Atonement

by CeruleanSlane

Taylor died in the locker. In her guilt, Madison triggered instead and became a superhero, to make up for her mistakes. Seen first on spacebattles, archived here for easier reading and for other people to find.

25. Arc 25: Temper

Note: So that everyone is aware ahead of time, the next arc/chapter after this one will be purely interludes from various points of view surrounding the Slaughterhouse Nine invasion, rather than a single interlude following five parts of Madison's first person view.

25.01

I was awoken from a very pleasant and distracting dream by sound of my cell phone ringing on the end table next to me. I'd left the ringer on in case anything happened. Blearily, I grasped for the phone and squinted at the unknown number on the display before answering with a grunted, "'ullo?"

"Umm..." The voice on the other end of the line was that of a little boy. "Is this, umm... Tether?"

Sitting up in bed then, confused and a little alarmed, I asked, "Who is this?" Could it be one of the Nine's tricks? Could they have gotten my number from somewhere?

"Please, Miss." The boy's voice was slightly more urgent. "You have to get out of the house. Miss Ruin says you have to get out right now. The bad guys might come back."

That sent me out of the room, eyes wide as I pushed open the door to Hunter's room to find the empty bed. Spinning, I asked, trying to keep my voice as even as possible. "Who are you, where's H—Ruin?" Even as I peppered the voice on the phone with questions, I was moving back to my room to change to my costume, sleep forgotten. Had Hunter been unable to sleep and gone out for a walk?

The anxiety in the boy's voice rose. "Pl-please, Miss Tether, she says that, to prove it's really her, you met when your brother was being an idiot and that you still can't drive. The b-bad guys took us and then we got aw-way but now they might come back for you. She says you have to get out of the house right now. She underlined it three times, Miss. You really, really need to get out right now."

Dressed by then (I'd gotten a lot of practice in changing quickly), I pushed the window of my room open and glanced outside at the dark, empty street. Regardless of what the boy knew, it could still be a trap. Hell, it might not even be a little boy, for all I knew. Still, Hunter wasn't here, for whatever reason.

Coming to a decision, I hopped out of the window, using a line to yank myself across the street to the roof of another house where I crouched and turned to watch Sam and Ethan's house briefly.

I saw nothing out of the ordinary, but kept watching while speaking into the phone that I'd kept with me. "I'm out of the house. Where are you?" Belatedly, I remembered that, in spite of my tenseness and confusion, this was a kid. Easing my tone, I asked, "What's your name? Are you all right?"

"My name's Carter, M-Miss. We're ummm, hey Erin, where are we?" There was a murmured voice from nearby, and the boy spoke a moment later, "We're by the place that Erin used to go ice skating."

The old ice skating rink. It wasn't that far, maybe a ten to fifteen minute drive. Not even half that for my method of travel. "Okay, Carter. I'll be there soon. Are you guys safe?" I figured there was no point to pressing him for answers at this point. I'd get the explanation from Hunter.

"We're o-okay, Miss Tether," the boy dutifully reported. "But the bad guy wanted to make Miss Ruin hurt us. He was h-hurting her so she'd hurt us, Miss, but she wouldn't. She's, umm, she's hurt now."

My blood ran cold at that, and I gripped the phone tighter. "I'll be there soon. You guys stay down."

Disconnecting the call after the boy promised that they would stay out of sight until I got there, I immediately used a line to yank myself back across the street, to the house next to Ethan and Sam's.

Putting myself against the wall of the house, I gave the surrounding neighborhood another survey, again finding nothing. Frowning, I tapped on the window next to me a couple of times.

Before long, the window slid up, and the point of a sword appeared ahead of Lily's face. She blinked at the sight of me. "What are you doing? Why are you in costume?"

"What, you didn't hear?" I cocked my head to the side. "Halloween came early this year. Got any candy for me?" When my words were met by a raised eyebrow, I sobered and told her what had happened. Or at least, what I knew about it. After finishing my succinct explanation, I added, "If they might come back, you need to get the Kanse's up and out of the neighborhood."

"And let you run off by yourself to find Hunter and those kids?" Lily had already moved away from the window to start changing. "It could still be a trap."

"I don't think it is," I shrugged. "And besides, do we have a choice? I mean, you have to get these people moving, and no one else is around." I turned then to look out at the silent street again.

"Wait, where's Pandora?" Lily asked while she slipped her costume on. "Wasn't she supposed to be watching the neighborhood? Err, one of her, at least?"

My mouth opened and then shut at the question. "Shit, I forgot about that. Yeah, she... should be here. Hold on." I started to lift my wrist before remembering. "Crap, I don't have Jalopy." Turning then, I gazed out at the neighborhood. "Where would she go? I don't like this."

"And I don't like the idea of you going off by yourself when anything could happen," Lily put in.

I shrugged helplessly at that. "Again, do we have a choice? Hunter needs help. I can't just wait for you to take care of everyone here. We need to hurry."

Behind Lily, another voice spoke up. "I can wake up mom and dad."

Turning that way, the Japanese-American girl spoke quickly. "Oh, Mika. Good, yeah. Get your parents up and out of the house. Take them to, umm, PRT headquarters and let the people there know what's going on." After the younger girl bobbed her head in agreement, Lily gestured to me while sheathing her rapier. "Let's go get Hunter so she can tell us exactly what happened."

I looked past her to where the youngest Ward was. "Mika, hurry. Be careful, but hurry, please."

"I... I will." Mika nodded again before pivoting to run out of the room, calling, "Mom, Dad, wake up!"

Once she was gone, I dropped down to the yard below and waited for Flechette to join me. Then I attached lines between each of us and the furthest building that I could see from there. "Ready?"

Checking the weapons on either side of her belt, Lily nodded. "Let's go."

My thoughts were rushing as I let the lines pull us away from the yard. Why had Hunter left the house? Had the Nine come and I slept through it? Where was Pandora? What was going on?

And most importantly, was there a single one of those questions that I would like the answer to?

---

We came down in the middle of the parking lot behind the old ice rink a few minutes later. We'd spent the time on the trip over contacting the overnight shift at the PRT building to let them know what was going on, and that we would be coming in with children who had been taken by the Nine.

The two of us had barely landed before a young girl's voice called out, "She came!"

Turning that way, I had to stumble backwards as a little brown-haired girl literally threw herself my way, colliding with me heavily while her arms wrapped around me. She was openly crying while she hugged me. "You came, you came, I knew you'd come!"

"Hey, hey there." I took a knee and let the girl, who looked like she was about eight years old, hug me before looking over her shoulder to see Hunter standing with two other kids, a boy and another girl, clinging to either leg, their faces stained with tears. "Are you guys okay?"

Flechette moved to kneel down next to the children that were holding onto Hunter, gently tugging the girl off the other girl's leg and into a hug of her own. "What happened to you guys?"

Through tears and shaky voices, the children all explained how the scary lady with the fire had abducted them. The two girls were friends named Erin and Stacy who had been having a sleepover, and Carter, about a year older, was Erin's brother. They lived in the same general neighborhood as we did.

Once we had assured the children that they were safe now and that Flechette wouldn't let anything happen to them, I left the three with the other girl and stepped a little to the side with Hunter, lowering my voice to a whisper while handing my phone to her, "Are you all right? What..." I took in her tired, sweaty, clearly pained face and flinched. "What happened?"

Using my phone, Hunter typed out her explanation, passing it back and forth until I had a good idea of how the night had gone down. Even as the thought that Jack Slash had been in my home made a hard knot of fear settle into my stomach, I hugged her. Clearly it was too tight at first, because she flinched and drew back, making me cringe. "Sorry. Sorry, god, sit down, Hunter. Sit."

I helped sit the girl on the nearby steps attached to the building, easing her down while she flinched at each movement. "And this Mnemosyne girl, you've never seen her before? Where'd she go?"

Hunter shook her head helplessly and shrugged before wincing at even that movement. Seeing how hurt she was, I activated my comm. "Control, could you send an ambulance to our location? No lights, no siren. Ruin has been injured by repeated electrical shocks, among possible other injuries. There's also children that need to be taken into the headquarters." I gave the children's names and addresses that they had provided. "Their parents need to be contacted and brought in as well."

The PRT officer on duty started to work on that, while I put a hand on Hunter's shoulder gently. "God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that happened to you, and that I wasn't there to help. I'm so sorry." No matter how many times I said it, my apology felt weak and pointless. Hunter had been abducted from our home, right out of her bed, and I had slept through the whole thing. If she'd been killed, or been forced to kill those children, I never would've been able to forgive myself. As it was, I still felt horrible. "I shouldn't have let that happen. I should've... split the night watch with you or something so that one of us was awake. I shouldn't rely so much on Pandora to be there. I'm sorry."

Hunter just shook her head and reached up to take my hand briefly. She squeezed it before giving me a thumbs up and a weak smile in an obvious attempt to show that she was fine. I knew better, but returned the hand squeeze anyway. Things could have gone a whole lot worse than they had, for which I was going to be eternally grateful to this Mnemosyne person, whoever she was.

Obviously, there were more and more unanswered questions about this whole situation. But before I could think about any more of them, my comm went off and I heard Emma's voice speak very quietly.

"M-Madison? Madison, a-are you there?" There was a slight hesitation before she added, "Don't worry, n-nobody else can hear over your... your ra-radio right now."

Turning away from Hunter, I blinked in confusion. "Oversight, what are—is everything all right?"

"N-no." Her response came back even more hesitantly. "Are y-you okay? You need to get out of the neighborhood, r-right now. Dinah already sent Riley and me to ch-check on you, but nobody's h-here."

"No, get out of there." I said quickly. "Stay out of the neighborhood. Jack Slash was there, but we're okay for now." After another second, I remembered to ask, "Wait, is Pandora there with you?"

"They're... busy..." Emma started to say before hesitating. "Can you meet us at o-our place? Dinah says that you sh-should come."

Looking back toward Hunter, I paused before asking her, "Will you be okay here with Flechette? I'll meet you at the HQ building as soon as I find out what's going on." When the silent girl nodded, I turned my attention back to my communicator. "I'll be there in a few minutes. You're out of there, right? You're safe now?"

My friend's not-terribly-encouraging response was, "As... s-safe as anybody else is."

"I'll be right there."

---

After explaining the situation to Lily and promising her that I'd be at the PRT Headquarters to go over everything as soon as I could, I had taken off. I hadn't liked the sound of Emma's voice, or the hesitation before she'd asked me to meet them.

Dinah and her group weren't staying at the motel anymore, after I had warned them about the rising effort to capture Riley. Instead, they had moved to large ranch style house near the outskirts of town that had been for sale. It was pretty much right next to the forcefield that had been created to lock us in here. I wasn't sure exactly how they'd gotten the place, but Dinah had assured me that it was paid for and that no one had been hurt in the process.

The house had a large field surrounding it for livestock, and a nearby rundown barn. It was in that barn that Riley and Amy did most of their experiments now, apparently.

