Scraped from here.
Index: Check the threadmarks now, means less work for me to have to update...
Index: Check the threadmarks now, means less work for me to have to update...
-
For all readers and writers
After much ado, our new tagging system is here and being rolled out to the userbase. Read more here!
Alteran Alternatives v2.0, Stargate: Atlantis/Worm crossover
- Thread starter Pyrion
- Start date
- Created at
- Index progress
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 876
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 7
-
Statistics (7 threadmarks, 54k words)
User Total Pyrion 7 Threadmarks Reader mode
Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
Scraped from here.
Index: Check the threadmarks now, means less work for me to have to update the list every time I post an update.
Alteran Alternatives v2.0; Stargate Atlantis/Worm crossover
by Pyrion (many thanks to Robo Jesus & hyzmarca for editing)
1.01
Hurt, anger, and betrayal were all I could feel. There were other thoughts and emotions raging through my mind, but those were dwarfed by the dominant three as I crouched as much as I could, hunched over in resignation. I had gotten numb to the surrounding filth and stench sometime before second period, but tried calling for help anyway. Nobody came. A few even banged back on the locker door, chuckling all the while. By third period I gave up, convinced nobody was going to help. Greg came by, asked if I was alright. I barely managed to croak out a weak cry for help, and he said he'd try to get someone, a janitor perhaps. Nobody came by after that, not that I could tell, I think I had cried myself to sleep before lunch. I don't know, really. My memory of things prior is a bit hazy.
Oh, yeah, there's a reason why. I'm still trying to sort it out in my head how it happened, why I ended up like this. I think the best way to describe it is that there's about a fifteen-minute gap between when I think I last passed out, and when I came to, with every fiber of my being burning with incandescent rage amidst the sheer confusion. I was alive, for a certain definition of the word, that much was certain.
But what the fuck happened to me?
One moment I'm hunched over, aching in every muscle, my stomach growling for food, the next I'm flailing in confusion and panic, like a fish out of water, from seeing far more than any human ought to. The filth of what Sophia and the others had forced upon me, defined in extreme detail, more information than I knew what to do with flooding my mind with no apparent way to shut it off. It wasn't just the filth, either. The locker itself, everything beyond, intermittent streams of colored noise flitting back and forth from points within what I somehow knew were classrooms, and points far beyond and above the school perimeter. For some reason, that noise was interesting, like there was a certain quantifiable... I don't know, structure? To it?
No matter. I had to get out, to hell with this place. I smashed my hands against the locker door in renewed desperation. I had, to get...
OUT!
The cacophony of information, of sound and light and things beyond that hit me as hard as I must've hit the locker door, even as it shattered in half and flew across the hallway, embedding the top half, at one corner, several inches into the drywall. I instinctively knew that school was still in session, even as I crawled out, now overwhelmed with the new sensations of knowing just some of what I was crawling on. A fine layer of dust, bits of dirt, dead bugs, even smaller microbes, even the air itself, defined in as much an unstoppable torrent of... well, "information" is the only way I can put it, and that was just my immediate surroundings. I became somewhat aware of myself, of what I had become, as beautiful and confusing and frightening and far more detailed than anyone would care to know.
I most certainly wasn't... normal, anymore. For me, the perspective change alone, of seeing everything in all directions simultaneously, told me that. Being able to "See" myself from my fingertips only doubly confirmed it. For anyone who'd come investigate the noise I had to have made? Yeah. It took me but a moment to realize that I was no longer "Normal", especially with how I seemed to look, and others certainly would see me soon too. I didn't want to be seen like this. I had to find somewhere to hide, to not be seen.
By its own free will, it seemed, my body complied. A surge of energy from inside, the strange feeling of light being wrapped around me, the flood of additional information nearly sending me headfirst into the ground... but I knew now that, if nothing else, I wouldn't be seen like this. I had, for all intents and purposes, become invisible. What the fuck?
Confirmation of that, as a few students and teachers from the immediately adjoining classrooms peeked out, looks of fear and astonishment on their faces. All of them looking at the locker, but not directly at me.
Ok, I needed to leave. I needed to leave right now.
I paid no attention to their shouting at that point, even as that strange structured noise flared up with a deafening intensity that I had to put out of my mind, lest it drive me mad. So I crawled to the nearest stairwell door, pushed it open, and stopped for a moment. I was panicking, I somehow knew that, but I had to figure out what to do here. Someone would come to investigate, and I couldn't run into them like this, even if I were invisible at the moment. Stairs down, or stairs up?
Stairs up.
Thankfully, nobody from the upper floors had come down to investigate, but I skipped those as well. The roof door was, predictably, locked shut. That didn't stop me from shoving it open, though I couldn't help but wince at the sight of the door coming loose at the hinges, leaning outwards at an angle when I tried to push it closed behind me.
Harsh sunlight wore down on me, and the habitual urge to shield my eyes did absolutely no good - I was, after all, "seeing" out of my arms, legs, every point on my body that was exposed to the world. That I had managed to make sense of everything being thrown at me so far was, well... amazing in my limited frame of mind, and terrifying for what it implied. I spotted an area of shade provided by two exterior air conditioning units, so I huddled between them.
Deep breaths, Taylor. It took me a few moments to realize that, while my chest was moving with the appearance of breathing, I wasn't actually taking in any air. Puzzlement at that turned into further panic. I reached to my left wrist and pressed two fingers against where my blood vessels should be - no pulse. I pressed harder, still no pulse.
Shaking my head, I pushed the shock aside with more important concerns. I was alive, that much was definitely certain, even if I had no pulse nor a need to breathe. What was I, though? To figure this out, I'd need to see myself, as-is.
Not so much of a surprise then, that the light-warping effect ended right that moment. I'd say I looked like a glistening, polished silver statue from head to toe, but that's simply not true. I was seeing more, a lot more, and somehow I knew I could see further. So I focused on that feeling, and my vision seemed to zoom in like a microscope. I was looking at my arm, and I could see things. Millions of little things moving in concert with each other. They were building things inside of me, changing me. Fixing me? That made no sense. And how did I know that?
What were these things? I...I could see them in every part of me. They… they were part of me, I somehow just knew that, I could even see them everywhere I looked inside of me, but what in the fuck are they? They seem, wait, wasn't there some Tinkers who...
Oh, crap.
Nanites?
"Fuck. What else could go wrong?"
I'm reasonably certain a few minutes have passed since I broke out, if only for the fact that the city police haven't yet shown up. The sirens wailing in the distance, though? Yeah, not gonna be long now.
"So, Taylor, time to take stock. You're a cape now, you're made of what appear to be nanites, you're pretty damn strong, and you can turn invisible. Oh, and you're talking to yourself in the third-person. That's not healthy."
I shrugged, before I started chuckling to myself. I was still getting hit with a deluge of information, only now it wasn't deafening so much as it was redundant. I could focus on a direction, narrow my field of vision and filter the input to regular "human" norms. Took a bit of effort at first, but relegating it to a sort-of "peripheral" sight did wonders for my capacity to think of other things. Like how I was going to get out of this mess.
I couldn't tell dad. Not yet. Not until, at very least, I had a better understanding of just what the hell happened to me, and more importantly, what I could do with it. I mean, I just busted down two doors, the latter with very little effort on my part, not hard to consider what I could do to someone on accident, never mind intentional harm.
That still left the question of where the hell I should go to figure any of this out. First thing that came to mind was the Wards or Protectorate, but that would mean telling not only them everything, but also telling my dad. I… I didn't want to do that to him, even though that would also mean probably scoring a transfer out of fuckin' Winslow and away from Sophia and Emma.
I couldn't just show up and ask how to join like this, though, not having the slightest clue what I could do? I mean, shit, barring anything else, I'd need clothes. I blinked, suddenly realizing that particular predicament - what the fuck happened to my clothes?! Wait, what in the fuck happened to my face?
Ok, the good news was that I wasn't 'nude' as I had feared. The bad news is that I now looked like a featureless statue. I.. I had no face. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Oh, I so wanted to scream right then and there. Every part of my body was perfectly symmetrical and rounded, from my head to my arms and legs and feet. Looking down at my chest, I also apparently no longer had any boobs either, not that I had much to begin with. Why hadn't I noticed this earlier?
"Oh now this just isn't fair," I couldn't help but mutter in some strange combination of shock and horror. Even the good things in my life end up making everything else worse, don't they? Wait, how was I talking if I had no mouth?
Ok, a mouth seems to form when I try speaking. That's… that good to know. Maybe I won't be stuck like this. Ok, I can work with this. Ok, let's take stock.
Nanites, right? The fact that I went invisible means I can obviously generate some sort of light-warping field or something due to them, and I think I'm seeing a lot more than what a human should be able to, nevermind the fact that I can see from the back of my head or my fingertips. I don't want to be stuck like this forever, but I don't want to be seen like this either, so let's focus on the invisibility here first.
Huh. No better place to test this than here and now, right?
Focusing on not wanting to be seen, I quickly faded from view. Yes. That's good. That's very good.
I dismissed the invisibility and then brought it back a few times, noting it didn't take an active thought so much as a subconscious desire now to turn it on or off. I had a detailed picture in my mind, a vivid memory of looking at myself in the mirror in the bathroom that morning while getting ready for school. I focused on that, only to gasp in surprise when another burst of energy, like the one accompanying my invisibility, prompting my body to shift. I stood completely rigid, afraid to even acknowledge what was happening as I felt my nanites seemingly take on minds of their own.
And almost as soon as it started, it stopped with a final burst of energy, running from head to toe. I dropped to a reflexive crouch for a moment, and looked myself over. Ok, I looked like a human should now, hair, eyes, mouth, the whole works. That's… that a relief. I'm still too silvery though, though I'm not 'nude' as I feared I might be, so that's a double relief. Huh, I wonder if I can get rid of the silver color. Maybe if I mess with light again, like how I turned myself invisible? A moments thought and a focus on doing so and I stared at normal, flesh-toned skin, even as I saw it stare back at me, strange as that was. Although, if I focused close enough I could still 'see' the nanites, each one interlocked with the others in a sort of mesh network, projecting just enough energy at certain wavelengths to fool the naked eye. But not my own sight.
Before the obvious realization hit me, my mind went into overdrive and I focused my attention on my right hand. I obviously had some level of control over the nanites, they responded to memory, but what about conscious control? Balling my fingers into a fist, I focused once more, and willed a simple perfect sphere into being from it.
It took no effort whatsoever.
Fuck me, I'm a shapeshifter?
-----
I slowly crept back down the stairs, invisibly I have to add. The hallway doors on all three floors were locked - huh, so the school's in lockdown. Makes sense, in this day and age they probably thought a bomb went off. I half-chuckled at the realization that, in a way, a bomb did go off. That line of thought was soon squelched, though, as much as I loathed this place and wanted to have nothing further to do with it, going on a hate-fueled rampage would kill my chances at being a hero, and more importantly, I wouldn't let Sophia and Emma win. While possibly getting myself transferred to Arcadia could be seen as running away, a tactical retreat was better than a futile charge, right?
Thoughts for later, anyway. Breaking down more doors wasn't an option, the locker and roof doors alone paint a pretty ugly picture, but they could just chalk the latter up to shoddy maintenance. Maybe. That left me with few options. I could wait the lockdown out, which meant remaining stuck in this hellhole and running the risk of discovery, or I could experiment, maybe figure out if I could pick a lock via shapeshifting. Only problem there is I have absolutely no clue how door locks work in the first place. Need another choice.
Shift through the doors? I have to admit, the thought was tempting. My nanites did seem to act like a liquid when not held together in a mesh-state, but it would mean dropping the invisibility and potentially giving myself away. So I get through the doors, then what? By my reckoning, there were at least four sets of doors between the stairwell and the front entrance, more if I'd exit through--
Fuck me, I'm so stupid sometimes. I just busted down two doors without so much as a scratch, my body's made of fucking nanites in a liquid metal state, why wouldn't I survive a three-story drop? Even going 'splat' would probably only present a brief annoyance, if what I assumed was right. Course, there were still the cops to deal with, but they couldn't cover all of the entrances to the school simultaneously, could they?
Oh, who am I kidding? Of course they could.
I hauled ass back up to the roof anyway, shoved the door aside only to cringe when its momentum yanked the remaining hinges out. Fuck it.
North side pointing towards the front entrance was definitely out - the design of the school would actually have me landing on the ground floor roof, and probably caving in the ceiling to a classroom. I followed the edge to the northeast corner. Eastern side was a straight drop to concrete, but the front entrance was there and the city police were now finally starting to show up. I ran to the northwest and looked over the edge - fuck me, no wonder they took so long, there were police vehicles forming a perimeter at the back of the school as well. Still, the cafeteria delivery and trash disposal area was fenced in, and they hadn't unlocked that yet. I shrugged to myself, noting this would either be the coolest thing today that nobody would see, or the dumbest end to a budding would-be cape's dreams.
I jumped, landing into a crouch with very little effort, no appreciable damage, and hardly a sound. Well, nothing as deafening as the police sirens wailing all around the place, which was a blessing in disguise. I briefly dropped my focus, letting the cacophony of information hit me again, and smirked with satisfaction as it didn't knock me into another round of stunned shock. The info overload was getting more manageable. More importantly, it was useful - the structured noise had started to work itself into recognizable sounds, voices even. Police radio communications? Not that I had a clue what any of the code phrases they were using actually meant, but hey, all other things being equal, I could always listen to the radio, though I did have to laugh as I asked myself who the fuck listens to the radio in this day and age.
I hopped over the concrete wall opposite to where the police cruisers were situated, checked my peripheral vision - invisible cloak was working fine, nobody seemed to notice, so I made a break for it. Only a few minutes later to discover something else about my transformation.
The run across the street, around the corner and out of direct line-of-sight of the police? A short sprint like that should have at least gotten the blood pumping, some sweat forming, heavy breaths, the feeling of my muscles tensing up. None of that now, for obvious reasons, but not even the slightest feeling of exertion. I almost felt disappointed.
How fast could I run, anyway?
-----
"Frank," the older man nodded.
"Jay. Good timing, hazmat is getting impatient, like usual."
"Can't blame 'em in this weather. Anyway, what've we got?"
"School principal called this one in. Reports of an explosion in a student's locker, door was blown in half, off its hinges, a portion of it embedded in the drywall. They placed the facility on lockdown, called out SWAT and bomb squad. SWAT cleared the hallway, found no obvious evidence of an explosion, no smoke, no fire, minor damage to the locker itself. Classrooms evacuated just in case. Locker's a biohazard though."
"Right, let's see what we've got."
The cop and plain-clothed detective were given a wide berth all the way in, stepping underneath a line of police tape blocking the double-doors to the hallway itself.
"Yeesh, that's it, huh? Are those... tampons?" The detective grimaced even as he crouched down to take a closer look. "Used tampons, and a lot of them. More than a few have been crushed flat, and the depressions look like footprints."
He grabbed the camera hanging from his neck, uncovered the lens and snapped a few photos of the locker, then turned to the shattered door. Crouching, he looked up at its underside and squinted, before taking more photos.
"Handprints embedded in the metal, strong enough to leave dents and a breach in one spot."
He stood up to the tips of his toes to get a better angle on the front of the door.
"Lock's still attached, and what are these? Visible fingerprints?" More photos. "Frank, tell hazmat they're gonna be waiting a while. Someone was trapped inside this locker, deliberately."
"Righto." Both men stepped out of the scene, the detective stopping to address an older blonde-haired woman he understood was the school's principal.
"Detective Jay Stanton, CSI." He extended his right hand.
"Kathleen Blackwell, I'm Winslow High's principal." They shook hands. "There anything I can do for you, detective?"
"For starters, who was assigned that locker?"
She sighed.
"Taylor Hebert. Female, fifteen-year-old sophomore, troubled teen, bad grades, excessive truancy."
He raised an eyebrow. "You sound like you recited that from memory."
"I did, she's one of several such students running the risk of expulsion for excessive truancy, never mind her grades."
He frowned. "Have you had a look in the locker since you called the police?"
"Of course not. I ordered the whole facility placed on lockdown, then waited for the all-clear."
"Then you're not aware that we have a hazmat team waiting outside to decontaminate the locker?"
She looked sufficiently surprised, so either she really had no clue, or was an exceptionally good actor.
"No. Why, what's in it?"
He took a deep breath. "From the looks of things, her locker was filled with used tampons and a person before it was locked."
"A pers--" the principal covered her mouth in shock. He simply nodded in response.
"Can you account for the attendance of Taylor Hebert for today, Miss Blackwell?"
She frowned. "Come with me, let's go check."
The two moved at a fast pace towards the administration offices. She shoved the door open. "Janet, the Hebert girl, did she show up for class this morning?"
"Hold on." She picked up a phone, pressed some keys and waited. "Administration. Did Taylor Hebert come into class this morning?" A pause. "Okay, thanks." She hung up. "No, although some students were overheard mentioning her by name."
Detective Stanton breathed out slowly through his nose, and nodded silently. "Miss Blackwell, can we talk somewhere in private?"
"My office."
The two walked into an adjacent office, and she sat at her desk.
"Miss Blackwell, I'm going to have to take the unavoidable step of calling in the PRT on this one, once my team is done collecting evidence. Are you aware of trigger events?"
