Enjoy!

Foreboding 1.c

The overweight and somewhat sickly looking Brockton Bay Director of the Parahuman Response Team almost seemed to loom over him despite that even with her standing up and him sitting down he was still taller than she was.

"Would you care to explain why you allowed a new parahuman who admitted to being responsible for Mush's hospitalization and the deaths of Skidmark, Squealer and three other Merchants to walk away without making any attempt to subdue her?" she asked, her voice deceptively soft and quiet, completely at odds with the low anger simmering off her form. Her desk groaned in protest as she leaned forward and allowed her weight to settle on it.

Robin Swoyer didn't like Emily Piggot.

Well, maybe that wasn't quite true, he didn't dislike her at any rate.

She was an extremely combative person to her subordinates and her enemies. She would use a stick when she needed more carrot, she would push when she should back down, she would argue when she should compromise. She didn't possess the subtle touch that most directors had and it showed in her work.

There was a reason why there were so few rogues in the city.

But perhaps it was because despite her combative personality he understood her and what she had to deal with each day. She had to try and keep the stranglehold of the gangs from squeezing the city too tight while at the same time avoiding pushing them back too hard lest the city descended into chaos. He had been in her position once a long time ago, back when he had been in the military.

It had been a time before the militaries' funding had been completely consumed by the PRT and Protectorate's ever growing budget and back when the United Sates was still trying to keep the world from falling apart, before Endbringer attacks and growing internal threats had forced them to back off and focus on protecting themselves.

He had been in the Middle East, Iran specifically, about a year after Behemoth's first appearance. With New York still recovering from its own Endbringer attack, the higher ups had been concerned that the collapse of the Iranian economy would be felt far harder than they had originally anticipated. Even with the Marun Field irreversibly irradiated Iran still had control of over ten percent of the world's oil. If the country descended into total civil war like it appeared it was going to then the shockwaves would be felt across the globe. Robin had been part of a multinational task force that had been assembled to try and quell the fighting.

It…it hadn't been easy.

Sometimes Robin thought that the citizens of Brockton Bay didn't realize how easy they had it. Oh, sure they had villains and gangs rooted throughout the city like malignant cancers but it was nowhere near the completely terrifying chaos of Iran. The gangs followed a certain order and understood that escalation would only lead to their destruction. Lung might burn the odd building or two down and slag a few streets but it was rare that he indiscriminately slaughtered anyone during his thankfully uncommon rampages. While he and other villains certainly wouldn't hold back against PRT troopers they understood that killing civilians in large quantities would bring more scrutiny and attention to them than they would want.

Back there out in the thick of it there were no rules. There hadn't been any gentlemen's agreements or understandings between the task force or the hundreds of small terrorist and rebel groups that had sprung up in the wake of Behemoth's attack. It hadn't mattered to him at the time what their motivations were, religious, political, economic- all he knew is that they had been hell to fight.

You didn't need to be a parahuman to be dangerous.

Child soldiers. Suicide bombers. The wholesale slaughter of entire villages in the dead of night, leaving nothing behind but cold corpses for them to find in the faint light of the morning sun.

He had made a lot of choices that he had regretted, the kind of choices that kept him up at night.

Robin didn't hold any illusions of what would have happened if he hadn't triggered. He would have killed himself, either by putting a bullet in his own skull or letting an enemy gun him down with impunity. As it was his trigger event had given him the freedom to do exactly what he had always wanted to do, save people.

He didn't have to worry about whether the civilians walking down the street were planning on killing him in broad daylight anymore as he made his way to the grocery store. He didn't have to check a room for booby traps before entering it or make sure that what he was eating hadn't been poisoned. All he had to do was arrest the criminals and villains and keep the city from falling into anarchy.

So, he could understand and respect Piggot's position. She was forced to make decisions that could very well affect the wellbeing of hundreds if not thousands. She couldn't afford to be soft and friendly in a city like Brockton Bay.

That didn't mean he had to like her though.

"I felt that attempting to engage an unknown parahuman while so many were present would lead to further casualties and as such I chose to attempt to de-escalate instead," Velocity said, uncowed by his superior's apparent anger. There was nothing that she could do to him, he followed standard procedure for dealing with a new parahuman, and it wasn't like she was going to ream him for not chasing after a cape that for all he knew could kill him with a touch.

Piggot narrowed her eyes, but appeared to accept his reasoning and allowed herself to fall back into her seat and folded her hands as a contemplative look crossed her face. She remained silent for a moment, just staring at him with her cold calculating eyes before opening her mouth to ask a question.

"What do you think of the parahuman?" she asked.

Velocity knew that he had thoroughly described her in his report which was lying mere inches away from her on her rather large desk but he obliged anyway. Sometimes just talking about a subject would be enough to rattle loose some new ideas about it or reveal a detail missed before.

"She was…combative," Velocity said. "She seemed to have a rather low opinion of the Protectorate and PRT in general."

"Do you have any ideas on why she seems to hold us in such a low regard?" Piggot asked as she typed a note on her computer.

"She mentioned our inability to curb any of the gang's activities," Velocity said. He most assuredly did not flinch at the look that Piggot gave him. It was common knowledge that for whatever reason the director was not particularly fond of parahumans and the idea that less savory individuals could walk the streets with impunity didn't sit well with her.

It didn't sit well with him either, but there was very little that they were capable of accomplishing to halt the gang's progress that wasn't illegal or involve a very high body count.

"Do you think we could leverage her to join?" Piggot asked as she folded her hands.

Velocity shook his head. "I doubt it, we would either need to catch her, which we've already determined would be extremely difficult, or we would have to find her identity which would be a violation of the unwritten rules," he said, ignoring the dark look that Piggot gave at the mention of the parahuman communities' gentlemen rules, "And even if we did once this hits the PHO boards she is going to get a lot of support from the public."

He left unsaid the PR backlash that they would have to deal with if they tried to press gang Boogeyman into the wards after dismantling an almost universally reviled gang. There would hardly be any tears for the passing of Skidmark and Squealer and even considering the brutality she demonstrated towards the Merchants Velocity doubted there would be too many civilians who would want her to stop.

"The only other option is that if we somehow convinced her to join willingly, but given her strongly negative reaction to such a proposal I doubt anything would come of it. If anything, she might be insulted by the offer," Velocity said as he shifted in his rather uncomfortable seat. He was half convinced that Piggot had a more comfortable, near exact, duplicate of this seat for debriefings because it never seemed this uncomfortable when doing anything else.

"So you're saying we won't be able to bring her in?" Piggot asked with a raised eyebrow.

Velocity nodded, "At least without understanding the root of her issue with us and attempting to fix or convince her it wasn't our responsibility I doubt she would be willing to accept a deal."

Because you didn't get that type of anger from standard stuff. He could understand if she was angry at the Protectorate and remained apathetic to their envoys, but for that kind of near-violent reaction to simply suggesting she came into the Rig to work something out hinted at a much more personal issue with the Protectorate.

"Is she a hero or a villain?"

Velocity paused as he thought about the question. It was an important question, one that could shape a parahuman's future for the better or worse for years to come. He had heard horror stories of heroic capes who because of misunderstandings, had been labeled villains and nearly had their lives ruined. It wasn't anything that the PRT would admit publicly because of PR bullshit, but Velocity more than understood the importance of this question.

"If she was a villain she would have attempted to subvert the Merchant's leadership and take over the gang instead of handing them over to us." There was a short pause as Velocity considered his next words, "I think we might have another Shadow Stalker on our hands."

Piggot leaned back in her seat contemplatively. Shadow Stalker was a problem child if ever there was one, no doubt about that. She refused to socialize whatsoever with her Ward teammates and was prone to leaving her partners behind to go on unauthorized solo patrols. Totally against regulations but Piggot held back on punishing her because despite all her faults she was good at what she did. She easily had one of the highest takedown rates of the Wards and had saved more than one innocent civilian from death or worse.

Of course, that was what made so frustrating prior to her forceful inductions into the wards. She was too good.

During her time as an independent, she had near caused a minor turf war. Shadow Stalker's brutal takedown of a rather well connected Empire lieutenant had sparked a surge in Empire crimes along their border with the ABB, which of course led to the ABB mobilizing their forces in retaliation.

If the Protectorate hadn't brought her in and deescalated the situation a lot of people could have died.

"That is concerning," Piggot said as her fingers drummed against her desk. "Even more so given that she seems to have no compunctions against murder."

Velocity had to keep himself from shifting in his seat. The thought of a child willingly killing someone without hesitation or regard for another's life brought back some memories that he would have preferred to ignore.

Piggot continued, apparently unaware of his growing discomfort. "And given the level of power she had so far displayed attempting to bring her in would be difficult, and that's assuming that she revealed all of her powers to you." A short snort revealed Piggot's opinion on that idea.

Frankly, Velocity had to agree with her. There was absolutely no indication that "Boogeyman" as she apparently referred to herself had revealed all of her powers. But what she had revealed was concerning enough.

A powerful master ability that manifested as rather nightmarish looking horses that numbered in the dozens if not more. Depending on their shelf life and general capabilities she was already looking at a Master 6 or 7, and that was assuming she couldn't make anymore.

Mover 4 given her disappearing trick. Velocity had spent a few minutes a high speed looking through the shadows where she and her steed had vanished and had found nothing. A quick run around the area hadn't revealed any sign of her either so she had an effective minimum range of thirty feet and it was probably much larger.

Her Mover and Master rating alone would make her a nightmare to fight and the interviews that the detained Merchants were going through were apparently revealing, even more, abilities that she had used during her assault on their base. He wasn't privy to those reports yet, but if she was as strong as he thought she was then there was very little the Protectorate or PRT would be able to do in detaining her.

"May I ask what we're going to do?" Velocity asked.

Piggot frowned at the question, perhaps she was thinking of the same nightmare scenario he was. "I'll be meeting with Armsmaster and Miss Militia in about half an hour to go over the interviews. If we're lucky we'll find something that we can use." The unspoken statement that they were never that lucky wasn't brought up. "Either way we will need to start making contingency plans if she continues to escalate, but that's not my main concern right now."

"The gangs," Velocity said, throat dry from the thought of the other gang's reaction to the Merchant's apparent destruction.

While the Merchants were nowhere near the Empire or ABB in terms of raw power they did act as a stabilizer for the city, as destitute and depraved as they were. While they were too weak to be bothered with they were too strong to outright ignore. Neither gang could risk engaging with each other and the Protectorate whilst the Merchants circled like a pack of vultures, looking for the slightest signs of weakness in their competitors.

It was why they had decided to try and keep Mush's hospitalization a secret. If the gangs learned that the Merchants had lost their main muscle, then they might get some ideas that the Protectorate would rather they didn't. Now that the Merchants as an organization were apparently going to be defunct there wasn't going to be anything keeping the Empire and ABB from expanding, and that didn't consider the dozens of other minor gangs that were going to pop up in the next few weeks looking for a piece of the carcass that was Brockton Bay.

The city was likely to face a full-fledged gang war in the next few days if they weren't careful.

"Indeed," Piggot said, her face twisted in displeasure. "I don't need to spell out the consequences of this, do I?"

Velocity shook his head wearily, his mind flashing to dead bodies piling the streets, "No."

If Lung decided to make a move there would be very little the Protectorate could do to stop him. The last time the entirety of the local Protectorate team and New Wave had fought against the Asian parahuman they had been thoroughly trounced, only Lung's prerogative to avoid killing any of them prevented a bloodbath. He could still remember the screams of panic and terror as the titanic cape smashed through them like a wrecking ball. He had heard that Armsmaster was working on something that would be able to keep Lung from escalating, but it was far from finished and even if it was there were still other threats to the safety of the city.

If Lung decided to make a move, then it was almost guaranteed that Kaiser would retaliate in kind. While the Empire didn't possess the sheer power of Lung they had more than a few capes capable of taking on most of the local Protectorate by themselves, and that wasn't even considering the backup that they could call in.

The fact of the matter was that they were outnumbered by the gangs. Even including the wards, they didn't even have enough to match the Empire, and the wards weren't even supposed to be fighting people like Hookwolf or Night.

Velocity would have run his hands through his plain brown hair in frustration if it wasn't for his helmet. As it was he was forced to settle for templing his fingers around the edge of his nose as his mind played through all of the worst-case scenarios that could develop within the next week or so.

"Velocity," Piggot's voice snapped. Velocity's head shot up to meet his director's gaze as he tried to regain control of his emotions.

The past week, in general, had been pretty bad for him. Not only was he going to have to deal with all this which was bringing up memories that he would rather leave unremembered but he had also been having some nightmares lately. The smuggling group that he had helped take down had been a human trafficking ring and a great number of the prisoners had been underage. Their hollowed thousand yard stares and their unhealthy, rail thin bodies that had been covered in various marks had affected him more than he would have liked to admit.

Piggot held him under her gaze like a bug for a moment before sighing.

"…Get some rest Robin, you've been working overtime for the past week," Piggot said not unkindly.

"Yes-I-I'll get some rest," he said as he rose from his seat. He gave Piggot a distracted wave, his mind not entirely present as he walked through the steel armored door. Instead, his mind was focused on the young woman he had encountered last night.

The young woman stared at him with unnaturally yellow eyes that seemed to glow a little in the darkness. Her steed shifted underneath her with its powerful looking limbs clicking against the concrete. He had seen horse related injuries back in Iran and knew they were nothing to joke about, adding teeth that looked like they had been ripped out of a bear's mouth was going to give him a few nightmares.

The street was almost utterly silent and Velocity couldn't help but vibrate his legs a little to burn off some of his excess nervousness. He could see her contemplating his words beneath as her face became as expressionless as a brick wall.

"Yes, Velocity. It does."

The words held a certain air of finality to them, like announcing that a glacier was going to crush a village or an Endbringer was going to ravage a city. There was no debate, nor arguments, no pleas for her to reconsider. She was going to go through with this if it was the last thing she ever did.

He had seen people like that before, back in Iran. You couldn't reason them, you couldn't plead with them, all you could do was try to stop them and pray to Scion that you wouldn't take anyone else down with them.

As she faded into the shadows of the building Velocity couldn't help but feel empty, like he had just been delivered a crushing defeat. Even with the thirty odd Merchants waiting for imprisonment he knew that this victory was a hollow one.


Robin wasn't sure how he made it back to his on-base room. He had just sort of blanked out after he had left the meeting and when he "woke up" he was standing in the doorway to his room.

Maybe he was even more exhausted than he thought.

Robin flopped down on the bed, not even bothering to remove his costume. He could feel his muscles cry out in sweet relief as they finally got to take a break. Even for a speedster like himself constantly exerting himself for a couple of days didn't do a lot of favors for his body.

But as he laid on the rather Spartan bed staring at the stark white ceiling, just like every other ceiling on the Rig, he found that he couldn't go to sleep.

His body felt more than ready to give into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness but apparently, his mind had other ideas.

It was an issue that he had with his powers in general. It just wasn't his body that sped up but his mind as well, it was the only way he could run as fast as he could without faceplanting into a wall or running off a building. To him, it always appeared that the world had slowed down around him as if everything was set to negative times 100 speed. Useful in a fight and when trying to speed read a book, not so useful when trying to avoid thinking.

More than once he had accidentally activated his powers without realizing it and spent what felt like hours just trying to blank his mind and enjoy some peace and let a few hours pass only to find it had only been a few minutes at best. It was why he always made sure that he had a clock in view when he was spending time by himself to avoid any accidental power uses.

"I will not allow myself to be shackled to the ones who have allowed the city to fall so far."

Robin understood what she was going through, he could understand the frustration of not being able to do anything, to watch as villain after villain walked out of containment like they had a revolving door built in. Watching good men and women be torn to shreds by Hookwolf as he launched himself out of his transport truck without a single scratch to show for it. Time and time again the criminal element slipped through their fingers like a bar of soap.

He understood how that resentment and frustration could boil under the skin and threaten to consume you, of the little dark thoughts that plagued him every time they caught a villain. What if they fell down the stairs? That sweet seductive little whisper that could make everything better if you just gave in this one time.

It was something that he had to struggle with, especially with his military training and experience constantly demanding him to end the threat, and how easy it would be for him to do so with a well-placed knife or two…

"No. Bad Robin," he thought as she shook himself out of that line of thinking. A quick glance at the clock revealed that he hadn't accidentally used his power and was still subject to the normal flow of time. He sighed as he tried to get himself more comfortable. Boogeyman had brought up some issues that had been haunting him for some time now.

It was clear that Boogeyman had given into that seductive voice with gleeful abandon if her actions were anything to go by. Robin couldn't help but shiver at the memory of that clearly unnatural smile that she had given him.

He knew deep in his heart that she wasn't going to stop. He could understand why, but his comprehension of her motives did little to ease the churning of his stomach as he considered all the damage she could bring down on the city despite her intention to help.

But could he say she was wrong? The last time any villains had been caught and transported to prison was back when Lung decided that Brockton Bay would be a good place to set up shop and ripped apart the other Asian gangs until they either bent or broke.

That had been years ago. Since then the entire city had been stuck in a holding pattern with nobody making any progress towards defeating their enemies. The gang were now fixtures of the city and viewed as something that had always been there and would continue to remain. Yet in one night Boogeyman had torn apart a gang that had survived in one form or another since the era of Marquis and the Marche.

Her attack had been effective, but it was a dangerous game she was playing. The other gangs would be forced to escalate and either she or the civilians around her would suffer. That wasn't even considering what would happen if some villain found out her identity. Her lack of a mask either meant that she had some sort of protection against identification or she simply didn't care about people knowing who she was. If it was the former, then she could very well wake up to find Lung standing over the burning corpses of her family.

But even as Robin stared at the stark white ceiling and considered how he was going to try and keep Boogeyman from escalating and getting herself and those around her killed he could feel his thoughts turning to mush and his eyelids were starting to droop as his mind finally caught up to his body and realized that yes, he was exhausted.

Planning could wait until he had gotten some rest. There was no point in panicking about a future he didn't know.


The threads of the future twisted and changed as dozens severed; a new element tore through them with the subtlety of a brick, ripping apart old futures and birthing new ones from the primordial soup of possibility.

High above the Earth, where the edge of the atmosphere met the void of space a single figure looked down upon the blue green marble that humanity called its home as if she was a goddess of old.

A single crystalline feathered wing twitched.


Special Thanks to my Patrons: Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz