Emily sank into the chair with a deep exhale, body aching in a pattern of familiar pain. She pushed past it as she always did, the pain a constant companion by this point. She sat, straight backed and at attention in a high-backed chair despite her shoulders feeling like they were weighed down by cinder blocks. Now was not the time to be tired, it never was.
"You're telling me we have a teenage Alexandria running wild in my city," her voice was as dry as a desert that hadn't seen a drop of rain in months, "One that two of you, together, couldn't stop."
In front of her, around a large wooden table that took up most of the conference room, sat the team of Protectorate 'Heroes' she had to interact with on a daily basis, barring Dauntless who was still out on patrol. The city couldn't be left without anyone instantly ready to respond where needed. Having only a single Hero out there wasn't a good idea, but it was better than having absolutely nobody, and the others were all too tired or still recovering to do patrols of their own. Emily grimaced, Armsmaster and Miss Militia's encounter with this 'Tyrant' couldn't have come at a worse time.
They'd all been called in despite the late hour, and it showed. Velocity, Robin, near buzz cut brown hair still showed signs of being ruffled from sleep. Next to him, Rory rubbed at his eyes tiredly. His golden helmet gleamed brightly on the table, its rendition of a lion staring blankly out the window.
A large screen took up most of the wall behind her, on it the video taken from Armsmaster's suit mixed with the sparse CCTV footage looped over and over without sound. Mutely showing the frankly terrifyingly easy defeat of their leadership figures. It ran on the heavily encrypted laptop before her on the table too, but Emily didn't look at it. She'd seen it enough times that the footage was burned into her memory.
"A Brute yes," Colin answered tersely, though whether he was annoyed by the reminder of his conversation with Tyrant or having to repair his suit was only known to him. He didn't look up from fiddling with his suit, glaring at it, apparently still finding something out of place in the spare pieces he kept on base, "he was resistant to containment foam. If I'd had more time-"
"Resistant? Try immune. The kid moved like it wasn't even there," Ethan cut in. The red face mask that usually covered his eyes was thrust up over his scalp, pulling his wild hair back and away from his face. He grinned. The man never seemed to not be smirking at something, though now he seemed to be too tired for it to reach his eyes, "It's not a power interaction either, or not just one. You can see he just Brute forces it."
He pointed as the footage slowed down to pass over a few frames individually, even taking it one frame at a time Tyrant's movements were abrupt with no transition between one moment and the next. Beside him, his wife rolled her eyes at his attempt at humor.
"Not only that," Emily quickly interceded before they could move off topic. It was like herding cats, only cats with far more power than sense and egos to go along with it, "He's the same Cape that assaulted Glory Girl and has now murdered Hookwolf. And we have his adopted mother sitting on the rig who triggered because of him."
A beat of silence. The woman, Delilah Graves, had only triggered earlier that very evening, a fact that only some in the room would have been briefed on. Namely Armsmaster and Miss Militia. If she hadn't known already, Emily would have been able to tell which of the Heroes in the room knew anything about the situation by their reactions alone. There was a collective sharp intake of breath as many of them leaned away from the table sharply.
She saw how the look in their eyes changed when they looked back at the frozen image of Tyrant, a wariness that bordered on disgust crept into them. All of them had gone through a trigger event, all of them knew on some level what Tyrant, Ashton Graves, had done to his own mother. If Emily ever needed more fuel for her feelings about parahumans, Brockton Bay always delivered in droves.
Velocity looked down at the report open in front of him, flipping through the entire thing in the time it would take a normal person to read a sentence. The others that weren't already fully abreast of the situation were still reading.
"Fuck me," he trailed off uncertainly, "he really believes he's someone else? And rubbed it in… Delilah's face? Talk about a messed-up situation."
Trigger Events were, naturally, a touchy subject in a room full of traumatized parahumans. The shared experience did as much to bring them together as it did to push Emily away from them. Armsmaster looked up from his suit, the panels on the replacement gauntlets clicking closed near silently.
"Apparently so. Everything came up as truthful on my systems from her testimony and almost everything Ashton, Tyrant, said did too."
"Almost?" Assault asked. He hadn't even opened the briefing.
"Almost. It could be a false positive, his body language didn't give my lie detector enough data to give a conclusive result, but he cares about her."
"Apparently not enough to not traumatize the woman though," Rory cut in scathingly. Family was important to the young Hero, who spent more time out of costume than any of the other local Protectorate Heroes, supporting and helping his family.
She found herself agreeing with the man, not overly surprising since he was one of the most reasonable of the bunch. She wasn't required to know what happened to Trigger the Heroes that worked under her jurisdiction, and she'd never dug into it, but if she had to guess, his would have been one of the least traumatic experiences or perhaps Battery's. That or he was just a frighteningly well-adjusted person, something that in her experience was mutually exclusive with parahumans.