She nodded, "Yes, it's when a parahuman's powers awaken for the first time."
"Call it a hunch, but I have reason to believe that Taylor Hebert did show up for class today, but was pushed into her locker after it was filled with that filth, and locked inside. I also have reason to believe that Taylor Hebert triggered inside that locker. I'll need to get a second opinion from the experts, of course. Do you have contact information for Taylor Hebert's parents?"
"Just a father, a Danny Hebert, we've dealt with him in the past. Hold on." She typed at her computer briefly, printed the information and handed the sheet to the detective. "Mother died in a car accident several years ago."
He took the paper and nodded.
"Anything else I can do for you, detective?"
"For now, no. I figure we'll be done collecting evidence within the hour, the cleanup will take about as long. Thank you for your time, Miss Blackwell."
-----
"Jay, you done talking to the principal yet?"
"Yeah David, what's up?"
"Join me on the third floor stairwell, there's something you need to see."
Jay sighed. "Describe it to me, our cape liaison just arrived so I'm gonna need to talk to her for a moment."
"Alright, fine. Looks like our girl left via the roof access, the door's been ripped off its hinges. I've already dusted for fingerprints, haven't found any. Oh, Kaitlyn did the same on the locker door. Outside's got lots of prints. The inside has got a few set of prints on the as well, but a lot of them are smeared though."
"Alright, we'll have the lab deal with that then. I get the feeling that most of those prints aren't going to be in the system though, so we'll probably have to deal with taking the prints of some of these students later. Gimme a few minutes to deal with the cape before we head back to HQ though."
"Gotcha."
He flipped his phone closed and shoved it into his right front pants pocket, then reached out to shake the approaching cape's hand.
"Battery." He nodded.
"Detective. Another trigger?"
He shrugged. "Looks like it. Teenage girl, name of 'Taylor Hebert', locked in her own locker by bullies most likely. She triggered about half an hour before lunch, blew the locker door off its hinges with enough force that the administration initially thought it was a bomb. No witnesses have come forward per the assumed bullying itself, and the school hasn't been much help either."
"No surprises there, not at this school at least. At least half of these kids are gang members, so they're not gonna speak up. Nobody saw the girl escape the locker itself?"
He pulled a notepad from his left pocket and flipped through a few pages. "A teacher, a Mister 'Gladly' and two students investigated before the lockdown went into effect. None of them saw the girl, although they did report the stairwell doors opening of their own accord."
Battery nodded. "Brute-Stranger then most likely. Can I see the locker?"
"Sure, but I have to warn you now, it ain't pretty."
He led the hero through the school's hallways, lifted the police tape and then shook his head when she started to gag.
"Christ... are those used tampons?"
"I had the same reaction when I first saw it. We got a hazmat crew outside waiting to clean all this up, you probably saw 'em on your way in. I don't envy 'em."
The cape turned away from the locker, shaking her head in dismay. He could only shrug.
"As for the door, huh, that's embedded pretty deep. I'd say brute three, stranger one at least." She crouched down to look at the exposed underside. "She did this with her bare hands?"
"Yeah, but the prints will take a while, and I don't think we have hers on file." He pointed to the top side. "Lock's still attached, we pulled partial prints off of it, and a couple full sets off of the door itself. Probably be a few days before we get a match. Oh, before you ask, I got contact information for the girl's father, one 'Danny Hebert', turns out a few of our guys have heard of him, he's the union rep for the dockworkers, has a pretty fierce temper apparently." He ripped a sheet of paper out of the notepad and handed it to her. "Someone's gonna have to tell him."
She snatched the paper from him and pocketed it. "Yeah, we'll handle that. Has an APB gone out for a missing person yet?"
"Yeah, and instructions have already been given to radio PRT dispatch if they spot the girl."
-----
Still invisible, I deftly leapt over a stopped car at an intersection, struggling to keep my enthusiasm from getting vocal. Still though, this was so cool! I'd run full-bore for about ten minutes without getting winded, on a street with a thirty-mile per hour speed limit, and I was running faster than the cars, even assuming most of them weren't obeying the limit. Rather than taking a good half an hour to get home with cooperating traffic, I was only about two minutes away.
That realization made me stop dead in my tracks. I had gotten so caught up in the novelty of having superpowers that I hadn't considered what I was going to tell dad, or if I'd tell him at all. Him finding out meant I'd have to tell him about the bullies, which meant I'd have to tell him about how long I'd been dealing with them, and why I hadn't told him then, etcetera. Or, for that matter, why I had ditched school.
That was all assuming he'd be home in the first place, so if nothing else, I'd have several hours to think of an elaborate believable lie and recite it.
The more I thought about it though, the more an uncomfortable realization crept into my consciousness: what kind of hero constantly lies to her parents?
The kind that doesn't want them to worry, I could only figure. I knew though that if I were to become a Hero, or hell, even if I was to join the Wards though, he'd have to know eventually, no way around it. Fuck.
Imagine my relief at dad not being home when I got there. I avoided the front door, in the off-chance anyone was watching, went in through the side kitchen door instead, dropped the invisibility and let out a sigh of relief. Home, and the freedom to learn about my powers for at least a few hours before dad would get home and I'd have to tell him.
I didn't even bother to wait until I got to my bedroom before I started cutting loose. Shapeshifting was all well and good if I knew what forms to take ahead of time, what made sense for a particular situation, and the foreknowledge of my limits, if any. I ran my hands along the wall, "Sampling" painted drywall up close and personally, as well as the hard plastic of things like light switches. Strange thing was, anything I looked at or made physical contact with, I felt I could recall at a moment's notice. My right arm assumed the texture and color of the aforementioned drywall, my left arm the dull flat beige of hard plastic, both of my legs the dark brown of hardwood flooring, complete with splinters poking out from frayed edges. The scariest part was that I wasn't even paying any of it much attention, most of my thoughts focused on thinking of other forms to take, as well as keeping a figurative eye, or ear, or whatever, on everything that I could detect going on outside and beyond.
In my bedroom, I started focusing on more objects, more textures, colors and patterns of both to memorize and assume. Thirty seconds in I was a patchwork mess, and enjoying every moment of it - that's another thing that occurred to me, the very act of shapeshifting was pleasurable. I considered another experiment: letting my body's cohesion dissolve altogether, melting into a puddle of liquid metal that quickly spread across the carpet, around the metal posts of my bed and desk, and even extended under the door out into the hallway. No energy pulses accommodated this change, but I also found that manipulating my body at this level required considerably more concentration. Huh, lesson learned there. I pulled myself back into my room, flowing up the bedposts with only mild effort, coalescing atop my bedsheets to retake my "default" silvery form - I could get used to this, though I'm sure dad would have a heart attack.
Though what would really give dad a heart attack, I just realized, was something lingering at the back of my mind. I thought of mom, though it had been a few years since her death, I still had good memories of her, photographs from happier times. Thinking of mom, visualizing her in my mind, prompted my body to change once more, and I let it happen, more curious than anything as to whether my memories of her were that detailed.
"Oh Taylor..." I spoke out loud at my new form, suddenly stunned that I had done so in her voice - so I could mimic other peoples' voices as well? The possibilities and implications swam through my mind - I could look and sound like anyone, given enough info to work with. The bullies were foremost on my mind... as a shapeshifter, I could get them into so much trouble without implicating myself, at least so long as nobody knew to expect a shapeshifter. Shit, good point there Taylor, best thing any shapeshifter has going for them is not advertising that fact to the world - if I were to the Wards, it's entirely probable that they'd keep me in reserve, more so than most front-line Wards. On one hand, I could be okay with that, I neither needed nor craved the attention, but on the other hand, I wouldn't be accomplishing much good on the sidelines.
...yeah, the more I thought about it, the more my initial thoughts for joining the Wards evolved into a growing pile of "what-if's" and their consequences, both for myself and for dad.
On that note, I resolved to determine how best my power could be applied to front-line combat, as that's ultimately what superheroes were good for, right? There were the simple things that immediately came to mind: forming spikes, blades, blunt objects like hammers out of my arms. Simple, but lethal, and yes I was acutely aware that Wards were forbidden from using lethal weaponry. With a bit more effort and coordination, I could extend whip-like tendrils to wrap around objects, they still had the potential of being lethal though - wrap a tendril around someone's neck and pull hard enough and they'd die just as fast from a snapped neck as they would from being shot.
No, the more I considered what I could do as a combatant, the more I realized just how easily I could kill with these powers. I sighed in resignation - if I was Ward material in the first place, it would likely be in a support role, little to no combat unless lethal force was necessary. Infiltration? Perhaps, though if Wards did that, we certainly never heard about it on the news.
But if I could take the forms of people, as well as simple inanimate objects and surfaces, who's to say I couldn't do complex mechanisms, technology, maybe even things like firearms? Obviously, there was a bit of an insurmountable problem, I didn't actually have anything to try to mimic, and learning the intricacies of such things would require taking them apart and actually understanding what the hell I'm looking at. Even something as relatively simple as a working cellphone necessitated actually having one in my possession. So, experiments to try for later, I supposed.
With a halfway-decent grasp of what I could do with my powers, and things to try out for the future, I was only a few seconds into brainstorming where would be a safer place to practice this when something familiar pinged my peripheral senses. A rapidly-approaching car pulling up onto the driveway, shutting off, and then hurried footsteps, rapid breathing and frantic whispering... shit, dad? Some rattling of the front door, the jingling of keys and muted swearing - in panic, I lashed out my right arm, forming a whip tendril to slap the light switch off... fuck me, I was still wearing mom's form, so I couldn't be caught like this. The front door slams open, and I instinctively know that it would take way too long to shift back to my own form, so instead I roll off my bed, lie on the floor and go invisible.
"Taylor? Taylor! Are you home kiddo?"
Shit, he just found out, didn't he?
"Taylor, honey! If you're home, please come out, I promise I won't be angry! Taylor?"
Heavy footfalls on the hardwood flooring towards my room, and then the door flies open and he hits the light switch. I remain perfectly still, and he doesn't see through the invisibility.
"Taylor? Fuck... fuck fuck fuck--"
He rushes back out through the living room and out the front door, and only then does it hit me just how worried he sounds. Another ping in my peripheral senses, the rumbling of a diesel-powered vehicle, and the noise of high-frequency encrypted radio chatter. Someone steps out of the vehicle, with the engine still running, and the footfalls are lighter.
"Mister Hebert? Miss Militia, we talked earlier, is your daughter here?"
I could hear him struggling to contain his sobbing now. "No, no she's not. If she were, she'd have come out by now."
Fuck me, if shame could power a city I'd have the whole country's power needs solved for a year.
"It'll be okay, we'll find her. We're coordinating a search at the PRT headquarters downtown, do you need a ride?"
More sobbing, and he finally manages to take a deep breath. "I... okay, yeah... yeah, gimme a minute and then we'll go."
The footfalls I'm now associating with Miss Militia pace around the outside of the house, and more radio communications ensue. Curiously, by hearing both sides of the conversation simply from close proximity, my power picks apart the encryption and gives me a slightly-delayed echo:
"Control, Miss Militia, I'm at the Hebert residence right now, her father's here, but no sign of the girl. Can I have a squad remain to keep an eye on the house?"
"Affirmative Miss Militia, squad zero-two-six en route, ETA three minutes. Will you be escorting the father back to base?"
"Affirmative control, he's in no condition to drive."
"Copy that. Control out."
Some rattling at the side of the house, kitchen door? Shit, I forgot to lock that behind me.
"Mister Hebert, your kitchen side door is unlocked."
"Yeah, I leave it unlocked for Taylor, she usually walks home from school and I don't have a spare set of keys. If she were here it'd be locked."
I dropped the invisibility and began shifting back to my own form, as the front door closed and dad locked it from the outside.
"We'll find her, Mister Hebert, don't worry. Come on."
Sounds of doors opening and shutting, the diesel engine revs and quickly gets quieter in the distance. Only then do I breathe a sigh of relief.
Of course, now I can't stay. In less than a minute, most likely, a PRT squad would show up and any activity in the house ran the risk of attracting their attention. I couldn't wear my form anymore, they'd be looking for that. Wearing dad's form would be a similar dead giveaway, and of the remaining forms I had practiced, I only really had foreknowledge of one that I figured I could use without drawing too much attention to myself. Much as it galled me to take her form...
I sighed. Fuck it.
I walked to the side door, acutely aware of a hastily-approaching diesel-powered vehicle on the edge of my peripheral sense, and left wearing Emma's form. I engaged the invisibility once more, just long enough to dash across the street and around a blind corner. Nobody looking my direction, from what I could tell, so I dropped the invisibility and shook my head in a mixture of frustration and shame.
Just have to get to the Boardwalk and blend in with the crowd…
A/N: Winslow's principal wasn't actually named, AFAIK. If she was, tell me, I'd appreciate it a great deal.
Anyway, yes, I haven't so much "given up" on it as realized that I screwed up quite a few things in an effort to get things moving along, so rather than try to salvage 1.0, a rewrite became necessary. Updates may not be as frequent as before, but that's because I'm actually planning things out in advance and more-or-less sticking to my outlines.
Might as well hit "Create Thread" now while SB's still responsive, right?
6/12/2014 EDIT: Index updated for SV.
Index: Check the threadmarks now, means less work for me to have to update the list every time I post an update.
Alteran Alternatives v2.0; Stargate Atlantis/Worm crossover
by Pyrion (many thanks to Robo Jesus & hyzmarca for editing)
1.01
Hurt, anger, and betrayal were all I could feel. There were other thoughts and emotions raging through my mind, but those were dwarfed by the dominant three as I crouched as much as I could, hunched over in resignation. I had gotten numb to the surrounding filth and stench sometime before second period, but tried calling for help anyway. Nobody came. A few even banged back on the locker door, chuckling all the while. By third period I gave up, convinced nobody was going to help. Greg came by, asked if I was alright. I barely managed to croak out a weak cry for help, and he said he'd try to get someone, a janitor perhaps. Nobody came by after that, not that I could tell, I think I had cried myself to sleep before lunch. I don't know, really. My memory of things prior is a bit hazy.
Oh, yeah, there's a reason why. I'm still trying to sort it out in my head how it happened, why I ended up like this. I think the best way to describe it is that there's about a fifteen-minute gap between when I think I last passed out, and when I came to, with every fiber of my being burning with incandescent rage amidst the sheer confusion. I was alive, for a certain definition of the word, that much was certain.
But what the fuck happened to me?
One moment I'm hunched over, aching in every muscle, my stomach growling for food, the next I'm flailing in confusion and panic, like a fish out of water, from seeing far more than any human ought to. The filth of what Sophia and the others had forced upon me, defined in extreme detail, more information than I knew what to do with flooding my mind with no apparent way to shut it off. It wasn't just the filth, either. The locker itself, everything beyond, intermittent streams of colored noise flitting back and forth from points within what I somehow knew were classrooms, and points far beyond and above the school perimeter. For some reason, that noise was interesting, like there was a certain quantifiable... I don't know, structure? To it?
No matter. I had to get out, to hell with this place. I smashed my hands against the locker door in renewed desperation. I had, to get...
OUT!
The cacophony of information, of sound and light and things beyond that hit me as hard as I must've hit the locker door, even as it shattered in half and flew across the hallway, embedding the top half, at one corner, several inches into the drywall. I instinctively knew that school was still in session, even as I crawled out, now overwhelmed with the new sensations of knowing just some of what I was crawling on. A fine layer of dust, bits of dirt, dead bugs, even smaller microbes, even the air itself, defined in as much an unstoppable torrent of... well, "information" is the only way I can put it, and that was just my immediate surroundings. I became somewhat aware of myself, of what I had become, as beautiful and confusing and frightening and far more detailed than anyone would care to know.
I most certainly wasn't... normal, anymore. For me, the perspective change alone, of seeing everything in all directions simultaneously, told me that. Being able to "See" myself from my fingertips only doubly confirmed it. For anyone who'd come investigate the noise I had to have made? Yeah. It took me but a moment to realize that I was no longer "Normal", especially with how I seemed to look, and others certainly would see me soon too. I didn't want to be seen like this. I had to find somewhere to hide, to not be seen.
By its own free will, it seemed, my body complied. A surge of energy from inside, the strange feeling of light being wrapped around me, the flood of additional information nearly sending me headfirst into the ground... but I knew now that, if nothing else, I wouldn't be seen like this. I had, for all intents and purposes, become invisible. What the fuck?
Confirmation of that, as a few students and teachers from the immediately adjoining classrooms peeked out, looks of fear and astonishment on their faces. All of them looking at the locker, but not directly at me.
Ok, I needed to leave. I needed to leave right now.
I paid no attention to their shouting at that point, even as that strange structured noise flared up with a deafening intensity that I had to put out of my mind, lest it drive me mad. So I crawled to the nearest stairwell door, pushed it open, and stopped for a moment. I was panicking, I somehow knew that, but I had to figure out what to do here. Someone would come to investigate, and I couldn't run into them like this, even if I were invisible at the moment. Stairs down, or stairs up?
Stairs up.
Thankfully, nobody from the upper floors had come down to investigate, but I skipped those as well. The roof door was, predictably, locked shut. That didn't stop me from shoving it open, though I couldn't help but wince at the sight of the door coming loose at the hinges, leaning outwards at an angle when I tried to push it closed behind me.
