Heieienej

by Kahlil Johnson

Aka lei

1. Akjsisk

"Good afternoon," Director Piggot stated, striding into the room. For once, she was the last one to come in.

Pretty much everyone worth mentioning had been assembled in the large conference room on short notice. The local Protectorate and Wards, without Chevalier. All of New Wave, including Panacea. There was also the PRT troop captain, deputy director Renick, several important consultants like someone called Julie Hart and Thomas Calvert, and basically a bunch of other local movers and shakers. And a small troop of PRT techies at Piggot's beck and cell.

Clockblocker leaned in to whisper to Aegis, as he looked around. "Where's Signal?" Centurion felt a pang of anger, but didn't speak.

"This meeting is rather sudden, but it is to relate very important information," Director Piggot notified. "Earlier today, Centurion was approached by the super-villain Accord, from Boston, with the offer of working for him. Quite obviously, Centurion refused, and left, given Accord's outrage. He was followed out by Signal, who was a mole for Accord, and in his anger, Centurion accidentally wounded her with a laser. Is that about right?" She glanced at the silver-clad Ward.

Centurion's body was stiff, almost shaking with anger. But then, when he spoke, it was melodious and calm. "Yes, Director."

"The situation wasn't handled perfectly, and I'm concerned Accord may desire blood for the injury to his subordinate. This isn't a call for offense, or attack, given we don't have much space to do that, but rather, this meeting is to caution you to defend. Centurion is going to be the likely target of any aggression; Accord's past actions suggest he prefers to keep outsiders and bystanders out of his grudges, but I'll be keeping Centurion under lock and key, with extra security." She turned to look at the aforementioned Ward, with a tense look on her face.

Centurion clenched his fists but otherwise remained silent.

He glanced at Piggot, nodded, and 'dozed off' into Oracle Morpheus. Everything went dark again. There were no dreams here, despite the fact that he was sleeping.

Oracle, how do we come out of this victorious, with the least amount of damage and casualties, and with both Accord and Coil on their knees?

Medium likelihood telling Accord about Dinah and her living conditions will evoke a disgust for Coil in him. Low but existent likelihood Accord would set out to kill Coil, then kill Centurion. It raises chances that both will kill each other, although extremely high likelihood that Accord will come out victorious and well. Extremely high likelihood that Accord's death will cause some instability on the cape scene of the east coast and America at large for at least the next year, possibly many years.

Centurion opened his eyes after that, sighing and clenching his fists again.

"–Centurion, are you listening to me?" Miss Militia demanded.

"As a matter of fact, I wasn't. I asked Oracle a question," he said, which gave Miss Militia a moment to stiffen and stop talking. "The outcome would be disastrous if we were to do what my power suggested. So the answer is irrelevant," Centurion elucidated.

"What did your power suggest?" Lady Photon asked from across the table. She had a distinct look of discomfort on her face, leaning forward with hands and elbows on the table.

"I asked how to come out of this victorious, with the least amount of damage and casualties on our side, and with both Accord and Coil on their knees. It suggested informing Accord about the living conditions of Dinah Alcott. Coil has her, and he's keeping her chained and drugged up somewhere. This, to take advantage of her precognitive abilities and further boost his own."

Director Piggot was practically seething. "Centurion, you haven't told me your Thinker power has grown to the point where you could locate the mayor's niece."

"I didn't know either," Centurion blatantly lied.

"Don't. Get smart with me," Piggot said, letting her hands down onto the long table. "How long did you know about this? Why didn't you tell me? Why did you not tell anyone?"

He thought about it. Why didn't he? There was only one conclusion: Tattletale. If Coil's moles brought him this information, Tattletale would be killed, or at least dealt with in some unpleasant way. "Revealing this information would mean somebody else died. In a horrible, brutal way."

Everyone in the room was tense. Some people were halfway to panicking, and others were just generally anxious. The mood wasn't positive, anyway, and it didn't look like things were going to get better.

Hesitantly, Laserdream asked, "What do we do now?"

"We protect Centurion," Miss Militia stated uncompromisingly. "That's what Accord wants, right? Then we'll have to form a defense. There's no chance to attack Accord effectively, especially if he's allied to Coil, like Centurion said. Do we have any idea of what Coil or Dinah's powers are?"

"Coil's power is the ability to… I assume simulate the existence of two timelines in his head, where the only things that differ are his choices. My first thought was actual timeline splitting, but meddling with time is a concept I already know is impossible. Dinah's… well, probably just very powerful precognition. I'm not sure."

If the mood before was gloomy, then it was filled with despair, right now. Glory Girl raised a hand in that moment, clearly hesitant to voice whatever she was about to say. Slightly surprised and disbelieving, but also not getting her hopes up, Piggot nodded in her direction. "Yes, Glory Girl? What is it?"

"Uhm," she started lamely, "I know this… might not be plausible, or whatever… but couldn't we just have Centurion apologize to Accord? The way that everyone talks about it, it's like he wants the respect more than anything… Right?" She looked around for support to the idea, but found little from the people around her. Panacea shook her head, laying a hand on her shoulder.

Aegis spoke in that moment, "…What, exactly, did Accord get angry about?" He looked to Centurion for an answer.

"He offered me a chance to save the world with my power and his guidance, and I refused," was the explanation.

"Hold on. Hold. Hold a moment," Clockblocker interrupted, leaning forward in his chair, one hand moving to stop Centurion's speech. "He told you, that the two of you can save the world together?"

"Yes."

"So… you thought he was lying?" Clockblocker continued, slowly.

"No."

"Then what on God's Earth are you doing here?" Clockblocker asked, fists clenching.

"Clockblocker. Calm down," Piggot chided, but didn't say anything else.

"Alright, I'll go join the Teeth while I'm at it. I'll go kill everyone I love. Is that what I should do?" Centurion asked, inflecting sarcasm.

"There's a difference between being a mindless anarchist psychopath going around on a bike killing people and working for a guy who told you that you can save the world," Clockblocker stated, slowing down with each word. Aegis started shaking his head, putting a hand on Clockblocker's arm; not supportively, but squeezing it, trying to get him to shut his mouth.

Centurion stood up. "I'll go look for him, tell him I changed my mind."

"No!" Piggot declared, then stopped for a moment, "Or yes? I'm… no, don't do it, not yet. We need to think this through. I'll ask Watchdog to see what would happen if we do that. This counts as an emergency." She motioned to one of the PRT staff in the room, who started tapping away at his laptop.

"I have a Thinker power as well, just as reliable. I can ask that question right now, while we wait. Should I?"

"Go on ahead," Piggot offered, folding her arms. Miss Militia was tense, tapping one finger against the pommel of her machete, trying and failing not to frown.

Centurion sat down on the chair. "Give me a minute. Maybe more, it depends." He closed his eyes, and he drifted off into Oracle.

The darkness reclaimed his awareness, with nothing but the vague idea that he could ask for help.

Oracle, what would happen if I were to look for Accord to sincerely apologize and tell him I changed my mind?

Accord would desire repayment for injuring Signal. When asked what she wanted in exchange, Signal would deny the idea that damage was done. Accord would be left deeply unsatisfied, but demand a personal repayment from Centurion and let him go in exchange. Nature of repayment unknown; may include tenure in Ambassadors but unlikely. Far more likely Accord would demand favors in uncertain amount, or something of similar nature.

Centurion's eyes shot open and he stood up at the same time. "The war would be averted. He'd just ask for favors in uncertain amounts or my entrance into the Ambassadors."

"We're not allowing either," Piggot said uncompromisingly. "Or to reiterate, I'd like to allow either, but I'm not allowed to. Something else."

"Then, I'll go out of your jurisdiction to literally save thousands of people and leave the Wards to do that."

Everyone stared at him for a moment, very uncomfortable.

"What if your Thinker power is wrong?" posited Laserdream, speaking up for the first time since the meeting began. The idea made her look on edge, slightly haggard. "What if that's not good enough? What if you're missing some kind of detail? What if he just kills you?"

"Then he'd be satisfied. There would be no war. And you… all would not suffer at his hands," Centurion explained, looking at her.

"It's not worth it," Glory Girl frowned. "Leave no man behind. We can't just hand you over to Accord."

"Uuh, yeah, yeah, actually, I think we can?" Clockblocker said, looking around for support. When he found none from the Wards and New Wave, he looked at the Protectorate but they were too busy looking at Director Piggot. He looked at Transfusion and Shadow Stalker, but they were more interested in brooding.

Director Piggot shook her head, looking distinctly unsatisfied. Traces of her previous anger were drowned out by a thoughtful expression, considering options, ideas. "The head office won't allow this, either way. I don't see any option except defend, and, if possible, set Accord and Coil on each other."

"Accord won't be distracted that easily," Adamant stated, arms folded. It was impossible to tell his expression under the mask, but his body language gave the impression of a frown. "He might just take us for liars, trying to protect Centurion at all costs."

"I stand by my belief that going to Accord for an apology is the best bet," Centurion said.

"So, what, you fly over to his little house in Boston and..." Glory Girl shook her head, not wanting to believe this. "What, say, 'I'm sorry?'"

"Yes, he will, because that's the best option!" Clockblocker said. "Gallant's not here to stand up for your deontological bullshit. We can't take Accord in a straight fight."

Centurion folded his arms. Clockblocker's enthusiasm at giving up his friend wasn't the best. Asshole.

Mr. Calvert raised his hand, looking over at Piggot. "If I may interject. It's well-known that Accord's power scales in propensity with the size of the issue he's facing. This may be bold of me to say, but wouldn't it be best to leave things uncomplicated? Defend, like you said, and keep things simple on a strategical level, while reinforcing everything in subtle ways? It strikes me as the best option."

Director Piggot looked down at the desk pensively, one finger tapping away with a nervous rhythm, practically ratting at the table like a woodpecker. "It's… not a bad idea," she eventually said, considering still. She looked up to gauge the faces in the room, and breathed in. "Then a proposition: we change patrol schedules, to keep Centurion out there. It simplifies the scenario. If Centurion is attacked, he will run instead of bunkering in. We will keep him with randomized patrol partners, always at least two, and we will cycle them, until we can get Watchdog's opinion on how to proceed. At the same time, Centurion will invest in more Mover powers."

There were some nods and affirmations of this plan. "Who's for?" Piggot asked, raising a hand. Miss Militia, the rest of the Protectorate, all of the Wards, all of new Wave, Mr. Calvert, and pretty much everyone else who mattered in the room did the same.

Centurion raised his hand as well. Accord would not agree to work with him after this, and he'd ask for a cost: an apology would prevent chaos and an all-out war, but it'd come at a price.

Piggot nodded, and not seeing the point to ask, 'who's against,' she said, "Very well. I'll go draft the altered schedule in a few minutes. For now, Centurion, stay with..." She considered briefly, "Miss Militia and… Chevalier."

Centurion nodded and sighed, letting his body relax a little. Mea culpa, oh Lord almighty, mea culpa.

"Then, the meeting is adjourned. Thank you for attending."

As everyone left the room, there was an atmosphere of tension. Glory Girl, Laserdream, and Panacea were walking in a trio; they were giving Clockblocker looks that suggested they were at odds, but Clockblocker was being uncharacteristically stubborn on the issue. Miss Militia looked grim, her voice a little harder when she spoke. Adamant followed after her, exchanged words, then walked away.

Chevalier was already waiting outside, in full armor, his fabled cannonblade held at the side, positioned a little upwards over his shoulder, and smaller than it looked on pictures. It was very possible he just shrunk it for the ease of carrying it around indoors.

Centurion glanced at Chevalier, and approached him. His body was a little more relaxed than earlier, although he was tense. Tense, angry, anxious, on the verge of having a panic attack, but most of all he was guilty. "Hi," he said quietly.

"Hey, how did it go?" the man asked. His voice didn't betray anything, except sympathy.

"We'll keep it simple. Defend, hopefully put Coil and Accord against one another through information we've recently obtained. There is the option of going to Accord for an apology, but… high command won't allow it."

"Accord's not going to keep this up for long," Chevalier stated, "Even he wouldn't go against the Triumvirate. Not openly."

"The Triumvirate won't intervene. It'd make Accord's job that much easier."

"You don't understand; Accord's power works on data gathering, then comparing the results to get an outcome. The more data, the more complex the problem; the better the outcome. If the problem is 'Eidolon is shooting bombs at me,' he'd need to sit down, think about it for a while, and then implement it. And he wouldn't have much time, given Eidolon was shooting bombs at him; Accord's defenses and back-up plans don't matter, since Eidolon is the swiss army knife of capes."

"Tell me if I'm getting the wrong message, but… are you suggesting something like Blitzkrieg? Strike him fast so that he can't gather the data?"

"No. We're definitely not in a position to attack Accord as we are now," Chevalier explained, and noticed Miss Militia walking up to them, staring at her intently. He kept speaking, "It's far more likely the PRT will send in a strike team, or a highly skilled operative to deal with the situation."

"A strike team? To do what? Kill him?" Centurion asked, kind of disbelieving.

"If necessary," Chevalier said, then his head turned to Militia who had been standing by, a meter behind Centurion, with her arms folded.

"If the objective is a kill, then put out a kill order. Reward: effective pardon of all crimes."

"Pretty sure that anyone who goes for that is worse than Accord," Chevalier shot back instantly. "Also there's no villain in existence stupid enough to give it a shot."

"You're probably right," Centurion replied, looking down.

"Chevalier," Miss Militia greeted cordially, sensing the conversation between the two of them was over. Chevalier looked at her, and Centurion could feel the grin forming under his helmet, as he replied warmly, "Miss Militia. It's good to see you after so long."

Centurion felt a wave of relief rush through him as he heard Militia's voice. His first instinct would have been to turn around and bury his face in her shoulder, but it wasn't the time. Centurion chose to turn around and smile weakly, "Hey."

"Hey." She looked down at him for a brief moment, smiling back, but lacking any sincere enthusiasm. "How are you holding up? I'm sorry about Signal."

"I may be a huge asshole and a bad person, but… that outburst made me feel tons better. It's like… I released all the stress I've been building up as of late," Centurion admitted shamefully.

"You… should probably spar more," Chevalier hedged with a nervous hinge.

Centurion nodded. "Yeah, I should..."

Awkward silence.

He decided to break the silence. "What's next?"

He couldn't shake the sensation that it was all his fault. This whole situation could've been avoided if he had dealt with his emotions earlier, instead of bottling them up. But he has dealt with them, on numerous occasions, and yet they kept coming back, hitting harder than before.

Chevalier gave him a flat look, and Miss Militia thought for a moment, before ordering, "Go back to the common room. Get some rest. Today must have been stressful for you."

Centurion nodded, but his frown didn't leave his face. "Am I… not allowed to go back to my home?"

"I doubt Accord is going to break the unwritten rules, at least explicitly; but maybe you shouldn't go home, yes," Miss Militia answered, nodding in a way that indicated she planned on doing the same, for much the same reasons. It brought the fact that Chevalier didn't know about their relationship into awareness.

Centurion looked up at her. "Alright. I guess I'll sleep in the bunks of the HQ, then," he muttered. "I'll see you both later." And with that, he walked off to the Wards HQ.

As he did, he heard Chevalier's armored plates clanking, as he turned to look at Miss Militia, giving her his full, undivided attention. There was a moment where Chevalier shuffled one foot while whistling, then asked, "How about I come over for dinner, when all this blows over? And we catch up on all the years that passed us by?"

"That'd be great," she replied, sounding almost giddy.

The Wards HQ was surprisingly full, given its state in the recent days; Transfusion was lounging on the couch on her own, with nothing except a dark red mask; thin enough it might as well have been a layer of paint over her skin, and Vista reading a book on her favorite beanbag chair. She looked at Transfusion covertly, using her book to gaze without being spotted. "You don't find that disturbing?" she asked.

"Find what disturbing?" Transfusion shot back, with a confused look, glancing at her from the couch.

"The… blood on your face?" Vista asked, motioning around her eyes with one finger. "You know, that blood that used to be in someone's body?"

"It's super-blood now," Centurion commented dryly as he walked in.

"You get used to it," Transfusion replied, nonchalant as they come.

"Riiight," Vista said, more than a little skeptical. "It's kind of disgusting, though."

"Sure," Transfusion admitted, unperturbed by the idea. By the concept of being called disgusting, or having a disgusting superpower. "And your power is weird. It shouldn't work, but it works."

Vista frowned, deciding to go back to reading.

Centurion managed to trudge into his room, just as their conversation reached cessation. The 'Centurion' room was barebones, since he'd never bothered decorating or living here for any length of time: a single, one-person bed, a nightstand with an electric-display clock, a small wardrobe in one corner, and a desk with a cheap computer and some shelves attached for books and other stuff; currently empty. There was some space for more furniture, though he imagined it'd be difficult to move it in.

Frustratingly enough, the bed hadn't been made; all of the bed sheets, blankets, and extra cushions were in a low drawer of the wardrobe.

Two tendrils of telekinetic force extended from the sides of his torso, as he sat on the chair and allowed them to work on their own. The drawer opened by itself remotely, then a pillow was flung across the room only to be caught in the air by an invisible force, then laid down on the spot of the head. The bedsheet and blanket came next, thrown in quick succession and caught just as quickly, before being tucked into the corners of the bed.

As this happened, he closed his eyes, meditating on his power and thus entering the mindscape of his subconscious.

Four charges seemed to dance in a spiral, around the fountain; incredibly languid as they moved, leaving behind untraceable ripples behind themselves. Like vast meteors going through space; fast, moving tens of kilometers each second, but looking so utterly slow from far away. His awareness shifted from the fountain, towards the power-meddling ability he had shaped into being not long ago. He reached out to it, willing to understand it more.

Centurion's mind filled with fuzz, like black-white ants moving across his awareness at rapid speeds, drowning out every thought in information he couldn't comprehend. He recoiled physically, feeling the barest hint of a headache building up for a moment, then letting go as he released.

That was weird.

He wondered… maybe, if he managed to hold on and resist, something would come out of it?

And that he did. He turned back to the power, staring into it, intently. It floated there, ominously, unaffected by his staring. He reached out, almost putting his awareness inside, grasping at the 'main' charge of the power, inspecting it closely and holding it close to his proverbial heart.

Centurion's eyes shot open as he woke up, suddenly aware that he'd just passed out from excruciatingpain and woke up… two, two and a half hours later; his power armor told him he had four missed calls from Miss Militia and a single one from Chevalier, over the last ten minutes.

He stood up in a hurry and immediately called Miss Militia.

"Centurion!" she snapped the second after the dial tone started going off. "What happened? Where are you?"

Should I tell her? No, I shouldn't.

"I… fell asleep," Centurion answered embarrassedly. "I'm in my bunk."

"Oh, thank God," Miss Militia released a barrel of anxiety she must have been holding in her lungs for a while now. "I thought something happened to you; I called you ten minutes ago. You didn't hear your phone buzzing?"

Centurion shook his head, but then realized he was talking to her through his power armor, so she wouldn't see his act. "E-er, no." Brain fart.

Miss Militia huffed out in relief, and said, "Just go back to sleep, and call me the moment you wake up."

"Alright, will do," he said groggily.

Centurion's vision flashed at that moment; for a brief second, he saw something green. Green and cyan. Not in the mindscape, but in the real world. By the time he blinked, it wasn't there anymore, like a phantom that disapparated. It was so quick he didn't even have a chance to flinch, but he undoubtedly saw it.

He then hung up the call. After that, he closed his eyes to see if anything had changed in the mindscape.

The Power-Meddler was moving around, orbiting the fountain just beyond the charges; a thin link connected the two of them; a single strand with a single function, or perhaps many functions that he couldn't see. The single function in his awareness was, for a lack of a better term, 'connection.' The fountain had connected itself to the power on some level.

Centurion looked at it, and started to wonder. Maybe this… is what lets me connect the fountain to other parahumans' powers? he thought.

The moment he focused on the strand of connection too much, he started feeling the mental fuzz envelop his brain once again; some bits flashed red in warning; a piece of the strand looked unstable, like the weakest link in a chain about to break away. His awareness shifted elsewhere as his eyes opened slowly.

Stray thoughts, meaningless; he tried to distract himself. He began wondering how Skitter, Taylor, was doing. Pure, genuine curiosity. But he had no way to contact her as of right now, so he'd have to wait; damn burner phones burning down... A shame...

He decided to take off his power armor, setting it on the table neatly, and then dozed off into sleep like Miss Militia suggested.

121

Birdsie

Nov 7, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 8, 2019

#2,581

June 2nd, 2011

Centurion walked into the rather desolate PRT lobby; not a single out-of-town tourist, maybe a tenth of the citizens that used to be in the area. He could spot three or four in different places, and four more in the gift shop; everyone looked like their house had just been blown apart with dynamite. To be fair; that wasn't entirely inaccurate. The only difference is that the dynamite, rather than exploding, made you soggy enough it felt like an eighteen-wheeler had slammed into you from the atmosphere.

The outfit of the lobby changed, too. The mood was different; the posters for the Wards and Protectorate had been swapped to include the new team members. There was a framed picture, hanging above the reception desk, maybe as tall as a person; an upper-body shot of Kid Win grinning, with a black-and-white color frame, and some inspirational quote that didn't really matter at all.

He'd noticed the Kid Win merchandise was still on the shelves; the last batch of his fame being given out. There was a slight discount on it, and he wasn't sure how to feel about that.

As Centurion made his way up to the conference room, he couldn't take his mind off of what happened the day before. His power made a connection to the fountain, on its own. Should he be scared? He didn't know.

The connection was still thrumming, but it felt like it might collapse whenever he looked at it too much; like it wanted to avoid the attention, or as though the attention itself caused it to break away into splinters. Thinking so hard about it, even peripherally, he felt it tense like a cord pulled taut. Not broken or breaking, but almost preparing to.

He stopped thinking about it and went for the conference room, using the elevator. Flechette and Vista barely caught up to him, and he held the door open for them to enter.

"Morning," he said, still somewhat groggy from waking up so early.

"Hey," Flechette greeted; Vista only offered an informal nod.

"How are you girls?" he asked, pressing the button on the elevator's panel to send them up to floor the conference room was on.

"Eh," Vista enunciated. "I've been better."

"I'm fine. Thanks," Flechette answered, drab in voice, but smiling a little,

There was an awkward silence for a moment or two, and Centurion broke it, speaking again. "What do you think Piggot wants to talk about?"

"No idea," Flechette answered, head-turning, in the belief he was asking her specifically. "Maybe something about Accord?"

"She would've called everyone else too if it was that," he argued. Piggot specifically asked only for the Wards to come.

"What do you mean?" Vista asked, frowning in incomprehension.

"If it was something related to Accord, everyone else should know too, don't you think?" Centurion answered, looking at her.

Flechette nodded tiredly. "Yeah. Maybe something about the team, then."

They went for the meeting room; everyone else was already there, sitting down. Aegis was sitting at the forefront, elbows off the table with his back straight; the only reason the smug bastard could even hope to maintain that kind of posture was because his damn muscles could go rigid whenever the spine wasn't feeling up to the job. The only exception to the sitting down rule was Piggot, who stood with her arms folded.

Centurion sat down along everybody else, "Good morning, Director," he said as he sat. Flechette decided to sit down next to him, as it was the closest free seat, while Vista, almost instinctively passed by Shadow Stalker and into the next chair over to plop down next to Clockblocker.

"Thank you for being prompt," Piggot spoke, then immediately moved onto the topic as she looked at Centurion. "Tell them about Chariot, Centurion."

Centurion froze for a moment, then stood up, to walk past everyone and next to Piggot, turning to the Wards. Then, unsure, he turned back to Piggot for a moment, "Should I tell them the short answer or the long answer?"

"Tell them all of it," Piggot answered, calm, and slightly surprised at how bothered by this he seemed to be.

He breathed in, then turned back to the team. "I've been suspicious of Chariot from the moment I met him for the first time. My lie detector confirmed that he was lying about his insecurity concerning the entrance in the Wards, and after that, I began investigating. I… acquired information from his computer, only to see crypto-coded e-mails sent to an anonymous address."

"All of this information was gathered legally, of course," Piggot said, with a voice that indicated she was lying through her teeth and not the slightest bit ashamed.

"Long story short, I consulted my Thinker power, and it put the dots together," Centurion explained, pausing. There was a sense of trepidation in his chest, which released the moment he made the decision to finish the explanation. "I am absolutely, utterly sure Chariot is Coil's mole."

"This is corroborated by prior cases of Coil using moles," Piggot added, looking at them, "This doesn't leave this room, but we know there are three agents employed in this very building who are working for Coil."

Clockblocker almost decided not to speak, but asked, "As in, right now?"

"Yes," Piggot nodded, "We might have gone entirely unaware, but Dragon found that one face on our security camera footage belongs to a known soldier of fortune. Our investigation found two more. Very capable gunmen, with a wide array of skills. Very much the kind of mercenaries that Coil would employ. We might have arrested them, but I spoke with people with higher credentials and clearance than myself, and we came to the unanimous agreement that it would be ideal to keep those mercenaries employed here. It allows us to keep a close eye on them for knowledge we could use, and we occasionally feed them bad or misleading information, obviously with a great deal of consideration each time.

"Which brings me to the main point of this meeting," Piggot informed them, "I would like to do the very same thing here, with Chariot. He would work alongside you, quite likely see you unmasked. You would socialize with him, and you would pretend not to know that he is passing on information to his employer. For that, for the risks you would be undertaking, I require your express permission. I understand if this seems difficult, but I implore you to consider."

"Yeah," Aegis agreed, "It's tough enough as it is. You want us to do this, too, Director?"

"I wouldn't ask you to do it if I didn't think you could handle it."

"And if I say I don't want to?" Transfusion raised a hand.

"If only one or two of you disagreed, I'd shift the patrol schedules so they didn't intersect with Chariot's; I've done much the same with Weaver, and ideally this would coincide with each of you returning to school, so your busy schedules could serve as sufficient excuse for why you do not cross paths with the boy. I would much prefer if everyone was on board."

Flechette nodded. "I'm not really a stable fixture in the team, so my vote probably shouldn't count, but I'm fine with it."

"Good," Piggot spoke, "And the rest of you?"

"My face isn't connected to anything except my adoptive mother..." Centurion said, frowning, glancing at Piggot. "It's fine. I'll develop a… power that scrambles people's perception of my face, just to be sure."

Shadow Stalker and Transfusion were next to agree, taking a stance; followed by a reluctant Clockblocker, then Aegis and Vista.

"Also, Director. May I speak with you in private after this?" Centurion asked with some sort of urgency, but not enough to raise any sort of suspicion.

"Later, Centurion," Piggot informed him, then looked at the whole team. "For your information, the earpiece communication channel, the computers at the console, the spare laptops and the spare smartphones will all be continually monitored by a team upstairs. Your own laptops and smartphones will be free of this prying. This makes it doubly important that you do not lose these possessions or let him gain access to them."

