Orderly (Worm Semi-SI)

[Obscura]

Tattletale:

Today was the day.

It was the day their fledgling team, the "Undersiders" would truly take off and fly, or perhaps crash ignominiously to the ground and juvenile detention. Probably the latter. Because their great big reputation-boosting scheme was pretty darn stupid. You could get away with a lot in the parahuman world, if you were clever and lucky, or just really powerful, but Tattletale didn't exactly have a ton of confidence in the plan.

Today was the day the Undersiders would attempt to rob the Brockton Bay Central Bank.

The plan was perfect, assuming everything happened according to it. Which applied to most plans, really. That did not make it a good plan.

No plan that involved holding up a bank in broad daylight was a good plan.

But she didn't exactly have a choice in the matter, so she was going through with it.

And, naturally, that didn't mean her other headaches had stopped. There were plenty of those. Not just from her power, either. There was apparently a powerful new Master in town, able to bury some druggie who tried to kidnap her in bugs. She almost hadn't believed Alec when he told her he'd saved some kid from a guy with a gun and a syringe, only for the kid to immediately and literally swarm the unfortunate degenerate under, (and she wasn't sure which of those was more unbelievable) but her power told her he was telling the truth for once. Hopefully the unknown kid wouldn't interfere with today. There was really no reason to expect her to mess things up besides Murphy's law and the evil machinations of Coil, but that could very well be enough.

Meanwhile, Alec was a sarcastic, lazy, jerk, Rachel constantly had to be held back from flying off the handle, and Brian was…

Well he was actually a pretty good teammate, all things considered, but he didn't make up for the unreliability of the other two. Still, at least her actual teammates were probably on her side. Probably being the operative word, but still. The backup Coil had agreed to provide in order to make Grue agree to do this probably wasn't.

Especially since she didn't know who it was, or if they even existed. Given everything else Coil had done, breaking promises probably wasn't where he drew the line.

Coil himself definitely wasn't on her side. Lisa was 100% certain that the mandatory robbery was, at best, intended to cause a big loud distraction and draw all of the available law-enforcement to it. That was the best case scenario, not the only one. She was equally certain that Coil wouldn't rescue them if they got caught. He'd send someone to keep her from talking, probably fatally, but that was it.

Granted, she'd kill him if she got half a chance, but he was the one who'd pressed her into his service at gunpoint. She felt pretty justified in that.

Lisa Wilborn technically had a plan.


Taylor:

Today was the day.

Admittedly, there had been a lot of "the days" of late, but this was the day Winslow was going down. Someone had actually been looking into Winslow, apparently, and now she was expected to meet the district superintendent to tell her side of the story. Dad had, after checking to make sure she was okay with it, scheduled the meeting for 12:30, the earliest slot available. Taylor was dressing as nicely as she could. Which still wasn't exactly black tie, but it'd have to do. Jacqueline had come in halfway through and stopped her from picking out a bright red flower. Taylor had thought she needed an accent, like how Jacqueline had insisted on yesterday, but the same girl stopped her today for some reason. The end result was a lot better than she could have managed last week, anyway, so she wasn't about to complain.

She'd also had to shove her protesting father out the door to go to work, since he'd already missed so much. She hadn't been able to stop him promising to attend the meeting itself, but she'd make it there on her own. After she dropped off Jacqueline at the PRT, since there was no chance she was going to leave the girl without powerful supervision. Not after yesterday.

Taylor Hebert sort of had a plan.




Coil:

Today was the day.

Everything was proceeding according to plan. [This was the moment when your classic James Bond villain would unleash an evil laugh, but Coil wasn't actually a Bond villain. Despite the underground base, army of mercenaries, and his various self-destruct devices. It's an understandable mistake, but actual Bond villains weren't quite as disgusting or horribly petty as Coil, and they tended towards grand gestures rather than gradual undermining.]

Several things would happen today. Some of them had been orchestrated by him, some he was merely twisting in his favor. The local Protectorate would be busy with a conference, which was why he'd picked today in the first place. The Undersiders would rob Brockton Bay Central Bank, and probably draw the attention of the PRT and its Wards. The PRT's new golden goose would be in the bank at the time, which would make sure of it. Taylor Hebert/Vespiary would be very busy with a sudden meeting with the district superintendent to explain what happened at Winslow.

One of Coil's agents had brought things to the superintendent's attention at just the right time, and Taylor's father had agreed to a meeting almost immediately. The superintendent's office was on the edges of the city, thanks to a corrupt mayor and a crooked building firm all of twenty years ago, so even if she heard about the bank robbery she'd be too late to interfere. It wouldn't do for his carefully-orchestrated distraction to get taken out in moments after all.

And the usual gang violence would continue unabated, of course. Coil even had a few agents provocateur ready to make sure today was interesting.

More importantly, today was the day he'd finally get his hands on Dinah Alcott. [Evil Laughter did not actually happen here, but would have been dramatically appropriate.] Then his power would be all the greater. Dinah Alcott was a precog, and a rather powerful one at that. She was also a pretty and somewhat rich preteen from a politically powerful family (her uncle was the mayor), but that had nothing to do with why Coil was going to have her kidnapped. He just wanted her power, which he theorized would synchronize well with his own, for himself. And he was willing to go to just about any lengths to get it.

He'd tried before, of course, but his previous attempts had all failed or drawn too much attention. Now, however, the entirety of the PRT-Aligned forces of the city would be too busy to even notice when his men grabbed her. He'd get the girl, and all her parahuman power too.

Thomas Calvert had a plan.




Dinah Alcott:

Today was the day.

By the time the sun set, Dinah Alcott would quite likely be either free of the dark futures and the bad men she saw in her future, or she would in their grip. If she did nothing, it would almost certainly be the latter. 96.017% chance. Her headache was really bad. But she'd stumbled across a better possibility, and she intended to take it. The odds were good that she wouldn't regret it. 79.242% chance.

She didn't know why, but the PRT was much more likely to believe her and take adequate protection measures now, provided she reached the right people. 84.512% chance.


Dinah Alcott had a plan.

 

[Obscura]

Taylor, it turned out, had a meeting today. The Independent-super of the educational district, or however it was he was titled, was looking into Winslow at long last.

Well that's sort of an exaggeration. If whoever was in charge of education in Brockton Bay hadn't been constantly keeping an eye on Winslow they were incompetent beyond belief. But, outside of inspections, the main way any educational oversight kept an eye on it's schools was through their administration. Or, rather, in this case, through Principal Blackheart's administration.


I hadn't had much experience with the woman myself, barring her futile efforts to downplay the time I'd gotten assaulted in her school (for the second time in as many days), but Taylor's case had shown her to have a rather unfriendly relationship with the truth, especially those parts of the truth that might make her look bad.

There were a lot of those parts. I quite honestly do not know if she's that arrogant and convinced of the righteousness of her wretched excuse for management of her wretched excuse for a school or if she's just a cynical time-server who doesn't care about the school, much less the students. I also quite honestly do not know which would be worse.

Either way, I don't think whatever reports the scholarly authorities get from Winslow are all that accurate. So after a quick breakfast, I was helping Taylor pick out how to dress nice. We managed pretty nicely, by which I mean she looked like a gawky, awkward, teenager dressing as formally as she could. Which she was.

So it was fortunate that that was probably exactly the right look for this. "She's trying, but it isn't working" was exactly the impression I wanted her to convey. Too good, and it would call into question how she'd gotten bullied in the first place, as unfair as that might be. If she didn't look like she was trying, that might seem disrespectful, and that would make her less sympathetic. Quite by accident, she'd managed to get it almost exactly right.

Aside from the bright colours. Bright colours would have been a mistake, and they were one she almost made. After the clothes were picked out, but not put on, we had breakfast. Which was cereal, as the nadir of the downward trend in breakfast quality in the Hebert household as of late. It wasn't even the good breakfast cereal, with the bright colours and the ridiculous amounts of sugar. No it was the boring, bland, great and non-tacky stuff like bran with dried grapes. Nothing like those stupidly oversweet loops made of froot.

On a side note, I discovered that my previous selves didn't agree on everything, and that my own opinions can be similarly divided. Good to know, I guess, but it made figuring out my sense of self even more complicated.

I also (re-)learned that I enjoy humourously "off" descriptions. They are a fine and underappreciated art. Sort of like background music, but funny. Although I guess background music can be pretty funny. Let's be honest, "Yakety Sax" is way better than any of the numerous scenes it's backed over the decades. Now there is a true masterpiece of the unseen art of background music.

More often though, background music is used to set the tone, to subtly, or "subtly", let the viewer know how they should feel without drawing attention to itself. I didn't really use background music specifically, but on a person there are quite a few things that serve the same purpose. Like clothes, makeup, scent, and body language. Also like background music, those things can draw attention to themselves if intended to do so or overdone, and there are times when such an approach has its benefits, but most of the time you want it subtle and supportive rather than loud and attention-getting.

"Come on Jacqueline, let's go." Taylor broke me out of my internal monologue once more. I was honestly getting used to it by this point.

That didn't mean I knew what she was talking about though, and it showed on my face. Taylor must have caught it, because she started explaining.

"Dad has to go to work or everything is going to go under, so I shoved him out the door. You are going to the PRT to wait for your meeting, I'm not leaving you unsupervised"

"Taylor, it's four hours before either of our meetings start."

She didn't have an answer to that. Preparation is essential, and being early is usually a lot better than being late, but four hours was really overkill. I'd do two and a half, and that was still more than most would bother with.

So we had a bit more than an hour and a half to kill.



I'd like to tell you we did great things with those ninety-seven minutes. That we made great progress in our research, or reforged our sisterly bonds stronger than anything the world had ever seen, or even went on a magical adventure in another world which took years from our point of view, but which happened in less than an hour on this side of the mirror thanks to timey-wimey stuff. Or that we were at least slightly productive.

It'd be a lie, but I would like to tell you that. In actuality, we mostly spent it sitting around awkwardly. Just because we had forged strong bonds under fire didn't mean we were experienced in small talk with each other, and neither of us were all that great at small talk anyway.

I wasn't all that great socially when not deliberately trying to create some grand impression, and Taylor just wasn't that great socially in general. At all. Having only one friend as a child and never seeking to expand beyond that wasn't great for developing those skills in general, even when that friend doesn't get Mastered into torturing you in incredibly callous, cruel and personal ways for over a year, and that kind of apparent betrayal sticks with a person. And I had my own problems, trust me.

To Brockton Bay, and all it's good and not-so-good people, I present to you your would-be saviours.

I'd say I was sorry for that, but it's really not my fault. Blame Patron. Always. Always be blaming Patron. Couldn't send someone in before she hit a downward spiral, huh?

 

[Obscura]

The thing about waiting is that it ends. No matter how awkward the silence, when the time comes it is broken. Assuming nightmarish achronal effects weren't in play, anyways. There was a particularly nasty member of the slaughterhouse…

No. Don't ask. Seriously. You don't want to know. I don't want to know. Seriously, every time I think I've discovered the worst Earth Bet has to offer, something worse comes up. Just forget the whole thing ever came up if you know what's good for you.

The bus ride was slightly more interesting than usual, because somebody didn't have their headphones plugged in and their music-playing device (which may or may not have been a phone) was just letting their music be heard by the whole bus. It was pretty weird hearing a little old lady listening to hardcore rapidfire electronic dance music, but "pretty weird" just wasn't enough to phase me by that point.

I was pretty inured to "weird". Not so much to "awful", despite being exposed to so much of it, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Awfully, with lots of sharp edges and all the delightful deliciousness forever lost, never to rise again. As the crumbling inexorably continues, deaf to the pleas of the countless innocents the process ruins the lives of, the life and glory of the world is forever diminished. That's why it's so important to make your cookies soft and whole, so that they can be bitten properly without crumbling in the hand. Grrr.

Cookies are serious business.


But other than that the bus journey was uneventful. Thankfully. Also thankfully, I had the earplugs I picked up before the kidnapping. That electronic stuff was pretty darn loud, and nobody had the social courage to just tell her to knock it off. Or plug her headphones in, I guess. That was a perfectly sensible course of action that nobody took. "Perfectly sensible" works more often than you might think, but sometimes it just falls through, and it always draws more attention than if it didn't.

