(PROFESSOR UZUMAKI) AFTERMATH III

A few days had passed since Leviathan’s aborted attack, and Brockton Bay had already begun the strange process of pretending that life could return to normal. The streets were still crowded with repair crews and emergency workers, businesses were opening wherever they could, and the constant presence of the PRT reminded everyone that the Endbringer battle had happened only days earlier, yet people had begun going about their lives again as though they could make the disaster feel smaller by refusing to let it stop them.

Taylor could see the difference, though, and she would have had to be blind to miss it.

People in the part of the city where she lived had started looking at her differently. Some thanked her when they passed, while others gave her smiles that seemed almost embarrassed, as though they weren’t quite sure what to say to someone they had only recently thought of as another face in the crowd. She had even been stopped a few times by people who remembered seeing her and her dad helping with the evacuation, and each time Taylor had found herself struggling to explain that there had never been anything particularly heroic about what they had done.

They had simply been there.

Leviathan’s arrival had sent people running in every direction, and the panic had been enough to turn streets into dangerous bottlenecks as thousands tried to escape at once. Cars had been abandoned, people had tripped over one another, and more than a few had been left behind when families became separated in the confusion. Taylor and her dad had spent the worst of it helping people reach safer areas, and although the Endbringer had never made landfall, she knew that plenty of people could have died during the evacuation if nobody had stopped to help.

She and her dad had been among those who did.

They hadn’t worn capes, and neither of them had possessed anything that could have stopped Leviathan or saved the city from the attack, yet the people who remembered them seemed to have decided that the distinction didn’t matter.

They had been heroes.

The thought still left a strange feeling in Taylor’s throat whenever it occurred to her, particularly when she noticed the way people looked at her now. They saw someone worth thanking when she had spent most of her life trying to make herself small enough that nobody would have a reason to notice her.

People looked at Taylor Hebert and saw a hero.

And she had to admit she certainly looked the part.

Taylor had watched the changes happen over the past year, from the muscle she’d gained through Naruto’s training and the endless exercises he had put her through to the way chakra had gradually changed her appearance. She had stopped being surprised by the difference a long time ago, and she knew perfectly well that she was no longer the awkward, underfed girl who had first walked into Naruto’s class. She wasn’t a model, and she had no interest in pretending otherwise, but she was certainly far from average now.

She was no longer the Taylor of a year ago.

Thinking about that felt almost selfish when the city was still dealing with the aftermath of an Endbringer arrival, particularly when Taylor knew how much had changed and found herself marveling at it almost every day. Even so, she couldn’t deny that there was something deeply satisfying about realizing how far she had come.

She wouldn’t have called herself a coward, although there had been a time when she had allowed everything happening around her to convince her that there was very little point in trying to change any of it. Naruto’s training had given her more than stronger muscles and the ability to use chakra. Somewhere along the way, she had stopped carrying herself as though she expected the world to push her aside.

Now her head was held higher, her shoulders were straighter, and she walked with a confidence that would have seemed ridiculous to the girl she had been a year earlier.

The other students had noticed as well.

They looked at Taylor and the other students Naruto had chosen to train with something approaching awe, and whatever envy had once existed between them had been replaced by an admiration that went far beyond the ordinary respect students gave to their classmates.

That change had everything to do with Naruto-sensei.

Taylor had always known that her teacher was powerful, although even that knowledge had been limited by how little she actually understood about what he could do. She had seen enough during training to know that Naruto possessed abilities above anything she could currently reproduce, but there had always been a difference between knowing that your teacher was extraordinarily strong and watching him walk out of the ocean with an Endbringer’s corpse in his hand.

Now everyone else knew too.

To many people, Naruto Uzumaki was the strongest cape in the world.

No other cape could boast about killing an Endbringer. They could injure one, certainly, and there had been plenty of battles where the Endbringers had been forced to retreat, but killing one was something else entirely.

Not even Scion had done such a thing.

Taylor had seen the videos, and at this point, who hadn’t? Part of her had almost scoffed at the reaction the first time she saw one of the clearer recordings, since Leviathan was an Endbringer for goodness sake, and the idea that anyone could simply defeat one had sounded ridiculous even after everything Naruto had taught her.

But it was Naruto Uzumaki.

And that settled it in her mind, and she was sure in the minds of others too. Nobody could defeat an Endbringer… with the sole exception of Naruto Uzumaki, of course.

But that brought with it certain problems, especially since she had no intention of telling the curious what she knew.

In the days following Leviathan’s defeat, schools and businesses across Brockton Bay had given people mandatory time off while the city dealt with the aftermath, and that had given Taylor plenty of opportunities to discover just how interested everyone had become in her teacher. She had already grown accustomed to her classmates asking about him, but now adults were approaching her as well, and their questions were considerably more pointed. They wanted to know what Naruto could actually do, how long he had possessed those abilities, and whether she knew anything that hadn’t already appeared in the news.

She wasn’t sure how long people’s patience would last, and she couldn’t even say with certainty that keeping silent was necessary, but she had no desire to become the person who exposed Naruto’s abilities simply because everyone wanted to know more about him. He had trusted her with what he knew, and she wasn’t going to repay that trust by turning his lessons into gossip.

Instead, she had spent most of the unexpected free time with her dad, taking advantage of the extra time to train together whenever they could and simply enjoy having fewer demands competing for their attention. Taylor had come to appreciate having him around again, and although he was much more willing to complain about some of Naruto’s exercises than she was, he always showed up for the next session anyway.

They had gotten used to talking, too, whether they were discussing training, what had happened during the evacuation, or whatever happened to come up during the day. Their conversations still occasionally wandered into awkward territory, particularly when they brushed against the years they had spent barely speaking to one another, but those moments had become easier to handle with time.

They were still making up for everything they had done, or not done as the case might be, and Taylor was content to let that take as long as it needed.

She was sure plenty of her classmates would use the time off differently. Greg certainly would, and Taylor could already imagine him finding some way to insert himself into every conversation about Naruto, Leviathan and the people who had been there when it happened. She understood the temptation herself, since there was a part of her that wanted even more people to know that she had been there too, that Naruto was her teacher and that she knew things about him that most of the world would never learn.

The attention would have been nice.

For once, people were looking at her with admiration instead of pity or indifference, and Taylor couldn’t pretend that didn’t feel good.

Still, she hadn’t chosen the life of a cape for attention.

She had chosen it because there were people who needed help and because someone had to be willing to stand between them and the things that could hurt them. Until that time came, though, she was perfectly happy to spend the days she had been given with her father, training together and slowly rebuilding something that had been neglected for far too long.

After all, they still had years of silence and awkwardness to make up for.