Author's Note: This chapter is the first of five or six that all happen simultaneously. So if there are details that don't make sense yet, trust that they will soon. Thanks for sticking with me!

Chapter Twenty: Pass the Popcorn

March 18, 2011

Dean looked up as a new emotional aura pinged on his radar. "Heads up. Fi's here."

Dennis stopped talking immediately and the elevator door opened at the same time. Fi took in the room at a glance, then moved to join the group. She had already shed her mask, and she walked with casual, rolling grace rather than her intimidating strut. Her casual manner didn't change her emotions, which were as tumultuous as ever. At the moment, weariness and sorrow appeared to be winning.

"What's up?" Fi asked as she leaned on the back of Missy's chair. Taylor turned and smiled at the two of them.

"We're celebrating!" Her emotional health had improved in leaps and bounds, even in the few days he had known her, especially when she was with the other Wards.

"Is that so?" Fi glanced around the table, her eyes lingering on Jason for a moment, while gratitude surged in her aura. She always seemed a little more stable when Jason was in the room, but the sharp edges of her emotions attracted Dean's attention regardless. "Isn't it rude to celebrate your leaders' departures before they're actually gone?"

Carlos took the teasing in the manner intended, but Rory stifled an increased wave of guilt and self-doubt, even as he answered, "And make us miss the party?" The group chuckled. "We figured that we never really got to welcome you and Jason last month, and now Taylor has joined too. Plus arresting Hookwolf is no small potatoes. And Dennis said he wanted to see Carlos and I off in style."

"Or I just wanted an excuse to order extra pizza." Dennis pointed out in honest humor. Ever since Fi had healed his father, Dennis had been inordinately happy, and his humor lacked the cynical edge it usually held.

"We were just debating which movie to watch!" Jason told her, at ease as he so often wasn't around her. The responsibility of being the person she was closest to was one that the younger teen took very seriously, just as Dean knew it was his responsibility to watch for hidden stresses. Perhaps Jason didn't feel the need to be as careful, tonight.

Fi smiled at him, but her heart wasn't in it. "So what's our options?" Fi glanced at Missy, who naturally answered her. Jason's happiness increased a touch. He was probably pleased to see Fi integrate herself more.

He'd talked to Jason over a week ago, after seeing increasing frustration in his day-to-day interactions with the other Wards. His teammate had admitted that he didn't feel like he fit in the team. Seeing Fi start to make inroads had been a double edged sword for him. On one hand, he wanted to see the team dynamic improve and he knew that Fi needed a support system.

But on the other hand, he and Fi had been isolated together because of her campaign against Sophia and he felt like Fi was leaving him behind as she integrated herself into the team. Further, he didn't think the rest of the team took the same care to accommodate her stress as he did, and he was bitter that he was putting in so much more work. That he could watch Fi and Missy without jealousy was a positive sign.

The movie debate went around and around for another ten minutes, before Fi sensibly pointed out that the Wards would have plenty more opportunities to hang out together, so they should allow Carlos and Rory to decide. Conveniently, they favored the old horror movie that Fi herself had shown interest in.

The call came from reception that their pizza had arrived, so Fi put on her mask, and grabbed Dennis, who was still in costume, and went to go retrieve it from the lobby.

Once they returned, the Wards moved to one of the many lounges in the PRT base, where they sprawled out on couches and armchairs around one of the massive flat-screens normally used for presentations and briefings. They cued the movie up and settled in to watch.

Less than ten minutes in, Dean noticed that Fi's aura had gone nearly pure honey, with hints of a bubble-gum pink. Nostalgia, and innocent amusement. It was the calmest, most unified her aura had ever been. It was normal for an aura to have three or four colors at a time - people were complicated and what they felt was complicated - but watching Fi was often like watching a kaleidoscope of eight or nine competing emotions; she not only had more simultaneous feelings, but her feelings also shifted constantly, at a moment's notice, without any discernable pattern or stimuli.

Dean settled in to enjoy the movie, pleased that he could enjoy a night off with his teammates without the headache of Fi's sharp edges drawing his constant notice.

When the movie was over, the Wards all failed to get up. By mutual laziness, they sat on the couch and argued over the plausibility of the action sequences. The conversation slowly morphed, as they started retelling old stories, reliving previous victories.

