by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings. This one is yet another idea organized in the same three parts.
AtomicAsh Beast is not a Case 53. He's a normally-triggered parahuman, whose power include the generation of explosions around him, as well as an immunity to these explosions. As powers go, the expression that applied to the poor boy was that the explosions went off continually. Not only dangerous for his environment, it also meant that he couldn't discuss with other people like before. From the moment he triggered onwards, he was completely isolated from everyone. Including other parahumans.
There are other people who, without having their physical body visibly mutated like those called "Case 53", had a power which made it impossible to hide their cape identity. Miss Militia was one: her power manifested as a weapon that couldn't be hidden.
Taylor Hebert ended up being one of those.
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Yet another compulsory happening"What are we waiting for?" asked Vista to her team leader, Aegis.
"There's a new Ward." the teenage boy replied.
"Boy? Girl?"
Vista was obviously eager for the possibility of a girl joining in. And it was understandable, as the only other girl was Shadow Stalker, who didn't associate well with anyone, especially her. Aegis understood that, but he winced instead of smiling. "A girl." he replied. "But don't get your hopes up, she's probationary."
"Oh. Like Stalker." she said dejectedly.
"I don't have the details." was the enigmatic answer. At that moment, the doorbell buzzed. "Wards! Masks on! Front and centre!" he called, and they replied more or less rapidly (apart from the mask thing, which was automatic by now).
Dennis, or Clockblocker, was the last in place right as the door opened. Shadow Stalker wasn't there, even if everyone knew she had heard the call from her room, further down the Wards area.
Miss Militia entered, followed by a shape that didn't look the slightest bit human… unless you looked past the hazy concentric spheres surrounding her. Yes, it was a girl, and a tall one, with long dark hair and pale skin. But that was all they could decipher.
"Good evening, Wards. Here's Electra."
"And I'd like it to be known that I didn't want that name." a sullen voice came from inside the cloud. "Again."
"You've been outvoted. Again."
"On my own name. Again."
Militia pressed the bridge of her nose and visibly counted to ten. However, before she even got there, the last Ward entered the room.
"What's this about a new- Whoah! Hebert?"
Militia's surprise prevented her from reacting in time, and the bubble left her vicinity and progressed towards Shadow Stalker. Visibly, seeing her with a simple mask was not enough to hide her identity.
"Sophia? You are the so-called hero they accuse me of having attacked?"
"Hey! You outed me! Again!"
"Fuck you! You said my name first! And you caused my trigger!"
"It's still under investigation!" Militia shouted, trying to pull the two Wards apart.
"Investigation, my ass!" Taylor yelled. "You just want to cover your ass so that she stays." A pause, while she collected herself. "I can't stay in an environment with the cause of my trigger. It says so in the manual."
Militia was heard muttering "Again…" as she rubbed the bridge of her nose again.
"Like I'd want a weakling like you!" Sophia sneered. "You're just a pathetic nothing like you were at school!"
"A school in which you bullied me for two years, causing my trigger!" Taylor replied, surprising the non-probationary Wards.
But not Miss Militia. "I said it's under investigation!"
"You have enough Thinkers and Tinkers to determine the truth!" Taylor rounded on her. "But you don't care about the truth, do you? All you want is your precious army of soldiers willing to die for the cause."
"No! How can you even-"
"How about I tell them why I'm a probationary Ward, then?"
"That's classified information! You can't!"
"I can't even tell my side of the story, then? While Sophia here can slander me all she wants? And you don't find that abhorrent?"
"The fuck that means?" Sophia asked. "You attacked me in the school!"
"See?" Taylor told Militia, pointing at Sophia – not that it was clearly visible.
"Shadow Stalker…" Militia sighed, looking at Sophia. "You've read the papers and signed them. You can't speak about this until the investigation is complete."
"My ass! She attacked me!"
"You caused my trigger! You filled my locked with used tampons, let them rot over Christmas break, pushed me inside, and locked me in! When I triggered, you were still there, laughing your ass off, and you were hit by a flying locker! I didn't out you, you outed yourself when you reacted by becoming all shadow. And fleeing. That's what your power does, doesn't it? Fleeing? Guess you're the weakling, then."
Militia didn't have a clear line of sight towards Taylor, and she didn't want to shoot her, not really. But she was a by-the-books woman, and Taylor told things best left untold.
