That Old, Familiar Sting
Fragile 2.3
They'd declared the school safe, the fire hadn't really gotten to anything important. The non-functional alarms and the issues that had occurred with the landlines had been deemed suspicious, however, and there were workmen repairing the sprinkler system and phone lines. Everything was being handled in a fast, efficient manner. Faster than it probably should have been, considering how small the budget really was.
Rumors flew, aided by the fact that Sophia wasn't there that fine Tuesday morning. That Taylor had returned as a Stranger to go all Carrie on the place. That Sophia was kidnapped. It wasn't quite fear, but it was unease. No one thought
they might be next, but they'd all been complicit. Either they'd bullied her, or they'd said nothing.
In a way, the Master/Stranger homework Mr. Six had assigned helped with a lot of the fears. After all, they could deal with it now, right? If the worst happened, they were prepared. After all, if Taylor had triggered in that locker, there was no reason she'd wait so long to get revenge, right?
Charlotte passed in her 'homework' like everything else. Except of course, for the extra sheets. Profit and Wisdom had been the keys, it was a simple Double Playfair. Taylor hadn't even bothered to get creative with the remaining letters. The content, however... The content was the day to day running of the local gangs, and what they were doing at the school. Dangerous to have, but something to pass on to the cop. Detective De Izca, wasn't it?
Mr. Six smiled at everyone, absentmindedly stroking a curving scar on his right cheek. "So, I got in trouble with Mrs. Blackwell yesterday. Not for circumventing Mr. Gladly's plan. Not for bribing you all with chips. I got in trouble for going on with the lesson and not properly introducing myself. So let's get this out of the way. My name is Joseph Six. I am a survivor of both Seattle and New York, which means that if Ziz lands on my head, I'll have pulled a Trifecta. I spend a lot of time traveling, as I'm willing to take the job schools no one else wants to. My first teaching gig was in inner-city Miami in the mid nineties. This is not the first time I've been in Brockton Bay, actually. I was here six years ago. Not this school, however. About this time of year too. Can anyone tell me what happen in April of 09?"
There were more than a few hands... Charlotte's Included, but he focused on Greg. "Yes, Greg?"
"Are you saying you were here with the Slaughterhouse Nine?"
Joseph's laugh was deep and rich. "You make it sound like I'm a member, Greg. But I was here at the same time. Different school, though. This, all this, is why I don't like to give introductions. People seem to think that I'm bad luck. Uh, let's see. What else is there... My favorite color is purple, not Royal purple but a more ruddy purple. Like a Maroon or a Carmine. My favorite word is defenstrate, it's just so fun to say... And I was a soldier before I was a teacher. Any questions?"
Yes, there were questions. Many questions. But most of Charlotte's were answered.
---
To say that Jason had questions about this plan was something of an understatement. "Let me get this straight. You want me to dress up as a security guard and stand outside a closed bank with a box so you can... do what exactly?"
Foreman looked up from the demolitions saw he was... modifying. Bastardizing. Both really. It was powered by some of Squealer's scraps, and he'd tweaked it further. He also added a guard to make it harder to light himself on fire. He'd learned that lesson. "Case the place. I want to wander around after hours and get a good feeling for the space as it actually is, as opposed to the way people use it. As opposed to what it says on a piece of paper."
Foreman's other project was setting up a sensor suite that Per couldn't disable. Per, for his part, was on his third seismic sensor, under the watchful eye of a motion/heat sensor. "What he really means is he wants to smoke the bank manager's illegally imported Cuban Cigars."
Foreman laughed and ran his fingers through that shaggy brown mane he called his hair. "Guilty as charged. But it'll still make the actual robbery that much easier. Besides, the statistics show that people will hand you their money without a thought, and we can keep things running smoothly with a couple thousand you'll get that way."
Jason smiled. "And if they're looking for a threat from inside, they won't be looking for a threat outside. I watch your back, we both get something. I get it."
---
Joey turned on that black monolith of silicon perfection, ran a quick diagnostic, and waited. He was on his lunch break too, but more importantly, the friends had finished installing the bugs and it was time to test it all. The Unmarked white van in the parking-lot was one things, but the woman in the crisp suit with Sophia was quite another. Taken together, they meant one thing. Government.
Wrong type of crisp suit to be FBI. Not far enough north to be the CIA, and they'd be blaming it on the FBI anyway. The NSA prefers Volvos and most of them look like accountants. Federal Marshals wore business causal, so she wasn't in the Witness Protection Program. That just left the PRT. Which meant that Sophia was a ward.
