Overture 1.11

I tried not to think of Emma or her cohorts on the bus ride home, of how my best friend had turned into my worst enemy, of how she used the deepest, most intimate secrets I had ever told her to ruin every day as best as she was able. I tried not to dwell on the fond memories of our childhood together, now tainted by betrayal and cruelty, or how much I longed for the best friend I had lost to…I wasn't even sure what.I tried not to think about it, so naturally, that was all I could think about.

I turned to my ruined bag to find something else to focus on and started rummaging through it to take stock. As I feared, nothing inside had escaped the grape juice that had, I began to suspect, been aimed specifically for my bag. All of my textbooks and notebooks, plus the two novels I carried with me, were at least partly damaged. Some had been lucky enough to catch only on the edges, but as I inspected each one, it became increasingly clear that most of them had gotten pretty badly soaked, with up to half the pages stained through with purple, and already they were beginning to turn wavy as they dried.

The truly sad thing was that most of it wasn't that bad, to me, because I'd already had to have my textbooks replaced a few times.

The heaviest blow, and the one which had my heart sinking as I inspected it, was the notebook with the black and white speckled cover. My superhero notebook, the journal I was using (encrypted, of course — didn't want that ending up in the hands of a monster like Sophia or Emma) to brainstorm cape names and applications of my power, was thoroughly ruined. The juice had diluted the ink, making the words illegible, so that even if they hadn't been coded with a cipher, they were completely unreadable.

I'd already had to copy my notes over once, back when my last backpack had been stolen and dropped into the trash — that was the reason I had decided to encode them in the first place — and with this notebook ruined, I'd have to do it all over again. If I could remember what was on all of the ruined pages, that is, and I didn't really hold out any hope of that.

The closest stop the bus made to my house was still a block away, and I got off there, trying to ignore the stares and not think about what was running through the heads of my gawkers. In spite of everything, even the cold that bit into me in my still-drying clothes, I started to feel better as I made my way home and let myself into the house. Being able to drop my guard, not having to keep my eyes peeled and my senses honed to watch out for the next attack, was like having a huge weight taken off of my shoulders.

The shower was the first place I went. I didn't even bother taking off my shoes or my clothes or setting my bag down until I made it to the bathroom, and even then, I kept everything else on as I set the water just shy of scalding and stepped under the stream. Only then, after taking a moment to enjoy the heat, did I start peeling off my clothes, one layer at a time, and dropping them to the floor of the tub. Maybe the shower might wash out the worst of it.

For a long time — a few minutes, but they felt like hours — I let my mind fall blissfully blank. The shower heated me on the outside, and the hum of my power heated me from the inside. It felt like everything unnecessary was being melted away.

Unfortunately, the real world wasn't that nice. Once I let myself start to think again, my mind kept winding itself in circles back around to my ruined 'superhero notebook.' I couldn't seem to think about anything else.

I turned off the shower and toweled myself dry, then wrapped the towel around myself and turned to look in the mirror. Gawky, teenage Taylor Hebert, with her beanpole body, her too-wide mouth, her thin lips, and her father's large eyes, frowned back at me.

A moment of concentration was all it took, and I was in my Breaker state. Covering my face was a royal purple mask, with big, reflective gold lenses over the eyes — miraculously, the same as my prescription for my glasses. It left my mouth and the top of my head open, curving around the outside of my cheeks in such a way as to completely transform the shape of my face, and my long hair came down over the back and the sides, where there were cutouts for my ears.

A sleek, skintight black bodysuit hugged every inch below my jaw, and overtop it was a sleeveless, gold-trimmed purple vest (complete with tails on the front and back that hung down to my knees) and a matching pair of pants. Black gloves (or maybe they were just part of the bodysuit) disappeared into a pair of gold-trimmed purple vambraces — incredibly flexible and remarkably robust, as I'd discovered through testing, despite looking more decorative than functional. To complete the pattern, the boots were black knee-highs trimmed at the top with more gold.

If you squinted and tilted your head, I looked almost like a Magical Girl from one of those Japanese cartoons from the nineties. Or maybe like one of those female superheroes from those old comic books from the sixties and seventies.

I turned around and examined the outfit from other angles. At first, back when I got my powers, I'd been a bit upset about how it looked, but it had grown on me. The overall design might come across as a bit stylized or dorky, but when you considered the color scheme, it was actually a very good middle ground — not too dark and edgy, but not blindingly bright and cheerful. It wasn't as elaborate or professional-looking as Armsmaster's power armor, but it also didn't look like something I'd picked up at the mall.

I turned myself back to the front, tilting my head just so and squaring my shoulders. I tried to imagine how I might look to a bad guy, stalking out of the dark in this outfit, gold lenses and trim glowing while the rest blended into the night.

What I'd realized as I stood under the spray of the shower, thinking about my ruined notebook, was that I was procrastinating. The original plan had been to wait to break out onto the hero scene until summer vacation, when I wouldn't have to worry about school and everything that came along with it. I could plot and plan and prepare until then, double and triple-checking everything to make sure I was as safe as being a superhero could be. I could expand my range, push my limitations, add more heroes to my repertoire, and just keep getting better and better…

But there would always be more I could do, more ways to push myself and my powers to new heights. There would always be contingencies to consider, obstacles to think my way around, possible problems to solve… If I delayed everything just to rewrite my notebook, I'd always find another reason to wait, another reason not to go out until I could study this or test that. I'd keep procrastinating, maybe even never go out at all.

So, I was going to stop waiting. My notebook was ruined, beyond repair — good. Without it to hold me back, there was nothing to keep me from going out. In fact, I'd do it next week — no, this weekend.

I was going to be a superhero. Things like indecision had to go.