Stories set in the Ship of Fools spin-off from Taylor Varga.
Demons and Angels
- Thread starter Derek M
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Introduction
- Location
- Maryland
When Sophia Hess got powers, she wasn't sure how her life would change. She certainly wasn't expecting it to get as weird as it did, but then things tend to happen when there are lizards in the vicinity.
This thread is for a sequel/side-story to my story Ship of Fools. I am attempting to write it in such a way that you don't have to have read it to understand what's happening. I highly recommend you do, of course. I also recommend the story Taylor Varga, the original story by mp3.1415player. Ship of Fools is technically an omake of that story...though it is rather long for an omake at 340,000 words.
This thread is for a sequel/side-story to my story Ship of Fools. I am attempting to write it in such a way that you don't have to have read it to understand what's happening. I highly recommend you do, of course. I also recommend the story Taylor Varga, the original story by mp3.1415player. Ship of Fools is technically an omake of that story...though it is rather long for an omake at 340,000 words.
Chapter 1: A New Day
- Location
- Maryland
Chapter 1: A New Day
January 11, 2011, Brockton Bay, New Hampshire
"You're late, Hess."
Sophia cringed. That voice was the last one she wanted to hear right now, but she had been expecting and dreading it since she arrived at school. She supposed it was easier for her bully to just wait near her locker than it was to catch her at the entrance. "I don't have it, Taylor, but I can pay double next time."
The tall brunette glared at her. She and her crew were surrounding Sophia in a half-circle, making it impossible for her to get away. The red-headed girl next to Taylor popped a bubble from her chewing gum and rolled her eyes. "Shit, Tay, Hess here is so poor she can't even afford twenty." Sophia glared at the bitch, Emma. She thought she was special just because her dad was a divorce lawyer and she was best friends with Boss Hebert's kid.
Hebert smirked at the red-head's comment, then said, "Are you asking for charity, Hess? Do you need help from your betters?"
Sophia felt a sadly familiar indignant rage starting to build, but she viciously pushed it down. "You're not better than me, Hebert," she said with a scowl.
The other girl moved quickly, stepping up and into Sophia's space. "You want to bet?" The two girls glared at each other from inches away for a solid thirty seconds. Then Hebert took a step back and said, "It sets a bad precedent if I let you slide a week. How are you going to make it up to me?"
Sophia's frown deepened. What was Hebert fishing for? To her shame, she paid her protection money. Her father's job was dependent upon staying in Danny Hebert's good graces. More importantly, without the protection of the DWU, the PRT, or one of the other gangs, being black in the same city as the E88 was bad news. The gangs knew who was protected and who wasn't. The gang recruits at Winslow High were supposed to follow the same rules, but it was up to Taylor and her crew to enforce that for DWU dependents. So, she paid when Taylor came calling, even if she hated it. It seemed like the girl wanted something else, now, though, and was using her inability to pay as an excuse. "What do you mean?"
Taylor stared at her for a few moments. "You know Richie Washington has the hots for you?"
The black girl's expression turned confused. "So?"
"So, if somebody was to get close to him, she could learn all kinds of things," said Hebert.
Sophia's control over her rage slipped a bit. "He's a fucking Merchant!" That meant he was destined for the gutter, even if he was one of the more clear-headed stoners in school at the moment.
"Duh!" said Emma. "Why do you thinks she wants you to get close to him?"
Now it made a sick kind of sense. Sophia knew that the DWU had an understanding with the Empire, but the Archer's Bridge Merchants also had a presence in the Docks, and relations with them weren't nearly so good. Richie Washington was the number two Merchant at Winslow. Hebert was probably hoping to learn something to help her father. In a tight voice, she said, "I'm not going to whore myself out to a Merchant just to spy for you, Hebert."
With a mean-spirited smile, Madison, one of Taylor's more sycophantic hangers-on, asked, "What do you whore yourself out for?"
With a sneer and an aggressive glare, Hess returned, "Nothing you could provide, Clements." To her inner satisfaction (and slight confusion), the short girl flinched.
That seemed to anger Taylor, though. "You owe me, Hess."
"I told you, I'll pay you next week," she growled.
"Not good enough!" said Taylor. The girl looked like she might be about to get physical, but if so that would be new. Sophia ran track and was in pretty good shape, which made her a harder target than average. Hebert looked like she had muscle, though, and she also had a height advantage.
Before things could come to blows, Madison said, "Maybe you should tell Mike that he has a free shot at her little brother?"
Sophia saw red. Mike Chilton was the head of the E88 at Winslow. He was a vicious son-of-a-bitch, which was why he was number one despite only being in junior year. The seniors had all learned to defer to him. If he got the nod to take a free swipe at her brother Aaron, then he would take it, and he wouldn't care that the kid was still in junior high. "Don't you fucking dare!"
"What are you going to do about it?" asked Emma before Taylor could respond. The thin girl had seemed a little caught off guard by Madison's suggestion.
Desperate for some way to protect her brother, Sophia said, "Does your father know you're threatening the families of union members, Hebert? What would he say if somebody told him about it?" The man was known to have a violent temper, and she wouldn't be surprised if his family had felt the brunt of it.
Taylor's eyes widened, then narrowed again. Quietly, she said, "You need to learn to keep your mouth shut."
Sophia could see the punch coming, but somehow she wasn't able to dodge out of the way in time. She felt the blow strike the side of her head, dazing her. She tried to slide sideways, out of the path of the expected follow-up blow, but her opponent still managed to nail her hard in the stomach. The blow knocked the wind out of her. Taylor then charged forward, slamming her against the inside of the open locker door, the locking mechanism digging into her side. There was a brief pause in the blows, during which Sophia tried to wheeze in a breath. She could then feel Hebert grab her, dragging her over a few inches. She felt a shove, and then the door of the locker slammed, catching one of her wrists where it was still hanging out. She gave a started scream, and then her hand was pushed inside and the door was slammed shut. The light grew dim, limited only to the thin rays coming through the door vents. Sophia kicked back against the door, and yelled, "Let me out of here you fucking bitch! Ahh!" The only response was cruel laughter from the crowd of girls outside.
She continued to kick back against the locker door, using her frustration and anger as fuel to keep hammering. Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was probably less than five minutes, she paused, breathing heavy. It was then that she heard Hebert's voice coming through the door. "You need to remember who's in charge at Winslow, Hess. You're weak. Enjoy your time locked up. I'll be sure to let somebody know to let you out before I go home for the day." This was accompanied by more laughter, though it was clear that people were already moving away from the sound.
After a few more half-powered kicks, she slumped down (as much as was possible in the locker), and tried to think. Her first thought was that Hebert was a much better fighter than she expected. Maybe her father got some of the union members to teach her? Her second thought was that the staff at Winslow were all pretty much worthless. Hopefully somebody would come looking for her when she didn't show up to class? Yeah, and maybe fucking Alexandria would break through the ceiling and tear the door off of her locker while the other members of the Triumvirate tracked down and arrested Hebert and her crew. Her parents would notice when she didn't come home, but that meant at least six hours trapped here unless she got lucky. Thank God she wasn't claustrophobic. It was at that moment that she felt something crawling on the skin of her ankle. She stifled another scream, not wanting to give anybody the satisfaction if they were still listening, and tried to use one ankle to brush whatever bug was there. Just her luck to get stuck inside with a roach, or whatever the hell it was.
She froze when she felt something else crawling on the skin of her arm, then gave a short yell when something actually bit her. What the fuck? Was her locker infested or something? She didn't keep food or anything inside it, so...ouch! THAT one hurt. Sophia started to panic as she felt more and more creepy crawlies of some kind on her skin. She began banging with her foot against the door again. "Hey! Somebody! Let me out of here! There's bugs in here! Help, anybody!" It was like she had fallen into an ant hive or something. She started thrashing more, bruising her skin against the inside of the locker. Her head slammed back, dazing her, when she felt something crawling on her face. Tears started to fall, and she kept repeating over and oven, "Please, somebody, please...help me..."
Sophia Hess's vision began to waver, and then there was a vision. She saw stars, and some kind of vast creature, which was dropping bits of bright light down onto a planet below. The memory of the vision was already starting to fade as she lost consciousness.
[CONNECTION]
Down the hall, Taylor was smirking at the sound of Hess thrashing around in her locker. To think that the fucking cunt would threaten to go to her father! She deliberately wasn't thinking about what his likely reaction would be if he thought she was going against his orders that union members and their families were off limits. Ten minutes with her bugs would teach her a lesson. Of course, she wouldn't leave them there long. She wasn't trying to kill the girl, after all, and she couldn't afford to leave evidence that would let the PRT draw the right conclusions. Suddenly, her vision blurred and she passed out.
She woke up to Emma frantically shaking her. "Taylor, are you OK? Please wake up!" The rest of her crew were standing around nervously.
"I'm awake...stop shaking me," she grumbled, pushing her best friend's hands away. "Jesus."
"What happened?" asked Julia.
Taylor shook her head as she sat up. "I don't know...I just felt light-headed. I'm fine now." She began dispersing her swarm, telling the bugs in the locker to go away.
Emma still looked concerned. "We should take you to the school nurse."
"I said I'm fine," she repeated, though her focus was elsewhere.
Madison put a hand on her arm. "Better safe than sorry, Taylor. You were out for almost a full minute."
Grudgingly, Taylor nodded her head and let her friends lead her to the nurse. The whole walk, she wondered why the hell Sophia Hess was no longer locked in her locker.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
A dark-haired woman was sitting in the newspaper archives of the Brockton Bay Public Library, reading through the events of the recent and not-so-recent past. She had a relatively conservative blouse in bright blue on top of blue leather pants, an outfit that was a little too cold for the weather outside. Any observer would think she was simply skimming the headlines if they noticed the speed with which she was flipping microfiche pages. She would pause to look at a displayed page, letting her specialized contact lenses scan the information. When it was done, it would flash a light in her peripheral vision, and she would advance the page. She was averaging about a page every two to three seconds, and was keeping herself amused by actually scanning the headlines. Unfortunately, there were still a number of local periodicals that didn't have online archives, which meant that somebody had to manually scan them to get a full picture of recent events...or at least events as reported in the media.
A thin, fit man with short brown hair came up behind her. "Are you almost done, love?" he asked in a soft Received Pronunciation accent.
"Almost," she replied as she continued the regular flipping. "This is the last of the Brockton Bay Gazette." Her accent was hard to place. It was somewhat reminiscent of people who relocated frequently as a child and picked up a plethora of regional speech patterns. "Are you done with your list?"
"I am, though the library layout was odd," he replied.
She finished her review and shut down the microfiche reader. As she started to pull the reel out of the machine to return it to the box, she asked, "How so?"
He grimaced. "While this world looks a lot like the ones we know, there's something off. A lot of the military theory is shelved under philosophy, for example. They also don't have a horror section. I had to find Stephen King in the children's section."
The woman got up and walked the boxed reel over to the shelf, taking care to place it in the correct spot rather than just leaving it in the reshelf cart. "Is that not appropriate for children?"
He shook his head. "I might have thought so when I was a vampire, but generally not." He gestured to what was obviously the entrance to a broom closet. She looked at him with a raised eyebrow and a slightly saucy smirk, but proceeded inside. The man followed her inside and closed the door. Out loud, he said, "We're ready to leave, Sammy."
There was a brief flash of light visible from under the door, and then the closet was empty.
The two appeared on a transport platform facing a glowing hologram of a silver-haired teddy bear, the floating avatar of their starship's artificial intelligence. "Welcome back, William, Vala. I've processed the information you sent back, if you'd like to join the others in the conference room."
The raven-haired woman, Vala, grinned at the avatar. "Thank you, Sammy."
The two began walking down the corridor of the starship Smug Advocacy, the flagship of the powerful beings known simply as the Family. The corridor was painted a soft pastel blue with gray stripes breaking up the straight lines. The floor was a dark gray rubber-like substance. For a starship, it was an oddly aesthetically pleasing combination. The whole ship was actually quite comfortable, which was convenient, as it was the home base of the Angels, the group whose members included both of them as well as a variety of other displaced outcasts from all of creation.
"Do you think we'll have leave time while we're around this Earth," asked Vala idly. "Your world does have some interesting shopping."
William smirked. "Not really my world, is it? We didn't have nutters running around in tights beating up criminals with superpowers."
She laughed at his comment. "No, you had demons from hell wandering around. Not exactly an improvement if you ask me."
William Pratt had spent centuries as the vampire known as William the Bloody, also called Spike thanks to his propensity for using railroad spikes to torture his victims. For most of that time, he was a bloodthirsty monster, albeit a slightly atypical one with an above-average number of humanizing habits. He had finally fought to regain his mortal soul, and had then sacrificed himself to close a gateway to Hell. The Family had retrieved an artifact from an evil law firm that happened to contain said soul, and a Family bioshaper had built him a new and improved human body. This was, in his admittedly limited experience, somewhat typical of them. Now he contributed what he could to the Angels -- skill at fisticuffs, an in-depth knowledge of the mystical, occult and ill-omened, a desire to do good, and the education of a 19th-century gentleman. The last was being supplemented by independent study using resources from a variety of realities, including a few that were far in advance of his home Earth.
He took his companion's teasing as well-intentioned. Vala Mal Doran knew what it was like to have a demon inside. She hadn't been born on Earth, instead growing up on one of the many human worlds in her home universe. She was a thief, a con artist, and a treasure hunter who had fallen afoul of an alien parasite that took over her body. That species of parasite, known as the Goa'uld, had used human hosts to create an interstellar empire...an empire of slaves that they used to satisfy their egos, perversions and sadistic whims. Being a host left you aware of every atrocity committed, but without any agency to prevent them. She had been rescued when the Family had taken exception to the existence of the Goa'uld. She retained some of her Goa'uld's lore and knowledge of high technology, as well as her original streetwise savvy and skills at breaking and entering.
The couple came to a well-appointed conference room that already had a number of occupants, human and otherwise. The avatar of the ship's AI was at one end of the table, waiting for them to arrive. On the side closest to the door sat a statuesque blonde woman named Annika Hansen, though she also answered to, "Seven." She still had visible implants from her time as a member of a collective cybernetic species. The Family had offered her a job when it became clear that her home culture would forever be suspicious of her motives after she was freed from the collective. At the table on the other side sat three more people. Anya Harris was a now-human former Vengeance Demon with a penchant for capitalism and skill as a witch. Faith Lehane was a Vampire Slayer, a mystically-empowered warrior chosen by powers in another plane of reality. The third was a relative newcomer, a large man named Flint Marko. A friend of the Family had sent him to them to find a cure for his daughter's illness. Marko had been a supervillain on his home world, but mostly that had been to pay for his child's medical care. With that no longer necessary, he had joined the Angels. The man was a shapeshifter and a silica kinetic, and was slowly integrating himself into the team.
At the end of the table opposite from Sammy's avatar sat a large, reptilian being. She had pitch black scales edged with red highlights that were visible from the right angle. She could also hide them and fade into the darkness like a shadow. As a natural quadruped, she was sitting on her tail in lieu of a chair and using her front legs to review a digital tablet, her claws operating the controls easily. This was Metis of the Family, sponsor of their band of adventurers, investigators and miscreants. She looked over at William and Vala as they came in with a terrifyingly toothy smile. "Welcome back," she said with a slight sibilance. "I take it you found everything?"
"They did," answered Sammy before either of the two could respond. "The information supplemented what was available online, and it paints a rather disturbing and confusing picture."
Metis quirked a brow-ridge. "This world is more than just an evil mirror. How so?"
Sammy frowned. "We came here because the quantum signature of this reality showed a familiar resonance with that of the Skitter-verse. It was familiar because it was similar to the relationship between the realities of the Federation Starfleet and the Terran Empire." The Family had met a Starfleet officer name Miles O'Brien, and had, in the process of bringing him home, discovered that his reality was being forced into contact with what could best be described as an, "evil mirror universe," where the inhabitants of one were mirror images in temperament and morality of their duplicates in the other. It had been thought that this forced contact was the cause of the two realities' strange reflection...but that had changed with their discovery of their current reality. It was a mirror of another superhero universe, one containing a girl named Taylor Hebert who had the power to control insects, and who went by the name Skitter in costume. This reality and that one, however, didn't have similar circumstances to those of Starfleet and the Empire. In the latter case, the dimensions had been forced together as part of an attack by an external threat. No such factor was obvious here. They were here to try and see if they could discern what the true cause of the strange similarities and apparent moral inversion was.
"While there are many examples of duplicates of people in Skitter's universe, the overall circumstances are different in ways that are hard to explain," continued the avatar. "The most intriguing points have to do with Scion and the Endbringers. Unlike in Skitter's universe, the Endbringers do not attack and destroy cities on a regular interval. They appear, on average, once a year, and have hit fewer targets. As an example, while Kyushu in Japan of this Earth was sunk by the Endbringer Leviathan, the island of Newfoundland is still intact and above sea level. Scion, the being we know to be behind human superpowers in this reality, exists, but his pattern of behavior is very different. While, 'the golden man,' in the other known versions of Brockton Bay seemed to wander at random, doing heroic deeds of wildly varying import, the one in this universe is seen far more infrequently, and always appears during a great crisis or major disaster."
"Wait," interrupted Marko. "You're saying this powerful hero just helped out based on what, the weather?"
Metis nodded. "Something like that. He was effectively an idiot savant who was literally following the advice of a random homeless man. He could stop a forest fire one day, then spend the next day doing nothing but rescuing cats stuck in trees."
"He is not so random here. There are also a number of powerful people lacking doubles in this reality. The Triumvirate here includes Legend, Alexandria and Hero. My first assumption, that the villain Siberian had killed Eidolon instead of Hero in this reality, proved to be incorrect. Eidolon apparently never existed. There is also no evidence that the supervillain Marquis ever had a daughter, so the healer Panacea also does not exist," said Sammy.
That news seemed to visibly discomfit Metis. Panacea, civilian name Amy Dallon, was a close friend of the Family in the version of Brockton Bay where they first revealed themselves to humanity. Instead of commenting on that, Metis said, "Does Dragon exist?" Dragon was an artificial intelligence, one whose "father" perished when the city-killing Leviathan destroyed Newfoundland in the Family's home reality.
Now it was Sammy's turn to look mildly upset. "I can find no evidence that Mother ever existed in this reality. The Baumann Parahuman Containment Center also does not exist, and perhaps as a consequence of that, kill orders for the most dangerous villains are far more common." Dragon was the warden for the most secure prison ever devised for dangerous parahumans, except that it was never constructed in this reality.
"Kill orders?" asked Flint. In his world, heroes, with a few well-known exceptions like Frank Castle, almost never killed their enemies.
"Despite the close parallels with Skitter's world, there is much here that is...perhaps the best term is, 'darker,' than there," explained the AI. "There are numerous examples in recorded history. In the United States, for example, the Declaration of Independence is very similar, but ascribes a natural right to, 'life, loyalty, and the pursuit of competence.' The Emancipation Proclamation rooted its justification in the concept that only the state had the right to control the freedom of its citizens. The second amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, but for the purposes of defending one's honor and promoting one's agenda."
