February 2nd, 2011
"Cathy-Sweetie, there is something very strange about this kid of yours."
Brigadier General Cathryn Harper found herself raising an eyebrow and stared incredulously at her current interlocutor. Then she quietly scoffed as she leaned back in her chair, and allowed a smile that few people had ever seen spread across her lips.
"You, Jackie Thatcher, are calling someone else strange?" She laughed as the other woman sitting on the other side of her desk childishly blew a raspberry at her, briefly revealing the rainbow-hued dental braces fastened to her teeth. "Try to remember that I've known you since we were both tweens. You are literally the weirdest person I've ever known." The other woman's response was a brief peel of high-pitched giggling. Then she reached up with her glossy 3D-printed prosthetic left hand to carefully push the frames of her slipping glasses back into place.
"You love me and you know it~!" the diminutive black woman said in a sing-song tone as she rocked her head back and forth with a silly smile, making the absurdly large cotton candy pink afro puffs on either side of her head wobble back and forth. Cathryn couldn't help laughing.
God, but her old friend was so weird.
"Hehe. Well, now that you've loosened up a little, and really Cathy-Sweetie, you should go on leave and take a vacation sometime soon, but as for right now…" Jackie sighed. Then she straightened up, and a childishly goofy older woman that seemed to have never grown up, was suddenly a straight-backed professional. Her prosthetic hand whirred softly as she very slowly twirled a Hello Kitty-branded pen around her artificial fingers. Cathryn couldn't help but remember just when the other woman had lost that hand, and inwardly marveled at how little that had changed her old friend.
"In Miss Hebert's particular case, I've already noted a number of things that I'd been expecting to see. With Parahumans, including those that have court-mandated counseling, the underaged ones who's parents or guardians elect into counseling, and the precious rare few that are self-cognizant enough to seek it out on their own, well…" She paused and marshaled her thoughts. "As a whole, the varying traumas that produce Parahumans aren't any different from the traumas that anyone might survive. But it's the abilities that they can develop that, in many cases, can and will have an anomalous effect on a Parahuman's cognitive and rational thinking, even if an individual Parahuman's developed abilities aren't any which might grant enhanced cognitive abilities. It's just far more apparent in those with such abilities than without."
Doctor Jaqueline Thatcher, a therapist with more than two decades of experience in helping people who had suffered traumatic events and injuries, predominantly children at that, paused to take a sip of water, and Harper leaned forward to rest her elbows against the edge of her desk.
"So how does this relate to Hebert? There are a lot of people concerned about a teenage Parahuman capable of high-altitude supersonic flight, significant hostility towards certain branches of the government and the firepower to cause potentially massive civilian casualties before she's stopped." In fact, much of that argument came with suggestions to stick the girl immediately into the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center just on the off-chance that she might snap. Or just kill her.
It wasn't as if it'd be the first time. Parahumans die all the time after all.
Fortunately, Jackie wasn't aware of Harper's thoughts. The dark-skinned woman with the absurd hair hummed thoughtfully as the fingers of her real hand drummed gently on the surface of the ring binder on her lap.
"The thing that concerns me the most, and should concern you as well, is her hostility towards authority figures. Or rather, that she doesn't have any."
Cathryn raised an eyebrow at that. Had anyone else said those words, she would have scoffed. "I'd say she seemed plenty hostile at both the PRT agents and the Protectorate muscle they brought with them when they came onto my base to try to take custody of her four days ago, Jackie."
"That's what makes it so curious, Cathy-Sweetie. Oh, she has quite a lot of anger at both of those organizations, and the administration of her previous high school. But what's so strange is that I would have expected those feelings to already be transitioning into a distrust of adults and authority figures in general. It's too soon to tell with any degree of reliable accuracy of course, but she seems remarkably, in fact unusually level-headed regarding her trauma, as if it had happened years ago instead of almost a month ago."
"Right.. And you would know better than most just how long it can take a person to recover from severe trauma," Harper softly said as she glanced at her friend's prosthetic, which replaced the hand she'd lost nearly to her elbow. Jackie hadn't taken it well at the time. In fact, she hadn't spoken a word to anyone for almost five straight months.
Jackie adjusted her glasses again, and her lips spread wide into an almost manic grin. "I'm thinking that I'll have to touch base with some colleagues that also specialize in working with Parahumans, see if they've had any similar examples with their own clients."
