TheatrclBarristr
Not a barrister
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Didn't Madison tell her handler that she thought she knew Sophia was SS when the drugs were found in Taylor's locker?
What's the Frequency, Madison? [Worm, Time Travel]
- Thread starter Swordchucks
- Start date
- Location
- Maryland
What the hell is Armsmaster thinking? Head out with only PRT backup vs a violent and possibly unstable vigilante with an unclear power set and drag two brand new wards out in the middle of the night as backup, without paying any attention to the fact that they have prior history with the cape in question? Taylor isn't the only one who is going to get yelled at.
- Location
- Earth
Yes they had. But in Armsmaster's defense, Taylor and Madison probably insisted on going once they know the situation. It's either bringing them along or have them sneak out without any supervision at all.
- Location
- Maryland
Except that she's not limited to using her power on crossbow bolts. I don't think I would want a random board phased into my chest. Just because she mostly is portrayed as a bit of a moron tactically speaking doesn't mean she can't improvise when cornered...
She seems to have a maximum ghost-time and also a cooldown between instances(well at least most Breakers do, and she doesn't seem special here), doing that means forfeiting her defense down to Fit Teenage Girl with no formal close combat training.
21 Closure
I licked my lips nervously. The cold was drying me out unpleasantly and the adrenaline had worn off. That left me cold and exhausted, but there was still stuff to be done.
"Anima and Bulwark ready," I said softly into the radio. My sound barrier had been effective so far, but there was no sense testing that. The two of us were behind the cannery, out where the big rollup doors would once have given access to ships carrying incoming shipments that tied up along the concrete pier that thrust out into the water. It was cold and silent now, the debris on the small dock that hadn't fallen into the water or been carried off by looters forming dark, dull shapes against the ground.
I could get all of the back wall into my range, but we needed to be fairly close to it for that to work. I'd tweaked the frequencies around the matter of the wall - and ground and air and everything else I could touch - to stop the weird effect I had seen from Sophia's power. If she tried to phase through it, she would probably be in for a nasty surprise. Once I got the signal, I would be doing the same thing for everything inside my range, which would include most of the warehouse, as well.
Most likely, what I was doing would just stop her power from working at all, but I expected that would be a big enough shock on its own. If it hurt her beyond that? I was having a hard time caring.
When the other PRT teams had moved up, Armsmaster had given the both of us a quiet dressing down, though it hadn't been especially harsh. Mostly, he had emphasized that we would be discussing the matter further once it was all over and how that went would hinge on our adherence to orders for the rest of the mission. He'd seemed annoyed, though it didn't really seem to be entirely directed at us.
This time, our orders were clear and explicit. We were present in order to keep Sophia from out the back of the cannery by making that wall impossible for her to phase through. There were snipers covering the other parts of the building, so the rear was the only really open path and getting a boat into place to cover it wouldn't be anywhere near as effective as just having me do it.
"What if she ends up coming out that way, anyway?" Taylor asked nervously. I think that after the last incident, she was being justifiably wary about the possibility of conflict.
He paused for a brief moment, his visor somehow giving the impression of a calculating stare, before replying. "It is possible that she will somehow end up running in your direction. In that case, I would urge you to avoid her. Shadow Stalker is a seasoned criminal that has been active for well over a year. Some of her targets have been experienced fighters so we have to assume that she knows how to handle herself. I want you to understand that the most important thing for the two of you is to not get hurt. If she gets away tonight, that isn't great but we will get her eventually. She doesn't have the kind of support network that she would need to evade capture for long, so if it's a choice between her escape and either of you getting injured, let her go. You are much, much more important than she is."
Anima frowned and I had a feeling my own expression wasn't positive, either. Sophia had directly struck against the both of us in our civilian identities and I didn't like the idea of letting her go. At all.
"Yes, sir," I agreed. Despite my personal feelings, what Armsmaster was saying made a lot of sense. I still didn't like it, but the bright side was that any hope Sophia had of getting a sweetheart deal that let her keep doing her own thing as a probationary Ward was pretty much gone. She might, somehow, claw her way into a team somewhere, but assaulting members of the local PRT attempting to apprehend her wouldn't make her any friends.
Eventually, I was pulled from my thoughts by a chirp over the radio followed a few seconds later by spotlights flaring to life in front of the building followed by a voice on a bullhorn. "Shadow Stalker, this is the PRT. We have you surrounded. Come out with your hands up. If you give yourself up without further violence, this will go better for you."
A long minute passed, then another. I triple-checked my modifications to the back wall, just in case.
What happened next surprised me but it really shouldn't have.
Shadow Stalker eased open one of the smaller rollup doors and slid out underneath it as quietly as she could. I boggled at the notion - I had been a little obsessed with the idea that she would barrel through the wall in spite of my meddling, and the idea that she would just wedge open one of the ancient metal doors and crawl through seemed alien to me.
Regardless, it was easy enough to lock down the air and ground around her, forcing it to be effectively solid to force and resistant to her power. She bumped into the shell a few seconds later and then tried to spring to her feet, only to find that she was now trapped like a bug in a jar. Even if we were cloaked in my invisibility bubble again, I then made the whole thing opaque from the inside so that she wouldn't be able to see at all - a not unreasonable amount of paranoia on my part - which just made her panic more. I couldn't bring myself to sympathize too much.
"Bulwark reporting Shadow Stalker captured at the rear of the building," I reported over the radio. It was anticlimactic and if she had been a brute or a kind of mover that I couldn't lock down, it would never have worked.
The rest of the night was an exhausting blur. I disintegrated a little of the concrete outside of my Sophia-bubble and made the rest float into the back of a PRT van. I had to ride in the back with her to the Protectorate HQ where the higher grade cells were and then stay on hand while a negotiator got her to agree to surrender in order to be released from the 'tinkertech field' which was confining her.
By the time I finally got home, I was ready to fall over, which I promptly did. I then slept straight through my alarm the next morning and woke up to a bunch of texts from Amy around noon.
They were kind of sweet, going from mild worry to full-on panic to a ramp-down as she apparently got told by someone that I was out 'sick'. I texted her back letting her know that I was 'feeling better' and that we would talk about it soon. I also had messages from Taylor who had been on her own additional adventure to heal some people while I was sitting on Sophia.
I also had a text from Agent Lawson requesting that I let her know when I'd be able to come to HQ because I was about to get a crash course in writing an after action report. Joy.
oOoOoOoOo
I rubbed my temples as I stared at the computer in the Wards area and revised my last line yet again. Agent Lawson had been a big help, but she'd kicked my proposed report back to me three times with suggestions and corrections. She claimed that it wasn't that I was doing a bad job, but that the format was fairly specific. You had to describe things in certain ways and use certain phrases for things, and it was a lot to keep straight.
Taylor wasn't there because when we had eventually admitted that she had gotten shot by Shadow Stalker, she'd been hauled off to the infirmary for a checkup.
"Geeze, they chained you to a desk already?" I glanced up from where I was sitting to find that Dennis was grinning at me. It had been almost a month since we'd discovered that my powers could negate his, and he'd mostly calmed down about it. He was at least trying to get over it, anyway.
"No good deed goes unpunished," I grumbled. "Is it always like this?"
He nodded. "Pretty much. Things are either boring, or they're really exciting followed by a huge pile of boring paperwork." He glanced at the screen. "Just remember, it's PRT policy to never imply ownership of a dildo. You have to use the indifferent article, so it's always 'a dildo' and not 'your dildo'."
I blinked. That sounded familiar. "Uh, I don't think it's called an indifferent article. What movie is that from?"
"One that you're too young to watch," he teased. "Did you talk to Amy yet?"
That threw me for a loop and I forgot about movie references. "Sort of? Why?"
He shrugged. "We have a class together and she was freaking out because you weren't at school. I had to clue in Dean so that he could give Vicky a heads up and she could stop her from ditching school to go find you. You really shouldn't leave your girl in the lurch."
I groaned. "I was half asleep when I got in and then it was after dawn by the time I got home. I kind of forgot to message her." I blew out a long breath. I was definitely not used to being in a relationship and that had definitely been a miss on my part. Then I gave Dennis an even look. "Thank you for doing that. She was probably really worried."
Genuine thanks appeared to be one of Dennis's weaknesses and he fidgeted as he looked away. "Uh, yeah, it's fine. No problem."
oOoOoOoOo
Amy looked confused. "They're very pretty," she said after a moment. The small bouquet of flowers I had shoved into her hands dipped as she looked at them with uncertainty.
"I just wanted to make it clear how sorry I am," I mumbled and gently took her other hand. She didn't resist. "So I ordered something pretty executed for you."
That got me a snort and Amy seemed to be on more familiar ground. "It's… well, I was upset, but it's okay. I know you probably didn't have a choice."
I gave her hand a squeeze. "I was half-asleep or in a panic for a lot of the night, but I should have thought about how you'd react if I didn't make it to school this morning. I remembered to text my dad and I didn't remember to text you. I'm sorry." It would have been easy to use the excuse she offered me, but I didn't want to lie to her.
Amy rolled her eyes and looked around for a place to put the flowers down. She ended up tossing them onto the table so that she could get her other hand free and pull me in for a hug. "It's still fine," she mumbled into my ear. "I grew up around capes and I know what it's like. Just… try not to do that again. I'll try to warn you if I'm going to be out, too."
"Okay," I mumbled back into her collarbone. I was the perpetual little spoon - even standing up - not that I minded.
oOoOoOoOo
"Shadow Stalker shouldn't be a problem for us going forward," Armsmaster declared across the conference table. Two days had passed since we brought her in and I actually felt fully awake again. Getting a call to meet with the boss had filled me with nerves, but he didn't seem upset.
"Once she was convinced of the seriousness of her situation, she was very receptive to discussing a deal, but there is no way that I want her in this city after her assault on the troopers attempting to apprehend her. If circumstances were different - if she were voluntarily coming to us instead of being dragged in after several cases of attempted murder - we might find some common ground, but that is not the case."
"So she'll get to be a Ward, just somewhere else?" I asked carefully, wondering if history really was rhyming with itself, even if it didn't really repeat.
"Possibly. She'll be going to Los Angeles for a program that Alexandria runs to 'scare straight' young parahumans that may be salvageable. If she comes through with flying colors, she might get shuffled off to one of the Wards divisions in a city with a low crime rate and a high degree of oversight. Most likely, though, she will serve at least part of her time in what amounts to a 'work release' program defending a containment zone. Believe me when I say that it isn't necessarily better than being in prison, but we are unfortunately in a world where we can't afford to discard a cape that could be salvageable."
I shuddered. After it had been mentioned some weeks ago, I had looked into what the containment zone assignments were like, and some of them were Hell on Earth.
"What about us?" Taylor asked, finally voicing what we really cared about. Sophia's fate was somewhat interesting, but it didn't really affect us directly. Not anymore.
"I'm going to be assigning both of you to train with PRT squads more extensively. Both of you have powers which could be huge assets for large operations. I think the Shadow Stalker operation would have gone more smoothly if you were both more experienced with following orders and comfortable with the command structure. That's nothing we can't fix with some practice and time, though," he said and then he stopped talking.
"That's it?" I blurted out. "We're not… in trouble?"
Armsmaster sighed heavily. "Do you want to be in trouble? No, I know that you don't. There were certainly a number of mistakes made - many of them on my part - but there's a truth in life and especially in the Protectorate. There's a quote - Bernard Shaw, I think - that success covers for a multitude of blunders. At the end of the day, we caught the criminal and no one was seriously injured -not beyond fixing, at least. If someone had died, this might be a very different conversation, but the truth is that if you're going to mess something up, make sure you still get the job done. No one is keen to assign blame during a victory celebration."
I let that sink in. Basically, we weren't in trouble because everything had worked out. More or less.
"The both of you showed that you need more training, but you both also showed that you have the instinct to try to help. We can teach you to follow orders, but we can't teach you that instinct, so I think we're in a workable position. Let's just try to make sure the next operation you two are involved with is a little less exciting."