"Reminds me of when we tried to take on Stormtiger and Cricket," Dennis said, and his aura took on the deep blue tinge of regret. "Man, did we bite off more than we could chew."

Missy threw a pizza crust at his head, acting defensive while she felt smug. After Rory and Dennis had gone down, Missy had stepped up to salvage a bad situation. "That was Velocity's call, not ours. Still, we did okay."

"Because we had help," Dennis reminded her. Dean shot his friend a sympathetic smile. If Shadow Stalker hadn't shown up when she did, Dennis might well be dead. It was a hell of an impression to make during her first encounter as a Ward, and Dean knew that Dennis had let it color his general impression of Sophia.

"What happened?" Jason asked, oblivious to the undercurrents.

Missy's aura flushed with orange, and she awkwardly glanced at Taylor, probably just realizing how difficult this might be for her to hear. Dennis stepped up casually to defuse the situation. "Shadow Stalker was out on an independent patrol and got the call from the console. We were able to get away without serious injury."

Taylor looked down, feeling just as uncomfortable, her aura the same orange, with a hint of anger in the heart of it leaking red. Jason went pale, glanced at her, and mumbled an apology.

Fi shrugged, staring into space, and spoke up. "Bad people do good things. Sometimes, bad people even save lives." No one replied. "Of course, that assumes that you can boil people down to labels as simple as bad or good."

She looked back at the group, at Rory specifically, and spoke directly to him. "That's why I don't like labels. Good, bad, hero, villain… doesn't matter. What matters is what a person has done, and what they will do."

Dean was surprised to see Rory's guilt fade away. Taylor looked up too, and the red anger had leaked out so that she was left with just a pale, awkward orange. Jason tried to meet Fi's eyes, but she was looking steadily at Rory.

Missy unintentionally broke off the silent communication as she changed the subject. "It's going to be so weird to not have you guys around."

Carlos, sitting next to her, put an arm around her shoulder. "We'll keep in touch."

"You're moving to California," she reminded him.

"It's not like it's another country," Fi put in, her aura drifting back to nostalgic. "It's two days' drive, no biggie."

"It's 3,000 miles." Carlos corrected. "Forty-four hours of driving without traffic. That's like four days of driving."

Fi shrugged. "Depends on how many speed limits you obey. And how many drivers you have to switch between. Besides, I'm defending you. You're not helping your case."

Carlos flushed as he remembered that he was supposed to be reassuring Missy. Fortunately for him, Fi's humor had done the trick. Missy's aura was a soft pink of amused, and the yellow-green of fondness. "I think I'll take the extra two days for safety's sake," Missy said as she squeezed Carlos' ribs.

"Can I ask something?" Taylor ventured as the topic died down, her aura the orange-pink of embarrassment. She summoned up orange-purple, forced bravery, and stifled brown-green fear of rejection.

"We're your team," Fi replied, more casually than she actually felt. Dennis and Missy picked up on Taylor's tenseness too, and both flushed identical shades of protective blue.

"I know trigger events aren't really talked about… but… well, I'm curious. The parahumans lecture didn't give any detailed examples. I know mine was…horrible… and I don't mean to pry, but…"

"Human curiosity is natural, even when it's morbid," Missy reassured her. "I got separated from my family when we were camping. I was lost for just over five days with no food, and no shelter. I woke up during the third night. I thought I heard something, but I couldn't see anything. I was hungry, I missed my parents, and I had this moment of clarity when I was certain I was going to get eaten.

"Something moved, I didn't see what, and I took a step back. Then I turned and ran until I collapsed. I must have triggered sometime during that run, but I don't remember exactly. I didn't even realize I was using my power at first, or what I was doing. Coving that much ground made it even harder for them to find me. My parents and I had never been much for the outdoors before that but after… we've never been back." Missy shrugged, not showing the pain and fear that still echoed in her even years later as she remembered the events.

Dean glanced at Rory, guessing that he would answer next, but he was just looking at his hands. Rory had always been very well adjusted to his trauma, able to talk about it calmly and use it to encourage younger capes. Maybe because he was older, when it happened, or because it was more mental than physical, Rory had never been affected in the same way. As a freshly triggered cape himself, hearing Rory talk about the worst day of his life and seeing how well adjusted he was had been a huge encouragement for Dean - a guarantee that things would get better. But now, though he'd never been shy about his trigger event before, he was flooded with shame.

