Furor Interlude 1

The last few days had been particularly stressful for Director Piggot. While the media had focused on Empress's claims of unjust persecution driving her to villainy, the simple fact that she'd utterly destroyed the Wards and had, for lack of a better term, mauled Glory Girl had gotten out, and someone had contacted the Youth Guard.

The civilian organization had been on site within hours, and while they had been respectful they did… complicate matters, as their representative, a Mrs. Fowler, had insisted that the Wards not be sent on patrol or given active duties until her own investigation into the incident had been completed. Director Piggot had complied with the request, because at least one thing had to go smoothly this weak, and becuase, well, with the revelations about Empress she'd had bigger fish to fry. Still, it had complicated matters and some of the Wards resented being grounded.

Speaking of Empress, the Director had personally been going over the files on previous encounters between her and the PRT. After Aegis had informed her of Empress's declaration upon seeing Shadow Stalker,the director had pulled the probationary Ward into her office to ask what, exactly, Empress had meant when she'd asked if Shadow Stalker wasn't planning to finish the job.

After quite a bit of resistance, Shadow Stalker had confessed to an unauthorized, unreported, violent encounter with Empress shortly after Empress had fled the first attempt to contain her. The Ward had insisted that she'd merely tried to convince Empress to turn herself in peacefully and that the other Parahuman had attacked first, but considering Shadow Stalker's reluctance to tell this story, Director Piggot was certain that it wasn't the truth. Regardless, between this encounter and Empress's claims, Director Piggot wanted to make absolutely sure that there was nothing else to suggest that Empress had legitimate reason to turn to crime.

Which led to her reading over a transcript of the orders to find and contain her first given after her trigger event and the after action reports for the mission when Mrs. Fowler entered her office.

Mrs. Fowler was what you'd expect from an organization like the youth guard. Middleaged woman, caucasian, clearly had more than one child, practical haircut, and dressed somewhere between business and casual. It was only the lack of a Minnesota accent that kept her from being the stereotypical image of a soccer mom. Looks could be deceiving, however. As the director had been informed on Fowler's arrival, the woman was an Ivy League graduate with a degree in child psychology and had worked as a councilor for a time before beginning work fulltime for the Youth Guard.

"Good afternoon, Director," the woman said, "I hope I'm not coming in at a bad time?"

"No," Director Piggot answer as she placed the documents to the side. "I was just reviewing some things. What do you need?"

"I've finished interviewing the Wards," the other woman said, holding a clipboard, "now I just need to get your take on the incident and a few other details." Director Piggot did not quite like the sound of that, but still beckoned the woman to sit while planning to answer honestly-the Director knew she was likely to be in trouble, lies and cover ups would just make it worse.

"First," Mrs. Fowler began, "it's my understanding that the majority of the Wards are in some vocational program, so I'm not going to ask why they weren't all in school… though you might have someone coming by later to inquire about that." The woman cleared her throat, "So the first thing to ask, really, is why send the Wards to a bank robbery?" Mrs. Fowler waited for response, clipboard at the ready.

The Director sighed. "What you have to understand here, is that this past Thursday had a massive spike in crime, even for this city." The director turned to get the relevant files containing reports given that day. "Circus attempted to rob a jewelry store, Trainwreck, a former member of the Merchants, resurfaced and tried to raid a methadone clinic, there were several armed robberies by people believed to be mercenaries in the employ of Coil," the director hesitated before concluding "not to mention a spike in civilian crime so high that BBPD actually went as far as to call in assistance from an Independant hero and his unpowered sidekicks as reinforcements."

"So what you're saying is that you were drastically understaffed?" Mrs. Fowler didn't seem so understanding in that moment. "I was under the impression that PRT ENE had received reinforcements a few months ago."

"It's true that we requested backup after a… violent incident with the villain that the Wards encountered at the bank," Director Piggot began in response, "with her being one dangerous parahuman threat too many, however the response was… underwhelming."

"How underwhelming?"

"Mouse Protector, Weld, and a dozen agents pulled out of reserve," Piggot answered. "Mouse has been a big help in her time here, but there's only so much Weld is allowed to do, and twelve reserve grunts are basically just meat for the grinder in a city like this."

Mrs. Fowler nodded. "Continue."

The Director obliged. "When we received notification that a group matching the description of the Undersiders had entered the bank and taken people hostage, we felt that it would be a 'safe' encounter for the Wards-the Undersiders have a reputation for fleeing rather than fighting," Piggot explained. "At the time, we didn't think that the A-Class threat, Empress, was affiliated with them but in hindsight there was an incident that should have clued us in."

