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Disillusion 2.4: Darwin's Law

Sophia Hess was not the type to back down.

She didn't run away, she didn't turn her back, and she didn't retreat unless it was to find a better position.

Most importantly, Sophia didn't lose.

The PRT and the Protectorate may have managed to slip a leash around her neck, but they didn't own her, and she didn't let their rules and regulations and pansy-ass refusal to act decisively stop her from doing her own private patrols, outside the view of her handlers and the weaklings she was supposed to call teammates. She was not a tame housecat, after all, she was a panther, all claws and teeth and lethality.

Even in her civilian life, she didn't lose. Every day, or near enough that there wasn't much difference, she showed her superiority and put the cowering sheep of Winslow like Taylor Hebert — especially Taylor Hebert — in their place.

She and her best friend, Emma, ruled Winslow in all but name. She was a Track star, Emma was a radiant beauty with modelling prospects — even the upper years didn't dare bother them.

The teachers? When they bothered to care, no one dared say anything against Sophia or Emma — no one who wanted to go anywhere in Winslow's internal hierarchy, anyway. Any weaklings that thought to tattle were easily discredited by Emma's friends, like Madison or Julia, because of course Sophia and Emma hadn't done those things, why would they?

That was how it was supposed to be. Sophia won, the end.

Except she hadn't.

Hebert was a pathetic weakling, so afraid of her own shadow that she didn't even bother eating in the cafeteria, anymore. Any brief moment of bravery — rare as they were — when Emma was asserting dominance was something Sophia quite happily and quite mercilessly squashed, and then Hebert went back to being a spineless loser.

Except she hadn't.

When Hebert had back-mouthed Emma, Sophia had done as she always did during those moments when Hebert grew something of a spine: she put Hebert back in her place. Like normal, Hebert was supposed to shrivel and shrink in on herself, and the day would go on.

Except. She. Fucking. Hadn't.

Instead, she'd rallied harder and come back with a spiel Sophia might have expected from Emma, but certainly not from Hebert. She'd come back, delivered a speech that would have actually been impressively scathing, if it hadn't been directed in Sophia's direction, and then she'd dared Sophia to hit her — to hit her, and prove her right.

Again, it would have been impressive, if it hadn't also been so fucking infuriating.

Because she couldn't have hit Hebert, not without proving everything Hebert had said was right. At the same time, though, to not hit Hebert meant that Hebert had beaten her. Hitting her meant Hebert was right, not hitting her was backing down and letting her win, especially after she'd lit into Emma, too…

There was no fucking way to win.

So, Sophia had done the only thing she could: she'd backed down. As much as she would have liked to hit Hebert right in that smug, ugly face of hers, not only would it mean losing (if in a much more personally satisfying way), but there was no way she would have gotten away with it. A trip in the hallway, a shove with her shoulder, a little push every now and again, those could be written off. A fist to the face, though? Giving the girl a black eye, as good as it would have felt? Those were much harder to ignore and much more likely to make it back to Sophia's handler for the PRT, which would make things even more of a hassle.

Immediately, Sophia and Emma had started making plans for how to get back at Hebert, but, as though she had sniffed out danger, Hebert was nowhere to be seen, that afternoon, and Sophia was left to stew. She could maybe have taken it out on some other loser or something, but there was no Track practice that day and Sophia wasn't scheduled for any patrols that night, either.

Sophia was pissed, and there was nothing she could do about it. She just had to put up with it, that feeling of impotent rage that reminded her far too much of how helpless she'd been during her Trigger, and that only made her angrier.

As she was on her way home, however, that anger crystallized into a brilliant idea.

Emma had once mentioned how proud Hebert was of her hair. At the time, Sophia hadn't given it much thought, just filed it away for future reference. The only reason they hadn't done anything with it before was that it was visible, and the more visible something they did was, the more likely the incompetent stooges on Winslow's staff were to take notice and actually do something. A push or a shove here, some missing homework there, and it could be written off as either an accident or Taylor just making excuses for why she wasn't doing her work.

But cutting Taylor's hair in the middle of the school day meant carrying scissors, and with how skittish the teachers were about gang stuff, that meant Sophia and Emma might get in trouble for some bullshit like assault with a deadly weapon. Better not to risk it.

Except it didn't have to be done in school, did it?

So, on her way home, Sophia scrolled back through her texts with Emma, looking for Hebert's address. When that didn't work, she fumed for a few minutes, then had the idea of looking it up in the digital equivalent of the Brockton Bay phonebook. There was no "Hebert, Taylor," listed there, though, and Sophia fumed again as she got off the bus and started the walk home.

Then, halfway to her front door, she remembered, well, of course Hebert's name wasn't listed, it'd be listed under her father's name. B…something. Maybe C-something? Sophia was fairly sure Emma had mentioned it at some point, she just couldn't remember what it was.

Sure enough, the only listing anywhere near enough to Winslow for Taylor to attend was a Hebert, Daniel. Danny, Sophia felt she could remember Emma saying. Danny Hebert, Taylor's dad. It was going to be a bit of a hike, but the reward at the end was going to be fucking awesome.

