Now that you have a good grasp of the pace of your part of the city, you want to get a bit of experience with patrolling and being out in your cape identity. As such, you organize a ride-along with the PRT.
On one of the days you have off, you head down to the PRT office in the center of the city. You get a few odd looks with your costume, but the cold and the fall chill means that most other people who are out and about are also bundled up.
You step into the main lobby and are hit with a wave of heat from the climate control desperately trying to keep up with the weather outside and the cold leaking in from all the windows. You can see the secretary at the front desk has on a jacket over her shirt.
You walk over to her and say, "Hey I'm Vicar, uhh, I was going to go on a ride-along patrol?"
"Yes, Staunch will be meeting up with you in meeting room 3," she answers.
"Alright, anything else, or should I just go over there?" You ask.
"One more thing. Here is a hard-copy of the results of your healing tests," she says handing you a manila envelope. "When you want to begin the next phase of your certification, bring this to one of the hospitals in the city and they will get you started."
Taking the envelope and placing it under your arm you say, "Thank you and have a nice day."
The secretary says the same as you walk over to one of the doors leading further into the building.
Inside meeting room three is a man sitting at the table. He's wearing a silver bodysuit under a pair of jeans and white muscle shirt. Covering the top half of his face is a helmet sculpted or forged to look like the upper half of the head of a roaring lion. The bottom half of his face is covered by a salt and pepper beard/mustache combo.
As you walk in, he smiles and stands up, you can see that despite his age he is both tall and well built. He reaches out and gives you a firm handshake. "Welcome to the Protectorate, my friend."
"Thanks, I look forward to learning from you," you say, a bit off balance.
He leads you through the hallways, talking as he goes. "You're going to be riding with McKay's team, while I'm in my Law-Keeper armor."
He stops and types a passcode into a touchpad. You follow him inside the base's underground vehicle bay. Parked are five vans, each with the PRT logo proudly emblazoned on the side. On top of each of the vans is the standard green and white lights, along with a rail and hatch system used for mounting containment foam sprayers.
Next to one of the vans is a set of cerulean power armor sitting in a resting position with the knees folded up to the neck of the suit. The bottom half of the head of a roaring lion is loosely placed on the neck of the armor. One hand of the armor is placed flat on the ground, the other is gripping the shaft of a giant warhammer. The warhammer is one headed, the same color as the armor, and on the back has three soot-marked jet engines.
You stand there awkwardly as Staunch puts on his armor. He starts by clicking the bottom half of the helmet into place; attaching it to the part of the helmet he already has on. After that, he presses an indistinguishable part of the shoulder armor that releases the front chest piece with a pneumatic hiss. Mechanically, he strips off his shirt and jeans and with a flexibility that surprises you, he slips into the power armor. Dots of power briefly flare throughout the power armor before stabilizing when Staunch attaches the front chest piece. All in all the entire process only takes five or so seconds.
In a slightly digitized voice he asks, "how familiar are you with the PRT system?"
At your confused look he continues, "as-in how we do patrols, chain of command, shit-uh, stuff like that."
"Well, chain of command would be you, then the leader of the squad, then the officers, right?"
Staunch makes a so-so gesture with his oversized gauntlets and responds, "officially, McKay is higher ranked than me, but because I've been around the block enough, the squaddies tend to take my advice."
"About the patrol, it's basically just driving around keeping an eye out for crimes, right?"
"Wrong. It's all about comforting the public, about showing them we're people just like them."
You mull over his answer. While most of what you hear about hero patrols is the heart pounding action, it makes sense that what makes up more of a patrol is public relations. The more unseen capes are from the general public, the easier it would be to other them, and dehumanize them.
"Of course if we see an obvious crime going on, we aid the PRT officers then contact the police," he continues.
On that note, a squad of troopers walk into the vehicle bay.
All five of them are clad in the typical outfit for PRT officers: Kevlar shirt and pants, ceramic plates, the reflective full face plate attached to a black helmet, and a rugged body-camera attached to their chest.
The one in the lead gives you a firm handshake and says, "I'm staff sergeant McKay, Vicar right?"
"Yeah, thanks for letting me tag along," you say.
Indicating to each of the other officers in turn, he says, "this is private O'Neil, containment foam specialist Michaelson, private first class Anderson, and private first class Brady. If I need to handle something, listen to them. Understood?"
"Yessir."
"Any questions before we head out?" Staunch cuts in.
"Just the one: could we stop by the children's hospital? You say, holding up the paperwork.
The sergeant looks over to Staunch, unable to see either of their faces; you can only guess as to what they communicate in the instant.
"If we don't run into any villains that should be alright," McKay decides.
The officers pack into the van, grabbing out their firearms. The con foam specialist checks the foam container and sprayer. Meanwhile the sergeant gives you a brief rundown of how to operate containment foam grenades.
