Interlude 1: Aegis

Aegis shifted in his seat, trying to find a comfortable position. He wasn't in pain, his power saw to that, but even without the pain it felt weird to shift an arm and find too much give because the skin and muscle had a gap torn into them, or to shift his weight and find himself overcorrecting because the connective tissues up one side were gone.

To an onlooker, it would have seemed a miracle that he was only uncomfortable. He'd stripped off the top of his costume just to get the wet mass of the blood-soaked fabric off of him, leaving his wounds on full display. Out of all the Wards, he was the only one to not have armor incorporated into his costume. It made logical sense, his power made sure his injuries weren't much more than inconveniences, but it also meant he had no protection against getting injured in the first place. And right now, he was very injured.

Deep gashes lined his arms, focused around the wrists, elbows, and shoulders. Others practically covered his torso, with the worst being a set of parallel slashes running from the bottom of his ribcage to his groin, the evidence of a near-disemboweling strike from taloned feet. His neck looked like raw hamburger meat from when the first monster had tried to bite out his windpipe, and more than a few other bitemarks decorated his body. The red of his leggings hid most of the wounds below the waist, but they were almost as numerous there. All in all, Aegis looked like he'd been put through a meat grinder, then put through again for good measure.

Across from him and on the other side of six inches of reinforced plexiglass sat PRT Director Piggot. Or a representation of her anyways. Normally, in this situation Piggot would have come in herself, but this within the nebulous block of time between late at night and early in the morning where Piggot never came in. It wasn't that she didn't want to be bothered or was busy, she'd always teleconference in like she was now, but she never came in person.

No one really knew what was special about that block of time, or if they did they were keeping their mouths shut. For his part, Aegis was too smart to ask. If Piggot wasn't telling people why, there was nothing good to be gained from digging into it.

"So." Piggot said. The restrained anger of that single word made Aegis flinch harder than he had during the entire fight that led to this meeting. "Aegis. Would you please, in your own words, explain to us how a routine patrol and a report of some minor gang activity led to a violent encounter with a new cape?"

Aegis shifted again. A fair mechanical whirring came from the ceiling as the containment foam dispensers of the Master/Stranger cell moved to track him. If he tried to break out of the cell, if Piggot pressed a button, or if any one of a dozen other criteria were fulfilled, the entire room would be filled with enough containment foam that not even strength and flight would let him pry himself free.

Piggot wasn't the only one waiting on his answer as he tried and failed once more to find a comfortable position. The screen she was teleconferencing in through was flanked by two Protectorate capes, Miss Militia on one side and Armsmaster on the other. Aegis wasn't really surprised that either of them were there, despite the time and the fact that neither of them were on the roster for the night. Everyone who worked with Miss Militia for longer than a few days knew she didn't need to sleep, and anyone who worked with Armsmaster at all knew the man would happily pull an all-nighter if it meant more time in his workshop. Of course for Armsmaster, that probably meant he'd been pulled away from his work to be here now, which certainly wouldn't help his mood.

Aegis started to talk, only to cut himself off in a garble of sounds. With his voicebox still crushed by the bite to his throat, parts in his chest and mouth had shifted to take over the job. But while the new parts were functional, years of ingrained habit of how to speak were hard to break. After a few false starts, Aegis got the hang of his new voice to answer the question.

"We were on patrol. Standard route, 11:30 run." The details weren't really important, Aegis knew all of them had access to the schedule information. But sitting in a Master/Stranger cell, faced with three people who all had the authority to dock his pay or take him off the roster for a month, he wanted to be thorough.

"We were by the border to the Docks when we got forwarded a report about gunfire and a small crowd of hooligans running through the streets."

"Why did you respond?" Armsmaster asked. Yeah, Aegis could recognize that gruff tone. He'd definitely been interrupted in his workshop to come here.

The question annoyed Aegis. The whole point of being Wards was to respond to things like that, to help people. Asking why they responded was like asking why a firefighter put out fires. But again, he recognized the question wasn't so much about an actual explanation as it was how he answered.

"We were close enough to respond," he said, "And I was reasonably sure that even if they had a gun, our power combination would make sure Vista would be fine."

Armsmaster gave a vague grunt in affirmation and motioned for him to continue.

"We arrived at the scene and found a group of people that matched the general description we'd been given. Unkempt, obviously drunk, and one of them had a gun. All signs pointed to them being Merchants." Aegis paused for a moment. "They were also fighting something."