Chris spoke instead, breaking Dean out of his thoughts. He'd talk to Rory later. "Mine was my dyscalculia, sort of. My older brother is really good at all sorts of science stuff, and we were working on trying to build a better rail gun. We'd spent just over a year on it, each trying to improve different pieces of the problem, but then he went to high school and we started drifting apart. The project was the only thing holding us together, for close to a year it was literally the only thing we could talk about any more.

"One day, I made a mistake in the calculations and when we tried to fire the gun it tore itself up. Ripped off the base and twisted in on itself. He stormed off and I sat there in the middle of the wreckage, and I had the sense that it was over. My last tie to my brother and I'd ruined it. I started picking up the pieces, but instead of putting them away, I put them together one last time. I forced everything to straighten out and I wired everything together. And then I fired it, and it accidentally blew a hole through my bedroom wall into his." Chris tried to grin, to shrug off his trauma like Missy had, but it was obviously brittle.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked." Taylor was blushing with embarrassment, and her aura showed regret too.

"Why did you?" Fi gently probed.

"I wondered if there was a correlation between the trigger and the powers. Because, well, my power didn't really help me. It sort of seems… pointless. We have a horrible experience, and undergo an enormous change… but it doesn't solve anything. I mean, stretching space actually hurt Missy and I thought I'd gone crazy at first. The powers don't solve the problem."

"What did happen?" Dean asked, softly. There had been hints, of course. They knew Taylor was bullied badly enough to need the hospital, and that she'd been put there by Shadow Stalker, but they hadn't gotten any details. Everyone seemed to hold their breath while they waited for an answer.

"They filled my locker with trash. Emma, and Madison… and Sophia." Taylor glanced at Fi and Jason, then looked down at her hands. "Emma was my best friend, once. A long time ago. They'd been attacking me since the start of high school, and it had only gotten worse when we came back from summer vacation, but before Christmas they sort of backed off.

"I could smell that something was wrong when I turned the corner. There were a lot of people around, curious, but not a crowd exactly. I opened my locker, and rotting trash just spilled everywhere. There was food, and paper… and biological waste. That's what the police called it. Tampons and pads. It was putrefied from being left there for three weeks.

"I threw up, and as I was retching Sophia shoved me into the locker. They left me there for hours. Not just Emma and her friends, but everyone else who had seen it too. And when my power kicked on, it made everything worse. Tons of new information, completely foreign, with no frame of reference… I didn't start to make sense of it until I was in the hospital. I thought I'd gone mad."

Dean saw Rory and Carlos exchange a heavy look, their auras tinged with worry, and he knew they were thinking what he himself was: could they have stopped it? If Sophia had been sentenced to juvie, instead of paroled to the Wards, could they have spared Taylor's pain?

Missy reached out and put a hand on Taylor's knee, offering comfort. Taylor smiled at her, then glanced around the circle. When she saw that no one was laughing, or trying to defend Sophia, her fear drained away and was replaced with gratitude and comfort. It was hard to realize how badly she had been broken, when her emotions around her teammates were usually so positive. But the way she had braced for rejection made it clear that the Wards had a lot of ground to cover to heal Taylor completely. She was strong, she'd had to be in order to survive, but she didn't quite believe that she wasn't alone anymore.

"Thank you for telling us," Jason said softly. "I know it's never easy to share." Taylor shrugged, a little embarrassed at being the focus of everyone's solemn attention, and Rory spared her from answering.

"He's right. You were brave to talk about it." He shifted awkwardly, and checked his watch, almost nervously. "I don't mean to rush off, but Carlos and I have to patrol with the Protectorate tomorrow morning. So, we'll see you around?" Carlos didn't look surprised at Rory's suggestion and abrupt departure, which was odd. Their whole reaction was odd. There was something he'd missed, but as he watched Rory and Carlos murmur goodbyes he didn't see anything that let him figure it out.

Once they were gone, the remaining Wards enjoyed a few moments of silence, and Dean realized that this was the new team.

