Taylor looked over the clothes on display, grimacing at the prices. She had taken about a grand out of her account with the Number Man, looking to update her wardrobe for her Arcadia debut. Riley’s drug had filled her out with well-toned muscle and she didn’t want to hide away under baggy clothes. It would also get her used to wearing the much tighter clothing that her eventual combat form would favor.

The problem was, she had little idea of where to start. She and Emma hadn’t been friends for years and she barely paid attention to fashion before their falling out. She had stuck to cheap and baggy clothes that wouldn’t break the bank if juice was spilled on them, but Arcadia was a new start, one she intended to embrace.

The leather jacket in the window was form fitting, but she didn’t think it would work with her current body. It would look amazing on her combat model, however. It was amusing that she was already thinking about playing dress up with it, and if anything, she was much more excited about it than she was about shopping for her Taylor model.

“That jacket would certainly be eye-catching,” someone said.

Taylor spun around, eyeing the unfamiliar girl carefully. She had long, blonde hair done up in a complicated braid that was draped over her shoulder. Her face was dusted with freckles over her nose and around her bottle green eyes. Her lips had a thin coating of a neutral lipstick that just barely stood out. She wore a tasteful pale yellow sundress with white stockings that came just shy of the hem of the skirt. To clinch it, her boots were brown leather, laced up with a slight heel and sat just below her knee.

To say Taylor was impressed was an understatement. The girl certainly pulled off the look in a way that Taylor herself never could. Hell, Taylor wagered she could pull off any look she damn well pleased. It made her yearn for her new shell, to be able to carry herself with that sort of confidence.

“It would,” she agreed after a moment, killing the blush response before it became too obvious. “I don’t think it would suit me, but I do have someone in mind.”

“A gift for a girlfriend, perhaps?” the unfairly cute girl asked with too much cheer in her voice. “She must be someone important if you’re thinking of dropping that much on her.”

“You could say that,” Taylor said. “Unfortunately, my abilities with fashion are somewhat limited.”

Taylor gestured at her plain t-shirt and jeans and the zip up hoodie over them. She had considered shopping on the boardwalk, but it was snowing and she didn’t want to deal with the cold in a still flesh and blood body. The mall was more affordable, which made it the obvious choice, but she was starting to regret it.

“Yes, your specialty is something else, I imagine,” she said, tapping her chin. Taylor’s eyes narrowed at the phrasing, but the girl grabbed her by the hand and began to pull her towards the store before she could voice her protest. “Fortunately for you, fashion is one of mine!”

Very briefly, Taylor considered pulling free and getting away from the strange girl, but that risked outing her in a very public place, and the cameras were frustratingly all on a closed circuit. She needed to work out the optical camo system, or some sort of electronic jammer to avoid that problem in the future.

“Nope, I’m not letting you run off,” the girl said with a grin. “One outfit. Let me work my magic and if you don’t like it, I’ll fuck off and you won’t see me again.”

“Awfully confident,” Taylor muttered. “Fine, one outfit, then an explanation of this hobby of buying clothes for random girls you seem to have.”

The blonde giggled, and Taylor fought to keep her face stern. Even with a cyber brain she didn’t have perfect control of her responses without shutting them off.

“I’m Lisa, by the by,” she said.

“Taylor.”

Lisa smiled wider and turned back towards the store. “Alright, so for you, I’m thinking that jacket could work, but everything else needs to match first.”

Taylor followed along as she browsed the racks, picking the occasional thing out and holding it up to glance between it and Taylor. Sometimes she put it back, other times she nodded and folded it over an arm. It didn’t take a genius to see that she was picking out more than one outfit, but Taylor went along with it. It wasn’t like she had any better ideas on how to put together a decent look.

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After half an hour of browsing and minor conversation, Lisa picked out a single white shirt with a deep neckline, a pair of black pants and the black leather jacket that had caught her eye in the first place. Rolling her eyes, Taylor took them into the changing room and began to strip down.

