Chapter Text
I was going to be a superhero; I had a significant legacy to live up to.
April eighteenth, 1938. Superman revealed himself to the world, saving the life of Evelyn Curry, an innocent woman meant for the electric chair. The moral and legal implications of this and later actions were debated for years, but, in the decades that followed, the first parahuman indubitably proved himself to be a force for good, a paragon of virtue.
It wasn’t until 1982 that another of his kind emerged, discovered hovering above the Atlantic Ocean. A silent golden figure who later proclaimed himself to be “Scion”. Rampant speculation that he was Superman’s son persisted even after the Man of Tomorrow publicly denied any relation.
The world was home to two phenomenal forces for good, and more followed. Within five short years, nobody could deny the coming of the age of the superhero. That was when the cracks started to show. Some parahumans used their gifts for cruel and selfish reasons, for crime and profit. Villains. But still, inspired by humanity’s twin beacons of hope, the majority of parahumans followed in their footsteps; the heroes handily outnumbered the villains. It’s almost hard to believe, now.
1989 saw the US government formalize the establishment of both the Protectorate and the Parahuman Response Team. Today, there are PRT-regulated Protectorate teams all across the country, but, in those days, “the Protectorate” referred to one specific team. The best of a generation: Hero, an early Tinker and the darling of late-night talk shows; Legend, the living laser beam and the first openly gay high-profile cape; Everyman, a hero even more powerful than Superman and just as humble; and Alexandria, dismissed by some as a token girl but soon proving herself to be Superwoman in all but name. They set the standard for what a team of parahumans could be, something greater than the sum of their parts. Emma and I used to geek out over Alexandria together. I still have an Alexandria poster up in my room, right next to the Superman one.
Superman was offered a place in the Protectorate, even asked to be its leader, but said he didn’t want to be tied to the needs of any one country. He had a better idea.
The Justice League.
The Mount Olympus of the superhero world. Every major parahuman hero from around the globe—bar Scion, and nobody was sure if he really was human—had a seat at the table. Superman and the Protectorate were its founders, but the League was a team of trusted equals who worked to the betterment of the entire world, regardless of which nation they came from.
That was the Golden Age of Heroes. It was an age of optimism, of hope, and of almost divine reverence for the heroes who protected us.
God, thinking about this reminds me of Mom. She practically raised me on stories from the Golden Age. At bedtime, she would alternate between reading to me from the books she was introducing to her English class and telling me the stories of heroes like Vikare, the Flash, and Lustrum. Superman tales were always saved for a special occasion, or when I was having a bad day, or when Mom wanted to teach me an important life lesson.
I suppose that brings us to Behemoth.
December nineteenth, 1992—Doomsday. Earthquakes were felt in Iran and the Justice League was dispatched to provide disaster relief. Behemoth emerged for the first time and over the next two hours killed over half of the heroes present, including Superman.
Fifty-four years. He had a good run. Something was bound to get him eventually. …Is what people said as if Superman dying wasn’t the most inconceivable occurrence of the twentieth century. They made documentaries, gave speeches, built a fifty-foot tall statue in the middle of New York. None of it managed to fill that empty space in the sky. Heck, I hadn’t been born yet and I still miss the big guy.
The way he went out… Dad tells me Saint Patrick’s Day used to be a big deal, but that, after footage of the fight made it onto the news, nobody wanted to be reminded of the color green. Superday—Saint Superman’s Day, to the devout Catholics—became the new holiday to get dangerously drunk on. Superman had always insisted that the “Super” in Superday ought to stand for superheroes, not Superman, but for most of us it’s still his day.
The world was still grieving when Behemoth attacked again, six months later.
Then Leviathan emerged. The Slaughterhouse Nine pulled itself from the Royal Flush Gang’s still-living carcass like some kind of demented murder-baby. Nilbog turned Ellisburg into his own personal hell pit. And then: Preacher, Sleeper, Maxwell Lord. The Simurgh. The world was under siege from an unending onslaught of monsters. Suddenly, there were three villains to every hero, and the numbers kept skewing. The world’s nations began to put mounting pressure on members of the Justice League to prioritize national interests.
The work of the globally-renowned architect Tinker Sphere provided my generation with its first taste of optimism—up until the moment an Endbringer attack transformed New Dover into “the modern Atlantis” and its creator turned into yet another monster.
The legacy of superheroes was a tarnished one. It was a comforting thought in its own way; I was never going to be the next Alexandria or the next Superman. I had the power to control bugs. Insects, arachnids. I wasn’t powerful. I was creepy, had what the modern world would call a villain power. I thought there had been a hero with bug powers back in the 80s, but I wasn’t sure, and back then every power was a hero power by default.