Miss Militia raised an eyebrow. "Something?"

Aegis nodded. "I didn't get a good look at them, but there were at least two of them. No higher than my knee, but they were clearly attacking the people and the guy with the gun was shooting at them."

Piggot hummed in thought, looking up from where she'd been typing on something offscreen. "You didn't mention that before."

Aegis shifted in his seat, this time more uncomfortable from the prodding statement than his position. "We didn't see much, and it wasn't as important compared to the rest."

"I'll decide what's important." Piggot said sharply. "Continue. You said before that you subdued them?"

Aegis nodded, then had to strain his head back into position when his windpipe crumpled under the movement. "Yes, Director. Vista hemmed them in while I knocked them around. They were so focused on the things that were already attacking them, they didn't even notice me until half of them were down."

"And what happened to those things?" Armsmaster asked.

"I'm… not sure." Aegis admitted sheepishly. "I was focused on the Merchants, I didn't even realize they were actually fighting something instead of just shooting randomly until I was already attacking them."

"So it's possible they're still out there?" Miss Militia asked.

"Maybe." Aegis admitted. "Like I said, I didn't really realize they were there until I was already engaging the Merchants. They might have slipped away, or the Merchants could have killed them."

Piggot frowned, typing something else out. "Given the choice between some mundane gangsters and indications of an unknown cape, it would have been better for you to focus on the cape."

"I'll make sure to run the Wards through a situational awareness gauntlet in the next few weeks." Armsmaster said.

Aegis felt his heart drop a bit at that. He'd been through one of those earlier on when he was joining the team and he still shuddered to think of it. His durability had meant Armsmaster had gotten to go all-out on the hidden traps and tricks, making an obstacle course he had to run through while finding and avoiding hidden claymore mines, high-voltage tasers, and innumerable other Tinker-made hazards, all while also carrying out a half-dozen missions at once, one of which was dealing with the Protectorate member hunting him through it. Even the lesser version the others had gone through was a nasty piece of work, and he had no desire to be the one who made them all go through it again.

"I'm the one who screwed up, you don't have to make everyone else do it too." Aegis said. He directed the statement to Miss Militia, judging her to be the most merciful option in the room.

Miss Militia considered it for a moment, then shook her head. "You made the mistake, but Vista didn't notice it either. In an unknown situation with an unknown power, that could have gotten one or both of you killed. You all get the drills, and hopefully you'll do better next time."

Aegis slumped in his seat a bit as Piggot finished typing. "The PRT squad sweeping the area didn't find any bodies in that alley," Piggot said, turning her attention back to Aegis, "So it seems they escaped. Please, continue."

Aegis didn't miss the extra layer of 'you fucked up' in her tone. Making himself keep talking felt like making himself stick his hand in a beartrap, but he sucked it up and kept going. "When we'd beaten them all down and started cuffing them, I heard a gunshot from the other side of the building. I told Vista to keep the gangsters in place and went to go check it out. That was when I ran into the cape."

He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. "There were two people on the ground and two people standing. One was the cape, but I couldn't make out much about them. The other was some sort of Master minion, like a person with claws and fangs. I was going to try and talk to them, but the minion attacked me as soon as I set down."

Armsmaster made a judgmental grumbling noise, shifting his weight as he crossed his arms, halberd still held in one hand. "So they were immediately hostile then?"

"That does paint a more severe picture." Miss Militia commented. "If they were willing to lash out at a Ward without provocation, we could be dealing with an unstable personality or an outright villainous one."

"I don't actually think it was either." Aegis interjected. "She was facing away from me when I landed, but the minion wasn't. She might have had poor control over it, or maybe it was just under loose instructions that marked me as a threat, but I don't think she actually noticed me until after it attacked."

Piggot folded her hands and glared at him through the screen. "If you think you're painting a better picture with the idea of a cape roaming the city with minions so poorly controlled they'll maul a Ward at the slightest provocation, you are severely mistaken."

"It is better, though." Miss Militia said. "It's possible they only recently triggered and don't yet have their power under control. Most take weeks or years to properly adjust to their powers. Someone scared and unable to control a strange new ability is much easier to deal with than an aggressive maniac."

"You said 'she' though." Armsmaster interrupted. "I thought you couldn't make out anything about them?"

Aegis nodded. "The way she was dressed, I couldn't tell she was a girl until she tried to talk to me."

