January 3rd, 2011 - Monday
Morning
Three PRT vans rolled into Winslow's parking lot. The panicked calls that flooded their lines fifteen minutes ago had been more than adequate explanation to the scale of the response - a Master attack against kids did not deserve any less - but Assault and Battery had another, less public reason for their concern. Unknown to the troopers disembarking before them, one of the callers had been Shadow Stalker in her civilian identity. The possibility of her being the intended target could not be dismissed lightly. Even Assault, the joker, had been uncharacteristically quiet during the trip.
Battery was the first of the two out of the van, and took in the decrepit building. Faces filled the windows, many frightened, some curious. There was a tension in the air, but no sign of outright panic.
"Guess the party's over, at least. Let's get inside, check on the victims." Assault suited action to word and moved forward, and Battery followed him in.
The scene was in one of the hallways. Thirty people were there, all in various degrees of injury. Twelve people weren't moving at all, and one girl's neck was twisted in a way that guaranteed she'd never move again. A few others were lying in enough blood to make their condition unambiguous.
As the cape duo stepped closer, one of the healthier-looking victims, a short yet muscled black girl, waved them over. Both recognized Shadow Stalker, of course, but it wouldn't do to make that obvious.
"Can you tell us what happened here, Miss?" Battery took the lead - her partner's crassness was neither needed nor wanted here.
"Got here. One girl, the creepy loner type, you know these kinds of people - she was yelling at one of my friends for some reason. I tried to step in, we got into a fight, everything went spinning for a moment and then I was so angry. Everyone just... started tearing into each other. She ran off. I think she's gone. Everyone started calming down a couple of minutes later."
Battery nodded at that. She couldn't be sure it was really all over, of course, but the injured needed help and this sounded like a fresh trigger - unlikely that they'd come back around immediately. After ordering one of the troopers to call for Panacea, she asked Shadow Stalker:
"The girl who did this, do you know who she is? Her name, face?"
"Yeah. Hebert. Taylor Hebert."
Battery committed the name to memory. At the time, it did not strike her as odd that Sophia knew the name off-hand. She looked around for her partner, and found him approaching one of the lockers farther down the hallway, holding his nose.
"Hey, Puppy, take a look at this!" he shouted, voice somewhat muffled. As Battery came closer, it did not take her long to figure out why.
One of the lockers was wide open, a noxious red mess spilling out of it. Battery recognized the indistinct objects in it as used tampons.
"Hey!" she called out towards the victims. "Is this Hebert's locker?"
A couple of the less injured students shouted confirmations back.
"Seems we'll have to check out her house, then. If there's anywhere we'll find answers, it's there. Hell, maybe the girl even ran back home, it's not unusual for fresh triggers to do that," Assault noted. The pair then sent one of the troopers to talk with the principal and get the girl's home address. By the time he returned, Panacea was already there, setting a curvy redhead's jaw back in its place. Battery couldn't help but note that the two most injured have been skipped over with a weary shake of the head...
~o~o~o~
January 3rd, 2011 - Monday
Afternoon
Miss Militia, flanked by two PRT officers, knocked on the door to the Hebert house. It took a few hours for a search warrant to be issued, and entering the house was ruled out on the grounds that the PRT troopers assigned to watch it reported no signs of either inhabitant being home until an hour ago, when Danny Hebert returned home, agitated. Apparently he'd heard about what had happened in the school and came home to look for his daughter.
When the door opened, Militia saw a tall, thin, balding man seemingly on the verge of panic.
"Is this about Winslow? I heard that there's been an attack and she ran off, but she hasn't come home. What happened? Have you found her?" Hannah could see that it was all he could do not to break down there and then.
"I'm sorry, Mr Hebert, we haven't. We're trying to find her, but we need leads. We'll have to search the house," she said, holding out the warrant for him to read. He looked at it with dead eyes, then opened the door wider and stepped back. Miss Militia and the officers entered. One of them, whose nametag read "Hernandez", spoke to Danny.
"Sorry about the broken step, sir. We'll cover the repairs," he said, slightly embarrassed, while his colleague, Officer Hill, went upstairs. Finding Taylor's room, she started her search while Officer Hernandez examined the living room. Miss Militia turned back to Danny.
"Have you noticed your daughter behaving oddly recently, Mr Hebert? New friends, falling out with old friends, going out at unusual times, dropping grades, anything?"
"Nothing recent, no. She's been withdrawn since... since Annette, but it's been almost two years," he replied after a few moments' thinking.
"Does she have any friends she regularly hangs out with? Maybe we could talk to them?"
"Emma Barnes, though now that I think of it I haven't seen them together in a while. She hasn't mentioned anyone else."
Miss Militia frowned. The name sounded familiar. A few more standard questions resulted in no other leads and painted a picture of a reclusive, lonely girl. Hannah couldn't help but remember the theories she'd heard about Master triggers. If there's a perfect fit for one...
Her thoughts were interrupted by Officer Hill making her way back down. In her gloved hands was a journal.
"Well, if we're looking for a motive, we definitely found one. Damn, if this is true..." she said, handing the journal to Miss Militia.
Flipping past the first few pages, the picture started falling into place. A bullying campaign like that was something she could scarcely believe could happen without anyone noticing, but there were too many details, too many events to be pure fabrication. And three names were repeated page after page.
Madison Clements.
Emma Barnes.
Sophia Hess.
Putting the journal into an evidence bag before she crushed it, Hannah asked Danny one last question.
"When did you say the last time you saw your daughter hanging out with Ms Barnes was, Mr Hebert?"
When she explained the reasoning behind the question, Miss Militia learned that Danny was a man with a temper. He did, however, seem to understand that going to the Barnes' house and beating his old friend up would only make things worse. Shadow Stalker has some explaining to do.
~o~o~o~
January 3rd, 2011 - Monday
Evening
"Gone? What do you mean, gone?"
Emily Piggot had been getting bad news the entire day. A Master triggering and attacking Winslow first thing Monday morning was unusual even by Brokcton Bay standards. Finding out her troublemaker Ward was likely responsible for that, an hour after she'd been sent home, didn't do her mood any favors either.
The squad captain gulped.
"Ma'am. We entered the Hess residence, according to her mother, she had went straight to her room after returning and hadn't left it. When we got past the lock, however, there was no sign of Miss Hess. Most drawers and the wardrobe were open, it seemed as if she'd packed her things and left in a hurry. We also found no sign of her costume or weapons."
"And you didn't find anything hinting at where she went."
"No, ma'am. Her phones were gone too, and the family didn't even know she was gone."
Piggot sighed. As... upset... about this whole mess she was, the trooper before her was not at fault.
"Dismissed, Captain."
The man saluted and left the room. Piggot sent Armsmaster a message. He appeared in her office five minutes later.
"Yes, Director?"
"I presume tracing Hess's phones didn't accomplish anything?"
"Unfortunately, no. We checked around the last known location - they were broken and tossed in dumpsters. It is unlikely that the data's recoverable after the damage."
One more thing that couldn't go right today.
"We have, however, figured out how she knew we were coming for her."
"Go on."
"About fifteen minutes before the squad approached, she received a call on her civilian phone from Emma Barnes. Her father, Alan Barnes, had been called by Danny Hebert half an hour before that."
"So we're guessing he called Mr Barnes to yell at him for letting his daughter bully Miss Hebert, and let it slip that we'd found the journal?"
"As good a guess as any. We'll have to ask him about that, of course."
"Seems we'll have to. No chance of bringing Hess in fast and quiet now - we have to be ready to explain things to the public if she goes out in costume now."
The visible part of Armsmaster's face had a grimace to match Emily's own. The man was not a fan of the media when it wasn't singing his praises. Emily continued.
"Miss Hebert herself is still a concern, as well. We can't cover up a Master attack that resulted in eight deaths, even for a trigger event. Try to bring her in, we can't have a Master this dangerous recruited by a gang, but judging by the fact her first act was to go into hiding, she's likely to try keeping her head down at least in the short term. We can't make her a priority between the gangs and the Shadow Stalker situation, however. Dismissed."
~o~o~o~
January 15th, 2011 - Saturday
Afternoon
As the elevator doors parted before Dean, he heard raucous laughter coming from the Wards room. Dennis and Missy were looking at a screen and laughing their asses off.
"What's so funny?"
They both turned back to look at him. Dennis's aura had a faint hint of amusement at recognizing him. Missy's reaction was... more enthusiastic.
"Oh, I'll answer that with a question: How do you beat a motherfucking Nazi?" the redhead responded, eyes mirthful.
"Alright, I'll bite. How do you beat a motherfucking Nazi?"
Dean finally made it across the room to see the screen they were staring at. Proudly displayed on it was a slightly-blurry image of a black-haired teenage girl swinging a white - literally white - man by the legs into another man, one wearing medieval-style armor. The image was captioned "I'LL BEAT A MOTHERFUCKING NAZI/WITH ANOTHER MOTHERFUCKING NAZI."
"Wait... isn't that..?" Dean started.
"Eris, Alabaster, Crusader. Yeah, there's video too." Missy was trying to hold in her laughter and almost succeeding. Dean wisely decided against pointing out that it made her look like a child trying too hard to look grown-up. She continued in a calmer voice. "Jokes aside, that means we'll have to update the profile. Strength like that, and I'm pretty sure she got shot at one point - a Brute/Master in one package is going to be a pain to deal with. We'll need to check if the Director saw this, well, not this this" - she pointed at the captioned image - "but I think she'll appreciate knowing what the new cape in town can do. If nobody else has told her yet, anyway."
Dean couldn't help but shudder at the idea of fighting a villainous mirror to Vicky. At least Eris couldn't fly...
~o~o~o~
January 31st, 2011 - Monday
Morning
"Can someone explain to me," Director Piggot asked nobody in particular, twitch in her eye, "why all the Merchant capes are wrapped in cocoons right in front of the PRT building?"