"All right, let's get on with it." the Director stated bluntly as she waddled into the meeting room with us and took a seat. Presently, Clockblocker, Shadow Stalker, Armsmaster, Piggot, and myself were in the little meeting room, a scant hour after the patrol that had seen my cousin encountering Grue for the first time.
Honestly, the fact that she hadn't tried to kill him was - to me - an absolute win. This was the best possible way this could have gone.
I just couldn't say that.
"Shadow Stalker. Why did you leave your patrol route without confirming first with the console?" Armsmaster asked in his typical, blunt, fashion with Piggot looking on with a mixture of annoyance and interest in her answer. I don't think the woman knew how to hold any other expression. I wasn't sure I had ever seen her make a different expression. It was always just various levels of annoyance and focus.
"I heard the alarms going off and reacted. I'm not used to these communicators." She responded just as bluntly, and perhaps tellingly, without an ounce of shame or chagrin in her voice.
I could already see where this was going, so I spoke up before Sophia could dig herself a deeper hole.
"When we were working together I was usually able to determine the situation in full and present it to her before we engaged. That kind of situation was something I could have warned her about if we were together." I offered with a glance towards Sophia to remind her not to talk about the Mindlink circlets. She huffed at me, which I took to mean 'I know, shut the fuck up'.
"Star Finder, your commentary has been noted and revisited shortly, but don't interrupt again." Piggot spoke up, turning her cold gaze on me. I flinched slightly at the force of will behind those eyes. She was practically begging me to argue the point.
So I did what wage slaves the world over would have done at that moment. I shut up and let my boss have her way.
"Shadow Stalker, we plot those routes to ensure that none of our Wards stray into dangerous areas without proper support. You need to report to the console before you go off of them or engage a threat of any kind. New Parahumans pop up every year, and we often have no idea what one of them can do. It just takes one bad encounter to turn out to be your last. Remember that." Armsmaster took over, sternly lecturing Sophia in what I thought was honestly a surprisingly responsible fashion. It wasn't like they were yelling at her. The fact that they let teenagers run around as government sanctioned combatant sat all was already a huge amount of trust to place in well… a fucking teenager. 'Don't get yourself killed like an idiot' seemed like the least they could really ask of any of us.
I mean, I was totally going to ignore all of these directives myself so long as it was convenient, but if I had a kid in the Wards, this was definitely what I would want from the program - which I suppose was the point.
My cousin, being the surly bitch she was, didn't immediately answer him however.
"Shadow Stalker. Do you understand?" Armaster repeated.
"...yes." She replied through grit teeth, and I sent her an apologetic look when she glanced in my direction, while silently promising to build her… I dunno, a motorcycle? Sophia seemed like she'd be into owning a motorcycle.
"Clockblocker." Armamster started up again, turning to Clock who was seemingly much more at ease with the situation than I or Sophia were. Probably because this wasn't his first time experiencing it.
"Why didn't you immediately report in when Shadow Stalker went off route?" He asked.
"I forgot." He answered with such absolute honesty in his voice that I couldalmostbelieve him. Of course, the bald faced lie was such that I don't think anyone in the room really believed him, but Sophia was at least looking somewhat appreciatively across the table at the guy.
"Clockblocker-" Armamster started to say sternly.
"What? I forgot okay! You had me on console duty for like, a month after I debuted I've been on like two patrols!" He rushed to explain.
"Perhaps more Console Duty is what you need in order to remember proper procedure then." Piggot interjected with a dry tone that was anything but amused.
Clockblocker, to his credit, looked across the table at Sophia and shrugged as though to say 'nothing for it'.
It occurred to me that by getting himself Console Duty he had effectively just saved Sophia from getting the same punishment, but I kept my thoughts on the matter to myself. Clockblocker was indeed much smarter than people gave him credit for.
Piggot continued to stare him down for a few more moments, before turning her gaze to me and speaking before Armsmaster could take over again.
"Star Finder. Explain to me how you knew enough about Grue's power to know about how he would interact with Shadow Stalker." she asked me flatly. I didn't think I was in trouble - I was probably the only person in the room who wasn't.But there was still definitely a certain degree of distrust in Piggots gaze when she asked the question.
Clever girl.
"Grue has been a small-time villain in the city for a while now. I took the time to read about him a while ago and used my Thinker power to reason it out. I probably couldn't do the same for most other Capes, but keeping my cousin alive has been a priority of mine for a while now, so naturally I know her powers better than anyones." I responded easily. It wasn't even really a lie. Ihaddone some research into the minor villains of the city after getting access to the PRT's files on all of them. They could probably check my history on the Wards console to confirm that.
It's just, I wasn't doing it for Sophia's sake. I was doing it because, quite frankly, the whole thing with the Choir or Chorus or whatever at the mall had freaked me out. The idea that I didn't know about everyone Parahuman in the city was so off putting to me that I just had to update my knowledge on the topic.
I wouldn't be caught off guard again.
"Hmm. I want you to do another round of Power Testing, with a focus on how you interact with other powers. Get it scheduled Armsmaster." She ordered.
Armsmaster nodded, and that was that.
--
"Shouldn't you be paying more attention to that?"
"I dunno Dennis, did you recently have a second trigger and now have an impeccable sense of timing?" I countered without bothering to look up from what I was doing - which was affixing a remarkably lifelike looking eyeball to the Drone I was presently constructing.
"...No? Is that even a real thing?" The redhead who had wandered into my lab without asking replied after a second to process what I had said, stepping over the loose collection of stuff strewn about the floor to lean against the center island where I was working.
The lab had security locks. God knows, the last thing I needed was to be surprised while I was working with something explosive - not that they actuallygave meanything potentially explosive to work with in the first place. It's just that I rarely actually engaged the things. For one thing, I actually kind of liked the other Wards to one degree or another, so I didn't really mind them meandering into my lab provided they didn't touch anything they weren't supposed to. For another, I had kind of been expecting this meeting for a while. One of the only prominent things I knew about Clockblocker was that his Dad had leukemia.
Probably anyway. I don't think the specific illness was ever described in the story, but I vaguely remembered something about a bone marrow transplant, which my Tinker granted knowledge of biology told me was a treatment for the disease.
And here I was, just so happening to have the magical ability to heal people.
Frankly, I was kind of expecting this conversation to happen sooner, but rarely was ever left alone with Clockblocker in order to make it so. I guess that today, purely by coincidence, I had happened to be logging my hours tinkering while he was on duty - because believe it or not, a lot of the time Wards were brought in just to be present, not to actually patrol ordoanything.
"It is, but don't bother trying to have one. Knowing it's even possible makes you statistically less likely to ever have it happen. Anyway, that stuff is basically the simplest thing I know how to make - I can brew it in industrial sized containers without even paying attention to it." I responded after a moment of silence to finish my current task. Then I leaned away from the island to examine my work.
In Starfinder, Engineers got to have either an Exocortex - like Merlin - or a Drone. My recent realization that I didn't actually have to follow those rules was what had led me to my current project.
It was a dog. Sort of. It was an entirely mechanical approximation of a greyhound. Usually an engineer spent a fair bit of time programming these things with the ability to follow basic commands.
They weren't particularly smart, and were easily discernible as not actually being alive. There were roomba's with better problem solving capabilities then your average Engineer drone - which is why the Engineer usually remote piloted the thing themselves using their custom rig - which was an entirely separate project for me. I, however, had Merlin - who was a perfectly functional and sapient AI.
So, rather than waste space and resources trying to program a thousand possible responses into the thing to make it useful, I had just slapped an uplink to my suit into it and called it a day. The result was what I was affectionately referring to as 'Science Dog'.
Merlin, for whom this was basically going to be a body, fucking hated it, but I wasn't going to let that bog me down.
"...thanks? Is talking to you always going to be like this?" Dennis finally asked, and I turned to him to find the ginger nervously fidgeting with the hem of his shirt while eyeing me speculatively.
"Sorry?" I asked in confusion, turning my attention fully towards him.
"You know, 'Hi John, what's up?' 'Nothing, but here, have some parahuman trivia that's ultimately going to be useless to you'." He answered helplessly before getting a slightly worried look on his face and rushing to elaborate.
"No offence man, you just- I mean Soph said that you were gonna do it alot but I didn't think-" He started to blurt out.
I lifted an eyebrow in his direction and snorted.
"It's cool. I'm not great with people, I know that. So uh… sup? I know I offered to make you something cool but I'm starting to eat through my budget for the month." I put forth.
