She nodded hesitantly, and after the two of them had made their way upstairs to Taylor's room, she then went ahead and loaded up the website for the gym in question on her personal dinosaur of a computer before handing it over for him to inspect.
Then, as the minutes passed by and Danny scrolled through the site, brows furrowed in concentration, Taylor couldn't help but start fidgeting, rubbing at her arms and bouncing on her heels as she stood near her father while he sat on her bed, trying and failing not to glance at her power notebook hidden underneath a bunch of schoolbooks on her shelf.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity and a half, Danny at last looked up. "Well, it doesn't look half bad at first glance." He admitted, gently closing the computer and setting it aside. "Certainly more professional than some of the places I went to before I met your mother." He added, chuckling lightly as he stood up.
Taylor tilted her head in confusion at his words, but nonetheless went ahead and asked her question with barely suppressed hope. "So, I can go then?"
"If you don't mind, I'd like to at least do a visit to see the place first and ask some questions, but otherwise, sure." Danny nodded, and Taylor couldn't help but perk up and smile. "It's not exactly cheap, but I suppose sixty bucks a month is a reasonable price considering they have coaches there."
Taylor couldn't help but flinch as the price for her desires was aired out. "Is... Is it really ok?" She reluctantly asked, feeling more than a little downtrodden. "If it's too much, I can see if there's other gyms nearby, or I can just do it all online..." She trailed off as her father firmly shook his head.
"Taylor, it's alright. Don't worry about it. We're not so poor we can't afford a basic gym membership, trust your old man on this." He said, his firm tone softened by his smile as he looked at her. "Besides, how can I say no when my daughter finally asks me for something? I was starting to feel real useless, you know."
Taylor's face went pink as she looked away, crossing her arms and letting out a huff. Still, she couldn't help but brighten up at her success at getting what she wanted, as well as the reminder that, for all his faults, her father really did love her.
"But with that being said..." Danny said, and just like that, Taylor's good mood evaporated. "Taylor, I just... I know I haven't exactly been the most attentive father the past year, but even I can tell something's going on. First the hospital, then this... I just want to help you, Taylor. Please." He pleaded, and Taylor couldn't help but look away. "Tell me what's going on."
She hated this. Hated this feeling of weakness and regret his words brought to her. She hated the fact that she was making her father worry, hated the fact that she didn't have the strength to just up and tell him what was going on, but most of all, she hated how he was intruding on what was supposed to be a happy moment by bringing up school.
Taylor didn't quite know what to call the strange mix of emotions she felt, but regardless, she shut her mouth tight and looked away, remaining stubbornly silent. After half a minute of silence between them, it was Danny who gave in first, sighing regretfully and running a hand through his balding hair.
He exhaled tiredly. "Teenagers..." He mumbled under his breath, earning himself an offended glare from his teen daughter before standing up from the bed. "Alright, fine." He said, his voice soft. "I get it, you don't want to talk about your troubles with your dad. Just... Know that I'm here for you, ok?"
Hesitantly, Taylor nodded, feeling more than a little subdued. "Y-yeah. I know." She mumbled.
Danny nodded at her words, although he didn't exactly look as if he believed her, before looking down at his wrist and the watch on it. "It's late today, and I'll be busy with work tomorrow, so will Saturday work? We can go and check out the gym together then." He offered.
After Taylor gave her assent, the two of them made their way back downstairs and got started on preparing dinner, and although the conversations between them still felt a bit stilted and awkward, Taylor couldn't help but feel like they'd both reopened doors once stubbornly held closed between each other.
It was... Nice, Taylor decided as she giggled at a stupid story her father narrated during dinner about one of his prospective employees being such a stupidly obvious gang plant. Although she still felt unsure about the future and her place in it, at least she knew that she'd always have her father with her.
Her good mood definitely wasn't hindered by the minuscule amount of points her power decided to award her after she'd finished her conversation with her dad. It wasn't a lot- less than what she'd gotten that morning after finalizing her powers- but every little bit was welcome, especially when she'd barely had to do anything to get it.
Spoiler: Reward + Hint+ 2 points for convincing Danny to sign you up for a gym.
+ Quest Sense Hints: Danny is an easy and safe, if low-reward, source of points. Taylor faintly senses that coming clean to him about things will most likely reward points, but how much is unknown, and how much you need to reveal is also unknown.
The following days after their conversation were relatively low-energy, with Danny leaving early in the mornings and Taylor staying behind at home to either idly scroll through her absolute dinosaur of a computer that struggled to load even the most bare bones Wikipedia page, work on adding various observations, ideas, and theories to her power notebook, or much more relevantly, focus on getting her schoolwork done.
And speaking of that last task, Taylor couldn't help but be impressed with how deceptively useful her learning power had turned out to be. She'd always been a smart girl, or so her parents and teachers before high school had always told her, but with her new power backing her up, Taylor felt like a certified genius.
