Broken Mirrors, Black Cats, and Other Wonderful Things [Worm][OC][Brockton Bay]

[T0PH4T]

My new-found peace is shattered by a perfectly ordinary piece of paper.

As part of the Protectorate, part of my job is staying up-to-date on the nature of parahuman crime in the city I'm in. Since that is actually impossible for any non-thinker (and most thinkers) instead we try to stay well-informed about as many subjects as is feasible. For Armsmaster, that means staying up-to-date on the dossiers of every parahuman in the city and macro-level trends, while for Ethan that means paying close attention to whoever is the most active or likely to become active within each week.

My personal briefings fall somewhere in the middle, with a focus on the capes I can fight effectively and the most pressing parahuman-related cases currently running around. Places where the two correlate is highlighted, and consequently the list of Empire kidnap victims is at the top of my weekly reports.

I flip through the profiles, scanning photos and skills. The sad truth is that we're probably not going to find most of these people, even if the Thinktank decides that pursuing our case is worth the time. They usually spend their hours of hyper-cognition on things like the Nine, checking up on containment zones, and the Elite. At the end of the day, a trans computer programmer-

I stop, staring at the headshot of Sam.

His profile is the last one before the report on Oni Lee's latest felonies. I check the date. The missing persons report was filed yesterday, a Medhall employee who noted that he missed his check-in, followed by the police discovering his burnt-out car with a corpse that didn't have matching dental records. One of the few where we'd been able to know for sure that they're kidnapped, not gone, because of the almost-painfully accurate medical history the victim-

Sam.

The Empire kidnapped Sam.

I spend a few precious minutes staring at the report, thinking. One half of my mind is calmly going through logical chains, pointing out that there's nothing between us anymore. That at the end of the day Sam is just another civilian, and that if I wanted my morality to remain internally consistent I should simply move on with my briefing. That any sort of action on this information beyond simply doing my job would be hypocrisy at best and despicable levels of possessiveness at worst, a holdover from the worst parts of romance. It's reasonable, painfully honest, and in line with the person I want to be. Not heartless, but aware of that at some level Kant was right, that I do need to keep the bigger picture in mind before acting. Act compassionately, but with a mind to people other than myself.

The other half of my mind is too incoherent to feel anything other than rage.

Slowly, I fold up the briefing, slipping it into my belt. A plan begins to form in my mind, old habits resurfacing as I set goals and reprioritize. I stand up and head for the locker room, heat oozing through my limbs. When I take off the bodysuit I know it's for the last time, and I give the goggles a fond pat. The costume, at least, has never done me wrong. It deserves a better end than abandonment.

I take a car from the motor pool, the oldest and cheapest I can find. One flag. For an hour I move about randomly, taking turns when I feel like it, heading deep into the shopping district. I park as soon as I can find a spot, then head into a department store and buy some unremarkable things. Clothes, cleaning supplies, cutlery, tools. Things someone moving into a house that needed a thorough dusting-off would buy. It's just enough to fit into a duffle bag, and once I'm done I head into a public restroom and change out of my normal civvies. I throw my shoulders back, stand a little taller, and pull a beanie on. Not enough to fool anyone who knew me well, but given that perhaps six people in the city can claim that I'm not too worried about being recognized.

I head back to the car, one last time, and leave my phone and a piece of paper with two words on it in the glove compartment. After locking the doors I walk away, dropping the keys into the second gutter I see.

Then I start teleporting towards Lung's territory.

****

The costume shop is an ABB front. Most specialty hobby shops outside of downtown are but here's it especially brazen, with a rack of Oni Lee and Lung masks flanking the doorway. The boy manning the cash register didn't want to sell me anything, muttering something about my parentage in Korean as he gave me the stink eye. When I asked to talk to his manager, told him that I had money for good work, he pulled a gun on me and told me to leave the money with him.

When the lady who actually owned the place came out, the boy has two broken fingers and is decidedly more cooperative.

