Interlude: Shadow Stalker
Several days earlier...
It sucks really. To be sitting in an office with a bunch of up-tight jackasses you can't stand and who can't stand you just as much.
Such was her life in the PRT. She couldn't stand the children. Her so called teammates. Even that stick up his ass Gallant or the wound up Aegis. Just prey. Sheep walking around trying to act like wolves.
Now she's sitting in a fucking conference room. The fat pig of a director sitting across from her. Robot boy scout to the left and Militia on her right.
All because of Taylor-fucking-Hebert.
Stupid little cunt just couldn't keep her mouth shut, could she? The fucking rat.
"You were a headache from day one Sophia." Piggot muttered, leafing through a file. Just for show most likely. "Give me one good reason not to throw you into juvie head first?"
'Oh come off it you overgrown slug. You've already decided what to do; this is just a puppet show at this point.'
She stayed quiet.
"What's wrong? Nothing to say? Are you genuinely that worthless that you can't think of a single reason?"
Her fists clenched under the table.
Piggot closed the file and stared at her. "Alright then, if you're short on reasons then I guess we're done here."
She closed the file and made to stand.
For that split second Sophia's heart fell into a pit in her stomach, a sudden fear taking her.
Was she afraid of Juvenile hall? Of the weak, degenerate lowlife's sitting in that pit?
No.
Did she want to be labeled as one more of those weak degenerate lowlifes? To have her name on public record that she was just another weak, pathetic creature of prey?
No. That she didn't want. She didn't want at all.
"I have the highest takedown/capture rate of any ward." She growled.
"You also have the highest assault and battery complaints against you. Excessive use of force is a word that gets thrown around an absurd amount of times whenever you're involved."
"I've followed every last one of your fucking rules. I've toed your lines, jumped your hoops, played nice with the fucking brats. What I do on my own time-"
"Is my business like everything else in your life. You're a probationary ward Miss Hess. For all intents and purposes I own your hide right now." The director drawled, eyes sharp as flint knives.
She was certain she was about to chip a tooth. Not even her mask would have been able to hide the sheer loathing on her face right now.
"As for following the rules-" She reached down, beside her seat, where she pulled out a familiar bag that made Sophia's heart sink to her feet.
Piggot reached in and pulled out a single, sharp, metal tipped crossbow bolt from where it was strapped in there.
"Recognize this?" She asked rhetorically. "I do. Its one of those things I specifically recall you were told could not be used anymore under any circumstances and yet here they are, found under your mattress."
She was shaking with palpable fury. If looks could kill, Director Piggot would probably have fared better facing Behemoth with nothing more than her hand gun.
"With this alone I'd have enough to revoke your status as a Ward." She drawled, setting the arrow back down. "With this and the mound of evidence provided by Miss Hebert, circumstantial though it might be I'd have enough to bury you in juvie until you turned eighteen. Probably keep you on some kind of probation immediately after as well."
"It's all circumstantial. You just said it." She hissed. That pathetic little bitch was going to pay for this! "You'll never make anything stick! Me keeping arrows under my bed as a novelty isn't evidence either."
"Legal lesson's one-o-one from Mr. Barnes?" Piggot smiled. It was not pretty. "Contrary to a divorce lawyer's legal strategy of filing motion after motion until one side runs out of money. We have a better cut of the crop when it comes to private and public attorneys. I assure you. Circumstantial evidence, in enough quantities, is enough to hold a criminal conviction. That's not even taking in your checkered past and unfavorable psychological evaluations that could be added to the pile."
"And your criminal negligence on keeping me on despite knowing all those so called psych evaluations."
Piggot's smile died and Sophia's was born.
"Yeah." The young woman hissed. "You forget my bad deeds can look just as bad on you as it does on me! You'll be called negligent or fucking stupid Piggy! And you know that!" She added the last part as the pieces came together in her head, a predatory grin spreading over her face. "That's why you're talking to me here and not behind electrified walls! So put the fucking dance and pony show to rest and say what you goddamn came here to say so we can both get back to not having to look at each-other again."
This time, it was the director's look that was murderous, her jaw was clenched so tight it looked like it'd have to be pried loose with a crowbar.
When she finally did speak it was practically through grit teeth. "Make no mistake Miss Hess. You are only being kept here, not because anything you say is something we couldn't recover from, public relations wise, but because you're the most expendable piece of shit I have need of at the moment."
Now they were getting somewhere. Sophia smirked. 'Called it.'
Piggot though, didn't look as though she could bring herself to say further. So bucket of paranoid bolts decided to step in for her fat ass.
"There is a new drug just hitting the streets of the bay now. Its called Dry Dust." He drawled sounding as bored and as placid as ever. "We're not sure where it comes from, and we're not sure who exactly are distributing it. Neither Kaiser nor Lung have shown much increased drug trafficking movements over the last few months so that leaves us with two potential sources. The elusive Coil and the Merchants."
"We're sending you." Piggy finally seemed to have taken enough deep breaths to speak calmly again. "To track this source down. This drug has an unbelievably high addiction rate and a fatality rate that's almost as bad. Your saving grace. If this was angel dust or cocaine I'd be walking you to a cell myself you little degenerate. But then you'd be useless and I'd be no closer to stopping this drug before it becomes an epidemic. With a nearly one hundred percent addiction rate, detox labeled as ineffective and a forty-percent death rate on withdrawal, cops are reluctant to send in undercovers to infiltrate the Merchants who will shoot up just about anything. Protectorate capes are too well known and none of my Wards are infiltrators. If you're caught, or killed, you're an unfortunate Ward who went off on her own and got in over her head. PR would take a hit for a month or two with the Youth Guard coming down like the vultures they are but after that my world will keep spinning without the headache you represent."