Perhaps I could have done more to make myself seem heroic. It was my first night on patrol, and my costume of cannibalized carapaces and spider-silk had already seen me mistaken for a villain twice. First by a team of villains, and then by Armsmaster—the Armsmaster. The blacks and grays had been a poor choice in retrospect, but it wasn’t like I had a costume department. Just a dingy basement and an awful lot of spiders.
I located the backpack with the sweatshirt and jeans I had hidden earlier, pulling them on over my costume. After triple-checking that there wasn’t anybody who could see me with my swarm, I removed my mask and stored it in my costume’s back-mounted utility compartment, then stored that in the backpack. And just like that, I was once again merely mild-mannered Taylor Hebert. I fumbled around in my backpack for a while, looking for my glasses, before a helpful centipede located them. Ugh, I thought, I bet Superman never had to worry about this.
I finished the walk home at a brisk pace, somehow less confident now that my face was exposed. I knew intellectually that my powers were still there, but Taylor wasn't supposed to be a cape, she was a victim.
The house I came to had seen better days, but it was home. My dad slept like a log, so I didn’t worry about being caught as I slunk in the back door.
I surreptitiously set my swarm to search the building anyway. It was a habit I’d started to form in an effort to better avoid the trio, and it just kind of stuck with me. I didn’t expect my swarm to actually find anything.
Least of all a body.
Splayed out in the middle of the living room was a man, the remains of his head splattered across the walls and ceiling. Some had gotten on the sofa. Turning on the light, I was able to make out his clothes. Dad's clothes.
No no no.
I tried to breathe. Couldn't.
No no no no no.
I fell to my knees, a scream forming in my chest and getting lodged against the pressure in my throat, coming out a half-formed wail. And then another, clearer cry.
Dad was dead. Dad was dead.
I started to hyperventilate, desperately sucking in breaths between bouts of screaming.
Was it Lung, had he escaped? Or was it one of his minions, or the teenage supervillains? Oh god, it was all my fault. They’d followed me, somehow. They must have had a cape able to hide from my bugsense, and I hadn’t known because I hadn’t done all of the proper research before running out to fight crime. I hadn’t even finished my costume.
Were they here, now? My bugs were still searching the building, as I instructed them to repeat the same search patterns over and over again. I didn’t sense anything but—
Dad.
What had been the last words I said to him? I couldn’t remember. Probably a lie.
I was still screaming. I couldn't stop.
Somebody knocked on the front door. I heard a muffled voice. A few minutes—hours?—later, more people arrived. Somebody found the back door open, and soon I had a blanket around my shoulders and was being led away from—being led away from—
I was outside.
The cold air hit me like a dive into arctic water. In a moment of clarity, I checked my swarm. They were still following the same patterns I had set for them. Thankfully, there weren't enough insects in the house for it to be immediately obvious. I did my best to normalize their behavior. It was more difficult than it ought to have been.
I came back to myself to find that I was sat on the hood of a car that looked older than I was, an even older man sat beside me, rubbing calming circles into my back, hand in the space between my sweatshirt and my backpack. He was a graying redhead with a bushy mustache and a pair of glasses taped together at the bridge. A well-polished police badge was pinned to a fraying coat.
Despite myself, I started to feel a little better. And then I felt immediately guilty. How long had it been since somebody had touched me like this?
I threw up over my shoes.
The man started to ask me questions. I didn’t feel like answering them, but I knew I had to.
I hadn’t seen my father’s killer. I wasn’t hurt (barring the injuries from my fight with Lung, which I wasn’t going to tell them about). And I didn’t know of any reason anyone would want to hurt my father (other than the aforementioned fight with Lung).
In the middle of a series of questions about my extended family, I began to make out the sound of a familiar motorcycle.
Armsmaster pulled up and dismounted, surveying the area and honing in on the man talking to me. “Jim,” he greeted with a nod.
“Armsmaster.”
“PRT will be here in ten minutes. I’ve been given the go-ahead to go over the crime scene.”
Armsmaster turned his head slightly, bringing me into view of his visor with a minimum of movement. Did he recognise me? I did my best to keep my gaze downcast.
“Is that the daughter?”
Jim reached an arm around my back to put a hand on my shoulder.
“She is. I was just wrapping up her interview. I’ll send you her statement, but there’s not much to tell.”
“Do that. Thank you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I know you don’t much like this part of the job.”
“My time is valuable.”
“I know.”
