RESTORING JUSTICE
[X] Belo Horizonte still had a police force while under supervillain rule - but its members were cops willing to answer to work for the cartel. While it's logistically tempting to keep them around, a thoroughly corrupt police force can actually be worse than no police at all. It's best to have all these people suspended, and have people you trust handle recruitment for the new Belo Horizonte police department, checking the personal credentials of each individual recruit and preexisting cop.
[X] The elites of Belo Horizonte - both the actual parahumans and the business leaders who collaborated with them - weren't exactly shy about hoarding wealth. Now is a good time to have most of it seized and redistributed to the less wealthy in the region. After all, the people need to see that the government is actually preferable to cartel rule, and future triggers will be more likely to side with the law.
"Allow me to put it this way, Madame President: The cartels have more money, more military hardware, and definitely more parahumans. Even with the Guild's support, they will not be defeated conventionally. Rather, the government needs to play up the
difference - make it obvious that you are
not just another cartel, but a legitimate government in service to the people. Winning over legitimacy and popular support is an absolute necessity - if you're seen as merely another cartel, this entire effort
will collapse.
"With that in mind, there are two things you absolutely must do. The first is to dismantle the current Belo Horizonte police department - confiscate their guns, their badges, their uniforms. Everyone currently a member of that department was complicit in the cartel's rule to one degree or another; while I'm sure
some were good people trying to make the best of a bad situation, it is practically guaranteed that the majority of people
left there were dirty and taking advantage of the situation. Best to create a new department from scratch, recruiting locally, getting trustworthy people to review the credentials of every potential recruit to ensure the new department is relatively clean."
She winces. "Do you realize the sheer bureaucratic overhead of recruiting an all-new police for a city this size? Especially if we're putting this much effort into ascertaining the worth of each individual recruit? Even under the most optimistic projections, this would mean several weeks before Belo Horizonte has its own police force. It'll be
chaos."
"Not necessarily, Madame President. You can bring in two hundred heroes and six to seven hundred police officers from Brasilia to oversee the transition period. A speech appealing to the people's cooperation in creating a new, better police force could do wonders. Furthermore, I have little doubt that you could start by identifying local leaders and pillars of the community who were protecting people from the criminal regime to the best of their ability; they can help your recruitment efforts. Besides, I don't know the full extent of parahuman abilities at your government's disposal, but there are several Thinkers either within the Guild or indirectly associated with it who could lend their assistance to accelerate this process.
"Still, this approach requires the support of the people of Belo Horizonte - their eager cooperation rather than teeth-clenched acceptance. Which leads me to the second necessary thing: As things currently stand, the elites of Belo Horizonte are either cartel people or local leaders who collaborated with the cartels - beside, of course, the vacuum left by the actual parahuman villains, who were quite wealthy themselves. The wealth of both defeated local villains
and elites guilty of collaboration with the cartels needs to be seized, and used to finance the city's needs - to repair infrastructure, feed the hungry, and provide housing for all. There needs to be a combination of immediate spending - welfare efforts to alleviate extreme poverty - and long-term efforts, such as financing hospitals and schools."
The President raises an eyebrow. "Historically speaking, Latin-American governments that seek to seize ill-gotten wealth to alleviate poverty tend to end up in the CIA's scope. I was hoping to win some measure of international
support, not international
opprobrium."
"I'm all too aware of the problem, Madame President - I was an active superhero for the entirety of Earth-Gimmel's Cold War. I have no doubt that the usual suspects will let fly accusations of communism and the such… but in the modern climate, democratic governments are less afraid of communism than of parahuman warlordism. As long as you frame it as confiscating the stolen property of supervillains, I believe it will do far more good than harm. Furthermore, earning the people's support will make it easier to earn the loyalty of parahumans. After all, not everyone who ends up working for the cartels is a black-hearted villain. Many are simply dealing as best they can with unfortunate circumstances, and don't exactly frame the whole matter in their mind as a battle of good versus evil. Having your side be unambiguously the morally superior one presents a number of advantages.
"It goes without saying that, whether or not you judge this advice worthwhile, the Guild in general and I in particular intend to continue supporting the restoration of rule of law in the nation."
"Thank you, Mister Avatar," she says, pensive. "I believe there is one way in which you could help me as early as today."
"What would it be, Madame President?"
"There are three people whose loyalty I need confirmed," she says. "One is Alfonso da Silva Paranhos, a politician whom I'm considering appointing as interim mayor of Belo Horizonte - he'd effectively be running the city until we could uphold elections, and would have the incumbency advantage when we did. The second is Lourenço Tosta, who would be
among my top choices for who I'd put in charge of organizing any new police department. Third is Previdente, one of the Thinkers I end up most relying on.
"All three of them are useful people… but I need to know if I can
truly trust them. You're the world's only telepath now that the Simurgh is gone. If you can confirm their trustworthiness, it would make things go much more smoothly."
