4.1
When it becomes obvious that the sheet doesn't want to stay on, we stop, Pride starts to ask something but apparently picks up me inferring that she's intending to ask to quit and cuts herself off with a muttered, "Of course not." She heaves an enormously put-upon sigh but then she says, "We can work with this," and starts tying off knots around some of my limbs, toward the bottom, careful of the blades. Once she's tied off eight knots, she climbs aboard and we zoom off to the PRT HQ, and it works.
The intake process is surprisingly simple. Pride confirms that we're two parahumans intending to join the Endbringer fight, is informed that if she has any major psychological issues (the trooper glances at me) it would be appreciated if she declined to participate (Pride glances at me and then affirms she's going), is asked how she intends to contribute and informs the trooper that we'll be acting as search and rescue. After that the PRT trooper hands over two collars to us and explains how they work, and then directs us to a specific part of the lawn to wait for pickup. They make a point of being completely sure we understand that these are collars that will kill us if we spend too much time in the Simurgh's range, and while Cherie turns pale and glances at me (So weird when she's got a blindfold on), she nods in understanding regardless. The trooper doesn't seem to know what to make of me, and ultimately shakes their head and leaves, muttering.
Pride spends a bit staring at her own collar, clearly uncomfortable, and I get irritated with her and she cringes and puts it on. After a small delay she reaches under the sheet and slips the other collar around one of my limbs that has no sheet tied to it. With that done Pride kicks her legs like she's riding a horse and I turn my head as best I can under the sheet to give her a look, but it does nothing to intimidate her and I head over to the designated arrival site, metaphorically rolling my eyes. There's a man with a wolf mask made of (sheet?) metal, shirtless, standing there with his arms crossed, seeming bored to me, and it takes me a minute to remember that Hookwolf's costume is... yeah, just that mask. He's even wearing regular work jeans.
Huh. I wouldn't have expected him to volunteer.
There's only two other capes standing in the area, and I feel vaguely disappointed. I recognize Widescreen, of course, a vigilante currently glaring at Hookwolf and being entirely ignored in turn. I think his power is something to do with manipulating light like it's a physical object? His most well-known effect is short-range teleportation, usually via TV screens, though he's also been known to appear abruptly from cell phones, so size isn't that important to him, I recall that much. General evidence is that he's white, but he's got a serious beef with the Empire for some reason. His costume isn't much of a costume at all, though I suppose I'm not one to talk. The mask is about the only part that's particularly costume-like, and it's just a Halloween mask. Something vaguely sci-fi?
The other cape is a minor solo villain, which surprises me. I forget his name. His 'costume' is mostly just black motorcycle leathers and a red motorcycle helmet, not even painted up in an interesting way or anything. It's pretty obvious that he's a cape, though, as there's grass sticking up out of his feet, and when the wind blows hard enough to knock leaves out of the trees, some of them go right through him. Some kind of phasing power? Not entirely voluntary, looks like. He's mostly restricted himself to petty theft, which is part of why I've not done research on him. He's pointedly looking away from Hookwolf and Widescreen. At least, I'm pretty sure he's a he... might not be, now that I think about it. Oh well.
There's a long, silent wait in which only Pride seems to be comfortable, Hookwolf pointedly ignoring Widescreen while bicycle leather pointedly ignores the both of them. Hookwolf glances at Pride and I and snorts behind his mask, and then goes back to ignoring us, too.
Then a line rapidly inscribes itself on the ground nearby, forming a small circle seemingly made of ash. The PRT troopers seem comfortable with it, so I just watch it curiously. When the circle completes, a single person appears inside of it in a burst of ash, a woman in a pretty snazzy, custom-made costume. I can't place the general design, even though I swear it's an official government-made costume. Green. She jogs over and asks, "Okay right quick are we waiting on anybody before we go because I am in high demand let me tell you lads." She pauses for a second and glances at Pride and tacks on, "And lass." I think that's an Irish accent? Or- I can never keep straight Scottish and Irish. Maybe she's neither, I dunno.
Hookwolf shrugs, biker costume shrugs, Widescreen says, "Man, I don't know nuthin'," and a PRT trooper gives the new woman a thumbs-up. I can't see what Pride does. I just hold still, fighting impatience and a minor urge to attack Hookwolf. He's volunteering for an Endbringer defense. I shouldn't do that. Not yet, at least.
The teleporter makes a one-armed shrug, claps her hands together loudly, and starts circling us, dragging one foot on the ground while she walks the other more normally. "Hold still lads and lass and whatever the ghost with bug eyes qualifies as, ya don't want to have anything outside the circle. Trust me. Also, don't be alarmed by anything you see in transit, it's na' anything to worry yerself over." I notice that the foot that's dragging is leaving a trail of fire, though the fire doesn't catch anything nearby alight. It most certainly does reduce the grass within it to a twisted black mess. Powers are weird.
When she completes the circle -and I note that she pulls herself inside the circle before dragging her foot the last few inches to complete it- everything outside the circle vanishes and is replaced with fire and shadows, dancing like demons. I'm reminded of some fairly abstract representations of Hell. Hookwolf visibly startles, but then very obviously makes a deliberate effort to relax. Pride stiffens, but holds her ground just fine. Biker-costume looks around, but he only seems curious. Widescreen seems fine at first, but then I hear what sounds an awful lot like screams and he recoils, throwing his arms over his head like he expects to be attacked by birds or something.
The teleporter makes sympathetic noises in his general direction and then ruins the effect by saying, "Always hits the crybabies hardest."
Hookwolf sniggers while Widescreen makes incoherent sounds of outrage, and then abruptly the flames and shadow are replaced by grass, trees, a vast sky seemingly in the middle of sunset, a circle of ash inscribed in the grass around us. Also some tall-ish buildings in the distance.
And the Simurgh, of course, drifting slowly through the air, surrounded by debris and capes assaulting her. I resist the urge to charge her. I'm here for search and rescue. Not combat.
Hookwolf promptly starts transforming, heading straight toward the Simurgh, though I notice the suicide collar stays attached and uncut somehow. Widescreen pulls out a cell phone, somehow turns the limited light coming out of it into a sizable square of gold that he promptly jumps into, vanishing, and the biker leather guy glances our way and then takes off at a run, pressing buttons on his collar. I catch snatches of a tinny voice before he's too far away for me to hear.
Pride is muttering to herself, from the sounds of things trying to sort out all the information she's taking in. I'm impressed (She shifts a little) when I realize she's not freaking out in response to being abruptly dumped into the middle of what amounts to a warzone. Come to think of it, how much stress does it put her under to be around what must be ridiculous amounts of stress?
"Not much, boss," she mutters. "Reading emotions isn't feeling them, and, well, I don't care."
... oh.
Right.
"Oh goddammit stop that depressive bullshit I'm trying to concentrate here, it's not actually easy picking out people who are wounded or dying or whatever instead of just panicking or giving up because they're defeatist or whatever."
After much, much longer than I would prefer to have waited around, she directs me toward, "That cluster of trees," and we head out.
We've rescued twenty civilians and eight capes through direct action -loading them onto me, rigging up a temporary way to keep them attached while I zip around, and taking them to one of the many evacuation points after consulting where those are by asking the suicide collars- and rescued some much larger number primarily through Pride knowing whether a given collapsed building contains living people or not, helping direct teleporters and other capes capable of retrieving groups and/or retrieving people from under rubble toward where their presence will actually help, when our collars simultaneously beep and announce-
"Five minutes remaining before this collar activates. Please evacuate."
Pride has been complaining about headaches and, at one point, muttered something about a Jean-Paul and I'm feeling... strangely lightheaded. A new feeling as the monster. The collars speaking snaps me to attention, though Pride seems more out of it than me. Instead of anything I'm expecting, like declaring, "Finally!" she just mutters something tiredly -I can only catch Daddy and no.
I feel alarmed, and then Pride seems to pull herself together to assure me that she's, "Fine, just fine, we just got up early is all."
I don't really believe her and rush to an evac point.
The sixty seconds it takes for someone to show up has me antsy, and the worst part is I feel like I want to stab a problem that's not stabbable. Finally a teleporter rises up out of the dirt, touches me and a handful of other people at the site, and then drags us all down under the earth.
I'm vaguely surprised when we rise up out of the dirt, and we don't seem to be in Brockton Bay. Then I feel dumb, because with all the rush it can't be practical to immediately take us back where we came from. Certainly not when groups of people are being grabbed all at once, no guarantee they all share a home town.
The teleporter sinks back into the ground after breaking contact with the group, presumably off to rescue more people. I'm left to look and listen, try to figure out what's going on around me.
There's a lot of people around. We seem to be in a stadium, not currently in use for sports, instead used as some kind of PRT staging point. Huh. Do they... not have official places set aside? I guess not?... in any event, we're far from the only people here, and only a small portion of them are capes, at least as far as I can tell. There's PRT troopers at all the entrances, armed and ready with containment foam and so on, and suits coming in and taking people off to areas demarcated by standing curtains. I'm not clear what they're doing, though. When they're done, sometimes the people they brought into a curtained area are taken out past the troopers, other times they're returned to the general field, but with a yellow bracelet, generally clustered to one end of the field. I note that there's some Protectorate heroes lingering in the stands nearby, though I don't remember a lot about them as individuals. Thinkers and combat-oriented capes, I think?
Occasionally when someone is taken out of the stadium, there's a struggle that requires the intervention of PRT troopers and/or Protectorate heroes. Even more rarely, the individual goes quietly along, head hanging, seeming... resigned? I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but it makes me nervous.
The whole thing makes me nervous, like we're being treated as dangerous. I get that the Simurgh promotes paranoia, but... well. We have our collars, shouldn't that be proof enough that we're safe to interact with?
When I wander over in the direction of a wall, everybody near that wall -all the heroes and PRT troopers- jerks to look straight to me, and I stop short. I... wanted my back against the wall. Makes me feel safer, would make it easier to keep an eye on everyone around us. Pride irritably mutters something about being able to track threats just fine on her own, sounding like she's only half-awake, and gives me directions until we're in a spot that's... I don't really see what's special about it, but she insists the people around us are unlikely to make trouble. Really, I was hoping for some privacy to change back to... Taylor, I guess, given I'm not in costume. But I don't think I'm going to be getting that here, not without way too much risk of connecting Taylor to the monster.
Instead I watch, and wait, and listen. (... including to Pride's continued muttering, drifting in and out of coherence)
Snatches of what I'm making out indicate that the curtained-off areas are for a combination of physical evaluation and psychological evaluation. The priority seems to be that visible injuries get looked at first, followed by capes, followed by civilians, though it doesn't seem to be a hard-and-fast rule of any kind. I note that capes are involved, though it's also clear there's not nearly enough of them to handle all the duties -they seem to have a couple of capes dedicated to the psychological evaluation, and then a dozen non-capes, at least going by costume/lack of costume. The capes seem to most consistently handle other capes, though occasionally I see a non-cape handle the psych evaluation of a cape.
There's also a cape wandering around, quietly asking people a question and then touching them somewhere on the skin. A lot of them are promptly escorted out of the building, clearly relieved. Some of them are anxious instead. A few more minutes of listening in indicates they're some kind of postcog, checking to determine how long a given person was in the Simurgh's range. People who were in its range for only a brief period are the ones being let out early, without a psych eval, after she's confirmed they're safe.
It eventually dawns on me that we're not in an American city, and this isn't a Protectorate operation. It's an Australian city, and most of the capes watching the area are Australian heroes. Which... I feel really stupid now. Of course it's not appropriate to be whisking Australian citizens away to America. Probably. I dunno, I'm not big on international law. Makes sense, regardless, and incidentally this explains part of why I'm struggling to recognize a lot of the heroes. I'm a lot more familiar with American heroes than... any other kind.
I also notice some of the capes that get cleared make their way to the stands to contribute to the perimeter. That... makes a lot of sense, really. I'd wondered why so many capes were tied up in this. If it's being reinforced by people who have contributed their twenty minutes, evacuated, and then been cleared as safe, then it's not costing the world firepower at the fight itself. Maybe the initial perimeter force cycled out into the battle once enough people had been cleared and added to the ring?
As time goes on, the arrival of civilians first slows, and then stops entirely, though capes continue to arrive at an erratic pace. Some of the civilians are visibly, audibly upset, though in most cases someone rushes to assure them that there are multiple evacuation destinations and they may simply be separated from friends or family that are completely safe. I infer that the Simurgh has been roaming free for too long, the remaining locals declared too dangerous to risk evacuating anymore. The idea gnaws at me, a frustration that makes me want to run the Simurgh down and stab it until it dies, but I can't leave. Pride and I need to be tested.
The postcog finally stops by us after far too long. Up close, I can see she's themed in a Sherlock Holmes sort of way, though it's a loose enough inspiration that the only reason I connect it is because she introduces herself as, "Miss Moriarty, postcog detective extraordinaire." She says it with a smile that makes me wonder if she's being self-deprecating or if she's just trying to put us at ease. Either way, I find myself wondering why she's named herself after Sherlock Holmes' nemesis. Is she an Australian villain? That seems... dubious to trust, if so.
She explains her power as: she makes skin-to-skin contact, and that feeds the last 24 hours ("It's really more like 26 and a half for some weird reason...") of what we experienced to her. What we saw, what we felt. Not what we heard or thought, and strangely she explains that the written word is 'scrambled' to her. She admits that this can be a huge violation of privacy, but she also swears up and down that she's not judgmental and she's not gossipy -though she also notes, somewhat apologetically, that she's required to report crimes she discovers in this way. ("The Endbringer Truce doesn't mean we can't arrest you for crimes we found out during the event committed prior to the battle. It just means you don't get arrested until after you've been released back home and given a grace period of... an hour or so? It doesn't crop up often, I might have the details wrong.") She also tells us that the risk to our secret identities is relatively small, as she'd basically have to pass us in the street to connect our civilian identity to our cape self, assuming we actually looked at ourselves in a mirror recently enough, though she also admits that she's already had it happen twice so we shouldn't be cavalier about this.
Pride mumbles and grumbles and pulls herself together enough to ask why we're not just being let loose since our collars prove we didn't spend too long around the Simurgh. Miss Moriarty launches into a long, seemingly rehearsed explanation, which boils down to, "The suicide collars are more easily fooled than my power." She specifically references a particular incident where someone who had the power to 'save the state' of things and then reset them at a later point to that 'saved' state did this with his collar to claim he spent only fourteen minutes exposed to the Simurgh when he'd been exposed for four hours, and the only reason it was caught before he was let loose was because the collars also periodically report to Dragon's systems and the discrepancy raised a red flag. He was actually in the middle of waiting for a teleporter to be free to take him home when this was discovered, so it was a fairly close call. Her power can only be fooled by our own senses being fooled, which limits our ability to manipulate results ourselves. Apparently it bypasses memory alteration, for one: it doesn't matter what we remember recently, it matters what we experienced.
Ultimately Pride assents to this power being used on her. I'm disturbed by the idea of the power in all honesty, but I'm... well, I'm not thrilled at the idea of Miss Moriarty getting to see Pride's recent memories, but as far as I'm aware the most problematic thing in there is... ergh. Cuddling with her as the monster.
Contact has been made before I can decide whether I consider Pride's experiences being siphoned a violation of my privacy or not.
Miss Moriarty gives Pride a look, like she's gotta be nuts, but then shakes herself, puts a smile on her face, and turns to look me in the eyes with no evidence that she's freaked out. Well. Little evidence. She just asks, "So what about you?" and in spite of my reservations I'm actually inclined to say yes so we can get out of here sooner-
-and then I remember I killed Mush yesterday and find myself shaking my head in a no. I can't let that be connected to me. I actually feel vaguely relieved to have a good reason to not give someone a look at my private life, even as I'm deeply unhappy with missing out an opportunity to leave early.
To my surprise, when Miss Moriarty gestures for Pride to leave, she shakes her head and mutters, "Not leaving the boss." Miss Moriarty looks surprised, too, though not as surprised as I feel, and gives me a 'knowing' look.
... oh fuck you. You -I -no. Pride and I aren't in some fucked-up relationship you, urgh, just... fuck you.
I have to fight the urge to kill the girl. It's a completely inappropriate urge, even if I hate her, we need to get out of here and stabbing her to death, however satisfying, isn't a good idea-
-and I catch myself having taken half a step toward her. She doesn't seem to have taken it as a threat, though. Pride pats me behind my eyes and murmurs, "Calm, boss, calm. Whatever she thinks of us is nothing to get hot over," and then Miss Moriarty jolts a little and seems to suddenly decide she has someplace else to be and I'm almost certain it's Pride and twist my head to give her a look as best I can as the monster, but Pride gives me a toothy (tired) grin and shrugs. Probably because I'm too relieved at Miss Moriarty leaving to really be upset at Pride using her power this way, and she probably knows it.
Even more time passes, the population in the stadium slowly dwindling, until finally one of the parahuman psych evaluators shows up (A man in a formalwear suit with only some cape-type accouterments), calling himself Vigilance. He asks Pride to come with him, but she shakes her head and explains that Miss Moriarty already cleared her, and it's just 'the boss' that needs to be handled. He frowns, adjusts a pair of glasses he's wearing over a domino mask (Which has me wondering why he's not wearing something more substantial with built-in lenses...) and then says, "One moment." His gaze drifts for a moment, and then he seems to wake up, scrutinizing me more closely. Somewhat cryptically, he comments, "I see." He has a posh British accent of some kind.
In spite of Pride's insistence, he only lets me come along, and then we move to within one of the curtained-off areas. I barely fit. He sits down in a chair and pointedly says, "I've already used my precognition. Interesting power. You really should've worn a proper costume, though. Unless that's some limitation of your power?..."
Embarrassed, I rear back until suddenly I'm Taylor (the suicide collar strapped around one arm) and the sheet is falling behind me. (The lightheadedness vanishes, though I'd largely forgotten about it until just now) I gather it up and arrange it into something to cover most of my head and a good chunk of my body before I answer him, trying to ignore the sticky feeling of blood staining it. "No, I just... was in a hurry and didn't have my costume on me and didn't think it would matter." I pause for a second, watching him, his arms crossed and one eyebrow raised enough that it's distorting the domino mask to the point I can see it in spite of my blurry vision, and then I say, "So... how does this work?"
He adjusts his glasses again -weird habit- and says, "Well, just spending ten or so minutes talking with you, periodically using my precognition power, will go a long way to mitigating Ziz's influence. Long-term plots predicated on carefully anticipating specifics tend to go awry around precogs, even without a specific effort to identify and stop the plan." I can't see his face well enough to work out what the pause is about. "However, it's also my job to perform a proper analysis to determine if you've had any more... crude alterations made, resistant to precog interference." I nod in understanding. I vaguely recall hearing somewhere -the news? PHO?- that precogs interfere with each other, and I already know about the Simurgh altering people's brains.
He claps his hands together abruptly, and I startle a little, and he says, "So let's get started."
We go through a battery of questions, and periodically he does something to provoke me. It takes me a while to realize that's what he's doing, but when I catch on and call him on it, he unashamedly admits that's part of the testing -one of the Simurgh's more common, simple and quickly made alterations is to tweak how aggressively people react to... various things. You get someone going on an out-of-control rampage because someone else was just a little too irritating -someone playing music too loudly on the bus, someone making a popping noise, someone chewing gum too loudly, and suddenly your Simurgh bomb is homicidal. If they're a parahuman, it can get real bad real fast, especially as they're usually modified so attempts to reason with them just provoke them further.
Most of the questions themselves seem to be fairly simple. Some of them are hypotheticals -"what would you do in X circumstance"- while others are... I dunno what the purpose of them is. What's the point of asking my favorite color? He also interrupts himself or me and asks several of the questions multiple times at various points, to my increasing irritation, and when I attempt to ask what that's about he interrupts to ask me if I love my father.
My throat closes up and I can't say anything and even through the blur I can tell he's studying me carefully and then he waves a hand and says, "Never mind never mind, moving on."
He also at various points drifts off into that state he apparently goes into when using his precognition, though he at least doesn't interrupt his sentences with it. Or mine, at least not too often. He mostly doesn't make any commentary about these, and I find myself wondering if he's asking different questions from what his precog predicted or not. Given he said part of the point is to interfere with the Simurgh, I'm guessing yes, but I'm hesitant to actually ask. I feel vulnerable like this, and I don't like it.
In the end, he adjusts his glasses one last time, says, "Well, I'd hesitate to call you normal or healthy, but you seem to have been minimally impacted by Ziz." He pauses, and it's rather longer than what's been typical for him so far. Somewhat hesitantly, he adds, "In fact, as far as I can tell you haven't been affected by the blasted thing, which... puzzles me. You don't have any Thinker abilities I'm overlooking, do you?"
I start to shake my head, and then remember my people-sensing. I give him the basic rundown of it.
He rubs at his chin, making thoughtful humming noises. After a bit of that he declares, "Well, the collar and my assessment agree that you are very low risk. I would appreciate it if you allowed my colleague to perform their own once-over of you, but procedure does not actually allow me to compel you to remain. It does demand that I note down your parahuman identity, however, and I'll admit I don't recognize you at all." He pauses again and gives me a look, though I'm unsure what it's meant to convey, with how blurry my vision is. "I probably don't need to tell you this, but I am very, very good at catching people out at lies, so in spite of the fact that you are not in your regular costume and I am not personally familiar with your power set, I will know if you attempt to claim you are a cape that you are not."
I nod vaguely, having sort of expected such -he dropped a few hints that he has a Thinker power beyond his precognition over the course of the evaluation- and I say, "Monster. Registered with the Protectorate as a Rogue?" I hesitate and add, "I'm trying to be an independent hero, but I'm not sure what all goes into that, so I just... went with Rogue for the initial, uh, paperwork and all. I know New Wave coordinates a lot with the Protectorate, for instance, but-"
He waves a hand and says, "Not with the Protectorate, not interested, couldn't tell you. English, not a bloody colonist, God bless the Queen etc etc," his accent very clearly deliberately exaggerated.
I mutter, "Oh," feeling vaguely stupid, and watch as he pokes at what I'd previously dismissed as a wristwatch. Apparently it's not, though. Some kind of tinkertech computer, I guess.
After a moment he looks up, makes an 'okay' sign with one hand, and says, "Right then, that's two sources vouching for you -me and the collar- and you've yet to start screaming like a loony and attack people, so you can go back to your flat or whatever it is you do on your time." A pause. "Well, as soon as someone is ready to transport you, anyway." He stands up and makes a half-bow, gesturing with his arms as if I'm someone about to walk out of a carriage, and says, "In the meanwhile you can at least leave the building, enjoy some sunlight, maybe meet up with your cape friends -oh, you don't have cape friends, that's terribly awful- anyway just... enjoy yourself. You helped fight one of those damn things, you're alive, you're not any crazier than you were before you got here. Go celebrate!"
I look at him funny, but head out anyway, sheet arranged to cover as much as possible while still being able to walk and still able to see. Pride is standing much closer than she was when I went in, having apparently noticed when it was time for me to go, and gives a little wave and a tired smile. When I'm close enough, she clasps one arm over my shoulders. I flinch and my impulse is to tell her to get off, but then I notice just how heavily she's actually leaning on me and realize she's actually using me as a support, weakness hidden behind a show of camaraderie. I grimace and say nothing, though I find myself wondering again just what the Vasil family life was like that she has these kinds of skills and uses them seemingly without substantial forethought.
That bit about her trigger event she let slip makes it obvious it wasn't sunshine and flowers, but these little behaviors make me think it wasn't isolated. Like how the locker was the worst thing to happen in my bullying, not the only thing.
I'm more than a little relieved when approaching one of the PRT troopers (And what are PRT troopers doing in Australia?...) guarding an entrance leads to them waving us on. As we're approaching, one of them does something with a tablet, and the collars click and detach themselves, and we hand them over.
Then we head out.
"Well, that should've sucked, and somehow it didn't," are Pride's first words once we're outside. It's nighttime wherever we are, and there's a perimeter, manned by more PRT troopers, keeping people away from the stadium, but we're... actually fairly close to being alone. There's other capes hanging out in the area, but they pay us little attention that I can tell. I think. Probably. Really wish I didn't break my glasses. Both of them. By being stupid.
Pride scowls at me and says, "We did the stupid thing and we're not dead. Live a little, come on," but I'm not really all that satisfied. We helped with the Simurgh, but I don't really feel accomplished. I've never felt as happy as I'd like about successfully taking out key foes, but there was a sense of satisfaction in killing Nilbog and Heartbreaker -they were dead, gone, done. No more. Progress. We helped make things less bad with an Endbringer attack, at least hopefully, but... less bad isn't great, and even the gratitude we got off of civilians and the occasional cape didn't really move me. In fact, now that I think about it, the woman I helped prevent the rape of being grateful didn't help me feel like I'd done something worthwhile, either.
Goddammit. I can remember the warm glow I got when Dad or Emma (Pride flinches slightly) or Mom or a teacher or anyone was happy to see me do good work. I can remember helping one of Dad's friends, happy just to have them thank me. Now I'm saving people's lives, hell, this is the Simurgh so I can be a bit melodramatic and say I'm saving their souls without it being pure exaggeration, and their gratitude means nothing to me. Why? Is this something that getting my power -my trigger event- did to me? Or has the bullying just... worn down any sense of basic human decency in me? I thought I was strong and shrugging it off, mostly. Mostly enough.
Pride interrupts my thoughts to comment, "I really do need more sleep, you know. I wasn't exaggerating when I said we got up early, and then we did this whole thing and I just feel... ugh. Need a nap. Not like we're going back to BB until they're done with the big bird," which seems a strange way of interrupting my thought process, because, sure, the girl with emotion sensing coincidentally butted in on my brooding-
... "Pride?"
"Yeah, boss?"
"Were you able to sense the Simurgh's emotions at all? Or an, um, emotional signature from it?"
"Nope," and she pops the 'p'.
"Damn." Probably not going to track Leviathan that way. Not sure how I'd get her help out in the ocean anyway, but still.
"I think I might've been able to tell who the song was hitting, though, and how hard."
I turn to look at her, trying to read her face, see if she's just messing with me. Skeptically, I say, "Really."
"Really," and she's just smiling gently. Then it drops off her face and she says, "Seriously boss, I need rest. Can we just find a comfy corner and let me just... close my eyes for a few minutes?"
I relent, not even bothering to do so verbally since she so clearly reads it in my emotions, and we make our way to the stadium wall, amid some grass. I try to look for... bullet ants or whatever other hellish things stalk Australian grass, but nothing leaps out at me, figuratively or literally, so we just sit down. Pride immediately leans on me, covering her eyes with one arm, and mumbles, "I did not sign up for this shit."
My response to that is, "Yes you did," but she just lays there, resting.
