Learning Curve

by FandomPariah

The original team of Wards are finally trusted to undertake an operation without having the Protectorate on hand to supervise them and naturally there is more to the situation than first believed. The fact that Mouse Protector isn't one of the listed Worm characters on here is a disgrace.

Worm/Ward/The extended Parahumans universe & All associated trademarks are property of John C. McCrae aka Wildbow.

I claim no ownership of anything except my own original characters.

I am making no money from this.

Learning Curve

There had been ten of them initially.

The Wards, teenaged and juvenile heroes under the training and protection of the most powerful and famous capes in America and arguably the planet as a whole and the PRT, the organisation to whom those capes had deferred and made themselves answerable in a show of good faith and openness to the people whose lives they saved. Ten young capes who had been intended to serve as a shining example of everything those granted such exceptional powers through their worst moments could be if given proper guidance and support, the beginnings of a new generation and a new age of heroes.

There were six of them left.

None of the Wards had yet fallen in battle against the villains they fought, it even seemed on many occasions that the villains were willing to show a level of restraint to their younger opponents, a lack of the lethality that was seemingly reserved for adult heroes; although if rumours were to be believed talks of some manner of truce, or rules of engagement and code of conduct which all parties would abide by was under consideration, an arrangement that the PRT was willing to consider in the face of such colossal threats as Behemoth and the recently emerged Leviathan.

Reed had been the first to leave, his departure mired in the mundane to such a degree that was almost laughable and yet could not be fairly begrudged. His parents, demanding, perfectionist and overbearing yet who clearly treasured their son had withdrawn their support for his presence on the team following a protracted series of skirmishes against a gang of small-time capes whose tenacity and ability to slip capture made up for their lack of scope or ambition, Reed receiving several small injuries along with missing schooling and taking a noticeable amount of psychological strain in the process which the PRT had, in its' still fledgling state been unable to offer any remedy for. In the wake of his parents' decision Reed had been retired from the life of a cape and a landmark court case against the PRT had set things in motion to ensure that mistakes would not be repeated and that young heroes, their health, happiness and sanity would be properly cared for with the formation of the Youth Guard, a body intended to provide a measure of oversight to the hero community; a decision that had been roundly applauded as the correct one by all parties, even the PRT and Protectorate themselves despite the obnoxiousness of the now ex-Wards' parents.

The second of the ten to leave the Wards had done so for reasons that were perhaps happier yet still had the air of normalcy about them, something so ordinary that it seemed odd to thing of in regards to a would be hero; namely because of a parent moving to take a new job. Arashi-Kuro had been a teenaged Japanese-American boy of dual citizenship and who had lived in the United States of America when his Trigger Event had allowed him to generate and hurl bolts of bio-electricity with catastrophic effects, becoming a young hero clad in armour of iridescent black which shimmered purple and electric blue with his movements, detailed with gold and hid his identity beneath a full face-covering helmet stylised to resemble the jaws of some mythical, whiskered dragon. He had also been too young too be allowed to make the decision to stay behind when his parents left the country even if he had wanted to; the Japanese government had offered the boys' parents, both of whom had been employed in small capacities by the PRT or businesses attached to them, new and rewarding positions within the background operations which supplied and enabled their fledgling but already expanding 'Sentai Elite' Japan's attempt at an answer to the Protectorate and with this offer had come the understanding that Arashi-Kuro would be offered a position within a team that was in the process of being founded, a position that was as much consultant as active duty in honour of the boys' status as a more veteran hero relative to his new peers and a way for marketing to play off of his position as an outsider, visually distinct from a team that would have their costumes designed to complement his. Ultimately Arashi-Kuro's parents had taken the offers and the young hero had departed with them; a loss that was keenly felt though was soothed every time the remaining Wards received an email from their old friend or saw footage of him in action in Kyushu.

Third had been Chess-piece and his loss was one which stung at the Wards and the PRT as a whole. The teenaged boy whose plain black and almost eerily featureless costume had drawn attention upon the Wards' inauguration had initially gone by the name 'Pawn' in a reference to the way pawns could be promoted to the role of another piece upon reaching the end of the board and although this name had been changed at the request of the PRT in light of its' other, less flattering connotations it still gave some insight into a power-set which had both invigorated and vexed scholars and academics in equal measure with the way it defied and changed what was known about powers and necessitated an entirely new form of classification, with words such as 'Trump' being thrown around in hypotheses and theories. In practice Chess-piece had been a sliding scale in terms of all power classifications save one, where he had been given the dubious placeholder title of 'Thinker Negative'; in practice Chess-piece had been able to subconsciously to develop powers subconsciously, in a manner similar to Eidolon if undeniably less impressive or dramatic and without any of the control, developing one power at a time that could be used to complete any given and with the limit of only being able to do so upon being ordered and given direction by someone else though in doing so, losing some of his own volition and becoming a pawn in every sense of the word to an extent. Chess-piece, capable and well-liked amongst the Wards as he had been had been a disaster waiting to happen in a world where Villains with the 'Master' classification existed and had left the Wards shortly after an encounter with an adversary capable of turning him against his friends had shaken him to his core; though he still allowed himself to be a subject of study if only to ensure that such things could not happen to anyone else.

The final departure from the teams' original roster had been Karambit, a loss felt more keenly for the circumstances that had facilitated her removal from the Wards, the first instance of a prospective hero being removed from duty by the PRT and Protectorate themselves. She had been a mover of a mid-level, made far more frightening by her predilection for carrying knives, primarily of the curved and claw-like variety for which she had named herself but also boasting a collection of everything from box-cutters to machetes with which to slash at opponents as she passed them. Her removal had, as each of her team-mates had privately suspected that it one day would, come after she had crossed a line and delivered a grievous injury that could not be explained away as a misdirected blow or accidental collision in the heat of battle; the only extenuating factor keeping her from facing a more severe sentence and possibly incarceration being that the villain she had she had almost killed had been a member of the same gang whose activities had led to Reed's departure, though this in turn had led to unsettling questions about just how premeditated and calculated the attempted murder had been. As it was the teenage girl was under house arrest until she reached the age of twenty one with exemptions made to allow for her education and it was a foregone conclusion that not only would she never work for the Protectorate again but also if she attempted to operate as an independent hero her actions would be heavily scrutinised by her former allies; with the entire ordeal leading to higher ups within the Protectorate realising that protocols needed to be put in place for reigning in the more wayward or potentially volatile would-be heroes.

Each loss was an emotional blow in its' own way however at that very moment Chevalier was more acutely aware of the fact that he had little more than half of the allies he could previously have counted on by his side and was heading into what promised to be a dangerous situation.

He, tall, broad shouldered and striking in appearance with his silver and gold, almost knightly armour and signature cannon-blade held between his thighs in an a statuesque display was currently confined with the cramped rear of a PRT van which raced and skidded through city streets at a dangerous speed, threatening to send what few items of equipment were not firmly secured in place spilling over the floor. He was one of five people within the vehicle, himself, a pair of armoured and helmeted PRT agents whose names Chevalier had not yet learned but would endeavour to once the mission was complete and, much to the young leader of the Ward's relief two fellow members of his team sitting opposite him.

One was Myrddin, clad as always in his loose fitting brown robe and poncho whose hood was pulled low, casting his angular and almost raptorial features in shadow that were accentuated further by the heavily tinted and swooping visor which covered the upper half of his face whilst long strands of tousled and wavy brown hair escaped from within the hood, creating an overall look that might be sinister were it not for the patchy and scraggly attempt at facial hair which denoted his youth or the way he rested in an almost lounging position with his weathered and lacquered wooden staff resting over the back of his shoulders to take up an inconsiderate amount of space.

The other was Cheerleader a dark-skinned girl clad in a skintight and glossy white bodysuit with a secondary outfit layered over it which stood in stark contrast to not only her base costume but also the rest of her team; the tall, lithe and athletic young woman wore a costume that her name would suggest, albeit one that did not correspond to any teams Chevalier was aware of, a jarringly vivid orange mini-skirt and low cut and high cropped top which had only been deemed acceptable by the presence of the bodysuit beneath it, with both garments sporting a jade green trim and the sleeveless top bearing a horizontal white stripe across the chest which housed a bright yellow emblem that could be described as either a pom-pom or starburst depending on how one looked at it, with the same shade of yellow being repeated on the fastenings of black gloves and calf-height boots whilst her hair, which Chevalier knew to be braided into dreadlocks which reached to just below her jawline was hidden beneath a wig of the same jade green that detailed her costume, a white domino mask covering part of her mask with bright, focused brown eyes behind it. Cheerleader was considered the secret weapon of the Wards, a capable if mundane fighter and highly intelligent young woman in her own right she was also gifted with the power to amplify the abilities of other capes in her immediate vicinity through her yells of encouragement; a power which had naturally seen her be used in close proximity with Chess-piece before his departure, with the required trust between them quickly becoming a solid friendship and, if Chevalier understood correctly something more which continued to blossom and grow even now.

Not that he had time or energy to spare for such thoughts.

A crackling sound, like that of a radio being rapidly tuned filled the rear of the van though the noise emanated from its' dashboard where equipment that was certainly non-standard and the work of a Tinker, either Hero himself or someone trusted by the PRT had been integrated. Mobile phones had been something of a novel idea in need of refining and proper implementation in the early eighties before the arrival of Scion and subsequent Capes however the industry had, over the course of roughly a decade and a half of work by both baseline humans whose intellect could not be overlooked and the bolstering, multiplying and magnifying effects of Thinker and Tinker class Capes even before such terms had been coined exploded into something ubiquitous and far beyond the wildest dreams of those who had initially conceived the idea. What had been integrated into dashboard of the PRT issue van was less mobile phone and more a mobile command centre and communications hub capable of being used to organise an entire mission of considerable scale if the need arose, being able to receive relayed information from the Protectorate headquarters or from a number of satellites directly. Yet video calls were still beyond current limits, as was an entirely perfect signal by all accounts though it made little difference to Chevalier in that moment as the speaker, stern, commanding and direct was one whose voice he would recognise in any circumstance.

Alexandria.

"Wards, we have an ongoing situation underway in a residential area of the lower east side; reports of a twenty-four hour pharmacy being robbed. Staff were not deliberately taken hostage and were the ones to raise the alarm, they have been unable to leave without engaging the suspect however; we're dealing with a lone assailant, confirmed Cape"

"Understood" Chevalier snapped the word out, firm and businesslike as he straightened his posture in an effort to appear stoic and ready despite Alexandria being unable to see him at all "Do we have a positive ID on the suspect?-"

"Lower east side….Barone Family?" Myrddin interrupted, something Chevalier was only content to allow due to their friendship and the fact his friends' musings often had valuable insight "It's their turf...Maybe someone didn't pay protection money?"

"Doesn't sound like them, if you owe the Barone family money then they don't let you or your staff call for help" Chevalier shook his armoured head as he dismissed the idea.

"The Jackal-Heads? They could be making a play" Cheerleader offered, wincing as she considered the group of villains with whom she was well acquainted; a local branch of the Hotep movement which had been co-opted by a particularly militant Cape-supremacist by the name of Anubis Da Pharaoh.

"On a pharmacy? I doubt it" Myrddin shook his head and stoked his pitiable attempt at facial hair in what he clearly hoped to be a profound pondering "Wouldn't be worth it and they never just send one person, not even for their initiations….Besides, they've got their own drug supply that the Feds have been struggling to get intel on-"

"Gamma-Razor then, I know she uses" Chevalier chimed in, unwilling to allow this interruption to continue going on needlessly yet unable to keep himself from being drawn in.

"Went to rehab and good for her" Cheerleader countered "Have you noticed the villains get way cooler names than us because they don't have to clear anything with PR, same as their suits-"

"It's not Land-Shark he's still in jail" Chevalier continued, deliberately avoiding the baited distraction of that familiar line of conversation "Too small time for Delenda-Est she'd be insulted at the idea, Buckshot and Moonshine went back to Arkansas; what about Edge-Lord….He's on the down and out right?"

"I heard that he actually retired after his last job" Cheerleader answered with an uncertain shrug.

"Oh thank God" Myrddin laughed, having little to no patience for the red and black clad, Katana wielding villain whose particular brand of aesthetic showmanship had highlighted everything undesirable about the recent era of Capes of which it was a part, an era of edginess that was mercifully drawing to an end.

"But see what I mean about all the best names and that suit was kinda-"

Alexandria cleared her throat over the phone, line crackling faintly at the sound.

"As….Invigorating as it is to hear your powers of observation and deduction in action" there was an unmissable testiness to her voice and each of the three Wards present in the van could imagine her demeanour with such clarity it was as if they had been in her office watching her pace with folded arms

"And as proud of your proactive approaches toward becoming familiar with your foes, their motivations and mindsets as well as the activities or lack thereof of the law enforcement you operate alongside none of that is currently important" the veteran hero let the words linger for a moment "The suspect is, by all accounts an unknown….ID does not correspond to any ongoing investigations from what our facial recognition software, admittedly not the most reliable means of identification, can detect. Suspect is however a confirmed Brute class, no exact ratings but be prepared for mid to high; expect mover and possibly some combination of striker and blaster abilities as well though that is just an educated guess….You'll know the suspect when you see them"

"Yes Ma'am" Chevalier winced beneath his mask, a foe who was either highly dangerous or an unknown factor could be a problem and the current situation seemed to be the worst of both worlds.

"What's the situation on the ground?" Cheerleader asked, noticeably more tense now that the details were being brought into focus; the continued skidding turns and screeching tires of the van as it tore through the streets a much lesser concern by comparison.

"Police are reluctant to engage until and unless we can provide more information on the suspect, they're deeming it a cape matter" Alexandria's scorn and utter disgust at the cowardice went entirely unhidden and unchallenged "Despite the fact it's a residential area security camera feeds show that very few civilians are acting stupid, trying to get pictures for the media or trying to get close enough to see if they can Trigger themselves; though there is a monorail track in close proximity and damage to the cities' infrastructure is to be avoided at all costs short of saving lives. More PRT response teams are en route will be helping you create a secure perimeter whilst you focus on the threat. At present an impromptu cordon has been set up courtesy of Incendiary; she, Mouse Protector and Miss Militia are already on site and engaging"

Miss Militia, Hana.

Chevalier's mind was suddenly brought into an even sharper focus than it already had been and the fiery determination within him burned white hot.

"We won't let you down Ma'am" his armoured costume shifted audibly as he moved; entire body tense and coiled with energy that demanded release, sense of urgency and discipline battling with one another.

"I had little doubt of that" Alexandria's voice held the briefest note of pride, faintly bemused as it was before she returned to pure businesslike firmness "That trust my colleagues and I extend to you is, in part why you will be acting without the assistance of any Protectorate members"

"Oh….damn" Myrddin whispered, lacking the collected coolness his friend was able to affect.

"I see" Chevalier answered simply though his tone was enough to convey that he was clearly taken aback, enough so that Alexandria broke her usual mask of steely determination to give her Wards something of the woman they had glimpsed beneath it on rare occasions, warmer and more understanding if still just as driven an expectant.

"If the situation deteriorates then Legend will move to assist you" the assurance did little though the words that followed it bolstered the trio of teens "I have every faith in you, in all of you. This is what you have been building towards"

"Chevalier!" one of the two PRT agents in the front of the van called back, any annoyance at having to defer to a teenager being cast aside in the heart of the moment "We're getting close to the place, I can already see fire! What's our plan?"

"Okay….Myrddin, fly ahead and banish the target. End this quickly if you can, buy us enough time to regroup if you can't" Chevalier nodded to his closest friend amongst the Wards with the understanding that his instruction would be followed before turning his focus to the agents "You two, I need one of you fire-fighting and the other one using foam to set up a perimeter; keep civilians out and keep the suspect contained until we can get reinforcements"

"What about us?" Cheerleader asked "Want me to boost you?"

"No, not yet" Chevalier shook his head, understanding her line of thinking and her likely strategy of using his weapons the moment the target escaped Myrddin's banishment as part of a well-practised one-two punch technique "I'm gonna give you an opening and I want you to get the others to fall back to your location, we don't know if they're injured and we don't know enough about who we're fighting….I don't want to throw everything we've got at someone just for it to make them stronger"

"Makes sense" Cheerleader nodded, with any further conversation being halted as Myrddin rose to his feet, robe fanning out and staff twirling as much as the limited confines of the van would allow as he reached for the door, his feet already hovering half an inch above the floor as he prepared to take flight.

"Good luck" Chevalier murmured, barely audible though his cloaked friend turned and shot him a smile that managed, despite its' friendliness to be utterly withering.

"No luck, no fortune, no fate and no tricks" his grin turned almost feral "You're talking to the magician remember….the magician knows it's all down to skill and timing"

With that the rear door of the van was opened and Myrddin launched himself out into the night with a rush of wind, distorting the already blurry lights of cars', store-fronts and streetlamps as the van whizzed by them; the air that rushed in to fill the brief void left being both chilly and filled with an unmistakable stench of smoke that left Chevalier and Cheerleader looking at one another in nervous silence which was finally broken as the armoured and sturdy young man readied his signature cannon-blade.

"Okay….Let's go and be heroes"

---

She was Geraldine Fields to those who knew her well enough to see the teenaged girl beneath the stylised knightly and yet deceptively lightweight armour she wore, to the public at larger however at times like these she was Mouse Protector, sword-wielding and wisecracking, self styled hero extraordinaire and defender of the people.

Currently she was simply having a bad time.

"Oh I am most dis-cheesed" the words left her in a pained wheeze which left her wincing with a motion that shuddered through her entire body, made more uncomfortable by her slight snicker at her own pun.

"For fuck sake! Enough with the puns!" an irritable and scratchy voice spat with a vehemence that seemed to imply, in just a few syllables that the speaker was unhindered and unbothered by the smoke and embers that filled the air.

"Mouse Protector, on your feet. This is not over" a second voice that was at the same time commanding, with a rough and husky edge and yet paradoxically warm and gentle with a faint trace of an accent called out; a voice that gave Geraldine, the Mouse Protector the mental push she needed to push herself first onto her hands and knees and then into a standing position, rising from the shallow trench of cracked asphalt that she had caused with her bone rattling impact against the ground, swaying on her feet and forcing herself to block out the stinging, throbbing pains that jolted with every moment and assured her that she would be a mess of scabs and bruises by sunrise. Slowly she turned back towards the source of her current miseries and spat out a mouthful of blood, though a quick sweep around the inside of her mouth assured Mouse Protector that she had simply cut the inside of her mouth with her own teeth as she hit the ground, rather than having had her teeth knocked out or received some grievous internal injury and as she turned she squared her shoulders and shifted her weight; aware of two figures moving out of cover to flank her on either side and provide a unified front to the villain they fought.

The two voices who had spoken, the proverbial angel and devil on her shoulders.

