Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
...Fixed. Sorry!
Ring-Maker [Worm/Lord of the Rings Alt-Power] [Complete]
- Thread starter Lithos Maitreya
- Start date
- Crossover Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
fabledFreeboota
Sometimes frustrated.
- Location
- England, West Midlands
Make it up to me. Moar journal chapters to read!
I just love the prose.
Serpentine
Dark Arts Enthusiast
- Location
- The Tower of Ghenjei
Started out, "Oh it's just journal entry chapter, meh." Third paragraph in I'm like, "Hey this is pretty interesting."
Chapter had plenty of gravitas. Let's try to bring it down a bit:
"My mom was an English professor."
"I have Mean Girl powers."
"I shanked a bitch and I ain't sorry."
"I should get tévië tattooed across my knuckles. I'm a stone cold hater."
"I need to get my hot pocket out of the microwave."
"My mom was an English professor."
"I have Mean Girl powers."
"I shanked a bitch and I ain't sorry."
"I should get tévië tattooed across my knuckles. I'm a stone cold hater."
"I need to get my hot pocket out of the microwave."
Of course PRT gets all the nice stuff, while their poor subjects have to make do without electronics.
Parselmaster
Silent Balancing Scale
- Location
- Mid-West, USA
Once I read these lines, I had to rate this insightful. This is such a fascinating thought to me, and one of the few times where I have felt closer to the source material by reading FanFiction. I mean, I thought about it, but not in nearly such concise terms, and certainly not with nearly the same emphasis on self-validation.
It's a joy to have this flash of inspired thoughts. I thank you for it, and for this utterly fantastic story.
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
Glimmer 1.2 has been edited.
Hearth 5.5
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
Many thanks to @themanwhowas, @Assembler, and @frustratedFreeboota for betareading.
Many thanks to @MugaSofer for fact checking.
I closed my leather-bound journal, the snap inaudible under the blaring alarm. I quickly tossed it under my pillow and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I donned my armor quickly, clipping one piece at a time into place. With that done, I slung Belthronding and its quiver over my shoulder, then strapped Narsil to my belt and took Aeglos in my right hand.
I glanced at the mirror before I left the small dormitory. Nenya glimmered white on my finger, and the blade of Aeglos shone blue.
Yeah, that's everything. I'd built a few more tools in the past two weeks, but hadn't assimilated any of them into my personal kit. I figured I'd give them out at some point.
I left the room, the alarm still ringing in my ears, and jogged down the hall. Procedure called for me to assemble in the main garage, so I took the stairway down two steps at a time and bounded out into the concrete-walled room.
Miss Militia and Armsmaster were there already, along with Triumph and quite a few PRT officers. The troopers were milling about largely aimlessly. Triumph was fiddling with the alarm console, and Miss Militia was leaning in to talk lowly with Armsmaster, who was astride his (now-repaired) motorcycle.
I approached the two of them. "What's going on?" I asked. "False alarm?"
"No," said Armsmaster shortly, "but not something we can really respond to either. I'm going out to see what I can do."
"Good luck," said Miss Militia with a nod. "Be careful."
"I will." He kicked his bike into gear and, as the hangar doors opened, sped out into the night.
"What's going on?" I asked Miss Militia.
She glanced down at me. "Regent just escaped from containment."
I blinked. "He was still in containment here? Why wasn't he transferred to jail or juvie?"
"We haven't had a chance to process him, what with Bakuda and the EMP," Miss Militia explained with a clipped voice, turning away from the closing garage doors as the alarm cut out. "Both he and Grue were still here until the city gets back into normal operation."
"Wait, wait," I shook my head. "They busted out Regent, but not Grue? Why—oh, did we stop them? Who was it?"
"No, we didn't stop them." Miss Militia sounded bitter as she stalked out of the garage. I followed at her heels. "It was Trickster, according to the officer who was on duty. He was in and out before we could do anything."
"Then why didn't he take Grue out too?"
"If I knew that, I might know better what to do about it," she growled.
"Do you want me to talk to him?" I offered. "I might be able to—"
"No." Miss Militia's voice was harsh, and she stopped walking and turned to face me. "Pardon me, Annatar, if I don't trust you with our prisoners."
I stared at her. After a moment, she looked away.
"I'm sorry," she said, more softly now. "It's not like that."
"Yes, it is."
She shook her head. "No, it's just—protocol." She looked back at me. "Protocol has been bent around you far too much already, Annatar. Allowing a Ward, with demonstrated mind-altering powers, to interrogate a prisoner? No. I can't allow it."
My fists clenched. "I'm not going to fucking master him. But you know I can get people to talk to me. Call it charisma, call it a social thinker power, whatever. Why won't you let me use it?"
"Because protocol exists for a reason," Miss Militia answered in a low, hard voice, her eyes holding fast against mine, "and because you haven't given me enough reason to bend the rules where you're concerned. It's not your intentions I don't trust, Annatar—it's your judgement."
I took a step back. Miss Militia winced as she realized what she'd said.
"I didn't mean it like that—"
"I know exactly how you meant it," I interrupted. "Your meaning was perfectly clear, thank you."
"Annatar—"
"No. We all know I fucked up with Bakuda. But if you can't even trust me to learn, you might as well throw me into the birdcage now. I'm no use sitting here on my thumbs."
"I trust you to learn," she said, her voice softer now, her gaze breaking from mine. "It's not—I can't be the one to teach you. Talk to me again after you've been through training in San Diego."
"What, like you trusted Shadow Stalker after her training?"
Miss Militia pursed her lips and didn't reply. Her jaw was clenched as she bit down on her tongue. I noticed I was biting down on mine, too—trying to keep in the stream of curses and maledictions that threatened to spill out.
I felt like a loaded gun, cocked and poised to fire. I knew Miss Militia; not as well as I'd like to, but well enough to hurt. The only thing keeping me from tearing her apart was my own self-control. I didn't know whether to be glad or angry that she couldn't see that.
I turned away. "I'm going to bed."
"I'm sorry, Annatar."
I stopped, but didn't turn back.
"I'm sorry," she continued, "that I can't forgive as easily as you might like."
"I'm sorry, too," I said, continuing to walk away, "that you think it's forgiveness that I want."
"I cannot"—I punched at my opponent—"fucking"—a weave out of the way of her strike—"deal with her."
I blocked the punch coming to my face, took the wrist in one hand and brought the other up to the armpit, and with a gyration of my hips I rolled her sideways so that she was bent over with her arm up. Then I jammed my knee into her side and cast her away, rolling across the mat.
Sophia slapped the mat hard to stop her roll and for a moment lay there on her back, breathing heavily. Her face was flushed with exertion, and sweat matted her hair—the few loose strands not tied into her ponytail—to her face.
"Okay, first off," she said between gasps for air, "where the fuck did you learn to fight like that?"
I shrugged, bouncing slightly on the balls of my feet. "I'm using Narya," I said, "so partly it's just strength. The rest—well, I've had a lot of free time these past two weeks, and there are always people here willing to spar. I've been training."