A short conversation in broken English later and I had my mask and costume. Nothing fancy, no armor, no extra pockets. Just fur sleeves and pants, a barred torso, and a minimalist snouted mask. I leave her with twice our agreed amount from my limited supply of cash and a compliment. She tells me that she'll put in a good word with the Demon.

The real estate is easier to acquire. There are plenty of dilapidated buildings in the Bay, residence only limited by the risks you're willing to take and your power to fight off other squarters. My excess of both eventually leads me to a warehouse on the beachfront, with plenty of broken windows and rooms open to the elements. A few aren't though, and after marking out the one with the most secure door as my bedroom I start setting up in the rest. Tarps go down, tables are organized, and a good map of Brockton goes up on the wall.

By the time the groundwork is laid, dusk has already fallen. I check the time, then head over to my new resting place and lay down on the cheap camping roll and snuggle into the sleeping bag, already falling into a light doze.

Tomorrow the work starts.

*****

I resign.

 

[T0PH4T]

The problem with Nazis, Eric decided, was that they just wouldn't stay beat.

"Okay, now stay down for real," he said, dropping a blue dome over Alabaster. The first five times he'd blasted the albino's knees out from under him it'd been fun, but now it was really getting irritating.

Instead of taking his loss like the low-rated brute he was, Alabaster promptly produced a small club from his sleeve and proceeded to slam it forcibly against the blue barrier while screaming obscenities. Like an idiot. Eric sighed and redoubled his mental effort, floating up to look at the real battle.

A few dozen Empire gangbangers, Hookwolf, and Stormtiger versus Lady Photon, Manpower, and Laserdream. It was a surprisingly fair fight, all things considered. Most of that was because the Empire members were shooting to kill and Eric's sister really wasn't, but even beyond that the fact of the matter was that Hookwolf's crew was just good. Sure, Dad could throw around the bastard son of a blender and a Saint Bernard like a garbage bag, but it took effort, and every second he spent using his power to throw around Hookwolf was a second where his field wasn't protecting him from the Empire thugs' guns. Sarah and Crystal were doing their best to provide covering fire, but Stormtiger was somehow maintaining air parity with the aid of the goons' small arms.

Eric lifted one hand and let light spill from his palms, a barrage of lasers that would bruise but not break, then promptly threw up another forcefield. Moments later he felt the snapsnapsnap impact of bullets on the dome and sighed again. Enough shield to absorb anything this side of a power or military hardware, a spear too short to capitalize on it. His sister had the opposite problem, except she also had high-speed flight that let her gamble on her opponent's poor aim.

Powers really weren't fair.

Amidst his contemplation there was a flicker, one there and gone inside of a second. Eric would've missed it if it hadn't be accompanied by a spray of red, by the collapse of an Empire thug. It took him a second to register that the spray was blood, that he'd just seen a man die, and by the time he thought to call it out another Empire member was clutching at her throat, staggering out of cover, only to be struck by an over-eager blast from Crystal.

"New cape!" he shouted, flying towards Sarah. When things get complicated, group up. That was Rule Two. Rule One was listen to Sarah and Neil before anyone else.

"Where?" Sarah asked, a trio of purple beams snapping off from her hands, even as the other conjured a trio of efficient, tiny forcefields, exactly enough to block the incoming gunfire.

"Hitting the Empire, I didn't get a good look," Eric said, conjuring a massive shield. Wasteful, but it gave Sarah enough breathing room to really cut loose, and soon a rain of purple was streaking out towards the entrenched Empire members. "They're going for kills though, and-"

"I see them!" Crystal shouted, a storm of spaghetti-thin lasers lancing towards a now, bleeding-out gangbanger.

The gangbangers broke, three deaths apparently the tipping point, and after a metallic growl Hookwolf started bounding away as well. Crystal started to speed after them, but when Sarah gave a sharp whistle she stopped, floating back sullenly.