The first voice had belonged to Incendiary, whose real name Mouse Protector knew was Regina, or just 'Gina' to a group of friends which Geraldine herself was not a member and also that Incendiary was a secondary choice of alias, taken after Mouse Protector had noted loudly that her initial choice of 'Firebird' did not make sense given that she couldn't fly and would likely lead to her being given mocking nicknames like 'Fried chicken' or 'Hot-wings' by foes; something which had seemingly left Incendiary exactly as irate and volatile as her name would suggest ever since. She was largely unremarkable in her build and stature, perhaps a little tall for her age as one of the younger members of the Wards though as the distinctions were only a matter of a few inches and a few years it was less important than it might be. She was undoubtedly Caucasian, yet her skin had a perpetually sun-kissed and bronzed look about it which Mouse Protector suspected was a side-effect of the younger girls' power and that skin was largely covered by a costume which consisted of an all-encompassing body suit which left only her neck and head uncovered; its' surface a charcoal grey-black adorned with a design of vivid orange and yellow lines shaped to resemble the outline of flames which were arranged in a swooping and artistic geometry which hugged the bodies' lines in a way that suggested sleekness rather than anything untoward or inappropriate for the wearers' age. Incendiary's hands and feet were covered with calf-height boots and elbow length gloves of a deep scarlet colour and affixed with golden buckles, the theme and colours repeated again on the plethora of belts which hung at her waist and hips that had been laid over one another at odd, criss-crossing angles and also the intentionally tattered remains of a cape which hung over her left shoulder with its' frayed and burned edge reaching no lower than her elbow and cut in a way which loosely resembled licking flames. The girls' face was partially obscured by a sweeping and roughly triangular visor of opaque, crystalline red visor of Tinker-tech which bore no eyeholes and covered from her brow to a point just above her upper lip which had replaced a more mundane mask, the device being capable of allowing Incendiary to work around the confusion her own power caused to things such as thermal imaging or even naked sight. One could likely assume the powers Incendiary wielded based on her name alone yet confirmation was given in the way those powers affected her whilst they were active, transforming hair which reached to between her shoulder blades into a mane of blazing orange which glowed like an inferno whilst acrid black smoke poured from her clenched fists and the corners of her narrow, hard-set mouth even before she began actively spewing flames.

Miss Militia by contrast wore a costume that was arguably undeserving of the title, an outfit of functional grey urban camouflage fatigues and black combat boots laid over lightweight and high-spec matte black body armour that had admittedly been custom made to fit the young heroine; the only concessions to decoration coming in the form of far more pouches than were strictly necessary scattered at odd and asymmetrical intervals across her body in a fashion which Mouse Protector would argue was reminiscent of a character from some Japanese video game or another, a red sash wrapped around her waist in such a way that the majority of its' length hung behind her to cover her rear and finally an overlarge scarf bearing the flag of the United States which had been wrapped around her shoulders, neck and the lower half of her face to form the barest attempt at a mask. The young woman herself a noteworthy figure and a face whose sharp, defined went some way to making her seem perhaps a little older than she actually was; olive skin and piercing bottle green eyes along with dark hair which shone in the firelight and was currently tied back into a simple and practical braid.

Frankly Mouse Protector felt that Chevalier was a very lucky man and too dense to fully realise it, however she couldn't allow herself to be distracted by that line of thought at present.

The rodent themed hero herself wore a costume of reddish browns, dull greys and creamy beige underneath dull, gunmetal coloured armour whose colour further leant to the illusion of weight and reliability; the clothing beneath being chosen for a mix of practicality, comfort and the fact that the colours were ones which Mouse Protector personally liked as well matching with her chosen aesthetic. Simple brown work-boots with steel toe caps were paired with a pair of faded grey cargo pants which were given the proper degree of heroic panache by being combined with both armoured greaves adorning her shins and knee-pads above them and a harness which resembled a tool-belt of brown leather which reached around Mouse Protector's waist and trailed down both thighs before connecting to the armour, the assembly containing handcuffs, a small amount of medical supplies, a lone mousetrap and other assorted paraphernalia. Her upper body was adorned with a similar mishmash of cobbled together parts which created an impressively coherent whole, a reddish brown hooded sweater with cream lining and detailing worn beneath an armoured breastplate with a forward and upward tilting gorget whilst a scabbard hung at her back to house her sword, black and fingerless leather gloves were paired with armoured vambraces and a single pauldron fastened to her left shoulder bore her own personal insignia of a cartoonish mouses' head with two crossed swords behind it. Much of Geraldine's face was hidden from view which she found herself immensely grateful for, knowing that her features did not lend themselves well to the stern and imposing image of heroism that the Protectorate seemed to be aiming for; prominently round and heavily freckled cheeks being offset by protuberant blue-grey eyes and a near immovable smile which displayed slightly crooked teeth whilst her hair was, in one of the few instances of a pun she did not enjoy unfortunately mousy. In her role as Mouse Protector however she wore a mask which covered the lower half of her face, grey fabric with a quaint and stylised impression of a mouses' mouth, whiskers and snout adorning it which she had moved a moment ago to spit out blood whilst much of the rest of her visage was covered by her signature helmet whose design could be described as being vaguely Roman in influence were it not far the oversized and rounded clearly comedic parody of mouse ears attached to it.

All in all the costume evoked the image of a wandering knight in piecemeal armour which was given further weight by the current scuffed, dented and blackened appearance of the dulled metal; though Mouse Protector would have traded that in a heartbeat to have her old home-made shield instead.

"We need a plan!" Incendiary snarled through clenched teeth, her incandescent rage seemingly tempered more than first thought or else she might simply have declared that an escalation of force was required and begun unleashing torrents of fire from her hands and mouth.

"We have a plan. Back up is en route, all we must down now is hold the line" Miss Militia answered, accented words calm and only slightly muffled by her scarf yet Mouse Protector saw easily the tightly controlled nervousness and apprehension her team-mate carried in the way her power acted subconsciously; the ever-shifting blur of oscillating green-black energy that moved and altered its' form as it flitted around her, changing from an intimidating looking and forward curved machete with a serrated edge to a more practical and almost paradoxically less lethal sawn-off shotgun as Miss Militia focused on the task at hand.

"You got it boss!" Mouse Protector raised her sword and used it to give a mock salute that was rendered lazy by the aching in her arm "No retreat, no surrender and no compro-mice"

With that said she ignored the groan her puns were rewarded with and turned her attention back to the pharmacy she had been painfully ejected from; trying to ignore the sweat tricking down her face and the way her armour was steadily heating up amidst the fires that Incendiary had started.

The three of them had been on patrol in a loose grouping without any of the fully qualified Heroes of the Protectorate to accompany them in what they had each seen as a clear sign of trust when they had learned of the unfolding robbery and moved to halt it without hesitation, the PRT making contact and the two groups sharing what little information they had a the time whist the trio were en route. Upon their arrival, into a wide street flanked on both sides by a smattering of dingy and dilapidated apartment buildings and smaller buildings housing businesses such as a laundromat, corner store and the twenty four hour pharmacy in question which was fortunately not attached to any of the other buildings; whilst the end of the street nearest to the ongoing scene was intersected by a bridge running over it which supported the monorail tracks and a small station from which to embark it had been incendiary who had acted first and began dousing the area with fire. Rash as it had first seemed to the panicked and screaming onlookers the fire-wielding heroine had quickly proven herself by revealing that she could control and limit both the spread and direction of the unnatural flames she unleashed and did so in order to create a ring of fire around the pharmacy, with several dozen feet of space in which the approaching heroes could manoeuvrer; at which point Miss Militia had demanded that the villain inside surrender themselves, the refusal being followed by several attempts at ending the altercation with a single decisive blow from outside which had also served as reconnaissance to gather vital information about this new foe and ultimately

Mouse Protector's entry with her team-mates providing cover and subsequent thrashing at the hands of the figure who could be seen clambering through a shattered window, hampered by monstrous bulk.

"Sometimes Brute class just doesn't cut it, no words for just how ugly they get" Incendiary sneered, raising her voice just loud enough to ensure that her adversary heard the taunt whilst Miss Militia let out a single, whispered expletive in her native Kurdish and Mouse Protector twirled her sword, an unnecessary flourish intended to keep an opponent on-guard and off-balance.

"Okay, let's not get furry-ous here. This can still end with nobody getting hurt" Mouse Protector rose her voice and attempted to sound confident, doing so by mimicking some of the more highly regarded members of the Wards as she addressed someone already proven capable of doing the hurting.

The villain, whose name had remained unknown stood at a comfortable seven and a half feet tall and no longer looked entirely human.

The massive body, which Mouse Protector barely reached the elbows of was a mass of sculpted, rippling muscle that bulged with every slight movement and gave off an unnatural glow where flesh and tissue that should have been a bloody red was instead a vivid shade of magenta which shone through skin that had either been stretched to transparency or simply removed entirely with either answer being possible given that the figure; whose curves suggested femininity boasted biceps larger around than the entire torso of any of the heroes present. The glowing figure had somehow managed to find clothes suited to her stature, though was currently barefoot with feet ending in black-clawed and avian talons scratching at the ground with each step. She wore ripped and faded jeans which only reach partway down her calves and were held up by a length of chain in place of a belt along with a simple white tank-top which left her midriff bare although whether this was a conscious choice or simply a lack of any suitable fabric to make more extensive clothes was unknown; over this was what had once been a leather jacket though the sleeves had been torn away to create an impromptu 'battle-vest' adorned with sliver studs and spikes which gleamed in the fire and dozens of patches and badges. More importantly the lack of sleeves allowed for the monstrous villain to fit both her massive arms and her wings through the holes, both of the wings seemed undersized and were unlikely to be able to support her enough to fly and instead rested over her shoulders as a living cape or armour, the left being a bat-like arrangement of extended finger bones and stretched membrane whilst the right wing was covered in snowy white feathers that extended up her neck where they stood out at odd angles to serve as pointed quills and interspersed themselves with black hair that had been dyed a bubblegum pink colour at the tips which whipped about her in a wild mane. The villain wore only a black domino mask to hide her identity though it would be hard to discern anything from those features given the way that they had been distorted, in addition to the transformation of her skin her eyes were a faintly glowing white without pupils whilst her lower jaw had been distended, displaying rows of dagger-like teeth which spread from her jaws along the length of a long, lolling tongue like that of a goose.

As if this fearsome appearance were not enough the villain were also even stronger than her looks would suggest and also capable of unleashing an area of effect attack in the form of a booming, almost honking blast of air. And as a final insult, in response to Mouse Protector's sword and Miss Militia's guns she had also seen fit to fashion an impromptu staff or spear from a twisted and jagged length of racking metal from the pharmacy store room.

"Stand down. You will be taken into custody and treated fairly….Nobody has been hurt, this is a first offence" Miss Militia urged as it became clear that the unknown villain would not respond to Mouse Protector's attempts at reason; the scene remained silent save for the sound of crackling fires and the yelling of civilians who were determined to see something they could report to the press and who refused to retreat for their own safety until that tense and charged silence was broken as Incendiary, growing impatient and frayed with the lack of progress shifted her weight and let out a wordless growl of annoyance which along with her balled fists and the smoke billowing from her hands and jaw either frightened or angered the nameless foe enough to send them on the offensive.

Incendiary, along with both Mouse Protector and Miss Militia were forced onto the defensive as she sunk her clawed feet into the ground and let loose with another of her booming honks, almost vestigial seeming wings fanning out as the shock-wave left the three teens covering their faces as windows across the street were destroyed and this was quickly followed up as she hefted her makeshift spear and hurled it with a distinct lack of technique or even proper aim in the general direction of Incendiary.

At which point Mouse Protector leapt into action.

She focused her power on her sword, marking it as the item to which her power of teleportation would be centred and then, with timing and coordination that went far beyond human she flung the weapon directly at the length of twisted metal. Her sword struck home and an instant later Mouse Protector had teleported to it, appearing in mid-air and kicking it aside before it could come close to its' intended target and without pause she threw her sword again whilst still airborne, the blade sinking into the ground at her targets' feet where she quickly teleported to it once again.

Realising her mistake an instant later.

"MOVE IDIOT!" Incendiary bellowed, distracting Mouse Protector from the task of tugging her weapon free of the ground to see both the pyro-kinetic and Miss Militia preparing to open fire but being unable to do so, the momentary lapse in focus being rewarded in the next instant by a blinding pain that left her legs buckling beneath her and her ears filled with a metallic ringing as she slumped to the ground, almost directly over her sword.

The villain had backhanded her and the reverberating clang that she could hear had been made by her helmet.

"I think she ro-dented my-" the latest in her ceaseless line of puns was cut short as an oversized and magenta-glowing hand seized her by the back and hefted her up into the air before the villain hurled her towards her team-mates, albeit with markedly less force than previously; as though the attempts to communicate had been successful enough to dissuade this new villain from breaking the unspoken rules of such confrontations.

Mouse Protector collided with Miss Militia and the two pulled themselves to their feet in an awkward tangle of limbs after only a few seconds of pained and awkward fumbling, just in time to be staggered as another honking boom served to deflect Incendiary's attempt to spew fire at her through a wordless scream of rage by simply displacing the air before it could fuel the flames.

However despite this Mouse Protector still managed a dizzy smile as she shook herself to her senses.

"Are you concussed?" the militaristic hero demanded with obvious concern as she caught sight of the misplaced expression on what could be seen of her team-mates' face.

"Help is here" Mouse Protector answered simply "Saw 'em while I was in the air….Your knight in shining armour; that doesn't have mouse ears….No taste at all-"

She was interrupted the sound screeching tires and the sight of a black, armoured PRT van tearing though the barrier of Incendiary's flames and skidding to a halt at the end of a one hundred and eighty degree turn as the vehicle prepared to deploy its' passengers and yet even this was not the most gratifying moment of this latest turn of events; no matter how much it brought a fond smile to Miss Militia's face beneath its' scarf.

That honour went to the owner of a confident, effortlessly light-hearted voice from above.

"Hey Khazad-Dumb-ass! You shall not pass!" with that bold and taunting declaration Myrddin, who had flown overhead and entered the fray undetected made his opening gambit in the form of a twirling and dramatic gesture with his staff that ended with him pointing the weapon at this quarry before opening one of his pocket dimension with an uproarious clap of thunder and flash of light which subsided to reveal that the villain had vanished entirely; trapped within the domain of the young man with wizard styling.

"I love it when other people commit to the bit" Mouse Protector chuckled to herself, realising how dazed she had been left by the multiple hits she had taken only when movement beside her and noise all around pulled her back to her senses. The PRT agents accompanying the remaining half of her team had leapt out of the van and were barking orders at onlookers whilst at the same time using a heavy prototype foam dispenser to not only douse flames but also erect a barrier of their own in case the situation called for it and Incendiary aided this endeavour by dissipating the artificially made fires as fast as she could whilst also regrouping. The movement beside Mouse Protector had come from Miss Militia who had begun making her way towards the rear doors of the van the moment they were flung open, allowing Cheerleader and Chevalier to leap out and though the pair were entirely professional there was an undeniable moment, a single lingering look and silent questioning that the other was unharmed before Chevalier turned his armoured head skyward to call to his friend.

"Myrddin, can you hold her?" all eyes focused on robed and hooded teen at that, a sense of dread and tension passing through the wards as the answer became apparent even before Myrddin answered as each of them could see the way his body stiffened with coiled tension and twitched, erratic and shuddering motions betraying how much his current task was straining him.

"You can do it Myrddin, you can it Myrddin; just keep holding her until we get back to base and we dump her directly in a cell!" Cheerleader called out, the only indication that her power was in effect being a slight reverb and delay to her voice that defied the acoustics of where she stood; Myrddin could be seen relaxing a fraction for a moment before ultimately shaking his head.

"She's just too big….I've only grabbed normal sized people before; I need to practice something like this" he called down.

"There's jokes I could make about that!" Mouse Protector replied before she could help herself, her excuse of a possible concussion likely being inadequate to stop the dirty looks cast her way; most prominently by Incendiary.

"Focus Mouse" it was Chevalier who spoke, voice firm and even; filled with a presence and assurance beyond his years "Guns and fire are too risky to keep throwing around; we need to end this quickly and with minimal damage….I've got an idea, combo hit. Mouse, you look pretty beat up; can you handle this?"

"I am at your service my liege" she bowed in a knightly fashion, entirely unbothered by and largely oblivious to the reactions to her antics. Chevalier nodded simply and spoke.

"Cheerleader one of Mouse's powers is her stamina, I need you to boost that" seeing the dark-skinned and brightly costumed girl nod he turned his eyes skyward again "Myrddin, pull her back from wherever you've banished her from on my signal, drop her right by Mouse's sword; I'm gonna take the shot….Mouse, I want you to jump to your sword and use my attack as an opening to land a finishing blow. Harass from all angles, like we practised"

"You got it" Mouse Protector was more serious now, taking a moment to adjust her dented and misshapen helmet before bracing herself; hands fishing through her pockets in search of a suitable weapon since she now knew that pulling her sword free would take more time than she would have available. The moment her fingers curled around it and a smile came to her face, dimpling her freckled cheeks Chevalier boomed out a single word.

"NOW!" the effect was instantaneous, thunder clapped again and the winged giant of a girl was flung back into reality; staggering in a disoriented and blinded daze which gave Chevalier the split second opening he needed to fire the Cannon-blade with devastating results. A shriek of utmost pain split the air as a single projectile ripped forward at blinding speed to strike the point where the villains' collarbone and right shoulder met, the scream being accompanied by an audible crack which made more than one of the Wards wince in sudden sympathy as both her right arm and wing were entirely dislocated and possibly broken in the process.

Mouse Protector teleported, her sword still being her marked item allowed her to appear in a crouched position on its' pommel and spring forward without pause to continue pressuring her enemy, using the way the towering villain had curled over herself to clutch at her ruined and dangling limbs in order to wrap her left arm around a feathered and oversized neck before thrusting out with her right fist; not to punch the villain in the face but instead to deploy her weapon of choice.

Her mousetrap.

Another scream of pain, sharp and surprisingly small and young in quality filled the air as the mechanism snapped shut and broke the villains' nose with an audible crunch which saw blood spilling down a magenta-skinned face and into a distended mouth an instant later. The response however was equally violent; the villains' spiked and elongated tongue lashed out and coiled around Mouse Protector's left shoulder and under her right arm with a crushing force which bruised and bit into flesh as it scored armour and tore at clothing, the appendage being used to drag the hero up and into the air where she was promptly knocked senseless by a frantic left hook; with her senses rattled once again Mouse Protector was unable to defend herself as the massive hand of her opponents' uninjured arm clasped her by the leg and she was slammed back-first against the ground with a series of bone-shaking impacts which cracked the ground beneath her and left her ears ringing whilst her vision swam and doubled, unconsciousness only kept at bay in the initial aftermath of the assault by Cheerleader's power acting on her. It was due to this bolstered resilience that Mouse Protector saw and heard what followed, being surprised again or as close to it as her condition would allow as the villain who had remained silent throughout the confrontation finally spoke; her voice that of a frightened young woman no older than the Wards themselves drastically at odds with the towering form it belonged to.

More harrowing still was the fact that she was clearly crying.

"WHAT THE FUCK? YOU GUYS AREN'T HEROES! YOU GUYS ARE JUST ASS-HOLES!" with that baffling, yet plainly heartfelt declaration the villain let loose another of her booming sonic attacks to push the Wards onto the defensive again before reaching back to the window she had climbed out of and, rather than running to seize her discarded weapon from before, simply tore a chunk of window-frame and the attached wall free and hurled it towards the regrouping heroes before Myrddin could hope to intercept it.

Explosions blinded Mouse Protector for a moment and she was left to piece together what was happening from the disjointed fragments of information that she could piece together.

Miss Militia had used her power to create a rocket launcher and fired it into the projectile at the same time Chevalier had used the Cannon-blade; reducing the mass of bricks and glass to scattered fragments which flew out in all directions, including towards the bridge which supported the monorail tracks though the impact was sufficiently lessened to keep the tracks or bridge itself from suffering damage.

A feminine cry of pain pain had filled the air and then flames had washed over everything in the immediate vicinity as Incendiary retaliated with unhinged brutality until she was compelled to halt her onslaught, yet the damage was done as by the time Mouse Protector's vision slowly returned to her, spots still being blinked away as she pulled herself into a sitting position the towering and wounded villain was entirely absent; having used the fire as cover for her escape.

Worse still was the sight of Cheerleader laying on the ground where she had fallen with blood staining the ground from the injuries called by fragments that had struck her.

"What-" Mouse Protector slurred out a single word in an aborted attempt to stand, getting the attention of her fellow Wards who were in the process of gathering around what she assumed to be the more severely injured of the two wounded girls "I can help, I'll-"

"Don't touch her, don't come near her, you've done enough!" Incendiary screamed, voice ragged from breathing fire and leaving Mouse Protector in no doubt as to the hateful expression she wore beneath her visor.

"What?" she managed to slur out as Myrddin landed beside her and in a display of camaraderie helped her to her feet and even allowed her to use his staff to support himself.

"That's enough Incendiary" he matched her own visored glare before turning to the wounded knight beside him, his head angle in such away that Geraldine could see glimpses beneath his hood and visor as he added "Damn it Mouse you had one job"

"You were supposed to take her down" Chevalier intoned bluntly, yet mercifully without anger as Mouse Protector limped closer "You were supposed to end the fight, not dick around playing pranks and showing off"

"Is she okay?" she asked, blood suddenly running cold at the bleak sight before her, armoured head hanging low with a shame that far outweighed the pain that continued to pulse through it.

"She's breathing" Miss Militia answered from where she crouched over her team-mate and administered what help she could.

"More than you should be-" Incendiary's venomous comment was cut off by a stern look from Chevalier whose attention was quickly diverted by one of the PRT agents rushing closer and pressing a phone into his grasp, the action causing the young man's entire demeanour to stiffen and then sag as though collapsing under its' own weight in an instant.

"Alexandria….Mission failure. No civilians harmed, only damage is the pharmacy; owner is likely still locked inside where they were but the suspect escaped. Cheerleader and Mouse Protector need medical attention immediately, we're heading back to base" Chevalier paused, armoured head turning to regard Mouse Protector for a moment as he listened to the black clad icon of the cape community before replying to something she had said "I understand….I take full responsibility"

With that Geraldine's stomach plummeted lower than she had previously thought possible.

---

Alexandria's home office, away from the PRT headquarters or the impossibly more clandestine operations of Cauldron was a safe haven for her to retreat to and one whose welcome embrace she had relished upon finally returning after a calamity of an evening which had further spiralled into a press disaster and arduous day to follow.

Debriefings had taken no small amount of time, the task of finding out exactly what had happened to send the situation at the down-town pharmacy spiralling so far out of control and veering so far away from her plans an important one which had been delayed and made more difficult by the condition, both physical and emotional of the Wards. From there events had trended towards damage limitation as she, along with her fellow Protectorate members and PRT officials had liaised with the local government and law enforcement, with the latter at least willing to acknowledge their own failings and hesitance in private when Alexandria's glare fell upon them; there had also been the media aspect to manage which, contrived and bothersome as it often felt could not be ignored though mercifully it fell to members of her team more suited to the role than herself. Equally immediate, practical and unavoidable had been the unexpected fallout of the altercation in the lower East-side which, happening as it had in a territory that the Capes had thus far been unable to entirely wrest from the organised criminals of the Barone Family, Italian Mafia with Capes of their own had sent unintended consequences rippling out across the city which would take some time to fully gauge and halt. All of this however paled in Alexandria's mind as she allowed herself a foolishly ill-judged glance downward to the documents before her and was reminded of the various halting and urgent conversations she had endured with members of Cauldron as the shadowy organisation to whom she owed so much interspersed updates and questions of their own regarding the current situation into other matters to create a single overarching and looming point of contention in Alexandria's thoughts.

Namely, how had such a simple and assured thing gone so wrong?

With a low, guttural growl of a groan escaping her she allowed herself to sag and for her mind to make the transition that had begun when she shed her black costume in favour of a more neutral and comfortable civilian outfit; where she ceased to be Alexandria for a few moments and became Rebecca again.

For what little that was worth.

Before she could truly relax, or as close an approximation to that as she ever achieved she heard the front door to her home, a pleasant but unassuming place in an upper middle class part of the city which had steadily begun to feel more costume than the black she wore whilst on patrol, opened; something which bothered her far less than it would any other woman who lived alone in such circumstances.

"I brought Chinese from that place you like!" a familiar, warm and friendly voice called up to her as the door closed behind and the visitor found keys in their usual location to lock a door which had been left open specifically for them. It was then only a matter of moments before she was joined by a man with a square, impressively sharp and strong jaw and wavy brown hair and whose tall physique which was powerful in a lean, efficient and athletic way was accentuated by jeans of a slim fit which were perhaps intended for someone a few years younger than himself, a simple button down shirt with a tie in the colours of a rainbow worked beneath its' collar and a well-tailored suit jacket whose cuffs and lapel featured more decorations which identified causes that the wearer believed in and fought for; a champion of the people in both his civilian and professional identities.

This was Keith, Legend out of costume.

"Sitting in the dark? Am I going to find a bottle of wine hidden under the desk?" Keith joked as he switched on lights that Rebecca had neglected.

"I didn't realise how late it had gotten" she answered in a faint mumble far removed from her usual commanding presence, too tired even to properly argue "And please, it would have been Scotch. How's Arthur?"

"I'll ask him when I get a chance to say more than a dozen words and when none of them are an apology for being late or absent" Keith frowned as he answered and Rebecca matched the expression even as she took the food her friend had brought her, the fact that even now she was considering flying headlong back into the thick of things a sign of the exact kind of single-minded focus which had seen Keith and her few other close allies ensuring that she took care of herself and did not lose sight of things outside of her goals.

"How bad as it out there?" she asked, almost hesitantly around a mouthful of noodles.

"Not as bad as it could be, which is something at least" Keith answered as he began to help himself to the food he had brought

"If it had been a pharmacy in territory that the Jackal-Heads control, or claim to then we'd be looking at something a lot worse in terms of retaliation….As it is, the Barone family….They describe themselves as old school, they've always had a code and they're amenable to the sort of inter-cape rules that have been floated; they don't know who hit a business that pays them protection money but they want to know. In the meantime they're not attacking indiscriminately but this could still get ugly-"

"They won't find her" Rebecca interjected, almost dismissively before pressing on with her own questions to ensure that Keith did not begin his own before she was properly fortified against them "Who do we have on the ground?"

"The Wards have been taken off of active duty if that's what you're asking. My decision" Keith held her gaze for a moment, silently challenging her to dispute the call that he had made and Rebecca found that she could not. With the brief and silent battle concluded he pushed on

"They needed the time to recuperate, not just from physical injuries although they have enough of those to go around. At the moment Eidolon is in the field, Hero is helping where he can although at the moment he's the public face of the PRT until I've rested enough to take over….There's also the matter of his arch nemesis being some of the people to take advantage of things being off-kilter"

"Cutting Edge….They've finally come out of hiding?" Rebecca was unable to keep a sneer from her voice at the consideration of the small network of criminally minded Tinkers who had banded together and come to consider Hero a grand rival for each of them despite the fact that to the rest of the world the notion was pitiable; the last Alexandria had heard of the group they were hiding out somewhere in New Jersey whilst on the run from the same Barone Family that were now out to defend their wounded pride after trying to poach one of their two Tinkers; a young woman with a penchant for using her abilities to turn a gambling habit into simple theft and skill who went by the name of 'Al Pachinko'.

"But since the subject was broached and then narrowly avoided" Keith cleared his throat, using the beat of silence to his advantage "What happened last night Rebecca….That Brute, Mover, Blaster and whatever else; you should have moved to intervene and you didn't. You've already implied that you know more than I do-"

"I won't comment on that"

"Ha ha" Keith folded his arms across his chest and waited in silence until finally Rebecca gave an answer, though truthfully for the woman beneath the mask of Alexandria it felt less like a surrender and more like a confessional that assuaged some of her misgivings.

"It was supposed to be straightforward" she took another bite of food before pushing the box it had been delivered in aside "Cauldron supplied her….without her knowledge of exact specifics, things went awry"

"Who is she?" Keith's voice hardened for a moment and Rebecca could see in him the same protectiveness tempered by welcoming charisma that had seen those members of the Wards with questions about their identity, or in need of moral support approaching Legend above all others. She smiled to herself and was silently thankful for her friend as she answered.

"Firstly, her power-set includes a high level Changer ability. She isn't once of Cauldron's Deviant cases….Her powers are ones that triggered naturally" Rebecca let the statement hang in the air for a moment, allowing the surprise to fully register on Keith's face before continuing

"She's somebody who has nobody. Her changing exacerbates a pre-existing chronic condition which requires a lot of painkillers and occasionally other medication….As we know our powers have a will and want to be used, which puts her in a difficult position. Cauldron's plan was to have her encounter the Wards, fight them to a standstill and then explain the situation to them as she had been led to believe that they would be willing to take her into our custody and work on finding a suitable arrangement for everybody rather than simply prosecute due to the unfairness of her circumstances and the fact that our Wards….They're good kids. From there the plan was for….She goes by Nemesis, there was some talk about Cauldron naming a project after her if the plan worked, to join the Wards as a new member"

"Nemesis? That's what we're going with?" Legend asked, eyebrow arching in a display of mild concern.

"After the Greek Goddess of retribution against hubris, arrogance and undeserved fortune….Commonly described as simply the Goddess of revenge" Alexandria paused, a faint smile on her lips as she allowed herself a moment of humanity amidst the importance of the matter at hand, adding "Besides, we were all teenagers once weren't we?"

"Okay, I get the questionable name choice but….why?" Legend breathed out, taking in what he had just heard and struggling once again to understand the convoluted depths Cauldron were willing to sink to "Why go to all that trouble rather than just help the poor girl and bring in her into the Wards if we need to recruit more people that badly?"

"We do" Rebecca answered bluntly "And as for a more direct recruitment, she's too far short of too many of the standard requirements….The Youth Guard would get their first big case. Cauldron felt this way would work better on multiple levels; it fosters a certain image-"

"Image?" Keith was incensed at the idea, which Rebecca had wholly anticipated.

"Consider how many newly triggered capes are ending up in gangs or being sucked into circumstances that lead them to becoming villains solely because of a lack of options" her words were measured and calculated, as though she saw the matter as a simple formula

"The Wards program was intended to serve as a counter to that, security and a place to grow for those who want it….Right now we are failing to be that in the eyes of the people we most need to convince; right now heroes are becoming steadily more and more outnumbered because we simply can't convince enough potential heroes that we're an actual alternative-"

"Because the Wards have been heroes for as long as they've been in the public eye" Keith sighed in bitter understanding "So Cauldron pointed a kid on the verge of becoming a villain our way so that we could have them be our new marketing campaign….I hate it, I hate how much sense it makes"

"She would also fill in a certain niche in terms of marketing, something to discuss with Hero" the comment, heartless as it would sound from anybody else was Rebecca's idea of a joke and Keith recognised it as such.

"I saw the punk jacket….A bad-girl, since our other Wards are allegedly squeaky clean?"

"Something like that" Rebecca grinned, fighting the urge to comment that Karambit would have filled the required niche quite well had she been able to keep her more violent tendencies under control.

After a while Keith spoke again, voice a low murmur filled with concern.

"Where is she now?….If just changing involves painkillers and she was pretty badly scuffed up in the fight with the kids-"

"Cauldron have eyes and ears on her and we had someone, I believe it was one of the new hires….A man called Armstrong, surreptitiously supply her with some medication and food" Rebecca answered, easing her caring friends' worries "She's currently holed up in an apartment building, our next move will depend on hers. The injuries in her Changer state don't carry over exactly from what I understand….But her right arm and shoulder are likely in a lot of pain and suffering from reduced mobility and her face is visibly bruised; two black eyes from where nose was broken with a mousetrap"

"Mouse Protector" Keith sighed "She commits to the bit"

"Indeed" Rebecca's lips pursed and something in her manner became inquisitive scrutinising, prying without saying a word until eventually she leaned back in her chair and breathed out "But you didn't come here just to check in….Cauldron made contact?"

"Other recruitment prospects….I suppose I should have tied this Nemesis Changer into that" Keith reached into the folds of his suit jacket and presented a small collection of folders filled with documents "Most are potential Wards that they want opinions on before they float them to the PRT through their own channels….That top folder is something slightly different"

"Let me see" Rebecca murmured, mind-state shifting into something much closer to that which she inhabited as Alexandria. Opening the uppermost folders revealed several photographs of a young woman whose immensely powerful musculature and almost titanic physique were clad in crystals and very little else, if anything at all.

"Please tell me she is over eighteen….Youth Guard would crucify someone over this and they'd be right to do it"

"Agreed….But she's an adult" Keith, not quite back in the frame of mind to be Legend despite the task at hand assured her "Cauldron managed to identify her through some military records that weren't as thoroughly scrubbed clean as they should have been, before they scrubbed them personally. She's Canadian but we're being asked to be the ones to make contact rather than a representative of….What is it they call themselves"

"The Guild" Rebecca answered reflexively, eyes scanning the images she was seeing and focusing on countless details in an instant "Why us, are they worried that she might be hostile to us?"

"Quite the opposite, she's apparently quite the hero….If a little rough around the edges. She's been taking down street to mid-level gangs, with and without Capes. The Guild are definitely interested in her, as soon as they have the funding to expand"

"And putting her military training to use in the field….Although with some different applications" Rebecca, or Alexandria as the line began to blur noted in an oddly toneless murmur whilst continuing to study picture after picture of the powerful, crystal-clad woman using the forcefields she generated in a uniquely offensive way; as weapons as much as shields and in several cases as a mode of transport. Knowing that was not quite as impervious as the public believed the thought of having to bring this soldier who currently played as a powered berserker sent a shudder through her and at that shudder Keith spoke up once again.

"You've noticed then? Her shields, they seem to go through everything despite Manton's theories….That's why we've been asked to contact her. Nobody at the Guild is directly involved with Cauldron enough to do it"

"I understand" Rebecca nodded, relieved and yet undeniably terrified at the prospect of such a potentially limitless power "Does she have a name?"

"Not one that anyone has heard her use….Internally they've been calling her the Narwhal" Rebecca heard the answer and paused, considering it for a moment before allowing a small smile to tug at her lips.

"I like that" she set Narwhal's files to one side and gestured at the others Keith had provided "And these, our potential new Wards….Have the others seen them?"

"Hero whittled a few down, these are some of his favourites-"

"Which means they're all Tinkers-"

"Which means someone less potentially biased should double check" Keith, still not quite donning his Legend persona yet responded delicately and Rebecca snorted before opening the first folder.

"Sphere….isn't he a little too old for our Ward program?"

"Not as old as he seems apparently" Keith shrugged "He'd probably age out far earlier than we'd like, but from what I understand….And naturally this is confidential in the strictest sense but the kid might need the stable income that the Protectorate is offering; smart as he is he's got a high-school sweetheart with a baby on the way before he's actually old enough to have graduated high-school-"

"I think Sphere is the last person we can offer money to set up a home to and expect results" Rebecca arched an eyebrow "I'm aware of him, the PRT have heard of him and his work….He has multiple offers; right now the best thing we could do is make sure that nobody with dangerous ideas co-opts his skills"

"By all accounts he wouldn't take the offer" Keith, or Legend as he was quickly becoming with each subtle shift of his posture noted.

"And we might not be in the best position to do that regardless" Rebecca observed "Cauldron could hire him directly….If not, then for the meantime it would be for the best to let him build biomes on the moon; from what I understand the money is substantially more than a place with us"

"Hero will be disappointed" Legend shook his head "The next one is one you'll like….Reminded me a little of Chevalier"

"Hmm, Armsmaster….Interesting" Alexandria studied the files intently once again, seeing exactly what her friend and colleague had meant by similarities to the current leader of the Wards in this young man clad in advanced armour whom she could see wielded a vast array of halberd and pole-arms to great effect.

"No" she ultimately shook her head "Not him….Not yet at least"

"Really?" Legend's eyebrow raised in surprise "I honestly thought you'd want to snap this one up-"

"Oh I do want him on a Wards and eventually a Protectorate team….But not our Wards, not yet" she explained firmly "Just scanning that evaluation I can see that he oozes potential, that and sheer drive; he's tough, determined…..defiant. I don't want him to butt heads with an established team-"

"You want to wait until we expand and build something around him"

"To complement him, even if he's not a leader or focal point I think it would be for the best" Alexandria nodded, frowning slightly as she added "And back to image…..He is a little too much like Chevalier, unfortunately he's not as good at delivering that 'Wow factor' that the press love from what I can see….Nothing that I'm reading about this Armsmaster boy makes me think he'd take a job that was advertised as second fiddle"

"I see your point…..But if it's wow factor your looking for, then this" Legend's smile was a flash of pearly teeth as he reached over and opened the final folder and pointed at the images within "Is Fishtank"

"What in God's name am I looking at here"

"That's the kid himself" Legend, clearly enjoying her confusion prodded at a dark shape perched atop a larger shape "And the rest of it is his work….Hero was suggesting that a lot of the Tinkers that have come after him seem to have specialisations, fields that they just get on a fundamental level….Well, this kid builds giant attack robots and rewrites the genetic code of marine life"

"And then he puts the fish in the robots and has them pilot it" Alexandria mouthed the words out slowly, as if still unsure of whether she could believe the utter absurdity that was reaching her ears; after everything else that she had experienced she found that this might have to be where she drew the line.

"It's great right?" Legend's composure cracked and he was Keith once more, giggling unapologetically "The kids will love this guy….Hell, PR will love this guy, think about the merchandising revenue they could get from his Fish-Bots"

"Fish-Bots?" Alexandria's head snapped with an almost painful jerk and her eyes narrowed with a sudden and intense realisation "Or Fish-Tanks?"

"Oh….Oh no" Keith sighed, visibly slouching under the weight of his own realisation "He….He-"

"Commits to the bit" Alexandria ground the words out through gritted teeth.

"So, should we tell Hero that we're vetoing-"

"No" Alexandria raised a hand and let a sigh more bitter and weary than any utterance thus far "Tell Hero and Cauldon that we'd like to approach…..Fishtank….Damn it I hate the name already now, about a potential spot on the Wards…."

"But?" Keith drew the word out and Alexandria was unable to tell if he was uncertain or simply enjoying her suffering; in response she buried her head in her palms and massaged her skull.

"But if Fishtank and Mouse Protector become friends so help me God I will do something I regret"

Legend found that he could not bring himself to disagree with that opinion.

---

It had only been a matter of a few short days since the Wards had failed to capture the Changer that had since been dubbed Nemesis at the ill-fated battle in the lower East side however in that time a great deal of recovery, at least of the physical sort had been done, expedited by physiology that was beyond human and advances in medicine that the general public were not yet privy to. As such and with some time still afforded to them before they were returned to active duty the Wards were beginning to gather in a small diner close to headquarters that was something of a regular haunt for the slowly diminishing group of teens.

Mouse Protector, currently in her civilian face as Geraldine Fields or Geri to her close friends, which she had once again found herself feeling that she had far too few of lately had often wondered about what, if anything the proprietors of the little establishment that her team-mates frequented thought about the presence of an oddly eclectic group of teenagers at odd hours and in a part of the city which was not located near any schools, college campuses or anywhere else such as group might be frequenting. Were they away that along with many logistics and administration staff and field agents of the PRT their customer base also included many of the youngest heroes and if so did the owners and other staff keep their secrets out of a sense of loyalty and support for the Capes or was it because they had been approached and threatened or otherwise convinced to cooperate by the PRT; Geraldine mused that it was also not entirely out of the question that this business along with any other business in the immediate area was in fact a PRT front organisation though such notions were quickly pushed aside as, mere moments after entering she caught sight of two teenaged boys in their usual corner booth and enthusiastically waved as she made her way over with a spring in her step that she maintained despite the slight aggravation it caused to her back, which was still a mass of sickly purple-yellow bruises.

The meeting had been entirely by chance, it just so happened that Chevalier and Myrddin had good taste in junk food and this diner served the best cheesy fries in the area.