... Alright, that was putting it a bit far, but it was certainly helpful. Taylor could remember and recall things much more easily, making it so that she only had to read through a book's section once or twice before grasping what it was trying to say, rather than having to go through it over and over again to hammer it into her head.
Taylor hummed to herself as she put the finishing touches on her essay for English class, one that was due two weeks from now. Turns out, for all that Winslow was a shithole, they had still somehow managed to find it in themselves to get her teachers to write a list of the past and next week's homework before having it delivered to her via mail, a fact that Taylor happily took advantage of, considering she didn't exactly have a lot to do otherwise, alongside a burning curiosity on how much her new thinking power was really worth.
And, as she'd already thought before, it was quite nice. Nothing ground-breaking, hell, Taylor didn't doubt that there were people out there who could learn and recall way better than she could, even with her power backing her up, but frankly, Taylor couldn't bring herself to care.
After all, thanks to this new power, not only had her homework been a whole lot easier to do, but it had also even felt outright good to do it. Truly a strange sensation, Taylor thought to herself with a small giggle as she put away the paper with her essay written on it before moving to grab her next assignment... Only to come to a pause as she realized that there was nothing left to do.
She blinked in surprise as her power twinged within her, awarding her another small amount of points like it'd done back when she'd talked with her father. Again, it wasn't a lot, but it was still welcome, especially considering that between those two things and her daily resupply of a single point, she'd actually accumulated a decent chunk of points to play with.
Spoiler: Point Reward
Standing up with a sigh and a stretch, Taylor grabbed her computer before meandering her way downstairs into the living room, went ahead and guiltily grabbed a small snack, and then plopped herself down on the couch.
Her father would be back from work soon, since today was a half-day for him. Then, once he was back, the two of them would then eat a quick lunch before heading off to visit the gym.
Taylor smiled at the thought. It was to feel like her dad was finally paying attention to her once again. She'd missed that.
Idly munching away at the tortillas she'd grabbed, Taylor booted up her computer. She'd been a very diligent girl the past few days, focusing almost exclusively on catching up on everything she could scholastically, enough so that she felt she was entitled to a little reward.
So, with eager hands, Taylor navigated to the search bar, and got to work.
+7 points total
Spoiler: Winning Plan[X] Plan: Quest Sense Not Being a Multiple of 5 Was Bothering Me, Okay?
-[X] Rules for Independent Heroes
-[X] Gangs of the Bay
-[X] Laborn Gym - Family-owned & run by a retired and no-nonsense vet. Expect tough exercises and little mercy, but seems to be very effective at what it promises to do.
-[X] Invest them
--[X] Quest Sense (6 points)
--[X] Regeneration (5 points)
---[X] Try to add in a foundation for the power to make you adapt to whatever it has to regenerate you from. Try to keep it to non-visible mutations only, though; you want to make your defensive power better at defending you, not turn yourself into the second coming of Crawler.
First things first, Taylor figured that if she wanted to go out and bust heads eventually, she might as well look up the rules around the whole thing... Which did sound a bit strange when put like that, she could admit. Real life was hardly a boxing ring all its rules and regulations, after all.
Nonetheless, she got to work, and before long, she'd loaded up a couple of social media rants, some public statements from the PRT, and even a short discussion in PHO about the difference between independent heroes and vigilantes.
It was all admittedly a bit confusing, and Taylor quickly figured out that if she wanted to really understand all the nuances of this kind of thing, she would need to either talk to the PRT directly or perhaps question some capes about it, but for now, it would have to do.
First, as claimed by several social media conspiracy theorists, the only real difference between a vigilante and an independent hero was the fact that the latter was registered with the PRT, while the former was not. Granted, it wasn't that simple, regardless of what some of the fervently anti-PRT posters ranted.
There was a lot of noise made by the PRT claiming that registered independents were expected to hold up to a higher standard, such as being skilled enough to avoid serious injury, property damage, or potentially disrupting police investigations, while vigilantes more or less did whatever they wanted, ignoring the consequences and leaving them for other people to deal with.
Taylor hummed to herself as she skimmed through one such PRT statement, a rather old one condemning the actions of a supposed vigilante, Black Bunny, for how she had gravely wounded several suspected but unconfirmed Empire members seemingly without provocation or reason, leading to the men in question being released without any charges due to lack of evidence.
Curious, Taylor then went ahead and tried looking up who exactly Black Bunny was, only to wince when the wiki page of the cape in question finally finished loading up.
Well, that's certainly a good reason why she hadn't heard about the cape, Taylor thought to herself as she stared at the little cross symbol next to the cape's name, indicating her to be deceased. Looking a little further into it, it didn't take long to discover the reason for her death, and as expected, it was an unfortunately rather common one amongst independents, as Taylor was quickly coming to discover.
