Orderly (Worm Semi-SI)

[Obscura]

"Mos Winslow High School. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." I mused, half to myself, half to the Taylor, who had decided to accompany me and Danny on the drive to school. Apparently I was supposed to go, and Taylor wasn't. Not sure why, really.

"This is not the Taylor you are looking for. Move along" she uttered with a wave of her hand, jedi-mind-tricking some imaginary bullies. Or so I assumed, she didn't exactly explain everything. Explanations are usually bad for humor. Usually. There are ways around that.

No, I'm not going to explain what they are. A girl's got to have some secrets.

Not like I can keep any of the ones I really want hidden. Stupid mandatory reports.

And then it was time. Into the breach.


The breach, in this case, being the front doors of the school. There was an actual breach, but it wasn't big enough to go through. Using a back door would have been better, but the only doors into the school that could be opened from the outside without a key were the front doors and the roof door, and the latter was only because the lock was broken. Too many delinquents doing too many sneaky things. Not that the door thing helped in the slightest, but it let the administration at least pretend to be addressing their institute of "education"'s problems.

I didn't go to my locker. Way I saw it, it was a lot safer to carry all my possessions with me or stash them in various obscure locations than to trust Winslow's locks. Today, I'd left most of my clothing at the Heberts', so my load was lighter than usual. Taylor had had a lot of stuff stolen from her locker, so I felt vindicated in not using mine.

There was also the other thing with her locker, but thinking about that wouldn't help. Not like the enemy had had the time to set up something like that little masterpiece of inhumanity.

Hopefully.


First class today would be English. My second-weakest, although it still wouldn't be hard. Not exactly ivy league junior, remember? Actually, given a certain merger, it might not be weak anymore.

There was a boy watching me as I made my way through the halls. Nothing blatant, but he really wasn't good at hiding it. Lingered way too long, looked a little too curious, that sort of thing. Old Colere's skills came in handy. There were, of course, all sorts of reasons he might be doing so. It was possible he was minioning for one of the bullies, but they weren't the only clique he could be working for. Not white enough to be Empire, but he could be ABB or a Merchant. Or one of the various petty gangs. Maybe PRT, a Ward or something? I'd heard (well, read) rumors they all went to Arcadia though. He could have just heard about yesterday and been curious, actually. It was possible he could have a crush, though he was barking up the wrong tree if he did. And he was old enough for that to be pretty creepy. There were probably other possible reasons he might be watching me, not that I could think of any offhand. I'm not exactly an intelligence analyst.

English was alright. Treasure Island seemed a bit simplistic for high school, but there was actual analysis and everything, and the book was actually pretty good. I didn't share the class with any of the bullies: almost all of them were tenth-graders or higher and I was in ninth. I was easily smart enough for their level, in my arrogant opinion, but Winslow didn't encourage skipping grades. Not going into the details, but the process was way harder and more expensive than it needed to be.

I hear in Arcadia they just check up on your learning every year and assign classes accordingly. No fees at all. I bet that's great.


Next was Maths. That boy was in the hallways along my way again, whispering with some girl I didn't recognize. Dirty blonde hair, or possibly dirty-blonde hair, and white enough that they probably weren't ABB. I'm not really sure what the difference between dirty and blonde and dirty-blonde is. They tried to keep it subtle, but the "discreet" glances they kept throwing my way made it clear what the topic of conversation was. Something to watch out for.

Maths itself was sheer drudge work. The subject can be taught well, and can be actually interesting, but Mr. Golem wasn't up to the task. At all. "Mr. Golem'' was written on a piece of tape placed over the actual nameplate so it probably wasn't his real name. You wouldn't be able to tell from his teaching methods, though. The sheer level of monotone to his voice as he read straight from the textbook was actually kind of impressive, but it meant absolutely nobody was paying attention. Including me. Not like I really needed to for the likes of 2x+2= 6 solve for x.

Instead, I was preparing myself for confrontation. And to avoid confrontation. Preferably the latter, really, but it's better to not be caught off guard. And I wasn't all that good at avoiding confrontation. Cell phone, hidden in a pocket but entirely accessible, with two little buttons carefully set up for when things went down. Steel-toed boots on properly. Clothes rearranged so as not to hinder running. Pepper spray positioned so that it was just barely visible if you were looking. Not that even half the people here who were likely to start a fight would look first, but the ones who did might be inclined to back down. First Aid kit in easy reach. Inkpot in pocket.

I even managed to do the homework assignment while I was at it. Golem (and I should probably know his real name, but I just don't remember it. He's really boring.) didn't give those out until the end of class, but when it's the exact same "Do the odd numbered questions from the textbook" assignment as every week for the last couple of months anticipating it isn't exactly brain surgery.

If you replaced the guy with a VCR and a tape, the change in teaching quality would be negligible at most. Unless it was one of the better-made math teaching videos, in which case it would be a very large, and entirely positive, difference. Maybe they should, then the administration might have the money to actually address the school's many, many, issues. Some of them, anyway. Teachers didn't get paid that much.

Anyway, maths class went without issue. Besides really bad teaching, which was only to be expected. Winslow. Not exactly ivy league junior.


Lunch next. I had a cafeteria pass thingamajig, so I wasn't worried. In retrospect, I probably should have been, at least a bit.

Actually getting lunch wasn't hard. There wasn't anything that really appealed, but frankly that was also only to be expected. Winslow. Not exactly ivy league junior. There were worse hardships.

One of those aforementioned worse hardships accosted me as I was eating. Not that much worse, but still a bit worse than a poor cafeteria selection.

Bullies.


Now bullying can be a serious, even life destroying issue, but the ones who had targeted me really weren't up to the exalted standards of schoolyard torment set by Mademoiselles Hess, Barnes, and Clements. These four weren't nearly the social manipulators those three were, and Taylor, unlike myself, was a soft target. Not in the sense of being a weak person, or of being stupid, but she had no real skill or confidence in the social arena. Someone like Emma Barnes, who was not only a prodigy in the field herself but who also knew all of Taylor's weaknesses, was someone who could overrun her very quickly. Emma's betrayal had put Taylor on the back foot, and between her and Sophia they had very efficiently cut apart anything that could let her regain her footing. Until some nosy no-good busybody came in and tore the whole house of cards apart anyway.

I don't remember exactly what the four were saying when they surrounded my little table, but it was hostile enough for me to decide to enact my devious plan. Muah ha ha. I thumbed one of my cell-phone buttons, and responded in the most reasonable tone I could manage: "Do you always walk up to complete strangers and insult them?"

That was enough to put them on the back foot. Preparation matters, kids. They rallied, of course, but I simply kept being entirely reasonable. Things like "You are perfectly welcome to think so, but must you keep bringing it up?, "Oh, I do apologize, I didn't quite catch that" and "You aren't being very nice. Could you please stop?". Responding that way to their increasingly unsubtle attempts to insult me naturally infuriated them, so they kept escalating, to which I kept being reasonable, which infuriated them further, causing them to escalate further, etc. I didn't even sound snide or sarcastic, which was a job of work, let me tell you. So they kept getting worse and worse, far more than any of them would have been willing to risk when they set out, and I kept being reasonable. A vicious cycle, but one I had planned for.

It took a while, and a lot of false (but convincing) reasonableness, but eventually one of them got fed up and slapped me. Harder than I think was intended, actually. There was a disturbing amount of blood in my mouth. I'm not entirely sure, but she looked an awful lot like the girl who that mysterious boy had been talking to before math.

The slap, of course, was what I was waiting for. Not that I would have been too disappointed if it didn't happen. I did the responsible thing, and pulled my phone out of my pocket and called emergency services, seeing as I had just been assaulted. Thanks to the wonders of high-end prt-issue phones, that didn't even require dropping my previous call. Naturally, they didn't just let me call the cops, but I was able to keep my phone out of reach long enough for the call to connect. Thus, the good operator at the other end heard what happened next perfectly well. Including the several attempts to grab my phone, my protests, a few punches being thrown and the girl who'd slapped me yelling about how "You're just being a big baby, it was just a little slap." While throwing said punches. It certainly wasn't "just a little slap" now.

Just a bit under an hour later, we were all in the principal's office, explaining things to Principal Blackheart (not her actual name, but it sure does fit her a lot better) and a nice officer from the Brockton Bay Police Department.

"It was so scary, they just kept getting meaner and meaner and I tried to be nice to them I did but they just seemed to get mad and they wouldn't stop and then she slapped me really hard and my mouth was full of blood and mommy told me to call you guys if something like that happened so I did but they just got worse and they tried to take my phone and I asked them not to and she kept hitting me and then Mrs. Knott stepped in and took her off me and then she took to different rooms to wait and we waited for like half an hour and then you arrived and you asked me to explain first and there's cameras in the cafeteria and I checked my phone and the call I was making to Taylor went to voicemail so most of it should be on her voicemail-thingy if you need it."

Panicked rambling to the rescue again! It was even mostly true. I implied I was calling Taylor to actually talk to her, rather than to make sure there was a recording, and I wasn't quite as scared as I was pretending to be, but everything else was entirely true.

Efforts to deny it were ineffectual, given the overwhelming amount of evidence. Especially since several students, mostly the ones with grudges, came and delivered their own reports. And one of the non-slapping girls (a "Julia North") decided to put all the blame on the girl who'd actually done the assaulting (whose name is redacted to protect the guilty, and so as not to interfere with the prosecutor's office). She was just protecting herself, of course, but it didn't help the slappy girl's case.

Our violent little delinquent screeching incoherently at being betrayed really didn't help her case either. Principal Blackheart tried to downplay things, but apparently that doesn't actually work when there is that much evidence and the police are actually there.

All in all, it wasn't exactly the Black Dahlia murder case. Within an hour of the meeting starting, one girl was in handcuffs, three had suspensions, and one totally innocent little homeless orphan girl was accompanying an officer to the Hebert home to pick up their voicemail records. That boy was watching again as we left the school, but still didn't say anything to me.

Hopefully, the same supremely pitiable little orphan girl getting brutally assaulted twice in as many days would put some critical eyes onto the wretched hive of scum and villainy that was Winslow High School. Maybe it would be ivy-league junior one day. Probably not, but it could be a lot better.

 

[Obscura]

Taylor:

Taylor Anne Hebert (an official Jacqueline Colere certified Good, Strong, Person) felt a little better when she woke up the day after Jacqueline Colere came into her life. Yesterday hadn't been easy, but Taylor felt that the worst was over. She'd come clean to her father, law enforcement was investigating the Trio, and Jacqueline had somehow not been horribly traumatized (again) by her spiders. They'd even spent the evening acting like a normal, healthy, family. It could have gone so wrong in so many ways, but they hadn't argued over anything worse than Pizza toppings. And the smell of pure deliciousness was wafting up from downstairs, stirring Taylor to wakefulness. And hungriness. Taylor could guess why dad wasn't in the room. She wasn't stupid. Even if yesterday had given her a few reasons to question that.


Taylor dressed, took care of herself, and made her way downstairs. There was Jacqueline, watching with wide eyes as Dad cooked breakfast. Dad almost never cooked breakfast. Maybe he was getting better too. Taylor hoped so. He'd been through enough.


Yesterday had been bad. Well, not exactly. Almost all of the problems that yesterday had exposed had been building up for far too long, and bringing them out into the open was definitely necessary, but that didn't make it easy. Jacqueline had come into the Heberts' lives like a wrecking ball, not that it was the poor girl's fault. Yesterday had been hard. On all of them, Jacqueline included.

Breakfast had been good at first. The food was delicious (and fattening, but Taylor couldn't bring herself to care right then and there), Dad and Jacqueline were happy, and bonding was done. Then Jacqueline asked about school. That killed the good vibes pretty darn quickly.

Going and raising h-e-double-hockey-sticks, going and pretending that everything was normal (normal, in this context, meaning utterly and depressingly awful), and skipping altogether seemed about equally unappealing. Mom hadn't raised her to be a truant, and Dad couldn't plausibly call Taylor in sick under these circumstances, let alone Jacqueline. There was a lot of discussion with no real answers, although Taylor could admit to herself that the idea of just burning Winslow down had it's appeal. Way too much appeal, honestly. Her incredibly awful time there might have left her with a few issues. Eventually she suggested asking the PRT just so she could get a definite no on the "Can't we just set Winslow on fire" plan so it would leave her alone.

While Dad had gone and done that, Jacqueline had started brooding. Again. The younger girl was definitely good at brooding, or at least losing herself in thought. Taylor had seen her just stop paying attention to the outside world enough to just let it happen. After less than 24 hours of acquaintance. That's how often it happened. Jacqueline didn't even seem to notice when Taylor started braiding her hair. Taylor wondered what she was thinking about.

Eventually Dad came back with an answer, and Jacqueline would be going to school. Dad would have to drive her, since she didn't know how to get to school on her own. And because neither Hebert wanted to leave the girl alone for too long. Taylor volunteered to come along, both out of solidarity and to finish up her hair-braiding. Which Jacqueline still hadn't noticed. Or maybe she just wasn't reacting on purpose, to mess with Taylor. That didn't sound likely, but the alternative was that Jacqueline Colere had all the situational awareness of a particularly unwary tree.

By the time they arrived at the school, the younger girl was back to earth, or at least close enough to earth to make a Star Wars joke. Taylor hoped it was a joke, anyway. She responded in kind, using the Force to mislead an imaginary Sophia.

As Jacqueline went off into the accurately described wretched hive of scum and villainy, Taylor was worried. But the girl had been taking care of herself at Winslow for months, so Taylor reluctantly let her go.


And then she went home. To her room. Where Jacqueline had slept. And, apparently, done a whole bunch of research, judging by the notes all over Taylor's desk. Good notes, too, although their organization left a lot to be desired. Taylor was particularly interested in the one sketch of the bunch, a quick doodle of a girl in black and yellow armor, surrounded by wasps. Not that Jacqueline was good at drawing wasps. Taylor would have assumed they were bees, except for the name emblazoned beneath the figure: Vespiary. Taylor rather liked the sound of that. The day was going entirely too well so far.

She also liked reading Jacqueline's thoughts on the various villains of Brockton Bay. Taylor had found more and better sources during her own research, but Jacqueline had extrapolated further than Taylor had ever dared, and she'd done more looking into the minor villains. Jacqueline was more worried about the minor villains than she was about the ABB or Merchants, which surprised Taylor. The Empire were a group Jacqueline clearly was deeply afraid of, for good reason. Taylor shuddered to imagine what they'd do to the poor girl if they ever got ahold of her.

Jacqueline's concerns about Coil were entirely understandable as well, though Taylor did think she was grossly overestimating Uber and Leet. Taylor hadn't even heard of the "Undersiders" before, but they seemed like a nasty bunch. Grue was probably more dangerous than Jacqueline thought, and the rest were apparently terrifying. Taylor wasn't as afraid of Tattletale as Jacqueline obviously was, but only because she was furious. The blonde's behaviour and the apparent powerset Jacqueline had noted reminded Taylor far too much of Emma, except Tattletale could use everybody's secrets against them.

Taylor set some bugs to redyeing her bodysuit black, and wondered about where she could obtain armor plates, before diving back into research. It was a wonderful distraction for a few hours, and then Dad called her down to lunch.

Halfway through Taylor's first grilled cheese sandwich, the doorbell rang. Dad got it, and there was Jacqueline, being escorted by a police officer. Taylor had known the day was going too well.

 

[Obscura]

Surprisingly, showing up at the door of someone who cares about you with a police officer and explaining that you were back from school early because you'd just been assaulted for the second time in as many days isn't exactly reassuring. Go figure.

Hugs, especially crushingly-tight-because-they-are-worried-about-you hugs, weren't something I'd had a lot of lately, at least pre-merger, but it turns out they're like riding a bicycle. More muscle memory than anything. Two hugs at once was not like trying to ride two bicycles at once, fortunately. I hadn't ever been quite stupid enough to try that, but I'd seen someone else be that stupid once, and it hadn't exactly gone well for them. I'd been told they'd make a full recovery, but I have my doubts. People aren't always honest about bad news, especially with the young.

The two situations had little in common beyond the factor of inordinate amounts of force being applied to ribcages, but that was enough for me to squawk in protest. Or squeak, really. I didn't have enough air or a deep enough voice for a proper squawk. The Taylor and her father didn't let me go, but they did loosen their grips a little. Not enough, really, but I could sort of breathe, and that would have to do.

There are worse hardships than having people care about you, after all.

Danny was furious. He was adamant neither of his girls would be going back to that expletive laden excuse for an institute of education.

He said a lot more than that, actually, but I was sort of caught up on the idea of him referring to me as his. It was in the heat of the moment, and he probably didn't even notice, but both of us girls caught it.

I wasn't opposed to the idea, and from what I could see neither was Taylor, but it was going awfully fast. We silently agreed not to mention it to him. I think. Maybe she thought we were agreeing to duel for his affection as soon as he looked the other way. Head shakes and nods are kind of ambiguous that way. I'm pretty sure I would lose if that was the case. She had better reach and her bugs weren't something I could reasonably counter. One bug in my eye at the wrong moment and it'd all be over. But it was probably the not mentioning it to him thing. Hopefully.

A lot of things had shoved the three of us together unnaturally fast. Homelessness, orphanness, perceived parental failure, being the first person to stand up for Taylor in far too long, universe deprivation derived stress, desperation for affection and probably some more things that I am forgetting. A lot of things. While that wasn't exactly bad, it wasn't the most stable basis for a family. Especially since Taylor had been stabbed in the back hard by the last girl she'd thought of as family. None of those things were guaranteed to last, and most of them probably shouldn't, and we hadn't built any of the things that would last as of yet. Or maybe a little, but not nearly enough.

Rushing into a familial relationship on that shaky foundation would not be half as bad as rushing into a romantic relationship based on those things, but any or all of us could still easily end up getting hurt. It would be a lot safer to take things slow and let any relationship between us build naturally.

I'm not sure if letting Danny get mad on my behalf counted, but I certainly wasn't going to get in his way. He was, after all, right. It was absolutely ridiculous that the various bullies had gotten away with their plethora of crimes for so long, the attacks against me did paint a deeply unflattering picture of the administration's ability to keep order, and Winslow was a pitiful excuse for an institute of education. The man had every right to be angry.

And while I was hoping to force Winslow to shape up, pulling myself and Taylor out was the sane response to the situation. Especially Taylor. I had been doing mostly okay until I had tried standing up for Taylor, while she had been systematically torn down on every level for no reason since she started there. Being Taylor Hebert was apparently a massive bad-things-magnety-thingy. Or something like that. I'm sure there is a pithier way to express it, but I can't think of any.

Huh, my hair was wet. I was pretty sure I knew why, but pretending not to notice seemed like the nice thing to do. It is actually possible to cry furiously, my research indicated. That fact had stuck with me quite well, although I really wasn't sure why. Maybe something to do with what I was doing at the time, not that I remembered what I was doing at the time.

Anyways, I was being furiously-crying worried hugged. That wasn't a common occurrence for either me, but it wasn't the first time. Unless it was, because I wasn't the old Jacqueline or the trans-dimensional kidnapee. I'm actually pretty sure I'm not one xor the other, but I still might be both. Or someone entirely new. Or somewhere in-between. Things are complicated. I blame "Patron". Though I guess old-Jacqueline was supposedly doomed to perish during the course of events, so maybe they saved my life? Sort of? And in an incredibly callous and damaging manner? That's almost as confusing as figuring out who exactly I am, and I had totally forgotten about it.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, that "xor" isn't a typo. It's a simple way to designate an exclusive or, rather than an inclusive or or an ambiguous or. An exclusive or reads true only if one, and only one, of the possibilities is true, while an inclusive or reads true if any of the possibilities is true. It may seem pedantic, but the distinction is sometimes extremely important. In my case, I was definitely sure I'm not one exclusively, but I'm not sure I'm not both. Thus a xor, or rather a negation of xor possibilities but not of inclusive or possibilities. For more on the subject, consult a close family member or friend, preferably one whom you haven't spoken to in a while. They probably won't know either, but the discussion will be fascinating and it might bring you closer together, and I like to encourage that sort of thing.

Outside the interesting but largely irrelevant world of formal logic, there was communication, honest and emotionally deep in ways I can't really convey here. So I'm not even going to try. Whoever's getting these reports knows way too much about way too much personal stuff. Yes, that means you. I know you're reading this, and it's frankly quite an invasion of privacy. I don't get to decide to share this stuff or with who, you know. Stupid nails driving into my brain. I shouldn't even be able to feel you! Brains don't have nerves! I checked it on the internet!

Sometimes it's hard to forgive. Especially when the things that you need to forgive are still hurting you.

Sorry if that's not up to my usual exalted standards of wisdom.

 

[Obscura]

There were four high schools in the fair city of Brockton Bay. (City may or may not actually be fair. Visit at your own risk.) Well, three high schools and the wretched excuse for an institute of education that was Winslow. Arcadia almost lived up to its name, that place was an actually good school, and I don't even mean by the low, low, standards of Brockton Bay. Teachers who actually cared, solid funding, a broad array of after-school programs, a student body that was actually respectable (and not in the all life is worthy of respect way that I tried to apply to Winslow) and programming to die for.

Not literally.

Hopefully.

Immaculata wasn't bad, but it wasn't up to Arcadia's standards. It was also a Catholic school, and I wasn't a Catholic, or even a Christian. Not even in the way most westerners get lumped or lump themselves into christianity by default but don't do anything more than the occasional Christmas and/or Easter service. I doubted they'd ever heard of my religion, so I doubted it would be respected by a religious institution, or at least one that was here. Not sure if my faith actually existed on this earth, in point of fact. Aside from me, obviously.

Clarendon was a bad school by the standards of places with a functional education system, by which I mean it had some obvious gang presence, mediocre to poor student grades, and teachers who failed to put in the effort far too often. Compared to Winslow's virtual gang omnipresence, abysmal student grades, and teachers who almost never did put in the effort, it was practically competent. It was a fairly typical American inner city high school, from what I'd read.

Four might seem like nowhere near enough high schools to serve an entire city, and to be fair that was largely correct. Brockton Bay wasn't much of a city though. Even with the influx of refugees after Kyushu was sunk, it didn't actually have enough people to become a city, since this world and area's requirements for such were awfully high compared to home. Official cities required an actual PRT presence and at least one Protectorate member, the PRT was constantly underbudgeted and the Protectorate was constantly understaffed, so there weren't a whole lot of them anymore. Brockton Bay shouldn't qualify, too many people left after the boat graveyard and the various other bits of awfulness that defined Brockton Bay. Since it was already a city though, charter, PRT division and all, that didn't matter, and it remained officially a city. And Brockton Bay definitely needed the help more than most would-be cities.

The four high schools were also big, even Arcadia and Immaculata. Winslow, and to a lesser degree Clarendon, were massive schools that would still be grossly overcrowded if all the registered students actually showed up. Which they didn't. Again, more so at Winslow than Clarendon, but also at Clarendon. Add in the large number of people who dropped out of high school or never went in the first place, and you had a school system that wasn't actively collapsing under the weight of numbers.

Don't get me wrong, the school system, aside from the mostly privately-funded Arcadia, Immaculata and their junior high and elementary equivalents, was collapsing, but that was more because of the issue of having no budget, an administration that didn't do its job (at least not at Winslow), and with just about everybody giving up on it. Having way too many students was merely an aggravating factor. One of the many, many, aggravating factors. Winslow exemplified all the problems with the system, but it was merely the worst case among many.

Danny didn't want either of us going to Winslow any more (and who could blame him?), which left one of the other three highschools. He might have been able to homeschool one girl, but he certainly couldn't handle two, or even homeschool one while actually paying attention to the other's regular schooling. Not to mention him homeschooling me would be incredibly suspicious. It was already kinda fishy that I was staying here. Child Protective Services hadn't placed me here, after all. Not that they'd done anything about my case.

If this wasn't Brockton Bay, I'd find that deeply suspicious. As it was, I was black (half, anyway, and for some reason that generally counted as much as full despite it not working that way for other races. Not even gonna go into the complicating factors of transdimensional merging, since nobody on this earth knew about it, and the other me's racial heritage was now essentially irrelevant to how I'd be treated) and a refugee, so it wasn't all that surprising that they wouldn't do anything. Not all the xenophobes are in the Empire.

Not that it was impossible that some Empire members worked for the local branch of CPS. That particular toxic ideology was deeply rooted in the bay.

So that left getting into one of the three other high schools in the city. Arcadia would be tricky at best, although there was a possible way around that. Both of us had the junior high grades for the place, but neither of us had gone, for different reasons. Taylor had been offered a scholarship, but had turned it down to stick with her bestest friend, Emma. The one who would repay that decision with betrayal and torment, to be clear. Now her grades, thanks to broad-ranging academic sabotage, weren't good enough for a scholarship. (Although Emma and her ilk sabotaged poor Taylor in a lot of ways it was the academic stuff that was really relevant to the matter of Arcadia.) Actually, her grades probably weren't good enough to get into Arcadia at all, but since she couldn't afford to attend without one it didn't matter anyway. My grades, now and then, were well beyond what was needed, but the scholarships were only available to US citizens, and I wasn't one. Leviathan was and continues to be raw awfulness incarnate. I couldn't even afford to travel to Arcadia, and I don't mean as a daily expense. One bus ride would cost more than I had. Being a homeless orphan sucks.

Immaculata was right out. Not only was it more expensive than Arcadia, despite not being as good a school, it was further away and faith-based in a faith that neither of us had any faith in. They did have an excellent scholarship program, but that was also faith-based, so we didn't qualify. That wasn't actually illegal here, or maybe it was and nobody cared. It would not be even remotely close to the first time illegal discrimination was practiced despite being illegal. On either Earth I had experienced, in point of fact.

Clarendon was mediocre at best, if one was being generous in one's description, and the commute was the longest of the four, but it wasn't Winslow, and that was what was really important. Still there was a way to get into Arcadia. Maybe two, depending on how you looked at it. You see, it was a (probably deliberately) poorly kept secret that the Wards went to Arcadia. So did the New Wave children (aside from Laserdream/ Crystal Pelham, who'd graduated from Arcadia), though they weren't secret. No secret identities and all that. Joining with either group could get them to pull the right levers to get us in.

Naturally, that conversation about what to do with our powers happened a little earlier than planned. What follows covers the results of that conversation fairly well, but do understand the actuality wasn't as neat and tidy.

My plan for myself was what I outlined earlier. Join New Wave, be a healer, mend things one piece at a time. Maybe put my power up for a lot of charity auctions. That'd let me fix things on a much bigger scale than I could do on my own, even if indirectly. Plus, being a model parahuman healer while black and gay would do more to undermine the Empire and their ilk than a dozen warehouse raids. You can't kill an idea with violence. Not if you want society to still be standing afterwards, anyway.

Taylor and Danny were worried about my safety, naturally. Outed capes could be targeted in ways that simply weren't possible if your attacker didn't know your civilian identity. I felt I was less likely to be targeted in my civilian identity if I was known to be a cape, for a number of reasons. My cape identity would be a healer, with a sideline in repair, not somebody going out and picking fights. Healers were extremely valuable, and everybody needed them. Targeting a healer would bring down the wrath of the cape community like very few things could, as long as the healer didn't start things. Attacking somebody in their civilian identity likewise. Nobody had ever done both in the same act, but that would be at least as bad. Meanwhile, my civilian identity was poor, black, young, without legal guardianship, and a lesbian. Any one of those things could easily get me targeted. Put them all together and they were practically a death sentence in a place like Brockton Bay. Put simply, I was safer as a known, open cape with a team than as a civilian. Safer, not safe, I should note. It was very much a matter of relative danger.

My hosts weren't happy about my argument in the slightest, but they did concede the point. Neither of them seemed to take my sexuality as a problem, except for the possibility of being targeted for it, which I was grateful for. You see, I had totally forgotten they hadn't known that about me before. I was bad at secrets. One more reason to go with New Wave rather than, say, the Wards. Plus the Wards had to fight, if only in the least dangerous fights, and I didn't want to. At least I managed to keep being trans to myself. They probably had a right to know, but I'd scout that issue out first. Homosexuality might be almost a non-issue thanks to Legend, but being transgender wasn't all that much more accepted than in the other world circa 2011.

Taylor did want to fight, which made things like ensuring her safety immeasurably more complicated. Apparently I was the odd one out, since most parahumans wanted to fight, but that didn't change the fact that fighting was risky. Wards in other cities got injured in the line of duty about once or twice a year on average, and Brockton Bay was a lot worse. Heroes were outnumbered by villains everywhere, but Brockton Bay had one of the worst ratios. Of the places that actually had heroes, anyway. There were places that didn't, and most of them weren't pretty. And there were a lot more violent non-parahuman criminals as well. Wards here got into fights more often than they did just about anywhere else, and into parahuman fights far more often than their counterparts anywhere else.

Panacea both did and didn't help with that. She made the injuries much less of a concern, but that let the Wards just leap right into the fight without learning anything, and their handlers did not take Ward injuries as seriously as places without a Panacea to lean on. Independents got hurt way more often than Wards, at least the ones who were entirely independent instead of with groups that were independent of the PRT, but not from having support from teammates, like New Wave.

None of the New Wave kids had ever gotten hurt in a fight, at least as far as the public record showed. Still, Danny and I suspected the reasons why none of them had gotten hurt wouldn't apply to Taylor if she joined them.

First off, the existing New Wavers were all family, and they were very used to working together in a way few teams could match. Lots of coordination and familiarity in the most literal sense, both in and out of combat. They had reached a level of group fighting that most Protectorate divisions couldn't match, let alone Wards.

Secondly, all four New Wave kids had powers that meant they were unlikely to get hurt, albeit for different reasons.

Panacea was a healer, safe for pretty much the same reasons I hoped to be. Though if she did get hurt she couldn't heal herself, while my aura was always healing me.

Laserdream was a Blaster, one of the longest ranged ones short of Legend himself, and she didn't need to get anywhere close to a fight. She was also a flyer, so she could avoid fights that didn't have other flyers or similarly long-ranged blasters pretty easily, with or without shooting the participants, and her shields helped a little. It was a very useful combination of abilities.

Shielder was as much a flyer as his sister, though not as fast, and one of the most powerful defensive capes on the east coast. It's easy to not get hurt if you have enough impenetrable forcefields in place, and he was careful and cautious in a fight.

Glory Girl was just plain impossible to actually hurt. She'd gotten into situations where she should have been hurt more than just about any other cape, since anyone who wasn't a major Brute wouldn't survive doing what she did, but nothing got past her invincibility.

Yet.

An awful lot of parahumans had proven to only be invincible until they suddenly weren't, when something finally got past their defenses and killed them. Even Alexandria, the namesake and exemplar of the "Alexandria Package" combination of Flight, Toughness, and Strength that Glory Girl possesed, had lost an eye to the Siberian.

Nobody had found something to get past the Siberian's defenses yet, but an awful lot of people were trying. I couldn't think of anything, but I was hopeful that someone would.

Thirdly, and this one was pure speculation, if any of them besides Panacea (who couldn't heal herself) had gotten hurt, they had the best contender for the position of world's greatest healer living in the same house/a few blocks away.

Only the third of those would apply to Taylor if she joined. Which was still infinitely (figuratively) better than just going out on her own. Still, Panacea couldn't touch brains, and like me, she couldn't fix dead.

Nobody could.

So it fell upon us to prevent death. By any means necessary.

Anyway, that's where the conversation was, dramatic statement and all, when the PRT guys came and very politely took us in for Master/Stranger screening.

 

[Obscura]

Master/Stranger screening was boring.

That was probably intentional, since constant new interactions and interesting things would change a person's behaviour and throw off any actual screening, you know? Still, knowing why you needed to be bored didn't make it any less boring. (Okay, it made it a little more tolerable, since I knew they weren't just being mean, but it was still boring).

Something similar applied to why I was in Master/Stranger screening. Knowing why could throw off the results. Presumably. I hadn't actually been told anything. I hadn't asked to be told anything. I knew exactly how dangerous human Masters could be. Or, rather, I didn't. I knew how dangerous Speakeasy was, but Speakeasy wasn't the worst of the bunch, or even anywhere close to it. Maybe Sophia had some sort of Master component to her powers?

On a mostly unrelated note, whoever was running the screening (monotone machine tones didn't convey a lot of information, which I suppose was the point) was probably scratching her head. (I was just guessing about them being a her, in point of fact) I wasn't exactly the ideal M/S screening subject.

They didn't have a baseline model of me. At all. Anyone who could have given them one was dead. The Hebert's might have had an image of my behaviour, but I'd only met them extremely recently, and under deeply unusual circumstances. Nobody could give them an accurate impression of Jacqueline Colere.

Which was probably for the best, since I only sort of acted like her. At least a third of myself was entirely foreign to old Jacqueline, with the rest being either her or the things my two past selves had in common. I think. I have no real way of knowing if "Patron" gave me a few extras. Anyway, having another person shoved into your brain/being shoved into another person's brain was a Master effect, one they had no reasonable way of knowing about, and I should probably keep it that way.

Jacqueline Colere was also known to have been traumatized by a human Master before: Speakeasy had at one point forced/Mastered her/me into his gang/Mastered thralls for a few days. Nothing especially bad, not like Speakeasy had done to far too many others, but bad enough. That couldn't have made the testing easier, even though I'd given them the whole story.

Finally, as far as I know, there were my particular religious practices. That didn't have anything to do with parahuman powers, aside from being from another world and getting shoved into my/Jacqueline's brain, but the issue was confirming that. I was able to claim I'd picked it up back in Newfoundland, where it was only a particularly small religion rather than something only I did. They probably wouldn't find any other Newfoundlanders following that faith, but then there weren't a lot of us left anyways. An exceedingly minor regional faith having only one (or two, counting my mother, who didn't actually follow anything of the sort, but was secular and private enough that such a claim was plausible) faithful survivor(s) after Leviathan would be more notable for having any survivors than for having too few. Still, a disturbing number of Masters had used religion as a screen, so they had to check out pretty much every detail. That took a while, and a lot of explaining on my part, but my obvious enthusiasm at preaching might have made it less unpleasant. Entirely genuine, I assure you. It was exciting spreading the Manifold Paths to a new world. Also, I was really bored otherwise.

Master/Stranger screening was very boring. Earnest discussions on faith and philosophy (the two aren't the same, but they do tend to intermingle) were one of the few exciting things available. Beyond that, not sure what to tell you.

The cell had a fairly spiffy bed, actual good-quality plumbing, and lots of paper and writing implements, along with a few carefully-selected books. I'd slept better than last night. After all, it wasn't someone's fault if they needed to be screened. Probably. Usually. Maybe someone had done some really stupid prank at some point? I could see that happening at least once. Most people who ended up in here weren't at fault, at least. They could just have less nice M/S cells for people who were at fault.

Still, it was a cell, and thus boring. Fresh Air was not to be had. Space to run, even less so. Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring.

Did I mention it was boring? It simply cannot be overstated how boring it was.

They did ask a lot of questions, but I had no context for anything and I can't remember most of them. I did learn something neat about my powers, at least. You see, somebody authorized a Tinker Ward known as Gallant to shoot me with "emotion beams" to see if I'd respond normally, and apparently they couldn't enter my aura. The emotion part, anyway. The physical stuff went through just fine. They checked it by shooting at me, at other people within the aura, and at people who were outside the aura but with the aura between them and him. And probably some other stuff they didn't tell me about. That was the only time I'd left the cell, and the testing room was right next door. Someone was whispering about trying it with other Masters, but I probably wasn't supposed to hear that. I think older people sometimes underestimate just how good young ears are, especially young ears that are in a healing aura 24/7.

Everything else was boring. Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring...

---

Chanting the word boring over and over a coupla hundred times probably wasn't the most mature response ever, but I was barely fourteen (sort of) and I had to act like a kid sometimes. Much better now than in a crisis. I'm sure it wasn't the first time somebody had done that. M/S had to be boring for everybody. If I was the only one they'd bored like this, somebody was getting an inkpot to the face.


At least it gave me plenty of time to come up with newer and shinier cape names, which the M/S running individual (whoever they were) was kind enough to record for me:

Clockwyrk (funetik spellin kn b kool) (But it can also be annoying, no.)

Clockwork (Kinda boring)

Watchwoman (heh)

Orderly (likewise)

Restorationist (Dull, but it got the point across)

Pax Medicae (Should probably have someone check that latin)

Kindly (that one was probably too sinister, but I did like greek mythology)

Adjuvant (Medical and purely supportive, which was nice. Obscure term, especially over here, but that's not a bad thing)

Mending (Even more on-the-nose than La Mademoiselle de Ma'at, but shorter)

La Restauratrice (Accurate and french, which was nice, but meant restaurant owner as well as a restorer.)

Concordiat (Leans too much on social order, rather than the physical "in working order" I could provide. Apparently there is also a notorious crimelord who goes by "Accord", so no)

Working Order (A bit too masculine)

Patchup (Implies a level of sloppiness I don't possess, could make people uncomfortable)

Fixup (...Better. Technically.)

Stabilité (Prétentieux, non?)

La Réparatrice (C'est bonne?)

The Maiden Resplendent in Brass (This wasn't Exalted) (Hopefully) (Creation was even more broken than this place.) (I really had no desire to see it.)

Orderzone (Something is wrong with that name. I'm not sure what, exactly, but something. No.)

Medic (That's got to be taken. Doesn't really describe what I do all that well, anyway)

Medivac (All the same problems)

Tindalos (I have no explanation. I think I might have confused it with something else, but I have no idea what )

Asclepius (Name of a deity, and mortals taking those never ends well. Also too masculine)

Asmodeus. (No. Just no.)

I think I'm just gonna end this here. Come back and make a decision later.

 

[Obscura]

Emily:

The Master/Stranger results were interesting. In the "may you live in interesting times" sense, wherein "interesting" is a codeword for completely and utterly awful. Like when you've got a medically fascinating terminal disease. That sort of "interesting". Emily Piggot hated that sort of "interesting".

Sophia Hess had apparently reverted to 7th grade. Last thing she remembered before waking up in M/S confinement was being taken by some "scary men" to meet a man in a black bodysuit. A black bodysuit with the bone white snake emblem of Coil emblazoned upon it.

Emma Barnes and Madison Clements had been taken in almost immediately after that little revelation. Clements didn't show any signs of Mastering, or even any unusual behaviour, but Barnes was another story. She'd gone into the same screaming fit almost half an hour before Sophia. Her parents had been transferred to the PRT by a 911 operator a minute or so before the squad showed up at their door, once the different emergency services realized they were interested in the same person. If she was telling the truth, and Armmaster's little scanner had shown she at least thought she was, she'd been "rescued" by Shadow Stalker and then, a week later, been dragged off by Sophia to meet the same man as from Shadow Stalkers' own report. Events after that were "fuzzy", but she'd apparently been ordered to do all sorts of unsavoury things, and done them. She didn't know why. It said something that subjecting her best friend to years of torment and attempted homicide via biohazardous waste was quite possibly not the worst of what she'd been made to do. She could barely remember most of it, but there were glimmers of depravity and torture on a level that made even the seasoned PRT veteran interviewing her shudder. Emily hoped very much that a lot of it was just the fervid imaginings of a girl missing over a year of her life, but the (confirmed) "Locker Incident" didn't give her much hope of that.

Both girls had obviously been Mastered. Coil, or someone doing a very convincing job of mimicking him, had apparently been Mastering the girls for his own twisted amusement.

Emily Piggot was held back from immediately issuing a kill order, at least an internal one, only by the necessity of getting it approved by at least three other Directors and a high-level judge first. She was still pushing for it as fast as possible.

It all seemed pretty clear cut. Sophia Hess and Emma Barnes, along with God knows how many others, had been Mastered by the so-called "minor villain" Coil into doing all sorts of awful things for his amusement. The Mastering had been subtle enough that they just looked like terrible people, rather than the unfortunate Mastering victims they actually were, but Jacqueline Colere's "Clockwork Aura" had interacted with it oddly. Only a few hours after encountering the Aura, which was now known to have anti-Master effects (she'd signed off on testing with Gallant, and Glory Girl's aura had been discovered to be canceled out by Colere's), the girls were free, though seriously messed up. Fortunately Colere herself was cleared of being a Master or being under Master influence, as much as they could clear someone they had no baseline for of being under Master influence, anyway. It'd have to do.

Coil's power appeared to be degenerative, since both known victims had damaged memory, although that could be a side effect of however the Clockwork aura broke the effect. Sophia, who'd been under longer than Emma Barnes, appeared to have no memory of the time she was under the effect at all. She didn't even recognize the name "Shadow Stalker". Unfortunately, that was the least of their problems right now.

Coil had been active for years. It was impossible to know just how many people he'd grabbed, he had dozens of mercenaries who might or might not be under his power, and his limitations were a complete mystery.

Emily Piggot was calling in every favour she could burn and every resource she could draw upon. She'd contacted several other PRT regional directors and a number of Protectorate members, including Dragon. Not much luck so far, but she was confident. Coil had, at a minimum, Mastered a Ward into committing attempted murder, along with sundry other crimes. If some of the glimmers of memory were accurate, he was planning on taking over all of Brockton Bay. If Emily Piggot had her way, he'd never see the sun rise again. That wasn't likely, but she hoped he wouldn't see May.

Some of the pieces she needed were already on the board. Colere would be immensely valuable in any anti-Master operation, and she was almost absurdly pliable. Piggot wasn't going to complain about getting lucky there. Jacqueline was almost certain to go along with whatever Emily needed her to do.

Taylor Hebert wasn't, but she'd have excellent reasons to go after Coil once Emily revealed the truth to her. And the despicable negligence of her underlings could be pinned on the [blaggard] as well. That wouldn't save them from Emily, but it would save the rest of the division. Taylor Hebert also had an immensely useful power, insect Mastery, with enough fine control and awareness to find wherever Coil was hiding. That hadn't been a pleasant discovery to make, but it paled in comparison to Coil. Taylor Hebert was going to help catch the [blaggard].

Emily wasn't about to give in. No [funtime] cape who thought his powers put him above the law would ever conquer her city. Emily Piggot was determined.





















[REDACTED] :

A certain ridiculous letter was not, in point of fact, found solely in two copies. Rather, there were three copies, identical in content, but not in purpose. The first was merely what it appeared to be, a device for letting a certain individual know what was going on. Not that it did all that good a job, but intended purposes and what actually ends up happening are not synonyms.

The second and third were a little different. In purpose, if not in substance. Like the first, they would have no effect on those who hadn't been exposed to them. Unlike the first, no one who read them was meant to understand that they were real, as opposed to being some jape or roleplay aid. There was another effect to the second and third, and technically to the first, though with the first it would probably never come up. That effect's nature was something in the line of an oxidizer composition in a binary explosive, something without effect until it encountered a catalyst. Some people would be affected, since a certain something about them acted as a perfect catalyst. For everyone else, the effect was negligible at most, but for those who were affected, the result was something like a binary compound, conceptually similar to Tannerite. Like Tannerite, it would remain inert until something triggered the explosion. Like a high-velocity bullet, or a certain parahuman's aura rearranging certain things into a more orderly state. At that point, or technically a cosmically insignificant amount of time after that point, boom. Then they were vulnerable.

All according to plan.

 

[Obscura]

I was rather surprised that Director Piggot came to let me out of Master/Stranger confinement herself. Not as surprised as I was at the deathly serious expression frozen on her face though. Something was obviously up.

The Master/Stranger confinement might also have hinted at that possibility.

Just maybe.

I revert to cold understatement in times of awe. Inside my head of course. On the outside I looked the very picture of solemnity and careful consideration.

Okay, fine. I looked like a cute little kid trying to look the very picture of solemnity and careful consideration. I didn't even look my body's age. I was freaking adorable. The mirror in the meeting room the director ushered me into showed that very clearly. Not that I was going to let on that I knew I didn't actually look solemn. It was a lot better for the image I was trying to project that way.


Sometimes I have trouble keeping up with all the little games of image I'm playing, but they are my main advantage and my main relevant skillset. I am, after all, just one person, with an incredibly useful ability that is still steeply limited in scope, and no particular skill at or useful powers for combat or evasion. Image is my best defense and my best tool for achieving my goals.

Parahuman powers can let someone do a lot, but the reputation, the raw archetypical force of personality, that parahumans tend to accumulate (whether they want to or not) spreads far beyond them. For example, Lung's raw power wasn't what kept the ABB untouchable. He couldn't be everywhere, after all. No, the fear of Lung was the sword that kept his enemies at bay. New Wave was meant to be a shining beacon of transparency and openness, and if they'd succeeded at that the world would look very different today. The Empire's PR game was disturbingly good for a bunch of self-described Nazis, which was a big part of why they still existed. My own PR game was aimed at them first and foremost.

Nothing undermines bigotry, or at least the more pervasive, subtler, kind, better than a paragon of society being part of the "inferior" group. Look at what Legend had done for gay rights without lifting a finger in that direction. Didn't do much to persuade the bitter hardcore, but without the support, tacit or otherwise, of the broader population, they became a lot less effective. Even the Empire didn't get too loud about the subject. They were still vile bigots in that direction, mind you, but not enough people agreed with them and too many disagreed for them to advertise the fact. Beyond the advertising of the fact implicit in openly being Nazis, anyway.

Hopefully something similar would work for me. I was pretty much everything the Empire hated (I wasn't Jewish) (I wasn't Romani, either, or Eastern European, but unlike the original generation Nazis the Empire didn't really care), and I would be standing tall as a veritable, and adorable, pillar of society. That'd gum up their works right quick if I had anything to say about it, and what were they gonna do about it? Complain about someone doing the right thing when their stereotypes said they'd do otherwise? If they did that, or if they struck at me for it it'd just make them look worse.


"I like your attitude kid, but right now we have a crisis on our hands" a familiar voice startled me out of my revelry. The director was talking to me!

Director Emily Piggot looked amused for a fraction of a second, then resumed that impressive iron-hard solemnity. Like she wanted to tousle my hair but now really wasn't the time. The situation must be very serious.

Not serious enough to stop me asking myself "How long was I talking?" though. It probably should have stopped me, but it didn't.

"From 'I am pretty much everything the Empire hates'" said another familiar voice, this one with a teasing tone. The man in the red-everything costume was right behind me, and I hadn't noticed. He actually did tousle my hair, and his expression was light.

Probably had as much idea of what was going on as I did, but with less ability to notice that impressive seriousness. Either that or he was a massive goofball even in the face of something able to scare even the hardened veteran director. It could honestly go either way. I really am not as sure about the matter as I was at the start of this paragraph.


Assault was kind enough to introduce everybody who came in after him, even when he didn't know who they were. In hindsight, "kind" may not have been the right word for that. Irreverent, maybe.

Assault was irreverent enough to introduce everybody who came in after him:

"Armsmaster, Head of the Protectorate East North East and my other boss. No sense of humor, may actually be a robot."

"Puppy, occasionally known as Battery, my partner and fellow member of the Protectorate East North East."

"Triumph. The new kid in the Protectorate in these here parts, just recently promoted up from the Wards. Don't ever give him a reason to shout at you"

"A kid in a standard issue full-face mask. Don't recognize her" That was Taylor. The hug she gave me was brief, but appreciated.

"Velocity. The fastest man alive, except not really. A sort of discount fastest man alive."

"Paul Renick, Piggot's deputy director. Boring."

"Commander Awesome. That's his real name. He's not a cape, just a guy whose last name is Awesome and who is a PRT commander. He's the one directly in charge of the PRT Troopers."

"His name isn't Awesome, Assault. It barely even sounds like Awesome. Shawson isn't that hard to remember. And he's only in charge of some of them." scolded Assault's oddly named partner. What kind of cape name is "Puppy", anyway?

"Don't take this away from me, Puppy!"

"Some guy." I didn't recognize him either. He was droning on to some poor unfortunate over the phone, in a tone that sounded pretty much exactly like Mr. Golem's. Guess there were two extraordinarily boring people in town.

"Some other guy" That was Danny. He patted me on the head, which was nice.

"Dauntless. Really, really boring guy, but he's a good hero"

"Mara Sorrows, the local M/S expert. Sort of. They cycle around pretty often. It's a security precaution. That's not her real name, all the M/S experts get assigned pseudonyms by Watchdog. That's also a security precaution"

"Gallant, one of our most promising Wards. Sometimes he even keeps those promises."

That last half was done in a stage whisper. Sort of like what Danny was doing about 15 reports ago, but faking whispering rather than restraining shouting.

"Miss Militia, the woman with all the guns, deputy head of the branch. Wow, that's all of us. Piggot must be having a real conniption about whatever this is."

"Yes." said Piggot, sitting at the head of the table, well within hearing range. "Sit down, Assault."

"Activate seclusion protocols by my authority. Access code:THISISTOTTALYNOTAREALACCESSCODENOWAYIAMGOINGTOSHARERESTRICTEDPRTACCESSCODESWITHALLANDSUNDRYITISMORETHANBADENOUGHTHATIHAVETOREVEALASMUCHASIDOPATRONISAJERKYJERKOFAJERK"

That's when the door, floor, ceiling and all the walls (there were no windows) suddenly had steel shutters slide over them. Within a minute, we were all trapped in a metal box. Nobody was visibly panicking, but pretty much everybody looked confused. Everyone except Piggot, Sorrows, and Armsmaster.

What in the worlds was going on here?

 

[Obscura]

Well this could turn into a right proper mess real quick.

Scratch that.

This was already a right proper mess. It simply also had the potential to turn into a much, much bigger mess. This was already the kind of mess that ruined lives and shattered souls. Worst case scenario, apply that same kind of damage to the entire city. I'm pretty sure I know why I was sent to the time and place I was.

I should probably explain. Let me start at the beginning.

So, remember Coil?

The so-called "small-timer" with the small but well-trained and extremely well equipped troops?

The one I'd thought was a much bigger threat than he appeared to be because he was obviously competent (or well-advised) and in possession of some truly impressive resources?

That guy.

Well, it turns out he's a lot scarier than I thought he was. Given how scary I'd thought he was, that was saying something.

Okay, that's not actually explaining. I think the situation merits a little panicked rambling, but it's not helping. This isn't my information, by the way. I'm mostly going off what the Director explained to everybody. She was so calm and in control, and it was really inspiring, but not enough to make me not afraid, and everybody else was taking it really well. Even Taylor. Cool as a cucumber. That's my girl. Still takes a licking and keeps on ticking, even though I'm still the one who resembles a Rolex.

So it all started back in Winslow's bathroom.

I hadn't been aware of it, but Sophia and Emma had apparently been exposed to my aura. Not a lot of my aura, but it seems they didn't need to be exposed to a lot of my aura.

Several hours later, they'd both had (pseudo-)psychological breakdowns and started screaming. Believe it or not, this was actually a good thing. Fevers are an immune response to subtler diseases, and apparently screaming, raving, breakdowns are an immune response to mind-shattering Master powers.

Piggot and Sorrows concluded, and after hearing their reasons I agreed, that my aura's already Gallant-tested anti-Master properties extended to this effect. Incidentally, that's why they tested my Aura with Gallant. One common thread between the shattering of the Master effect on both victims at nearly the same time was that they'd both met me for the first time that lunch hour, which was enough for them to suspect something. New powers often had unforseen elements, after all.

Both victims remembered just enough to point to the Master: Coil. Neither remembered much else, although Sophia was apparently worse off. Poor girl couldn't remember anything past the middle of 7th grade. Seems however that psycho's power works it hinders and destroys memories formed while under its effects.

And I use the word "psycho" advisedly. Sophia apparently had no idea what they'd done to Taylor while under his influence, and Emma only had a few glimpses and a lot of horrible feelings about it. Since they'd been under his control, Coil was the obvious person to blame for the "harmless schoolyard teasing". Maybe the sole person responsible, maybe just the main driving force, but either way it was highly disturbing. Sophia was apparently actually a very nice, if deeply confused, individual, and I'd always had a hard time believing someone would actually betray their best friend, their sister in all but blood, for no reason. Although that deeply held belief hadn't really come up all that often before what happened to Taylor was revealed. A Master being behind it made much more sense, though it was no less infuriating.

Taylor was stoic, but I leaned over and held her anyway. Danny was already doing that, so good on him.

Discovering Sophia Hess was a member of the Wards would be extremely concerning under normal circumstances, but frankly that little tidbit wasn't anywhere near as bad as the rest of what I was learning. Plus a clever Master/Stranger of Coil's apparent level could conceal horrible behaviour in any number of ways, so it made sense that they didn't know anything about the bullying until I came to them.

I'd made my concerns about Coil's resources and apparent competence heard when his name was brought up for the first time ("What do you know about Coil?"). They seemed to respect my analysis, and it was pretty impressive for my apparent age, but I'd severely underestimated the problem. Coil did have all that, yes, and that was bad enough, but he also had an unknown number of Mastered victims, probably supplemented with willing, conventionally coerced or unknowing servants if he was smart (and we knew he was), and at least one victim (Sophia) who'd had access to classified information. And we had no idea where his base was. Or how to find it. Or anywhere near enough about him in any number of areas.

How did he apply his power? How many people could he have under it at any given time? How quickly could he grab and process victims? Who would he target? Sophia had been a Ward eventually, apparently on probation for a crime it was looking like Coil was really the one to blame for, but she'd been grabbed well before that. It wasn't even clear if she'd had powers when she'd been grabbed.

Either possibility was disturbing, for entirely different reasons. Either Coil could identify new triggers well before anybody else, before they'd actually done anything with their powers, and had grabbed a potentially useful parahuman, or he was enough of a psycho to grab a random girl, give her powers (and nobody would tell me how that worked, but it was apparently awful) and force her to act like an antisocial bully/horrifyingly violent vigilante. Either would be a massive problem, and since we didn't know which was the case, we had to plan for both. Or at least try to. If he was a psycho we'd just have to take him down fast, and, if he had information on new parahumans, the PRT didn't have that information, so they couldn't move to protect people. So we really couldn't plan for either. That being said, all was not lost, the forces of law and order still had some tricks left, and Coil didn't know that we knew about him.

And now for the really important part of the meeting: The Plan. Saying it like that, in the way that I've translated to writing with the expedients of italics, big thick letters, a colon, and capitalization, made it seem more real, more solid, and more like something that would actually work. Dramatics may be insubstantial, but they work.

Most of the Protectorate, and all the Wards except Gallant (and Sophia, presumably), would be showing the flag, making a series of flashy patrols, raids, PR events, and similar attention-grabbing moves. An obvious crackdown, one that would deliberately leave Coil and his operations entirely untouched, not to mention being largely ineffectual and unsustainable in the long term. But they didn't need to actually accomplish anything. It'd draw attention away from the shadow war and keep the big gangs from taking advantage of the chaos to come, and it would look like the heroes were ignoring Coil to all and sundry.

Taylor, who had apparently told the PRT about her powers at some point (I honestly have no idea when that happened), would be tasked to search for Coil's base and other assets. There was a lot more said about the matter than that, but I was honestly just holding her to prevent her breaking down and screaming in all-consuming rage. Not that she didn't deserve a chance to rant, but it wouldn't help the situation.

Gallant and I would be working together, hunting moles, along with Sorrows and Armsmaster. Technically, Piggot had zero authority to make me do anything (though she could order me not to do something, especially if it was illegal), but I trusted her judgement, and so did everybody else. Except maybe Danny and Taylor. I had no idea what he was thinking. Taylor had her usual authority issues, but that was only to be expected. All the others were used to working under her, so that meant they trusted her.

The plan was simple: Sorrows would go into PRT meetings, either normal meetings or ones set up for the purpose, and spin a tale about an out-of-town Master coming into town and how all PRT employees needed to take a short M/S examination or take a leave of absence. After anyone who wouldn't left, and everybody else had been moved to a secure room (or the shutters came down), I'd hit them with my aura at full blast, then she'd explain everything about Coil. That'd normally be very illegal, since they wouldn't give consent or even know it would happen until after it did happen, but the director could authorize it under the auspices of Master Stranger screening, and she had already filled out the paperwork. During all that Gallant, who could apparently see as well as shoot emotions, would check their emotional responses, to detect anything suspicious. Tinkers really can do anything. Armsmaster, who had a Tinkertech lie detector built into his helmet, would question everybody. Hopefully, that'd get all the moles without Coil catching wise. Though I was asked to hit everyone at the meeting just in case. Nobody objected.

I closed my eyes and focused inwards, focusing my fury at Coil's actions and my fear into an all-consuming need to overcome his efforts, to undo all the evil that had been done. Skin changed to brass, glimmering as if under the noonday sun. Pupil and Iris were swept away, to be replaced with the exacting precision of perfect clocks as my eyes opened again. The steady sound of ticking filled the air. Phantom cogwheels churned in perfect order. Gouges and scrapes disappeared in short order. All the aches of being cooped up in a cell waned. Dozens of minor imperfections in the furniture, walls, floor and ceiling were corrected. Then, once again, the aura faded as I released it, and the world was mundane and imperfect once more.

Nobody broke down screaming. Everybody was just a bit astonished at what'd just happened, but apparently nobody was under Coil's power. That was a relief. Unless it always took time before the breakdown happened, regardless of the amount of aura exposure, but I was sure the Director had thought of that. Piggot still had everybody explicitly deny working for or cooperating with Coil in any way shape or form, while Armsmaster's helmet was looking at them. It was pretty obvious why. She even made Armsmaster give his helmet to Miss Militia and make the statement to her. It was fortunate he had an under-helmet mask on, but apparently he was prepared for everything.

I just bet in the original story none of this would be revealed until something ridiculously tragic had happened. Maybe Taylor killed Emma after her friend-turned-unwilling-tormentor was forced to do something even more horrible than the locker, only to learn far too late that none of it was Emma's fault. That seems like the sort of ridiculously horrible thing that would fit into this universe. Maybe Sophia acted like a psycho cause of his influence at the worst possible time and the whole city was destroyed by an Endbringer. Maybe Taylor tried to join the Wards, Sophia was there, and the resulting mutual breakdown ended up with way too many people dead. Maybe some other thrall did something and started a massively destructive gang war that went way out of hand. Maybe all of the above. This was supposed to be a "ridiculously depressing" story, after all. Hopefully I'd stopped all that.

Then Taylor, Danny and I were released, along with Gallant. From the room anyway, I wasn't supposed to leave the building. I'd have to stay here for a while, and there were apparently other things to be discussed. Probably the homeless orphan thing. I just know that's gonna come up again. Not like my parents are gonna come back to life.

 

[Obscura]

Being a homeless orphan with no legal guardian wasn't a situation that could last forever, at least not when you come to the attention of a government agency. Actual attention, I mean, not the sort where you technically fall under their aegis but they don't actually care, even though it's their job to care. If you're just another faceless bit of paperwork you can slip through the cracks pretty easily. I think it's pretty obvious how I know that.

Legally speaking, my situation was a complete Mike-Echo-Sierra-Sierra, pardon my phonetics. At least none of it should splash on me. A child really couldn't be held responsible for being abandoned by child protective services. Scratch that. A child couldn't reasonably be held responsible for being abandoned by child protective services. That wouldn't stop a deeply unreasonable person, of which there were plenty on Earth Bet. Luckily for me the PRT ENE was pretty reasonable.

It shouldn't have surprised me that they'd look into my background and situation, but it did. I have no excuse.


It should have surprised me that Director Piggot decided to talk with me about it herself, but it didn't. She'd been really nice to me. Maybe something struck a chord or something. I did have a lot of deeply unfortunate things in my past. Or it could be that I had a really useful power she wanted on her side. I was also a lot more reasonable than most parahumans, if my research was correct, so that could be it. Or it could just be that I was freaking adorable. Probably that last one. Never underestimate the power of being adorable!

Or overestimate it. That can get you killed really quickly. Endbringers and the real psychos of the parahuman world don't care about adorableness. And now you know. And knowing is a moderately decent starting point for preparing for the battle. Nowhere near halfway though. No, even when you think you know, there is always more to know. You know?

No?

Well, that's too bad.


Anyway, I was adorable, and that might be why Emily Piggot, Regional Director of the Parahuman Response Team East-North-East was being nice to me. As part of her being nice to me, a meeting would be called to sort out my living and legal situation as soon as possible. Unfortunately, under the current situation, everyone involved would have to be vetted first. Not only was I a minor, but I was the only one on hand who could even detect Coil's influence. Letting Coil get any sort of leverage on me wouldn't end well for anybody. Except maybe Coil, I guess, but he doesn't count. I wasn't an invisible, inconsequential orphan girl anymore.

That was why the first meeting to discuss my status would also be the first meeting to be swept by myself, Gallant, and Armsmaster. That'd be tomorrow though. Monday, April the 12th at 9:30. I'd apparently been in M/S screening longer than I'd thought. That's actually deliberate, Emily informed me. It's a little morally iffy, but a lot of the same things that made it easier to manipulate people by non-parahuman means also made it easier to tell if they were being manipulated by parahuman means, and one of those things was messing with their sense of time. It wasn't nice, but it meant they could check faster and more conclusively, so they went through with it pretty often. They did always apologize for the necessity afterwards, and it did beat the alternative, so I wasn't about to hold it against them. Jet lag (sorta) isn't nice, but it sure beats an extra day (at least) in M/S.

Moving on, as both a minor without a legal guardian and an important part of what was to come, I wasn't allowed out of the PRT building til they found some sort of guardian for me. That might or might not take a while, though I was planning on cooperating, which would probably make it go faster. In the meantime, I'd be getting what I needed here. Dinner would probably be a good place to start. Deputy Director Renick handed me a meal ticket, or maybe it was a chit. I'm not really sure what the difference is. I was more used to annual plans or just every-student getting lunch schemes than the sort of one-use thingy-ma-bob he gave me.

The cafeteria was a masterpiece of order and organization. Some might call it dead and lifeless, but I could almost see the complex interplay of schedules and logistics that would need to go into maintaining a 24-hour kitchen and eating area that could handle nearly a thousand people at a time while keeping everything clean, on budget, and healthy. Winslow's cafeteria couldn't even manage one of the three, and they were only open for an hour a day, except for a small side area. The selection was a lot better than Winslow's too, as was the food quality. I mean, it was still a government cafeteria and not a Michelin star restaurant, but compared to Winslow's it might as well have been. Very soon I was in Tortellini heaven.

"Tortellini heaven?" inquired my gallant babysitter, Gallant.

Mine answer:

"It's like regular heaven, but with all the perfect happiness replaced by tortellini, and instead of lasting for all the compounding eternities, you're done in about an hour if you go slow. So it's not all that much like regular heaven at all, come to think of it. Still, it's a lot more fun to say than just 'in front of the pasta area, which is serving tortellini today', don't you think?"

Silly boy didn't have an answer to my brilliance, so I just took the opportunity to reinforce my image of adorable precociousness in his mind with earnest puppy dog eyes. Positive opinion, my power, and intelligence were my only real advantages right now, and I wasn't about to let any of them slip away. Then I went back to tortellini. I know what is best in life, and Conan's psychotically violent little set of life goals wasn't it. I'm pretty sure that it was Conan first, the thing with Genghis Khan was probably apocryphal. I may have had to get the shredded cheddar from the salad area, but I was doing pretty well for dinner. They even had a nice drinks selection.


The actual dinner was more than a little bit awkward. The food was good, but the conversation wasn't. Gallant was probably a better meal companion when he hadn't just learned that a teammate of his had been Mastered for years without him noticing. Into commiting quite a few awful crimes, no less. Meanwhile I kept teetering between the cheerful child I wanted to be and the Mastery-paranoid and overwrought wreck the circumstances were pushing me towards becoming. If he could see my emotions this conversation was probably even worse for him. That's gotta be an awful power. I mean, it's actually useful, but it's got to be awful to have to live with, especially if you're trying to keep a secret identity.

At least there were no notable incidents. That I noticed, anyway. For once, I wished that I was as ignorable as I had been before the merger and acquisition of powers. Alas, twas not to be. Lots of people were looking, gallant Gallant included.

And then it was time to go to bed.

 

[Obscura]

Sophia:

Sophia Hess was a very confused girl. One day she'd been an ordinary schoolgirl with nothing to do with Capes and a perfectly normal fear of violence, and the next she was apparently a borderline psychotic "vigilante" who'd been pressganged into the Wards after she'd almost killed someone. And then she'd almost killed someone else, by way of shoving them into a locker full of rotting tampons, as if that wasn't completely insane. And committed a great many other crimes. Except she hadn't, because that had never happened. Except it did happen. But it wasn't her. Sort of. Shadow Stalker did it. The whole thing was very confusing.


She started again.

Her name was Sophia Hess. That much was clear and simple. Up until 7th grade, she'd been a fairly normal, healthy schoolgirl. As healthy as she could be, anyway, given that she lived in Brockton Bay. And was black and poor. And didn't live nearly far away enough from Empire territory. Though it hadn't been the Empire that got her in the end.

During 7th grade, two life changing, life destroying things had happened. Not that she could remember either of them, she didn't even know which happened first, but she knew they did happen. She'd gotten superpowers somehow and Coil had gotten his claws into her. Somehow. And Coil was a colossal [aurochs]. And that was it for Sophia Hess. Then it was Shadow Stalker's turn.

And Shadow Stalker was a [bear]. That was the plain and simple truth of the matter. As a cape, she'd been "heroic" only by the slimmest of technicalities, and when she was pretending to be Sophia she was worse. Sophia couldn't be her, that was impossible. Definitely.

It was all Coil's fault. Coil was a colossal [aurochs].

And now Sophia was left with…


What, exactly, was she left with?

All her friends had been scared away by Shadow Stalker. Her mom hadn't noticed her being replaced. Her brother hadn't either, and probably hated her. Her little sister was very little, too little to be of much help. And then there were the people Sophia had never met, but whom Shadow Stalker knew. And, even more importantly, who knew Shadow Stalker. And Shadow Stalker was a [bear].

Emma Barnes was apparently in the same boat as Sophia. She wasn't a parahuman, but Coil had replaced her with a [bear] too. They had that much in common. Beyond that, Sophia didn't know a thing about her.

Then there were the people who'd been forced to tolerate Shadow Stalker. The Wards, Miss Militia, a few PRT members. They were obligated to support her, but they didn't know her and she didn't know them. Sophia was technically a Ward, but she'd never meet any of her supposed teammates and they'd spent over a year reluctantly tolerating the [bear] who'd worn her face. That couldn't be a great first impression.

Not that Sophia would have made a great first impression herself, she was just ordinary. Boring. And they were professional heroes. She barely even knew how to activate her Breaker state. But she couldn't have made a worse first impression than the one Shadow Stalker had made for her.

Miss Militia had been nice. Told her she wasn't holding Shadow Stalker's actions against her. Told her they were working on clearing her name, stopping her from paying for Shadow Stalker's crimes. She was very much welcome with her, and that if she ever needed to talk to someone, her door was always open. Metaphorically, a literal open door was a security risk. Sophia thought that was a joke, but she wasn't sure.

Shadow Stalker's own "friends" were awful. They'd helped Shadow Stalker perform more than one vicious bullying campaign, including that awful thing with the locker, and Sophia was sure they'd turn on her if she was any less horrible than Shadow Stalker had been. Best to avoid them entirely.

School would be hard. The PRT was prepared to help her, including a desperately needed transfer, but she'd still lost years of education. And she'd been a middling student at best before all of this happened. About all that stuck with her was her expanded vocabulary. Which contained way more profanity than was reasonable. She didn't know what they were going to do about it. She didn't know what she wanted them to do about it. Either it.

She didn't know what she wanted in general, really. She'd been told that was only natural after what she'd been through. She wouldn't know. Now she was leaving the Master/Stranger screening cell for the first time. The world outside of it was big and scary, and a large part of her wanted to run back in and hide, but she was a big girl (a lot bigger than she was comfortable with, actually), and big girls didn't do that. They faced their problems, even when it was scary. Especially when it was scary, if they were heroes. And even though Sophia wasn't really a hero yet, that's what she'd do to.

Miss Militia took her to the Cafeteria. She'd never seen it before, although it had seen her lots of times. Or, rather, it had seen Shadow Stalker lots of times. That was a weird feeling, although Sophia was going to have to get used to it. Shadow Stalker had been to lots of places.

Getting food from a cafeteria was weird. She hadn't done that before, and Miss Militia had to show her how. She wasn't sure if she'd done it right. Miss Militia said there was no wrong way to do it, but maybe she was just lying to make Sophia feel better. That was something grownups did.

Seeing Jacqueline Colere was also weird. Miss Militia hadn't pointed her out, but who else could it be? There weren't all that many little girls in PRT headquarters, and Vista had a different skin colour. Sophia hadn't heard a lot about the girl, but Miss Militia had let slip that Jacqueline's power was the reason Shadow Stalker was gone and Sophia was back. Even if she desperately wished the whole thing hadn't happened, Sophia was grateful for that. And she sort of liked Jacqueline, even if they hadn't actually met. The girl was genuinely and ridiculously nice, by all accounts, despite all the awful things that had happened to her. Shadow Stalker among them. Sophia felt bad about that, and more than a little bit bad for the girl in general. And Jacqueline was ridiculously cute. Sophia wanted to be friends with her, a lot, and not just because she didn't have any friends of her own.

But what was she gonna say?

"Sorry my super scary [bear] of a Mastered replacement of me beat you up, wanna be friends?"

That wouldn't do at all. This time, Sophia chickened out. She'd have to figure something out. Coil and Shadow Stalker had broken Sophia's life into itty bitty pieces, and now she had no idea how to put it back together.

Coil was a colossal [aurochs]. And Shadow Stalker was a [bear]. And Sophia Hess was a very confused girl.