Conversation halted as the two caught sight of their team-mate and Myrddin, or simply Harry as he was in that moment, offered a lazy attempt at returning the gesture. Out of costume the staff wielding hero styling himself as a wizard of sorts and the Canon-blade wielding knight were just an oddly matched pair though without even the tangential similarity of themes to connect them and it had often been said, usually by Geraldine herself that it looked as though one of the pair was there to sell weed to the other although the roles of dealer and customer were never fixed. Currently Myrddin, or Harry looked almost deliberately dishevelled in a pair of white sneakers that bore no resemblance to their original pristine colour and jeans that had been ripped and faded far beyond the point of being fashionable whilst his T-shirt was black and loose enough to hide the physique beneath it, printed upon it was the logo for some tabletop role-playing game which Harry had confided in his friends that he had actually never played and only wore the shirt because the idea of he, Myrddin wearing it in public amused him; overtop this was a plaid shirt of black brown and creamy white which hung unfastened whilst a collection of random beads and tacky faux-spiritual adornments hung from his wrists and neck. The entire look of a teenage boy far too acquainted with cannabis being completed by his scraggly and laughable attempt at facial hair, then offset again by his well-kept wavy brown locks and the alertness which never seemed to leave his features.

Chevalier, or simply Nicholas or Nick as he was known in day to say life was by contrast everything one might expect a teenaged hero to look like in their civilian identity and whilst Geraldine could safely say that she was not attracted to her team leader in the slightest, she could certainly see why Hana's eyes followed him whenever she thought that nobody would notice. He was tall and broad shouldered, built in a way that could be explained away with claims that he had trained for a school football team and continued training after not quite making the cut with all of that imposing frame both displayed and somewhat counteracted by an outfit of cargo shorts and a polo shirt which was perhaps a little too tight and in Geraldine's admittedly subjective opinion a little too preppy. His skin was flawless and seemingly tanned year round whilst his hair was a shade that trod a fine line between blonde and chestnut which rendered its' appearance either gold or bronze as the sun struck it, immaculately styled to keep it from falling in front of intensely dark eyes.

"Hey you fries!" Geraldine beamed as she slung herself with undue gusto into a seat opposite Harry and used the motion, along with Myrddin's distraction as he groaned at the opening pun to reach across and pilfer a fry from his plate; only for a hand to close around her wrist.

"I can excuse the worse than usual jokes because you're concussed" Harry sniffed, taking on an air of faux-snootiness "But not this, not this Geraldine….my fries are sacrosanct"

"Don't use words you can't spell Harry"

"And so it begins….I wish I could say this is record time but it isn't" Nick sighed, shaking his head at the rapid-fire exchange of teasing banter that had come to define interactions between Myrddin and Mouse Protector.

"So what're you guys doing here?" Geraldine's voice dropped into something low and conspiratorial, albeit almost comically so and in a way that would certainly draw more attention that it deflected however Nick, after taking a quick glance around to ensure that there were no obvious signs of anybody listening in gave an honest answer.

"I didn't get cleared for duty yet, but I didn't get hurt in the fight….I needed to be doing something so I came and trained; the PRT guys, jeez they know how to fight"

"I was hoping to talk to Eidolon" Harry added in a murmur that he accompanied with a slight shuffle.

"Fanboy"

"Fuck off" he shot back in response to Geraldine's anticipated jibe "He can do so much and I wanna learn how to do more….Other than that we're just hanging out until they let Chantelle have visitors, Hana is meeting us here any minute now; then Nick and Hana have a thing later-"

"Really now" Geraldine's eyes widened for a fraction of a second before her entire being seemed to break into a smile that promised mischief as it dimpled her cheeks.

"Not like that" Nick cut off the expected torrent of jokes, teasing and innuendos that would make him want to sink into the ground if he heard them before they could begin, trying to reorient Mouse Protector's thoughts toward something useful as he added "Chantelle….How is she?"

Chantelle, Cheerleader; most injured member of the Wards who was still confined to the Protectorate buildings' medical facility.

"She'll be fine" Geraldine waved a hand as she gave an airy and unconcerned answer, quailing under the look she received from Nick, who was all Chevalier in that instant "The debris didn't hit anything vital….She hit her head on the floor pretty hard when she fell and some of her cuts needed to have glass and stuff pulled out, but she's fine-"

"Did she tell you she's fine?" Harry's question left Geraldine sinking into the chair and almost buried in the folds of the creamy beige hoodie she currently wore, bought in a thrift store and personalised with patches of bright colour as she had mended it.

"She's not telling me anything….We were in the rooms next to each other but she's uh, she's not talking to me right now"

"You were fucking around on the job again" Harry noted coolly "I stopped Gina from taking your head off at the time but you were fucking around when we needed you to focus-"

"Was it at least funny though? The mousetrap?" the question hung in the air and was answered only with a silence that Geri couldn't help but find judgement and accusations in, which left her sinking even further into her oversized clothing. The sight of her utterly dejected and collapsed state stirred some sense of pity and duty, if not exactly friendship in Nick as he looked her over and managed a guilty expression as he spoke.

"I'm sorry, you've been in medical for the last few days and I didn't ask how you are. Is everything okay?" Geraldine saw Harry squirm at the realisation that he too had asked about Cheerleader whilst disregarding the fact that Mouser Protector had been taken out of action after being thrown through windows, slammed into the ground until it cracked and otherwise pummelled.

"I'm a pretty tough cookie and if you give a mouse a cookie then you've gotta….something something, I don't know where I was going with that one, let me workshop it" Geraldine's enthusiasm for the ill-fated pun fizzled out mid sentence and Harry answered it with a snort an a mutter.

"Take your time, we can definitely wait to hear it"

"I'm mostly okay, they thought I might have torn or broken something with getting rag-dolled by….They're calling her Nemesis right? Cool name. But yeah I'm cleared for duty but told to take it easy….So maybe I'll just take a sick note to the next set of villains to show up, treat 'em like PE class when we're playing dodge ball….But on the subject of someone absolutely not dodging your balls, you and Hana-"

"You're disgusting" Nick interrupted, cheeks colouring in a way that suggested far less experience than Geraldine would have guessed "It's not like that"

"Hana's folks got her a car" Harry supplied, sparing Nick further discomfort "Since we all got that vehicle handling training after the runaway truck thing and they were talking about letting us go for motorbike licenses early….Apparently her Dad told her that it's an American tradition for everyone's first car to be a real beater, absolute shit-show of a car held together with tape and prayers"

"And so naturally Hana has spent every night that she's not on the phone listening to Nick mumble sweet nothings-"

"Still not like that" Nick cut Geraldine off again, the blush reaching his ears doing nothing to aid his case "Hana doesn't sleep, something to do with her power….so whenever her and her Dad have time together they've been working on an old Chevrolet Camaro; we're just taking it out for a test drive-"
"To a spot in the hills with a nice view of the city, taking a picnic with you" Harry observed, deciding that this was in fact the perfect vehicle for Geraldine's particular brand of astute social observation and paradoxical lack of social awareness or good sense.

"Right, so she wants to ride both of her Chevy's on the same night" Harry was left barking out his hysterical laughter until he was reduced to teary wheezing whilst Nick was scarlet and sputtering in a desperate attempt to find any words at all that would convey the sheer maelstrom of emotions that he was reduced to by the experience of having to deal with Mouse Protector out of costume, where she was free to allow her puns to venture away from the cheese-related and less obligated to censor herself.

All of that ended when the sound of the diners' door opening once again caught the attention of the trio of Wards.

"Hey Hana, we were just talking about you" Harry's smile was almost predatory as Miss Militia, in her civilian attire entered the small establishment; clad in an outfit that flattered her figure whilst leaving her almost entirely covered, a skirt that reached below the knees and a modest and comfortable sweater to hide any lingering bruises and burns from the fight in the lower East side, all balanced out by the fact that her hair had been removed from its' usual practical braid.

"Nothing too bad I hope" she noted, faintly bemused by a situation she knew enough to guess at; inadvertently providing Geraldine an avenue of attack before Nick could silence her verbal onslaught.

"Something about a new car, something about late night dirty work….Something about getting 'motor-head' which is weird because we weren't talking about music-" she fell silent as a French fry covered in melted cheese bounced off of the end of her nose; a sign that Harry had decided that his friend had suffered enough and that further embarrassing Chevalier, especially in front of the team-mate he was so obviously enamoured with would not be tolerated.

Mouse Protector took it as her cue to leave.

"Well, I'll leave you two love birds….And whatever that makes Harry-"

"It makes me tolerable" Myrddin retorted without pause

"I have vital and momentous task that require my bravery and fortitude and so forth and so fucking help me" Geraldine slumped again "I still haven't had a proper talk with Alexandria about what happened and she's gonna skin me alive and then my skinned carcass has gotta go do physio and I've still gotta go pick my armour up from the workshop"

"At least they got the dents out" Hana noted, Geraldine's only response was a dramatic sigh followed by an even more dramatic departure from the table leaving Harry, Hana and Nick in her wake; the three of them silent for a few moments before Harry finally broke the silence with an exaggerated huff.

"She's such a fucking goof-ball….I mean don't me wrong, I've tried my best to get her and I do like her, she's fun and kinda cute and cool in her own weird way but she's goofy-"

"You are admitting far more than anybody asked, you monologue like one of the worse villains….Maybe Edge-Lord" Hana noted, the conversational tone making the words all the more cutting.

"She's trying her best" Nick interjected "She makes mistakes, she tries to be better….We've all made mistakes; trust me I know how bad mine are-"

"Yeah but were your mistakes the monumental kind of stupid where you come into a diner and then leave without ordering anything" Nick's jaw closed with an audible clack, he was left wondering once again if his own perpetual exasperation with his team-mate had seen him inadvertently ignoring Geraldine's problems and debating whether he should buy some food for her and chase her down to hand it over, her often visibly second-hand and repaired clothes suggested a lack of money despite the fact that she was given a stipend as a Ward though such a charitable action might instead draw attention personal circumstances that her often off-colour humour was intended to distract from.

All of these thoughts were derailed by the sound of Hana's soft laugher.

"Harry, look down" she suggested and upon doing so Harry found that his cheesy fries were no longer on the table; Geraldine having most likely marked them the moment she tried to steal a single fry and used her powers to teleport the entire portion to herself rather than herself back to the table the moment she was out of sight. Harry's jaw fell and the utterance that escaped him was befitting of the scale of the crime against him.

"Oh that Rat Bastard!"

---

Even when not in costume Incendiary, or rather Regina was every bit as fiery and volatile as the name she had been forced to settle for would suggest.

When out of costume and with her powers dormant her appearance was somewhat different, most notably that her hair was no longer a raging and crackling blaze of orange and was instead a golden sun-bleached blonde that complemented the year-round sun-kissed complexion that her powers granted her and was currently a little longer than shoulder length and held in place by a headband which was both black and littered with glittering pink, though this more natural state paired with her bright blue eyes and the overall more childlike appearance of her features when she was not hiding more than half of her face behind an opaque mask as well as her current attire of a fashionable looking denim jacket worn over a t-shirt with a cartoonish and saccharine logo, deliberately juxtaposed against a slogan which could be seen as a double-entendre and a candy pink pleated skirt worn with high-topped Converse sneakers and even higher socks seemed to give Incendiary the look of a beach-girl taken from her natural habitat as well as highlight the fact that Regina was indeed the youngest of the Wards.

Though any attempts to baby, coddle or otherwise patronise her on the part of her team-mates had been met with disastrous consequences.

Currently her expression was set in what she hoped was a hard and fierce glare as she trudged through the less busy areas of the PRT headquarters, however in the absence of her costume and the acrid smoke that spewed from the corners of her scowling mouth whilst her powers were engaged the look was more in line with what could be considered the typical pouting of a moody teenager; that she walked with the distinctive telltale slouch of one who had just been reprimanded and had her hands balled into her fists and stuffed into pockets save for when she needed to adjust the gym bag she carried to keep it slipping from her shoulder only added to the picture. Despite her outward appearance and the assumptions that were often made about her popularity Regina had few, if any close friends in her life away from heroism; many of the Wards had, for whatever reasons and despite the complaints of the fledgling Youth Guard left full-time education or interacted with it only infrequently and at a distance whilst those who did still attend school did not attend the same school as Regina herself and her once active social life had been hampered by both the circumstances surrounding her trigger event and her own subsequent actions, including the vigour with which she had thrown herself into the life of a Cape and as a consequence of this the young girl had found herself with her fellow Wards as the only people in her approximate age group with whom she would consider herself close.

Which was why she had chosen to skip school.

It was, at least in Regina's mind and the arguments she had attempted to employ utterly ridiculous that her team should be benched for days at a time under the auspice of recuperation and the in the same breath told that those of them who attended school were still expected to do so and this, coupled with mounting concerns that threatened to crack the facade of fiery bravado she wore, even whilst exacerbating its' worst aspects had seen Incendiary leave the school grounds and make her way to the headquarters so that she might enter the medical facilities and speak with Cheerleader, Chantelle; the girl whom Regina had endless respect and admiration for and whom she had not spoken to since Mouse Protector's insistence on acting just as juvenile as people expected from Regina herself had led to her being injured.

Naturally she had been required to present her identification to gain entrance to the building and this had set in motion a chain of events which had culminated with Regina being sequestered away in an interview room until a member of the PRT office in charge of handling the Wards in matters that did not require the direct involvement of fully qualified adult Heroes could arrive and begin a lecture which had the distinct feeling of being pre-prepared about it and left Regina both thoroughly annoyed and yet at the same time immensely grateful that it had not been Alexandria to handle the disciplinary matter, it was inevitable that the black-clad woman would learn of her behaviour however there was a slim chance that things would go no further, or at least Regina hoped so; disappointing Alexandria herself was not something done lightly. Following a lecture that had done more to patronise and infantilise Incendiary than any of her older team-mates would ever dare to try Regina had been told that she would be unable to visit Chantelle in the medical facility, for reasons that had not been explained though despite this ignominy the person handling the lecturing process had not, either through a mistaken lack of oversight or possibly a modicum of understanding and sympathy made any effort to send Regina away from the headquarters until she was able to patrol again. It was this small amount of leeway which had seen the teen regarding the gym bag that had initially been intended for classes later that fay and decide that she was healed enough from the Wards last deployment to at least vent some of her frustrations in the buildings' gym; which was the current destination on her pouting, hard-faced march through the headquarters. Eventually she drew close, nearing a set of double doors which would see her enter the gym and have to cross its' entire length in order to make her way to the lockers and changing rooms however it had still been the quickest way to approach it and if she were entirely honest with herself being able to engage in even the most basic of small talk with the adult PRT operatives who supported her team as they trained always went some way towards making her feel more adult however upon opening the door, doing so with a kick that was more forceful than necessary and resulted in a loud impact which made her wince yet upon stepping inside Regina saw that there was only one occupant of the gym at present and that she had paid no mind to the noise at all.

It was Geraldine Field, Mouse Protector.

Whilst she was by far Regina's least favourite member of the team the youngest Ward would still not go so far as to say that she hated her team-mate, at least not most of time.

Incendiary disliked that Mouse Protector made the team look bad and was, in her opinion a weak link and liability that not enough was being done to either correct or remove; her mouse theme had little if anything to do with her powers as far as Regina could tell and her attempt at a Knightly aesthetic was lacklustre at best and downright shoddy when compared to Chevalier, her attempts at the witty banter made popular by the few Heroes quick witted and charismatic enough to make it a part of their persona were a frankly embarrassing collection of gags and puns better suited to entertaining small children and most damnable of all was that with all of her powers supposedly turning her into something greater than human Mouse Protector was still a clumsy and half-hearted attempt at a hero and it was that which had led to Cheerleader getting hurt.

Except at that moment Geraldine was none of those things.

Regina watched, jaw slackening in silent disbelief as she watched her team-mate in action and struggled to reconcile what she saw with everything she had thought she knew about Mouse Protector. Currently her mousy hair was tied back into a tight and practical bun at the back of her head whilst she wore grey sweatpants and a black tank-top which displayed enough to properly highlight core muscles that were clearly powerful if not so defined as to have clear abs and arms and shoulders which were made brawny by swinging a sword which Regina could only assume was heavier than it looked or else Mouse Protector was simply stocky by nature, the entire look being completed by the fact that her hands were wrapped as she unleashed salvo after salvo of precise and punishing blows against a training dummy that had had been automated to counter and respond.

Regina could still only stare as she watched yet her eyes narrowed with steadily building anger as the mechanical dummy threw a wild left hook only for Mouse Protector to weave under the blow with blinding speed and land a trio jabs to part of what would have been upper ribs this left exposed before springing back up to her full height and in one fluid motion seizing the dummy's still extended arm below the elbow with her left hand and bringing her right fist down overhead for a hammering impact which left the limb dangling limply and would, if her foe had been another Cape almost certainly have broken the arm. Geraldine was not finished however and followed up the attack by thrusting further into her mechanical adversary's guard and slamming her elbow into the point where a cheek and jawbone would meet with a force that would likely have knocked teeth loose; immediately pressing her advantage with a use of her powers where she used the fact that she had obviously marked the training dummy as her teleportation point in order to appear on its' right side in the blink of an eye where she used the fact that the automaton was still reeling and struggling to respond in order to land a gut punch which left the dummy reeling and staggering whilst doubled over in a display of realism that was almost uncomfortable to watch. Eventually the machine made another attempt to fight back in the form of a roundhouse kick which was swiftly answered as Mouse Protector once again teleported into its' space, crouching this time so that she could spring upwards and catch the leg that kicked out with her shoulder before ensnaring the limb with her arms and throwing them both to the ground with a leaping, driving tackle where she pivoted mid-fall to ensure the landing was as awkward as possible for her opponent. Another instant teleportation brought her from the dummy's legs to its' head where, still in her grounded position she struck out with her knee in a cage-fighter like assault that left the training dummy motionless and gave Geraldine the brief moment of pause it took her to realise that she was being observed.

"Hey kid!" her somewhat overlarge grey eyes found Regina and she flashed the younger girl a large-cheeked smile which showed crooked teeth "Shouldn't you be in school?"

And with that anger that had simmering finally came to a head.

"Shouldn't you be digging through dumpsters and tripping over your own shoelaces you fuckwit?"

"Woah, woah, woah what the hell firecracker?" Geraldine's hands were raised defensively, which only served to anger the younger Ward more "Are you okay? Did something happen, what's wrong-"

"THAT!" Regina yelled, voice taking on the scratchy quality that accompanied her pyro-kinetic abilities as it rose in volume and shook with anger

"ALL OF ALL WHAT YOU JUST DID! YOU'VE LET US ALL THINK THAT YOU'RE THE GOOFY LITTLE DUMB-ASS WHO CAN'T DO SHIT RIGHT AND THE WHOLE TIME YOU'VE BEEN ABLE TO FIGHT LIKE THAT?….SO FUCK US THEN RIGHT? FUCK ALL OF US WHO HAVE TO DEAL WITH YOU ACTING LIKE A CLOWN, FUCK CHANTELLE RIGHT?"

"Chantelle is-"

"FUCK YOU!" Geraldine's attempt to speak was cut off by Regina stepping into her space and physically shoving her with all the force she could muster, knocking the older and larger girl back a pace even despite her sturdy frame and enhanced abilities; moreover the blow seemed to shake Geraldine, leaving her expression faltering and eyes downcast whilst Regina stepped close to shove the subject of her anger again only to be halted when Geraldine caught her wrists, holding them with as little force as she could.

"Chantelle's okay" the words were strained, the weight of her action clearly weighing on Mouse Protector which Incendiary could only take a bitter pleasure from "I was gonna go and try to talk to her again after my physio thing but her parents were there….So was Chadwick, I didn't want to intrude"

Chadwick, Chess-piece; former Ward and someone else whom Regina admired. The knowledge did nothing at all to soothe her anger.