"We're getting off track," Piggot interjected, "We can discuss the specifics of the story once it's finished. It attacked you, then what?"

"I grabbed its arms, managed to restrain it. It seemed fairly strong, but not to the point of being superhuman, so it wasn't that hard." Aegis stopped talking for a moment, absentmindedly reaching up to rub his mangled throat. "Then it bit me. Things… changed then."

"Is that the reason why Vista called for Master/Stranger procedures?" Armsmaster asked.

Aegis nodded. "Once it bit me, I got pissed. It was like getting hit by one of Gallant's blasts set to anger. I… killed the minion, then turned on the cape."

"You've been describing it as a minion," Piggot interrupted, "But when you killed it, did you know for certain that it was a Master minion and not a Case 53? Are you certain now?"

Aegis hesitated. "I'm certain it was a minion now, and I was certain as soon as I killed it. But before that… no. I didn't know for certain."

Piggot hummed, typing something on her computer. No one said anything, leaving Aegis to grapple with the realization that had just been raised to him. He hadn't known. He knew for certain now, but then… He could have killed somebody. Thoughts of whatever punishment he might face for that action were far from his mind in comparison to the wave of guilt he felt.

He averted his gaze from the trio before him, looking down at his hands. They were bloodied, mostly, but not entirely, with his blood. His hands were shaking, and he knew his power meant there no physical reason for that, just a mental one. God, he could have killed someone!

"And?" Armsmaster's gruff voice cut off his thoughts.

Aegis tore his gaze away from his hands, taking a deep, shuddering breath to try and calm himself. "I… killed the minion. I tried to attack the cape, but before I could she created another monster."

He froze as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Even through six inches of plexiglass and a teleconference call, he saw Piggot stiffen. Many things about her personal life were a secret, whether through deliberate action on her part or just because no one poked into the matter, but the reason for her reaction was not. When you were one of only a handful of survivors from first contact with Nilbog, word got around.

"Created might be the wrong word," Aegis hastily corrected, "It seemed more like she summoned them. They appeared out of thin air, vanished again when they were killed. No bodies left behind, no-"

"Stop." Piggot said sternly. Aegis shut up immediately. From the look she was giving him, it was clear she knew why he was trying to change his wording. She still relaxed a fraction. Obvious or not, at least his attempts to reassure her that they weren't looking at another Nilbog worked. Privately, Aegis hoped he hadn't made a mistake and just undersold the potential threat.

When no one else spoke up, Aegis took it as his cue to continue the story. "She summoned another minion, it intercepted me. While I was wrestling with it, she tried to say something to me."

He stopped talking, trying to find a good way to phrase what happened next. After a few seconds without him continuing, Armsmaster got impatient. "And?"

There really was no good way to say it, so Aegis just went for it. "And I interrupted her by threatening to kill her." The admission was met by silence. Even the clacking of Piggot's keyboard stopped. "And then I snapped the minion's neck." He continued sheepishly when no one else spoke to fill the quiet.

More silence. "Oh, Aegis." Miss Militia said, breaking the silence with two words packed with more disappointment than he'd heard from anyone but his parents. He would have blushed with shame, but he didn't have enough blood left in his body for that, and apparently it wasn't important enough for his power to readjust his face for.

"Then what?" Armsmaster prompted.

Aegis sighed. "She summoned more to dogpile me and ran. I managed to call Vista, but the cape was already gone by the time she got there and the minions were too close to me for her to effectively use her power. I'm kind of hazy about what happened next, they kept biting me and the anger kept getting worse."

"Vista left the bound Merchants for the police and found you being attacked by five unknown creatures." Armsmaster said. He wasn't looking straight at Aegis, but up and slightly to one side in the way that indicated he was looking at something in his visor. Presumably he was reading the notes from the PRT agent who debriefed Vista. "The creatures were already grappling you and clearly intent on doing harm, so she made the decision to use her power and isolate you, ensuring that they would stay focused on a target they couldn't harm. You fought them, during which Vista noted a change in your behavior and called back to the console to enact Master/Stranger protocols."

Aegis winced at that. He definitely remembered yelling at Vista, mostly in assorted insults, threats, and profanity. He'd tried apologizing on the ride back after his head cleared up, but that seemed to make her more annoyed than what he'd said in the first place.

