Transfer 1.1

My fingers rapped softly against the dull glass window in the door.

"Come iiiiiiin," lilted a sing-song voice from inside.

I took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

The door swung open to reveal a small office in what might charitably be described as an advanced state of organized chaos. Heaps of books and paper lay everywhere, and no less than three different laptops whirred atop different piles. The person I had come to see reclined on a folding chair behind a desk square in the middle of the room.

A vulpine grin split the face of Shamus, Brockton Bay's resident parahuman-cum-private investigator. She steeped her fingers and leaned forward.

"Hiya, Taylor. Thanks for dropping by. The boredom has been killing me."

I'd imagined Shamus to be a grizzled man, probably in his 30s, with a few scars and a no-nonsense attitude. Instead, I now stared at a blonde girl who couldn't have been more than a year older than I was, clad in an expertly-tailored gray suit. A brown fedora perched atop her head at a rakish angle completed the ensemble.

Shamus's green eyes twinkled in the recesses of her simple face mask.

"Am I not quite what you expected?"

I snapped out of my introspective reverie. Rude and spacey wasn't the first impression I'd hoped to give.

"Uh, no, to be honest," I said. "Based on your name, I was picturing some guy straight off the pages of a Raymond Chandler novel."

Shamus smirked.

"That's the idea," she said. "Helps me keep a low profile."

She gestured with the folder she held toward a faded armchair opposite the desk.
"Take a seat, hon."

Gingerly, I did. I couldn't afford to screw this up. This was my one shot out of the hell my life had become.

Shamus swung her legs up onto her desk as she began rifling through the manila folder she held. I noticed the words "Taylor Hebert" scrawled on the folder tab. She had a folder on me?

"Ah, there we go," Shamus said. She plucked a sheet from the folder.

"Taylor Hebert. Age, sixteen. Currently attending Winslow High. Family, father, Danny Hebert. Mother Annette Hebert, deceased." Her seemingly perpetual grin softened. "My condolences, by the way."

I murmured something polite-sounding. My fists clenched. Why would she remind me of that?

Shamus gazed at me a moment before continuing.

"No criminal record." She flashed a thumbs-up. "Good for you! That's surprisingly rare in this line of work." She glanced back down at the paper. "Brief hospital stay in January of this year, and that's about all I dug up on you. Sorry for the intrusion. I don't take a case without doing my research. You wouldn't believe some of the lunatics who've come through that door. Gotta watch out for number one, you know?"

"Of course," I said.

"Now, before we get down to business, anything else I should know about?"

A fly stirred on the office's floor lamp.

"No," I lied.

Her grin never diminished.

"Then let's talk," she said. "How can I help you?"

I fiddled with the zipper on my backpack.

"I need you to help me transfer schools," I said.

Try as I might, I hadn't been able to come up with a way to make that sound less ridiculous.

"Well, that's new." Shamus quirked her head. "May I ask why?"

"Uh, is that really important?" I asked. Explaining would just make me seem even more pathetic, if that was even possible.

" 'Fraid so, hon."

I bit my lip. Why did she keep calling me "hon", anyways? She couldn't be more than a year older than me."Let's just say it's a hostile environment and leave it at that," I said.

Shamus nodded sympathetically.

"I get it," she said. "They put you in the hospital. I'd be upset too. And the school didn't lift a finger, did they?"

I shook my head mutely.

"Of course," she said. "See, shit like this is why I dropped out. What I'd like to hear, though, is why you let them."

"Why?" I said. "Because then the people doing this to me would just escalate more. Because then I'd waste my dad's money on a fight we can't win." I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice. I didn't want to. "Because everybody's quick to jump to their defense but doesn't give a shit if I die in a locker. That's why."

There came that grin again. What was wrong with this girl? There wasn't anything funny about this.

"You've got some fight left after all," she said. "That's good. Sorry for riling you up. Bad habit of mine. I'm working on it, honest."

"So, Taylor," she said, "now that we've established why you're here, why should I take your case?"

I wilted. I'd asked myself the same question, more than once. I still didn't have a good answer.

"I can pay you," I said. "I don't have a lot of money, but I can get more, as much as you need."

Shamus drummed her fingers on the desk. "Sorry, hon, but there's no way you can meet my rates, even if you did have a job."

Bitter disappointment welled in my stomach. Coming here had been just another stupid Taylor mistake.

"Please," I said. "I'll do anything, just help me. I can't live like this."

Shamus walked around her desk. She leaned toward me, closer and closer, until her sparkling grin seemed to fill my entire field of vision. She twirled a stray curl of my hair around her finger.

"Anything?" she whispered huskily into my ear.

I felt my face flush. This girl was crazy. Time to leave.

Before I could will myself into motion, she snorted and collapsed back onto the desk, consumed in a fit of giggling.

"Oh man, you should have seen your face!" she said, wiping a tear away from her mask. "Relax, I'm not gonna jump you. We bat for the same side."

