ultra vivid daydream on those stairs?

No, that doesn't seem right. I still remember what I could have done when I had it, as well as how I could have done it. I just can't do it now. The knowledge is way too detailed, too... instinctively ingrained in me now to have just been a hallucination. So is this something built in to the power itself then?

...I have absolutely no idea. But it's easier to focus on this than to think about anything else right now. I sit back and try not to think about the inevitable talk I'll be facing once we get home.

As expected, the first thing my dad does after we arrive is sit me down on the couch, and seat himself on a chair across from me.

"Taylor, do you feel well enough to tell me what happened?"

His voice quavers a bit at the end, maybe worried that I'll say no, and leave him wondering why. Maybe he's right to be. After I babbled it out last week under the influence of painkillers, there's no point in trying to hide that I'm being bullied. But I haven't yet told him by who.

Still, my reluctance to do that doesn't stop me from explaining the general gist of what happened today. Considering my current state, I know he's not going to just let that go.

I briefly summarize the event for him, keeping it as short as possible and leaving out the part about my powers. I need to figure out more about them first, and it's not as if I can prove it isn't just the concussion speaking right now, since my powers seem to be missing at the moment.

Once I finish, he leans back, put his fingers across the bridge of his nose, and lets out a heavy sigh.

Then he stands, walks into the kitchen, and starts dialing a phone number.

"Dad, who are you calling?" I ask.

"Your principal." he replies, a forced calm pervading his voice.

"No, dad, that's a bad idea." I say hurriedly. He already blew up at Blackwell once last week, over the phone back at the hospital, but she'd already disliked me even before, and that certainly hadn't helped. A repeat of that incident is just going to make things worse. As much as I don't see how I can possibly receive less support from the staff than I do now, I'm not willing to bet that through sheer force of spite she won't somehow find a way.

"I'm not calling to argue with her or tell her off. I'm calling to inform her that you are not going back to that school."

His voice is hard, set with determination. But as nice a thought as never returning to Winslow is, it's a pipe dream. He knows that.

"Dad, please don't. I don't have any choice." I mumble.

"They promised to look after you." he growls, sounding as though it's coming through clenched teeth. "It took all of half a day for them to break that promise. I knew they were going to, but like you said, we weren't given any choice."

His fingers grip the phone so hard I can see the veins popping out of his skin. He's trying so, so hard not to be angry in front of me again, after last week...

Dad whirls around to face me again. "But I can't send you back to a place where they let this sort of thing happen. I won't." His voice cracks, choking back emotion. "Taylor, I can't spend every day you're at school worried that I'm going to receive a phone call telling me your corpse was found after a supposed 'accident'! If you don't want me to call your principal, I'm calling the police! This bullying is clearly bad enough that they should be involved!"

"No dad, you can't..." I start, before trailing off.

"Why not, Taylor?!" he pleads, clearly desperate for some sort of explanation.

But I can't give him one. In order to explain my reasoning, I would have to tell him just how bad the situation really is. Even if anyone else had been at the scene today, no one in the school would testify that I had been pushed, either for fear of invoking the trio's wrath, or because they just don't care. Meanwhile, my tormentors have an entire legion of followers to back up whatever story they can come up with, so any investigation would doubtlessly find itself inundated by classmate testimonials to my clumsiness, along with several glowing reviews of Emma, Sophia, and Madison's collective character. Even if we did somehow manage to get a fair investigation, we'd have to fight a court case against both the school and Emma's dad, which could only end badly for us, and would mean revealing who the leader of the campaign is...

So instead I just sit silently on the couch, stonewalling my dad and feeling horrible about it. When I fail to respond, he seems to crumble in on himself, which only makes me feel worse. I knew he wouldn't push me to give up something I want kept secret, and wouldn't try to fight for something I don't want. Normally I appreciate that, but right now it just feels like I'm taking advantage of him.

"Just... get some rest, alright?" he finally says, the utter defeat in his voice hitting me like a physical blow. "It's early, but you're hurt. We can talk about this tomorrow."

He seems just as aware as I am that nothing will have changed by then.

"Sure, dad... sure."

I stand and limp up the stairs to my room, hoping I didn't just make everything that much worse.

The next morning sees us avoiding the subject like the plague, pretending everything is normal as we make and eat breakfast. I'm not going to school today due to my injuries, but thankfully I'm not actually feeling that bad overall, my spirits being buoyed by the thought of what I can do with the day off.

Dad seems unsure about leaving me alone for the day at first, but since I'm only injured, not crippled or unconscious, after a few minutes of assurances he seems to accept it and leaves for the union. A few minutes later, I throw on a jacket and step out the door as well, walking in the direction of the nearest bus stop.

I'm heading to the library. Dad probably wouldn't approve, given that I'm supposed to be resting right now, but I need to get some of my questions answered, and an unlimited, fairly speedy internet connection is pretty crucial if I plan to spend hours on this. Aside from there being a lot of things to look up if I'm going to be a hero- something I'm tentatively hopeful is in the cards- I absolutely need to check online and see if anyone else has ever had problems with their powers the way I currently am.

