42-3 Infrastructure
New
- Location
- The House of Moon and Star
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Of course, I knew full well that things undoubtedly were being done, but they wouldn't be enough. The Empire, or at least the parts of it that actually bothered with it, was good at the PR game, as good as they reasonably could be as explicit neo-nazis in the US. And now they had a perfect casus belli. Normal measures wouldn't be sufficient.
I wasn't arrogant enough to believe I could single-handedly fix everything, but I was confident I could contribute. And I had a few cards up my metaphorical sleeve that could, if not be a silver bullet, then at least tip the balance a little.
Adrian Jackson, it must be said, was very accommodating about making an appointment. Actually, considering how things went, I'll just say he was very accommodating in general, at least with me. Part of me wonders just how much of that was liking me personally versus having faith in my abilities versus curiosity versus just experience with how much trouble parahumans and teenagers alike can be if not at least worked around, but it was convenient enough that I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Whatever it was, it only took a few minutes before we were scheduled to meet at seven. It didn't exactly leave a lot of time for showering, dressing, scarfing down cereal, brushing teeth, and all the other morning necessities, but I'd had shorter. I was decent, at least, and at a bare minimum "being seen in public" level for a normal person. The rest was, quite literally, his job, not mine.
Probably one he'd mostly delegate, and one I'd need to pick up at least a bit of the skills for, but still. I knew full well that he was better at it than I was. Even with all my advantages I just plain and simple didn't have the same experience or training he and presumably his underlings had. I was a talented amateur at the PR game, they were seasoned professionals.
My plan was not a good plan. It was a good start, but it needed a lot of fleshing out before calling it a "plan" wasn't being grandly generous. Really, it was more of a loose collection of mostly solid ideas, the vast majority of them still in need of polishing and all of them needing a lot of work to forge them into a coherent whole. And I knew it. That was half the reason why I was going to Adrian Jackson, and the only half I intended to explicitly (if not quite that explicitly) share.
Of course, first I had to convince Adrian Jackson that the core ideas were good, but that didn't take too long. He was already aware of and at least mostly on board with my no secret identity plan, and it was hard to deny that the public was already aware of me and my PRT ties. Armsmaster had literally carried me out of the hospital in full view of the public, and that was after I'd done plenty of other attention-grabbing things at Brockton Bay General.
Honestly, I think he was more making sure I was prepared to commit to the plan and articulate enough to actually pull it off than seriously trying to dissuade me if I really wanted to do this. If I couldn't make a convincing case for why I should be doing this then I had no business attempting the actual plan, and this couldn't be undone. I had to be certain.
But I could, and I was.
He could have stopped me, if he didn't think it would help. I would have let him. But it wouldn't be on the strength of concern for myself unless he brought up something I hadn't already considered and accepted.
He didn't. He did his due diligence, and perhaps just a little more, but in the end we moved from are we going to do this to how are we going to do this.
Refining the plan was not a simple process on my end, but Adrian Jackson had it harder. He was doing that with me, overseeing the actual set up, and undergoing the probably even more arduous process of actually getting permission to publicly reveal a Ward's civilian identity. Even with my consent, and me being the one actually doing it, that was not something he could approve unilaterally. At a minimum, it involved the Director, Armsmaster, Alice Stone, Danny as the closest thing I had to "parental consent", and Taylor getting herself involved even if she probably didn't officially need to give permission, and that was just the people I had to speak with to drag them into my nefarious scheme. I had the impression Jackson talked to at least three times as many people.
It took hours, and then half an hour more to tie it all together, even with the help of Jackson's secretary, the ENE's speechwriter, and several other people whose exact roles I'm not sure of but who struck me as quite competent.
Adrian Jackson made it look like just another day at the office. I'm not sure if that says good things about his composure or bad things about his usual workload, but I can't say I have any complaints about how he handled it. Or his staff for that matter: everything that could be ready without me was ready when I left said office.
My costume for the day was pretty basic, just a nice white dress (and not even that nice, it wasn't even fitted) with trim and a few accessories in approximately the same shades of red as my boots. Scarf, some long shiny gloves, and some sort of waist sash thing that probably wasn't technically a belt but I don't know what else to call it. The shoutout to Panacea was obvious, but besides that it was just modestly fancy and slightly archaic/eccentric civilian clothing. Exactly the sort of outfit I'd wear going out to a fancy dinner, if I'd ever been invited to one.
Which was the point, of course.
I probably made the makeup artist's job difficult. Part of that was just working on a new person with very little warning, but mostly it was the rather unusual end-goal and the complexity of working on a person with multiple skin tones that change on her whim.