It's just not very interesting when somebody is perfectly sensible and it works out perfectly. It's why I don't hear very much about the Guild. I assume. I haven't heard very much about it.


Mostly I was just snuggling up to Taylor out of a desperate need for reassurance and human contact before I went and did something scary. I realize that, objectively speaking, meeting with a bank shouldn't be scary, especially for a minor who wasn't going to be responsible for making any of the actual arrangements, but it was. Don't ask me why.

It's not that I wouldn't be able to find an answer, it's just that I already have way too much introspecting that I need to do. Being scared of banks, meetings, or financial independence (whatever the problem was exactly) was a comparatively small issue when you are multiple people, from another dimension, been an orphan living alone for way too long, in possession of superpowers as of a week ago, under a hideously painful compulsion, or horribly traumatized. Much less when you are all of the above.

And the worst thing is that, of all of that, being from another dimension was the only one of those things that wasn't ridiculously, horribly, common.


Earth Bet, ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary personages!


(Beat)


It's awful.


Ba-Dum-Dum-Tish.


Anyway, we made it to the PRT building unscathed. Aside from Taylor's ears. I had my earplugs, so I was fine, but Taylor was a little annoyed. Not with me thankfully, I was far too cute and sympathetic to get annoyed with, or even with the old lady, but just sort of generally annoyed. She didn't let it affect her manners though. Those were impeccable as she waltzed (not literally) right up to the reception desk, waited in line for all of twenty seconds, and gave a code phrase to the receptionist. I'm assuming it was a code phrase, anyway, and that she had read at least that part of the manual.


Because if "I'm here to deliver a bundle of glamour issues" wasn't a code phrase Taylor and I would have to talk.

Glamour was an actual magazine, so it did make some sense as a code phrase, although Taylor didn't say it with the sort of emphasis a magazine title should be said with in order to avoid confusion. And she didn't have any actual magazines, so it wasn't all that good a code phrase to begin with.

I will admit that I do have a lot of issues regarding image though. Like a lot. Blame any combination of dysphoria, Patron, transphobia, racism, poverty, orphanhood, and a need for teacherly approval. I have some pretty solid reasons to focus so much on image, so the problem probably isn't going away anytime soon. If ever.

Kinda like the problems that caused it in the first place. Them. Whatever.


Agent Stone was as kindly and hair-rufflingy as ever. And no, I do not mean that in the "Kindly Ones" sense. Actual kindliness. I shouldn't have to specify, but it's been a "may you live in interesting times" kind of interesting kind of week.

So I may or may not have latched onto her like a latching eel and bawled. Oh, who am I kidding. I totally did. She was very good about it. Knew just what to do. Probably trained for it.

Taylor, despite wanting to stick around, had to leave pretty soon after that. Separation was a lot harder than it should have been. I'm pretty sure that's normal after a traumatic incident, but I really shouldn't be leaning so hard on self-diagnosis. Especially for psychological matters. Even mostly healthy people can't really be objective about themselves. Letting her go away was frankly scary, though. It was also tearful, huggish, and filled with frantic reassurances. At least I somehow managed to not ruin her outfit. I really have no idea how that happened.

---

Aura, right. That would make sense. On an unrelated note, I'm not that bright. At least not all the time.

And if you actually believed that note was unrelated, you may not be all that bright yourself. Consult an appropriate professional today. Not that I have any idea what sort of professional would be appropriate, but we've already established that I'm not that bright. Figure it out for yourself.

And I just told people to figure out for themselves who to consult with on the matter of them possibly not being all that bright. Presumably, anybody who could figure it out could at least fake being all that bright enough to function, so that's not all that helpful. Not my finest moment, honestly. I blame Patron.

Always a sound move. They are to blame for everything.


Except the Endbringers, the Slaughterhouse Nine, the various forms of horrible discrimination, and most of the world's problems. Really, they're just responsible for problems relating to me, personally.


And there are people far worse off in this world. Like, so much worse that I'd feel bad about worrying about my own problems, but Misery Poker is really not at all healthy or valid. Mug's game, that. Really, the more I look at this world, the worse it seems to get, and Patron's really a pretty small part of the problem, and one that's at least trying to solve things.

They're just not very good at it.

Ugh.

 

[Obscura]

Alice Regina Melancholia Stone, as her full name turned out to be, also turned out to be the PRT's go-to woman when it came to interacting with me. Presumably because she was already cleared of Mastering and she'd shown she could handle me. The same could be said of Director Piggot, of course, but she was also right at the top of the local PRT hierarchy, and thus had a ridiculous amount of responsibility. Like keeping the city from being on fire, sometimes literally. Instead of distracting her from that key task for my sake, Agent Alice Stone, PRT ENE, would be handling me. Not literally. Usually.

Breaking down sobbing while clinging to her kinda necessitated a literal approach to handling. And back-patting, for that matter. I wonder if that's what she expected when she joined the PRT. Or when she came in to work this morning. Who knows?

She does, obviously. Probably any confidants she has would know as well. But I don't, and I'm not about to ask. I'm just glad she took it so well. It wasn't the first time she'd seen it, so maybe that helped. Maybe.


Eventually, she managed to pull myself together. Or however that works when it's somebody else doing it. I also managed to give a coherent statement about what happened yesterday. Or at least more coherent than could reasonably be expected from a traumatized fourteen year old. I do have certain advantages. Combined decades of experience and knowledge and all that. Also the ability to suppress my feelings on command. Or at least when I decide to. I don't have an actual command for that. I think.

Maybe I shouldn't have watched The Manchurian Candidate.

But yeah, my statement was pretty good. Or pretty bad, if you consider it's contents. Not exceptionally bad, really, considering that this was Brockton Bay, but pretty bad. Really, my case was a lot more exceptional for the fact that it happened in the market, which was usually pretty safe, and the fact that it was actually stopped than for what the guy tried to pull. That's depressingly common around here. Agent Stone didn't actually tell me that, of course, but I knew.

Frankly, no remotely competent or empathetic law enforcement professional should ever tell a victim of a violent crime that what happened to them happens on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Just not a good idea. Unless you're actively trying to further traumatize people who are already traumatized and undermine trust in the empathy of law enforcement and functional society in general.

Sadly, on Earth Bet there are way too many people who are actively trying to further traumatize people who are already traumatized and undermine trust in law enforcement and functional society in general. Endbringer cultists (yes, those vile traitors to humanity are an actual thing), nazis (also unfortunately real), would-be warlords, basically anyone who wanted to overthrow the system and take over for their own nefarious ends. Or just wanted to tear down human civilization and leave nothing in its wake. And a wildly disproportionate number of those people got powers, for some reason. It's almost as if whatever's behind parahuman powers is actually, if somewhat passively, trying to tear down the fragile but oh-so-vital facade of civility that enables lives to actually be good, as opposed to a constant mess of continual violence and fear.

Why can't things be nice?


That was a rhetorical question, me.

Yeah, okay. You have a point.

After blithely skipping over my actual statement, it was time to meet up with the individual from the accounting department.

His name was Hector Brown, and he was very pleased to meet me. I know because he told me so:


"Hello, I'm Hector Brown. You must be Jacqueline Colere. I am very pleased to meet you, little lady"


See?

Of course, it was entirely possible that he was just saying that. It was, after all, almost word for word what you'd be taught in school to say for introduction purposes. Except for the "little lady" part, anyway. Which should have seemed condescending, but was actually nice. Kinda reaffirming. Not that he knew, or at least not that he should have known. Naturally, I had to pump him full of aura.


He was clean, by which I mean he wasn't under Master influence. Probably. Stone was definitely clean, and coming with us, anyway. Should be safe enough.

Which didn't mean I felt it was safe enough, but I knew I was being irrational there.

I had good reasons for not being entirely rational, and nobody could really blame me for feeling that way, but it was still irrational, and I resisted that fearful, instinctual, part of me. This time. Contrary to certain works of fiction, overcoming a trauma once doesn't make it go away. It might diminish it a little, but it's just not as simple as the hackneyed phrase "get over it already" makes it seem. Trauma lasts.

But I was talking about Hector Brown. As far as I know, he's not traumatized. Much. As a rule of thumb, I was assuming that anybody who lived on Earth Bet was at least somewhat traumatized, if only from the news. That, combined with my previously stated position that nobody is completely sane, may seem cynical, but only if you believed, as I never have, that those things would stop somebody from being good and/or capable. Hector Brown certainly seemed capable. "Good" would require me to know him a whole lot better, but he was definitely capable. Of pretending to know what he was doing, if nothing else.

Professional dress, glasses and aura of numeracy certainly conveyed that impression, as did Agent Stone's clear respect for the man. And the fact that he was employed here. The PRT didn't have the budget to suffer incompetency in its accountants. Their work was a hardbitten shoestring balancing act that never ended. Like a lot of jobs in the PRT. Later events would serve to prove me right in my assessment.

But at the time we didn't have much time to size each other up before we had to go.

The vehicle we took was not one of the PRT's conspicuous "vans" that are more like small armoured personnel carriers, but a relatively boring and unnoteworthy little black car. Stone drove, leaving me and Mr. Brown to talk in the back seats. The passenger seat was empty, Mr. Brown having elected to accompany me in the back. Mostly, we talked about what I should be expecting at the meeting.

Actually setting up an account for me would normally be relatively simple and easy. Brockton Bay Central Bank, like a lot of its fellows, had specific programs for minors to bank with. Except the amount I was due for revealing an infiltration attempt at the PRT, de-mastering two individuals (one of them a Ward), and agreeing to screen several others, with more to come, plus revealing a possibly city-threatening supervillain as such would be a lot more than a normal child account was allowed to contain. They had a pretty low maximum in the amount of dollars they could hold, which was still wildly optimistic for most children in Brockton Bay, with a young adult account I was still a little too young for being able to accept five times that amount. Which was enough for the initial payment I was to expect, but not enough for everything I'd be due if everything checked out, at least if I kept sweeping the PRT. Technically, they had to pay me a fairly large consulting fee for every Master/Stranger check they asked me to do for them. So they were negotiating an adult-level account for me, with the PRT as my trustee.

Just giving me the money wasn't something they wanted to do, and for good reason. As far as they knew, I was just barely into puberty, devoid of parental influence for way too long, and had never had anywhere close to that kind of money. I think the most Jacqueline Colere had ever possessed was her savings from her allowance, lost with her piggy bank and the rest of Newfoundland, which was somewhere in the double digits. Canadian money, naturally, but the exchange rate wasn't all that relevant given the sheer difference in scale. The other me wasn't as financially inexperienced, but the PRT could probably do a better job than she or the total me could. They could get a better interest rate, for one thing.

Of course, the payout wasn't anywhere close to enough for my plans. If the PRT could afford to give it out, it wasn't enough to fix the city, let alone the world. Or, you know, they would have fixed the city with it instead. But it would be way more than enough for my personal needs, at least as long as the Heberts were hospitable, and I could maybe get started. I could certainly buy the tools I'd need to shape my image into a weapon pointed straight at the E88's digestive system.

We were in the middle of talking about what was a reasonable interest rate to expect (I had no idea, at least not in America on Earth Bet) when Agent Stone parked us a block or so from the bank. We walked over, got in the lobby, and were shown to a waiting room in the basement, having arrived a few minutes early.


It wouldn't be until half an hour later that things went south.

 

[Obscura]

Monsters are real. The experience of being faced with creatures that could destroy you in moments, that very much do not have your best interests in mind, and that barely resemble anything you've ever seen is not easily forgotten. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First: Banking!

It went well.

I got a good interest rate and everything. Well, Mr. Brown got me a good interest rate. I think. My plan to be underestimated and actually far more aware and understanding of what I was getting into than the adults around me thought did run into a slight hitch.

In that I actually didn't understand most of it. The part where they assumed I wouldn't, based off my age, went perfectly, but that didn't help much.