The Empire had retaliated after Bunny poked and prodded at them one too many times, and although no official killer was named in the wiki itself, there was little doubt that it had been them, judging from the racial slurs carved into the cape's mangled corpse after it had been left crucified in a random alley for some poor shmuck to find.
Grimacing at the reminder that the world that she wanted to jump into was an unforgivingly brutal one, Taylor shook her head and closed up the page, feeling more than a little nauseous from the uncensored image of the cape's corpse the wiki had for some reason decided to display.
Now with a rather sharp reminder that this wasn't a game, Taylor spent the last remaining hour and a half she had looking up as much as she could regarding the various gangs and villains within Brockton Bay, and while most of the stuff she found she'd already mostly known, there were still some interesting details she hadn't known about that she managed to dig up.
For example, more or less everyone knew that the three big gangs in the Bay were the Empire 88, the Azn Bad Boys, and Coil, but while she'd known about those, she personally had never heard about the various minor gangs such as the Choir, the Undersiders, the Left Watch, the Dockyard Mariners, or the Archer's Bridge Merchants.
Still, for the moment, Taylor ignored her curiosity regarding the various minor gangs since even she knew how quickly they tended to pop up and then either move away, split up, or burn out, and instead focused on researching the bigger ones, such as the Empire, which was simultaneously the oldest gang, the most numerous and perhaps outright powerful one, and the one with the most support amongst the city's civilian population, a fact that had Taylor frowning, considering they were open and proud nazis.
Sporting an almost ever-changing roster that drew capes and normals alike from almost the entirety of New England through both alliances with other far-right groups as well as smaller, subsidiary branches in several smaller cities near Brockton Bay and perhaps even far beyond that. Overall, the Empire was a true behemoth of a gang, one that, had they not been so irredeemably despicable, might have even been worth calling an outright organization considering the level of power and influence- both soft and hard- that they wielded.
They were also notorious for being particularly brutal and merciless to those who opposed them, a trait that they shared with the Azn Bad Boys, or ABB for short. Similar to the Empire, the ABB was a racially motivated gang, drawing support from the large numbers of Asian migrants in the Bay, although to call it support was perhaps too generous, from what Taylor both knew and could read.
The ABB were the worst kind of thugs, rumored to profit off of human trafficking, both the sex and organ kind, as well as being notoriously predatory toward their own people. For all that Taylor had heard rumors of white girls being kidnapped off the streets and being disappeared to face horrible fates, something that her father and mother had both warned her about multiple times, she knew very well that what wasn't mere rumors was that a lot of eastern migrants, especially women, were often coerced into working for the gang through threats, drugs, and simply the fact that they had no documentation since a lot weren't legal immigrants, so going to the police was often seen as being an even worst choice than just keeping your head down.
While nowhere near as numerous as the Empire, the ABB made up for it by being ten times as brutal and lethal, something that one particular post claimed to be the influence of 'bushido and honor culture', but Taylor couldn't help but doubt that. Regardless of her thoughts, while smaller than the Empire and mostly confined to the overwhelmingly Asian parts of the city, the ABB was not a threat to take lightly, especially considering how eager they were to whip out high-caliber weaponry.
Meanwhile, the last major gang, Coil's, was somewhat of a relief to Taylor. They were still awful, running protection rackets and selling drugs and other illegal items like there was no tomorrow, but for the most part, the gang was seen as the least outwardly dangerous of the three, with no known parahumans other than perhaps Coil himself, it held its ground through the use of tinker tech wielding and highly trained mercenaries that were good enough to even fight off Empire incursions into their territory.
It was a bleak picture, when taken all together, and as Taylor leaned back on the couch with her brows furrowed with a not insignificant amount of worry, she felt a strange mix of emotions welling up within her.
She'd always known the Bay had it bad, but for the most part, she'd never really taken it all that seriously. Sometimes the violence did spill out from the criminal sphere and into the civilian, but it was rare enough that it was easy for her and her family to mostly ignore it and focus instead on their day-to-day issues. If a road was busted up because a cape fight had happened there a few days prior, well, that was just a part of life.
However, it felt remarkably different now that she was a cape herself. She'd always somewhat looked down on the idea of capes who just went their whole lives hiding their powers and keeping their heads down, but now that she had a clearer picture of the dangers of the cape lifestyle, Taylor could reluctantly understand the allure of that mindset.
But just because she could understand it did not mean she was willing to give in to it. Taking a deep breath, Taylor pushed her computer off her lap and stood up, glancing at the clock and noting that there were only ten or so minutes left before her father should be back home.
Taylor was done hiding. She was done running. She was done being just miserable little Taylor, the school pariah. Locker Girl.
