Chapter 16

Saturday 29 May 2010

In contrast to the stories Lauren had heard from Missy and her own expectations, Mr. Johnson, head of the PRT ENE PR department was a good man dedicated to his job. Lauren's power had told her that he and the other employees in the room genuinely wanted to help the local heroes, which in their case was done by changing public opinion in the favor of the local heroes.

Before deciding on a costume, they first wanted Lauren to decide on a definitive cape name. After all, some costume ideas didn't work with certain names, while some names would require specialized costumes.

"So Fortuna, with your powerset, we can go two ways. We can either give you a name that advertises you as a versatile and powerful trump, or we can go with a name that underplay your strengths and pay more attention to your unpredictability and inconsistency. We would advise you to go with the second option, as that would make the gangs go easier on you and make you a bit more approachable. Most of the costumes we designed are also build with that idea in mind. However, we could work with names of the first group."

Lauren thought for a moment, as this was a very important decision for her hero career. She knew her power was ridiculously strong, but did she want to advertise it? The wards did regularly fight against villains in this city, although usually without any results to speak off. If portraying herself weaker meant those villains would underestimate her, why wouldn't she do that? It is not like she particularly cared to be seen as a strong hero, and if the PR team kept their promise on letting her sing, she would probably be a popular hero either way.

"I'm fine with underplaying my abilities. Please give me some names from the second group."

"Okay, you can of course always remain Fortuna if you don't like any of these names. So first, what do you think of Lady Luck?"

"No, it feels way too generic."

"Okay, then what about Serendipity?"

Lauren had to think for a moment here, before deciding: "I think it's better than Fortuna, but still not exactly what I'm looking for."

Lauren continued rejecting other names for a few minutes, which included Ripple, Chancy, Auspice and many others, until finally:

"That's another no. Next one: what do you think about Hit-or-Miss?"

Wait, that one seemed a lot better than the others. It seemed fun, not dangerous, easily pronounceable, and was even a nice pun regarding her anti-aiming power. Lauren liked it!

"I would really like Hit-or-Miss as my cape name!"

"That's great! Do you want to go through the rest of the names or are you content with Hit-or-Miss?"

"No, I don't think it is necessary, Hit-or-Miss is a great name and I don't think we will find anything better."

Mr. Johnson and his assistants were visibly relieved she had settled on one of the names. Did they have bad experiences with naming the other wards or something?

Once they had settled on Hit-or-Miss as Lauren's cape name, they moved on to the costume ideas. As Hit-or-Miss was not a name that required a specialized costume, they had still loads of costume ideas for Lauren to inspect.

However, before they started perusing all the costume ideas, Lauren had to make one thing clear:

"I have one important request for my costume, which I hope Director Renick already mentioned to you. I want both a helmet and either a bulletproof vest or some other armor for my vital areas! I have a healing power, but that won't work if one of my vital organs is destroyed or if I'm shot in my brain. Aside from that, I'm probably okay with most ideas. Although, if possible, I want my hero costume to look like that of an Earth Aleph magical girl."

Mr. Johnson made a few futile attempts to make Lauren change her mind about the helmet, but it quickly became clear to him that Lauren wouldn't budge on that point. However, he was clearly happy with Lauren's wish for a magical girl-like hero outfit and already had a few ideas prepared in that direction. He first had a question for Lauren though:

"So, Hit-or-Miss. When you go out in public, are you planning to do that in the ice form you're using now or in your normal body?"

Lauren hadn't thought much about that. However, she always preferred not having to deal with her warm area power and quickly made her choice:

"I will probably go out in my ice statue form, as I feel more comfortable like that. However, I might decide to forgo that form on some days."

"Okay, then we'll look to find a costume that look good on your ice form, and at least fine on your regular body."

Once Lauren had picked her costume, and had her measurements taken by a female staff member, there wasn't actually anything else to do at the PR department. Mr. Johnson and his assistants thanked her sincerely for her cooperation and told her that they would be busy finishing the details of her costume and actually ordering the parts. The whole affair had only taken 3 hours, while Renick had told Lauren that she would most likely be busy for the whole day. As the PR lessons would start on Sunday, Lauren actually had the rest of the day free. This meant she could finally spend some time getting to know the other wards, and see how her siblings were doing.