It took me a bit longer to get out there than it would have to get to the old motel, since there were fewer easy buildings to reach for long swings and launches, forcing me to mostly propel myself off of the road and various signs or utility poles for the last part of the trip. When I finally arrived, my attention was drawn immediately to the fairly large group of figures standing in a circle in the field. At a glance, it looked like a bunch of the various Pandoras, if not all of them. I'd never seen them all in one place before.

Riley, Dinah, Emma, and Amy were standing a bit away from the circle, clearly deep in conversation. The latter had decided earlier to stay with them rather than at the apartment that she normally shared with Crystal.

I brought myself down with a line to put myself beside them. As soon as I landed, Emma was there embracing me. She was literally shaking. "Thank god." She murmured while embracing me as tight as she could. "I th-thought you were... wh-when we couldn't find you... when... when..." She trailed off, shuddering even more.

Returning the hug, still a bit confused, I assured her nonetheless, "I'm fine. They took Hunter but some... other girl saved her. She's-" I cut myself off in mid-explanation, noticing the looks on everyone's faces. "What's wrong? What happened?"

It was apparently Riley's turn for a hug then, her arms tight around me while the former Slaughterhouse Nine member actually sniffed a little. "I thought Jack took you away. I thought he took you away because I left, because I told him that you were my hero."

"Oh Riley." I gave the girl a real hug then. "No. Nothing Jack does is your fault. It's his fault. You're trying to be a better person, and you have a lot to feel sorry for, but not that. Don't feel bad for what Jack does."

The younger girl stepped back, letting Amy take her turn for a hug, murmuring, "I'm glad you're okay."

I stared for a moment at the obvious tear tracks on Amy's face, then looked toward Dinah just as she hugged me as well. The always-in-control girl looked anything but just then. She had obviously been crying, and the sight of that scared me more than anything else had so far.

"Guys... what's wrong?" I reached up to tug my mask off, staring back and forth at all of them. "What's going on, why is everyone so upset? What are the Pandoras doing?"

"Mourning." Amy said quietly, her voice hoarse.

"Mourning?" I echoed, confused. "Who are they mourning?"

It was Dinah who spoke, her voice even softer than Amy's had been. "Two of themselves. Eta and Rho."

"Wh-What?" I stammered, staring at them. "What do you mean?"

Amy turned slightly to look at the circle of Pandoras while responding. "Eta and Rho were watching over your house tonight. They were attacked by... by Hatchet Face. He... his power turned theirs off, and he.." She closed her eyes.

I covered my mouth with a hand. "But... they just... reform, don't they? They weren't using anyone else's powers besides their own."

Dinah shook her head, the tears starting anew. "No. Their powers were off when he... when Hatchet Face... they couldn't reform because they were... k-killed when... when their powers were gone. It..."

She couldn't go on, and it was Amy who finished for her. "It erased them from the Pandora collective."

My eyes were wide as I pressed my hand tighter over my mouth, staring at the group in stunned horror.

Not only were we trapped in here with Slaughterhouse Nine, but at least one of their members was capable of killing any Pandora they met... permanently.

25.02

I felt like a stranger, disconnected from my own body even as I walked to where the sixteen Pandoras stood in their circle. I had never seen all of them in one place at the same time before. My eyes passed over each of them in turn, taking in the differences among those who had taken individual forms, while my mind struggled with the thought that they could be vulnerable, that they weren't entirely immortal.

I had fallen into the same trap that so many civilians most likely felt about the capes who protected them. I had seen the Pandoras as unstoppable, as an automatic win button that would bypass and ignore every possible threat. Even just having them as a bodyguard had led to me ignoring the simplest concept of not sleeping at home in a location that might have been compromised, or taking turns sleeping with Hunter so that one of us could be awake at all times. I'd dismissed such thoughts, just because there was Pandora, whom I had become reliant on being able to beat anyone.

All of that and more was on my mind as I stopped a few feet away from the circle, not wanting to barge in. Part of me wanted to say something, but a larger part felt like I should wait until they wanted to talk.

A couple of minutes passed before the nearest Pandora, who had taken the form of a girl of middle eastern descent in her late teens, turned toward me. Her brown eyes studied me for a moment before she spoke. "Tether-Friend, we are..." She trailed off, looking utterly lost for a few seconds, as though she had lost track of what she was going to say. I saw something glisten in her eyes briefly before she blinked a couple times. "We are not whole."

Having no idea what to say or do for a moment, I just stared. "I..." My words failed me entirely.

In the face of my silence, the Middle Eastern Pandora spoke again. "We are missing. Two of us. Two of we are... missing. Our minds, our thoughts, our choices... we have... grown... together. We cannot..." The glistening in her eyes turned to genuine tears through her words, and she touched her eyes with one hand before looking at the dampness on her fingers as though unsure of where it had come from. Her voice turned even softer then. "We cannot feel them anymore. We cannot feel them, Tether-Friend. We cannot hear them. They are... gone. They are gone and we... we are... less."

My throat closed up and I took two more quick steps that way before embracing the other girl. "I'm sorry," I managed to get out after several long seconds. "I'm so sorry..." I trailed off then, realizing as I had started to address the girl that I didn't know her name. I didn't know which one she was, and that realization on its own was enough to make me hate myself just a little bit more than I already did. After everything they did for me, I still didn't know all of their individual forms by sight. And in the next moment, the very thought that I didn't know what forms Rho or Eta had chosen before they'd been killed made me feel like the lowest form of life imaginable. I released the other girl from my embrace.

The Pandora that I didn't know stepped back after I released her, head tilted slightly while her eyes lowered, downcast. "We have done something wrong, to make you withdraw."

My eyes widened at that, and I shook my head quickly. "What? No, no you didn't. I just... I keep thinking about how I didn't really know them, and how I don't really know enough about any of you. I mean, you do so much to help me, and I take it for granted. I..." Lifting my hands, I put them on either side of her face to make her look at me. "You did nothing wrong. I just wish I that I'd taken the time to know more about them. I..." Flinching, I admitted, "I don't even know what you call yourself."

Those dark, sad eyes stared me for several long seconds before she spoke again. "This... iteration is called Theta, Tether-Friend. We..." She hesitated, taking a moment to form the clearly unfamiliar word. "... I... have spoken to you during the water-beast's intrusion into the city."

I thought for a second then before offering quietly, "You're the one that saved me, the one that flew?" When she nodded, I embraced her again. "I'm sorry about Rho and Eta, Theta. I... I wish I knew what to say. I wish I knew what to tell you that could make it better, but... but I..." My eyes closed then as I thought about the other people that I'd lost to those monsters. Katherine and Dean had been murdered, and there hadn't even been time to properly grieve for them. We couldn't grieve until this was done, until the Nine were no longer a threat. They were dead, and we weren't allowed to even think about that fact for longer than a moment. If we did, if I did, I'd just... shut down. And then the Nine would win.

And it wasn't just them. The Slaughterhouse Nine had murdered so many people, had orchestrated so much death and destruction, had ruined so many lives for their own entertainment that the actual body count (Or as close as could be made considering the way the Nine operated) was physically staggering. They had killed over fifty people and posed them in front of just one of the shield generators, just to mock us. There hadn't been a reason or a purpose behind it other than to show that they could, to show that we were helpless to stop them. Or, more accurately, to show the city around us that we were helpless, that we couldn't save them from the monsters. They were conducting a war on every front, physical and psychological, and they wouldn't be happy until they destroyed everything.

And Hunter. They had abducted Hunter, had tortured her and would still be torturing her, all to make the other girl into their weapon. They wanted her to kill for them, had tried to force her to kill innocent kids for no reason other than to break her spirit so that she would kill even more whenever they wanted.

"You are angry, Tether-Friend." Theta observed quietly as she watched me.

Forcing myself to let out a long, low breath, I straightened and looked up to find all of the Pandoras staring at me, unblinking. They looked to me as though I should have answers that explained what they were feeling, that would give some meaning to their grief. They hadn't just lost a teammate or a friend. They had had part of themselves that was even closer than a twin cut away. Two people, two real people who had literally grown up with them over the past several months since their creation, whose every thought and opinion had been mixed with theirs, were gone. Theta had said it herself, they weren't whole anymore. Eighteen distinct individual personalities, people, had spent every moment since their 'birth' connected to one another. As relatively short as their lives might have been to an outsider, it was their whole lives. Every thought they'd had, every little triumph and bit of growth along their journey to become real individuals, real people, had been made with two others who were no longer there. Two parts of their whole were gone and would never come back.

Just another thing that Jack Slash had ruined.

"Yes," I agreed. "I'm very angry. I..." My mouth went dry as sixteen pairs of eyes, some filled with confusion, others with anger, and more with grief, continued to stare back at me. "I'm sorry." I spoke loud enough for all of them to hear. "I'm so, so sorry. I shouldn't be interrupting you right now."

Another Pandora that I didn't know, this one a pale girl with short, spiky black hair spoke up. "We have named you Friend." She corrected me, as though it was the most natural, obvious thing in the world. "Your presence will never be unwanted, or unappreciated."

"Alpha-Self is correct." Iota, the Asian Pandora that I knew, agreed before adding, "We do not name as friends those who we do not wish to be near, even while..." Her head tilted then as she sought the word.

The tall, black Pandora that I knew as Zeta supplied, "Even while we are grieving."

Before I could even try to find a response to all that, another pair of arms encircled me. I blinked down to find that one of the Pandoras had taken the initiative and was hugging me all on her own.

"Lambda," I wrapped my arms around her in return and hugged her back, as tightly as I could. I didn't want her to be grieving. God, not Lambda. I wanted her to be happy. I wanted her to be giving me one of those wide, goofy smiles as she told stupid jokes. Please. Please just tell stupid jokes so I can groan again while inwardly laughing. Please. Don't take Lambda's perfect silliness away. I wanted to see her fall all over herself at the very mention of a pickle. I wanted her to be the Lambda I knew, not a sad, grieving little girl who clearly didn't understand what she was feeling.

The small blonde figure of Gamma had joined her sister by that point, both of them embracing me from either side while my heart cracked just a little bit more.

After a few moments that way, the two of them released me and stepped back to make room for Alpha and Iota. Two by two, each of the Pandoras came to take their turn for a hug. I exchanged a few words with each, trying to give them what pathetically little peace or understanding that I could.

Finally, all sixteen Pandoras stood in a semi-circle around me, and I let out a long breath while meeting each of their gazes. "Guys... I... I'm sorry. I'm sorry about Rho and Eta, I'm so sorry. I wish I could... make it better. I wish I knew what to say. I don't... know anything really. But I know... that they aren't going to get away with this. For Katherine and Dean, for Rho and Eta, and for everyone else they've killed... they're going to pay. I swear it. I swear to all of you right now, I will not let them get away with it. Whatever it takes, whatever I have to do, they'll pay for it. They... will... pay."