She eyed her body and what the serum Riley had given her had induced. The fine lines of muscle just visible beneath the skin, flexing with a power she hadn’t had before. She felt good, but it wasn’t her future body. As good as the outfit looked on her, and she had to admit, Lisa had done an amazing job, it wasn’t the same as imagining it on her new shell.

Still, she looked good. That meant she had to pay up so to speak with Lisa. Looking down at her shoes, she added a pair of high quality combat boots to the shopping list, because she wasn’t going to even attempt anything strenuous in her current shoes.

Stepping out, Lisa turned around and her jaw sort of dropped for a moment before it turned into a full grin. “Damn, am I good or what?”

“Yes, I reluctantly admit defeat,” Taylor said. “Now, explain where this little hobby of yours comes from. Do you just go around picking random girls to help come up with new looks for them? No siblings to dress up?” Lisa winced at that comment and Taylor filed it away that siblings were a sore subject best avoided. “As thankful as I am, you are quite the conundrum.”

“Alright, you caught me,” Lisa said. “I actually recognized you from the bus the other day and was going to strike up a conversation then, but you seemed hella pissed and I chickened out.” It was Taylor’s turn to wince, because she had been livid after the Empire tried to recruit her in broad daylight, not that she could admit as much. Still, Lisa had more to say. “Now imagine my surprise to see you not only up and about, without crutches, but you suddenly look like you could bench press said bus?”

“Ah, about that,” Taylor said, trailing off. “I sort of got treated by Surgeon, they’re a Ward. I got really sick and had a brain infection. Panacea did what she could, but it wasn’t enough. Surgeon was brought in to help, and that did the trick.”

There, not a lie, but not the full truth. The last thing she needed was for the cute girl to figure out she had powers then run off. This had somehow turned into her first real social interaction outside of Toybox’s members and she didn’t want to fuck it up. She was fairly certain she was fucking it up.

“Oh wow, did you get their autographs?” Lisa asked after a moment. “Surgeon’s really famous, and she never gives them out except on medical forms.”

That. Was not how Taylor expected her to react.

“Still, that’s awesome that she helped you like that,” Lisa said with a nod. “So, all of this is for you, it should be pretty close to your size.” She patted the pile of clothes. “Now, would you like to pick something out for that friend? Maybe a matching jacket in that style for her? If you know her general measurements, or close enough we should be good.”

Taylor blinked, already pulling up the relevant data from her project files before she realized it. She paused, letting herself catch back up for a moment. She had almost rattled the numbers off without even realizing it, which would have been rather creepy. Instead, she thought about it for a moment, then took off her own jacket and checked the tag.

“Funny enough, this should be her size too,” Taylor said. “We’re about the same height, though she got blessed with more curves than I did.”

Not much more, as Taylor didn’t want to have to relearn to do everything, but it was just enough to cast a different silhouette. She loved the jacket, and planned to use it as part of her casual cape outfit over the suit and armor she would build. Funny enough, it would be the cheapest part of the outfit, even at three hundred dollars.

Thinking of the price as it was rung up, she suddenly realized that even with a thousand dollars in cash, she probably didn’t have enough to afford literally everything Lisa had picked out. That meant putting some of it back, her current outfit excluded. She was going to wear that out of the store even if having it all scanned with it on her was awkward.

Idly, she considered how good it would be to hide a shoulder holster. Her cyber body would be able to track targets really well, and she could probably talk Bakuda into making exotic rounds that were non-lethal in exchange for some tech or another favor. Thoughts for later, she was getting distracted. She needed to explain to Lisa how she didn’t have enough money for everything. Or she would have if Lisa didn’t just swipe a credit card and pay for all of it.

Taylor sputtered, her words failing as she saw a twelve hundred dollar tab disappear, taken care of by this mysterious girl she had by all accounts met twice. Something was very wrong, because nobody just did something like that, no matter how rich they were. Scrambling for a reason, she had a sneaking suspicion and pulled up her recognition software and was prepared to run Lisa through it.

Rules be damned, she was tired of being caught unaware.

Just as it loaded, she heard a voice that sent ice down her spine.

“Well, if it isn’t little Taylor,” Emma said.