"Try to talk to her?" she sneered, a hateful and mocking repetition of Geraldine's words "Stop trying! She doesn't want you around her, because you're the idiot who got her put in the hospital. Nobody wanted you here Mouse, all you've ever done is drag this team down AND NOW WE KNOW THAT YOU'RE DOING IT ON PURPOSE!"

"I-It's not….I mean-" Geraldine's halted and stammering attempts to explain herself, eyes wide, panicked and unless Regina was mistaken teary only served to further infuriate the spiralling fire-thrower and send her deeper into her rage.

"Speak up idiot!" she demanded, spittle flecking Geraldine's freckled cheek and seeming to give her enough focus to release Regina's wrists and wipe at her face, her expression hardening into a stern mask more worthy of a hero than anything the younger girl had seen from her thus far.

"I have been trying Gina-"
"Don't call me that, we're not-"

"I have been trying so damn hard to find a balance where I can do what I do and still be a hero" Geraldine's voice shook with every syllable "I like having fun and cracking jokes on the job, I really do; the whole character I play into is great….But I have to be that way because if I'm not, if I go out in all black like Alexandria and start teleporting around after people, making sure they can't run away while I hunt them down with a sword and dodge every single hit they throw at me….I don't look like a hero, I stop being something that people like the Protectorate can show to kids and I just start being a contract kill-"

She was silenced by a slap to the face that left her massaging a reddened spot on her cheek.

"DO YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT?" Regina demanded in a furious scream "You really think that you're the next Alexandria and that you have to tone yourself down so it doesn't scare the kids? You're full of shit!"

To demonstrate her utter disbelief in her team-mates' claims Regina lashed out wildly with a left jab and right cross that were barely coordinated enough to be called such and struck nothing but air, blue eyes widening first in shock and then secondly in world-shattering pain as every thought was stricken from her mind and her entire body crumpled under the explosive impact of a single retaliatory blow; Geraldine had marked her when she grabbed her wrists and Regina had no chance at all to stop the older girl from teleporting to her left side and delivering a straight right jab directly to her throat which left her convulsing on the ground and grasping at her neck as though she could force it to begin taking in air once again.

After several moments of thrashing in dizzying, sickening pain and choking where she began to genuinely fear for her life as she became light-headed Regina dragged herself to her feet and ignited her powers in a crackling blast of superheated air whilst her blonde hair shifted to blazing orange that was mirrored by the fireballs forming in her clenched fists.

"I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!" the scream was met with silence, save for the way it echoed back from the walls of the gym and the fire alarms that began to trill in the next instant as the smoke issued by Incendiary's powers activated sprinkler systems which dowsed the gym and its' surrounding area.

Mouse Protector was nowhere in sight.

---

Night had fallen over the city and with it a mild chill that was especially noticeable in the hilly areas at the edge of the city, interspersed only with a handful of narrow, winding roads and paths which led to pleasantly scenic locations from which one could enjoy a view of the entire city, the monorail track which ringed it forming a flood-lit and glowing halo whilst lights adorning the smaller tracks which criss-crossed the deepest reaches of the city formed a faintly glowing web which would be more prominent were they not lost in a sea of shifting and multicoloured neon that stood out starkly in the night, a man-made an almost incomprehensible jewel in the darkness.

Nick and Hana had, as intended driven out to the hills under the pretext of taking the old and battered but lovingly restored and personalised muscle car which Hana had been gifted by her adoptive parents for a test drive and at present Nick was currently trying to work up the nerve to take advantage of the cold by using it as a pretext to wrap an arm around the young woman beside him, though he found himself suddenly aware of it requiring an entirely different form of do-or-die bravery to that which he was used to implementing under the guise of Chevalier.

"It's been a nice night" Hana murmured softly, shifting her weight on the blanket Nick had set down for the two of them during the small picnic he had prepared, the boy blushing at how cliché the entire affair was whilst Hana had privately adored every moment of it as she did almost every other aspect of life in her adopted country, with what was cliché and commonplace to others often being new to her; a love further highlighted by the unmistakably American car parked mere feet away. As she shifted her weight bottle-green eyes met Nick's gaze and she slowly and deliberately leaned into his side, equally as uncertain as Chevalier was in the moment but relaxing as a strong arm looped around her waist and pulled her closer.

"It really is" Nick nodded, his words only slightly affected by the sudden hammering of his heart against his ribs which Hana smiled upon realising she could hear "Nice of Harry to wrangle that mess with Gina"

"He is a good friend, I was honestly surprised to learn that you were not friends before the Wards" Hana noted, faint accent being coming more pronounced as she slowly considered her words. The two of them had, as planned and with Myrddin still keeping them company ventured back into the Protectorate headquarters where they hoped to be able to speak with Cheerleader and keep their friend company once her parents had left, the trio of Wards also hoping that they might see their former team-mate Chadwick, or Chess-Piece as he had once been known at the same time however before they could reach the medical facilities they had been pulled aside by a solemn and stern Legend who had explained the vaguest details of a situation that had occurred on site only a short while prior, wherein Incendiary had accidentally tripped fire alarms and prompted a brief evacuation of the building, with examination of the camera feeds in the area showing that the youngest Ward had deliberately started an altercation with Mouse Protector which had quickly turned physical. The matter of disciplinary action was one that would have required Chevalier's presence as the head of the Wards however Harry had stepped forward and stated that both he and Hana were considered unofficial second in command, in lieu of a proper chain of command and that he would be willing to handle the matter if only to gain experience in important aspects of the job; a degree of professionalism which was promptly ruined by the high-five he had given Nick.

"If I'd had a friend like Harry before I came to the Wards I might never have started out….He would have helped me do something with all that anger"

"And anger is useful" Hana's expression became both hard and thoughtful, green eyes becoming intense in a way which drew Nick's attention to them all the more intently "Sometimes even for heroes the story isn't as heroic as the stories you Americans tell yourselves; life is….messy and the rough edges shouldn't be smoothed"

"You Americans? I'm with you on this one" Nick's tone was gentle though he watched in cautious fascination as the shimmering and warping green-black of Hana's power manifested and roiled around her, taking shape as she spoke and forming a particularly vicious looking machete no doubt based on one that she had seen as a child in Kurdistan at the mention of rough edges. Hearing Nick's agreement she shook her head faintly, allowing the weapon to fall way into incoherence and letting out a wordless hum as she rested her head on the shoulder of her team-mate, friend, date and many other possible things which she found her stomach fluttering every time she considered them; the two enjoyed a peaceful silence until Hana found that she wanted to ensure that the conversation did not fizzle away in awkwardness in the wake of their momentary openness with one another.

"But on the subject of getting things done….What do you think of the Camaro so far?"

"Handles better than it had any right to considering that I think it's actually older than my Dad" Nick laughed, earning himself a playful swat to the chest which Hana had to reposition herself almost onto his lap to deliver though neither of them commented on the sudden closeness.

"I was told breathing life back into a junker builds character….I'm planning on giving the Camaro a character all of its' own" her words were companied by an enthusiastic smile which left Nick's mind blissfully blank for a moment until he could reorganise his thoughts into something that would not embarrass him to utter aloud.

"You're planning on doing more to it?"
"I sleep once a year, I always have time to do more" Hana noted with a satisfied purr "Besides, I have this car because I am a Cape….The car should fit the part should it not?"

"You want to make it your...I don't know, work ride?"

"It would be better than the vans no?" Hana's grin widened at the thought "Harry can fly, the rest of arriving in a Camaro modified with Tinker-tech would make a few of our villains reconsider I think"

"It really would" Nick matched her smile but spoke delicately as he added "But which Tinker are you planning on getting to work on it?….The only person that comes to mind is the guy the Barone Family use"

"Scram-Kid" Hana grumbled the name with obvious distaste for the villainous teenager reputably younger than herself who was one of two Tinkers within the Mafia family that plagued a vast swathe of the city, Scram-Kid himself was a face rarely seen at the forefront of the action, allegedly a product of his being the nephew of a Made Man within the family who had gone to lengths to ensure his safety however the influence of mildly unhinged mechanic could be seen in the vehicles the Barone Family used; white-tired and boxy things that appeared to be anachronistic parodies of cars from the roaring twenties albeit fitted with modified jet engines that spewed blue fire in their wake and handled in ways that should not have been possible.

"Cheerleader was right" Hana pouted though her tone was still good natured and retained some of her previous smile "The villains do seem to get the best of everything, names, suits, toys-"

"I mean would you really want to dress up like some of the villains….Like Delenda-Est?" Nick noted, the idea leaving Hana with a blush creeping across her cheeks whilst he himself tried to not to become distracted in a way that the girl still sitting on his lap might notice by the thought of her clad in the costume in question.

"It's just that I have more time than most people and I still want to make the most of what I have before it goes away?"

"Goes away?" something in that made Nick's stomach lurch uncomfortably.

"I was offered a position on another team" the words hit him like icy water and he struggled to find a response.

"Oh" the single croaked syllable was all he could manage yet Hana took it as an invitation to explain.

"There were teams before the Protectorate became sponsored by the government and the PRT was formed yes? Other countries are starting similar initiatives and it feels as though Heroes working together is going to be the new way of things, other teams are starting….One of them reached out to me" Hana let out a slow sigh "They're calling themselves Haven, they're backed by the Church and they wanted me to join specifically because I came to this country and converted to Christianity, they wanted to hold me up as an example of the American Dream and their vision of a Christian nation….It would have meant moving away"

"Would have? You're not going?" Nick clung on to the desperate hope he had managed to find in the fleeting used of the past tense and Hana's slight shake of the head allowed him to let out a slow breath that had been trapped in a suddenly tight chest.

"No" she breathed out "I don't want to be their symbol, not like that….I didn't want to leave you-the Wards but it made me think of how little time we really have together; we both known that they want us to head our own teams in other cities when we're older"

"Yeah" Nick leaned forward, forehead touching hers as his arms found her waist once again "Guess we'll have to make the most of the time we have now….And find you a Tinker so your car can handle the road-trips to wherever I end up"

"A road trip with you sounds like a great idea" Hana beamed, leaning into Nick ever so slightly and prompting them to both slowly manoeuvre themselves so that their lips were almost touching, Nick's hand reaching up to cup Hana's cheek whilst her arms found their way around broad shoulders as she made to pull him to her and close the last of the distance between them.

And then the moment was ruined by the sound of something hurtling through the air at great speed.

"What the hell!" Nick barked, more furious exclamation and curse than question as his eyes darted upwards in the same instant that he and Hana broke apart and leapt to their feet, tense and ready with Chevalier, thoughts swiftly centring on strategies needing only a moment to find the source of the noise and realise with a sense of sudden urgency that Harry, who was hovering above them and steadily descending was in full costume and holding his staff.

Harry had donned his guise as Myrddin, meaning that the Wards were needed.

"I really didn't want to interrupt" his greeting was filled with a genuine note of discomfort as opened one of his sigil-like portals and pulled a pair of locked cases bearing the logo of the PRT from one of his pocket dimensions "But you both need to suit up and get ready to roll ASAP"

"What's happened?" Hana asked, tone conveying the surprise that Chevalier was pushing aside and working through as he took the first case and drew the Canon-blade, inspecting his weapon before anything else.

"Everything is happening, not even co-ordinated; just everyone decided to take advantage of everyone else being an ass-hole all on the same night" Myrddin huffed bitterly.

"We need actual details" Chevalier noted pointedly, emphatically agreeing with his friends' position especially given the moment that circumstances had seen to interrupt but still needing proper information to work with.

"The Tinker crew that have a whole 'Notice me please' thing with Hero, Cutting Edge...Yeah they're up to something, I'm guessing because the Barone Family are occupied they got brave enough to come back and Hero is busy with that" Myrddin began, setting a grim picture with the opening statement

"Again, the Barone's are busy which means Delenda-Est feels like she can remind everyone why she's the undisputed Queen of everywhere; Alexandria is going after her and Eidolon is staying back in reserve-"

"Why are the Barone's busy?" Hana asked, noting the way the Mafia family had been mentioned multiple times in passing already and being cognizant of the fact that the Wards most recent activity had been in a part of the city the family claimed.

"That's where it gets fun" Myrddin's words were exasperated and accompanied by a dramatic wave of his staff "Because nobody knows who it even was that we were fighting a few days ago the Barone Family have gotten into their heads that it was the Jackal-Heads, the Jackal-Heads can't deny it because that would look like backing down from a fight they started-"

"And now they're taking potshots at each other" Chevalier surmised "How bad is it?"

"Multiple arson attacks started by regular mob guys without powers, firefighters have already responded but Legend is busy trying to find Anubis Da Pharaoh and his heavy hitters and stop them from going on a rampage through Barone turf….Which has freed up the Barone capes to go and make a big statement of a hit"

"So how bad is it?" Chevalier repeated, eyeing his armour with some impatience yet still not quite comfortable with the idea of changing in front of Hana just yet, he would not take his pants off around her until after a conversation about where they stood with one another.

"Jackal-Heads have been branching out of the Southside and into the west, word is that they've got a lot of money in that new art museum that opened up six months ago….A few of Scram-Kid's cars pulled up; five Capes and some other guys"

"They're attacking the museum?" Hana snarled, openly and visibly affronted at the idea of destroying art and cultural heritage over something so petty as gang territory.

"They're looting it; sounds like they want Anubis to buy back the stuff as compensation-"

"Which Capes?" Chevalier asked, stern and focused as his mind raced and countermeasures began to form themselves "Tinkers?"

"Everyone but the Tinkers" Myrddin answered "Wiseguy-Capisce and Whack went inside, we'll have to go through Lackadaisy, Splurge Malone and Kenny Combo from the Bronx to get inside"

"We can handle that" Chevalier asserted confidently, managing a smile as he turned to Hana who was readying her costume and preparing to fully become Miss Militia again "Well, no Scram-Kid but we can take a couple of his cars….You might just get those modifications for the Camaro that you wanted"

"You say the sweetest things" Hana laughed, eyes bright as she winked in his direction before she paused once a thought came to her and she turned to Myrddin "Where are the others?"

"Incendiary was still on site, having to go over some paperwork after the thing earlier. She's gonna meet us there with PRT reinforcements; Cheerleader has been provisionally discharged and is gonna be hanging back in case we need backup….Chess-Piece offered to jump in if it gets-"
"No" Chevalier cut his friend off "He got out for good reasons, let him have his peace; we can handle this. Where's Mouse Protector?"

"We have no idea" Myrddin admitted with a defeated look that neither his hood nor his visor could hide.

---

In her flight from the PRT Headquarters Geraldine had been in that singular frame of mind where utter senseless and incoherent desperation met focus and determination and created, through some inexplicable emotional alchemy the unshakeable sense of exactly what should be done that went entirely beyond her ability to describe it and had seen her acting as though on autopilot.

She had tried to find the balance between the powers she had been given by whatever force arbitrated such things, powers that would befit an assassin or merciless bounty hunter and the kind of person she wanted to be, namely a hero who brought hope and smiles to those in need, the kind of hero she had wished for in her own hour of need and yet despite her best efforts Mouse Protector felt that she had failed. The wisecracking and often-times abrasive or overbearing girl had always struggled to make friends, especially in any lasting and meaningful capacity and had simply accepted such things as a part of her nature however she had been unable to stop the sickening, plummeting feeling or the sniffling tears that had accompanied it with the realisation that what little connections she had managed to make with her fellow Wards would likely soon to be lost to her in the wake of her latest mistakes. Whilst Cheerleader's injuries were not being officially or entirely blamed on her actions Geraldine knew that they would be held against her and that her explanations and justifications would fall on deaf ears as they had with Regina, with Incendiary whom the fleeing hero was certain would be the cause of her ultimate dismissal from the Wards.

Karambit had been removed from the team for her excessive force, Mouse Protector felt that her own removal was a foregone conclusion after punching her younger team-mate in the throat.

Her departure from the headquarters had not been a swift thing, instead she had been present for long enough to hear the fire alarms began to screech as Incendiary's fury ignited her powers and with alarms and bustling, evacuating bodies pressing all around her Mouse Protector had felt something of the instinct that guided her in her better moments come into play and push her towards a course of action that would no doubt see her further reprimanded by her superiors when they learned of it; namely making her way into the costume department and its' attached workshop and collecting her own recently repaired attire, sword included and stuffing it into a specially made duffle bag intended to muffle any noise from the metallic components within and serve in circumstances where the more easily identified cases would not suffice. With her costume stored, save for the hoodie which she had thrown over the black tank-top she had worn in the gym and a hastily scrawled note simply stating that it was she who had taken it left in its' place the stricken and anxious Mouse Protector had exited the headquarters and slipped away, paying no regard to the PRT employees around her or the proper procedure for evacuations and instead vanishing into the city.

She was not entirely sure how she had found herself in a small coffee shop somewhere on the more affluent West-Side.

She was however entirely sure that the reason she had lingered in the place for so long was because of the remarkably pretty, but severely battered looking girl whose table she was now approaching.

"Excuse me, is this seat taken?" Geraldine, as she considered herself in that moment clad as she was in a hoodie and sweatpants and feeling decidedly unheroic asked; her voice chipper and yet apologetic as she approached with the understanding that she was, as she often seemed to be disturbing someone's peace uninvited.

"It's cool, you can take it" the reply caught Geraldine off guard for a moment and she quickly clarified.

"No I mean….I was asking if I can sit here….I bought you a coffee" she took the seat and tried to make herself comfortable, despite the sudden lump in her throat and nervousness which left her hands trembling slightly as she placed two cups on the table and slid one across "Normally I go to Costa Coffee….Today I'm trying 'cost a lot' coffee"

The girl, whose name Geraldine did not yet know smiled at that; which she considered a win on her part.

Studying the girl, in a way that she hoped would not be seen or at least not considered creepy or overt if it was noticed Geraldine saw that she had a hefty and thoroughly worn backpack with more than one hole that had been patched clearly visible which had been slung over the back of her chair whilst she herself sat hunched forward on it, as though trying to appear as small and unassuming as possible. Her somewhat bedraggled and thoroughly beaten appearance worked against her in that regard as it had drawn Geraldine's attention and had likely caught the glimpses of others, though the young hero noted that small and slight frame, buried as it was within baggy clothes would likely go some way to making her less eye-catching in other circumstances. The girl was perhaps tall enough to reach Geraldine's shoulders and fair-skinned with much of her appearance hidden beneath an outfit consisting of a pair of ripped and faded jeans whose loose fitting seemed deliberate which had been tucked into a pair of black platform boots which reached her calves and were fastened with candy pink laces which seemed to draw attention to the fact that the boots themselves were currently far from the pristine condition that they had once been sold in; above this was an equally loose fitting black hoodie, its' colour faded yet its' material thick enough to stave off the current cold whilst emblazoned on its' chest was a logo for a band that Geraldine had been acquainted to through one of her fellow Wards, it might have been Reed before his departure. The hood of the garment was pulled up to hide much of a face that was lean and waifish with high cheekbones and eyes of a bright, almost iridescent hazel colour that caught every speck of light the encountered and whilst most of her hair was hidden beneath both her hood and the grey and pink striped beanie hat she wore beneath it Geraldine could still see a few strands of black peeking out.

All of this however was secondary to the fact that the nameless girl kept her right arm clutched to her body, its' movements stiff and halting and that her face, pretty as Geraldine found it was marred by a mass of bruising that featured purple, yellow and even green shades which spanned almost the entire width of her face to give her two black eyes from its' point of origin on a nose that had clearly been broken and put back in place without the aid of a doctor.

Before she could stare for too long Geraldine's thoughts were brought screeching to a halt by an utterly unexpected question.

"What are ya a cop? Ya look too young"

"I-what-no-I-huh?" the syllables tumbled out of an utterly flummoxed Geraldine as grey eyes widened to comical proportions and she was left reeling, needing several moments to try and put her thoughts back into a somewhat intelligible order "Not a cop….Just saw someone who looked like their day is going even worse than mine and decided to ask the bartender what they've been drinking, which sounded a lot smoother in the movies than when I said it 'cos, I don't know I guess misery loves company I guess?"

