Many thanks to dwood15 for betareading.

Twinkle 2.7

Sophia was playing with one of her crossbows when I entered the lobby, flipping it over in her hand like a cowboy with a revolver from an old western. She glanced up as I stepped in. None of the other Wards were here.

"Hebert," she greeted.

"Hess."

We were out of costume. My armor was secure in my locker; her suit, I imagined, was packed into the duffel at her feet.

"You weren't half bad at the infiltration," Sophia said casually.

"Fuck you," I grunted without looking at her.

"What? I'm serious, Hebert!"

I glanced at her, frowning. "I got myself concussed and didn't stay over the hostages, Sophia," I said flatly. "I went in without a weapon and almost got myself killed. I fucked up hard."

Sophia snorted. "You couldn't have carried that giant spear and me anyway," she said. "And you just kept getting up. Circus wasn't holding back, but you just took it like a champ. That was impressive; none of the pussyfooting around the others do all the time. Even Aegis, and he's supposed to be able to take that kind of thing."

I sighed. "Piggot yelled at me over that," I said dryly. "Said I should have fallen out of combat once I was injured."

"Fuck her," said Sophia succinctly. "How does she think people fight against Endbringers? By retreating and running away? Bull. If you can fight, you keep fighting until you can't anymore."

I considered her. She wasn't looking at me now, instead studying the polished wood of her crossbow's handle.

"You were an independent before you joined the Wards, right?" I asked.

"You know I was."

"What was that like?"

Sophia snorted. "Hell of a lot better than this shit," she said dryly. "None of the bullshit oversight, no one holding me back. I could just buckle down and get shit done. I cleaned more scum off the streets in three months as an independent than I have in more than a year as a Ward."

"When did you trigger?" I asked.

Sophia stiffened.

I raised an eyebrow. "Are you really going to get squeamish about your trigger? To me?"

"…I was twelve."

"Hm."

"Only went out in costume after I turned thirteen, though."

"Still pretty young."

"I guess."

I watched her out of the corner of my eye. She was back to flipping her crossbow in her hand, watching the light of the sinking sun playing on the wood as it streamed in through the windows.

"Did you get lonely?" I asked. "As an independent?"

She didn't look at me. "I don't get lonely, Hebert," she said evenly. "I work best on my own."

All lies. I changed the subject. "Where are the others?"

"They all live in the south bay," Sophia said. "There's a shuttle for them."

A door opened behind me. I craned my neck about to see an orderly in a PRT uniform. "Sophia," he said, "your stepfather is here."

I turned back to Sophia, saw her tightly clenched jaw. "Right," she said. "Later, Hebert."

I watched her walk past me, toward the door. Just before she stepped out, I called after her, "Sophia!"

She turned her head my way.

"We work well together. Looking forward to continuing."

She was perfectly still for a moment, and then her lips twitched, as though she was trying not to smile. "Same here, Taylor."

"They told me you had a concussion. Are you okay?"

These were the first words out of my dad's mouth when he arrived to pick me up on the Rig.

"I'm fine, Dad," I reassured him as he led me into the car. "I healed it. I'm okay."

"What happened, anyway?" he asked. "I was in a meeting; They left a message and promised to call the moment you were diagnosed. When they did, you were better. Spill."

"The Undersiders robbed Brockton Bay Central Bank," I explained. "The Protectorate was out of town, so the Wards got called in. This villain, Circus, in a clown costume—she hit me in the face with a sledgehammer."

Dad twitched. His grip on the wheel tightened until his knuckles were white. "You were hit in the face with a sledgehammer?"

"I was in armor!" I defended. "My head bounced around in my helmet a bit, but it was fine—"

"You know that can be fatal, don't you, Taylor?" my Dad asked, his voice rising. "This isn't just something you can shrug off! You might have died!"

I opened my mouth to respond, then closed it again. There was silence for a moment.

"You're right," I said quietly. "I screwed up several times today. I made a lot of mistakes. I almost paid for it. I'm sorry, Dad."

