Julia from Brockton Bay Heroica

DISCLAIMER: Worm and its characters are the creation of John "Wildbow" McCrae. The Galactic Milieu was the creation of the late Julian May. I own neither, and neither expect nor deserve any sort of financial remuneration for this work of fiction. I wrote this story for my own amusement.

Reviews would be nice.

Individuals wishing to learn more about the Worm web serial may search for it on the Internet. Julian May's Intervention and Galactic Milieu series are available on Kindle, although hard copies can be found here and there.

ADVISORY: This chapter rated T for foul language and situations. If either offends you, please don't read it.

Julia from Brockton Bay*Julia from Brockton Bay*Julia from Brockton Bay

T
he Poltroyans' questioning ended a short time later when my Dad came by the school. Ms. Carstairs had told him about my outburst. When he opened the door, I saw the expression on his face and I knew that I was in for more trouble when I got home.

My Dad looked around the room and saw the Poltroyans taking notes. He then looked at me and shook his head. "Julia," he said, "what the Hell did you do this time? Tell me that you didn't steal another bicycle."

"She didn't," said Frenesso. "Your daughter informed us of a certain Earth Bet Parahuman called Heartbreaker, and we've found her answers useful. If Heartbreaker is on this side of the Portal, the Magistratum will soon run him down."

"Is she in any sort of trouble with the Magistratum?" asked my Dad.

"Perhaps with her principal, but not with us," Frenesso replied. "As a matter of fact, I'd say she's earned a couple of brownie points."

I shot the Poltroyan a dirty look. He looked at me with a lazy grin and said "Kid, considering your principal's state of mind, you need all the brownie points you can get."

The Poltroyans said good-bye to me and my Dad, then left. Ms. Carstairs came back into the conference room and she told him about my outburst. I couldn't see his facial expression while I was seated next to him, but I could hear his sigh. Ms. Carstairs told me that I was going to get detention for two weeks. My Dad said that he'd come back that evening to pick me up. I didn't have any free periods that afternoon; I had detention instead. Dad drove me straight home from school.

Dad and Mom were both so stressed that they ordered take-out instead of cooking and Mark and Lisa weren't old enough to wash the dishes themselves. After they were sent to their room, Mom and Dad both sat me down and we talked about what had happened during my Current Affairs class. I told them what was what: that it was all because Mr. Reddy expected me to believe that the Magistratum were all good guys and that I told the rest of the class that they were acting like sheeple.

My Dad looked at me with exasperation. I knew he was angry at me, but for now at least, he was keeping a handle on his temper. Finally, he stood up and said that he needed to step out in the porch. I gave him a weird look. Dad used to smoke up until a couple of years ago back on Earth Bet. He'd quit, but back when he was smoking, he used to say that he needed to step out on the porch when he needed a cigarette.

My Mom decided that with Dad out on the porch it was her turn. She asked me if I was happy at school and I told her that I wasn't. I also told her about Kasey. All of it, or at least the part about her being on a Special Ed track.

Mom did not agree. "Real friends are people who stick by you in hard times as well as good ones," she said. "If your friends are in trouble, you stand by them, you don't turn your back on them. You stick by them instead. I thought you knew that already."

"Julia. Baby. You are truly blessed that at least two of your friends are alive and well and on this side of the Portal instead of some run-down refugee camp or fearing yet another Endbringer attack on Earth Bet."

"But you and Dad took us away from home…" I began.

Mom put up her hand. "I don't want to hear it," she said. "You know our reasons and what's done is done. The Portal has closed. We left Earth Bet because we wanted all of you to have better lives than what we were living back in Brockton Bay."

Dad came back in just after Mom was finishing.

"Can I get up now?" I asked.

"No," said Dad. He looked me in the eye and I could see that he was still pissed off. "I have things to say to you."

"Am I grounded again?" I said. I think I said it too sarcastically.

"Yes, you're grounded," said Dad. "But we'll get to the penalties later."

"Julia, I think it's time for you to learn some new behavior."

"But I hate the Proctorship and I hate the aliens," I said.

"As if I didn't know already," said Dad. "But if you can't change your attitude about them, you need to change your behavior."

"What, become a good little sheeple?" I said. "Love them?"

"If you can't make yourself like them, you don't have to show the whole world that you don't like them," Dad replied. "You don't have to mouth off every time you see one."

OMG, I thought. Did he find out about those Simbiari when I was in jail?

"Let's try it a different way," he said. "Back at Winslow, did you run around saying "I hate the Empire!" every chance you got?"

"No," I said.

"Why not?" said Dad.

"Because they would have either sicced the girls' auxiliary on me or beaten me up themselves," I said.

"Did you run around trashing that other gang, the BAZ or the BABs or whatever they were called?" said Dad.

"No," I said.

"What would have happened if you did?" he said.

"I would have told the Principal?" I said.

Dad looked at me and chuckled. When he finished, he looked at me and said "Yeah, right. And you know how much good it would have really done you."

"Isn't that like hypocritical?" I said.

"What?" said Dad.

"Being dishonest about your feelings," I said.

"Only to yourself," said Dad. "When it comes to certain situations, you have to do what you have to do to get along," said Dad.

"Here's the deal, Jules. The Proctorship has all the high cards. I suggest you get real and learn not to set off a fireworks display every time somebody says or does something you don't like."

"It's not fair," I said.

"It is what it is," said Dad.

Mom came back in from the kitchen and both of them talked to me some more. Like I said, I was grounded, and they told me the penalties. By now it was getting late. I went back to my room to do my homework.

I thought about my homework. Except for Math class, my big worry was Timmy's essay. I decided that I'd work on Math during morning study hall. I still had Timmy's essay assignment looming over my neck. He wanted me to write about heroes.

I read some of my Earth Sciences homework and hoped that there wouldn't be a pop quiz in French, then decided to hit the sack. I'd have to get up way early to write something for my Language Arts class.

The alarm clock went off at 3:00 AM. I was still dead tired; I'd hoped that I'd feel inspired and awake when I got up, but that plan had gone south. I went over to my desk, turned on my desk lamp, and tried to think of something to say about heroes.

So what about heroes? Mr. O'Neill wanted us to write about heroes: what they were, how they acted, what they did that made them heroic, and how they inspired us. He acted like he thought some of us might know heroes personally. What the Eff was that Dweeb thinking? Did Timmy think that we all knew heroes? There were only a couple of students from the Bay in his class—the rest were locals or came from somewhere else on Earth Showa. I stared at the paper and tried to think of something to say.

My first thought was to write about my parents. That would have been standard cop-out essay topic number one, but I didn't think my parents were heroes. When Leviathan came to town, they got out of Dodge, which was how we ended up in that shit-hole camp while Leviathan was knocking things down. Then, after the monster had gone, Dad and Mom didn't do anything heroic—instead they stopped by the house, loaded up the car, then drove through the Portal to Fredericton. Like real heroic, Dads, I thought sardonically.

I put down my paper and looked at my watch. It was a quarter til four. I'd have to write something. OK, heroes.

I thought about writing about heroes from the Protectorate, then I remembered that I'd actually met a couple of the Wards before Leviathan hit Brockton Bay. Not socially, but in a PR thing at the Mall. I wondered which one I should write about. I decided to write about Kid Win. I thought he was cure. I wrote several paragraphs about him. What I wrote wasn't my best. In fact, I thought it was drippy, like something I'd expect Taylor to write. I might have to copy it over again, but I thought it was good enough. But I got it done before I had to leave for school.

-Worm—Milieu—Worm—Milieu—Worm—Milieu—

Dad drove me and the sibs to school that morning. I'd hoped for a little back-up but neither Mark not Lisa were willing to give it. Their attitude was like this was my problem with Mom and Dad, not theirs, and they didn't want any part of it. We rode pretty much in silence to Kellman, where they got out, and then Northcote, where I got out.

Dad tried to talk to me before I got out of the car. "Julia, I may be angry with you right now, but I still love you," he said.

Yeah, whatever. "Bye', Dad," I said, and closed the door.

I walked into homeroom at 8:15 that morning and sat down.

Most of the morning was pretty much so-so. Ms. Carstairs and the assistant vice principal made several announcements using the internal monitor. The soccer team would be playing a home game that evening and some of the clubs were having meetings. Ms. Carstairs mentioned that some of these clubs were still accepting memberships. I looked at the screen and scowled.

I had an unpleasant surprise waiting for me in French class: Madame Chapelle gave us a pop quiz. I did not do well and I knew it.

Earth Science was more interesting, at least if you were a geek. Mr. Stone gave a presentation regarding planetary and lunar formation, and what sorts of planets and moons were most likely to develop life and which of those were likely to develop eco-systems that were compatible with those of some of the Milieu races.

Like I said earlier, I was grounded. Part of my being grounded was that my allowance was cut back to almost zero. I thought it would all be shitty, but then a miracle happened in the girls' room. Some idiot had left her purse behind after doing her business.

I was angry, fed-up, broke and I didn't like it. I opened the girl's purse and then her wallet. I wanted cash, not cards: back in the Bay I might have been able to sell her card numbers to one of the gangs, but I didn't have the connections here. She did have folding money, though. I wanted to take all of it, but I decided that I'd only take some of it. I put the wallet back in the girl's purse, then left it on the floor for some other girl to find and some other girl to take the blame. I told myself that I needed the fifty five credits more than she did.

I skipped lunch and went to study hall. Not that I'm planning to starve myself to become model-skinny like Emma was (Was she even still alive?), but I wanted to re-do my essay. I read what I'd wrote earlier. I still didn't like it, but I could at least do something about the spelling and grammar mistakes. I copied it out again, correcting what I could. I still found using Milieu spelling to be a pain in the butt.

Essay in hand, I walked into Language Arts class. I kept my copy close at hand; I'd played Taylor Hebert back in January when I handed one of her assignments in to Mr. Gladly. I did not want to get played that way myself.

I soon learned that Timmy was on a roll about heroes and that he wanted class participation.

"What is it about heroes that make them different from the rest of us?" he asked. "Is it because they are already more than the rest of us, or are there circumstances that make ordinary people, people like you and me, into heroes?"

You and me, Timmy, I thought. No way.

"I would argue that there is no set pattern," said Gareth, one of the Canadians. "There are some people who are already a cut out of the ordinary, like those Capes from Earth Bet, but in other circumstances, heroes can ordinary men and women who step out of their boundaries and do extraordinary things in difficult situation."

"Extraordinary things in difficult circumstances," said Timmy. He wrote it on the blackboard. was so excited that I thought he'd start jumping up and down.

"Can you give us some examples?" said Timmy.

"It could be something like going into a burning house and bringing out a kid trapped by fire," said Gareth.

"Diving off a pier to save a kid who's fallen into the water and can't swim," said Wendy.

"Or stopping by the side of the road and helping a woman and her child out when their car broke down," said Audrey. Audrey was the other Bishop in the class and I caught her making eyes at Rory. Aww, Red's got a girlfriend, how sweet, I thought sardonically.

"OK, those are all great ideas. Now, how does a hero stay a hero?" said Timmy.

"You, Mr. Nguyen," he said, pointing at our resident ABB ganger.

"He either stays heroic or he gets a PR agent," said JT.

What kind of crappy answer is that, I thought.

"I don't understand," said Mr. O'Neill.

Maybe the ex-ABB guy had something, I thought. He managed to stop Timmy dead in his tracks.

"Heroes back on Earth Bet had a hard time staying heroes," JT said with a shrug. "Some journalist would go back over his private life, learn that he had an overdue library book or that he shoved another kid back in fourth grade and the rest of the media will spend the next three months dragging him through the mud."

"Are you saying that heroes shouldn't strive to be perfect, that they shouldn't strive to be role models?" Mr. Neil said incredulously.

"No, I'm saying that most heroes, even the capes or some of the guys in the history books, were human and had flaws," said JT. "If you're looking for perfection, maybe you should go to the next window and look over the saints. Most people don't measure up for sainthood."

"OK, does anyone else agree with Mr. Nguyen?" asked Mr. O'Neil. "Let's see a show of hands."

To my surprise, not only did most of us from the Bay agree with JT, but so did several of the locals. I guess they aren't all sheeple, I thought.

Most of the other kids agreed with Timmy, of course. Feeling more confident, O'Neill gave us an in-class essay asking us whether we thought heroes should strive for perfection or if they ought to be recognized as heroes but allowed to have perfections.

That assignment lasted to the end of class, when we had to hand in what we'd written, along with our homework assignments. I put my stuff in the stack of essays being passed up front, then saw Keith Ortner turn around and give me a nasty smile. I wondered what the little shit was up to. Unfortunately, I couldn't drag him into the girls' bathroom and beat it out of him. Besides, I was in enough trouble as it is.