by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings.
A New HoundThere were two RACHELLEs on PHO. One was Rachel Lindt, of the Eundersidrs – she didn't know how to write this, so she took the initial. That was before she realized she could have used Bitch, first, and then that using her self-assigned cape name would have been a better platform to change the one chosen by the PRT. Except that PHO, like all American-driven software, had filters even on user names, and she couldn't use Bitch anyways… or any variation thereof. Her IP even got banned, after she spent hours trying to find one that would work. Hey, she may not be that smart, but she's persistent.
The second was Rachel Lily Evans, who chose to initialize everything past her given name – apparently, it was the craze, and all the cool kids did it. Why, there was even an EMMANOOB (real name Emma Noelle Ophelia Ocarina Barnes) and a SOPHIAHOE (real "name" Sophia Hess Organizes Expirations) who were critical about someone called T-something – the mods were on the nose and censored any part of an attack on private citizens where one not in the know already could recognize the name. Hypocrites.
Rachel Lily was a student at Immaculata High, with a passion for detective novels – not comics, despite her age, and especially not Detective Comics (who had, like Marvel, lost their edge after Scion appeared on Earth Bet). She liked to investigate, and often "borrowed" the tools of the trade from her father, himself a Private Investigator: cloak, hat, fake facial hair, newspaper with holes for the eyes, etc. That is… the ones the man had thrown away since the eighties anyways – nowadays, there were faster ways to get information about someone, and it was by hacking into their own computer.
Rach' didn't like science, and computing, and the things she preferred to leave to the boys – she knew that those things brought more money, and intended to belong to the generation where the salaries would be completely equalized, rendering moot the choices towards "hard" science as well as individual effort and merit. But that would be for later anyways. Years in the future. In a teen mind, that was too far to plan.
So she played at being a private detective, and started to solve a couple simple cases. Such as the fact that AllSeeingEye must be the Simurgh, otherwise how could she know about everything. And PointMe TheSky must be a secondary account for the Simurgh, too, given that she always flies. No one ever said Rach wasn't rash, in her daily life. And determined, too: much like the other Rachel, when she had a bone to gnaw on, she didn't stop until nothing was left.
Rach got a new phone, one day – and to say her father had made her wait for her birthday before sinking a whole month of salary into that new gadget! The indignity! For a few weeks, she had had to use her previous phone, even, even though it had a slightly broken screen, because her current one had been crushed out of service (she had thought to push her dad by breaking it herself… but it didn't work).
On said new phone, she immediately reconnected to her usual haunts, accepting all memorization of user identifiers and passwords. And since she had eluded the course on password security, she had the same level in awareness as the other Rachelle, about what not to use as such. Especially the "no part of user name", since she used it. Hey, it was easier to remember, right?
A mistyped character later, she was connected as RACHELLE837526 instead of RACHELLE837256, and didn't see the difference. Especially as the displayed name was RACHELLE for both.
With her new phone, Rach picked a new bone… I mean case. And the lead to follow started with the "T" Emmanoob and Sophiahoe (and others) continually harassed. Noting comments from someone called something like VoidCowboy, she easily found that it happened in Winslow, and she went there to investigate – Immaculata let part of their students off at midday, so she had time.
Why? The school does that for religious reasons: those practising Protestantism had mass inside the school, and didn't want the heathens polluting them. Even if they welcomed them (and their money) on the mornings. Too bad the "interesting" courses, for the future leaders of the country, were afterwards. Those included Politics and Finance, of course, but also Media Manipulation, Ponzi Schemes, Blame-shifting, and PR.
Ah, you didn't care for that and asked for why did Rach visit the hellhole that was Winslow? To get closer to the action, of course. Besides, like most teens (and until proved wrong), she thought that problems only happened to others. So the fact that the place was reputably a place for people to be forcibly recruited into gangs, to buy (or sell) drugs, and/or to get raped… she didn't care.
And, yes, she found a group of girls colluding to bully another, called Taylor. And among the bullies, the pack leaders were two girls named Emma and Sophia – now, where had she seen those names… hmm… difficult to remember. But she could see the way Emma was clothed, and coiffed, and how athletic Sophia was. Those indicators were well-known to a girl from Immaculata.
It meant that Taylor, to incur their wrath, must have done something bad, right? Such as clothing herself like a loser… or worse? Of course, she was such a good detective that she gave herself a pat on the back. Literally so, yes, and woebegone anyone telling her how stupid she looked.
In order to ascertain what Taylor did wrong, she followed her out of school. Needless to say, when her quarry had noticed the girl with a fake moustache and a fake newspaper, in school and then in the bus, she was able to compute two plus two and reach the good answer. No, let me scratch that. There is no "good" and "bad" answer, in math. But there's also an infinity of "incorrect" ones, and, in this example, only one "correct". Taylor may not be the next Sklodowska, but she had passed primary school. And the teachers there hadn't winced when she had left for the next level, because they knew that she hadn't been another one of those self-entitled brats who didn't question the world around them, choosing instead to revel in their rejection of everything. But I digress.
Taylor had seen the conspicuous trenchcoat-wearing girl in the corridors of Winslow, behind her tormentors. She had seen her in the bus. She had seen her following her towards her home. And she had seen her waiting, still barely hidden behind her fake newspaper, an hour afterwards. Well, Rach hadn't stayed immobile, and had sat on some bench nearby, and pulled her phone to pass the time – trying to pass Candy Crush level 2, or looking contentedly at the "above-average" 53 she had finally obtained out of her IQ score app after months of trying (hint: it's not a grade, as 100 is the average).
Or checking with PHO every now and then. Apparently, Emmanoob and Sophiahoe were deliberating about whether the time spent in the locker was fun and when could they do it again. Given the comments, several people inferred that they thought about the locker room and that the two were lesbians. They got told off and then stopped commenting on the forum. VoidCowboy, Rach's trusted source for everything around Winslow, suggested that they had taken their steamy romance to PM. Since it was afternoon, she agreed.
"Zoing." her phone said, indicating that someone had posted something of interest. Or just answered in one of the threads she was currently following. Such as the one where she had asked for directions to Winslow from Immaculata – and she had things to say, too, because some of them were wrong: one even said "lowering herself" and that hadn't worked, as she had sat on the ground, in the basement, and she hadn't been magically whisked away.
"Stop taking Bitch's account." came from AllSeeingEye! Oh my God! The Simurgh was communicating!
Her thumbs going on overdrive, she wrote a message saying so. Right in the same forum.
"*sigh* Stop insinuating I'm the Simurgh."
"Yore tottly the Simough. Somue. Sim. Her!1!1 Shed say no, you say no. Pruef! Fact!"
"*sigh* Subject has one-track mind. Can't even touch parameters to accept PM. I though only Bitch had dog-level intelligence. I stand corrected. Who's a good little girlie? Who's been good?"
"Me! Ima good!"
"Le sigh. Sometimes, being proven right by imbeciles isn't so satisfying. I'll check with the mods to ban her for account theft, and have Bitch connect. That should help."
"Whod you call bitch bitch? Ima good dog investigor-sumthin. I sniff trayls. Ima sure this girlie T[REDACTED]'s done somthng bad."
"Why do I care?"
"Hey, who rote TRIDACTD?"
"Sorry everyone for the derail- the wreck."
"Hey, I askd a question!1"
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The ChaseRach was so preoccupied by the banter on-screen that she didn't notice immediately when Taylor left the house. And she scrambled to follow when the taller girl started her afternoon running practice. Thinking herself a great detective, she thought that she was running after a villain, who seemed anxious and determined to loose her… while, in fact, she had difficulties to run even at the slow pace of Taylor warming herself up.
And then Taylor got herself into a good enough state to increase the tempo, losing in seconds the pursuer hounding her.
"What?" Rach thought as she stopped, partly to catch her breath, and partly in shock of the ease with which the taller girl had… fled. "I was running full-tilt, and she accelerated to insane speeds? She must be a parahuman! I'm sure she's Velocity's daughter!"
