Chapter 6: The Keys
Going through all the crap Sophia, Emma, and Madison put me through again with my Dad was, uh, not fun. He even managed to coax me into giving up my journals so he could properly transcribe them. It was mortifying. Then, around noon on Tuesday, he finally got to the real bombshell.
"Taylor, are you a cape?" I start to answer before I'm cut off. "I'm asking because this could affect our future. I know a few things about capes honey, your Mom ran with Lustrum's gang. The most relevant fact here is that most capes have a compulsion to use their powers. I need to know so we can protect ourselves, before you have any run-ins with any gangs or the government. Are you a cape?"
"...Yes." He's right. I can't afford to try anything clever with our safety. Not with my civilian identity already in question, and the Empire looking to recruit. He looks a tiny bit taken aback by my confession.
"So are you a thinker? That stunt with the fliers seems like the kind of... tactic they would try."
"Yes and no? It started out with me seeing someone else's power when I woke up at the hospital. He's some sort of time traveler and I can remember what he does in his other timelines. He's the villain Coil."
He's silent for about a minute. "You said started with?"
"Yeah. I started being able to turn into... some sort of slime thing sometime yesterday. Then before that on Friday those mouths that Emma were talking about appeared on me in front of her."
"You're sure you didn't wake up in the hospital with these powers?"
"Absolutely." I would have noticed the durability boost when I got shoved around in school.
"Probably some sort of Trump. Maybe randomly cycling through powers. Do not tell anybody about this. Not even the heroes unless you're sure you want to join up with them." I scowl at that, remembering Shadow Stalker. "And for the love of God don't show those mouths off for anything less than life and death. I'm holding out hope my power cycling theory is right. Though if it is you might not be able to have a secret identity regardless, what with new powers popping out at random."
"We'll deal with that if it happens Dad." We'll have to. "But don't we have an appointment today?" He glances at the clock.
"Oh shit, we're running late." He grabs his keys and a flash drive filled with copies of everything we gathered. "Come on Taylor. You lock up and I'll start the car." He runs out the door and I follow. Reaching into my pocket-!
Why do I have two house keys? Looking at them they're completely identical except for the keyring. On the one I'm assuming is fake the keyring is completely solid. No way to remove it or add new keys.
*HONK*
"Come on Taylor, we got a schedule to keep!" I toss the strange key onto the sofa, lock up, and go to the truck. I can figure it out later.
The meeting with the lawyer is sleep inducing. Just so very boring. Dad was talking legalese for most of it, and I just could not keep up. I was able to understand. The lawyer was looking through my emails at one point and asked if they were all like this. I said some of them were probably school announcements of some sort, but other than that, yeah.
The deal Dad was able to get was almost simple enough for me not to yawn through the explanation. We were going to try to strongarm Blackwell into transferring me to Arcadia. This will cost 5,000 dollars. If she isn't playing ball, or delays enough where our lawyer has to put in more than twenty hours in this, the money fee will be waved, he'll switch over to contingency work, and we're suing the school. He thinks we have a real good chance here.
After Dad signed the contract our lawyer officially put Blackwell on notice with an email and a phone call. Means she can't delete anything without risking a default judgement from the judge. She can still physically try, but this makes it significantly riskier to do so.
Coil was also making some more fake timelines during all this. There was one on Tuesday that lasted a few hours in the morning. I used the chance to check out the address Stormtiger never destroyed. A black woman who I assume to be Sophia's mother answered the door. Let's just say I can see who she inherited her inner and outer bitch from. I had made a blank card with just the word "BITCH" scrawled on it. I gave it to her saying it was for Sophia. She opened it up in front of me and laughed about it.
The next day, Wednesday, me, Dad, and our lawyer went into the school for the initial negotiations. One of Coil's fake timelines opened up during all that. Luckily it was one of his hours long ones. I excused myself to the bathroom to go leak Sophia's identity. I went to one of the camera blindspots to a skinhead's locker I know the combination to. He happens to keep his cell phone in his locker during class so the teachers can't confiscate it. I take ruthless advantage and get her identity out to some of the websites outside of PRT influence. Then I return to the negotiations with none the wiser. About an hour and a half into this snooze fest after that the PRT comes knocking to arrest the skinhead. Heh. No psycho Shadow Stalker coming to kill me by the end of the timeline either.
"Why did you set up these cameras?" I ask our lawyer.
"So nobody can lie about what happened or what was said here. Are we ready to start negotiations?" Directed to the opposition's legal counsel. Some no name little weasely looking guy. Not that ours is much better honestly.
"Ready as we'll ever be." There are three people on their side of the desk. Principal Blackwell, her lawyer, and the suit bitch who tried to murder me when I thought I was going to get a trial. She just keeps coming up now, doesn't she? I'm going to have to leak Shadow Stalker's identity before legal processes start. The PRT has all sorts of authority to protect hero identities. Not to mention what she herself will do when she feels threatened. None of this will be an issue if there's no secret identity to protect.
"Quite. Well if I were your lawyer I'd be quaking in my shiny little designer shoes right about now. You had a contract that had you taking on more liability than you otherwise would be on the hook for, saying you would take bona fide measures to stop the bullying campaign against miss Hebert here. There was even a representation in the contract that you both signed that asserted there was a bullying problem that culminated in her hospitalization. Now, what do you have to say for yourself?"
"I'd say it's ridiculous to hold the school to impossible standards." From their lawyer. "No school official can police a student's life outside of school."
"Yes, I do concede that point. Though there are quite a few emails on the school's servers that would be within your power to police. It makes me wonder if you did..." He bites his lip, looks around the room, and fidgets with his pen. "Well, anything about it at all really? Did you hand out any detentions? Did you expel the worst of the offenders? Please stop me if I'm getting anything close to the truth." The other lawyer starts scrabbling on a notepad frantically, then passes it to Blackwell. She writes something down in response.
Our lawyer decides to continue on. "So right now this school is facing down the barrel of a ten million dollar lawsuit. Specifically for one..." He looks down at his notes. "Emma Barnes' actions in attempting to unmask Miss Hebert here as a cape." Blackwell's jaw drops at this revelation. She stares at me in shock. "It happened on school grounds, and I'm betting she probably used school controlled communications to coordinate it. Teenagers are kind of stupid like that.
"Luckily for you my client has been gracious enough to give you a way out here. He's willing to drop all of this in exchange for a guaranteed transfer to Arcadia for his daughter." He folds his hands and gets into a praying position to give them some puppy dog eyes. "And I am begging you not to take this deal." The other lawyer starts writing something down again. "I have never seen a more open and shut case in my life. This lawsuit will make my fucking career." Blackwell and the other lady look at what the lawyer wrote. The other lady nudges Blackwell and shakes her head no.
"I'm sorry ladies, I couldn't help but to see something incredibly suspicious going on right in front of my eyes." From our lawyer. "Miss Blackwell, is this woman threatening you? We can have her removed from the negotiations."
"No she is not." She says stiffly.
"Interesting. Well then let me continue explaining how incredibly screwed you are." The next two hours are spent fruitlessly trying to cajole any kind of concessions from Blackwell. None arise. In fact I feel kind of sorry for her lawyer. I can almost see the bald spot trying to form on him because of this. Not sorry enough to do anything about it though.
After all that it was agreed we would give Blackwell until the end of Friday to respond to this. If she doesn't, we'll be suing the school. Dad drops me off in the driveway while he parks the truck. I reach into my pocket to grab my keys.
Holy shit, the extra is back. I must have forgotten about it. Probably sunk into the cushions. And now it has a garage door opener on it. A copy of the one Dad has. I put it back into my pocket and unlock the door normally.
I finally decide to investigate it in the next fake timeline. I go out to the backyard, lock the door, and unlock it with the duplicate. The teeth match, this should work. What it actually opened was not anywhere in my list of expectations. It was a Star Wars looking control room with an observation window. What was outside of the window was a series of rings that must have been miles wide, stacked on top of each other. It looks like we're floating in space. What the fuck!? Only there are no stars in the sky or sun giving off light here. There's some sort of crystalline octahedron giving off a menacing red light in the direction of 'up' that contrasts horribly with the florescents in here. And then I see it on the computer screen.
I quietly power walk out, gently close the door, and put the weird key in my pocket.
"Nope."
Powers gained this chapter.
Garage (Fast and Furious) (100CP)
You have a nice garage and parts supply. With a few days and some elbow grease, you could basically rebuild your car or cars from the bottom up; you probably have enough parts to keep someone else's ride running or give it an upgrade, too.
AN: I had fun writing the lawyer scene. Please be gentle with me if you're an actual lawyer. I'm not going to be editing this in an attempt to preserve the word count. Just point something out and I'll keep it in mind going forward. Like the dirt thing from earlier.
"Taylor, are you a cape?" I start to answer before I'm cut off. "I'm asking because this could affect our future. I know a few things about capes honey, your Mom ran with Lustrum's gang. The most relevant fact here is that most capes have a compulsion to use their powers. I need to know so we can protect ourselves, before you have any run-ins with any gangs or the government. Are you a cape?"
"...Yes." He's right. I can't afford to try anything clever with our safety. Not with my civilian identity already in question, and the Empire looking to recruit. He looks a tiny bit taken aback by my confession.
"So are you a thinker? That stunt with the fliers seems like the kind of... tactic they would try."
"Yes and no? It started out with me seeing someone else's power when I woke up at the hospital. He's some sort of time traveler and I can remember what he does in his other timelines. He's the villain Coil."
He's silent for about a minute. "You said started with?"
"Yeah. I started being able to turn into... some sort of slime thing sometime yesterday. Then before that on Friday those mouths that Emma were talking about appeared on me in front of her."
"You're sure you didn't wake up in the hospital with these powers?"
"Absolutely." I would have noticed the durability boost when I got shoved around in school.
"Probably some sort of Trump. Maybe randomly cycling through powers. Do not tell anybody about this. Not even the heroes unless you're sure you want to join up with them." I scowl at that, remembering Shadow Stalker. "And for the love of God don't show those mouths off for anything less than life and death. I'm holding out hope my power cycling theory is right. Though if it is you might not be able to have a secret identity regardless, what with new powers popping out at random."
"We'll deal with that if it happens Dad." We'll have to. "But don't we have an appointment today?" He glances at the clock.
"Oh shit, we're running late." He grabs his keys and a flash drive filled with copies of everything we gathered. "Come on Taylor. You lock up and I'll start the car." He runs out the door and I follow. Reaching into my pocket-!
Why do I have two house keys? Looking at them they're completely identical except for the keyring. On the one I'm assuming is fake the keyring is completely solid. No way to remove it or add new keys.
*HONK*
"Come on Taylor, we got a schedule to keep!" I toss the strange key onto the sofa, lock up, and go to the truck. I can figure it out later.
The meeting with the lawyer is sleep inducing. Just so very boring. Dad was talking legalese for most of it, and I just could not keep up. I was able to understand. The lawyer was looking through my emails at one point and asked if they were all like this. I said some of them were probably school announcements of some sort, but other than that, yeah.
The deal Dad was able to get was almost simple enough for me not to yawn through the explanation. We were going to try to strongarm Blackwell into transferring me to Arcadia. This will cost 5,000 dollars. If she isn't playing ball, or delays enough where our lawyer has to put in more than twenty hours in this, the money fee will be waved, he'll switch over to contingency work, and we're suing the school. He thinks we have a real good chance here.
After Dad signed the contract our lawyer officially put Blackwell on notice with an email and a phone call. Means she can't delete anything without risking a default judgement from the judge. She can still physically try, but this makes it significantly riskier to do so.
Coil was also making some more fake timelines during all this. There was one on Tuesday that lasted a few hours in the morning. I used the chance to check out the address Stormtiger never destroyed. A black woman who I assume to be Sophia's mother answered the door. Let's just say I can see who she inherited her inner and outer bitch from. I had made a blank card with just the word "BITCH" scrawled on it. I gave it to her saying it was for Sophia. She opened it up in front of me and laughed about it.
The next day, Wednesday, me, Dad, and our lawyer went into the school for the initial negotiations. One of Coil's fake timelines opened up during all that. Luckily it was one of his hours long ones. I excused myself to the bathroom to go leak Sophia's identity. I went to one of the camera blindspots to a skinhead's locker I know the combination to. He happens to keep his cell phone in his locker during class so the teachers can't confiscate it. I take ruthless advantage and get her identity out to some of the websites outside of PRT influence. Then I return to the negotiations with none the wiser. About an hour and a half into this snooze fest after that the PRT comes knocking to arrest the skinhead. Heh. No psycho Shadow Stalker coming to kill me by the end of the timeline either.
Earlier
"Why did you set up these cameras?" I ask our lawyer.
"So nobody can lie about what happened or what was said here. Are we ready to start negotiations?" Directed to the opposition's legal counsel. Some no name little weasely looking guy. Not that ours is much better honestly.
"Ready as we'll ever be." There are three people on their side of the desk. Principal Blackwell, her lawyer, and the suit bitch who tried to murder me when I thought I was going to get a trial. She just keeps coming up now, doesn't she? I'm going to have to leak Shadow Stalker's identity before legal processes start. The PRT has all sorts of authority to protect hero identities. Not to mention what she herself will do when she feels threatened. None of this will be an issue if there's no secret identity to protect.
"Quite. Well if I were your lawyer I'd be quaking in my shiny little designer shoes right about now. You had a contract that had you taking on more liability than you otherwise would be on the hook for, saying you would take bona fide measures to stop the bullying campaign against miss Hebert here. There was even a representation in the contract that you both signed that asserted there was a bullying problem that culminated in her hospitalization. Now, what do you have to say for yourself?"
"I'd say it's ridiculous to hold the school to impossible standards." From their lawyer. "No school official can police a student's life outside of school."
"Yes, I do concede that point. Though there are quite a few emails on the school's servers that would be within your power to police. It makes me wonder if you did..." He bites his lip, looks around the room, and fidgets with his pen. "Well, anything about it at all really? Did you hand out any detentions? Did you expel the worst of the offenders? Please stop me if I'm getting anything close to the truth." The other lawyer starts scrabbling on a notepad frantically, then passes it to Blackwell. She writes something down in response.
Our lawyer decides to continue on. "So right now this school is facing down the barrel of a ten million dollar lawsuit. Specifically for one..." He looks down at his notes. "Emma Barnes' actions in attempting to unmask Miss Hebert here as a cape." Blackwell's jaw drops at this revelation. She stares at me in shock. "It happened on school grounds, and I'm betting she probably used school controlled communications to coordinate it. Teenagers are kind of stupid like that.
"Luckily for you my client has been gracious enough to give you a way out here. He's willing to drop all of this in exchange for a guaranteed transfer to Arcadia for his daughter." He folds his hands and gets into a praying position to give them some puppy dog eyes. "And I am begging you not to take this deal." The other lawyer starts writing something down again. "I have never seen a more open and shut case in my life. This lawsuit will make my fucking career." Blackwell and the other lady look at what the lawyer wrote. The other lady nudges Blackwell and shakes her head no.
"I'm sorry ladies, I couldn't help but to see something incredibly suspicious going on right in front of my eyes." From our lawyer. "Miss Blackwell, is this woman threatening you? We can have her removed from the negotiations."
"No she is not." She says stiffly.
"Interesting. Well then let me continue explaining how incredibly screwed you are." The next two hours are spent fruitlessly trying to cajole any kind of concessions from Blackwell. None arise. In fact I feel kind of sorry for her lawyer. I can almost see the bald spot trying to form on him because of this. Not sorry enough to do anything about it though.
After all that it was agreed we would give Blackwell until the end of Friday to respond to this. If she doesn't, we'll be suing the school. Dad drops me off in the driveway while he parks the truck. I reach into my pocket to grab my keys.
Holy shit, the extra is back. I must have forgotten about it. Probably sunk into the cushions. And now it has a garage door opener on it. A copy of the one Dad has. I put it back into my pocket and unlock the door normally.
I finally decide to investigate it in the next fake timeline. I go out to the backyard, lock the door, and unlock it with the duplicate. The teeth match, this should work. What it actually opened was not anywhere in my list of expectations. It was a Star Wars looking control room with an observation window. What was outside of the window was a series of rings that must have been miles wide, stacked on top of each other. It looks like we're floating in space. What the fuck!? Only there are no stars in the sky or sun giving off light here. There's some sort of crystalline octahedron giving off a menacing red light in the direction of 'up' that contrasts horribly with the florescents in here. And then I see it on the computer screen.
Anti-Matter units stored: 242
I quietly power walk out, gently close the door, and put the weird key in my pocket.
"Nope."
Powers gained this chapter.
Garage (Fast and Furious) (100CP)
You have a nice garage and parts supply. With a few days and some elbow grease, you could basically rebuild your car or cars from the bottom up; you probably have enough parts to keep someone else's ride running or give it an upgrade, too.
AN: I had fun writing the lawyer scene. Please be gentle with me if you're an actual lawyer. I'm not going to be editing this in an attempt to preserve the word count. Just point something out and I'll keep it in mind going forward. Like the dirt thing from earlier.
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