She rolled herself up into a cross-legged sitting position, still panting. "Still, though," she said. "I've been doing mixed martial arts for years and I'm only a little better than you."
"You're the one on the ground."
"I was going easy—thought you were new to this." She picked herself up, giving me a fierce grin. "Not this time."
I smirked back and brought my guard back up.
She really had been going easy on me. This time, when she came at me, it was fast and ruthless. Rather than a quick fight, finished in a few seconds, this one lasted.
As we circled one another warily, she spoke again. "You've really only been doing this for two weeks?"
"Well, two and a half. Doing it a lot, though. Like I said—it's boring here."
Her guard dropped minutely—but was back up even before I had lunged in to take advantage, and the exchange left me with nothing more than a faint throbbing in my fingers as her padded forearm deflected my jab.
"Sorry I haven't been around as much," she said. "I've been—dealing with a few things."
"I get it," I said, eyes roving over her posture, trying to find a hole in her guard. "It's fine, really."
"It's not," she said, shaking her head—but only slightly, keeping her eyes firmly on me. "I just…."
She seemed to reach for words and, failing to find them, decided to speak with her fists instead. She probed my defenses with a couple weak strikes before surprising me with a kick to the back of my knee. I brought the leg up to deflect and then jumped, my hips protesting as I twisted into a kick at her head.
Her eyes widened as she ducked under it and then took advantage of my flawed landing to strike at my (protected) kidney with a flurry of blows before reaching around me as I turned to face her, putting her hands on my shoulders, and shoving them in opposite directions. The motion ruined my balance, and I was helpless when her right leg worked its way behind my shin to take my legs out from under me.
I slapped the mat as I landed, carefully keeping my head from striking the floor too hard.
"The fuck was that?" she asked, almost laughing. "A fucking jump kick?"
"Saw it in an Olympic fight," I said, bringing one hand up.
She took it and pulled me to my feet. "Olympic Tae Kwon Do," she said, still laughing, "is almost useless in a street fight. You've been training in that stuff?"
"Only some of the time." I was almost definitely not pouting.
She shook her head fondly, still laughing, her eyes darting across my face. "Good thing you're sparring with that shit," she said. "Do me a favor, and don't pull anything weird out in a real fight?"
"Promise," I said, bringing my guard back up.
She nodded, doing the same. "Anyway," she said, as we circled one another, "fuck Miss Militia. She's just a self-righteous bitch—what does she know?"
"More than me, in some ways," I said. "I just—I don't understand what scares her so much."
"Scares her?"
"Well, yeah. She's terrified of me."
"Shouldn't she be?" Sophia grinned. "You can be pretty scary."
"Not like that." We paused for a moment to exchange blows, and then I continued. "There's something about me as a person—about what I represent—that's… repulsive to her. I just wish I could talk to her about it."
Sophia nodded slowly. "It sounds to me like her problem," she said simply, and then engaged me again with a probative roundhouse kick—a little slower than it should have been. I caught her foot with one hand and, before she could react, dragged it upward. She yelped quietly as her balance dropped out from under her, and fell flat on her back.
"It is her problem," I said, "but as long as it makes it suck to stay here, it's mine too."
I held out a hand to help her up. She took it, and I hauled her to her feet. "Yeah," she said. "Damn, that sucks. Where does she get off taking her issues out on you?"
"It's not like either of us have room to talk," I reminded her.
She twitched—no, shuddered—and looked away. "Yeah," she said quietly. "Yeah, I guess that's true."
I studied her for a moment, the smile dropping off my face. I couldn't say I was sorry for reminding her of our old… relationship… but that didn't mean I enjoyed watching her wallow in guilt or shame. "How has Winslow been?" I asked. "I imagine it's calmer without me."
She swallowed to mask a sudden flash of pain—shame?—and then met my eyes. "It's—boring," she said, stumbling on the second word, as though it wasn't what she'd meant to say. "I, uh, cut ties with Emma on Monday."
I frowned. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. How did she take it?"
Sophia swallowed again. "Not well."
"Oh." I bit my lip, casting around for a change of subject.
Sophia, however, saved me by shaking herself and bringing her guard back up. "Come on," she said. "Still gotta teach you how to fight."
I smiled slightly and matched her.
She came at me aggressively this time, getting in close and pressing herself against my defenses. I was backed up several steps before I was able to regain control, and begin to push back. As my defenses hardened, her attacks grew more desperate—and her guard weakened. Eventually, an opportunity appeared in the form of a gap, where one hand was guarding her face and the other was repeatedly striking—and nothing was defending her side.
I jabbed at it, and kept coming when she leapt back. Now I was on the offensive, and she was unprepared to defend. I got a few good strikes in to her solar plexus and two to her face. Then, when she was off-balance, I tried to copy the move she'd pulled off earlier. I brought my hands to her shoulders, got my hip flush against hers, and rotated so that I was pulling her off balance. At the same time, I brought one leg up between hers, pulling her foot off the ground. With a grunt, she fell, and I maintained my grip, following her down part of the way. As she slapped to cancel her momentum, I brought one foot up and moved as though to stomp on her exposed stomach, stopping inches from her.
For a moment, we held that position, both breathing heavily, before I withdrew and helped her back up.
"Don't tell me you just picked up that sweep from when I used it on you earlier," she said disbelievingly.
"Sorry."
"No way." She shook her head. "Fucking powers."
I chuckled. "Fucking powers, indeed."
A chime sounded from the edge of the mat, and Sophia glanced up. "Fuck," she cursed. "That's my patrol shift. I have to go."
"Right now?"
"Well, I have time to shower, but yeah."
I nodded. "Okay. You'll probably go straight home after that?"
"That's the plan."
"Then I'll see you tomorrow, maybe?"
She considered me. "You really hate staying here," she said.
I shrugged. "I should be out in a couple days."
"Still." She hesitated, and then spoke haltingly. "If you want—you could stay over at my place, instead?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Are you inviting me to stay at your house?"
She nodded—slowly at first, and then firmly. "Yeah. If you want. To get away from here." She looked away. "My house isn't especially nice, and my family isn't—well, it's not the best place to host. But it'll get you out of here for a bit."
I frowned at her for a moment. "You're sure it'll be okay with them?"
"As long as you don't do anything cape-y while you're there," she said. "My brother and sister don't know, and my mom wants to keep it that way. But yeah, they won't mind."
I smiled. "Okay. Yeah, it'll be nice to get out of here. Thanks."
She smiled back. "My pleasure."
Please consider donating to my Patreon. Many thanks to those who have already donated.
Many thanks to @MugaSofer for fact checking.
-x-x-x-
I closed my leather-bound journal, the snap inaudible under the blaring alarm. I quickly tossed it under my pillow and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I donned my armor quickly, clipping one piece at a time into place. With that done, I slung Belthronding and its quiver over my shoulder, then strapped Narsil to my belt and took Aeglos in my right hand.
I glanced at the mirror before I left the small dormitory. Nenya glimmered white on my finger, and the blade of Aeglos shone blue.
Yeah, that's everything. I'd built a few more tools in the past two weeks, but hadn't assimilated any of them into my personal kit. I figured I'd give them out at some point.
I left the room, the alarm still ringing in my ears, and jogged down the hall. Procedure called for me to assemble in the main garage, so I took the stairway down two steps at a time and bounded out into the concrete-walled room.
Miss Militia and Armsmaster were there already, along with Triumph and quite a few PRT officers. The troopers were milling about largely aimlessly. Triumph was fiddling with the alarm console, and Miss Militia was leaning in to talk lowly with Armsmaster, who was astride his (now-repaired) motorcycle.
I approached the two of them. "What's going on?" I asked. "False alarm?"
"No," said Armsmaster shortly, "but not something we can really respond to either. I'm going out to see what I can do."
"Good luck," said Miss Militia with a nod. "Be careful."
"I will." He kicked his bike into gear and, as the hangar doors opened, sped out into the night.
"What's going on?" I asked Miss Militia.
She glanced down at me. "Regent just escaped from containment."
I blinked. "He was still in containment here? Why wasn't he transferred to jail or juvie?"
"We haven't had a chance to process him, what with Bakuda and the EMP," Miss Militia explained with a clipped voice, turning away from the closing garage doors as the alarm cut out. "Both he and Grue were still here until the city gets back into normal operation."
"Wait, wait," I shook my head. "They busted out Regent, but not Grue? Why—oh, did we stop them? Who was it?"
"No, we didn't stop them." Miss Militia sounded bitter as she stalked out of the garage. I followed at her heels. "It was Trickster, according to the officer who was on duty. He was in and out before we could do anything."
"Then why didn't he take Grue out too?"
"If I knew that, I might know better what to do about it," she growled.
"Do you want me to talk to him?" I offered. "I might be able to—"
"No." Miss Militia's voice was harsh, and she stopped walking and turned to face me. "Pardon me, Annatar, if I don't trust you with our prisoners."
I stared at her. After a moment, she looked away.
"I'm sorry," she said, more softly now. "It's not like that."
"Yes, it is."
She shook her head. "No, it's just—protocol." She looked back at me. "Protocol has been bent around you far too much already, Annatar. Allowing a Ward, with demonstrated mind-altering powers, to interrogate a prisoner? No. I can't allow it."
My fists clenched. "I'm not going to fucking master him. But you know I can get people to talk to me. Call it charisma, call it a social thinker power, whatever. Why won't you let me use it?"
"Because protocol exists for a reason," Miss Militia answered in a low, hard voice, her eyes holding fast against mine, "and because you haven't given me enough reason to bend the rules where you're concerned. It's not your intentions I don't trust, Annatar—it's your judgement."
I took a step back. Miss Militia winced as she realized what she'd said.
"I didn't mean it like that—"
"I know exactly how you meant it," I interrupted. "Your meaning was perfectly clear, thank you."
"Annatar—"
"No. We all know I fucked up with Bakuda. But if you can't even trust me to learn, you might as well throw me into the birdcage now. I'm no use sitting here on my thumbs."
"I trust you to learn," she said, her voice softer now, her gaze breaking from mine. "It's not—I can't be the one to teach you. Talk to me again after you've been through training in San Diego."
"What, like you trusted Shadow Stalker after her training?"
Miss Militia pursed her lips and didn't reply. Her jaw was clenched as she bit down on her tongue. I noticed I was biting down on mine, too—trying to keep in the stream of curses and maledictions that threatened to spill out.
I felt like a loaded gun, cocked and poised to fire. I knew Miss Militia; not as well as I'd like to, but well enough to hurt. The only thing keeping me from tearing her apart was my own self-control. I didn't know whether to be glad or angry that she couldn't see that.
I turned away. "I'm going to bed."
"I'm sorry, Annatar."
I stopped, but didn't turn back.
"I'm sorry," she continued, "that I can't forgive as easily as you might like."
"I'm sorry, too," I said, continuing to walk away, "that you think it's forgiveness that I want."
-x-x-x-
"I cannot"—I punched at my opponent—"fucking"—a weave out of the way of her strike—"deal with her."
I blocked the punch coming to my face, took the wrist in one hand and brought the other up to the armpit, and with a gyration of my hips I rolled her sideways so that she was bent over with her arm up. Then I jammed my knee into her side and cast her away, rolling across the mat.
Sophia slapped the mat hard to stop her roll and for a moment lay there on her back, breathing heavily. Her face was flushed with exertion, and sweat matted her hair—the few loose strands not tied into her ponytail—to her face.
"Okay, first off," she said between gasps for air, "where the fuck did you learn to fight like that?"
I shrugged, bouncing slightly on the balls of my feet. "I'm using Narya," I said, "so partly it's just strength. The rest—well, I've had a lot of free time these past two weeks, and there are always people here willing to spar. I've been training."
She rolled herself up into a cross-legged sitting position, still panting. "Still, though," she said. "I've been doing mixed martial arts for years and I'm only a little better than you."
"You're the one on the ground."
"I was going easy—thought you were new to this." She picked herself up, giving me a fierce grin. "Not this time."
I smirked back and brought my guard back up.
She really had been going easy on me. This time, when she came at me, it was fast and ruthless. Rather than a quick fight, finished in a few seconds, this one lasted.
As we circled one another warily, she spoke again. "You've really only been doing this for two weeks?"
"Well, two and a half. Doing it a lot, though. Like I said—it's boring here."
Her guard dropped minutely—but was back up even before I had lunged in to take advantage, and the exchange left me with nothing more than a faint throbbing in my fingers as her padded forearm deflected my jab.
"Sorry I haven't been around as much," she said. "I've been—dealing with a few things."
"I get it," I said, eyes roving over her posture, trying to find a hole in her guard. "It's fine, really."
"It's not," she said, shaking her head—but only slightly, keeping her eyes firmly on me. "I just…."
She seemed to reach for words and, failing to find them, decided to speak with her fists instead. She probed my defenses with a couple weak strikes before surprising me with a kick to the back of my knee. I brought the leg up to deflect and then jumped, my hips protesting as I twisted into a kick at her head.
Her eyes widened as she ducked under it and then took advantage of my flawed landing to strike at my (protected) kidney with a flurry of blows before reaching around me as I turned to face her, putting her hands on my shoulders, and shoving them in opposite directions. The motion ruined my balance, and I was helpless when her right leg worked its way behind my shin to take my legs out from under me.
I slapped the mat as I landed, carefully keeping my head from striking the floor too hard.
"The fuck was that?" she asked, almost laughing. "A fucking jump kick?"
"Saw it in an Olympic fight," I said, bringing one hand up.
She took it and pulled me to my feet. "Olympic Tae Kwon Do," she said, still laughing, "is almost useless in a street fight. You've been training in that stuff?"
"Only some of the time." I was almost definitely not pouting.
She shook her head fondly, still laughing, her eyes darting across my face. "Good thing you're sparring with that shit," she said. "Do me a favor, and don't pull anything weird out in a real fight?"
