Chapter 3

A/N: So there were some questions about the decision-making last chapter. Worry not, things will be explained here. As FTomato said, you don't ignore the Thinker. Unless… well, you'll see. Tattletale was having a bad day.

It had been fairly easy to find a place to stay the night – or morning, now. This city, or at least this area of the city, was filled with abandoned buildings. The warehouses around were all built sturdily so despite their age and neglect Shepard still trusted them to not collapse while she slept. She had particular fortune when she found one that had an upper room, which she supposed must have been some sort of loft from which managers could watch over the workers.

The loft looked relatively unclaimed, aside from the broken glass and three grimy socks scattered across the floor, so she figured it would be safe enough for the night. There were no furnishings, but she had slept on worse ground before. Her decision made, she shoved aside her exhaustion for just a bit longer and began maintenance on her equipment.

First off was her helmet. It looked like it had survived her earlier skirmish unscathed, but on closer inspection she found some scuffing on the back where she had slid after eating one of Lung's fireballs. It was nothing the armor's auto-repair function wouldn't fix overnight, so she set the helmet aside.

She then reached around behind her back to the clasps for her breastplate. With a pop and the slight hissing of air the front and back halves of it separated, the front falling forwards into her waiting arms and the back still clinging to her body. She set the grey armor in a clean spot on the floor and pulled the back half off, setting it next to its partner. These two pieces were only slightly scuffed as well, but one of the interlocking pieces that went over her spine was slightly misaligned. With a wave of her omnitool the grey bit snapped back in place.

The rest of her inspections progressed similarly, with only her pistol needing any real work. When Lung had knocked her backwards she had landed on her hip, right on top of the heavy pistol. Normally the firearm would have been tough enough to handle that, but Lung's fire must have been hotter than she expected. The combination of heat and force had warped the body of the gun just enough that it wouldn't unfold fully.

If Shepard had her tools with her this wouldn't be a huge problem. She could remove the bent paneling, reshape it, strengthen it, and reattach it, but unfortunately she didn't keep her tools on her. They were permanent residents of whatever ship she served on, and had been under Ashley's or Jacob's control ever since she had taken command of the Normandy. The hours spent tinkering with her weapons to have them exactly how she liked them always paid off, but now some of the riskier modifications she made to the Paladin pistol were coming back to haunt her.

The magazine modification she had added had necessitated a slight thinning of the protective coating on the gun, and that thinness was what prevented her from just bending the gun's plating back in place. Doing so would leave imperfections in the metal that would make it brittle and prone to warping out of place again as the gun heated up in battle. She would have to keep it stowed away for now until she found somewhere with the tools to melt down and reforge the paneling.

Setting the compacted pistol next to her armor on the floor and pulling out her Tempest sub-machine gun, Shepard finally laid down to sleep. Her omnitool would warn her if anyone got too close, and she had her weapons and biotics for defense. It was in the middle of hazy thoughts about anachronistic cities and seeker swarm teenagers that she finally drifted off.

The next day Collin Wallis stood in one of the PRT meeting rooms next to a white board, marker in hand, and addressed the various Protectorate heroes and Wards arrayed before him.

"We have two new capes on the scene in the Bay." This was met with subdued mumbling and a bit of fidgeting. "Neither of them are named, so I have taken the liberty of giving them temporary codenames until either they give us one or the media catches on. We will call them 'Specter' and 'Bug' for now." He reached out to the board and wrote the names at the top, then underlined them.

"Specter?" It was Battery who spoke up, raising her hand slightly. "That's an unusual temp name."

Armsmaster nodded. "Yes. She referenced "Spectre authority," leading me to believe that this word meant something to her. It also fits well with the cloaking tech I observed, thus, the name." He returned to his scripted presentation.

"Both of these new capes are female. One is an adult of undetermined age, but I would estimate she is in her early to mid-thirties. The second, Bug, who insisted to me that she was not associated with Specter after Specter left, is Wards age. I had a more extensive conversation with Bug after Specter left, so I will begin the briefing with her.

"Her power, as far as I can tell, is a sort of arthropod-kinesis, or bug control. She demonstrated extreme multitasking abilities sufficient to individually control the actions of each insect in a cloud at the same time, while still holding her conversation with me. With those two things in mind I have rated her a Master 2 and Thinker 1.

"As far as her disposition goes, a lot can be said by the fact that she chose to fight Lung on her first night out. Heroic, but lacking in self-preservation. I believe we can get her to join the Wards if she meets some of them on patrol." Armsmaster paused and took a sip of water from the bottle on one of the tables beside him. As he replaced the cap he began to speak again.