"Uh huh" the girl answered bluntly, studying Geraldine intently enough to have her sipping from her overpriced coffee if only so that the cup would hide some of her face and keep the person she was bothering from seeing how suddenly flustered she had become.

"I guess I just wanted to do something nice today" she mumbled between sips.

"Right and you thought something, nice and today were my first, last and middle names so you'd come and do me?"

That left Geraldine choking on coffee and almost spilling the entire cup on herself in her sputtering.

"Aww crap" the bruised girl sighed "Sorry about that, here let me-"

"That was funny!" Geraldine managed to choke out despite the burning in her throat and her prominent, freckled cheeks which she was now certain were an impressive shade of pink "That was really funny and wearing a cup of coffee is a price worth paying if I get to talk to someone with a sense of humour today!….But I uh, I didn't get your name….If you don't mind me bothering you?"

"I'm Sally" the bruised girl introduced herself, reaching over the table to offer a hand which Geraldine shook enthusiastically whilst noting that Sally had the faintest traces of an accent which suggested that she was not a native of this city, or indeed this region of the country.

"I'm Geraldine. Call me Geri, everybody does….Probably 'cos my brother's name was Tom, then people don't like me making puns as if I had a choice in it" Geraldine offered a smile with her self-deprecation but couldn't quite mask the way her shoulders slumped slightly at the thought.

"Cursed from day one….Believe me I get that" Sally raised her cup as though toasting "Here's to shit fortune and overpriced coffee right?"

"Huzzah" Geraldine managed to make the word sound utterly deflated as she lifted her own, unfortunately emptied cup though her expression brightened a little a she caught Sally giving her a quizzical look.

"Your brother 'was' called Tom….What happened?" the way Geraldine's expression twisted did away with the need for a verbal response and Sally's hands flew to her mouth, her attempt at an apology being cut short by a pained wince and hiss through clenched teeth as she was punished for the sudden and reflexive movement of her right arm.

"Are you okay? That sounded like it hurt?" Geraldine's words were filled with sudden concern, her own painful memories forgotten as Sally massaged her injured arm and shoulder before managing a one-armed shrug.

"Yeah, I just" she paused, flopping back in her chair with as much drama as she could risk poured into the flourishing motion before letting out a huff as she continued "I hate this fucking city so much….I'm not even from here"

"Yeah I kinda guessed" Geraldine noted.

"Yeah well, I wasn't doing so hot back home either, things were lousy and there was nothing really keeping me there so when I got an offer for a job interview and a fresh start here I saved up what I could and managed to take a couple trains and get somewhere to stay for a few nights" the bruised girls' expression darkened into something bitter, angry and utterly heartbroken that Geraldine could only guess at the depths of

"Well, turns out the job wasn't what it was sold as and the people I would have been working with and for are all ass-holes. To top it off I ended getting jumped on the way back from the interview, so now I'm looking for another way to get home….as if there's anything there anyway. Honestly thanks for the coffee, I can barely afford the prices here….I just wanted to come to the West-side and have one nice thing here y'know?"

"I can help" Geraldine's voice was quiet, intimately aware that she was crossing boundaries and overstepping her place as a merely talkative stranger in this matter

"I've had a part time job for a while" she chose her words carefully, ensuring that she did not betray the exact nature of her work and who she really was whilst also, out of a rare sense of camaraderie taking care not to outright lie "It was paying pretty well but it might be about to end….I uh, kinda messed up something important on a night shift and I got into an argument with a co-worker so I think my manager is probably gonna decide they've had enough of me, but I've got enough saved to last for a while….I've definitely got enough saved to buy you a ticket to wherever home is"

"You're sweet Geri" Sally offered a smile full of teeth which Geraldine noted were oddly pointy, though with her own crooked teeth she could hardly comment on others' "Most people would have tried to either parlay the spilling coffee into inviting me round to their place for 'coffee' or offered to buy a ticket to wherever I want, as long as where I want is their place"

"Who are these 'most people' you know?" Geraldine gasped, utterly aghast at the notion of taking advantage of anybody in a such a way, whilst at the same time blushing until the tips of her ears burned at the mental images Sally's comments painted in her mind, the bruised girl was after all remarkably pretty even with her broken nose, battered face and unflattering clothes.

Before the two could talk further, with the risk of Geraldine tripping over her words and making an imbecile of herself growing with every sentence the young hero in search of an escape from herself was provided a harsh reality check in the form of sirens filling the air.

"What the hell?" Sally muttered, good arm tensing as she half-rose from her seat until Geraldine, without thinking placed a hand on top of hers to steady her and leaned in her chair to get a better view of what was going on beyond the windows of the coffee shop.

The sirens and flashing blue lights that they had preceded belonged to police cars which sped by and were joined with what Geraldine realised, with a sinking feeling were the black armoured vans of the PRT.

"Damn it" she muttered under her breath before leaping from her seat and frantically grasping the duffel bag which held her thankfully lightweight armour and preparing to leave until she heard Sally behind her.

"Wait here" she urged "Please"

"Where're you going?" once again Geraldine, or Mouse Protector as she found herself slipping into the mindset required for duty found herself looking for an answer she could give to distract from the truth, though this time she found herself more willing to lie to protect both her own identity and Sally's safety.

"It's been crazy around here lately with the capes and stuff, it looks like things are gonna be bad tonight and my Grandma lives over that way….I'm gonna make sure she's okay"

"I-okay" Sally nodded.

"I'll see you….oh" Geraldine's face fell "I probably won't….that sucks"

"Who knows, it's not like I've got a train to catch tonight" Sally shrugged "Go do what you need to do"

"Right" the two girls locked eyes for a moment, something passing between them in their silence whilst the rest of the patrons of the coffee shop went about their business without paying any attention, either turning back to their drinks and conversations or in the case of those less used to the antics of the cities' Villains making their way out of the immediate vicinity. The brief spell was broken as Geraldine turned and hurried out of the door as hastily as she could manage without drawing attention and turned into the nearest alleyway before breaking into a full sprint, rushing through the night air with a series of leaps and flips that took her from ground level to the rooftops in moments by using walls, fire escapes and ledges to her advantage, all whilst searching for both the incident that had drawn the PRT to the area and also a place where she would be able to don her costume with some degree of secrecy before rushing into the fray to find and help her fellow Wards.

All worries and reservations about her future within the team be damned, she was a hero and these were the moments which defined her.

Geraldine was however, completely unaware that she had been watched.

"Now why couldn't you have been that nice the first time….You're not such an ass-hole after all" Sally murmured to empty night air as she stared happily in the direction Geraldine had departed, following her out of the coffee shop and keeping track of her movements for as long as possible in order to confirm suspicions that had been growing as they spoke, a smile spreading across her battered face and her cheeks warm despite the chill in the air as she did so.

It seemed that Mouse Protector, for that was who she clearly was had failed to recognise her though she could hardly be blamed for that, despite the way the injuries between Sally's two forms lined up with one another had failed to recognise her whilst Sally had recognised the voice of the armoured Ward who had unleashed as many terrible jokes as she had actual blows during their previous altercation within moments of her sitting at the table. Sally chewed at her bottom lip with pointed teeth as she weighed her options whilst at her deepest core already knowing that her choice had been made from the moment Geraldine had sat down and offered her kindness to a complete stranger; it had been suggested to Sally that if she could draw the attention of the Wards there was a reasonable chance of being taken into the care of the PRT and provided with the help and medicine she needed in return for her cooperation with the young heroes and though the idea had been sullied and soured by her first interaction with them she found herself suddenly far more willing to try again in light of these recent developments.

"Looks like I'm a fucking romantic now" she muttered to nobody in particular as she set off in the direction Mouse Protector had gone, taking her own bag with her and as she dipped into the alleyway removing both her oversized hoodie and grey and pink striped beanie hat to reveal that her black hair was dyed bubblegum pink at the tips, stowing the items in her rucksack and withdrawing the sleeveless leather battle-vest with its' studs and patches that would not fit her properly until the transformation which was already beginning reached its' completion; her eyes losing their colour whilst her skin took on a magenta tone and musculature rippled beneath it, her shoulder-blades expanding in a grotesque display to form the beginnings of her mismatched wings.

Soon enough Sally was gone and Nemesis took off into the night.

---

"Youse is makin' a mistake y'hear? You know who owns this joint and it aint got nothin' to do with public interest so maybe you sit on the fence this time huh? Maybe we don't have to have any problems here just 'cos youse wanted to be tough guys today how 'bout that?" the voice which snapped out the statements thinly disguised as questions in a staccato burst wore a nasal and overwrought accent which sounded just as laughably false as the attempt at bravado which permeated it, a throwback to some romanticised glory days of the Mafia which the speaker was several generations removed from at best.

All in all it drove Incendiary to the verge of violence and her powers ignited around her, wreathing her fists in coronas of raging fire as she spoke through clenched teeth.

"Why are we even talking to these chuckle-fucks? We've got the people to just overpower them, for Christ sake let's get this over with instead of standing around like idiots!"

"Calm down" it was Cheerleader who spoke and by virtue of that fact alone Incendiary listened, the roaring light of her power fading but not extinguishing itself in response. The two teenage girls were situated toward the rear of the combined response to the Barone Family and their ongoing robbery of the art museum allegedly owned by their rivals, that response taking the form of a defensive perimeter formed around the 'Jean-Michel Basquiat Museum of the Arts', one of the more modern and yet most prominent cultural centres of the city; a perimeter formed of both police vehicles which served as impromptu cover for the officers themselves, the local police force having been compelled to act by the outpouring of scorn and derision following their inaction only days prior and behind them the black vans of the PRT where the two Wards currently present were surrounded by field agents in specialised armour with weapons intended to halt those with powers in an efficient but non-lethal manner and importantly a perimeter with a dual purpose. On the one hand they would stop the Jackal-Heads should the Cape-supremacist gang arrive with the intention of enacting bloody retribution on their rivals whilst on the other they would serve to keep the members of the Barone Family from leaving with their ill-gotten spoils.

The Barone Family themselves, or at least the contingent that was present at the museum had arrived in a convoy of four cars that were clearly the product of the Tinker known as Scram-Kid; each of them an oblong and boxy thing with an outdated design which belied a level of armour which Incendiary was irked to know would not be unmade by her flames no matter how vigorously she hurled them, each modified car having space for the five people it had ferried to the museum and a vast array of looted artwork which the jet engines mounted within them would ensure that they escaped with if they could only find a route. A driver remained seated within each of these vehicles, whilst a trio of the Barone family grunts had followed two of their capes inside presumably to aid with the heavy lifting and manual labour which no self-respecting villain would perform themselves which left a little over half a dozen men in sharply cut black suits with white pin-stripes milling around in a loose formation behind their armoured cars; the assortment of guns they had brought lowered in a gesture which the police were willing to reciprocate as the presence of Capes on both sides turned what would have been a furious firefight into an uneasy stalemate.

Atop one of the cars stood the man responsible for the nasal and overconfident challenge to the two Wards in attendance; a young man most likely in his late teens and certainly no older than his early twenties clad in a suit much like those of his underlings, save for the fact that its' pinstripes, like those worn by all Capes within the Barone family a bright gold colour which went some way to flattering a frame that was largely unremarkable in height and build; further set apart from his underlings by a black domino mask which along with his angled forward trilby covered a great deal of his face in shadow though left onlookers with an impression of slicked back dark hair and a prominent, Roman nose. Over his suit he wore a brown leather harness slung over one shoulder in the style of an ammo belt and a pair of hefty gloves in the same colour which managed to clash with a detract from hi suit less than expected. This was Splurge Malone, a Blaster and Changer classification Cape whose ability allowed him to shrink items down a certain percentage in a what had first appeared to be a weaker variety of Myrddin's pocket dimensions and then, upon resizing the objects hurl them forward with excessive force and momentum as makeshift projectiles. For some odd reason, likely the result of a theme Incendiary did not grasp Splurge had taken to using foodstuffs as his weapon choice; primarily cream-pies.

Which had naturally led to Mouse Protector making jokes that the younger girl still wished she could un-hear.

Leaning against the hood of the car Spurge stood upon and so positioned at his right hand side was Lackadaisy, the young woman whose presence was a rarity amongst the male dominated ranks of the Barone footsoldiers and whose features were largely unknown beyond the curves hinted at by her striped suit and the deep burgundy shirt worn beneath it as the mask she wore covered much of her face, leaving only her mouth uncovered and featuring an oddly whimsical cat design replete with feline wars which her hat had been modified to account for. In one hand she held a mercifully unlit Molotov cocktail whilst in the other was a bottle of wine which had been opened and had several generous gulps taken from it in preparation for the inevitable confrontation. Lackadaisy was a low level Master type with a peculiar power, in that she could consume large quantities of alcohol with no adverse effects to herself but then push the expected lack of coordination, dizziness, sickness and headaches that came with drinking far too much onto those around her at will.

The third and final of the trio of waiting Capes was tall and olive skinned, black-shirted and clad in a white Tuxedo which still featured the expected golden pinstripes and a matching trilby, along with a mask that consisted of heavily tinted sunglasses and an obviously fake pencil moustache whose brown colour failed to match his own curls of raven black hair, the outfit being completed by bandages wrapped around his fists. This was Kenny Combo from the Bronx, a breakaway member of another crime family who had found a place with the Barone organisation on account of his admittedly short-ranged but impressively versatile abilities as a Striker which would have seen him become one of the most sought after mercenaries in the city were he ever to begin freelance work.

After several moments without an answer to Splurge Malone's proposition, a heavy silence between parties filled with the muted shuffling of people adjusting their position cautiously it was Kenny Combo who spoke out, evidently having grown tired of the stalemate.

"You should maybe listen to Mister Malone here, he's makin' you offer you really shouldn't refuse"

"Kenny that's not how the quote goes, at least get it right if you're gonna plagiarize!" Cheerleader called out, her white bodysuit and the orange outfit she was named for draped over it ensuring that all eyes turned to her as she waded through the midst of dark clothed PRT field agents and police officers, a silent nod to Incendiary without ever looking in the younger Wards' direction ensuring that the two of them quickly found lockstep and mad their way forward until they at the front of the assembled barrier, the attempt at needling delivered in an attempt to throw the Mafioso off balance and exacerbate whatever uncertainty had already set in, something which she felt she had achieved the moment she heard the white-suited gangster respond.

"Ay listen broad, it's Kenny Combo from the Bronx! Ya say the whole thing, like a tribe called quest, a pimp named Slick-Back or Shakira Shakira!"

"Be quiet ya chowder-head, they're tryina distract you" Splurge snapped whilst Lackadaisy simply tittered to herself beneath her mask as Kenny Combo bristled.

"Tell me you've actually got a plan beyond making these guys look like idiots" Incendiary growled, words barely audible amidst the irritation that filled her words and distorted her voice to a coarse scratching complete with smoke trickling from her lips. Cheerleader merely stared straight ahead and gave only the faintest of nods to acknowledge that she had heard her team-mate and that she had at least the beginnings of an idea, her eyes meeting those of each of the trio of Capes arrayed against her in turn as she sought out the most viable angle of approach before settling on Splurge Malone, his initial offer giving him the appearance of being malleable and willing to listen to reason.

"Let me make a counter offer!" she raised her voice to ensure that it carried and could be heard by all whilst raising a hand for the police and PRT to stand ready in case of any sudden attacks "You're surrounded and outgunned; your friends have gone inside are going to abandon you the second things get dicey….Which is going to be in the next few seconds, minutes at most because the Jackal-Heads know you're here and Anubis Da Pharaoh is out for blood"

"Why do you think we came here toots?" Splurge Malone cackled in response "Think we're out here stealing pretty pictures 'cos we're supporters of the arts? We wanted those pricks to come, only problem is that there's two snot-nosed kids and a bunch of cops that wanna be referees now; let me counter your-What the shit?"

The cocky and smooth talking gangster was cut off by the sound of a roaring engine and screeching tires filling the air, followed immediately by the glare of headlights falling across the part of the blockade which Cheerleader and Incendiary were a part of as the vehicle responsible for the uproar came hurtling into view, with officers already scrabbling to brace against the newcomers and the fact they were now at risk of being caught in a crossfire; only for Incendiary to be the one to make sense of the situation a moment before her team-mate as one of the features of the visor she wore allowed her to see a distinctive swirling mass already taking shape close to the drivers' seat of the approaching Camaro.

"It's not the Jackal-Heads!" she called out "It's Miss Militia!"

"What on-" Cheerleader fell silent, words lost beneath the screaming of smoking tires as the vintage muscle car was thrown into a sharp sideways turn which saw the drivers' side door brought to face the direction of the Barone Family and the entire vehicle slide horizontally along the street for several dozen feet before coming to a halt and having its' door flung open in the same instant. Miss Militia was in motion the moment she emerged, the momentum of her cars' halting seeming to carry her forward as she broke into a sprint with her shifting nexus of power swirling and forming a pair of overlarge handguns loaded with non-lethal rounds which she aimed at the Mafia Capes an opened fire with, forcing them to leap and roll to safety behind their cars.

"Cheerleader!" she gasped out as she sprinted through the parting tide of bodies to reach her friends "Your power now! On Lackadaisy!"

"On it" the reply came without hesitation even in Cheerleader was not sure exactly what was being planned and she began her chorus of affirmations and chants a moment later, aiming them all at the mouse-masked woman who had already begun tipping more wine down her throat, most likely intending to send Miss Militia along with the entire front line of the blockade staggering away drunkenly. The plan became apparent in the next moment as Lackadaisy sent her wave of inebriation out, only for it to reach out in all directions an unexpectedly wash over several of her own associates, including each and everyone of the drivers still seated within their Tinker-tech cars who promptly scrabbled out of them and collapsed to the ground, making it no more than a few steps before they were all doubled over and reduced to vomiting from the sudden surge of intoxication. From there Miss Militia shifted her weapon again, a blur of green-black reconfiguring into the shape of a rocket launcher not limited by normal constraints such as ammunition supply and unloading a salvo into the cars which were proven to hardy to be destroyed entirely by the resulting blasts of fire and concussive force but were nonetheless thrown onto their sides and roofs.

"Incendiary! Corral the henchmen away from the Capes!" Cheerleader ordered "Officers, no lethal force unless they use it first! Contain and detain!"

"FINALLY!" Incendiary's voice was nearly ecstatic as she reared back and gathered a nova of raging fire in her palm before pitching it forward with all her might, the blaze igniting the air it streaked through to form a corridor of flames which the youngest Ward had a degree of control over, forming twisting barriers of fire that kept the now frightened and increasingly overwhelmed thugs and underlings all whilst taking to never actually set any of them ablaze and also to ensure that she did not ignite any ammunition of fuel tanks as police and PRT rushed forwards, the latter acting with an unnerving precision and sense of calm in the face of such a relatively minor threat.

Leaving only the battle between three Capes on either side to be decided.

"So" Cheerleader turned to Miss Militia "Who takes on who?"

"Let's wait a moment" green eyes shone with sudden mischief at that and an answer was presented before Cheerleader could ask what was happening. A shrill whistle caught the attention of herself along with Splurge Malone, Lackadaisy and Kenny Combo from the Bronx and caused them to turn their eyes skywards where they found Myrddin waiting for them, the robed figure having used Miss Militia's dramatic approach in order to soar overhead from another angle and open one of his pocket dimensions.

Allowing Chevalier to emerge from within it, clad in full armour and with Canon-Blade at the ready as he jumped into the midst of the villains.

