Interlude 1.x
Closer...
Carefully...
The proximity alarm beeped and he began slowly extracting the probe. Damn, he'd have to start fresh.
Miss Militia kicked the door open just as Armsmaster was removing the tungsten rod from his newest project. "What the hell, Colin!?"
"Make some more noise," he groused. He hated being interrupted while he worked. "If you were a little faster you might've caused me to explode.
"Don't try to set me on the defensive, Wallis." Hannah's dark eyes blazed with fury. "I read the report. No way the Undersiders did that to Lung. It was somebody else, somebody new." She'd already put the pieces together and was giving him a chance not to dig himself deeper.
"Yes," he huffed as he walked over to his old threadbare sofa, "it was Hebert. She fought him into retreating, by herself." Colin flipped up his work goggles and dropped onto the aged piece of furniture, which groaned in protest.
Hannah folded her arms across her chest, having pulled down her scarf so he could see in full detail the disapproving frown on her face. "And you stole the credit for her win?"
"She's powerful, Hannah. Incredibly so. She wasn't even scratched and she'd done more lasting damage to Lung than I'd ever seen. Somehow the alkaloid she'd hit him with was suppressing his regeneration." He frowned right back at her. "We're losing this war, slowly but surely. Anders shows people that he can provide them the safety we can't, and all they need do is subscribe to his ideology. The Merchants have the best chance of picking up traumatized new parahumans. And now we need to run damage control and keep Hess' actions out of the press."
Colin idly began fiddling with his goggles, needing something to keep his hands occupied while he spoke. "The PRT is struggling. All across the globe, we're faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges. And we can't even go after the villains like we should, because we need their power against the Endbringers. Hebert needs to understand that it's for the best if she joins the Wards. We need that kind of power and dedication, that moral compass."
Hannah stepped forward and popped him in the forehead with the heel of her hand. "So you undermine her success? You idiot! You come across as a glory hound and the Protectorate appears to be a tyrannical 'us versus them' situation! If anything, you've guaranteed that she'll never join!" She turned to stalk out of the room.
"Hannah. Don't make this worse."
She stopped but didn't turn around. "I don't think I could. But we owe this girl for our failings. I might not be able to fix everything, but I can hopefully show her that we're not all like Hess."
Colin sat in silence for several long minutes, scratching at his fingertips with his thumbnails. He eventually walked over to his computer, firing up the innumerable racks of servers. "Dragon, are you there?"
The screen flickered and changed to show a slightly grainy image of a pretty, petite redhead. "Colin. You look upset."
He told her the entire story. Despite the fact that they lived more than a thousand miles apart and had never met in person, Dragon was his dearest friend. He spared no detail, desperate for her advice.
Dragon's face scrunched up adorably in thought. "That's...yeah, that's a problem." She sighed and let her shoulders droop. "Look, Colin, I'm not gonna mince words. You screwed the pooch on this. My recommendation? Stay out of it. The girl has good reason to hate you and any action you take will be seen in the worst possible light. Hannah's a smart girl; I trust her to do her best to make the situation salvageable. Meantime? Just focus on the Protectorate. Let others handle Taylor."
Colin could only nod. "I'm sorry for causing this mess. I just...you know I'm not good with people."
She smiled. "I don't know about that. You're good with me."
"That's because we can talk Tinker tech. We understand each other. I..." He sighed.
"Colin, stop stressing over this. You can't repair it. Let others, people with the specializations to deal with these things, handle it. Now, what are you working on over there?" She pointed past him to the tungsten rod on his workbench.
(BREAK)
Hannah huffed to herself, her energy having formed into a pair of padded gloves. She pounded the heavy bag, needing to get her frustration out before she took any more action. That utter idiot! How could he do that? Armsmaster had potentially made a permanent enemy of, by all appearances, an extremely powerful parahuman. Sure, he had good intentions, but he went about it in exactly the wrong way.
Toweling herself off, Hannah shifted two a pair of uzis and holstered them. She picked up her smartphone. "Director, I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
"Not at the moment. I'm on dialysis for another hour or so and there's nothing good on TV." Emily Piggot might hate parahumans, but she almost liked Miss Militia. Hannah had seen true evil and understood that parahumans were even more dangerous than zealots with guns. The two were of like mind on many subjects and, had Hannah been normal, Piggot could have seen them becoming friends. "I hope this isn't an emergency."
"Not exactly. If you haven't seen the report already, Armsmaster made a significant mistake with Hebert last night. It may have burnt any bridges between her and the PRT, and all evidence points to her being a heavy hitter."
"That's unfortunate. Do we need to designate her as a villain?"
"That's...not what I was thinking, Director. I think that we still have a chance, or at least I'd like to hope. Hebert has a strong moral compass and doesn't trust authority. It makes sense, since she's been failed by those in power so often. I'd like to offer her an olive branch, granting at least one of her requests. She wanted to transfer to Arcadia; let's make that happen."
"You think that will be enough?"
"Doubtful. But it's a start, and more than anyone's done for her in years, I'll wager. We need to show her our best side, and not the photoshopped PR side. We need to show her we do genuine good. If we can win her over, maybe we can do the same with other troubled parahumans."
"Fewer capes with the gangs, more with us. Alright, I'll see what I can do. And Militia? Good work."