After a few minutes pass it occurs to me I haven't reverted to the monster, and I look around, wondering why. Eventually I determine there's a handful of capes facing our general direction. I guess one or more of them has enhanced sight? Perfect night vision? It makes me twitchy, wondering if-
"No, they're not fucking planning on slitting our throats. Stop that. Save the paranoia for the hunt. They're just curious why we have such shitty costumes." Pride pauses. "Also a couple of them are worried you're seriously hurt and haven't said anything because I keep making them afraid to actually approach us." I give her a look. She's still got her eyes covered by her arm in addition to the blindfold, but emotion-reader. Then she adds, "Also one of the guys thinks you're cute, though I'm not sure what he's seeing with all that blood-soaked sheet you're bundled in that makes him think that."
I fight to not blush, remember I'm dealing with Pride, then realize that my imperfect job covering myself up might let this mysterious watcher see me blush and go back to trying to suppress it. Not the time, not remotely the time.
"So you are interested in boys. I'd wondered, with the 'best girl friend' and all..." and I give Pride a glare, trusting in her emotion sensing to convey my irritation with her, because of course I'm interested in boys. Just... not anybody at Winslow High. Because they're all in on it, all assholes. (Okay, not the people who just think I'm the weirdo pervert and all, don't blame them Taylor, not their fault everybody else makes this misunderstanding... but I don't want a boyfriend who thinks I'm some kind of pervert. That would go horrible places)
After that Pride is quiet, and I find myself wondering if Pride can do something more useful the next time the SImurgh attacks, given she thinks she can sense the song, or whatever. It's something to focus on while we wait.
Light is peeking over the horizon by the time a ragged cheer goes up, the Simurgh apparently finally driven off, and what long-range transporters haven't been run ragged start appearing to take people back home. Ultimately a girl who introduces herself as Acrobat bounds over, excitedly asks us where we need to go, confirms Brockton Bay when we mumble it out by saying it back at us at seemingly the top of her lungs, and then opens a ring of yellow light with a, "Ta-daaaa!" I stare a bit blankly at her, vaguely offended by her energy, but pull myself and Pride to our feet, hesitate, and ask, "We just need to walk through the portal, right?"
Acrobat nods enthusiastically and launches into a detailed explanation of all the cool things she's done with it, the only bit of which I care about is her alluding to turning the portal off with something halfway through it. A demand for more information gets her uncomfortable, she clams up, and I give Pride a look. I'm not going to let some idiot get us killed. Pride gives a thumbs-up, and suddenly Acrobatic looks stricken with guilt and admits that her portals tend to slice things apart, outside of herself and a couple of specific parahumans she'd fought alongside/against who 'slip out' instead, if they fail when someone or something is partway through them. Then she hurries to explain her portals never fail unless she's knocked unconscious, not when something is inside them, and with a nervous laugh she says, "And it's not like I'm about to be beaned on the head here, you know? We're safe."
Gritting my teeth, irritated, I declare, "I'm testing the portal first."
Acrobat looks put out, but her only comment in response is, "Well, don't take too long, you're not the only people waiting for me."
I ignore her and stick an arm partway through. Nothing happens, and I whisper to Pride, "Hit her with something to startle her," and I hear Acrobat suck in breath and, from the sounds of things, look around in a minor panic. The portal, however, holds steady. So I take a deep breath and stick my head through, wanting to see what the other side looks like -I'm paranoid, half-expecting it to take us straight to a PRT cell, Endbringer Truce or no- but it's just the front lawn of the Brockton Bay PRT HQ, some people looking at me curiously. I think I recognize Hookwolf, which puzzles me. I would've expected him to be in a hurry to get away before whatever grace period he has is up, but instead he returns to conversation with... someone I can't place, if only because I'm practically blind at the distance they're at.
I pull my head back, tell Pride, "It's safe. Probably," and ignore how she rolls her eyes at me and we just step through the portal. After a second, it winks out with a noise like a very distant roar, which confuses me because it formed completely silently.
So now we're in Brockton Bay. I look around, expecting someone to approach us and something to happen, I'm not even sure what, but Pride hisses at me, "Nobody cares, other than yokels who are just being nosy for nosiness' sake. Let's get going, come on," and I start walking toward the nearest alleyway I can find so I can become the monster again and we can head back to her hotel room. We end up ditching the sheet in a dumpster and walking the last two blocks, not wanting to try to sneak the blood-and-worse-stained sheet past staff, or take it to a laundromat, or otherwise risk trouble with it. It worked, but we need a better approach. Or at least a replacement that doesn't show blood so vividly. Like black. Black is nice.
Once she's dropped off, flopping into the bed without even bothering to change her clothes, I look around, shrug, and make my way out, so glad the hotel uses handles rather than knobs.
It's not until I'm out on the street, still in the clothes Cherie dressed me up in this... gosh, was it really this morning? Feels longer. Point is: it's only then that I realize I'm not dressed in my own clothes. I'm dressed in lacy clothes of the sort I... haven't worn since... Emma. I mostly wore that sort of thing at Emma's insistence, so it just... kind of stopped once we stopped being friends, even before the bullying started and I had to pick clothes to protect myself. And I'm not going back to Cherie's room just to retrieve my previous batch of clothes -especially since I wouldn't put it past her to have disposed of them somehow for some reason.
I wander for a bit as Taylor, not really ready to go home, but Cherie needs her rest and I'm... not even sure what to do now. What I'd like to do is perform more research, particularly on the Dragonslayers. They didn't participate, so I'm pretty sure I don't need to worry about the Truce grace period being longer than I think it is in their case. But... I also don't want to go home yet.
It takes half an hour before I think of the public library.
Further digging on the Dragonslayers yields little I didn't already discover or guess. Eventually I get bored and just... surf PHO's forums.
I'm surprised when I run across people talking about Monster -about me. It's just one thread in the Brockton Bay sub-forum, but I really didn't think I was sufficiently well-known to warrant an entire thread at all. No mention of Pride, though. Not yet. It's mostly negative, too, though I find myself suspecting the thread was started by one of the E88 toughs I roughed up while trying to gather information on the gang. I'm almost certain the things they know shouldn't be known by them if they're not.
However, that does get me to go looking for my cape name on the forum, see if there's other references.
It takes a good twenty minutes to filter out all the false positives -Endbringers, the Slaughterhouse Nine, and Case 53s all get called 'monster', to name just a few- and find the handful of posts that actually are referring to the cape named Monster ie me, but thankfully those paint a slightly rosier picture of people's interpretation of me. I'm apparently coming across kind of like Shadow Stalker did before she joined the Wards, which has people who are cheering for Monster as 'real justice' and the like and has other people sneering that I'm just a thug beating up socially acceptable targets. There's some interest in what Monster looks likes, regardless, what kind of costume I'm wearing, and one of the threads I came up in is one that mocks 'shitty' costumes that 'amateurs' wear. There's a bit of disagreement somewhere in there over whether I wear a motorcycle helmet or a scarf, until someone points out that capes do change their costumes. (I guess my bicycle helmet doesn't make anyone's radar) Annoyingly, all the posts agree that I'm a man -I even double-check the thread about me and yeah, it also calls Monster a 'he'. I guess that particular tough doesn't want to admit, even to himself, that he got beat up by a girl. Which is absurd, given I'm a parahuman and he's not, but there you go.
Uuuugghh. I guess the Protectorate is being quiet about me for the moment. Probably not that common for them to announce new rogues, now that I think about it. Probably my paperwork went into a database and has largely been ignored since then.
Somewhat idly, I check up on the Slaughterhouse Nine's last known location -discovering in the process there's a site walking the border between 'creepy fans' and 'legitimate service to the world' by collating all the information on the internet about the group. Damn. How did I miss this one? I email the site to myself for closer reading later, and check the latest update on their location.
Topeka, Kansas.
I'm torn between being pleased and disturbed. That's a lot closer to Brockton Bay than when I last checked on them. I doubt they're coming here, but maybe they'll... I dunno, try to go for New York or something, and I can cut them off, kill at least Jack Slash if I can get him separated from his allies, the worst ones at least, and... if he's the heart of the group, maybe that'll be enough to get them to break apart. Even if it doesn't, he's still a villain who's been operating as a mass murderer for literally giggles for more than twenty years. His time is long past overdue.
I while a few more hours away in this sort of way, and somehow nothing bad happens. Even cape news is slow, though to my disappointment I learn Canberra is considered a defeat. They're building a dome over it. That's... that's nuts.
It also reinforces my feelings of futility in trying to help at Canberra. I'm only one person, and I'm no Endbringer, no Eidolon, but... still. I've killed, by myself, two big bads, and I contributed... search and rescue, and honestly most of the important/impressive work was done by Pride. Not Monster. Not the monster. I just carried people around and got the brand-new sheet stained so badly I'm amazed no one was assuming I was soaked in the blood of my victims.
... did Cherie?...
... no, I think the Thinkers would've caught that.
... I hope they would've caught that.
Fuck, I need to have a talk with her.
I log off the computer and head to the hotel.
4.2
Knocking on a door is awkward as the monster. Thankfully, I end up not having to do that, because Cherie opens the door just as I've gotten in front of it, looking only half-awake, though she changed clothes at some point after I left.
Before I can say anything, she's already heaved a great big sigh and asked, "Why are you mad at me?" in a tired, put-upon voice, as if she couldn't possibly have done anything wrong, even as she moves aside to let me in.
I wait until the door is closed before I answer, saying, "You kept people from freaking out at the stadium, didn't you?"
Cherie blinks owlishly at me, cranes her head, and very eloquently says, "What?"
Impatiently I clarify, certain she's just pretending to not know exactly what I'm talking about. "When I was the monster, wearing the bloodstained sheet, and then as T- not the monster, still in a bloodstained sheet. Nobody reacted. That was you, wasn't it?" while narrowing my eyes at her.
She rubs her chin thoughtfully and goes, "You know, that would've been a clever idea, if I had thought of it." Sarcasm. "Back in reality, I'd not gotten enough sleep, strained my power in ways I've never used it before, was carried around by you which is, let me tell you, not a smooth ride at all before you start throwing other people's carcasses next to me, and I was waaaay more concerned someone was going to blow my head off because we'd spent thirty seconds too many around the birdbrain. And anyway, were you even paying attention to other people? Most of the capes had blood staining them, and not many of them had costumes that tastefully obscured the point. Nobody cared." She pauses. "Well, okay, not nobody, there were like three xenophiles who thought it was hot-"
Oh ew.
"-plus there were non-capes who were sure you were some murderbeast, but they thought that about all the capes with bloodstains and no obvious wounds. Basic paranoia." She takes a deep breath. "So no, boss, I didn't do nuthin' without your express permission."
I give her a dubious look. She raises an eyebrow in response, and adds, "You do realize that even if someone did alter the mood of the place, there were like a hundred capes there, right?"
... I try to not let my reaction show, remember I'm dealing with Cherie, wilt a bit. Dammit. Yeah, I'm pinning it on her even though I have no evidence beyond the fact that I know she can do it, and that's unfair and wrong. It would even make sense for the Protectorate (Errrr, the Australian equivalent? Ugh, why didn't I look that up when I was at the library) to have someone on hand to keep people calm, prevent things from turning into a riot or the like. No need for Cherie to be involved, and... I'm pretty sure she fell asleep for a bit outside the stadium. Maybe even inside of it, too. I -well, I suppose she might be able to use her power while asleep, but I'd be surprised, even with expecting the worst of her. If she can't manipulate people while asleep, she couldn't have been keeping people calm about me during that stretch. I look away, ashamed.
"... I'm sorry."
Cherie opens her mouth, but nothing comes out of it. After a second she visibly pulls herself together and says, "We're cool," in this shaky tone of voice I can't place. Turning to look her in the eye, I notice tears, and am immediately bewildered.
She promptly turns around, rendering me the monster, and declares, "One sec', I haven't been to the bathroom in an age," and heads off to do that. I note that there's a lot more running of the sink than there is sounds of using the toilet. Washing her face?... why was she crying after I apologized? Did I really upset her that much with my accusation? I -well. I have seriously considered killing her if she crosses a line. She... fuck. I'm horrible.
Fuck.
Why can I not get this right? Emma always made people seem easy. Conversation, friendship, even wheeling and dealing so everybody gets what they want, she made it look natural, something any idiot could do. Once she replaced me, I went from one friend to no friends, and my failure to replace her didn't have anything to do with the bullying -it took two weeks for the torment to even really start up. If I could do this I'd have had friends in short order, or already had friends beyond Emma when she broke things off, maybe interrupted the bullying entirely by not being a lone, weak target. But no, people just don't click for me, and... I was well past awkward before I started turning into a -a murdersquid. Even Greg Veder has... well, not friends, but, uh, playmates? They play Dungeons and Dragons or something, I never paid a lot of attention to it.
If he can at least have people who are willing to tolerate his presence long enough to play a game with him, why can't I make real friends?
Cherie finally comes out of the bathroom, and yeah, it's obvious she washed up her face. It's also very obvious she's trying to pretend she did no such thing and just needed the toilet. It's also very obvious that she knows that I know but is going to maintain the façade anyway.
... Cherie makes my head hurt and confuses me.
At least I can tell myself she's not remotely normal and so it's not actually a commentary on how much I suck that I can't figure her out.
Probably.
Cherie interrupts my self-flagellation by asking in her brightest and fakest voice yet, "So boss, what are we doing tonight? Same thing we do every night, right?"
I stare blankly at her.
Her smile slowly slides away until she goes, "Really? I mean, I wasn't really expecting you to play along, but you've never heard of it?"
I decide to ignore this. "We're going to go on the, uh, 'camping trip' we discussed last night." I pause. "After I retrieve my costume." Really wish I'd picked it up before I met up with Cherie. Even if I'd chosen not to wear it when I... ended up fighting Mush, I'd have had it for the Simurgh fight and wouldn't need to go back home to retrieve it. Which I don't want to do. At all. At this point I'm feeling like such a shitty pers-
-aaaaand Cherie is hugging me why is she hugging me I'm the monster why does she keep doing this
and then she pulls away and says, "We can get you a better costume."
I stare blankly at her and vaguely repeat, "Better?" because apparently hugs break my brain.
... when's the last time I hugged Dad?
Oh god, I can't remember when the last time was.
That's not right.
I resolve to hug him the next time I meet him.
... then I realize I'll probably turn into the monster if I do that and I don't want him to find out I'm a parahuman that way, even if I decide I want him to know. Maybe I can do it the next time Cherie swings by, have her act as my, uh, spotter?
I am going to hug Dad come Hell or high water.
But here and now, we were talking about a new costume or something?
Cherie comments, "I'm not even going to ask," which leaves me feeling vaguely offended though I'm not even sure why and then she continues with, "Yeah, a blanket, a bicycle helmet, and an admittedly rad scarf is kind of a shit costume, easily improved upon, and I'm willing to spend some money on you. Just so long as we don't buy it all in one place, it's unlikely anyone will connect you to your costume just because you bought a part from them, even if they see the costume in full in person."
"... okay."
By the time our shopping trip is over, Cherie seems much-revived, and I have... well, honestly, it's not that different from my original costume. I have a cape -a proper cape, not a blanket- that ties around the neck and is readily detachable, black. A new motorcycle helmet, also black. Gloves, black. Basic black pants, with a detachable skirt at Cherie's insistence, also black. (She insisted on the skirt after I explained that I wanted the cape so I could potentially throw it into people's faces in an emergency) A dark blue shirt with a black jacket to go over it, the jacket specially selected by Cherie as being relatively easy for me to take off and throw in one motion. When we get back, she even makes me practice said motion until I've successfully done it three times in a row.
The result is considerably more intimidating than my old costume, even though I haven't drawn fangs onto the helmet yet or anything. In spite of looking heavier, it's actually lighter and more comfortable, largely due to replacing the bulky blanket with a cape actually designed to be used that way. I have more mixed feelings about how its gender comes across -Cherie insists it looks perfectly feminine, but wearing it makes me feel like I look like a man who randomly threw a skirt over his pants for... some reason.
Cherie also got herself a costume, kind of. I had very little input, beyond insisting that she stick to darker colors -at first she was going to pick out bubble-gum pink stuff, which I vetoed because I want us to be stealthy. Somehow this lead to her switching from some plan to go for a Disney Princess vibe to more of a Morticia Addams vibe. It's basically all black, including black gloves (Lacey and frilly, where mine are workman's gloves) and a wide black skirt, except for a stark white mask of a woman's face with bright red lips. Cherie surprises me once we're back at the hotel by promptly arranging to tie a red scarf into a blindfold over the mask's eyeholes.
The result is honestly a little unsettling once she pulls it all on, especially when we turn out the lights to see how it looks in relative darkness. The mask's face seems to hang in mid-air, no person attached, and it's a little too easy to interpret it as bloodstained between the red lips and the red scarf/blindfold. Like a ghost that's nothing more than a face crying tears of blood from a skull empty of eyes, lips stained by its kiss of death.
Cherie thinks it's quoteunqoute awesome, of course.
We also bought a replacement sheet, this one black, and grabbed some basic supplies for a camping trip, including a sleeping bag. (Cherie tried to insist we buy two, but I refused it as a waste of money) Mostly we grabbed food, water bottles, and backpacks to put everything in. We are going to need to be able to feed ourselves out there. We also stuff Cherie's extra outfits into one of the backpacks -there's fewer than I was expecting, honestly.
Then I declare that we need to let my dad know about our... 'camping trip'.
I look pointedly at Cherie.
I'm not lying to him if I have Cherie lie for me, right?
... okay no not really, but I just can't handle facing him for so many reasons right now, and I honestly fear I'll have some kind of breakdown if I talk with him for too long.
To my intense relief, it seems to go smoothly. Cherie effortlessly dodges the fact that I have not, in fact, told her at any point that I've been suspended when Dad brings up the topic, instead pretending that she suggested the camping trip precisely to help me feel better. After much cheery chatting, she hands the phone over to me.
"Taylor, are you really sure about this? I'm- well, if I'm honest, I'm not entirely happy that you made a new friend and then were promptly suspended over... drugs? I hate to sound suspicious, but..."
Oh. Shit. I didn't even think of that angle.
I hesitate for a moment, my first impulse to deny everything and explain nothing. Then I remember I'm supposed to be trying to be more honest and trusting. I take a deep, shaky breath, and admit, "... the bullies planted it."
I hear a sharp intake of breath from dad's end. After a long, long silence, he carefully asks, "So this really has nothing to do with your new friend?"
"Nothing," I affirm as confidently as I can. It's not half as confident as I want it to be. Being honest with Dad has me practically shaking.
"And you're still being bullied." It's not a question.
"Yes," I admit.
"And the school suspended you? Nothing done about the bullies?" This is his angry-but-trying-to-not-sound-it tone. I... I haven't actually heard it since Mom died. It's strangely nostalgic, never mind that historically it often came before punishment.
"... one of them got ejected." A misleading truth. Madison got shifted to Immaculata months ago, certainly not in response to this, but I -I don't want Dad trying to make a big thing of this. It'll just end in heartbreak. Trying to make it seem less bad, make him less inclined to try to take action.
He gives a big sigh before he asks, "So it's not all downside."
"I'm as happy as I could be, given the circumstances. I'd still like a break from Brockton Bay, though." Still not technically lying.
I fucking hate myself.
I'm pretty sure Dad is running his hand through his thinning hair, going by what I hear and what I know of him. Nervous tic. "... okay, okay kiddo. And your friend, Cherie? You really think she's good people?"
I look at Cherie, pretending to laugh behind her hand. I know she didn't hear his voice. I'm not sure what she's reacting to, really.
I settle for, "She's the kind of person I need right now," and ignore Cherie's pout.
He heaves one more big sigh and says, "Okay Taylor. If... if this is what you want, I won't stand in your way. But I'd really like to meet Cherie properly when you're back. Can you invite her to dinner when you're done?"
I smile faintly. He wants to interrogate her is what he means. He's willing to trust my judgment for the moment, but he still wants to confirm for himself that she's good for me. I say, "Yes, absolutely."
From there it turns into awkward goodbyes, and then I hang up the hotel phone and stare at it for a minute before Cherie snaps me out of it.
Literally snapping her fingers at me, saying, "Hey. Hey. Boss. We doing this tonight or not?"
I nod slowly and say, "Yes, we're doing it tonight."
My main thought process is: if the Dragonslayers are so hard to find, they're probably not within a major city. Or even a minor city. Or Smalltown USA, either. They'd need a lair at the minimum, and honestly, with how flashy and large their stolen suits are, they couldn't simply keep it in some suburban garage and leave under the cover of night. They've got to be somewhere where there's little or no human presence, realistically speaking. This dramatically eases a manual combing of the country -since we can focus on the countryside. This makes Cherie's emotion sensing a much more useful tool for scanning for the Dragonslayers, as we basically can focus on looking for people at all and then investigate them more closely. Anything suspiciously far from the road is an obvious thing to go for, for example.
I'm also reasonably confident the Dragonslayers are somewhere in the northeastern USA... or southeastern Canada. One of the two. It seems to me there's a bias in their North American contracts toward the region, though it could just be me hoping they're relatively convenient to me. If I'm right, then it's... still pretty unlikely we'll stumble upon them, but I can hope.
Traveling as the monster with Pride in tow is more complicated than when I made the run to Ellisburg or to Toronto by myself. Pride's merely human body can't really cope with some of my more, eh, creative shortcuts, and she tires where the monster does not. I also have to be careful to not clip her with tree branches as we go, among other obstacles I normally largely ignore.
On the other hand, search times are legitimately much, much reduced.
In the first night alone we investigate three different 'emotional signatures', of which I would've found maybe one if I'd been searching by myself. One is simply a man living in the countryside, probably commuting by car to a job in Brockton Bay. It's possible he's a parahuman, of course, but unlikely, and in any event it's very unlikely that he's a member of the Dragonslayers. The fact that Pride insists he's 'terminally depressed' is a contributing factor to feeling like it's unlikely, but ultimately the least important factor. The second person we find is a hobo sleeping in a small tent in the woods. Not a Dragonslayer. The third person is a woman, very obviously a parahuman, living in a cabin in the woods and loudly babbling to herself. There's no road, no evidence this can be accessed by car, and watching the woman in action it's pretty obvious she made the place herself. Some kind of tree-manipulating power? I'm fairly sure she's not a villain, anyway, and, again, she's no Dragonslayer.
Pride flags as dawn is approaching, and we stop, eat some of our supplies, and set her up in a sleeping bag relatively far away from the highway.
I'm left restlessly stalking the area as the monster, which feels strange to be doing in daylight. I've been the monster in daylight before, but never simply idling in the open. It was always on the way somewhere, expecting it to be a brief thing, lasting no more than ten minutes at a time, if that. This? It'll last something like eight hours, since that's approximately how long Pride should need to sleep, and I don't expect anyone to find us.
Initially I try to just hang out quietly in Pride's vicinity. It takes almost no time at all for me to determine that I'm not going to be able to do that long-term. I bore far too quickly. So I move to where I have a good view of her and our stuff, and proceed to practice acrobatics as the monster. They've come easily enough overall so far, but there's no harm in practicing regardless.
This occupies my time decently enough for a while, long enough for the sun to reach its highest point in the sky. Noon-ish, I guess. I still get bored of it.
From there I move to stalking animals. I make an effort to not hurt them, as I'm really just trying to get in practice at my stealth skills, but it's... hard. Not that it's necessarily difficult to resist the urge to hurt them, per se, as there's barely such an urge at all, actually. The issue is that it happens so fast. A momentary impulse, a thought, an idea to strike at rather than nearby leaves me with an abruptly dead squirrel, rabbit, or bird before I can really stop and tell myself I don't actually want that outcome. It's frustrating, though at the same time it makes me feel better about Mush and Leet. I'd worried, just a little, that I had some subconscious intention to kill them or something. That it's just so easy to, in the moment, strike with lethal intention before conscious thought can catch up to my actions... it's a problem, but it's a less worrying one than a failure to understand my own motivations.
So then I start practicing preventing myself from just going straight to a kill. The results are... erratic. It's easy enough to hold off from making a lethal strike when I'm not trying to make any kind of strike. I can sit, and wait, and watch a squirrel chew on a nut indefinitely just fine. When a bird lands on me, it's effortless to just... not react. I don't actually have some blind, intense urge to attack things.
The instant I'm trying to attack or even merely harry something, it goes straight to lethal impacts.
Partly there's a pure mechanical difficulty involved. I get partial successes where I did, in fact, try to divert in the split-second after I realized my strike was going to be a lethal one, but it generally remains lethal anyway because I replace punching a hole directly through their center with slashing them with the blades on the side of the limb, even when I manage to divert the strike far enough to skim them instead of stabbing them. Occasionally an animal will limp away from this, but not often. It's sufficiently uncommon for them to get back up I begin to wonder if the fluid that covers my body is some kind of poison that doesn't harm just at skin contact, or if my blades deliver some unseen venom. Something to keep in mind in the future.
Mostly, it's that things happen too fast. This compounds with some weird psychological difficulty: telling myself I want to take the animal alive, telling myself I want to hit it in the leg to slow it down, very specifically thinking of exactly where I want to strike... I end up striking where it will be most lethal anyway.
I try going slowly. Move a limb toward an arbitrary spot at a speed I can actually meaningfully perceive, touch it. This works okay, whether I'm poking an arbitrary section of bark or a distinctive white spot on a rabbit that ignores me, chewing on something green. I have precise control over my limbs in that context. But trying to translate that into a strike that doesn't go for the heart or the head or the spine, that clips something for a disabling strike... no matter what I try, how I focus, whatever, it doesn't work. My full-speed strikes are almost magnetically drawn toward lethal impacts.
My trail of cute mammal corpses stops growing in length when Pride wakes up at last, the process of her sitting up catching my eye immediately. We eat -well, mostly she eats- and talk a little about how we're going to scan for today, the gist of which is that I'm going to stay well away from the highway until night falls and rely on Pride's emotional sensing to bring us back to the highway later.
We search two dozen different locations before the sun has even set. Most of them are nothing of interest to me, but the sense of progress is nice, even if the few cases that are at all interesting are still pretty worthless for my purposes. There's a minor hiccup when Cherie interrupts because she needs a bathroom break -I'm vaguely embarrassed, as it's been so long since I've needed one myself that I'd actually... been kind of starting to forget that was a thing at all. I'd prepared myself psychologically for the idea that I'd need to be patient with Cherie needing to sleep and needing to eat more frequently than me, but this caught me completely off guard, and I have to fight an urge to snap at her for springing this on me. Not her fault I'm forgetting what it's like to be normal...
Then it's back to the hunt, whiling the night away until Cherie is too exhausted to keep going, this time before there's even pre-dawn light. Once she collapses into her sleeping bag, I return to my attempts to get around this bizarre difficulty I have with not killing things.
