It was like someone had taken the basic idea of an interrogation room and tried to soften the edges, blunt the corners, make it less threatening. Whoever it was had succeeded, in part. Sure, there wasn't a big mirror in the wall for people to sneakily observe through. The table wasn't bolted to the floor, it didn't have the metal loops for handcuffs to be threaded through, and the chairs looked surprisingly comfortable. Still, none of that changed how bare and bleak the walls were, without a single window, or how solid the door looked.
Okay, sure, I could feel through my outer power that the door was actually hollow, painted wood, and that the reason for the lack of windows was probably because the room was closer to the core of the building than the sides, but still. Its appearance didn't exactly lend itself to relaxation.
That said, with my powers, I simply couldn't be confined, which really helped ease my nerves. The field of my outer power actually covered the entirety of the building with only a little adjustment, and a mere door could be twisted into parted gossamer fangs to grant me exit with the greatest of ease.
If the building were solid, it would be much too big for me, but since buildings are mostly empty space, I could feel the whole thing, from the helipad on the roof to the dome of the Wards HQ in the basement. Empty sets of clothing walked around or sat at desks, the bodies within not registering to my power. I could even pick out the ink that formed words on paper, and with some effort I might be able to decipher what was written. My attention split a dozen ways, most racing off to explore what I could while two remained with my bodies to shake the hand of the man who had led the two of me here. Tabitha's grip was firmer than Acacia's.
"Have a seat, please," he said with an easy smile, gesturing to the two chairs on one side of the table. He'd introduced himself as Taisto Ruoho when he'd arrived in the lobby to collect me. With his neatly parted blond hair, gray eyes behind round-lensed glasses, and business-casual outfit, he looked every inch an unremarkable paper-pusher. I certainly didn't remember him from the story, assuming he even featured at all. He looked my age, perhaps younger.
Tabitha and Acacia each took a seat, with Acacia further from the door. Taisto (it felt weird to think of him as "Mr. Ruoho", given our relative ages) settled into one of the chairs opposite them, setting the folder he'd been carrying on the table. "Alright," he said, steepling his fingers. "How are the two of you doing today?"
"I'm doing alright," my bodies said, almost, but deliberately not quite, in synch. Tabitha gave her sister a toothy grin, while Acacia gave her a smaller, closed-lipped smile in return. "I was almost expecting one of your parahumans to meet us, to be honest," my flannel-wearing body said.
"They're a bit too busy, what with all the gang-related, ah, unpleasantness happening recently," he replied with an apologetic smile. His expression slipped almost seamlessly from friendly to serious, and his focus remained on Acacia. "I was briefed on your call, but if you could restate what the two of you are seeking assistance with? Just to make sure we're all on the same page."
My bodies blinked, and Tabitha forced a smile as the stress of the situation returned. "Ah, yeah," she started, and Taisto hurriedly turned his focus to her. "Actually, I think I might not have remembered to say some things we want help with, in addition to what we need." He nodded and motioned for her to continue. "Well, first off, there's the stuff you've probably been briefed on, how we were basically taken from our Earth as we slept and left on a fu- a rock in the woods on this one." I quickly dialed down that emotional response and left a note etched into Acacia's skull to remind me to reset it later. Tabitha covered my pause by taking a deep, calming breath, before continuing, "Thus, we have no identification, no documentation, no money, and no way to get any of that on our own."
"Not legally, at least," Acacia interjected, and Tabitha gave her a tight smile.
"Yeah, that. I… well, I don't want to turn to crime, even if it's for the sake of survival, which I guess is pretty obvious since we're talking to law enforcement and all. But… yeah." Tabitha's strained smile turned a touch more genuine. "The people who were kind enough to give us a place to stay said that if anyone could help us, it'd be the PRT."
"They would be correct," Taisto said with a smile of his own.
"Yeah, we figured, especially after we did some research. There are those other parahumans-"
"The ones with mutations and amnesia," Acacia supplied. Tabitha gave her a side-eye.
