"LaaAa LEEE laay looOOO," I vocalized as I distractedly picked at my arm again for the umpteenth time. It had been roughly three weeks since whatever had happened doing my… inspection? Showcase? Dog and pony show? Whatever. Either way, the damn tattoo-thing hadn't so much as faded even the tiniest bit. It was kind of ironic actually, since the roses that had showed up on my skin had the slightly-faded look of an aged tattoo, which got me some odd looks.

Yeah, sure, like my dad really would've taken an eight-year-old to get inked up. Brockton Bay wasn't that much of a shithole, last I checked.

Also Mom would've gotten powers for the sole purpose of killing him with her brain if he'd tried.

"Taylor, I'd appreciate it if you'd focus on your vocalization instead of playing with your nose art. When you're distracted the signal strength of your voice begins modulating significantly and just makes this take longer." I definitely did not pout as I rolled my eyes, then glanced towards a young Airman carefully fiddling with some sort of radio contraption, who hadn't even dignified the comment by looking at me.

"And don't pout, it's unbecoming," the second Airman gently chastised as she smiled pleasantly at me.

Damn it I just said I wasn't pouting!

"& $ $-id I wasn't pouting and it's not nose art!" the device the two were working on blurted out in my static-heavy voice, and when the first Airman glanced at me with a raised eyebrow I felt my cheeks grow hot with embarrassment.

The two young 2nd Lieutenants effectively all but ran Barnes ANGB's technician division despite lacking the seniority to officially do so, solely due to the fact that the two were absolutely brilliant young geniuses that had stubbornly resisted PRT recruitment straight out of MIT (and CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, etc). They had five PHDs between the two of them, and were smart enough that they could've had any military job they wanted. But they were both hopelessly inept when it came to most social situations. They were also hopelessly in love with each other and literally everyone but the two of them knew it. It was even obvious to me and I sucked something awful at social interactions these days.

That last point had provided me with literally hours of entertainment as the two spent the past week experimenting and cobbling together something to help me with my… umm… speaking problems.

"No, you were definitely pouting, and you are, for all intentions and purposes, coterminous with a very, very advanced and heavily classified military aircraft," 2nd LT Simmons (call me Jemma) cheerfully replied. "Now, chin up please~!"

I couldn't be mad at her. She was literally too nice to get mad at, and she … ugh… wasn't technically wrong, I guess.

The past three weeks had been test after test after test involving my wings. Letting them out, putting them back, engine tests, communications, sensor suites… everything but my weapons and actual flight. The last annoyed me the most. I was officially 'grounded' pending repairs and evaluation, which was stupid because I could fly just fine. So what if my wings looked a little beaten up?

I obediently raised my chin, giving 2nd LT Simmons easy access to my throat as she reflexively subtly adjusted the cloth band around my neck before dancing her slender fingers across the tablet screen held in the crook of her arm. I heard/felt a faint shift in the signal between the test unit that 2nd LT Fitz continued to fiddle with, the tiny battery-powered speaker strapped to my throat, and the cell-phone-sized control unit for said speaker that sat in a table next to me. It had in fact began life as a sturdy little military-spec cell phone that 2nd Lieutenants Fitz and Simmons (or Fitz-Simmons as most of the base had nicknamed the pair) had gutted, rebuilt, and repurposed for the sole job of intercepting the radio that I spoke on and reducing the strength of said signal before passing it on to the sturdy little speaker built into the band I now wore around my neck. Said former phone was currently connected to 2nd LT Simmons' tablet via a thin USB cable.

"Alright, Jemma? Thinking that we've finally got the full signal range and strength Taylor speaks at. This one should last without her breaking it. Hopefully," he muttered as he leaned aside to type something into a keyboard without bothering to look. With just one hand and not looking, he was faster than anyone I'd ever seen with both hands and their full attention.

"Got it! Thanks, Leo," Simmons chirped as her fingers blurred across her tablet again. There was a soft beeping tone, then she carefully unplugged the former phone from her tablet. "Well now Taylor, what do you think?"

