Hey guys! It is I, the phoenix, celebrating my birthday today!

As I finally hit the two decade mark amidst the chaos of the pandemic, I decided to publish a very special story that randomly popped into my head. This, just like Up In Arms, is just a Plot Bunny for now; whether or not it becomes a verified story is dependent entirely on you guys.

Don't worry about my existing stories; Multiplayer will receive an update in three days at the maximum, and then I already have a third of the next Event Horizon Chapter completed. After that will be Up In Arms, The Tale of Dekiru, then Radix Point.

Anyways, before we get into this story, I want you guys to keep something in mind; the Servant featured in this crossover, Enkidu, is a character that has not been expanded upon much in terms of ability. Fate Strange Fake was incredibly cryptic about how his powers worked, and Fate Grand Order really wasn't much help on that front either, so I had to take matters into my own hands and write my own interpretation of Enkidu. Don't be alarmed though; I'm not changing his Noble Phantasms or anything. His powers in this story are basically what I understood from the source material.

On that note... I HAVE INCLUDED A COMPREHENSIVE LIST FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DID NOT UNDERSTAND THE BASIC PREMISE OF THE STORY, AS WELL AS THE SITUATION AND ENKIDU/TAYLOR'S POWERS. PLEASE READ IT AT THE FOOTNOTES OF THE CHAPTER, EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU UNDERSTOOD ANYTHING.

So how did this story come to be?

Completely by chance. I was reading Archer, a Story where Taylor received Archer, who had hijacked her Shard with help from the Counter Forces. It was then that the idea first occurred to me. Of course, my story goes in a completely different direction, so don't assume it will be the same. I also had some ideas I couldn't implement in Up In Arms due to various reasons, such as time constraints (in the story) and the like. One of those things is the inclusion of Canary, which wouldn't have worked for the Type of Hero Bedivere!Taylor is, since there was no actual way that she could help her, especially because she doesn't know any good lawyers, and does not trust Brandish. That was why I decided to move that idea to this story, where Taylor is far more flexible as a Hero.

Additionally, in this story, Taylor is a boy.

Now, don't flame me to hell for that. First of all, Taylor is almost always paired with girls anyway, so I don't think there's really much of a problem. Second, since Taylor is a girl in my other story, I wanted to experiment in this one because I tend to not follow the same formula for any stories I create that share a franchise.

I look forward to exploring the differences between the boy and girl versions of Taylor, and how that influenced them. I that's okay with you guys in case you want me to continue this idea as a story.

Also, why Enkidu?

Despite being such a beloved Servant, there are literally no stories that feature Enkidu's powers being given to an OC. In fact, Enkidu-centric stories are incredibly rare as well. I think personally that this problem might be because of how vague the mechanisms behind his powers are, something that I can definitely understand, but I decided to go ahead with it anyways, since it's quite unique.

And thus, this story was born.

Anyways, that's all I have to ramble about, so without further ado, let us get on with the story.

Don't forget to read the points at the footnotes.

Mud 1.1

It heard a Voice.

A Voice that was strange.

A Voice that was inhumane.

A Voice that was not maternal.

A Voice that was not paternal.

A Voice that was completely unknown to it.

A Voice that was speaking its name.

Even if it was not supposed to have a name because it lacked a sense of self, a concept of identity, it heard the name being uttered in reference to itself.

Once again, it heard the Voice.

The Voice telling it to rise.

And rise it did.

From the mud that descended onto the earth, it awoke in the wilderness. Its eyelids opened to response to the Voice that had called out to it.

Its body slithered forward, its eyes roaming around the greenery surrounding it, mesmerizing it, and absorbing its attention.

Then it looked upwards, towards the sky, to the Heavens themselves. Even if the Kingdom couldn't be seen from where it was, it's blank and hollow eyes were still able to perceive the Gods that resides within, its Creators.

And then it let out a Sound.

A Sound that wasn't male.

A Sound that wasn't female.

A Sound that did not come from a child.

A Sound that did not come from an elderly being.

The Sound it let out was just like the Voice that had called to it.

Inhumane and Indecipherable.

The Sound of a Monster.

Then there was Darkness.

Silence.

Nothingness.

The Earth, the sweet smell of soil.

The beautiful trees surrounding it.

The soft grass beneath its feet.

The pretty blue sky that stretched overhead next to the bright sun which radiated light.

The loud waterfalls that roared like thunder and lighting.

The river that sang a beautiful melody.

It had no intellect, no knowledge and was unable to think, to feel, to understand.

And then it heard a Voice, once more.

This time, the Voice was different.

This time, the Voice was clear.

The alluring Voice guided it through the forests of the land it had been born in.

The lovely Voice led it to a woman of incomprehensible beauty, one which transcended even gender.

Her name was Shamhat, and she was all it knew.

It was certainly a strange existence, for it couldn't recognize anything around it except for her.

Fascinated, it had followed the woman, so it came to recognize the woman, and from that same woman, the only one in its World, it learned.

