A Cold, Cold Heart Chapter 1
Laboratory, Hidden Base, Brockton Bay
The room was large and stuffed full of scientific equipment, all centered around a single tube in the middle, inside of which a single thin man lay, an aura of pure cold emanating from it in waves.
The cold didn't affect me, not anymore.
Walking over to the cryosleep capsule, I placed my hand on the cold glass surface of the lid and wiped the thin layer of frost away to look at the face of my father. He had contracted a virus, one of that little psychopath Bonesaw's creations that she had released because, and I quote 'she was bored and wanted to pass the time'.
Thankfully, I had gained powers as a Tinker thanks to the fucking Fridge that my ex-best friend had helped to put me in. I had revealed them to him and had used my specialty, which had been cryogenics, to impede and slow the progression of the virus while I frantically tried to get Panacea to see my father. In the end though…in the end, I had been forced to use an experimental, incomplete cryosleep capsule, the direct predecessor of the one Dad was in right now, in order to try and save his life.
It had worked…but outside interference had caused…an incident, resulting in me receiving what I now know to be a Second Trigger. It had, as Second Triggers are known to do, caused me more problems than it had solved.
"Dad…" I whispered softly. "What I'm about to do…you will not agree with it. You'll likely be very disappointed in me for doing it…but I must do it. If I do not…you have no future, and neither will I."
Removing my hand from the glass, I turned and left the room, automatically sealing the room shut behind me. I had built it so that even someone like Glory Girl would have some trouble busting through the walls, ceiling, floor or door. I wasn't taking any chances with my father's safety.
Not this time.
The base that I had 'acquired' had formerly belonged to a treacherous snake known as Coil, a supposedly small-time villain. He had in fact been a member of the PRT. He had, apparently, had some kind of splinterpoint simulation power that seemed to misinterpret my actions as something else entirely, allowing me to get in and take down both him and all of his merry mercenaries with some cobbled together gear.
Extracting his resources and finances had been more difficult than that, forcing me to first threaten and then carry out some minor torture. I wasn't proud of what I had done, but I still felt almost nothing about it emotionally. Ever since my Second Trigger, my emotions had been…numbed. Deadened to the point I could barely feel them.
Entering my main lab, I eyed the clunky cryochamber attacked to the wall that had the frozen form of Coil, otherwise known as PRT Strike Team Captain Thomas Calvert, resting within it. I had only promised not to kill or otherwise torture him if he gave me every cent he possessed. I hadn't promised to let him go free. This was my compromise over killing him.
Stepping up to the metal canister in the center of the room, I keyed in the correct code and it split open, revealing the fruits of my labors and the instruments of my vengeance. A cold smile adorned my face as I reached for the first part of my power armor.
"The cold hand of vengeance is reaching out for you…Sophia!" I snarled.
Half an Hour Later
Lobby, PRT Building, Brockton Bay
PRT Trooper Hendrickson was bored.
It wasn't an uncommon occurrence; guarding the front entryway into the PRT Building was seen as either a good thing (because you got to earn your paycheck without risking injury from Capes) or a bad thing (because it was so incredibly uneventful aside from the occasional rowdy tour group) and Hendrickson was firmly in the second camp.
No one was stupid enough to attack the PRT Building anyway, no one aside from the goddamned Slaughterhouse Nine at any rate. The Nine had actually been in Brockton Bay a few months back, but they had (thankfully) only been passing through, which meant less than a hundred casualties, not including the victims of Bonesaw's latest virus.
Hendrickson shivered and banished his thoughts; no need to borrow trouble, as his old granny had told him on multiple occasions.
Returning to his boredom, he still had half an hour until shift change and a release from this purgatory. As it was a Wednesday, the Wards were already assembled downstairs and being briefed on their patrols and other duties for the afternoon. He was due to go to a mall with Vista, Shadow Stalker, Clockblocker and Aegis, which would be a welcome change to standing around cradling a Containment Foam Gun in the lobby of the PRT Building.
OK, so he'd still be standing around cradling a Containment Foam Gun, but at least it would be a change of scenery!
