by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings.
Solid PowerI hate my power.
Seriously, I do. Even if I smile about it – I often smile, even when upset, because I know it will lessen the disturbance to others.
Back to my power. Or my… passenger, as some call the alien source of our superpowers. Not only do said powers require a trigger event to manifest, they also push us to use them. Brutes seek physical fighting, Tinkers build things (of whatever their specialty is), Masters try to master people (or whatever their specialty is), and Thinkers… think.
You really can't survive if you're a non-Brute facing any kind of attack power – and there are many of them, separated in whole categories: Striker, Blaster, etc. Due to that fact, some among the overarching cape organization, the Protectorate, created a specialized group for Thinkers, which they called Watchdog (due to its acronym slightly looking like that word).
I was on the process of being recruited into Watchdog when the Youth Guard intervened in my behalf. After all, I was nine at that time, and the rigorous training was deemed too much for me. However, training and meeting more and more people allowed me to refine my powers.
I thought I was a Thinker with a specialty in watching things on screens – the dream of every teen everywhere. And my power made me look at screens, making me learn things I wasn't always ready for.
But I ended up learning more about it, too: as it happens, I can also Tinker surveillance equipment and immobile equipment. In fact, I'm of better use on the field, acting as surveillance and counter-surveillance. Not that the Youth Guard will accept any deployment of little old me.
On a field, I can use and build terminals (and improve them, too, merely by kicking them – powers are weird), to have them do whatever I wish. With time, I'm sure I could build teleportation terminals – all they need is to stay immobile.
I'm Kenzie Martin, by the way. Haven't done the presentations? Happens all the time, my teachers say it's because I'm hyperactive. Or so they think. My current cape name is Lookout – I went with Optics, when I thought I was made to only watch.
But enough about me. Let's talk about things that I see on those many screens I now have under my command – because even in my sleep, as far away from action as can be, I have screens showing me everything. People. Living their lives. With their highs and their lows. People in love. Joyful children. Muggers. Suicides. Bullying.
I see all this, but I can't intervene. All I can do is push information up the chain, towards the local instances of the PRT if it has the slightest link to cape activity – yes, local, as "I'm watching everything" means exactly that. My current network of activity covers everything north of New York. And the capabilities of my terminals continue to increase every day, with every kick I give them (I thought my kicks magical, and tried soccer… didn't work). To date, my screens can identify the people they display in my surveillance feeds, and give me their cape identity if they have one (the first rule told to those joining Watchdog is that if the Unwritten Rules aren't written, it's for a reason).
That means that when my feed shows me a girl pushing another in a locker, I can see the "Sophia Hess / Shadow Stalker" name tag on the aggressor, "Taylor Hebert" on the victim, and "biological waste" in the locker. This happening in a high school, I make due haste in reporting this to the Brockton Bay PRT Director. I can't do anything else, really. Besides, events like these are countless.
As I said before, powers make you yearn to use them, and parahuman powers even more so. Some people went mad when their powers were restricted. On the opposite side of the scale, there are those who overuse their power, unable to resist the lure. I already reported Glory Girl several times because of the collateral damage she tends to accrue (which included several persons already).
What is a bit rarer is Hebert's reaction. Or, rather, what happens once the locker door closes. Learning that her tormentors planned to leave her there, possibly to die of septic shock, made her trigger. I saw Shadow Stalker stumble due to the area effect of trigger events, and even my equipment had a moment of flickering. However, since I set it to record everything, I noticed afterwards that pictures had appeared between moments, between frames, showing worm-like creatures navigating through space. Or something like that.
The locker… expanded outwards, afterwards. Slowly, like a balloon being inflated. And, in fact, looking at the cheap metal contorting around the spherical thing (which resembled a steel ball) growing inside and pushing the neighbouring lockers away too, it was exactly like that.
Thankfully, instead of taking all the available volume and crushing an already despairing girl, the "balloon" inside the metal coffin was perfectly spherical, leaving a bit of space in the thin piece of furniture. It stood to reason for a visibly shaken and enraged (and a bit dirty, to be honest) Taylor to walk out, then, her ball leading the way.
