It was a day like any other. The sounds of city living all around, of the docks in the not too far distance bustling with activity, mostly of the illegal kind, and people running scared from- wait. What?
Brockton Bay was a place with a higher than average rate of parahuman crime, and one of its primary drivers, Oni Lee of the ABB was currently running after a group of underage villains, chasing them by cloning himself, dropping grenades and overall being a giant cunt of a person. The teens had robbed the ABB and taken with them a tool of great value, and currently, their leader was pouring darkness out of his body to try to slow down pursuit while they were riding on three gargantuan abominations that kinda sorta resembled dogs, as a girl in purple latex held onto the sealed crate for dear life.
It was fate that the pursuit would be interrupted by a wannabe hero, who saw the bigger villain was about to drop in and kill the kids, and then dropped down on him.
In that brief moment, the hero, heroine really, had really thought that if this was the way she was going to die, at least she would die sending a fuck you to the ABB, and preventing multiple murders. So she dropped in from above and crashed onto Oni Lee, unknowingly covering his line of sight and preventing his teleport by tangling her jacket on his face, pure and dumb luck.
"FUCKING RUN!" she screamed at the teens who were stunned by the display.
She saw that Oni Lee was throwing a small grenade, and she caught it with her hand, preventing him from launching it, but that gave the villain enough time to kick her off of him, taking the shirt off just in time for the grenade on the heroine's hand to go off. Luckily it was no high explosive, but a noisy and flashy stun type of grenade instead, and as it blew, it blinded everyone.
Unfortunately, this was no videogame flashbang, and as it went off, it took much of the girl's arm with it, stunning and blinding the biggest villain of the lot here, and buying precious few minutes for the teens to flee.
More importantly, it bought enough time for them to pick up the now one armed girl who had rescued them, as well.
Back in their hideout, the teen villains were now at an impasse, as they had risked their lives to recover the object in the box, but they also all knew they wouldn't have made it without her.
The blonde was the first to speak up. "I say we give it to her. She's already proven herself," she said, "and besides I don't wanna amputate an arm to put it on either."
Their nominal leader, the man in leathers with a skull themed helmet, shook his head. "She did it willingly, if we give her what we stole then what did we even steal it for in the first place?"
"Meh, I don't care either way, I'm not gonna take off one of my arms either, but I don't care about her, so up to you dudes," the third voice was a rather youthful and distracted one, coming alongside the sounds of the TV and a videogame.
However, the door opened and in walked the final member of the team, the tiebreaker, who had carried the girl with them. She put the girl down on the ground, she was still passed out after being sedated and having her wound seen to.
"Please, Bitch, if we don't do this-"
"Bitch, you agree with me, right-"
Bitch took the weird, tattoo'd arm from the box they'd stolen from the ABB, and shoved it in place. Almost as if magically, it immediately grafted itself to the girl's shoulder, and shifted in size and shape to match her other arm, save for the tattoos. And that was that.
... later...
"Hero or villain, what am I?"
The heroes had been...
Sophia Hess was a Hero. That alone was enough for her to want nothing to do with the Protectorate. As much as she hated the idea of trusting a self admitted villain like Tattletale, it was true that they had sacrificed their haul from robbing the ABB to give her a new right arm. She clenched her right fist. God's Right Fist, apparently.
Before, she had been a lanky, weak and pathetic girl. Now she had six pack abs, could lift cars above her head like they weighed nothing, rip utility poles off the ground one handed, run at about sixty miles per hour and throw hundreds of punches in less than a second. All thanks to this arm. God's Right Hand sure lived up to the name. So far she had found nothing that could withstand her punches, and no upper limit to her abilities. She could even do stuff like coalesce the energy that coursed through the arm into shapes, like baseballs or bats, which she could then use to fight her opponents, and if she concentrated and tensed properly, she could unleash a burst of power all at once that rendered her damn near invulnerable and greatly enhanced her strength and speed.
"It's time for me to choose my path," Taylor said, nodding to herself, "with the power of my God Hand no evil doer will get past!"
... later still...
"Hand to hand or fist to fist," Taylor taunted, bouncing on the balls of her feet, facing her opponent, a man who bounced between totally unskilled buffoon to the greatest martial artist in the planet.
How had she gotten to this point, you ask? Well...
She'd never been one for self defense before, but with the power of the God Hand she was learning at an accelerated rate, and thanks to its absolutely bitching tribal tattoos she was even getting a lot of respect from the more belligerent parts of the Dockworkers' Union, many of which were old hands at fighting like thugs as many of them were in fact thugs working for gangs on an informal basis.
Taylor had decided that if the heroes had become villains, then she would be the Hero to show them all!
And her first chance came shortly after she was considered a passable fighter, as Uber and Leet were in the middle of a large robbery. Massive, blocky looking dudes were running about, smashing things in the boardwalk, mostly breaking public property but also smashing storefronts and taking things from them. It kinda looked like they were sprites from videogames brought to real life. Someone shouted something about Double Dragon, but Taylor didn't know that one, as it was before her time.
