Magical Girl Escalation Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)

[Silently Watches]

[ ] A Dragon's Hoard


Emigration 4.8

Thursday, March 24
Staring at the open browser window, you reconsider once again what the hell you're going to say. You were lost on what to tell Dragon immediately after receiving her email, and in the two weeks since, you haven't come up with anything spectacular. That's without dwelling on the little fact that it has taken you two weeks to say anything. You really hope Dragon won't think badly about you after postponing this for so long.

Samantha purrs from her spot in your lap, and you stroke her soft fur for a moment. Once you had mostly recovered from draining your mana to power the radio – recovered enough to walk without the room spinning, at least – she had shifted into her pet form and stayed like that. Her drain on your Linker Core is apparently lessened significantly when she is small like this, and even though Perfect Storm had said that maintaining her human form would not stress you, she is insistent. So long as you aren't supposed to cast any magic, she will stay an unremarkable raccoon unless you need her to keep you safe.

And you've allowed yourself to get distracted again. Dragon! What are you going to do about Dragon? It was one thing when you thought you had a computer core from the crashed ship, the Agharti; you aren't a Tinker, but there might have been information on the system that would give you just enough of a background that you could pass for one through the course of a casual conversation. But you didn't find a computer, did you? You found a radio, which leaves you with no more knowledge than you had before.

Knowledge pertinent to this discussion, that is. You got quite a bit of info about angry space wizard cops, but that terrifying nugget is one you have no idea what to do with just yet. Particularly the bit about them now knowing where you are.

«Mistress need not contact the Dragon at this time.»

"No, I really do," you tell your Device. "I just don't know what to say."

Stretching out in your lap, Samantha suggests, «Why don't you start with 'Hi' and go from there?»

A fat lot of good that suggestion is, and from the twinkle in her amber eyes, she knows it. You give her tail a gentle yank in retaliation, smiling at her when she glares up at you.

Okay, enough distractions. Time to type. "Dragon," you read aloud as you type out the private message, "I apologize for the time it has taken me to reply. I have been rather busy— No, that doesn't work. She's a hell of a lot busier than I am." Your fingers tap dance on the keys of your laptop while you think. "Settling in to a new town took me longer than I expected. I know you're probably busy, but if you want to chat sometime today, I'll be free. If not, just let me know. My schedule's pretty open most of the time. That should work, don't you think? Friendly and casual?"

«Sure. It's not like she's going to get huffy at you because you were too informal. It's an email on PHO.»

"True." You hit the send button and lean back. "Now we just have to wait for her response. Storm, can you keep an eye on my account and let me know when she replies? I don't want to keep her waiting—"

The computer dings.

«The Dragon has replied.»

"I noticed," you say in a dry tone. Opening the message, you find only a link leading to – according to Google – a video chat site known for its strong security. "Hey, just deploying my Barrier Jacket won't strain my Core too badly, would it? I don't think an old t-shirt is the thing great first impressions are based on."

«Video stream can be edited prior to transmission.»

"So that's a no, then?" Perfect Storm does not deny it, and with a small sigh you click the link. "This had better not blow up in my face."

The page loads, and the little screen in the corner that shows what Dragon is going to see shows you as you are for a brief instant before it blacks out. When it comes back, your digital self is wearing your Barrier Jacket and sitting in front of a featureless black background. Right after that change is made, the main screen comes to life and reveals a woman's face, her 'skin' made of blue characters falling from the top of the screen. Dragon smiles, and you stare as the symbols briefly flow around the changing shape before resuming their straight downwards march. "Good afternoon, Calamity Witch."

You'd think having a private chat with Alexandria would have inured you to talking to world-famous heroes, but your tongue is still tied for a moment before you clear your throat and reply, "Good afternoon to you, too. You can just call me Calamity if you want. I know my full name's a bit of a mouthful."

"It's not the worst I've ever heard. That prize goes to a Native American hero I met once," she says when you look at her curiously. "He was an Alexandria package who called himself He Who Flies Among the Eagles. Stereotypical, maybe, but certainly memorable. He also refused to shorten his name, which probably played a role in why the PRT gave him the nickname Flyboy."

"He didn't take that well, did he?"

"Not in the slightest."

You chuckle lightly, which is the reaction Dragon is going for if her widened smile is any indication. "I hope I didn't distract you from anything important, but I figured two weeks without any answer was pushing the boundary of rude."

"You didn't need to feel obligated to reply," the legendary Tinker replies with a small frown. "I just wanted you to know that you could call me if you wanted to. As for interruptions, you actually caught me at an opportune time. I was just finishing up a report about the Cornell incident for the PRT."

"Cornell…. You mean about how everyone in that auditorium was turned to stone?" She nods. "That is a scary power. I know there was talk on the news about some people saying it might have been an accident, but was there any proof of that?"

Dragon sighs and shakes her head. "That is part of what is in the report I mentioned. Some of the evidence the initial investigators found proves that this was definitely not an accident, if for the sole reason that the parahuman in question is not a Shaker as first thought. She is a Tinker. More specifically, she is possibly a bomb Tinker."

"Bomb… Tinker?" you repeat hesitantly. Did you really hear that right? "Powers are weird."

"Yes, they are. I do not believe that powers determine whether someone becomes a hero or a villain, but then instances like this come up that make me wonder." She smiles. "And speaking of heroic Tinkers, how are your projects coming? Most Tinkers reach their peak production volume at the beginning of their careers when they are still finding their limits. I remember my first projects," she says in a fond voice, "and even if they are crude compared to what I do now, they still have a special place in my heart."

"Uh…." Great start, Taylor. That's really Oscar-worthy acting right there. "I…. I've been a little busy just getting the lay of the land here. All the little hassles that come along with moving, you know?"

She hums distractedly. "Once you finish setting up your workshop, feel free to contact me if you ever want someone to bounce ideas off of. I have always enjoyed collaborating with other Tinkers." With a light laugh, she adds, "Which reminds me that I don't even know what your specialization is. Few Tinkers can achieve the variety of effects of which your staff is capable. Durability, plus pyrokinetic blasts, plus unassisted flight, plus force fields? The only specialty I can think of that could manage all that is energy manipulation of some kind, which is so broad a field as to put you close to Hero's level. I don't know that even I could put all those functions into a single machine, and that doesn't even come close to how you made yourself completely immune to the Simurgh's Scream. It should come as no surprise, but that has been a holy grail for Tinkers ever since she made her first appearance.

"I suppose the question I have been dying to ask is somewhat obvious now," she concludes with another laugh. "How did you do it?"

Well. That's a tricky question, isn't it?


Before anyone asks, no, I don't have any plans for Bakuda at the moment. It's just that I realized as I was writing that the date I have listed is the day after Lung recruited Bakuda in canon, so I felt mentioning her was appropriate.

Yet another conversation choice. Let's see how you do this time. (Please don't fuck it up!)
[ ] Tell her Perfect Storm is your creation and baffle her with bullshit
[ ] Tell her you found Perfect Storm but don't know anything about how it works
[ ] Tell her about magic but stay quiet about its extraterrestrial origins
[ ] Tell her what little you know about the alien space wizards and their tech

 

[Silently Watches]

[ ] Tell her what little you know about the alien space wizards and their tech


Emigration 4.9

For a long moment, you hold your tongue. So many ways to approach this, but there is no way to tell which is the best, and you're only going to get one shot at this.

Lying to Dragon is incredibly tempting just for how safe it is. Play to her expectations, claim you really are a Tinker. She even gave you an out! Energy manipulation is such a broad category that everything you can do fits under it, and considering that's what magic is, you wouldn't even have to make too much stuff up. 'Science up' the magical theory you've been learning just like you had Perfect Storm do to its information about telepathy, and you actually could pull it off.

But that would be just another lie, and a lie that will do nothing but buy you a little temporary comfort. Eventually she will expect you to work on some projects, and when you can't do it, she'll get suspicious. Even if you do as Perfect Storm suggests and give someone a Device that lets them be a magic Tinker, that doesn't solve the larger issue. Tiburon said he knew where you are, which means eventually someone is going to show up to reclaim their ship. That is a problem much larger than you, and there is no way you'll be able to hide it all on your own.

So you have to tell Dragon the truth, at least to some extent. While it's true that you don't know all the details about how Perfect Storm works, saying only that you found it laying on the ground would still lead to all the same problems lying would. It might even make things worse since she might think of you as no different than the Dragonslayers, a group of criminals who make it a habit to attack Dragon and have even beaten her occasionally, stealing her stuff as they ran away. Sure, you didn't steal Perfect Storm, but you certainly didn't spend too much time looking for its creator prior to the whole 'I come from outer space' revelation. That's too big a risk to take.

Only telling her about magic is little better. You won't be the first cape to claim that their abilities are mystical, and even if you frame it differently, that well was poisoned a long time ago. Myrddin, for all that he's the head of Chicago's Protectorate office, is widely regarded to be a kook, and then you have villain groups like the Adepts in New York, and the Eye in Las Vegas, and the Brujas in Los Angeles, and the Heretics in Montana, and…. Well, there are more than a few of them, and no one believes that they really do have magic powers.

If you won't lie to her, won't tell her the bare minimum, and can't limit yourself just to magic, there's one other choice that you can see. You'll have to go all the way and tell her the whole truth.

"That… is a bit of a complicated answer." Dragon's avatar gives you a look of confusion. "I guess I should start with the easiest thing. I'm not a Tinker."

"But your staff—"

"I didn't build Perfect Storm. I found it." Is that the anger you were afraid of? It's hard to tell from her fake face, no matter how expressive it is. "I was just walking through an alley and found it on the ground. Then it started talking," you add with a laugh, "which scared the life out of me. It didn't remember who built it or even what its real name was, and because I was the only person who paid it any attention for as long as it had been laying there, it offered to give me whatever I wanted. I asked to become a hero, and, well…."

"It… offered to give you what you wanted?" Dragon repeats slowly. "Because it was thankful? You make it sound… sentient. Even sapient."

Lifting the small blue jewel up into the camera's view, you say, "Dragon, I'd like to introduce you to my Intelligent Device, Perfect Storm."

«It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.»

Dragon apparently heard that, no doubt because Perfect Storm was pumping its telepathy into the video stream, and her eyes grow wide. "Intel— You're an artificial intelligence. And not a simple one, either, are you?"

«Correct. Complex intelligence and problem-solving capabilities are required to assist my mage as per design. Emotional capabilities necessary to understand user's priorities. Full intelligence was deemed the most efficient solution.»

"Your…." The Tinker looks back and forth between you and your Device several times. "Your mage?"

You nod. "That's complicated part number two. Or three, if you consider an Intelligent Device being an AI as number two. All of 'my' abilities are based on the magical theory Storm's been teaching me."

"I know that parahuman abilities can seem incredible, even magical," explains Dragon patiently, "but they really aren't. They are all rooted in science. We might not understand exactly how they work, but there is a reasonable explanation for them."

"Apparently that applies to real magic, too. When you said that you thought my specialty was energy manipulation, you weren't that far off. It's just that it uses a specific form of energy. Storm calls it mana, and I don't have a better word for it. I still can't wrap my head around exactly how it works," you caution, "but all of my spells are weird computer programs. I dump mana in, and somehow the spells turn that energy into all those different effects. They're complicated, extremely so, but I'm slowly figuring out how they work and how to make them do different things than they're programmed to do. I can even cast a few of them without needing Storm to do the calculations for me."

You carefully don't give away just how proud of that you are. You can't do much without Perfect Storm's help – make a single Flare Shooter that provides light but little else and kinda-sorta hover for a couple of seconds – but it's still progress!

"That's impossible." Dragon's flat denial cuts through your enthusiasm. "A parahuman's abilities cannot be taught. Either you have them or you do not. Tinkertech can do amazing things, but it is still a manifestation of parahuman powers. People have tried to do what you claim, hundreds of times. It just doesn't work."