It learned about its feelings and how to express them.

It learned to find the meanings of even the vaguest of concepts, on both Heaven and Earth.

It learned to truly recognize its environment.

It learned about the various different kinds of animals and how to communicate with them.

It learned how to understand words and was soon able to speak on its own.

Over the six days and seven nights it spent with Shamhat, the Monster began to change its shape as it gained the capacity to think rationally. It sought to copy the form of the woman who had granted it sentience, who had given it a Soul, and in time, made her paradoxical beauty its own.

Only then, when it had fully cast off the beast-like nature it had been born in to, losing much of its indiscriminate power for the capacity of rational thought and wisdom, though its might still towered over that of any human, did it finally recognized its name, and the purpose it had been born to serve.

"My name is Enkidu, born of the divine mud shaped by the hands of Anu and Aruru. I am the Chains of Heaven meant to bring the Keystone back under the control of the Gods. My duty is to fight Gilgamesh and reprimand him as an equal."

And then the monster known as Enkidu left the forest of its birth and walked towards civilization to fulfill its mission.

Violet eyes opened in surprise as their owner sat up in shock, before falling over as said owner realized that his action wasn't meant for the shape his body was currently in.

The purple-eyed sloth fumbled around in alarm before looking at his fur and narrowing his eyes in concentration.

And then, the sloth's body began to dissolve into what could only be described as mud, although it gave off an aura that no ordinary mud ever could hope to radiate.

The sloth completely dissolved, leaving behind a heap of mud, which began to shift as it rose again, tendrils reaching out and shifting as the mud began to take another form.

Long black hair appeared, falling straight down the back, followed by pale skin, and a lean, athletic body that was nearly six feet tall in height. Glasses formed over the figure's face, along with clothes, a white shirt with a black hoodie over it, completed by combat boots and biker pants.

The figure wobbled unsteadily as his body finished transforming, still getting used to the feeling of activating that particular aspect of his power.

He steadied himself within an instant though, and ran a hand through his hair, making sure he had formed his body properly.

One could never be too sure when shape-shifting was involved.

"I think I'm starting to get the hang of this." said the boy, a teenager of about sixteen years, with a handsome face that seemed almost unearthly in its complexion, complementing his lustrous skin and velvety hair.

He might have even been proud of it had it not been so damn feminine.

Despite what people always thought, he wasn't a girl, damn it!

He tied back his long waist-length hair with practiced ease, and moved towards the mirror to check himself once more in the mirror.

His own wry face looked back at him, although it was now much more... radiant than it used to be only over a month ago, when he had Triggered.

'You still lack the ability to Transform instantaneously.' chided a gentle voice in his mind. 'Although you still learned to use that power of mine far more easily than I did.'

The boy smirked at that. He preened slightly, as while his companion wasn't a stern one by any means, he only gave out complements when they were deserved.

'Didn't you need a Magical Girl to control your own power supply, Enkidu?'

A soft sigh echoed through his mind, though with a definite undertone of amusement at his wording.

'Shamhat was a Sacred Prostitute, not a Magical Girl. And yes, while you are definitely correct in that regard, keep in mind that our situations are very different, Taylor. Still, your progress is more than acceptable, though I'm not sure My King would have found it all too impressive.'

'From what you told me, your King found pretty much nothing impressive, except for you.'

A laugh.

'Well, I'm certainly not going to deny that. King Gilgamesh was quite the picky one.'

Wasn't that the understatement of the millennium.

Taylor, having finished cleaning himself up, began to clean his 'room', and hummed a small tune to himself as he did so, neatly stacking away the various boxes that littered the room from the previous day's meals, and throwing them all in the garbage.

Taylor found simple tasks like cleaning and cooking to be incredibly calming, something that he was grateful for considering how much his life had been torn apart after his Trigger.

He would have probably fallen apart in those first few days in both the physical and mental sense; lost and alone, on the run from the 'Heroes', not that he would ever refer to any Cape employed by the PRT as such, if it weren't for his powers.

And that topic led to a whole different can of worms.

His powers.

Parahumans, humans who had gained amazing superpowers, had been around for close to three decades by the current point in time, coinciding with the debut of the golden man himself, Scion.

They all possessed incredible and highly diverse abilities.

Alexandria was invincible, could fly and had hyper-enhanced speed and strength. Eidolon literally could use any power, and Legend was basically a living laser cannon. Their own Lung was a man who slowly transformed into a dragon, continuously gaining more and more power as he fought, and Panacea of New Wave was the World's foremost Healing Cape.

Yet, Taylor was pretty sure that their powers were far more normal than his were. Because there was nothing normal about his powers. Both his actual abilities and the circumstances behind them were so extraordinary that he himself had a hard time believing he had them.

But he'd seen more than enough to make him a believer.

Some people might gain the ability to fly, others might invent a machine to turn oatmeal into porridge, but Taylor was sure that none of them had a bona-fide Heroic Spirit living in their head and passing their powers down to them.