And it was true too. The PRT wanted me to spend a bunch of time on base? Fine. I'd spend a bunch of time on base. But while I was there I was going to go down my wish list, and I was going to do it with a vengeance.
Besides Science Dog I was already starting to build an Engineering rig and a custom Microlab, not to mention the host of chemicals I was eating through cooking up my personal stock of Ampoules. I had bigger things in the works, but I needed to work with Armsmaster on a lot of them, if only because he would have to give me permission to requisition some of the things I would need.
So yeah, I was starting to tap out my available resources.
"No! I uh, I actually didn't come to ask you to make me anything. I was kind of hoping I could… talk to you for a minute?" He offered hesitantly. Normally I'd be worried he wasn't being more of a flippant jokester, as was his tendency, but since I already knew what he was here to ask me about, it made sense.
His Dad had been his trigger event after all.
"Shoot." I offered, leaning an elbow on my workbench while pointedly trying not to think about the mess I was going to have to clean up after this.
"So uh… I don't really know where to start." He said with a frown.
"Probably by sitting down." I noted, gesturing to the free stool nearest him. He glanced at it, then smiled thinly at me.
"I think I'd rather stay standing. You know, just in case you decide to set the hounds on me." He joked, though he did genuinely seem leery of Science Dog - which was fair. I hadn't had the opportunity to apply the fake skin I was going to use on the thing, so instead of a real dog it kind of just looked like a dog shaped terminator.
"I promise man, there's nothing you could possibly say that would piss me off enough to actually attack you. Honestly, I doubt you could say anything that would bother me much at all." I responded with a roll of my eyes. Man, I had no idea what his deal with this was. As far as I could tell he had literally never even tried to ask Amy to heal his Dad. Unless his Dad had a brain thing, in which case that made sense, but I didn't think-
"Cool. So uh, you wouldn't be bothered if I like, asked Sophia out on a date?" He quickly blurted before shutting his eyes and flinching like he thought I was going to punch him.
I blinked. I turned to look around, trying to find the hidden camera that had to be present. I turned back to Clock, whose eyes were still closed. I lifted a finger as though I was going to answer him. Then I lowered it, because I had no idea what the fuck was going on anymore.
"...What?" I asked in a strangled tone.
"I mean, I know she's your cousin and all so I thought it'd be like, you know, you don't date your bro's sister without asking him first you know? I- I totally understand if you say no I just thought-" Dennis babbled at me in a panicked tone.
"Dennis. Shut the fuck up." I said, closing my eyes and rubbing my temples. I didn't see him do it, but I imagined I could hearhis mouth closing with a solid click of teeth smashing together.
"Okay. First off. I don't own her, she can date whoever she wants. If I tried to tell her otherwise she'd beat the shit out of me so hard I'd need to brew a new batch of healing stuff, because that one would be used up keeping me alive." I grumbled, gesturing at the ten foot wide vat I had cooking the most powerful Healing Serum I could make.
"So that means-" Dennis started hopefully.
"Shut up, I'm not done." I snapped, opening my eyes and pointing a finger at him.
"I thought you were here to ask me to use that," I gestured at the healing serum again, "on your Dad." I asked in annoyance.
"Oh," was his succinct response.
We stared at each other for a second before Dennis awkwardly lifted a hand in my direction, like a student in class asking for permission to speak.
"Yes?" I ground out.
"I asked Armsmaster about that, like, the day after we got you. He said it wouldn't work." he explained to me, like I was the fucking idiot.
"Oh," was my succinct response.
There was a moment of silence.
"So, are we cool or…?" Dennis finally asked me, breaking the stalemate.
"Y-yes Dennis. We are 'cool'. Here, you'll need it." I said, giving up on living a reasonable and sane life and just snatching one of my personal Healing Ampoules off a rack nearby to deposit in front of him.
"Uh… I thought this wouldn't work on my Dad?" He asked curiously. And, unfortunately, with perhaps a bit of hope in his tone. I could eventually heal his Dad's illness. I just couldn't do itright now. Diseases and other similar illnesses were a completely different concept in Starfinder to 'damage'. You couldn't heal them away via normal means. The simplest way I could easily think of to even begin to attempt to do so was to create a Spell Gem of the third level Mystic spell 'Remove Affliction' - which I currently couldn't do, and wouldn't be able to do until I was level eight at minimum. I mean, I could also replace all the man's bones with cybernetic augments which might also solve the problem - but I somehow doubted anyone involved would go for it.