They'd lost Shadow Stalker, and were about to lose Triumph and Aegis. But they'd gained Intrepid, Contract, and Beetle. It was back to being the seven of them again, but a very different seven. They had less experience, with both Beetle and Contract basically green capes, and Intrepid's previous assignment had been laid back compared to Brockton Bay. They had known each other for barely been a week, and yet the silence as they sat together wasn't oppressive as it might have been with the old group.

"I lost faith in humanity," Fi suddenly stated, breaking the silence. Everyone's head snapped up to stare at her in near-unison. Her aura was surprisingly calm, sort of resigned and sorrowful, with a hint of shame. She stared off to one side, not looking at anyone, as she continued. Anticipation crept into their auras as they realized what Fi was about to discuss.

"My family and I were travelling through Chicago, staying with a friend, when his six year old daughter disappeared. My family isn't powered, but there's no way any of us would stand by and let anything happen to one of our own. So we went out searching.

"I found the girl first, but before I could call it in, I got ambushed. I was dragged into the house, dazed as hell from the blow to my head, and put in cellar with six other girls, including Clarissa. A couple hours later, one of the Nazi bastards comes downstairs and hauls me up to a bedroom. When he was finished, he took me back, and his friend came down with us. As he was chaining me up, his buddy unlocked Clarissa. I knew what was going to happen to her.

"For about half a heartbeat, I was in denial. I couldn't believe that anyone could be that depraved. My mind just refused to accept the possibility. I couldn't understand that level of evil, couldn't accept it coming from another human being. And then she whimpered, and I swore to myself and God and anyone else who was listening, that I would do whatever it took to protect her. I'd even kill, if necessary."

Fi looked over then, spearing Jason with her gaze. Her resigned calm shifted towards fear of rejection. "You have to understand, I'd never killed a human before. Not when I was escaping my torturers. Not when my family was threatened. Not when my own life was on the line. I considered human life to be sacred. Invaluable." From where Dean as sitting, it didn't look like Jason was breathing. He wasn't judging her. If anything, he was grieving, already understanding where this story was going.

Fi flicked her eyes over to Taylor, and Dean was glad that she wasn't looking at him. Her aura was chaotic: sorrowful, regretful, afraid, with anger buried deep in the core. As she focused on Taylor, shame surged up. "You can get out of handcuffs with you're willing to break your own thumb. I did. Then I killed the man who had raped me, and I killed the man standing over Clarissa."

Taylor didn't recoil in horror as Dean had half expected. She was just furious and sympathetic. A girl who had refused to give her tormentors head lice, didn't reject Fi for admitting to murder. Surprisingly, none of the Wards did. Missy was stricken, and had been since she realized exactly what had happened to Fi. Dennis was furious and protective and feeling frustrated that there was nothing he could do. Chris was devastated, and Dean remembered that he'd had a cousin who went missing a year and half ago and was never found. For himself, Dean wasn't sure what he felt. Numb, mostly, and a little satisfied that the Nazi bastards had got what was coming to them. Fi was still talking in the same forced-steady voice.

"Then I went upstairs and killed the three creeps who were just starting to reach for their guns." She took a deep breath, and looked down as she admitted, "My family came in the door as I finished off the last one. If I had waited another sixty seconds, it would have been over anyway."

When she finished speaking, no one answered her. No one seemed to know what to do with that sort of confession. Their emotions were a jumble of horror and sympathy and protective fury, but no one knew what to say. Jason, shockingly, was puzzled, the confusion slowly overcoming the grief and compassion. He had heard something in Fi's story that the rest of them had missed, some detail that sparked his curiosity, and he was using it to distance himself from the horror. After a moment, Taylor got up from where she was sitting next to Missy and crossed over to sit next to Fi instead, grabbing her in a strong hug.

She was determined, angry, but mostly protective. Fi's first reaction to the hug was confusion and awkwardness, but eventually, when Taylor didn't let go, Fi hugged her back and gratitude overcame the confusion. Gratitude, and relief.

Finally, Fi broke the silence, pulling back from Taylor slightly, but not so far that the taller girl couldn't keep an arm around her. "My brother used to say that people are just crazy. You can understand any other evil, but human evil… we're the only species that kills for sport. Just crazy." She glanced down at her hands.

"You don't talk about your family much," Taylor observed gently. Her own aura now had grief mixed into it.

"What is there to say? They're dead to me, but I love them. They're gone, but they're still alive. They're out there living, and I'm here, living, and we'll probably never see each other again."

Missy, who seemed to become determined and protective as the shock wore off, asked the one question that had been burning Dean's own curiosity for weeks. "I get why you can't go to your family, but why haven't they come to you?"

Fi considered her for a while, then glanced at the rest of the team. "It's difficult to explain. I can try, but… well, let me start with my trigger event. I didn't know it at the time, but I'd made my first contract. Clarissa's freedom, in exchange for the deaths of our tormentors. Understand, I didn't want to kill those men. I didn't fly into a rage and decide their lives were worthless. I preferred that they live, rather than die. The cost of the contract was that I give up their lives, that I give up my refusal to kill, that I betray my own values, in order to save Clarissa.

"When my family found me…" she sighed. "It's hard to explain, when you've never met them. If I tell you that they were disappointed in me for killing those men, you will think that they're horrible people, but they're not. They were disappointed because they knew that I was capable of non-lethal measures, and chose lethal solutions instead. I betrayed myself and them with what I did.

"But even so, they supported me. They helped me overcome my guilt and understand what had happened, both in terms of the rape and in terms of my new powers. Even when I betrayed my own values and theirs, they forgave me long before I forgave myself."

Guilt broke into her aura, and she looked up at the team, at Dennis specifically. "Saying that I traded my family for Behemoth is… well it's not untrue but it is a simplification." This caught the team off-guard, and Dean could see confusion and frustration start to creep in. It faded almost immediately, and Fi outlined the truth in broad, terrible, strokes.

"What I traded for Behemoth is… infinitely worse than just the death of five truly despicable men. They forgave me for those five murders. But what I paid to destroy Behemoth… it would be like a Catholic willingly selling their soul to hell. If I see my family, there is chance that they will decide I am better off dead than alive, for my own sake. Some of them would almost certainly try to convince me to change my mind. If they succeeded, Behemoth would be re-created.

"Some of them would support me, I'm sure. My siblings especially. And Ash has been helping me as much as he can. He's getting messages to me through PHO letting me know my family is alive. But if there is even the slightest chance that one of them would try to kill me, I can't risk it. The reason the sacrifice was so powerful was because of all it entailed. Betrayal of myself, of my family, loss of my family, my culture, my identity - there's no good way to explain it. I didn't know what to say, except to try to sum it up. Saying I traded my family was as close as I could bring myself to admitting the truth."

Dennis's aura had faded from frustration back into sympathy and protection. He gave Fi a tight smile, her guilt shattered into grief.

"That doesn't explain why they haven't come to you, especially the ones who do forgive you," Chris pointed out. Fi nodded and elaborated.

"The other thing to consider is that my family has enemies. It's almost certain that there are people out there watching Brockton Bay, waiting for one of them to show up and visit me. I am a visible target, and the best way for me to protect them and vice versa is for us to cut ties so that their enemies don't know where to find them and my enemies don't know where to find my weak points."

"That seems very clinical," Dean observed, shocked to see satisfaction tempering her pain. She truly believed that the separation was for the best.

"I didn't have a normal childhood."

Taylor scoffed in reply, trying to inject humor into the conversation. "Obviously. Every time I learn more about you, the more I realize that you must have had a truly unique experience."

"I wouldn't trade it for all the diamonds in Africa," Fi admitted wryly.

"Not that you're a diamond fan anyway," Jason said. "I've been meaning to ask, what's with the costume jewelry?"

Fi looked surprised for a bit, then glanced down at her own hands where she was wearing a cheap watch, four or five hand-made bracelets, and two plastic rings. "They're costs," she said, shrugging.

"I spent money on them, much more than you'd guess by looking at them, and I store energy in them when I'm not using it for anything else. I've got a much higher metabolism rate than standard humans, but if I don't constantly use energy it just gets burned off and goes to waste, so if I don't have a purpose immediately I dump it here, like a personal battery." She waved her right hand in the air. "It's not much but it's something."

"If you need to purchase more, I'm sure we could talk to Piggot or Armsmaster about increasing your allowance," Dennis mused, digesting the new information with interest. Dean noticed him touch the bracelet which he had taken to wearing ever since Fi healed his father.