Harsh sunlight wore down on me, and the habitual urge to shield my eyes did absolutely no good - I was, after all, "seeing" out of my arms, legs, every point on my body that was exposed to the world. That I had managed to make sense of everything being thrown at me so far was, well... amazing in my limited frame of mind, and terrifying for what it implied. I spotted an area of shade provided by two exterior air conditioning units, so I huddled between them.
Deep breaths, Taylor. It took me a few moments to realize that, while my chest was moving with the appearance of breathing, I wasn't actually taking in any air. Puzzlement at that turned into further panic. I reached to my left wrist and pressed two fingers against where my blood vessels should be - no pulse. I pressed harder, still no pulse.
Shaking my head, I pushed the shock aside with more important concerns. I was alive, that much was definitely certain, even if I had no pulse nor a need to breathe. What was I, though? To figure this out, I'd need to see myself, as-is.
Not so much of a surprise then, that the light-warping effect ended right that moment. I'd say I looked like a glistening, polished silver statue from head to toe, but that's simply not true. I was seeing more, a lot more, and somehow I knew I could see further. So I focused on that feeling, and my vision seemed to zoom in like a microscope. I was looking at my arm, and I could see things. Millions of little things moving in concert with each other. They were building things inside of me, changing me. Fixing me? That made no sense. And how did I know that?
What were these things? I...I could see them in every part of me. They… they were part of me, I somehow just knew that, I could even see them everywhere I looked inside of me, but what in the fuck are they? They seem, wait, wasn't there some Tinkers who...
Oh, crap.
Nanites?
"Fuck. What else could go wrong?"
I'm reasonably certain a few minutes have passed since I broke out, if only for the fact that the city police haven't yet shown up. The sirens wailing in the distance, though? Yeah, not gonna be long now.
"So, Taylor, time to take stock. You're a cape now, you're made of what appear to be nanites, you're pretty damn strong, and you can turn invisible. Oh, and you're talking to yourself in the third-person. That's not healthy."
I shrugged, before I started chuckling to myself. I was still getting hit with a deluge of information, only now it wasn't deafening so much as it was redundant. I could focus on a direction, narrow my field of vision and filter the input to regular "human" norms. Took a bit of effort at first, but relegating it to a sort-of "peripheral" sight did wonders for my capacity to think of other things. Like how I was going to get out of this mess.
I couldn't tell dad. Not yet. Not until, at very least, I had a better understanding of just what the hell happened to me, and more importantly, what I could do with it. I mean, I just busted down two doors, the latter with very little effort on my part, not hard to consider what I could do to someone on accident, never mind intentional harm.
That still left the question of where the hell I should go to figure any of this out. First thing that came to mind was the Wards or Protectorate, but that would mean telling not only them everything, but also telling my dad. I… I didn't want to do that to him, even though that would also mean probably scoring a transfer out of fuckin' Winslow and away from Sophia and Emma.
I couldn't just show up and ask how to join like this, though, not having the slightest clue what I could do? I mean, shit, barring anything else, I'd need clothes. I blinked, suddenly realizing that particular predicament - what the fuck happened to my clothes?! Wait, what in the fuck happened to my face?
Ok, the good news was that I wasn't 'nude' as I had feared. The bad news is that I now looked like a featureless statue. I.. I had no face. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Oh, I so wanted to scream right then and there. Every part of my body was perfectly symmetrical and rounded, from my head to my arms and legs and feet. Looking down at my chest, I also apparently no longer had any boobs either, not that I had much to begin with. Why hadn't I noticed this earlier?
"Oh now this just isn't fair," I couldn't help but mutter in some strange combination of shock and horror. Even the good things in my life end up making everything else worse, don't they? Wait, how was I talking if I had no mouth?
Ok, a mouth seems to form when I try speaking. That's… that good to know. Maybe I won't be stuck like this. Ok, I can work with this. Ok, let's take stock.
Nanites, right? The fact that I went invisible means I can obviously generate some sort of light-warping field or something due to them, and I think I'm seeing a lot more than what a human should be able to, nevermind the fact that I can see from the back of my head or my fingertips. I don't want to be stuck like this forever, but I don't want to be seen like this either, so let's focus on the invisibility here first.
Huh. No better place to test this than here and now, right?
Focusing on not wanting to be seen, I quickly faded from view. Yes. That's good. That's very good.
I dismissed the invisibility and then brought it back a few times, noting it didn't take an active thought so much as a subconscious desire now to turn it on or off. I had a detailed picture in my mind, a vivid memory of looking at myself in the mirror in the bathroom that morning while getting ready for school. I focused on that, only to gasp in surprise when another burst of energy, like the one accompanying my invisibility, prompting my body to shift. I stood completely rigid, afraid to even acknowledge what was happening as I felt my nanites seemingly take on minds of their own.
And almost as soon as it started, it stopped with a final burst of energy, running from head to toe. I dropped to a reflexive crouch for a moment, and looked myself over. Ok, I looked like a human should now, hair, eyes, mouth, the whole works. That's… that a relief. I'm still too silvery though, though I'm not 'nude' as I feared I might be, so that's a double relief. Huh, I wonder if I can get rid of the silver color. Maybe if I mess with light again, like how I turned myself invisible? A moments thought and a focus on doing so and I stared at normal, flesh-toned skin, even as I saw it stare back at me, strange as that was. Although, if I focused close enough I could still 'see' the nanites, each one interlocked with the others in a sort of mesh network, projecting just enough energy at certain wavelengths to fool the naked eye. But not my own sight.
Before the obvious realization hit me, my mind went into overdrive and I focused my attention on my right hand. I obviously had some level of control over the nanites, they responded to memory, but what about conscious control? Balling my fingers into a fist, I focused once more, and willed a simple perfect sphere into being from it.
It took no effort whatsoever.
Fuck me, I'm a shapeshifter?
-----
I slowly crept back down the stairs, invisibly I have to add. The hallway doors on all three floors were locked - huh, so the school's in lockdown. Makes sense, in this day and age they probably thought a bomb went off. I half-chuckled at the realization that, in a way, a bomb did go off. That line of thought was soon squelched, though, as much as I loathed this place and wanted to have nothing further to do with it, going on a hate-fueled rampage would kill my chances at being a hero, and more importantly, I wouldn't let Sophia and Emma win. While possibly getting myself transferred to Arcadia could be seen as running away, a tactical retreat was better than a futile charge, right?
Thoughts for later, anyway. Breaking down more doors wasn't an option, the locker and roof doors alone paint a pretty ugly picture, but they could just chalk the latter up to shoddy maintenance. Maybe. That left me with few options. I could wait the lockdown out, which meant remaining stuck in this hellhole and running the risk of discovery, or I could experiment, maybe figure out if I could pick a lock via shapeshifting. Only problem there is I have absolutely no clue how door locks work in the first place. Need another choice.
Shift through the doors? I have to admit, the thought was tempting. My nanites did seem to act like a liquid when not held together in a mesh-state, but it would mean dropping the invisibility and potentially giving myself away. So I get through the doors, then what? By my reckoning, there were at least four sets of doors between the stairwell and the front entrance, more if I'd exit through--
Fuck me, I'm so stupid sometimes. I just busted down two doors without so much as a scratch, my body's made of fucking nanites in a liquid metal state, why wouldn't I survive a three-story drop? Even going 'splat' would probably only present a brief annoyance, if what I assumed was right. Course, there were still the cops to deal with, but they couldn't cover all of the entrances to the school simultaneously, could they?
Oh, who am I kidding? Of course they could.
I hauled ass back up to the roof anyway, shoved the door aside only to cringe when its momentum yanked the remaining hinges out. Fuck it.
North side pointing towards the front entrance was definitely out - the design of the school would actually have me landing on the ground floor roof, and probably caving in the ceiling to a classroom. I followed the edge to the northeast corner. Eastern side was a straight drop to concrete, but the front entrance was there and the city police were now finally starting to show up. I ran to the northwest and looked over the edge - fuck me, no wonder they took so long, there were police vehicles forming a perimeter at the back of the school as well. Still, the cafeteria delivery and trash disposal area was fenced in, and they hadn't unlocked that yet. I shrugged to myself, noting this would either be the coolest thing today that nobody would see, or the dumbest end to a budding would-be cape's dreams.
I jumped, landing into a crouch with very little effort, no appreciable damage, and hardly a sound. Well, nothing as deafening as the police sirens wailing all around the place, which was a blessing in disguise. I briefly dropped my focus, letting the cacophony of information hit me again, and smirked with satisfaction as it didn't knock me into another round of stunned shock. The info overload was getting more manageable. More importantly, it was useful - the structured noise had started to work itself into recognizable sounds, voices even. Police radio communications? Not that I had a clue what any of the code phrases they were using actually meant, but hey, all other things being equal, I could always listen to the radio, though I did have to laugh as I asked myself who the fuck listens to the radio in this day and age.
I hopped over the concrete wall opposite to where the police cruisers were situated, checked my peripheral vision - invisible cloak was working fine, nobody seemed to notice, so I made a break for it. Only a few minutes later to discover something else about my transformation.
The run across the street, around the corner and out of direct line-of-sight of the police? A short sprint like that should have at least gotten the blood pumping, some sweat forming, heavy breaths, the feeling of my muscles tensing up. None of that now, for obvious reasons, but not even the slightest feeling of exertion. I almost felt disappointed.
How fast could I run, anyway?
-----
"Frank," the older man nodded.
"Jay. Good timing, hazmat is getting impatient, like usual."
"Can't blame 'em in this weather. Anyway, what've we got?"
"School principal called this one in. Reports of an explosion in a student's locker, door was blown in half, off its hinges, a portion of it embedded in the drywall. They placed the facility on lockdown, called out SWAT and bomb squad. SWAT cleared the hallway, found no obvious evidence of an explosion, no smoke, no fire, minor damage to the locker itself. Classrooms evacuated just in case. Locker's a biohazard though."
"Right, let's see what we've got."
The cop and plain-clothed detective were given a wide berth all the way in, stepping underneath a line of police tape blocking the double-doors to the hallway itself.
"Yeesh, that's it, huh? Are those... tampons?" The detective grimaced even as he crouched down to take a closer look. "Used tampons, and a lot of them. More than a few have been crushed flat, and the depressions look like footprints."
He grabbed the camera hanging from his neck, uncovered the lens and snapped a few photos of the locker, then turned to the shattered door. Crouching, he looked up at its underside and squinted, before taking more photos.
"Handprints embedded in the metal, strong enough to leave dents and a breach in one spot."
He stood up to the tips of his toes to get a better angle on the front of the door.
"Lock's still attached, and what are these? Visible fingerprints?" More photos. "Frank, tell hazmat they're gonna be waiting a while. Someone was trapped inside this locker, deliberately."
"Righto." Both men stepped out of the scene, the detective stopping to address an older blonde-haired woman he understood was the school's principal.
"Detective Jay Stanton, CSI." He extended his right hand.
"Kathleen Blackwell, I'm Winslow High's principal." They shook hands. "There anything I can do for you, detective?"
"For starters, who was assigned that locker?"
She sighed.
"Taylor Hebert. Female, fifteen-year-old sophomore, troubled teen, bad grades, excessive truancy."
He raised an eyebrow. "You sound like you recited that from memory."
"I did, she's one of several such students running the risk of expulsion for excessive truancy, never mind her grades."
He frowned. "Have you had a look in the locker since you called the police?"
"Of course not. I ordered the whole facility placed on lockdown, then waited for the all-clear."
"Then you're not aware that we have a hazmat team waiting outside to decontaminate the locker?"
She looked sufficiently surprised, so either she really had no clue, or was an exceptionally good actor.
"No. Why, what's in it?"
He took a deep breath. "From the looks of things, her locker was filled with used tampons and a person before it was locked."
"A pers--" the principal covered her mouth in shock. He simply nodded in response.
"Can you account for the attendance of Taylor Hebert for today, Miss Blackwell?"
She frowned. "Come with me, let's go check."
The two moved at a fast pace towards the administration offices. She shoved the door open. "Janet, the Hebert girl, did she show up for class this morning?"
"Hold on." She picked up a phone, pressed some keys and waited. "Administration. Did Taylor Hebert come into class this morning?" A pause. "Okay, thanks." She hung up. "No, although some students were overheard mentioning her by name."
Detective Stanton breathed out slowly through his nose, and nodded silently. "Miss Blackwell, can we talk somewhere in private?"
"My office."
The two walked into an adjacent office, and she sat at her desk.
"Miss Blackwell, I'm going to have to take the unavoidable step of calling in the PRT on this one, once my team is done collecting evidence. Are you aware of trigger events?"
She nodded, "Yes, it's when a parahuman's powers awaken for the first time."
"Call it a hunch, but I have reason to believe that Taylor Hebert did show up for class today, but was pushed into her locker after it was filled with that filth, and locked inside. I also have reason to believe that Taylor Hebert triggered inside that locker. I'll need to get a second opinion from the experts, of course. Do you have contact information for Taylor Hebert's parents?"
"Just a father, a Danny Hebert, we've dealt with him in the past. Hold on." She typed at her computer briefly, printed the information and handed the sheet to the detective. "Mother died in a car accident several years ago."
He took the paper and nodded.
"Anything else I can do for you, detective?"
"For now, no. I figure we'll be done collecting evidence within the hour, the cleanup will take about as long. Thank you for your time, Miss Blackwell."
-----
"Jay, you done talking to the principal yet?"
"Yeah David, what's up?"
"Join me on the third floor stairwell, there's something you need to see."
Jay sighed. "Describe it to me, our cape liaison just arrived so I'm gonna need to talk to her for a moment."
"Alright, fine. Looks like our girl left via the roof access, the door's been ripped off its hinges. I've already dusted for fingerprints, haven't found any. Oh, Kaitlyn did the same on the locker door. Outside's got lots of prints. The inside has got a few set of prints on the as well, but a lot of them are smeared though."
"Alright, we'll have the lab deal with that then. I get the feeling that most of those prints aren't going to be in the system though, so we'll probably have to deal with taking the prints of some of these students later. Gimme a few minutes to deal with the cape before we head back to HQ though."
"Gotcha."
He flipped his phone closed and shoved it into his right front pants pocket, then reached out to shake the approaching cape's hand.
"Battery." He nodded.
"Detective. Another trigger?"
He shrugged. "Looks like it. Teenage girl, name of 'Taylor Hebert', locked in her own locker by bullies most likely. She triggered about half an hour before lunch, blew the locker door off its hinges with enough force that the administration initially thought it was a bomb. No witnesses have come forward per the assumed bullying itself, and the school hasn't been much help either."
"No surprises there, not at this school at least. At least half of these kids are gang members, so they're not gonna speak up. Nobody saw the girl escape the locker itself?"
He pulled a notepad from his left pocket and flipped through a few pages. "A teacher, a Mister 'Gladly' and two students investigated before the lockdown went into effect. None of them saw the girl, although they did report the stairwell doors opening of their own accord."
Battery nodded. "Brute-Stranger then most likely. Can I see the locker?"
"Sure, but I have to warn you now, it ain't pretty."
He led the hero through the school's hallways, lifted the police tape and then shook his head when she started to gag.
"Christ... are those used tampons?"
"I had the same reaction when I first saw it. We got a hazmat crew outside waiting to clean all this up, you probably saw 'em on your way in. I don't envy 'em."
The cape turned away from the locker, shaking her head in dismay. He could only shrug.
"As for the door, huh, that's embedded pretty deep. I'd say brute three, stranger one at least." She crouched down to look at the exposed underside. "She did this with her bare hands?"
"Yeah, but the prints will take a while, and I don't think we have hers on file." He pointed to the top side. "Lock's still attached, we pulled partial prints off of it, and a couple full sets off of the door itself. Probably be a few days before we get a match. Oh, before you ask, I got contact information for the girl's father, one 'Danny Hebert', turns out a few of our guys have heard of him, he's the union rep for the dockworkers, has a pretty fierce temper apparently." He ripped a sheet of paper out of the notepad and handed it to her. "Someone's gonna have to tell him."
She snatched the paper from him and pocketed it. "Yeah, we'll handle that. Has an APB gone out for a missing person yet?"
"Yeah, and instructions have already been given to radio PRT dispatch if they spot the girl."
-----
Still invisible, I deftly leapt over a stopped car at an intersection, struggling to keep my enthusiasm from getting vocal. Still though, this was so cool! I'd run full-bore for about ten minutes without getting winded, on a street with a thirty-mile per hour speed limit, and I was running faster than the cars, even assuming most of them weren't obeying the limit. Rather than taking a good half an hour to get home with cooperating traffic, I was only about two minutes away.
That realization made me stop dead in my tracks. I had gotten so caught up in the novelty of having superpowers that I hadn't considered what I was going to tell dad, or if I'd tell him at all. Him finding out meant I'd have to tell him about the bullies, which meant I'd have to tell him about how long I'd been dealing with them, and why I hadn't told him then, etcetera. Or, for that matter, why I had ditched school.
That was all assuming he'd be home in the first place, so if nothing else, I'd have several hours to think of an elaborate believable lie and recite it.
The more I thought about it though, the more an uncomfortable realization crept into my consciousness: what kind of hero constantly lies to her parents?