She looked at them, "Thank you, Wards, for your cooperation. Your service since the start of the Endbringer event has been exemplary. Trust me when I say I will find a way to make this up to you."

With that, the chairs slid as the Wards began to stand and file out, with Piggot looking at Centurion. Once everyone was out, she asked, "What is it, Centurion?"

"There's something I omitted at the emergency meeting, that I did not disclose out of fear for the person in question."

"What is it?"

"Dinah's status was disclosed by Tattletale. She works for Coil, but is reluctant to do so, and is trying to find a way to save the girl. Skitter is also aware of this. I met the two of them together when I convinced Skitter to join the Wards. I suggested it to Tattletale as well, but she refused, saying that Coil would have her killed, or worse." Not exactly accurate, but he was willing to paint her in a lighter shade of gray.

"If that's the case, I believe she may be dead by now," Piggot said, "It's not out of the question the information leaked out of that meeting."

"I doubt she's dead. She still has a team with her, and they gave the whole Protectorate and the Wards combined a hard time," he said. "I doubt a couple of mercs can do better than us."

"The Undersiders happen to have a powerset that gave them an advantage in everything they did; they are among the most well-balanced teams in the city," Piggot stated. "It's a matter of poor match-ups, rather than skill. And Coil has parahumans on his payroll; no doubt at least the Travelers have ties to them, and he can always hire Faultline's Crew if he's in any need of additional muscle."

"I want protection of some kind to be put on Tattletale," Centurion said, sighing with a deep frown stuck on his face. Yeah, Tattletale may have been a cunt, but she showed a willingness to do something 'good,' for Centurion at least, if not for the 'greater good.' Not every good deed had to be motivated by selflessness.

"She'd need to approach the PRT on her own," Piggot clarified, "Which I do not believe will happen."

Centurion clicked his tongue, folding his arms. Damn her, and her smug pride, he thought. "Understood. Sorry to have bothered you with this," he said, letting his arms fall to his sides. "Knowing her, she won't approach us. And going out to find her is a big no-no, if I don't want to die."

"Smart," Piggot said, commenting on his choice, then motioning that he's free to leave.

Centurion nodded and made his way out of the room, then stopped, as Piggot said, "And Centurion?" He turned. "Good work out there." He nodded, and closed the door, blinking a few times.

She's human?

With that thought, he headed for the Wards HQ.

"So when's the new girl gonna arrive?" Vista queried.

"Skitter?" Clockblocker asked, frowning distastefully.

"They call her Weaver now," Vista answered, "She has a white costume and everything. I'm kind of surprised she gets to become a Ward before Chariot."

Centurion entered through the door when the conversation started. "Oh, hey guys."

"Hey," Aegis shot back first, followed by a less enthusiastic greeting from Clockblocker. Flechette and Team Edge were probably off in their rooms, chilling. Signal was probably in the work– right.

"Talking about Skitter?" Centurion asked with a friendly tone.

"Weaver," Vista corrected, a little stormy. "That's what the PR decided on. Apparently, they're going to have her use butterflies to cover up the nastier bugs. The PR-friendly, child option. I'm excited." The enthusiasm was mixed with a bit of trepidation. Not that surprising; she probably wanted more permanent female members other than Transfusion and Shadow Stalker, who probably weren't very fun for her to interact with. Or Flechette, who was fun to interact with, but wouldn't stay too long. At the same time, Weaver used to be a villain and fought them on multiple occasions, so that kind of put a wedge into social relationships.

"I'm still - ugh - off-put by inviting a villainess into the team." Clockblocker shivered.

"You don't know the full story, do you? She was a mole for Armsmaster," Centurion explained. He was pretty sure he'd told this story before, to the Wards; Vista and Aegis knew it for sure, but perhaps Clockblocker hadn't been there or didn't hear. Centurion's thoughts went back to the fly who zipped into his mouth, and he giggled unconsciously. "I met her out of costume. Saw the person behind the mask. She's nice. Just a normal girl... with bugs."

"God, not you too," Clockblocker cursed, seemingly at odds with fate itself, clutching his face. "Why does everyone like bugs so much?"

"Come on, you'll get used to it," Centurion reassured him.

"Oh, yeah; I'm sure life will get better when I accept the fact that I'm sleeping in bed with a nest of giant centipedes, spiders, and wasps; all of them moving around, their carapaces chittering as they touch each other and writhe like this mass of evil. Ugh!" Clockblocker's body twisted itself at an angle, in a deep cringe.

"Ah come on! You must be swift as a coursing river, with all the strength of a great typhoon. In other words, man up. It's just some bugs," Centurion prodded with a chuckle.

Clockblocker screamed out, in frustration and anxiety. "Nope," he stood up, beginning to back away and gesticulate at them with amusement, "No. Fuck you, no; you guys can greet the new girl. Me? Mia amo not up to it-to."

Centurion stopped him. Clockblocker backed up into Centurion's manly chest. "Dennis," he said. "Please, calm down."

"Look, I'm not saying I hate the bug girl," Clockblocker started, "But I fucking hate the bug girl. I don't want spiders in my mouth. Again."

"Do you have a phobia of bugs?" Centurion tilted his head.

"Yes!" he declared, moderately offended Centurion hadn't noticed. "Do you remember the bank robbery? Do you know what she did to me? Spiders. In. My. Mouth, Centurion. That's what she did. Little, creeping crawlies, picking up my eyelids and scratching my eyeballs, and threatening to be stuck there if froze them. Nuh-uh. I am not touching her with a ten-foot-long pole; count me out!"

"Clock, please. Try to be understanding," Centurion pleaded, putting a hand on his shoulder supportively.

"I am extremely understanding! It's why I choose to live!" he declared, doing the same to Centurion; it looked disproportionate, given Clockblocker was significantly shorter.

A moment later, the masks-on buzzer began to flare. Clockblocker nodded. "And like that, I've got get my leave on, if you know what I'm saying… I'm saying I've got to fucking leave, let me through."

Centurion stepped to the side to let him go, sighing wearily. Childish...

Clockblocker dashed towards his room madly, laughing at his new-gained freedom then jumping in through the door and closing it.

Centurion turned towards the opening door, looking at who was going to enter.

Miss Militia stepped in, a heavy assault rifle held in one arm, hefted with the butt-plate resting on her shoulder, the barrel pointed upwards at the ceiling. She walked in with, almost with a strut, followed by an antsy girl that Centurion vaguely recognized; it looked like the Skitter costume, only significantly altered; an almost baby blue shade for the costume underlayer, with pure white plates of armor, an elegant belt with an 'o-shaped' loop in the middle. Her black hair flowed out from the back of the faceplate freely.

Centurion's face twisted into a wide, child-like smile of excitement. "Ooooh, guess who's here!" he cooed with a positive vibe, smiling.

Aegis stood up, to exchange pleasantries, while Weaver looked off in the direction of the hallway and asked, "Who's the guy who ran away?"

Vista facepalmed, while Centurion laughed. "That must be scared-of-bugs-Clockblocker," he informed.

She cringed a little, in shame. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" Aegis asked, not understanding.

"I think that may be my fault," she clarified.

"He'll get over it, Weaver. Give him time," Centurion said with a soft smile.

"Ah, yeah, my name's Weaver," she said, "But you guys probably know me as Skitter. I'm the girl from the Undersiders. Hi." She waved at Vista nervously - Vista returned the gesture - then looked around again, in the direction of the hallways. Her body took a posture halfway between amusement and being offended; an entertained disappointment.

Aegis turned to follow her gaze, but didn't hear anything. He realized what was happening from pure deduction: "He's using–"

"He's, yeah, he's using bug spray everywhere," Weaver interrupted with a nod.

Now, that's just rude, is what that is. "I will force a can of that crap up his nose," Centurion threatened with an irritated frown, folding his arms.

"I'd say it's alright, though," Weaver stated, "It's his room, right? And besides, I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable. It's my fault that Clockblocker's… leery to begin with."

Miss Militia judged this situation to be about the right type of social interaction for teenagers, and nodded. "I think I'll leave you guys to it, hm?" she looked around, then smiled. Everyone shrugged collectively, prompting her to chuckle. "Have a good one." She went back outside with a jaunty little wave.

Centurion smiled at Miss Militia as she left, then turned back to Weaver. When the door of the Wards HQ closed, he raised a hand. "If you don't mind, I'll do this," he said, taking off his helmet. Vista and Aegis hesitated for a moment, kind of surprised that Centurion was this open with her; but the trust seemed to at least encourage them to be open.

Vista walked up to Weaver, smiling. "I'm Missy. Missy Biron. It's nice to meet you. I, uhm, warp space. But you probably already know that." They shook hands in friendship; burying the hatchet.

Aegis came next. "Carlos. My power is redundant biology; not invulnerability. But, like Vista said - you probably already know that. From the... the, you know, extensive bleeding and puncture wounds my body was dealt," he joked, moving his finger to point at his chest in a few places.

Weaver cringed again; Centurion couldn't really imagine what it felt like, trying to befriend your former enemies: people you've just about helped beat up on more than one occasion. "S-sorry, yeah. Tattletale said you'd be fine, though."

"Guys, could we… keep the 'you-almost-killed-me' talks for when we're a little more comfortable with each other?" Centurion pleaded, looking at Aegis.

"It's fine," Weaver admitted, "I'm just guilty about it, I guess?"

"You guess?" Aegis laughed at that, not aggressively; just general laughter.

"I am. I am very guilty about it," Weaver corrected herself, swarming with anxiety.

It was Centurion's turn now. He approached Weaver and extended his hand. "My name's Gabriele Lioni. Gabriel, or Gabe, whatever you prefer. For now, I have a telekinetic barrier that I can extend to grab and do stuff with, an environmental shield that can shoot lasers and create golden constructs out of hard light, and can emit energy in almost every form that energy can be outputted in," he explained. "Oh, and I fly. I also have a bunch of other, minor abilities"

"Careful not to flex too hard," Vista chided, with an amused frown, arms folded over her chest.

Centurion turned to her with a disbelieving expression, "What? I'm honest! This is better than saying 'I can do pretty much anything I want given enough time,' right?" he asked.

Weaver laughed at that; goal achieved. Aegis snorted and shook his head, saying, "Or you can go for the humble solution, and just say you're a Trump."

"What kind of Trump?" Vista asked, playing along.

"Every kind!" Aegis shot back, grinning.

Centurion felt he'd just missed what had to have been an Eidolon-brand cereal commercial reference, or something of equivalent status.

"Oh, and I'm also Eidolon and Dauntless' son. I was brewed in a laboratory, and was born out of a tube," Centurion joked, playing the tune of the most popular crack-theory on PHO.

"And Scion is his grandpa," Transfusion said, mumbling, as she strode into the room while stretching.

"Good morning, sunshine," Centurion greeted her.

"R-right," Weaver responded, staring at Centurion with mild awe. "Are you really..."

"No, I'm from another dimension," Centurion answered dryly.

"Come on, stop joking," Weaver said, folding her arms and looking at him with a pang of irritation; not angry, serious irritation; just weariness from the uninterrupted antics.

"Not joking."

Weaver looked at Transfusion, and at Aegis. She looked at Vista last, as if expecting the child to be the most honest out of them. Unfortunately, not one of them laughed, smiled, or otherwise indicated that what Centurion said had been an attempt at humor, or otherwise fibbing. Weaver looked up at him, gaping.

Transfusion walked up to her, unmasked, and punched her shoulder with medium force; as a gangster greeting, and then said, "Kanna Akagi. Blood manipulation and blood accessories."

"Blood accessories?" Weaver asked, cocking her head to the side.

"Like this. Watch." Transfusion stepped back, and sensing the sobriety of her voice, Weaver elected to step back thrice. With that, Transfusion extended her fingers, and a filament of red shot out from each, like string; they assembled on the floor and started building over each other, solidifying into a wirework. They began to rise, creating four supporting arches that converged into a single base, and then created a spire. It built up and became slimmer towards the top, with a little head crowned by a needle at the very top; she made the Eiffel Tower. Out of blood.

With that, the red streamers cut out, as the bloody strings at the base began to dry up into a crystalline form; surprisingly clear-red for blood. Transfusion grinned. "Blood accessories; I apply myself. What do you think?" She looked around for opinions.

"We officially have two gross powers now!" Centurion said, sarcastically cheering.

"We officially have one gross asshole," Transfusion jabbed back with equal sarcasm, and a little smirk, as she wandered over to the refrigerator and started rummaging through.

Centurion jumped at Vista, stopping himself in mid-air just in front of her, and covered her ears. "Vista alert!" he informed her, "No swearing!"

Weaver looked at the hallway, holding her right elbow with the hand of the other arm. She looked flighty. "Is… Clockblocker and whoever else is in there gonna come out? He's covered himself in a fortress of frozen pillows and blankets. I can still go through. Should I flush him out?"

"Don't. That'll just make it worse," Centurion admitted, letting go of Vista's ears.

"They say exposure therapy is the best method," Transfusion offered, drinking something from a brown bag. "Like I used to be scared of blood."

"Is that liquor?"

"No, it's cola that tastes like liquor, and has a rich, brownish color," Transfusion said with a straight face, drinking some more.

Centurion sighed. Edgelords will stay edgelords. "Alright, guys, I'll do some stuff. If I suddenly space out and stop responding, my power's doing some freaky stuff."

"Wait. I didn't get to introduce myself!" Weaver argued.

"Oh, right," Centurion grinned, looking at her. "Go ahead."

"I'm Taylor," she said, looking at the Wards. They looked back at her, and she realized she hadn't taken her mask off. She did exactly that, fumbling an apology along the way, and smiling at them. "I'm Taylor. Hebert. I manipulate bugs, insects, crustaceans, and butterflies."

"Wait, you can manipulate shrimp too?" Centurion asked in a legitimate, genuine surprise.

"I… don't know, but during the Leviathan fight, some crabs and similar things got into my range and I could sort of control them," Weaver explained, moving a strand of hair out of the way. "It's not a big deal."

"That's sick," Centurion exclaimed again, in awe.

She looked abashed at the praise, shuffling her feet a little. "You can fly," Weaver replied, almost defensively; a 'no, no, you're cooler' argument.

"So what? Just because I can do two things, doesn't mean your one thing isn't cooler. Quality over quantity, hun," he said with a grin, swishing his hair dramatically, like those shampoo advertisements girls.

Vista raised an eyebrow. "I don't know. The flight is kind of cool."

"See?" Taylor insisted, nodding to Vista's words.

Transfusion took another sip of her liquor-flavored cola, gasping out with a 'good stuff' mumble, then reassessed the group. She said, "I'm gonna go get Stalker in here, to interact with you people. She's getting too anti-social," as she began to walk past them into the hallway.

Centurion looked down for a moment. At the same time, Aegis said, "Centurion and I wouldn't mind carrying you around the city, to fly."

"Oh, no," Weaver shook her head, skittishly stepping away at the offer, "I've always wanted to be able to fly, like Alexandria, but I'd rather do it under my own power. Uhm, not that I don't trust you guys to hold onto me, since you're heroes." She cringed again, realizing how awkward that sounded.

"Don't worry, it's alright," Centurion said, nodding.

"You should make her a jetpack," Vista commented dryly, seemingly in remembrance that he had Tinker powers too. She realized what she said wasn't completely far-fetched, and looked at him with enthusiasm, repeating, louder: "You should make her a jetpack! And me as well, while you're at it!"

He thought about it for a total of two seconds before agreeing that's sick. "That's not a bad idea. I will," Centurion agreed with a smile.

"We'd need approval from Piggot, PR, and the tinkertech review guys, from science and military, first," Aegis stated, frowning a little. "Should I send them the permission forms?"

"Yup."

"Okay. But you're doing the paperwork next," Aegis answered with a nod.

In that moment, the hallway door opened, as Transfusion walked back, dropping her emptied liquor-flavored cola into the nearby trash bin. She burped as she backed up and let herself fall down onto the couch. Footsteps followed behind her from the hallway, as Shadow Stalker walked out of the darkness and looked at Weaver. Directly at Weaver.

"Hi," she said, unassuming.

"Hey," Weaver replied, tilting her head. "Uh, my name's Taylor. I control bugs."

"Yeah," Shadow Stalker said, surprisingly calm; too calm, too cold and self-controlled, almost like an iceberg. Like a wolf sizing up its prey. "I can see that."

Centurion's body tensed up immediately. He stood up very slowly, putting himself in a position from where he could put himself between the two.

"Skitter, right? Your codename?" Stalker asked, pointing at her, sounding too affable and nice.

"Weaver, now."

"Weaver. Right, yeah," Shadow Stalker nodded, inching closer with folded arms, walking around her, as if observing and admiring her costume. Like a shark around a diver who pricked himself on the finger to lure it.

Centurion was ready to leap at any moment. If she dared to try anything, he'd drive her into the ground. She was not going to psychologically annihilate the living proof that he was not such a useless hero. Was that a selfish thought? Did he accidentally an unheroic thought? Whoops. Either way, Taylor was the first person who admitted she truly looked up to him, respected him, because of his actions and beliefs.

The Wards were friends with him because of the circumstances. That doesn't make the friendship any less meaningful, of course. But… Taylor felt like the first friend he earned.

"You're not doing the… reveal thing?" Weaver asked, confused, and slightly anxious.

"No. I don't feel like it," Stalker answered, inching, standing a meter behind her; there was no malice or killing intent in her body language. She stood calmly, with arms folded. "Say, Skitter. What's a bug like you, doing in a place like this?"

"I don't like where this is going," Vista softly murmured.

Aegis stepped in, snapping out of the frozen state he had been in. He walked forward to Stalker, and stopped literally an inch away from her; their faces close enough that if given the slightest push, they'd collide. "Stop," he ordered. "I don't know what set you off, but for your own good, I advise you stop right now, Stalker." Centurion interposed, putting himself between Weaver and Shadow Stalker, behind Aegis; backing him up.

"She's a villainous freak," Shadow Stalker said, before Weaver or Centurion could get in a word. "Did you see how she messed up Clockblocker? She doesn't belong here. It's not her place."

Centurion's fists tightened. "Do you?"

"I've earned my place on this team," she said confidently, phasing through Aegis, walking around behind him to face Centurion. Aegis was confused for a brief second, touching his chest in several spots as if a ghost had gone through it and infused him with ice, then turned on his heel to glare at her back.

"Let her do the same, then," he said, staring directly into her eyes. Dare to do anything and your head comes clean off.

"Let me spar with her, then," Stalker proposed, almost innocent, but with a violent undertone, hidden deep down.

"Why? So that you can childishly prove that you're physically stronger?"

"She can use her bugs, then," Shadow Stalker answered, "And a weapon. I'll use my fists and nothing else."

"You're a child."

"Fuck you!" she shouted, pushing him; Centurion felt himself sway backward, and stepped once to avoid tipping over, but otherwise he didn't budge.

"I convinced her to join us." Centurion offered, "Your quarrel is with me."

"No," Shadow Stalker spat, "My quarrel is with this bitch."

Vista decided to step in, in that moment, scowling with her fists at her side. "Don't call her that! For the short while she's been here, she's been nicer than you; I'm convinced she's a better human being. What's wrong with you?"

Shadow Stalker stepped back, fists clenching, as she looked around the room. Transfusion was staring at the situation, but not interfering; measuring Shadow Stalker?

Stalker looked at Centurion again, and he got the impression of a deep, burning scowl under the mask, "She can't stick up for herself?" she taunted, mocking, cutting; trying to find a weak spot somewhere. "You three need to babysit her, or she's going to die when I step on her?"

"A wise person once told me that being a hero is about protecting other people," Centurion said, referring to his conversation with Tattletale the other day. Only Weaver might have figured it out, if she got past the fact that Tattletale wasn't exactly 'wise,' just a smart-ass.

"Let me spar with her," Weaver said, not the slightest bit intimidated.

Centurion's body turned around on a swivel to look at her. "Are you sure?" he asked. Hearing her tone made him relax: she was confident, determined.

"Finally, some fucking positive answers!" Stalker said, turning around in a happy strut; satisfied, smug.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Weaver said, nodding, then looked at Stalker. "You against me. I get my power, you don't."

"That's unfair," Shadow Stalker said, calmer now; she was fine with the way the situation developed. "But I'll beat your ass black and purple anyway."

"You have two years of experience over me, yeah; this is to even the playing field," she proposed.

Centurion approached Taylor and whispered into her ear. "If she pulls anything, Aegis and I intervene. Alright?"

"Of course," Weaver nodded confidently.

With that, they were off to the sparring room.

128

Birdsie

Nov 8, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 9, 2019

#2,665

Shadow Stalker and Weaver now stood on the opposite ends of the sparring room; Aegis and Centurion floated over them, while Transfusion and Vista watched from behind the safety screen. Clockblocker didn't even want to watch, citing 'bugs' as his reason, while Flechette was busy with something out in the city.

Both girls had their masks on, now; for added protection. Weaver looked surprisingly confident in herself throughout, stretching a little in preparation, while Shadow Stalker just stared at her.

"Are we starting this, or not?" Stalker shouted at them.

"Begin on three," Aegis said, uncomfortable with the idea of being responsible for this. "One… two… three, go!"

Shadow Stalker ran forward, while Weaver froze where she stood, then started moving sideways. At the last moment, a collection of bugs that had previously been hiding appeared out of nowhere; from slits within the ceiling between the fluorescent light panels, in tiny cracks at the edges of the room, coming in through a vent, and from under armor panels in Weaver's costume. Must have been thousands of them, of different types.

Shadow Stalker stopped to a standstill, her mind racing to decide on a course of action as a sea of crawlies started to fill out a fourth of the room on the opposite side, while wasps and other fliers rushed her.

She dove out of the way, covering up her face-plate with one hand, and bum-rushing Weaver with a tackle to the ground, managing to just barely step away from the largest clusters of bugs; they moved out of the way perfectly to accommodate Weaver's fall, then slunk back and started crawling up Stalker's body.

The girl immediately Broke and jumped away, across the entire length of the room, trailing darkness behind herself. She swayed a little as she came out of it, and said, "This is fucking bullshit. She gets to use her powers, while I don't?" Weaver stood up by the time she was done speaking.

"Wow, you acted so high and mighty before, even suggesting she use a weapon, and now you talk about this not being fair?" Centurion called out with a smirk.

"Shut the fuck up," Shadow Stalker said, "I'm using my power."

"Fine." Weaver didn't seem to mind.

Shadow Stalker took that as permission, Breaking. Her body distorted, wispy, with a faint outline of her skeleton underneath, spilling out into wisps as she ran and leaped through the bugs, coming out of the Breaker state with a flying kick.

Weaver's balance and poise were decent for unarmed fighting, nowhere near the level that Armsmaster dished out, but almost matching Centurion's own. She wove out of the way, while raising her arms for a block to minimize the impact, but hesitated to counter-attack; smart choice, as the moment Shadow Stalker missed and stopped moving, she Broke again and rushed Weaver.

Centurion smirked at first. The way Weaver fought impressed him, but he frowned slightly at the thought of how the whole situation reminded him of his spars with Armsmaster.

Weaver seemed to realize something in that moment, because her movements changed; from defense into a steady retreat. She moved back, putting bugs in their way, creating a swarm of flies. Shadow Stalker seemed to try to go out of her Breaker state, but was incapable of it. She moved back and away, irritated, and Unbroke, thinking of how to proceed.

She Broke again, moved away from the swarm, even as it tried to follow her. She Broke out in safety behind it, then growled and ran at Weaver, ignoring the bugs as they all converged on her from every direction; like a reverse explosion of insects. She punched Weaver in the faceplate, making her stumble, then added a straight kick to send her sprawling back; Shadow Stalker entered the shadow state to escape the bugs, then moved elsewhere again to disengage safely, while Weaver climbed back up.

"Not so fucking tough now, are you?" Shadow Stalker asked mockingly. "If I had my crossbow you'd be dead."

Weaver took that at face value, having every bug converge on Stalker again; to force her to move. She anticipated the kick this time, as Stalker came at her, and narrowly managed to catch it. This gave Stalker an opportunity to raise her fists to strike Weaver's head, but she was pushed back and away instead, into a mass of bugs, where she went shadowy again for safety from the swarm.

"Damn," Aegis said, genuinely impressed by the sight. "It's a pretty even match. Stalker's been doing this for two years."

Centurion couldn't help but scoff in pride, grinning a little. "Yeah, thank me later for recruiting her."

Shadow Stalker rushed Weaver again, managing to find purchase through a hole in the swarm's defenses, Breaking out close, in an opportune position; she flanked Weaver quickly and managed to land a solid hit on the breastplate before Weaver jabbed back. The impact was strong enough to force Stalker to back off for a moment before she tried some kind of grapple; Weaver instead stepped forward and managed to put Stalker off-balance enough for the bugs to finally arrive there to her rescue.

With a cry of frustration, Stalker Broke away.

"Are you surrendering?" Centurion called out to Shadow Stalker.

"Fuck you!" Shadow Stalker yelled, Breaking forward and ignoring the bugs as she Broke within them; a single mosquito clung to her faceplate, its needly mouth stuck to the helmet. Stalker stepped into combat range like a feral animal, grabbing Weaver near the throat with one hand to push her forward, running together towards the wall.

Weaver punched her once, twice; once again, in the face, and then finally found purchase on the ground, skidding them both to a halt and kicking her off of herself. Stalker couldn't find balance for a moment, and she'd have fallen over if not for Breaking for half a second to reorient herself. She dashed at Weaver again.

"Maybe we should break this up?" Aegis asked, "Stalker is getting riled up."

"Yup, we should," Centurion agreed, flying down and swooping Weaver off the ground, high into the air. "Alright, you've had enough."

"I was about to win!" Shadow Stalker declared, not entirely aware how unhinged she sounded.

"Yeah, right, like the other seventeen times?"

"It's called attrition, dumb fuck; not that you'd know. Your fucking strategy is to rush in headfirst into a fucking concrete wall, thinking you'll break through. Fucking retard," she insulted in a chain.

Centurion extended a telekinetic cord, but the moment Stalker felt the pressure, she Broke and jumped. When she exited the shadow state, her posture was stiff and furious, facing them.

Centurion looked at Weaver, while holding her with one arm around the waist. The telekinetic barrier spread around her provided extra leverage, so she wouldn't feel the effects of gravity. "You did good, really," he said, smiling.

"I could have kept going," Weaver said, breathing hard enough that he could hear it in her speech. Not quite panting, though.

"I don't doubt that. But if it kept going, she would've started to try and kill you," Centurion admitted.

"She can try," Weaver answered. Centurion laughed good-heartedly.

Shadow Stalker stared up at them defiantly, probably wishing she could fly right now. "Coward. You didn't prove shit. You needed your retarded boyfriend to bail you out, just like he bailed you out of being a fucking villain."

"I'm on probation. Just like you," Weaver said coldly, "I'm not getting any special treatment."