And while I could explain all of that to Dennis, I felt it unfair to put the hard 'maybe' of me surviving that long on him.
No, this was for entirely different reasons.
"It won't. That's for when she rejects you." I said with an absolutely straight face.
"We'll see won't we?" He said, apparently taking the statement as a challenge - even though I noticed he did pocket the vial of healing serum.
Some days, I had a really hard time understanding why teenage boys were so into women who could beat the shit out of them.
Then I thought about Alexandria, who despite being a stone cold bitch, was also astonishingly hot, and wisely didn't voice that particular thought.
--
"So explain to me again what we're doing?" I asked, the exasperation I was feeling making a valiant attempt to show through in my even tone, even though it was still either missed - or more likely - ignored by my partner on this fine saturday afternoon.
"Scouting, duh. Don't you do this kind of thing all the time?" Emma asked me, and she said it so absolutely seriouslythat I had to do a double take just to make sure thatIwasn't the one in the wrong here.
We were currently sitting in a chinese restaurant just off the main road downtown. We couldn't have been more than a block from the mall, and were nowhere even slightly close to anything evenvaguely resembling gang territory. The proximity to downtown and therefore, the PRT headquarters meant that this was easily one of the safest parts of the city.
So when Emma said we were 'scouting' she was either being incredibly racist, or just straight up lying to my face. I didn't believe she could genuinely be stupid enough to just assume this chinese place was an ABB front just because it was a chinese place.
Unfortunately, at some point, her Mother of all people had gotten ahold of my cellphone number, probably by rifling through her daughters phone, and had all but begged me to hang out with her.
Mostly because she hadn't physically left the house, or indeed, her room, since the last time I had seen her.
"What, racially profile a bunch of people? No, not really." I responded evenly, raising an eyebrow at the girl's slight blush - and it was very slight, let me tell you - and leaning slightly away so that the server who had manifested next to me the second my glass of water had hit the halfway point could do her job.
"Well… how else are we going to take down the-" She paused to glance around us, then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone before continuing. "take down the ABB?" she continued.
I squinted, unsure of how exactly to field this question. I couldn't tell if she was being serious or just making shit up as an excuse to hang around the cape who made her feel safe. When she was described as being a good liar in the story, that shit wasnotan exaggeration. I couldn't read the woman for shit. Presently, she was dressed in a very 'Victoria Dallon Approved' fashion, with a green dress, black tights and some kind of excessively strappy shoes that I felt like I'd need a separate tinker specialty to make heads or tails of.
I was wearing a black t-shirt and jeans - because I'm a plebeian and I like it that way.
"We don't. I mean. You don't. I can't do much about them until I figure out how to deal with that teleporting asshole." I answered somewhat honestly, reaching for a dumpling with my fingers and then pausing when Emma started to glare at me.
So I grabbed my chopsticks instead, which sucked because I couldn't use the fucking things if my life depended on it.
"What about Lung?" She asked me eagerly.
I made a noncommittal gesture with my hand. I actually had several methods for dealing with Lung. At the end of the day he was basically just a Troll that was immune to fire, at least, by Dungeons Dragons standards. It was Oni Leet hat I had a hard time figuring out. I had no way of responding to the kind of fast teleportation he could pull off. Honestly, it was kind of ironic that I had compared Lung to a Troll, because when he was comboed with Oni Lee they basically had between them all the same characteristics of a Quantum Troll.
Yes, that is a thing. No I will not elaborate.
"Look, forget that for a second. I thought I told you to see your friends." I countered, gesturing at her with my chopsticks in a manner that clearly annoyed her, because she took them from me. I let her, but only because using any level of strength to resist would have risked knocking the table over.
"I have!" She answered, and if I didn't literally know she was lying I wouldn't have been able to tell.
But I did. So I just stared flatley at her until she started to fidget and spoke again.
"How do you even know I didn't?" She asked sourly.
"I have super-" I started to respond easily only for her to cut me off.
"My mom told you, didn't she?" Emma cut in smoothly.
God damn, the woman was like a fucking social blood hound.
"...No, I just-" I tried to cover.
"Ugh. I can't believe she- how did she even- ugh!" Emma hissed, reaching into her bag and withdrawing her phone - no doubt to change her pin number or whatever security measure she personally ascribed to.
"...anyway, how I know aside, are you doing anything I asked you to do? Therapy?" I tried.
"I don't need therapy." She responded petulantly, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking away from me.
"Okay well, what do I have to do to get you to try it? Or to at least talk to your friends." I emphasized.
"I want you to stop ignoring my texts." She responded after a moment of thought.
"O...kay… that's not too-"
"And I want to hang out more. You basically walked into my house one time and never came back. That sucks, alot." She continued on.
"...okay well, that's not…too difficult." I offered. It wasn't like I had a huge problem looking out for the girl. I had a fairly limited number of people I could even begin to admit to caring about and this needy redhead was somehow one of them.
Still, I found myself feeling really suspicious of her as I reached for another dumpling only to have her start glaring at me again. I made to reach for my chopsticks - only to remember Emma had taken them from me a few minutes ago. When I looked back up, she was holding a dumpling up for me.
Did… did I just get played?
I tried super hard not to feel like I had just made a deal with the devil, as I pointedly raised a hand to take the offered dumpling in two fingers and popped it into my mouth, much to her displeasure.
Something told me this wasn't over.
--
It was Tuesday afternoon, and I had just come from my official Wards announcement. It had gone… pretty much exactly the same as Sophia's. The Director had been less than pleased when I'd walked backstage with my Drone, but a quick showcase of its decidedly non-biological properties had been enough to calm her down, even if she did eye it suspiciously the entire time we were backstage together.
With his fake skin on, Science Dog looked almost exactly like a Greyhound. Almost. There was some obvious armor on the dogs body, though it mostly existed for stylistic reasons, with all of the actual defenses being part of the drone beneath the fake skin I had stretched over it. Two manipulator arms were attached to this fake harness, or at least, looked like they were.
In truth, they connected to the drone underneath, but held the appearance of being part of the surface armoring. Each manipulator held a small device that I hoped would be useful during my tour of the hospital today, and the press had been exceedingly amused by the handful of tricks I had been able to convince Merlin to do while he was piloting the thing.
For obvious reasons, Merlin really hated being treated like a dog, even though he was equally aware of the importance of not being detected as a true AI.
Thus, after a few simple tricks from the drone, a few soft ball questions about what my favourite color was and suchnot, and a big announcement about the amazing healing technology I was bringing to the Bay, I had been bundled off in a PRT van with all the Healing Serum I'd brewed for today, headed towards Brockton General.
"Is it… alive?" One of the troopers in the back of the van with me asked curiously, eyeing the drone so obviously that even through the blank face shield that all the troopers wore to protect their identities it was obvious he was staring at it.
"God no. Can you imagine how much shit I would be in if I grew an entire dog in a vat? Ellisburg isn't that far from here." I responded easily, rapping the knuckles of my power armor on the Drones spine to demonstrate that there was metal inside of it.
"Okay but… why the skin then?" The trooper continued, not taking his eyes off the drone.
"Well I'm going to be in the Hospital alot from now on, so I wanted it to be, you know, good with kids? If it looked like a terminator I don't think they'd let me bring it with me." I answered. Which was… partially true. In truth, I just wanted the drone to be able to pass for a normal dog so I could walk around with it in my secret identity without drawing too much attention.
It was a trivial amount of work to change the color and pattern of the fur on it, so I wasn't worried about being recognized - especially because it would be acting a lot more 'alive' when it was with me than when I was using it in my Star Finder identity.
"Still it- do you hear that?" The trooper asked suddenly, setting everyone in the van on edge, including myself.
Listen, there are very few situations where 'do you hear that' doesn't result in a jump scare of some kind.
Thankfully, upon listening closely, this didn't seem like one of those situations. What the trooper was referring to was clearly the absolutely horrendous excuse for music that some nearby driver was clearly blaring so loudly that we could hear it through the walls of the troop transport.
Music that was growing painfully loud actually.
I had just enough presence of mind to think 'wow that sounds like some serious Merchant music' before something slammed into the side of the van, and we were all sent sprawling.