dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's also testing whether you're intimidated by large equations, for that matter.
Orderly (Worm Semi-SI)
- Thread starter Obscura
- Start date
- Superhero
Just for fun, solving this.
((2x3-50x) ÷ (5x2-30x+25)) ((5x-5x2) ÷ (x3+5x2))
--reorganize so the top and bottom are together
((2x3-50x) (5x-5x2) / (5x2-30x+25) * (x3+5x2))
--take x out of two top multipliers, x squared from a divisor, and 5 out of a divisor and dividend
(x (2x2 -50) x 5(1-x) / 5(x-1)(x-5) x2 (x+5)
--remove the fives and x's from both sides. split 2x squared -50 into (2x-10)*(x+5)
( (2x -10)(x+5) -(x - 1) / (x-1) (x-5) (x+5))
--take out x+5 and x-1 from both sides.
2(x-5)/(x-5)
--take out x-5 from both sides
2
--reorganize so the top and bottom are together
((2x3-50x) (5x-5x2) / (5x2-30x+25) * (x3+5x2))
--take x out of two top multipliers, x squared from a divisor, and 5 out of a divisor and dividend
(
--remove the fives and x's from both sides. split 2x squared -50 into (2x-10)*(x+5)
( (2x -10)
--
2
--
2
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- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ultimately, this isn't meant to be too hard, if you're an adult with a firm grasp of the entirety of high-school math. I got it from a grade 11 textbook, albeit an AP one, but I don't think it's anything you're not supposed to know by the end of high-school.
Taylor, however, is in Grade 10 and in terms of her actual understanding she's a fairly mediocre student with a less-than-mediocre teacher. It's impressive that she managed that much under the circumstances, but it's not gonna let her solve math problems that much above what she's actually been taught. She's done pretty well for her age and grade level, which is again tenth grade, but there are limits on what she can reasonably be expected to accomplish.
It's just that Jacqueline is ignoring those limits with seemingly complete ease and that makes it feel like pushing past them is something Taylor should be able to do.
Pretty sure (it's been a while) polynomials were covered in Algebra 1, but I was in algebra 2 before I needed to actually factor polynomials like turning (5x2-30x+25) into 5*(x-1)(x-5), but that wasn't AP yet--so... yep. Most states don't require Algebra 2 in the real world, much less the wrecked USA of Worm, soo... expected but not required in most states to know it as part of graduating high school. Of course, some high schools go up to Calc 3, and Arcadia is the good school for the area. So they'd definitely throw that kind of question into placements. It checks out! 
She should be able to get part of the way there, though, once she stops panicking. That is, taking out the common factors of the expressions like 2,5, x and x squared, then simplifying where they cancel out. Partial credit for showing your work is a thing she'd know about, given her mother and getting good grades in a decent school up through middle school.
She should be able to get part of the way there, though, once she stops panicking. That is, taking out the common factors of the expressions like 2,5, x and x squared, then simplifying where they cancel out. Partial credit for showing your work is a thing she'd know about, given her mother and getting good grades in a decent school up through middle school.
40-7 Inferiority
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The "Mathematics Standard Assessment", as the words on the front of the test proclaimed it, was no disappointment.
Admittedly, the logistics of a single examination starting with two plus two and ending with pushing my modest grasp of calculus to the limit boggled the mind somewhat, especially since it was nominally for a high school, but that was a minor issue. I was at where I should be at for my age by the end of the first page, and at my grade level by the end of the second. By the end of the third sheet I needed to write out the process for more than just basic caution and "show your work" reasons, by the end of the seventh I was legitimately being challenged, and by the end of the tenth and final page I had, as stated, been pushed to the limits of my understanding.
It was nice. Certainly not an academic experience I could have had at Winslow. Pushing me while still being ultimately doable. I wasn't entirely sure about every single answer, but after I finished thoroughly checking them over (both for actual mistakes and for just plain illegible handwriting) I was confident in the vast majority. Just the way it should be. And, as expected, I wouldn't have to worry about completing too little.
In hindsight, I probably should have instead considered the pitfalls of completing too much.
First of all, it would definitely raise questions. It was, after all, a lot more than anybody would have expected of the old Jacqueline. More, in fact, than she/I could have pulled off, and by a considerable margin at that. I have no doubt that that version of Jacqueline Colere would have done well, for her age and grade level, but the old me wouldn't have finished the whole exam. She was a straight A student even after skipping a grade, but she couldn't apply concepts she'd never actually learned.
Of course, that version of me would never have gotten the chance to take Arcadia's placement assessments in the first place. Even as this more proactive version of me, with my broader skillset and knowledge, I don't think I could have pulled it off without having superpowers and thus a reason for powerful organisations to have a vested interest in my wellbeing and disposition towards them. I couldn't have paid the tuition even if I somehow managed to get a transfer request through Winslow's office. The old Jacqueline Colere definitely couldn't have.
If that hypothetical version of Jacqueline Colere, the one I would never be, was even still alive to try. She was "destined to perish in the course of events", after all. I knew I'd probably never know what would have happened, but it didn't stop me wondering.
At least until the timer I hadn't noticed went off and announced that our ninety minutes were up. That was fine, the checks past the fourth go through were mostly just to be extra safe and kill time, since I knew Taylor would want the full hour and a half. Whether or not she actually needed it, she would probably believe she did. And even if she didn't believe she needed it, she would take it just to be safe and assuage her doubts.
It sucks feeling like you're slower than everybody else, I know. Maths was not a field I'd experienced that in, but I couldn't imagine it was any different. One student finishing ahead of Taylor in a normal class probably wouldn't be that bad, but there were only two of us, and I was almost two years younger than her.
I didn't want her to feel intellectually inferior or inadequate in any way.
Sadly, when I took my eyes off the exam she clearly did. Or at least she was more than slightly dejected and down on herself. I couldn't see any other reason why that might be, and the way she glanced over with barely-concealed frustration pretty much confirmed it.
That she immediately looked away guiltily when I caught her told me I was involved. Maybe I hadn't been as sneaky about finishing quickly as I thought.
Note to self: when trying to keep information from Thinkers, for their own good or otherwise, remember that they're Thinkers. They have ways of getting information that you don't, and it's important to keep those ways in mind if you want to hide a secret from them.
Not that it would have helped much. I suppose I could have done my checking as I went, and maybe delayed things a little, but I didn't have a firm enough grip on how much time I had to spare for that to be practical, probably wouldn't have even if I'd noticed the timer, and it wouldn't have done anything to conceal the fact that I did finish.
I suppose I could have sandbagged it. Done just enough to be smart for my age but still behind Taylor. I knew roughly where she'd end up running out of steam, after all. It probably would have led to fewer raised eyebrows when the assessments were graded. I might even have been able to keep it to what the Jacqueline of old could have managed.
In the end, I didn't feel the need to boast about how smart I was or rub it in people's faces. I'd actually been quite careful to keep it on the down low at Winslow. Both to avoid attention in general and because there was a very real possibility of somebody getting dangerously mad about being outdone by somebody like me. (Younger, a girl, or of my skin colour, most likely, though my accent, class, and/or foreign refugee status were also possibilities. The rest were things to be discreet in their own right, and if they were uncovered I probably had bigger problems.)
But there's a difference between keeping quiet about something, especially something nobody else cares to look into and that isn't any of their business anyway, and actively maintaining a lie about it. It would come up, every single maths class at a minimum, it would be miserable every time it did, stifling in too-simple equations and guilt-inducing both at once, and eventually I would screw up the lie somehow. And then it'd be worse than if I'd just been honest in the first place. Cause more problems.
And this was already problematic enough.
Admittedly, the logistics of a single examination starting with two plus two and ending with pushing my modest grasp of calculus to the limit boggled the mind somewhat, especially since it was nominally for a high school, but that was a minor issue. I was at where I should be at for my age by the end of the first page, and at my grade level by the end of the second. By the end of the third sheet I needed to write out the process for more than just basic caution and "show your work" reasons, by the end of the seventh I was legitimately being challenged, and by the end of the tenth and final page I had, as stated, been pushed to the limits of my understanding.
It was nice. Certainly not an academic experience I could have had at Winslow. Pushing me while still being ultimately doable. I wasn't entirely sure about every single answer, but after I finished thoroughly checking them over (both for actual mistakes and for just plain illegible handwriting) I was confident in the vast majority. Just the way it should be. And, as expected, I wouldn't have to worry about completing too little.
In hindsight, I probably should have instead considered the pitfalls of completing too much.
First of all, it would definitely raise questions. It was, after all, a lot more than anybody would have expected of the old Jacqueline. More, in fact, than she/I could have pulled off, and by a considerable margin at that. I have no doubt that that version of Jacqueline Colere would have done well, for her age and grade level, but the old me wouldn't have finished the whole exam. She was a straight A student even after skipping a grade, but she couldn't apply concepts she'd never actually learned.
Of course, that version of me would never have gotten the chance to take Arcadia's placement assessments in the first place. Even as this more proactive version of me, with my broader skillset and knowledge, I don't think I could have pulled it off without having superpowers and thus a reason for powerful organisations to have a vested interest in my wellbeing and disposition towards them. I couldn't have paid the tuition even if I somehow managed to get a transfer request through Winslow's office. The old Jacqueline Colere definitely couldn't have.
If that hypothetical version of Jacqueline Colere, the one I would never be, was even still alive to try. She was "destined to perish in the course of events", after all. I knew I'd probably never know what would have happened, but it didn't stop me wondering.
At least until the timer I hadn't noticed went off and announced that our ninety minutes were up. That was fine, the checks past the fourth go through were mostly just to be extra safe and kill time, since I knew Taylor would want the full hour and a half. Whether or not she actually needed it, she would probably believe she did. And even if she didn't believe she needed it, she would take it just to be safe and assuage her doubts.
It sucks feeling like you're slower than everybody else, I know. Maths was not a field I'd experienced that in, but I couldn't imagine it was any different. One student finishing ahead of Taylor in a normal class probably wouldn't be that bad, but there were only two of us, and I was almost two years younger than her.
