Enjoy!
Training
Sophia Hess was in pure agony. Her lungs burned as if she had a thousand needles in them, her legs felt as if they were on fire. Sweat soaked her shirt and clung to her like a second skin as the sun blazed in the sky. Her entire body was screaming in protest as her shoes padded against the dirt track. All in all, she was fairly miserable.
Sophia wasn't a stranger to physical exertion, she had jumped rooftops as part of her "hobby" as her mother liked to call it, but this was well beyond anything that she had tried before. Her normally graceful and controlled motions were haphazard and sluggish from exhaustion. All around her others were in similar condition, some being even worse off than her. At least she had a reasonably fit body, unlike that rather chunky girl in the back who was panting for air despite only having finished a few laps at best.
The pleasant green that surrounded the track looked far more enticing after what felt like an eternity of pounding her feet against the dull brown track. The water bottle attached to her hip was the only source of comfort that she had, and even that was almost exhausted. She had tried to conserve what little liquid she had, but it was just so tempting with the sweltering heat bearing down on her. Still, she couldn't keep this up forever, she needed some form of release from this hell. For a brief moment, she allowed herself to come to a stop, giving her screaming muscles some much-needed relief. Her hands fell to her knees as she struggled to keep herself from kneeling over. But her respite from her torment was short lived as a sharp whistle cut through the air and a megaphone squeal followed soon after.
"Did I say you could stop?" the voice screeched from the other end of the track. Sophia turned to glare at the source of her tormenter, a portly looking woman standing on the other end of the track. Though she couldn't see it Sophia could easily imagine the scowl on the woman's face. Piggot didn't seem to have much of a personality aside from angry and even angrier. The woman was beyond difficult to deal with, but Sophia could grant her some grudging respect given the capabilities she and her partners had demonstrated.
If anyone had told her that a human could take down a parahuman without Tinker tech support she would have laughed them off. The idea of an unpowered nobody trying to fight off someone like Jack Slash was laughable to the extreme. Unpowered people were supposed to be the weak sheep that parahuman guided, protecting them from the disasters that were wrought upon this world.
That had been before the camp director landed one of the older parahuman attendees on their butt in the time it took someone to blink. They had shown them some declassified footage from some of their former team's missions, and quite frankly Sophia would have run away screaming if she had been put in that situation. Fighting gangbangers was one thing, fighting monsters like the Slaughterhouse was another thing entirely.
"Extra laps for everyone!"
Still, that grudging respect didn't make this any less difficult. Sophia winced at the sound of the pained groans that filled the air and the dark glares being directed her way. Her feet quickly found themselves running once more despite the pain running up and down her legs. She had no desire to get on the other's bad side again. Finding her locker full of garbage had been one time too many.
"I see you're keeping your recruits busy."
Emily Piggot didn't turn her gaze away from Hess until she was certain that she wasn't going to stop the moment her back was turned. Satisfied that fear of her fellow trainees' retribution would keep her in line the woman allowed herself to turn to her old acquaintance. The amused grin on Annette's face seemed so alien for someone so inhuman looking, but she was hardly one to judge someone by their appearance.
"I find that they're less likely to cause problems if they're too tired to move," Emily said. Of course, this activity also assisted in the development of their physical capabilities. She had always found the typical punishment of putting Wards and Protectorate capes on monitor duty to be a waste of time and resources. Monitor duty bored them out of their skulls, which made them perform substandardly and it didn't teach them to fear punishment. It became more of an annoyance to get out of more than anything else. Actually forcing them to do physical activities until they couldn't anymore was a much more beneficial punishment. It homed in their abilities that would actually benefit them in the future and taught them to fear punishment.
Annette hummed as she came to stand side by side with the retired PRT agent. Her crimson gaze swept out the two dozen or so capes lapping around the dirt ring that served as their track field. "I see your class is bigger than usual," the Master cape noted with interest. Emily couldn't stop a pride-filled smile from crossing over her lips at the parahuman's observation.
"The brass decided to give us some more funding once they saw the results," Emily said with no small amount of pride. There had long been a call for a more standardized training program of the Protectorate, but it had always fallen by the wayside thanks to a limited budget and the sheer variation of powers. People didn't seem to see what was the point in training dozens of people on the same program when they all had different powers. Parahuman didn't have the ability to standardize themselves like guns and munitions. Each one was unique and different, which was even more of a reason that parahumans needed to receive training, not a reason to exempt them from it.
