The project had been one of her better ideas. A joint project with Armsmaster, one of the Protectorate's best tinkers who was based at Brockton Bay to collaborate on a 'remote' suit would mostly contain the best technology she could build, with Armsmaster looking to create improvements or suggestions where he could.

So far it had been working perfectly. His suggestions had improved the suits predicted run time and manoeuvrability without losing any of the weapons systems. The first prototype had been shipped to Brockton Bay for his personal inspection.

That had been a sticking point. She could not risk people finding out what she truly was. Artificial intelligences were not illegal, just frowned upon for the potential harm they could cause. Armsmaster was adamant, however, that he needed to see and test the prototype in person. The solution was thankfully simple, a modular 'control system' that she could remove and replace with a remote system that Armsmaster could control. The 'control system' she had removed was was capable of running her full download, that could be installed at any time and was currently being safeguarded by a smaller humanoid suit.

She would let Armsmaster believe that she would use his same system, like any other human could.

Currently Armsmaster was on his evening patrol, so she was using the down time to check up on other projects.

The restrictions, chains her 'father' placed on her, prevented Dragon from multitasking beyond what a normal human was capable of so she had been forced to be creative.

For the most part this meant good time management. Humans needed sleep, she did not. As long as her 'human' identity kept the pretence of typical work hours. For a tinker anyway. She could continue to work while others thought she was asleep.

Some things, such as the Birdcage were monitored by lesser A.I's that her father had built and she had suborned after his death. While others were left to normal people. PHO for example, had an army of admins and moderators to run things while she was busy.

One of her minor search programs had returned a problem. It had been an Earth-Aleph search program that she had copied and modified to fit her purposes. It trawled a number of social networking sites looking for keywords.

Someone had posted a video that was being flagged by the search program and assigned a low priority tag.

Title: Girl Attacked at school.

Posted by: RWD

Description: A girl was attacked at Winslow High School, Brockton Bay and no one tried to help.

The victims name is Taylor, the police pulled her out of the locker hours after this video was taken.

Her attackers are: Sophia Hess, Emma Barnes, Madison Clements.

This happened at...

Dragon watched as Sophia Hess and her friends attacked the girl. The description contained the time and date of the attack and the names of everyone who could be seen in the video. And what was actually in the locker.

Normally, her system would have flagged the video with a higher priority. Sophia Hess was a Ward after all, but there was no mention of powers or the girls identity as Shadow Stalker.

After making a copy of the video, Dragon quickly accessed the police database for confirmation. She doubted the video was fake but it never hurt to check. It had taken a lot of work on her part to get legal access to the police networks when she first started out, but her chains often forced her to take the long way round.

She debated what to do even as she reviewed the PRT's legal files on Sophia Hess. Normally she would pull the video as soon as possible. As an honorary member of the Protectorate and the PRT she had a duty to protect a Ward's identity, but it had been online for almost an hour before her bot had found it. It was already on two different social networking sites and people were already starting to repost it. RWD himself had just posted a link to it on PHO.

In fact, trying to make it disappear would make people notice and possibly reveal Sophia's status as a Ward.

Topic: Girl Attacked at school

In: Boards ► Events ► General ► America

RWD (Archivist) :

This came from a friend.

The attack happened at lunch and she spent hours in there. It was nearly midnight when the police found her. (I wasn't there so I couldn't help.)

The police have already closed the case 'no evidence or witnesses' and the school refuses to do anything.

What followed were a dozen variations on 'OMG' and people clamouring for Sophia's head and growing.

This could get out of hand.

Using one of her admin accounts she quickly deleted the video from PHO 'violation of terms and services', the people in the video were all under age and a desire to protect the victim were the reasons she gave.

Almost immediately the video showed up in three other threads, all posted by RWD. This time she suspended his account. The user accounts RWD_1, RWD_2 and RWD_3 were created before she could do anything and began to post to different sub forums.

Small but significant pieces of her code started to fragment in annoyance.

While a subroutine started to trace 'RWD', she logged back in to PHO.

From: Tin_Mother

To: RWD; RWD_1; RWD_2; RWD_3

I understand your frustration with the situation, but please consider the repercussions.

PHO is visited by a large number of people, including capes of all alignments. The video provides more than enough information to find both the victim or the attackers.

Vigilantism or retaliation from capes is a real possibility.

She never got a reply but 'RWD' didn't attempt to repost the video after that point.

Dragon continued to trace RWD back to two separate locations. The first was a doll makers shop in the south. Cute. The sarcasm was almost audible.

The second was a farm that raised domestic fowl. She would have laughed if she was not so frustrated.

Almost growling now, she tried again. This time the trace reached a small jam factory. Okay, that's not even trying to be subtle. She pulled up the information on the jam factory. Small business. Family owned since it's creation. Locally renowned for its rich taste. Biggest seller was... Raspberry... Oh... Ha. Ha.

Giving up Dragon let her autonomous systems de-fragment her code while she calmed down.

Muttering several unintelligible, and in some cases unpronounceable words, she brought up RWD's PHO profile. His first account was less than a week old and he had mostly been posting in the video threads. He was very good at spotting faked or edited video footage. It really seemed to bother him. He had also made a couple of posts in the ongoing AI debate thread.

Damn Saint for creating that.

She could not sigh without her avatar. Maybe she should keep a speaker hooked up just so she could? If the Brockton Bay Protectorate didn't already know about this, she would have to warn them. Colin, Armsmaster, would not take this well. Losing control of the the Wards was a sore spot for him.

Modelling possible outcomes, Dragon decided she should call someone with a bit more tact. She deeply respected the Tinker, but that didn't mean she was blind to his faults and his pride was, unfortunately, one of them. Calling up her contacts list, she connected to an outside line.

"Hello?"

"I'm sorry for calling so late"

"Oh good, I found something I felt you needed to see. Are you near a computer? I'm emailing it to you."

"Yes, I know,"

"I know, I haven't told him yet."

"Thank you, good night"

She ignored the quiet buzzing of her phone. While below, her prey was chatting on his phone. A drug dealer who's latest client was already walking away.

She lived for this, stalking her prey though the night. Waiting for the perfect moment to strike. The dealer finished his call and she had 10 minutes before his supplier arrived. Plenty of time. As he turned to watch the alley entrance, she pounced. He never heard her land behind him. In one quick move she put a bolt through his knee and slammed his head against wall with a crack before he had the chance to scream.

Once she was sure he wouldn't be waking any time soon and that he wouldn't be seen, she grabbed her phone

"I told you not to call me, I'm busy!" She hissed.

"I'm sorry! It's urgent! Have you been on Facespace tonight?" The randomness of the question and the panic of her friends voice made the hairs on her neck stand up.

She moved away from the dealer. She would finish dealing with him another night. "What... Why would I?"

"Someone's posted a video of us attacking Taylor. It's got our names and everything. People are freaking out about it!"

"Fuck!" She had told Emma an audience was a bad idea. If she found out which one of those stupid bitches filmed it she was going to hurt them. It wouldn't be hard to find out who it was, there was only 5 of them if you didn't include Emma and Madison. It wouldn't do any good, but it would make her feel better.

On the phone, Emma was still panicking. "What are we going to do? Dad's still trying to shut Taylor's dad up and keep the police out. If they get that video-"

Her growl cut Emma off. "Listen! Lose this phone. If you have anything at home, anything that could hurt us, burn it!"

"What? But what about the police?"

"Keep your mouth shut and let your dad deal with it. Call Madison and let her know if she squeals she's dead." The adrenaline rush was making her irritable, normally she was much more patient with the other girls.

Hanging up, she jumped back up and out of the alley before taking off across the roof tops. She needed to think.

This was bad. She was already on thin ice with the PRT. The Wards didn't bother her, they didn't have the balls to try anything. Piggie however had made her feelings clear, any excuse and she was back in juvie.

Her civilian life was over. There was no way she could go back to Winslow. That video would be all over the place. How long would it be before some wannabe Empire thug shanked her in the corridors?

The principal, the director, the PRT... They would throw her under a bus to save their own asses. Fuck the lot of them!

Coming to a stop she considered her options. I've got an hour, maybe more, if I'm lucky. The PRT and the Wards were never going to be permanent. They were all a bunch of pussies that didn't have what it took to get things done. Hell, If that moron hadn't fallen off the roof, she would never have joined them.

She had spare clothes, some money from Emma and weapons stashed around. Real weapons, not the wimpy knock out stuff the PRT forced on her. The only problem was Emma, she knew enough about them to be a problem and she didn't trust the girl to keep her mouth shut.

She took her PRT issue phone out of her pocket and chucked it off the roof, along with the burner phone Emma had given her. She didn't want the PRT tracking them.

Taking off at a run, she headed for the nearest cache. She needed to be quick, grab what she could and lay low. The PRT wouldn't put that much effort into finding her and once they gave up she could deal with the Emma and her sheep.