William, who had taken a seat at the table, nodded his head and added, "That is very similar to some of the things I saw in the public library. Attitudes seemed harsher, and more fixated on usefulness and power. Some of the Dr. Seuss books were...disturbing."
"Some of the newspaper headlines seemed to make light of events that sounded unpleasant," said Vala. "It's like heroes and villains are almost expected to incur a significant amount of collateral damage in terms of lives and property."
"That is in line with the attitudes of the Terran Empire," commented Seven. "It is well documented that the Imperial Navy used extremely painful methods of discipline, and advancement through assassination was relatively common." The Borg Collective, the 'species' which had formerly assimilated her, had obtained a significant amount of data about the mirror universe from captured Federation vessels and personnel.
"So, does any of this bring us any closer to understanding why this mirror universe exists?" asked Anya. "That is why we came here, isn't it?"
There was a moment of silence, and then Metis replied, "Our best option here may be investigating the most obvious differences between this world and its mirror."
"If I may suggest something slightly selfish," said Sammy, "we could begin at the last known address of Andrew Richter in Newfoundland. It is likely the Endbringer targeted Newfoundland because he created Mother. Perhaps if he still lives, it is because he never gained his powers, or he may have different powers."
The Angels looked at each other. Nobody seemed to have any better suggestions.
"What's Canada like in this world?" asked Faith.
Sammy turned to look at the Slayer. "It is similar in many ways to your world, and also to Skitter's. The government-affiliated hero team is still the Guild, though this one is run by Narwhal and Hearthrob."
"Hearthrob?" questioned Metis.
Sammy nodded. "He is this world's version of Nikos Vasil, who was known on Skitter's world as Heartbreaker before his unusual disappearance."
"Does he have a goatee?" asked Vala with a smirk.
The AI turned a skeptical look on the woman. "There is no correlation between facial hair and morality, Vala. In any event, from his press pictures, he appears to have what is called a, 'soul patch.'"
"Definitely evil," claimed Faith, to a round of good-humored chuckles around the table.
Still smiling, Metis said, "I think we have a plan. Come up with an action plan we can review before tomorrow, and if everything looks good, then we can go ahead with the investigation."
With that, the meeting broke up, the participants heading to attend to their own matters elsewhere aboard the ship.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sophia woke up to find herself staring at a foam-board drop ceiling in a dimly lit classroom. She groaned quietly and pushed herself up to a sitting position. Running her hands over her arms, she could feel the welts from insect bites.
"What the fuck just happened?" she asked out loud.
Nobody answered her, not that she was expecting an answer. She began to slowly push herself up to her feet. Whatever had happened, she felt dazed and a little weak. Without thinking, she reached out for something to help support her weight, only to grab onto a heavy metal projection screen leaning against the wall. The bulky item tilted away from the wall at her tug and began to fall. She tried to back off, but stumbled and fell back onto her backside. She closed her eyes with a wince as she could see that it was going to catch her legs.
There was a loud clang, then a rattling crash. Surprisingly, there was no pain. She opened one eye to peek, wondering if she had gotten insanely lucky with the accident. What she saw caused her to open both eyes and stare. She raised her hand and looked at the transparent, shadowy form that took the place of her skin. The metal screen was lying on the floor, passing through her body. She backed up, scooting away from the fallen screen on her butt. When she was clear of it, she made an instinctive mental effort, and her body turned back to human flesh and blood.
"Huh."
Sophia had a sneaking suspicion that she was currently in the seldom-used classroom that was actually behind her locker. She must have turned to her shadowy form and fallen through the wall. Getting to her feet, she went over to the wall where she thought her locker was located. Another act of will had her arm turn to shadow...but just her arm. She reached through the wall, and felt around the bottom of the locker until she found the textbook she had dropped when that bitch had shoved her inside. Grabbing it, she was able to pull the now shadow-form book through the wall.
"Well...that's kind of cool."
She supposed she could make a living stealing shit from behind locked doors. Of course, the PRT would be after her. Her eyes widened as she realized that they would be after her regardless. The law said new parahumans were required to register. She was pretty sure she wouldn't be doing that. She had no desire to join the Wards, and if she registered without joining then the gangs would know about her before the end of the day. It was taken as simple fact that there were spies for all the gangs embedded in the local PRT offices. Everybody in Brockton Bay had heard about the Laborns. The son, Brian, had triggered, and had registered without joining the Wards. He, his father, and his sister had all been found murdered less than a week later. The walls were covered in pro-Nazi graffiti, but the jury was out on whether it was actually the E88 or another gang trying to blame them. The kid must have said, "no," one too many times.
The clock on the wall said it was a quarter past ten, which meant that she had been out for almost an hour. She had missed a class, which at Winslow wasn't that big a deal. The good news is that she was in the middle of a free period, which meant she had some time to figure out what to do. Her temptation was to cut for the rest of the day so she could figure out what her powers actually did, besides obviously turning her into some kind of shadow person. She wondered if she could see herself in a mirror when she was fully shifted? The problem with that was that she was supposed to be stuck in her own locker, and people might notice if she just disappeared. She didn't really feel like getting back in her locker and waiting for rescue, though. Apart from being uncomfortable and boring, the school also seemed to need to call an exterminator. She didn't like thinking about the ramifications for the cafeteria food. Even so, it wasn't like the quality would go down just because of a few bugs. It might even improve the nutrient content.
Was it possible to open a locker from the inside? They were supposed to keep people out, not in, right? Going back to the wall, she shifted back to her shadow state and looked at the inside of the locker door. The problem was that the inside of the locker was pretty dark, with the only light being from the air vents. Her ability to see in the dark seemed to be slightly improved when she was shadow, but not enough to figure out the mechanism for the door lock. Withdrawing back into the classroom, she wondered if it would be easier looking in a locker that was closer to the overhead light? She moved over a few feet, then shifted again and began pushing through the wall. She only made it a few inches before there was a sudden flaring pain, and she was knocked back into the room, and also back to her physical form. It felt like her nerves were on fire, and she couldn't control her limbs. After the better part of a minute, her twitching stopped. She muttered a slow, "Fuuuccckkk..." under her breath. A little more rest allowed her to sit up. She looked at the wall where she had tried to pass...and noticed the electrical socket just to the right of where she had tried to enter. She wasn't immune to electricity in her shadow? That would complicate things.
After a few more minutes of rest, she got up. Shifting her hand to shadow, she began to slowly press against the wall in the same area. After several attempts and a couple of comparatively minor shocks, she thought she could feel when she was too close to an electrical field. The technique required her to move slowly, however, so it wouldn't be very practical if she actually had to hurry. Doors and windows would probably be pretty safe, but walls would be risky, at least in buildings that had power. Of course, there were more than a few abandoned buildings in the Bay. She wondered for a second how she was figuring all of this out so quickly? Did her power include a thinker power, too? Nobody would say she was dumb (at least nobody but racist fucks whose opinions didn't matter), but she was mostly an average student. While that made her slightly above the Winslow average, it really wasn't anything to brag about. Thinking about it, she realized that, at least where her power was concerned, she had kind of an instinctive feel for what she could and couldn't do. The electricity had caught her by surprise because she hadn't considered the matter before. When she had more time, she was going to have to think about it carefully.
For now, she tried to find a locker that was near a hall light, but wasn't blocked by electrical lines. She finally found one, and also discovered that the actual locking mechanism for the locker door was a pretty simple mechanism that just blocked the bar connected to the door latch. The whole thing looked cheap, but the important thing is that it should be possible to open the door with a ruler pushing at the right spots. The tricky part was that it had to be done at both the top and the bottom of the locker to work. She could probably just do one and push the door out a bit, then work the other. She pulled back out from the other kid's locker. It was probably the locker of the stoner kid down the hall if the pervasive smell of weed was a clue. She could still smell in her shadow state, but it was slightly muted, almost like she was breathing through a mask.
There was a ruler in the teacher's desk in the classroom, and she had shortly phased back into her own locker. She reversed her facing, though, so that she could more easily work the lock. Hopefully, nobody would notice the discrepancy, assuming anybody was watching. It took her about ten minutes of fiddling with the lock to get the door open. Trying to undo the bottom first had been a mistake, because the door didn't have enough flex to keep the metal tab out of the locking slot. The top was able to push out, though, and then it was just a matter of putting enough force into it at the bottom. She finally popped the door open, and stumbled a bit as she half-fell out into the corridor. Looking around, she saw that there was a janitor down the hall cleaning up some kind of mess, but the man didn't even look up from his task. She noticed wires running up to his ears, so he may not have even heard her over whatever music was playing. Closing her locker door, she saw that the top edge wasn't flush anymore, and it was a little harder to get it to close. That probably wasn't a bad thing, as it suggested that she had forced her way out from the inside in a pretty concrete way.
She began heading toward the girl's restroom by the stairwell. Checking herself in the mirror and then heading to the cafeteria seemed like the best approach. She could worry about her powers later.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Flint checked the time and verified that it would be after school hours on Sineya station, even if it was just after lunch on board the Smug Advocacy. The ship's hours generally shifted to match their current ground-side location if they expected to be there for more than a few days as a matter of practicality. Of course, in space, the maintenance of day-night cycles was fairly arbitrary, and most of the crew needed only a limited amount of sleep thanks to Family biotech. Flint didn't have a Family symbiote, but his power had altered his biology rather dramatically, and he already hadn't needed to sleep more than a few hours a night. He made the call.
The image of the girl who answered the call changed from mild interest to excited happiness. "Daddy!"
A smile broke the normally stern visage of Flint's face when he saw his daughter. "Hey, girl! How was school today?"
"It was soo cool. We had an Asgard come in and explain how magic and physics interact with each other," she exclaimed, her voice rising and falling rapidly as she spoke.
He cocked his head to one side. "An Asgard? You mean like Thor?" Marko had met the thunder god on several occasions, and a couple of them had even been friendly...or at least not overtly hostile.
His daughter shook her head rapidly. "They're not like our Asgard. These are aliens that look a little like those gray aliens in that weird movie that we saw on cable."
At her words, a vague recollection came to him from the Angel "allies and enemies" briefing packet about a highly advanced race that looked like the kidnappers from Communion. "Huh. What was he like?"
"It was a girl alien," she corrected. "Her name was Idunn. She was nice, though I don't think her people show their emotions much. She knew a lot about science and magic, and Maggie's father is a wizard who uses magic that interferes with technology. He's got bracelets that stop that, and Idunn was really interested when she heard about that. She also talked about the Family a lot. She said she was the first member of her species to actually meet them, when they rescued her from being stuck in a damaged starship."
Flint smirked at that. From his interactions with Metis and the stories told by the others, it seemed like the lizards had a thing about saving people. Combined with their slightly odd sense of humor, they reminded the reformed villain of Spider-man, albeit with an underlying aura of menace that was more like Doom. Then again, he could also draw parallels to Doc Strange and the Fantastic Four. The Family were kind of like all the metas in New York crammed together in lizard-shaped packages. "That sounds fun. Is everything all right at Danielle's?" Danielle Faez was his daughter's best friend, and her parents were watching over her while Flint was out on assignment. The girl's parents were both researchers in the technomancy group, and neither of them did field work.
"They gave me the spare bedroom, because Danielle's bed is only a single, but we stayed up talking and I fell asleep next to her anyway. We had something they called manakish for dinner, and it was kind of like pizza." The girl stumbled a bit at the food name, obviously focusing on how to say it properly. "Did you know Danielle has a teddy bear that talks to her, but it isn't one of those mechanical ones like they have in the stores back home? Her mom said it has something called a, 'minor guardian spirit' inside. It's actually like a really smart dog."
He listened for a bit as his daughter chattered on about various things. Finally, he asked, "And how are you feeling? Any tingles? Pain?" His daughter had had a rare genetic disorder that had caused partial paralysis, and she had needed regular care to ensure that her breathing and heart rate stayed normal. The Family had healed her, but he was still worried about her.
The girl rolled her eyes. "Dad! I'm fine. When Ianthe heals people, they stay healed. That's what everybody says." The purple healer of the Family had a well-deserved reputation.
"I know, girl. Despite that, I'm going to be back in a few days and we're going to go to the doctors for a follow-up." He wasn't taking any chances with her.
His daughter wasn't happy to have to go for another checkup, but she also knew she wasn't going to be able to convince him that it wasn't necessary. That didn't stop her from making a half-hearted effort to do so. Finally, it was time to end the call. "All right, Mary, I have some things I have to lookup. You be good for Mister and Missus Faez."
"I will," she said sincerely. "I love you, daddy."
He gave her a wide smile in return. "Love you too, baby girl."
After the call ended, Flint began looking through the briefing packets for the various known versions of Brockton Bay, focusing on the specific individuals mentioned by Sammy and Metis during the meeting. He also flagged the overview article on the Asgard, curious about the alien that had come to speak to his daughter's class. The Angels had a lot of information available on a massive range of topics. Flint had never been one to spend a lot of time on planning and intelligence gathering, but that had mostly been due to a lack of available resources, not a lack of ability. Unlike some of his friends in the villain community, he hadn't seen being a villain as a viable long-term career. Crime had been more an act of desperation than anything else. Now that Mary was healthy and safe, he had options, and he was going to take advantage of those options for her sake, as well as his own.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The rest of school had been uneventful. Hebert had apparently had to go to the nurse for some reason, so she and her posse had been preoccupied for a long time. She hadn't seen her until late in the afternoon in last period. The girl had given her a piercing look right before the end of the day that was a little worrisome. Sophia had also been puzzled when she took a good look at her locker at the end of the day. The only sign of any insects had been the body of a single dead ant. The insect bites she remembered feeling had also seemed to disappear, which made her wonder if she had imagined the whole thing. Had she had some kind of psychotic break and hallucinated the insects, which then caused her to trigger? It was all confusing, and she skipped her normal after-school workout to head home. The bus ride home was uneventful, but she hadn't come to any conclusions by the time the bus reached her stop and she got off.
Her mother and little brother were both home. Her mom worked slightly irregular hours as a hostess at a local restaurant, so it was always a tossup on whether she would be there. Her dad's work was slightly more regular, though it did vary based on what jobs the DWU was able to get. Today, he was going to be late. Both parents had to work to make ends meet. Luckily, the housing market in Brockton Bay was depressed along with the local economy, so they almost always had enough money to cover rent and necessities. Sophia knew there were kids at Winslow who had it a lot worse. Of course, there were also those who were better off, like Taylor's friend Emma. It was hard not to be a little envious of the girl, who took every opportunity to brag about her wardrobe and her occasional modeling shoots. You would think she was the next cover-girl the way she talked, though in reality most of her work had been minor teen fashion gigs. Sophia hadn't seen any of her pictures. They weren't the kind of magazines she read, preferring the Women's Sport version of Sports Illustrated and Vibe, though she did read her mother's copies of Essence occasionally. She doubted that the pale-skinned redhead would be doing much modeling for black publications like that, anyway. The local Bay Teen was available for free, but the local rag didn't have the money to pay for professional photography sessions.
"Hey, squirt," she greeted her brother as she came into the family kitchen. He scowled a little at the nickname, but just said, "Hey," in response, not bothering to look up from his homework.
"Is that you, Sophia?" came their mother's voice from the living room.
She went to the refrigerator to get a glass of juice while calling out, "Yeah, Mom, I'm home."
As she was downing the glass of orange juice, her mother poked her head into the kitchen. "You skip the gym today, honey?"
"Yeah, I didn't feel like going," she said, hoping her mother wouldn't press. That hope was futile.
Her mother gave her a skeptical look. "Did something happen?"
Sophia frowned. She hadn't told her mother about her issues with Hebert. Her mom knew that the girl's dad had a lot of power at the union, and she didn't want to worry her. "I just had a run-in with another girl at school today. It wasn't anything serious."
"Was it gang-related?" asked her mother. That was a common assumption, and unfortunately one that couldn't be dismissed easily, as Winslow was a hotbed for gang activity. While the Empire was the worst, getting the attention of any of the gangs was a bad idea, and her parents were both afraid that either Sophia or Aaron would end up mixed up with them somehow, either as members or victims.
Putting the plastic glass in the sink, the teen shook her head and said, "No, just a white girl bragging about her money." That was close to the truth without actually being true.
"Sophia?" said her mother suspiciously. The woman looked tired, but she was a little too sharp to accept that non-answer.
Sophia sighed. "It was nothing. It wasn't a gang thing." Technically, this was true, as the DWU wasn't really a gang, and Hebert's clique didn't count. "Just somebody got up in my face, and I got angry."
Her mother looked her up and down, probably looking for clues. "Were you fighting?"
"No!" she replied, rolling her eyes. Why couldn't her mother ever just take her word on stuff like this?
Of course, that led to having to listen to ten minutes of her mother expressing her concerns and asking her for additional details, but eventually she was able to convince her that nothing serious had happened. Her mother finally let it go with a sigh and a muttered comment about teen-aged drama, like it was Sophia's fault that some girl was a bitch to her.
The rest of the evening passed with Sophia doing what little homework she had while her mother and brother watched television. There was some kind of blooper show playing that had them both laughing, but she was too preoccupied by what had happened earlier to pay much attention. After her mother and brother both went to bed, she was still up, scrolling through her phone. Mostly, she was just reading the PHO forums, looking for some kind of insight or epiphany that didn't come. Her father got home around ten. He saw that she was still up, and nodded to her as he went through and into the kitchen. He came back with a beer and settled down into the recliner, the seat creaking a little under his large frame. "How was school today?" he asked in his deep baritone.
She thought about her day, and her inability to come to any conclusions. Looking at her dad, who looked exhausted but genuinely interested, she came to a decision. "Something happened today."
"Something bad?" While her father could get angry, and she had seen it before, he generally had to work that up from a slow burn, and he wasn't as quick to jump to conclusions or suspicions as her mother.
She sighed again. She seemed to be doing that a lot today. "It could be," she replied.
His lip twitched into a slight frown. "Anything I can help with?" he asked simply.
"I hope so," she replied. She raised up her hand, and let the hand up to the wrist fade into shadow mode. "Dad, I'm a cape."
His eyes widened slightly comically, and she might have giggled under other circumstances. After a moment, he said, "Well...that's a hell of a thing. How did that happen?"
It was pretty late when they finally went to bed, but Sophia was at least able to sleep well. They still had a lot to talk about, but her dad had her back, and that meant a lot.
January 11, 2011, Brockton Bay, New Hampshire
"You're late, Hess."
Sophia cringed. That voice was the last one she wanted to hear right now, but she had been expecting and dreading it since she arrived at school. She supposed it was easier for her bully to just wait near her locker than it was to catch her at the entrance. "I don't have it, Taylor, but I can pay double next time."