I cautiously eyeballed the phone-turned-control unit and fingered the band around my neck. Okay, so it was a choker, I guess? Either way, it wasn't exactly something that I'd wear if I had a choice. But on the other hand…

"Doot Doot Doot dew dew dew dew dee oh hey!" I couldn't help but smile as the distortion of my voice as it left the speaker on my throat suddenly stopped. I sounded a little tinny maybe, sort of like I was speaking through an old phone maybe. But it beat the pants off sounding like I recorded secret messages to slip into songs that you only heard when you played them backwards.

Or so Dad claimed. I'm not sure that I believed him about bands doing that sort of thing. And how would you even play a CD backwards anyways?

When I had asked him that, he just stared at me. Then he clicked his tongue and did one of those slow headshakes, so I had thrown a pillow at him in retaliation.

Our relationship was getting… I don't know. Different? Better, I guess? I think I liked it… maybe. Except for when it felt like he was making fun of me.

Hmph.

Still, I refused to let his weird old guy humor sour my enjoyment of being able to communicate more easily now. Lieutenants Fitz and Simmons beamed triumphantly at me, then shared a look, one of those looks, and I found myself rolling my eyes and thinking that they really should just go out on a date or kiss or something rather than dance around each other in that stupid will-they-won't-they thing for six or seven years like some kind of TV show.

Then Lieutenant Simmons blushed all the way to her roots and began blinking rapidly while making odd choking noises and Lieutenant Fitz's mouth started opening and closing as he glanced dumbly between Simmons and I that's when I realized that I'd said that out loud.

Ooops.

"You three done with your weird science yet?" The Bastard said as he barged into the workshop, only to stop and stare at the two 2nd Lieutenants, who were so flustered that it took them three whole seconds to salute the superior officer. Hatheway didn't reprimand them though, as he took one look at their faces. Then he all but glowered at me.

"... You better not have just screwed the betting pool kid, there's a three thousand dollar pot riding on this," he said. Then he ignored the two Lieutenants bewildered questions about said pot as he beckoned me. "Just came to tell you that Staff Sergeant Murphy is waiting for you on the PT field."

Dread dropped my stomach into my shoes.

It wasn't that I didn't like physical training.

Okay, I can't even think that with a straight face, because I hated it. Or rather, I hated what everyone on base called 'PT.' As my official ROTC program had yet to begin, I was largely left to SSgt Murphy's tender mercies. One would think that a diminutive 4'11" pixie of a woman wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem to exercise with compared to, say, a brawny 6'2" man with arms as big as his thighs.

As I dry-heaved into the grass, I found myself wishing that I was doing PT with said brawny man, because SSgt Murphy was a devil. A tiny, cutesy-motherly devil spat up from the depths of Hell because Lucifer was afraid she'd take over.

"C'mon Hebert, we've only got two more laps to go, promise. You're already improving a lot, you know. Hell, last week you were puking five whole minutes earlier."

Two more laps and I was pretty sure that I was going to die. Everything burned and my limbs felt like rubbery noodles that also hurt, but then everything but my hair hurt.

Twenty sit-ups and push-ups, planking for several minutes to further strengthen my core, followed by jogging, then sprinting, then jogging again, then outright running. That didn't seem like much, unless you're like me and built like a scrawny upright frog, then it's a special sort of torture.

What made it bearable was that Murphy did every exercise with me.

What made it salt in an open wound was for every push-up and sit-up I did, she did two, the torture of planking didn't even make her bat an eyelash, and if she hadn't been sweating I wouldn't have thought that she'd been running alongside me for however long she'd had me running for.

She might have been a tiny, tiny woman, but I honestly doubted that she was even human. Seriously, she must have been made in a lab, or was something like that old movie from the 80s about the Tinker-made time-traveling killer robot-cyborg-thing. You know, the one where the robot was covered in human tissue.

Fortunately for me, when we were finally finished with my latest torture session, time I was able to stagger away from the PT field without collapsing for several minutes first.

After a long shower that left me mostly feeling human again, I chipped away at a little of the mountain of school work I had to work on as part of the deal for my eventual enlistment. Personally, I would've preferred to have just the homeschooling and eventual GED, but it had been made crystal clear to me that going back to school was inevitable, but fortunately, it wouldn't be Winslow, not ever again.

I did my absolute best to ignore any news coming out of Brockton Bay, but Blackwell's firing by the school district and subsequent arrest had made the national news, with only vague references to the negligence that had led to… to…

Well, the news was throwing around sensational phrases like 'attempted murder conspiracy' and 'potentially deadly biological hazard' and 'unconscionable corruption,' whatever that last one was supposed to mean exactly.

Was she being blatantly thrown under the bus?

Definitely.

Did I feel even an ounce of pity for my former principal?

HA.

I put her circumstances out of my mind. World History wasn't going to read itself after all, and I still had Organic Chemistry to catch up on afterwards.

Later, I found myself sequestered within the same secure hangar that I'd proven my worth in, only this time, it was less for showing off and more for… ugh… analysis. That basically meant me getting my wings looked over with a fine-toothed comb and comparing them to a set of blueprints.

I wasn't exactly sure where the blueprints had come from. Supposedly, they were for a plane that had never made it to the prototype stage due to funding issues… officially. I think. I wasn't allowed to look at them, though from what I'd overheard and what I was outright told, I didn't exactly match what was on those blueprints.

But it wasn't without benefits. Whether I liked it or not… I was damaged. My wings, I mean, not my head, though I was still struggling at times to deal with… well, you know. My right wing in particular only looked like it was in working order.

"I can't believe that you flew over two gees with your wing beat to shit like this. You're lucky it didn't sheer right the fuck off," the crew chief of the team of engineers told me as he eyeballed my wing. Engineers had finally figured out how to remove the armor paneling from my wings, and I absolutely hated it. Having my wings, even one of them, temporarily stripped down to mere airframes… it didn't hurt, not exactly, but I felt bizarrely naked in a way that I wasn't really comfortable with or comfortable talking about.

But I gritted my teeth and bore it, especially when one of the first things that happened was the removal of… fuck, I don't know, shrapnel I guess.

Hell if I know how it had ended up in my wings [mission log: ERROR ERROR], but at first it was a metal sliver being eased out with a pair of pliers. Two seconds after it had been pulled out of my wing, it became a jagged meter-long flechette-thing of some kind that was falling to the floor. The moment it was out of me I felt better somehow, as if an ache that I hadn't even noticed was suddenly gone.

Somehow, the crew chief whistled around the wad of chew in his cheek as another engineer carefully hefted the maybe-flechette with a pair of tongs.

"You know.. I feel like that jostled something loose," I thoughtfully said. My flaps certainly felt like they'd move more easily now, though I didn't dare test them out of fear of damaging something or shearing off someone's fingers. The crew chief glanced at me with a raised eyebrow, then shook his head with a chuckle.

"Shit, if only every bird I ever worked on could talk back and tell me where they were hurting," he ruefully said. "Don't suppose you could make this easier and tell me what some of this parahuman bullshit in your wing is?"

"It's not bullshit," I said with an annoyed frown. "It's just a complex additive manufacturing unit for producing a variety of short-range remote-operated-..." I trailed off and felt myself blushing as damn near everyone in the hangar suddenly crowded around me.

"Uhhh.. It's.. y-you know… a 3D printer that makes drones. My drones, I mean," I shyly mumbled.

"And you know that how, exactly?" one of them, a greying older man who looked up from the blueprints he'd been studying to stare at me as if I was some kind of specimen. I didn't like him.

But damn if that wasn't a good question. How did I know that?

The answer just popped into my head, and I found myself saying, "It's in my blueprints. Wait, I have blueprints? What the hell?"

Everyone tried to talk at once for several chaotic seconds. I was too distracted with the schematics that were suddenly occupying my head [airframe schematics ready for transmission to on-site technicians for facilitation of maintenance], images that felt like they had always been there but had been waiting for me to notice them, except that now that I had, they were dominating my attention. It was actually really annoying, but fortunately I felt that I could send them… somewhere?

I gave the pictures in my head a firm mental shove [beginning upload] or so it felt, and then every cell phone present in the hangar started buzzing and beeping. Everyone began reaching for their phones. I wasn't sure what was going on at first. Was the base being attacked? Was this their version of an Endbringer alert? Fortunately, the crew chief gave me an answer.

"what in the holy fu-..." he trailed off, then turned his phone sideways and touched the screen with his thumbs, then his eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head.

"is everyone looking at the same thing that I'm looking at?"

"How the hell did she send this to everyone?"

"Oh hell, please tell me that the entire base didn't just get these blueprints!"

"Incredible. These are definitely clearly based on our prototype design for the B-21, you can clearly see that, especially along the fuselage. But these engines…"

A piercing, painfully loud whistle split the air and brought an end to the chatter, courtesy of the crew chief bringing two fingers to his mouth. Seriously, how the hell he didn't spit tobacco juice everywhere, I have no idea, but I was getting kinda morbidly curious now.

"Right. We're gonna have to secure every device this just got sent to," he said authoritatively as he brandished his own phone. Someone nodded in agreement, then grimaced at their own phone, "Not even finished paying for it," he grumbled, but he tossed it onto a table all the same, which began a small pile.

"Someone's gonna have to pass this up the chain, aren't they?" someone pointed out.

"Yep. The Brig Gen is just gonna love this when she learns about it."

Multiple pairs of eyes slid in my direction, then someone asked, "Please tell us that you only sent this to everyone in this room."

I couldn't help but nervously hunch my shoulders.

Fortunately, as it turned out, I 'only' sent my blueprints out as far as the MPs guarding the hangar we were in.

General Harper, as it turned out, wasn't exactly happy.

Her not being happy meant me getting in a little extra PT time for a week.

"C'mon Hebert! If you can electronically flap your gums at half the base, you can run extra laps!"

I really hated extra PT.

Finally, the day came for me to go back to 'proper' schooling. It'd taken over a month, partly to ensure that I was mentally somewhat stable (I had weekly therapy sessions, which I wasn't sure how to feel about since it's not like I was crazy), and partly to decide how to present me to my future classmates. Fortunately, Barnes ANG had its own school slash junior ROTC program and it was just a matter of slotting me into it, and making sure that I didn't become an embarrassment.

Dad made sure he was there, despite the long drive from Brockton Bay. He always made sure to come visit me at least once a week, but that day, he definitely made a point to be there.

He helped me get my ROTC uniform as perfect as we could, even though SSgt Murphy had been relentlessly drilling me for the past two weeks on just that using the dire threat of even harsher PT to make sure that I got it right.

It worked. That woman was terrifying.

Still, it was worth it to see the pride in my dad's eyes. Of course, he ruined it by saying, "Why does it have to be the backup Chair Force though?"

Ugh.

I rolled my eyes and scowled up at him.

"Excuse me?"

"Just saying, the kid of a dockworker, slumming it with chair jockeys? You could at least have gone respectable and signed up with the Navy."

"Be another squid with my name stitched on my butt so other sailors know who they're dry humping in the middle of the night? No thanks," I shot back.

"Sure, sure," he gamely retorted with a grin. "I'm sure that'll be a big consolation when you're passing your next PT test on a stationary exercise bike while nibbling on your daily Twinkie ration."

I snorted, a harsh staticky sound through my choker's speaker, then doubled over laughing, and Dad laughed right along with me as he pulled me into a hug while being careful not to wrinkle my uniform.

"I wish your mom was here to see this, Little Owl," he softly said, and I felt my eyes water.

"Me too, Dad."

And then it was off to school for the first time in maybe two months. That was also when I would meet the person who would become my best friend and wing woman, though at the time I absolutely loathed the other girl with every fiber of my being.

I'm talking of course about that wonderfully psychotic little Russian bitch, Nataliya Sokolova.