"Speaking of Delilah, how is she holding up?" Battery asked, the blue lines of her suit muted without her charging it. Her fingers tapped against her knee while she directed her eyes down at the file.
Emily answered with a careful shrug, "As well as could be expected from someone in her situation."
"So, fucked."
Emily didn't even need to look over to know that Battery smacked her husband over the head for his blithe comment. She did anyway, it was therapeutic.
"Succinctly put, Assault. We're keeping her at PHQ for now, the standard therapists have been offered but it remains to be seen whether or not she'll take it. There won't be any official power testing until she's recovered."
"Jesus, even her power has something to do with him," Rory muttered under his breath loud enough for everyone around the table to hear.
Ah, he'd found the photos. Delilah herself had been left out of them, her powers having no impact on her own appearance. Instead, there were snapshots taken from the security cameras placed everywhere over the rig. Emily suspected there wasn't a square inch of the place that wasn't covered by at least two cameras.
Black and blue fog swirled into a short figure, solid enough that in the dark she could've mistaken it for a real person. In the harsh light of the room she'd situated Delilah in, light shone through it like rays of the sun through tree branches in a park. Wisps of fog floated off it, almost as if it was steaming hot. The face was perhaps the most noticeable aspect. Whatever it was made of it had congealed at the head into a near solid material, enough that the facial structure could be made out.
A face that by all reports Delilah refused to look at. Recognition software provided to the PRT by Dragon gave a damn near perfect match to one Ashton Graves. Tyrant. Or what Tyrant looked like before he Triggered.
"Indeed," Emily said dryly, "for all intents and purposes it appears to be a standard single minion Master power. Again, she hasn't even officially joined the Protectorate. Our first priority has to be keeping her away from Tyrant."
Robin shot her an odd look, "Away from him? She's explicitly asking for us to bring him to her."
If she was anyone else, Emily would've laughed. Instead she spared the speedster an annoyed glance.
"Yes, because bringing a known violent murderer to his traumatized mother is a fantastic idea, the woman that he traumatized. Delilah doesn't know what's best for her right now."
The fact that she didn't think that any of the Capes in the room did went unsaid. Collectively, parahumans seemed to have as much control over themselves as a severely intoxicated preschooler and even less of an idea as to how to get over their trauma. Emily had problems, and she knew she did. Capes had more and didn't care to even acknowledge them let alone work around them.
Rory looked like he wanted to disagree, but let it drop rather than bring it up now. Good, the last thing she needed was for the meeting to go even more off course.
"That doesn't mean we're leaving Tyrant alone in the meantime," she continued, glaring around the table to make sure her message got across, "even if they were gang members and Villains, the boy is a murderer and a criminal. Turn to page three."
The sound of rustling paper filled the room and Emily had to fight the urge to sigh.
Page three detailed the extent of what they knew about Tyrant; what they knew he was capable of, what they thought he might be capable of, Thinker evaluation and so on. Normally, there would be more than one page of information. Normally, there wasn't more blank space than text.
"Nothing?" Assault asked incredulously, "They've got nothing?"
"Nothing we haven't worked out for ourselves," Miss Militia chimed in, deliberately not looking at anyone else around the table.
Emily grimaced and shifted in her seat. To others it would look like she was trying to get comfortable, not knowing that she'd given up on that a long time ago.
Neither of them were wrong. The only thing she'd gotten back from the Protectorate Thinkers was regurgitated information that she'd given them in the first place. Half of them seemed to believe the Villain wasn't real and the half that did varied in their reports so much that they may as well have said nothing at all.
"All we've been able to deduce is that he's a Trump, enough at least to throw off every Thinker we threw at him," Emily's voice was grim, and she saw that information settle over the group like a dark cloud.
Assault threw his hands up in a 'what can you do' gesture, "Of course he does. What next? Blaster? Master?"
"There's nothing indicating that he has any additional powers that could fit into other categories," Armsmaster said tersely, glancing up at Ethan, "Just the basic Brute-Mover combination."
"And a Trump," Ethan shot back faux happily. A crunch came from under the table and Ethan winced and peered warily at his wife.
"Just a Brute that handily took down two of the most senior members of the team," Emily continued as if nothing had happened, "we're balancing enough plates as it is, with Hookwolf dead Kaiser will seek reprisals from someone. It'll either be a blind reactionary strike, or one that will bring him into conflict with a Brute of unknown capabilities. Neither is acceptable and neither are anything this city can handle."
She knew for a fact everyone around the table understood, even if a part of them would have felt perfectly content to let the Villains fight amongst themselves. They, more than anyone else, understood the precarious balancing act maintaining control of Brockton Bay took.