The sound of an engine revving drew closer and louder, making the Trooper look up and around with a blink of surprise. That was odd; the PRT Building was located in the Downtown area, near to Arcadia Highschool. As such, the traffic control in this particular area was pretty tight. So for someone to be moving at the speed that the revs that he was hearing suggested, it was either an emergency services vehicle or an idiot speeding. As he could hear no sirens, he presumed that it was the latter.
"Isn't that coming a bit close?" he wondered. The nearest of his fellow Troopers, Hernandez, nodded slowly.
"True. Nothing should be-" he started to say before being cut off…by a freaking truck slamming through the entrance to the lobby, making the troopers scatter in a panic to avoid getting run over. Even the receptionist leapt to safety before the truck slammed into the desk, demolishing it.
"Holy fucking shit!" Hendrickson cursed as he staggered to his feet. He had been near the entrance to the gift shop, so he had flung himself through it instinctively and had landed on a large assortment of Armsmaster merchandise. Those little halberds on the action figures were sharp!
"Hernandez! You OK?!" he shouted as he poked his head out of the gift shop cautiously.
"Yeah…just barely." The man called back.
"Roderick? O'Malley?" Hendrickson called. A pair of groans answered him, but he was relieved to see his fellow Troopers survive unscathed.
"What the hell happened?" O'Malley, a petite woman, asked as she bent down and picked up her Containment Foam Gun.
"This sonofabitch went and rammed through the doors!" Hendrickson scowled as he stomped over to the driver's side door of the van. "Let's arrest the bastard!"
"We can't arrest non-Parahumans, Hendrickson." Hernandez reminded him.
"Citizen's arrest until the Police or a member of the Wards or the Protectorate gets here then!" the formerly bored Trooper snapped. "We were almost run over! Now, let's be having you!"
He pulled the door open…revealing that the driver's cab was empty, barring what looked like a makeshift autodrive system attached to the wheel.
It was at this point that a set of loud steps came from the gaping and damaged entrance. Hendrickson turned to see who it was…and gaped. Advancing through the door was a tall figure in some kind of armour. Coloured blue, black and silver, it covered every part of the wearer's body, and it was obvious that it was a female body as well. Where any sensible person would have a helmet was a crystal clear dome that covered the entire head of the wearer.
Unusually though, despite the lack of opacity of the bowl, the wearer's features were darkened and hard to see. Except the eyes. Whoever was wearing the suit must've been wearing some kind of goggles with red lenses that reflected the light that hit them, making them look very intimidating.
"Freeze!" Hendrickson and the other troopers raised their weapons to point at the intruder.
A dry chuckle came from the figure as she raised her own weapon, a large, blocky handgun, at them in return and spoke in a modulated voice that came out with a metallic echo. "That's Lady Freeze to you."
A pull of the trigger by the enemy Cape had a burst of freezing cold energy lancing out at the Troopers, striking O'Malley's weapon and arms and encasing both in a block of ice, making the woman scream in shock.
"Foam her!" Hernandez ordered frantically, but Lady Freeze had whipped her weapon in an arc, freezing their guns solid and dusting their arms with frost. It took some serious strength to rip their hands from the guns (and thank god the standard PRT uniform came with gloves).
"Drop her in some hot water for a while and the ice will melt." Lady Freeze said with a lazy wave at O'Malley, who was shivering at the cold seeping into her body. "I have my own business here, so I must be going."
"Why you…!" Roderick shouted as he charged the obvious Tinker. She simply turned and caught his fist even as he launched it before driving a knee into his groin. The crack made it sound as if she had broken his pelvis.
"Don't try that again." The (power) armored woman said flatly before turning around again and stomping towards the door to the stairs off to one side of the lobby. Of them all, Hendrickson was the only one who had the sense to run over and slap a button in the room behind the demolished front desk, triggering an alarm that started blaring through the entire building.
With Aegis
The leader of the ENE Wards jerked up for the second time in less than five minutes when the intruder alarm blared. The first time had been a loud crashing sound and shaking of the building that had made the PRT officer giving their briefing hurry out.