The Heroic Spirit in question was a bizarre one too.

When people think of a Hero, barring the modern Capes, they think of people like King Arthur and Hercules, while a select few might even remember lesser-known but equally impressive people like Beowulf or Geronimo.

However, the one Taylor had bonded to was neither of them, nor any other Hero in popular folklore. The Heroic Spirit he was bound to was called Enkidu.

He had been stumped when the androgynous (wasn't it hypocritical of him to call someone else androgynous?) green-haired being had introduced himself as such.

Taylor's late mother, Annette Hebert, had been a literature professor, so Taylor was of course influenced by her and was in turn well versed in many kinds of literature all over the World.

He knew many historical Heroes, from the Indian Bhishma, the man who received his name for the terrible oath he had sworn for his father's happiness and was in turn blessed to only die when he willed it so, to the Celtic Diarmud, a man who lived a great but unfortunate life thanks to the curse that had plagued him, leading to him losing the only thing he had truly desired; to serve his king loyally.

And yet, he had never even heard of Enkidu.

A bit of research, along with testimony from the big E himself, and Taylor had assembled a small profile on the Heroic Spirit in question.

'Name: Enkidu

Title: Chains of Heaven

Alignment: True Neutral (He's the Secretary /Vice Commander Type)

Power Classification: Yes'

It was a very small profile, all things considered, but it captured basically everything important.

Enkidu was from The Epic of Gilgamesh, and was probably the World's first true AI, a mud puppet created by the Gods to control King Gilgamesh of Uruk. What actually happened was that Enkidu and Gilgamesh instead became the World's oldest pair of bros after they beat the crap out of each other, and Enkidu turned against his Masters, causing them to pull the plug on him after Ishtar decided to be a sore loser.

Yeah, the AI comparison was making a lot of sense.

He was also one of the strongest Heroes of old, being able to match Gilgamesh, who was basically that one guy you meet in Call of Duty Multiplayer that already hacked the whole game and spends their time showing off their OP mods while crushing everyone and everything in their way.

Yeah, not a small feat. It was also why Taylor had simply listed his Power Classification as 'Yes', because he was pretty sure Enkidu himself at least had a Rating of 4 in every power Category.

His iconic chains were clear Blaster Abilities.

His Transformation was a Changer Power.

His raw physical strength put him into both the Brute and Mover categories.

His chain creation powers along with some of the Skills he picked up during his life fell under Tinker.

His own control over his body would make him a self-Master, something Taylor had to acknowledge considering he knew firsthand how difficult it was to properly manipulate it.

His ability to respec his own Stats in order to change his attributes threw him into the Trump Category, since it allowed him to change the degree of his Mover, Brute, Striker and Blaster abilities.

Considering that Enkidu could channel energy through his fingers as well, and could transmute the Earth around him with a touch, he would also be a Striker.

As one possessing calculation abilities far surpassing any human, with the wisdom to match it, he was definitely a Thinker.

The enchantment Enkidu had thrown over Taylor's new home, a 'Bounded Field' that kept people away, fell under the Stranger Typing.

His strongest abilities, his Noble Phantasms, powers he described as the crystallization of his legend, consisted of Breaker and Shaker abilities.

Honestly, instead of trying to determine what powers Enkidu did have, it was probably easier to check out what powers he didn't have.

He made the so-called 'grab bag' Capes, those gifted with multiple powers, look like freaking Leet, whose Tinker power allowed him to build something once, before promptly screwing it up.

Honestly, Enkidu's sheer range of powers easily would have placed him into the ranks of the strongest Parahumans in the World, possibly only losing to Eidolon or Glaistig Uaine, though Taylor was confident the Chains of Heaven could beat both of them.

However, Taylor was not Enkidu.

Due to the massive differences between their bodies and spirits, the process of merging that was going on between him and the Heroic Spirit was painstakingly slow.

It was to be expected. Enkidu was a Autonomous Divine Construct from the Age of Gods, a time when magic was prevalent and Divine Spirits walked the Earth. Taylor was a completely average Human from the Age of Parahumans, with no innate abilities or unique attributes. The difference between them was like Heaven and Earth.

Oh, he had gained a few of Enkidu's powers, but nowhere near enough to catapult him to the top of the food chain.

Over the month that had gone by since he had Triggered, Taylor's body had begun to change in order to match Enkidu's, in terms of both his physical appearance, becoming far more attractive than he used to be, and his actual traits, because now Taylor was no longer human, but a blob of sentient mud just like Enkidu.

With that came the ability to Transform.

Transforming was a lot more difficult than Transformers and Ben 10 let on.

In order to Transform properly, you needed to be able to command every molecule in your body to shift in a unique pattern, forcibly changing the makeup of your components, until they took on a whole new structure.

Enkidu was able to use this ability instantaneously with ease because he possessed a far higher base intelligence than any human.

Taylor, while smart, was nowhere near the level of pure mental processing capacity required to reach Enkidu's Level.