Once ready, everyone except Staunch packs into the van.
You mostly observe the patrol, while occasionally asking questions. All in all, its surprisingly uneventful. To accommodate you, they project the comms system through the vans speakers, in addition to their personal Bluetooth. Every few minutes Staunch updates the team, telling cheesy jokes, and relaying positions.
Aside from the check in points; where the team parks for a while and keeps an eye out, the patrol is just driving through city traffic.
Once you make it to the hospital the troopers park and wait outside, Staunch does an impromptu meet and greet, and you drop off the paperwork (with an agreement to set up a healing test later).
During the second half of the patrol McKay asks what your experience of being a cape has been like. The conversation flows from there, to why you decided to be a hero, eventually landing onto the topic of the Protectorate.
"While I'm not a fan of the back-room politics involved, and the profiting off of destructive fights leaves a bad taste in my mouth, the organization does a great deal of good nationally and internationally," you lay out.
"In a big picture sense, sure, but what about the personal scale?" he asks. "Back-up, info, training, funding, it'd free you up to do this sort of thing full time-assuming you don't already," he adds quickly.
"The thing is that as of right now, most of my abilities have a long cooldown, the ones that don't aren't meaningfully better than a dude with a gun, no offence."
"As of right now?-sorry I shouldn't pry," McKay apologizes. "Even so, during the rest time you can study and do training right?"
"Sure," you concede. "Also on the personal scale, well, I'm not entirely sure that I want to commit to an organization with strict timescales and hierarchies. I get that for a group that size, scheduling and ranks are needed, I just have to decide if giving up on the flexibility of independence is worth it. "
"I'm glad that you're thinking about this seriously," he says.
"Of course, thanks for letting me ride along," you say.
After that, the rest of the ride along is uneventful.
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Once you have set up a healing session at the hospital, you head over there after work. Waiting outside one of the side doors is a male nurse in full scrubs. Seeing you he gives you a brief on the situation.
"Normally we would have to doing some paperwork, acclimation to our processes here, and some classes, but we got a kid on the way with critical blood loss," he says, opening the door and grabbing some hand sanitizer. "Some of the folks over in legal are talking with the parents about getting release forms signed."
The responsibility that you have accepted, for the first time really hits home. If you aren't able to heal this child then they will either die, or in the best case scenario have a long recovery time and permanent scarring.
While walking to the emergency room you introduce yourselves to each other. "I'm Ethan and I'm going to be your liaison around here."
"I go by Vicar," you respond.
"If it isn't too personal to ask: why?" he says.
You take a moment to collect your thoughts then say, "it's a reminder. I never want to forget that I need to act as a representative for the poor, the forgotten and the downtrodden. There are too many stories of people forgetting themselves once they find success, tales of how easily power can be abused. I never want that to be me."
The rest of the walk to the emergency room is made in solemn quiet.
The emergency room that you are brought to has a thick smell of antiseptic. On the gurney is a small child, six or seven years old, with his face covered in bloody bandages. One of the doctors walks up to Ethan and says, "the parents gave permission for experimental treatment. "
"Is there anything else you need?" Ethan asks.
"No," you say, stepping forward to the kid. You reach out with a trembling hand, knowing that if this doesn't work… you don't want to think about what would happen.
Pressing your hand into a patch of exposed skin on his neck, you release the wave of blue-white healing energy and watch as the bleeding stops.
Someone nearby asks if anything else needs to be done and you numbly shake your head. Seemingly the next instant the kid is surrounded by medical professionals and you are nicely, but firmly led out of the room.
The parents are nervously waiting outside the door, the father pacing and the mother wringing her hands.
"How is he," the woman pleads.
"I stopped the bleeding," you say, noticing afterwards that Ethan is trying to subtly get something across to you. In your overwhelmed state you can't quite parse what it is. Once you regain focus into the conversation you see the woman crying into her husband's chest.
One of the doctors steps out from the room behind you and says, "your son is fine. We're just going to finish cleaning him up then you can come in and see him."
The father grabs your hand firmly and says, "thank you, thank you so much."
"Of course," you say, still trying to regain your balance. Before your healing power seemed near useless, never getting to see its strengths. Now though, you get it, your power is great for triage, that's the type of healing you should be focusing on.
The two parents rush into the emergency room, and Ethan leads you over to one of the hospital's break rooms.
"Now that the first bit of excitement's over, here is the first booklet," he says, holding out a safety manual.
The two of you spend the next few hours going over medical disclaimers, legal information and hospital procedure.
You go to bed that night buoyed by the warmth of having saved a life.
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Near the end of the week you take your last day off, and head over to the PRT for another patrol. This time it is going to be a walking patrol with two heroes: Archetype and a newly transferred hero named Newton. Knowing that your feet are going to be killing you by the end of it, you preemptively take some aspirin.