The tall brunette glared at her. She and her crew were surrounding Sophia in a half-circle, making it impossible for her to get away. The red-headed girl next to Taylor popped a bubble from her chewing gum and rolled her eyes. "Shit, Tay, Hess here is so poor she can't even afford twenty." Sophia glared at the bitch, Emma. She thought she was special just because her dad was a divorce lawyer and she was best friends with Boss Hebert's kid.
Hebert smirked at the red-head's comment, then said, "Are you asking for charity, Hess? Do you need help from your betters?"
Sophia felt a sadly familiar indignant rage starting to build, but she viciously pushed it down. "You're not better than me, Hebert," she said with a scowl.
The other girl moved quickly, stepping up and into Sophia's space. "You want to bet?" The two girls glared at each other from inches away for a solid thirty seconds. Then Hebert took a step back and said, "It sets a bad precedent if I let you slide a week. How are you going to make it up to me?"
Sophia's frown deepened. What was Hebert fishing for? To her shame, she paid her protection money. Her father's job was dependent upon staying in Danny Hebert's good graces. More importantly, without the protection of the DWU, the PRT, or one of the other gangs, being black in the same city as the E88 was bad news. The gangs knew who was protected and who wasn't. The gang recruits at Winslow High were supposed to follow the same rules, but it was up to Taylor and her crew to enforce that for DWU dependents. So, she paid when Taylor came calling, even if she hated it. It seemed like the girl wanted something else, now, though, and was using her inability to pay as an excuse. "What do you mean?"
Taylor stared at her for a few moments. "You know Richie Washington has the hots for you?"
The black girl's expression turned confused. "So?"
"So, if somebody was to get close to him, she could learn all kinds of things," said Hebert.
Sophia's control over her rage slipped a bit. "He's a fucking Merchant!" That meant he was destined for the gutter, even if he was one of the more clear-headed stoners in school at the moment.
"Duh!" said Emma. "Why do you thinks she wants you to get close to him?"
Now it made a sick kind of sense. Sophia knew that the DWU had an understanding with the Empire, but the Archer's Bridge Merchants also had a presence in the Docks, and relations with them weren't nearly so good. Richie Washington was the number two Merchant at Winslow. Hebert was probably hoping to learn something to help her father. In a tight voice, she said, "I'm not going to whore myself out to a Merchant just to spy for you, Hebert."
With a mean-spirited smile, Madison, one of Taylor's more sycophantic hangers-on, asked, "What do you whore yourself out for?"
With a sneer and an aggressive glare, Hess returned, "Nothing you could provide, Clements." To her inner satisfaction (and slight confusion), the short girl flinched.
That seemed to anger Taylor, though. "You owe me, Hess."
"I told you, I'll pay you next week," she growled.
"Not good enough!" said Taylor. The girl looked like she might be about to get physical, but if so that would be new. Sophia ran track and was in pretty good shape, which made her a harder target than average. Hebert looked like she had muscle, though, and she also had a height advantage.
Before things could come to blows, Madison said, "Maybe you should tell Mike that he has a free shot at her little brother?"
Sophia saw red. Mike Chilton was the head of the E88 at Winslow. He was a vicious son-of-a-bitch, which was why he was number one despite only being in junior year. The seniors had all learned to defer to him. If he got the nod to take a free swipe at her brother Aaron, then he would take it, and he wouldn't care that the kid was still in junior high. "Don't you fucking dare!"
"What are you going to do about it?" asked Emma before Taylor could respond. The thin girl had seemed a little caught off guard by Madison's suggestion.
Desperate for some way to protect her brother, Sophia said, "Does your father know you're threatening the families of union members, Hebert? What would he say if somebody told him about it?" The man was known to have a violent temper, and she wouldn't be surprised if his family had felt the brunt of it.
Taylor's eyes widened, then narrowed again. Quietly, she said, "You need to learn to keep your mouth shut."
Sophia could see the punch coming, but somehow she wasn't able to dodge out of the way in time. She felt the blow strike the side of her head, dazing her. She tried to slide sideways, out of the path of the expected follow-up blow, but her opponent still managed to nail her hard in the stomach. The blow knocked the wind out of her. Taylor then charged forward, slamming her against the inside of the open locker door, the locking mechanism digging into her side. There was a brief pause in the blows, during which Sophia tried to wheeze in a breath. She could then feel Hebert grab her, dragging her over a few inches. She felt a shove, and then the door of the locker slammed, catching one of her wrists where it was still hanging out. She gave a started scream, and then her hand was pushed inside and the door was slammed shut. The light grew dim, limited only to the thin rays coming through the door vents. Sophia kicked back against the door, and yelled, "Let me out of here you fucking bitch! Ahh!" The only response was cruel laughter from the crowd of girls outside.
She continued to kick back against the locker door, using her frustration and anger as fuel to keep hammering. Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was probably less than five minutes, she paused, breathing heavy. It was then that she heard Hebert's voice coming through the door. "You need to remember who's in charge at Winslow, Hess. You're weak. Enjoy your time locked up. I'll be sure to let somebody know to let you out before I go home for the day." This was accompanied by more laughter, though it was clear that people were already moving away from the sound.
After a few more half-powered kicks, she slumped down (as much as was possible in the locker), and tried to think. Her first thought was that Hebert was a much better fighter than she expected. Maybe her father got some of the union members to teach her? Her second thought was that the staff at Winslow were all pretty much worthless. Hopefully somebody would come looking for her when she didn't show up to class? Yeah, and maybe fucking Alexandria would break through the ceiling and tear the door off of her locker while the other members of the Triumvirate tracked down and arrested Hebert and her crew. Her parents would notice when she didn't come home, but that meant at least six hours trapped here unless she got lucky. Thank God she wasn't claustrophobic. It was at that moment that she felt something crawling on the skin of her ankle. She stifled another scream, not wanting to give anybody the satisfaction if they were still listening, and tried to use one ankle to brush whatever bug was there. Just her luck to get stuck inside with a roach, or whatever the hell it was.
She froze when she felt something else crawling on the skin of her arm, then gave a short yell when something actually bit her. What the fuck? Was her locker infested or something? She didn't keep food or anything inside it, so...ouch! THAT one hurt. Sophia started to panic as she felt more and more creepy crawlies of some kind on her skin. She began banging with her foot against the door again. "Hey! Somebody! Let me out of here! There's bugs in here! Help, anybody!" It was like she had fallen into an ant hive or something. She started thrashing more, bruising her skin against the inside of the locker. Her head slammed back, dazing her, when she felt something crawling on her face. Tears started to fall, and she kept repeating over and oven, "Please, somebody, please...help me..."
Sophia Hess's vision began to waver, and then there was a vision. She saw stars, and some kind of vast creature, which was dropping bits of bright light down onto a planet below. The memory of the vision was already starting to fade as she lost consciousness.
[CONNECTION]
Down the hall, Taylor was smirking at the sound of Hess thrashing around in her locker. To think that the fucking cunt would threaten to go to her father! She deliberately wasn't thinking about what his likely reaction would be if he thought she was going against his orders that union members and their families were off limits. Ten minutes with her bugs would teach her a lesson. Of course, she wouldn't leave them there long. She wasn't trying to kill the girl, after all, and she couldn't afford to leave evidence that would let the PRT draw the right conclusions. Suddenly, her vision blurred and she passed out.
She woke up to Emma frantically shaking her. "Taylor, are you OK? Please wake up!" The rest of her crew were standing around nervously.
"I'm awake...stop shaking me," she grumbled, pushing her best friend's hands away. "Jesus."
"What happened?" asked Julia.
Taylor shook her head as she sat up. "I don't know...I just felt light-headed. I'm fine now." She began dispersing her swarm, telling the bugs in the locker to go away.
Emma still looked concerned. "We should take you to the school nurse."
"I said I'm fine," she repeated, though her focus was elsewhere.
Madison put a hand on her arm. "Better safe than sorry, Taylor. You were out for almost a full minute."
Grudgingly, Taylor nodded her head and let her friends lead her to the nurse. The whole walk, she wondered why the hell Sophia Hess was no longer locked in her locker.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
A dark-haired woman was sitting in the newspaper archives of the Brockton Bay Public Library, reading through the events of the recent and not-so-recent past. She had a relatively conservative blouse in bright blue on top of blue leather pants, an outfit that was a little too cold for the weather outside. Any observer would think she was simply skimming the headlines if they noticed the speed with which she was flipping microfiche pages. She would pause to look at a displayed page, letting her specialized contact lenses scan the information. When it was done, it would flash a light in her peripheral vision, and she would advance the page. She was averaging about a page every two to three seconds, and was keeping herself amused by actually scanning the headlines. Unfortunately, there were still a number of local periodicals that didn't have online archives, which meant that somebody had to manually scan them to get a full picture of recent events...or at least events as reported in the media.
A thin, fit man with short brown hair came up behind her. "Are you almost done, love?" he asked in a soft Received Pronunciation accent.
"Almost," she replied as she continued the regular flipping. "This is the last of the Brockton Bay Gazette." Her accent was hard to place. It was somewhat reminiscent of people who relocated frequently as a child and picked up a plethora of regional speech patterns. "Are you done with your list?"
"I am, though the library layout was odd," he replied.
She finished her review and shut down the microfiche reader. As she started to pull the reel out of the machine to return it to the box, she asked, "How so?"
He grimaced. "While this world looks a lot like the ones we know, there's something off. A lot of the military theory is shelved under philosophy, for example. They also don't have a horror section. I had to find Stephen King in the children's section."
The woman got up and walked the boxed reel over to the shelf, taking care to place it in the correct spot rather than just leaving it in the reshelf cart. "Is that not appropriate for children?"
He shook his head. "I might have thought so when I was a vampire, but generally not." He gestured to what was obviously the entrance to a broom closet. She looked at him with a raised eyebrow and a slightly saucy smirk, but proceeded inside. The man followed her inside and closed the door. Out loud, he said, "We're ready to leave, Sammy."
There was a brief flash of light visible from under the door, and then the closet was empty.
The two appeared on a transport platform facing a glowing hologram of a silver-haired teddy bear, the floating avatar of their starship's artificial intelligence. "Welcome back, William, Vala. I've processed the information you sent back, if you'd like to join the others in the conference room."
The raven-haired woman, Vala, grinned at the avatar. "Thank you, Sammy."
The two began walking down the corridor of the starship Smug Advocacy, the flagship of the powerful beings known simply as the Family. The corridor was painted a soft pastel blue with gray stripes breaking up the straight lines. The floor was a dark gray rubber-like substance. For a starship, it was an oddly aesthetically pleasing combination. The whole ship was actually quite comfortable, which was convenient, as it was the home base of the Angels, the group whose members included both of them as well as a variety of other displaced outcasts from all of creation.
"Do you think we'll have leave time while we're around this Earth," asked Vala idly. "Your world does have some interesting shopping."
William smirked. "Not really my world, is it? We didn't have nutters running around in tights beating up criminals with superpowers."
She laughed at his comment. "No, you had demons from hell wandering around. Not exactly an improvement if you ask me."
William Pratt had spent centuries as the vampire known as William the Bloody, also called Spike thanks to his propensity for using railroad spikes to torture his victims. For most of that time, he was a bloodthirsty monster, albeit a slightly atypical one with an above-average number of humanizing habits. He had finally fought to regain his mortal soul, and had then sacrificed himself to close a gateway to Hell. The Family had retrieved an artifact from an evil law firm that happened to contain said soul, and a Family bioshaper had built him a new and improved human body. This was, in his admittedly limited experience, somewhat typical of them. Now he contributed what he could to the Angels -- skill at fisticuffs, an in-depth knowledge of the mystical, occult and ill-omened, a desire to do good, and the education of a 19th-century gentleman. The last was being supplemented by independent study using resources from a variety of realities, including a few that were far in advance of his home Earth.
He took his companion's teasing as well-intentioned. Vala Mal Doran knew what it was like to have a demon inside. She hadn't been born on Earth, instead growing up on one of the many human worlds in her home universe. She was a thief, a con artist, and a treasure hunter who had fallen afoul of an alien parasite that took over her body. That species of parasite, known as the Goa'uld, had used human hosts to create an interstellar empire...an empire of slaves that they used to satisfy their egos, perversions and sadistic whims. Being a host left you aware of every atrocity committed, but without any agency to prevent them. She had been rescued when the Family had taken exception to the existence of the Goa'uld. She retained some of her Goa'uld's lore and knowledge of high technology, as well as her original streetwise savvy and skills at breaking and entering.
The couple came to a well-appointed conference room that already had a number of occupants, human and otherwise. The avatar of the ship's AI was at one end of the table, waiting for them to arrive. On the side closest to the door sat a statuesque blonde woman named Annika Hansen, though she also answered to, "Seven." She still had visible implants from her time as a member of a collective cybernetic species. The Family had offered her a job when it became clear that her home culture would forever be suspicious of her motives after she was freed from the collective. At the table on the other side sat three more people. Anya Harris was a now-human former Vengeance Demon with a penchant for capitalism and skill as a witch. Faith Lehane was a Vampire Slayer, a mystically-empowered warrior chosen by powers in another plane of reality. The third was a relative newcomer, a large man named Flint Marko. A friend of the Family had sent him to them to find a cure for his daughter's illness. Marko had been a supervillain on his home world, but mostly that had been to pay for his child's medical care. With that no longer necessary, he had joined the Angels. The man was a shapeshifter and a silica kinetic, and was slowly integrating himself into the team.
At the end of the table opposite from Sammy's avatar sat a large, reptilian being. She had pitch black scales edged with red highlights that were visible from the right angle. She could also hide them and fade into the darkness like a shadow. As a natural quadruped, she was sitting on her tail in lieu of a chair and using her front legs to review a digital tablet, her claws operating the controls easily. This was Metis of the Family, sponsor of their band of adventurers, investigators and miscreants. She looked over at William and Vala as they came in with a terrifyingly toothy smile. "Welcome back," she said with a slight sibilance. "I take it you found everything?"
"They did," answered Sammy before either of the two could respond. "The information supplemented what was available online, and it paints a rather disturbing and confusing picture."
Metis quirked a brow-ridge. "This world is more than just an evil mirror. How so?"
Sammy frowned. "We came here because the quantum signature of this reality showed a familiar resonance with that of the Skitter-verse. It was familiar because it was similar to the relationship between the realities of the Federation Starfleet and the Terran Empire." The Family had met a Starfleet officer name Miles O'Brien, and had, in the process of bringing him home, discovered that his reality was being forced into contact with what could best be described as an, "evil mirror universe," where the inhabitants of one were mirror images in temperament and morality of their duplicates in the other. It had been thought that this forced contact was the cause of the two realities' strange reflection...but that had changed with their discovery of their current reality. It was a mirror of another superhero universe, one containing a girl named Taylor Hebert who had the power to control insects, and who went by the name Skitter in costume. This reality and that one, however, didn't have similar circumstances to those of Starfleet and the Empire. In the latter case, the dimensions had been forced together as part of an attack by an external threat. No such factor was obvious here. They were here to try and see if they could discern what the true cause of the strange similarities and apparent moral inversion was.
"While there are many examples of duplicates of people in Skitter's universe, the overall circumstances are different in ways that are hard to explain," continued the avatar. "The most intriguing points have to do with Scion and the Endbringers. Unlike in Skitter's universe, the Endbringers do not attack and destroy cities on a regular interval. They appear, on average, once a year, and have hit fewer targets. As an example, while Kyushu in Japan of this Earth was sunk by the Endbringer Leviathan, the island of Newfoundland is still intact and above sea level. Scion, the being we know to be behind human superpowers in this reality, exists, but his pattern of behavior is very different. While, 'the golden man,' in the other known versions of Brockton Bay seemed to wander at random, doing heroic deeds of wildly varying import, the one in this universe is seen far more infrequently, and always appears during a great crisis or major disaster."
"Wait," interrupted Marko. "You're saying this powerful hero just helped out based on what, the weather?"
Metis nodded. "Something like that. He was effectively an idiot savant who was literally following the advice of a random homeless man. He could stop a forest fire one day, then spend the next day doing nothing but rescuing cats stuck in trees."
"He is not so random here. There are also a number of powerful people lacking doubles in this reality. The Triumvirate here includes Legend, Alexandria and Hero. My first assumption, that the villain Siberian had killed Eidolon instead of Hero in this reality, proved to be incorrect. Eidolon apparently never existed. There is also no evidence that the supervillain Marquis ever had a daughter, so the healer Panacea also does not exist," said Sammy.
That news seemed to visibly discomfit Metis. Panacea, civilian name Amy Dallon, was a close friend of the Family in the version of Brockton Bay where they first revealed themselves to humanity. Instead of commenting on that, Metis said, "Does Dragon exist?" Dragon was an artificial intelligence, one whose "father" perished when the city-killing Leviathan destroyed Newfoundland in the Family's home reality.
Now it was Sammy's turn to look mildly upset. "I can find no evidence that Mother ever existed in this reality. The Baumann Parahuman Containment Center also does not exist, and perhaps as a consequence of that, kill orders for the most dangerous villains are far more common." Dragon was the warden for the most secure prison ever devised for dangerous parahumans, except that it was never constructed in this reality.
"Kill orders?" asked Flint. In his world, heroes, with a few well-known exceptions like Frank Castle, almost never killed their enemies.
"Despite the close parallels with Skitter's world, there is much here that is...perhaps the best term is, 'darker,' than there," explained the AI. "There are numerous examples in recorded history. In the United States, for example, the Declaration of Independence is very similar, but ascribes a natural right to, 'life, loyalty, and the pursuit of competence.' The Emancipation Proclamation rooted its justification in the concept that only the state had the right to control the freedom of its citizens. The second amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, but for the purposes of defending one's honor and promoting one's agenda."
William, who had taken a seat at the table, nodded his head and added, "That is very similar to some of the things I saw in the public library. Attitudes seemed harsher, and more fixated on usefulness and power. Some of the Dr. Seuss books were...disturbing."
"Some of the newspaper headlines seemed to make light of events that sounded unpleasant," said Vala. "It's like heroes and villains are almost expected to incur a significant amount of collateral damage in terms of lives and property."
"That is in line with the attitudes of the Terran Empire," commented Seven. "It is well documented that the Imperial Navy used extremely painful methods of discipline, and advancement through assassination was relatively common." The Borg Collective, the 'species' which had formerly assimilated her, had obtained a significant amount of data about the mirror universe from captured Federation vessels and personnel.
"So, does any of this bring us any closer to understanding why this mirror universe exists?" asked Anya. "That is why we came here, isn't it?"
There was a moment of silence, and then Metis replied, "Our best option here may be investigating the most obvious differences between this world and its mirror."
"If I may suggest something slightly selfish," said Sammy, "we could begin at the last known address of Andrew Richter in Newfoundland. It is likely the Endbringer targeted Newfoundland because he created Mother. Perhaps if he still lives, it is because he never gained his powers, or he may have different powers."
The Angels looked at each other. Nobody seemed to have any better suggestions.
"What's Canada like in this world?" asked Faith.