"You proceeded to fight with the creatures for roughly twenty minutes, during which the creatures made no attempts to search for other targets, leave the area, or do anything other than attack you. The engagement concluded when you killed all five creatures."

Aegis shuddered, looking back down at his hands. He remembered doing that, oddly with more clarity than what the cape had said to him. The fight… it hadn't been pretty. They'd gone at him with tooth and claw, and he hadn't held back with his strength at all. A memory flashed through his mind of grabbing one by the head and pushing his thumbs into its eye sockets, using the grip to pull its skull apart like a fruit. At the time he'd felt only a burning anger and a sort of grim joy at the violence, but now the thought just made him want to vomit.

"Afterwards you continued to be verbally aggressive towards Vista, causing her to keep up the spatial affect to contain you. Shortly after you reverted to typical behavior, though Vista did not drop the affect in case of a trick until the containment van arrived to collect you."

"I remember the rest." Aegis said, interrupting Armsmaster's spiel. It had been an awkward ride, and he'd been shuffled off into this cell as soon as they arrived at PRT headquarters. He may have disliked her personality, but Aegis had to admit that as a professional, Piggot ran a tight ship. All the protocols and safeguards had been followed to a T, leaving no room for him to slip away or talk his way out if he had been Mastered.

"First things first." Piggot said. "The emotion effect. Tell us about it."

"It really only involved anger." Aegis said. "It hit hard, made it difficult to think. I got more aggressive, but I also got sloppier. Looking back on it, even with five of them, I could have worked my way out of it a lot more easily. But I was too angry to think straight. I didn't use my flight, couldn't focus on the training we got to deal with that sort of thing. I basically just thrashed and hit as best as I could."

Aegis tried not to show it, but that unsettled him. He prided himself on being more than a dumb brute, in both the literal and the power classification sense of the term. He could think on his feet in a fight, come up with strategies before one, and was good enough at both that he was going to be team leader next month when Triumph aged out of the Wards. Even outside of the cape gig, he was already out of high school and taking college courses. The idea that one hit could take his mind from him, make him little better than Lung…

Piggot nodded. "Of course, you understand why I can't just take you at your word for that. You'll spend the night in the cell until we can get Panacea to come give you a once-over for your injuries and check for anything floating around in your system. After that you'll be under watch for a few weeks, or until we can get a Thinker to come by and verify that you're clean."

Aegis nodded glumly. He didn't like it, but he accepted it was better than him potentially getting thrown back into a rage state at any time.

"So the cape." Miss Militia said, redirecting the conversation. "What do you know about her?"

"She might be a recent trigger, but she didn't trigger tonight." Aegis said. "She had a bandanna and goggles to hide her face. It makes me think she already had powers and was going out to do something with them."

"Do you know what that might have been?" Miss Militia prompted. "Vigilante work, as part of a gang?"

"We know she attacked the Merchants." Piggot said.

"The little things Aegis mentioned the group fighting?" Miss Militia asked. "We don't know for certain that was her."

"Occam's razor." Armsmaster said. "Simpler for there to be one cape that can create two types of minions than two different capes that both summon minions in the same area at the same time."

"True," Piggot said, looking at something offscreen, "But I'm also looking at the preliminary interviews with the Merchants that were brought in. According to them, they were chasing a masked individual who had attacked one of their gatherings using several creatures."

"Do the descriptions match the ones Aegis and Vista gave?" Miss Militia asked.

Piggot shook her head. "The Merchants that talked mentioned small bug like creatures that stripped a car to pieces before attacking them."

Aegis noticed Armsmaster's grip tighten a bit on his halberd. "Is there any evidence to back up these claims?" Aegis could have sworn there was a glimmer of some other emotion under his gruffness.

"There was, as they were helpful and high enough to give up the location of their party. The police found a mostly disassembled truck several blocks away, along with large quantities of drugs."

Armsmaster nodded slowly. "So our cape can make two types of minions. Bug-things that can break down a car, humanoid monsters with a wrath-inducing bite… If there's a theme to the power, I don't see it."

"It's more likely that those aren't the only minions she can make." Miss Militia said. "Maybe she can pick from a broader list of minions that each have their own uses, or she can shape her minions into whatever form she chooses."

"I think it's more likely to be the first option." Aegis supplied. "If she can shape her minions it would probably mean she has to shape her minions, and she made them too fast for her to have spent any time planning them."

"Powers aside," Piggot said briskly, "What about the person, her personality?"

