Stasis

Saturday, November 27th

Director Emily Piggot was sitting in her office, trying to enjoy the last of a salad she had gotten for lunch, looking over the paperwork she would need to fill out once she was done. There were no thoughts of procrastination; even if paperwork wasn't the kind of enemy she had once trained for, it was just about the only kind she could still defeat.

Her legs twitched in pain. She grimaced, finishing the last bite of salad. Back to paperwork.

No sooner had she started on the third page of the form when her phone rang. It had different tones for different callers, and the one ringing right now was not one you could ignore and call back after. Sighing, then wincing at the pain again, she pressed a button on the phone, turning to her computer screen as she did so. It flickered over to the video call, and she was greeted with a familiar face.

"Hello, Chief Director. To what do I owe the pleasure?" she asked, genuinely curious. It wasn't every day Director Costa-Brown called you without an appointment or warning. Most times that happened, it was bad, but this week had been fairly calm.

"Good afternoon, Emily. I'm sorry about calling unannounced, but I noticed a probable misprint in a briefing, and thought it might be good to confirm, in case it isn't. The part of the briefing in question was going over the power testing for a new Ward up there."

"You mean Michael Vanderbilt?"

"Yes. It appears the power tests rated him a rather absurd Shaker rating, a 12 on the threat scale. I just wanted you to confirm if this is true or not."

Emily blanched. She hadn't seen the report yet. "One moment, Director." She rifled through the paperwork for today until she found the sheaf in question. Permission to Post Detailed Testing to File 'Materia'. It included a long, detailed account of every step in the testing, and Emily's hands shook a little upon reading the fine detail. No Manton limit. Powers tied to emotional state. Steadily growing control radius. Full control of all terrain in said radius, and tactile sense of all objects affected by it. Not projection-based, things could be brought back from the radius. Similar powers to all 3 Endbringers, and a combat learning thinker power to boot.

She shakily responded. "It- it's correct. Maybe even lowballing them. I wasn't yet aware of this, or I would have been calling you."

Rebecca nodded curtly. "Get that form signed off. I'm going to make some calls. This will need to be handled carefully. Make damn sure the boy gets good therapy, and don't talk down to him. I don't want someone so willing to become a hero to be driven away, especially when staying in one place for a week could make them an S-Class threat if they became hostile. Do you understand, Emily?"

She could only nod, her mouth dry. A wince, as the wounds from Ellisburg voiced their opinion. Here was a cape who could make that fucker look tame, and the only thing that stood in his way was his own morals and sense of good. Something shifted in Emily at that thought. She would damn well keep that kid sane, or she would sign his kill order herself. She hoped, prayed for the former, but she would never let a city become another Ellisburg.

Never again.

-Shangri-La-

Sunday, November 28th

Coil was unhappy/ Thomas was hard at work.

Almost a week had passed since he became aware of Michael Vanderbilt, and his plans concerning him had all failed.

The boy was too young for his plans for a villain team; an eight-year-old would not mesh with the Lindt girl, for one. However, such a young boy would have been putty in his hands, made into a perfect pawn, if he was just given the right… persuasion.

It was paltry work for his men to track him from the PRT to his house. When the boy went to the library alone later that day, he figured it was the perfect time to strike. He had a squad mobilize in one reality, only to find themselves outrun on foot by an overweight child, unable to grab him as he had dodged around them as if they were bumbling idiots, instead of the best mercenaries Coil could afford. He had collapsed that reality. Keeping the element of surprise was essential.

That evening, he had arranged for them to break in during Thanksgiving dinner. They would taser the family, grab the child, and be gone.

His men had been burned, frozen in place, or knocked unconscious, and one unfortunate had been assaulted by a series of bamboo shoots until he couldn't cry for help anymore over the comms. Again, he closed the timeline. Perhaps tomorrow.

He had waited for power testing to finish, to find out the child's limits. What little he was able to glean from the sparse summary of the tests had been illuminating, with the main issue of his attempts becoming clear; obviously, every attempt had been in an area he had been in for some time. He was using his prodigious shaker powers to stop the attempts, he was sure. He wanted the boy even more, now; he would make the base nigh-impregnable if he could be controlled, and perhaps more given time.

The next day, he had a nondescript black SUV full of men in full riot gear on the road, tailing the target. In one reality, as they pulled up to the light together, the men came storming out, shooting the mother and taking the kid out of the car by force-

The last thing he had heard from that patrol was seven and a half little words. "Back off! Something's wrong with him! Oh shi- "

So very frustrating.

But today would be the day.

He would go himself, to collect the boy directly, an opening move for his Coil persona. / He would remain safe at the PRT, because contingencies.

He walked into the church parking lot. / He filled out more paperwork.

His men flanked him.

He raised the taser, firing moments before the men behind him opened fire on the family.

The boy shuddered as the taser struck his lower back, and turned in time to see his family die around him.

Thomas switched to a new document.

The boy grasped at the wires, gritting his teeth, twitching, slowly turning as other people in the lot began to scream.

A single tear ran down the boy's face as his eyes rolled into his head and he began to fall limp.

Coil smiled.

Then he was standing in midair, a mile up, an impossible view below him, his men's yells and screams growing fainter as they fell. The boy was hovering in front of him, riding a tornado, eyes glowing brightly. The taser had been ripped from his hands and cast away by the wind; he was helpless to resist. / Thomas almost closed the timeline, but stopped. There was data to gather.

Then the boy - who by all accounts couldn't speak - spoke one word, in a voice that could not possibly have come from the child's mouth; a voice too resonant and layered and wrong to be carried by just air; one that sounded like a legion of voices following the same intonation, but not necessarily the same language, at once. It said one awful, terrible word as if it was the only truth in the world:

[No.]

Then Coil was cast down from the skies. / Thomas shuddered as he closed the timeline.