"Specter, on the other hand, is highly dangerous. She was in advanced power armor which, contrary to the norms for newly triggered tinkers, was sleek and streamlined. Her armor, however was not the extent of her weaponry. She had an advanced cloaking device and she held various tinkertech firearms, two of which were a pistol and a sniper rifle. The latter she used to kill Lung." At this Armsmaster was forced to glare at the rest of the heroes until they quieted down.

"Yes, Lung is dead. His body is in the morgue downstairs. Regardless, due to the advanced nature of her armor and the power of her weapons, which were able to kill a partially transformed Lung in a single shot, as well as the demonstration of her cloak, I have rated her a Tinker 6, with no information on her specialty. Additionally, my own power gained no information from observing her tech. This is highly unusual for tinkers, and thus I have added on a Trump 1 to her rating.

"As far as Specter's temperament goes, I would place her as highly unlikely to join the Protectorate. She has a very Vigilante type outlook, and she immediately aimed to kill Lung instead of subduing him. Everyone should approach her with caution, and the Wards should not approach her at all. She will be placed as a tentative Independent Hero, but that could change quickly to Villain if she becomes more violent. Questions?"

As soon as the door to their hideout slammed shut behind them, Grue whirled on Tattletale. "What the hell was going on with you tonight, huh? First you tell us that Oni Lee will stick with Lung and Alec almost gets his throat cut, and then you say that Lung will be open to making a deal? If those other two capes hadn't been there he would have slaughtered us!" When Lisa's only response was to groan and massage her temples, Brian dropped his raised arms and stalked over to the couch. "Spill. Why did you give us so much bullshit information tonight?"

Lisa's voice was quiet and subdued, a stark contrast to the slight teasing that always bled through into her tone. "I don't know."

"You don't know? But knowing is your thing."

"I know it's my thing, okay! It was just… My power was really confusing tonight. It kept changing its mind, like it wasn't sure. And then that woman? The one in armor? When I looked at her it started asking questions. All I got from her was that she'd killed before. A lot. And that she didn't think the law applied to her."

Grue's face shifted from a glare to a frown. He leaned forward over his knees and rested his chin on his fists. "Your power asked questions? What do you mean?"

"Normally my power tells me things. Like, I look at you now and it says 'Frustrated. Confused. Doesn't understand how your power works. Wants to protect the team.' If I let it really off its leash it'll start drawing conclusions from its conclusions until I get the information I need. But with her, my power just said she killed a lot of people and then it had nothing."

Grue nodded, and the whole room was silent for a while. Eventually Alec stood from his spot on the couch beside Brian and turned on one of his gaming consoles. The sound of lasers and virtual combat filled the room.

"So what are we going to do about it? Is this a long-term problem?"

"I don't know. I think it's centered around her, though."

"So we need to find her and figure this out. I'm not going to risk these mistakes getting us killed."

Alec cut in. "Dude, this lady killed tons of people, remember? You guys can go find her, but I'm going to stay here and take your stuff if you die."

"She didn't kill us immediately when we showed up, so she's at least willing to talk first. We'll go out and find her tomorrow."

Tattletale was not enthused with this, but she nodded anyway. "Sure."

Shepard woke to shaking. She snapped to awareness and palmed the pistol that laid by her side, then reached for her helmet with her other hand. She missed, instead punching the piece across the room. What? It wasn't the room that was shaking. She was.

It was as she climbed to her feet to go pick up the runaway helmet that sat in a patch of morning sunlight that she realized just how miserable she was. She felt sick, her hands shook, and her legs barely supported her. Have I been poisoned? She realized that she had. Looking back over the entirety of the day before, she realized that her memories were covered in a haze. Everything felt like a story being told to her instead of something that she did herself.

She executed that Skidmark guy? Okay, yeah. She would have done that anyways. But her fight with Lung was sloppy. The guy was on fire, sure, but dodging a fireball is even easier than dodging one of Harbinger's biotic bombs. That should have been clean up.

She winced when she thought back to her conversations with everyone she met. That big girl, the armor guy, and those costumed teenagers. The Undersiders? She thought that's what they called themselves. She bet they all thought her a fool. Rule Number One of Infiltrator training: If you really don't know, make shit up and say it with confidence. She hadn't thought to take the time to really figure out where she was, and thus she had blundered around in those conversations, revealing to anyone astute enough to notice that she was completely lost. She'd have to make better first impressions in the future.

She also really needed to get some bearings on her surroundings. Picking up her helmet and setting it beside herself, Shepard opened up her omintool. No extranet? She guessed that fit. It was a pretty old looking place. There was a network, though, and her omnitool's repurposed Shepard VI set up a link. April 12, 2011. Shepard sat back, eyes wide. That was a shock. Although she supposed it wasn't impossible. That bug girl had superpowers, so it was possible that time travel, no, alternate dimensions – there were no superpowers in 2011 as far as she remembered – was common knowledge here.