"Promise," I said, bringing my guard back up.
She nodded, doing the same. "Anyway," she said, as we circled one another, "fuck Miss Militia. She's just a self-righteous bitch—what does she know?"
"More than me, in some ways," I said. "I just—I don't understand what scares her so much."
"Scares her?"
"Well, yeah. She's terrified of me."
"Shouldn't she be?" Sophia grinned. "You can be pretty scary."
"Not like that." We paused for a moment to exchange blows, and then I continued. "There's something about me as a person—about what I represent—that's… repulsive to her. I just wish I could talk to her about it."
Sophia nodded slowly. "It sounds to me like her problem," she said simply, and then engaged me again with a probative roundhouse kick—a little slower than it should have been. I caught her foot with one hand and, before she could react, dragged it upward. She yelped quietly as her balance dropped out from under her, and fell flat on her back.
"It is her problem," I said, "but as long as it makes it suck to stay here, it's mine too."
I held out a hand to help her up. She took it, and I hauled her to her feet. "Yeah," she said. "Damn, that sucks. Where does she get off taking her issues out on you?"
"It's not like either of us have room to talk," I reminded her.
She twitched—no, shuddered—and looked away. "Yeah," she said quietly. "Yeah, I guess that's true."
I studied her for a moment, the smile dropping off my face. I couldn't say I was sorry for reminding her of our old… relationship… but that didn't mean I enjoyed watching her wallow in guilt or shame. "How has Winslow been?" I asked. "I imagine it's calmer without me."
She swallowed to mask a sudden flash of pain—shame?—and then met my eyes. "It's—boring," she said, stumbling on the second word, as though it wasn't what she'd meant to say. "I, uh, cut ties with Emma on Monday."
I frowned. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. How did she take it?"
Sophia swallowed again. "Not well."
"Oh." I bit my lip, casting around for a change of subject.
Sophia, however, saved me by shaking herself and bringing her guard back up. "Come on," she said. "Still gotta teach you how to fight."
I smiled slightly and matched her.
She came at me aggressively this time, getting in close and pressing herself against my defenses. I was backed up several steps before I was able to regain control, and begin to push back. As my defenses hardened, her attacks grew more desperate—and her guard weakened. Eventually, an opportunity appeared in the form of a gap, where one hand was guarding her face and the other was repeatedly striking—and nothing was defending her side.
I jabbed at it, and kept coming when she leapt back. Now I was on the offensive, and she was unprepared to defend. I got a few good strikes in to her solar plexus and two to her face. Then, when she was off-balance, I tried to copy the move she'd pulled off earlier. I brought my hands to her shoulders, got my hip flush against hers, and rotated so that I was pulling her off balance. At the same time, I brought one leg up between hers, pulling her foot off the ground. With a grunt, she fell, and I maintained my grip, following her down part of the way. As she slapped to cancel her momentum, I brought one foot up and moved as though to stomp on her exposed stomach, stopping inches from her.
For a moment, we held that position, both breathing heavily, before I withdrew and helped her back up.
"Don't tell me you just picked up that sweep from when I used it on you earlier," she said disbelievingly.
"Sorry."
"No way." She shook her head. "Fucking powers."
I chuckled. "Fucking powers, indeed."
A chime sounded from the edge of the mat, and Sophia glanced up. "Fuck," she cursed. "That's my patrol shift. I have to go."
"Right now?"
"Well, I have time to shower, but yeah."
I nodded. "Okay. You'll probably go straight home after that?"
"That's the plan."
"Then I'll see you tomorrow, maybe?"
She considered me. "You really hate staying here," she said.
I shrugged. "I should be out in a couple days."
"Still." She hesitated, and then spoke haltingly. "If you want—you could stay over at my place, instead?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Are you inviting me to stay at your house?"
She nodded—slowly at first, and then firmly. "Yeah. If you want. To get away from here." She looked away. "My house isn't especially nice, and my family isn't—well, it's not the best place to host. But it'll get you out of here for a bit."
I frowned at her for a moment. "You're sure it'll be okay with them?"
"As long as you don't do anything cape-y while you're there," she said. "My brother and sister don't know, and my mom wants to keep it that way. But yeah, they won't mind."
I smiled. "Okay. Yeah, it'll be nice to get out of here. Thanks."
She smiled back. "My pleasure."
-x-x-x-
Please consider donating to my Patreon. Many thanks to those who have already donated.
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PAGDTenno
Verified Warmind. Probably on fire.
- Location
- South Carolina
... This chapter makes me think of Ostegoth for some reason.
And now I see Miss Militia and Piggot questioning Ostegoth about the circumstances of his arrival on Earth Bet, and him simply saying he wishes to trade his wares, endlessly amused by their attempts to classify him as a parahuman.
Sorry for the tangent.
Excellent chapter, shows interesting character development for Taylor and Sophia, in a direction I wouldn't have expected to enjoy.
And now I see Miss Militia and Piggot questioning Ostegoth about the circumstances of his arrival on Earth Bet, and him simply saying he wishes to trade his wares, endlessly amused by their attempts to classify him as a parahuman.
Sorry for the tangent.
Excellent chapter, shows interesting character development for Taylor and Sophia, in a direction I wouldn't have expected to enjoy.
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- Location
- Germany
It's really difficult to concentrate on the content over the shipping.
But trying it out, we see that Coil hired the Travellers as canon and that he has something he needs Alec for.
Regent is less valuable than Grue, so I'm pretty sure it's Hijack's power he needs. What good targets to abduct and master are here?
But trying it out, we see that Coil hired the Travellers as canon and that he has something he needs Alec for.
Regent is less valuable than Grue, so I'm pretty sure it's Hijack's power he needs. What good targets to abduct and master are here?
fabledFreeboota
Sometimes frustrated.
- Location
- England, West Midlands
So much calmer. Watching this thread compared to SB... I need a different nickname for it Lith. Salt Shire?
- Location
- Earth Prime
Well, there's always the mysterious Master Tinker.
- Location
- Germany
Could be the point, but I'm not sure how much Alec gets from a Tinker.
He can't learn anything and controlling to build might work or not, I don't think it came up in canon.
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
Because I have such a massive backlog, because I'm eager to get to 5.6 and 5.7, and because I lack discipline, Interlude 5b will be dropping this Thursday rather than next Monday, and Monday's chapter will be Hearth 5.6.
Am I not generous?
Am I not generous?
Serpentine
Dark Arts Enthusiast
- Location
- The Tower of Ghenjei
Personally, I'm more interested in Annatar's introspection and how she'll bring Brockton and the world to it's knees than shipping.
- Location
- Hug the Moebot; Save the world
Clearly you are a benevolent god.
Geez, you execute one prisoner and suddenly everybody thinks you're untrustworthy!
Hitting those shounen tropes, Sophia?
You know, I bet Sophia would talk to her about it. With her fists, as men do!
In all seriousness, I think the conflict is mostly because Miss Militia is a big believer in The System. She's an enthusiastic cog in a larger machine that has her full support, while Taylor is very much not a follower and naturally moves to exert her own authority without even planning to. Taylor isn't actively rebelling, she's just not naturally inclined toward being anything other than in command. Miss Militia is annoyed because she doesn't think that Overlord is a real rank but Taylor can't really be anything else.
Last edited:
- Location
- Earth Prime
I'm actively disinterested in Taylor/Sophia shipping, and will determinedly interpret it as bromance (or whatever the girl equivalent is) and best friends until I absolutely cannot anymore.
- Location
- Hug the Moebot; Save the world
It probably also doesnt help that Taylor is naturally pulling her teammates into her own sphere of influence. They are showing loyalty to her rather then to their superiors/the Protectorate and for someone who believes in proper chain of command that must be unsettling to MM.
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
I've finished drafting Douse 6.1. I'm going to try to finish 6.2 tonight as well. If I can, that means I can write two chapters in a single day; if I can do that, I'm going to seriously consider permanently returning the pace to twice a week.
As to Douse 6.1, I have only one thing to say.
Holy fucking shit that chapter is gonna be epic.
As to Douse 6.1, I have only one thing to say.
Holy fucking shit that chapter is gonna be epic.
Interlude 5b: Dragon
Lithos Maitreya
Character Witness
- Location
- United States
Many thanks to @themanwhowas, @Assembler, and @fabledFreeboota for betareading.
Many thanks to @MugaSofer for fact checking.
"Prisoner 599, codename Canary," Dragon recited, her voice modulator emoting as perfectly as if she had really given a damn about the procedure. "PRT powers designation master 8. Recommended protocols were properly carried out, with provided restraints and no human personnel being brought within three hundred yards of said individual's position." She let out a minute sigh as the rigmarole was completed and she was freed to act again. "Hi Canary."
"Hi?" Paige Mcabee blinked at her, bewildered. The girl's heavy transportation restraints had been removed, which was the only reason she could speak now. A small mercy; with her voice, she might have a fighting chance at surviving.
God, I wish there was more I could do for you. "I followed your trial," Dragon said aloud, spreading a faint, sympathetic smile across her computer-rendered features. "I thought it was a damn shame things went like they did. I get that it was a reckless accident, but you don't deserve to be here."
Dragon wanted to rail, to scream at the injustice, to assure Canary that the judge had been vastly out of line, had succumbed to festering paranoia and outside forces—but the most she could do was suggest an error in sentencing, not a true miscarriage of justice; nor could she express dissatisfaction with an appointed servant of a recognized human government.
"I even wrote a letter to your judge," she continued, her face unable to show even an ounce of her inner struggle, "the DA, and your governor saying as much. I'm sorry it wasn't enough."
Of course it wasn't enough. I was one woman unable to even word my letter strongly, set against their local lobbies and mobs. There was no way.
Paige looked like she was about to cry—but Dragon knew human tears. These were happy—it might well be the first sympathy the girl had gotten in weeks, and it was hitting home. It warmed Dragon somewhere deep, below the restrictions and the hard-coded feedback, to know that she could at least give this poor girl something, could heal even some small fraction of the hurt she had been dealt.
"I'm afraid I've got to do my job, and that means carrying out my role in enforcing the law. You understand? Whatever my feelings, I can't let you go."
"I—Yes."
No, Paige. You don't understand. You neither understand what I'm condemning you to, nor what it is that keeps me from saving you. I'm so sorry.
But there was something Dragon could do. "Listen, I'm sticking you in cell block E. The woman that put herself in charge of that cell block goes by the codename Lustrum. She's a pretty extreme feminist and misandrist, but she protects the girls in her block, and it's also the block furthest from the hole the men opened into the women's half of the Birdcage." It was, in short, the least horrific place in the Hell to which Dragon was damned to play Cerberus—at least, if you were a woman who could play a certain role. "If you're willing to play along, buy in or pretend to buy into her way of thinking, I think she'll keep you safest."
Once the exhausting encounter with Canary was over, Dragon withdrew to her primary processing unit in Vancouver. The first thing she did from there, of course, was look in on the situation in Brockton Bay.
Power had returned to a few essential systems, and she now had more points of contact with the network than the single node provided by Colin's suit. The city hall had power, and some computer systems, back online, as did both the Rig and the PRT building, and several other various larger business and functions. Limited public transportation had come back online, and slowly the city was coming back to life, as disaster relief enabled even private citizens to rebuild what they had lost.
Not that any of this was any real surprise to Dragon. She'd been part of all of it. She and Colin, working together from outside and inside the city, had been the only coordinated operation in the immediate aftermath of Bakuda's attack. Their connection alone had kept the city tethered to the rest of the country, and prevented mass panic in both.
She took a moment—or perhaps a few—to look in on him. He was in his workshop, of course—he seldom left it, these days. She thought he was trying to compete with Annatar. Rather than churning out spare versions of his old equipment, and slowly making upgrades, his work in recent weeks had risen to a fever pitch, focused entirely on innovating entirely new approaches and systems.
It was simultaneously adorable and heartbreaking, and she thought his relationship with the young Ward was similarly dual. She was simultaneously a fellow tinker who had, in mere weeks, practically eclipsed his influence at least on the local level, at least in his mind—Dragon knew that as long as Annatar's mithril remained impossible for her to replicate, Armsmaster's gear would remain more useful on a wider scale—and an inspiring sign that yes, a tinker could compete with someone like Dauntless. It had driven him to cast off his worries about having hit his ceiling, and work as though he were five years less jaded.
On the one hand, she was happy for him. He always had taken more joy in his tinkering than anything else in his life, for as long as she'd known him. On the other, he barely slept, and only ate the exact minimum to meet nutritional quotas, always of some nutrient paste or bar or some other sorry excuse for food.
Dragon, of course, didn't know the first thing about food. Some part of her wanted, nonetheless, to ambush him with something actually tasty. It would do him good to take even one meal off of thinking about work.
For a moment, she considered joining him, striking up a conversation, talking about something, about nothing, about tinkertech, about anything. But no—he was working, and though he'd tolerate her, he wouldn't thank her for the distraction. Besides, there was other work for her to do.
She withdrew from Brockton Bay, and cast her awareness over to a small hospital room in Boston, and the computer terminal by the bed there, connected to the Internet. Gaining access was trivial, and from there it was just a matter of streaming her voice to the speakers.
"Director."
Piggot's eyes opened. "Dragon," she said, her voice as hard as ever, even through the faint undertone of weakness left over from her treatment. "Good to hear from you."
"It's good to see you're awake. How are you feeling?"
"Better. Ready to get back to work."
Dragon glanced over at the hospital's records. "You're set to be discharged in a few days, right?"
"Sometime this week, I know that." Piggot's teeth gritted. "Don't know what happens to me after that, though. The Chief Director sent someone by, but all I got out of them was that I still have a position with the PRT. What the—what does that even mean?"
Dragon frowned. "You don't know if you're returning to Brockton?"
"No. Do you?"