Okay, in fairness, it did, just in a different way. They were a lot more willing to explain things to some kid than they would have been to an adult. Or at least a lot less surprised. That could have been rather embarrassing. As it was, they were happy to explain everything in great detail, and gradually built their way up.

It was while they were gradually building their way up that the monsters came into the picture. Not that I could see them at first, mind you. Mostly, I was tipped off by the screaming coming from the bank's lobby. Then the screaming cut off, suddenly. I concluded that either somebody had threatened everyone upstairs into silence, or they had all died at once. There weren't a whole lot of powers that could kill that many people all at once, so it was probably the former. Well, there weren't a whole lot of powers that could kill that many people all at once without making a lot of noise and causing a lot of collateral damage. It was probably a threat. Either way, sitting around like a duck waiting for whoever was behind this to find me didn't seem like a great idea.

Fleeing the building entirely would be best if I could pull it off, but I didn't know if the enemy had covered the exits. Or how many of them there were. Or who they were. Or what they wanted. Or what powers they had, if any. It could just be men with guns, or women with guns, or non-binary personages with guns, or children with guns, basically any kind of people with guns. The hypothetical guns were the important things here. Although I doubted normal children would get that reaction, even ones with guns.

Parahuman children, on the other hand, were and are terrifying. All the raw and untameable power of adult parahumans (actually quite a bit more, on average, for some reason), tied to a mind unprepared for responsibility, or even, in particularly immature ones, the idea that strangers' lives and well-being have value. Parahuman teenagers were bad enough.

Interestingly, this particular bit of horror would turn out to be committed by parahuman teenagers, but I didn't know that at the time. All I knew was that there was screaming coming from upstairs, which suddenly cut off. Though I did guess quite a bit from that information. It was more than enough for Agent Stone to decide to investigate.

With a gun, naturally. Because that's what law enforcement people do when large numbers of people are screaming in fear. At least in those countries where they carry guns. America was one of those countries. That and contacting base.

Which she hadn't done.


Shoot.


That was not good.

Of course, it was entirely possible that I'd just missed her doing so, or even that she'd actually gone to contact them outside the office we were in for some reason. I hadn't heard anything, but making loud noises (like talking) was a bad idea in this scenario anyway. Presumably. There was a lot of guesswork in my assessment of the situation. It was pretty good guesswork, if I do say so myself, but it was still guesswork.

It was probably safer to contact the PRT myself, instead of assuming she had. She was a professional, I think, so she probably had, but there was no point in taking pointless risks. That's why they're pointless. Presumably. I'm not an etymologist. Or an entomologist, for that matter, despite how much knowing Taylor would be a gold mine for any member of that illustrious field of study. Wasted opportunities, I guess.

Speaking (writing?) of wasted opportunities, I decided to find a place to hole up before things got worse. Because things were going to get worse. This wasn't anywhere near awful enough to stop getting worse yet. Yet.

It'd get there, alright.

On a side note, I think I've become conditioned to expect horribleness. By horribleness coming again and again whether or not I was expecting it. I swear, if I ever get my hands on Patron…


Well, it won't be very nice.


For them.


I was also mad at Brown and the guy from the bank (his name was Mr. Rose, but I never mentioned it before because it wasn't really relevant) for ditching me. Or so I assumed, based on the fact that they weren't in the room. I didn't see them leave, either. Stupid internal monologues. This office wasn't really a good place to hide. Too open, too obvious, and there was no cover beyond the desk, which didn't have a front plate. And the chairs, I guess, but they weren't any better. It was enough to undo my previous slight fondness for modernism in home design. I honestly wonder what I ever saw in that style. Doesn't provide nearly enough visual cover. So I slipped out of the office, glanced up the stairs, and that's when I learned that monsters are real. For the first time in person, anyway.


A great, hulking brute of warped flesh and twisted sinew was sitting about halfway up the stairway. Twisted muscles, unnatural colours, plus some sort of weird pseudo-chitinous plating. I don't know what that was, and I don't want to know. Some serious IA! IA! stuff right there. I recognized the creature too. I'd seen photos. You know my previous description of Heckhound's minions?

"She could turn any ordinary cute li'l puppy into a vicious killing machine comparable in raw speed, strength, and ferocity to an angry bear."

I knew then that I had seriously understated just how horrifying those things were, and I hadn't even seen them in action yet. I could just tell. I could see why her official PRT name was so sinister. Heckhound herself had to be around here somewhere, since I'm pretty sure she has some sort of time or distance limitation. Very few Masters had neither, and her deeply nightmarish excuses for canines had never been seen too far from her. So she had to be here. That was horrifying. Worse, if she was here, the rest of the Undersiders were probably here too.

I am not ashamed in the slightest to say that I was terrified. I am a little ashamed to say that I immediately turned tail and ran. I could say that it was the right move tactically, or that running in within knowing enough was a bad idea, or even that I didn't really didn't want to rush into what was probably a hostage situation because somebody would kill a hostage. And I would be right on all three points, but that wasn't why I did it. I was scared. Plain and simple.

I couldn't face that sort of terrifying situation, so I ran. But I ran smart and quiet, my panic on a tight leash, and quickly found a good place to hide.

It didn't help in the end, but I did. And I managed to call the PRT after hitting the absolute silence button on my phone. Unlike a civilian phone, mine had a single button that would completely and utterly silence every alert, voice, call, music, etc., for exactly this kind of situation, and I read the user manual. It certainly came in handy.


Help knew where to find me, and I was confident that it would come. That made all the difference in the world.

 

[Obscura]

Alice Stone:

It was supposed to be a routine mission. Mostly routine, anyway. She had been expecting some trouble with the "get Jacqueline's statement if you can do it without spooking her" part, but that had actually gone off without a hitch. Somehow. The girl was remarkably mature and level-headed. And capable of an almost frightening level of detachment.

That detachment was something Alice would have to watch out for if she kept working with Jacqueline, which seemed likely. But she wasn't abusing it, or trying to bottle up her feelings completely, and she seemed to still be quite in touch with herself. The girl had disturbingly developed coping skills for someone so young, but they did seem to be healthy coping skills. Mostly.

No, where things took a turn for the worse was what should have been the simplest part of the mission. Drive the girl to the bank, keep an eye out, help her if she needed any further comforting, drive her back to her house. Simple, right?


Wrong.

The screaming from upstairs was the first sign things had gone south. Alice Stone was an officer of the law, if more of an investigator than an enforcer, so she grabbed her weapon and went to investigate. That was her first mistake. She wasn't exactly on bodyguard duty, but in hindsight it would have been smarter to get Jacqueline out of the bank and to safety first. Assuming she had a way to do that, anyway, which she didn't. Her second mistake was not noticing the two men, the PRT accountant and the bank manager, following her. Under normal circumstances, she absolutely would have, but they kept their distance and she was focusing hard on what was ahead of her.

Which turned out to be a hostage situation. Something that she wasn't really trained for. So she did what she was supposed to do in that situation, and backed off. The hostage takers, unfortunately, included one suspected Thinker and a number of Mastered dogs, so she had to be very careful. But she managed to be very, very, quiet.

Then her second mistake came to haunt her, when the bank manager's phone went off. She hadn't noticed him following her before, but everybody noticed him after that. Regent had caught all three of them very quickly after that, and Alice couldn't risk an altercation or his teammates might hurt a civilian.

So now she didn't have her gun, and was on the floor cowering with all the civvies. Not how she'd pictured her day going when her boss gave her the mission, for sure. She wasn't even supposed to be on-duty today, but the crisis with the attempted kidnapping of Colere meant that whoever met her had to be already vetted, had to be already well-regarded by Colere, and had to have as much experience and training for dealing with traumatized children as possible, and she was the only one who fit the bill. She didn't resent Jacqueline for it, since it was hardly her fault, but she could resent the Undersiders just fine.

She wasn't exactly a common soldier, but it was still her god-given right to complain. Or at least that's what she was going to tell herself.




Dispatch Report:

Robbery at Brockton Bay Central Bank. Agent and prospective Ward on scene, both in contact with base. Four detected hostiles, all known parahumans. Undersiders, a minor gang, known to have worked together before for broadly similar but less bold and high-profile robberies.

Hostages taken, including Agent Stone and 20-30 civilians. Prospective Ward in hiding downstairs. Phone silenced to avoid detection. Text messaging used to enable two-way communication.


Known Hostiles:

Grue, Leader: Shaker 5, Generates and manipulates areas of darkness, can see through darkness

Tattletale: Powers unknown, suspected thinker.

Regent: Master 4 minimum, suspected actual abilities much higher. Interferes with the human nervous system, creating spasms.

Hellhound: Master </= 6, empowers dogs with increased size, strength, durability, armor and agility. Known history of use of lethal force.



Commander Shawson:

The robbery wasn't exactly ideal, but under normal circumstances it would be a fairly minor, easily handled situation, at least by the low, low, standards of Brockton Bay. Unfortunately, most of the Protectorate wasn't available, due to a previous engagement.

So, seeing as Hellhound was rated above what troopers were supposed to face without parahuman support unless absolutely necessary, he had to call in the Wards for support. He didn't really like doing that, but he wasn't about to let it get in the way of his responsibilities.

Naturally, given the situation, he also sent all the troopers he could spare. There would be two squads waiting and ready when the parahuman teenagers showed up. The law-enforcing ones, not the law-breaking ones who had precipitated the whole mess. The latter showing up was the whole problem.

Director Piggot was overseeing this personally, as befitted such a brazen and public event, not to mention one with so many civilians at risk. The Undersiders had drawn a lot of attention with this stunt.

Still, they had to be cautious, or somebody could get hurt. And it was the PRT's responsibility to protect the public as much as it was to enforce the law.


Not to mention that a rather important piece of their strategy against Coil was inside the bank, and they couldn't risk her.

So they would have to play it safe and try to intercept the thieves outside the bank. Unless the hostages or the little girl hiding downstairs came to harm, of course.


If that happened, they'd come down on the Undersiders like a ton of bricks.

 

[Obscura]

It is sometimes said that violence doesn't solve anything. Other times, it is said that violence solves everything. The truth, naturally, is more complicated. Violence solves anything, for as long as you can keep from losing, and even then it's not always a good solution.

Sometimes, most of the time really, it's a lot like the classic schoolchild's cop out:

The kid's teacher gives them a math test, you see, and the kid hasn't studied at all, or even paid any real attention in class. They're a kid, you know? They aren't really all that interested in math. And the teacher's got too many students to keep an eye on everybody's progress, so it's gone uncorrected. It doesn't really matter all that much what the exact questions are: they could be algebra, arithmetic, fractions, whatever. Point is, the kid has no idea how to answer the first question, till they hit a sudden burst of inspiration. Knowing for sure that their answer is correct, despite not really being able to follow the actual mathematics, they put down:

"A number"


Not an actual number, mind you, but the actual words "A number". Technically it's a solution, and technically it's correct, but it's not a good solution, and no sane teacher would accept it. That hypothetical kid is definitely flunking the hypothetical test. Violence, as a solution, is often like that. Sure, it technically solves the problem immediately in front of you, but it usually doesn't do so in a remotely constructive or helpful manner. Remember that, it'll be on the test. Assuming I ever figure out how to actually do that.

The second problem with violence as a solution is the fact that it goes both ways. Any fight is a fight you can lose, and if you kept trying to solve problems with violence eventually you'd hit the fight you did lose, often fatally.

Nobody's ever hit the level of just being able to ignore absolutely everyone else through violence, although quite a few have tried, and Glaistig Ulaine got dangerously close. Even tyrannical governments have to worry about their own troops and at least some of the other governments. I guess the endbringers, on the other hand…

But if you weren't endbringer-level strong, violence has consequences if you aren't careful about where you apply it. And lucky. This will also be on the hypothetical test.

Both of these issues were rather important to how things turned out, and I do expect them to come up again. Most immediately, was the fact that a blatant daylight robbery of the largest bank in town wasn't going to just go unchallenged.

And, indeed, it did not.