Her power was strong. She knew that. She was a one-in-a-million type of cape, and she would be damned before she allowed her potential to go to waste just because she was a little scared of some thugs in costumes. Regular men and women regularly faced the city's villains without being backed up by literal superpowers, after all. How hard could it possibly be if they managed it?
Her commitment reaffirmed, Taylor took a few seconds to calm herself from the frenzy she'd worked herself up, feeling somewhat glad that there was no one around to see her embarrassing outburst (god, she'd have hung herself if her dad had seen her give herself a pep talk like that) before marching upstairs to go and get ready.
Because, damn it, she was going to do this, and she was going to do it well!
She was so not ready for this. Why had she thought this was a good idea?
"Hello, Mr. Laborn." Her dad greeted the military-looking guy before them. He was a muscular, tall man who must have weighed at least twice as much as Danny did, with none of the weight being anything but pure muscle. "I'm Danny Hebert, and this here is my daughter, Taylor."
Mr. Laborn nodded, a jerky, sudden movement as his eyes trailed away from Danny and onto Taylor, examining her with a surprisingly intense amount of scrutiny before looking back at her dad. "A pleasure." He said, voice rough and tight. "You looking to sign up?" He asked, crossing his arms under his chest.
Her dad blinked but nodded in acceptance. "Yes. Well, Taylor is. I'm just here to make sure this is a good place for her." He admitted. Mr. Laborn gave an understanding grunt at his words before turning to Taylor.
"What are you looking for?" He asked her, and while Taylor had obviously never attended any military academy, she couldn't help but wonder whether this was how it felt to be addressed by a drill sergeant.
"Ah, uh," Taylor stammered, feeling a brief moment of shyness at being put on the spot before she managed to rally. "W-well, I mostly just want to get in shape. I've... I've been having some trouble at school..." She said, not daring to look at her dad as she spoke, "And, well... I thought it could help." She finished helplessly.
Truthfully, she mostly just wanted to get in shape for her hopefully upcoming cape career, but it wasn't like she'd spoken a lie. Also, she kind of hoped this would turn out to be a good place for farming some easy points, and if her newly upgraded point-sensing power was any indication, then it probably would be.
And speaking of powers, Taylor had taken the time during the car ride here to invest her points, figuring that while it would be good to have some as a backup in case of emergency, she really didn't have enough to use them for anything worthwhile on their own anyway, so she might as well get some value out of them.
While she'd been tempted to just dump them all into her learning power- Better Learner, as she'd decided to call it- she figured that, right now, it would be a better decision to invest them into her other two powers, considering they would be more relevant to her immediate needs.
So, she'd gone ahead and done just that, putting six of her points into her Point Sense power, which she'd also decided to name, to match it with her Regeneration, a decision that hadn't quite paid off yet since the difference was minuscule so far, but Taylor hoped it would prove worthwhile soon enough.
Finally, for her last bit of points remaining, she'd actually decided to experiment a little. Before, all that her Regeneration did was up her natural healing factor by a little bit, and while she could have just gone ahead and continued to invest into it until that little boost became outright superhuman, she'd wanted to try something a little different.
So, when she'd put five of the remaining points into the power, she'd tried as hard as she could to push a new concept into the power: Adaptation. It hadn't been easy, and they'd almost arrived at the gym by the time she was done, but she'd still managed to do it thanks to what her gut was telling her was an inherent synergy between the concept of regeneration and adaptation.
Now, while her slight regeneration boost from the power had only gone up by a very slight amount, she could tell that her power would now, whenever she took some form of damage, provide her body with a slight, almost unnoticeable amount of adaptation to the damage. Nothing that a normal human couldn't reproduce through time and practice, she wouldn't be able to grow bony plates herself if she were shot, for example, but she'd grow calluses quicker than she should if she punched someone, and she sensed that her body would improve ever so slightly quicker and easier as long as she exercised it.
But with that said, her modification hadn't come without a cost. She automatically knew that, since her Regeneration was now broader in scope, she'd have to invest more points into it if she wanted to make her healing factor better, since each point was now split between enhancing that old part of the power and the new one.
Overall, a very satisfying result, Taylor felt, one that had both served to improve a rather important part of her current kit while also helping her learn just a little bit more about her power.
"Hm... I see. As good a reason as any, and I've heard worse ones." Mr. Laborn said, forcing Taylor to shake off her momentary daydreaming and refocus on the present. "Come. We'll get started and see how you do." He half-said, half-ordered, turning without hesitation and beckoning her to follow.
"Wait, what about payment?" Her father asked, sounding somewhat worried.
Mr. Laborn looked back at him with a raised eyebrow. "It's 60$ per month. First lesson's free. If you can't tough out even the first session, then you don't belong here. Easier for both of us to see if you have what it takes first before committing." He said, sounding bored even as his eyes met Taylor's own.
