1.02

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When the elevator doors opened on the fifth floor I was greeted by a brown haired teen smiling broadly at me. She was tanned and kind of cute in a way that probably made her seem younger than she was. Her hair was straight and just past her shoulders and she looked at me with a friendliness and openness you hardly ever see from a complete stranger.

As I stepped out of the elevator she walked up to me and stuck out her hand. "You're Gertrude right? Nice to meet you."

I winced at that. "Look if you want to be friends don't ever call me Gertrude. I hate that name," I said half-jokingly. Reaching out I shook her hand. "Call me Geri. Geri De Luca."

"Wendy James. Pleasure to meet you Geri De Luca," she said teasingly. Her handshake was firm if a little too enthusiastic. "I volunteered to show you around and help you get settled. It's always good to get another girl on the team."

"More girls are always good," I agreed with a little smirk. More girls were always good even if the girls that could join the Wards were too young for my tastes.

"Come on I'll show you where your room is and you can put all your stuff down," Wendy said and twirled heading off down the hall.

Picking up my bag I quickly caught up with her. Before I could come up with a topic of conversation she beat me to it.

"So I hope this doesn't come across as rude but you don't look like a De Luca," she said letting the implied question hang in the air.

"Why's that?" I said playing dumb. Some people would get flustered at this point when they got afraid of accidentally insulting me and sometimes it was fun to watch them squirm. Turned out Wendy wasn't one of those people.

"You look super Asian. I wouldn't have pegged you for having an Italian last name," she said plainly without coming across as rude. I'd only said a handful of words to Wendy and I was already starting to like her.

Of course she was right. I looked about as much as a De Luca as white-girl Wendy looked like a Chen or a Wang. I was athletic with chin length black hair and just enough of a bust to be enticing. And yes very very Asian. I'd been dealing with questions like that for a few years now. I took a few seconds to pick my words carefully.

"I'm half Chinese, quarter Japanese and quarter American. De Luca comes from the American bit of that mess," I answered truthfully.

"Huh," Wendy replied, "well that's an exciting ancestry. More exciting than mine at least, I'm just Black Irish," she said. Then she turned to me and grinned. "So can you guess which one of the SF Wards I am? You didn't ask so I guess you think you've figured it out."

I couldn't help but smile back at her enthusiasm. Folding my arms I tapped my chin, pretending to be deep in thought as I looked her up and down. "Well going by how you look you must be… Escudo," I said with certainty.

Her eyes widened and she shot me a glare which wasn't all that effective because she was trying not to grin. "Escudo? Really? You think I'm almost six feet tall and run around dressed in a white outfit?" she asked trying to sound serious and failing pretty horribly at it.

She definitely wasn't six feet tall. Maybe five-four at the most, about three inches shorter than me. I shrugged. "They say the camera adds about ten inches," I said.

"I'm pretty sure that's ten pounds. Also what about the fact that Escudo is obviously a dude?"

"I thought all the San Francisco Wards were dudes," I said with a *mostly* straight face.

She slapped my arm lightly and was making a half-hearted attempt to look stern through her giggles. It was good to know someone here enjoyed my sense of humor. I couldn't help it and joined in the snickering. Maybe my time in "the Bay" as the locals called it wouldn't be so bad.

"How old are you anyway?" I asked her.

"Sixteen. You're seventeen right?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, "how did you know?"

She shrugged. "Magicman brought it up. Escudo is turning eighteen in just over a month so technically you would be next up to lead the Wards after that which is what we were talking about. Ah here we are," she said opening a door in sight of a spacious living room.

Wendy went inside and I followed. The room was new and was pretty big. Solid looking wooden desk, dresser and a full sized bed. It had a window and a door that led to a small private bathroom.

"This is pretty nice," I said sitting on the bed and testing its springiness, "nicer than I expected actually."

"Was you room in St. Louis really that bad?" Wendy teased.

"I didn't have a room in St. Louis. I lived with my mom," who caved like a rotten egg and signed the paperwork to get me sent here, I grumbled in my mind.

"Really?" said Wendy looking genuinely surprised.

"Yeah," I said puzzled by her reaction, "why? Don't you live with your parents?"

Wendy shook her head. "No way. Constellation requires that all the Wards live on site. It's always been that way here as far as I know."

I frowned at that. "Why? And how can Constellation require that? Isn't Director Puck… well, the Director? He's the one who calls the shots."

Wendy shrugged. "Not around here. Officially, sure, but everyone knows Constellation gets her way on pretty much everything. She's pretty much the one who calls the shots here in the Bay."

I hummed at that not sure what to think about this new information. Constellation was the leader of the Protectorate SFB and a hell of a powerful Master. That and she was pretty famous nationwide. Why would Director Puck let someone else take over some of his authority though? First thing that came to mind was blackmail. Probably something more benign though.