"They were on the run! We could've-"

"Chased after scared and desperate felons armed to the teeth, yes," Sarah said, voice edged with steel. "Just because the new cape decided that lethal force was the best course of action doesn't mean that we need to lose our sense of perspective entirely. The are three bodies on the ground, and that means something entirely different when they aren't getting up again."

It took Crystal a moment to process that, and as her expression slowly changed from sullen to horrified Sarah floated down towards her husband, who was stepping over towards one of the corpses.

"Knife wounds, ragged. Either a dull blade with a lot of force or something serrated," he said dispassionately, eyes flickering to Sarah. "PRT?"

"Calling now," she said, pulling out a phone and plugging in the three-digit hotline, floating up again to get away from her husband's electrical field. Eric focused on his mid-air forcefield, dismissing it after a moment focus, then search for something to look at beside the three far-too-still-

"Hey."

Eric spun around, lowering his hand when it came to a rest pointing at his sister. "Oh. Hi."

"You alright?" she asked quietly, eyes searching for his. "I don't think you've..."

After a minute, Eric shook his head. "No," he said quietly. "I'm not and I haven't."

Crystal nodded, drifting around him. "Mom and Dad usually handle this stuff on their own. Wanna go get ice cream?"

Eric shook his head again. "No food. A movie?"

She smirked. "Going to make me go to the movies with my lame little brother?"

"I have to go to the movies with my lame older sister." The jokes were old, too worn to be funny, but they both kept it up as they drifted through the empty night sky, leaving the crime scene behind.

*****

Ethan liked to think of himself as fairly open-minded. Sure there were some people he didn't give a chance, but those were people like Lung and Kaiser, who were a sex slaver and a literal Nazi respectively. He'd also met a bunch of basically-decent people who happened to sell drugs and collect protection money as their method of income. Sure, he fought for the white hats now, but working both sides of the law had given him a bit of perspective on how easy it was to do the wrong things for the right reasons.

That's why when Armsmaster called an emergency meeting to discuss Black Cat, he tried to avoid any snap judgements.

"Black Cat left work early on last Friday evening at the beginning of his shift. He checked out a nineteen ninety eight Toyota Corolla, the proceeded to drive to the shopping district in Downtown, where he bought clothes and cleaning supplies. He made a large cash withdrawal from an ATM, since which the card has gone unused. The car was found when it got towed, and when searched his phone was discovered, with a note written beneath it." A slide flickers up, with Cat's loopy handwriting left to hang on the projector screen.

"This wouldn't be the first time a Protectorate member that has up and left," Velocity said leaning forward.

Armsmaster nodded. The slide flickers, rest on a pair of sheet-covered bodies. "New Wave engaged the Empire last night, four days after Black Cat disappeared. In the fight, a trio of unpowered Empire members had their throats cut, causing them to retreat. Shielder reports seeing a flicker of movement each time, an ambush tactic that is consistent with Black Cat's style."

"Are we sure it wasn't Oni Lee?" Dauntless shivered a little as eyes turn on him but nonetheless persevered. "I mean, the Empire and ABB have been killing each other for a while. Wouldn't Occam's razor say old enemies are more likely than a dramatic change in someone's usual modus operandi?"

Armsmaster shakes his head. "Oni Lee's power is too distinctive to mistake. The other teleporters in the city are similarly identifiable, either because of Splashzone's arrival effect or Thunderstruck's trail. Furthermore, Splashzone engages nonlethally and Thunderstruck limits their activity to the Docks. While this could be a newly-triggered stranger, Occam's razor similarly suggests that there may be a correlation between the disappearance of a stranger/mover and the appearance of a stranger/mover who also has a penchant for blades."

"If Black Cat has started killing Empire members, what's our plan?" Miss Militia was spinning a butterfly knife, a nervous tic that Ethan assumed was there to prevent her from manifesting something heavier.

A new slide came up. This one had a picture of Eli, head on and in profile, along with a list of bullets points on the side. "Step one will be a press release, reporting Black Cat as missing in action. Privately we're taking his resignation at face value, and for all intents and purposes he is no longer a part of the Protectorate and is instead a dangerous parahuman with both the means and willingness to maim and murder. " Armsmaster paused, taking in the room, then sighed. "With that said, make contact as softly as possible. Talk before fighting, avoid escalation, do not pursue if there is nothing at stake. If at all possible attempt to negotiate further meetings, but remember that personal safety is your top priority."

Ethan swallowed, shaking his head. There was something wrong about cutting ties at the drop of a hat, even if it made sense. There had to be a story behind his disappearance, a reasoning for Eli to suddenly pull up roots and run.

"If it comes to violence, standing orders are to run if there is no human life at risk," Armsmaster said, face grim. "The parahuman now known as Damocles is currently rated at mover seven, stranger six. Their power operates in such a way that anyone without a thinker power cannot be expected to perceive them if they're fighting seriously, and psychological profiles of said parahuman indicate that they are aware of the quirks and potential of their power. As of this moment, only myself, Velocity, Desperado, and Stitchskin are cleared for engagement, and if this situation is not wrapped up in a timely manner we will be calling in additional help."

The named parahumans nodded, even as Battery frowned. "You mentioned a psychological profile. Can we receive a copy of this assessment?"

"Once we've formally confirmed that it is worth breaching patient confidentiality it will be distributed," Armsmaster confirmed. "On the other hand Damocles was extremely cagey, even with his therapist. If anyone here has any information they think would be worth disclosing, now is the time."

For a long moment there was only silence.

Then Dauntless raised his hand, drawing Ethan's eye-

"He was in a relationship," Miss Militia said. Ethan blinked. Tall, dark and broody? With who? When? How? "I don't know when it started or who it was with, but the end date was about a week after Desperado arrived, just more than two before he disappeared."

"Thank you," Armsmaster said, tilting his head in acknowledgement, like the idea wasn't ludicrous, before turning to Dauntless. "You were going to say something?"

"Nothing," the other man said quietly, arm lowering. "She beat me to it." Ethan's jaw dropped. Miss Militia was oddly perceptive, sure. He could take that hit. But Dauntless?

Ethan sat back in his chair, shaking his head. He needed to up his rumor game. That, and figure out how to read people without talking to them.

"If that's all?" When no one spoke up, the projector shut off. "I'll see you all tomorrow."

Ethan stood, nudging Battery with his elbow. When she gave him a Look, he brushed the back of his hand against hers.

"Can we talk?" he asked quietly.

"About this?" Ethan smiled, this time sadly. Sharon answered questions with questions when she wasn't sure, when she needed more data to come to a conclusion. It was one of the little things he'd picked up only after he'd stopped asking her out on dates, and one of the little cues he'd come to appreciate.

"About Eli," he said, using his former teammate's name. Ethan knew, intellectually, why people with powers ran around in masks. He'd built a career on it in fact, and now that he had something to lose the idea of being attacked in his civvies had a terror that simply wasn't there when he was living on Froot Loops and TV dinners.

There was still something wrong about it, though. A layer of dehumanization, of making oneself and others easier to hurt, to throw into bottomless pits and never release. There were people who deserved it, sure, but he still believed that those were the exceptions rather than the rule. Puppy hadn't quite come around to that yet, and maybe he was the one in the wrong.

Here though, Ethan thought it was worth the fight.

"Over dinner," Sharon said, heading for the women's locker room. Ethan parted with her, thinking about justification, levels of response, and how to convince his wife to allow a murderer to roam free.

*****

As the parahumans filled out of the room, two didn't rise from their chairs. Once they were alone, Stitchskin turned to Desperado.

"Did you fuck him up?" he asked bluntly.

Desperado nodded. "This isn't me though. At least, I really, really don't think it is."