"Masks on." He ordered the other Wards. That was standard procedure for when the intruder alarm was rung.
"Who the heck would be stupid enough to attack the PRT?" Clockblocker asked as he slipped his mask on.
"Who gives a fuck?" Shadow Stalker snapped. "A fight's better than listening to some idiot prattling on about stuff we already know about."
Aegis glowered at the former vigilante. She was just so damned passive-aggressive and confrontational at the best of times! He was really unhappy with her and had complained to Armsmaster and a few of the PRT people, as had the rest, but they had been told 'suck it up and get over it' in response.
"What's that sound?" Vista asked as she adjusted her helmet.
Cocking his head to listen, Aegis could hear loud thumps coming closer. It sounded like the time that another Tinker had visited the Wards dressed in a suit of heavy powered armor.
"Shit, sounds like the intruder's heading this way!" he hissed. "Kid, does that sound like someone in powered armour to you?"
Kid Win, the only other heroic Tinker in Brockton Bay aside from Armsmaster, listened for a minute before nodding. "Yup. Sounds as if whoever it is has quite the protection from regular firearms. Wonder why they weren't foamed…"
"This is so not how I wanted to start my career as a Ward…" Browbeat grumbled. The former Independent Cape had only just joined the Wards a few days previously and his new costume had only been delivered literally that morning.
"Get ready!" Gallant hissed and raised one armoured hand towards the curved hallway that led to both the stairs and the secure elevator from the lobby, where the steps where coming from. A loud crash and the sound of metal on metal proved that the stairway door had been no obstacle to the intruder. Two more loud steps echoed across the distance before a phut-phut-phut sound came from around the corner, swiftly followed by three objects about the size of D batteries bounced around the corner and landed in amongst the Wards.
"Grenades!" Aegis hollered and grabbed Vista, throwing her clear, even as Gallant flew back, Shadow Stalker went into her shadow state, Kid Win flinging himself over the tables and then over the sofa, with Clockblocker close behind him, and Browbeat picked up one of the tables and put it in front of him to act as a shield.
When the grenades exploded, it was not gas, mundane explosives or anything terribly exotic like the new ABB Tinker, Bakuda, had been seen to use. Instead, they were ice-generating grenades. Aegis was frozen up to his chest by one, Browbeat was blasted back by the ice generated by another and Shadow Stalker screaming as she fell back onto the floor and out of her Breaker state, her lower legs frozen in ice.
"M-my legs…!" she half-screamed. "Th-they're frozen on the inside!"
"Naturally." A mechanical monotone stated as the perpetrator advanced into the Wards' main base room, red eyes locked onto the incapacitated Ward. "My research indicated that your Breaker state is susceptible to not only electricity, but liquids as well. My grenades unleash a liquid-gas mixture that rapidly turns to ice as it makes contact with air. They were specifically designed to either kill or disable you."
"Wh-who the fuck're you?!" Shadow Stalker barked as she grabbed her crossbow and raised it to point at the power armoured figure.
"Sophia, I'm hurt." The woman said insincerely. "You don't remember me? The person you tortured into Triggering?"
There were multiple gasps of shock coming from the other Wards at that. First was the shock that whoever this was obviously knew who Shadow Stalker was underneath the mask. That was bad enough, but then she claimed that Sophia Hess/Shadow Stalker had not only tortured her, but done it to the point that she had made the Tinker Trigger in the first place.
"No…no, it can't be!" Stalker yelled in a fury that none of the Wards had seen before. "I fucking killed you!"
"Self-evidently, you failed." The Tinker replied dryly. "Lady Freeze, formerly the Rogue Cape Cryo Heart, alive and accounted for. My father, who you tried to kill as well, is also alive. Three attempted murders as a Ward…the observation that you are under is sub-par, so I am taking matters, and you, into my own hands. You will be unable to harm anyone else in a cryogenic stasis chamber for the rest of eternity."
"NO!" the former vigilante screamed and activated her Breaker state and firing her crossbow, aimed right at the heart of 'Lady Freeze'. In the Breaker shadow state the arrow was in, the quarrel would simply phase through the armour and become solid at Shadow Stalker's will. It was a move that could cripple a Brute temporarily…or kill a human if it struck the heart, even with the tranquilizer arrows Stalker used.