"Is that true?" asked Vista. To Dean, of all people.
And the boy nodded. "She believes so."
"Whose brilliant idea was it to bring her here, then?" Aegis asked Militia. "I'm not talking about other classified information – information I should have known before accepting her in my team. I'm just asking-"
"You don't get to ask." Militia was fed up with the whole shebang. "You do what you're told."
"Like good little soldiers." Taylor inserted. "Nice to know I was right."
"You just don't have the guts for it." Shadow Stalker sneered again.
"I'll ignore the stupid cunt, since I'm forced to be here. But that farce is contractual, and I have set hours. Since it's now three past seven, I'll go home now."
At the end of the sentence, Sophia had finally shaken off the surprise of hearing her victim talk about her in those terms, and she reacted by instinct: pulling a crossbow, she took aim at the centre of the bubble and pulled the trigger. She clearly expected the bubbles to pop one after the other, to see Taylor lying there in her blood, despite what it would do to her probationary status.
She didn't expect the last bubble to light up when her crossbow touched it, the light coalescing at the point of contact, and the bubble to shrink.
"Thank you." Taylor replied.
"No!" Militia exclaimed, trying to put herself between the arguing teens.
"You know, they tested me. And they found out that I had a neutral state, after expending all my power. I couldn't attack anyone. Or anything. I just needed someone to attack me. To give me that energy. Kinetic energy? Let me laugh. Now, my turn. Eenie, Meanie, Mynie… Moo! Electricity!"
The bubble that had just shrunk suddenly expanded back to its initial state, and a bolt of lightning erupted from the side, arcing around Militia, and hitting Sophia Hess at her own centre mass – whatever mass she had when in her shadow state, in fact. It wasn't much, but electricity interacted badly with her, in that state.
Let it be said that Taylor's memory was eclectic (not eidetic): she remembered unconnected things quite easily. It was good when browsing the web, reconstructing a whole image from disparate articles. She had read the ParaHumanOnline website, like many cape geeks, and had read between the lines that Shadow Stalker was vulnerable to that energy. Not that anyone could prove that she knew what she was doing.
Shadow Stalker was left slightly smoking on the carpet, and Taylor stepped back towards the door. "I'm sorry to leave you with the trash, but my shift ended five minutes ago." she told Aegis, before trying to leave through the door.
"You can't leave!" Militia exclaimed. "You just assaulted a Ward!"
"I'm a Ward! You can't say I assaulted a Ward! I just responded to a lethal attack with a nonlethal one. Perhaps she can be trained, but I doubt it. Now, if you don't want me going to the Director with a form for additional time, you'll have to let me go."
"And where would you go?"
"Home."
"How?"
"Not your problem."
"Well, you are… conspicuous. People could attack you. Gang members could try to recruit you."
"And perhaps they will offer better conditions than this prison. But I just want to go home."
"If you leave, there's a good chance that you'll die."
"Is that a threat, Miss Militia? Know that I'm recording everything that has been said around me, and I'll give that recording to a lawyer if I have to defend myself in court."
"It's not a threat! It's because of the gangs!"
"Gangs who recruit you by telling you that going anywhere else is leading you to prison or death?"
"Yes!"
"Funny, that was exactly what happened to me. Here."
Militia, who had been ready to ask which gang it had been, was struck speechless for enough time for Taylor to work out how the door opened. And she left.
Her dad waited in the place he had parked, and she reined her bubbles in (by having him strike her repeatedly with a baseball bat, giving her potential energy to unleash later) before entering his car.
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Yet another compulsory exercise"I don't like this." Danny Hebert said. As Taylor's legal guardian (and father), he had the right to oversee what was happening with her in the PRT, and both of them were quite appalled at the situation. Still, his job had given him tools to work with people under him, but also unyielding people over him.
It was called Malicious Compliance, and consisted in doing everything that was on the written contract… and nothing else. In general, people in charge got rid of you quickly (if they could, according to the contract). And your colleagues hated you, because you would work your paid hours, and not one minute more. Sometimes, you could even sabotage the work, or the workforce. After all, it wasn't on the contract that you had to be cordial and cooperative.
That was their new aim in life. And as it is often said: having a common enemy brings people together. Father and daughter, estranged since the death of Taylor's mother, were more aware of each other than ever.