I didn't want her to feel intellectually inferior or inadequate in any way.
Sadly, when I took my eyes off the exam she clearly did. Or at least she was more than slightly dejected and down on herself. I couldn't see any other reason why that might be, and the way she glanced over with barely-concealed frustration pretty much confirmed it.
That she immediately looked away guiltily when I caught her told me I was involved. Maybe I hadn't been as sneaky about finishing quickly as I thought.
Note to self: when trying to keep information from Thinkers, for their own good or otherwise, remember that they're Thinkers. They have ways of getting information that you don't, and it's important to keep those ways in mind if you want to hide a secret from them.
Not that it would have helped much. I suppose I could have done my checking as I went, and maybe delayed things a little, but I didn't have a firm enough grip on how much time I had to spare for that to be practical, probably wouldn't have even if I'd noticed the timer, and it wouldn't have done anything to conceal the fact that I did finish.
I suppose I could have sandbagged it. Done just enough to be smart for my age but still behind Taylor. I knew roughly where she'd end up running out of steam, after all. It probably would have led to fewer raised eyebrows when the assessments were graded. I might even have been able to keep it to what the Jacqueline of old could have managed.
In the end, I didn't feel the need to boast about how smart I was or rub it in people's faces. I'd actually been quite careful to keep it on the down low at Winslow. Both to avoid attention in general and because there was a very real possibility of somebody getting dangerously mad about being outdone by somebody like me. (Younger, a girl, or of my skin colour, most likely, though my accent, class, and/or foreign refugee status were also possibilities. The rest were things to be discreet in their own right, and if they were uncovered I probably had bigger problems.)
But there's a difference between keeping quiet about something, especially something nobody else cares to look into and that isn't any of their business anyway, and actively maintaining a lie about it. It would come up, every single maths class at a minimum, it would be miserable every time it did, stifling in too-simple equations and guilt-inducing both at once, and eventually I would screw up the lie somehow. And then it'd be worse than if I'd just been honest in the first place. Cause more problems.
And this was already problematic enough.
40-8 Incapability
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A pretty decently long time ago, a small child who was not yet called Jacqueline (though she was still Colere, even if nobody realised she was a she just yet) was pretty smart, particularly in matters of academics. She finished assignments quickly, did very well on tests, and even understood words like academics and assignments and could use them properly in sentences. This caused problems with the other children around her, particularly those in her class, and she didn't understand why.
(Or, indeed, the why behind any of the problems they had with her, or even which were which to any extent beyond what was blatantly shouted at her, but the idea of having problems because she was smart was a particularly vexing one)
So, when it finally irked her enough, she set out into the big, brave world, or at least the biggest, bravest part of it she knew (the school library) and did her best to figure it all out. What the issue was, why it happened, what the other children were thinking, and, most importantly, how to fix it.
Seven and a half chronological years later (Earth Bet time) I was here, the land that school stood upon was no longer land, and most if not all of those other children were dead. I understood people, sociability, and politics better than that to-oneday-be Jacqueline could have even imagined, and I knew exactly what the problem(s) was/were back then. I was once again facing problems because of being too smart. I knew exactly what the trouble was this time, and I knew exactly why it was happening. And I had a pretty good idea what Taylor was thinking.
And I still had no idea how to fix it.
That idea, too, was a particularly vexing one. So at least I had that much in common with myself.
This wasn't quite the same issue, at least on the surface. Taylor probably wasn't going to take her problems out on me verbally or through shunning and the like, and she definitely wasn't going to do so physically.
… this is the part where I would normally say something catty about those who didn't live up to that standard, but it's not nice to speak ill of the dead. They were just dumb (and, admittedly, kinda bigoted) kids anyway, and I bet at least some of them would have grown up okay. I can't say I have any particularly fond memories of that bunch, but we were children.
None of us deserved Leviathan.
Moving on.
At its heart, or at least its root, this was the same problem: the all too human tendency of comparison. I was fairly sure Taylor had, in fact, done at least reasonably well, but "reasonably well" doesn't look so good when stacked up against the truly exceptional. Especially when those are the only two points of comparison.
I wasn't about to judge her for having human limits. I had them too, and they were only looser than they should have been due to a pretty extreme outside-context incident. Danny probably wouldn't either and I suspected he would be supportive even if he did. Armsmaster and the rest of the Protectorate/PRT would have at least the other Wards to compare it to, and probably had more realistic expectations anyway. And of course Arcadia's staff and (other) students would have a decent understanding of what people our age should be capable of.
The only person who would be down on Taylor for this was Taylor. Unfortunately, that would be enough to cause problems. That anybody else who was down on her for other reasons (and there would be some, that was the way the world worked) could find it a convenient weapon and possibly even excuse was the least of it, or at least the furthest from becoming immediately relevant. She was already far too prone to beating herself up (strictly metaphorically, as far as I know) for comfort.
And this time there really wasn't anything I could do to stop it. Not without making it worse.
Oh, I could tell her she did fine, before or after checking, and I wouldn't be lying. But since I'd done so much better there was every chance it would just sound condescending, no matter how sincere it was.
If she didn't, and I do like to think that Taylor knew me better than that even if we'd only known each other for a very short time, it might honestly be worse. There'd be no backlash on me, but Taylor was used to being condescended to. It was one of her bullies' most common tactics, and one she'd mostly grown numb to when it wasn't combined with other hurts.
In contrast, there was no way to tell how she'd respond if a younger girl who she was supposed to be taking care of (even if I personally felt it was at least as much the other way around) who passed a test she failed (even if she really didn't, and it wasn't actually a pass-fail system to begin with) and then "stepped down" to try to comfort her over her (perceived) inadequacy. It was entirely possible that would actually cut deeper than just being condescended to.
Although probably not deeper than being betrayed by a friend/sister she trusted. Especially with the issues she still had from the last time she thought that happened.
There was a reason why the Not-Emma's condescension always hurt more. And there was a reason why I hadn't needed to be told that it did.
Maybe Taylor would have taken my attempt to comfort her as mockery. Maybe she wouldn't have. Either way could have gone disastrously wrong.
Either way, I didn't dare risk it.
So I pretended not to notice. Perhaps it was cowardly of me, but I didn't think there was anything I could do to help. Not directly. Not with this. So I went with my other skillset:
Getting other people to do stuff for me.
(Or, indeed, the why behind any of the problems they had with her, or even which were which to any extent beyond what was blatantly shouted at her, but the idea of having problems because she was smart was a particularly vexing one)
So, when it finally irked her enough, she set out into the big, brave world, or at least the biggest, bravest part of it she knew (the school library) and did her best to figure it all out. What the issue was, why it happened, what the other children were thinking, and, most importantly, how to fix it.
Seven and a half chronological years later (Earth Bet time) I was here, the land that school stood upon was no longer land, and most if not all of those other children were dead. I understood people, sociability, and politics better than that to-oneday-be Jacqueline could have even imagined, and I knew exactly what the problem(s) was/were back then. I was once again facing problems because of being too smart. I knew exactly what the trouble was this time, and I knew exactly why it was happening. And I had a pretty good idea what Taylor was thinking.
And I still had no idea how to fix it.
That idea, too, was a particularly vexing one. So at least I had that much in common with myself.
This wasn't quite the same issue, at least on the surface. Taylor probably wasn't going to take her problems out on me verbally or through shunning and the like, and she definitely wasn't going to do so physically.
… this is the part where I would normally say something catty about those who didn't live up to that standard, but it's not nice to speak ill of the dead. They were just dumb (and, admittedly, kinda bigoted) kids anyway, and I bet at least some of them would have grown up okay. I can't say I have any particularly fond memories of that bunch, but we were children.
None of us deserved Leviathan.
Moving on.
At its heart, or at least its root, this was the same problem: the all too human tendency of comparison. I was fairly sure Taylor had, in fact, done at least reasonably well, but "reasonably well" doesn't look so good when stacked up against the truly exceptional. Especially when those are the only two points of comparison.
I wasn't about to judge her for having human limits. I had them too, and they were only looser than they should have been due to a pretty extreme outside-context incident. Danny probably wouldn't either and I suspected he would be supportive even if he did. Armsmaster and the rest of the Protectorate/PRT would have at least the other Wards to compare it to, and probably had more realistic expectations anyway. And of course Arcadia's staff and (other) students would have a decent understanding of what people our age should be capable of.
The only person who would be down on Taylor for this was Taylor. Unfortunately, that would be enough to cause problems. That anybody else who was down on her for other reasons (and there would be some, that was the way the world worked) could find it a convenient weapon and possibly even excuse was the least of it, or at least the furthest from becoming immediately relevant. She was already far too prone to beating herself up (strictly metaphorically, as far as I know) for comfort.
And this time there really wasn't anything I could do to stop it. Not without making it worse.
Oh, I could tell her she did fine, before or after checking, and I wouldn't be lying. But since I'd done so much better there was every chance it would just sound condescending, no matter how sincere it was.
If she didn't, and I do like to think that Taylor knew me better than that even if we'd only known each other for a very short time, it might honestly be worse. There'd be no backlash on me, but Taylor was used to being condescended to. It was one of her bullies' most common tactics, and one she'd mostly grown numb to when it wasn't combined with other hurts.
In contrast, there was no way to tell how she'd respond if a younger girl who she was supposed to be taking care of (even if I personally felt it was at least as much the other way around) who passed a test she failed (even if she really didn't, and it wasn't actually a pass-fail system to begin with) and then "stepped down" to try to comfort her over her (perceived) inadequacy. It was entirely possible that would actually cut deeper than just being condescended to.
Although probably not deeper than being betrayed by a friend/sister she trusted. Especially with the issues she still had from the last time she thought that happened.
There was a reason why the Not-Emma's condescension always hurt more. And there was a reason why I hadn't needed to be told that it did.
Maybe Taylor would have taken my attempt to comfort her as mockery. Maybe she wouldn't have. Either way could have gone disastrously wrong.
Either way, I didn't dare risk it.
