Orderly (Worm Semi-SI)

[Ferrite]

Honestly, I'm kinda hoping to get an update on her PRT handler pretty soon because she was abducted too (iirc) and it would have been intelligent for Coil to *snip* that particular loose end as soon as he could after the kidnapping. After all, what benefit could he obtain on keeping her breathing once his mercs had control of the situation versus what risks would his plans be under?

Edit: by PRT handler, I mean Agent Stone. I had forgotten her name and had to flip back some chapters to find it.

 

[Obscura]

Honestly, I'm kinda hoping to get an update on her PRT handler pretty soon because she was abducted too (iirc) and it would have been intelligent for Coil to *snip* that particular loose end as soon as he could after the kidnapping. After all, what benefit could he obtain on keeping her breathing once his mercs had control of the situation versus what risks would his plans be under?

Edit: by PRT handler, I mean Agent Stone. I had forgotten her name and had to flip back some chapters to find it.

Click to shrink...

There's some information that can be worked out about her next chapter, and some more direct stuff chapter after that, but nothing terribly exciting yet.

 

[Obscura]

Armsmaster:

"The assault was successful, Director. No casualties."

No casualties on their side, anyway. The opposition hadn't been so fortunate, but that wasn't Colin's problem. There had been no deaths on either side, and no unnecessary or extreme injuries, and that was enough for Colin.

(No deaths during or following the assault, anyway, and nobody that Colin would shed a tear for. Because of, yes, but never for. And Coil had a Kill Order on him, so there wouldn't be any legal difficulties about it. And, of course, Emily Piggot had already been informed about that. Colin had precisely one concern on the matter of Coil's demise, and the psychological repercussions were a matter for him to discuss with Dr. Maina, not the Director.)

(Or, at least, to discuss with Dr. Maina first. He would defer to her judgement on the matter.)

It was, after all, a frankly astonishingly low amount of physical harm done for the number of arrests made, especially considering the caliber and equipment of the criminals.


As for the hostages…

"And the hostages?"

Nothing had happened to them during the assault.

"Extracted without any further harm."

Nothing had happened to them that they hadn't already known about.

"Considering the amount of harm already done, that is not as reassuring as it should be."

Which, unfortunately, wasn't the same as nothing happened to them.

"... No. No it is not."

And that was the other side of it. For all that they were victorious, for all that the battle had gone their way in the end, they had been, ultimately, a reactive force. Retaliating to blows that had already landed.

He didn't think Emily Piggot was just thinking about the hostages when she said that. Colin certainly wasn't.

The hollow "reassurance" of successfully removing a threat that had already done too much harm was not a new feeling for either of them. It wasn't exactly a common experience, certainly less so than the frustration of inconclusive skirmishing or even the the bitterness of endurable, recoverable defeat, but it was by no means rare.

Certainly far more common than a truly clean and clear triumph, no matter what Jackson made Colin say when he was in public or what the young buck who'd just recently ceased to be Wards Captain called himself.

Today, it seemed worse than it had in a very long time.

It was never entirely pleasant, but it usually at least felt like victory. Hard won, bitter, victory, usually, but victory nonetheless. Today it tasted like ashes, and two times over at that.

For the director it was no doubt even harder.


Colin had never known complete defeat. Complete helplessness. He certainly hadn't won every fight he'd gotten into, but he'd always at least made a significant contribution before going down, and he'd never gone down so hard he couldn't get back up.

If not for that fight, then for the next one, or at least the one after that.

It had been close, more than once, and he'd needed a not-insignificant amount of assistance keeping it that way over the years, but though he'd been bested he had never been truly beaten. Not completely.

Emily Piggot had. It was by no means her fault, nobody could have done any better, (without powers, anyway, and the powers in question would have needed to be pretty impressive ones,) but it had happened. Ellisburg and its Master had shown her true defeat.

And she had come awfully close to seeing it again, today.

They all had.

Twice.


Bakuda had done a lot of damage, even going by the absolute lowest, most bare-minimum guess the analysts had, and there was an awfully big margin of error on their estimates. But she hadn't been smart about it, hadn't made any sort of real concentrated effort.

If she'd decided to wipe out law enforcement in the city instead of sadistically picking on civilians, she might have pulled it off. Even if she hadn't, she absolutely could have killed enough heroes to render the rest unable to seriously contest the city.

It wouldn't even have taken that many. The balance was precarious at the best of times and villains outnumbered heroes by a considerable margin. Few of those villains were under Bakuda's command, only Oni Lee was known to have assisted in her rampage, but that was scant comfort when the E88 would be just as happy to blatantly murder civilians if they thought they could get away with it.

Sure the broader PRT and Protectorate would have retaliated, but if PRT headquarters or the Rig had gone down the newcomers could have very easily ended up rebuilding the forces of law and order in the city essentially from scratch, and there was no guarantee they'd succeed before there wasn't anything worthwhile of Brockton Bay left.


And, scant hours after the onslaught was over, they'd almost lost not only Wards, not only children in their care, but also their biggest advantage over Coil. If that snake had realized the risk she'd posed to him, the damage she'd already done to his efforts, Jacqueline Colere would have been dead. The others would have been the same or back under his thrall, quite likely never to break free again.

Colin honestly wasn't sure which would have been worse. He was fairly sure that Sophia, at least, would have preferred the former.

He would have, in her place. A place he'd been disturbingly likely to end up in, only without the breaking free part, if a small child hadn't gotten a particularly fortunate powerset and gone straight to the PRT with it.

Today's events wouldn't have given Coil total victory even if the kid, if Jacqueline, had died, even if Coil had somehow managed to cover his tracks successfully. With the PRT both local and broader, and in particular the M/S investigators, aware of the danger, he'd have a fight on his hands either way. But it was a reminder of just how bad it could have been, and it certainly would have made things a lot harder.

Both in the fight itself and in the aftermath.

And Colin wasn't exactly comfortable with the idea of a child under his care dying even if she had been expendable in a strategic sense. He doubted Emily Piggot was either, even if she was about as bad about showing it as he was.

This was going to be a long and difficult conversation. But, he reminded himself, it wasn't going to be even half as difficult as it easily could have been.

He could handle long and difficult.

He wasn't sure he could have handled the alternative.

 

[Lord Sia]

Great chapter; really hammers home the how's and whys of the perpetual 'ineffectiveness' of the heroes.

And, bitter though it might be, this IS a victory, and one that will compound upon itself.