Without responding, Armsmaster turned away and walked into my house—Armsmaster is in my house—leaving me alone with Jim, and a few other police officers standing vigil around the building.
“Why is Armsmaster here?” I asked.
Jim fiddled with his glasses, keeping one hand on my shoulder.
“Your father’s death wasn’t natural, kid. As near as we can tell from the—and there’s no good way to say this—splatter pattern, his head exploded from the inside-out. The killer’s a cape and they didn’t even try to hide it. That makes this a PRT matter. Do you know what the PRT is?”
I nodded.
“Well, we called them in, and they sent Armsmaster ahead of their boys. He must have been in the area.”
I made a noise of acceptance.
“So… what happens now?”
“Now? Well, since you don’t have any family who can take you in, I’ll be giving you a ride to a children's institution. You’ll stay there until the foster system places you in a home or you come of age,” Jim explained. “Or a relative comes to collect you.”
“So, an orphanage.”
“America doesn't have any orphanages, kid, but it's something like that, yeah. The distinction goes over my head. We've phoned ahead, so everything will be all set up whenever you're ready.”
“Can I get some things before we go?” I asked, thinking of my ‘superhero notebook’. It was written in code, so its meaning wouldn’t be immediately apparent, but I didn’t doubt that somebody like Armsmaster could crack my cipher. Ironically, the trio might have saved my bacon when they ruined most of it with grape juice. At least I was still wearing my costume; explaining that away would have been difficult. Then again, Armsmaster seemed like a good guy. At worst, he’d probably just ask me to join the Wards again.
Jim winced. “I don’t think you really want to go into the house right now,” he said diplomatically.
He was right. I considered asking that I be let in anyway, but it would probably violate the sanctity of the crime scene, or something. And I’d have to walk past dad’s body. It would probably be fine. “Okay, let’s go then.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
I slung my backpack into the backseat of the car I’d been sitting on, then pushed it to the other side of the vehicle as I took its place, buckling up and closing the door behind me. Jim started the engine on his second try, and we took off. I spent the drive thinking through my options. It helped to distract me from thinking about… anything else.
I didn’t want to spend the next two and a half years in an orphanage. I wasn’t likely to be adopted by anyone—or fostered—not at my age, at least if TV movies were to be believed, and I didn’t want to be adopted anyway. I could barely maintain a relationship with Dad, there was no way some stranger was going to become like family to me before I was old enough to move out and live by myself.
Could I seek emancipation? Legal independence? I didn’t know the laws surrounding that. Again, it was something I only knew from TV.
I could join the Wards.
I’d been against it, on principle, but now? I doubted the Protectorate would let one of their own languish in the foster system. I’d be paid. Maybe not a lot, but enough to get by, probably. Armsmaster would know my situation. And taking down Lung—sort of—had to count for something, right?
But did I really want my life to alternate between the teenage drama of Winslow and the teenage drama of the Wards, with added supervillains? I’d barely survived my first. I needed a part of my life where I could just be me, and not have to deal with all the bullshit of other people.
Maybe… maybe I could just run off. Leave the orphanage, and go cape full-time. There’d be no more Winslow, which was a plus. Dad would be disappointed in me, but—but Dad wasn’t here anymore. I’d be able to dedicate my time to taking down the cape who killed him, too. There couldn’t be that many capes who made people’s heads explode. I could—I could capture them, and hand them over to the PRT. That could be my big debut as a hero. Maybe then I could join the Wards, after I had the clout to ensure I would be something other than ‘the new girl’. All I’d need was some books and a place to hide out and I’d be set.
I was jolted out of my thoughts by the car grinding to a halt.
“Here we are, the Martha Wayne Institute for Dispossessed Children.”
The building wasn’t what I’d expected of a glorified orphanage. It was a large white building with modern architecture, designated parking, and even its own sizable garden. Somebody had spent an inordinate amount of money on this place. The Institute stood out against the surrounding buildings like Bad Canary at a grunge concert. It didn't seem like it belonged in Gotham Bay; then again, that was true of anything that wore the name Wayne.
For the first time, the thought that I was expected to live here became real. A few hours ago I’d been living at home, with my dad, and now I was here. Alone.
Jim introduced me to some people inside. Papers were signed, but I didn't pay much attention. I was already planning my escape. I’d intended to spend a night here, just to get some sleep before I went out on my own, but I'd realized I was still wearing my costume and that there was nowhere I could hide it here. Not tonight, probably not ever. It was too big of a risk. I could use my swarm to find an empty building to stay what was left of the night in.
