Glimmer 1.7

Immediately following Glimmer 1.6

"Director," Armsmaster said crisply, "A word, if you please?"

Piggot glanced at him, then back at me. "Annatar," she said slowly, "if you and your father could please step outside?"

I considered her. "You know something," I said. "Sophia's a cape, isn't she? I could tell."

Piggot considered me, her eyes hooded, her face perfectly blank. "Do you have a power that allows you to tell capes from non-capes?" she asked evenly.

"Not exactly," I hedged. "I just… get a feeling for power, especially when it's arrayed against me. The entirety of Winslow is full of my enemies, but only Sophia pinged on that radar. Is she a Merchant? Or one of the minor groups? She can't be ABB or Empire."

"You know we can't unmask a cape to you," Armsmaster said slowly. "Villain or no. The director and I need to discuss this for a moment and decide what to do. I promise you, Annatar, we're on your side here, but some of this information is highly sensitive. Please step outside."

I shrugged. "Sure," I said. "Come on, Dad."

If they decide to cooperate, great. If not, well, I'll still go through this trial thing, but if they can't trust me, I can't work with them, and if they're not willing to stick their necks out a bit to help me out of Winslow, I'm not really willing to help them with all their PR bullshit.

I slipped my helmet on as I stood up and led my dad out of the room. Just as I opened the door, I glanced back around my shoulder.

"Just remember," I said. "I haven't signed anything yet. I don't have to sign anything yet."

They didn't answer, and I stepped out of the room, Dad following behind.

A cape shut the door behind us. I recognized him—Triumph, a recent graduate from the Wards. The shine of the gold paint on his shoulderpads didn't quite conceal the ordinary steel underneath.

"Annatar, right?" he asked.

I nodded, holding out a hand, which he shook. "That's right. And you're Triumph. Nice to meet you. You were Wards captain for the Bay for a while, right?"

"Yep," he confirmed. "You got any questions about it?"

I thought about that. "Well, I have some problems in my civilian identity," I said. "Things that have to do with my trigger. How likely do you think the PRT is to stick their necks out for me?"

He frowned. "I mean, it depends," he said. "They probably won't break any laws for you or anything, but if you just need, I dunno, a support network, they'll do what they can. I'm not exactly a policy maker, though; I don't know."

"Fair enough," I said. That was supremely unhelpful. "What if I happened into knowledge of a villain's civilian identity?"

He blinked at me from beneath his mask. "Oh. Hm. I don't know, actually. There's the unwritten rules, but it's a villain. I guess it'd depend on which villain. It's bad form to go after people in their secret identities, but if they're bad enough…"

"Annatar?" The door opened, and Armsmaster stood in the space. "Please, come in. We've come to a decision."

I nodded and followed him inside, Dad close behind me.

Piggot was still seated at the desk. She looked somehow diminished, weakened, tired. Clearly whatever decision was made was one she didn't fully like.

We returned to our places, like players returning to the stage following intermission. Armsmaster returned to Piggot's elbow, I sat across from her, and Dad sat at my side. I did not remove my helmet, instead resting my chin on my hand and studying the director from across her desk.

As Triumph shut the door behind us, I broke the silence. "Well?" I asked. "What have you decided to tell me?"

Piggot glanced at Armsmaster silently. The man sighed.

"Sophia Hess," he said slowly, "is a parahuman. You're quite right there."

I nodded. "I know. What else?"

Armsmaster's mouth twisted. "I want you to know," he said slowly, "that we had no idea any of this was going on. This was the result of a sequence of lapses in judgement and incompetent behavior on the parts of several people involved, and now that it's been brought to our attention we'll do our utmost to fix the situation."

My face froze. I stared into his featureless visor. "Explain," I ordered, unable to keep Narya from rushing to amplify my voice. "Now."

To his credit, he didn't flinch. "Sophia Hess is the civilian identity of the Ward Shadow Stalker," he said.

There was a crack as my fist came down on the desk. The desk broke, a hole punched into it as by an artillery shell. "No," I said, and my voice was shrill in spite of Narya. "No, you're fucking kidding me! That bitch is one of yours? That bitch is supposed to be a hero?"

" 'Supposed to be' is a very good way of putting it," said Piggot dryly.

"As I said," Armsmaster said evenly, "we had no idea any of this was going on—"

"How?" I thundered, standing sharply and staring into his visor. He was a tall man, especially in his armor, but I was almost as tall as he was, and with Narya enhancing and building me up I was practically dwarfing him in presence, if not in actual size. "How the fuck did you miss something like that? Do you not bother with any kind of oversight? When a girl got shoved into her locker at your Ward's school, did you not even bother to look?"

Armsmaster didn't back down in the slightest, even though I was battering him with Narya's overbearing will. "As far as we can tell," he said stiffly, "her handler totally failed to keep a proper watch on her, and the school's administration was too attached to the funding they got for being a Ward's school to hold her accountable for her behavior. In addition, Emma Barnes' father is the lawyer who first represented Sophia when she was brought in for vigilantism and vouched for her character so that we would offer her a plea bargain to join the Wards in lieu of juvenile hall; it is possible he… misrepresented the case to some or all of the people involved."

"Fucking Alan," Dad muttered.

That brought me back to earth. I sat down heavily, slouching slightly, curling inward. I was spent, exhausted. I could have drawn on Narya to uplift me, but I didn't want to use the Ring right now. I just wanted to be done here.

"What are you going to do now?" I asked, by voice soft and a little rough.

"Shadow Stalker will, of course, be removed from the Wards' active roster," Armsmaster said evenly. "Miss Hess will be removed from Winslow, and the PRT will find an excuse to launch an investigation into Winslow's administration. Shadow Stalker's handler will be drummed out of the force with a dishonorable discharge, and Miss Hess will quietly be consigned either to juvenile hall or possibly prison, depending on what our legal department thinks she can be charged with."

I nodded dully. "Great," I said. "Fine. You fucked up. Fix it."

"We will, Annatar," Piggot said firmly. "You have our assurances of that. Sophia Hess has done everything exactly wrong, has broken every law, rule, and oath in the Wards' contract, and she will be punished for it. If I have my say, she'll be tried as an adult for terrorism and use of a bioweapon, if even half of the report on the locker incident is true. She'll be looking at a prison sentence for at least several years."

She's just a child.

It would be months and years before I was able to truly understand what it was that put that thought in my head. Sophia Hess was a bully, a monster, a demon in human skin. She'd made it her mission to make my like hell for more than a year. She'd taken one of the highest academically achieving girls in middle school and systematically beaten her down until she was practically failing high school and couldn't find it in herself to give a damn. She'd come damn close to killing me—more than once.

More than that, she'd almost managed to get me to kill myself. More than once.

She's just a child.

She was a monster, but what I didn't understand was why. Children aren't born evil. Nothing is. What could have made Sophia into the monster she was? Had she even had a choice, any more than I had?

She'd triggered, same as I. It was so easy to see how, if I'd had any other power, if the Three weren't so wonderful and supportive and strong, I could have become a monster myself. I'd spent a week in a madhouse after my trigger because I'd been a gibbering wreck. I'd gotten better.

What if Sophia hadn't?

She's just a child.

"I need to understand," I said thickly.

"Pardon?" Armsmaster said.

I looked up at him. I had a feeling my eyes were red. They certainly itched. "I don't understand why she'd do this," I said quietly. "I need to. I want to talk to her. Face to face."

"I'm afraid that's against policy—" Armsmaster began.

I shook my head. "I won't hurt her," I said. "I don't… I want to understand. I want to hear, from her, why she did it. She's… she's just a kid. What could have happened to make a child into that?"

"She likely has some disorder," Piggot said flatly. "Psychopathy, perhaps. Parahumans aren't famous for being particularly stable."

"Because we fucking trigger," I said, glaring at her. "Because we go through days that are so bad that they color the rest of our lives! Because we get broken down into something less than human, and get rewarded for it with more than human power! You'd be fucked up too, Director Piggot, if you had to deal with what we do! If you had to use powers which, every damn day, reminded you of one of the worst moments in your life!"

I looked back up at Armsmaster. "I don't really hate her anymore," I said, and it was honestly true. "I pity her, if anything. I don't know what fucked her up this badly, but… well, she was an independent hero even before she joined the Wards, right?"

"That's true," said Armsmaster cautiously. "She had a habit of being overly brutal, however."

I waved that away. "If all she wanted was to hurt people," I said quietly, "it would have been so much easier to do it as a villlain. That's what villains do. She chose to target criminals instead. Why?"

"I'd assume it's so that she'd get the good PR that comes with heroism," said Piggot caustically.

"Haw you met her?" I asked roughly. "What exactly gave you the impression that she wants to be well liked? Was it the way she shoves people out of the way like they're dust in her path, or the way she talks to everyone like they're beneath her? No, Director, I can't help but think she set out to be a hero, and lost her way."

"You're serious," Armsmaster said. "You want to, what, give her another chance?"

"Sophia doesn't understand chances," I said. "I want to understand what makes her tick. I want to figure out where she fucked up. And if she sincerely wants to be a hero, then I want to teach her myself. I want to actually watch her properly, and hold her accountable, and give her a chance, not to shape up, but to be shaped. To be molded into the hero that I think she wants to be."

Piggot and Armsmaster looked at each other. "We'll have to discuss this," Piggot said.

"But we're outmanned in Brockton Bay," said Armsmaster thoughtfully. "There's no question that another hero on the roster would be a good thing, but only if you think you can actually make Shadow Stalker into a net positive."

"I don't know," I said truthfully. "I need to talk to her."

"Well, we'll certainly consider it," said Armsmaster, looking back at me. "In the meantime, if you could follow Triumph to have your powers tested and rated, we'll consider your idea."

"Thank you," I said, standing up. "If you could just give me an interview room or something to talk to her, in private, for about half an hour… I can't promise we'll come to an agreement, but I'll try to make the offer. And I won't hurt her."

"We'll consider it," said Piggot flatly. "If you please?"

I left. Dad followed.

"Taylor," he said lowly, as Triump led us down a corridor toward power testing, "I get that you want to be the better person here, but are you sure? It seems insane to want to give someone like her a second chance."

"Third chance," I corrected him. "And yes, I'm sure. She's a child, Dad. If she knows anything about right and wrong, it's because she's learned it; and she's not so old, yet, that she can't unlearn it. She's an asset, if nothing else, and I'd rather not waste it.

"Well, I'm really proud of you," he said with a wan smile. "I don't think—no, I know I couldn't do that. I'm just worried about you. I know you said you wouldn't hurt her, but don't let her hurt you, either."

"You don't have to worry about that," I chuckled. "I'll be perfectly safe."

-x-x-x-

"Why would they kick me out?" Shadow Stalker snarled. "I haven't done anything!"

Narya sang in my veins, allowing me to look my tormentor in the eye unblinking, and overpower her very presence with my own. I chuckled. "Oh, you are funny," I said, and took off my helmet.

I saw the slight tilt of her head, saw her reel, saw her try to reconcile the world of two seconds ago with the world of now, and fail. I knew exactly how she felt.

"Sit down, Sophia," I said, "and let's talk."

"No." Sophia's voice was strangled by more than just the helmet. I could practically here her heartbeat accelerating, the adrenaline rushing to her brain.

"It's in your interest," I told her truthfully. "If you walk out now, there's no hope for you."

"No. No way. You? A Ward? A hero?"

You don't even know what that word means.

"I said the same thing when I found out, you know?" I asked rhetorically, a light laugh bubbling up to color the words. "You? The girl so vicious and vile she thought shoving a classmate into her locker with a literal biohazard was an innocent prank? But them's the breaks, I'm afraid."

"No." Her voice was getting high, almost panicked. "No, fuck this. I'm not going to work with you."

"Is that your final answer?" My lips twisted into a smile. Part of me hoped she would just walk out. Sitting here, directly across from the woman—no, the girl—who'd driven me to madness, to depression, to pain, and eventually to power, I was reminded of just how deep and strong ran my hatred for her.

But she's just a child.

As much as I was enjoying this conversation, enjoying getting her on the back foot for once, enjoying being the one with all the power, I had a goal in mind. I needed to know.

"Because, believe me, I would love to have you walk out that door right now and be unceremoniously arrested and kicked out on your ass," I told her. It was, of course, true. I just had a better prize in mind for the alternative. "That would be wonderful. I owe you for a hell of a lot of shit, Sophia. But there's an alternative. Sit down."

When she did, my smile widened slightly, because I knew I'd won. "Now, Sophia," I said, and n my satisfaction my voice came out practically a purr. "What do you desire?"

End Arc 1: Glimmer

I will upload Arc 2: Twinkle tomorrow.