I shatter a few toes and collect my thoughts. Of course the Protectorate are interested in cape fights. They're responsible for cleaning up the messes left behind. This makes total sense, I just never thought that I would be someone responsible for creating such a mess. Or that the Protectorate would personally come by to talk to me.

I really need to get a phone.

"We would like to debrief you," Battery says, interrupting my train of thought. "And if you could help clean things up that would also be much appreciated." Battery's demeanor doesn't change any but I get the sense that she's irritated. This feeling promptly intensifies when Assault starts laughing.

"Don't worry too much. The Protectorate is used to dealing with parahumans who don't immediately have a handle on every aspect of their power," he says, winking. "Trust me, this isn't the worst thing we've seen this month. Or the strangest."

They give me a lift in a PRT van which is simultaneously roomier and more intimidating than I expect it to be. I shrink my lifts and heels down a little to fit into the seats more easily, and if either of the heroes notice they don't comment. I have to wonder if that's out of respect, a simple jaded nature towards the wackiness of parahuman powers, or part of an act to get me into the Wards.

Sadly, I think this is still an improvement on my average social interaction.

About forty-five seconds into the ride there's a sound like a gunshot and I jump in my seat, turning towards the noise. Assault has his hands together and is grinning like a loon.

"Just trying to see if you're completely unflappable," he says unapologetically, still smiling. Battery slaps the back of his head and I'm suddenly disoriented, like I've been looking at one of those pictures with two different images in it and only now see the young woman and the slightly older man. These are supposed to be the defenders of Brockton Bay?

"What my partner was trying to do was begin interrogating you about the fight so we can focus on battlefield cleanup when we get to the site," she says in an even tone, eyes on mine. I haven't replaced the lens in my mask yet, have I? I quickly grow a rose over the gap, obscuring part of my vision. It's uncomfortable, but I don't think this conversation is going to turn into a fight.

I nod. "Isidis, Justitia and I were going out to lunch. Oni Lee showed up and attempted to kill me." Boom. The waiter. I don't know if he's alright. "When that failed, I tried to run away." Boom. "When I could not run away, I encased myself in a shell of bone until I stopped feeling anything. Once I had collected myself, I left the dome to engage Oni Lee. By that time he had fled so I decided to try and find Isidis to see if she was alright." The facts. Plain and simple.

Assault nods. "Fits with his SOP. Go in, do some damage, run away when he doesn't think he can win." He leans back against the steel wall. "Honestly, I'm a little surprised this is the first time he's gone after you. Maybe he was waiting on Bakuda to cook up something good."

"Bakuda?" I ask. I think I've heard that name before but I don't remember from where.

"The Cornell Bomber," Battery answers flatly and a memory clicks. "A Tinker that specializes in explosives, near as we can tell. She makes the bombs, other people carry them. A potent combination with Oni Lee."

I think back to the half-empty onesie and imagine a city block filled with black-clad, red and green masked duplicates, all pulling pins, and I have to ripple my ribs before I vomit again. Not now. Not while the Protectorate are watching.

In. Out. Mask on.

"But why?" I ask, trying to banish the memory of the taste of salt from my tongue. "If I killed Lung, wouldn't that mean he'd be the boss of the ABB?" In a twisted sort of way, Lee should be thanking me. I just gave him a promotion.

"You killed Lung," Battery says, shrugging. "Lee takes loyalty very seriously, and apparently Bakuda does too. That, and the ABB has a reputation to maintain. If the other gangs smell blood in the water, they'll attack. If the ABB kill you, they reaffirm their status as not to be fucked with. If they don't..." she shrugs. "It's a heavy blow to their reputation."

I stay silent for a moment, considering.

"What are the ways gangs can improve their reputation?" I ask. Something cold and slimy is in my stomach, and start rhythmically breaking and mending my pinky toe. I have an idea, but I could be wrong. I'd like to be wrong.

"Pull off big heists, break people out of prison, kill or beat down high-profile capes," Assault starts, listing off each item with a new finger. "Showing up to Endbringer fights is a big one, and so is staying neutral or in one place for a long time." Like the Empire, he doesn't say. He shrugs with the raised hand. "It really depends though. Different acts can give different amounts and types of rep. It's not exactly a formal system."

