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
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.
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:
1.03
Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
Alteran Alternatives v2.0; Stargate Atlantis/Worm crossover
by Pyrion (and all the voices in his head telling him not to open an ice cream shop. Oh, and Robo Jesus, but don't mind him).
1.03
A few hours earlier…
"...Taylor Hebert is believed to have triggered as a Brute-Stranger. Oh, sir, I just started, so you haven't missed much."
Armsmaster nodded to Aegis, and then stood aside, closing the door behind him and letting the Wards' leader continue. A quick glance at the assembled Wards showed nothing remotely suspicious from the full members. He let his gaze linger on Shadow Stalker momentarily, though the girl didn't seem to notice, being too caught up in her own preoccupation.
"As I was saying, Taylor Hebert is believed to have been the victim of a bullying campaign lead by a group of girls at her school. Now, none of us go to Winslow, with the exception of Shadow Stalker, so I'm not surprised in the least that this is news to you all. Shadow Stalker, you go to Winslow, do you have anything to add?"
Everyone turned to see her reaction, and were summarily disappointed - Shadow Stalker appeared lost in thought, and was wringing her hands in apparent frustration. Gallant frowned, but held his tongue for the moment.
Aegis coughed, clearing his throat exaggeratedly. "Earth to Shadow Stalker!"
She shook herself out of her thoughts, then shrugged. "No, I don't know anything."
Lie, probability: 98.47%. Armsmaster squinted at the readout on his helmet's HUD, but gave no other indication that he cared. The other Wards, meanwhile, giggled and shook their heads at her expense.
"Right, okay. So, the police have their work cut out for them, apparently nobody at Winslow saw or heard anything, according to the police investigators, and knowing what we know about Winslow, that isn't at all surprising." Aegis rolled his eyes to the slight amusement of everyone, and a shake of the head from Shadow Stalker. "How this concerns us, however, is that Taylor Hebert has gone and remained missing since her trigger. The PRT is already involved in the search, and with the weekend coming up, that means we're going to be involved."
"I know I'm pointing out the obvious flaw in this plan, but..." Kid Win piped in, "if she's a Stranger, chances are we're not going to find her unless she wants to be found."
Aegis nodded. "Yeah, our 'involvement,'" using fingerquotes, "is mainly going to be a flag-waving operation. Since she's not likely to be visible, we're going to make ourselves visible. Very visible. Make the search look that much more serious. Besides, if she's in trouble, there are places we can go that police officers in vehicles cannot, not without serious effort at least. The Director doesn't really expect it to accomplish much, but since the police and PRT are already fully invested, she thinks it's a good idea if we play our part." He paused, looking over his assembled team, pausing in his glance at Shadow Stalker. "Any questions?"
The Wards collectively shook their heads in the negative.
"Alright, I'm done then. Armsmaster?"
"Only a few updates on the Taylor Hebert situation." He responded evenly. "First, she's not a Brute-Stranger." He sighed. "She's a Changer-Stranger."
He spared a quick glance at Shadow Stalker, his HUD pointing out a rapid spike in both her heart-rate and respiration. Confirmation, he thought to himself.
"How bad?" Aegis prompted him, the others caught in wide-eyed realization.
"I'm estimating her to be a Changer six at least." He sighed, letting this info sink in. "She was spotted at the Boardwalk branch of the library early this evening," he pulled out his smartphone, manipulated the screen for a moment, and then held the screen up, "wearing the form of this girl, whom we've identified as one 'Emma Barnes."
Shadow Stalker's breathing suddenly stopped for a moment, and Gallant gave her a brief glance of concern before turning back towards the podium. No reaction from the other Wards, beyond them quietly nodding. "It's assumed that the two are friends at school, beyond that though we don't have any additional information," he lied.
"Any idea why she was there?" Aegis asked.
Armsmaster looked Aegis straight in the eyes, and slowly nodded, "No." To his credit, Aegis got the hint and didn't press the issue further. Shadow Stalker, meanwhile, was too preoccupied with her own thoughts to pay attention to the exchange. A quick glance at the rest of the Wards, noting Gallant's slightly increased heart-rate and respiration, something to add, Gallant?, he thought to himself.
"If there's nothing else, Aegis, I'd like a word with you in private, the rest of you, get some sleep."
As he and Aegis approached a side-door to an adjoining office, Gallant approached. "Aegis, Armsmaster, we need to talk. It's urgent."
"Alright," Armsmaster nodded. The three entered the office, and Armsmaster shut the door behind him.
"It's Shadow Stalker. Something is seriously wrong with her. I've seen her get mad before, but never like this." He shook his head. "She's mad enough to kill someone, over what, I don't know, but--"
Aegis leaned against the table. "You picked that up too?" He turned to Armsmaster. "That's what this is about, isn't it?"
He nodded approvingly. "Good instincts, both of you." He sighed and folded his arms. "Shadow Stalker is somehow involved in Taylor Hebert's trigger event, as is this 'Emma Barnes' girl. To answer your prior question, Aegis, Taylor Hebert was at the library conducting searches on Parahumans Online for any info she could pull on Shadow Stalker. Among the search terms she used was 'Sophia Hess.'"
Both Wards exhaled simultaneously, and Aegis whispered "Shit..."
"Indeed. Somehow, Taylor Hebert has learned Shadow Stalker's real identity, and going by her reactions, she knows this too. Further investigation on Dragon's part revealed a link between Shadow Stalker and Emma Barnes - her father represented Shadow Stalker at her probation hearings."
Aegis shook his head. "So her awareness of Sophia being a cape predates Shadow Stalker's time with the Wards. Yet Taylor only finds out today, after she gets her powers, while she's wearing Emma's form?" He sighed. "Knowing Sophia, she probably caused all of this."
"That, and she's probably going to kill Taylor." Gallant finished with a frown.
Armsmaster nodded. "I'm expecting as much."
"Does the Director know?"
"Not yet, I needed to gauge Sophia's reactions for confirmation before taking this up the chain."
-----
Sophia seethed as Armsmaster, Aegis and Gallant stepped into a side-office. The three that knew the most about her current situation were also the three that had been giving her looks of concern the whole time. Armsmaster likely knew more than he was letting on, Aegis was rapidly figuring it out, and Gallant undoubtedly knew something was up from his power and the frequent side-glances he sent her way. The others? Clueless as usual, she thought to herself. Fucking Taylor, triggering from being stuck in a locker, as if that compared to... and then she violently stifled the memories. No, not here, not going to break down in front of these losers, I won't.
That Armsmaster hadn't opted to share his findings with all of the other Wards and Piggot before filling them in at this briefing was encouraging, in that he likely still knew who was still in charge and the deal that had been agreed to. Much as they hated to admit it, they needed her. So what if she had a body count? It's not like the rapists and drug pushers deserved to live. Piggot would take Armsmaster's report, acknowledge it, fume a bit over the bad PR that her actions would bring upon them all if word got out, and then ensure that word never got out. She always had. Winslow would do the same, afraid of losing their Ward, afraid of looking like idiots, afraid of getting sued, and Taylor? She chucked to herself. So that little shit has powers now, and knows I'm a Ward. Doesn't matter, she tries anything, she gets labeled as a villain, and I can kill villains. The thought brought a smirk to her face - Emma would just have to cope.
She abruptly took to her feet and stormed out past the remaining Wards, ignoring their cries of surprise. Down the hall to the elevator, down two flights to the Wards' dorm level. Nobody else there for the moment, which was just as well, as she'd have more time to consider her options. She marched past the bunk beds into the communal bath-shower room and started stripping off her costume and undergarments, savoring the cool air on her skin from the removal of her sweat-soaked clothes. A hot shower before bed, and hardly any worry beyond how much the Director would pitch of a fit, and what the chances were that she'd find Taylor before Taylor worked up the nerve to approach the PRT directly. It's just as well she knows now, if she had any thoughts about playing heroine, she won't come here and waste everyones' time.
As she showered, she vaguely heard the dorm doors open and shut repeatedly, but paid it no mind. The others knew well enough to not bother her, most of the time, and private showers were always treated as sacred, even despite the communal nature of the PRT's accommodations. She shut off the water, grabbed a towel from the rack outside and wiped herself dry before stepping out to take another couple of minutes donning clean undergarments and her costume once more. Just in case, though that was a force of habit the Protectorate drilled into everyone's minds as soon as they got their costumes. Standing outside, arms folded and a serious expression on his face, Aegis glared at her.
"What the hell were you thinking, Sophia?"
She turned and gave him an odd look. "What the fuck are you talking about now?"
He rolled his eyes, "Don't play coy with me, it doesn't suit you nor do I have the time to waste playing twenty questions with you. You had something to do with the Hebert girl's trigger," he walked over to confront her as she started donning her costume, "and Armsmaster's got it all figured out. That girl knows who you really are, and nobody outside of family's supposed to know who we really are."
"What's your point?" Sophia smirked, "girl's a weakling anyway."
Aegis nodded, and walked towards her, "so you do know more than you were willing to admit."
"What, that Taylor Hebert's a weak little cunt? How's that news to anyone? The whole school knows that!" Finished with most of her costume, she picked her facemask up and started strapping it back on, just in time for Aegis to grab her by the shoulder and shove her, back first, against the wall. "What the fuck, Carlos?!" She dropped the mask and shoved him back, not that it moved him very far.
"You don't get it, do you Sophia? You probably think Piggot's just gonna sweep this under the rug like she has all your other past fuck-ups." He shook his head. "Not this time, not with your identity compromised, and certainly not with you apparently having abused a normal so badly that she fucking triggered!" He shook his head. "She abides a lot of your bullshit, but we all know what lines you never cross with her."
By now the other Wards were standing outside the restroom watching the ensuing argument, all of them similarly wearing looks of disbelief, or in Clockblocker's case, vindication. She glared at them briefly, then rolled her eyes and knelt to pick up her mask. "Are you done yet, Carlos?"
He leaned back, nodding. "Yeah." Beat. "Yeah, I'm done with you." He walked out, obviously frustrated, the others backing off to give him room.
She mumbled a few choice words under her breath, then strapped her mask back on, ignoring the looks she kept getting from the other Wards. Doesn't fucking change anything, the Director's not gonna do shit, they need me too badly for that, she's said it herself, "Brockton Bay doesn't have enough heroes as it is, we need every hero we can get to counter all the villains this place attracts," they've all heard it, and... She stepped out to see Carlos talking into his phone, glancing back at her with a look of smug satisfaction on his face.
"Yeah, she did." He winked at her, earning a scowl. "Yes ma'am, I'm done as well. Alright." He snapped the phone shut, pocketed it, and smirked at her. "Just got off the phone with Piggot, you wouldn't believe how pissed-off she is with you. I wasn't kidding when I said I'm done with you, and she just made it official."
She gave him a look of sheer incredulity. "What the fuck are you talking about, Carlos?!"
"You're done, Sophia. As a Ward, Brockton Bay or otherwise. Armsmaster's on his way down now, and I bet he's as happy as we all are."
Sophia shook her head and scowled, that fat bitch just sold me out, and for what, a weakling like Taylor? Her hesitation only lasted a half-second, though, this was it. Swearing under her breath, she ran out the door and to her left towards the elevator, briefly smirking at the sounds of the Wards' collective surprise. Fuck Carlos, fuck Piggot, fuck Armsmaster..., she ran past the elevator and dashed into the adjacent stairwell, opting to ascend up its open center in shadow-form towards the top floor.
Down below, Aegis was the first one out, just in time to hear the stairwell door shut, and the 'ding' of the elevator reaching their floor. He dashed past the parting elevator doors and into the stairwell. Inside, there was no indication of which direction Sophia had gone, though down wasn't likely as there was nowhere for her to go there. He flew up the open center to the ground level and yanked the door open, only to hear the distant shutting of a door at the top. Combined with the heavy guard presence outside that seemed entirely too sedate for the circumstances, the top floor sounded far more likely. First, though, he needed to inform Armsmaster. He pulled his smartphone out and keyed a number on speed-dial.
"Armsmaster? Yeah, ground floor's clear, I'm heading for the roof." Back up the stairwell, the muffled sound of a scream that he immediately recognized as Sophia's echoed down the stairwell. Lockdown, Sophia, he chuckled to himself. Exiting the stairwell, he turned and flew down the hallway, stopping halfway at the intersection leading to the helipad exit. "End of the line, Sophia." He hovered, blocking the path behind him. She raised a crossbow with her left arm, and flickered into shadow momentarily. "What, did you think I--" he stopped mid-speech, sputtered and then looked down to find half of a tranquilizer bolt lodged in his armor, the rest of it having phased through. He coughed, dropped to the ground as his vision began to blur, his regeneration struggling to counter the poison as well as the damage caused by the bolt itself. Sophia raised her other arm and shifted to shadow for a split-second once more, another bolt suddenly appearing in his lower left chest cavity. Groaning, he leaned back and passed out.
She smirked, then shifted to shadow and dashed to him, back to normal, rifling through his pockets for his keycard. After several seconds, she found it, and dashed back to the roof exit. The keycard worked, so she tossed it aside along with her PRT-issued phone and keycard. Without sparing a glance behind her at the echoing footfalls of what were undoubtedly the other Wards, she took to shadow once more and leapt for an adjacent rooftop.
Fuck the PRT and the Wards, I don't need them, I've got other options... First thing on her mind was stocking up on crossbow bolts, specifically not the non-lethal stuff the PRT forced her to use. She'd plied her "trade" in this city long before the PRT got a hold of her, so she'd hidden and maintained a number of "stashes" on rooftops all over the city for those occasions she needed to take somebody out of the picture completely. Helped that between the stipend she got from the PRT, and the occasional help she had from a certain individual, she could afford to keep those stashes restocked and away from the prying eyes of her PRT handlers. Ammo first, then to place a call...
---
"You've got to be kidding." I deadpanned. Regent and Grue were chuckling and shaking their heads. "You're not kidding." I squinted at Tattletale. "You're villains. Was I not clear enough?"
Tattletale rolled her eyes behind the mask, and sighed. "You're not gonna get far working on your own, kid. Sure, there are a few independent heroes in Brockton Bay, but you don't hear much about them. The heroes you know about are the ones with teams. So what if we're villains, we're a team, we'd like you to join, and hell, we're not asking you to do evil things." She chuckled to herself, "if you think we're all about kicking puppies, wrecking peoples' lives and getting filthy rich while doing it, one: you kick a puppy in Bitch's presence and she'll rip you a new asshole, two: we only target those that deserve it, and try to avoid fighting the heroes whenever possible, and three: what's so bad about money?" She frowned in thought for a moment, and then nodded. "Right, it's just you and your dad, and he doesn't make much money, so you wouldn't really know. How much do you figure your dad makes?"
I shrugged. "Forty, maybe fifty thousand a year?"
"Try half that. Your dad works for the Dockworker's Union," I about gasped at how she picked that out, before remembering that this was her power speaking, "and work for them has pretty much dried up. Not much need for shipping by sea when Leviathan rolls into town and trashes everything. Yeah, your dad makes enough for the two of you to survive, but you go to the fuckin' library to get internet access. What if I were to tell you that the amount of money you'd make just from joining us would practically double your family's earnings, without being taxable income?"
"Careful there, Tats, you know tax fraud is a crime, and she's a hero..."
"Shut up Regent, nobody reports under-the-table earnings on their taxes."
"I'm just sayin', if she needed anything concrete to nail us to a wall, tax fraud is..." he started chuckling to himself, "oh who am I kidding?"
Even I couldn't help but chuckle at that.
"Aha! See? She does have malleable ethics!" Tattletale folded her arms. "So, now that we've established that you're not the shining white knight of income tax enforcement that Regent thought you were, how about this: you know what the Protectorate's capable of. They've got a pretty decent amount of power, Wards included, plus they have the PRT backing them. So why aren't they waging holy war on the Empire eighty-eight? They're fuckin' nazis, for crying out loud, everybody should be dogpiling them, just out of principle."
I frowned. "They have considerably more capes than the Protectorate, Wards and New Wave put together."
"True," she smirked, "but they could bring the Boston Protectorate and Wards here in under an hour. New York and DC in under two hours. Treat it like an Endbringer attack and they'd be available more-or-less instantaneously. Yet the nazis still hold a large chunk of Brockton Bay. Why do you think that is?"
"Hint, she just gave you the answer!" Regent whispered loudly.
She groaned and shook her head. "Regent, shut... you know, now that I think about it Regent, why ramp up the snark now?"
"As opposed to when we just met her? Come on, take one good look at her, and then tell me with a straight face that you weren't tempted to plead that we don't know anyone named 'John Connor.'"
Grue shook his head, stifling laughter and turning to walk away while Tattletale just stared at him for a moment. She took a deep breath.
"Okay, he makes an interesting point--" She started.
"Interesting point?!" He started laughing, "Skynet here made the interesting point, and then about stabbed us all with it!"
Another groan. "Okay, first, we are not calling her 'Skynet.'" She turned to me. "That having been said, if he's of any indication, you're going to have a bitch of a time marketing yourself as a hero when everyone who's seen that movie immediately thinks of it. Especially if you start calling yourself 'Skynet.' Now, where were we?"
"Endbringers." I answered with a shrug.
Her brow furrowed. "Endbringers? That's not what we... oh. Oh, right. Yeah, much as the so-called heroes would love nothing more than to wipe villainy off the face of the Earth, the truth of the matter is that when it comes to the real threats, there's no difference between heroes and villains. We know it, and they know it, which is why they choose to do nothing of substance when they most certainly could. We're simply not worth the trouble."
I nodded, her logic made a strange sort of sense. Still...
"You're still having doubts?" She shook her head, and turned to the two boys. "You two getting tired? Take the money, head back to base and wait for me there."
"You sure about this?" Grue approached her.
She nodded. "Yeah, I have a few more things to say before we part ways."
I watched silently as the two boys walked out with the money, again noting to myself how much of a failure I was as a hero that I was just letting two villains escape. Maybe this 'Tattletale' was right, maybe I'm not cut out for heroism.
She looked me straight in the eyes and nodded, almost knowingly. "I didn't want them around to hear this, because I understand it's kinda personal for you. Why you want to be a hero so badly. Come on."
---
Atop an apartment complex near Winslow, she pried open the side of an air conditioning unit, pulling out a dull red toolbox. Inside, she withdrew her preferred bolts as well as a wad of cash, and flipped through the latter to remove a folded slip of paper tucked between the bills. Written on it was a phone number she kept for "emergencies," from someone who had long ago attempted to recruit her into his operation and was reliable enough to call upon in case the shit hit the fan. The cash itself was the leftover payment for one of the rare jobs she'd taken from him, long ago, one requiring the assassination of someone she'd have killed anyway: a minor lieutenant of the ABB, the man was known most for his lavish parties at a seedy nightclub with a private suite at the top floor where he'd routinely retire to to get himself roaring drunk and laid. Typical gangster trash, really. He hadn't been missed.
Back to the business at hand, she sheathed her tranquilizer rounds, and reloaded both crossbows with regular bolts, before returning the toolbox to its hiding spot. She pulled out her phone, noting the text messages that had piled up since she'd muted the volume... several from Emma, mainly advising her that the police came to her home, asking questions about what happened at school that morning, if anyone there had seen Taylor since, etc. One from Piggot, so the fat bitch knows my private number, the message ordering her to return within a day "or else..." She deleted that one with a chuckle. Illuminating the slip of paper with her phone's screen, she dialed it hoping he'd still used this number.
After the third ring, he finally picked up.
"Shadow Stalker, it has been a while. I had heard some recent rumors regarding you and your situation, but still, to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?" How the fuck did the fucker hear anything? He obviously had more connections than he let on, and behind the professional veneer he almost sounded smug.
"Snakes, yeah, a little source of amusement for the past two years went and fuckin' triggered on me, PRT found out, straw that broke the camel's back, you know."
"These things do happen from time to time," he chuckled softly, sounding almost amused, and making Sophia wonder once again just who this fucker really was. "Still, that brings us back to what you would want from me? If you're phoning in regards to the offer I made to you last we spoke a year back, I am stepping up my operations within the city. If you're still looking for a more... permanent position and place within my organization, I would be more than willing to hear you out."
She sighed in relief, "Yeah, of course. Listen, Snakes, I got a bit of business to clean up first, but I may need some help on this one. Fuckin' bitch triggered as a changer-stranger, my bolts may not do much against that."
"Ah. I think I know what you need. It will cost you extra, you understand. I provide the tools, you complete your business, then we skip the negotiations and you accept my terms for continued employment. You know what they are."
It chafed, but they were terms she'd accept. Being his personal assassin still had benefits, even if she was signing up to be a full-time villain under someone else's employ. The PRT would consider her a villain soon enough anyways, regardless of what occurred. May as well go all out, and if nothing else she was willing to wait a bit before cutting his throat if she needed to.
"Alright."
"Good. You remember where you last got paid? I'll have some of my people deliver the tools you'll need to put down your little source of trouble. I assume you're going to track down this individual yourself?"
Damn right she was going to. "Yeah, finding her shouldn't be hard. I know where she lives, where she's been, and what forms she uses. It's only a matter of time."
Her attention diverted to an explosion in the distance, out towards the Boardwalk. Like a moth to flame? Could it be that easy? Taylor's house was in the neighborhood left of that, southeast by a few miles, and as a newbie cape there was a decent chance she'd be attracted to the explosion.
"I'll leave you to it then, Shadow Stalker. The tools will be available within the hour. Do keep in touch." He hung up.
Yeah, I will. She grinned under her mask.
---
"So Alexandria is your favorite cape. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised."
Nor was I, more for her continuing to read me like an open book. If nothing else, Tattletale was proving herself to be an excellent source of information, some of it being things even I wasn't aware of.
We walked out towards the edge of the docks, my peripheral sense devoid of threats, or anything else for that matter. Made sense, as we were nearing the ship graveyard, and there was practically nothing of value out here that anyone, even the gangs, wanted. The warehouses out this way had been largely gutted of anything and everything valuable, much like the ships themselves.
"What I want to know, though, is what do you expect Alexandria, or any of the heroes for that matter, to do for you?"
I stopped, pondering her question. "I... don't understand."
Tattletale shook her head, and gestured to the ship graveyard. "Look at this place. What have the heroes done to fix this, hmm? The docks are in a similar state of disarray. The whole city itself is more-or-less fending for itself, and you know where the heroes are? New Wave is holed up in the rich part of town, which isn't all that surprising seeing as they started out as lawyers. The Protectorate?" She pointed, and in the distance I could see where. "Yeah, off-shore. Like they're afraid to set foot inside the city."
I frowned. "What's your point?"
"Villains own this town, by and large. The heroes are afraid to do anything because it's the villains that are keeping everything running. The ABB and E88 largely keep to their own territories and otherwise fight amongst themselves. It's why the Protectorate takes on assholes like Shadow Stalker, they can't afford to be picky with the help they get. But I get the impression that you can. You want to be a hero, but you don't want to work with Shadow Stalker, or anyone else like her."
I nodded, and she grinned.
"That's why I'm asking you to join us. All a 'villain' is, ultimately, is someone who refuses to work with the heroes on their terms. We make our own terms. It's why the labels don't actually matter when it comes to the really serious threats. Do you think the Protectorate's going to care that Shadow Stalker did something to you, if you go to them and sign up? They're going to force you to work with her and to hell with what you want because they can't afford to shitcan her just to pick you up. It's all a numbers game to them. So let's say you work independent of them, and you don't play by their rules. You know what that makes you?"
"You're going to say 'a villain.'" I sighed.
"As I said before, you're a fast learner. So come on already, it's getting cold out here and if you're not gonna head home, then you need a place to stay for the night."
I shook my head. "It's just... if I go villain, it's gonna kill my dad. He already knows I'm a parahuman, and the PRT already knows who I am. I can't do that to him."
Tattletale shrugged, and the look she was giving me was one of sore resignation. "Alright, I tell you what. Since you're not running straight home to him, I can tell that you're still having doubts. Come back with me and just stay the night, think it over, and while you're at it, get to know us. We're not bad people. If you're still set on being a hero, then if nothing else, I'd rather have you as a friend and a potential ally than as an enemy. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough," I agreed.
I followed Tattletale back into what amounted to the maze of largely featureless alleys that made up the abandoned factories and warehouses of the Docks, peripheral sense ramped up to its limits. Mentally noting the locations of various landmarks, be they as simple as garbage dumpsters, graffiti, broken windows, anything and everything one could expect to not change much, if at all. We were ostensibly heading to the Undersiders' lair, so barring some major act of urban renewal, I was pretty sure I could find my way back in the future even if approaching from a different direction. We ended up stopping at a large three-story abandoned factory bearing the name of "Redmond Welding," and I filed that tidbit away for future reference. Peripheral sense flared up on approach - Grue and Regent were inside, and more details filtered in as I got closer. Most of the activity was on the top floor, and judging from what my sense indicated was electrical wiring, the overall layout was of a large office hastily converted into a living room, kitchen and communal sleeping area.
As we walked up the stairs to the loft, I realized I was more-or-less right on that mark. Regent and Grue stood from the couch in front of an absolutely gigantic television, even bigger than the ones at Emma's house, and I immediately stifled the frown that was beginning to form on my 'face.' Regent jabbed Grue in the chest with his right elbow and held out a hand towards Grue. "Pay up."
Tattletale chuckled and shook her head. "She's not joining us, not yet at least."
"Damnit!" Regent shook his head and sat back down, mumbling to himself. Grue, meanwhile, looked more annoyed than anything, but thankfully it was aimed at Tattletale, not me. She caught his look as well, and nodded.
"Yeah, Grue, we need to talk. Kid, just... make yourself at home, and we need to figure out a better name for you, we are not calling you 'Skynet.'" She reiterated, much to Regent's amusement. The two villains left the way we came in, and I got the distinct impression that I wasn't really welcome here. Consequently, I stood by the door, ready to bolt at a moment's notice. The place was certainly big enough to be a home-away-from-home, but that annoying little voice in the back of my head kept reminding me that this was a villains' lair.
Yet it looked so... normal. Well, television aside, that alone had to have cost several months worth of what my dad earned, so these people obviously weren't short of funds. Regent glanced at me from the couch and chuckled. "So what, you're just gonna stand there? Come on, sit down!" He slapped the couch next to him. I shrugged, and walked to the couch.
"So, Skynet, you don't mind if I call you that, do you?"
I shrugged as I sat down. "It bothers Tattletale much more than it bothers me. I'm not going to use it as a cape name though."
He laughed at that. "That's cool, just sort of an in-house nickname then. So whaddya think of the place?"
"It's... a lot more normal than I expected for a villains' lair." What was I supposed to say, that it could feel like home even if it obviously wasn't? In some alternate universe, I could see myself getting comfortable here, treating these people as friends, even being a villain myself just for the distraction.
He nodded. "Yeah, we're not like the big-name gangs. Nightclubs with booze and strippers and drugs, guns, dogfights, all that nonsense. It's just us four... well, three, you haven't met Bitch yet. She's... well, she's not a people-person, and reacts poorly to change, if you know what I mean."
"Any advice?"
"Yeah, it's not Bitch you should be concerned with, it's her dogs. She trains 'em, so they respond to her commands, but they're still dogs, minds of their own, et-cetera. If you're gonna go all stabby, try to avoid killing them," he chuckled to himself, "or us for that matter. Hell, if you're made of liquid metal, it's more likely that her dogs can't actually hurt you, and you'd look so much more badass shrugging them off without any concern. You know, save the stabbing for John Connor and the real threats."
I rolled my eyes.
"Speaking of, you're a shapeshifter, but I haven't actually seen you take someone else's form. Can you actually--?"
I let my form waver, and assumed a mirror image of his form. His jaw dropped underneath his mask.
"Shit, girl, we've hardly known each-other for more than a couple hours and you got me perfectly."
I smirked, and answered in his voice, "I can do voices too."
He shook his head, probably in shock. "That is both awesome and creepy as fuck. You know how much havoc you could wreak with that power? If you were a solo act, the other gangs would be slaughtering themselves in paranoia to root out 'that damned shapeshifter.' I'm guessing you can't do powers though, right? I mean, if you could, that'd just be bullshit."
"Don't think so," I shrugged, "as far as I know, I'm just a shapeshifter."
I could see him easing out of his shock. "As far as you know, right, and you've only been at this for less than a day. I can see why Tats is pulling out all the stops to bring you on board."
Peripheral sense pinged - two people, Grue and Tattletale, stomping up the stairs to the loft. Regent and I shared a masked look at each-other before we both leaned over the couch, me mirroring his movements.
Grue walked in, followed shortly by Tattletale, stared at both of us, and shook his head. "Alright, very funny. Regents, the new girl can stay for the night, I'm not totally convinced that this is a good idea, but Tattletale's vouching for her."
Tattletale looked us both over briefly, then looked at me with a grin. "She's the one on the right."
"How do you--?" I started, to which her grin only got wider.
"I'm psychic."
by Pyrion (and all the voices in his head telling him not to open an ice cream shop. Oh, and Robo Jesus, but don't mind him).
1.03
A few hours earlier…
"...Taylor Hebert is believed to have triggered as a Brute-Stranger. Oh, sir, I just started, so you haven't missed much."
Armsmaster nodded to Aegis, and then stood aside, closing the door behind him and letting the Wards' leader continue. A quick glance at the assembled Wards showed nothing remotely suspicious from the full members. He let his gaze linger on Shadow Stalker momentarily, though the girl didn't seem to notice, being too caught up in her own preoccupation.
"As I was saying, Taylor Hebert is believed to have been the victim of a bullying campaign lead by a group of girls at her school. Now, none of us go to Winslow, with the exception of Shadow Stalker, so I'm not surprised in the least that this is news to you all. Shadow Stalker, you go to Winslow, do you have anything to add?"
Everyone turned to see her reaction, and were summarily disappointed - Shadow Stalker appeared lost in thought, and was wringing her hands in apparent frustration. Gallant frowned, but held his tongue for the moment.
Aegis coughed, clearing his throat exaggeratedly. "Earth to Shadow Stalker!"
She shook herself out of her thoughts, then shrugged. "No, I don't know anything."
Lie, probability: 98.47%. Armsmaster squinted at the readout on his helmet's HUD, but gave no other indication that he cared. The other Wards, meanwhile, giggled and shook their heads at her expense.
"Right, okay. So, the police have their work cut out for them, apparently nobody at Winslow saw or heard anything, according to the police investigators, and knowing what we know about Winslow, that isn't at all surprising." Aegis rolled his eyes to the slight amusement of everyone, and a shake of the head from Shadow Stalker. "How this concerns us, however, is that Taylor Hebert has gone and remained missing since her trigger. The PRT is already involved in the search, and with the weekend coming up, that means we're going to be involved."
"I know I'm pointing out the obvious flaw in this plan, but..." Kid Win piped in, "if she's a Stranger, chances are we're not going to find her unless she wants to be found."
Aegis nodded. "Yeah, our 'involvement,'" using fingerquotes, "is mainly going to be a flag-waving operation. Since she's not likely to be visible, we're going to make ourselves visible. Very visible. Make the search look that much more serious. Besides, if she's in trouble, there are places we can go that police officers in vehicles cannot, not without serious effort at least. The Director doesn't really expect it to accomplish much, but since the police and PRT are already fully invested, she thinks it's a good idea if we play our part." He paused, looking over his assembled team, pausing in his glance at Shadow Stalker. "Any questions?"
The Wards collectively shook their heads in the negative.
"Alright, I'm done then. Armsmaster?"
"Only a few updates on the Taylor Hebert situation." He responded evenly. "First, she's not a Brute-Stranger." He sighed. "She's a Changer-Stranger."
He spared a quick glance at Shadow Stalker, his HUD pointing out a rapid spike in both her heart-rate and respiration. Confirmation, he thought to himself.
"How bad?" Aegis prompted him, the others caught in wide-eyed realization.
"I'm estimating her to be a Changer six at least." He sighed, letting this info sink in. "She was spotted at the Boardwalk branch of the library early this evening," he pulled out his smartphone, manipulated the screen for a moment, and then held the screen up, "wearing the form of this girl, whom we've identified as one 'Emma Barnes."
Shadow Stalker's breathing suddenly stopped for a moment, and Gallant gave her a brief glance of concern before turning back towards the podium. No reaction from the other Wards, beyond them quietly nodding. "It's assumed that the two are friends at school, beyond that though we don't have any additional information," he lied.
"Any idea why she was there?" Aegis asked.
Armsmaster looked Aegis straight in the eyes, and slowly nodded, "No." To his credit, Aegis got the hint and didn't press the issue further. Shadow Stalker, meanwhile, was too preoccupied with her own thoughts to pay attention to the exchange. A quick glance at the rest of the Wards, noting Gallant's slightly increased heart-rate and respiration, something to add, Gallant?, he thought to himself.
"If there's nothing else, Aegis, I'd like a word with you in private, the rest of you, get some sleep."
As he and Aegis approached a side-door to an adjoining office, Gallant approached. "Aegis, Armsmaster, we need to talk. It's urgent."
"Alright," Armsmaster nodded. The three entered the office, and Armsmaster shut the door behind him.
"It's Shadow Stalker. Something is seriously wrong with her. I've seen her get mad before, but never like this." He shook his head. "She's mad enough to kill someone, over what, I don't know, but--"
Aegis leaned against the table. "You picked that up too?" He turned to Armsmaster. "That's what this is about, isn't it?"
He nodded approvingly. "Good instincts, both of you." He sighed and folded his arms. "Shadow Stalker is somehow involved in Taylor Hebert's trigger event, as is this 'Emma Barnes' girl. To answer your prior question, Aegis, Taylor Hebert was at the library conducting searches on Parahumans Online for any info she could pull on Shadow Stalker. Among the search terms she used was 'Sophia Hess.'"
Both Wards exhaled simultaneously, and Aegis whispered "Shit..."
"Indeed. Somehow, Taylor Hebert has learned Shadow Stalker's real identity, and going by her reactions, she knows this too. Further investigation on Dragon's part revealed a link between Shadow Stalker and Emma Barnes - her father represented Shadow Stalker at her probation hearings."
Aegis shook his head. "So her awareness of Sophia being a cape predates Shadow Stalker's time with the Wards. Yet Taylor only finds out today, after she gets her powers, while she's wearing Emma's form?" He sighed. "Knowing Sophia, she probably caused all of this."
"That, and she's probably going to kill Taylor." Gallant finished with a frown.
Armsmaster nodded. "I'm expecting as much."
"Does the Director know?"
"Not yet, I needed to gauge Sophia's reactions for confirmation before taking this up the chain."
-----
Sophia seethed as Armsmaster, Aegis and Gallant stepped into a side-office. The three that knew the most about her current situation were also the three that had been giving her looks of concern the whole time. Armsmaster likely knew more than he was letting on, Aegis was rapidly figuring it out, and Gallant undoubtedly knew something was up from his power and the frequent side-glances he sent her way. The others? Clueless as usual, she thought to herself. Fucking Taylor, triggering from being stuck in a locker, as if that compared to... and then she violently stifled the memories. No, not here, not going to break down in front of these losers, I won't.
That Armsmaster hadn't opted to share his findings with all of the other Wards and Piggot before filling them in at this briefing was encouraging, in that he likely still knew who was still in charge and the deal that had been agreed to. Much as they hated to admit it, they needed her. So what if she had a body count? It's not like the rapists and drug pushers deserved to live. Piggot would take Armsmaster's report, acknowledge it, fume a bit over the bad PR that her actions would bring upon them all if word got out, and then ensure that word never got out. She always had. Winslow would do the same, afraid of losing their Ward, afraid of looking like idiots, afraid of getting sued, and Taylor? She chucked to herself. So that little shit has powers now, and knows I'm a Ward. Doesn't matter, she tries anything, she gets labeled as a villain, and I can kill villains. The thought brought a smirk to her face - Emma would just have to cope.
She abruptly took to her feet and stormed out past the remaining Wards, ignoring their cries of surprise. Down the hall to the elevator, down two flights to the Wards' dorm level. Nobody else there for the moment, which was just as well, as she'd have more time to consider her options. She marched past the bunk beds into the communal bath-shower room and started stripping off her costume and undergarments, savoring the cool air on her skin from the removal of her sweat-soaked clothes. A hot shower before bed, and hardly any worry beyond how much the Director would pitch of a fit, and what the chances were that she'd find Taylor before Taylor worked up the nerve to approach the PRT directly. It's just as well she knows now, if she had any thoughts about playing heroine, she won't come here and waste everyones' time.
As she showered, she vaguely heard the dorm doors open and shut repeatedly, but paid it no mind. The others knew well enough to not bother her, most of the time, and private showers were always treated as sacred, even despite the communal nature of the PRT's accommodations. She shut off the water, grabbed a towel from the rack outside and wiped herself dry before stepping out to take another couple of minutes donning clean undergarments and her costume once more. Just in case, though that was a force of habit the Protectorate drilled into everyone's minds as soon as they got their costumes. Standing outside, arms folded and a serious expression on his face, Aegis glared at her.
"What the hell were you thinking, Sophia?"
She turned and gave him an odd look. "What the fuck are you talking about now?"
He rolled his eyes, "Don't play coy with me, it doesn't suit you nor do I have the time to waste playing twenty questions with you. You had something to do with the Hebert girl's trigger," he walked over to confront her as she started donning her costume, "and Armsmaster's got it all figured out. That girl knows who you really are, and nobody outside of family's supposed to know who we really are."
"What's your point?" Sophia smirked, "girl's a weakling anyway."
Aegis nodded, and walked towards her, "so you do know more than you were willing to admit."
"What, that Taylor Hebert's a weak little cunt? How's that news to anyone? The whole school knows that!" Finished with most of her costume, she picked her facemask up and started strapping it back on, just in time for Aegis to grab her by the shoulder and shove her, back first, against the wall. "What the fuck, Carlos?!" She dropped the mask and shoved him back, not that it moved him very far.
"You don't get it, do you Sophia? You probably think Piggot's just gonna sweep this under the rug like she has all your other past fuck-ups." He shook his head. "Not this time, not with your identity compromised, and certainly not with you apparently having abused a normal so badly that she fucking triggered!" He shook his head. "She abides a lot of your bullshit, but we all know what lines you never cross with her."
By now the other Wards were standing outside the restroom watching the ensuing argument, all of them similarly wearing looks of disbelief, or in Clockblocker's case, vindication. She glared at them briefly, then rolled her eyes and knelt to pick up her mask. "Are you done yet, Carlos?"
He leaned back, nodding. "Yeah." Beat. "Yeah, I'm done with you." He walked out, obviously frustrated, the others backing off to give him room.
She mumbled a few choice words under her breath, then strapped her mask back on, ignoring the looks she kept getting from the other Wards. Doesn't fucking change anything, the Director's not gonna do shit, they need me too badly for that, she's said it herself, "Brockton Bay doesn't have enough heroes as it is, we need every hero we can get to counter all the villains this place attracts," they've all heard it, and... She stepped out to see Carlos talking into his phone, glancing back at her with a look of smug satisfaction on his face.
"Yeah, she did." He winked at her, earning a scowl. "Yes ma'am, I'm done as well. Alright." He snapped the phone shut, pocketed it, and smirked at her. "Just got off the phone with Piggot, you wouldn't believe how pissed-off she is with you. I wasn't kidding when I said I'm done with you, and she just made it official."
She gave him a look of sheer incredulity. "What the fuck are you talking about, Carlos?!"
"You're done, Sophia. As a Ward, Brockton Bay or otherwise. Armsmaster's on his way down now, and I bet he's as happy as we all are."
Sophia shook her head and scowled, that fat bitch just sold me out, and for what, a weakling like Taylor? Her hesitation only lasted a half-second, though, this was it. Swearing under her breath, she ran out the door and to her left towards the elevator, briefly smirking at the sounds of the Wards' collective surprise. Fuck Carlos, fuck Piggot, fuck Armsmaster..., she ran past the elevator and dashed into the adjacent stairwell, opting to ascend up its open center in shadow-form towards the top floor.
Down below, Aegis was the first one out, just in time to hear the stairwell door shut, and the 'ding' of the elevator reaching their floor. He dashed past the parting elevator doors and into the stairwell. Inside, there was no indication of which direction Sophia had gone, though down wasn't likely as there was nowhere for her to go there. He flew up the open center to the ground level and yanked the door open, only to hear the distant shutting of a door at the top. Combined with the heavy guard presence outside that seemed entirely too sedate for the circumstances, the top floor sounded far more likely. First, though, he needed to inform Armsmaster. He pulled his smartphone out and keyed a number on speed-dial.
"Armsmaster? Yeah, ground floor's clear, I'm heading for the roof." Back up the stairwell, the muffled sound of a scream that he immediately recognized as Sophia's echoed down the stairwell. Lockdown, Sophia, he chuckled to himself. Exiting the stairwell, he turned and flew down the hallway, stopping halfway at the intersection leading to the helipad exit. "End of the line, Sophia." He hovered, blocking the path behind him. She raised a crossbow with her left arm, and flickered into shadow momentarily. "What, did you think I--" he stopped mid-speech, sputtered and then looked down to find half of a tranquilizer bolt lodged in his armor, the rest of it having phased through. He coughed, dropped to the ground as his vision began to blur, his regeneration struggling to counter the poison as well as the damage caused by the bolt itself. Sophia raised her other arm and shifted to shadow for a split-second once more, another bolt suddenly appearing in his lower left chest cavity. Groaning, he leaned back and passed out.
She smirked, then shifted to shadow and dashed to him, back to normal, rifling through his pockets for his keycard. After several seconds, she found it, and dashed back to the roof exit. The keycard worked, so she tossed it aside along with her PRT-issued phone and keycard. Without sparing a glance behind her at the echoing footfalls of what were undoubtedly the other Wards, she took to shadow once more and leapt for an adjacent rooftop.
Fuck the PRT and the Wards, I don't need them, I've got other options... First thing on her mind was stocking up on crossbow bolts, specifically not the non-lethal stuff the PRT forced her to use. She'd plied her "trade" in this city long before the PRT got a hold of her, so she'd hidden and maintained a number of "stashes" on rooftops all over the city for those occasions she needed to take somebody out of the picture completely. Helped that between the stipend she got from the PRT, and the occasional help she had from a certain individual, she could afford to keep those stashes restocked and away from the prying eyes of her PRT handlers. Ammo first, then to place a call...
---
"You've got to be kidding." I deadpanned. Regent and Grue were chuckling and shaking their heads. "You're not kidding." I squinted at Tattletale. "You're villains. Was I not clear enough?"
Tattletale rolled her eyes behind the mask, and sighed. "You're not gonna get far working on your own, kid. Sure, there are a few independent heroes in Brockton Bay, but you don't hear much about them. The heroes you know about are the ones with teams. So what if we're villains, we're a team, we'd like you to join, and hell, we're not asking you to do evil things." She chuckled to herself, "if you think we're all about kicking puppies, wrecking peoples' lives and getting filthy rich while doing it, one: you kick a puppy in Bitch's presence and she'll rip you a new asshole, two: we only target those that deserve it, and try to avoid fighting the heroes whenever possible, and three: what's so bad about money?" She frowned in thought for a moment, and then nodded. "Right, it's just you and your dad, and he doesn't make much money, so you wouldn't really know. How much do you figure your dad makes?"
I shrugged. "Forty, maybe fifty thousand a year?"
"Try half that. Your dad works for the Dockworker's Union," I about gasped at how she picked that out, before remembering that this was her power speaking, "and work for them has pretty much dried up. Not much need for shipping by sea when Leviathan rolls into town and trashes everything. Yeah, your dad makes enough for the two of you to survive, but you go to the fuckin' library to get internet access. What if I were to tell you that the amount of money you'd make just from joining us would practically double your family's earnings, without being taxable income?"
"Careful there, Tats, you know tax fraud is a crime, and she's a hero..."
"Shut up Regent, nobody reports under-the-table earnings on their taxes."
"I'm just sayin', if she needed anything concrete to nail us to a wall, tax fraud is..." he started chuckling to himself, "oh who am I kidding?"
Even I couldn't help but chuckle at that.
"Aha! See? She does have malleable ethics!" Tattletale folded her arms. "So, now that we've established that you're not the shining white knight of income tax enforcement that Regent thought you were, how about this: you know what the Protectorate's capable of. They've got a pretty decent amount of power, Wards included, plus they have the PRT backing them. So why aren't they waging holy war on the Empire eighty-eight? They're fuckin' nazis, for crying out loud, everybody should be dogpiling them, just out of principle."
I frowned. "They have considerably more capes than the Protectorate, Wards and New Wave put together."
"True," she smirked, "but they could bring the Boston Protectorate and Wards here in under an hour. New York and DC in under two hours. Treat it like an Endbringer attack and they'd be available more-or-less instantaneously. Yet the nazis still hold a large chunk of Brockton Bay. Why do you think that is?"
"Hint, she just gave you the answer!" Regent whispered loudly.
She groaned and shook her head. "Regent, shut... you know, now that I think about it Regent, why ramp up the snark now?"
"As opposed to when we just met her? Come on, take one good look at her, and then tell me with a straight face that you weren't tempted to plead that we don't know anyone named 'John Connor.'"
Grue shook his head, stifling laughter and turning to walk away while Tattletale just stared at him for a moment. She took a deep breath.
"Okay, he makes an interesting point--" She started.
"Interesting point?!" He started laughing, "Skynet here made the interesting point, and then about stabbed us all with it!"
Another groan. "Okay, first, we are not calling her 'Skynet.'" She turned to me. "That having been said, if he's of any indication, you're going to have a bitch of a time marketing yourself as a hero when everyone who's seen that movie immediately thinks of it. Especially if you start calling yourself 'Skynet.' Now, where were we?"
"Endbringers." I answered with a shrug.
Her brow furrowed. "Endbringers? That's not what we... oh. Oh, right. Yeah, much as the so-called heroes would love nothing more than to wipe villainy off the face of the Earth, the truth of the matter is that when it comes to the real threats, there's no difference between heroes and villains. We know it, and they know it, which is why they choose to do nothing of substance when they most certainly could. We're simply not worth the trouble."
I nodded, her logic made a strange sort of sense. Still...
"You're still having doubts?" She shook her head, and turned to the two boys. "You two getting tired? Take the money, head back to base and wait for me there."
"You sure about this?" Grue approached her.
She nodded. "Yeah, I have a few more things to say before we part ways."
I watched silently as the two boys walked out with the money, again noting to myself how much of a failure I was as a hero that I was just letting two villains escape. Maybe this 'Tattletale' was right, maybe I'm not cut out for heroism.
She looked me straight in the eyes and nodded, almost knowingly. "I didn't want them around to hear this, because I understand it's kinda personal for you. Why you want to be a hero so badly. Come on."
---
Atop an apartment complex near Winslow, she pried open the side of an air conditioning unit, pulling out a dull red toolbox. Inside, she withdrew her preferred bolts as well as a wad of cash, and flipped through the latter to remove a folded slip of paper tucked between the bills. Written on it was a phone number she kept for "emergencies," from someone who had long ago attempted to recruit her into his operation and was reliable enough to call upon in case the shit hit the fan. The cash itself was the leftover payment for one of the rare jobs she'd taken from him, long ago, one requiring the assassination of someone she'd have killed anyway: a minor lieutenant of the ABB, the man was known most for his lavish parties at a seedy nightclub with a private suite at the top floor where he'd routinely retire to to get himself roaring drunk and laid. Typical gangster trash, really. He hadn't been missed.
Back to the business at hand, she sheathed her tranquilizer rounds, and reloaded both crossbows with regular bolts, before returning the toolbox to its hiding spot. She pulled out her phone, noting the text messages that had piled up since she'd muted the volume... several from Emma, mainly advising her that the police came to her home, asking questions about what happened at school that morning, if anyone there had seen Taylor since, etc. One from Piggot, so the fat bitch knows my private number, the message ordering her to return within a day "or else..." She deleted that one with a chuckle. Illuminating the slip of paper with her phone's screen, she dialed it hoping he'd still used this number.
After the third ring, he finally picked up.
"Shadow Stalker, it has been a while. I had heard some recent rumors regarding you and your situation, but still, to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?" How the fuck did the fucker hear anything? He obviously had more connections than he let on, and behind the professional veneer he almost sounded smug.
"Snakes, yeah, a little source of amusement for the past two years went and fuckin' triggered on me, PRT found out, straw that broke the camel's back, you know."
"These things do happen from time to time," he chuckled softly, sounding almost amused, and making Sophia wonder once again just who this fucker really was. "Still, that brings us back to what you would want from me? If you're phoning in regards to the offer I made to you last we spoke a year back, I am stepping up my operations within the city. If you're still looking for a more... permanent position and place within my organization, I would be more than willing to hear you out."
She sighed in relief, "Yeah, of course. Listen, Snakes, I got a bit of business to clean up first, but I may need some help on this one. Fuckin' bitch triggered as a changer-stranger, my bolts may not do much against that."
"Ah. I think I know what you need. It will cost you extra, you understand. I provide the tools, you complete your business, then we skip the negotiations and you accept my terms for continued employment. You know what they are."
It chafed, but they were terms she'd accept. Being his personal assassin still had benefits, even if she was signing up to be a full-time villain under someone else's employ. The PRT would consider her a villain soon enough anyways, regardless of what occurred. May as well go all out, and if nothing else she was willing to wait a bit before cutting his throat if she needed to.
"Alright."
"Good. You remember where you last got paid? I'll have some of my people deliver the tools you'll need to put down your little source of trouble. I assume you're going to track down this individual yourself?"
Damn right she was going to. "Yeah, finding her shouldn't be hard. I know where she lives, where she's been, and what forms she uses. It's only a matter of time."
Her attention diverted to an explosion in the distance, out towards the Boardwalk. Like a moth to flame? Could it be that easy? Taylor's house was in the neighborhood left of that, southeast by a few miles, and as a newbie cape there was a decent chance she'd be attracted to the explosion.
"I'll leave you to it then, Shadow Stalker. The tools will be available within the hour. Do keep in touch." He hung up.
Yeah, I will. She grinned under her mask.
---
"So Alexandria is your favorite cape. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised."
Nor was I, more for her continuing to read me like an open book. If nothing else, Tattletale was proving herself to be an excellent source of information, some of it being things even I wasn't aware of.
We walked out towards the edge of the docks, my peripheral sense devoid of threats, or anything else for that matter. Made sense, as we were nearing the ship graveyard, and there was practically nothing of value out here that anyone, even the gangs, wanted. The warehouses out this way had been largely gutted of anything and everything valuable, much like the ships themselves.
"What I want to know, though, is what do you expect Alexandria, or any of the heroes for that matter, to do for you?"
I stopped, pondering her question. "I... don't understand."
Tattletale shook her head, and gestured to the ship graveyard. "Look at this place. What have the heroes done to fix this, hmm? The docks are in a similar state of disarray. The whole city itself is more-or-less fending for itself, and you know where the heroes are? New Wave is holed up in the rich part of town, which isn't all that surprising seeing as they started out as lawyers. The Protectorate?" She pointed, and in the distance I could see where. "Yeah, off-shore. Like they're afraid to set foot inside the city."
I frowned. "What's your point?"
"Villains own this town, by and large. The heroes are afraid to do anything because it's the villains that are keeping everything running. The ABB and E88 largely keep to their own territories and otherwise fight amongst themselves. It's why the Protectorate takes on assholes like Shadow Stalker, they can't afford to be picky with the help they get. But I get the impression that you can. You want to be a hero, but you don't want to work with Shadow Stalker, or anyone else like her."
I nodded, and she grinned.
"That's why I'm asking you to join us. All a 'villain' is, ultimately, is someone who refuses to work with the heroes on their terms. We make our own terms. It's why the labels don't actually matter when it comes to the really serious threats. Do you think the Protectorate's going to care that Shadow Stalker did something to you, if you go to them and sign up? They're going to force you to work with her and to hell with what you want because they can't afford to shitcan her just to pick you up. It's all a numbers game to them. So let's say you work independent of them, and you don't play by their rules. You know what that makes you?"
"You're going to say 'a villain.'" I sighed.
"As I said before, you're a fast learner. So come on already, it's getting cold out here and if you're not gonna head home, then you need a place to stay for the night."
I shook my head. "It's just... if I go villain, it's gonna kill my dad. He already knows I'm a parahuman, and the PRT already knows who I am. I can't do that to him."
Tattletale shrugged, and the look she was giving me was one of sore resignation. "Alright, I tell you what. Since you're not running straight home to him, I can tell that you're still having doubts. Come back with me and just stay the night, think it over, and while you're at it, get to know us. We're not bad people. If you're still set on being a hero, then if nothing else, I'd rather have you as a friend and a potential ally than as an enemy. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough," I agreed.
I followed Tattletale back into what amounted to the maze of largely featureless alleys that made up the abandoned factories and warehouses of the Docks, peripheral sense ramped up to its limits. Mentally noting the locations of various landmarks, be they as simple as garbage dumpsters, graffiti, broken windows, anything and everything one could expect to not change much, if at all. We were ostensibly heading to the Undersiders' lair, so barring some major act of urban renewal, I was pretty sure I could find my way back in the future even if approaching from a different direction. We ended up stopping at a large three-story abandoned factory bearing the name of "Redmond Welding," and I filed that tidbit away for future reference. Peripheral sense flared up on approach - Grue and Regent were inside, and more details filtered in as I got closer. Most of the activity was on the top floor, and judging from what my sense indicated was electrical wiring, the overall layout was of a large office hastily converted into a living room, kitchen and communal sleeping area.