After Jim—”Commissioner Gordon”, to the institution’s staff—departed, the staff showed me to my room—Geeze, this is bigger than my room at home. Does every kid in this place have a room this big to themself?—and provided me with pajamas, several sets of day clothes, and a few minor essentials, including a toothbrush and a bottle of shampoo that a member of staff said I could make better use of than she had. They left me to get changed, and I packed everything useful into my backpack while waiting for the corridor outside to clear.
Once my swarm no longer detected anyone outside, I slipped out of the room and made my way along the corridor, navigating through the building with the aid of my insects. It was very late, or very early, and I only had to change direction once to avoid other people. There wasn’t anything I could do about any security cameras, but the staff would realize I was gone in a few hours anyway, and it wasn’t like they were seeing anything that would connect me to my alter ego.
Once I was outside, I took up a light run to make distance on the building, and started to head in the direction of the docks. It would be the best place to find somewhere to lie low; it had lots of disused warehouses and empty apartments.
I was only twenty minutes into my run, and just starting to feel a little like myself again, when, through my swarm, I felt the rough shape of a person on a nearby rooftop. Their form was indistinct beneath what was probably a cape, but I felt they were probably a man, and they were gunning it for me at high speed.
Shit shit shit.
Why hadn’t I asked the police about protection? Stupid. My father’s killer was coming to finish me off.
I continued to run, but started to slow. It had been a tiring night, and I’d need to conserve my energy for the fight
I’d lost track of the man. A teleporter? Oni Lee?
I turned around just in time to see the man finish grappling down the side of a nearby building.
It wasn’t Oni Lee. It wasn’t any cape I recognized, actually. He was wearing a cape, with a cowl-and-mask combination pulled up over his head, a pair of pointed horns emerging from the top of the cowl. The cape and cowl were a blue so dark I at first mistook it for black, as were his boots and bladed gauntlets. A practical-looking belt hung above his hips. The body of his costume was a matte gray, save for the squat image of a stylised bat on his chest, more of that near-black blue with a yellow-gold border. I looked at the horns again. I could see them being bat-ears, I supposed.
The man's cowl left his face exposed from just above his mouth down to his chin. His skin was white–Not ABB then–and his mouth drawn into a tight line.
My first instinct was that I was facing a villain. Those blades wouldn’t be much good for a non-lethal takedown, and I didn’t know of many heroes who dressed all in blacks and grays (and yellow). But then I remembered something. Sorry, Armsmaster. I dressed in those colors. I’d literally been mistaken for a villain twice tonight on the basis of my costume. Maybe three times; I never got the chance to ask Lung if he thought I was a supervillain.
He raised his hands, palms out, in a placating gesture.
“I don’t mean you any harm,” he said. Something about the man’s voice felt unnatural, forced. Maybe he was using some trick to sound different. Was that standard for capes? Should I do that?
“Who are you?” I asked, massing my swarm out of sight, in the nearby alleyways and on nearby rooftops. “What do you want?”
“I’m Batman. A hero. And I’m here to help you, Taylor.“
I wasn’t going to trust the guy just because he claimed to be a hero. “How do you know my name?”
“I got a tip-off from a friend about what happened to your father. I help out the police, sometimes. Work with them. That’s more than most parahumans are willing to do, and it has its perks.”
“You’re helping the police? With my dad?”
“I am.”
“Armsmaster is already looking into it.”
“Armsmaster is a busy man. He has a few dozen villains to worry about at any given time. He has to maintain his equipment, lead the Protectorate, support the Wards, do PR. I’m sorry, but something like this just doesn’t merit his direct involvement over a prolonged investigation, and none of the Protectorate really have the skills needed for something like this.”
Batman was making valid points about Armsmaster; I wasn't that important. But, still, this was the Protectorate he was bad mouthing.
“And you do?”
Instead of answering, he reached behind his back, slowly pulling something out and gently tossing it across the space between us. It landed on the ground before me with a thud.
My ‘superhero notebook’, the one the trio had ruined with grape juice. That had been today, yesterday, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Most of the pages were ruined, and I’d written it in code, but—
“I know about your powers. Bug control." I stared at him. "It wasn’t my intent to learn a fellow cape’s identity, but I found this hidden in your basement, and thought it might have been your father’s. Armsmaster overlooked it.”
Shit. A total stranger already knew my secret identity. Plus, so did whoever had killed my father, probably. I’d be freaking out if I hadn’t already decided to bail on my civilian life. Well, since he knew anyway, I didn’t see any harm in making my swarm more visible. I let them scurry across the walls and mass around me in a thick cloud. After a moment, I dug my mask out of my utility compartment and put it on. I felt a little better, like that.