If it wasn't for the Thinker ability he had, Taylor doubted he would have been able to properly transform.

Basically, Taylor's power let him both process more than the average human, but also allowed him to simultaneously process various Streams of thought, allowing him to basically become a multitasking God.

This ability was apparently not related to Enkidu himself, but rather the circumstances behind their union, but Taylor was grateful nonetheless, because he doubted that even after their fusion was complete, that he would have Enkidu's intellectual capacity.

How did this power apply to Transformation, you may ask?

It was simple.

Taylor was running multiple Streams of thought at the same time, allowing him to dedicate a couple of Streams to focus solely on Transforming his body, cutting down the time it would take to Transform by running multiple focused Streams in order to take care of each step of the process and allow a seamless and quick Transformation.

It was incredibly taxing, and he hadn't been able to do it at first, suffering from the infamous Thinker headaches as he tried to keep his form stable, but he had grown into it, and was now able to do it subconsciously, though it required him to push his Thinker power to the max.

The same applied to his ability to reconfigure the Parameters of his body; he had to focus on changing his density and the size of the intermolecular spaces of his body in order to increase or decrease his speed, strength, toughness, and even his power capacity.

The consequence of needing to go through this process made it so that his Transformation and Reconfiguration took a couple of seconds to activate, as opposed to Enkidu's instantaneous morphing.

Hopefully, in time, he would be able to Master his Changer abilities, but that time clearly wasn't now.

Those powers weren't the only ones he had, but they were the easiest to understand and the most valuable for combat, out of all his current powers.

And now, after a month of trying to rebuild his life and train, Taylor was finally confident enough to make some more practical tests of his power.

That's right; tonight was going to be his first night out as a Cape.

On that note, Taylor finished cleaning up his 'room', and then descended the stairs to reach the main floor and living room of his new home; a large abandoned house that lay in the middle of the woods on the outskirts of Brockton Bay, right beneath a mountain.

He'd been living in this place for around a month now, as it was the last place anybody would ever think to look for him.

This home, after all, belonged to a Villain who was currently in the Birdcage.

This house was the property of the Marquis, one of Brockton Bay's most infamous Capes.

At first, Taylor had felt more than a little uncomfortable using the house of a notorious Villain as his base of operations, especially since nobody had bothered touching the place since the Marquis had been arrested around a decade prior, which meant all of his personal items were still there.

But it wasn't like he could go back to the home he had been born in after what had happened. That option had been stolen from him forever. Not to mention, the memories that humble home now held was too much for him. He couldn't go back. Not yet.

Also, Taylor's more logical side knew that this was a highly tactical location to roost, as no Villain would dare infringe on the Marquis' home out of fear, and possibly respect, while New Wave and the PRT could do nothing because the man actually was the legal owner of the property, even if he was sentenced to the Birdcage for life.

That left it as a golden location for him to set up shop, especially because it was in the middle of the woods, and thanks to his mobility, distance wasn't a problem. Plus, the Bounded Field his tenant had set up made it so that people would be compelled to stay away from the area, meaning no one would discover him, especially since the PRT didn't keep surveillance on the area.

Hopefully, the Marquis wouldn't be too angry that Taylor was squatting on his land.

"If they show up, please take over." said Taylor.

'Of course. I understand.' replied Enkidu in his gentle voice. 'I urge you to be careful, but if you feel at any point that you cannot continue, then I will handle things from there.'

Honestly, Enkidu didn't have a gender, but Taylor felt like it was derogatory to call the Legendary Hero an 'it', so he had asked which gender pronoun he preferred, and had been encouraged to refer to him as a male.

"Thanks." said Taylor, walking by the counter and opening the blinds.

Night time it was. Perfect for a field test. Of course, it wasn't a debut, not by any means, but it was more to test his powers and make sure he was combat ready.

As he was about to leave the rather high-end house that served as his base of operations, he paused for a moment, pondering the significance of what he was about to do.

True, he'd had powers for a while now, but he wasn't truly a Cape, at least by the general standards. He didn't go about in costume doing his own thing with his powers. He wasn't involved with the Parahuman World, beyond the circumstances that led to his current state.

That would change the moment he walked out that door and put on his costume. If he went through with what he was about to do, he would officially be entering the Cape scene, for better or worse. He could possibly die, he might even be arrested by the PRT, or he could make a difference, just like he'd always wanted to.

But did he really want to? The World had given him nothing but pain, and had taken everything from him. The Heroes had completely destroyed the remnants of the life he once led. He had been left as nothing, a blank slate. Thanks to his powers, he had managed to push forwards and rebuild from the ashes he'd nearly drowned in. Did he want to risk his life and his freedom, and everything he had worked for by going out there?

Enkidu said nothing, as this was a decision, a resolve, that Taylor had to make for himself.

Taylor clenched his fists.

Yes.

Brockton Bay, his beloved city, was dying.

Between the ABB, the Merchants and the E88 tearing apart the city, it also had a nearly destroyed infrastructure, societal decay, and of course, Heroes who were so bad, both as people and at their jobs, that they were no better than Villains.