 

[Blacksheep]

It's gonna be okay, I believe in our heroes!

 

[Obscura]

Of course, Amy wasn't the only person in the room who had reason to be concerned for me.

Even excluding the people I'd brought with me, (or, more accurately, the people who had brought me with them, considering that my contribution to the journey to the hospital consisted pretty much entirely of me walking myself out of the parking lot with a considerable amount of emotional, but no physical, support (yes, I was proud of myself, and no, I'm not ashamed to admit it,)) the vast majority of the ward were either professionally obliged to me for saving a great many of their patients even if they didn't know which patients would have lived or died without me, or were said patients and non-professionally obliged to me for having possibly saved them.

And most of the rest seemed to like me anyway. Sophia had fallen asleep with what I suspected was no small amount of chemical assistance, Alice Stone was still asleep from her own experience with such, (significantly more than my own, apparently, but I was assured she would be fine, although I don't know if she would have been without Amy's assistance) but they both seemed fond enough of me before the van incident and I hoped that wouldn't change because of what happened. Miss Militia smiled prettily enough for someone whose mouth was covered, in what I strongly suspected was meant to be a reassuring and/or teasing manner, and Armsmaster was a pillar of stability I rather needed even if he was busy on the phone in his helmet.

I wasn't quite so sure about the benevolence of the adult New Wave members, particularly Brandish (who hadn't left Glory Girl's bedside to so much as say hello to her other daughter, or even looked at Amy when the other healer stopped to check on her sister), but there weren't all that many of them anyway.

My point being that, even with the room's population cut by at least a quarter (mostly by discharges, with a few transfers to other areas and several ongoing conventional surgeries), I was still understandably popular. And a lot of people had seen me stumble in with a massive burn suffering yet another emotional breakdown (in obviously-borrowed clothing with my hair all messed up and showing signs of having just been washed in a way that didn't make sense if I was going back to work).

By and large, and the superheroes mostly excepted, they didn't know the details, but they knew enough to be concerned.

And they were willing to step up to see that I was alright. Or at least one was, and that opened the way for more.


Esmerelda Gutenberg probably wasn't the best choice to go first. She certainly wasn't who I would have picked, if it had been somebody else who needed comforting.

Admittedly the odds were more than good that I would have just gone and done it myself in that case, but even assuming that wasn't possible for whatever reason she still wouldn't have been my first option. Nothing against her, but she was just coming off having her leg healed and her grip on my identity didn't seem to have improved any.

Still, she did the job well enough. Even if she called me "Alice" at least three times, and even if that was just the times I could actually make out what she was crooning, she was a pretty good hugger until a nurse came and gently ushered her over to where her son, himself looking at least physically fine, was awkwardly waiting.

(It was, in hindsight, somewhat concerning that this "Alice" hadn't shown up, but I would later learn she was out of state attending university. Aside from the myriad stresses that accompanied trying to get a notoriously difficult degree from an institute with a markedly if not particularly unusually patriarchal reputation she was fine. As far as I know. Although I can't imagine finding out what had happened here in Brockton Bay didn't at least sting a bit. Neither the bitey fish nor the serpent had killed her, and that was what I was most worried about, so she was fine for a not particularly good but would have to be sufficient level of fine. Like, well, most of the city and pretty much everybody I knew who was still alive.)

And with that the (metaphorical) floodgates opened.

(The literal floodgates were largely unaffected by the events of that Sunday, aside from some delays to scheduled maintenance. Given where the water levels were at at the time, that was very fortunate indeed. I've only seen the other one in a metaphorical context, but I'd had enough of high water for a thousand lifetimes.)


Sorta. I wasn't crowded or anything, people seemed to realise that that would be a bad idea.

Or somebody was taking steps to make sure I only had to deal with one person at a time. Probably Miss Militia, if that was the case, but if so I never caught her doing it. And I was paying some amount of attention, even if it wasn't up to my usual standards.

Then again, I didn't catch anybody else doing it…


But either way, as soon as any one person was done, or had to go, there was another one ready to take their place. Joline Presscott had been discharged, as had my new "big sis" and a considerable portion of my other newly acquired relatives (and good for them), but a solid majority of those who remained had something to say to reassure me even if they had to ask a nurse to scooch me over to their bedsides.

(I'm not sure if moving beds around on wheels actually constitutes "scooching", but the word was used and I really like the way it sounds. Scooch, scooch, scooch. Snnrk.)

Literally all of the exceptions being asleep, or, in one case, deliberately sedated into something that would (hopefully) resolve into a natural sleep but wasn't one yet. Given their injuries, it didn't seem like a good idea to wake them just for this.

Especially the one who'd needed to be sedated. Apparently "Auntie Mitsuki" had been in serious risk of aggravating her wounds further, to a degree that might significantly impact her recovery time, and that was just what people were actually willing to tell me. I can only imagine the reality was significantly worse, even if I don't know how.

Looking back, it really could have been just about anything. I never asked. It didn't seem wise to pry, and I had more than enough on my plate already without going looking for tragedies that could have been but had been successfully averted without my intervention.

Granted, that hasn't always stopped me, as these reports indicate, but I certainly wasn't feeling up to it at the moment.


It was on the twelfth sitting-down person (not a new relative this time, but honestly does it really matter?) that I was nosebooped by surprise for the second time that day. By the same hand, even, or rather the same paw.

Although the nurse was gentler about pushing Sergeant Fluffles in my face than Mei had managed. As sweet as she was, and however much she just wanted to help, Mei had more enthusiasm than fine motor control, while the nurse was fully capable of letting the moment of contact speak for itself without any extra force.

Even though my face wasn't horrifically messed up this time, I did appreciate it. And the bear.

The bear was nice, and soft, and wonderful, and all those things the world around me sadly failed to be. So I grabbed her and held her tight and didn't let go for a long time.

Which, granted, wasn't all that different from a solid portion of the rest of my behaviour around that time, but can you blame me? It had not been an easy day.

I thanked the nurse, as sweetly as I could manage, and held the good sergeant close, and cried and cried until I could cry no more.

That took a while. I was pretty good at crying by that point in my lives.

I'd had a lot of practice, after all.

 

[Lord Sia]

Ooof, my feels. As always, kudos, now please let go of my heartstrings?

 

[Obscura]

Ooof, my feels. As always, kudos, now please let go of my heartstrings?

Click to shrink...

My apologies, but they seem to have gotten hopelessly tangled up...

 

[Obscura]

Chaos theory, as it is usually explained to the layman, begins with a butterfly flapping its wings. This in turn moves air, which moves other things, and each thing that moves causes more things to move until there's a hurricane happening on the other side of the world.

Of course, that's a deliberately cherrypicked example. Everything causes more things to happen, and everything affects everything else. You know that.

What's more, a lack of action is, in a chaos theory sense, just as meaningful as an action. If something doesn't happen, it doesn't trigger those things, and, in an existing complex system, that's just as chaotic and unpredictable.

Personally speaking, I find myself thinking a lot about what happens when a butterfly doesn't flap its wings.


In an immediate sense, the butterfly stops flying. It lands. Or crashes, or is seized and perhaps devoured midair, because nature is horrifying and the world has no inherent respect for beauty, but usually it lands.

Sometimes, that butterfly lands on a teddy bear's head.

Granted, that's far from the most common outcome. Certainly not as frequent as landing on flowers. There aren't that many teddy bears, there's no real reason for the vast majority of butterflies to want to land on your average teddy bear, and most stuffed animals are stored indoors, where butterflies usually don't go.

Unless, of course, they have a reason to go inside.

Like, say, a Master who can control bugs. That's a pretty good reason.

Or at least a compelling one, in a pretty literal sense of the word. I probably would have been more worried about that if it hadn't been just a bug, but, well, it was just a bug.

Even if it did have pretty wings. Really pretty wings. With really pretty patterns.

Okay I zoned out a bit looking at the pretty wings. They were very nice, and they weren't moving so I could actually see them properly, take my time and really observe.


It's also possible that Panacea hadn't flushed all the drugs out of my system. I mean, some of them pretty much had to be in the brain, right? And I was definitely still traumatised, and probably at least partially in shock, and that alone can be a pretty potent drug

My brain was probably latching onto whatever non-disturbing stuff it could get, too. Not sure if that's really a separate issue from the trauma, but it's worth bringing up.


The easiest way to get ahold of a bug is to wait til it's walking, note where and which way it's walking, then put your hand down so that, if it wants to keep going in a straight line, it has to walk onto you. Preferably, one does this at the edge of a table (or, really, the edge of anything), or when the bug is going down a slope, so that your fingers don't form a wall, don't make it go out of its way to adapt. That won't usually stop a bug, but it does send them turning and going another way often enough that it's worth your time to look for a good spot.

Sergeant Fluffles' head was a good spot, considering the butterfly was right at the very peak of Mount Floof. Though it would have been better if it wasn't a species so obviously heavily adapted to flight as a preferred mode of locomotion.

And, you know, it hadn't been holding its position with a stillness that seemed frankly unnatural. I don't even know if butterflies naturally do that at the best, quietest of times, and this was not that.

Huh. Do they even sleep?

You don't really think about butterflies not moving, do you? You think of them in flight, or at least gracefully landing or taking off. Moving their wings, if nothing else. Maybe sipping and fussing at a flower.

Not holding perfectly still on a teddy bear's head, but that was exactly what this one was doing.


I took the way it stopped doing that and gently walked onto my hand right at the moment I finished putting it out properly as the final proof that this was, in fact, Taylor's butterfly.


Hypothesis confirmed, I lifted the critter up and looked it in the eyes.

Or, rather, the eye spots, but I think I can be excused for making that mistake, considering my condition and just how much larger and more like a human eye they were than its actual eyes. The gesture was more for me than her, really. She had plenty of other eyes to see into mine with, if she wanted to.

Not that I was concerned with that at the time, since I only realised the issue much later. I was concerned with talking.

"Hey, Taylor."

The butterfly didn't say anything, but it did turn to face me. Or my face, I guess, since my hand was cupped in such a way that, so long as it didn't take off, any way it faced was technically facing me.

"Thanks for checking up on me."

The butterfly continued to not say anything, but I took the wing flap it made to be acknowledgement. It hadn't been doing that before, and it only did it once.

It was mostly a context thing. I have enough difficulties with human body language to not even attempt to apply what I'd learned to a creature with ten limbs, four of which had no human equivalent, two antennae, and a proboscis long enough it had to curl up to be transported safely.

"I'm glad you're okay."

By which I actually meant alive, considering I hadn't actually seen Taylor prime, but given everything I had been far from certain of even that much. Even that much was a relief, even if I hadn't realised the weight was there until it wasn't.

I reached out to pet it. On the head, once Taylor made it clear not to touch the wings.

By moving them away and the head forward, if you need to know. I, for one, don't know for sure what that was about, but I suspect it has to do with fragility. Whatever it was, I've kept to that habit ever since. Don't touch the wings.

After only a few, brief pats, those colourful wings started flapping, and soon I had a butterfly hovering over my shoulder. I made an educated guess as to what that meant: "It's okay. You can land there. I don't mind."

And just like that I had a butterfly on my shoulder, facing front, ready to defend me against any threats a butterfly could actually do something meaningful to.


I suppose it could have landed on somebody's eye and blocked their vision, but we both knew that wasn't what it was really about.

Undoubtedly, there were much more dangerous bugs around if I actually needed protection. They just weren't showing themselves, because they were probably kinda scary to most people and because surprise is a tactical advantage.

The butterfly was showing itself because Taylor wanted me to see it, to know it was there. To know she was there.

The gesture was appreciated.


Another of its ilk alit upon the good sergeant. This was a different kind, (Species? Sex? I don't know,) going by wing colour, but I'll admit I don't know what either of them were. This one, too, was greeted with an open hand, and soon pet.

No words were exchanged with this one.

No words needed to be exchanged with this one. And, soon, I had a butterfly on my other shoulder, and a third was touching down.


I lost count somewhere around one hundred and twenty seven, when I heard Taylor yelling something about letting her know about important stuff in what was probably considerably less of "the distance" than it sounded like.

That was nowhere near the last one.

In hindsight, we may have gone just a little overboard.

But I can't bring myself to regret it.

 

[Obscura]

It was sort of nice at the hospital, with so many people trying to make me feel better, but eventually I was just ready for the day to be over.

I mean, technically, it was over, midnight was long gone, but it wasn't over for me, and that was what counted.

It had been a very, very, very long day.

Even just counting objective time, it had been more than eighteen hours since Browbeat had shoved Thomin and the Nightlord in my slumbering face. Sure, I hadn't been strictly awake for all that time, but getting knocked out with a gas grenade by supervillainous henchmen or corrupt police isn't exactly restful.

Quite the opposite, actually, if not as much so as certain other events.

Not a high bar to clear, that.

Point is, I was exhausted.


In several ways, actually, some of which no amount of people trying to comfort me could help with. And I was reaching my limit on how much people trying to comfort me could help with the rest, even if my limit on that was considerably higher than average.

Even being carpeted in protective butterflies could only do so much.


I could sleep in the hospital, if I wanted to. Even if it wasn't strictly necessary, given my lack of any remaining physical injuries, nobody would stop me, not after the day we'd all had. It was honestly tempting, not having to move, to just fall asleep where I was. I could easily do it, just lie back, close my eyes, and fall asleep. The most anybody was going to do about it would be to put a blanket or two over me.

But I knew full well that it wouldn't be a good idea. The room, as relatively quiet as it was at the moment, was still an active hospital ward, one meant for the most severe cases. Most of the people around me had been severely injured in traumatic fashion over the course of the day.

(Or, strictly speaking, the previous day, as it was well past midnight, but it sure didn't feel like the previous day. Half the time, it didn't even feel like the previous hour. Still doesn't, sometimes. Probably all the more so for people who hadn't had any violent incidents since then, but I get the sense that most people in general have a better grasp on time as discrete units than I do.)

Literally everyone around me had at least witnessed something traumatic, such as all those severe injuries. To greatly varying degrees, mind you, but even the lowest end would have been enough to give people nightmares for far too long.

Even if nobody was wheeled into the room tonight, and that was hardly guaranteed, more than one person was going to wake up screaming. It was inevitable. In pain, in terror, or in some wretched and miserable hybrid of both, the details didn't really matter.

I knew myself well enough to know I wouldn't respond well to that. I wouldn't hurt anybody or anything like that, in all likelihood I would freeze up and nobody else would even notice unless I was specifically being watched or my aura flared in response to the perceived threat, but it would cut deep all the same. Browbeat's little cartoon was bad enough, adding compassion, much better reasons for terror, and a broad array of potential flashbacks to the mix would be infinitely worse, and it probably wouldn't have only happened once.

This was already not going to be a good night, sleep-wise. There was no need to make it even worse.

So I got up.


I probably made quite a sight, in grossly oversized nurses uniform and my distinctively branded Armsmaster slippers (the second pair of the night, but otherwise identical to the first), clutching a teddy to my chest, my hair looking like I'd let Mei loose with scissors on it and covered in butterflies along with the rest of me, but nobody said anything about it, and what eyes were upon me held only concern, appreciation, and gratitude.

I wasn't the only one who'd had a very long day, and an awful lot of people could have found theirs quite a bit longer or tragically cut short if not for me. I had to remind myself of that. I'd done good work.

In theory, it wasn't a long walk to get to Armsmaster. He wasn't even an eighth of the way across the room from me, and while it was a pretty big room, it wasn't that big. He was less than a single beep on the test away.

By the time I collapsed into him, it felt like I'd run all twenty-one levels. I was fairly sure that was at least mostly psychosomatic, but knowing that didn't actually help any.

"My apologies, Director, but there seems to be a pressing concern," he said, with a steady slowness and softness that had to be deliberate, "what is wrong, Jacqueline?"

"M'tired. Wanna go home."


Even now, I don't know where, exactly I meant by that. Maybe I meant a little but much-loved apartment in Corner Brook. Maybe I meant a battered and cheap house with mommy in a bad-ish neighbourhood that still didn't come anywhere close to deserving Purity and Lung "visiting" it. Maybe I meant Ward headquarters, with its fancy slumber parties and pizza and video games I was terrible at. Maybe I meant the Hebert home, spider jars and sketchy home maintenance record and all.

Maybe I even meant Winslow, as messed up as the entire situation there was.

Maybe I meant mom, or dad, or Taylor, or Danny, or Alice Stone, or Emily who was presumably on the phone with Armsmaster right then and there.

Maybe I just meant anywhere that was soft and warm and safe where people loved me.

I don't know. I just don't know.

But only one of those options was an actual still-extant physical location that had the kind of security that would undoubtedly be necessary for the next while, so there was that.

"I can take you back to headquarters, Jacqueline."

It was a good enough answer, I decided as he paused.

I was already nodding by the time he started to ask if that was okay.

 

[WallFlower]

Even being carpeted in protective butterflies could only do so much.

Click to shrink...

What I'm getting from this is that Taylor should switch to blanketing Jacqueline with butterflies

 

[Blacksheep]

I am fully aware I am a softie, but Armsmaster with Jacqueline was so sweet and good in this update

 

[Splattered Cloak]

Fourteen is an awkward age. There are times they want to be treated like an adult, and times they want to be pampered like a little kid. Fortunately for Armsmaster, Jacqueline wears her heart on her sleeve, making it easy to see which mode is appropriate, her desires are reasonable, and she responds well to a straightforward approach.

There are adults who would prioritize their PRT director over a child, especially in a crisis, but there are at least six reasons to give her all the attention she wants right now. I wonder which ones weigh most heavily in Colin's decision-making process right now. And whether he's even aware of them.

I feel for her on the home, though. It's telling that Armsmaster thinks of the headquarters first, and only then realizes that she might want to go elsewhere. The ideal place might be the home of a PRT agent already approved for foster care, but not to spend the night before she can get to know them. And the one she knows best is not in a good place to receive visitors right now.

 

[Obscura]

What I'm getting from this is that Taylor should switch to blanketing Jacqueline with butterflies

Click to shrink...

Sadly, Taylor's silk production at the moment is purely Spider-Based. Butterfly-silk beddings are going to take a while.

I am fully aware I am a softie, but Armsmaster with Jacqueline was so sweet and good in this update

Click to shrink...

Indeed he is.

Fourteen is an awkward age. There are times they want to be treated like an adult, and times they want to be pampered like a little kid. Fortunately for Armsmaster, Jacqueline wears her heart on her sleeve, making it easy to see which mode is appropriate, her desires are reasonable, and she responds well to a straightforward approach.

There are adults who would prioritize their PRT director over a child, especially in a crisis, but there are at least six reasons to give her all the attention she wants right now. I wonder which ones weigh most heavily in Colin's decision-making process right now. And whether he's even aware of them.

I feel for her on the home, though. It's telling that Armsmaster thinks of the headquarters first, and only then realizes that she might want to go elsewhere. The ideal place might be the home of a PRT agent already approved for foster care, but not to spend the night before she can get to know them. And the one she knows best is not in a good place to receive visitors right now.

Click to shrink...

It's a difficult problem, one without any easy answers. Alice Stone isn't too badly off medically speaking, but she's not in a good position to raise children. PRT agent is a high-stress, high-time investment job with a high mortality rate, so that's not ideal, and Alice in particular is practically running another full-time job on top of that. Not exactly a good position for Fostering. Most other PRT agents, and all of the ones in Brockton Bay, aren't much better. Same goes for most trustworthy people, and then there's the problem of interest and willingness. Jacqueline probably isn't going to trust CPS, for understandable reasons.

The Heberts aren't exactly in a great space themselves, but there is a reason why Jacqueline was told to stay with them.

 

[Obscura]

"I just need to check on the others before we go, okay Jacqueline?"

That did shake me up a bit. The question was harder than it should have been: it was a perfectly reasonable course of action and probably a firm responsibility of his, but I wasn't at all sure I could make the trip.

Then I remembered how I'd gotten here in the first place, and a solution presented itself.

"... carry me?" I pretty much whined. Something I usually tried to avoid, because entitlement isn't endearing and I didn't like annoying people into doing what I wanted, but in this case it was worth it.

Armsmaster had already proven remarkably able to put up with my nonsense anyway. I appreciated that, but I wasn't afraid to take advantage when I really needed it. Still there was no need to be rude about it.

"...please?" I belatedly tacked on. I don't know if he even heard me, he was moving before I'd so much as got to the first syllable.


Slowly and carefully, probably more so than was strictly necessary, I was swept up and carried over to Sophia's bed, or at least the bed that had Sophia on it. It certainly wasn't her property, and I can't imagine she was all that attached to it. I'm not sure if she'd even noticed she was in it.

She hadn't seemed particularly aware of her surroundings when I'd left the van we'd arrived in, and she definitely wasn't any more alert now. (Or then, rather, but that just doesn't sound right for some reason.) The snoring wasn't particularly loud, but it was still a dead giveaway.

Probably for the best. I can't imagine being awake and fully aware of the injuries she'd had would have been particularly pleasant, and I doubt most people could have resisted moving and aggravating things further under those circumstances.

I certainly couldn't have.

Those injuries were gone now, swept away by the grace of Panacea, but I still couldn't help but smile a little at the way she seemed to be sleeping peacefully.

She deserved it.


Amy was talking. That I noticed that before I noticed Amy was present I'm gonna blame on distraction and exhaustion, though I've done that sort of thing enough that the exhaustion was probably at most an aggravating factor.

She wasn't talking to me, so it was probably alright. Even if she did raise an eyebrow at me when I startled and looked at her.

I'm not sure if that was because of the startling, or because I was being princess carried. Doesn't really make a difference either way. I just tilted my head in a way that I hoped conveyed adorability instead of unnatural inhumanity and accepted the headpat that came in response to it. Full acceptance, leaning into it and closing my eyes included.

I didn't bother opening them again. Didn't seem worth the effort.

I do have to admit it was pretty impressive how she just kept delivering her report without acknowledging what she was doing. Armsmaster deadpanning through the whole thing should have been just as much so, but I wasn't looking at him and it just kinda seemed more expected of him anyway.

Maybe not by, like, anybody else, but certainly to me.


I'll admit, I wasn't paying the best attention to the report itself. Mostly, I focused on the tone. If there were any problems, that would shift.

I and my fellow kidnappees were physically fine and dandy (aside from stress and exhaustion), the other two were sleeping mostly naturally, it was safe to move us, stuff like that.

None of it was any sort of surprise. I had a lot of faith in Amy's ability to deal with physical harm, and it isn't exactly hard to move sleeping people safely if they aren't injured, at least when you have specialised beds and the tools and people for the job.

Probably easier to avoid waking them up when it's mostly naturally, too.

The surprising part came when she said all three of our Corona Pollentias seemed well.

I had not been aware there were three to be concerned with.

(Or, until relatively recently, what a Corona Pollentia was or that they so much as existed, but An Introduction to Parahuman Theory had a brief explanation in its introduction, and I wasn't afraid of a bit of in-store reading. Wasn't that what book introductions were for?)

Neither had Armsmaster.

Amy had not been aware of that.


PRT members, apparently, were required to share that with their superiors and, if applicable, their local Protectorate Leader, and Stone had had a brain scan "last year". She had not had any indicator of power potential in her normal medical file, and would not have, as that was considered private, but Amy had been unaware that the version the PRT had didn't show any such thing either. Armsmaster had apparently checked. I assume he used his visor.

Which meant this was new, and probably news to her. And had some fairly interesting implications for studying the nature of pollentias and powers, as this was apparently one of the narrower windows between "definitely didn't have a pollentia" to "definitely had a pollentia" on record.


Now, this didn't mean Alice Stone was a cape. Or even a parahuman.

There were no signs of her having Triggered, and no Gemma could be found. (In Stone, that is. Sophia's was as normal as any Gemma was, and mine was kinda weird in the same way it had apparently been before.) Unless Stone's hypothetical Corona Gemma was somehow concealed to an extraordinary (though not quite impossible) degree, and in hindsight I know that that wasn't the case, she simply had the potential to Trigger. Something to make note of, to be sure, but most recorded potential capes never Triggered at all, never had that soul-crushing moment of breakdown into breakthrough.

(And usually into more breakdown, but that's as maybe.)

It also was something I probably shouldn't have known about, but I didn't exactly look like I was listening and understanding, and for that part they talked almost as quietly as they should have.

Which, for keeping it from me, was a mistake. That was what tipped me off that I should pay closer attention. But it probably helped with everybody else.

At the very least, nobody had any audible reactions to finding out, but that wasn't an absolute guarantee. I didn't either. It probably helped that I didn't really care, but there was no reason to assume that an accidental eavesdropper would either, and a purposeful one would probably have enough self-control to avoid giving the game away like that.

But, well, Amy, and more pertinently Armsmaster were probably better qualified to check for eavesdroppers than I was, especially right at the moment. They were certainly more interested.

Mostly, I was interested in getting to bed.

Spoiler: Author's Note / Coronas explanation

Author's Note: No, Alice Stone isn't a secret cape. Yes, this is setting up for something. No, the emphasis on that something isn't going to be on Alice Stone being an OP super impressive superhero and taking down *insert villain here* with her awesome superpowers.

For those unaware, the Coronas (named well before the pandemic), are the extra parts of the brain Shards link to their hosts with, and their presence is the surest sign of a Parahuman or potential Parahuman. The Corona Pollentia appears when a Shard takes interest in a potential host, and if you have one you can trigger if you break down badly enough, which gives you a Corona Gemma, powers, and the status of an official Parahuman. Pollentias are relatively predictable in their appearance, but pretty much every Gemma is weird and different to some degree. Jacqueline's is above average in the amount of weirdness, but not extraordinarily so. She's not even the weirdest among the Wards, actually.

There's probably a substantial sampling bias in measurements of how often people with just the Pollentia trigger, because inactive Coronas can only be detected via a brain scan or a very small number of powers, and the portion of the population that needs and can access brain scans is probably different demographically and experientially from the population as a whole and the population that experiences events stressful enough to induce triggers in particular, but that's not terribly important to this story.

 

[Blacksheep]

I am kinda hoping that its' Jacqueline's Shard's friend that's looking at Stone. Don't want her to break down of course, but I think it would be cool

 

[Obscura]

"Uhh, boss?"

"Yes, Assault?"

"Why are you princess-carrying the kid?"

"She's tired."

Tired was putting it nicely, or I would have at least considered responding to the sound of Assault's skepticism. As it was, I'd barely managed to murmur appreciatively to Amy's quietly conveyed well-wishes at our departure, and those were a lot nicer, actually addressed to me, and coming from somebody I actually liked.

Not that I thought Assault was a horrible person all-round, or that I didn't appreciate his efforts as a hero, but the fact that he was probably doing a lot more good than harm didn't mean I wanted to engage with him.

Especially not when I was already "tired" and stressed out.

Fortunately, Assault didn't have anything more to say.


Well, he probably had a lot more to say, knowing him, but he didn't say it, so that was fine. He was too loud anyway. If I had to guess I'd say Armsmaster shut him up with body language, but he could have just been so confused he couldn't work out which of his undoubtedly many potential responses he wanted to actualize.

Given the level of faith he'd seemed to have in his boss's childcare abilities, I suppose seeing something like this was probably a bit of a shock, but I can't say I found myself particularly sympathetic.

Or, like, particularly inclined towards considering the issue at all, beyond that he had finally shut his noise-hole.

Maybe that was uncharitable of me, but I'd had quite the day and I felt I could be uncharitable if I wanted to. It wasn't like I was hurting anybody.

I was just being grumpy and tired and probably very adorable in a helpless innocent sort of way, and I doubt anybody else even noticed.

Assault's vocal, well, assault, was over, and that was what counted.


Soon we were joined by several more sets of quiet footsteps and passed through the gentle whoosh of a sliding door. (Though the sound was noticeably less gentle than it should have been. Poor maintenance and me just being oversensitive hearing-wise at the moment seem about equally plausible as explanations for that, though there's no reason it couldn't have been both.)

And we stepped outside.

It was cold outside. Even colder than it had been when we'd left Coil's underground torture-dungeon. And this time the cold didn't represent such a stark and relieving contrast from my previous location.

Before I knew it, I was shivering and trying to curl up against the chill. I wasn't dressed for this weather, the nurse uniform having more than enough fabric but in ways that didn't actually help, and this time it had my full attention.

The arms tightening just a little around me were a comfort, but scant shield against the cold. Undoubtedly, Armsmaster's armour had some means of temperature control on the inside, considering he wore it not only in all weather but into burning buildings and while fighting dragons, but on the outside it was at best like a blanket, and it only covered what it covered.

Which was a lot, don't get me wrong, Armsmaster was much bigger than I was, but it still left quite a bit exposed.

Or, technically speaking, covered in butterflies as well as the inadequate cloth, but they provided less insulation than you might think. There were a lot of them, but they were pretty small except for the wings, and said wings needed a lot of space but didn't do much for my thermoregulation.

Or theirs, probably, now that I think about it. I'm guessing there's a reason why you usually don't see butterflies out at night. Maybe it's something to do with needing light to see, but large flat surfaces maximising surface areas strikes me as an excellent way to make oneself more sensitive to air temperature.


I heard Taylor whispering "it's okay, it's okay" in my ears right as I felt a silk covered hand running through my hair. She didn't sound like she believed it, it was definitely just a platitude she'd picked up (quite possibly from me), and I don't think she was actually addressing the immediate issue, but I appreciated the effort.

Taylor was nice.

I needed nice people in my life.

To a probably unhealthy degree, really, particularly when so many of the ones I had were in remarkably high-mortality careers.

But I wasn't going to be letting go of any remotely tenable coping methods for the next while, and denying myself basic human affection wasn't ever going to be a good idea either, so I leaned into it.

Or whatever it's called when it's just the head moving.

The hand didn't leave, and that, too, was good.


It was probably extremely awkward for Taylor and Armsmaster though. Like, even the basic setup was probably uncomfortably close, and I was fairly sure Taylor was mad at him for not including her in the rescue and still at least a little starstruck at the same time.

(Hero-worship, as a term, just didn't feel right when either, let alone both, of the people involved had literally had "hero" as their common-parlance job description. Or even when anybody literally has "hero" as their job description. I mean, it doesn't seem to stop people, so maybe it's just my unique perspective tinting things, but the old Jacqueline didn't use the term either. The behaviour, yes, at least before the fall of Newfoundland, but not the term. So I don't know.)

And Taylor wasn't one to enter difficult social situations for her own sake, most of the time…

That she was willing to do so for mine said something.

I tried to convey my appreciation. I don't think I was all that comprehensible about it, but she seemed to get the message anyway. At least, I hope that was what the nose-boop meant.

I know it wasn't Sergeant Fluffles. I still had her held tight.


We got in the van. I was placed in a seat, but I managed to open my eyes and put my seatbelt on by myself.

On the second try, even, and only because I had the stick-outy part backwards relative to the buckle. Taylor took three.

The beds for Alice Stone and Sophia took up a lot of room, and there was a small amount of fuss about getting them secure, but it didn't take too long. We had Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Assault, and Battery on board after all, and they all seemed to know what they were doing.

All of them managed to get the seatbelt on their first tries.

We drove off into the night.

 

[Ferrite]

Looks like the night is finally winding down so everyone will hopefully be able to breathe. The Big Bad is in the dirt and the team is heading back to base. However, I can't remember if the Travelers are in town or on even on their way to town already so I don't really expect for the calmness will continue.

 

[Obscura]

Looks like the night is finally winding down so everyone will hopefully be able to breathe. The Big Bad is in the dirt and the team is heading back to base. However, I can't remember if the Travelers are in town or on even on their way to town already so I don't really expect for the calmness will continue.

Click to shrink...

The Travellers aren't in town yet, this is still days before the start of Bakuda's canon rampage. At this point, it's entirely possible that Coil never even started negotiations with Accord to have them sent over. They aren't showing up without a good reason, and I'm not so eager to see them as to go out my way to give them one. I won't say it's impossible that they'll show up in Orderly, but it's not likely.

 

[nicoo]

I just binge-read all of Orderly so far, and gosh I hope things get better, or at least less horrifying, for Jacquy now.
She's an absolute cinnamon roll and definitely does not deserve Earth Bet's bullshit... not that much of anyone does TBH :3

 

[Obscura]

I just binge-read all of Orderly so far, and gosh I hope things get better, or at least less horrifying, for Jacquy now.
She's an absolute cinnamon roll and definitely does not deserve Earth Bet's bullshit... not that much of anyone does TBH :3

Click to shrink...

On the one hand, bad things happening to people who don't deserve it for no good reason and people having to deal with it is one of the central themes of Orderly, but on the other hand so is them actually stepping up and dealing with it as best they can, and it actually helping. We are now officially in a period of the latter.

 

[nicoo]

On the one hand, bad things happening to people who don't deserve it for no good reason and people having to deal with it is one of the central themes of Orderly

Click to shrink...

I realised, but thanks for comfirming things do get better. 💜

P.S. To be clear, my first message was pure emotional reaction, and not analysis/critique of Orderly.
It is a really cool story IMO, and part of why it gripped me is that those central themes being so strong (and relatable, actual-Earth is full of that too)
Anyhow, thanks a bunch for writing it, and looking forward to whatever comes next

 

[Obscura]

I'm fairly sure I fell asleep in the van, because I don't remember much of anything about the trip, just jolting to awareness when we came to a stop and Assault was too loud. Something about "home, sweet home," it sounded like, but the tone seemed too bitter for that.

I didn't exactly feel all that rested, but with so short a sleep I doubt I would have even if sudden awakenings were good for that.

The next one would be better, I promised myself. I just had to get out of the vehicle, make my way to my room, change into my trooper pyjamas, brush my teeth, and collapse into bed.

I could handle that.

And I would undoubtedly be watched (or at least listened for, when I was in the bathroom) every step of the way in case I couldn't. After the day we'd all had, it was pretty much inevitable. Nothing short of death could have stopped it.

Although death had been a very real possibility. Mine, theirs, maybe both. I was just trying not to think about that.

They probably were too. I doubted they were succeeding. I certainly wasn't.

I forced myself to unbuckle my seatbelt.

I could do this.


I had no idea how to get from the garage to my room. Not directly, anyway, and I wasn't particularly keen on the idea of going to the meeting rooms then to Stone's office as a wayfinding measure. That would have involved crossing a solid chunk of the building, and there were a lot of stairs or elevators along the way, most of them cancelling out to leave me one or two floors below where I started after climbing at least half the way to the top.

Easier to wait for somebody else to take the lead.

More in keeping with my general persona, too, although I wasn't really putting too much attention to that. I was tired, and after what I'd said to Purity it was definitely going to need some revising anyway.

Something to deal with in the morning.


Or, more likely, the afternoon. I had every intention of sleeping in. I'd earned it, after all, and getting enough sleep is important, especially when you're fourteen. Given the day I'd had, and how late it already was, even the adult eight hours was probably going to take me past noon, and I had no intention of stopping there.

Sleeping through all of what was left of Monday the nineteenth of April, two thousand eleven wasn't likely, at least without outside intervention, but it honestly didn't seem like a bad idea.

That was the exhaustion talking, I knew. There were probably some very good reasons why I shouldn't do that. That I couldn't actually think of any was more indicative of my state of mind than the facts of the situation.

Eh, that, too, was something to deal with after I'd gotten at least some sleep.

Or just blow off entirely. It wasn't like the matter wouldn't be settled by then. One way or the other.

​

It wasn't a long trip, from the garage to Wards HQ, especially since we'd parked right by the appropriate door. Which probably wasn't a coincidence, but it was appreciated, since with some of the other available spaces we would have done more walking across the garage than from it.

Most of the travel time was waiting for the elevator, waiting in the elevator, and waiting out the thirty second alarm period at the entrance. I was able to lean on people during those times, so it was alright.


Most of said people were gone now. Battery and the still sleeping Stone had taken a different elevator upwards, presumably heading up to Stone's quarters or one of the medical areas, and Assault hadn't even made it that far before he'd disappeared without a word.

Or maybe I just hadn't been paying attention.

Armsmaster had taken us all the way, and he'd specifically made sure we made it safely inside, but he, too, had to depart. He was apologetic about it, but he had a lot of work to do.

Considering that he was the sole adult Tinker available in the aftermath of an absolutely massive Tinkertech assault, the superhero in chief for the area assaulted, one of the people most responsible for the wellbeing of two minors who had been kidnapped, and the man who'd led the assault on a supervillain base to rescue those two and a fellow law-enforcement agent from a closely related agency, all on top of his already busy schedule and probably some more stuff I don't even know about, that was reasonable.

And even if I hadn't been aware of at least most of what I just laid out, he was so nice about it that I couldn't be mad.

Disappointed, yes, faintly, but not mad.

C'est la vie. It's not even a cape thing, or even an Earth Bet thing. Just an unfortunate fact of life. Crises happen, and they eat time regardless of how needed those moments are, or who we'd rather be spending them with.


Why was my door open? I was sure I'd closed it.

Sergeant Fluffles, right. Sophia had brought her to me, and Sergeant Fluffles had been on my dresser. She must have forgotten to close it on her way out. I could hardly blame her, considering that the city was all but literally on fire at the time, and I'm not entirely sure about that "but".

She certainly wouldn't have been.

It was fine.

Miss Militia was putting Sophia to bed, still in her hospital clothes and probably cold but otherwise seemingly untouched. Taylor was with me, patiently waiting for me to get through whatever it was that had me spacing out in front of my own open door. Sergeant Fluffles was clutched tight to my chest.

I put her on the bed and gestured Taylor inside.

On a night like this, I knew it would be better to have someone I trusted close by. I even managed to say as much, and she said she understood.

Given the state of my diction and volume, that was impressive, but she was a Thinker, after all.

(Yes, there was a better explanation. No, I didn't think of it at the time.)


Changing and brushing my teeth went quickly and easily, at least compared to pretty much the entire rest of the day. The gifted pyjamas filled me with strength and the taste of toothpaste was reassuring on the tongue it wasn't supposed to be on before I backed out of the bathroom and collapsed onto a bed that felt strongly like mine, for all that I'd never actually used it.

Careful, awkward hands placed a bear in my hands and a blanket over my body, and I fell asleep to the sound of Taylor's best attempt at a lullaby.

I have no idea what, exactly, she was singing, and it still somehow managed to be noticeably off-key, but that wasn't the important thing.

 

[Obscura]

Adrian Jackson's job was by no means an easy one, most of the time. Quite apart from the logistical and scheduling difficulties of being the PR manager-in-chief for both an entire rather large division of a police force and more than a dozen celebrities, which were considerable, capes were as difficult to work with as the proverbial children and animals.

And more than half of his capes were children, on top of the usual cape stuff.

Suffice it to say that most of the personalities he managed were difficult to work with. Some more so than others, and with as many differences as similarities in the "challenges" they created, but all but one of his parahuman charges were difficult.

And then there was Jacqueline Colere.

Jacqueline Colere was, simply put, a PR dream.


It wasn't that she was less work than the others. In fact, given her many projects, she was only exceeded in the amount of time Adrian spent on her per week by Assault and Clockblocker. It also wasn't that she wasn't cape-level eccentric, although she was better about that than most of the rest. It was that working with her was rewarding.

She not only understood the importance of the art, she was downright enthusiastic about it, and she had the talent to match, hard-won though she indicated it was. Unlike some, she actually listened to and understood what Adrian and other PR people told her, and she both took advice and learned from it. Fast.

Case in point, her new music video.


The song, like many other songs he'd heard her humming or singing quietly, was one he'd never heard before, and could find no traces of having ever existed anywhere else. Adrian wasn't sure if Colere was a songwriting genius or if she "just" had an incredible memory for obscure songs that had never made it out of Newfoundland before Leviathan happened, but either way she had a truly astonishing array of novel yet surprisingly compelling tunes.

It had been just over a week since the internet had convinced her making an official recording of one of her songs was a good idea, less than two since a very much unofficial recording of her singing a lullaby nobody else seemed to know to an entire ward of newborn babies had caught fire online.

She'd gotten a professional recording studio who's head's wife she'd cured of lung cancer to help her in less than forty minutes. Twenty-four nonconsecutive hours of makeup, practice, recording, and tutoring later, plus a considerable amount of editing, setup, and hype work, Adrian Jackson was ready to put both it and a digital single of the song up for sale, for whatever price anybody wanted to pay, all proceeds to charity.

Colere's idea, both parts, although the latter wasn't exactly a new one.

And the video was actually good. Really good, for her age and level of experience. The novelty and quality of the song itself was a big part of it, and that it was a superhero singing it wasn't going to hurt anything sales-wise, but it wouldn't have shamed many a professional band.

This was going to be so much good PR. Adrian wasn't usually one to celebrate, but he let the video play anyway.

He liked the song, sue him. He'd rarely heard anything with so much heart. It was short, much shorter than the standard, and it seemed a little too cut down, but it felt like a promise, like an oath.


"Ah!"

Adrian knew the startle was fake. He was the one who'd taught her how to do it, after all. It tugged on his heartstrings none the less.

So cute.

"Hello Internet! A lot of you have been curious about my songs, and I thought it would be nice if I shared one of them with you!"

"... if that's okay with you, that is?"

A dozen voices assured the girl that it was, in fact, okay. Adrian's was one of them. Both in the video, and, to his secret shame, in reality as well.

She was just too good at the puppy dog eyes.

"Okay! So this one's about my work, and how much it means to me. Hope you like it!"

Oh, they would. This was gold.


Iiii, just want to tell you how I'm feeling

I've got to make you, understand


It was amazing. All of Jacqueline's songs were, even the ones that dealt with things no fourteen year old should know, but this one especially. There was just so much love in it, so much care for the world, for the people she protected.


I'm never gonna Give. You. Up.

Never gonna Let. You. Down.

Never gonna step aside and desert you


It was a promise, was an oath. A vow to the world, to the people.


I'm never gonna Make. You. Cry.

Never gonna saaay goodbye

Never gonna tell a la-aie and huurt you


Their protectors were there. She was there. And she cared.


And if you ask me what I'm feeling

Don't tell me you're too blind to see


Even to Adrian Jackson's old, jaded soul, it was enough to draw a tear.


Well, I'll make you understand

I'm never gonna Give. You. Up.

Never gonna Let. You. Down.

Never gonna step aside and desert you

I'm never gonna Make. You. Cry.

Never gonna saay goodbye

Never gonna tell a la-aie and huurt you


Adrian legitimately didn't notice the girl of the hour bouncing into the room in tune with the beat.


I'm never gonna Give. You. Up.

Never gonna Let. You. Down.

Never gonna step aside and desert you!

I'm never gonna Make. You. Cry.

Never gonna saaay goodbye

Never gonna tell a lah-aieeee and hurt you


It was over all too soon, and the Jacqueline on screen was smiling at the camera.

"I mean it, you know. I'm never going to give up on you guys. Ever. I promise. Not as long as this world, this society, needs me."

The final stroke of the masterpiece.


The Jacqueline in Adrian's office nodded and cleared her throat. Adrian didn't quite fall out of his chair in shock, but it was a close-run thing.

Jacqueline, graciously, pretended not to notice.

"It's up, then?"

"... Yes. Yes it is."

It wasn't. But a click fixed that quickly enough that she probably wouldn't find out about the lie.

Not that she'd hold it against him, she was too nice for that, but he didn't want to hurt her feelings. She didn't even mean for her disappointed looks to bruise, but that only made it worse.

He wasn't prepared for her to burst into laughter.

It took almost a quarter of an hour for her to stop, and even then it kept coming back in fits and spurts until she finally left.

There was a considerable amount of giggling coming from the hallway until she was too far away to be heard.

Adrian didn't think his forgetfulness was that funny.

Maybe the trauma was getting to her more than he'd realized…

 

[Dumberfluff]

I hate you. Also Never Gonna Give You Up was released in 1987, so it probably still exists on Earth Bet. Maybe not though. (It was pretty funny though, I audibly groaned when I got to the lyrics.)