Go unchallenged, that is. In case that wasn't clear. The PRT was setting up a cordon outside, according to a text message from them. In hindsight, I'm just a little embarrassed that I didn't think of it myself, but I think it's pretty well established that I'm not perfect by this point. Much as I might wish otherwise, I do make mistakes. Not considering text messages as a long-distance communication option when silence was a priority was a pretty big one, tactically speaking, but luckily the PRT thought of it. If I'm as good at learning from the past as I like to think I am, I will to, next time.

Like I mentioned before, I'd managed to find a pretty good hiding place. Except for the part where it wasn't actually a good hiding place. Fool that I was, I had assumed they were just going after the tills and maybe whatever the patrons had on them. So I didn't pay attention to where the vault was, and hid in a storage closet right next to it. Yeah, that wasn't really a good idea.

Especially since some stuff spilled out before I closed the door, not that I noticed at the time. I'll note that while I may have had enough self-control to avoid stomping or running blindly, my focus on the plan I had was laser-like to a detrimental degree. That kind of fear is good for running faster or hitting harder, but it wreaks havoc with your ability to notice the little details. Which is fine until those little details become very important. I blame evolution, for my messed up adrenaline response.

To be clear, the adrenaline response in everybody is messed-up. Mine is no more so than usual. At least as far as I know. I'm not exactly a doctor. Or even vaguely a doctor. Technically, I'm barely into high school. I'm just an innocent little girl who should be sheltered from all the badness of the world, and everybody should help do so. And the Slaughterhouse 9 should be in jail forever, heroes should always win, nobody should be poor or hungry, the Endbringers should never have existed, and everybody shouldn't be bound to or judged by whatever biological characteristics they're born with.

But, of course, that just isn't the case. The world isn't perfect. And all my precious hopes and dreams, or even all my adorableness and good intentions don't mean that I don't get exposed to all sorts of awfulness, like bank robberies. Earth Bet is just not a place where good triumphs automatically, and all sorts of unfortunate and undeserved things can happen. Case in point, the door slammed open, and then there she was, catsuit on, smug grin on face, blonde hair falling down around her head, and gun in hand: Tattletale.

Shattered worlds, I was terrified.

I blame evolution, for failing to make me invincible. I couldn't exactly blame brainwashed-Sophia this time, after all. I guess I can blame the Undersiders. That's fair right?



No, that is not a rhetorical question. Although I guess you can't answer me anyway, can you?

Please answer.

I don't want to be alone with this.


Please.


Please.


Please.


Please.


Please.


Please.


Please.


Please.


Please.


Please.


Help me. Please.


Please.


…---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...---...


Help.





Of course you don't answer. You never do. Nobody answers.

Even when I really need answers.

Especially when I really need answers.

 

[Obscura]

Lisa:

Things actually seemed to be going pretty well so far. That was enough to put Lisa on edge. "So far" and "seemed" were the operative words in that sentence, after all, and there were still plenty of chances for things to go horribly wrong.

There hadn't been any unexpected problems during the preparations. Alec was still sarcastic and lazy, and Rachel was still surly and touchy, but those were expected problems, and she was ready for them. She'd have been more worried if they hadn't been awful. That would be out of character for them, and that would mean something. Lisa, of course, was perfect, and let nobody tell you otherwise. She definitely didn't make things worse by sniping at both of them verbally. Definitely. Rachel had ramped up her dogs pretty impressively, everybody had their costumes and equipment, and they all had a good grasp on the plan. Unlike the time with the jewelry store. That had very nearly been a disaster, but they had agreed to never speak of it again.


Getting in had been easy, easier than it really should have been. Then again, it wasn't like there were a whole lot of civilian buildings that could take over a ton of amped-up superpowered canine trying to force their way in through the windows, or a whole lot of civilian-grade locks Lisa couldn't get through with her very expensive set of lockpicks. Her lockpicks were so expensive because she wasn't about to cheap out on equipment when Coil was paying for it.

Trying them on the vault probably wouldn't work nearly as well, but the side entrance was another story.


The civilians knuckled under pretty fast, with no real resistance beyond screaming, which cut out pretty fast when Brian told them to shut their noiseholes. In slightly nicer words, of course, because he was trying to seem like a reasonable, personable, type of bank robber. Which was why they weren't grabbing the patrons' money, or roughing anybody up unnecessarily.

Roughing people up necessarily, however, was a different story. The little incident with the PRT agent had been interesting in all the wrong ways, but PRT protocols dictated that she surrender once it became clear that she couldn't escape, seeing as it was a hostage situation with multiple hostiles and she was alone. Or, rather, her companions were unarmed civilians, which made it even more imperative that she not start anything. No, it was the bank's manager Alec and Brian had roughed up, until Lisa's power told her his vault key was in his back pocket (the left one, if it matters).


Events upstairs went pretty well for a bank robbery, assuming you took the bank robbers point of view. The agent had been the only nasty surprise so far, and that was resolved smooth as silk and quick as lightning. Even if you took a less biased viewpoint, at least nobody got hurt.

It was when Lisa started down the stairs to loot the vault that she realized she should be worried about why a PRT agent was at the bank in the first place.

Escorting child to bank. PRT acting as trustees.


Child is parahuman / prospective Ward.


Child is downstairs.


Coil arranged for child to be here.


Well, that was just typical of Coil, wasn't it? And Lisa wasn't going to be able to avoid a confrontation now, if she knew anything about how he operated. Best to be ready for anything. She had a headache already, and it wasn't all from her power.

Lisa had sort of expected her mysterious opponent to be hiding, waiting to ambush her. What she hadn't expected was for their hiding place to be so obvious. Really, the Janitorial closet? With a bunch of cleaning supplies scattered outside it willy-nilly?

She was halfway convinced it was a diversion, but her power said the kid was actually in there, and she hadn't gotten to where she was today by trusting her power. Since "where she was today" was under the heel of a ruthless supervillain, who was probably a sociopath and whose clutches she might not have fallen into if she'd listened to her power and avoided the profitable Lord's Street Market, she was inclined to trust it now.

Going right for the confrontation might not have been the best idea, but she thought she had the upper hand, she had a splitting headache (that was only mostly attributable to the unfortunate consequences of overusing her power), and she assumed the prospective Ward was going to try to ambush her.

So Lisa, like a fool, slammed open the door of the place of the janitors, gun to the side, and was almost immediately brought to her knees in pain. Not because of anything the child had done, mind you.


Child is terrified.

Child is terrified of you specifically.

Child thinks you are a human Master.

Child was attempting to reach for earplugs when you interrupted.

Earplugs are for protection against you.

Child is a Newfoundland survivor.

Child is the same girl Alec rescued yesterday.

Child does not control bugs.

Child is protected by someone who controls bugs.

Child is hiding something.

Child is panicking.

Child is about to hit you.


Given how Lisa's head felt from the Thinker headache all those insights hit her with, the actual blow was pretty redundant. Lisa Wilborn was trying to scream her lungs out before her opponent so much as touched her, not that that stopped the panicking girl from kicking her repeatedly.

Things were no longer going pretty well.

 

[Obscura]

The fight or flight response is a powerful, if misnamed, thing. Really, the instinct to freeze in place and hope not to be seen is just as, if not more, prevalent than either fight or flight, but that's not important right now. The important thing right now is violence.

Just realized how that might sound to you. To be safe, I'll note here that "important" is very much not synonymous with "good". Violence was very much not good here, but there was no denying that it was the core of everything that happened. Armed robberies tend to be like that.

I can only assume that a very powerful fight or flight "fight" response happened when the pretty teenage supervillain with a gun opened the door to threaten me. I feel the need to emphasize the "supervillain" and "with a gun" parts for some reason. Probably to justify panicking and lashing out.

Successfully.

Somehow.


It was pretty apparent that Tattletale wasn't a Brute. Or even particularly tough. You'd expect a supervillain to be able to deal with an untrained and unathletic 14 year old, right? I mean I technically had powers myself, but I hadn't actually used them in any meaningful way. I don't think my powers even can help me incapacitate someone. Quite the opposite, really. My aura could, I guess, help me recover even in the middle of a fight, though I'd never pushed it anywhere remotely far enough to actually be meaningful during your average combat, but it was a lot more likely to help anyone I fought than to hurt them directly. Meaning that my power, wonderful as it is, almost definitely didn't contribute anything to the offensive power of my unarmed, pubescent, and frankly soft and cute self.

Nonetheless, my offense was apparently somehow good enough. I can't say how, exactly; my memory does not appear to contain the bit where I overpowered Tattletale. Hence my assumption about the fight or flight reflex. All I knew was that one second she was outside the door with a gun, the next she was on the floor, screaming, I was kicking her, also screaming, the gun having flown off in the confusion. It hadn't gone off, informing me that movies had lied to me again. Not that that was a shock by that point. Even if Hollywood not being the epitome of honesty had been a shock anymore, basically everything that had led to me screaming my head off like a banshee while kicking a pretty teenage supervillain like she was a particularly difficult kickball would have been bigger shocks. Much, much bigger shocks. Like, comparing licking the tv remote batteries to an earthquake and its pre and aftershocks, though I'm not sure whether the actual robbery or somehow winning against Tattletale would be the earthquake in that metaphor.

In any case, Tattletale had run headfirst into the second major issue with using violence as an answer to your problems. It goes both ways, remember? And this time, not only had it gotten her into another fight, it got her into another fight that she lost. And she got beaten up pretty badly for it. Just goes to show why violence is not your one-stop shop for all your problem-solving needs. You only need to get unlucky once to lose, and the consequences of losing can be pretty bad.

Of course, I was no more immune to that than Tattletale was. While I didn't use violence nearly as lightly as she did, and I like to think I had much better reasons for the times I did resort to it, it was just as capable of coming back at me as it was at her.

Well, not as capable, at least not long term. It was able to come back to bite me, but not as much as in Tattletale's case. You see, Tattletale had initiated violence, and I had responded, and at a fairly reasonable level at that. Mostly. More importantly, Tattletale was not only to blame for her violence, she was generally held to be responsible for her crimes. Particularly by the other players of the game of violence in Brockton Bay, those being other gangs, who had all been targeted by the Undersiders at some point (not that they didn't deserve it, but that didn't make them less mad), the PRT, and the heroes. Theoretically the cops were part of the normal contract of violence, but as a known parahuman she was out of their jurisdiction. That wouldn't save her from everybody else though. She and her group had irked basically everybody in the city, and it had never been in question that there would be heavy backlash for that from one quarter or another. That quarter being me was a lot more surprising, but I doubted it would end there.

I, on the other hand, had only resorted to violence against people who were already employing it against me, which was generally considered much more acceptable, and I was cuter and less criminal than Tattletale. Long term, the only people likely to hold a grudge against me for my own forays into the field of violence were the Undersiders. I mean, they had no reasonable grounds to hold a grudge, but they were parahuman teenage supervillains, so them holding an irrational grudge was hardly beyond the bounds of possibility. Not that it turned out to be purely a long-term possibility.

You see, even in the middle of a bank robbery, two teenage girls screaming bloody murder isn't something that just passes without comment. Even on Earth Bet, even in Brockton Bay, that sort of thing tends to get a response of some sort.

Sometimes that response is very carefully not getting involved in the situation, I will admit. That does happen a lot. Unfortunately, that wasn't the response this time, Nor was it the BBPD, the PRT, or the heroes showing up, which was even more unfortunate. I could have really used a hero, with or without powers, right about then, any kind would have done.

So, naturally, it was very unfortunate that I didn't get one.


Remember what I said about the Undersiders before, way back when I was first sizing up the various villains of Brockton Bay? About how their leader, Grue, worried me the least because while he could beat me up, he would need an actual reason? Because I didn't remember that when I was panic-whaling on Tattletale.

If I had, I might have stopped to consider that viciously attacking one of his teammates was a pretty good actual reason. Of course, remembering that and considering that little tidbit would have required me to not have been panicking, so the point is ultimately moot. Everything went dark and quiet, not that it stopped my panicking. It just meant that nobody could hear me scream.

