The Green Dragon

Summary: She's got a power and a force that you've never seen before. She's got the ability to morph and to even up the score. No one will ever take her down, the power lies on her side!

Taylor held the defiled corpse of her mother's flute.

Tears ran down her cheeks, snot dripped from her nose.

"Oh my god she's crying!" someone said with great cheer.

Emma was about to laugh and make a comment to Sophia when her best friend lost consciousness and fainted on the spot.

That, Emma thought, was the first sign that something very, very wrong was happening. At the time, however, she did not see it for what it was, the very first sign of the fact that she and her friends all were in very, very deep shit.

Of course, any thoughts like that soon ceased to matter, as she returned her gaze to Taylor, who was beginning to stand up, holding the flute.

Only it wasn't a flute anymore. It was a very large knife. A dagger really. Ornate, decorated in gold, its handle wrapped in green cloth, the blade gleaming and polished silver surrounding what looked like emerald.

More than a weapon of war, it looked like a weapon of ritual. However, Emma could recognize the 'core' of the dagger for what it was. A flute.

It was the very same flute that Taylor'd had just a moment ago, transformed into a weapon.

Emma looked into her former friend's eyes, and she saw them gleam green. It was the last thing she saw before emerald colored lightning burst from Taylor's eyes and all went dark.

Taylor had been on the run for hours now.

She hadn't tired yet, but she knew she was only delaying the inevitable. They'd find her soon. She had beat the everloving shit out of her bullies. When she began, she could feel the power crackling below her skin, she could feel it egging her on, begging her to use it, to lay waste to her enemies, to repay them for the pain they had inflicted upon her.

Her very first meeting with a real hero had gone... poorly.

Velocity had shown up just as she was throwing Sophia's beaten, unconscious body away.

One of the heroes of the Protectorate ENE, located at Brockton Bay itself. One of the people she had used to look up to.

One of the people who had protected Sophia Hess, allowed her to go on with her bullying. Someone who didn't even ask or wonder what was going on - he simply jumped into battle, getting inside her guard within a moment. He could not punch her harder using his speed. But he could use it to set up attacks and cancel out his super speed just before he hit, delivering full force hits that she could not block or see coming.

Her power fed her rage, and she let it burst, shocking Velocity as he tried to attack her once again.

Stunned by the shock of her electricity, he didn't have time to go into super speed to avoid her surprisingly well executed right jab, followed by a left and then using the built up momentum from the series of movements to knock him out with a haymaker to the chin.

"A hero," she muttered. "How fucking pathetic," she added.

However, not long after that, the PRT moved in, levelling foam sprayers at her. Her power crackled within, wanting her to use it. She indulged, bringing her mother's precious flute to her lips and playing a short melody. She hadn't really known how to play the flute all that well even moments before, but the knowledge of how to perfectly perform the March of the Dragon was within her mind in an instant, and with just a short series of notes, she felt her power surge through in a far more controlled fashion than ever before, striking the five men surrounding her at once and knocking them flat on their asses.

"You won't get away with this," one of them said, as he threw away his melting weapon.

Taylor snorted. "How quickly you come to cover your fucking asses," she growled, before taking a few steps, to where Sophia lay, and grabbing her by the hair, drawing a pained whimper as she regained consciousness. "How does it feel, Sophia? To be the one trampled under someone else's boot, for a change? How does it feel to know that for all your talk, you're no more than a worm beneath my heel!? "

She whimpered again and Taylor let her go. Her face hit the ground.

The PRT troopers were beginning to recover. Taylor had no real desire to hurt grunts who were just doing their job, so instead of laying the smackdown on them the normal way, she simply walked off. It didn't take long for a few of them to recover enough to charge her, and when she looked, she was surrounded by all five again. She frowned in distaste.

The first one came at her with a tackle, she sidestepped it and brought one hand up to knock the second one for a loop, raising her leg to kick a third's collarbone, stopping his momentum, and then kicking off him to perform a scissor kick on the fourth, while the fifth approached from behind. She pretended to be caught unaware until he threw himself into a tackle, at which point she jumped, executing a perfect backflip and landing feet first on the trooper's back.

Noticing that unless she hurt them seriously, they'd just keep coming, she grunted and ran. She quickly oustripped any pursuit, even when they climbed aboard their vehicle.

How humiliating, it must've been, to lose to a fourteen years old girl.

And now she was having her second run in with a hero.

Three of them, in fact.

She raised her dagger, making it clear that she was armed, as she bent her knees and fell into a ready stance. Before her, Armsmaster did the same, while Miss Militia was hanging back and holding what appeared to be a shotgun of some sort. Not far away, Dauntless stood, his Arc Lance crackling.