Well, at least he'd been right about why stuff was being kept under-wraps. He paused, she should be the daughter of some cape. Either way, using that knowledge without getting his ass killed was going to be a pain and a half. He plugged in his headphones and relaxed. Keep your mind open and you'll never know what you'll learn.
He played with the key he made last-night. Seems that it's going to be seeing use a bit sooner than he thought.
He'd hoped to get his full two weeks, but this identity might be burned after this. Hell, there might not be a school after this. Why couldn't the Principal just be smuggling drugs? That one was easy. Or the Military School full of Neo-Nazis. That one was fun. Nope, another Parahuman Response Team screw-up. If he didn't know better, he'd swear that someone in the Protectorate or the PRT just no regard for human life and was using the US as their own personal Petri dish. But, well, Cock-up before conspiracy.
Even now, when he was listening to the principal get an earful about
not doing enough to protect Sophia from herself. Lady, she bent over backwards to prevent a sociopath from being expelled, she was going to lose either way. No wonder she was sleeping with a younger man.
---
Sophia's reappearance halfway through the day did nothing to quash the rumors. Charlotte didn't care, her mind was elsewhere. She'd decided last night that letting Mr. Six handle all this was probably a bad idea. He was just a teacher, what could he do against the sort of corruption and blindness that created all this?
Maybe she was naive, but you should taking things to the proper authorities. So she faked being sick, and dropped off a copy of the 'translated' text into Mrs. Blackwell's cubby, and then went about her day. She probably shouldn't have been surprised when she found that Joey had managed to get the next block into her locker. A quick glance showed no X's. Probably a foursquare then. Harder, but doable. Especially if she fed it into the computer.
Thinking of hard but doable, she had to make a few calls. Home first, then a cab. She was taking it to the police. She already had an In, right? Detective De Izaca?
That's what you do, right? You take evidence of a crime to the Police?
---
Thinking is hard. But she had to know. Taylor made her way from her perch to where Jason was trying on a selection of wigs, letting his body change to match the sort of person he thought would have that hair. Her mouth felt like she was licking astroturf: hot, dry, and in danger of cutting herself. "How do you deal with it?"
Jason didn't bother to look away from his reflection. "Handle which now? You've got so many issues, I don't know where to start. So do I. How do I handle knowing that this is not who I was meant to be? Handle knowing that my parents were more focused on some ideal than on me actually being happy? Handle the fact that some part of me is thinking things I don't agree with? Deal with the fact that everyone lies to themselves and hates me for being honest? Same way you do. I run away. I turn to drugs, I find some place where I don't have to think and I just zone out."
Taylor frowned, running a hand through her tangled hair. It wasn't as comforting as she'd hoped. "It's not the same... I need them. And... dad was just busy. I didn't want to bother him..."
Jason's skin flashed red, and he tried on a new body. "Bullshit. Do you need medicine? Maybe, maybe it does help. Maybe it is just like glasses. But all of this can be controlled and lessened by learning to cope. Something you've never, ever done. You always do one of two things. Either you run, or you fight so hard that no one has any choice but to bow to your will. And you know what? You really don't have it that bad. Yes, you were bullied. But at least your father, the waste of flesh that he was, didn't want you dead on general principal. At least you have good memories. And at least you were only on the streets a couple days."
Taylor fought back tears, and found herself screaming. "Why are you saying all this, Kriemhild? How do you know this? Why do you hate me?"
Jason hissed as his body changed, shrunk. He whipped off the wig and let the brown hair flow. As he spoke, his voice(and body) slowly slid to match Taylor. "Because. These are the things you're
refusing to let yourself think. It's easy to blame it on everyone else, and damn if they don't deserve it. But you have to take responsibility for your own situation too. I `hate you` because you hate yourself. And until you can deal with that, you're not going to get any better. I speak from experience. When you forced yourself into my head, you opened up to me. I saw all this shit too. And for once, I felt like I was better off.
You got away with it before because you were trying to shock me. You get away with it now because you're out of your mind. But next time you call me Kriemhild, I'm putting your bony ass through a wall."
George chose this moment to look in. "Hey guys, uh... Why are you yelling at each other in German?"
---
Getting in to see Detective De Izaca wasn't too hard. It was interesting to know that he was shared between Homicide and the Gang Task Force, but then, Brockton Bay had too many parahumans to have a high homicide rate. Everyone was worried that if actually tried to kill someone , they might trigger. Which was part of the reason why the muggers were so gentle, for the most part.
Everyone had heard the story of, or perhaps even seen, someone getting jumped and told 'Gimmie your wallet!' and the mugger being rebuked with a simple 'Nah'. Depending on who was telling it, the mugger would usually make a disappointed noise then either ask for some change or some cigarettes.