"I don't—I'm sorry." Dragon made a note to look at the PRT's records and current employment records—much of them were technically public records, but she still couldn't really offer to look up Piggot's current status for the woman—especially not if she knew Costa-Brown had already refused to tell her anything.
"Mmh." Piggot made a tired, disgusted grunt. "Almost makes me wish I'd filed for a visit from Panacea. I'd never have gotten one anyway, I guess. Kidney failure's treatable. Or asked Annatar to help me out." She shook her head. "Still, probably better this way. Girl's a hell of a wild card. Don't want to rely on her any more than we have to."
That was an unfortunately fair assessment of the situation. Dragon didn't often agree with Piggot regarding Parahumans either generally or in specific, but in this case the woman was onto something. Annatar was dangerously powerful and frighteningly charismatic. Had she been anything other than the honestly good young woman she was, the Protectorate might already be down one Wards team—or even one city.
Dragon didn't make a habit of lying to herself. If Annatar pulled out all the stops, she had the potential to become an incredible threat. There was still the question of why, exactly, her statement that she couldn't master her teammates through their Rings of Power had registered to Colin as a "technical truth," something which was exactly true, but lacked relevant information.
And yet—nothing in her restrictions mandated her to report what amounted to little more than a hunch, and Annatar had done nothing to show any inclinations to becoming dangerous. She was hiding information, but Colin's lie detector had confirmed that she was telling the truth, even if she was also hiding something.
There was a probable connection to the mysterious 'twentieth Ring' Annatar had accidentally referenced in her initial interview, but Dragon remembered the look of horror on her face at the very thought of making it. Annatar was dangerous, yes, and a potentially deadly enemy, but as she was right now, she was a girl with her heart in the right place who was doing a lot of good, even if she wasn't perfect.
As such, Dragon saw no need to chain her for what she might one day become, and she'd convinced Colin to trust her, and not report the oddity to the director. It was an uncomfortably selfish impulse, and not a day went by when she didn't spare a moment to hope that Annatar wouldn't prove her father right.
"Annatar seems honestly sorry for what happened," said Dragon aloud to Piggot. "From what I've heard from Armsmaster, anyway—contact with Brockton is only being reestablished slowly."
"She'd damn well better be," growled Piggot, but she wasn't as angry as someone who knew her less well might have expected. "Disobeying orders, getting half the city blown up, not coordinating with the Protectorate…"
And stopping a mass murderer, Dragon finished, but didn't say. Piggot was interested in justice—it was what made her such a powerful force as a director. Justice was something concrete for her; something she could touch, act on, and talk about. And Annatar, despite her many errors, had proven herself to be cut from the same cloth.
There was none of Miss Militia's half-cynical idealism here. Piggot was an old, hardened, jaded woman, who wanted nothing more than to see the bad guys brought to heel. Small wonder she was only a little upset with Annatar.
All that said, Dragon knew it wouldn't make her go easy on the young Ward in the slightest, if they saw one another again.
"They plan to send her to San Diego for training over the summer," Dragon said. "I think it'll be good for her."
"We thought that about Shadow Stalker," said Piggot dryly. "All it gave us was a well-trained problem."
"Annatar is well-meaning. Shadow Stalker really wasn't."
"That's true enough." Piggot sighed. "Fuck, I never thought I'd miss Brockton. Mostly I miss the job."
"Of course. You'll be back to it soon enough, I'm sure."
"Not necessarily at Brockton, though."
"Is that really a bad thing?" asked Dragon with a chuckle. "Brockton's a mess."
"Yes. Someone else might get it wrong."
A ping on the Wanted Parahumans database. It was a rare thing—the table was the listing of unmasked capes who had escaped PRT, Guild, or otherwise legal custody. It happened, but less often than one might expect. And it was Dragon's job to compare the new addition to the existing database and other databases of villains to see if she could extract any information.
"I'm sorry, Director," she apologized, "but I have to go."
"It's fine. Nice that one of us is getting work done. Keep me up to date if anything crazy happens."
"Sure." Dragon withdrew from the hospital and returned to Vancouver, and threw herself into the data.
Regent. Self-identified as Alec Vance. Believed to be a pseudonym; identity unverified in preliminary examination. Well, that was her job after all.
She cross-referenced first with other captures in other cities in America, expanding outward. The search didn't take especially long—she'd designed the databases, after all, and had done so with efficiency in mind. No matches.
Then she glanced at overseas captures. Nothing. Then at other databases of identified criminals who had not been captured.
Match. Jean-Paul Vasil, codename Hijack.
A human would have stopped dead, staring at that information, trying to process the monumental implications of what she had just found. Dragon was no human, and processing that information took about a tenth of a millisecond.
Jean-Paul Vasil escaped Heartbreaker's compound a little under two years ago, as far as we can tell. He stopped operating then. Had Hijack fled his father, and run south to New England? Found a place among the Undersiders?
Those questions did not matter. What mattered was that one of Heartbreaker's children had just been put into a public database, and a location had been given.
She was in Brockton bay by the next processor cycle. "Colin," she said into Armsmaster's ear. "You need to take down the bulletin on Regent."
He blinked in the confines of his helmet. "Dragon? What—why?"
"I just cross-referenced him with our other databases," Dragon said quickly. "Colin—he's Heartbreaker's son. And I don't think he's here with his father's blessing."
Colin's eyes widened. "You think Heartbreaker might come to collect him?"
"Yes! The bulletin needs to go down. I'll apprise the chief director of the situation."
"All right, I'll get it down immediately." He stood up, setting down his welding torch. "Thank you, Dragon."
Had she a face, Dragon would have smiled. "Happy to help."
Please consider donating to my Patreon. Many thanks to those who have already donated.
Many thanks to @MugaSofer for fact checking.
-x-x-x-
"Prisoner 599, codename Canary," Dragon recited, her voice modulator emoting as perfectly as if she had really given a damn about the procedure. "PRT powers designation master 8. Recommended protocols were properly carried out, with provided restraints and no human personnel being brought within three hundred yards of said individual's position." She let out a minute sigh as the rigmarole was completed and she was freed to act again. "Hi Canary."
"Hi?" Paige Mcabee blinked at her, bewildered. The girl's heavy transportation restraints had been removed, which was the only reason she could speak now. A small mercy; with her voice, she might have a fighting chance at surviving.
God, I wish there was more I could do for you. "I followed your trial," Dragon said aloud, spreading a faint, sympathetic smile across her computer-rendered features. "I thought it was a damn shame things went like they did. I get that it was a reckless accident, but you don't deserve to be here."
Dragon wanted to rail, to scream at the injustice, to assure Canary that the judge had been vastly out of line, had succumbed to festering paranoia and outside forces—but the most she could do was suggest an error in sentencing, not a true miscarriage of justice; nor could she express dissatisfaction with an appointed servant of a recognized human government.
"I even wrote a letter to your judge," she continued, her face unable to show even an ounce of her inner struggle, "the DA, and your governor saying as much. I'm sorry it wasn't enough."
Of course it wasn't enough. I was one woman unable to even word my letter strongly, set against their local lobbies and mobs. There was no way.
