Julia from Brockton Bay Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

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.

ADVISORY: Situations and foul language. If either offends you, maybe you should go read something else.

Julia From Brockton Bay*Julia From Brockton Bay*Julia From Brockton Bay

When I ran out of O'Neill's classroom, I thought that things were as about as bad as they could get. I had no idea that worse was to follow.

I did not go back to school. I'd had it. I walked over to a park I'd found, sat down on a bench and tried to pull myself together.

I was shocky. I'd never been so humiliated in my life. Well, maybe a couple of times when I was a small kid, but that was in private and never in public. This was humiliation, and what was worse it had been that little dweeb Keith who'd done it; him and Timmy O'Neill. That touchy-feely asshole should have shut Keith down before the first words came out of his mouth.

I thought about Keith and wished he'd drop dead. "Effing little lying shit," I muttered. Sure, Emma, Sophia and Maddy had shoved Taylor into the locker, but it wasn't like she didn't have it coming or that I had anything directly to do with it. I mean it was just a prank. Who would have thought that the neurotic skirt would freak out and have to be taken away in an ambulance?

I walked home. I was not going to put up with any more humiliation at school. Dad was waiting for me when I got there.

"Julia, where have you been?" he said. "I got a call from your school that you ran out the door during class and didn't come back."

"I had some crap thrown at me in class so I decided to take a breather," I replied.

"Julia, you can't deal with your problems by running away from them," said Dad.

"You should talk," I said. "That's what you and Mom did." I saw his expression and realized that I'd really gotten under his skin. He stood there glaring at me. I wondered if he was going to lose it. Dad was angrier than I'd seen him since like forever.

"I'm going to my room," I said.

I thought I was in the clear when he said something else.

"I heard from the Baumgardners today," he said.

Shit, I thought.

"Joyce said that you'd e-mailed Kasey from school and that they used the local net to get our phone number," he said. "We had a pleasant conversation. They're now living in Halifax and they're all doing fine. They like it there. Your friend Kasey's a meta-psychic operant and is taking training to develop her powers."

"Didn't you say she was in Special Ed?" Dad continued. "Kasey's in Operant Training. That's not the same thing."

"I said she was in Special Ed," I said glibly.

"That's not the same thing and we both know it," said Dad. "You and I and your mother are going to talk more about this."

Shit, I thought. Busted.

"You're still grounded," said Dad. "Go to your room."

Don't ask me about what happened that night. There was a lot of yelling. I don't want to talk about it. Both my Mom and Dad were angry with me. Dad raised his voice. So did my Mom; she like almost never does that.

I told them that like since Kasey has gone Meta, she's become like a Master-powered collaborator. My Dad said that was bullshit. Dad tried to tell me that not every Head had the same power levels. I replied that that was just what the Proctorship said and asked him why he should think that anything they said is true. He looked me in the eye and asked me why he should think anything I said was true.

After that my parents sent me to my room.

-Worm—Milieu—Worm—Milieu—Worm—Milieu—

The next day sucked even worse. I'd had some crappy days since my parents drove through the Portal, but the next day sucked even more.

Dad drove me and the Brats to school. They didn't say anything to me; they'd heard Mom and Dad yelling at me and knew that I was in trouble. Dad was silent when he drove me to Northcote after they got out.

The gossip network must have gone into overdrive after I ran out of Language Arts the day before. Most of the other kids in my home room saw me when I came in that morning, but only one or two people said so much as "Hi!" to me. The rest either ignored me or turned their heads away from me.

My next class was Current Affairs. I like so did not want to be there. Mr. Reddy was smarter than dweebs like Timmy or Mr. Gladly back at Winslow and didn't ask me any questions. I was already in deep shit and didn't want to sink any deeper. I somehow managed to hold it together through class.

Ditto Meditation. I wasn't able to get any cool vibes during Meditation; the only things I felt were anger and resentment.

I thought I'd somehow managed to hold it together for the rest of the day but it all fell apart at lunch.

I sat down with some of the other girls from Earth Bet. A couple of them gave me cold looks, some didn't: they hadn't done anything to get Taylor out of the locker. At least none of them got up and left or told me to leave.