As we walked up the stairs to the loft, I realized I was more-or-less right on that mark. Regent and Grue stood from the couch in front of an absolutely gigantic television, even bigger than the ones at Emma's house, and I immediately stifled the frown that was beginning to form on my 'face.' Regent jabbed Grue in the chest with his right elbow and held out a hand towards Grue. "Pay up."
Tattletale chuckled and shook her head. "She's not joining us, not yet at least."
"Damnit!" Regent shook his head and sat back down, mumbling to himself. Grue, meanwhile, looked more annoyed than anything, but thankfully it was aimed at Tattletale, not me. She caught his look as well, and nodded.
"Yeah, Grue, we need to talk. Kid, just... make yourself at home, and we need to figure out a better name for you, we are not calling you 'Skynet.'" She reiterated, much to Regent's amusement. The two villains left the way we came in, and I got the distinct impression that I wasn't really welcome here. Consequently, I stood by the door, ready to bolt at a moment's notice. The place was certainly big enough to be a home-away-from-home, but that annoying little voice in the back of my head kept reminding me that this was a villains' lair.
Yet it looked so... normal. Well, television aside, that alone had to have cost several months worth of what my dad earned, so these people obviously weren't short of funds. Regent glanced at me from the couch and chuckled. "So what, you're just gonna stand there? Come on, sit down!" He slapped the couch next to him. I shrugged, and walked to the couch.
"So, Skynet, you don't mind if I call you that, do you?"
I shrugged as I sat down. "It bothers Tattletale much more than it bothers me. I'm not going to use it as a cape name though."
He laughed at that. "That's cool, just sort of an in-house nickname then. So whaddya think of the place?"
"It's... a lot more normal than I expected for a villains' lair." What was I supposed to say, that it could feel like home even if it obviously wasn't? In some alternate universe, I could see myself getting comfortable here, treating these people as friends, even being a villain myself just for the distraction.
He nodded. "Yeah, we're not like the big-name gangs. Nightclubs with booze and strippers and drugs, guns, dogfights, all that nonsense. It's just us four... well, three, you haven't met Bitch yet. She's... well, she's not a people-person, and reacts poorly to change, if you know what I mean."
"Any advice?"
"Yeah, it's not Bitch you should be concerned with, it's her dogs. She trains 'em, so they respond to her commands, but they're still dogs, minds of their own, et-cetera. If you're gonna go all stabby, try to avoid killing them," he chuckled to himself, "or us for that matter. Hell, if you're made of liquid metal, it's more likely that her dogs can't actually hurt you, and you'd look so much more badass shrugging them off without any concern. You know, save the stabbing for John Connor and the real threats."
I rolled my eyes.
"Speaking of, you're a shapeshifter, but I haven't actually seen you take someone else's form. Can you actually--?"
I let my form waver, and assumed a mirror image of his form. His jaw dropped underneath his mask.
"Shit, girl, we've hardly known each-other for more than a couple hours and you got me perfectly."
I smirked, and answered in his voice, "I can do voices too."
He shook his head, probably in shock. "That is both awesome and creepy as fuck. You know how much havoc you could wreak with that power? If you were a solo act, the other gangs would be slaughtering themselves in paranoia to root out 'that damned shapeshifter.' I'm guessing you can't do powers though, right? I mean, if you could, that'd just be bullshit."
"Don't think so," I shrugged, "as far as I know, I'm just a shapeshifter."
I could see him easing out of his shock. "As far as you know, right, and you've only been at this for less than a day. I can see why Tats is pulling out all the stops to bring you on board."
Peripheral sense pinged - two people, Grue and Tattletale, stomping up the stairs to the loft. Regent and I shared a masked look at each-other before we both leaned over the couch, me mirroring his movements.
Grue walked in, followed shortly by Tattletale, stared at both of us, and shook his head. "Alright, very funny. Regents, the new girl can stay for the night, I'm not totally convinced that this is a good idea, but Tattletale's vouching for her."
Tattletale looked us both over briefly, then looked at me with a grin. "She's the one on the right."
"How do you--?" I started, to which her grin only got wider.
"I'm psychic."
Last edited:
1.0x
Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
A/N: So yeah, this one's almost six months overdue. Sorry bout that, longest bout of writer's block I've ever experienced. Also, crossposted to SB. 9546 words.
Alteran Alternatives v2.0; Stargate Atlantis/Worm crossover
by Pyrion and Robo Jesus (he helps so much I'm just calling him a co-writer at this point
)
1.0x - Interlude: Tattletale
"Yeah, Grue, we need to talk. Kid, just... make yourself at home, and we need to figure out a better name for you, we are not calling you 'Skynet'." Somehow, I felt like we were just scraping the top of the iceberg of Alec's stupid name suggestions, and the look he gave me in return only confirmed it. That'd be for later though, much later, after I'd convinced Brian that the new kid's not gonna narc us out, and after I'd popped at least a couple of Advil's. Most capes' powers were simple to figure out, but not this girl's, and the headache that was forming was all the evidence I needed of that.
I walked outside, Brian hot on my heels, and gave the surrounding area a quick look-over. Nothing amiss, so I turned and folded my arms. "I know what you're going to say, Brian."
"Is that your power talking?" Yeah, he didn't sound happy.
"Nope, don't need it for this conversation. Newbie cape thinks she's a hero, comes this close to killing us," I held up my right thumb and index finger about half an inch from each other, "next thing you know, after she turns us down, I drag her back like a lost puppy and turns out she's not joining us. Yet. Sound about right, so far?"
"Lisa, I know we need more heavy-hitters than just Rachel, but you know as well as I do," he gestured with his left arm back the way we came, "she doesn't have a clue what she's doing, she just triggered, so she's going to be an emotional mess for some time, and while I don't doubt your ability to convince her to join us..."
I nodded. "You're worried that it's just going to blow up in our faces."
"She hasn't even met Rachel yet. That's a meeting I don't expect to go over well, for either of them. We got lucky in that we didn't attack her, but when Rachel attacks, and we both know she's going to, the new girl may say 'to hell with the rules' and retaliate, and I don't think any of us could stop her. Regent's power doesn't work on her, and she sidestepped mine with little difficulty. She's listening to you, yes, but again, that's only because she doesn't know what she's doing, and that'll only go so far." He shook his head and took a deep breath. "How important is it that we get this girl on board?"
"I don't know. That alone should convince you." I facepalmed for a moment. "I'm still trying to figure her out because what little I've picked up from here so far doesn't make any fucking sense. She isn't just a shapeshifter, Brian."
We both took a deep breath, before I continued, lacking reason to stop, "In general terms?" I paused as I started counting out with my fingers, "Changer and Thinker. That's just the stuff she's already figured out and demonstrated to us, or at least to you two, and I think there's a hell of a lot more than just that there. Brian, she's too damn important to let loose or make an enemy of, and I don't think anyone realizes just how much she can shake things up in the city yet. Her most of all."
"God damnit Lisa," Brian grit out, annoyance, concern, and trepidation coloring his body language as he leveled a stare at me. Good, he understands what's at stake.
"I know, I know, I'm taking a huge risk here. Hell, we all are, but even if this doesn't net us another member, we at least keep her from being an enemy. Rachel notwithstanding." I trailed off,
"Okay, so lay it out for me, if this goes bad, I want to know what we may be dealing with here."
"In a nutshell? Alec's suggestion of 'Skynet' as the girl's cape name is appropriate." I squinted at Grue's frown. "Yeah, don't tell him I said that, the only saving grace to all of this is that the girl's never seen those movies. She's more of a bookworm. More to your point though, that invisibility power of hers? It isn't a Stranger power, it's part of her Changer power augmented by a Thinker power, and I suspect the same power is responsible for her effortlessly no-selling Alec's control." I shrugged. "She's easily A-list, sevens or higher in both categories, and as she figures herself out, that's only going to go higher. If we make an enemy of her? There's sweet fuck all we can do to stop her."
Brian groaned and shook his head, glaring daggers at me.
"Oh don't look at me like that Brian, you asked. If it comes to a fight, the most we'll accomplish is to piss her off, but that holds true for just about every heavy hitter in this city, and they've already chosen sides. That said, she hasn't gone off on us already, and provided we don't give her a good reason, she's not going to. There's something else though. All her reactions are off here, for someone with a very recent trigger. She should be showing signs of clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, for everything she's gone through up to today, but she's not."
"You think she's unstable?"
"No, and that's what worries me."
Brian took a moment to collect his thoughts. I didn't need any powers to see the doubts running through his mind at this moment over this entire situation, let alone the path I acted on in my haste and desperation to not have a 'Terminator' after us.
"Okay, I'm still not comfortable with this, but yeah, I'd be even less comfortable with the Protectorate or Empire getting their hands on her. So what do we need to do?"
I sighed, putting the pieces together. "First thing's first, whenever Rachel gets back, we'll need the new girl to go invisible, just long enough for one of us to hold Rachel at the door and inform her of what's going on before she goes ballistic. If nothing else, we see it coming."
"And aside from that?"
"Make her feel welcome, get on her good side? She'll come around, to her, the whole 'hero' thing is just an escape from a bad situation at school. What she doesn't yet realize is that heroes still have to go to school. It's the law." I smirked. "That right there, if nothing else, will keep her out of the Protectorate's grasp, and she's too level-headed and opposed to them on principle to sign on with the Nazis. Either she joins us, or she goes independent, and if she goes independent, we can still work out an alliance."
He rubbed the back of his head. "I dunno, it feels like we're manipulating her for our own ends."
I grinned, couldn't help it really. "We are, but it's for a good cause."
"I hope you can convince her of that when she figures it out." He shrugged. "Alright, Alec's not screaming for help, so at least that's a good sign. Come on."
Walking back in to find two Regents sitting opposite each other, glancing at us like they were sharing some kind of inside joke, brought the headache back full bore. Brian just gave a half-sigh, half-laugh and shook his head. "Alright, very funny. Regents, the new girl can stay for the night, I'm not totally convinced that this is a good idea, but Tattletale's vouching for her."
Regent, that is, the real one, gave a very slight nod in the affirmative. "She's the one on the right." At her gasp of surprise, in Regent's voice no less, I couldn't help but grin with my next response. "I'm psychic."
Beat, no reaction beyond blinking; sense of humor needs work, but at least she's paying attention.
"I probably should've used that line when we met, though," I shrugged, "the joke's a lot funnier when used on people that don't actually know what my power is. Revealing, too. Speaking of which..."
I grabbed a chair and sat, leaning against the comfy backrest. So far, I was the one that hadn't yet seen her shapeshifting power in action, and despite the migraine I was steadily barreling towards, this was the best opportunity to see it for myself in a controlled situation. I was blunt: "take my form, I want to see how you do it."
At her sigh in response, I opened the floodgates and watched; 'Regent' dissolved into a nearly-featureless silver humanoid shape, almost like a template? 'Initial form post-trigger, used as basis for successive human forms.' Her new form... mine, rather, started to take shape, and I couldn't stop my jaw from dropping as the contour of my own face appeared, even as my power started giving me things to work with; 'extrapolation, prefers her right hand side but seems to be ambidextrous, ambidextry recent addition, constant observation of surroundings, omnidirectional, prescience, can see inside human body, doesn't want to, makes her uncomfortable', ...right, pass the brain bleach, and maybe give me something more useful to work with. 'Accuracy of abilities improves exponentially with time, posture tense, mentally exhausted, stressed, able to handle stress and sensory information beyond human norms.' Aspect of her Thinker power?
Huh, makes sense. As I looked at my face on her head, I couldn't help but sigh. I knew my domino mask didn't hide that much, and I already knew her Thinker power was pure bullshit, this just cements it. As I continued watching, a perfect replica of my domino mask extruded from her rendition of my face, and the mass of 'hair' coalesced from a wavy blob to individual strands; 'subconscious perfectionist; control freak.'
Hmm. Grue would need to know about that, if she does join us, she could easily take over the team, and I could see Brian letting it happen. Okay, now she applies color, the disguise finally completes, and... the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as an energy wave cascades over her form, from head to toe. 'Forced interlocking to hold form together without further active effort.' Wait, what?
"Good enough?" She spoke, with my voice no less, and I was torn between jealousy of her powers, and barely-contained giddiness at the thought of getting this girl on board and ultimately, utterly ripping Coil a new asshole with her help. I nearly grinned, but the pain... ugh.
"Yeah, got far more than I think I really needed from that. You're definitely a high Thinker..." Does she get headaches? 'No sensation of pain whatsoever.' Oh come on! "...you don't get headaches, do you?"
The other me shook her head, looking both puzzled and concerned.
"Yeah, now I'm really jealous." I slammed my eyes shut for several seconds, breathing deeply even as I knew I'd need to pop some Advils, maybe down a cup of coffee, and get a good night's sleep. "I think I'm gonna turn in early."
Brian stifled a cough, and I sensed his disapproval... am I forgetting something? 'He's not content to call her 'new girl.'' Ah, right. "Hm? Oh, yeah, you chosen a cape name yet?" The other me shook her head, and I groaned. This was gonna be a long night. "Fine, gimme a few minutes to take care of this headache," and Alec started to open his mouth. "I know what you're going to say, and again, no, we are NOT calling her 'Skynet', so stop suggesting it."
"I was actually going to suggest 'Weaver'," Alec said, with a shit-eating grin I could practically feel from behind his mask. I blinked a few times in confusion. "You don't get it, do you?"
Brian sighed loudly and shook his head. "Earth-Aleph ran a short-lived TV series-"
"-and Catherine Weaver was the Terminator that sought to create an AI to destroy Skynet. Right, now I remember." I glared at Alec, before shaking my head. "You don't get to name anything anymore."
He shrugged, not the least bit discouraged. "Doesn't mean I can't still make suggestions."
I caught the look of cautious amusement from the new girl's face as I walked to the kitchen. 'Finds this funny, but is afraid to show it.'
Brian followed me in, closing the door behind him and waiting patiently while I downed several Advils. I set aside my mask, wincing slightly as my curiosity got the better of me. 'He saw it too, worried about our identities.' "You and Alec don't have much to worry about, she's only working with what information she has. Domino masks don't hide that much, we're mainly working within the silent agreement that nobody's going to consciously dig deep enough to learn who any of us really are. She knows what I look like, that doesn't necessarily mean she knows who I am."
"Does she?" Unusually blunt there, Brian.
I shook my head. "Her power's not my power. As Thinkers go, they're similar, but she's working with an entirely different level of information, it's just what she sees. She sees a lot though. Plus I'm getting the impression that she doesn't have conscious control over it. What we saw wasn't something she intended us to see, it just happened as a consequence of her taking my form." I sighed. "And she doesn't get headaches. That pisses me off more than anything."
He chuckled in response, before taking his mask off and smirking. "You're really that jealous of her?"
"Shit yeah I'm jealous. Think about it for a moment. She doesn't have to worry about costumes, masks, secret identities, shit that most capes starting out have to concern themselves with, her changer power is just that much bullshit on its own. Add on something like my power, only without the headaches?" I huffed. "Still want her to join, though. I'll be less bothered by it all if she's on our side."
He nodded. "How do you think we're doing on that front?"
"Just from the last few minutes? She's scared of us, Brian. Or more accurately, she's growing to like us, and that's what scaring her. She doesn't see herself as doing the cape thing for shits and giggles, she actually wants to help, but there's an undercurrent of 'doing it her way'," I caught his look, "yeah, she's a control freak. If she does this, joins us that is, she'll want to do it on her terms, and she might just be enough of a natural leader to end up calling the shots here."
Unsurprisingly, Brian silently nodded once in silent agreement, not looking the least bit bothered by that.
"You'd be fine with that, wouldn't you?"
"If it helps get me custody of Aisha? I'd be fine with anything, you know that Lisa." He took a deep breath. "Think she'll find conflict with the boss?"
God, I hope so. I stifled my grin, though just barely. "That depends on the boss. I don't foresee him being able to buy her off with money, for instance. Her problems are social and school-related, and the only reason she didn't start out by running off to join the heroes is that she doesn't believe they can, or will, help her."
His brow furrowed. "Why is that, though?"
"Remember when we first met her, I pointed out that another cape is responsible for her triggering?" I grinned at the dawning recollection on his face. "Yeah, it's one thing if the responsible cape is a villain, and for Winslow we'd expect that. But what if the responsible cape is a hero?"
He looked perplexed at the question for a moment before he rolled his eyes and sighed. "Shadow Stalker?"
"Thus her distrust of authority and the heroes. Anyway, I'm not using my power for the rest of the night, barring emergencies or Rachel, and we still need to think of a cape name for her. Come on."
Donning our masks, we cracked the door open and I swear I could hear Brian's heart seize up for a moment when he saw Alec and the new kid, him maskless and her in civilian form, playing a video game together. Several realizations hit me at once: 'Alec has a crush on her, she's being polite but not reciprocating. She doesn't play video games, doesn't own any, father can't afford them-'
"Fuck! There's no way you're new to this game." Alec shouted and shook his head in obvious frustration, and I glanced at the screen for a moment. Beginner's luck or fast learner? 'New to the game, learning from observation, mimicking playstyle, paying more attention to Alec's controller than the screen.' I chuckled at that; no surprise there, she's taking in everything, probably even--oh shit. Did she? 'Heard everything, both conversations. Still sees us as villains first, aware of intent at manipulation, taken by surprise from Alec's unmasking, thinks he's not in on it, they exchanged real names.' Fuck me.
I elbowed Brian in the ribs and started to remove my mask, ignoring his obvious shock and growing frustration. "Alec's got the right idea." I blew out a sigh of both relief and annoyance, wiped the sweat off of my brow and then leaned over the couch, putting on my best grin. "Hi. I'm Lisa."
"Bit busy here, Lise," Alec gritted as his grip on the controller tensed, his moves getting more exaggerated and forceful. The new girl, on the other hand, glanced briefly at me with obvious surprise, before turning her full attention back to the game. Her moves, meanwhile, only sped up, and I watched with equal parts fascination and horror that every attack Alec attempted got blocked or evaded with perfect timing. As the match very quickly ended and Alec dropped the controller in stunned silence, I got the implicit message - she's playing along to learn the game, but once she's had enough, it's game over.
"Were you fucking with me this whole time?" Alec started, completely oblivious to the seriousness of the situation. She turned to me, blank-faced, briefly glancing in his direction. Damnit.
"You were, weren't you? You've played this game before." He continued, mumbling under his breath. "Can't believe I just got hustled at Smash Brothers."
"Alec, shut up." Brian growled, arms akimbo and still masked. "Anyone want to explain to me what the fuck I'm obviously missing?"
I turned to him. "She overheard everything, Brian. Us talking about her powers, her psychological state, our goals with getting her onboard... everything." Back to her. "I wasn't kidding when I said it's for a good cause."
Frowning and crossing her arms, she didn't look the least bit convinced. Brian just audibly sighed and grabbed a chair. Yeah, this was going to be a long night.
I shook my head - so much for not using my power.
-----
Cajoling Brian to unmask didn't take much effort at that point, he cracked under the combined pressure of death glares from both me and the new girl. We each took a seat at the table, more than a bit nervous at the thought that she could snap at any moment. Fortunately, she seemed more inclined to keep listening, which honestly continued to puzzle me. Something to look into later though.
"So, whaddya wanna know?" I grinned nervously.
She paused for a moment, apparently deep in thought, before taking a breath. "Your boss. Who is he, and what's his power?"
Alec chuckled and pointed to me. "She is, obviously."
Brian and I frowned, albeit for wildly different reasons.
Her brow furrowed in thought. "You sure? They both referred to a 'boss' that calls the shots here and, I guess, pays you all?"
"When they were talking in the kitchen while you were supposedly learning how to play Smash Brothers? Skynet, the only person to ever really call the shots here is her. It's what she does."
I rolled my eyes at him in response, and Brian shook his head. "No, we do have a boss, Lisa coordinates jobs and pay with him, so yeah, she tells us where to go and what to do, and her power's suited for that anyways. But no. I've... talked with him in the past, though I don't have a clue who he is, just that he's got loads of money and employs capes to do his dirty work."
Alec turned to Brian and shook his head, grinning. "Yeah yeah, I get it, you let her call the shots, she lets you play team leader and-"
"Alec?" I glared at him.
"Yeah boss?"
I shook my head, a smirk forming. "Coil calls the shots here."
He blinked several times in confusion. "Wait... seriously?"
"I'll put you on the line next time he calls if you don't believe me." I glanced over at the shapeshifter, noting her slight nodding in apparent recognition of the name. "So you've heard of him," I prompted her.
"Just what was on Parahumans Online, which isn't much." She confirmed with a shrug.
"Yeah, nobody knows much about him. I think he's a Thinker, but beyond that... haven't a clue. I've yet to meet him in person."
"And how much does he pay you?"
"Ten thousand a month, split four ways. Five if you join us. Rachel's the only one liable to complain, the rest of us would be cool with it." I elaborated, and we all chuckled at her wide-eyed reaction. "We get considerably more when we take actual jobs, usually it's attacking gangs at a certain place and time. Like this last job, for instance. Nothing bad, nothing that really harms anyone." My grin disappeared. "We... can't really deal with Protectorate kill-orders, not that anyone outside of psychos like the S9 want those anyways, or the other gangs' heavy hitters, for instance."
"Which is why you want me to join." She leaned back, arms crossed.
"Partially," Brian preempted me, much to my annoyance. "This is mostly Lisa's idea, but I can see the merit of having a shapeshifter on the team. You'd be more than just a heavy hitter. I mean..." he shook his head, "you'd be a natural infiltrator, and your... hyper-awareness...?"
"Prescience." I answered.
"Prescience. Yeah, that. We've gotten pretty good at avoiding direct conflict, Rachel's dogs are all we really have going for us in that department."
"I think what Brian's trying to say is that we wouldn't have to rely solely on my power for avoiding fights, or the dogs as heavy hitters," I frowned and glanced at the stairwell, "considering she's awfully unreliable at times."
Alec chuckled and shook his head. "Rachel is Rachel. Her life is basically her dogs and... not much else."
"Rachel's a street kid. Her trigger accidentally caused a death due to the transformed dog going out of control, and, well..." Brian trailed off before sighing. "Rachel's never been much of a people person since."
She nodded in thought, before frowning. "What's a trigger?"
Oh dear...
Brian and Alec both looked at her in disbelief. Honestly…
"Wait, you don't know..." Brian started.
"It's when and how we get our powers. The worst day of our lives." Alec finished for us, and I sighed in relief, really not wanting to have to explain it.
Brian frowned. "Bad enough that we don't talk about ours in casual conversation. Trigger events themselves aren't generally known to the public, but every cape has had one."
"The likely reason why is if the public knew what we had to go through to get powers, a lot of people would intentionally put themselves through the wringer to try to get powers." I shook my head in mock disgust. "It doesn't work that way."
"Alright, what about the rest of you? You don't seem like stereotypical villains."
Brian leaned against the table, frowning. "You first."
"Brian..." I growled at him.
He raised his right hand in defense. "If I'm going to be baring my soul to her, it's only fair that I have an idea of who she is. I don't know her name, her background, anything other than that she's a stupidly-powerful shapeshifter."
She took several deep breaths, 'conflicted, doesn't want to answer, doesn't want to be rude...' "Taylor. My name's Taylor."
Brian nodded cautiously. "I'm not asking about your trigger, Taylor. Just... anything you want to share?"
She seemed to deflate in response, not saying anything, but appearing on the verge of crying. 'Doesn't have an answer that isn't directly related to trigger event. Very long-term abuse, years. Can't cry, no tear ducts.' Damnit Brian, she doesn't need this.
I leaned over and elbowed him in the ribs, ignoring his surprise and giving him another death glare.
"The one friend I thought I had turned against me," her answer was barely audible, yet we all heard it.
"Taylor, you don't have to say any more." I intervened, continuing to glare at Brian.
"...I see," he frowned. "I'm sorry I asked."
We sat in silence for a moment as Taylor recomposed herself, again much too quickly for such a recent trigger. What the hell is causing that?
"My story..." Brian sighed, "my story is I've got a drug addict for a mother and a dad-in-name-only for a father. If it were just me, I'd have joined the Wards already, but it's not just me. They'd have done jack squat for Aisha."
"You mentioned her earlier," she confirmed. "Sister?"
He nodded. "Mom got custody of her while dad got custody of me." A deep breath, and he flexed both of his hands in growing anger. "If Aisha were also a parahuman, we'd both go to the Wards and not look back, but she's still stuck with mom, and living on the streets is actually better, despite being a criminal, than... yeah."
Alec glanced over at Brian, and smirked. "So, I'm Alec, as I already told you, and I'm doing the villain thing for shits and giggles."
Taylor frowned at that, and Alec read into her reaction. "Yup, it's exactly what you're thinking. Lisa and Brian, they have reasons for being villains," he shrugged. "I don't."
Her frown started to turn into a scowl, and her inner conflicts started to show through. She snapped her head towards Alec. "You seem so nice though."
"For a villain, you mean?" He rolled his eyes. "Skynet, there are three main types of villains. Those in it for the money, those in it for the attention, and those in it because they're one maraschino cherry short of a fruitcake." He pointed his scepter at both of us. "We're in it mainly for the money. The big gangs, you know, Merchants, ABB, the Empire? Money, attention, and crazy."
"On the spectrum of villainy, we're on the light side of things," I confirmed with a grin. "The other gangs are in various places in the middle. No idea where Coil would place, and I don't have to say where the Slaughterhouse Nine fits into this."
Brian had the makings of a smirk as he joined in. "You could probably put the heroes on a similar scale. I'd call them the idealists, the attention whores, and the militants. The idealists do the heroing thing because they actually believe they're making the world a better place." He caught her look and nodded. "The attention whores do the heroing thing for recognition, and the militants have an 'us versus them' mindset and are determined to win by any means. Glory Girl? Attention whore. Shadow Stalker? Militant. The other Wards? Idealists."
For a moment I felt a pang of sympathy as she reacted to that last bit with a sigh. 'Still conflicted, diametrically opposing viewpoints, 'good villains' and 'bad heroes'.'
"If it makes you feel any better, you're new at this. Some villains start out thinking that they're going to make the world a better place, only to learn the hard way just how eager the system is to screw them over. Either you take the screwing and maybe make something of yourself as a hero, or you fight back and bam, instant villain." Brian shrugged, then turned to me. "Your turn, Lisa."
Fine. "Short and sweet of it is I come from a rich family," I glared at Alec, "which is probably why you thought I could afford to shell out ten grand a month... no way I have that kind of cash on me. Anyway, rich family, parents are douchebags, they found out I had gained a power, sought to abuse it for themselves and didn't care one damn bit what I thought, so, I don't care one damn bit what they thought of me leaving." 'Thinks there's more to that explanation.' Excellent.
She nodded a few times, still frowning. "One more question."
"Shoot." Brian said.
"It seems like you're going to a ridiculous amount of effort to get me to join. Letting me stay at your place, unmasking, this whole Q-and-A session where you've spilled the beans on pretty much your whole operation. Why?"
I sighed loudly, leaning back into my chair. "Taylor, you probably have no idea just how rare true shapeshifters are in the cape scene, and there's no way that you're just a shapeshifter. I'd rather have you as a friend than an ally, but I'd still rather have you as an ally than an enemy, because your power scares the shit out of me, and I guarantee you, in the next week alone when the rest of this town comes to grips with a true shapeshifter in their midst, everyone will be feeling the exact same way. If you won't join them, they'll want to make damn sure they don't do anything to piss you off, because your power will play merry hell with everyone's inherent paranoia. Some might just decide you're too much of a threat to ignore or buy off, even if it means breaking the unwritten rules." Yes, Taylor, they'd go after your father if they couldn't get to you, unwritten rules be damned.
She seemed to accept that answer, nodding silently to herself, and once again I started having the feeling that something was very off here. 'Reconciling cognitive dissonance as further attempt at manipulation.' Oh for fuck's sake...
"Taylor, I have a question," I started.
"Okay."
"Why do you think we're manipulating you?"
She exhaled hard, annoyed. "I dunno, it feels like we're manipulating her for our own ends," Brian's eyes widened at hearing his own voice, "we are, but it's for a good cause," my voice, and she can rapidly switch between voices... figures. "I hope you can convince her of that when she figures it out," finishing with a look that all but said "well?"
"I wasn't lying when I said that, Taylor," I shrugged. "Look at it from my perspective, I'm walking on eggshells trying to put this in terms that won't provoke you or scare you off."
She folded her arms, apparently unconvinced. "You said it's for a 'good cause.' Whose?"
"Ours," I grinned. "Yours included. I think you know why, too, even if you're afraid to admit it."
"I just..." she sighed, "I just don't want to lose my dad. He's the only thing I have left. I don't want to villain. I can't go villain. If I go villain-"
"It's not gonna kill him, Taylor." Brian interrupted.
She shook her head. "I know, but... I don't want him to hate me for it."
"Taylor, if your father really loves you, he's not going to suddenly disown you for joining a gang of villains, especially if he has any idea what you've just gone through." I tried, only to get another shake of her head.
"That's just it: I haven't told him any of this." 'Trust issues. Betrayal struck deep, doesn't trust her father, wants to trust us, but doesn't trust herself.'
Alec rolled his eyes. "Well duh. You only triggered this morning."
"He doesn't know anything about what lead up to it, though. The bullying, who the bullies are, how long this has been going on... I haven't told him anything." Beat. "He undoubtedly knows by now, the police or the PRT will have told him, and he's going to want me to join the Wards out of fear for my safety, which means I'd have to work with Shadow Stalker, and she's much of the reason I have powers in the first place."
While Alec and I started to facepalm, Brian simply responded with "Ah." Good grief…
"Give me some time to think about all of this, I'm not going to make a decision one way or another until I've spoken with him." She simmered down to mild frustration, apparently feeling better for having gotten all of that out of her system.
"Speaking of Shadow Stalker," Alec smirked at Brian, "you wanna tell her about your experiences with her, or should I?" At his shrug in response, Alec wore one of my grins. "Yeah, Shadow Stalker's got a massive hate-on for Grue here. Her power and his react weirdly, so she really wants him dead."
"She wants everyone dead," Brian corrected him.
"Yeah, but when she sees you, it's like she gets tunnel vision and ignores everything going on around her. It's why she's never managed to take you down; an over-achiever she ain't. Still, she did ruin that white couch Lise loved when she shot you that one time."
"Wait, what?"
Oh dear...
"Yeah, Shadow Stalker shot Brian with a barbed crossbow bolt, it was sticking out of his gut and blood got everywhere. Ruined that lovely two-thousand dollar white leather couch Lisa bought," Alec said. I couldn't help the scowl at the memory of that incident as Alec kept talking. "If not for some tinker medicine we shelled out some major bucks for a few weeks earlier in case of an emergency, Brian would probably be dead."
I stood, approaching the kitchen. "My headache's slowly coming back, so I'm gonna get some coffee. You want anything?"
"Tea," she perked up, "I haven't had anything since I... well... you know."
"No wonder you're cranky," Alec joked, "get me a Coke while you're at it."
"Same," Brian added. Halfway to the fridge, I heard him start, "so, cape names."
Oh you are not starting without me...
-----
I sat back down several minutes later, having gotten everyone their drinks and listened intently at the, frankly, utterly retarded suggestions coming from Brian and Alec.
"'Mercury' and 'Quicksilver' are both taken, and besides, mercury the metal is toxic." So is this coffee, come to think of it. Dark roast. Bleh. What was I thinking?
Brian frowned and gestured to Alec. "Well he's not coming up with any better ideas. 'Hastur'? Where'd you pull that from?"
Alec chortled in response. "You're obviously not a fan of the classics."
I felt my headache flare up at this point. The only saving grace to all of this was the innocent, clueless look on Taylor's face. Well-read, but not that well-read.
"Yeah, if she goes hero with that, she'd be buried in red tape, plus that's the kind of name that might be reserved for an Endbringer."
Of course, he wouldn't let it go without a modicum of protest in jest. "She-who-is-not-to-be-named, Lise. It fits."
"That's not funny," I managed to squeeze out between laughs. "Okay, serious suggestions. We're dealing with a shapeshifter, you two, not a Great Old One or a shameless ripoff of one of those Earth-Aleph comic book characters."
I glanced at Taylor's direction as she took a careful sip of her tea, half-wondering why she hesitated for so long before remembering she didn't have tear ducts. Hell, might as well - I let the floodgates open once more and watched. 'No digestive system, cavity forming within throat to contain ingested material.' No reaction on her part for the taste, and I shrugged inwardly, it's just cheap black tea, nothing fancy. 'No taste buds, no sense of taste, no sense of smell.' She frowned, realizing it at much the same time as I was, and I felt a pang of sympathy, but only for a moment, before all hell broke loose.
Our eyes widened in almost-perfect synchronization as something flared up within her. 'Surprised, power interaction with ingested material,' but what kind of interaction? She sighed and her eyes closed, 'momentary sensory overload; euphoria,' so probably her Changer power having done something to the tea. But what?
Brian and Alec obviously knew something was up, because their bantering cut short in favor of both of them watching this spectacle cautiously. Taylor lifted the mug to her lips once more and downed the rest of her scalding hot tea in one gulp, pausing for a moment before having a similar, albeit more pronounced reaction.
"You alright?" I asked hesitantly.
She blinked a couple times, and then nodded. "I think so, just learned that I can still eat, even if I can't taste anything. Don't think I have to worry about bathroom breaks either, my power just breaks it all down, repurposes it."
What? No, seriously, what? 'Ingested material broken down into constituent elements, restructured.'
My breathing stopped momentarily as the realization hit me. "Your Changer power's also a Breaker and Striker power as well." I turned to Brian, alarmed. "She's breaking down and restructuring matter at the atomic level."
Predictably, his eyes bugged out in realization at how potentially game-breaking that was, with a Changer not only capable of altering herself, but everything she could get her hands on.
Throwing caution to the wind in favor of potentially more useful information, I handed her my coffee. "It's burnt anyway."
She eagerly gulped the whole foul thing down, waited a moment, and then nodded several times. "Slightly denser. Can I try something?"
At our obvious continued interest, she held my mug in her right hand, shifted it to liquid metal and enveloped the mug itself. A chill went down my spine as the mug, coated in liquid metal, melted into her hand, and the look of satisfaction on her face was evident. "Thought so."
I started having second thoughts at this point, even as Taylor obviously wasn't done experimenting. Effecting permanent changes to physical matter for the sake of, well, self-replication I guess, could easily bump her up into the S-class ranks, and all of us could end up with kill-orders on our heads if she were to go completely nuts and we were fully associated with her. Then, out of the palm of her hand, a sphere of liquid metal extruded itself, contracting into the familiar shape of my mug, taking on the same color and texture as the original. She hesitated for a moment, before setting it down and cautiously letting go. 'Mimicry of the real thing, retaining full sensory awareness and control despite lack of physical connection.'
I stared at the mug for a moment, then looked her straight in the eyes. "Bullshit. Your powers are utter bullshit." Remote control of parts of herself mimicking other forms? Master rating, on top of everything else. Only thing that would top this is if the mug grew legs or wings... and who the fuck am I kidding? She hasn't tried it yet, so it's only a matter of time before she figures it out. God damn...
Alec reached over and snatched the mug away. "So, what? She melted it down and then built it back up?"
I glared at him. "That's not really a mug you're holding. It's part of her body now."
His eyebrows shot up, and a smirk started forming. "Really?" He flipped it around in his hands, nodding to himself in mock-appreciation, then with the worst shit-eating grin I've ever seen him use: "You've got an impressive cup size, Taylor."
Brian barely stifled his laughter while facepalming, whereas I just shook my head in indignation, then grabbed Brian's empty Coke bottle and threw it at Alec. In exaggerated mock-surprise, he dropped the mug, his amusement turning to shock upon hearing it shatter. All of us stood to look at the remains scattered on the floor, motionless for a moment before Taylor walked over, stared at it intently, and nodded as the individual fragments melted and coalesced into a liquid metal blob, before re-assuming the form of the mug.
Alec took a breath to say something, but Brian and I immediately responded in tandem: "We're not calling her Skynet!"
"I wasn't gonna say anything," he shrugged, barely concealing his amusement.
Taylor reached down to retrieve the mug, absorbing it back into her hand with a look of pensive thought. "What are you thinking?" I prompted her.
"I'll still need some time to think about this, and determine the limits of... well, you know. If I can be in multiple places at the same time, and if I have a range limitation. I'd also have to come up with alternate forms, costumes, assumed power sets..." she sighed, "cape names."
"Let's keep with the notion that you're a shapeshifter. You're probably going to be using that in public more than anything else."
Brian shrugged as he sat back down, and I could tell he was feeling overwhelmed by all of this. "What about you Lisa? I mean, you're the Thinker, you've got to have ideas."
"Well, thinking of alternate words for 'shapeshifter' to work with. Hmm. I very briefly thought 'Changeling' before I realized the negative historical conno-"
"The Female Changeling!" Alec announced triumphantly. We all glared at him.
"Alec, quit while you're ahead," Brian gestured at Taylor, who was similarly annoyed. "She didn't get 'Hastur,' but I'm pretty sure she's familiar with Star Trek."
"...Anyway, there was that, and the only other words I could think of were 'polymorph' and 'meta-'"
Taylor's head snapped towards the stairwell. "Dogs."
I blinked, headache and interruption adding to my initial confusion. "What?"
"Dogs, several, approaching the entrance. Someone's with them, I assume that's-"
"Rachel." Brian confirmed, his darkness already starting to bellow out. Alec and I stood and backed away from the table, largely useless for what would ensue.
"Taylor, I'm going to flood this half of the room with my darkness. Go invisible and stand somewhere outside of it. I want her to think you're hiding in it, because the moment we confront her and she finds out someone else is in here, she's probably going to attack the darkness."
"You didn't just say that," Alec started to laugh once more despite the seriousness of the situation.
He shook his head in response. "Whatever. Taylor, invisible, now." She complied, disappearing right as the door creaked open.
Immediately, we could all tell that Rachel's dogs knew something was up. They bolted up the stairwell much faster than usual, and all three were growling when they reached the top. Rachel, consequently, was on edge as well, and seeing us all gathered at the table with a cloud of darkness only confirmed it.
"Bitch, hold on a mo-" Brian started, trying to put himself between Rachel and her dogs. She just whistled sharply, and all three charged into the darkness, just as predicted. Brian sighed loudly as the dogs slammed into the drywall with some yelps of surprise, deprived of their senses and having found nothing to attack.
He turned away from the dogs to stare down Rachel. "As I was saying..."
Rachel suddenly flew upwards and back, pinned against the wall and grasping at her throat while kicking at the wall in a vain attempt to pry herself free from her invisible assailant. Taylor dropped her invisibility, and in a moment of inspiration, formed a thin, expanding metal wall from her free left hand, surrounding Brian's darkness and trapping the dogs within.
"God damnit Taylor, let me handle this," Brian said, anger and frustration easy to see on his face at this turn of events.
She ignored him. "They told me you'd try something like this, and that if we fought, it would likely end with me killing your dogs. Use your power on them, and I will." Rachel's eyes widened, and she looked to be on the verge of calling that bluff. "Hi, I'm Taylor, I just got my powers, and this is technically the first time I've been attacked by another cape. Stop struggling."
"Damn if she doesn't sound like a Terminator right now..." Alec muttered under his breath. Brian, meanwhile, gritted his teeth and watched.
"I just have one quick thing to say, and then I'm going to let you go. I get it, you're not a people person, the only things you likely care about are yourself and your dogs. You sensed a threat and lashed out, I neither know nor care why, but don't even think of trying it again. So, you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. Fair enough?"
Rachel nodded stiffly, realizing she couldn't do much else, unable to see or hear her dogs, and Taylor unceremoniously dropped her to the floor while drawing the metal back into her fingers. Rachel stumbled in a brief coughing fit as her dogs similarly stumbled out of the darkness. She seethed and glared at Taylor but otherwise retreated silently to her room. Brian, meanwhile, was livid.
"What the fuck was that, Taylor? I said 'let me handle this' for a reason. Yeah, Rachel likely deserved that because we all knew that she'd start out by attacking you, but you could've broken her neck. What the hell were you thinking?!"
She folded her arms. "I was thinking that I had gone through the past couple years of my life running from bullies, fully aware that I couldn't fight back, hoping that at some point they'd get bored and stop. That obviously hasn't worked, they just put me through the worst day of my life, and the very same night, when it seems like I can finally escape that shit, I get attacked by another bully. What did you think was going to happen?"
Brian responded with a long sigh and shook his head. "I had hoped you'd stay invisible at least until I could calm Rachel down. Explain the situation to her, in terms that she'd understand. She... doesn't think like we do. People, I mean. Lisa, help me out here."
Ugh. "Honestly, Brian? That could've gone much worse. Yeah, she doesn't think like we do, she thinks like a dog, so in really simple terms, the moment she sensed a threat, she was dead-set on attacking that threat until it ceased to be one." I met Brian's glare. "You could've talked her out of it, yes, but Taylor would've had to remain invisible and Rachel's dogs would've had to remain immobilized. They get loose, they have minds of their own, and the last command she gave them was to attack, and I don't need to tell you that neither Alec nor I would want to try restraining three dogs on the hunt for a foe they can't see..." I frowned, realizing how unlikely the darkness should've deceived them, "or smell, for that matter. No, that actually went rather well, Taylor basically presented herself as a bigger dog, in Rachel's mind at least." I glanced at Taylor. "She'll avoid eye contact with you if that's the case."
"Fine." Brian turned to Taylor and crossed his arms. "You got lucky, but Rachel's still part of this team, you're not, and you may have just killed your chances at joining." He turned his attention to us. "If she wants to join, we're still going to hold a vote, Rachel included." Fuck. Even split, if we held the vote right now. Good thing I had some time here though, even if this entire ordeal of a night was the most seat-of-my-pants stunt I've pulled yet.
Brian leaned against the doorframe, arms still crossed. "We still haven't figured out what to call you."
Huh, almost forgot about that. Blame the headache. "Right, only words I had left to work with on that subject were 'polymorph' and 'metamorph,' otherwise we'd have to start back in on cultural references and-"
"Metalmorph." Brian interrupted with a hints of a smile. "It's perfect. She's a metamorph, made of metal. Metalmorph."
Alec shook his head and walked back to the couch. "Seriously, you two? 'Metalmorph''s the best you can come up with?"
I frowned in thought. "It's awfully simplistic, as much an adjective as a pronoun, but I don't have any better ideas. Also, it's probably taken, I'd have to go check."
Without waiting for input from the others, I dashed to my room and logged onto my terminal. Ran a PHO Wiki search on 'Metalmorph,' came up with five hits, hmm... none of them articles named Metalmorph. Okay, that's encouraging, and... yep, use of the word as an adjective to describe Hookwolf in both the Hookwolf and Empire 88 articles. Adjective use in an article on Weld of the Boston Wards... huh, his appearance and powers are somewhat similar to Taylor's. Use in both articles on Mercury and Quicksilver, both European capes I was already somewhat familiar with. Sweet, not taken as a name then.
"It's unclaimed!," I shouted, to no response. Hm. Killed the browser, logged off and ran back to everyone. "I said it's unclai-"
I first sighted Rachel, scowling from the entrance to the kitchen as one of her dogs, the german shepherd... Judas I think, staring down Taylor, wearing her human form, seated at the table and herself staring down Judas. Aside from a low growl on Judas' part, everyone else seemed content to watch. Brian glanced up at me, and held one hand up and shook his head silently. Yeah, this could go bad, none of us really wanted to tempt fate with one of her dogs, but what was really strange was that Rachel herself was letting it happen. Judas would look over at Rachel occasionally, as if expecting an order to attack or retreat, but she just continued to watch. Damn the headache... 'angry with herself, angry at Brian, angry at Taylor, suspicious of her motives, reluctantly respects her strength.' Shit, didn't see that coming. Brian voting no, Rachel maybe voting yes? 'Contingent on reactions to Judas, hostile/threatening behavior ensures 'No' vote.'
I snapped my head towards Taylor, and whispered her name faintly but urgently. On eye contact, I mouthed "she's testing you" while giving brief glances towards Rachel. A single nod confirmed she understood, and then Taylor slowly slid off the chair, crouching down to her knees and presenting herself as a smaller, less threatening target.
"What's his name?" She asked, looking at Rachel. No answer. 'Doesn't want to answer, realizes Taylor's not going to attack, doesn't want to vote yes.'
"Rachel?" She tried again, no answer, no eye contact. "Bitch?"
Rachel let out a long sigh before practically growling out "Judas" with gritted teeth.
"Okay," Taylor nodded and reached out with her right hand. "Judas? It's okay."
His growl intensified and he backed away one step, baring teeth at her. "Alright, it's cool," she held up both hands in response, backing away and switching to a cross-legged sitting position. She patted at the floor to her right, "it's okay, I'm not gonna force you."
Judas continued to growl, sniffing the air and looking to Rachel for guidance. He took a couple of cautious, tense steps toward Taylor, still growling, the intensity briefly ratcheting up a notch when Taylor reached out again. Again, she pulled her hand away and patted at the floor, silently staring at him intently. The staredown continued for an additional half-minute before Judas quickly backed away, running to Rachel, his growling briefly morphing into a whine. She shook her head and turned inward into the kitchen, Judas in tow.
Everyone let out their held breaths, myself included, and I quickly crossed the distance to the table, grabbing and planting myself in a chair before Rachel'd undoubtedly come storming back out. We looked at each other silently, the only sound in the room being the distant hissing of running water from the sink, and Judas' occasional high-pitched whine. Rachel crossed back into view once more, carrying a bowl filled with water, avoiding eye contact with all of us as she hurriedly walked to her room. Judas looked at Taylor once more, growling briefly before dashing after Rachel.
I grinned once they disappeared out of view. "Swing vote."
"Seriously?" Brian now.
"Yeah, she's on the fence, doesn't want to vote yes, but she knows we need another heavy hitter." My grin faded as I looked at Taylor, now having retaken her seat. "You barely passed, by the way. And I was right, 'Metalmorph' is only used as a description, not a name."
Alec rolled his eyes and turned back towards the TV. "You guys could do so much better than that."
"I like it." Taylor smiled faintly.
Brian nodded, satisfied. "Alright, glad that's settled. Metalmorph," he gave a cautious nod towards Taylor, "if you're still thinking about joining us, ehh..." he took a breath, "give it some thought and time. Now wouldn't be the best time to call for a vote, honestly."
Much as I wanted to, I couldn't help but agree with him.
"I'm spent, Bitch's liable to flip her shit, Lisa's probably got a headache the size of Texas..."
"Getting there," I agreed, wincing at the reminder.
He stood and walked towards his room, turning back towards us halfway there. "You gonna be okay out here, Taylor?"
"I think so." She nodded reluctantly.
"Okay, fuck it, I'm going to bed." He practically ran out of sight, leaving me shaking my head with another forming grin. I rolled my eyes and looked at Taylor.
"Two swing votes, actually, so yeah, give it a few days at least." I took a deep breath, now acutely aware of the pounding in my head. "I hate my power sometimes."
"Go get some sleep then, I think I'll be alright," Taylor stood, left arm extended out to me. Helping me up? 'Desperately seeking friends, giving serious thought to joining despite her reservations.' Huh.
I gladly took her hand, pulling myself out of the chair, now aware that my sense of balance was starting to falter.
"Definitely overused my power, and the painkillers are already wearing off." I managed to open both eyes enough to be aware I was facing Taylor, and leaning on her arm to maintain my balance, which didn't seem to bother her in the slightest. Realizing that this was the last I'd probably see of her for a while, given how much sleep I'd need, I reached out and hugged her, whispering "sorry you had to go through all of that today. Triggers suck."
She nodded silently, and we stood there hugging for a few moments before I started hearing odd noises coming from Alec's direction. The hell? 'Vocalized porno music.' Oh for... I forced my eyes open, stepped away from Taylor with a slight wobble in my step, turned to glare at him, even more annoyed that he was wearing one of my grins. "Alec?"
"Hmm?" His grin got wider.
I sighed, and started walking to my bed. "Die in a fire."
-----
I don't even remember collapsing in bed, nor if I managed to dream at all when the banging on the wall began.
"Lisa! Wake up!"
Nope. Didn't want to. Couldn't. Head's still pounding.
"Lisa! It's Taylor, she's on the news!"
My eyes shot wide open, before I smashed them closed, swearing at the searing light amplifying the pain in my head. Okay, fine. Gotta wake up.
"Come on damnit, this is live! Taylor's just been attacked! Get up!"
I stumbled out of bed, still clad in my costume, hair everywhere, head pounding, half-asleep. Someone, Brian probably, held me by the arm and practically carried me out.
"...submitted this video of the aftermath of a car crash and ensuing cape fight in the upper west side of town. The attacker, the Ward we know as Shadow Stalker, ambushed and confronted the first-responder, an assumed newcomer to Brockton Bay's cape scene..."
I forced my eyes open just in time to watch a grainy portrait smartphone recording of what was obviously Taylor, in her metal humanoid form, one arm bladed, extracting herself from... containment foam? Seriously?
And no PRT in sight. What the fuck?
Alteran Alternatives v2.0; Stargate Atlantis/Worm crossover
by Pyrion and Robo Jesus (he helps so much I'm just calling him a co-writer at this point
)1.0x - Interlude: Tattletale
"Yeah, Grue, we need to talk. Kid, just... make yourself at home, and we need to figure out a better name for you, we are not calling you 'Skynet'." Somehow, I felt like we were just scraping the top of the iceberg of Alec's stupid name suggestions, and the look he gave me in return only confirmed it. That'd be for later though, much later, after I'd convinced Brian that the new kid's not gonna narc us out, and after I'd popped at least a couple of Advil's. Most capes' powers were simple to figure out, but not this girl's, and the headache that was forming was all the evidence I needed of that.
I walked outside, Brian hot on my heels, and gave the surrounding area a quick look-over. Nothing amiss, so I turned and folded my arms. "I know what you're going to say, Brian."
"Is that your power talking?" Yeah, he didn't sound happy.
"Nope, don't need it for this conversation. Newbie cape thinks she's a hero, comes this close to killing us," I held up my right thumb and index finger about half an inch from each other, "next thing you know, after she turns us down, I drag her back like a lost puppy and turns out she's not joining us. Yet. Sound about right, so far?"
"Lisa, I know we need more heavy-hitters than just Rachel, but you know as well as I do," he gestured with his left arm back the way we came, "she doesn't have a clue what she's doing, she just triggered, so she's going to be an emotional mess for some time, and while I don't doubt your ability to convince her to join us..."
I nodded. "You're worried that it's just going to blow up in our faces."
"She hasn't even met Rachel yet. That's a meeting I don't expect to go over well, for either of them. We got lucky in that we didn't attack her, but when Rachel attacks, and we both know she's going to, the new girl may say 'to hell with the rules' and retaliate, and I don't think any of us could stop her. Regent's power doesn't work on her, and she sidestepped mine with little difficulty. She's listening to you, yes, but again, that's only because she doesn't know what she's doing, and that'll only go so far." He shook his head and took a deep breath. "How important is it that we get this girl on board?"
"I don't know. That alone should convince you." I facepalmed for a moment. "I'm still trying to figure her out because what little I've picked up from here so far doesn't make any fucking sense. She isn't just a shapeshifter, Brian."
We both took a deep breath, before I continued, lacking reason to stop, "In general terms?" I paused as I started counting out with my fingers, "Changer and Thinker. That's just the stuff she's already figured out and demonstrated to us, or at least to you two, and I think there's a hell of a lot more than just that there. Brian, she's too damn important to let loose or make an enemy of, and I don't think anyone realizes just how much she can shake things up in the city yet. Her most of all."
"God damnit Lisa," Brian grit out, annoyance, concern, and trepidation coloring his body language as he leveled a stare at me. Good, he understands what's at stake.
"I know, I know, I'm taking a huge risk here. Hell, we all are, but even if this doesn't net us another member, we at least keep her from being an enemy. Rachel notwithstanding." I trailed off,
"Okay, so lay it out for me, if this goes bad, I want to know what we may be dealing with here."
"In a nutshell? Alec's suggestion of 'Skynet' as the girl's cape name is appropriate." I squinted at Grue's frown. "Yeah, don't tell him I said that, the only saving grace to all of this is that the girl's never seen those movies. She's more of a bookworm. More to your point though, that invisibility power of hers? It isn't a Stranger power, it's part of her Changer power augmented by a Thinker power, and I suspect the same power is responsible for her effortlessly no-selling Alec's control." I shrugged. "She's easily A-list, sevens or higher in both categories, and as she figures herself out, that's only going to go higher. If we make an enemy of her? There's sweet fuck all we can do to stop her."
Brian groaned and shook his head, glaring daggers at me.
"Oh don't look at me like that Brian, you asked. If it comes to a fight, the most we'll accomplish is to piss her off, but that holds true for just about every heavy hitter in this city, and they've already chosen sides. That said, she hasn't gone off on us already, and provided we don't give her a good reason, she's not going to. There's something else though. All her reactions are off here, for someone with a very recent trigger. She should be showing signs of clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, for everything she's gone through up to today, but she's not."
"You think she's unstable?"
"No, and that's what worries me."
Brian took a moment to collect his thoughts. I didn't need any powers to see the doubts running through his mind at this moment over this entire situation, let alone the path I acted on in my haste and desperation to not have a 'Terminator' after us.
"Okay, I'm still not comfortable with this, but yeah, I'd be even less comfortable with the Protectorate or Empire getting their hands on her. So what do we need to do?"
I sighed, putting the pieces together. "First thing's first, whenever Rachel gets back, we'll need the new girl to go invisible, just long enough for one of us to hold Rachel at the door and inform her of what's going on before she goes ballistic. If nothing else, we see it coming."
"And aside from that?"
"Make her feel welcome, get on her good side? She'll come around, to her, the whole 'hero' thing is just an escape from a bad situation at school. What she doesn't yet realize is that heroes still have to go to school. It's the law." I smirked. "That right there, if nothing else, will keep her out of the Protectorate's grasp, and she's too level-headed and opposed to them on principle to sign on with the Nazis. Either she joins us, or she goes independent, and if she goes independent, we can still work out an alliance."
He rubbed the back of his head. "I dunno, it feels like we're manipulating her for our own ends."
I grinned, couldn't help it really. "We are, but it's for a good cause."
"I hope you can convince her of that when she figures it out." He shrugged. "Alright, Alec's not screaming for help, so at least that's a good sign. Come on."
Walking back in to find two Regents sitting opposite each other, glancing at us like they were sharing some kind of inside joke, brought the headache back full bore. Brian just gave a half-sigh, half-laugh and shook his head. "Alright, very funny. Regents, the new girl can stay for the night, I'm not totally convinced that this is a good idea, but Tattletale's vouching for her."
Regent, that is, the real one, gave a very slight nod in the affirmative. "She's the one on the right." At her gasp of surprise, in Regent's voice no less, I couldn't help but grin with my next response. "I'm psychic."
Beat, no reaction beyond blinking; sense of humor needs work, but at least she's paying attention.
"I probably should've used that line when we met, though," I shrugged, "the joke's a lot funnier when used on people that don't actually know what my power is. Revealing, too. Speaking of which..."
I grabbed a chair and sat, leaning against the comfy backrest. So far, I was the one that hadn't yet seen her shapeshifting power in action, and despite the migraine I was steadily barreling towards, this was the best opportunity to see it for myself in a controlled situation. I was blunt: "take my form, I want to see how you do it."
At her sigh in response, I opened the floodgates and watched; 'Regent' dissolved into a nearly-featureless silver humanoid shape, almost like a template? 'Initial form post-trigger, used as basis for successive human forms.' Her new form... mine, rather, started to take shape, and I couldn't stop my jaw from dropping as the contour of my own face appeared, even as my power started giving me things to work with; 'extrapolation, prefers her right hand side but seems to be ambidextrous, ambidextry recent addition, constant observation of surroundings, omnidirectional, prescience, can see inside human body, doesn't want to, makes her uncomfortable', ...right, pass the brain bleach, and maybe give me something more useful to work with. 'Accuracy of abilities improves exponentially with time, posture tense, mentally exhausted, stressed, able to handle stress and sensory information beyond human norms.' Aspect of her Thinker power?
Huh, makes sense. As I looked at my face on her head, I couldn't help but sigh. I knew my domino mask didn't hide that much, and I already knew her Thinker power was pure bullshit, this just cements it. As I continued watching, a perfect replica of my domino mask extruded from her rendition of my face, and the mass of 'hair' coalesced from a wavy blob to individual strands; 'subconscious perfectionist; control freak.'
Hmm. Grue would need to know about that, if she does join us, she could easily take over the team, and I could see Brian letting it happen. Okay, now she applies color, the disguise finally completes, and... the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as an energy wave cascades over her form, from head to toe. 'Forced interlocking to hold form together without further active effort.' Wait, what?
"Good enough?" She spoke, with my voice no less, and I was torn between jealousy of her powers, and barely-contained giddiness at the thought of getting this girl on board and ultimately, utterly ripping Coil a new asshole with her help. I nearly grinned, but the pain... ugh.
"Yeah, got far more than I think I really needed from that. You're definitely a high Thinker..." Does she get headaches? 'No sensation of pain whatsoever.' Oh come on! "...you don't get headaches, do you?"
The other me shook her head, looking both puzzled and concerned.
"Yeah, now I'm really jealous." I slammed my eyes shut for several seconds, breathing deeply even as I knew I'd need to pop some Advils, maybe down a cup of coffee, and get a good night's sleep. "I think I'm gonna turn in early."
Brian stifled a cough, and I sensed his disapproval... am I forgetting something? 'He's not content to call her 'new girl.'' Ah, right. "Hm? Oh, yeah, you chosen a cape name yet?" The other me shook her head, and I groaned. This was gonna be a long night. "Fine, gimme a few minutes to take care of this headache," and Alec started to open his mouth. "I know what you're going to say, and again, no, we are NOT calling her 'Skynet', so stop suggesting it."
"I was actually going to suggest 'Weaver'," Alec said, with a shit-eating grin I could practically feel from behind his mask. I blinked a few times in confusion. "You don't get it, do you?"
Brian sighed loudly and shook his head. "Earth-Aleph ran a short-lived TV series-"
"-and Catherine Weaver was the Terminator that sought to create an AI to destroy Skynet. Right, now I remember." I glared at Alec, before shaking my head. "You don't get to name anything anymore."
He shrugged, not the least bit discouraged. "Doesn't mean I can't still make suggestions."
I caught the look of cautious amusement from the new girl's face as I walked to the kitchen. 'Finds this funny, but is afraid to show it.'
Brian followed me in, closing the door behind him and waiting patiently while I downed several Advils. I set aside my mask, wincing slightly as my curiosity got the better of me. 'He saw it too, worried about our identities.' "You and Alec don't have much to worry about, she's only working with what information she has. Domino masks don't hide that much, we're mainly working within the silent agreement that nobody's going to consciously dig deep enough to learn who any of us really are. She knows what I look like, that doesn't necessarily mean she knows who I am."
"Does she?" Unusually blunt there, Brian.
I shook my head. "Her power's not my power. As Thinkers go, they're similar, but she's working with an entirely different level of information, it's just what she sees. She sees a lot though. Plus I'm getting the impression that she doesn't have conscious control over it. What we saw wasn't something she intended us to see, it just happened as a consequence of her taking my form." I sighed. "And she doesn't get headaches. That pisses me off more than anything."
He chuckled in response, before taking his mask off and smirking. "You're really that jealous of her?"
"Shit yeah I'm jealous. Think about it for a moment. She doesn't have to worry about costumes, masks, secret identities, shit that most capes starting out have to concern themselves with, her changer power is just that much bullshit on its own. Add on something like my power, only without the headaches?" I huffed. "Still want her to join, though. I'll be less bothered by it all if she's on our side."
He nodded. "How do you think we're doing on that front?"
"Just from the last few minutes? She's scared of us, Brian. Or more accurately, she's growing to like us, and that's what scaring her. She doesn't see herself as doing the cape thing for shits and giggles, she actually wants to help, but there's an undercurrent of 'doing it her way'," I caught his look, "yeah, she's a control freak. If she does this, joins us that is, she'll want to do it on her terms, and she might just be enough of a natural leader to end up calling the shots here."
Unsurprisingly, Brian silently nodded once in silent agreement, not looking the least bit bothered by that.
"You'd be fine with that, wouldn't you?"
"If it helps get me custody of Aisha? I'd be fine with anything, you know that Lisa." He took a deep breath. "Think she'll find conflict with the boss?"
God, I hope so. I stifled my grin, though just barely. "That depends on the boss. I don't foresee him being able to buy her off with money, for instance. Her problems are social and school-related, and the only reason she didn't start out by running off to join the heroes is that she doesn't believe they can, or will, help her."
His brow furrowed. "Why is that, though?"
"Remember when we first met her, I pointed out that another cape is responsible for her triggering?" I grinned at the dawning recollection on his face. "Yeah, it's one thing if the responsible cape is a villain, and for Winslow we'd expect that. But what if the responsible cape is a hero?"
He looked perplexed at the question for a moment before he rolled his eyes and sighed. "Shadow Stalker?"
"Thus her distrust of authority and the heroes. Anyway, I'm not using my power for the rest of the night, barring emergencies or Rachel, and we still need to think of a cape name for her. Come on."
Donning our masks, we cracked the door open and I swear I could hear Brian's heart seize up for a moment when he saw Alec and the new kid, him maskless and her in civilian form, playing a video game together. Several realizations hit me at once: 'Alec has a crush on her, she's being polite but not reciprocating. She doesn't play video games, doesn't own any, father can't afford them-'
"Fuck! There's no way you're new to this game." Alec shouted and shook his head in obvious frustration, and I glanced at the screen for a moment. Beginner's luck or fast learner? 'New to the game, learning from observation, mimicking playstyle, paying more attention to Alec's controller than the screen.' I chuckled at that; no surprise there, she's taking in everything, probably even--oh shit. Did she? 'Heard everything, both conversations. Still sees us as villains first, aware of intent at manipulation, taken by surprise from Alec's unmasking, thinks he's not in on it, they exchanged real names.' Fuck me.
I elbowed Brian in the ribs and started to remove my mask, ignoring his obvious shock and growing frustration. "Alec's got the right idea." I blew out a sigh of both relief and annoyance, wiped the sweat off of my brow and then leaned over the couch, putting on my best grin. "Hi. I'm Lisa."
"Bit busy here, Lise," Alec gritted as his grip on the controller tensed, his moves getting more exaggerated and forceful. The new girl, on the other hand, glanced briefly at me with obvious surprise, before turning her full attention back to the game. Her moves, meanwhile, only sped up, and I watched with equal parts fascination and horror that every attack Alec attempted got blocked or evaded with perfect timing. As the match very quickly ended and Alec dropped the controller in stunned silence, I got the implicit message - she's playing along to learn the game, but once she's had enough, it's game over.
"Were you fucking with me this whole time?" Alec started, completely oblivious to the seriousness of the situation. She turned to me, blank-faced, briefly glancing in his direction. Damnit.
"You were, weren't you? You've played this game before." He continued, mumbling under his breath. "Can't believe I just got hustled at Smash Brothers."
"Alec, shut up." Brian growled, arms akimbo and still masked. "Anyone want to explain to me what the fuck I'm obviously missing?"
I turned to him. "She overheard everything, Brian. Us talking about her powers, her psychological state, our goals with getting her onboard... everything." Back to her. "I wasn't kidding when I said it's for a good cause."
Frowning and crossing her arms, she didn't look the least bit convinced. Brian just audibly sighed and grabbed a chair. Yeah, this was going to be a long night.
I shook my head - so much for not using my power.
-----
Cajoling Brian to unmask didn't take much effort at that point, he cracked under the combined pressure of death glares from both me and the new girl. We each took a seat at the table, more than a bit nervous at the thought that she could snap at any moment. Fortunately, she seemed more inclined to keep listening, which honestly continued to puzzle me. Something to look into later though.
"So, whaddya wanna know?" I grinned nervously.
She paused for a moment, apparently deep in thought, before taking a breath. "Your boss. Who is he, and what's his power?"
Alec chuckled and pointed to me. "She is, obviously."
Brian and I frowned, albeit for wildly different reasons.
Her brow furrowed in thought. "You sure? They both referred to a 'boss' that calls the shots here and, I guess, pays you all?"
"When they were talking in the kitchen while you were supposedly learning how to play Smash Brothers? Skynet, the only person to ever really call the shots here is her. It's what she does."
I rolled my eyes at him in response, and Brian shook his head. "No, we do have a boss, Lisa coordinates jobs and pay with him, so yeah, she tells us where to go and what to do, and her power's suited for that anyways. But no. I've... talked with him in the past, though I don't have a clue who he is, just that he's got loads of money and employs capes to do his dirty work."
Alec turned to Brian and shook his head, grinning. "Yeah yeah, I get it, you let her call the shots, she lets you play team leader and-"
"Alec?" I glared at him.
"Yeah boss?"
I shook my head, a smirk forming. "Coil calls the shots here."
He blinked several times in confusion. "Wait... seriously?"
"I'll put you on the line next time he calls if you don't believe me." I glanced over at the shapeshifter, noting her slight nodding in apparent recognition of the name. "So you've heard of him," I prompted her.
"Just what was on Parahumans Online, which isn't much." She confirmed with a shrug.
"Yeah, nobody knows much about him. I think he's a Thinker, but beyond that... haven't a clue. I've yet to meet him in person."
"And how much does he pay you?"
"Ten thousand a month, split four ways. Five if you join us. Rachel's the only one liable to complain, the rest of us would be cool with it." I elaborated, and we all chuckled at her wide-eyed reaction. "We get considerably more when we take actual jobs, usually it's attacking gangs at a certain place and time. Like this last job, for instance. Nothing bad, nothing that really harms anyone." My grin disappeared. "We... can't really deal with Protectorate kill-orders, not that anyone outside of psychos like the S9 want those anyways, or the other gangs' heavy hitters, for instance."
"Which is why you want me to join." She leaned back, arms crossed.
"Partially," Brian preempted me, much to my annoyance. "This is mostly Lisa's idea, but I can see the merit of having a shapeshifter on the team. You'd be more than just a heavy hitter. I mean..." he shook his head, "you'd be a natural infiltrator, and your... hyper-awareness...?"
"Prescience." I answered.
"Prescience. Yeah, that. We've gotten pretty good at avoiding direct conflict, Rachel's dogs are all we really have going for us in that department."
"I think what Brian's trying to say is that we wouldn't have to rely solely on my power for avoiding fights, or the dogs as heavy hitters," I frowned and glanced at the stairwell, "considering she's awfully unreliable at times."
Alec chuckled and shook his head. "Rachel is Rachel. Her life is basically her dogs and... not much else."
"Rachel's a street kid. Her trigger accidentally caused a death due to the transformed dog going out of control, and, well..." Brian trailed off before sighing. "Rachel's never been much of a people person since."
She nodded in thought, before frowning. "What's a trigger?"
Oh dear...
Brian and Alec both looked at her in disbelief. Honestly…
"Wait, you don't know..." Brian started.
"It's when and how we get our powers. The worst day of our lives." Alec finished for us, and I sighed in relief, really not wanting to have to explain it.
Brian frowned. "Bad enough that we don't talk about ours in casual conversation. Trigger events themselves aren't generally known to the public, but every cape has had one."
"The likely reason why is if the public knew what we had to go through to get powers, a lot of people would intentionally put themselves through the wringer to try to get powers." I shook my head in mock disgust. "It doesn't work that way."
"Alright, what about the rest of you? You don't seem like stereotypical villains."
Brian leaned against the table, frowning. "You first."
"Brian..." I growled at him.
He raised his right hand in defense. "If I'm going to be baring my soul to her, it's only fair that I have an idea of who she is. I don't know her name, her background, anything other than that she's a stupidly-powerful shapeshifter."
She took several deep breaths, 'conflicted, doesn't want to answer, doesn't want to be rude...' "Taylor. My name's Taylor."
Brian nodded cautiously. "I'm not asking about your trigger, Taylor. Just... anything you want to share?"
She seemed to deflate in response, not saying anything, but appearing on the verge of crying. 'Doesn't have an answer that isn't directly related to trigger event. Very long-term abuse, years. Can't cry, no tear ducts.' Damnit Brian, she doesn't need this.
I leaned over and elbowed him in the ribs, ignoring his surprise and giving him another death glare.
"The one friend I thought I had turned against me," her answer was barely audible, yet we all heard it.
"Taylor, you don't have to say any more." I intervened, continuing to glare at Brian.
"...I see," he frowned. "I'm sorry I asked."
We sat in silence for a moment as Taylor recomposed herself, again much too quickly for such a recent trigger. What the hell is causing that?
"My story..." Brian sighed, "my story is I've got a drug addict for a mother and a dad-in-name-only for a father. If it were just me, I'd have joined the Wards already, but it's not just me. They'd have done jack squat for Aisha."
"You mentioned her earlier," she confirmed. "Sister?"
He nodded. "Mom got custody of her while dad got custody of me." A deep breath, and he flexed both of his hands in growing anger. "If Aisha were also a parahuman, we'd both go to the Wards and not look back, but she's still stuck with mom, and living on the streets is actually better, despite being a criminal, than... yeah."
Alec glanced over at Brian, and smirked. "So, I'm Alec, as I already told you, and I'm doing the villain thing for shits and giggles."
Taylor frowned at that, and Alec read into her reaction. "Yup, it's exactly what you're thinking. Lisa and Brian, they have reasons for being villains," he shrugged. "I don't."
Her frown started to turn into a scowl, and her inner conflicts started to show through. She snapped her head towards Alec. "You seem so nice though."
"For a villain, you mean?" He rolled his eyes. "Skynet, there are three main types of villains. Those in it for the money, those in it for the attention, and those in it because they're one maraschino cherry short of a fruitcake." He pointed his scepter at both of us. "We're in it mainly for the money. The big gangs, you know, Merchants, ABB, the Empire? Money, attention, and crazy."
"On the spectrum of villainy, we're on the light side of things," I confirmed with a grin. "The other gangs are in various places in the middle. No idea where Coil would place, and I don't have to say where the Slaughterhouse Nine fits into this."
Brian had the makings of a smirk as he joined in. "You could probably put the heroes on a similar scale. I'd call them the idealists, the attention whores, and the militants. The idealists do the heroing thing because they actually believe they're making the world a better place." He caught her look and nodded. "The attention whores do the heroing thing for recognition, and the militants have an 'us versus them' mindset and are determined to win by any means. Glory Girl? Attention whore. Shadow Stalker? Militant. The other Wards? Idealists."
For a moment I felt a pang of sympathy as she reacted to that last bit with a sigh. 'Still conflicted, diametrically opposing viewpoints, 'good villains' and 'bad heroes'.'
"If it makes you feel any better, you're new at this. Some villains start out thinking that they're going to make the world a better place, only to learn the hard way just how eager the system is to screw them over. Either you take the screwing and maybe make something of yourself as a hero, or you fight back and bam, instant villain." Brian shrugged, then turned to me. "Your turn, Lisa."
Fine. "Short and sweet of it is I come from a rich family," I glared at Alec, "which is probably why you thought I could afford to shell out ten grand a month... no way I have that kind of cash on me. Anyway, rich family, parents are douchebags, they found out I had gained a power, sought to abuse it for themselves and didn't care one damn bit what I thought, so, I don't care one damn bit what they thought of me leaving." 'Thinks there's more to that explanation.' Excellent.
She nodded a few times, still frowning. "One more question."
"Shoot." Brian said.
"It seems like you're going to a ridiculous amount of effort to get me to join. Letting me stay at your place, unmasking, this whole Q-and-A session where you've spilled the beans on pretty much your whole operation. Why?"
I sighed loudly, leaning back into my chair. "Taylor, you probably have no idea just how rare true shapeshifters are in the cape scene, and there's no way that you're just a shapeshifter. I'd rather have you as a friend than an ally, but I'd still rather have you as an ally than an enemy, because your power scares the shit out of me, and I guarantee you, in the next week alone when the rest of this town comes to grips with a true shapeshifter in their midst, everyone will be feeling the exact same way. If you won't join them, they'll want to make damn sure they don't do anything to piss you off, because your power will play merry hell with everyone's inherent paranoia. Some might just decide you're too much of a threat to ignore or buy off, even if it means breaking the unwritten rules." Yes, Taylor, they'd go after your father if they couldn't get to you, unwritten rules be damned.
She seemed to accept that answer, nodding silently to herself, and once again I started having the feeling that something was very off here. 'Reconciling cognitive dissonance as further attempt at manipulation.' Oh for fuck's sake...
"Taylor, I have a question," I started.
"Okay."
"Why do you think we're manipulating you?"
She exhaled hard, annoyed. "I dunno, it feels like we're manipulating her for our own ends," Brian's eyes widened at hearing his own voice, "we are, but it's for a good cause," my voice, and she can rapidly switch between voices... figures. "I hope you can convince her of that when she figures it out," finishing with a look that all but said "well?"
"I wasn't lying when I said that, Taylor," I shrugged. "Look at it from my perspective, I'm walking on eggshells trying to put this in terms that won't provoke you or scare you off."
She folded her arms, apparently unconvinced. "You said it's for a 'good cause.' Whose?"
"Ours," I grinned. "Yours included. I think you know why, too, even if you're afraid to admit it."
"I just..." she sighed, "I just don't want to lose my dad. He's the only thing I have left. I don't want to villain. I can't go villain. If I go villain-"
"It's not gonna kill him, Taylor." Brian interrupted.
She shook her head. "I know, but... I don't want him to hate me for it."
"Taylor, if your father really loves you, he's not going to suddenly disown you for joining a gang of villains, especially if he has any idea what you've just gone through." I tried, only to get another shake of her head.
"That's just it: I haven't told him any of this." 'Trust issues. Betrayal struck deep, doesn't trust her father, wants to trust us, but doesn't trust herself.'
Alec rolled his eyes. "Well duh. You only triggered this morning."
"He doesn't know anything about what lead up to it, though. The bullying, who the bullies are, how long this has been going on... I haven't told him anything." Beat. "He undoubtedly knows by now, the police or the PRT will have told him, and he's going to want me to join the Wards out of fear for my safety, which means I'd have to work with Shadow Stalker, and she's much of the reason I have powers in the first place."
While Alec and I started to facepalm, Brian simply responded with "Ah." Good grief…
"Give me some time to think about all of this, I'm not going to make a decision one way or another until I've spoken with him." She simmered down to mild frustration, apparently feeling better for having gotten all of that out of her system.
"Speaking of Shadow Stalker," Alec smirked at Brian, "you wanna tell her about your experiences with her, or should I?" At his shrug in response, Alec wore one of my grins. "Yeah, Shadow Stalker's got a massive hate-on for Grue here. Her power and his react weirdly, so she really wants him dead."
"She wants everyone dead," Brian corrected him.
"Yeah, but when she sees you, it's like she gets tunnel vision and ignores everything going on around her. It's why she's never managed to take you down; an over-achiever she ain't. Still, she did ruin that white couch Lise loved when she shot you that one time."
"Wait, what?"
Oh dear...
"Yeah, Shadow Stalker shot Brian with a barbed crossbow bolt, it was sticking out of his gut and blood got everywhere. Ruined that lovely two-thousand dollar white leather couch Lisa bought," Alec said. I couldn't help the scowl at the memory of that incident as Alec kept talking. "If not for some tinker medicine we shelled out some major bucks for a few weeks earlier in case of an emergency, Brian would probably be dead."
I stood, approaching the kitchen. "My headache's slowly coming back, so I'm gonna get some coffee. You want anything?"
"Tea," she perked up, "I haven't had anything since I... well... you know."
"No wonder you're cranky," Alec joked, "get me a Coke while you're at it."
"Same," Brian added. Halfway to the fridge, I heard him start, "so, cape names."
Oh you are not starting without me...
-----
I sat back down several minutes later, having gotten everyone their drinks and listened intently at the, frankly, utterly retarded suggestions coming from Brian and Alec.
"'Mercury' and 'Quicksilver' are both taken, and besides, mercury the metal is toxic." So is this coffee, come to think of it. Dark roast. Bleh. What was I thinking?
Brian frowned and gestured to Alec. "Well he's not coming up with any better ideas. 'Hastur'? Where'd you pull that from?"
Alec chortled in response. "You're obviously not a fan of the classics."
I felt my headache flare up at this point. The only saving grace to all of this was the innocent, clueless look on Taylor's face. Well-read, but not that well-read.
"Yeah, if she goes hero with that, she'd be buried in red tape, plus that's the kind of name that might be reserved for an Endbringer."
Of course, he wouldn't let it go without a modicum of protest in jest. "She-who-is-not-to-be-named, Lise. It fits."
"That's not funny," I managed to squeeze out between laughs. "Okay, serious suggestions. We're dealing with a shapeshifter, you two, not a Great Old One or a shameless ripoff of one of those Earth-Aleph comic book characters."
I glanced at Taylor's direction as she took a careful sip of her tea, half-wondering why she hesitated for so long before remembering she didn't have tear ducts. Hell, might as well - I let the floodgates open once more and watched. 'No digestive system, cavity forming within throat to contain ingested material.' No reaction on her part for the taste, and I shrugged inwardly, it's just cheap black tea, nothing fancy. 'No taste buds, no sense of taste, no sense of smell.' She frowned, realizing it at much the same time as I was, and I felt a pang of sympathy, but only for a moment, before all hell broke loose.
Our eyes widened in almost-perfect synchronization as something flared up within her. 'Surprised, power interaction with ingested material,' but what kind of interaction? She sighed and her eyes closed, 'momentary sensory overload; euphoria,' so probably her Changer power having done something to the tea. But what?
Brian and Alec obviously knew something was up, because their bantering cut short in favor of both of them watching this spectacle cautiously. Taylor lifted the mug to her lips once more and downed the rest of her scalding hot tea in one gulp, pausing for a moment before having a similar, albeit more pronounced reaction.
"You alright?" I asked hesitantly.
She blinked a couple times, and then nodded. "I think so, just learned that I can still eat, even if I can't taste anything. Don't think I have to worry about bathroom breaks either, my power just breaks it all down, repurposes it."
What? No, seriously, what? 'Ingested material broken down into constituent elements, restructured.'
My breathing stopped momentarily as the realization hit me. "Your Changer power's also a Breaker and Striker power as well." I turned to Brian, alarmed. "She's breaking down and restructuring matter at the atomic level."
Predictably, his eyes bugged out in realization at how potentially game-breaking that was, with a Changer not only capable of altering herself, but everything she could get her hands on.
Throwing caution to the wind in favor of potentially more useful information, I handed her my coffee. "It's burnt anyway."
She eagerly gulped the whole foul thing down, waited a moment, and then nodded several times. "Slightly denser. Can I try something?"
At our obvious continued interest, she held my mug in her right hand, shifted it to liquid metal and enveloped the mug itself. A chill went down my spine as the mug, coated in liquid metal, melted into her hand, and the look of satisfaction on her face was evident. "Thought so."
I started having second thoughts at this point, even as Taylor obviously wasn't done experimenting. Effecting permanent changes to physical matter for the sake of, well, self-replication I guess, could easily bump her up into the S-class ranks, and all of us could end up with kill-orders on our heads if she were to go completely nuts and we were fully associated with her. Then, out of the palm of her hand, a sphere of liquid metal extruded itself, contracting into the familiar shape of my mug, taking on the same color and texture as the original. She hesitated for a moment, before setting it down and cautiously letting go. 'Mimicry of the real thing, retaining full sensory awareness and control despite lack of physical connection.'
I stared at the mug for a moment, then looked her straight in the eyes. "Bullshit. Your powers are utter bullshit." Remote control of parts of herself mimicking other forms? Master rating, on top of everything else. Only thing that would top this is if the mug grew legs or wings... and who the fuck am I kidding? She hasn't tried it yet, so it's only a matter of time before she figures it out. God damn...
Alec reached over and snatched the mug away. "So, what? She melted it down and then built it back up?"
I glared at him. "That's not really a mug you're holding. It's part of her body now."
His eyebrows shot up, and a smirk started forming. "Really?" He flipped it around in his hands, nodding to himself in mock-appreciation, then with the worst shit-eating grin I've ever seen him use: "You've got an impressive cup size, Taylor."
Brian barely stifled his laughter while facepalming, whereas I just shook my head in indignation, then grabbed Brian's empty Coke bottle and threw it at Alec. In exaggerated mock-surprise, he dropped the mug, his amusement turning to shock upon hearing it shatter. All of us stood to look at the remains scattered on the floor, motionless for a moment before Taylor walked over, stared at it intently, and nodded as the individual fragments melted and coalesced into a liquid metal blob, before re-assuming the form of the mug.
Alec took a breath to say something, but Brian and I immediately responded in tandem: "We're not calling her Skynet!"
"I wasn't gonna say anything," he shrugged, barely concealing his amusement.
Taylor reached down to retrieve the mug, absorbing it back into her hand with a look of pensive thought. "What are you thinking?" I prompted her.
"I'll still need some time to think about this, and determine the limits of... well, you know. If I can be in multiple places at the same time, and if I have a range limitation. I'd also have to come up with alternate forms, costumes, assumed power sets..." she sighed, "cape names."
"Let's keep with the notion that you're a shapeshifter. You're probably going to be using that in public more than anything else."
Brian shrugged as he sat back down, and I could tell he was feeling overwhelmed by all of this. "What about you Lisa? I mean, you're the Thinker, you've got to have ideas."
"Well, thinking of alternate words for 'shapeshifter' to work with. Hmm. I very briefly thought 'Changeling' before I realized the negative historical conno-"
"The Female Changeling!" Alec announced triumphantly. We all glared at him.
"Alec, quit while you're ahead," Brian gestured at Taylor, who was similarly annoyed. "She didn't get 'Hastur,' but I'm pretty sure she's familiar with Star Trek."
"...Anyway, there was that, and the only other words I could think of were 'polymorph' and 'meta-'"
Taylor's head snapped towards the stairwell. "Dogs."
I blinked, headache and interruption adding to my initial confusion. "What?"
"Dogs, several, approaching the entrance. Someone's with them, I assume that's-"
"Rachel." Brian confirmed, his darkness already starting to bellow out. Alec and I stood and backed away from the table, largely useless for what would ensue.
"Taylor, I'm going to flood this half of the room with my darkness. Go invisible and stand somewhere outside of it. I want her to think you're hiding in it, because the moment we confront her and she finds out someone else is in here, she's probably going to attack the darkness."
"You didn't just say that," Alec started to laugh once more despite the seriousness of the situation.
He shook his head in response. "Whatever. Taylor, invisible, now." She complied, disappearing right as the door creaked open.
Immediately, we could all tell that Rachel's dogs knew something was up. They bolted up the stairwell much faster than usual, and all three were growling when they reached the top. Rachel, consequently, was on edge as well, and seeing us all gathered at the table with a cloud of darkness only confirmed it.
"Bitch, hold on a mo-" Brian started, trying to put himself between Rachel and her dogs. She just whistled sharply, and all three charged into the darkness, just as predicted. Brian sighed loudly as the dogs slammed into the drywall with some yelps of surprise, deprived of their senses and having found nothing to attack.
He turned away from the dogs to stare down Rachel. "As I was saying..."
Rachel suddenly flew upwards and back, pinned against the wall and grasping at her throat while kicking at the wall in a vain attempt to pry herself free from her invisible assailant. Taylor dropped her invisibility, and in a moment of inspiration, formed a thin, expanding metal wall from her free left hand, surrounding Brian's darkness and trapping the dogs within.
"God damnit Taylor, let me handle this," Brian said, anger and frustration easy to see on his face at this turn of events.
She ignored him. "They told me you'd try something like this, and that if we fought, it would likely end with me killing your dogs. Use your power on them, and I will." Rachel's eyes widened, and she looked to be on the verge of calling that bluff. "Hi, I'm Taylor, I just got my powers, and this is technically the first time I've been attacked by another cape. Stop struggling."
"Damn if she doesn't sound like a Terminator right now..." Alec muttered under his breath. Brian, meanwhile, gritted his teeth and watched.
"I just have one quick thing to say, and then I'm going to let you go. I get it, you're not a people person, the only things you likely care about are yourself and your dogs. You sensed a threat and lashed out, I neither know nor care why, but don't even think of trying it again. So, you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. Fair enough?"
Rachel nodded stiffly, realizing she couldn't do much else, unable to see or hear her dogs, and Taylor unceremoniously dropped her to the floor while drawing the metal back into her fingers. Rachel stumbled in a brief coughing fit as her dogs similarly stumbled out of the darkness. She seethed and glared at Taylor but otherwise retreated silently to her room. Brian, meanwhile, was livid.
"What the fuck was that, Taylor? I said 'let me handle this' for a reason. Yeah, Rachel likely deserved that because we all knew that she'd start out by attacking you, but you could've broken her neck. What the hell were you thinking?!"
She folded her arms. "I was thinking that I had gone through the past couple years of my life running from bullies, fully aware that I couldn't fight back, hoping that at some point they'd get bored and stop. That obviously hasn't worked, they just put me through the worst day of my life, and the very same night, when it seems like I can finally escape that shit, I get attacked by another bully. What did you think was going to happen?"
Brian responded with a long sigh and shook his head. "I had hoped you'd stay invisible at least until I could calm Rachel down. Explain the situation to her, in terms that she'd understand. She... doesn't think like we do. People, I mean. Lisa, help me out here."
Ugh. "Honestly, Brian? That could've gone much worse. Yeah, she doesn't think like we do, she thinks like a dog, so in really simple terms, the moment she sensed a threat, she was dead-set on attacking that threat until it ceased to be one." I met Brian's glare. "You could've talked her out of it, yes, but Taylor would've had to remain invisible and Rachel's dogs would've had to remain immobilized. They get loose, they have minds of their own, and the last command she gave them was to attack, and I don't need to tell you that neither Alec nor I would want to try restraining three dogs on the hunt for a foe they can't see..." I frowned, realizing how unlikely the darkness should've deceived them, "or smell, for that matter. No, that actually went rather well, Taylor basically presented herself as a bigger dog, in Rachel's mind at least." I glanced at Taylor. "She'll avoid eye contact with you if that's the case."
"Fine." Brian turned to Taylor and crossed his arms. "You got lucky, but Rachel's still part of this team, you're not, and you may have just killed your chances at joining." He turned his attention to us. "If she wants to join, we're still going to hold a vote, Rachel included." Fuck. Even split, if we held the vote right now. Good thing I had some time here though, even if this entire ordeal of a night was the most seat-of-my-pants stunt I've pulled yet.
Brian leaned against the doorframe, arms still crossed. "We still haven't figured out what to call you."
Huh, almost forgot about that. Blame the headache. "Right, only words I had left to work with on that subject were 'polymorph' and 'metamorph,' otherwise we'd have to start back in on cultural references and-"
"Metalmorph." Brian interrupted with a hints of a smile. "It's perfect. She's a metamorph, made of metal. Metalmorph."
Alec shook his head and walked back to the couch. "Seriously, you two? 'Metalmorph''s the best you can come up with?"
I frowned in thought. "It's awfully simplistic, as much an adjective as a pronoun, but I don't have any better ideas. Also, it's probably taken, I'd have to go check."
Without waiting for input from the others, I dashed to my room and logged onto my terminal. Ran a PHO Wiki search on 'Metalmorph,' came up with five hits, hmm... none of them articles named Metalmorph. Okay, that's encouraging, and... yep, use of the word as an adjective to describe Hookwolf in both the Hookwolf and Empire 88 articles. Adjective use in an article on Weld of the Boston Wards... huh, his appearance and powers are somewhat similar to Taylor's. Use in both articles on Mercury and Quicksilver, both European capes I was already somewhat familiar with. Sweet, not taken as a name then.
"It's unclaimed!," I shouted, to no response. Hm. Killed the browser, logged off and ran back to everyone. "I said it's unclai-"
I first sighted Rachel, scowling from the entrance to the kitchen as one of her dogs, the german shepherd... Judas I think, staring down Taylor, wearing her human form, seated at the table and herself staring down Judas. Aside from a low growl on Judas' part, everyone else seemed content to watch. Brian glanced up at me, and held one hand up and shook his head silently. Yeah, this could go bad, none of us really wanted to tempt fate with one of her dogs, but what was really strange was that Rachel herself was letting it happen. Judas would look over at Rachel occasionally, as if expecting an order to attack or retreat, but she just continued to watch. Damn the headache... 'angry with herself, angry at Brian, angry at Taylor, suspicious of her motives, reluctantly respects her strength.' Shit, didn't see that coming. Brian voting no, Rachel maybe voting yes? 'Contingent on reactions to Judas, hostile/threatening behavior ensures 'No' vote.'
I snapped my head towards Taylor, and whispered her name faintly but urgently. On eye contact, I mouthed "she's testing you" while giving brief glances towards Rachel. A single nod confirmed she understood, and then Taylor slowly slid off the chair, crouching down to her knees and presenting herself as a smaller, less threatening target.
"What's his name?" She asked, looking at Rachel. No answer. 'Doesn't want to answer, realizes Taylor's not going to attack, doesn't want to vote yes.'
"Rachel?" She tried again, no answer, no eye contact. "Bitch?"
Rachel let out a long sigh before practically growling out "Judas" with gritted teeth.
"Okay," Taylor nodded and reached out with her right hand. "Judas? It's okay."
His growl intensified and he backed away one step, baring teeth at her. "Alright, it's cool," she held up both hands in response, backing away and switching to a cross-legged sitting position. She patted at the floor to her right, "it's okay, I'm not gonna force you."
Judas continued to growl, sniffing the air and looking to Rachel for guidance. He took a couple of cautious, tense steps toward Taylor, still growling, the intensity briefly ratcheting up a notch when Taylor reached out again. Again, she pulled her hand away and patted at the floor, silently staring at him intently. The staredown continued for an additional half-minute before Judas quickly backed away, running to Rachel, his growling briefly morphing into a whine. She shook her head and turned inward into the kitchen, Judas in tow.
Everyone let out their held breaths, myself included, and I quickly crossed the distance to the table, grabbing and planting myself in a chair before Rachel'd undoubtedly come storming back out. We looked at each other silently, the only sound in the room being the distant hissing of running water from the sink, and Judas' occasional high-pitched whine. Rachel crossed back into view once more, carrying a bowl filled with water, avoiding eye contact with all of us as she hurriedly walked to her room. Judas looked at Taylor once more, growling briefly before dashing after Rachel.
I grinned once they disappeared out of view. "Swing vote."
"Seriously?" Brian now.
"Yeah, she's on the fence, doesn't want to vote yes, but she knows we need another heavy hitter." My grin faded as I looked at Taylor, now having retaken her seat. "You barely passed, by the way. And I was right, 'Metalmorph' is only used as a description, not a name."
Alec rolled his eyes and turned back towards the TV. "You guys could do so much better than that."
"I like it." Taylor smiled faintly.
Brian nodded, satisfied. "Alright, glad that's settled. Metalmorph," he gave a cautious nod towards Taylor, "if you're still thinking about joining us, ehh..." he took a breath, "give it some thought and time. Now wouldn't be the best time to call for a vote, honestly."
Much as I wanted to, I couldn't help but agree with him.
"I'm spent, Bitch's liable to flip her shit, Lisa's probably got a headache the size of Texas..."
"Getting there," I agreed, wincing at the reminder.
He stood and walked towards his room, turning back towards us halfway there. "You gonna be okay out here, Taylor?"
"I think so." She nodded reluctantly.
"Okay, fuck it, I'm going to bed." He practically ran out of sight, leaving me shaking my head with another forming grin. I rolled my eyes and looked at Taylor.
"Two swing votes, actually, so yeah, give it a few days at least." I took a deep breath, now acutely aware of the pounding in my head. "I hate my power sometimes."
"Go get some sleep then, I think I'll be alright," Taylor stood, left arm extended out to me. Helping me up? 'Desperately seeking friends, giving serious thought to joining despite her reservations.' Huh.
I gladly took her hand, pulling myself out of the chair, now aware that my sense of balance was starting to falter.
"Definitely overused my power, and the painkillers are already wearing off." I managed to open both eyes enough to be aware I was facing Taylor, and leaning on her arm to maintain my balance, which didn't seem to bother her in the slightest. Realizing that this was the last I'd probably see of her for a while, given how much sleep I'd need, I reached out and hugged her, whispering "sorry you had to go through all of that today. Triggers suck."
She nodded silently, and we stood there hugging for a few moments before I started hearing odd noises coming from Alec's direction. The hell? 'Vocalized porno music.' Oh for... I forced my eyes open, stepped away from Taylor with a slight wobble in my step, turned to glare at him, even more annoyed that he was wearing one of my grins. "Alec?"
"Hmm?" His grin got wider.
I sighed, and started walking to my bed. "Die in a fire."
-----
I don't even remember collapsing in bed, nor if I managed to dream at all when the banging on the wall began.
"Lisa! Wake up!"
Nope. Didn't want to. Couldn't. Head's still pounding.
"Lisa! It's Taylor, she's on the news!"
My eyes shot wide open, before I smashed them closed, swearing at the searing light amplifying the pain in my head. Okay, fine. Gotta wake up.
"Come on damnit, this is live! Taylor's just been attacked! Get up!"
I stumbled out of bed, still clad in my costume, hair everywhere, head pounding, half-asleep. Someone, Brian probably, held me by the arm and practically carried me out.
"...submitted this video of the aftermath of a car crash and ensuing cape fight in the upper west side of town. The attacker, the Ward we know as Shadow Stalker, ambushed and confronted the first-responder, an assumed newcomer to Brockton Bay's cape scene..."
I forced my eyes open just in time to watch a grainy portrait smartphone recording of what was obviously Taylor, in her metal humanoid form, one arm bladed, extracting herself from... containment foam? Seriously?
And no PRT in sight. What the fuck?
Last edited:
1.04
Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
Alteran Alternatives v2.0; Stargate Atlantis/Worm crossover
by Pyrion (and Robo Jesus, who will inevitably write something funnier here. RJ: No I won't~)
1.04
I stepped out of the Undersiders' hideout at around four in the morning, having spent the majority of my time there considering my options. Joining them was... tempting... but again, I couldn't see dad taking it well, and he'd been the only person I had left when it seemed like the whole world had turned against me. While they seemed like nice people, for villains at least, whatever friendship could be had there would always be tainted by the fact that they had tried to manipulate me into joining them. I'd always have to watch my back around them, Rachel in particular, and that was no way to go about cultivating friendships. No, these were people my age that got powers through similarly shitty situations and took the easy way out, using their powers for their own benefit first and foremost, at the expense of everyone else. In their circumstances, it probably would've been easy to write off friends and family, yet I wasn't going to let this drive me away from my father. Becoming a villain would. Becoming a hero... still might.
And that was the crux of the issue facing me. I'd have to tell dad everything. That I had been lying to him about school, I hadn't told him about the bullies, he had no idea that Emma was one of them, and if Sophia could be believed, Emma was the ringleader. I hadn't told him that the whole damn school knew what was going on, and nobody had stepped in to help. Well, not to help me, at any rate. I had to stop to unclench my hands. I'd have to tell him that, despite everything that's happened, I wasn't going to run away, I wasn't going to let them win. Even if it meant having to go back to Winslow, with the whole damn place likely knowing what had happened to me, and I wasn't going to let Sophia's... status... as a state-sponsored Hero get in the way of me becoming a hero. I'd... just have to work outside the system, not join the Wards. Maybe look into New Wave, or at least ask them for advice. Oh god, I had to let breathe out, trying to smother the feelings of panic I could feel beginning to rise at this entire situation I found myself in. Ok, breathe in, breathe out. Ok, a bit better. No, not really, but at least I know I won't start hyperventilating.
"Hehehe," I started to laugh at that thought before smothering that down too.
And as for Winslow? I could always turn invisible, walk from class to class without Emma or the others ever seeing me. My ability to mimic absorbed objects could effectively allow me to forego worrying about textbooks, I'd just have to absorb them, although that still left the problem of having to pay for replacements, as I wasn't about to "give back" a portion of myself in the form of a textbook. 'Hmm...'
Two blocks away from the Undersiders' hideout, I had the makings of an idea. My nanites had no trouble disassembling solid and liquid matter to build more nanites, and I had no difficulty recalling the shape and appearance of Lisa's coffee mug for the purposes of mimicking it. I walked down a dimly-lit alley, content to know that nobody had followed me, nor was anybody awake and nearby, and focused. The familiar sphere of nanites erupted from my hand again, but as I intently thought about reproducing the mug instead of mimicking it, the first indication that my power had a say in the matter kicked in. A wave of... I almost want to say "nausea", washed over me, a general feeling of wrongness pervading my very being, even as the nanites in that sphere sacrificed themselves, being disassembled by other nanites, and those in turn sacrificing themselves, et cetera, to reproduce the mug. It took longer, too. A solid minute, at least, before a perfect recreation of the mug rested in the palm of my hand. I took a deep breath again, even mindful of the fact that I didn't necessarily need to breathe, but the feeling of wrongness hadn't subsided. Did I do something wrong? Something I shouldn't have?
The familiar energy wave of my nanites locking together washed through me, and the ill feeling mostly went away. I felt... lessened, I guess. Smaller. Absorbing matter, making more nanites, extending my awareness, no, that was my first indication that my power had a say in the matter. To confirm that, I drew the mug back into me, the uneasiness turning to pleasure and finally contentment as the mug dissolved into new nanites, though not as much as before.
I wanted to panic at this realization, that my power was subtly affecting my thoughts, rewarding me for some actions while punishing others, before I realized that it wasn't so different from eating food for sustenance versus starving. Not that I needed to eat food anymore it seems. But still, if there was any doubt that my transformation into this... swarm... of nanites had changed me other than just physically changing my body, this sealed the deal.
I resumed the walk home wearing my own form, a bit of a spring in my step from reconciling the changes to my body with the changes to my mind. Yes, my power seems to be affecting my thoughts, but not necessarily in a bad way. It didn't compel me to absorb matter to make more nanites, for example; that would've been just cause for a panic attack. 'Wait, can I absorb living things too?' Hm, maybe something to check on later with a houseplant or something. But while I could use the nanites as "construction material" to reproduce mundane objects, it wasn't ideal.
'Shit.' The realization just occurred to me, and I dashed down the closest alleyway, annoyed at myself for not having realized it earlier. I could absorb matter to create more nanites, and vice versa, so why not cut out the middleman? I ripped off the lid of a nearby trashcan, smirking to myself at the thought that what I was about to do was technically vandalism, not that anybody would care in this city... I let my nanites flow out from my right hand once more, coating the lid while focusing on the mug once more, and proceeded to watch in amazement as my nanites quickly rearranged the galvanized steel lid into the polished ceramic shape of the mug, sans its handle. The lid wasn't enough. ...Huh, that went faster than I thought it would, and for some reason, the weight felt off. As my initial giddiness wore off, I realized I needed to confirm what I thought I saw. I threw the mug to the ground, but instead of it shattering like before, only a thin sheet of ceramic snapped off. The inside was still galvanized steel. 'No wonder that was too easy.'
Still, proof of concept, I wasn't simply a shapeshifter of my own body, but I could conceivably shapeshift anything into near-duplicates of objects I had previously absorbed. Actually making perfect duplicates would likely require considerably more material, and attention paid to the process, because my power seemed inclined to cheat. I thought about why that might be, but then smacked my forehead in realization. 'Duh, Taylor, you're not perfectly mimicking a human body, you're just looking like one on the outside.' Made sense that my power would apply the same formula to other things.
Even so, Lisa was right, my power is pure bullshit. I couldn't keep the grin from my face at that realization even if I tried.
Still, the potential applications were mind-boggling. Absorb a pair of handcuffs, and never have to worry about needing to secure a villain and not having brought any with me. Absorb weapons, mimic them on the fly for my own use, or craft them from available raw matter for others maybe? Could I reproduce technology as effectively as mundane objects? And if so, what about Tinker tech? Shit, even if dad were to talk me out of becoming a hero, we wouldn't lack for money if I went rogue, using my power to duplicate stuff on demand. Especially if I could duplicate Tinker tech. I gave the handle-less mug a final look, grinning in realization that I had options other than fighting crime if I so chose, before absorbing the new mug.
Head full of thoughts and ideas for this new angle to my power, my walk home turned into a jog. Already I was looking at the world with a different perspective, looking a previously mundane and uninteresting objects with a feeling almost akin to "hunger," but more for wondering about the applications of reproducing, say, cellphones, or car tires, or hell, even whole cars. Even as I didn't know a damned thing about how cars work, and hadn't even learned how to drive yet, my power let me recall the exact molecular structure of the ceramics in Lisa's coffee mug, so presumably working knowledge wasn't an issue.
Half an hour later, and almost halfway home, I was jolted out of my distracted thoughts by the distant noise of an oncoming car. Not so weird in this city, even at this hour, aside from the sound itself. Brockton Bay, like most cities in the United States, had its fair share of speed demon gearheads, and this sounded like one of them. I paid it little mind, aside from the amusing realization that even in the early morning on a weekend, some people still have reason to be awake so early. Still, speed limit was 35 miles per hour and there was no way this guy was sticking to the limit. 'Joyrider out in the early morning, or something more sinister?', I wondered. The growl of his engine almost immediately changed to the blare of a horn and the sound of skidding tires, before the unmistakable sound of two cars slamming into eachother echoed through the otherwise quiet city.
'Fuck, that was only two blocks away.' I cloaked and ran in the direction of the crash. Two blocks away and one block towards downtown, it turned out. I took in the sight, and yeah, sure enough, one car had its passenger-side caved in and wedged up against a street lamp, while the other car's entire front end was mangled and... oh no...
While one of the cars had front and side airbags deployed, the other car was a classic, back from the days before seatbelts became mandatory. Consequently, though the vehicle itself was in much better shape, its sole occupant wasn't. I could tell, despite my complete lack of medical training, that there was no way he had survived, not with the way he head was smashed into the front window and his skull seemed to be split open. Even as I turned away from the sight in disgust, my expanded senses proved a curse, affording me perfect sight to my sides and back... I ended up focusing all of my attention on the other wrecked car, intentionally ignoring everything not in front of me, putting it out of my mind.
Only for the memories to kick in. Memories I thought I had done a good job of suppressing. Mom's car accident, and the events that came after…
'No, Taylor, pay attention to the present,' I thought to myself. The other driver could still be alive, but with the driver's side door and mirror pressed up against the street lamp, there'd be no way he'd escape under his own power. I dropped the cloak and my form, shifting to my default silver, as good a cape form as any, and more than enough indication for anyone who might be watching that the situation was being dealt with.
I ran up to the driver's side door and got a quick look at the driver, Female, about mom's age when she died. Shook my head at the memories that I didn't need flaring up, and set about ascertaining her condition before potentially making things worse. The most obvious thing wrong with her was a nasty gash on the left side of her head, not "gushing blood" bad but if I remembered what little I knew of car accidents, moving her would be a Bad Idea. I could see bruising on her upper neck where the seatbelt held her in place. Breathing seemed fine, though.
'Fuck.'
I started second-guessing whether it was a good idea to try to help at this point. I had no medical training, and it was entirely possible this woman had far more serious injuries than just what I saw. The decision ended up being made for me, though, when she groggily woke up, dazed but somewhat aware. She slowly glanced at the state of her car, bewildered mostly, and then turned to the window and looked at me with a worried but expectant look on her face.
"W-what-?" she asked, somewhat slurring her words as she looked around her car, the cracked front window giving her no real view from that angle.
'Crap, that's probably not going to be good' I thought to myself as I walked up to the smashed in door and said to her "It's going to be alright. You got into an accident. Uhm, can you tell me your name?"
"Leslie."
"Ok Leslie, uhm, your car is kind of ruined, and when the emergency crews get here they're going to need to remove the door here to get to you. Do you mind if I help them and you out here with that?"
I could see her swallow as she said "Yeah, thank you, uhm...?"
I almost wanted to grin as I said "Metalmorph" to her. "My name is Metalmorph."
I walked up and tugged on the door handle. Locked, of course, couldn't be that easy. I pressed my hand up against the window, letting the nanites flow out over it, and absorbed it into me as I saw her eyes widen a bit as she leaned back a bit. Breaking the glass could only injure her further, and I needed to get the damn door open. A few tense seconds ensued before the glass ceased to be a problem, and I reached in with my left hand as my right hand started to reform, and tugged on the inside door handle.
Jammed. I pulled on the exposed door frame, the fiberglass and metal warping from strength I didn't know I had, and after a couple of seconds, I tossed the door aside. "Uhm, whoops," I said sheepishly.
Her look of disbelief at my words almost made me laugh despite the seriousness of the situation, so I turned back to her and asked "Do you have a cellphone?"
She blinked a moment before she tried to point behind her, only for her breathe to catch as I heard her start hissing in pain.
"I"ll get that for you. Don't hurt yourself further. Please. It's in your purse, right?"
"Yeah," she said before she started sniffling as tears fell down her face, softly repeating. "Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god."
"Shhh, it'll be ok? Give me a moment and I'll phone emergency services here," I said as I finally got the passenger side door open without unhinging it totally. It took a moment to get the phone out of the purse, strange fuzzy dice and far too toy cats inside of the damn thing and getting in my way.
"Nine one one, what's your emergency?"
"Yeah, I'm at the corner of Dawson and Ninth, and there's been a major car accident," I said loud enough that the woman could hear me before I moved a few feet away and said more softly "At least one driver is dead, and I'm unsure how injured the other driver is at the moment. Before you ask, she's awake, but she's slurring her words and she's bruised and everything, and this corner is a blind intersection, so I'm halfway scared that another car may end up hitting her and causing more injuries and damage."
"Ok, emergency crews are on their way, and should be there in about fifteen to twenty minutes. I take it from your words that you're not directly involved or injured?"
"No, I came across the scene and am rendering what I aid I can without moving her or making a bigger mess of things. Uhm, before you ask, I did make it so the emergency crews won't have to use the jaws of life."
"Wait, what? Can you repeat that?"
"I pulled the front door off to make sure she was alright, especially when… when I saw that the other driver was dead. I figured I should say something before emergency crews show up and anyone freaks at my appearance."
"You're a parahuman?"
God I felt awkward at that moment.
"Yeah… yes, I am."
"Understood. Crews should be there soon. Can you tell us the injured driver's name?"
"I can do better than that," I said as I walked up to the driver and put the phone up to the woman's ear as I heard sirens coming into range.
-----
I waited until right after the emergency crews and tow truck showed up before disappearing. I… didn't really want to talk to anyone right now. The reason was simple: I was pissed. After I focused back on my surroundings I had found that there were other people nearby who had came to take a look after hearing the impact.
Not a single fucking one of them had phoned emergency services to report the wreck. I could fucking feel the cell phone connections in my immediate vicinity, could even listen in on them if I paid any real attention to doing so, and not a single fucking person had helped out.
It may have been less than an hour or so before most of the early morning donut and coffee shops opened up, but apparently there were still enough people around, even before sunrise, that a small crowd had gathered from across the street as the police set up a quick roadblock and detour as they tried to get the two cars out of the road and the injured to the hospital and deceased to the morgue.
I focused on calming down, not wanting to appear from thin air and demanding from those idiots why none of them had helped or at least phoned for help. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, unclench my now bladed hands, breathe out, don't scream in rage. I'd say I was a little calmer, but that would probably be a lie. God, what is wrong with these people? This city?
I had walked a block or two away from the crash site and the police and those useless, worthless people, away from the direction of home too, moving towards a corner away from viewing eyes, so I could come back into view and at least think in disgruntled peace and not have to worry about anyone bumping into me while I was invisible. It took only a moment to shimmer and shift back into view as I brought my focus back to what was in front of me. I could see a few of those vending trucks moving about the area and setting up for the early morning commute as people gathered outside a nearby coffee shop as it was preparing to open.
I watched the crowd in my regular human form for a few minutes when I felt a small object the size of a large ping-pong ball tap against my right foot. I dropped my focus on the crowd in time to get enough of a glimpse of my surroundings, before the object detonated, spreading a cloud of drywall-white foam around my lower body up to my waist as I heard some of the people nearby gasp in shock and surprise. I spotted a familiar figure crouched at the top of a nearby building, and I felt incandescent rage, even as another foam grenade arced its way towards me.
'Shadow Stalker, here?'
The foam grenade bounced off a nearby car's rear window and detonated, covering me up to my hair in foam. PRT containment foam, so even as I tried turning around for what good it'd do, I soon found myself suspended mid-twist, just enough to face her, if I could see through this gunk. Surprisingly enough, my peripheral senses still worked, and I got the impression that Sophia wasn't the only person present for this little scene playing out. There were a few others converging, all on foot at ground-level, but none of them capes, from the sound of their hushed conversations.
"Ah, Taylor, you stupid, stupid girl. Playing the hero, are we?" She dropped down to the ground.
"I suspected you might have it in you, ya know. Deep down. I heard about the crash on my phone's apps, then the police go on to report an unknown cape they suspect to be the 'Missing Winslow Girl' disappearing from the scene. And I go to take a look around, only to see you appear from nowhere and shapeshift, not even bothering to hide your face like the weakling you are. I thought Emma was acting strangely last night, but that was you, wasn't it?" Sounds of fumbling with something, metal or fiberglass being bent, I recalled Sophia used crossbows, so that was probably it. But the foam was solid, so she wouldn't be able to...
"It's funny, really. The prey triggered and got the power to look like something it isn't. Or wasn't. With you, I'm not sure anymore. But it doesn't matter. You know who I am, you know my secret. That has to change."
I struggled against the foam vainly, my movement only making it strengthen. What was enough to rip a fiberglass door off its hinges was now, paradoxically enough, making me weaker, more vulnerable, more isolated. 'Just like in the locker...' Only I had options, this time.
I focused my attention down to the microscopic level, letting my nanites poke and prod at the material the foam was made out of. The design was eerily similar, if considerably less advanced - the foam arranged itself in a lattice structure similar to how my own nanites connected themselves, but any movement imparted upon it would cause the material to form additional connections, strengthening the hold both on me and on the rest of the foam.
"If only you'd known your place and stayed in it…"
Suddenly, and quite violently, a small portion of the nanites making up my head ceased to exist, and I shook with anger at realizing that Sophia had fired a crossbow bolt at me while in her shadow state. 'She just tried to kill me.' My right arm shifted into a blade and shot through the foam, and surprisingly enough, the foam hadn't reacted. 'It solidifies and goes inert?' I hadn't expected that, but it was something I could use. I willed my nanites to start absorbing the foam and crossbow bolt, and my whole outer surface rippled and expanded, the nanites working through the foam's latticework, dismantling it from the inside out. My anger morphed to a feeling of righteous satisfaction as I walked forward with little difficulty, my nanites having broken down enough of the foam to push the remainder aside with little fuss.
Sophia stood, crossbow still in hand but with a look of stunned shock, and muttered a barely-audible "oh fuck," before bolting off in the opposite direction towards downtown. I shook my head in equal parts anger and amusement, before I took off after her.
Even as she had several seconds of a head start and obvious exercise both from being a cape and from her track-and-field activities at school, I caught up to her in a matter of moments at my full sprint speed, shoving her forward with my left, non-bladed hand, eliciting a shriek from her in return. She tumbled to the ground and rolled, dropping her crossbow, before getting back to her feet while drawing a dagger from her right boot. With the flick of a switch on the handle, the dagger's blade was sheathed in bright orange, and I brought my arm-blade up in a defensive stance.
For a few seconds, we stood there, staring eachother down.
"Okay, I was wrong, you do have it in you." She laughed. "How's it feel to be a predator?"
'What?' I stared at her in puzzlement before she made a series of quick jabs and slashes towards me. I sidestepped the first two before attempting to block the third, only for the dagger to slice clean through my arm-blade. The upper half dropped to the ground with a clang, and I backed off in shock.
"Aw, did that hurt?" She started laughing, only for her laughter to turn nervous as I re-extended the blade. A second later, I willed the severed half into a liquid state, and guided it back towards me. She took immediate notice and stopped laughing. "Oh come on."
The liquid metal merged into my right foot, and another interlocking energy wave cascaded over my form. She started backing away, shaking her head while continuing to slash and jab at me. I followed her at a comfortable distance as she backed into an alley between two warehouses, the plethora of gang symbols telling us both we were in some gang's territory. Fuck if I could tell which.
She continued backing away, her movements getting more exaggerated, more desperate. I stayed with her, far enough away that her attacks would never hit, but close enough that she still felt threatened. About halfway to the end of the alley, her stance shifted, and she turned to shadow before lunging at me. I felt a brief, odd sense of familiarity as she passed through me in her shadow-state, as if something about it jogged a long-lost memory that I couldn't place, before she re-materialized behind me and buried the dagger into my abdomen. I reacted almost instantly, reaching behind me to grasp her right wrist with my left hand, and squeezed. She shifted back to her shadow-state with a muffled gasp of pain, having let go of the dagger, before she bolted across the street.
Meanwhile, I shifted my attention to the dagger, slowly carving its way through my body as gravity pulled it down, and pulled it out with my left hand while retracting my right arm-blade. Sophia could wait, the dagger was more immediately interesting. My nanites pulled themselves back together, the clean slice sealing itself up, even as the nanites in my left hand began to flow over the dagger's surface. The orange sheath proved effectively impenetrable, as it wasn't quite matter, but a projection of light held in place by some kind of energy field. I shut it off, and let my nanites continue their work.
The dagger handle itself was uninteresting, something that could probably be taken off the shelf of any sporting goods store, but the "hard light" emitter welded onto it was obviously Tinker tech. I focused my attention solely on the inner workings of the device, as my nanites stripped it apart, and blinked in comprehension at how simple it was in retrospect. 'I could build something like this.'
I hadn't even finished absorbing the remaining bits of the dagger when I decided to test that theory. First, mimicking it, I recalled the effect and my nanites did the rest, projecting orange hard light from every exposed surface on my body, including the rapidly-retracting blob of nanites in my left palm. 'Holy shit. I can mimic Tinker tech?!' I killed the effect just as fast, and struggled to contain my excitement at this revelation. It didn't necessarily make me a Tinker, but if I could understand Tinker tech enough to mimic it, I could probably reproduce it as well, and I knew of only one other person on the planet that could both understand and reproduce Tinker tech.
And she was one of the most famous Tinkers on the planet, if not the most.
Back to the more pressing issue at hand, only a few seconds had passed by as Sophia had, by this point, just walked out of my peripheral sense's range. She was walking though, not running, and her pacing and slightly higher body temperature suggested exhaustion, possibly injury as well. I hadn't pinched her wrist that hard, but then again I had ripped a car door off its hinges with little effort. Given what had transpired though, I couldn't bring myself to feel sorry for her. I shrugged inwardly, then cloaked before stepping out of the alley.
I could feel signals in my vicinity start to spike as people started making calls on their cell phones. Focusing in on one of those signals, I took a moment to listen in before:
"-yeah, two capes fighting near the East Meets West coffee shop. I think one of them was Shadow Stal-"
I cut the connection as I focused back on my surroundings, not wanting to get attacked again while distracted, even if I was cloaked.
Inside, I seethed. 'No. I won't let her hurt me again.' As much as I wanted to rip her throat out, at the moment it took everything I had not to cry as well. Not that I could even if I wanted to. So fucking unfair, bullshit powers or not. I took in a deep breathe, only to let it out a moment later.
No cross-traffic in the street, so I crossed without incident, and took off at a full sprint in the direction where Sophia had disappeared. The gang signage on the brick and corrugated steel walls of the various buildings steadily featured less east-asian characters, more swastikas and lightning bolts, so definitely Empire territory. This bothered me somewhat, the thought that the damn nazis had claimed and mostly-uncontested territory so close to home. 'Just means if I break something, I shouldn't feel too broken up over it.'
Still hadn't spotted Sophia, so I slowed my pace to a cautious walk, taking in my surroundings to a much finer detail. Beyond pointing out individuals who could be her, of similar physical dimensions and body heat output, my peripheral senses started to be more of a hindrance than a help at this point. The area I had entered was definitely occupied gang territory, my peripheral senses picking up large concentrations of people, most of them inside the various warehouses and factories I passed by. I ignored those, concentrating on the people outside, writing off those not matching Sophia's body shape and temperature, and those I could see who weren't her.
The cellphone calls in the area were starting to pick up in volume too. Sophia had stated that she had a phone on her, so it was worth listening in, at least on the initial conversations. This went on for a few minutes with no success, before I found her standing atop a corrugated steel building, phone to her ear.
"...the fuck gives, Snakes? Your men aren't here, there's no unmarked van, nothing." Definitely Sophia, but I tempered my enthusiasm on what else my peripheral senses had picked up. A large congregation of people inside the building, E88 tags prominently decorating one of its side walls, and two individuals in the center of it giving off considerably more body heat than the rest. Muffled cheers, chanting, and catcalls mainly. As noisy as they were, I'd still have to approach Sophia cautiously, as silently as possible, which ruled out approaching her in human form.
"You realize this was a test, Shadow Stalker. A test of your competence and your loyalty." Definitely an older male, but someone whose voice I didn't recognize. 'Who is this 'Snakes,' a new Protectorate cape, or her handler within the PRT?' "The simplest of assassinations, easier than jobs you've accepted in the past, made easier with resources I provided at considerable expense--"
"Bullshit! We both know damned well that worthless shit didn't didn't cost you anything; the containment foam didn't fucking work, she shrugged that off, and the dagger was similarly useless Tinker trash. The rest of the gear? I don't have any fucking use for it!"
'So, Sophia's backer has access to PRT gear as well as Tinker weapons, but apparently it came at cost to him. Not PRT or Protectorate then. Accent isn't fake-German or Asian, so that rules out Empire and ABB...' Still under cloak, I began circling the building, looking for any obvious means of reaching the roof without drawing attention to myself. I found a fire escape on the opposite side, ladder already extended, and began climbing, mindful of the noise I was making. The noise from the party inside proved to be a blessing, as even if Sophia wasn't distracted by her call, even I had trouble hearing my own noise over theirs.
"That's not my problem. Nor, for that matter, are you. Your services are no longer required or desired, Shadow Stalker. Goodbye." The call terminated abruptly, and I was treated to the amusing sound of Sophia swearing under her breath while pacing in place. Even with the noise from below, sneaking up on her would be difficult in human form, so once I reached the top I let my form dissolve, dropping to the corrugated sheet metal surface as a puddle of liquid metal.
Flowing across the angled roof turned out to be much less difficult than I initially imagined it would be, and the kind of experience I don't think I could put in words. Sophia sat, back turned to me in a crouch, resting her chin on her knees. As I slowly flowed towards her, the sheet metal flexed slightly under the weight, giving off a rattle that attracted her attention briefly. A glance towards my direction, but even with the sun barely starting to light things up, she hadn't spotted me.
"Fucking Coil, fucking PRT, fucking Taylor... stupid bitch couldn't just stay in her place, nooo..."
'Wait, that was Coil?' That... changed things. 'Shadow Stalker, a Ward and hero, working for a supervillain. Worked, rather, past-tense.' Either the PRT knew and had allowed it for whatever reason, or they didn't, meaning someone who they had under a microscope for close to two years still got away with this. Maliciousness or incompetence, and I couldn't decide which was worse.
As I flowed closer, I noticed she had laid her phone down to her left, along with a couple other items I couldn't identify. Her sole remaining crossbow remained slung over her shoulder, and from this distance, the crossbow was uninteresting and unthreatening. I extended a tendril of nanites towards her phone while she remained distracted with her own thoughts, enveloped it, and proceeded to absorb it. My nanites got through its outer casing easily enough, but on contact with the inner circuitry, something amazing and not entirely unexpected occurred.
Rather than mindlessly tearing apart and into the circuitry, my nanites bonded with it, established connections, traced the flow of electricity from battery to screen, and drew a veritable mountain of information into me. Initially gibberish, the data rapidly started to make sense as more of it flowed in. I directed more nanites to form connections at specific points, gorging myself on the resulting data flow, making sense of the phone's design, how it stored data, negotiated calls with the cell network...
This had to be her personal cellphone rather than one provided by the PRT, if they even did that. The contact list... Emma was on it, along with a few other names I hadn't recognized. Text message history, many messages to and from Emma...
White-hot rage flared through me again, and my nanites reacted, throwing themselves at the phone, devouring it considerably faster than normal. More tendrils snaked out at the other items, tearing into them without a care in the world for the noise generated. Sophia glanced at her possessions, then sprang to her feet and drew the crossbow in a fluid, practiced motion while swearing under her breath.
Barely repressing my anger, I flowed upward at my center, quickly taking my silver humanoid form as Sophia started shaking her head and stepping away.
"No... no way, I... you... you can't be--"
I glared at her. "Alive?" My right arm shifted into the now-familiar blade, only this time I added the hard light sheathing, illuminating both of us in a dim orange glow. Before she had a chance to respond, I slashed downwards at the metal roof separating us, carving a thin straight cut through the sheet metal and sending sparks flying as the metal screeched loud enough that I heard it over the blare of noise below us. She took a few more steps back, right up to the edge of the roof.
"Yeah, I'm alive. Thanks to you, it turns out. You and Emma." I broke eye contact with her, and started forming a replica of her phone in my left hand. I held it out, letting her watch. "Looking for this? I know, Sophia. I know everything."
She muttered something under her breath, and then leapt backwards. I blinked in shock, even as gunfire started to plink away at the roof underneath me, shards of metal pushed up and outwards as bullets passed through the metal roof. She shifted to shadow before hitting the ground, and broke into a mad dash through the metal wall into the building below.
More gunfire erupted from below, and the creaking of the metal got considerably more intense. I stepped away from the edge, tracking Sophia's movement through the building below. Nobody seemed to be paying her much attention, beyond a few shouts of surprise and confusion. The gunfire slackened a bit though, and I stepped towards the center of the roof, where a large glass skylight provided a clear view of the inside.
What I saw was mostly one large cavernous room dominated by a cubical cage of chain-linked fencing, surrounded by tables and bars at three of the edges, with a single large wall going straight up to the roof separating this one large room from the rest of the building. So, booze, guns and skinheads. 'Wonderful.' Sophia was shifting in and out of her shadow form while attempting to cross the distance underneath the tables and largely out of sight of the skinheads, most of whom had their attention firmly aimed at the roof. Several spotted me, aimed guns and started firing, and a few shots actually hit me. Getting shot was... interesting. I initially moved away from the window and ducked, an entirely instinctive reaction that did me no good as a few bullets passed through the roof, and then through me. My nanite body righted itself with the familiar energy wave, and I chuckled briefly to myself at the thought that I could soak bullets without a care in the world.
Inspiration struck me just then, and I lunged towards the skylight in the general direction of the cage below, smashing through the glass and sheet metal frame and letting my form go liquid prior to hitting the chain-linked fencing. I flowed through and into the cage itself as a barely human-shaped blob of liquid metal, an act fancy enough to intimidate nearly all of the skinheads into backing well away from the cage and, conveniently, into Sophia's path, forcing her into her shadow form and making her presence more widely noticed.
A few of them had the presence of mind to take shots at me, though I ignored it in favor of turning towards Sophia while reassuming my humanoid form, though I had the presence of mind not to take my civilian identity. Sudden movement from within my peripheral vision tore my attention away from her, however, when something tore into the cage from the crowd below. A mass of writhing... blades? Its source launched itself into the cage and in a fluid motion, slammed a fist of hooks and blades into my chest, pressing me against the cage before flinging my stunned body to its right, through the cage and into a rack lined with alcohol bottles.
'Hookwolf? Here?!'
I had only seconds to reevaluate my priorities. Fuck Sophia, she didn't rate as a threat anymore, not compared to this. Hookwolf was up there with fucking Lung on the list of villains to not tangle with. I barely had the time to form a weak shield of metal from my left arm when the full mass of his body slammed into it, effortlessly slicing through the shield even as the two of us caved through a side wall into one of the building's adjoining restrooms.
'Ah crap.'
The storm of blades that was Hookwolf tore into my body pretty much effortlessly, as my initial attempts at getting a grip on him proved futile. My hands and arms got sliced into ribbons of silver for the trouble, though the only thing I felt was annoyance. He got a grip on my chest once again, and began slamming me left and right against the toilets and sinks, my body steadily falling apart with each impact. It culminated in him throwing me towards the far side of the restroom, and I let my form dissolve, splashing into so much liquid metal against the ruined tile floor and walls.
He walked over on hind legs of metal blades, and I focused my attention not on the blades themselves, but where they seemed to emanate from. A roughly spherical orb, glistening in silver, from which new blades constantly erupted and sank... whatever attacks I'd attempt against him would have to focus on this, not simply dealing with his blades, yet the only thing I had going for me was the hard light effect. 'Maybe that's just enough,' I thought.
"That's all, new blood? I expected more of a fight out of you." He towered over me even as I slowly began coalescing into my humanoid form again. I extended a trinity of blades from where my legs would've formed, up through his central mass of blades, and immediately applied the hard light effect, pleasantly rewarded with his blades bouncing off the hard light with no apparent damage dealt. He snarled in surprise and frustration, as I catapulted him backwards as hard as I could manage, sending him slamming head-first into the ceiling, and then ass-first into the opposite wall. Apparently weakened by his previous use of me as a crude hammer, it caved outwards on impact, sending him sprawling into the street.
I pulled myself together, humanoid form mostly complete, when the skinheads in the main room watching this started to panic. Most ran, although some pulled out their firearms and took aim at me. I wasn't the least bit concerned, Hookwolf seemed a bit dazed, but recovering fast. 'This is gonna be a long day,' I sighed in resignation as gunfire tore into my right side.
-----
Five blocks away and six stories up, two armored figures crouched over several boxes of loosely-packed, brightly-colored objects that looked like oversized kids' toys. One of them smacked the other on the arm with the back of an armored glove. "Hey, check this out."
"Can't. Busy. This Donkey Kong mockup isn't going to assemble itself, you know."
Uber sighed in exasperation. "Bro, something big's going on in Empire territory. Seriously, you need to see this. Are the camera drones active?"
"Yeah, but I'm not going to--" Leet looked up, and blinked. "Huh, that's Hookwolf."
"Getting thrown out the side of a nightclub. How many capes do you think could manage that in this town? The show can wait, get the drones down there, I've got a weird feeling about this."
Leet grumbled. "Fine, fine, hold on."
A rattling sound echoed across the cityscape, like popcorn in a microwave.
"That's... a lot of gunfire." Uber observed with a hint of amazement.
"Yeah, but it's focused on one spot, and mostly seems to be hitting the opposite wall. Look at all the dents and holes." Leet shook his head. "They're either firing at something that isn't there, or..."
The apparent target of the massed gunfire stepped out of the hole made by Hookwolf, and the two villains' jaws dropped.
"Is that... a Terminator?" Uber started.
Leet shook his head. "A T-1000? Not on this planet. Skynet would take one look at our planet and fire the nukes out of pity rather than anger and..." The metal figure's right arm shifted into a blade, as its left arm flattened out into a disc, and the two villains let out loud sighs.
"Well, there's one franchise we've been beaten to." Uber shook his head sadly.
The arm-blade and apparent shield then took on a distinctive orange glow.
"What." Uber stated flatly, as Leet's reaction was more pronounced. "Oh come on. Hard light on a T-1000? I call bullshit."
Hookwolf was on his feet once more, and the two stared eachother down even as more skinheads filed out of the building's other exits in haste.
"I think they're talking to eachother. Get the damn drones in closer."
-----
"Killing you will make for an excellent story." Hookwolf rumbled.
I shrugged. "Not that any publisher in their right mind would print it."
I glanced to my left briefly, aware that a trio of objects in the distance had just entered my peripheral sense's range. Drones of some sort, probably some Tinker's work, but I couldn't think of any Tinkers that worked with the Empire...
Hookwolf growled and charged at me while I appeared distracted, but I was ready for it. I swatted at his bulk with my shield arm, deflecting him to my left and sending him careening into the outer corner of the building. He slammed into it with enough force to crack its wooden frame, but his swift counterattack forced me to sidestep and slash with the blade. Whereas his blades cut through my own when they were unaided, the hard light cut through his blades just as easily. Still, I felt weakened, slowed by the effort of maintaining the effect. 'So I have... what, an energy generation limit?'
He kicked off the side of the weakened building, and slammed into me, his blades arcing around the shield even as I tried to push him off, and once again he started tearing into me. I let my form turn to liquid once more, and decided to take a trick from his own playbook, shifting blade-tendrils out of my liquid mass, each tipped with a razor-thin line of hard light. He leapt off in what I took as a mixture of surprise and fear, many severed blades and hooks littering the ground around me. I rose once more, only this time assuming a form closer in functionality to his own, a human-shaped mass of hard light-sheathed blades.
-----
"Alright, I agree, that's bullshit." Uber grumbled as he sat at the edge of the open floor, even as Leet now paced behind him, considerably more animated.
"It's not just bullshit, she's cheating. The readings I'm getting from the scanners on the drones? That's not a power, that's Tinker tech!" Leet was fuming now. "She got a hold of someone's work and is copying it, just like she's fighting Hookwolf by copying him."
Uber chuckled. "Beating him at his own game? Nothing wrong with that, you know."
"Yeah yeah, it's just..." he dropped to the edge of the floor next to Uber, "if I were to try to integrate something like that into my own stuff, some other Tinker's work, it'd just blow up in my face. But her?"
Hookwolf tried a different tactic, grappling and flinging trash dumpsters and the like at the other shapeshifter, which she parried away with growing ease. Her hard light surfaces started to pulsate, activating and deactivating as needed.
"She understands what she's using, tweaking it on the fly. That strobing we're seeing? Why not simply cover herself in hard light, or project beams offensively to rip Hookwolf a new asshole?"
Uber nodded in growing understanding. "She's got limits, yeah. She figures them out, works around them; she's sped up a bit since she started toggling the effect."
"She's fucking metagaming her own power in the middle of a battle with someone few in this city are either strong or crazy enough to go up against." He sighed loudly. "Who has time for that, huh? It's not fucking fair."
"You jelly?" Uber teased.
He got a loud sigh in response. "No, I'm just... Yeah, okay, I'm jelly, a bit. Still, someone's finally giving that crazy bastard the ass-kicking he deserves, the only things we're missing are lawn chairs and a bowl of popcorn."
-----
I moved quickly towards him, moving my bladed sword tendrils, and god was that a weird thing to think about, towards his own bladed limbs, hoping to cut off his ability to fight or escape. Sadly, that didn't seem to work out as well as I had hoped it would as he had grabbed hold of a parked motorcycle with a mass of hooked metal and used it to bat me away from him, even as my hardlight projections cut through his impromptu club with ease.
The hit sent me flying backwards, forcing me to shift back to liquid as I passed through a chainlink fence, and I turned to face him as, instead of attacking me like I expected, he moved back towards the building we had just exited from. Bullets started to impact me as some of the Empire gang members started taking potshots, though whether they were trying to provide cover for Hookwolf or take me down I didn't know, nor did I really care at that point. I walked calmly through the chainlink fence, absorbing it as I turned to face my opponents as they fell back to the building, the cleancut hole of my passage clear to see from the light of a nearby streetlight as I moved forward.
"Covering fire damnit, covering fi-" one of them was screaming before I grabbed a hand-sized piece of concrete with a hastily formed limb from my legs and threw it at his head, knocking him to the ground where he lay bloodied and moaning in pain.
'Now where is... ahh, there you are,' I thought as I turned towards where Hookwolf had gone, small tendrils moving out from my body and pulling in the weapon of the first gang member I brought down before a few more shots hit me. Given the fact that so many of the shots were coming close to hitting their own downed member, these idiots needed to be dealt with quickly, before they ended up shooting civilians, because they obviously didn't seem to care about collateral damage.
I moved quickly, shifting form so as to start grabbing hold of limbs holding weapons and squeezing as hard as I could. I could hear the snapping of bones, but couldn't find it in me to care as I moved as quickly as I could to disable as many of them as I could and remove their weapons from play. Absorbing the guns so I could mess around with them later was just an added bonus, all things considered.
"Get out of my way," I said calmly as I knocked aside the fourth empire member to get in front of me, watching him fly through the air before his rough landing on the concrete knocked the air out of him.
"Fuck you!" the fifth empire member screamed from a few feet away, firing at me in a blind panic as I moved to disable her before I got hit in the chest with what appeared to be a kitchen sink, thrown from within the third story of the building I crashed through a few minutes earlier. 'Hookwolf.' As she chose to run I let her flee from me as I turned my attention back towards Hookwolf, moving at speed as I crashed through the metal front doors of the building, absorbing some of the material to help clear a way for me as I moved towards my target.
-----
"Damn." They both shook their heads.
"Yeah. This fight has everything and the kitchen sink."
Uber grinned. "Oh, we are sooo re-using that line in the dub-over."
"Huh, looks like most of the mooks are fleeing the building. Smart of them."
"Not all of them," Uber switched camera views, "check out that guy in the back… oh shit."
"Wha-" Leet got out before the explosion rang out
"Did-did she just take a fucking RPG to the face?"
-----
I'm pretty sure that if I was flesh and blood I would be dead right now. Dead and spread out over several hundred feet, at least. As it was, my visual perspective suddenly expanded ten-fold from... whatever it was they shot me with, though it didn't take long to realize it had been some kind of propelled explosive. The upper half of my body was spread out in small pieces around and behind me, though I still had control and awareness over those bits, and the explosion also blew out the nearby walls and put a sizable hole in the floor.
"Did we get her?"
'Yeah, I need to put a stop to that.' With the dust in the air, it was easy to hide myself by moving along the floor, hidden from view due to the angle and the dust, though trying to keep quiet proved considerably more difficult, though with the way even my head had been ringing for a moment after I got hit, I was certain that their ears weren't in much better shape.
It took only a few seconds to slither across the hallway and reform, and with the dust obscuring me from their view, I formed a gun in my right hand. Reproducing the bullets took a bit longer, and I waited for the queasiness to pass before cloaking myself.
"Dunno, I don't hear-"
I shot him. Repeatedly. It felt very cathartic. As he dropped the RPG with both arms and legs suddenly riddled with bullets, the guy standing next to him let out a high-pitched girlish shriek as I faded back into view barely a foot away from them. Tendrils reached out and grabbed the RPG as the second guy pissed himself as he backed against the wall.
I ignored the writhing figure screaming out in pain and begging for mercy as one of my tendrils took the pistol from the shaking hands of the uninjured man against the wall. As I absorbed the empty RPG, I moved a few tendrils to the box of ammo to grab a few rounds incase I needed them, absorbing one while physically carrying the rest inside of me, hidden from view.
'Fuck going through making these things.'
I tilted my head to the side and said "Get out."
I watched him moving to scurry away before adding, "and take him with you."
I started moving back through the hallways before my senses twitched. I stopped a moment pay enough attention to feel the signals in the air. Cell phone calls. A lot of them.
"COME AND GET SOME!"
"Wha-"
I only had a moment before Hookwolf barreled into me with his bladed limbs, trying to dismember me again as he kept pushing me through the walls. As if that worked so well the first time. Reforming the hard light shield, I blocked him a few times while shifting the RPG behind my back and moved one of the stored rounds into it before I leapt backwards.
He had only a moment to realize what was going on before the first round hit him, knocking him aside and sending my second shot wide. I sighed inwardly, corrected my aim, and hit him with the third shot a second later before the floor gave way beneath us.
The floor must've been weaker where I stood, as it bent downwards below me before disintegrating into dust entirely. I hit the floor below, with Hookwolf landing atop me.
I took a moment to shift myself from facing the floor to facing him as he enveloped his arms around me, trying to cut me up yet again. 'Idiot'.
I headbutted him, only to get cuts across my head for my troubles, not that it mattered when the 'wounds' disappeared a moment later.
"Hahaha," he laughed deeply, "Give it up already! You can't-"
'I've had enough of this.' So I shifted my head and neck into a mass of blades, turned on the hardlight effect, and headbutted him again, cutting clear through his metal head before tossing him away from me as he reeled from the blow. I watched as he landed in a shaft of light from one of the flickering lights in the now abandoned arena, watching him struggle to get up, only to be shocked as Glory Girl crashed through the ceiling.
"What in the hell is going on here?" Glory Girl screamed as she kicked Hookwolf into the wall. The wall I had shot with an RPG, and that was now caving in on us.
"Oh crap," all three of us said at the same time.
-----
Leet couldn't help but whistle. "Man, they're really bringing down the house with this fight."
Uber turned to him. "We've seen this movie before, haven't we?"
"Yeah. All three of 'em." He shrugged. "You think the similarities are intentional?"
"It's possible. Only thing I know for sure is that this is going to get a shitload of views," Uber said with a grin.
With a loud groan and dust billowing up, the building collapsed in on itself.
"Oh, come on, that is just bullshit!" Leet cried out.
"What happ- oh. Ceiling falls on her, she ignores it, walks right through it. Yeah. Yeah, that is bullshit. That's Siberian-grade bullshit… we might need to cut some of this out of the final video."
"Yeah…"
-----
Dust wafted heavy in the air as another section of wall collapsed. I needed to put a stop to this, now. Glory Girl had risen into the air, and I could see her circling above, trying to see through the dust as I saw her talking into a cellphone with someone.
The sun had just started to creep over the ocean, and as much as the early morning traffic had picked up considerably, everything I could see pointed towards people fleeing this section of the city.
While I hadn't made any significant progress on taking down Hookwolf, he had been getting more desperate to find a weakness to exploit. Throwing large, heavy objects at me only worked when such things were freely available, and anything he could have thrown before was now covered in concrete and brick. Any unused explosives or ammo they had left had also been buried in the rubble, not that I could sense anyone else nearby.
Well, no one other than Hookwolf and Glory Girl, though I could hear sirens in the distance. 'How do I end this?'
It was clear I wasn't going to be any outright beating him with brute force. I needed alternatives. 'Can't kill him; well, I could, but the Empire would be out for blood. Retreating isn't something he's known for doing, and if I don't end this soon he'll just tear into the police and firefighters that show up. So this ends only with someone fleeing or dying, neither of which is palpable... waitaminute...' Containment foam. I had absorbed enough of it to have an idea of how it worked, and since I had figured out the hard light, could I do the same with the foam? Making the stuff would be taxing, but how about mimicking it?
Ok, yeah, I could mimic it. Probably even better than the original stuff. Now I just need to bait him into getting close to me so I can use it on him.
"Don't tell me that's all that 'The Mighty Hookwolf' has to offer," I screamed as loudly as I could, much louder than I expected to be honest, as I slowly moved into view, letting Hookwolf know where I was. The dust may have been heavy still, but I knew that he couldn't not know where I was, especially as I turned on the hard light effect in order to make myself more visible.
A shape emerged from the dust as Hookwolf charged at me once more, heedless of the fact that I could, and had, sliced off a considerable amount of his blades during our fight, and used a few tendrils to cut off some to ensure he was focused solely on me. His blades grew back of course, quickly at first, but even so Hookwolf was looking considerably thinner and wiry than when we first 'met.' Then I dropped the hard light effect entirely and let him slam into me.
He only realized his mistake when I said "Gotcha" and covered him entirely.
And that's when Glory Girl brained me.
-----
"Remind you of anything?" Uber sighed and turned to Leet.
"Containment foam." He shook his head in resignation. "She's mimicking fucking containment foam. Now I've seen everything."
"And what has been seen cannot go unseen. That is creepy as hell."
-----
"Oh shit!" Glory Girl exclaimed in shock as her fist went right through where my head was.
"Do you mind?" I said in irritation as my head reformed a moment later, the pieces that had been thrown from my body flowing right back, "I'm trying to keep Hookwolf contained here."
"You're not Hookwolf!"
The look I gave her spoke volumes. So far I was not impressed with Glory Girl, an 'attention whore' as Brian called her, and probably the biggest one in the city short of Uber and Leet.
"Uhm, so who are you? Haven't met you before, you a good guy or bad?" she asked sheepishly.
I gave her a cautious glare. "If I were a bad guy, do you think I'd say so?"
"Sorry, and yeah, that was dumb of me. You ok though?"
I shook my head. "No, but I will be."
"So, why the throw-down with the chrome furry?"
'"Chrome furry?"' "You mean Hookwolf? Long story. Short of it is, So--" I caught myself, "Shadow Stalker just tried to kill me, twice, I chased her down this way, found out she's working for Coil, and-"
Her eyes bugged out. "Shadow Stalker's gone bad?" She laughed, once. "I knew something wasn't right with that bitch... oh man, this is even cooler." She looked around at our surroundings again, briefly focusing on the scattered severed blades and hooks littering the area. "Wow, you really didn't need my help with him, did you?"
I turned to her, and half-heartedly shook my head. "Yeah, actually, the distraction gave me enough time to think about how to restrain him. If we'd just kept going at it..." I shrugged, "I've been reacting to his attacks the whole time, hadn't had much time to think about how to deal with him."
"Not going to lie though, that was fucking awesome!"
'What.'
"You just went toe to toe with Hookwolf and kicked his ass."
I couldn't help but smile at that, even as I heard Hookwolf cursing at me from inside of his impromptu prison.
"Not gonna complain about the break. He was starting to wear me out."
"'Starting to?'," she said as she looked about our ruined battleground before giving out a whistle. "Huh, you two had to have thrown down for at least-"
"Glory Girl? You ok? We've got continuous incoming calls about a cape fight near your area, and police and firefighters are responding to calls about a collapsed building."
"Crap, gotta take this call," she said before bringing her phone up to her head. "Console, this is Glory Girl. Yeah, I'm here with..." Glory Girl stopped for a moment and asked, "what's your name anyway?"
I looked at her briefly, my focus mainly on keeping Hookwolf restrained. "Metalmorph."
"That's a lame name. You get that off the PHO Wiki? Meh, whatever." Back to the phone. "Yeah, I'm here with 'Metalmorph,'" she put an amused emphasis on the name, "powerful-as-fuck changer, though she could use a better name, and she's got Hookwolf pretty much dead to rights."
"Say again, she's captured Hookwolf?" The voice on the other end was very young; female, high-pitched, considerably younger than me. 'Probably Vista.'
"Shit yeah," she grinned, "tore up a pretty hefty chunk of Empire real estate too. Might want to bring out the big guns for this though, he's still struggling."
-----
Firetrucks had shown up along with a few police cars, though most of them decided to cordon off the street while the firefighters had checked out the area for gas leaks. By the time the Protectorate forces showed up with PRT agents in tow, Glory Girl and I were standing together outside the dust-covered remnants of the collapsed nightclub with Hookwolf half-submerged in my nanites, extending from my left hand. He had eventually reached the point where the entire surface area of his 'core' had nanites dug in, the subtle alteration necessary to mimic the super-adhesive properties of the foam. Blades stuck out from the mass at odd angles, some of which still quivered as he continued to struggle, especially once the heroes had shown up in droves.
If the rest of the Empire knew what was going on, they weren't acting as of yet, either anticipating Hookwolf's victory, or simply not knowing what had happened.
We were confronted barely a minute later by Armsmaster, clad in his armor and carrying his halberd at the ready, with Battery and Miss Militia close behind. No less than four full PRT trucks of agents swarmed the place, forming a perimeter both to keep traffic out of the area and to secure Hookwolf. Not that it was really necessary at this point, but I didn't really want to stick around for long.
"Heh. Hell of a debut for a newbie, you don't aim low do you?" Battery shook her head in amazement, arms folded.
Armsmaster silently circled us, paying critical attention to Hookwolf's captured state. A few new blades erupted towards Armsmaster, which he parried away with ease before I could rope them in with another tendril of nanites. "Impressive. It usually takes a full containment team drowning him in foam to pull this off."
I shrugged in response. "It's a lot harder than it looks, I'm having to focus most of my attention on just keeping him restrained like this, 'cause everything else I tried wasn't accomplishing much."
"Oh yeah, she was fuckin' badass though. Heard the explosions, thought I'd figure out just what the hell was going on," Glory Girl grinned. "I jump in, the whole place collapses around us, and when the dust settles she's got him all wrapped up with everything but a bowtie."
Miss Militia had a pistol in both hands, and gave the site a critical eye. "No other Empire capes in the area... it was just Hookwolf?"
"It was just me and Shadow Stalker initially. I didn't even know Hookwolf was in there until he jumped me, and she bailed not long after," I frowned and recalled the fight, "I'm not going to get into trouble for defending myself against a Ward, am I?"
They paused for a moment, as if some silent conversation was taking place among them, before they turned to me and shook their heads.
"No, spectators recorded video of the initial confrontation," Armsmaster stated, "and Shadow Stalker's no longer a Ward as of last night, just so you both know."
Glory Girl chortled, "You guys finally fuckin' kicked her out?"
"No, she left," he frowned, and turned to me. "Whatever you did to her last night spooked her into throwing away close to two years of... barely tolerable behavior, granted, but we can talk about this later once Hookwolf's dealt with."
I nodded, not wanting to get into that right here and now. "How is Hookwolf going to be 'dealt with' anyway? I can't keep him like this forever."
'Actually, I probably could,' I thought to myself with wry amusement, but they didn't need to know that.
Hookwolf thrashed against my hold on him again to no avail, simply giving me the excuse to dig into his blades and core further. His struggling ceased a few seconds later, and I shook my head dismissively at the attempt.
"Sergeant!" Miss Militia called out to one of the armored PRT troopers, "how much longer?"
"No more than two minutes, ma'am. Minor maintenance issues with the truck's foam sprayers." He walked over to us, foam sprayer cradled in his hands, and chuckled audibly towards me. "Since you're unfamiliar with how we handle things, high brutes typically necessitate getting drowned in containment foam before we haul them off. Takes a while, makes a huge mess, and the hero that captures them typically ends up getting foamed as well. Yeah, we heard you can pretty much no-sell containment foam. Someone recorded a video, and it's spreading like wildfire." He turned to Armsmaster. "It's unconventional, but we could forego the foaming entirely, just cart him into the truck like this, and foam him there." He nodded to me. "She should have no issue with the foam itself, and we can let her out after we're done."
"It's up to her," Miss Militia interjected. "she's already been foamed once today and she wasn't happy about it then."
Armsmaster nodded, still frowning. "It would save time though, and we're still knee-deep in Empire territory. Anything could happen in the next ten minutes."
"It's fine," I sighed in resignation, "I just want this over with so I can go home."
"Understandable, but Director Piggot will want to talk to you before--"
I shot him a glare. "No. After we're done here, I'm going home, your director can wait."
"This isn't negotiable," he gripped his halberd tightly, as if expecting a fight, "Director Piggot gave explicit orders--"
Miss Militia placed a gloved hand on his shoulder. "Sir, our orders were specifically to ensure her safety, and to bring her in only if she's willing to cooperate." She turned to me, and nodded. "You're not under arrest, Metalmorph, but the Director will want to speak with you regardless."
The PRT squad cars blocking the road parted to allow a large diesel-powered armored truck through, and it pulled up alongside us.
"If this is an offer to join the Wards, you can just tell her my answer. No, I'm not interested in joining the Wards. Not now, and probably not ever."
'There, I said it.'
Armsmaster raised his voice, irate, "If this is about what Shadow Stalker did--"
"Sir?" Miss Militia squeezed his shoulder, "let me handle this." She turned back to me once more. "I understand, Metalmorph. Given what you've just gone through, I'd be saying the same if I were you. Still, there were other things she wanted to discuss besides Wards membership, but it can wait until you're ready to speak with her. You okay with that?"
I nodded, after taking another deep breath.
An armored PRT trooper unloaded a small forklift from the rear of the truck, while two more stood guard at Hookwolf's sides, foam sprayers at the ready. I shrugged, and then surprised them by simply lifting Hookwolf's entire mass into the truck on my own.
"That works too," one of them muttered.
I climbed in afterward, and they shut the doors behind. Recessed nozzles mounted within the truck's sides started spraying foam in onto Hookwolf and me, and I began to quickly withdraw my nanites. Predictably, Hookwolf lashed out with his freed blades, slicing at the nozzles, the exposed surfaces of the truck, and at me.
"When I get out, I'll kill you and your family for this, you cunt! Don't think I-"
I stayed silent, shaking my head and glaring at him as the truck filled with foam. My nanites absorbed what stray bits of it landed on me, and I quickly realized that the spray nozzles were tracking his movements, sparing me most of the extra hassle.
Within moments, the foam completely covered him, and his thrashing died down as the foam quickly hardened. I banged the back of the truck, the doors opened, and I stepped out, fuming.
As the three troopers got back in the truck and drove off, Glory Girl ran up and gave my shoulders a squeeze, as if trying to reassure me, which took me by surprise. "Hey, don't worry about it. They'll be sending him to the Birdcage, and the rest of the Empire plays by the rules..." she let go, and gave me a critical look. "You don't know about the rules, do you?"
I almost said yes, but realized that in doing so, I'd be admitting to have made prior contacts with capes. I shook my head.
"Yeah, I thought so. They're pretty simple, really. No killing or raping, civilian identities and family are off limits, and a truce is in effect whenever the Endbringer sirens are sounded."
I flexed my fingers in a brief moment of anger, taking another deep breath.
"Shadow Stalker broke the rules, didn't she?" Glory Girl folded her arms with a wry grin on her face.
I nodded. "She tried to kill me, twice. Phased crossbow bolt to the head, and then a dagger to my abdomen, right here," I pointed out where, "not to mention she's part of the reason I have my powers to begin with."
"Shit." She shook her head, incensed. "I always knew she was rotten, but to actually... fuck, tell ya what Metalmorph, if I see her, I'll break her back for you."
My frown only deepened in response.
"Hey, like I said, you can't kill, but there's a whole lot you can do up to that point. Besides, if anything goes seriously wrong, I can just get my sis to fix her up. Speaking of which, I'll introduce you two later."
The other heroes were huddled with some of the PRT troopers, and beyond the squad cars blocking the road, a small crowd of onlookers was steadily gathering. Armsmaster then broke ranks and walked towards me.
"Listen, Metalmorph, I want to... apologize. On behalf of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, for what Shadow Stalker did, and for my actions a few minutes ago."
I folded my arms and glared at him. "Okay, it's a start I guess. I... don't know if there's anything you, your Director, or anyone else can say or do to make up for what she and the others put me through, though."
"Just... don't write off the Wards entirely. You're hurt, you're angry, you feel isolated, alone, and don't know who to trust. It's understandable. But we're not bad people, so don't let Shadow Stalker's actions color your views of the rest of us."
I took several deep breaths, again wanting and failing to cry, and inwardly cursing my transformation for taking that away from me. Glory Girl stood beside me as he walked off a moment later.
"Come on, it'll be alright."
I gave her a look at that.
"No, really. It will be alright. Crap, I'm not good at this, am I?"
I couldn't help the smile I gave at that.
"Despite the really bad first impression that I am really sorry for," I had to glare at her again for reminding me of that as she kept talking, "I am not against you here. So, friends?"
I gave her a look of surprise and confusion as she stuck out her hand, as if waiting for me to shake it. "What, really?"
"Really. Friends gotta stick together, ya know? You need a ride home? 'Cause I can do better than that."
That felt... kinda nice, actually, even as I hesitantly expected the other shoe to drop somehow. Still, I had to ask, "What's the catch?"
"No catch. This isn't a recruitment pitch."
I couldn't help it when my shoulders slumped a bit.
"So, friends?"
I sighed inwardly, angry and ashamed at myself for my reluctance to accept the offer of friendship that I so desperately craved. 'This is almost like how I met Emma...' and here I was expecting the same outcome from somebody completely different. 'No, I can't let them win at this as well, I can't let them force me into isolation.'
"Friends," I said as I shook her hand.
"Hi, I'm Victoria Dallon," she said with a smile, "call me Vicky."
"I-" I wasn't sure what to say. I did not want to say my name out loud, even if I might have been outed as a cape at school.
"Don't worry, I won't hold it against you if you don't want to tell me your name right now."
Now I felt a bit guilty at that, even as a smiled nervously. Crap. Fighting one of the most feared villains in the city didn't unnerve me as much as this conversation was doing.
"Can we," I lowered my voice, before turning my head to look at the PRT and fire crews still in the area, "talk a bit away from any prying ears?"
"Sure, did you have anyplace in mind?"
"How about the top of that building over there?" I pointed towards a nearby multi-storey building about a block away.
"Okay, do-"
I turned invisible.
"Hey, where'd you- no, nevermind," Glory Girl said before shrugging and moving into the air.
-----
I took the elevator up as far as I could before finding out it didn't go to the roof, much to my disappointment. I had to take the stairs the rest of the way, though the locked roof-access door didn't hinder me much as my nanites ate through the lock mechanism.
...I wish I had known I could do that before I had shoved the school's roof-access door open. I could see Glory Girl waiting for me before I dropped the invisibility, startling her.
"Aggh! Damnit, don't do that!"
I chuckled, couldn't help it really, not after the absurdity I'd just lived through.
"You're a jerk, you know that? Shit, everything I've seen from you already, and you can turn invisible? I'm not going to lie, that is bullshit," she said with a smile, taking the sting out of her words.
I gave a small smile at that.
"So what did you want to talk about?"
I had to pause a moment at that question. Mainly I just wanted people to stop staring at me, and getting out of the crowd seemed like the best way to do that. But yes, I did have questions to ask.
"I don't know what to do at the moment."
"That's it?" Glory Girl asked incredulously.
"I just triggered," I glared at her, "Shadow Stalker's proof that the PRT is either malicious or incompetent, and either way, I can't trust them not to fuck me over. I just got into a slugging match with Hookwolf and won, and I'll probably have to deal with the rest of the Empire later. And if what Armsmaster said is of any indication, Director Piggot isn't going to let this go. So yes, I think I have reason to ask for advice here."
"Woah, don't bite my head off here, I didn't mean anything," she said with her hands up.
I let out a long sigh, and nodded. "Sorry, I'm just frustrated. If I didn't know about Shadow Stalker, I'd probably be taking them up on the inevitable offer to join the Wards. Knowing what I do, though?" I shook my head. "I just can't, and I don't know what to do."
"I'm no lawyer, but you're basically saying the PRT is partly responsible for what happened?"
"Yeah?"
"Ask for restitution then. They don't want to get dragged through the mud here, and even if some of them are shitheads, most of them are just regular people trying to do their jobs."
"That's it? They're just going to get away with the two years of hell I've been through then?"
"Wait, back up there, two years? And what do you mean 'They'?"
Deep breath in, deep breath out.
"I've been tormented for the past two years in school, by someone whom I thought was my best friend, and Shadow Stalker, in her civilian identity. They've always gotten away with it, even in plain view of teachers and school officials, and I think the PRT is the reason why."
She looked very uncomfortable at that, but nodded, before adding "Ok, so probably school officials trying to cover their own asses then as well. My advice? Get a lawyer involved here, and soon. There's enough fuckups here that, if you have any evidence-"
"I do, but one of the people involved has a lawyer for her dad, and everyone has gone out of their way to cover for Shadow Stalker."
"Yeah, that may end up pulling in the District Attorney depending on how far that went. Don't give me that look, the fucker would probably be rubbing her hands in glee at the thought of being able to go after the PRT for criminal misconduct if she could. More convictions for her to add to her career list. Still, this is likely going to be settled out of court."
I slumped at that bit of depressing news.
"Don't be so disappointed. They're going to owe you some sweet change, and even if the public doesn't hear about it directly, the school board's elected, so they'll find out, and heads will roll. As for the PRT, even Director Piggot has superiors and can be replaced."
"I don't want money," I muttered softly.
"Ah. You want a public trial then. The problem with a public trial is it's just that. Public. Meaning you'd probably have to take the witness stand, and they might have to as well, and they can start throwing shit at you just as much as you can throw it at them. Also, if Shadow Stalker's gone villain, she'd need to be captured first before being put on trial, so it could conceivably be months or years before it got that far." She grinned. "Trust me, you file a lawsuit, settle out of court, whoever replaces the people that get shitcanned for this are going to want to keep their new jobs under the greater scrutiny they'll be under, so your bullies are going to be miserable. If they're even allowed to remain in school."
I frowned a bit at that, as all I really wanted is for the bullying to stop. Still, I had options I didn't know I had.
"So is that all you wanted to ask?"
"The Empire?"
"I don't think many of them will be eager to get into a fight with someone who can beat up Hookwolf," she grinned at me.
I couldn't help but grin right back, before my expression turned more serious. "And what about those who still might?"
"Ask for help? If you're willing to help me out I'm willing to help you kick some ass as well. I don't doubt that the rest of New Wave would want to help as well. I mean, I'm just a phone call away. Speaking of which..." she pulled out her phone.
It took only a moment for me to mimic Sophia's phone, before I handed it to her. I chuckled inwardly after realizing that, hey, it was mine now.
"Neat phone. Where did you get it?"
"I stole it from Shadow Stalker," I said with a shit-eating grin, "after she tried to kill me.".
Glory Girl, no, Vicky, I could think of her as Vicky now. Vicky gave me an odd look before laughing. "Then I suppose you paid for that fair and square. Lemme give you my number in case you need to call me for whatever."
It took only a few seconds for us to exchange numbers, and I was grateful that this phone was a prepaid one, as I could keep using it so long as I bought minutes for it. Sophia should be damned thankful that I didn't feel vindictive enough to start imitating her voice and using her contact list to make things worse for her whenever she's finally caught.
"So, uhm, hey, what should I call you?"
I gave her a glare at that.
"What? Calling you 'Metalmorph' still feels awkward."
I glared some more..
"Okay, fine, 'Metalmorph' it is," she rolled her eyes, "though we really need to get you a better name."
I huffed at that as she laughed.
-----
We talked a bit afterwards before going our separate ways. Mostly inconsequential things, though it still felt nice before we made our departure.
It didn't take much effort to sneak into my backyard while invisible. I hadn't wanted to take any chances that someone might be watching, taking photographs or video, anything like that. Though as expected, I did spot a pair of unmarked cars, occupied, and new to the neighborhood.
After checking to make sure that no one was nearby and watching, I dropped the invisibility and took my normal form, the wave of energy as it locked in place washing over me. After a moment, I carefully knocked on the back door, and after a few seconds later I could sense my dad cautiously approaching before I could see him through the glass in the doorway. 'Oh shit, he looks horrible...' His forehead was covered in sweat, hair was a mess, bags under his eyes. He scrambled to open the door, and after it was opened he grabbed me in a bear hug.
"Oh kiddo, thank God you're safe, come here." We hugged for a few seconds, and then he shivered. "What the hell, Taylor?" He let me go, then placed the back of his palm on my forehead. "You're freezing. What happened to you?"
I let out a long sigh. "It's a long story, dad."
He looked at me for a long moment, and then nodded.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then looked him straight in the eyes. "Dad, I'm a cape."
To my eternal surprise, he nodded and said, "I know, kiddo. You coming in?"
I sat down at the dinner table, and dad went to the kitchen and grabbed a couple glasses from a cupboard. "You need anything to drink?"
I shook my head, but he got me a glass of orange juice regardless.
He sat, looked at his glass, and then downed its contents in one gulp. "Kiddo, I got a call from a 'Director Piggot' of the PRT last night. She said you'd gotten into some kind of trouble at school, that you... 'triggered,' was the word she used. What happened?"
I took several deep breaths. "Dad... Emma and I aren't friends. Haven't been since about two years ago. She... and Sophia, and Madison... they filled my locker with..." I broke eye contact and stared at the table, "things. Garbage. Locked me in it and left me there."
Dad's jaw dropped, but in his eyes I could see rage forming.
"...I'll kill him." He shook his head, then pushed away from the table. "That lying son of a bitch, I'll kill him..."
"Dad." I got his attention. "Just, stop, please? I don't think he knows."
I could see him clenching his fists in frustration, but the rage simmered down. "...Alright, okay... So they've been bullying you for almost two years? Why didn't you say anything?"
"I didn't want you to get angry. I was... gonna handle it myself. Not react, just wait for them to get bored and stop."
He nodded in understanding. "But they never did, did they?"
"No, they didn't. I figured out why yesterday. One of them is a cape, and a Ward."
His rage flared up again, but he kept it under control. Barely. "Who?"
I thought about the unwritten rules for a moment, and then shrugged. "Sophia. Her name's Sophia Hess." She had already violated them, and he needed to know in case she ever showed up here.
Dad nodded silently for a moment, letting his anger dissipate again. "Kiddo? What happened?"
"There was a car accident as I was walking home this morning. I went to try to help, managed to call 911, and then Sophia attacked. She shot me with one of her crossbow bolts, in the head, then stabbed me in the abdomen when that didn't work."
"She tried to kill you?! ...and you're alright?" He looked at me, moving up to check on my uninjured form. "What am I missing?"
"Dad," I stood, and reverted to my cape form. "I'm a shapeshifter."
-----
Omake: "Dad," I stood, and reverted to my cape form. "Where is John Connor?"
-----
Author Notes:
Robo Jesus: Yes, there are infact cell phone apps that can monitor police scanners and whathaveyou. Here is a Link to one such application, incase you were wondering what Sophia was talking about there when she foamed Taylor.
Pyrion: I was ambivalent about that part, but figured "sure, why not?" We can add "stealing wifi" to her list of crimes.
Robo Jesus: I have to say, I enjoyed writing out the Hookwolf fight scene here, even if it did add a few days to the update.
Pyrion: Yeah, my version was shit. But yeah, we had a lot of fun writing this, and fixing it, and fixing it some more. And throwing out half of what I wrote. *shrugs* 15094 words, minus everything down here.
by Pyrion (and Robo Jesus, who will inevitably write something funnier here
. RJ: No I won't~)1.04
I stepped out of the Undersiders' hideout at around four in the morning, having spent the majority of my time there considering my options. Joining them was... tempting... but again, I couldn't see dad taking it well, and he'd been the only person I had left when it seemed like the whole world had turned against me. While they seemed like nice people, for villains at least, whatever friendship could be had there would always be tainted by the fact that they had tried to manipulate me into joining them. I'd always have to watch my back around them, Rachel in particular, and that was no way to go about cultivating friendships. No, these were people my age that got powers through similarly shitty situations and took the easy way out, using their powers for their own benefit first and foremost, at the expense of everyone else. In their circumstances, it probably would've been easy to write off friends and family, yet I wasn't going to let this drive me away from my father. Becoming a villain would. Becoming a hero... still might.
And that was the crux of the issue facing me. I'd have to tell dad everything. That I had been lying to him about school, I hadn't told him about the bullies, he had no idea that Emma was one of them, and if Sophia could be believed, Emma was the ringleader. I hadn't told him that the whole damn school knew what was going on, and nobody had stepped in to help. Well, not to help me, at any rate. I had to stop to unclench my hands. I'd have to tell him that, despite everything that's happened, I wasn't going to run away, I wasn't going to let them win. Even if it meant having to go back to Winslow, with the whole damn place likely knowing what had happened to me, and I wasn't going to let Sophia's... status... as a state-sponsored Hero get in the way of me becoming a hero. I'd... just have to work outside the system, not join the Wards. Maybe look into New Wave, or at least ask them for advice. Oh god, I had to let breathe out, trying to smother the feelings of panic I could feel beginning to rise at this entire situation I found myself in. Ok, breathe in, breathe out. Ok, a bit better. No, not really, but at least I know I won't start hyperventilating.
"Hehehe," I started to laugh at that thought before smothering that down too.
And as for Winslow? I could always turn invisible, walk from class to class without Emma or the others ever seeing me. My ability to mimic absorbed objects could effectively allow me to forego worrying about textbooks, I'd just have to absorb them, although that still left the problem of having to pay for replacements, as I wasn't about to "give back" a portion of myself in the form of a textbook. 'Hmm...'
Two blocks away from the Undersiders' hideout, I had the makings of an idea. My nanites had no trouble disassembling solid and liquid matter to build more nanites, and I had no difficulty recalling the shape and appearance of Lisa's coffee mug for the purposes of mimicking it. I walked down a dimly-lit alley, content to know that nobody had followed me, nor was anybody awake and nearby, and focused. The familiar sphere of nanites erupted from my hand again, but as I intently thought about reproducing the mug instead of mimicking it, the first indication that my power had a say in the matter kicked in. A wave of... I almost want to say "nausea", washed over me, a general feeling of wrongness pervading my very being, even as the nanites in that sphere sacrificed themselves, being disassembled by other nanites, and those in turn sacrificing themselves, et cetera, to reproduce the mug. It took longer, too. A solid minute, at least, before a perfect recreation of the mug rested in the palm of my hand. I took a deep breath again, even mindful of the fact that I didn't necessarily need to breathe, but the feeling of wrongness hadn't subsided. Did I do something wrong? Something I shouldn't have?
The familiar energy wave of my nanites locking together washed through me, and the ill feeling mostly went away. I felt... lessened, I guess. Smaller. Absorbing matter, making more nanites, extending my awareness, no, that was my first indication that my power had a say in the matter. To confirm that, I drew the mug back into me, the uneasiness turning to pleasure and finally contentment as the mug dissolved into new nanites, though not as much as before.
I wanted to panic at this realization, that my power was subtly affecting my thoughts, rewarding me for some actions while punishing others, before I realized that it wasn't so different from eating food for sustenance versus starving. Not that I needed to eat food anymore it seems. But still, if there was any doubt that my transformation into this... swarm... of nanites had changed me other than just physically changing my body, this sealed the deal.
I resumed the walk home wearing my own form, a bit of a spring in my step from reconciling the changes to my body with the changes to my mind. Yes, my power seems to be affecting my thoughts, but not necessarily in a bad way. It didn't compel me to absorb matter to make more nanites, for example; that would've been just cause for a panic attack. 'Wait, can I absorb living things too?' Hm, maybe something to check on later with a houseplant or something. But while I could use the nanites as "construction material" to reproduce mundane objects, it wasn't ideal.
'Shit.' The realization just occurred to me, and I dashed down the closest alleyway, annoyed at myself for not having realized it earlier. I could absorb matter to create more nanites, and vice versa, so why not cut out the middleman? I ripped off the lid of a nearby trashcan, smirking to myself at the thought that what I was about to do was technically vandalism, not that anybody would care in this city... I let my nanites flow out from my right hand once more, coating the lid while focusing on the mug once more, and proceeded to watch in amazement as my nanites quickly rearranged the galvanized steel lid into the polished ceramic shape of the mug, sans its handle. The lid wasn't enough. ...Huh, that went faster than I thought it would, and for some reason, the weight felt off. As my initial giddiness wore off, I realized I needed to confirm what I thought I saw. I threw the mug to the ground, but instead of it shattering like before, only a thin sheet of ceramic snapped off. The inside was still galvanized steel. 'No wonder that was too easy.'
Still, proof of concept, I wasn't simply a shapeshifter of my own body, but I could conceivably shapeshift anything into near-duplicates of objects I had previously absorbed. Actually making perfect duplicates would likely require considerably more material, and attention paid to the process, because my power seemed inclined to cheat. I thought about why that might be, but then smacked my forehead in realization. 'Duh, Taylor, you're not perfectly mimicking a human body, you're just looking like one on the outside.' Made sense that my power would apply the same formula to other things.
Even so, Lisa was right, my power is pure bullshit. I couldn't keep the grin from my face at that realization even if I tried.
Still, the potential applications were mind-boggling. Absorb a pair of handcuffs, and never have to worry about needing to secure a villain and not having brought any with me. Absorb weapons, mimic them on the fly for my own use, or craft them from available raw matter for others maybe? Could I reproduce technology as effectively as mundane objects? And if so, what about Tinker tech? Shit, even if dad were to talk me out of becoming a hero, we wouldn't lack for money if I went rogue, using my power to duplicate stuff on demand. Especially if I could duplicate Tinker tech. I gave the handle-less mug a final look, grinning in realization that I had options other than fighting crime if I so chose, before absorbing the new mug.
Head full of thoughts and ideas for this new angle to my power, my walk home turned into a jog. Already I was looking at the world with a different perspective, looking a previously mundane and uninteresting objects with a feeling almost akin to "hunger," but more for wondering about the applications of reproducing, say, cellphones, or car tires, or hell, even whole cars. Even as I didn't know a damned thing about how cars work, and hadn't even learned how to drive yet, my power let me recall the exact molecular structure of the ceramics in Lisa's coffee mug, so presumably working knowledge wasn't an issue.
Half an hour later, and almost halfway home, I was jolted out of my distracted thoughts by the distant noise of an oncoming car. Not so weird in this city, even at this hour, aside from the sound itself. Brockton Bay, like most cities in the United States, had its fair share of speed demon gearheads, and this sounded like one of them. I paid it little mind, aside from the amusing realization that even in the early morning on a weekend, some people still have reason to be awake so early. Still, speed limit was 35 miles per hour and there was no way this guy was sticking to the limit. 'Joyrider out in the early morning, or something more sinister?', I wondered. The growl of his engine almost immediately changed to the blare of a horn and the sound of skidding tires, before the unmistakable sound of two cars slamming into eachother echoed through the otherwise quiet city.
'Fuck, that was only two blocks away.' I cloaked and ran in the direction of the crash. Two blocks away and one block towards downtown, it turned out. I took in the sight, and yeah, sure enough, one car had its passenger-side caved in and wedged up against a street lamp, while the other car's entire front end was mangled and... oh no...
While one of the cars had front and side airbags deployed, the other car was a classic, back from the days before seatbelts became mandatory. Consequently, though the vehicle itself was in much better shape, its sole occupant wasn't. I could tell, despite my complete lack of medical training, that there was no way he had survived, not with the way he head was smashed into the front window and his skull seemed to be split open. Even as I turned away from the sight in disgust, my expanded senses proved a curse, affording me perfect sight to my sides and back... I ended up focusing all of my attention on the other wrecked car, intentionally ignoring everything not in front of me, putting it out of my mind.
Only for the memories to kick in. Memories I thought I had done a good job of suppressing. Mom's car accident, and the events that came after…
'No, Taylor, pay attention to the present,' I thought to myself. The other driver could still be alive, but with the driver's side door and mirror pressed up against the street lamp, there'd be no way he'd escape under his own power. I dropped the cloak and my form, shifting to my default silver, as good a cape form as any, and more than enough indication for anyone who might be watching that the situation was being dealt with.
I ran up to the driver's side door and got a quick look at the driver, Female, about mom's age when she died. Shook my head at the memories that I didn't need flaring up, and set about ascertaining her condition before potentially making things worse. The most obvious thing wrong with her was a nasty gash on the left side of her head, not "gushing blood" bad but if I remembered what little I knew of car accidents, moving her would be a Bad Idea. I could see bruising on her upper neck where the seatbelt held her in place. Breathing seemed fine, though.
'Fuck.'
I started second-guessing whether it was a good idea to try to help at this point. I had no medical training, and it was entirely possible this woman had far more serious injuries than just what I saw. The decision ended up being made for me, though, when she groggily woke up, dazed but somewhat aware. She slowly glanced at the state of her car, bewildered mostly, and then turned to the window and looked at me with a worried but expectant look on her face.
"W-what-?" she asked, somewhat slurring her words as she looked around her car, the cracked front window giving her no real view from that angle.
'Crap, that's probably not going to be good' I thought to myself as I walked up to the smashed in door and said to her "It's going to be alright. You got into an accident. Uhm, can you tell me your name?"
"Leslie."
"Ok Leslie, uhm, your car is kind of ruined, and when the emergency crews get here they're going to need to remove the door here to get to you. Do you mind if I help them and you out here with that?"
I could see her swallow as she said "Yeah, thank you, uhm...?"
I almost wanted to grin as I said "Metalmorph" to her. "My name is Metalmorph."
I walked up and tugged on the door handle. Locked, of course, couldn't be that easy. I pressed my hand up against the window, letting the nanites flow out over it, and absorbed it into me as I saw her eyes widen a bit as she leaned back a bit. Breaking the glass could only injure her further, and I needed to get the damn door open. A few tense seconds ensued before the glass ceased to be a problem, and I reached in with my left hand as my right hand started to reform, and tugged on the inside door handle.
Jammed. I pulled on the exposed door frame, the fiberglass and metal warping from strength I didn't know I had, and after a couple of seconds, I tossed the door aside. "Uhm, whoops," I said sheepishly.
Her look of disbelief at my words almost made me laugh despite the seriousness of the situation, so I turned back to her and asked "Do you have a cellphone?"
She blinked a moment before she tried to point behind her, only for her breathe to catch as I heard her start hissing in pain.
"I"ll get that for you. Don't hurt yourself further. Please. It's in your purse, right?"
"Yeah," she said before she started sniffling as tears fell down her face, softly repeating. "Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god."
"Shhh, it'll be ok? Give me a moment and I'll phone emergency services here," I said as I finally got the passenger side door open without unhinging it totally. It took a moment to get the phone out of the purse, strange fuzzy dice and far too toy cats inside of the damn thing and getting in my way.
"Nine one one, what's your emergency?"
"Yeah, I'm at the corner of Dawson and Ninth, and there's been a major car accident," I said loud enough that the woman could hear me before I moved a few feet away and said more softly "At least one driver is dead, and I'm unsure how injured the other driver is at the moment. Before you ask, she's awake, but she's slurring her words and she's bruised and everything, and this corner is a blind intersection, so I'm halfway scared that another car may end up hitting her and causing more injuries and damage."
"Ok, emergency crews are on their way, and should be there in about fifteen to twenty minutes. I take it from your words that you're not directly involved or injured?"
"No, I came across the scene and am rendering what I aid I can without moving her or making a bigger mess of things. Uhm, before you ask, I did make it so the emergency crews won't have to use the jaws of life."
"Wait, what? Can you repeat that?"
"I pulled the front door off to make sure she was alright, especially when… when I saw that the other driver was dead. I figured I should say something before emergency crews show up and anyone freaks at my appearance."
"You're a parahuman?"
God I felt awkward at that moment.
"Yeah… yes, I am."
"Understood. Crews should be there soon. Can you tell us the injured driver's name?"
"I can do better than that," I said as I walked up to the driver and put the phone up to the woman's ear as I heard sirens coming into range.
-----
I waited until right after the emergency crews and tow truck showed up before disappearing. I… didn't really want to talk to anyone right now. The reason was simple: I was pissed. After I focused back on my surroundings I had found that there were other people nearby who had came to take a look after hearing the impact.
Not a single fucking one of them had phoned emergency services to report the wreck. I could fucking feel the cell phone connections in my immediate vicinity, could even listen in on them if I paid any real attention to doing so, and not a single fucking person had helped out.
It may have been less than an hour or so before most of the early morning donut and coffee shops opened up, but apparently there were still enough people around, even before sunrise, that a small crowd had gathered from across the street as the police set up a quick roadblock and detour as they tried to get the two cars out of the road and the injured to the hospital and deceased to the morgue.
I focused on calming down, not wanting to appear from thin air and demanding from those idiots why none of them had helped or at least phoned for help. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, unclench my now bladed hands, breathe out, don't scream in rage. I'd say I was a little calmer, but that would probably be a lie. God, what is wrong with these people? This city?
I had walked a block or two away from the crash site and the police and those useless, worthless people, away from the direction of home too, moving towards a corner away from viewing eyes, so I could come back into view and at least think in disgruntled peace and not have to worry about anyone bumping into me while I was invisible. It took only a moment to shimmer and shift back into view as I brought my focus back to what was in front of me. I could see a few of those vending trucks moving about the area and setting up for the early morning commute as people gathered outside a nearby coffee shop as it was preparing to open.
I watched the crowd in my regular human form for a few minutes when I felt a small object the size of a large ping-pong ball tap against my right foot. I dropped my focus on the crowd in time to get enough of a glimpse of my surroundings, before the object detonated, spreading a cloud of drywall-white foam around my lower body up to my waist as I heard some of the people nearby gasp in shock and surprise. I spotted a familiar figure crouched at the top of a nearby building, and I felt incandescent rage, even as another foam grenade arced its way towards me.
'Shadow Stalker, here?'
The foam grenade bounced off a nearby car's rear window and detonated, covering me up to my hair in foam. PRT containment foam, so even as I tried turning around for what good it'd do, I soon found myself suspended mid-twist, just enough to face her, if I could see through this gunk. Surprisingly enough, my peripheral senses still worked, and I got the impression that Sophia wasn't the only person present for this little scene playing out. There were a few others converging, all on foot at ground-level, but none of them capes, from the sound of their hushed conversations.
"Ah, Taylor, you stupid, stupid girl. Playing the hero, are we?" She dropped down to the ground.
"I suspected you might have it in you, ya know. Deep down. I heard about the crash on my phone's apps, then the police go on to report an unknown cape they suspect to be the 'Missing Winslow Girl' disappearing from the scene. And I go to take a look around, only to see you appear from nowhere and shapeshift, not even bothering to hide your face like the weakling you are. I thought Emma was acting strangely last night, but that was you, wasn't it?" Sounds of fumbling with something, metal or fiberglass being bent, I recalled Sophia used crossbows, so that was probably it. But the foam was solid, so she wouldn't be able to...
"It's funny, really. The prey triggered and got the power to look like something it isn't. Or wasn't. With you, I'm not sure anymore. But it doesn't matter. You know who I am, you know my secret. That has to change."
I struggled against the foam vainly, my movement only making it strengthen. What was enough to rip a fiberglass door off its hinges was now, paradoxically enough, making me weaker, more vulnerable, more isolated. 'Just like in the locker...' Only I had options, this time.
I focused my attention down to the microscopic level, letting my nanites poke and prod at the material the foam was made out of. The design was eerily similar, if considerably less advanced - the foam arranged itself in a lattice structure similar to how my own nanites connected themselves, but any movement imparted upon it would cause the material to form additional connections, strengthening the hold both on me and on the rest of the foam.
"If only you'd known your place and stayed in it…"
Suddenly, and quite violently, a small portion of the nanites making up my head ceased to exist, and I shook with anger at realizing that Sophia had fired a crossbow bolt at me while in her shadow state. 'She just tried to kill me.' My right arm shifted into a blade and shot through the foam, and surprisingly enough, the foam hadn't reacted. 'It solidifies and goes inert?' I hadn't expected that, but it was something I could use. I willed my nanites to start absorbing the foam and crossbow bolt, and my whole outer surface rippled and expanded, the nanites working through the foam's latticework, dismantling it from the inside out. My anger morphed to a feeling of righteous satisfaction as I walked forward with little difficulty, my nanites having broken down enough of the foam to push the remainder aside with little fuss.
Sophia stood, crossbow still in hand but with a look of stunned shock, and muttered a barely-audible "oh fuck," before bolting off in the opposite direction towards downtown. I shook my head in equal parts anger and amusement, before I took off after her.
Even as she had several seconds of a head start and obvious exercise both from being a cape and from her track-and-field activities at school, I caught up to her in a matter of moments at my full sprint speed, shoving her forward with my left, non-bladed hand, eliciting a shriek from her in return. She tumbled to the ground and rolled, dropping her crossbow, before getting back to her feet while drawing a dagger from her right boot. With the flick of a switch on the handle, the dagger's blade was sheathed in bright orange, and I brought my arm-blade up in a defensive stance.
For a few seconds, we stood there, staring eachother down.
"Okay, I was wrong, you do have it in you." She laughed. "How's it feel to be a predator?"
'What?' I stared at her in puzzlement before she made a series of quick jabs and slashes towards me. I sidestepped the first two before attempting to block the third, only for the dagger to slice clean through my arm-blade. The upper half dropped to the ground with a clang, and I backed off in shock.
"Aw, did that hurt?" She started laughing, only for her laughter to turn nervous as I re-extended the blade. A second later, I willed the severed half into a liquid state, and guided it back towards me. She took immediate notice and stopped laughing. "Oh come on."
The liquid metal merged into my right foot, and another interlocking energy wave cascaded over my form. She started backing away, shaking her head while continuing to slash and jab at me. I followed her at a comfortable distance as she backed into an alley between two warehouses, the plethora of gang symbols telling us both we were in some gang's territory. Fuck if I could tell which.
She continued backing away, her movements getting more exaggerated, more desperate. I stayed with her, far enough away that her attacks would never hit, but close enough that she still felt threatened. About halfway to the end of the alley, her stance shifted, and she turned to shadow before lunging at me. I felt a brief, odd sense of familiarity as she passed through me in her shadow-state, as if something about it jogged a long-lost memory that I couldn't place, before she re-materialized behind me and buried the dagger into my abdomen. I reacted almost instantly, reaching behind me to grasp her right wrist with my left hand, and squeezed. She shifted back to her shadow-state with a muffled gasp of pain, having let go of the dagger, before she bolted across the street.
Meanwhile, I shifted my attention to the dagger, slowly carving its way through my body as gravity pulled it down, and pulled it out with my left hand while retracting my right arm-blade. Sophia could wait, the dagger was more immediately interesting. My nanites pulled themselves back together, the clean slice sealing itself up, even as the nanites in my left hand began to flow over the dagger's surface. The orange sheath proved effectively impenetrable, as it wasn't quite matter, but a projection of light held in place by some kind of energy field. I shut it off, and let my nanites continue their work.
The dagger handle itself was uninteresting, something that could probably be taken off the shelf of any sporting goods store, but the "hard light" emitter welded onto it was obviously Tinker tech. I focused my attention solely on the inner workings of the device, as my nanites stripped it apart, and blinked in comprehension at how simple it was in retrospect. 'I could build something like this.'
I hadn't even finished absorbing the remaining bits of the dagger when I decided to test that theory. First, mimicking it, I recalled the effect and my nanites did the rest, projecting orange hard light from every exposed surface on my body, including the rapidly-retracting blob of nanites in my left palm. 'Holy shit. I can mimic Tinker tech?!' I killed the effect just as fast, and struggled to contain my excitement at this revelation. It didn't necessarily make me a Tinker, but if I could understand Tinker tech enough to mimic it, I could probably reproduce it as well, and I knew of only one other person on the planet that could both understand and reproduce Tinker tech.
And she was one of the most famous Tinkers on the planet, if not the most.
Back to the more pressing issue at hand, only a few seconds had passed by as Sophia had, by this point, just walked out of my peripheral sense's range. She was walking though, not running, and her pacing and slightly higher body temperature suggested exhaustion, possibly injury as well. I hadn't pinched her wrist that hard, but then again I had ripped a car door off its hinges with little effort. Given what had transpired though, I couldn't bring myself to feel sorry for her. I shrugged inwardly, then cloaked before stepping out of the alley.
I could feel signals in my vicinity start to spike as people started making calls on their cell phones. Focusing in on one of those signals, I took a moment to listen in before:
"-yeah, two capes fighting near the East Meets West coffee shop. I think one of them was Shadow Stal-"
I cut the connection as I focused back on my surroundings, not wanting to get attacked again while distracted, even if I was cloaked.
Inside, I seethed. 'No. I won't let her hurt me again.' As much as I wanted to rip her throat out, at the moment it took everything I had not to cry as well. Not that I could even if I wanted to. So fucking unfair, bullshit powers or not. I took in a deep breathe, only to let it out a moment later.
No cross-traffic in the street, so I crossed without incident, and took off at a full sprint in the direction where Sophia had disappeared. The gang signage on the brick and corrugated steel walls of the various buildings steadily featured less east-asian characters, more swastikas and lightning bolts, so definitely Empire territory. This bothered me somewhat, the thought that the damn nazis had claimed and mostly-uncontested territory so close to home. 'Just means if I break something, I shouldn't feel too broken up over it.'
Still hadn't spotted Sophia, so I slowed my pace to a cautious walk, taking in my surroundings to a much finer detail. Beyond pointing out individuals who could be her, of similar physical dimensions and body heat output, my peripheral senses started to be more of a hindrance than a help at this point. The area I had entered was definitely occupied gang territory, my peripheral senses picking up large concentrations of people, most of them inside the various warehouses and factories I passed by. I ignored those, concentrating on the people outside, writing off those not matching Sophia's body shape and temperature, and those I could see who weren't her.
The cellphone calls in the area were starting to pick up in volume too. Sophia had stated that she had a phone on her, so it was worth listening in, at least on the initial conversations. This went on for a few minutes with no success, before I found her standing atop a corrugated steel building, phone to her ear.
"...the fuck gives, Snakes? Your men aren't here, there's no unmarked van, nothing." Definitely Sophia, but I tempered my enthusiasm on what else my peripheral senses had picked up. A large congregation of people inside the building, E88 tags prominently decorating one of its side walls, and two individuals in the center of it giving off considerably more body heat than the rest. Muffled cheers, chanting, and catcalls mainly. As noisy as they were, I'd still have to approach Sophia cautiously, as silently as possible, which ruled out approaching her in human form.
"You realize this was a test, Shadow Stalker. A test of your competence and your loyalty." Definitely an older male, but someone whose voice I didn't recognize. 'Who is this 'Snakes,' a new Protectorate cape, or her handler within the PRT?' "The simplest of assassinations, easier than jobs you've accepted in the past, made easier with resources I provided at considerable expense--"
"Bullshit! We both know damned well that worthless shit didn't didn't cost you anything; the containment foam didn't fucking work, she shrugged that off, and the dagger was similarly useless Tinker trash. The rest of the gear? I don't have any fucking use for it!"
'So, Sophia's backer has access to PRT gear as well as Tinker weapons, but apparently it came at cost to him. Not PRT or Protectorate then. Accent isn't fake-German or Asian, so that rules out Empire and ABB...' Still under cloak, I began circling the building, looking for any obvious means of reaching the roof without drawing attention to myself. I found a fire escape on the opposite side, ladder already extended, and began climbing, mindful of the noise I was making. The noise from the party inside proved to be a blessing, as even if Sophia wasn't distracted by her call, even I had trouble hearing my own noise over theirs.
"That's not my problem. Nor, for that matter, are you. Your services are no longer required or desired, Shadow Stalker. Goodbye." The call terminated abruptly, and I was treated to the amusing sound of Sophia swearing under her breath while pacing in place. Even with the noise from below, sneaking up on her would be difficult in human form, so once I reached the top I let my form dissolve, dropping to the corrugated sheet metal surface as a puddle of liquid metal.
Flowing across the angled roof turned out to be much less difficult than I initially imagined it would be, and the kind of experience I don't think I could put in words. Sophia sat, back turned to me in a crouch, resting her chin on her knees. As I slowly flowed towards her, the sheet metal flexed slightly under the weight, giving off a rattle that attracted her attention briefly. A glance towards my direction, but even with the sun barely starting to light things up, she hadn't spotted me.
"Fucking Coil, fucking PRT, fucking Taylor... stupid bitch couldn't just stay in her place, nooo..."
'Wait, that was Coil?' That... changed things. 'Shadow Stalker, a Ward and hero, working for a supervillain. Worked, rather, past-tense.' Either the PRT knew and had allowed it for whatever reason, or they didn't, meaning someone who they had under a microscope for close to two years still got away with this. Maliciousness or incompetence, and I couldn't decide which was worse.
As I flowed closer, I noticed she had laid her phone down to her left, along with a couple other items I couldn't identify. Her sole remaining crossbow remained slung over her shoulder, and from this distance, the crossbow was uninteresting and unthreatening. I extended a tendril of nanites towards her phone while she remained distracted with her own thoughts, enveloped it, and proceeded to absorb it. My nanites got through its outer casing easily enough, but on contact with the inner circuitry, something amazing and not entirely unexpected occurred.
Rather than mindlessly tearing apart and into the circuitry, my nanites bonded with it, established connections, traced the flow of electricity from battery to screen, and drew a veritable mountain of information into me. Initially gibberish, the data rapidly started to make sense as more of it flowed in. I directed more nanites to form connections at specific points, gorging myself on the resulting data flow, making sense of the phone's design, how it stored data, negotiated calls with the cell network...
This had to be her personal cellphone rather than one provided by the PRT, if they even did that. The contact list... Emma was on it, along with a few other names I hadn't recognized. Text message history, many messages to and from Emma...
White-hot rage flared through me again, and my nanites reacted, throwing themselves at the phone, devouring it considerably faster than normal. More tendrils snaked out at the other items, tearing into them without a care in the world for the noise generated. Sophia glanced at her possessions, then sprang to her feet and drew the crossbow in a fluid, practiced motion while swearing under her breath.
Barely repressing my anger, I flowed upward at my center, quickly taking my silver humanoid form as Sophia started shaking her head and stepping away.
"No... no way, I... you... you can't be--"
I glared at her. "Alive?" My right arm shifted into the now-familiar blade, only this time I added the hard light sheathing, illuminating both of us in a dim orange glow. Before she had a chance to respond, I slashed downwards at the metal roof separating us, carving a thin straight cut through the sheet metal and sending sparks flying as the metal screeched loud enough that I heard it over the blare of noise below us. She took a few more steps back, right up to the edge of the roof.
"Yeah, I'm alive. Thanks to you, it turns out. You and Emma." I broke eye contact with her, and started forming a replica of her phone in my left hand. I held it out, letting her watch. "Looking for this? I know, Sophia. I know everything."
She muttered something under her breath, and then leapt backwards. I blinked in shock, even as gunfire started to plink away at the roof underneath me, shards of metal pushed up and outwards as bullets passed through the metal roof. She shifted to shadow before hitting the ground, and broke into a mad dash through the metal wall into the building below.
More gunfire erupted from below, and the creaking of the metal got considerably more intense. I stepped away from the edge, tracking Sophia's movement through the building below. Nobody seemed to be paying her much attention, beyond a few shouts of surprise and confusion. The gunfire slackened a bit though, and I stepped towards the center of the roof, where a large glass skylight provided a clear view of the inside.
What I saw was mostly one large cavernous room dominated by a cubical cage of chain-linked fencing, surrounded by tables and bars at three of the edges, with a single large wall going straight up to the roof separating this one large room from the rest of the building. So, booze, guns and skinheads. 'Wonderful.' Sophia was shifting in and out of her shadow form while attempting to cross the distance underneath the tables and largely out of sight of the skinheads, most of whom had their attention firmly aimed at the roof. Several spotted me, aimed guns and started firing, and a few shots actually hit me. Getting shot was... interesting. I initially moved away from the window and ducked, an entirely instinctive reaction that did me no good as a few bullets passed through the roof, and then through me. My nanite body righted itself with the familiar energy wave, and I chuckled briefly to myself at the thought that I could soak bullets without a care in the world.
Inspiration struck me just then, and I lunged towards the skylight in the general direction of the cage below, smashing through the glass and sheet metal frame and letting my form go liquid prior to hitting the chain-linked fencing. I flowed through and into the cage itself as a barely human-shaped blob of liquid metal, an act fancy enough to intimidate nearly all of the skinheads into backing well away from the cage and, conveniently, into Sophia's path, forcing her into her shadow form and making her presence more widely noticed.
A few of them had the presence of mind to take shots at me, though I ignored it in favor of turning towards Sophia while reassuming my humanoid form, though I had the presence of mind not to take my civilian identity. Sudden movement from within my peripheral vision tore my attention away from her, however, when something tore into the cage from the crowd below. A mass of writhing... blades? Its source launched itself into the cage and in a fluid motion, slammed a fist of hooks and blades into my chest, pressing me against the cage before flinging my stunned body to its right, through the cage and into a rack lined with alcohol bottles.
'Hookwolf? Here?!'
I had only seconds to reevaluate my priorities. Fuck Sophia, she didn't rate as a threat anymore, not compared to this. Hookwolf was up there with fucking Lung on the list of villains to not tangle with. I barely had the time to form a weak shield of metal from my left arm when the full mass of his body slammed into it, effortlessly slicing through the shield even as the two of us caved through a side wall into one of the building's adjoining restrooms.
'Ah crap.'
The storm of blades that was Hookwolf tore into my body pretty much effortlessly, as my initial attempts at getting a grip on him proved futile. My hands and arms got sliced into ribbons of silver for the trouble, though the only thing I felt was annoyance. He got a grip on my chest once again, and began slamming me left and right against the toilets and sinks, my body steadily falling apart with each impact. It culminated in him throwing me towards the far side of the restroom, and I let my form dissolve, splashing into so much liquid metal against the ruined tile floor and walls.
He walked over on hind legs of metal blades, and I focused my attention not on the blades themselves, but where they seemed to emanate from. A roughly spherical orb, glistening in silver, from which new blades constantly erupted and sank... whatever attacks I'd attempt against him would have to focus on this, not simply dealing with his blades, yet the only thing I had going for me was the hard light effect. 'Maybe that's just enough,' I thought.
"That's all, new blood? I expected more of a fight out of you." He towered over me even as I slowly began coalescing into my humanoid form again. I extended a trinity of blades from where my legs would've formed, up through his central mass of blades, and immediately applied the hard light effect, pleasantly rewarded with his blades bouncing off the hard light with no apparent damage dealt. He snarled in surprise and frustration, as I catapulted him backwards as hard as I could manage, sending him slamming head-first into the ceiling, and then ass-first into the opposite wall. Apparently weakened by his previous use of me as a crude hammer, it caved outwards on impact, sending him sprawling into the street.
I pulled myself together, humanoid form mostly complete, when the skinheads in the main room watching this started to panic. Most ran, although some pulled out their firearms and took aim at me. I wasn't the least bit concerned, Hookwolf seemed a bit dazed, but recovering fast. 'This is gonna be a long day,' I sighed in resignation as gunfire tore into my right side.
-----
Five blocks away and six stories up, two armored figures crouched over several boxes of loosely-packed, brightly-colored objects that looked like oversized kids' toys. One of them smacked the other on the arm with the back of an armored glove. "Hey, check this out."
"Can't. Busy. This Donkey Kong mockup isn't going to assemble itself, you know."
Uber sighed in exasperation. "Bro, something big's going on in Empire territory. Seriously, you need to see this. Are the camera drones active?"
"Yeah, but I'm not going to--" Leet looked up, and blinked. "Huh, that's Hookwolf."
"Getting thrown out the side of a nightclub. How many capes do you think could manage that in this town? The show can wait, get the drones down there, I've got a weird feeling about this."
Leet grumbled. "Fine, fine, hold on."
A rattling sound echoed across the cityscape, like popcorn in a microwave.
"That's... a lot of gunfire." Uber observed with a hint of amazement.
"Yeah, but it's focused on one spot, and mostly seems to be hitting the opposite wall. Look at all the dents and holes." Leet shook his head. "They're either firing at something that isn't there, or..."
The apparent target of the massed gunfire stepped out of the hole made by Hookwolf, and the two villains' jaws dropped.
"Is that... a Terminator?" Uber started.
Leet shook his head. "A T-1000? Not on this planet. Skynet would take one look at our planet and fire the nukes out of pity rather than anger and..." The metal figure's right arm shifted into a blade, as its left arm flattened out into a disc, and the two villains let out loud sighs.
"Well, there's one franchise we've been beaten to." Uber shook his head sadly.
The arm-blade and apparent shield then took on a distinctive orange glow.
"What." Uber stated flatly, as Leet's reaction was more pronounced. "Oh come on. Hard light on a T-1000? I call bullshit."
Hookwolf was on his feet once more, and the two stared eachother down even as more skinheads filed out of the building's other exits in haste.
"I think they're talking to eachother. Get the damn drones in closer."
-----
"Killing you will make for an excellent story." Hookwolf rumbled.
I shrugged. "Not that any publisher in their right mind would print it."
I glanced to my left briefly, aware that a trio of objects in the distance had just entered my peripheral sense's range. Drones of some sort, probably some Tinker's work, but I couldn't think of any Tinkers that worked with the Empire...
Hookwolf growled and charged at me while I appeared distracted, but I was ready for it. I swatted at his bulk with my shield arm, deflecting him to my left and sending him careening into the outer corner of the building. He slammed into it with enough force to crack its wooden frame, but his swift counterattack forced me to sidestep and slash with the blade. Whereas his blades cut through my own when they were unaided, the hard light cut through his blades just as easily. Still, I felt weakened, slowed by the effort of maintaining the effect. 'So I have... what, an energy generation limit?'
He kicked off the side of the weakened building, and slammed into me, his blades arcing around the shield even as I tried to push him off, and once again he started tearing into me. I let my form turn to liquid once more, and decided to take a trick from his own playbook, shifting blade-tendrils out of my liquid mass, each tipped with a razor-thin line of hard light. He leapt off in what I took as a mixture of surprise and fear, many severed blades and hooks littering the ground around me. I rose once more, only this time assuming a form closer in functionality to his own, a human-shaped mass of hard light-sheathed blades.
-----
"Alright, I agree, that's bullshit." Uber grumbled as he sat at the edge of the open floor, even as Leet now paced behind him, considerably more animated.
"It's not just bullshit, she's cheating. The readings I'm getting from the scanners on the drones? That's not a power, that's Tinker tech!" Leet was fuming now. "She got a hold of someone's work and is copying it, just like she's fighting Hookwolf by copying him."
Uber chuckled. "Beating him at his own game? Nothing wrong with that, you know."
"Yeah yeah, it's just..." he dropped to the edge of the floor next to Uber, "if I were to try to integrate something like that into my own stuff, some other Tinker's work, it'd just blow up in my face. But her?"
Hookwolf tried a different tactic, grappling and flinging trash dumpsters and the like at the other shapeshifter, which she parried away with growing ease. Her hard light surfaces started to pulsate, activating and deactivating as needed.
"She understands what she's using, tweaking it on the fly. That strobing we're seeing? Why not simply cover herself in hard light, or project beams offensively to rip Hookwolf a new asshole?"
Uber nodded in growing understanding. "She's got limits, yeah. She figures them out, works around them; she's sped up a bit since she started toggling the effect."
"She's fucking metagaming her own power in the middle of a battle with someone few in this city are either strong or crazy enough to go up against." He sighed loudly. "Who has time for that, huh? It's not fucking fair."
"You jelly?" Uber teased.
He got a loud sigh in response. "No, I'm just... Yeah, okay, I'm jelly, a bit. Still, someone's finally giving that crazy bastard the ass-kicking he deserves, the only things we're missing are lawn chairs and a bowl of popcorn."
-----
I moved quickly towards him, moving my bladed sword tendrils, and god was that a weird thing to think about, towards his own bladed limbs, hoping to cut off his ability to fight or escape. Sadly, that didn't seem to work out as well as I had hoped it would as he had grabbed hold of a parked motorcycle with a mass of hooked metal and used it to bat me away from him, even as my hardlight projections cut through his impromptu club with ease.
The hit sent me flying backwards, forcing me to shift back to liquid as I passed through a chainlink fence, and I turned to face him as, instead of attacking me like I expected, he moved back towards the building we had just exited from. Bullets started to impact me as some of the Empire gang members started taking potshots, though whether they were trying to provide cover for Hookwolf or take me down I didn't know, nor did I really care at that point. I walked calmly through the chainlink fence, absorbing it as I turned to face my opponents as they fell back to the building, the cleancut hole of my passage clear to see from the light of a nearby streetlight as I moved forward.
"Covering fire damnit, covering fi-" one of them was screaming before I grabbed a hand-sized piece of concrete with a hastily formed limb from my legs and threw it at his head, knocking him to the ground where he lay bloodied and moaning in pain.
'Now where is... ahh, there you are,' I thought as I turned towards where Hookwolf had gone, small tendrils moving out from my body and pulling in the weapon of the first gang member I brought down before a few more shots hit me. Given the fact that so many of the shots were coming close to hitting their own downed member, these idiots needed to be dealt with quickly, before they ended up shooting civilians, because they obviously didn't seem to care about collateral damage.
I moved quickly, shifting form so as to start grabbing hold of limbs holding weapons and squeezing as hard as I could. I could hear the snapping of bones, but couldn't find it in me to care as I moved as quickly as I could to disable as many of them as I could and remove their weapons from play. Absorbing the guns so I could mess around with them later was just an added bonus, all things considered.
"Get out of my way," I said calmly as I knocked aside the fourth empire member to get in front of me, watching him fly through the air before his rough landing on the concrete knocked the air out of him.
"Fuck you!" the fifth empire member screamed from a few feet away, firing at me in a blind panic as I moved to disable her before I got hit in the chest with what appeared to be a kitchen sink, thrown from within the third story of the building I crashed through a few minutes earlier. 'Hookwolf.' As she chose to run I let her flee from me as I turned my attention back towards Hookwolf, moving at speed as I crashed through the metal front doors of the building, absorbing some of the material to help clear a way for me as I moved towards my target.
-----
"Damn." They both shook their heads.
"Yeah. This fight has everything and the kitchen sink."
Uber grinned. "Oh, we are sooo re-using that line in the dub-over."
"Huh, looks like most of the mooks are fleeing the building. Smart of them."
"Not all of them," Uber switched camera views, "check out that guy in the back… oh shit."
"Wha-" Leet got out before the explosion rang out
"Did-did she just take a fucking RPG to the face?"
-----
I'm pretty sure that if I was flesh and blood I would be dead right now. Dead and spread out over several hundred feet, at least. As it was, my visual perspective suddenly expanded ten-fold from... whatever it was they shot me with, though it didn't take long to realize it had been some kind of propelled explosive. The upper half of my body was spread out in small pieces around and behind me, though I still had control and awareness over those bits, and the explosion also blew out the nearby walls and put a sizable hole in the floor.
"Did we get her?"
'Yeah, I need to put a stop to that.' With the dust in the air, it was easy to hide myself by moving along the floor, hidden from view due to the angle and the dust, though trying to keep quiet proved considerably more difficult, though with the way even my head had been ringing for a moment after I got hit, I was certain that their ears weren't in much better shape.
It took only a few seconds to slither across the hallway and reform, and with the dust obscuring me from their view, I formed a gun in my right hand. Reproducing the bullets took a bit longer, and I waited for the queasiness to pass before cloaking myself.
"Dunno, I don't hear-"
I shot him. Repeatedly. It felt very cathartic. As he dropped the RPG with both arms and legs suddenly riddled with bullets, the guy standing next to him let out a high-pitched girlish shriek as I faded back into view barely a foot away from them. Tendrils reached out and grabbed the RPG as the second guy pissed himself as he backed against the wall.
I ignored the writhing figure screaming out in pain and begging for mercy as one of my tendrils took the pistol from the shaking hands of the uninjured man against the wall. As I absorbed the empty RPG, I moved a few tendrils to the box of ammo to grab a few rounds incase I needed them, absorbing one while physically carrying the rest inside of me, hidden from view.
'Fuck going through making these things.'
I tilted my head to the side and said "Get out."
I watched him moving to scurry away before adding, "and take him with you."
I started moving back through the hallways before my senses twitched. I stopped a moment pay enough attention to feel the signals in the air. Cell phone calls. A lot of them.
"COME AND GET SOME!"
"Wha-"
I only had a moment before Hookwolf barreled into me with his bladed limbs, trying to dismember me again as he kept pushing me through the walls. As if that worked so well the first time. Reforming the hard light shield, I blocked him a few times while shifting the RPG behind my back and moved one of the stored rounds into it before I leapt backwards.
He had only a moment to realize what was going on before the first round hit him, knocking him aside and sending my second shot wide. I sighed inwardly, corrected my aim, and hit him with the third shot a second later before the floor gave way beneath us.
The floor must've been weaker where I stood, as it bent downwards below me before disintegrating into dust entirely. I hit the floor below, with Hookwolf landing atop me.
I took a moment to shift myself from facing the floor to facing him as he enveloped his arms around me, trying to cut me up yet again. 'Idiot'.
I headbutted him, only to get cuts across my head for my troubles, not that it mattered when the 'wounds' disappeared a moment later.
"Hahaha," he laughed deeply, "Give it up already! You can't-"
'I've had enough of this.' So I shifted my head and neck into a mass of blades, turned on the hardlight effect, and headbutted him again, cutting clear through his metal head before tossing him away from me as he reeled from the blow. I watched as he landed in a shaft of light from one of the flickering lights in the now abandoned arena, watching him struggle to get up, only to be shocked as Glory Girl crashed through the ceiling.
"What in the hell is going on here?" Glory Girl screamed as she kicked Hookwolf into the wall. The wall I had shot with an RPG, and that was now caving in on us.
"Oh crap," all three of us said at the same time.
-----
Leet couldn't help but whistle. "Man, they're really bringing down the house with this fight."
Uber turned to him. "We've seen this movie before, haven't we?"
"Yeah. All three of 'em." He shrugged. "You think the similarities are intentional?"
"It's possible. Only thing I know for sure is that this is going to get a shitload of views," Uber said with a grin.
With a loud groan and dust billowing up, the building collapsed in on itself.
"Oh, come on, that is just bullshit!" Leet cried out.
"What happ- oh. Ceiling falls on her, she ignores it, walks right through it. Yeah. Yeah, that is bullshit. That's Siberian-grade bullshit… we might need to cut some of this out of the final video."
"Yeah…"
-----
Dust wafted heavy in the air as another section of wall collapsed. I needed to put a stop to this, now. Glory Girl had risen into the air, and I could see her circling above, trying to see through the dust as I saw her talking into a cellphone with someone.
The sun had just started to creep over the ocean, and as much as the early morning traffic had picked up considerably, everything I could see pointed towards people fleeing this section of the city.
While I hadn't made any significant progress on taking down Hookwolf, he had been getting more desperate to find a weakness to exploit. Throwing large, heavy objects at me only worked when such things were freely available, and anything he could have thrown before was now covered in concrete and brick. Any unused explosives or ammo they had left had also been buried in the rubble, not that I could sense anyone else nearby.
Well, no one other than Hookwolf and Glory Girl, though I could hear sirens in the distance. 'How do I end this?'
It was clear I wasn't going to be any outright beating him with brute force. I needed alternatives. 'Can't kill him; well, I could, but the Empire would be out for blood. Retreating isn't something he's known for doing, and if I don't end this soon he'll just tear into the police and firefighters that show up. So this ends only with someone fleeing or dying, neither of which is palpable... waitaminute...' Containment foam. I had absorbed enough of it to have an idea of how it worked, and since I had figured out the hard light, could I do the same with the foam? Making the stuff would be taxing, but how about mimicking it?
Ok, yeah, I could mimic it. Probably even better than the original stuff. Now I just need to bait him into getting close to me so I can use it on him.
"Don't tell me that's all that 'The Mighty Hookwolf' has to offer," I screamed as loudly as I could, much louder than I expected to be honest, as I slowly moved into view, letting Hookwolf know where I was. The dust may have been heavy still, but I knew that he couldn't not know where I was, especially as I turned on the hard light effect in order to make myself more visible.
A shape emerged from the dust as Hookwolf charged at me once more, heedless of the fact that I could, and had, sliced off a considerable amount of his blades during our fight, and used a few tendrils to cut off some to ensure he was focused solely on me. His blades grew back of course, quickly at first, but even so Hookwolf was looking considerably thinner and wiry than when we first 'met.' Then I dropped the hard light effect entirely and let him slam into me.
He only realized his mistake when I said "Gotcha" and covered him entirely.
And that's when Glory Girl brained me.
-----
"Remind you of anything?" Uber sighed and turned to Leet.
"Containment foam." He shook his head in resignation. "She's mimicking fucking containment foam. Now I've seen everything."
"And what has been seen cannot go unseen. That is creepy as hell."
-----
"Oh shit!" Glory Girl exclaimed in shock as her fist went right through where my head was.
"Do you mind?" I said in irritation as my head reformed a moment later, the pieces that had been thrown from my body flowing right back, "I'm trying to keep Hookwolf contained here."
"You're not Hookwolf!"
The look I gave her spoke volumes. So far I was not impressed with Glory Girl, an 'attention whore' as Brian called her, and probably the biggest one in the city short of Uber and Leet.
"Uhm, so who are you? Haven't met you before, you a good guy or bad?" she asked sheepishly.
I gave her a cautious glare. "If I were a bad guy, do you think I'd say so?"
"Sorry, and yeah, that was dumb of me. You ok though?"
I shook my head. "No, but I will be."
"So, why the throw-down with the chrome furry?"
'"Chrome furry?"' "You mean Hookwolf? Long story. Short of it is, So--" I caught myself, "Shadow Stalker just tried to kill me, twice, I chased her down this way, found out she's working for Coil, and-"
Her eyes bugged out. "Shadow Stalker's gone bad?" She laughed, once. "I knew something wasn't right with that bitch... oh man, this is even cooler." She looked around at our surroundings again, briefly focusing on the scattered severed blades and hooks littering the area. "Wow, you really didn't need my help with him, did you?"
I turned to her, and half-heartedly shook my head. "Yeah, actually, the distraction gave me enough time to think about how to restrain him. If we'd just kept going at it..." I shrugged, "I've been reacting to his attacks the whole time, hadn't had much time to think about how to deal with him."
"Not going to lie though, that was fucking awesome!"
'What.'
"You just went toe to toe with Hookwolf and kicked his ass."
I couldn't help but smile at that, even as I heard Hookwolf cursing at me from inside of his impromptu prison.
"Not gonna complain about the break. He was starting to wear me out."
"'Starting to?'," she said as she looked about our ruined battleground before giving out a whistle. "Huh, you two had to have thrown down for at least-"
"Glory Girl? You ok? We've got continuous incoming calls about a cape fight near your area, and police and firefighters are responding to calls about a collapsed building."
"Crap, gotta take this call," she said before bringing her phone up to her head. "Console, this is Glory Girl. Yeah, I'm here with..." Glory Girl stopped for a moment and asked, "what's your name anyway?"
I looked at her briefly, my focus mainly on keeping Hookwolf restrained. "Metalmorph."
"That's a lame name. You get that off the PHO Wiki? Meh, whatever." Back to the phone. "Yeah, I'm here with 'Metalmorph,'" she put an amused emphasis on the name, "powerful-as-fuck changer, though she could use a better name, and she's got Hookwolf pretty much dead to rights."
"Say again, she's captured Hookwolf?" The voice on the other end was very young; female, high-pitched, considerably younger than me. 'Probably Vista.'
"Shit yeah," she grinned, "tore up a pretty hefty chunk of Empire real estate too. Might want to bring out the big guns for this though, he's still struggling."
-----
Firetrucks had shown up along with a few police cars, though most of them decided to cordon off the street while the firefighters had checked out the area for gas leaks. By the time the Protectorate forces showed up with PRT agents in tow, Glory Girl and I were standing together outside the dust-covered remnants of the collapsed nightclub with Hookwolf half-submerged in my nanites, extending from my left hand. He had eventually reached the point where the entire surface area of his 'core' had nanites dug in, the subtle alteration necessary to mimic the super-adhesive properties of the foam. Blades stuck out from the mass at odd angles, some of which still quivered as he continued to struggle, especially once the heroes had shown up in droves.
If the rest of the Empire knew what was going on, they weren't acting as of yet, either anticipating Hookwolf's victory, or simply not knowing what had happened.
We were confronted barely a minute later by Armsmaster, clad in his armor and carrying his halberd at the ready, with Battery and Miss Militia close behind. No less than four full PRT trucks of agents swarmed the place, forming a perimeter both to keep traffic out of the area and to secure Hookwolf. Not that it was really necessary at this point, but I didn't really want to stick around for long.
"Heh. Hell of a debut for a newbie, you don't aim low do you?" Battery shook her head in amazement, arms folded.
Armsmaster silently circled us, paying critical attention to Hookwolf's captured state. A few new blades erupted towards Armsmaster, which he parried away with ease before I could rope them in with another tendril of nanites. "Impressive. It usually takes a full containment team drowning him in foam to pull this off."
I shrugged in response. "It's a lot harder than it looks, I'm having to focus most of my attention on just keeping him restrained like this, 'cause everything else I tried wasn't accomplishing much."
"Oh yeah, she was fuckin' badass though. Heard the explosions, thought I'd figure out just what the hell was going on," Glory Girl grinned. "I jump in, the whole place collapses around us, and when the dust settles she's got him all wrapped up with everything but a bowtie."
Miss Militia had a pistol in both hands, and gave the site a critical eye. "No other Empire capes in the area... it was just Hookwolf?"
"It was just me and Shadow Stalker initially. I didn't even know Hookwolf was in there until he jumped me, and she bailed not long after," I frowned and recalled the fight, "I'm not going to get into trouble for defending myself against a Ward, am I?"
They paused for a moment, as if some silent conversation was taking place among them, before they turned to me and shook their heads.
"No, spectators recorded video of the initial confrontation," Armsmaster stated, "and Shadow Stalker's no longer a Ward as of last night, just so you both know."
Glory Girl chortled, "You guys finally fuckin' kicked her out?"
"No, she left," he frowned, and turned to me. "Whatever you did to her last night spooked her into throwing away close to two years of... barely tolerable behavior, granted, but we can talk about this later once Hookwolf's dealt with."
I nodded, not wanting to get into that right here and now. "How is Hookwolf going to be 'dealt with' anyway? I can't keep him like this forever."
'Actually, I probably could,' I thought to myself with wry amusement, but they didn't need to know that.
Hookwolf thrashed against my hold on him again to no avail, simply giving me the excuse to dig into his blades and core further. His struggling ceased a few seconds later, and I shook my head dismissively at the attempt.
"Sergeant!" Miss Militia called out to one of the armored PRT troopers, "how much longer?"
"No more than two minutes, ma'am. Minor maintenance issues with the truck's foam sprayers." He walked over to us, foam sprayer cradled in his hands, and chuckled audibly towards me. "Since you're unfamiliar with how we handle things, high brutes typically necessitate getting drowned in containment foam before we haul them off. Takes a while, makes a huge mess, and the hero that captures them typically ends up getting foamed as well. Yeah, we heard you can pretty much no-sell containment foam. Someone recorded a video, and it's spreading like wildfire." He turned to Armsmaster. "It's unconventional, but we could forego the foaming entirely, just cart him into the truck like this, and foam him there." He nodded to me. "She should have no issue with the foam itself, and we can let her out after we're done."
"It's up to her," Miss Militia interjected. "she's already been foamed once today and she wasn't happy about it then."
Armsmaster nodded, still frowning. "It would save time though, and we're still knee-deep in Empire territory. Anything could happen in the next ten minutes."
"It's fine," I sighed in resignation, "I just want this over with so I can go home."
"Understandable, but Director Piggot will want to talk to you before--"
I shot him a glare. "No. After we're done here, I'm going home, your director can wait."
"This isn't negotiable," he gripped his halberd tightly, as if expecting a fight, "Director Piggot gave explicit orders--"
Miss Militia placed a gloved hand on his shoulder. "Sir, our orders were specifically to ensure her safety, and to bring her in only if she's willing to cooperate." She turned to me, and nodded. "You're not under arrest, Metalmorph, but the Director will want to speak with you regardless."
The PRT squad cars blocking the road parted to allow a large diesel-powered armored truck through, and it pulled up alongside us.
"If this is an offer to join the Wards, you can just tell her my answer. No, I'm not interested in joining the Wards. Not now, and probably not ever."
'There, I said it.'
Armsmaster raised his voice, irate, "If this is about what Shadow Stalker did--"
"Sir?" Miss Militia squeezed his shoulder, "let me handle this." She turned back to me once more. "I understand, Metalmorph. Given what you've just gone through, I'd be saying the same if I were you. Still, there were other things she wanted to discuss besides Wards membership, but it can wait until you're ready to speak with her. You okay with that?"
I nodded, after taking another deep breath.
An armored PRT trooper unloaded a small forklift from the rear of the truck, while two more stood guard at Hookwolf's sides, foam sprayers at the ready. I shrugged, and then surprised them by simply lifting Hookwolf's entire mass into the truck on my own.
"That works too," one of them muttered.
I climbed in afterward, and they shut the doors behind. Recessed nozzles mounted within the truck's sides started spraying foam in onto Hookwolf and me, and I began to quickly withdraw my nanites. Predictably, Hookwolf lashed out with his freed blades, slicing at the nozzles, the exposed surfaces of the truck, and at me.
"When I get out, I'll kill you and your family for this, you cunt! Don't think I-"
I stayed silent, shaking my head and glaring at him as the truck filled with foam. My nanites absorbed what stray bits of it landed on me, and I quickly realized that the spray nozzles were tracking his movements, sparing me most of the extra hassle.
Within moments, the foam completely covered him, and his thrashing died down as the foam quickly hardened. I banged the back of the truck, the doors opened, and I stepped out, fuming.
As the three troopers got back in the truck and drove off, Glory Girl ran up and gave my shoulders a squeeze, as if trying to reassure me, which took me by surprise. "Hey, don't worry about it. They'll be sending him to the Birdcage, and the rest of the Empire plays by the rules..." she let go, and gave me a critical look. "You don't know about the rules, do you?"
I almost said yes, but realized that in doing so, I'd be admitting to have made prior contacts with capes. I shook my head.
"Yeah, I thought so. They're pretty simple, really. No killing or raping, civilian identities and family are off limits, and a truce is in effect whenever the Endbringer sirens are sounded."
I flexed my fingers in a brief moment of anger, taking another deep breath.
"Shadow Stalker broke the rules, didn't she?" Glory Girl folded her arms with a wry grin on her face.
I nodded. "She tried to kill me, twice. Phased crossbow bolt to the head, and then a dagger to my abdomen, right here," I pointed out where, "not to mention she's part of the reason I have my powers to begin with."
"Shit." She shook her head, incensed. "I always knew she was rotten, but to actually... fuck, tell ya what Metalmorph, if I see her, I'll break her back for you."
My frown only deepened in response.
"Hey, like I said, you can't kill, but there's a whole lot you can do up to that point. Besides, if anything goes seriously wrong, I can just get my sis to fix her up. Speaking of which, I'll introduce you two later."
The other heroes were huddled with some of the PRT troopers, and beyond the squad cars blocking the road, a small crowd of onlookers was steadily gathering. Armsmaster then broke ranks and walked towards me.
"Listen, Metalmorph, I want to... apologize. On behalf of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, for what Shadow Stalker did, and for my actions a few minutes ago."
I folded my arms and glared at him. "Okay, it's a start I guess. I... don't know if there's anything you, your Director, or anyone else can say or do to make up for what she and the others put me through, though."
"Just... don't write off the Wards entirely. You're hurt, you're angry, you feel isolated, alone, and don't know who to trust. It's understandable. But we're not bad people, so don't let Shadow Stalker's actions color your views of the rest of us."
I took several deep breaths, again wanting and failing to cry, and inwardly cursing my transformation for taking that away from me. Glory Girl stood beside me as he walked off a moment later.
"Come on, it'll be alright."
I gave her a look at that.
"No, really. It will be alright. Crap, I'm not good at this, am I?"
I couldn't help the smile I gave at that.
"Despite the really bad first impression that I am really sorry for," I had to glare at her again for reminding me of that as she kept talking, "I am not against you here. So, friends?"
I gave her a look of surprise and confusion as she stuck out her hand, as if waiting for me to shake it. "What, really?"
"Really. Friends gotta stick together, ya know? You need a ride home? 'Cause I can do better than that."
That felt... kinda nice, actually, even as I hesitantly expected the other shoe to drop somehow. Still, I had to ask, "What's the catch?"
"No catch. This isn't a recruitment pitch."
I couldn't help it when my shoulders slumped a bit.
"So, friends?"
I sighed inwardly, angry and ashamed at myself for my reluctance to accept the offer of friendship that I so desperately craved. 'This is almost like how I met Emma...' and here I was expecting the same outcome from somebody completely different. 'No, I can't let them win at this as well, I can't let them force me into isolation.'
"Friends," I said as I shook her hand.
"Hi, I'm Victoria Dallon," she said with a smile, "call me Vicky."
"I-" I wasn't sure what to say. I did not want to say my name out loud, even if I might have been outed as a cape at school.
"Don't worry, I won't hold it against you if you don't want to tell me your name right now."
Now I felt a bit guilty at that, even as a smiled nervously. Crap. Fighting one of the most feared villains in the city didn't unnerve me as much as this conversation was doing.
"Can we," I lowered my voice, before turning my head to look at the PRT and fire crews still in the area, "talk a bit away from any prying ears?"
"Sure, did you have anyplace in mind?"
"How about the top of that building over there?" I pointed towards a nearby multi-storey building about a block away.
"Okay, do-"
I turned invisible.
"Hey, where'd you- no, nevermind," Glory Girl said before shrugging and moving into the air.
-----
I took the elevator up as far as I could before finding out it didn't go to the roof, much to my disappointment. I had to take the stairs the rest of the way, though the locked roof-access door didn't hinder me much as my nanites ate through the lock mechanism.
...I wish I had known I could do that before I had shoved the school's roof-access door open. I could see Glory Girl waiting for me before I dropped the invisibility, startling her.
"Aggh! Damnit, don't do that!"
I chuckled, couldn't help it really, not after the absurdity I'd just lived through.
"You're a jerk, you know that? Shit, everything I've seen from you already, and you can turn invisible? I'm not going to lie, that is bullshit," she said with a smile, taking the sting out of her words.
I gave a small smile at that.
"So what did you want to talk about?"
I had to pause a moment at that question. Mainly I just wanted people to stop staring at me, and getting out of the crowd seemed like the best way to do that. But yes, I did have questions to ask.
"I don't know what to do at the moment."
"That's it?" Glory Girl asked incredulously.
"I just triggered," I glared at her, "Shadow Stalker's proof that the PRT is either malicious or incompetent, and either way, I can't trust them not to fuck me over. I just got into a slugging match with Hookwolf and won, and I'll probably have to deal with the rest of the Empire later. And if what Armsmaster said is of any indication, Director Piggot isn't going to let this go. So yes, I think I have reason to ask for advice here."
"Woah, don't bite my head off here, I didn't mean anything," she said with her hands up.
I let out a long sigh, and nodded. "Sorry, I'm just frustrated. If I didn't know about Shadow Stalker, I'd probably be taking them up on the inevitable offer to join the Wards. Knowing what I do, though?" I shook my head. "I just can't, and I don't know what to do."
"I'm no lawyer, but you're basically saying the PRT is partly responsible for what happened?"
"Yeah?"
"Ask for restitution then. They don't want to get dragged through the mud here, and even if some of them are shitheads, most of them are just regular people trying to do their jobs."
"That's it? They're just going to get away with the two years of hell I've been through then?"
"Wait, back up there, two years? And what do you mean 'They'?"
Deep breath in, deep breath out.
"I've been tormented for the past two years in school, by someone whom I thought was my best friend, and Shadow Stalker, in her civilian identity. They've always gotten away with it, even in plain view of teachers and school officials, and I think the PRT is the reason why."
She looked very uncomfortable at that, but nodded, before adding "Ok, so probably school officials trying to cover their own asses then as well. My advice? Get a lawyer involved here, and soon. There's enough fuckups here that, if you have any evidence-"
"I do, but one of the people involved has a lawyer for her dad, and everyone has gone out of their way to cover for Shadow Stalker."
"Yeah, that may end up pulling in the District Attorney depending on how far that went. Don't give me that look, the fucker would probably be rubbing her hands in glee at the thought of being able to go after the PRT for criminal misconduct if she could. More convictions for her to add to her career list. Still, this is likely going to be settled out of court."
I slumped at that bit of depressing news.
"Don't be so disappointed. They're going to owe you some sweet change, and even if the public doesn't hear about it directly, the school board's elected, so they'll find out, and heads will roll. As for the PRT, even Director Piggot has superiors and can be replaced."
"I don't want money," I muttered softly.
"Ah. You want a public trial then. The problem with a public trial is it's just that. Public. Meaning you'd probably have to take the witness stand, and they might have to as well, and they can start throwing shit at you just as much as you can throw it at them. Also, if Shadow Stalker's gone villain, she'd need to be captured first before being put on trial, so it could conceivably be months or years before it got that far." She grinned. "Trust me, you file a lawsuit, settle out of court, whoever replaces the people that get shitcanned for this are going to want to keep their new jobs under the greater scrutiny they'll be under, so your bullies are going to be miserable. If they're even allowed to remain in school."
I frowned a bit at that, as all I really wanted is for the bullying to stop. Still, I had options I didn't know I had.
"So is that all you wanted to ask?"
"The Empire?"
"I don't think many of them will be eager to get into a fight with someone who can beat up Hookwolf," she grinned at me.
I couldn't help but grin right back, before my expression turned more serious. "And what about those who still might?"
"Ask for help? If you're willing to help me out I'm willing to help you kick some ass as well. I don't doubt that the rest of New Wave would want to help as well. I mean, I'm just a phone call away. Speaking of which..." she pulled out her phone.
It took only a moment for me to mimic Sophia's phone, before I handed it to her. I chuckled inwardly after realizing that, hey, it was mine now.
"Neat phone. Where did you get it?"
"I stole it from Shadow Stalker," I said with a shit-eating grin, "after she tried to kill me.".
Glory Girl, no, Vicky, I could think of her as Vicky now. Vicky gave me an odd look before laughing. "Then I suppose you paid for that fair and square. Lemme give you my number in case you need to call me for whatever."
It took only a few seconds for us to exchange numbers, and I was grateful that this phone was a prepaid one, as I could keep using it so long as I bought minutes for it. Sophia should be damned thankful that I didn't feel vindictive enough to start imitating her voice and using her contact list to make things worse for her whenever she's finally caught.
"So, uhm, hey, what should I call you?"
I gave her a glare at that.
"What? Calling you 'Metalmorph' still feels awkward."
I glared some more..
"Okay, fine, 'Metalmorph' it is," she rolled her eyes, "though we really need to get you a better name."
I huffed at that as she laughed.
-----
We talked a bit afterwards before going our separate ways. Mostly inconsequential things, though it still felt nice before we made our departure.
It didn't take much effort to sneak into my backyard while invisible. I hadn't wanted to take any chances that someone might be watching, taking photographs or video, anything like that. Though as expected, I did spot a pair of unmarked cars, occupied, and new to the neighborhood.
After checking to make sure that no one was nearby and watching, I dropped the invisibility and took my normal form, the wave of energy as it locked in place washing over me. After a moment, I carefully knocked on the back door, and after a few seconds later I could sense my dad cautiously approaching before I could see him through the glass in the doorway. 'Oh shit, he looks horrible...' His forehead was covered in sweat, hair was a mess, bags under his eyes. He scrambled to open the door, and after it was opened he grabbed me in a bear hug.
"Oh kiddo, thank God you're safe, come here." We hugged for a few seconds, and then he shivered. "What the hell, Taylor?" He let me go, then placed the back of his palm on my forehead. "You're freezing. What happened to you?"
I let out a long sigh. "It's a long story, dad."
He looked at me for a long moment, and then nodded.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then looked him straight in the eyes. "Dad, I'm a cape."
To my eternal surprise, he nodded and said, "I know, kiddo. You coming in?"
I sat down at the dinner table, and dad went to the kitchen and grabbed a couple glasses from a cupboard. "You need anything to drink?"
I shook my head, but he got me a glass of orange juice regardless.
He sat, looked at his glass, and then downed its contents in one gulp. "Kiddo, I got a call from a 'Director Piggot' of the PRT last night. She said you'd gotten into some kind of trouble at school, that you... 'triggered,' was the word she used. What happened?"
I took several deep breaths. "Dad... Emma and I aren't friends. Haven't been since about two years ago. She... and Sophia, and Madison... they filled my locker with..." I broke eye contact and stared at the table, "things. Garbage. Locked me in it and left me there."
Dad's jaw dropped, but in his eyes I could see rage forming.
"...I'll kill him." He shook his head, then pushed away from the table. "That lying son of a bitch, I'll kill him..."
"Dad." I got his attention. "Just, stop, please? I don't think he knows."
I could see him clenching his fists in frustration, but the rage simmered down. "...Alright, okay... So they've been bullying you for almost two years? Why didn't you say anything?"
"I didn't want you to get angry. I was... gonna handle it myself. Not react, just wait for them to get bored and stop."
He nodded in understanding. "But they never did, did they?"
"No, they didn't. I figured out why yesterday. One of them is a cape, and a Ward."
His rage flared up again, but he kept it under control. Barely. "Who?"
I thought about the unwritten rules for a moment, and then shrugged. "Sophia. Her name's Sophia Hess." She had already violated them, and he needed to know in case she ever showed up here.
Dad nodded silently for a moment, letting his anger dissipate again. "Kiddo? What happened?"
"There was a car accident as I was walking home this morning. I went to try to help, managed to call 911, and then Sophia attacked. She shot me with one of her crossbow bolts, in the head, then stabbed me in the abdomen when that didn't work."
"She tried to kill you?! ...and you're alright?" He looked at me, moving up to check on my uninjured form. "What am I missing?"
"Dad," I stood, and reverted to my cape form. "I'm a shapeshifter."
-----
Omake: "Dad," I stood, and reverted to my cape form. "Where is John Connor?"
-----
Author Notes:
Robo Jesus: Yes, there are infact cell phone apps that can monitor police scanners and whathaveyou. Here is a Link to one such application, incase you were wondering what Sophia was talking about there when she foamed Taylor.
Pyrion: I was ambivalent about that part, but figured "sure, why not?" We can add "stealing wifi" to her list of crimes.
Robo Jesus: I have to say, I enjoyed writing out the Hookwolf fight scene here, even if it did add a few days to the update.
Pyrion: Yeah, my version was shit. But yeah, we had a lot of fun writing this, and fixing it, and fixing it some more. And throwing out half of what I wrote. *shrugs* 15094 words, minus everything down here.
Last edited:
1.0y
Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
Alteran Alternatives v3.11 for Workgroups; Worm/Stargate Atlantis crossover
by Pyrion and Robo Jesus and the Ghost of Elvis as revealed to us through the medium of RJ's pet hamster, Lee Harvey Oswald. Oh, and big thanks to Logiccosmic and Hyzmarca for helping out with this snippet, even if it was just hanging around and cracking jokes with us as we worked.
1.0y - Interlude: Metalmorph Masonry, LLC. "You shit 'em, we fit 'em."
A low-pitched hum reverberated through the walls and floor of Uber and Leet's secret base, or what passed for one, as the lights, appliances and computers making up the two villains' "home" fired up. In reality, the duo had commandeered a long-ago abandoned automobile repair shop in the heart of the Docks district, fixed the place up and called it their own, only because nobody bar the Merchants was actually interested in holding the area. A rickety pair of hollow steel double doors parted with a loud clang as Leet marched in first, fuming, helmet already removed and quickly tossed aside.
"Damn bro, you're still mad?" Uber chuckled, shaking his head in obvious amusement. Though the planned content of tonight's show would obviously have to be postponed, or put off entirely, it wasn't like they walked away without at least a consolation prize. "I don't get it. We had front row seats to Hookwolf's downfall at the hands of an obvious newbie, and a teenage girl at that, caught it all on camera, and you're not happy? We monetize this video and we won't have to worry about shit for the next--"
"Shut the fuck up, you know I'm not angry over that," Leet glared at his partner, "you saw it just as well as I did, the drone scanners don't lie man, mimicking tech... she's practically another Dragon, and she'd have to be another goddamn hero."
Uber grinned even wider at the realization. "Wait, you're still jelly?"
"I'm not..." he paused, then sighed, exhaling loudly. "Okay fine, you're right, I'm jealous just a bit. You happy now?"
"It's no big deal bro," Uber chuckled and shook his head, while mostly distracted connecting the camera drones to his rig. "Think of it this way, if she's like Dragon, then she has to learn from others' work to get anywhere, whereas you can make damn near anything to start with."
Leet rolled his eyes. "Once."
Uber continued chuckling at his best friend's expense, then brought up the night's raw videos on his terminal. "So..." He started playing back the recorded video, his amusement fading to growing concern over what all the camera drones picked up. "Hmm..."
"Hmm?" Leet glanced over from his own terminal.
"How much of this you think we should cut out? I mean, between the three drones, we've got a good half-hour of footage here, and yet..." He paused the playback to show the female shapeshifter in the process of 'absorbing' the submachineguns scattered on the floor by the retreating Empire goons, her body pierced by multiple bullet impacts to no obvious discomfort. "...how much of this should we cut out of the final vid? I mean, shit, this right here?" He unpaused the vid, and the two villains frowned as the shapeshifter formed a perfect reproduction of the small arms she had absorbed, firing back with an emotionless, blank look on her face.
"Yeah, I think I see your point. There's what'll entertain the audience, and then there's what'll put them in danger if she catches wind of this vid. Not to mention us." Leet shrugged, turning back to his terminal to bring up the YouTube Creator Studio. "Much as I'd like to talk with her, show her some of my stuff, see if reproducing any of it is possible..."
Uber started chuckling again. "You'd like to 'talk' with her?" He made fingerquotes for emphasis.
"What else would I do? Either she's a villain, in which case maybe we'd collaborate, or she's a hero, in which case we'd be lucky not to ever run into eachother. I'm not sure I'd ever want to face that," he nodded toward Uber's screen, "and either way, taking down Hookwolf on her first day? She's so far out of our league..."
"Yeah, we're gonna have to cut out quite a bit of this, crop some closeup shots so the viewers don't see her full capabilities... most of the bathroom brawl vid's good as is, we'll keep the initial shot of her tanking the RPG though, no way we're throwing that out."
On a lark, Uber snatched a remote out from underneath his terminal's monitor and aimed it at the flat-screen mounted on the wall to his left, flipping back-and-forth through the local channels before one of them finally segued from commercials to the morning news, and then mashed the Volume Up button.
"...gonna be another warm spring morning with temperatures in the lower-to-mid fifties, not so much as a hint of snow headed our way folks, so enjoy it while it lasts."
"Another, what, year and half of this, Rick?" A look of amused resignation from the lead anchorwoman, the name "Kate Spelling" briefly plastered in black-outlined white Comic Sans alongside a "WBRC-7 LIVE" logo. The weatherman shrugged in silent response.
"Well, as Rick said, enjoy the good weather while it lasts, 'cause we don't have a clue when things will get back to normal on that front. Good morning, Brockton Bay, it's currently eight-fifteen on this bright Tuesday morning and it's already shaping up to be a very interesting news day, particularly on the cape front."
Leet groaned. "Great, have they beaten us to it already?"
"Sure has, Kate, first thing's first though," the camera panned to an older gray-haired white male news-anchor named "Gary Stenner," "our mid-morning commuters will be happy to know that the roads are clear and traffic congestion is at an all-time minimum, with the sole exception of northbound Dawson Street and westbound Ninth Avenue, there's been a nasty early-morning collision there with the Bay police and PRT having locked down all but one lane in each direction. Avoid it if you can."
Uber and Leet glanced at eachother with a bit of concern, Dawson and Ninth wasn't far from where they had set up for their initial show, nor the ensuing fight.
"Speaking of that car crash, Gary, our main story today might be tangentially related. Our viewers will note the PRT is involved in the investigation and cleanup of that crash, and while they're not saying so as of yet, one of our viewers sent in this cellphone camera video approximately an hour ago."
Leet sighed in obvious annoyance, shaking his head while paying no attention to the video whatsoever. "Portrait. Fucking figures. Nobody knows how to record good video anymore..." Uber just chuckled loudly in response, stopping only when the video stopped shaking long enough to focus in on what was definitely their shapeshifter, no-selling containment foam to confront an obviously-surprised Shadow Stalker.
"The PRT and Protectorate both have, at this point, not responded to calls for comment, either on the status of this new cape or the actions of Shadow Stalker. The lone victim of the crash, a woman in her mid-thirties whose name has not yet been released by authorities, is nonetheless said to be recovering at Brockton Bay General with only minor injuries."
"As to our top story..."
-----
As weekends went, Emily Piggot rarely found time to relax, and even then, couldn't ever bring herself to truly let down her guard for any significant length of time. Brockton Bay itself pretty much ensured that hers was a thankless job few truly wanted, but someone had to do it, and she simply couldn't think of anyone else worth trusting with this sort of responsibility. She could tell, today was going to be a Bad Day. 'Though there is a thin layer of icing on this cake of shit,' she surmised, while holding the folded, printed email from Chief Director Costa-Brown in her right hand while waiting for Armsmaster to report to her office. The unexpected takedown and capture of Hookwolf in and of itself comprised the other half of her good mood, knowing his loss was sure to deal the white supremacists a heavy, if not mortal blow. The ABB would attempt to capitalize on it like usual, the gang war would heat up a bit, but fighting between the gangs tended to be preferable to the gangs teaming up against the heroes. That alone was probably enough to get the Chief Director's attention, at least insofar as the PRT East-North-East would likely need reinforcements sooner rather than later just to keep him behind bars and to keep the ensuing gang fighting constrained to the gangs.
All in all, the contents of said letter left her smothering a grin as Armsmaster walked in and saluted. She was having a hard time not feeling giddy about this outcome. Putting on her best straight face, she silently handed the tinker the printed letter and ordered, "read it."
Without missing a beat, Armsmaster unfolded the letter and began reading aloud. "To: Director Emily Piggot, Parahuman Response Teams East-North-East, from: Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown, Parahuman Response Teams. Subject: Shadow Stalker and Metalmorph. Emily, on the subject of Shadow Stalker, I've read your report, so I'm giving you both a blessing and a curse. Cut that girl loose, she's done as a Ward effective immediately." He stopped to glance at the director, and frowned at her obvious satisfaction.
"Keep going," she prompted him.
"Way I see it, you're not going to want her back after she assaulted Aegis, and none of the other Wards teams are likely to take her, not even the punitive teams handling the Simurgh Quarantine Zones, so we're not going to bother. Release her trust fund into the care of her parents, and I'll leave it to you on how to break the news to the public."
"That part I'm not looking forward to," she sighed, "go on."
"As to this 'Metalmorph,' our thinkers project severe animosity towards the PRT and Protectorate for Shadow Stalker's involvement in her triggering. Honestly, that should surprise absolutely nobody. It's a shame, but an unavoidable one: you probably will not manage to convince her to join the Wards. My advice: SOFT SELL, even if it takes most of the year. Correction of the school situation is an obvious priority; we don't need her going Carrie on Winslow, even if it sounds like they deserve it."
Director Piggot rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm not that stupid, Rebecca," she mumbled, then leaned back in her chair and glanced up at Armsmaster. "I take it you didn't bring her in for questioning."
A statement, not a question. Armsmaster frowned slightly. "No, she refused." Beat. "You knew she'd refuse."
"I expected as much."
He shook his head in puzzlement. "Then why--?"
"Good cop, bad cop, Armsmaster. When she comes in, she'll be pissed at you and not at me and it makes my negotiating position somewhat easier if I can paint it as you being uncompromisingly literal with my orders. Be it now or whenever she does decide to come talk about Shadow Stalker and maybe joining the Wards. Besides, if I need a gentle touch in negotiating, I'd send Miss Militia, not you."
His frown deepened. "You did send Miss Militia."
"And she performed her job more than adequately, as you came back in one piece and the Endbringer sirens aren't ringing," she smirked briefly in response, before shifting focus. "As is, I have to go tell the media what we've all known and have never wanted to admit. How do I tell the media that one of our child heroes has gone villain?"
"...we don't?" Armsmaster hesitantly suggested, only for Piggot's smirk to return.
"Exactly, Armsmaster. We don't. We tell them that Shadow Stalker's gone AWOL, which she has, we tell them that Metalmorph is to be treated as a hero, which she will be, and we let these things sort themselves out." She leaned back into her chair and sighed once more. "Time to face the firing squad."
"They're not that bad."
She glared at him as she stood. "You don't have to deal with them, you just have to stand still and look imposing."
-----
His eyes shot open to a bright white ceiling, reflexively squinting from the glare and the mild headache it elicited. To his right, an empty spot on an unkempt bed, the door to their room slightly ajar, and a metric fuckton of commotion echoing in from beyond.
'Great, now what?,' Victor thought to himself, stumbling out of bed in a mental haze brought on by too little sleep, the residual effects of a hangover, and apparently, sleeping in his costume. He eschewed a shower and a change, straightening himself up with a grunt before leaving.
He paid the various skinheads' looks of surprise and excitement no mind on the walk down to the ground floor of the warehouse-turned-nightclub-turned-palace the Empire had appropriated for itself years past, originally paid for by a subsidiary of a shell company of Max Anders' Medhall Corporation, all off-the-books of course. Most of their fortified holdings at least had a veneer of legitimacy that kept city code inspectors off their backs, and the police generally knew to leave well-enough alone. Not that any of this was of real concern, even if the adjoining streets had bloody, beaten skinheads dripping from flesh wounds streaming in.
Othala was among them, doing her best to tend to their wounds, but it was pretty clear that many of these poor, dumb kids would need real medical attention, and those willing to brave the risk of facing arrest hadn't come here. Most of their injuries appeared superficial, granted, but he could tell a couple of the really pale kids wouldn't survive the day. Especially the guy with both kneecaps shot out. He shrugged.
"The gooks got lucky for once?"
Othala turned to him and shook her head. "What little I've gotten out of them was this is all one cape, taking on Br--" she quickly caught herself, "Hookwolf of all people. Another changer, immune to small arms and heavy explosives. Most of them back there," she gestured towards the back three rows, most of whom whose wounds looked mainly to be cuts and burns, "shrapnel from RPG fire."
A chill went down his spine. "And Hookwolf?"
Othala merely shook her head in response.
"Shit. Someone has to tell Kaiser. Any of 'em say who was responsible? RPG fire sounds like Protectorate--"
One of the less-injured skinheads caught him with a look, and didn't shy away from his glare. 'Hmm...' He nodded in response. "Who did this?"
"Two heroes, some changer I've never heard of before, and Shadow Stalker, but Shadow Stalker didn't stick around for long."
He squinted in thought. "Describe this changer."
"Kinda like Hookwolf, only liquid metal instead of blades. Like, uh, one of those Terminators from the Earth-Aleph movies, actually. Bullets moved right through her, got her in the face with an RPG though, thought the bitch was done, then she just appears out of nowhere, shot Karl," he pointed at the guy with both kneecaps blown off, "took his RPG and nailed Hookwolf with it."
"He'd survive that," Othala whispered.
"Then what?"
The goon looked a bit nervous now. "We, uh, got the fuck outta there then. Hookwolf and the other cape were going at it, place was comin' apart. Fuck if we're stickin' around for that. Sirens too, whole place is probably locked down tighter than a kike's purse now."
"Doesn't tell us much," Othala said with a roll of her eyes, and he was inclined to agree.
"It'd be all over the news by now, especially if the Protectorate's involved. Still... fuck it, I'll go tell him."
The skinhead perked up a bit more. "We're gettin' even with that silver whore, aren't we?"
His frown deepened even more - Max wasn't the sort to go off half-cocked, even from such a blatant challenge.
"You want me to come along?" Her offer was welcome, but appearances needed to be maintained. He couldn't let himself look intimidated by Kaiser, even to the man himself.
"No, I'll be fine. Kaiser doesn't shoot the messenger."
The elevator ride to the penthouse level was mercifully short, and the door guards, two normals decked out in Nazi regalia, saluted with raised arms. He shook his head in annoyance and entered ignoring them. Kaiser sat with his back to the door, giving his full attention to the wall-mounted flat-screen.
"--we have time for a few questions. You, second row." Director Piggot pointed to a thin suited Asian.
"Joe Nguyen, channel twelve news. Madam Director, we've all seen the news footage, Shadow Stalker ambushing the cape you're referring to as 'Metalmorph,' her AWOL status seems incredibly convenient for what's being viewed as an unprovoked attack on a new cape being treated as a hero. What exactly is Shadow Stalker's status as a Ward?"
Piggot forced a smile. "As I said, absent without leave, as of midnight this morning. We'll ascertain exactly what her intentions were when she reports back in, if it was a case of mistaken identity, if she knows something about Metalmorph that we don't, as of now however we prefer not to speculate. Next question--"
The word "MUTE" suddenly covered half the screen in green allcaps.
"Well, well..." Kaiser started chuckling, "Hookwolf falls to a new hero, and a girl at that. Brad's gotta be steaming in his britches." He turned around in his chair and regarded Victor's confused look with more chuckling. "I take it all that commotion below is related?"
Victor nodded stiffly. "Mostly minor injuries, though a few of our people probably won't see the light of day tomorrow. All I could get from them was that this 'Metalmorph' fought Brad one-on-one, Shadow Stalker didn't stick around--"
"Of course not," Kaiser kept chuckling, "Shadow Stalker's psychotic, but she's not stupid. More importantly, this 'Metalmorph' may not necessarily be a hero." At Victor's continued look of confusion, he continued, "Earlier news report, car accident near Brad's cage just outside our territory, this 'Metalmorph' stops to help, gets pounced on by Shadow Stalker, she hits her with the PRT's containment foam grenades, which is interesting that they're issuing those to Wards... anyway, Metalmorph walks through the foam as if it's not there, one arm ends with a blade, and Shadow Stalker flees." He gestured, remote still in hand, at the muted television. "And then this happens."
Victor folded his arms. "Brad sees a challenge, doesn't care where it comes from, attacks her, and she's new enough that she fights back instead of running like everyone else who isn't Lung."
"And beats him into submission, only for the PRT to take most of the credit for the capture. Like usual." Kaiser stared at the ceiling, shaking his head in continued amusement. "This 'Metalmorph' sounds like someone to give a wide berth... and maybe some consideration, perhaps?"
He frowned once more. "Wannabe heroes don't just up and join the Cause on a whim."
"True, so we give her a reason. She gets attacked by a Ward, and the PRT circles the wagons, without going the extra mile to alienate her due to her obvious strength. Why?"
"They want her to join, be it the Wards or Protectorate, obviously." Further confusion.
"Yet they'd have offered already. So why are they not crowing to the media about their newest Ward or full Protectorate hero?"
Victor paused, his frown deepening. "Either she's thinking about it, or she's already said no."
"Either way, we need to find out why. And yes, before you ask, Brad's late for a meeting, we need to remedy that." Kaiser stood, forming his full armor. "Assemble everyone, tell them why."
-----
The news report mainly served as further confirmation of his earlier suspicions and fears. 'Damn that man,' he kept thinking to himself. Something as big as this? Alan had to have known. Between Taylor's disappearance from school and her return home this morning, Danny had stayed awake all night reevaluating his daughter's behavior up to yesterday. Her reluctance to visit the Barnes', how withdrawn and moody she had gotten recently, even little things like the lack of Christmas cards or the fact that Taylor and Emma never went out together anymore. 'Not since... almost two years ago,' he realized.
And now here was his little kiddo, covered from head to foot in gleaming silver, admitting to him not simply that she was a cape, but that she was a shapeshifter. Even showing him the process and extent of her powers. His outburst hadn't surprised her in the least, but it had confirmed nearly everything he suspected in retrospect. Emma, her former best friend, had done this to her, and she was aided by one of Brockton Bay's Wards no less. To her, at least, Alan was cluelessly innocent, though that was something to investigate later, at any rate.
And then, just to take his mind off of those revelations, he had turned on the morning news. What a mistake that had been, but Taylor's ensuing silence and look of guilt confirmed everything. She had helped an innocent bystander, bless her heart, and fought a monster like Hookwolf all in the same morning. Beaten him, too! Yet she couldn't tell her old man this? He had to learn about it from the fucking morning news?
"Jesus Christ, Taylor, if the Empire figures out who you are--"
"They won't do anything, dad." Her sudden, matter-of-fact response backed by such certainty... "Civilian identities are off-limits, the unwritten rules forbid it."
...'Unwritten rules?'
"'Unwritten' suggests they're not written down anywhere, so this isn't something you found out on the internet, kiddo." At this point, reading her, even if she was a shapeshifter, was something he was getting a lot of practice in. She immediately clammed up and broke eye contact. "Someone had to have told you, yet you're not jumping with excitement over, say, having just met a local superhero. Armsmaster, or Miss Militia perhaps?"
She sighed. "Met them both, but we didn't talk. I did talk with Glory Girl, though, but I already knew about the rules by then."
"Well I doubt Hookwolf gave you a lecture while you were beating the crap out of eachother, so... what, you ran into another villain last night?"
She broke eye contact once more. 'Come on, kiddo, you're not fooling me here...'
"God damnit, Taylor. Why can't you tell me these things?" He felt his blood start to boil, figuratively, and then clamped down on it, hard. Not that it helped; she had already started to cringe in reflex.
"...I don't want you to be angry with me, not like you were with..." she looked him in the eyes once, and then stopped, broke eye contact once more.
'Shit.'
"Like your mother?"
She nodded.
He took several deep breaths. "I'm not angry at you, kiddo. Disappointed? Yes. Scared out of my wits? Fuck yes." Another deep breath. "Just tell me that you're not joining a gang."
She shook her head. 'Not good enough, kiddo.'
"Taylor..."
"I'm not joining a gang, dad!"
He raised both hands to calm the situation. "Okay, okay. I believe you."
Beat.
"Who were they, and what were they like?" He couldn't help but ask.
Another sigh, "They're called the 'Undersiders,' dad. About my age, no drugs, no bad stuff, just kids with powers that got screwed by the system into being villains instead of heroes." 'I guess she set out to surprise me.'
'Ah.'
"Kinda like how you feel right about now? I mean, Winslow had to have known." Again, his blood started to boil, but for entirely different reasons. He let it simmer.
She nodded reluctantly. "Yeah, they did, it was always just my word against theirs."
''Theirs,' plural, no wonder she's so reluctant to tell me, if nobody ever believed her up to now. Fuck.'
"So Emma was, what, the ringleader?,' and again the urge to strangle Alan at that moment for that, especially when Taylor nodded her head, "and Sophia, the one you said is a Ward. Just them, or was there anyone else?"
Taylor was silent for a few moments before answering. "Yeah, Madison Clements, among others. Trying to be popular by joining in."
'So more than just one or two troublemakers, it might as well have been the whole damn school.' He grit his teeth, and took several more deep breaths, not that it helped.
"You're not joining the Wards." They made eye contact once more.
"No."
"And you're sure as hell not going back to Winslow." 'Not if I have anything to say in the matter…'
"Hell no. Most of my teachers knew what was going on and ignored it." She smirked mirthlessly, "I've been asking for a transfer to Arcadia for years and it's always been 'the waiting list is miles long, you'll never get in.'"
He let out a long breath, and held his head in both hands, elbows resting on the table. "If nothing else, kiddo, I'll get you that transfer. That, or I'll homeschool you myself. You're not going back to Winslow."
Her reluctant, hopeful smile made his day. He chuckled to himself. "So, anything else you don't want to tell me about?" He asked with a teasing smile. 'Like, say, plans on murdering your former best friend in an elaborate revenge plot, a desire to take over the world, or a quest to look for someone named John Connor?'
-----
Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
You are currently logged in, Clockblocker
You are viewing:
• Threads you have replied to
• Most active thread is displayed.
• Thread OP is displayed
• Ten posts per page
• Threads and private messages are ordered chronologically.
You have three warnings.
♦ Topic: Events in Brockton Bay, Thread #9
In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay
► White Fairy (Original Poster)
Replied on October 26th, 2010
So, with the closing of the last thread (link), a new thread has been opened to deal with news coming out of Brockton Bay, and I, your source of news and info out of the bay, shall do my best to bring you news straight from the streets as I hear about it.
(Showing page 113 of 114)
► Vanilla_Spoonful
Replied on January 4th, 2011
@XxVoid_CowboyxX, no, I do not see how we can get an army of uplifted army rodents out of this. Come on dude, this is getting silly.
► HotterLass (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Listen, I'm just saying that if we included the video evidence posted by Uber and Leet on their website as is, we're going to have to acknowledge that this tinker is likely going to have some serious firepower to pull out.
And I don't see anyone in the gangs not raising a stink should she decide to join someone else.
edit: I probably should have included the quote so people would realize I was talking to someone a few pages back. Sorry about that.
► StalkingTanuki (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Auu, I hope not. Though I do have to wonder, if as SpiderMancer speculated earlier, about how quickly she could arm a group with tinkertech weapons. But tinkertech armed animals? That's too scary to imagine.
► Baldur
Replied on January 4th, 2011
There will be dire consequences for this.
► Mugen_Kaede
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Of course there will. A ward went AWOL, a building or two got demolished in a cape throw-down, and now idiots are going on about how this new tinker is the next dragon. I'm not seeing it though.
► Tinker's_Bells
Replied on January 4th, 2011
I really hope this new cape doesn't join one of the gangs. The last thing the bay needs is another souped up gang member with superpowers and a grudge.
► GstringGirl
Replied on January 4th, 2011
I'm more worried about what this Metalmorph will do if she ever encounters the people posting those horrible things about her.
► Baldur
Replied on January 4th, 2011
@Mugen_Kaede, oh, it's going to be more than just that. Trust me on this.
► Winged_One
Replied on January 4th, 2011
@Baldur, that's quite the understatement there. Trust me on this. And no one will expect the army of tinker-tech armed animals that will be unleashed. Infact, I've got to remember that one myself.
► Mechanical_Messiah (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
We had a breaking news story, with accompanying video no less, about a new cape showing up in Brockton Bay and having an epic throwdown with Hookwolf, kicking major Empire Eighty Eight ass in the process, and you guys decide to argue, for almost ten pages no less, about whether or not the newbie could make an RPG that teleports pies into her enemies faces, or uplift rodents and take over the world with them? I think I speak for many when I say "What. The. Fuck."
End of Page. 1 … 110, 111, 112, 113, 114
♦ Topic: The name 'John Connor' ring any bells?
In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay
L33T (Verified Cape) (Veteran Member) (Original Poster)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Well everyone, something... interesting happened yesterday, and as you probably expect, we caught it all on camera.
As many of you paying attention to the news out of Brockton Bay have heard in the past day, E88 badass 'Hookwolf' got his ass handed to him by a complete newbie in an epic beatdown. Uber and I had front row seats. Trust me, it was quite the show.
The media is playing her off as a changer, but we know better. Why?
She is a cheating cheater who cheats, and I, for one, DON'T welcome our new machine overlord.
Don't let the "Changer" label fool you, everything we saw and recorded in that fight involved tinkertech in some way, from start to finish. I'm not sure what she is exactly, but that hard light? That's not a separate Striker power, she's generating power for that, and assembling and dismantling emitters on-the-fly even as she's focusing on laying the smackdown on Hookwolf.
Bull. Shit.
The invisibility? Metamaterials and holographic projectors.
What. The. Fuck.
The part where she captures Hookwolf? She was mimicking containment foam. Containment foam that she can no-sell btw. And that's just the stuff we're willing to talk about.
She isn't a Changer. She's fucking Dragon 2.0.
Probably a time-traveling robot as well.
Mod Warning: Please keep speculation to the speculation forums. As nothing else seems to violate the rules and the thread does contain a lot of info about a new cape, I won't lock this thread just yet, but give me reason to and that will change.
(Showing page 1 of 10)
► Uber (Verified Cape)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
U still mad bro?
► Really_special_girl (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Wut?
► All Seeing Eyes
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Hahaha, wow, that's just pathetic.
► Zombro
Replied on January 4th, 2011
...I'm not sure if I should cut back on the booze or grab some more. News out of BB keeps getting stranger and stranger, I swear.
► Ne
Replied on January 4h, 2011
I have to wonder what they're not talking about. I mean, yeah, tinkers are able to do some strange and terrifying bullshit, but what in the hell aren't they saying that makes them think that this cape is the next Dragon?
► FriendlyGuy_01 (Unverified Cape)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
I am not pleased at all by your slander towards your future mechanical overlords. They will be your boss one day afterall, and you have got to pay all due respect to The Boss.
► XxVoid_CowboyxX (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Oh fuck me. This... this is going to be bad.
► Killkicky_Shin_Menace (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Why?
► XxVoid_CowboyxX (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
*SNIP*
User was infracted 10 points. Just a friendly reminder, but when a Moderator tells you not to derail a thread, NOT to post speculation outside of the speculation forum, and not to break the rules, you had better listen if you have any sense of self-preservation.
► palshife
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Let's hope not Cowboy. That would be bad to say the least.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, ... 10
♦ Topic: Worlds Hottest Capes, Part 8 (SFW Edition)
In: Boards ► Places ► World
► Sonic_Boom (Original Poster)
Replied on November 25th, 2010
So, this thread is here to fulfill all our desires to talk about the hottest capes. Friendly reminder though, keep the discussion and links worksafe people. We don't need a repeat of the last thread.
(Showing page 49 of 68)
► bodyrug
Replied on January 1st, 2011
Happy new years everyone. And Forgefire continues to put on exquisite fashion shows. She is turning out to be almost as memorable as Rouge.
► Reinc (Unverified Cape)
Replied on January 1st, 2011
So, word has reached me via some chatty fellows that Vox of VTV has acquired the rights to do a photoshoot with a number of lesser known female villains for release sometime this summer. Can anyone confirm this?
► Lady_of_Problems (Unverified Cape)
Replied on January 1st, 2011
I can confirm that some oh so humble-but-smoking-hot lasses have been approached.
And happy new years everyone.
► Sokijo
Replied on January 2nd, 2011
Proof?
► Lady_of_Problems (Unverified Cape)
Replied on January 2nd, 2011
You're speaking to one of them. Omg, I'm moving up in the world, I just know it!
► Edict (Verified Cape)
Replied on January 2nd, 2011
Pfft, yeah right Damsel. You're a loser, and a liar, and we all know it.
► Lady_of_Problems (Unverified Cape)
Replied on January 3rd, 2011
Fuck you Edict.
User was infracted 25 points for this post.
► Edict (Verified Cape)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
As if. I know better than to stick my dick in syphilitic crazy.
User was infracted 100 points for this post.
► WaterArthropod (Moderator)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
That is enough! Lady_of_Problems, Edict, you both should know better than to derail a SFW thread with over-the-top flaming insults like that. LoP, you're already on thin ice for overreacting to people provoking you. Edict? Consider a fishing trip, as you've got the next three days off.
► Arcane_Hermit
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Uhm, yeah, getting back on topic, I really wonder who else Vox got hold of for that photoshoot. I wonder if Smokecloud is going to be involved with this?
End of Page. 1 … 47, 48, 49, 50, 51 … 68
-----
"Come on, Forgefire is a lot hotter than Smokecloud ever could be," Clockblocker said as he was reading over KidWin's shoulder.
Laughing despite himself, KidWin turned and said "CeeBee, that pun was horrible, even for you."
"You know it's true though."
"Yeah, can't deny that, so who- OW!"
"Grow up you two," Vista said with a frown.
-----
Author Notes: I bet you thought this hidden line was going to be something important, didn't you?
Pyrion: So, I owe some people some apologies, namely everyone who haven't yet given up on waiting for updates. There's a huge difference between the time it takes me to type up an update, and the time it takes me to feel bothered enough to type up an update. So yeah, sorry for the wait. That having been said… well, things happened, bricks were shat, but life goes on.
Robo Jesus: Indeed, and as the previous chapters showed, the media got involved, and consequences spiral outwards from that little bit alone. And then you've got the various groups in Brockton Bay and those outside of it sitting up and paying attention as the media starts talking. And then you've got what has actually happened that the Media is reporting on. And then you've got other things spiralling even further out of control.
Pyrion: And then there's Greg.
Robo Jesus: Poor Greg.
Pyrion: Pftt.
Robo Jesus: Ok, we don't actually pity Greg.
Pyrion: I might include him in a later interlude, but yeah, the above would end up being a spoiler of sorts, because if Taylor and Greg do meet in the future? She's gonna have words.
Robo Jesus: Those words may or may not include such lovely phrases as "Chainsaw vivisection" and "OhGodWhy".
Pyrion: Heh.
Robo Jesus: Also, the entire time I was writing this update with Pyr, googledocs had me listed as "Anonymous Nyan Cat." Oh, and I was drunk for a good chunk of it. Just so you good people know.
Pyrion: So if anything is wrong or misplaced with this update, you can blame it on RJ being drunk.
by Pyrion and Robo Jesus and the Ghost of Elvis as revealed to us through the medium of RJ's pet hamster, Lee Harvey Oswald. Oh, and big thanks to Logiccosmic and Hyzmarca for helping out with this snippet, even if it was just hanging around and cracking jokes with us as we worked.
1.0y - Interlude: Metalmorph Masonry, LLC. "You shit 'em, we fit 'em."
A low-pitched hum reverberated through the walls and floor of Uber and Leet's secret base, or what passed for one, as the lights, appliances and computers making up the two villains' "home" fired up. In reality, the duo had commandeered a long-ago abandoned automobile repair shop in the heart of the Docks district, fixed the place up and called it their own, only because nobody bar the Merchants was actually interested in holding the area. A rickety pair of hollow steel double doors parted with a loud clang as Leet marched in first, fuming, helmet already removed and quickly tossed aside.
"Damn bro, you're still mad?" Uber chuckled, shaking his head in obvious amusement. Though the planned content of tonight's show would obviously have to be postponed, or put off entirely, it wasn't like they walked away without at least a consolation prize. "I don't get it. We had front row seats to Hookwolf's downfall at the hands of an obvious newbie, and a teenage girl at that, caught it all on camera, and you're not happy? We monetize this video and we won't have to worry about shit for the next--"
"Shut the fuck up, you know I'm not angry over that," Leet glared at his partner, "you saw it just as well as I did, the drone scanners don't lie man, mimicking tech... she's practically another Dragon, and she'd have to be another goddamn hero."
Uber grinned even wider at the realization. "Wait, you're still jelly?"
"I'm not..." he paused, then sighed, exhaling loudly. "Okay fine, you're right, I'm jealous just a bit. You happy now?"
"It's no big deal bro," Uber chuckled and shook his head, while mostly distracted connecting the camera drones to his rig. "Think of it this way, if she's like Dragon, then she has to learn from others' work to get anywhere, whereas you can make damn near anything to start with."
Leet rolled his eyes. "Once."
Uber continued chuckling at his best friend's expense, then brought up the night's raw videos on his terminal. "So..." He started playing back the recorded video, his amusement fading to growing concern over what all the camera drones picked up. "Hmm..."
"Hmm?" Leet glanced over from his own terminal.
"How much of this you think we should cut out? I mean, between the three drones, we've got a good half-hour of footage here, and yet..." He paused the playback to show the female shapeshifter in the process of 'absorbing' the submachineguns scattered on the floor by the retreating Empire goons, her body pierced by multiple bullet impacts to no obvious discomfort. "...how much of this should we cut out of the final vid? I mean, shit, this right here?" He unpaused the vid, and the two villains frowned as the shapeshifter formed a perfect reproduction of the small arms she had absorbed, firing back with an emotionless, blank look on her face.
"Yeah, I think I see your point. There's what'll entertain the audience, and then there's what'll put them in danger if she catches wind of this vid. Not to mention us." Leet shrugged, turning back to his terminal to bring up the YouTube Creator Studio. "Much as I'd like to talk with her, show her some of my stuff, see if reproducing any of it is possible..."
Uber started chuckling again. "You'd like to 'talk' with her?" He made fingerquotes for emphasis.
"What else would I do? Either she's a villain, in which case maybe we'd collaborate, or she's a hero, in which case we'd be lucky not to ever run into eachother. I'm not sure I'd ever want to face that," he nodded toward Uber's screen, "and either way, taking down Hookwolf on her first day? She's so far out of our league..."
"Yeah, we're gonna have to cut out quite a bit of this, crop some closeup shots so the viewers don't see her full capabilities... most of the bathroom brawl vid's good as is, we'll keep the initial shot of her tanking the RPG though, no way we're throwing that out."
On a lark, Uber snatched a remote out from underneath his terminal's monitor and aimed it at the flat-screen mounted on the wall to his left, flipping back-and-forth through the local channels before one of them finally segued from commercials to the morning news, and then mashed the Volume Up button.
"...gonna be another warm spring morning with temperatures in the lower-to-mid fifties, not so much as a hint of snow headed our way folks, so enjoy it while it lasts."
"Another, what, year and half of this, Rick?" A look of amused resignation from the lead anchorwoman, the name "Kate Spelling" briefly plastered in black-outlined white Comic Sans alongside a "WBRC-7 LIVE" logo. The weatherman shrugged in silent response.
"Well, as Rick said, enjoy the good weather while it lasts, 'cause we don't have a clue when things will get back to normal on that front. Good morning, Brockton Bay, it's currently eight-fifteen on this bright Tuesday morning and it's already shaping up to be a very interesting news day, particularly on the cape front."
Leet groaned. "Great, have they beaten us to it already?"
"Sure has, Kate, first thing's first though," the camera panned to an older gray-haired white male news-anchor named "Gary Stenner," "our mid-morning commuters will be happy to know that the roads are clear and traffic congestion is at an all-time minimum, with the sole exception of northbound Dawson Street and westbound Ninth Avenue, there's been a nasty early-morning collision there with the Bay police and PRT having locked down all but one lane in each direction. Avoid it if you can."
Uber and Leet glanced at eachother with a bit of concern, Dawson and Ninth wasn't far from where they had set up for their initial show, nor the ensuing fight.
"Speaking of that car crash, Gary, our main story today might be tangentially related. Our viewers will note the PRT is involved in the investigation and cleanup of that crash, and while they're not saying so as of yet, one of our viewers sent in this cellphone camera video approximately an hour ago."
Leet sighed in obvious annoyance, shaking his head while paying no attention to the video whatsoever. "Portrait. Fucking figures. Nobody knows how to record good video anymore..." Uber just chuckled loudly in response, stopping only when the video stopped shaking long enough to focus in on what was definitely their shapeshifter, no-selling containment foam to confront an obviously-surprised Shadow Stalker.
"The PRT and Protectorate both have, at this point, not responded to calls for comment, either on the status of this new cape or the actions of Shadow Stalker. The lone victim of the crash, a woman in her mid-thirties whose name has not yet been released by authorities, is nonetheless said to be recovering at Brockton Bay General with only minor injuries."
"As to our top story..."
-----
As weekends went, Emily Piggot rarely found time to relax, and even then, couldn't ever bring herself to truly let down her guard for any significant length of time. Brockton Bay itself pretty much ensured that hers was a thankless job few truly wanted, but someone had to do it, and she simply couldn't think of anyone else worth trusting with this sort of responsibility. She could tell, today was going to be a Bad Day. 'Though there is a thin layer of icing on this cake of shit,' she surmised, while holding the folded, printed email from Chief Director Costa-Brown in her right hand while waiting for Armsmaster to report to her office. The unexpected takedown and capture of Hookwolf in and of itself comprised the other half of her good mood, knowing his loss was sure to deal the white supremacists a heavy, if not mortal blow. The ABB would attempt to capitalize on it like usual, the gang war would heat up a bit, but fighting between the gangs tended to be preferable to the gangs teaming up against the heroes. That alone was probably enough to get the Chief Director's attention, at least insofar as the PRT East-North-East would likely need reinforcements sooner rather than later just to keep him behind bars and to keep the ensuing gang fighting constrained to the gangs.
All in all, the contents of said letter left her smothering a grin as Armsmaster walked in and saluted. She was having a hard time not feeling giddy about this outcome. Putting on her best straight face, she silently handed the tinker the printed letter and ordered, "read it."
Without missing a beat, Armsmaster unfolded the letter and began reading aloud. "To: Director Emily Piggot, Parahuman Response Teams East-North-East, from: Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown, Parahuman Response Teams. Subject: Shadow Stalker and Metalmorph. Emily, on the subject of Shadow Stalker, I've read your report, so I'm giving you both a blessing and a curse. Cut that girl loose, she's done as a Ward effective immediately." He stopped to glance at the director, and frowned at her obvious satisfaction.
"Keep going," she prompted him.
"Way I see it, you're not going to want her back after she assaulted Aegis, and none of the other Wards teams are likely to take her, not even the punitive teams handling the Simurgh Quarantine Zones, so we're not going to bother. Release her trust fund into the care of her parents, and I'll leave it to you on how to break the news to the public."
"That part I'm not looking forward to," she sighed, "go on."
"As to this 'Metalmorph,' our thinkers project severe animosity towards the PRT and Protectorate for Shadow Stalker's involvement in her triggering. Honestly, that should surprise absolutely nobody. It's a shame, but an unavoidable one: you probably will not manage to convince her to join the Wards. My advice: SOFT SELL, even if it takes most of the year. Correction of the school situation is an obvious priority; we don't need her going Carrie on Winslow, even if it sounds like they deserve it."
Director Piggot rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm not that stupid, Rebecca," she mumbled, then leaned back in her chair and glanced up at Armsmaster. "I take it you didn't bring her in for questioning."
A statement, not a question. Armsmaster frowned slightly. "No, she refused." Beat. "You knew she'd refuse."
"I expected as much."
He shook his head in puzzlement. "Then why--?"
"Good cop, bad cop, Armsmaster. When she comes in, she'll be pissed at you and not at me and it makes my negotiating position somewhat easier if I can paint it as you being uncompromisingly literal with my orders. Be it now or whenever she does decide to come talk about Shadow Stalker and maybe joining the Wards. Besides, if I need a gentle touch in negotiating, I'd send Miss Militia, not you."
His frown deepened. "You did send Miss Militia."
"And she performed her job more than adequately, as you came back in one piece and the Endbringer sirens aren't ringing," she smirked briefly in response, before shifting focus. "As is, I have to go tell the media what we've all known and have never wanted to admit. How do I tell the media that one of our child heroes has gone villain?"
"...we don't?" Armsmaster hesitantly suggested, only for Piggot's smirk to return.
"Exactly, Armsmaster. We don't. We tell them that Shadow Stalker's gone AWOL, which she has, we tell them that Metalmorph is to be treated as a hero, which she will be, and we let these things sort themselves out." She leaned back into her chair and sighed once more. "Time to face the firing squad."
"They're not that bad."
She glared at him as she stood. "You don't have to deal with them, you just have to stand still and look imposing."
-----
His eyes shot open to a bright white ceiling, reflexively squinting from the glare and the mild headache it elicited. To his right, an empty spot on an unkempt bed, the door to their room slightly ajar, and a metric fuckton of commotion echoing in from beyond.
'Great, now what?,' Victor thought to himself, stumbling out of bed in a mental haze brought on by too little sleep, the residual effects of a hangover, and apparently, sleeping in his costume. He eschewed a shower and a change, straightening himself up with a grunt before leaving.
He paid the various skinheads' looks of surprise and excitement no mind on the walk down to the ground floor of the warehouse-turned-nightclub-turned-palace the Empire had appropriated for itself years past, originally paid for by a subsidiary of a shell company of Max Anders' Medhall Corporation, all off-the-books of course. Most of their fortified holdings at least had a veneer of legitimacy that kept city code inspectors off their backs, and the police generally knew to leave well-enough alone. Not that any of this was of real concern, even if the adjoining streets had bloody, beaten skinheads dripping from flesh wounds streaming in.
Othala was among them, doing her best to tend to their wounds, but it was pretty clear that many of these poor, dumb kids would need real medical attention, and those willing to brave the risk of facing arrest hadn't come here. Most of their injuries appeared superficial, granted, but he could tell a couple of the really pale kids wouldn't survive the day. Especially the guy with both kneecaps shot out. He shrugged.
"The gooks got lucky for once?"
Othala turned to him and shook her head. "What little I've gotten out of them was this is all one cape, taking on Br--" she quickly caught herself, "Hookwolf of all people. Another changer, immune to small arms and heavy explosives. Most of them back there," she gestured towards the back three rows, most of whom whose wounds looked mainly to be cuts and burns, "shrapnel from RPG fire."
A chill went down his spine. "And Hookwolf?"
Othala merely shook her head in response.
"Shit. Someone has to tell Kaiser. Any of 'em say who was responsible? RPG fire sounds like Protectorate--"
One of the less-injured skinheads caught him with a look, and didn't shy away from his glare. 'Hmm...' He nodded in response. "Who did this?"
"Two heroes, some changer I've never heard of before, and Shadow Stalker, but Shadow Stalker didn't stick around for long."
He squinted in thought. "Describe this changer."
"Kinda like Hookwolf, only liquid metal instead of blades. Like, uh, one of those Terminators from the Earth-Aleph movies, actually. Bullets moved right through her, got her in the face with an RPG though, thought the bitch was done, then she just appears out of nowhere, shot Karl," he pointed at the guy with both kneecaps blown off, "took his RPG and nailed Hookwolf with it."
"He'd survive that," Othala whispered.
"Then what?"
The goon looked a bit nervous now. "We, uh, got the fuck outta there then. Hookwolf and the other cape were going at it, place was comin' apart. Fuck if we're stickin' around for that. Sirens too, whole place is probably locked down tighter than a kike's purse now."
"Doesn't tell us much," Othala said with a roll of her eyes, and he was inclined to agree.
"It'd be all over the news by now, especially if the Protectorate's involved. Still... fuck it, I'll go tell him."
The skinhead perked up a bit more. "We're gettin' even with that silver whore, aren't we?"
His frown deepened even more - Max wasn't the sort to go off half-cocked, even from such a blatant challenge.
"You want me to come along?" Her offer was welcome, but appearances needed to be maintained. He couldn't let himself look intimidated by Kaiser, even to the man himself.
"No, I'll be fine. Kaiser doesn't shoot the messenger."
The elevator ride to the penthouse level was mercifully short, and the door guards, two normals decked out in Nazi regalia, saluted with raised arms. He shook his head in annoyance and entered ignoring them. Kaiser sat with his back to the door, giving his full attention to the wall-mounted flat-screen.
"--we have time for a few questions. You, second row." Director Piggot pointed to a thin suited Asian.
"Joe Nguyen, channel twelve news. Madam Director, we've all seen the news footage, Shadow Stalker ambushing the cape you're referring to as 'Metalmorph,' her AWOL status seems incredibly convenient for what's being viewed as an unprovoked attack on a new cape being treated as a hero. What exactly is Shadow Stalker's status as a Ward?"
Piggot forced a smile. "As I said, absent without leave, as of midnight this morning. We'll ascertain exactly what her intentions were when she reports back in, if it was a case of mistaken identity, if she knows something about Metalmorph that we don't, as of now however we prefer not to speculate. Next question--"
The word "MUTE" suddenly covered half the screen in green allcaps.
"Well, well..." Kaiser started chuckling, "Hookwolf falls to a new hero, and a girl at that. Brad's gotta be steaming in his britches." He turned around in his chair and regarded Victor's confused look with more chuckling. "I take it all that commotion below is related?"
Victor nodded stiffly. "Mostly minor injuries, though a few of our people probably won't see the light of day tomorrow. All I could get from them was that this 'Metalmorph' fought Brad one-on-one, Shadow Stalker didn't stick around--"
"Of course not," Kaiser kept chuckling, "Shadow Stalker's psychotic, but she's not stupid. More importantly, this 'Metalmorph' may not necessarily be a hero." At Victor's continued look of confusion, he continued, "Earlier news report, car accident near Brad's cage just outside our territory, this 'Metalmorph' stops to help, gets pounced on by Shadow Stalker, she hits her with the PRT's containment foam grenades, which is interesting that they're issuing those to Wards... anyway, Metalmorph walks through the foam as if it's not there, one arm ends with a blade, and Shadow Stalker flees." He gestured, remote still in hand, at the muted television. "And then this happens."
Victor folded his arms. "Brad sees a challenge, doesn't care where it comes from, attacks her, and she's new enough that she fights back instead of running like everyone else who isn't Lung."
"And beats him into submission, only for the PRT to take most of the credit for the capture. Like usual." Kaiser stared at the ceiling, shaking his head in continued amusement. "This 'Metalmorph' sounds like someone to give a wide berth... and maybe some consideration, perhaps?"
He frowned once more. "Wannabe heroes don't just up and join the Cause on a whim."
"True, so we give her a reason. She gets attacked by a Ward, and the PRT circles the wagons, without going the extra mile to alienate her due to her obvious strength. Why?"
"They want her to join, be it the Wards or Protectorate, obviously." Further confusion.
"Yet they'd have offered already. So why are they not crowing to the media about their newest Ward or full Protectorate hero?"
Victor paused, his frown deepening. "Either she's thinking about it, or she's already said no."
"Either way, we need to find out why. And yes, before you ask, Brad's late for a meeting, we need to remedy that." Kaiser stood, forming his full armor. "Assemble everyone, tell them why."
-----
The news report mainly served as further confirmation of his earlier suspicions and fears. 'Damn that man,' he kept thinking to himself. Something as big as this? Alan had to have known. Between Taylor's disappearance from school and her return home this morning, Danny had stayed awake all night reevaluating his daughter's behavior up to yesterday. Her reluctance to visit the Barnes', how withdrawn and moody she had gotten recently, even little things like the lack of Christmas cards or the fact that Taylor and Emma never went out together anymore. 'Not since... almost two years ago,' he realized.
And now here was his little kiddo, covered from head to foot in gleaming silver, admitting to him not simply that she was a cape, but that she was a shapeshifter. Even showing him the process and extent of her powers. His outburst hadn't surprised her in the least, but it had confirmed nearly everything he suspected in retrospect. Emma, her former best friend, had done this to her, and she was aided by one of Brockton Bay's Wards no less. To her, at least, Alan was cluelessly innocent, though that was something to investigate later, at any rate.
And then, just to take his mind off of those revelations, he had turned on the morning news. What a mistake that had been, but Taylor's ensuing silence and look of guilt confirmed everything. She had helped an innocent bystander, bless her heart, and fought a monster like Hookwolf all in the same morning. Beaten him, too! Yet she couldn't tell her old man this? He had to learn about it from the fucking morning news?
"Jesus Christ, Taylor, if the Empire figures out who you are--"
"They won't do anything, dad." Her sudden, matter-of-fact response backed by such certainty... "Civilian identities are off-limits, the unwritten rules forbid it."
...'Unwritten rules?'
"'Unwritten' suggests they're not written down anywhere, so this isn't something you found out on the internet, kiddo." At this point, reading her, even if she was a shapeshifter, was something he was getting a lot of practice in. She immediately clammed up and broke eye contact. "Someone had to have told you, yet you're not jumping with excitement over, say, having just met a local superhero. Armsmaster, or Miss Militia perhaps?"
She sighed. "Met them both, but we didn't talk. I did talk with Glory Girl, though, but I already knew about the rules by then."
"Well I doubt Hookwolf gave you a lecture while you were beating the crap out of eachother, so... what, you ran into another villain last night?"
She broke eye contact once more. 'Come on, kiddo, you're not fooling me here...'
"God damnit, Taylor. Why can't you tell me these things?" He felt his blood start to boil, figuratively, and then clamped down on it, hard. Not that it helped; she had already started to cringe in reflex.
"...I don't want you to be angry with me, not like you were with..." she looked him in the eyes once, and then stopped, broke eye contact once more.
'Shit.'
"Like your mother?"
She nodded.
He took several deep breaths. "I'm not angry at you, kiddo. Disappointed? Yes. Scared out of my wits? Fuck yes." Another deep breath. "Just tell me that you're not joining a gang."
She shook her head. 'Not good enough, kiddo.'
"Taylor..."
"I'm not joining a gang, dad!"
He raised both hands to calm the situation. "Okay, okay. I believe you."
Beat.
"Who were they, and what were they like?" He couldn't help but ask.
Another sigh, "They're called the 'Undersiders,' dad. About my age, no drugs, no bad stuff, just kids with powers that got screwed by the system into being villains instead of heroes." 'I guess she set out to surprise me.'
'Ah.'
"Kinda like how you feel right about now? I mean, Winslow had to have known." Again, his blood started to boil, but for entirely different reasons. He let it simmer.
She nodded reluctantly. "Yeah, they did, it was always just my word against theirs."
''Theirs,' plural, no wonder she's so reluctant to tell me, if nobody ever believed her up to now. Fuck.'
"So Emma was, what, the ringleader?,' and again the urge to strangle Alan at that moment for that, especially when Taylor nodded her head, "and Sophia, the one you said is a Ward. Just them, or was there anyone else?"
Taylor was silent for a few moments before answering. "Yeah, Madison Clements, among others. Trying to be popular by joining in."
'So more than just one or two troublemakers, it might as well have been the whole damn school.' He grit his teeth, and took several more deep breaths, not that it helped.
"You're not joining the Wards." They made eye contact once more.
"No."
"And you're sure as hell not going back to Winslow." 'Not if I have anything to say in the matter…'
"Hell no. Most of my teachers knew what was going on and ignored it." She smirked mirthlessly, "I've been asking for a transfer to Arcadia for years and it's always been 'the waiting list is miles long, you'll never get in.'"
He let out a long breath, and held his head in both hands, elbows resting on the table. "If nothing else, kiddo, I'll get you that transfer. That, or I'll homeschool you myself. You're not going back to Winslow."
Her reluctant, hopeful smile made his day. He chuckled to himself. "So, anything else you don't want to tell me about?" He asked with a teasing smile. 'Like, say, plans on murdering your former best friend in an elaborate revenge plot, a desire to take over the world, or a quest to look for someone named John Connor?'
-----
Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
You are currently logged in, Clockblocker
You are viewing:
• Threads you have replied to
• Most active thread is displayed.
• Thread OP is displayed
• Ten posts per page
• Threads and private messages are ordered chronologically.
You have three warnings.
♦ Topic: Events in Brockton Bay, Thread #9
In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay
► White Fairy (Original Poster)
Replied on October 26th, 2010
So, with the closing of the last thread (link), a new thread has been opened to deal with news coming out of Brockton Bay, and I, your source of news and info out of the bay, shall do my best to bring you news straight from the streets as I hear about it.
(Showing page 113 of 114)
► Vanilla_Spoonful
Replied on January 4th, 2011
@XxVoid_CowboyxX, no, I do not see how we can get an army of uplifted army rodents out of this. Come on dude, this is getting silly.
► HotterLass (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Listen, I'm just saying that if we included the video evidence posted by Uber and Leet on their website as is, we're going to have to acknowledge that this tinker is likely going to have some serious firepower to pull out.
And I don't see anyone in the gangs not raising a stink should she decide to join someone else.
edit: I probably should have included the quote so people would realize I was talking to someone a few pages back. Sorry about that.
► StalkingTanuki (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Auu, I hope not. Though I do have to wonder, if as SpiderMancer speculated earlier, about how quickly she could arm a group with tinkertech weapons. But tinkertech armed animals? That's too scary to imagine.
► Baldur
Replied on January 4th, 2011
There will be dire consequences for this.
► Mugen_Kaede
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Of course there will. A ward went AWOL, a building or two got demolished in a cape throw-down, and now idiots are going on about how this new tinker is the next dragon. I'm not seeing it though.
► Tinker's_Bells
Replied on January 4th, 2011
I really hope this new cape doesn't join one of the gangs. The last thing the bay needs is another souped up gang member with superpowers and a grudge.
► GstringGirl
Replied on January 4th, 2011
I'm more worried about what this Metalmorph will do if she ever encounters the people posting those horrible things about her.
► Baldur
Replied on January 4th, 2011
@Mugen_Kaede, oh, it's going to be more than just that. Trust me on this.
► Winged_One
Replied on January 4th, 2011
@Baldur, that's quite the understatement there. Trust me on this. And no one will expect the army of tinker-tech armed animals that will be unleashed. Infact, I've got to remember that one myself.
► Mechanical_Messiah (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
We had a breaking news story, with accompanying video no less, about a new cape showing up in Brockton Bay and having an epic throwdown with Hookwolf, kicking major Empire Eighty Eight ass in the process, and you guys decide to argue, for almost ten pages no less, about whether or not the newbie could make an RPG that teleports pies into her enemies faces, or uplift rodents and take over the world with them? I think I speak for many when I say "What. The. Fuck."
End of Page. 1 … 110, 111, 112, 113, 114
♦ Topic: The name 'John Connor' ring any bells?
In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay
L33T (Verified Cape) (Veteran Member) (Original Poster)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Well everyone, something... interesting happened yesterday, and as you probably expect, we caught it all on camera.
As many of you paying attention to the news out of Brockton Bay have heard in the past day, E88 badass 'Hookwolf' got his ass handed to him by a complete newbie in an epic beatdown. Uber and I had front row seats. Trust me, it was quite the show.
The media is playing her off as a changer, but we know better. Why?
She is a cheating cheater who cheats, and I, for one, DON'T welcome our new machine overlord.
Don't let the "Changer" label fool you, everything we saw and recorded in that fight involved tinkertech in some way, from start to finish. I'm not sure what she is exactly, but that hard light? That's not a separate Striker power, she's generating power for that, and assembling and dismantling emitters on-the-fly even as she's focusing on laying the smackdown on Hookwolf.
Bull. Shit.
The invisibility? Metamaterials and holographic projectors.
What. The. Fuck.
The part where she captures Hookwolf? She was mimicking containment foam. Containment foam that she can no-sell btw. And that's just the stuff we're willing to talk about.
She isn't a Changer. She's fucking Dragon 2.0.
Probably a time-traveling robot as well.
Mod Warning: Please keep speculation to the speculation forums. As nothing else seems to violate the rules and the thread does contain a lot of info about a new cape, I won't lock this thread just yet, but give me reason to and that will change.
(Showing page 1 of 10)
► Uber (Verified Cape)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
U still mad bro?
► Really_special_girl (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Wut?
► All Seeing Eyes
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Hahaha, wow, that's just pathetic.
► Zombro
Replied on January 4th, 2011
...I'm not sure if I should cut back on the booze or grab some more. News out of BB keeps getting stranger and stranger, I swear.
► Ne
Replied on January 4h, 2011
I have to wonder what they're not talking about. I mean, yeah, tinkers are able to do some strange and terrifying bullshit, but what in the hell aren't they saying that makes them think that this cape is the next Dragon?
► FriendlyGuy_01 (Unverified Cape)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
I am not pleased at all by your slander towards your future mechanical overlords. They will be your boss one day afterall, and you have got to pay all due respect to The Boss.
► XxVoid_CowboyxX (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Oh fuck me. This... this is going to be bad.
► Killkicky_Shin_Menace (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Why?
► XxVoid_CowboyxX (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
*SNIP*
User was infracted 10 points. Just a friendly reminder, but when a Moderator tells you not to derail a thread, NOT to post speculation outside of the speculation forum, and not to break the rules, you had better listen if you have any sense of self-preservation.
► palshife
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Let's hope not Cowboy. That would be bad to say the least.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, ... 10
♦ Topic: Worlds Hottest Capes, Part 8 (SFW Edition)
In: Boards ► Places ► World
► Sonic_Boom (Original Poster)
Replied on November 25th, 2010
So, this thread is here to fulfill all our desires to talk about the hottest capes. Friendly reminder though, keep the discussion and links worksafe people. We don't need a repeat of the last thread.
(Showing page 49 of 68)
► bodyrug
Replied on January 1st, 2011
Happy new years everyone. And Forgefire continues to put on exquisite fashion shows. She is turning out to be almost as memorable as Rouge.
► Reinc (Unverified Cape)
Replied on January 1st, 2011
So, word has reached me via some chatty fellows that Vox of VTV has acquired the rights to do a photoshoot with a number of lesser known female villains for release sometime this summer. Can anyone confirm this?
► Lady_of_Problems (Unverified Cape)
Replied on January 1st, 2011
I can confirm that some oh so humble-but-smoking-hot lasses have been approached.
And happy new years everyone.
► Sokijo
Replied on January 2nd, 2011
Proof?
► Lady_of_Problems (Unverified Cape)
Replied on January 2nd, 2011
You're speaking to one of them. Omg, I'm moving up in the world, I just know it!
► Edict (Verified Cape)
Replied on January 2nd, 2011
Pfft, yeah right Damsel. You're a loser, and a liar, and we all know it.
► Lady_of_Problems (Unverified Cape)
Replied on January 3rd, 2011
Fuck you Edict.
User was infracted 25 points for this post.
► Edict (Verified Cape)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
As if. I know better than to stick my dick in syphilitic crazy.
User was infracted 100 points for this post.
► WaterArthropod (Moderator)
Replied on January 4th, 2011
That is enough! Lady_of_Problems, Edict, you both should know better than to derail a SFW thread with over-the-top flaming insults like that. LoP, you're already on thin ice for overreacting to people provoking you. Edict? Consider a fishing trip, as you've got the next three days off.
► Arcane_Hermit
Replied on January 4th, 2011
Uhm, yeah, getting back on topic, I really wonder who else Vox got hold of for that photoshoot. I wonder if Smokecloud is going to be involved with this?
End of Page. 1 … 47, 48, 49, 50, 51 … 68
-----
"Come on, Forgefire is a lot hotter than Smokecloud ever could be," Clockblocker said as he was reading over KidWin's shoulder.
Laughing despite himself, KidWin turned and said "CeeBee, that pun was horrible, even for you."
"You know it's true though."
"Yeah, can't deny that, so who- OW!"
"Grow up you two," Vista said with a frown.
-----
Author Notes: I bet you thought this hidden line was going to be something important, didn't you?
Pyrion: So, I owe some people some apologies, namely everyone who haven't yet given up on waiting for updates. There's a huge difference between the time it takes me to type up an update, and the time it takes me to feel bothered enough to type up an update. So yeah, sorry for the wait. That having been said… well, things happened, bricks were shat, but life goes on.
Robo Jesus: Indeed, and as the previous chapters showed, the media got involved, and consequences spiral outwards from that little bit alone. And then you've got the various groups in Brockton Bay and those outside of it sitting up and paying attention as the media starts talking. And then you've got what has actually happened that the Media is reporting on. And then you've got other things spiralling even further out of control.
Pyrion: And then there's Greg.
Robo Jesus: Poor Greg.
Pyrion: Pftt.
Robo Jesus: Ok, we don't actually pity Greg.
Pyrion: I might include him in a later interlude, but yeah, the above would end up being a spoiler of sorts, because if Taylor and Greg do meet in the future? She's gonna have words.
Robo Jesus: Those words may or may not include such lovely phrases as "Chainsaw vivisection" and "OhGodWhy".
Pyrion: Heh.
Robo Jesus: Also, the entire time I was writing this update with Pyr, googledocs had me listed as "Anonymous Nyan Cat." Oh, and I was drunk for a good chunk of it. Just so you good people know.
Pyrion: So if anything is wrong or misplaced with this update, you can blame it on RJ being drunk.
Last edited:
1.05
Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
Alteran Alternatives v2.0; Stargate Atlantis/Worm crossover
by Pyrion and Robo Jesus (who wishes he was still drunk )
1.05
Admitting everything to dad, in retrospect, took a huge weight off of my shoulders, or at least it felt like it had. Dad's righteous fury was now aimed squarely at Winslow and the PRT, so if nothing else, I knew exactly how he felt.
His suggestion that we talk to the PRT, however, despite my intentions already having been made clear, threw me for a moment. I wasn't going to join the Wards, and if that sham of a press conference was of any indication, the PRT weren't about to fess up to their involvement anytime soon. Still, dad was being dad I supposed, so I'd humor him on this, not that it would change anything.
He picked up the landline and placed the call, and it took me a moment to realize that, for whatever reason, he knew exactly what number to call. No looking it up in a phonebook, no dialing zero for the operator... oh, yeah, two possibilities sprang to mind. Either dad and the PRT conversed often in his capacity as the head of the Dockworkers' Association, or the PRT had contacted him in my brief absence last night.
Probably the latter, since they likely suspected I was a cape by that point. Dad was calling from a landline, so while there were no radio signals to eavesdrop on, the phone handset itself vibrated just enough that I could listen in from where I sat...
"Brockton Bay Parahuman Response Team, this is Caroline speaking, may I ask who's calling?" The receptionist sounded... bored, I suppose.
"Daniel Hebert, of the Dockworkers' Association." So the former reason, then?
The receptionist's tone immediately changed, like she was half-asleep but now paying attention. "Mister Hebert, we've been expecting your call. Transferring you to Director Piggot now, please hold."
So... the latter reason, then. Dad gave me a brief smile, and I shrugged in response. It was still entirely pointless, but I wasn't losing anything by humoring him.
"PRT East-North-East, Emily Piggot speaking."
"Danny Hebert. We... spoke briefly, yesterday." Dad glanced at me again, with a bit more worry in his look. "My daughter got home about half an hour ago, we've... talked..."
The director's sigh was audible. "And it would probably be best if we discussed this in person, yes?"
Dad grit his teeth. "That would... probably be best, yes."
"Excellent. I'll be in my office until... six PM today. When should we expect you?"
Dad glanced in my direction once more. "Is the next hour or two good, kiddo?" I shrugged again. "Yeah, we'll be there around eleven."
"That works, I look forward to meeting you both. Good day Mister Hebert." She hung up.
...Huh. Entirely professional, if a bit clipped, but not the slightest hint of apprehension in her voice. Dad hung up the phone, and then took a deep breath, letting out a long sigh.
"I'm gonna go take a quick shower, get cleaned up for this then. You okay?"
I gave him a reluctant smile. "Yeah... I don't think I need to shower. No dirt or anything clinging to me, actually." I gave myself a brief inspection, for effect more than anything really, before shifting back to my normal, human self.
"Lucky you." He huffed in amusement, "don't have to worry about clothes either. That is a bullshit superpower, kiddo."
Halfway to the bathroom, he turned back to me, a wry grin on his face. "Does this mean I don't have to worry about buying you clothes ever again?"
I rolled my eyes. "Da~ad!"
"I won't complain if you won't. Never again having to feel awkward as a guy in the girls' clothing section of the store will be a plus."
Ugh. He was enjoying this way too much. Then I imagined such a scene, briefly remembered he had been the one to buy me those Armsmaster panties way back... yeah, now that I put that mental image in my head, I could see where he was coming from.
Suddenly needing a distraction to get that picture out of my mind, I plopped down on the couch and turned the television back on. Local news would undoubtedly still be going nuts over my capture of Hookwolf, and...
I blinked in shock.
I was on television. Metalmorph was on television. Or rather, my fight with Hookwolf was on television. Someone got close enough to record it? The caption at the bottom read "source: Uber & Leet @ YouTube," and I briefly recalled those portions of the fight when my attention was focused mainly on... yeah, okay, replaying the memories, and realizing in the process that I had perfect memory recall, there were several imperfectly-cloaked camera drones, likely Tinker-made, circling around the outside of the building.
The video they had uploaded was obviously clipped in places, set to cheesy action movie music that undoubtedly was ripped from some Earth-Aleph import or other, and featured annotations made by the villain duo that the news channel hadn't bothered to disable. Or maybe it was actually part of the video.
Finding out that Leet was apparently rabidly jealous of my power, or that Uber apparently found the whole situation hilarious? Not important. What was, was that my fight had been recorded, uploaded, and presumably those two were making money off of this. If nothing else, they certainly were getting a lot of attention. What the fuck?
Dad walked out, dripping wet with a towel around his waist just in time to see my act of shooting Hookwolf with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in slow-motion.
"Kiddo, is this what they're teaching you in school these days?"
Oh my fucking God. First chance I get, I'm so gonna kill those two losers! I turned to glance at dad, who still wore the smirk he had prior to his quick shower.
"What? Your old man can't have a sense of humor?"
-----
I wasn't sure if Dad was taking the whole situation in stride, but I was glad he wasn't asking me questions about it that still made me feel awkward even thinking about answering, and the smiles and reassurances he sent my way were something I appreciated. Having spent most of yesterday and this morning being worried sick, I suppose he more than earned the right to crack a few jokes at my expense. Dad then offered to cook me breakfast, which I initially turned down due to "not having to eat." He paused, my omelette still hanging from the spatula, and frowned.
"Bullshit, Taylor, superheroes need their Wheaties, and I can do better."
At this rate, it was probably best not to argue. While I hadn't actually needed to eat, it wasn't like I didn't benefit any from it, even if I was basically digesting the food on contact. He didn't need to know that, though, nor did he really need to know that I lacked a sense of taste.
"Feeling better?"
I frowned. No, I really wasn't. "Not really. I'm not looking forward to hearing whatever excuses the PRT has for Shadow Stalker, and--"
"We're not going there for that. Come hell or high water, we're gonna get restitution for this. From them, from the school, from Alan if I can help it."
"I don't want their money, dad." The money wouldn't make up for the last two years...
"It's not about that, the only way large organizations like the PRT or Winslow will pay attention to this and do something about it is if you hit them where it hurts. They can't do anything without large amounts of money, kiddo." He gave me a weary smirk. "Besides, if you're gonna be an independent superhero, you'll need an attorney, and a legal fund. Sooner or later some greedy asshole's gonna sue you for helping them."
I couldn't argue with that.
Dad took a few more minutes after breakfast to comb his hair and tidy up, and inwardly I counted myself ruefully lucky that getting myself ready to go anywhere wasn't something I really had to do anymore. Beyond picking an appropriate form, that is.
On that note, I started giving serious thought to what I was actually going to say when we got there. Not joining the Wards was a given, but prior to this morning my only reason was avoiding Sophia. Her trying to murder me, not once, but three times, locker, crossbow shot to the head and then the knife... four times if luring me into a fight with Hookwolf was intentional... right, she tried to kill me repeatedly over the course of two days and obviously had help. I mean, how the hell did she even know where I lived? If Emma had told her, it wasn't done over the phone - I still had her phone, including their full texting history, which just thinking about would've pushed my blood pressure through the roof if I had any blood... no, much as it galled me that Emma might not be in some way directly responsible for Sophia escalating to attempted murder, it meant that Coil, if he was whom Sophia was arguing with this morning, had somehow learned where I lived, and broke one of the unwritten rules by telling Sophia.
The only other possibility, that Lisa, or another one of the Undersiders, had sold me out to Coil, well, it didn't make much sense. Small-time villains-in-name-only that wanted me to join them, had prior issues with Shadow Stalker, and even went so far as unmasking themselves to try to convince me? I hadn't heard any of them place calls during the time I was among them, and too little time passed between me leaving while they all slept, and Sophia ambushing me, for that to be plausible.
No. I had to consider the possibility that the PRT had been compromised, that Sophia was but of possibly several moles Coil had among the heroes and their government handlers.
"You ready to go, Taylor?" I could see Dad smiling from behind me as he walked down the stairs to our living room.
Jarred out of my deep thoughts, I blinked a moment before nodding. "Yeah, I was just thinking."
He gave me a wry grin. "Anything you want to share?"
"Just trying to figure out how Sophia knew where we live. She had to have been close by when that accident happened." I stood and, after his gesture towards the front door, approached it and stepped out.
While our immediate neighborhood was otherwise quiet and mostly empty by this hour, I immediately had the feeling of being watched, and kicked my senses into overdrive in return. There were several vehicles parked in the area that I had never seen before, all of them with heavily-tinted windows, but the most obvious was a PRT-branded armored truck, parked half a block away on an adjacent street corner and partially-obscured by a row of hedges. I focused on it for a brief moment, and picked out two distinct lifesigns, both in the front seats. Of the other three foreign vehicles, one was cold and unoccupied, another had just been parked recently but was empty, and the last, a polished black sedan down the street closest to the main intersection, had a single occupant. I kept my focus on that vehicle without actually looking in its direction, as dad and I climbed into his car.
My suspicions quickly began to bear fruit as the unmarked sedan kept its distance while obviously following us. It wasn't noon yet, so traffic within our outskirts of the city was still relatively light. I let myself appear to relax in the passenger seat, but even as dad reached over and patted me on the shoulder while we waited at the third red light in as many minutes, I blinked in sudden concern as the black sedan's driver placed a phone call.
The other side answered after one ring. "You have her in sight?" I inhaled sharply, immediately recognizing the voice. Coil's voice.
"The target, and her father, at Ninth-and-Earl, eastbound. Faded blue coupe. I'm three cars back." A younger man's voice, one I didn't recognize.
Another voice on the line cut in, "Assault teams are en-route, ETA two minutes." I tensed up and glanced at dad.
He immediately noticed my sudden change in mood. "Something wrong?"
"Black car three rows back. We're being followed, and it's not the PRT."
The light turned green, and dad mashed the accelerator, hard.
"Continuing eastbound, target is... target is running, I might be made." No shit? Dad, meanwhile, had already blown through a yellow light at fifteen over the limit, and I dropped my focus in favor of scanning everything ahead of us. Taller buildings, denser cross-traffic and the next intersection had a red light. Dad slowed the car, but not by much.
"Heavy cross-traffic at Ninth-and-Sentry, target isn't stopping. Permission to engage?"
Barely a second passed before Coil responded. "Negative. Maintain distance and stand-by, but do not engage." Odd, we were only about a quarter-mile from the PRT headquarters building -- I gripped the right handrail of the door to steady myself as dad weaved through a gap in Sentry Street's one-way cross-traffic -- and we both let out the breath we'd been holding. Dad started chuckling to himself, more nerves than anything I suppose, when a loud screeching wail and strobing lights lit up from behind.
I winced, quickly reviewing the past few seconds in realization that a police car had been lying in wait in a side-alley not a hundred feet past the Sentry Street intersection. Dad groaned, and looked at me for advice. "Taylor?"
"How much farther?" I asked him, as all of the traffic lights turned green on our approach.
Dad looked at me briefly, brow furrowed in puzzlement. "'Bout half a mile, why?"
Rather than answer him, I focused my attention outward, letting my peripheral sense hone in on the closest cellphone tower. In my head, the inner workings of Sophia's phone assembled themselves, and I triggered the autodialer for the number she'd saved as "PRT."
Two rings later, an unfamiliar female voice answered. "Console, go."
"Is this the PRT?" I hurriedly inquired, briefly surprised at how easily my thoughts vocalized over the line despite me not actually speaking.
The other side paused briefly, "...who is this, and how'd you get this number?"
"I'm Metalmorph, and that's not important. My dad and I are headed to the PRT building, Coil just made an attempt on our lives, and we've got a cop chasing us now. We're about two minutes away."
The line on the other end went quiet for a moment, and by this time we had the PRT in sight, though the inner-city traffic had built up such that, seeing no alternative, dad cut us across an intersection into the opposing lanes, making a beeline for the parking garage entrance next door.
Several tense moments passed as dad quickly parked the car, diagonally, into two parking spaces, and the police car parked perpendicular to the parking spaces, blocking us off from backing out. The cop quickly exited his vehicle, gun drawn and pointed at dad from behind his car.
"Get out of the car, hands up where I can see them, now!"
Dad started to follow his order, but I had a better idea. I rolled down my window, leaned out and turned to liquid, spreading my nanomass out over the roof and hood of the car, enveloping it in only a few seconds. I focused the majority of my mass to a point adjacent to the left rear window, and began flowing outwards to retake my human form, hoping the cop would shift his attention (and aim) onto me.
It worked, almost too well. The cop, in a fit of panic, activated his radio and yelled out a code-number along with the phrase "parahuman contact" before he aimed his pistol at my barely-formed "head" and pulled the trigger repeatedly, the bullets harmlessly passing through my mass and shattering the rear window behind. Better it than dad, I supposed.
As my human features started coalescing, several things happened in quick succession: the cop, freaked out both by my transformation and apparent immunity to bullets, started to back away, putting more of his car between himself and me while keeping the gun leveled at my head and yelling "shots fired, no effect!" several times into his radio. From a side exit, PRT troops started streaming out with weapons drawn, an even mix of containment foam sprayers and what looked like energy rifles of some sort. And behind the mass of PRT troops, Miss Militia ran out, apparently at a full sprint.
"Everyone put your weapons down, dammit! Metalmorph is on our side!" She yelled at the PRT forces, before she dashed across the garage to get the cop's attention. "Officer, stand down! Metalmorph is not a villain!"
"Could've fooled me! They were doing 60 in a 35 zone cutting across traffic in all four lanes! Shit..." He lowered his gun and took a breath "Fuck me... I... I just shot at a Ward?!"
"She's not a Ward, not yet," Miss Militia gave me a brief glance, eyes crinkled as if smiling underneath her mask, then turned back to the cop, "and if I'm guessing right, she wanted you to shoot her. Right, Metalmorph?"
I shrugged while approaching them. "Better me than my dad." I turned towards him, and called out. "It's okay now dad, I'm fine!"
He struggled out, obviously shaken up by what just happened, anger stretching across his face as he stared at the shattered rear window for a few seconds before quickly glancing at me, Miss Militia, and finally fixating on the cop.
"You shot my daughter."
I sighed. "Dad, it's okay, it didn't hurt, and besides, it's not the first time I've been shot at today."
I got a look from all three of them for that, but it was Miss Militia that reacted first. "Empire?"
"Yeah," I nodded, frowning as I gave Miss Militia a hard stare, "and even they weren't the first."
"We'll talk more about that inside. Our people will escort you two up to the Director's office now, and I'll be along shortly, okay?"
"Yeah, I guess." I nodded noncommittally, then turned and wrapped my left arm around dad's waist, leading him inside. Rapid breaths and a fast heartbeat... adrenaline rush, I realized.
"Officer, if it helps you to know..." Miss Militia started, as the sliding door closed behind us. I shifted my attention away from that conversation and started giving the PRT's headquarters a critical eye. "Justified paranoia" was my first thought as we walked deeper. My peripheral sense's range dropped off significantly, but that may have had more to do with the sheer amount of information I was picking up versus anything intentional on their part.
Just as an example, the floor tiles would shift and click nearly-imperceptibly, weight sensors most likely, and we had walked through two doorframes sporting some manner of scanning technology that gave audible pings as I passed through. Our escorts didn't seem to mind, so acting like I didn't notice seemed the best approach.
The adjoining room, however, gave me pause. A more conventional x-ray and metal detection checkpoint stood between us and a set of elevators, and the strong magnetic fields made me feel more uncomfortable than my experiments with reproducing that trash can lid had early this morning.
Dad noticed my hesitation, as did our escort, and he leaned over to whisper in my left ear. "It's just a metal detector, kiddo."
"And I'm made of metal, dad. I... don't have a good feeling about this."
Dad gave one of our escorts a pointed look, and the guy rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry, sir, it's just standard procedure, everyone has to go through."
'Everyone' apparently included our armed escorts, though I had to wonder how much of that was just for show. Still, as we waited in line, the discomfort only got stronger the closer I got to the detector.
Dad pulled out his wallet and sat it on the x-ray conveyor belt, then stepped through the detector. Apparently satisfied, he picked up his wallet, stuffed it into his back pants pocket and then turned to me, nodding expectantly.
Discomfort welling up in me, I reached out and poked my right hand through the detector, and it gave out a shrill alarm as I felt my nanites involuntarily reacting to the strong magnetic fields, the links between them briefly breaking apart before I yanked my arm out and took a deep breath. Several quick conforming energy pulses washed over my right hand, straightening everything out. Strangely, my inner feeling of discomfort quickly bled away, even though I knew I'd still need to step through the damned thing.
Dad had already turned and looked ready to argue my case to the guards when I sighed loudly. "It's okay dad. I think I'm fine now."
He paused mid-breath and looked at me. "You sure?"
I shook my head, and then poked my right hand through once more. The detector gave off its shrill alarm again, but this time my nanites stayed in place. I pressed onward, ignoring the alarm, only for my body to fire off another conforming energy pulse from head to toe as the bulk of my form passed through the detector. The alarm abruptly cut out with an audible pop, and I couldn't help but smirk as smoke began slowly rising from an air vent at the top of the unit.
"Oh for crying out loud," one of the guards complained while he shook his head, even as our escorts quickly covered the amused looks on their faces with their hands, or just turning away. He gave me a pained look, and I shrugged in response.
As our small group stepped into one of the elevators, one of our escorts started chuckling. After seeing the looks from both dad and me, he clarified. "That last security checkpoint's just for show, everyone's under a microscope the moment you walk in, but if the public and politicians don't see the familiar security checkpoints they deal with at airports and bus terminals..."
"They start thinking you're being lax and wasting taxpayer money." Dad finished, with all of our escorts nodding.
"We're actually critically underfunded for a regional branch, though you wouldn't know it just from looking at us," the PRT guy continued, "anyway, you're the one that captured Hookwolf, so there was no point in putting you through that gauntlet, not even for show. Director's orders, though," he made fingerquotes, "everyone gets the same treatment."
The others shook their heads, one rolled his eyes as well, and that one then turned to me and smirked. "Now you probably won't hear this from the Director, and you didn't hear this from us, but Shadow Stalker? That girl was trouble before she ever joined the Wards--"
"She was working for Coil." I muttered under my breath while glaring at him, and was rewarded by looks of genuine shock and disgust from all three of them.
"That's news... but it explains a lot, actually." He didn't elaborate. "I don't know if the Director knew, and that's way above our combined paygrades anyway, but no matter what else happens today, you've got friends here in the PRT. Word travels fast."
The elevator doors parted, and our escorts quickly reassumed their quiet professional demeanor, though more than a couple times did I get a knowing smile-and-nod either from them or some of the others standing guard throughout the hallways.
"And here we are." We stopped outside a small waiting area consisting of just a few chairs, a small couch and a wall-mounted monitor only displaying the Brockton Bay PRT logo. "The Director's office is next door," our lead escort gestured to his left, "and someone will be by to call you in when she's ready to speak with you."
They turned and left the way we came, and I, meanwhile, took a seat facing the monitor, with dad sitting on the chair to my right. He let out a long sigh and gave me a weary look, before asking me "Taylor, I honestly hope this isn't what you'd consider a 'normal' day from now on. I don't think I can handle the stress, much less the cost."
"I've only been a cape for a day, dad." Not that he didn't have a point, and I couldn't help but wonder whether was I just complaining for the sake of complaining here.
"Yes, and that's what worries me kiddo. You've been shot at several times from both sides of the law, and it's not even lunch-time yet."
What could I say to that? God I felt guilty dragging him into things like this. I had to fix this, but I had no idea how. A few seconds later, dad muttered under his breath:
"...will they even pay for the window?"
I frowned at his sudden concern for something so mundane. "I can fix that, dad."
"Oh, how? I can't imagine independent heroes get paid much. If you joined the Wards, then yeah, they'd probably pay you enough that I wouldn't have to fight the city with a claim against the police department, but..."
I took a breath to protest his argument, then gave up at the sight of the grin forming on his face. "Da~ad! I'm serious, I can fix it! Like this." I snatched an empty, decorative ceramic vase off the table in front of us and effortlessly snapped off a handle. "Watch."
"Uh, Taylor, I doubt the PRT would take kindly to you..." he blinked, ceasing his protest as I held the handle against the vase with my left hand, and ran my thumb and index finger around the seams, a thin film of liquid metal flowing through the cracks as my nanites reattached the handle at a molecular level. "See?" I handed him the vase.
Dad took the vase in both hands, and tugged on the handle, blinking in surprise as it refused to budge. At that moment, my peripheral sense registered someone 'interesting' approaching from an adjacent room at a confident pace, and before he rounded the corner, I knew it was Armsmaster.
"That's... an incredibly useful and unique application of a Changer power, Metalmorph." I stood reflexively, almost in defense, fully aware that I likely looked like the kid whose hand just got caught in the cookie jar. He merely held out his right hand, gesturing for dad to hand him the vase. After a moment, dad did just that.
"You're technically correct, Mr. Hebert, although I doubt Director Piggot would look kindly upon me wasting her time with a vandalism charge for your daughter damaging a fake porcelain vase." He rotated it in his gloved hands, tugging on the handle as well, before nodding to himself. "Thinker, Changer, Striker, and Breaker. Impressive." He set the vase back down on the table, before turning to me. "There is, however, the issue of the phone call you placed a few minutes ago."
I cringed, even as dad's eyebrows furrowed. "She didn't place any phone call, Mister..."
"Armsmaster," he turned and stiffly offered his right hand for a brief handshake, "and yes, she did. With a stolen phone that belongs to a former Ward."
-----
Dad stood, and folded his arms. "Are you charging my daughter with a crime?"
"Hardly," Armsmaster didn't look the least bit intimidated, though I couldn't help but do a double take at his response. "We're more interested in what was said over that phone call versus the fact that your daughter is in possession of Shadow Stalker's personal phone." He turned back to me. "You do have the phone in your possession."
It wasn't a question, and I sighed in resignation. "Yes, and no."
Armsmaster frowned, looking distracted for a moment. "...You're telling the truth. Could you clarify?"
I froze for a second, reconsidering how Lisa and the other Undersiders had reacted to this aspect of my power. Clarifying meant demonstrating that I could both absorb and then reproduce normal technology, which carried a lot of dangerous implications.
I sat back down in the chair, folded my arms and stared straight ahead, as if to say 'don't bother me,' and both Armsmaster and dad frowned in reaction.
"Whatever it is, kiddo, it can't be much worse than what you've shown so far."
When I didn't budge, he looked up at Armsmaster and shrugged. "I'm sorry, sir, in the past when she'd get like this, I've learned not to pry unless it's important."
"If it involves powers in any way, it's important." Armsmaster looked at me. "Metalmorph, you're not in trouble, not yet, but if we're left to guess what could be so bad that you'd keep it a secret, we're generally going to assume the worst and work from there."
I sighed. Damnit. I didn't like it, but he had a point.
"Fine, here goes nothing," I muttered to myself, and stuck my right hand out, palm facing up. A ball of liquid metal erupted from my palm and slowly coalesced into the shape of Sophia's folded phone. I winced from the familiar discomfort but tried to ignore it, to push it aside, and this time around to not cut corners and let my power cheat like it did with the trash can lid. This phone had to work, and it had to be an exact duplicate.
Armsmaster's frown deepened, and he pulled his halberd from its magnetic mount at the back of his armor, and hovered the business end of the weapon over my phone. I blinked in recognition: he had a Geiger counter, as well as some other scanning devices, embedded in the axe-head undoubtedly feeding information to a heads-up display in his helmet, and the more I paid attention to the weapon, the more certain things stood out. Like the taser built into the pole's tip, or both ends having seams connected together by a line of interwoven carbon wire running the length of the weapon... grappling hooks?
I very-briefly entertained the thought of what I could learn from absorbing his halberd, then shook myself free of those thoughts and focused on finishing the phone. I hadn't gotten distracted like that since, well... since Sophia stabbed me with that dagger, now that I thought of it...
I leaned up to try handing Armsmaster the completed phone, yet he just gestured to the table with his halberd, and I set the phone down next to the vase. He nodded silently in return, and then tapped a panel on the side of his helmet underneath his right ear.
"Quarantine team to the Director's waiting lounge," he ordered to our collective shock, and after dad and I shared a brief look of worry, Armsmaster shrugged and put his weapon away. "Standard procedure. My gear says there's nothing dangerous, but the Director would insist on this regardless."
I watched as a few seconds later several PRT employees in what looked like heavy-duty hazmat gear walked in cautiously, one waving another Geiger counter around, running it past us and Armsmaster, even as he pointed to the vase and phone. "Everything on that table needs to go into isolation for inspection," he ordered, and one of the employees audibly groaned.
"We're gonna have to take the table too, then."
Armsmaster nodded and gestured for both of us to step aside. The phone and vase were each packaged in thick, opaque metallic bags before those were placed inside metal crates that my peripheral sense couldn't penetrate. I squinted, focusing my attention solely on the crate containing the phone, and felt my sensory power rapidly shift through modes I was already familiar with, some of them uncomfortably so, into the weird and unexplainable. "Seeing" radio waves didn't help like it sometimes would for, say, seeing through walls, or people for that matter. It shifted to a mode consisting of near-total darkness, with random streaks of light occasionally passing through everything except the boxes, to no apparent effect, but even that was too unpredictable to be of use…
Then with a sudden feeling of dizziness and confusion, my vision changed again, and things got really weird: a cool, wet breeze flowed past me, and I wasn't in the PRT's headquarters anymore, but standing, alone, on a flat gray-metal pier mere feet from an endless expanse of water on the outskirts of a city that most certainly wasn't Brockton Bay.
"What the hell?" I asked myself, the dizziness clearing up for just a moment as I took in the foreign architecture, the total lack of inhabitants, the multiple moons in the sky, and then the dizziness kicked in once more and I fell forward, collapsing onto my hands and knees.
"Taylor!" Dad lunged out and grabbed me by my left shoulder, helping me stand back up despite my confusion. My sight returned to normal, dad hovering close by my shoulder with a look of obvious concern, and Armsmaster to my right, halberd out, waving it over me and frowning deeply.
"Are you alright? Do you need to see a doctor?"
I shook my head, "no, I'm fine, I just lost my balance for a few seconds."
After a moment's hesitation, he sighed and nodded, placing his halberd back onto his back. "If you say so."
Dad sat back down, and motioned for me to join him. "What the hell happened there, kiddo?"
I gave Armsmaster a glare that all but screamed "private conversation," but relented after he didn't seem to get it. "I was trying to see through the quarantine boxes they used, but--"
"That should be impossible," he interrupted, folding his arms, "those crates are specifically designed to be impenetrable to any and all forms of active and passive scanning. Nothing short of a high-rated Thinker should be able to determine what's inside them without physically opening them."
I kept my mouth shut at that point. After a few seconds of silence, Armsmaster nodded to himself and quietly muttered, "I see," apparently satisfied with whatever he worked out. I wasn't going to confirm anything further for him, though.
"I think I've seen enough, send them in now please," an older woman's voice echoed out with a slight, but noticeable delay, and I realized I was hearing the Director's voice both from her office, and the radio broadcast being directed to Armsmaster's helmet. He nodded slightly, and addressed us a moment later. "Well, if you two are up for it," he paused, waiting for dad's acknowledgment, "then perhaps we should take this conversation to the Director's office?"
-----
Armsmaster stiffly held the door open for dad and me, nodding slightly once we'd walked in, before taking up a parade rest stance to the Director's right. The Director was considerably overweight, almost to the point of obese, and I could see a bunch of expensive medical equipment hooked up to one of her arms. She looked like a no-nonsense sort of woman, not your typical bureaucrat, and in other circumstances I don't think I'd be ashamed to say it might've been intimidating. She stood to shake dad's hand, and then offered me the same, but I was in no mood for pleasantries, folding my arms instead.
"Taylor..." Dad growled as he sat down, "you're being impolite."
I shook my head and sighed, before accepting her handshake just to get it over with.
"Sorry, ma'am," he apologized on my behalf.
She sat back down, while keeping her eyes on me, and the inklings of a smirk started to cross her face.
"It's understandable, Mr. Hebert, I understand you've both been through a lot these last couple of days."
"Hah," I snorted, folding my arms again. "That's putting it mildly."
"I suppose I should start out by asking if both of you are physically alright?"
An uncertain look flashed across my father's face for a moment as he glanced to me, and I shook my head in exasperation. "Relatively-speaking, yeah. We're fine."
"Good. Normally these sorts of conversations would start with pleasantries and smalltalk, but this isn't a normal meeting. What exactly happened out there?"
"Coil's men attempted a kidnapping," I told her, watching their reactions while keeping my 'face', well, facing her. Armsmaster remained still, but the Director blinked a couple times, with a deer-in-headlights look on her face, before reaching underneath her desk to flip an almost-inaudible switch.
The door to her office locked with an audible thud, metal shutters unrolled from above the windows and the faint sound of hissing air surrounded her office, quickly abating after a few seconds, though I could also feel something else working in the background, a sort of static hiss that was annoying in a way I couldn't quite put into words, sort of like an itch on your teeth. Annoying, but manageable.
"Sorry," she continued with a scowl on her face, "security precaution. I've just isolated my office from the rest of the building, so we can have this conversation without anyone listening in." She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her desk, hands folded together. "I'm not doubting you out-of-hand, Metalmorph, but do you have any proof?"
I squinted, both incensed that, as usual, my word was being doubted, and puzzled over her use of my cape name. "...You know who I am, Director. Why are you calling me 'Metalmorph'?"
"Because it's considered rude to do otherwise when addressing a cape in costume, and because calling a cape by their real name is a bad habit that can and does get people killed."
Ah. "Oh. Um, thanks?" I briefly thought back to all those times I'd gotten called into Principal Blackwell's office, being prompted for proof, and never being able to provide anything more than my word against everyone else's. But then, I couldn't mimic voices... "Yeah, I have proof, give me a second."
"You have her in sight?" I started reciting the conversation, mimicking Coil's voice, and the Director's eyes widened fractionally for a moment.
"The target, and her father, at Ninth-and-Earl, eastbound. Faded blue coupe. I'm three cars back."
"Assault teams are en-route, ETA two minutes."
Armsmaster shifted in place, tensing up, almost as if he wanted to be somewhere else right then and there.
"Continuing eastbound, target is... target is running, I might be made." I stopped for a moment to explain. "That was when I told dad we were being followed, and that it wasn't the people you assigned to watch our house."
Piggot nodded once, apparently not that bothered that I was aware our house was under surveillance, before I began again.
"Heavy cross-traffic at Ninth-and-Sentry, target isn't stopping. Permission to engage?"
"Negative. Maintain distance and stand-by, but do not engage." I frowned. "That's when we blew past the cop, he started chasing us, and I placed that call."
"With Shadow Stalker's personal phone, that you... acquired, no less," and she gave me a pointed look that screamed 'disapproval,' "sometime prior to your fight with Hookwolf this morning?"
"...Yeah," I sighed, defeated on that point, "how'd you know?"
Piggot leaned back and let out a long breath. "We knew Shadow Stalker had another phone in her possession, one that she technically wasn't supposed to have as a Ward." Dad tensed up, and Piggot nodded. "I know what you're going to ask, Mr. Hebert. It's a moot point. Shadow Stalker broke lockdown last night and assaulted another Ward in the process. Internally, we're treating her as a villain, which means Metalmorph is a very lucky hero right now." She smirked, looking back at me. "If it weren't for that, I could charge you with theft, but since Shadow Stalker has been released from the Wards and is being treated as a villain, it's not against the law for vigilantes to steal from villains, provided the stolen property isn't otherwise illegal to possess in the first place. On that front, you're fine."
I finally sat, letting myself relax a bit after clearing that hurdle.
"However," she broke eye contact, staring at her desk, "by using the phone for yourself, it's inadmissible as evidence, so if there's anything on it that could've helped your case at Winslow..."
Fuck. I balled my fists, wanting to hit something, but relented after Armsmaster tensed up again. I took a deep breath before letting it out.
"Emma's phone might still have copies of the shit she and Sophia sent eachother," I spat out.
She nodded, then gave me a fixed stare. "Perhaps. That's a concern more for the police's investigation."
I opened my mouth to object when she cut me off. "Do understand, Metalmorph, the police are handling the investigation of what went on at Winslow, our involvement only specifically pertains to parahumans, and Shadow Stalker is, as far as we know, the only other parahuman involved in that. Now, back to the issue of Coil, how do you know that the voice in that call was his?"
"...the fuck gives, Snakes? Your men aren't here, there's no unmarked van, nothing." I grinned as Piggot's jaw dropped and Armsmaster groaned. I couldn't help not to.
"You realize this was a test, Shadow Stalker. A test of your competence and your loyalty. The simplest of assassinations, easier than jobs you've accepted in the past, made easier with resources I provided at considerable expense."
"Bullshit! We both know damned well that worthless shit didn't cost you anything, the containment foam didn't fucking work, she shrugged that off, and the dagger was similarly useless Tinker trash. The rest of the gear? I don't have any fucking use for it!"
"Dagger?" Dad looked at me, suddenly worried. "What dagger?"
"Good question, Mr. Hebert." Piggot affirmed.
I held my right hand up, palm forward, and started reproducing the weapon, stopping only briefly to nod at Armsmaster when he drew his halberd once more. A minute and the uncomfortable sacrifice of so many nanites later, I handed the finished item to him. Like before, he looked it over briefly, even activating the hard light sheath, pursing his lips in surprise that it worked, then deactivated it and set it on the Director's desk.
"Quarantine, Armsmaster. You know the drill," she chided him, then looked at me worriedly, "but it looks like one of ours."
"Fucking Coil, fucking PRT, fucking Taylor... stupid bitch couldn't just stay in her place." I continued repeating in Sophia's voice as I locked eyes with Piggot. "She was working for Coil, and she's not the only one, Director. You're compromised." As the Director leaned back to stare at the ceiling, muttering under her breath, I turned to dad. "Sophia stabbed me in the stomach with that this morning." I shrugged nonchalantly, before noticing dad's look and added "It didn't hurt me."
Armsmaster picked up the dagger, and glanced at the Director once more, before she nodded at him. "Yes, go." She reached under her desk once more and flipped that switch again.
I let out a sigh as that damned annoying feeling went away, briefly amused as Armsmaster damn near sprinted out of the Director's office. I leaned back into my chair and folded my arms as the Director silently mouthed an obvious slew of silent profanities, still staring at the ceiling, before she gave me a look of frustrated resignation.
"I don't suppose, after all you've just dropped on my plate, you'd be considering--"
"Nope." I glared at her. "One of your Wards made my life a living hell for close to two years while also working for a supervillain, and I'm supposed to believe that you had no idea? I didn't come here to join the Wards, Director. I came here to tell you why not, and because my father had questions that he probably could've gotten answered just as well over the phone." I stood and turned towards the door, only stopping when he grabbed me by my left arm.
"Taylor?"
I shook my head and shrugged. "I'm just gonna go wait outside, dad." I pulled my arm free, continued towards the door, and turned to the Director halfway out the door. "My dad has a temper, and I'm not sure I want to be in here when he loses it."
------
I sat back down in the adjoining waiting room, glad for having been able to tell someone in charge of my gripes and actually getting listened to. Also, glad to put some distance between myself and her office's security measures. Though with nothing else better to do, I let my peripheral sense loose once more, focusing in the direction of the Director's office...
"There you are."
I froze up, redirecting my senses outward in all directions and finding nobody, before realizing the voice came from a speaker embedded in the wall.
"Uhm, can I help you?" I asked, unsure of why they were bothering me.
"Yes, actually, between the low resolution of the lowest-bidder camera they have installed here and the lack of a microphone on your end, I'm having to read lips, and it's hard to hold a decent conversation when you're making educated guesses as to what the other side is saying. There's a conference room two doors opposite of the Director's office. Could you move there please?"
I shrugged. "Fine, whatever."
The room had one of those hollywood style tables, long and lined with chairs. The only thing missing was the room having a nice view. I was so busy looking around that it took me a moment to notice the room's sole monitor. A monitor that wasn't displaying the PRT's logo, but a computer-generated image of a cape's mask. A mask a lot of people recognized.
"Dragon..." I whispered in awe, mostly to myself, stunned that I'd gone and graduated from talking to the head of the local Protectorate to the most famous Tinker on the planet.
"Metalmorph, though yes, I know who you are. Your identity is safe with me. Armsmaster's had some interesting things to say about you."
Yeah, I'll just bet. "What do you want?"
"A girl can't have a pleasant conversation with someone she finds interesting?" She sounded hurt, and I immediately felt guilty for snapping at her. "Well, like I said, Armsmaster finds you interesting, in an entirely non-creepy academic way before you ask," she chuckled, "which is just as well, because you're getting plenty of that from Leet."
Uh... "What?"
"Right, where to begin..." Beat. "Armsmaster called me up a few minutes ago raving about 'the second coming of me,' and then showed me a standard PRT-issue hard light dagger that, he says, you apparently assembled from a portion of your own mass. Does that hurt, by the way?"
I shook my head. "Hurt? No. Feels wrong though. Why?"
"Well, everything I have on you so far says that you're probably the single-most versatile, if not powerful, straight-line Changer in North America." The monitor changed to a security camera recording that I immediately recognized as being the Boardwalk branch of the library, and... crap. I'd been so dead-set on doing my research that I was caught on camera dropping my cloak and taking Emma's form. "Does that hurt, changing forms?"
"No." Demonstrating, I assumed Emma's form and voice. "I don't feel much of anything, actually. I just think of what I need or who I want to be, and my mass rearranges itself."
The looping camera footage changed to a freeze-frame from Uber and Leet's video, my reproduction of the hard light effect to shield myself from Hookwolf's blades. "And you can mimic technology too, normal technology and Tinker technology. Do you actually understand it?"
I thought about that. The mundane tech, like Sophia's cellphone, boiled down to a combination of my peripheral sense picking up radio waves, somehow innately decoding the signals to hear them, and then mimicking the hardware necessary to transmit them when placing a call... "No. Not enough to explain it. I'm just mimicking the shapes of everything involved and, I guess, my power is filling in the blanks."
"Not enough to understand, but enough to replicate. Changer-Thinker, then. And you learn the structures of things to mimic by...?"
I stared at the floor, not wanting to answer, the implications of what my power could do were already too fresh in my mind, particularly if I'd ever lost control of it.
The screen changed back to her mask. "Your power dismantles and reassembles it at the atomic level, doesn't it?"
How? Still in Emma's form, I looked back up at the screen in alarm and started giving serious consideration to running.
"Metalmorph, please, don't run, just calm down, you're fine. I know you're scared, you're hurting, you've just got powers that you barely understand but you can do amazing things with them but the means are scary and..." she sighed. "I want to help you, but to do that I have to understand what I'm working with."
I glared at the screen, immediately suspicious of her motives. "Why?"
She hesitated, so I stood, intent on leaving. "Because you need help, Metalmorph, but more importantly, you need a friend. I've looked into your situation at Winslow, and frankly, it's criminal what they've put you through. I can't even begin to understand what you went through, but I do know that you've gone for a very long time without being able to place your trust in anyone."
I turned back to the screen, incensed. "You're right. You have no idea what I've been through, and trust?" I snorted. "I had a best friend, and the past two years have taught me what friends and trust are worth. Why should I take that chance again, with you, when you don't even know me?"
Her mask avatar looked downwards, as if staring at the ground. "Because I'm going to take that chance with you," she whispered.
I... wait, "What?"
"I'm going to do something that I've never done before, but that I'm fully within my rights to try, and I'm going to take that chance with you, Metalmorph. I've discussed it at length with Armsmaster, and he agrees, that the Brockton Bay Wards, as they are right now, are the last place you need to be. It is not the kind of environment you need to be placed in."
I chuckled despite myself. "I just told the Director that in fewer words, Dragon."
Her avatar changed back, as if to look straight at me. "But that's not to say you don't need training, guidance, and supervision." It looked aside, to its right. "Not to mention a hug, every now and then." It looked back to me, but the mask took on a warm smile. "I'm well within my rights to take on an apprentice, Metalmorph, and I'd like you to be my apprentice. How would you like to join the Guild?"
"Wait, what!?"
AuthorNotes: Would all of the people reading this story give this post a "Like". Pyrion and I are curious to see how many people are actually reading it. Thank you. ^_^
Pyrion: Well, RJ figured out how to highlight text in google documents.
Robo Jesus: Indeed I did. A pity SB/SV doesn't have highlight tags though. Oh well.
Pyrion: For everyone complaining that there wasn't any obvious tie-in to the Stargate side of things, there you go. More will follow as Taylor encounters more things that throw her for a loop or two.
Robo Jesus: Or ten. But yes, we have been working on this story. A few delays now and then due to health concerns and random shit in real life, but we'll likely have one, maybe two more updates before a short Hiatus as Pyr moves to his new place.
Pyrion: Escrow closes March 14th, so we'll see...
Robo Jesus: Indeed. Until next time everyone~
by Pyrion and Robo Jesus (who wishes he was still drunk
)1.05
Admitting everything to dad, in retrospect, took a huge weight off of my shoulders, or at least it felt like it had. Dad's righteous fury was now aimed squarely at Winslow and the PRT, so if nothing else, I knew exactly how he felt.
His suggestion that we talk to the PRT, however, despite my intentions already having been made clear, threw me for a moment. I wasn't going to join the Wards, and if that sham of a press conference was of any indication, the PRT weren't about to fess up to their involvement anytime soon. Still, dad was being dad I supposed, so I'd humor him on this, not that it would change anything.
He picked up the landline and placed the call, and it took me a moment to realize that, for whatever reason, he knew exactly what number to call. No looking it up in a phonebook, no dialing zero for the operator... oh, yeah, two possibilities sprang to mind. Either dad and the PRT conversed often in his capacity as the head of the Dockworkers' Association, or the PRT had contacted him in my brief absence last night.
Probably the latter, since they likely suspected I was a cape by that point. Dad was calling from a landline, so while there were no radio signals to eavesdrop on, the phone handset itself vibrated just enough that I could listen in from where I sat...
"Brockton Bay Parahuman Response Team, this is Caroline speaking, may I ask who's calling?" The receptionist sounded... bored, I suppose.
"Daniel Hebert, of the Dockworkers' Association." So the former reason, then?
The receptionist's tone immediately changed, like she was half-asleep but now paying attention. "Mister Hebert, we've been expecting your call. Transferring you to Director Piggot now, please hold."
So... the latter reason, then. Dad gave me a brief smile, and I shrugged in response. It was still entirely pointless, but I wasn't losing anything by humoring him.
"PRT East-North-East, Emily Piggot speaking."
"Danny Hebert. We... spoke briefly, yesterday." Dad glanced at me again, with a bit more worry in his look. "My daughter got home about half an hour ago, we've... talked..."
The director's sigh was audible. "And it would probably be best if we discussed this in person, yes?"
Dad grit his teeth. "That would... probably be best, yes."
"Excellent. I'll be in my office until... six PM today. When should we expect you?"
Dad glanced in my direction once more. "Is the next hour or two good, kiddo?" I shrugged again. "Yeah, we'll be there around eleven."
"That works, I look forward to meeting you both. Good day Mister Hebert." She hung up.
...Huh. Entirely professional, if a bit clipped, but not the slightest hint of apprehension in her voice. Dad hung up the phone, and then took a deep breath, letting out a long sigh.
"I'm gonna go take a quick shower, get cleaned up for this then. You okay?"
I gave him a reluctant smile. "Yeah... I don't think I need to shower. No dirt or anything clinging to me, actually." I gave myself a brief inspection, for effect more than anything really, before shifting back to my normal, human self.
"Lucky you." He huffed in amusement, "don't have to worry about clothes either. That is a bullshit superpower, kiddo."
Halfway to the bathroom, he turned back to me, a wry grin on his face. "Does this mean I don't have to worry about buying you clothes ever again?"
I rolled my eyes. "Da~ad!"
"I won't complain if you won't. Never again having to feel awkward as a guy in the girls' clothing section of the store will be a plus."
Ugh. He was enjoying this way too much. Then I imagined such a scene, briefly remembered he had been the one to buy me those Armsmaster panties way back... yeah, now that I put that mental image in my head, I could see where he was coming from.
Suddenly needing a distraction to get that picture out of my mind, I plopped down on the couch and turned the television back on. Local news would undoubtedly still be going nuts over my capture of Hookwolf, and...
I blinked in shock.
I was on television. Metalmorph was on television. Or rather, my fight with Hookwolf was on television. Someone got close enough to record it? The caption at the bottom read "source: Uber & Leet @ YouTube," and I briefly recalled those portions of the fight when my attention was focused mainly on... yeah, okay, replaying the memories, and realizing in the process that I had perfect memory recall, there were several imperfectly-cloaked camera drones, likely Tinker-made, circling around the outside of the building.
The video they had uploaded was obviously clipped in places, set to cheesy action movie music that undoubtedly was ripped from some Earth-Aleph import or other, and featured annotations made by the villain duo that the news channel hadn't bothered to disable. Or maybe it was actually part of the video.
Finding out that Leet was apparently rabidly jealous of my power, or that Uber apparently found the whole situation hilarious? Not important. What was, was that my fight had been recorded, uploaded, and presumably those two were making money off of this. If nothing else, they certainly were getting a lot of attention. What the fuck?
Dad walked out, dripping wet with a towel around his waist just in time to see my act of shooting Hookwolf with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in slow-motion.
"Kiddo, is this what they're teaching you in school these days?"
Oh my fucking God. First chance I get, I'm so gonna kill those two losers! I turned to glance at dad, who still wore the smirk he had prior to his quick shower.
"What? Your old man can't have a sense of humor?"
-----
I wasn't sure if Dad was taking the whole situation in stride, but I was glad he wasn't asking me questions about it that still made me feel awkward even thinking about answering, and the smiles and reassurances he sent my way were something I appreciated. Having spent most of yesterday and this morning being worried sick, I suppose he more than earned the right to crack a few jokes at my expense. Dad then offered to cook me breakfast, which I initially turned down due to "not having to eat." He paused, my omelette still hanging from the spatula, and frowned.
"Bullshit, Taylor, superheroes need their Wheaties, and I can do better."
At this rate, it was probably best not to argue. While I hadn't actually needed to eat, it wasn't like I didn't benefit any from it, even if I was basically digesting the food on contact. He didn't need to know that, though, nor did he really need to know that I lacked a sense of taste.
"Feeling better?"
I frowned. No, I really wasn't. "Not really. I'm not looking forward to hearing whatever excuses the PRT has for Shadow Stalker, and--"
"We're not going there for that. Come hell or high water, we're gonna get restitution for this. From them, from the school, from Alan if I can help it."
"I don't want their money, dad." The money wouldn't make up for the last two years...
"It's not about that, the only way large organizations like the PRT or Winslow will pay attention to this and do something about it is if you hit them where it hurts. They can't do anything without large amounts of money, kiddo." He gave me a weary smirk. "Besides, if you're gonna be an independent superhero, you'll need an attorney, and a legal fund. Sooner or later some greedy asshole's gonna sue you for helping them."
I couldn't argue with that.
Dad took a few more minutes after breakfast to comb his hair and tidy up, and inwardly I counted myself ruefully lucky that getting myself ready to go anywhere wasn't something I really had to do anymore. Beyond picking an appropriate form, that is.
On that note, I started giving serious thought to what I was actually going to say when we got there. Not joining the Wards was a given, but prior to this morning my only reason was avoiding Sophia. Her trying to murder me, not once, but three times, locker, crossbow shot to the head and then the knife... four times if luring me into a fight with Hookwolf was intentional... right, she tried to kill me repeatedly over the course of two days and obviously had help. I mean, how the hell did she even know where I lived? If Emma had told her, it wasn't done over the phone - I still had her phone, including their full texting history, which just thinking about would've pushed my blood pressure through the roof if I had any blood... no, much as it galled me that Emma might not be in some way directly responsible for Sophia escalating to attempted murder, it meant that Coil, if he was whom Sophia was arguing with this morning, had somehow learned where I lived, and broke one of the unwritten rules by telling Sophia.
The only other possibility, that Lisa, or another one of the Undersiders, had sold me out to Coil, well, it didn't make much sense. Small-time villains-in-name-only that wanted me to join them, had prior issues with Shadow Stalker, and even went so far as unmasking themselves to try to convince me? I hadn't heard any of them place calls during the time I was among them, and too little time passed between me leaving while they all slept, and Sophia ambushing me, for that to be plausible.
No. I had to consider the possibility that the PRT had been compromised, that Sophia was but of possibly several moles Coil had among the heroes and their government handlers.
"You ready to go, Taylor?" I could see Dad smiling from behind me as he walked down the stairs to our living room.
Jarred out of my deep thoughts, I blinked a moment before nodding. "Yeah, I was just thinking."
He gave me a wry grin. "Anything you want to share?"
"Just trying to figure out how Sophia knew where we live. She had to have been close by when that accident happened." I stood and, after his gesture towards the front door, approached it and stepped out.
While our immediate neighborhood was otherwise quiet and mostly empty by this hour, I immediately had the feeling of being watched, and kicked my senses into overdrive in return. There were several vehicles parked in the area that I had never seen before, all of them with heavily-tinted windows, but the most obvious was a PRT-branded armored truck, parked half a block away on an adjacent street corner and partially-obscured by a row of hedges. I focused on it for a brief moment, and picked out two distinct lifesigns, both in the front seats. Of the other three foreign vehicles, one was cold and unoccupied, another had just been parked recently but was empty, and the last, a polished black sedan down the street closest to the main intersection, had a single occupant. I kept my focus on that vehicle without actually looking in its direction, as dad and I climbed into his car.
My suspicions quickly began to bear fruit as the unmarked sedan kept its distance while obviously following us. It wasn't noon yet, so traffic within our outskirts of the city was still relatively light. I let myself appear to relax in the passenger seat, but even as dad reached over and patted me on the shoulder while we waited at the third red light in as many minutes, I blinked in sudden concern as the black sedan's driver placed a phone call.
The other side answered after one ring. "You have her in sight?" I inhaled sharply, immediately recognizing the voice. Coil's voice.
"The target, and her father, at Ninth-and-Earl, eastbound. Faded blue coupe. I'm three cars back." A younger man's voice, one I didn't recognize.
Another voice on the line cut in, "Assault teams are en-route, ETA two minutes." I tensed up and glanced at dad.
He immediately noticed my sudden change in mood. "Something wrong?"
"Black car three rows back. We're being followed, and it's not the PRT."
The light turned green, and dad mashed the accelerator, hard.
"Continuing eastbound, target is... target is running, I might be made." No shit? Dad, meanwhile, had already blown through a yellow light at fifteen over the limit, and I dropped my focus in favor of scanning everything ahead of us. Taller buildings, denser cross-traffic and the next intersection had a red light. Dad slowed the car, but not by much.
"Heavy cross-traffic at Ninth-and-Sentry, target isn't stopping. Permission to engage?"
Barely a second passed before Coil responded. "Negative. Maintain distance and stand-by, but do not engage." Odd, we were only about a quarter-mile from the PRT headquarters building -- I gripped the right handrail of the door to steady myself as dad weaved through a gap in Sentry Street's one-way cross-traffic -- and we both let out the breath we'd been holding. Dad started chuckling to himself, more nerves than anything I suppose, when a loud screeching wail and strobing lights lit up from behind.
I winced, quickly reviewing the past few seconds in realization that a police car had been lying in wait in a side-alley not a hundred feet past the Sentry Street intersection. Dad groaned, and looked at me for advice. "Taylor?"
"How much farther?" I asked him, as all of the traffic lights turned green on our approach.
Dad looked at me briefly, brow furrowed in puzzlement. "'Bout half a mile, why?"
Rather than answer him, I focused my attention outward, letting my peripheral sense hone in on the closest cellphone tower. In my head, the inner workings of Sophia's phone assembled themselves, and I triggered the autodialer for the number she'd saved as "PRT."
Two rings later, an unfamiliar female voice answered. "Console, go."
"Is this the PRT?" I hurriedly inquired, briefly surprised at how easily my thoughts vocalized over the line despite me not actually speaking.
The other side paused briefly, "...who is this, and how'd you get this number?"
"I'm Metalmorph, and that's not important. My dad and I are headed to the PRT building, Coil just made an attempt on our lives, and we've got a cop chasing us now. We're about two minutes away."
The line on the other end went quiet for a moment, and by this time we had the PRT in sight, though the inner-city traffic had built up such that, seeing no alternative, dad cut us across an intersection into the opposing lanes, making a beeline for the parking garage entrance next door.
Several tense moments passed as dad quickly parked the car, diagonally, into two parking spaces, and the police car parked perpendicular to the parking spaces, blocking us off from backing out. The cop quickly exited his vehicle, gun drawn and pointed at dad from behind his car.
"Get out of the car, hands up where I can see them, now!"
Dad started to follow his order, but I had a better idea. I rolled down my window, leaned out and turned to liquid, spreading my nanomass out over the roof and hood of the car, enveloping it in only a few seconds. I focused the majority of my mass to a point adjacent to the left rear window, and began flowing outwards to retake my human form, hoping the cop would shift his attention (and aim) onto me.
It worked, almost too well. The cop, in a fit of panic, activated his radio and yelled out a code-number along with the phrase "parahuman contact" before he aimed his pistol at my barely-formed "head" and pulled the trigger repeatedly, the bullets harmlessly passing through my mass and shattering the rear window behind. Better it than dad, I supposed.
As my human features started coalescing, several things happened in quick succession: the cop, freaked out both by my transformation and apparent immunity to bullets, started to back away, putting more of his car between himself and me while keeping the gun leveled at my head and yelling "shots fired, no effect!" several times into his radio. From a side exit, PRT troops started streaming out with weapons drawn, an even mix of containment foam sprayers and what looked like energy rifles of some sort. And behind the mass of PRT troops, Miss Militia ran out, apparently at a full sprint.
"Everyone put your weapons down, dammit! Metalmorph is on our side!" She yelled at the PRT forces, before she dashed across the garage to get the cop's attention. "Officer, stand down! Metalmorph is not a villain!"
"Could've fooled me! They were doing 60 in a 35 zone cutting across traffic in all four lanes! Shit..." He lowered his gun and took a breath "Fuck me... I... I just shot at a Ward?!"
"She's not a Ward, not yet," Miss Militia gave me a brief glance, eyes crinkled as if smiling underneath her mask, then turned back to the cop, "and if I'm guessing right, she wanted you to shoot her. Right, Metalmorph?"
I shrugged while approaching them. "Better me than my dad." I turned towards him, and called out. "It's okay now dad, I'm fine!"
He struggled out, obviously shaken up by what just happened, anger stretching across his face as he stared at the shattered rear window for a few seconds before quickly glancing at me, Miss Militia, and finally fixating on the cop.
"You shot my daughter."
I sighed. "Dad, it's okay, it didn't hurt, and besides, it's not the first time I've been shot at today."
I got a look from all three of them for that, but it was Miss Militia that reacted first. "Empire?"
"Yeah," I nodded, frowning as I gave Miss Militia a hard stare, "and even they weren't the first."
"We'll talk more about that inside. Our people will escort you two up to the Director's office now, and I'll be along shortly, okay?"
"Yeah, I guess." I nodded noncommittally, then turned and wrapped my left arm around dad's waist, leading him inside. Rapid breaths and a fast heartbeat... adrenaline rush, I realized.
"Officer, if it helps you to know..." Miss Militia started, as the sliding door closed behind us. I shifted my attention away from that conversation and started giving the PRT's headquarters a critical eye. "Justified paranoia" was my first thought as we walked deeper. My peripheral sense's range dropped off significantly, but that may have had more to do with the sheer amount of information I was picking up versus anything intentional on their part.
Just as an example, the floor tiles would shift and click nearly-imperceptibly, weight sensors most likely, and we had walked through two doorframes sporting some manner of scanning technology that gave audible pings as I passed through. Our escorts didn't seem to mind, so acting like I didn't notice seemed the best approach.
The adjoining room, however, gave me pause. A more conventional x-ray and metal detection checkpoint stood between us and a set of elevators, and the strong magnetic fields made me feel more uncomfortable than my experiments with reproducing that trash can lid had early this morning.
Dad noticed my hesitation, as did our escort, and he leaned over to whisper in my left ear. "It's just a metal detector, kiddo."
"And I'm made of metal, dad. I... don't have a good feeling about this."
Dad gave one of our escorts a pointed look, and the guy rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry, sir, it's just standard procedure, everyone has to go through."
'Everyone' apparently included our armed escorts, though I had to wonder how much of that was just for show. Still, as we waited in line, the discomfort only got stronger the closer I got to the detector.
Dad pulled out his wallet and sat it on the x-ray conveyor belt, then stepped through the detector. Apparently satisfied, he picked up his wallet, stuffed it into his back pants pocket and then turned to me, nodding expectantly.
Discomfort welling up in me, I reached out and poked my right hand through the detector, and it gave out a shrill alarm as I felt my nanites involuntarily reacting to the strong magnetic fields, the links between them briefly breaking apart before I yanked my arm out and took a deep breath. Several quick conforming energy pulses washed over my right hand, straightening everything out. Strangely, my inner feeling of discomfort quickly bled away, even though I knew I'd still need to step through the damned thing.
Dad had already turned and looked ready to argue my case to the guards when I sighed loudly. "It's okay dad. I think I'm fine now."
He paused mid-breath and looked at me. "You sure?"
I shook my head, and then poked my right hand through once more. The detector gave off its shrill alarm again, but this time my nanites stayed in place. I pressed onward, ignoring the alarm, only for my body to fire off another conforming energy pulse from head to toe as the bulk of my form passed through the detector. The alarm abruptly cut out with an audible pop, and I couldn't help but smirk as smoke began slowly rising from an air vent at the top of the unit.
"Oh for crying out loud," one of the guards complained while he shook his head, even as our escorts quickly covered the amused looks on their faces with their hands, or just turning away. He gave me a pained look, and I shrugged in response.
As our small group stepped into one of the elevators, one of our escorts started chuckling. After seeing the looks from both dad and me, he clarified. "That last security checkpoint's just for show, everyone's under a microscope the moment you walk in, but if the public and politicians don't see the familiar security checkpoints they deal with at airports and bus terminals..."
"They start thinking you're being lax and wasting taxpayer money." Dad finished, with all of our escorts nodding.
"We're actually critically underfunded for a regional branch, though you wouldn't know it just from looking at us," the PRT guy continued, "anyway, you're the one that captured Hookwolf, so there was no point in putting you through that gauntlet, not even for show. Director's orders, though," he made fingerquotes, "everyone gets the same treatment."
The others shook their heads, one rolled his eyes as well, and that one then turned to me and smirked. "Now you probably won't hear this from the Director, and you didn't hear this from us, but Shadow Stalker? That girl was trouble before she ever joined the Wards--"
"She was working for Coil." I muttered under my breath while glaring at him, and was rewarded by looks of genuine shock and disgust from all three of them.
"That's news... but it explains a lot, actually." He didn't elaborate. "I don't know if the Director knew, and that's way above our combined paygrades anyway, but no matter what else happens today, you've got friends here in the PRT. Word travels fast."
The elevator doors parted, and our escorts quickly reassumed their quiet professional demeanor, though more than a couple times did I get a knowing smile-and-nod either from them or some of the others standing guard throughout the hallways.
"And here we are." We stopped outside a small waiting area consisting of just a few chairs, a small couch and a wall-mounted monitor only displaying the Brockton Bay PRT logo. "The Director's office is next door," our lead escort gestured to his left, "and someone will be by to call you in when she's ready to speak with you."
They turned and left the way we came, and I, meanwhile, took a seat facing the monitor, with dad sitting on the chair to my right. He let out a long sigh and gave me a weary look, before asking me "Taylor, I honestly hope this isn't what you'd consider a 'normal' day from now on. I don't think I can handle the stress, much less the cost."
"I've only been a cape for a day, dad." Not that he didn't have a point, and I couldn't help but wonder whether was I just complaining for the sake of complaining here.
"Yes, and that's what worries me kiddo. You've been shot at several times from both sides of the law, and it's not even lunch-time yet."
What could I say to that? God I felt guilty dragging him into things like this. I had to fix this, but I had no idea how. A few seconds later, dad muttered under his breath:
"...will they even pay for the window?"
I frowned at his sudden concern for something so mundane. "I can fix that, dad."
"Oh, how? I can't imagine independent heroes get paid much. If you joined the Wards, then yeah, they'd probably pay you enough that I wouldn't have to fight the city with a claim against the police department, but..."
I took a breath to protest his argument, then gave up at the sight of the grin forming on his face. "Da~ad! I'm serious, I can fix it! Like this." I snatched an empty, decorative ceramic vase off the table in front of us and effortlessly snapped off a handle. "Watch."
"Uh, Taylor, I doubt the PRT would take kindly to you..." he blinked, ceasing his protest as I held the handle against the vase with my left hand, and ran my thumb and index finger around the seams, a thin film of liquid metal flowing through the cracks as my nanites reattached the handle at a molecular level. "See?" I handed him the vase.
Dad took the vase in both hands, and tugged on the handle, blinking in surprise as it refused to budge. At that moment, my peripheral sense registered someone 'interesting' approaching from an adjacent room at a confident pace, and before he rounded the corner, I knew it was Armsmaster.
"That's... an incredibly useful and unique application of a Changer power, Metalmorph." I stood reflexively, almost in defense, fully aware that I likely looked like the kid whose hand just got caught in the cookie jar. He merely held out his right hand, gesturing for dad to hand him the vase. After a moment, dad did just that.
"You're technically correct, Mr. Hebert, although I doubt Director Piggot would look kindly upon me wasting her time with a vandalism charge for your daughter damaging a fake porcelain vase." He rotated it in his gloved hands, tugging on the handle as well, before nodding to himself. "Thinker, Changer, Striker, and Breaker. Impressive." He set the vase back down on the table, before turning to me. "There is, however, the issue of the phone call you placed a few minutes ago."
I cringed, even as dad's eyebrows furrowed. "She didn't place any phone call, Mister..."
"Armsmaster," he turned and stiffly offered his right hand for a brief handshake, "and yes, she did. With a stolen phone that belongs to a former Ward."
-----
Dad stood, and folded his arms. "Are you charging my daughter with a crime?"
"Hardly," Armsmaster didn't look the least bit intimidated, though I couldn't help but do a double take at his response. "We're more interested in what was said over that phone call versus the fact that your daughter is in possession of Shadow Stalker's personal phone." He turned back to me. "You do have the phone in your possession."
It wasn't a question, and I sighed in resignation. "Yes, and no."
Armsmaster frowned, looking distracted for a moment. "...You're telling the truth. Could you clarify?"
I froze for a second, reconsidering how Lisa and the other Undersiders had reacted to this aspect of my power. Clarifying meant demonstrating that I could both absorb and then reproduce normal technology, which carried a lot of dangerous implications.
I sat back down in the chair, folded my arms and stared straight ahead, as if to say 'don't bother me,' and both Armsmaster and dad frowned in reaction.
"Whatever it is, kiddo, it can't be much worse than what you've shown so far."
When I didn't budge, he looked up at Armsmaster and shrugged. "I'm sorry, sir, in the past when she'd get like this, I've learned not to pry unless it's important."
"If it involves powers in any way, it's important." Armsmaster looked at me. "Metalmorph, you're not in trouble, not yet, but if we're left to guess what could be so bad that you'd keep it a secret, we're generally going to assume the worst and work from there."
I sighed. Damnit. I didn't like it, but he had a point.
"Fine, here goes nothing," I muttered to myself, and stuck my right hand out, palm facing up. A ball of liquid metal erupted from my palm and slowly coalesced into the shape of Sophia's folded phone. I winced from the familiar discomfort but tried to ignore it, to push it aside, and this time around to not cut corners and let my power cheat like it did with the trash can lid. This phone had to work, and it had to be an exact duplicate.
Armsmaster's frown deepened, and he pulled his halberd from its magnetic mount at the back of his armor, and hovered the business end of the weapon over my phone. I blinked in recognition: he had a Geiger counter, as well as some other scanning devices, embedded in the axe-head undoubtedly feeding information to a heads-up display in his helmet, and the more I paid attention to the weapon, the more certain things stood out. Like the taser built into the pole's tip, or both ends having seams connected together by a line of interwoven carbon wire running the length of the weapon... grappling hooks?
I very-briefly entertained the thought of what I could learn from absorbing his halberd, then shook myself free of those thoughts and focused on finishing the phone. I hadn't gotten distracted like that since, well... since Sophia stabbed me with that dagger, now that I thought of it...
I leaned up to try handing Armsmaster the completed phone, yet he just gestured to the table with his halberd, and I set the phone down next to the vase. He nodded silently in return, and then tapped a panel on the side of his helmet underneath his right ear.
"Quarantine team to the Director's waiting lounge," he ordered to our collective shock, and after dad and I shared a brief look of worry, Armsmaster shrugged and put his weapon away. "Standard procedure. My gear says there's nothing dangerous, but the Director would insist on this regardless."
I watched as a few seconds later several PRT employees in what looked like heavy-duty hazmat gear walked in cautiously, one waving another Geiger counter around, running it past us and Armsmaster, even as he pointed to the vase and phone. "Everything on that table needs to go into isolation for inspection," he ordered, and one of the employees audibly groaned.
"We're gonna have to take the table too, then."
Armsmaster nodded and gestured for both of us to step aside. The phone and vase were each packaged in thick, opaque metallic bags before those were placed inside metal crates that my peripheral sense couldn't penetrate. I squinted, focusing my attention solely on the crate containing the phone, and felt my sensory power rapidly shift through modes I was already familiar with, some of them uncomfortably so, into the weird and unexplainable. "Seeing" radio waves didn't help like it sometimes would for, say, seeing through walls, or people for that matter. It shifted to a mode consisting of near-total darkness, with random streaks of light occasionally passing through everything except the boxes, to no apparent effect, but even that was too unpredictable to be of use…
Then with a sudden feeling of dizziness and confusion, my vision changed again, and things got really weird: a cool, wet breeze flowed past me, and I wasn't in the PRT's headquarters anymore, but standing, alone, on a flat gray-metal pier mere feet from an endless expanse of water on the outskirts of a city that most certainly wasn't Brockton Bay.
"What the hell?" I asked myself, the dizziness clearing up for just a moment as I took in the foreign architecture, the total lack of inhabitants, the multiple moons in the sky, and then the dizziness kicked in once more and I fell forward, collapsing onto my hands and knees.
"Taylor!" Dad lunged out and grabbed me by my left shoulder, helping me stand back up despite my confusion. My sight returned to normal, dad hovering close by my shoulder with a look of obvious concern, and Armsmaster to my right, halberd out, waving it over me and frowning deeply.
"Are you alright? Do you need to see a doctor?"
I shook my head, "no, I'm fine, I just lost my balance for a few seconds."
After a moment's hesitation, he sighed and nodded, placing his halberd back onto his back. "If you say so."
Dad sat back down, and motioned for me to join him. "What the hell happened there, kiddo?"
I gave Armsmaster a glare that all but screamed "private conversation," but relented after he didn't seem to get it. "I was trying to see through the quarantine boxes they used, but--"
"That should be impossible," he interrupted, folding his arms, "those crates are specifically designed to be impenetrable to any and all forms of active and passive scanning. Nothing short of a high-rated Thinker should be able to determine what's inside them without physically opening them."
I kept my mouth shut at that point. After a few seconds of silence, Armsmaster nodded to himself and quietly muttered, "I see," apparently satisfied with whatever he worked out. I wasn't going to confirm anything further for him, though.
"I think I've seen enough, send them in now please," an older woman's voice echoed out with a slight, but noticeable delay, and I realized I was hearing the Director's voice both from her office, and the radio broadcast being directed to Armsmaster's helmet. He nodded slightly, and addressed us a moment later. "Well, if you two are up for it," he paused, waiting for dad's acknowledgment, "then perhaps we should take this conversation to the Director's office?"
-----
Armsmaster stiffly held the door open for dad and me, nodding slightly once we'd walked in, before taking up a parade rest stance to the Director's right. The Director was considerably overweight, almost to the point of obese, and I could see a bunch of expensive medical equipment hooked up to one of her arms. She looked like a no-nonsense sort of woman, not your typical bureaucrat, and in other circumstances I don't think I'd be ashamed to say it might've been intimidating. She stood to shake dad's hand, and then offered me the same, but I was in no mood for pleasantries, folding my arms instead.
"Taylor..." Dad growled as he sat down, "you're being impolite."
I shook my head and sighed, before accepting her handshake just to get it over with.
"Sorry, ma'am," he apologized on my behalf.
She sat back down, while keeping her eyes on me, and the inklings of a smirk started to cross her face.
"It's understandable, Mr. Hebert, I understand you've both been through a lot these last couple of days."
"Hah," I snorted, folding my arms again. "That's putting it mildly."
"I suppose I should start out by asking if both of you are physically alright?"
An uncertain look flashed across my father's face for a moment as he glanced to me, and I shook my head in exasperation. "Relatively-speaking, yeah. We're fine."
"Good. Normally these sorts of conversations would start with pleasantries and smalltalk, but this isn't a normal meeting. What exactly happened out there?"
"Coil's men attempted a kidnapping," I told her, watching their reactions while keeping my 'face', well, facing her. Armsmaster remained still, but the Director blinked a couple times, with a deer-in-headlights look on her face, before reaching underneath her desk to flip an almost-inaudible switch.
The door to her office locked with an audible thud, metal shutters unrolled from above the windows and the faint sound of hissing air surrounded her office, quickly abating after a few seconds, though I could also feel something else working in the background, a sort of static hiss that was annoying in a way I couldn't quite put into words, sort of like an itch on your teeth. Annoying, but manageable.
"Sorry," she continued with a scowl on her face, "security precaution. I've just isolated my office from the rest of the building, so we can have this conversation without anyone listening in." She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her desk, hands folded together. "I'm not doubting you out-of-hand, Metalmorph, but do you have any proof?"
I squinted, both incensed that, as usual, my word was being doubted, and puzzled over her use of my cape name. "...You know who I am, Director. Why are you calling me 'Metalmorph'?"
"Because it's considered rude to do otherwise when addressing a cape in costume, and because calling a cape by their real name is a bad habit that can and does get people killed."
Ah. "Oh. Um, thanks?" I briefly thought back to all those times I'd gotten called into Principal Blackwell's office, being prompted for proof, and never being able to provide anything more than my word against everyone else's. But then, I couldn't mimic voices... "Yeah, I have proof, give me a second."
"You have her in sight?" I started reciting the conversation, mimicking Coil's voice, and the Director's eyes widened fractionally for a moment.
"The target, and her father, at Ninth-and-Earl, eastbound. Faded blue coupe. I'm three cars back."
"Assault teams are en-route, ETA two minutes."
Armsmaster shifted in place, tensing up, almost as if he wanted to be somewhere else right then and there.
"Continuing eastbound, target is... target is running, I might be made." I stopped for a moment to explain. "That was when I told dad we were being followed, and that it wasn't the people you assigned to watch our house."
Piggot nodded once, apparently not that bothered that I was aware our house was under surveillance, before I began again.
"Heavy cross-traffic at Ninth-and-Sentry, target isn't stopping. Permission to engage?"
"Negative. Maintain distance and stand-by, but do not engage." I frowned. "That's when we blew past the cop, he started chasing us, and I placed that call."
"With Shadow Stalker's personal phone, that you... acquired, no less," and she gave me a pointed look that screamed 'disapproval,' "sometime prior to your fight with Hookwolf this morning?"
"...Yeah," I sighed, defeated on that point, "how'd you know?"
Piggot leaned back and let out a long breath. "We knew Shadow Stalker had another phone in her possession, one that she technically wasn't supposed to have as a Ward." Dad tensed up, and Piggot nodded. "I know what you're going to ask, Mr. Hebert. It's a moot point. Shadow Stalker broke lockdown last night and assaulted another Ward in the process. Internally, we're treating her as a villain, which means Metalmorph is a very lucky hero right now." She smirked, looking back at me. "If it weren't for that, I could charge you with theft, but since Shadow Stalker has been released from the Wards and is being treated as a villain, it's not against the law for vigilantes to steal from villains, provided the stolen property isn't otherwise illegal to possess in the first place. On that front, you're fine."
I finally sat, letting myself relax a bit after clearing that hurdle.
"However," she broke eye contact, staring at her desk, "by using the phone for yourself, it's inadmissible as evidence, so if there's anything on it that could've helped your case at Winslow..."
Fuck. I balled my fists, wanting to hit something, but relented after Armsmaster tensed up again. I took a deep breath before letting it out.
"Emma's phone might still have copies of the shit she and Sophia sent eachother," I spat out.
She nodded, then gave me a fixed stare. "Perhaps. That's a concern more for the police's investigation."
I opened my mouth to object when she cut me off. "Do understand, Metalmorph, the police are handling the investigation of what went on at Winslow, our involvement only specifically pertains to parahumans, and Shadow Stalker is, as far as we know, the only other parahuman involved in that. Now, back to the issue of Coil, how do you know that the voice in that call was his?"
"...the fuck gives, Snakes? Your men aren't here, there's no unmarked van, nothing." I grinned as Piggot's jaw dropped and Armsmaster groaned. I couldn't help not to.
"You realize this was a test, Shadow Stalker. A test of your competence and your loyalty. The simplest of assassinations, easier than jobs you've accepted in the past, made easier with resources I provided at considerable expense."
"Bullshit! We both know damned well that worthless shit didn't cost you anything, the containment foam didn't fucking work, she shrugged that off, and the dagger was similarly useless Tinker trash. The rest of the gear? I don't have any fucking use for it!"
"Dagger?" Dad looked at me, suddenly worried. "What dagger?"
"Good question, Mr. Hebert." Piggot affirmed.
I held my right hand up, palm forward, and started reproducing the weapon, stopping only briefly to nod at Armsmaster when he drew his halberd once more. A minute and the uncomfortable sacrifice of so many nanites later, I handed the finished item to him. Like before, he looked it over briefly, even activating the hard light sheath, pursing his lips in surprise that it worked, then deactivated it and set it on the Director's desk.
"Quarantine, Armsmaster. You know the drill," she chided him, then looked at me worriedly, "but it looks like one of ours."
"Fucking Coil, fucking PRT, fucking Taylor... stupid bitch couldn't just stay in her place." I continued repeating in Sophia's voice as I locked eyes with Piggot. "She was working for Coil, and she's not the only one, Director. You're compromised." As the Director leaned back to stare at the ceiling, muttering under her breath, I turned to dad. "Sophia stabbed me in the stomach with that this morning." I shrugged nonchalantly, before noticing dad's look and added "It didn't hurt me."
Armsmaster picked up the dagger, and glanced at the Director once more, before she nodded at him. "Yes, go." She reached under her desk once more and flipped that switch again.
I let out a sigh as that damned annoying feeling went away, briefly amused as Armsmaster damn near sprinted out of the Director's office. I leaned back into my chair and folded my arms as the Director silently mouthed an obvious slew of silent profanities, still staring at the ceiling, before she gave me a look of frustrated resignation.
"I don't suppose, after all you've just dropped on my plate, you'd be considering--"
"Nope." I glared at her. "One of your Wards made my life a living hell for close to two years while also working for a supervillain, and I'm supposed to believe that you had no idea? I didn't come here to join the Wards, Director. I came here to tell you why not, and because my father had questions that he probably could've gotten answered just as well over the phone." I stood and turned towards the door, only stopping when he grabbed me by my left arm.
"Taylor?"
I shook my head and shrugged. "I'm just gonna go wait outside, dad." I pulled my arm free, continued towards the door, and turned to the Director halfway out the door. "My dad has a temper, and I'm not sure I want to be in here when he loses it."
------
I sat back down in the adjoining waiting room, glad for having been able to tell someone in charge of my gripes and actually getting listened to. Also, glad to put some distance between myself and her office's security measures. Though with nothing else better to do, I let my peripheral sense loose once more, focusing in the direction of the Director's office...
"There you are."
I froze up, redirecting my senses outward in all directions and finding nobody, before realizing the voice came from a speaker embedded in the wall.
"Uhm, can I help you?" I asked, unsure of why they were bothering me.
"Yes, actually, between the low resolution of the lowest-bidder camera they have installed here and the lack of a microphone on your end, I'm having to read lips, and it's hard to hold a decent conversation when you're making educated guesses as to what the other side is saying. There's a conference room two doors opposite of the Director's office. Could you move there please?"
I shrugged. "Fine, whatever."
The room had one of those hollywood style tables, long and lined with chairs. The only thing missing was the room having a nice view. I was so busy looking around that it took me a moment to notice the room's sole monitor. A monitor that wasn't displaying the PRT's logo, but a computer-generated image of a cape's mask. A mask a lot of people recognized.
"Dragon..." I whispered in awe, mostly to myself, stunned that I'd gone and graduated from talking to the head of the local Protectorate to the most famous Tinker on the planet.
"Metalmorph, though yes, I know who you are. Your identity is safe with me. Armsmaster's had some interesting things to say about you."
Yeah, I'll just bet. "What do you want?"
"A girl can't have a pleasant conversation with someone she finds interesting?" She sounded hurt, and I immediately felt guilty for snapping at her. "Well, like I said, Armsmaster finds you interesting, in an entirely non-creepy academic way before you ask," she chuckled, "which is just as well, because you're getting plenty of that from Leet."
Uh... "What?"
"Right, where to begin..." Beat. "Armsmaster called me up a few minutes ago raving about 'the second coming of me,' and then showed me a standard PRT-issue hard light dagger that, he says, you apparently assembled from a portion of your own mass. Does that hurt, by the way?"
I shook my head. "Hurt? No. Feels wrong though. Why?"
"Well, everything I have on you so far says that you're probably the single-most versatile, if not powerful, straight-line Changer in North America." The monitor changed to a security camera recording that I immediately recognized as being the Boardwalk branch of the library, and... crap. I'd been so dead-set on doing my research that I was caught on camera dropping my cloak and taking Emma's form. "Does that hurt, changing forms?"
"No." Demonstrating, I assumed Emma's form and voice. "I don't feel much of anything, actually. I just think of what I need or who I want to be, and my mass rearranges itself."
The looping camera footage changed to a freeze-frame from Uber and Leet's video, my reproduction of the hard light effect to shield myself from Hookwolf's blades. "And you can mimic technology too, normal technology and Tinker technology. Do you actually understand it?"
I thought about that. The mundane tech, like Sophia's cellphone, boiled down to a combination of my peripheral sense picking up radio waves, somehow innately decoding the signals to hear them, and then mimicking the hardware necessary to transmit them when placing a call... "No. Not enough to explain it. I'm just mimicking the shapes of everything involved and, I guess, my power is filling in the blanks."
"Not enough to understand, but enough to replicate. Changer-Thinker, then. And you learn the structures of things to mimic by...?"
I stared at the floor, not wanting to answer, the implications of what my power could do were already too fresh in my mind, particularly if I'd ever lost control of it.
The screen changed back to her mask. "Your power dismantles and reassembles it at the atomic level, doesn't it?"
How? Still in Emma's form, I looked back up at the screen in alarm and started giving serious consideration to running.
"Metalmorph, please, don't run, just calm down, you're fine. I know you're scared, you're hurting, you've just got powers that you barely understand but you can do amazing things with them but the means are scary and..." she sighed. "I want to help you, but to do that I have to understand what I'm working with."
I glared at the screen, immediately suspicious of her motives. "Why?"
She hesitated, so I stood, intent on leaving. "Because you need help, Metalmorph, but more importantly, you need a friend. I've looked into your situation at Winslow, and frankly, it's criminal what they've put you through. I can't even begin to understand what you went through, but I do know that you've gone for a very long time without being able to place your trust in anyone."
I turned back to the screen, incensed. "You're right. You have no idea what I've been through, and trust?" I snorted. "I had a best friend, and the past two years have taught me what friends and trust are worth. Why should I take that chance again, with you, when you don't even know me?"
Her mask avatar looked downwards, as if staring at the ground. "Because I'm going to take that chance with you," she whispered.
I... wait, "What?"
"I'm going to do something that I've never done before, but that I'm fully within my rights to try, and I'm going to take that chance with you, Metalmorph. I've discussed it at length with Armsmaster, and he agrees, that the Brockton Bay Wards, as they are right now, are the last place you need to be. It is not the kind of environment you need to be placed in."
I chuckled despite myself. "I just told the Director that in fewer words, Dragon."
Her avatar changed back, as if to look straight at me. "But that's not to say you don't need training, guidance, and supervision." It looked aside, to its right. "Not to mention a hug, every now and then." It looked back to me, but the mask took on a warm smile. "I'm well within my rights to take on an apprentice, Metalmorph, and I'd like you to be my apprentice. How would you like to join the Guild?"
"Wait, what!?"
AuthorNotes: Would all of the people reading this story give this post a "Like". Pyrion and I are curious to see how many people are actually reading it. Thank you. ^_^
Pyrion: Well, RJ figured out how to highlight text in google documents.
Robo Jesus: Indeed I did.
A pity SB/SV doesn't have highlight tags though. Oh well.Pyrion: For everyone complaining that there wasn't any obvious tie-in to the Stargate side of things, there you go. More will follow as Taylor encounters more things that throw her for a loop or two.
Robo Jesus: Or ten. But yes, we have been working on this story. A few delays now and then due to health concerns and random shit in real life, but we'll likely have one, maybe two more updates before a short Hiatus as Pyr moves to his new place.
Pyrion: Escrow closes March 14th, so we'll see...
Robo Jesus: Indeed. Until next time everyone~
Last edited: