Transparency 1.01

"We have no secrets from each other, though sometimes I wish some things were more hidden.
What's more transparent than invisible?" —Jarod Kintz

This was not how I'd expected my day to go.

It was fairly nice weather today. The temperature was a cool fifteen degrees, the sun was actually out for once, and there was almost no wind either. It was the perfect type of weather for relaxing, maybe to have a picnic or something, or a trip to the grocer's.

Instead I found myself at the edge of a street brawl. There were several things wrong with this. For one thing, it was at a fairly nice café patio in the middle of the day; there was no chance that it could be excused as a simple conflict that had spilled out from a nearby pub. The second thing was that it was a very lopsided fight—one bloke versus at least four others. Finally, I had planned on going shopping. Getting into a fight today had been the last thing on my mind.

But, unfortunately for me, helping others is the exact sort of thing I'm supposed to be doing. See, I'm a parahuman, a person with powers and abilities. What's more, I'm a hero—aiding the unfortunate and downtrodden is part of the job description. If that doesn't sound believable, my partner could probably point to the specific section and paragraph where the terms are outlined in my contract.

The only problem was that my powers don't translate very well into a direct combat situation such as this. While a decade's worth of involvement as an active 'cape' meant that I considered myself to be far from helpless, front-line brawler I was not. All of my experiences over the years had been limited to the task of overwatch and facilitating coordination for my group—a direct confrontation was a rare occurrence and is not something I would prefer to get into even now. Unfortunately for myself, circumstances had forced me to take on a more active role in recent times.

It had been Jamie—or J when we were working—who'd first spotted the disturbance. As a fifty-centimetre tall spectre capable of flying anywhere she wished within a five-kilometre radius from my position, I used her extensively during my patrols whilst in costume, a habit I continued to a slightly lesser degree even when off-duty.

She was an extension of my powers given ethereal form, effectively allowing me to be two places at once. She could communicate with people at her end and any thoughts the two of us had could be shared over a sort of psychic link. Whatever she saw, heard, or even deduced, I would know it instantly.

Such as the fact that the group of four attackers were all the exact same person.

Exactly the same person. Identical builds, identical clothing, and identical expressions—furious. They all appeared to be fairly young boys with closely-cropped blond hair. I would have pegged them at around twelve or thirteen years old. They even fought in the same manner. They did their best to run up to the solitary defender and throw a straight punch into his face. No tricks or feints, just continuous, straightforward attacks. More often than not they would trip each other up in their rush to reach him, and their victim was able to defend himself quite well once he'd realised they weren't trying anything clever.

But even as he fought back and occasionally dropped his attackers, I noticed they were returning to their feet none the worse for wear. In fact, as I watched, more of them were getting back up. I didn't see any lethal blows being thrown intentionally, but occasionally an attacker would wander into the path of his twin's—his quintuplet's?— attack, or another would trip and smash his head into a table corner at a really bad angle.

Each time I was afraid that the fight had turned deadly and that one person had been killed, accidentally or otherwise, two more guys stood in his place. This was not hyperbole. I followed one individual as he rushed forward with a raised fist. He earned himself a desperate blow to the jaw that spun his head around with a sharp crack that made me think whiplash and he dropped to the street like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

He stood up. Then he stood up again. Two identical copies each getting their bearings, reorienting themselves to find their target, and charging back into the fray. The same mindless determination to reach their victim, the same uninspired, straightforward assault. Their target had no choice but to fall back before the relentless waves. Where at first there had been a mere four attackers when Jamie had first notified me, there were now almost double that number pressing down on him by the time I'd arrived at the scene.

I began shoving my way through the mob to reach him, analysing the group as I moved. They were clearly the result of a parahuman ability of some kind, but I'd never heard of a duplicator with this sort of power before. The clones were simple-minded beings. They pushed and shoved as I made my way through them, but they weren't attempting to fight back as much as they were trying get past me in order to reach their original target.

They were in street clothing, which strongly suggested that this was not likely to be an established cape. It could have been a rogue or a villain working plainclothes, but my mind seemed to latch onto another possibility. Someone in the city had just had their Trigger Event—the precise moment where they had received powers.

Knowledge of Trigger Events was not widespread amongst the population, but any person who studies capes in depth, or even a cape working with others, will eventually ferret out that shared commonality. Triggers tended to result from highly stressful situations, be it physical or emotional. It wouldn't be wrong to say that each cape had a tragic backstory behind their abilities, although the degree of that trauma—or at least how much each individual allowed that history to affect them—seemed to vary from cape to cape.

The way the clones were doing their level best to inflict a beat down on their target made me suspicious as to the reason behind it, but without knowing if there were other victims elsewhere in the city I couldn't be certain. Since I didn't see any of the clones acting in a rational manner, I had to assume their progenitor was elsewhere. Making more clones somehow in the worst case.

I now had two tasks to complete. First, I had to keep this completely random, innocent bystander—yeah, I couldn't keep my face straight even while thinking that—from harm's way. Disabling or otherwise removing the threat provided by the duplicates would have to be a good start. But I still needed to track down the original parahuman that was releasing the clones.

Fortunately as I'd mentioned before, my power allows me to multitask quite well.

Jamie, I sent the thought across the mental link I shared with my personal spectre. You know what to do?

Got it, she sent back to me. See if there are any other clones, try to track them all back to their source. Back in a flash, Big Brother~

Jamie had been hovering several stories above the café before I sent her off. When I had first discovered my ability, her tethered range had been just under a kilometre from my current position. The years we'd spent as active capes had seen that range slowly expand, with the largest increase happening just a few months ago. She had a lot of experience in running search patterns and the thought that she wouldn't succeed in finding some trace of our mysterious parahuman never even crossed my mind.

As for my original problem of dealing with the duplicates directly...

This part would be a bit tricky. Unfortunately my power did not see fit to endow me with superhuman, or even above-average strength or toughness. I did have a few years of self-defense classes under my belt, but kung-fu master I was not. I had a standard, police-issue nightstick strapped to my side, which would most likely be useless against a group that large. In short, I had nothing that would help me if the clones suddenly decided to treat me as an enemy.

It was times like these that I really wished I had put more effort into being a front-line combatant back when I was part of a team.

By the time I reached the boy—a young teen not much older than his attackers—he had been forced to retreat underneath a table. He was kicking out against a clone that was prone against the ground, mindlessly reaching for him. As for the others—the rest of the clones were either tripping over the fallen one or banging their arms against the surface of the table. The table itself was a mesh of wrought iron, so his panicked expression was clearly visible to his attackers.

"Hey!" he shouted, having noticed me pushing my way there through the clones. "You! Dumbass! You're a hero, right? Help me!"

I nearly stopped in disbelief at his behavior, almost regretting that I had gotten involved. Oh the things I do for the Greater Good, I mused to myself. One of the clones behind me shoved me roughly to the side to join his counterparts in attacking the table, creating an ear-hurting cacophony of sounds as they continued banging on the metal with their fists. The teen was more or less trapped there as they surrounded the table... but none of them seemed to have the presence of mind to crouch.

On the plus side, they seemed to have stopped multiplying since he'd stopped fighting back.

A stray thought made me shake my head. No... no way. There's no way the answer could be this simple. The clones were clearly simple-minded. More than simple-minded, they were stupid. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. The mystery parahuman's power could be something like the ability to create a clone and issue it a command, a single directive. Such as 'find and beat up person A.'

They would go out, find their target, and immediately engage him or her, all whilst taking the most direct path they could see. They could see the teen through the patio table, so it'd never occurred to them that it was an obstacle they should be moving out of their way.

I was less sure about the duplication abilities the individual clones had, but from what I saw earlier it might have had to do with the amount of damage they took. Hurt a clone enough and it would split into two, for example. The threshold must have been fairly high at least, or else there would have been a lot more of them.

So, I had an idea—a stupid idea—but one that might buy him some time at least. Part of my costume included a scarf to hide my nose and mouth. I grabbed one of the clones by the shoulder and heaved it away from the table—not quite as easy as it sounded, but they were distracted enough that I could manage—and moved into the gap it had left, dropping into a crouch as I unwound my scarf and held it out to the teen.

"Cover as much of your head as you can with this," I told him. He gave me a look that let me know he thought I was nuts, but he accepted the scarf and dutifully wrapped it around his head several times, leaving just his nose and eyes uncovered.

The effect was nearly instantaneous. The gathered clones immediately stopped their assault on the table and simply stood there, turning their heads this way and that as if searching for their missing target. They were completely oblivious to the fact that they had seen him not moments ago, unable to process the change in his appearance. I idly wondered what criteria the original had used to identify their target for them.

The teen slowly emerged from his hiding spot, brushing aside my proffered hand. He was wide-eyed as he stared at the identical figures surrounding us, disbelief evident in his posture.

"Yeah," I drawled. "I didn't really think this would work... I think I'm almost disappointed."

He didn't seem to share my humor. His eyes narrowed as he turned towards the closest clone and buried his fist into its gut. "Fucker!" he screamed. "Think you're all high and mighty now that you've got powers?! You think you're hot stuff, but you're still a dumb little piece of shit!" The clone he'd attacked didn't react other than to turn its head so that his wasn't blocking its view and continue looking around the cafe.

Completely random, innocent bystander, I repeated my thoughts from earlier. I sighed and shook my head. I put him out of my head—even as he continued to scream and vent himself on the clone—as I mentally searched for Jamie. She was only several hundred metres south of my position, moving back and forth across the streets in a search pattern. Find anything?

No new clones, she reported back. But wherever they came from, they've left a trail of destruction in their wake. Mostly a bunch of angry street vendors with knocked over stalls. I'm guessing Mr. Boy Scout over there ran into your group around where I am now and started running. They followed in as straight a line as they could manage. There are a few cars stopped on the streets too. They might have been the reason for the first few duplications.

I glanced back at the absurd sight of a masked and angry teenager using another apparent teen as a punching bag. He had issues. Judging how the clones are acting without their target in sight, I'm guessing they didn't originate very far from where you are now. Their progenitor might have moved on though.

So I might want to look for a familiar face? Or three? She was already rising above the skyline to get a better view. Way ahead of ya.

I sighed and prepared myself to take the teen into custody—protective custody, of course. He was, after all, the victim of an assault using a parahuman ability, a very serious event. The authorities would want to make absolutely sure that he suffered no long-lasting effects. A psychiatric evaluation wouldn't be a bad idea.

As I turned my attention back to him, however, I noticed that he'd knocked the clone over onto its back and was trying to punch its face in. I shuddered.

"That'll teach you to mess with me!" he growled, completely forgetting there was an authority figure near him. Somehow I doubted that had ever stopped him before in the past. "Nobody messed with Billy Williams!"

It was mostly in my head, but I could have sworn that when all eight of the clones snapped their heads towards the teen, their combined focus was like an audible click. There was a brief moment of dawning comprehension in poor Billy's eyes before the one he'd been straddling blurred and suddenly two clones rose to their feet beside him, the others moving in from where they had wandered off.

I knew I should have helped, I really did. But my first reaction was to drop my head into one hand as they dogpiled the shrieking teenager.

There was a few moments of confusion and flailing limbs, moments where I seriously considered if I wanted to wait the clones out and retrieve my scarf from the remains afterwards. The decision was taken from me, however, when a clump of snow the size of an exercise ball slammed into the renewed melee. It scattered on impact, spilling across the ground, but it succeeded in knocking away the pile of clones from Young Billy. As it spread, the giant snowball broke into clumps and pressed down on the fallen bodies, pinning all of the clones to the floor and rendering them unable to move.

"Your hesitation may have nearly cost that boy his life," a female voice chided me as a cloud of white particles flew past from behind me. The snow flurry almost, but didn't quite hide the movement of a white-hooded cape stepping forward to stand beside me. "I think I'm almost disappointed, Looking Glass."

"Mitigating circumstances?" I shrugged and walked over to where Billy had fallen. He'd fallen unconscious, probably from being smothered, but he didn't seem to be in immediate danger. He did look a bit worse for wear, but he was relatively undamaged. Apparently with that many clones on top of him, the ones closest to him didn't even have the leverage to properly attack him. I retrieved my scarf, checked it for dirt or blood and found none, then rewrapped it around my neck as I turned to face the newcomer. "And I know for a fact, Flurry, that you had eyes-on for the last few minutes or so. I could feel the temperature drop. What took you so long to jump in?"