Harper nodded, and found herself smiling back even as she rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine, you crazy little midget. Just keep me updated. And thanks for taking this on for me."
March 12, 2011
"Jackie, I love you like a sister, I really do. So explain to me again why putting Hebert with the rest of my kids at Doolittle was a good idea, instead of having her home schooled?"
Jackie rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated sigh.
"You're really gonna second-guess me on this?"
"Jackie I will put you over my goddamn knee and spank you purple with your own hand."
"You sure about that Cathy-Sweetie? You know which way I swing~!"
Harper closed her eyes and groaned as her old friend threw her head back with a cackle. Her giant afro puffs were robin's egg blue today and tipped in canary yellow.
"Goddamnit, Jackie." The other woman's cackling transitioned into wheezing giggling as the general shook her head. "Come on. That didn't work when we were seventeen and it's not gonna work now. I'm being serious, damnit." She glowered at her friend and waited for her to stop giggling and get serious, or as close to it as the other woman was willing to get.
"Okay, okay~," Jackie wheezed out between her giggles as she briefly plucked off her glasses to delicately dab at the corners of her eyes with a tissue before tears threatened to ruin her makeup. "Okay. Simple fact of the matter is Cathy-Sweetie, is that I legitimately cannot justify not putting her back into a proper school environment, despite my or your personal feelings on the matter. Not if we want to keep stonewalling the attempts by that overenthusiastic, bumbling collection of soccer moms calling themselves the Youth Guard to butt in and possibly making a mess of things, the hamfisted bunch of fucking shit-swilling cock-gargling monkey-fuckers."
Not for the first time was Harper amused and bewildered by the fact that her friend was so scathingly, viciously critical. In fact, some of the most astoundingly creative strings of shockingly vulgar profanity that she'd ever heard in her life, she'd heard from Jackie's lips where the Youth Guard was concerned.
And Cathryn once dated a boatswain's mate.
"Alright, I get that part, but…" Harper said leadingly, and Jackie let out a sigh that was equal parts frustration, bewilderment, and quiet fascination.
"... She's too stable, Cathy-Sweetie, and it doesn't make any sense at all." Jackie straightened up as she began gesturing emphatically with her hands. "She can talk about it. She doesn't like to, but she can. Normally, getting a Parahuman to discuss their Trigger Event at all in any form is like pulling teeth without the benefit of being drugged senseless. You can do it, but someone's likely gonna get hurt no matter how careful you are. Salt in an open wound doesn't even begin to cover it. And yet, I've only been having sessions with her for a little over a month, and she's already, very peripherally I might point out, willing to broach the subject, which I honestly wasn't expecting to happen for anywhere from six months to a year. Maybe even longer."
Harper's eyebrows rose at that.
"... Is that bad?" The way Jackie shrugged in response did not give the general even the slightest hint of confidence.
"It's not just that. She unconsciously practices box breathing when she gets anxious, but can't tell me where she learned it from. Not won't, can't. She didn't even know that she's been doing it, not until I pointed it out. The way she talks sometimes is like she's a completely different person. Before one of our sessions, I overheard her in a lobby in the middle of an especially passionate debate with a veteran about the performance and specifications of military aircraft over the past maybe forty-something years that was way over my head. The veteran in question fought in Vietnam and now runs a civilian pilot training and certification program. From the way they talked and the jargon they were using, I didn't even realize Taylor was the other half of that conversation until I actually saw her."
Jackie frowned, an expression that Harper didn't often see on her face, and she quietly added, "I'd almost call it some form of dissociative identity disorder, but I'm hesitant to seriously consider it without a few more months of working with her at the very least and an assessment from a second party. Maybe even a third."
"And yet you're thinking it anyway, Jackie," Harper quietly replied. "Yet despite that, you think it's safe for her to be around other kids."
Jackie quietly laughed at that, an oddly humorless sound from what was usually such a cheerful and animated person. "Cathy-Sweetie, if she really does have someone else in her head, then by all appearances, it's a soldier, and it's in her head because of her powers. I'm just hoping that putting her around other children her age can help keep her Taylor Hebert instead of whatever the hell else she is."
Now that, Harper could understand. A kid should be a kid.
"Besides, from all reports, she's setting in well already. Some personality clashes with a couple students aren't a surprise. From the sound of things, one of them in particular…" she paused and glanced at the now-open binder on her lap and flipped a couple pages, "Nataliya Sokolova.." Jackie carefully enunciated.