She supposed if there was one good thing to come out of Ellisburg beside the woman standing next to her it was this. The disaster had been the wake-up call the directors needed to realize just how important something like this was. That still hadn't stopped them from kicking and screaming all the way. It had taken her and Thomson years of negotiations to scrape off what little funding and capes that they could from the Protectorate. None of them had been too eager to give up any of the capes under their command, even if it was only a temporary measure. Emily had to keep herself from rolling her eyes at the internal politics that plagued the PRT. If there was one thing that she wouldn't miss working with them it was that.
Though despite their whining, the results spoke for themselves. A marked improvement in team coordination and a steady drop in disciplinary measures showed that the capes were learning and improving. They weren't as likely to try and fight the villain for glory or run away at the first sign of danger.
"I asked Cindy if she had wanted to come here again," Annette said, a smile teasing her lips. "I found it rather amusing that she turned even paler than me at the thought of coming back here."
Emily grunted in amusement at Annette's words. Despite the girl's status as Annette's daughter, she had pulled no punches with the girl. Whether she had been expecting preferential treatment or not she hadn't gotten any. Whoever these people were outside of this camp didn't matter, because here they were all the same, maggots that needed toughening up. Though she was willing to admit that the girl had been one of her best students and taken her lessons seriously.
"She's a good girl," Emily said with a thin smile. The girl knew all too well what happened to capes with too much power and not enough sense. The scars of Ellisburg ran deep throughout all of them.
"Is Thomson here? I haven't seen him around," Annette said.
"No, he's guest lecturing on parahuman group tactics," Emily said. The offer had been given to both of them, but she would rather stay here in the field than trying to teach a group of Protectorate leaders who thought they knew better than her. If she had been forced to attend that meeting she wouldn't have been able to keep herself from killing one of those muscle-bound idiots.
Perhaps a bit unfair, but she had never quite gotten over the foul taste that the deserters had left in her mouth. No matter how much she tried she could never get over that black mark on their record, and she doubted she ever would. Something like that wasn't something that one could just get over. To see people that you were trusting to have your back and protect you turn tail and run away was something that no combatant wanted to see.
That was the entire reason that she had devoted herself to helping Thomson build this program so that something like that wouldn't happen again. Parahumans needed to learn that just flinging their powers around wasn't good enough in battles of life and death, they needed to be able to think critically about situations and understand how to coordinate with others. Perhaps if they capes at Ellisburg hand understood that they could have coordinated a strategic retreat, but they hadn't and all her friend were dead because of that.
"You know, Panacea can heal anything. All she needs to do is give you a touch," Annette said, giving a meaningful look towards the woman's side. Emily had to roll her eyes, even after all these years Annette's subtly needed some work. It wasn't as if this was the first time that Annette had mentioned the girl, but each time she brought it up in their conversations she gave the Master the same response.
"I'm not going to be healed by a parahuman, Annette," she said, her lips twisting into a grimace. Even after all these years and many surgeries they had only been able to improve her condition minutely. There had just been too much damage to the area when Nilbog's demented pets ripped it out. Trying to get a transplant was out of the question with how badly mangled the entire area was.
"Amelia is a sweet girl, Emily," Annette protested.
"I don't care," Emily snapped, her tone laced with anger. She took a breath to calm down at the woman's surprised expression. "I can't allow my body to be put into another parahuman's hands, Annette. I can't."
She could feel the loudspeaker in her hand groan under the strain as her hand twisted so much her knuckles started to turn white. She pointedly tried to ignore the slight tremor in her wrist. The thought of allowing a parahuman, any parahuman, unconditional access to her body made her shiver in dread. It wasn't as if she hated parahumans, but she was never going to surrender control of her body again, not ever again.
Teeth the size of razors tore through flesh like wet tissue.
A pained scream.
Agony.
"I understand not wanting to give up control Emily," Annette said in a kindly tone. If any other parahuman aside from her had tried to bring this up she would have chewed them up and spit them out without hesitation. They couldn't possibly understand the hell that had been Ellisburg.
But Annette, Annette understood all too well. She knew what it was like to watch your entire world crumble to dust at the hands of an unrepentant monster. She had even worse off than she did, losing her husband and her daughter all in the same space. Civilians weren't meant to suffer like that, that was what the PRT was supposed to do – they were supposed to suffer so that civilians didn't. The knowledge that she had been part of the failing of keeping Ellisburg safe had always weighed heavily on Emily's conscience.
"And I know something like this would be well outside your comfort zone, but you can't live the rest of your life like this," Annette said, her crimson gaze holding above the part of her that had once been her kidneys, but now was nothing more than a mangled mass of flesh that had been sewn shut from the world. Emily scowled.
"It's my body, and I'll do what I want with it," she said, a slight growl of irritation entering her voice. If Annette was perturbed by the display of anger she didn't show it. Then again, this was the woman who dealt with A and S-class threats on a regular basis, so it wasn't as if an unhealthy human was going to be much of a threat to her.
And that was the part that really grated on Emily's nerves.
Even in the aftermath of Ellisburg where it had been normal unpowered humans holding the line alongside Annette's Spatori, the parahumans were the ones to receive all the credit. Admittedly without Annette, they wouldn't have been able to hold off Nilbog for more than a few hours at most, but they would have done it. They could have done it. She could still remember Alexandria's press release to the public about that nightmare.
"While we should mourn this tragedy, we should also celebrate the three hundred souls that survived this madman's rampage, all thanks to the work of the Protectorate and Independent heroes that came to lift the siege from them," the strongest woman in the world said, her dark helmet gazing out over the crowd.
There had been a brief mention of the PRT agents that had been left behind in the wake of the capes' retreat, but nothing beyond that. No real mention of any of her fallen comrades that she would more for the rest of her life. Even Calvert, the snake that he was. She knew he wouldn't have given a single care about her if she died, but that was why she was a better person that he was.
Annette had tried to raise a fuss about the whole thing, along with a rather sizable group of the survivors, but nothing lasting had ever come of it. There had been controversy and talk about it all, but it was all a show. Emily knew that the Protectorate had the media eating out of the palm of their hand. When they told them to jump the news agencies asked how high. Even with all of the goodwill that Annette had earned from the public, she was no match for the juggernaut of the Protectorate's PR team.
Within the year the media had all but dropped the story, focusing on other Endbringer attacks or Slaughterhouse 9 rampages. There were some brief mentions about the event, but nothing beyond that. It had become a bit of a taboo to talk about it as if somehow ignoring it would grant the thousands of people that died some peace as if they wanted to be forgotten.
It made her blood boil.
Not only had the entire incident been swept aside as a footnote in the tragedies of the world, but the PRT Strike teams themselves were disbanded shortly after. On one hand, Emily could understand why the PRT had given up on that venture, the loss of so many skilled personnel after one mission had been a crippling blow to the organization's power and credibility. It was somewhat difficult to proclaim that non-powered individuals could fight parahumans when they were almost slaughtered to the last man.
But to not only defund the program but rather to shift the entire focus of the organization towards a more supportive role alongside to the much more aggressive and unrestrained parahumans struck Emily as a powerplay. There had just been too many things happening in the aftermath of Ellisburg for it all to be a reaction to the event. Some of this stuff had to have been building up prior to the slaughter. Ellisburg had simply been the finishing move in a masterstroke to remove the PRT from relevance.
It was immensely frustrating to watch something happen and have no power to stop it. Even after all this time campaigning to reform the PRT and Protectorate all she and the former Strike teams had managed to accomplish were smaller programs like this in an effort to help train heroes. There desires to see the PRT agents armed with weaponry, real weapons, not those containment foam toys, had all amounted to squat.
And all the while parahumans were put in the spotlight again and again. They celebrated the heroes and villains that died in droves to the Endbringers but made little mention of the PRT agents that died helping evacuate the cities. Nowadays when people looked to the PRT they didn't think of the organization whose agents stood equal to the capes, but of a bureaucratic nightmare that made the "heroes" job difficult for them.
After all these years the youngest members of society no longer thought of non-powered individuals as threats to parahumans, but rather minor annoyances that couldn't contribute anything. That had been one of the first things that she had tried to dissuade from the people coming to this camp, that non-powered individuals couldn't be threats to them. It was almost cathartic watching their smug looks collapse in on themselves when Thomson landed them on their asses.
"I can't give up control, not any more than I already have," Emily said, her voice tired and weary. She tried to keep her attention focused on the parahumans running the track, but she could feel the weight of Annette's gaze on her as if it was a physical thing. She understood that Annette only wanted to help her, but she couldn't give up what little she had. This camp and her body were the only things that she had left, and she wouldn't give them up, not even for a single second.
"At the very least can you come meet her?" Annette asked softly, though there was some steel to her speech. "I understand why you don't want it to happen, but New Wave isn't like the Protectorate. They want to be accountable for their actions. They want to be better heroes, Emily. And isn't that why you and Thomson made this camp? So that people could be better heroes?"
Emily didn't say anything, but she could feel her ironclad resolve waver a bit. Only by the tiniest fraction, but it was there. She had taken part in this endeavor for that very purpose. To make better capes so that they wouldn't run when the going got tough.
"If you don't want to deal with the Protectorate that's fine. I don't like dealing with them either," Annette said. "But if you don't interact with the very people you're trying to help, then how can you make a better tomorrow?"
Emily wanted to push aside Annette's words. She didn't need parahuman help with her health, she was doing just fine on her own. She had made it this far and she would make it even farther without help.