And despite herself, Taylor couldn't help but bristle slightly. "I can do it!" She said, trying her best not to sound like a whiny teenager. When Mr. Laborn's only response was to raise his eyebrow even higher, she huffed grumpily before stomping past him and into the actual gym beyond the reception area.
"Ah! Taylor, wait..." Her father called, but she ignored him in favor of looking around wide-eyed at all the professional-looking equipment neatly stored around the gym. Hell, there was even a boxing ring off to the side!
"We'll be done in two hours. Come pick her up then." She heard Mr. Laborn tell her dad, but she was too distracted by all the fancy new gadgets lying around to hear his response as she cautiously explored the place, idly noting how there didn't seem to be any other visitors currently.
A loud clapping sound caused her to flinch in alarm, looking toward its source to find Mr. Laborn standing there. "Alright then." He spoke, tilting his head in thought. "Let's start with some stretching. Give me thirty box squats in a row." He ordered.
Taylor blinked in confusion. "Um... What?" She said dumbly, only to immediately flush in embarrassment at the frown Mr. Laborn sent her way. "I mean, what's a box squat?" She asked again, trying not to wilt.
Either ignorant or uncaring of her embarrassment, Mr. Laborn merely nodded, got into a stance, and showed her.
'Ah,' Taylor realized with more than a little horror as he finished demonstrating the exercise while also explaining what to do and what not to do. 'I may have made a mistake.' She thought again as she struggled to complete even a single such squat, falling clean on her butt on her first try.
"Again! Is that all you can do? My decrepit grandma could do squats better than that, and she was halfway in the grave already!" He barked at her, and Taylor scrambled to try again.
Mistake or not, though, Taylor was nothing if not stubborn, and so, as the minutes crawled on by at a snail's pace, she refused to give in even as Mr. Laborn gave her tough exercise followed by even tougher exercise, with the small, three-minute breaks whenever she genuinely couldn't keep going feeling more like three-second breaks.
Her Regeneration power definitely came in clutch, and Taylor was extremely glad to have gotten it, because she genuinely didn't know how she could have handled things without it. It wasn't enough to not make her feel like a dead fish by the end of the two hours, but it definitely helped by giving her just enough recovery to get through it all, and not just because it was finally over.
As Taylor more or less collapsed on the back seat of her father's truck after mumbling something incomprehensible to him when he'd asked her how it'd gone, she nonetheless couldn't help but smile.
Spoiler: Point Reward
After all, even if every single one of her muscles was currently crying out in agony, she couldn't help but relish the sensation of the nice little chunk of points she'd managed to gradually earn throughout the whole session.
It was, Taylor would reluctantly admit the following morning, a very nice feeling to be carried by her father up into her room and tucked in for a rather early night, with him even kissing her forehead before he left.
What was less nice, however, was the realization that she then had to go to school feeling like she'd been run over by a truck the previous day, which was, Taylor could admit, a bit of a miscalculation, but regardless, she was more than happy with what she'd managed to do, and she fully intended to keep doing it, even if the mere thought of more sessions like that left her wincing in sympathetic agony for her future self.
+11 points total (10 gym, 1 daily)
12 Points in Bank
Spoiler: Winning Plan[X] Plan: Different Basics
-[X] Go to School - You won't give up. Sure, the timing could have been better, but you refuse to let the Trio win. Your homework is all done and done well, and you're done being the school's punching bag. Show them who's boss.
--[X] Confront bullies - Fight back, not with fists, as you know that's a losing proposition, but with words. Results may vary.
-[X] Spend Points
--[X] Existing Power: Regeneration. Do it before we reach school - hopefully it will help with the soreness...
---[X] 10 Points.
The bus ride toward school felt simultaneously far too long and yet also much too short. Taylor wasn't sure what exactly she was feeling, torn up as she was between dread at going back to the one place she hated most, while simultaneously feeling a kind of nervous anticipation to just get it over with, but whatever it was, it had her practically bouncing in place out of sheer anxiety as the bus rolled along its usual route.
Taylor rechecked her schoolbag for what had to be the fourth time, ensuring all of her work and books were in good order within. Biting her bottom lip, she leaned back against her seat, glancing out of the window and, for a little while, tried to calm herself by just watching the city she'd grown up in pass her by.
Surprisingly, it did sort of work as Taylor felt herself relax at least a little bit. Letting out a breath and idly noticing that they were starting to get close to her stop, Taylor grimaced as her arm ached a little. Unsurprising, considering how much she'd worked it out yesterday, and honestly, it was only thanks to her Regeneration that it wasn't hurting far more, but it was still an unwelcome feeling.
... But then again, speaking of powers... Maybe she could just do something about it?
