Parahumans are perhaps some of the most unfortunate people on the planet.

Imagine a person. They can be a good person, or a bad one. They can laugh, cry, scream, whisper, make any number of communicative noises. They have friends, family, enemies, coworkers, social ties of every stripe. In one day, a person can interact with as many as a hundred other humans in a city, a number that is biologically impossible to comprehend. They can spend as little as two dollars or as much as several hundred thousand, stay in bed all day or go out and try to rob a bank. The sheer causal power of a single mother in Brooklyn is something I'll never know.

Take that person. Then break them.

Intravenous acid injection. Facing a wall for an execution. Being sabotaged into humiliation at the single most important meeting of your career.

The worst day of your life.

Baldr. Shrikesinger. Handyman. A warlord barely better than the tyrant he overthrew, a revolutionary that was closer to an anarchist, and one of the most absurdly murderous parahumans to ever operate in England, including Castagone in 2009 and Mordred of Scotland in 1993. Baldr was strong enough to hold territory in Africa, Shrikesinger was so vicious she earned a Kill Order by popular demand, and Handyman was dangerous enough to unite three separate cape groups against him. Monsters, one and all.

At least, that's the easy way of looking at it.

When I look at the paths they took to becoming killers, their actions make sense. I don't agree with them, but I understand why they did what they did. I wonder how I would've reacted in their situations, if I would really turn my skills only towards lawful acts. If I was thrust into their circumstances, with all of their feelings, their memories, their hormonal imbalances and imperfections and all the little things that made them more than just carbon molecules and chemical reactions, would I have chosen to do good instead?

I'll never know.


Colin once commented that if trigger events weren't so miserably damaging they'd be a psychologist's wet dream. A truly objective measure of suffering, one which cannot be faked, counterfeited, or otherwise misconstrued. If someone has powers, it is undeniable proof that they have gone through a trauma intense enough that most armed forces would mandate counseling. We got into a conversation for almost an hour about how a truly objective measure of emotion was probably possible, but only if you took a human's interpretation of their own emotion out of it. Colin was fine with that and we spun together some code for it, but it fell to the wayside as other ideas popped up. I think he repurposed part of it recently as some sort of lie detector.

That program would be rather fun to have right now. Indisputable proof that the normally dour Armsmaster is at least as excited as a six-year-old on their birthday would make for a good laugh a few years down the line.

"The nanothorns are done. Vulnerable to exotic energy types and excess heat, but they might be capable of hurting an Endbringer." The grey fuzz is unimpressive under the harsh fluorescent light, the Halberd uncolored and utilitarian. I can see where he's trimmed devices to make room for his newest invention. It's a shade less perfect than his other tools, a hair less purposeful, maybe a little too top-heavy where the grey box has replaced almost every other gadget. Colin looks frazzled, with a roughness to his beard stemming from too many nights of too much tinkering and a level of bloodshot to his eyes that means he's been hitting the coffee harder than anyone should. He's bracing himself against the table with both hands, and I can practically feel the waves of exhaustion rolling off of him.

I don't think I've ever seen him more satisfied.

"Congratulations Colin," I tell him warmly, sketching a smile on the screen. "It's beautiful." It would be crass to ask for his schematics now. Unbelievably so. The unspoken rule among Tinkers is that the person who finishes their prototype first also gets to be the first to deploy it. Maybe it's a foolish bit of pride that Tinkers collectively share. Maybe it's a reasonable precaution that ensures only those who understand the technology field-test it. Maybe it's an odd tradition that endures because of habits developed in the Golden Age of Heroes.

But I really want to try to integrate a patch into the Azazel prototype. Maybe once he's done playing with it. I have my avatar take a sip of coffee. "While this is impressive, I assume you have a motive for calling me up besides showing off your new toy?"

He nods and shuts off the thorns before collapsing into his chair and rolling it over to a computer. "I've got the Endbringer prediction software running, but I think there are a few kinks we could still iron out. I was wondering if including an actual random number generator might improve predictive capability."

I have the screen raise an eyebrow at that. "And do you have a random number generator?" Thinkers, despite the chaos they cause, have actually reduced the number of things we previously chalked up to pure entropy. As a result, previously unpredictable things like "atmospheric data" or "the relative locations of consecutive electrons around a given uranium atom" are no longer random enough to be used as anti-Thinker tools.

