1:05 P.M. - December 13, 2010 (Earth Bet)
"-ship!"
What the hell? Vicky thought in a brief moment of utter confusion. This was not right at all! No longer was she posed dramatically on the deck of the flying wooden ship - seriously, what kind of Tinker built their tech out of wood of all things? - reading the Ren-Faire rejects the riot act for nuking Rune. You can't just do shit like that. There were rules!
She was most certainly not on the deck of that ship any longer. Rather, it appeared she had been abruptly transported to some stereotypical mad Tinker's laboratory, as re-interpreted by that wackadoodle Myrddin, complete with a series of cylindrical force field containment tubes for their prisoners. Her first instinct was to flee, not appreciate her captors' decor, so without further ado, Victoria Dallon, the invulnerable parahuman known as Glory Girl, flexed her power and directed it to launch her through the faintly glowing ceiling.
Huh?
Nothing happened. Vicky tried once more, with similar results.
Oh shit, she thought with a sudden sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach,
this is really bad. Her powers weren't working and there weren't many reasonable explanations for such a scenario. Either the Tinker whose lab she was being held in had the ability to block, cancel, or steal parahuman powers, a possibility, if a remote one, because who ever heard of a Tinker able to pull off that kind of bullshit, or the group who captured her had among their members a power negating Trump. Those exist, Vicky knew, but they were incredibly rare. Unfortunately for her state of mind, the first such Trump she recalled was the infamous Hatchet Face, a bloodthirsty psychopath who traveled with the Slaughterhouse Nine, a nomadic group of murderhobos.
Please, God, don't let it be the murderhobos! she implored desperately. She was too young and pretty to die now.
"You'll find that your magic does not function within the confines of that cell." The pleasant voice was female and had a vaguely Eastern European accent.
Vicky whirled around to confront the speaker, embarrassed that she hadn't realize they'd been standing behind her. Oh, it was the silver-haired pretty-boy who had turned Rune into a charcoal briquette, and he was accompanied by an attractive young woman with Mediterranean features and a head of midnight black hair. And it looked like they actually bought into the Myrddin school of bugnuts crazy, believing parahuman powers were the result of magic. So, pretty-boy probably thinks he's a Wizard, then, and Glynda is a Witch? Should she humor them?
Screw that! "Listen up, you crazy assholes, you can't just kidnap a hero in broad fucking daylight, with the whole world watching, and not expect their to be repercussions. If you let me go right now, maybe New Wave and the Protectorate will take it easy on you."
"Is that what you we did, young miss? Kidnap you? It looked to me like you were trespassing on my ship, and being quite rude about it, too," pretty-boy responded, quirking one delicately arched silver eyebrow. She could do that, too, though it had admittedly taken quite a lot of practice in front of her bathroom mirror to get the hang of it. "Insulting, even."
Damn, this guy's voice is incredible, Vicky thought distractedly,
like Legend, but with some James Dean bad boy added to the mix, and maybe a little Orlando Bloom for flavor. Why couldn't Dean sound like that? Oh God, now she was having inappropriate thoughts about one of her captors. Vicky hoped she wasn't blushing.
No! she silently commanded her brain,
this is not going to turn into one of those trashy cape in captivity fanfics you read on PHO! She definitely felt her face heating up.
Perhaps assuming she wasn't willing to answer, the pretty-boy continued, "You mentioned New Wave and the Protectorate. What sort of organizations are they? Law enforcement? Guild authorities?"
Finding her voice once more, Vicky glared at the duo through the barely visible force field barrier separating them. "You'll get nothing out of me!" Her response was a little cliched, hammy even, but it was the first thing she could think of.
Pretty-boy glanced at Glynda, who shrugged. "That's fine. Neither of us really felt like doing this the slow way, either."
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
"I'm Lya, who you might call the Wizard. Viserys, on the other hand, is a Sorcerer. It's a very important distinction to make," the self-named Lya interjected. "I take it that Glynda is the name of a powerful magic-user in these lands?"
There was a moment of confusion, before realization struck Vicky like a ton of bricks. She had most definitely not said Glynda out loud for her captors to hear. Was Lya implying that she had read her mind just now? Wasn't that supposed to be impossible?
Pretty-boy, Viserys according to Lya, nodded, his smile gone. If anything, he looked kind of sympathetic now. "Yes, Vicky, we've been monitoring your thoughts, ever since I returned you to human form after your brief time as a turtle. I must say, you think very loudly."
She felt nauseous.
Wait...
"What the hell do you mean, returned me to human form? You turned me into a turtle? You bastard!"
----
"I don't care if she is your daughter, Mrs. Dallon. I will not order a strike on that ship, even if it has moved away from an inhabited area," Emily responded to Brandish's shouted command. Carol Dallon was rightfully concerned about her foolhardy daughter, Emily acknowledged, but she wasn't about to throw away the lives of her people over what could very well be a huge misunderstanding.
Many would be intimidated by a fiercely scowling parahuman, especially anyone who had seen this particular parahuman carve through stone and steel like warm butter using her hardlight weapon projections. Say what you will about Emily Piggot, she probably deserved it, but she was not one to back down in front of a challenge. Of course, it didn't hurt that half the Protectorate's ENE roster of parahuman heroes was standing within twenty feet of her position, along with one of the Wards, Gallant, in his polished power armor. She would have to speak with Mr. Stansfield once this fiasco was over. Just because his girlfriend had been transformed into a turtle did not mean that he could insinuate himself into a meeting without an invitation.
"Fine," Brandish spat, her hands aglow with the telltale energy from which she formed her weapons. "New Wave will handle this on our own." She turned to leave, but was stopped in her tracks by the sound of Emily's hand slamming down on the hood of the PRT vehicle which had brought her speeding to the docks, where the strange ship was just visible hovering high above the bay.
"No, you will not. This is now a joint PRT-Protectorate operation. Do not attempt to interfere, or you and the rest of New Wave will be subdued." It wasn't an idle threat. New Wave was an important balancing factor in Brockton Bay, and Panacea alone gave them an immense amount of leeway, but Emily was not willing to kowtow to any parahuman unless her life depended on it, and there was a damned good chance that even then she wouldn't submit.
"There is too much about this situation that remains unknown, Brandish. We don't know how many parahumans are on that ship, what their motivations are, or what powers they possess, beyond an extremely powerful Blaster and some sort of Shaker who can transform people, at range, into turtles. Do you really want to send your family into that kind of potential meat grinder?" Sometimes it didn't hurt to explain your reasoning. This time, however, was actually pissing her off and that would probably make her ulcer flare up again. "As we speak, Armsmaster is re-purposing a drone to make contact with the occupants of the ship. Our first priority will be the safe return of Glory Girl." Preferably in human form, she left unsaid.
A/N: Bam, omake chapter 4! I've done more writing today than in a long, long time. I hope I wasn't too heavy handed in trying to illustrate Vicky's reaction to Viserys's standard social spells combined with his superhuman social skills and Charisma attribute. She's a captive, after all, so she should be affected, but not Diplomanced into compliance. I've also done a very slight ret-con on the timeline of the day's events. The first chapter was happening too late in the day, so I adjusted the time stamp from the beginning of chapter one backwards a little bit.