She winced. Had she really just traipsed around a city in 2011 in armor that was cutting edge technology 175 years later? She had used her tactical cloak liberally, but still. Well, there goes any thought I could have had about timeline contamination. It was probably best if she touched up on her history, though, so she spent the next hour and a half reading up on the local history. It was very strange and somewhat tedious, but at least it gave her time for the shakes to die down. Some water would be nice, though.

After becoming familiar with the history of this "Earth Bet," she moved on to the local cape scene. Brockton Bay. It was an awful dynamic, and Shepard truly wondered how the authorities let it get this bad. The city was split into fourths, with the white-supremacist Empire Eighty Eight perpetually at war with the Azn Bad Boyz. That's really what they call themselves? The Protectorate and PRT controlled parts of downtown, and the Merchants ran around the parts of the city that no one else wanted. Coil was in there somewhere, but nobody really knew anything about him, and the smaller groups like the Undersiders sort of did their own thing and avoided the larger ones if they could.

On the upside, in one day Shepard had cut off the heads of two of the large organizations. Shepard, 2, Earth Bet, 0. Maybe Bet 1. Getting drugged wasn't fun. Anyway, from what she understood it was only Lung who was keeping the balance between the E88 and the ABB, so the city was now primed for a Nazi takeover. On the upside, this did make prioritizing easier.

Goal number one, kill Kaiser. She smirked. If it were me, you and Hitler in a room, and I had two bullets... Well. We'll see what happens.

Goal number two, figure out what's up with Coil. He actually seemed like the biggest threat. Shady guy – Illusive maybe? – that nobody has the time to worry about but who somehow has a lot of money and tech? Who always seems to win the battles that he picks? Who leads a paramilitary group? It screamed Cerberus, and she would take a lot of pleasure in wiping it out. She would need better intel for that though, so it would come after stabilizing the E88 situation.

All of this would be a lot harder on her own, though. She needed a team, ones who she could count on like she could the Normandy crew, and ones who would follow her orders to the T. The authorities were out. If they were anything like that Armsmaster they were too stuck in their ways to follow a new leader. New Wave had potential, but they all sounded like they had a terminal case of public relations. Shepard punched reporters, so they wouldn't get along. The Undersiders were used to working outside the law, but they were really not the military type. That bug girl, though… She had been pretty shaken by the Lung encounter, but she had never frozen. She fought even with useless weapons until the end. She'd do.

Now if she could only find her. Maybe through this PHO forum? It seemed like the place where capes went to chat. She needed an account name though, and she figured she might as well get a Verified Cape account while she was at it. She opened up the site and logged in. Cape name… Oh! With a smirk she tried Catalyst. Nope. It was taken by some chemical tinker in New Zealand. Commander and Shepherd were taken as well. Spectre it is. She tried it out. How is that not taken yet? Invisible people are so uncreative. She made her password "Normandy," and within ten minutes she had sent a fully armored photo of herself to the moderator Tin_Mother. She got a response almost immediately

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Private message from Tin_Mother:

Spectre: Hey, Tin_Mother. I just wanted to get my account verified. Here's a photo: [HOLO_ ]

Tin_Mother: This is in three-dimensional format.

Spectre: Um... Oops? More proof, I guess.

Tin_Mother: I'll verify your account. Is Spectre going to be your cape name as well?

Spectre: Yep. Thanks for the help.

Spectre: I just checked, and that name is open to use. You are welcome.

With that taken care of, Shepard began searching for any sign of the bug girl. Searches for "insect" gave a couple of insect-themed capes from around the world, but nothing on anyone in her area. She kept looking. After nearly an hour of looking she stumbled across a new thread. There was a lone post in the Connections section of the site, followed by a couple of other ones speculating about what it could mean.

Subject: Bug and Rifle

Owe you both. Would like to repay the favor. Meet?

Tt.

Now this was interesting, and slightly ingenious. To someone like Shepard who had the right context, this was obviously a message to her and the bug girl, from Tattletale. To anyone on the outside, however, this would be an extremely vague and unhelpful post. She messaged the account that posted that, and soon had a response. They would all meet, Shepard, Undersiders and Bug, at the place of Lung's death tonight at eleven.

A/N: Yeah, so Shepard's cybernetics don't immediately cure her of everything. In my headcanon, at least, they just allow her to function past the limits where others would break. She executed Skidmark at the "I'm no longer seeing dancing rhinos" stage in detox, but was still full of drugs for the rest of the first two chapters. LawlessWriter, shoutout for reading my mind. Also, Tattletale's power got screwed up by all the "That's not real science!" that happened to put Shepard here.

TL:DR: Shepard sleeps off her high, Armsmaster briefs the heroes, Tattletale says WTF, and Shepard eats the internet.