"It wouldn't really cost me anything if you did. The money has most emotional impact when I work for it, and it's that impact that matters. I buy ugly jewelry for the sole purpose of power storage, which means I give up going to the movies or whatever else I could spend it on. That all contributes to how much punch a little trinket can pack."

"So what sort of jobs have you had?" Missy asked, leaning forward, playful green curiosity overcoming her earlier turmoil. Missy could bounce back from anything.

"Not many, because my family moved around a lot. But whenever we stayed in Texas I would sing at the Roadhouse."

"You're good?" Dean threw in, watching as Fi's aura shifted decidedly toward the positive emotions: humor, nostalgia, satisfaction, comfort.

"Not really. But Ellis is Jo's mom, so she understood that I needed to do something to work for cash. And there were advantages to having me on the stage, watching all the customers, even if we didn't get many tips."

Dean wanted to ask what sort of advantages that might have, for a teenager to be watching a bunch of people eat and drink, but Jason jumped in first. "What sort of stuff do you sing?"

"Mostly I got country requests, but I'm also good at Michael Buble, Taylor Swift, and Elvis Presley. I can do most classic eighties rock and a decent mix of the more modern pop music."

"Well, now you have to demonstrate," Missy teased.

"I don't have a music player," Fi protested, but Dean was already digging in his pocket for his phone. He had to have something on there, and the chance for blackmail on a teammate was just too good to pass up, not to mention that the team could use the lighter conversation.

"That can be rectified," Dennis insisted. "You have to do at least one song for us."

"I told you guys, I'm really not that good."

"Good enough to be paid," Taylor shot back.

"One song," Jason begged, as Chris leaned over to look at Dean's phone, helping him pick.

Once Dean pulled up his meager country list, the song choice was obvious. Chris evidently agreed, because he tapped the screen to start the opening lines of "Man, I Feel Like a Woman." Fi shook her head, but reluctantly stood up and sang.

She hadn't been lying: she wasn't a fantastic singer. She didn't hit the highest notes, instead occasionally singing a lower line to accommodate her voice. But she did sing with passion and emotion, moving her body and her hands and clearly enjoying herself. Her emotions also settled out as she sang, which was good. She seemed to just be enjoying hanging out, her emotions indistinguishable from the other Wards, who were also in good humor.

As she started the last chorus, Fi suddenly reached out and grabbed Missy and Taylors' hands, pulling them up off the couch. They were both surprised, but the boys clapped and cheered them on and they picked up the end of the chorus with Fi, laughing and grinning as they stumbled over some of the words.

When they were finished and sat down, Jason pounced. "So, I've never heard of Michael Buble. Why are you good at his songs, specifically?"

"It's what Jo's dad used to sing to Ellis, so I made sure to sing a lot of them. They're her favorite songs."

"Jo is your sister right?" Taylor checked.

"Yeah."

"But not biological?" Chris asked, confused yellow-orange.

Fi snorted. "None of my siblings are biological. We just sort of… found each other. You could say we adopted each other. In fact, Jo and I used to sing together. Mostly Dixie Chicks and Taylor Swift."

"Is Jo any better than you?" Dennis teased.

"Hey!" Missy jumped in. "Lay off. I liked it. In fact," she turned a little more towards Fi and away from Dennis, "I bet you're great at Taylor Swift and Michael Buble stuff. They're both more emotional singers."

"Now you have to demonstrate!" Jason interrupted. "Since I've never heard this amazing Buble." Judging from his emotions, he was lying, but with the purpose of encouraging Fi to continue to sing, so Dean let him have his fun.

Fi rolled her eyes and groaned theatrically, while Missy bounced up and down excitedly. "Do 'Feeling Good!'"

After another round of cajoling from her teammates, Fi cleared her throat and sang without accompaniment. As before, she wasn't spectacular, although the range of the song was better suited to her. But as the song built, Dean was amazed at the strength of the sheer emotion she put into it. Her emotions were free, victorious, hopeful, even joyful and they seemed to rise and undulate in beat with the song. As the last words died out, he glanced at his friends and saw the same positive emotions reflected in their auras. He sat back in satisfaction.

The seven of them were going to make a damn good team.