"Don't be—" he cut himself off. "You promised me you'd be careful. They promised me you'd be careful!"

"Yeah. I screwed up. I'm sorry. It's not Piggot's fault; I broke procedure."

My Dad sighed. "…Don't be sorry," he said at length. "Don't. You're new to this, and I know you'd never be happy if you didn't feel like you were helping. Just… please. Be careful. You know I can't lose you."

"I know. I'll do better."

He glanced over at me with a wan smile. "I know you will."

I reached out and touched his shoulder. He reached up and took my hand in his.

"Want to go out to eat tonight?" he suggested.

"Sure. Italian?"

"Sounds like a plan."

Clang. Clang.

The hammer fell on the mithril anvil, each rhythmic beat producing a sound like a ringing bell.

It was Friday, and I was back in PRT Headquarters.

Clang. Clang.

Carlos, in costume, slipped into my workshop. "Annatar."

"Aegis."

Clang.

"Can I talk to you?"

"Sure." I set down the hammer and turned off the plasma forge—borrowed from Chris—that I was using to heat the metal I was working with. Turning away from my anvil, I faced my team leader. "What's up?"

"I wanted to talk about yesterday."

I nodded. "I figured," I said. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for screwing up."

He blinked at me. "Screwing up?" he asked. "You did fine. No one's perfect. You managed to take Regent out of the fight before we even got started; that's as much as anyone was expecting from you and Stalker."

I grimaced. "I also almost got myself killed," I said. "And screwed up on procedure at least three times."

Carlos shrugged his wide shoulders. "Protocol's important," he allowed, "but so's our job. Sometimes you have to do things against protocol to get the bad guy or protect an innocent. When that happens, it's Piggot's job to yell at us over it, and it's my job to take the fall for you, if you have to do that. So don't worry too much about it. Stick to protocol when you can, but remember that it can't have a plan for every situation."

I nodded slowly. "I… think I can understand that," I said. "Say… what do you think of Piggot?"

He sighed. "Off the record? I don't like her, on a personal level," he admitted. "But I don't have to like her to respect her. She's been in the business for a long time, fighting people worse than I ever want to meet for more than a decade. She knows what she's doing, and she knows how to use people effectively to do what needs to be done. I can respect that."

"She's a skilled leader."

"A skilled director, at least. I don't know that they're the same thing," Aegis said. "I lead the squad, and that's one skill. She leads the whole PRT on the scale of the city. I have a feeling it's a little different. I know she was a PRT squad leader at some point, but I don't know how she was then."

I nodded. "That's fair," I agreed. "Do you ever see yourself in her role? As a leader on that scale, directing large groups?"

"No, thanks," he chuckled. "I'm happy where I am. I'm graduating pretty soon, but if I can just lead a local protectorate team by the end of my career I'll be happy. I don't see myself ousting Legend."

"Yeah," I agreed teasingly. "I can't see you ousting Legend either."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh, now what's that supposed to mean?"

I smiled at him and took up my hammer again. "Oh, nothing."

"I'm still in charge of you, you know. I can have you on console duty for a week, no questions asked."

"Yeah?" I grinned. "Then I guess you won't be seeing me in action with my new gear anytime soon."

"New gear?"

Clang. "I couldn't—" clang "—carry Sophia—" clang "—and bring—" clang "—Aeglos to—" clang "—the fight." Clang.

"So?"

"So—" clang "—I'm making—" clang "—something more—" clang "—portable."

I pulled the hammer away, lifted the weapon into the air, and then quickly sank it into the ice water bath beside my anvil. It hissed and steamed.

I'd asked for an ice water bath before, when I was making my gauntlets. The PRT had done what I should have expected—poured tap water into a vat, and stuck it into a refrigerator for a few hours overnight.

Today, I'd instead been more careful. "Iced spring water," I'd requested. "Pure as you can find."

The water was clear, cold, and above all, pure.

I withdrew the now-cooled steel blade. It shone like cold fire, reflecting the fluorescent lights in the ceiling and the red heat of the forge in twin colors of flame. I quickly connected it to the hilt and struck it once with my hammer, watching as the components fused, suffused with my powers.

Then I held up the completed-if untempered-sword, and spoke.

"I dub thee Narsil," I said softly, and pain skidded across my Ring-finger, at the knuckle, like hot fire. "The Red Flame and the White Flame. May thy edge never dull, nor thy blade never break, while the hand of the sons of Númenor guide thee. May you be a hot death to all that is evil, and a warm protector to all that is good."

The sword, thus named, blazed with light. Something bittersweet rose up in me, like a memory of a dream forgotten. A hint of pain mingled with respect, like a salute to a powerful foe.

I dismissed the hammer and anvil and shut off the forge, then stepped away from it. Slowly I swung the glistening blade through the air, shearing through the space with a faint whistling. Once, twice, thrice. With each swing, pain shot through my finger-fierce and cold on the first swing, duller and throbbing on the second, and by the third it was numb, like an old wound long scarred over.

Narsil. The Blade of Kings.

"What was that?" Aegis asked softly.

"What was what?" I asked.

He stared at me. I stared back.

"…Nothing," he said, looking away from me and at the sword. "…Narsil, you said?"

"Yes. The Red and White Flame, in Quenya." I carefully, almost nervously, ran my finger along the flat of the blade. It rang against my gauntlet in a clear, cold note.

"…Does all your tinkertech have names like that?"

"Not all," I admitted as I fiddled with the automatic forge to produce a torch for tempering. "My armor doesn't. But most of it. My modules do, for one."

"What are they called?"

I bit my lip. "'Fire' is Narya," I said. "For nár, which means, well, fire. 'Water' is Nenya, for nén, which means water. 'Air' is Vilya, for víl…"

"Which means air?"

"Which isn't actually a word," I acknowledged. "It's the root of several words which tie to air, including, well, vilya itself."

He considered me. "This is a real language?"

"Depends on what you mean," I said. The forge was heating again. I brought the blade towards the flame and the flat began to heat again as I began to temper the metal. "It's a complete language, but as far as I know, I'm the only speaker. Same for Sindarin, Khuzdul, and Valarin."

"Your powers just gave you four languages to speak for some reason?"

I sighed. "Aegis, Lung turns into a dragon. I'm not the weirdest cape out there."

Even as I said it, though, I was wondering. The oddities of my powers were only part of it. Panacea had said my gemma, the part of my brain that was supposed to control my powers, looked dead. Sure, sometimes they looked different, but mine looked dead. What did that mean?

If the part of my brain that was supposed to give me superpowers was dead, how did I have them? If it was giving me superpowers despite being dead, what did that mean? Dead tissue doesn't do a whole lot, so if the tissue was dead, but the effect was still observed, what was going on behind the scenes?

"Yeah, I suppose," Carlos admitted, standing up from the seat he'd taken in the corner. "Anyway, any chance you can kit the rest of us with some of your armor? That mithril kept you pretty safe in the last fight, even if it didn't totally stop the sledgehammer."

"Yeah," I agreed, shaking off my thoughts. "I'll start with Vista, probably, since you and Sam are both brutes, Sophia's a breaker, and Chris and Dean both have power armor. It's hard, because her outfit's too tight to really fit chainmail under, but I don't want to mess with her image by just giving her platemail like mine."

"Talk to her," Carlos suggested. "And the PR guys. They'll be able to figure out a design that works."

"Good idea," I said. "I'll do that."

"Oh, and Chris really wants to tinker with you tonight or tomorrow," Aegis added. Then he grimaced. "And the way I said that makes me think of something very different."

I chuckled. "Not in favor of fraternization?"

"Not in favor of getting involved," he stressed. "Look, you and Chris do whatever you want, and feel free to not tell me about any of it. In fact, consider that an order."

I laughed aloud. "Sir, yes sir," I agreed. "First things first, though…." I considered Narsil, the flat beginning to glow with heat again. "I need a scabbard, once this is done. Know where I can find some leather?"

End Arc 2: Twinkle