Side-Step DA
People take the ability to ask questions for granted. They assume they know the answers, or pretend the question doesn't matter. They probably never stopped to think about how different life might be without questions.
Dinah didn't get to ask if her parents really loved her. She didn't get to ask if Taylor was a good friend or not. She didn't have the luxury of asking 'am I a good person.' Any question set her power off, like a google search that butted in at every opportunity to rattle off irrelevant bullshit. She saw everything. The futures where she was a good person, a bad person, a neutral person, a monster.
And none of it mattered. The brief visions gave no context for the lives those other Dinahs lived. Seeing everything that could happen only made her more uncertain.
Somehow, that felt like a dumb side effect of seeing the future.
"I question if she's telling the truth," she heard her father say.
That's not what he really said and she didn't really hear him.
The plugs in her ears completely blocked his voice. Never hearing her parents again. Another wonderful benefit to super powers. Adjusting to a world of near total silence took time. Teaching herself not to restructure the text feed Veda printed on the lens of her glasses into questions took a lot more time.
It helped when she 'imagined' people speaking. Made the silence a little more tolerable.
"She's probably not," her mother's voice 'said'.
She busied herself in the kitchen with the pancakes. Dinah sat at the table and waited. Her father occasionally looked at her with concern, but Dinah ignored it.
Another disconnection, knowing that some things needed to be.
Her father turned back to the television after a moment.
Taylor's interview dominated the news through the week, along with the arrest of six villains in one night. Dinah took a little pride in that. She did help, after all. Taylor asked her all the questions she could think of in three days and they hashed out every possibility. The plan worked.
Dinah did worry about Veda. She didn't have much choice when it came to friends and the AI had been abnormally silent in the days leading up to the field trip to Boston. A feud between the two people she most depended on for safety didn't end will.
Dinah tried not to let it bother her, though. Taylor and Veda tended to work their problems out. Most of the time.
Taylor looked a little stiff early but as the interview went on, she relaxed.
"They're not AI," Taylor said in response to a question Dinah ignored. "The Haros aren't that capable."
Not in Dinah's experience.
The little rascals might as well own Tattletale's building. Half of the villain's neighbors knew them, and the robots spent more time keeping the building well maintained than the guy running the place. They even replaced the lock on the rooftop door, albeit for ulterior motives.
That took creativity.
Then again, the Haros really didn't compare to Veda and Taylor wouldn't just go on TV and announce she made the world's second AI.
"But they are smarter than I intended them to be," Taylor went on to say. "That's part of the struggle of being a tinker. We don't really know a lot of what is going on under the hood when it comes to tinker tech. We just know it 'works.' It's something I've been toying with 'cause it doesn't really make a lot of logical sense and it nags at me."
Huh.
Something she didn't see coming.
Neat.
"Dangerous making tech when you don't know what it does."
"I test extensively," Taylor answered. "When designing my first suit, StarGazer ran simulations and found the design had some very negative environmental effects. We spent weeks working to solve the problem."
"I hope you did."
"We did. Tinkers might not understand the 'why' or the 'how' but we can still observe the 'what.' My suits don't even pollute now. They're one hundred percent green."
People laughed.
Laying the groundwork for Veda and Dragon's eventual public reveal with leading statements, and handling her own ability to understand tinker tech as something other than her power being abnormal. Must have worked that out with Kati. Dinah wasn't asked questions about the interview, and she only got a few pertaining to Dragon and Veda so far.
She might not need to.
Taylor didn't realize she had a way with words. Maybe that's a good thing. People who know how convincing they can be tend to be assholes. Taylor thought everyone disliked her as a default, and sad as that was it kind of played into her unrealized talent. People believed her when she talked.
When she went on national news and said "the world I see around me is broken, and it needs to change" no one doubted she meant what she said. No one asked for an ulterior motive, or veiled messages. Taylor came off as earnest and sincere, even when talking about things that could make people uncomfortable.
Still, Dinah enjoyed poking fun at Taylor. At least, mentally. She led a rather entertaining life.
"I don't have a boyfriend," Taylor said. From the set of her jaw she found the question rude and didn't like answering it. "I have other priorities right now."
Like hiring a boy who wants to be my boyfriend and not noticing he thinks I'm cute.
"Of course my parents worry about me."
They worry so much 'they' make horrible parenting choices.
"I haven't thought about kids. And I'm fifteen."
Already made one and she's great, I need a mug and a 'kid on board' bumper sticker for my robot.
A ping from Dinah's phone distracted her.
C: those pancakes look good
Dinah's brow furrowed. She picked up her phone and quickly tapped out a response.