Taylor furrowed her brows, pondering whether it was worth it to use her points as carefreely as she'd been doing, but ultimately, she couldn't see why she shouldn't. While she didn't have a lot of points to spend, they were still coming in quickly enough that she wasn't too worried about running dry, so she might as well.
Besides, Taylor thought to herself as she focused inward and grasped at her meager point pool with ease born of practice and instinct, if she was going to confront her bullies, she might as well do so as the best version of herself she could manage.
And so, with that in mind, Taylor didn't hesitate to add ten of her points onto her Regeneration, smiling as she felt her power eagerly soak them up and grow.
Flexing her arm, Taylor closed her eyes as she tried to feel the difference her investment had made, and while it unfortunately wasn't by a lot, as was quickly becoming a trend with her powers, one that Taylor wasn't exactly all that pleased by, it was still a noticeable improvement.
Already, Taylor was feeling less tired and more energetic, her aches vanishing a bit faster, and in general, she felt more pumped up. Nothing groundbreaking, but Taylor had already resigned herself to the fact that her power unfortunately didn't lend itself to explosive growth, but rather a marathon of constant improvement.
Don't get her wrong, she was glad to have the power she did. The sheer freedom of choice it offered her was something that she, somewhat smugly, thought practically any normal cape would be practically crying in jealousy of, and she was sure (or at least hoped) that she'd eventually reach a point where she had more points and powers than she knew what to do with, but... Well...
It did, Taylor secretly admitted to herself, feel a bit stifling to constantly have to feel like she was starving for points and then forced to look for the smallest of improvements when she did use them.
Still, she exhaled, shaking her head. She knew she was being silly and, frankly, acting like a spoiled brat. So, taking a deep breath, she pushed away her worries and complaints and focused on the task before her, a decision made easier by the fact that her bus had reached its destination.
As the other passengers began making their way out, Taylor stood up as well, grabbed her schoolbag, firmed up her resolve, and followed the crowd.
Today, things would change. They had to, because if they didn't... Taylor didn't even want to think about it.
Her first class of the day was biology, and while throughout it all Taylor side-eyed the only one of her bullies in the class with her, Madison, for its entire duration, the disgustingly fake cutesy girl barely even looked at Taylor, apparently far more interested in giggling along with a couple of tag-alongs of hers as they not-so-discreetly insulted and made fun of their old teacher, who was unfortunately too old and lame of hearing to catch them in the act.
Still, Taylor took some measure of satisfaction when she repaid the smirk Madison not so subtly sent her way when the teacher took everyone's weekend homework before handing out a test on what they'd covered last week by being the first one to turn said test in as done.
She took even more satisfaction when, by the time she left the class, she did so with a brand-new A+ while Madison was left behind to stew over her C-. The little tingle signifying her receiving a little reward for her success definitely also helped to improve her mood.
Her next class, French, was also blissfully peaceful and bully-free, and to her somewhat amused yet pleased surprise, the teacher immediately gave out a surprise quiz the moment the class started, much to the consternation of everyone else in the class.
As far as Taylor was concerned, between her power-provided assistance and the headache-inducing amount of studying she'd already done, the quiz might as well have been labeled 'free points!!' for all it served to do.
And, sure enough, by the time the class ended and the lunch bell rang, Taylor left it feeling particularly pleased as she felt yet another little reward had been given to her.
Spoiler: Point Reward
Unfortunately, that was just about when her good time at school came to a close, because once she'd finished grabbing her lunch and was debating where to go sit to eat, her legs were abruptly swept out from under her, and with a yelp, she found herself falling to the ground, spilling the chicken nuggets and pizza slice she'd gotten all over the floor.
"Whoops!" The hauntingly familiar sound of Emma's giggling and Sophia's chuckling came from next to her fallen form. "Careful there, Taylor! I know you're clumsy, but you almost spilled that all over me." She clicked her tongue, shaking her head even as Taylor got to her feet, face red in both fury and humiliation. "Jeez... First day back and you've already made a mess. Typical."
"You tripped me!" Taylor forced herself to say, seething as her good mood was thoroughly obliterated. She wanted to retort with something witty or humiliating right back, but alas, Taylor was many things, but a social savant she was not, and thus was unable to provide any further pushback as Emma smirked.
"Me? I didn't do anything." Emma innocently said, even as Sophia's smirk just widened. "Typical Taylor, always pushing blame everywhere but where it belongs... With you." She practically sang, looking delighted as Taylor shook with helpless rage, her worst fears coming into reality right before her eyes.
She'd promised herself things would change, and yet here she was, still being humiliated and pushed around without any retaliation. Still nothing more than weak little Taylor.