Lady Freeze's weapon came up just as fast as the arrow was released and a blast of cold energy launched from the barrel of the gun's muzzle, intersecting with the shadow state bolt, disrupting the Breaker effect it was under and knocking it off course to slam into the wall.
"H-how?!" Stalker snarled as she tried and failed to stand on her frozen legs.
"When applied to inanimate objects, your Breaker effect is more easily disrupted than with your body." Lady Freeze answered as she stumped forwards. "Now give up. My strength is many times that of yours in this suit."
"Can't let you do that." Gallant said as he raised his hand towards her. "Regardless of what you claim Stalker has done, you cannot be allowed to take her, especially after you invaded the PRT building."
"Do tell what makes you think you can stop me." Lady Freeze replied and fired another blast at Clockblocker, who yelped as his arms were frozen to his torso in a large block of ice.
Gallant hit her with an emotional blast, but she was barely fazed. "My Second Trigger makes me emotionless." She stated. "Blasts which alter emotions are therefore completely useless."
She then pressed a button on her gun before pulling the trigger, which fired another Ice Grenade at Gallant, exploding on contact and enveloping him in ice up to the neck.
Vista shrieked with anger and extended the room to ludicrous dimensions, separating Lady Freeze from her teammates, aside from Shadow Stalker.
"Vista, what are you doing?!" Aegis yelled as he struggled to free himself of the ice that held him captive.
Lady Freeze wasted no time in grabbed Shadow Stalker by the throat and picking her up. Reaching into her belt, she withdrew a bracelet that was slapped on one wrist of the struggling Ward. "Electrical systems are not my forte, but a simple shock bracelet should be a sufficient muzzle for the moment, Sophia."
"Fuck. You. Hebert!" Stalker snarled.
"You aren't my type." 'Hebert' deadpanned back before punching Shadow Stalker in the solar plexus and then the jaw, driving the wind from her body and knocking her out respectively.
Throwing the unconscious girl over her shoulder, Lady Freeze eyed the remaining Wards; Vista was glaring at her, with Kid Win pointing his p=laser pistol at her warily and Browbeat bulked up and wielding a table leg he had ripped off the nearest one.
"I have no quarrel with you all." She stated unequivocally. "I am taking Sophia with me; get in my way and I will disable your ability to fight temporarily. Besides…you had better remove your companions from that ice before they freeze to death."
"Why attack her here?!" Vista demanded harshly. "Why?!"
"She could not run far here due to the very security that the Wards Base and PRT Building possess." Lady Freeze stated flatly. "It was therefore the most logical plan to attack here."
"PRT forces and Protectorate members will be here to capture you soon!" Kid Win said tightly. "You won't get away with this."
The enemy Tinker looked at him for a moment. "Given how well Sophia has evaded justice for her crimes against me up until this point, I shall not hold my breath."
With that, she started making her way back across the now football pitch-length room towards the exit.
"Why you…!" Browbeat shouted as he charged at her, Vista undoing the space manipulation she had used between the two to help him out. Lady Freeze dodged to the side, avoiding the table leg, before lashing out with her free hand, smashing into the new Ward's sternum and sending him flying.
"Gah!" the self-biokinetic choked out before crashing into the mass of ice that Aegis was trapped in.
"Browbeat!" Vista cursed.
"Let me leave. Right here, right now, I am an opponent beyond your skills." Lady Freeze stated. "Come at me later, when you have had time to analyze my abilities and equipment. It will turn out much more in your favour."
That made the most experienced of the current Wards gape at the Tinker for a moment. Was she actually trying to be encouraging? Vista didn't know what to make of that possibility.
Looking at Aegis, Clockblocker, Gallant and Browbeat, all immobilised or down for the count, she sighed and undid her alterations to the room. No point in dragging this out.
"Thank you." Lady Freeze stated simply and strode back around the corner, the sound of her steps fading as she started to ascend the steps.
"Vista, what the hell?" Kid Win asked as he lowered his weapon.