She pulled her phone to share her deduction with her clients… that is, the people on PHO, only to notice something she saw every so often. "You've been BANNED from using this site."
"Banned, banned… what does that mean, again?" she muttered under her heaving breath. "No matter, I suspect their site is down, again. Seems to happen quite often, too. In the meantime…"
In the meantime, she had a scent to follow. She was in a part of town she didn't know much, and had seen Taylor turning right, there, so if she was right (and she was often right), she had to go there to continue.
Turning to enter the street at what she thought was a run but was merely a somewhat fast shuffle, her feet tangled with a stray dog, which yipped in fright and fled, right as she fell on her face.
Of course, when looking up, there was no running Taylor in sight anywhere in the street. Rach chose to progress anyways, pulling her magnifier out and looking comically through it, with one eye, to check on the surroundings. Urgh. Trash. Trash. Homeless man, sleeping. Bum. Trash. Trash.
She suspected that Taylor had come here to get rid of some trash, and she approached the mound of putrid matter. The man wasn't sleeping, though, just resting his old bones. "Hey! Git tha fuck away from me shit!"
Rach obeyed, apparently, but it was only because of the equally putrid breath coming her way, laden with undefined particles that thankfully only impacted her sturdy trenchcoat.
Remembering (through a great effort) that Taylor had nothing in her hands, when running, she left the trash and hurried down the road. There were several other streets leaving on its left side, some leading to nothing while others visibly led to place brightly lit, but Rach was sure she was right, and that she had to turn right. So she walked to the very end of the street before turning. Right into the trainyard – there was a reason for such a long stretch of houses wasn't interrupted by a street, and that was the large and derelict exchange platform where, before, trains and boats exchanged loads.
And now it was the playground for Trainwreck, a Case 53 parahuman. Seeing the large creature, mostly made of rusted machinery, "playing" with a couple heroes, Rach pulled her phone out again to film everything – her first cape fight! She was vibrating in anticipation.
Only to be concerned when someone appeared in front of her phone. Too close for a proper view.
"You have to leave the premises, miss." the man stated. It was a man, indubitably. Those skin-tight outfits didn't leave doubts at the heroes' physical attributes. And this one in particular was…
"Velocity! Just the one I wanted to interrogate… I mean… interview."
"Didn't you hear me?" the hero asked. "I asked you to leave-"
"Yeah, I heard. But since I don't know what primissmiss means, I chose to ignore you. If you choose to speak a foreign language to me, after all, it's your problem, not mine. Besides, wasn't that Russian? Are you a Russian, Mister Velo? Are you a foreign spy?"
At that point, a yell could be heard from the living machinery behind the hero, whom the hero named Assault was hitting with a regularity that was slightly depressing – for the villain. "Blyat! Ostav menya vpokoye!"
Velocity pointed a thumb behind him. "That was Russian. I merely said you had to leave. This situation can become dangerous."
"Oh, I know. After all, I'm an investigor!" the girl continued filming, her phone trying (and failing) to move quickly enough around Velocity so that she could take the fight scene in. Seeing that he was always faster than her, she looked at him crossly… and then smiled and filmed him directly. "Is Taylor your daughter? I wondered, you know, because she ran so fast! Is that why you defend her territory? Oh my god, your daughter is a villain! Are you a villain in disguise, Mr City? Or-" gasp "are you her? Are you a Changer, Taylor?"
Velocity might be quick on the uptake, there were so many inconsistencies in the girl's questions that he could only gape for a few minutes before reacting. In real-time, it took only a second. "I don't have a daughter. And my name is Velocity."
"Velo City, right. I knew that! So then, Mr City, is the fact that your daughter a villain a problem with your superiors?"
Gritting of teeth. "I don't have a daughter!"
"Oh! Why didn't you say so?"
"I told you! Right before telling you my name wasn't City." A pause. "But perhaps a one-track mind can only keep track of one thought at a time, and then if I tell you to leave… you'd leave?"