I stared at the floor. Keeping a neutral expression had become difficult. "I'd better go," I said. "Sorry to bother you."

Shamus wagged a finger at me. "Ah-ah-ah," she said. "Hang tight for a sec, 'kay? Sorry for messing with you. I wasn't lying when I said I really can't help myself."

She hopped onto the desk, her legs dangling off the edge. Her eyes darted left and right in comically exaggerated glances. She leaned in conspiratorially, though at a more respectable distance this time.

"I'm going to let you in on a secret," she said in a mock-whisper. "Just between you and me. Can't leave this room, you understand?"

I nodded. It couldn't hurt to hear what she had to say before I left.

I hoped.

"I don't actually do this for the money," she said. Her vividly green eyes twinkled. "Money's nice, sure, but I could be sipping drinks all day in a penthouse for the next sixty years starting tomorrow if I wanted. I do this for fun."

She sprang down from her perch and clasped my shoulders. "And, you know, blackmailing some stuck-up bitch of a principal sounds pretty damn fun to me."

I froze. Was she saying what I thought?

I met her gaze. "You mean…"

Shamus smiled. "I'm in."

Shamus rummaged through one of her many haphazard pillars of paper.

"Principal's Blackwell, right?" A quick wave forestalled my reply. "Sorry, thinking out loud. I do that a lot." She shifted aside a few books. "I really should clean up this place. A-ha!" She tugged out a manila envelope from between two large, heavy texts on economic theory.

"I have files on pretty much everybody who's anybody in this town," she said as she thumbed through the papers. "You never know when you might need some leverage."

She briefly held up a page, then sighed. "Admittedly, my info on high school principals runs a bit sparse, though I think that's understandable."

"You know, if it'd be easier, I could always cut out the middleman and go right to the people causing your problem," Shamus said. "I can be very persuasive."

The wicked look on her face didn't inspire much faith in that solution.

"No," I said firmly. "No, I just want out. As long as I never have to see them again, I don't care what they do."

"Well, you're a nicer person than I am," she said. "No objection to my leaning on the principal, though, right?"

"I'm not trying to get her fired, but I wouldn't shed any tears."

Shamus nodded, and eyed me with excitement bordering on the predatory.

"I can work with that. Anything else that might be good for me to know?"

I shrugged helplessly.

"That's really it."

"No problemo," she said. "We'll have you kicking back with the trust fund kids in Arcadia by the end of the week."

I wasn't sure I shared her confidence, but knowing someone was genuinely on my side was an immense relief.

"Don't look so gloomy," she said. "I really am good. The Brockton Bay school system doesn't stand a chance."

A watch alarm buzzed from a shelf creaking under the weight of a truly absurd number of papers. Shamus's head snapped around.

"Time flies!" she said. "Listen, you know where to reach me if anything comes up. I'll be in touch. Hang in there while I do the cloak-and-dagger stuff, alright?"

She grabbed my hand in both of hers and shook vigorously.

"Thanks for stopping by! Not to hustle you out, but my next appointment…well, best if you don't know! Rest assured I take client confidentiality very seriously." She winked. "You'll be hearing from me soon!"

After gathering my bag, I left to a cheery wave as Shamus shoved aside stacks of paper.

Torrents of information spilled into my mind as I stopped resisting my power. Giving away even the slightest hint that I was a fellow parahuman could have tipped Shamus off. She had come across as pretty okay by cape standards, but getting outed before my big public debut would not be a great way to launch a career already jeopardized by the fact that I seemed to have intercepted my powers on their way to a two-bit, cackling supervillain.

Against all instinct, my lips twitched into a faint smile. I'd never really expected anything but getting laughed out of the office. If Shamus lived up to her reputation, I might actually be able to muddle my way out of the awful mess my life had become.

All I had to do was survive the next few days.

After the last few years, what was one more week?

A/N:

Shamus is a completed story of roughly ~77,000 words in five 5-part episodic arcs which will be posted Mondays and Fridays until its conclusion. I've been working on it on and off for several years now, and am thrilled to finally have it out the door. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

A note on divergence: The main "butterfly" for this story is Thomas Calvert dying of his wounds after the encounter with Nilbog. No Coil, so no Undersiders, so the Empire is in the ascendant in Brockton. All events regarding Taylor's life unfolded as normal, up until her first night on patrol, where she failed to find a single criminal or person to help. Suffering through another week of bullying after that was the final straw which sent her to Lisa/Shamus for help.

Since I had Lisa do a little teasing in Chapter 1, I want to stress that this is a fic about Taylor Lisa as friends, not a couple, so as to avoid misleading anyone interested in Taylor x Lisa. If you're a Taylor x Lisa fan, I hope to still have you as a reader, but I'd rather be honest with you guys up front to avoid any disappointment.

Anyways, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy it!