Shadow Stalker physically shook with anger, shudders running over her skin. Then, she started laughing. "Fuck, that's right. I didn't do anything wrong; this was all; this whole spar was consensual," she said, as if realizing something brilliant.

"What do you mean?" Centurion asked, as he flew down to put Weaver on the ground. She stood, stepping away once, and staring at Shadow Stalker.

Centurion didn't notice this when rescuing her, but Weaver's bugs had massed into the cracks and slits of the room again; some of them crawling into the space between her hair and back, others into nooks in her armor. Gross… but cool…

"I mean this, you fucking idiot," Shadow Stalker said, pulling off her hood and then helmet in short order, throwing it to the ground besides her where it clattered. She grinned at Weaver, who hitched a breath and stepped back. "What's up, Hebert?" Sophia asked, smug and aggressive.

Holy shit. It was her. She's the bully?!

Centurion's body stiffened, tensed up and puffed up in unrelenting fury. He took a step towards her. Slowly striding, step by step, towards her.

"Oh? You're approaching me? What you going to do, you fucking idiot? Hit me? Instigate a fight? Think Piggot will be happy, when I haven't started it?" she asked, mocking in every word. When he blanked at the words, trying to find a response, she simply laughed at him. "What? Cat got your tongue? You don't have anything on me."

Centurion was at a single inch from her face, staring directly into her eyes. She stared back, defiant, grinning proudly. "Do you want to spar?" Centurion asked.

"Nope," she said, still grinning.

"Coward. Prey."

She perked up at that, but didn't become angry. "I'm refusing because you're nothing without your powers, without that fancy armor that Armsmaster made for you. Everything special about you is that you fell out of a hole in dimensions and woke up in a ratty fucking warehouse in the middle of nowhere," she said; the grin became subtler, more suave, more like a shit-eating smirk. Smug enough to make him smile back, genuinely.

"I'm glad you just told me everything everyone has been telling me for the last two months, Sophia. I don't care anymore, and you know why?" Centurion asked, folding his arms.

"Because you're fucking stupid?" she asked, cocking her head to the side, almost cutesy.

"Because I know I'm better than people like you, who depend solely on bullying others into submission to feel superior. Because you can't otherwise. You have no redeeming qualities: you're a sociopath. A villainous bitch who's probably so ashamed of herself that she developed this… coping mechanism."

"Coping mechanism?" She laughed, arms extended to the sides. "I'm just better than you, because I know my place in the world. I'm a predator. You're just a little dog, baring its fangs and trying to draw blood, but the moment your owners come around, you start whimpering for forgiveness like a little bitch. Just like her." She pointed at Weaver, who was clearly shaken, watching Sophia with widened eyes.

"Well-trained dogs are appreciated. Wild, predatory dogs are put down. Don't let me be your euthanasia," he said.

"As far as dogs go; you've been sterilized. You don't have the balls," Stalker said, picking up her helmet and laughing, as she started walking away, smug and contended with her efforts here.

Centurion turned towards Weaver and his whole pretense dropped instantly. His expression was concerned, and his body more relaxed as he hurried to her side. "Are you okay?"

"No," Weaver said, snapped, even. Her throat sounded dry, parched like she hadn't swallowed in a while. "I don't know if I can stay here. In the Wards."

"You're on probation. You have to," Aegis said; pressuring only out of concern.

Centurion's fists tightened. "Piggot will hear from me, I swear. She will be out of here before the sun is set. I promise you this."

"Somehow I doubt that," Weaver said, shaking her head, hesitant to look up at any of them. Vista stepped out of the peanut gallery a moment after, jogging towards them with a worried expression.

"Do you have any idea what Piggot would do to keep me alive and in Brockton Bay?" Centurion asked, shaking his head. "I can just threaten to leave, and she'll comply."

"Maybe," Weaver said, shaking her head, "But I'm not worth that much."

Centurion snapped, "Yes, you are!"

"How?!" she asked, looking up at him; the response was mostly a plea; a question, as if she couldn't see the answer, but it had anger laced into it.

Centurion breathed in, then sighed. "Sorry for lashing out… but... "

"Guys. Stop," Vista said, intervening right there and stepping forward, "Let's give her some space, okay? Let me take her back to the HQ, so she can calm down. Do you want to do that? Weaver?" She looked at Weaver, and the girl hesitated, waited before answering, then nodded mutely.

"Okay, come on," Vista said, a little hopeful, as she took Weaver's hand and led her on. Centurion spotted a trail of bugs, thin, concealed, just barely following after them; the flies, bees, wasps, and other fliers were buzzing intensely, as if in anger. They were responding to Taylor's emotions.

Centurion had already opened his mouth to speak, but the two girls had already left. He turned to Aegis. His tone was quiet, disappointed, resigned. "She's going to leave," he announced, choked up.

"I'm not going to allow that," Aegis said, "But I'll need… help. We need to figure this thing out. What was that about? Why did… they seem to have some past history, in their civilian identities."

"Sophia has been Taylor's school bully for the whole time Taylor was in Winslow, I think. They both go there; it makes sense. I wouldn't be surprised if Sophia made Taylor Trigger." In his head, it all clicked, as he remembered all of the vague hints. Shadow Stalker's moods over the months, correlated to how Taylor apparently stopped going to school. There was something there, even if small.

"We'll need evidence. Actual evidence," Aegis stated, stern. "I think Piggot is reasonable enough to send Sophia to juvenile for this, but we need evidence to convince her it's the right choice."

"Computer, give me the last three years of camera feeds from Winslow High School."

No CCTV or monitoring in Winslow High School.

"Fuck! Computer, look for any bullying reports, filter by name: Winslow High School."

62 reports available from last year; 326 reports available from the last five years; more reports available over time.

"Filter by name: Sophia Hess, Taylor Hebert."

9 reports found from last year.

"Fuck yes! Got it!"

"What did you get?" Aegis asked.

"Reports, containing either Sophia's or Taylor's name."

"Is it evidence? Reports aren't necessarily true," Aegis stated. Then he backed up his statement with, "I mean, I'd believe Taylor, over Sophia, but you know." It really said something about how fucking monstrous Shadow Stalker could get if the team captain was willing to choose a newbie-member ex-supervillain who acted nice and had a hero to vouch for her, over Stalker.

"Piggot is reasonable enough to make the connection," Centurion said.

"You don't get it," Aegis stated, understanding but tired of Centurion's attitude, "Piggot can't do anything to Sophia. She needs actual, solid evidence that Shadow Stalker broke her probation to present to the caseworker. I'm sure the moment Piggot sees the reports she'll agree with us, but it won't give her leverage."

"Give me a moment."

And with that, Centurion slumped on the ground, entering Oracle Morpheus.

Oracle, how do I find concrete evidence to put her in jail?

Sophia Hess; cunning, wild. Driven by experience in situations, in situations without experience falls back on spur-of-the-moment planning. Very low likelihood of confession of any kind. Possible to look through phone to find admissions of guilt, but also potentially illegal to obtain information this way; admissions of guilt may be dismissed. Unlikely to find witnesses. Ask Greg Veder: Greg Veder may be willing witness.

Centurion woke up and flew up in the air only to then fall back on both feet. "I know a fucking witness. Paired with Taylor's explanation, and the reports… she's pretty much in jail already."

"Who is it?" Aegis asked.

"Greg Veder."

"Who?" Aegis squinted.

"A… guy I met on PHO. We became… acquainted."

"Oh. Okay." Aegis stayed silent for a moment, awkwardly looking at Centurion as if trying to make something out. "And, uh... this Greg knows about the bullying? If we can convince him to talk, that might lend us some credence," Aegis proposed, eyes shifting under his mask.

"He knows I'm Centurion." He thought about it for a moment. "He will certainly help his hero solve bullying cases in his school."

"Okay." Aegis nodded, "It sounds like a plan. Do you want me to come with you, or do you think you'd better handle it alone?"

"Two heroes will just make it better," Centurion said.

"Let's go, then." They started walking in the direction of the exit, but it'd be good to give Greg a moment to prepare for the questioning. It'd be kind of awkward if they just walked up to his home, only to find out he'd gone out or was having guests over, or something like that. Centurion called Greg.

Greg picked up five seconds later, and there were sounds of Triumvirate Kart being played in the background. "Void Cowboy here. Whatsssup?" Greg took a long slurp of what sounded like an energy drink, then a gasp of relief. Where did he get that, with the state the city is in?

"Do you want to take your first step into being an actual hero?" Centurion asked; the carrot, dangling it in front of Greg's eyes. "And I'm not fucking kidding."

"Woah, woah, woah." Greg paused the game on the other side of the call, seemingly standing up. "Slow down, what's up?"

"You're going to throw your school's worst bully into jail," Centurion stated.

"Who?"

"We'll talk about it later. For now… this is your first real hero work."

"Holy shit. Holy fuckstickles! I'm so pumped, dude. Okay. Okay, where do I meet with you? Or do you like, float over to my window, knock on it, and I open it, and you just go in, Legend-style?" he asked, seemingly quivering with exhilaration. There was a sound as he closed his door, then ran downstairs.

"We'll do that. I'm not alone."

"Holy shit. Okay, I'm going to prepare some snacks for you guys. This is gonna be awesome!"

"Hey, this is kind of not awesome," Greg sulked, frowning, as he took a chocolate-chip cookie and took a sizable bite out of it, crunching for a moment then swallowing. He moved his hands to the sides, palms facing them questioningly. "What do you mean, 'testify in court?'"

Centurion sighed, then looked up at him and smiled charismatically. The kind of smile you'd expect from the good, deontological capes: Legend or Miss Militia when she's being diplomatic. "Look, I was not joking or tricking you when I told you that this was going to be heroic. Being a hero is not about punching villains or looking cool. It's about doing what's right, and helping others," he explained.

"Uuuh, but if… aah, frick. What do you want to know?" he asked, frowning, furrowing his eyebrows like an old grandma; unhappy with life.

"Everything there is to know about Sophia Hess' behavior towards Taylor Hebert. And every other person she's ever bullied, too. The more evidence, the better. Go into as much detail as you want," he said, starting a recording on his power armor. They couldn't really question anyone else except Greg, because that risked leaks. The PRT only investigated matters of parahuman nature, and the Wards themselves rarely investigated anything; it'd just be suspicious, but with Greg, they didn't have to worry about that too much.

"Sophia is just kind of mean to everyone. She's the star athlete and takes other people for granted," Greg explained, chewing on a jelly bean and washing it down with a mouthful of kool-aid. He gesticulated with the cup as he continued, "I mean. Nothing major; she shoves people out of the way, sometimes plants a gumdrop on someone's seat, uuh… she pushed Taylor into a filthy locker once, but I'm pretty sure it was someone else who came up with the idea. One of Sophia's friends."

"I doubt it," Centurion stated.

Greg continued to put another jelly bean into his mouth; a worm-shaped one. He bit into it, chewed on the head a little, then snapped it off and continued to roll it around with his tongue for a few seconds before pushing the rest of the noodly worm down into his mouth, feeling the sour sweetness and finally swallowing with a gasp of satisfaction. "What? No, Sophia has friends, I'm pretty sure."

"I didn't mean that. But go on."

"Emma and Madison are also bullying Taylor," he explained, kind of casual, "I wanted to stand up to them, but I'm kind of too scared."

"Surnames, please."

"I'unno, man. I think Madison's starts with C?" he hedged, not remembering exactly. "...Or was it B? C or B; I'm sure of that."

"Computer, filter by available data."

Madison Clements, Madison Brandons, Madison Bismarck.

"Is it Clements?"

"Oh, yeah. Definitely! Must've been Emma whose started with B. Like… Barn? Barn? Barnes? Barn...er… I dunno."

"Emma Barnes?"

"Uuh, probably?"

"It's probably her," Centurion said. "Thank you. You've helped us, a lot. I promise I'll make it up to you."

"I want a mecha!" Greg said excitedly, jumping up and mock-punching the air a few times. An invisible blade of plasma came springing from his arm, to catch an equally invisible foe into the chest, then cut upwards to divide their torso and head in two halves; all of it punctuated by 'tsschuu' and 'pow-pow' and 'zwoozsh' sounds Greg made with his mouth. Aegis looked at Centurion as if asking him 'what were you feeding this poor boy?'

Centurion turned to Aegis, with a shameless expression. "I just Tinkered him a gaming console!" he said, protecting himself.

"Oh, the console is kind of buggy; just wanted to say," Greg said, interrupting his mock-fight with invisible ninja opponents. "I mean it worked flawless for the first day or two, but then it started glitching out after that. I'm still using it, but I need to vent the thing every few hours or it just starts... freaking out."

"Tinkertech is unstable, and degrades really quickly. I'll repair it as soon as I can."

Greg balked at that. "Awh."

120

Birdsie

Nov 9, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 9, 2019

#2,694

Following their questioning of Greg, it quickly became clear that investigating the matter further was impossible: neither could pose for law enforcement or child protective services, they didn't have any real evidence, and Mr. Barnes was a lawyer, which complicated things extensively given he'd see through such lies instantly. On the other hand, as Wards, they had little to no authority to investigate this; no more than a civilian, really, without express permission from the PRT or a court.

So Aegis proposed they hand over what they've got so far to Piggot, and let her men handle it, and Centurion agreed.

When Director Piggot was told that Shadow Stalker violated the terms of her probation, she'd believed them almost instantly, like it was inevitable, then queried the exact nature of the act, or acts: and in so, they gave her the full story, and what they managed to gather from Greg Veder.

"I see," Piggot frowned, sitting down at her desk. "We'd need more evidence, more witnesses. Ask Weaver for any details regarding the bullying; they'll be key to figuring out any testimonies. I'll move some strings, and get someone to look into this. I doubt we'll come up with anything fast, but with a little luck, Shadow Stalker might slip up. I will be moving patrol schedules, to accommodate this information: alienating a new Ward is hardly a good idea. Aegis; do you mind the afte–"

"I don't mind the afternoon shift, Director," Aegis stated, nodding with a sliver of determination.

"Very good," Piggot nodded. "Dismissed."

"Thank you," Centurion said, standing up and leaving. "I'm gonna call Weaver."

Aegis gave Piggot a stern nod, then stepped out after Centurion and closed the door behind himself, breathing out a little. "Shadow Stalker, man," he complained quietly, beginning to fall into step towards the elevator. Centurion's called Weaver, using his armor's systems.

"Hello?" she picked up, sounding a little down, thoughtful, but otherwise like she was picking up shards of herself and slowly gluing them back together.

"Hey, Taylor. How are you feeling?" Centurion asked, in a sweet tone.

"Stupid," she answered, and after a moment, she elaborated, "I can't believe how stupid that whole situation was. How stupid I was."

"What… situation?" Centurion asked, not sure what she's referring to.

"The spar," she answered, bitter, "I should have just let it go. I- when I joined the Undersiders, Bitch - uhm, that's Hellhound - challenged me for... my place on the team, basically, and sicced her dogs on me. But, yeah; I managed to beat her, and she had to acknowledge my position, I guess? I thought- I guess my brain skipped to that, right there; joining a new team, having to prove myself again."

"You've proven yourself to everyone else who matters. Everyone hates that girl, but probably not as much as you do. We'll always be there to stick up for you. You're our teammate, and that means you're our friend," he reassured her.

That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because from the blank, nervous silence, he could tell that saying that repelled her. Weaver spoke five seconds later, saying, "I've got to go."

"Will you be–"

"Bye," she said, then hung up.

Centurion looked down at the ground, blankly, feeling a tad irritated. "So?" Aegis asked, clearing his throat uncomfortably as the elevator arrived on their floor. He stepped in.

"She's not coming," Centurion muttered, stepping in as well.

Aegis frowned for a moment, then, kind of cold, said, "You pushed her too much."

Centurion chose to stay silent. He was angry, because why would anyone be mad at someone for telling you that they were your friend?

Aegis, not sensing the dim anger, continued to speak, "She's been bullied, for a long, long time. No friends, from what you've told me; little support from her family. And she's just left behind her last group, so she's probably slow to take up connections. Relationships, friendships, don't come naturally to her."

"I have been bullied as well, Carlos," Centurion retorted.

He looked at Centurion with a lidded look, and shook his head. "Not my point. She dealt with it differently. She didn't have friends, didn't seem to have a therapist; and you told me her father was withdrawn from her life for a long amount of time," Aegis stated, word after word, "People in that kind of situation can't form bonds with other people easily. You can't expect them to just... jump at every opportunity to make friends." He sounded tired, having to explain this.

Centurion sighed wearily. "How do I fix this?" he asked, looking up at him.

"You don't," Aegis answered, "Time heals wounds, pushing back forces them open and inserts a hot rod inside."

"She will leave on her own. That will… put her in danger."

"How so? Coil only has it out for Tattletale, if that," Aegis said, as the elevator doors opened on the first floor. They proceeded through the lobby, walking past the two remaining PRT guards, the lonely receptionist, and a single girl in a hoodie, with black hair and a red streak who was staring at a poster of Miss Militia with a Kalashnikov.

"Independent capes don't make it for long," Centurion answered, still staring down at the ground.

"I don't know. Convince her," Aegis suggested. "You don't have to become friends with someone to give them a good argument not to do something stupid."

"How do I convince her? She probably doesn't want to talk to me right now," Centurion asked.

"Man, I don't know, I'm out of my depth here." They stepped into the Wards elevator, and Aegis sighed as he went through the routine of the retinal scan, then continued to speak, "If only Gallant were still on the team. He's the guy who held us together, I think. Kept conflicts like this from spiraling out, and fixed them, when they did."

"Yeah… I'll figure out a way. I hope."

"We could use some of that," Aegis stated, kind of absent, "Everything's just getting worse, lately. Moles in the PRT, Coil trying to take over the city, Chariot, Signal; Accord's after you, and now this damn drama. I'm not even gonna list Leviathan. It's so damn frustrating," he nearly hissed, clicking his lips together.

Centurion couldn't help but smirk. He felt world-weary as he responded, "Tell me about it." They came into the common room of the HQ. Centurion took off his helmet, sitting on the sofa and placing the helmet on his lap.

Aegis followed in, making sure the door was closed before taking off his mask and stretching, his arms going up above his head as he bent every muscle in his torso. It made his voice sound strained as he spoke, "And now Piggot wants to send me to Boston, bring Weld here. Some kind of... replacement thing, for testing leadership."

"What?!" Centurion exclaimed, expression jumping into disbelief. "She fucking what?!"

"Yeah," Aegis nodded, sounding kind of weary as he sat down on the couch. For a moment, they stirred in silence, then Aegis sighed. "It was part of an agreement before Leviathan. Armstrong and Piggot agreed to an exchange." With that, Aegis relaxed his muscles and looked up; the same kind of weary look that Centurion recalled from that one time he'd patrolled with Shadow Stalker.

"I'm… sorry about all this," Centurion looked at him, noticing his lassitude.

"Not your fault. It's a matter of course for me, and I'm helped by the fact that I never get exhausted. Just part of being the captain, I guess," Aegis stated, looking at him and seemingly dropping the tired look, only for it to be replaced by a mourning stare. "I wish Kid were still here. I miss his energy."

It brought back repressed memories, which clawed to the forefront of Centurion's awareness. He remembered the rain, the blood. What was the order of events? Did he save Reynard first, then go Kid Win? That felt like it was the case, but he wasn't sure. He helped Laserdream against Leviathan after he found Kid Win.

Realizing he'd been thinking for a few moments, in silence, he spoke. Slow and hurt. "I actually… found his body. During the fight."

Aegis shook his head, looking at the coffee table glumly. He brought it on himself, but chose to listen.

"I was… reviving him, when one of Leviathan's tidal waves separated me from him." Aegis nodded once. "I still feel so guilty about it. If only I had found him… a minute earlier..." Centurion stared at the ground, fists clenched. He fumed, but the anger was almost immediately replaced by sadness, helplessness; his muscles sagged into weakness, unable to hold the fists tight.

"I was out for a good part of the fight," Aegis said, then scowled as he bit his lip hard enough that it looked like he managed to draw blood. "After Leviathan bisected me, I didn't really have quite as much control over my body; had to reattach the other half, and I still couldn't quite walk for a few minutes after that. Damn."

Centurion recalled his own injury. It was near the beginning of the fight. He'd been flying, far above the fight, far above Leviathan, and managed to charge up an energy missile strong enough to draw the Endbringer's attention. His brain couldn't even process fast enough, to warn him of the incoming blow. He remembered the details of the injury, after he'd woken up. A cracked spine, at the very least. Probably some cranial damage, as well. "I was knocked out cold from a direct blow, and then hitting the ground. I would've died if it wasn't for my healing power."

Aegis nodded. "Wish I could grant a piece of my survivability with a touch, like you do," he said languidly, melancholic. Centurion froze up, then relaxed as he realized he wasn't talking about the power-meddling power; Aegis didn't even notice, but his expression took on a harder note as he stood up and said, "I'll go check out the console."

June 3rd, 2011

The Docks were in a state of eternal disrepair following the attack. Cracked pavement, broken piping sticking out of the street; chunks of concrete unevenly distributed across the streets like hills, or pitfalls leading into stormy sewers - a virtual maze of dangers to navigate, slightly smoothed out by Vista's power. Clockblocker was along, if only because his power was useful when combined with Vista's, and because given recent events, Centurion was in constant danger. The weather was shit like always, with a slight drizzle to fuck up their day.

They'd been patrolling there for nearly half an hour, passing through the streets, directing civilians to areas where they could get supplies or food. They'd stopped a single mugging so far, but nothing beyond that; and even then, Dauntless did a majority of the work when it happened.

Dauntless looked at the vagrants, frowned at the ABB colors of their mismatched clothing and said, "Console. Reporting former ABB remnants in our area and moving on."

"Copy that," a PRT uniform replied.

Centurion looked at Dauntless briefly, then looked back in front of himself. He wanted to talk, just to break the silence, but didn't really know about what. The whole situation felt tense like they were walking through a jungle, rather than a city. It took some of his willpower, but he gathered the courage to talk.

"So… how have you been holding up?" Centurion asked, turning towards them.

Clockblocker seemed annoyed. "That's the only conversation topic nowadays, huh? Shit; that's the answer. Everyone's been holding up like thick, gooey shit, Centurion."

Vista flinched at his language, then glared at him with a frown, but he seemed to scoff instead of apologizing. A brief exercise of her power caused a little piece of outcropping rock to expand and cause Clockblocker to stumble. He dashed forward five steps, regathering his balance, then turned to her. "What the hell?"

Dauntless sighed. "Stop. Now." His voice was tired, weary; exhausted, and clearly little conflicts like this weren't making things better. "Let's just get this patrol over with."

Clockblocker looked away and released a low sound. Between a sigh and a groan. But he turned and walked, three or so steps ahead of the rest of the group, with Dauntless trailing five or six behind. Centurion turned towards Vista. The lower half of his face contorted into a frown.

She was truculent, blowing air into her cheeks and letting it out in the opposite direction from him with a little scoff. Dauntless groaned in such a way that his eyes probably went up to the top of his skull. "Please, not today," he said, harsh and firm, before anyone did anything else, "Just… not today."

Vista frowned, and without turning to look at him, said, "Okay. Sorry."

Centurion kept silent. He didn't really feel like talking anymore.

Apparently deciding that, the two options were either (a) the Wards fight and annoy him, or (b) he finds an acceptable conversation topic to distract the children with, Dauntless asked, "So how's the new Ward? Weaver? Is she fitting in?" at the same time as he gave the area a superficial glance. His spear and shield crackled at the droplets of light drizzle hitting them, sharp contours of lightning jutting out to flash-boil any water droplets that came into range, which formed a constant vaporwave.

"She's fine," Clockblocker shot back, without looking back.

"I like her," Vista answered.

And that was that. No one bothered to elaborate. At least Dauntless, despite his mounting annoyance, had the decency to not sigh this time.

In that moment, Centurion heard a swish of air, as something fast and sharp went past his head at the speed of sound, followed by the sound of a bang, and tiny metal hitting the concrete. Dauntless wheeled immediately, raising his shield and erecting a forcefield to block the second gunshot. "We've got incoming!" he said. "Radio for support. Vista, create cover!"

Vista exercised her power, and pieces of the pavement began to distort impossibly in ways, directions, and textures they shouldn't have been able to. Clockblocker crouched beneath one of them, using the radio to call in the situation. At the same time, Centurion raised a hand, and a pair of golden filaments rushed out towards the ground, expanding and creating construct walls. Large, tall barriers of golden crystal; opaque for the most part, with only a slim outline of the colors of what existed beneath.

"Centurion; conserve your energy," Dauntless said in a corrective, but not necessarily harsh tone.

Centurion nodded, and the walls disapparated, shattering into hundreds of fragments that degraded into motes of gold. And these sparks went back into Centurion's shield, briefly making it flare.

Four more shots rang out, crashing against Dauntless' shield, over the course of five seconds. After that, they stopped for a breath, before beginning to pepper across Vista's cover. Pieces of tarmac and concrete spread through the air with showers of particles, as this happened.

Dauntless frowned, said, "Centurion. Construct armor on Vista and Clockblocker, then take cover and stay here. How long until that backup arrives?"

"Eight, ten minutes," Clockblocker answered, breathing a little quick, but mostly managing to deal with the stress of being shot at.

"Good enough," Dauntless stated, dashing forward. Or to be more accurate, he stepped once, and launched away like a cannonball, trailing a streak of yellow lightning as he began to get closer to the shooters, several streets across. From this far away, Centurion could barely make them out; figures in some kind of dark armor. Dauntless raised his shield to block their shots, then zipped around, stabbed the arclance at one of them; making them drop to the ground.

Centurion pointed his hands at Clockblocker and Vista. Two strands of gold snaked their ways out of his palms, connecting to them and beginning to create layers upon layers of golden energy, condensed into crystal-like constructs around their bodies. They were segmented, like armor, to afford them mobility. He'd mostly put them in the places that didn't have much armor, or needed more.

Clockblocker turned to look behind Centurion, and yelled, "Watch out!"

Half a second passed before Centurion felt the danger sense flare. He was involuntarily thrown to the ground, as he felt someone or something punch or kick him in the back of the shoulders; the loud gunshot indicated it was a bullet. More started coming; rather than potshots, whoever was shooting decided to spray full auto at them, and he picked up on at least three distinct shooters.

He picked himself up with flight, which for a brief moment, unveiled him and made him an easier target; four more bullets hit him: in the left foot, the side of the head, the right shoulder, and the dead center of the chest. Every one of them felt like a debilitating punch, by an athlete, knocking the wind out of him, and dealing what will definitely be a bruise, if not for the healing power.

Vista altered space behind him, on top of the other parts of the cover she'd already made, concealing herself and Clockblocker in a v-shaped sandbag trench. Some of the gunshots petered off of it, blowing away chunks. Centurion dashed behind the nearest cover; an outcropping of the trench that Vista made, breathing heavily.