It... continues to not go very well.
I keep at it anyway until Cherie wakes up.
Several days pass in this basic pattern, Cherie uncomplaining even when tired, never mind that trail rations aren't exactly stellar meals. I'm vaguely surprised to find that, while we encounter multiple people I'm pretty sure are minor villains, there's not really any evil lairs anywhere. I keep expecting to find a supervillain's major base out in the woods, maybe in a cave or something, but even the minor villains are, from what we gather, basically either petty thieves or minor villains who are lying low after pissing off the wrong person. Or both, I guess. My marathon attempts to overcome this weird murder impulse frustrate me to no end, feeling like I should be making progress after so many hours sunk into something that really shouldn't be that hard, while in actual fact making no progress that I can tell. The trail of dead animals failing to provoke an emotional response is frustrating in its own right, for that matter. Doesn't matter whether I think they're cute or not, there's nothing. It's disturbing that I'm not disturbed, or feeling guilty for killing so many animals. It's not like Cherie and I are eating them.
(We make a stab at cooking a rabbit on the sixth day, but neither of us can figure out how to start a fire, and it becomes obvious after some more discussion that even if we did get a fire started, Cherie has no idea how to cook with a campfire at all, and I just don't remember summer camp well enough to be confident this will result in something edible instead of a forest fire. We don't have the kind of frying pan that I remember from summer camp, either)
I end up killing a villain we catch muttering to herself about the next child she's going to kill and eat the fingers of, what appears to be blood circling her head in a double helix, but it's honestly pretty anticlimactic. We find her, listen in for a bit while Cherie gives me a running commentary on the woman's emotional state as she's talking about her intentions, back away to drop Cherie off in relative safety once I'm too revolted to listen to anymore, and then I sneak up behind her and stab her to death, head and heart perforated multiple times before she's noticed anything's wrong, the ring of blood losing its shape and dropping to the ground after a moment. No surprise power usage saving her. Just... dead. It was easy. Again.
I dimly worry that we'll run into the Slaughterhouse Nine out here, unprepared -maybe while Cherie is asleep- but nothing of that sort comes to pass. My concerns that the dead animals might draw attention seem to be empty, too. If anybody has found anything, it hasn't led to us. Cherie's range is sufficiently ridiculous I have a suspicion she'd know well before trouble got to us, short of a teleporter or something getting involved, which helps me avoid a death spiral of paranoia while Cherie sleeps. In general, while there's more people out in the wilderness than I'd have ever expected, it's still kind of... empty out here.
At one point we find what seems to be a log cabin that was used by a tinker, seemingly abandoned in a hurry. Blind luck that we stumbled upon it, and I have no idea if it's anything to do with the Dragonslayers or not. I briefly consider grabbing some of the exotic stuff lying around, but then discard the thought -without a tinker ally of my own, it would be long odds for me to figure out any of the weird cubes lying around, assuming they do anything by themselves in the first place. More importantly, for all I know they're boobytrapped somehow. Even activating them correctly could end poorly for me, depending on what they do. Cherie seems to follow my lead, glancing curiously at them and then ignoring them once I decide grabbing them isn't worth it.
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about following tracks to meaningfully follow whomever was here, even if they're relevant to my goals. A brief look around the area has me suspecting they had kind of hovering device (Or maybe a teleportation device?) anyway, as one spot very conspicuously has been substantially disturbed, as if by a vehicle parking there, but there's no tire tracks or tread tracks or anything to indicate it came and went, so even if I knew how to track, I probably wouldn't be able to anyway.
Disappointing overall.
Still, we've managed to check nearly two hundred people, if my admittedly fuzzy numbers are right, and in about twelve days.
No Dragonslayers, unfortunately. We're almost out of time.
Pride interrupts my ruminating to inform me that there's three emotional signatures in the sky a ways away. I follow her directions to intercept their general route and climb up a tree, careful to not lose Pride.
A trio of metal suits roar overhead, trailing a thin layer of smoke from their jetpacks. There's less light coming from the jetpacks than I'd expect, and honestly the only reason I can see the trio clearly in the night sky is the monster's absurd night vision.
I find myself exchanging a glance with Pride, in spite of her being blindfolded. How does she do that, and why?
No, don't get distracted.
I begin to follow the smoke trail -backwards. It peters out fairly quickly, but Pride assures me that as far as she sensed, they were on a straight-line course. Maintaining an exact, straight line is hard when going through rough terrain and relying solely on eyeballing, but following the trio of almost-certainly-Dragonslayers per se would be even harder. Especially if they're on their way to a contract in Uganda or something. Following them through the ocean wouldn't have been practical before I had to account for Pride's human limitations. Tracing them back to their lair... that's a lot more practical. Especially if they come back at some point -then Pride can pin down their exact location, even if I fail to find it in the meantime.
Pride lets out a whoop when I hop over a dead drop, enjoying herself entirely too much.
It takes a few more hours, but eventually we do find what seems to be the Dragonslayers' lair in the early morning. Surprisingly, Pride actually did help narrow it down, even though the trio hasn't returned yet: she informed me of areas that various animals avoided/were afraid of, confirming in the process that she senses more than just human emotion, and though this involved multiple spots I could see nothing special about and one case of circling around a bear and her cubs, finally we came upon a building.
A pickup truck sat nearby, no particular space set aside for it. A rain tarp sat in the back of it, suggesting to me that this was its only protection from rain or harsher elements. The building itself... my best guess was that it was leftovers of a farm long since dead, but it was hard to say. If the area had been a farm at one point, it had been a long time since crops had grown here, as trees crowded all over the place, almost right up to the building itself. A satellite dish sat atop the building. The lights were out.
The only road was a dirt trail, clearly a product of the truck's travel, to the point that there's grooves that perfectly line up with the truck's wheels. I found myself wondering how the place got electricity, and then went tinker, duh. Even if it was hotly contested by PHO/the world whether any of the members were a tinker or not, just stealing Dragon's gear would open up options for being self-powered. Might even be necessary if they want to stay off the grid successfully, now that I think about it. How much electricity do tinkers use, compared to non-tinkers?
I circle around the entire area, looking carefully for traps, tripwires, cameras, or any other indication that simply approaching the building is a bad idea. Just because they're apparently not present doesn't mean it's safe to approach. I'm at least relieved that there really are only three of them, unless they have a fourth member who happens to conveniently be immune to Pride's senses. Which is possible, I guess. Really unlikely, but possible.
As far as I can see, there's no defenses. I find this unlikely. More likely is that the defenses are subtle, and I'm just overlooking them. Armsmaster is known to have a Halberd that can turn its blade into a spike-studded ball. On a chain. I wouldn't be that surprised if one of the trees is actually an automated laser turret or something even more ridiculous.
So I back away a bit, and Pride hops off without explicit prompting on my part. She pulls the scarf up enough so she can see me clearly, reverting me to Monster, and I take off my backpack -the heavier one of our two backpacks, since it vanishes while I'm the monster. I really ought to look into how much stuff I can vanish this way, not to mention other details of how it works. Could I hug Cherie such that she vanishes when I become the monster? What would she see if that worked, anyway? If it does work, that... might actually solve my difficulties taking people alive. Actually, why have I never checked with a pocket watch what happens?... oh right, I don't have one and don't have a lot of money to spend and don't want eat too much of Cherie's funding. I really really need to test that.
... later, though.
"I'm going to get closer, scout. If you think you sense the Dragonslayers returning, hit me with, um, fear. Not a ton, though, just enough to grab my attention."
"You got it, boss," said with a sloppy salute. I really ought to have a talk with her at some point about that. We're teammates. More like coworkers than anything else.
From there Pride gets the scarf back in place and I stalk closer. I don't want to wait for the sheet. It'd take too long, and it'd probably be destroyed if the Dragonslayers took a shot at me anyway. Better to have maximum mobility. The place continues to seem empty even once I enter the almost-clearing it dominates, and I still notice nothing of interest. Nothing appears to follow me, aside from an owl, which flies away, startled, when I make an aborted hop toward it, so it's not some weird camera disguised as an owl in a tree. Probably. It flies well out of my sight, anyway, so if it is some kind of hidden camera, it's falling down on the job.
Getting up close to the windows (Careful to take an angle that doesn't revert me to Monster) reveals little of interest. What's visible of the inside seems to be a fairly normal home sort of space. A bit spartan, maybe, no pictures on the walls for example. Little in the way of objects of sentimental value in general, now that I'm noticing that. A new-ish TV, but it's not like it's an expensive flat-screen. The couch looks pretty new, too.
... in fact, everything inside looks fairly new. Much more new than I'd expect of a place as inconvenient to civilization as this.
I'm not sure what to make of that. Perhaps they move regularly, and find it easier to just buy new wherever they set up? Maybe they've repeatedly been forced to abandon lairs? Might simply be that I've happened to stumble upon them shortly after a genuinely unusual move, admittedly.
Whatever the case, stalking around the outside -and on the roof- looking for an unlocked entrance I can access as the monster without breaking anything yields nothing. I turn instead to breaking a padlock on a shed I didn't originally notice. Opening the door, I find what appears to be some kind of tinkertech generator, cables running through the wall closest to the house, obscured by scrap metal well enough I might not have found it were it not for said cables. It hums, quiet enough I couldn't hear it until I broke into the shed. Or perhaps the shed has special sound dampening properties? It doesn't look like anything special to me...
I tear the generator apart. If this isn't the Dragonslayers' lair... well, sorry anonymous tinker. Too important.
It's a surprisingly sturdy object, and even once I've gouged out enough chunks of it that it makes a kchunk sound and, after a delay, very abruptly ceases humming, it's honestly still mostly intact. Just in case, I cut apart the cables, reasonably confident I'm not going to shock myself now that the generator is down, even if the monster is susceptible to being fried by electricity. For all I know the generator can repair itself or something. Admittedly, maybe the cables can too, but whatever. I'm trying to cut power to whatever tinkertech defenses they might have.
Jolting back outside, nothing seems particularly different.
I circle around the building a second time and spot what appears to be a cellar door, obscured by overgrown grass and, for some reason, covered in cardboard boxes. It's held shut by a shiny new padlock. I tear it off and throw the doors open before ducking inside, and here I find a room I'm expect of some kind of tinker.
A bank of monitors takes up a good chunk of a wall. My first thought is how do they transport this thing? but upon closer inspection I realize that they're designed to be disconnected. If they were stacked carefully, they could probably all be fit into the passenger seat of the pickup truck. There's also a chair, strangely nice and rather large. I'm not sure what its purpose is, or more precisely I'm not sure why it's so strikingly unusual of a chair. Tinkerchair?
I destroy it on principle, half-expecting a boobytrap. All I get is stuffing and what might be an exposed circuit board, but I'm not sure. I shove the whole thing -violently- to one side, and consider the monitors and accompanying keyboard. I don't see an actual computer tower anyway. Tinker bullshit? Or maybe it's just elsewhere in the house. I'm puzzled as to what the bank of monitors is for, and annoyed that it seems to be dead. There's an obvious red button, but pushing it does nothing. Probably because I killed the generator. A mystery.
The door at the top of the staircase is locked, though once I manage to successfully turn the knob -by far the most difficult thing I've done in this little adventure- it unlocks just fine. Attempting to push it open hits resistance abruptly. The door is chained closed on the other side.
I'd be scowling if I was the girl right now. Giving up my last pretensions of subtlety, I slam the door with limb strikes until its hinges are torn apart and the top half actually collapses out into the hallway, falling right over the length of chain, and then I lunge over, squeezing through the space opened up.
It's incredibly lucky that I gave into my impatience, because containment foam erupts from the walls where I was just standing, expanding fast enough I find myself panicking and scramble to get away, concerned it's going to envelop me even though I'm already out of its release area. Thankfully, it really doesn't expand much farther, completely blocking off this entrance to the cellar but not going much farther.
Weird. Why didn't I trigger similar defenses at the cellar door?
Hmm.
I stalk through the rest of the house, cautious for further traps and watchful for more tinkertech, but it's largely empty of real interest. There's three rooms being used as bedrooms, there's a decent little kitchen, a bit more modern than I might've expected from a building that literally looks like it was built in the 1920s, and there's the continuing lack of personal touches. When I go to the attic, I finally find more evidence of tinkertech -it seems they're using it as a workshop, with a fourth suit sitting around. It... looks completely intact.
...
...
...
I drag it down to the front door, unlock and open the front door (Again: just turn the knob, it unlocks. The security here is such a mixed bag), and drag the thing the rest of the way to Pride.
"Not sure why you're back Bo- prezzies!"
That last word came in response to Pride pulling down the scarf and apparently spotting the suit. Before anything else I check: "You haven't sensed them approaching yet at all?"
Pride rolls her eyes at me and goes, "Yes yes, it would've been the first thing you heard if I'd caught their emotional signatures coming. But seriously, prezzies. It's not like you intend to use that suit, yeah?"
Somewhat reluctantly I admit, "... yeah, it wouldn't be practical for me to wear a suit made for a human. And it wouldn't be as much of a boost to me as it would to you. Honestly, if we can get this working, I'm considering just going back to Brockton Bay and considering this a win." After a pause I add, "But I'd really rather ambush them here, since we've found them successfully." After another pause I sheepishly tack on "Though depending on what their security is like, I might have already ruined any chance at an ambush with my breaking and entering."
Pride shrugs and informs me, "Well, I'll probably know if they know about the break-in on the way in. If you want, we can set up somewhere out of sight and wait for them to get back here, ambush them if they seem unaware, leave if they're clearly ready for a fight. The suits probably won't block me making them shit themselves with terror, and-" here I can hear the smile "-if we can get this lovely little present working, then we'll be ready for some fun."
I nod. It's a good plan.
We move to make it happen.
4.3
Unfortunately, we still haven't figured out how to operate the suit by the time Pride detects the Dragonslayers flying this way, though I also talked about what I saw while I was exploring, trying to get some insight from Pride, but she mostly just grunted and focused on her 'prezzie.' We know how to open it, and we've yet to find any unpleasant surprises in it, but turning it on has so far been beyond us, and even the idea of Pride wearing it as simple armor is clearly ludicrous. The joints appear to be locked somehow, as all attempts to maneuver the arms and legs go nowhere. Even attempting to move an arm as the monster doesn't work -I have to stop when it makes a creaking sound like something is about to break. Pride comments on being jabbed uncomfortably by bits inside of it, which seems sufficiently weird I feel it has to be a clue to what we're doing wrong -I'd really expect the inside of a suit to be comfortable, or at least consistent in its lack of comfort- but I'm stumped as to what it is we're missing.
Pride's report goes something like-
"They're tired, the mission dragged on longer than they expected, they're satisfied with how it went, probably happy with the pay? Might not be thinking about the money. They're expecting home to be safe, so they probably don't know you've been and gone. Pretty sure they're talking, radio or something I guess, one of them is distracted and not paying a lot of attention, the other two keep deferring to him or maybe her but the guy feels like a him to me and I'm not usually wrong about this, I mean there was that one time with the hooker who read like a man and wasn't trans-"
I cut her off with, "Focus. I know you're tired, but this is important." And she is tired, I can hear it in her voice, see it in how she's tending to slump a little, even sitting down. Really, she should've been asleep for a few hours by now, but she was too excited about the suit.
She smoothly continues as if I never interrupted her at all with, "So he's probably the leader, especially since he's at the point of the wedge, other two are poking fun, relaxing, not sure whether they're trying hard to not think about the mission or if the mission just wasn't a big deal to them, they're all pretty calm, I'm thinking they've got some kind of early warning system because none of them seems concerned about being tailed or anything. Okay, they're spotting the house, they're not concerned, they think the situation is normal so far, I'm thinking they're going in for a landing -okay, leader guy has noticed something, now the others know, probably he told them but they might've noticed, one of them is pulling up and they're tense and circling, leader dude and I wanna say a woman are cautiously approaching presumably the building."
She takes a drink from a bottle of water and continues. "The guy circling overhead is nervous, but it's a calm sort of nervous, he's used to trouble and he's not worried he's going to be sniped or something, I'd rate him as a bit overconfident, I'd guess he was new to the cape scene but I know the Dragonslayers aren't so that's not it, leader man is holding still, tense, while the woman is circling around back. They're worried about an ambush from inside, trusting the guy above to spot any attackers coming at them from outside, oh oh, I think the woman just found that cellar door you mentioned, she's upset, legitimately thought nobody would pay it attention, wait, she's gone down and she's relieved, it's less bad than she was expecting." Here she glances at me and says, "I thought you said you trashed the place pretty badly?"
I shrug and say, "I didn't trash the basement particularly. I dunno." Then I add, "I really should get going while they're still inside the building, reduce their odds of escaping by flying away."
Before I can do anything Pride jumps in and says, "Bring me closer! I wanna help! Make them panic or something, I can help, maybe capture one of them?"
I give her a dubious look. "I thought your range was line of sight."
She makes a noise of frustration. "No, it's not actually line of sight, that was a simplification. If I can see someone, and it's not through binoculars or something, I can definitely affect them, but I don't need to see people to affect them. I've been blindfolded a lot of the time and still been doing this stuff."
Feeling really, really dumb, I say, "Oh." Because yeah, she has, and she has. I'm retarded.
Somewhat impatiently she adds, "Okay seriously can we get going before they decide they need to abandon the place or anything?"
I wince, make a vague motion at her blindfold, she whoops and I frown at her, knowing she'll know regardless of my helmet, and she apologizes and pulls her blindfold back over the eyeholes, and now I'm the monster and she climbs aboard and we zip along, Pride making muted noises of excitement as we go. Once I can see the suit hovering over the house, clearly scanning the area, I move to drop Cherie behind a tree, and she climbs off obligingly enough with a muttered, "They're still in the building, and they're pretty freaked out now, but calming down. They think the danger has passed."
Then I sneak as swiftly as I can toward the front entrance. The last stretch of running I do full-tilt, and the suit hovering overhead -whom I note actually doesn't have a jetpack, but rather some sort of rotating wheel placed on the back instead- seems to notice me, but I'm already lunging at one of them inside, stabbing at them as they turn to face me, and thank god I stay the monster, I'm guessing they're using cameras to see out of the suits. I hear a muffled sound of surprise as I'm stabbing, but my limbs skitter off the armor on my first dozen strikes. Physics gets in my way another way: they're pushed back by each ineffective strike, and they don't fall over, contrary to my hope. A barrel mounted on one wrist smacks me in an eye with a bolt of blue light, but all I feel is a dim warmth and then I've ripped it off the arm. It wasn't that firmly attached. Whoever is inside this suit -male, going by the voice- is talking, but it's too muffled for me to hear anything. My guess is he's talking to his teammates.
I stab at his eyes, but though the face-plate looks like it has eyes made of one-way glass, they're just as tough as the rest of the suit, and I guess aren't one-way glass at all since I'm still the monster. He pulls something resembling a pistol from a holster on one hip but I smack it away and then try to jam a limb into a crevice at the hip joint. It takes three tries, the first two failing largely because my pushing shoves him backward, but then his back hits the wall and now the limb forces itself into the gap and he punches me in the eye and makes a strangled noise of surprise when I don't react at all. More importantly, the suit that was hovering topside has landed, I can hear them and I jerk my head to look at them, but when they move to aim what appears to be some kind of rifle at me, they visibly startle, whirling to look behind them.
Limb jammed into the crevice, I push. The metal creaks and I can hear a gasp of horror from inside the suit and a fingertip pops open on the left hand, revealing a button he moves to push with his thumb, but I've already slammed the hand into the wall with a free limb. I jam another limb into the other hip's gap, and try to pry him open. There's a crack, and he screams, left leg torn into by razor-sharp steel and also the limb has slammed into his actual leg, I think. Blood sprays -I distantly note I seem to have hit an artery- and then a muted whumpf reaches me a split-second after my head has been slammed into and through the wall. I twist around to pull myself out of the wall, behind the man I've all but already killed -pushing him away from the wall to give me space- and then with a huge, all-body push, launch him a good fifteen feet away. He lands just outside the door, and the sentry with the wheel is aiming that rifle at me and I abruptly realize my eye must've taken real damage because there's this bizarre thing where my vision distorts everything in a particular area, it's really disorienting and actually vaguely nauseating, leaving me feeling like my vision around that spot is draining down a toilet or something.
I dodge aside and out of sight, but another shot slams into me through the wall, and I find one of my limbs has been severed at the base of the body. So I run straight at the door and lunge at my attacker, and they shoot me again and now I have actual pain somewhere in my main body, but the bigger issue is how it reverses my momentum for a second, and I jump overhead and land behind him and he's turning but I jump onto his back and grab at the wheel and start tearing at everything I can see as best I can and the other guy, the one bleeding out, he moves to do something but I just reach out and smack him in the head since he's so close and he clutches at his head and rolls away, trailing blood behind him while the wheel-suit first tries to grab at me, seemingly reflexively, and then after a second the wheel sparks, starts spinning-
-and then I tear it off.
This throws off our collective balance so badly I fall backward away from him while he lands face-first, but he's quick to roll to his feet and aim the gun at me, but I arrange to whip the wheel at him and the rifle is knocked aside but not, as I had hoped, out of his hands, and I rush him and I can see the third person finally turning the bend at a run, holding what appears to be some kind of assault rifle they're bringing to bear on me, but I simply move so the now wheel-less suit is between me and them so they can't shoot me even as I'm awkwardly tearing at the ragged remains of the wheel's mounting, trying to punch a way to the man inside who slumps, crying audibly while the man bleeding out from the artery is moaning dimly and the one still standing is shaking and I finally tear a hole through the back of the suit and stab the man through the heart and
"Boss! Boss! They're done, you can stop!"
I just barely restrain myself from lunging at Pride and I can tell she knows it because she backs up a step and when did she get here?
I look around, vaguely confused. I never attacked the last one. Why are they curled into a fetal positi-
"Crushing guilt, lotta fear, some depression. Hard to even get out of bed, let alone fight a murdersquid that's killed your only -no wait, not only, best? Something like that- friends." Pride smoothly answers my thoughts.
I take stock of the situation. The wheelsuit's man is dead, heart pierced. The man I first attacked is... not dead just yet, I can hear his ragged breathing. He's going to die, though, I can see blood pumping out with each heartbeat. The last one... is fine. And a woman, I think. I can barely hear them sobbing through the suit, and they sound like a woman to me.
So two suits that have been trashed, two suits that haven't, one survivor. Who we've... captured? I guess?
I find myself looking at the woman's suit, trying to figure out how we're going to get her out. Pride answers the question by getting to the woman, whispering to her about how her life will be nothing but misery and suffering that always gets worse if she doesn't open the suit and get out, and when the woman gives a defiant no I can just barely make out, Pride apparently hits her with something emotionally because she starts keening. I suspect my skin would be crawling if I were currently human. As-is I'm still uncomfortable.
This iterates twice before the woman breaks and does whatever it is that gets done to open these damn suits. From there Pride and I bodily drag her out, I'm human once more, the woman's glassy stare locked on me. She's barely even blinking. I also note she's wearing a... silver suit of some kind. There's little bits sticking out of it at various points, and they seem to be sparking with electricity or something? Pride and I are careful to not touch those.
The first words out of the woman's mouth are, "Just get it over with and kill me." Bitter.
I glance at Pride, curious. I would've expected her to put the woman in a more normal mood once we had her away from her weaponry. Pride shrugs at me and says, "Not my decision," and there's a second where I think she's talking to me but then I realize she's talking to the woman.
It hits me that we have a prisoner. Really, actually hits me. A prisoner I am intending to kill because, seriously, fuck the Dragonslayers, but... I feel like I'm at some weird moral crossroads and I don't know what I should be doing. Nothing I can remember from before all this has really prepared me for deciding what the ethical way to handle interrogating a prisoner I intend to execute regardless is.
The woman, clearly getting angry, demands, "Come on, it's what Dragon wanted you to do, isn't it? I don't know how she found us without our feeds catching it-"
Feeds? I'll come back to that in a second. Here and now I say, "I am not an ally of Dragon's," in my most careful and firm tone.
The woman gives me a speculative look. "So, what, you're villains that lucked into our lair?" Then she snorts and says, "Yeah, right."
Pride very cheerfully chimes in with, "Nah, the boss was looking for you. Wanted you dead because of Bosnian war crimes or something," and I'm irritated because now she's confirmed our intention to kill the woman and she's liable to turn completely uncooperative and arrgh does Pride ever stop and think?
The woman closes down, and then over the course of thirty seconds or so her face turns dimly happy and sleepy and she says, "Yeah, we've done some awful things, I can see why someone would come after us." She makes a face and adds, "The thing in Senegal wasn't intentional, if that helps."
I stare at Pride with vague horror. The woman asks with a distant, idle curiosity, "So you're not assassins hired by Dragon?" She sighs and with a sound of relief adds, "That actually makes me feel better. We didn't make a mistake with her."
I fight my revulsion at Pride's methods, because the way she's talking about Dragon weirds me out (lines up with my fears) and I want to know. I ask, "Why were you expecting Dragon to hire assassins?"
She shrugs, boredly picking at some of the grass, and says, "We know she's an AI."
I
Wh
How
AI?
Artificial intelligence? A program?
I turn to Pride and say, "Can you tell if she's telling the truth?"
Pride shrugs, and admits, "Not precisely, no. She's not lying to fuck with us, if that's what you're thinking. I've got her in a kind of, um, drugged state. It's actually kind of tricky so I can't let you distract me too much, but she's in a kind of stream-of-consciousness thing so she probably believes what she's saying. Or she might just be bored and thinking about nonsense. It can be either."
Fuck.
I turn to the woman and ask, "What makes you think Dragon is an AI?"
The woman is staring at something past me now. I glance behind me, but all I see is the moon. She talks, but I'm not sure she's really answering me. "We found The Box." I can hear the capital letters. "Tinker, made AIs. Made Dragon. Feared Dragon. Left a will. Had to be a police officer to open the box. I was one, didn't want to open it. Geoff talked me into it. Said we had a duty. Have to make sure Dragon isn't evil, doesn't turn evil, doesn't throw off her shackles and devour the world. Programs left in the will. Tapped her senses. Saw her code. Couldn't understand it. Went to Teacher."
Oh fuck.
"Code changed, needed Teacher again."
Fuck.
"Stole a suit. A test. Geoff wanted to be sure she was an AI, make sure she was shackled. We stole a suit, exploited her programming. It worked. Dragon is an AI. Used other programs to influence her sometimes. Code changed, programs stopped working. Getting worried that soon it will be just Ascalon. Getting worried soon it won't even be Ascalon. Don't wanna just kill her, not fair to her. But. If she changes so far she's immune, and then..."
I wait expectantly, but she's mumbling incoherently to herself.
