PRT ENE Building Wards Base, Common Room; March 15 2008 11:30 PM
After signing on as a Ward Kotoro finished out the rest of his day in the Ward's base. By the time he made his way up to the room the other 3 wards had already gone home for the day. He found the small attached barracks-like area to the side where Wards could store their stuff and sleep on days where they had to work late and couldn't get home easily, and selected a room that appeared to be unused. He was still hungry, and had been hoping to return to the Techne, but right now he was more tired than hungry. He laid down on the bed to get some rest.
PRT ENE Building Wards Base, Common Room; March 16 2008 7:00 AM
After Kotoro woke up and ate breakfast, a box and a half of some cereals that were in the cabinets in the small kitchenette as well as several bananas, Epistēmē filled him in on the progress that had been made on his case while he had been asleep. The government apparently had fast-track processing set up for stateless persons with no history due to the existing case 53 phenomenon, as papers and an ID had already been prepared. They'd had to do some back-calculations to approximate a birthday, which came out to be approximately Nov 24, 1995, but Epistēmē had said that the chosen date was probably as accurate as they were going to be able to get (based on amount of time that had been experienced subjectively from Kotoro's birth at any rate). They didn't see any point in specifying a time of day and just put down a randomly generated value. A birth certificate was generated and social security number was assigned and the pool of guardians had been contacted to find a best fit.
A childless middle class couple, transplants from the UK, who were naturalized US citizens, had stepped up to accept the sudden need for a guardian. Donald Gibbons, a contractor who specialized in construction, and Janet Gibbons, maiden name Hanover, a researcher with a PhD in microbiology who worked in a local College, lived to the west of the boardwalk, just outside the docks. They would be stopping by in a few hours to meet Kotoro and bring him to his new living quarters in their home.
The middle school associated with their address had already been contacted and had papers sent. A representative would contact them within the next day or two to begin the process of figuring out what to do in terms of Kotoro's admission and studies. He would likely have to take placement exams for the STEM subjects, though for subjects like social studies & English they were going to advise the school to presume that he needed to start at the absolute bottom. This too didn't raise many questions, as case 53's frequently had educational requirements like this.
As it was a Monday and school was in session, he would be visiting the school for the first time later today. The first order of business was to meet his new legal guardians and get them filled in on his situation. He also needed to talk with Epistēmē about whether, under what conditions, and when he would want to move the Techne. For now it was probably safer to leave it where it was hidden, but eventually they'd probably want to bring it out and possibly park it near the rig or PRT building. It was Epistēmē's choice ultimately, as it was his ship and currently was serving as his body. The Techne was fully capable of making an exit for itself under Epistēmē's direction, but it wasn't really capable of doing it quietly. In principle, the jump drive could be used for a very short range hop to simply teleport out of the cavity, but they didn't really want to risk doing that given the mishap that landed them here.
A buzzer sounded and strategically placed red lights lit up, indicating that someone was entering the hallway that led past the Common area. There was no telling whether it was a tour group, one of the other wards, a PRT worker, a protectorate member, or otherwise. Kotoro was expecting someone to come fetch him when his Guardians arrived. They'd be meeting in a conference room on one of the lower levels. Putting on the domino mask the PRT had provided, Kotoro exited the room where he had slept, as a pair of adult capes entered the Common area. A woman wearing blue circuitry themed armor and a helmet with a visor and a man wearing a red domino mask and a solid red outfit that was lightly armored entered together.
"I'm Assault, and this is Battery. We're members of the local protectorate. We heard that you signed up and since we had business in the PRT building this morning, we wanted to meet you before heading back to the rig" the man in all-red said, offering his hand to shake.
Kotoro accepted the handshake. "Nice to meet. I not pick name yet." he explained. "you see Armsmaster notes?" he queried.
"Actually no, we received a notice and basic report from Director Piggott last night. We also have some partially redacted notes and documents in our inboxes from Armsmaster, but we only gave them a quick once over. We'll have time to read them later on. We wanted to introduce ourselves and satisfy a bit of our curiosity in meeting you. Piggot says your debut is being delayed until you can make a proper showing at a press conference. That sucks! You probably want to be out doing hero things right?
We've never had a problem introducing foreign capes who struggle with English in the Protectorate. Still, I guess that it is understandable. PR is a bit more important with the Wards right now with how difficult the Youth Guard has been lately."
"I hear many things about. Youth Guard sound annoying." Kotoro said.
"Their hearts are in the right place, but their demands can cause problems. They want to make sure that we don't treat the Wards like child soldiers." Battery said in partial agreement.
"My life before, could describe as child soldier. Wards probably are child soldier, even if not look like. Not like how I see on internet, in Africa and Arabian Peninsula. Those much worse treatment. Like slaves. Youth Guard worry about how looks. Not worry about how is." Kotoro said.
"My my, I think the boy is smarter than he looks, puppy." said Assault at the same time that Battery was saying "they are NOT child soldiers".
"Ah but they are puppy, in everything but name. We protect them and try to prevent them from fighting the super-villains and gangs if we can, but they're in training to join the Protectorate and they frequently come to blows with villains despite our efforts. With how everything is going lately, even the police could be thought of as a paramilitary organization, and the PRT forces certainly are. They have to be to be able to keep up with cape shit, even though the PRT is supposed to manage most of that, the cops still run into it sometimes and have to protect themselves. Cape business demands it. People prefer to frame things a certain way to satisfy their consciences." Assault said.
"I still think it is different. Don't let any civilians hear you say so. Don't say it in earshot of Piggot either. You'll catch hell over the PR disaster it might cause. " Battery said. Assault just shrugged in response.
Assault decided to change the subject. "I read that you're a very powerful brute and a very fast mover too. It'd be interesting to compare your speed to puppy here. She can go pretty fast when she wants. I'd also like to test how your power interacts with mine. I can absorb and store kinetic energy for later use, it can make for some fun power combos with movers and brutes. It doesn't have to be right now. It can wait for later. We have a scheduled patrol pretty soon anyway. We'll have to schedule a spar or something."
"I think read notes first good idea. Break many things in power test. Not want to hurt." Kotoro said hesitantly, paling a bit at the thought of what he might do to a standard human in a spar even if he was being careful.
"Will do. My power is a striker power, but it makes me almost as durable as a brute as long as i'm aware of incoming attacks. It lets me take impacts that would normally crush or squash a person without any damage." Assault explained.
About little while later, after Kotoro had explained the basics of his powers and background, with Epistēmē's help, leaving out the classified bits, the buzzer sounded off again and the red lights lit up. A few minutes later a PRT security officer entered the room and summoned Kotoro to accompany him to a conference room in the sub basement. He waved goodbye to Assault and Battery and followed the man.
PRT ENE Building; SubBasement 1; Conference Room A; March 16 2008 9:00 AM
Kotoro entered the room. A middle aged couple were seated at the table, across from a dark skinned man in a PRT uniform and Director Piggot. The man's dark brown hair was slicked back, and had some intruding grey strands. He was dressed in a dark buttoned shirt with a collar, and work boots. The woman's black hair was in a pixie cut, and she too had some intruding gray hairs, though not quite as many. She was wearing all black, a dress, with leggings and heels. The only color on her person was a royal blue scarf.
The escorting officer silently left the room, leaving Kotoro in the care of the officials already present. Director Piggot stood and made introductions. "This is Thomas Calvert, a consultant working with the PRT who assists us in handling a lot of different time sensitive or security related issues that come up from time to time in addition to his regular duties overseeing the organizing and training of some of our squads."
"Nice to meet" Kotoro said politely, as Mr. Calvert nodded back at him.
Piggot turned to the couple seated at the table "These are Donald and Janet Gibbons. They'll be assuming the role of legal guardianship for you in your civilian identity until such time as you apply and qualify for emancipation or reach the age of majority. Janet works as a professor at a local college, and Donald works in construction." She motioned to Kotoro "This young man is Kotoro Shinoto. He approached us to join the wards just yesterday, and we are glad to have him, but due to his circumstances he will be faced with several challenges adjusting to life in Brockton Bay, as we went over before he was called in. We will be arranging for more detailed briefings in a more secure setting at a later date. They have already signed NDAs and have been told that certain elements of your background are to be treated as highly classified. We will not be addressing those topics today, however."
Piggot used the next several minutes to explain what ward membership would require of them, and the provisions and limitations that applied to Kotoro's case, which included a plan to study and master English as quickly as possible, as well as for his eventual public introduction as a member of the team. He would be doing corporate compliance training and console work for the immediate future as his official duties. They also required that he arrange to make use of their in house training staff, and possibly also find an appropriate 3rd party self defense trainer who could help Kotoro learn to apply his abilities with more fine-tuned control. The city had no shortage of martial arts dojos, boxing gyms, and other such trainers, and some even openly offered courses oriented toward training hero or rogue capes. Presumably some of them trained villains on the side as well, but they didn't openly advertise that.