"Stand down," Armsmaster ordered. "You are under arrest."

Taylor sneered. "Of course you care that I exist now," she said. "Well, fuck you, if you want to take me in, I'm gonna make you work for it."

"You cannot win against us," he said. "Come quietly, and we will ensure a fair trial."

"A trial!?" she nearly shouted. "For defending myself!? Fuck you!"

"Defending yourself by beating up a bunch of unpowered schoolgirls," Armsmaster said, his tone rather disbelieving. "And you intend me to buy this!?"

"That bitch turned to shadow when I punched her," Taylor growled. "Unpowered my ass. And I notice how you don't think it's weird at all that there were six girls against one there!"

"You also assaulted PRT operatives and a Protectorate Hero," Dauntless said, not sounding particularly convinced.

"Velocity showed up and started punching me. Your men showed up and pointed guns at me. The fuck was I supposed to do, let them shoot me!?" Taylor nearly shrieked. "This is fucking pointless. You're gonna defend that bitch, you've been covering her ass for the bullying - you, the PRT, the Protectorate, you're all worthless and corrupt!"

"What are you-" Armsmaster didn't seem to know what she was talking about.

Taylor didn't care. "Well, if that's what you've decided, if the heroes are assholes, then I'm gonna be a villain! At least they're upfront about being assholes!" Taylor shouted.

Armsmaster seemed like he'd had enough, as he charged forward. "Then you will be defeated!" he said.

She saw his attack coming, a simple swipe of his halberd, with the blunt side rather than the edge. She sneered at his slow and predictable attack, he was holding back after all, and stopped it with her dagger.

He could not make her budge, and the more he tried, the more he realized that his halberd's shaft was being cut by Taylor's dagger.

Taylor pushed him off, easily pushing away a grown man nearly three times her size decked in power armor, leaving even herself somewhat astonished - the principle of leverage should've made the very idea ridiculous - and then made a break for it.

Dauntless intercepted, but she kicked off the ground and ran a few steps on the brick wall to run over the large bubble that his shield had become. Behind her, she noticed the building being blasted by Miss Militia's shotguns.

Given the non lethality of the other two, Taylor assumed those were beanbags. Still very dangerous for close quarters, however - Miss Militia was probably of the mind that Taylor was a brute who could take it.

Rolling to the side, Taylor dodged another blast, but fell right into a trap, as Dauntless hit her with a charge of lightning. She growled, refusing to scream in pain as the electricity coursed through her, and only had a moment to curse when Armsmaster shot a cord at her from his halberd. She felt it wrap itself around her - probably some sort of grappling hook tool or the like, and drag her in. She managed a small spin, the edge of her dagger cutting through the cord, but by then she was close enough to be clubbed by the butt of the Halberd, forcing her to defend against that.

She endured another hit from the Arc Lance, kicked at Armsmaster and caused him to lose his footing, staggering back, and crouched, preparing to leap at Dauntless, unshielded at the moment.

However, she felt intense pain at the back of her head and everything went dark. The last thing she heard was the 'crack' of aluminum hitting the back of her head.

Miss Militia was the first to visit her cell. "You made some pretty hefty accusations towards us," she said.

She hadn't said hi, or introduced herself, or anything. There was a pistol holstered on her right leg.

"This is my execution, then," Taylor said, glaring up at her. "Because I spoke up, isn't it? Nail that sticks out gets hammered and all that," she said.

"No," Miss Militia said. "You are currently in a holding cell at the PHQ. Your distress and anger, as well as witness accounts, paints to us a pretty clear picture. You had a trigger event today, didn't you?" she asked.

Her voice wasn't soft, or kind, or warm, or any of that. It was neutral. It was better than anything Taylor had gotten from authority for months.

"No duh," Taylor said. "I got powers today, that's how I was finally able to pay that bitch back for all her shoves."

Miss Militia hummed. "Very curious. Miss Hebert, do you mind if I call you Taylor?"

"Yes," Taylor replied. "I mind very much."

Miss Militia nodded. "Very well then, Miss Hebert, the situation is as such. You triggered that day. Trigger events are the lowest points in our lives, and frequently coincide with psychotic breakdowns that oftentimes result in extreme violence. It would handily explain your behavior."

"I'm still pretty pissed actually," Taylor said.

"Possibly your power's influence," Miss Militia said. "Now, I am rather curious. You said that we were covering up Shadow Stalker's bullying activities. I assure you, this is not the case."