Sammy turned to look at the Slayer. "It is similar in many ways to your world, and also to Skitter's. The government-affiliated hero team is still the Guild, though this one is run by Narwhal and Hearthrob."
"Hearthrob?" questioned Metis.
Sammy nodded. "He is this world's version of Nikos Vasil, who was known on Skitter's world as Heartbreaker before his unusual disappearance."
"Does he have a goatee?" asked Vala with a smirk.
The AI turned a skeptical look on the woman. "There is no correlation between facial hair and morality, Vala. In any event, from his press pictures, he appears to have what is called a, 'soul patch.'"
"Definitely evil," claimed Faith, to a round of good-humored chuckles around the table.
Still smiling, Metis said, "I think we have a plan. Come up with an action plan we can review before tomorrow, and if everything looks good, then we can go ahead with the investigation."
With that, the meeting broke up, the participants heading to attend to their own matters elsewhere aboard the ship.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sophia woke up to find herself staring at a foam-board drop ceiling in a dimly lit classroom. She groaned quietly and pushed herself up to a sitting position. Running her hands over her arms, she could feel the welts from insect bites.
"What the fuck just happened?" she asked out loud.
Nobody answered her, not that she was expecting an answer. She began to slowly push herself up to her feet. Whatever had happened, she felt dazed and a little weak. Without thinking, she reached out for something to help support her weight, only to grab onto a heavy metal projection screen leaning against the wall. The bulky item tilted away from the wall at her tug and began to fall. She tried to back off, but stumbled and fell back onto her backside. She closed her eyes with a wince as she could see that it was going to catch her legs.
There was a loud clang, then a rattling crash. Surprisingly, there was no pain. She opened one eye to peek, wondering if she had gotten insanely lucky with the accident. What she saw caused her to open both eyes and stare. She raised her hand and looked at the transparent, shadowy form that took the place of her skin. The metal screen was lying on the floor, passing through her body. She backed up, scooting away from the fallen screen on her butt. When she was clear of it, she made an instinctive mental effort, and her body turned back to human flesh and blood.
"Huh."
Sophia had a sneaking suspicion that she was currently in the seldom-used classroom that was actually behind her locker. She must have turned to her shadowy form and fallen through the wall. Getting to her feet, she went over to the wall where she thought her locker was located. Another act of will had her arm turn to shadow...but just her arm. She reached through the wall, and felt around the bottom of the locker until she found the textbook she had dropped when that bitch had shoved her inside. Grabbing it, she was able to pull the now shadow-form book through the wall.
"Well...that's kind of cool."
She supposed she could make a living stealing shit from behind locked doors. Of course, the PRT would be after her. Her eyes widened as she realized that they would be after her regardless. The law said new parahumans were required to register. She was pretty sure she wouldn't be doing that. She had no desire to join the Wards, and if she registered without joining then the gangs would know about her before the end of the day. It was taken as simple fact that there were spies for all the gangs embedded in the local PRT offices. Everybody in Brockton Bay had heard about the Laborns. The son, Brian, had triggered, and had registered without joining the Wards. He, his father, and his sister had all been found murdered less than a week later. The walls were covered in pro-Nazi graffiti, but the jury was out on whether it was actually the E88 or another gang trying to blame them. The kid must have said, "no," one too many times.
The clock on the wall said it was a quarter past ten, which meant that she had been out for almost an hour. She had missed a class, which at Winslow wasn't that big a deal. The good news is that she was in the middle of a free period, which meant she had some time to figure out what to do. Her temptation was to cut for the rest of the day so she could figure out what her powers actually did, besides obviously turning her into some kind of shadow person. She wondered if she could see herself in a mirror when she was fully shifted? The problem with that was that she was supposed to be stuck in her own locker, and people might notice if she just disappeared. She didn't really feel like getting back in her locker and waiting for rescue, though. Apart from being uncomfortable and boring, the school also seemed to need to call an exterminator. She didn't like thinking about the ramifications for the cafeteria food. Even so, it wasn't like the quality would go down just because of a few bugs. It might even improve the nutrient content.
Was it possible to open a locker from the inside? They were supposed to keep people out, not in, right? Going back to the wall, she shifted back to her shadow state and looked at the inside of the locker door. The problem was that the inside of the locker was pretty dark, with the only light being from the air vents. Her ability to see in the dark seemed to be slightly improved when she was shadow, but not enough to figure out the mechanism for the door lock. Withdrawing back into the classroom, she wondered if it would be easier looking in a locker that was closer to the overhead light? She moved over a few feet, then shifted again and began pushing through the wall. She only made it a few inches before there was a sudden flaring pain, and she was knocked back into the room, and also back to her physical form. It felt like her nerves were on fire, and she couldn't control her limbs. After the better part of a minute, her twitching stopped. She muttered a slow, "Fuuuccckkk..." under her breath. A little more rest allowed her to sit up. She looked at the wall where she had tried to pass...and noticed the electrical socket just to the right of where she had tried to enter. She wasn't immune to electricity in her shadow? That would complicate things.
After a few more minutes of rest, she got up. Shifting her hand to shadow, she began to slowly press against the wall in the same area. After several attempts and a couple of comparatively minor shocks, she thought she could feel when she was too close to an electrical field. The technique required her to move slowly, however, so it wouldn't be very practical if she actually had to hurry. Doors and windows would probably be pretty safe, but walls would be risky, at least in buildings that had power. Of course, there were more than a few abandoned buildings in the Bay. She wondered for a second how she was figuring all of this out so quickly? Did her power include a thinker power, too? Nobody would say she was dumb (at least nobody but racist fucks whose opinions didn't matter), but she was mostly an average student. While that made her slightly above the Winslow average, it really wasn't anything to brag about. Thinking about it, she realized that, at least where her power was concerned, she had kind of an instinctive feel for what she could and couldn't do. The electricity had caught her by surprise because she hadn't considered the matter before. When she had more time, she was going to have to think about it carefully.
For now, she tried to find a locker that was near a hall light, but wasn't blocked by electrical lines. She finally found one, and also discovered that the actual locking mechanism for the locker door was a pretty simple mechanism that just blocked the bar connected to the door latch. The whole thing looked cheap, but the important thing is that it should be possible to open the door with a ruler pushing at the right spots. The tricky part was that it had to be done at both the top and the bottom of the locker to work. She could probably just do one and push the door out a bit, then work the other. She pulled back out from the other kid's locker. It was probably the locker of the stoner kid down the hall if the pervasive smell of weed was a clue. She could still smell in her shadow state, but it was slightly muted, almost like she was breathing through a mask.
There was a ruler in the teacher's desk in the classroom, and she had shortly phased back into her own locker. She reversed her facing, though, so that she could more easily work the lock. Hopefully, nobody would notice the discrepancy, assuming anybody was watching. It took her about ten minutes of fiddling with the lock to get the door open. Trying to undo the bottom first had been a mistake, because the door didn't have enough flex to keep the metal tab out of the locking slot. The top was able to push out, though, and then it was just a matter of putting enough force into it at the bottom. She finally popped the door open, and stumbled a bit as she half-fell out into the corridor. Looking around, she saw that there was a janitor down the hall cleaning up some kind of mess, but the man didn't even look up from his task. She noticed wires running up to his ears, so he may not have even heard her over whatever music was playing. Closing her locker door, she saw that the top edge wasn't flush anymore, and it was a little harder to get it to close. That probably wasn't a bad thing, as it suggested that she had forced her way out from the inside in a pretty concrete way.
She began heading toward the girl's restroom by the stairwell. Checking herself in the mirror and then heading to the cafeteria seemed like the best approach. She could worry about her powers later.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Flint checked the time and verified that it would be after school hours on Sineya station, even if it was just after lunch on board the Smug Advocacy. The ship's hours generally shifted to match their current ground-side location if they expected to be there for more than a few days as a matter of practicality. Of course, in space, the maintenance of day-night cycles was fairly arbitrary, and most of the crew needed only a limited amount of sleep thanks to Family biotech. Flint didn't have a Family symbiote, but his power had altered his biology rather dramatically, and he already hadn't needed to sleep more than a few hours a night. He made the call.
The image of the girl who answered the call changed from mild interest to excited happiness. "Daddy!"
A smile broke the normally stern visage of Flint's face when he saw his daughter. "Hey, girl! How was school today?"
"It was soo cool. We had an Asgard come in and explain how magic and physics interact with each other," she exclaimed, her voice rising and falling rapidly as she spoke.
He cocked his head to one side. "An Asgard? You mean like Thor?" Marko had met the thunder god on several occasions, and a couple of them had even been friendly...or at least not overtly hostile.
His daughter shook her head rapidly. "They're not like our Asgard. These are aliens that look a little like those gray aliens in that weird movie that we saw on cable."
At her words, a vague recollection came to him from the Angel "allies and enemies" briefing packet about a highly advanced race that looked like the kidnappers from Communion. "Huh. What was he like?"
"It was a girl alien," she corrected. "Her name was Idunn. She was nice, though I don't think her people show their emotions much. She knew a lot about science and magic, and Maggie's father is a wizard who uses magic that interferes with technology. He's got bracelets that stop that, and Idunn was really interested when she heard about that. She also talked about the Family a lot. She said she was the first member of her species to actually meet them, when they rescued her from being stuck in a damaged starship."
Flint smirked at that. From his interactions with Metis and the stories told by the others, it seemed like the lizards had a thing about saving people. Combined with their slightly odd sense of humor, they reminded the reformed villain of Spider-man, albeit with an underlying aura of menace that was more like Doom. Then again, he could also draw parallels to Doc Strange and the Fantastic Four. The Family were kind of like all the metas in New York crammed together in lizard-shaped packages. "That sounds fun. Is everything all right at Danielle's?" Danielle Faez was his daughter's best friend, and her parents were watching over her while Flint was out on assignment. The girl's parents were both researchers in the technomancy group, and neither of them did field work.
"They gave me the spare bedroom, because Danielle's bed is only a single, but we stayed up talking and I fell asleep next to her anyway. We had something they called manakish for dinner, and it was kind of like pizza." The girl stumbled a bit at the food name, obviously focusing on how to say it properly. "Did you know Danielle has a teddy bear that talks to her, but it isn't one of those mechanical ones like they have in the stores back home? Her mom said it has something called a, 'minor guardian spirit' inside. It's actually like a really smart dog."
He listened for a bit as his daughter chattered on about various things. Finally, he asked, "And how are you feeling? Any tingles? Pain?" His daughter had had a rare genetic disorder that had caused partial paralysis, and she had needed regular care to ensure that her breathing and heart rate stayed normal. The Family had healed her, but he was still worried about her.
The girl rolled her eyes. "Dad! I'm fine. When Ianthe heals people, they stay healed. That's what everybody says." The purple healer of the Family had a well-deserved reputation.
"I know, girl. Despite that, I'm going to be back in a few days and we're going to go to the doctors for a follow-up." He wasn't taking any chances with her.
His daughter wasn't happy to have to go for another checkup, but she also knew she wasn't going to be able to convince him that it wasn't necessary. That didn't stop her from making a half-hearted effort to do so. Finally, it was time to end the call. "All right, Mary, I have some things I have to lookup. You be good for Mister and Missus Faez."
"I will," she said sincerely. "I love you, daddy."
He gave her a wide smile in return. "Love you too, baby girl."
After the call ended, Flint began looking through the briefing packets for the various known versions of Brockton Bay, focusing on the specific individuals mentioned by Sammy and Metis during the meeting. He also flagged the overview article on the Asgard, curious about the alien that had come to speak to his daughter's class. The Angels had a lot of information available on a massive range of topics. Flint had never been one to spend a lot of time on planning and intelligence gathering, but that had mostly been due to a lack of available resources, not a lack of ability. Unlike some of his friends in the villain community, he hadn't seen being a villain as a viable long-term career. Crime had been more an act of desperation than anything else. Now that Mary was healthy and safe, he had options, and he was going to take advantage of those options for her sake, as well as his own.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The rest of school had been uneventful. Hebert had apparently had to go to the nurse for some reason, so she and her posse had been preoccupied for a long time. She hadn't seen her until late in the afternoon in last period. The girl had given her a piercing look right before the end of the day that was a little worrisome. Sophia had also been puzzled when she took a good look at her locker at the end of the day. The only sign of any insects had been the body of a single dead ant. The insect bites she remembered feeling had also seemed to disappear, which made her wonder if she had imagined the whole thing. Had she had some kind of psychotic break and hallucinated the insects, which then caused her to trigger? It was all confusing, and she skipped her normal after-school workout to head home. The bus ride home was uneventful, but she hadn't come to any conclusions by the time the bus reached her stop and she got off.
Her mother and little brother were both home. Her mom worked slightly irregular hours as a hostess at a local restaurant, so it was always a tossup on whether she would be there. Her dad's work was slightly more regular, though it did vary based on what jobs the DWU was able to get. Today, he was going to be late. Both parents had to work to make ends meet. Luckily, the housing market in Brockton Bay was depressed along with the local economy, so they almost always had enough money to cover rent and necessities. Sophia knew there were kids at Winslow who had it a lot worse. Of course, there were also those who were better off, like Taylor's friend Emma. It was hard not to be a little envious of the girl, who took every opportunity to brag about her wardrobe and her occasional modeling shoots. You would think she was the next cover-girl the way she talked, though in reality most of her work had been minor teen fashion gigs. Sophia hadn't seen any of her pictures. They weren't the kind of magazines she read, preferring the Women's Sport version of Sports Illustrated and Vibe, though she did read her mother's copies of Essence occasionally. She doubted that the pale-skinned redhead would be doing much modeling for black publications like that, anyway. The local Bay Teen was available for free, but the local rag didn't have the money to pay for professional photography sessions.
"Hey, squirt," she greeted her brother as she came into the family kitchen. He scowled a little at the nickname, but just said, "Hey," in response, not bothering to look up from his homework.
"Is that you, Sophia?" came their mother's voice from the living room.
She went to the refrigerator to get a glass of juice while calling out, "Yeah, Mom, I'm home."
As she was downing the glass of orange juice, her mother poked her head into the kitchen. "You skip the gym today, honey?"
"Yeah, I didn't feel like going," she said, hoping her mother wouldn't press. That hope was futile.
Her mother gave her a skeptical look. "Did something happen?"
Sophia frowned. She hadn't told her mother about her issues with Hebert. Her mom knew that the girl's dad had a lot of power at the union, and she didn't want to worry her. "I just had a run-in with another girl at school today. It wasn't anything serious."
"Was it gang-related?" asked her mother. That was a common assumption, and unfortunately one that couldn't be dismissed easily, as Winslow was a hotbed for gang activity. While the Empire was the worst, getting the attention of any of the gangs was a bad idea, and her parents were both afraid that either Sophia or Aaron would end up mixed up with them somehow, either as members or victims.
Putting the plastic glass in the sink, the teen shook her head and said, "No, just a white girl bragging about her money." That was close to the truth without actually being true.
"Sophia?" said her mother suspiciously. The woman looked tired, but she was a little too sharp to accept that non-answer.
Sophia sighed. "It was nothing. It wasn't a gang thing." Technically, this was true, as the DWU wasn't really a gang, and Hebert's clique didn't count. "Just somebody got up in my face, and I got angry."
Her mother looked her up and down, probably looking for clues. "Were you fighting?"
"No!" she replied, rolling her eyes. Why couldn't her mother ever just take her word on stuff like this?
Of course, that led to having to listen to ten minutes of her mother expressing her concerns and asking her for additional details, but eventually she was able to convince her that nothing serious had happened. Her mother finally let it go with a sigh and a muttered comment about teen-aged drama, like it was Sophia's fault that some girl was a bitch to her.
The rest of the evening passed with Sophia doing what little homework she had while her mother and brother watched television. There was some kind of blooper show playing that had them both laughing, but she was too preoccupied by what had happened earlier to pay much attention. After her mother and brother both went to bed, she was still up, scrolling through her phone. Mostly, she was just reading the PHO forums, looking for some kind of insight or epiphany that didn't come. Her father got home around ten. He saw that she was still up, and nodded to her as he went through and into the kitchen. He came back with a beer and settled down into the recliner, the seat creaking a little under his large frame. "How was school today?" he asked in his deep baritone.
She thought about her day, and her inability to come to any conclusions. Looking at her dad, who looked exhausted but genuinely interested, she came to a decision. "Something happened today."
"Something bad?" While her father could get angry, and she had seen it before, he generally had to work that up from a slow burn, and he wasn't as quick to jump to conclusions or suspicions as her mother.
She sighed again. She seemed to be doing that a lot today. "It could be," she replied.
His lip twitched into a slight frown. "Anything I can help with?" he asked simply.
"I hope so," she replied. She raised up her hand, and let the hand up to the wrist fade into shadow mode. "Dad, I'm a cape."
His eyes widened slightly comically, and she might have giggled under other circumstances. After a moment, he said, "Well...that's a hell of a thing. How did that happen?"
It was pretty late when they finally went to bed, but Sophia was at least able to sleep well. They still had a lot to talk about, but her dad had her back, and that meant a lot.
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M. H. Fuzzball
Aperture Science-certified Horrible Person
- Location
- Sector 2814
The Family is going to have to work fast here. Canon already showed how destructive a good Skitter is. An evil one? The whole world will have to make sure their insurance is up to date.
- Location
- Deep in the Badlands of Equestria
Given this is almost a Trek mirror-verse in setting, it will be interesting to see what sort of plan gets laid out. Just finding elements that they can justify supporting is going to be an interesting task in and of itself, I suspect.
- Location
- Here
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
'Out loud'?
Story looks as though it has a lot of potential...
Glad to see evil goatees are already a consideration.
Could we see a *gasp* good Coil?
- Location
- Beyond the Unknowable Veil
"No. No, it's not true. It's impossible!"
M. H. Fuzzball
Aperture Science-certified Horrible Person
- Location
- Sector 2814
Hmmm, a good Coil, who rescues Sarah Livsey from her abusive parents and hired Leet to build him James Bond gadgets while he operates out of an 'export company' on the Docks?Could we see a *gasp* good Coil?
God, I hope not. Ideally Calvert died in Ellisburg.
- Location
- Villa Straylight, Freeside, Earth Orbit
This is the sort of twisted around mirror verse sort of thing I am hoping to see. Maybe not quite that convoluted in its twist, but for some reason the idea of a good guy Coil is facinating in a car wreck sort of way.
I cant wait for the Family and Co to have to deal with the mirror Heberts. That should be fun to watch them wade through while Sophia is now the person needing a hand.
Who, interestingly, had been known as William the Bloody even as a human (because his poetry was 'bloody awful!')
Among those who didn't know him as 'William the -- oh fuck no I am so out of here!'
- Location
- Home
An AU I don't think I ever seen, is a reversal of Piggot/Coil, an Evil Director Piggot, abusing her position and a anti-villain Coil working on the shadows to bring her down.
Still don't want to see Coil as part of the story. Just saying.
- Location
- Here
How about parahuman right activist Thomas Calvert? As in, a decent human being with no connection to Coil beyond name and some shared history.