"We are the only two people not immobilised on our side, our teammates are encased in ice for the most part and who knows what other kinds of Tinker bullshit Lady Freeze had up her sleeve?" the green, black and white clad girl replied crossly. "All I could do was keep the situation at a stalemate while everyone else froze to death. I chose to place the wellbeing of my teammates above capturing a villain who has too many unknowns about her. Now stop bitching at me and help get this ice off of Clockblocker!"
"Piggot is NOT gonna be happy about this." The Wards Tinker groaned as he moved to help.
Later
Director Piggot's Office, PRT Building
Emily Piggot was furious. Not only had the PRT Building been breached for the first time in her tenure, but a Ward had been kidnapped right out from under her. Never mind that she had been in a meeting in Boston at the time, she just knew that that brass-clad bitch Rebecca Costa-Brown was going to lay the blame for this Charlie-Foxtrot at her feet.
"You have had four hours. You had better have results." She said icily (how ironic) to the four people assembled in her office. "Miss Militia, what is the current status of the Wards team?"
"All of them have been deiced, warmed up and any injuries tended to. They are dispirited and withdrawn for the most part." The Kurdish-American woman replied steadily. "An understandable reaction, really; they were beaten in their home turf as if they were unruly five year olds. Some of what Shadow Stalker and this 'Lady Freeze' said is also bothering them."
"Later. Renick, PRT casualties?" Piggot moved on.
"One Trooper, Beth O'Malley, was hit by Lady Freeze's 'Freeze Gun' and had her torso and arms encased in an ice block." The Deputy-Director replied with a tired sigh. "Another, Timothy Roderick, has a broken pelvis and severely damaged testicles. I'm putting in a request for Panacea to help him. Trooper O'Malley was defrosted easily upon submersion in hot water. The other troopers in the lobby were only lightly struck by the Freeze Gun and escaped the need for anything but a warm shower afterwards."
"And the damage to the lobby?" the Director asked with a sense of impending budgetary agony.
"The lobby will need several days before it is fully repaired." Renick admitted. "The doors and desk are total write-offs, with the floor needing repaired as well. It's likely to not be expensive monetarily, but reputation-wise? We've taken a black eye, Director. Anyone looking at our building will be able to see that."
"Understood." Emily sighed. "Armsmaster, your analysis of Lady Frost's Tinkertech?"
"She left very little to analyze, Director." The power-armored hero replied gruffly. "The drive system in the van is very crude and is little more than an expanded version of a remote controlled car. I cannot imagine that it accurately reflects the sophistication of her real Tinkertech."
"And your opinions via the footage of the cameras?"
"Very obviously, her Tinker Specialty is Cryogenics." Armsmaster stated. "The 'Freeze Gun' and 'Ice Grenades' that she used to assail the PRT Building are all fairly well designed and with no obvious counters that I can see, save for hot water to melt the ice. What concerns me is that she told the PRT Troopers of this weakness in her technology herself. What I can guess from this is that either she is working on a version that does not have this weakness and is thus unafraid to reveal it to us, or she created this version of her ice technology especially for us, meaning the regular technology she possesses is unaffected by hot water."
Piggot grimaced. Just what she needed. So either Lady Freeze was close to perfecting her technology, or she already had perfected it and had deliberately used a flawed version with a verifiable weakness to go easy on the PRT and Wards.
That didn't speak of a full-on villain, at least not yet. This spoke more of someone determined to accomplish a goal without indelibly ruining their name.
"Very well." She said at least. "Dragon, why did the automatic containment foam turrets in the lobby activate when the alarm went off?"
The last person 'present' wasn't physically present, but the Canadian Tinker who some called the greatest Tinker since Hero himself was watching and listening through Armsmaster's armor and had a screen displaying the face of a cute young woman with a bob of brownish-red hair on the wall.
"They couldn't be activated from the control panel on the desk because the van destroyed both desk and panel, Director." Dragon replied softly. "And they did not activate when the intruder alarm went off because the physical circuit to activate them had been sabotaged. As best as Armsmaster and I can determine, a signal was broadcast into the building minutes after the entry of the van and activated miniature bombs inside the main computer in charge of them, as well as their main and secondary data BUS. They wouldn't have activated even in their capacity as emergency fire suppressants."