You imagine it would. Lack of trust and the inevitable array of second-guessing that flows from it has crippled many an organization. However…
"I'm afraid I cannot do that, Madame President?"
"Why not?"
"To read their minds without permission would be the biggest breach of privacy possible. Meanwhile, if I
ask them for the right to read their mind and they refuse - which is
entirely within their right, and not at all unreasonable - then they run the risk of being considered less trustworthy because of it."
"...I see," she says, trying to contain her disappointment. "Very well. I will inform the Guild if I need anything else. For now, please resume getting prepared for the Goiânia operation."
"Of course. Good day and thank you for your time, Madame President."
You say that.
But your next stop is a discussion with one Alfonso da Silva Paranhos.
"...And as such, I would appreciate it if you would allow me to read your mind, to limit the second-guessing between yourself and the president. If you or any of the others refuse, however, the President will not be informed of any of this."
The politician hesitates, but ultimately consents. You don't find any evidence of treacherousness or significant corruption in his mind… but some unexamined racism toward Brazil's indigenous people. Sadly, to be expected.
Previdente has hesitations, mostly because she knows some very sensitive secrets. You assure her that you can navigate her mind in a way that will let you dodge such sensitive matters while focusing on her actual trustworthiness.
Lourenço Tosta, however, flat-out refuses. You dearly hope to change his mind - after all, you can't present a clean bill of trustworthiness for
two out of three of the people; that'd inform the President that the third refused to submit to this test, and that'd ruin the entire point. At the same time, you can't
pressure him into this - he has every right to refuse such a request.
You rely on the carrot rather than the stick. You make it extremely clear that there will be no negative consequences to his refusing - no-one but yourself will know - but you also emphasize the advantages of going along with it, and the benefits of trust within the institution.
He clearly hesitates, but ultimately consents.
Hm. Some sexual fetishes he understandably doesn't want publicized, but it doesn't look like he ever harmed anyone in pursuit of them. You're more concerned about some select instances of bribery… but nothing beyond the pale.
You assure him that the former is no-one's concern as long as he causes harm to none. As for the latter… "I understand that you are operating in a morally grey milieu, Mister Tosta. I will not counter-recommend you. I do want you to understand, however - in the position for which you are being considered, your country
needs a good man. I believe, truly, that you can
be that good man if you so choose."
"I… understand," he says, somewhat surprised. You don't need telepathy to notice the tell-tale signs of emotion.
But then, you're an old hand at
raising people up by openly expecting them to do better.
The President is pleasantly surprised by the report you give her shortly afterward. "So you refused my request to my face… so you could ask them in person, and then not tell me if they refused? Do you do that sort of thing often?"
"Almost never, Madame President. That'd create
expectations of my relying on mind-reading to get this sort of job done, at which point, people I
didn't report as trustworthy would start looking suspicious. I reserve it for extremely rare situations, as such, and respectfully request that you never tell anyone I did it, just as I requested from all three individuals." But in the context of trying to help a government reclaim its nation after being pushed out of all but one city? When the opposition has thousands and thousands of supervillains to call on? That's definitely a situation that calls for a few special advantages.
You spend the next five hours on duty in Mexico City - some highly visible patrolling, providing cover to a police raid on a cartel weapon depot (your presence suffices to discourage resistance), and talking to a teenage villain who was captured yesterday.
"The kid's a Breaker," Excellente explains. "Any attack that would hurt him hurts his attacker instead… but every time his power activates, it becomes inactive for a second and a half. He tried to rob a bank yesterday, so now we have a security guard in prison with a gunshot wound - but the Breaker power didn't help him against containment foam." He stares through the one-way mirror. "I'd rather have him with us than getting scooped by the cartels - he'd be dangerous to deal with - but he's given us nothing but attitude, insults and screaming since being brought in."
"I'll see what I can do. How is the security guard doing?"
"He'll live. It remains to be seen how
well."
The parahuman youth is already starting to mouth off when you open the door, but stops in shock when he sees you. Your reputation on Earth-Bet isn't
quite what it is back home, but it's a start.
So, you talk.
About Pablo Sotto, the guard who got injured. About Francisco's (that's the youth's name) horrible family that he ran away from. About the friends he made in the homeless community, some of whom have turned to petty crime - sometimes for food, sometimes to end the pangs of withdrawal as the local dealers hook them up in order to have a supply of desperate, addicted labor for dirty deeds.
"I understand wanting money to take care of your friends," you say, "but you have powers. Why not get a job with the Protectorate?"
He sneers. "I don't know how cops are in
your world, but here? Scumbag thugs, the whole lot of them. Cops never protected me from my parents, and they never protected me and my friends on the streets. All they care about protecting is themselves."
"That's often the case," you say. "Maybe you can change that."