The kind that doesn't want them to worry, I could only figure. I knew though that if I were to become a Hero, or hell, even if I was to join the Wards though, he'd have to know eventually, no way around it. Fuck.
Imagine my relief at dad not being home when I got there. I avoided the front door, in the off-chance anyone was watching, went in through the side kitchen door instead, dropped the invisibility and let out a sigh of relief. Home, and the freedom to learn about my powers for at least a few hours before dad would get home and I'd have to tell him.
I didn't even bother to wait until I got to my bedroom before I started cutting loose. Shapeshifting was all well and good if I knew what forms to take ahead of time, what made sense for a particular situation, and the foreknowledge of my limits, if any. I ran my hands along the wall, "Sampling" painted drywall up close and personally, as well as the hard plastic of things like light switches. Strange thing was, anything I looked at or made physical contact with, I felt I could recall at a moment's notice. My right arm assumed the texture and color of the aforementioned drywall, my left arm the dull flat beige of hard plastic, both of my legs the dark brown of hardwood flooring, complete with splinters poking out from frayed edges. The scariest part was that I wasn't even paying any of it much attention, most of my thoughts focused on thinking of other forms to take, as well as keeping a figurative eye, or ear, or whatever, on everything that I could detect going on outside and beyond.
In my bedroom, I started focusing on more objects, more textures, colors and patterns of both to memorize and assume. Thirty seconds in I was a patchwork mess, and enjoying every moment of it - that's another thing that occurred to me, the very act of shapeshifting was pleasurable. I considered another experiment: letting my body's cohesion dissolve altogether, melting into a puddle of liquid metal that quickly spread across the carpet, around the metal posts of my bed and desk, and even extended under the door out into the hallway. No energy pulses accommodated this change, but I also found that manipulating my body at this level required considerably more concentration. Huh, lesson learned there. I pulled myself back into my room, flowing up the bedposts with only mild effort, coalescing atop my bedsheets to retake my "default" silvery form - I could get used to this, though I'm sure dad would have a heart attack.
Though what would really give dad a heart attack, I just realized, was something lingering at the back of my mind. I thought of mom, though it had been a few years since her death, I still had good memories of her, photographs from happier times. Thinking of mom, visualizing her in my mind, prompted my body to change once more, and I let it happen, more curious than anything as to whether my memories of her were that detailed.
"Oh Taylor..." I spoke out loud at my new form, suddenly stunned that I had done so in her voice - so I could mimic other peoples' voices as well? The possibilities and implications swam through my mind - I could look and sound like anyone, given enough info to work with. The bullies were foremost on my mind... as a shapeshifter, I could get them into so much trouble without implicating myself, at least so long as nobody knew to expect a shapeshifter. Shit, good point there Taylor, best thing any shapeshifter has going for them is not advertising that fact to the world - if I were to the Wards, it's entirely probable that they'd keep me in reserve, more so than most front-line Wards. On one hand, I could be okay with that, I neither needed nor craved the attention, but on the other hand, I wouldn't be accomplishing much good on the sidelines.
...yeah, the more I thought about it, the more my initial thoughts for joining the Wards evolved into a growing pile of "what-if's" and their consequences, both for myself and for dad.
On that note, I resolved to determine how best my power could be applied to front-line combat, as that's ultimately what superheroes were good for, right? There were the simple things that immediately came to mind: forming spikes, blades, blunt objects like hammers out of my arms. Simple, but lethal, and yes I was acutely aware that Wards were forbidden from using lethal weaponry. With a bit more effort and coordination, I could extend whip-like tendrils to wrap around objects, they still had the potential of being lethal though - wrap a tendril around someone's neck and pull hard enough and they'd die just as fast from a snapped neck as they would from being shot.
No, the more I considered what I could do as a combatant, the more I realized just how easily I could kill with these powers. I sighed in resignation - if I was Ward material in the first place, it would likely be in a support role, little to no combat unless lethal force was necessary. Infiltration? Perhaps, though if Wards did that, we certainly never heard about it on the news.
But if I could take the forms of people, as well as simple inanimate objects and surfaces, who's to say I couldn't do complex mechanisms, technology, maybe even things like firearms? Obviously, there was a bit of an insurmountable problem, I didn't actually have anything to try to mimic, and learning the intricacies of such things would require taking them apart and actually understanding what the hell I'm looking at. Even something as relatively simple as a working cellphone necessitated actually having one in my possession. So, experiments to try for later, I supposed.
With a halfway-decent grasp of what I could do with my powers, and things to try out for the future, I was only a few seconds into brainstorming where would be a safer place to practice this when something familiar pinged my peripheral senses. A rapidly-approaching car pulling up onto the driveway, shutting off, and then hurried footsteps, rapid breathing and frantic whispering... shit, dad? Some rattling of the front door, the jingling of keys and muted swearing - in panic, I lashed out my right arm, forming a whip tendril to slap the light switch off... fuck me, I was still wearing mom's form, so I couldn't be caught like this. The front door slams open, and I instinctively know that it would take way too long to shift back to my own form, so instead I roll off my bed, lie on the floor and go invisible.
"Taylor? Taylor! Are you home kiddo?"
Shit, he just found out, didn't he?
"Taylor, honey! If you're home, please come out, I promise I won't be angry! Taylor?"
Heavy footfalls on the hardwood flooring towards my room, and then the door flies open and he hits the light switch. I remain perfectly still, and he doesn't see through the invisibility.
"Taylor? Fuck... fuck fuck fuck--"
He rushes back out through the living room and out the front door, and only then does it hit me just how worried he sounds. Another ping in my peripheral senses, the rumbling of a diesel-powered vehicle, and the noise of high-frequency encrypted radio chatter. Someone steps out of the vehicle, with the engine still running, and the footfalls are lighter.
"Mister Hebert? Miss Militia, we talked earlier, is your daughter here?"
I could hear him struggling to contain his sobbing now. "No, no she's not. If she were, she'd have come out by now."
Fuck me, if shame could power a city I'd have the whole country's power needs solved for a year.
"It'll be okay, we'll find her. We're coordinating a search at the PRT headquarters downtown, do you need a ride?"
More sobbing, and he finally manages to take a deep breath. "I... okay, yeah... yeah, gimme a minute and then we'll go."
The footfalls I'm now associating with Miss Militia pace around the outside of the house, and more radio communications ensue. Curiously, by hearing both sides of the conversation simply from close proximity, my power picks apart the encryption and gives me a slightly-delayed echo:
"Control, Miss Militia, I'm at the Hebert residence right now, her father's here, but no sign of the girl. Can I have a squad remain to keep an eye on the house?"
"Affirmative Miss Militia, squad zero-two-six en route, ETA three minutes. Will you be escorting the father back to base?"
"Affirmative control, he's in no condition to drive."
"Copy that. Control out."
Some rattling at the side of the house, kitchen door? Shit, I forgot to lock that behind me.
"Mister Hebert, your kitchen side door is unlocked."
"Yeah, I leave it unlocked for Taylor, she usually walks home from school and I don't have a spare set of keys. If she were here it'd be locked."
I dropped the invisibility and began shifting back to my own form, as the front door closed and dad locked it from the outside.
"We'll find her, Mister Hebert, don't worry. Come on."
Sounds of doors opening and shutting, the diesel engine revs and quickly gets quieter in the distance. Only then do I breathe a sigh of relief.
Of course, now I can't stay. In less than a minute, most likely, a PRT squad would show up and any activity in the house ran the risk of attracting their attention. I couldn't wear my form anymore, they'd be looking for that. Wearing dad's form would be a similar dead giveaway, and of the remaining forms I had practiced, I only really had foreknowledge of one that I figured I could use without drawing too much attention to myself. Much as it galled me to take her form...
I sighed. Fuck it.
I walked to the side door, acutely aware of a hastily-approaching diesel-powered vehicle on the edge of my peripheral sense, and left wearing Emma's form. I engaged the invisibility once more, just long enough to dash across the street and around a blind corner. Nobody looking my direction, from what I could tell, so I dropped the invisibility and shook my head in a mixture of frustration and shame.
Just have to get to the Boardwalk and blend in with the crowd…
A/N: Winslow's principal wasn't actually named, AFAIK. If she was, tell me, I'd appreciate it a great deal.
Anyway, yes, I haven't so much "given up" on it as realized that I screwed up quite a few things in an effort to get things moving along, so rather than try to salvage 1.0, a rewrite became necessary. Updates may not be as frequent as before, but that's because I'm actually planning things out in advance and more-or-less sticking to my outlines.
Might as well hit "Create Thread" now while SB's still responsive, right?
6/12/2014 EDIT: Index updated for SV.
Last edited:
1.01
Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
Yeah, in 1.0, I'd write out an outline, then start writing, and check back occasionally to see that I've gone way the hell off my own rails, and by then anything I've planned out either has to be shoehorned in, or drastically altered to fit. This time around my outline is story post-sized on its own, so it's actually planned several chapters in advance, and if new ideas crop up, I can fit them in before I've written anything substantial.Hanashinobi said:
No more HUD, no more prompting, it's going to be a lot slower in progression as she gets firmly used to being "just a shapeshifter with perks" for a while.
ThatGazzer
Minds Eye Bind
- Location
- PNW
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Taylor's powers of denial are mighty.Larekko12 said:
Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
"Shapeshifter with perks" - she already knows she's made of nanites and can see/hear & comprehend pretty much the entire electromagnetic spectrum - understanding radio transmissions is just a "weird" bonus to her at the moment, as she doesn't yet grasp how the two are related. Yes, it seems like her powers of denial are in full effect, but she should also show all the signs of clinical depression, yet she doesn't, and that realization hasn't yet hit her either because she's riding an emotional high (relatively-speaking).
As things start going hilariously wrong for her, she'll also start figuring out what she's really capable of. I just want the circumstances that lead up to that to be a lot more believable than what I attempted in v1.0, and since her Asuran side isn't doing any prompting, it's going to have to take a bit longer.
As things start going hilariously wrong for her, she'll also start figuring out what she's really capable of. I just want the circumstances that lead up to that to be a lot more believable than what I attempted in v1.0, and since her Asuran side isn't doing any prompting, it's going to have to take a bit longer.
Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
It's pretty damn close to a public trigger, meaning as far as Winslow High's student body is concerned, they already know Taylor was in the locker, and now the locker's destroyed with enough force to be initially mistaken for a bomb, but none of the telltale signs of an explosion, it's not going to be hard to put two and two together with them realizing she's now a parahuman. The only group that hasn't gotten this much information is the media, and in that regard neither the school nor the authorities are talking, the school because it's going to be covering its own ass, and the authorities because a criminal investigation is taking place.Aras said:
From the PRT's perspective, they know she's a parahuman, but they don't know the full specifics of what she got out of her trigger event, or what caused it in the first place. Their goals are twofold: find Taylor (and get her off the streets) and, if possible, recruit her into the Wards.
Pretty much this, and this is something I totally fucked up on my characterization of her in v1.0. Taylor has massive trust issues, she has a very difficult time trusting anyone, even her own father (because he has a temper, so she constantly lies to him so he won't worry). If Danny had returned home at his usual time and didn't sound worried from the start, she'd probably have confronted him and told him everything was fine (like she usually does) - except Danny returns home unexpectedly early, and already in a state of worry. Thus her hesitation: she can't lie to him, but telling him the full truth (and admitting to him that things are much worse than they appear) is just as unpalatable an idea.Mr SP said:
- Location
- Near Freiburg in South-West Germany
Also the principal already knows the identity of one ward, so the PRT probably did a background check on her and let her sign a NDA. She isn't a random civilian, but a valuable asset who can be trusted with the identity of a cape and can help in protecting Taylor's identity. At least thats what the PRT currently thinks.Pyrion said:
I'm really liking the rewrite so far, especially the other perspectives. The principal calling Taylor a truant with bad grades was a nice touch; perceptions differ after all, and from the outside the administration could easily cast it like she's just a bad student. Taylor's roller coaster of emotions was very fitting given how fragile her mental state should be right after her 'trigger', and I'm curious where you're going to take this with her identity being revealed so openly and so soon. As a shapeshifter she can still hide rather easily, but it also means that Danny has become a target now if she starts doing things and people connect the new cape to her.
I have to wonder whether or not Sophia is going to do a runner. She's not stupid; her victim pretty obviously triggered, there were police swarming around the locker, and someone is going to eventually speak up about it (and beyond that her boss has a lie detector, so no dice trying to brush accusations off).
I have to wonder whether or not Sophia is going to do a runner. She's not stupid; her victim pretty obviously triggered, there were police swarming around the locker, and someone is going to eventually speak up about it (and beyond that her boss has a lie detector, so no dice trying to brush accusations off).
lancelot
Completely worth it
Are we talking about the same munchkin that in three months made herself a bullet proof spider silk body suit with armor plates?Pyrion said:
Face it, even if you don't have Taylor joining the Wards right away you can't get away from the fact that she is going to constantly research and push her powers. Honestly I would remove the HUD as well but replace something more organic and less 21st century.
Instant Learning and Enhanced Memory as part of Encyclopedic Knowledge.
Anytime she see something that clicks with her scientific knowledge from the Alterans she knows and understands everything about it. If she see a tinker device not only does she understand how and why it works, but she understands the related science behind it. This would apply to some but not all of other parahuman powers. When every she think 'how did they do that' she pulls that information up.
She'd have perfect recall, those details of a scene we take in only subconsciously she would take in as clear as a bell. Every conversation in her hearing distance she hears and understands at the same time unless she consciously ignores those conversation and even then she can think back and remember every word.
Anytime she thinks I wish I could fly, teleport, fire blasts of energy, etc her ashuran nature brings that knowledge to her attention, along with blueprints for flying/blasting, teleporting devices, and a complete understanding of the science behind them.
lancelot
Completely worth it
The lesser part is a lack of trust, but the larger part is that Taylor is a Control freak, and telling her father how bad the bullying is would be admitting she can't handle i herself. This becomes FAR worse after becoming a parahuman, luckily it won't get as bad as canon thanks to her power not screwing with her head. Without that tampering I think it's more likely that Taylor would let her father know, doubly so if she just smashed out of her locker I can't see her not turning herself in after a few hours to calm down. The only other option is to never go home again most likely leave the city I just can't see her doing that. I just hope this emo session of hers doesn't go on for to long and she pulls her head out of her ass.Pyrion said:
Arthur Hansen
Author of no Authority.
- Location
- Utah, behind the Zion Curtain.
The boat graveyard probably has metal by the kiloton.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
That's not what I'd expect from an AI, it's what I'd expect from... a human mind with AI parts grafted on.Doomsought said:
Which may be fairly accurate, come to think of it.
Robo Jesus
Your Mechanical Messiah
A STATEMENT BY ROBO JESUS AND PYRION REGARDING THIS THREAD'S ONLY SPECIFIC RULE:
Speculation about what Stargate technology Taylor may acquire is the only line of discussion forbidden in this thread (because it has repeatedly caused massive offtopic spammish thread derails, and Pyrion and I quickly got tired of that).
Speculation about anything else that is story related is fine and dandy, and more than encouraged and welcomed here. ^_^
:themoreyouknow:
Speculation about what Stargate technology Taylor may acquire is the only line of discussion forbidden in this thread (because it has repeatedly caused massive offtopic spammish thread derails, and Pyrion and I quickly got tired of that).
Speculation about anything else that is story related is fine and dandy, and more than encouraged and welcomed here. ^_^
:themoreyouknow:
Last edited:
1.02
Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
Alteran Alternatives v2.0; Stargate Atlantis/Worm crossover
by Pyrion (much thanks to Robo Jesus for editing & putting up with my shit. Also, for the Funky Jazz Beats)
1.02
Walking at a normal pace to the Boardwalk while wearing Emma's form ended up telling me quite a lot about my former best friend. For one, as much as Emma thought of herself as fashion model material, I hadn't attracted anything in the way of lewd stares, catcalls, or anything else despite cutting a path through ABB territory to get here. It briefly made me wonder how much of her purported modeling career was due to her looks as opposed to her dad's influence.
Another thing that occurred to me was how much in the way of Brockton Bay's night-life Emma must've been missing out on. If she ever came down here, nobody seemed to recognize her, a stark contrast from just about everywhere else we used to visit together. Sure, the Boardwalk was a tourist trap, but that didn't mean locals didn't frequent the place either.
The only possible explanation was that word had gotten around that the police were out in force searching for someone, so the troublemakers were laying low. And yes, there were a few times I got looks from officers in passing police cruisers, but since I wasn't who they were looking for, and I wasn't otherwise in trouble, they had better things to do with their time. Gangs were leaving them alone, and vice-versa.
So it was with a shrug of disappointment that I walked right into the tourist trap at the height of the early evening without so much as an attempted mugging. I had no money, granted, but I couldn't help but look. Yeah, "tourist trap" is right, maybe another reason Emma avoided this place is that everything was overpriced. Though I couldn't imagine her being hard up for money.
After wasting what felt like a good hour or two looking through shop windows at things I'd likely never afford, or want to buy for that matter, and generally doing my utmost to appear lost, out of place, helpless and alone, still nothing of consequence occurred. Maybe coming here wasn't such a good idea, in retrospect; but hey, first day as a cape, what would I know?