Taylor wrapped a bandana on top of her head to keep her hair off of her face, and rolled up her sleeves, and dove into the fight, using her fists and feet to lay the smackdown on the blocky, 8 bit mooks, walloping them hard and fast, enough so that they would take one or two hits and then she would send them flying. The ones that landed back on the ground blinked in and out of existence for a few moments before fading away completely, the rest simply disappeared in mid air.
Not long after she stomped the first few, however, she heard a voice come from speakers hidden somewhere. "We've got a badass over here, why don't you try level two, huh?"
And then the blocky dudes suddenly seemed to get faster, more aggressive and smarter, coordinating their movements and forcing Taylor to spend a lot more time weaving and bobbing around their attacks. Eventually they realized that even if she could dodge all attacks coming at her upper body with relative ease, she would need to move around to dodge big sweeping attacks, and as she dodged and weaved and dashed around all the attacks, she heard an even more frustrated voice cry out "THEN HERE'S LEVEL THREE!"
The change was immediate and terrifying. It was staggering how much the enemies had been holding back. Taylor went from confidently dodging and occasionally striking back with a counter hit, to suddenly being on the defensive. The whooshing air from their missed punches was enough to make her realize that taking even a single one would put her halfway to the hospital.
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Seeing a single opening between the mass of muscular 8 bit guys, she did multiple back flips to put distance between them and her and fell into a stance, concentrating on the powers of the God Hand... as she delved into her powers it seemed like the world slowed down around her, and her powers soared. Her stored charge was spent and she moved, faster than greased lightning, taking several steps forward and then turning around.
"Kick your nuts," she spoke jovially, raising her leg and kicking like a mule, landing the kick straight into the biggest of the dudes' balls.
The living sprite grabbed at its crotch, and then shattered like glass around it.
"Ooooooooooohhhhh fuuuuuck, that was dirty!" the same voice from before, presumably Leet, cried out.
"Twist your wrist," Taylor added, grabbing another one of the dudes, this time by the wrist, and then doing exactly that, taking advantage of her immense speed boost from using her stored charge, breaking the sprite's wrist and causing it to disappear as well.
The final mook made a horrified expression in its low resolution face, and Taylor grinned at it, stepping up to it.
"Ooooh helll naw!" the sprite cried, bringing its hands to its crotch.
"Godly power keeps my pimp hand strong," Taylor shouted, raising her hand up to her face, trying not to think about the fact that her height now matched big muscular guys, and then making a sweeping backhand that hit the sprite's face, sending it flying into a wall, which it slammed comically against, flattening into a disk, and then dripping like a liquid to the ground, at which point it began to blink and then disappeared.
She put her left hand on her hip and pointed at her chest with her right thumb, striking a pose and looking at the patrons and employees of the jewelry store she'd just saved. "So trust me or you won't last very long!"
... even later...
Not too long after, Taylor was minding her own business when the Nazis started a fight with a bunch of Merchant thugs, clearly sending a message by finding and thrashing their shit. Several parahumans had shown up, and after a brief fight, the Nazis won, subduing Skidmark and Mush, though several of them had gone off after them and Squealer as the trashy blonde rescued her fellow capes.
And then Taylor dropped in when the number of nazis reduced from five to two, presumably because it was the one that was useless and the one that was too heavy to carry around for the teenage nazi.
"What are you, nervous?!" the Nazi taunted.
"I'll dragon kick your ass into the milky way!" Taylor shouted, as the excessively albino nazi laughed about his infinite and impossible regeneration.
She then spent two stored charges simultaneously on a single attack, just to show off how much this dude, in all his nazi shittery, had pissed her off. The world slowed down to a fucking crawl and she felt like the wrath of God himself had been imbued into her right leg. She stepped forward, slammed her left foot down on the ground as a support, like an invincible pillar, raised her right leg, like a coiled spring, and then let loose with all her strength, hitting the nazi in the chest with such impossible strength that it didn't just send him flying into the air, it sent him flying into the horizon, only a twinkle remaining as he was launched beyond even her own enhanced sight.
"Keep sharp, this bitch isn't afraid to play dirty!" a man that was quickly becoming covered in whirling blades shouted.
Taylor huffed. "Don't act like you don't like the Ball Buster!" she happily taunted, using her third charge of the day to quickly step into his guard before he was finished transforming, and giving him a taste of what had become her signature move after the Uber & Leet stream she'd crashed.
She could almost hear the sound of a bell getting dinged and the man immediately grabbing his balls, his transformation interrupted as he bent over, his face turned blue from the pain and loss of breath.
However, a lot more nazis, both regular thugs armed with bats, knives, brass knuckles and the odd pistol, as well as several dressed in the same armor, looking ghostly, dropped in, and Taylor could almost feel the sights of a sniper focused on her, her intuition was telling her she was in danger.
She grinned, grabbed at her right arm with her left. "My arm..."
... even later still...
"AH'LL HYUSH HYUR BONSH LEEK HOOHTHPEEKS!!!" the rampaging, flaming, roid raging dragon screamed as it increased rapidly in size, quickly dwarfing Taylor and then some, his muscles bulging, a new pair of arms bursting from under his armpits, wings coming out of his back, and a spiked tail elongating from his spine, all covered in metallic silver scales.