So I pretended not to notice. Perhaps it was cowardly of me, but I didn't think there was anything I could do to help. Not directly. Not with this. So I went with my other skillset:
Getting other people to do stuff for me.
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- Pronouns
- She
Excellent! Sometimes a problem is best solved by someone not yourself
41-1 Insight
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Securing privacy to talk with Armsmaster was a fairly simple matter. Taylor had the perfect powerset for a spy, but she also had the mindset of a guilty teenager. I simply told her I needed to ask the man about something and asked her not to listen in because it would be embarrassing if she heard.
It wasn't a lie. That it would be more embarrassing for her than for me didn't need to be brought up.
With a hug (of her own initiative, I'm proud to say, even if she did seem to be forcing herself to do so), she left. Considerably more bugs than I'd realised could be in a room without being obvious about it left with her.
It did occur to me that if she could pull that off, she could probably leave behind enough to listen in without me ever noticing, but I was pretty sure she wouldn't. Not only did I trust her, I knew she wanted me to trust her, and that she'd had enough of her personal stuff turned against her to know the consequences of sneaking in on private matters.
Armsmaster had overheard us, of course. He was a professional hero, and that meant situational awareness was a key job skill. And even if he hadn't, Taylor leaving with all her bugs but without me was probably more than enough to make it pretty clear that I wanted a private conversation. Almost as soon as Taylor closed the door behind her he asked what was the matter.
A part of me considered taking offence to the idea that I would only talk to him if I had a problem that I needed help with, but between sending Taylor away and my recent history it was a pretty reasonable assumption.
Though that thought process, and my attempts at figuring out how to breach the subject, still took long enough that he took it as a cue to continue.
"Are you concerned with your performance on the assessment? I am not the official grader, but you appear to have done very well," he asked kindly.
I wasn't even surprised that he'd already gone over mine in enough detail to know that. It was, ultimately, still high school math, and his helmet was probably better than any calculator on the market on the off chance he actually needed one for the job.
Or maybe he'd just checked which questions had been answered and which hadn't, which was what I would have assumed if it had been anybody else.
"I'm pretty sure I did, yeah. I'm not entirely confident about a few of my answers towards the end, but I definitely got a fair way past my grade level," I carelessly understated.
Armsmaster nodded in a manner of fact way that strongly suggested he wasn't surprised. I supposed that was one less person I'd need to talk to about how I'd pulled that off, but I did wonder where that faith in me came from.
Briefly. I had more pressing concerns. Maybe I'd come back to it eventually.
"but I'm worried about Taylor." I finished the sentence a little quieter than I'd started it, despite the fact that it was only the two of us in the room. It did at least serve as a decent, though probably redundant, audio cue that the matter was one for discretion.
And I did appreciate the way he lowered his voice to match as he told me that "I can't let you look at her exam, professionally speaking, but it looked to me like you were correct before: she did fine."
No surprise there.
"And I know that, and you know that, but the person who needs to know that is Taylor. She's got that little voice in her head telling her she's dumb and can't do anything right, you know? That's why I needed to tell her she'd do fine in the first place."
"That seems like a likely result of recent events, yes."
"Right, and now I've gone and set the bar impossibly high. She saw me do the whole thing, and even if she logically knows better that's going to get her thinking she should be able to do the same, and that it's her fault if she can't."
"... and you can't tell her she performed acceptably, because coming from somebody who did so much obviously better it would ring hollow."
"Yeah." He was right, even if he said it like a profound revelation, like he was only just now figuring out some arcane mystery that had stymied him in the past. Maybe he was.
I was reminded of myselves, in the before times, and felt a deep bond of kinship in the moment.
And then for several moments after that as we stood in silence, trying to think our way out of the situation. I came up with nothing beyond "somebody should probably talk to Danny about this."
Thankfully, Armsmaster had a few more ideas than that.
And also that, the first thing he said when he finally broke the silence was that he'd do precisely that. (Or at least I'm not aware of any other "Mr. Hebert"s he could have been referring to. It's not exactly a super-common name in this town, even if it isn't quite as unusual as "Colere".)
"I'll also include it in my notes for Arcadia," he continued. "They know about the bullying, so they probably already suspect self-esteem might be an issue, but I'm sure they'll appreciate the specifics."
"And hopefully do something about it" was left unsaid. With Arcadia, though, I didn't think it'd go unfulfilled. With Winslow, or even a more typical American High School, it was quite possible there wouldn't even be an attempt, but Arcadia held itself to a higher standard. Probably all the more so when their prestigious and profitable position as the "Ward School" was potentially at stake.
"And I do appreciate you coming to me with this. I know it can't have been easy," he went on to say, despite the fact that it actually was. Even I couldn't say why I trusted him so easily though, so it was hardly reasonable to expect him to know I did. Much less take it for granted.
So I just hugged him.
It wasn't a lie. That it would be more embarrassing for her than for me didn't need to be brought up.
With a hug (of her own initiative, I'm proud to say, even if she did seem to be forcing herself to do so), she left. Considerably more bugs than I'd realised could be in a room without being obvious about it left with her.
It did occur to me that if she could pull that off, she could probably leave behind enough to listen in without me ever noticing, but I was pretty sure she wouldn't. Not only did I trust her, I knew she wanted me to trust her, and that she'd had enough of her personal stuff turned against her to know the consequences of sneaking in on private matters.
Armsmaster had overheard us, of course. He was a professional hero, and that meant situational awareness was a key job skill. And even if he hadn't, Taylor leaving with all her bugs but without me was probably more than enough to make it pretty clear that I wanted a private conversation. Almost as soon as Taylor closed the door behind her he asked what was the matter.
A part of me considered taking offence to the idea that I would only talk to him if I had a problem that I needed help with, but between sending Taylor away and my recent history it was a pretty reasonable assumption.
Though that thought process, and my attempts at figuring out how to breach the subject, still took long enough that he took it as a cue to continue.
"Are you concerned with your performance on the assessment? I am not the official grader, but you appear to have done very well," he asked kindly.
I wasn't even surprised that he'd already gone over mine in enough detail to know that. It was, ultimately, still high school math, and his helmet was probably better than any calculator on the market on the off chance he actually needed one for the job.
Or maybe he'd just checked which questions had been answered and which hadn't, which was what I would have assumed if it had been anybody else.
"I'm pretty sure I did, yeah. I'm not entirely confident about a few of my answers towards the end, but I definitely got a fair way past my grade level," I carelessly understated.
Armsmaster nodded in a manner of fact way that strongly suggested he wasn't surprised. I supposed that was one less person I'd need to talk to about how I'd pulled that off, but I did wonder where that faith in me came from.
Briefly. I had more pressing concerns. Maybe I'd come back to it eventually.
"but I'm worried about Taylor." I finished the sentence a little quieter than I'd started it, despite the fact that it was only the two of us in the room. It did at least serve as a decent, though probably redundant, audio cue that the matter was one for discretion.
And I did appreciate the way he lowered his voice to match as he told me that "I can't let you look at her exam, professionally speaking, but it looked to me like you were correct before: she did fine."
No surprise there.
"And I know that, and you know that, but the person who needs to know that is Taylor. She's got that little voice in her head telling her she's dumb and can't do anything right, you know? That's why I needed to tell her she'd do fine in the first place."
"That seems like a likely result of recent events, yes."
"Right, and now I've gone and set the bar impossibly high. She saw me do the whole thing, and even if she logically knows better that's going to get her thinking she should be able to do the same, and that it's her fault if she can't."
"... and you can't tell her she performed acceptably, because coming from somebody who did so much obviously better it would ring hollow."
"Yeah." He was right, even if he said it like a profound revelation, like he was only just now figuring out some arcane mystery that had stymied him in the past. Maybe he was.
I was reminded of myselves, in the before times, and felt a deep bond of kinship in the moment.
And then for several moments after that as we stood in silence, trying to think our way out of the situation. I came up with nothing beyond "somebody should probably talk to Danny about this."
Thankfully, Armsmaster had a few more ideas than that.
And also that, the first thing he said when he finally broke the silence was that he'd do precisely that. (Or at least I'm not aware of any other "Mr. Hebert"s he could have been referring to. It's not exactly a super-common name in this town, even if it isn't quite as unusual as "Colere".)
"I'll also include it in my notes for Arcadia," he continued. "They know about the bullying, so they probably already suspect self-esteem might be an issue, but I'm sure they'll appreciate the specifics."
"And hopefully do something about it" was left unsaid. With Arcadia, though, I didn't think it'd go unfulfilled. With Winslow, or even a more typical American High School, it was quite possible there wouldn't even be an attempt, but Arcadia held itself to a higher standard. Probably all the more so when their prestigious and profitable position as the "Ward School" was potentially at stake.
"And I do appreciate you coming to me with this. I know it can't have been easy," he went on to say, despite the fact that it actually was. Even I couldn't say why I trusted him so easily though, so it was hardly reasonable to expect him to know I did. Much less take it for granted.
So I just hugged him.
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- Location
- Louisville KY
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The more that I read this, the more I love this Colin. However, every time that I see this Colin, a voice whispers to me that Colin hadn't had his crash like he did in canon so why exactly does he behave as if he went through the personal growth that came about after having his reputation trashed?
It's either A) author fiat which is absolutely fine because this is their story to tell or B) our MC's aura has more of a canon-breaking effect than has been revealed yet. Does Jacqueline have some of GG's aura shenanigans going on but only in removing what she would see as a negative behavior?
It's either A) author fiat which is absolutely fine because this is their story to tell or B) our MC's aura has more of a canon-breaking effect than has been revealed yet. Does Jacqueline have some of GG's aura shenanigans going on but only in removing what she would see as a negative behavior?
Splattered Cloak
Recovering Line Editor
I tend to read it as:
Meanwhile, I seem to have missed that Armsmaster was proctoring the exams. That does feel like a massive expenditure of time that he would rather have pawned off on someone else. Like a nameless PRT intern, or an Arcadia librarian.
- His reputation hasn't partially crashed due to nearly killing Lung by trying to take solo credit for his arrest.
- He's being much less unreasonable to a cute little girl who walked in and signed up immediately and then got kidnapped than to someone who looked like a villain, got him in trouble, and immediately tried to do something stupid instead of joining the Wards.
- Jacqueline has trained herself to be much better at understanding someone like him than Taylor is, so the unreliability of the narrator is reduced.
- Jacqueline is actively, albeit subtly, guiding him toward better behavior in some cases.
Meanwhile, I seem to have missed that Armsmaster was proctoring the exams. That does feel like a massive expenditure of time that he would rather have pawned off on someone else. Like a nameless PRT intern, or an Arcadia librarian.
I strongly suspect her aura has much more than a physical effect. Armsmaster and Piggot are the two most obvious examples supporting that, their issues are specific and so the betterment is easier to observe. I think if Amy spent more time around her we'd have an even better one since her 'damage' has multiple angles to be approached from. I think a sleepover with New Wave is in order!
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's actually quite a lot of reasons why Colin's behaviour is/seems so much better here than in pre-Defiant canon, including all of the reasons @Splattered Cloak mentioned as well as the lack of the subsequent humiliations by Taylor/The Undersiders (excluding the bank, but even that went a lot better for the heroes than in canon), the fact that he's being shown dealing with allies instead of enemies, and the fact that he has pretty accurate information explaining the people he's dealing with instead of relying purely on his own diminished people-reading skills. (He's read Jacqueline's file, and unlike canon Taylor's it actually explains her psychology pretty well.)
Jacqueline also trusts, respects, and arguably even adores him. She's very open about that, up to the point of unembarassed physical affection. Colin, in turn, is too sympathetic to her to want to do anything but live up to that, especially since it seems that a key part of his issues are about wanting to be respected.
The big one, however, is that he actually has had a pretty big crash here. His home base, arguably his home, came under attack, and it was down to luck and never coming under direct attack himself that he survived. There was very little he could do about it until Bakuda stupidly got herself killed and Tatttletale (both a teenager and a Villain) saved the day from Lung.
Then, right as he was adjusting to that, two children under his care were kidnapped and tortured right under the noses of the PRT.
Either event, individually, could have been enough for him to get over himself. Combined, they were either going to do that or make him double down into being completely insufferable.
There aren't a whole lot of times we see Armsmaster's POV before these events, but it's no coincidence that every single one of them is considerably less considerate.
And, admittedly, there's always a certain amount of author fiat in a situation like this.
Jacqueline's aura very specifically doesn't alter people psychologically unless its to undo something else (that it deem unnatural) doing so. Jacqueline herself, however, is extremely good at it, both on purpose and otherwise. In Emily Piggot's case, there's actually a lot of the same reasons as Armsmaster. Particularly the fact that Jacqueline, in stark contrast to Skitter when they met (especially from Emily's point of view), clearly holds deep regard for Emily personally, for her role, for the organisation she represents and the ideals she upholds.
nicoo
Malfunctioning neurochemistry, please be kind.
- Location
- Europe
- Pronouns
- They/She/Meow
To be fair, IME the expected answer would be to show that the rational function actually simplifies to a constant one, rather than take it as a premise... but even then, evaluating at some arbitrary point is always a useful consistenct-check.
(OTOH, the expectations would be curriculum- and grade-specific, and I could be projecting university stuff on a HS-grade problem. I don't recall much about HS thankfully)
To be fair, it's not that bad either (I just did it the "hard way" as a distraction from all-encompassing pain) since after the trivial simplifications (pulling as much x out of each term and cancelling out between numerators and denominators) all that remained was 2(x - 5)(1 - x) / (x² - 6x + 5)
... at which point it seemed (to me) pretty natural to expand (x - 5)(1 - x) and compare it to x² - 6x + 5, rather than try to factor the later (which is doable with the usual root-finding formula, just unnecessarily tedious)
EDIT: I forgot I also had to factor x² - 25 but that's also a known-identity rather than something to compute
Yeah, I think that's a large part of it. At least my experience is that many of my students who struggled with my courses, had the skills to engage with the topic, but were held back by math-related trauma... and I was really not equipped to do "light therapy," though I did the best I could. 😿
I was teaching in a university's computer science faculty (at both BSc. and MSc. level) so that was with students who already self-selected as capable of engaging with that field, and who were selected through at least 2 years of university already, so I can only assume it's far worse in the general "high-school graduate" demographics.
That's... all too relatable, TBH. I also often struggle to help people when it's about anchoring their self-esteem in how "good" they are/look/whatever compared to others, and how that may make them put others down (often in subtle, or at least subconscious, ways) or put themselves down when they keep finding others who are better at something.
I probably said so before (and I'm sure others did too) but it's one aspect of Orderly that makes it so... gripping for me, how you capture everyday psychological struggles, and how difficult it can be to help no matter how much we'd want to. (Granted, massive trauma stuff shouldn't be an everyday occurence, but... it is what it is...)
Yassss~ Jacqueline, incidentally socializing Colin into better people's skills ❤️
FWIW, I felt it came across pretty well through the story (though the evolution might have been more-obvious, just because I tend to re-read the last chapter or two before a new one, as a work-around for my... current shortcomings in memory)
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- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Jacqueline was, from the start, meant to feel like a person of fairly normal stature and scale. I wouldn't say she's precisely normal, and she really isn't meant to be, but she isn't a world-shaping legend of will, awesomeness and/or sheer power like canon Taylor became or how a lot of Orderly's counterparts have their protagonists be and/or become. A lot of her was born from thinking about the ordinary people affected by the many, many awful things about Earth Bet, both from an outside perspective that's never lived there and (my best attempt at) their own.
There's a reason why, for all that there's a lot of awful things in her backstory, none of those things were really about her. In a typical wormverse story touching on the fall of Newfoundland, or Speakeasy, or the Purity/Lung fight that killed Jacqueline's mother, Jacqueline probably wouldn't even be mentioned directly. At most, she'd be a metaphorical face in a crowd. But for all that, she's still deeply affected by all of them, and that's a key part of her character.
The ordinary person of Earth Bet, or at least the type Jacqueline is supposed to represent, does have a much higher level of trauma, especially acute trauma, than their our-world counterpart. But for all that, they are an ordinary person all the same, and having more problems thrown at you doesn't make the ones you already have go away.
And for all that the level of trauma Jacqueline has is (hopefully) not an everyday matter, bad things do happen and indeed are happening in our world, and for all that the causes here aren't as exotic as supervillains and city-destroying monsters I don't think it can hurt too much to think of those caught up in them as people.
The man is putting in the effort for her. If that's leading to him thinking about things more and realising their applicability to other situations, or even if isn't, more power to him.
I did my best (at least from the point of the change actually starting), but it's never been outright stated in story and even things that have been, even repeatedly, can and do get missed. Orderly is long, there's a lot of things going on, and the short chapters don't make it any easier to remember everything week-to-week. I don't take it personally, even I need to re-read on a semi-regular basis to keep track of things.
41-2 Incredible (Interlude: Colin)
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Colin:
It really was relaxing, having nothing more important he needed to be doing than watching two teenagers taking a test. Dragon had been right to insist, shifting to something low-intensity was exactly what he'd needed after the long exertions of the day, the night, and the previous day.
Colin knew more work wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind, she'd been reluctant enough to let him handle informing the other Wards of the last night's events after the over sixteen hours of intensive activity he'd done during the crises and the immediate aftermath, but this wasn't exactly difficult and he couldn't go out of costume or leave the building until the next shift was rested and ready to respond to any potential emergencies.
And there was something fulfilling about this, anyway. Colin wasn't sure what it was, but for the moment he wasn't inclined to question it.
Neither was Dragon, apparently, when she made it clear that she'd noticed by notifying him that there was precisely one minute left of the allocated exam time. That she didn't sound disapproving was enough to indicate that she too found it suitable.
Dragon was easy to understand like that. Colin was pretty sure she did it on purpose, but that didn't mean he didn't appreciate it.
The tests themselves, well, they were and weren't surprising. Taylor was slightly ahead of where she was supposed to be, according to Arcadia. Not enough so to be particularly notable in and of itself, but under the circumstances it was more than respectable.
Jacqueline, on the other hand, Colin expected to go considerably beyond where she was "supposed" to be. Her grades and grade level were enough to justify that expectation: she was a year ahead and still a straight A student. Her impressive track record in keeping a level head in stressful situations (when she actively needed to) only added to that impression.
He still hadn't expected her to finish the exam. She was clearly struggling a bit by the end of it, and there were still a few mistakes even in the much-revised version of the last page she'd finally handed him, but a fourteen year old struggling with material that would normally be taught at the post-secondary level was praiseworthy in and of itself. Arcadia was the only high school in the city that even offered those courses, and strictly as an option for the particularly mathematically inclined among its already somewhat selective student body.
Despite knowing that in all honesty he had very little to do with this outcome, Colin found himself proud of her.
Their conversation at the door was something Colin very carefully didn't eavesdrop on, but when Taylor left and very carefully took every bug in the room with her, leaving behind an awkward Jacqueline, it wasn't hard to guess that a private conversation was in the offing.
(Dragon left the call as Taylor was leaving, ostensibly to resume work on analysing the recovered Bakuda bombs. Colin wasn't fooled, he knew she'd been doing it all along. As sound as he was realising Dragon's advice generally was, the woman wasn't much better about following it than Colin was. Especially when it came to their shared workaholic tendencies.)
That way Jacqueline relaxed when the door closed was enough for Colin to guess that there was a problem, even if it did take some time to coax it out of her.
(It was good to know she neither underestimated nor overestimated what she was capable of. Colin had seen both destroy heroes. The latter, yesterday had shown him, had come far too close to destroying him. It wasn't exactly a surprise that Jacqueline wasn't falling into that trap, given her track record, but he appreciated it all the same.)
"...but I'm worried about Taylor."
Colin wasn't sure if he was surprised that Jacqueline's problem wasn't Jacqueline's problem. On the one hand, the girl undeniably had a considerable number of her own problems. On the other hand, her record clearly indicated that that hadn't stopped her from getting involved with those belonging to the people she cared about, or from talking about her own in front of them.