When Lauren entered the wards common room, it was surprisingly empty. Maybe the other wards were still on their morning patrols?

However, she soon heard suspiciously familiar voices originating from Kid Win's tinker lab. In hindsight, it was obvious that Kyla wouldn't turn down any opportunity for tinkering. Maybe Lauren could ask the PRT to send some tinker materials home? Kyla would love to have the option to tinker at home, especially since all old electronics in the garage had already been used up in the last few weeks. Lauren herself would also be helped by this, as she wouldn't be forced to destroy her own stuff in tinker fugues if there were quality materials lying around. She would ask dad about it.

"Wheeeey!"

Suddenly, Kyla flew out of the lab at high velocity with some weird device on her back. Lauren realized it was almost certainly the jetpack Kyla had been talking about on Wednesday just before the reality of the situation came to her.

"Kyla, slow down now! You're going to get hurt like this!"

Kyla, being as responsible as the average 7-year old with a new toy, ignored Lauren's advice and continued flying around the common room. After shouting more warnings at her happily screaming sister, Lauren realized it was hopeless to stop her and decided to prepare for the unavoidable collision. As Kyla was flying around, Lauren started summoning forcefield clones in front of all the walls she might crash in, dismissing them when she passed them.

As Lauren was trying to stop her sister from hurting herself, Chris ran out of his lab, also shouting for Kyla to slow down and land. Unfortunately for him and Lauren, Kyla either didn't hear him or didn't care and continued to fly around. Lauren was however touched by the clear concern he had for Kyla in his voice.

This situation continued for a few minutes before Kyla had enough and returned to the ground. Surprisingly, Lauren hadn't even needed to safe her sister once, although she needed to safe the television when Kyla's right foot pushed it off the shelf. Cameron had also come out of Chris' tinker room, but remained content to watch the chaos from the side.

"Yay big sis, the jetpack works perfectly!"

"That's great Kyla, but you shouldn't immediately test something like that in a small enclosed space. It's a wonder you didn't fly into a wall!"

"But, I really wanted to test it out! If I didn't do it now, then I would have to wait until that stupid committee finally approves it. Chris said they can take more than a week, and I didn't want to wait that long!"

Ugh, Lauren couldn't really fault Kyla for that, she would have done the same in her situation. Now how to convince Kyla to be a bit more careful without being a hypocrite?

"Hey Kyla, you said I could use the jetpack after you!"

"Of course big bro, here you go!"

While Lauren was considering what to say, Kyla had taken off her jetpack and given it to Cameron, who immediately put it on.

"Cameron, stop! You don't even know how it works, put it off now!"

Cameron, predictably, listened to her as well as Kyla did and immediately turned on the jetpack. However, unlike Kyla, he actually flew forward slowly.

"Of course I know how it works! Kyla told me all about it when I asked her!"

Bereft of any good rebuttals, and still feeling guilty for causing his trigger, Lauren gave up and just let him fly. However, she kept a forcefield clone around whose sole job was to keep an eye on him. After weeks of using that power, seeing and doing things from multiple perspectives had become natural to her. In fact, she far preferred it over having no force fields out and seeing only from one perspective. It was a shame she couldn't use them at school to read a book or browse PHO during a boring lesson.

As Cameron happily flew around, Lauren was approached by Chris:

"So, Lauren, I need to tell you something."

Wondering what brought this about, Lauren answered "Sure Chris, what is it?"

"Well, after your power created Kyla here, I had no idea how to deal with it, especially after Panacea's revelation." Chris said while taking a glance at Kyla who was now running after the flying Cameron.

"As you were gone, and no one else I know is even remotely in a similar situation, I ended up telling my parents about it. I'm sorry for revealing your powers and the names of you and Kyla to them, but I very much needed to talk to someone about this! They did eventually end up giving me some advice on how to handle it, by essentially doing the same thing you are doing and seeing her as a little sister, but I just can't forget what Panacea said. However, that's not what I wanted to tell you. After hearing about Kyla, my parents are dead set on meeting her, and you by association, and I'm supposed to invite you two over at your earliest convenience."

Lauren was flabbergasted by this. However, she should have seen this coming. There is no way Chris' parents wouldn't want to meet their sort of granddaughter, and Lauren couldn't blame Chris from being overwhelmed and seeking help from his parents, even if she didn't like him outing her without asking.

"Well, it's more Kyla's choice than mine whether she wants to go, so you have to ask her first. However, I'm grounded for the next month, so I can only come with my father's permission. Also, Chris, I cannot and will not say I'm sorry for creating my little sister, but I am sorry that I accidently caused you to feel that way."

Seeing Kyla happily running around reaffirmed Lauren's conviction that she wouldn't ever apologize to anyone for creating Kyla.

"Thanks, but you don't need to apologize. It was clear to me that you had no idea what your power did, and Kyla has been a great influence on my life since she appeared. She let me figure out my specialty, keeps me company while tinkering, and even accidently let me reconnect to my parents. However, that aside, could you tell me what you did to earn a whole month of grounding?"

Chris' question immediately brought back memories of Tia lying on the table, belly cut open, and blood flowing all over the place. All the guilt and self-loathing Lauren had buried came back in force.

"I don't want to tell about it. All I can say is that I deserved that, and probably worse."

Lauren walked away after saying that, not in the mood to talk anymore. However, when she sat down on one of the couches with her real body, Kyla noticed her sudden mood dip and decided to cheer her up. Therefore, once the alarms sounded, Lauren's mood had cleared up.

Cameron immediately stopped flying when he heard the alarms and quickly brought back Kyla's jetpack to Kid Win's tinker room. However, when the opened elevator revealed Tia and dad, his precautions proved unnecessary.

What Lauren did not expect was for her father to immediately hug her:

"Thank you so much Lauren! You couldn't have given Tia a better power! Thank you!"

Lauren had no idea what kind of power for Tia could have provoked such a large reaction from her father, but for now she was content to get some positive attention from her father.

Their moment was rather quickly interrupted by Cameron: "Tia! How was power testing? Do you finally know your powers?"

Tia, seemingly less happy than her father, answered: "Yeah they figured out my power all right. It is a super lame stranger power. It makes it impossible for people to hurt me, unless I intend to hurt them. So I have a power that only works when I'm not fighting villains! Lauren, why couldn't you have given me a cool brute or blaster power?!"

Ah, that actually explained a lot. It was unfortunate that Tia herself didn't like her power, but Lauren had to agree with her father that this was the best kind of power they could have hoped for!

"Uhhm, I'm sorry to interrupt, but did you say Lauren gave you your power? I assumed you cluster triggered with your brother Cameron here. Does that mean Lauren gave him his weird thinker power too?"

Both Lauren and her father suddenly realized that it wasn't just her family in her room. Dad immediately gave Chris the PRT approved version of what happened that evening, hoping he wouldn't think deeper about it. After that was cleared up, Chris moved to summarize his situation and ask him and Kyla about the request from his parents.

"… Lauren mentioned she was grounded, but could you please allow her and Kyla to meet my parents? They are very insistent about this, and I don't want to disappoint them after we finally reconnected."

Evan didn't think long about this: "That is fine. I was thinking about reducing Lauren's grounding anyway, and this is for Kyla's benefit. Both of them will be busy with ward lessons until Wednesday though, so it will have to be Thursday after Lauren's track and field meet, as long as Kyla wants to go."

Kyla's agreement made sure that Lauren's agenda was now full for the next 5 days. As there was no more reason for him to be there, Lauren's father moved to leave the room and return to his normal job. However, before he left, he still had to say something:

"Oh, Lauren, Cam, Tia, Kyla, I almost forgot to say something. This afternoon, there will be two tour groups coming into the wards room. One on 14:30 and another on 15:30. Lauren, Renick personally forbade you to have any interaction with the public until you have finished your PR lessons, and it is not a good idea for Cameron and Tia to meet a tour group when they only joined today. So you three should make sure to be somewhere else in the building during that time. You can either accompany the more experienced wards on console duty or go to the power testing chambers.

Kyla, you can stay here and tinker in Chris' workshop if you want. Just make sure to keep your mask up and remain in the workshop while the tourists are here."

Lauren wasn't surprised that Renick wouldn't want her to do anything regarding PR, he had seemed rather angry with the singing thing after all.

When all the children nodded, Lauren's father left them alone in the room. Kyla and Chris almost immediately went back into his workshop, while Lauren and her other siblings decided to finally check out the room. Almost immediately, they found out the wards had a Wii too, with of course the ever popular Mario Kart on it. Seeing the possibility to play while getting payed for it, the siblings quickly turned on the game. Lauren's siblings were extremely competitive when it came to these kind of games, but at the same time were perfectly able to work together to beat Lauren, which showed after Lauren ended up in third place twice. Even using forcefield clones to observe their actions and get advanced warnings for their items wasn't enough to compensate for them teaming up by only throwing their red and blue shells at Lauren. Before they could start up another game, the elevator opened and revealed the costumed forms of Triumph, Aegis and Vista.

Missy was the first to see Lauren: "Hey Lauren, how did you escape from the PR team so soon? It took me a whole day before I got them to approve a name or costume that wasn't ridiculously childish!"

Before Lauren could answer, Missy spotted her siblings: "Wait, are you two the new wards Triumph mentioned? Nice to meet you, I'm Vista, your future teammate!"

Vista became almost giddy when Cameron and Tia introduced themselves as Lauren's siblings, as the wards now had their own cape family. After Triumph and Aegis had also introduced themselves and all wards had unmasked to Cameron and Tia, Missy continued on her earlier track of questioning.

"But seriously Lauren, how did you finish so quickly?"

"Well, the name was chosen rather quickly, as "Hit-or-Miss" fits just so well with my power! Once they brought it up as an option, I just knew it should be my cape name. Choosing a costume also wasn't that hard. I just mentioned I wanted a helmet and armor for my vital areas and asked them for a costume with an Earth Aleph magical girl theme, and they immediately gave me multiple cool costumes to choose from!"

When she said this, Rory and Carlos started laughing while Missy stared at her with open mouth.

"What is so funny guys?"

As the guys were still laughing, Missy was the one who answered Lauren: "Uh, Lauren, you do realize you will have to wear this costume until you graduate to the protectorate?"

"Of course I do."

"Then why did you let the PR team choose such a cute and childish outfit for you? It might make you popular, especially with the children, but people won't take you seriously like that."

"Yes, that's true, but I fail to see the problem."

"… But … don't you want people to treat you with respect, instead of just seeing you as the cute little ward until you graduate?"

"Honestly, it doesn't matter much to me whether they respect me or just like me. I don't have anything against you guys, you seem like great and fun teammates, but the wards as a whole never make any sort of impact on the city. The PRT and Protectorate want to keep the wards popular and safe, which I do appreciate now that three of my siblings joined the wards. However, that also means you won't have the opportunity to do anything significant for the city. I bet Shadow Stalker puts more criminals in jail than the entire wards team just because she can patrol in unsafe areas and has no rules of engagement. Seeing as I won't do much that's worth getting respect for anyway, why not have some fun with my costume?"

While Lauren was talking, the boys had gotten quiet. As she finished her explanation, Lauren saw that they were not happy with what she said. Missy, however, looked more thoughtful than angry.

Rory was the first to react: "If you think the wards are so useless, why did you join them then?!"

Lauren understood why he was angry at her, but she still didn't like his tone.

"I didn't even plan to join the wards! I wanted to be an independent hero and pay back Hookwolf and the rest of the E88 for what they did to my mother! However, I realized how dangerous being an independent hero could be to my family, especially when my powers could so easily out myself, so I instead joined the wards. With Cameron, Tia and Kyla joining the wards too, I don't regret my decision at all!"

Lauren realized her mistake when she first saw Tia's eyes tearing up, and Cameron's soon after. Even though they had moved on and had accepted Sophie as a new mother in their lives, they still remembered her. And Lauren just dragged up their worst memories.

Lauren immediately moved to hug her siblings as she summoned a forcefield clone to ask the other wards firmly to leave them alone for a few minutes.

AN: Here is an early chapter for this week. I'm going to be busy tomorrow and friday so instead I'm releasing this chapter now. Again, we have a chapter without new powers, although with character development. The people who like the random power part of the story the most don't have to worry though, as next chapter will have another power grabbing session. We also get confirmation of Tia's powers, which are very similar to those of August Prince, as Aminadab_Brulle deduced, but have the limitation that they stop working on someone once Tia is commited to hurt that person or someone they care about (Although they can only hurt her back as much as she is planning to hurt them).