1.16- Rally

The streets around the PRT Headquarters were clogged with bodies. From the roof of a neighboring building, I could look down at the sea of protestors. The buzz of hundreds of voices carried up to me, the anger palpable even from a distance.

BBPD members clad in riot gear hemmed the edges of the crowd, and a solid line of them kept anyone from entering PHQ. There were no capes in evidence though. A podium had been erected in front of PHQ, and various speakers were cycling through. The current speaker was haranguing the Protectorate for not being accountable enough. My turn was coming up soon.

"This is all for me?" I said. Krieg stood back from the railing, checking his phone. He looked up as I spoke.

"We didn't call it the 'March to Remember' for fun. They're here because of you."

"How many of them are Empire?"

Krieg chuckled. "Not all of them. Kaiser loved getting a chance to take a shot at the Protectorate, but a lot of them are just regular civilians. It turns out that a lot of people aren't big fans of heroes killing normals."

I stared over the railing again. There were a lot of people down there.

"Geez. You're sure they're going to listen to me?"

"Nobody likes seeing capes get away with murder, Taylor. The Protectorate is going to regret this for a long time."

Someone in the crowd tossed up a beach ball. I watched it bounce around knots of protestors while I thought. Originally, my incentive to speak here was to align myself with the Empire. I didn't want to do that anymore, but I hadn't backed down. Here was a chance to not only punish the Protectorate for keeping Sophia around, but to ensure that she was forever remembered as a murderer.

Was it fair to go after the entire Protectorate for what she did? Probably not, but I deserved some payback, and there was no way they couldn't have noticed what a psycho she was. As far as I was concerned, they were as complicit as Winslow was. Speaking of Winslow-

I flicked through my speech notes and added a reminder about Winslow. I was going to throw them under the bus. The Protectorate I might cut a little slack, but Winslow? Fuck them.

Krieg checked his phone again. "Alright. My contact just texted me. You're up in twenty minutes."

Yay. Public speaking, my favorite. If I still had the ability, I'd have been sweating buckets.

"You're just going to watch from up here?"

"I'm not a fan of crowds. And Kaiser can't know I was involved in this. There are enough of our people down there that someone might recognize me." Krieg sidled up to lean against the railing. "The view from here is better anyway."

"Alright then." I left Krieg and moved further down the roof. The wind rustled my hood as I went. It was a new addition to my costume; Krieg's idea. He thought that it'd be easier for people to empathize with someone who wasn't headless. It was hard for me to tell, but I liked the effect. My outfit felt more complete with it.

Allfather was crowd-watching on the far corner of the roof, his helmet swiveling back and forth rapidly. As I approached, he faced me.

"I… hey." I said awkwardly. He looked at me, not speaking. "Are you ready?"

"I'm ready." He said. "Are you?"

I was very glad I couldn't throw up, because I was that level of nervous. Allfather seemed to see something similar in my expression.

"Taylor, you…" He hesitated, before doing something I didn't expect. He pushed away from the railing and put his hands on my shoulders.

"Listen, I gave what you said to me some thought. What you said about your role. I thought about my role in this and… Taylor, I owe you an apology."

"Allfather, you don't, really-"

"I do." He said firmly. "I was having trouble coming to terms with things, but it wasn't fair to take it out on you. I was, as Skidmark would put it, a 'Nazi dickweed.'"

I snorted with laughter. "You were kind of a dick. But look, it's- everybody deals with shit in different ways. I spent an entire month moping around. I shouldn't have expected you to just get over it right away."

"Let's just say we're both sorry then." He said.

I nodded, and a sliver of tension slid out of my heart.

"I have a few other things to cover before you go up there." Allfather continued. "The first is the Empire."

"I'm not joining." I interjected. "I mean it."

Allfather leaned in, and I could see his eye narrowed slyly behind his visor. "Fine. Don't join."

I stared at him. Allfather had basically done nothing but insist on me joining the Empire since I'd met him.

"You don't have to join them. But that doesn't mean you need to burn that bridge. When we kill my son, you'll have the gratitude and support of the Empire. Krieg will aid you in whatever ways you need."

"I don't know…" I said slowly. "I really don't want to be with them."

"Then don't be. Leverage their support. Your deeds will make you a favored daughter of the Empire, regardless of where you stand on the matter. Even if they don't support our killing Kaiser, what you do here-"

He swept his hand wide, encompassing the entire crowd. "What you do here today will tie you to the Empire in a meaningful way. Treat it like mercenary work. You'll do them a favor now and then, and they'll repay you."

"How are they supposed to repay me?" I said. There were two things I wanted in the world: ghosts and Dad.

When Allfather spoke, I could hear his grin. "Ghosts, Taylor. Ghosts. The Empire is one of the best connected parahuman groups in America. How many dead capes will they know about? Not just here, but across the country. And if they contact Gessellschaft, you'll have a shot at ghosts across Europe."

I couldn't stop my eyes from going wide. I wouldn't be stuck scrounging in Brockton Bay; I'd have free access to ghosts all over. Who knew who I'd meet? What problems I could help with? It was like a buffet of spirits.

"You're drooling." Allfather said.

"Am not!" I wiped my mouth as discretely as I could.

"So you'll think about it?" He said. "I know you had reservations about the Empire, and I think this settles most of them."

All those ghosts…

"I'll think about it." I said.

"Good. Now, there was something else I needed to talk to you about."

Allfather stepped back and drew his hand through the air. Space rippled as he pulled a weapon from nowhere.

"I wanted to save this for when we went after Shadow Stalker together, but as circumstances aren't leaning that way anymore, I'm going to give it to you now."

He held up the weapon to me. It was a knife, only about as long as my hand. The sheath was black, banded with metal. Set into the grip was a tiny silver eagle holding a swastika. I took the knife and drew it. The blade was double-edged, and inscribed on it was a phrase in German.

"A Nazi knife?" I said dryly.

"There's a story behind it." Allfather said. "It was my grandfather's."

"Your grandfather was a Nazi?"

That was something. That made Kaiser what- A fourth generation Nazi?

Allfather chuckled. "My grandfather brought that home from the Occupation. My father was the first white supremacist in our family. When I became a man, he passed the knife down to me. When Max was about your age, I took him out and he made his first kill with that knife. I'd hoped that you might do something similar with Shadow Stalker."

I gaped at him. "That is… the most fucked-up thing ever, Allfather. I can't even begin to explain to you how messed up this conversation is."

"You don't like it?"

"I'm going to kill Sophia with it."

The level of fucked-up that we were at was exactly what she deserved.

Allfather reached out and closed my fingers over the knife, resting his hand on mine.

"I'm glad you're happy with it." He said.

"You're a Nazi sociopath, I have to take what I can get. But… thanks. It's fucked-up, but it's sweet."

I glanced out at the crowd. The speaker was leaving the podium.

"Showtime!" Krieg called to us.

Allfather undid his sword belt and threaded my knife onto it. I lifted my cloak as he synched the belt around my waist. His hands were gentle, sliding the belt into place with practiced ease. I was starved for human contact and I'd take what I could get, but the way Allfather was so careful with me was touching. It added an odd sort of intimacy to the act.

"Ready?" Allfather said, straightening up. I tugged on the belt. The knife was an unfamiliar weight at my waist.

"Ready." I said. I took his hand, and he stepped closer to me.

"Don't be nervous Taylor. You can do this. This is your moment; your debut." He squeezed my hand softly. "While I was thinking about our roles, I thought of something. Don't go out there as Empress. That's not you, and I was wrong to push you that way. I think I know your name now though."

Allfather leaned in and whispered a name in my ear.

My smile was all the confirmation he needed.

I let him dissolve. As he returned to my well, I repaired the damage done to his shard from losing his belt. And then I summoned another ghost.

Runechild appeared, holding her hood down against the wind.

"Let's get your Nazi on!" She shouted.

She seized my hand and we moved. I expected a rush of sound or maybe a void, but when we teleported, we simply were elsewhere. Runechild had teleported us to the bottom of the PHQ steps.

The crowd around me fell back as I stood. A wave of noise swept through them; voices rising suddenly in surprise or fear or awe. I straightened my cloak and focused solely on what I had to do. I had to give a speech. I wasn't nervous, because I didn't have nerves. Right.

I walked calmly and deliberately up the PHQ steps. The BBPD officers were murmuring into their radios, but none of them made a move to stop me. Runechild vanished with a whispered "good luck," and Allfather reappeared. He surveyed the crowd before falling into step behind me. I stopped halfway up the stairs. With a thought, I called Michael to stand at the podium. He would be my voice.

"Do it here." Allfather whispered. "Don't hide behind the podium. Speak to them from here. Michael can use the microphone."

I turned and faced the crowd; staring at them for a long moment. Hundreds of faces stared back. The entire street had gone suddenly silent. Flashbulbs ignited here and there. Television cameras angled to get a better shot. All eyes were on me. The world's eyes were on me.

Allfather whispered to me again. "Be proud and strong like you know you can be. Awe them."

I took a deep, meaningless breath, and then spread my arms.

"Ladies and gentlemen of Brockton Bay, I am Valkyrie."

Gallant suffered in silence. The crowd's noise was muted inside PHQ, but its mental noise was deafening. He was as far from the window as he could get and still be in the conference room, but a haze of emotion drifted off the crowd; like light pollution lighting up the clouds above a city. They were so emotional that he could see it. The effect was nauseating. Fear-blue blending with orangered-rage and anger, interspersed with patches of joy-green.

He wanted to say something, but he knew that it would be inappropriate. He knew by looking that the others were under just as much pressure as he was. The room was filled to capacity; all the Protectorate members were there, and the Wards as well. Every one of them wore some variation on stress or Piggot glowed a healthy stress-gray, streaked through with dark lines of pain, all simmering in a deep burgundy of disgust.

"This is one of the worst possible scenarios." Piggot said. She gave no outer sign of what she was feeling; continuing the meeting like they were discussing standard regulations.

"I'm not going to mince words with you all. There's a very good chance that I, Armsmaster and Miss Militia will all be out of a job when this is over."

Armsmaster's anger-red flared into life, but he only nodded at Piggot's words. Miss Militia was silent as well, staring down at the protesters through the window. Her emotions were raging; burning red, but undercut with white for righteous anger.

"The only possible way to salvage something from this whole mess is if we catch Shadow Stalker. Wards, I'm including you in this. We need to be the ones to clean house. If we bring her in, we might have a shot. We've got to show the world that she was an outlier; that we are heroes."

"What's the plan?" Aegis said. Clockblocker nodded soberly.

"Quick and fast." Piggot said. "She crossed a line and now we've got to hit her like the hammer of God. Before the villains do."

"Christ." Kid Win muttered. "We'd be a laughing stock."

Piggot looked at Kid Win. "Not just us. The entire Protectorate's reputation will take a hit. The press would crucify us."

Gallant could imagine without any difficulty what would happen. Piggot would be fired, they'd lose both senior Protectorate capes, and their entire branch would fall apart. And beyond that? If they got shown up by villains; the entire country would know that the Protectorate was too incompetent to police itself. That the villains were doing a better job at it than they were. Crucify was a polite way of putting it.

"How many of us will still be here when this is over?" He thought.

"We know Shadow Stalker. We know what she's like; how she operates. She won't be able to stay off the radar for long. Especially if she's traveling with that civilian girl." Piggot said.

Miss Militia spoke up from the window. "Emma Barnes. She'll limit what Sophia can do. And it adds another person for us to get to Sophia through."

"Dragon is monitoring for anything that might tie back to Shadow Stalker." Armsmaster contributed. "They're probably hitching or using cash, because we haven't found them yet. I've got several predicted routes for where they might go. I'll forward them to each of you after the meeting. In the meantime we need to…" Armsmaster trailed off suddenly, looking up.

Gallant looked up at the same instant. The crowd noise had suddenly gone off like fireworks; blazing into a riot of yellow-fear and teal-shock. He stumbled to the window, dizzy with the sheer force of what they were feeling.

Far below, a single figure in red faced the crowd.

"Tv cameras just picked up something at the rally!" Armsmaster shouted. He tapped a button on his gauntlet, and the conference room's display screen flashed on. The entire room stared at the news footage.

"-come to talk to you about Shadow Stalker. Or as you know her, Sophia Hess. But I'm here to talk to you about someone more important. Who you're all here for. Taylor Hebert."

The figure on the screen was swathed in bloody rags, backed by a huge man in armor and a cloudy thing that Gallant thought was a man. The man-thing spoke into the microphone, but the figure- a woman judging by the dress, gestured like she was the one speaking.

"I speak with the dead. Dead parahumans to be specific. And I tell you this- Taylor Hebert died a parahuman! It was why she was murdered. Shadow Stalker was eliminating a rival- breaking the unspoken laws that govern all parahumans to murder an innocent girl!"

"Oh shit." Clockblocker said quietly. "What the hell is that? And- geez! What's with that voice?!"

Gallant agreed with him wholeheartedly. The speaker's voice- whether the man's or the cloaked woman's, was awful. Like a chorus speaking in unison; voices echoing out of the depths of a crypt.

"An unknown cape." Armsmaster said. "The other one… Allfather again?"

"From when Skidmark died." Battery said, not looking away from the tv.

Armsmaster nodded. "The one I thought was a projection. But there're more of them now. Gallant, what do you see off them?"

He squinted, looking out the window. It was like staring into the sun.

"The woman is… angry, nervous, excited. The armored man- Allfather? He's elated. The third one doesn't register."

"Two capes and a projection then." Armsmaster said. He rose from his chair, drawing his halberd. "All of us together. We've got one wanted villain and one person of interest."

"No!" Miss Militia barked. "We can't go down there. They're here to protest us. If we step in to arrest those speakers, the whole crowd will rise up against us. Do you want to incite a riot, Armsmaster?"

"Miss Militia is right." Piggot said. "Hold positions here. When they leave, we follow. We don't need an audience for this."

Gallant slumped against the window. Below, the little figure kept on speaking.

"-we must rise up and unite in the face of this atrocity! Let the world know that we will not tolerate so-called heroes that kill. I promise you-"

"-that I will not rest until the murderer known as Shadow Stalker is-"

Whiskey pooled into the carpet where the bottle had fallen from her nerveless fingers. The room was filled with many other similar bottles, all empty.

Setsuna barely noticed. She sat on the bed, staring unseeingly at the television.

"It couldn't be." She whispered. "It's not possible."

It had only been a glimpse. The camera had swung around to catch the newcomer cape and Setsuna had seen. The girl was standing next to Valkyrie for only an instant before she vanished.

But she knew that stupid cape and frilled shirt better than she knew her own face. She knew because she saw the cape every time she let the dreams come. Knew it well enough to draw it; to sketch out every little spot of blood and viscera that stained it.

"Impossible."

Wait. Lung had gotten her a television attachment. She could rewind it. But where was…

She moved. In a heartbeat, she stood on the other side of the room. Behind her, her iterations tore the room apart to find the remote. They had only the briefest moments of life, but there were enough of them to be thorough.

Iteration 36 waved victoriously as she spotted the remote sitting under a box of moldy takeout. Setsuna staggered across to where 36 had been. She was just getting into staggering-drunk, but she wasn't feeling the buzz anymore. The news had cut through that like a silver bullet.

The television blooped as she rewound the news. Figures moved in rapid reverse motions until she found the right spot.