Only after I started walking back home, again straight through ABB territory, something interesting finally happened. Hasty footfalls at the edge of my peripheral sense, approximately two city blocks ahead and slightly to my right, heading left. I quickened my walking pace, eminently aware that as my luck would have it, this was probably nothing. Were it the footfalls alone, I'd have written it off, but something else pinged and got my attention as "odd" and thus worth investigating - a single individual, seemingly teleporting across adjoining rooftops, heading in the same direction as the aforementioned footfalls.
Their source came into view: two teenage boys, probably no older than me, running as if their lives dependent on it, knocking over trash cans, pushing bystanders into walls or out into the street if they didn't move out of the way fast enough. The lone individual on the rooftops briefly materialized at the edge of a roof, and I instantly recognized her. Shadow Stalker, a Ward probably best known for being a lone wolf. She disappeared once more, although a streak of darkness briefly illuminated by a street lamp gave her intentions away - the two teenagers suddenly found their heads smashing into Shadow Stalker's raised arms, and while the guy on the left mostly managed to deflect the blow, his buddy went straight down, groaning loudly and clutching his head.
Shadow Stalker flexed her arms and shook her head, before raising a crossbow to shoot the fleeing, disoriented teen in the back. I blinked a few times, my mind briefly seizing up on processing this as the bolt flew through air - here was a Ward, using a decidedly lethal weapon on someone whose only apparent crime was running away? I focused my attention on the guy, sighing with a bit of relief in that he was still alive and breathing, albeit unconscious. Tranquilizer bolts, then.
My sense of relief only took a new nosedive when Shadow Stalker proceeded to kick the guy closer to her repeatedly in the chest and head, despite the fact that he was, at that point, no threat to anyone. Then I heard her laugh, and start taunting the kid.
"What the hell were you thinking, you stupid shit? Running from me?!" Another round of kicks, and the guy was now bleeding profusely from a nasty cut on his head. As much as I was shocked that a hero was mercilessly assaulting someone who couldn't fight back, my mind seized up once again with a much more pressing realization: I know that voice.
Fuck me sideways. Shadow Stalker is Sophia Hess?!
I stopped dead in my tracks and stared, unable to wrap my head around this. In that moment, every childhood dream, every remembered bit of overpriced cape merchandise, all the idolization of heroes, the anticipation of becoming one when I got my powers, my entire world-view at that point took a nosedive at the speed of sound and cratered within my mind.
How the hell could I explain this to dad? 'Sorry dad, but the heroes are a bunch of frauds?' I couldn't join the Wards, or it'd just be more of the same, only with soulless bureaucrats ordering me to put my life in the hands of the one person most responsible for me having powers in the first place.
Sudden movement in my peripheral sense again, and suddenly Shadow Stalker went from lording her superiority over an unconscious and seriously-wounded kid to yanking me by my arms into an adjacent alleyway.
"Emma?"
I blinked, and the nightmare got worse. No...
"Emma? What the hell are you doing all the way out here at this time of night?!" She grabbed me by the shoulders and jolted me out of my shock, and in that brief moment it all crystallized in my mind - I was still wearing Emma's form.
"Sophia?" I answered lamely.
She chuckled. "Uhh, yeah. No-one else wears this costume last time I checked. You alright? Having second thoughts about earlier? Buck up, even if your chewtoy breaks, I'm sure we can find new prey for you to sink your teeth into."
Much as I wanted to gut her right then and there, I reigned in my simmering anger, channeling it into doing my best Emma impression.
"No, I just had to get out of the house and away from Dad. He heard what happened to Taylor and started asking questions."
Shadow Stalker shook her head. "And so you walked halfway across town, straight through ABB territory, and there's not so much as a scratch on you? Heh, I was right about you, survivor."
'Survivor?' There's something I'm missing here...
"Anyway, I gotta bag these shits and call this in." Shadow Stalker turned around to look at her 'handiwork,' "You picked a great time to branch out, survivor, cops are out in full force over something and most of these stupid fuckers are keeping their heads down. I'm actually kinda disappointed. Still, unless you're trying to get yourself powers, and that never works, this town gets ugly at night, cops or no cops. Get home before daddy starts to worry, I'll call you when I'm done here."
I nodded mutely, almost painfully aware that I had probably done the lamest impression of my former best friend. Sophia seemed to buy it, though - she turned back to shadow, dashed across the street and reformed, giving the unconscious kid a final swift kick in the ribs. With her back turned to me, I gritted my teeth and shifted invisible, ducking into an adjacent alleyway.
An errant thought hit me just then: what kind of a hero was I, that I'd abandoned those two guys to further abuse on Shadow Stalker's part?
A shitty one, right? If Shadow Stalker was the new benchmark, I'd probably fit right in. The thought brought me no comfort.
-----
"Control, Shadow Stalker. Finally got 'em. Idiots had to fight back, so send an ambulance."
"It's about time. Aegis is calling a meeting, something's got Piggy more pissed than usual." She rolled her eyes at that. "Whatever it is, PRT's acting like a kicked hornet's nest, BBPD's involved."
"Whatever, if they're involved, I'll hitch a ride back with them. Stalker out."
Sophia shrugged, shifted to shadow and then leapt to a perch on the nearest rooftop. She still had a few minutes to kill before the cops would show up, and she didn't feel like dashing all the way back to the PRT building for whatever bug the Director got up her ass this time. Something else nagged at her though... Emma? What the hell was she doing all the way out here anyway? She pocketed her PRT phone, dug out her personal phone and started typing a text message.
-----
Armsmaster sighed in annoyance as the missing kid's father introduced himself and offered his right hand.
"Don't mind him, he's... not a people person." Piggot glared at him briefly, only to be offered a shrug in response, to which she only rolled her eyes. She gestured to her left, "Mister Hebert, Detective Jay Stanton, Brockton Bay Police." The two nodded and shook hands. "Please, sit."
"Mister Hebert, as I told you on the phone earlier, your daughter's been involved in an incident at school that we believe resulted in her gaining parahuman powers. Are you aware of or have heard anything about 'trigger events?'" He shook his head. "Alright, in layman's terms, parahuman powers are dormant until a particularly traumatic event in their lives causes these powers to manifest. We call these events 'triggers,' and between the incident itself and its immediate aftermath, we have good reason to believe your daughter triggered late this morning, about fifteen minutes before lunch break at Winslow."
"You keep calling it an 'incident,' what the hell happened to her?"
Piggot glanced to her left. "Detective?"
He took a deep breath. "Someone, or possibly a group of someones, filled your daughter's school locker with used tampons, presumably after school the previous day, or early in the morning. Your daughter was shoved into and locked inside her locker for a period of approximately four hours." Danny's face began to redden as he clenched his fists in anger, tears beginning to run down his cheeks.
"In that time, judging from the damage to the inside of the locker, she struggled to escape, or at least call for help, but nobody helped. At eleven-forty in the morning, the school administration called the police, with initial reports of an explosion in a student's locker. Winslow High was placed in lockdown, a SWAT team cleared the hallways and found no explosives, so the bomb squad that had been called out proved unnecessary. The SWAT team reported extensive damage to the locker, particularly its door, and on further investigation we found considerable amounts of fingerprints both inside the locker, and on both sides of the locker door, including prints on the lock itself. Before you ask, we have no initial suspects, and it's going to take at least a few days to process the prints."
Danny sighed. "By no initial suspects, you mean nobody's come forward as a witness, right?"
"Correct, and for Winslow's student body, it's not surprising. Most of those kids are gang members, some even openly carry weapons onto the premises, and the school's main concern is preventing fights from breaking out. According to them, your daughter's only really notable due to her excessive truancy--"
"Truancy?! What?" Danny shook his head. "That makes no sense, she'd always tell me school was going fine, and I've never gotten calls from the administration that suggested otherwise."
Detective Stanton nodded. "It's the only thing that makes your daughter particularly memorable as far as the administration is concerned. It's likely she's been on the receiving end of a bullying campaign for a while, hence the excessive truancy. Bullied kids tend to fall into one of two categories: either they fight back, in which case the parents and school administration find out about it quickly, or they keep it bottled up and don't tell anybody, in which case nobody hears about it until something major, like this, happens."
"It also explains the powers we believe your daughter now possesses," Piggot interjected. "Parahuman powers tend to follow a theme related to whatever traumatic event causes their powers to awaken in the first place. We've initially classified your daughter as a 'Brute-Stranger,' 'Brute' meaning enhanced strength, 'Stranger' meaning invisibility or the like. Powerful enough to escape, and then remain hidden."
"Officially, this is being treated as a felony aggravated assault case. Your daughter going and remaining missing has, consequently, put the department on alert. Now we don't know for certain if she actually has triggered, but the evidence fits that assumption, hence the PRT's involvement." Jay shrugged. "It's just as well, really. More people looking for your daughter, and they know how to handle parahumans in such a way that nobody ends up seriously injured or killed."
Piggot nodded. "Our involvement here is twofold. One, finding your daughter and ensuring her safety, up to and including getting her medical attention if necessary. Two, if both she and you accept, we'd offer her a place in the Wards." Danny glanced up at her, half-puzzled and half-incensed. She brought both hands up in a calming gesture. "Mister Hebert, I'm sorry to have to bring it up, it's a requirement of my job, unfortunately. The problem with parahuman triggers is that, statistically, most of them happen in childhood, and of those that gain powers, they're three times more likely to become villains rather than heroes. I know what you're thinking of saying, your daughter would never do that, unfortunately, the statistics disagree with you and most parents of parahumans. Hence our early involvement, the sooner we find her, the lower the chances she turns toward villainy, particularly if she feels she has no other choice. The other problem, more specific to this case, is that this is about as public a trigger can get without anyone having actually witnessed it. That's not going to stop people from coming to that conclusion. We're not going to be the only people looking for your daughter, and the others that will don't have you or your daughter's best interests at heart."
Armsmaster's helmet communicator beeped, and he sighed in audible relief. "I gotta take this, excuse me Director." He stepped out quickly, not wanting to be present one more second than necessary.
"Colin."
He smiled, faintly. "Dragon. Something I can do for you?"
"Yes, actually. Go down to the Boardwalk branch of the Brockton Bay Public Library, I'll explain on the way."
He stepped into a secure elevator, and jabbed the button for the garage sub-level. "This related to our missing teen case?"
"It might be, it might not. Either way, it's considerably more serious, and concerns one of your Wards."
He stepped out onto the secured garage floor, and marched to his motorcycle. "Who?"
"Shadow Stalker. Her identity is compromised."
He slammed to a halt, and sighed. "Why am I not surprised?"
"I can't answer that, Colin."
He straddled the bike, fired up the engine and sped out. "I know. Still, why the library?"
"Someone performed a rapid series of searches on Parahumans Online, totaling less than three minutes of activity. On its own, aside from the volume of information accessed, none of it is notable. One search was flagged high enough that it got my attention, though. The search string was 'Sophia Hess.'"
"On Parahumans Online?" He blew through a red light, unconcerned. "The forum, or the wiki?"
"Both, at nearly the same time. No results, obviously, but somebody out there knows Sophia is a cape. Coincidentally, the first searches performed by this individual were on Shadow Stalker."
"What else?"
"Let's see..." she paused for several seconds, "major and minor villains of Brockton Bay, profiles on every Ward and Protectorate cape, some information on the Endbringers, usual stuff. Aside from that one search, nothing stands out, aside from the long delay between those searches, and the search that was flagged." Another pause. "You there yet?"
He nodded, more to himself. "Parking lot."
To Armsmaster's complete lack of surprise, the library was devoid of activity and visitors, only a sole librarian at a desk manning the place. She did a double-take at his entrance, and stood nervously. "Is... there something I can help you with?"
A curt nod in response. "Not half an hour ago, someone used a computer terminal at this branch."
A statement, not a question. The librarian tilted her head to the right slightly, and then nodded. "Yeah, teenage girl, tall, thin, dark hair with curls. She's here frequently, so I didn't think anything of it."
Armsmaster squinted in thought, even as Dragon piped in from the open comm channel, "That sounds like your missing teen, Colin." He pulled out his PRT-issued smartphone, tapped it twice and showed it to the librarian. "Is this her?"
"Yeah, that's her. Is she in trouble?"
He frowned. "Possibly," then turned around and glanced at the ceiling. "You have security cameras. I'll need access to their footage."
The librarian nodded and shrugged. "Right, fine, this way." She led him up a flight of stairs and into a cramped office. "It's all here, call if you need me."
"Colin," Dragon chimed in, sounding amused to herself at the sound of him sitting and typing at the terminal, "it would be nice if I could see what you're seeing."
He paused, sighed, and tapped a hidden control on the side of his helmet. "Yes, better! Thank you."
Half a minute of silence, aside from the occasional tapping of keys. "There, exterior camera aimed at the entrance." Armsmaster frowned. "That's not her. Hair's wrong, different clothes, slightly shorter."
"Colin, roll the camera back a few seconds." More tapping. "There, pause it. See that, right at the edge of the camera?"
He squinted and leaned in. "What the hell? Her body's... silver?"
"Step the frames forward. Yes, see that, her whole body comes into focus as silver very briefly and then everything shifts. Step it forward more. More. Whoa, stop, looks like some kind of cascading energy wave? Step it forward, slowly."
"Covers her from head to toe, but doesn't appear to do anything."
"She leaves the coverage of the camera here, switch to the entrance. Now, normal playback."
Armsmaster leaned back in the chair in thought. "She turns left and heads straight to the women's restroom. Why?"
Dragon chuckled over the line. "Maybe she needs to go?" He rolled his eyes in response to her joke. "More seriously, and for obvious reasons, there aren't any cameras there. Alright, she disappears out of view. Keep playing." Dead silence for a few seconds. "Seventeen seconds from when she disappears to when your missing girl reappears... Huh. Colin, you noticing this?"
"Hmm?" He leaned in once more.
"She's walking with the same stride, same intent. Even the annoyed look on her face is the same. Colin, I think your missing girl's a changer."
It took him a moment to process this, and then nod. "Shit."
"Yeah. She's a damn good one too, if she can change forms on-the-fly in such a short amount of time. Okay, she goes straight to a computer, facing this camera. Is there one from an opposite perspective?"
He switched through camera feeds, finally settling on one behind and to the girl's right.
"There, yes. Now, she fires up the browser and... wow, she's a fast typist. Loads Parahumans Online, loads multiple tabs for the search page... Colin, how fast do you type, out of curiosity?"
"Eighty-five words per minute. Why?"
"I've seen you type, and it's nowhere near this fast. She has to be doing over two hundred easily. Maybe even two-fifty."
He frowned. "That's relevant how?"
A sigh on the other end. "Now look at how fast she's reading, if she's reading at all. She skims the first page, then... huh. Why the delay and the shake of the head?"
"First time? She's had her powers less than a day." He took a deep breath.
"She then goes back to it, only even faster now. No surprise on her face, just... it's almost like she's archiving all of this for later. Wow, she's not even using the scroll wheel anymore, she's just holding page-down. Superhuman reading comprehension on top of a way-beyond-normal typing speed? Your missing girl might be a mid-level thinker as well."
Silence on his end, content to let Dragon make all the observations. "Colin, I just did a facial recognition database search on the other girl. She's another Winslow High student, name of 'Emma Barnes.' I think there might be a connection here, both between her and our changer here, and her with Shadow Stalker."
He blinked in surprise and comprehension, some of the pieces starting to fit together. "Explain."
"All three of them are the same age, same grade level, at the same school. Notable that Sophia's the only Ward at Winslow, and the administration is on file as being aware of her status as a parahuman. Emma Barnes is listed as the younger of two daughters of an 'Alan Barnes'... huh. He shows up, flagged, in the PRT database as the attorney representing Sophia at her probation hearings. Doing a search on Mister Barnes, however, his listed occupation is 'divorce attorney.' Colin, what's a divorce attorney doing representing a parahuman minor at a criminal probationary hearing?"
He squinted in thought once more. "Favor for a friend, probably." He blinked, "but that would mean--"
"Emma Barnes has been aware of Sophia Hess' status as a parahuman for a long time. Colin, I have a hunch here."
"So do I, but let's hear yours first."
"Alright. All three of these girls attend the same high school, Emma and Sophia are obviously long-time friends. Taylor is the odd-one out here. Now, something dreadful happens to Taylor in school today, she gets her powers from it, she's a changer on top of everything else, and maybe she realizes people are looking for her. So she picks a disguise that she's familiar enough with, but won't attract the kind of attention that she would, at least from the police, PRT forces, et-cetera. It still attracts attention, though, and maybe that's intentional on her part. If Taylor Hebert wasn't previously aware of Sophia Hess being Shadow Stalker, how does she find out, and why is it relevant to her?"
"Hold that thought, Dragon, I think I know the answer, let me just confirm it. I'll call you back."
He tapped his smartphone a few times, placing another call. "Aegis, Armsmaster. Who's running control for the patrols today? Okay." More taps, another call. "Vista, Armsmaster. Has Shadow Stalker ended her patrol yet? She has? Where? Confirm that, the Boardwalk, and she called in late? Understood." A shake of the head, while muttering "damn that girl," before returning Dragon's call.
"Dragon, got a possible answer for you. Shadow Stalker completed her evening patrol outside of the Boardwalk district, but she called in ten minutes late."
"Ten minutes is more than enough time to talk with a friend."