Still, it wasn't comfortable sitting in that waiting room, hearing about a missing persons case from the mother. It was a little too cold, the lights a little too bright, and the benches a little too old. They might have been nice once, but the vinyl had become sticky with age. Then again, nothing in the city was exactly new anymore. Only the PRT managed to pull in decent funding. And the PRT was the last place she was going to go with this information. For one thing, this bit would my mostly useless to them. But if the others, like the chapter she was working on decrypting the old fashioned way, contained information on a parahuman... Well, that's something she's better off not knowing, right?
After what felt like an eternity, Detective De Izaca came to get her.
The look on his face as he read through the list of crimes perpetrated on school grounds, and the sorts of things that the students were involved in, varied between disbelief and rage. Charlotte couldn't help but fidget. "You can use this, right? Like, the fact that she was probably stalking and eavesdropping won't ruin this?"
He looked up and smiled. "You watch a lot of police dramas? Yes, there's something called Fruit of the Poisonous Tree, which means that if we break a law getting the information we can't use it in court. But there are two major exceptions. One is Inevitable discovery, which states that if we would have found it anyway, such as when doing a search on someone's premises after an unrelated crime, it's okay.
"The other is that it's
us that has to break the law for it to matter. If someone robs Kaiser's house and then comes to us with proof connecting him to some terrorist action or what not, we can still us it. We still have to prosecute them for the robbery, of course, but the sentence is likely to be a lot lighter because of the fact that they aided the police. In this case, Taylor would have another mitigating factor. She was not attempting to commit a crime, she's lacking in mens rea. The Guilty mind. The `crime` was likely committed in self defense. Given that she was repeatedly bullied and went to the staff, who did nothing, it'd be easy to argue that this gathering of information was to try and keep herself safe. And as she went to great lengths to make sure it didn't fall into anyone's hands, we can show she was being responsible with it."
Charlotte nodded. "And if she unmasked a cape or two?"
Detective De Icaza sucked air in between his teeth. "That's... harder to say. Technically, the above still applies. But parahumans are a law unto themselves. They certainly won't like it. But so long as there's no Endbringer in town, the PRT probably won't do too much to her. That, and it looks like she's been responsible with the information. She's kept it encrypted and gave it to someone she could trust."
Charlotte had to admit this all sounded reasonable. So why did she have a creeping feeling of doom?
----
The thing about your typical School Lock is that there are so many ways to get into it. One, as the school values the lock more than the student's property, anyone with any decent amount of strength can pop on right off. You don't even have to be a brute. A good quick yank will usually disengage the mechanism. This is loud. A shim can be constructed from a soda can, each shim good for two or three locks and each can good for two or three shims. This is time consuming and obvious, it tends to take around a minute to get the lock open this way, even if you're good at it, and there aren't a whole lot of things your cut soda can could be.
However, school locks generally have a hole for a master key on the back. If you know a bit about lock-smithing, or can follow simple directions, you can simply steal a lock using one of the above methods and rip it apart to make a new master key for that batch. This was the method that Mr. Six had chosen. He'd taken the lock from someplace it wasn't needed, gave a good reason for it to be gone, and now he was using the key for something... interesting.
Almost everyone had left, and he had a good idea what was going on thanks to the bugs and his phone. He'd done this many times before. Some tags here, some stolen goods there. With any luck, he was going to have a gang war on his hands by noon tomorrow. Still, he had a few problems. Not everyone's lock was one of these, and most of the Persons Of Interest on the Parahuman wall had brought their own locks. Including Sophia Hess. He'd deal with them another day.
----
Sophia was having a rotten, terrible, no good day. First that `session` with Armsmaster, then getting chewed out at school. The rumors that the Bug Taylor had murdered her... That was definitely something she didn't even want to think about. Taylor had just been a bit of sport, and not even her idea. Why did she get all the blame?
Of course, as she crossed an alley-way she realized she was ignoring the real problem. Pig-O managed to take one of the things she loved most and turn it into a punishment. She was to patrol, alone, by the docks. This was wonderful. She was doing it as bait. That... wasn't. She was supposed to be the scared little rabbit here. That was. It.
It pissed her the fuck off! She was a predator! You don't send a hunter-of-men into a trap to figure out who set it up!
After an hour, she finally noticed that she'd picked up a tail He was good. Quiet, fast, dressed in a dark melange of colors designed to screw with his outline. A Professional. A merc. Not what she was expecting. "Console. I've found them. Merc."