It wasn't enough, of course, to do much toward easing their grief. I spoke with all of them, trying to get to know them as individuals for another few minutes before leaving them to their sort-of memorial. Amy passed me, touching my shoulder briefly in thanks before she moved to speak to the Pandoras herself.

By the time I turned away from them, my fists were clenched once more. I was so furious, so blindly angry, that I nearly launched myself upward with no thought other than finding Jack and punching him until there was nothing left. I wanted him to be the one that was hurt for once. I wanted him to suffer.

It was Riley who stopped me. Her hand caught my arm, and I saw her staring at me with more understanding than I had previously thought her capable of. "Don't," she said quietly. "Don't run off without thinking. Don't get... mad and try to confront him. That's what he wants. Believe me, that's really what he wants. If you stop thinking, if you stop planning and just react, you'll... you'll be doing exactly what he wants you to do. That's... that's why he does it. He pushes until you're so blind with anger that you can't... think. I know. Trust me, that's what he's doing, and he has a plan. Believe me, please, please believe me. He has a plan and if you run out like this, if you run into him and just try to fight because you're angry, he'll beat you. Please listen to me, because this is just what he wants."

For a long moment, I stared at the younger girl while she continued to cling to my arm, staring up at me pleadingly. My gaze moved off of her, to the mask that I still held, before I nodded. "I understand. But I can't just sit here. I have to try to stop him, Riley. I have to try. You... you guys help Pandora. If you have a plan to deal with any of the Nine, get working on it. I have to keep moving."

Before I could move, however, Emma spoke up. "I'll go with you."

I blinked that way, hesitating. "Emma, are you..."

The other girl's voice was as firm as I had heard it since she had finally admitted what we did to Taylor. "I... I can help with th-this. I can do some real good. I can, and I will. I swear... I can do it. I know I screwed up before by not getting the field taken down in time, but I can do better. I swear I can do better if you give me another chance. Please, I can't sit here and do nothing while this is going on. That's... wrong. So please let me help. Tell me how to help."

Wincing, I shook my head. "That wasn't your fault any more than it was Flechette's, Emma." I assured her as emphatically as I could. Lily had been a mess right after that whole thing had gone down. She had been convinced that every single death that happened from the moment that she destroyed that shield generator and ended up breaking the system that would have allowed Emma to take down the field would now be her fault. That was part of the reason that everyone had gone home to go to bed, to let her sleep off the crushing sense of failure. As if something like that could just be 'slept off.' But what other choice did we have at the time? When this was all over, for better or for worse, then we could have our real emotional breakdowns.

Then, of course, I had woken her up with the news that our neighborhood was being invaded. And what had she done? She'd snapped right into business mode, as if none of her doubt had existed. She had shut it away, compartmentalizing it for the time being in order to do her job.

And yet I knew, in spite of the fact that she hadn't mentioned it again, that Lily still blamed herself for what was happening now. She would keep that running tally of deaths that happened from the moment that she destroyed that generator until all of this was done, seeing all of them as her fault.

Shaking off those thoughts, while inwardly vowing to talk to Lily the next chance I got, I focused on my other friend for now. "Definitely not your fault. But... if you still want to help... I'm glad, because Scion knows we could use all the help we can get."

"I do. I'll help, wh-whatever it takes." Emma straightened, giving me a firm nod. She hadn't crumpled in the face of something that could kill Pandora. Instead, she had gotten angry. Angry enough to ignore her fear and volunteer to do something that no one would have expected even six months earlier. Emma Barnes was volunteering to risk her life to fight the bad guys, people who would do much worse than kill her if they ever had a chance. She was willingly putting herself in front of that danger, not for thrills or reputation, but simply because it was the right thing to do.

And that is why I believe that people can change, that every wrong choice we make does not preclude us from ever making the right one.

"Okay, Emma. You're coming with me then." I looked back toward Dinah. "Are you going to be okay here with the Pandoras?"

The younger girl had mostly put aside her emotion, but I could still see the dampness in her eyes as she nodded. "Riley, Amy, and I can take care of them. Just give them some time."

"Of course," I agreed. "Just help them, whatever it takes, whatever they need." Pausing, I added, "I do need to ask you for one more thing."

While she listened, I told her what I was going to need.

---

The sun was coming up by the time I set myself and Emma down on a building roof half an hour later. We could see it through the faint blue shield, which cast a distinct glow over everything. The city itself was eerily quiet, as most people refused to come out of their houses for fear of attracting the Nine's attention. Brockton Bay would have resembled a ghost town, if it hadn't been for the roving looters and apocalyptic cult types going around. I'd dealt with the few that I could, but my focus had been on getting here. I had, however, taken great pains to rip down every 'Slaughterhouse City' sign that I had seen, though the graffiti messages to the same effect had been too much to deal with for the moment.

"A-are you sure this is a good idea?" Emma asked from her place next to me. She was wearing her faceplate mask, and was surrounded by half a dozen remote control trucks with various items attached to them, while just as many modified toy helicopters hovered above and around us. The helicopters had actually carried the trucks with attached hooks while we passed through the city on our way here.

"Don't worry, Oversight," I reassured her. "The Nine know that Ruin escaped. There's no way they'd stick around and risk letting us know where they are. They're cocky, but they're not that stupid."

"On the contrary, my dear." A voice spoke from behind the two of us, and we turned to see a female figure floating there. Her body was entirely covered by a series of tiny shards of glass that were intricately connected, and seemed to flow outward and down like a gown or a robe. Meanwhile, the top half of her head was covered by a helmet that was made of colored glass, obscuring her features.

Shatterbird, floating right there in front of us, waved a finger back and forth. "I believed that this would be an excellent opportunity for us to have a conversation."

25.03

"A conversation, huh?" I tried to think quickly, instinctively putting myself between Shatterbird and Oversight. "Unless that conversation includes the words 'I surrender unconditionally, please arrest my ridiculous hyelophobia-inducing ass right now', I don't think we want to hear it."

"H-Hyelophobia?" Emma echoed without looking away from the menacing woman floating there.

"Fear of glass," I supplied. "I looked it up, just in case."

"Ah, I see the confusion." Shatterbird interrupted, shaking her head slowly. Twin spirals of glass swirled around the woman, some casting reflections while others remained transparent. "I do not wish to speak to both of you. You are the one I was waiting for. She..." Her gaze took in Emma a bit critically before she shrugged. "She is unnecessary, a mere distraction." A warning tone entered her voice then. "You may either willingly speak with me now, or I can... remove such distractions."

Four of Emma's remote control helicopters hovered up and around the woman, tiny guns emerging from the noses while she spoke quietly, "I m-might be a bigger distraction than you think."

"Not so." Shatterbird replied dismissively, waving a hand. When nothing happened from her obvious attempt to destroy the electronics inside the drones, she paused and examined Emma for another moment before speaking again. "Most interesting. I believe that you would be the girl who allowed the Protectorate access to the Birdcage after they were locked out of it, correct? Perhaps a conversation may include you after all."

"N-No thank you." Emma's voice was a bit shaky as she replied. "I already let one selfish, egocentric psy-psycho girl turn me into a morally rep-reprehensible piece of sh-shit with her warped worldview. Doing it ag-again would just feel, like, incredible passé, you know?" By the end, the other girl's tone had taken on something resembling the cliché popular girl voice that I was intimately familiar with.

"A shame." Shatterbird didn't sound all that upset as she turned her attention back to me. "Thankfully, you are the one that the offer was meant for, in any case."

"What offer?" I asked carefully, trusting Emma to have her drones keep an eye out in case there were any other surprises. "Because again, the only thing I'm really interested in is you surrendering."

Shatterbird ignored that, pressing on. "We have had two teammembers stolen from us. We believe that you are in contact with those who are responsible. We will extend this offer one time. Give both of them back to us, and we will leave this city without any further violence, and will never return so long as Jack Slash leads the Slaughterhouse Nine."

"Sure," I made an exaggerated nodding motion. "I'm totally going to sell out a friend on the word of a bunch of murderous psychopaths whose idea of a fun time is genocide. That couldn't backfire."

"A friend..." Shatterbird spoke slowly, her tone curious. "Interesting. Well, I suppose that leads to our second solution." Glass shards rose up on either side of her like twin vipers, poised to strike. "You will both come with me, and your lives will be traded for those of our teammates."

Emma stiffened beside me. I glanced to her expecting fear, but her mouth was set in a hard line. "I'm okay." Her voice was remarkably steady under the circumstances.

Nodding at that, I turned back to Shatterbird. "I've got a better idea. How about we knock you out, then drag you into a containment cell back with the PRT so you can tell us where Jack and the others are?"

"It seems that the reports of your tendency toward flippant monologue in the face of danger are quite accurate." Shatterbird observed. "I wonder just how far that attitude will carry you in the face of what we will bring upon this city."

An instant after the woman spoke, I reacted. Attaching a pair of lines from Emma and myself to the roof below us, I used them to hurl the two of us upward and back, away from Shatterbird. The lines threw us a good hundred feet into the air at the single shove, while Emma yelped in surprise.

To her credit, however, she wasn't that much longer in reacting. Even as the lines released us, I saw a trio of the other girl's drone helicopters fly in. Before my eyes, the main rotors of what had appeared to be ordinary children's toys stopped spinning and slid together into a single blade which then retracted into the body. Meanwhile, the tail end slid inward and apart so that each half covered one side of the helicopter's body. Doing so revealed what looked like a glowing blue flashlight that hummed with energy sticking out of the back of the helicopter, the true source of its ability to fly and lift much heavier objects than an ordinary remote control would have.

Once the three 'toys' had finished shifting into their altered state, they flipped over vertically and flew in, attaching themselves to a barely noticeable set of hooks that poked through holes in the back of Emma's otherwise fairly ordinary looking clothes. Clearly, she was wearing some kind of armor beneath the camouflage of the simple outfit that the 'toys' were designed to attach themselves to. One by one, the helicopters set themselves into their slots, two down near her waist on either side, and one further up around the middle of her back.

The whole process took only a couple of seconds, and once it was over, Emma stopped falling. The transformed toys acted as a flight pack, holding her aloft. It was incredibly impressive to see, marred only slightly by the audible sob of relief that the girl made once it was over.

"It worked?" Emma looked around quickly as she hovered there. I couldn't see her entire expression through the faceplate, but her mouth was open with surprise that belied what had looked like a completely practiced maneuver. She gaped and stammered, "I-it worked!"

By that time, I had used another line to toss myself to the nearest roof away from where we had been. Gravity, unfortunately, still affected me. It did not, however, seem to affect Shatterbird, who was still floating above the spot we had been while lazily stretching her arm out to send what looked like a massive scythe of gathered shards of glass through the air where Emma was. The red warning line was hardly necessary at that point.

"Oversight, back!" I shouted the warning while attaching a tether between my gauntlet and the other girl's pants. The line yanked her out of the glass scythe's path and back toward me a second before the animated shards would have cut through her.