"Why leave?" Rach asked, confirming the hero's idea. "I followed your daughter here, so I get to film her dramatic reveal, right? Oh! Did I ask you if you knew her? For all I know, she can be hidden from you. How many girlfriends have you had in your life, Mr City?"
"This is… quite inappropriate. And an invasion of privacy. Leave. Now." And then he returned to the fight. Assault was good, but he still needed the speedster to make the enemy flat-footed when he hit.
Of course, Rach didn't leave. She even intended to film everything and send it to PHO, having forgotten that she was banned. She also added her running commentary, while still looking around, waiting for Velo's daughter to appear with a villain's costume.
However, as the fight moved across the trainyard when Trainwreck decided that discretion was the better part of valour, she found her way blocked and had to walk around the mountains of discarded train parts. And that's when she was found by a group of ABB thugs.
Her phone was the first "casualty" of the encounter, ripped off her hands as she was still filming. And then she tried to apply Taylor and Trainwreck's method… and run away. Only to stop after barely three minutes, heaving for breath. And be caught by the thugs, of course.
Her clothes were the second casualty, when her coat was brusquely removed. They still whistled in appreciation at her school uniform before ripping it – even if it was made with sturdy material, it was still fabric, and held no resistance to their sharp knives.
Rach found herself, quite suddenly, with her worldview as tilted as her body, pushed down on the dirty street. With her certainties shattering around her, and the mounting terror, and disgust, and a host of other emotions… she couldn't cope and passed out. Only to be slapped awake because the thugs wanted her to resist, actually. Not used to such treatments, she did so a second time, and then a third. That's when she was threatened with permanent disfigurement via knife if she slept on the job again.
She didn't pass out, then. Instead, she triggered.
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The PackIt happened right as a group of persons was approaching. They had seen the situation, and wanted to interfere… and were ready to use their cape powers to do so. The problem was that the trigger event provoked a reaction among them – they fell unconscious. And the one used to taunt their enemies was at the front of the group, and only wearing a skin-tight lavender costume.
Rach having triggered with the acute need to get people to ignore her, the thugs turned on a dime and approached the downed girl in spandex… who awoke with a knife at her throat, while being pulled into a vehicle. Thankfully, in a way, Rach's trigger had made her sturdy too, because ignoring someone cowering in the middle of a street, when driving a vehicle, was a recipe for killing that person.
Instead, the car was stopped as if it had hit a pillar. Rach was hurt, of course, and propelled towards the group of awakening capes. She ended up in a tangle of limbs with one of them, a teenage boy with a Venetian mask. "Hmm… I'm down? Someone's on me?" he wondered, before using his power to notice people's nervous systems. And, sure enough, he was perhaps unable to perceive the person with his eyes, but she was clearly there – given his automatic reaction and his preferences, it was clearly a girl… and a bitch.
In fact, he looked sideways for a second to make sure his associates were all accounted for – and he could see the lavender costume of the girl escaping the car. Nope, Bitch was still on the side, with her doggies. So who was taunting him with her animalistic side, now?
Several persons were able to perceive Rach, too. One was Rachel, used to dogs and their scents. Another was Tattletale, used to infer data from the slightest clues. And another was Brian, when flooding the area with shadow – in fact, everything in his shadow was visible, to him, and that included things and people made invisible by other powers (they made holes in his perception).
When she was pushed away and then encircled, Rach looked up and saw that the thugs from earlier had been replaced by a team of capes… and one that she didn't know. Meaning villains, most probably.
And she passed out.
She awakened in a couch, wrapped in a plaid cover, and smelled the delicious smell of coffee from in front of her. On the low table was a mug, with a note. "For you."
The couch was old and facing the corner of the building she was in, but she was more interested by the coffee than turning around to inspect the place – even if the sounds reverberated as if the place was big. And many smells were there too. Still, they were less interesting than the promised caffeine.
"Umm… thanks?" she said aloud, taking it and starting to sip.
"You're welcome." a voice said from behind, startling her. A hand took control of the coffee, while the hand's owner approached and sat next to her. Mask and lavender costume. "Welcome to the world of capes. I'm Tattletale, and I'll tell you everything you don't want to know."
"Er… doesn't that usually go "You'll tell me what I want to know" or something?"
The girl identified as Tattletale smirked and nodded. "Yes. So. Presentations!" she said, her arm lifting and encompassing the rest of the room. Cavernous, with a metal structure, it was obviously a warehouse. And Rach knew that, even if she could find it again from the smell, she wouldn't be able to distinguish from the many other abandoned warehouses in town. She knew all that… in a sort-of detached way. As if those realizations were made by a separate mind. And she smiled, because she thought the allied mind could allow her to cheat at school. Or not. She felt reprobation.
"Wow." came from two people. One was Tattletale, who had interrupted her movement to watch her reactions… and who had inferred many things from them. The second was the teenage boy from earlier. The other girl with them, with the doggy mask, merely grunted.
"So. Presentations. We're a group of capes named the Undersiders. I'm Tattletale, as I said earlier. The others are Grue, our leader; Regent, the one I usually present last… and Bitch."
"Bitch?"
As a response, the dog girl growled. And the other Undersiders exchanged glances, as it wasn't the aggressive growl they were used to, when Bitch met someone new. It was a curious one, almost inquisitive.
And then Rach changed, becoming a dog – one of those annoying little ones, always yapping at bigger ones. But silent, for once. Bitch moved in some fashion, and the little dog grew, only to stop when Rach reacted in surprise, transforming back… and showering her surroundings with the flesh that had started to grow on her.
"So… that's Changer, too." Tattletale added. "To be added to her Master/Stranger classification. And Brute."
"What?" Rach asked.
"Oh, yes, let's not forget Tinker -1, too."
"What?" Regent asked. "Does that even exist?"
"No, but she's so naturally dumb that she's the only one able to notice when her power thinks in her place."
"Thank you." Rach said, grinning and preening. And forgetting that her cover had fallen down during her transformations.
"Wow." Regent repeated his earlier thought. "Way to confirm stereotypes, here."
"Thank you too." Rach told him.
"You're welcome." he replied automatically, before turning to Tattletale. "Tell me we're recruiting her."
"The boss…"
"It's that or I'm out. With her."
"I know your… tendencies." Tattletale said with a wince, but it only earned a mocking smile from him… aside from a side glance towards Bitch, who thought nothing of it (as usual). "And I think both you and Rachel will be happy to include Rachel, here, in our group. I still have to ask the boss about it."
"If he says no, tell him I leave. Rachel, uh? Welcome."
"Thank you!" she said, before jumping at his neck for a hug.
Tattletale nicely sidestepped the lunge, and left the two hugging teenagers alone as she walked towards the stairs leading to their upstairs lounge. All the while, she was muttering "We'll have to choose a cape name, too, if only to distinguish our two canine capes. Dingo? Bloodhound? Blondhound, for the colour and the hair?"
On her path was Bitch, staying there and watching the new girl with confusion. Tattletale's power being what it is, she realized that Bitch was currently unable to make her mind about how to deal with a friendly girl with the power to become a bitch. And wondering if she would be replaced?
"You're not being replaced." Tattletale told her as she walked past. "In fact, we have a better synergy with the two of you together."
"Sy… nergy?"
"We'll work better together." Grue explained, before turning to Tattletale. "Getting upstairs?"
She nodded. He followed. And, for once, Regent didn't comment on unresolved sexual tension, as he was quite occupied with his own.
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To be continued… on the noseAuthor's Notes: Of course, Taylor isn't Mr City's daughter. She isn't even a cape, here… or is she? Was the stray dog a stray, or did she have something to do about it? A Master? Of dogs? The jury is still out…
I'm not Russian, and all Russian words from here came straight from Google's translator. In short, Mr Trainwreck strenuously objected to Mr Assault's… assault.