Friday, February 4, 2011

"What are you looking at now, Lucy?" Taylor asked curiously as she sat at her desk a few minutes before the bell rang, barely conscious of the way she carefully moved a little sideways to allow her tail to slip past the back of the chair and onto the floor behind her. It was somewhat inconvenient, she'd have preferred to remove the chair and sit on her tail like she did at home, but that was probably a little too much. Luckily they were at the back of the class and hardly anyone ever needed to walk behind her, although in other classes there had been some embarrassing and somewhat funny incidents with people tripping over it, stumbling, then wondering why. The cloak technique seemed to be holding up nicely so far.

She was running most of the way to school most days in either her combat form, which she still couldn't think of a name for that she liked, or as Saurial, under the cloak, then jogging the rest of the way as her human self, visible to the world. She'd taken the bus twice but preferred the physical effort. At the speeds she could reach, weaving in and out of the oblivious traffic, she was much faster than the bus anyway. Sometimes she wondered what the reaction would be if she let people see her, and stopped at traffic lights and the like just for fun. It amused her but again was probably a little excessive.

Her friend, as the girl had definitely become, along with Mandy, tilted her high end smartphone towards her, Mandy and another classmate, Rich, moving around to keep the screen in view. "Saurial and Vista talking on the boardwalk the day before yesterday. Clockblocker was there as well but this video doesn't show him."

"They're just standing there talking, why would anyone video that?" Taylor asked, inwardly amused. She remembered the encounter well, the young Ward had had some questions about her climbing and running abilities that she'd answered to the best of her abilities, propping herself on her tail and left leg so she could raise her right foot to her waist and show the girl her toe-claws. The inhuman jointing of the limb made it easy, but had made Clockblocker choke a little, then stare.

"People video anything to do with Capes, you know," Mandy put in, smiling. "Lucy is sort of obsessed with Saurial. Actually, she's into reptiles, did you know she has a pet iguana?"

"No, I didn't," Taylor laughed, looking at the Chinese girl who was keeping her eyes on the video but going slightly pink. "That's interesting. How big is it?"

"About four feet long," Lucy replied quietly, looking over at her for a moment. "He likes eggs. Like Saurial does, someone on PHO says she comes into his shop and buys them by the box full then walks away eating them in the shell, raw."

"Uurgh," Rich laughed from the other side of Mandy's desk. "That's horrible."

"She seems happy enough with eating them," Lucy giggled. The video ended, so she put her phone away, the bell ringing shortly thereafter. "And I was right that time. Her scales are definitely blue, a nice shade. I wish I could meet her, she looks interesting."

Smiling to herself, Taylor turned her attention to Mr Hanks as he took roll, thinking that she should one day let her friend meet her other persona. It would make her day.

Sitting on her bed, Lisa paged through the various PHO sightings of Saurial, wondering what it was about the cape that was bothering her. Her power was poking her something fierce but every time she tried to draw some conclusions, she got the mental equivalent of a blue-screen, then had to go and lie down for a while to recover. It was annoying, frustrating, and somewhat worrying.

Giving up on that train of thought for the moment she amused herself trolling PHO for a while, before reading some Alexandria fanfiction and giggling about it. She posted a few snarky comments about how out of character Legend was, waited to see the explosion of annoyance, then sighed with boredom and shut the laptop, lying down and staring at the ceiling.

She was no closer to working out Coil's power, which left her no closer to working out how to get out from under the bastard's thumb. This was also annoying, frustrating, and worrying.

The upside was that he'd gone surprisingly quiet the last couple of weeks, only calling her four times in that period for what on the face of it were fairly innocuous questions. He'd called her in to his base once, talked for about ten minutes, then threw her out again, giving off the impression of being nearly as annoyed as she was about the entire pointless activity.

She dearly wished she could simply take out her pistol and shoot the fucker between the eyes but she knew that wouldn't end well, until she could work out how to neutralize any advantage he had over her. Sooner or later she'd work it out, hopefully before he dropped them in so deep they couldn't get out. Send them to fight Lung or something like that.

Laughing for a moment at the absurd idea, she got up, wandered into the kitchen, and made some coffee, which she drank. Finally, deciding she was just running in circles, she left her apartment and headed towards the Undersider's base, just for the company.

On the way she went back to the odd conversation she'd hacked into between Piggot and her people and Shadow Stalker, the principal of Winslow, and some PRT agent, who by the sound of it would soon be an ex PRT agent. It had been both funny and disturbing by turns. Feeling a considerable sympathy for this Taylor Hebert girl, and a lot of respect for her father for the remarkably neat way he'd shut the entire thing down, she wondered how much they'd ended up with as a settlement. Hopefully it was a lot.

Idly trying to extract more information from the conversation, with her powers producing wilder and wilder ideas, she headed away from the fairly civilized areas of the city into the beginnings of the docks. Half a mile further on, she stopped to observe a group of men who seemed to be carefully checking the rail line that ran through the area from the direction of the main waterfront towards the rail yard. There were a dozen of them walking along both rails looking at them, and poking them with crowbars and other tools, while each group of six had one extra making notes. Surrounding them were half a dozen more men who were clearly guards, keeping a wary eye on the surroundings and carrying metal baseball bats.

"Hmm." Lisa found a good vantage point and aimed her power at the group.

Dockworkers, from the DWU facility

Checking rails for damage

Thinking of reopening rail line

Excited about possibility of new work

Big project possible in near future

Driven by DWU

They don't know the details but are still willing to do whatever is necessary

Loyal to their boss

She blinked a couple of times in surprise, kept watching for a little while, then went on her way. She noticed a number of Merchants were also watching and muttering to themselves but were obviously not keen on going over and asking what the men were up to.

Wary of dockworkers

Afraid of dockworkers

DWU has made them afraid

"Interesting," she mumbled, glancing back at the workmen. She noticed that one of the guards was watching her closely and sped up a little, feeling just a small amount of worry.

She was going to have to tell Brian and the others about this new development, they'd need to be careful. Her power was telling her change was on the horizon and it might be a good idea to stay clear.

She wasn't going to tell Coil, though. Fuck him, let him work it out himself.

Dinah looked up at her parents, and Uncle Roy, who had come with them to the PRT building. She'd met some interesting people including Miss Militia, who she thought she liked, and told them all about the numbers that she kept seeing when certain types of questions were asked. She had no control over the answers, not really, it hurt too much not to answer.

She'd discovered she could ask the questions herself and whatever was giving the answers would do the same for her, but she still got the headaches after half a dozen or so. But at least an adult was finally listening to what she had to say and not just telling her she had something wrong but they didn't know what.

It was a little annoying, she'd been trying to tell them that for nearly three weeks, but just because she was only twelve, no one seemed to take her seriously. They were now, though, thanks to Uncle Roy.

Smiling at him, which prompted a smile back, she went back to playing with the music device he'd given her. Her father had helped her put all the favorite music on it the night before and she'd discovered that listening to some of it at low volume with her eyes shut helped the pain her ability produced if it was overused. Yet another thing to thank Uncle Roy for.

Turning the music to a low level so she could hear past the earphones, she listened to the discussion between the three adults and Miss Militia, who was looking at a folder of paperwork in the private room they'd been shown to after a lot of tests elsewhere in the building. Miss Militia had, somewhat oddly, reached up and carefully unplugged the security camera mounted on the wall by the door as soon as they entered. Dinah wondered why.

"Testing has confirmed that Dinah has a very powerful precognitive ability. We're tentatively rating her at Thinker 8, although that might go up a little with further testing. Due to the power-induced migraine we're very limited in the number of questions we can ask her at any one time, she says it hurts too much after about six or seven. She needs several hours between sessions to recover. The scientists think that she risks injury if it's pushed so we want to avoid that at all costs."

"Are there any drugs that can help?" Her mother seemed worried. "We gave her ibuprofen at the doctor's suggestion but it didn't do anything worthwhile."

"Thinker headaches are notoriously difficult to treat with anything other than time to recover and not inducing them in the first place," the scarf-wearing woman replied with a smile in her voice even if it wasn't visible on her face. Dinah thought she had a nice voice. "There are a few Tinker drugs that can help a little, and stronger painkillers can take the edge off, but all in all it's best to simply limit the occurrence of it as much as possible by avoiding whatever provokes the power into action. In Dinah's case that's asking definite questions about the future which can be answered as a percentage."

"So we just don't ask her the chances of snow later or something like that?" her father asked.

"76.3%" Dinah grinned at them. The question hadn't been directly asked so it was just a wild guess, although looking at the sky outside the window was probably pretty close. Uncle Roy was the first one to get the joke, grinning back and ruffling her hair.

"Precisely." Miss Militia sounded amused. After a moment, though, she became more serious. "The real question now is, what do you want to do?"

All three of the other adults exchanged a glance. Uncle Roy looked at Dinah, who peered back, not entirely certain what the heroine meant.

"What do you mean?" her father asked, sounding worried, asking the question she wanted to but was a little scared to.

"What I mean is, Thinkers of any level, never mind ones as high level as Dinah is, are in very high demand. So high, in fact, that their services can be desired whether they want to give them or not." Miss Militia looked seriously at them, while Uncle Roy sat back with a thoughtful expression and nodded slowly. Her parents stared at the woman, then looked at each other, before turning to Dinah for a moment.

"She means, Jim, that we have to be careful. There are criminals who would probably love to have a precog as powerful as Dinah is, and would stop at nothing to get hold of her," Uncle Roy sighed. "I'm half-sorry I arranged this testing, perhaps you could have kept her abilities a secret."

"I doubt that would have worked, Mayor," Miss Militia replied with a shake of her head. "All the information is already out there, unfortunately. The hospital visits and the records of the tests done, not to mention the things Dinah has been saying, all of those are clues that would eventually attract the wrong sort of notice, if they haven't already done so. There may well be other Thinkers already putting the clues together for someone."

"You mean someone could try to kidnap her!" Her mother grabbed Dinah and held onto her like she thought someone would burst into the room right then and there. Dinah felt a little frightened and also slightly irritated about how tightly her mother was holding her.

With a sigh, Miss Militia nodded a little. "It's neither unknown or impossible, unfortunately. I suspect that if you hadn't noticed, Mayor, and worked it out, something like that might have happened sooner or later. Mrs Alcott, don't worry too much, we should be able to prevent that now, though. We know about Dinah now and we can keep her safe. Or as safe as anyone can be in this world."

"Assuming that the PRT itself doesn't end up being what causes someone unpleasant to find out about Dinah," Uncle Roy muttered. Miss Militia looked at him, making him talk louder. "I'm pretty sure, from what I've heard over the last couple of years, that you have more than one leak in this organization."

The heroine inspected him for several seconds, then sighed again. "You're probably not wrong, Mayor Christner, I'm afraid. We've had issues like that before. It's difficult to totally prevent in any organization this large, as you know."

He nodded silently.

"That said, I fully believe that Dinah is safer now than she would have been if she hadn't come to our attention so soon after triggering. Obviously, we would strongly advise that she joins the Wards program. It's up to you, Mr and Mrs Alcott, but it would be the safest thing for her."

"The Wards?" Her mother sounded worried, and was still clinging to her hard enough to make Dinah wriggle a little to escape. She loosened her grip a little but kept her hands on her shoulders. "Is that really necessary?"

"As I said, I personally believe it's the safest option," Miss Militia nodded. "We can set up a number of security protocols to protect her from most threats. If necessary, it would be possible to arrange to have you all relocate away from Brockton Bay, to a less… complicated… city."

Uncle Roy looked both amused and a little insulted. "Leave this fair city?" he commented, making the woman look like she was grinning under her scarf. "With all the vibrant night life? How could anyone do that?"

"It has it's good points, Mayor," she replied with a laugh in her voice. "But bad ones as well, as you know."

"You can say that again," he sighed. "But it's not boring." Both of them looked at Dinah's parents.

"What do you want to do, Cheryl? Jim? Miss Militia is probably right, although I wish she wasn't."

Once again her mother and father looked at each other, then at her. "Dinah? What do you want to do?," her father asked. "You know what we're talking about, don't you?"

She nodded. It was pretty obvious, she'd heard them talking only moments ago, and she wasn't stupid.

Thinking for a little while as everyone waited, she turned to Uncle Roy. "If I joined the Wards, could I still see you?"

"Of course you could, Princess," he assured her, smiling. "And possibly more often, City Hall is a lot closer to the PRT building than to your house. I'm sure I could see you regularly."

She nodded, then turned to Miss Militia. "Could I see my parents as well?"

The woman smiled again, her scarf moving slightly. "We're not suggesting locking you in the PRT building, Dinah. You would have a room here and could stay if you wanted, but normally you'd be living at home the same as you do right now, and go to school as well. It's just that you'd have us making sure nothing happened to you. You'd spend some time here most days, we'd want to test your powers more and find out what would be the most useful way you could use them. But no one will force you to use them, if you don't want to."

"Mom? What do you think?" she asked after another few seconds of thought.

Her mother held her again. "I don't want to lose you, Dinah. I don't like thinking of you being away from home like that, but if it will keep you safe..." She wiped her eye, trying to make it look like she wasn't about to cry. Dinah wasn't fooled.

She was feeling both slightly confused about how quickly everything suddenly seemed to be going, pleased that people were taking her seriously, excited about meeting other parahumans, and worried about not seeing her parents. Not to mention mildly terrified about the whole 'being kidnapped' thing that the adults had been talking about.

After a moment, having carefully decided on the wording, she said out loud, "Chances I get kidnapped or someone tries to kidnap me if I don't join the Wards?"

They all stared at her, somewhat shocked. The numbers came to her along with some mild pain. She'd mostly recovered from the testing session a couple of hours earlier, but it was still uncomfortable.

"79.45%" she announced. Her mother gasped, Miss Militia frowned, her father looked like he was going to shout, and Uncle Roy reached out and put a hand on her shoulder next to her mother's, squeezing gently.

She pondered the answer, then asked herself, "Chances I get kidnapped if I do join the Wards?" The answer popped into her head, as she winced slightly. "8.82%"

Miss Militia looked even more annoyed, but was writing the questions and answers down on a pad at the same time.

"Chances someone tries to kidnap me if I join the Wards?" A pause. "16.45%"

"Ow," she muttered after the last answer, rubbing her head between her eyes. Closing them she leaned back in her chair for a moment, trying to think. No one spoke.

"Chances that someone outside the PRT will find out what I can do in... the next two weeks, other than Uncle Roy or Mom and Dad?" Miss Militia was looking closely at her, she noticed when she opened her eyes. "85.21%"

"Fuck," the woman mumbled under her breath, obviously not meaning to be heard. Dinah giggled to herself, even through the pain that she was now feeling as her head throbbed. The heroine looked slightly embarrassed, her eyes showing it surprisingly well.

"I would assume that means that someone most likely has the information and can put it together but probably hasn't done so quite yet," Miss Militia said thoughtfully. "Otherwise the answer would, presumably, have been one hundred percent. So there's a possibility that they either won't, or it will take some time or at least more than two weeks, but I doubt we could rely on that. These figures would appear to support my case, Dinah would be safer in the Wards than out."

"Although it's still not a guarantee of safety," Uncle Roy replied, glancing at Dinah, then her parents, who seemed all right with him taking the lead.

"No. I wish I could promise you that there's no way that anyone could do anything to her now, but I'd be lying if I did." Miss Militia sighed faintly. "However, a chance of less than nine percent versus a chance of nearly eighty percent is a big change. Admittedly we don't know from the first question how it splits between attempts and successful attempts, but..." She shrugged slightly. "As I said it's up to her parents in the end although everything is pointing towards the Wards being the safer option. We would be pleased to have her."

The military cape leaned forward as apparently a thought struck her. "Hmm. I wonder..." She studied Dinah closely, then stood up. "Please wait here for a moment, I need to make a phone call. I'll be right back." She left the room, the door opening and closing quietly, leaving them all looking at each other.

There was silence for a little while, until her father spoke. "Roy, what do you think we should do?"

"I tend to agree with Miss Militia," her uncle said with a small frown. "I wish I didn't, as you both know I'm not entirely happy with the PRT for several reasons, but she's right. They have the resources, skills, and experience to keep Dinah safe. Or as safe as she can be." He smiled down at her. "I have to say it would be nice knowing she was both safe and sometimes close enough to see more often. We could have lunch together sometimes, if you'd like that, Dinah."

Smiling back at him as the pain from her self-questioning ebbed she nodded enthusiastically. "I'd like that, Uncle Roy."

"But the Wards? Being an official superhero? Isn't that dangerous?" Her mother didn't sound happy.

"Much less dangerous than being kidnapped by a gang, Cheryl," Uncle Roy replied, glancing at her. Her mother went white.

"Oh, god, don't even joke about that."

"I'm not, actually, but don't worry too much about it, sis. The PRT would take very good care of Dinah, like Miss Militia said, high level Thinkers are very rare and very valuable. Dinah would never be out on the street or anything like that, they'd probably give her a nice office and ask her to answer a few very carefully designed questions every now and then. Not to mention there's a fair amount of money involved, they'd set up a decent trust fund for her, which would certainly pay for college nicely, and a good allowance until she's eighteen. It would take a lot of stress off you both from that point of view."

"We're easily able to pay for what we need, Roy," her father noted, slight irritation in his voice.

"I know, I didn't mean to suggest that you couldn't provide for your family, Jim," Uncle Roy smiled, holding up a hand. "All I meant is that there would be some money that could be helpful in the future. I think she'd be safe here, more so than most places."

Looking back to Dinah, he smiled more widely. "I wish I could provide the security she needed at City Hall, I'd love to have a precog on staff. Even a cute twelve year old one."

Dinah giggled, smiling back. "You think I'm cute, Uncle Roy?"

"Everyone thinks you're cute, Princess," he chuckled.

"I'll always answer any questions you want to ask me." Dinah grinned, holding out her hand. "Promise."

Gravely he shook it. "Thank you, my dear. I may well take you up on that."

They all looked up as Miss Militia came back into the room. Closing the door behind her she retook her seat. "I've been talking to Armsmaster. He says that he can provide a subdermal tracking implant that Dinah can have put under her skin, which would allow him and no one else to track her position. If, by any chance, someone did actually kidnap her, we could get her back and hopefully catch them in the process."

They all looked at Dinah, who thought for a moment, then said, "Chances that I would be successfully kidnapped if we did what Miss Militia has said?" The numbers came, but so did the pain. "Ow ow ow. 2.34%" She held her head with both hands, closing her eyes again. "I can't do that again for a while," she whispered.

"OK, dear," her mother said, smoothing her hair gently. "We get the point."

"It's not perfect, but all things considered it's probably the best option at the moment," the heroine said after a few seconds. "If you want to go ahead with it I can have the implant here within half an hour."

Opening her eyes as the pain faded slightly, Dinah watched her parents exchange glances, then look at Uncle Roy who nodded slightly. They both sighed and turned to look at her with difficult to interpret expressions. "Oh, Dinah," her mother sighed, still holding her like she was afraid someone would take her if she let go.

"I think I'd like it, Mom," she said, mostly honestly. "I can meet Vista and the other Wards, that would be cool."

"She's about your age, actually," Miss Militia put in. "She'd love to meet another female Ward. You'd probably get on with most of them very well. They're good kids."

"Most of them?" Uncle Roy asked curiously.

She sighed very faintly. "Shadow Stalker is somewhat… abrasive… at times."

"Ah. Yes, so I've heard from other people," he chuckled. "Five out of six isn't too bad, though."

"There are mean girls at school as well," Dinah added. "I know how to ignore them."

With a laugh, Miss Militia nodded, then turned to her parents. "If you want to do this, I have all the paperwork with me for the Wards acceptance. You can read and sign it immediately or take it and look at it later."

"May I see it, please?" her father requested.

The woman picked up a folder from the table beside her and opened it, looking through the contents then removing a set of stapled-together pages and sliding them over the table to him. Picking them up he began reading them very carefully. Everyone waited quietly for him to finish. When he did, he looked thoughtfully at her, then handed the papers to Uncle Roy, who also read them. "They look fairly straightforward, Jim," her uncle said, when he finished a couple of minutes later.

"There seem to be a surprisingly large amount of marketing and public relations clauses in the document," her father noted, glancing at Miss Militia.

"The PRT feels it's important," she replied. "I understand the reasons, capes scare a lot of people, not surprisingly considering what many of them are capable of, and the PRT goes to significant effort to present their capes as responsible and safe. Part of that process is a careful public relations exercise, including acceptable naming, costuming, appearance, that sort of thing. It sounds silly but it does have a very large effect on public perception. So does the marketing aspect, although I have to admit that some of the things the Marketing people have come up with over the years are… somewhat dubious." Her face moved a little under her scarf, indicating another smile. Uncle Roy laughed a little. "A fair percentage of the profit generated by marketing a Ward's public persona is added to the trust fund, so it benefits everyone."

"I see," her father said, reading the document once more, then turned to her mother. "I have to admit that as much as I'd like to I can't find any reason not to go for this."

Her mother sighed heavily. "I hate it. But you're right. If it keeps her safe, we don't have a choice." She looked at Miss Militia, who was giving off an air of sympathy. "We agree, she can join the Wards."

"Great," the other woman replied. "If you'll both sign on page five at the bottom, both copies, please?"

Her parents took the pen she held out, then did as requested. She retrieved the papers and the pen and signed in two places as well, then separated the document and gave one half to Dinah's father, who carefully folded it and put it into his inside jacket pocket. "Wait here and I'll call Armsmaster, we can get the implant installed immediately. I'd feel safer if you didn't leave before that happened. Just in case."

Getting up she left again. They all looked at each other, then Dinah's mother began crying a little, holding her. Dinah, both excited and sad, held her back.

"It'll be OK, Mom," she said quietly. "I'm nearly certain. 97.66% certain at least."

Despite herself, her mother started laughing, setting them all off.