"O-oh..." Emma was breathing a little harder now as she floated next to where I stood, while the helicopters-turned-flight pack adjusted to her new position after I had literally yanked her a good thirty feet or so. "Right... b-bad guy, got it. Sorry, I-" Abruptly, the girl's hand caught mine and yanked me up and off the roof as a storm of glass shards rained down to shatter like hail where we had just been.

We came down on the next roof over, and I twisted around at the sight of another red line attaching itself to Emma, just in time to see one of those serpent-shaped spinning glass constructs lash our way. The thing had grown, taking in broken glass from up and down the neighborhood until it was as large as a crane arm, crashing down toward us with a thousand sharp, jagged pieces.

Reacting quickly, I attached a line from the nearby smokestack on the roof to the furthest bit of glass that I could see. A hard tug on the line literally tore the top couple of feet of the smokestack off the body with an earsplitting screech of grinding metal before the heavy pipe was sent careening through the incoming construct, shattering more and more glass as it went.

Unfortunately, the glass shards simply came back together almost as quickly as they were broken. They were smaller, but that didn't matter as much when Shatterbird could just reform and hold them together. Still, it was a second of time that gave us a chance to get off the roof. We split up around the attack without discussion or prompting. I launched myself up and to the right, while Emma let her new hoverpack send her to the left so that the psychopath would have to split her focus.

Catching a line against the roof we had started on, I let it pull me in about halfway before attaching two more lines from the metal balls on my shoulders, all the way in to Shatterbird's chest. The metal orbs flew off their slots and crashed through more of the shards that were swirling in to protect the woman. The sound of shattering glass was deafening, as more and more of it was brought in, eventually creating enough of a barrier that I couldn't push it through.

That was all right though. The balls had been a distraction. A second after Shatterbird had them under control, the new line that I had attached between myself and the woman carried me bodily into her. She had brought so much of her glass in to block my first attack, that I was able to throw myself through the opening that she left, grunting as the force of my airborne tackle carried us out of the air to crash down onto the roof below.

Shatterbird rolled away from me rather quickly, barely seeming to notice the impact. She came to her feet and easily sidestepped the low kick that I had spun around into from where I had fallen.

A new storm of glass erupted toward me at a single wave from the woman's hand, but before it could reach me, one of the remote control trucks rolled forward and into its path. What looked like a tiny barrel popped up out of the trucks hood, emitting a concussive wave that shattered the incoming glass and sent it spraying away before the woman could get it under control.

Two more of the trucks parked themselves on either side of me, while Shatterbird cast a glance to the spot where Oversight was hovering. She made a considering noise for just a second, before waving a hand. At her gesture, there was cacophonous explosion of noise as every bit of glass within several blocks tore its way up into several constructs. There was a simple tornado, another serpent, and more spikes and blades of glass of various sizes than I could count. All of them converged on the spot in the air where my friend was.

And yet, no warning line appeared. Emma hovered there in the sky, three of her remaining helicopters arrayed around her, and didn't move. As the various constructs of glass came in at her from every angle, the helicopters all pivoted, taking more concussive shots that blew apart the glass repeatedly every time one of them got close enough. The glass kept reforming to attack from more sides in an attempt to get past Oversight's defense, but Emma appeared to have eyes in the back of her head. No matter what angle the glass came from, a helicopter was always there to meet it with a blast of force that knocked it away and broke them into increasingly smaller fragments.

Seemingly ignoring her failure to hurt the flying girl, Shatterbird took advantage of my brief distraction to send more glass toward me. I would have reacted too late, but a new concussive blast from the truck on my right shattered the incoming shards and blew them away.

In spite of myself, I was surprised at how much the other girl was able to pay attention to at once. Somehow she was maintaining control of the helicopters that had attached themselves to her back to keep herself aloft, while using the ones that she had around her to deal with any and all of the repeated attacks coming at her from all sides, and still controlling the trucks that she had put near me. I had absolutely no idea how it was even possible for her to divide her attention that much, but it didn't even really seem to be that hard for her. She was controlling all of them at the same time, somehow focusing on everything at once. It was a kind of multitasking that I'd never seen before.

And I didn't waste any more time before taking advantage of that. Before Shatterbird could reform more glass constructs after the last concussive wave, I threw myself forward. She swept a scythe of glass toward me, but I used a line to give myself a bit of a boost, carrying me over it and into a roll that brought me right in front of the woman. Getting my feet underneath myself, I came up, extending my gauntlet in front of myself into a punch that caught Shatterbird across the face and sent her stumbling backward, bleeding from the mouth.

We stopped like that, for just a second, while the woman touched the blood on her face. She glanced at the red smear dripping from her fingers as though unsure of what it was. Then her mouth set into a grimace that told me she was finally taking this seriously.

The way she came at me then supported that theory. Her leg swept up and around in a kick that looked elegant and casual, belying its deadliness. I managed to duck away from it, yet still felt a sharp stab of pain in my arm that made me gasp and stumble slightly before looking down at the spot of red that stained my costume.

Now I was bleeding. The woman had kicked at me, but her kick had also been accompanied by the glass that surrounded her and made up the woman's costume. The shards kept extending and retracting with each motion, creating an effect that was reminiscent of Leviathan's afterimage of water that followed that giant beast around. In the woman's case, even after she had finished throwing a punch or a kick, the air around the punch wasn't safe as several dozen shards of glass could pass through it a second later. It was like fighting someone whose attacks carried on for a couple of seconds after each strike, and for whom even the act of dodging was also an attack, as her motions left more jagged shards in the path of any incoming attack.

Grimacing at that, I cracked my neck to either side and prepared myself before launching myself forward. I had to go on the offensive, in spite of how dangerous it was. I couldn't let her focus too long on Emma. No matter how well my friend could multitask, eventually she would make a mistake, or not react fast enough. I couldn't let that happen.

Shatterbird in combat moved like another of her swirling tornadoes of glass. It was a smooth, flowing motion that would have reminded me of a dance, if it hadn't been intended to slice me apart.

Her arm lashed around, and I ducked beneath it, maintaining the duck long enough to avoid the glass that trailed after it. Then I rose and lashed out with a kick that made the woman stumble backward, just before she sent a dozen shards of glass toward my face to make me recoil. That was followed up with a series of increasingly fast strikes that took all of my focus to protect myself from. Her hands were like striking cobras, lashing out almost too quickly for me to see. Still, I blocked everything that I could, and avoided most of the rest. She was incredibly fast, but I had been trained by several of the best that the Protectorate had to offer.

Her fist lashed toward my face, supported by two shards of glass like daggers. I twisted my head away from the shards, caught her wrist on the side of my gauntlet to knock it aside, and drove my knee up into her stomach with as much force as I could muster. Her glass armor protected her from most of the damage (as did her upgrades from when Riley had been Bonesaw, I assumed), but it still made her stumble slightly, throwing off her rhythm. Unfortunately, she recovered just as quickly, catching my follow-up kick against her own arm before chopping toward my neck with glass-laced fingers that I barely managed to duck backwards away from. The shards still graced across my chest, glancing off the armor there.

We went back and forth like that. Sometimes she was on the offensive and I could barely keep up with her, while other times I managed to throw a punch or two that threw her off.

Yet it couldn't go on that way. Every time I blocked, more of my costume got cut through. The armored parts could take most of it, but the padded cloth was taking a beating. I felt several more sharp stings, and knew that I would have been incapacitated already if it wasn't for the uniform I wore. The glass was able to cut through even the reinforced cloth of my costume, but by the time it did there wasn't much left to cut me with. I was only taking a small fraction of the damage that I should have been, but it was still damage. I was bleeding from several places, and I hadn't managed a solid enough blow to put her down.

Grimacing from yet another glancing cut, I finally extended myself too far. Shatterbird caught hold of my arm and twisted it around to expose the unarmored inner part before driving her knee up and into it.

I went briefly blind as a shock of pain shot through me as my arm was broken, and I fell to my knees. I must have cried out because I heard Emma call to me.

Every motion sent pain through my arm, but I managed to bring my other arm up and smack Shatterbird's hand away from me. Then I gathered two lines to launch myself upward and back, far into the air while cradling my injured arm in against my stomach as best as I could.

The woman was after me a second later, my moment of weakness alerting her like a shark that smelled blood in the water. Emma took the time to blast more of the woman's glass constructs away to catch her attention, but the monster only had eyes for me.

It was harder to propel myself through the city that way, when every movement made pain shoot through my arm. But I managed it, using my good arm to yank myself over several city blocks while Shatterbird stayed right on my tail. It would have been worse, I knew, without the breaker effect that protected me from the worst of the effects of the lines yanking me around.

Finally, I dropped out of the sky, crashing through the upper window of an old church before tumbling into an utterly graceless roll that made me cry out even more as my arm was jostled.

Before I could rise again, Shatterbird flew in through the opening I had made. She landed easily, stepping on the glass that covered the floor from the previously broken windows that had been shattered by the Nine's announcement of their presence in the city. As she moved forward, the shards lifted off the floor, forming into another viper construct.

"You have tried your best," she announced. "Now you will surrender and allow Jack to have his fun."

Rolling onto my back with a grimace of pain, I managed, "Actually, I'm still stuck on my first idea. We knock you out and drag you in for questioning."

"Flippant as always," the woman observed. "Even in the face of cowardly retreat." She brought her hand down in a gesture that sent the glass viper lashing down toward my face... where it stopped short.

The glass viper remained locked in place, a few inches in front of me, in spite of Shatterbird's gestures and obvious confusion.

"See... that's where you're wrong." I got my feet underneath myself and stood, albeit shakily on tired legs. "I wasn't retreating. It was just the best chance we had to get you where we wanted you. Reach?"

Cassie emerged from the shadows of the church then, her arms outstretched as she maintained her focus on the viper construct. "What do you know?" She remarked, as flippant as I probably sounded. "Looks like my power does outrank yours after I've touched every bit of glass in the building."

The glass viper broke apart, all of the pieces flying backwards to encase the woman. Within seconds, she was covered from her toes all the way up to her shoulders with an unyielding, unmoving suit of glass armor that even she couldn't manipulate as long as Reach kept using her power to hold them in place.

"See, I have a little friend that let us know who we were going to run into if we came to your old hideout." I explained. "So we were actually ready for you. Or, you know, getting ready for you, in Reach's case."

"And," Emma floated down through the window opening and hovered there. "I just had to call ahead to let her know that you were coming so that she could get out of s-sight."

"So..." I was still panting, barely able to stay standing while I lifted my arm to aim at the immobilized woman. "With all due respect, you vicious, vile little piece of shit... I think we'll stick with my plan."

The knockout dart shot off of my gauntlet, embedding itself into Shatterbird's exposed neck as she was held still, trapped within the confines of the same material that she had used to kill so many people. A second later, she was out.

25.04

"It looks like you lost a fight with a blender," Amy observed about an hour later. The two of us were sitting in the Wards locker room in the PRT building so that she could heal the injuries I'd taken while fighting Shatterbird. Aside from the broken arm, I'd lost a fair bit of blood from the dozens of cuts that the crazy glass manipulator had inflicted before we finally managed to bring her down.