Lacking any better ideas, Colin just lowered his voice to match and told her Taylor did fine. It was the truth, after all.
"And I know that, and you know that, but the person who most needs to know that is Taylor. She's got that little voice in her head telling her she's dumb and can't do anything right, you know? That's why I needed to tell her she'd do fine in the first place."
That… did make sense, after everything that had happened. And Colin wasn't afraid to admit it.
"Right, and now I've gone and set the bar impossibly high. She saw me do the whole thing, and even if she logically knows better that's going to get her thinking she should be able to do the same, and that it's her fault if she can't."
It all fitted. Colin wouldn't have put it together himself, but when she laid it all out like that it made sense. Except for the part where Jacqueline was telling him all this without even trying to help Taylor through her problem herself.
Then he remembered something Dragon had told him, a few months ago, about a problem with one of her local Tinkers. Colin hadn't cared enough to try and figure it out then and there, but looking back…
"... and you can't tell her she performed acceptably, because coming from somebody who did so much obviously better it would ring hollow."
"Yeah."
That explained so much. With Kid Win, with Triumph, with at least half the Wards who'd been under his command over the years and more than a few of the Protectorate members he'd interacted with, especially the weaker Tinkers.
Colin had a lot to talk to Dragon about. He barely noticed promising to talk to the Heberts, didn't even notice he'd only mentioned the senior one until he'd moved on to promising to share with Arcadia. There was so much to do that he almost forgot the standard courtesies for this type of situation he'd looked up scant hours before.
Then he was being hugged, and he resolved to do what he could for Jacqueline and Taylor's issue before he moved on to his own. It was the least he could do.
It really was relaxing, having nothing more important he needed to be doing than watching two teenagers taking a test. Dragon had been right to insist, shifting to something low-intensity was exactly what he'd needed after the long exertions of the day, the night, and the previous day.
Colin knew more work wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind, she'd been reluctant enough to let him handle informing the other Wards of the last night's events after the over sixteen hours of intensive activity he'd done during the crises and the immediate aftermath, but this wasn't exactly difficult and he couldn't go out of costume or leave the building until the next shift was rested and ready to respond to any potential emergencies.
And there was something fulfilling about this, anyway. Colin wasn't sure what it was, but for the moment he wasn't inclined to question it.
Neither was Dragon, apparently, when she made it clear that she'd noticed by notifying him that there was precisely one minute left of the allocated exam time. That she didn't sound disapproving was enough to indicate that she too found it suitable.
Dragon was easy to understand like that. Colin was pretty sure she did it on purpose, but that didn't mean he didn't appreciate it.
The tests themselves, well, they were and weren't surprising. Taylor was slightly ahead of where she was supposed to be, according to Arcadia. Not enough so to be particularly notable in and of itself, but under the circumstances it was more than respectable.
Jacqueline, on the other hand, Colin expected to go considerably beyond where she was "supposed" to be. Her grades and grade level were enough to justify that expectation: she was a year ahead and still a straight A student. Her impressive track record in keeping a level head in stressful situations (when she actively needed to) only added to that impression.
He still hadn't expected her to finish the exam. She was clearly struggling a bit by the end of it, and there were still a few mistakes even in the much-revised version of the last page she'd finally handed him, but a fourteen year old struggling with material that would normally be taught at the post-secondary level was praiseworthy in and of itself. Arcadia was the only high school in the city that even offered those courses, and strictly as an option for the particularly mathematically inclined among its already somewhat selective student body.
Despite knowing that in all honesty he had very little to do with this outcome, Colin found himself proud of her.
Their conversation at the door was something Colin very carefully didn't eavesdrop on, but when Taylor left and very carefully took every bug in the room with her, leaving behind an awkward Jacqueline, it wasn't hard to guess that a private conversation was in the offing.
(Dragon left the call as Taylor was leaving, ostensibly to resume work on analysing the recovered Bakuda bombs. Colin wasn't fooled, he knew she'd been doing it all along. As sound as he was realising Dragon's advice generally was, the woman wasn't much better about following it than Colin was. Especially when it came to their shared workaholic tendencies.)
That way Jacqueline relaxed when the door closed was enough for Colin to guess that there was a problem, even if it did take some time to coax it out of her.
(It was good to know she neither underestimated nor overestimated what she was capable of. Colin had seen both destroy heroes. The latter, yesterday had shown him, had come far too close to destroying him. It wasn't exactly a surprise that Jacqueline wasn't falling into that trap, given her track record, but he appreciated it all the same.)
"...but I'm worried about Taylor."
Colin wasn't sure if he was surprised that Jacqueline's problem wasn't Jacqueline's problem. On the one hand, the girl undeniably had a considerable number of her own problems. On the other hand, her record clearly indicated that that hadn't stopped her from getting involved with those belonging to the people she cared about, or from talking about her own in front of them.
Lacking any better ideas, Colin just lowered his voice to match and told her Taylor did fine. It was the truth, after all.
"And I know that, and you know that, but the person who most needs to know that is Taylor. She's got that little voice in her head telling her she's dumb and can't do anything right, you know? That's why I needed to tell her she'd do fine in the first place."
That… did make sense, after everything that had happened. And Colin wasn't afraid to admit it.
"Right, and now I've gone and set the bar impossibly high. She saw me do the whole thing, and even if she logically knows better that's going to get her thinking she should be able to do the same, and that it's her fault if she can't."
It all fitted. Colin wouldn't have put it together himself, but when she laid it all out like that it made sense. Except for the part where Jacqueline was telling him all this without even trying to help Taylor through her problem herself.
Then he remembered something Dragon had told him, a few months ago, about a problem with one of her local Tinkers. Colin hadn't cared enough to try and figure it out then and there, but looking back…
"... and you can't tell her she performed acceptably, because coming from somebody who did so much obviously better it would ring hollow."
"Yeah."
That explained so much. With Kid Win, with Triumph, with at least half the Wards who'd been under his command over the years and more than a few of the Protectorate members he'd interacted with, especially the weaker Tinkers.
Colin had a lot to talk to Dragon about. He barely noticed promising to talk to the Heberts, didn't even notice he'd only mentioned the senior one until he'd moved on to promising to share with Arcadia. There was so much to do that he almost forgot the standard courtesies for this type of situation he'd looked up scant hours before.
Then he was being hugged, and he resolved to do what he could for Jacqueline and Taylor's issue before he moved on to his own. It was the least he could do.
- Pronouns
- She
I am so proud of Colin and excited!
41-3 Intralinguistic (Interludes: Headquarters)
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Danny:
It was a striking experience, watching Taylor chatting with a superhero.
Danny had seen her speaking with heroes before, of course. Even before recent events he'd taken his daughter to meet and greets and the like more than once.
But this time was different. This wasn't a celebrity being nice to a fan. It wasn't even the professional discussion he'd witnessed a few times since he'd learned Taylor had superpowers. No, this was a peer interaction. They were coworkers, and not just in name. It had happened awfully fast, but Danny had expected that: capes in general lived fast lives.
Danny knew what it looked like when the newbie had proved themself and became just another member of the crew. He'd experienced it himself, all those years ago, and been on the other end more times than he could count in the time since. There wasn't always a singular moment when it happened, and it certainly happened a lot less in recent years, but it was always a beautiful thing when a new hire ceased to be a stranger in a strange land and really became part of the world of the Dockworkers.
This was Taylor's world now.
The feeling was bittersweet. Sweet because Taylor had found a place. She wasn't a woman, not just yet, but she was growing into one, and it was nice to see she had the respect of her peers and a profession she clearly suited very well.
Bitter because said profession was a difficult and dangerous one, and because Taylor's new world was one he feared he would never truly understand. He was a Dockworker (or a paper-pusher, in terms of the work he actually did, but he was very much part of the world of the Dockworkers) not a cape or even one of the poor suckers who had to manage them. What he knew about cape battles and superheroes was what was on the news and the kiddy stuff the PRT put out to make themselves look good. His was very much a civilian perspective, on the outside looking in, and until recently not looking particularly hard at that.
Danny was glad his daughter had found her place in life.
He just wasn't entirely happy with where it was.
Taylor:
"So she signs out the toe kick and the wet floor sign, like actually properly signs them out, paperwork and all."
"That does sound like her," Taylor smiled. She already knew where this was going, and for all his protestations to the contrary she was pretty sure Dennis (as he'd introduced himself) had figured it out by this point in the story, but that only made the story better.
It was nice, hearing about Jacqueline being whimsical instead of traumatized. A little weird at first, more for the source than anything else, but Clockblocker had been surprisingly considerate when he'd asked her to sit with him.
The only somewhat one-sided conversation continued as Taylor's bugs noted the girl in question enter the cafeteria with Armsmaster. (She had not been spying. She'd kept out of the room they'd talked in, and she only had a few bugs in corridors to make sure Jacqueline didn't get lost. In this of all buildings, it was a valid concern.) They paused, and spoke briefly (not so loudly as to be overheard unless Taylor had a lot more bugs near them than she did), and then Armsmaster went to sit with dad (and Taylor did feel kinda bad about not sitting with him, but she needed to get her new peers tolerance, if not respect) and Jacqueline moved over to the serving area.
Taylor pulled her bugs around dad back, whatever Armsmaster had to talk with dad about probably had to do with whatever it was Jacqueline didn't want her to know. She'd wait until Jacqueline had her food before she beckoned her to join them, she was pretty sure that was the polite way to do it.
Brian:
"My apologies for the delay," said the bandana-adorned woman sharing the stark confines of the interrogation room with Brian. He wasn't sure what he'd done to be escalated from a (terrifying, but undeniably convincing) PRT agent to the second in command of the Protectorate ENE herself, but he certainly wasn't going to ask.
Even if he somehow worked up the courage, that wasn't the first question he'd want answers to. Far from it. Especially after what he'd seen on the news over the past thirty some hours.
Miss Militia sat herself professionally on the other side of the table from Brian. Exactly on the other side of the table from Brian, and without breaking eye contact.