D: you can't have any
C: I can
C: just need someone to slide the plate across the table
C: *wink wink*
Dinah's brow furrowed in annoyance.
Somehow she didn't mind that much, because annoying friends who bug you are normal for most people. If Claire even could be called a friend. The 'girl' was twice Dinah's age easily, and seemed even less capable at socializing than Taylor.
D: no
C: you need more adventure in your life
D: I live in Brockton Bay
D: every day is an adventure
Questions can be so critical to so many simple things.
Friendship for example. No one could tell friend from foe, especially among strangers, without questions. Dinah didn't get to ask questions, though. She didn't have the luxury of wondering 'why' or 'who.' A simple aspect of life most people easily took for granted but provided so much peace of mind.
Peace of mind she didn't get to enjoy. Call it the stupidly red cherry on the top of her slice-of-life pie.
Absent questions, Dinah only made determinations.
Claire saw things she didn't want to see. She saw them all the time. She felt the same isolation, and unlike Dinah, Claire wanted to be more social than her power allowed.
But pancake supplies were limited, so…
D: your request is considered
D: request denied
C: we can make a deal
D: I get all the pancakes
D: deal
Dinah took a bite out of her pancakes.
C: And you're making me watch
C: so cruel
D: your tears sustain me
Dinah added syrup.
C: you monster
Dinah finished her breakfast, monstrously, and got up from the kitchen table.
"I'm going to go see Missy," she said.
"Missy," Her mother said. "From school."
Dinah nodded to the questions she didn't hear. "Yes."
"You'll do something you've planned."
"Shopping and stuff."
"You have money."
"Yes."
So much money. Taylor had been rather fair in splitting her earnings with Dinah and Lafter. Of course, Dinah's parents didn't know she now had her own bank account with tens of thousands of dollars in it. No way to explain that without unmasking and the time wasn't right, yet.
It is nice being rich, though.
"I can drive you," her father offered.
"Okay," Dinah replied.
She went upstairs to pack her bag and met him in the garage.
She'd use the bus but they lived too far out from the city center for that. Even if they lived closer her parents might not let her. It's an irony that her mother and father knew how dangerous Brockton Bay was but never left. She didn't quite understand why and she didn't get to ask the question. She would miss their response when her power reacted and fed her twenty or more different versions of the answer.
Life is a box of chocolates like that.
When she got out of the car, Dinah waited on the street. Her father played protector, pretending to leave her on her own while coming back around the block behind her and waiting. Some might call it overprotective, but Dinah found it reassuring.
The nightmares still haunted her.
Her fucked up existence came with so many possibilities involving imprisonment, forced addiction, and isolation. She managed to hem off two of those by going directly to Taylor. She usually showed up in Dinah's life somehow. Better sooner rather than waiting for the intervention that so often came far too late. The isolation remained however, and the knowledge that her parents cared meant a lot. Especially when it came in the form of encouraging her to become confident and independent while always maintaining a protective, even if overly so, eye.
Better than Missy's parents.
Dinah got her powers because two assholes decided to be absolute dicks. Missy got hers because her parents were so toxic their daughter had a nervous breakdown.
At least, that's what Dinah put together from some of the things she saw. Missy's mother and father treated her like some family pet to fight for and win rather than a child enduring a nasty divorce with no idea how to think or feel about it. A divorce dragging on for years because they kept breaking up and getting back together.
There's probably an award for parenting that badly, and Missy's parents desperately needed to win it.
"Hey, Dinah."
Maybe some people just needed to not have kids.
"Hi, Missy."
Dinah turned to her and put on a small smile. She didn't know if she'd call Missy a friend, but she didn't get to wonder so 'friend' is the label she applied.
Close would not be the correct word to describe their interactions. They'd known each other since elementary school, but only in passing. They did homework together, went to the same birthday parties, and knew many of the same people.
Missy tended to act a little 'holier-than-thou' around their peers, tried to act above being thirteen. It put people their own age off and made people older than them concerned. Dinah never minded much. Missy wasn't pushy, so if Dinah simply wanted to be somewhere and not get pestered Missy was a good person to be around.
"We can stop somewhere on the way to the cafe," Missy said.
"Sure," Dinah said.
She remained silent as Missy lead the way.
Her father tailed them for a block or two before peeling off. Overall, Brockton Bay was pretty safe if you stayed in the nicest parts of the city. Even safer when walking those parts of the city with a Ward. And if anything did happen, Newtype would 'suddenly' appear and beat the crap out of anyone who survived Missy's wrath.
Really, Dinah might be the safest preteen on the east coast as far as random street violence was concerned.
Dinah feigned surprise when Missy led her inside a store down the street.
"You're into capes now," Dinah said.