The gunshots stopped for a moment. Almost four seconds later, his danger sense decided to flare, informing him of a ball-shaped object that was about to be inside the trench.

"Grenade!" Centurion yelled, catching the object as it fell, then thrown it up, high in the air with a cordon of telekinetic force.

The high-explosive went off, scattering enough fragments of shrapnel and pressure that his telekinetic barrier snapped away, scattered, impotent enough to stop it. He felt the feedback ring back in his mind like a sense of dullness, even as black, jagged pieces fell down around them. Clockblocker breathed out, "Are you both okay?"

"I'm fine!" Vista declared, stretching the cover to its absolute limits; practically coating them in, like a turtle. She prolonged the trench, turning it into a kind of tunnel gradually; like a bunker without windows, but it was clear that despite her ability to distort space on a large scale, she struggled with speed; it took several seconds to achieve the effect, and by that time, a second grenade had come, and Centurion threw it out in much the same way.

He felt his telekinetic barrier become weaker, due to the constant, massive exertion. His danger sense became duller, less sharp and pronounced already. He spent fifteen charges to boost his telekinetic field, and five on the danger sense.

It took eight seconds to implement it. The gears turned, then solved the question and upgraded the powers.

The danger sense barely improved; the average prediction rate jumped up by a tenth of a second, the number of uses without overheating went up almost unnoticeably. The telekinetic field, though, he felt get stronger, by a small chunk. It was easily his second strongest power, after the environmental shield.

He'd noticed the gunshots outside, or at least immediately outside had stopped; they were still in the distance, alongside the sounds of Dauntless' arc-lance cracking, as loud as lightning.

Centurion took a knee, panting. "Fuck."

"What's wrong?" Clockblocker asked. He wasn't exactly on the verge of panic; his voice sounded more angry, adversarial, confrontational, than scared.

"I was shot five times," Centurion answered. "Didn't you see that?"

"Shit. Really?" Clockblocker asked, wincing. "No, I was too busy dodging bullets myself. Can't really freeze them on 'instinct.' It needs conscious input."

"Do you think it's Accord's men?" Vista asked, covering up her ears a little at the ringing.

"Or Coil's," Clockblocker suggested.

"Neither Accord or Coil are stupid enough to attack me while I'm with two other Wards. But Accord has it out for me, so I assume he'd be willing to ignore that."

"Fuck that! Look!" Clockblocker pointed outside the trench. A team of three people in armor stood there; two with guns, one with a bazooka, crouched down and beginning to take aim. Vista screamed and exerted her power, covering up the exit of the trench with her power and swaying a little at how non-Euclidean the space around them was getting.

Half a second before then, the bazooka guy fired, and the rocket rushed towards them, crashed against the side of the trench, and exploded off to the side, instantly causing Vista's power to be nullified and snap to zero; leaving them in the middle of a slightly cracked, paved street; an upwards of ten meters in any given direction to get to cover. Vista started to use her power again, providing them with space and cover.

Centurion switched on adrenaline. He felt a sharp, life-giving burn in his veins, and he sent three lasers at the three enemies' heads in quick succession. Blunt lasers.

The shots contacted; the bazooka-wielding man stayed up thanks to his knelt, stable position, but the shot caused him to sway and drop the heavy tube. He drew his sidearm and began to fire blindly, in a panic, while his other two friends were less lucky and were thrown to the ground hard enough to daze them; at least for the next few seconds.

Centurion projected a golden shield construct in front of himself as cover from the blindfire as he flew at top-speed towards the man, intending to do him some mischief.

He was blindsided, as the danger sense warned him of the immediate sniper shot that would not fail to perforate his gut when it impacted him, exactly half a second into the future, with the shooter already pressing the trigger.

He stopped mid-flight and changed direction, going back in the direction he came from. The bullet went past him with a swish, but the impact sound was far more concerning: it hit the side of the building on the opposite side of the street, and then exploded, creating a perfect, twenty-centimeter diameter of pure nothingness, like someone dug an ideal sphere in that spot.

Centurion's eyes widened as he flew into cover again, behind a concrete barrier on the sidewalk, lobbing an energy grenade at the group of three armed mercenaries. He didn't get to see the effects, but the trajectory suggested they were dealt with.

Shit, shit, shit, what the fuck was that?! I would've fucking died if that hit me!

The danger sense flared, but this time, it did not warn him quick enough; Centurion felt his forcefield and environmental shield flash away for a literal eyeblink as the cover behind him was eaten away to form an ideal sphere of nonexistence. His armor barely suffered, but had the cover been a few inches less thick, he probably wouldn't have a good amount of his spine right now.

Centurion aimed for the nearest window, leaping through the air. The danger sense was too overheated to warn him, but the next two sniper rounds missed anyway; a good chunk of the building he was moving for was destroyed, a perfect swiss cheese hole now present on an old, ratty red couch in the middle of the room, revealing layers of fluff and old, rusted springs.

He decided it was prudent to be behind at least two layers of cover at a time, each one spaced from the other at least slightly. And so he ran, deeper into the building, to get the most space between him and the outside. He heard noises downstairs, of chairs and furniture being thrown around, and someone speaking in a gruff voice. More mercenaries. He had no idea where Vista, Clockblocker and Dauntless went; he'd been separated. No option of going back with that sniper.

Centurion turned on the combat prediction system, on the 'armed military team' setting. He hated Armsmaster with a passion, but he fucking loved the man for his thoroughness. One good trait he was willing to admit he had. The combat prediction started to 'predict' the sounds downstairs, but couldn't do much. A notification showed: 'Estimated opponents: 4-6.'

Centurion radioed in. "I am currently in a building, four to six mercenaries are looking for me. Please, I need help."

After a moment of silence, the top of his armor flashed a red notification: 'Warning! Communications jammed! Networking functions unavailable.'

Fuck! he yelled out in his mind. Soon after that, he started whistling subsonically. There were sounds of creaking floorboards in the main hallway, on the half-floor below him.

The combat prediction program started doing something, and showed, '15s until enemies arrive on this level.'

His echolocation didn't extend far enough to show details, but he could just about make out three or so masses, moving in a strict line up the stairs. The building was damaged; there were three floors, but the stairwells had been broken, so there was only one that connected the second with the third, and only one that connected the second with the first.

Centurion floated off the ground ever-so-slightly to avoid making footsteps or noises. He moved towards the stairs and hid in a spot where he'd be out of sight when they came out of them. The doorway of the small room was seven meters away from the stairs. An ambush is my best bet: take them all out quickly, element of surprise.

The mercenaries stopped on top of the stairs, and his combat prediction program was trying to work something out, but they started acting first.

"Come out, come out, come out, whereveeer you are! We know you're in here, kid. It's the end of the line. Let's make this quick, eh?" one of them said. His voice sounded particularly nonchalant about the situation; he'd done this a hundred times before, in different settings and variations. These guys were experienced.

Centurion loitered in silence, preparing an explosive beam to shoot at them as soon as they came into view.

"Fuck it," the same man said, "Tell the guys upstairs to prepare the anti-matter annihilator. We'll burn this fucker down."

"Roger," another one said, and started radioing in the request.

What is that supposed to be?

"Let's get clear," the man said, then there was the sound of footsteps going down.

As soon as they turned around, Centurion came out of cover and got speared by a barrage of lasers, from the trio of mercenaries who had been already waiting for him. A bluff.

The lasers went through his environmental shield, which barely managed to absorb the slightest bit. They entirely ignored his telekinetic field, and instead of tearing through his armor, they heated it up, to the point where it sizzled and burned against his skin, like a burger laid on a burning grill. He couldn't keep himself from screaming at the top of his lungs, but had enough control to charge at the three at top-speed.

He managed to tackle the mercenary leader, in the middle, flinging him over the half-floor and breaking through the balustrade behind him. Centurion pinned him to the back wall, as he released a golden shockwave to keep the other mercenaries at bay, and to hit the one he was holding a second time. He then headbutted their helmets together, slightly ineffective, and the man growled. Centurion's combat prediction software showed a pair of red arrows from behind with a, 'Warning' and an outline of the mercenary leader reaching for his sidearm to fire in Centurion's stomach.

Centurion wheeled around and threw the mercenary leader at the other two with his full might.

The leader yelped, but - credit to the fucking man - he managed to draw his sidearm and blindfired twice as he went through the air, almost hitting Centurion on the second shot. He didn't get a chance to fire a third time, as he slammed into his two subordinates and the entire trio fell to the ground in a heap; still conscious, but stunned.

He could hear the reinforcements incoming, as a grenade was thrown somewhere downstairs to flush him out from a location he wasn't actually in. They were expecting him to flee downstairs.

Centurion threw a blunt-force energy grenade in the middle of the mercenaries in front of him. They scrambled away, and everyone except one managed to get away; the third one was slammed down a side corridor of whatever fucking building this was, and from the sound of cracking glass, Centurion could tell he either killed a man or grievously injured one. Probably the latter, given this was only the second floor.

There wasn't much time to do anything; the reinforcements from downstairs arrived in that moment: four mercenaries, standing shoulder-to-shoulder as they let out a barrage of lasers in his direction. His energy stores were running dry; no option to attack or defend beyond taking the shots; which he definitely wasn't eager to try. Centurion darted upstairs, flying through the hallways. There, two of the remaining mercenaries ran into him, and he flew past them; not reacting to their presence quickly enough.

One of them yelled something, then a laser hit the wall to his right. His danger sense decided to react in that moment, extremely dull, warning him that he'd be hit by a laser in the foot. Too late to dodge, but he managed to swivel around in such a way that instead scratched across his armor's surface.

Centurion kept flying, focusing on going faster to get out of that situation. He was terrified. Another laser impacted his back, went across the top of his head, and then left a scorch-mark on the far ceiling ahead of him. The rest of the mercenaries caught up, and the barrage of laser-fire increased for a split-second before he finally reached the fucking stairs and got to the third floor.

The combat prediction program told him there were no mercenaries on the third floor, but the ones downstairs would catch up in twenty seconds.

He could hide out here, or he could try to break through to the roof. The former option left him with a group of at least six mercenaries, with guns that could hurt him. The latter meant unveiling himself to that fucking sniper with whatever physics-defying crumbler rounds he was armed with. His communications were being jammed, and it was very possible that his tracker had just kind of plopped off the console screen, meaning no one short of Thinkers would be able to figure out where he was. He was completely on his own.

Centurion was panicking. He didn't know what to do. Both of the two options would possibly mean certain death. But there were more chances at surviving if he was outside, with more maneuverability to run away. And thus, he broke through the nearest window, raining down shards of glass onto the street and taking a cursory look around. Down on the street, he saw two unmarked black vans, that he recognized from the escape vehicles at the Forsberg gallery.

His danger sense came to a glint, foretelling the sphere of void that was about to be his stomach, in a second.

Centurion zipped out of the way, dodging the bullet, going for cover.

He allowed his adrenaline mode to take the reins, giving himself another shot of endorphins and combat juices. At roughly the same time, his combat prediction program managed to start drawing out reddish areas where the sniper could reach but struggled to confirm his location.

Centurion flew through the air; the barest, hushed scream of his danger sense combined with the adrenaline allowed him to dodge the void bullet as he went for the nearest other building.

The second round hit him in the left thigh, and removed everything from the knee-down, causing him to tumble into the window and break it with a heavy impact. Centurion managed to crawl away behind a wall, the stump that remained below his knee bleeding heavily. He sat down, against the wall, opposite of the entrance door to the apartment he was in.

Holy fuck.

It didn't hurt as much as it should have. It felt like the leg was still there, the nerves barely registering its disappearance, beyond a very high amount of cold, discomfort, and some scratchy sensations down at the line of severance. He felt the burning heat of his regeneration power fill out the area, stopping the bleeding.

I just lost my fucking leg. Holy fuck.

He began to shudder involuntarily, at the thought of it, if not at the currently-nonexistent pain.

What the fuck.

Some tears went down his eyes, but the adrenaline kept him from crying and panicking too much: he was lucid, but he felt the faint sense of uncontrolled shock gnawing at the back of his mind. Lucid was good. Lucid meant he'd be able to make decisions.

Centurion charged up his environmental shield, pressing on himself with telekinesis. It charged notably slower, he'd noticed, because there was no shield to cover his left foot, and therefore, no shield to charge over there. He sat there, for ten seconds, letting his shield charge, when the combat prediction announced, '180s until opponents arrive at this floor.' It began counting down from that.

Centurion kept waiting. Meanwhile, he tried to send an emergency request to Dragon: the only person who he hoped could come to his aid. Maybe she could get through the jam?

Nothing. The communication was being blocked at the transmitter, not during the reception.

Two minutes left; he could hear the muffled sounds, two floors down now. Looking to the right, outside the window, the prediction program told him the sniper and his spotter were scanning each window of the floor he was on. He was prepared to fire, which, in a way, not only returned him to square one of choosing between a sniper and mercenaries, but made things worse, by virtue of a missing foot and the sniper roughly knowing which windows to spot for.

The seconds kept passing by, one after another, as he was left with himself, pondering on what the fuck to do.

He wasn't as scared as he should have been, nowhere near as panicked as someone with a missing foot should be: the results of the adrenaline, and he could slowly feel it wearing off, the pain and fear coming back to haunt him. He needed more of the adrenaline, to keep his wits sharp.

He breathed in, exercising his power, and felt the relaxing sluice of heating go through his veins, revitalizing them: he realized in that moment, how cold his body was; a fact he hadn't noticed before. It was like the ground was winter itself, leeching the heat out of him. Or maybe it was the blood loss, missing foot, the brain going haywire, the adrenaline, or a very unhealthy combination of several of those factors.

Centurion suddenly remembered that those bullets must be Tinkertech. A train of thought. Tinkertech was rare, hard to maintain, and expensive, which led to the conclusion: he will run out of rounds, sooner or later. He projected a medium-sized object of unsure shape, and tossed it out of the window to draw the sniper's fire.

Nothing. A waste of energy. The sniper was too skilled to fire too quick but skilled enough to fuck him dead if he, himself, went out.

Fuck.

Around a minute and twenty seconds, until the mercenaries downstairs reached his position. He could hear them opening doors, somewhere downstairs, looking and searching, and breaching rooms. He heard the screams of terrified civilians, as they were forced out of their tenements, as the mercenaries looked around.

Centurion started moving the furniture with telekinesis in front of the door, stacking chairs, the couch, the table, a small cupboard with no doors or hinges, the TV, and the couch. He topped it off with the potted, wilted flower for good measure.

He then placed the entirety of his stored energy into a pebble of explosive force, which he held in his hand, and kept charging with every single bit of energy that the telekinetic pressure provided. As soon as the door budged, he'd launch it. To get extra energy, he began to bang his free hand against the floor, letting it absorb the meager kinetic impact.

One minute left; they were on the third floor now, far away in one of the hallways. His energy ball was getting stronger, but not as strong as to entirely overshadow most of his grenade discharges: it'd take a bit longer to get it up to the same level that managed to hurt Leviathan.

His foot, or the lack of thereof, was beginning to sting again. Out of habit and a desire not to bother with this fucking mess, he ordered the adrenaline to go through his body. The shot brought shivers with it, this time, as he realized that he was getting even colder; like a grave, contrasting sharply against the fiery burn of his healing power, and the near-chemical acidity of the adrenaline in his veins.

The ball had grown, expanding to the size of a furious globe, as big as Centurion's head. It crackled with wisps of light, furiously reaching out and wavering. He suspended it in the air, as he heard someone batter against the door to the apartment. One of them muttered something about him being through here, then about 'grenades' to 'flush him out.'

Centurion grinned.

Centurion's telekinesis, if he used it as a field on his body and then punched with its assistance, could output enough force to make a car skid across the street. Connecting it to a car instead, would let him lift and move it with fair precision and sluggish momentum, though surely enough to chuck it down the street.

A door wasn't even a quarter the weight of a car, and certainly nowhere near its size. The telekinetic tether connected to it, spread inside of it, then took a moment to properly fill it out with its full might. In that moment, Centurion pushed, and the door exploded outwards, shattered into a shower of splinters nearly as fast as shrapnel, but not quite as sharp and durable. The mercenaries weren't hurt thanks to their armor, but they were stunned, and that gave him all he needed:

As soon as the door blew up, he chucked the energy sphere at them, through a narrow slit in the furniture barrier.

Last edited: Nov 9, 2019

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Birdsie

Nov 9, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 10, 2019

#2,727

The blast was loud enough to drown out everything else. It was the same force he'd used against Leviathan: the maximum output of his energy blasts, which coincidentally wrung him dry of said energy.

Centurion tried to stand up, hobbling, using telekinesis as a crutch, hovering off the ground. Every single bit of him, underneath the power armor, was cold like ice, contrasting sharply against the warmth of the adrenaline flowing in his veins. It almost gave him a headache, from the sheer dizziness, but the adrenaline helped there.

The mercenaries outside the door had been blown to smithereens; at least the ones closest to the blast. One of them had a big chunk of his stomach lacerated and charred, a coal-like surface with dark brown blood: the heat ate through his armor. A few of them probably survived, but had enough broken bones and concussions they weren't an immediate concern.

Fuck. His thoughts raced to catch up to him. The grim-hearted realization he'd just killed not one, but several people in cold blood. In self-defense, in an act of arguable panic, driven into a corner; but still. He'd lost a part of his innocence, in a way. Not that he gave a fuck about that particular little third-world issue right now: given how there was a bunch of mercenaries after him.

Centurion flew out of the doorframe (as no door existed any longer,) and went for the apartment opposite of the one he was in, to go down into the complex's courtyard. For all his prediction program could tell him, and for all he knew, this was outside the sniper's reach, and it'd take a while for the mercenaries to catch up.

As he flew, he rationalized the manslaughter of his doing, They were killers, they deserved to die. Was it my place to decide that? Maybe not. But they put me in a corner.

He felt stupid. Why was he rationalizing this? He didn't want to feel guilty about taking another human life. He did it only did it to save himself. If it wasn't for the adrenaline, they would have been brutalized. He would have fought like a wild animal, wounded, backed up against a wall, defending itself with tooth and nail. This, at least, was humane, quick and painless.

He reached the far end of the building, away from the corpses, and far away from the fucking sniper. Immediately upon seeing the courtyard, a shot of exhaustion, anger, frustration, hatred, and at the same time, fear went through him; almost to the extent where he considered killing himself just to be done with this.

Four unmarked vans had just parked, with two teams of mercenaries already deployed and assembling, scanning through the windows and the other two teams only just getting out.

Coil doesn't have a fucking shortage of fodder, that's for damn sure.

They were accompanied by a cape, he noticed. At least, he looked like a cape. Either a cape or just some kind of commander: a guy in armor, distinctive for its urban camouflage colors and slight sci-fi look. Either a Tinker in power-armor or some guy who bought Tinker power-armor and was wearing it.

Centurion ducked back inside the building, deciding to go the long way through the complex to reach the street he had first been attacked on. He trudged away from the window-adjacent hallways, through the middle of the building. Almost thankfully, there were enough doors: this was some kind of ghetto apartment block in the past, and the relative squalor of the area meant lots of doors and holes in walls that enabled better mobility.

He reached the place where the two buildings had met; the one he was in right now, and the one he went into when the sniper started taking shots at him first. There was no door from one to the other, meaning he'd either have to go back out through a window or find a way to dig through. A casual check of his combat prediction program said he had about eighty seconds before the mercenaries got up here and found the corpses of their teammates, and then fifteen more after that before they reached his position.

Centurion looked around, to see if there was anything sturdy enough to break the wall with, combined with his strength. He knew he could break through, as the buildings here were built with the thought that they'd need to be demolished ten or twenty years into the future in mind; there was some loose concrete rubble, with bits of steel rebar sticking out, slightly rusted. It looked more like post-Leviathan wreckage, and must have fallen in bits from the ruined walls. How the fuck Leviathan managed this kind of controlled destruction using only pipes - Centurion had no idea.

Centurion picked up the largest piece of rubble he could find and, with his full strength, smashed through the fucking wall in one hit. Anger, combined with telekinetic might.

The concrete and a large amount of the wall self-annihilated, breaking away into fragments and finding purchase about a third-way through. He instantly grabbed another piece and got to work, but the sounds alerted the mercenaries to his general whereabouts, cutting his time in half.

It didn't matter, he was done by the time he'd heard the first footsteps on the stairway to the third floor. Centurion flew across the length of the hallway, then to the window: looking at the street he'd started on.

No Clockblocker and Vista in sight. Nor the three fuckwads with the bazooka he took out. Dauntless wasn't there, but if Centurion focused his hearing, he could make out the sounds of the arc-lance going off two blocks north.

Centurion flew outside of the window at top speed, shattering it and reaching 160kph in less than a second, speeding in the direction of the sound of Dauntless' spear.

Dauntless was there, on his own, trying to fight off the entire Midtowners' team. His go-to strategy was back away from Venus using his boots, focus fire on Gargoyle, dodge Avalanche, and ignore Uber unless he got too close. He noticed, though, that Uber was using a slingshot and some kind of metal spheres as projectiles. Smart choice, at least?

"Dauntless!" Centurion shouted out, the adrenaline wearing off.

"Comms are off!" Dauntless declared, stepping away from Venus as she tried to find ground. The momentary distraction of Centurion's appearance drew her attention away. Dauntless' arc-lance stabbed forth, creating a discharge of lightning and spearing into Venus' shoulder. She fell down with a cry, and Gargoyle flew down in front of her, standing guard and absorbing two jabs before Dauntless had to defend from an assault by Uber-launched and Avalanche-shifted balls of metal

Nevermind. That's a powerful team-up.

Centurion accelerated towards Uber at top-speed. He extended his fist for a brutal punch, and Uber was thrown a good five meters, bouncing on the ground with a grunt. The man was too stunned to get up. Avalanche took three throwing knives and chucked them towards Centurion, and they expanded to the size of spinning motorbikes at the halfway point between them, expanding more. His danger sense warned him in advance, so it wasn't a biggie.

Centurion narrowly avoided them, only to then fly straight at Avalanche to fucking punch him in the side, going for a flying haymaker into his liver. Avalanche bent over, with a low, pained, "Uuuhg," noise.

A moment after that, Uber performed a martial artist get-up move, spinning himself into standing, then firing off a single slingshot ball at Centurion as he began to run for cover. The Ward simply floated out of the way and discharged a laser at the man's crotch.

Uber fell, and the moan was enough to jerk Avalanche awake. The latter received a prompt kick to the face for his troubles, which helped him sleep this time around.

Dauntless used Centurion's attack of the two other Midtowners to press the advantage, running towards Gargoyle and stabbing into his form directly, the arc-lance stabbing into the Changer Brute and transferring electric charge into him. Gargoyle roared at first, punching Dauntless once, twice, to little effect, only to move back and tear the spear out.

Dauntless jabbed at his face twice from a distance, and the lightning bolts connected with Gargoyle's eyes, blinding him and making him step on Venus by accident. Both of them screamed as Gargoyle fell over, losing enough focus on his power that a layer of stone stripped away for a split-second before he reasserted control over it.

Dauntless pressed the attack, jabbing thrice in a row while motioning for Centurion to move. "Let's go! We're retreating!"

Centurion nodded and flew to join up with Dauntless, kicking Gargoyle's head with his remaining foot as he zipped past him, in a taunting manner.

The two heroes fled to the nearest alleyway, and out to the street beyond. Dauntless started to breathe and rest, and stopped, pressing his back against the wall, as he looked at Centurion. After moment of blank, stunned silence, Dauntless finally said, "You don't have a foot." Deadpan.

Centurion peered into Dauntless' eyes, nodded once, twice, in an appreciative manner. "And the seven mercenaries who backed me into a corner don't have internal organs anymore," he stated.

There was a pregnant silence for a moment before Dauntless moved away from the wall and started heading away. "Follow me."

"The Protectorate promised that this wouldn't happen. That they'd keep me safe," Centurion said, following him.

"Well! I'm sorry to disappoint you, Centurion! Maybe next time don't piss off the biggest villain conglomerate on the east coast, as a Ward!" Dauntless yelled with a sharp bitterness to it, not quite angry enough to be called furious, but definitely upset. "I swear to God, you're... nevermind." Dauntless shook his head.

Centurion stayed silent and floated along with him.

"Any idea where Vista and Clockblocker are?" Dauntless asked, still breathing from the exertion of what must have been minutes of uninterrupted combat.

"No."

"Shit," Dauntless cursed. After a moment's deliberation, he turned to Centurion and asked, "Can you get to HQ like this? Can you make it?"

"Yes." He nodded. That was a good idea; he wanted to get out of there and be done with this.

"Are you sure? I don't want to hear later that I left you hanging," Dauntless stated; not exactly angry or demanding, but strongly desiring affirmation. The same kind of tone a parent took when asking if their child was sure they wanted this flavor of ice cream specifically because if they chose differently, they couldn't change it anymore.

"The bleeding stopped. My healing power is numbing the pain. I can fly at 160kph," Centurion listed, annoyed, "Yes, I am sure."

"Go, then. I'll find Vista and Clockblocker," Dauntless said.

In less than an eyeblink, Centurion zipped through the alleys, careful not to expose himself too much in the air, as to not attract firepower from the entity that his brain had labeled Coil's Sniper.

Centurion took time to reorient himself, as to the rough direction of the PRT HQ. These streets weren't one-hundred percent familiar, and the fact that they'd been wrecked by Leviathan recently didn't help in the slightest.

There, on the exit of the alleyway, Centurion came to a sudden stop.

The Travelers were waiting there, assembled in a sort of diamond formation, with Trickster in the back, Ballistic and Sundancer to the sides, and Genesis at the forefront, currently in the form of a ten-foot-tall green, octopus-like creature with at least thirty small tendril-like limbs, and a torso with clawed arms instead of a head the octopus would have.

Centurion immediately raised both arms, ready to fire lasers at them all. A tremble of fear ran through him at the thought of having to fight again; he wasn't sure if he could win, with so little energy. The adrenaline had already wore off, and his breathing had gotten irregular and panicked.

"Good afternoon," Trickster greeted, with a tip of the hat, smiling a little. He noticed the missing leg, frowned, and nodded, "Or not so good."

"Let's get this over with, please," Centurion pleaded, arms and hands shaking.

"To the contrary. Killing other capes is bad for the reputation, and even worse when it's a junior hero," Trickster said, shaking his head, "Our purpose is to slow you down, so the grunts can take care of you instead."

"They didn't do a good job, apparently," Centurion said with grit teeth.

"I don't know about that," Trickster said, cocking his head to the right side. His eyes pinned themselves to the space where Centurion's left foot should have been, and he smirked, looking back up at Centurion questioningly. "Did they?"

He felt the combat approaching if he tried to break through. It still felt strange, flying around without a foot; unbalanced, because he was a few kilograms lighter on one side. The mercenaries with the laser-guns managed to hurt him before, rather badly, but his healing power was already stepping in, regenerating the harshly pained areas where he'd been dealt what must have been second degree burns, at least.