“Okay, well, if you’re the world’s greatest detective, who killed my father?”
Batman grimaced. “I don’t know.”
I had to resist the urge to shout. “Then what good are you?”
“I’ve only just begun to investigate. I came straight here from your house to make sure you didn’t do something stupid, and to ask you if there was anything you didn’t tell the GBPD because you didn’t want to out yourself.”
I took a deep breath, and counted to ten, considering what I should tell him. Not that there was much to tell, actually. Fuck it.
“I had a run in with the ABB, earlier tonight.”
“The ABB only has two capes, and neither of them possess a power with the means to kill someone in the way your father was. Did they learn your identity?”
“No. I think. There were some teenage villains too, on big dogs.”
“The Undersiders. This doesn’t fit with their known abilities either—or those of any other cape known to be in the city—and only one of them is a recorded killer.”
“But then—”
“Taylor, I can’t be certain, but this probably had nothing to do with you. There are rules, unwritten rules, to cape life. Going after another cape in their civilian life? Going after their family? That gets everybody out for your blood. It still happens, but only in the most extreme circumstances.”
“Are you saying it’s a coincidence that my father is killed the first night I go out in costume?”
Batman took a moment to mull my words over.
“No. But not for the reason you think. I surmise that the only thing special about tonight, as far as the killer was concerned, was that you were out of the house. There was no witness to worry about, no kid to add to their rap sheet. If I’m right, then that means this was planned out in advance. That somebody might have staked your house out for several days, or even weeks, waiting for a convenient opportunity.”
“That’s bullshit. Why would anyone want to kill my dad?”
“I can’t think of any reason that somebody would want to kill ‘Taylor Hebert’s dad’. Daniel Hebert, however? Head of hiring at the Dockworkers Association, former member of the Lustrum movement, and campaigner for local reform? I can think of a few reasons that someone might want to kill him.“
Dad had campaigned? I knew he wanted to make the city better, but I didn’t know he’d been involved in anything worthy of being called a campaign. It struck me just how little I really knew about who my dad was when he wasn't at home.
I blinked away the blurriness that started to overtake my vision.
“Okay, what do you need me to do?”
“Right now I want you to go back to the Institute.”
I spluttered. “Fuck that.”
“You’ll just be wasting police time if you run away now. And you don’t have anywhere else to go. The Institute is a good place. You’re not the first kid to wind up there under these circumstances, and you won’t be the last. Is living there really worse than being homeless, not knowing where your next meal is going to come from, freezing to death in some empty building?”
When he put it like that, my plan sounded kind of stupid.
“I don’t have anywhere I can hide my costume.”
A moment of consideration.
“I’ll look after it for you. We can meet up tomorrow night and I’ll give it back to you then. And we can keep meeting up like that for the duration of my—our—investigation.”
So, he actually was planning on working with me. Or maybe just realized that I’d be looking for Dad’s killer with or without him and wanted to keep me out of trouble. But still, I didn’t like the idea of handing my costume over to him. It would feel too much like I was giving him a part of me, making myself vulnerable. Like a selkie giving up its skin, I would be trapped in the form of Taylor Hebert until he permitted me to be a hero.
But if I refused, he might try to force me to come with him, or even reveal my identity to the police, or the PRT. It was almost ironic that after spending so much time wishing an adult would show me something other than apathy, an apparently concerned adult had decided to finally come along the moment I didn’t want one to interfere.
Shit.
I didn’t have a choice, did I?
I agreed to return to the Institute (for now), and to give him my costume on a temporary basis. My swarm provided me with privacy while I first removed my outer garments, then my costume, then redressed in my civilian clothes.
Batman offered me a phone, top of the line, Waynetech—taking it felt like a small betrayal of Dad’s memory, but it was for a good cause—then he unholstered a hairdryer-like device from his belt, releasing a grappling line from it with a thwip! The grapple gun pulled him up the side of a building with ease, and he was soon out of sight. I could still sense his presence through my swarm, and continued to do so intermittently until I returned to the Institute.
Once I was actually looking at my new bed with the intent to sleep in it, I found I had barely enough energy to change into the pajamas I’d been provided with before collapsing into the mattress. I panicked for a moment when I realized that I had school in a few hours, before reasoning that nobody would expect me to actually go. With any luck, I could find my father’s killer, and Batman and I could go our separate ways before anybody expected me to go back to Winslow; and then I could leave Taylor Hebert and her worries behind me.