"And if Storm's powers were parahuman, you'd be right. But they don't."

"It still had to be built by a parahuman—"

Now it's time for the hardest part of your explanation, the part that could really get you labeled as a whack job. «Storm,» you ask as inspiration suddenly strikes, «you didn't happen to record our trip down to the ship, did you?»

The image representing what Dragon sees is replaced by a view of ocean waves, and she falls silent as she follows you under the surface. "Do you remember those green meteors that were on the news a couple of months ago? Storm suspected that they might be parts of the ship it was on, so it tracked down where they most likely fell."

The remnant of the ship appears on-screen.

"That's what we found."

Dragon's digital face is perfectly, creepily still while she watches the video. Looking down into the abyss, moving through the ship, Perfect Storm projecting its weird wire-things, recovering the radio, and then your frantic struggle to get out before you were dragged to the bottom of the ocean. And even as impressive as that is, part of you is just glad that it doesn't show you in that embarrassingly skimpy swimsuit Storm stuffed you into.

"Huh," the world's premier Tinker says once the video is done. "That…. Mmm. I am not saying that you are lying, but you hopefully understand that it is a relatively simple undertaking to fake footage like this. Many movies have been made with that exact premise. If you are agreeable to it, I would appreciate you giving me a copy of this video so I can analyze it."

"Sure." You didn't fake the video, so giving it to her can't hurt. Speaking of things that can't hurt…. "Would you like a copy of some of the theory texts Storm has? So you can see that I'm not lying about that, either?"

"Very well. It could make for interesting reading." You give Perfect Storm a look, and it sends the files over. "Thank you. I would like to discuss an alternative explanation for your abilities, though. One that is not quite so otherworldly."

"I already said Perfect Storm knew all of them before I did, and you were the one who said that capes can't teach other people their tricks," you point out.

"I did, but there is one exception where powers can be learned. You could be a parahuman yourself. More specifically, a power mimic. It would explain quite a lot," she says to your doubtful expression. "You presumably spend the majority of your time with Perfect Storm. It shows you a new ability, and after a few times seeing it, your own powers kick in and let you duplicate it. Since you do not spend much time with other capes, not even your own team leader, you have not had a chance to learn their abilities, and as such it looks as though you do not have powers yourself but are instead learning what Perfect Storm teaches you."

You frown. You spend time with your dad, and you haven't picked up his powers. Is it even possible for someone to be a cape and not know it? Besides, you know what you saw, and you believe what Perfect Storm told you. If it says you're a mage, then that's that. "What about Samantha?" you ask once that idea pops into your head. "I spend plenty of time with her, but I can't turn into an animal or go super fast."

"If I remember correctly, there is a note in Samantha's dossier stating that she is a Case 53 but denied being one. That excuse could fly when it was assumed that you were a Blaster, but keeping in mind that your staff is Tinkertech?" She tilts her face. "Case 53s are feared and kept at arms' length by the general public, which is extremely unfortunate, but they are still less scary than even the thought of a sapient being created by some mad Tinker. If she happened to be a creation by Perfect Storm, perhaps someone literally designed to be a complement to your own fighting style? I could see your mimicry not working on her.

"Thankfully, there is an easy way to see who is right," Dragon says before you can react too visibly to her figuring out Samantha's secret origins. "I can get in touch with the Philadelphia PRT and see if you could arrange an anonymous MRI at Penn Presbyterian for you." Your face displays your confusion. "All parahumans have two additional lobes that are not present in normal humans. If you have them, an MRI will find them, and that will further support the idea that you are a Trump of some kind."

"And when you can't find these lobes?" you press.

"If we do not find these lobes, then we will have to revisit your claims of magic," admitted Dragon. "But let us speak of that once we have the results."

"I'll have to think about it."

Dragon nods. "I understand. If you decide to go through with it, just send me a message. Now, if you will excuse me, I have video footage to go over. Have a pleasant evening, Calamity."

"Bye to you, too." The video chat ends once Dragon signs off, and you lean back in your chair. Perfect Storm drifts over to hang itself off your neck, and Samantha nuzzles your hand. "Well," you say with a sigh, "I suppose that could have gone worse."


You'll notice that even though the "Mention the crashed ship" subvote didn't get anywhere close to the support it needed to win, I still included it. I had actually already planned for that to happen for the simple reason that the ship is the best evidence you have that you're neither lying nor crazy.

You get a prezzie today! As you can see, there's a special option for next week's subquest selection, marked yellow for your convenience. If you don't take it now, it won't be available next time. But will it give you anything you value? That's something you're going to have to decide for yourselves.

• Party Hardy! – You could use a break from heroing, at least for one night. Go to the party Kayleigh told you about.
• Picking up the Pieces, Part 3 – So that was a thing. Unfortunately for you and them both, dealing with angry and upset space wizards is way outside your areas of expertise. You need to talk about this with someone, but who? And how are you going to prove that you aren't crazy?
  • Who do you talk to?
  • What else are you doing at the time?
• A Dragon's Hoard, Part 2 – In case you missed it, Dragon is more than a little doubtful about your claims of using alien magic, even with the video of you finding part of the ship. She wants proof? Fine. Get the stupid MRI and prove to her that you're no simple parahuman. You are a mage.
• Snark Hunt – Okay, maybe you should have helped out, after all. Reports are coming in that not only have Valefor and other members of the Fallen shown up, the Teeth are no longer in Boston. Three guesses where they're headed now.
• Monstrous Menagerie – Those monsters had to come from somewhere. Have Perfect Storm do some digging, and then investigate where there seems to be the most activity. Maybe you'll get lucky.
• Helping Out the Little Guy – Look for trouble in your new home and stop it. You can write in for someone to come along with you.
• Hanging Out – This is a bit of an experiment. Pick someone to spend time with outside of combat. Write in the who, what, and where.
• Know Thyself – Spend a free period training in the simulator. May be chosen twice. Write-in for which spell to practice.

And back to the moratorium for this vote. Hold your horses for 24 hours, if you please.

 

[Silently Watches]

[ ] A Dragon's Hoard, Part 2


Emigration 4.10

Monday, March 28
"Miss Smith? We're ready for you."

It takes you a moment to realize that the nurse is talking to you, but you stand from the waiting room chair and make your way over with a sheepish smile. The nurse pays it no mind, instead going through the normal hospital routine. Weight, height, blood pressure, heart rate. Once all the gadgets have been put away, she gives you a sideways look. "You recruits just keep getting younger and younger."

You look away and give her a little shrug. You initially wondered how Dragon had managed to square away this appointment in only a couple of days, but the information packet you picked up from the Protectorate base instead of going to school for the day explained quite a bit. This is apparently standard procedure for anyone who applies to join the PRT; just as you were told when you first tried to register the Privateers as a hero group, the Protectorate is for parahumans while the PRT is for unpowered humans, and never the twain shall meet. If somebody wants to be in the PRT, she needs to prove that she isn't a cape.

All that being the case, it still strikes you as a bad sign that this woman already knows that the PRT sent you here, even if she's wrong on the why. Then again, you'd have trouble finding a name much more pseudonym-y than 'Jane Smith'.

"I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about it."

"If you don't want to, you don't have to. If you're just worried about violating confidentiality, though, you don't need to worry. The PRT and Administration made us sign a stack of NDAs as tall as I am before they would tell us what was going on. Not like they had much of a choice," she adds with a slightly mocking scoff. "It'd look suspicious if a bunch of people submitted release-of-information forms to send radiology records to the PRT, and there's no way they'd get the scans any other way unless they subpoenaed us. But that was taken care of long ago. What department are you applying to?"

After a few seconds of silence, she shrugs and lets it go. "Come this way and change into some scrubs. You don't have to get in a gown, but we need to make sure you don't have any metal on you, so make sure you remove any earrings or other body jewelry before walking in. You don't have any braces, dental posts, or steel surgical clips inside you, do you?"

Several minutes later, you walk into the scanning room, the gigantic upright doughnut of the MRI already humming in mechanical anticipation. "Go ahead and lie down on the table," a man's voice says over the intercom. "You'll need to be as still as possible while we get the images. Try to keep talking to a minimum, but you can swallow and breathe normally. It's going to get a little loud, but just bear with it. This should only take thirty minutes or so."

Thirty minutes. Okay, you can do that. Lying down, you close your eyes as the table slides into the machine. Thirty minutes, and you can show Dragon that your brain is perfectly normal.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

"How is that even possible?"

"I'd just like to know what all that means," you yourself pipe up.

The PRT physician sighs and spins around on his stool to look at you rather than his computer screen. "I don't know how much you know about parahuman neuroanatomy, but the gist of it is this. Most people have no hope of becoming a parahuman. Doesn't matter how much they want it, how terrible the worst moment of their lives are, nothing. The small proportion who do have that chance all have an extra lobule located somewhere in their brains named the corona pollentia. Having a corona doesn't guarantee that they'll get powers," he adds, "but it makes it possible. If someone with a corona eventually becomes a cape, they develop a second growth called the gemma. We don't know exactly how these lobes work, but since we've found them in all but the strangest Case 53s, we're very confident they they are necessary for powers to work.

"Your brain, however, is interesting." He turns back to the computer and clicks a few things to pull up a black and white picture. "Look here, between the two halves of the frontal lobe. Do you see this circular structure? That should be your corona, but there's something wrong with it. It's been replaced almost entirely by scar tissue. There isn't any sign of a gemma, either. Frankly, I'm just as stumped as Dragon on how you can have powers with a brain like yours."

The digitized face of the heroine turns to regard you for a long moment. This is definitely a blow to her theory that you're some kind of power-copier, though you're just as surprised that you apparently can never gain powers of your own. Not that it's necessarily a disappointment. If someone came over and offered you the choice between gaining powers and keeping your magic, you'd side with the latter in a heartbeat.

Not to mention, the whole 'get powers at the worst moment of your life' thing is kind of off-putting. If living through the locker incident wasn't enough to turn you into a cape, you don't even want to consider how much worse things would have to be for it to happen. Speaking of bad things that could happen…. "It isn't cancer, is it?"

"What about function?" Dragon asks at the same time. "We cannot rule out the possibility that what looks like scar tissue is actually a gemma growing within the corona. It has never happened before, but that does not mean it could never happen."

"True, but not in this case." He brings up a colored image which means just as little to you as the grey one did. "The activity is normal in the rest of the brain, but the corona has nothing. That's consistent with scarring, not dense neural tissue. We'd also expect greater blood flow if this were any kind of tumor," he tells you with a gentle smile, "and cancers are rarely symmetrical, which this certainly is. Even these trails, which I can only speculate were once white matter tracts connecting the corona pollentia to the corona radiata – which has nothing to do with parahuman powers despite the similarities in their names – are mirror images of each other. You don't have to worry about that. You're perfectly healthy, neurologically at least."

You shoot Dragon a satisfied expression only to see her mulling something over. "I would like to recommend one more test before we chalk this up as a strange impossibility," she finally says. "I understand it is inconsistent with how brain tissue normally works, but this study was, out of necessity, done without you using any of your powers. If we measured neuronal activity while you were on patrol, perhaps using ambulatory EEG, it would give us the most definitive answer."

The doctor shook his head. "Except an EEG wouldn't tell us where in the brain the activity's coming from. An estimate, sure, but we couldn't prove that it was coming from the corona as opposed to her frontal lobes."

"Agreed, but if there was a change in signal when she flies or fights compared to baseline mental or physical activity, it would indicate that something activated that hadn't before. Something like an abnormal gemma."

Looking back at you, he shrugs. "It's up to you, Calamity Witch. I think it would be a waste of your time, but if you want to give it a shot, we can set it up tonight. We just need to know so we can make the calls."


Originally I was just going to throw you into the patrol, but that's not really fair to you. Dragon can't force Taylor to participate in her experiment, after all.

[ ] Pull the plug – You gave Dragon the information she wanted. One more study won't tell her anything different if she's going to be stubborn about it.
[ ] Wear the EEG – Dragon still has her doubts, but they're crumbling while you watch. Go on patrol so they don't have even a single leg to stand on.
-[ ] Do you want to bring someone with you?

FYI, patrol partner is a straight majority vote. If nobody breaks 50%, you're going solo.

 

[Silently Watches]

[ ] Wear the EEG
-[ ] Vista


Emigration 4.11

The ground slips beneath you as you skim the rooftops of the city. Not too fast, not as fast as you can go, but you are definitely covering a lot of ground. A flicker of green skirt catches your eye, and you glance over to see Vista appear out of thin air and vanish just as quickly.

"Hurry up, slowpoke!" she taunts with a laugh from five buildings ahead of you.

Oh she wants to play it like that, does she?

You blaze past her and blow a raspberry, and she responds to that with all the righteous indignation she can muster. The pair of you race each other for a few dozen blocks until she warps in front of you and bodychecks you towards a wall. At that point, the strangest game of tag anyone has ever seen commences.

Several minutes later, Vista sits on the edge of a building and glares at you because unlike her, you aren't huffing and puffing like a train. "Flight is bullshit."

"You know that isn't a word little girls should say," you reply with a syrupy smile. "And I don't think someone with space-warping powers gets to say anything about anyone else's mode of transportation."

She blows that off with a wave of her hand. "I meant to ask before, but where's Samantha? She's the big reason I hang out with you, you know."

Sticking your tongue out earns you a giggle. "She's at home. She said she wanted to give 'us girls' a chance to have fun without her hanging around, but I know that isn't the whole reason. It also gives her a chance to be alone with my dad."

"Your partner… has a thing for your dad?"

"Yeeeeeaaah, you could say that. She hasn't been shy about what she wants at all. And I don't think it'd stop at dating or sex." You shudder slightly. Maybe it's because you don't want to give up your mom's place in your heart, or maybe it's because Samantha is someone you created, but her obvious desire for your dad is extremely off-putting sometimes.

Vista seems to get it, and her eyes widen. "Your partner… wants to become your stepmom? That's just a little awkward."

"Yes, I know."

"And it doesn't help that she's a raccoon. I mean, I know she's really a person," she adds hastily, "but she's a raccoon."

"Yes, I know."

A gleam enters the girl's eyes, one you don't like at all. Nor the smile she soon sports. "Good on your dad if he can see past that, though. Seriously, kudos to him. But still, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the sweet, gentle love between a man and a raccoon is illegal in most states."

"What the fuck?!"

Vista falls over from laughing even as you glare at her in shock and disgust. No. Just no. She looks at you and laughs even harder. "Keep it up," you bite out. "I'm fully prepared to tell Miss Militia what kind of messed up stuff you're looking at online. Don't think I won't. That's just gross."

It takes the younger heroine a minute to regain her breath. "She won't believe you. The Protectorate wifi blocks porn sites."

You eye her warily. "…I don't even want to know why you know that. You're freaking twelve."

"I'm thirteen!" she retorts, less amused now that she's the one in the hot seat. "And I didn't go looking for it! Clockblocker asked Kid Win once if he could Tinker up something to get around the filter."

Her expression fades slightly at the memories she unintentionally dug up. You aren't really sure what you're supposed to say to her, though. The last time she brought something like this up, she was quite clear that she didn't want to talk about it. She probably won't appreciate you digging into it. On the other hand, she did bring it up, and you remember how uncomfortable it got right after your mom died and everyone hastily changed the subject the instant she was brought up. "Could he?" you finally ask in a tentative voice.

"I don't know. I was already halfway across the base to bug Armsmaster about inventing brain bleach."

"After what you just said, I'm not sympathetic for younger-you in the slightest."

Vista smiles weakly and lets her legs swing back and forth over the ledge. "I miss them. My parents, too, but not as much as I miss my team. Does that make me a bad person?"

And now things are even more awkward than they were.

She doesn't wait for your answer. "It's not like my parents were bad people," she says, "not even bad parents. Not really. They were high school sweethearts who eventually fell out of love. They got divorced when I was ten. It could have been a lot worse. They didn't try to poison me against the other. They didn't use me as a weapon in divorce court. They didn't ignore me or forget about me or anything like that. They just…. They spent so much time and energy fighting each other about the pettiest shit that happened while they were married that when they walked away at the end of each day, they just couldn't put in the effort to care about me or anything and instead just went through the motions. It was like when they divorced, I was left with two babysitters who just looked like my parents. I got more love from the old couple who lived next door to us than I did from them. That's when I Triggered, but I couldn't bridge the distance between me and them no matter how hard I tried.

"They got better eventually, but that brought its own problems." The girl sighs. "They didn't want to be together again, but they still wanted to be my parents. By then, I had been Vista for over a year, and that was the life I was focused on. But my parents didn't want Vista. No, they just wanted little Missy, and they refused to accept that I had already outgrown her and they missed out on it."

After a moment, Vista's words catch up to her, and she looks nervously at you from the corner of her eye. You feel a little hurt that she apparently thinks revealing her name to you will come back to bite her, but you suppose the two of you don't know each other that well. That and the fact your magic does a whole lot more to defend you than the little mask you wear. Still, there's an easy way to reassure her. "Taylor," you offer, giving her a half-smile.

"Let's go just… do something," decides Vista as she stands up. "Something not here. Something not talking about…. Yeah. Where are all the villains? That's why you wanted to patrol together, right? Right."

Well, no, you wanted to patrol to give Dragon that EEG data without which she won't accept the idea of magic, but sure, fighting criminals is why you decided to invite Vista along. You just didn't invite her because you had already planned to turn it into a percussive therapy day. Not that it's a bad idea; Vista sounds like she could use a bit of venting right now. "Sure, why not. Let's find someone to punch in the face until they stop moving."

Vista stares at you for a moment. "I never realized just how well you and Shadow Stalker would have gotten along before now." Shrugging that away, she leads you deeper into the city.

Voices that are doing nothing to keep quiet, accompanied by the sound of glass shattering, eventually grab your attention. The two of you follow the noise to a group of Hispanic men who have broken into a pawn shop and are carrying out their ill-gotten goods. Wait. No, never mind; it just looked like a pawn shop. You're pretty sure pawn shops don't carry big white blocks of cocaine or meth or whatever that stuff is.

Swallowing loudly, Vista's eyes never leave the assault rifles each guy carries. "When I said let's do something, I didn't mean let's pick a fight with the Maras. This might be a little more than we can handle by ourselves."

"Maybe," you allow, "but we can probably take them if we're smart about it. Squealer shot me once with guns a lot bigger than those, and I was fine. I hit them from the front and get their attention, and you go behind and…. Well, shit."

Another man jumps out the broken window, shouting things in Spanish and his underlings hurrying to carry out his orders. Not that you blame them. There's a reason even the PRT is hesitant to cross the Mara Salvatrucha, and it's this cape. If the tattoos that almost completely cover his face weren't recognizable enough, the tactical vest – left open to display more tattoos on his chest and abdomen – with the white outline of a dog on the back would guarantee that absolutely anybody who ran into this cape knew they were in trouble.

Brockton Bay had Lung. Philadelphia has Cadejo.

"We need to go. Now." You look down at Vista, who looks back at you with naked terror painting her face. "Cadejo's killed two Protectorate heroes and a Ward since he came here. He doesn't care about killing capes or cops or anyone. People have talked about sending him straight to the Birdcage, but they can't because nobody's ever managed to arrest him. Everyone who's tried is dead. We need to leave before—"

"Capotes!"

"…they see us."

You look down to find one of the gangsters pointing up at you. A few feet behind him, Cadejo follows his arm and meets your eyes.

Well, shit.


Ah, ha, ha…? This doesn't look good. What to do, what to do?
[ ] Full frontal assault – Maybe if you and Vista hit him with all your might from the word 'go', Cadejo will decide fighting you is more trouble than it's worth.
[ ] Be the bait – Attack Cadejo to get his attention and let Vista get away. It worked with Monster Mom in Brockton Bay, right?
[ ] Throw the bait – Thanks to her powers, Vista can hold Cadejo off. Meanwhile, you'll just be way over there….
[ ] Run the hell away – Run the hell away.

And because it wouldn't be fair to force you to make this decision without any information at all…

Spoiler: Cadejo

The infamous and much-feared leader of the Philadelphia branch of the MS-13. The PRT classifies him as a Changer/Breaker for his ability to transform himself into a pack of wild dogs. This alternate form is intangible except for its teeth and claws, which are sharper than natural. He can also see and hear from their eyes and ears, but his senses are unchanged from what they were as a human, so no tracking anybody by scent.

Now would be a good time for stunts. Just saying. Oh, and you don't get new spells just by finding fights; you actually have to take part in them.

 

[Silently Watches]

[ ] Full frontal assault
-[ ] Plan Fish in a Barrel


Emigration 4.12

You level your staff at the Mexican villain who is already starting to turn grey. Time. You need more time. "Temporal Sludge!" you scream.

A jet of purplish-black color flashes from the end of your Device and hits Cadejo and his gang a moment later. A bubble of the same color pops into existence before anyone can react and then fades out of sight. Within a good sixty feet, everything has slowed down considerably. It's too bad that actually stopping time is outside your capabilities, but Perfect Storm has told you before that without a Rare Skill, whatever that is, it would take far too much mana to be feasible.

Unfortunately, all slowed time means is you get a better look at how Cadejo's body is distorting, human features melting away and huge eyes and long teeth pushing out from the smoky blur. One, two, three, four heads already, and what looks like another one currently forming.

"You slowed time?! How?!"

"Not the time!" you shout back. "Keep him in there! If he gets out of range, he'll be back to normal speed!"

The buildings slide away from the Mara Salvatrucha as space itself expands far beyond what should be in this stretch of roadway. One corner of your mind thinks that her complaining about a little slowed time is just a touch unreasonable considering her own powers, but then again, she hasn't started flying and hitting like Alexandria, either. Maybe her surprise is less unreasonable in that light.

The rest of your attention is occupied by the spell you're casting. Your orange triangle spreads out beneath you, then it spins around; slowly at first, but it gets faster and faster before exploding into a wave of not-light that sweeps over everything in sight. Colors become muted, and all the gangsters except for Cadejo vanish. They aren't dead, of course. It's just that you pulled the fight into an almost virtual space, a shadow of the real world. The way Perfect Storm explained Recursion Field, it was originally designed to let mages practice new spells without worrying about annihilating whatever was around them. It didn't take long for it to start being used for fights between mages in urban settings, allowing everyone involved to go all out without nearly as much concern about collateral damage. Parahumans aren't mages, but their powers should cause them to be affected the same way mages are rather than ignored like a normal person.

At least, that's the hope. It seems to have worked in this case, anyway.

By now, Cadejo has broken apart into six near-featureless canines of indeterminate breed. You can't even tell if they're dogs or wolves. They take off at third-normal-speed towards the edges of Temporal Sludge's effect, and you notice with not a little distress that they're making better progress than you hoped. "We need more space!"

"I'm trying! Whatever you did is messing with my powers. They're taking longer to work than normal."

…Oh. In hindsight, you should have expected that. Temporal Sludge slows down time itself, so it makes sense that the effects of Vista's powers would also be slower. "If you can't go wide, go deep," you order, floating away from the edge of the building towards the area of effect. You also make sure to stay up in the air. You've heard that Cadejo's dogs can run up walls, but you haven't heard of them flying. Stay up here, and you should be safe. "Turn the whole thing into a pit. I want them all in one place for this."

As the road stops looking like a plain of asphalt and starts looking like an antlion trap, you focus on the next spell you have queued up. This is one you spent a long time practicing in the simulator, but it's the first time you're casting it in real life. "All right, Storm," you breathe, "let's hit him with everything we've got."

«Agreed, Mistress. Target lock. Firing solution calculated. Begin ignition sequence.»

Sparks leap from the red jewel and gather together just in front of the tines. A wave of heat, and the tiny fireball, smaller than a single Flare Shooter, expands into something the size of your head. Yellow and orange and red, it looks like a miniature sun; it even has black sunspots and scaled down flares slamming back into its corona. In any other circumstance, you would think it pretty.

«Ready to fire.»

Glancing down to find the dogs at the edge of Temporal Sludge's effect and starting to climb up the walls Vista created, you nod to yourself. They're still close enough to hit with one shot. Your staff moves to point at the middle of the pit, and an ugly snarl crosses your face. It's time for bullies to taste the fear they all spent so much of their time spreading.

"Solar. WRATH!"

The sun explodes. A cone of orange and red flame shoots out, blocking your view of the targets from the sheer size. Behind you, Vista gasps or shouts or something. You can't exactly hear her over the roar of your fury made manifest.

Two seconds pass, then three, and the spell peters out. Smoke wafts up from the edges of the Ward's crater, and the asphalt farther in is actually molten and oozing downwards. A hemispherical firestorm still rages in the very center where your spells are interacting. If this spell weren't set to nonlethal, nothing short of Alexandria and the Endbringers would have survived.

But the six dogs still stand, and they're still running to get free of Vista's prison.

By now the dogs are far enough away from each other than your patrol partner can't drag them all together again, and that means another Solar Wrath is out of the question. Flare Shooter it is, then. Vista seems to catch on to what you're doing, and instead of focusing on the whole group, she goes after one or two at a time. The dogs find themselves running at each other, and between her twisted space and your homing bullets, you would normally have no trouble corralling the canines.

You realize what went wrong with Solar Wrath when your bullets zip through their insubstantial forms. Just turning into dogs is not that great of a power, but when those dogs are intangible? It gets a little harder to fend them off. You had hoped that maybe your magic would trump his parahuman powers, but it looks like that's not the case. You do remember that his teeth and claws are physical, though maybe so you try to blast those out of his heads.

No dice there, either. The bullets explode just fine, but while the dogs rear back from the force, they don't do anything else to him.

Now that he knows you can't hurt him, Cadejo must think it's safe to start taunting you. The five dogs aren't even trying to get away anymore, instead weaving through each other, biting your bullets out of the air, and generally showing off just how powerless you are. A Rust Shooter hits the ground at one of their feet, but as expected, it does nothing. Neither the road nor the dog is metallic.

Without warning, they turn around and run. Are they trying to lead you away into a trap, or maybe just split you off from Vista so they can surround you? A definite possibility, but should you follow them, they'll soon learn you aren't some glass cannon. Teeth and claws aren't enough to get through your Barrier Jacket. You conjure some more bullets and send them after the pentad.

Wait.

Didn't Cadejo break apart into six dogs?

Vista's scream of pain and horror spins you around, and you watch her fall off the rooftop, the last dog clamped tight to her left bicep. You rocket downwards, the distance between her and the ground shrinking far too quickly. Even if the fall doesn't seriously injure her, the last thing you want is for Cadejo to get his feet back under him. You grab onto her and whip around, skimming the asphalt and flying back up. The dog is still clamped on, claws scrabbling for purchase and raking through the spandex and skin of her torso in the process. Flare Shooter does nothing, slipping through him like smoke.

Desperate now, you almost send your bullet to explode against his jaw, but before you can do that, his sharp teeth finish their grisly work. Cadejo falls to the ground, a large chunk of Vista's arm still caught between his teeth.

Blood flies in thick spurts with each of her panicked heartbeats. You clamp your hand over the severed artery and fly as fast as you can towards the PRT headquarters, Recursion Field falling apart so you can actually reach it and the people inside it. You don't know first aid; you don't know any healing magic. The most you can do is get Vista to people who can help her before she dies in your arms.

A loud ringing fills your ears for a moment, and then someone picks up the call Perfect Storm made for you. "Console."

«I need a medical team waiting for us when we get there!» you scream at the boy hero who picked up. Not Bouncer, which leaves either Flambé or Cherry Bomb. «We ran into Cadejo! Vista's dying!»


So I thought long and hard about how to deal with this chapter. The big problem is that while my SVers discussed carrying Vista to a safe distance, only one person actually voted for it. Do I do what I think you want and ignore what you actually say, or do I do what you say and ignore that you've made a mistake in your votes? As you can see, I chose the latter. I'm being nice this time and only critically injuring her rather than killing her as originally planned, but this is your one save. Please be more careful in the future.

And because I just know someone's going to bitch about it…

Spoiler: Teeth and claws

This is one situation where Nanoha's destroy-everything-but-don't-hurt-anyone bullshit came back around to bite you. If you look through the series, any time Nanoha fired a Divine Breaker, she not only never killed anyone, bust never broke any bones, never damaged internal organs, she never even bruised anyone. Because nonlethal magic won't break bones, it also won't knock out teeth or break claws, which left Cadejo unharmed by Solar Wrath since he's otherwise, you know, 99% intangible.

For a while, it looked like you guys would actually win this fight, at least as much of a win as was possible here. Several of you talked about the possible legal consequences of hitting him with lethal force, which would have broken his natural weapons and forced a stalemate where you couldn't hurt him and he couldn't hurt you unless he turned back into a human and split again, which he wouldn't do nearby after you demonstrated that you could actually hurt him. Unfortunately, no one voted to go lethal, and like I say in Basics of Training on the very first post, once you train an attack spell to Adept status and make it nonlethal by default, you have to explicitly tell me that you want to kill with it.

That said, you did fight Cadejo, as ineffectual as your attacks were. Pick a spell, any spell.

 

[Silently Watches]

Emigration 4.13

Friday, April 1
"Look, I'm just really not in the mood to go to this thing anymore."

"All the more reason you should go," Samantha says. "You were actually getting excited about this until Monday happened."

You pin the Guardian Beast with a look. "Gee, I wonder why. Who would have thought that almost getting a kid killed would put a damper on my mood?"

She sighs and sits down on the bed next to you. One arm goes around your shoulders, and you lean into the embrace. "What happened to Vista was terrible. The fact that the Protectorate has closed ranks around her and won't let anyone who isn't an official PRT hero see her makes things worse. But the rest of your life can't just stop. Especially not with this. Is a single party important in the grand scheme of things?" she asks when you whip your head around to stare at her in shock. "Of course not. But what is important is that it is a dividing line between the you who is Taylor Hebert and the you who is Calamity Witch. The latter persona has better things to do than go to a high school party, but I think it would be good for the former to go.

"I worry about you, you know. I know that finding Storm and becoming a mage was an escape for you, a way to get away from your bullies, and make no mistake that I don't appreciate that. I wouldn't exist were it not for the two of you meeting. But I don't want Calamity Witch to consume your life until you have nothing else."

"I worry about you, too, kiddo." Both of you turn to find your dad leaning against the doorframe. "If you eventually decide you want cape work as a full-time job, that's your decision, but I'd prefer it if you at least experienced what being a teenager and a young adult is like before you make that choice. Looking forward to this is the most normal teenage thing you've done in months. As much as dads aren't supposed to want their high school daughters at parties where I already know there won't be any parents around, I really do think you should go."

Facing a united front like this, you hold up your hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. I'll go to the party. And if someone spikes the punch and I get insanely drunk, I don't want to hear a word about it when I get home."

"Oh, I'd never yell at you for getting drunk right after you get back," he says with a smile. "Any and all underaged drinking lectures wait until the morning after when you're nice and hungover."

Samantha claps her hands. "And since you're going, I have the perfect thing for you to wear."

You share a frightened look with your dad. This… could be an issue. You still remember some of the things Samantha first suggested she could wear as her 'official' costume before you talked her around to the suit. Fishing around under your bed of all places, your Guardian Beast pulls out a white box and opens it up. "Ta-da!"

"What the hell is that?!"

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

An hour later, a car horn honks outside your apartment, and you peek through the curtains. Kayleigh's here and waiting for you. Great. You had actually hoped she might have forgotten her promise – made over your objections, of course – to swing by and pick you up on her way to the party. Anything to avoid being seen in this stupid getup.

"No wiggling out of this now," Samantha tells you with unholy glee, grabbing you by one arm and physically pulling you towards the door. "You told your friend that you were going to go, and you told us you were going to go. You're going. Have fun!"

The door slams in your face and locks.

You glare at the sheet of wood, wishing your powers included laser eyes, or even just telekinesis. As you are, though, the door withstands your assault. Resigning yourself to the humiliation, you walk down the stairs.

Kayleigh stares at you when you first come into view, but then she laughs and gives you a teasing wolf whistle. "That's one way to get the guys' eyes on you! I hope those are as hard to get off as they look, or you might just spend the whole night bottomless if you let 'em have their way."

"They were certainly hard enough to get on," you grumble. Where did Samantha go to buy a pair of black latex pants in your size? Why did she buy them? You don't know the answer to either of those questions. Between it, the soft grey poncho-like shirt, and a pair of strappy heels, you definitely look like you're headed out for a night on the town. Because trendy club-hopper is just so you. Worse, the same aspect of Perfect Storm's 'upgrades' that let you walk around in your Barrier Jacket without tripping over yourself seems to extend to ungainly outfits like this, so now even your magic is conspiring against you.

You know from little comments Kayleigh's dropped that her dad brings in a ton of money doing whatever it is he does, so it doesn't surprise you that she drives an expensive-looking convertible. It's a little more of a surprise that she's driving with the top down even though the temperature is still only in the forties, but you don't have any room to make an issue of that. One of the best parts of chucking fireballs around is that your magic keeps you nice and toasty. There's no other way you'd go flying around in the middle of winter in a miniskirt.

Reaching the car, you plant your hand on the edge of the door and flip over it into the passenger seat. It's only while you're buckling yourself in that you remember there's a reason you haven't shown off like this in front of your classmates.

The redhead immediately squeals. "Oh, you are so trying out for cheerleader next year. Why didn't you say you were a gymnast? I had English with Tasha last semester, and she was always griping about how nobody who tried out was flexible enough to do anything. All you'd have to do is show off a couple of things, flips and somersaults and stuff, and I just know she'd let you on the team…"

Well, at least she isn't assuming you're a cape.

Kayleigh's excited babble fills the air for the entire drive out of Philly proper and into one of the many suburbs. Taking the time to sit back and not think about how worried you are about one of your four familiar faces in this town being seriously, critically injured, you let her words wash over you. It only takes a murmured hum or 'Yeah' to get her going again, and even if you aren't actually paying her any attention, it's still soothing in a way. You aren't much of a talker, and your dad? Ha! You get it from him. Samantha's the most talkative out of all of your little family, but that's only in comparison to the two of you.

It's nice having her around, honestly, more than just having someone to rely on with hero work. She fills the spot that's been empty since your mom died, the one who got the majority of your conversations rolling and holds everyone together. You never had that knack, though not for lack of trying when you were little; maybe if you had stayed the motormouth you were before your mom's death and Emma's betrayal and everything else, that would be different, but things are what they are. No point in dreaming of what could have been.

Eventually, Kayleigh pulls up to a well-lit house whose driveway is already packed full of different cars, shiny Beamers and Mercedes and even a brand new Audi setting next to Honda Civics and dusty Santa Fes. Parking in an empty patch of grass, she steps out; you, on the other hand, show off just a little and pull off a twisty half-flip-half-airborne-somersault that is only possible with a touch of flight.

You immediately after rearrange your shirt so you aren't showing off quite so much. What made that blasted raccoon think this would ever be a good idea?

The boom of a huge stereo system, already audible from outside, drowns about just about all other sound as you make your way inside the house. From the wild gyrations of the crowd over on the impromptu dance floor that's taken over what looks like a formal dining room, that's exactly the way they like it. Almost out of sight, you can just barely make out more people sitting around on couches in the living room and presumably watching a movie. In a different direction is a row of tables covered with red plastic cups, and you shake your head in disappointment. The beverage may get better and more expensive, but beer pong is beer pong. Another table is nearby and supports a single large bowl of undoubtedly spiked punch. If you want to make your threat to your dad reality, here's your chance. The only issue there is that a large portion of the football team, at least whoever isn't involved in a pong game, has clustered around it, and several of them are staring at you in disdain.

"You could at least give them a little smile," Kayleigh hisses at you, smile never leaving her face. "Everyone knows Charlie likes you, but you look like you're about to run off and hide in a corner. That's not how you catch a guy, Taylor."

Wait, what? Charlie, as in Charlie the star running back? He likes you? When did that become a thing?

"Oh my God, you didn't know?" she nearly squeals. "That's just precious. Go talk to him! Go go go!"

"I don't know," you mutter, doing your best to ignore her suggestion. Looking around for literally any other topic, your eyes alight on somebody who doesn't look at all like everyone else around. Too scruffy, too dirty. He looks almost like he's coming off a week-long bender and getting ready for an encore. "Who's he?"

Kayleigh follows your gaze and wrinkles her nose. "Ugh. Why the hell did Greg invite him? Oh, right. Greg's cousin got into the whole Duster thing, and now he has to keep her dealer happy or whatever." She looks embarrassed after a moment, which is the first time you've ever seen that particular expression on her face. "But you didn't hear that from me, okay? I mean, everybody knows it, but he doesn't like people bringing it up. He's kinda ashamed of it, you know?"

"Sure, right. Sworn to silence. And the 'Duster thing' is… what exactly?"

"Something you want to stay away from. I'm serious." She looks it, too, gazing up at you with slightly narrowed eyes. "People say Angel Dust's stuff isn't addictive, but it that was true, he wouldn't have as many repeat customers as he does, would he? People can have some awful trips off the stuff he sells, like tear themselves up so bad they have to go to the hospital bad, and that's just the hallucinogens. The uppers, the downers; they work either super good and make you feel wonderful or super bad and send you into a nightmare from what I hear. Don't get into that shit."

…Uh, well then. That was certainly… vehement. You want to ask her just what it is about this stuff that has set her off like this, but then you reconsider. You don't actually know much about Kayleigh's family; it's entirely possible that she had a family member or close friend who got caught in the Winter Hill Gang's drug Tinker's web and suffered like she described as a consequence. That's a wound that's best left undisturbed.

Taking a deep breath, the other girl wipes the forbidding expression off her face and replaces it with her more casual smile. "Oh, there's Marcia! I gotta talk to her about some stuff. And you have a boyfriend to snag." Her smile turns sharp. "Maybe those pants were the right choice after all, huh?"


Spatial Translocation learned.

So, you're at the party. What to do now?
[ ] Follow the Duster
[ ] Follow Kayleigh while she gossips
[ ] Flirt with football guy
[ ] Check out the movie
[ ] Break out your dance moves

 

[Silently Watches]

[ ] Break out your dance moves


Emigration 4.14

Your eyes turn to follow the Duster's path, but then you look away. As suspicious as the drug dealer is, this isn't something that really needs hero intervention, and anyway, didn't your dad and Samantha all but demand this be a night for Taylor, not Calamity? You're off the clock per parental edict.

That said, flirting with some football jock, especially wearing skintight fetish-gear-y pants? There aren't enough nopes in the world. Between Samantha's questionable fashion choices, spiked punch, and hormones, you just know you'd wake up naked with him in the bathtub or something. Screw that, not happening, no way.

Maybe you could follow Kayleigh? She's the most familiar person here. True, you don't care about gossip, but it would be better than just standing around like an idiot. The only problem there is that she's already walked off, and while you can still see her making her way towards the outdoor patio, it would make you look desperate not to be left alone. She… probably isn't enough like Emma to use that against you, but you've already had one best friend turn around and make your life a living hell with all the secrets you told her. Kayleigh isn't that close – deep inside, you worry that you'll never let anyone in that far again – but there's no need to tempt fate. She'd probably treat you even more like a little animal that needs someone to care for it than she already does if you chased after her, too, and you've spent the last couple of weeks trying to make her stop doing that. This is the first bit of peace and quiet you've had at any school-related event since you enrolled at Winterrose Academy! Are you really going to throw that glorious bit of freedom away?

That just leaves you with just two options, doesn't it? You glance over at the dance floor, and then at the living room and movie-watchers. You know which place you want to go, no doubt about that, but….

You look down at the offensive outfit again. This is so not you. You'd never wear anything like this normally, and you and your dad both thought your Guardian Beast was completely insane when she suggested it. But going to a party like this isn't you, either. It's one of the reasons you wanted to go.

You've been given a chance to reinvent yourself here. No one, absolutely no one, knows who you are here. Not even the other Brocktonites who enrolled at your new school know you, seeing as they were previously Immaculata and Arcadia students. You've been given the chance to throw off the last traces of Winslow-era Taylor, to break the few lengths of chain that survived your metamorphosis into Calamity Witch and becoming a hero and burning your own path through the world. You aren't going to pretend to be a social butterfly or a giggling fashion queen, but you're rediscovering yourself. That sometimes means trying something new even if you think you'll make a total fool of yourself. Still….

«Hey, Storm? Do you know how to dance?»

«Dancing is not in my protocols,» the blue jewel hanging around your neck replies. «However, Mistress's parameters were updated during template installation to emulate predecessor. Coordination, balance, dexterity. Necessary parameters for dance. Calamity Witch origin could da— could dance?»

«How would you know if…?» Your eyes widen. «Storm. Are you recovering your memories?!»
«Created… after termination of Calamity Witch origin? Does not compute.»
«…Undetermined.»

You wrap your fingers around your Device and give it a comforting squeeze. After finding out that the Agharti's radio wasn't a computer, you had feared that you would never be able to offer your Device, your friend, the chance to relearn exactly who it had been before crash-landing on Bet. If it's remembering its past?

That's a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Making up your mind, you walk over to the dance floor. Okay. You're going to dance. Easy. How the hell do you even do that? Ignoring the guys, you instead focus on the girls and how they're moving. All you have to do is do the same thing everyone else is doing, right? Jumping in time with the music and shaking your butt and non-existent tits can't be that hard.

You slip through the people at the edge of the crowd and into the mass of bodies. Fewer people to see you make a fool of yourself this way. The music blasts again, and you jump with everyone else and start copying a gaggle of girls a few feet away after swiftly checking that they aren't the only ones doing whatever this is. Your hips bump into somebody, and you offer the guy you hit an apologetic smile. He takes this as an invitation, and soon you're scooting away from his attempts to grind up against you. Thanks but no thanks, buddy.

The song ends, and a few seconds later another one comes on, this even poppier and bubblier than the last. Everyone cheers and claps their hands, and the dancing changes abruptly and leaves you doing the same dance a couple of seconds too long. No one seems to notice, thankfully, and you bob on the balls of your feet a couple of times before you try to emulate them. This is a bit more of an active dance, or maybe it's just that the other girls you're watching are willing to have more fun, because the group splits apart and starts slide-skipping around the dance floor in different directions. One girl with blue-dyed hair makes her way in your direction, astonishingly steady on her feet considering the stench of booze that surrounds her, and then she's wheeling around and writhing in front of you. A panicked glance reveals that yes, all her friends are doing something similar and yes, some of them are dancing with other girls, too.

Well, you guess this is how this dance is done?

You match blue girl's movements as best you can, but thanks to her drunkenness and your awkwardness, you aren't entirely in sync. She doesn't mind your accidental contacts. Not in the slightest, for when the music changes once more, she grabs ahold of your hand and drags you back towards the rest of her group. Then you have an armful of party girl again, her hair slapping into your face and bringing a strong whiff of strawberries and something not quite like licorice—

Huh? You sniff again. No, it doesn't. It just smells like flowery perfume and alcohol. Why do you expect that particular smell?

The music booms on, and after several more dances you manage escape to the edge of the crowd near a wall of wide windows. Your feet are sore, your legs and arms burn, and your skin glistens with sweat, but what worries you most is the tight, giddy feeling in your chest. You need a bit of a break to calm down.

The glass is fogged up by the cold air without and the radiant body heat within, but the windows are still clear enough for you to catch movement in the night, black sliding against black. You wipe a circle clean and peer out. Dark fur atop hulking, malformed figures, long and thick arms ending in sharp claws. Rats; not the normal kind, but the crazy Case 53s you fought with Samantha and Vista. The kind that tried to kill and eat you.

What the hell are they doing here of all places?! You're miles outside the city proper!

You aren't the only one to notice them, and screams start coming from the nearby patio as people see the monsters running towards them. Their intent is as obvious as it is malevolent. Your blood runs cold while you calculate the odds in the back of your mind. There aren't any other capes here, and you're too far away from the city to wait for backup. It's just you, the Rats, and nearly a hundred potential victims.

One way or another, the Grim Reaper will be busy tonight.


At first I was going to have the Rats jump through the glass onto the dance floor, but even I think that would be a little too dark.

Suit up!
[ ] Billionaire, genius, playgirl, philanthropist – Saving lives trumps secret identities, period, end of story. Don your Barrier Jacket right here and now despite the crowd and exterminate some pests.
[ ] Where's a phone booth when you need it? – You don't want to leave anyone to get hurt by these Rats, but you owe it to your dad to keep your secret. Use the inevitable chaos to find a corner in which to change.
[ ] To protect my city, I must wear a mask – Get off the dance floor and run for someplace isolated where no one will see your transformation. Giving away the truth of your identity puts everyone you love at risk.
[ ] You wouldn't like me when I'm angry – You know how destructive your powers are, and if anyone connects you with Calamity Witch, they will all turn on you. This isn't your fight. Get away and call in the PRT.

Assuming you want to fight, what's your battle plan?
[ ] Write in

 

[Silently Watches]

[ ] To protect my city, I must wear a mask
[ ] You're a lethal weapon!
-[ ] Even before you find a spot to transform, have Storm make a call to the PRT informing them what's going on, as well as your current plan.
-[ ] Use Temporal Sludge to slow down their charge and give time to take out as many as possible with Flare Shooter before they can reach the crowd.


Emigration 4.15

You think but for a moment before you're running away from the window. The urge to go out there right now even with everyone watching is incredibly strong; every second you waste is a second the Rats can get closer to the innocent bystanders. What holds you back is the knowledge that it isn't just you your mask protects. Dad may be a cape, but he's a Master who's otherwise extremely squishy. All it would take for someone to kill him is to stand more than sixteen feet away and shoot him. Sam…. Okay, Sam doesn't have a secret identity other than your roommate/your dad's live-in girlfriend depending on who you ask, and she's tougher than you are, so unmasking here and now wouldn't actually put her in any danger. You still have to think about your dad, though, and also the fact that once that cat's out of the bag, there's no putting it back in. It would be on social media within a second, and any chance of either of you having a normal life would be gone forever.

No, you need somewhere safe, isolated, in which to transform. Thankfully the entire process takes only a few moments, but you still feel guilty about it.

Dining room. Den. Bathroom with a guy and girl hastily pulling their pants up. Where's an empty room when you need it? Glancing up and down the hallways, you come up empty, but now the screams are getting louder and you can hear the heavy footfalls of everybody who's running away from the beasts. Even once you transform, that's still a lot of Rats. You're going to need some help.

«Storm, dial the PRT. Now!»

«Aye, Mistress. Call initiated.»

"This is the PRT emergency hotline. Please—"

«Those rat–Case 53–things are attacking!» you all but scream at the poor woman. «I've got a hundred high schoolers here, and I'm the only cape around! Get me some backup!»

For a brief instant, you're worried that her silence means she's going to blow you off, but she quickly replies, "Name and address?"

You hang up as soon as you've passed on the information, and then you find the pantry just off the kitchen. Not as big as you'd like, nor as isolated, but everyone in the kitchen's already running away, too. It should work.

A flash of orange, and you're out the door again. The window ahead of you shatters, and you make a note to apologize to the owners if you get a chance before you rise into the sky and take in the scene. In the time it took you to find a place to change, the Rats reached the patio, and already there are people unmoving on the ground while others are within range of the Rats' claws. That makes things… complicated.

The thought of casting Recursion Field briefly crosses your mind, but you aren't so sure that would be a good idea. On the one hand, Cadejo was pulled in, and if you can pull all the monster capes into an alternate dimension, that would save everyone. On the other hand, if you're wrong? All you'd do is take yourself out of the action for however long it took to break the barrier down.

No, what you need is more time.

"Temporal Sludge!"

The purplish-black bullet flies out, not to the killing scene but instead to the middle of the swarm. Once it explodes into the dome of slowed time, you smile faintly. That will give you the edge you need. Now it's time to show these Rats just who they're messing with. "Storm? Live fire."

«Fire at will!»

The Flare Shooters you form now are special. They aren't any larger than their fellows, nor a different color, but they're all lacking a very important piece of code: the part that makes them safe to fling around carelessly around civilians. These are completely lethal. A twirl of your staff, and you send them flying. The bullets slow down once they enter the field, but since you aimed at the leading edge, they don't exactly have far to travel, and the slo-mo view is spectacular. The orange spheres hit the black Rats, and instead of knocking their heads back like last time, their skulls cave inwards in a flash of light. Blood, bone, and brain splatter the fur of their neighbors.

The wounded teenagers you just saved are quick to take advantage of the opportunity you gave them and flee, stumbling a little at the transition between time but then resuming their run for their lives. You, meanwhile, keep shooting, working your way from front to back—

Okay, where did all the ice come from?

A perfect circle of frost has appeared in the middle of the swarm, spiraling spikes just a little less than your own gangly height popping up everywhere inside and trapping the monsters. A moment later, the pillars explode and rip the Rats to ribbons. With the ground cleared, you can just make out a tiny bright blue sparkle that spreads out into a slow-growing circle. You recognize this effect now. You have never seen it in person, a fact you are happy about, but you have heard it described and seen video of it. This is the work of Cailleach, one of Winter Hill's newer capes. She is fairly young, isn't she? No one has ever come out and said how old she is, but she could very well be high school age. And considering she's pulling out her wide-area burst instead of her faster cone-shaped blast, she wasn't expecting any trouble, either. You glance around, but you don't see anyone standing around, just more proof that the cold-hearted villainess is out of costume.

Gang backup isn't exactly what you had in mind, but you'll take whatever you can get.

The Rats once again show their less-than-human intelligence and do not run out of the clearly marked ground zero, and you aim your bullets at a group that is not about to get shredded. Hey, if they want to make your job easier, fine by you.

Movement towards the previous blast-zone catches your attention. Maybe the Rats weren't alone. They don't have brightly colored Slimes with them this time, but there are a small number of grey.... You don't really know what to call these things. Spiders, maybe. Swollen abdomens, but marginally more human-like torsos, still with eight legs except that the legs end in deformed hands. Their heads are the worst part: overlarge human skulls covered in chitin and with four glistening black eyes shoved randomly into the bald pate. One lays a hand - and oh, does it gall you to call that thing a hand! - on the body of a Rat, a flat sound coming from its mouth. If these things actually mourn each other, you're going to have an issue.

Thankfully for your sanity and conscience if not the battle itself, that is not what the Spider is doing. The monstrosity is surrounded by a purple halo the same color as your Temporal Sludge spell, and then the Rat's body blurs. It slides upwards and around to get to its feet before solidifying back into a normal, living Rat.

Temporal Sludge chooses that moment to reach its forty-second limit. The bubble of altered space flashes and dissolves.

Well, that's just wonderful. Mark seven of the Spiders. Swing your staff to launch Flare Shooter. Mark another group while you shape the mana and fling another Temporal Sludge. Fire Flare Shooter. Numbers and symbols dance behind your eyes, and a dull throbbing takes up residence between your temples. You know this feeling, have felt it more than once during your training scenarios. Perfect Storm has an amazing degree of computing power, but the programs that make up your spells are enormous, and it still has to offload some of the processing to you. You can only handle a few spells running at a time before your brain starts to strain, and you aren't as familiar with Temporal Sludge as you are with Flare Shooter or your flight spell. With time once more on your side, you resume full-speed firing and wish for just a moment that you had some kind of machine gun alteration for Flare Shooter. Bullets that home in on their targets are all well and good, but right now you'd dearly love raw quantity.

Your and Cailleach powers have very distinctive appearances, so when another Rat falls to the ground without getting hit by either fireball or ice bomb, you are understandably confused. You become less so when a sound not unlike a cannon rings out and another actually explodes.

Reinforcements have arrived.

A motorcycle's roar can now be heard, and a single headlight speeds into view. You shake your head when the heroes jump a nearby hedge, bullets flying even as they soar through the air. Of course you can trust Miss Militia to make an appearance that would not be out of place in an action movie. Her passenger jumps off, and the oddly shaped gun Chevalier holds reforms into a long sword that slices cleanly through a Rat's neck.

The patriotic heroine's power becomes a pair of submachine guns that she fires into the crowd away from where Philadelphia's literal knight in shining armor stands, and you refocus your efforts on blowing away the closest edge of monsters, even at the expense of renewing the effects of Temporal Sludge. Between the three of you, you finally make headway in culling the crowd, even if Cailleach is holding back her own contributions. She likely does not want to give the Protectorate even that much of a clue about her identity. You slowly descend when the numbers become manageable, and your feet touch the ground after the last Rat falls.

The stench from the rapidly rotting corpses is disgusting, but you pick your way through the growing puddles towards the adult heroes. "I'd say you took long enough," you begin with undisguised suspicion as the pieces start falling together, "but I know it wasn't that long ago that I called the PRT. A few minutes at most. There's no way you drove all the way from Philly to here in that time, I don't care how fast you were driving. You were in the area already. And the Rats and Spiders; they're a long way from home, too."

Chevalier shares a look with Miss Militia and steps backwards a few steps; that done, he gives you a nod before turning away and tapping his helmet over his ear. She shoots his back a mild glare before walking closer. As she approaches, you spot scratches and cuts all along her fatigues, yet more evidence in support of your suspicions. "We've been hunting this pack for the last several hours," she confirms. "We had them on the run, but we lost them a little while ago and were still searching when we got your message. That told us where they all ran off to."

"You were hunting them down?" you repeat. Something doesn't add up here. "What are they doing? Where are they all coming from? What aren't you telling me?"

Miss Militia opens her mouth but stops before saying anything. With a glance around, she shakes her head. "Now isn't the time or place, Calamity. This needs to be handled cautiously. Let me get some things squared away, and then I'll tell you what I can, okay?"

Taking a step back, both physically and emotionally, you nod. No matter what this steaming pile of shit really is, it's probably best to talk about it when you aren't coming down from the adrenaline rush of a fight. You and Samantha can confront her about it later—

Oh. Oh, no. You forgot to tell Samantha about the attack. She is going to be so pissed.

Swallowing the terror of that impending lecture – because she's astonishingly good at the mom-voice for someone who's only been a person for nine weeks – you float back up into the air and let Miss Militia continue on with whatever else she has to do. Once you're sure she's out of earshot, you look around at the empty windows. The other cape is long gone, probably ran as soon as the heroes arrived, but just in case…. "Cailleach. Thanks."

Zipping around the side of the house, you hit the ground and dismiss your Barrier Jacket. Most everyone has already left, you note with some approval, even if it does put a bit of a crimp in your travel plans. Thankfully, you recently figured out Samantha's teleporting trick, so that's just a couple of seconds—

"Taylor!" You turn to find Kayleigh running towards you. You barely get a greeting out before she pounces, wrapping her arms around you like a python. "Oh my god I was so worried I couldn't find you where the hell were you I was sure those monster things got you and you were going to get eaten because you weren't with the football team and I asked Charlie but he said you were off dancing but there were so many people and you weren't by the car and—"

"Breathe, Kayleigh! And I need to breathe, so let go." You manage to pry her off enough to slip her grasp. You are somewhat perversely glad that she likes you enough to be worried about you, but between gratitude and air, you prefer air. "I found a bathroom to hide in until everything quieted down. Why are you still here? I thought everybody would be long gone."

She stares at you like you've gone mad before putting her hands on her hips. "Taylor Hebert, do you really think I'd just go off and leave you behind with all that shit going down? Hell to the no! I was going to stay here until you were in that seat beside me."

A faint smile alights on your face, and you surprise yourself and her both when you reach over and give her a hug of your own accord. "Thanks, Kayleigh. Really. I appreciate it."

"If you're that surprised I'd stick around, your old friends were shit," she mutters into your shoulder. You probably weren't supposed to hear that. Giving you another squeeze, she latches on to your hand and drags you towards her car. "If your dad's anything like mine, he'll probably go out of his mind if he hears you weren't the first one out the door. Let's get our stories straight so they can't call each other and find out we were so late getting out of here."


So that was… fun? I was hoping the vote to throw up Recursion Field would win if only because it would have let you take care of the Spiders with ease (the Rats, of course, are not affected by dimensional barriers by dint of being only super-tough and -hard Brutes), but this works, too. The Spiders' shard is a little twisted from what it was in canon, admittedly, but it follows the same theme.

Anyway, that's the end of the week. Time to pick next week's adventures!

• Picking up the Pieces, Part 3 – So that was a thing. Unfortunately for you and the TSAB both, dealing with angry and upset space wizards is way outside your areas of expertise. You need to talk about this with someone, but whom? And how are you going to prove that you aren't crazy?
  • Who do you talk to?
  • What else are you doing at the time?
• A Dragon's Hoard, Part 3 – You got Dragon her EEG data, and at great cost to Vista. You know that it didn't give her any evidence that you're secretly a parahuman. Confront her on the issue, and get your first ally who knows that you're something different and special.
• Snark Hunt – …And the Butcher herself showed up to help out the Fallen for whatever reason. Great. Go to the emergency meeting that has been organized to help plan what the heroes' response to this move will be.
• Monstrous Menagerie, Part 2-ish? – Those Beasts that attacked the party had to come from somewhere. Question Miss Militia about what she knows about them, and demand some answers if she tries to hide the truth again.
• Helping Out the Little Guy – Look for trouble in your new home and stop it. You can write in for someone to come along with you. Vista is NOT an option.
• Hanging Out – This is a bit of an experiment. Pick someone to spend time with outside of combat. Write in the who, what, and where.
• Know Thyself – Spend a free period training in the simulator. May be chosen twice.
  • Which spell do you want to train?

And yet another battle under your belt. You know what that means.

• Pick a spell to learn

Moratorium for 24 hours. Plan out what you want to do.

 

[Silently Watches]

Emigration 4.a

Sunday, April 3
Rebecca's eye focused on nothing while she drummed her fingers on her desk. Chief Director Costa-Brown had so much still to do, so much work that had piled up while Alexandria was off in Los Angeles, but despite the files sitting in front of her, her attention strayed again and again to the puzzle that had rooted itself firmly in her head.

The window opened, and she glanced over in surprise. Thankfully for her visitor, she held back from immediately lashing out. "I thought I told you to call ahead if you were coming here."

"Perhaps I just like surprising you."

"Most people who surprise me wind up getting thrown through a wall," she reminded the blue-suited cape. "Generally more than one."

"If you figure out how to hurt light, I might even let you," replied Legend with a laugh. "Not that you're the only one surprised. You're normally much more careful with keeping the connection between your identities separate, but right now, you aren't even trying to hide it. Is something the matter?"

She reached up to touch the plain eyepatch cover her empty left socket. "Everyone already knows I always have a lot of paperwork to catch up on and that they aren't to disturb me on Sundays for anything less that the literal end of the world. Not that anyone would want to talk," she added with a small, bitter smile. Sundays were peaceful around the head office of the PRT, in large part because no one with any sense wanted to come in to work on the weekend. It was one of the reasons she liked doing this: with the building staffed by a skeleton crew, no one came by to bother her as she worked through the report that constantly accumulated.

Well, that and the fact that her office was more familiar and inviting than her empty apartment. Free weekends meant little when she was the only one around.

Her memory and conscience joined forces to prod her at that thought. True, she did not have to be alone this weekend. Her parents had called with a special invitation to come to dinner the previous night and wish her baby sister luck on her fourth attempt at wedded bliss. A wish that would have been wasted considering Michelle's atrocious taste in men. Rebecca knew he was yet another brainless, aimless gym rat even before the background check. Not that she would have been welcome, anyway. One of the downsides of perfect memory and the ability to read micro-expressions was that the veiled distaste her siblings and siblings-in-law held for her might as well have been shouted in her face. It had made Thanksgiving five years previous incredibly awkward, enough that it was actually the last family event she had attended.

"And that ties into your eyepatch how?" he prodded.

She sighed and looked down at the small box sitting on one corner of the desk in which her glass eye rested. It was a necessary evil to keep her dual roles separate, yet that knowledge strangely did nothing to change the fact that indestructibility and surgical implants did not mix. Tinkertech might be a nice alternative, but it also required maintenance and posed a high risk for somebody outside the Triumvirate discovering the truth. Instead, she had to make do with the awkward solution she had eventually worked out, no matter how barbaric it seemed at times. "The clips broke sometime during my fight with Juggernaut. I haven't had a chance to replace them, and I can't go around with one eye hanging out."

"Ah," he said with a nod, no more eager to hear the details of its design than he had been when she first figured it out. "That would explain things."

"Explain things?"

He rolled his shoulders in a languid shrug. "Rime called me. She was worried that you've been a little… off lately. Not in a bad way," he added hastily, "but more like you're preoccupied. She was hoping I could figure out what's wrong."

"Rime worries too much." He smiled at her flat tone, unaware that she was not joking in the slightest. If she had realized how much of a mother hen Rime would turn into upon promotion to her second-in-command, she seriously would have considered someone else. Unfortunately – or, more likely, fortunately – Rime was also very good at her job, so she had no grounds upon which to demote her.

"Maybe, but you do seem a little stressed." Pulling off his mask, Michael sat in the chair in front of her desk. "You know you can tell me and David anything, right? If you need help, all you have to do is ask."

The words 'I'm fine' settled with familiar weight on her tongue, but she hesitated at the last second. No, she did not need any help of the variety he intended, but maybe he could provide something more useful. "Do you have time to be a sounding board? There's something I'd like a second opinion about."

He blinked, surprise written across his face in bold lettering. "Of course," he replied, his voice far more eager than she ever would have expected. Was he truly that excited to help? Or was it more that he had offered his help time and time again only to be rebuffed and so was overjoyed that she was finally accepting? "What's up?"

"I recently received a rather interesting report from Philadelphia. Dragon was discussing something with Calamity Witch, the same Tinker who sent us the document regarding the Simurgh's telepathy, and set up an appointment for Calamity Witch to get an MRI of her brain. From what I can read between the lines, there was some debate over whether or not her powers were actually magic."

Michael let out a long, drawn-out sigh. "Another Myrddin, huh? I like the guy, I really do, and maybe his powers really do require him to meditate and carve on his staff, but I have to deal with all the complaints that get sent in about his eccentricities. Did this newbie finally get convinced she sounded crazy?"

She raised her eyebrows and pushed the stack of papers away. There was no way she was going to get through this right now. "The relevant portion of the MRI makes for interesting reading. 'Also noted is a spherical lobule approximately 2 centimeters in diameter located between the frontal lobes on the superior aspect. This area is similar to other instances of the corona pollentia and has a higher than expected attenuation. No findings of the gemma lobe found in active parahumans. Bilateral tracts mirroring the course of the corona radiata show similar features. Low fMRI readings in setting of hyperattenuation indicates sclerosis as opposed to inflammatory process, but clinical correlation is recommended.' "

"And for those of us who didn't go to medical school and can't memorize textbooks at a glance?" he asked in an amused voice.

"It means she had a corona and possibly could have triggered. Had," she stressed. "Now it's scarred down. Without a gemma, she didn't trigger, and now she likely never can."

"But how can she be a Tinker if she didn't—" He caught on quickly enough and frowned. "Someone following in Saint's footsteps and stealing Tinkertech? Except Saint was one of Teacher's thralls; that's likely the reason he can use and modify Dragon's designs. Without a Tinker or Thinker power, someone would have needed to teach her how to use her weapons."

"And that someone would most likely be its creator. My thoughts exactly. But let's look at the powers themselves. Flight, pyrokinesis, corrosion projectiles, protective forcefields, and enhanced durability that in hindsight is more likely a second forcefield. A more recent report adds both a spatial warping power and a temporal warping power. And we can't forget the most impressive talent, rendering herself immune to the Simurgh. This would be incredible coming from someone who had to carry half a dozen massive devices with them." Rebecca gave him a tight smile. "All Calamity Witch has is a mechanical staff."

"Armsmaster could do something like that," Michael pointed out.

"Putting all those inventions into a single package? Agreed. What he could not do, though, is design everything else. Miniaturization grants understanding of neither energy manipulation nor spatiotemporal shenanigans. It would take a Tinker with a power lightyears beyond either Dragon or Hero to have even a slim hope of success."

A sigh preceded his nod of agreement. "Then it wasn't one Tinker. There were three, all working in collaboration."

"Five. Maybe six."

"How do you figure that?"

"Three like you said. A fourth who designed whatever protects her from the Scream. Maybe a fifth who destroyed her corona provided number four couldn't. And finally the bio-Tinker who created her bodyguard."

He blinked in confusion. "Bodyguard?"

"Officially a Case 53, raccoon-changer with multiple powers. Close range combatant. The only problem is she isn't one of ours. I know every 53 we ever made: their appearances, their powers, everything. We never made one who looked like her." She leaned back in her chair. "And most damning of all, she has the same immunity Calamity Witch has. I have a hard time believing two independent Tinkers stumbled onto something as valuable as this independently."

"There's just one problem with your theory," he told her. That comment received a curious look. Had he reached the same conclusion she had? She hoped not; that would get her nowhere. "Let's assume you're right. Six Tinkers, two of them with truly incredible powers and none of them anybody we've ever heard of, got together and collaborated to make a generator of some kind that would as good as turn anybody into a cape. They find somebody, scramble her corona, give her said generator and this bodyguard, and spend time teaching her how to use it.

"My question is simple. Why? What do they get out of it? She's an independent hero, right?" Rebecca nodded. "So it isn't that they're villains. If they were, she'd be committing crimes. If they're heroes or want to be heroes, they would have at least spoken to somebody with the Protectorate long before they found each other. If they're rogues and are trying to advertise their products, they wouldn't let her run around claiming she has powers of her own, and especially not that she's using magic of all things. Come to think of it, they wouldn't make just one," he added, rubbing his chin in thought. "After all the effort to design something like that, making more than one would be comparatively easy and would also give them more exposure. No matter how you look at this, none of it makes any sense."

"Yes, I'm aware," she grunted. "Why do you think it's been on my mind so much? I can't figure it out, and I keep coming to that conclusion, too. There is no way that series of events can come to pass, but I can't think of any other explanation."

"I can."

She looked up at his mirthful expression. He had another explanation? "What is it?"

"You're overthinking it. Just because we were part of a shadowy conspiracy doesn't mean there's one around every corner. We're missing some crucial piece of the puzzle, that's all." Tilting his head, he considered her thoughtfully. "What I find more interesting is how invested in this you are. I've never known you to get this riled up about any cape before. Any person before, honestly. What is it about her that has you so fixated?"

Because she's me from twenty years ago and looked at the me of today in disgust. Not that she could really explain that, not in any way that would make sense to him. Some days, it did not even make sense to her. All she knew for sure was that after the uncomfortable revelations following the Simurgh fight, she could not go back to how she had previously done things. In a way, it was almost a relief; the methods she had previously chosen were all geared towards a goal that was no longer possible or relevant, so being forced to abandon them provided the clean break she had not realized she needed. For every bit of relief, however, there was three times as much anxiety about what she was going to do now. The Endbringers might not be quite as threatening as Scion, but they still had no clue how to defeat the monstrosities.

Not to mention, they could no longer just let the world spiral into chaos and start over with whatever pieces were left. They were stuck with this mess.

"Unless…." He chuckled. "If you're that interested in her, you could just ask her out like a normal person."

…What?

"What."

"I mean, researching your crush inside and out until you know her better than she knows herself is definitely something you would do, but it's also a little creepy. You'll come off as less of a stalker if you actually talk to her."

With Herculean effort, she cast off the sheer befuddlement his words had caused and noticed the wide smile he was doing his best to hide. That… that…. "I know there is a way to hurt a rainbow," she hissed through her teeth, "and no matter how long it takes, mark my words. I will find it."

Michael finally let out the laugh he was holding back. "I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not. That opportunity was just too good to pass up. And you have to admit, it isn't like anyone has any clue what tickles your fancy. For all I know, overpowered coeds might actually be what turns you on."

"Keep talking, Michael. I dare you."

All he did was grin, and soon enough she let the forced indignation fade away. "Not that it's any of your business, but I've always been too busy. Between D.C., L.A., and Cauldron, I didn't have the time to care for a cat, let alone a boyfriend. My cacti are about as much commitment as I can handle."

"I wish I found that harder to believe. I really do." Rolling her eyes, she pulled the paperwork towards her again in clear dismissal, not that he seemed to notice or care. "Don't take this the wrong way, but have you considered retiring?"

"What are you talking about?"

"When we started this project, there were two main reasons you wanted to be the one directing the non-cape side of things. One, integrating capes into the rest of society. I think that's been a success. It hasn't always been easy, and it's still not finished, but momentum is on our side. That's practically a done deal, and it doesn't need your personal attention anymore. Two, creating a foundation on which to rebuild society after Scion. Now that he's dead, it's irrelevant." He stared at her until she met his eyes. "You run yourself ragged taking care of two positions and leave no time for anything outside of it. Eidolon did the same, but we both know he half-wanted to die a heroic death while striking the killing blow against Scion. The big difference between you and him? He isn't unaging and indestructible. Eternity's a long time to spend all by yourself."

"If that was supposed to encourage me to focus on being Alexandria so I could have a life outside of work, it failed spectacularly."

He grimaced and pulled on his mask, Legend once more. "You're right. Forget I said anything."

"Easier said than done."

"Fair enough." Walking over, he laid his hand on her shoulder. "I don't mean to upset you. I just worry about you. Sometimes it's hard to reconcile how you are today with the bright-eyed girl you were when we all first met. We've all gotten older and wiser, but there were days…."

"There were days what?" He shook his head, but before he could deny anything, she pressed, "No, finish what you were going to say. There were days what?"

He looked away. "…There were days I worried your warmth and humanity wasn't protected from the ravages of time the same way your body is. That the reason you got better at making hard decisions wasn't because the world was becoming a harder place but because it was you becoming harder and colder. Finding out the truth about Cauldron didn't help matters."

As much as his words hurt, she could not refute them. Instead she reached over to lay her hand on top of his. "Maybe I was. That's part of why Calamity Witch interests me. She reminds me too much of myself from back then, and looking at us now, maybe I have lost something important. Something I don't know if I can ever get back," she finished in a whisper.

"I don't know about that," he replied. "You seem to be regaining some of it. Even a year ago, there's no way you would have trusted me with this. We haven't really trusted each other in a long while."

She gave his hand a pat and pulled away. "Well, that's something we can try to fix. Not today," she added with a glare at her work, "but soon. Grab Eidolon and spend some time together without fights or dark revelations. Just the three of us like we used to be."

"You have no idea how much I like that idea."

No, she did. Watching him slip out the window again through the corner of her eye, she returned to her reports. She really did.


My depiction of Alexandria's prosthetic eye is different from canon, but that's because 1) it probably isn't Tinkertech for the reason stated above, 2) the mounting Wildbow described isn't used in real life, at least not for an eye that's supposed to be mobile, and 3) his method would have required surgery, which you can't do on someone who is completely invulnerable.

 

[Silently Watches]

[ ] Monstrous Menagerie, Part 2-ish? – Those Beasts that attacked the party had to come from somewhere. Question Miss Militia about what she knows about them, and demand some answers if she tries to hide the truth again.


Emigration 4.16
Tuesday, April 5

«Connection established.»

"Miss Militia."

«It's Calamity Witch,» you project, careful not to let your lips move. Everyone else has also tuned out Mrs. Kohle's lecture about the symbolism in The Great Gatsby, but there's no reason to let them know you're using that time to make a phone call. «I believe we still need to have a little chat.»

"Yes, I guess we do," she replies in a tired voice. "When can you come to the Protec—"

«This is a discussion we should probably have at a more neutral location, wouldn't you say?» And by neutral, you mean somewhere where Miss Militia doesn't feel like she has a home field advantage, not to mention somewhere you can send Samantha ahead of time so she can lie in wait and make sure no one tries to trap or bug the place.

Is it petty? Yes. Paranoid? Maybe a little. But petty and paranoid or not, your trust of the gunslinging heroine has taken a pretty big hit over the last couple of days. After weathering the glares and the 'I'm not mad, I'm disappointed' lectures from both Samantha and your dad, you dragged your Guardian Beast away so you could put your heads together. With this new data point, it's clear the warning your intuition gave you after the first encounter with the Beasts was a valid one. Miss Militia knew something was off about the crazed monstrosities, but she didn't tell you and instead lied that everything was perfectly fine. How long has she been hiding what's really going on? Has she been lying to you since right after the Simurgh attack when she called to persuade you to leave Boston? If she's been lying about this, what else has she been lying about?

You just don't know.

She is quiet a moment before letting out a quiet sigh. "I suppose it could be. How about the rooftop across from the jeweler's where you and Vista fought them? Maybe in an hour?"

English ends in forty-five minutes. It won't take you long to fly to that area of the city, not at the speeds you can reach, but you'll also have to shake off Kayleigh. The redhead was extra clingy yesterday, and you know she'll be the same way as soon as she finds you after class. You'll have to convince her to go to lunch without you, and since you might wind up skipping class for the rest of the day depending on how long the conversation takes, you'll have to give her a really good argument so she doesn't completely smother you tomorrow. «Ninety minutes would be better.»

"Fine. Ninety minutes. See you then."

The woman hangs up, and you ask, «You caught all that?»

«That I did,» Samantha answers. «Though I have to wonder. Do you truly think she might set a trap for you, or are you just being cautious?»

«You think it's too much, huh?»

The raccoon's laughter fills your mind. «Oh, not at all. Whatever information she withheld, it nearly got you killed the first time you found those creatures. Perhaps it was never her intention to put you in danger. Perhaps it was. Only she knows which, and until she reveals her goals, it is best that you watch her warily. No one ever died from being too careful.»

Not what you were expecting, but you'll take it. «I just thought you would tell me not to judge her based on one act or something along those lines.» Then again, your Guardian Beast has tried to get you to think before you act before now, so maybe she's just taking what she can get.

«I will not say you should never offer trust to those who have abused it once, but be sure you know and agree with their reasons why before you do so. Should similar circumstances crop up again, they will undoubtedly make the same choice.

«I will arrive at the rendezvous point soon. I'll see you when you get here.» The telepathy cuts out, leaving you alone in your own head and with nothing to do but watch the clock count down.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

You are still airborne when Miss Militia shows up. Not in transit, just floating; more precisely, you're leaning back against the empty air with the brim of your hat pulled down over your eyes. A single finger pushing from underneath slides it back to reveal your mask. "You made good time."

"I had an hour and a half. If it were late with that much time to prepare, it would be a problem." Looking around at the apparently empty rooftop, she drops her knife onto the gravel where it turns into a small cannon. It seems that the power to make 'any weapon' doesn't include improvised armaments like folding chairs, no matter what professional wrestlers want the world to believe. Still, she seems comfortable enough on her makeshift bench.

The silence turns stuffy until you finally cave. "What's really going on here, Miss Militia?"

"It's… complicated," she admits. "I think you've already figured it out, but these aren't Case 53s. There are too many, and they're all duplicates. At first, we thought we were dealing with a duplicator, maybe someone with a similar power set to Oni Lee but with a Brute aspect added in. Then the teleporters showed up. Self-duplication almost always prevents a cape from copying someone else, so that theory looked less likely. And now, with these healers? That theory is dead.

"Once you take clone-based powers out of the mix, the sheer number of enemies points to one big, scary alternative: a bio-Tinker. The problem with that is that Tinkers need time to establish themselves. Setting up a working lab, fine-tuning their abilities, learning the ins and outs of their powers; all that can take months or even years. The Brute-type would already be incredibly sophisticated for a fresh Tinker, but he's progressing too quickly for that to be the case. We're more likely dealing with somebody who is acting out a long-standing plan. We just don't know what he wants."

"And you couldn't just tell me that?" you demand. "You fed me that lie about Case 53s to lure me here instead? If you had just asked me, I would have happily given you a hand dealing with them."

She shakes her head sharply. "I didn't lie to you. When we talked in Boston, I told you what I knew about the situation. I wasn't briefed on the realities until I got here."

"Why keep it a secret? If there's a bio-Tinker who needs to be stopped before he builds some kind of mutant army, I'd think you'd want every hand on deck you can get!"

"Because the last time a Tinker built a 'mutant army', we built a wall around him," the American-themed heroine points out. "No one wants to turn a city of one and a half million people into a second Ellisburg, and that's what will happen should this information become public knowledge. Typhon, our current name for this villain, is moving slower than Nilbog did. We still have time to stop him. Until the situation gets entirely out of our hands, we don't want to cause a panic. Chevalier, Legend, Director Paulson, and Chief Director Costa-Brown talked the situation over, and it was finally decided to make the details classified outside the Protectorate and PRT with few exceptions. Chevalier wanted the information spread further so we could get more help," Miss Militia explains, raising her hands helplessly, "but his hands are tied. So long as we are mostly in control of the situation, he has to be careful in how he gets help."

…All right. You are still angry about the situation and the terrible decisions that went into it, but just maybe it isn't Miss Militia personally you should be mad at. Left unanswered is another question, one you would dearly like an explanation for. "What happened Friday? The Beasts were well away from where they should have been, and you and Chevalier were already on their tails."

"Like I told you, we had been on the hunt for most of the evening already," she says with a sigh. "We hoped that we could find a group and drive them back to their creator so we'd know where in the city we needed to focus our efforts, but instead of fleeing home they went on a rampage. The group we found somehow called in reinforcements – a lot of reinforcements, at that – and while we drove them off, we were afraid they would just find somewhere else to attack. Unfortunately, we were right, and they found your party. Sere was with us in the beginning, but his powers managed to kill some of the Brutes without letting them rot away like they normally do, so he had to stay behind and make sure they stayed intact while Chevalier and I continued the pursuit."

"Why was that so important?"

"Once we had intact specimens, Chevalier wanted them sent to Houston. If anyone can glean insight from another bio-Tinker's work, it's Bonesaw. I just hope it doesn't give her ideas," she adds, her voice soft with worry.

That makes some sense, you suppose. "And where were the Wards in all this?"

Miss Militia crosses her arms. "Shortly after you came back with Vista the night you ran into Cudejo, somebody called in the Youth Guard with some nonsense story about her being intentionally sent to arrest him. All the Wards are benched until they finish their investigation. For now, it's just Chevalier, Sere, and me, along with whatever independents want to help out."

"How long do you expect the investigation to take?"

"However long it takes for the pair of representatives to go through our records. Not that Chevalier or Director Paulson have anything to worry about; the Wards program here isn't nearly the mess it was in Brockton. If anyone had called them back there, Director Piggot would have been in a very sticky situation. Not that it matters anymore," she finishes with another sigh.

The silence this time is melancholy rather than stilted, your mind drifting back in time to Brockton Bay as well.

Thumps sound from a nearby heating vent, and Miss Militia jumps up, her cannon reforming into a heavy pistol. Not that she has anything to worry about. A few deep grunts come out, followed shortly by an unremarkable raccoon. "I told you you wouldn't be able to climb out of there in war form," you say.

The raccoon shoots you a glare before melting into Samantha. "If I needed to get out quickly, I would have just ripped through the metal. No need to damage anything now, though."

Miss Militia's own expression is indecipherable, though you have the feeling she recognizes the significance of you keeping your Guardian Beast in war form and hidden nearby.

"How is Vista doing?" you ask before your obvious distrust can make things too awkward. Not that asking about the thirteen-year-old you brought back critically injured isn't awkward all on its own, but sadly it's probably less so than the former.

The older heroine shakes her head. "She…. She's doing as well as can be expected, I suppose. She has been spending most of her time in her room, and she doesn't want to talk to anyone. In a way, the Youth Guard's timing couldn't have been better. Pushing to be let back on the field while she's still recovering would do her more harm than good. Much more."

"And there's no way I would be allowed to go over there and try to talk her out, is there?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, but no, there isn't. No one outside the Protectorate has permission to see her right now. Any hope of her keeping her identity secret long-term is dead, but we will still protect it while it offers her even the slightest protection." Returning her knife to its sheathe, Miss Militia gives you an incline of her head, not even a nod, and says, "I need to get back to my patrol. You know how to reach me if you need me."

And with that curt dismissal, she walks away and climbs down the fire escape.

«That was certainly pleasant,» Samantha sarcastically thinks to you.

"Maybe, but I don't know how much of her frustration is really aimed at us." You pull off your wirework mask and rub the bridge of your nose. "It is nice to know what's really going on, though. I just wish it were better news."

"On that score, we'll just have to take what we can get." A second later, the raccoon leaps up onto you and climbs to your shoulder. «Onward. You still have just enough time to get back to school before your next class. We can grab something on the way.»

"And you're, what? Just going to hang around for three hours until school's out?"

«Maybe I will. You dragged me away before my soap started, so there's no point in catching just the last five minutes. I'll have to wait tomorrow to watch it online.»

You roll your eyes where Samantha has no chance of missing it. You really should have waited to find a cat. She'd be a whole lot easier to deal with.


Dimensional Transfer learned.

Vote, vote, what to vote on? Ah! Next chapter will be the big scene with Dragon. Is there anything in particular you want to talk about, either just with her or for you or her to say to the TSAB should you get ahold of them?
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