Centurion tensed, assessing his enemies, their powers.

Trickster was a battlefield control specialist. He could swap any two objects of roughly similar weight or size with each other, keeping momentum the same; there were a bunch of objects in the area that might weigh as much as a human, so he had plenty of space to move around, move the Travelers around, or move Centurion around if need be.

Sundancer could take a few seconds to create floating suns that she could command, the bigger the hotter, and she was unharmed by them. He remembered her power from the Leviathan fight; how she'd used it to slam a ginormous sphere of crackling orange-yellow-bluish energy into Leviathan, and it managed to hurt him. There were only two suns right now, the size of beach-balls.

Ballistic's power was simpler than his comrades; not as slow to build up as Sundancer, not as good at control as Trickster: easier to predict, but his power's simplicity is part of what made it so dangerous. With a touch, he could imbue objects with kinetic energy, to send them flying - he could send a car at Centurion, fast enough it blurred as it moved.

And Genesis. Capable of creating new bodies for each encounter, with exact classification unknown. Their current body was this Cthulhu-looking creature, with dozens of grasping tentacles, a torso with a face that had two red slits for eyes and more tentacles for a nose and mouth, and two, large, webbed and clawed hands.

Fighting them is suicide, Centurion concluded. "Please," he pleaded, lowering his arms, shaking involuntarily. He was more scared now, compared to during the Leviathan fight. This time, the danger itself was directed towards him in particular and they'd go out of their way to get him. He wasn't Leviathan's target: he was just a nuisance.

"Please what? We're not doing anything," Trickster answered, calm.

"Let me through."

"Not an option. The boss said not to. We're not going to do anything else," Trickster said, taking a cigarette out of his suit, then lifting the pack to show it to Centurion, "Do you?"

"What do I need to do to make you let me go?" Centurion asked, voice shaking.

Trickster thought about that, even as Sundancer noticed him putting the cigarette in his mouth and had a single sun move towards him, beach ball-sized. Trickster moved forward and lit the cigarette by tapping the tip against the sun's surface. The sun moved back, while Trickster took a good whiff of his cigarette, the tip lightening up and burning up a fraction of the way to create black-white ash. He took the cigarette, moved the tip to let the ash fall to the ground, and breathed out a little cloud of smoke. He was doing it slowly, on purpose. Deliberately drawing out the time in subtle ways, instead of doing things quickly.

"I don't know. If it helps - we wouldn't be doing this if I could afford to. Apologies."

"Say I put up a fight, and I got away. Please."

"Not sure the boss will believe that. He's got that precognitive on call - he calls her pet. I think that's disgusting," Trickster answered, taking in another draw from the cigarette and breathing out, quicker this time. "All it'd take is for him to ask, 'What's the chances the Travelers will betray me?' And she has to answer, I'unno, 'eighty-seven-point-five percent the Travelers will betray you today,' though, I'm not sure exactly how that works."

"And he rapes her on a daily basis," Centurion informed, still hovering in the air, a good five meters above their heads.

"I don't know if he does," Trickster replied, shrugging. "But again: we've got our own concerns."

"Which are?!" Centurion asked, his body tense. He was getting more and more anxious, angry.

Trickster exhaled uncomfortably, eyes tracing the lines of the sidewalk Centurion was hovering over; not exactly submission, but deep thought. Trickster sighed, rubbing his face. "Look, I'd gladly share my problems with you, if I could. But I can't exactly do that."

"Whatever it is, I can fucking solve it, but let me go, please."

"Not sure if you can," Trickster answered, frowning a little, "And even if I agreed to it, then Coil would have known in advance we betrayed him. I don't want to die any more than you do."

Centurion was at a loss for words. He didn't know what to say or do. He was… trapped. He felt cornered, again. But this time, it felt more like pure isolation, rather than being stuck in a corner, trying to fight his way out. There was no one to help. The comms were off, and he was boxed in by a group of supervillains.

He clenched his fists, looking down at the ground, as emotions swelled up within him. But the cherry that was on top of the fuckfest-cake that was his mind, there was the primal, animalistic fear of death, with an icing of being closed off and feeling hopeless.

Trickster's phone rang, and he picked up, cigarette in his mouth. Someone said something on the other side, and then Trickster nodded. "Got it." The phone clicked off, and Trickster stared at Centurion, not doing anything for a moment, before he said, "Your friends are fine, if it helps."

Centurion snapped. "I want to be fine, god damn it!"

"Shouldn't have messed with the wrong people," Trickster replied, not entirely unsympathetic in tone, but sounding more or less unbothered. "We all make dumb mistakes, and have to pay the price for them eventually. Apologies." That fucking word. Second time he said it; it sounds so disingenuous.

"The PRT will pay you plenty for you to let me go," Centurion tried to bargain.

"Don't want money. The PRT has nothing they can offer us, and if the PRT discovered who we are, they'd probably send us to the Birdcage or kill us on the spot. Probably the latter, actually," Trickster said, humming to himself.

"What do you want, then?"

"Freedom," Trickster answered, and Sundancer and Ballistic both turned to look at him with uncomfortable glares.

"He's going to know," Sundancer said.

"Coil already knows," Trickster answered, looking at her, "I'm pretty sure."

"Have you ever killed people on a large scale?" Centurion asked, less panicky then before.

"Only in self-defense," Trickster countered, "Never because I chose to."

"Then you can do probation in the Protectorate."

"I can't," Trickster instantly countered, then went on to quickly say, "Okay. I will be fair about this. I'll give you a chance to give me something. Any argument you can come up with not to do this; because deep down, I really don't wish to. But before you start, I should preface this: Anything, and I mean anything involving the PRT, the Protectorate, Wards, government - yadda-yadda-yadda - is not going to work."

"I can create literally have any power that you can think of, and can do pretty much anything," Centurion started.

Ballistic shook his head, speaking up, "I don't buy it. There's got to be a limit."

His fists clenched. "Time. I can create any power, given enough time."

"It's a shame, then, that you don't have much of that," Trickster answered, shaking his head sadly, then taking out the butt of the cigarette from his mouth and letting it drop, where he squashed it with his shoe. "Coil's men will be at this location in a minute." Centurion looked down at the ground. He was done for. Nothing that he could do. Or say. He was dead.

"You're not going to try and fight us?" Trickster asked, sounding kind of surprised.

"It'd be suicide," Centurion said, pointing his finger at Sundancer. "She hurt Leviathan."

"Fair enough. I think we can take you, but most capes like to dig their heels in when surrounded," Trickster answered, shrugging. Sundancer looked at him, clearly annoyed with his attitude. Centurion decided to dig his heels in and take that spot of distraction as a chance.

He released a flash of light into Trickster's eyes and zipped up into the sky at maximum speed, up above the clouds. Before he could ascend even ten meters, something solid grabbed him by the ankle, wrapped up and around his chest, began to encircle his body - Genesis' tendrils, he realized.

Fucking Cthulhu.

Genesis pulled him down to the ground and kept him there, letting out a guttural wet sound from their mouth, trying to enunciate some kind of wording. It felt like a 'no.' Sundancer sighed, then looked at Trickster. "Maybe we should just let him go?"

"And what, risk Coil going after us?" Ballistic asked, angered by the proposition. "You want to end up like..." He shook his head, frowning.

"End up like who?" Centurion asked.

"Doesn't matter," Trickster answered, drawing the attention of the other two Travelers while Genesis kept their attention on Centurion, shrugging with his face. "Accord has a way of dealing with people he doesn't like. You're too valuable, so you're probably not going to die."

"What, brainwash me?" Centurion asked, staring into Trickster's eyes.

"Something something an offer you can't refuse," Trickster answered, beginning to actually smile.

Centurion entered Oracle Morpheus, going limp in Genesis' grip. He had only a single question left, that he could ask it.

How do I escape? I don't want to die.

Travelers: Desire freedom from something, not willing or not able to tie selves to PRT or Protectorate. Migrating/nomadic group, prior to arriving in Brockton Bay, was in Boston before that. Met Accord in Boston, Accord forwarded them to Coil and made their costumes. Lost a member in Boston. They require something from Coil. Requirement tied to freedom; freedom is more abstract. Willing to bond selves in exchange for abstract or non-literal freedom. Possibly related to Leviathan's attack. Travelers have a secret that, if unveiled, will earn them instant enmity from all authorities and cause them to be killed on sight.

Centurion opened his eyes. "Leviathan attacked Coil. Why?"

Trickster looked a tad uncomfortable for a split-second before smiling and shrugging. "Not a clue. Maybe he got jealous over the snake aesthetic?"

"Don't bullshit me. Why would the authorities kill you on sight, if whatever you're hiding goes public?"

"Can't imagine a reason," Trickster replied, digging in his heel firmly and refusing to cede ground. Centurion wouldn't convince him this way.

"Do you control the Endbringers?"

"If I controlled the Endbringers, would I attack the rat-fucked city I'm forced to work in?" Trickster asked, beginning to look angry. His fists shook, as he looked at Sundancer and then at Centurion with his eyes.

Centurion turned his gaze to Sundancer, even as two of her suns began to float over closer to him. He felt their heat through his armor, beginning to heat everything up. A 'critical system failure' notification began to flash, warning him a lot of the processors and internal components were overheating, and the heatsinks were failing to work fast enough.

"If you're going to kill me, do it quickly."

"We're just going to shut you up, so the boss can deal with you without interruption," Trickster said, his groove of a calm, affable gentleman ruined. "You can keep your psychosis to yourself."

Centurion looked down at the ground.

"Where're Coil's men?" Ballistic asked, looking back.

"They should be..." In that moment, Trickster's phone began to ring, and he picked up, beginning to listen to the person on the other side. Sundancer's pair of suns moved away from Centurion a little, enough that the power armor wasn't under their constant assault. Trickster turned away a little, beginning a conversation with someone. The Travelers sans Genesis were distracted.

Centurion started releasing his energy stores as heat, to hopefully hurt Genesis and make the creature release him. He was preparing to zip into the sky at top speed as soon as the grip loosened.

The tentacles caught on fire, and the weakest began to seize away, but the creature looked unbothered, simply layering more tentacles on: it didn't have pain receptors of any kind. However, the sudden burst of fire drew the attention of Ballistic and Sundancer, who stared at him in shock. Trickster began to turn, eyes widening.

Centurion released a shockwave of golden kinetic energy from his lower body and into the tentacles. For a brief moment, he was free, as all of them were forced away, and he flew. Trickster exercised his power, and suddenly, Centurion slammed into the top of a lamp-post, while a mailbox fell from the sky on top of Genesis' tendrils, forcing the cape to sever them away, leaving bloody stumps.

Centurion's head was now stuck in the glassy interior of a lamppost, and he could feel the sudden shock of electricity against his head, being absorbed by his armor and shield, but still being there - if he didn't have either one, he'd be dead right now.

Centurion pulled himself out, only to stumble as a metal rod caught him near the lower stomach, a little off to the side, and made him stumble into a building. The force was tremendous - a bullet, except bigger. Sundancer's twin balls of heated energy followed, tracing a path towards and above him, to cut off his escape. Trickster looked ready to use his power again.

Centurion shot a kinetic laser at Trickster's head as he made his getaway only for Trickster to swap himself for a pile of rocks, and then swap Centurion for a large rubber tire from a tractor, lying in the nearby junkyard.

Ballistic took a moment to orient himself to the change, then fired off his power again, using a metal sphere - he placed it atop his palm, then it snapped forward at the speed of sound, whizzing just next to Centurion's head with a sound similar to a whip moving past him. Sundancer, meanwhile, put her palms together and began creating another sun, even bigger than the other two, while they moved towards Centurion's new location. Genesis' current body was resting, letting its tentacles gradually regrow.

Centurion shot an incendiary laser at Sundancer and Ballistic, but missing; the exchange, however, made Ballistic growl and take cover behind a dumpster, as he fired another projectile at Centurion and missed. Centurion began flying away as fast as he possibly could, but once again, failed, as Trickster pointed and switched him with the same mailbox as the one at the start of the fight - returning Centurion to square one.

All three of Sundancer's suns hovered above him, at the top of the alleyway, ready to cut him off, while Genesis' regenerated tendrils lashed out. In the distance, Centurion spotted two unmarked black vans approaching them.

Centurion discharged a powerful, kinetic laser at Trickster, strong enough to knock him out. The cape noticed it coming, and his eyes widened; he moved away, and this changed the target to his chest, causing Trickster to collapse on the ground with a grunt, but still conscious. Centurion flew upwards, but Trickster managed to swap him with a nearby park bench, still conscious enough to act.

Trickster stood up, running in Ballistic's direction, even as Ballistic fired off more shots from his power to cover his leader. The two black vans stopped at the end of the street, and the doors opened, as Coil's mercenaries stepped out.

Centurion threw a kinetic grenade at both Ballistic and Trickster, but it lacked the necessary energy to harm them properly - it made Trickster's run stop, and caused him to stumble backward, while also throwing Ballistic's next shot off; a shot that would have hit otherwise. Sundancer moved her suns closer to Centurion, taking cover behind a tree in case he started shooting again.

Centurion flew straight up, trying to go through the suns, but ending up smushed between them, and screaming in absolute agony as they burned straight through his armor and left him tracing black dust into the sky, in enough pain that his telekinesis began to fizzle out. Bullets rained in the space around him, as the mercenaries opened fire.

Centurion tried to avoid, to escape, to the best of his ability. He wove between the bullets, the rough arcs of their movement provided by his combat prediction software - the bullets it didn't help him dodge, his danger sense just barely managed to forewarn him of. Every now and then, a few of them impacted the sides of his charred armor. He had two options - go up and risk being visible to snipers and gunfire, or go lower and risk fighting the Travelers again.

He ascended, and barely managed to go above the level of rooftops as he felt the danger sense thrum with an ambient sense of doom; Coil's Sniper had already set up in the area, with his tinkertech rounds. The gunmen kept firing, and he felt the sniper would fire in two seconds - and the chances he'd miss were low.

Centurion discharged all of his energy stores in a flash of blinding light from his body, bright enough to blind the Travelers sans Sundancer and stun the grunts. He started to fly down into another alley.

The combat prediction software warned him this time - Coil's men would be on the street coming out. The others would close in on his location in thirty seconds, and he'd be surrounded by them from both directions, as well as by the sniper from above. Closed in - this had been planned. Everything in the area was a giant trap. He needed to do something to change the game.

He spied on a vent in one of the sides of a building and thought about his smoke power. It didn't like wind currents and physical objects, like the propeller in Squealer's crab vehicle, or Leviathan's claw - it was confused by them and Unbroke him forcefully. But… porous materials, stuff like containment foam, that air can go through. He can go through it, too.

Centurion flew at the vent, and shifted into a dark wisp, moving through, then coming out inside of a short, narrow hallway inside of whatever building this was.

He started making his way through the building, sideways, to get distance between him and Coil's men.

The building must have been some kind of laundromat in the past, judging by the sheer amount of washing machines. The entire front of the building was made from glass, but it had been boarded up. Through the glass, Centurion noticed a dark alleyway, with two men in armor, laser rifles held at the ready as they observed the alleyway he used to be in.

His communications were still being jammed.

Centurion continued to make his way through the building, using the old washing machines as cover and bringing down his environmental shield to the bare minimum as to not be noticed. Outside, he noticed, another van pulling over and parking. Half a team of mercenaries deployed, armed with grenade launchers, and followed out by the Midtowners.

In that moment, he heard a voice behind him. "What are you looking at?"

Centurion turned, arm raised towards the source of the voice.

Signal was crouching behind the washing machine just behind him, her knees up, hands resting on them. She looked sullen, even with the slight smile on her lips, the LEDs of her costume no longer working, some dirt covering her hands, hair, knees, and boots. She seemed to have no drones with her.

Centurion's fists clenched. "I'm… sorry," was the only thing he allowed himself to say.

"I'm not actually here," Signal said, frowning. "This is a hologram. One of the solid ones, that Kid Win made. I'm just here to help you out however I can."

"Why would you? I hurt you," Centurion responded.

"I feel bad about misleading you," Signal answered, almost plain. "The drugs - I was using them to… escape, myself, I guess. They pushed bad thoughts away, and after you almost choked me to death, I stopped using them… as much. Yeah. So I realized I was a shit person and didn't want to do any of what I did. Also, Accord kind of discovered that I'm an addict, and decided that he's not going to have a useless junkie working for him."

"Let's… talk about this later. I need to get out of here..." Centurion said, shaking.

"Why isn't the PRT helping you?" she asked, tilting her head in suspicion.

"My communications are being jammed, my tracker is probably off."

She nodded gravely, considering that. "I don't… I didn't have any way to maintain my drones, but some of them are working, still. I don't know if it's plausible, but I'll try to figure out what's jamming the communications."

"Are any of them quick enough to take out multiple targets in a short amount of time?"

"I have three drones. Each one has five tools. Everyone has at least a thermal laser, for basic combat, but they don't have a lot of energy left. I had to charge them up between patrols, remember? In fact, I don't think this one will last, if we keep talking for too long. Anyway, whatever's jamming you is directed at you, specifically, because my broadcast is fine. It's probably lock-on-based tinkertech. If you got rid of the armor, there's a very slight chance you could use your phone to get a call out, but I wouldn't bet on it for my life."

"Where are you?" Centurion asked while he took his private phone out of his leather pouch. He remembered Piggot's number by heart, and started dialing it. No signal.

"No, no. You'd have to take off the armor, but I wouldn't. It's a theory. Tinkertech doesn't always follow rules. Sometimes, it might seem like it shouldn't work, or it might have arbitrary limitations the Tinker put in, but can't explain," Signal explained to him, then frowned down at the ground. "I'm tracking the jamming device to one of the vans, around one-hundred and thirty meters east of you."

"Blow it up."

"Okay." Signal smiled, nodding. It was a sad smile, not one of her endlessly cheerful grins.

"Thank you. Let me make it up to you, somehow. Please," Centurion said with a forced, albeit thankful smile.

"I don't think we'll see each other after this," Signal said, shaking her head, "I'm going to have to run, once this is over. My drones are converging on the van."

"I'm sorry for all of this… I'm s-so sorry," he stuttered, looking at her.

Her eyes began to focus on something, even though the hologram didn't show a change in body language. There was a dissonance there; showing her body in a locked position, but the face was being transmitted in real-time. "The Travelers are here. Drat," she said, pouting thoughtfully.

"To you, or to me?"

"Me," she answered, then her face took on a panicked appearance for a moment. She yelped, and there was a sound of something swishing past her. She laughed a little, and there was a sound of a laser, and a distant scream.

"Run!"

"No way! I just set Trickster's butt on fire," she said, her face beginning to creep into a grin.

"...be safe, I beg you."

"Oh, hey, this communication drone is running out of..." Her hologram began to flicker, and her face moved as she spoke, but no sound came out.

Centurion grit his teeth. The hologram flickered a few more times, then turned off, leaving behind a fist-sized sphere of dark metal that wobbled for a moment, then gently landed on the ground and turned off. Centurion looked outside, to where the mercenaries were. They weren't there anymore, moving on. Signal was providing a distraction.

Centurion got up and moved out of the building, away from their general position, careful as to not be spotted

After roughly ten seconds, something clicked, and his radio came on. "Centurion! Where are… are you safe?" Aegis' voice asked, panicked. "I'm sending Dovetail and Adamant to your location. And Chevalie– screw it, I'm sending in the Protectorate!"

Centurion's felt a wave of relief hit him, and tears just started flowing down his eyes. "Signal helped me, the Travelers and Midtowners are here, alongside a fucking army of mercenaries sent by Coil, and a sniper with tinkertech rounds. He shot my foot off," he explained, in a choked-up voice.

"Christ," he heard Weaver say next to Aegis.

"Alright. I'm sending in back-up to your location," Aegis stated, and Centurion heard some clicking on the other side, "Just stay where you are, in case the comms go off again."

"Okay."

Centurion sat down at the nape of the alleyway, and began to whistle, to get a rough image of the area. In case anyone found him.

Last edited: Nov 10, 2019

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Birdsie

Nov 10, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 10, 2019

#2,771

After two minutes, Dovetail swooped down and landed on the ground, with Assault running up to them from another street, then skidding with the side of his boots to come to a sudden stop. Centurion was there: a pathetic mess. A missing leg from where green goo was oozing out, completely charred armor, and shaking in shock.

"Jesus," Assault said, taken aback at the sight. He breathed for a moment, and turned around, hands on the back of his head, as he shook his head in disbelief. Dovetail stared, muttering something in shocked disbelief. After another five seconds, Assault turned around to speak to Centurion. "Can you walk? Or… fly, I suppose?"

Centurion jumped slightly at his words, and looked up. He was terrified, scared and scarred, in shock. But there was a glimmer of relief, at seeing Assault. He wasn't going to die, after all. But seeing Signal there only made things worse: regret was eating him up from the inside.

"Yes," he replied, voice quiet.

"Okay, come on," Assault moved closer, lending a hand in standing up. Centurion took his hand hesitantly and hovered off the ground.

"What the hell happened out there?" Assault asked, "We lost track of you, Dauntless, Clockblocker, and Vista, and then eventually Clockblocker and Vista regained contact and started radioing in for backup."

"Tinkertech jammed our comms… probably… they're here for me."

"Take him," Assault said, handing the hero over to Dovetail, who nodded.

"Let's go, Centurion. Come on, it's alright now," she said, beginning to lift upwards and flying with him, in the direction of the PRT HQ.

As they flew above the ruined streets, Centurion entered a kind of blind daze. He lost contact, not completely aware of what was going around him. Everything seemed like a dream: he was looking forward, seeing the streets pass underneath him, and then forgetting about them instantly, only to remember the path he'd just made with Dovetail's help, and realize that entire minutes had passed since he stopped fighting for his life, Centurion noticed several armored PRT vans, sirens blaring, move past in the street ahead of them. Going towards the fighting.

Centurion felt his throat get drier. "This is my fault," he stated.

Dovetail, rather than lying to him, chose to stay mournfully silent. The Ward stayed silent as well.

They reached HQ four minutes later, with Clockblocker and Vista - both battered - as well as Weaver waiting for him at the entrance. Dovetail let him go, then sped away to get towards the fight. The Wards stared, looking at him, and their eyes seemed to widen to him, but he wasn't sure if he was just seeing things.

"While you weren't here," Vista started, kind of apprehensive given his lack of a leg, "The Undersiders took advantage of the chaos and broke in. They stole some data from the servers, I think. We had to fight them, except… Weaver."

Centurion hovered up to them, slowly. "What do you mean…?" he asked.

"The PRT just told me to stay put," Weaver answered, with mixed feelings in the batter. "Are you..." She didn't say 'okay,' because of how he looked.

"Do I look okay?" Centurion cried out.

"No. I'm sorry," Weaver answered, moving back a step.

"...I shouldn't have shouted at you, I'm sorry," Centurion shook his head, swallowing some saliva to wet his throat. He felt it crash against the back of the parched cavity, where the surface felt like dried paper. The sharp contrast of the sudden humidity and the dryness left him with a sort of withered feeling, and he swallowed again, feeling a little better.

"You can't be blamed," Weaver answered, looking kind of cooked on both sides: the whole drama with Shadow Stalker wasn't a good place to be in, and he wasn't helping.

"Let's go in," Clockblocker sighed, "Piggot wants to talk to us." Centurion looked at him, even as he turned away to walk.

You would have been happier if I died, right?

Centurion felt his fists clench against his will. He followed them, gravely silent. After the world's most awkward elevator ride, with Clockblocker using Vista and Centurion as manmade barriers for not being close to Weaver, they filed out towards Piggot's office and Vista knocked on the door.

Even in this situation, he can be a cunt.

A moment later, they received permission to go in, and entered. Three chairs waited there, and Weaver closed the door, while Clockblocker, Vista, and Centurion sat down. Weaver elected to stand back, hands held together, The heel of the foot tapping against the ground nervously, for a moment, before she cut it out. Centurion wished he had that kind of energy, but he'd been through enough shit that his body was devastated. It'd be more effort to be twitchy than to keep himself from being twitchy.

"Well," Piggot started, looking at them with a little frown, "I can see today's patrol wasn't exactly the greatest of events. Which of you is in a state to tell me what happened, if at all?"

Centurion stared into Piggot's eyes, almost as if to say, 'Well, certainly me, Director.'

Vista decided to begin, raising a reluctant hand. "We… were shot at, from behind. Dauntless gave us orders to dig in and defend, so I started raising barriers, and Centurion gave us some armor with his power, while Dauntless went to fight." A simple explanation, and she lowered her hand.

Piggot nodded, and kept nodding as she spoke, "Reasonable. What happened then?"

Vista looked at them, and Clockblocker decided to pick up there. "We got… attacked. It happened so fast I could barely see. I think it was a sniper at first. Or the grenades. I'm not even sure which came first."

Centurion interjected, "Both. At the same time."

"Right." Clockblocker nodded, letting out a quivering sigh. Like he wanted to cry but was too tired to. "Okay. And… Vista started to armor us in, with the street. Bending space for defense."

"I don't know why I did that," Vista frowned, shaking her head. "I could have expanded the distance, so the grenades and bullets didn't reach us to begin with. I panicked."

"All reasonable. Continue, if you can," Piggot spoke, trying to sound sympathetic.

"We… there were three guys in armor. Mercenaries, I think," Clockblocker continued. "One of them had a bazooka, and used it to break our cover and flush us out. It must have been tinkertech. Something power-nullifying, probably. Centurion took them down, then retreated inside a building to take cover. And that's when I noticed the comms were out, because I called in for support again but nothing came of it. So me and Vista retreated into an alleyway, and hid. No one really came after us, and Dauntless found us after a few minutes, and we got back into base with Vista's power."

Piggot nodded, then sat back, sighing. "Coil's men," she stated, "Accord seldom employs mercenaries of that magnitude. I've been informed by Aegis that there was tinkertech involved? You've mentioned the rocket launcher. What else?" she asked, looking at them.

"The sniper had Tinkertech rounds. Every time a shot landed, it erased everything from existence in a ten-centimeter radius, with the point of impact being the center of the sphere. That's how my leg disappeared," Centurion explained, then looked at Clockblocker and Vista. They had nothing to add.

Piggot rubbed her face, then said, "I'll get Panacea to come to see to that. And you're not leaving this building anymore; not without a very heavy escort. And neither is Chariot entering it without constant supervision. We can't afford to be... uncautious."

Centurion nodded. "I don't want to leave," he stated, his body shuddering.

"Maybe we should move him to the Rig?" Clockblocker proposed, sounding bitter, "It's safer there than here. He could lounge around with Armsmaster and play around at being a Tinker all day."

Centurion clenched his fists at the mention of Armsmaster. But it was safer there. It was his only option at being safe.