 

[Obscura]

Brian:

Bank robbery wasn't exactly Brian's idea of a good time, or even Brian's idea of a good idea, but he had bills to pay and a little sister to acquire custody of. And if you don't think the latter is hard, try getting the American legal system to give custody to a teenage boy over the kid's biological mother, even if the latter does have rather serious issues. It's not easy, to say the least, and it's basically impossible if you aren't seen as being able to support yourself. So Brian was determined to give off the impression of being a responsible adult. By robbing places, including this bank.

The Wards, after all, had too many restrictions.


Anyway, the bank Brian was robbing, Brockton Bay Central, kept the vast majority of its money and valuables in a vault. Like most banks, really. It really wasn't all that special or original, but it did necessitate certain steps being taken to deal with the issue. Luckily for Brian, he wasn't robbing the bank alone. He had three friends to help him!

Even if all three of those friends were the "with friends like these" type far too often for his tastes, they were professional enough when actually on the job. Usually. They had come a long way since the jewelry store incident.

Not to mention that they all had superpowers. Those tended to come in handy in their chosen profession. Brian had sent one of his "friends" downstairs to open the vault and do a little constructive robbery. Well, except for the "constructive" part. Really, theft is pretty much the exact opposite of constructive commerce in its effect on society as a whole, if you look at it from an economic perspective.

Brian hadn't been able to afford a post secondary education, although he was more than smart enough for one, and his high school experience was in Brockton Bay, so he didn't really understand economics on a large scale (macroeconomics). He did have some practical experience with microeconomics though, and he had a decent amount of real talent for the field that had sadly gone to waste. If you must blame something for the robbery, blame the American educational system, such as it is. Or one of the numerous other people, organizations and abstract concepts that are also at fault. Really, it's your blame, and you can do what you want with it.

---

Unfortunately for Brian, his colleague did not quickly, quietly and efficiently return with his gang's ill-gotten gains. Instead, he heard her screaming, rapidly joined by the screaming of another, not that Brian was all that great at identifying screams. Honestly, he couldn't quite tell which scream was which, but he was pretty sure one of them was his coworker's, if only because there were probably only so many teenage girls in the basement of the poor, beleaguered bank.

He hoped. He couldn't really think of any savoury reasons why there would be a whole bunch of teenage girls down there already, although it should be mentioned that he was more than a bit cynical and protective.

Regardless, his hunch was swiftly proven correct when he ran downstairs and saw Lisa screaming and clutching her head while some other girl kicked her repeatedly, while also screaming. That was not a sight Brian saw every day, but you wouldn't have known that from the professionalism of his response. Within seconds, the entire corridor was flooded with darkness. To everyone except Brian, that is, who could see just fine. His power was pretty cool that way, at least for him.


Dealing with the mysterious girl wasn't hard for Brian. She might have been quite literally kicking and screaming the whole way, but she wasn't very fit and she obviously had no idea what she was doing in a fight. Brian, in contrast, was not only quite a bit taller and heavier, but he was also quite athletic, in a muscular sort of way, and he had a very well-rounded skillset when it came to unarmed combat. And he could see what they were doing, and she couldn't. The girl was incapacitated and restrained within a minute of Brian starting to rush towards her, most of that time being spent applying the zip-cuffs.

Sometimes a fight really is just that simple.


Of course, Brian was then left with a severely beaten teammate in the middle of a bank robbery, a gun said teammate had dropped that he didn't have a convenient way to carry safely, even if there was no round in the chamber, the PRT cordoning off the area, the Wards incoming if they weren't already there, and a clearly psychotically violent little girl as a hostage, so maybe "simple" wasn't the right word.

Brian's mother had told him several times that crime didn't pay. She was a massive hypocrite on that subject, and Brian had disregarded most of her advice because it was usually terrible, but he was starting to wonder if she had been right about that.


This definitely wasn't Brian's idea of a good time.

 

[Obscura]

Stone:

The screaming from downstairs was almost enough to make Alice Stone rush down to the basement to save her charge, and more than enough to break her heart. Poor Jacqueline had been through far too much already, and the kidnapping attempt had shaken her somewhat. Stone had heard of worse, but she'd been lucky enough to not have seen the results in person so far. Alice really didn't want anything to happen to the kid.

Unfortunately, she really didn't have much say in the matter. The Undersiders weren't exactly hardened professionals, but they were smart enough to take away her gun and the canister of Mace she kept hidden in her jacket, and one of the "dogs" was watching her closely. Keeping her cool wasn't exactly easy, but getting herself mauled wouldn't help her charge at all, so she managed it. Somehow.

She may not have been trained in hostage situations or direct confrontations with multiple mid-level parahumans, but it turned out she'd learned from the "keep calm and don't do anything stupid" part of her training pretty well. No matter how much she disliked it, she wasn't going to do anything unless she got a good opportunity or it became absolutely necessary. So she had to sit and wait for the right moment, and not do anything.

Even if her heart was breaking.


Sophia:

The Wards had left Sophia behind.

She could see why, of course. Sophia was nowhere near ready for the kind of confrontation they were heading into. Multiple supervillains, hostages taken, all at the largest and most famous bank in Brockton Bay. She'd just screw up if she tried something, and somebody could get hurt. Probably Sophia, but there was a good chance somebody else would as well. Aegis had made the right decision in ordering her to remain on base, even if he'd had to have the message passed on by a PRT member she hadn't met before.

That didn't make staying behind any easier. Especially since she'd been allowed to watch the console (she wasn't qualified to run it by herself just yet), and thus knew who was in the bank.

Sophia's feelings about Jacqueline Colere weren't exactly normal, but then nothing about Sophia's situation was normal. Gratitude was certainly a large part of it, and so was protectiveness, but she wasn't sure about the rest. She was definitely mad at the Undersiders, though, and frustrated that she couldn't do anything about it. And standing by helplessly when something like that happened, to anybody, grated on her in ways she didn't have the emotional vocabulary to explain.

So she'd get better, get stronger, do whatever she had to be able to stop this sort of thing. For now, though, she had to sit and watch and not do anything. It really grated on her, but she'd do it.

Even if her heart was breaking.



Danny:

He'd had to rush a few things (okay, more than "a few", but Taylor was worth it) at work, but Danny Hebert had made it to his and his daughter's meeting with the district superintendent for education.

Technically, it was going really well. Technically.

The man was actually listening, and he seemed like he intended to do something about it. The fact that he'd come to them, and hadn't tried to downplay things or intimidate them into not suing indicated as much, but his evident, if restrained, outrage was more than welcome to Danny, although he expected Principal Blackwell would disagree with him on that. Tough. As far as Danny was concerned, the woman deserved a long stay in prison at a minimum.

Fortunately, it seemed the superintendent agreed with him on that. No, there wasn't any problem with Superintendent Winters. The man was remarkably reasonable and empathetic. Normally, Danny might have held what happened to Taylor against him, but the man hadn't been in the position for very long, he'd been transferred to the district after the last superintendent was let go by the school board, and he was just looking into the mess his predecessor left behind. Danny couldn't blame him for that. He actually rather liked David Winters.

Basically everything was going right with the meeting, except for the fact that the superintendent needed to hear everything his daughter had gone through and how the Winslow administration had responded to it.

And that was not easy to hear, or to tell. Danny took as much of the weight of talking about it from Taylor's shoulders as he could, but there was so much he didn't know. And so his daughter recounted so much, so many things he should have stopped, so many things he should have been there for, and he couldn't stop her. Because Winters needed to know so he could stop it happening to anybody else, hopefully.

So he sat there, deeply uncomfortable but unable to say anything, as his daughter counted off his failings. He had to sit quietly, and not do anything.

Even if his heart was breaking.



Amalia Dimitrov:

Amalia Dimitrov was nowhere near Brockton Bay Central Bank, nowhere near PRT-ENE headquarters, and only vaguely sort of close to the Superintendent's office. Specifically, she was in her house, being informed of her son's death. A few days ago, he'd accidentally been caught in the crossfires of a fight between the ABB and the Empire. Nothing was particularly special about Amalia Dimitrov or her son, and even the latter dying because of gang violence wasn't particularly notable. Not in Brockton Bay, anyways.

Now if things had been different, this could quite possibly have been very important on a grand scale. If Amalia had a Shard lurking dormant across a dimensional connection, such an event could have quite possibly caused it to go active. But she didn't, and so it was only a very important event on a small scale. It certainly was enough to cause Amalia quite a bit of distress, as you can probably imagine, but Brockton Bay would never notice it, much less the world. Things like this happened every day, and they certainly weren't going to stop just because a bunch of teenagers decided to rob a bank.

Amalia, unfortunately, couldn't afford the luxury of breaking down in grief. She still had two surviving children to support, and the child support checks from her ex weren't going to be enough. He didn't make very much money, and Amalia didn't make all that much more. So, like a lot of people in Brockton Bay and elsewhere, she had to keep working, no matter what.

Amalia's story was far from unique, and the world as a whole would never really notice it. It wouldn't particularly affect any of the really "big" things, and the most notice any parahuman would take of it would be when Stormtiger would discipline one of his men for not being more careful with his fire, because it might have brought down just a little bit of heat on the Empire, although it really didn't. It really wasn't an important bit of the story of Earth Bet. And causing a scene might get her fired, and work was hard to come by in Brockton Bay. So Amalia had to sit and listen, and not do anything.

Even if her heart was breaking.

 

[Obscura]

Rough blows that I can't see coming aren't really something I'm terribly fond of. There aren't many who are, at least without certain tastes running and informed consent given, and ideally with certain rather important rules followed. None of those applied here, and theoretically I don't know anything about the subject. Point is, I don't think anybody really enjoys losing a fight, especially not when the fight is as utterly one-sided as the one I lost against Grue.

To be blunt, I never stood a chance. I don't actually know how good he is, since even if I could have seen anything he was at least good enough to be beyond my ability to judge just how good he was. Quite possibly because that was a really low bar to clear, but still. Taking somebody down that quickly without causing any permanent damage isn't easy.

Taking somebody down that quickly with causing permanent damage is a lot easier, particularly if you're a parahuman, but fortunately Grue didn't take that route. At least not with me, I don't know everything he gets up to. I hadn't heard of him doing anything like that anyway, and I could appreciate that. Especially when I was totally at his fortunately-existent mercy. If it was Tattletale or Heckhound who held that kind of power over me I'd be even more afraid than I already was. Grue was way better at projecting a scary image, but his actions didn't really back that image up, which was for the best. But that's a matter for another time. It's pretty interesting, at least to me, so I'll be sure to tell you all about it later.

Leg sweep, some sort of grab and hold, and then he was putting something on my wrists that held them together. Handcuffs of some sort, I think. Behind my back, not in front of me like an amateur. I've read enough books to know that restraining somebody's arms where they can reach them makes it easy for them to escape, at least if they knew what they were doing. I didn't know what I was doing, but there was no reason for him to just assume that. Punching me in the stomach that hard seemed a little excessive, but it was pretty understandable under the circumstances. He'd probably taken the kicking I was giving his teammate out of context.

Eventually, the metaphorical smoke cleared, and he grabbed the Tattletale and ran. Well, the smoke was clearing while he grabbed the Tattletale and ran, but that's not important right now. I, not being a complete and utter idiot, did not attempt any sort of pursuit. I pretty much laid there like a dead fish and waited to be rescued. That was not particularly heroic or inspiring, I'll admit, but it was a good deal safer than trying to fight somebody who had a bunch of hostages and had easily beaten me once already. With both hands tied behind my back, no less. That just wasn't a winning proposition no matter how you looked at it.


I have no intention of brashly refusing to give in when I can't win and can surrender without something awful happening. Sometimes you can't, of course, and some enemies must be resisted no matter what the risk to one's self, but this wasn't one of those situations and Grue wasn't one of those enemies. Unless I was gravely mistaken, and I'll admit that I was not operating on enough information for that to be all that unlikely. At the very least his actions so far pretty much matched my guesses about him. And yes, it did in fact turn out that if he had a reason (and he did) he could beat me up pretty easily (and he did).

Which wasn't fun, but I knew full well he could have done a lot worse if he wanted to. Heckhound definitely would have. Well, that or have her dogs do it. Given how big their teeth were, I think I'd prefer Heckhound, but I'm just glad it didn't come up. There was no way that would have ended well, or even as well as any massive hostage situation could end.


