Taylor did not think of the bullies during summer. She did not think of Emma. Summer was when she could relax. It was the one time in the year when she could spend weeks without being tormented by them. And now, looking at the smiling face of her, very hot, former best friend, Taylor felt a fire light up inside of her. She grabbed one of the promotional pamphlets lying around and strode out of the store and into the closest bathroom.

Quickly checking that all the stalls were empty, she locked herself into the furthest away from the door and opened the pamphlet, drinking in the images. Emma appeared in several of them. She looked flawless, product of both good photography techniques and her own looks, complemented by professionally applied make-up. None of them were swimsuit photos but Taylor wasn't really fixated on that. No, her eyes were more focussed on Emma's smile. Emma had no right to make her feel like that. Not while she was smiling. She unbuttoned her jeans with one hand and dove her fingers inside her panties, rubbing and prodding. If Emma was going to get her hot, it would be on her own terms. After all that she'd done, all the betrayals and the bullying, Taylor wanted nothing more than to see her cry for once. She imagined what it would be like.

Emma's blue eyes sparkling with tears, her sniffles and cries, her moans... Had Emma had sex yet? It wasn't like she lacked admirers or like she wasn't willing to paste her face and body all over posters, the slut. Had any of them ever grabbed her butt or groped her breasts? The modeling world was full of scandalous relationships, like a promoter and an underage model. Setting Emma apart, threatening her budding career, promising her his best. One kiss, so simple. Then came the tongue and Emma would sputter but he'd grab her chin and make her. Tongues fighting obscenely until she gave up. It was just the beginning if she really wanted to keep being a model. He'd touch and have those breasts in his hands while she bit her tongue to keep silent. And when she was all wet and ready, he'd get her on her knees and whip out his cock. And Emma would suck it. All eager to please, too far into the act to back down then, red hair bouncing, full lips wrapped around the throbbing, smelly flesh, a flash of tongue tongue here and there... Her teary eyes as she looked up to Taylor and swallowed...

"Fuck!"

Taylor panted, slumped on the toilet seat. She had one of her tentacles protruding from her front like a dick, one hand wrapped around it. The tip shone with fluids and she grabbed some toilet paper to clean herself. Great. She had just jacked off, so to say, to an image of Emma in the mall's bathroom. A part of her felt repulsed. Another part had very different ideas.

Taylor had just found who she was going to have sex with first.

* * *

A stalker's essential kit: binoculars, camera, gloves, sunglasses, bandanna, cap, notebook and writing implement, water bottle, book and a copy of the day's newspaper. A backpack for the whole set and an excuse in case you were caught. This applied to areas where such items wouldn't be overly suspicious. For example: binoculars and a notebook and she could pass as a bird watcher near the beach. On the other hand, everything went into the backpack when she pretended to be a jogger, and the newspaper came out when she sat down on a coffee shop. That she was a girl dispelled any suspicions people might have regarding her. Double standards being useful for once.

Taylor was becoming a bloody expert on the business.

It was like hunting. She chose a prey and stalked her. Observing her habits, which places she frequented the most, the routes and routines. She reveled in the hunt, knowing one day she would get her hands on the prize. And a what a prize it was. Emma had certainly grown up. It was so very obvious when she went to the beach, wearing one of her well-fitting bikinis.

So, apparently, her power wasn't just sex. No. It was sexual predation.

She had read a few articles about the whole parahuman debate. There were two camps about the issue. Either powers screwed with people's head, which called for a witch hunt or better PRT support depending on the extremists, or it was just human nature and everybody was fucked either way. Taylor had definite proof that the first camp was right. She was, after all, stalking her former best friend turned tormentor in order to drag her into a back alley and thoroughly rape her. There was no amount of snapping because of bullying that justified her complete nonchalance. Her downright eagerness. Oh well, who cared anyway?