Danny didn't like having to hit his daughter to give her parahuman abilities a boost (and to make her more inconspicuous), even if it didn't harm her. But he did it. And Taylor didn't like being forced to work with Sophia. But she would. After strenuously protesting in triplicate – they had bought a computer and a printer, with many bottles of ink, in order to print all the forms they intended to hit the PRT with. Soon, she would print them at the PRT, too.
With Danny's eye for the Legalese, and Taylor's habit of memorizing random bits from things she read, they had many ideas for throwing spanners into the works, the first of which being Taylor's lack of existence as a Ward, in the eye of the public – her contract, though, had a beginning date of a few days ago, and she would be paid.
You needed to be presented to the public before being recognized as a Ward. You needed an identity and a costume, for that. You needed to complete power testing to get a costume. And Taylor's bubbles of potential energy prevented anyone from taking her measurements. They also prevented anyone from seeing exactly if she was hurt when testing Brute resistance. As such, and as her father, Danny vetoed any Brute testing. Since it was the first test in a batch, they couldn't proceed.
Also, she clearly didn't agree with her assigned name. If Clockblocker hadn't done so already, she would have introduced herself with her preferred name "Prisoner", or "Child Soldier"… or "Atom", if she had to choose something for real.
Because her "bubbles" weren't bubbles at all: they were one of the most up-to-date representation of electrons "orbiting" around an atomic core – herself. Each bubble was situated on an energy level, and glowed differently depending on the number of "electrons" they held.
Taylor could absorb energy from attacks by having the outermost energy layer decreasing in size. That power was then available for immediate retaliation… or for later. The release of that energy could have multiple forms: kinetic, energetic, or simply light.
Kinetic was movement, like those attacks from fists, bats, or bullets. Or a car overrunning you. Throwing that back felt like the original, although it could be changed: she could punch something with as much force as the last attack she had absorbed. Or several.
Energy attacks were those interacting with energies, as the name implies: she could heat something, throw fire, or bolts of electricity. Other "attacks" were suggested by Danny when he cracked open his old role-playing game rulebooks. Cold was possible, although it was more the absorption of every energy in an area around her, and gave her more energy than an attack that expended that energy. Acid or lava were not possible: she couldn't generate matter… for now (she knew that matter could be equated as energy, but, at the moment, she lacked the way to ask her power to do so).
There was an innermost layer a few inches around her skin, and the shape couldn't shrink further, but it also radiated heat, light, and other wavelengths, if it was struck further.
Taylor was a Brute, no question about that. The two of them just wanted the PRT to err on the side of caution and not test if she was able to stop bullets if she couldn't (hint: of course she could; they just tested it in private).
Speaking of energy… gravity seemed to be a force that pulled everything together. By absorbing the "equivalent kinetic energy" from the bottom of her bubbles, she could float. And by redirecting it in another direction, she could fly. As fast as if she was falling down, even, except with another vector.
She couldn't turn on a dime, but she also didn't really need to, generally. Flying was just to move from a point to another, not to fight land-bound foes.
Finally, using gravity, she could push back or attract things around her. People to push out of the way, projectiles to attract, and so on – and reading about gravity in a scientific journal, she wondered if she could attract matter around her and condense it, both as armour and as projectiles when pushed away with enough force.
With her dad giving her ideas, she felt she was quite good and ready for combat. They just had to find ways to train without the PRT to know about it.
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Yet another compulsory struggleTaylor seethed. Despite the fact that she hadn't had her introduction, it seemed that the PRT wasn't above cheating to have her doing patrols and meet the public. Without a costume. The rationale was that her bubbles obscured her shape enough to hide her identity.
Incidentally, that detail was important when one considered one of the Wards' duties: keep up the good work in school. Given that Taylor's scores had been sabotaged in Winslow, she wasn't high to begin with. And given the expression of her power, she could not go to a normal school. For her, having that in the contract, with the provisional addendum that "or else" meant going to prison, was almost equating prison itself. The only difference was the duration after which the penalty would come up. And she was sure that the Director had carte blanche on that topic.
That's why she followed the Wards on the patrol that was poorly disguised as "PR event": walking the length of the Boardwalk – the place with all the shops, and the tourists, and the crowds. And the fewest possible villains.