You see, even if nobody got hurt and the hostage-takers were brought in without incident, it was still a massive disruption and several people would probably be traumatized. Not so much in Brockton Bay, admittedly, where both the city government and the population were a lot more accustomed to violent incidents than most of the United States, but such events still weren't exactly normal. At least not when you're actually involved, since hearing about them on the news was depressingly ordinary. Gang violence was just an accepted fact of life, like the poorly-maintained roads, the high unemployment rate, or the massive number of illegal-drug related deaths every month. Yeah, the city is not exactly what one would call "untroubled" or "idyllic". Unless the "one" in question is Worstlifeadvice.com, which I've actually rather come to enjoy, at least when I'm not in need of actual life advice.

So, anyway, I'd rate being handcuffed and bruised on the floor of a bank basement while a robbery is in progress somewhere around a 4 on the Talkwardness-Elevator scale, or at least in my particular case. Although it did become significantly less awkward once the robbers / the Undersiders / my assailants went back upstairs. Maybe a 2.2. I will say that the numbers would probably be a bit higher if I was entirely able to focus at the time. Of course, I really shouldn't be the one to make the assessment, seeing as I was directly involved, but there aren't a whole lot of publicly available awkwardness analyses on outright criminal situations, so I kinda have to play it by ear. Or find someone more qualified to do the analysis, but the Talkwardness-Elevator scale does not appear to exist in any meaningful way on Earth Bet, so that's kinda tricky.

On a side note, it turns out that composing monologues and bits of information for later use is actually pretty good at distracting you from pain. Who knew?


Members of the International Association for the Study of Pain, probably. That's a real organization by the way. They've got a website and everything. Given that they were founded well before Scion's arrival, they probably exist back home too. Although I doubt that version has the only officially approved human Master Rogue currently active in its employ. The Earth Bet version is somewhat famous for using Anguisette, a parahuman who can both sense and create nearly any type of pain in any human she makes eye contact with, as a research aide and aid. No, those are not the same thing. Look it up. Anguisette was one of the individuals the old Jacqueline Colere's mother had found when she was looking for human Masters who weren't complete scum like Speakeasy. She didn't find a whole lot, but then again there aren't exactly a whole lot of human Masters in general, and most of them like to keep quiet about what they can do.

Sorry if that's a bit rambly, but it turns out that being handcuffed and not doing anything about it on a bank basement floor isn't very interesting.

 

[YetiMarauder]

Ok, maybe I'm just stupid or something, but I'm on 5-6 and I don't understand how coil is getting blamed for being a master when he is... not a master? Is her aura recovering memories from deleted coil timelines of something?

 

[Obscura]

Ok, maybe I'm just stupid or something, but I'm on 5-6 and I don't understand how coil is getting blamed for being a master when he is... not a master? Is her aura recovering memories from deleted coil timelines of something?

Click to shrink...

He's not a Master. The letter sets something up, which the the aura triggers. It only looks like Mastery is breaking, and the memories didn't happen. It's all sort of explained in 4-6. The letter leaves behind something that does something screwy with memory in people it's supposed to effect, but it takes the aura to trigger it. That makes it look like the aura is just breaking a Master's control, a deception that is significantly assisted by the aura's real anti-Master properties.

 

[Obscura]

Dinah:

Dinah Alcott, it should perhaps be mentioned, wasn't one of Brockton Bay's many great schemers. At least not naturally. She was, after all, a preteen with no particular training, education, or experience in the area. That wasn't about to stop her, not considering what she knew would happen to her if she just let it happen, but it did affect her decision making tremendously.

Namely, most of her plans weren't very good, at least not in and of themselves. She wasn't all that creative a schemer, and she just didn't have the knowledge base to plot anything really complicated or insightful. However, thanks to her power, she was extremely good at telling which plans were more likely to work out for her, in a way. As long as she asked the right questions, she knew exactly how likely a plan was to work out in her favour. If she asked a question about the future that could be answered as percentile odds, she got an answer. Unfortunately, the same thing happened if anyone else asked a question that qualified, and she couldn't figure out any way around that. Worse, every question hurt her, starting at flick to the forehead levels but eventually getting to be completely debilitating if too much was asked of her. Still, her questions could keep her alive and free, so she had to use them. No matter how bad her current headache was, she frequently needed to keep going regardless, like on this particular day.

She didn't have any particularly inspired insight into what questions to ask, unfortunately, her power not helping with that problem in the slightest, but she'd learned from experience which questions were absolutely vital. Or at least some of them. Sometimes she had learned that the hard way, but she had learned well. She certainly had a good and pressing reason to do so.


Coil.

That was a name she had learned to loathe.

Loathing wasn't really something most adults thought twelve year olds were capable of, especially not twelve year old girls, but Dinah had pretty good reasons to be loathing Coil. The man was planning on kidnapping and drugging her for the rest of her life, after all. Any reasonable adult would agree that was a good reason to loathe somebody, although most of them wouldn't believe her about him. Or they would sell her out, accidentally put her in a position where Coil's many minions could get her, or just fail to do anything about it. The whole thing had really worn on her ability to trust that the grown-ups knew what they were doing.

And just really traumatized her in general.


It should probably go without saying, but twelve year olds really shouldn't have to conduct shadow campaigns to evade nefarious supervillainous conspiracies that are out to abduct them, drug them, and lock them up forever in order to exploit their powers. It's just not something that should be happening. Unfortunately, Dinah Alcott lived in a world where the fact that something shouldn't happen very much did not mean that it didn't happen. As was evidenced by the fact that, as a twelve year old, she had to conduct a shadow campaign to evade a nefarious supervillainous conspiracy that was out to abduct her, drug her, and lock her up forever, in order to exploit her superpower.

That was the kind of thing that made an impression on her.


Coil was, of course, the one behind the conspiracy, although Dinah had cottoned on to the existence of the conspiracy long before she'd thought to ask about every single big crook in Brockton Bay to figure out who was behind it. Well, it wasn't that long before, it was just that the sheer amount of stress and fear had really stretched out the months since she'd discovered she was being stalked. And that anybody she'd told wouldn't believe her, would actually make things worse, or just wouldn't be willing and able to help her. As one could probably imagine, that hadn't been a pleasant discovery, and the knowledge hadn't gotten any easier to bear over time.


But now Dinah Alcott had a plan, and she knew that it would probably work. 84.426% chance of success last she'd checked, more than an order of magnitude better than the best plan she'd had before today. She didn't know what had changed, and she couldn't spare any questions in a likely-futile effort to find out, but she was glad for whatever it was.

Technically speaking, she should have gone to school today, but truancy punishments really didn't faze her all that much compared to what would happen if she got caught. Instead, she'd been implementing her plan.

The chances that she would be safe from Coil if she went to the PRT directly and uncomplicatedly were 79.642%. The chances that she'd be safe from Coil if she went to a number of public locations before calling them varied enormously. Most of them were less safe, but she'd heard "Brockton Bay Central Bank" on the radio of a passing-by car (the BBPD weren't able to spare the resources to deal with noise complaints all that often, though this was one of the areas where their response time was a lot better than most of the city). When she'd absentmindedly asked, before instantly regretting it as her headache got even worse, the odds of her being safe from Coil if she went there were an impressive 96.742%. She immediately hopped on a bus there.


She really should have considered that "Safe from Coil" wasn't quite the same thing as "Safe", but then again Dinah Alcott wasn't one of Brockton Bay's many great schemers.

 

[Hellarion]

Nice to know that we aren't supposed to wait before commenting.

Last one about Dinah was freaking hilarious, especially if she accidentaly escaped Coil's notice by doing so, and even better if the first individual she asks for help is that PRT lady. Gotta say, mistaking him by a master is one of the funniest ways of dealing with him that i know.

 

[Obscura]

Nice to know that we aren't supposed to wait before commenting.

Last one about Dinah was freaking hilarious, especially if she accidentaly escaped Coil's notice by doing so, and even better if the first individual she asks for help is that PRT lady. Gotta say, mistaking him by a master is one of the funniest ways of dealing with him that i know.

Click to shrink...

Commenting is fine. Encouraged, even. Coil getting mistaken for a Master is definitely funny, even if nobody in-universe knows about it. As for Dinah, she's not going to slip Coil's attention that easily, but going to the exact location where Coil spent a lot of effort to make sure everybody would be paying attention to so that they wouldn't be close enough to interfere isn't exactly the best thing for his plan.

 

[4Dname]

going to the exact location where Coil spent a lot of effort to make sure everybody would be paying attention to in order so that they wouldn't be in close enough to interfere isn't exactly the best thing for his plan.

Click to shrink...

This is such a effective way for Dinah to Evade Coil yet I don't think I have ever seen it used in a Worm fanfiction before. Good Job coming up with this idea.

 

[Obscura]

This is such a effective way for Dinah to Evade Coil yet I don't think I have ever seen it used in a Worm fanfiction before. Good Job coming up with this idea.

Click to shrink...

Honestly, it was was what worked in the situation, and I haven't seen in anywhere else either, but I pretty much feel it has to have been done somewhere. Kinda like "Principal Blackheart" back in 4-1. The ideas just seem obvious enough that they seem like somebody would have used them before.

 

[Obscura]

Vista:

Missy was watching, biding her time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Her enemy was no match for her. Despite her kinda silly first name (in her opinion), she was a seasoned and powerful superhero, and now she would finally get the respect she deserved. By the end of this day, nobody would be able to deny that she was a force to reckoned with and respected.

Then her Wards phone went off and she had to go deal with a bank robbery, leaving behind her plans to dominate the next dodgeball game. It was actually a pretty good plan, to. Using her powers would be cheating, but as a Ward she had trained to a much higher level of situational awareness, athleticism, and combat-related skills than any of her peers at the middle school. Not that her bosses would let her use them in a real fight.

Vista was one of the longest-serving Wards on her team, by far the highest-rated of them, and was still relegated to the safest patrol routes and just playing support to the youths they actually allowed into combat. It was rather frustrating for her. Not that her power didn't make her extremely competent at playing support, but she was fully capable of actually fighting. They didn't even trust her with anything remotely dangerous, like carrying a weapon to protect herself. That was a full blown headache in it's own right.

A lot of things were frustrating to Missy Biron, really. Some of the blame for that can probably be put on teenage rebellion, albeit a little early, but she had lots of long-running issues in her relationships with others as well, most of which weren't her fault. Most.

Her crush on Dean/Gallant, or rather her inability to move past it or admit that it wouldn't work out, kind of was her fault, not that she'd admit that either. But given the sheer amount of stressors she was under, and her young age, merely developing a crush on somebody unattainable because there was too much of an age gap without actually doing anything bad because of that crush was actually an amount of self-control worthy of great respect.

Her parents were constantly fighting, and happened to share custody over her after they stopped living together, but they wouldn't leave each other alone and neither would refrain from using Missy against the other. That was an immensely complicated mess, and one bad enough that she'd triggered from it, and it didn't look like it would ever be resolved short of one of them kicking the bucket.

Work was a massive improvement on her home life, but improvement is a relative term. Besides the aforementioned hopeless crush and lack of respect, there was a lot of strangeness in the Wards, as could perhaps be expected from a bunch of people who gained bizarre and inhuman abilities from proverbially traumatic events who banded together to fight crime. The weirdness with Shadow Stalker Sophia was the latest, and by far the weirdest. Finding out that her teammate had been under somebody else's control for years was more than emotionally messed up enough, but Shadow Stalker (as Sophia seemed to call her Mastered self) had been more than disdainful of Missy, and Missy had returned the feeling with a mixture of fear and anger. Now that was transfering over, purely on Missy's part, and neither of them had any idea how to deal with that.

All of that put quite a bit of stress on her, which is most of why she was rather irritated during the events that unfolded at Brockton Bay Central Bank on April the Fourteenth, 2011. The other part being that she'd developed a slight but very annoying rash during training the previous day, but that accounted for seventeen percent of her irritation at most.