Sure, he was professional soldier. But she was a track-star with superpowers. She took off in a dead run. She wasn't truly alone, of course. A couple blocks away would be Armsmaster, and in another direction an unmarked PRT van. He was ensnared. So she drove him into the trap. Just fast enough to be a challenge, not so fast she'd lose him.
He was good. He'd been roof-running before. She was better. At some point the spirit of competition got the better of her, though, and she took a jump too far for him. She turned to look for him, but he was gone. "Lost him."
Then she heard someone land behind her. She turned slightly. Fuck. How the hell did he do that? "Found him."
She ran again. Every time she pulled something, he'd disappear and show up again moments later. And then he started to teleport. He'd just appear in front of her, mocking. He never said anything, but he wasn't even breaking a sweat. Every time she tried to lure him toward her back-up, he'd disappear only to cut her off. Soon, he was driving her away from them, and deeper into the docks. She tried going through walls, she tried shooting at him. She tried everything.
And then she heard the baying of wolves. "CONSOLE! Back-up! Now!" This was not the time for pride. She hated to do this, but the fucker knew her. Knew what she was going to do. He was separating her from everyone and he was going to take her. Right now, he was just toying with her. She just kept running. Not for the joy. Not to prove she was better. Just to survive. This was new to her.
And then she realized where he was guiding her. The electric fence loomed ahead and she froze. He knew. He knew everything.
For once, she was happy to hear the telltale roar of the Arms-cycle. The merc tilted his head and just... walked away. As though she'd never really been the target. As though he was just following because she was bored.
---
"Accel-1 to Superconductor. I think we found something she's afraid of."
----
This? This was the life. The bank was empty, and easy enough to get into. Onto a balcony then through the door, disabling the security system was a breeze. George just wandered about for a bit. He wasn't going to take anything, he just... wanted to feel it. A private showing of a modern work of art. Banks were one part fortress, one part temple, and they lived and died on confidence. If you could awe people, they'd bring their money. The Brockton Bay Central Bank was no exception. The six stories of stone gave the impression of a castle, of some form of primitive wondrous government.
The security was a joke. Yes, the stairs would stop someone from driving a van through the front door. Yes, the cameras would catch most people who tried to pull something sneaky. Yes, the silent alarms could easily be tripped if someone came in with guns. But that was about the people. The building itself had thick vents to reduce the problem of Sick Building Syndrome. Could a person get through them? Maybe if they were small, but it's be loud. But there were so many tinkers with drones.
If you wanted to gas the building, you could use the vents. Each of the exits could be locked down from the outside, and the balcony and roof access was barely protected. Pretty stupid in a world where people can fly. Hell, he was pretty sure the only thing preventing Squealer from just making off with one of the smaller banks whole cloth was that it was too much effort... That said, the idea of ripping up a building and stealing it did appeal to him.
He relaxed in the bank managers chair and scoffed. Not even a panic room. The only places to head in a siege would be the vault and the lock boxes. That'd be enough for sixty, maybe eighty people. The bank failed as a fortress, and only managed to be a grim cathedral to greed. So if he was going to deal a blow to the place, he was going to go make it look like he was attacking them where they were strong.
Which is why Jason was standing outside with a bag. If they put their security on dealing with
people out front, if they paid attention to
who they'd miss his trick in the storage room entirely. He took a spare security uniform from the lockers, put it on, and left through the front door. He and Jason took the money, and walked off, like they were just getting off shift. Then again, perhaps they were.
A/N:
And for those of you that don't get what Charlotte's talking about with Double Playfair and Foursquare and the like, here's the Wikipedia thing on the
Playfair and
Foursquare ciphers. The Double Playfair is also known as the
Two-Square. They're all nice "easy to use" manual encryption techniques. The thing is, there are all sorts of ways to screw with people even if they know what you're doing. For instance with all of them you can align the keyword vertically instead of horizontally, and you could place the remaining letters in the reverse order. You could use the Dropping of the Q, or you could merge V and U. Hell, you could drop X and use Q for the junk character. In two-square, is it a horizontal or Vertical placement? Is one key horizontal while the other is vertical? In Foursquare, you could even drop the W as the placement of the plaintext squares mean that you don't have to use an X to double up doubled letters and just use a U twice. Or Two Vs.
Or instead of forming the Diagraphs with the two letters next to each other, you could take two lines of text and form the diagraph out of the letters Above and Below each other. The fact that Taylor didn't do any of this things proves to Charlotte that despite the warning, Taylor
wants these to be solved. It's going to take a phone call to Danny to figure out
why.