Armsmaster nodded, gritting his teeth in growing anger. "Except that 'friend' is our missing girl in disguise."
"Yes, so she beelines straight to the library, changes back to her normal form, and starts doing all the research she can on Shadow Stalker, among other topics. She looks pissed off too. So what's the connection there?"
"Her trigger event." Armsmaster finishes, shaking his head. "Shadow Stalker is somehow connected to Taylor Hebert's trigger event."
-----
So, my first night out as a cape wasn't a total bust. No fights, although I had to restrain the urge to start one upon learning that Sophia was Shadow Stalker. Research at the library taught me another useful aspect of my power: I could read and type a hell of a lot faster than normal, and any information taken in could be fully recalled with an errant thought. On this front, at least, I felt like I was only skimming the surface of what I could really do, but experimenting in a well-lit public place, even one as devoid of activity as a public library? Not ideal. I'd probably learn far more about my power in far less time if I joined the Wards, but... no. Not with Sophia there.
Going home and confronting Dad was at the top of my mind, only because I didn't really know what else to do. I had no place else to stay for the night, although curiously I was neither tired nor hungry - two feelings I probably wouldn't miss in retrospect. He'd want to call the PRT to confirm my safe arrival home, and then I'd have to confront them with what I know. Absolute best-case? Sophia gets thrown in juvie, Emma and Madison as well, and I become a superhero. Fat chance, right? More than likely outcome? The PRT covers for Sophia's crap, she remains a Ward, maybe they transfer her to a different city if I'm lucky, Emma and Madison get away with it, and I end up having to take orders from the same people that likely allowed Sophia to use me as a fucking punching bag for two years.
I sighed loudly to myself. If nothing else, this train of thought gave me ample ideas for arguments to use on Dad if he'd try to convince me to join the Wards, and I'm sure he'd try. Telling him "No, I don't want to be a Ward" or "no, I can't be a Ward" would break his heart, but there was no going back with that conversation not taking place.
Fucking PRT.
With the Boardwalk closing down for the night and nothing else even remotely interesting happening here, I shrugged, and started walking home, now fully aware that Sophia had been right about one thing: Brockton Bay does get ugly at night. The looks I attracted in Emma's form, by and large, now held barely-constrained malevolence, mixed with the stench of several varieties of fermented plant byproducts. Booze, I corrected myself. Wait, what? Shaking my head, I focused more on practical matters, like my surroundings.
If I had a heart, the beating kind at least, I'm sure it'd be racing by now. I played up the fear angle for what it was worth, looking over my shoulder, wringing my hands together, increasing my walking speed, and finally dashing to my right into an alley that my peripheral sense had already mapped out as a dead end. Four young men of predominantly asian heritage followed with grins clearly defined on their faces. Perfect.
"Fuck!" I spoke aloud, faking surprise at finding a dead end, then turned around to continue faking fear, drawing them in so they surrounded me.
"Hey, that sounded like a suggestion, or an offer, eh D?" The one on my right announced with a chuckle.
The one in the center, full alpha male body language dominating his approach, smirked in response, then leaned in to get a closer look at me. "Yeah, this one's got money written all over her." He briefly glanced down at my breasts, grinning. Yup, for better or worse, this was going to be educational. "Shit, are those for real?"
I shrugged. "They're as real as I need them to be." Entirely truthful, and yet entirely too suggestive.
"So what's a pretty thing like you doing the fuck way out here? Your boyfriend leave you high and dry, that it?" He leaned in closer, forcing my back up against the center wall.
"Practice, actually." I smirked. "It's my first night out, and I need all the practice I can get if I'm gonna make it big as a cape."
The drunk's grin only got wider, obviously not having processed all of that fast enough. "Yeah, well, we can-- wait..." It dawned on him, barely a second before I kneed him in the crotch, grabbed him by the throat with my right arm and threw him aside, back-first, at the side wall. I dropped all pretenses at that point, along with Emma's form - I hadn't even thought of a costume to wear as a cape, but instead recalled the featureless statue-like form I started out with since I got my powers.
I lashed out at the closest drunk to my right, letting my arm twist out, forming a tendril, wrapping around his neck and pulling him towards me. He reached up with both hands to his neck, trying in futility to pull it off, choking all the while. The other two tripped over themselves in surprise, and in their drunken state neither looked cognizant enough to get up and run. I let go of the guy in my grasp, flinging him behind me and to my right, wincing as he ran head-first into the center wall and stayed on the ground moaning in pain. I let my arm re-assume its normal shape, and by then one of the remaining punks managed to stand, precariously, while struggling with a pocket knife in his right hand.
Good grief, as practice goes, this wasn't even worth my time. I walked right past the two idiots, glanced down to my left at the guy with the knife, and shook my head. He got the hint, dropping the knife, and wetting his pants in the process as he backed himself against the wall, and slid down in fear to the ground and away from me.
Pitiful, that's all I could think, walking out of the alley in statue-form. All that lead-up to trap a bunch of drunks who were more of a danger to themselves than anyone else. At this rate, it'd be months before I'd gain enough experience as a solo hero to actually have a clue what I was doing, and as far as finding danger was concerned, maybe I was just doing it--
My peripheral senses pinged with activity. Three blocks to my right and one behind, barely audible shouting and gunshots. Much more like it. I cloaked and ran towards the commotion, the streets thankfully being devoid of any further distractions. On approach, both the gunshots and the shouting had largely been snuffed out, and the cause was obvious: a cloud of pitch-black darkness obscuring everything within an alleyway running between two warehouses. My peripheral senses had the area mapped out: three buildings close together surrounded by a chain-link fence, yet I was getting absolutely nothing from the areas covered by the darkness. Instantly recalling the research I had done earlier, the cloud of darkness was Grue's power, so I could at least expect the presence of Regent and Tattletale, the three known members of a small villain gang called the 'Undersiders,' though Parahumans Online had very little of substance on any of them beyond the apparent rivalry between Grue and Shadow Stalker.
I circled the fence, gathering as much information on the layout of the place as I could despite the darkness, and slipped through a gap that had obviously been cut recently - whoever did it had even left the wire-cutters on the ground nearby - then waded into the thick of the cloud momentarily. My peripheral sense seemed to shut off altogether at this point, I was detecting nothing beyond the ground under my feet, and I backed out quickly to regain my bearings and consider my alternatives.
What noise there was came from within the buildings themselves, so the darkness likely hadn't extended that far in. All three buildings had doors facing the outside, though they were blocked off with wooden planks, as were the few exterior-facing windows. The building I stood next to had lingering infrared traces giving me the impression of a barracks with an attached kitchen and dining area, but it was devoid of people and the shouting was considerably more muffled here. The smaller of the two adjoining buildings had a considerable amount of heat built up, and my enhanced senses started registering the presence of a long list of... chemicals, I suppose. I had no idea what any of this stuff was, so my mind settled on the simplest explanation where villains were involved: drugs. Only one individual was moving around the place, with two waiting outside on the edge of the cloud. The third building was similarly lacking in activity, and the impression I had was of a storage shed or machine shop. Possibly an armory, but what would I know?
Back to the alleys, the cloud of darkness had started to dissipate, but still not enough that I could make out the forms of anyone caught within it. An idea struck me then, and I held out both arms before wading into the cloud. Predictably, my senses condensed into feeling the ground, air and little else, but as I walked forward and counted my steps, something eventually hit one of my arms. I backed off, only to take a glancing blow from a swung tire iron as its wielder struck out blindly at anything entering his range. Idiot. I grinned, then plunged forward at his last-known position, grabbing hold of his chest with enough feeling from my left hand that I could predict where his arms were in relation to the rest of his body. It still took a few seconds of moving my right arm frantically to find his right arm and the tire iron, and I knew there had to be a better way of doing this.
I pulled the tire iron free from his grip and tossed it behind me, before blindly grabbing at the man's neck. Found it, balled my hand into a fist, and decked him. He collapsed to the ground, curled into a ball and groaning, and I moved on. Different approach this time though - I released my form altogether, collapsing into a puddle of liquid metal, and flowed along the ground, tracing the edges of the alley's walls as well as anything in my way. Two more thugs, and the positions of their feet gave me enough of an idea where the rest of their bodies were. One was easy enough, he had apparently tripped on something, banged his head on a side wall and was lying on the ground, conscious but dazed. The other was like the first guy, but leaning on a side wall with one hand and slowly tracing his way forward. He had a sawed-off shotgun in his other hand, something I snatched away with a tendril and no trouble at all. I yanked his hand away from the wall, and used several tendrils to haphazardly guide him on a collision course with his buddy lying on the ground behind me.
Made it to the intersection, and spread out further, dead end to my right, nothing there. I continued on, and found my sense returning as the cloud washed away behind a portion of me. In clear view, Regent and Grue stood atop a trash dumpster lying on its side, adjacent to an open door of the building that had the drugs in it. I flowed out of the cloud, and drew myself upward, reassuming my statue-form to their obvious amazement and intimidation.
"Shit! Tattletale, we got company!" Grue shouted to his right.
"Almost done here. Is it Lung or Oni Lee? Please don't let it be--" 'Tattletale' stepped out, holding a leather briefcase by its handle with her left hand, and a lit Molotov cocktail in her right hand. She tossed the bottle behind her, before glancing at me. "Oh. Good. Just what I needed." She blinked a few times and leaned forward, clutching her forehead.
The cloud had dissipated by now, revealing my handiwork. 'Regent,' whose costume looked like it came straight out of a Renaissance fair, nodded and grinned. "Nice, he...she...it took care of them for us." He shrugged. "What are you, anyway?"
Tattletale shook her head. "It's a she. New cape, just got her powers. Shapeshifter, and... fuck." She glared at me. "She's a hero."
"Great." Regent gestured with the scepter in his hand. "The fuck?" He gestured more wildly, and I turned to stare at him. Grue did the same.
"What's up?"
"It's not working! My power's not fucking working on her!"
At that, I formed my right arm into a blade. I had no idea what Regent's power was - hell, Parahumans Online was similarly lacking in that information, but in my mind, his words just constituted a threat. The three villains flinched back slightly at this.
"Whoa, wait!" Grue started. "No killing! Regent, apologize."
Regent looked at Grue like he'd grown a second head. "Me, apologize? For what? My power doesn't work on her."
"What is your power?" I demanded.
"Like I'm gonna fucking--" Tattletale interrupted him. "He's a body controller. Gestures with his hands, makes you do things like trip over yourself, or prematurely fire a gun. And Grue's right, no killing. It's against the rules."
My head snapped to her direction. "Rules? What rules?"
She looked back in the building, and winced as the fire began spreading. "I'd love to tell you, I really would, but not here." She shook her head. "They made methamphetamines here, and this building's about to be blown sky-high. We don't want to be here when that happens."
I nodded. "Fine, you can tell me at a safe distance." With that, I cloaked.
Tattletale sighed. "Changer-stranger. Just our fucking luck. Come on guys."
I followed from close behind as the three minor villains ran back to the gap in the fence. Tattletale tossed the briefcase to Grue, and then crouched to grab the wire-cutters. I held the fence aside for them to pass through, earning a puzzled look from Tattletale at the sight of the fence seeming to hold itself open mid-air. We ran, or rather they ran and I jogged at a slow pace, across the street and into another alleyway, out across another street, down yet another alleyway and through a hastily kicked-down door into an abandoned warehouse.
The three stopped to catch their breath, and I decloaked, again not the least bit winded. They stared at me as I retracted the blade and folded my arms, energy cascading over my form. "So, you were saying something about rules?"
The building shook as a gust of air blew in, filling the room with dust and bits of broken glass falling from overhanging windows. The three villains reflexively ducked, but nobody was injured. Tattletale recovered first, forcing the door closed while gasping for breath.
"That didn't affect you?" She started. I shrugged my shoulders in response. "Huh. I think I see why. Okay, newbie, yes, we're villains and you're a hero, in the grand scheme of things, that just means we do things our own way rather than doing things society expects of us. The rules..." she took a deep breath, "...are pretty simple actually. No killing, and that one's a no-brainer. You kill, you're playing for keeps, and that means the rest of the rules don't apply to you. You have family? Yeah, you have family, single father, no mother nor siblings. They're off-limits, unless you break the rules, so you can probably see why that's important. You don't go out of your way to discover a cape's civilian identity, and if you do happen upon it, you keep it to yourself. Yeah, I see that look on your face, you know something about a cape and oh dear, they're responsible for you getting your powers?"
I glared at her in response. "How the hell do you know all of this?"
She grinned momentarily, before coughing from all the dust in the air. "It's my power. Tells me things, even things I don't necessarily want to know." She stood upright, and extended her right hand. "Call me Tattletale."
"I... actually haven't picked a name yet." The absurdity of the scene threw me off. Me, a hero, being offered a handshake by a villain, and I wasn't reacting?
Her grin turned into a smirk. "Yeah, that's not surprising. Still, pretty impressive for your first day, if you could work around Grue's power and be immune to Regent's. Maybe a low-level trump as well? Anyway," she gestured to the other two, "as you've probably figured out, ren-faire guy is Regent, skull-mask is Grue, I'd introduce you to Bitch but I don't know what the hell she got up to, just as well, she's... not a people person. She'd probably order her dogs to attack you, and then you'd rip her dogs new assholes, and then she'd go ballistic and we'd have to break up the fight, she'd be useless and you'd be pissed... sorry, I'm rambling, aren't I?"
Grue hesitantly approached me, right hand extended. I just glared at him in response. "You're villains." I repeated.
He shrugged. "Good villains, if you'd believe it possible. All that just a few minutes ago," tilting his head to his right, "used to be a meth lab run by the Merchants 'til the ABB kicked them out and took it over. We shut that shit down, get it off the streets, bloody the ABB's noses a bit, make them think twice before ruining peoples' lives."
"Don't forget the loot," Regent chimed in. At my glare, he shrugged. "What, you think all of us have homes and family to go back to? We do what we have to to survive, being able to enjoy it's just a bonus."
"Regent has a point." Tattletale sighed. "You have a home and a loving, worried-sick father to go back to at the end of the day. For most of us, that's actually pretty rare. We're all damaged goods in one way or another. Some of us more than others."
"Why are you telling me all of this?"
She frowned. "Well, the rules were self-explanatory. You're new, and somebody needed to explain them to you before you'd end up as bad as Shadow Stalker." I locked eyes with her, and her grin returned. "Yeah, as heroes go, she's the worst. She's killed in the past, everyone knows it, yet the Protectorate keeps her on for some reason, even if the rest of the Wards hate her guts. I'm guessing she's the reason you haven't gone to the Wards yet."
I sighed and broke eye contact. "I know who Shadow Stalker is, and yes, she's the reason I have powers."
Tattletale nodded knowingly. "As I said, keep it to yourself. The rest of the rules are mainly about playing fair, letting your rivals withdraw if you've trounced them, keeping collateral damage to a minimum, so you don't go about destroying large swaths of the city for example. We have enough problems with Endbringers as it is. Oh, yeah, that's the final thing: when the Endbringer sirens sound, truce rules are in effect. If you're fighting villains, you stop, whatever grudges you're holding against another cape, you don't act upon them. You don't capitalize at all during a truce, because if the truce is broken..."
"Then neither side can trust the other, and fighting off the Endbringers becomes that much harder." I finished for her.
"Fast learner." She nodded. "So, since you're obviously having second thoughts about becoming a hero, particularly as you can't join the Wards with Shadow Stalker being present... wanna join us?"
A/N: Yes, cliffhanger! I hate them too! Well, I hate it when I am suffering them, but making others suffer?
by Pyrion (much thanks to Robo Jesus for editing & putting up with my shit. Also, for the Funky Jazz Beats)
1.02
Walking at a normal pace to the Boardwalk while wearing Emma's form ended up telling me quite a lot about my former best friend. For one, as much as Emma thought of herself as fashion model material, I hadn't attracted anything in the way of lewd stares, catcalls, or anything else despite cutting a path through ABB territory to get here. It briefly made me wonder how much of her purported modeling career was due to her looks as opposed to her dad's influence.
Another thing that occurred to me was how much in the way of Brockton Bay's night-life Emma must've been missing out on. If she ever came down here, nobody seemed to recognize her, a stark contrast from just about everywhere else we used to visit together. Sure, the Boardwalk was a tourist trap, but that didn't mean locals didn't frequent the place either.
The only possible explanation was that word had gotten around that the police were out in force searching for someone, so the troublemakers were laying low. And yes, there were a few times I got looks from officers in passing police cruisers, but since I wasn't who they were looking for, and I wasn't otherwise in trouble, they had better things to do with their time. Gangs were leaving them alone, and vice-versa.
So it was with a shrug of disappointment that I walked right into the tourist trap at the height of the early evening without so much as an attempted mugging. I had no money, granted, but I couldn't help but look. Yeah, "tourist trap" is right, maybe another reason Emma avoided this place is that everything was overpriced. Though I couldn't imagine her being hard up for money.
After wasting what felt like a good hour or two looking through shop windows at things I'd likely never afford, or want to buy for that matter, and generally doing my utmost to appear lost, out of place, helpless and alone, still nothing of consequence occurred. Maybe coming here wasn't such a good idea, in retrospect; but hey, first day as a cape, what would I know?