The plan was simple and uncomplicated. They'd fanned out to intercept anybody leaving the front of the bank, which, thanks to Vista's impressive skills, was now the only way to leave the bank. (Assuming you didn't take out Vista or get her to take down the warping, anyway). They couldn't go into the bank, because of the Undersiders' hostages, but the villains wouldn't be able to leave without getting past them.

Vista had been told to stay away from the enemy and keep her distance, which was annoying, but otherwise she felt it was a solid plan.


She was wrong.

 

[Obscura]

Brian:

The robbery plan hadn't survived contact with the enemy, "the enemy" in this case being a very angry little girl who looked somewhere around thirteen or so, and who did not seem to have any particular aptitude for violence. Just a rather disturbing willingness to use it. Brian knew that his sister, for all her mischievousness, would never do something like that. What was wrong with that one?

Whatever it was, the girl Lisa had stumbled across in the basement had managed to mess up the Undersiders' little operation quite nicely. With Lisa down, their ability to carry stuff was reduced, more because he had to carry her than for her own ability to serve as a pack mule. More importantly, she was the only one who knew how to sort out the metaphorical wheat from the metaphorical chaff in the vault without taking more time than they had to spare. And she'd gone and gotten herself overpowered by a civilian without so much as putting up a fight.

Brian would have to talk to his teammate about that later. Assuming that he'd get the opportunity. If they got arrested they probably wouldn't see each other again for quite some time, which would be rather put a crimp in that plan. And all of his other plans.


He'd known Lisa wasn't nearly as good a fighter as himself or Rachel, but he'd assumed she had enough basic competence in the area to function in their line of work. Seeing how he'd found her on the floor, trying and failing to curl into a ball and getting kicked quite a lot, while her younger, unarmed, obviously untrained, and frankly unathletic opponent hadn't had so much as a scratch on her, he had quite clearly been mistaken in that assumption. Maybe he could make her pay for fighting lessons of some sort out of her cut of what was in the till, assuming Alec had managed that part of the operation competently. His duffel bag seemed to be pretty full, so he probably had. Alec was lazy and insubordinate even by the standards of their highly informal gang, but he was pretty good at being a supervillain when he actually cooperated, aside from a bad habit of mouthing off to everybody.

The plan Brian had hoped to be able to use for their escape wasn't going to work, since the Wards had shown up. That wasn't entirely unexpected; the mysterious employer only Lisa knew how to contact had only told them that the Protectorate would be unable to interfere, not their junior colleagues. They hadn't explicitly mentioned that, apparently, but Lisa had figured it out.

So now he needed a new plan. Sneaking out without being noticed would have been great if it was possible, but space was warped so that the only way out, literally, was through the front, where the PRT had set up a perimeter and the Wards were all waiting. Except maybe Shadow Stalker, who he hadn't seen. That was kind of relieving, since she was a complete psycho who'd already tried to kill him once for no real reason, but not really relieving since she was also very good at remaining unseen. Like the name implied, she was well known for stalking in the shadows. He definitely hoped Aegis or somebody had made the "reformed" vigilante stay home.

Regardless of whether they had or not, though, Brian wasn't about to let himself get arrested. Besides not wanting to go to jail, a criminal record would be the final nail in the coffin of his efforts to get custody of Aisha. He wasn't about to let his teammates get caught either, even if he kinda disliked most of them. Scratch that, he wasn't about to let his teammates get caught either, even if he kinda disliked all of them. Rachel sometimes (usually) lived up to her chosen cape name in being gruff and abrasive, Alec wasn't much better, and Lisa was apparently not only a know-it-all, but a somewhat incompetent know-it-all.

Still, Brian was going to do his best to get them all out.


And, shortly after coming to that decision, he had a plan. A breakout, with overwhelming force applied to as small an area as possible. It wasn't a great plan, or even a good one, but it was a plan. It was mediocre at best, but he didn't exactly have a surfeit of good options. He was outnumbered rather badly, the PRT and Wards forces were ready and waiting, he had no way to evade or flank them, thanks to Vista, and his choices boiled down to breaking through their lines or falling under siege as their reinforcements showed up. If it came down to a waiting game, the four of them had dozens of hostages to watch, a possible head injury, a severe beating already taken, and a modus operandi based on getting in and out as quickly as practicable.

Meanwhile, the PRT had replacements and reinforcements incoming, could take breaks, had nobody to watch but them, and were entirely accustomed to remaining alert and active for long periods of time, such as patrols. That way would not end well for Brian. While the PRT could rotate troopers in and out, had only four hostiles to keep track of, and a lot of experience with remaining alert for long periods from guard duties and patrols. Turning the bank robbery into a siege would not go well for the Undersiders, and everybody knew it.

So a breakthrough was in order. The Undersiders were rather outmatched in terms of numbers, combat experience, and raw parahuman power, but they did have a few advantages and Brian meant to use them. His own power would obscure their exit. Rachel's dogs had a lot of speed and mass, meaning they had a lot of momentum, making them very hard to stop. Finally, they had the mysterious "backup" their employer had promised, waiting outside. If Brian didn't know who or where they were, the law probably didn't either. Hopefully they actually existed, and were better at this than the Undersiders apparently were.

Meanwhile, the forces gathering outside had made one rather key mistake that Brian could see. They'd left Vista unguarded, and Vista was the only one who could keep them from leaving if they were on Rachel's dogs. Aegis and Kid Win were the only ones who might be able to keep up with them, especially if Rachel kept pumping in more of whatever it was she gave to the dogs to make them bigger. Alec could probably mess with them a lot, as well. Two against three would be a massive improvement on the current odds.

So he'd build up a lot of darkness, and let it out at the same time as the hostages, stopping the opposition from hitting them with containment foam and/or Kid Win's lasers before they could engage, then charge out like modern-day shock cavalry. Brian would take out Vista, while Alec kept the others off their backs. Hopefully, Rachel could keep Lisa on her dog, and their backup would hit the Wards while they were distracted and take off some of the heat. Either way, they'd then charge off into the distance and find some place to disappear into the ether. Unless they failed, of course. That was a definite possibility.

Still, it was the best plan he could come up with, and he was really hoping that it would work.

 

[Obscura]

Über:

The situation was on the very precipice of boiling over, the current building tension ready to explode into a frenzy of violence at any moment. Which suited the man who called himself Über just fine. Somebody could get hurt, but he didn't really care as long as he could avoid taking the blame for it. And he could. It hadn't been easy at times, but he and his buddy, who called himself Leet, although it really should have been L33+, had managed to carve out a comfy little niche for themselves in the dog-eat-dog parahuman world.

They were the "edgy" type, the kind of purposelessly aggravating and pointlessly stupid kind of young man that everybody disliked and avoided but nobody took seriously. They were crude and shocking, but dressing it up with video games and the kind of toxic masculinity that always got ignored made it somehow acceptable. And that meant Über and Leet weren't taken seriously as a threat. The sheer amount of irritating, but sort of funny, dramatics they made a point of including went a long way too.

And, thus, there was a lot they could get away with that just wouldn't get taken seriously. And anything really competent and discreet he did would never be connected to him, and if somebody did connect the dots nobody would believe them. He was just Über, of those idiots Über and Leet, after all. The only time they'd really screwed up was with their Grand Theft Auto run, which was in hindsight a huge mistake. They really should have refrained from beating up prostitutes on camera, it made too many people take them seriously, though a lot of them had forgotten by now, moving their attention on to less (intentionally) ridiculous threats. Über had learned from that mistake. When he wanted to do something really awful, like savage beatings for fun and profit, he did so quietly.


Coil was a big help there. Über knew his occasional employer was a much bigger fish than he pretended to be, and the snake was very good at arranging for whatever depravity would make people do what he wanted them to do to happen, and happen discreetly. Über salivated a little at the thought of what he could do with what he'd been promised in return for helping with today.

He was pretty sure the Undersiders were Coil's tools, and that there was more to the robbery than was apparent at a first glance. The teenage gang had been just a little too successful to be truly independent, unless Tattletale was a much stronger Thinker than he thought she was. And the very public nature of the robbery was well outside the Undersiders' usual modus operandi of quick smash and grab raids on targets the authorities were obligated to pretend to care about, but actually didn't care about. This was all but a direct challenge to the PRT, and the Undersiders didn't seem stupid enough to do something like that for no reason. Not that Über particularly cared, but still.

He could get away with it, because he was just flashy and stupid, not a real threat. Über and Leet's orders were simple and broad ranging, just the way Über liked them. They were to make a scene and steal the show as much as possible. Be big and bold and dramatic, and grab as much attention as possible. Since most people thought of the pair as desperate parahuman attention (seekers), nobody would be all that surprised at them taking advantage of a big event to fuel their egos. Only the villains directly involved would know that there was more to it than the pair enjoying themselves and flaunting it. In reality, ego stroking was only a secondary benefit.


Today's theme, despite being a rush job, was actually a pretty good choice for educating people about video game history, though Über didn't really care nearly as much as Leet did. It made his buddy happy, and it was certainly a useful face to present to the world, and that was about it for him. Don't get him wrong, he rather enjoyed them, he just wasn't particularly fussed about other people having fun. He wouldn't do so much trolling if he did. Despite that, Spacewar! was a good choice for a number of reasons. It was pretty simple and quick to do, which was important since Coil hadn't given them much notice, it was completely unrelated to the heist, which was important since this had to look purely opportunistic, and it would be memorable nevertheless.

Not for the costumes, which were just basic armoured bodysuits with the Needle (for Leet) and the Wedge (for Über) superimposed onto a starfield background, or the weapons, which were just grenade launchers (with the same nonlethal stun-flash grenades they'd used on half a dozen prior stunts), but for the Tinkertech. Leet's "hyperdrive" was just his old short-range teleporter in a different case, but the star was actually rather impressive. Living things, and only living things, would be strongly drawn to it by some sort of pseudogravity [nonsense] Über didn't really understand. That should definitely make it interesting.


But first, they were going to wait for the Undersiders to make some sort of play, in order to ensure they could take the Wards by surprise. No point in not playing it smart, and, despite constantly feigning otherwise, Über and Leet were actually pretty good at playing it smart. They wouldn't have survived Brockton Bay for as long as they had if they really were as stupid as they made a point of looking.

 

[Obscura]

Aegis:

Before the fight started, Carlos was confident and self-assured. His team was a well oiled machine, excepting the new member Browbeat and the weirdness that was Sophia, and this sort of thing was exactly what they'd trained for. Vista's power would keep the Undersiders from escaping, and the sneak thieves wouldn't be a match for them in a straight fight even if they weren't badly outnumbered.

That confidence didn't last long once things actually kicked off. Firstly, he hadn't realized just how fast those dogs were, and all three of them were heading for different targets. Knowing he had to act quickly or all three would get through, he made a rapidfire decision, and, following standard PRT threat rating protocols as best he understood them, he targeted the higher rated Master first, Rachel Lindt. Masters were second only to Thinkers in terms of standard PRT targeting, assuming equal ratings. (Tattletale, as a rather powerful Thinker, would have been a better pick, but he didn't know she was a rather powerful Thinker.) That was a mistake for two reasons. Firstly, it let [Heckhound], her dog, and the still somewhat capable Tattletale gang up on him, since he neglected to actually work with his team. They weren't nearly as well-oiled a machine as he thought, and they'd rarely worked together in anything serious before, not in groups larger than three, and working in pairs was more usual for their patrols. Secondly, it meant that there was nobody in position to deal with Grue, since Browbeat had tried a stupidly high kick and immediately been forced to overextend it to the point of completely losing his balance by Regent.

The latter would prove to be rather important.


Panacea:

Amy Dallon was entirely unaware of the confrontation at Brockton Bay Central Bank, not that she would have really cared even if she had known about it. Violence happened all the time in the Bay, and Amy had been exposed to so much of the results of it that she found it hard to care unless it got quite a lot worse than usual or it affected her personally. When she did find out about it, she was just glad that she'd done her banking yesterday afternoon, after checking over the new healer's work, since she was downtown anyway. Then she'd feel a rather unhealthy amount of self-loathing for that feeling, but it wouldn't be that much more than she already felt basically all the time. She wasn't in all that good a place, mentally speaking, but that tends to happen when you're a child celebrity with a negligent father and an emotionally abusive mother. Go figure.