It was with that realization that Taylor felt herself cool off, and before she even knew it, she'd started talking. "That's funny, coming from you." She felt herself say, almost as if she were a spectator watching the scene unfold. "Because I distinctly remember you always making messes when we were younger, and then always pushing them onto other people... Like the time you peed your bed, and tried to say a ghost had done it." She said, and she delighted in watching the way Emma's face went red with confusion and anger.
Before Emma could actually respond, though, Taylor was once more shoved, and once again fell on her butt as Sophia stood over her, glaring at her. "Watch your words, Hebert." Sophia spat at her. "You don't get to-"
"Oi!" A male, adult voice interrupted her, and all three of them turned to see that one of the teachers on hall monitor duty had wandered over, his somewhat overweight frame and poorly kept beard unfamiliar to Taylor. "What's going on here?" He demanded, looking at the three of them with furrowed brows.
Although Taylor tried, it was Emma who rallied first, her sweet voice immediately vomiting out bullshit. "Ah, it was nothing, Mr. Brown. Taylor here just tripped twice and then said it was our fault when we tried to help her." She 'explained', but this time, Taylor refused to stay silent.
"Bullshit!" She spat, glaring at her tormentor. "You two tripped and pushed me! You did it in front of literally everyone!" She accused, causing Sophia's glare to deepen and Emma's face to contort in annoyance, as if Taylor was somehow at fault for not shutting up and just taking it.
"See? She always does that. We were just trying to help." Emma said, and for a moment, Taylor felt the intense urge to rush to her feet and just strangle what had once been her best friend to death, consequences be damned.
But, fortunately for her continuance of non-criminal status, the teacher just raised an eyebrow and sighed. "Kid, I have eyes. I literally saw your... friend..." The teacher glanced at Sophia with disdain, "Push her. So, for all our sake, shut up, apologize, and get out of here." He said. Taylor felt a surge of vindictive amusement as she watched Emma's mouth open and close as she clearly tried to find some excuse to get out of this one.
Sophia made an annoyed sound. "Sorry, Taylor." She said flatly with the least apologetic voice she could manage, glaring at her as she forced herself to her feet, forcing herself to glare right back, an act that seemed to only infuriate Sophia even more. Letting out a loud harrumph, she turned and started walking away, gesturing for Emma to follow.
However, what was supposed to be a cool exit turned out to be anything but as the teacher interrupted her. "Oh no, you don't." He said, smirking lightly as Sophia came to a halt. "You're coming with me to the principal's office. Assaulting another student like that is unacceptable." He claimed, spewing out bullshit just as stinky as Emma's, considering how common violent incidents were in the school, and how rarely they were properly punished.
"No, I fucking won't, I didn't do anything!" Sophia protested, fuming. The teacher, however, remained unmoved, and before long, Sophia was forced to follow the teacher as he pretty much force-marched her to the principal's office, a complaining and disputing Emma following after the two all the while.
Taylor, meanwhile, remained behind, watching the three of them disappear, brows furrowed.
She'd... She'd won. Sort of.
It wasn't a victory she was proud of. It wasn't a victory like she'd imagined she'd achieved during this morning's daydreams... But... It was still a victory. She'd finally gotten her bullies to face some consequences.
More than even that, however, what truly floored Taylor was the fact that a teacher had actually acted against the trio, or duo in this case, for once. All of a sudden, that image of invincibility she'd built up around the idea of her bullies started crumbling down, and as she looked around with new eyes at the cafeteria around her, and more importantly, the students still here, she couldn't help but see it all in a new light.
A few people had watched the show go on, and now that it was over, nobody had intervened to help her... Neither had they bothered to say anything to defend Emma and Sophia.
It was a sobering realization, just how deep the apathy in this place went, that nobody would bother to defend her nor her bullies, but in a way, Taylor supposed she could understand it, she thought with a frown on her face. She was hardly any better, after all. How many times had she witnessed other people being bullied or harassed and done nothing about it because she was too concerned with her own problems?
The answer was, of course, far too many to bother counting.
Still feeling a bit like her head was about to explode from the strange realization, Taylor wandered away, still lost deep in thought as she sat at an empty table to brood over everything that had happened, and potentially, how she could take advantage of it.
However, said brooding was quickly interrupted as her power acted up, except that this time, it didn't just twitch... It outright burst.
It took all of her willpower for Taylor not to gasp as a rush of points greater than anything she'd yet felt flooded into her pool, so much so that, by the time it was done, Taylor was left with her mouth hanging in surprise.
Spoiler: Point Reward
It was more points than she'd earned in total since she'd first gotten her power, more than she could have ever imagined earning by fighting back against the trio. And, perhaps most importantly... More than she should have gotten.
Something was amiss. Taylor would be the first to admit that she still didn't fully, or perhaps even partially, understand all the intricacies of how her power worked, but she had still mostly worked out the greater kinks, and from everything she understood, she should not have gotten anywhere near this many points, especially since she herself had barely done anything to deserve it.