"... Yeah, them. We figured that, since a number of them have been able to get accommodations for that, y'all would be able to do something similar for us, given our circumstances are kind of similar, save, y'know, we don't have amnesia or mutations or the like."
"Of course," Taisto nodded. "Just for the sake of thoroughness, though, do either of you have a mark or tattoo shaped like an omega anywhere on you?"
"I don't," Tabitha replied promptly. "My power gives me an awareness of my body, so I'd know if I had anything like that on me. Acacia doesn't have one either, I think." She gave her sister a questioning glance, and received a head shake in return.
"Okay, that's interesting," Taisto murmured, jotting down some notes in nearly illegible handwriting on a small notepad he'd pulled out at some point. He returned his attention to me. "That actually leads into another question I'm supposed to ask: what are your powers?"
Acacia's hand found Tabitha's under the table, and I jumped a bit internally at the unexpected contact. That… No. Later. I made another note next to the previous one, and Tabitha gave her sister's hand a squeeze.
None of this showed on her face as she said, "Well, I guess I'd describe my power as shapeshifting." She held up her free hand and had ripples of melanin flow across its surface for a couple moments before returning her skin to its normal, freckled appearance. Then, her fingertips opened up like little mouths, complete with tiny, sharp teeth. Those teeth were soon shoved to the sides, though, by wickedly curved, bone-white, razor-edged claws that emerged from each mouth's gullet in an inversion of a sword swallower's technique. I examined them for a moment or two, admiring the way they glistened wetly under the room's fluorescent lighting, turning Tabitha's hand this way and that and flexing her fingers.
Acacia's eyes had been on Taisto's face throughout the process, and through them I got to watch as his eyes went wide, his face lost color, and his mouth fell slightly agape. I grinned internally as I savored his horrified expression like a fine wine, but I managed to keep Acacia's expression from growing beyond a small smile. Then, before the scene had managed to overstay its welcome, she cleared her throat pointedly.
Both Taisto and Tabitha jumped a little at the sound, and I had her blush a little and give him a slightly sheepish smile. His eyes went to her teeth, then quickly looked away. The claws retracted with a soft squelch, tiny tongues lapped up stray droplets of drool, and the mouths closed, leaving Tabitha's fingers looking like nothing had happened to them. By that point, Taisto had managed to get his own expression under control, and he hurriedly scrawled something in his notes.
"Okay, then," he said, returning his attention to Tabitha. "That was… visceral. Is, is that all?"
"Oh, uh, not quite." Time for a bit of bullshitting. "I've also got this power that lets me feel vibrations from the ground, but I don't exactly have a snappy name for it. It lets me feel people's footsteps and stuff, how far away they are, which way they're going, that sort of thing. Like, I can tell that there are, um, a couple dozen people or so walking around or standing or whatever on this floor, and more above and below us." Plan Two-Person Pseudo Cluster is a go, I guess.
He let out a breath that he'd apparently been holding, and turned to Acacia. "And you?"
"Well," she said, drawing out the word, "my powers are rather different from my sister's." Her free hand came up, and she started tracing circles on the table's surface with her finger. "I originally thought of it as a sort of terrakinesis, but that isn't quite right, since I can affect more than just rock and dirt. In fact, it seems like I can use it on pretty much anything that's solid and not alive that's in my range, like… like this." Ripples had begun to form around her finger in the table's surface, as if a raindrop had fallen into a pool of water, and the results had frozen in time. Each pass of her finger left more ripples to push the old ones outwards, forming a spiral of rounded ridges, while in the center, a small spike began to slowly rise. "I can do bigger stuff than just this, of course. But I'm sure that wouldn't be appreciated here."
She stopped moving her hand, then raised it, only to bring it down with a smack on the center of the spiral of ripples she'd made. A circular pass over the rest of it, and all that was left was a table as flat as it had been before being subjected to her power, if with a rather obvious distortion of the faux-woodgrain surface.
"Now," she continued, "I do have another power, but it's not very powerful. Basically, I can alter my own cosmetic features, like my eye color or skin tone." She shut her eyes for a moment, and when they opened again they were bright green. Another long blink and I'd returned them to their usual blue shades. "It's useful, and it lets me have a costume that leaves my eyes visible, since heterochromia like ours isn't exactly common. But minor feature changes aren't exactly a game changer, I don't think."
Taisto jotted down some more notes, nodding to himself as he did, before setting the notepad aside and placing his hands on the folder. "Well, then. I'm not with the PR department, but I think we can work with your powers and circumstances. Now-"
"Wait, wait," Tabitha interrupted, giving voice to the confusion I felt. "What do you mean, 'work with'?"
Taisto blinked. "We, uh… The two of you are here to join the Protectorate and get documenting handled, right?"
"Nnnnnot really? I mean, we need ID's and stuff, yeah, but… well…"
"We did some research between when Tabby scheduled this appointment and now," Acacia piped up. "And, well, we kind of don't want to join y'all, given all the fighting. 'S not really what we, well, what I want to do with my life, and I'm sure Sis will agree with me." She glanced at Tabitha, who nodded. "Yeah. And I thought, my power is good for fixing stuff, and since fights between parahumans seem to often cause damage to stuff like roads, we could get paid for fixing that!"
She smiled brightly at Taisto, who slowly sat back in his chair. He let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair, messing up the neat part. "Okay. I think… I think I need to get some different paperwork." He got up from his seat, collecting his things, then paused. "Um. I, uh, can't leave you two here alone. Regulations. But I'm pretty sure I can't take you to where I can get the paperwork. And someone who knows more about Rogue stuff." He ran his hand through his hair again, before suddenly snapping his fingers. "There's a break room on the next floor up. I can take you there, and then go get what I need. Who I need. Sound good?"
"Um, by break room, do you mean the room over there," Tabitha pointed up and to the side, "with five people sitting down in it?"
Taisto's face went blank for a moment, before understanding dawned and relief filled his eyes. "Oh, good, there's people there. Good. Yes. So?"
Tabitha grabbed the briefcase's handle and stood, with Acacia following not long after. "Sure, let's go."
.o.o.o.
And just like that, my bodies found themselves seated in a very average-looking breakroom with five average-looking office workers. Thankfully, it seemed that no one had ever inflicted the truly villainous crime of cooking fish in the microwave upon this room. Sanity prevailed.
The people here paid more attention to their meals or to the news program on the TV than they did to either of me, which I didn't mind. I'd been idly watching the news, too, at first just because it was the smart thing to do, with my recent arrival. But that was before the subject took a rather concerning turn.
Scion was here.
Well, not here, here. Rather, he was hovering above the forest to the north of the city, above a rather familiar stone sculpture, as he had been for the past couple of days. Whatever reason he had for snooping around the spot where I'd appeared, it probably wasn't good, and the thought had my altered guts twisting in knots.
The reporter whose crew had actually trekked out into the woods to do a live bit on it was yammering about how Scion had apparently been just starting to help with the cape-caused fires ravaging the city of Galle, in Sri Lanka, when he'd abruptly stopped and fucked off. Well, she didn't use those words, exactly, but I didn't really care. He'd then flown halfway around the world to just hang in the sky, motionless, for days. Why?
"Hey, uh, kid?" My bodies jumped a bit, and turned to look at one of the people, an almost middle-aged woman. She blinked, then asked, "Are you alright, there?"
It was Tabitha's turn to blink. "Oh, uh, yeah," she started to say, only to be interrupted by a truly horrendous sound, like the tortured shrieks of steel and stone and snakes and so much more, all blended into one, coming from the TV. I turned to look, only to stare slack-jawed at what I saw.
A huge distortion hung in the air before the entity, whose arms were spread as if he'd torn something in half. And he had.
He'd torn a hole in reality.