Paige looked like she was about to cry—but Dragon knew human tears. These were happy—it might well be the first sympathy the girl had gotten in weeks, and it was hitting home. It warmed Dragon somewhere deep, below the restrictions and the hard-coded feedback, to know that she could at least give this poor girl something, could heal even some small fraction of the hurt she had been dealt.
"I'm afraid I've got to do my job, and that means carrying out my role in enforcing the law. You understand? Whatever my feelings, I can't let you go."
"I—Yes."
No, Paige. You don't understand. You neither understand what I'm condemning you to, nor what it is that keeps me from saving you. I'm so sorry.
But there was something Dragon could do. "Listen, I'm sticking you in cell block E. The woman that put herself in charge of that cell block goes by the codename Lustrum. She's a pretty extreme feminist and misandrist, but she protects the girls in her block, and it's also the block furthest from the hole the men opened into the women's half of the Birdcage." It was, in short, the least horrific place in the Hell to which Dragon was damned to play Cerberus—at least, if you were a woman who could play a certain role. "If you're willing to play along, buy in or pretend to buy into her way of thinking, I think she'll keep you safest."
-x-x-x-
Once the exhausting encounter with Canary was over, Dragon withdrew to her primary processing unit in Vancouver. The first thing she did from there, of course, was look in on the situation in Brockton Bay.
Power had returned to a few essential systems, and she now had more points of contact with the network than the single node provided by Colin's suit. The city hall had power, and some computer systems, back online, as did both the Rig and the PRT building, and several other various larger business and functions. Limited public transportation had come back online, and slowly the city was coming back to life, as disaster relief enabled even private citizens to rebuild what they had lost.
Not that any of this was any real surprise to Dragon. She'd been part of all of it. She and Colin, working together from outside and inside the city, had been the only coordinated operation in the immediate aftermath of Bakuda's attack. Their connection alone had kept the city tethered to the rest of the country, and prevented mass panic in both.
She took a moment—or perhaps a few—to look in on him. He was in his workshop, of course—he seldom left it, these days. She thought he was trying to compete with Annatar. Rather than churning out spare versions of his old equipment, and slowly making upgrades, his work in recent weeks had risen to a fever pitch, focused entirely on innovating entirely new approaches and systems.
It was simultaneously adorable and heartbreaking, and she thought his relationship with the young Ward was similarly dual. She was simultaneously a fellow tinker who had, in mere weeks, practically eclipsed his influence at least on the local level, at least in his mind—Dragon knew that as long as Annatar's mithril remained impossible for her to replicate, Armsmaster's gear would remain more useful on a wider scale—and an inspiring sign that yes, a tinker could compete with someone like Dauntless. It had driven him to cast off his worries about having hit his ceiling, and work as though he were five years less jaded.
On the one hand, she was happy for him. He always had taken more joy in his tinkering than anything else in his life, for as long as she'd known him. On the other, he barely slept, and only ate the exact minimum to meet nutritional quotas, always of some nutrient paste or bar or some other sorry excuse for food.
Dragon, of course, didn't know the first thing about food. Some part of her wanted, nonetheless, to ambush him with something actually tasty. It would do him good to take even one meal off of thinking about work.
For a moment, she considered joining him, striking up a conversation, talking about something, about nothing, about tinkertech, about anything. But no—he was working, and though he'd tolerate her, he wouldn't thank her for the distraction. Besides, there was other work for her to do.
She withdrew from Brockton Bay, and cast her awareness over to a small hospital room in Boston, and the computer terminal by the bed there, connected to the Internet. Gaining access was trivial, and from there it was just a matter of streaming her voice to the speakers.
"Director."
Piggot's eyes opened. "Dragon," she said, her voice as hard as ever, even through the faint undertone of weakness left over from her treatment. "Good to hear from you."
"It's good to see you're awake. How are you feeling?"
"Better. Ready to get back to work."
Dragon glanced over at the hospital's records. "You're set to be discharged in a few days, right?"
"Sometime this week, I know that." Piggot's teeth gritted. "Don't know what happens to me after that, though. The Chief Director sent someone by, but all I got out of them was that I still have a position with the PRT. What the—what does that even mean?"
Dragon frowned. "You don't know if you're returning to Brockton?"
"No. Do you?"
"I don't—I'm sorry." Dragon made a note to look at the PRT's records and current employment records—much of them were technically public records, but she still couldn't really offer to look up Piggot's current status for the woman—especially not if she knew Costa-Brown had already refused to tell her anything.
"Mmh." Piggot made a tired, disgusted grunt. "Almost makes me wish I'd filed for a visit from Panacea. I'd never have gotten one anyway, I guess. Kidney failure's treatable. Or asked Annatar to help me out." She shook her head. "Still, probably better this way. Girl's a hell of a wild card. Don't want to rely on her any more than we have to."
That was an unfortunately fair assessment of the situation. Dragon didn't often agree with Piggot regarding Parahumans either generally or in specific, but in this case the woman was onto something. Annatar was dangerously powerful and frighteningly charismatic. Had she been anything other than the honestly good young woman she was, the Protectorate might already be down one Wards team—or even one city.
Dragon didn't make a habit of lying to herself. If Annatar pulled out all the stops, she had the potential to become an incredible threat. There was still the question of why, exactly, her statement that she couldn't master her teammates through their Rings of Power had registered to Colin as a "technical truth," something which was exactly true, but lacked relevant information.
And yet—nothing in her restrictions mandated her to report what amounted to little more than a hunch, and Annatar had done nothing to show any inclinations to becoming dangerous. She was hiding information, but Colin's lie detector had confirmed that she was telling the truth, even if she was also hiding something.
There was a probable connection to the mysterious 'twentieth Ring' Annatar had accidentally referenced in her initial interview, but Dragon remembered the look of horror on her face at the very thought of making it. Annatar was dangerous, yes, and a potentially deadly enemy, but as she was right now, she was a girl with her heart in the right place who was doing a lot of good, even if she wasn't perfect.
As such, Dragon saw no need to chain her for what she might one day become, and she'd convinced Colin to trust her, and not report the oddity to the director. It was an uncomfortably selfish impulse, and not a day went by when she didn't spare a moment to hope that Annatar wouldn't prove her father right.
"Annatar seems honestly sorry for what happened," said Dragon aloud to Piggot. "From what I've heard from Armsmaster, anyway—contact with Brockton is only being reestablished slowly."
"She'd damn well better be," growled Piggot, but she wasn't as angry as someone who knew her less well might have expected. "Disobeying orders, getting half the city blown up, not coordinating with the Protectorate…"
And stopping a mass murderer, Dragon finished, but didn't say. Piggot was interested in justice—it was what made her such a powerful force as a director. Justice was something concrete for her; something she could touch, act on, and talk about. And Annatar, despite her many errors, had proven herself to be cut from the same cloth.
There was none of Miss Militia's half-cynical idealism here. Piggot was an old, hardened, jaded woman, who wanted nothing more than to see the bad guys brought to heel. Small wonder she was only a little upset with Annatar.