Stitchskin considered that, nails clinking against the table as he drummed his gauntlets.

"I believe you," he said. After a moment, "Bitch."

She laughed coldly, standing up and walking towards the door. "Jackie went after Eli. Black Cat and Desperado don't interact. Whatever he's trying to do, I have no idea what snapped inside of him and where the pressure came from. I've got some stuff that might clear it up, might not, but if it does come to light he's going to be so fucked it's going to make three bodies look like punching a kid." She paused at the threshold, looking back. "You're his friend. Should I go to Armsy?"

Stitchskin stood up and stretched, bones and skin flaps creaking as they extended out. After holding the position for two seconds he relaxed, slumping forward in a spindle of dead parts, purple eye holes staring forward sightlessly.

"Give it to me, I'll figure it out," he said, stepping past the cowboy. "If it's an emergency, release it. Don't think things are that bad yet."

Desperado cackled, twisting to follow him. "You think it's going to get worse?"

"Lots."

*****

When Earl woke up bound and blinded with a thin piece of cloth over his eyes, his first instinct was to scream. Then, once he'd worked that out of his system, he registered the other voice in the room.

"Jake, that you howling like a bitch? Mark? Andy? Whoever it is, shut the hell up!"

It took Earl a second identify the speaker, and when he did he groaned. "Fuck you, Jace! Bet you cried like a baby when you came out of it too!"

"Fuck you!" Jason was one of the older recruits, with the swastika tats and muscles that Earl knew were at least part juice. "You have any idea where we are?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be screaming now, would I?" Earl said sarcastically, tilting his head. That much was free, but beyond the thin cloth the room was dark, with only the faint glow of silvery light coming through the filter. "Listen, you think you've got a way out of this?"

"If I did, I wouldn't still be here, would I, dumbfuck?" Jason snarled back. Earl could almost make out the sound of ropes and chairs creaking, then muffled swearing. "Chair's too heavy. It feels like it's made of wood but I can't fucking move it."

Metal scraped against metal near Earl's right ear, drawing a shriek from him.

"Jesus fuck, man! Can't you calm the fuck down for a minute?" Jason said.

"There's someone else in the room!" Earl shouted, leaning away from sound. Jason was right: the chair was more solid than it felt. His wrists were duck taped to wood, but even when he leaned all the way over the chair refused to tilt.

The sound repeated, this time by his left.

"There it is again!" he shouted, sitting straight up.

"Grow a pair!" Jason said. "Listen, I've going to try to flip outta this, but I need you to calm the fuck down for just a minute, alright?"

"Okay, okay, do your fucking thing, just whatever the fuck it is do it fast," Earl said, twisting his head left and right, trying to spot the source of the noise.

"Aww, is little baby Earl afraid of the dark?" Jason said, even as he grunted with effort.

A faint whistling noise started up. Metal scraped against metal, and then there was a second source of light through the cloth.

"The fuck?" Jason said.

Earl watched as the light moved across the room, away from him. Where the light from above was white, this was orange, and as he watched it the glow turned blue. There was a howling in the background, one he only vaguely recalled but couldn't quite place.

"Who the fuck are you?" Jason asked, voice quavering. "Seriously, take off this fucking blindfold." The light kept moving. "What're you doing?" It had achieved a constant distance, and now it was waving gently back and forth, disappearing as it passed in front of something. "Fuck, that's hot! Cut it the fuck out!"

The light paused for a moment, hovering in mid air.

Then it descended.

 

[T0PH4T]

I shiver as a breeze runs across my chest. Brockton Bay has mild winters, but being outside at night anywhere is cold. The lack of coverage from my costume doesn't help, and nor does the cold gravel rooftop. I adjust my grip on the binoculars I claimed as spoils from a different Empire safe house and examine the bar in front of me.

From the outside it looks basically normal. Large windows, polished wooden tables, and a collection of different-colored liquids on shelves. If you were a random tourist walking through, stopping by for a pint probably wouldn't be a bad idea. It even has a certified cask beer plaque, displayed proudly beside the liquor license. It's just past five by now and already a few men are at the bar, drinking from glasses that look too large to be American units.

A closer examination will note the dog whistles. Namely, that the seat leather is black, the beers all German, and the jagged piece of metal hangs on the wall from a chain. The last item is an old wolf-hunting trap that Hookwolf's adopted as his symbol, something that I didn't actually know about until Earl threw it out at the last moment. Something to put in the data drive I'm going to leave on Victor's corpse.

For now though, scouting.

I take a breath, hold it, then let it half out, focusing on the patrons. Generally speaking, upper-level Empire members come in one of two varieties: tattooed thugs who earned their rank by committing felonies and rich people who bought their way to the top. That means the oldest, gnarliest man with the most blurred ink is my best bet for getting street addresses, while the guys walking around in white shirts wearing fancy watches are generally wallets with legs and little more.

A smile works its way across my face. The Nazi in its natural habitat, separated into the hunter and gatherer castes. The former dapple their coats as time goes on in an attempt to increase their chances of getting a mate, but this has the fortunate side effect of making them much more visible to their natural predator, the wily and lethal...

I let the thought trail off and go back to looking, searching for my next target.

*****

When Oog van Assvoël told me her name, I had to work hard to avoid laughing. When I saw her go to work for the first time, I had to work hard to avoid vomiting. There's not a lot of ways to use touch-based corpse animation in a family-friendly manner, and she did it on a macroscale. When I looked her up on PHO a few years after I'd gotten out people couldn't stop talking about the time she laid siege to cites, about how her snowball potential was so high that she almost deserved an S-Class rating. While that logic wasn't wrong, it necessarily didn't take into consideration the aftermath of those rampages.

Ada came out of the corpse titans a mess. A human consciousness, split up over dozens, sometimes hundreds of bodies, rotting quickly and degrading in a battle against time in the middle of a life-or-death fight, where capes didn't pull punches? Each one-woman siege-breaking was followed by days, sometimes weeks, of recovery as she tried to piece her mind back together. Brommer thought she was weak, that a man would've taken the ego shattering better, that her weakness was feigned. He shut up after I killed him twice, but I never did change his mind.

To this day I think she must have had the strength of ten men, and that the day she begged Derrida to kill her was the day when she needed the strength of eleven.

Instead of pulping her, he assigned her to the Maaiers. She was a cleaner, both because she could scrub away even the most stubborn bloodstains and because she had enough raw power to put down anyone the rest of us didn't. The one who came in after, who didn't have to risk her life again and again and again. Before she came though, we'd draw pebbles to figure out who was responsible for cleaning up the bodies, weighted so the most dangerous capes were less likely to end up with the grunt work. Turns out I still remember how to disappear the body.

I chuck the cordwood-sized pieces of dead Nazi into the plastic bins of drain cleaner, breathing heavily through the mask. Cutting up corpses is hard work, and even though I acknowledge the importance of cleaning up after yourself it's still a pain in the ass. I've even been careful about it, with tarps on the ground and no blood sprays, but for every five minutes I spend...

I shake my head and secure a lid on top of the box, then duct tape it shut. Tomorrow night I'll dump the liquid down the drain, then toss the bones in a sack and teleport out into the water with a rock to weigh it down. Once the bag breaks there's a small chance that a police officer grabs them, puts the pieces together, and concludes something but by then the data will be more or less irrelevant.

This isn't close to paranoid enough to deal with an actual group of hostile thinkers. If that was the case I'd be disposing of the corpses out of state, deciding my next course of action with a random number generator, and trying to get in contact with more parahumans in order to generate a greater spread of possible futures. The Thinktank is overtaxed though, and the Empire doesn't have anything comparable so I think I'm safe with just this.