Only after I started walking back home, again straight through ABB territory, something interesting finally happened. Hasty footfalls at the edge of my peripheral sense, approximately two city blocks ahead and slightly to my right, heading left. I quickened my walking pace, eminently aware that as my luck would have it, this was probably nothing. Were it the footfalls alone, I'd have written it off, but something else pinged and got my attention as "odd" and thus worth investigating - a single individual, seemingly teleporting across adjoining rooftops, heading in the same direction as the aforementioned footfalls.
Their source came into view: two teenage boys, probably no older than me, running as if their lives dependent on it, knocking over trash cans, pushing bystanders into walls or out into the street if they didn't move out of the way fast enough. The lone individual on the rooftops briefly materialized at the edge of a roof, and I instantly recognized her. Shadow Stalker, a Ward probably best known for being a lone wolf. She disappeared once more, although a streak of darkness briefly illuminated by a street lamp gave her intentions away - the two teenagers suddenly found their heads smashing into Shadow Stalker's raised arms, and while the guy on the left mostly managed to deflect the blow, his buddy went straight down, groaning loudly and clutching his head.
Shadow Stalker flexed her arms and shook her head, before raising a crossbow to shoot the fleeing, disoriented teen in the back. I blinked a few times, my mind briefly seizing up on processing this as the bolt flew through air - here was a Ward, using a decidedly lethal weapon on someone whose only apparent crime was running away? I focused my attention on the guy, sighing with a bit of relief in that he was still alive and breathing, albeit unconscious. Tranquilizer bolts, then.
My sense of relief only took a new nosedive when Shadow Stalker proceeded to kick the guy closer to her repeatedly in the chest and head, despite the fact that he was, at that point, no threat to anyone. Then I heard her laugh, and start taunting the kid.
"What the hell were you thinking, you stupid shit? Running from me?!" Another round of kicks, and the guy was now bleeding profusely from a nasty cut on his head. As much as I was shocked that a hero was mercilessly assaulting someone who couldn't fight back, my mind seized up once again with a much more pressing realization: I know that voice.
Fuck me sideways. Shadow Stalker is Sophia Hess?!
I stopped dead in my tracks and stared, unable to wrap my head around this. In that moment, every childhood dream, every remembered bit of overpriced cape merchandise, all the idolization of heroes, the anticipation of becoming one when I got my powers, my entire world-view at that point took a nosedive at the speed of sound and cratered within my mind.
How the hell could I explain this to dad? 'Sorry dad, but the heroes are a bunch of frauds?' I couldn't join the Wards, or it'd just be more of the same, only with soulless bureaucrats ordering me to put my life in the hands of the one person most responsible for me having powers in the first place.
Sudden movement in my peripheral sense again, and suddenly Shadow Stalker went from lording her superiority over an unconscious and seriously-wounded kid to yanking me by my arms into an adjacent alleyway.
"Emma?"
I blinked, and the nightmare got worse. No...
"Emma? What the hell are you doing all the way out here at this time of night?!" She grabbed me by the shoulders and jolted me out of my shock, and in that brief moment it all crystallized in my mind - I was still wearing Emma's form.
"Sophia?" I answered lamely.
She chuckled. "Uhh, yeah. No-one else wears this costume last time I checked. You alright? Having second thoughts about earlier? Buck up, even if your chewtoy breaks, I'm sure we can find new prey for you to sink your teeth into."
Much as I wanted to gut her right then and there, I reigned in my simmering anger, channeling it into doing my best Emma impression.
"No, I just had to get out of the house and away from Dad. He heard what happened to Taylor and started asking questions."
Shadow Stalker shook her head. "And so you walked halfway across town, straight through ABB territory, and there's not so much as a scratch on you? Heh, I was right about you, survivor."
'Survivor?' There's something I'm missing here...
"Anyway, I gotta bag these shits and call this in." Shadow Stalker turned around to look at her 'handiwork,' "You picked a great time to branch out, survivor, cops are out in full force over something and most of these stupid fuckers are keeping their heads down. I'm actually kinda disappointed. Still, unless you're trying to get yourself powers, and that never works, this town gets ugly at night, cops or no cops. Get home before daddy starts to worry, I'll call you when I'm done here."
I nodded mutely, almost painfully aware that I had probably done the lamest impression of my former best friend. Sophia seemed to buy it, though - she turned back to shadow, dashed across the street and reformed, giving the unconscious kid a final swift kick in the ribs. With her back turned to me, I gritted my teeth and shifted invisible, ducking into an adjacent alleyway.
An errant thought hit me just then: what kind of a hero was I, that I'd abandoned those two guys to further abuse on Shadow Stalker's part?
A shitty one, right? If Shadow Stalker was the new benchmark, I'd probably fit right in. The thought brought me no comfort.
-----
"Control, Shadow Stalker. Finally got 'em. Idiots had to fight back, so send an ambulance."
"It's about time. Aegis is calling a meeting, something's got Piggy more pissed than usual." She rolled her eyes at that. "Whatever it is, PRT's acting like a kicked hornet's nest, BBPD's involved."
"Whatever, if they're involved, I'll hitch a ride back with them. Stalker out."
Sophia shrugged, shifted to shadow and then leapt to a perch on the nearest rooftop. She still had a few minutes to kill before the cops would show up, and she didn't feel like dashing all the way back to the PRT building for whatever bug the Director got up her ass this time. Something else nagged at her though... Emma? What the hell was she doing all the way out here anyway? She pocketed her PRT phone, dug out her personal phone and started typing a text message.
The fuck?
Half a minute later, she did. A pic in response, Emma at home sitting on her bed with an annoyed look on her face, flipping the bird at the camera. Sophia's eyes bugged out in realization, her heart racing as it hit her just how much she may have fucked up.
'If that wasn't Emma,' Sophia thought, 'it was someone who knows me and...' The final horror dawned on her. She knew what it took to get powers, and the coincidence was all too likely: Taylor had to have triggered, and if she was walking around looking like Emma, then she triggered as a fucking changer.
It fit too well, Emma had acted far too shocked at the non-revelation that she was Shadow Stalker, since she had known for years. Sophia eyed a police van and ambulance approaching from the southwest, and shook her head and pocketed the phone, before shifting to shadow and leaping like her life depended on it back towards the PRT building. 'If this meeting is what I think it is, I am so fucked' was all she could think about.
-----
Armsmaster sighed in annoyance as the missing kid's father introduced himself and offered his right hand.
"Don't mind him, he's... not a people person." Piggot glared at him briefly, only to be offered a shrug in response, to which she only rolled her eyes. She gestured to her left, "Mister Hebert, Detective Jay Stanton, Brockton Bay Police." The two nodded and shook hands. "Please, sit."
"Mister Hebert, as I told you on the phone earlier, your daughter's been involved in an incident at school that we believe resulted in her gaining parahuman powers. Are you aware of or have heard anything about 'trigger events?'" He shook his head. "Alright, in layman's terms, parahuman powers are dormant until a particularly traumatic event in their lives causes these powers to manifest. We call these events 'triggers,' and between the incident itself and its immediate aftermath, we have good reason to believe your daughter triggered late this morning, about fifteen minutes before lunch break at Winslow."
"You keep calling it an 'incident,' what the hell happened to her?"
Piggot glanced to her left. "Detective?"
He took a deep breath. "Someone, or possibly a group of someones, filled your daughter's school locker with used tampons, presumably after school the previous day, or early in the morning. Your daughter was shoved into and locked inside her locker for a period of approximately four hours." Danny's face began to redden as he clenched his fists in anger, tears beginning to run down his cheeks.
"In that time, judging from the damage to the inside of the locker, she struggled to escape, or at least call for help, but nobody helped. At eleven-forty in the morning, the school administration called the police, with initial reports of an explosion in a student's locker. Winslow High was placed in lockdown, a SWAT team cleared the hallways and found no explosives, so the bomb squad that had been called out proved unnecessary. The SWAT team reported extensive damage to the locker, particularly its door, and on further investigation we found considerable amounts of fingerprints both inside the locker, and on both sides of the locker door, including prints on the lock itself. Before you ask, we have no initial suspects, and it's going to take at least a few days to process the prints."
Danny sighed. "By no initial suspects, you mean nobody's come forward as a witness, right?"
"Correct, and for Winslow's student body, it's not surprising. Most of those kids are gang members, some even openly carry weapons onto the premises, and the school's main concern is preventing fights from breaking out. According to them, your daughter's only really notable due to her excessive truancy--"
"Truancy?! What?" Danny shook his head. "That makes no sense, she'd always tell me school was going fine, and I've never gotten calls from the administration that suggested otherwise."
Detective Stanton nodded. "It's the only thing that makes your daughter particularly memorable as far as the administration is concerned. It's likely she's been on the receiving end of a bullying campaign for a while, hence the excessive truancy. Bullied kids tend to fall into one of two categories: either they fight back, in which case the parents and school administration find out about it quickly, or they keep it bottled up and don't tell anybody, in which case nobody hears about it until something major, like this, happens."
"It also explains the powers we believe your daughter now possesses," Piggot interjected. "Parahuman powers tend to follow a theme related to whatever traumatic event causes their powers to awaken in the first place. We've initially classified your daughter as a 'Brute-Stranger,' 'Brute' meaning enhanced strength, 'Stranger' meaning invisibility or the like. Powerful enough to escape, and then remain hidden."
"Officially, this is being treated as a felony aggravated assault case. Your daughter going and remaining missing has, consequently, put the department on alert. Now we don't know for certain if she actually has triggered, but the evidence fits that assumption, hence the PRT's involvement." Jay shrugged. "It's just as well, really. More people looking for your daughter, and they know how to handle parahumans in such a way that nobody ends up seriously injured or killed."
Piggot nodded. "Our involvement here is twofold. One, finding your daughter and ensuring her safety, up to and including getting her medical attention if necessary. Two, if both she and you accept, we'd offer her a place in the Wards." Danny glanced up at her, half-puzzled and half-incensed. She brought both hands up in a calming gesture. "Mister Hebert, I'm sorry to have to bring it up, it's a requirement of my job, unfortunately. The problem with parahuman triggers is that, statistically, most of them happen in childhood, and of those that gain powers, they're three times more likely to become villains rather than heroes. I know what you're thinking of saying, your daughter would never do that, unfortunately, the statistics disagree with you and most parents of parahumans. Hence our early involvement, the sooner we find her, the lower the chances she turns toward villainy, particularly if she feels she has no other choice. The other problem, more specific to this case, is that this is about as public a trigger can get without anyone having actually witnessed it. That's not going to stop people from coming to that conclusion. We're not going to be the only people looking for your daughter, and the others that will don't have you or your daughter's best interests at heart."
Armsmaster's helmet communicator beeped, and he sighed in audible relief. "I gotta take this, excuse me Director." He stepped out quickly, not wanting to be present one more second than necessary.
"Colin."
He smiled, faintly. "Dragon. Something I can do for you?"
"Yes, actually. Go down to the Boardwalk branch of the Brockton Bay Public Library, I'll explain on the way."
He stepped into a secure elevator, and jabbed the button for the garage sub-level. "This related to our missing teen case?"
"It might be, it might not. Either way, it's considerably more serious, and concerns one of your Wards."
He stepped out onto the secured garage floor, and marched to his motorcycle. "Who?"
"Shadow Stalker. Her identity is compromised."
He slammed to a halt, and sighed. "Why am I not surprised?"
"I can't answer that, Colin."
He straddled the bike, fired up the engine and sped out. "I know. Still, why the library?"
"Someone performed a rapid series of searches on Parahumans Online, totaling less than three minutes of activity. On its own, aside from the volume of information accessed, none of it is notable. One search was flagged high enough that it got my attention, though. The search string was 'Sophia Hess.'"
"On Parahumans Online?" He blew through a red light, unconcerned. "The forum, or the wiki?"
"Both, at nearly the same time. No results, obviously, but somebody out there knows Sophia is a cape. Coincidentally, the first searches performed by this individual were on Shadow Stalker."
"What else?"
"Let's see..." she paused for several seconds, "major and minor villains of Brockton Bay, profiles on every Ward and Protectorate cape, some information on the Endbringers, usual stuff. Aside from that one search, nothing stands out, aside from the long delay between those searches, and the search that was flagged." Another pause. "You there yet?"
He nodded, more to himself. "Parking lot."
To Armsmaster's complete lack of surprise, the library was devoid of activity and visitors, only a sole librarian at a desk manning the place. She did a double-take at his entrance, and stood nervously. "Is... there something I can help you with?"
A curt nod in response. "Not half an hour ago, someone used a computer terminal at this branch."
A statement, not a question. The librarian tilted her head to the right slightly, and then nodded. "Yeah, teenage girl, tall, thin, dark hair with curls. She's here frequently, so I didn't think anything of it."
Armsmaster squinted in thought, even as Dragon piped in from the open comm channel, "That sounds like your missing teen, Colin." He pulled out his PRT-issued smartphone, tapped it twice and showed it to the librarian. "Is this her?"
"Yeah, that's her. Is she in trouble?"
He frowned. "Possibly," then turned around and glanced at the ceiling. "You have security cameras. I'll need access to their footage."
The librarian nodded and shrugged. "Right, fine, this way." She led him up a flight of stairs and into a cramped office. "It's all here, call if you need me."
"Colin," Dragon chimed in, sounding amused to herself at the sound of him sitting and typing at the terminal, "it would be nice if I could see what you're seeing."
He paused, sighed, and tapped a hidden control on the side of his helmet. "Yes, better! Thank you."
Half a minute of silence, aside from the occasional tapping of keys. "There, exterior camera aimed at the entrance." Armsmaster frowned. "That's not her. Hair's wrong, different clothes, slightly shorter."
"Colin, roll the camera back a few seconds." More tapping. "There, pause it. See that, right at the edge of the camera?"
He squinted and leaned in. "What the hell? Her body's... silver?"
"Step the frames forward. Yes, see that, her whole body comes into focus as silver very briefly and then everything shifts. Step it forward more. More. Whoa, stop, looks like some kind of cascading energy wave? Step it forward, slowly."
"Covers her from head to toe, but doesn't appear to do anything."
"She leaves the coverage of the camera here, switch to the entrance. Now, normal playback."
Armsmaster leaned back in the chair in thought. "She turns left and heads straight to the women's restroom. Why?"
Dragon chuckled over the line. "Maybe she needs to go?" He rolled his eyes in response to her joke. "More seriously, and for obvious reasons, there aren't any cameras there. Alright, she disappears out of view. Keep playing." Dead silence for a few seconds. "Seventeen seconds from when she disappears to when your missing girl reappears... Huh. Colin, you noticing this?"
"Hmm?" He leaned in once more.
"She's walking with the same stride, same intent. Even the annoyed look on her face is the same. Colin, I think your missing girl's a changer."
It took him a moment to process this, and then nod. "Shit."
"Yeah. She's a damn good one too, if she can change forms on-the-fly in such a short amount of time. Okay, she goes straight to a computer, facing this camera. Is there one from an opposite perspective?"
He switched through camera feeds, finally settling on one behind and to the girl's right.
"There, yes. Now, she fires up the browser and... wow, she's a fast typist. Loads Parahumans Online, loads multiple tabs for the search page... Colin, how fast do you type, out of curiosity?"
"Eighty-five words per minute. Why?"
"I've seen you type, and it's nowhere near this fast. She has to be doing over two hundred easily. Maybe even two-fifty."
He frowned. "That's relevant how?"
A sigh on the other end. "Now look at how fast she's reading, if she's reading at all. She skims the first page, then... huh. Why the delay and the shake of the head?"
"First time? She's had her powers less than a day." He took a deep breath.
"She then goes back to it, only even faster now. No surprise on her face, just... it's almost like she's archiving all of this for later. Wow, she's not even using the scroll wheel anymore, she's just holding page-down. Superhuman reading comprehension on top of a way-beyond-normal typing speed? Your missing girl might be a mid-level thinker as well."
Silence on his end, content to let Dragon make all the observations. "Colin, I just did a facial recognition database search on the other girl. She's another Winslow High student, name of 'Emma Barnes.' I think there might be a connection here, both between her and our changer here, and her with Shadow Stalker."
He blinked in surprise and comprehension, some of the pieces starting to fit together. "Explain."
"All three of them are the same age, same grade level, at the same school. Notable that Sophia's the only Ward at Winslow, and the administration is on file as being aware of her status as a parahuman. Emma Barnes is listed as the younger of two daughters of an 'Alan Barnes'... huh. He shows up, flagged, in the PRT database as the attorney representing Sophia at her probation hearings. Doing a search on Mister Barnes, however, his listed occupation is 'divorce attorney.' Colin, what's a divorce attorney doing representing a parahuman minor at a criminal probationary hearing?"
He squinted in thought once more. "Favor for a friend, probably." He blinked, "but that would mean--"
"Emma Barnes has been aware of Sophia Hess' status as a parahuman for a long time. Colin, I have a hunch here."
"So do I, but let's hear yours first."
"Alright. All three of these girls attend the same high school, Emma and Sophia are obviously long-time friends. Taylor is the odd-one out here. Now, something dreadful happens to Taylor in school today, she gets her powers from it, she's a changer on top of everything else, and maybe she realizes people are looking for her. So she picks a disguise that she's familiar enough with, but won't attract the kind of attention that she would, at least from the police, PRT forces, et-cetera. It still attracts attention, though, and maybe that's intentional on her part. If Taylor Hebert wasn't previously aware of Sophia Hess being Shadow Stalker, how does she find out, and why is it relevant to her?"