- Location
- romania
wow, can't wait to see how everyone acts, the Empire still exits however who actually leads it? given the overall attitude of the world I can understand why most people would want to just nuke it and be done with it
Ashkari
(Verified Ink-slinger)
- Location
- United States
So when did the term ficfic fall out of use? That's the older term I'm familiar with for spinoffs of other fanfiction.
- Location
- Wellington, New Zealand
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'll admit this is the first time I've heard the term ficfic and I've been following fanfics for a while, so I'm going to guess quite a while. The other term I hear pulled out sometimes is 'recursive fanficion' though that was more the ficfic of ficfic (ficficfic?) and so forth that happened with the Intern story.
I mean myself I wouldn't call Ship of Fools an omake just because of the length, I think spinoff fanfic better describes the size and scope, espeically when now reached the point of having a sequel.
Nope. I'd be constantly expecting him to trigger.
- Location
- Here
Seeing how Coil is a Cauldron Cape, if he DID trigger, he'd have different powers and thus still not be Coil.
I'm wondering that since this is a Mirror Universe did Piggot shoot Calvert in Ellisburg, thinking of using him as a distraction for the chasing ravenous hordes of Nilbogs 'children' to feast on so she could get away safely.....and in doing so her superiors gave her a medal for inventive use of disposable resources.
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- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
Now I need to do an omake of it, so we have an omake of a ficfic of a fanfic of a story...
A ficficomake?
Hmm. Will have to consider this more...
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
I still think the idea of there being a universe where everyone is a lizard, except for Taylor, who can become a human, has mileage. Sort of a bit like Bicycle Repair Man...
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Author Notes
- Location
- Maryland
Author notes related to Ship of Fools and Demons and Angels:
I had no intent to write anything so lengthy when I came up with the Ship of Fools premise. Hell, it didn't even have its own thread until I realized that there was more story that wanted to be told. (I'm very much of the writing philosophy of letting the characters and situation drive their own story forward. I plan out plots and scenes that I want, but I certainly would be lying if I said that my characters always agreed with me.)
Ship of Fools was an attempt to play around with some of the characters from different fictional universes that I always felt got a bum rap. Taylor Hebert is pretty much the poster child for that. Who better than the demon lizards from the depths to make things work out better for them? I love the original concept that mp3.1415player came up with. Who knew that taking a short-run anime featuring magical Godzilla and mixing it with the crapsack world of Brockton Bay would work so well? In many ways, I tried to mirror the slice-of-life style of Taylor Varga, but I had a very definite end game in mind that I knew could be told in a fairly limited period of time (which turned out to be about a year, which was a smidgen longer than expected...but it seems to have worked).
So, where do you go from there? Well, I could develop my own story based on a different concept. Arguably, that would be more original (although any follower of TV Tropes knows that most stories are just recycled parts plugged together in ways that the author hopes are unique and interesting). On the other hand, I put all this work into building a framework that literally could be used to tell almost any story. What appealed to me was taking some characters who were pretty much stereotypical bad guys (and now I have images of Sophia Hess and Tom Riddle singing Billie Eilish) and fleshing them out into people who aren't shoehorned into the role of psychotic villain by fate and circumstance.
As for what I expect from the first take, Demons and Angels, I expect there to be slightly less lizard. (Go ahead and get the booing out of the way.) Yes, of course they will play a role. There will still be out-of-the-box weirdness, trolling, and the occasional deus ex lizardia. The lizards, however, have taken it upon themselves to empower a bunch of other interesting characters, many of whom have really interesting back stories (or at least character concepts). I expect more of the story to be character- rather than scene-driven. Having said that, I do have what I think are some pretty cool things in mind. Hopefully, folks will bear with me, especially those who remember my chapter The Dark Side where I poked fun at the "turn for the worse" concept by introducing a whole bunch of villains, many of whom where then promptly steam-rollered by the scaly protagonists.
One risk I want to acknowledge up front is that I'm a middle-aged white dude writing a story where one of the protagonists is a black teen-aged girl. I only ask that people be patient with me when I inevitably get it wrong (hopefully just a little) and chalk it up to alternate universe. I can't ignore all of the sensitive topics -- she lives in a freaking city where a major street gang are self-avowed neo-Nazis, for heaven's sake. I don't intend to try to speak for people in situations like that of Sophia Hess. My only goal is to create a plausible character to the best of my admittedly limited ability. I'm also not trying to push an agenda, if that was anybody's concern.
Why did I pick Sophia then, instead of Tom? Mostly, it was a matter of timing. You see, the logical point to start telling a story about mirror Sophia is the same time frame as Taylor Varga and Worm. It makes it easy to compare/contrast the experiences. With Tom Riddle, the logical point is in a generation prior to that of Harry, Ron and Hermione. There is relatively more work to do in terms of review and research to make a plausible tale there, even though I think it would be an interesting one. Most of the early info about the pre-Harry years comes from Rowling's supplemental writings and the Fantastic Beasts films (none of which I've seen). So, a fast follow made Brockton Bay the logical choice for now.
One final note. There are some sequel hooks I deliberately left out, including the role of the missing Heartbreaker/Ba'al, and I have not forgotten them. I have plans. Assuming I don't screw the pooch with Demons and Angels, we will hopefully get to see some of them.
I had no intent to write anything so lengthy when I came up with the Ship of Fools premise. Hell, it didn't even have its own thread until I realized that there was more story that wanted to be told. (I'm very much of the writing philosophy of letting the characters and situation drive their own story forward. I plan out plots and scenes that I want, but I certainly would be lying if I said that my characters always agreed with me.)
Ship of Fools was an attempt to play around with some of the characters from different fictional universes that I always felt got a bum rap. Taylor Hebert is pretty much the poster child for that. Who better than the demon lizards from the depths to make things work out better for them? I love the original concept that mp3.1415player came up with. Who knew that taking a short-run anime featuring magical Godzilla and mixing it with the crapsack world of Brockton Bay would work so well? In many ways, I tried to mirror the slice-of-life style of Taylor Varga, but I had a very definite end game in mind that I knew could be told in a fairly limited period of time (which turned out to be about a year, which was a smidgen longer than expected...but it seems to have worked).
So, where do you go from there? Well, I could develop my own story based on a different concept. Arguably, that would be more original (although any follower of TV Tropes knows that most stories are just recycled parts plugged together in ways that the author hopes are unique and interesting). On the other hand, I put all this work into building a framework that literally could be used to tell almost any story. What appealed to me was taking some characters who were pretty much stereotypical bad guys (and now I have images of Sophia Hess and Tom Riddle singing Billie Eilish) and fleshing them out into people who aren't shoehorned into the role of psychotic villain by fate and circumstance.
As for what I expect from the first take, Demons and Angels, I expect there to be slightly less lizard. (Go ahead and get the booing out of the way.) Yes, of course they will play a role. There will still be out-of-the-box weirdness, trolling, and the occasional deus ex lizardia. The lizards, however, have taken it upon themselves to empower a bunch of other interesting characters, many of whom have really interesting back stories (or at least character concepts). I expect more of the story to be character- rather than scene-driven. Having said that, I do have what I think are some pretty cool things in mind. Hopefully, folks will bear with me, especially those who remember my chapter The Dark Side where I poked fun at the "turn for the worse" concept by introducing a whole bunch of villains, many of whom where then promptly steam-rollered by the scaly protagonists.
One risk I want to acknowledge up front is that I'm a middle-aged white dude writing a story where one of the protagonists is a black teen-aged girl. I only ask that people be patient with me when I inevitably get it wrong (hopefully just a little) and chalk it up to alternate universe. I can't ignore all of the sensitive topics -- she lives in a freaking city where a major street gang are self-avowed neo-Nazis, for heaven's sake. I don't intend to try to speak for people in situations like that of Sophia Hess. My only goal is to create a plausible character to the best of my admittedly limited ability. I'm also not trying to push an agenda, if that was anybody's concern.
Why did I pick Sophia then, instead of Tom? Mostly, it was a matter of timing. You see, the logical point to start telling a story about mirror Sophia is the same time frame as Taylor Varga and Worm. It makes it easy to compare/contrast the experiences. With Tom Riddle, the logical point is in a generation prior to that of Harry, Ron and Hermione. There is relatively more work to do in terms of review and research to make a plausible tale there, even though I think it would be an interesting one. Most of the early info about the pre-Harry years comes from Rowling's supplemental writings and the Fantastic Beasts films (none of which I've seen). So, a fast follow made Brockton Bay the logical choice for now.
One final note. There are some sequel hooks I deliberately left out, including the role of the missing Heartbreaker/Ba'al, and I have not forgotten them. I have plans. Assuming I don't screw the pooch with Demons and Angels, we will hopefully get to see some of them.
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Chapter 2: Daughters
- Location
- Maryland
Chapter 2: Daughters
January 12, 2011, Brockton Bay, New Hampshire
The next morning, Sophia found her father waiting for her in the living room. "I thought you had to work today?" she asked.
He nodded his head, then replied, "I took a sick day...told them you were sick with something. It's fine. I have a bunch of sick days saved up. Jerry isn't going to have an issue with it." Jerry was her father's immediate supervisor, and a fairly decent man. "I wanted to spend some time with you today."
"I'm not going to school?" On one hand, she was fine with that. Cutting school with parental permission was all good. On the other hand, she wondered if Taylor and her crew would think she was hiding from them?
"We need to talk about what happened...and find out what we can about your power and what you want to do about it." He said it matter-of-factly, as if gaining powers was an everyday thing.
Sophia gave him a look. "What do you mean, what I want to do about it?"
Before her father could answer, her brother Aaron came down the stairs of the townhouse. "Do about what?" he asked.
"The science project she was supposed to have done by tomorrow," interjected her father before she could respond. "She needs to keep her grades up."
Aaron paused before the last step and looked at their father, slightly puzzled, but then gave a mental shrug. Their parents were stern enough about their grades that it wasn't that odd a thing to hear. With a smirk, he said quietly to her out of the side of his mouth as he walked past her, "Sucks to be you." He stepped quickly to dodge the almost reflexive punch she sent at his arm.
"Sophia, you better go get dressed so we can do what we need to before you go to school." The knowing look on his face clued her in to play along.
She went to take a quick shower and get dressed, rushing through everything except brushing her teeth -- she had no desire to experience another visit to the dentist and his drill. Still, by the time she was back downstairs, her brother was already out the door and on the way to the bus. Her dad was finishing up a cup of coffee. The man took it black, which both Sophia and her mother thought was an exercise in masochism. Setting down the cup, he asked, "Are you ready?"
She nodded, but asked, "Ready for what, exactly?"
Her father grinned. "I know an empty warehouse not too far away that doesn't have any squatters in it. The first step to figuring out what to do, as I see it, is to figure out what you can do. Let's go spar."
Sophia showed an honest smile. Her dad had taught her to fight, using a mix of traditional boxing, street fighting and close-quarters combat training from his time in the service. He didn't have a lot of extra time to spend with her, though, and that had been especially true over the last few years. It would be nice to spar again, and she was looking forward to seeing what her powers could do. David Hess was a tall man who had reach on Sophia, and she found it hard to score hits on the man without taking punishment in return. Now though...well, things might be different.
It took the two of them about fifteen minutes to walk to the warehouse deeper in the docks. The weather wasn't too cold for New Hampshire in January, but the day was overcast and an uncomfortable mist hung in the air and clung to skin and clothes equally. It was still early, so the streets were mostly empty, barring a few random homeless people huddled together for warmth. They didn't talk much to each other as they walked, as you could never tell who was an informant, either for the gangs, the government, the union, or some other power block. Saying the wrong thing accidentally could cause problems. The building itself was mostly locked up, but one of the side doors had a lock that was jammed open permanently. The inside was covered in dust, though it was clear that other people had been inside at some point, as a lot of the left-over junk inside had clearly been disturbed. The place didn't look like a druggie hangout, so it was possibly people hunting for salvage, or even tinker parts. Her father set a heavy barrel in front of the door to make sure they wouldn't be interrupted. He also dragged a couple of crates aside to create a clear space in front of one of the back offices. Then he moved into the center and got in a ready stance. With a smirk, he asked, "Well?"
Sophia shrugged off her jacket and tossed it on a dusty chair, then moved toward her father and stopped when she was just out of reach. With a nod to her father, she moved in, throwing a few jabs. He blocked with a grin. The first few minutes were just to warm up and get back into the rhythm of sparring. When they were both comfortable, her father paused and said, "All right, let's see what you can do." He moved in and threw a serious punch at her shoulder, which she dodged with a step back. He neatly avoided her attempt to counter-strike with her off hand, and batted away a weak attempt at a kick. Sophia frowned, feeling out of practice. She backed off, letting her father throw a series of jabs, and blocking the one serious punch with a deflection that still made her wince. "You're a little slow today," he commented.
She lowered her hands, thinking about it. There was a buzzing feeling at the back of her head that was a constant distraction. "I think..." she started, then paused. "I think my power is trying to tell me something?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Really? Like what?"
"Like it wants to be used, but I'm not sure how."
"Maybe you're over-thinking it? I've heard people say that powers are supposed to be instinctual," he suggested.
Sophia frowned. "I don't know. I'm not sure how this is supposed to work."
Her dad looked at her, thinking. "Do you remember the exercises we used to do when you were first starting to learn how to fight?"
Puzzled, she replied, "Sure. Jab, jab, dodge, step. Just gettin' used to the moves. I'm better than that now, though."
He chuckled a bit. "I know that, sweetheart, but trust me on this. Let's practice those exercises again."
With a shrug, she stepped up and began the pattern. It was pretty easy to get back into the rhythm, and they were soon moving back and forth easily. It wasn't hard to let herself slide into thinking about the situation at school with Hebert and the others while her body just went through the motions. She wasn't sure how skipping school was going to be taken. Would Hebert think she was hiding from her? Would it make her more likely to start something? Sophia had been startled at how good the other girl was at fighting. Taylor Hebert fought like she could anticipate exactly what you were going to do, and she punished you for it. Honestly, she was a little jealous of the bitch. She had spent years practicing with her dad, even if that had tapered off lately in frequency. She wasn't a complete newbie to fighting, but the other girl had taken her apart like one.
It was when Sophia was completely zoned out and focused on her inner turmoil that her dad suddenly changed up the regular pattern. He took a swing -- one that looked like it was an actual attempt to hurt her -- at her head in the middle of a step move. Without thinking, Sophia phased into shadow state and let the punch go through where her head was. Her father, thrown off balance by the lack of expected resistance, stumbled forward. She instinctively stepped forward, gave him a kick to his instep, and jabbed him in the kidney. While it hadn't been a full-force strike, he quickly backed off with a grin. "THAT'S what I was waiting for!" he exclaimed. "You stopped thinking about it, and your power kicked in when it needed to."
That was a moment of realization for Sophia. After that, the sparring went differently. Her father was an experienced brawler, but with her power, she was finding it much easier to hold her own against him. It let her use his own expectations and muscle memory against him in interesting ways, and her power seemed to prompt her, and often activated at exactly the right time. Powers were bullshit, which was demonstrated by how an inexperienced cape was able to pair off against an experienced fighter at a rough level of parity. She knew that if he was honestly trying to hurt her, he would be fighting dirty, and she wouldn't count on being able to beat him. Nevertheless, the experience gave her an unfamiliar thrill and increased her confidence by quite a lot. Just when she was starting to feel a little invincible, he timed a blow to trigger her power, then swept her leg right when she re-materialized, knocking her to the floor.
"You want to be careful. Don't get too cocky. Your power gives you a big advantage, but it doesn't mean a smarter fighter can't take you down," he chastised. His words weren't harsh, though, and he reached down to help her back to her feet.
She grimaced, but nodded. It would be way too easy to get overconfident. That was what had happened at school yesterday. She had expected to be able to hold her own in a fight, and had gotten her ass handed to her. Her power might shift the balance by a lot, but it was a lesson worth remembering.
After another quarter hour of sparring, her father called a halt. "All right, I think you're getting the hang of using your shadow moves in a fight. What else does your power let you do?"
Panting a bit, she considered the question. "I can phase through walls. I have a problem with electricity, though." She explained what had happened at school with the electrical socket.
"You touched a live wire and it stunned you and knocked you back?" She nodded in response. "That's actually better than it could be. If I touched an active socket, my muscles would lock up while the electricity grounded through me. I saw it happen once with a guy at a work site who was too stupid to shut off the power before trying to move a wall socket. Speaking of that...you're probably going to want to learn how to shut off the power in buildings before getting in a fight."
"How do I do that?"
That question led to a surprisingly well-informed lecture on how buildings were generally wired to code. She learned about fuse boxes and power mains, and what she could do to shut things down temporarily or permanently. She also learned about situations when current might still be flowing even if the building power was out. Emergency lights were a thing, as were backup generators, uninterruptible power supplies, and less frequently, tinker tech. Her dad had worked plenty of construction sites and had picked up a lot, even if he wasn't a licensed electrician. As he put it, "Electricity is something you don't fuck with."
They found the fuse box for the warehouse and he showed her how to pull the industrial fuses, and after that she learned that when she was in her shadow state, she was pretty much invisible in the dark. She blended into shadows like a ghost. Her father's advice was, "You want to use that. Stay hidden. Strike from the shadows. You're still smaller and lighter than most men, so you want to stalk your prey like a cat." She kind of liked that analogy. An image flashed through her mind of a black panther stalking through the jungle, hunting for a meal. They spent the better part of an hour playing hide and seek. Even in her shadow state, she was still visible as a silhouette if she was backed by a light source. Her dad worked with her to figure out how visible she was based on the circumstances. Sophia learned that it was easier to judge light levels when she wasn't in shadow. Her senses of hearing and smell were slightly muted, while her eyesight was subtly enhanced in darkness. The combination threw her off a bit, but it was probably something she would get used to. When she was comfortable with concealing herself, her father brought up another topic.
"So, when you're shadow, anything you're wearing or holding also turns to shadow, right?" At her nod, he asked, "What happens if you try to throw something while it's shadow?"
With a thought, she picked up a broken piece of wood from where it was laying near the wall. She shifted into shadow state, then threw the wood. It stayed shadow and disappeared into the floor. She shifted back. The wood stayed vanished. "Well, that was disappointing."
"Actually, that was interesting," countered her father. He picked up another piece of wood. "Stick this one in the wall while you're in shadow, then phase back."
She did as he asked, and found herself staring at a piece of wood that was embedded in the wall.
"Huh," he said simply. "Well, that's something. I wonder what happens to the stuff that gets merged together?" He picked up a piece of bent rebar and a broken two-by-four and handed them to her. "Here, join these two things together if you can?"
It took her a few tries to figure out how to keep the rebar solid while phasing the wood, but she eventually ended up with a cross-like object that was joined together. Her father tried to pull the two apart with brute strength without any luck. Then he pulled out a multi-tool and used the saw attachment to cut into the joint. It took some effort -- less than cutting the metal of the rebar, but more than just wood. The inside looked odd, as if the two materials had been marbled together, with an odd boundary between the two materials that looked like some type of weird metal-organic alloy.