"No," Missy said defensively. "I'm just curious."
"Right. Curious."
Cape-a-Palooza rocketed into one of Brockton Bay's most popular stores over the past month. They had exclusive access to 'official' Newtype merchandise, and Taylor was printing model kits as fast as Larry and JP sold them. She'd probably try to approach Yashima soon, but she promised the groupies six months of exclusive access. Taylor put effort into keeping her word.
A small crowd packed the store, most gathered around a display by the register. The early morning crowd picked the display clean of the new Full Armor and Queen Gundam kits Taylor made. A few of the Astraea and O Gundam kits remained and neither appeared to be what Missy wanted.
"I thought Newtype didn't do anything," Dinah said, remembering Missy's words from months ago.
Missy's face turned red, and she stammered for an excuse.
Dinah accepted her surrender in silence.
"That was then," the girl finally said. "Things changed."
"Mhm."
Dinah's phone dinged. She pulled it from her pocket while Missy settled on an Astraea model kit.
C: Ha!
D: You can't be watching this
C: Revenge for my pancakes!
Dinah rolled her eyes and just got on with it.
There's no stopping Claire. She couldn't avoid looking if she wanted to. Dinah accepted that, and everything it entailed, as a natural consequence of knowing things no one should ever know.
"That's not the one you wanted," Dinah said.
"The suit she uses right now," Missy said. "I wanted the one she used in Boston, though."
"Pretty sure that broke," Dinah lied.
"I guess," Missy lied back.
She didn't want to act like she knew about tinkers. That's fair. Dinah knew Taylor fixed the Full Armor system a week ago, but considered it overkill for what she normally did in Brockton Bay.
Larry rang Missy up and got her to buy the tools she needed for the kit as well. Dinah decided to buy a Vista novelty mask. It would be funny in about twenty minutes. Maybe. Honestly, she found the look Missy gave her when she bought it funny enough.
Missy slipped the items into her backpack before they left and the girls continued on their way.
They walked into the café and Dinah donned her novelty mask. She went straight to the woman at the reception desk and ignored the somewhat indignant look she got.
"I.A.F.," she said. "Private booth for two."
The woman continued her indignant gaze, and Dinah pulled a roll of twenties from her pocket. She got an inquisitive look instead, but stood her ground until the woman relented and led her to her reservation.
When they got into the enclosed room and the door closed, Missy didn't sit down.
She stared at Dinah.
Cutting off the girl before she even asked, Dinah reached into her bag and said, "I stopped an international assassination and saved Miss Militia's life. Heroism pays, unlike crime."
She pulled her mask - Forecast's mask - from the bag and set it on the table.
"The fuck," Missy exclaimed.
She blinked and covered her mouth.
"Don't worry about it," Dinah said. She turned her head and pulled her hair back so Missy could see the black bud in her ear. "StarGazer stops me from hearing questions I don't want to convulsively see answers for. Pretty sure you were there when I told Miss Militia that."
Missy blinked.
"The fuck," she repeated.
"Language." Dinah lifted her Forecast mask and stuck it back into her bag. "We're minors."
The door opened and the waitress entered the booth. She gave Dinah a quizzical gaze but took their drink orders.
Missy stared even after she left.
As soon as the door closed, Dinah said, "Also, we're not tipping."
Service did not improve just because Dinah proved she could pay for it.
Missy sat silently, and Dinah let her. People needed time to process things. They got their drinks after a ludicrous twenty-minute wait – someone preferred playing phone games in the restroom to working – and Dinah took her time maneuvering the straw under her novelty mask to enjoy a flat Sprite.
Missy didn't even touch her drink.
Dinah took the delay to answer her phone.
C: hahahahahahahaha
Delete.
C: rude
D: ha
Dinah swapped over to the other chat.
V: you are telling her your identity
D: Newtype's going to unmask to the Wards
D: Missy has seen her with me before
D: She'll realize I'm Forecast
D: This makes less trouble later
D: Confirm you knew Vista's secret identity already
V: I did
V: state purpose
Dinah did not need Missy showing up at her house in the middle of the night or asking any questions within the PRT.
"You bought a Vista mask to hide your face," Missy eventually said.
"Most thirteen-year-olds don't have rolls of twenties, and that's all the ATM gives out." Missy gave her an indignant glare. "Right. Sorry. Don't really get a choice in what I do and don't see."
Missy scowled. "StarGazer is listening to everything we say! You just unmasked me!"
Dinah turned her phone toward Missy and let her read the text chat with Veda. After letting Missy read it, Dinah turned the phone back to herself.
D: purpose stated
"The fuck," Missy said for a third time.