That was… unsettling.

Maybe he didn't need a base guardian after all. Laser sharks had a certain appeal. Besides, the boy was joining the Wards soon, so if all went well, he would have him eventually. All he had to do was bide his time before he struck.

Thomas opened another timeline.

-Shangri-La-

Monday, November 29th

Jessica had seen many things in her tenure as a cape psychologist and therapist. She had seen monsters acting like people, people thinking they were monsters, monstrous bodies with good people inside, and people who didn't realize they might be monsters from the choices they made.

She'd been scheduled to take on the Wards in Brockton Bay a few days ago, and so far, she was glad to be called in. These kids all needed help, and she was happy to give it to them.

She wasn't fazed in the slightest by a little kid entering the room. She smiled, offered a hand, and asked for his name. She was unfazed when he pulled out a phone and typed, nor when a moment later the robotic text-to-speech program said 'Michael'. She had seen worse, sat through things infinitely more tedious than this would be.

"Nice to meet you Michael. I'm Jessica, Jessica Yamada." The boy smiled, typed. She waited patiently. 'Nice to meet you too.'

She asked one of the basic questions, a conversation starter. "So, how are you?"

Typing.

'Okay, I guess. Made it through a week with powers.'

A long pause, an intake of breath, a sigh. He was probably making a choice, and preparing himself for it. She waited.

Typing.

'I feel like I'm just faking everything. Going through the motions.'

Typing.

'Like every interaction is a lie, even if I'm telling the truth.'

Typing.

'Because I'm not telling them about all of it. I can't.'

She waited a moment for him to continue. He didn't continue, so she said, "You can't tell them because of some issue, or can't express it?'

'Yes.'

"Could you explain it given the time to? I'm a good listener, and I can be here as late as you need; you're my last appointment." She might have to leave if the Asylum had an emergency, but they were often handled by onsite personnel, and her current patient always took priority. Besides, she had already read the files transferred from his last therapist, and found them wanting. Jessica needed more information if she was going to help him.

He nodded. He sat for almost five minutes, thinking. Jessica sat patiently, understanding smile on her face. It was a sort of relief, having a new patient who actually wanted help, who didn't need to be coaxed into it.

Ah, now he was typing.

'It's hard to put into words.'

Typing.

'It always has been.'

Typing, longer this time.

'How do I explain why I did it, instead of just describing what I did?'

A sigh, a silent decision, more typing.

'Last Saturday, I tried to take my own life.'

Typing.

And so, she listened. She heard the boy's story, told through halting sentences with no emotion and a clinical detachment.

He wanted companionship, an equal. His whole life had the theme; it was easy to spot right off the bat. Unfortunately, Michael didn't seem to be able to relate to other kids. He looked for friends, but couldn't make a connection. Rather than accept his lot, be defined by it, he had tried to reach out anyway, and was shunned or ignored again and again. He had tried to find somebody who could understand him, and failed. Tried to explain his feelings, but couldn't. He had threatened to end his own life just to get someone to pay real attention to him.

She listened to him far into the night. He spoke of his other problems, the little, insignificant problems he had that sapped his mind's potential. How he was so easily distracted. How useless he felt when he could ace a test, but forget to do his homework, or even to check the things that reminded him to do it. How he would find a subject he liked, and become so obsessed gathering information on it that he often accidentally neglected even the things he loved, until he realized his mistake. How it ached when he let his imagination run wild, but the more he tried to find the words to write the thoughts down, the more they left him.

He showed her a glimpse of his worlds, and explained how they reminded him each day of how easily he could escape it all. He talked about his family's problems, his brothers as intelligent as he, his loving mother who was quietly broken, all of them plagued by their demons. His last therapist, who put shame on the whole profession with her blatant phoning it in. His revelations over the summer, his loss of innocence over the course of a week of breakdowns at the end of the previous school year, the grim reality he saw in everything.

She felt like she could begin to understand him. He was set apart, he was lonely, and he was ignored. Introverted, but less because it had come naturally and more because he didn't have a way to relate. From how he described his interactions at school, the 8-year-old sitting across from her knew more about relating to adults than to children his own age; from his description of home life, she could see his family cared for him deeply, but worried Michael didn't always see it.

Hours later, but far too soon, he had run out of things he could find words for. All that he had left were concepts and no way to translate them. Six years of conscious thought is barely anything to an adult, so Jessica understood that he had little to say, understood that he had put his whole life on the table, and got that his stray thoughts might hide the real problems he needed to fix.

Dean had told her about the emotions he had seen. Michael was among the most depressed people Dean had ever seen, painful to look at. Jessica knew why.

How can you not be depressed when your entire life has been based on isolation? Defined by a failure to be recognized and understood?

When, from the moment he had realized other people had different experiences, he had been alone in that revelation for months? When he had lost what few people had known him before that moment, and was dropped, unprepared, into a world of people he didn't know how to talk to? When he had had nothing but more misery and loneliness visit him ever since? Depression is only normal. Depression was a default state of mind for Michael, just a part of his thoughts that had been there for most of his conscious memory.

It surprised her it had taken him till third grade to crack. She was somewhat surprised that she would ever think that, but it was true.

But there was hope, and hope could be nourished.

She would be filing for permanent assignment to Michael, assuming he wanted her to. Michael could not do this for every new counselor, every month. It might break him. Probably not make him suicidal; he had strong feelings on that front; but it might make him apathic. Make him numb.

Hope had to be nurtured. It was like a tiny plant, one bad rainstorm and it could be damaged, or die from overwatering, or have the dirt around its roots washed away. But if you kept it out of the storms, watered and fed it, and put it in a nook to catch the sun, pretty soon your hope would be big, and strong, and blooming. You just had to care for it.

Jessica Yamada began to talk.