(TAYLOR HEBERT) CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The transformation ended in a rush of unfamiliar sensation that left Taylor momentarily disoriented, her thoughts scrambling to catch up with a body that no longer obeyed the rules she knew.

Her center of gravity felt wrong almost immediately, her weight pitched forward in a way that made her instinctively spread her arms for balance, only to find them longer, blue, and tipped with claws she didn’t remember having. And when she glanced down, the ground seemed strangely far away.

Her feet were not feet at all, at least not in any human sense it seemed. She stood on the tips of something rounded rather than flat soles, forcing her to rely on a constant tension running up her legs to stay upright. Behind her, a tail swayed with an ease that unsettled her because it felt as natural as an arm.

She did not move for several long seconds, afraid that even a careless shift would send her sprawling. But once she got the hang of things, she took a breath and forced herself to assess what had changed.

Her vision was the first thing she noticed. Everything was sharper, unnaturally so, words on distant signs resolving with clarity while colors appeared just a shade too vivid, as though the world had been turned up past its intended setting. Sounds were wrong too. They weren't really louder, but clearer, stripped of background noise and distortion. She could hear the erratic buzzing of a damaged streetlight a block away, the clatter of something loose skittering across pavement in the distance, and even the reverberation of her own breathing as it rasped through a throat that was distinctly not human.

“Okay,” she told herself, trying to keep the initial spike of panic under control. “This is different… but you can handle different.”

She shifted her weight experimentally, testing the alien body’s response.

The world lurched.

That was the only way she could describe it. One second Brockton Bay was solid and still around her—normal, albeit highly detailed—and the next the street seemed to stretch and smear into elongated streaks of color, buildings blurring as if reality itself were struggling to keep pace. Air tore past her in a continuous rush, flattening every distinct sound into a single roaring presence that pressed against her senses.

She yelped, flailing as the ground slid out from under her, and only managed to keep herself upright by instinct alone. Her body skidded several yards before she realized she had moved at all, claws scraping against the asphalt in a sound that set her teeth on edge. Her heart pounded with something dangerously close to exhilaration as she came to an unsteady stop, staring down at the shallow grooves she had carved into the road.

“…Oh,” she breathed.

Slowly this time, she lifted one foot and set it down, then the other, moving with exaggerated care. Nothing happened. Encouraged, she leaned into it experimentally, letting the strange tension in her legs guide her instead of resisting it.

Distances ceased to matter.

She wasn’t running so much as being somewhere else, the sensation closer to falling sideways through space than moving forward. In the span of a second, or even less, she crossed an intersection. In another, she was halfway down the block.  

A laugh burst from her, half disbelief and half exhilaration, before she clamped her mouth shut—literally, as a visor slid into place over her face—and forced herself to slow, body skidding to a stop without the violent scraping from before.

Fast.

That was the word that stuck, echoing in her mind as she laughed again.

This was not speed the way she had known it in her giant form, where distance had still felt measurable, something to be crossed in chunks. This was something else entirely. Here, speed was intent more than acceleration or momentum. When she decided to move, her body simply complied, carrying her farther than it should have by gliding over the ground as if it offered no resistance.

The realization was dizzying. If she pushed herself, truly pushed, she had the distinct impression she could cross the entirety of Brockton Bay in the time it took an ordinary person to jog the length of the boardwalk. Maybe even less.

But she did not need the whole city.

She only needed the Docks.

That realization grounded her, snapping her focus back into place. She leaned forward, surrendering control to instinct, and the alien body responded eagerly. Streets, cars, and buildings flashed past in rapid succession, her mind somehow keeping pace as obstacles registered and were avoided before they could become problems. A fallen street sign was sidestepped without conscious effort. Scattered debris was cleared in single bounds. Her body compensated automatically, sparks flaring lightly against asphalt and concrete as she adjusted her trajectory by fractions of a second. 

All the while, a part of her mind marveled.

The watch was not merely powerful. It was versatile. Each form was not just strong or fast or durable, but perfectly suited to what it did. Where the giant form had given her reach and perspective, and the fluid-like one control over technology, this form made her fast and an intimate connection with speed itself.

It did not take long for the Endbringer shelter to come into view.

She slowed, her perception settling back into something closer to normal as she came to a halt in front of the structure. The shelter loomed solid and squat, its thick doors sealed tight, the street around it eerily empty in the aftermath of evacuation and fear.

She had made it.

Relief surged through her so strongly it nearly buckled her knees, her chest rising and falling as her tail curled unconsciously behind her. He was here. He had to be. The shelter was intact, unbreached, and exactly where it was supposed to be. Her dad would have gone to the nearest one, just like she had reasoned.

But that relief lasted only a moment before she ran into the next problem.

She could not just transform back.

Yes, her secret identity was non-existent at this point. Heroes knew her face, and the villains would soon enough if they didn't already. Armsmaster and Dragon had ensured that much, even if they had not meant to. But there was still a difference between that and being the one to open the shelter door, between being known in abstract and being visibly, undeniably tied to this place, by opening the shelter.

It would make her a spectacle.

Worse, it would make her father a target.

And beyond that, there was the immediate danger. People in shelters were not calm. They were frightened, exhausted, and running on rumors and pure survival instincts. If a monster opened the doors and then turned into a teenage girl, panic would spread through the crowd in seconds. In a space as cramped and tense as this, that kind of pandemonium would get people killed.

So that option was out.

Her next idea came from desperation rather than reason. With her speed, she could grab her dad and be gone before anyone had time to react, take him somewhere secluded, transform back, and explain everything.

It was tempting, and she was confident she could do it cleanly.

But it still required opening the shelter door.

And that led directly to the next problem, compounded by another realization that made her pause and glance down at her hands.

“…Right,” she muttered.

She did not actually know how to open it.

The shelter doors were reinforced and sealed from the inside, designed specifically to remain closed during an Endbringer attack. They were not meant to be opened casually from the outside, certainly not by an alien with claws and wheels for feet.

She shifted her weight, tapping one foot against the pavement, the small orbs embedded there clicking softly with each contact. She tapped again, faster this time, the motion an unconscious outlet for her nerves as she tried to think.

She could knock, assuming someone would respond and that communication through the door was even possible. She could try to force it, but that risked damaging the shelter or terrifying everyone inside, and strength was clearly not this form’s specialty. She could wait, but waiting solved nothing, and every second stretched her nerves tighter.

With a frustrated huff that escaped her as a strange chirring sound, she straightened, resigned to biting the bullet and dealing with the consequences as they came. She stepped closer to the shelter, raising a clawed hand toward the surface.

“Guess I just—”

She felt it before she saw it, a sudden displacement of air from above that sent dust and grit scattering across the pavement beside her. Instinct flared, and she twisted away, ready to run or fight or both.

Then she froze.

A woman in a white bodysuit hovered a few feet away before settling lightly onto the pavement. Her blonde hair fell in an almost intentional way, each strand arranging itself to frame her attractive face as though guided by an invisible hand. And despite being face-to-face with an unknown, her confidence never shook. 

Photon Mom had arrived.