The director leaned forward. "You do this for me, and don't fuck up in any way, I'll sign you transfer papers to Los Angeles myself. Let Alexandria deal with you. You get to start fresh Sophia. Hopefully there you won't bury yourself in a hole like you did here. Or maybe you will. In which case, it'll be under her watch. Not mine. Either way I win."
The director seemed to pause, thinking about something. "Oh and one more thing."
She reached down Sophia half thought she was going to pull something out again when there was a spike of pain from her leg. "Ahh! What the fu-" She stood, the chair upturning itself behind her.
There was a dart sticking out of her shin.
"Little something Armsmaster came up with." She drawled. "Tiny trackers. All but fusing with your bloodstream in a handful of seconds. With a battery life of nearly ten years. Just in-case you're even dumber than I think you are and you'd try to run." She placed the small gun on the table in front of her. "Go outside Brockton Bay's limits without clearance? Next time I see you your ass is in a cell."
It took every last ounce of her willpower to not jump across the table and see if Piggy squealed like her namesake and gut her like one. Only Armsmaster's flat glare and the look of warning Miss Militia was giving her made her reign herself in.
Ten. Minutes. Alone...
"Are we fucking done?" She bit out through clenched teeth.
"Almost. When you leave don't return to your room. Your effects have been cleaned out. You will be held in a separate facility for the duration of your remaining work here. You are to stay away from Hebert. Approach her under any circumstances and the deal is revoked, immediately and without question. Do so, and it's juvie. I don't care if you even just bump into her at the same gas station. Do I make myself clear."
"Yeah. Leave the weak little cunt in peace." She could almost feel the heat of Miss Militia's eyes intensify on her.
Piggot stared at her dead in the eyes. "Should you give me any reason to regret this decision Miss Hess; I will bury you."
"You done?"
She flicked her hand in a dismissive wave.
Agents twice her size all but threw themselves in the wall to get out of her way.
It was five minutes later that Sophia was outside, waiting for the PRT van that would take her to the safe-house she would be staying in.
A hand clamped onto her shoulder hard. She barely had time to react before she was turned around, the hand clasped onto the juncture of her neck and collarbone.
Miss Militia stood there, eyes like coals as they all but burned.
"You." Her voice was a whisper, nearly taken with the sound of the waves hitting the rocky shoals nearby. "Are on the thinnest ice you can possibly fucking imagine. Piggot is keeping you here. You don't want to know what I voted for. If you so much as dare to fuck around like you did before Sophia there won't be a pit deep enough that I could find."
"Get your fucking hands off me old woman." The teen hissed right back. "Fuck Hebert! Fuck You! Fuck Piggot and fuck this bullshit. You guys got a shiny new Ward and don't want to deal with the bad PR so you're throwing me under a bus."
"Its the directors job to deal with PR." The hand released her. "For me. I'm just sick that for some reason I have to call someone like you a Hero. The very last thing you want is to give me an excuse to strip that title away. As bad as you might wear it."
The van pulled up behind her and Miss Militia turned and stalked off on her heel with Sophia doing the same.
She had to get out of here before she decided to shoot a fucking bolt through half the empty skulls in the building.
"You strapped in?"
"Just fucking drive." She snarled.
Get this done and get the fuck out of the Bay. That was the goal at this point. Piggy was threatening with juvie if she so much as fucks up at best, Birdcage if the swine was feeling vindictive. Seeing as how she's being thrown into the lions to get this last assignment done she wouldn't put it past her.
The dark skinned girl looked out the window, towards the direction of her home. The sole reason she became a hero in the first place, a vigilante who made sure to send the message across.
She may never see her brother again. Her little brother, growing up in that shitstain of a house with a mom that was just as pathetic as the rest of the prey that littered the streets. She became a hero to clean up her neighborhood. She was gonna make sure her brother wasn't gonna be prey. Give him something...better...better than her house...better than the Bay...better than any two-bit-shit their mother decided to bring home.
And that four-eyed lanky cunt ruined it all.
She looked at her designated cell phone, made for contact with the PRT and soon-to-be-assigned Merchants only and opened up the text to Piggot.
Send my funds in the bank over to me in cash when this shit is done.
Sophia then deleted the text, and opened up another contact. T. Calvert.
Calvert. Can you send my paychecks to my little brother? I won't be getting them again here so I might as well give them to something useful.
Calvert was someone she...respected. He carried himself with great confidence and authority, even without powers and he was the one who brought her into the Wards. Fucking swiss army knife in a suit has nothing of a soul and the 'All american dream' bitch was on Hebert's side.
She felt her phone vibrate.
I understand. I will set up a trust fund for your brother. It won't go to waste Hess. Good luck. And delete this message.
Sophia let out a sigh of relief. That should be enough to send him to Boston College or Temple University for a good year or two when he got there. Working under Alexandria in the future should give her more funds to send his way. She deleted the text and sat back in the van, staring silently out the window.