"Eh?"
"You say the police don't care about protecting the homeless. But
you care. If you join the Wards, and later the Protectorate, then there'll be one more law enforcement agent in this city who protects them - one with superpowers to boot. Doesn't that sound like something they could
use?"
It takes you some time to sell him on the idea. You explain (having memorized by now the relevant laws and regulations) how he can arrange to be emancipated from his family to join the Wards. You tell him that, while there are no regulations about it,
you expect him to use his salary to pay for Pablo Sotto's physical therapy, which he guiltily agrees is fair. And you leave him to finalize things with the PRT.
From your understanding, Eidolon has been far from idle the past few days - his patrols have covered an impressive percentage of the massive city, and he's been involved in the capture of no less than eight parahuman villains.
Mexico City is a long way from being a safe place, but it's gradually improving.
"Surdoué," you nod at the veteran Guild member. "You wanted to talk?"
"An opportunity came up concerning the European Brigade," he replies. "The Brigade's rebirth is pretty much
your doing, and between Athens, Paris and Madrid, it's been able to prove itself three times over by now."
You heard the news this morning - in part thanks to Leonardo's precognitive "oracle" computer, the Brigade was able to arrest Emboscado, a Spanish A-class threat who effectively ruled an enclave of his own within Madrid that no heroes dared enter - but the oracle and good Thinker support allowed them to react to an opportunity and catch him at the edge of his territory, and they've been cautiously dismantling his enclave's defenses since. At least ten parahuman associates of Emboscado have been reportedly arrested so far.
"Thing is, the
Guild has been going from victory to victory over these past weeks. Just in the time
since you convinced the bigwigs to restore the Brigade, we've liberated Lagos, liberated Belo Horizonte, arrested the Death Dealers - the Guild's practically a
reverse-Endbringer that strikes five-six times a month.
"Now, in the European political scene, you're either trying to
stymie the apocalypse, trying to do your own thing while
surviving the apocalypse, or trying to
ride the apocalypse to power. Anyone not in the last group now
really wants to have their own Guild that they can influence. To a certain extent, that's the Guild itself - Hydro, Entropisch and I are all members of European national agencies - but the Brigade is the obvious choice.
"And - to
finally get to my point - I know that Victoire has been probing the Quatre As to see how they would feel about Brigade associate membership."
You've met Victoire - she's a Thinker and the leader of France's Irréductibles. As for the Quatre As… it's not uncommon for a country to have, among its parahuman law enforcers, a small elite cadre that gets sent to handle particularly dangerous situations. Within the Protectorate, it's the Triumvirate - three highly experienced heroes with A-list powers. In Kenya, it's the Pentagon and their impressive power synergy. The Chinese-Imperial Union has the Yangban, a team of over a hundred parahumans who share a limited version of their powers between them.
The Irréductibles, meanwhile, have the Quatre As - a team of four parahumans who are equipped with tinkertech armor and weapons made by Professeur Plus, a Tinker with a specialization in making equipment that synergises well with existing powers. The team was created in 2003 and is highly effective, but after suffering losses in Newfoundland in 2005, France stopped sending them into Endbringer battles.
You nod. "The government will obviously never assign the team as full-time members in the Brigade, but even as associates they would give the Brigade
teeth. From what I've seen, though, even if the Quatre As are in favor, the government will at best be hesitant about committing their elite team like this."
"Oh, the Quatre As are in favor," Surdoué chuckles, "you don't join a team like that because you want to be
away from the action and danger. But, yes. Victoire could use your and my help persuading the President and Prime Minister later today - I get your people skills when we're in the same room, along with
their understanding of politics. I figure we can put our thumb on that scale."
"Understood. If Victoire can invite us, then I'd be happy to help her make her case."
The actual case-making, even with Victoire and Surdoué, proves challenging - neither the President nor the Prime Minister enjoy the prospect of selling such a move to the national right wing. Eventually, though, you are able to convince them that this is a necessary risk - a European Brigade powerful enough to do for Europe what the Guild does across the world is too valuable an investment.
Another daily patrol in Vietnam seems to lift the people's spirits… but you also have a pending request from Black Sun.
"You said you would owe me three fights," she says. "I have been thinking about it, and I want to collect - on one of them."
"Very well. What is the matter?"
She hands you photos and a map. "She calls herself Ice Wave. She has some parahumans following her - maybe 90, maybe a hundred. She claims twice as many. She also claims some territory north of mine. Some small towns, some farmland, one resort town she's turned into her HQ. She turned a village to rubble last year for failing to pay tribute.
"More importantly, she sits on a major highway and controls who goes through. The toll she charges means it's impossible for refugees to get in, and not profitable for trade to go either way - not by road, at least.
"I don't need you to take down her entire gang. If you just take
her down, I'm confident I can recruit most of her people and reopen the highway."
"That sounds reasonable," you say. "I hope you don't mind if I do some research of my own about the situation first?"
"Be my guest."
Less than a day later, you have (partly through your own fieldwork, partly through asking contacts in the Protectorate and Guild) confirmed that Ice Wave is bad enough to justify taking down. The actual process of arresting her is almost trivial.
You spend two hours patrolling Belo Horizonte, during which you get called in to intervene in one altercation involving a parahuman. According to the Guild's intelligence, the plan to escalate inter-cartel hostilities in São Paulo is working; the current timeline calls for the assault on Goiânia to start in slightly under 48 hours.
You spend another two hours patrolling Brasilia - mostly to discourage criminal activity while so many of the city's heroes and police are being transferred to Belo Horizonte.
You make a stop by Kolwezi, where people are still recovering from the nightmare of Lustuctru's reign, and Triple Alliance forces still maintain a siege on the city from a distance. You use your powers to refill their food and fuel reserves.
Another stop by the refugee camps in Japan. It's important to keep some degree of attention on them, lest they be forgotten and abandoned… though the government has announced that it intends to have 12,000 new apartments ready and finished for them by the end of the month, and is aiming for another 30,000 the month after that. It will take time for the refugee camps to finally empty, but as long as there's a steady trickle, morale stays higher than it's been in years.
After that, another shift in Mexico City. This time, however, you have an unexpected guest.
"Sandra Duval, from the Jacksonville Youth Guard. I'm sorry for showing up here, but the PRT doesn't exactly give the Youth Guard ways of contacting Protectorate members directly."
"It's not a problem. How may I help you?"
"Well… how much do you know about the Youth Guard?"
"I'm aware of the basics. A civilian organization dedicated to the protection of underage parahuman, which has negotiated an oversight role over the Wards program with the PRT." Following a number of lawsuits, that is.
"Yes," she nods. "You understand, minors have always been particularly vulnerable to all sorts of abuse. Make them parahuman, make them
valuable, and it gets even worse."
"I am familiar with society's frequently-abusive tendencies toward all vulnerable categories," you assure her. Granted, mutant powers back home tend to take several years between puberty and adulthood to reach their full potential, but you've seen people, organizations and nations who've tried to regiment their mutants from a young age.
She nods. "Well, in
most Protectorate territory, the PRT usually does right by the Wards. In some places, though… In some places, local directors are not as conscientious."
She proceeds to paint the image of Jacksonville, Florida to you. Jacksonville, like Brockton Bay, is considered a "cape city" where the parahuman-per-population ratio is a couple times higher than the national average - for historical reasons, some large gangs moved in from Miami and Tampa between 2001 and 2003. To make matters worse, the Slaughterhouse Nine visited in 2007, leaving behind a trail of destruction that included nine dead Protectorate heroes.
The long and short of it is, that in the years since, with the Jacksonville Protectorate still recovering, badly outnumbered, and unable to either put down the city's villains or provide so much as the illusion of safety to its people, the North Florida PRT director has been fielding the Wards in dangerous situations more and more.
Now, in theory, the Wards program provides training, but avoids sending its members into actual combat situations until they graduate to the Protectorate. In practice, especially in cities where the Protectorate is struggling, it's not unheard of for the Wards to sometimes be used to reinforce the Protectorate, or be sent into the field when the adult heroes can't get there in time.
From the sound of it, the Jacksonville PRT is practically turning it into standard operating procedure to field the Wards, including in potentially deadly situations. There's cause to believe that some of them have gotten badly injured in missions, though the presence of a strong healer on the local Protectorate means that anything short of death can be physically undone.
At this rate, though… one of those kids could end up dead. And regardless, they're being used like child soldiers. The Youth Guard's attempts at salvaging the situation have been falling flat - to put it plainly, Florida's court system is a lot more cooperative toward the PRT than toward the Youth Guard.
Now, you're not naive. You've been following humanity since before the invention of the written word, and you know that keeping the young out of harm's way isn't always an option.
It's still an ideal to strive for, however. Which leaves you with the question of what you ought to do about the Jacksonville Wards.
[ ] You are extremely valuable to the Protectorate, both strategically and PR-wise. Bring the matter to the Chief Director's attention, and make it clear you wish to see it resolved.
-[ ] Clarify that you are willing to donate some of your time to assist.
[ ] After acquiring permission, do a highly visible patrol in Jacksonville to scare the villains… and inform the local Director that they can call upon you, conditional upon leaving the Wards out of combat situations.
[ ] Ask the Guild and its contacts to spend a day or two cleaning up the town after Goiânia is handled.
[ ] For now, do nothing directly. Over the rest of the week, when opportunities arise and other matters aren't monopolizing your resources, gather intel on the Jacksonville PRT and villains.
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Voting options to come later, after some time for discussion.