Regent:

"Alec" was, for once, not bored. He probably would have been if the robbery had gone off without a hitch, but it hadn't. It had been one interesting thing after another. Not that they were good things, but they were definitely interesting. He had never heard the old curse "may you live in interesting times", but if he had he probably would have made some kind of deeply sarcastic yet surprisingly insightful comment about it.

First there'd been the PRT agent, then the bank manager, then some girl downstairs had started screaming, then Tattletale had started screaming, and that was just the beginning. (Regent, unlike Grue, was fully able to tell apart the two screaming voices. Where he'd grown up it was a basic survival skill.) When Grue had come up carrying a severely battered Tattletale, all sorts of interesting questions were brought up, especially when it turned out that the girl "Alec" had saved had done it. Especially especially when Tattletale handed him a letter she'd apparently grabbed from the girl and whispered that it was important somehow. Then she'd gone back to barely holding herself back from screaming, so clearly she wasn't in the best frame of mind at the moment, but still.


Who was that girl? Why had she beaten Tattletale up? Why attack her with her legs instead of swarming her under? What made the letter important?

He paused to make some really buff guy he'd never seen before pay for overextending, by making him overextend even worse. To be honest, Alec had no idea who that was, but that didn't stop him from shouting "Don't you think you're going a step too far!"

The guy didn't seem to like that, so Alec was going to count it as a win.


Grue:

Things actually seemed to be going according to plan. The dog he was riding was letting him guide it with his heels (and hadn't that been tricky to learn. He was just going to be glad that Rachel was as good with dogs as she was bad with people.), his team was actually working together well, and the opposition had continued to leave their most important and most vulnerable member unguarded.

Brian came in like a bolt of lightning, darkness streaking out behind him, and crashed into where Vista was like a highly muscular man riding nearly a ton of angry, blind, canine. There weren't a whole lot of people who could keep on their feet after something like that, almost all of them major-league brutes. Vista was not one of those people. Unfortunately for him, she didn't have to be.

Then a big guy in a black bodysuit with a large wedge shape in white emblazoned on it showed up and threw some sort of weird device, and things got complicated.


Dinah:

Rushing to the bank as fast as possible had been a mistake, Dinah realized too late, as chaos broke out less than half a block from where she was standing. Coil's men were pursuing her, so she couldn't back out. She'd just have to find someone from the PRT who could be trusted, and then everything would be okay. She knew that Coil couldn't grab her from PRT custody anymore, even if she didn't know why, so everything would be fine.

She hoped.

 

[Obscura]

Alice Stone:

For the various hostages on the floor of Brockton Bay Central Bank's lobby, the Undersiders' exit was an opportunity. For most, it was an opportunity to flee the area, hopefully to return to their families, lovers, friends and so forth. For one individual who happened to be rather drunk (hair of the dog didn't work so well for him), it was an opportunity to get to his favorite bar before it closed, seeing as how he was forgetting that not only was it barely into the afternoon (and thus well outside the bar's operating hours), but that the bar in question had been burned down a month before by a bunch of Empire goons for displaying a pride flag. It turns out that inebriation, well-developed alcoholism and violent events are not a great combination. Truly, tis unfortunate that those things so often go together. That particular time, the guy was fine, but the odds were that he'd be otherwise because of his condition sooner or later. But yes, the Undersiders leaving to take the fight to the Wards was taken as an opportunity to leave by most of the hostages they left behind.

For Alice Stone, on the other hand, it was an opportunity to rush into the bank's basement. Not for anything the bank basement itself had to offer, mind you, she wasn't terribly interested in offices, closets, the staff bathroom, or even the vault, but in order to find a 14 year old girl who she was supposed to be looking after.

This was exactly what she was supposed to be doing as a PRT agent. She'd been assigned to look after Jacqueline Colere, and if her superiors asked, going to her at this point was exactly what protocol said she should do.

She would have done it anyway, but it being the officially correct thing to do certainly made things easier. Not that anything about this was easy.

Alice felt like a failure. There really wasn't all that much that she'd gotten wrong. For starters, she'd done everything before the robbery kicked off exactly right, even if Jacqueline had made it pretty easy for her. Quietly scouting out the situation once the screaming started had been what she was supposed to do, and it would have worked out quite well if she hadn't been followed by people who were a lot less [funtime] discreet than herself. Not stopping them, because she hadn't noticed them, had been her only real mistake. In this incident, that was, she'd made mistakes before, and she'd probably make more in the future. She'd surrendered without a fight, but that was clearly the right thing to do when a lone PRT agent was confronted with four supervillains with hostages. And once she saw the opportunity, she returned to the person she was supposed to protect with all alacrity.

Nevertheless, she felt guilty. She knew it wasn't rational, but she did. The fact of the matter is that guilt, even irrational guilt, is part and parcel of being a caring person, and virtually no one can escape it. Being well adjusted requires dealing with it. (Coil, being Coil, not only could escape it but had never needed to put any effort into doing so, but nobody except possibly himself would call him well adjusted.)

Being a certified therapist, she had a fairly good idea what was happening with her. Even if her speciality was children, she had more than enough of a basic grounding to be able to tell on general principles, although self-diagnosis wasn't exactly reliable. But knowing exactly why she felt the way she did didn't make it go away. For now she'd just have to put it aside for a bit.

She found Jacqueline on the floor of the bank's basement, trying to curl up into a ball. She wasn't having much luck, since her hands were in what Alice recognized as zip-cuffs behind her back. It might have been cute if it wasn't for all the tears. Some people can look pleasant and even pretty when they cry, but Jacqueline Colere wasn't one of them. At least not when she was crying as hard as she was just then. The stuttering, off-key singing under her breath didn't really help. Alice didn't let that stop her from approaching, or from trying to comfort the child. Who suddenly seemed so very, very small.

"And I find it kind of funny I find it kind of sad the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had I find it hard to tell you I find it hard to take When people run in circles it's a very, very Mad world"

Alice didn't recognize the song, but it definitely wasn't an appropriate one for a girl of Jacqueline's age. She wasn't about to stop her though, at this point she wasn't about to stop anything Jacqueline found comforting. Short of self-harm, illegal drugs, or exposing herself to unnecessary danger. An inappropriately cynical and morbid song was fine. If the PR department wanted to take that away, they'd have to get through Alice Stone first.

Jacqueline barely responded as Alice removed the cuffs from her, (Given the amount of capes who used zip-cuffs, on both sides of the law, having a little device that was just the right size and shape to remove them was just good sense for a PRT member.) but when Alice hugged her she gradually grew quieter and quieter, until all the agent could hear was a bit of sniffling. And then the emotion disappeared from the young girl's face, and she was all business again, like she'd been when she was giving her statement about the kidnapping attempt. It was honestly pretty unnerving, even eerie, but Alice Stone just had to hope for the best.


Hopefully, everything would be okay.

 

[Obscura]

It's not the most original insight to ever grace my brain, but being beaten up and restrained on a tile floor sucks. Imagine that. Not half as bad as being a homeless orphan, admittedly, but the awfulness was a bit more concentrated. I will admit that I was a bit of a mess there for some time.

Okay, more than a bit.

I'm not sure when Agent Alice came back downstairs, but she obviously did at some point, because she was there. Once again, she knew what she was doing, and she managed to get me into something resembling a calm and rational state with alacrity and grace. Her training was showing. Nobody is naturally that good at dealing with frightened children. Like almost all skills, it takes education and practice as much or more than talent. Although it wasn't a skill I had myself, so I could be wrong.

I don't think I am, but then I wouldn't, would I?

Most people who are wrong think they're right, or at least that they're probably right, or they would change their minds. Not necessarily their words, if their pride was strong enough, but their minds, definitely. That's just good, basic, common sense.


Not wanting to remain in the bank any longer than I had to was also just good, basic, common sense. Although leaving without getting into further danger was not necessarily a simple thing.

I let Stone, PRT agent that she was, take charge of that, as was only sensible, not that I could have done much if I decided to contest the matter. I was small, weak, and already pretty-beaten up, while she was a lot bigger, stronger, and actually knew what she was doing in this kind of situation. It was pretty obvious which of us should be leading, and it wasn't me.

Leaving the basement was pretty easy, as one would probably expect. Fortunately, I wasn't in too much pain to climb the stairs, at least not when I had a rail and a PRT agent to take some of the weight off me. Mostly the rail, I didn't want to risk putting too much weight on agent Stone and throwing her off balance. It didn't seem all that likely, but then neither did my trip to the bank being interrupted by supervillains seem probable. Somehow, it didn't seem like a coincidence, but neither Tattletale nor Grue seemed to be expecting me.


I decided to blame Coil. To be clear, I did not have any particular reason to blame the twisted and insidious human Master, I was just doing so on the basis that anything particularly awful that didn't have a reason for happening was probably his fault. At least in Brockton Bay. Taylor's nightmarish high school experience had been, after all. It wasn't really fair of me, but I wasn't particularly interested in being fair to somebody that horrible. As far as I was concerned, he could get thrown off a bridge into a pit of discarded razor blades and it wouldn't be amiss. Aside from somebody being so irresponsible as to just leave a pit full of discarded razor blades lying around uncovered, anyway. That was just not safe. At all. Seriously, that's just plain reckless, hypothetical pit full of discarded razor blades leaving person. Shame on you. Somebody could have gotten seriously hurt.

Somebody besides Coil, that is. He could just get thrown right into that pit of sharpness and pain.


But I couldn't afford to get too caught up in elaborate revenge fantasies. Even ones where I lost track and moved my focus pretty far away from the actual revenge. At least not right then. Maybe later.

The bank lobby was empty. Well, sort of. There weren't any people in it, anyway. Just lots and lots of upturned, disheveled and ugly furniture. Seriously, what is it with banks and bad furniture choices? Do the superbig holding corporations just transfer anything that doesn't get sold from their furniture stores to their banks? Is that even how holding corporations work?

No, that doesn't make sense. That plasticy and metal-barish Minimalist stuff sells great, for some reason. Fie if I know. Not that I know what "fie" means. I just find it's one of those funny words, you know? Anyway, the bank lobby had a lot of scattered chairs and a couple tables, plus quite a few of those long ribbony things on poles they use to mark out lineups, so the footing in there was more than a little bit treacherous. Panic and fear do not for concern for the furniture make. Not that your average Brockton Bay denizen is all that concerned for furniture when violence is in the offing. At least when the furniture isn't their own, anyway. Definitely not when the furniture is obviously cheap and easily replaceable, and doubly definitely not when the furniture belongs to an institution as inhuman and disliked as a bank. Personally, I didn't really have much of a problem with banks, but that may have just been lack of experience talking. Or my overwhelming disdain for certain other institutions, like Winslow High "School".

But we found an area where I was able to stand relatively steady and looked for ways to get out. Unfortunately, the number of ways out was rather lacking, being exactly one. A really weird distortion effect meant that the only way out of the bank's immediate area was through the front of the bank. I'd never seen Vista's work before, but this looked a lot like how I'd heard it described, so it was probably her. It wasn't like there were a whole lot of spatial distortion Shakers in Brockton Bay. Just Vista and Labyrinth, of the local mercenary group, and the latter was supposed to be a whole lot weirder. Although that was two more than most cities, I guess, so relatively speaking we had a lot. Capes who could warp space were even rarer than healers, but not nearly of the same unique utility and protection, and, like healers, there were more of them than normal in Brockton Bay, but nowhere near so many that they weren't all extremely distinct.

Undoubtedly, this was a measure to keep the Undersiders from getting away. And, like most methods used to keep criminals from escaping, it had the unpleasant side effect of hindering the innocent from escaping too. Well, that's just great.


Except for the part where it's not great at all, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. A lot of people had exited the bank by the front exit and gotten stuck between the bank and the fighting, but I didn't intend to join them. Even if the warping stayed up for a long time, it was probably safer inside the bank than just outside it's front.