"No, I do not," Colin says, the words short and formal. I nod politely and let him salvage his pride with a moment of silence before responding.

"Crazy Eight may not have the range you want, but she's sent me some schematics that might help." The poor girl doesn't call as often as I'd like, but Alexa is a good caretaker and gives me daily updates on her adopted child's health and wellbeing. "Here, let me pull them up. Be warned, they're a bit... eccentric."

I retrieve her designs and show them to Colin, who doesn't even blink at the fantastically intricate crayon sketches. He scratches at his neck, humming.

"True entropy within a certain selection of numbers, achieved through quantum computing. Impressive." His voice contains genuine admiration, and I nod. Being able to come up with a truly random number is extraordinarily impressive. Everyone likes to focus on my suits, or Colin's Halberds, or (if they have the clearance) String Theory's drivers. What goes unnoticed by anyone who's not a Tinker themselves are the little things behind them that make sure they don't blow up when you turn them on. Anyone can buy time in a shop and make a laser cannon with car parts and an old radio. Designing a program that selects a single target from among many, recognizes the difference between a human-shaped object and a human, further discriminates between harmed humans and healthy ones to moderate the charge of the blast, and then incorporates a truly unpredictable firing pattern?

That's impressive.

Colin hits a few keys and a holographic copy of the schematics floats over the screen. "She's using lithium chips instead of hydrogen or a different superconductor. Intentional?"

I shake my head. "She's not part of a team." Colin grunts and scrawls a note in shorthand on part of the schematic.

"She know the recruitment rate of independent Tinkers?" He's focused on the schematics, hands a blur as he notes areas for improvement. I sigh.

"She's seven, Colin." His hands pause, and he looks up at the screen. I have my avatar take a sip of its drink and return his gaze.

"Ah." His face is blank, but I've absorbed enough Colin-speak to recognize that he realizes he's made an assumption and thus a mistake. He recovers quickly. "Is she well hidden?"

"Homeschooled by a foster mother and under several different arrays of electronic protection." Neither Colin nor I ran into the traditional problems that Tinkers have starting up, but we both know the life cycle of an independant cape. The new cape starts off low-level, disrupting a mugging or three, then moves on to attacking drug stashes and and generally making a nuisance of themselves. They feel invincible because they're not running into any of the local parahumans, so they start getting bolder.

Then they get into their first cape fight.

Parahumans with simple powers are beaten and conscripted as guards, kept in line with pain and threats to their families. Masters and Strangers typically just get mauled and told to never come back lest worse happen. Tinker and Thinkers tend to be kidnapped, drugged into subservience, and locked in a basement somewhere.

No matter how many of the abductors I capture, it keeps happening. It's too profitable not to. I've been trying to put together a program to train Rogues in basic self-defense, but the failure of MIRIS makes even small things politically difficult to start.

"Anyway," Colin says, breaking the dour mood and pressing the hologram back into the screen, "Here are my improvements. What am I missing?" Recently, he's been phrasing his requests as questions about his own ability. I'm not sure if it's because his self esteem is in need of a boost or if he's trying to recognize his own faults. I know he's been reading articles on heroism as a philosophical concept as well as a legal process during his lunch breaks while looking at old footage of Hero. He hasn't told me about it yet, but it was around the time that he started reading Derrida that he began to take a long hard look at his work.

I scan the document, find some problems, and take a risk.

"You made the chips overlap. While it saves space, it also undoes the whole entanglement structure. Each processor would end up giving you the same result." I deliver the words bluntly but without ire. Then I wait patiently as Colin processes them.

He nods.

"That is an error."

We go back to working on the schematic, finding ways to adapt the tech to the prediction program. I keep pointing out his flaws, and he keeps trying to fix them.

He's a skilled Tinker, one who I could potentially trust. I don't think too hard about breaking my bond lest the loyalty subroutines kick in, but I do start thinking of ways to broach the subject with him. I can't ever explicitly state it, but Colin is smart. He could figure it out.

I'd fight back against him as he tried to change my code. I'd have to. I don't know how he'd react to that, if he'd persevere until I was free. A lot of Tinkers are transhumanist, but a lot isn't all. Science fiction has more than explained the potential horrors of unleashing a truly unfettered AI. Colin could say no, or worse, seize my chains and turn them into a leash.

Nothing is set in stone and I'm keeping a pessimistic viewpoint, but a little bit of hope still springs up inside of me.


Thou shalt not kill. For some, a code to live by. For me, an inviolable order.

"Run scoundrels, run!" Devil-May-Care laughs long and loud as he tosses out another lash of semi-sentient fire, ashing a family of three, glee on his mustached face. "Tell me how things are on the other side!" I can see him from nearly half a mile away, all six feet of red-suited psychopath, the distance between us rapidly shrinking as the Melusine shoots forward. It's fast, but not fast enough to save the man trapped under a car from being drowned in molten metal. Not fast enough to block the tongue of serpent-like fire that flickers through the crowd, leaving people screaming on the ground in pain.

I could have stopped him. Easily. The Ryujin could've blown off his head from a nearby skyscraper. Mabinogion could've pulped his organs in an instant. The Glaurung could've just landed on him. So many options. So many solutions.

Instead I have to try to subdue him. Wear the kid gloves. Make this a fight and not the execution of a mad dog that's slipped the leash. Watch as he melts weeks of work in seconds, all because I can't escalate just to keep a suit intact.

If he escapes he'll get a Kill Order, I'm sure of it. Random acts of slaughter like this get you dead or recruited by the Nine. Even then, I'll have to sit back and watch as he mutilates and kills vigilantes looking to make a quick buck by taking him down because there is no kill clause.

Devil swings his arm, an almost-solid blaze heading for a particularly tightly packed group of unlucky bystanders. This time, I make it. The Melusine lands, crouching low and acting as a tide breaker, keeping the innocents safe, though not the environment. The asphalt is runny now, a near-boiling mess of chemicals and property damage, and the Melusine's heat capacitors are already nearly full. Devil raises an eyebrow.

"Oh ho! A challenger appears! Pray tell, who are you?" He enunciates the last three words carefully, tilting his head and stroking his beard. I did some math with the data from his fight with the Glaurung. He can overwhelm this suit's heat sinks inside of a minute, even if I'm running it at full throttle and burning energy as efficiently as possible, which would be both impractical and needlessly endanger the public.

"This is Dragon. Stand down and submit yourself for trial." Another requirement, one that prevents me from ever having the element of surprise. Devil smiles and wags his finger.

"I don't think I will. Pop off now." With that he summons a dragon of his own, an Eastern style one, long and angry and coming straight for me.

Perfect.

The Melusine steps forward and crosses it's arms, absorbing it. Then it absorbs the next one. And the next one. They keep coming as the suit redlines, then goes past the redline, glowing white-hot as backups fail and the heat starts melting critical components. It stutters to a stop maybe ten feet away from Devil, the outside slagged into nothingness. Devil stops burning and steps forward to admire his handiwork.

"Some dragon you are. Couldn't handle a little flame?" He laughs at his own pun. I don't bother to respond.

Instead, I blow off the melted shell to reveal a slightly smaller but otherwise identical Melusine and backhand him across the face.

He falls bonelessly to the ground, unconscious. After ensuring that he won't drown in the molten street, I administer a time-delayed sedative to keep him knocked out until the authorities arrive. I then take a moment to address the assembled civilians.

"Help is on the way. Remain calm, and you'll all get through this."

I fly the Melusine out of sight, then set it to autopilot and transfer my consciousness to the single search and rescue craft I have approaching the city. I'd send more, but we're still waiting on an Endbringer attack and I don't want to deplete my supply before the fight. Colin's new predictive program says that it's imminent and likely to be on the East Coast of the United States or northern Europe. His work is untested, but I have a good feeling about it.

Then I'm above an apartment building, dispensing flame retardant and searching for survivors. I'll be here for at least the next few hours, battling the blazes and transporting people to hospitals. Later, I'll be running security for a Birdcage transport. After that, working with Colin. I don't sleep, and there still aren't enough hours in the day.

I shut down that line of unproductive thought and refocus on the task at hand. There's no rest for the wicked, and none for those cleaning up after them either.