Nevertheless, Emily explained further, "We cannot allow Tyrant to destabilize the situation any further. The Thinkers already attributed some of the destroyed ABB safe houses to him, he isn't just attacking the Empire or the Heroes. Near as they can tell, he's blindly lashing out at everyone he can."
Colin hesitated for a second, twisting his partially mended gauntlet around.
"And they're certain about that like they're certain about the rest of what he can do?" Ethan pushed the folder away from him, disgust plastered over his face, "we've got barely anything on the kid. Heck, the only things we actually do know are things that don't affect him at all."
It looked like Battery was going to manually correct his behavior again, but her hand dropped back down to the table a moment later. Her fingers drummed an anxious beat against the wooden surface.
"Nobody is invincible," with the way Colin didn't look away from his work, Emily wasn't sure whether he was really talking about himself or Tyrant. Probably both, "He must have a weakness, it's just a matter of finding it. Given enough time I'll be able to cover our bases."
Emily shook her head. Time, as ever, was one of the many valuable resources they never had enough of.
"Time which we don't have. The gang war is a bomb just waiting to go off and by murdering Hookwolf, Tyrant has lit the fuse. We have until Kaiser finds out about losing his right-hand man to fix this mess or prepare ourselves as well as we can. If we're lucky, he'll call for a meeting between the gangs, try to find out what happened and end the situation diplomatically."
"It wouldn't work," Miss Militia pointed out quietly. She paused and raised her hand to her throat, massage it gently. Without Panacea, the fatigue wearing Hero would still be in a small multitude of casts, "Kaiser isn't stupid, he'll know that."
"And twist the other gangs' refusal to meet at the table to his own means, yes," Emily nodded gravely, "but it would give us time. Time which we need to stop Tyrant. Capes, Villains, escalate. I am in no hurry to see where an overly empowered teenager goes from murder."
The name still left a bad taste in her mouth, like ash. Another deranged psychopath throwing on a mask and a different name as if it separated them from their actions. As if wearing a junk helmet made murder any less heinous. She wasn't foolish enough to ignore how her feelings on parahumans colored her perceptions, but she wasn't naïve enough to not see that she was often right about them.
"Which we still aren't any closer to having any idea of how to do," Robin half sighed, half said. His eyes were closed, head tilted down towards the table, hands raised to cup his head while thumbs circled tiredly on his forehead.
"We have his mother, uh" Ethan shrugged, before pulling the file back towards him quickly, "Delilah, right?"
Rory turned to face him. The look in his eyes wasn't overly friendly and when he spoke his voice held a distinct edge, "What, exactly, do you mean by that? If you're suggesting using her as bait…"
That would set him off, Emily thought to herself. Ever the family man. Ethan didn't look at all phased by the question, the glare slid off him like water off a duck's back. It was at times like these that he reminded Emily that he had dressed up as Madcap before he was ever Assault; that he had been a villain and a dangerous one at that. Not that she ever forgot.
"She already is bait. The only thing we got out of this whole thing was that Tyrant, Ashton, whatever he wants to call himself, cares about her. Safe bet is that he'll come for her once he finds out we have her."
"The same person that made her trigger in the first place and told her to leave?" Battery sniped while digging her elbow into his side, "It's just as likely to be a glitch in the system, it even says that in the file if you'd actually read it."
Ethan held up his hands in mock surrender.
"I'm just going off of what we have, don't shoot the messenger puppy."
Emily chewed over his words carefully, grimacing slightly, "He's not wrong." Rory's glare slid over to her like the headlights of a PRT van, surprise mixed into the anger, "One way or another, unless Delilah decides to leave the city, she's the only connection we have to Tyrant. We can't be unprepared when, if, he comes for her."
Internally, she could feel the scales tipping back and forth. Trying to maintain control of Brockton Bay was like a race. One with dire consequences and the responsibility solely on her head. She wasn't some green under the collar rookie but having an unknown obstacle like Tyrant thrown on the track left Emily unnerved.
"The whole team can't be out of town at once. The risk is too high," she continued.
"You mean the award ceremony," Colin had straightened in his seat, jolted out of his work, "we can't cancel it. The city needs to know that we've taken action, that we're effective against the gangs."
The award ceremony for taking down Lung was always going to be a risk, taking the entire Protectorate team out of the city. At the time, Emily had known that the danger was worth it. They needed that PR, a resource more valuable than solid gold to her. Public opinion was the oil that greased the wheels of the PRT war machine. At the time.
Now, with a mentally unstable Brute threatening to rampage through her city, there was no way she'd leave her city with the Wards as its last line of defense.