"I certainly do not feel comfortable with the idea of shackling one of our Wards to a paramilitary installation," Piggot said, shaking her head with a note of distaste. "And neither would the Youth Guard, despite their arguments that we're doing too little to keep our Wards safe. They're sending in someone from outside the city to keep an eye on us, given the recent events. At any rate, you're all dismissed."

June 4th, 2011

The Protectorate was busy keeping the streets clean, while the Wards had patrols in the safer areas, away from Coil's territory. Centurion had been pulled off of patrols at his on request, and only attended the extracurricular activities, like watching shitty seminars about a professor and a bunch of students going around, asking questions about the 'parahuman condition.'

He was only a day in, but he felt simultaneously isolated, and yet safer. There were no chances of one of Coil's mercenaries showing up in the Wards HQ, except for Chariot, but Chariot was constantly being watched by the entire team - so if he'd been told to do anything to Centurion, he didn't show it.

Centurion was hunkered down on the couch, in a pair of trousers and an oversized jumper, sitting next to a bored Flechette, both of them watching TV. He was also hugging a pillow.

The door buzzed open, and Weaver walked in. A small swarm of butterflies flapped their wings, moving around her, and occasionally setting down on her shoulders and in her hair. "Hey."

"How was your first patrol?" Flechette asked, grinning.

"It was alright. How are… you two?" Weaver asked, not trying to single out Centurion, whose leg was still missing, as Panacea couldn't show up yesterday. It didn't really hurt anymore given the ambrosia's effects unless he bumped it into something, which happened with the corner of the couch earlier.

"Good," Centurion responded. It wasn't a lie. He felt safe in here. But he also felt lonely. The company of the occasional Wards who came by really helped him keep his sanity, but the lack of his leg didn't. Sure: he could move around with telekinesis, or even make a golden prosthetic construct, but it didn't feel the same.

Weaver nodded, then went off to her room, probably to take the costume off or do something else. Shadow Stalker was currently being investigated by the PRT, and Piggot had been kind enough to switch around the patrol schedules to keep them out of the same room and general vicinity at all times, with something similar for Chariot who'd only shown up once or twice over the last few days; with roughly the same attendance rate as Browbeat. Weaver seemed to be doing fine-ish, though, apparently, Aegis had to talk to her first, about the investigation and her place in the Wards. Centurion was glad for that since he didn't really have a head for these things.

Flechette crossed her legs, as she asked, "Change channels?" After watching some part of a musical about the French revolution, called, 'Robespierre: A French Musical,' the advertisements went on, promoting a brand of shampoo that was allegedly used by Legend.

"If you want," Centurion responded without looking at her.

She clicked, and the screen switched to The Wards cartoon, showing off some kind of fight between - wouldn't you know it - Flechette as well as another Ward from New York, and a group of villains eerily similar to the Teeth but called, 'the Eyes' in the cartoon. Instead of wearing eyes on their costumes, they had eye-of-providence iconography and were led by the Reaper, who claimed the souls of slain foes.

"If only fights were that easy," Centurion stated blankly, looking as the Reaper swung his scythe, and Flechette cut it off with a rapier.

"Yeah," Flechette nodded.

After several minutes of hammy action, their watch-through was interrupted by the 'masks on' buzzer. Flechette and Centurion put on their domino masks, and a few seconds later, Adamant came in, followed by Panacea in her costume, with a brightly-lettered 'GUEST' card on her chest.

Centurion looked straight at her, remembered how the routine works, and said, "Tell me I'm stupid, irresponsible and that you're sick of healing me, and get this over with, please."

Panacea rolled her eyes. She looked around the room, presumably for something that could serve as a hospital bed, and then locked her eyes on the couch: the only object large enough. "Just lie down," she said, and peered at Flechette, who stood up, to give him space on the couch.

Centurion complied and rested his body on the couch. Panacea pulled up one of the chairs at the sides and took his hand, then asked, "Permission to heal you?" She looked at him, the big, near-black spots under her eyes digging into his soul.

"Given."

She frowned, then Centurion started to feel something in his left foot. The slightest sensation of growth and regained ability to contract his muscles.

"This will take a while," Panacea stated dryly.

"Take your time," Centurion shot back, with no particular tone.

Flechette elected to sit down in a chair, watching the foot grow back with morbid curiosity, as the skin expanded out first like a balloon only for the flesh to fill it out. Centurion felt it was a numb growth at first; lifeless and inert, without any way of moving it, then gradually received feeling, as nerves expanded throughout and began to transmit data.

"So how did this particular little horror occur?" Panacea asked, and beneath her lifeless monotone, there was the barest notion of curiosity. "Did you mess with your power again?"

"Coil's Sniper erased my leg from existence, and after that, an army of mercenaries went after me. The Travelers, too," he said, trying to keep his voice indifferent.

Panacea whistled a little, un-appreciatively. "I don't even know what to say at this point. God loves to shit in your dinner."

"God doesn't exist."

"No, but he still loves to shit in your dinner," Panacea answered, voice as dull as they come. Each syllable she pronounced didn't sound real - more like she was a particularly unskilled actor, reciting words from a script.

"Okay," he said.

"And done," she said, sighing, as she stood up. With that, Panacea made her way out, saying, "See you next week, I guess." Adamant followed her out, and the door closed.

Centurion wriggled his toes, sighing in relief. It felt identical or near-identical to how it used to be: he couldn't really tell. Either way, Panacea did a good job, although... that did make him wonder a little. "She acted weirder than usual," he stated, looking at the closed exit of the room.

"Did she?" Flechette said, looking in the same direction. "I always got the impression she's crushed by the workload. And… an Endbringer attack did occur only half a month ago," she justified calmly.

"Crushed by work and depressed is different than 'I look and sound like a robot being remotely controlled,'" Centurion stated, narrowing his eyes at the exit.

"You're being paranoid," Flechette actually laughed. Then, in a mocking tone, she stood up, looking around herself in a paranoid act, proclaiming, "Everyone is a mole! Everyone is controlled by Coil! Oh, woe is upon me! Bleergh!" Flechette went limp and allowed herself to fall back into the chair, beginning to laugh again.

"You know what? I can check," he stated, a note of challenge in him.

Flechette snorted. "Go ahead."

Centurion closed his eyes, and entered the realm of Oracle Morpheus. Once again into the inferno. Nothing but darkness, with no sense of space, not even the abstract mindscape of his power. God: this felt weird...

Oracle, is Panacea being mind-controlled in any way, shape or form?

Panacea is being mind-controlled by depressive and suicidal thoughts. Considering suicide, potentially, or leaving her position as a healer permanently and running away from home. Is not aware she is considering suicide on a conscious level. Unlikely to go through it in the end.

Centurion opened his eyes, sighing and knowing Flechette was about to make fun of his paranoia again. "Whatever," he said, shrugging.

Flechette laughed for a moment. "Told you! You're being paranoid."

"Wouldn't you be, in my place? I already have anxiety on my own, then this happens."

Flechette stopped laughing, her humor dropping off instantly at that little sentence. "Sorry," she muttered, apologetic.

"Don't… worry. I have no one to blame but me for everything that's happened," he sighed, shaking his head.

Their phones buzzed. Flechette whipped out hers, turned it on, and began to look through at the message. Her eyes widened a little. "Oh, crud."

"What happened?"

"Murder scene," she answered, standing up and going over to her room, "We're being called in for an emergency."

"What murder scene?" Centurion asked but she was already gone.

Aegis walked out of the console room, already putting his mask on, as he walked around the couch, stopped, looked at Centurion, and hesitated. After roughly two and a half seconds of staring at each other, Aegis kind of shrugged hesitantly. He asked, "Are you coming? You don't have to."

"...I don't know. Are there details on the murder scene?" Centurion asked. He wondered: maybe it was the apartment, and maybe the victims were the mercenaries who he blew up.

"Yeah. Capes are probably involved. Not the mercenary attack, though," Aegis explained in a soothing voice, "PRT wants someone to comb the area, but everyone else is busy."

Weaver stepped out of her room, pulling on her mask in a hurry as she was followed by a trail of bugs, which slinked in beneath the armored plates of her costume. She took a few stray butterflies and interweaved them with her hair, like a sort of halfway flower-crown of natural colors.

Centurion nodded. "I'll come, let me put on my armor," he stood up and walked into the workshop.

The armor was there, almost entirely fixed and ready for work: throughout the fight, a bunch of the minor sub-systems got broken, but he managed to replace the charred armor plating and add a new leg-piece. Fortunately, Armsmaster always kept back-ups for his suits, and he'd done a second one for Centurion, so he could swap the major parts on the fly if he could access them. Centurion took a minute to put it on, and then ten seconds for all of the software to pull up, before he went back out with the rest of the Wards.

The scene was set up in the husk of a building. Walls loomed on three sides, but there was no roof remaining. The floor was uneven, composed of layers of broken boards, shattered drywall and chunks of concrete. There was an overcast sky above. Not quite daylight. And people weren't around.

They'd arrived at the scene. Clockblocker, Vista, Aegis, Centurion, Flechette, Transfusion, and Weaver. No Shadow Stalker or Chariot, for obvious reasons.

On each of the three interior walls of the older building was a body, twenty feet above the ground. Each had received a different kind of treatment. To their left was a corpse that had been flayed, the gender no longer identifiable. Directly opposite their group was the corpse of an obese woman, charred black. Completing the scene was the body of what appeared to be a homeless man, or one of the people who'd been rendered homeless by the recent disaster, judging by the layers of clothing he wore. His limbs had been severed at each joint, then reconnected so each was joined by a short, foot-long length of chain. Nails placed through the chain kept him in position, head hanging, a macabre puppet with an overlong body. The chains jangled and swung in the wind.

Occupying the same building as the corpses was a familiar group. Trickster, Sundancer, and Ballistic stood beneath the corpses. A winged figure that might have been a gargoyle, demon or dragon was clutching to the sides of an empty window frame with three talons, the other reaching toward the homeless man. Genesis.

"Pardon the cliche, but this isn't what it looks like," Trickster spoke. Truth.

Centurion stared at Trickster, fists clenched. He detested the man, especially given his behavior yesterday, but he needed to act rational about this. It was unlikely the Travelers would call in support on them, with all of the Wards here. Not even Coil was that stupid, or that smart.

"Well, tough life," Clockblocker said, sounding kind of thuggish - uncharacteristically aggressive - as he said it. "You're coming with us."

"Let me handle this," Aegis said, extending a hand over Clockblocker's chest to stop him, and shaking his head. Aegis looked at the Travelers, as he floated a step out of the Wards' ranks. With a note of irony, putting himself forward like his namesake. "If it's not what it looks like, then what is it?"

"We've stumbled upon these people," Trickster said, as if that explained anything. Truth. "Let us go. Whatever happened here, it deserves your full attention. This guy over here was still alive when we arrived." Truth. Trickster turned and pointed at the man with chain limbs with his thumb.

"He's not lying." It pained him to admit this: he wanted, with all his heart, to arrest them and throw them in the fucking Birdcage, but Trickster's argument wasn't wrong. "We're here to comb the area, right? Look out for suspects? My lie detector says he's telling the truth."

"You're still suspects," Aegis said, fists balled up. He began to float an inch off the ground, preparing to fight.

"We had nothing to do with this," Sundancer argued. Truth.

"Aegis, they're telling the truth," Centurion said, turning towards him with grit teeth, furious at the fact that they had to let them go. "This is a waste of time. Let's not escalate." Deep inside, Centurion felt a sort of personal irony. His past self, looking at his current self and asking 'what the fuck?' while his current self replied, 'fuck you.'

Aegis hesitated to make a decision for a moment, and Centurion understood. Piggot's reaction would probably be mixed. "Fine, you can go, then." Aegis frowned under his mask, then moved right, and the Wards had followed him. Simultaneously, the Travelers moved to the left side of the room, and towards the exit, while the Wards moved towards the crime scene. A wheel-shaped exchange of positions, letting the Travelers leave.

Weaver stared at the exit for a moment. After roughly ten seconds, she turned to the team and said, "They're gone."

Vista looked at the corpses, green at the gills, and looked back. After a moment, she said, "I'm going outside. To patrol."

"I'll go with you," Weaver offered, before looking to Aegis. He nodded once, and they were off, through the same exit as the Travelers.

Centurion folded his arms, looked over at the victims. "This looks ritualistic," he stated.

"There's two other crime scenes like this," Aegis responded, looking at the charred woman, shaking his head. "The PRT wanted us to secure this place, for a while, until some analysts can get here, with proper forensics equipment and stuff like that. The Protectorate and PRT troops have the other locations handled."

"I think this power armor can do very basic analysis," Centurion said, not imagining that Armsmaster would pass up such a function. He remembered looking at the software and hardware list, and there was something called, 'basic crime scene examination.' "Should I get started?"

"Analysis? Like what?" Clockblocker asked, looking up from the wire-snared, flayed corpse.

"Figure out how exactly they died. Was the charred corpse burned by fire, or chemically burned?" he asked.

"There's very little room for distinction there," Clockblocker argued. "But, yeah, go on ahead."

Centurion nodded and approached the charred corpse first. "Computer, full scan."

'Charred corpse. Deceased approximately one hour ago.'

He recoiled a little. "This body is relatively fresh. Approximately one hour ago. Computer, chemical residues on the body?"

'Error. This suit contains no hardware capable of chemical analysis.'

Centurion sighed and turned to the Wards.

"No game?" Aegis asked.

"No game."

"It's the middle of the damn day," Clockblocker stated, kind of cold, but also sounding offended and yet, frightened at the idea. Transfusion snorted a little, but didn't speak otherwise. "Broad daylight. It's fucking ridiculous. And there are two more crime scenes like this?" He looked back at Aegis, questioning, bewildered in posture and expression.

Aegis nodded. "Yeah. Three corpses at each crime scene, killed using different methods."

"Shit," Clockblocker said, a little quiver running down his spine.

Flechette was inspecting the middle body closely, the one with the chains connecting the joints together, frowning. She'd been staying quiet throughout the conversation. Centurion stared up at the same body Flechette was inspecting. The man with chains connecting his limbs, sagging towards the ground.

"This is eerie," she said, shaking her head. "We shouldn't be dealing with this. Why the hell would anyone send Wards to a crime scene like this?"

"Out of manpower," Aegis answered. "Literally no one else to do it. And, to be fair, the PRT wasn't wrong - the Travelers were here, just a moment ago."

"And Piggot doesn't care that we're kids."

"You signed up for this job, didn't you?" Clockblocker shot back, without looking at him directly.

"Yeah, of course. Not complaining, just saying."

"Any idea about the killer?" Aegis asked, looking at Flechette, then at Centurion with folded arms.

"Well. Three locations, at roughly the same general timespan," Clockblocker assessed, "Means he can move around quickly. And has access to a lot of tools; likes… variety," he shuddered, as he looked at the differences between the corpses. They were up on the walls, hung like effigies. Ritualistic, as Centurion said.

Centurion recalled the long list of villainous capes he knew: unless they were a new Trigger, or someone who came from outside of Brockton Bay, he'd know them. Aegis pressed his earpiece, then nodded, and turned to the team. "Forensics guys are going to be here in three minutes. Let's go outside, do a sweep."

Centurion nodded and headed outside along the rest of them, sighing. Weaver and Vista were there, standing and staring across the street. Weaver turned to look at them even before they'd gone through, and asked, "Anything?"

"Nope," Aegis said, taking to the air. "We're going to start a circuit of the area. Be on watch for anything in the meantime."

"I can't see anyone in the range of my power," Weaver said, shrugging, "Other than a few homeless."

Aegis frowned and touched down with the ground again. Behind him, Flechette walked out of the building, last, and closed the door with an exhalation of air. "Any idea who could've done this? Killers tend to have their… what's it called? Modus operandi?" She looked around for confirmation.

Centurion chimed in, "No one in Brockton Bay is this brutal. Unless it's a new trigger, they come from outside."

Aegis nodded shrewdly, looking at them. "We have… three crime scenes, decently far from each other, three corpses each. A total of nine people killed. Any ideas?"

"Nine… rooms full of brutal–" Centurion stopped. Then looked down, pondered, then looked back up. "Slaughterhouse Nine? Is that what they do? I didn't read much about them."

Aegis looked at him, his eyes slowly widening. "The Nine's in town?" Clockblocker asked, stepping back, shuddering physically. "Fuck, that's all we needed."

Centurion shook his head in disbelief, "I certainly hope they aren't."

"I have to call Piggot about this," Aegis said, taking out his phone and flying to the rooftop.

Weaver looked apprehensive, and Vista was staring down at the ground. The former balled up her fists. "We're probably not going to be allowed to fight the Nine, if they're here."

"I thought that was obvious," Centurion said. "And it's right. We are no match for them."

"Probably not." Weaver shook her head.

With that, the conversation was over.

Last edited: Nov 10, 2019

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Birdsie

Nov 10, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 10, 2019

#2,846

June 5th, 2011

"Hey, Centurion," Aegis said, walking into the common room. "Some… worker, from the Youth Guard wants to talk to you."

"Huh?" Centurion peered at him, interrupted from watching TV with Vista. Some kind of cooking show where a guy dressed up as Eidolon was the chef.

"Yeah. Shannon Richards. Says she has some questions for you," he said.

"I assume it's about what happened on the third," Centurion responded, looking down for a moment, only to stand up. "Should I tell the truth?"

"Prrrobably, yeah," Aegis fizzed.

Clockblocker's head craned out of his room, as he looked around the commons. "Did I just hear right? Piggot's getting fired? Holy shit. About time."

"Only if I talk," Centurion informed, focus on the space in front of himself. On the TV.

"Will you?" Vista looked at him.

"I… don't know."

He knew about Coil's plan, and speaking out against Piggot's tactics would mean handing the city right over to him. But he was sick of being constantly put in danger, and he was also fed up with the fact that Piggot constantly covers up the fact that he, or any Ward for that case, was in danger. In the danger of death.

"You should," Clockblocker said, grave. He took a moment to stand up from his chair behind the door, to get up and walk over to them, as he continued, "Piggot is a mean bi… scuit." He took notice of Vista's presence, this time.

Centurion turned to Aegis, head cocked to the left. "What… what do you think?" he asked. He wanted confirmation, some kind of advice from someone he looked up to.

Aegis shrugged, saying, "I don't know. Technically, that patrol followed the plan that was agreed to at the meeting."

"...That means Coil knew about the plan."

Aegis frowned, shaking his head. "There was a mole in that room. Or somehow it leaked. Bugs?"

"A mole," Centurion said, frowning. "I'm sure of it."

"Well. You shouldn't keep the Youth Guard waiting. Room five, on the second floor," Aegis said, stepping out of the way of the door and unfolding his arms.

Centurion nodded, then looked towards Clockblocker. "I'll do the right thing," he reassured. Clockblocker's mouth craned up in satisfaction.

Centurion walked forward, stepping through the halls and elevators that moved at the speed of the government, as he thought.

Just two days ago, they were attacked with lethal force, god damn it. They shot Tinkertech missiles at him, and shot off his foot with a Tinkertech sniper round. He killed a bunch of people in self-defense, in blind panic. He was done. Piggot was too focused on PR, on politics, and meanwhile, the city went to shit because of her fixation on looking good. They didn't have to look good, they had to protect the city by cutting off the bull's head. The fame aspect is also important, but it should not be the main focus of what they did. It was a difficult decision, quite literally one that he made on the fly, as he walked through the hallways: to keep quiet or to throw Piggot to the dogs. It took some willpower to center himself, to find the answer he thought was right, but once he did: he committed to that end.

This ends now.

He walked into the room, seeing two chairs and a table; a row of windows with plants on the windowsills, light leaking in. Mrs. Richards was there, with a blue folder in hands, looking over some documents, and she looked up at him. She was pretty, in her late twenties or so, a dark-haired brunette with a prim ponytail and a dark, sober business outfit.

He didn't give her time to ask questions or exchange greetings. Centurion started spilling, as he walked over to his chair and sat down:

"Two days ago, while on patrol with Clockblocker, Vista, and Dauntless, we were attacked by a group of mercenaries. Their intent was clearly lethal. I had my foot shot off, and I was chased around the city like an animal for more than an hour. I had to kill at least five people to protect myself and my life. Five," Centurion explained, shuddering and sighing shakily as he finished talking. Something in him welled up. A knot in his stomach, wondering if he should have done that just now. He kept telling himself it was right.

The woman stared at him, in a sort of dazed stupor. Without dropping her gaze, she opened up her document, and her hand moved automatically, writing line by line. Only after the first three or so sentences, she looked down to make sure she was getting everything, and continued to write, lower lip moving down in thought as she observed Centurion's face. Half a minute passed by like this.

"Okay." She nodded, then looked up at him sympathetically, but somewhat pale. "I wrote that down."

"And before you say anything, I am not leaving Brockton Bay," Centurion affirmed sternly.

"I'm not saying you have to," Mrs. Richards nearly sputtered. Clearly, his attitude caught her flat-footed. She shook her head, and breathed out. "I'm Shannon Richards, from the Youth Guard. I would say it's a pleasure to meet you, but you've dropped quite a missile on me from the get-go. I'm not sure how to react."

"Help the PRT ENE get back on its feet," he suggested. Uncompromising, efficient. He'd learned things from the people he disliked, ironically. "A relief fund. We're forced to not escalate because we can't afford to."

"The PRT has clearly been abusing your rights, to operate and learn to use your powers safely, in a secure environment. You have the mindset of a soldier," she said, trying to show a sympathetic expression: a saddened smile. Her face was pretty, for a twenty-something, and she managed to do it without looking condescending. "We're going to pull in a more detailed investigation, Centurion, but I'm going to have to talk to my boss about this. Do you have anything else, before we… proceed?"

"I have recordings of all the events," Centurion explained.

"It'd be helpful if you could give them over to me, at some point."

"What's your email address?" Centurion asked. After a second, his armor's HUD showed him. "Nevermind, I've got it."

Mrs. Richards' eyes widened a dime, and she nodded. "You're incredibly cooperative. And… fast. Very fast. Are you sure you're okay, Centurion?" She leaned her face forward a little, frowning with concern.

"Not really," Centurion nodded with a sad smile. Before she could offer a therapist, he said, "Therapists are useless."

She nodded. "I won't pretend to understand what you're going through, but if you'd like, I can get you the best therapist the PRT has on call. Maybe you'll change your opinion. I'll force this stipulation out of them."

"That's… okay."

"Alright." Mrs. Richards shifted a little in her seat, then wrote something else down in her documentation. "This meeting is proceeding very… quickly. I'd expected, when talking to you, I would take the lead, and we'd go over everything, topic by topic, minute by minute. In my expectations and what the Youth Guard can offer, but it seems you've come prepared."

"Picture this," Centurion started, leaning forward to look her in the eyes. A sort of two-way pressure: both intimate and vulnerable, but nullified by the fact she couldn't see his eyes. He was only peripherally aware that he was doing it. "A system that puts great, rightful expectations on your shoulders, but without any instructions on how to reach said expectations. The system beats you repeatedly because of it, punishes you. And everyone expects you to achieve said goals, and when you don't, they start hating you, or think less of you for it," Centurion concluded, looking down at the ground, sighing.

She took that in, choosing to remain silent. He shrugged, and added, "And… I've managed to find some relief, from this. Dragon, Chevalier and Legend. They're the 'big guys' who helped me the most, without realizing."

She looked into her documents, considering his words. "How would you feel about a court settlement? We could set up a case, claiming you'd been abused, and get you something out of it. Get some easier expectations for you. If not, we can still apply penalties to the PRT." She looked up at him.

"Don't," Centurion shot back. "The PRT ENE is already running low on funds, and if we want to help, we need that money."

"You don't need to help anyone. The PRT has brainwashed you into believing that you have some duty to other people," she countered, "You're a Ward, Centurion. Your role is to train for active combat, but not to expect it. As far as I'm concerned, any moment where you're exposed to danger is a violation of your civil rights. And I will fight for them."

"It wasn't the PRT," he said. "It was my moral compass."

She shook her head, slightly misunderstanding. "Pardon? I don't understand."

"The duty I have comes from my moral compass," he explained, trying to affect Armsmaster's tone. Harsh, gruff, stoic. It didn't come out right, with his accent and young voice, where Armsmaster was a smooth baritone who could turn to speaking like Batman at a moment's notice.

"You're too young to have such concerns," she answered, frowning, "Too young to understand the meaning of what you're saying."

He shrugged. "This world isn't mine. My old life is gone, and this is all I have. Giving people hope is what I want to do."

"No. You've been lied to, Centurion. You can't operate like this. The PRT is putting your life at risk - from what you said, yourself, you've almost died, correct? It's the PRT's duty to prevent that, and your duty to stay out of danger until you're ready for becoming a hero," she said.

"And I failed my duty. I have been acting reckless for as long as I can remember."

"That doesn't matter. The PRT is an organization and should be expected to keep you safe at all times," she told him, slowly and in a calm and friendly approach, "They're at fault here."

Centurion sighed and folded his arms. She was aggressive about it, trying to find an angle to attack the PRT specifically, but he didn't get the impression she was unsympathetic. Better than he could ask for, really, but he decided to press on. "I just want to stay here, and keep doing what I've been doing for all this time. This is what I enjoy doing, and this is what I want to do."

"And you can, but in a safer environment," Mrs. Richards insisted, letting her pen down on the table, steepling her hands. "Look around you. This isn't how people your age should act. Or live."

"Instead of moving me into a safer environment, make this environment safer," Centurion offered.

"I don't understand?" she asked, shaking her head.

"Make this city safer."

"How?"

"I'm sixteen, I wouldn't know," Centurion said. "You do." A deflection. Force them to take charge.

"Exactly. Centurion, you really shouldn't concern yourself with the big details. All of us are doing our best. Just focus yourself on what you can do, and I'm telling you that the best option right now is for you to get a settlement of some kind, so we can force the PRT at large to change the way the local department works. Do you understand?"

Centurion scoffed, "Please, don't give me that 'us adults' stuff. Just because I existed for less time than you, doesn't mean that I'm less than any of you," he said, with a kind of annoyed tone.

"That's not what I'm saying, Centurion. I'm saying you haven't seen the things I've seen, that you don't have the same experience or recognition of how things work. I'm sorry if that offended you," Mrs. Richards answered, smiling at him again, in the same way as before. Saddened, but without condescension.

"Maybe. But I have seen one of my friends die in front of me, I've seen my… girlfriend's brother be snapped lifeless by Leviathan in front of me."

She almost scowled upon hearing that, but quickly hid her expression with a sort of cough or clearing of the throat, behind her hand. "Yes. It's unacceptable for Wards to be deployed in those kinds of conflicts."

"They gave us the option of not participating. I chose to go out of my own volition."

There was a break in the conversation. He sensed some growing frustration in the woman in front of him, hidden up by experience, by exposure to responses like that. "Why?" she asked.

