"I don't see the big deal." Missy said from the couch, where she was liberally sitting upside down with her legs up over the back of the couch and her hair dangling over the front, almost touching the ground.
As children were want to do.
Missy had a slightly negative opinion of our new Wards - mostly because Shadow Stalker tended to ignore her, and Star Finder used to treat her like a walking atom bomb until he had realized it bothered her.
I paused in the middle of pinning an overly colorful paper cut out of the letter 'E' to the wall - when I was done it would eventually say Welcome to the Wards, but for now it just said 'Welcome to the'.
"Rory said that they're only joining up because the Director got mad and sent an agent to their house. Star Finder and Shadow Stalker aren't that friendly on a good day, so he asked us to set this up to smooth things over with them." I explained while carefully distancing myself from my own feelings on the topic.
Mostly because I wasn't sure what I felt. I had no issue with Shadow Stalker, besides being slightly worried about how close to 'angry' her default state of being seemed to be - but Star Finder was different. I didn't dislike him, but he made me uncomfortable. He was too… I want to say 'balanced'. He had a sort of emotional equilibrium that - while enviable - also made him seem like kind of a psychopath.
See, one of my very few powers is the ability to read a persons emotions as an aura that loomed around them. Most people were fairly flighty, demonstrating micro changes in their aura that caused it to ebb and flow with all the myriad feelings a person experienced over the course of normal consciousness. Shadow Stalker was an angry person, so her aura was usually a constant bubble of red along the edges of an otherwise neutral and focused green, with the occasional blue or orange for curiosity and interest blended in. That was pretty normal for most people.
Star Finder didn't really do that. I wouldn't describe him as insane or even actively malicious, but the fact that he was a solid green of focus almost ninety percent of the time I encountered him on patrol, with a solid bar of dark blue for anxiety perpetually ringing him made his behaviour just… jarring. He'd taunt and insult
His enemies, laugh at their misfortune if one his weapons temporarily blinded them, make blithe comments about the questionable sapience of your average Nazi - and the entire time his emotions would stick the exact same in my powers view of him. Other people might mistake his antics for those of a particularly driven person, offended by the presence of Nazis in the city - but not me. All I saw was the joyless torture of anyone who got in his way.
Not wanting to lie to myself, I could admit there were other reasons he made me uncomfortable. His bizarre mental state aside, he at least seemed like he was trying to be a hero. There were… other… reasons for me to dislike him - reasons I did my best to keep to myself, because they weren't very professional.
"I'm just glad we're finally getting a girl in this place." Dennis joked from where he was pulling out paper plates and depositing cans of soda on the table
In preparation for when the pizza got here. We couldn't order directly to the Wards room, but it wasn't especially hard to ask a trooper to go get it for us. Dennis - or Clockblocker - seemed to have no opinion on the duo who would be joining us whatsoever. He seemed to hold at least some appreciation for what he described as Star Finders 'banter game' but I could tell he was hiding something.
"The Director already mandated you to sensitivity training Dennis. Don't make this weird man." Carlos sighed at the ginger boy, who snickered back at him.
"Come on man, fearless leader isn't even with us today. You gonna rat me out to Rory for having some game?" Dennis shot back. Carlos lifted his hands into the air to concede the point.
"I'm just saying man, it would be awkward for all of us if you started bringing more relationship drama around. No offence Dean." The large hispanic boy offered to me as an aside. I tried not to wince at the implication.
"Hey, you talk big now but when me and Dean are out on the town having a double date you'll regret it." Dennis countered.
"Glory Girl is mad at him right now." Vista offered blithely, lifting her head slightly to catch a glimpse of everyone else while she was speaking.
"Again? Man what'd you do, fail the 'does this make me look fat' test?" Dennis joked.
I had politely told Victoria that all the time she was spending with Star Finder made me uncomfortable and asked her if it would be possible to distance herself from him, actually. Not that I was going to say that.
"Yeah, something like that." I responded with a strained smile.
"For an empath you're surprisingly shit at this kind of stuff huh?" Was Dennis' uncaring response to me admission.
It wasn't that I didn't trust Vicky. It's not like I had accused her of cheating on me or anything! I just sat down at one point and realized we hadn't been on a date in a while - because she had found so much success working with her new Tinker friend. My power sight didn't work on her, so sometimes I could occasionally misread a situation. And in this case, I had just… misjudged how Vicky felt about me trying to tell her who to be friends with.
Which totally wasn't what I was doing!
I mean, I didn't think that was what I was doing. I would have to apologize and make it up to her in a day or two when she was less mad at me.
"For a guy whose single you sure have a lot to say on the topic." I grumbled back at him.
"Hey I got moves. I just haven't had the chance to use them yet." He answered, smiling crookedly at me.
"Hey I just realized, you said you were looking forward to a girl on the team but I'm sitting right here!" Missy belatedly piped up, tumbling onto her side and doing… something… with her power that resulted in her pinching Dennis from across the room.
"Woman not girl! I meant woman! You don't count! No powers in the common room!" He squealed, jerking this way and that in an attempt to avoid the much younger girl's wrath when his comment failed to pacify her.
I smiled at their antics, before returning to my designated task.
A part of me was kind of glad Star Finder would be joining the PRT - because it would mean he wouldn't be able to patrol with Vicky anymore, at least, not unless she started tagging along with Ward's patrols again.