Emma would be leaving the beach soon. Taylor closed her book, got up from her seat and walked to the counter to pay for her cola. If there was one thing she disliked about this whole stalking thing was that Emma always chose the good beaches in front of the Boardwalk. It was really easy to lose her from view in the middle of all those hot babes and the prices on the Boardwalk's esplanades were absurd. Highway robbery! Taylor moaned the loss of another part of her very limited money. She would have to look into an alternate source of income soon. She had a few ideas revolving about the sex industry, since her mind lived in the gutter nowadays, but she wanted to get to Emma first. Speaking of whom... Emma and Sophia, who she had met on the Boardwalk, were climbing the stairs from the beach. If they turned... And they were walking in her direction.

Fuck. She couldn't turn away now. It would look really suspicious and you didn't want to look suspicious on the Boardwalk lest the security find you disrupting. Taylor was reasonably sure could fight off the security mercenaries, because normal cops they weren't, but that would mean revealing her powers. Which was a big no-no. Steeling herself, she lowered her head and focussed all of her attention on her shoes. No need to look up, she'd just pass Emma and Sophia by and nobody would even notice her...

Luck was not on her side.

Her shoulder collided painfully with somebody else and she spun around, clutching at it. She looked up to whoever she had stumbled into with an apology on her lips... and froze.

Sophia sneered at her.

Danger.

Beside her Emma was saying something but Taylor couldn't hear it.

Danger!

Sophia took a step towards her...

Danger. Danger! Danger!!

Taylor bolted. She shoved past people, running in blind panic, ignoring everything around her. Beneath her skin her tentacles seemed tenser than they had ever been, coiled in on themselves, making themselves small. All of her new instincts were telling her Sophia was dangerous. Like a rabbit, she ran from the wolf until she reached her home and only when she was huddled under the covers did she slowly stop shaking.

Well... Fuck.

* * *

So. Apparently Sophia Hess went and set off all the alarms. All of them.

Taylor could adapt. For one, she could cross her out of the list of people she eventually wanted to fuck. Twice over, just to be sure. It was a shame because Sophia had the exotic and athletic niches filled in. Still, nopes! Taylor didn't know what that was all about, but she wouldn't ever touch the dark-skinned girl ever again if she could help it. She was going to be much more cautious from now on. On the other hand, it also meant she was going to have to change her plans towards Emma. A fuck in a dark alley to give her a scare and watch her cry a little just wouldn't cut it.

Really, Taylor should have thought of the logistics of it much sooner. Emma lived in a relatively good part of town and frequented pretty good parts of town, Winslow probably being the big exception in her routines, but that didn't matter during summer. Dark alleys weren't exactly common. And say Taylor did manage to corner her, and she knew she would, what if Emma got even a glimpse of her face? Knowing Emma, just a suspicion might be enough for her to lash out at Taylor. Maybe even accuse her. Not to mention the fact that Taylor had no idea if the fluid from her tentacles actually contained her DNA. In short, a bad idea.

That even imagining Sophia going to look for Emma's rapist almost sent her into a nervous breakdown didn't even enter her mind. At all. Really.

So with her approach modified, Taylor had started truly exploring the limits and versatilities of her tentacles. What bothered her more was the realization that she didn't know everything she could do with her power. But she'd been rather busy ever since getting her powers. There had been masturbation, stalking, more masturbation, more stalking, etcetera ad nauseum. So with a little bit of experimentation and some contortions, she'd discovered a plethora of useful skills. Well, it wasn't like she was planning on including a set of skills and experiences, with references and everything, under Sexual Predator in her CV, so the useful label could be debated. It wasn't even like she could send her imaginary CV to the PRT or another organization that employed parahumans. That wasn't villainous.

So she'd discovered a couple of abilities that would tonight go much smoothly. From her position behind a club's flickering neon lights, Taylor looked down on the groups of teenagers milling around. Clubs like these were all the rage amongst people her age. They didn't serve alcohol and were lighter in atmosphere, a sort of training wheels for fourteen to seventeen years old. Unless you knew somebody that knew somebody, in which case any vice was available in Brockton Bay. Taylor had never been to one herself, but she had overheard a conversation that specifically said Emma was going to be here tonight with a group of other people from the business, mostly other girls. Some sort of night between the seniors and the juniors. What had interested Taylor was that Sophia was not coming, being busy doing something or other.

And there came Alan Barnes' familiar car, stopping in the parking lot and letting out one gorgeous red-haired teen in a fashionable outfit. It was also an outfit that was far more modest than the norm around this club, and that purse of hers looked heavy. She'd scouted out this place, sneaking out at night and studying the population. The very nice population, she might add. Younger girls dropped off by their parents usually dressed differently... until they entered the tea room next door, owned by the same guy that owned the club, to change into better clothes in the bathroom. They also tended to exit through the backdoor, conveniently left open, which opened into a side-street. Emma, predictably, went into the shop.

There were cameras in front of the club, the tea room and the parking lot. Not in that side-street. Habitually there was a straggler or two in the street, but Taylor had dropped a couple of disgusting trash bags there earlier, that stunk to high heaven. Hopefully, Emma would leave the place alone. Finally, she had her important tentacles out and ready for the action. Everything was in place.

The door opened and her target stepped out, scrunching her nose. Taylor let herself have three seconds to admire the length of leg revealed by Emma's skirt and the cleavage that let her imagination run wild. Then Emma shook her hair, glamorous, and Taylor started turning imagination into reality. She dropped from above, one long and strong tentacle slowing her descent at the last moment. Emma barely had time to make a sound before a gloved hand covered her mouth, muffling her. Then they hit the ground in a tangle with too many limbs, Taylor straddling her. The prey struggled, flailing, trying to pry the hand away and yell for help. Long tentacles wrapped around her, grabbing her legs and arms and immobilizing her.

Then Taylor pinched her nose closed with her thumb and index and pressed her special tentacle against the skin of her back. An electric current surged through Emma from the two pointy nubs on that tentacle's end and she spasmed wildly. Taylor held strong and fast for another fifteen seconds before the pain and the lack of air became too much and she passed out.

Panting from the exertion, triumphant, Taylor let the body of her prey fall to the ground, the tentacles she had used for restraints returning under her skin. They brushed against Emma's undergarments, quite accidentally, and found the nipples hard and the thong wet with urine, the shock having made her lose control of her bladder. She scoffed and started frisking Emma, removing all of her jewelry, feeling the nubile shape that would soon be hers. And, together with her cellphone, dropping it all in a nearby gutter. Then she hefted her dead weight with her strongest tentacles, hauled herself into the roof again and disappeared into the night.

Taylor couldn't rape Emma just like that. So she'd just have to make her vanish. It happened all the time in Brockton Bay.

And then she'd have her all for herself.

* * *

Taylor thought she could wait just a little bit more, but saying and doing are different, especially when you know you have an, albeit unwilling, warm and ripe body just waiting for the taking.

She was getting wetter just from thinking about it.

She waited about fifteen minutes after her father had left the house. She turned on the television and turned up the volume until she had a nice background sound. Then, she took out the red key from the necklace around her neck, opened the basement's door and closed it behind her. In front of her was another door. Around the edges of that door one could see acoustic sealant. Taylor dangled the key on a rough wire hook she had installed on the wall and descended.

She was proud of the basement. It had already been almost soundproof, dry and warm enough. She had installed an extra door and invested in soundproofing, just in case. The windows at ground level had been bricked up and sealed in as many ways as the internet could tell her. The coal shute had had to go too, and the little furniture that had been down there had been repurposed. It said something about her financial state that it had taken most of her personal money to do that little. But the hardest part had probably been convincing her father to give her the basement. A place just for her, where he could not go in. She'd gotten that promise out of him, but she'd changed the lock on the door. If it bothered her father, he tried not to let it show.

He'd be happier not knowing what would be going down in the basement.

With a wide lecherous smile, Taylor hit the switch for low-level lights. The setup was mostly bare. The corner where the old drain was had an empty bucket. On the other side of the room, the old workbench had been repurposed into a cot. Emma lay on her side over it, barefoot, a black collar around her neck. Taylor approached her body slowly, trying to restrain herself. Two long tentacles made for strength unfurled from her back. She started on Emma's feet, moving a hand up her legs, feeling the exquisite skin, recently shaved, the way the flesh gave way under her touch, until she reached the skirt and pushed it up until she could see Emma's thong.