The camera spun wildly and focused in on the cape. Red-white, clothed in rags. Setsuna moved back to the bed, still staring at the tv. The rag-girl was odd- like one of her iterations. Spectral, but scrawny, black-haired, unimportant. Setsuna only cared for the other girl in the video.

"There." She hissed. The rag-girl strode forward and Setsuna saw the other girl clearly. That goddamned frilly shirt and cloak combo. Her useless domino mask. The way she grinned crookedly when she was nervous.

Setsuna found herself reaching for the hilt of a sword she didn't have. She moved to the door, and her iterations spoke as one. Spoke the name of a dead girl. A girl she'd killed years ago.

"Noriko."

"-there can be only death for her crimes. I say this- I have spoken with Taylor Hebert. Her last wish for this world was to protect her father. And where is he?! Comatose, because of Shadow Stalker! I swore to Taylor that I -"

She had her hands pressed to her mouth. The blood-cloaked figure was new, but she knew the man in armor well. Allfather. And if this girl was associated with Allfather, then she had to be…

"Oh my god. It's her." Amy said.

"It's who?" Victoria said. She was sprawled across the floor, flipping through a magazine.

"The girl from the hospital. The Empress." Amy said numbly.

Carol looked up from her book. She glanced at the tv and then back at Amy. Her glare was piercing; her suspicion naked.

"What did you do, Amy?"

"-uphold her will; that I would bring peace to the dead. I will right this wrong-"

Sophia kept one hand laced through Emma's hair, but the other mashed the volume button on the remote. The shitty motel tv was too quiet.

"'s too loud." Emma murmured sleepily from across her lap. "Soph…"

On screen, the cape called for her death. Called it a crusade. Sophia's grin was almost feral. She shifted, slipping out from under Emma and leaving the bed. She only meant to get closer, but when she shifted, the screen changed. All the color was bleached away in her shadow state, but she'd never seen a change like this.

The cape on screen was a different person when Sophia used her powers. She shifted again, and the cape changed as well. It was like she suddenly came into focus and-

"Hebert." Sophia snarled. "God. Damn. Hebert."

For once, something quenched her anger. A new feeling; the joy of the hunt. Hebert was after her?

"Come and get me, you little bitch."

-

"-then and only then will Taylor Hebert be able to rest in peace." She paused. "Thank you."

Valkyrie looked to be waiting until the thunderous applause cleared, but it didn't stop. The crowd just kept cheering. They weren't happy or triumphant. Vicious hate was written large on every face the camera passed over. They wanted blood. They wanted Shadow Stalker's blood.

Finally, Valkyrie bowed to the crowd, and descended the stairs. The crowd parted in front of her like the Red Sea. She walked with slow, even strides. The man in armor moved to be alongside her. He bent slightly so that he could speak to her as they walked.

Max knew that walk anywhere. That cocky, self-assured walk that he deliberately imitated as Kaiser. He set down his pen, his paperwork forgotten.

It could be a Master. Some kind of illusion. Maybe a Tinker hologram. But he knew that it wasn't. Because he recognized that walk; had seen that walk for many, many years.

"Father."

His voice echoed through his cavernous office.

And then Max Anders laughed.

He laughed until it hurt.

SPEAKSPEAKSPEAKSPEAKSPEAK

Yeesh. This chapter was really cool when it came out, but is really embarrassing now. I had no idea where I was going with this shit. A lot of it is really cringeworthy and unrealistic now. Stuff like the Wards and the rally were plotpoints I threw in but had no idea what to use them for.

I did really enjoy finally getting to drop Taylor's cape name. We also get the first appearance of Black Kaze, who got namedropped in Browbeat's chapter, and finally shows up. Her inclusion was a complete whim. I threw her into Browbeat's chapter just for fun, and she stuck around.

There's a noticeable continuity error here in Sophia's segment- she sees Taylor with her powers, even though it's on tv and that makes no sense. The tv doesn't broadcast in extra-dimensional wavelengths, so there's no way to see her. It needed to stay in as foreshadowing for capes who could see through Taylor's powers, but it's a definite error.