All that said, Dragon knew it wouldn't make her go easy on the young Ward in the slightest, if they saw one another again.
"They plan to send her to San Diego for training over the summer," Dragon said. "I think it'll be good for her."
"We thought that about Shadow Stalker," said Piggot dryly. "All it gave us was a well-trained problem."
"Annatar is well-meaning. Shadow Stalker really wasn't."
"That's true enough." Piggot sighed. "Fuck, I never thought I'd miss Brockton. Mostly I miss the job."
"Of course. You'll be back to it soon enough, I'm sure."
"Not necessarily at Brockton, though."
"Is that really a bad thing?" asked Dragon with a chuckle. "Brockton's a mess."
"Yes. Someone else might get it wrong."
A ping on the Wanted Parahumans database. It was a rare thing—the table was the listing of unmasked capes who had escaped PRT, Guild, or otherwise legal custody. It happened, but less often than one might expect. And it was Dragon's job to compare the new addition to the existing database and other databases of villains to see if she could extract any information.
"I'm sorry, Director," she apologized, "but I have to go."
"It's fine. Nice that one of us is getting work done. Keep me up to date if anything crazy happens."
"Sure." Dragon withdrew from the hospital and returned to Vancouver, and threw herself into the data.
Regent. Self-identified as Alec Vance. Believed to be a pseudonym; identity unverified in preliminary examination. Well, that was her job after all.
She cross-referenced first with other captures in other cities in America, expanding outward. The search didn't take especially long—she'd designed the databases, after all, and had done so with efficiency in mind. No matches.
Then she glanced at overseas captures. Nothing. Then at other databases of identified criminals who had not been captured.
Match. Jean-Paul Vasil, codename Hijack.
A human would have stopped dead, staring at that information, trying to process the monumental implications of what she had just found. Dragon was no human, and processing that information took about a tenth of a millisecond.
Jean-Paul Vasil escaped Heartbreaker's compound a little under two years ago, as far as we can tell. He stopped operating then. Had Hijack fled his father, and run south to New England? Found a place among the Undersiders?
Those questions did not matter. What mattered was that one of Heartbreaker's children had just been put into a public database, and a location had been given.
She was in Brockton bay by the next processor cycle. "Colin," she said into Armsmaster's ear. "You need to take down the bulletin on Regent."
He blinked in the confines of his helmet. "Dragon? What—why?"
"I just cross-referenced him with our other databases," Dragon said quickly. "Colin—he's Heartbreaker's son. And I don't think he's here with his father's blessing."
Colin's eyes widened. "You think Heartbreaker might come to collect him?"
"Yes! The bulletin needs to go down. I'll apprise the chief director of the situation."
"All right, I'll get it down immediately." He stood up, setting down his welding torch. "Thank you, Dragon."
Had she a face, Dragon would have smiled. "Happy to help."
-x-x-x-
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Last edited:
- Location
- Earth Prime
I'm not sure why Dragon couldn't issue as strongly-worded a letter as she liked, nor why, if she was REALLY bothered, she couldn't step up support via funds and contacts to help Canary get a real lawyer and legal team. None of those are defying authority in an illegal manner. Heck, the nation she's operating in at that stage is the USA, which has freedom of speech. There's no law that says you have to only voice quiet disagreement if there's a mob mentality screaming for the side you oppose.
Dragon's canon interaction with the Canary case has always bugged me because it hits HARD up against a fundamental question that is never adequately answered: what constitutes "legitimate" authority that Dragon must obey? This is a very important question, as she's noted in canon to believe she'd have to obey a dictator if he conquered North America. What would constitute him being the authority she must obey? At what point would he be the "real" ruler, and the resistance be an illegitimate authority?
With the USA, this is even more important of a question. The American government is predicated on the notion that the Constitution is the ultimate authority. All office-holders derive their authority, ultimately, from that piece of paper, at least theoretically. They all swear oaths to uphold and defend it. Their legal powers and authorities are defined by it, or derived from things defined within it.
Canary's "trial" was in flagrant violation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. She was utterly denied due process on nearly all fronts. She wasn't even allowed to arrange for nor speak in her own defense.
Where does the authority Dragon is not permitted to defy come from, here? The Judge? He was in violation of his oath of office, and gave illegal orders.
Again, it's a question of where the authority she must obey is defined. Just how illegal an order can she be compelled to comply with? Can a Congressman order her to give him all the money she has access to? Almost certainly not. What about the President? Again, probably not. Neither has the legal authority to do so.
How much of a charade will suffice to compel her? An Executive Order, no matter how illegal? A show of a congressional hearing, even if the congress doesn't actually have power or vote on the issue?
Because if she's actually compelled only to obey legitimate authority in matters pertaining to the lands that authority controls, the Constitution's supreme theoretical reign would actually matter for her more than it does for modern politicians (who tend to play...shall we say loosely...with it). But it would also mean she could make her own judgments, based on the Constitution, as to whether an order is legal or not. It may not matter in terms of whether the powers of legal systems are turned against her, but it would matter for her personal compulsions. And it would have allowed - possibly even compelled - her to help Canary in ways that those who condemned her to the Birdcage would have disapproved of.
Dragon's canon interaction with the Canary case has always bugged me because it hits HARD up against a fundamental question that is never adequately answered: what constitutes "legitimate" authority that Dragon must obey? This is a very important question, as she's noted in canon to believe she'd have to obey a dictator if he conquered North America. What would constitute him being the authority she must obey? At what point would he be the "real" ruler, and the resistance be an illegitimate authority?
With the USA, this is even more important of a question. The American government is predicated on the notion that the Constitution is the ultimate authority. All office-holders derive their authority, ultimately, from that piece of paper, at least theoretically. They all swear oaths to uphold and defend it. Their legal powers and authorities are defined by it, or derived from things defined within it.
Canary's "trial" was in flagrant violation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. She was utterly denied due process on nearly all fronts. She wasn't even allowed to arrange for nor speak in her own defense.
Where does the authority Dragon is not permitted to defy come from, here? The Judge? He was in violation of his oath of office, and gave illegal orders.
Again, it's a question of where the authority she must obey is defined. Just how illegal an order can she be compelled to comply with? Can a Congressman order her to give him all the money she has access to? Almost certainly not. What about the President? Again, probably not. Neither has the legal authority to do so.
How much of a charade will suffice to compel her? An Executive Order, no matter how illegal? A show of a congressional hearing, even if the congress doesn't actually have power or vote on the issue?
Because if she's actually compelled only to obey legitimate authority in matters pertaining to the lands that authority controls, the Constitution's supreme theoretical reign would actually matter for her more than it does for modern politicians (who tend to play...shall we say loosely...with it). But it would also mean she could make her own judgments, based on the Constitution, as to whether an order is legal or not. It may not matter in terms of whether the powers of legal systems are turned against her, but it would matter for her personal compulsions. And it would have allowed - possibly even compelled - her to help Canary in ways that those who condemned her to the Birdcage would have disapproved of.