Between all these forces, how was the common man to survive? How would humanity ever progress in an environment like that, where you could trust neither the supposed good nor the clear bad?

There were many reasons why Brockton was the way it was now, mashed into place by a variety of both related and unrelated factors.

First of all, the city itself had been dying, ever since Leviathan had shown up on the Endbringer scene.

Even if Brockton Bay hadn't been hit directly, Leviathan's appearance caused more than just physical damage. Fresh Water sources all over the World had been hit, leading to an acute water shortage around the World in the early days of Leviathan's appearance.

However, the biggest blow was to the shipping industry, which had pretty much collapsed on itself after the big guy had appeared. After Japan and Newfoundland had been sunk, people were simply too afraid to risk sailing the oceans. After all, when he wasn't busy wrecking coastal cities, Leviathan rested at the bottom of the ocean. It could literally be anywhere, and as such, ships simply weren't a stable means of transportation anymore.

For Brockton Bay, this meant the collapse of one of its primary sources of economic revenue. After all, Brockton Bay used to be a famous port city that was famous for being a hub where people would ship goods to and from the rest of the country, and even international waters.

All that grinded to a halt once Leviathan had launched a few attacks. Funding and business had sharply dropped, and people had left their jobs to seek work elsewhere.

Taylor would know this better than anyone else; after all, his father was the head of hiring for the Dockworker's Association, and had regularly complained about how they were constantly losing members due to a lack of work.

Taylor's mouth fell into a frown as the memories turned bitter.

After all, he would never be able to talk to his father again.

Momentarily gritting his teeth and shooing away the unwanted memories, Taylor continued to do what he did best; think.

The collapse of Brockton's infrastructure and economy was due to Leviathan, which caused the city to begin dying, even as people did their level best to hold everything together. And then the Vultures came.

The E88 and The Teeth come to mind as Brockton Bay's earliest criminal organizations. The E88 were cordial at least to the white population, although Allfather was by no means a cordial man, and definitely went the hardline angle, as opposed to his successor, Kaiser. The Teeth were just a band of savage murderers led by The Butcher, and were basically the junior Slaughterhouse Nine.

These two organizations continued to pull Brockton Bay further into the mire, until the dawn of the Marquis.

The osteokinetic repelled The Teeth, driving them out of the Bay, and even managed to fight off the Slaughterhouse Nine. While he was not a nice man, casually killing Heroes who got in his way, he never involved civilians in his fights, and always made sure that women and children were kept safe.

Under him, Brockton Bay began to thrive again, surprisingly enough. He may have been a Villain, but the Marquis brought stability to the Bay, which it hadn't seen for a while.

Things were actually looking up. Since Marquis never involved civilians in his battles, the city was well on its way to recovering and possibly reclaiming its former glory.

And then New Wave attacked him in his own home and finally defeated him, after suffering repeated losses. Taylor found himself resenting them for that, not only because he was pretty sure that they broke the so-called Unwritten Rules by attacking him in his own house, the same house he was actually using now as a base, but they also took down the only person that was keeping the city stable, as the E88 wasn't brave enough to mess with him, and The Teeth were booted out when they tried to. They didn't eradicate the actual parasites sucking Brockton dry like the literal Nazis, but focused on the man who was fearsome enough to halt any other Villainous activity barring his own.

New Wave destroyed the only true chance Brockton Bay had at recovering, which was something Taylor found hilarious. After all, who could say that their city had been the safest under the grip of a Villain, and that a team of Heroes had brought it all crashing down?

Things just went downhill over the ten years since the arrest.

First of all, the Empire grew in power, as Parahumans became more and more prevalent, until they were the organization with the most Capes in the city.

Then Japan went under, and Lung decided to nest in the Bay, the ABB forming as a result, creating another major Villain organization.

It was around the same time that the Archer's Street Merchants, or simply, the Merchants, became a cohesive unit, or at least, as close to an organization as a group of souped-up meth-heads and druggies could be.

These three became the major powers in the city, although calling the Merchants a power was slightly unrealistic. They had a decent amount of power, with Skidmark, Squealer and recently Mush, but they were so high all the time that none of them could use the full potential of their powers, which made them honestly look like highly violent jokes on the Parahuman scene.

Of course, minor Villains were still a thing, separate from the Big Three, as some liked to call them.

Notable examples were Coil, a reclusive wierdo who used mercenaries equipped with Tinkertech as his go-to fighting force, and the duo of Über and Leet, a pair of Parahumans who wasted their potential staging crimes that followed the theme of a certain video game.

Between all these forces, each backed by at least one Parahuman, Brockton Bay was being gripped by the freaking throat.

What made it worse was the utter incompetence of the Heroes sworn to protect it.

New Wave wasn't included in that picture. While they weren't really active at the moment, well, ever since the death of Fleur anyways, during their glory days they had definitely made a difference, taking down several Villains, though their crown achievement would be defeating the Marquis.

No, the true reason why Brockton Bay was only getting worse and worse was because of the ENE Branch of the PRT.

While it may be true that Taylor's opinion was colored by the events that had caused his Trigger, and his mistrust of authority in general, the facts honestly spoke for themselves.

To put it simple, the PRT sucked. There was literally nothing else that could be said which accurately summed up all the problems into one statement.

First of all, they couldn't keep hold of even a single captured Villain. Over the decade that the PRT had been in power, they hadn't even removed a single Villain Cape from the roster, including even waste cases like Skidmark who should have been easy to take down and contain since he was literally never thinking straight.

That alone was damning evidence of their incompetence.

But wait, there's more!

Not only did they suck at keeping Villains locked up, but the Capes that worked for them were utter scumbags that were even worse than the people they arrested!

Armsmaster and Sophia were basically the poster children of the PRT on that front. While Taylor knew that there were good people among both the awards and the Protectorate, the fact that Armsmaster was the leader of the Protectorate showed how brain-dead their management actually was.

The Wards, with of course, the exception of her, seemed to be mostly okay people, but they were hamstrung by their management, and were forced to be dolls meant to roam around in public and act as if they were actually doing something.

No logic was present in any of their decisions. They could have taken out nearly every Villain in the Bay if they gave Vista a baseball bat and let her go to town, but they didn't even let her carryall weapon.

One could argue that the PRT were doing their best, considering the fact that they were outnumbered by the Villain Capes by a fair amount.

But that wasn't an excuse. The PRT only protected the richer areas at the center of the City, and focused more on maintaining the current status quo than actually doing something to clean up the city.

And so, as a result of all of these factors, Brockton Bay, his home, was drowning, sinking into the mire.

But not anymore.

He wouldn't let it happen. He wouldn't let Brockton Bay, the city that held the memories and hopes of his broken family, die like that.

Taylor had nothing left. He had stopped going to Winslow, and had no other obligations or duties.

His sole focus was cleaning up Brockton Bay, one problem at a time.

It was an undertaking that may cost him his life, but he was ready to take that chance.

His whole life, he had played it safe. He'd never taken any risks, and always went for the guaranteed option in any situation.

Not anymore. Playing it safe had done him no favors

For the betterment of the city, Taylor Hebert was going to risk it all.

"I'm ready."

'Then let us begin.'

The ten gangsters from the ABB had been jeering and taunting the ten thugs of the Empire 88 for a good ten minutes now and things were getting towards a good old fashioned street brawl. Members of the Empire were fitting knuckledusters and pulling out clubs, while the ABB were mostly unarmed, but the self-appointed leader of the group had a katana.

Honestly, this wasn't the first time such a thing had happened. It wouldn't be the last either.

After all, the Empire 88, a powerful gang that controlled much of the city and were white supremacists, would definitely get into conflict with the ABB, a powerful gang that controlled much of the city and were Asian supremacists.

It was just a matter of principle.

The Gangs were so bold, for good reason too, that they would literally just begin fighting on the streets, and would continue to until everyone was dead or a Cape showed up.

The unlucky people on whichever street the two Gangs had chosen as a battleground could do nothing but board up their homes and hide.

Since the area where the two Gangs often fought was usually the border between their respective territories, the victorious party usually wrecked the homes of whoever lived on the loser's side.

Deaths were commonplace this way, and tons of property damage was additionally caused as a result.

It was so common that people thought of it like rain; a random natural occurrence that wasn't too out of the ordinary.

It was one of the things that Taylor hated the most of what his city had become; the people had been oppressed and beaten down by the criminal activity plaguing the city to the point that they thought of it as normal.

Well, there weren't going to be any lives lost on his watch, not if Taylor had anything to say about it.

On a nearby rooftop, a Peregrine Falcon touched down gently, obscured by the night.

Slowly, even as the thugs below began to jeer at each other and hurl insults, the bird's form melted into a puddle of mud that slowly reshape do itself into a new figure.

The figure was a sixteen-year-old androgynous person with long, beautiful hair that shimmered with a light-green color. The person was wearing only a plain tunic as a costume, the only spark of color being a necklace of sorts that ended in the golden tip of a chain, so they seemed rather unremarkable compared to those that were normally called Capes. In fact, in an act that was seemingly reserved only for the Heroes of New Wave, the figure wore no mask to hide their identity.

It would be hard to determine the gender of the figure. Their face retained vaguely childlike features that could be interpreted as that of either gender.

The figure's lustrous skin and soft features were reminiscent of a woman, but their loose tunic further obscured their gender by hiding their physique, making it impossible to see their chest and hips, and making it difficult to discern if they were even actually human.

The person had firm and taut limbs with rough hands and feet like those of men, and their body seemed like a coiled spring ready to rocket forth.

And rocket forth the figure did, leaping through the air with a grace that made it appear as if they were flying, before planting themselves firmly in the middle of the street, kicking up dust and cracking the concrete at the points their bare feet touched down.

Sharp green eyes pierced through the night, and the figure spoke calmly, but with a firm undertone and a melodious voice that pierced straight through those listening, pinning them in place and making them listen. It wasn't a Parahuman ability; rather, it was the sheer presence of the person that was affecting them as such.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen." said Taylor with a smile. "But I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to stop your little tussle right here. Please desist, or I will have to take things into my own hands."

For a moment, both sides stared at him, both out of shock due to his entry and due to his appearance and words.

Taylor couldn't help but smirk internally. After all, he was using Enkidu's appearance as his Cape persona, out of respect and admiration for the Heroic Spirit. He no longer was Taylor Hebert, the wimpy boy who had lost everything due to his own powerlessness.

He was a Cape now, and the inheritor of Enkidu's legacy.

And it was time to act like it.

"CAPE!" screamed one of the skinheads, breaking the spell that had fallen over them as Taylor patiently waited for their answers.

Suddenly forming a bond of kinship, both the ABB and the Empire 88 trained their weapons on him.

It was sort of like a miniature version of the Endbringer Truce; in response to the threat of an unaffiliated Cape, the two gangs would team up, and then beat each other up after the problem was dealt with.

"I guess I should have expected this." He sighed. "Too smart to be Merchants, too dumb to know when to run away."

With a chorus of shouts of challenge, the two gangs charged at the motionless Cape with their weapons raised.

Taylor took a breath before he opened his mind and tapped into the wellspring of power Enkidu called the Counter Force.

The Counter Force was like a safety net created by the World itself to fight off threats to humanity. It usually acted indirectly to empower people to defeat threats, but also had a horde of murder machines called Counter Guardians that were deployed when things were so f*cked up that the best solution was to kill everyone in the area and salt the earth.

In some instances, it empowered people to protect humanity, such as Jeanne of Arc, the Saint of Orleans.

However, Enkidu, as a primordial Heroic Spirit whose very nature inclined him towards the defense of humanity, could access the Counter Force directly, using its energy to perform his attacks.

In fact, his Noble Phantasms were directly linked to the power of the Counter Force, which apparently made them stronger against those with evil in their hearts and those that were a threat to humanity.

The more you know, right?

Anyways, Taylor's body began to cackle with tendrils of what looked like blue lightning as the energy of the Counter Force flowed through him, empowering his mind and body.

And then they came.

Taylor slammed both of his palms onto the asphalt, sending out a shockwave of blue energy that threw the approaching gangsters on either side off their feet like rag dolls, sending them flying over their compatriots.

The ABB guy with the sword slashed at him, having used the front rank as decoys, but the shoddy steel blade was easily halted by Taylor's hand as he karate chopped the blade, the blue energy emanating from his fingers like electricity running through the blade and causing it to shatter like glass.

"B*tch!" one man howled, unleashing a barrage of punches. Clearly he had experience with martial arts, but it did him no good as Taylor didn't even flinch under the barrage, countering each attack with one of his own, his fists moving so fast they looked like blurs. The thug got a palm strike to the gut in response that took him out of the fight, the shockwave causing his belly to jiggle before he toppled over.

It was at this point that the rest of the thugs and gangbangers saw how the battle was going and tried to run, seeing the unknown Cape effortlessly handling their forces despite their superior numbers.

It was no use though, as Taylor crouched low, focusing as he created Streams of thought to alter the density and structure of his body, and shot off with enough force to crack the ground beneath his feet.

He soared through the air, catching up to the retreating thugs, opened by latching onto the head of one of them with an open palm, and flipped himself over his head, slamming the thug relatively gently into the pavement and then throwing him like a boomerang and nailing the foremost of the group who were trying to escape.

As they fell over like bowling pins, the last thing the thugs saw was Taylor falling straight towards them, his frame wreathed in cackling energy, sharp eyes glinting in the low light with the promise of harm.

And then they knew no more.

Taylor made sure that there were no more gangsters around before letting out a deep breath as he grimaced, his form partially dissolving before he got it back under control.

'This took a lot more out of me than I thought it would.' he grimaced.

'Of course. The power you were using is not one to be taken lightly. However, you did well today, although your stamina needs work. While I understand that using my power is very taxing, it is a necessity you get over this weakness before getting into more serious fights.'

Taylor openly accepted the words of his mentor.

The people he had taken down were the lowest on the food chain; untrained thugs without proper weaponry.

Even then, he had used up much of his energy to complete the battle. This sort of thing wouldn't fly in Cape fights, because they were all in a completely different league.

He had a lot to work on in the future, before he could become the Hero he wanted to be.

Despite his weariness, Taylor smiled.

"Mom, Dad... can you see me now?"

As luck would have it, one guy had several coils of rope in his backpack, for what reason Taylor didn't know, so he hogtied them all, Transforming his hands into blades to cut it.

He piled them up in two separate piles, based on affiliation, before grabbing a phone he had confiscated from one of the Empire thugs and dialing the PRT hotline.

After telling the operator where several gangbangers and thugs could be found, including a pile of weaponry that was definitely illegal, Taylor hug up and walked away, ducking into an alley as his form twisted, and he returned to his normal form, his silky black hair swaying in the wind before he tied it up and pooled it in his hood.

He walked away with a smile even as he heard the sirens of the law enforcement, his first night out as a Cape having been a resounding success.

However, a question came to mind, even as he walked in the direction of his stolen home in the woods.

'Enkidu, why did you choose to bond with me? You said that you were given the choice to come here, to pass your power down to me. Why did you do it?'

There was a moment of silence before Taylor heard his gentle laughter.

'Two reasons, actually. First of all, my King once believed that humanity should be left to develop on its own, without outside interference. It was this belief that led him to cause the true decline of the Age of Gods. What the Entities are doing goes against everything he worked for, and is something he would never stand for. Of course, that means that I cannot tolerate these beings either. The second reason is that above all else, I am a Heroic Spirit, sworn to protect humanity from those that threaten its existence. I could not decline the call. Even if I am unable to act directly, I am more than happy to pass on my power so that you, a true inhabitant of the Age of Parahumans, can save your people with your own hands.'

"I understand." said Taylor as he looked up at the night sky, the Stars twinkling overhead.

He let out a laugh of his own as he moved a few bangs of hair out of his eyes.

"Then I'll do it. I'll save my people, no matter what it takes."

And that's a wrap!

Before I make any comments, here's basically the summary of what's going down. Please read it to get a better understanding of the story. It is as follows;

- Taylor is a boy (already mentioned) who looks like a shorter, slightly younger black-haired Kingu in modern clothing. For this reason, people tend to mistake him for a girl, something that is a bit of a sore point for him.

- This Story takes place a little under a year before Taylor Triggered in canon, March 2010. The Undersiders have not formed yet, and Tattletale and Regent have not yet reached Brockton Bay, having run away only months earlier, making their way South. Shadow Stalker has joined the Wards with probationary status a little earlier than canon thanks to the ripple effect, joining in November of 2009. Canary has not yet been arrested. Behemoth's attack took place in February.

- Taylor's parents are both dead. The PRT is involved with the death of his father, which is what caused him to Trigger. You can probably guess who is involved. Taylor is technically a fugitive because he is wanted for 'assaulting the Heroes', and is hunted by the PRT because he knows Shadow Stalker's Civilian Identity. The other reason is due to a screw up on their part that they want to cover up. However, since he can literally shapeshift, and since his appearance changed after his Trigger, they had no luck finding him. However, they do know he is a Parahuman; they just don't know what his powers are. Due to the Event that was responsible for this, Dragon is not as close to Armsmaster as in canon. Armsmaster was also demoted and Miss Militia was made the leader of the ENE Protectorate for the same reason. If I continue this story, you'll find out what happened in the next chapter.

- It has been approximately a month since Taylor Triggered and gained Enkidu's powers. The Installation is slow going, but he has assimilated almost all of Enkidu's non-Noble Phantasm abilities. Enkidu has become a mentor and an older brother figure to Taylor over that time.

- Taylor is operating out of the Marquis' abandoned home on the outskirts of Brockton Bay, which Enkidu erected a Bounded Field over to keep away intruders.

- The lightning that cackles around Enkidu like Full Cowling when he fights in the anime and the game is apparently the Counter Force, so I had Taylor use its power as a substitute for magical energy in order to fight. It is currently functioning like a Mana Burst Skill to enhance his Parameters.

- Taylor has Enkidu's shapeshifting powers, but still takes several seconds to use them due to how hard it is to actually transform. This is also my own take on that power, mostly because I like to do things logically in my stories. For example, it's taking so long for Taylor to get all of Enkidu's powers because Enkidu and Taylor are radically different. Unlike many Heroic Spirits, Enkidu is neither a human nor a Divine Spirit possessing one, making it so that it's difficult to pass on his power to someone who was formerly a pure human.

- Enkidu has subsumed the Queen Administrator Shard by choice at the behest of the Counter Force, which is why Taylor has a few abilities from the Queen Administrator as well, although nothing major enough to be a game changer.

- While I will create a Heroic Spirit Stat Card for Taylor in the next chapter if you guys want this story, Taylor's Alignment is Neutral Good, as opposed to Bedivere!Taylor's Lawful Good in Up In Arms. This means that he is willing to take even controversial actions in order to save people.

- Taylor and Enkidu are both aware of the truth behind Parahumans and the Enitities.

Yeah, that's basically the gist of it. I'm aware that I'm not following the Nasuverse rules, but to be honest, few crossovers really do. Please don't give me a hard time over it.

Anyways, that is all I wanted to say, so have a nice day and stay safe. Tell me if you guys want me to turn this into a story or leave it as a One-Shot. I don't mind either way. Next update will be Multiplayer in a few days.

Spatialphoenix here, burning to ashes.