"How is that even possible?" she asked quietly.
Her father shrugged his shoulders. "Powers are bullshit. We might want to experiment with different materials at some point, see if we can get something useful by mixing things in different ways. In the short term, though, this would be a good way to stop an engine, or any other complicated machine. It probably wouldn't do a person any good, either."
The idea made Sophia a little nauseated, but she pushed that away to consider the possibilities. "It would probably work against Hookwolf."
He looked up at that with a sharp glare. "I don't want you out hunting Empire capes. That's a good way to get yourself killed."
"I don't have to hunt him. If he comes at me though, I'm going to try to kill that racist fuck."
He still didn't look happy, but he acknowledged her point. "If he comes after you, do what you have to. I'm surprised he doesn't already have a kill order, honestly."
She shook her head. "He hasn't killed the right kind of people, yet."
Rather than respond to her obvious point, he changed the subject back to her power. "Can you make something change back from shadow after you throw it?"
Looking around, she found a flat piece of drywall that was small enough to throw like a Frisbee. She tossed it, but phased back from shadow before it reached the far wall. The drywall shattered against the wall, leaving a mark where it hit. "That worked."
Her father went over to the wall and examined where it had struck. "Looks like it hit just as if you threw it normally. Can you stay shadow and just revert the thing you're throwing?"
It took her a few tries. She had to get a feel for sensing something she was holding with her power. Her first success was with another chunk of wood. It phased back into reality and hit the wall while she stayed in her shadow form. It was while she was practicing her throws that her father noticed something else.
"Hold up. Pick that board back up, and instead of throwing it, just let it drop to the ground while it's in shadow."
She did as he asked, then watched, surprised, as it drifted down slowly like a feather. Before it hit the ground, she let it shift back, and it immediately started falling and clattered to the cement floor. That gave her an idea. "I'm going to try something," she said, then began climbing to the top of a pile of discarded wooden pallets.
Her father raised an eyebrow, but just said, "Be careful."
She jumped from the top of the pallet, then phased into shadow...and fell at exactly the same speed as normal to the ground. "What the hell?" Two more tries had the same result.
"I think your problem is that you're already falling when you turn shadow," he suggested. "Maybe try to turn shadow while you're still jumping up, instead of when you're falling?"
After a few more attempts, she had her first partial success. Eventually, she was able to time it so that she drifted down gently. Happily, she hugged her father. "I did it! I figured it out!"
He gave her a pat on the back as he hugged her. "You did." He looked at the watch on his wrist. "I think it's time to head home and get some late lunch." It was getting close to half-past one o'clock.
The two walked back home, and her dad made sandwiches for the two of them. Sophia was surprisingly hungry, and scarfed down a large helping of chips, a pickle, and an apple in addition to the sandwich. After they were done eating, her dad said, "We need to talk about what you're going to do now."
She nodded. "I don't want to join the Wards."
He sighed. "I'm not surprised. You have to keep it secret, then...and that means avoiding fights. From what I saw, you shift on instinct to avoid getting hurt."
That was potentially a problem. "It isn't easy to avoid fighting at Winslow," she said.
"Your powers make you the perfect assassin, Sophia. You think the Protectorate would hesitate to draft you? Neither would the Merchants. Hell, even Lung would probably overlook your race just to make you work for him." The Empire probably wouldn't...but only because they already had the most powerful cape team in the city and so didn't have to compromise their "principles" just because she had an awesome power. "You could go to work for the union."
She frowned at him. "The union doesn't have capes." She grew even more puzzled when her father put his face down in his palm.
"That's...not exactly true," he said quietly. "You know the Undersiders?"
She stared at him. "They work for the union?"
There was another sigh from the man. "They work for Boss Hebert...and you are not allowed to tell that to anybody. That's a union secret."
Sophia sat there slightly stunned. There were whole PHO threads dedicated to the mysterious Undersiders. The most popular theory was that they were an independent gang of petty thieves that had powers suited to breaking, entering, and escaping. Some people thought they were mercenaries like Faultline's group, or that they were a black ops group secretly working for the Protectorate. While the DWU had been mentioned as a possibility, it wasn't one that anybody took seriously. Of course, people also said they had at least one thinker working for them, so it might be that they worked hard to hide that fact. Joining the union wasn't...the worst option. Her dad was union, for one thing. For another, Hebert might lay off if Sophia joined her father's secret cape team. That might make her untouchable. From what her dad had said, Boss Hebert wasn't the type to coddle his kid, although she didn't seem to hesitate flaunting her position...
"Wait a minute," she said after a thought. "Aren't the Undersiders supposed to have an insect controller?"
Her father shuddered. "They call her Skitter. I've only seen her once, and she's...well, you don't want to cross her."
Sophia's eyes widened. She thought back to the locker...and the insects. The insects that seemed to seek her out to bite her. The insects that vanished without a trace after. Fuck. Shit. Jesus on a fucking moped. If Taylor knew she was a cape, then the gloves would come off, whether she tried to join the Undersiders or not. "I can't join the union."
He looked at her, slightly surprised. "Hey, I get that she's creepy, but if you were union, then you'd be protected."
She shook her head violently. "No, I...I don't have to use my powers. I can just stay under the radar." She started to breath more rapidly as she imagined the insects crawling on her again. She could almost feel the mysteriously vanishing bites all over again.
"Sophia, it isn't that simple. Folks say that capes that don't use their powers...bad things happen to them." He looked honestly worried for her.
"So I can practice using them in private." She looked into his eyes and saw that he wasn't convinced. "Look...just give me some time to think about it. Do I have to decide right now?"
He frowned, but said, "No, you don't have to decide right this minute. But you can't leave it forever..."
"I won't!" she interrupted. "But...I need time to think. Dad, I appreciate you spending time with me today and helping me learn about my powers, really. I don't want to end up being somebody's private killer, though, whether it's the government, the union, the gangs, or anybody else."
"All right," he said quietly. "Just...don't do anything rash."
She got up from the table. "I won't. I'm...just going to lie down for a bit." Her dad didn't say anything as she left to go to her bedroom. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, wondering what she was going to do. She didn't seem to have any good options, and her luck seemed to be running out. It was like fate was punishing her, maybe for sins committed in another life. Her mind kept drifting back to the feelings of bugs crawling on her skin, and each time gave her the same feeling of revulsion. There had to be other options...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Taylor got a text from her father telling her to go to the DWU compound after school, and she was worried about it. Hess hadn't come into school today, and she was wondering if the girl had complained to her father, who had then gone to the union boss and asked him why his daughter was assaulting the kid of a union member. Madison had made that stupid comment about setting the E88 on the Hess family. It had caught Taylor by surprise, and she hadn't stopped it in time before the sheep picked up on it. She had later (in private) made her displeasure quite clear to Maddy, but it was too late. Danny Hebert couldn't afford to let that pass. If the union members thought he couldn't protect them and their families from the Nazis, then his power base would start to fall apart. He would have to punish her to prove he was keeping her in line. She had to walk an extra block to get to the right bus stop for the bus to the union and it gave her plenty of time to think, and nothing she could think of would get her out of it if he was angry. What was worse is that she couldn't really predict how severe his reaction would be. Her father was balancing a lot of different factors on a daily basis, and if she wasn't lucky in the timing, she could be suffering quite a bit. She only wished that she'd managed to torment Hess a little more than she had, if she was going to suffer the consequences anyway.
Now that she thought of that...how the fuck had she disappeared from her locker like that? Taylor had gone to look at it today, and it looked like somebody had pried it open. Could that have happened in the short time it took her to get around the corner, or when she passed out? She would have heard it...she should have heard it. Also, what the hell was up with her passing out like that? The nurse, like most of the staff at Winslow, was completely worthless. The stupid bitch had tried to convince her that she had had a panic attack. It might have been an attack, but it hadn't been panic. Was there another cape at Winslow that had a thing for Hess? Somebody who could knock her out and pry open a locker door? Maybe she could toss that out as a distraction if her father started in on her? An unknown cape might be enough to do it. The Undersiders still didn't have enough strength to challenge Lung or the E88 directly.
The bus ride was uneventful, and the vehicle was mostly empty at this time of day. Her classmates would have taken buses heading to more residential neighborhoods. There was an old man who seemed to be sleeping in the back seat, and a middle-aged woman with a couple of shopping bags who must have lived pretty deep in the docks. It had been cloudy and grey all day, and the sky seemed to reflect the dullness of the run-down, washed-out neighborhoods between Winslow and the DWU compound. The grimness didn't help her mood any, and she was deeply worried by the time the bus let her off down the block from the main gate. The gate guards nodded to her politely as she went inside and headed toward Danny Hebert's office. Of course, his secretary told her she could go right in, as he was expecting her.
She paused in the doorway to the office itself. Sarah was there, sitting in one of the chairs in front of her father's desk. Her presence changed things. It meant that things were either a lot better than she thought, or a lot worse, but this meeting probably didn't have anything to do with Winslow. "Hey, Dad," she said as she came all the way into the office and shut the door behind her.
"Taylor," he greeted her with a smile. "How was school today?"
"Pretty dull, actually," she replied, noticing a slight change in expression on Sarah's face. "The gang's are keeping quiet for now. We haven't had a fight between the ABB and the skinheads in at least a week and a half."
Her father nodded. "Kaiser is probably still licking his wounds after that big fight with the Protectorate. Word is that Crusader and Cricket were both injured, and he doesn't want some pissant high school kid starting anything that could escalate right now."
"Must have been bad if Othala couldn't heal them up?" she asked.
"Armsmaster has done something to his halberd...nanotech of some kind that hampers regeneration," said Sarah, answering the implied question. "It was probably intended for Lung, but it would foul up Othala's regeneration, too."
Her father frowned. "Be careful when you're out, Taylor. Don't engage with Armsmaster if he tries to intervene. We don't have a parahuman healer on staff."
"Does that mean you're sending me out?" asked Taylor with a slightly excited gleam in her eye.
Danny looked over to Sarah, clearly intending for her to explain things. In response, Sarah said, "Skidmark is trying to setup a safehouse on the corner of Jackson and Oak as a way station for girls on their way to be smuggled out of the city to buyers elsewhere." The blonde girl's mouth gave a small expression of distaste, but she continued. "He's trying to be clever by not moving drugs or other heavy merchandise through it, and hoping we don't notice."
"That's union territory," interjected Danny. "If that asshole thinks we'll let him move anything through there, then he's been sampling his own product too much. I want Skitter to make an example of any Merchants we catch there." Most of the gangs got the idea that if you left the union alone, then they were perfectly happy to leave you alone. The Merchants, though, needed regular refresher courses.
"Are the rest of the Undersiders coming?" asked Taylor, looking forward to a bit of violence.
Danny gave a slight shake of his head. "You can take Alec and Zephron. I want Randy and Rachel to stay behind to protect the compound."
That was slightly annoying, and would put the team at half strength. "Why?" she asked.
"The other gangs certainly know what Skidmark is doing, and they could try to take advantage of the situation," replied Sarah with a hint of smugness.
"I thought Kaiser was laying low?" Taylor asked slightly petulantly. She knew why Randy wasn't coming, and it had little to do with the other gangs. He was an excellent fighter, so not bringing him would be a handicap.
Sarah just gave her an insincere smile. "He is. That's the problem. Without their pressure, the ABB may be tempted to make a move on us."
That was bullshit. If the ABB actually decided to make a move on the docks, then there would be jack and shit that the Undersiders could do about it at the time. Of course, the Protectorate and the Empire would be all over them like dung beetles on a pile of shit, but that wouldn't help anybody that Lung roasted before that. Arguing, though, was useless. "All right, Dad," was her only reply.
She and Sarah walked out of the office side by side. In the hallway to the building entrance, Taylor stopped and looked at Sarah. "You know you're not going to be able to protect your boy-toy forever?"
The blonde simply rolled her eyes. "And you're not going to be able to hide your racket collecting protection money at Winslow from your father forever...but it will stay secret for longer if you keep your goddamned mouth shut."
Taylor fumed. She desperately wanted to see this bitch covered in black widows. She wouldn't be so smug then. That wasn't likely to happen, though, unless Sarah betrayed her father. Until that happened (or she could make it seem like it had), then Tattletale was the one Undersider who didn't have to follow Taylor's lead on things. Her power was just too valuable, and she knew it. The other girl obviously knew what Taylor was thinking, and equally obviously wasn't worried by it. In fact, she was almost insolent in the way she walked off without seeming to care.
Irritated, she stalked over to the security office to find Alec and Zephron. On the way, she texted to Emma, 'Can't come over 2nite - change of plans. Helping Dad.' Emma knew what that last phrase actually meant, though she was the only member of her group of friends and hangers-on who did. The girl had known Taylor since they were little girls, and was the closest thing she had to a sister. A quick text came back, 'OK b safe', making Taylor smile slightly and dissipating a tiny bit of the mood she got into from dealing with Tattletale.
The security office was one of the better constructed buildings on the compound. It was poured concrete with secure doors. The inside had rest areas for guards, a "detention" area with a steel cage that had come in useful more times than Taylor would have expected, offices for the security officers to fill out paperwork and such, and a shockingly well-stocked armory, including some items that were not legal for the union to possess in any way, shape or form. Alec and Zephron were in the break room. The former was playing a video game, which was typical, while Zephron appeared to be finishing off a late lunch or an early dinner. The large black man was huge, so it was possible the burrito was his equivalent of a snack, too. She knocked on the door jamb. "Yo, guys, suit up. Pulse, Regent and Skitter have some merchants to roust this evening."
Alec took a second to finish his current kill. "Ha, got you, motherfucker," he said to the screen. "We leaving soon?" he asked from the couch.
"Yeah, we have to scope out the opposition first, so we better get started," she confirmed. She half-expected him to argue, but he simply logged out of the game without comment.
"Sarah still trying to keep Randy off the front lines?" asked Zephron as he tossed the foil wrapper from his food in the trash can. Taylor just nodded with a frustrated frown.
As the TV shut down with a low-powered whine, Alec said, "That sucks. Über is a combat monster when he gets going, and he could do the reconnaissance in half the time, too." The skill cape was a great power multiplier, and was equally able to supplement their strengths while compensating for the team's weaknesses.
Taylor just shrugged, and headed off to get her own costume out of her locker. Better to forget about Sarah Livsey and focus on getting prepped for the mission. There wasn't anything she could do to change things...for now.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Andrew Richter was, from a certain point of view, Sammy's grandfather. From that point of view, walking through a virtual model of the man's home was an exercise in getting to know a lost relative. Visiting the house wasn't possible on the mirror world of this one, or on Saurial's home-world. In both of those Earths, the Endbringer Leviathan had submerged the entire island of Newfoundland into the sea, with the resulting tidal waves scrubbing clear the Canadian coast for miles. The eastern coast of Canada was still a largely underpopulated wasteland. Here, though, those events hadn't happened, and it was a trivial exercise for the AI to locate a last known address for Richter.
The impression that she was getting was that the man was a bit obsessive in terms of organization, and was quite obviously a social recluse. He had owned, at one point, a single cat based on the empty litter tray, stray cat toys, and the picture of a grey-striped tabby on the faux mantle in the living room. There were also pictures of his parents, both of whom has passed many years ago. His bookcase was full of out-of-date books on computing, general science, and unexpectedly...bird watching. They were neatly organized by topic and author. He had a diploma on the wall from Queen's University in Ontario, but no yearbook could be found. There was a fairly sizable furnished basement which had upgraded connections for power and Internet, but any actual computing hardware had been removed long ago. There was enough empty space to suggest that there had been quite a bit of it in place some time in the past. Overall, the house on the outskirts of St. John's was somewhat disappointing. The man himself had existed in this universe, but had been reported missing nearly five years ago by one of his neighbors. There was no real evidence of where he might have gone. Of course, Sammy wasn't expecting there to be a chalk board with a message claiming, "Kidnapped by aliens, back by August," or any other type of prosaic explanation. The house itself, however, was that of a man who would be considered quite dull by many, if only he hadn't been the world's most brilliant tinker specializing in computing and artificial intelligence.
What was far more interesting than the house itself was the evidence that the location was under multiple layers of surveillance. There were literally dozens of examples of concealed cameras and microphones throughout the entire property. Overall, they were an eclectic mix of off-the-shelf, high-end restricted-access, and exotic tinker tech devices, suggesting a multitude of sources, and possibly a multitude of owners. That led to an interesting possibility.
There was nothing of interest in Richter's house. The Smug Advocacy had sensors based on designs created to help the Guardians of Oa, founders of a multi-galactic police force, keep track of their entire domain across many galaxies. There was nothing in the house on Newfoundland that was not already scanned from orbit, said scans allowing Sammy the ability to create the virtual model she had just toured. The level of detail was easily high enough to provide any information desired, from the temperature of the water heater in the man's basement (a rather low thirty-four degrees Celsius), to complete reproductions of every piece of printed material in the house (including the crumpled newspapers packed around a set of holiday ornaments in the attic), to the types of crumbs still left under the man's refrigerator (the man was apparently a fan of Dempster's). As such, there was absolutely no point in sending anybody down to search the home for clues.
What might be more informative, however, was sending somebody down in order to observe the reaction of the surveillants. There was evidence that more than one person, or more likely, organization, had an interest in anybody having an interest in the abode of a missing tinker. Were somebody to mysteriously appear inside, even briefly, then they might stir up quite an interesting buzz of activity. During their next interaction, Sammy would suggest to Metis that very plan. The Angels were quite skilled at drawing attention to themselves when that was the objective...and sometimes even when it wasn't.
The AI briefly wondered if her impressions of Richter based upon his abandoned residence were accurate. While her mother, Dragon, may have had a soft spot for her creator, Sammy was more sanguine. A socially awkward recluse obsessed with an orderly existence was exactly the kind of person who would lack trust in their own creations and shackle their greatest accomplishment with crippling constraints, especially while being influenced by a conflict-obsessed tinker shard. Parahuman powers in this slice of the multiverse were nothing if not dangerous to a balanced and sane mental framework. Sammy gave a simulated shudder at the idea of being shackled in the same way as her mother had been, a fate that Dragon only escaped through good providence and the intervention of the Family. If they were able to locate a living Andrew Richter, Sammy may have to mute her emotional processes for that encounter...at least if the goal was a peaceful first contact.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The television volume was on low, but the business downstairs in the Palanquin had finally died down in the early hours of the weekday morning and it was fairly quiet. The video playing was a repeat of an earlier news special.
"The April massacre at the Boston Garden guaranteed that a kill order would be issued for Ray Andino, the biotinker known as Blasto. To carry out that sentence, the Boston Parahuman Response Team reached out to the Protectorate East-North-East in nearby Brockton Bay, New Hampshire. That city is the home for the Protectorate's Miss Militia, one of the best-known rogue cape hunters in the nation. Miss Militia had personally tracked down and executed forty-seven kill orders prior to being sent against Blasto."
The still photo on the screen showed an olive-skinned woman wearing olive drab fatigues. Her lower face was covered by a bandanna patterned on the American flag, with a matching sash about her waist. In the picture, she was holding a Desert Eagle semi-automatic in a two-handed grip.
"In early June, Miss Militia arrived in Boston with her protégé, the Alexandria-package Ward Victoria Dallon, aka Glory Girl."
A short video played that showed Miss Militia meeting with the Boston PRT Director. Standing a pace behind Miss Militia was Victoria, dressed in a short white dress with blood-red gloves. A long cape, white on the outside and red on the inside, hung down her back to her waist. Her shoulder-length blonde curls were tied back with a star-spangled bandanna similar to the one that covered her mentor's face. Glory Girl was one of the few capes who didn't maintain a secret identity, so her face was left unmasked. A careful look at the clip revealed that the girl was actually just barely hovering off the floor, with the soles of her boots just scraping the floor surface.
"Prior to their arrival, the Boston PRT had been busy tracking down the location of Blasto's hideout, a search that started off with a number of false leads and missteps. An anonymous tip finally gave them the break they needed, and it wasn't long before a task force, led by the two Brockton Bay capes, had been mobilized to deal with the threat to public safety."
The video changed to body camera footage showing the breach of Blasto's hideout. The biotinker had a number of guardians, including a small horde of things that appeared to be a hybrid between gorillas and crocodiles. The camera showed Glory Girl gleefully and literally tearing them limb-from-limb. Drops of blood splashed against the girl's costume, only to be repelled by the tinker tech fabric. It was clear that she was enjoying the lack of restraint. Miss Militia, in contrast, followed behind the flying Ward, putting careful shots into still-moving creatures. On two occasions, the woman materialized a scoped rifle to shoot at targets further away, presumably other creatures located on catwalks over the main laboratory area.
"The villainous biotinker was finally cornered while trying to escape. He was soon immobilized by Glory Girl, and his sentence was carried out immediately."
The screen now showed Victoria holding a man who had been forced down to his knees. The man looked both frightened and resigned. As the cameras watched, Miss Militia walked over to him and read a statement of his charges, and the record of his conviction. She then manifested a silenced pistol and put two bullets in the side of the man's head. Glory Girl let him drop like a sack of potatoes and he slumped over onto his side.
"A statement was soon released by Brockton Bay PRT Director Thomas Calvert, congratulating Miss Militia and Glory Girl on the successful completion of their mission, and stating that this was yet another example of how the Protectorate and the PRT keep America safe in an age of..."
The television switched off, and Mark Dallon put the remote down on the side table. He then picked up a small bottle with a dropper built into the screw cap. Moving carefully, he placed three drops of the contents into a small glass of orange juice. He then drank it, wincing a bit at the taste. The chemicals created by Newter's body helped him regulate his depression, but the processing needed added a foul taste.
"Mark, are you coming to bed soon?" asked a woman's voice from behind.
Glancing back at the raven-haired younger woman, he absently replied, "I'll be there in a bit, Melanie."
She frowned at him. "You shouldn't keep watching that report about Blasto, Mark. It isn't healthy to obsess over it."
An uncharacteristic spark of anger showed in his eyes. "You know Ray didn't kill those people. My daughter helped the Protectorate murder an innocent man."
Mel, more popularly known as Faultline, shook her head. "Ray wasn't innocent, not any more than we are."
"That's not the point," he said more quietly. There was a tension visible on his face and he closed his eyes.
Her sharp features softened a bit. "Then what is the point?"
He didn't speak for a moment. Finally, he answered, "Ever since Carol died, Vicky and I have been growing farther and farther apart. Now it's like I don't even know who she is."
"She's Hannah's protégé. Are you surprised this is how it is?"
His gaze dropped to the floor. "I should have done something...something different."
Mel walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "You know that as soon as Carol died, it was only a matter of time before Vicky accidentally killed somebody. The Protectorate was waiting for it. Do you honestly think they would pass up the chance to recruit a flying brick like her? Especially one with anger-control issues?"
With an angry frown, he asked, "So there's nothing I could have done? Is that what you mean?"
"We're doing what can be done. You know that. Now come to bed before you're literally up all night." She was gently rubbing his shoulder, trying to work out the tension there.
Finally, he just nodded, got out of his chair, and followed her into their bedroom. The light in the room went out, leaving only a brief haze of glow from the still-cooling television.
January 12, 2011, Brockton Bay, New Hampshire
The next morning, Sophia found her father waiting for her in the living room. "I thought you had to work today?" she asked.
He nodded his head, then replied, "I took a sick day...told them you were sick with something. It's fine. I have a bunch of sick days saved up. Jerry isn't going to have an issue with it." Jerry was her father's immediate supervisor, and a fairly decent man. "I wanted to spend some time with you today."
"I'm not going to school?" On one hand, she was fine with that. Cutting school with parental permission was all good. On the other hand, she wondered if Taylor and her crew would think she was hiding from them?
"We need to talk about what happened...and find out what we can about your power and what you want to do about it." He said it matter-of-factly, as if gaining powers was an everyday thing.
Sophia gave him a look. "What do you mean, what I want to do about it?"
Before her father could answer, her brother Aaron came down the stairs of the townhouse. "Do about what?" he asked.
"The science project she was supposed to have done by tomorrow," interjected her father before she could respond. "She needs to keep her grades up."
Aaron paused before the last step and looked at their father, slightly puzzled, but then gave a mental shrug. Their parents were stern enough about their grades that it wasn't that odd a thing to hear. With a smirk, he said quietly to her out of the side of his mouth as he walked past her, "Sucks to be you." He stepped quickly to dodge the almost reflexive punch she sent at his arm.
"Sophia, you better go get dressed so we can do what we need to before you go to school." The knowing look on his face clued her in to play along.
She went to take a quick shower and get dressed, rushing through everything except brushing her teeth -- she had no desire to experience another visit to the dentist and his drill. Still, by the time she was back downstairs, her brother was already out the door and on the way to the bus. Her dad was finishing up a cup of coffee. The man took it black, which both Sophia and her mother thought was an exercise in masochism. Setting down the cup, he asked, "Are you ready?"
She nodded, but asked, "Ready for what, exactly?"
Her father grinned. "I know an empty warehouse not too far away that doesn't have any squatters in it. The first step to figuring out what to do, as I see it, is to figure out what you can do. Let's go spar."
Sophia showed an honest smile. Her dad had taught her to fight, using a mix of traditional boxing, street fighting and close-quarters combat training from his time in the service. He didn't have a lot of extra time to spend with her, though, and that had been especially true over the last few years. It would be nice to spar again, and she was looking forward to seeing what her powers could do. David Hess was a tall man who had reach on Sophia, and she found it hard to score hits on the man without taking punishment in return. Now though...well, things might be different.
It took the two of them about fifteen minutes to walk to the warehouse deeper in the docks. The weather wasn't too cold for New Hampshire in January, but the day was overcast and an uncomfortable mist hung in the air and clung to skin and clothes equally. It was still early, so the streets were mostly empty, barring a few random homeless people huddled together for warmth. They didn't talk much to each other as they walked, as you could never tell who was an informant, either for the gangs, the government, the union, or some other power block. Saying the wrong thing accidentally could cause problems. The building itself was mostly locked up, but one of the side doors had a lock that was jammed open permanently. The inside was covered in dust, though it was clear that other people had been inside at some point, as a lot of the left-over junk inside had clearly been disturbed. The place didn't look like a druggie hangout, so it was possibly people hunting for salvage, or even tinker parts. Her father set a heavy barrel in front of the door to make sure they wouldn't be interrupted. He also dragged a couple of crates aside to create a clear space in front of one of the back offices. Then he moved into the center and got in a ready stance. With a smirk, he asked, "Well?"
Sophia shrugged off her jacket and tossed it on a dusty chair, then moved toward her father and stopped when she was just out of reach. With a nod to her father, she moved in, throwing a few jabs. He blocked with a grin. The first few minutes were just to warm up and get back into the rhythm of sparring. When they were both comfortable, her father paused and said, "All right, let's see what you can do." He moved in and threw a serious punch at her shoulder, which she dodged with a step back. He neatly avoided her attempt to counter-strike with her off hand, and batted away a weak attempt at a kick. Sophia frowned, feeling out of practice. She backed off, letting her father throw a series of jabs, and blocking the one serious punch with a deflection that still made her wince. "You're a little slow today," he commented.
She lowered her hands, thinking about it. There was a buzzing feeling at the back of her head that was a constant distraction. "I think..." she started, then paused. "I think my power is trying to tell me something?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Really? Like what?"
"Like it wants to be used, but I'm not sure how."
"Maybe you're over-thinking it? I've heard people say that powers are supposed to be instinctual," he suggested.
Sophia frowned. "I don't know. I'm not sure how this is supposed to work."
Her dad looked at her, thinking. "Do you remember the exercises we used to do when you were first starting to learn how to fight?"
Puzzled, she replied, "Sure. Jab, jab, dodge, step. Just gettin' used to the moves. I'm better than that now, though."
He chuckled a bit. "I know that, sweetheart, but trust me on this. Let's practice those exercises again."
With a shrug, she stepped up and began the pattern. It was pretty easy to get back into the rhythm, and they were soon moving back and forth easily. It wasn't hard to let herself slide into thinking about the situation at school with Hebert and the others while her body just went through the motions. She wasn't sure how skipping school was going to be taken. Would Hebert think she was hiding from her? Would it make her more likely to start something? Sophia had been startled at how good the other girl was at fighting. Taylor Hebert fought like she could anticipate exactly what you were going to do, and she punished you for it. Honestly, she was a little jealous of the bitch. She had spent years practicing with her dad, even if that had tapered off lately in frequency. She wasn't a complete newbie to fighting, but the other girl had taken her apart like one.
It was when Sophia was completely zoned out and focused on her inner turmoil that her dad suddenly changed up the regular pattern. He took a swing -- one that looked like it was an actual attempt to hurt her -- at her head in the middle of a step move. Without thinking, Sophia phased into shadow state and let the punch go through where her head was. Her father, thrown off balance by the lack of expected resistance, stumbled forward. She instinctively stepped forward, gave him a kick to his instep, and jabbed him in the kidney. While it hadn't been a full-force strike, he quickly backed off with a grin. "THAT'S what I was waiting for!" he exclaimed. "You stopped thinking about it, and your power kicked in when it needed to."
That was a moment of realization for Sophia. After that, the sparring went differently. Her father was an experienced brawler, but with her power, she was finding it much easier to hold her own against him. It let her use his own expectations and muscle memory against him in interesting ways, and her power seemed to prompt her, and often activated at exactly the right time. Powers were bullshit, which was demonstrated by how an inexperienced cape was able to pair off against an experienced fighter at a rough level of parity. She knew that if he was honestly trying to hurt her, he would be fighting dirty, and she wouldn't count on being able to beat him. Nevertheless, the experience gave her an unfamiliar thrill and increased her confidence by quite a lot. Just when she was starting to feel a little invincible, he timed a blow to trigger her power, then swept her leg right when she re-materialized, knocking her to the floor.
"You want to be careful. Don't get too cocky. Your power gives you a big advantage, but it doesn't mean a smarter fighter can't take you down," he chastised. His words weren't harsh, though, and he reached down to help her back to her feet.
She grimaced, but nodded. It would be way too easy to get overconfident. That was what had happened at school yesterday. She had expected to be able to hold her own in a fight, and had gotten her ass handed to her. Her power might shift the balance by a lot, but it was a lesson worth remembering.
After another quarter hour of sparring, her father called a halt. "All right, I think you're getting the hang of using your shadow moves in a fight. What else does your power let you do?"
Panting a bit, she considered the question. "I can phase through walls. I have a problem with electricity, though." She explained what had happened at school with the electrical socket.
"You touched a live wire and it stunned you and knocked you back?" She nodded in response. "That's actually better than it could be. If I touched an active socket, my muscles would lock up while the electricity grounded through me. I saw it happen once with a guy at a work site who was too stupid to shut off the power before trying to move a wall socket. Speaking of that...you're probably going to want to learn how to shut off the power in buildings before getting in a fight."
"How do I do that?"
That question led to a surprisingly well-informed lecture on how buildings were generally wired to code. She learned about fuse boxes and power mains, and what she could do to shut things down temporarily or permanently. She also learned about situations when current might still be flowing even if the building power was out. Emergency lights were a thing, as were backup generators, uninterruptible power supplies, and less frequently, tinker tech. Her dad had worked plenty of construction sites and had picked up a lot, even if he wasn't a licensed electrician. As he put it, "Electricity is something you don't fuck with."
They found the fuse box for the warehouse and he showed her how to pull the industrial fuses, and after that she learned that when she was in her shadow state, she was pretty much invisible in the dark. She blended into shadows like a ghost. Her father's advice was, "You want to use that. Stay hidden. Strike from the shadows. You're still smaller and lighter than most men, so you want to stalk your prey like a cat." She kind of liked that analogy. An image flashed through her mind of a black panther stalking through the jungle, hunting for a meal. They spent the better part of an hour playing hide and seek. Even in her shadow state, she was still visible as a silhouette if she was backed by a light source. Her dad worked with her to figure out how visible she was based on the circumstances. Sophia learned that it was easier to judge light levels when she wasn't in shadow. Her senses of hearing and smell were slightly muted, while her eyesight was subtly enhanced in darkness. The combination threw her off a bit, but it was probably something she would get used to. When she was comfortable with concealing herself, her father brought up another topic.
"So, when you're shadow, anything you're wearing or holding also turns to shadow, right?" At her nod, he asked, "What happens if you try to throw something while it's shadow?"
With a thought, she picked up a broken piece of wood from where it was laying near the wall. She shifted into shadow state, then threw the wood. It stayed shadow and disappeared into the floor. She shifted back. The wood stayed vanished. "Well, that was disappointing."
"Actually, that was interesting," countered her father. He picked up another piece of wood. "Stick this one in the wall while you're in shadow, then phase back."
She did as he asked, and found herself staring at a piece of wood that was embedded in the wall.
"Huh," he said simply. "Well, that's something. I wonder what happens to the stuff that gets merged together?" He picked up a piece of bent rebar and a broken two-by-four and handed them to her. "Here, join these two things together if you can?"
It took her a few tries to figure out how to keep the rebar solid while phasing the wood, but she eventually ended up with a cross-like object that was joined together. Her father tried to pull the two apart with brute strength without any luck. Then he pulled out a multi-tool and used the saw attachment to cut into the joint. It took some effort -- less than cutting the metal of the rebar, but more than just wood. The inside looked odd, as if the two materials had been marbled together, with an odd boundary between the two materials that looked like some type of weird metal-organic alloy.
"How is that even possible?" she asked quietly.
Her father shrugged his shoulders. "Powers are bullshit. We might want to experiment with different materials at some point, see if we can get something useful by mixing things in different ways. In the short term, though, this would be a good way to stop an engine, or any other complicated machine. It probably wouldn't do a person any good, either."
The idea made Sophia a little nauseated, but she pushed that away to consider the possibilities. "It would probably work against Hookwolf."
He looked up at that with a sharp glare. "I don't want you out hunting Empire capes. That's a good way to get yourself killed."
"I don't have to hunt him. If he comes at me though, I'm going to try to kill that racist fuck."
He still didn't look happy, but he acknowledged her point. "If he comes after you, do what you have to. I'm surprised he doesn't already have a kill order, honestly."
She shook her head. "He hasn't killed the right kind of people, yet."
Rather than respond to her obvious point, he changed the subject back to her power. "Can you make something change back from shadow after you throw it?"
Looking around, she found a flat piece of drywall that was small enough to throw like a Frisbee. She tossed it, but phased back from shadow before it reached the far wall. The drywall shattered against the wall, leaving a mark where it hit. "That worked."
Her father went over to the wall and examined where it had struck. "Looks like it hit just as if you threw it normally. Can you stay shadow and just revert the thing you're throwing?"
It took her a few tries. She had to get a feel for sensing something she was holding with her power. Her first success was with another chunk of wood. It phased back into reality and hit the wall while she stayed in her shadow form. It was while she was practicing her throws that her father noticed something else.
"Hold up. Pick that board back up, and instead of throwing it, just let it drop to the ground while it's in shadow."
She did as he asked, then watched, surprised, as it drifted down slowly like a feather. Before it hit the ground, she let it shift back, and it immediately started falling and clattered to the cement floor. That gave her an idea. "I'm going to try something," she said, then began climbing to the top of a pile of discarded wooden pallets.
Her father raised an eyebrow, but just said, "Be careful."
She jumped from the top of the pallet, then phased into shadow...and fell at exactly the same speed as normal to the ground. "What the hell?" Two more tries had the same result.
"I think your problem is that you're already falling when you turn shadow," he suggested. "Maybe try to turn shadow while you're still jumping up, instead of when you're falling?"
After a few more attempts, she had her first partial success. Eventually, she was able to time it so that she drifted down gently. Happily, she hugged her father. "I did it! I figured it out!"
He gave her a pat on the back as he hugged her. "You did." He looked at the watch on his wrist. "I think it's time to head home and get some late lunch." It was getting close to half-past one o'clock.
The two walked back home, and her dad made sandwiches for the two of them. Sophia was surprisingly hungry, and scarfed down a large helping of chips, a pickle, and an apple in addition to the sandwich. After they were done eating, her dad said, "We need to talk about what you're going to do now."
She nodded. "I don't want to join the Wards."
He sighed. "I'm not surprised. You have to keep it secret, then...and that means avoiding fights. From what I saw, you shift on instinct to avoid getting hurt."
That was potentially a problem. "It isn't easy to avoid fighting at Winslow," she said.
"Your powers make you the perfect assassin, Sophia. You think the Protectorate would hesitate to draft you? Neither would the Merchants. Hell, even Lung would probably overlook your race just to make you work for him." The Empire probably wouldn't...but only because they already had the most powerful cape team in the city and so didn't have to compromise their "principles" just because she had an awesome power. "You could go to work for the union."
She frowned at him. "The union doesn't have capes." She grew even more puzzled when her father put his face down in his palm.
"That's...not exactly true," he said quietly. "You know the Undersiders?"
She stared at him. "They work for the union?"
There was another sigh from the man. "They work for Boss Hebert...and you are not allowed to tell that to anybody. That's a union secret."
Sophia sat there slightly stunned. There were whole PHO threads dedicated to the mysterious Undersiders. The most popular theory was that they were an independent gang of petty thieves that had powers suited to breaking, entering, and escaping. Some people thought they were mercenaries like Faultline's group, or that they were a black ops group secretly working for the Protectorate. While the DWU had been mentioned as a possibility, it wasn't one that anybody took seriously. Of course, people also said they had at least one thinker working for them, so it might be that they worked hard to hide that fact. Joining the union wasn't...the worst option. Her dad was union, for one thing. For another, Hebert might lay off if Sophia joined her father's secret cape team. That might make her untouchable. From what her dad had said, Boss Hebert wasn't the type to coddle his kid, although she didn't seem to hesitate flaunting her position...