"Well I don't see how every authority figure at Winslow would ignore her behavior unless they got a very good incentive to, and it just so happens that she's a Ward. Pull the other one, I'm not a moron," Taylor said.

"I repeat," she said, her tone firm and her voice getting a dangerous tone, "that this is not the case," she said. "Miss Hebert, your accusations WILL be investigated. If you are found to be lying-"

"Of course!" Taylor crowed. "You're gonna ask at school. You're gonna go up to the students and ask "hey, is Sophia Hess bullying Taylor?" and they're gonna say no, because of course they're going to say no. After all, Sophia Hess can get away with doing anything to anyone and never gets punished. I'm not even her only victim, everyone's scared of her! You know the saying, snitches get stitches!" Taylor said, near hysterical. "And then you're gonna come back here, you're gonna pretend you did a thorough investigation, and do like Blackwell did every single time. "Oh I'm sorry Taylor, there's just no evidence, you need to stop telling these tall tales to get attention!", and then I'm gonna go to juvenile detention all because I defended myself, for one fucking time, from the girl who has made it her mission in life to make my own miserable!"

By the end of her rant, Taylor didn't realize that she was crying, that she was screaming and that she had fallen on her knees, unable to even grip the bars because her arms were cuffed. She had crawled to the front of the cell, to scream at Miss Militia's face.

In the end, she couldn't even do that, sobbing and hiccuping.

She felt one of the heroine's arms on her shoulder.

"Miss Hebert," she began. Her tone was still not warm, not kind. But there was something there. She would not falsify kindness nor sympathy. But she had listened. Taylor could tell she had listened.

It was strange. She was used to the authorities plugging their ears.

"This matter WILL be investigated to the absolute best of our ability. I promise you that. You had a very bad day today, a horrible day. Do you need to talk to someone about it?"

"I want my mom," Taylor said, finally, sobbing as she collapsed to the ground. "I want my mommy," she repeated, "they took her away, they took the last thing I had of her, they broke it, they- they-" she was caught by the hiccups and couldn't continue, the rest of her sentence becoming incomprehensible.

Taylor took a moment to glare at the director. She glanced at her father. He said and did nothing. He was much like a zombie, and it was clear he lacked sleep.

"I think," Taylor said, "that you know where you can put your offer."

"Regrettable," the director said, apparently unconcerned. "Then I suppose you're okay with facing the criminal charges?"

Taylor made a face.

Being an open cape was hard. Taylor thought it a foregone conclusion that joining New Wave was not an option. It was, ultimately, a family group, and she would feel awkward just asking to join, let alone being in there.

What had been surprising to Taylor was how quickly the court of public opinion shifted from side to side. You could even see it on PHO - one day they were lauding her as a poor victim suffering under the PRT's corruption, the next she was a violent lunatic that they were trying to bring to heel.

In the end, public opinion began to shift more definitely in her direction. The PR Machine of the PRT simply could not cope with Shadow Stalker's ability to make herself presentable for the public. She had never been too much in the public's eye before, but now that people were paying attention to her, now that people were waiting for her to make a fool of herself rather, it turned out that she was very bad at remaining 'PG' as the PRT demanded. She'd been caught cursing, she'd been caught shirking her duties, she'd been caught with a civilian on unsanctioned patrols, she'd been caught being overly brutal - it was nothing she hadn't been doing before.

The problem was that now people were paying attention to her, which nobody really had before. It was odd - everybody knew Shadow Stalker, as the PRT touted her as their 'succesful rehabilitation' in Brockton Bay, but it seemed that the press had kept away from her, likely at the PRT's own 'request'.

As for herself, Taylor wound up facing community service for her actions. Mitigated immensely by the fact that it had been her trigger event, of course. It also didn't really surprise Taylor that nobody thought to investigate the other people involved. A Trigger Event was someone's worst day in their life, generally, and if Taylor had immediately delivered violence upon a bunch of girls, one had to wonder why that was... but Taylor figured the PRT and Protectorate had squashed investigation.

In the end, Taylor wasn't surprised that Miss Militia had lied to her face. The heroes were corrupt, they didn't care for the innocent, they cared for maintaining their image.

Well, fuck them, then.

Taylor had almost cut ties with her father. The man was sunk so deep into his depression that she wondered if he had even noticed that she was gone for days.

All she had now were the clothes on her back and her flute. She sat on the rusted rail of the tanker that blocked incoming sea traffic on the Boat Graveyard. With her increased athletic ability, it had been easy to climb onto it, to overlook the ocean.

Something had been niggling at the back of her head. Something big. Something powerful. It had been urging her, to use her power, to call it. It had been telling her that it wanted to rise, that it wanted to be summoned.

She placed both hands on the rail and used them to raise. She didn't care about the rust stains on her worn pants. She used her hands to push herself up and into the air, where she performed a flip that landed her with her feet on the rail. She heard the metal groan, but it held, as she knew it would.

With a wave of her hand, her flute appeared, and she brought it to her lips.

The March of the Dragon came of its own volition, and she was merely the instrument that gave it life. It was louder than it had ever been before, and she continued far past the initial notes, the ones that made her power surge. She could feel it singing in tune with her, answering to her notes, dancing around her in arcing bolts of emerald lightning.

The Atlantic was not still. She saw the waves shifting, she saw the current changing.

Then it seemed to inflate, as if it was growing a giant, flowing pimple. It burst, and from it erupted an absolutely gigantic metallic dragon.

Taylor smiled. Satisfaction flooded over her body. The name came to her lips. "Roar, Dragon Caesar!"

The mechanic monstrosity opened its jaws, and let loose an earsplitting roar.

For Taylor, it was merely an addition to her March.

Glory Girl flew up to the girl who was sitting, almost languidly, on the shoulder of a gigantic mechanical dragon. She was playing a soft tune with her flute. It was pretty, she mused. "Hello," she said. "You must be... Yeah, I saw you on the news. You're Taylor Hebert, right? The only non-New Wave open cape in Brockton," she said.

"Yep," Taylor said, stretching a bit and turning towards her. "And you're Glory Girl," she said.

"So... hero or villain?" Glory Girl asked.

"Is there a difference?" Taylor asked. "The heroes are too busy covering their asses to do any heroics, the villains are only there to help themselves," she said, shrugging, "what's even the point?"

"The heroes are trying!" Glory Girl nearly shouted. "I get that you had a bad experience with authority, but-"

"Bad experience with authority?" Taylor asked. "One of my bullies is the civilian identity of a Ward. She's been bullying me to the point I triggered from it. You know what she got for it? Nothing. When I told Piggot about it, I was shocked to see that she believed me. You know what she did then? Told me to suck it up because they can't afford to lose any cape, and then had the sheer fucking balls to tell me to join the Wards. I have half a mind to take Dragon Caesar and have him stomp their base to the ground!"

Glory Girl looked down. She was at the Dragon's shoulder, and there was at least one hundred feet from there to the ground. She was not entirely unconvinced that the robot dragon could actually do that. "Shit, that sucks," she said. "Uhm... You know, that's actually kind of the reason why New Wave exists. It's all about accountability," she said. "Unlike everyone else, we're held responsible and to a higher standard because we don't hide our powers."

Taylor sighed. "You guys are a family group-"

Glory Girl shook her head. "Look, listen, the system fucked you, I know it did, and honestly? I believe you. Maybe it's aunt Sarah's rants against the Protectorate, or maybe it's the fact that I work with the wards so often that I'm privy to a lot of the boneheaded, dumbass shit that they do. I mean, would you believe that I'm not allowed to patrol with them anymore? It's because I don't just let the villains be when they're causing trouble, since I actually do something about it, they don't want me anywhere near!"

Taylor nodded. "Yeah that sounds like them alright," she said. "They want to keep their image, and they need the villains around to make themselves look good! That's why they constantly let Uber and Leet go, and let the villains escape!"

"New Wave has a giant robot dragon, Emily."

Piggot winced.

"That robot dragon came from a wards-age girl."

Piggot winced again.

"A wards-age girl that is not a ward because you told her to, and I quote, 'suck it up' when she told you that she was being bullied by one of your other wards."

Piggot winced harder.

"Emily. Clear your desk."

Costa-Brown ended the call.

Eeeh...

Maybe I should've written Dragon Caesar (AKA The Dragonzord) Versus Lung or Leviathan.

But bleh.

And yes, that IS Taylor as the Green Ranger. She has all of Tommy's strength and knowledge, and given that the Army couldn't do crap against the same putties that he could put away by the dozen in his first appearance (from which he only grew stronger and better). She's basically a One Woman Platoon, and as soon as she figures out how to transform, she's bullet proof.

That's her alone.

Anyway, Dragon Caesar is like three times Behemoth's size, from what I recall. Needless to say, the fact that Taylor isn't sending him back into the ocean is causing people to freak the fuck out, and yes, Alexandria did just fire Piggot over this.

To be fair, it would be hard to justify NOT firing her over a fuckup that colossal.