I wait for the silence to settle. Then I ask the question.

"What about committing an atrocity and not getting caught?"

Assault and Battery exchange a look. Battery decides to answer.

"It would... depend," she says, folding her legs. "Some things you can't frame well-"

"What about mass killings?" I ask, seeing the digression for what it was. Fuck that, give it to me straight. "What about going around and spreading as much chaos as possible without being caught?"

Battery lets out a breath. "That would probably be considered a positive gain in rep, yes," she says slowly and carefully, the visible parts of her face blank.

I keep the toe bone fractured. I'm feeling this. I deserve it. "And if your reputation was tarnished by, say, having your leader killed by a new cape, you could regain that rep through one of the previous means?"

The silence is answer enough.


Breaking apart the dome is conceptually easy. The thing that makes it difficult is the sheer mass. Would make it difficult, if it wasn't for the pair of heroes beside me. Assault is able to slap things around like they're pillows, and Battery is a steady blur, moving long bars of bone to the hazard workers with a minimum of fuss. I can only imagine how much they could make in the private sector as construction workers. Then I remember NEPEA-5. Fucking anti-competitive bullshit.

Most of the bone goes into garbage trucks, destined for the landfill. I also give permission for the Protectorate to use a little bit of it for general research purposes. Apparently there's a law that lets them simply claim it as a spoil of war but they prefer to ask when the parahuman who made the material isn't antagonistic. Makes things less legally murky that way.

About halfway through, a truck with plastic covering every interior surface comes by. Apparently someone at the hospital got wind of the supply of perfectly good dead biomass and thought of recycling. Good thinking, that. The process slows down more as I break each piece into the uniform size that Isidis finds optimal.

I don't mind. It gives me time to think.

The first thing is the raw fucking rage. Why the fuck didn't I see it earlier? Of course Oni Lee wasn't going to lie there and take it. Of course he'd want vengeance. Of course he'd need to protect his reputation.

I feel my bones flexing every time a new wave of guilt runs through me. I stop them before they can so much as crack. No, I do not get to run away from this.

That's the next feeling. Guilt. If I had run earlier, then Lung would be alive and the ABB wouldn't be waging war. Or if I had been less lethal, maybe he wouldn't have been as ramped up and the Protectorate would've been able to drive him off.

If if if. So many different ways I could've handled things. And I chose the wrong one.

I stay silent during the clean up, answering questions simply and tersely. By the time the dome is gone it's nearly seven and I need to get home. Dad finding out about my powers on top of everything else that's happened today would be the icing on the fucking cake.

I walk back home, playing with my bones and trying to figure out a way to deal with all this. Two blocks away I duck behind a garage and change into my civies. I shiver as the bones pull back into my skin. It's always surprising how effectively they retain heat. Underwear, tank top, sweats, then jog home and hope Dad's not back.

He isn't. Another message on the machine. He'll be back later, and he wants to make plans for the weekend. Maybe I can use the bombing to get that pushed back until we forget about it. It feels bad avoiding him like this but we were never the most social people even before Mom died. She was the glue that held us introverts together.

I make myself some pasta and reheat some cheap store-bought sauce. Really not feeling the effort tonight. I take my meal to my room and boot up my computer so I can address something that I do know how to deal with. I go through an onion browser, create a throwaway account on PHO, and head to the thread on Lung's capture to find CharlotteHolmes.

XXX

Subject: re:Employment

I am interested in hurting the ABB. If you can provide the location of their weak points, I will be at Longshire Park at 2AM. Be punctual.

This is not an acceptance of your employment offer. This is not a subtle agreement to work with you to bring in Oni Lee. This is simply my desire for information. If you cannot provide that, do not show.

I will greet you. You will respond with the color of the noun in the sentence I greet you with. If you don't I hurt you and call the Protectorate to clean up the mess.

Do not PM me back or continue to ask for my services.

XXX

I check the message over a few times. Aggressive? Maybe. But I'm feeling aggressive. The whole 'meeting at two in the morning' thing is going to be a pain in the ass but the weekend's coming up so I can afford to do it. That, and I have the beginnings of an idea about how to fix this problem. Something that I'll need some time to try out.