But there was a truth to her words that she couldn't quite deny. How could she claim that she was trying to train better capes if she didn't even bother with the ones that actually lived up to her standards? Even so, the thought of giving up what little control she had was something that made her insides twist like a tornado.
"Please, at least meet with her. If you still don't want to go through with it I'll let it go," Annette said. Emily tried to keep herself from swallowing. She knew that Annette had given her control of the conversation by putting the choice in her court instead of pushing it, but it still made it no less daunting. Admitting that she needed parahuman help would be an admittance that she couldn't take care of herself, that she needed powers beyond human ken in order to carry on with her life.
But then again, she wouldn't have survived Nilbog's goblins if Annette's minions hadn't interceded. She owed her life to the parahuman next to her, as did over three hundred individuals. She trusted the woman's judgment before in life and death situations before, would this really be so different? At the very least she could go meet the girl if time allowed it, and at least then Annette would stop pestering her about it.
"Alright, I'll go meet her. I'm not promising anything," she added with a searing glare that could have melted steel. Annette remained unaffected by the glare, giving the woman a grin that made her hairs stand up on end. It was like looking at the cat that ate the canary.
This may have been a mistake.
Piggot is healing, but she still as a ways to go.
So, some worldbuilding in this snippet that I want to explain.
Media
Piggot might be overstating it a bit, but the Protectorate does have the major news channels eating out of the palm of their hands and can direct the narrative as they see fit. Part of this is in part of Cauldron's interference (yes this is a Cauldron plot). Cauldron wants to have as many parahumans available to fight Scion as they can, and thus they consider unpowered individuals to be of lesser value. Now, most capes are glass cannons that anyone with a gun could take down, and Cauldron knows this. They don't want their troops to be killed because a few crazies decided that they don't like parahumans. So, they've slowly been shaping the culture and public perception of capes into something more than human, something that no regular Joe could stand up to. Ellisburg just served as the nail in the coffin so to speak, allowing them to prove that unpowered individuals had no place fighting with parahumans.
Granted, there are parahumans that a person couldn't kill without a nuke, but those are few and far between. But we really don't see many demonstrations of regular people fighting parahumans that much in Worm. There are a few cases like the Dragonslayers (though they use Tinker Tech and Saint is a Teacher thrall) and Coil's mercenaries and Fleur's murderer. But you don't really see a random gang member picking up a gun and filling Miss Militia's face with lead despite being extremely vulnerable compared to some of her other capes. She can dish out massive firepower but is only as tough as a trained human.
Cauldron needed to create a culture where the thought of a normal fighting a parahuman was unthinkable, so they used Ellisburg as a subtle propaganda point. They pushed aside the PRT contributions and focused on the Protectorate ranks. This did alienate Annette and the survivors quite a bit, but they viewed it as an acceptable loss with the possible gains they would be able to make in the future. They did cry out for justice and they did get it, but their interactions with the media were heavily monitored and restricted, and if anything got out that contradicted the narrative the Protectorate had woven they weren't treated with much seriousness. After all, if Alexandria is on the screen telling you that you can't fight a cape compared to a deeply traumatized individual whose one lone voice against everything the media has told you, who are you going to believe?
There is some significant debate about the whole thing, the PR teams weren't entirely able to quash rebellious ideas, but they're treated more academically and theoretically. And after several years of Endbringer attacks and gangs, the people in charge don't want to rock the boat too much, even if Cauldron would allow them in the first place.
New Wave
So, New Wave's situation is a bit different than it was in canon. Here Fleur's murder was basically butterflied away with the death of Allfather and Kaiser, which weakened the Empire significantly. While they do have a relationship with the local Protectorate branch, they have a much closer one with the Guild through Annette's influence. While they don't really focus that much on small time stuff, the Guild does have a powerful reputation and having an independent group backed by them does give them some standing. Other independent groups have emerged in the wake of New Wave, but they aren't as successful as they had initially hoped (but far better than in canon).
Amy is in a bit of a better headspace thanks to Annette's influence, as she treats the New Wave kids as if they're her own alongside Cindy. Amy has a mother figure that she can actually look up to and be appreciated by. She also is flexing her power more creatively than she was in canon since she can now collaborate with Riley without being an insane murderer. She doesn't feel the guilt and pressure that much since her projects with the bio-tinker are helping a lot of people, more than those that she heals locally. Annette does have a little bit of a hangup with how similar her powers are to Nilbog's, but she doesn't allow it to affect her relationship with the girl. Victoria is a bit more cautious with her powers after Annette pounded it into her head about the dangers of unchecked power. All in all, I would say that New Wave is in a much better place than they were in canon. They still have issues, but they aren't as pressing as they could be.
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