-PatB-
I set the "Worksheet for Preparing INTENTION OF MARRIAGE" form on the table, and fill out the "PERSON A" boxes, front and back, checking the box labeled "BRIDE", my name, "FEMALE" under "GENDER", dad's address under "RESIDENCE", my birth city, dad and mom's names and birthplaces. Further down the page I enter look at the boxes labeled "MIDDLE" and "LAST", then turn to the back, and put down that it's my first marriage, white, French, secondary. I line out all the boxes labeled "PERSON D" and pass the form to Amy.
She scratches her chin at the boxes labeled "LAST NAME AT BIRTH", frowns at the line saying "Age Waivers not permitted for same gender marriages per: RSA 457:4", and fills in her demographic information on the back. She passes it to Lisa.
Lisa starts with one of the lines Amy and I had left blank, writing "Hebert" in the box labeled "LAST" under "Upon Execution of this Marriage: Person "C" shall be known as:". She looks at it a moment, then writes "Lisa" under "MIDDLE" before filling in names and addresses, then demographic information on the back. She looks at the line "Marriage is planned to take place on", and asks "When do we want to get married?"
"After we find out Amy's birth name and her mother's name and birthplace? Her father's too, looks like."
"Before the babies are born?" Amy says.
"November," Lisa pauses, pulls up a calendar on her phone, "16, the judge will have an opening then," she says, without looking at the calendar she pulled up, "Do you mind a Wednesday?"
"At the courthouse? That's hardly the marriage for a millionaire."
"You don't want anything fancy," Lisa tells me, "Amy'll be happy if Vicky's there, and I'll be happiest if my parents aren't there. This will give us six weeks to find names, panic, shop for dresses, and invite the few people we want to be there."
"That sounds fine. I'd like to use Hebert," Amy says.
"OK, that's fine with me," I look at the blank middle name slot, "Anne with an E, Claire, or?"
"You'd go with Diana, then?" Amy asks, smiling.
"If you'd like."
"Claire," she says, "You can keep Anne."
"And if they decide to fuss over the age thing?"
"Amy can give me a dick to wave at them, and then it won't be a problem, although we'd have to change my gender on the form," I sigh, "I'll have Mary push down yet another version of the form, without the 457:4 line, anyway."
-PatB-
Pinky is seated in the audience behind me, and I'm addressing the "Special Select Committee on Parahuman Activities" as they ask, again, why we have nuclear thermal rocket propelled atomic grenades.
"We had one human casualty from this attack," I say, getting annoyed. I push that out to my swarm, although I'd prefer a hug, "Not fatality, casualty. We killed eight million bugs, five thousand rats and squirrels, four hundred cats, and a hundred dogs. I rounded the numbers, but they are written down in the incident report submitted last month."
"That is a lot of power to be in the hands of," the plump old man in a suit that probably cost as much as my dad's house starts.
"A sixteen year old girl?" I continue for him when he trails off, unable to find a polite way to put it, "A sixteen year old pregnant girl?" I push a little further, "An unmarried sixteen year old pregnant girl?"
I shake my head, "It isn't germane, but she's getting married soon."
"Congratulations," the lone woman on the committee says, smiling.
"Thank you," I smile back at her, not that she can see through my mask, "When she was thirteen she read Cat's Cradle and made what she called ice-nine. It isn't actually, merely a complex organic molecule that will, at about three percent concentration, raise the freezing point of salt water to seventy degrees, and fresh water to about ninety, along with a photosynthetic bacteria to produce it. You will notice a distinct lack of frozen oceans."
"Are you trying to make us feel better about the fact that your team is a nuclear power?" a less-plump man asks.
I cock my head, "Maybe a little? I am trying to cushion the fact that if the endbringers come back to Brockton Bay they will be met with antimatter weapons."
"Antimatter?" the woman asks.
"We have a positron rifle. Five shot capacity, fifty grams of antimatter per shot. Approximate yield of five megatons if there is a containment failure. The rest of the weapons system is currently growing, but should be operational next month, and fully mature in time for a normally-spaced endbringer attack. We will not be leaving Brockton Bay to fight endbringers until our children are old enough to look after themselves, however."
"So the rest of the world is on it's own?"
"I am not going to send a pregnant girl around the world to fight monsters that have killed millions. If the monsters come to us, we will be ready."
"And if we try to force you?"
"If you can convince me of your moral superiority we will help you. If you bring me an illegal order, or send forces on illegal orders, you can expect that they will not be complied with."
"Not complied with?" the woman asks.
"I will use enough force to maintain my team's safety and independence, where enough will depend on my resources and the level of threat brought to bear."
"What sort of resources?"
"Bugs, teammates, minions, the civil employees of Brockton Bay. Atomics are unlikely to be used on anything less dangerous than an endbringer."
"Bugs?"
"I met Pinky while I was robbing a bank. We had Grue's darkness and my bugs to keep thirty-four employees and customers under control. I threatened black widow spider bites, but I did not have to bite anyone. I took down Lung, the Dragon of Kyushu, twice. That was before Pinky started making me bugs."
"What can you do now?"
"Using less-lethal bugs," I go silent, "No, I couldn't safely knock out everyone in Washington, D.C. I could safely render the city inoperable."
"Inoperable?"
"Knock every third adult and second child unconscious? Nothing would get done except emergency services."
"That's terrible!" the plump man says.
"Mercy is for the strong," I tell him.
"I thought the quote was mercy is for the weak?" a different less-plump man asks.
"The Flash Gordon quote is. When you are weak you can't risk letting your enemies live, or fighting at less than a hundred and ten percent. When you are strong you can lay out rules of engagement that limit your ability to win, but protect others, like the U.S. did in Vietnam, and in the Middle East on Aleph."
"And rendering the city 'inoperable'," I can hear the quotes, "Is merciful?"
"Legend, or Alexandria, or Eidolon, could flatten this city. Only Pinky or I could stop it in it's tracks without killing thousands of people."
"And if we decide you are too dangerous?" the woman asks, looking pointedly at one of the slenderer men.
"You'd better hope you got all of us at once. We're tougher than we look, and our team is our family. What would you do to protect, or avenge, your family? Would you risk a deadman switch?"
The slender man shifts, a little green, a little pale.
-PatB-
A/N: Started with an actual New Hampshire marriage license application. Did you know than NH legalized same-sex marriage in 2009? I didn't. 457:4 refers to the limiting of same-sex marriages to people over 18, while opposite sex marriages are legal at 13 for girls and 14 for boys . . . but supervillain.
Skitter had already fixed the two-person limit on her marriage license applications.
10 January 2018: 56,477 words.