She wasn't surprised that Colin was the one that responded the most to the idea of cancelling it. Being recognised as the Hero who took down Lung came with its fair share of glory, and Emily knew the man well enough to see how he railed against the public narrative the PRT was setting up for Dauntless. If nothing changes, it was practically inevitable that the Trump would overtake and overshadow the Tinker. Personally, she thought that the fixation was foolish. The very nature of parahumans made predicting their future unreliable, and the man was already the leader of a Protectorate branch. In the end, that same drive for glory pushed him to work harder than anyone else on the team so Emily let it be.
"What we need is a city to come back to," she answered, weighing her words heavily.
"There's no indication that Tyrant is likely to move again within the next twenty-four hours," heat surged through his voice and for a moment Emily thought he might push himself up from the table. He paused, perhaps finally remembering that he was talking to his superior, before continuing with a more subdued tone, "the positives still outweigh the negatives. We have to be seen to be doing something."
And you get what you want out of it, of course, Emily thought to herself dryly.
"We'll try and get it moved to a venue in the city, maybe the Forsberg Gallery?" Emily made a note of it, "Even then we won't be tying up the entire team in one place. Yes, Armsmaster, you will be there. The rest of you will be operating as normal."
It would hurt to not get the Protectorate and PRT as whole directly associated with the award but sending the leader of the branch would still give them a significant boost in the court of public opinion. Armsmaster settled down, though with a small, satisfied smile. Maybe in his head he'd already convinced himself that he had been the one to take Lung down and not another new, unknown parahuman.
"We'll have to release a statement on Tyrant, of course." Emily flipped the laptop in front of her closed and steepled her fingers above it, "until then, inform the Wards that they are to report any contact with him, and to not engage-"
She was cut off by the ground shaking, followed by a window-rattling explosion. As one, everyone in the room spun round to face the barred window that took up an entire side of the outer wall of the room. The conference room was several stories above street level, enough to see above most of the buildings in the surrounding blocks.
Smoke rose in the distance, so dark in the low light of the night that Emily could only make it out by how it blotted out the well-lit windows of a high rise. Whatever had happened, the PRT Headquarters was too far away to see what was going on at street level.
Armsmaster sidled up beside her, helmet returned to his head and mouth pressed into a grim line.
"What's going on?" Emily asked, tone clinical, not betraying the knot of unease that twisted in her stomach.
"Confirmed impact, eastern Downtown area," his voice was equally cold, whatever he'd felt about the award ceremony falling away into clinical professionalism. Emily could appreciate that, "Dauntless is already on his way to the impact site, Shadow Stalker and Kid Win are falling back. I'm pulling CCTV footage but none of them got a good angle."
Emily caught his meaning immediately and turned to him sharply, "You think this is Tyrant?"
"We can't risk them becoming involved if it is, and-"
Armsmaster stiffened at the same time as Emily's closed laptop pinged with an emergency message. In her pocket, she could feel her work phone and her personal phone vibrate simultaneously.
"Dauntless is down."
If anything, his voice became even more detached. Chairs scraped backwards as those that hadn't moved to stand by the window already shot out of their seats.
"Move! We need eyes on the scene now. Battery, Assault, Velocity, get there and get there yesterday. Get me information!" Emily barked, and to the Capes' credit they were already moving before she'd finished talking. That kernel of dread in her gut grew. If there was anything she hated more than dealing with parahumans, and she knew this was the work of a parahuman, it was going in blind.
She turned back to face the window for a moment but stopped. Armsmaster hadn't moved, his expression unreadable.
Suddenly, his jaw tightened, and he twisted towards the room.
"Get down!"
The next thing Emily knew, armoured arms snapped around her waist as the tall Hero barreled into her with all his mass. She was thrown to the floor, collapsing backwards awkwardly. Without time to prepare, her breath was knocked out of her, and she was left gasping.
A split second later, the glass windows exploded inwards in a cascade of shards and broken metal. Pieces clanked against Armsmaster, his body covering her own and absorbing the impact.
Distantly, like it was happening far away, she heard footsteps alight on pieces of broken glass. A crunch as loud as a thunderclap in the briefly shell-shocked room.
A voice rang out. It was cold, almost leisurely. Emily recognised the voice of course, how could she not, she'd just been listening to a recording of it near on repeat since Armsmaster and Miss Militia had returned.
"Where is Thomas Calvert?"
A/N: Whelp, here it is. I only call this chapter an interlude because it was filling in some of the PRT opinion on Tyrant, and it sets up the next bit. I think there's an argument that the chapter might be too long, considering it's nearly 4k words of just talking.
Again, I don't feel super confident that this is my best writing, or that I captured Emily's voice in the narrative that well so maybe expect some changes? I wanted to get this out before Elden Ring because yeah... I'm probably not going to be writing much when that comes out in (checks clock) half an hour hours?!
Hope everyone's having a good 2022 so far, appreciate you taking the time to read my power fantasy fanfiction.