Interlude 4
Sunday 30 May 2010
How much chaos can a teenage girl cause in two days without even meaning to? Emily Piggot, intimately familiar with teenage parahumans, would have answered 'a lot'. However, Fortuna, the most problematic ward in the history of the program, proved otherwise. 'A lot' didn't even cover half of the chaos Fortuna had unleased upon the PRT, the city at large and even her own family.
First, the girl somehow got the brilliant idea to start a music channel on Viewtube where she actually advertised that her song was mastering people. Then, immediately after her deputy director and Glenn Chambers of all people managed to keep the fallout contained and actually make it a PR victory, the ward did something even worse. In a tinker fugue, the girl had bio-tinkered on her sister and in the process let her own little brother trigger! Yes, the girl's father made a beautiful tale out of it using words like 'fusing tinkertech with the body' and 'I gave her permission', but Piggot saw it for the euphemisms and blatant lies they were.
As if that wasn't bad enough, yesterday brought even worse. First, she got an e-mail from the youth guard where they demanded to speak to the damn girl because of the forwarded public debut, ignoring the fact that it was the girl's own fault that said public debut was forwarded! What was even worse was that the Youth Guard officer send to speak to Fortuna also wanted to have a meeting with the other wards after speaking with Fortuna. Piggot knew she was sometimes a bit loose with the Youth Guard regulations and hoped they wouldn't rain down a new set of restrictions and fines on the PRT.
Then, she got the confirmation from Armsmaster and Dragon that her old friend Abigail was actually a mole. They had accessed her bank statements and confirmed a large monthly transfer from a consultant company, even though Piggot knew for sure that Abigail was not doing a side job. The employee database from said consultancy company included one other PRT officer, two BBPD officers and even someone working at Medhall, who were almost certainly moles too. The only problem was that they didn't have a clue who was behind the shell company and the moles, it could be the E88, Accord, or even Coil.
After that, in the afternoon, the girl decided to do some power testing in the chambers. Normally, Piggot wouldn't be unhappy with the girl following her orders to use her powers there. However, this time, the girl destroyed all the expensive equipment in said chamber and also used up all materials placed there specifically to prevent that in a 6 hour long tinker fugue. Then once the girl was finished and told the troopers what those items did, Armsmaster raced towards the PRT building, picked up all the items made by the girl, and moved them to his personal laboratory in the Rig. He hasn't come out of his workshop since, and cancelled all his patrols for the next few days, forcing Piggot to reschedule the patrols of the other overworked members of the protectorate.
Finally, there was the clusterfuck of last evening. Officially, Fortuna performed exemplary by capturing a severely wounded Squealer and an unpowered merchant after they drove a truck through a house while stoned and killing one of the inhabitants. Unofficially, there was more to it. Piggot didn't believe in coincidences, and Squealer crashing her truck into a home within a few dozen feet of Fortuna screamed of parahuman involvement. First, Piggot thought that Fortuna had grabbed some sort of temporary master power just before the incident. However, when she took another look at the preliminary reports on the powers of her siblings, Piggot realized the truth. Tia, the new ward with the most innocent seeming power Piggot had seen in years, was indirectly responsible for Squealer's crash and the resulting civilian death. Piggot didn't blame the girl one bit though, as she didn't consciously use said power. Even if she did, it prevented Squealer's truck from running over their own car. It was just unfortunate that a civilian died in that event.
And that brings her to the woman and girl in front of her. Both of them were obviously grief-stricken, although there was a small glimmer of hope and happiness in the eyes of the girl.
"So, mrs. Graham, I'm sorry for the loss of your husband. We have Squealer and the other perpetrator in custody and will be pushing for the harshest possible sentence."
"I hope that bitch dies! But being dumped in the birdcage would be satisfactory. Just don't screw up and let her escape through your revolving door prison!"