It's a cold and clear fall day outside and you take a moment to appreciate the lack of cloud cover. You make your way down to the PRT office, jogging at times to warm up. The front door people are starting to recognize you at the headquarters, so the one currently on shift lets you right in.
You walk straight down to the meeting room that you have been to a few times now. Inside is who you assume to be Newton. He is lounging on a chair in his full costume; a pink bodysuit, attached navy blue plates and an angular gunmetal gray helmet covering the front of his face and leaving his shaved heavily scarred head exposed.
"Hey, uhh, I'm Vicar, I assume you're Newton?" you venture.
"Yeah," he says in a higher pitch voice than you would expect based on his buff appearance.
You wait a minute in case he has anything else to say, when there is nothing forthcoming you ask, "are we going to meet up with Archetype?"
"Yup," he bluntly says.
Getting the message that he doesn't want to talk to you, you pull up a chair and start going through the supplies you keep in your utility belt. First aid/trauma kit, fifty feet of cord, protein bars, water bottle, pocket knife, baggie of fireflies, some blindfolds and gags (most movers need line of sight, some masters need to speak).
After going through your stuff, you spend a bit of time evaluating your core. The intangible orb of spectral energy that you have now had for a while. A trick that you have been experimenting with is expending the ball, tracing the energy down your arms to your fingers so you can use the power instantly. So you begin the process and once you get to the point of no return with the energy tingling in your fingers, you instead force it back up your arms, and coil it into ball form.
On the fifth or sixth time going through the process, a blur of green light hovers into the room. In your head you hear a peppy feminine voice, hi, I'm Archetype, are you the new guy?
You try thinking to her, yeah, I'm Vicar.
After getting no response, you repeat it out loud.
You hear in your head again, cool! My thing is that I have three power sets that I switch between every day. I can't have the same power for two days in a row. What about you?
"I've got two types of blasts, a weak telekinesis, a triage heal that works once a day, and a few other minor powers."
Wow! That's a huge spread, I have a Brute power that makes me slow, a Thinker power that makes me vulnerable and this one that makes it hard for me to communicate.
"You seem fine to me?"
Well, I am only talking to you, I can't project to more than one person at a time, and even then, it's only 'cus you are looking at me that I can project to you at all.
"Alright that makes sense, what about you Newton?"
"I've got a Brute force field and when it gets hit, it powers up my gravity control. Any questions or can we go?"
Before you can really think about it, he takes your silence as affirmation and gets up and starts walking to the door. You notice that he walks in an odd way, perhaps it's the armor?
The two of you walk out the door and Archetype flies behind you. On the way outside Newton slings an oxygen tank onto his back without a word. While you all make your way through the complex he attaches a heavy duty tube from the top of the tank to his mask.
Seeing your look he says, "In case of a crisis, my effectiveness is more important than pride."
Archetype projects to you, Newton has permanent lung damage, to try to combat it she tries to improve her heart, but sometimes she can't get enough air anyway.
Well, it seems Newton is a woman, it's a good thing you didn't say anything related to that before finding it out.
Right as you are leaving the PRT headquarters you hear a loud rumbling and feel the ground shake. Looking around wildly, a block or two away you glimpse a cloud of cement dust billowing up into the air.
The three of you start running/flying over to the location. Newton activates his-her air tank and contacts the main office. Archetype blurs past the two of you flashing through the dust cloud.
You hear Newton take a deep breath from the air tank and yell over the roaring of the chaos around you, "stick with me, we're on discovery and recovery."
Before making it to the building you have a moment to think, what sort of approach do you want to make to any villains you find?
Options: (Pick 1)
[ ] Aggressive
-Use your strongest blast and try to blitz them.
Pro: This will almost certainly take whoever it is down.
Con: This will only leave you with a single heal.
[ ] Defensive
-Use Armor of Agathys to give yourself more time and perhaps an extra hit.
Pro: You are squishy, especially to Brutes, this will hurt them and make you tougher.
Con: Ranged enemies won't be hurt by this, also it leaves you with one heal.
[ ] Diplomatic
-Try to reason with them or, failing that, stall the villain.
Pro: Requires the least commitment, and can keep a villain around until the PRT gets here.
Con: Takes the most time thus allowing victims to stay in dangerous positions.
[ ] Other
-Write in.
Pros: Up to you.
Cons: Requires writing, personal investment, and creativity.
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This is the first half of the chapter, the second half will consist of some healing at the hospital and a second patrol with the PRT. Also, next half of the chapter will lead into the first combat encounter >: )
12/2/21 Edit: I decided to put in the hospital scene as a reward for anyone who checks this out early.
12/23/21 Edit: DONE.