Kotoro was advised to exercise due caution and wait to engage with 3rd party trainers until his costume and cape name had been designed and selected, and he had his debut. It would likely be nearly impossible for him to hide his identity, at least until he re-learned proper control and could hide his abilities, given his particular power set, so he was to engage in such services while in costume using his ward identity, once he had one.
She then handed a packet of material to Janet. "This is what we have been able to prepare and get started so far. You should be able to help complete the remainder of the school arrangements, we will manage our portion of the details and communications with the school administration. We will give you the remainder of the week to get acquainted and begin setting up your schedule before you will actually be required to start. You're set to start next Monday, as far as console duty is concerned."
The meeting had abruptly ended and Kotoro had been escorted with the couple to their vehicle. One of the cloaked drones accompanied them on the drive back to their residence. They spoke a bit during the drive, getting to know each other better.
Janet, much like his own mother, was an academic, although she specialized in a somewhat different area. She was involved in multi-decade long evolution research involving bacterial cell lines exposed to different selective conditions. It had originally been pitched to sudy the development of resistance to antibiotics, but had expanded into a more generalized investigation of genomic adaptation to different environmental conditions and metabolic stresses.
Don focused on home and office construction, but he also occasionally found work upgrading and maintaining the endbringer shelters and the occasional warehouse. Kotoro had seen construction sites in varying states of progress all over the city through the spy drones. He noted the humans required the assistance of a lot of heavy machinery, due to their limited strength. Perhaps he could assist them and help cut costs in his free time. At first during the demolition phase of re-building projects, as he wouldn't need a lot of control to knock down a structure, and it would provide him with an opportunity to practice, ensuring that he only crumbled or toppled a structure rather than utterly annihilating it into tiny pieces of rubble.
He mentioned that his union was in the process of merging with the DWA to improve bargaining power for everybody involved. The DWA had also recently branched into construction work, due to the limited amount of docks specific work available in the city, due to the blockage to shipping the sunken vessels created in the waters around the city.
Their house was medium sized. 4 Bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and dining room, and an extra, small side office sized room, with almost no yard to speak of. It had 2 floors with the bedrooms upstairs, a spacious attic, currently being used for storage, and a large unfinished basement, filled with all manner of wood and metal shop equipment.
Don showed him to the room he would be using. It was currently unfurnished save for a small cot sized bed. He explained the empty state of the room, "We weren't sure what you'd like to have in the room, so rather than waste our time and money and possibly disappointing you in the process, we figured we'd bring you to a bunch of stores and decide together, unless you have some stuff you'd like to bring in".
"I do have, but look very different. make people ask question. store is better idea. For short time, think should remove door. Put curtain. Until control strength better. I reinforce outside door, make hard break. Problem soon solve." Kotoro suggested.
"The director told me about your problem. I got to see some select footage of your power testing to drive the point home, so I understand. We'll work on it together. Let me go over any designs or plans for the door before you touch it, and i'll help you build it." Don said.
"I thank." Kotoro said.
Janet came back out from whatever she had been doing in the small office room. "We're to meet with the Principal of your middle school in about 45 minutes. Lets get in the car so we're on time. The traffic on local roads can be unpredictable."
The school had Kotoro take placement tests as expected. He tested quite high in STEM subjects, at a level beyond the test at any rate. It wasn't designed to differentiate between high school or collegiate level understanding, as this was a middle school. As expected his English results were poor, and his social studies and history were awful, due entirely to genuine ignorance and unfamiliarity. On the plus side his STEM scores meant he would have more time to focus on the material that he was weak on.
They would require him to attend phys-ed, due to it being a graduation requirement, but he would be given extra dispensation for privacy in the event he needed to shower or change. This was something not reserved for capes, as there were students with various psychological, physical, or medical-device issues that had to request similar accommodations, and shouldn't raise too many questions.
He would begin classes tomorrow. These earthlings took kids being in school quite seriously it seemed. He could already tell he was going to be bored. Hopefully the social atmosphere would make up for it and he could make some friends to hang out with. How bad could these earthling children be, compared to the Saiyajin brats he'd dealt with back home?