Realign 14.1
Monday, August 1
You look to your right at 'Diana', who looks back with a pleasant smile. To your left, Samantha stares at the small screen with an opaque back floating in front of her. She will be no help to you here. Finally you stare straight ahead at the winged devil with her innocent mein. "Cassiel."
She looks at you with a placid expression.
"Do you… have any threes?"
The feathered fairy glances at her own screen and shakes her head. "Go fish."
You snarl quietly and hit the draw button on your screen. A worthless five of coins appears in your lineup, matching exactly nothing you have in your hand.
"Hey, Taylor?" asks Samantha without looking at you. "Got any threes?"
This time your growl is much more audible as you slide both your threes off your screen in her direction, and a glowing numeral 3 lights up along with the 7, 11, and capital E for the Empress rank. Yet another book collected for the Guardian Beast.
Despite all your attempts for the last two days, Perfect Storm has stubbornly refused to create a normal deck of cards. Galean culture had its own deck with five suits and fifteen ranks, one through twelve and then the Sinner, Prophet, and Empress. Two Death cards, which are apparently essential in some card games and seem to be analogous to the Joker, complete the 77-card set. Your Device initially tried to teach the four of you games from Galea, but the actual rules were in the memory files that had been corrupted beyond recovery. Instead you were forced to adapt Earth games to these cards, with Go Fish being the most recent attempt at passing the time.
A game that, despite being a regular raccoon prior to you finding her dying in the street, Samantha is utterly spanking you at. You cannot remember being beaten this badly at cards since your mother was alive.
"How long have we been stuck here?" you ask no one in particular. The 'here' in question is the featureless room the Tampa PRT stuck the four of you within once some semblance of order had descended upon the island.
"Fifty-eight hours, thirty-six minutes," Perfect Storm chimes.
Samantha groans. "How long did you say we were going to be treated like rats in a cage, Dragon?"
"If the PRT is using standard Master/Stranger protocols, which they undoubtedly are considering who it was who attacked the island, anywhere between forty-eight and seventy-two hours." She shrugs and points at the digital mask she was projecting onto her face. "They will undoubtedly be extra cautious with us considering we are capes."
The capes the PRT knows about, that is. Missy, not being in costume, you saw being shepherded along with several other normal people, and when Cassiel came fluttering over without her prior Unison partner, you knew Laura was planning to vanish into the crowd of civilians as well. You have not seen them or anyone else since the four of you were shoved into this room.
"They better let us out soon," you say into the ensuing silence. "I've never noticed it before, but the longer I'm stuck here in my Barrier Jacket, the more I can't help but remember that I'm running around naked except for a forcefield."
You are tempted to post that on the Internet just to have something to do, but 'Cinder' has enough new threads on PHO as it is. Someone took photos of the aftermath of your fights with the Fallen and uploaded them, and the collective nerds of the 'Net went crazy soon after. Dragon had not overestimated the threat the cultists posed, and then in the course of an hour ten of their capes were dead and another nine were captured, not to mention the unpowered gunmen who do not appear to warrant mention on the forum. It attracted attention.
You know it had to be a member of the PRT who released the photos, both because the only people who were present in the dome who have access to the Internet are the four of you thanks to Perfect Storm and because one of the photos shows a row of ten bodies covered by sheets. It is still up in the air whether that was done to compliment or denigrate you, and the forum-goers cannot seem to decide either. Some of them are praising you for taking care of the Fallen while others worry who you will go on a killing spree against next. A few even called for you to do the same to the rest of the Fallen, an idea Samantha is fully in favor of and which you cannot help but find tempting as well.
Almost as though your less than charitable thoughts have summoned them, the door opens to reveal a full team of PRT agents backed up by one of the flying Brutes from earlier. "Come on. You're free to go."
"Finally," Samantha mutters. Cassiel nods in agreement and drifts upwards to settle herself on the Guardian Beast's head. That earns an eye-roll and a huff but nothing more.
"I'm glad you finally realized we aren't thralls of the Fallen," you add, because really? You would be a pretty terrible slave if you went around and defeated all your masters and supposed allies. If anyone could have been cleared of Master influence without a second thought, it would be you.
Your comment was made half in jest and half in frustration, but even with as light a delivery as it was you still notice the troopers grip their guns tighter. Clearly somebody or somebodies have been reading PHO.
"Just get moving," the lone cape says. "Yours is the last group. Your belongings are in the suites where you left them. Once you have them, we will escort you to the Tampa Protectorate office so you can change back into civilian clothes and can catch a ride to the airport."
Dragon frowns lightly. "You only need us to come to the Protectorate office as a waypoint? It is not for an official statement?"
"No ma'am. Your… friend's actions," he says with no little disgust, "are enough of a statement on their own."
Your fist clenches. It would be satisfying to let him know just what you think of the statement made by
his actions, but assaulting a member of the Protectorate is unlikely to let you get home faster, no matter how satisfying it would be.
The voice Dragon uses is so sickeningly sweet that it is obvious she is as unimpressed with his attitude as you are. "Then thank you for the offer, but we will have to decline. We are perfectly capable of teleporting home on our own."
"Wait, what?" one of the troopers says.
She just nods. "Yes, we arrived via teleportation, and we shall leave the same way. You do not have to go out of your way to accommodate us." Left unsaid but clearly heard by all was the underlying message that you could have escaped this quarantine any time you wanted, and that is more effective than anything you can think of to set the troopers and the cape quivering in their boots.
You smile at that, and the display of your teeth does not help their nerves any. You actually suggested doing just that, teleporting to your stuff, grabbing Missy, and getting out, but Dragon shot that idea down by pointing out that doing so would put a target on the backs of everyone involved. Cinder is just a temporary disguise, but Samantha and Cassiel cannot change their appearance so easily.
Despite being the voice of cooperation, you now wonder just why she pushed for that only to lash out at the Protectorate member who came to retrieve all of you. Not that you mind, of course, but you are curious. «
If that was meant to put them at ease, I don't think it worked,» you send her teasingly.
«
It wasn't. I just wanted to remind him which of you has the bigger stick.» You blink in surprise at that, and she gives you a small smile. «
There is a reason why unlike many in the Guild, I am not also a member of the Protectorate. It was not solely due to being an A.I.»
That revelation leaves you reeling.
Fate must have enjoyed spiting your expectations because the suite you were supposed to stay in and where your belongings are is not empty as you assumed. Laying on her bed and watching television, Missy turns her head to look at you when you enter the room. "Hey. Finally get let out?"
You nod and look around the room. It will be quick work to throw all your things back in your suitcase, though you are also considering being lazy and just sealing them inside Perfect Storm. In contrast, Missy's bright yellow suitcase is standing beside her bed already packed. "When did
you get out?"
"First group." You raise your eyebrows as that means nothing to you, and a grimace sweeps across her face. "About noon."
"Noon." A glance at the clock tells you no, you have not gone crazy. "It's eight o'clock. You've been sitting here for eight hours?"
"I— Yeah." She shrugs. "I was in the same group as Kayleigh and her folks and Laura. They all took the PRT's offer to get them to the airport, but I told them I was going to wait for the rest of our party. I didn't expect the PRT to keep you in containment so long."
"I'm sorry we kept you waiting." And you are. You understand her desire to leave as one group, but this is beyond excessive. "Samantha! Dragon and Cassiel are teleporting back to Vancouver on their own?"
"Uh huh," comes the response from the living area. Samantha pokes her head into the room and sees Missy. "Ah. You're taking her home?"
"She's been stuck here long enough. I'll meet up with you back at the house." A thought has your Cinder disguise falling apart to be replaced by your normal costume, and you sigh as the magically created fabric fits you more normally. That is better. Pointing your staff at her suitcase, you suck it up into Perfect Storm's storage space and do the same to your own. "All packed. Let's get out of here."
Missy rolls off the bed and takes your offered hand, and you whisk the two of you away.
The sun is setting over the cityscape of Philadelphia, and you look around to find your destination. You did not want to appear directly on top of the base, due in part to the last several times you showed up unexpectedly at a PRT location. You were tired of being called a villain a long time ago, and the same accusations being leveled against Cinder have not helped.
The short trip over to the base is a quiet one but not uncomfortable. You doubt Missy had any more fun being stuck in Master/Stranger quarantine than you did. "Did you ever have to go through that in Bro—"
Missy cuts you off with a raised hand and a quiet "Shh". She points to the base of the PRT building and asks, "Do you see them?"
You don't, but your friend fixes that by shrinking the distance between you and them. Eleven people are gathered at the entrance to one of the garage doors. All of them seem to be wearing the normal body armor of the PRT, but none of them carry containment foam sprayers or rifles. Instead they carry a strange assortment of weapons and tools, including pistols, a book, and a gauntlet, but it is the staff in the hand of one of them that tips you off.
These must be some of the mages you found, now armed with their very own Devices.
"Do they… have… ears?" Missy mutters in surprise.
You want to slap yourself. The dog ears poking out of the helmets some of them wear is another good hint as to their identities, yes. In your defense, you have become so used to Samantha's own ears that animal features on a human figure just do not strike you as strange anymore.
Your revelation does nothing for Missy's own confusion, but you worry about just what kind of feelings enlightening her will engender. Particularly when the last time you two really spoke, she was lamenting the mental protection a Device could provide her if only she had a Linker Core.
No matter how much it could hurt her, she does not deserve a lie.
"They're mages." Her head whips around to look at you, but you keep your eyes focused on them so you do not have to look back. "Legend approached me to help locate mages within the PRT here and teach them how to use magic. The spell I taught them was the same ritual I used to create Samantha. It looks like they've gone beyond just that."
She looks away. "Oh. How… How many did you find?"
"Thirty. Most of them had relatively weak Linker Cores," you add in a weak voice. "They were all in the PRT proper, too. No one in the Protectorate or Wards had one."
Missy is silent for several seconds, and then the close-up of the mages snaps back to reality. "That shouldn't make me feel better."
"But it does?"
"…But it does."
This arc is going to be so much fun for me, I can just tell. 
Next week is the start of the new school year, and the arc-specific quests will become available at that time. For now, though, you still have a week of vacation left. Pick out two social events to mourn the end of summer.
- Hang out with another character(s). This is by definition a non-combat activity.
- Go on patrol. You can vote for one non-Samantha character to join you if you want.
- Explore somewhere on Earth Bet. A location must be included. You may bring 1-3 other characters with you.
- Explore another world. If you do not select a world where Taylor has been or already knows about, one will be selected randomly.
- Train, either in the real world or in Perfect Storm's simulator. SPECIFY which spell to work on.
- Write-in (subject to my approval)
Take 24 HOURS to get back in the groove of normal life and figure out what you are going to do.
And before anyone asks, Missy will be with Taylor to check out Tim's mutagenics lab on Wednesday, so if you're thinking about burning a social event on that, don't.