I made myself scoff at that. "I'll have you know I actually won that blender fight, thank you very much." After a second, I amended, "Okay so Reach and Oversight won it as much as I did. I would've been dead if it wasn't for both of them. Or worse, in Jack's tender care."

Both of us shuddered at that thought, and I gave another silent thanks to my companions through that fight. I also thanked the fact that neither of them had needed healing. Cassie had gone to be debriefed, while Emma was apparently waiting in the cafeteria.

Seeing a worry line cross Amy's face a moment later, I asked, "How are the Pandoras doing?"

She flinched at the question. "Not good. I don't think they ever really had to think about being mortal, about losing... a part of themselves. It's like..." She paused before shrugging helplessly. "I don't think there's a good comparison. I'd say it's like losing a twin, but it's even worse than that. Rho and Eta were a part of them. Their united thought process, it's all... messed up now without eighteen different inputs. They're lost and reeling. That and the grief... I don't know what's going to happen."

"And you want to be there," I realized, "where you can help them get through it." Cringing at the thought that I had dragged her away, I offered, "I'm sorry, Amy. I could've waited for-"

She shook her head and interrupted my apology. "Don't worry about it." It took the other girl a moment to go on, and ever few words was punctuated by hesitant silence while she sought the right thing to say. "I was in here anyway. Panacea can't disappear when something like this is going on, no matter how much Amy Dallon wants to sit with her sisters and help them get through their grief."

I was fully healed by that point, and looked down at the tattered remains of my costume, held together mostly by the armored portions. Even those were pretty heavily scuffed and scratched. "At least we've got one of them." My voice was soft, knowing that wasn't much help under the circumstances.

Even if I had thought that would be any help at all, it would have been quashed by the other girl's next words. Looking away from me, she murmured, "I wish Vicky was here."

The words made me cringe, but it wasn't surprising. Losing two of her new sisters had to remind the girl of the loss of the sister that she had actually grown up with. After hesitating slightly, I reached out to take the girl's hand. "I'm sorry, Amy. I wish Vicky was here too. I wish..." I blinked a few times rapidly before shaking my head with a sigh. "I wish a lot of things, but that's one of the biggest." Squeezing her limp hand, I spoke softly. "We could all really use a little glory right about now."

Amy remained quiet for several long seconds, looking away from me. When she finally spoke, her voice was so soft that I had to lean a little closer to hear properly. "Stop these guys, Madison." Taking in a long, deep breath, she straightened to look my way finally. "Whatever it takes, put them down. You don't... save these ones. They're not lost puppies that you need to rescue and convert. If you try, if you give them an inch, they'll kill you. They'll kill you and I can't... I can't lose another friend, Madison. I just can't. So whatever it takes, whatever you have to do, you do it. End it. End them."

Swallowing a little, I gave a tiny shake of my head. "I'm pretty sure it's not going to come down to my decision, Amy. I'm just one more cape in a city that's still got a lot of them."

The look that Amy shot me was doubtful. "I'm no Thinker, but I'll tell you this much. However this ends up going down, whatever happens, it's going to involve you. I don't know how, but it will. You're the one that Riley came here to find and Jack knows that. You're the one that he wanted to pass the 'offer' to trade her and the Siberian for the city's safety to. He's got his eyes on you, Madison, and that... scares me. It terrifies the shit out of me, Mads. Either way, it means that you're going to be important to however this ends up going down. And I'm telling you, do not let them get away with this. End them."

I knew what she was saying. Amy wanted no more arrests, no more captures. She wanted the Slaughterhouse Nine dead, and she was flat out asking me to make sure that happened.

Before I could come up with a response to that, the door opened and Lily walked in alongside Missy and Mika. They all gave my shredded costume a once over before collectively flinching.

Recovering first, Missy made a tutting noise while shaking her head. "They are never going to approve this new fashion direction of yours. Ooh, does Sundancer know about it?"

Jumping in on that, Mika used the flight bracelets she was still wearing in spite of not being in costume to float off the ground, inverting so that her head was facing the floor. Sometimes I thought the younger girl enjoyed being upside down more than right side up. "If she doesn't, can we save pictures?"

Rolling my eyes, I pushed myself to my feet. "Yeah, yeah, I get it. I've got another one." Crossing to my locker, I opened it up and took out the fresh costume, though I didn't put it on yet. I wanted to shower first. "Do you know if Shatterbird has been taken care of?"

"Yeah, she's locked down." Lily took the seat beside Amy and stretched out with a yawn. "Director Simms wants to talk to you about that." She gestured vaguely to me. "And some other stuff, I think."

I wanted to ask Lily how she was doing with everything that had happened. I wanted to take the time to try and reassure her, again, that the shield still being up wasn't her fault. I was afraid that she was just compartmentalizing too much, trying to hide her real feelings until the crisis was dealt with. Worse, I was afraid that doing so was going to make her more reckless, prone to either waste her own life or try something desperate to make up for what she thought she'd done wrong. There were any number of things that I wanted to say, but the right words wouldn't come. And without the exact right thing to say, I was afraid of bringing it up. But as I looked at the Asian girl sitting there looking tired and despondent, I knew that I had to saysomething.

My mouth opened to do just that, but Mika spoke first. "Miss... ummm, I mean, Madison?" When I looked that way, she made a twitching motion with her finger. "Can I talk to you?"

"Err," I glanced down at the costume in my hands, then looked toward the showers. "Of course, just let me get umm..."

Snorting at my indecision, Amy pushed herself up, hooking an arm around Lily's to make her rise as well. "Come on you two." She gestured with her free hand toward Missy to include her. "The healer needs food to refuel. Care to escort me?"

While the other two headed out, Missy hesitated long enough to look at me. "You should've killed her." Her voice was quiet, but firm, and her gaze was locked on mine. "They killed Dean and Katherine. They don't get to walk away from that, or from anything else that they've done."

"They won't," I assured her after a second. "I promise, Missy, they're not going to walk away from it."

The younger girl held my gaze briefly before giving the slightest of nods, though I wasn't sure how convinced she actually was. "I'm glad you're okay, Mads."

I managed something resembling a grin, trying to ease the Nine-induced tension that we were feeling. "Hey, I've gotta be okay. After all, we've still got the Hungry Hungry Hippos maneuver to pull off." We were still naming our joint teamwork plans after old children's toys and games.

That coaxed something resembling a faint smile out of the girl. "I'd rather do Duck, Duck, Goose."

"That'll be a good one," I agreed. "Though we have to wait for one of these fights to happen near a firehose." Sobering after a second, I assured her once again. "One down, Missy. We'll get the rest."

With a silent nod that didn't seem all that convinced, Missy moved out of the locker room.

I breathed out then before looking toward Mika, who was still hovering there upside down. "Hey," I said quietly. "How are you feeling? Are your parents okay?"

She righted herself and touched down to the floor before nodding. "They're here, sleeping in one of the guest rooms. They umm, they didn't want to let me keep fighting. I told them the PRT would have to use resources to stop me that they could use against the Nine. We umm..." She made a slight sniffing noise and looked down. "We had a fight. I told them I had to fight because if I didn't, more people would die. And if more people die because I don't fight, because I don't do enough... I... I can't..."

She trailed off then, and I flinched before stepping that way to embrace the eleven-year old girl. Fuck me. None of this was fair. None of it was right. Mika was a kid, and she had to tell her own parents that she had to fight the terrifying villains, had to risk her own life against a fate where death was not the worst option. She was forced to tell her mom and dad that she was risking her life because the alternative, surviving while others died, was too horrible for her to live with.

And I couldn't even tell her that she was wrong. She was a kid, but she was also a very strong cape, and we had a woeful lack of those for this particular situation. We needed everybody we could get.

But I was still tempted to use one of my knockout darts to put the girl down. Then I'd take the unconscious Mika to her parents to keep her away from this particular battle for as long as it took.

Instead, I just hugged the girl tighter, thinking about how I would feel if someone made the decision to take me out of this fight 'for my own good.' "Your parents just want you to be safe, Mika."

"I know." She gave a slight nod against my shoulder before stepping back. "What I wanted to ask is... how do you do it?"

Blinking at the question, I asked, "How do I do what?"

"You know..." Mika gestured toward me with both hands. "How do you keep being funny? How do you keep laughing even with all the ummm, all the bad things that keep happening? How do you keep making jokes even though people are... dead?" She swallowed at the last word, looking toward me imploringly for answers.

It took me a moment to find an answer. Finally, I breathed out before starting. "There's a few ways, really. First of all, it does affect me. Sometimes I don't want to make jokes. I just want to... hit things. Or curl into a ball and cry." The admission was hard, but Mika deserved the whole truth. "And I do cry, Mika. I think we all do sometimes. Because this stuff... it's hard. The things that we see, the people that..." I trailed off and shook my head, swallowing back the lump in my throat at the thought of my parents. "The point is, it affects all of us. You're not the weird one for being hurt and scared."

The girl's chin lifted and I thought she was about to say that she wasn't afraid, but she stopped herself. Once it was clear that she wasn't going to speak, I continued. "But as for how I keep it from being overwhelming, I... one thing I do is think about how amazing it is that we have these powers." At her unsure, doubting look, I pressed on. "Seriously, yes there's bad things happening, but there's also good things. We can really help people that no one else could have helped, Mika. We have a chance to do some very good things, to change the world and make it better."

That time, she clearly couldn't help but speak up. "You really believe that?" She didn't sound doubtful so much as... afraid to hope. After everything she had been through in the past couple of months, her ability to hope for good things, for positive change, was strained to the breaking point.

"I do." I reached down to take her hand and squeezed it. "Mika, that's the other reason that I can keep making jokes and being optimistic. Because it's a choice we make. See, the way that I see it, there's a scale in the world. On side of the scale we have all the positive, good things in the world. On the other side, we have all the negative things. There's a lot of bad guys adding a lot of negative things to that side. So, how do we balance it out? We stop them, as much as we can, but we also add good things to our side. We make people laugh. We stay positive, as much as possible. And we take away the power of the bad guys."

"You can do that?" Mika stared at me, eyes widening slightly. "Take their power away?"

I coughed, shaking my head. "Sorry, no. Not literally. I mean you take away the power that they have to make everything terrible. That's what people like Jack want, Mika. He wants everyone to be afraid, to be focused on how horrible things are. So, you laugh at him. You make jokes. That's how you disarm people like that. You make fun of them."

The younger girl considered that for a moment before prompting, "But you still hit them really, really hard, right?"

I reached out to muss her hair, nodding. "Oh hell yeah, beat that son of a bitch like he owes you money." She giggled finally, and I smiled before embracing her again. "The world's full of bad things, Mika. We can fight back, not just physically, but by showing people that it's okay to keep laughing. It's okay to mock the assholes that keep trying to make the world be worse than it is. That's how you really take their power away. We laugh at them because they hate it, because they want to bring us down to their level. So we don't let that happen. We show people that all the monsters in the world can't take away humor and fun."

Mika thought about that for a few more seconds before giving a slow nod. "Thanks, Madison. I guess I should let you shower, huh?"

"Probably a good idea," I agreed before stepping back. "We can handle this, Mikes. Trust me, we'll deal with the rest of the Nine."

She hesitated, but nodded one more time before heading for the door, leaving me to get cleaned up and changed.

---

Eventually, I had showered and changed into the fresh costume. I was still tired after my sleep had been interrupted, but there was no time to lament the lack of rest. Jack was definitely going to counter attack as soon as he found out we'd taken another of his members away from him. I just hoped that we could withstand whatever he hit us with.

My answer seemed to come a moment after I left the Wards area and emerged into the main corridor. I was just orienting myself to head for the cafeteria to see if anyone was still there, and to snag food for myself, when alarms began to blare. It took me only a second to realize the origin point, but as soon as I did, I was off and running.

The alarms were coming from the detention center, where Shatterbird was being kept.

Halfway down the hall, I used a line to draw myself the rest of the way, cursing out loud. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. No you don't, not this time. Shit, no, please." After everything we had done, if the woman got away at all, let alone this soon... I didn't know what we would do.

Vista met up with me at the entrance into the detention area less than a minute later, the space twisting around her as she emerged from the next hallway over. Together, the two of us moved through the entrance, which was standing open. My eyes widened at the sight of the empty guard's desk with the blood seeping out from under it, and I quickly ran that way.

It was too late, the man who had been stationed there was dead, killed by half a dozen bullet wounds from close range. Whoever had done this had wanted to make sure that he wouldn't be able to call out an alert until it was too late.

The security doors that should have been closed were hanging open, inviting anyone to leave right past us. Worse, according to the security monitor at the guard's desk, the other entrance, from the rear lot where they loaded prisoners too dangerous to bring through the main facility, was open as well. And the controls had been broken so it was impossible to close them again.

Before we could wait for anyone else to show up to back us up, a black line rose up in front of me, leading into the facility. "Shit," I cursed, starting that way at a run once more, and Vista followed after me.

With Missy's help, the two of us quickly navigated the maze of corridors and stairways that led to where they had apparently been keeping Shatterbird locked away. If she actually escaped after all this... I shut the thought out of my mind and kept moving.

Following the black warning line, we emerged together into what looked like an interrogation room, with a strange tube-like structure on one side of a long table where the prisoner was kept. Two guards were laying dead on the ground, while a third stood in front of the tube itself. Director Simms himself was slumped in a corner of the room, bleeding profusely from his chest. The black line was leading to him.

Before we could do anything, or even start to understand what was going on, the guard in front of the tube ran his fingers over the buttons on the side of the thing, and it cracked open.

"No!" I shouted, attaching a line to the guard to yank him away from Shatterbird's prison. Before I could, however, there was another explosive gunshot. Instantly, a hole was blown into the man's back and he pitched forward against the tube, sliding down it and leaving a trail of blood on the way.

Simms was holding his sidearm, which wasn't an ordinary pistol but one filled with tinker-tech explosive ammo, pointed toward the guard he had just killed. "Stop... her..." He managed, blood bubbling up from his mouth as his arm slipped, unable to keep it up any longer.

Yet Shatterbird was already out of the tube. She slid over the table, landing in front of us before twisting into a kick that knocked me aside like a bag of flower, pain erupting back into my face. Then she was out the door and began to disappear down the hallway. She had no glass down here to work with, but she would very quickly.

I rolled over, shouting for Missy to stop the woman. Rather than chase after her, however, Vista stooped down and took the pistol from Simms' limp hand. Then she turned and made a quick series of gestures with her free hand toward the door. Before my eyes, the view of the doorway changed as Missy altered and twisted the space. First we saw the long hallway outside of the door, leading to the stairs, the distance of which shrank dramatically with another gesture until the stairs appeared to be directly in front of the doorway. Another turn of the younger girl's hand twisted space once more to orient up the stairs, where we could see the fleeing Shatterbird about halfway up them.

Space sufficiently twisted, Vista raised the pistol with both hands. It was so big in her small grip that it might have almost looked comical if it hadn't been for the seriousness of the situation. Carefully, but quickly sighting along it, Missy pulled the trigger. The sound was still deafening in these tight spaces, and it bucked heavily in her hand, nearly tearing its way out of her grip in spite of her attempt to hold it steady.

A normal pistol wouldn't have done the job, not with the way that the Slaughterhouse Nine had been upgraded. But Director Simms' explosive bullets were far from ordinary. Which meant that one shot was enough. As soon as it hit, the back of Shatterbird's head blew apart, leaving what was left of the broken body to sprawl across the steps.

Lowering the pistol after a moment before letting it drop to the floor, Vista looked back toward my wide eyed gaze. Her voice was as firm as it had been earlier, the voice of a soldier who had put down a rabid animal. "They don't get to walk away from this. Not this time."

25.05

Before I had even fully gotten over my shock about what had just happened, Vista was already moving out the door, using the fact that she had already twisted the space almost all the way up the stairs to give herself a head start as she literally jumped over Shatterbird's fallen corpse. "Help Simms!" She called over her shoulder. "I'll get Panacea. We'll be right back."

That reminder was enough to snap me out of my daze, and I scrambled over to where the newest PRT director had fallen. His face was ashen, and there seemed to be more blood covering his ruined suit and the floor around him than his body could hold, even though I knew he couldn't have lost as much as it looked like and not already be dead. He was pale and couldn't speak, but definitely alive and conscious.

I had no idea what I could do at that point, but I did the best I could by tearing the shirt off one of the nearby fallen guards and pressed it to the chest of the critically injured man. He'd already lost so much blood that what I was doing probably amounted to sticking my finger in a dam that was already empty, but what else could I do? I felt pathetically inadequate and useless at that point. This was beyond any kind of first aid that I could have provided. My guess was that Simms was only alive at the moment through sheer willpower. If that gave out before Amy got here, there was nothing I could do about it.

"Sir," I coaxed him while holding the already soaked shirt against his chest. "She's down. Shatterbird didn't get away. Look at me, please. Please look at me. You're okay. Panacea's coming, sir. Panacea's coming and then you'll be okay. Mister—err Director Simms, keep your eyes open, please. I know it hurts, I know, but look at me. Please, sir, keep looking at me. She's almost here, sir."

Honestly, I had no idea how far away Panacea was, but I needed to encourage the man. "Just hold on a little bit longer. Don't let Jack win, Director Simms. Don't let Jack beat you. Please, hold on just a little longer, sir. I promise she's almost here. Just a few more seconds. Hold on just a few more seconds."

I twisted a little to glance at the stairs that were still visible through the doorway before looking back at the rapidly dwindling man in front of me. "No, sir, don't close your eyes. Don't. Just look at me. See? You can beat this, you can beat him. Jack thinks you're dead already, Director. Make him be wrong, please. They lost Shatterbird, but you're alive. Just a few more seconds, sir. Ten more seconds, I'm sure. Can you hold on for ten more seconds, Director Simms? Ten more seconds, you can do that, right?"

Finally, after an agonizingly long time that was probably less than two minutes, Vista and Panacea appeared in the doorway. Amy all but shoved me out of the way as she came down to her knees, hands pressed to either side of the director's neck. A moment later she snapped, "Call for a medical team! We need to get him to the hospital wing as soon as possible. Hurry, I can stabilize him for now, but he needs a lot of blood and I can't make something out of nothing." She muttered something a second later while focusing back on the fallen man that sounded an awful lot like 'I wish Riley was here.'

The next few minutes passed quickly. Amy kept Director Simms alive until the emergency medical team arrived with a gurney, which they loaded both onto so the healer could continue her work. Then she and the injured man were swept out of the room together and rushed up to the medical center.

All of which left Vista and myself standing alone in the interrogation room, surrounded by the bodies of the dead guards. It was eerily quiet in the few seconds after the medical team had rushed away.

Missy spoke up first, barely more than a whisper but still startlingly loud against the previous silence. "Valefor, right? All of this had to be because of Valefor."

I nodded slowly. The rumor that the Endbringer cultist, whose power allowed him to implant irresistible commands in people who met his gaze, had hooked up with the Slaughterhouse Nine had been one that we'd been afraid to fully contemplate. The Nine were already a threat that was impossible to predict, let alone if unwilling sleeper agents that had been mind whammied into assassins were thrown into the fray. If Valefor really had joined up with them, it would mean that it wasn't just Jack and his followers that we had to worry about, it was anyone who might have had contact with them. Absolutely anyone could be a threat, even someone who was otherwise fully trustworthy.

Unfortunately, now it seemed like that rumor was fully substantiated. There was just no other good explanation for what had happened, unless that Mnemosyne girl who rescued Hunter had already changed sides. Even then, I didn't know if she was capable of something like this. For that matter, I didn't know whose 'side' she was actually on, only that she had saved Hunter, which meant I owed her.

No, the single most likely explanation was that Valefor was a part of the Nine, which just made the guilt that I already felt even worse. I had chosen not to kill Shatterbird, in spite of the threat that she still posed. I couldn't bring myself to let her die, in spite of what she had done and the ongoing kill order. Ihad brought her back to this place, where Jack had to have found out about her capture. I'd wanted Jack to know about it, wanted him to know that he'd lost another of his little murder buddies. I'd wanted him to know that we beat him at something else.

I'd pushed this to happen. All of these men that were dead, all the ones in this room, the man in the front detention area by the entrance desk, and anyone else that had been killed during this attempted escape were all my fault. If Director Simms died, that would be my fault as well. I hadn't wanted to kill Shatterbird. I'd wanted Jack to know that we had her. I had brought her into this building, a known location where Jack had to know that she was present. This was my fault.

But what was the alternative, kill an unconscious and helpless opponent? I couldn't be that kind of person. I just... couldn't. Not after what had happened to Taylor. I couldn't let myself just kill like that, when there was any other choice. There was a line between killing in self-defense or immediate defense of others, and execution. Shatterbird had been contained. Killing her just... wasn't something I could have done, no matter who she had been.

Yet look at the current situation. More people were dead, maybe even Director Simms if Amy didn't arrive in time to save him, who would have been alive if I hadn't made the choice that I had. I'd avoided killing one mass murderer, by so doing, I'd allowed several innocent people to die.

What choice did I really have then? Which choice was right? Why had sparing a life led to more death? What was fair about that? What was right about it? What was I supposed to do? I'd spared a guilty life, and by doing so, had sentenced more lives to die. And now Shatterbird was dead as well, which meant that the only thing I had accomplished by sparing her, besides briefly sparing my conscience, was the death of several PRT agents.

I had no answer for my own confusion. I had no idea what else I could have done, or what I should have done. I'd done the right thing, I thought, but it had ended in not only the death of the person I had spared, but also several other deaths that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

It seemed that no matter what I could have done, no matter what choice I could have made, there was no right answer. I had stuck to my morals, and by so doing, I had gotten innocent people killed. This was my fault.

---

"This was not your fault."

Director Simms' voice was firm, though still a bit weak and tired, as he gazed at me. In spite of the fact that less than an hour had passed since he had been on death's doorstep, he was conscious and talking. Amy really was a miracle worker, and her efforts along with the absolute top of the line medical facilities in the building had saved the man's life and gave him enough strength to speak, albeit weakly.

He still looked spent, however. He clearly didn't have much strength, and his body was pale and worn as he lay in the hospital bed, wearing a medical gown instead of the suit I had always seen him in.

It wasn't just myself and Vista standing in the medical room either. The entire Wards team was there, along with Amy, Emma, and Hunter. The place was crowded enough that the doctor had already demanded that we clear out within a few minutes. He'd wanted it to be immediately, but Director Simms had insisted that he needed to talk to us briefly.

He continued, "Bringing Shatterbird in alive, letting us try to interrogate her, I know why you did it. And I know why you couldn't do it any other way. None of what happened here was your responsibility, yours or... Oversight's." He nodded toward Emma.

I started to shake my head at that, feeling that guilt creeping up again. "But I-"

"Tether," Flechette put a hand up to stop me. "Shut up and listen. That's an order."

In spite of his weakness, I could have sworn that Director Simms smiled very faintly at that before straightening a little in the hospital bed that the doctor had threatened to have him containment foamed to if he didn't stay put on his own. "Tether, listen to me. I'm going to... tell you a secret." He glanced toward the others and added, "I'm going to tell all of you a secret, apparently."

I felt something brush my hand, and glanced that way to find Emma clutching for it. Even with her face covered, I could tell that she was as horrified as I was. Wincing, I took her hand in mine and squeezed it. For her, realizing how much guilt she had to feeling as well, I stayed quiet and let the man talk.

"The secret that I'm going to tell you," Director Simms continued. "Is that sometimes... it's not enough. Sometimes we do the right thing, and bad things still happen. Sometimes we do everything right and we still can't stop people from dying. Sometimes it's doing the right things that makes the bad things happen." It took him a few extra breaths before he could continue, and the whole time, his eyes seemed to bore into mine. "But that doesn't mean westop doing the right thing. It doesn't mean that we change who we are or stop trying. It doesn't mean we stop hoping that things can get better.

"We don't do the right thing because it always works, or because it's always the best answer. We don't do the right thing because there's never any unintended side effects or circumstances. We don't choose to do what's right because it's perfect, we choose it because it's right."

Lifting a hand that was still hooked up to machines, he pointed at Emma and me. "Our choices aren't binary. Just because you do the right thing doesn't mean everything turns out right. It's not that simple. The only thing you can control is your own actions, your own choices. That doesn't preclude others from making things worse. Hell, that's how the Nine thrive. They turn good choices into horrible outcomes. They corrupt and ruin everything, everywhere they go. That's why you have to stop them. All of you... have to stop them." He hesitated, glancing away from us briefly before continuing in a softer, more restrained voice. "And now you have to do it without the PRT."

"Err, sir?" Flechette stepped closer to the bed, clearly frowning behind her visor. "What do you mean, we have to do it without the PRT? You're gonna be okay, and there's others that-"

"Others that might be compromised by Valefor." Director Simms interrupted, looking toward us once more. "We have no idea how many of our agents have had a... discussion with that monster, or how many might in the future. Anyone you talk to or depend on could snap at any second. Valefor can program people into his own personal little murderbots that can go off any time he wants them to, either when they hear a certain phrase or after another condition is filled, like time or when they see a certain person or group of people You can't trust people until Valefor is taken out and we have a chance to go through every single agent that could have been compromised."

"He could've taken over capes too," Reach pointed out from her place in the back of the room. "Any of us, or one of the others in this little 'alliance' could be a sleeper agent. They wouldn't even know it."

"True." Director Simms nodded. "That's why you have to be careful. Anyone could be a threat. But I don't think that he's gotten any capes yet. Obviously there's no way to be absolutely certain, but I believe that if Jack had control over one of the city's capes like that, he would have used them to break Shatterbird out. It would've been more likely to succeed, and a much more crippling blow either way it went down. My educated guess is that he doesn'tyet have any capes in his control. But that could change, which is why you have to be careful about who you trust from now on."

Amy spoke up from where she was standing on the other side of Emma.. "I have to warn my father. His... ummm... organization could have been infiltrated too."

"Do it," Simms agreed. "I assume you have a method of contacting him for your monthly meetings."

Clearly surprised by that, Amy stared at the man. "You, uhh, you knew about those? But why didn't you use them to catch him or... something?"

That time, I was certain of the faint smile that came to the weakened man's face. "We could've, sure. But some things are more important than how many prolific arrests we make. You needed to not lose another family member, especially while he was behaving under a truce."

While Amy was still coming to terms with that, the man waved his hand toward us. "Now go. Don't trust anybody after you leave this building, not even me." When we started to object, he spoke over us. "I mean it. Until Valefor is out of the equation, all of you are operating under constant master/stranger protocols. Any of us could have been compromised at any point. Be careful, and handle the situation. You can do this. Between you, the Undersiders, Faultline's group, and what Marquis brings to the table, you can all handle the Nine."

His eyes found mine once more, and his voice softened. "You understand what that means? No back-up, no reinforcements, no PRT standing with you. And no PRT building to bring prisoners to."

"Which means no prisoners," I acknowledged quietly.

He nodded in agreement. "No prisoners. All of you have my ongoing authorization to do whatever it takes, anything you have to do, to bring down the Nine. Put them in the ground. No negotiations, no playing games. Whatever you need to do to finish this, you do it."

We started for the door, the mood obviously somber. Before I could move, however, Director Simms caught my arm with his hand. His grip was tighter than I would have expected him to be capable of. His gaze met mine intently. "Be careful. And... good luck."

After another second, that tight grip slackened, and the man lay back on the bed once more. He had spent himself, and was all but unconscious already. I took a few steps backward, then turned to join the others outside the room.

Jack had lost Shatterbird, for good this time. But he'd also managed to force a state of paranoia over everyone, and cut the entire PRT off at the knees. They couldn't be trusted, and any single agent in the building might be a threat just waiting to kill everyone else.

"So we're moving Simms somewhere, right?" Kid Win put into the silence that followed our exit from the room. "Cuz bullshit if we're just leaving him here."

"Yeah," Flechette agreed. "I'll contact Faultline and see what Murk can do to get the director somewhere safer. Panacea, you said you can contact your... Marquis?" When Amy nodded, she went on. "Tether, you have history with the Undersiders. Get a hold of them, plan a meeting place for everyone. And tell them to stay away from the PRT building. As of right now, we're operating without Protectorate or PRT guidance. We have to do this ourselves.

"Scion help us all."

Interlude 25 – Contessa

A steady rain fell against the boarded up windows of Arcadia High School. The gentle thrum of drops against plywood joined the steady, methodical scratch of a pen on paper to form a sort of lonely chorus.

The woman who, for three decades, had called herself Contessa sat at the desk in the front of the room. A stack of papers lay in front of her, while her red-tipped pen danced across a single sheet taken from the top of that pile. She marked where grammar errors existed, and where the essay's writer had made historical mistakes. Opinions that she disagreed with were commented on or marked not with the red pen, but with the green one that lay precisely eight inches to the left of the paper.

As she finished with that paper and set a new one in its place beneath the tip of the crimson pen, her mind began to fill with precisely where every corrective mark needed to be made. Rather than follow those instructions, however, the woman closed her eyes.

Nothing changed, of course. Even with her eyes closed, the power would tell her precisely where to move the pen and what strokes to make. She didn't even need to read the words on the paper before she could correct it. There was no need to even see it before her power would tell her exactly how it should be marked. There was, she thought, some deeper allegory to that fact beyond the obvious.

The guiding power that answered every question save for the preciseone that she needed it to answer had been a part of Contessa for almost her entire life. A fleeting, barely recalled childhood where the solution to every situation didn't magically appear in her head came to mind occasionally. But for thirty plus years now, she had grown increasingly accustomed to never needing to actually think about what she was doing. Reaching for her power, allowing it to answer every question she might have, had become so instinctual that not doing so when confronted with a problem required extra effort.

No, she thought to herself, thought to the guiding power. Don't tell me the answer. Don't tell me what to mark, or where to put it. Don't tell me where to look. Don't guide my eyes or my hand. Let me do this part on my own. After a few repeated mantras of that, her eyes opened and the guidance had vanished from her mind. The power had obliged her request, leaving her to read the essay on her own.

A glowing portal appeared at the other side of the room, allowing a man to step through it. His manner of dress was almost painfully ordinary, his features utterly mundane. Set against a crowd, most eyes would pass him over entirely. Any listed description would match far too many men to be even slightly useful. He was forgettable, bland in almost every regard.

"Of all the things I expected to find you doing," the Number Man announced. "Grading essays was far from the top. Although," he paused to consider. "It occurs to me that these must be old papers."

"I had not graded them yet. There were other concerns," Contessa answered simply without rising.

"And there aren't other concerns now?" The portal had vanished, and the Number Man walked casually up the aisle, his eyes passing over the empty desks. His hand brushed over a student's name that was scratched into the wood of one in particular. "Shatterbird was killed by one of the Wards."

"I... was aware."

---

Earlier That Day

Shatterbird had been captured. As one of Cauldron's better successes (as far as power went), they needed her out and about. The number of parahumans that she had helped create simply by virtue of the fear her power inspired was too beneficial to lose, to say nothing of her own potential.

Not that she would be the one to win the war that was bound to come. Their enemy was entirely too powerful for something like flying glass to present even the slightest threat. But she was yet another cog in an expansive machine. There were ways that she could, and would, contribute to eventual victory. But to do that, she couldn't be dead, or locked up in a Protectorate cell.

Or so Contessa's power had informed her. The newly updated step of the plan to prevent total apocalypse, which had been running for as long as she could easily remember, was to free the woman and escort her out of the city. She needed to be clear of this if she was going to contribute when the time came. Sacrifices now meant they had a marginally higher probability of success and survival later.

Wearing the stolen uniform of a PRT agent, she strolled across the back lot of the PRT building, adopting as unhurried a pace as possible at the instruction of her power. The pair of guards stationed at the rear entrance there came to attention, watching her cautiously in spite of the uniform. She wasn't one that they recognized, and with what was going on in the city, their concern was understandable. After all, with the protective helmet that covered part of her face, she could have been anyone.

I want to make them trust me.

The steps came to mind immediately, and she stopped walking. Stretching her arms out to either side, the woman yawned wide and then gave the men what would look to them like a somewhat tired smile. "I've got an idea," she said. "How about Peterson comes out to do the next patrol and we get to sit in his office playing solitaire?"

That calmed the pair, and their weapons lowered. "What'd you do to get tossed onto rear patrol?" One of the men asked, his tone more curious at that point than suspicious.

There was no need to think of a conceivable answer. There was no need to think at all. The answer simply came to mind, the next part of the plan coming into focus. "Oh you know, I made the mistake of complaining about the crap his little dog leaves laying around everywhere."

Both men made faces at that while nodding in understanding. Apparently this Peterson man's dog was a well-known nuisance. One gestured at the armored door behind them. "You heading in now?"

"Yup," she started walking again, giving them a short nod as she passed. "I need some rack time, and you know how they hate it when you turn in reports late." There were murmured affirmations, and she walked straight to the sealed door. With barely a conscious thought, her hand moved to input the code that her power provided. A moment later, the door beeped and she was able to pull it open.

"Good luck," one of the men spoke up with a glance over his shoulder. "And watch where you step. Never know where you're gonna find more of that little shit's shit."

Giving the man a thumbs up, Contessa stepped into the building and let the door close behind her. Now that she was inside the building, all she had to do was locate the cell that they were keeping Shatterbird in and escort the woman off the premises. A call to Doormaker would get the woman out of the city.

And then the psychopath would be free to continue killing innocent people.

The thought made her pause in mid-step. Where had it come from? The steps were very clear. If they wanted to save the world, the next step was to release Shatterbird. The damage that the woman would do, particularly if she was separated from the Nine this way, was a drop in the bucket compared to their true enemy. They needed her out and about, creating chaos and causing more triggers that would add to their still growing army of capes. Every parahuman that triggered before the end inevitably came was one more bullet to use against... him.

Having the ability to see what might happen, an ability that gives you that kind of view of the world and the future, doesn't give you the authority or the right to destroy someone's life. Power, especially that kind of power, comes with an inherent responsibility to use it in a way that makes things better

She knew where the words had come from. Madison Clements had written them on her essay about the cape called Visionary. Contessa couldn't understand, just then, why they had occurred to her now.

Shaking off the thought, she continued down the hallway. A minor check with her power guided her path, while allowing her to avoid any other interruptions simply by adjusting her pace to what was needed in order to progress without running into anyone. All she had to do was think about avoiding anyone that would stop or question her, as well as any capes that might be able to stop her. Security doors were of little use when she could either input the code easily, or in the case of bio-metric scans, simply time her arrival to be right behind someone else that was going through.

It would be a simple matter to release Shatterbird the way that her power said was the correct next step.

You can't ruin people's lives, you can't take away their choices based on what might happen and then justify it as being necessary for the greater good.

More of Madison's-Tether's words. A simple, naive thought process, of course. There were things coming to this world that the girl herself had not the slightest inkling of. The things that they had to do in order to prepare the world for that could be seen as terrible, but they were necessary if the world, or any world, was going to survive in any fashion.

It's not enough to stop the bad things in the world from happening. It's not enough to just kill everyone who might do something wrong or horrible. You can't just make people's choices for them and force them to be a certain way just because you say they should. The world has to deserve to exist, and the only way that it's going to get better is if people are guided toward the right choices.

As she approached the entrance to the holding cells, an alarm began to sound. Confident that she wasn't the reason for it, the woman paused nonetheless. The door that led to the security desk was standing open. After briefly querying her power to ensure that it was safe to walk in, she continued on.

A man was dead, lying slumped in his chair as the six different bullet wounds ensured that he'd paid for sounding the alarm. Contessa frowned slightly, lifting her gaze to the security monitor on the desk. According to the monitor, both the front and rear entrances had been jammed open, the controls broken so that they couldn't be closed again.

Clearly someone else was already working on freeing the imprisoned Shatterbird. One of Jack's cronies, no doubt. Valefor, if she had to guess. Which meant that her presence shouldn't have been necessary. Simply asking her power how to ensure that Shatterbird was freed would have resulted in a simple 'wait and see' response. Yet her power had continued to direct her here. Was it possible that the woman's escape would be prevented without Contessa's presence?

As if in answer to the question, the sound of people approaching drew her attention that way.

I want to not be seen in here.

Following the resulting instructions that sprang to mind, Contessa stepped to a nearby secured utility closet. Her fingers danced over the buttons, and when the door beeped, she stepped inside. Rather than close the door all the way, she left it open a crack to see what, or who, she was dealing with.

Tether and Vista. The two came into the room, immediately moving to check on the deceased guard.

I want to stop them from interfering with Shatterbird's escape.

Simple enough. Three steps. Use the pistol to aim a threat toward Vista that Tether would notice. The girl would react by using a line to throw her teammate back and away from her, which would separate the pair and put Vista near enough to the closet for Contessa to reach with the stun gun on her other hip. Tether herself would still be turning to find the threat when Contessa reached her with a single lunge.

Three steps, both literally and symbolically. One step out of the closet, one to catch the younger girl and drop her, and a third to reach Tether and put her down. Temporarily of course.

Putting her hand on the pistol, Contessa watched while the girls took in what had happened. Three steps, and Shatterbird would be released. Cauldron's plan could continue uninterrupted. Perhaps a few more would die who wouldn't have if the woman had remained imprisoned, but there would also be fewer parahuman triggers with which to fight the true enemy. It was no contest. A few lives, even an entire city, weighed against the literal apocalypse? It was worth releasing Shatterbird for every extra parahuman that she provided Cauldron's eventual army, however unknowingly.

Mind made up, the woman began to draw the pistol from the holster while Tether seemed to be reacting to one of her invisible warning lines. Clearly things were not going well deep in the prison. Which meant that the two Wards were going in, and had to be stopped now.

That's what I'd do. I would help people make the right choices, not take those choices away from them. I would try to help make good things happen. Because if you kill everyone who might do something bad, you haven't stopped all the monsters. You've just turned yourself into the worst monster of all.

Hand tight against the pistol, Contessa... stopped. As soon as she did, her power began to list various steps that she needed to take in order to ensure the continued success of Shatterbird's escape, and thus the completion of that stage of the ongoing plan to create the army that would save the world.

With each second that passed, the power that had guided her life since she was a child continued to adjust. It paid no attention to the thoughts that swept through her mind, the consideration that wouldn't stop interrupting her intentions.

Her power didn't care about nuance. It didn't debate morality. It was cold, logical, and always correct. Save for the few blocks that had been placed on it, her power was one hundred percent right about anything she asked it. The answers came without effort, the solution to every problem that she could conceive, so long as the questions weren't those of a moral, opinionated nature.

Monsters. They had to do everything possible to ensure that the world was able to survive what was coming, but was there a line that they could cross where the ends would not justify the means? Was there a point where the world that existed after the apocalypse would be worse than a world that didn't exist at all? If people like the Slaughterhouse Nine were allowed to run rampant, what would that mean to the world of the future?

What mattered more, the fact of the world's survival, or the state of its survival? Was it possible to compromise?

Her power offered no answer to questions as existential as these. It simply continued to blindly insist on the steps that needed to be taken in order to ensure Shatterbird's escape, steps that were becoming more complicated with each passing nanosecond.

The steps were laid out before her, adjusting slightly as Contessa continued to hesitate. Yet she could still do what was necessary. Shatterbird could be rescued, released back into the world so that she would inspire more triggers, more parahumans.

A world destroyed because they hadn't forced enough parahumans to be created.

A world that survived, ruled entirely by people like the Slaughterhouse Nine, where no one knew anything but suffering and death, where a torturous existence was all anyone had an opportunity to look forward to.

Which was worse? What kind of people were they if they continued to allow these things to happen without a thought about the people they were sacrificing in order to save others? At what point did the quality of humanity they were preserving outweigh the quantity?

Steps continued to update, even as Tether and Vista had already left. She could delay them. Her power provided the steps that were necessary to bring the security doors back online long enough to close every door between the Wards and their quarry. Six steps, and she would be able to meet Shatterbird outside, ensuring her escape.

Ensuring the escape of one monster, intentionally allowing her to continue terrorizing even more of the world so that her actions would cause more triggers, on the off chance that something useful appeared.

Contessa... ignored her power. Shutting the thought away, dismissing the plans that it continued to outline, she left the utility closet and walked out of the building in the midst of the ongoing confusion. She walked away from the building. And for the first time in her life, she walked away from her plan.

---

"I was under the impression that you were going to take her out of the city," the Number Man spoke calmly, his eyes obviously evaluating her reaction.

Contessa didn't respond at first. After leaving the PRT building, she had come here, to the high school. She hadn't known where she was going at first. For once, she had intentionally not asked her power... anything. She'd barely known how to walk without its guidance, and it felt a bit like hopping on one foot. There was a piece of her balance that was missing, a crutch that she had relied on for several times longer than she hadn't. For that matter, she hadn't even known where the high school was. Without her power or Doormaker's portal, she had just... wandered through this city under siege.

Once she arrived back at the high school after wandering aimlessly, she had come in to... read old essays, to grade them. She had ignored her power's urgings about how the plan could be brought back in line, ignored what it said and focused on nothing but the simple papers in front of her.

Ms. Fortune. She... sort of enjoyed the act. Dealing with teenagers, teaching them, it was as false as anything else she had ever done. The answers came to her with a single thought, rather than being earned through study and discipline. Yet still, in spite of the fact that she was essentially an actress reading lines from a script, she enjoyed it. She enjoyed engaging with the students.

Finally, Contessa lifted her gaze to look at the Number Man. Her voice was cool. "I changed my mind."

His eyebrow raised barely noticeably. "I wasn't aware that you could change your mind." He was fishing, clearly curious about what had changed. After a moment, he added with obvious awkwardness, "Are you all right?"

Once again, she didn't answer at first. Her eyes drifted away from him and back to the papers in front of her. "I need some time to myself. There are... considerations that I need to make."

"You want to take a vacation?" Now the man was even more curious, with a note of concern that was as alien in his voice as her own indecision was.

"As I said," she straightened from the desk, standing so that she could look at him directly. "There are things that I have to consider, thoughts that I need to... address with myself." Thoughts of what they had created, of what the world itself would be if they went too far. And other thoughts, such as the question of who she was outside of her power. What else did she have to offer aside from the solution to nearly every problem in existence? Aside from the answers her power gave her, what was she?

The Number Man's voice returned, interrupting her reflection. "And you're addressing those thoughts now... here... in this city?"

Her head gave the faintest of nods. "This is the right place."

There was another pause and considering look from the man, before he nodded. "All right then. What should I tell the good Doctor?"

"Tell her that I will return when I have had a chance to think." Contessa turned away from the man to look at the whiteboard, her gaze taking in the assignment instructions printed there in her own handwriting. Words that she hadn't written. Rather, her power had guided her hand in what was the proper assignment.

The Number Man was silent for another few seconds, before he finally spoke again. "I'll see to it." At a murmured instruction, a new portal appeared behind him, and the man stepped to it. He paused there briefly before adding, "Whatever you're thinking about, whatever question you're trying to work out... I hope it's worth it."

"That," Contessa informed the empty room after the man had disappeared through the portal. "Is precisely the question that I'm asking."