"Anima and Bulwark ready," I said softly into the radio. My sound barrier had been effective so far, but there was no sense testing that. The two of us were behind the cannery, out where the big rollup doors would once have given access to ships carrying incoming shipments that tied up along the concrete pier that thrust out into the water. It was cold and silent now, the debris on the small dock that hadn't fallen into the water or been carried off by looters forming dark, dull shapes against the ground.
I could get all of the back wall into my range, but we needed to be fairly close to it for that to work. I'd tweaked the frequencies around the matter of the wall - and ground and air and everything else I could touch - to stop the weird effect I had seen from Sophia's power. If she tried to phase through it, she would probably be in for a nasty surprise. Once I got the signal, I would be doing the same thing for everything inside my range, which would include most of the warehouse, as well.
Most likely, what I was doing would just stop her power from working at all, but I expected that would be a big enough shock on its own. If it hurt her beyond that? I was having a hard time caring.
When the other PRT teams had moved up, Armsmaster had given the both of us a quiet dressing down, though it hadn't been especially harsh. Mostly, he had emphasized that we would be discussing the matter further once it was all over and how that went would hinge on our adherence to orders for the rest of the mission. He'd seemed annoyed, though it didn't really seem to be entirely directed at us.
This time, our orders were clear and explicit. We were present in order to keep Sophia from out the back of the cannery by making that wall impossible for her to phase through. There were snipers covering the other parts of the building, so the rear was the only really open path and getting a boat into place to cover it wouldn't be anywhere near as effective as just having me do it.
"What if she ends up coming out that way, anyway?" Taylor asked nervously. I think that after the last incident, she was being justifiably wary about the possibility of conflict.
He paused for a brief moment, his visor somehow giving the impression of a calculating stare, before replying. "It is possible that she will somehow end up running in your direction. In that case, I would urge you to avoid her. Shadow Stalker is a seasoned criminal that has been active for well over a year. Some of her targets have been experienced fighters so we have to assume that she knows how to handle herself. I want you to understand that the most important thing for the two of you is to not get hurt. If she gets away tonight, that isn't great but we will get her eventually. She doesn't have the kind of support network that she would need to evade capture for long, so if it's a choice between her escape and either of you getting injured, let her go. You are much, much more important than she is."
Anima frowned and I had a feeling my own expression wasn't positive, either. Sophia had directly struck against the both of us in our civilian identities and I didn't like the idea of letting her go. At all.
"Yes, sir," I agreed. Despite my personal feelings, what Armsmaster was saying made a lot of sense. I still didn't like it, but the bright side was that any hope Sophia had of getting a sweetheart deal that let her keep doing her own thing as a probationary Ward was pretty much gone. She might, somehow, claw her way into a team somewhere, but assaulting members of the local PRT attempting to apprehend her wouldn't make her any friends.
Eventually, I was pulled from my thoughts by a chirp over the radio followed a few seconds later by spotlights flaring to life in front of the building followed by a voice on a bullhorn. "Shadow Stalker, this is the PRT. We have you surrounded. Come out with your hands up. If you give yourself up without further violence, this will go better for you."
A long minute passed, then another. I triple-checked my modifications to the back wall, just in case.
What happened next surprised me but it really shouldn't have.
Shadow Stalker eased open one of the smaller rollup doors and slid out underneath it as quietly as she could. I boggled at the notion - I had been a little obsessed with the idea that she would barrel through the wall in spite of my meddling, and the idea that she would just wedge open one of the ancient metal doors and crawl through seemed alien to me.
Regardless, it was easy enough to lock down the air and ground around her, forcing it to be effectively solid to force and resistant to her power. She bumped into the shell a few seconds later and then tried to spring to her feet, only to find that she was now trapped like a bug in a jar. Even if we were cloaked in my invisibility bubble again, I then made the whole thing opaque from the inside so that she wouldn't be able to see at all - a not unreasonable amount of paranoia on my part - which just made her panic more. I couldn't bring myself to sympathize too much.
"Bulwark reporting Shadow Stalker captured at the rear of the building," I reported over the radio. It was anticlimactic and if she had been a brute or a kind of mover that I couldn't lock down, it would never have worked.
The rest of the night was an exhausting blur. I disintegrated a little of the concrete outside of my Sophia-bubble and made the rest float into the back of a PRT van. I had to ride in the back with her to the Protectorate HQ where the higher grade cells were and then stay on hand while a negotiator got her to agree to surrender in order to be released from the 'tinkertech field' which was confining her.
By the time I finally got home, I was ready to fall over, which I promptly did. I then slept straight through my alarm the next morning and woke up to a bunch of texts from Amy around noon.
They were kind of sweet, going from mild worry to full-on panic to a ramp-down as she apparently got told by someone that I was out 'sick'. I texted her back letting her know that I was 'feeling better' and that we would talk about it soon. I also had messages from Taylor who had been on her own additional adventure to heal some people while I was sitting on Sophia.
I also had a text from Agent Lawson requesting that I let her know when I'd be able to come to HQ because I was about to get a crash course in writing an after action report. Joy.
oOoOoOoOo
I rubbed my temples as I stared at the computer in the Wards area and revised my last line yet again. Agent Lawson had been a big help, but she'd kicked my proposed report back to me three times with suggestions and corrections. She claimed that it wasn't that I was doing a bad job, but that the format was fairly specific. You had to describe things in certain ways and use certain phrases for things, and it was a lot to keep straight.
Taylor wasn't there because when we had eventually admitted that she had gotten shot by Shadow Stalker, she'd been hauled off to the infirmary for a checkup.
"Geeze, they chained you to a desk already?" I glanced up from where I was sitting to find that Dennis was grinning at me. It had been almost a month since we'd discovered that my powers could negate his, and he'd mostly calmed down about it. He was at least trying to get over it, anyway.
"No good deed goes unpunished," I grumbled. "Is it always like this?"
He nodded. "Pretty much. Things are either boring, or they're really exciting followed by a huge pile of boring paperwork." He glanced at the screen. "Just remember, it's PRT policy to never imply ownership of a dildo. You have to use the indifferent article, so it's always 'a dildo' and not 'your dildo'."
I blinked. That sounded familiar. "Uh, I don't think it's called an indifferent article. What movie is that from?"
"One that you're too young to watch," he teased. "Did you talk to Amy yet?"
That threw me for a loop and I forgot about movie references. "Sort of? Why?"
He shrugged. "We have a class together and she was freaking out because you weren't at school. I had to clue in Dean so that he could give Vicky a heads up and she could stop her from ditching school to go find you. You really shouldn't leave your girl in the lurch."
I groaned. "I was half asleep when I got in and then it was after dawn by the time I got home. I kind of forgot to message her." I blew out a long breath. I was definitely not used to being in a relationship and that had definitely been a miss on my part. Then I gave Dennis an even look. "Thank you for doing that. She was probably really worried."
Genuine thanks appeared to be one of Dennis's weaknesses and he fidgeted as he looked away. "Uh, yeah, it's fine. No problem."
oOoOoOoOo
Amy looked confused. "They're very pretty," she said after a moment. The small bouquet of flowers I had shoved into her hands dipped as she looked at them with uncertainty.
"I just wanted to make it clear how sorry I am," I mumbled and gently took her other hand. She didn't resist. "So I ordered something pretty executed for you."
That got me a snort and Amy seemed to be on more familiar ground. "It's… well, I was upset, but it's okay. I know you probably didn't have a choice."
I gave her hand a squeeze. "I was half-asleep or in a panic for a lot of the night, but I should have thought about how you'd react if I didn't make it to school this morning. I remembered to text my dad and I didn't remember to text you. I'm sorry." It would have been easy to use the excuse she offered me, but I didn't want to lie to her.
Amy rolled her eyes and looked around for a place to put the flowers down. She ended up tossing them onto the table so that she could get her other hand free and pull me in for a hug. "It's still fine," she mumbled into my ear. "I grew up around capes and I know what it's like. Just… try not to do that again. I'll try to warn you if I'm going to be out, too."
"Okay," I mumbled back into her collarbone. I was the perpetual little spoon - even standing up - not that I minded.
oOoOoOoOo
"Shadow Stalker shouldn't be a problem for us going forward," Armsmaster declared across the conference table. Two days had passed since we brought her in and I actually felt fully awake again. Getting a call to meet with the boss had filled me with nerves, but he didn't seem upset.
"Once she was convinced of the seriousness of her situation, she was very receptive to discussing a deal, but there is no way that I want her in this city after her assault on the troopers attempting to apprehend her. If circumstances were different - if she were voluntarily coming to us instead of being dragged in after several cases of attempted murder - we might find some common ground, but that is not the case."
"So she'll get to be a Ward, just somewhere else?" I asked carefully, wondering if history really was rhyming with itself, even if it didn't really repeat.
"Possibly. She'll be going to Los Angeles for a program that Alexandria runs to 'scare straight' young parahumans that may be salvageable. If she comes through with flying colors, she might get shuffled off to one of the Wards divisions in a city with a low crime rate and a high degree of oversight. Most likely, though, she will serve at least part of her time in what amounts to a 'work release' program defending a containment zone. Believe me when I say that it isn't necessarily better than being in prison, but we are unfortunately in a world where we can't afford to discard a cape that could be salvageable."
I shuddered. After it had been mentioned some weeks ago, I had looked into what the containment zone assignments were like, and some of them were Hell on Earth.
"What about us?" Taylor asked, finally voicing what we really cared about. Sophia's fate was somewhat interesting, but it didn't really affect us directly. Not anymore.
"I'm going to be assigning both of you to train with PRT squads more extensively. Both of you have powers which could be huge assets for large operations. I think the Shadow Stalker operation would have gone more smoothly if you were both more experienced with following orders and comfortable with the command structure. That's nothing we can't fix with some practice and time, though," he said and then he stopped talking.
"That's it?" I blurted out. "We're not… in trouble?"
Armsmaster sighed heavily. "Do you want to be in trouble? No, I know that you don't. There were certainly a number of mistakes made - many of them on my part - but there's a truth in life and especially in the Protectorate. There's a quote - Bernard Shaw, I think - that success covers for a multitude of blunders. At the end of the day, we caught the criminal and no one was seriously injured -not beyond fixing, at least. If someone had died, this might be a very different conversation, but the truth is that if you're going to mess something up, make sure you still get the job done. No one is keen to assign blame during a victory celebration."
I let that sink in. Basically, we weren't in trouble because everything had worked out. More or less.
"The both of you showed that you need more training, but you both also showed that you have the instinct to try to help. We can teach you to follow orders, but we can't teach you that instinct, so I think we're in a workable position. Let's just try to make sure the next operation you two are involved with is a little less exciting."
I mentioned way back at the start that this was my NaNoWriMo project for 2022 (and one I actually did by all of the rules) and I managed to cross the 50k threshold in the previous chapter. As presented originally, this chapter was just a sketch of a couple of scenes to finish out my thoughts because I ran out of inspiration. When I did the rewrite/edit, this one got fleshed out considerably to what it is now, but that is pretty much it for this story. For now, at least. I have zero inspiration for more, but it's also a story that I'm happy with up to this point and could see adding to in the future.
I think I learned a few things from writing this one, and I like to think that I offered a unique take on the Wards program that made sense within the world that Wildbow presented.
Thank you for reading along with me.
I think I learned a few things from writing this one, and I like to think that I offered a unique take on the Wards program that made sense within the world that Wildbow presented.
Thank you for reading along with me.
- Location
- Pale Blue Dot
Huh. Sane!Armsmaster is go! This seems to be the kind of Armsmaster who wants glory, but also works to get the skills, philosophy and strategy needed to actually succeed. Probably even checked Protectorate mission histories to double check that his conclusions are correct, too.
Basically, not just "we're told he work hard and train hard". He actually shows the skills that hard work and planning would probably result in.
Nice.
Armsmaster...
*Facepalm.*
Do not tempt Murphy like that! He's always listening! Especially in Brockton Bay!.
He does kind of show it in canon too, its just that it never works out because the narrative doesn't like it.
Admittedly having Shadow Stalker in a neat pokeball with no injuries from that action is handy.
- Location
- Kent, WA
Heh, well, that world does do its best to turn people into the worst versions of themselves.
To be fair, he did temporize that with "try." Murphy looked up until that word was used.
from going out the back?