Even then, she didn't follow Aegis and Clockblocker when they rushed to get hold of a mugger. And when said mugger successfully navigated the alleyway to evade them, she didn't even touch him – she had been defanged by expending all her stored energy, after all.
The resulting shouting match was spectacular, if shortened because Aegis was still in hot pursuit. It was still nothing compared to the one she was subjected to when she left the place on her own, contrarily to his specific orders – it was time for her "day job" to end, so she felt justified in doing so.
And Taylor wasn't the one who seethed at the PRT.
At some point, a mail with Tattletale as sender was received by several news agencies and the PRT. It contained the civilian name and address of each Empire cape. The poor Tattletale ended up the first victim of the retaliatory strike, despite her pleas that she was innocent – when the Unwritten Rules were flouted in that way, the victims were past caring about logic, only vengeance.
And vengeance was what was foremost in Kayden Russell's mind when the PRT acted on the information to… kidnap her daughter. They knew about her ways, even had Thinkers in their employ, but they still did it.
And Purity ended up fighting the majority of the Protectorate roster in Brockton Bay. And win. And cause truly massive collateral damage. All the while screaming about them having kidnapped her baby. And they didn't even counter that argument, angering her further.
The Wards were dispatched, then. As if a sextet of teens, barely combat-ready, would be able to best the trained adults and their gear.
Except that, actually, there was one Ward who could stand, fly, and take the kind of punishment the flying Blaster was inflicting. And return it.
She could even act as a body double for Purity, given that she could fly and emit light around her. The helicoid lance of plasma which was Purity's signature attack, less so. But she thought she could work on it.
But Taylor didn't return fire. Instead, she had recognized a woman wronged by the authorities, like her, and decided to approach her. After some words, they headed towards the PRT building together.
With their powers, making a hole in a wall was easy, and they found Director Piggot angrily shooting at them. Taylor took the bullets, and Purity disarmed the woman. Literally.
It had been her idea to kidnap the girl, held in their prison for the moment. But she still revealed that the idea had come from one of her colleagues: Thomas Calvert.
The two powerhouses exited the office through the hole in the wall, turned around the building, and made another hole in another wall. With Purity threatening everyone, Taylor took hold of the innocent girl.
They flew away, Taylor collected her dad, and then they left the city… only to return the next day. With Danny and Aster relatively safe in a Mexican safe house, Taylor and Kayden had no qualms razing everything that had hurt them.
Winslow was first.
The PRT building was second.
Despite their doing so quite slowly, allowing people to escape the future ruins, the damage was quite extensive, and the Triumvirate was called. But Alexandria's attacks only gave Taylor enough punch to send her to orbit – and, apparently, it was enough to remove one's access to superhuman power.
Eidolon's power could protect against Purity's beam, but she didn't relent, forcing him to be on the defensive. Legend was Taylor's target after she got rid of the flying brick, forcing him to zip around the battlefield to avoid the energy attacks. Not yet briefed on the new Ward's real powers, he didn't understand that each laser that connected to her gave her more ammunition.
And when Miss Militia, acting on a Kill Order that came through right then, launched a mini-nuke on Taylor, the result was a thoroughly pissed teenage girl, who skewered both heroes with her newly-discovered plasma beams.
Seeing the writing on the wall, Eidolon thought that it was a good time for a "deus ex machina" to appear… and Leviathan appeared as if summoned, quite ahead of schedule. And the beast only targeted the two flying blasters. Purity went higher. Taylor went lower. The accumulation of attacks on her ended up being enough to end the Endbringer itself.
And then she turned towards the assembled heroes. "All of what you did was against the law and common decency. We are leaving. You'd better not follow."
And they left, making a slight (and inconspicuous) detour to grab hold of Theo, Kayden's stepson. In Mexico, they gathered their temporary family cell and headed even more to the south.
And they were left alone, all the Thinkers in the world colluding on that conclusion: that was a nest of wasps you didn't want to shake.
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To be continued… unless it's an atomic storyAuthor's Notes: Yes, there is much inspiration from the fanfic Implacable (available on SpaceBattles dot com), which I highly recommend – I didn't want to copy/paste anything from it, which leaves parts of this blurb feel like some content is missing. You can go read it to get the detailed verbal assaults, they're hilarious.