"Hindsight is a cruel mistress," Mrs. Fowler added helpfully. "Now, it's my understanding that when the Wards realized that Empress was present, they called back in for updated instructions. What was it that you told them?"

"Under normal circumstances, we'd have told the Wards to retreat and immediately sent in the Protectorate, however" the director hesitated for a moment, "Concurrently with the Bank robbery, there was an altercation near the Dockyard between Hookwolf and Lung, with Lung heavily escalated. All Free members of the Protectorate had been deployed to deal with that when the Wards called back. So, I made a judgement call." The director coughed. "I concluded that the A-Class threat currently rampaging through town was more likely to cause harm than the A-class threat bunkered up in a bank in the middle of a robbery. So, the Wards were instructed to stay put, observe the situation, report back if the situation changed, and not engage." The director blinked. "Shortly after this exchange, the Wards called back to inform us that Glory Girl of New Wave had arrived and that her parents, Brandish and Flashbang, were on their way."

"I understand that Panacea of New Wave was among the hostages in the bank," Fowler interrupted, "and that this had something to do with both New Wave's response and the... altercation that led to the Ward's being injured?"

"Correct on all counts," Piggot continued. "From what I've been told, Glory Girl grew impatient, waiting for her parents to arrive while her sister was, potentially, in danger and on her own initiative charged into the building, damaging a wall." As opposed to going in through the door like a normal person, was Piggot's unvoiced thought. "Panacea later told us that, while in the bank, Glory Girl used excessive force in dispatching one of the Undersiders, Hellhound-"

"The serial killer with the monster dogs?" Mrs. Fowler questioned.

"The very same," Piggot answered, "anyway, from what we've been told, Glory Girl used excessive force to dispatch Hellhound, leading Empress to believe that Hellhound had been killed, before insulting Empress. Empress responded by punching Glory Girl through a wall and beating her, sadistically, while claiming that she would kill Glory Girl if Hellhound was dead."

"And that's when the Wards engaged." Mrs. Fowler wasn't asking. She'd know this already, the Director knew, because her Wards wouldn't lie.

"Without calling in to update the situation. I'd only learned of Glory Girl's… impatience after the fact," Piggot said. "Regardless, from the Ward's reports after the fact, Gallant was apparently the first one to engage, out of fear that Empress would kill Glory Girl." Piggot sighed. "The rest of the Wards engaged, not thinking, with the intent of keeping Empress's attention off of Glory Girl. I can't fault them for refusing to abandon an ally and trying to protect her at any cost, even if they were… incredibly foolish in how they did it but." The director sighed "I'm just glad that Empress didn't transfer her rage to the Wards, and that Panacea was present and willing to heal their injuries. If either of those factors hadn't been the case, we'd be burying at least one Ward today."

"Alright," Mrs. Fowler said as she finished filling out something or other on her clipboard, "that's consistent with the Wards' stories. No problems there." She flipped a page on her clipboard. "Now, I've noticed that the media… What can you tell me about this villain, this Empress?"

"Thats… That's a complicated story, Mr. Fowler."

The woman in question nodded. "I've got time. I feel that… The media seems to be awfully concerned with the possibility that Empress could be an innocent victim of persecution and not very concerned with that she's done to the Wards. I feel that knowing why that's the case is important."

The Director sighed. "We… honestly don't know much about Empress's psychological state. Our initial… Empress triggered after spending several hours trapped in a high school locker that had been filled with biological waste that had been left to decay." The Director paused as Mrs. Fowler winced. "She escaped by breaking through the locker door, and then, in a panicked state, attacked and injured a fellow student before fleeing the school. At this point in time, acting under the impression that the girl was panicked and lashing out following her trigger event, we sent out squads in order to find her, talk her down, and if necessary contain her before she could harm herself or another."

"How major a concern was that?"

"Imagine that you're a teenaged girl, lost, scared, alone," Piggot began. "Now imagine that someone tries to mug you, and while trying to defend yourself, you kill them. Not on purpose, but still. How likely are you to be willing to turn yourself in?"

"I want to say that I could think things through rationally," began Mrs. Fowler, "but I know how teenage brains work"

"And that's not even the half of it," Piggot continued. "Now imagine that the mugger was a member of the Merchants, of Empire Eighty-Eight, of the Azn Bad Boyz? The gangs do not take well to parahumans killing their members and would be out for blood. Assuming that they weren't already," Piggot stated, "because all three gangs are known to recruit from Winslow, the school Empress attended, and are thus unlikely to react well to a parahuman rampaging there."

"And even if they weren't," Fowler interjected, "It's my understanding that criminal organizations are always looking for parahumans to recruit, and a runaway fresh off of her trigger event is an easy target."