Dinah sighed. "Fine."
"The fuck!"
"Get it out of your system."
"How does she-"
"Powers."
"But-"
"You treat space-time like a toy and should not need me to state powers are bullshit and no I did not precog this conversation I'm just reading your lips."
Which is hard not to learn how to do when you don't hear what people say. Mostly Dinah tried not to look at anyone's mouth, but that came with the problem of people wondering why she rarely looked them in the eye.
The super power parade kept on marching that way.
Missy stumbled for a few seconds. She silently raised her hands and pointed at Dinah questioningly.
"Like I said to StarGazer. Newtype is going to unmask to the Wards and you've seen her before."
"Seen her bef- Wait-" Missy stopped herself and looked confused.
She probably didn't remember off the top of her head. She only saw Taylor once months ago. She would though, which was the whole point.
"She's unmasking to you next week." Dinah reached back into her bag and pulled out a pad and pencil. "You'll remember."
Dinah set the pad down and took the pencil in one hand. She removed her ear buds. Most people might call the room quiet, but Dinah heard that silence loudly. The gentle hum of the fan in the vent above. The distant sound of talk in the café beyond the door. The occasional creak of the seats, or the shallow breaths of the only other living thing in the room.
She looked at Missy.
"Go ahead," she said. "I know you want to. It's okay."
Missy's eyes widened. She hesitated, of course. It's a big thing. She knew how thinkers worked. The headaches are no joke, and Dinah's burned her out for days if they got too bad. The power is there though. Everyone wants to know the future. Uncertainty and fear for tomorrow might even be the foremost causes of human conflict.
It's certainly the source of all Dinah's uncertainty and fear, and she saw the future.
Missy bit her lip.
Dinah recognized the conflict playing out on Missy's face. She lived it.
The only thing worse is being kidnapped. Being held in a dungeon, forcefully addicted to drugs, and waiting to die. Crippling uncertainty. Dinah knew where she got her power. She remembered the feeling of helplessness - of not knowing what would happen next - when she lost her mother in the mall. She got her power right then and there, in that moment of traumatic unknowing.
Funny that her power did absolutely nothing to ease its source.
It's 'haha' funny.
"Waiting," Dinah said.
Missy hesitated a while more and closed her eyes. She inhaled, and the tension in her shoulders faded away. She opened her eyes and hung her head slightly.
She relented, and asked, "Do they get back together? For real?"
Dinah didn't need 'they' defined.
Contrary to the 'thinker' part of thinker power, Dinah's started in her fingertips. A static that gathered under her nails and then shot up her arms. Muscles twitched and she consciously forced herself to sit still. Not that she could. Her body convulsed despite her best efforts. Not painfully, but definitely uncomfortably. Not the worst part, at least.
The worst part was, her power didn't really do anything for her. Her power did nothing but complicate her life.
She hated her power.
The images flashed through her mind in a perfect blur. She saw all of them perfectly, one after the other. It felt like eternity though. Like her body and mind were hostage to a force beyond her control that didn't care. She paused a few of the possibilities as they went by, focusing her mind on them and willing them to move.
Her hand wrote as her body convulsed.
When the last possibility passed, Dinah took a deep breath. The pain and tightness flowed out of her limbs and she opened her eyes.
"I only see what can happen," she said. She tore the page off her pad and folded it in half. "I don't know what will happen."
Missy took the page and Dinah put the pad and pencil away. She put her earbuds back in and returned to her separating silence.
They talked for a little while, and got some desserts for their sorrows, before Missy got up to leave.
"See you around," Dinah said.
"Yeah," Missy mumbled. "I'll see you later."
Not for the rest of the summer likely. Fair enough. Missy wouldn't go around the PRT poking her nose in places, hopefully. The last thing Dinah needed was the Youth Guard banging on Taylor's door. The definition of more trouble than help.
C: that was so sweet
D: just covering my butt
C: Doormaker agrees with me
C: you're a softie
D: shush
Dinah left a twenty on the table.
Service sucked as expected.
Veda brought one of the vans around to pick her up out of sight.
At the factory, Dinah found Astraea missing. The Haros were sitting on the couch playing one of Lafter's games, and Lafter wasn't with them. She stood with Trevor by Taylor's workstation.
That's not good.
"I don't see Taylor."
"She's getting her ribs broken," Lafter said.
Dinah stared.
The monitors showed Astraea flying over the ocean a few miles out from the city, and it seemed to be going a lot faster than normal.
"Funny," Dinah mumbled.
"Not really," Lafter mumbled back.
"Taylor," Trevor called.
"It's fine," she said, her breathing labored. "Ish."
"That doesn't sound fine," Lafter said.