"Do you know how many people I've healed during the fight? All those people would've been dead if I hadn't been there to intervene," he answered.

Mrs. Richards sat back in her chair, crossed one leg over the other, and rubbed the space below her nose for a moment. "Perhaps..." she started, looking, not exactly at him but a little below him, "But you shouldn't have that kind of mindset, Centurion. It's toxic. I've seen people die before, because of it, and I'm here to protect you. To offer my experience in keeping you safe, to let you grow into a better man in the future." She looked up, to look for a reaction.

Centurion sighed, looking down for a moment. "Keeping me safe includes forbidding me from going out on eventual patrols?"

"Only if it's unsafe," she clarified, "I'd rather you didn't patrol for two or three years, so you can patrol for ten as a Protectorate hero, rather than dying or being put out of commission when you're so young and vulnerable."

"I can die, yes. But I can't be put out of commission," Centurion argued back.

"That's not exactly an argument," she answered.

"But your argument makes sense. I don't know. Two, three years are maybe too much. I did the math. A year and a half should be enough to reach Endbringer-level power," he said, kind of brazen, to the point where she looked briefly shocked, again. She blinked heavily and returned to her ordinary expression, though the facade of calmness was cracking.

"Centurion. I won't pretend to understand anything about… being a cape," she waved her hand before her, "I don't understand half of it, and you shouldn't try to make me. But I am a social worker with almost a decade of experience. I know how things work, and the PRT has abused your rights. And - if this truly does sound like a better argument to you - I believe they threatened your potential to flourish, as well."

Centurion stopped at her words. "What about Panacea? Why don't you help her too?"

Mrs. Richards blinked, moving forward a little. "Help her?"

"She has depression, suicidal thoughts, just from the sheer workload she has to endure. She's the only healer in Brockton Bay," he said, then realized the mistake a second later, and was quick to fix it, "Other than me and Othala. But I'm not a proper healer, and Othala is literally a Nazi so she doesn't count."

"I… didn't know any of that," Mrs. Richards said, sounding kind of crossed. Embittered. "At any rate, Panacea is not a Ward. I'll contact one of my co-workers, to speak with New Wave. We'll investigate what you said, but I can't make many promises."

"Thanks," Centurion said, smiling a bit. The first time he's smiled in all of this meeting.

"Is there anything else? This was an incredibly productive meeting. Most parahumans have a strong tendency towards… well, you know. Aggression, I should say. Refusing help, of this kind. You seem to push for it, instead."

"I haven't gone through the trauma of a Trigger Event. Or at least, I don't remember it."

"So you're something of a special case," she nodded in understanding. "I see. Most parahumans, especially young, have a unique relationship with their powers. Powers are addictive, on some level. It's why the Youth Guard and the government even endorse the idea of something like the Wards program. If you can't stop using powers, use them safely."

"Yeah." He nodded, and thought about the idea. Addiction to powers? Maybe. Three months ago, he wouldn't imagine having them, but at this point, he wasn't sure if he could live without the tiny comforts of having telekinesis, or the ability to fly. With the power to stop bullets with his bare chests. Can you imagine that? It felt good, but he realized that there was something wrong with it. "I think my power also compels me to be aggressive and reckless. I have never been so hostile towards those I consider my 'enemies'–" he said, air quoting, "–in all my sixteen years of life. But as soon as I appear in Brockton Bay, I suddenly get these… urges to rush head-first to fight, and win."

"I won't tell you to suppress them. To repeat what I said earlier: I am not a parahuman, and I cannot speak for how it is, or how it feels," she said, nodding and gesticulating as she spoke, "But of course, I'm urging you to find some way of… safely disbursing these feelings."

"The only times I felt satisfied are the times where my heel pressed a criminal's head into the ground," Centurion admitted, not doing anything to help his case of not sounding like an absolute fucking sociopath and nutjob.

Mrs. Richard suppressed a look of stunned disbelief, but she looked disturbed for a second, before returning to a smile. A slightly nervous smile. "I see. Please, find an outlet. I'll get you that therapist. Doctor Jessica Yamada: she's an expert at what she does, and from what I know, she was going to be cycled to Brockton Bay soon, either way, so it won't be too difficult to get."

Centurion nodded. "Alright."

"If that's all, I should probably hand over all of this information to my superiors, and discuss what happens next. Is there anything else you'd like to know, tell me, or ask me?"

"I don't think so," Centurion said, shaking his head. He felt a tinge of satisfaction. Relief, having told all this to someone who can change the situation for the better.

She smiled at him, and nodded once, then began to gather her documents. "Well. In that case, you can go. It was a distinct pleasure to speak with you, Centurion. Hold in there."

"I will," Centurion responded, standing up and leaving the room.

This talk with Mrs. Richards actually made him think of a new power idea. She talked about safety, about a safe environment. So, why not create a power that made the environment around him safe? He pushed the entirety of his charges into an AOE power that influenced the people around him, who had hostile intentions towards him to instead protect him.

The effect took five seconds and came out rather meager: a five-meter range, and only induced slight hesitation and guilt on anyone who directly used Master powers on him. He combined it with his previous anti-master power, to see what he got. It took eight seconds to parse fully this time.

The result was a power that induced a small amount of guilt and hesitation into anyone trying to control his thoughts or actions, especially with close proximity and the use of parahuman powers. It had minimal effects, though, and no effects on people without a moral compass. Which kind of sucked, given he couldn't imagine Heartbreaker being particularly... well, heartbroken, about mind-control.

His phone and HUD pinged. A message from Piggot. 'Meet me in my office.'

Ah. Well.

Centurion felt a smug expression creep onto his face, as he proceeded to Piggot's abode, only several doors down the same hallway. He stopped in front of the door, to clear his throat and prepare for the conversation, then stepped in.

"Good morning, Centurion," Piggot said, drinking her mug of coffee between statements, looking rather unimpressed. "Word has reached me you've just spoken with the Youth Guard representative?"

"Good morning," he responded. His smirk didn't drop. "Yes. They asked for me."

She drummed her fingers against the desk, thinking. "What did you tell them?" she asked from across the office.

"That I was hunted down like an animal. That I had my foot shot off. That I almost died," he listed each thing, stating it like a fact, nearly as smoothly as Accord would say it.

"From what I recall, a month ago, this would've been a huge success in your books," Piggot stated, deadpan and dry. She looked up at him.

"A month ago," he shot back, staring her dead in the eye.

"You're truculent," she said, without raising her voice or becoming even a touch angry, "When the PRT says one thing, you act contrarian. When I say to stand back and inform me, you attack the Empire. When I allow you to act and make a plan, you decide to act outside of the plan, and complain when you've been given free reign. What would satisfy you, Centurion? I don't believe there's any option I could offer you, that would make you happy."

Centurion gave her a lopsided smile, raising a hand to his mouth to cover it, rubbing his chin. "You can offer me the option, but you can't afford it," he explained, as the smile turned into a smug grin. "You've said it yourself. Escalation is bad, and I say take out the root of the problem before it ever thinks of escalating."

He saw Piggot's knuckles whiten, showing bones through the skin as she clutched the mug of coffee in her hand. "You have no experience in anything. You're an outsider from another world. You're arrogant. Immature. Callow," she listed, one after another, just barely raising her voice, but not standing up. She shifted in his seat, to glare at him from across the room.

"And you're jobless, Emily." Centurion said with a shit-eating grin, turning and walking out of the office.

She stared at him, as he walked out.

After his meeting with Director Piggot, Centurion had walked down to attend his PR shift in the lobby. Not that there was a lot to do.

The city had improved ever since Leviathan. In baby steps, electricity was returned to a city district here, some piping had been repaired in a building or block over there. A few more families out of shelters and camps, going back to their homes, capable of affording food and amenities. Little steps towards safety. Even the weather was improving, back to its usual, comfortable 'warm, but not hot,' and 'chilly, but not cold.'

This also meant that some tourists returned. Not a lot, but some; the people who could afford it. There were maybe seven to ten people in total in the PRT lobby, at any given moment - including the gift shop. Not a lot given how big the city was, but a stark improvement to the total emptiness of the first-week period post-Leviathan.

A ping of his armor told him, 'Villain activity across the city. Midtowners, Travelers, Undersiders spotted, all of them on their own. Appear to be delivering supplies to civilians, possibly claiming territory. Be on watch, but don't initiate combat.'

Centurion looked at the notification and sighed in mild irritation. Coil and Accord's initial attack failed, and while they were unlikely to try again too soon, they'd likely capitalize on any weakness or show of vulnerability, so the PRT was keeping him back. He stood at the back, as some older woman took a photo of him and her granddaughters. He smiled for the flash, then they walked off to see the photo.

The elevator to the Wards HQ opened, and Flechette came out, alongside Shadow Stalker. They appeared to be talking about how schools are getting back up soon - about damn time, given it's been almost two weeks. His schoolbooks must have been rotting from the humidity at this point.

Centurion smiled. "Hey there," he said, waving towards Flechette.

"Hey, saddled with the PR?" Flechette smiled in understanding. Shadow Stalker stepped past them, arms swinging sharply as she walked, electing not to partake in the fruits of conversation. She proceeded to the lobby exit, causing some of the more wise-minded civilians to step out of her way.

"Yeah. Don't really mind. The kids are nice," he answered, chuckling lightly. "How are you doing?"

"Pretty good. I'm getting transferred out, soon," she said, then looked at the lobby. "Not a lot of circulation here. There's like, several points back in New York, and each one has dozens of people. Almost looks rural, over here."

"Leviathan did flatten the city not more than two weeks ago," he retorted dryly with a blank expression. "And people have better concerns than underwear with Armsmaster's logo on it."

"I've heard you talked to someone in the Youth Guard about what happened a few days ago, from Clockblocker. About the mercenary attack." She shrugged. "Do you think it was a good idea to throw Piggot under the bus like that?"

"Yes," Centurion stated candidly.

"Huh. Okay. Well, I've got a patrol now, so I guess we'll catch up later." She smirked, catlike. "Unless you wanted to surreptitiously sneak along. Just kidding, bye."

Centurion grinned back. "Oh, how I'd like to do that. See ya."

He spotted a family approaching with a camera and poised himself for their arrival. He smiled, conveying a sense of pride and charisma at them, as his environmental shield flared on, from an external perspective, it looked like he burst into glorious golden flames. He raised a hand, waving at them, royal-like. "Greetings!"

"I want a photo with the cool golden dude!" their son said, running out and breaking contact with his concerned mother's hand, then standing next to him and constantly hopping on his heels.

"Do you want to do something amazing?" Centurion asked, looking down at him.

"Something awesome?" the kid asked, looking back up with a glimmer in his eyes.

Centurion nodded, extending his hand to the child. "Take it, I'm not actually on fire," he said with a reassuring tone and an older-brother-type smile.

The boy slowly extended his palm and clasped Centurion's hand, vibrating as he felt the tingle of the environmental shield.

The hero took his hand and the telekinetic field wrapped around the both of them, spreading thin. It took a while longer to wrap around people and could be broken out of more easily; a fact Centurion noticed a while ago. It could still manage, though, if he needed to rescue someone or carry them away.

The two started hovering off the ground, a meter or two above the floor level, and a crackle of the environmental shield extended over the boy's body. "Pose!" Centurion said, posing heroically with a fist placed on his waist, the other hand holding the boy, at the side of the shoulder.

The astonished father raised his camera and started taking photos from several angles, while the kid tried to mimic Centurion's posture and was clearly having the time of his life. After a moment, the family looked satisfied, and Centurion let the kid go back to his family. "You're like the coolest hero in the entire city, dude!" he said, the glint in his eyes twice as potent.

"Do you want to be as cool as me?" Centurion asked, kneeling in front of him.

"Hell yeah!"

"Then push yourself to be better every day," the Ward stated, putting a hand on his shoulder. "No one else is going to do it for you. Do your homework, eat your greens and listen to mom and dad. And when you win, in the end? Tell the people that it was Centurion who set you on the right path."

The boy nodded, skipping up like his legs had springs in them, constantly compressing and discharging their potential energy. "Okay! I'll do that! Holy plastic bottles, Centurion!"

Centurion grinned as they left, feeling satisfied and happy about this boy's enthusiasm.

A female voice said, "That was quite an admirable approach to children. I know some people who could take pointers from you. My dad, my boss."

Centurion turned to the source of the voice. To the right of him, slightly behind, stood a girl, leaning against the back of the wall with folded arms, one foot on the wall, and a slight smirk. She had a black top, and jeans, which just barely revealed some colorful tattoos on her chest and back, but mostly concealed them. She looked like a model, with black hair and a red streak running through it.

He smiled at her, folding his arms. "I do what I can do brighten the days of who approach me." She looked friendly - and he found himself instinctively dropping his guard, and wondering why he'd to that. He couldn't really explain. She was just... nice.

"I'm sure you do," she answered, smiling. "Can I take a selfie?" She raised her phone, white, with a slightly cracked screen.

"Obviously," Centurion nodded.

She strutted up to him, turning the phone on and fumbling with the password screen for a moment, before turning on the camera and walking to stand next to him. They wrapped their hands around each other's backs, as she took the photo of the two of them, with a wide grin on her face. She looked at the photo and, after a moment, nodded in satisfaction. She put the phone in the pocket and shook his hand. "Cherie."

"Centurion," he replied, smiling. He couldn't shake the feeling of how nice she was.

"What's it like, to be this great hero? Inspiring people? Giving them a reason to live?" she asked, cocking her head almost parallel to the ground. She was incredibly nice so far, if a little bizarre. He felt comfortable, talking to her, especially since that was a rare occurrence around people he didn't know.

Centurion shrugged. "It's just that. I try to do my best."

"Really? I don't think I could just do that, personally. Not gratifying enough," she said, smirking. "I prefer more obvious rewards."

"Such as?" Centurion inquired.

"Well, it depends," she said, sort of turning around, almost theatrical, as she folded her arms. The way her hair swayed around her shoulders was mesmerizing. Was he falling in love? "See, I grew up in a weird environment. Dad was kind of an asshole, pretty shortsighted for all of his power. Siblings? Also assholes, or bitches, depending on the gender - not that it really mattered back then." She turned back to him.

"I suppose I'm a hedonist, in a sense. I like to play around. Life is just one big game, wouldn't you say? Actors, filling roles… that's what my boss says, at least." She smirked a little more, and he couldn't keep his heart from fluttering at her beauty. For a moment, his breathing hitched, as he realized something strange was going on, but couldn't place a finger on it.

Computer, monitor my vitals.

'Heightened heart rate detected. Signs indicate feelings matching the emotions of infatuation or danger.'

Oh, fuck that, I have a girlfriend. This girl is a parahuman.

Centurion looked nervous for a moment. Then after a moment, he realized there was nothing to be afraid of, and gave the girl a honest smile. "Yeah."

"Ooh. That's curious," she said, stalking closer, cupping his chin and lifting his head up. He didn't resist, but felt his heart pick up speed as she got closer. It was so tense but exciting, to be near her. "That's very curious. For a moment there, I thought you'd realized what was going on."

Should he order the computer to take him away? No. Obviously not. This girl was fun to talk to, though he couldn't quite a place a finger on why. He narrowed his eyebrows, then shrugged. Centurion grinned. "You're a parahuman, aren't you? You're doing something to me," he said, almost excitedly.

"Does it bother you?" she asked, smiling cutely. He felt his heart sink and rise at the same time, and breathed out, not quite laughing.

"Kind of," he said, in a tone that didn't really match his emotions.

"Does it, reaaaally?" she asked again, and he felt his heartbeat against his chest. He realized he'd fallen in love with her.

"Actually, not… really? That's kind of weird," he said, coming to the brilliant realization of who he was talking to.

"Yeah. You're acting weird," Cherish of the Slaughterhouse Nine said, letting go of his chin and smirking a little. He felt a mite of regret when she stopped touching him, like he'd been a dog abandoned by his loving owner. He wanted her back. "Are you sure you're not under the weather, or something?"

"Absolutely certain," Centurion responded. "You're Cherish."

"Mm, that's right. Smart boy." She clapped him on the side of the helmet, then said, "Why don't you propose me to go somewhere more private?"

A desolate, old part of his mind - one he felt he'd abandoned years ago and fed to the dogs - wanted to call the PRT because she was a dangerous serial killer. He;d read so: it was outlined in the paperwork regarding the Nine. But could he really do that to Cherish? He loved her. Fuck, he hated to admit it, but he loved her. He couldn't live without her. Fuck.

"Sure," he said, eager to. "What kind of place?"

"I don't know. Somewhere without prying eyes?" she suggested.

"And what are you going to do to me?" Centurion asked. He found a way to communicate on some level, past the veil of emotion. Double-speak: this sentence could be interpreted in two ways. Sexually, or serial-killery.

"Oh. Are you scared, little kitten?" she giggled, and he felt his knees get weak at how intoxicating it was. He lived for that laughter. He couldn't live without it. "Don't worry. You've already been claimed by someone else. I'm not going to do anything too bad. As I said, I'm a hedonist. I like to play around, and I've heard you're pretty handsome under that tin can."

A PRT trooper looked over at them, noticed how close Centurion was to the weird girl, and yelled, "Hey, everything alright, over there?"

Centurion looked over at the trooper and smiled, "Yeah. Just talking to a fan."

"Alright. Are you sure I shouldn't call this..." After a moment, the PRT trooper looked at Cherish, and seemed to reconsider. "Actually, nah." His partner laughed. The civilians weren't noticing the commotion.

"Yeah, it's cool," Centurion said. The trooper's worries had already been alleviated. Centurion frowned at the man's interruption, then returned to his attention to his beloved, and proposed, "There's a meeting room on the second floor, without any cameras. We could go there if you need privacy."

"Oh, yeah, it'll be delightful," Cherish said, grinning. After a moment, her phone buzzed, and her face contorted into a snarl as she picked up. "What?! Oh. Yeah, yeah, I'll get it..." she continued conversing. She looked over at her fingernails as he spoke, and he traced them with his eyes. So beautiful. Goddamn it. His thoughts were going wild, and he knew deep down that something was wrong, but it didn't matter since he loved Cherish.

"Ugh." Cherish turned. "Where were we? Oh, right. I can't really stay, because something just came up. It's a shame."

Centurion shook lightly. "Oh. That's… sad," he replied, meek.

"Yeah. I'll talk to you later, I guess." She walked up to Centurion and pressed her lips against his, giving him a French kiss. He felt a tongue pressing against his own, and embraced her back. When she pulled away, he'd noticed she was recording the entire thing with her phone, from a side angle. It made his mind run with excitement. What would she do with the video? "That was good. You're not too shabby for… huh, not a virgin, but close. Whatever. Stay here."

With that, Cherish walked off, and gradually, as she left his sight, Centurion felt his love for her leaving him, returning to rational thoughts.

What the fuck? What? Did I just fucking make out with a serial killer?!

He panicked. He immediately radioed in. "Cherish, of the Slaughterhouse Nine, was at the PRT HQ. In the lobby. She put me under some kind of Master effect, and… she… fuck, let's not get into the details. She's currently leaving."

"Holy fuck," Clockblocker's shocked voice rang over the radio. "What happened?"

"She recorded herself making out with me. This is going to be a PR disaster," he announced.

"Holy fuck," Shadow Stalker's voice followed that, in almost the exact same tone as Clockblocker. "She chose you to make out with?"

"Yeah, not too shabby, she said," he shot back in an annoyed tone.

One of the PRT troopers ran past him, muttering something about Master/Stranger protocols. The other one was using the radio.

They'd been Mastered too? Wait. Of course they were!

Centurion looked at the PRT trooper. "Hey! What's the situation?" he shouted, to be heard.

"We're rerouting patrols around midtown!" the trooper yelled back. The civilians in the lobby seemed to notice the commotion and were looking around in mild interest at what looked to be an ongoing operation. A stray thought made him wonder if anyone noticed him making out with a random girl.

Centurion floated up to be seen by everybody and used his louder-voice power to be heard. "Everyone, vacate the premises and return to your homes. We have confirmation of villains in the area, one of whom has mind-controlling powers. Exit the building in an orderly manner, please."

The civilians looked around, and he heard the clamor of worried mutterings, but some of the families quickly got the message and filed out, while the individual people in the gift shop either left or hurried up with their purchases and ran out. In a minute, the PRT lobby was devoid of people.

Centurion radioed. "The PRT lobby was vacated. Civilians are out, and safe."

"Master/Stranger protocols in effect from here on out," Clockblocker said, "Password will be… Alpha-Zulu-Six-Five-Eight. The response is Gamma-Mike-Eight-Nine-Two. Remember this until the next change."

A noise of 'roger thats' came out, from various people.

"Ten-four."

106

Birdsie

Nov 10, 2019

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Threadmarks Modus Operandi 9.2

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 11, 2019

#2,932

June 6th, 2011

Another boring day of PR duty, this time, with added security. Centurion's armor had been set to constant facial recognition of everyone he looked at and warn him. He also set it to send a notification to all systems if his heart-rate went up past a certain threshold. The problem with the protocols was that Cherish's power worked against them - he'd still remember and know the passwords under her power. Their implementation felt slightly pointless.

The Nine were in the city, now. It was clear. They'd made their presence known in subtle ways, and less subtle ways, with Cherish's appearance in the lobby.

He'd called Crystal about what happened, and they met up at a restaurant that re-opened recently to talk about it. She didn't appear to be mad, but definitely disgruntled.

Gabriel went home, and after taking a shower and changing into more comfortable clothes, he sat on the couch and closed his eyes, entering his power's mindscape.

Eleven charges lazily swam around the fountain's precipice, a single brother to join them in two hours. The fountain itself was seated at the throne of the system, with a single wire connection to the power-meddling power. Everything looked blue and cyan: stable.

He remembered creating the power-meddling power itself: the fountain and the power at large seemed pleased. Eager for this power to be made, stabilized and used. And so, he came to this conclusion: his power had some sort of will, or deep-seated consciousness that he could please and maybe get some nice treats from…?

He pushed one charge towards the fountain itself.

It bounced off of the fountain in much the same way that a rescue wheel bounces off of the side of a boat.

He redirected that same charge towards the power-meddling power, with the intent of making it focused on draining other people's powers at will. Either steal the power altogether or drain their potential and turn it into charges.

For a moment, every other power disappeared from existence. There were only twenty-seven dots of unstable power and a single charge that swam towards them. The twenty-seven reached out with stabbing tendrils, jabbing them into their singular brother and forcing him to come closer and merge with them. The power flashed red, then green.

Huh. I really want to try it, but there's no way I can do that as of right now. Unless I look for a random parahuman and meddle with them. That's not very nice, is it?

Centurion pushed five of his charges inside the Legionnaire's Scutum, to make the hard-light lasers actually go at lightspeed. At least, that was his intent. A sense of orange and purple, as the five charges entered the power and it reconfigured itself. It kept changing, shifting.

He felt the change take place and slot itself in. The lasers would go… a fraction faster.

Then, he pushed the rest into the same power, but with the function of more absorption, and more passive regeneration of his energy stores. Ten seconds to reconfigure. He felt the absorption rate jump up from thirty-five to around forty percent, with the maximum rate at forty-seven.

Gabriel then turned his attention towards the August Breaker power, named after the so-called August Prince whose power had been similar to it. He wondered if he could manually reconfigure the function of charges and decided to test.

He filled his awareness with the power and with all the charges associated with it, and spread them wide, to see each charge's individual function. It was impossible. The charges looked indistinct: each one a perfect nebulous grain of radiation, surrounded by a quantum mist of some kind of programming, passing information between the fibers. If he really focused, to the furthest extent the mindscape could allow, he could almost make out the individual motes of data: billions of marks and symbols, overlaid over one another in a tesseract, occupying and moving alongside the same space in packets.

Guess I can't.

He opened his eyes and sighed, resting his head on the sofa.

"Fffffuck," he groaned out in frustration. "Why can't I just… randomly get a gift from the Divine Providence and get… I'unno, ten thousand charges all of a sudden?" He stood up from the sofa, bored out of his mind.

What to do, what to do, what to do.

Should he call Crystal? With all the post-Leviathan relief efforts, there wasn't much time for dating. And all this literal distance put a wedge between them. Their talks were shorter and more awkward. Gabriel sighed, humming to himself a tune as he headed up to his room, to play the keyboard.

He opened up the keyboard itself and looked at the keys. He shuddered; not even a full month ago, when he played the piano, a serial killer from Boston attacked him and tried to kill him. And it wasn't like he could kill her in self-defense. That was counter-intuitive. He shook his head, and brought his hands up to the keys, slightly shaking.

And after a brief moment, his mind went blank, and it was like a couple of months ago. His body spazzed as his hands rushed across the keys, forming a concordant symphony of music.

Etude number twelve, opus ten. Chopin. Revolutionary Etude.

After he was done playing, he sat back and looked at the vase of flowers on top of the wardrobe next to the keyboard. He noticed the glass vase was rattling, at low amplitude but high frequency. Vibrating, oscillating. Only the glass.

"Fucking Behemoth?!" Gabriel exclaimed, standing up all of a sudden. "Earthquake?"

He felt with his feet, but nothing else was shaking. The floor was upset, the walls didn't seem to rattle even subtly when he focused on the edges of objects. He looked around his room, and noticed the screen of his computer was clacking, as was the window, and the glass bulbs on his lamp, and the chandelier: glass. All of it was glass.

"...one of the Ni–"

He never finished, because in that moment, he felt a distant scream and every bit of glass in the room exploded into tiny bits. He saw his computer jump, as the micro-elements of silicone inside of the chips and processors exploded outwards and cut through the wiring. He observed as the glass of his window rushed towards him and cut through his skin in multiple places, his environmental shield turning on in reaction to the danger sense and just barely managing to turn deadly lacerations into flesh wounds.

The ambrosia immediately started seeping into his wounds to close them up.

He heard a suppressed bark of mocking laughter from the outside, and looked up, to see a woman floating a good bit of distance away. She wore a gown of colored glass pieces over her body, her helmet there seemingly only for appearances, rather than for hiding identity.

The glass pieces in his room rattled again, then moved up and flew out of the window like a swarm of bugs, reminding him of Skitter's power. They slowed down next to their controller, moving around to orbit her.

Gabriel looked directly at the woman outside. He was scared, but not hopeless, or defenseless. He felt like he had a sliver of a chance at beating her. But he was out of armor: that was a big problem. A shiver ran across his back.

"Well? Do you have anything to tell me, Centurion?" Shatterbird asked, smirking. He could see the faint curving of her lips even from a distance away. Her voice held traces of a British accent, despite her dark skin. It made her sound higher class.

"Your dress is pretty," he answered with a suave grin as he lifted off the ground and clenched his fists. Deep down, his heart was beating against his chest. Not in infatuation, but in fear. This could really go sideways. "But it's not really a fair fight if I don't have my armor on me."

"Fight?" she asked, with faint distaste. "How combative. I see my assessment of you was accurate."