"I don't think she would have been hostile if she knew it was me." Aegis said. "I can't remember exactly what she said, but she seemed apologetic about her minion attacking me. If it wasn't for my… behavior, I think she might have even called it off."

Miss Militia gave him a slightly incredulous look at that, but she didn't say anything.

"It could have been a ploy." Armsmaster said. "She's surprised to see you so she sets an anger-inducing monster on you, then feigns remorse when she knows you're not in a position to try and talk with her, then uses the excuse of your influenced behavior to attack you further. If you die she can claim self-defense, if not then she gets away and has a chance to build a false story she can use to garner sympathy."

"Really?" Miss Militia said in an incredibly unimpressed tone. "An elaborate trick to attack one Ward without consequences is more likely than the idea that it was just an accident, that it attacked Aegis without her knowing in advance and she had to scramble to protect herself after he got influenced?"

"I was just raising the possibility." Armsmaster said defensively.

"And I, for one, appreciate that." Piggot said. "When dealing with a Master of unknown scope and scale, it doesn't hurt to be cautious. But for now, let's talk best-case scenario. Aegis, how old would you way she was?"

"Young." Aegis said. "Maybe college-aged, but at least a teenager." It had struck him, he remembered, that she hadn't sounded like an adult when she'd spoken. Or at least some level of that had seeped through the anger. Mostly he remembered being pissed that she was apologizing without stopping what her minion was doing.

"So she could be a potential Ward." Miss Militia said.

"Assuming she's the right age and has the right mindset." Armsmaster added.

"Assuming." Miss Militia admitted. "But if she is, she could benefit from the program. With a power like that, especially with the lack of control Aegis seemed to indicate, she would probably like the aid we can offer her to learn to control and make use of it."

"The pay isn't a half-bad motivator either." Aegis added. He was only half joking. Money was always nice, and with college looming in the fall he was looking forward to being able to cash in in his Ward trust fund once he turned eighteen.

"So you've decided to attempt to recruit her into the Wards." Piggot said, sounding slightly irritated. "May I remind you that she did commit battery with a parahuman ability on your first encounter with her, to a degree that would have killed anyone on the Wards team that wasn't Aegis?"

"Be that as it may," Miss Militia sad firmly, "I'm not going to judge her based on one incident that we don't even know was fully under her control. I'd extend the offer to any suitable cape and we've seen nothing yet to say she isn't one."

"She did make a strike against the Merchants." Armsmaster added. "That indicates some level of heroic preference."

"Or she was making a strike for a rival gang, or just wanted to steal the drugs herself." Piggot retorted.

"That wouldn't explain why she tried to call 911 for the injured Merchants in the alley before Aegis showed up." Armsmaster said.

Piggot's eyes widened slightly. "How did you… Yes, your visor. But while the investigating officers did report find a cellphone in the alley that had been used to call 911, there was no evidence that she was the one who made the call."

"Still, we've made our decision." Miss Militia said.

"Though there is still another issue to address." Armsmaster said. "The press."

Piggot looked like she wanted to keep arguing her point, but let out a slow breath through her nose instead. "Yes, that." She said. She turned to her computer offscreen, rapidly typing and clicking. Aegis shifted again in his seat, almost forgotten about now as he watched the discussion unfold in front of him. If nothing else, he'd have plenty to talk about with the other Wards tomorrow.

"Nothing's showing up on PHO about it." Piggot said after a minute or so. "Thanks to both the secluded area and the fact that most of the residents there don't have quick and easy access to the internet, it seems her appearance has gone unnoticed for now. The Merchants who encountered her are all going to be looking at jailtime, so they won't be in a position to spill anything to the press. It's almost the ideal with how this played out. From the looks of things, nothing's going to be showing up in the news about our new mystery cape unless we tell them about it."

"And are we?" Aegis asked curiously. Maybe it was just because he'd gotten to have first contact with her, but by now he felt rather invested in whatever happened to the mystery cape.

"I'm going to have a press release written up, but not put out." Piggot said. "As it stands, there's too many unknowns for us to say anything about the subject except that there's a new cape in the city. Over the next few days you'll all be making an effort to try and recruit her or at least find out where she stands."

Armsmaster nodded. "That sounds reasonable."

"Exactly. If things work out, the first the public knows about her will be a press release talking about the newest Ward or the newest villain taken into custody. So long as she doesn't do anything to make the news herself in the meantime, everything should be set."