"You're black?" Was Dennis'... less than polite exclamation of surprise when Star Finder and Shadow Stalker finally arrived, wearing normal clothes and PRT issued domino masks as they walked in. It was obvious that Vicky had gotten to them before they arrived, because both of them were dressed exactly to her tastes, with Shadow Stalker wearing a pair of fitted jean shorts and a blue blouse that she was clearly unaccustomed to, and Star Finder wearing a muscle tee and khakis. They were both… unreasonably fit. All of us Wards exercised, but outside of our patrols and what we managed in our free time it wasn't with any real regulatory or end goal in mind. Star Finder and Shadow Stalker looked like they spent half of all their time working out, with Shadow Stalker having a taut runners build and Star Finder looking almost comically top heavy for how broad his shoulders were.
"No, this is just a skin condition. You see I was born with an excess of melanin in my body and- oof." Star Finder drawled in a sarcastic but amused tone of voice that wasn't reflected in his aura at all, before Shadow Stalker jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow.
"Got a problem with that?" She said, her gaze going predatory in a way that reminded me of the day she had come in for power testing and first been introduced to us under the pretense of some sparring with the Wards.
She had trounced everyone but Carlos, and I got the impression that was only because she was choosing not to actively maim one of us to win a spar.
The fact that Missy had been spending increasing amounts of time doing optional self defense training ever since probably wasn't a coincidence.
"No I just didn't think- like I don't mind or anything, it doesn't really matter to me but-" Dennis began to hurriedly cover his mistake while Carlos pinched the bridge of his nose in consternation behind him.
"Soph, it's not a jail, prison rules don't apply. You don't have to find the most threatening guy in the yard and beat him up to assert your dominance." Star Finder joked while rubbing his side where she had elbowed him, swatting her on the shoulder hard enough to get her to turn and glare back at him.
I would have to keep an eye on that. They were both weirdly physically abusive with each other, and it wouldn't do for them to start treating everybody else the same way.
"Seriously though, no biggy man. I actually think it's weirder how many of you guys are white. I'm John and this is Sophia, by the way." He said, panning his gaze around the room and nodding in greeting to each of us in turn.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Missy asked in a deceptively calm tone. Credit where it was due, John clearly caught the implication in her tone and chose to explain himself.
"I mean, people Trigger on the worst day of their lives, and this city has an active and massive Nazi presence. This place has bi-monthly racist lynch mobs as initiations into the gang - so you would think more colored people would have triggered in this city. I guess you could argue that they do trigger and just get killed shortly afterward, but that feels highly unlikely to me since most Trigger events provide immediate solutions to the problems that caused them." He reasoned out, gesturing wildly with his hands while he spoke.
We all stared at him funny at that. I hadn't undergone a real Trigger event, but I had learned very quickly that most Capes don't like even being reminded of theirs - so the fact that he could talk about it so casually was extremely off putting to everyone else in the room, who was no doubt thinking about their own trigger events. The only person who wasn't visibly put off by what he'd said was Sophia, who had already walked up to Dennis to start prying open the pizza boxes that he been set up on the table near him before hand.
"Get ready for a lot of that." She said blithely, pulling a slice of pizza free and then turning to rest against the table.
"Huh?" John grunted in confusion, his brow furrowing. The familiarity between the two was obvious at this point, as Sophia promptly rolled her eyes and ignored him, instead directing her response to Carlos.
"He talks alot about nothing, is way too loud, and just when you're thinking about tuning him out he switches over to his professor dickhead mode, where he starts randomly lecturing you about some shit you barely care about." She noted between bites of her slice.
"Hey, you can't call me a dickhead! That's my word!" John spat back.
"I'm sure we'll all get an opportunity to use it at some point." I added in, earning chuckles from everyone present - including, thankfully, John.
"Dean! You were the promised one! You can't curse!" Dennis chortled in mock despair.
We all sort of broke out to do our own thing then. We were all in the same room, and easily able to hear everyone else's conversations - so there were many interruptions and interjections to be had - but I was just sort of sitting off to one side and observing everyone else when John meandered up to sit on a stool next to me.
"Hey so uh, I spoke to Vicky." He said awkwardly rubbing that back of his head like he'd rather be anywhere else but here right now.
I could kind of sympathise.
"She's great right?" I said instead of asking him to elaborate. I don't know why but I just suddenly felt the need to act like everything was okay. I just… didn't want to talk about my relationship with this guy.
"She has her moments," He responded noncommittally which made me frown before he continued. "But uh, yeah she told me what you said and I just wanted to let you know that I get it man. We've all been there. I can like, try to avoid her for a while if it makes you feel better?" he offered casually.
I turned to look woodenly at him.
"What?" was all I could get out in my confusion.
"I mean, I wouldn't be obvious about it, because it would just make her mad at you if she found out I was doing it, but like, I'm really not trying to steal your girlfriend bro." He explained patiently, like he was talking to a child.
I think I decided in that moment that I really didn't like this guy. I couldn't have put it into words at the time, but something about him just felt patronizing, and I didn't appreciate the implication that he could take Vicky from me if he actually wanted to.
"Fuck you, John." I said before I realized what I was doing.
"Cool. Good talk, great powwow. I'll catch you when you're in a better mood I guess." He responded without a care in the world - completely unbothered by my outburst, even as I felt a wave of shame wash over me for letting my feelings get the better of me.
"So! My debut is set for next month. They don't have a lab setup for me yet, but they want me to be brewing up some shit in the meantime instead of patrolling. I think they're going to do Soph first and then me later - stagger the news and all. Anyone got any requests? The government is paying so I'm more than happy to make horrific implements of war for all of you." He said with an affected air of magnanimity. He even turned back towards me as he spoke to add; "I could probably juice up your power armor for you too."
It was at that point that I realized - I had never actually told him I wasn't a real Tinker. But he seemed to know anyway.
I really didn't like John.