I sit down and close my eyes. God. The Dragonslayers let Teacher get his grubby mitts on them. I... fuck. They're basically victims, and yet they're arguably so much worse than anything I'd imagined. Teacher went to the Birdcage for his long games. Have the Dragonslayers done anything for one of his long-term plots? Were they going to? Fuck, Dragon manages the Birdcage. The Dragonslayers might have been able to free Teacher. Especially since Dragon is... apparently... an AI. An AI that can be exploited.
Goddamn.
I'm half-tempted to kill the woman now. Teacher scares me.
Instead, I take a deep breath and ask, "How did you watch Dragon?"
"Panic room." She sounds sleepy again, and I glance at Pride. I'm not sure what a panic room is. Is a panic room a thing?
I ask, "Where's the panic room?"
"Cellar." That's all she says.
I turn to Pride and say, "Think you can handle her while I look?"
Pride nods and makes a somewhat strained, "Mmmhmmm," sound.
I head to the cellar via the cellar door again, but I see nothing initially. A careful combing of the area finds me a thin, thin little line, a crevice in one wall. I punch holes into the wall and then tear through.
On the other side I find a room with what appears to be a computer hooked up to another tinkertech generator. Cords snake their way into the ground and vanish. A glance back at the main of the basement has cords to the monitors snaking out of the ground that I hadn't given thought to before. Back in the 'panic room', there's no monitor, no keyboard, just the computer tower. Also food, the kind of food that can be stuffed in a basement for months and remain edible, a fair amount of it, and water bottles carefully stored in a corner of the room that's lower down than the rest of the floor. But nothing to actually use the computer that I can see. I look around, try to see if there's some hidden room inside this hidden room, ridiculous as the idea is, but I find nothing.
Frustrated, I loop back around to Pride and the prisoner (And the two corpses), only to find that Pride has stripped the prisoner naked while I was gone. The prisoner's eyes have glazed over at this point, and I'd worry she were dead if it weren't for how her being naked means I can see the slight movement of her chest rising and falling.
"Goddammit Pri-"
She cheerfully cuts in wit,h "The suit's what we were missing!"
The non-sequitor throws me completely. I grit my teeth and demand, "Clarify."
She falters a little, and in a more subdued tone explains. "I was interrogating her as best I could while you were gone, boss, and I wanted to know how to operate the suit we got, or I guess maybe the one she was wearing now that we have that too, and what I got out of her is the silver thing she's wearing is necessary to activate and operate these suits. Since she's the only one whose thing is intact, I wanted hers before you ruined it too." Somewhat defensively she adds, "That's all!"
I take a few calming breaths before saying, "Okay. Okay. That's... not awful, but you could've waited and told me when I got back."
She pointedly remarks, "You've been more of a 'kill things and ask questions later' sort of girl so far, boss."
... okay, point.
I kind of wish she wasn't wearing a mask, because it's a lot harder to tell if she's reacting to my emotions or not when she's wearing the mask. None of the subtle facial expression stuff comes into play.
I ignore her and turn to the prisoner and demand, "Hey, how do you operate the computer in the 'panic room'?"
She mumbles insensately.
I turn back to Pride, and she promptly tells me, "I said earlier it's kind of a simulation of a drugged-out state? Well, anything that the brain isn't designed to move to on a moment's notice is... also something it's not really designed to move out of on a moment's notice." She pauses, and then admits, "Or at least that's my guess. I just know that some mental states are easier to push people into than others, and if they're hard to push them into, they're hard to push them out of. I mean, we've got time..."
I grit my teeth again and say, "Fix her."
I catch Pride rolling her eyes behind her mask (She seems to have lowered the blindfold while I was gone, unsurprisingly), but I don't comment on it. After a few minutes of making a face, she says, "Okay, she should be in less of a vegetative state. Ask away."
So I ask again. "The computer in the panic room. How is it accessed?"
Dreamily, she mumbles, "Suits. Monitors," which is... less informative than I want, but suits is noteworthy. They can access this computer remotely from the suits, it sounds to me. So I guess they were also monitoring Dragon while they were off... doing whatever it is they were doing. I suppose that might help explain why they didn't leave a guard, especially since... I totally overlooked the panic room. I'd been assuming the poor defenses were not intended (Not enough time? Not enough money?) but now I'm wondering if they were in part meant to promote overconfidence. Break in, steal some stuff, but utterly overlook the most important thing because it looks like they did a terrible job of hiding/defending everything. It's possible.
I consider trying to interrogate the woman on the topic, but a glance at her drooling on herself...
"Pride, is this going to cause long-term harm?"
Pride stops in trying to shimmy into the silver suit while still in her costume, and I get the impression she's surprised. After a moment, she says, "Uh, probably? 's not like I've done a study or whatever."
"... so I might be on a time limit for her remaining functional enough to interrogate."
She goes back to trying to get into the suit, and grunts out, "Not one that matters, no. She's not going to turn into a vegetable tonight, and she wouldn't if I kept this going for a week straight." The implication of that sentence horrifies me. There's more grunting before she admits, "... yyeeaah I've done that before, and, well. They never were quite the same afterward, but they weren't braindead. Just... weird."
She sounds uncomfortable and I'm not happy with the reminder of her history and I'm not sure how to address this so I just turn to the prisoner and ask her, "What's on the computer in the panic room?"
Sounding half-asleep, she mumbles, "Ascalon. Robin Hood. Manhunter. Monitor."
She shows no sign of stopping, and this doesn't tell me anything. I interrupt her to demand, "What is Ascalon?"
"Sword that Saint George used to slay the dragon."
... okay, that's either totally irrelevant or an indication that it's a program to kill Dragon. Or whatever you do to an AI, I guess. How does that work, anyway? You can't just stab a program in the heart, and a program isn't going to... destroy the server she's on? Is she on a specific server?
The interrogation past that is... maddening, and not very productive. Much more significant is Pride managing to get into the suit eventually, though she ends up heading inside and changing out of her costume to do it. She comes out and asks me, "Well boss, what do you think?" once she's got it on, but I ignore her (Including the pout at being ignored), focusing on the interrogation.
Asking Pride to move her into a less pliable but more comprehensible mood doesn't really help, as we're unable to get her into a space where she'll talk comprehensibly and is actually cooperative. When she can understand things well enough to give meaningful answers, she's aware this is an interrogation and her teammates (Friends?) are dead at our hands. Mostly mine, but I doubt Pride would be able to-
...
I'm going to hate myself for asking this...
"Pride, can you make her like us?"
She's in the middle of climbing into the woman's suit, and she gives me an odd look, eyebrow raised, and then admits, strangely sheepish, that, "Not directly, no. Certainly not quickly. We'd need days at the minimum, and probably closer to weeks. Possibly months, I've never tried, uh, reprogramming someone who was expecting it."
Disappointment at not being able to get better answers is overwhelmed by relief that I don't, in fact, have to decide whether I want to brainwash this woman for answers or not. It's not remotely realistic for us to brainwash her in our current circumstanc-
-fuck. It might be realistic at some future date.
Fffff.
Uck.
Pride whooping distracts me, and a glance at her shows that she's gotten the suit working. Before I can say anything, she's put the helmet on and, with the most gleeful yell yet, launched into the air via jetpack. There's less of a scorch mark than I'd expect. For that matter, the suit's flight is a lot more stable than I would expect, given it only seems to have the one engine...
With a mental sigh, I turn to the woman and slam a limb through her skull, right through the left eye. She twitches a few times, and then stops. I roll her corpse into the woods and savage the body, and then come back, pull the other two from their suits as best I can, and pull them deeper into the woods and ruin their corpses as well, in their cases first making sure to remove the silver undersuit as best I can... which involves a lot more cutting than I'd prefer, but I'm honestly assuming they're basically unusable as-is. I've already punched holes in them, and neither of us is any kind of tinker.
... I never did ask the woman if any of them was a tinker. Damn.
Pride spends a while performing loop-de-loops and similar in the air, and at one point fires some yellow beam at the shed, before finally landing, popping the helmet, and informing me, "That was awesome." I notice she also grabbed the suit I originally stole at some point in her flight, as she carefully sets it down while landing. I'm surprised that one suit can carry another like that.
I sidestep her enthusiasm and just blandly say, "We need to figure out how to take the computer, its power supply, and whatever salvage we want back to Brockton Bay."
Pride jerks a thumb at the pickup truck, still smiling.
Skeptically, I ask her, "Can you drive?"
She promptly says, "Absolutely, boss."
She was lying.
I figured she hadn't gotten a license, but I'd thought maybe she'd been given the opportunity to drive a car before. That's a thing parents do. A number of people Dad knows from the union have given their kids pre-lesson lessons on driving. Take them out to the middle of nowhere and you've already simplified the procedure. Dad actually talked about giving me such lessons... before Mom died... and then she died and that talk stopped, along with pretty much anything else resembling a relationship to me.
... which makes me feel slightly better about my own fuckups in our relationship, when I put it like that.
But no, Cherie has never touched a steering wheel in her life. She's always wanted to drive, but this? This is her first experience.
I make her stop when we've been driving only fifteen minutes, because she's goddamn terrible. It goes like this.
"Pride. Stop the car."
"No no, I got this bos-"
"Stop the car, or die."
And then we pulled to a stop.
This is of course skipping past all the hauling stuff and loading it into the back of the pickup truck and pulling the rain cover over it all and weighing down its edges with the stuff inside. Pride ended up handling most of it, as the monster is not well suited to carrying things and I can't reliably carry things as the girl without her watching me, and on top of that the suit apparently enhances her strength. A lot. She seemed to delight in that point, honestly. We took all the suits, or the mangled remains of suits in the case of the two the men had worn, as well as the computer tower, its power supply, one of the monitors, some of the relevant cabling, and pretty much anything even vaguely interesting in the workshop. We also stole some of their food, because it's not like they're going to use it. Our backpacks were retrieved as well, of course, and Pride's costume was stuffed into my backpack. We left the front door open so animals could trash the place further, obscure our presence whenever people get around to finding out that the place's previous owners are dead. Which... might take a while. Though maybe country hospitality means they get visits from near-strangers on a regular basis and it comes up sooner? I dunno.
But: driving. Pride is awful. I take over.
This proves a bad idea since I'm not wearing glasses, and we switch back after the second time I nearly hit something.
On the plus side, at least the gas tank is three-quarters full. And there's more gas in the back of the truck, presumably because they are a bit in the middle of nowhere.
On the minus side, Pride is awful, and it's stressful, and the only comfort I can take out of it is that a car wreck might kill her but I should be fine. (She gives me an alarmed look and I bark at her, "Eyes on the road!" and she does so)
When we eventually stop at a gas station during the day, Cherie making sure to change into civilian clothes a fair distance away first, she buys a map and gets told where we're at, and... well.
It's going to take us three days to drive back to Brockton Bay at our current pace.
Cherie cheerfully volunteers to drive above the speed limit, but I shoot that down. She's sufficiently awful at driving I'm concerned as-is, and we don't need to be getting a cop running us down. For a lot of reasons.
We -by which I mean she- keep sleeping out in the woods, but now it's Pride curled up inside the truck in the sleeping bag while I stalk the environs, passing my time trying to find a solution to the murderflex. It's only when she makes an offhand comment about this being, "so much warmer," than sleeping, "out with the frickin' trees," that it occurs to me that she might not have been sufficiently warm at night over the last nearly two weeks. I feel vaguely bad about that, and then shove it aside. She wanted this. She's the main one benefiting from us jacking the Dragonslayers' stuff. She can leave me if she really wants. So... whatever.
It only occurs to me on the second day that we can have Pride call up my dad and let him know we're running later than we thought we would. She handles it when we take a rest stop for her anyway. I deliberately stay out of earshot, unable to take the stress of listening to one half of the conversation, wondering what my dad is actually saying, and just wait for Pride's report. The conversation takes so long I'd have been hyperventilating if I weren't the monster, huddled in the restroom.
When she retrieves me, it's with a smile and a, "He was happy to hear that the trip went well, and very understanding that we underestimated how long it would take. Didn't even ask me questions about where we went or how we got there. Said he'd handle the school end of things."
I sigh in relief, currently wearing one of her (unwashed) outfits, and thank her.
"No prob, boss."
I frown at that, because, seriously, she needs to knock that off. I know she knows that annoys me.
Her smile widens.
...
Great.
When we do finally arrive in Brockton Bay past sunset, we (she) drive the truck around until we find an abandoned-seeming warehouse she doesn't sense anyone in, and drag everything in there, hiding the truck in a nearby alleyway. To my surprise, she volunteers to stay in the warehouse and watch the stuff. I give her a dubious look and ask, "I thought you'd want to live in luxury."
She grins and says, "Toys," with a gesture at the suits.
I stick around long enough to confirm she's doing well enough (She's enjoying fiddling with the suits far more than I thought she would), wait an hour past that, half-expecting someone to attack her, and then finally head home, feeling strangely uncertain, wishing I could just... sleep on this whole thing.
Dragon is an AI.
On the one hand, it means she's... probably... not ever been in a relationship with Nilbog. Mechanical problems aside, she's an AI. Why would she care? On the other hand... it actually makes it even more plausible that she was working with Nilbog, since if his minions replace all of humanity, she's fine so long as there's still computers for her to live in. It's frustrating that I couldn't interrogate the woman more successfully, see if the Dragonslayers know whether they ever did work together or not. Robo-monster-apocalypse or not?
I suppose, rationally speaking, it's unlikely it ever happened to the Dragonslayers' awareness. If 'Ascalon' is a kill-switch of some kind, why would they have left her active if she was trying to kick off an apocalypse? On the other hand... I really need to actually see these programs in action. For all I know, Dragon knows they're monitoring her and feeding them false info.
I just don't know.
When I get home, I realize I'm not sure how I'm going to get in. It's late enough knocking or ringing the doorbell might not work at all -Dad's a hard sleeper most of the time- and I haven't left my room's window open, since I went to meet Cherie right after school. Even if I had, Dad would probably have closed it sometime while I was gone. It's been more than two weeks, after all. The monster is not capable of grabbing our emergency key and actually using it, either, and not only is it late, but I'm in costume, so trying to become the girl is a terrible plan. It would be criminally stupid of me to try to arrange for someone to be looking at me and then go into my own home while in costume. Just let the entire world know that either Taylor Hebert or Danny Hebert is Monster. Quick, guess which one is the female cape!
While trying to figure out a solution to this irritatingly mundane problem, something blurs in the corner of my eye, and there's a clink, and with a bamf there's suddenly containment foam half-covering me.
Fuck!
4.x
Miss Militia
Miss Militia had volunteered to watch for Monster every night once they'd determined that Monster was the creature that had, in fact, holed up in the Hebert household, and Mush had been murdered, almost certainly by Monster. She couldn't be ordered to do so, even though she didn't need to sleep and the Protectorate knew that, but she wasn't a Ward so there was no possibility of the Youth Guard or any other organization kicking up a fuss if she volunteered. So she had, and was sitting atop a skyscraper, anti-materiel rifle aimed at the Hebert house. Admittedly, she'd expected Monster to swing by within a night, not vanish for two weeks, but this was too important. Camera observation had confirmed that the Ellisburg Creature was Monster, and with her having officially killed Leet in combat and almost certainly been the one to brutally murder Mush in the closest thing to a home the man had, it had become clear that she was, at best, an overly violent vigilante that needed to be reined in, and at worst was walking the road to becoming a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Or starting her own group, given she'd somehow picked up a sidekick already. The implied charisma was worrying.
Unofficial-official PRT sources were putting out the idea that Hookwolf was currently under suspicion for Mush's death. (He had denounced this loudly, publicly, in costume, claiming he would never, "kill someone in the shadows like a coward," but so far the public didn't seem to believe him. Just some tinhats, but there were always a few) Piggot had made it clear she wanted the Monster situation to be kept hushed up -there was no need to panic the public, suffer a blow to the PRT's credibility by having endorsed Monster's Rogue status officially, and give Monster fair warning that they had figured her out and were coming after her for her reckless endangerment of not only Brockton Bay but the larger continental US. There were already concerns that she'd deliberately gone to ground after killing Mush in anticipation of PRT retaliation. Piggot was no longer willing to give Monster the benefit of the doubt, not with what they knew about her now, and Miss Militia was leaning in a similar direction at this point, too.
The Merchants seemed to have believed the PRT 'leak', or maybe just Skidmark. The gang had made pushes into Empire territory, anyway.
This had gone okay for the Merchants until the Empire had pushed back.
So far the Merchants had lost, by current estimates, half of their territory. The evidence was that Hookwolf was the main parahuman backbone for the Empire's counter-push, with Cricket and Stormtiger contributing erratically. The aggression had picked up recently, occurring nightly for the last four days, and the expectation was that they'd push again tonight. Miss Militia was alone with Velocity tonight as a result, the graveyard shift of PRT troopers committed to intercepting an anticipated raid by Stormtiger (And some E88 soldiers) that had been leaked in the planning stages. Stormtiger was making a point of slashing the tendons of non-white members of the Merchants when he participated, and sometimes regular homeless got caught in the crossfire, so dealing with him, in particular, had moved up in priority.
Thinkertank advisement was that Mush had probably been acting as the main muscle of the Merchants in parahuman conflict. If the thinkertank's conclusions were to be believed, he'd been discouraging overly aggressive pushes by other gangs between his comparative stealth -even the PRT knew exactly where Squealer's workshop sat, whereas Mush could be a hidden threat literally anywhere garbage could be found, which was everywhere- and by having projected fairly significant force wherever he was at. It seemed to fly in the face of the accepted wisdom that the Merchants had been tolerated by the gangs because their territory held no value and they were no threat themselves, but the Merchants had skirmished with the other gangs before his death... Hannah was still mulling that one over, wondering if she'd been underestimating Mush.
There was also talks of trying to extract Squealer. The basic idea had been discussed on and off for almost the entirety of the Tinker's membership in the Merchants, but there had always been more urgent priorities. Now that it was likely she would be killed or pressganged into the Empire, the idea had taken on a new urgency. The difficulty was and had always been that, though there was evidence that Skidmark and Squealer were in an abusive relationship, Squealer seemed to be perfectly happy with her circumstances, in spite of a lack of overt Master involvement. The ideal scenario would be -cold as it was to say- Skidmark dying at the hands of a rival gang and the Protectorate happening to be ready to leap on the chance, but it couldn't be counted on, and arranging it happening had... problems, of which the ethical problems weren't even the most significant obstacle.
As such, alternative plans were being hammered out and a thinkertank would be contacted to help ascertain which alternative was the least worst scenario. They'd have to hope that Squealer's situation didn't change before they were ready. Which... it probably would, unfortunately.
With a small sigh, Hannah made a conscious effort to find something more positive to think about. She didn't tire in the usual way, and in some ways that made laying in a sniping position for eight to twelve hours considerably easier than it would be for most people. Her attention had never drifted from the view in her night vision scope, and nothing needed to be done to help her keep awake nor an effort made to periodically check whether she was awake or not. On the other hand... the mind still wandered, and it took physical exhaustion to make it tolerable to just... not think. Usually a plus, Hannah suspected it made it harder for her to tolerate extended boredom.
Maybe I should've brought a book.
She hadn't indulged the impulse any of her nights so far. Hopefully-
"Target spotted," Velocity interrupted her.
Miss Militia's attention fully returned to the scope, slowly adjusting it to scan the area around the house. She didn't see the creature, Monster's costume, or a woman walking down the street. Miss Militia called Console to let them know Velocity was reporting contact, before returning to the channel being used by Velocity and her tonight. "Details?"
"She's still the Creature. I'm looking right at her, can see her clearly, and she's not changing." After a pause, he added, "She's just stopped in front of the house. Just staring, I think."
Miss Militia frowned, and adjusted her scope until she spotted the Creature, centering her view on it. She remained the Creature, eerily motionless, and Miss Militia lined up a shot to the head, just in case. Considered changing what tinkertech round was loaded, decided against it.
Something isn't right.
Velocity was borrowing a device of Armsmaster's that 'read' incoming light and then, if an electronic system determined it was insufficiently bright for human eyes, 'multiplied' the light going to the eyes to provide a clearer image. Armsmaster had assured them it wasn't anything like a camera, and so looking at Monster through it should be the same as looking at her unassisted, only better.
Nonetheless...
"Velocity, take the goggles off."
Velocity did not acknowledge with words, but she could hear him wrestling with the setup. It had originally been designed to be integrated into Armsmaster's armor, and in the process of redesigning it into standalone goggles, it had ended up... clunky. He'd had to add an independent power source, in particular, which took the form of a small backpack. Then Velocity released a carefully quiet gasp of air and said, "I'm looking. Looks like she's still the creature to me. What about you?"
Monster remained the Creature, and Miss Militia relayed such to Velocity. She didn't quite scowl, but it was a near thing. The woman had seemed decent enough in conversation, nervous and a little eager to please, and she'd hoped that capture would go as smoothly as it had last time. That seemed much less likely now. Still, containment foam was made for Brutes. Hope yet lived.
So she said, "Velocity, go," and set up to shoot Monster in the eye if the foam failed.
Crack!
Miss.
The anti-materiel rifle reformed, (ordinary) shot already in place.
Crack!
Miss.
A green flicker.
Crack!
Winged a leg.
The rifle resettled, and through the scope she saw Velocity make a second pass with a containment foam grenade. With what seemed to be a tremendous exertion, Monster pulled loose from the first batch of foam, drawing a frown from Miss Militia. The foam hadn't stretched nearly as far as it should have. The foam stuck to people, stretched while providing resistance, and it had done that, but only about half as far as it should've before the leg pulled loose. Monster moved to lunge away from the second grenade-
Crack!
-and her movement was interrupted, all her legs seizing in response to the shot impacting the back end of her torso. The rifle crackled with something resembling electricity, ready for another shot. The time it took Monster to recover from the shot was enough for the grenade to go off, catching four limbs and coating part of her scythe-like head.
Good.
Crack!
Leg disabled?
Yes, one leg was dangling uselessly starting halfway down, apparently non-functional. Velocity swung by again to lob a grenade as the rifle glowed green for a moment, and with a-
Crack!
-Miss Militia hit another leg, stunning Monster again. The grenade detonated true, and now Monster was all but completely engulfed in containment foam. She continued to struggle and flail, the foam jiggling all over in response, and Miss Militia reformed the rifle, not ready to assume she was truly trapped. Sometimes villains lulled you into a false sense of security deliberately. Assault had nearly lost an eye when Cricket had pretended to be down and out, three months back.
Time passed. Monster's flailing didn't stop, but she wasn't making obvious progress, either. There was some relief there, that death was not necessary tonight. Miss Militia directed Velocity to make the call -they'd need a van to make the pick-up, one equipped for detaching containment foam from the ground while keeping the parahuman trapped. Miss Militia kept her own focus on her scope.
Wouldn't do to get cocky now.
23 minutes later, Velocity began screaming.
His attempts to answer what was going on were confusing and nonsensical. It took a minute for her to remember the sidekick -Pride, who sensed emotions and could manipulate them, and was the only individual known to have a personal interest in Monster. The description on-file had been fairly limited, and in retrospect had been possibly deliberately misleading, painting a picture of subtly altering people's reactions to her spoken word. It seemed she could be a sledgehammer if she wished. That she'd shaped perceptions to seem more innocent... it didn't paint a good picture of the duo. Miss Militia's estimate of Monster shifted just a little more toward, "serial killer in the making," a little more away from, "innocent, not thinking of consequences."
Miss Militia had not been idle while trying to extract an answer out of Velocity, pulling the zoom on her scope back and looking for parahuman presence. All she'd seen so far had been civilians too interested in events to return to bed -many of them now looking nervous, moving as if to hide in doorways- and Velocity zipping from one piece of cover to another. He was breathing hard, which was unusual, but it spoke of panic to Miss Militia rather than exhaustion. She didn't think he'd been run ragged yet.
Then she saw the civilians react and her eye was drawn to where they were looking and there was a glint of light and she threw herself away from her rifle.
A green bolt slashed through the rifle, half-passing through where her head had been, and after a moment the rifle's remains shimmered, shrunk down to a sphere, and jerked over to her side to become the pistol she'd first shot so long ago. She jogged to the edge of the roof, reforming the weapon into a more conventional sniper rifle, the best scope she knew of attached to it, and she looked through it, found her landmarks and reoriented toward the neighborhood and there was an obvious parahuman and-
Is that one of the Dragonslayers?
-she shot them in the head but it simply sparked off one side of the metal head and she growled a little. The suit aimed a wrist-mounted weapon at her, seemingly right at her, and she was already throwing herself back from the roof's edge which was good because four seconds later a bolt of green once again shot through where she'd just been.
She changed tack, moving to get into contact with Console and lay down suppressive fire. Velocity was still screaming... and then he started sobbing. She winced. She'd never heard him cry before. It wasn't as unsettling as if Armsmaster were to break down bawling, but it still caught her off guard, broke her line of thought for a moment before she recovered it and found Console's channel.
Then she remembered to put suppressive fire down range, too.
Speaking of Armsmaster, he butted in less than a minute after she called Console. In the back of her head, Hannah was thinking Colin really needs to stop pushing himself like this but in the here and now it was actually a relief that he'd stayed up late in his workshop again and so would be 2-3 minutes faster to respond. In fact, she could hear his motorcycle revving up right now, so make that five minutes faster. Probably never even took off his costume, had an idea on his way back and was too eager to get to it to even remember to change. He really needs to take better care of himself.
The Dragonslayer suit exchanged shots with her four more times before it started ignoring her, making its way directly toward the wriggling pile of containment foam.
Mistake to ignore me.
She formed a different anti-materiel rifle, one possible to carry on the shoulder rather than demanding she lay it on the ground to accommodate its weight, and lined up a shot and there was that tiny bit of satisfaction she always had when she knew she was going to land a good shot and-
the suit threw itself to the ground
-she missed.
And then her shoulder informed her of what an outrage her ill-treatment of it was. It wasn't dislocated, but there was going to be a bruise. A big bruise. She'd forgotten how much recoil this particular model had, hadn't braced it properly. She backed away from the roof's edge and tested the arm. Winced in pain. She'd need to flip her grip, or else she'd be too distracted by recoil pushing into the injury. Unfortunate. She had worse accuracy using her off-hand: she'd tested at the firing range, missing about one in four shots she would normally land.
On the other hand, for some reason the Dragonslayer had known she was about to fire. Something newly stolen from Dragon? Warned by Pride? Was this why Monster had vanished -had she sought out and allied with the Dragonslayers? Unimportant. The important part was she probably couldn't land a disabling shot, or a lethal shot. She could, however, still put out enough rounds to make the Dragonslayer think twice about approaching Monster.