"I was having a really good night until you guys spoiled it!" the teen knight declared as he reached the ground at just the right moment to intercept Lackadaisy in her opening attack; the drunkard had lit her Molotov cocktail and thrown it only for Chevalier to shatter the bottle underfoot and send a small amount of flammable liquid and quickly-guttering flames out on all direction whilst causing no damage to his armoured form as he landed in a crouch, close enough to the masked woman that as he reared up to his full height he could swing the hilt of his weapon directly into the side of her head and send her toppling to the ground limp and unmoving and with her hat falling from her head to roll across the street into Incendiary's flames.

The next attacker was Kenny Combo, his bandages falling away from his fists as he engaged one of his many, varied Striker powers and charged Chevalier with arcs of coruscating purple lightning trailing from knuckle to elbow in an obvious attempt to turn the metal armour of the Wards' leader against the man inside it. It was not the first time that the Wards and the Barone Family had encountered one another after all and the two groups had taken to devising ways to outfight one another specifically early on in their rivalry.

A sword which cut both ways as it allowed the Wards to anticipate such ploys.

Chevalier let out a wordless yell and hefted the Canon-Blade as he charged forth to meet his adversary, outwardly offering every indication that he intended to meet Kenny Combo for a glorious exchange of blows and a climactic showdown only to show his hand at the last moment by skidding to a halt and aiming the point of his weapon downwards as he discharged its' canon component, shattering the ground at Kenny's feet and like doing some damage to the villains' ankles as he was hurled from the ground and sent sailing into the air in a high arc; directly into the path of Myrddin who had swooped around for this exact purpose and swung his staff like a crude cudgel to strike Kenny Combo in the chest and send him crashing to the ground with a jarring thud, where Miss Militia promptly pounced on him with her power taking the form of a shotgun which she levelled at his face until he could be properly detained.

Leaving Splurge Malone as the only remaining Cape within the struggling remnants of the Barone Family; wet and forceful splats filling the air as he began drawing the various miniaturised pies and other would-be projectiles he had stored and firing them directly downwards to make a show of disarming himself and surrendering.

"Ay, offer's still there so be smart, this is between us and another crew nobody is getting hurt who aint involved in the game so-" his fast talking was silenced as Chevalier strode purposefully towards the crook and transferred his weapon into his left hand so that he could deliver a right hook which sent Splurge to the ground with a mouthful of bloodstained and decidedly loose teeth.

"Whack and Wiseguy-Capisce are inside" Chevalier stated matter of factly "What was the getaway plan? How are they getting out?"

"They're coming out through the front door" Splurge slurred, all codes of silence forgotten in light of the way his face was already swelling in response to the punch; finding the answer inconceivable Chevalier raised his fist again only for his beaten opponent to cower

"Easy tough guy! I told your friends, we came here expecting the Jackal-Heads; this is their spot and we aint running from the likes of them….We was supposed to walk in, take their stuff and walk out through the front door like we own the place, 'cos this is our city and even if we don't own the place, we do own the place"

"You believe this guy?" Myrddin asked, the words announcing his sudden presence and giving Chevalier a brief moment of hesitation as he considered his options before answering.

"Cuff him and hand him over" he said simply before taking stock of the situation and seeing that Incendiary and Miss Militia were likewise occupied with detaining the captured criminals which only left one of his team-mates available to assist him; with that understood he signalled for Cheerleader to follow him and began making his way towards the grand entrance to the art museum itself.

"What're we doing?" Cheerleader asked as she fell into step beside him.

"Wondering how much force I can use to get this door open and catch the rest of the Barone crew, put on the defensive by being where they wanted to run"

"Well if it's a gang owned museum…." Cheerleader trailed off, small smirk tugging at her lips as she let her friend extrapolate the rest of that thought.

"But if it isn't and we destroy anything priceless…." Chevalier trailed off and left his own statement hanging in the air, prompting Cheerleader to purse her lips and consider in silence for several moments.

"Chess-piece and I came here during the grand opening" she whispered "I won't boost your power, not even sure if would affect your canon like that but….there's an atrium behind these doors and as long as you aim straight ahead you shouldn't hit anything other than a customer service desk"

"Noted" Chevalier grinned beneath his helmet and held his left arm horizontally, laying his Cannon-blade across it so that is was balanced against his forearm as he adjusted his stance to ensure that he absorbed the force of his next attack; with a slow exhale he prepared to fire at almost point blank range with the intention of charging in immediately afterwards.

"Well….Tally ho and stuff" he chuckled "It seems weird without having Mouse Protector here to say it"

---

Alarms had been trilling throughout the museum prior to Mouse Protector's arrival and the Ward had used that fact to her advantage as she entered the premises and begun attending to the task at hand with a detached efficiency and surgical precision that had felt uncomfortable to her from the moment she had begun though had pushed ahead with despite her misgivings.

Incendiary's words ringing in her ears as she stalked the Barone Family and disabled each of them in turn without her usual capering and tomfoolery.

Entry to the museum had been a simple enough thing for Mouse Protector, as she slunk and flitted across shadowy corners of roofs with an impressive speed given the care she took to ensuring that her approach would go unseen. The West-side of the city in which the museum was situated was one of the safest and most prosperous areas, those spaces and districts intended for tourists and the enjoyment of monied interests especially so which had been one of the reasons that the area had no gangs more prominent than college fraternities of its' own and was instead an area that criminal empires from the east and south fought to expand into; with a further consequence of this being that the museum was somewhat lacking in security despite its' purported ties to the Jackal-Heads as such things would draw undue attention, which had allowed Mouse Protector to pull free a hefty piece of slate from one of the roofs she hurried across and set it as the location she would be teleported to before throwing it through a window of one of the upper floors.

Once inside she had taken more care in her initial approach, making her way down towards the ground floor and heading in the direction of the yells and bickering of her quarry who clearly felt no such urgency in their situation. On the way she had found the night watchman who had been knocked unconscious and tied to a chair within an office before being abandoned and ignored in an amateurish display, upon waking him Mouse Protector had learned that the majority of the Barone Family who were present were waiting outside to fend off the counterattack they expected to face and the fact that they had not rushed into the museum suggested that the Ward still had the element of surprise whilst three grunts without powers had accompanied Wiseguy-Capisce who seemed to be the brains of this operation and his bodyguard Whack inside.

And so the hunt, or game of cat and mouse as she might have called it were she still in a joking mood began.

Mouse Protector found the first grunt standing over the broken remains of a bulletproof glass case that they had some how broken, in the midst of donning several examples of African jewellery that he had decided take for himself, items which she had taken care to replace as carefully as possible after leaping into the air and driving an armoured knee into his nose and teeth. The second and third grunts had been together, the pair of them responsible for the loud and uncaring bickering she had heard as they carried several painting that they had liberated from the nearby walls on top of one another as though moving furniture in a setup that would seem at home in a slapstick comedy; the two had dropped the paintings upon seeing Mouse Protector's approach and with the rules regarding using guns in fights with Capes clearly at the forefront of their mind rushed towards her with a knife and brass knuckles respectively. Geraldine's sword had knocked the knife from her first opponents' hand with a single well-timed parry which she had followed up by kicking the disarmed thug into his compatriot, using the contact to set him as a teleportation point and then reappearing amidst the tangled and stumbling Barone gangsters and falling upon them in a flurry of blows which had left one of the pair unconscious and the other far more willing to cooperate, informing Mouse Protector that Wiseguy-Capisce and Whack would likely be nearer to the main atrium before she had knocked him out cold and handcuffed him to a railing.

That atrium and the a corridor that led from it into the main wing of the museum had become a battleground shortly after.

"Looks like we got a rat on the inside!" Wiseguy-Capisce sneered "Put that motherfucker on ice!"

"Rat puns, on the one day I'm not in the mood" Mouse Protector huffed and wheezed the words out with as much jovial confidence as she could muster despite needing to use the corridor of the wall to support her as she dragged herself to her feet and staggered after having the wind knocked out of her and her balance along with it by the last exchange of blows. Wiseguy-Capisce wore the costume around which all other Capes within the Barone Family had based theirs, a black suit with golden pinstripes paired with a forward leaning trilby and a black domino mask though it failed to hide the fact that he was physically unimpressive in every way, short, weedy and pale with a slouching stature and overall miasma of inadequacy about him. Within the limited folds of the sharply cut Tuxedo Geraldine could see some sort of Tinker-tech implement, wrought in gold and silver fitted around his waistcoat and hidden largely from view which concerned her given that the man was not known as a Tinker even if the exact nature of his Thinker abilities was not yet known to the PRT.

What concerned her more however was the fact that his bodyguard and fellow villain had knocked her across the atrium and back into the corridor that she had arrived from with a single blow that had visibly collapsed part of her chest plate and was making breathing more difficult than she would like.

Whack was a stark contrast to the man he protected, tall and burly with biceps larger than Mouse Protector's head and a form that could barely be contained within the fabric on his black and gold suit, its' waistcoat having been exchanged for a bulletproof vest laid over a button down shirt with a loose tie around his neck to suggest a sloppiness that was artful and deliberate rather simply an accepted fact; his mask was black a featureless as it reached up from his jawline to trace his cheekbones and highlight eyes that seemed to shine with malevolent eagerness. The heavy hitter of the Barone Family Capes earned his title through an explosive ability which saw him categorised as a high-level striker, mid-level brute and mover and a low level blaster all in one; in effect the young man could unleash bursts of kinetic raw kinetic energy and concussive force a short distance in front of and behind himself to either lunch himself forwards or deliver devastatingly powerful blows, with the latter of which being the source of Mouse Protector's misery.

"Aww, she don't wanna crack wise with us no more, aint that a pity!" Wiseguy-Capisce sneered, a fresh outpouring of vitriol seeping into and permeating his words as he nodded to Whack whose only response a single wordless grunt before he rolled his neck and shoulders until they gave what must have been a satisfying crack and then began advancing towards' Mouse Protector at a steadily increasing pace.

"You really don't wanna do this" she managed to force some level of confidence into her wheezing, choked words despite the pain she was in; no doubt amplified by the way she twirled her sword with needless flair and held it ready, hoping to distract from the way that her left hand rummaged through her pockets.

"Oh I think we do" Whack snorted before breaking into a run and engaging his powers after only a few paces to send himself hurtling forward as though fired from piece of Medieval siege equipment with his right fist rearing back for the sort of ground shattering punch, thrown with the weight of the whole body that had been made popular by Capes such as Alexandria.

"Think fast!" Mouse Protector jeered as instinct, reflexes and pure gall and panache intersected and she withdrew the item she had been searching her pockets for, namely a bag of marbles which flew through the air in a wide arc; distracting Whack as for long just long enough for Mouser Protector to teleport to the specific marble that she had selected as a destination.

Appearing behind him and to his right.

Whack let out a howling scream as Mouse Protector spun and swung her sword out towards his legs in an outwardly wild yet carefully measured blow, catching him whilst still in mid-air and doing just enough damage to his calves to ensure that the hulk of a man clattered to the floor with no chance of righting himself. His response was to slam a meaty fist into the floor and use another burst of power to send a shock-wave out across the ground yet Mouse Protector had anticipated this and reacted once again with the kind overwhelming and flamboyant precision that made her victories so remarkable; taking the marble she had teleported to from the floor and using the push of Whack's shock-wave to throw her self into a cartwheeling lip she threw the small sphere directly into the villains' eye before teleporting herself yet again which transformed her cartwheel into an acrobatic kick which connected with Whack's left cheek with an audible crack and spatter of blood as her heel cut into his eyelid and was followed up with a punch to the chest which left Mouse Protector's knuckles stinging.

"You're dead!" He bellowed, voice cracking with pain "Your family dead, your pets dead, your little friends dead!" with that he unleashed his power for a final attack, lunging to deliver the closest thing to an uppercut that his bloodied legs would allow and striking the flat of Mouse Protector's blade as she hastily brought her sword around to block though the explosive force of his power still sent her streaking backwards through the air; once again allowing her to turn the situation to her advantage as she teleported once more, the blows she had landed serving as a way to set Whack himself as her new teleportation point and appeared directly behind the muscle bound man whose powers did nothing to prevent her from transferring all of the momentum she had built up into an elbow strike to the back of his skull.

Mouse Protector's elbow was consumed in a single moment of jolting, electric pain before a numb, tingling sensation akin to static enveloped her entire left arm and rendered the limb entirely useless as it dangled at her side however Whack slumped forward with no indication that he would be able to stand any time soon.

"Well look at that….I think I've got my groove back" Mouse Protector wheeled around to face Wiseguy-Capisce who had avoided the direct violence as much as possible, eyes boring into his in an effort to distract from the fact she only had one working arm in a display of confidence that she willed herself to feel at least some of.

"So, you wanted puns Wiseguy?" she gave a taunting laugh and a wink "I'm bringing you in and when they take your mugshot….Say cheese-"

Geraldine's world exploded into pain.

When her ears stopped ringing and her vision was no longer swimming to the point of incoherence the downed Ward found that she was no longer where she had been standing previously, instead she was half-laid and half-slumped against the wall of the atrium, close to the adjoining corridor with the chest plate of her armour, smoking, warped and barely attached though still she could feel an uncomfortable heat transferring from the metal surface into the clothes beneath it which her nose informed her were already beginning to singe.

"No more Missus Mice-" words became an impossibility a moment later as blood began to pour from her nose down onto the mask covering her mouth which left in clinging to her face in a way which made breathing even harder all whilst a fresh wave of blinding pain and stunned dizziness left her eyes watering in response to Wiseguy-Capisce striding towards her and slamming something viciously into her face which, Geraldine realised as she once again struggled to remain cogent in the wake of the violence was the butt of what appeared to be a shotgun of some sort, albeit one of a clearly Tinker inspired design.

"You can't…." she trailed off, struggling to speak and breathe as blood left her mask sticking to her mouth and intermittently gagging her.

"Oh this?" Wiseguy-Capisce gestured to the weapon in his hands with faux innocence before cackling as he began to monologue in a way which his sudden eagerness and the sinister edge to his words implied he had been looking forward to doing for quite some time

"Ay, this is your peoples' fault, I figure if the broad in the commando gear can make guns out of thin air and your Capo with armour can have a sword that's really a gun then there's a lot of room for interpretation in these rules that everyone is getting all bothered about right? You Wards, you're the little leagues, you're just a bunch two-bit beat cops next to the real Heroes and you never had a chance against the Family, y'know that right?….We run the city 'cos we got the connections, 'cos I got the connections!"

"All….All talk" Mouse Protector managed to burble the words out, realising that this was the best chance she or any of the Wards or Protectorate had been given at finding out exactly what it was Wiseguy-Capisce could do and; as someone with an ego which far outstripped their accomplishments was bound to do in such a position, the gangster continued to talk, falling for the obvious ruse entirely.

"You don't get it do ya toots? This here, this is what I do!" he gestured from his weapon to Whack and then to the museum as a whole "I know at any given time which capes I need around me to make the things I want to happen, happen.

My people, we wanted the Jackal-Heads gone and right now your people are handling that for me because I knew that you would be the best people for the job, so I had the boss let me work things so that you did the dirty work for us. I knew that the best way to bring down whoever came in here after me, before I knew it was you, would be to have Whack stall for time and have some Tinkers cook something up…..Oh and by the way, Buckshot and Moonshine asked me to pass on a message before they left town; they said rot in-"

The monologue was cut off abruptly by the force of an impact on the ground behind him.

"Son of a bitch that hurts, why do people like Legend always land like that?" both Mouse Protector and Wiseguy-Capisce strove to see the newcomer, with Geraldine craning her neck and her bloodied features breaking into a dazed, disbelieving look of confusion as her mind struggled to put two and two together whilst the Mafioso Cape whipped around, weapon ready and wearing an expression that was pure an unadulterated fury as he saw Nemesis in her fully transformed glory rising up from the single-knee crouch she had landed in.

"You!" he spat in the accented tones which all members of the Barone Family seemed to favour "You got a lot of nerve showing your face around here after you hit one of our joints!"

"I can hit a few more of your joints if you'd like, how about I start with your knees?" Nemesis demanded, voice low and menacing despite the unmistakably young quality it possessed which stood at odds with her massive frame, fierce claws and the way her mismatched wings and spike-lined tongue bristled with each step forward she took.

"I don't what kinda game you're playing here but nobody muscles in on the Barone Family, take a look around and see how that goes!" Wiseguy-Capisce waved his Tinker-tech weapon threateningly, albeit in a one-handed grip which Mouse Protector, even in her bloodied and rattled state could sense would be risky to him if he fired.

"It looks like it ends with you surrounded all because the guard Mouse Protector saved let me in through a fire exit" Nemesis retorted with an utter calm that had been absent from her fight in the lower East-side; leaving Mouse Protector scrambling to file that information away in her mind as she considered that Wiseguy-Capisce's ability to catalogue and instinctively apply the knowledge of other Capes' abilities gave him a blind spot regarding those without powers.

"Oh so you wanna be a hero now? You?" the gangster demanded incredulously, gesturing at Nemesis in all of her dangerous glory, only for her to shrug in a way that suggested her right arm and wing had healed more than should have been possible but still completely in the few days since she had last been seen.

"Kinda" she admitted "But honestly I'm just doing this 'cos I owe a cute girl a cup of coffee"

"What….Oh!" Mouse Protector's mouth hung behind her mask as comprehension dawned on her and she found herself lamenting her own blindness as she looked back on her interactions with Sally from the coffee shop only a short while ago and found them given a new context; her thoughts halting only when she found Wiseguy-Capisce's weapon trained on her again as he managed to connect at least some of the dots before him.

"Well let's see how pretty she is when-"

Everything halted as the door to the museum exploded from its' hinges and was sent ripping through the atrium in fist-sized and jagged fragments.

Nemesis was the first to react, throwing herself out of the path of as much of the debris as possible and in the same instant unleashing one of her signature booming, honking sonic attacks which reduced the shrapnel to sawdust before it could cause any harm.

The rush of air alerted Wiseguy-Capisce to the cannonball which had shattered the door tearing through the length of the atrium, demolishing a customer service desk before sailing into the corridor which he and Mouse-Protector had been positioned to the side of and over Whack's still unconscious body; in response to this he span and aimed his own weapon and fired off three blasts which struck like miniature meteors and forced Cheerleader to retreat back out of the building whilst Chevalier scrabbled hopelessly for cover that simply was not there.

Acting on instinct once again Mouse-Protector took her sword and slid it across the ground towards Chevalier then kicked out at Wiseguy-Capisce's legs before using the weapon as a teleportation point, buying herself a few seconds to grab the sword once again and catch Chevalier's attention by reflexively pulling him clear of an expected follow up shot from the villain who was still trying to get his bearing.

"Where were-what's going….Are you okay?" Chevalier's words were a frantic collision of thoughts that refused to be tamed and ordered however, seeing the steps between the present and victory clearly in her minds' eye Mouse-Protector wasted no time on answers and simply reached into the workings' of her team leaders' Canon-blade in order to place her hand on its' next projectile before nodding towards Nemesis.

"She's with us" she spoke firmly "And I've got a plan, same kinda thing we tried against her but better this time-"

"You can't be-" Chevalier was silenced as Wiseguy-Capisce got his bearing again and another blast from his Tinker-tech gun forced he and Mouse Protector to scatter, which allowed Geraldine the moment to throw her sword to Nemesis in a show of trust and call out to her.

"Rush him! I've got your back!" Nemesis locked eyes with Mouse-Protector for the briefest moment despite the fact that her own eyes were now a pure and featureless white as she caught the sword in her left hand before nodding and charging. Seeing the towering mass of magenta muscle stampeding toward him Wiseguy-Capisce took aim.

"Chevalier now!" Mouse Protector yelled and the armoured Ward complied, a cannonball striking the wall beside the villain, embedding itself there and sending splintering cracks across its' surface whilst jarring him enough for Nemesis to draw close, seemingly giving the gangster an inkling of the plan.

"Oh so now Mouse teleports back to her sword, I get it!" he gave a mocking laugh as he aimed his weapon higher, clearly intending to shoot the rodent themed Ward the second she appeared.

Only for Mouse-Protector to appear somewhere else.

Wiseguy-Capisce had not seen her touch the cannonball Chevalier had fired whilst it was still within the weapon and she teleported into place at shoulder height and mid-leap, positioned perfectly to kick the Tinker-tech gun off-course and then wrest it entirely from the grip of Wiseguy-Capisce who found himself staring down its' barrel and visibly panicking, sweat tricking from his brow onto his mask as he realised that his costume would not fare so well as Mouse Protector's damaged armour.

"Hey Wiseguy….Rat-a-tat-tat" with the pun delivered Geraldine slammed the butt of the weapon into his face and left the villain slumping down the wall unconscious before producing a pair of handcuffs from one of her many pockets as she turned to Nemesis "So….you wanna do the honours and cuff him? First time working with the good guys and all-"

"Hands are too big" the Changer held up the monstrous clawed and over-muscled appendages of her altered state, prompting Mouse Protector to simply shrug and snap the cuffs in place herself just in time for Chevalier to make his way over and lean on the cross-guard of his sword with a sigh that left his shoulders sagging.

"So, Mouse….I am really glad you're okay, really I am. I heard Incendiary gave you a hard time, she's outside and she's gonna apologise. Myrddin was worried when nobody could find you-"

"I left a note!" she exclaimed defensively.

"That just said 'going out'" Chevalier countered, exasperation lessened somewhat by the slight chuckle that escaped him before he turned to Nemesis, his expression unseen but almost certainly more serious as he continued speaking to his team-mate.

"But I've gotta ask" he gestured slightly towards the Changer "What's going on here, because I am really confused right now?"

"So maybe we got off on the wrong foot before" Nemesis shrugged, shuffling with an apparent nervousness which was laughable in her towering altered form "Don't get me wrong you're still ass-holes; you messed my shoulder up when I already needed painkillers….but, I came to this city to do some good and the Wards are doing that-"

"You robbed a pharmacy and now you're asking to join?" Chevalier regarded the Changer from behind his helmet with wary suspicion until Mouse Protector broke the silence before it could become truly tense.

"Wiseguy-Capisce would have taken me out if she hadn't stepped in" she considered for a moment before adding "And full disclosure we've both seen each other without masks….So, maybe it's for the best that we have an agreement. Maybe let Legend or someone make the call?"

"You've gotta be kidding me" Chevalier breathed out, eyes darting from one girl to the other as he took in the entirety of the situation as he saw it "You're telling me that the reason we one today….Is because Mouse Protector made a friend?"

"Don't say it like 'that's' the weird part….Wait, were the other Barone's here too? I wanted to fight the one with the cat mask, I wanted to commit to the bit" Geraldine pouted, suddenly becoming aware of how woozy the various blows she had suffered had left her as she felt her thoughts begin to fragment and slip away from her in her mind; with a brief stagger being abated by Nemesis's hand on her shoulder.

"Okay, you need medical attention….You" Chevalier stated in a tone that brooked no argument before focusing on Nemesis "Come with us. The only promise I can make is that I'll keep the other Wards from attacking you on sight and that I'll help explain things as I understand them"

"That'll have to be good enough I guess" and with the answer given the trio made their way towards the blasted open entrance to the Museum, Chevalier leading the way and giving a series of silent gestures to Cheerleader as she caught sight of the towering Changer behind him; making it clear that at the very least a ceasefire was in effect, from there he waved for Myrddin to cover the PRT agents as they entered and swept the building all whilst behind him Nemesis tightened her steadying grip on Mouse Protector and Geraldine responded by looping her arms around Sally's changed and bulging forearm as best she could with a glowing smile beneath her bloodstained mask which faltered, only to grow larger at the sight of the latest development to come out of left field.

"One of those nights then" Chevalier muttered to himself, struggling to parse exactly what he was looking at for several seconds before his mind made sense of the jumbled mass of steel and hydraulics whose pistons and clanking caused a reverberating cacophony as the thing trudged into view. A large and cumbersome contraption, vaguely resembling a headless humanoid albeit far larger and bristling with weaponry; the centre of its' mass featuring a globe filled with water within which a living thing swam. Before anything could be said a lone figure came into view, rearing up to his full height from where he had been crouching behind a raised panel of shoulder armour and brought a megaphone to his lips to be heard.

"Alexandria and Hero sent me! The other incidents across the city are all in hand and being resolved; I was told that there was something….Fishy going on!"

At that Mouse Protector collapsed into a fit of hysterical and utterly contented laugher, her entire being overtaken by a fuzzy warmness as she considered that between this new arrival whose entrance had already left an impression upon her, the fact that her relationship with the other Wards was not completely ruined, her hard-earned victory against the Barone Family Capes and the fact that she was clutching the arm of someone who, beneath her changer form was very pretty and had made some comments about them going for coffee together.

Truly this was the life for her.

---

Author's Notes:

Well hello everybody, this is my first venture into writing something for the Worm/Parahumans fandom and I'll admit that firstly I'm not entirely caught up with the entirety of the lore (At time of writing I'm on Arc 13 of Ward) and that I should honestly have gotten into a long time ago, I really wish I had….Unfortunately there were enough obnoxious fans of Worm to kill off my initial interest in it and it took a while to get it back.
I knew I was going to write something for this fandom/universe almost straight away, it has honestly become my favourite superhero setting in a matter of a month or so; it honestly feels like the best parts of big extended universes like Marvel and DC condensed down into something entirely self contained. The main problem was always a matter of 'Where and when will the fic be set' because Worm has a surprisingly tight narrative for a story with a two year time skip in the middle of it; I feel like that's why most of the stories I've seen are either AUs that bare no resemblance to canon or are based on original characters (Which I am clearly guilty of here).
It was honestly Mouse Protector and the potential that I saw in her as a character that was the deciding factor in me writing this story.
I do have an ongoing story for another fandom which is my main project however I do have ideas for two more Worm/Parahumans stories already, so when I get some free time I'll probably work on one of those.

But in the meantime, let's summarise shall we?:
I feel like a good chunk of this story is dedicated to the world-building and scene setting needed to establish things and give everything around the characters a sense of being lived in and that things happen outside of the characters, which honestly is something I don't mind because a setting that has that feel it honestly one of the things I find most immersive; the feeling that there's other stories going on in the background of the one you're telling.
That being said, let's breakdown the Wards and how I picked the team I did; canonically there was Chevalier, Mouse-Protector, Myrddin, Reed, a guy in an all black suit, a girl with fire powers, two unknown guys and two unknown girls to round it out to ten. Before I realised it wouldn't work within canon or honestly with his character I debated with making a younger Coil the guy in black before I came up with the idea for Chess-piece, the fire-girl became Incendiary (Who I was originally gonna call 'Inflammatory' but that just has connotations) I made one of the unnamed guys Myrddin and filled the rest out with original characters.
Those original characters were a good opportunity to world build and have some fun as well, Karambit was effectively a prelude to the kind of problem-capes like Shadow Stalker, Arashi-Kuro was a fun way to show how Cauldron almost certainly had ties with the Sentai Elite prior to their collapse and since they had such a strong Super Sentai vibe he would have worked as the 'Sixth Ranger' archetype, especially so considering my understanding that 'Hafu' people are often scouted by idol and talent companies.
Now onto Myrddin and his presence in the story….I'll just be blunt and say it, he's here because I honestly assumed that he would be one of the two unnamed guys and that would be how Chevalier knows him; the two are referenced as a pair before we ever see either of them. By the time I saw that it was confirmed via word of God to not be the case it was too late because I was committed to the idea; that being said I honestly consider word of God a secondary level of canon, it's supplemental to the source material at most.
Did anyone notice that the cheerleader outfit that Cheerleader wears over her bodysuit is the ones from the My Hero Academia sports festival arc?
Also I wanted Cheerleader to be a contrast to everything about Shadow Stalker.
Scion's arrival and the first real-world mobile phone were within a few years of each other in the 80s and by my count I put the Wards at around the late 90s to early 00s, so things like PRT vans having something a little more advanced than the time make sense given the advancements likely made by Tinkers.
The little discussion between the Wards about potential villains ID was another chance to world-build and throw some fun ideas out there; I feel like the names I gave were the right mix of flavours to fit in the Parahumans universe.
Also….We never see them on screen but if we did the Jackal-Heads would definitely have a Wu-Tang Clan vibe, just saying that Ghostface Killah was meant to be a Supervillain.
Look the Parahumans universe canonically had it's 90s comic book edgy phase so I ran with it and a villain from the 90s called Edge-Lord who wore red and black and carried a Katana.
And now we finally get into the meat of it, new villain attacking a pharmacy in mob turf on their own, three Wards there already, three Wards following but no support from Protectorate.
Geraldine Fields, the first of the names I invented for the Wards' civilian identities because a lot of them have nothing on the Wiki and asking people about it could only give me 'Harry' for a fan-name for Myrddin….Obviously I made the joke about her name later on and I want you to know that is literally why she was named Geraldine, for a 'Tom & Geri/Jerry' joke.
And of course her literal first words were a pun.
Incendiary is named Regina which is absolutely a Mean Girls reference, although her character evolved as I was writing her; she's not just bitchy….She's the baby of the team, surrounded by people she feels are more capable and professional than herself and she's overcompensating; as well as just being a very angry kid. Think of her as a twisted mirror of Vista.
Hana's costume is slightly different, to represent the different iterations its' gone through since.
The only artwork for a lot of characters is fan art with vastly different interpretations of the characters but for Mouse I knew I wanted a mix-and-match 'Scrap Knight' look.
And here we have out first look at out villain, the Wards' new Nemesis...In more than one sense.
The reason Nemesis has a honking sonic attack is because the Greek Goddess Nemesis who she's named after was actually associated with Geese….Which is also why she has a barbed tongue.
I cannot explain how much fun it was to write the fight scenes with Mouse-Protector, the way her teleportation works combined with her other heightened abilities makes her a really interesting way to solve the puzzle of "How do we get out of this" but it's offset against the fact that she treats a fight like slapstick comedy.
Okay so Myrddin jumped in with a Gandalf quote turned into a pun, knowing that he kinda thinks Mouse is cute how much are we betting that the line was entirely for Mouse Protector's benefit because he knew she'd enjoy it.
Myrddin isn't quite as powerful as he is in canon yet, which gives the fight a sense of urgency that wouldn't be there if he was.
The cannonball attack, followed by breaking a nose with a mousetrap felt like just the right blend of funny mixed with visceral nastiness to work.
"WHAT THE FUCK? YOU GUYS AREN'T HEROES! YOU GUYS ARE JUST ASS-HOLES!" so, who was confused by that?
And we end with the first signs of the cracks that would no doubt lead to Mouse Protector being independent at the time of her death.
Alexandria is younger in this story and I wanted this scene to show it; she's not the director of a branch of the PRT yet and she's not quite as hardened by everything….She's still 100% committed to the Cauldron plans but at the same time she hasn't quite mastered burying her feelings and when she has an emotionally draining day it actually shows.
The first hint that something was massively weird was the fact that Alexandria was having to explain the Wards losing to Nemesis to Cauldron directly.
Alexandria is one of the better "Evil Superman" archetypes I've seen in fiction but I like the idea that her mind works more like Batman, right down to her civilian ID being a disguise and the cape her real self.
Yeah I feel like the original Protectorate members are definitely close enough, or were to be able to make house calls like that.
Legend wearing rainbow flags and being a champion of Gay rights was something that occurred to me as a head-canon while I was writing and I was told afterwards that it was confirmed by Wildbow; also the idea of Legend being the person that all Wards that are questioning the identity go to for reassurance.
So this is before the Truce was made an 'Official' thing but the beginnings of it are there and I feel like capes that were part of groups that had a code of honour of some sort before hand would be willing to sign up to it.
More world building slipped in….Because Hero, the first Tinker would definitely have an entire Tinker collective that all wanted to be his arch nemesis; but it's also a chance to give a sense of scale for the Barone Family, they sent an entire villain team running for the hills.
Also….Cape who robs casinos called Al Pachinko; I sincerely hope I don't have to explain that joke.
So Nemesis took the name from the Greek Goddess, Cauldron named their own Nemesis Project where they give their manufactured Heroes a Case 53 to flex on for early reputation in honour of her, because she was a successful test of their ability to manipulate the narrative.
See to me this is what sets Alexandria aside from other evil Superman archetypes; the things she does have a 'Greater good' logic about them that makes sense in twisted way and this was an example of that; Nemesis was supposed to be a PR move that stopped a generation of villains from becoming villains in the first place.
Director Armstrong before he became Director, doing the same thing he did for Ashley.
Okay the Narwhal and potential new Wards stuff doesn't really come into the plot until the last part of the final scene but honestly it was something that occurred to me and felt to good to pass up.
Young Narwhal as a straight up berserker in a fight makes perfect sense to me….And so does the reaction her 'Costume'.
I gave Sphere a background that's actually similar to Dauntless in some ways; just to twist the knife and make it all the more tragic that we know what happens….Also yeah, there's a half finished city on Earth Bet's moon and I feel like he should have done something with it.
Armsmaster would absolutely play second fiddle to Chevalier and hate every moment of it if they'd been on a team together as teenagers….And yes, working the word 'Defiant' in there was a deliberate 'Character stares at the camera like it's the office' moment.
I included Fishtank for one reason and one reason alone; because Fishtank is fucking awesome.
A few days of time skip, to get people back in fighting shape and give things time to move into place behind the scenes.
I wonder if the people who worked in businesses around the Protectorate buildings knew that they were serving Capes when they were out of costume, they must have done surely?
Another note that Mouse Protector was the odd one out of her team….her 'friends' all meeting up without inviting her.
So now that we're out of costume I basically had to describe the characters all over again, although it was fun to do because it gives a chance to show other sides of their personalities….And also the contrast between Myrddin and Chevalier out of costume was just funny to me.
Calling Chevalier Cody because his brother was called Zack would have been too obvious, I went with Nicholas after Saint Nicholas (Yes Santa) because he's the Patron Saint of Children.
The give a mouse a cookie pun annoys me because there was a punchline there and I couldn't find it.
The Wards have bike training, I figure that at least once in the history of Capes there's been an incident like Queen Maeve stopping the truck in The Boys, where someone had to utterly level a vehicle because they didn't know how to drive….That being said, with the rules not being as fixed at the time I feel like the original Wards definitely had driving licenses at around sixteen.
Mouse-Protector makes mouse and cheese puns….Geraldine just opens fire with everything.
See this was the scene where Regina became an actual character and not just a placeholder for me, where we get a sense of how she thinks.
The youngest Ward, trying to act older and more mature to live up to the people around her….All whilst Mouse Protector cracks jokes and shows off; of course Incendiary has issues with her.
But it was seeing exactly what Mouse can 'Really' do that was the last straw.
Of course Mouse Protector is buff under her armour and baggy clothes.
Chadwick, because of course I named the Ward in the all black suit after Chadwick Boseman.
Yeah Regina is completely out of line, but you can almost see where she's coming from.
See Mouse Protector's answer here is the thing that struck me about her, the difference between the way she was shown in Worm and the way Victoria described her in Ward actually paints a really interesting picture; on the one hand she leaned into the cheese and camp of it all but on the other she was the person that handled the Villains with the 'Unbeatable records' and it hit me that the whole character she puts on is deliberate….Partly just to bruise villains' egos but also because she would be like Oni-Lee if she didn't.
Throat punches, the effective way to shut someone up.
I never actually refer to the city by name and that's deliberate, you should consider it to be like Brockton Bay in that it's a place that only exists on Earth Bet because I refuse to believe that the only difference is one city….Also the Monorail is a nod to '95 Power Rangers movie because I was originally going to have the fight with Nemesis break the monorail.
Now….Enjoy these awkward dorks.
Look, the idea of Miss Militia having a beat up muscle car just would not leave my head and the idea of her wanting to Tinker-tech it to high heaven just came naturally.
Scram-Kid, the other Barone Family Tinker….For no reason other than the idea of them having modified cars from the 20s with jet engines and because I was having an absolute blast coming up with these mafia Cape names….We'll get to others in a bit.
And DENIED….To me readers from other works in other fandoms, hi; you knew this moment would be here, this moment is always here in my writing.
Myrddin as the pack mule to drop off suits just makes sense.
Villains politics and how one faction doing something unexpected can have knock-on effects is always fun to figure out, especially in stories that are larger than this one and go on for several chapters.
And now we have the beginnings of the real fun stuff; Villain gang in full effect, Ward en route and Mouse is out of the loop.
Mouse collected her shit and was ready to go, she might have gone independent right here if things had played put differently.
Please tell me that someone figured out where this was going when I gave a description of Sally/Nemesis, the bruises should have given it away.
The entire talk between these two was immensely fun for me to write.
A job interview and she got jumped….Not technically a lie.
Neither was Geraldine's response….Also, she sees a pretty girl and is just immediately offering to fix their finances; the thirst is real.
She was halfway out of her seat at the sound of sirens, I really wasn't being subtle.
And now the plot thickens, Nemesis knew it was Mouse Protector the whole time.
God the way the Barone capes talk is cliché.
Okay so Splurge Malone is a reference to Bugsy Malone and the Splurge Guns which is why his power is usually used to throw cream pies….And no I'm not sorry about the innuendo.
Lackadaisy gets her name from the comic about bootlegging cats, which is why she has a cat mask….Her power is basically Slosh from My Hero Academia and I was originally gonna call her 'Muddler' because 'Speakeasy' was too obvious.
Kenny Combo from the Bronx is a play on Benny Blanco from the Bronx….And ya say the whole thing, like a tribe called quest, a pimp named Slick-Back or Shakira Shakira!
Okay Miss Militia's entrance was cinematic.
And the fight scene we get off the back of it is exactly the kind of fast paced nonsense that all fights with this many people with powers involved will devolve into.
"We was supposed to walk in, take their stuff and walk out through the front door like we own the place, 'cos this is our city and even if we don't own the place, we do own the place" is exactly the kind of plan that they would come up with.
Having Chevalier drop a Mouse-Protector style line was the perfect way to end that scene and move into the finale part of the story.
The entire first chunk of the scene is Mouse Protector being what she told Incendiary she didn't want to be, just stalking her opponents and eliminating them.
Whack is easiest to imagine as a mix of Bambino and Bakugo.
Just, take in the way Mouse handled that fight, really take it in and let it marinate and realise that Whack never had a chance.
Of course the last villain standing plays dirty and then starts monologuing, it makes all the sense in the world.
Wiseguy-Capisce (Another great name on my part if I do say so my self) has a very interesting power, but one that does not help on the front lines; which is made up for by a Tinker-tech gun….Courtesy of one of the two villains who were mentioned as having fled back to Arkansas at the start of the story.
Obligatory hero landing joke.
Oh! because every story needs a good Oh! Moment.
And now, with the door exploding the two halves of the cape fight line up.
What a take-down, set-up, feint and execution were all immaculate and finished it with a pun.
So here's the part that they don't show in Marvel movies….The awkward standing around after the big team up; but here we are things worked out.
….Just in time for me to throw another curveball; because I couldn't not have Fishtank here.
Truly this was the life for her…..Y'know why I left it here? Because this whole story when we really get down to it, it's all just the prelude to a tragedy.
We know that Chevalier and Miss Militia don't get a happy ending even after surviving the end of the world, we know the PRT collapses, we know that Myrddin is killed by a copy of Eidolon who he looks up to and we know that Mouse Protector is killed by the Slaughterhouse Nine; after leaving the PRT before that….And with Nemesis being an original creation, we can make assumptions about why she wasn't around and tie that into Mouse's leaving.

As always thank you to everyone that reads this, with a special thanks to those of you that follow, favourite and review.