My former team leader's mask hid her face completely, but her posture shifted slightly and she turned her head, avoiding my gaze. "I was merely trying to ascertain the full situation," she said. "Attempting to find the most effective moment to step it."

"Uh huh..." I narrowed my eyes. "And it had nothing to do with making a dramatic entrance...?" Though my tone had started with joking-familiarity, it had trailed off as my brain caught up to what I was saying.

She was quiet for several long moments and I mentally berated myself. Although it had long been a running joke between the members of our team, the person who had first commented on Flurry's habit had been Wu Lung. It was a bitter reminder for the both of us. "Your clones are melting," she finally said.

"I—what?" I glanced over to see what she was referring to. Sure enough, all dozen or so clones were dissolving into thin air. I grinned. "J must have found the source and managed to calm him down." I mentally reached out to ping her, "Let me just get her position—"

—and I found nothing.

Flurry picked up on my sudden unease even as she worked on vanishing the snow around the cafe. "What is it?"

Not bothering to answer, I turned and headed south at a dead run.

"Ja—Glass! Wait!" I heard Flurry shout. I knew her first impulse would be to follow me, to back me up, but her sense of duty would eventually win over and she would move to secure the victim first. Getting his and the café owner's details for the inevitable paperwork to follow once she contacted the authorities.

At any other time I would have felt guilty about leaving her to that boring task, but that guilt had been superseded by the unthinkable. I couldn't feel Jamie at all.

It took me several minutes to reach her last known location, a distance Jamie could have covered in just a few seconds. The fact that I hadn't even noticed her vanishing was extremely troubling. Had the mysterious parahuman countered her somehow? Was she dead? Was she alive? Had I suddenly lost my powers completely? Various possibilities came to mind, each of them as unlikely as the last.

I turned onto a street littered with debris. Food and trinkets spread all across the ground as vendors set to work gathering their scattered wares and righting their overturned carts. I pulled out a small beacon from a pouch in midstride, activating it and tossing it to one of the owners as I ran past. "Hold on to that!" I shouted. "The authorities will come to take your statements within the hour!"

I ran on.

When I arrived at my destination, a dingy alleyway off a side street, I found a single person standing there, leaning with his back against the wall as if waiting for me. I knew his face, even if I didn't know him personally. The parahuman. The clonemaster.

"What have you done to her?" I demanded. My breathing was harsh, lending my voice a sort of guttural quality. I didn't know if I the emotion I was feeling leaned more towards fury or fright. Perhaps an equal mix of both. It didn't even occur to me to be more cautious in the face of a known duplicator. If he sicced his clones on me at this moment, I'd be done for.

Yet, none of that mattered. He'd taken Jamie away from me somehow.

I had stepped closer and found my nightstick in my hand without realising it. "Where. Is. She?" I growled. The clonemaster hadn't been facing me when I entered the alley. Even as I approached, he didn't turn around. A part of me found something wrong with this, but another part of me noted the very open target he was presenting.

I flipped the nightstick around in my hand so the longer end was extended out and tapped him on the shoulder. "Final warning," I said. "Where is Jamie?"

The clonemaster shifted and I drew my hand back, ready to club him in the head. But he just turned his head to look over his shoulder, his eyes wide and trembling with strain. It was enough to make me pause.

"J—James?" he croaked.

I froze completely. The voice wasn't right, but that intonation… My mind seemed to freeze with the indecision.

The clonemaster's eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed. As he dropped to the street, Jamie's form floated in place where his head had been, turned towards me the same way he had been. Even as my mouth flapped wordlessly, her eyes closed and her body dimmed, the electric blue barely visible now as she froze in place.

There was a clattering sound as my nightstick dropped to the pavement.

ooo

a/n—this chapter went up a bit fast because i mostly had this written before i'd even started the prologue. don't expect updates every day ^^;;

plot happens!