Outwardly, Piggot remained calm and composed. Inwardly, Piggot was furious and wanted to ask her how she would keep the villains locked up when they had more capes than you, knew exactly when the prisoners were going to be transported, and you already had enough trouble keeping the villains contained by themselves.
"We will do our utter best to keep Squealer locked up until the day of her trial." And Piggot meant that. This time, the villain was not going to escape, even if she had to ask Dragon to provide armored flying transport to the trial and the prison afterwards. "However, let's move on to the real topic of this meeting. You said you wanted to sign up your daughter to the wards?"
And there was the final result of Fortuna's chaos. May Graham, the daughter of the civilian killed by Squealer, had triggered and was going to join the wards. Normally, Piggot would be ecstatic when a new parahuman decided to join the wards instead of causing chaos as a vigilante or joining one of the numerous villain gangs. However, this child was only 7 years old and, thanks again to Fortuna, Brockton Bay already had a surplus of young child wards who couldn't even be send out on the 'safer' patrol routes. Well, at least there would always be enough wards for PR events, with the total ward count of Brockton Bay becoming 11.
"Yes, I don't want to lose any more family and the wards are by far the safest place for May! Besides, my daughter is enamored with the new ward who captured Squealer and really wants to join her team."
Again, Piggot had trouble keeping up her neutral face. Of course the new parahuman would have hero worship towards the damn ward who cause all of this chaos instead of any more reasonable parahuman like Miss Militia or maybe Velocity. The girl was even transforming into either Fortuna's forcefield clone or her ice-breaker state every minute or so!
The contract was signed quickly after that. Normally, Renick would be the person who would sign up the new wards and arrange the paperwork, but thanks to Fortuna's PR disaster, he had overworked himself and took today off. Just like most other wards, the Graham family opted for May to work with the PRT for the maximal allowed number of hours. The only wards who didn't do that were the problematic ward herself, Modula, and their brother. Additionally, a transfer to Arcadia elementary was included, conveniently putting May in the same class as Modula starting after the summer vacation.
After sending the new ward and her mother back home, Piggot prepared herself for the next meeting. This time, it was a meeting with the cause of her frustrations: Fortuna, real name Lauren Porter.
Even though Piggot was frustrated with the ward and the chaos she created, she could see that none of it was ill-intended. All of it was either caused by her impulsiveness or by her powers acting up. Even the moment when said ward bio-tinkered on her own sister was almost certainly caused by her power putting her in a tinker fugue and only letting her think of the positives of giving her sister powers.
That didn't mean Piggot was comfortable with it, not by a long shot, but it meant she couldn't fully blame the problematic ward for the bio-tinkering.
When the ward in question came in, Piggot could see that she too had been affected by the events of the last days. Seeing your first dead body would always do that. Just like last time, Piggot pressed the button that would isolate the chamber from any possible listeners.
"Fortuna, first I want you to know that you have my sympathy. Children shouldn't see dead bodies, especially not in the state mr. Graham was in. Additionally, you handled the apprehension of Squealer well and kept the family from panicking. Squealer is stabilized and under heavy guard in the PRT medical wing.
That said: What the hell were you thinking the last few days?! Almost creating a PR disaster, biotinkering on family members, destroying PRT property?! People have been demoted or even jailed for doing one of these things! You are lucky that mitigating circumstances have been involved in all these situations, or else you might even have faced legal consequences!"
Thanks to said mitigating circumstances, Piggot couldn't even punish Lauren for the latter two things, as both the bio-tinkering and the destruction of PRT property had been done in a tinker fugue. After circumstances involving a ward with a rich lawyer daddy, it had become PRT regulation that wards were not to be held responsible for anything done in a tinker fugue, which was ridiculously convenient in Fortuna's case, as she automatically seemed to go into a fugue whenever she gained a tinker power. Presumably receiving permission from both her PRT-affiliated father and her sister to do the bio-tinkering also removed any possibility on abusing the 'Using untested tinkertech on civilians' angle to punish her. Piggot could have punished her father for unlawfully giving said permission, but was loath to do so with one of the few cleared not-moles in her department and kept it to a warning.
"Regardless, as Renick told you, your punishment for putting up that video without permission is in part the mandatory lessons until your debut, and an increase in your mandatory amount of PR events afterwards. In addition, I will have you know that using untested tinkertech on civilians is forbidden except with permission from Renick or me. So next time you want to biotinker on your sister, I expect you to know that your father is not allowed to give you permission for that!"
Fortuna seemed suitably subdued after hearing the semi-threat. "Yes, director Piggot, I will remember that!."
"Good, now let's get back to our damn molehunt. I'll have you know that your first suspect is confirmed to be a mole, although the organization who employs her is unknown. From the same research, we have discovered that agent Robert Simmons is very likely to be a mole too, so please confirm that with your power whenever you happen to meet him. Regardless, do you have any new suspects?"
Fortunately, or unfortunately, Fortuna didn't find any new moles. However, she rattled off 8 names of troopers that were trustworthy, which was maybe even more useful.
Before Fortuna went to her lessons, Piggot had a few more things to say:
"Fortuna, first I have to inform you that you have an appointment with the Youth Guard tomorrow at 16:00. In case you don't know, they are officially an organization that tries to ensure the safety and well-being of parahumans."
Unofficially, they were a pain in the ass that prevented her from letting her wards do anything useful, even if said wards themselves were willing.
"However, there is also something else I wanted to talk about. Do you know about the true reason why Squealer's car crashed into mr. Graham's house?"
The scared and haunted look on her face already told Piggot the answer before she said "Yes, I do and I would rather not have known it at all!"
"So you understand why I want you to keep to the official story that says Squealer was too stoned to drive straight, especially in front of Tia and our new ward May Graham?"
Fortuna nodded "My father already took me and Cameron aside and told us the same. I don't want Tia to feel like she killed someone."
"Good. I will also have you know that May Graham seems enamored with your hero persona. Please try to be a good role model for her and your siblings and don't do things like your outburst in front of half the wards yesterday. Also, try to keep your powers and impulsiveness under control! If you don't, there will come a time where you have to fully face the consequences of your actions, and you won't like that at all!"
As Piggot let out the problematic but useful ward, she hoped that said ward would tone in the chaos she was going to unleash in the future.
That evening, Piggot was about to check out after a long day when a PRT trooper opened the door
"Madam, Dauntless just managed to catch Shadow Stalker! She had nailed an E88 member to the wall with crossbow bolts and was seemingly interrogating the guy when Dauntless intervened. According to him, Stalker attempted to flee in her shadow state but was still hurt by his Arclance."
And of course she wasn't allowed to go home and sleep after another hectic day. While Piggot didn't care about the health of the wannabe Nazi at all, she also didn't like independent parahumans taking the law in their own hands and torturing people.
"Go back and ask Dauntless to watch her. Let him immediately use his Arclance if she even thinks of escaping!"
Keeping a parahuman that could move through walls locked up would be a challenge, but Piggot had an idea of Stalker's weakness. Tomorrow morning, she would ask the new thinker ward for confirmation and, if what she thought was true, cuff Stalker with electrical handcuffs and put her under guard of troopers with tasers.
Unlike with the captured Squealer, Piggot thought there was some hope for Stalker to become useful. If she wasn't too much of a psychopath, turning the dangerous vigilante against the gangs under PRT supervision might be worth the effort. Otherwise, Piggot wouldn't mind throwing Stalker into Juvie hall, as having less psychopathic capes on the streets was never a bad thing. However, at this moment, Piggot was mainly pissed at Stalker for forcing her to stay awake longer.
AN: I wanted to write the aftermath of the Squealer incident from another PoV, and director Piggot was the perfect candidate. We also got confirmation that it was Tia's power which made Squealer run her truck into the house, as Squealer was forced to quickly change directions after seeing a glimpse of Tia's face in the car window.