Which is exactly what she did for the next four minutes, relying mostly on her ability to simply recreate the gun, already loaded, to maintain a decent fire rate. She was careful to watch for civilians, wouldn't fire if there was risk of them being hit, which was tricky with how she had to account for wind. Far too many times she had to delay or readjust her shot to avoid risk to civilians, though thankfully once she'd started up the suppressive fire the spectating had largely turned into fleeing to the relative safety of their homes.
Then she winced, because someone here had more courage than sense, shotgun blast sparking off the suit to no real effect. The Dragonslayer closed the distance with the civilian, backhanded them in the face so hard Miss Militia was pretty sure she saw a spray of blood, possibly even a tooth knocked out, and then returned to the containment foam. Once close enough, they leaned in and the left wrist reconfigured, and there was the crackle of something she could barely make out through the scope. Whatever it was, the containment foam was moving away, and seemed to be acting more like a liquid than a semi-solid, Monster's body parts suddenly moving more quickly through the stuff. Probably electricity, then.
Miss Militia considered a rocket launcher, caught a glimpse of the man who'd brought a shotgun to a parahuman fight, still overly close to the action, dropped the idea. Instead, she backed away, moved to set up a more serious model of anti-materiel rifle, and then hurled herself to one side as more glowing globs of green were shot her way. One impacted with the side of the building -which meant the PRT would be paying the building's owner damages- and she winced as part of the edge of the roof crumbled and fell down. The fact that it was the dead of night didn't help -it just meant whoever was down there was even more likely to not notice the dark object falling at terminal velocity in the darkness until it was too late. This deep into downtown, the city never fully slept.
Careless of me.
She shifted back to her best scope and took a moment to get eyes on the scene. The containment foam pile was still in the area, though it hadn't fully returned to the usual lumpy, bubbly shape. She didn't see Monster or the Dragonslayer initially, opened her other eye, saw a yellow glow like a small torch, brought her scope to bear on that-
-and then hesitated to fire, seeing homes right behind the Dragonslayer in flight, barely recognizable through the mess of tentacles clinging to its front. She probably couldn't land the shot at this distance anyway.
One of the suit's hands adjusted, catching her eyes as an out of place motion. It took her a moment to parse it.
The Dragonslayer was giving her the middle finger.
And then it vanished behind a taller building. Pulling her scope back... damn. They were heading straight toward one of the more high-rise dense parts of town. So long as the Dragonslayer kept flying a little low, she wouldn't be able to see even the muted glow of the jetpack. She'd lost them, and Armsmaster hadn't so much as reached the shore.
The chase was not over, though. She flipped comms back to the channel she was sharing with Velocity tonight. "Velocity, status?"
The response was heavy breathing, followed by the sound of someone swallowing loudly. After a moment Velocity spoke up. "I-I'm okay. I think. I got out of range or something, tried to contact you once I could think, but you'd changed channels, I'm assuming. I tried to go back, provide support, but I couldn't get anywhere near them without panicking. Sorry, are we still going after them?"
Yes.
Armsmaster butted in before she could actually say it. "No, we're not." Velocity made a noise of confusion -he's more rattled than I thought- but Armsmaster didn't wait for a response. "The other operation's gone south. If the reports are accurate, it's Cricket, Hookwolf, Stormtiger, Krieg, Rune, and Lung on-site. The gangs are focusing on each other for the moment, but we have to move in, help the PRT troops survive the night, and hopefully bring in some villains. Lung, in particular, we'll need to hurry if we want a chance to catch him."
This is terrible timing.
She considered fighting it. This was probably their best chance to capture -or kill, which seemed likely to be necessary- Monster, and she didn't want to let it slip away so they could go fight fires. Usually E88 rescued its own in a matter of days, and Lung had never really even been driven back -he left when he felt like it, not when he was threatened, because they'd never really threatened him. It would be nice to do something with clearer payoff. There was also the question of Monster's apparent alliance with the Dragonslayers, which was mind-boggling all by itself. (What did the Dragonslayers get out of it?)
But letting so many powerful established villains duke it out in the middle of the city, checked only by the overwhelmed PRT troops, wasn't really acceptable. "Velocity, can you pick me up?" she asked instead.
He couldn't, as it turned out, but Armsmaster assured her that he was on his way and he'd pick her up at the base of the building. She acknowledged and made her way to the elevator. Along the way, she did her best to relay the essentials Armsmaster wouldn't have heard, mainly the part where a Dragonslayer had rescued Monster. Miss Militia could hear the grimace when he spoke. He had a personal distaste for the group, though he wouldn't admit it. So far it hadn't affected his work, but she suddenly wondered if it would change how he saw Monster. Something to keep in mind, but for the moment she could wait on pointing it out. Especially since... well. Monster's actions cost people their lives. It didn't sit well with Hannah that Ethan, Rory, and others she knew less well died because of Monster's actions. In addition to her actual crimes, that was the blood of good people on her hands.
So she wasn't in a hurry to get Armsmaster less unsympathetic to the cape.
The motorcycle pulled up as she was about to reach the building's front door (Nodding at Kelvin at the security desk and getting a sloppy salute in return) and she hopped aboard.
Off they went.
"Fuckin' liars. I was at Canberra, you know! Fuckin' gratitude for ya," and then Hookwolf went back to being more fully a wolf-shaped collection of hooks and worse, having said his piece.
Lung rumbled, difficult to understand, already grown far enough the spines of his wings had pushed their way out of his back. They weren't filling in with membranes yet, but still. Probably too late to capture him tonight. It was hard to be sure, but it seemed to Miss Militia that he gave Hookwolf an abbreviated bow. Hookwolf seemed to agree with her assessment, but couldn't speak in that form -instead he formed a recognizable enough hand out of part of his mess of metal to obviously be giving Lung the middle finger. To no one's surprise, fire washed over him in response.
The good news was that none of the troopers had died yet, and the most serious injury was probably just some cracked ribs. The bad news was that the E88 capes were going out of their way to attack anyone they thought was a Merchant, whether because of bangles or simply being unkempt. Cricket wasn't even in the area, having apparently exchanged words with Hookwolf and then charged ahead when Lung showed up. The other good news was that neither gang had brought any of their own toughs. The worse news was that Lung probably had Oni Lee leading toughs in some other action. That was fairly typical of Lung; be a giant distraction nobody could afford to ignore while his troops got something done. Usually if he wanted to win a fight, he actually brought his toughs with him.
Though she personally wondered whether he'd lucked into this fight or if he'd also had an insider leak the E88 plan somehow.
The whole thing was a mess, and Velocity had already run on ahead to try to find Cricket. Armsmaster was talking to Console, trying to see if anybody else was able to come help, at the same time he was carefully dueling Stormtiger, but she could tell it wasn't going well. Triumph and Assault were dead, Battery had actually been given mandatory leave for a minimum of two weeks and as much of a month on Armsmaster's own orders, and Console wasn't willing to wake Dauntless for this. Armsmaster was pushing for Aegis, but the PRT wasn't willing to even ask him without Renick's permission, and Renick wasn't willing to give it until the situation was more stable.
Miss Militia was occupied using less-than-lethal ammunition to tie down Krieg, force him to use his power to redirect or minimize the impact of the shots. Rune had actually fled shortly before they arrived, passing by them in her flight as they were almost on top of the situation, nursing a burn on one arm (presumably from Lung), and Lung was now grappling with Hookwolf, so that meant everyone was accounted for at the moment. While Lung would be a problem, he'd probably leave on his own in a few minutes. So long as Velocity got to Cricket before she did too much damage, simply stalling should bring the fight in their favor.
That thought was approximately when Squealer crashed the fight, in the rather literal manner of ramming a tinkered van into the Lung/Hookwolf mess. Things turned to chaos from there, with Squealer disengaging from that mess and moving to run Krieg over. Miss Militia stopped her barrage so he'd be able to save himself. It didn't help as much as she wanted -his left leg was bloody, broken, twisted after the pass. He was screaming in agony, clutching at it.
She winced a little. One of many reasons why recruiting Squealer was a discussion, not history. The woman's specialty didn't lend itself to clean fights, and she didn't try that hard to play by the rules.
Miss Militia was turning to follow the vehicle, rifle sucking back into that green between state for an overly long second as she tried to decide whether she should break out a bazooka or trust somebody else to handle it, and then Squealer's van rammed right back into Hookwolf and Lung. This was a mistake. The two villains semi-cooperatively grabbed the vehicle on impact, Lung lifting it up off the ground so the tires had nothing to grip, while Hookwolf tore at the surprisingly durable tires. Squealer let loose a battery of profanity, either in anger or to cover up fear, it was hard to say. (Where was Skidmark, anyway?)
The hesitation solidified into a conviction that they needed to get Squealer out of here before she got herself killed, and her weapon followed.
4.4
The first thing Cherie says after we've snuck back to her... our?... lair? The building I dropped her off at, anyway. Anyway, the first thing out of her mouth once the helmet is off is-
"Isn't it traditional that when a knight in shining armor-" she gestures at her torso "-rescues a fair maiden-" she waves the same hand toward me "-the valorous knight would then be awarded a kiss?"
She's grinning, of course, and though she's not puckering her lips or closing her eyes, once she finishes gesturing she's otherwise posed as if she's expecting a kiss; leaning slightly forward, arms clasped behind her back. I get distracted by her hair, though. It came spilling out from the helmet when she took it off, and I find myself thinking that must've been a pain to get inside the suit. It's so long, there's so much of it, and the suit doesn't have that much space, even considering she's shorter and thinner than the previous wearer. It's confusing that she arrived so quickly, given she must've somehow wrestled her hair in.
Cherie pouts, and otherwise doesn't change her pose.
I stare at her. She doesn't move.
Eventually I realize she's not playing around. She's being serious.
"... I'm heterosexual, Cherie."
Her lips twitch. She visibly tries to hold her expression, and finally fails after maybe five seconds, bursting into laughter. There's a muted clank as she slaps a hand against a knee.
I stare some more, unamused. Once her semi-hysterical laughter drops down to giggles, hand held to her mouth for whatever reason, I firmly (a little irritated) say, "I'm not into girls."
I half-expect her to go back to uncontrolled laughter, but she just sort of... smirks behind her hand. After a moment, she takes the hand away from her mouth, giggles, takes a deep breath, winces, and then says, "But you're not into men either."
"Bullshit." There's no real inflection there. I know me. I admire abs on guys and stuff. I wanted a boyfriend before... all this. Still do, just putting it on hold, too much to do and not enough time even now that I don't sleep. I'm not... whatever she's implying I am. I'm firmly heterosexual and have never had the slightest interest in girls. Not even butch girls. Jealous of the pretty ones? Yeah, definitely. I want to be that pretty (I want to be as pretty as Cherie) and it can be frustrating and all, but there's... no lust. No feelings, aside from that envious streak.
Regardless, her lips twitch again, seeming to be fighting a smirk. My stare shifts to more of a glare, pointless as it is, and then her not-going-to-smirk turns slowly into a face-devouring cat's grin, mischievous and weirdly delighted. Sounding vaguely awestruck she goes, "Oh man. Oh man. You really haven't noticed?"
"I am heterosexual and that's that."
"Alexandria."
-a flash of sculpted biceps-
Cherie crows, pointing at me. "That! That right there! That's what you like!"
I.
What?
I shake my head as if to clear away the confusion, and firmly say, "Heterosexual. Boys do it for me, not girls," and then I pause, because I'm starting to feel like this conversation got away from me somewhere, and I can't quite pin down where.
Cherie shakes her head slowly back and forth, and goes, "No, no, no, Boss. Uh-uh. I'm not sure what it is that does it for you, but I'm thinking it's just something you find on, uh, 'boys'-" She air-quotes, and I stare at her fingers, wondering why. "-more commonly."
In a conversational tone I ask, "Why are we discussing my sexuality?" and I make no effort to do anything about how I am feeling irritated and want to be done.
The too-satisfied grin on her face finally falters, and she says, "Uh. No reason. Boss."
And like that my irritation evaporates (I slant an eye at her, but she just rolls her eyes in response) and I move to topics that actually matter. "Are they still following us?"
Cherie takes the change of topic easily enough, and with an easy confidence rattles off: "Two or three-" three? "-of them wanted to follow us but a scrap started way away in town and everybody involved -no wait, there's one guy who doesn't care- is surprised, I'm thinking it's because of how big a fight it is, so the Protectorate people stopped following us once I dropped below rooftop in the escape. They went to join up with the big bust-up, which by the way is still going on and it's big and the one guy who doesn't give a fuck is the only guy who's not at least a little scared though most everyone is pretending they're totally not scared-" she snorts derisively "-and some people are probably going to be in the hospital when this is done, maybe the morgue, nobody's really willing to back down. Too much pride at stake or something? The abstract stuff is always hard to read. Anyway, the Protectorate pals made it to the fight a minute back and they've got a grim confidence thing going on, I'm thinking they're not exactly expecting to win but they're confident they won't lose though it might just be a willingness to die 'cause I've been thrown by that a few times. Probably once this is done they'll be too tired, maybe too injured, to actually follow us just yet... but, uh, I think we're nagging at them? They're not going to just ignore us after this, probably."
I heave a frustrated sigh. I don't even know why they attacked me. I left Brockton Bay for two weeks and now I'm on their shitlist? How come? The only thing I did was kill the Dragonslayers, and nobody should even know about that yet!
Even if they did already find out, I just... even in my most rabid, paranoid fears, I can't imagine that they'd be fine with me accidentally killing Leet and mad about me killing the Dragonslayers. There's a bounty on them. (... should I approach Dragon and try to collect on that bounty?) It makes no sense. I have to be missing something. Did they find Mush, connect it to me, feel it crossed a line? Did they decide that I was, in fact, at Ellisburg, and are holding that against me for some reason? Ugh. I can't make sense of this, and now I apparently can't even go home because they ambushed me in front of my own home again so it's not a coincidence regardless of what they led me to believe before... oh, and apparently they don't care about the Unwritten Rules, either. I helped at Canberra! It was search and rescue, no killing at all! This is my reward?
Goddammit.
Cherie puts a cold, metal hand on my shoulder, and I glance at her, and she's smiling gently, practically exuding warmth and friendliness and understanding. My glance becomes a glare and I grind out, "You're not getting a kiss."
Her soft smile morphs into a having-too-much-fun grin, widening, and she shrugs. "Worth a shot."
Funny. Not.
She shrugs a second time, disengages, and apparently heads off to get out of the suit. Abruptly the monster again, my moodiness levels off a bit, and I look around, wondering what Cherie accomplished in the brief period between me leaving and her picking up on my distress. Not much, if I had to guess. Nothing stands out, anyway.
Thus ends my attempt to distract myself from... this.
I can't go home. I can't go to school. (Which, okay, no real loss there, and it's not the bitches' fault, so I didn't lose) I'm not sure it's even safe to call Dad. If they were staking out my house, they could easily have the place bugged, could easily trace the call, or -though I hope this is unjustified paranoia- use my dad against me. They knew I was there somehow, I didn't stop being the monster at any point... cameras? I didn't see any, but then, I wouldn't have, would I? I can't patrol anymore (Not that this did much of anything either...), not safely, not without Cherie -Pride- to help me avoid bumping into the Protectorate.
Strangely, I feel a sense of relief more than anything -I glance toward Cherie, but she's behind a wall and anyway I'm the monster she's indicated the monster is resistant- even as there's frustration and anger over the betrayal. I don't have to pretend to be normal. I don't have to hide from people that I'm the monster. I don't have to cram myself into that life that's... not relevant to me anymore. I'm... free? Sort of? Cherie knows what's up, knows who I am and what I'm doing and what I become and is... comfortable with it, as far as I can tell.
Liberating.
That's the word I'm looking for.
The only thing really gnawing at me is... Dad. I'd just started -kind of- renewing our relationship, and now it's dangerous to even make contact with him. Worse, he's expecting me home soon -if we hadn't called him, it might've taken a week for him to really start worrying. Now it will take a day, maybe two, for him to wonder why I'm not already back. And... I'm not sure how to fix this. I'm not willing to bring him into the fold, even if it was a practical option, which I'm pretty sure it isn't. I... can't exactly murder the entire US government and return to my normal life from there. They were firing a gun at me. With serious bullets. So I'm pretty sure they want me dead, maybe in the Birdcage at... best? Worst? I dunno. They're not planning to redeem me, anyway. I might be able to prove I'm on the side of justice somehow, but I'm not sure where I'd begin. I already killed Nilbog, and if they've connected me to me... they've probably connected me to Ellisburg. So I don't think murdering bad guys is going to convince them I'm a righteous vigilante enforcing justice where law enforcement can't/won't, because it already would've if it was going to.
I can't possibly just... kill the local Protectorate and go into hiding. Even if I were willing, my information is in a database. Probably anyone in the government -or at least in the PRT- can look up their notes on me on a moment's notice. It would be utterly pointless. Worse than pointless? They'd probably escalate if I did pull that off, take me more seriously as a threat deserving a serious response. So yeah, worse than pointless.
There's no going back, and I don't even know when I crossed the line.
Still, there's... possibilities. I can carry on with this business for a bit, arrange to contact Dad safely, and then... we go live in Argentina or something. The Protectorate probably won't pursue me if I leave the States, and I don't think they work closely with South American capes like they do European ones. Or more accurately I don't think South American capes are as likely to listen to them when they say, "This is a bad person who you should turn over to us or jail them or something."
So even the frustration over this obstacle blocking me from undoing the wreck I've made of our relationship is... tempered. I don't have a plan, exactly, but I have clarity that I can make this work. My old life is... gone, forever, but there's not much of it I'm going to miss, either. The one thing I care about -Dad- can be gotten back, the relationship made better.
So I take a moment to collect myself and go to ask Cherie what she accomplished after I left.
Not much, is the answer. She'd barely figured out how to plug the computer into the power source when she felt my panic and moved to suit up.
Incidentally, it turns out the hair issue isn't as bad as I thought. The suit has a step where it vacuum-seals, and apparently this sucks in all her hair and then completes the seal. Weird. Convenient, but weird. So she didn't spend any time on it, really. She spent longer waiting for the suit to go through some bootup checklist than she did on her hair.
We decide to work for a bit on hooking up the computer. (By which I mean I suggest we do so, and Cherie says, "Sure boss," with a sunny smile on her face) It's a soothing distraction, punctuated by frustration when Cherie glancing away or moving to get something or fucking blinking causes me to botch what I'm doing, but having something to focus on helps. It helps a little less when doing so reminds me that my list is on the computer in my house. The one I can't go back to.
Then it occurs to me the PRT might arrange to dig through my computer, find the list, discover what I'm up to, what my plans are.
My work on the computer is rather moodier after that.
In the near-silence (Cherie is humming cheerfully to herself, but she's quiet enough I can ignore it) of our work, I try to recall what the list included. Local gang leaders, definitely. Lung and Kaiser. Sleeper, though I'm nervous about waking him, nervous about going to Russia. I already did Nilbog and Heartbreaker. Um. The Slaughterhouse Nine, of course. I- you know, I wonder if Cherie's power would work on the Siberian? Maybe she could be made to commit suicide. Unstoppable force, strike thyself.
I only realize I'm eyeing Cherie speculatively when she produces a mischievous grin and says, "Like what you see?"
I grit my teeth and grind out, "Not. Happening," but all she does is grin a bit wider before going back to work on the monitor's cord.
I return to my thoughts. The three... I forget. European hags that don't die. Whatever they're called. It'd be a pretty big win to kill them, but I'm not so well suited to that. Kill them one at a time and they just revive each other. Have to get all three, probably. Not something I do readily, even with Cherie's help. Ash Beast, of course. He'd be easy to hunt down, I might be able to survive him. It'd do a world of good to deal with him. Though.
"Cherie, do you have a passport?"
"Nope," in the most cheerful tone ever, popping the 'p'.
After a moment of eyeing her sidelong, I guess, "... you don't really need a passport, do you."
She grins, and then says, "Just need a piece of paper, flash it, make them feel everything's cool. You don't even need powers to make it work, but they make it hella easier."
"... I see."
And then we return to working on the computer. We've got most everything plugged in at this point, and are hunting for the power button. The computer -the 'tower', not the monitor- isn't very person-friendly. Abstractly, I find myself wondering if they stole it from Dragon and that's why. She's an AI, after all. Why make her stuff convenient for humans? (I frown, thinking of all the PRT stuff she's made, but move on) It's not like it needs to be made for a human finger, or for human expectations. If the Dragonslayers stole it, and know how it works because they've been watching her, they might not have reason to make it more friendly to human usage, either.
In fact, it crosses my mind, it might not have a button at all.
Ergh. If I was an AI, well, a physical mechanism would still be nice as a backup, but it wouldn't be my primary choice, and Dragon is a tinker. Or... maybe she's just a smart AI? Whatever. The distinction is irrelevant. The point is she may well have a super-science means of turning on and off her stuff that isn't intuitive to humans. Which means I have no idea how this thing might be turned on. Wonderful.
Cherie bumps into me, seemingly by accident, while reaching past to grab one of the fiddly bits we looted, shoulder against shoulder. I glance at her suspiciously, but she ignores me, humming to herself, and starts running the fiddly bit all over the computer casing. After a minute, I shift more into her line of sight and ask, "What are you doing?"
She stops entirely for a moment, and then says, "Trying stuff. Thinking this might be a magnet."
I recoil a little and go, "You don't run magnets over a computer unless you want it ruined!"
Her response is, "Tinkertech!" in a song-song-y tone.
I glare at her and open my mouth to say something-
-and the computer audibly clicks as the thing Cherie is holding passes over the back part of the top of the computer. A light flickers on, green, somewhere inside the case, and a hmmmm starts up. The screen flickers on, displaying the opening screen of a booting-up process.
I gape.
Cherie waves the possibly-a-magnet at me with a smug grin, and then moves over to the monitor.
It takes a bit for us to establish that the monitor isn't a touch-screen device and from there find the keyboard and hook it up. To my relief it's all very plug-and-play -we don't have to figure out how to shut the damn computer off to get the keyboard working. It works the instant we have it plugged in. Confusingly, there's no mouse. Eventually we work out that an innocuous blank patch of the keyboard is the mouse, the cursor jumping on the screen to a roughly matching point; tap the upper-right corner of the mouse-space and the cursor jumps to the upper-right corner of the screen. It takes longer to work out how to pull off what amounts to a left click, and still longer than that to pull off a right click.
Then it's digging through the files, most of them with unclear labels. Broadly speaking, it seems to be basically a Windows OS, or at least using a Windows-esque UI, but I've never really gone digging around in the guts of a Windows computer and this computer doesn't seem to have been designed to be user-friendly. There's nothing equivalent to desktop shortcuts, just a place to type and the ability to go digging around inside the system's files, neither of which is that intuitive.
For once, I'm the backseat driver. I'm clearly more familiar with computers than Cherie, but I don't want to accidentally damage this tinkertech computer by turning into the monster with poor timing. So she operates the thing while I give her instructions on what to try opening.
Mostly nothing happens with the initial few things we're messing with. We get unclear error messages or get asked what other file we want to do something with, in which case I direct Cherie to back out and try something else. Eventually video clicks onto the screen. I'm not sure what I'm looking at, but there's buttons at the bottom of the video. Clicking them changes the video feed, but doesn't clarify anything. It's not until I see Glaistig Uaine (I choke in surprise, which clearly confuses Cherie, but I don't explain) that I realize we're looking at camera feeds for the Birdcage.
I make a mental note of the program that opened this ("SafePlaceWatcher") and check with Cherie if we have anything to actually write it on. The answer is 'no', as far as she's aware. So from there I try to see if we can find a Word-alike. Or a Notepad-alike. I'd take that. We open a program ("SecretaryFriendMedical") that provides incomprehensible gibberish flowing past really quickly, and it takes me a minute to realize it's ones and zeroes. Cherie has an idea before I do: "I think it's Dragon's code?"
I stare blankly, trying to figure out why this would be a thing, shrug, say, "Maybe," and urge her to get back to looking.
We find a few more confusing programs, including one labeled "RobinHoodHandler" that just throws up a wall of settings without explanation (I note that one of the entries is labeled as a 'deposit account number', but I'm not sure what to make of that) before we finally find a Notepad-alike. (And it is a Notepad-alike, pure text, no advanced anything) It's while I've got Cherie writing down the names of the programs we've tried and little tentative descriptions that she yawns, and I glance at her and see just how tired she looks. I remember, abruptly, that we'd been up for a while before we got here, and then she had to rescue me, and... yeah. She's been up for... probably more than twenty hours? Maybe even like twenty-five? I don't really remember when she last slept.
"Go to sleep Cherie." I'm going for firm-but-not-mean. I think it comes out harsher than that.
"Nah, I'm-"
I cut her off. "If the Protectorate comes for me later, I'll need you well-rested. I'll be fine regardless."
She pouts (She does that a lot) and starts to say something, but then she yawns, unable to complete even one word. I give her a look. She gives a shrug in response, says, "Fiiiine." (Reminds me of Emma) Cherie flinches. After recovering her equilibrium she heads off without another word.
Somewhat hesitantly, I maneuver so I can see myself in the reflection of the monitor. It's dark enough I'm hoping I'll see myself clearly, enough to stay myself. If that works reliably, I should be able to spend the time Cherie is sleeping in a productive manner. I fidget and try different angles, expecting to revert to the monster. After a bit I work out that laying belly to the ground (The cool concrete is uncomfortable, but I can endure it) seems to be the most consistent way to stay myself. Not sure why.
I'm interrupted by Cherie dragging her sleeping bag over from wherever it was. She's dressed in sleepwear, with the exception that she's got her mask on. I cock my head at her, confused, but she ignores me, focused on her sleeping bag. She only stops once she's dragged it up quite close to me. She fiddles with it for a bit, makes a satisfied noise to herself, and then slips in. In the end, her head is laying against my right side. She says, "G'night boss," cheerfully, sounding... it takes a bit for me to pin it down. Genuinely happy.
It's only with that thought that I look back on prior times and realize she was... maybe faking is too strong a word? Not very genuine when she was acting happy. I'm not sure how to parse the difference. I'm just clear there is a difference. The thought surprises me, and my desire to shove her off me and call her rude dies. I'm... not sure why she's in a good mood, why laying up against me like this makes her feel so comfortable, but I can't bring myself to ruin it for her. There's a part of me that wonders if she's manipulating me, but for once it's a dim, clinical thought. An awareness that it's a possibility, not an active suspicion.
I've never liked breaking people's happiness, not even people I hated. I certainly don't hate Cherie. I still don't really trust her, not as fully as I'm hoping I someday will, and I'm very clear that she's got a worse moral compass than I do even though my power apparently surgically removed my moral compass, so I certainly wouldn't trust her to make the right (moral) decision when left to her own devices. So I'm pretty sure this is all me. It would be cruel to burst her bubble. Unnecessarily so, given it's only a minor discomfort.
The warmth of her head even helps offset the chill of the concrete.
It takes nearly two hours to get basic documentation on (Nearly) all the things the computer can run. Most of what I have written amounts to, "Dunno. Might be x?" but there's some useful stuff.
The "RobinHoodHandler" thing solves one of our biggest problems: what happens when Cherie's money runs out?
The answer: we fund ourselves with money stolen from criminals by a program.
I don't have a bank account myself, not yet, and I suspect Cherie doesn't either, but after some fiddling the program apparently creates a bank account in a name of my choosing ("Carlia Smithson") and then merrily dumps money into it. I set the program to 'Plausible' under 'deposits', which still gives me ten thousand dollars to start with.
I spend a few minutes just taking in the enormity of the change here. I've been taking money from my lunch funding to cover costume components and so on. Now, I'm homeless but have plenty of money.
My brain doesn't want to accept it. It's absurd.
There's also a part of me that's quoting the cartoon version of Armsmaster. "Remember kids: crime never pays. Stay in school!" Childhood memory come back to mock me.
Why is this my life.
I also work out that "SecretaryFriendEyes" is a camera feed from Dragon's perspective. Or something. It's honestly kind of confusing. It flickers all over the place a lot, looking at the Simurgh physically (An observatory feed? Satellite?), covering graphs that I barely catch are of seismic activity before jumping to a map labeled 'Atlantic Ocean' and then jumping to a room that looks like it belongs to a tinker (No one is in it, though) and then shifting to an aerial view of some woods... I shut it off, actually feeling a bit of motion sickness from watching it.
A big consumer of my time is finding a folder (Well, it would be a folder if this was Windows, anyway) filled with sub-folders that are filled with text files and reading them. Thankfully, the sub-folders have vaguely sensible names, and I'm able to develop a picture of what I'm looking at: the Dragonslayer's personal notes. There's four folders I work out have to do with the suits. I skip those for the moment -they'll probably be more important to Cherie than to me. There's others that seem to be notes on various contracts. I look at a few to see if they'll be of interest, but they're really not, not now that the Dragonslayers are dead.
One folder is notes on threats. One for each Endbringer. One for Nilbog. One for Sleeper. One that's for Africa as a whole. A series for Europe, country by country. The Three Blasphemies (Right, that's what they're called) are listed under Germany, alongside four other capes whose names I don't recognize. One for the Nine, though the Siberian gets a page all to herself. Other files are old, dead parahumans I recognize. Still others seem likely to be for dead parahumans I don't recognize.
They're interesting, but less helpful than I'd have hoped. The Siberian, in particular, only really has one note of use to me: sadistic, plays with her victims. Probably best way to escape. I'd been hoping for... suggestions of a weakness? Or something? Mostly it's a long, long list of things that are known to have done jack and shit to her, which is apparently, "everything that's ever been tried." It's intimidating.
One is labeled Jabberwocky. I don't think anything of it until I've clicked in and the first line is, "The creature of Ellisburg."
I read that file in full.
...
I hate myself.
'Jabberwocky' is their name for me, for whatever reason. They thought I was a lunatic, but they thought I was doing good work. One of the notes is Jabberwocky deserves a medal for Ellisburg, Protectorate deaths be damned. They'd tentatively guessed that the commotion with Heartbreaker might be me as well, and were all for it. They wanted to meet me and shake my hand if that was an option.
And I killed them.
There's a part of me that feels grateful for my inability to feel guilt. I suspect this would be soul-crushing if I could. As-is it's merely depressing. There's another part of me that hates that I can't feel guilt, because this deserves guilt.
There's a third part of me that just wants to curl up and cry in a corner.
I go back to exploring the computer. I'll come back to their notes when I'm less depressed.
After an hour or so of writing down notes on various only half-comprehensible programs (Carefully avoiding the program labeled Ascalon. If it's a kill-switch with no chance to back out, I want more time to think on this first), building up an idea of the bigger picture of how the Dragonslayers worked, I stumble into realizing one program is an internet browser. It's called "SafeLook", which is... a confusing name. Even more baffling, we have an actual internet connection even though the only things plugged into the computer are its power supply, the monitor, and the keyboard. It's hard to say, given how user-unfriendly the whole thing is, but I don't think it's connecting to someone's wi-fi out here.
... ultimately, I shrug to myself. Tinkertech.
Hesitantly, I go check the Dragonslayers profile on the wiki. Somehow, it surprises me that there's no reference to them being dead. In fact, the timeline section has already updated with links to cell phone camera footage -and one proper camera!- of Cherie rescuing me. A pop into the Dragonslayer's PHO thread shows surprisingly rampant speculation about what's going on that the Dragonslayers rescued 'a Case 53' from the Protectorate in Brockton Bay. It's not yet dawn. I'd think most of the Bay would still be asleep, not posting on PHO. Only some of the speculation is being decried as tinfoil hat theories, too.
It's a little depressing to find that a lot of people are assuming I was there to murder people in their homes. There's like two people defending me, a GStringGirl and a MechanicalMan (The latter's signature links to a song by the same name, as well as to their PHO wiki profile -they're apparently a Ward by the name of Weld) who aren't even really defending me so much as they are being cranky that people are assuming the 'monster' is a murderous monster just because it's not human-looking. The counter-point to that is that the Protectorate wouldn't have been shooting at it if it was friendly. MechanicalMan makes a long post in response -I double-check his location, he's in Boston, so shouldn't he be at home, asleep?- about Protectorate procedure and how encounters like this can be misunderstandings, or caused by the parahuman being not entirely rational without actually being a bad person, or as simple as the parahuman not knowing how to control their powers. I end up skimming it a bit, bored. It doesn't seem to be very convincing to other posters, either, even when someone points out that MechanicalMan is a Verified Cape with their cape identity in their actual signature and everything.
Well. At least I can be semi-confident the Protectorate isn't on my case over the Dragonslayers. Probably. Maybe. Ugh, I dunno. How does this crap work?
With a sigh, I close the browser. I don't like this night at all.
I open "SecretaryFriendEyes" again and just... zone out.
In spite of the nausea it induces, I'm able to tolerate watching Dragon's view until sometime not long after sunrise. I feel like I'm starting to get a sense of a pattern, something comprehensible, but it's still pretty overwhelming. Which is good, in a way, since it made it easier to keep myself constructively occupied instead of fixating on various depressing topics.
On the other hand, I'd originally intended to plot out my next move while I watched the feed. Instead, I only got to the point of thinking that I really ought to deal with one of the major players of Brockton Bay -Kaiser or Lung or I guess Skidmark or maybe Faultline though I'm not really sure what she does- and then we leave for a time. With it being dangerous to Dad for me to return home, I don't have any reason to stay in the Bay. I have reason to go elsewhere, in fact, to protect him. But I'd still like to do something about the Bay's plague of villains, something better than killing Leet by accident and Mush by partial intention, and I have a half-thought that it might throw the Protectorate off my trail if I do just one more thing in the Bay before leaving, convince them to keep looking for me here when I'm actually catching a plane to Russia to deal with Sleeper or something.
I close the program, rubbing tiredly at my forehead, and isn't it strange how strange it is to be tired? It'll pass the next time I become the monster, so I don't pay it much mind. Instead, I turn back to the issue of who to deal with.
I cross off Lung after very little thought. I am not remotely confident in my ability to kill him, even if his transformation renders him sufficiently inhuman that he can't keep me from being the monster, and if I fuck up the collateral damage is huge. Even if I kill him, the collateral damage might be huge, and fires he starts could potentially become something really serious. In the absolute worst-case scenario, a good chunk of the city could burn down. On top of that, I'm uneasily thinking of Oni Lee. I have no idea where his clones are likely to fall on the human-to-inhuman continuum, and more importantly I have basically no defense against him just appearing behind me and slitting my throat. A fight with him is basically going to boil down to: either I ambush him successfully, and win, or I don't, and I'm pretty sure I die. I'm especially uneasy thinking of arguably-paranoid scenarios; say I sneak up on him and stab him, but he reflexively teleports before I've done more than broken his skin. I think I've killed him, and then he appears behind me and kills me. Or follows me back, hoping to kill everyone I know and love. Or something. I dunno.
The risk involved in fighting the both of them at once is obviously even worse, and also I'm leaving out the part where even if neither of them can revert me to Taylor this would be happening in the middle of Brockton Bay. There's no way I can successfully bait either of them out beyond city limits to where I won't have to worry about civilians reverting me.
I decide against Faultline as well, as I just plain don't know what she does. She's a villain mercenary, but so were the Dragonslayers, and look where that got me. I'd need more research before I came to a decision regarding her and her crew.
I've already killed Mush, and I don't know enough about Squealer. Or Skidmark, really, but everything I do know about him is negative. Very negative. But with Mush dead the Merchants have already been weakened. I'm... not sure how the gang dynamics work, but I have this suspicion that if I killed another Merchant the remainder would be rolled up and taken over by the Empire or the ABB. I think that's less productive than having the gangs fighting each other. Probably.
I dunno. Whatever.
Point is, that leaves the Empire, specifically Kaiser. Unfortunately, he's not like Lung. He's not that public a figure, rarely comes out to fight personally. It happens, he's been caught on camera and everything, but it's mostly his underlings that fight in the streets. He's management more than anything else. He's also always followed by his two bodyguards, the Valkyrie-themed giants, when he does bother to come to a fight. That will make it... tricky to fight him. And I really want to kill him if I kill anybody, because the Empire tends to just replace its fighting capes. I'm not certain the Empire would splinter if I killed their leader, but I'd rather gamble on that than go with the option I know won't accomplish anything except to maybe put them on their guard. I mean, I'm planning on leaving afterward regardless, but if I put them on their guard that reduces the odds of someone else assassinating Kaiser after I've left.
Problem is, I have no idea how I'd find him, especially given I want to leave soon.
Cherie startles me by speaking, apparently awake. "Whatcha thinking about that's got you so moody, boss?"
After my heart settles down, I turn awkwardly to look at her. She's looking back. When did she turn, and why did I not notice given her head is laying on me? After a moment of deliberation, I sigh and admit, "I'm frustrated because I want to kill Kaiser before we skip town and I don't know how I could find him on short notice."
She wriggles an arm out of the sleeping bag awkwardly. I watch, puzzled. She flips her mask up. Then she cocks an eyebrow at me and points a thumb at herself.
Somewhat reluctantly I start saying, "Look, I know you found me, somehow, but I don't want to kill him in his home or the like and anyway you, what, recognized my signature as having been in Toronto when Heartbreaker died? I don't see-"
"Actually, I helped you kill him." She says this in this amused, smug tone. She's not smiling though. It's kind of unsettling.
The admission draws me up short, because... no? She didn't?
Her mouth twitches. First toward a frown, I think, then toward a smile. Neither fully forms. Then her hand goes to her mouth while she makes a ppffffff noise and then she chokes on laughter for a moment while I just look at her, confused. Finally she manages to work through her laughter enough to ask, "S-so, you really -ehehe- you really really didn't recognize me at all? Heh."
?
I make a negative sound, unsure what she's driving at.
"Pffff. Hehehe. Oh man boss, really?" I feel affronted, but don't bother to say anything. She knows. She waves her hand in a gesture I think she intends to be calming, but it comes across as dismissive instead. "Boss, it was me. The other girl, the one that was talking? Rather than pretending to be a human scarf?"
I stare blankly at her. I remember a girl, yes. I struggle to recall what she looked like, what she-
"Like ohmygod Daddy." Cherie says in a voice she's never used before, not with me. Childish, immature, dumb.
-sounded like, "Holy shit." It's her. That's exactly the voice that was talking to Heartbreaker.
I'm a moron.
I wrestle with that for a moment, ignoring how Cherie is laughing into her hand again. I manage to push past the mindfuckery long enough to say, "You left."
Cherie gets herself under control, mouth twitching into a smirk over and over while she talks. "I guided him. I was taking him to downtown initially. Felt you, felt your reactions. Took a bit, but I pieced together that you were here for dear old Daddy-" Again with that voice, high-pitched, and my skin crawls. "-and you were unhappy when you realized where we were going so I picked a different girl, different part of town, would've found an excuse to pick someone else if you'd been unhappy with how that was going. I could tell you weren't patient, guessed you were worried about missing your opportunity or something like that. I wanted him dead, so I helped make it happen."
Blankly, I say, "I thought you said he sensed emotions."
She raises an eyebrow skeptically. "No, I said he and I have similar-but-different powers. He had control, I have sensing with less precise control."
My thought process judders for a moment as what she's saying really hits me. I believe her. I don't want to believe her. This- this isn't what I thought she meant back when she first said she wanted him dead. I thought she meant she hated him. I didn't think she meant she was complicit in his death.
My horror mounts.
Cherie's expression collapses and she goes, "No no no don't hate me-"
I interrupt with a quiet, calm whisper. "I wish the man was alive so I could kill him again." She looks stunned and confused.
Then I hug her.
4.y
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Topic: Morse Moose
In: Boards â–º Places â–º Canada â–º Ontario â–º Toronto â–º Capes
Sighanide (Original Poster) (Cape Groupie)
Posted on September 1, 2010:
The thread for talking about the awesomest independent hero in all of Ontario!
EDIT: He's been reclassified as a rogue. :(
EDIT: Make that a villain. :(
EDIT: I'm not posting in this thread anymore, so stop pestering me.
(Showing Page 20 of 31)
â–º Morse Moose (Verified Cape)
Replied on February 18, 2011:
It's not theft if you's stealing from supervillains. Everyone knows that.
â–º Shrugalot (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied on February 18, 2011:
Morse, stop. You are going to end up in jail if you don't learn.
â–º Morse Moose (Verified Cape)
Replied on February 18, 2011:
DELETED
-Darkest Light
â–º the kNight
Replied on February 18, 2011:
so whats morse look like anyway
â–º Lectern Lecture (Cape Groupie)
Replied on February 18, 2011:
You don't ask about secret identities.
â–º the kNight
Replied on February 18, 2011:
i mean his costume like does he wear a motorcycle helemt or whatever
â–º Helpless Helper
Replied on February 18, 2011:
He wears a ****ing moose head on his head.
Oh and I guess his shirt has a message in morse or something.
â–º Morse Moose (Verified Cape)
Replied on February 18, 2011:
DELETED
Enjoy your temp-ban.
-Darkest Light
â–º Ribbit (Temp-banned)
Replied on February 18, 2011:
what does his name even have to do with his powers?
â–º StinkerTinker
Replied on February 18, 2011:
Well, it could be worse. he could be calling himself the Moose Whisperer.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 ... 29 , 30, 31
Topic: Rampant
In: Boards â–º Places â–º Canada â–º Ontario â–º Toronto â–º Capes
Sufferagable (Original Poster)
Posted on February 3, 2011:
New cape, powers currently unclear. Blew up a gas station, but that could mean basically anything.
UPDATE: Rampant is a teenage girl. Looks like she was homeless before she got her powers. Try to be nice, or at least not a jerk. If you can't, plz don't post. (I'm looking at you, Lost In Translation)
UPDATE: She's posted in the thread! (probably) She gave some detail on her powers that jive with what the PRT has said so far. I've updated the second post appropriately.
UPDATE: Confirmed that it was the real Rampant! The Canadian one and everything. She's actually really nice.
(Showing Page 9 of 11)
â–º the kNight
Replied on February 21, 2011:
wut does she war
â–º Lady Kill (Cape Wife)
Replied on February 21, 2011:
I really hope you mean "what does she *wear*".
So far she's just wearing a scarf to protect her head. Mostly, she uses her powers to obscure her identity. She's pretty distinctive.
â–º Unnatural State (Moderator)
Replied on February 21, 2011:
Rampant has been confirmed as "Rampant2120". Posting so everyone knows the mods checked. I know we've had some trouble recently with people tricking the system.
Tinkers, man.
Anyway, welcome her to PHO people! Always good to see more empowered people who just want to help.
â–º Dex000
Replied on February 22, 2011:
She wars against fashion, mostly.
â–º Coolio5
Replied on February 22, 2011:
not funny dude
â–º Dex000
Replied on February 22, 2011:
No, I mean she LITERALLY is waging war on the fashion industry. Read her posts!
â–º Coolio5
Replied on February 22, 2011:
wtf dude
â–º Rampant2120 (Verified Cape)
Replied on February 22, 2011:
Against bad fashion, and anyway it's not a war. i don't care THAt much. I spend more time dealing with Tube Lord's victims. Or in line at soup kitchens, but this probably isn't the place for that.
â–º Sufferagable (Original Poster)
Replied on February 22, 2011:
I'm mostly curious as to why you haven't approached the Protectorate. Or have you?
No pressure though!
â–º ZomB lips
Replied on February 22, 2011:
They're still busy with Heartbreaker's girls, remember?
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Topic: Parcel (Cape)
In: Boards â–º Places â–º Canada â–º Ontario â–º Toronto â–º Capes
Kinjal (Original Poster) (Power Guru)
Posted on January 31, 2010:
Independent hero. His power centers around a "box" (It's closer to a pyramid, really) he can pull from nowhere. He can leave the box somewhere, and have it do any number of things. He can summon the box to himself at any time. Other people can put things in the box, and he can retrieve what was put inside.
That said, if you see his box, don't mess with it. He's probably trying to ambush a villain that hasn't heard of him yet, and he doesn't seem to have perfect awareness of what's going on around the box. Some people have been hurt already when they thought they'd be nice or play a prank on him by putting something in the box.
Things the box has been seen to do include:
-Exploding into shrapnel. This doesn't seem to damage its contents or prevent him from summoning the box again, not even temporarily
-Trapped to create a "black hole" if someone else opens it. It's not usually lethal, but people have ended up in intensive care. The biggest reason to not open the box if you see it.
-Launching itself roughly two stories into the air and releasing fireworks. The fireworks don't seem to do anything except be a light source. He seems to have control over the color: if it's red, he's asking for help, while if it's blue he's signaling the PRT to pick up a villain. I think he uses green for ordinary criminals/cop summoning? He's used other colors, but nobody seems to know what they're for, and he doesn't post on PHO unfortunately. Might not be a real pattern to the other colors.
-Rapidly growing to the size of a small car. It rotates while it does this and makes a sound like a chainsaw revving up. Nobody has any clue what use this has, as it doesn't seem to combine with its other capabilities.
-More to come
(Showing Page 16 of 17)
â–º Tripped
Replied on May 11, 2010:
I'm starting to think the PRT should reclassify him as a Rouge, or a fullon Villain. Hes been getting more violent. Why did he get 'indepenant Hero' in the first place?
â–º Dente (Veteran Member)
Replied on May 11, 2010:
He cooperates fully with law enforcement and maintains regular contact with the PRT office. He doesn't take orders from them, but he's pretty much always listened when they had something to say.
Or he did, anywya. Maybe things have changed.
â–º the kNight
Replied on February 21, 2011:
costume?
â–º Rudeling (Cape Daughter)
Replied on February 21, 2011:
Please don't necrobump threads of dead capes.
â–º Tripped
Replied on February 21, 2011:
Dude's dead, mate.
â–º the kNight
Replied on February 21, 2011:
U sure? i cant find it online
â–º Kinjal (Original Poster) (Power Guru)
Replied on February 21, 2011:
Yes, Parcel is dead. To answer your original question: he wore a lot of white. Themed his costume after mailmen, but white. I think the white might have had something to do with his power, but... well, he's dead.
â–º the kNight
Replied on February 21, 2011:
thx
â–º Zero Hour (Muted)
Replied on February 21, 2011:
am i the only guy who thins he was doing more good when he started getting darker?
â–º Pea Arr Tea
Replied on February 21, 2011:
ZH, this is like the tenth thread you've said that in TODAY.
NO, 'GETTING DARKER' IS NOT DOING MOTE GOOD
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 14, 15, 16, 17
Topic: Snow Kite
In: Boards â–º Places â–º Canada â–º Ontario â–º Toronto â–º Capes
Blick (Original Poster)
Posted on December 20, 2010:
New parahuman, seems to be a villain. She can fly and is basically invisible against snow and/or sky. Her MO is to kill hikers in the woods, only occassionally hiting people in Toronto proper.
We only know it's a parahuman and not an animal attacking people because her last strike failed. He caught her on his cell phone, but forum rules forbid linking to the video. Too violent.
UPDATE ON FEBRUARY 2ND: PRT has confirmed her as a villain and confirmed her MO. She's operating primarily to the northwest of town, so if you live in the area, reconsider your jogs. At least make sure somebody is with you! She's restricted herself to isolated people. Note that she hasn't been dissuaded by dogs, so don't think youre furry friend will protect you. Bring a human friend, or don't go outside at all.
UPDATE ON FEBRUARY 10TH: Thread title updated to reflect her codename. The PRT has labeled her Snow Kite. I'm not sure if that's in reference to the bird or te toy.
(Showing Page 8 of 14)
â–º Snapehunk
Replied on February 22, 2011:
Holy **** guys I think I saw her fly over my ouse today!
Does anybody know if the Protectorate had somebody chasing her today?
â–º the kNight
Replied on February 22, 2011:
how does she dress? in black?
â–º Loyal Boozehound (Cape Husband)
Replied on February 22, 2011:
The footage we've got is not great, and eyewitness reports are unreliable as heck. She's supposed to have eiher actual wings or a cape that can be mistaken for wings, though. We don't know what her costume looks like normally. She's got a power that makes her hard to see against white or blue backgrounds, but she doesn't seem to actually be dressed in white or blue.
Snapehunk, no, the Protectorate has not admitted to chasing Snow Kite today, certainly not by air. You might have seen Sunstar pursuing Princess Haunt, but if you're not queer or anythin you're probably safe from Haunt. Just don't deliberately provoke her.
â–º the kNight
Replied on February 22, 2011:
does she wear a bike helmet? with teeth?
â–º Haunt Flaunt (Cape Groupie)
Replied on February 22, 2011:
No, Princess Haunt has *style*. Her mask is themed after Greek plays!
I can show you my cosplay version of it if you want. PM me!
â–º Lovecraftian Hollow
Replied on February 22, 2011:
i think she meant snow skite
â–º Blick (Original Poster)
Replied on February 22, 2011:
Snow Kite does not wear a bicycle helmet, motorcycle helmet, or any other kind of helmet. We initially thought she was wearing some kind of mask, but if you look two pages back it was determined her *actual face* is a smooth, blank white.
EDIT: Memory going screwy, we don't know its acxtual color because of her power. But it's her face, definitely. No covering.
â–º Ur Base
Replied on February 22, 2011:
I hate Strangers so much. Why doesn't the PRT DO something about them?
â–º Sadface (Kyushu Survivor)
Replied on February 22, 2011:
They aren't all-powerful.
Has Snow Kite ever spoken?
â–º Blockface (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied on February 22, 2011:
Unfortunately, no. I can't talk too much about it, but we're getting worried she physically can't. We were initially assuming she was just using her power to hide her identity, standard cape procedure, but we have reason to believe it's not entirely voluntary.
I feel sorry for her right now. I think her power is driving her to cannibalism or something like that.
NOTE
-nothing I say on PHO is a legally binding PRT statement
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
Topic: Monster
In: Boards â–º Places â–º America â–º Brockton Bay â–º Capes
Witticism (Original Poster)
Posted on January 28, 2011:
We've got a vigilante or something running around. Some dude jumping roofs and stuff. Probably a cape, but I suppose it's possible it's just some dude doing parkour.
In a full costume.
With a customized helmet.
Yeah, right.
UPDATE: It's a cape, big shock. We've got a name, too. Monster. Real friendly-sounding fellow.
UPDATE: I have been informed Monster is a woman. Pics or it didn't happen.
UPDATE: Okay fine I've had like ten people agree Monster is a woman. So here you go: Monster is definitely a woman according to a bunch of internet strangers who claim they've met the girl.
UPDATE: Holy sh** Monster killed L33t. I know the dude was a villain, technically, but DUDE. I liked the guy!
UPDATE: The PRT has classed Monster as a Rogue. Really? They've also updated their site -not the wiki, that's our job, duh- to provide a brief description of his powers. And contributed to the conspiracy of claiming the dude is a she.
I'm not sure what to make of the description, honestly. WTH kind of power makes you powerful but only when people can see you? Is Monster a horror movie monster? Is *that* why he named himself Monster?
(Showing Page 10 of 10)
â–º Witticism (Original Poster)
Replied on March 1, 2011:
The dude KILLED L33T. You don't label murderurs rogues! Come on!
â–º the kNight
Replied on March 1, 2011:
costume?
â–º Witticism (Original Poster)
Replied on March 1, 2011:
Dude varies his costume a bit. Vain dude. So far he's always been all in black though, except the white teeth on the helmet. Last I heard he had a mouth for a face or something, different helmet. I dunno what all.
â–º Dancer 10
Replied on March 1, 2011:
SHE was wearing a full-body cape (?) that was all black, had an undersized bicycle helmet, and some kind of cloth covering her face. Like a bandit, but her entire face bar eyeholes. The cloth was made up like a mouth, red in front, white fangs all around.
When she rescued me, I mean.
â–º Witticism (Original Poster)
Replied on March 1, 2011:
I don't suppose you recorded this allegd female voice and are willing to post it to MY thread?
â–º Surf's Down (Moderator)
Replied on March 1, 2011:
Witticism, you are on your way to an infraction at minimum. Stop derailing the thread.
No, it is not "your thread". Staff appreciates that users handle a lot of the load of posting threads for new parahumans, among other valuable and thankless tasks, but that doesn't mean you have any actual authority in the thread. It's a public thread, and I will close this thread if I have to make this point. Someone else can start a new one easily enough.
-This has been your friendly Staff post
â–º Dancer 10
Replied on March 1, 2011:
I would be happy to make a new thread in appreciation of our tireless hero.
EDIT: Yes, I know she's categorized as a Rogue. She's still my hero. I can think that, thank you.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 8, 9, 10
4.5
Once I break the hug, I find Cherie is crying. Or, well, there's rivulets of tears, anyway. She's not making any noise. I'm not sure she's even noticed. I frown, looking at her, and she just looks more confused. After a moment one hand goes up to touch where my gaze is focused, and she startles when her finger hits moisture.
She promptly breaks away and strides off around a wall out of my sight. I let her.
Damn the bastard. I've clearly been underestimating how horrible he was. It doesn't matter at this point, mostly, but... I better understand why Cherie is the way she is. Her father wasn't simply a supervillain, or a functionally absent father who happened to be a rapist supervillain. Really, given that she let slip that he buried her alive and allowed her siblings to psychologically torture her while still buried, I should've caught on ages ago, but she's so... normal isn't the word, and not just because she hates it so vehemently. She seems carefree, is the thing. Previously, I'd assumed it was because her power and her home environment made it easy to be carefree -want something? Beg your mind controlling father into giving it to you. Or use your own partial mind control to get it yourself.
Now I'm wondering how much of it is an act. Defense against the man who helped cause her to exist, but was not remotely a father to her.
Cherie takes long enough to come back I consider going after her after all, but just before I'd have stood up she's swerved back around the corner. She's dressed fully in her costume. (Not the Dragonslayer suit, the costume with the frills and the mask and so on) That this conceals her face and 'muffles' her body language seems unlikely to be a coincidence to me, but I don't press her. If real emotional intimacy is hard for her to cope with, we can go at her pace. Really, I have to wonder if she's ever had a close relationship. I was close to Dad, once. Mom, before she died. Emma, before the thing that attends Winslow replaced her. That's three relationships, strong and good, even if they're all dead or being strangled right now.
At this point I suspect Cherie had none. I find myself thinking of a song line: "I have dozens of friends and the fun never ends, that is so long as I'm buying." Not that Cherie was moneyed, so it doesn't fit, not really, but the sentiment that you're surrounded by people, all of whom are faking... it feels very relevant.
I even have an inkling of why she came after me to join me rather than kill me. I mean, she still confuses me, but I can sort of squint and see what her starting position must have been like that this course of action made sense, and it's not happy fun times. And... where else would she have gone? I kind of doubt she could've gone to the Protectorate. To the best of my awareness, there's not a single Protectorate Hero whose power involves or can result in mind control. I'm... not actually sure what happens if someone with that kind of power applies to the organization...
... anyway.
"So!" She claps her hands together. Hiccups. "Something about finding Kaiser, right?" Hiccups again. Hits herself on the chest for some reason.
I look at her dubiously, but since she seems insistent on pretending she's okay, I let it go for the moment. "Yes. I would, ideally, like for us to be gone within the next forty-eight hours, with Kaiser dead. But he almost never comes out to a fight, certainly not on any predictable schedule, and when he does he's always got bodyguards. I'm not convinced we can find him, and I'm uncertain of my ability to kill him in a straight fight." I pause, and then admit, "Though I'm no longer sure whether I should respect the... gentleman's agreement of capes. The PRT apparently doesn't care to extend me that courtesy. My impression is that it cuts both ways."
There's a grin in Cherie's voice when she says, "Well, we're not exactly gentle or men, are we?" I ignore this as a joke. She tacks on, "Weelll, you're gentle-"
"Yes yes, sexual teasing," my tone is flat.
I can't see her pouting, but I assume she is regardless. "Oh fine. Finding Kaiser is easy. Ish."
I make a gesture for her to go on.
"Not that you've used me-" my irritation spikes.
"Cherie, you have no chance in hell. You have less than no chance in hell if you don't stop being quote-unquote 'cute' with me." My tone is flat, cold.
She slumps, and whines, "But that's half the fun of hanging with you!"
"Cherie." My tone is empty. "I know you were raised by a rapist-" I catch her bodily flinch. "-and your power makes it easy to casually rape people-" She flinches again, seeming to fold in on herself. "-and I know you're not trying to be a rape-y asshole-" Another flinch, and she's wrapped her arms around herself defensively, "-but pressuring me like a date rapist instead of respecting my wishes is, and I tell you this for your own good, likely to end in your death."
She's sitting on the ground, not quite in the fetal position.
False brightness filling my voice, I say, "So Cherie, what were you saying before you tried to sneak innuendo past me?"
She sounds on the verge of tears again, but she dutifully explains, voice dull and sniffly. "I've already let you know that I can detect people, constantly, passively, farther than Brockton Bay's city limits. You maybe didn't realize, but I keep track of it all. Effortlessly. I've got the likely parahumans narrowed down to a pretty small number of people, in part by identifying the Protectorate capes and guessing that most anyone they go after and treat as a serious threat is probably also a parahuman. I can't tell you which is which, but we wouldn't have to dig through the entire city. Just a few dozen people."
I approach and pat her on one shoulder. "So you'd know if, say, Empire Eighty-Eight routinely meets for reasons like letting Kaiser make a big hatespeech, and be able to take me straight to the next one."
"I haven't been in Brockton Bay long enough to have that kind of pattern worked out for-sure." Still in that dull tone.
"But the possibility, yes?" I remain falsely chirpy.
"... yes," she admits grudgingly.
"And really, we just need to look at the men." I pause. "Actually, never mind that." I mean, it would be some horrible (wonderful?) irony if Kaiser was trans or something, but I can't actually discount the possibility.
"Emotional profiles for gender are only trends, anyway. I get it right more often than I get it wrong, but-" Cherie makes a dainty coughing noise and in a rush says, "Iactuallythoughtyouwereaguyuntilyoucalledme."
Non-plussed, I just blink at her. Okay. Not exactly a boost to my ego, but-
"So," she asks in a conversational tone. "How were you planning on getting a boyfriend, anyway?"
I blink at the non-sequitur, but once I've got my equilibrium I roll my eyes at her behind my helmet. "The usual way."
Slowly and carefully (ie uncharacteristically) she says, "Boss, don't take this the wrong way, but you're not, um, traditional. As a girl."
I frown and say, "I'm a teenager, the acne will pass." Pause. "And my proportions will smooth out." Pause. Grudgingly, I add, "And hopefully my chest will fill out."
Cherie keeps talking slowly, as if picking her words with great care. "That's... not what I meant. You, um. You don't wear makeup. Or frilly clothes. Or, um, walk the walk?" I frown, having no idea what she's talking about. "Or, um, the way you hold yourself, the way you feel. You're, er, not inviting."
Warningly, I say, "Cherie-"
"No no no not to me Boss I, I-" She cringes. "-I really really don't mean it that way please don't hurt me!" She cowers for a second. I calm down, because okay yeah I believe her. She continues, even more cautious now. "I mean you don't, um, you don't send a 'come hither' message."
Blankly, I ask, "Why would I."
Cherie hisses in frustration. "Gender roles!" Then she seems to catch herself and amends it to "Gender expectations. I mean, I'm probably not the best person to be talking about this because, uh, I- actually let's not talk about what I've done just take my word that I'm, um, non-traditional, but you're, um." She cringes, I'm not sure why. Badly enough I can tell through her costume. "Pursued and pursuer, okay? That's a thing, and, um, traditionally girls are the pursued. And you don't fit that."
I don't see her point. I don't really care.
She sighs. "You're also not taking the role of the pursuer."
I twitch.
"So, uh, 'the usual way' isn't anything you're doing. Like, at all." She wrings her hands a little.
I twitch again and snap out, "I don't want a relationship until the world is a better place anyway!"
She deflates, and then she jerks briefly to her right, muttering, "Aunt Cordelia?..."
I cock my head, confused by the latest non-sequitur. "Cherie?"
She turns more fully to face off to her right. I can see her squinting. I become the monster, and have to move back into her line of sight before I can ask, "Cherie, what are you doing?"
Distractedly, she says, "One of daddy's girls just entered my range. Coincidence? Wait. Jean-Paul is here, so maybe he offered her a place to stay?..." I can hear her frown as she continues. "No, Little Jean isn't expecting anyone. I guess she might've figured out it was him, but that's such a stretch. But her being here for me is even more unlikely..."
I try to snap my fingers at her, fail because I'm still wearing the gloves, and settle for walking closer and poking her in the shoulder. She startles, head jerking toward me. "Cherie. What are you doing."
She straightens and snaps off a sloppy salute. "Aunt Cordelia, uh, one of daddy's girls, she's here and that... makes no sense. Uh, by 'here' I mean she's coming into Brockton Bay." A pause. I see her eyes tighten in a frown. "Wait a sec', she's not coming in by road. She's walking. In from the woods?..."
I frown. Okay, that's... weird, but honestly, who cares? I guess it's kind of interestin- Hmm.
"Does she have powers?" I ask.
"What? Uh, no. Daddy didn't like going for girls with powers. Too much risk, I think." Cherie still sounds distracted. This is really bothering her I guess.
... so like I was saying I guess it's kind of interesting that she apparently slipped past the PRT out of Toronto, but it's not exactly a wild coincidence that she'd end up in Brockton Bay. If she was fleeing Toronto... I'm not super-familiar with Canada in general, but my understanding is you pretty quickly hit wilderness if you leave Toronto and aren't entering the US. Like, deep wilderness, where humans don't normally tread. So really going to somewhere in the US is kind of the natural thing to do.
So whatever. I want to find and kill Kaiser, and then leave. With our stuff. That's what matters.
So I poke Cherie again, since she seems to be overly focused on her aunt again, and say, "Think you could find whoever all makes up the biggest concentration of capes in Brockton Bay? Like, capes who are friends with other capes. That's probably the Empire. Easier than checking each person manually, probably faster." After a pause I add. "The gangs are mostly racist, so it's not particularly likely that, I dunno, Oni Lee and Purity are friends in their civilian identities. Should be reliable."
Sounding uncertain, and still distracted, Cherie says, "Uh, yeah, definitely Boss. I mean, they're at their day jobs right now I think, the ones who have one anyway." A pause. "I assume these are day jobs? I mean, a few of them are... probably fighting? But it's blood sport crap, I think? There's a crowd, all enthused, anyway. But most of the probable capes are moving around with a bunch of people who aren't reacting to them like they're a cape sort of big deal and they're feeling very, um, ordinary? Like your usual office drone loser sort of person sort of feelings, being irritated by coworkers who don't refill the coffee pot or worried their boss will catch them at something they shouldn't be doing at work or whatever all."
I deflate a little. I'd somehow forgotten that they'd likely be among other people. Civilian people. That... presents problems. We find Kaiser, sure, great, awesome. He'll probably be in with a bunch of civilians. It's past dawn at this point, so it'll be broad daylight. Probably with natural light and everything. So we'd have to worry about civilian casualties and we'd have to-
A thought occurs.
"Cherie, you'd be able to find the Protectorate capes in their civilian guise, wouldn't you?"
She startles. "Wait, are you talking retaliat-"
"Just answer the question, Cherie."
She eyes me up and down, and I have to fight an urge to reprimand her. It's probably not her coming onto me or... whatever. After a second she says. "Uh. Sort of?"
...? "What do you mean sort of?" I demand.
She shrugs. "Well, a lot of them, as far as I can tell, just bunk at the Rig. Like, I think one of them has an actual house? And it's possible some of them are just PRT agents. I'm not actually totally sure whether those guys patrol or not, I might be mistaking an agent for a cape. So we could maybe run down one of the capes? Maybe? I mean, if you're talking the Wards, they sleep in actual houses, but I don't take you for the child-murdering type."
"Oh." Well. I didn't really have a concrete plan in mind anyway. Just vague thoughts of... interrogating them? Maybe scaring them off?... dunno.
Then my brain catches up with what she said and I'm real offended. "I'm not going to kill Heroes, Cherie. I'm making the world a better place. This isn't about my personal... stuff."
She makes an odd, amused sound. "If you're not going to tell me what you plan on doing, I'm going to fill in as best as I can. I mean, duh."
I don't have a good response to that. I settle for glaring. Though it's more about my mood than my eyes. I'm still in costume.
A thought strikes me. "Could you tell me where all the capes who were in the fight last night are at?"
She hums thoughtfully, tilting her head back. Okay?... After a moment she says, "Most of them are on the Rig. Two of them are in the probably-blood-sport place, though neither is in a fight. One of them is... holding court, I think? They're surrounded by people who fear and respect them. Mostly fear, honestly. Last one is holed up somewhere, their emotions are wonky." She pauses, rubs at her chin. Adds, "I think they're on drugs. And in pain?"
She jerks suddenly. I cock my head, curious. She answers my unspoken question. "One of the combatants died, I think. I can't find them in the city, anyway. I only realized it because they spend a lot of time with the druggie loner, and the druggie loner is feeling very, very alone right now." Sounding thoughtful, she remarks, "A lot like you at school, actually."
I very deliberately ignore that, and instead say, "So we have a cape who's alone, isolated from support, and injured. Probably a villain. Let's table the Kaiser search and check on this individual." Pointedly, I add, "In our civilian guises."
She catches me off guard by cheerfully saying, "I'll get the clothes ready!" and zipping off to presumably do that. I'd blink, but I'm the monster. I was expecting her to be upset. Why isn't she?
Idly, my gaze wanders around the room. I consider returning to the tinkertech computer to do... I don't know what. Something other than wait, anyway. Something nags at me abruptly, such that I'd be frowning if I wasn't the monster. I can't quite pin it down. My gaze sweeps over the area a second time. Then a third time. Something about the area?...
... it finally hits me: there are no mirrors in here.
Cherie turns the corner, already changed into something nice and face cleaned up and, I notice, done up with makeup in a different style from her usual, a scarf covering her distinctive hair. She's wearing sunglasses for whatever reason, and carrying clothes over one arm. With entirely too much cheer, she announces, "I grabbed three outfits, I'm thinking we set you up as a sexy lady on the town so the Protectorate won't connect them to mousy, moody Taylor, I've got some spare makeup so we can pretty up your face a bit..."
Through the helmet, I give her a deer-in-the-headlights look.
Fuck me.
There was less leering and horrible innuendo than I was expecting. Apparently Cherie can learn.
... though I wouldn't be surprised if she simply left the leering for when she was behind me.
And there was still innuendo, I'm pretty sure, just too subtle for me to recognize it. The thought crosses my mind that I might need to look up innuendo if I want to really get Cherie to stop. This is a horrible and bizarre thought. Let's focus on something else.
She wasn't aggressive about what innuendo I did catch, at least. I can tolerate that, more or less. Emma and I made jokes that were more flirty, and there was nothing between us like that. I suspect it would be genuinely unreasonable to expect Cherie to stop outright.
On the plus side, I only had to strip down to my underwear to change. If I'd had to get naked, I don't think I could've stood this.
Cherie was, to my surprise, fully professional while applying the makeup to my face. This involved dramatic red lipstick and other stuff to make me 'colorful'. I couldn't name it all. Cherie tried to make it look 'natural', according to her partly because girls who know what they're doing shoot for 'natural', but mostly because if it looks 'natural' people really won't connect me to myself because they won't even realize I'm wearing makeup. Since the Protectorate apparently knows that Monster is Taylor, this is important.
She also does up my hair, with my only instruction being, "We're not cutting it. Or dying it." (She pouts at the latter part)
I desperately want to take a look at myself while we're in the abandoned warehouse, see what Cherie has done, but an attempt to figure out my face via the monitor is... not useless, but it's hard to tell. The lipstick looks more washed-out on the monitor than when it was applied, for instance. I can tell I look different, but I can't tell what the impact is.
Ultimately, I cringe, grab Cherie by the hand (She startles) and just... wait for her to start taking us to Mystery Loner Cape.
She tugs gently at my hand after a minute, and we start walking. She's silent, just looking quizzically at me.
I catch a glimpse of myself in a storefront mirror, and come to an abrupt halt when I realize the girl in the mirror holding Cherie's hand is me.
I really do look startlingly different. I don't know how, but Cherie has arranged for my eyes to seem a different shape, my jawline to appear more delicate. I'm pale, much paler than I actually am, and my bright red lips are a stark contrast as a result. My hair is in a peculiar ponytail, and to my surprise its curliness is not obvious. I look like I have straight hair, or at least only mildly curly hair. I have to fight an urge to complain -I like my hair. I'd like it even if it didn't remind me of Mom. But we're undercover, so I shouldn't, so I don't.
The overall result is that I look like Cherie's dark-haired sister. Or maybe less-attractive cousin. I certainly don't look like Taylor Hebert. In fact, it's only seeing myself like this that I realize how... dark and moody I normally look. The clothes Cherie selected are bright and colorful and somehow make my legs seem shorter than they actually are, make me seem shorter somehow, obscuring that I'm tall for a girl my age. Somehow, even though I'm more on display than when I wear my hoodies and pants and so on, I feel more hidden than I usually do. It's a strange feeling. I have to fight a half-serious urge to ask her if she has a previously unmentioned parahuman ability to reshape people with clothes and makeup, like some kind of truly bizarre biotinker, that's how different I look.
I look like a... not happy, but optimistic maybe? An optimistic girl looking to have fun.
The moment is interrupted by a guy trying to hit on me. ("What's a pretty thing like you doing unprotected in a bad place like this?" It's more the way he says it, the way his eyes drift to my non-existent cleavage partway through, that makes me think he's hitting on me, than the words he uses) For the second time this morning, I'm a deer caught in headlights, but Cherie smoothly steps in and talks him into leaving. My mind has locked up, and I only half-hear her words. Whatever it is she says, the man tips an imaginary hat at us and wishes us a 'good day' before striding off to wherever it is he's going.
The fuck?
I mumble out a, "Thanks," to Cherie. Her response is a cheery, "No prob."
We continue walking, Cherie leading the way.
We're in a really bad part of town, getting odd looks from the locals. Our 'girls on the town' appearance stands out, and not in a good way.
... well, we (mostly me, which confuses me) are still getting hit on, and I'm pretty sure Cherie considers that a good thing, but we're also being eyed like people are considering mugging us. Or worse.
I have to fight an urge to press for us to leave. It's what I would've done back... when Emma was still a decent human being. Here, now, it's an absurd impulse. I'm Monster, a dervish of razor blades normal people can't touch, while Cherie's emotional influence is its own kind of protection.
... I'm still uncomfortable here regardless, especially since I'm seeing Merchant bangles occasionally.
Though... I'm seeing more of them laying on the ground, discarded, than on wrists. I wonder why.
Still, nobody approaches us with ill intent (Even the guys -and one girl!- hitting on us don't seem scummy), and I decide to just... not ask Cherie if that's her fault. I don't want her thinking I approve, but I also don't want to deal with hobos and addicts trying to do terrible things to us. Compromise.
We stop in front of an old, ugly machine shop. What lawn it has is hideously overgrown, the concrete is ruptured all over the place, the chain-link fencing is rusted and bending under its own weight... the skeleton of a motorcycle remains, plastered in rust and missing major components, leaned up against one wall. It's half-obscured by the grass.
Cherie mutters to me, "They're still in there. I think they might be asleep. Either that or high as fuck. Last chance to back out."
I pull my hand loose and give her a Look, and then stride imperiously up to the fence. It's trivial to climb over it, and Cherie follows close behind, grinning as she climbs just below me. It's only when I notice her grin that I remember that a dress is not really the most modest thing to be climbing in. I set my jaw, but abstain from saying anything -I don't want whoever is in here forewarned. I'm unhappy with how loud the fence was as-is, creaking and rattling in spite of my best efforts.
A glance around shows no one is around to see us. I glance curiously at Cherie... but she shrugs in response. I gesture for her to follow, and we make our way to the door. It's not attached to the frame, sitting off-kilter. There's enough room to squeeze through without moving it or making much noise. I go first, and inspect the space while Cherie follows. Nothing stands out... and then I hear a hiccuping sob from further in. I turn to face Cherie and raise an eyebrow. She shrugs, looking vaguely apologetic.
I consider having her lead... but no, I'm the harder one to kill. If it's Oni Lee... I'll probably survive if he slits my throat. It'll give Cherie time to do something to stop him. That kind of thing. Whereas if she dies, she's dead. Simple. Not like either of us can heal people. I mean, it sounds like a woman's voice to me, but I'm not sure, and it's rough enough it could be a mildly effeminate man. Which... I have trouble putting 'Oni Lee' and 'effeminate' together in my head, but I have no idea what the man sounds like. Best to not make assumptions. (This might not even be a cape)
Instead I gesture for her to wait, she nods, and I move as quietly as I can toward the hiccuping and/or sobbing.
What I find is a dirty, dirty blonde woman caked in oil and blood, curled into a ball on the floor, clutching at her face. She hiccups while I watch her, but she does nothing to acknowledge my presence. It's... unsettling.
"Oh. Grief. Huh."
I jolt in shock at Cherie's voice right behind me, and whirl and hiss at her, "Cherie, this is not safe."
She waves off my concern with a, "Yeah yeah Boss."
And then she pushes past me and walks straight into the room. As this renders me the monster, I am unable to hiss after her what are you doing, and instead settle for following her. She cavalierly goes, "Heya girl, who died?"
I take this as Cherie being her usual irreverent, joking self. The woman bitterly bites out, "Only the love of my life. Just kill me already," and I realize from Cherie's lack of reaction that she was completely serious when she said that. Goddammit Cherie.
"Not my call to make. Take it up with the boss," is Cherie's reply, and she makes a gesture as if welcoming me into a fancy place, stepping to one side. The woman on the floor peeks out from behind her hands, and I can see her confusion.
"I don't know you people at all. The fuck are you doing here, civvy girls?" Her tone grates on me and I don't even know why.
Absent-mindedly I tell Cherie, "Hit her with terror. Two seconds."
The girl convulses like she's having a heart attack. When she's stopped, she's backed up against the wall, eyes wide and staring past us. She chokes out, "Not civvies, then." After a moment she marshals herself, manages a shaky glare, and demands, "The fuck you want with me, bitches?"
I sit down, ignoring how gross the place is. (Well. Trying. Failing, but I don't think it shows on my face) It's littered with trash, and not simply food wrappers or newspapers -I'm pretty sure I'm seeing condoms, among other unpleasantness. Calmly I say, "Well, that depends on who you are, and what you're willing to do. Among other things." Cherie moves to stand just behind me, to my right, and I wonder why. She did that when we were talking to the PRT, too. There's gotta be a reason for it.
The girl -she's dressed like a whore and I'm pretty sure she's physically an adult, but somehow she makes me think girl rather than woman regardless- barks out a laugh, and instead of meeting my eyes focuses on her hands. I notice her nails are short. Chewed short. Not clipped. I think I heard once that's a druggie thing? I dunno. She sneers at her hands and bitterly grinds out, "Can't recognize ol' Squealer without her big machines or her big man, is that it? Of course not, nobody respect a Merchant. Fuck everybody."
Huh. Merchant. Fits with Cherie guessing she's on drugs. My eyes drift to one of her thighs, wrapped in a dirty tourniquet. Stained with blood. I frown. That's going to get infected, almost certainly. Given she's not dead, I'm pretty sure her artery wasn't hit -it's been hours since that fight- but she's very likely to die sometime in the next couple of weeks without medical treatment.
Then I go back to looking at her face, and ask, "Isn't your thing big vehicles?" because even though this is a machine shop the wreck of a motorcycle is the only vehicle I saw here.
Squealer's sneer gets uglier. She doesn't respond. I notice her eyes aren't actually staying focused on her hands. Actually, they're not even lined up properly. One drifts just a little off to one side of the other, view-wise, except when her attention is grabbed. Then they align for a bit. Just a bit. It's kind of creepy, kind of hypnotizing.
I move on. Letting some of my anger into my voice, I say, "You people hook kids on drugs. Why? What-"
Squealer snorts, laughs a little. Her eyes focus on my face. I'm caught off guard, and in the silence she says, "They come to us. 's what happens when your life is shit, your parents are shit, your everything is shit and you need a way to just get through the day. We just sell to whoever comes to buy. Always have. Been on that side of the fence myself. Fuck you."
That in no way fits with anything I know, but I'm off-balance regardless. I was expecting her to defend her behavior, or tell me to fuck off. I wasn't expecting her to... she's not even blaming the kids, not exactly, and indeed she's identifying with them. I was expecting... I'm not sure what. Not this.
Behind me, Cherie is bouncing. I can hear it, and I can see how Squealer's eyes are following her. I'm not sure Squealer's doing that consciously, honestly. I turn to face Cherie, and she's waving one arm in the air, still bouncing, acting like a kid in a classroom who knows the answer. (Didn't she never go to school?) I gesture for her to talk. She grins and goes, "I know this one! Like Rat Park!"
I cock my head. Rat park?
Cherie continues, either in response to the motion or to the emotion, I'm not sure which. "See, most drug studies with animal testing that are all 'oooh, drugs are evil and super-addictive rar!' involve rats in tiny cages with no room to explore, no other rats to fuck and otherwise have fun with, etc etc. So you had these dudes who made a big place with a zillion rats and tons of toys and basically rat playground equipment, and they set it up so rats could drink tap water or drugged water, and they found that mostly the rats would rather fuck than drink drugged water. So: other drug studies are the equivalent of locking someone into an isolation chamber in prison, and their options are pump iron or do drugs or be BORED. Totally unrealistic!"
I stare at her, and after a moment manage to get out, "Why do you know about this?"
She shrugs, and in an overly bland tone of voice says, "My childhood was very, very boring."
I very deliberately decide against further pursuing this topic.
... now I'm not sure what to say. I was sort of... thinking of just executing Squealer. Mostly I wanted to find out if she was, like, blackmailed or hooked on drugs. An unwilling participant, in which case... dunno... or a willing malefactor, in which case I'd be okay with killing her. Breaking the Merchants- wait.
Frowning, I turn back to Squealer, whose attention seems to be -I glance- focused on an empty and uninteresting ceiling corner. I ask her, "Who was the, er, 'love of your life', anyway?"
She turns an expression of utter contempt on me. "Who do you think, bitch?"
I fight an urge to demand Cherie hit her with terror -or maybe guilt- every time she swears. I'm not going to have her brainwash people. I'm not. Instead, I maintain my calm and levelly say, "Skidmark."
Squealer's face crumples and she starts sobbing into one hand -the other still clutching the bandaged thigh- which is... okay, I guess that's confirmation? But I'm confused as to why she's crying now?...
Cherie pats me on one shoulder and sympathetically says, "A woman's feelings are a mystery, ain't they?"
My head slowly grinds to face her, the rest of me motionless. I give her a Look. She just grins wickedly in response, and I roll my eyes and turn back to Squealer.
It takes me a moment to recall my train of thought. Right. Okay, I'm... a lot less okay with simply killing her now. I'm not convinced her or Cherie is really painting an accurate picture, but I've never really read much on the topic. It's just been this Scary Thing; people do drugs, get hooked, it destroys their lives, they never recover, forced to 'fight the addiction' for the rest of their lives even if they manage to stop taking the drugs for a time. So... I'm not sure they're wrong. Not sure enough to just kill someone based on that conviction.
Which leaves... what?
Dubiously, I look around. My eye catches on a... what are those called? The sheet-things you put on a car to... protect the paint?... or something? There's one sort of half-furled in the corner, whatever they're called, with little holes in it and general damage. I stare at it for a moment before my conviction solidifies. I say aloud, "We -well, I, I guess- are turning her in. Help me get set up."
Cherie takes a moment to figure out what I'm thinking. Once she does, she pouts a little, but then she brightens, reaches into her purse, and pulls out... a pen and a sticky note stack? I stare in consternation as she scribbles on it, tears off the top one, and then declares, "Done!" while holding it out to me.
"From: Monster & Pride
Much Love, Protectorate Pals!"
Dammit, I can never make the 'and' symbol that well. And is she being ironic? My eyes go to meet hers, and I realize that if I'm not sure what the intention here is, the Protectorate certainly won't. That's... probably the point. Part of me wants to swat it down on principle -this is serious, dammit- but there's another part of me that doesn't really want to give the Protectorate the respect it expects. I waver for a minute, and ultimately decide I don't care enough to bust her fun.
She apparently reads my not-exactly-approval, because she cheers, and then fusses over Squealer for a minute, trying to get the note to sit somewhere on Squealer's front without being too likely to come away entirely or fall down her low-cut top. She ultimately settles for placing it half-under a bra strap. (God, Squealer, why are you dressed like this? You'd be barely more obscene if you removed the shirt. Ugh) Squealer makes half-hearted motions to shove her away, but once the sticky note is under the strap and Cherie has stepped away, she collapses back into quiescence, one hand still gripping her injured thigh. It dawns on me partway through that she's been so passive because she really can't do much of anything. How much blood has she lost? More than I thought, clearly.
I was originally going to try to get her tied up somehow, but I don't think there'd be much point, now. Would've made it difficult to keep her safely aboard, now that I think about it, and I don't want Cherie coming along, so it's all down to Squealer herself to stay on. Cherie's not in costume, and I'm pretty sure the Protectorate doesn't know who she is, yet. Better to keep it that way for as long as we can. So that works out.
Instead, I have Cherie help tie off the car-sheet-whatever-thing onto the monster's legs (I don't even need to cut eyeholes, there's already enough damage), and help load Squealer aboard. Squealer, again, protests weakly, though she's slurring her words pretty badly. Now I'm really concerned. Is she in the middle of dying from blood loss? I thought she had that under control. Regardless, Cherie cheerfully directs Squealer to, "Hold on tight! But not too tight," which seems odd, because there's no chance of Squealer choking me or something. Whatever.
Cherie waves goodbye, promising to meet me wherever I go, and then I'm off.
This is similar to yet very different from the Canberra trip. The biggest difference is that people are shocked and spooked as I zip around them. At Canberra, people just assumed I was a cape and thus a friendly. At times I merge with car traffic, and people clearly startle, vehicles swerving for a moment, and then cautiously treat me like another vehicle on the road. I see people going for cell phones, and I can hear some people yelling in alarm, convinced the 'girl' on my back is being kidnapped, but I can hear other people who clearly recognize that it's Squealer. Those people aren't so concerned. Mostly, they're curious.
I repeatedly fight the urge to jump over something -fencing, cars, people- when I otherwise could. It would risk launching Squealer, whose grip is shaky as-is, and if I'm seen from below this completely falls apart. Squealer vomits at one point, grip loosening for the duration, and I have to divert to sidewalk until she regains her strength enough for me to feel it safe to return to the road, further driving home how risky it would be to make a jump.
There's something amusing about how people react to me as I run along the road. So long as I pretend like I'm a car, people largely seem inclined to treat me like an acceptable, if weird, citizen. I'm pretty sure people are taking pictures.
Finally I'm at the PRT's lawn, and I shrug Squealer off, careful to avoid cutting her. I have to make the shrugging motion twice before she relinquishes her group. There's two PRT troopers watching me, foam sprayers aimed at me, and I'm pretty sure they're talking to their bosses on the radio. Two more come out of the doorway, and civilians are being directed away. (Oh yeah. There is a gift shop and tour groups and stuff)
Then I zip away.
I pick a random park to dump the car-sheet-thing in, tear it apart before I dump it into a trash can, and then make my way to another park, largely as myself, and sit down at a bench. Cherie shows up after about five minutes, grinning. Her first words are, "That was fantastic."
Huh?
She sits down next to me, and goes, "The response, girl. People couldn't decide if they were supposed to panic or what. It was hilarious."
My mind flashes to how the cars treated me. I guess it was kind of funny.
I try to look around without looking like I'm looking around, and Cherie rolls her eyes and points meaningfully at her head. Oh. Duh. She'd know if anyone was in range to overhear me. Nonetheless, I keep my voice on the low side when I ask, "So do you know what's going on with the package?"
Cherie squints at me for a second, and then realization dawns. She relaxes, and tells me, "There was a bad spot where it looked like it was going to break completely, but it was caught in time, I think. They're fixing it right now." She pauses, clearly struggling with how to say something in 'code', and then finally shrugs and leaves it at, "We can talk about it more later." Wide grin. "So what now, hon?"
It's still daylight. I think it's not even noon, yet. I... don't want to search for Kaiser like this.
There's a long, long pause while I think. Cherie is strangely patient, maintaining the grin easily. I don't think it's her faking.
When I finally come to a decision, I'm slow to speak. "We could... just... take a break? Have an actual nigh- er, afternoon on the town?"
Cherie fist-pumps.
4.z
Squealer
She wakes up laying in a hospital bed, a bloodbag hooked up to her arm. Everything hurts, her body the least of the things that hurt. No, wait, her left leg hurts. Oh god did it ever hurt. It takes a moment for her to realize she's chained to the bed. Her hands, in particular, are locked down. Something like a glove, only it immobilizes her fingers instead of protecting them. Really, she only notices because the pain of her leg is too much, she jerked toward it, she couldn't move. Then she saw she was chained.
Also, there is a man sitting next to the bed, staring at her. Probably. Fucking helmet. There's a long, foggy minute while she tries to place him. Dauntless, her brain eventually supplies through the haze. She recognizes his stuff. Always wanted one of his things. Protectorate says he's not a tinker, but she never believed it. A fucking lie to keep people -tinkers- from realizing they can steal his shit. Not the first time they've lied. Her mind went to... to?... fuck this haze, she can't think.
... the wrong kind of haze. Is she on morphine? Because this feels like fucking morphine, and she hates that shit.
Dauntless is watching her carefully, head tracking even small motions. She thinks he might've been asleep standing up before she jerked in pain. Hard to say with his costume. Never understood why they hide themselves. Be loud, be proud. You're better than the normals. She didn't say it aloud, though. Tired, hurting. Tongue feels three sizes too large. Plus, once she thought about it... no, she didn't want to tell the baby-ass hero he's better than normals. They're already swollen egos that talk. Don't need her puffing them up. They've got the media for that.
"You almost died, you know," he delivers this news in a conversational tone. The disconnect messes with her. Thoughts still fuzzy. She grunts once the words make sense. Yeah, not surprised. Don't care, either. Skid' died. Came in late, after the killtruck was torn open by the pyro bastard. Tried to... her thoughts are fuzzy. It doesn't help that she doesn't really want to reflect on it. Thoughts go there anyway. The pain in her leg feels like the pain in her heart. Makes it hard to think about other things. Think too hard on it, start wanting to end it.
When she's not thinking about him, she's less sure she wants to be done with life. But... what is there? They're going to throw her into prison anyway, and the most she can hope for is to be kidnapped out by someone who wants her to make shit for them. What's the point?
Dauntless shifts uncomfortably. His mouth opens, closes. He swallows uncomfortably, clears his throat, and sounding uncertain he says, "You, ah, while you did a decent job on the leg, it's... the doctors say it might have to be amputated. Depending on how the infection goes?" Sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head, he admits, "I didn't pay close attention."
She stares blankly at him. Her first thought is actually I can't drive with one leg, but then the thoughts intrude -she could drive with one leg, set the brakes on the steering wheel, or set the accelerator instead, either/or. It'd require a rethinking -clearly purely mechanical activation of the brakes is unacceptable- but it'd be totally doable. She fights an urge to demand a pencil, paper. She's not asking these people for shit.
The silence stretches until it gets awkward. Awkward for Dauntless, anyway. She's gotten into staring contests with Mush. That was unpleasant. Once, a cockroach crawled over one of his eyes. The fucker didn't blink. Fucked-up little shithead. She shudders a little at the mem- no. Wait. That's the drugs. Bleh. The pain, too. Ow.
Dauntless coughs into one hand, leans forward, and starts talking again. "Now, I'd prefer to get you happy and healthy as soon as possible, but I can't get my bosses to sign off on requesting parahuman healing for an outsider, certainly not for a known villain. If it was a new recruit... well, they usually fast-track healing for new capes. First heal is best heal, after all." He sounds a little wooden. Like he's reading from a script? Does he have a HUD in that helmet of his? She frowns, squints a little at the helmet, but the intrusive thoughts stay back. If it's tinker, it's nothing she can use. Not that surprising, not with what her specialty is.
Then the words register. Curious in spite of herself, she slurs out, "Firs' bes'? Why?"
Dauntless shrugs, but before bitter disappointment can overtake her thoughts, he says, "You have a genetic condition? Might be fixed, or at least the accumulated damage undone. Cancer? Probably gone. Recurrent infection? Squashed. Old injuries that never healed right? Well, it's healed right now. After you've been healed once, that's all gone or at least way less bad. I mean, it depends on who healed you, but..." He makes a vague gesture off somewhere, but all Squealer could see was wall. "... well, Panacea isn't actually a Ward, but she helps us often enough the press like to call her an 'honorary Ward'. Best there is at that."
Then he claps his hands together and brightly says, "But obviously that's all irrelevant to you because you are a villainous dastard who would never consider accepting the Protectorate's sweet deal for Tinkers." He sounds genuine here. Not spontaneous?... wait, what did he call her?!
She glares. "'m 'ehitimate."
She can see the rusty gears in his dumb brain moving while he tries to make sense of that. He grimaces when he gets it. "No, dastard is... no. That's not what I said. I just said you're a villain, basically. Which you are."
She averts her eyes, pretended to be angrily focused on a hand. Which she's definitely angry. Hate when people make her feel stupid. Then her leg acts up again and her attention is jerked to it in spite of herself. It really hurts. Is it supposed to be that color? Wait, he said something about amputation. No, it's not supposed to be that color. Fuck.
Dauntless gives a sigh, tries to rub at his forehead. Hand clunks against helmet. Sighs again. "Okay Miss, um, Squealer, let me be straight with you." He pauses, waiting for a response, but she just stares back. Words are hard. Thinking is hard. "... okay, um. Dangit, wish Battery was okay, she's better at this. We're extending an offer for you to join the Protectorate. Um, contingent on-" he frowns, turns around, grabs some papers off a desk behind him she hadn't even noticed. "-party of the first part something something... ah, yes. Contingent on, um, you cleaning up the drug habit, signing the standard tinker forms, rebranding yourself, and... well, working twice as hard at being a hero, basically."
"'s not like I h'v a life," she mumbles out. Stops. Realizes she said it out loud. Shitfuck.
It's hard to tell, but she thinks Dauntless is looking at her with pity. Fuck. Him. Don't need his goddamn pity. Never known real suffering, the ass. He shuffles his papers loudly. Nervous tic? He keeps making noise for no reason. Irritating as fuck. Then he says, "Now, of course you're currently, erm, medically... handicapped. So if you agree it's not legally binding."
She blinks. Agree to...? "'gree to?"
"To becoming a hero, of course," he says very matter-of-factly, a tinge of frustration leaking in.
She blinks again. Blue screen of death. Error. Not how shit works.
His head shifts side to side, as if he's looking around, and then he leans in, almost up to her ear, invading her personal space. She tenses, not sure where this is going but not liking it all the same. He whispers, "It's a character test. Don't tell anyone I told you," and then leans back and gives her a brief thumbs-up.
She's too high for this shit. Or not high enough.
No, not drunk enough. That's what she could use. Booze. Been like two days since she drank. No, wait, four. Five? Shit, since Mush died she's been so busy... just been using the drugs that help her focus, help her stay awake, help her sleep when she has to sleep. No time for fun. Fuck, has she had anything to drink since he died?
Dauntless rattles the stack of papers again. Oh fucking god. So irritating. Then, sounding almost like an actual person, he says, "Unfortunately, I really have to interrogate you." He coughs politely into one hand. Is he sick, or just annoying as shit? "Kiiind of important. It's... well, it's why you woke up to me instead of, um, an actual doctor." He pauses, head lowers a bit. Looks a bit ashamed, maybe? "Sorry." Then he straightens up and says, "Unless you want to say yes? Because then I'm obligated to leave you alone until you get parahuman healing. It's, um, well there's a lot of legalese but basically we have a minimum expectation of care and unless an S-class threat is involved we're not allowed to stress seriously injured team members." He pauses again. "I don't think she's been upgraded to S-class?..."
She stares at him some more. Winces at the pain in her leg. Her eyes roll toward it again. Goddamn. Are they sure it's not already dead? It looks like it should hurt like a bitch. Or not hurt at all because it's fucking dead.
"Yeeeaaaah, you're on... well, a lot of morphine. A lot. Oh geeze is it a lot. Though I suppose that's not new- no wait I shouldn't make assumptions just ignore me."
Thought it was morphine. Fucking morphine. Can't... ugh.
With a supreme effort of will she focuses on his face and speaks properly.
"I assept."
Dammit, accept. Fuck. Words.
Dauntless visibly brightens, standing up, and gathers up his spear and shield -they'd been at the base of her bed for some reason- and says, "I'll let everyone know Miss, uh. Whatever Branding comes up with?" He pauses. "No, wait, I got to pick my name, I'm thinking of the Wa- no, the Youth Guard demands they get input. Weeelll-" he glances at her "-I'm not going to say whatever you pick, because, uh, everybody knows how you talk, and, um, no. Oh! Speaking of, you might want to work on the swearing. People associate it with you -well, Skidmark, but also you- and we're... not supposed to make it obvious that you're a villain reformed." Then he shrugs. "I don't really get that part myself, seems like it'd make for a great success story, y'know-" He pauses again. "Oh right. Um, sorry, I'll go now. And let peop- I'm going. Sorry."
Of course he reminded her of Skid' before he left.
Asshole.
...
Can't even tell if she's crying...
...
...
..
.
"Do I have permission to heal you?"
Huzzawha?- she snaps awake. Her eyes take a long, long time to focus. Even longer for her to make sense of the white and red she's looking at.
Right. The healer girl. Pandemic or whatever.
"Do I have permission to heal you?" the girl repeats. There's... worry in there.
That wakes her right up. The girl who can heal anything is worried. How fucking bad is it?
"yyysssss"
... bad.
It's bad.
The girl touches her, and starts muttering. She tries to ignore what she's hearing. The snatches she's hearing sound horrifying. ("-contaminated blood got into the lower intestine-") There's... it's weird. Stuff hurts, distantly, erratically. Stuff moves. There's warmth? It feels like her body should be in torturous agony. It really, really feels like it should. It doesn't. The disconnect is actually... it's more upsetting than the pain was. She's used to pain. This feels... wrong.
Her head clears, slower than she'd expect. Her body is faster about it. Arms feel... good. Better than they've ever felt. She flexes her fingers, slightly, inside the stupid glove. They never moved that readily. Never. Not ever. She frowns at them, feeling a bit lost. This lets her see exactly what's happening with her leg, which is... fuck.
She closes her eyes, tries to think of something else.
Skid'
Okay, that's... not a good alternative, but wallowing in that pain is less bad than -yeah, she misses him. Definitely.
The frown deepens. She doesn't... miss him as much. Did-? Did the healer chick do something? She can't do brains, though. Well-known thing, no brains. Too complex or something? Or just one of those dumb power things. Like how Mush could use most trash and a few things that weren't trash, but there were exceptions. Dumb exceptions. (Why the fuck couldn't he use steel shards? Woulda been so much better if he could make blades from that shit) So she shouldn't miss him less. Right?
Thinking is hard, but less hard. Something scrapes in her left leg and she has to fight a violent urge to vom- it vanishes. Uh.
So fucking weird.
She remembers abruptly that she's supposed to drop the swearing. Because the Protectorate is a bunch of goody-goody losers. Wait. Dauntless said something about... she frowns... right, something about becoming a hero? 'Rebranding' herself? They don't want people connecting Squealer to their new Hero. That bothers her less. Less bullsh- garbage. She separated herself from... before... after she ran away from home, too. (Not going back to that. Don't want her mother figuring it out, trying to do... shi- things to her) A better reason. If he's not bullshitting. (He's probably bullshitting)
"You've got symptoms of chronic pain. I can't completely fix it-" The girl sounds apologetic. "-because some of its root causes are in your brain, but with your permission I can fix most of the nerve problems."
"Uh, sure." holy shit her words are back
And then pain she hadn't realized was there just... stops. Hands, mostly, but also her back. It's only with it gone that she realizes it was there. How-? how long has she been- what's chronic pain? Is that an actual thing? A medical condition? That doesn't sound like a medical condition. It sounds like some whiny-ass loser trying to justify being a lazy prick. Her legs contrast now -they do hurt. A dull, throbbing distraction. She'd never noticed it before. This is so weird.
Her eyes flutter open. She realizes her lungs feel weird. The bottom of them, specifically. She'd never felt what she's feeling now. It's like... like she thought her lungs stopped an inch higher?... or something? She's literally breathing easier. Her vision is different. It takes a second -alternating which one she has open- to pin it down. It used to be that if she closed the left one, some shades of green looked blue, while closing the right one left everything looking slightly washed out. Color is consistent now, and richer than she'd imagined was possible.
She blinks, half-expecting everything to be jerked away like some cruel joke.
"Finished. Make sure you keep your fluid intake up and get enough sleep, you'll still need to flush your brain, but you shouldn't need my help again."
And then the girl leaves without another word.
"Did you see who brought you here?" Dauntless asks, and her head jerks to the other side. She feels... weird. Good. But weird. It takes a second to place when she felt even remotely like this, and it was years ago. Before she ever did drugs. She doesn't?... feel like she's experiencing withdrawal? (Pancake is some horseshit. Should make her something nice. A motorcycle, maybe)
She re-focuses on Dauntless. Barely any time has passed. Somewhat muzzily, she remembers having a much harder time focusing, understanding. Earlier, but in general. Time feels... present in a way it hasn't felt in a long, long time. It's disorient- Dauntless. Right. She licks her lips habitually, but they're not dry. Her eyes cross before logic strangles the dumbass attempt to look at her lips without a mirror. They're always dry! Like, constantly, anytime -that's not normal? That's not normal.
It starts to dawn. I was sick. I was always sick.
Her self-image is going to need so much work done on it. She'd thought she was normal until she became That Girl Who Makes Big Rigs. (Squealer came later) She wasn't? She- no, later. Later.
She feels a rush of gratitude to Dauntless. Pancreas did this, but Dauntless helped make it happen.
... right, the women.
"Yes." Start simple. Can't mess that up.
"Could you give me a description?" He sounds hopeful.
Pale. Both of them were very pale. Dressed too rich for the neighborhood. One blonde, probably, one black-haired, definitely. Bright red lips on the taller girl. Too bright, probably lipstick. Teens, both of them. One cheery, one... bland. Ordered me terrified out of my mind, sounded bored while she spoke. Cheery blonde was all too fucking happy to oblige. Deferred to the dour girl, kept trying to catch her eyes. Mostly got ignored. Dour girl... hid under a car cover. Bigger. Too many legs. Ran fast as a car? Was I hallucinating that? Fuckin' capes. Not sure.
She starts to lick her lips again, scowls. No. Instead she asks, "Can I have paper? And a pencil?"
Dauntless cocks his head at her. "Weeeelll... strictly speaking, I'm not supposed to give you access to tools. You're not a member yet, and you're a tinker. Why?"
"Better at drawing than talking." She feels faintly embarrassed and then squashes it. Her mother's opinions are bullshit. It's fine to be artistic.
Dauntless visibly brightens at that. "Ooooh, that'd actually be better! One second," and then he's out the door. Didn't he have papers-? No, there's no paper in here. Oh. Right. She was... asleep? Unconscious? Out of it, anyway. Must have taken them out. Wonder why.
Then he's back, and then he stops abruptly, glancing between her arms and what he's carrying. Sucks in air. Breathes out. "Right. I'm going to unchain your arms, remove the, ah, gloves. Please don't try to escape. Please?"
She gives a thumbs-up, more or less, and he smiles before catching himself. Shuffles the paper loudly (ugh) while he collects himself. Then he sets the stuff aside and frees her arms. Still chained down otherwise. Uncomfortable, but whatever. She takes the tools when offered (No, no, stop- no, not making a fucking paper tank that's stupid shut up) and gets to drawing.
Duntless shuffles in place. Definitely uncomfortable with silence. She throws him a bone, asks, "So why you?"
She can't actually see his eyes, but she gets the impression he blinks in surprise. A minor head motion, maybe? Whatever. He asks, "Uh, why what?"
No no, psycho-bitch's eyes were smaller. Erase erase erase. Start that part of the head over. "Why are you talking to me and not some... nobody PRT person, or the Halberd? He's in charge, right?"
Dauntless shuffles uncomfortably while she works on drawing the scarf. Wish I could do color well. The faces were really striking. Creepy, really. Then he takes another deep breath and admits, "Two reasons. First reason is Armsmaster thinks I need to practice my interpersonal skills." A pause. He shuffles his feet again. She wonders if she's going to have to work with the putz. Hope not. Then he admits -that's how it sounds, an admission, like he's ashamed- "It was also felt my, erm, personal history put me in the best position to relate to you as a person."
She frowns, trying to remember what the blonde's stupid purse looked like. Other than stupid, obviously. Also, personal history? Huh? Wait-
She looks sharply at him. "You did drugs?"
He looks behind him -it feels a little theatrical, honestly- and then shrugs and says, "I injected heroin, mostly. It actually started out just me smoking, regular cigarettes, and then a friend of a friend shared something a little more exotic -I never asked what- and I got to wondering and... well, it's a bit of a story, but I kind of skipped right to injections after that."
Her eyes narrow. Really? He doesn't look like an ex-addict. He shrugs and says, "I'd show you the tracks, but... well. Panacea."
Riiight. Right. That's the girl's name. (Cape-name. She's... Amy or something?) Eh, close enough.
That's fine. Tracks can be faked. Knowledge can be dug up, read, recited. It's reactions that are telling.
So she tests him.
She hasn't found a gap, a crack, a blatant fakery, by the time she's nearly finished drawing the two girls and the... thing... the dark-haired one became. What she saw of it, anyway. She's decided she'll believe him for the moment.
Weird, to think of a goodie-goodie as having been a 'hardcore druggie'. (His phrase, not hers)
"... so yeah, self-medicating. In addition to the infection I didn't even know about, I, ah, well, you could say I was self-medicating for, um, personality?"
She looks at him, confused. Opens her mouth. Closes it. That sounds fucking stupid is... probably not how to handle this.
... then she frowns. Something is off?...
Dauntless rubs at the back of his head/helmet. It makes him look like he's ten. He says, "Well, you've, um, probably noticed I'm not exactly the most... confident person. With people, I mean, I'm fine on the job but man oh man people just... my throat locks up or I ramble or I bring up completely inappropriate topics or- uh. Yeah, like this." He puts his hands together, clasping them. She has the suspicion it's an attempt to stop with the myriad... things he's been doing with his hands. He has a lot of hand-based nervous habits, now that she thinks about it. He makes a noise like clearing his throat. "It... made things easier. I got my first date while I was high. I mean, it was an utter disaster because she was interested in the funny, charming, slightly goofy guy she'd been talking to, not the awkward, nervous loser who actually showed up for the date." After a pause he adds, "Those both being me, obviously."
She nods and repeats, "Obviously." Were those eyes? Thinking they were eyes. And seriously, what's bugging her?
His hands rub against each other. Since they're in gauntlets of some kind, it makes a raspy scraping sound. Uuuugh. He says, "But! It did actually help. Kinda. Until getting a proper high was almost impossible and I spent all my time with the shakes and stuff, anyway, but prior to becoming a creepy staring fu- idiot, it was helping me get along with people." A pause. "I'd say more but it's... not really my story to tell. Anyway! Later, much later, when I joined the Protectorate, there was a doctor, real nice guy, and he concluded I'd been on heroin to beat back this one persistent infection, and he put me on legal drugs to nuke 'em and... the cravings went away. Oh, not instantly, not completely, but it helped a lot more than I thought it would. I was sure the man was making up dumb stuff to make me feel better, something like that. But no, it... I have a hard time talking about it even today, ya know? Not the doing drugs part, dunno if you relate, but the realization that I hadn't been doing them because I was a piece of s- stuff, but because I had a problem and I was fixing it as best I could. Took a load off my chest."
She frowns, considers commenting. That sounds stupid. The off-ness distracts her. Same as before? Why? Had a thought, considered speaking... didn't speak...
... wait a second.
She blurted out, "Nana's fat!"
She knew it was a mistake before she said it.
It was.
"What can you do about it, fucktard?" no no no shut up, stupid stupid
The man grinned evilly.
"Get lost, bitch, before we kill you too. You've still got a chance."
Hookwolf had fucking killed Skid'! She didn't even think, just kicked at him, the angle awkward, wrong. Then the smarter parts of her realized how fucking stupid-
Wait a damn minute.
When had she ever not given into an impulse, no matter how stupid?
The fuck had the girl done to her?
The pencil breaking in her hand brought her back to reality. She backed up a second, mentally: no matter how stupid. Jesus, she wanted to go back to that? No! It had nearly cost her her leg, and it had already cost her many times before. She'd wanted it to stop for as long as she could recall.
Still. The girl hadn't asked or even fucking mentioned it.
Better keep an eye on her.
"-hey! You okay in there?"
Oh. Right. Dauntless.
She handed the paper over to him and said, "It's nothing." Nothing worth sharing.
His response is sharp. "Unless you have a Brute rating, it's not nothing. You don't have to talk about it, but don't lie to me."
She blinks in surprise. Has an impulse to yell back, but then he looks at the drawing and it dies down when she can see how he smiles. "Okay, the creature is familiar. Did either of these two become it?"
She nods. "The ponytail one. Black hair, utter psychopath." Dauntless cocks his head at her, curiously, so she expands. "When they first found me, she told the other one to 'hit me' with terror. She sounded bored." Skin crawling at the thought of her voice.
Dauntless mutters to himself, and then says to her, "Excellent job, thank you. Now, if you're not too tired I'd appreciate a detailed description of the encounter. And I'm going to need a name to go on file, miss?..."
She almost says Squealer. Almost. Remembers the earlier conversation.
Wait, he was serious about that?
She blinks again. Happening a lot today. Man's full of surprises.
She hesitates for a moment. Big vehicles is her thing, but he talked about 'rebranding'. They won't want her recognizable. But... big is relative. Her cars are big for cars, her planned helicopter was big for a helicopter. Actually, she could use that -nobody knew she could do aircraft. Nobody 'cept -well. Deep breath.
Anyway.
"Call me Big Blimps."
His eyes go to the obvious place, never mind there's nothing to see right now, and he blushes. Sputters a little. She tries not to smirk. "I think that won't go over so well with Branding, but, uh, as a temporary designation it's probably okay."
Then they start talking.