It wasn't the most overt display of sheer coordination she could have made, but it was enough. Brian couldn't even say if it was a deliberate message or just something she was good enough to pull off without even thinking about it.
Either way, he knew that if the woman in front of him decided to put a bullet between his eyes, she could do so in an instant, and there wasn't anything he could do to stop her.
That still wasn't Brian's foremost concern.
"Aisha is fine."
That was.
"She wasn't near any of the initial bombings", Miss Militia continued, her voice surprisingly gentle for the circumstances, "and it seems she had the sense to keep her head down until the explosions stopped."
… Brian shouldn't have been surprised by that. His sister was a little reckless, but she wasn't suicidal, and it wasn't like there much of chance of looking cool by mouthing off to a bomb.
All the same, it was a tremendous relief to hear that she was okay. He thanked the woman, and she accepted it and said she thought he should be informed before they had to move on to the difficult stuff.
Despite everything, it was a nice moment.
Then they had to move on to the difficult stuff.
It was a striking experience, watching Taylor chatting with a superhero.
Danny had seen her speaking with heroes before, of course. Even before recent events he'd taken his daughter to meet and greets and the like more than once.
But this time was different. This wasn't a celebrity being nice to a fan. It wasn't even the professional discussion he'd witnessed a few times since he'd learned Taylor had superpowers. No, this was a peer interaction. They were coworkers, and not just in name. It had happened awfully fast, but Danny had expected that: capes in general lived fast lives.
Danny knew what it looked like when the newbie had proved themself and became just another member of the crew. He'd experienced it himself, all those years ago, and been on the other end more times than he could count in the time since. There wasn't always a singular moment when it happened, and it certainly happened a lot less in recent years, but it was always a beautiful thing when a new hire ceased to be a stranger in a strange land and really became part of the world of the Dockworkers.
This was Taylor's world now.
The feeling was bittersweet. Sweet because Taylor had found a place. She wasn't a woman, not just yet, but she was growing into one, and it was nice to see she had the respect of her peers and a profession she clearly suited very well.
Bitter because said profession was a difficult and dangerous one, and because Taylor's new world was one he feared he would never truly understand. He was a Dockworker (or a paper-pusher, in terms of the work he actually did, but he was very much part of the world of the Dockworkers) not a cape or even one of the poor suckers who had to manage them. What he knew about cape battles and superheroes was what was on the news and the kiddy stuff the PRT put out to make themselves look good. His was very much a civilian perspective, on the outside looking in, and until recently not looking particularly hard at that.
Danny was glad his daughter had found her place in life.
He just wasn't entirely happy with where it was.
Taylor:
"So she signs out the toe kick and the wet floor sign, like actually properly signs them out, paperwork and all."
"That does sound like her," Taylor smiled. She already knew where this was going, and for all his protestations to the contrary she was pretty sure Dennis (as he'd introduced himself) had figured it out by this point in the story, but that only made the story better.
It was nice, hearing about Jacqueline being whimsical instead of traumatized. A little weird at first, more for the source than anything else, but Clockblocker had been surprisingly considerate when he'd asked her to sit with him.
The only somewhat one-sided conversation continued as Taylor's bugs noted the girl in question enter the cafeteria with Armsmaster. (She had not been spying. She'd kept out of the room they'd talked in, and she only had a few bugs in corridors to make sure Jacqueline didn't get lost. In this of all buildings, it was a valid concern.) They paused, and spoke briefly (not so loudly as to be overheard unless Taylor had a lot more bugs near them than she did), and then Armsmaster went to sit with dad (and Taylor did feel kinda bad about not sitting with him, but she needed to get her new peers tolerance, if not respect) and Jacqueline moved over to the serving area.
Taylor pulled her bugs around dad back, whatever Armsmaster had to talk with dad about probably had to do with whatever it was Jacqueline didn't want her to know. She'd wait until Jacqueline had her food before she beckoned her to join them, she was pretty sure that was the polite way to do it.
Brian:
"My apologies for the delay," said the bandana-adorned woman sharing the stark confines of the interrogation room with Brian. He wasn't sure what he'd done to be escalated from a (terrifying, but undeniably convincing) PRT agent to the second in command of the Protectorate ENE herself, but he certainly wasn't going to ask.
Even if he somehow worked up the courage, that wasn't the first question he'd want answers to. Far from it. Especially after what he'd seen on the news over the past thirty some hours.
Miss Militia sat herself professionally on the other side of the table from Brian. Exactly on the other side of the table from Brian, and without breaking eye contact.
It wasn't the most overt display of sheer coordination she could have made, but it was enough. Brian couldn't even say if it was a deliberate message or just something she was good enough to pull off without even thinking about it.
Either way, he knew that if the woman in front of him decided to put a bullet between his eyes, she could do so in an instant, and there wasn't anything he could do to stop her.
That still wasn't Brian's foremost concern.
"Aisha is fine."
That was.
"She wasn't near any of the initial bombings", Miss Militia continued, her voice surprisingly gentle for the circumstances, "and it seems she had the sense to keep her head down until the explosions stopped."
… Brian shouldn't have been surprised by that. His sister was a little reckless, but she wasn't suicidal, and it wasn't like there much of chance of looking cool by mouthing off to a bomb.
All the same, it was a tremendous relief to hear that she was okay. He thanked the woman, and she accepted it and said she thought he should be informed before they had to move on to the difficult stuff.
Despite everything, it was a nice moment.
Then they had to move on to the difficult stuff.
- Location
- Louisville KY
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In all honesty, I feel like ALL Capes are a little suicidal. Hell, they attended 2 EB fights voluntarily that I can remember but without anything that the majority of could really offer. For example, what could Aisha, Jean-Paul or Brian really offer when Capes were facing off against Levi or Benny? Well, as Regent showed, nothing much but target practice.
At least Rachel had her dogs to evacuate people and Lisa could provide some planning (when she isn't thrown off of a building or having to have emergency tracheostomy performed) amd Taylor had a history of having a penchant for problem solving. The others were literally risking themselves for nothing.
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean, you're not wrong. Natural triggers canonically do have a strong artifical drive towards risk-taking as well as conflict.
That being said, there are strong incentives to show up for an Endbringer fight, especially a local one. It's a major loss of face not to, if it's in your city.
And, at least for Leviathan, there at least seemed to be the possibility that each of the Undersiders could contribute in some way. Brian couldn't, but they didn't know Leviathan didn't need eyes to see, and Regent could detect nerves and maybe correct movements in the same way he usually made them worse.
And, of course, Aisha didn't trigger until after Leviathan.
Behemoth is, admittedly, a lot more questionable on multiple levels, but even Aisha might have been able to do close up rescue without getting targetted.
41-4 Inhabit
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It wasn't until Armsmaster offered to walk me to the cafeteria that I realised it was dinnertime. In fact by my usual standards it was past dinnertime. My internal clock must have been out of whack.
The one in my brain and my biochemistry that is, not the ones in my eyes. As far as I know, those are one hundred percent reliable as long as you're fine with Brockton Bay solar time. Or possibly local solar time wherever I happened to be, we haven't tested that.
Unfortunately, I couldn't see the ones in my eyes, (since they're, you know, in my eyes) and I hadn't been checking any external clocks, so I hadn't noticed it was well past seven. It wasn't an unreasonable time to start on dinner, but it was certainly enough that any further waiting would put me way off schedule.
So dinner it was. I didn't feel particularly hungry, but that didn't necessarily mean I wasn't in need of nutrition or that I wouldn't start feeling it when food was in front of me, and establishing what sense of normalcy I could wasn't a bad idea in any case.
By the time we made it to the cafeteria, I was forced to once again concede that my grasp of three-dimensional space was insufficient for navigation, at least within the deliberately confusing structure I presently inhabited. Hopefully that'd get better with time.
Taylor, of course, was already there, had her plate full, and was apparently deep in conversation with an unmasked Clockblocker, despite having left on her own. I could only assume her inhuman proprioception had lent her a (hopefully purely metaphorical) hand.
Also present was one Daniel "I still don't know what his middle name is or if he even has one but 'Danny' probably works well enough" Hebert, nose freshly re-bandaged as he awkwardly watched his teenage daughter chat with an admittedly kinda charismatic older boy.
I'll admit, I was a little worried as well. Putting aside that I wasn't terribly impressed with Clockblocker as a potential romantic partner, Taylor wasn't in a good place for a relationship. A better one than myself, maybe, but not a good one.
On the other hand, Clockblocker hadn't tried anything of the sort with me, and probably wouldn't with Taylor either. And Taylor did need all the friends she could get, particularly among her peers. If it became a problem, well, I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.
Or maybe burn it. Depends who was crushing/hitting on who and how big the age gap was.
How old was he, anyway? How much longer was he even going to be with us.?
"Clockblocker will graduate to the Protectorate around the middle of July," Armsmaster told me, having somehow divined my thoughts. Apparently massive amounts of trauma is not, in fact, a cure for internal monologues not staying internal.
More importantly, that meant the boy was seventeen, with his birthday happening probably a little before the stated time. Almost two years older than Taylor. For comparison, that was a bigger age gap than there was between Taylor and myself, if not by much. In five years I doubted anybody would raise an eyebrow at that sort of distance, but at the moment it was kinda sketchy.
Scratch that, a lot sketchy, once I remembered that Wards captaincy was determined by age. As soon as Aegis was out of the picture (hopefully by graduation), Clockblocker would be our team leader, and thus in our chain of command. And once he graduated, he would still be in our chain of command, like all Protectorate members theoretically were. (That did assume that none of the others were between Aegis and Clockblocker, an assumption that in hindsight was pretty unfounded, but it doesn't change the basic nature of the situation.)
Yeah, that was definitely a ship I'd have to sink if it tried to leave port before Taylor was an adult. Even if it meant burning bridges with Clockblocker.
Then again, I was probably catastrophizing unnecessarily. They did seem to like, or at least tolerate, each other, but it wasn't necessarily in that way in either case. I wasn't even entirely certain she liked boys. If she knowingly swung the other direction she probably would have said something in solidarity, but that still left a number of possibilities. And even if she did, that didn't mean she'd like him in particular.