"Exactly," Said the director. " Quite simply, we needed to find her before something like this happened. However, our attempts to find her before that could happened backfired. A Squad was sent to her house, to ask her father where she might have fled to, and was armed with containment foam just in case she couldn't be talked down and had to be contained by force." Piggot coughed again. "However, Empress arrived during the process. The after action report is sparse on details, but what's clear is that at some point, Empress tried to flee, was foamed, destroyed the foam with some kind of shaker power, and escaped into the city."

"Exactly what you'd sent the squads out to prevent." The Woman from the Youth Guard finished. "Though what's changed? She's far from a scared little girl anymore."

"When we investigated the school, following the trigger… Other than members of the gangs pointing fingers at each other and the popular minority children in the Case of E88, we received quite a consistent story" Piggot sounded for all the world like she no longer believed the story in question. "Empress's civilian identity was said to be a strange, quiet loner who seemed unusually biased against the popular cliques…"

"The stereotype of a school shooter?"

"Exactly," Piggot answered. "At first the consistent story was suspicious, but after several weeks with no one breaking… Around the same time, there were multiple sightings of Empress in conflict with the gangs, and it became known to us that she was stealing narcotics and other controlled substances from the Merchants in these encounters." Piggot grimaced. "Participating in gang fights and stealing drugs are both criminal acts, and when a teenage runaway is stealing narcotics she's either using or dealing. Around the same time, a few… less than productive encounters between her and PRT agents led to us being forced to pursue her as a criminal. We even assigned her a villain name from a list, Lilith, though we've retired the name after she declared her own alias."

"And then," Director Piggot continued, "she tore the arm off of one of our agents during an encounter." The Director paused while the other woman flinched. "After this, we were forced to conclude that Empress was dangerously unstable, warned the public as such, and requested reinforcements in hopes of being able to deal with at least one of the dangerous Parahuman threats in the city…" The director hesitated, "But I may have been wrong to do so."

Mrs. Fowler raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"The reason that the media is covering the possibility that Empress is a victim of unjust prosecution," Piggot began, "is because Empress claimed as such to her captive audience, citing a fear of being killed or sent to the Bird Cage and, for whatever reason, several of them believed her."

"Why?" Mrs. Fowler asked, incredulously. "What possible reason could people have for believing that the person holding them hostage was an innocent victim?"

"I don't know why," the director answered, "but her actions at the Bank were so inconsistent with our psychological profile of her that we had to throw it out and start over." Director Piggot hesitated before adding this next bit, but decided that Mrs. Fowler had probably already known that Shadow Stalker was on punishment detail. "And there's at least one incident, that I've only recently become aware of, where one of our Wards had a violent encounter with Empress shortly after Empress fled her home and failed to report on it.. Since becoming aware of this, I've been personally going over everything we have on Empress, because if there's any chance that any other..."

"...Ahh." Mrs. Fowler laughed bitterly. "Might be a villain you made yourself? Well, you're lucky that that's outside of the scope of my investigation. Now, about this Ward with the unreported encounter?"

"Shadow Stalker is a probationary Ward. Apparently, at some point shortly after Empress fled from home, she went on a solo patrol and encountered Empress, and the encounter turned violent." Director Piggot tapped her fingers on the desk. "Shadow Stalker claims that Empress attacked first, but regardless the fact that such an encounter happened at all… She's already violated the terms of her parole by going out alone. The only reason she's not on her way to juvenile hall as we speak is because I want to give her a chance to prove that she's merely guilty of poor judgement."

Mrs. Fowler filled away a few more things on her clipboard. "Well, that's everything I needed. Between your testimony and the Wards', it seems like this encounter was an extreme freak accident." Fowler laughed for a moment but suddenly stopped. "Just don't let it happen again," she said in a serious tone that clashed with her wide smile. "Some people higher up than me might try and use this for some agenda or another," she said as she stood up, "but my part's done."

Director Piggot was relieved to hear that. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Fowler."

"Good afternoon, Director Piggot." The youth guard woman left,just in time for an agent to enter. Director Piggot silently wondered why, exactly, people kept coming into her office without knocking today.

"Deputy Director Renick said that you personally wanted all files on Empress?" the agent said while holding out a stack of papers. "I've got my Squad's after action reports here, on the Empress sighting mission."

"Thank you, Agent… Wallace, isn't it?" Piggot said and asked.

"Um, yes, Director," answered the agent.

"You were in the Squad first sent to find and contain Empress after her trigger, weren't you?"

"Yes, Director."

"Ah, then you could help me with something," the director said a bit more… menacingly than she perhaps intended. "I was looking over the report from that mission. Could you explain a few things for me?"