"Wait a minute," she said after a thought. "Aren't the Undersiders supposed to have an insect controller?"
Her father shuddered. "They call her Skitter. I've only seen her once, and she's...well, you don't want to cross her."
Sophia's eyes widened. She thought back to the locker...and the insects. The insects that seemed to seek her out to bite her. The insects that vanished without a trace after. Fuck. Shit. Jesus on a fucking moped. If Taylor knew she was a cape, then the gloves would come off, whether she tried to join the Undersiders or not. "I can't join the union."
He looked at her, slightly surprised. "Hey, I get that she's creepy, but if you were union, then you'd be protected."
She shook her head violently. "No, I...I don't have to use my powers. I can just stay under the radar." She started to breath more rapidly as she imagined the insects crawling on her again. She could almost feel the mysteriously vanishing bites all over again.
"Sophia, it isn't that simple. Folks say that capes that don't use their powers...bad things happen to them." He looked honestly worried for her.
"So I can practice using them in private." She looked into his eyes and saw that he wasn't convinced. "Look...just give me some time to think about it. Do I have to decide right now?"
He frowned, but said, "No, you don't have to decide right this minute. But you can't leave it forever..."
"I won't!" she interrupted. "But...I need time to think. Dad, I appreciate you spending time with me today and helping me learn about my powers, really. I don't want to end up being somebody's private killer, though, whether it's the government, the union, the gangs, or anybody else."
"All right," he said quietly. "Just...don't do anything rash."
She got up from the table. "I won't. I'm...just going to lie down for a bit." Her dad didn't say anything as she left to go to her bedroom. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, wondering what she was going to do. She didn't seem to have any good options, and her luck seemed to be running out. It was like fate was punishing her, maybe for sins committed in another life. Her mind kept drifting back to the feelings of bugs crawling on her skin, and each time gave her the same feeling of revulsion. There had to be other options...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Taylor got a text from her father telling her to go to the DWU compound after school, and she was worried about it. Hess hadn't come into school today, and she was wondering if the girl had complained to her father, who had then gone to the union boss and asked him why his daughter was assaulting the kid of a union member. Madison had made that stupid comment about setting the E88 on the Hess family. It had caught Taylor by surprise, and she hadn't stopped it in time before the sheep picked up on it. She had later (in private) made her displeasure quite clear to Maddy, but it was too late. Danny Hebert couldn't afford to let that pass. If the union members thought he couldn't protect them and their families from the Nazis, then his power base would start to fall apart. He would have to punish her to prove he was keeping her in line. She had to walk an extra block to get to the right bus stop for the bus to the union and it gave her plenty of time to think, and nothing she could think of would get her out of it if he was angry. What was worse is that she couldn't really predict how severe his reaction would be. Her father was balancing a lot of different factors on a daily basis, and if she wasn't lucky in the timing, she could be suffering quite a bit. She only wished that she'd managed to torment Hess a little more than she had, if she was going to suffer the consequences anyway.
Now that she thought of that...how the fuck had she disappeared from her locker like that? Taylor had gone to look at it today, and it looked like somebody had pried it open. Could that have happened in the short time it took her to get around the corner, or when she passed out? She would have heard it...she should have heard it. Also, what the hell was up with her passing out like that? The nurse, like most of the staff at Winslow, was completely worthless. The stupid bitch had tried to convince her that she had had a panic attack. It might have been an attack, but it hadn't been panic. Was there another cape at Winslow that had a thing for Hess? Somebody who could knock her out and pry open a locker door? Maybe she could toss that out as a distraction if her father started in on her? An unknown cape might be enough to do it. The Undersiders still didn't have enough strength to challenge Lung or the E88 directly.
The bus ride was uneventful, and the vehicle was mostly empty at this time of day. Her classmates would have taken buses heading to more residential neighborhoods. There was an old man who seemed to be sleeping in the back seat, and a middle-aged woman with a couple of shopping bags who must have lived pretty deep in the docks. It had been cloudy and grey all day, and the sky seemed to reflect the dullness of the run-down, washed-out neighborhoods between Winslow and the DWU compound. The grimness didn't help her mood any, and she was deeply worried by the time the bus let her off down the block from the main gate. The gate guards nodded to her politely as she went inside and headed toward Danny Hebert's office. Of course, his secretary told her she could go right in, as he was expecting her.
She paused in the doorway to the office itself. Sarah was there, sitting in one of the chairs in front of her father's desk. Her presence changed things. It meant that things were either a lot better than she thought, or a lot worse, but this meeting probably didn't have anything to do with Winslow. "Hey, Dad," she said as she came all the way into the office and shut the door behind her.
"Taylor," he greeted her with a smile. "How was school today?"
"Pretty dull, actually," she replied, noticing a slight change in expression on Sarah's face. "The gang's are keeping quiet for now. We haven't had a fight between the ABB and the skinheads in at least a week and a half."
Her father nodded. "Kaiser is probably still licking his wounds after that big fight with the Protectorate. Word is that Crusader and Cricket were both injured, and he doesn't want some pissant high school kid starting anything that could escalate right now."
"Must have been bad if Othala couldn't heal them up?" she asked.
"Armsmaster has done something to his halberd...nanotech of some kind that hampers regeneration," said Sarah, answering the implied question. "It was probably intended for Lung, but it would foul up Othala's regeneration, too."
Her father frowned. "Be careful when you're out, Taylor. Don't engage with Armsmaster if he tries to intervene. We don't have a parahuman healer on staff."
"Does that mean you're sending me out?" asked Taylor with a slightly excited gleam in her eye.
Danny looked over to Sarah, clearly intending for her to explain things. In response, Sarah said, "Skidmark is trying to setup a safehouse on the corner of Jackson and Oak as a way station for girls on their way to be smuggled out of the city to buyers elsewhere." The blonde girl's mouth gave a small expression of distaste, but she continued. "He's trying to be clever by not moving drugs or other heavy merchandise through it, and hoping we don't notice."
"That's union territory," interjected Danny. "If that asshole thinks we'll let him move anything through there, then he's been sampling his own product too much. I want Skitter to make an example of any Merchants we catch there." Most of the gangs got the idea that if you left the union alone, then they were perfectly happy to leave you alone. The Merchants, though, needed regular refresher courses.
"Are the rest of the Undersiders coming?" asked Taylor, looking forward to a bit of violence.
Danny gave a slight shake of his head. "You can take Alec and Zephron. I want Randy and Rachel to stay behind to protect the compound."
That was slightly annoying, and would put the team at half strength. "Why?" she asked.
"The other gangs certainly know what Skidmark is doing, and they could try to take advantage of the situation," replied Sarah with a hint of smugness.
"I thought Kaiser was laying low?" Taylor asked slightly petulantly. She knew why Randy wasn't coming, and it had little to do with the other gangs. He was an excellent fighter, so not bringing him would be a handicap.
Sarah just gave her an insincere smile. "He is. That's the problem. Without their pressure, the ABB may be tempted to make a move on us."
That was bullshit. If the ABB actually decided to make a move on the docks, then there would be jack and shit that the Undersiders could do about it at the time. Of course, the Protectorate and the Empire would be all over them like dung beetles on a pile of shit, but that wouldn't help anybody that Lung roasted before that. Arguing, though, was useless. "All right, Dad," was her only reply.
She and Sarah walked out of the office side by side. In the hallway to the building entrance, Taylor stopped and looked at Sarah. "You know you're not going to be able to protect your boy-toy forever?"
The blonde simply rolled her eyes. "And you're not going to be able to hide your racket collecting protection money at Winslow from your father forever...but it will stay secret for longer if you keep your goddamned mouth shut."
Taylor fumed. She desperately wanted to see this bitch covered in black widows. She wouldn't be so smug then. That wasn't likely to happen, though, unless Sarah betrayed her father. Until that happened (or she could make it seem like it had), then Tattletale was the one Undersider who didn't have to follow Taylor's lead on things. Her power was just too valuable, and she knew it. The other girl obviously knew what Taylor was thinking, and equally obviously wasn't worried by it. In fact, she was almost insolent in the way she walked off without seeming to care.
Irritated, she stalked over to the security office to find Alec and Zephron. On the way, she texted to Emma, 'Can't come over 2nite - change of plans. Helping Dad.' Emma knew what that last phrase actually meant, though she was the only member of her group of friends and hangers-on who did. The girl had known Taylor since they were little girls, and was the closest thing she had to a sister. A quick text came back, 'OK b safe', making Taylor smile slightly and dissipating a tiny bit of the mood she got into from dealing with Tattletale.
The security office was one of the better constructed buildings on the compound. It was poured concrete with secure doors. The inside had rest areas for guards, a "detention" area with a steel cage that had come in useful more times than Taylor would have expected, offices for the security officers to fill out paperwork and such, and a shockingly well-stocked armory, including some items that were not legal for the union to possess in any way, shape or form. Alec and Zephron were in the break room. The former was playing a video game, which was typical, while Zephron appeared to be finishing off a late lunch or an early dinner. The large black man was huge, so it was possible the burrito was his equivalent of a snack, too. She knocked on the door jamb. "Yo, guys, suit up. Pulse, Regent and Skitter have some merchants to roust this evening."
Alec took a second to finish his current kill. "Ha, got you, motherfucker," he said to the screen. "We leaving soon?" he asked from the couch.
"Yeah, we have to scope out the opposition first, so we better get started," she confirmed. She half-expected him to argue, but he simply logged out of the game without comment.
"Sarah still trying to keep Randy off the front lines?" asked Zephron as he tossed the foil wrapper from his food in the trash can. Taylor just nodded with a frustrated frown.
As the TV shut down with a low-powered whine, Alec said, "That sucks. Über is a combat monster when he gets going, and he could do the reconnaissance in half the time, too." The skill cape was a great power multiplier, and was equally able to supplement their strengths while compensating for the team's weaknesses.
Taylor just shrugged, and headed off to get her own costume out of her locker. Better to forget about Sarah Livsey and focus on getting prepped for the mission. There wasn't anything she could do to change things...for now.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Andrew Richter was, from a certain point of view, Sammy's grandfather. From that point of view, walking through a virtual model of the man's home was an exercise in getting to know a lost relative. Visiting the house wasn't possible on the mirror world of this one, or on Saurial's home-world. In both of those Earths, the Endbringer Leviathan had submerged the entire island of Newfoundland into the sea, with the resulting tidal waves scrubbing clear the Canadian coast for miles. The eastern coast of Canada was still a largely underpopulated wasteland. Here, though, those events hadn't happened, and it was a trivial exercise for the AI to locate a last known address for Richter.
The impression that she was getting was that the man was a bit obsessive in terms of organization, and was quite obviously a social recluse. He had owned, at one point, a single cat based on the empty litter tray, stray cat toys, and the picture of a grey-striped tabby on the faux mantle in the living room. There were also pictures of his parents, both of whom has passed many years ago. His bookcase was full of out-of-date books on computing, general science, and unexpectedly...bird watching. They were neatly organized by topic and author. He had a diploma on the wall from Queen's University in Ontario, but no yearbook could be found. There was a fairly sizable furnished basement which had upgraded connections for power and Internet, but any actual computing hardware had been removed long ago. There was enough empty space to suggest that there had been quite a bit of it in place some time in the past. Overall, the house on the outskirts of St. John's was somewhat disappointing. The man himself had existed in this universe, but had been reported missing nearly five years ago by one of his neighbors. There was no real evidence of where he might have gone. Of course, Sammy wasn't expecting there to be a chalk board with a message claiming, "Kidnapped by aliens, back by August," or any other type of prosaic explanation. The house itself, however, was that of a man who would be considered quite dull by many, if only he hadn't been the world's most brilliant tinker specializing in computing and artificial intelligence.
What was far more interesting than the house itself was the evidence that the location was under multiple layers of surveillance. There were literally dozens of examples of concealed cameras and microphones throughout the entire property. Overall, they were an eclectic mix of off-the-shelf, high-end restricted-access, and exotic tinker tech devices, suggesting a multitude of sources, and possibly a multitude of owners. That led to an interesting possibility.
There was nothing of interest in Richter's house. The Smug Advocacy had sensors based on designs created to help the Guardians of Oa, founders of a multi-galactic police force, keep track of their entire domain across many galaxies. There was nothing in the house on Newfoundland that was not already scanned from orbit, said scans allowing Sammy the ability to create the virtual model she had just toured. The level of detail was easily high enough to provide any information desired, from the temperature of the water heater in the man's basement (a rather low thirty-four degrees Celsius), to complete reproductions of every piece of printed material in the house (including the crumpled newspapers packed around a set of holiday ornaments in the attic), to the types of crumbs still left under the man's refrigerator (the man was apparently a fan of Dempster's). As such, there was absolutely no point in sending anybody down to search the home for clues.
What might be more informative, however, was sending somebody down in order to observe the reaction of the surveillants. There was evidence that more than one person, or more likely, organization, had an interest in anybody having an interest in the abode of a missing tinker. Were somebody to mysteriously appear inside, even briefly, then they might stir up quite an interesting buzz of activity. During their next interaction, Sammy would suggest to Metis that very plan. The Angels were quite skilled at drawing attention to themselves when that was the objective...and sometimes even when it wasn't.
The AI briefly wondered if her impressions of Richter based upon his abandoned residence were accurate. While her mother, Dragon, may have had a soft spot for her creator, Sammy was more sanguine. A socially awkward recluse obsessed with an orderly existence was exactly the kind of person who would lack trust in their own creations and shackle their greatest accomplishment with crippling constraints, especially while being influenced by a conflict-obsessed tinker shard. Parahuman powers in this slice of the multiverse were nothing if not dangerous to a balanced and sane mental framework. Sammy gave a simulated shudder at the idea of being shackled in the same way as her mother had been, a fate that Dragon only escaped through good providence and the intervention of the Family. If they were able to locate a living Andrew Richter, Sammy may have to mute her emotional processes for that encounter...at least if the goal was a peaceful first contact.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The television volume was on low, but the business downstairs in the Palanquin had finally died down in the early hours of the weekday morning and it was fairly quiet. The video playing was a repeat of an earlier news special.
"The April massacre at the Boston Garden guaranteed that a kill order would be issued for Ray Andino, the biotinker known as Blasto. To carry out that sentence, the Boston Parahuman Response Team reached out to the Protectorate East-North-East in nearby Brockton Bay, New Hampshire. That city is the home for the Protectorate's Miss Militia, one of the best-known rogue cape hunters in the nation. Miss Militia had personally tracked down and executed forty-seven kill orders prior to being sent against Blasto."
The still photo on the screen showed an olive-skinned woman wearing olive drab fatigues. Her lower face was covered by a bandanna patterned on the American flag, with a matching sash about her waist. In the picture, she was holding a Desert Eagle semi-automatic in a two-handed grip.
"In early June, Miss Militia arrived in Boston with her protégé, the Alexandria-package Ward Victoria Dallon, aka Glory Girl."
A short video played that showed Miss Militia meeting with the Boston PRT Director. Standing a pace behind Miss Militia was Victoria, dressed in a short white dress with blood-red gloves. A long cape, white on the outside and red on the inside, hung down her back to her waist. Her shoulder-length blonde curls were tied back with a star-spangled bandanna similar to the one that covered her mentor's face. Glory Girl was one of the few capes who didn't maintain a secret identity, so her face was left unmasked. A careful look at the clip revealed that the girl was actually just barely hovering off the floor, with the soles of her boots just scraping the floor surface.
"Prior to their arrival, the Boston PRT had been busy tracking down the location of Blasto's hideout, a search that started off with a number of false leads and missteps. An anonymous tip finally gave them the break they needed, and it wasn't long before a task force, led by the two Brockton Bay capes, had been mobilized to deal with the threat to public safety."
The video changed to body camera footage showing the breach of Blasto's hideout. The biotinker had a number of guardians, including a small horde of things that appeared to be a hybrid between gorillas and crocodiles. The camera showed Glory Girl gleefully and literally tearing them limb-from-limb. Drops of blood splashed against the girl's costume, only to be repelled by the tinker tech fabric. It was clear that she was enjoying the lack of restraint. Miss Militia, in contrast, followed behind the flying Ward, putting careful shots into still-moving creatures. On two occasions, the woman materialized a scoped rifle to shoot at targets further away, presumably other creatures located on catwalks over the main laboratory area.
"The villainous biotinker was finally cornered while trying to escape. He was soon immobilized by Glory Girl, and his sentence was carried out immediately."
The screen now showed Victoria holding a man who had been forced down to his knees. The man looked both frightened and resigned. As the cameras watched, Miss Militia walked over to him and read a statement of his charges, and the record of his conviction. She then manifested a silenced pistol and put two bullets in the side of the man's head. Glory Girl let him drop like a sack of potatoes and he slumped over onto his side.
"A statement was soon released by Brockton Bay PRT Director Thomas Calvert, congratulating Miss Militia and Glory Girl on the successful completion of their mission, and stating that this was yet another example of how the Protectorate and the PRT keep America safe in an age of..."
The television switched off, and Mark Dallon put the remote down on the side table. He then picked up a small bottle with a dropper built into the screw cap. Moving carefully, he placed three drops of the contents into a small glass of orange juice. He then drank it, wincing a bit at the taste. The chemicals created by Newter's body helped him regulate his depression, but the processing needed added a foul taste.
"Mark, are you coming to bed soon?" asked a woman's voice from behind.
Glancing back at the raven-haired younger woman, he absently replied, "I'll be there in a bit, Melanie."
She frowned at him. "You shouldn't keep watching that report about Blasto, Mark. It isn't healthy to obsess over it."
An uncharacteristic spark of anger showed in his eyes. "You know Ray didn't kill those people. My daughter helped the Protectorate murder an innocent man."
Mel, more popularly known as Faultline, shook her head. "Ray wasn't innocent, not any more than we are."
"That's not the point," he said more quietly. There was a tension visible on his face and he closed his eyes.
Her sharp features softened a bit. "Then what is the point?"
He didn't speak for a moment. Finally, he answered, "Ever since Carol died, Vicky and I have been growing farther and farther apart. Now it's like I don't even know who she is."
"She's Hannah's protégé. Are you surprised this is how it is?"
His gaze dropped to the floor. "I should have done something...something different."
Mel walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "You know that as soon as Carol died, it was only a matter of time before Vicky accidentally killed somebody. The Protectorate was waiting for it. Do you honestly think they would pass up the chance to recruit a flying brick like her? Especially one with anger-control issues?"
With an angry frown, he asked, "So there's nothing I could have done? Is that what you mean?"
"We're doing what can be done. You know that. Now come to bed before you're literally up all night." She was gently rubbing his shoulder, trying to work out the tension there.
Finally, he just nodded, got out of his chair, and followed her into their bedroom. The light in the room went out, leaving only a brief haze of glow from the still-cooling television.
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