"Do you mean to tell me that someone infiltrated my building and installed measures deliberately designed to cripple our defences as and when their employers wished?!" Piggot snapped in anger and disbelief.
"I am sorry to say yes." Dragon admitted. "With your permission, we shall order the entire building searched for similar explosives in any and all areas, but…it seems likely that Lady Freeze will not return. She has who she came for."
"Shadow Stalker. Yes." Piggot said grimly. "What have you uncovered about her and Lady Frost?"
"According to the Wards, Shadow Stalker referred to Lady Freeze as 'Hebert' on one occasion." The woman's image turned grim before the picture of a girl appeared on screen. "The only person with that name in close proximity to Sophia Hess for any length of time was Taylor Hebert. Her father, Daniel Hebert, was afflicted by Bonesaw's virus four months ago. Both Heberts vanished three months ago, with no clue as to how or where they vanished to."
"Didn't Lady Freeze specifically accuse Stalker of attempting to murder her twice and her father once?" Miss Militia asked, anger in her voice.
"Presumably her Initial and Second Triggers." Dragon agreed. "As to the suspected Initial Trigger, Taylor was locked inside of a large chest freezer in Winslow's kitchen for over an hour back in January."
"Locked? How?" Piggot asked in disbelief.
"Several heavy items were placed atop it, beyond the strength of a fifteen year old girl's strength to move, even with leverage." Dragon replied. "The police report indicates that there were no witnesses and that the school authorities seemed disinterested in finding out the one responsible."
"Hell." Emily closed her eyes as she deduced a reasonable explanation for everything. "Dragon, I'll get you a warrant for Winslow's computer systems. Tear through it and find out what the hell happened there. Armsmaster, I want Hess' lockers, both here and at Winslow, ripped apart. Her phones, her room at her house, everything. I want to know exactly what the hell she has brought on our heads and what the hell Lady Frost might have planned next."
"What about a warrant for Hess' room?" Renick asked.
"Sophia Hess in on probation; she has no privacy so far as we are concerned." The Director snapped. "Renick, I want you to grill Hess' PRT handler. If Hess did get away with attempted murder at Winslow, then I find her glowing reports of her charge's so-called 'excellent' conduct to be very suspicious. Get on it."
So this is something I've had in mind for a while now. If the name hasn't given it away, this is a 'Mr. Freeze' Taylor. Like Victor Fries, she was initially just a regular Tinker to do with cryogenics systems, but an incident happened to up her rating by quite a bit. Three guesses on who was responsible, and you'll only need the one. Also, Contessa interfered to keep killing Coil whenever he split timelines. The Path to Victory dictates that a cryosystems Tinker may be useful in preserving some of mankind, especially since she's a better Tinker than Glace from Toybox. To reflect Taylor's two different states, I'll be giving two power breakdowns; one for Cryo Heart and one for Lady Freeze.
Cryo Heart: Tinker: 2 (Specialisation: Cryogenics and Stasis Systems) [Is able to design and build exceptionally refined and sophisticated cryogenic stasis machines, as well as possessing some aptitude in medicine.]
Lady Freeze: - Tinker: 5 (Specialisation: Cryogenics and Stasis Systems, Cryogenic-based weapons, armour and utilities) [Possess all abilities once held by Cryo Heart. Additionally possesses the ability to build various weapons, armour and other combat-related accessories and devices, from guns, powered armor and grenades to massive cryo-cannons.]
- Thinker: 1 (Has frozen emotions, rendering her all but immune to any emotion-manipulation powers)
- Breaker: 2 (Permanently active. Has a cryogenic physiology, requiring that she be kept at subzero temperatures at all times. Can only last a handful of minutes outside of that temperature range. The aging process is drastically slowed down and her skin has turned ice-blue. Is immune to any cold temperatures and can adapt to unknown frozen temperatures in a handful of minutes. Immune to most toxins, bacteria and viruses.)