"You just attempted to kill me. If that doesn't scream 'fight,' I don't know what does." He breathed in through his nose because if he did it through the mouth, he might've whimpered.

"Hm," Shatterbird mused, in a tone that suggested she wasn't really thinking. He found himself calming down a little. "Kill you? Combative, then, but not very smart. If I wanted to kill you, Centurion, then we would not be speaking right now. You'd be over there, on the floor, bleeding from every part of your body from thousands of shards digging into it. "

"I don't really want to fight. I just wanted to play the piano in peace," he replied, kind of annoyed.

"Yes. That's why I waited for you to finish. It was quite an interesting piece. Chopin?" she asked, with a trace of smugness.

"Exactly," he answered, genuinely surprised a villain cared about elevated culture such as this. It knocked another strand of fear out of his mind. She was almost agreeable.

"Do my proclivities towards asserting my superiority prevent me from enjoying the higher beauties life has to offer?" she asked, rhetorical.

"Not really, but it'd help if you weren't a serial killer. Not to offend, or anything, but I think we could have a pretty decent chat about music if I wasn't scared just from being in your presence," he admitted.

"If you're interested, I'm giving a concert soon," Shatterbird offered, sounding genuinely non-ironic. "I'd be more than glad if you attended."

"What are you playing?" he asked, narrowing one eye.

"A new piece I came up with when I joined the Nine," she answered back, with a grin matching his.

Centurion's body tensed up. He expected her to start using her power soon, so he prepared in advance, imagining spots around the room where he could move to dodge blasts of glass. He smiled.

"Now then. Before things devolve to brutalism, I'd like to warn you that I did not come here wishing you death. If you attempt to fight me, I will respond with my full might, but as it stands, I'm just here to pass on a message," Shatterbird told him, both hands extended to her sides. Kind of like a preacher in church.

Centurion gulped, thinking twice before asking. "The message is?"

"I am the Nine's primary recruiter," she elucidated, "Over my membership, I've brought no less than five members. Although it took a while to come to this conclusion, I've decided that you would thrive among us."

"You want to recruit me into your murder-club?" he asked brusquely, genuinely surprised.

"Refusal will not be accepted," she answered, smooth and yet inflexible in her demands, "And calling it a murder-club is very crass."

"Well, it wasn't meant as an insult. You are a group of people who get along, who find pleasure in killing others. If that's not a Murder Club..." he trailed off, genuinely meaning what he said. "But anyway. Let's say I accept your offer, which is unlikely. What would I get out of it?" he asked, curious to know the answer.

"You would become one of us," Shatterbird answered, "Which, naturally, means you won't die."

That hit all of the right notes to make his heart pound, once, hard enough that he felt it in his chest, sending a spike of adrenaline and fear through his system. "I can avoid death by just hiding somewhere where people won't find me. How does joining you change things?"

"You truly believe security is so simple as hiding out?" Shatterbird nearly scoffed. "Your perspective is so simplistic, so limited, and yet you have so much potential to be molded. As a member of the Nine, we would become your new family. A group that protects you, and helps guide you. I'm sure Jack could come up with even better arguments to convince you."

"Eh. What exactly do you do? I'm sure my description was a tremendous understatement," he inquired.

"It depends from member to member," Shatterbird elucidated, hovering up closer to him, slowly. "Crawler, for example, finds great joy in the ability to move with us, around any city, to be harmed by a great plethora of powers, so he can grow stronger. Bonesaw is an artist, finding security in belonging to the group and having the ability to Tinker in peace. Me? I'm more of a scholar. I enjoy the study of people. A little more refined than the others. And I'd love to see a way to bring you on board."

Centurion looked down for a moment. "Kill Accord and Coil, retrieve Signal. That's my price," he said.

"Is that so? I've heard of Accord, but who are the other two?" The pieces of glass rearranged themselves. She was only meters away from his window now, floating in midair, the glass shards of her dress clinking against each other as they swayed in the wind. He could make out the contours of her face: dark-skinned, with dark hair. Not bad-looking, if one ignored the serial killing.

"Coil is a local villain who plans to take over the city and basically already did. Signal is a… friend who I misjudged."

"I don't see a reason not to if you managed to join us."

"Managed?" Centurion cocked his head to the side.

"Of course. During recruitment, every member of the Nine gets to promote a candidate. The candidates are tested, and often fight and kill each other. At the conclusion, the last one must go through the remaining trials before they are considered ready. Each member of the Nine may select a trial of their own. For example… Mannequin often requests that a new member change themselves, in some way. He forced Cherish to tattoo a most disgusting emblem on her otherwise immaculate body. It was quite enjoyable to see."

"That is evil incarnate, if I do say so myself," Centurion stated with a trace of sarcasm.

"Cherish is unrefined, as far as people go. She's fundamentally disagreeable, and I'd rather she died if possible," Shatterbird said, looking over him, assessingly. For once he was glad at how muscular he was. Even if he kept breathing a little much, it meant she wouldn't take him for granted.

"Why would I even accept your offer? What you do is literally the opposite of what I stand for. I want to help people, inspire them."

Shatterbird smiled at him, and he felt his throat tighten, his belly cramp up. "Well, if you're looking for base motivation, I would say not dying is a good beginning. As for more lofty ideals, think about it. If you were to join us, you could have time to study the Nine's inner workings. Our weaknesses. You'd be in an ideal position to kill each of us, once the right time came. In exchange for compromising your ideals in the meanwhile. An exchange, or a bet, if you will - that's what Jack calls it."

"If I were to join after you told me this, you'd all expect it," he pointed out the contradiction.

"So?" Shatterbird asked, landing on the windowsill with her bare feet, as she walked up to him, "Isn't that what makes life interesting? A little bit of risk?"

"Do you all try to kill each other on a daily basis?"

"Not on a daily basis, and not always each other. Sometimes, unique relationships develop between members. Crawler, for instance, is like a very large, rather disgusting, family dog," she explained, nearly shuddering, "We always have to steal an additional van to transport him, he takes up so much space."

Centurion cringed a little. "I don't… really want to join you."

"And if we were to acquiesce to your request? To destroy Coil and Accord? I believe Crawler intends to break into Coil's base sometime tonight, to meet his candidate. The buried girl; Cherish called her," Shatterbird explained.

"Buried girl…?" he asked, eyes widening. The Travelers… mentioned something. Oracle also gave me some info… maybe it's that secret?

"Crawler has strange interests," Shatterbird shrugged, looking around the room in mild curiosity. She traced the keyboard with her eyes, looked at the keys almost lustfully, with true appreciation for them. "You see. The way his power works, it makes him a masochist. He gets hurt once, regenerates, and comes back with a perfect counter to what hurt him. He goes out of his way to find people who can damage him, so he'll come back stronger. Whatever Cherish found, he believes it can hurt him, or be a challenge. Otherwise, he'd never bother with candidates, and choose someone random."

"Doomsday, except he doesn't have to die," he said, shuddering.

"Doomsday? Is that a villain from your world?" she asked, turning her attention away from the keyboard and back at him, prompting his heart to hammer a little in his chest. He noticed the shards of glass, some of them as small as half a fingernail, turning in the air to follow her field of vision.

"Villains and heroes don't exist on my world. Doomsday is a fictional character who's an alien experiment," he explained, but she didn't react, didn't even nod, "Every time he dies, he comes back to life, immune to what previously killed him."

"Accurate, then. Yes. Crawler is a Doomsday, except he doesn't have to die," Shatterbird nodded, smiling at him, narrowly showing a little of her white teeth as she spoke.

"The point still stands. Accord and Coil's destruction was a simple request, to see to what extent you would go to. I don't want to join you: it'd be a betrayal of the very ideals I stand for, and you'll agree with me that hypocrisy is one of the worst sins mankind can commit, plus I don't want to go around the world, bringing destruction everywhere," he explained his argument.

"You don't really have to," she answered, floating off the ground, as she looked around the room again. "Being a member of the Nine doesn't mean you're forced to kill. There are no 'rules' for being in the Nine. We could destroy Coil and Accord, and you could get a chance to grow strong enough to kill all of us, given time. In the meantime, you'd serve as a source of interest. It's been so long since the Nine had a talented pianist… in fact, I don't believe that was ever the case before."

Centurion laughed at that. A small, short yet mocking laughter. "So you'd have me around as a pet, until I grow strong enough to dig your graves?"

"Yes. Like I said, it's a bet. A challenge. A game. Call it whatever you want. It's a proposition open to you. Jack agreed it was a good idea, as did most of the others," Shatterbird answered, "And if you eventually decide you'd like to stay, that can happen. It's happened before, that someone who thought joining the Nine was ridiculous decided to stay and express themselves in new ways."

"A proposition that I politely close. A challenge I won't accept. A bet I won't take. It's a–"

Her face was turned to stare at a poster on the wall, of a band on Earth Bet. She looked at it, as she considered his words. Then, her face turned to him, her glare icy. "I don't like refusal. Think twice before answering, boy."

"I don't need to think at all to tell you that I don't want to join."

Gabriel felt his stomach crumple as something empty and vacuous spread into it. Veins of ice raked into his belly, spreading throughout, as he looked down and saw an entire cluster of glass crystals and shards in his stomach, blood pouring from beneath his skin in straight lines. He felt his bones turn to jello at the shock, for a moment, as Shatterbird said, unaggressive, "Disappointing."

Centurion's adrenaline kicked in instinctively, and an array of golden, penetrating lasers ejected from his forehead towards Shatterbird's head.

Before he was even done, a mass of glass moved into the path of the lasers and intersected it. The result was a bit of a visual cacophony his eyes barely comprehended, but what he thought happened was that most of the grass cracked, while a majority of the lasers were deflected in several directions, scattering across his room and digging holes into various surfaces, chipping off concrete and wood. Shatterbird let out a quiet, polished giggle, then he felt a mass of glass shards reroute itself to stab him in the shoulder, before moving out.

The enzyme leaked into his wounds, but the glass was lodged in his chest, still. Some of it in his stomach. Shatterbird lifted off, moving through the window facing him, as she laughed.

"Psycho," he muttered to himself, as he pushed out all of the glass out of his body with telekinesis, causing a burning feeling of blood to sear every part of his torso for a moment, ordering the ambrosia to over-produce to compensate. The warmth evened out in moments.

Centurion lifted off the ground and wrapped himself up in layers of telekinetic force, loading up to dart at the full 175kph towards her. While he waited for the field to get ready, he spoke, "Didn't you say you didn't want to kill me?"

"That was before you refused, silly boy," she said, and he spied on the glassy shards rearranging themselves around her. Thousands of pieces formed a pack in front of her, the sharper edges directed towards him: a natural barrier, to cut into him if he attempted to charge, while very easy to reform as shields.

Fuck.

Centurion stealthily extended a tendril of telekinesis towards her, to wrap around her neck. It couldn't reach far enough: it began to peter out just as it entered the halfway point into her mass of shards.

"I've studied your powers. I've studied every aspect of your personality and philosophy."

"My philosophy? And what would that be?" he said.

"It's in your life. You believe in becoming a symbol of peace, while acting contrarian by acting as a violent vigilante. Violence is in your nature; you desire to sate it. That's why I believed you would thrive among us," she explained, "Maybe I was wrong, after all. If you're unwilling, then we'd have to break you first."

"I'm getting better," he stated, folding his arms. "Violence is in almost every parahuman's nature."

"No. You are by far the most abnormal case I've seen," Shatterbird answered, tilting her head, "You're an outlier. One of the most violent people I've seen. I believe you would fit in with the likes of Hatchet Face, brutally killing the people you don't like."

"You're speaking?" Centurion said, offended. "A member of the most lethal group of people on this planet? You're on the same level as an Endbringer."

"I take great pride in that, yes. I wouldn't mind if you complimented me some more," she answered, smiling with a trace of smugness. The kind of smugness that a king would direct towards peasantry, believing they were below him. "But as it stands, words of flattery are a waste on the ears."

He considered charging up a blast of energy, on the same force that he'd used against Leviathan or the mercenaries. It'd take several seconds, and there was a good chance she'd notice the environmental shield brightening.

"You're in no place to judge me, then."

"Why? You're just as violent as me, but far less effective in what you do. With the Nine, you could kill as many evil people as you liked, and we'd back you up. We don't discriminate between good and evil, you're aware of that, correct?"

"Not all evil people deserve death. Some are redeemable. But you aren't," he stated, as he started loading up a Leviathan-hurting shot, but only half as strong.

The moment he finished speaking, Shatterbird had already reacted, predicting he was about to go on the offense. He felt the glass around him rattle, as several individual pieces shot to throw his aim off and force him to dodge, while the others rerouted into a large, flat circle.

Centurion's danger sense flared intensely and coupled with adrenaline, his body instinctively moved out of the way, backwards. She kept throwing shards of glass, and some of them started to scratch him, only to move back and scratch him on their way back towards Shatterbird. It appeared, however, she was having trouble with the control of smaller pieces, with her control getting finer the more glass she had.

Centurion routed the energy back into himself: it wasn't the time to shoot now. He decided to focus on breaking her glass shards. He covered his body in thick, golden armor and started hitting the shards of glass that were flying at him, to further break them and give her a harder time in controlling them.

Shatterbird seemed to grow bored with waiting, and irritated that he'd armored himself up. She split her shield into two equal halves, with fine control over the large pieces, then she threw half of them towards him - all at once - while the other half quickly reformed to cover her.

Centurion sent a kinetic shockwave at the glass, strong enough to shatter it into sand-grains, and coincidentally fragment every surface in his room: the wooden floor splintered, the concrete and brick walls cracked and lost stability, the furniture was thrown about, while the entire wall opposite of him was blasted from the house, bricks, and pieces of stone raining down on the front garden. A pang of irritation and loss ran through him, at destroying his own room.

More visibility, but I have more exposed sides. Fuck.

The golden hero loaded a shotgun-laser in her direction, set to penetration mode.

The glass shield rearranged itself to become something similar to a lens or a bowl, convex so that the middle of the curve was towards him. The lasers scattered and refracted, flying around the neighborhood, with minimal damage to her shield. He spotted as a branch of a tree fell off, as a house across the street was hit with a stray laser and its front door was scorched and damaged. Shatterbird sang, and he heard the cracking of numerous glass objects across the house, drawing in towards her to reinforce her defense.

Shatterbird was smiling, seemingly content with the play-by-play.

Centurion shot out of his room, and downstairs. As he reached the living room, he grabbed both of his phones, only to see that the glass screens had been missing, both of the devices utterly ruined. He groaned in frustration and flew out of the front door at top speed. Shatterbird was already a mote in the distance by the time he started flying. She was going roughly in the direction of the Trainyard or the Docks; north and a little east.

Centurion flew after her. Catching up to her would be relatively easy. As he did so, he shot multiple lasers in her direction.

Shatterbird wove out of the way of the lasers and turned so that she was flying supine, back-towards-the-ground, so she could take a better look at him. She frowned.

Centurion fired a laser off, trying to approximate a dodge pattern she might take, then firing off a second one to where she'd go. Naturally, she dodged, the first shot, then bobbed and yelped as the second one went up her skirt-dress-thing and cut her somewhere.

He heard Shatterbird growl with rage. She raised and moved a hand, then a cluster of glass pellets redirected itself and sunk into the bodies of a group of civilians on the street. They screamed as they fell down. She was trying to distract him by wounding people, forcing him to heal them. If he stopped, he wouldn't be able to catch her.

Centurion grit his teeth and shot another laser, only to then stop and fly down to the civilians. Bitch. I'll shoot your clitoris off next time.

Four people on the ground, bleeding heavily. He saw a man, thrashing on the ground, in a white dress shirt with large, dim red shapes spreading across slowly, as he bled. Two women, too, in outfits suggesting they were Dock denizens, and what looked to be the man's son, a young boy maybe fourteen, with a shard of glass stuck in his neck; not deep enough that he looked to be suffocating, but deep enough that he was lying down, crying, and trying to pace his breathing.

Centurion extracted the glass shards with telekinetic clamps and immediately replaced them with ambrosia, pouring an abundant quantity of it inside of the deeper wounds. He'd only smear a thin layer on the skin-level cuts.

In moments, the people looked more or less stable, and one of the women managed to stand up with his help. "W-what was that?"

"A villain. She got in a fight with me and, to distract me, hurt you. I couldn't leave you here," Centurion said in an exasperated tone.

"Thank you. God, thank you." Her legs wobbled, as she took a step forward. The rest of the people were down on the ground, but looking at him, in enough shock that they couldn't speak.

"Can I borrow your phone for a moment?" Centurion asked pleadingly.

She shook her head, tears in her eyes. "I don't have a mobile. I'm sorry."

"Don't worry," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "I'll carry you all to the hospital if I need to, but let's check if the others have a phone first," he turned to them.

"My son," the man in the dress shirt said from the ground, slowly sitting up and shaking the boy. "Are you okay, Jason? Jason?" His son's face turned to look at him; the boy was pale, breathing slowly, but he nodded quietly.

"Y-yeah… I'm just… I'm dizzy all over."

"Hey, hey, take it easy," Centurion cooed, kneeling next to the boy. "Okay, you're Jason, right?"

"Yes, yes… sir." The boy's face turned to look at him.

"Okay, I'm Centurion. Don't call me sir, I'm not that old," he said with a friendly smile. "I'm gonna take you and fly you to the hospital. Okay?" he said, making sure he was in a state to fly. He was so utterly disgusted at Shatterbird: harming random people just to distract him.

"Okay." The reply was thin and calm. Too calm for someone healthy. Jason looked sleepy, his eyes closing in, his blinks heavy and long.

Shit, he thought, picking up the boy. "Call an ambulance and the PRT, tell them Shatterbird was here and that Centurion told you to call, I'll bring him to the hospital," he ordered sternly, lifting off and flying quickly towards the nearest hospital.

"Shatterbird?" he heard someone ask in shock. By the time they'd spoke, he was speeding through the air, at half the speed of sound. They reached the hospital in two minutes, with Jason falling asleep somewhere a minute and a half in.

Centurion hurried inside of the hospital's lobby, "I need a doctor! This boy lost a lot of blood!" he used his loud-voice power so that everyone would hear him.

A pair of doctors, who were discussing something near the entrance, looked and stared at them, as did a bunch of civilians. A second later, they realized what was going and there was a response, as nurses rushed off to bring a stretcher. Centurion laid Jason down on it, and a man in a white coat began to ask, "What happened?" His plaque said, ironically, 'Dr. Hope.'

Centurion looked at the plaque for maybe too long, only to then shake his head and look at him. "A villain attacked me, and I started chas–"

"Doesn't matter!" the man raised his voice, clipboard and pen at the ready. "What happened to the boy?"

"He was hit in the throat with a large shard of glass!" he responded, "I stabilized him with my healing enzyme, but he still lost a lot of blood," Centurion informed him.

Dr. Hope stepped forward into the emergency ward, telling Centurion to wait. He could just about make out the doctor yell something about blood and medical records. Not ten seconds he stepped out, to ask, "He's unconscious. Do you know the name and surname of the patient?"

"The name is Jason. I don't know the surname," he explained.

Dr. Hope nearly growled. "Goddamn it."

"My blood group is zero positive. I'm a universal donor," he informed the doctor.

"Alright. Come on in, then. Quick!" The man urged, pushing Centurion on the back and stepping into the ward. There was a small array of nurses around Jason, trying to stabilize him in various ways. He'd noticed a nurse connecting a drip-feed.

Centurion hurried after the doctor, and the armor he had created around his left arm disappeared. He created a hard-light rubber-band around his forearm to squeeze it, as he repeatedly clenched his fist to expose the vein.

They had him sit down. After covering his skin in some kind of disinfecting agent, they unceremoniously jabbed a needle into Centurion's arm and drew at least two-hundred milliliters before delivering it off.

Centurion felt slightly dizzy as they did it, and the healing enzyme immediately closed up the hole. "Do you have sugar packets?" he asked, holding his head as it spun. Perfect body, healing power, but he still lacked a power to fix blood loss.

One of the nurses looked at him for a moment, opened a nearby drawer, and tossed a chocolate bar at him.

This one's gonna fuck up my diet, he thought. "Thank you," he said as he caught it, opening it and eating it. The only sweet thing his mind registered in a long time.

Except for sex. That was pretty sweet.

He shook the thought away, and stood up, heading to the PRT.

112

Birdsie

Nov 11, 2019

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Threadmarks Modus Operandi 9.3

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 12, 2019

#3,031

There was a squad of troopers near the front door, waiting for him, with guns raised. The trooper upfront stated, "Beta-Oscar-Seven-Eight-Eight."

"Omega-Juliett-Eight-Five-Two!" Centurion exclaimed.

"The name of the current PRT director!?"

"Emily Piggot."

A moment, as one of the troopers spoke into a radio, then said, "Last question. Who recruited Weaver into the Wards?"

Centurion looked straight at the trooper. They were meticulous. "Centurion. Me. I did," he said.

"Alright. You can proceed," the trooper said, and they broke formation to walk to the sides to let him in.

"Thanks," Centurion said, walking in and re-absorbing the hard-light armor he had built around himself, now only left with a domino mask on.

There were no civilians in the lobby, and some of the fluorescent lights at the top were turned off. Not surprising, given how late it was, and the PRT was probably trying to skim on the electricity bills in the Leviathan aftermath. There were only the troopers, standing on extra guard. Some of the cuts on his body were still healing, with only thin, narrow cuts visible: red lines, with a gray-greenish hue in the center.

"Fucking Shatterbird! She attacked me at my private home," he told the sergeant.

The man turned to Centurion, shaking his head. "How?"

"I was playing piano, and she just floats up to my window and, when I finish the piec–"

"Not that. We have full reports on how Shatterbird's power works. How did she know where to find you?" the captain asked, somewhat irritated by the non-sequitur.

"I haven't the slightest idea!" Centurion responded, hopeless. He sighed and looked to the ground, as he felt the relief of the ambrosia do its job. The tiny specks of warmth across his skin, sometimes a little deeper in his flesh. He could almost feel the flesh mending itself together.

The trooper pressed the button on his radio, then spoke, "Console, we have confirmation the Nine have a high-level Thinker. Can track capes to their homes. Civilian identities are insecure until further notice." With that, the radio clicked off. "We'll be standing firewatch. Go down to the Wards HQ."

"Will do," Centurion nodded.

He proceeded down to the HQ with the elevator. He used the retinal scanner, and the elevator moved him into the chrome corridor that led to the HQ. The lights that usually illuminated it were interchangeably on and off, to save on the electricity bills. It gave the whole place a gloomy atmosphere, kind of fitting given what he'd just went through, but definitely not helping his mood.

"Hey," he said as the door opened and it let him in.

The Wards HQ looked empty, although the lamps and lights turned on automatically when he stepped in.

"Oh." He sighed and made his way into the workshop.

His power armor was there, on the charging stand. It was ready to be donned, but there was some vulnerability to not being able to lug it around everywhere.

Centurion's first instinct was to go and put it on, but as he walked towards it, his mind raced with the thought that the armor itself was deserving of an upgrade. The Slaughterhouse Nine were in town. Shit, the fucking Slaughterhouse Nine were in town. And his armor was outdated. In need of some more functionality.

He picked up the helmet off the top of the helmet, went over to the toolbox on the workbench, and disassembled it in several minutes. His tinker power stepped in, giving him a comprehension of the elements. They were top-of-the-line, each and every single one, and clearly made by an experienced artificer. The armor had no pride in it: only cold efficiency.

He felt out, trying to see how Oracle or Danger Sense might be applied as a pattern of technology in the materials. He could see both would require some extra materials, components, and what the exact requirements were. He could see the required software programming, the limitations. A rough cost of 620 in materials for Oracle, and two to three hours of implementation. Around 970 for danger sense, but much shorter to program. He could only pick one.

He selected the former, and began to pick out the components from one of the boxes. Processors, computers: all of them vanilla, but good enough to work with. He fell into the Tinker fugue, his body working on its own, assembling the device. Halfway through, he'd stopped, realizing he made a mistake somewhere when inducting the heatsink for a processor cluster, and decided it had to be scrapped; so he started over, and once he was done, he began to code. A total of three hours passed by in what felt like, maybe ten minutes, or so.

When he was done, he looked at the helmet: there was a slight panel outcropping on the top, reminiscent of the red mohawk a legionnaire would have, but uncolored. He took a brush and painted it red. It was where the module was seated. An advanced AI, capable of active analysis of battlefield conditions, but struggling to do so quickly. It'd need anywhere from seconds to minutes to fully come to a conclusion to a query; he could improve that time if he connected it to Armsmaster's network, but he needed administrative rights for that.

Then, he picked up the armor itself, put it down on the table and disassembled it using the same tools. It took several minutes, again.

An array of plates, plastics, and special synthetic materials for outside shielding, assembled in a pattern that served to minimize the passage of kinetic energy within. The plates were an excellent insulator for heat and electricity, although not quite perfect, and the advanced servos gave the user a low measure of super-strength.

He pondered on how to implement his Scutum: the environmental shield.

He could sense two patterns, that he could implement here. The first was a way to draw on the internal battery of the suit to create repulsor blasts with his palms, although they wouldn't let him fly - they would still be a useful back-up if he lost energy in mid-combat. The second pattern was something similar, but more oriented in constructs: the ability to form extremely hard shields with his palms, reminding him of Shielder's power. In fact: that's almost exactly what it was. A choice between Laserdream's firepower with quick battery loss, or Shielder's defense. Was the Scutum power… unconsciously inspired?

He decided to hold that thought and ponder on other powers. Such as the smoke-warp.

There was a rough idea of a pattern, for the chestplate and legs. Vents on the back, that would trail black smoke, somewhat similar to a mixture of Venus and Grue's powers: it'd dull sound, consume light and radiation, but he'd have to move to leave it behind himself. If he spun around quickly, it'd be almost like a smoke bomb: if he implemented this pattern in his helmet as well, at the cost of the Oracle Morpheus pattern, he'd be able to see through the smoke.

Hold this thought too. He reflected on all his remaining powers, visualizing the patterns in his mind.

With the tactile telekinesis, he could create a small generator that created physics-bending waves to affect inertia and kinetic energy around himself: slow down others, while being faster.

The ambrosia enzyme would create a system of needle injectors that stabilized him whenever he was injured: it'd work even if he were unconscious, although it wouldn't be much stronger than his normal healing power.

The danger sense would result in a pattern that gave his servos assisted dodge motions, moving his limbs automatically to avoid any fast-coming objects, light-based phenomena, and similar things, including melee attacks.

August Breaker had a pattern for locking down joints, if he were to be Mastered, and then detecting if he is still Mastered if he tried to enter a password to unlock himself. Something of a double-edged sword.

His power-meddling power would… do something strange.

Oracle Morpheus would give him a palm-injector with sedatives sufficient enough to put down a single adult human before requiring more sedatives to fill the injectors. