Apprentice
"Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are."
The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli and a book Rebecca Costa-Brown had never really liked, but she couldn't help thinking about it as she took a small drink of water. She'd called for a small break for everyone to empty bladders and refill coffee. No one objected. The directors still online tirelessly sniped at each other on the call with little borderline personal jabs about the latest news in their respective cities. She excused herself citing a run down to the snack bar, muted her microphone and alt-tabbed, knowing that her tile on screen would go blank so no one would assume she was still there.
She made another call on a very private line. She waited a moment for the warning chime to play before speaking. "Alexandria, you have a personal interest in Farseer as an A-Class, potential S-Class parahuman without an Endbringer blind spot. You would like to meet her in person, deadline next two weeks."
The reply came in the familiar soft but clipped tones she herself frequently adopted for official business. It masked the peculiarities of her voice. "Understood, and thank you. I will make the arrangements."
To the public, Alexandria was a nigh-invincible heroine that served as the head of the Los Angeles Protectorate. She was the eponymous Alexandria package, known for being unstoppable. The truth was significantly more complicated.
"Any developments?"
Alexandria hummed for a moment. "None worthy of note."
"Keep up the good work then." And she did do good work, had been for the past seventeen years. Rebecca hung up and then made that snack run.
When she came back, West was just settling into her seat as the last of the directors to reconvene and Danny Hebert was turned completely around in his chair, talking to his daughter. In spite of herself, Rebecca felt her eyebrows creep upward as she spared a look towards the PRT ENE tile.
Emily Piggot stared back innocently.
As the meeting had been on hold,
technically speaking Farseer as a
PRT employee would be allowed access to the room, especially as her father was there. The problem would be removing her.
"Chief Director, might I request that Farseer attends the remainder of the meeting?" Dragon asked. "This does involve her, after all."
Right on cue, she thought. They had just gone over, extensively and exhaustively, the amount of ways Farseer would be an asset to any PRT branch she ended up in. And she was an asset, in more ways than they knew. Now that she was in plain sight of the directors, the obvious question would begin to crop up in their minds.
'Why not have her choose?'
"Of course." Rebecca smiled. "We've covered most of the discussion points already. I don't see any harm in it."
The answer was, because she was a child that had just come into her powers. There was a tendency to assume that answers derived from Thinker powers were
correct answers. It was a reasonable assumption, much in the same way people would assume that someone with a high IQ or had significant academic achievements were
right and those less intelligent were then
wrong.
She could only wish things were that simple.
Thinkers commonly bought into their own hubris. That could not be allowed to happen with this one. More than anything else, Taylor Hebert needed to grow as a person, a hero that would be the world's Atlas for when the sky began to collapse. Cauldron knew she had the potential.
When she wanted to be, Contessa was an excellent judge of character.
Unfortunately, Rebecca was well aware that the quickest way to get a teenager to do exactly what you don't want them to, is to say that they can't do it.
"Farseer." Taylor looked up at the screen, seemingly a bit curious. Rebecca carefully kept her face clear of involuntary expressions. "Would you like to sit in on this?"
The girl took a moment. Her eyes traveled in a vague circular pattern around the screen, looking at every face and reading their titles. A few Directors shifted uneasily as the green eyes landed on them calmly. When she came back to Rebecca, her face seemed a bit chagrined.
"If I may ask three questions before I leave?"
That was a very specific number. For no particular reason she could put a finger on, Rebecca found herself a bit apprehensive about what exactly those questions were. Internally, she crossed her fingers and hoped that it wouldn't end up being too incriminating. "Go ahead."
The girl nodded. "Is my Thinker rating final?"
Internal sigh of relief. "Not yet."
She flashed a small contented smile and turned her eyes away. "Mr. Richards, am I correct in assuming you are in the WEDGDG headquarters in Los Angeles right now?"
"Mhm." Then the man choked on cigarette smoke, nearly falling off his chair hacking up a lung as his eyes went wide and scared. He pounded on the desk, struggling to get back some air as the Directors almost as one paused for those few crucial seconds. Was he genuinely choking on smoke or were they watching Farseer attack him? If she was, what should they
do? Richards made one last gasp and a few light coughs before rattling, "What the
fuck?"
"Explain!" Rebecca cracked her voice like a whip.
Farseer seemed completely at ease. "If I have a point of reference, I can thought-talk to people. My range is restricted, too far and the message gets garbled." She turned her head slightly and West paled, mouth half-open. "Seattle." She then frowned at Dragon's tile. "Can't find you, for some reason."
Dragon's avatar adopted a slightly puzzled expression. "That's a bit odd. Might it have something to do with being a Noctis cape?"
"Don't need to sleep?"
"Yes."
Farseer frowned harder. She didn't quite believe that. "Maybe."
Rebecca had the sudden urge to rub at her temples. There went an entire two-hour discussion made completely irrelevant by the reveal of yet another ability, one that had next to no precedent. It was no wonder Richards had reacted badly. There was only one other being on the planet that could project sound into thoughts. Farseer made it sound almost harmless. Thought-talking?
Really?
She made the mental note to shove the girl right back into the hands of the experts and tell them not to let her go until she had squealed every last power she had. "Farseer?"
"Yes?"
The Chief Director almost chuckled as she realized; that made four questions. "Stop it."
Taylor smiled.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
"Did you know about her, thought talking?" She asked Emily later after the Directors had been released back to their duties. For now, the Farseer would remain in Brockton Bay with a possibility of traveling to Boston and New York to get her used to the idea of relocating. Her little stunt had earned herself a grace period until they could figure out the limitations of that ability, what it meant for the subject of 'telepathy' in parahumans and how to keep certain unsavory comparisons out of sight.
Her trigger didn't come with any feathers, thank God for small mercies.
Director Piggot hemmed and hawed for a bit. "There was a potential mention in a report about the troopers caught up in her temper tantrum over Shadow Stalker."
"Potential mention?" Rebecca asked dryly.
"At the time, there was reasonable doubt that it was direct communication via a power and not that she simply had said it out loud. It was noted, but ultimately disregarded."
"She claimed to be capable of reading minds when she returned to the building," Rebecca gently reminded the woman and Piggot grimaced.
"Her ability to sense emotions and intent, coupled with being able to see micro expressions with a great deal of accuracy could allow for that." Rebecca simply stared at Emily until the older woman shrugged. "Believable bullshit."
"Well," she said with a wry smile. "It appears that Farseer's believable bullshit account is now in the red."
Emily just gave her a very long-suffering look that spelled quite clearly what she thought of that.
Rebecca sobered, lacing her hands together. "This is going to cause problems for us, you realize?"
Piggot nodded grimly. "That the public's fears about Maelstrom is actually
justified would be bad enough, but her Thinker rating is another issue entirely."
"All the power of the Simurgh in the hands of a bullied teenager. A Carrie situation beyond our worst nightmares." Rebecca laughed mirthlessly. "Can you imagine the headlines?"
"I'm trying not to." Piggot leaned back in her chair, stonily beating down the wince of pain. "Is there any way we could keep this in house?"
"My hands are tied," Rebecca said with genuine regret and frustration. The
one time that regulation worked against her
had to be now. The
one time.
The government had what was colloquially called the 'WMD clause,' an understandable policy that required the PRT to pass along information on any capes that had a 'reasonable' ability to overthrow the government of the United States. At the time, the Triumvirate had submitted to the registration as a show of cooperation. The nation already knew who they were, what they could do if they were pushed. It wouldn't have changed anything.
Other names were added but only a few over the years. The standards to be considered a reasonable threat to an entire country like America were high, but they
were met. The Siberian was one, as her true nature was unknown to the public. Nilbog. Bonesaw. Others were simply suspected of being capable, but proof was lacking.
Panacea.
"However," Rebecca began slowly. "We do require proof of her abilities, and several of her ratings are currently being revised. I don't make a habit of sending incomplete reports."
Piggot frowned a little, recognizing the olive branch for what it was. "At least we can't be subpoenaed for it."
She was in the unique position of being able to see both sides of the issue. Of being able to see just how much the politics and bureaucracy of the PRT, of the federal government as a whole, was like rust on the gears and how much it affected the Protectorate. At times, the system simply seized, shuddering and screaming under the burden of its own inefficiencies.
Familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying went. PRT Canada had evaded certain bureaucratic pitfalls with the help of the Guild, only to run head-long into others. It was a work in very slow progress.
"Do you think it would be possible to postpone her counseling sessions until after the trial?" Rebecca asked. "A demonstrated inability to control her extreme emotions could hinder her case. They could paint her as being unstable."
"An extreme emotion brought on by an unexpected confrontation with her tormentor," Piggot rebutted. "A response Gallant could feel from
blocks away."
"She violated the terms of her imprisonment over a high school bully."
"A bully that triggered her and was brought up on criminal charges, now and previously."
"And who is also in a medically induced coma due to Farseer's telekinetics not being Manton limited," Rebecca said softly. According to the doctor report, it was as if someone had passed their hands right through Sophia Hess' skull to press on the brain. Press and
tear with thousands of tiny barbs. "I will attach Dragon's investigation to her Shaker re-evaluation, but that is just a stalling action. Had she been a bit angrier for longer, it wouldn't have just been Brockton Bay. What happens if her friends are killed? Her father?"
Piggot raised an eyebrow. "As opposed to what happens if she feels like she's being made into an enemy? If she decides to
be one?"
Rebecca tsked once. "She's fifteen, hardly invincible."
"She's a Thinker," Piggot said with a shark like smile. "She doesn't need to be."
Rebecca Costa-Brown knew that all too well.
"This," she said eventually with a long drawn out hiss as she cradled her head as if developing a headache. For a moment, she could almost believe she actually was. Parahuman court cases were always shitshows. There was a reason why she preferred not getting involved at all. "This is going to be troublesome."
"Yes," Piggot said without an ounce of irony or humor. "Yes, it will be."
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Rebecca watched Taylor Hebert's face as she sat by her father watching a video Dragon had been trying to contain on the internet. It was one of Winslow High, looking like high schools usually did with a wide hallway filled with students and a uniform row of brightly colored lockers. The video was taken from a cellphone. Its owner was Japanese, snickering with his friends as the view panned the hallway.
Then there was thunder.
The windows all shattered as the hallway erupted in yelps as the fluorescent lightbulbs showered sparks onto the teens below. Above the mad rush and scramble, a girl screamed in desperation and pain. It echoed off the walls. The boy holding the phone said, 'Taylor' as he wildly swung his phone around.
An arm ripped through the door of one of the lockers. It was twisting, melting, covered in rotting blood as shards of bone grew outwards. There was a screech of metal as the bone burst through the top of the locker.
The boy dropped his phone.
The blood had long since drained from Danny Hebert's face and Taylor's was no better. Rebecca cleared her throat as the video ended.
"On official sites, MeTube, PHO and the like, we've managed to pull this video. However, I cannot guarantee that it's not still being shared on the web." She smiled, knowing that it likely looked tired. "I figured you deserved to know."
Taylor closed her eyes and managed a small nod. "Thanks."
"The good news is, you get to stay in Brockton Bay, for now."
Taylor nodded again, opening her eyes. "And the bad news?"
"The Department of Justice has begun investigating the downed and missing planes." Taylor seemed to stop breathing. "You haven't been federally indicted, yet. The PRT has received a subpoena for all relevant information regarding your case."
"When?" She whispered.
"The hearing? The date hasn't been set yet, but we feel it safe to assume you have a month or two at the very least."
You are what they fear in parahumans, she thought. Uncontrollable, and all the more dangerous for it. The PRT had always had a certain amount of leeway in its dealings with parahumans. Too much leeway, many would say. For someone willing to cooperate, they were able to make some criminal records quietly go away. A new name, a new costume. This time, it would be anything but quiet. The nation was watching.
If there was a better stage to crucify the PRT's unilateral privileges, she didn't know of it. She could interfere. The PRT hadn't lost any official power yet. Their recommendation to simply
drop it would have to be heard.
It would be a trade off. The Farseer becoming a national asset, virtually untouchable in exchange for the PRT itself getting clapped in irons. It wasn't ideal, but she was willing to do it.
She met Taylor's eyes. Do you want me to? She thought.
The girl lowered her eyes, trembling. A slight shake of the head.
"Then this is what we are going to do…"