37

Date

2011 January 30th - Saturday - Earth Bet Time

"What?" she replied and at the same time took a step back from the grinning blonde.

"I'm Victoria."

"I got that!" she snapped. "Why did you do that?"

"Oh, well, Dean, my boyfriend," she began, motioning towards a handsome young man and a frizzy-haired girl standing a little back. The girl was smirking; the boy, however, was holding his face in his hand. "Saw you and mentioned I almost hit you way back, and I thought why not say hi, and apologize?"

"What?"

The girl blinked, a little confused, then smiled at her, and Taylor somehow expected her to sparkle. "I'm apologizing for almost hitting you."

"Why?"

"You are rather monosyllabic, aren't you?"

"Yes," she answered, trying to inject as much sarcasm into her voice as possible. "That's what happens when a random girl assaults you in broad daylight."

"Hey, I didn't hurt you!" Victoria asked, a little panicked, running her eyes over her. "If yes, my sister is over there and she could heal you!"

"No, I'm all right," Taylor answered, frowning. "Was that it? Because if yes, I have lunch to find."

"Really? We are looking for a place to eat; you can come with us!"

The bombastic blonde didn't even give her a chance to retort. She grabbed her hand and began to pull her towards the other two. She could, of course, wrench her hand out of the blonde's iron grip. But that would defeat the purpose of a secret identity. Instead, she would allow Victoria to pull her and when the parahuman would let her go, she would make up some excuse and leave.

Within seconds, the pair was before the exasperated boy and smirking Panacea.

"Hey there, I'm back!" Victoria exclaimed cheerfully. "And I brought a guest. She is also looking for lunch!" Then she motioned at the boy. "This is Dean Stansfield, my awesome boyfriend!" she gave him a radiant smile, then motioned at the smirking girl. "And this is my also awesome sister, Amy, or Panacea as you know her!"

Amy nodded, still smirking as if enjoying Taylor's visible discomfort. Dean gave her a rather handsome smile, which somehow conveyed an apology about Victoria. She returned the greeting with a small smile but stayed silent. It had been so long since she was in a social setting with her peers, so she didn't want to mess up.

Victoria, ignoring the byplay, turned towards Taylor next. "And this is… What did you say was your name?"

"I didn't. And you still haven't apologized," she replied.

There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, as they all stood and looked at each other.

"Vicky, you can't just pull people around…" spoke up Dean finally.

"Don't worry,… err… she doesn't mind!" Victoria replied while smiling at Taylor, ignoring the fact she still didn't know her name.

Taylor looked into the now hovering blonde's eyes and knew immediately she wouldn't be able to escape. Apparently, the young woman had decided to include Taylor, and nothing would change her mind.

It didn't help that Admin in his usual cheerleading outfit (now with blond hair) was doing his best to encourage her to stay.

She sighed, deciding not to fight it, but she would definitely get the girl to pay for her food.

"My name is Taylor." she gave a small wave. "Blink twice, if she took you as a hostage."

Amy snorted, and Dean gave her a smile. "Hello, Taylor. Nice to meet you! I'm really sorry about Vicky."

Again, the small group fell silent, looking awkwardly at each other.

Victoria clapped her hand together once, rose a little higher, and exclaimed. "Now, Taylor was looking for food. We were looking for food. Let's get that food!"

All of them expressed agreement some way, while the blonde beamed at them.

Fifteen minutes later they were all sitting in a restaurant that seemed to serve everything possible. They ordered and now they were sitting again in silence, looking at each other.

The first one to speak up, to nobody's surprise, was Vicky. "So, Taylor, I promised an apology."

"Yes," Taylor replied, looking at the blond. "If you want to apologize, pay for my food."

"Oh, that's no problem. Dean is paying!" exclaimed the other girl.

Taylor glanced at Dean, who was giving another exasperated smile. She suspected he was usually sporting that look when with Vicky. Amy, who was still staying silent just snorted in derision.

"All right," she answered, then they fell silent again.

Thankfully, the server arrived with their drinks, interrupting the uncomfortable silence. When he left, Vicky took a sip of her fruity drink, then sighed.

"Okay, this is awkward. Let's try talking. I don't want to sit in silence the entire time," she exclaimed, now without her previous cheer. "So, Taylor, tell us about yourself!"

Both Dean and Amy turned towards her, interested, though Taylor could see that Amy was definitely enjoying her suffering.

Taylor looked at Admin, who was holding up a cue card saying 'MAKE NEW FRIENDS' and grinning at her.

After a few seconds of scrutiny from everyone, she sighed in defeat.

"As I said, my name is Taylor. I'm currently homeschooled, and I like sciences."

"Oh, why are you homeschooled?" asked Dean, who was frowning as if trying to remember something.

She grimaced, but she knew she couldn't go her entire life hiding facts, and what better way to try to heal than with strangers. Or something like that.

"Several people tried to kill me, so my father pulled me out of school after I got out of the hospital."

Her frankness seemed to take all of them back, with Vicky sporting a horrified look. However, the one who spoke up was Amy.

"You are the Locker Girl!"

"What?" she exclaimed, looking at the brown-haired girl, who seemed to blush.

"I mean, I heard the nurses talk. Mostly how lucky you were about not catching anything," she explained, not meeting her eyes.

"I see," answered Taylor, frowning. "I expected better confidentiality."

Amy just shrugged. "They didn't mention any specifics, but nurses basically live on gossip…"

"Okay, let's talk about something else!" said Vicky, visibly uncomfortable with the subject.

They spent the meal having small talk, mostly about Taylor's experience with homeschooling, the other three regaling her with funny stories about Arcadia, or in Amy's case, about the hospital.

Despite the beginning, Taylor felt nice. Spending time with people who were in her age group was surprisingly easy. She expected to be rusty, and she was, but over time things came back, and she found herself debating about the main character in one of the new fantasy novels with Amy, ignoring Dean and Vicky making eyes at each other.

She found the mousy girl highly intelligent and rather sarcastic. With a rather bleak look at the world and deep exhaustion.

Vicky was annoyingly cheerful, yet she couldn't help but get sucked in by the energy and found herself enjoying talking with her.

Dean mostly stayed silent, answering questions aimed at him, but to Taylor, he seemed to enjoy himself.

After the restaurant, they moved closer to the water and took a seat at a café with a look at the water.

They continued chatting until she got a message on her phone. She looked at it and saw it was from Tess. It seemed she would be visiting them for dinner. She took a look at the time and frowned when she saw it was already around four.

"Anything wrong, Taylor?" asked Dean, who immediately seemed to notice her change in mood.

She shook her hand and gave him a smile. "Nothing, I just got a message that we will be having guests for dinner, so I have to do a quick grocery run and throw something together."

"Oh, is that good?" asked Vicky curiously.

"Oh, yeah. A friend is coming to visit. I haven't seen her in a while," she answered, beaming at the thought of Tess visiting her in the actual world.

"That's nice," answered Vicky. And Taylor noted she seemed genuine, not just saying it. "Do you need a ride?"

"What?"

"Dean has a car; we could give you a ride." Dean just nodded, ignoring that she volunteered his services without asking him.

"Really?" Taylor asked, surprised. She had a good time with them, but that seemed a little too much.

"Sure!" exclaimed Vicky, raising from her seat with her power. "You are our friend, so it's not a problem."

"I'm your friend?"

"Well, yeah. What did you think was happening here?" asked the blonde, confused.

"I don't really know. Haven't made friends in a long time," admitted Taylor. Only to immediately be suffocated by a hug from the bombastic blonde.

She waved goodbye to her new friends as they drove away with Dean's rather nice car. They took her to a shop, then went in with her, just simply to spend more time with her, then dropped her off.

It was a really, really weird feeling for her. Did friends act like that? Or was that simply Vicky? Amy didn't seem the type to do that. Maybe Dean, as he seemed to be really going for the whole gentleman thing.

She would look it up, but for now, she needed to do some cleaning and dinner.

Her father arrived before eight, happy but exhausted. He also seemed to be excited to meet with her friends. And was even happier when she told him what happened to her today.

"I told you, Taylor. No need to worry, you will easily make new friends," he told her after a hug.

"Well, not that easily…" she replied.

He just smirked at her and went to check the food in the oven.

She was about to head back to the bathroom to do a last check on her hair despite her power when the doorbell rang. She ran full speed towards it and quickly yanked it open.

On the porch stood a young woman, with lustrous black hair, a nice dress, and holding a bottle of wine.

"Tess!" she yelled in greeting and hugged her.

The woman returned the hug before answering. "Hello, Taylor. Nice to meet you in real life." Then she looked behind Taylor. "And hello Mr. Hebert. It's nice to meet you. My name is Theresa Richter."

Danny smiled at her and extended his hand. "Nice to meet you, Ms. Richter. Please come in, the food is almost ready."

"Excellent, I'm starving."

They were sitting in the living room, all of them full from the simple roast Taylor created. Danny and Tess sipping the wine, while Taylor was jealously clutching her orange juice.

They spent the dinner talking, mostly about how Tess and Taylor got to know each other, then about the happenings of the city.

Taylor could feel her face hurting from smiling so much throughout the day, despite her brute powers.

She was trying to figure out a way to get Tess up into her room to show her the tinker tech stuff without her dad there when Danny spoke up.

"So, Tess, you said that you work as an engineer. What kind of work do you usually do?"

"Well, Danny, I mostly work with tinker tech. We are trying to reverse engineer as much as possible."

"I see. Is it interesting?" he asked while taking another sip. "I'm afraid I was never much for the hard sciences."

"It has its difficulties," she answered, then turned to Taylor. "Taylor told me she was also interested in them. Though mostly from a programming viewpoint."

Taylor nodded hearing that. "Yeah, I'm hoping to get into a school that has a good programming course."

"I saw some of her projects. They are very impressive," said Danny with a smile. "I'm sure she will be great at it."

"That's how we met," Tess explained, while Taylor watched a little jealousy as the older woman elegantly raised her glass. She would never be capable of doing the same thing. At least the gynoid body was functioning properly. If she didn't know Tess wasn't a human, she would never figure it out. "I posted a problem to a site, and she managed to solve it."

"Really?" asked Danny proudly, while Taylor blushed at the story.

"Yes, sometimes you just need a little outside view," replied Tess. "Then we got talking, and when I was told I would be coming here, I offered a meetup."

Danny nodded in understanding and sent another proud look at Taylor.

"I'm glad Taylor is making new friends."

"Me too. She is a very intelligent young woman."

"That she is." agreed her dad. "And say, where did you say you worked?"

"I didn't," answered demurely Tess. "But I can tell you I work closely with the PRT. After all, they are one of the biggest sources of tinker tech."

"Makes sense. Did you hear about the fight at the docks?" asked Danny.

Taylor frowned at hearing that. Why would her dad bring that up?

"Oh yes, who hasn't? Nasty business."

"Mm." agreed Danny. "Luckily, I was far enough. Though I heard the damage was substantial. Dragon even hired us to repair some of it."

"Oh, really?" replied Tess simply. "You work with Dragon?"

"More like, she hired us for some work. So we work for her, not with her."

Taylor watched the discussion with a weird feeling like she was missing something. So she stuck to her juice and continued to watch.

"Still, working with the Dragon. It must be rather interesting, right?"

"Indeed, it is," replied Danny, still with the same small smile on his face. "Just the other day, several Merchants threatened me. Fortunately, Dragon showed up, and they ran away."

"Oh, you must have been terrified!" exclaimed Tess, and Taylor had to give it to her, her acting skills were impressive.

"Yes, it was rather scary, but in the end, it worked out." explained her father.

"That's good."

"That's why I wanted to thank you in person. I would have hated leaving Taylor alone," said Danny while raising his glass at Tess.

The two women, however, were frozen in their places until Tess began to chuckle.

"What gave it away?" she asked while Taylor was gaping at her father.

Danny also chuckled a little. "It was a lot of small things in retrospect. Taylor makes a new internet friend, Dragon contacts me. The things you knew about the Union, while discoverable, are known to Taylor. The medi-gel facility? Somebody hiring Dragon? Please, I'm not blind." explained Danny with a smug smile. "And now, your voice, while disguised when projected, is similar enough."

"Impressive!" said Tess and gave a small clap.

"Also your hair," Danny added a little melancholically. "I'm not aware of any other relatives of Annette who have that type of hair aside from Taylor. So while I won't really pry into what Taylor helped you, I'm sure it was significant enough for you to choose to wear your hair that way."

Taylor took in the explanation, and couldn't help but be impressed with her dad.

"Wow, Dad, that was awesome!"

"Thank you, honey."

"Indeed, Danny, it was rather impressive." agreed Tess.

Danny took another measured sip of his drink, then turned to Taylor. "I assume, based on her new facility, she knows about your hobby?"

Taylor blushed and looked away. "Yes."

"Good."

"What?"

"She is an experienced parahuman, Taylor. She can give you better advice about it than me," he replied calmly.

"That's true." agreed Tess, while smirking at Taylor. "I mostly have been spending my time trying to talk her out of going patrolling. Her time is much better spent on inventing things."

"Really? Good luck with that, I still don't know how she managed to restrain herself from going out."

"Hey, I promised, didn't I?" answered Taylor indignantly.

"Yes, you did, honey, but a father still worries. I was a teenager once, I know how they think."

"Maybe in a controlled environment?" added Tess, a smirk still on her face. "I could arrange a joint patrol with the Wards."

"That sounds nice! A nice simple patrol as a first outing," answered Danny with a straight face. "Do you think you could take pictures for me?"

"Daaad!"

Date

2011 January 30th - Saturday - Earth Bet Time

As they drove away from the Hebert house, Vicky thought back to the day. It was a really nice day, that started really awkwardly.

The impulsive decision to talk to Taylor after Dean pointed her out seemed to be paid dividends. The girl was smart, funny, could keep up with Amy's sarcasm, and didn't hit on immediately on Dean.

That won her several bonus points with her. It was so hard to make new friends who didn't fawn over her because of her parahuman status (that Taylor for some reason totally ignored), her beauty, or her sister.

She hoped it would be the birth of a long friendship, so she even gave Taylor her number for them to talk later.

"She is weird." spoke up Amy.

"What?" she asked while turning around in her seat to look at her sister.

"Taylor. She was weird."

"Why?"

"Your aura, it didn't affect her."

"I noticed that too, but I didn't want to point out," added Dean, while still paying attention to the road.

"So what? Not everybody gets affected by it the same way."

"Vicky, she didn't even notice when you used it." Came the exasperated answer from Amy.

"So what? She is a parahuman?"

"Maybe… I touched her once. Her body is a normal healthy teenager body."

"Nothing stood out about her emotions either. I saw nothing that would indicate that she was a parahuman."

She frowned in thought a little. "Maybe we should stop talking about that, Unwritten Rules guys."

"Agreed. It's probably a little over the line," said Dean.

"You are still going to be her friend?" asked Amy, moving the topic away from the question of Taylor's parahuman status.

"Sure! She was nice, and I enjoyed talking to her," answered Vicky cheerfully.

"Suit yourself. Just don't come to me crying when it turns out she is some kind of monster in disguise," said Amy, who then turned on her phone to check on PHO. Maybe she could find something about a new parahuman that looked like Taylor…

Vicky snorted in answer, turned back, then dialed up the music, and started to sing just a little bit off-key to annoy Amy.