It might have been tolerable except that Keith Ortner sat down a couple of tables away from me. His voice can carry. He was telling a couple of the other kids about the locker and telling them that it was true. I was already on edge and found myself operating on auto-pilot. The next thing I knew I found myself standing across the table from him.

"You have a big mouth, Ortner," I said "Shut the fuck up."

"Why?" he said. He looked back at me with a shit-eating grin that he wouldn't have dared given me back at Winslow.

"Because I said so," I said.

"Listen up, Marcotti," he said, playing Humphrey Bogart for what it was worth. "I'm not afraid of you or the rest of your girl clique anymore. Emma's daddy can't sue me and Sophia Hess can't do her Shadow Stalker thing to me either."

"Shadow Stalker?" I said.

"Sure, Marcotti," said Keith. "Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker. That was why you and your bunch got so much free play. Anyone with half a brain could have figured that out."

Something clicked in my brain. Holy crap! The little shit was right. Sophia was Shadow Stalker.

I suppose a shrink or a social worker would have told me to walk away or chill out. I didn't: I was still pissed off at Keith from yesterday and he'd humiliated me again. And then on top of it, he'd just committed a crime.

"YOU OUTED A WARD!" I yelled. "YOU FUGGIN JERK! YOU COMMITTED A CRIME! YOU OUTED A WARD!" And that's when I started hitting him.

-Worm—Milieu—Worm—Milieu—Worm—Milieu—

If you want like a summary, I only managed to hit him a couple of times. He fended off a couple of my punches. Red Bishop and Robert McCord came over and grabbed my arms and kept me from giving Keith more of what he deserved until a couple of faculty members could subdue me. After that I remember the conference room where I'd been before and Ms. Carstairs telling me that this had ceased to be a school matter and had become a criminal matter. Not long afterwards a couple of cops came and took me to jail.

-Worm—Milieu—Worm—Milieu—Worm—Milieu—

This time it was serious. The cops said that they were going to book me, then lock me up I'd already had trouble because of the bicycle thing a couple of months before. Unlike juvie back in the US, they might forget, but they remember again if I get into more trouble. I stayed behind bars.

I went to court in mid-September. I got my lawyer to tell the Magistrate that outing a Ward was a crime back in the US and that Keith had committed a criminal offense. The Magistrate didn't care; he said that while Keith might have done something that was a crime back in the US, it wasn't an offense in the Milieu. Furthermore, he said that I wasn't a cop or anything and that I had no reason or authority to hit him. I was sentenced to juvenile detention for two years for theft and assault and was sent to a nearby lock-up.

I was locked up when another portal to Earth Bet opened up in October: that portal was out on the west coast and was only open for a couple of days. A couple of people who'd come through the Brockton Bay portal went back along with some freight and some mail: mostly gifts, legal documents, and messages to people back on Earth Bet. Then it closed again.

I'd thought about looking for a resistance movement when I got out. I'd only be locked up for two years and then I'd be free again. If I didn't luck out and find a Portal going back to Earth Bet, maybe I could find some other people who wanted to get rid of the Proctorship. I wasn't much for reading, but I remembered hearing somewhere that some of the successful resistance movements started behind bars. I decided to start off by recruiting people from Earth Bet.

That idea went down the toilet in February. Reports came out from Earth Orbital Traffic Control about a naked six-winged angel emerging out of the ether in Low Earth Orbit. She remained there briefly, just long enough to be scanned and filmed. If the Milieu talking heads didn't have a clue as to who she was, I did. She then blipped back out of existence.

My cell-mate was an End-Time Evangelical who believed that the six-winged creature was a Seraphim, one of God's angels. I knew better: that was no angel, that was the Simurgh. I wasn't the only the only one who knew better, so did a lot of other people who'd come through the Brockton Bay Portal and a few of the galactics.

One of the journalists sampling people's reactions got someone from the Bay who knew what was what. He said that the Lylmik had run the Simurgh out of Dodge. I might be careless sometimes but I'm not a total dipstick; I'd heard that there had been three big-ass Lylmik cruisers in Earth orbit that day. After news of the Simurgh blipping away, former Earth Bet people across the planet started celebrating and I started crying because I realized that they'd won. There'd be no way in Hell I'd be able to recruit any Earth-humans to any anti-Milieu organization I tried to set up.

-The End—