Taylor looked out over the crowd that had assembled. For an early February day, the weather was fairly pleasant, the wind blowing in from the ocean being warmed by the Gulf Stream. Thus, most people were wearing lighter coats and jackets, and the coffee vendors were doing a brisk business with their hot drinks.
"...Ladies and gentlemen, I present Juggernaut!" Deputy Director Renick announced.
That was her cue, and she strode out onto the stage. Or tried to. Although it looked reasonable, the stage hands who'd set things up hadn't actually left a big enough aisle for her to walk through. She sighed once and began walking towards the stage anyway.
As the audience waited, they could hear chairs and various objects being pushed gently but noisily out of the way. Finally, the young woman of the hour slowly powered her way through a veritable pile of chairs, A/V boxes, and other things that had been left along the narrow aisle they'd directed her to enter through.
The audience clapped politely as she waved.
"So, Juggernaut, what happened?"
The towering teenager shrugged. "The stage crew must not have believed you when you told them I needed a wider aisle for access to the stage," she answered.
"I... see," Director Renick answered after a pause. "If it wasn't obvious, Juggernaut is a brute."
"Are you sure she's a Ward?" someone called out from the audience.
"Yes, Juggernaut is still a minor," Director Renick answered. "Just a very large one." With that, the event transformed into a rather atypical questions and answers session.
"
How much can she lift?" someone asked incredulously, not believing the amount that Director Renick stated.
"I was tested to the limits of the equipment," Juggernaut answered. "It broke at 1,250 tons. And yes, I am taking some martial arts lessons so I don't pulp most perps I might run across."
"Did you really rip Squealer's abomination of the week in half?"
"I did, mainly so I wasn't trapped in it and to get her out in case it caught fire," Juggernaut replied. "She then shot me with a hogleg shotgun loaded with rubber shot. Rubber tastes terrible, by the way. Took days to get the taste out of my mouth. Same with the asphalt last week."
"How
do you get those kinds of tastes out of your mouth?"
"I've found a plate of hot wings followed by blue cheese dressing, celery, and some chewy bread suppresses it for at least a couple of hours. Otherwise it's just fading with time."
"What did you do to Skidmark?"
"I clapped my hands together to create a shockwave," she explained. "Classic brute trick, but very few have the power to pull it off. Everything that happened after that was his doing in, according to him, a desperate attempt to not become a literal skid mark or smear on some hard, unyielding surface. Hookwolf was a simple uppercut. I just tapped him, and away he went."
"And before anyone else can ask," Director Renick interrupted, "She will be washing the Mayor's limo. Our staff has come to a settlement with Medhall for the rather inaccessible broken window as well."
"Was the violence in your handling of the situation last week on The Boardwalk
really necessary?" a voice whined from the crowd.
That person was soon very uncomfortable under the glare of the Protectorate, Wards, debuting Ward, Deputy Director Renick, and the people standing nearby.
"Really, you want to go there?" Juggernaut asked. "I might be bulletproof, but nearly everyone around me with one exception
wasn't. The Merchants weren't listening to reason, and I tried to talk them down. The review of my actions afterwards said I used an appropriate amount of force. The rest of the first part was all Skidmark. The second part with Hookwolf, I did get warned about using too much force, but was also told that my actions were allowed, just not preferred. Both times were ruled self-defense.
"I did get fined for littering, though," she finished. "And misdemeanor property damage." That got some chuckles from the audience.
"Who'd win in an arm wrestling match, you or Glory Girl?" some wag from the crowd called out.
"Me," she answered with confidence. "We tried once, with Panacea on hand. Glory Girl broke her own arm trying to get mine to move. With Panacea there, she got healed immediately and she isn't likely to try again. S'Okay, though, she's cool about it.
"Although if someone else wants to try, I'm told we might be able to arrange something."
= = = = = = = = = = = =
From the back of the crowd, a pair of individuals watched the proceedings. A tall young man of African American descent was paired with a smug looking blonde. Both were dressed for the mild day and had been enjoying some coffee from one of the concessions setup near the event.
"She's one heckuva brute," the young man commented.
"That she is, Brian," his companion agreed. "Kinda glad our orders are hands off."
"Any bright ideas, Lisa?" He took a sip of his coffee. Brockton Brews had some of the best coffee in the city, and even its bad coffee was still pretty good. His drink was one of their better ones.
"A few ideas to stay on her good side," Lisa admitted. "My intuition is having a few problems with her, but based on the available data, I'm working around it." Her power had literally told her that the girl was
"The brutiest brute to ever brute!" before moving on to simply saying
"Is unstoppable" and then
"SDTP Error 418: I'm a teapot!".
Still, no thinker headache from those, and she had no idea what 'SDTP' meant. She'd worked around the problem a bit by simply treating her as a regular brute at the top end of the scale. So far, it was working. When she'd tried to probe deeper, she got the feeling something was wagging a metaphorical finger at her and going "No, no, no" at her. She didn't like the implications of that. She'd even included that in her report to their boss, who actually called her in for an interview on the matter along with a couple of people she'd never met before. One was a powers-centric researcher, and the other was the scarier than fuck cape bogey lady in the fedora.
Lisa minded her Ps and Qs, stayed civil, answered their questions honestly and got out with her life. And an extra ten grand for the information. That had made it almost worth it.
"I mean, when she says she can lift over twelve hundred tons, that's one thing," Brian noted. "It's another to see her picking up a PRT van and setting it back down one-handed and making it look
easy."
Twelve hundred fifty tons not full strength.
It took ironclad control to not have her triple shot mocha cappuccino exploding out of her cup in the mother of all spit takes.
Brian, however, had noticed. "Problem?"
Lisa coughed a couple of times. "My wonderful, helpful trolling intuition just dropped the fact that the twelve hundred tons mentioned is not even close to her full strength."
"That's... not good."
"That's horrifying if she goes off the rails," Lisa concluded. "We already know she's insanely invulnerable, shrugs off engineering abominations at road speed like they were annoying and can punch Nazis over half a mile without too much effort. I'd rather have that be a good thing."
"I think most of the Bay would agree," Brian snarked. "I certainly would. So would Aisha."
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Commander Thomas Calvert, PRT Covert Operations, watched the debut of the new Ward, Juggernaut. The girl couldn't have anything resembling an effective secret identity, given her height and musculature. There were only five other women of similar height and build in the world, and only three of them were capes. Still, the ability to punch something extremely hard and shrug off return fire like it was a squirt gun was useful.
Shame his orders were to leave the girl alone and not make any recruitment pitches until after her eighteenth birthday. His boss had made what would happen to him crystal clear, and his power had reinforced that. It was how he knew just how invulnerable she really was, and how little they could actually do to stop her once she got moving.
Shortly after acquiring his powers, he had toyed with the idea of going completely villain. His power would be extremely useful in such an endeavor, but the PRT paid him and his crew well, they had a pretty deep pocket when it came to equipment, and they were allowed to supplement that with funds they seized from criminal endeavors they dealt with. However, the appearance of the meddling, fedora-wearing woman simply telling him "Please don't" was enough to make him shelve the plan indefinitely.
Life was currently good. He got to cut some problems down to size before they came on the normal PRT's radar by engaging in legally dubious, covert operations. And annoy Emily Piggot, though she wasn't aware of his presence in the city. Yet. He and the woman had never gotten along, even when they were squadmates, and definitely after the fallout from Ellisburg. She'd gotten the medals, he'd gotten a court martial and a plea deal. Annoying, but he admitted to himself it wasn't a completely undeserved result.
He stopped reminiscing about the "good old days" and turned off the broadcast of the debut.
"So, Captain? What's the sitrep with the Alcott girl?" he asked his second in command.
"So far, no other gangs appear to be aware of the girl having triggered," he read off his tablet. "Tattletale suspects, but she's one of ours. We're keeping discreet surveillance on her, but she appears to be aware of our presence." He left unsaid that she had waved directly at the camera they'd been using.
"We can't expect it to stay that way," Calvert noted.
"Yes Sir," the captain ordered. "We're still looking for more moles. Jenkins and his crew have black bagged a couple and interrogated them before turning them over to our contacts in NYC."
"Do your spooks have anything to say?"
"They figure that it's likely to be less than a week if she goes in for power testing that the Empire and the ABB will want to make a move on the girl," he reported. "Definitely within the month."
"Very good. What about what's left of the Merchants?"
"We've destroyed another drug lab, seized some more of their assets. Skidmark is going to be transferred over to New York. DEA and Secret Service want to have some
stern words with him."
Ouch. If the Secret Service wanted to have words with Mr. Mustain…
"Our money is clean, Sir," the captain added without being prompted. "The counterfeits we've found are very good, possibly from an offshoot of Lazare Cagliostro's ring operating in the US. We've turned them in anonymously to the Treasury Department. The debit cards for the rewards were mailed to an anonymous mail drop per SOP. They were distributed to the various squads, per your orders."
"Very good." Yes, keep the men well paid and happy. They were all PRT or former Special Warfare operators who had various issues like his. Nothing truly egregious, but those who the tribunals thought were redeemable were here or in other similar positions around the country if not the world.
Except for the quack they'd sent him as a medical officer. Thomas had shot him himself when the man had been caught torturing prisoners he was supposed to be treating. The sentence he'd escaped by joining Calvert's "merry band of lunatics" was carried out immediately, per his orders.
Wellington was a much better doctor than Pitter had been anyway, and the men liked him too. Around the few women he had working for him, he was professional and distant. Which they liked.
"For the moment, Captain," he instructed, "keep tabs on Mush. He may be parahuman, but doesn't seem to be much of a leader. The Empire should be quiet for a few days before they try to get Hookwolf out of PRT detention. Two squads are to receive two days off over the next two weeks, on the usual rotation."
"Yes, Sir."
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Taylor stomped into the Wards common area and flopped down on the reinforced couch after dispelling her costume, leaving her in her street clothes.
"That's handy," Vista stated as she appeared in an eye watering and brain itching distortion in the room.
"Being a part of my power means that no matter how badly it gets damaged, it'll be like new after I dismiss it and re-summon it," Taylor stated. "One of the few nice things about this."
"You'll always be able to open stuck lids on jars," Dennis quipped as he walked in.
"It doesn't always work like you think it will," Taylor shot back. "Grip too hard…"
"Lemme guess," Aegis added. "Ketchup, mayo, or pickles?"
"Pickles," Taylor replied. "It took me three days to get the smell of dill and vinegar out of my clothes and the kitchen."
"I did it with mayo," Aegis said. "Not as smelly, but much, much messier. To avoid a repeat, we buy our mayonnaise in squeeze bottles now. We've only broken one of them, and it wasn't me."
Pretty soon they were all sharing a laugh about mishaps and mischief with their powers. When Miss Militia walked in fifteen minutes later, they were still laughing about something.
She smiled under her bandanna and decided to give them some more time.