He did a bang-up job nonetheless. If I didn't know what I looked like before and the objective I'd set it would have seemed just a little sloppy (although still better than I could have managed myself) but the effect was just what I wanted when the time cameras started rolling.
Lights, camera, action.
(I've always wanted to say that)
I wasn't arrogant enough to believe I could single-handedly fix everything, but I was confident I could contribute. And I had a few cards up my metaphorical sleeve that could, if not be a silver bullet, then at least tip the balance a little.
Adrian Jackson, it must be said, was very accommodating about making an appointment. Actually, considering how things went, I'll just say he was very accommodating in general, at least with me. Part of me wonders just how much of that was liking me personally versus having faith in my abilities versus curiosity versus just experience with how much trouble parahumans and teenagers alike can be if not at least worked around, but it was convenient enough that I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Whatever it was, it only took a few minutes before we were scheduled to meet at seven. It didn't exactly leave a lot of time for showering, dressing, scarfing down cereal, brushing teeth, and all the other morning necessities, but I'd had shorter. I was decent, at least, and at a bare minimum "being seen in public" level for a normal person. The rest was, quite literally, his job, not mine.
Probably one he'd mostly delegate, and one I'd need to pick up at least a bit of the skills for, but still. I knew full well that he was better at it than I was. Even with all my advantages I just plain and simple didn't have the same experience or training he and presumably his underlings had. I was a talented amateur at the PR game, they were seasoned professionals.
My plan was not a good plan. It was a good start, but it needed a lot of fleshing out before calling it a "plan" wasn't being grandly generous. Really, it was more of a loose collection of mostly solid ideas, the vast majority of them still in need of polishing and all of them needing a lot of work to forge them into a coherent whole. And I knew it. That was half the reason why I was going to Adrian Jackson, and the only half I intended to explicitly (if not quite that explicitly) share.
Of course, first I had to convince Adrian Jackson that the core ideas were good, but that didn't take too long. He was already aware of and at least mostly on board with my no secret identity plan, and it was hard to deny that the public was already aware of me and my PRT ties. Armsmaster had literally carried me out of the hospital in full view of the public, and that was after I'd done plenty of other attention-grabbing things at Brockton Bay General.
Honestly, I think he was more making sure I was prepared to commit to the plan and articulate enough to actually pull it off than seriously trying to dissuade me if I really wanted to do this. If I couldn't make a convincing case for why I should be doing this then I had no business attempting the actual plan, and this couldn't be undone. I had to be certain.
But I could, and I was.
He could have stopped me, if he didn't think it would help. I would have let him. But it wouldn't be on the strength of concern for myself unless he brought up something I hadn't already considered and accepted.
He didn't. He did his due diligence, and perhaps just a little more, but in the end we moved from are we going to do this to how are we going to do this.
Refining the plan was not a simple process on my end, but Adrian Jackson had it harder. He was doing that with me, overseeing the actual set up, and undergoing the probably even more arduous process of actually getting permission to publicly reveal a Ward's civilian identity. Even with my consent, and me being the one actually doing it, that was not something he could approve unilaterally. At a minimum, it involved the Director, Armsmaster, Alice Stone, Danny as the closest thing I had to "parental consent", and Taylor getting herself involved even if she probably didn't officially need to give permission, and that was just the people I had to speak with to drag them into my nefarious scheme. I had the impression Jackson talked to at least three times as many people.
It took hours, and then half an hour more to tie it all together, even with the help of Jackson's secretary, the ENE's speechwriter, and several other people whose exact roles I'm not sure of but who struck me as quite competent.
Adrian Jackson made it look like just another day at the office. I'm not sure if that says good things about his composure or bad things about his usual workload, but I can't say I have any complaints about how he handled it. Or his staff for that matter: everything that could be ready without me was ready when I left said office.
My costume for the day was pretty basic, just a nice white dress (and not even that nice, it wasn't even fitted) with trim and a few accessories in approximately the same shades of red as my boots. Scarf, some long shiny gloves, and some sort of waist sash thing that probably wasn't technically a belt but I don't know what else to call it. The shoutout to Panacea was obvious, but besides that it was just modestly fancy and slightly archaic/eccentric civilian clothing. Exactly the sort of outfit I'd wear going out to a fancy dinner, if I'd ever been invited to one.
Which was the point, of course.
I probably made the makeup artist's job difficult. Part of that was just working on a new person with very little warning, but mostly it was the rather unusual end-goal and the complexity of working on a person with multiple skin tones that change on her whim.
He did a bang-up job nonetheless. If I didn't know what I looked like before and the objective I'd set it would have seemed just a little sloppy (although still better than I could have managed myself) but the effect was just what I wanted when the time cameras started rolling.
Lights, camera, action.
(I've always wanted to say that)