That night, Sophia pretended to go to bed early and waited for the rest of the house to fall asleep. The hours ticked by with agonizing slowness, and once or twice, Sophia had to catch herself before she dozed off, too. Whenever the wait seemed too long, she consoled herself with the knowledge that it would be well worth it to see the look on Hebert's face in school the next day — if the girl even bothered to show and didn't just hide under her pillow all day.

Once the glowing numbers on her clock showed midnight, however, Sophia slowly extricated herself from her blankets and quietly got dressed. She put on her old costume, the one she'd worn before being forced into the Wards, and it felt so very good to slip on that old, metal hockey mask instead of the carved visage of her official mask. For a little extra warmth, she pulled on a dull, grey hoody, too. Then, she grabbed a harness, her crossbow, and a bunch of bolts — both the tranquilizers the PRT had provided and the broadheads she wasn't supposed to be using anymore — because she might as well go whole hog and get in a solo patrol while she was out.

The last things she snagged before leaving were an old rag and a bottle of chloroform hidden under a loose floorboard (something she'd gotten ages ago for those takedowns where she needed to, ah, interrogate a scumbag, rather than just putting the fear of God into him, but never actually gotten the chance to use). Just to make sure Hebert wouldn't wake up while she was at work.

Then, with everything in hand, Sophia climbed out of her window and used her powers to drift down onto the street below. Once she was safely on the ground, she snuck over a few streets, sticking to the shadows to make sure no lucky idiot managed to trace her back to her home, and only then, when she was sure she'd taken all the necessary precautions, did she pull out her phone and use its GPS to plot out her route.

"Fucking A," she breathed.

In the end, it took her about an hour to make the trip, and when her phone finally showed a little icon that said, "You have reached your destination," she was staring across the street at an old house. It was well-kept, but it still looked like something that had been built a hundred years ago, and its age definitely showed. Compared to Sophia's apartment or the houses closer to the center of the city, it looked positively ancient.

When she took a picture of the front door and zoomed in on the number, it matched the address she'd pulled up early in the afternoon. This was where Hebert, Daniel lived, which meant this was also where Taylor Hebert lived. Sophia smiled.

She was there.

She crossed the street quickly, careful to keep her footsteps quiet and unnoticeable. As she walked, however, a feeling of foreboding crept down her spine, and she had to suppress a shiver as something cold wrapped around her heart.

This was a bad idea. She really shouldn't be doing this. In fact, she should just turn around and head back home. Forget about the whole thing — she shouldn't have come in the first place.

But Sophia scowled, cursed the moment of hesitation, and soldiered on until she stood in the Heberts' yard, looking up at the ancient house. She was not going to chicken out now, so close that she could taste it.

Which room was Taylor's, though? She glanced at each of the windows she could see, but it wasn't like one had frilly pink curtains to give away which one belonged to her target. Okay. So, how should she go about finding it? Should she go through the front door and search room to room until she found Taylor, or should she climb up and stick her head through each window? Or maybe…

It was only by instinct that Sophia avoided death.

The prickling on her neck was what tipped her off that something was wrong, and as she dove forward and out of the way almost on reflex, something cut through the air where her neck had just been — she heard the whoop it made as it passed. She came back up with catlike grace where others might have fallen flat on their faces, and as she whipped around and lashed out at her assailant, using her crossbow like a club, all she saw at first was the color: pale white.

But after she struck — CRACK — and the figure went down, collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut, she had the chance to get a better look at the pile in front of her. The distinctly inhuman pile.

"What the?"

She leaned over and peered down at it. Pale and white, it was a collection of rods, some straight, some curved, mostly rounded. In fact, it looked distinctly like…

"Bone?"

As though she had spoken the magic word, the ground around her erupted, and all over the yard, skeletal hands reached up, pulling up entire bodies made of nothing but bone as though over a cliff or the edge of a pond. Each one had ribs shaped like claws, no head but for a pair of jaws with sharp, crocodile teeth, and carried some kind of weapon made of bone. Some had axes, some had swords, and some had clubs with jagged spikes.

There was no gore attached to them. No rotted muscle or skin, no bits of entrails, no sinew to hold them together.

"The hell?"

The skeletons all faced her, chittering with every move as their joints produced a series of clacks. It took her only a bare instant to realize their intent.

"Shit!"

She thrust herself backwards, stooping down to sweep up the sword belonging to the one she'd already destroyed, and as though that was some kind of signal, the army of skeletons surged.

She swung out at the closest one and struck it with enough force to send the bones flying. They scattered and clattered and fell with a sound like a cross between a piece of wood snapping and bowling pins being knocked over.

"The hell are these things?"

As they approached, she swung again and destroyed another one. Undeterred, the rest kept coming, and she pushed herself back and out of their reach, trying to keep all of them in her sight. In the back, more rose out of the ground to replace the ones she'd…killed wasn't the right word, but it was the only one she had.

"More of them?!"

This was serious zombie apocalypse shit. But these things, there was no way they were humans or some kind of prank. That first one would've killed her, if she hadn't ducked. These were minions, which means this had to be the work of some kind of Master.

She cast her gaze around quickly, dodging backwards whenever one of the skeletons came too close, but the lights were off all over the street, except for a handful of streetlamps. No one was standing in their room with the lights on and watching her, and there were no mysterious figures on one of the rooftops staring down at her. In fact, now that she looked around, the skeletons were only coming up out of…one…yard…

Dully, Sophia Hess came to a realization: Taylor Hebert was a cape.

A sudden rage surged up inside of her, the world tilting on its side and turning white, and she swung out with a growl at another one of the skeleton minions, sending the bones scattering. It didn't really make her feel any better — it wasn't alive, for one thing.

No way. No fucking way.

That wimp, that wimp, so afraid of her own shadow that she never fought back, was a cape? Taylor fucking Hebert, who didn't have a single ounce of courage and no backbone to speak of, was a parahuman? That little weakling?

It didn't make sense. It ran counter to everything that Sophia Hess knew to be true, everything that she had always believed without a shadow of a doubt. The sky was blue, grass was green, the earth was round, and Taylor Hebert was a weak, little nothing who would never have the strength to be anything other than Sophia's personal punching bag.

She was not a cape, and she would never be a cape, because capes were strong, were people who faced the darkest parts of the festering bag of shit that was life and rose up in spite of it, even if they became wimpy and weak later on. They were everything Taylor Hebert wasn't. Therefore, Taylor Hebert simply could not be a cape.

And if the situation was different, maybe Sophia could have convinced herself that was true. Maybe she could have convinced herself that she was right and Taylor Hebert could never be a cape. However, the proof was staring her straight in the face, was taking swipes at her with weapons made of bone and snapping at her with mouths full of sharp, crocodile teeth.

Sophia felt her lips twist up into a grin as she shattered another minion. They just seemed to keep coming, and even though they weren't enough of a threat that she couldn't just blow them apart with a well-aimed punch, sheer numbers alone made them annoying, at the very least.

She'd just had a wonderful idea.

The original plan was shot all to hell, that much was obvious. With this many minions pouring out to fight her, there was no way the cape responsible for them — Taylor Hebert — didn't know she was coming. That was how Masters worked, wasn't it? They commanded their minions from the shadows, like a puppet master pulling the strings.

Briefly, Sophia had a thought about how fitting it was that a girl who could never be strong enough to fight for herself would get a power that allowed her to summon minions to fight for her. Because of fucking course that would be the kind of power a weakling like Hebert would have.

Anyway, it just made things easier. Sophia could admit that her original plan had been quite a bit riskier and relied on a whole bunch of stuff going just right — not that she would have been caught, either way, but some lucky idiot with a smartphone could've made things difficult for her — but the new idea running through her head was a much better one.

Forget the cutting her hair idea. If Hebert knew she was there, knew enough to send minions to stop her, then Sophia would just have to kill her outright, and when she called it in, told Miss Piggy about the whole thing, she'd say she'd been out patrolling solo (maybe following up on a rumor she'd heard in school or something; you know, really sell it) when she'd been attacked by an unknown Master. She'd spin a heroic tale about how she'd tried to do it peacefully, but she'd run out of tranquilizer bolts by the time she'd finally fought her way through the endless horde of minions, and oh, it was a tragedy, but she'd been forced to use one of her emergency backup (coincidentally, lethal) bolts to finally take down the Master: Taylor Hebert, a weird, friendless loner from her school who had a completely unjustified grudge against Sophia.

Oh yeah, picture fucking perfect. All wrapped up, tied neatly with a bow. Piggy might bench her for a week or two, maybe shout her up and down the office, but at the end of the day, Hebert would be gone and Sophia would get a feather in her cap for taking down a villainous new Master, and hey, if Hebert's father happened to get killed by one of her minions in the process, then Sophia was even more of a hero, wasn't she?

Fucking A.

Sophia charged forward, excitement rushing through her veins and pooling in her stomach, and towards the house. The sword fell from her fingers, discarded as excess weight. All she had to do was find Hebert, and then she could enact her little story, and without anyone else to say otherwise, things would be golden.

Another of the minions came towards her, pulling its arm back to swing its bone sword, but rather than fight it, Sophia shifted into shadow form and kept going. She was already imagining the look on Emma's face, the laughs they'd share, when the sharpened blade of bone slid right through her like she wasn't even —

"Hu — ?"

A strange sense of numbness overcame Sophia, and with a jolt, she watched her legs go spinning off to one side while gravity pulled her to the other. She had a single instant to register red blood on white bone, glistening in the moonlight, as her momentum caused her to tumble towards the ground. She had a single moment to feel the surge of muted pain that lanced up her spinal cord, the peculiar sensation of her stomach sinking, and the jarring thud as her torso hit the ground.

The last thing she saw before her vision went black was the rest of her, everything from her hips down, collapsing to the grass several feet away.

Bad End 1

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