Because it did move, even if it was really slow – thankfully: due to its appearance of polished steel, and, as it rolled, the sounds so massive they converted into physically-visible vibrations, it seemed like it would crush anyone standing in its way (given that it crushed several lockers, it might really do so).
As it was, everybody fled away from the massive pinball that was slowly moving out of the school. I took a couple seconds to check, but Uber and Leet had nothing to do with re-enacting a flipper game into a high school. Not today, anyways.
Nobody prevented Taylor from leaving, but many had their cell phone out, recording the event and the new parahuman out of costume.
Thankfully, I had a few aces up my sleeves, myself, and they recorded nothing but the ball. Counter-surveillance, remember?
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The next daysThanks to my interference, Taylor wasn't outed to the world on her first day. And it meant that the PRT couldn't simply act on Sophia's wishes and invade Winslow to arrest Taylor – as the cape police, they had rules and needed evidence. Of the fact that a parahuman power had been used, first, and then that it was Taylor, and then that it targeted and harmed Sophia (who wasn't the kind of girl to give herself a black eye just to rat someone out). With the speed this kind of inquiry takes, sometimes, it meant that Taylor was free to return to school.
In her course with Mrs Knott, I noticed that she wasn't browsing PHO on her spare time, as her history showed her usually doing. Instead, she looked at complex algorithms to… create 3D pictures? Those programs were old, and often gathered in libraries of optimized code, but she didn't want to use them: she clearly wanted to understand them. As if she had a new computer, incompatible with the others, and wanted to program it anew. Or if her "computer" was her head (or her passenger, really: no mere human has the processing power to do that) and her power allowed her to synthetize real-life items out of the 3D models in her mind. Nice.
I had a couple ideas about how I could help her, such as directing her towards specific (and open-source and properly documented) building blocks, when she was approached by Greg Veder, of all things. Or people.
The guy was mostly harmless, except for his wild guesses on cape identity on PHO (which earned him numerous days of ban time, already), and in this case he looked like a godsend: as a geek, he had amassed knowledge of various topics, and these included computer-generated pictures, and movies – of girls, mostly, but that wasn't the point. As an immature geek, he was putty in her inexpert hands, and accepted her barely audible excuses about just wanting to learn the topic (instead of, say, playing a game… or, god forbid, dating).
It was him who introduced her to the concept of regular polygon-based shapes, such as the cube and tetrahedron (the triangular pyramid), for instance. And the collective name of these: the Platonic solids (he was beet red when telling this, anticipating a remark about "platonic love" or something; nothing came). In addition, his wide (and wild) array of hobbies included role-playing games, and he always had a set of dice with him: with four, six, eight, twelve, and twenty sides. Or, are they are also called: tetrahedron, cube, octahedron (the double square-based pyramid), dodecahedron (the only one based on pentagons), and icosahedron.
His varied knowledge wasn't deep, but it was enough to lead her towards the proper methods to use her powers more efficiently: seeing that the old-school computer-generated images took hours to compute, while more recent 3D games were relatively fluid, she explored the various advances in the related software… and refined her power.
By reducing the initial sphere into an array of triangles, she was able to create and move it much faster than before. She also discovered that she could make it hollow, and surround herself with is, or someone else. She could alter its physical properties, allowing it to act as a protection… or a cage.
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A cage?Soon, I noticed that, despite my message to the PRT director, Shadow Stalker wasn't removed from Winslow. I would learn afterwards that the bully had practically whined to Armsmaster, angling the story to be an "unprovoked assault on a Ward with a parahuman power", and the sucker had responded in kind.
In the wee hours of the morning, PRT troopers moved to position themselves efficiently around Taylor's house, before invading the place. Between their shouts and the use of a flashbang grenade, it was almost as if they wanted the parahuman inside to react explosively. And even if her polyhedral structures only returned their ordinance to them, they still saw that as unprovoked aggression (because they were on the side of the Law) and pressed harder.
I couldn't do much when I saw, in the end, the structure Taylor was in (an icosahedron) being flattened by the use of Browbeat's power: it was reduced to a hexagon, four feet wide and only an inch thick. I first thought her dead, but I noticed that Browbeat fell unconscious, as well as Shadow Stalker, here as well (with the clear intention to loot the place). And Armsmaster. And I recognized the signs of someone triggering. Again.