"G-forces are forty-nine percent beyond expected parameters," Veda said.
"Should have seen that coming," Taylor said with a labored breath. "Newtonian equations stop adding up right when you start fucking with quarks."
She followed it up with words Dinah didn't understand, but they sounded bad.
"We can fix that," Trevor said. "Maybe."
"Define maybe," Dinah said, struggling to keep her face placid.
"Um." Trevor rubbed the back of his head. "Off switch?"
"System error," Veda said.
Trevor blinked. "Shit."
Warnings flashed on the myriad monitors above Taylor's desk. Alarms beeped and booped. Trevor, Veda, and Taylor kept talking in tinker talk. Lafter didn't make quips like she usually did when things were fine.
Dinah's hands tensed at her sides, and her heart dropped into her stomach.
What happens to me without Taylor?
She'd seen so many different ends to her life, and far too many involved the descriptors 'dark' and 'alone'. She died without her parents. Without any friends. Sometimes she lived, and those possibilities honestly seemed worse. Loneliness. Addiction. Hounding from villains. The snake man always wanted her. He found out she existed somehow. He waited for his chance to take her. Always- Always-
Wait.
"StarGazer," Taylor called. She audibly strained to breathe. "Override!"
"Activating emergency shut down procedure," Veda announced.
Dinah didn't hear a lot of what came next.
What happens to me without Taylor?
She waited, but it didn't happen. No feeling in her fingertips. No images overwhelming her. Nothing.
Dinah pulled the buds from her ears, letting the sounds of the workshop surround her.
"Might want to speed that shut down up," Taylor's voice - her real voice - said with a pained gasp.
"Bypassing," Veda said. "There is a critical failure in several sub-systems. I must bypass them."
"What's the issue?" Trevor asked.
Still nothing.
…
The fuck?!
She blinked, a hand reaching for her phone.
She hated her power.
Why did suddenly not having it terrify her?
Why did it feel so much more alone?
C: Dinah
She stared at her phone but didn't answer.
C: Dinah
C: somethings happening
C: you don't look good
Dinah's heart jumped. Claire saw her. Of course, Claire saw her.
She rapidly tapped out a response.
D: my power isn't working
An answer didn't come at first.
C: define not working
D: I don't see anything
D: I asked three questions
D: nothing
The alarms suddenly stopped and Dinah raised her head.
"System wind down complete," Veda announced.
"Fuck breathing is good," Taylor said. She inhaled deeply. "Well, that didn't work."
"Technically it did," Veda said.
"Well, the super mode did," Trevor said. "It's the inertial neutralizers that didn't. Might have to redesign those. Again."
Super mode?
Taylor said, "We are not calling it that."
"I still vote 'red mode'," Lafter said.
"We are not calling it that either!"
"Well, what are we going to call it then?" Lafter asked.
Dinah tensed.
The static spread across her body, and the visions played out one after the other. She closed her eyes. The visions didn't last long. She'd never seen so few before. Only five or six played out.
Astraea fighting Bakuda. A suit that looked like Astraea, but wasn't, fighting Lung. A Gundam she didn't recognize at all – red and white in color, with two big thrusters on its back – flying over a city nestled between cliffs and the sea.
The visions all vanished almost as soon as they started. Just gone. That happened sometimes when the question asked stopped being relevant, but it never happened so quickly. So consistently.
The GN particles turned red and the pictures disappeared every time.
Dinah inhaled sharply. She stopped the last vision as soon as it started. Her heart pounded in her head and pain spiked in her temples as she did.
Something rose over Brockton Bay. The city looked ruined, buildings burning and reduced to rubble all around. The machine looked like a giant robot chicken, with big metal wings and a long tail. Dragon's logo marked the surface. A Gundam faced it, with two GN drives mounted over its shoulders.
Dragon and Taylor, fighting…
"Transactional Amalgamation is the most technical description," Veda said, her voice coming from somewhere around her.
Not her vision. She didn't hear anything in her visions.
"That's a mouthful," Trevor said.
"I don't know what it means," Lafter replied.
Dinah let the image play slowly, her eyes fixed on the Gundam.
Taylor was inside. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew. It looked different from Astraea. Cleaner lines, with smaller antennae and, of course, two drives instead of one. Translucent green panels marked some of the surface, and the GN particles seemed to flow around them. A different condenser design? Dinah only made out a few letters on the suit's surface. 'OO' on the armor and six letters within the translucent green panels.
The colors of the particles around the suit began to change. The air exploded and a wave of green and pink bursting out from the machine.
Dinah opened her eyes.
"Trans-Am," she said.
"Huh," Taylor mused. "That ones not bad."
