I loosely picked at my salad as Jemima tried to make her latest breakup sound interesting, and miserably failed. I caught the eyes of Madison, who was sat next to her and she made a face, rolling her eyes as Jemima tried to explain why the fact that this boyfriend cheated on her was something interesting. At some point, you know, it becomes more about you than it does them.
I smiled, slightly, at Madison, and Charlotte saw that, cutting over the African American girl to talk about something interesting. That was what it meant to be on top, to be able to direct the currents of the conversation with a few glances, to make someone a pariah with an off-hand comment. I ruled this school, untouchable and unquestioned, the queen of the social scene. Even now, the fact I'd gotten tired of Jemima would probably mean the other girls would cut across her when she next spoke up, to try to curry favour with me, because I had the influence. And by having the influence, people were just so eager to give me more influence, more power, through the fact they'd react based on my own control. And these were the best of the school, more or less, the ones who are best able to bite off people's head with a few sentences, those who had managed to distinguish themselves enough to be invited to my lunch table. How weak, how stupid were the rest of the school?
I speared another bit of chicken and salad, and ate it, idly listening to the discussion about the latest episode of Scandal, before Lyra pointed down the table. "Hey, Ems, it's Taylor. Finally showing her face again? Don't know why she's acting like anyone wants to see it, though."
Everyone at the table gave a small grin at that, at least, a few of the newer and more uncertain members giving slightly forced chuckles. Ah, Taylor. Despite being a weak and pathetic, I couldn't exactly call her
useless, because she was a great tool to unify people. I slowly turned, a slow smile creeping on my face. She'd entered the dining hall with Sophia next to her, stupidly chattering away about something.
"I wonder why she wasn't here last week." Someone said from behind me.
I smiled, waited until she was a little bit closer, turning away to make it less obvious, and then pitched my voice just right that she could here it. "Oh, she wanted to see if someone would care if she'd died to the asians. Shame she doesn't realise that Sophia's pity isn't quite the same thing."
Everyone chuckled, and I ate another forkfull of salad, waiting for someone to start up a conversation. But there was silence for a couple of seconds, before Jemima, clearly eager to reassert herself, spoke up.
"If you want to hang around people who don't like you, you've got an entire school to do that in, you don't
need to do that here." That, honestly, wasn't that bad.
I turned around, then, to see what Taylor was doing. She was just staring at me, with eyes ringed in shadows, Sophia leaning against a pillar nearby, watching. I blinked, a bit surprised at how intensely she was staring at me. It was weird, really, she usually turned away from anything close to direct eye contact.
"Hanging around for a reason, Taylor? Or do you actually enjoy people despising you?"
"That'd explain why she keeps turning up, like something you just can't scrape off your shoe." I was pretty sure that was one I'd said before, so it wasn't like Caitlin was being inventive there, but Taylor did stop staring at me to flicker her eyes across the table.
"You… Emma… you know, I told myself I didn't care about any of you?" She said, her voice soft, eyes having gone back to staring at me.
"Sure looks like you don't care about us, doesn't it?" Julia chimed in, and I chuckled.
"Yes. I did, didn't I? You sent me home in tears, to cry myself to sleep for.. years. Because for some reason I cared." She spoke almost without inflection, and I frowned, inside, careful to keep it off my face. This was weird. She was usually weird, to be sure, a creepy little geek who'd cling on to anyone who showed her friendship, but this was weird even for her. Why was she telling us this?
"What, do you want us to stop doing this, then? Finally had enough, come begging for us to be friends, to braid your hair and invite you over for sleep overs and tell each other secrets in the middle of the night? That'd be… honestly, even more pathetic than the fact you're still crying yourself to sleep."
"... I want to say I've stopped caring, Emma, but I think even now I care just a little. Because you were my friend. Because you were my sister, Emma. And I care, because what a waste you've become." She delivered the last with a smile, almost a grin, before turning away.
A waste? A waste? I ruled this school's social scene. I'd fended off challengers from spiteful people who wanted my position as the one everyone cared about, the envious people who thought they could take me down and be the one who got invited to actual places, who had prospects outside this waste of a school. And here was Taylor acting like she wasn't racing for the bottom with Greg, acting like she wasn't almost a void moving through the school.
I grabbed her by the shoulder, and then wondered when I'd stood up. She turned around, looking down on me, the one thing I hated most about her, the way she somehow towered over me, how it gave her an unearned advantage. She seemed even taller than I remembered.
"A waste? A waste? How screwed up is your mind that you think that I'm a waste, when nothing you've done has had any effect?"
Sophia stepped forwards, but Taylor looked at her, and something passed between them in that instant, and she started grinning, her white teeth gleaming in reflection. Oh, Sophia. If only you were slightly less of a blunt instrument, slightly less wedded to your ideas of heroism. You'd taught me everything about how the world worked, about how you needed to claw your way to the top, but I'd improved upon it, I'd realised where the true power lied, and it wasn't in pointless fighting, but in connections, in people needing you, wanting you. What greater predator could there be than one who's prey would willingly come to be devoured?
"What are you going to do, Emma? I don't know what's the deal with your group, but you've got influence, even I can see that."
"Can you really?" Came the jibe from Jemima, over-eager, and Taylor's eyes flickered over to her, and she stopped her quiet chuckle.
She then looked back to me, and I realised why I was seeing in her eyes, in her face. I'd been so used to seeing misery, or fear, or anything else written across Taylor's face, because she wore her heart on her sleeve, that I didn't recognise it for what it was. It was pity.
How
dare she pity me.
"What have you done with that influence, Ems? The school was a hotbed for the empire, and what did you do? What changes have you made? Power needs to be used, Emma."
"Power? You've been spending too long around Sophia if you think everything is about power? It's not like I force them to hang around with me. It's called having friends, Taylor. But I guess you wouldn't know what that's like, would you?"
She stared at me, for a second, before breaking into a small, pitying smile again. "And that's it. All your power, focused on making me feel bad. And you did it, Emma. If that's what you wanted this for, to make me hate myself, you won. But shouldn't you find something better to do?"
She reached a hand up, and took my hand off my shoulder, neatly sidestepping the foot that was stuck out by Adrian, as she walked to the canteen window, the queue having vanished this late into lunch. Sophia looked at me, for a second, before stepping closer.
"I don't know why you care, Emma. Honestly, I don't. I know I never cared about her, while I was here. I know they don't care, they just do it because you do. But… I'm bored. I got bored a while back, and I left. But now… I think I'm bored of even seeing this shit. It was fun, Emma, for a while, but every joke's gotta end someday. Have a fun, worthless life. I've got shit to do."
I paused, as she turned away, joining Taylor in the queue. I stared at them for a second, their backs to me. Sophia had drawn Revamp's symbol on the back on her bag, and neither of them turned around, even once, to look back at me.
"- emma? Earth to emma, hello?" I turned around, looking at Madison leaning on the table, wiggling her fingers at me. "Ah, there you are. Seriously, are you actually thinking what they were talking about? They don't know anything. You tried teaching Sophia how things were, and look how that turned out."
"Probably because she's a giant dyke, can't actually work out how normal social relations work." Melissa said, chuckling a little. I joined in, and soon the conversation moved onto important things.
I saw the glances, though, between them, as I walked through lunch. That lapse had cost me, I could see. I suppose that was the downside of usually being so perfect, that even a second's hesitation looked like failure.
It wasn't like they knew what they were talking about.
---
The small conference room was entirely unlike the last two time's I'd been inside the PRT building. The first time, shortly after I was discharged, had been in a huge meeting room on the upper floors of the buildings, plate glass windows charged with some force field, and the Director, Armsmaster, and half a dozen other personages in attendance. It wasn't exactly a subtle attempt to overawe us with power, but even if my Dad didn't agree with my reasons, he was sticking by what he said, and my Dad could teach an ornery mule how to be more stubborn. And so, for now, I wasn't a member of the wards. My second time was in the small and crowded office of Mrs Hendrick, my newly assigned social worker, a day later. It'd mostly been me and Dad going through paperwork to confirm what we'd all agreed in that big office, and her explaining her role to both myself, and Dad. She emphasised a lot that she wasn't here to replace him as a parental figure, which really said a lot about the usual people she handled.
But this one had the look of, what my dad told me, was a fairly common thing in office jobs, that of the bookable meeting room. Half a dozen like it lined the outer walls of the third floor of the building, and a bunch of desks and cubicles were stuffed into the interior, paperwork occurring that I had no idea what it consisted of.
Even though the conference room was small, once Mrs Hendrick pressed her badge against the door and let us in, it still felt disproportionately large for the four of us inside. I sat next to Dad, dressed in a smart cardigan I'd found at the bottom of my wardrobe, while my father was wearing the same suit he'd been using for every meeting. Mrs Hendrick, for her part, was wearing a frumpy jumper and a long skirt. The fourth member of the meeting was an incredibly blonde man - his hair was almost white, it was impressive - with high cheekbones, wearing a pale grey suit. He had piles of documents in front of him, and only barely looked up when we came in, but Mrs Hendrick sat next to him fairly cheerfully, so I presumed his presence was expected.
"So! Lovely to see you again, Taylor, Danny, and I'm so sorry on the short notice I gave for this meeting. This fella here-" and at this she gently nudged the man next to her with her elbow, "- didn't tell me he'd be coming here until he saw me leaving my office yesterday!" She gave a flavourless laugh, before grabbing a couple of pieces of papers out of the stacks in front of him, and reading them with a slight frown on her face.
"Anyway, Taylor, how are you doing? Have you begun tinkering again? I know we took most of your tinkertech, but you did say it was broken during the fight. But if you'd like to get it back, I'm sure I can get that done for you. I know you did say we could keep it, but I know the pressure everyone up there must have been putting on you, and Armsmaster is very insistent about these things. And I hope you're adjusting to school well?" She paused to smile widely at me, and I took the opportunity to actually speak.
"I, uh, I haven't been tinkering yet, still mostly planning out what I want to make, and if I had enough to make it. But I don't think I need my, uh, broken tech." Liam had sent me a text, I'd managed to find out, once I'd gotten the phone from the PRT's evidence lockers.
'Good job. Hope you do well in the future. Please never visit again. Sorry.'
I'd sent messages in reply, but they'd all come back with failure to deliver errors.
"And are we grateful for that." The man spoke, for the first time, dropping one of the pieces of paper to look at me and dad.
"Good afternoon. I'm part of one of the PRT's subdivisions. You might be more familiar with WEDGDG? I work for a similar organisation, except more focused on 'lingering abilities'. This mostly means we deal with residual tinkertech, as well as a few of the more persistent power creations. What remains of Nilbog's creatures, for example. We're particularly interested in reproducible abilities for several reasons, and…" He smiled now, widely and without humour, spreading his fingers widely like a spider. "Well, I was responsible for compiling and analysing the reports you gave to Armsmaster about the events that occurred, with reference to your creations, as well as the reports produced on the actual remains themselves. As I understand it, you refused to join the Wards, despite the numerous incentives on offer, especially for tinkers?"
"Yes." Dad said, looking this man in the eye. "We did. And we will not be changing our minds."
"Mm." He shuffled around some papers in front of him, until Mrs Hendrick elbowed him in the side, with a muttered 'Pyotr'. I wasn't sure how to take Mrs Hendrick, honestly. Half of her was incredibly fake, her fake laughs, her too-close attitude, and I didn't like that. But in the meeting we'd had in public, she'd been very upfront about how the PRT and protectorate didn't always act in people's best interests, and how much she was constrained, and how it might be better to go to the Youth Guard, although apparently they'd be even more insistent about joining the Wards than even the PRT wanted me to be.
"As you wish. Regardless, in my investigations, I found several things of particular interest. These 'originum' crystals, as present both inside you and on the tower, seem to have very interesting properties, especially given the latent power inside them, but the investigation of that is, ah, ethically fraught. What more interested me was several aspects of Armsmaster's reports that I believe his missed at the time, as well as properties of the devices you reported. For example, did you design any of your tech to be particularly resistant to sea-water?"
I paused, as that hadn't been what I was expecting the question to be. "Uh. No. No, I don't think so?" I didn't really think of much when designing them. My crossbow, old Firewatch, had been really the greatest attempt I had at directing my power, and then my yoyo the next one, and I hadn't really expected anything of them, when I was building them. But given how I'd sat in the wash for at least a hour, they'd held up very well. Liam had said… Liam had said a lot of things.
Perhaps I shouldn't take all of them as true.
"Mm. And did you perform any maintenance during the week you were constantly fighting? Sharpening your swords, attending to the strings on your crossbow, dealing with the internal mechanisms of your yoyo?"
"No." I paused. "You don't think I'm like, uh, Ashpul macreth?" He was that Chinese genius tinker, wasn't he?
"It's Ashul Macseth. And no, not at this stage. Tinker tech can have had longer maintenance gaps than yours, and tinkers can occasionally not notice them doing maintenance, especially as it can on occasion not look like actual maintenance. But it is something to be aware of. And finally, ah. How skilled, Ms. He…-" he get elbowed again by Mrs Hendrick, who's smile had become rather fixed as she stared at us. "Revamp, my apologies, would you say you are at swordsmanship? Say if I took you down to the gyms in the building now, and gave you an epee, or a foil."
I looked at him, my mind slowly putting the pieces together. "You're interested in the abilities my tech grants, aren't you?" I would be… I didn't know, actually. I had never tried to fight with a sword without using my sword's abilities, but I could still remember fighting with those granted abilities. I was probably better than I
should be, then.
He smiled, thinly. "Powers that affect the mind are my speciality, especially in non-obvious ways. What do you think of Skullshatterer, Revamp?"
"Who?"
He smiled again, and wrote something down. "It doesn't matter at this stage. No, I'm interested in the provenance and scale of the mental abilities you have. Your originum seems to have a similar effect, as some people have reported that it feels strangely… electric, was the general theme, but powers are ill suited for description, most of the time. And to that extent, well. Mr Hebert, how well equipped is your house for fabrication? For building tinkertech?"
My Dad was uncomfortable as Pyotr turned to him, smiling in that thin manner he did. "Do I need to answer that?"
"To be honest, no. If you'd read over, ah, this document, it goes over the basics of what I, and my organisation are offering." He passed the page to my Dad, and then turned his pale eyes on me.
"Are you familiar with how most transference powers work? There are few of them in the world, but this city did have one in residence for a while."
Transference. Movement from one to another. Who would have been… "You mean Victor."
He smiled again, still oddly still. Did this… he hadn't actually said what the organisation was called, had he? That was… odd. "Ah, excellent. You really are admirably quick thinking. Yes, although he is actually a relatively unique case. The most famous, of course, is the Butcher, but her ability is relatively indicative. Victor was unique for taking from people without mental influence, while most other transference type thinkers, or other classifications, have bleedover, shall we say. Are you familiar with Split? No? No matter. The butcher being, of course, the extreme end of this, taking the entire personalities with it as it moves, but mannerisms or habits transferring between people occur, or even actual memories on occasion. However, this is mostly the case when there is a known real person to take them from. Such extreme… competence, shall we say, that you have, while being sourceless, is relatively unique."
"Uber has it."
"Uber is… a strange case. Frankly, there are some in my department who believe him to merely be a friend of Leets, and actually lacks any powers of his own, or perhaps has something of Leets which allows him to mimic his stated powerset." That was interesting, but something I could probably confirm as false. He had a power, even if I'd never learned the actual limits of it. Of course, that'd probably result in more long and boring conversations with PRT agents and analysts. I frowned, slightly, as Pyotr had paused, his eyes looking at my face with a strange expression. He seemed almost… eager.
"Regardless, there is some evidence of bleed-through in your power, despite being sourceless, is very unique. And I am very interested in studying such mental effects, and if they affect others, and other such details. Could it be controlled and harnessed? Given how you are a tinker, it seems more easily repeatable than otherwise might be."
My dad slowly passed me the paper, and I quickly scanned through it, something I could use to block his pale gaze. It seemed to be a lot of information in densely packed legalese, a list of requirements, a few tests they wanted to do, and then at the bottom paragraph, a five-digit number, alongside the word "annual expenses".
"That's… a decent amount of money." I said, trying to work out what that'd let me build. That might let me build one of the second tiers, actually, or possibly even the first tier. I mentally sorted through the catagories in my head, ignoring how a lot of the second tier was spikey. I could certainly rebuild my sword and crossbow if I wanted, those two third tier weapons. But did I want to just replicate what I had before? I had eighty, ninety-odd other third tiers to choose from, and I didn't know what they'd make otherwise.
My dad touched my on the shoulder, and I came back to the present, my face heating a little bit, and Mrs Hendrick gave me a surprisingly genuine little smile. Pyotr merely blinked, once, before repeating himself.
"Whatever you might think of it, the United States Government does not lack for money. And it's still less than the stipend you would have received as a Ward." He moved to the side to dodge Hendrick's elbow, this time. "Yes, yes, I know she doesn't want to join them. This is also a fair few restrictions you wouldn't have as a Ward, although Wards have other issues, but in general, I think that the testing and sample provisions would be acceptable for you, in return for funding your heroic activities. There are also other grant programs Mrs Hendrick would be able to help you with, if you do accept my offer, as the official link opens several doors they otherwise wouldn't."
I looked at him, again, and he gave another bland, thin smile. Was this something I wanted? It was similar to what I had agreed to with Liam, but at least there I knew what he wanted. And it was more personal. In this, I'd be entrusting it to an organisation I couldn't just see everyone as a member of. I trusted heroes, but these wouldn't be heroes. This would be people like … him. I stared at Pyotr, my mind changing through the gears.
"I'm sorry, but I didn't actually get your name."
The man actually grinned at me then, a slow and wide smile, like a frozen river and with all the warmth of the same. He looked like a snake, almost rearing to strike. "Oh, how discourteous of me." He extended a hand to shake mine with, a grip that lasted only a second, two quick shakes. "I am Pyotr Kashchey, Ms Revamp, and I foresee us having a long and fruitful relationship."
---