"What about Cadet Sokolova, Jackie? From what I hear, she's one of the best students at Doolittle this year, if not in the past decade."
"Oh, I don't doubt that Cathy-Sweetie. Classic overachiever from the look of things on the surface, though I do have some concerns. You've given me access to student files, but hers is classified." Jackie looked up and pointedly arched an eyebrow, and Harper grimaced.
"Sokolova's status is a complicated matter, Jackie," Harper grudgingly replied. "The very short version, the one that I can legally inform you of, is that she's a political refugee from Ukraine who's been granted asylum here in the US with her father since 2006. Her father is an invalid currently in a long-term care facility in nearby Westfield. She's currently an emancipated minor."
Jackie grimaced at that. "... Poor kid. Explains some of the things I've heard about her. Though I have to wonder at the logic of granting her a place at an ROTC academy."
"She's a military brat, going back a number of generations as I understand it," was Harper's reply. "Raised for it and familiar with it, and it was decided to honor her request when she asked for a place. Coincidentally, it also makes it much simpler to keep an eye on her, just in case."
"... Just in case of what, Cathy-Sweetie?"
Jackie wasn't surprised when her best friend very deliberately didn't answer.
"... I see. W-well, I do recommend keeping an eye on their interactions. Though at a glance, I found myself seriously doubting that we'll see anything like the incident at Winslow with these two as things are now, barring unforeseen circumstances. By all accounts, Sokolova is a model student in every sense of the word. Bit of a bitch, but not the sort to cause problems. In fact.." A faint smile spread across Jackie's lips. "Perhaps these two might even become friends."
"Jackie, I honestly and very sincerely doubt that."
"Hey, you never know. Just look at us!"
Harper sighed in exasperation as her old friend giggled at her.
March 27 2011 3:27 am
SSgt Murphy stood at rigid parade rest, directly next to the chair occupied by a bleary-eyed Doctor Thatcher, clad in a fluffy house robe as she nursed a steaming cup of coffee. Her left sleeve was conspicuously empty and her normally distinctive afro puffs had been abandoned in favor of expediency, leaving her with such a massive and wild head of bed hair that the dark skinned woman's face was completely obscured from the nose up. Not that Harper was much better off, but the benefits of having two flesh and blood arms had given her the time to get dressed and pull her hair into a simple ponytail at the very least.
For a long time, no one said anything.
"Doctor Thatcher."
"Yes, General?" It wasn't Cathy-Sweetie. Not that night.
"I'm giving you full access to Cadet Nataliya Sokolova's file, records, everything we have on her. Someone dropped the fucking ball on her psych profile when she was given the okay to come here and join our ROTC program, and since I apparently cannot trust whichever psychologist that originally cleared her, you're it. I want to know ASAP whether or not I need to chuck her little ass the hell off of my base, or if the pet project of whichever colleague of mine dumped her onto my lap is salvageable or even worth my goddamn time."
Doctor Thatcher paused in mid-sip of her coffee.
"General, as a contractor I don't have that kind of security clearance necessary to legally access her records like that."
"You'll have it by noon today at the absolute latest no matter who's precious feelings I have to step all over. This is too important. Staff Sergeant Murphy."
The diminutive woman straightened up, shifting to attention in damn near the blink of an eye.
"Ma'am! Staff Sergeant Karrin Murphy reporting as ordered, ma'am!"
"We will later be discussing at considerable fucking length what just happened tonight. But for now, I'm actually not completely pissed at you. Get some rest if you can, then back to Cadet Hebert's housing. I want both of those girls checked out by medical no later than 6 am. Hmm. Better yet, 8 am, unless the situation changes. Under no circumstances are Hebert and Sokolova to be left alone together until I decide otherwise. Dismissed."
SSgt Murphy promptly saluted, turned, and marched out the door, leaving Harper and Doctor Thatcher alone for the time being.
For a moment, there was silence.
"Jackie?"
"Yeah, Cathy-Sweetie?"
"Please tell me that we didn't just fuck up. Tell me that this was something that anyone would've missed, in our shoes."
Jackie took a long sip of her coffee, then raised her head to blearily peer at her old friend through the mass of hair obscuring so much of her face.
"...Ask me again in twelve hours and I'll have an answer for you."