For a couple of minutes, Taylor was left scrambling for ideas as to what could have caused this. She was happy, don't get her wrong, very happy, even, but she was also confused and slightly worried. Thankfully, she did eventually figure out a possible solution to understanding this strange occurrence, one that honestly left her feeling a bit dumb for not immediately considering it.
Trying her best to think about the nigh-imperceptible hunches her Point Sense power usually gave her in the background, she mentally tried her hardest to push the power to the front even as she forced herself to remember the confrontation over and over again, going over every single detail of what occurred.
And, eventually, she did finally manage to pick up on something; unfortunately, it only left her even more confused than before.
To her Point Sense, Emma did faintly feel like a valid and abundant source of points, one that could be tackled in multiple ways for a variety of possible rewards, although what said ways and rewards were, her power felt too weak to say, but for the most part, it was all as Taylor had already mostly expected.
No, what really surprised her was Sophia, because even to her usually very faint point sensor, the thuggish girl was practically a beacon, one radiating with the potential for point rewards now that she was really focusing on it.
Unfortunately for Taylor, for all that she'd gotten her answer as to what had caused her sudden influx of points... She still had no idea as to why it had all happened.
So it was that the left of the day went on with Taylor in admittedly somewhat of a daze, her last remaining classes passing by without incident or issue, and it was only by the time she was riding the bus back to her home that she finally managed to shake herself fully free from it.
Taylor still had many more unanswered questions, but realizing that agonizing over the issue wouldn't do her any good, she finally managed to force herself to drop the matter for the moment, a task made significantly easier by the deliciously plentiful pool of points within her, one that, while not quite enough to match her initial fund, was still plenty enough to leave her with a wide smile at the thought of what she could do with them.
Overall, Taylor was... Happy. She'd won, perhaps more so through dumb luck and carelessness on her bullies' part, but she'd still won. The illusion of invincibility she'd built up around her tormentors had shattered, and she'd come away from it all with a nice and fat reward to boot.
So, needless to say, Taylor was in a rather excellent mood as she arrived at her house, humming quietly to herself as her mind already got to work furiously thinking on what she would use those sweet, sweet points on.
Said excellent mood, unfortunately, was not to last, because as she stepped inside the house and found to her surprise that the lights were on, she found her father waiting for her, sitting on his chair while facing the entrance, facing her.
"Welcome back, Taylor." He said, his voice slightly subdued, but despite that, something about his tone immediately set Taylor on edge. "Would you mind taking a seat? I feel like we need to talk."
Those four final words, the ones that no teenager ever wants to hear from anyone, especially not a parent, spelled the death knell of her previous happiness, and Taylor found herself swallowing tightly, clutching at her schoolbag like it would somehow protect her.
As she cautiously and quietly sat on the couch, hands wringing together, her father resumed speaking. "I received a rather interesting call from your school this afternoon. They claimed that there was an incident during lunch, one where you, and I quote them, 'collaborated along with an unjust and racially motivated punishment'. They refused to provide me with more details." He said calmly.
Taylor's stomach practically fell out of her belly. "Dad, I didn't-" She immediately tried to defend, but her dad merely held up a hand, shushing her as he looked straight into her eyes.
"I know you didn't. That's why I told them to fuck off and never dare insinuate such things about my daughter again, especially while refusing to provide evidence, or I would sue for defamation." He told her, his voice soft yet pained.
Taken aback, Taylor was left with her mouth agape, unsure of what to say to that. "Dad, I... I don't... I would never..." She tried to say, but the words just wouldn't come, leaving her babbling like an idiot.
"Taylor." Her dad said firmly, and Taylor's mouth clicked shut. He rubbed his nose, closed his eyes, and let out a long, loud breath. "Taylor, I love you, you know that, right? I think the world of you." He began, his voice unsure but quickly gaining momentum. "But I'm also worried for you. First, a supposed 'prank' ends with you in the hospital and refusing to say anything about it. Then, you suddenly ask me to sign you up for one of the toughest gyms I've seen yet, claiming to be having trouble at school but refusing to explain anything." He took a deep breath, his own pleading eyes meeting her own.
"And now, this happens. Taylor, I don't know what's going on with you, but no matter what it is, I promise I can help. Please. Let me do so." He practically begged, and Taylor couldn't bear to look at him anymore, her face red with shame as she looked down at her lap.
She didn't know what to do. She'd never wanted to worry him this much. It had all just been so stupid and childish, and he'd already been so busy and already in difficulty, and she just didn't know what to do.
"Taylor. Please." He asked for one final time. "Tell me what's going on."
Blinking away her tears, Taylor forced herself to look at her father, and after a long, painful pause of indecision on her part, finally made her choice.
+63 points total (61 bullies, 2 tests)
65 Points in Bank