With that settled I hit send, log out, close down the onion browser, and power down the computer. Pretty mild as cybersecurity goes but I don't have a ton of options. I finish off the last of the pasta and set my clock to wake me at twelve. It would take maybe fifteen minutes to sprint to the park but it always pays to arrive early.

I strip down into sleep wear and settle in for a nap. Before I know it I'm out.


The alarm shocks me more than it has any right to. The sheer viciousness of my instinctive blow to shut it off though...

Good thing I don't need that alarm clock. I'm not sure even Dad could put it back together again.

I get up, take off my sleep wear, and armor up. I go for subtle this time, with none of the usual flares or decorations. Just smooth bone. I step out the back and hop fences, detouring around any house with the light still on. Once I'm a good seven blocks away I get into the streets and run.

The park is a little farther away than I thought it was, and I have to backtrack a few times when I start getting into unfamiliar territory. I'll have to get a better sense of direction at some point. Not today, but soon.

The view of the ocean is different at night. It becomes a void, darker even than some parts of the sky. This close to the city there aren't any stars, and while the horizon has the cityscape to illuminate it the water doesn't. It's just a cold, inky blackness. Urban sounds, car horns, and the rush of air drift through the thicket of trees as I stand at the summit of the hill before letting my power run free.

Assault and Battery made it clear that the Protectorate doesn't mind random debris so long as it's for a good reason and I keep it semi-manageable. The information also came with a Wards offer where I could learn how to better control my power. I thanked them politely for the heads up and ignored the pitch but it did get me thinking about what sort of effect I could have on my environment.

Here would be the test run. A toe in the water, as it were.

Setting the scene takes less time than I anticipate, and after finishing up my work on the ground around the hill I climb to the top and settle down to wait.

At two o'clock on the dot, an inky substance that doesn't look like smoke so much as it looks like the very manifestation of empty space rolls out from the treeline. I stand by impassively, though I'm quietly impressed. Not sure how useful it'd be in a fight but it certainly looks pretty.

Eventually the cloud dissipates, revealing a scene from some twisted artist's nightmare. Three massive lizard-things with a canine bent that makes me think of what wolves might have looked like before the ice age, all heavy muscle and bone spikes, stand at the edge of the ring of trees. On top of them are four figures: One in a black motorcycle getup, one in a lavender and black catsuit with a domino mask, one in a white renaissance faire throwback with something that wouldn't look out of place in a stage play on his face, and one in street clothes with a cheap plastic rottweiler mask barely concealing her identity.

They would be terrifying to most people. Four capes, one who can blind you and one who can control dogs the size of cars? That's not including the two that are complete unknowns. I can imagine the Merchants running from these four, or even New Wave if there weren't any civilians present.

I still think I did them one better.

Trees of bone, no less than waist width at their thinnest, fanning out into broad canopies and forming an artificial forest on the hill. There are pathways leading to quiet groves with benches and chairs for the weary. One even has a ladder and slide for children..

Roses hang from the branches, out of reach for all but the tallest and thorned generously.

An archway of entwined branches leads up to the top of the hill which I've left free of excess decorations. Don't want to ruin anyone's wedding shoots.

I've also grown a throne, modest and comfortable, still connected to my armor. More rose blooms adorn it, and I recline lazily, forcing the group come to me. Maybe I'm playing up the royalty thing a bit much but creating the forest felt good. That and it's an excellent home field advantage.

The four capes approach, and the thing that strikes me the most is how young they look. The three who have parts of their face visible don't look much older than I do, and the dime-store nature of the tall one's costume makes me think that he doesn't have a proper job yet either.

They stop at the top of the hill, waiting. I slowly sit up, cracking my spine all the way. The one in the catsuit looks a little grossed out. Good. I form a mouth on my mask, all jagged teeth and unsettling smiles.

"It's a good night," I say conversationally.

"Black," the man in leathers says, his voice reverberating oddly. I push my concerns a little farther away. They're the real McCoy. "We're the Undersiders," he continues. "I'm Grue, the one in white is Regent, purple is Tattletale, and the last is Bitch."

I nod.

"Let's talk."


A/N: Hrm. 200 follows. Looks like the story's alright.