It had only been one in the afternoon yesterday when we got home, so I'd had plenty of time alone in my room to try to figure out ways to make my power come back. I still felt fairly certain I hadn't just imagined it, but nothing, absolutely nothing I'd attempted had made it show up again. Feeling and flexing my way around my brain, trying to get in to the same frame of mind as when it had happened, trying to just plain use the power the way I knew it should work; all had failed in turn, along with a slew of other attempts. Admittedly, I hadn't exactly been feeling particularly inspired right after the discussion with Dad, but I honestly wasn't sure what else to try past a certain point.

I slipped into doubting again for a while, but no, I'm still next to certain- I know exactly what the power did, and exactly how to use it. I had a power. Whether or not I still have it is what's currently up for debate. Either way, having my own experiments fail time and time again is beginning to drive me to despair, so I figure it's perhaps time to get some outside perspective, rather than try floundering on my own forever.

I'm not quite ready to give up on the first thing that's given me any sort of hope in over a year. Not just yet.

The library isn't that far away, so thankfully for my patience it isn't long before I'm sitting down at a computer and searching the web for as much information on powers and parahumans as I can. I've always been a bit of a cape geek, but until now I've usually been more interested in the individual heroes and villains of the world than powers themselves, so I still have a lot to look up.

As I quickly find out, PHO is a surprisingly good resource for accurate information on parahuman related subjects. I immediately locate stickied posts containing a copy of the power classifications list, a summary of the options available to the newly empowered- from which the absence of villainy only makes the option that much more obvious-, an in depth general overview of most other topics related to powers, and a wealth of other information. Apparently, since a lot of actual capes use the forum, the site is kept well maintained and (relatively) troll free. The moderators do good work.

The first thing I do is quickly set up a new account, since I've never actually properly made one before, despite absently browsing the site more than a few times in the past. Immediately after, I create a new topic, asking if there's ever been a case of someone losing their powers, or if there are any known powers that seem to vanish at times. With any luck, given that vague description of the problem, someone will have an answer for me.

Once that's done, I turn my attention to something else that's been bugging me- I still don't know how I suddenly (hopefully) obtained powers. I don't know how anyone gets powers, honestly. Having grown up with capes being the norm, it's one of those things you question early on in life, and then forget about once your dreams of actually being one fade from memory. Since that's rather pertinent to me now however, it qualifies as a major point of interest.

Searching the forum for questions on the topic seems to turn up the phrase "trigger event" a lot, with not a great deal of description concerning what that actually is, besides something that lets someone gain powers. Apparently boards that do more than mention the term get shut down a lot by the mods, for whatever reason. Looking elsewhere online for this proves to be the trick, as I quickly manage to find a website with a summary on the subject.

Trigger events, or triggers, are generally described as happening only in severely traumatic situations. Research concerning the exacts is spotty, but they apparently usually occur when a person is caught in some sort of inescapable crisis, be it mental or physical, or a situation in which they feel utterly helpless to prevent something.

I frown. That doesn't really make sense in my situation, at least not on the stairs. Sure, the trap had seemed inescapable, and I certainly felt helpless at the time, but only the fact that it was the first thing they'd tried since the locker really makes it stand out in my mind from all the other "pranks" they've pulled. There had to be hundreds before that where it was the same sort of situation, and I didn't trigger then. Heck, I hadn't even fallen yet when I felt the power come to me, and I certainly feared more for my life back when I was trapped in a standing coffin of biohazardous waste than-

Hmm. Come to think of it, I can't remember much about the locker, horrible as it was. All I really recall is being overwhelmed by my senses before falling unconscious for an unreasonably long amount of time. So long in fact that even when the smell finally persuaded a janitor to open the door, I purportedly fell out of it like a stiffened corpse. Said fall ended up contributing to a minor bone fracture that extended my hospital stay by a few days.

Being out of it for that long is... not normal. Maybe I triggered then, and just didn't realize it? I certainly don't remember it if so. Was that why I was unconscious for so long? I'm not sure if its even that important, but it kind of annoys me that I don't know.

Figuring that it's pointless to fixate on something I have no way to test, I move on, spending my time looking up various things I imagine might be helpful to know. Chief among these is a review of the various capes of Brockton Bay, both hero and villain, as I try to commit them to memory for future reference. Some don't have much information on them available, and some that do I already know everything that's listed, but if I'm going to be involved in the local cape scene in any capacity whatsoever, then I need to be as prepared as possible for what I'm planning on walking into.

I'm almost tempted to start looking up what names are taken, but after debating it for a minute I decide to hold off until I know more about my powers.

...assuming they come back, that is.

Around lunchtime, I start to get the feeling that the librarian on duty is getting annoyed with my being glued to their computer all morning. I've caught several glares aimed in my general direction at this point- the fact that I'm here during school hours probably isn't helping. Without any context, I suppose it does look sort of bad.

Oh well. I need to go home and eat anyways.

I do a quick check of the board I made- only three responses thus far, none of them particularly helpful- and leave for home. Hopefully, I can get a little more accomplished with my power testing than I managed yesterday.