I was distracted form my thoughts when Wendy plopped down on the bed next to me. "You still haven't guessed which Ward I am," she said with a raised eyebrow.

I rolled my eyes good naturedly. "Osteo Girl is at least four inches taller than you. That would make you Rewind."

"Ding! Got it in one," she said, her face beaming with an infectious smile. Wendy was a hard girl not to like.

"So what are your powers exactly?" I asked. While powers of the Wards and Protectorate members were not really a secret often the heroes would keep some of the finer details to themselves.

"Pretty much what PHO and CapeWiki say about me," she said, "I can restore anything I touch to a state it was anytime in the last hour."

"CapeWiki said you were a healer?"

"Eh, sort of? I'm the closest thing to a healer the good guys have in the Bay anyway. If someone is injured and I can get to them before the hour is up I can restore them good as new. It also works on buildings and stuff. They often get me out to places after a battle to fix some of the collateral damage," she said, and I got the impression she wasn't completely thrilled about being a free repair service for the city.

"Cool," I said nodding, and meant it. There could be a lot uses for a power like that. "Anything else?"

"Well not much. My only offensive power is that when I restore someone it takes a few seconds for their brain to 'reboot'. As long as I'm touching someone I can restore them continually leaving them essentially unconscious," she said shrugging. Then she smirked at me. "What about you, Miss 'Top Ten Strongest Wards in the Protectorate'?"

I groaned at that and threw myself back on the bed. "You guys read that and still remember it? I swear I'm never going to live that stupid article down."

"We all read Parahumans Monthly. Suck it up. Now tell me about what you can do," she said enjoying my apparent discomfort.

I sighed dramatically but wasn't as annoyed as I pretended. "You know my cape name right?"

"Sure. It's Ripple," Wendy said plopping down next to me.

"Right. So… I can propagate waves through any solid or liquid. I can make the waves be of nearly any amplitude, intensity or period that I want."

"Yeah I got no idea what that means. You're going to have to dumb it down for me."

I snorted at that. "I thought the California education system was supposed to be all that? Anyway it basically means I can make waves that travel along the ground that are as big or go as fast as I want."

"Cool," she said sounding thoughtful, "how big can you make the waves?"

I shifted a little uncomfortably. The truth was I'd never completely cut loose with my powers. "Well I did demolish some condemned buildings as a charity thing slash PR stunt back in St. Louis. Does that give you an idea?"

She nodded. "Big destructo powers, got it. Anything else?"

I smiled at that. This wasn't something I often got to show off. "Yup. Here, grab my hand and try to use your power on me."

She hesitated for less than a moment before touching my hand. Almost instantly her eyes went wide. "Holy crap, my powers don't work on you!" she said in wonder.

I smiled at that, amused at her reaction. "Shaker 7 Trump 3 here. Trump because I'm immune to powers that would affect me directly. Strikers, Masters and Thinkers that want to use their powers on me directly are out of luck. Even Tinker tech doesn't work all that well on me."

She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me, and for the first time I saw Wendy looking something other than smiley or cheerful. Her eyes were concerned and slightly panicky. "You know this means I can't heal you if you get hurt don't you?" she said sounding very unhappy about the situation.

I shrugged trying to appear unconcerned. "Guess I'll just have to be careful then. Never had a healer in St. Louis. The only time I got hurt Tinker tech fixed me up… eventually."

"Yeah well St. Louis is one of the safest big cities in the whole country. You're almost certainly going to get hurt here in the Bay at some point. Things have been getting really, really crazy here since The Gore rolled into town," she said, brow furrowing in displeasure as if she could somehow fix the problem if she scowled hard enough.

I couldn't really argue because most of what she said was true. St. Louis was one of the major cities with the lowest incidence of Parahuman crime in the continent and those that did commit crimes rarely took things to a lethal level of violence. I'd spent most of my year in the St. Louis Wards stopping purse snatchers and breaking up minor gangs. In my time there I'd only gotten into two cape fights all together and they hadn't been that dangerous. I was somehow both scared and eager to jump into the fray of the much more violent and dangerous streets of San Francisco.

"What is your Striker rating anyway?" I said changing the subject.

She huffed and laid back down on the bed thankfully dropping the subject. "That part's really annoying. Since cape ratings only take into account threat levels I'm only rated as a Striker 2. That in no way takes into account how useful my power is." It sounded like that was a sore point for her. I thought about it. It did seem kind of low.

"Can't you, like, have infinite bullets in a gun?" I asked.

"I know!" she said, "I should be at least a Striker 3."

I couldn't help it. I tried to hold it in but I ended up snickering at her whining tone. She sat up and punched me in the arm, hard.

"Ow!" I said rubbing my arm. It wasn't entirely faked either.

"Come on," she said bouncing off the bed, "that's enough of you laughing at my pain and suffering. Let's see if we can find Shades and Escudo."

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