Taylor grinned, grabbed at her right arm with her left and it began to glow. "My arm..."
... later than that...
Running away with a sexy blonde, surrounded by a large amount of thugs wielding hyperadvanced, tinkertech weaponry, with extremely thorough training to handle not just regular combat situations but also battle with Parahumans, combining the best of paramilitary organizations with the best of government funded training, Taylor couldn't help but feel her blood pump and the tension grow ever more rapidly.
"Taylor, they're surrounding us..!"
Taylor grinned, as her right arm began to glow, and her left gripped the midsection of her sexy blonde arm candy tighter to make sure she wouldn't drop. "My arm-"
... almost as late as it gets...
A massive gang war had started over the newest big name cape that had broken into the scene, some bitch named Bakada or something dumb like that, Taylor honestly could not give one iota of a fuck about her name or give her the slightest bit of respect. She didn't deserve having the privilege of Taylor remembering her name! After everything she'd done, after all the people she'd killed, it really was no wonder that for a change, instead of simply responding to something that was already happening on the street and putting the criminals where they belong, for once, Taylor went out on a hunt.
With The Cape Formerly Known As Tattletale's help, she had tracked down the bomber to her hideout.
Sixteen inch thick steel plated doors, even thicker walls, protected by a variety of exotic effects. "How do you plan on getting through all this?" Lisa, formerly Tattletale, asked, showing Taylor a picture of the front of the base, taken from Barracuda's own security camera system.
"My arm-"
... a whole lot of moments later...
The Protectorate was the worst.
Not only did they screw Taylor out of the glory, fame and acknowledgement of heroism that would come from being the hero who put a stop to the mad bomber's rampage, singlehandedly, while everyone else was bickering and fighting each other instead of going after Bakugan, but they had even tried to paint her to the media as a villain in her own right! Claiming that if she truly had heroism in mind, then she would have joined them when they offered.
It was true that they'd offered multiple times, and it was also true that Taylor had practiced her taunting one liners by telling everyone they had sent after her to go fuck themselves in many different ways, but they had the raging psychopath that was Shadow Stalker, or Sophia Hess, in their team, Kid Win was entirely too quick with his guns and had nearly killed several members of his team and the Undersiders by using untested weaponry in the field, Clockblocker appeared to be a class clown of the worst kind that seemed to hit every single one of Taylor's buttons whenever he opened his mouth and Vista, for someone so young, was already as much of a holier than thou asshole as Taylor's grandmother could ever hope to be.
Okay so maybe some of that was personal bias because she had an antagonistic predisposition to them from before they even opened their mouths and she looked for the worst interpretation of their actions possible.
"I'm glad you at least admit that," Lisa said, from Taylor's bed. Luckily, Taylor's father, Danny, was home so little and cared so little when he was that Lisa had been able to effectively live in Taylor's house without him even noticing. "So what are you gonna do about it? I already told you where they're holding the event. I can't bring the guys in on this, Grue's in Boston and who knows where Regent is, but I'm sure Bitch'd be good to give it a go."
Taylor nodded, raised her right arm and clenched her hand into a fist, looking up at the... ceiling, but imagining it was the sky above. "My arm-!"
... the latest it gets...
The monster, one of the three greatest threats humanity had ever known, stood above it all. Unharmed. Untouched. Pretending invincibility. A great calamity.
The Leviathan.
An apt name, a seadwelling monstrosity, vaguely reptilian, definitely malformed.
"My arm!!!!"
But the Leviathan was Slain by God.
"I'LL SUMMON UP THE POWERS OF THE GOD HAND!!"
Taylor's shout was overheard across the entirety of the Bay. Those who had been victim to this very cry before, for the first time since they had fought her, instead of finding terror in its utterance, found hope, as a beam of light erupted from the ground and broke the black storm clouds in the skies, as Taylor unleashed the full extent of her arm's power into a single attack, a glowing golden fireball that appeared puny next to the size of the Leviathan, catching the creature in its midsection, boring a hole through it and then incinerating the creature from within with the infinite, omnipotent power of God's Right Arm.
The storm ceased, and the sun came up.
After years of the Endbringer Threat, finally humanity knew Hope, and her name is-
"TAYLOR HERBERT!?" Lisa laughed like a loon.
"Would you believe that killing an honest to goodness endbringer was easier than having a newspaper correct my fucking name in a publication? Everyone thinks my surname is Herbert now!"
Lisa chuckled, laying back on Taylor's bed. "Cheer up," she said, "at least the Protectorate can't take the credit for this one! Besides, your true reward is right here!"
Taylor nodded, then she turned around from her computer and looked at Lisa. "Whaaa- Lisa you look different today."
Indeed, she did! She was wearing something rather different! Purple high heels, black semi-opaque tights, a purple leotard with a fuzzy cotton tail and big, long and floppy ears on a headband, sitting on top of her head.
"You like? It's your gift for being such a good friend and-"
and then they fucked, hard, for a very long time, and that's how Danny learned he had a guest living in his house, his daughter was God Hand, and his daughter wasn't straight