Clockblocker, well, the kindest way to put it was that he needed to grow up a little, both physically and mentally, as weird as it is to say about somebody closer to four years my senior than three. Puberty had clearly hit him both late and hard, if he was like this at seventeen, and the way I had to be the mature one for our pranking was telling.
It wasn't anything time couldn't fix, but time was my main objection in the first place. If they decided on something as mature, consenting adults I wasn't going to stop them.
If there was even anything there in the first place. Which there quite possibly wasn't. They were just talking, after all.
Ugh. I needed to think about something else.
First things first, I pointed Armsmaster towards Danny and watched him ask and then sit next to the man. I wasn't close enough to overhear (which was very much intentional on my part) but I didn't see any angry gestures, hostile body language, or punching in the face so I assumed it was going okay.
And I had a job to do: acquire and consume sustenance. It was vitally important that I not starve to death. Missing one meal wouldn't be that bad, but having it would at least help enforce routine and maybe aid me in just getting through this. I don't want to say I needed that, but it sure wouldn't hurt.
And also there were hot fudge sundaes available. I really liked hot fudge sundaes.
It probably wasn't the most responsible idea to start with a hot fudge sundae, but in my defence nobody stopped me. And I did acquire some vegetables to go alongside it, becroutoned and nut-sprinkled though they were. Does it count as a salad if you include no dressing whatsoever?
Food for thought, once I figured out where I was going to eat it.
A butterfly flitted in front of my face, then gently flew off as if leading me to Taylor, which settled that question neatly.
As I followed the distinctively purple-on-purple wings, I mused on my concerns of the last few minutes. Who did better on the test nobody studied for. Who's pulling their weight in pulling a little prank on the adults. Who should and shouldn't be dating whom. Who to sit with in the cafeteria.
Taylor, I decided, had been entirely correct: the Wards really were filled with teenage drama.
… eh, I could live with it. We were teenagers, after all, as well as capes. It was nice to see that the latter hadn't entirely devoured the former.
Author's Note: Three hundred chapters. 300. That's an awful lot of chapters, and a nice big round number to celebrate. In all honesty I don't have much planned for the occasion (we're not quite ready for the next "punchy" chapter just yet), but I'd like to thank you all for sticking with me for this long. It's been a long journey, and Orderly has grown up quite a bit since it started, and I'm very glad to have had the chance.
The one in my brain and my biochemistry that is, not the ones in my eyes. As far as I know, those are one hundred percent reliable as long as you're fine with Brockton Bay solar time. Or possibly local solar time wherever I happened to be, we haven't tested that.
Unfortunately, I couldn't see the ones in my eyes, (since they're, you know, in my eyes) and I hadn't been checking any external clocks, so I hadn't noticed it was well past seven. It wasn't an unreasonable time to start on dinner, but it was certainly enough that any further waiting would put me way off schedule.
So dinner it was. I didn't feel particularly hungry, but that didn't necessarily mean I wasn't in need of nutrition or that I wouldn't start feeling it when food was in front of me, and establishing what sense of normalcy I could wasn't a bad idea in any case.
By the time we made it to the cafeteria, I was forced to once again concede that my grasp of three-dimensional space was insufficient for navigation, at least within the deliberately confusing structure I presently inhabited. Hopefully that'd get better with time.
Taylor, of course, was already there, had her plate full, and was apparently deep in conversation with an unmasked Clockblocker, despite having left on her own. I could only assume her inhuman proprioception had lent her a (hopefully purely metaphorical) hand.
Also present was one Daniel "I still don't know what his middle name is or if he even has one but 'Danny' probably works well enough" Hebert, nose freshly re-bandaged as he awkwardly watched his teenage daughter chat with an admittedly kinda charismatic older boy.
I'll admit, I was a little worried as well. Putting aside that I wasn't terribly impressed with Clockblocker as a potential romantic partner, Taylor wasn't in a good place for a relationship. A better one than myself, maybe, but not a good one.
On the other hand, Clockblocker hadn't tried anything of the sort with me, and probably wouldn't with Taylor either. And Taylor did need all the friends she could get, particularly among her peers. If it became a problem, well, I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.
Or maybe burn it. Depends who was crushing/hitting on who and how big the age gap was.
How old was he, anyway? How much longer was he even going to be with us.?
"Clockblocker will graduate to the Protectorate around the middle of July," Armsmaster told me, having somehow divined my thoughts. Apparently massive amounts of trauma is not, in fact, a cure for internal monologues not staying internal.
More importantly, that meant the boy was seventeen, with his birthday happening probably a little before the stated time. Almost two years older than Taylor. For comparison, that was a bigger age gap than there was between Taylor and myself, if not by much. In five years I doubted anybody would raise an eyebrow at that sort of distance, but at the moment it was kinda sketchy.
Scratch that, a lot sketchy, once I remembered that Wards captaincy was determined by age. As soon as Aegis was out of the picture (hopefully by graduation), Clockblocker would be our team leader, and thus in our chain of command. And once he graduated, he would still be in our chain of command, like all Protectorate members theoretically were. (That did assume that none of the others were between Aegis and Clockblocker, an assumption that in hindsight was pretty unfounded, but it doesn't change the basic nature of the situation.)
Yeah, that was definitely a ship I'd have to sink if it tried to leave port before Taylor was an adult. Even if it meant burning bridges with Clockblocker.
Then again, I was probably catastrophizing unnecessarily. They did seem to like, or at least tolerate, each other, but it wasn't necessarily in that way in either case. I wasn't even entirely certain she liked boys. If she knowingly swung the other direction she probably would have said something in solidarity, but that still left a number of possibilities. And even if she did, that didn't mean she'd like him in particular.
Clockblocker, well, the kindest way to put it was that he needed to grow up a little, both physically and mentally, as weird as it is to say about somebody closer to four years my senior than three. Puberty had clearly hit him both late and hard, if he was like this at seventeen, and the way I had to be the mature one for our pranking was telling.
It wasn't anything time couldn't fix, but time was my main objection in the first place. If they decided on something as mature, consenting adults I wasn't going to stop them.
If there was even anything there in the first place. Which there quite possibly wasn't. They were just talking, after all.
Ugh. I needed to think about something else.
First things first, I pointed Armsmaster towards Danny and watched him ask and then sit next to the man. I wasn't close enough to overhear (which was very much intentional on my part) but I didn't see any angry gestures, hostile body language, or punching in the face so I assumed it was going okay.
And I had a job to do: acquire and consume sustenance. It was vitally important that I not starve to death. Missing one meal wouldn't be that bad, but having it would at least help enforce routine and maybe aid me in just getting through this. I don't want to say I needed that, but it sure wouldn't hurt.
And also there were hot fudge sundaes available. I really liked hot fudge sundaes.
It probably wasn't the most responsible idea to start with a hot fudge sundae, but in my defence nobody stopped me. And I did acquire some vegetables to go alongside it, becroutoned and nut-sprinkled though they were. Does it count as a salad if you include no dressing whatsoever?
Food for thought, once I figured out where I was going to eat it.
A butterfly flitted in front of my face, then gently flew off as if leading me to Taylor, which settled that question neatly.
As I followed the distinctively purple-on-purple wings, I mused on my concerns of the last few minutes. Who did better on the test nobody studied for. Who's pulling their weight in pulling a little prank on the adults. Who should and shouldn't be dating whom. Who to sit with in the cafeteria.
Taylor, I decided, had been entirely correct: the Wards really were filled with teenage drama.
… eh, I could live with it. We were teenagers, after all, as well as capes. It was nice to see that the latter hadn't entirely devoured the former.
Author's Note: Three hundred chapters. 300. That's an awful lot of chapters, and a nice big round number to celebrate. In all honesty I don't have much planned for the occasion (we're not quite ready for the next "punchy" chapter just yet), but I'd like to thank you all for sticking with me for this long. It's been a long journey, and Orderly has grown up quite a bit since it started, and I'm very glad to have had the chance.
Orderly Timeline
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
In celebration of 300 chapters, the timeline I've been working with for Orderly so far:
June 11, 1995 - Taylor Hebert born (Canonically it's unclear when Taylor's birthday is exactly, but it was definitely somewhere around the middle of this month and year and June 11 seems like as reasonable a date as any)
April 4, 1997 - Jacqueline Colere born to Charlotte and Adrien Colere, under the name Nathaniel.
September 3, 2002 - Jacqueline enters kindergarten at King's Cross Reformed Elementary. "Nathaniel" performs well in activities, but largely fails to integrate with the class due to several factors, racial issues and an undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder among them.
February 14, 2003 - Jacqueline wears a dress for the first time, due to a misunderstanding of the purpose of Valentine's Day. While this course of action is not universally detested among her classmates, Jacqueline faces active and blatant mockery and bullying. After school and over the following weekend, Charlotte and Adrien Colere prove more supportive.
September 2, 2003 - Jacqueline enters first grade. Over the year, poor classroom integration will escalate to open hostility on the part of several classmates, exacerbated by Jacqueline's superior performance on tests, perceived favouritism on the part of the teacher, and several more "cross-dressing" incidents.
January 12, 2004 - Jacqueline begins studying social systems and psychology. Early on, this will only exacerbate the issues between her and her antagonists.
April 4, 2004: The Speakeasy incident. After running away from a disastrous 7th birthday party, largely caused by Charlotte Colere's poor decision to invite her entire class and Jacqueline's unfortunate decision to wear a dress to it, Jacqueline is talked into following a mildly curious Speakeasy. Her parents are extremely upset with several of Jacqueline's classmates for pushing her into Speakeasy's arms, although not as upset as they are with Speakeasy himself.
April 8, 2004: Eighty-one hours after her disappearance, Jacqueline is discovered in a trashed hotel suite several hundred kilometres from home. Four hours after her discovery, she is reunited with her very relieved parents. After hearing the full story and discovering the full extent of her issues at school, Jacqueline is withdrawn from King's Cross Reformed Elementary.
April 11, 2004: Charlotte Colere, after many frantic hours of research and a very informative encounter with NewU's website, approaches her possible-daughter about transition. Jacqueline cautiously agrees to try: by the end of the month she will be fully convinced and committed.
April 20, 2004: Jacqueline chooses her new name.
August 2, 2004: Jacqueline meets NewU for the first time.
August 9, 2004: Jacqueline begins NewU's treatment plan.
August 30, 2004: Jacqueline enters third grade at a new school. She quickly finds herself flourishing both socially and academically, despite a relatively long daily commute. She gets along with all her classmates and makes many friends. It is the happiest time of her life.
October 11, 2004: Jacqueline completes NewU's treatment plan.
May 9, 2005: Leviathan attacks Newfoundland. Charlotte and Jacqueline Colere escape the island aboard the fishing vessel Fishful' Thinking III. Adrien Colere, inland on a business trip, is left behind and presumably perishes, along with most of Jacqueline's past and current classmates and the island's population in general.
May 21, 2005: Fishful' Thinking III, after an extremely hazardous and turbulent voyage, is successfully beached a few kilometres north of Brockton Bay. Despite the violence of the landing and the difficulties of the trip, 112 of the 130 people who boarded her in Newfoundland survived the journey, including her entire crew complement. Within the year, she will resume service.
May 22, 2005: After perfunctory processing, Charlotte and Jacqueline Colere are registered as legal refugees in the city of Brockton Bay.
October 5, 2010: Purity picks a fight with Lung late at night. By the time dawn breaks on the sixth, thirty-seven people are dead, including Charlotte Colere, and her and Jacqueline's house has been burnt to the ground. Jacqueline automatically goes to school the next morning, and will not leave it until story start.
Thursday, April 7: Start of Orderly. Merger, meeting with Taylor, "de-mastering" of Sophia and Emma, first contact with PRT, Jacqueline goes home with the Heberts, Danny finds out about both girls' superpowers.
Friday, April 8: "Vespiary" concept begins. Heberts + Jacqueline taken into MS screening.
Small timeskip while Jacqueline is in MS containment.
Sunday, April 10, 2011: Jacqueline out of MS containment. "The Plan" commences.
Monday, April 11, 2011: Lung/Vespiary-Armsmaster fight ends with Lung taken into custody almost without incident extremely early in the morning. Jacqueline placed with the Heberts.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011: An emergency midnight meeting of non-powered ABB leadership ends with all attendees dead at Bakuda's hands. Bakuda seizes control of the ABB. Jacqueline's first proper power testing. With Panacea's help, it is confirmed that Jacqueline's power is safe and effective for human healing.
Wednesday, April 13: Billy Cletis Ewart attempts to abduct Jacqueline, is foiled by the combined but mutually unaware efforts of Regent and Taylor.
Thursday, April 14: The Undersiders rob Brockton Bay Central Bank. Despite their best efforts and the intervention of Über and L33+, Grue and Tattletale are captured. Dinah Alcott arrives at the bank during the battle and is promptly taken in by the PRT, with significant precautions taken to keep her safe. Taylor and Jacqueline officially sign on to the Wards.
Friday, April 15: Jacqueline and Taylor are (separately) introduced to Adrian Jackson and (together) to the Wards. Assault spills the beans about what (apparently) happened with Taylor and Sophia.
Saturday, April 16: Achronal Engine decides on a Name. Jacqueline discovers Purity's involvement in her mother's death while reading files on the E88. A significant amount of peer bonding.
Sunday, April 17: Bakuda's bombing spree. Jacqueline acts a cape publically for the first time, healing in the Parahuman Healing Ward at Brockton Bay General Hospital, saving a great many lives. First proper meeting with Amy. The Purity incident. The assault on the Rig. Coil's kidnapping of Jacqueline and Sophia ends with him dead under Jacqueline's boot and his organisation in ruins.
June 11, 1995 - Taylor Hebert born (Canonically it's unclear when Taylor's birthday is exactly, but it was definitely somewhere around the middle of this month and year and June 11 seems like as reasonable a date as any)
April 4, 1997 - Jacqueline Colere born to Charlotte and Adrien Colere, under the name Nathaniel.
September 3, 2002 - Jacqueline enters kindergarten at King's Cross Reformed Elementary. "Nathaniel" performs well in activities, but largely fails to integrate with the class due to several factors, racial issues and an undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder among them.
February 14, 2003 - Jacqueline wears a dress for the first time, due to a misunderstanding of the purpose of Valentine's Day. While this course of action is not universally detested among her classmates, Jacqueline faces active and blatant mockery and bullying. After school and over the following weekend, Charlotte and Adrien Colere prove more supportive.
September 2, 2003 - Jacqueline enters first grade. Over the year, poor classroom integration will escalate to open hostility on the part of several classmates, exacerbated by Jacqueline's superior performance on tests, perceived favouritism on the part of the teacher, and several more "cross-dressing" incidents.
January 12, 2004 - Jacqueline begins studying social systems and psychology. Early on, this will only exacerbate the issues between her and her antagonists.
April 4, 2004: The Speakeasy incident. After running away from a disastrous 7th birthday party, largely caused by Charlotte Colere's poor decision to invite her entire class and Jacqueline's unfortunate decision to wear a dress to it, Jacqueline is talked into following a mildly curious Speakeasy. Her parents are extremely upset with several of Jacqueline's classmates for pushing her into Speakeasy's arms, although not as upset as they are with Speakeasy himself.
April 8, 2004: Eighty-one hours after her disappearance, Jacqueline is discovered in a trashed hotel suite several hundred kilometres from home. Four hours after her discovery, she is reunited with her very relieved parents. After hearing the full story and discovering the full extent of her issues at school, Jacqueline is withdrawn from King's Cross Reformed Elementary.
April 11, 2004: Charlotte Colere, after many frantic hours of research and a very informative encounter with NewU's website, approaches her possible-daughter about transition. Jacqueline cautiously agrees to try: by the end of the month she will be fully convinced and committed.
April 20, 2004: Jacqueline chooses her new name.
August 2, 2004: Jacqueline meets NewU for the first time.
August 9, 2004: Jacqueline begins NewU's treatment plan.
August 30, 2004: Jacqueline enters third grade at a new school. She quickly finds herself flourishing both socially and academically, despite a relatively long daily commute. She gets along with all her classmates and makes many friends. It is the happiest time of her life.
October 11, 2004: Jacqueline completes NewU's treatment plan.
May 9, 2005: Leviathan attacks Newfoundland. Charlotte and Jacqueline Colere escape the island aboard the fishing vessel Fishful' Thinking III. Adrien Colere, inland on a business trip, is left behind and presumably perishes, along with most of Jacqueline's past and current classmates and the island's population in general.
May 21, 2005: Fishful' Thinking III, after an extremely hazardous and turbulent voyage, is successfully beached a few kilometres north of Brockton Bay. Despite the violence of the landing and the difficulties of the trip, 112 of the 130 people who boarded her in Newfoundland survived the journey, including her entire crew complement. Within the year, she will resume service.
May 22, 2005: After perfunctory processing, Charlotte and Jacqueline Colere are registered as legal refugees in the city of Brockton Bay.
October 5, 2010: Purity picks a fight with Lung late at night. By the time dawn breaks on the sixth, thirty-seven people are dead, including Charlotte Colere, and her and Jacqueline's house has been burnt to the ground. Jacqueline automatically goes to school the next morning, and will not leave it until story start.
2011:
Thursday, April 7: Start of Orderly. Merger, meeting with Taylor, "de-mastering" of Sophia and Emma, first contact with PRT, Jacqueline goes home with the Heberts, Danny finds out about both girls' superpowers.
Friday, April 8: "Vespiary" concept begins. Heberts + Jacqueline taken into MS screening.
Small timeskip while Jacqueline is in MS containment.
Sunday, April 10, 2011: Jacqueline out of MS containment. "The Plan" commences.
Monday, April 11, 2011: Lung/Vespiary-Armsmaster fight ends with Lung taken into custody almost without incident extremely early in the morning. Jacqueline placed with the Heberts.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011: An emergency midnight meeting of non-powered ABB leadership ends with all attendees dead at Bakuda's hands. Bakuda seizes control of the ABB. Jacqueline's first proper power testing. With Panacea's help, it is confirmed that Jacqueline's power is safe and effective for human healing.
Wednesday, April 13: Billy Cletis Ewart attempts to abduct Jacqueline, is foiled by the combined but mutually unaware efforts of Regent and Taylor.
Thursday, April 14: The Undersiders rob Brockton Bay Central Bank. Despite their best efforts and the intervention of Über and L33+, Grue and Tattletale are captured. Dinah Alcott arrives at the bank during the battle and is promptly taken in by the PRT, with significant precautions taken to keep her safe. Taylor and Jacqueline officially sign on to the Wards.
Friday, April 15: Jacqueline and Taylor are (separately) introduced to Adrian Jackson and (together) to the Wards. Assault spills the beans about what (apparently) happened with Taylor and Sophia.
Saturday, April 16: Achronal Engine decides on a Name. Jacqueline discovers Purity's involvement in her mother's death while reading files on the E88. A significant amount of peer bonding.
Sunday, April 17: Bakuda's bombing spree. Jacqueline acts a cape publically for the first time, healing in the Parahuman Healing Ward at Brockton Bay General Hospital, saving a great many lives. First proper meeting with Amy. The Purity incident. The assault on the Rig. Coil's kidnapping of Jacqueline and Sophia ends with him dead under Jacqueline's boot and his organisation in ruins.
- Location
- Attached to a wall
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Huh, you know what if the wierd vibes Jacqueline got from
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dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That's as many as thirty tens, and that's wonderful!
- Location
- Louisville KY
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Omg, I had forgotten about Jean-Paul's reaction to seeing the potential kidnapper covered in bugs.
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The "Wow, this kid is scary, better memorise what she looks like to avoid her" part or the "I just bet I can annoy Tattletale with this" part?