It was the first time I could see what was, probably, a second trigger. From what I'd learn later, it removed a few limitations on her power, the first being the need for the inside shape to be equal to the outside. Now, she could dissociate the internal size of her polyhedron, allowing Browbeat to crush it while still existing comfortably inside.
However, no one would see that anytime soon, as the hexagon was hauled inside a PRT van – with the Wards in another, while Armsmaster was woken up (and upon which event he immediately pushed for Taylor to be Birdcaged).
However, the vans wouldn't reach their target. Due to someone singing to the top of their improved lungs, all glass broke in a radius so wide that it impacted most of the city. And since, between glasses and phones and computers, most people had glass around their head, there were also many wounded, some even already dead.
Shatterbird had arrived, her song heralding the Slaughterhouse Nine's entrance in town. Thankfully, I was far enough away for my stuff not to explode on me. And my counter-surveillance powers even allowed for my cameras to work, still, despite the damage. I noticed that Taylor's hex was hovering out of the ruined van. And duplicating.
Soon, it was covering the whole street, while adapting, their appearance mimicking the underlying asphalt. And if I noticed a continuation in the new street covering into the whole district… I didn't tell anyone. The PRT and Protectorate had revealed themselves as corrupt, vicious, and leaking critical information like a sieve. Instead, I got myself some popcorn and settled to watch. Given how Taylor seemed able to escalate, I knew it would be fun.
And it was. In a way. I wasn't one for gory ends for anyone, but the Slaughterhouse had earned their Kill Orders, so I squirmed a bit but kept watching when Cherish and Burnscar walked into the trap: thin triangular shapes emerged under their feet, like pointy blades. They stumbled, started to fall, and then other blades pierced through their body. Much like Kaiser would do with his blades, Taylor killed them.
And then she took care of the others. Those who weren't dispatched by other capes, that is.
Hatchet Face was killed by a long-distance round, courtesy of Miss Militia, who also got the flying Shatterbird in the same way. And Jack Slash might predict cape movements, but his arrogance had him confront the police precinct alone, and got him pelted by bullets. Despite Bonesaw's improvements to his body, several found purchase into his eyes and mouth, killing him.
Crawler had sought Lung out, wanting to test himself against the king of escalation. He got a massive increase in his adaptive resistance towards heat, due to that, and ended up killing the dragon. And then, convinced of his invulnerability, Crawler had rampaged through the town, ending up at a Merchant meeting. His resistances didn't prevent him from being corralled by Skidmark's acceleration fields, nor did he have a resistance to increase against the disintegration power of Scrub, a new Merchant cape.
Taylor found her hexagons walked upon by the Siberian, once, which caused the whole street to erupt in pointy blades… which did nothing to the invulnerable construct. But her face showed panic when a nearby van was speared through, and she hurried there, breaking the geometric shapes on her way – and they broke in a strange way, only splitting into triangular shapes: not a single fragment showed round or irregular lines. That's when Taylor learned that she could manipulate shapes without touching them. And the flying fragments followed the striped stripper, and went through the vehicle that was, obviously, containing something precious to her. She disappeared, never to be found again, when the old man inside died.
And then there were two: Mannequin and Bonesaw. The mad little girl kept to the motel room she had been secreted in, while the Tinker construct hovered around it. It wasn't that hard to find it, and I rearranged the electronic displays in various places in the city to direct Taylor to them – with how her power manifested, she had the best chances against the two super-villains.
Mannequin got thin versions of her flying geometric shapes stuck to the chains he used to hold his flying limbs, only to grow into larger spikes when he had reeled them inside its "body". Not protected in the same way when struck from the inside, the body exploded, its insides already pureed.
Remained the biotinker.
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Shock and aweTaylor's duplicating hexes surrounded the motel in all directions, providing her with details on its interior: every client and employee was dead. Only remained Bonesaw, and Taylor saw no reason not to compress the whole thing, killing the last Slaughterhouse member with it.
She had another reason to seal the whole site: the plagues that the biotinker was rumoured to hold in reserve. However, the rumour was unsubstantiated, the villainous girl never having used such an attack before.
Instead, Bonesaw acted like a frightened kid, kidnapped by the bad guys and suffering from Stockholm Syndrome from the beginning. With her apparent age of seven and her powder blue robe, she looked quite innocent.
Despite the hardships in her life, Taylor fell for it and hugged the crying little girl… only to have Bonesaw inject her with something. With her finger.
The biotinker's body was in fact a construct, much like Mannequin, except that it was made to look like a little girl. One even younger than when she had effectively been kidnapped. And she cackled as Taylor's own body was paralyzed and started to decay from the injection point outwards. The fast-acting agent only needed seconds to blacken her hand, her fingers soon turning into dust.
Apparently, it was painful, too, and Taylor's power reacted in a weird way. Faced with imminent extermination, it changed again. As if the girl had a third trigger event. Her whole body shook as it was slowly transformed into geometric shapes – starting with the side opposing the arm that Bonesaw had targeted, her skin smoothened into flat triangular panes, the effect quickly covering her whole body. She lifted her unaffected limb first, seeming to marvel at her hand, before lifting the other. She frowned, first, but smiled when her control allowed her to elongate the stump that remained, and re-create her hand.
Bonesaw had seen that and was smiling, herself, jumping in place and clapping her hands. But whatever she wanted to say was interrupted when Taylor moved almost as fast as a thought, her arm lengthened and speared the babbling girl through the mouth – her initial attempt at killing Bonesaw had shown her how resistant her skin was.
And then she started to collect the bodies. It was common knowledge that the Slaughterhouse Nine members had a Kill Order on them, with a significant bounty attached. Taylor knew that money was tight at home, and wanted to help her father in that regard.
She wasn't the only one, though, and ABB members had already recovered Burnscar's body. As she was pursuing them, Taylor discovered that her geometric control of her body was total: she could float, and even fly. And, like with her "rolling" ball, she was faster when she manifested less details. Ending up as a tetrahedron, she shot after the moving truck, ignoring the masked woman manning the turret gun atop it. Or, rather, the grenade launcher.
The woman was Bakuda, a bomb Tinker, and had taken the reins of the ABB upon Lung's demise, earlier that day. And when she noticed that the parahuman pursuing her wasn't suffering from her normal rounds, she started to use exotic ammunition, such as ones which created black holes, which distorted organic bodies, or which transformed materials into glass.
The first she easily evaded: not only were they slow to form, but new body wasn't subject to gravity – she wasn't even suffering the pull from high-speed turns, giving her a perfect manoeuvrability.
The second simply didn't work on her, as she was not organic at all.
That last one worked, but Taylor's power had, by now, a much firmer grip on her, and had already downloaded her whole consciousness. It had been necessary when she had been transforming into a construct made of geometric shapes. And now that the construct was transformed into glass… it fell and shattered into many fragments.
And those fragments were triangular.
Slowly, at first, and then faster, they rose again, and flew after the moving truck again. The attack might have counted as a fourth trigger, if such a thing existed, and meshed Taylor's consciousness even further with her power. It granted her a much higher control of details of the shape she showed (such as transparency, now) but also the perception of the "body" of her power shard.
On Earth Bet, she was able to get rid of Bakuda, and then reform into a body that looked normal – after all, recent video games showed people that looked normal. But she could reform at any time into a simpler body to be faster… and back into her own afterwards, clad with any type of clothing she wanted. Or change clothes at will.
In fact, her body was like a video game character, and she could change it at will. She could appear as any kind of creature, and win any cosplaying contest, ever. She also made me think of that old series Automan, in which a character was a solid-looking hologram – he could have any clothing and wasn't subject to g forces.
She could also take the appearance of specific people, even if the level of detail needed was so high that she couldn't be moving faster than normal, then. She took Emma's place to confound Sophia, once. And vice-versa.
And since she was now appearing as a video game character, and had the perception of the "body" of her power, she could break the "fourth wall" whenever she wanted.
As such, she often looked straight in my eyes, when I was watching her on my screens. And wink.
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To be continued… laterAuthor's Notes: Inspiration struck (ouch) when reading "Absolution" by quantumsheep (on SpaceBattles and/or SufficientVelocity), although this had nothing to do with it. Next chapter will, though.