Once the first step in the cleaning is done, I head over to the map and start checking out the sites described on the map. Red and yellow exes dot the northern half of the city, describing an arc of low- to high-key Nazi activity. It took me three interrogations and five bigots to get this far, and by this time next month the information will be useless. For now though I have a fairly well-developed picture of the Empire's casual and formal meeting places.

I take a step back and cap the pens, staring at the city. The odds of Sam making it past one week are close to zero. That gives me two days to capitalize on this information. Two days to search fourteen different building complexes while avoiding detection. Two days to either find Sam or-

I gently place the two pens down, then head towards the sink and jug of barely-potable water that serves as a washroom. I strip out of the scrubs, wash my face and parts of my upper body, then head towards the pseudo-bedroom.

In two days I either have fulfilled my victory conditions or haven't. Thinking past that isn't productive, so I don't.

Instead, I pull the sleeping bag closer around my neck and drift into blackness.

 

[T0PH4T]

I'd like to talk about The Death of the Author.

Nominally, I agree with the statement "books are meant to be read, not written." This is not an unbiased opinion, as that theory affects my employment opportunities as well as viewership, but it wasn't until this debacle that I really had to put my money where my mouth is. After considering where the plot would be going, what I already had, and the likelihood that the former is worth the latter, I have decided that this story is done.

Simply put, the Good End is now canon. I'm going to nip and tuck away the caterpillar chapter and include the final Wards segment, but more or less we're outta here. The continuing plot lines are inconsistent with what I wanted to do with the story, needlessly edge, and frankly aren't that interesting. I am ret-conning the past three chapters as non-canon, and all information in them is to be considered non-canon as well. This also means losing five chapters I had pre-written but because they're worthless that isn't much of a loss. If you want to throw me any more questions I'll be more than happy to answer them while I put this thread in order.

Anyway, self-review:

What I did good:

• Made an OC: Eli is not the problem in this story, and frankly I enjoyed exploring his head. I think at this point I can claim the ability to make interesting people, both as side characters and as protagonists.
• Protectorate Are Not Idiots: Like Collagen, this was a story trying to push back against the "Protectorate is Evil" fanon. I think I've written a fairly even-handed administration, one which takes people's circumstances into account, and who would not be the worst employers in the world should you come into a set of superpowers.

What I did alright:

• Consistency: I'll get to this later, but from a technical level I did what I promised of a 1k chapter every day. This is not a difficult promise mind, and the quality was low enough (frequent SPAG errors, actual story content) was garbage enough that I'm not sure I think producing it actually counts as a feat.
• Canon characterization: I still don't have a good handle on Armsmaster, and basically all of Velocity and Dauntless are made up. On the other hand Colin is more than a robot here, Velocity has lines, and Dauntless exists as a plot-affecting character. I'd like to think that overall people basically bought these characters as canon, plus or minus a few years of jading.

What I fucked up:

• Pacing: This is a function of the production method, which is "crank out 1k words every day", but it's no less inexcusable. This story moves both too fast and too slow in places, and I wouldn't blame anyone who's asking about a time structure. Frankly speaking, there is no calendar, and including one would require a massive re-write.
• Plot: This story isn't one. I don't think that there is a single coherent narrative carried from chapter one to chapter thirty six, and that's horrible. The D&D group died out without doing almost anything, the car-bombing plot is going to be basically unresolved, and just in general things are kinda shit. Again a function of production, again inexcusable.

*****

I give Black Cat, pre-Jackie, a 6/10. I think that while it's got a LOT of flaws, Eli is a character that a lot of people liked and were happy to read about. Post-Jackie it's 3/10, maybe worse, on account of being too edge and inconsistent, hence the reason I'm declaring it non-canon. The best parts of this story (for me) were the Wards interactions, which occasionally reached 7 or 8 out of 10. I also got an infraction for that one scene, which I had to edit in post and should've run by amicii. There was more potential here than I was capable of capitalizing on, and I'm sorry to miss out on that.

Anyway, H4T signing off.