"Hold that thought, Dragon, I think I know the answer, let me just confirm it. I'll call you back."
He tapped his smartphone a few times, placing another call. "Aegis, Armsmaster. Who's running control for the patrols today? Okay." More taps, another call. "Vista, Armsmaster. Has Shadow Stalker ended her patrol yet? She has? Where? Confirm that, the Boardwalk, and she called in late? Understood." A shake of the head, while muttering "damn that girl," before returning Dragon's call.
"Dragon, got a possible answer for you. Shadow Stalker completed her evening patrol outside of the Boardwalk district, but she called in ten minutes late."
"Ten minutes is more than enough time to talk with a friend."
Armsmaster nodded, gritting his teeth in growing anger. "Except that 'friend' is our missing girl in disguise."
"Yes, so she beelines straight to the library, changes back to her normal form, and starts doing all the research she can on Shadow Stalker, among other topics. She looks pissed off too. So what's the connection there?"
"Her trigger event." Armsmaster finishes, shaking his head. "Shadow Stalker is somehow connected to Taylor Hebert's trigger event."
-----
So, my first night out as a cape wasn't a total bust. No fights, although I had to restrain the urge to start one upon learning that Sophia was Shadow Stalker. Research at the library taught me another useful aspect of my power: I could read and type a hell of a lot faster than normal, and any information taken in could be fully recalled with an errant thought. On this front, at least, I felt like I was only skimming the surface of what I could really do, but experimenting in a well-lit public place, even one as devoid of activity as a public library? Not ideal. I'd probably learn far more about my power in far less time if I joined the Wards, but... no. Not with Sophia there.
Going home and confronting Dad was at the top of my mind, only because I didn't really know what else to do. I had no place else to stay for the night, although curiously I was neither tired nor hungry - two feelings I probably wouldn't miss in retrospect. He'd want to call the PRT to confirm my safe arrival home, and then I'd have to confront them with what I know. Absolute best-case? Sophia gets thrown in juvie, Emma and Madison as well, and I become a superhero. Fat chance, right? More than likely outcome? The PRT covers for Sophia's crap, she remains a Ward, maybe they transfer her to a different city if I'm lucky, Emma and Madison get away with it, and I end up having to take orders from the same people that likely allowed Sophia to use me as a fucking punching bag for two years.
I sighed loudly to myself. If nothing else, this train of thought gave me ample ideas for arguments to use on Dad if he'd try to convince me to join the Wards, and I'm sure he'd try. Telling him "No, I don't want to be a Ward" or "no, I can't be a Ward" would break his heart, but there was no going back with that conversation not taking place.
Fucking PRT.
With the Boardwalk closing down for the night and nothing else even remotely interesting happening here, I shrugged, and started walking home, now fully aware that Sophia had been right about one thing: Brockton Bay does get ugly at night. The looks I attracted in Emma's form, by and large, now held barely-constrained malevolence, mixed with the stench of several varieties of fermented plant byproducts. Booze, I corrected myself. Wait, what? Shaking my head, I focused more on practical matters, like my surroundings.
If I had a heart, the beating kind at least, I'm sure it'd be racing by now. I played up the fear angle for what it was worth, looking over my shoulder, wringing my hands together, increasing my walking speed, and finally dashing to my right into an alley that my peripheral sense had already mapped out as a dead end. Four young men of predominantly asian heritage followed with grins clearly defined on their faces. Perfect.
"Fuck!" I spoke aloud, faking surprise at finding a dead end, then turned around to continue faking fear, drawing them in so they surrounded me.
"Hey, that sounded like a suggestion, or an offer, eh D?" The one on my right announced with a chuckle.
The one in the center, full alpha male body language dominating his approach, smirked in response, then leaned in to get a closer look at me. "Yeah, this one's got money written all over her." He briefly glanced down at my breasts, grinning. Yup, for better or worse, this was going to be educational. "Shit, are those for real?"
I shrugged. "They're as real as I need them to be." Entirely truthful, and yet entirely too suggestive.
"So what's a pretty thing like you doing the fuck way out here? Your boyfriend leave you high and dry, that it?" He leaned in closer, forcing my back up against the center wall.
"Practice, actually." I smirked. "It's my first night out, and I need all the practice I can get if I'm gonna make it big as a cape."
The drunk's grin only got wider, obviously not having processed all of that fast enough. "Yeah, well, we can-- wait..." It dawned on him, barely a second before I kneed him in the crotch, grabbed him by the throat with my right arm and threw him aside, back-first, at the side wall. I dropped all pretenses at that point, along with Emma's form - I hadn't even thought of a costume to wear as a cape, but instead recalled the featureless statue-like form I started out with since I got my powers.
I lashed out at the closest drunk to my right, letting my arm twist out, forming a tendril, wrapping around his neck and pulling him towards me. He reached up with both hands to his neck, trying in futility to pull it off, choking all the while. The other two tripped over themselves in surprise, and in their drunken state neither looked cognizant enough to get up and run. I let go of the guy in my grasp, flinging him behind me and to my right, wincing as he ran head-first into the center wall and stayed on the ground moaning in pain. I let my arm re-assume its normal shape, and by then one of the remaining punks managed to stand, precariously, while struggling with a pocket knife in his right hand.
Good grief, as practice goes, this wasn't even worth my time. I walked right past the two idiots, glanced down to my left at the guy with the knife, and shook my head. He got the hint, dropping the knife, and wetting his pants in the process as he backed himself against the wall, and slid down in fear to the ground and away from me.
Pitiful, that's all I could think, walking out of the alley in statue-form. All that lead-up to trap a bunch of drunks who were more of a danger to themselves than anyone else. At this rate, it'd be months before I'd gain enough experience as a solo hero to actually have a clue what I was doing, and as far as finding danger was concerned, maybe I was just doing it--
My peripheral senses pinged with activity. Three blocks to my right and one behind, barely audible shouting and gunshots. Much more like it. I cloaked and ran towards the commotion, the streets thankfully being devoid of any further distractions. On approach, both the gunshots and the shouting had largely been snuffed out, and the cause was obvious: a cloud of pitch-black darkness obscuring everything within an alleyway running between two warehouses. My peripheral senses had the area mapped out: three buildings close together surrounded by a chain-link fence, yet I was getting absolutely nothing from the areas covered by the darkness. Instantly recalling the research I had done earlier, the cloud of darkness was Grue's power, so I could at least expect the presence of Regent and Tattletale, the three known members of a small villain gang called the 'Undersiders,' though Parahumans Online had very little of substance on any of them beyond the apparent rivalry between Grue and Shadow Stalker.
I circled the fence, gathering as much information on the layout of the place as I could despite the darkness, and slipped through a gap that had obviously been cut recently - whoever did it had even left the wire-cutters on the ground nearby - then waded into the thick of the cloud momentarily. My peripheral sense seemed to shut off altogether at this point, I was detecting nothing beyond the ground under my feet, and I backed out quickly to regain my bearings and consider my alternatives.
What noise there was came from within the buildings themselves, so the darkness likely hadn't extended that far in. All three buildings had doors facing the outside, though they were blocked off with wooden planks, as were the few exterior-facing windows. The building I stood next to had lingering infrared traces giving me the impression of a barracks with an attached kitchen and dining area, but it was devoid of people and the shouting was considerably more muffled here. The smaller of the two adjoining buildings had a considerable amount of heat built up, and my enhanced senses started registering the presence of a long list of... chemicals, I suppose. I had no idea what any of this stuff was, so my mind settled on the simplest explanation where villains were involved: drugs. Only one individual was moving around the place, with two waiting outside on the edge of the cloud. The third building was similarly lacking in activity, and the impression I had was of a storage shed or machine shop. Possibly an armory, but what would I know?
Back to the alleys, the cloud of darkness had started to dissipate, but still not enough that I could make out the forms of anyone caught within it. An idea struck me then, and I held out both arms before wading into the cloud. Predictably, my senses condensed into feeling the ground, air and little else, but as I walked forward and counted my steps, something eventually hit one of my arms. I backed off, only to take a glancing blow from a swung tire iron as its wielder struck out blindly at anything entering his range. Idiot. I grinned, then plunged forward at his last-known position, grabbing hold of his chest with enough feeling from my left hand that I could predict where his arms were in relation to the rest of his body. It still took a few seconds of moving my right arm frantically to find his right arm and the tire iron, and I knew there had to be a better way of doing this.
I pulled the tire iron free from his grip and tossed it behind me, before blindly grabbing at the man's neck. Found it, balled my hand into a fist, and decked him. He collapsed to the ground, curled into a ball and groaning, and I moved on. Different approach this time though - I released my form altogether, collapsing into a puddle of liquid metal, and flowed along the ground, tracing the edges of the alley's walls as well as anything in my way. Two more thugs, and the positions of their feet gave me enough of an idea where the rest of their bodies were. One was easy enough, he had apparently tripped on something, banged his head on a side wall and was lying on the ground, conscious but dazed. The other was like the first guy, but leaning on a side wall with one hand and slowly tracing his way forward. He had a sawed-off shotgun in his other hand, something I snatched away with a tendril and no trouble at all. I yanked his hand away from the wall, and used several tendrils to haphazardly guide him on a collision course with his buddy lying on the ground behind me.
Made it to the intersection, and spread out further, dead end to my right, nothing there. I continued on, and found my sense returning as the cloud washed away behind a portion of me. In clear view, Regent and Grue stood atop a trash dumpster lying on its side, adjacent to an open door of the building that had the drugs in it. I flowed out of the cloud, and drew myself upward, reassuming my statue-form to their obvious amazement and intimidation.
"Shit! Tattletale, we got company!" Grue shouted to his right.
"Almost done here. Is it Lung or Oni Lee? Please don't let it be--" 'Tattletale' stepped out, holding a leather briefcase by its handle with her left hand, and a lit Molotov cocktail in her right hand. She tossed the bottle behind her, before glancing at me. "Oh. Good. Just what I needed." She blinked a few times and leaned forward, clutching her forehead.
The cloud had dissipated by now, revealing my handiwork. 'Regent,' whose costume looked like it came straight out of a Renaissance fair, nodded and grinned. "Nice, he...she...it took care of them for us." He shrugged. "What are you, anyway?"
Tattletale shook her head. "It's a she. New cape, just got her powers. Shapeshifter, and... fuck." She glared at me. "She's a hero."
"Great." Regent gestured with the scepter in his hand. "The fuck?" He gestured more wildly, and I turned to stare at him. Grue did the same.
"What's up?"
"It's not working! My power's not fucking working on her!"
At that, I formed my right arm into a blade. I had no idea what Regent's power was - hell, Parahumans Online was similarly lacking in that information, but in my mind, his words just constituted a threat. The three villains flinched back slightly at this.
"Whoa, wait!" Grue started. "No killing! Regent, apologize."
Regent looked at Grue like he'd grown a second head. "Me, apologize? For what? My power doesn't work on her."
"What is your power?" I demanded.
"Like I'm gonna fucking--" Tattletale interrupted him. "He's a body controller. Gestures with his hands, makes you do things like trip over yourself, or prematurely fire a gun. And Grue's right, no killing. It's against the rules."
My head snapped to her direction. "Rules? What rules?"
She looked back in the building, and winced as the fire began spreading. "I'd love to tell you, I really would, but not here." She shook her head. "They made methamphetamines here, and this building's about to be blown sky-high. We don't want to be here when that happens."
I nodded. "Fine, you can tell me at a safe distance." With that, I cloaked.
Tattletale sighed. "Changer-stranger. Just our fucking luck. Come on guys."
I followed from close behind as the three minor villains ran back to the gap in the fence. Tattletale tossed the briefcase to Grue, and then crouched to grab the wire-cutters. I held the fence aside for them to pass through, earning a puzzled look from Tattletale at the sight of the fence seeming to hold itself open mid-air. We ran, or rather they ran and I jogged at a slow pace, across the street and into another alleyway, out across another street, down yet another alleyway and through a hastily kicked-down door into an abandoned warehouse.
The three stopped to catch their breath, and I decloaked, again not the least bit winded. They stared at me as I retracted the blade and folded my arms, energy cascading over my form. "So, you were saying something about rules?"
The building shook as a gust of air blew in, filling the room with dust and bits of broken glass falling from overhanging windows. The three villains reflexively ducked, but nobody was injured. Tattletale recovered first, forcing the door closed while gasping for breath.
"That didn't affect you?" She started. I shrugged my shoulders in response. "Huh. I think I see why. Okay, newbie, yes, we're villains and you're a hero, in the grand scheme of things, that just means we do things our own way rather than doing things society expects of us. The rules..." she took a deep breath, "...are pretty simple actually. No killing, and that one's a no-brainer. You kill, you're playing for keeps, and that means the rest of the rules don't apply to you. You have family? Yeah, you have family, single father, no mother nor siblings. They're off-limits, unless you break the rules, so you can probably see why that's important. You don't go out of your way to discover a cape's civilian identity, and if you do happen upon it, you keep it to yourself. Yeah, I see that look on your face, you know something about a cape and oh dear, they're responsible for you getting your powers?"
I glared at her in response. "How the hell do you know all of this?"
She grinned momentarily, before coughing from all the dust in the air. "It's my power. Tells me things, even things I don't necessarily want to know." She stood upright, and extended her right hand. "Call me Tattletale."
"I... actually haven't picked a name yet." The absurdity of the scene threw me off. Me, a hero, being offered a handshake by a villain, and I wasn't reacting?
Her grin turned into a smirk. "Yeah, that's not surprising. Still, pretty impressive for your first day, if you could work around Grue's power and be immune to Regent's. Maybe a low-level trump as well? Anyway," she gestured to the other two, "as you've probably figured out, ren-faire guy is Regent, skull-mask is Grue, I'd introduce you to Bitch but I don't know what the hell she got up to, just as well, she's... not a people person. She'd probably order her dogs to attack you, and then you'd rip her dogs new assholes, and then she'd go ballistic and we'd have to break up the fight, she'd be useless and you'd be pissed... sorry, I'm rambling, aren't I?"
Grue hesitantly approached me, right hand extended. I just glared at him in response. "You're villains." I repeated.
He shrugged. "Good villains, if you'd believe it possible. All that just a few minutes ago," tilting his head to his right, "used to be a meth lab run by the Merchants 'til the ABB kicked them out and took it over. We shut that shit down, get it off the streets, bloody the ABB's noses a bit, make them think twice before ruining peoples' lives."
"Don't forget the loot," Regent chimed in. At my glare, he shrugged. "What, you think all of us have homes and family to go back to? We do what we have to to survive, being able to enjoy it's just a bonus."
"Regent has a point." Tattletale sighed. "You have a home and a loving, worried-sick father to go back to at the end of the day. For most of us, that's actually pretty rare. We're all damaged goods in one way or another. Some of us more than others."
"Why are you telling me all of this?"
She frowned. "Well, the rules were self-explanatory. You're new, and somebody needed to explain them to you before you'd end up as bad as Shadow Stalker." I locked eyes with her, and her grin returned. "Yeah, as heroes go, she's the worst. She's killed in the past, everyone knows it, yet the Protectorate keeps her on for some reason, even if the rest of the Wards hate her guts. I'm guessing she's the reason you haven't gone to the Wards yet."
I sighed and broke eye contact. "I know who Shadow Stalker is, and yes, she's the reason I have powers."
Tattletale nodded knowingly. "As I said, keep it to yourself. The rest of the rules are mainly about playing fair, letting your rivals withdraw if you've trounced them, keeping collateral damage to a minimum, so you don't go about destroying large swaths of the city for example. We have enough problems with Endbringers as it is. Oh, yeah, that's the final thing: when the Endbringer sirens sound, truce rules are in effect. If you're fighting villains, you stop, whatever grudges you're holding against another cape, you don't act upon them. You don't capitalize at all during a truce, because if the truce is broken..."
"Then neither side can trust the other, and fighting off the Endbringers becomes that much harder." I finished for her.
"Fast learner." She nodded. "So, since you're obviously having second thoughts about becoming a hero, particularly as you can't join the Wards with Shadow Stalker being present... wanna join us?"
A/N: Yes, cliffhanger! I hate them too! Well, I hate it when I am suffering them, but making others suffer?
Last edited:
Khaos
Baguette, wine and cheese
Yeah, it's much better than the first version, it feels much more like Taylor turned into Asuran rather than "random teenager with random trust issue" turned into Asuran.
I still feel that the end of the first chapter can be written better though, something should be added to describe her thought process went for "just getting away from all this shit". Because at this moment, all we have is guessing "because trust issue and panic", you have to be showing that.
I still feel that the end of the first chapter can be written better though, something should be added to describe her thought process went for "just getting away from all this shit". Because at this moment, all we have is guessing "because trust issue and panic", you have to be showing that.
ThatGazzer
Minds Eye Bind
- Location
- PNW
- Pronouns
- They/Them
You magnificent bastard.
Khaos
Baguette, wine and cheese
Does Dragon speak like this?
Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
*shrugs* I don't know. I'll change it if it's a glaring error on my part.Khaos said: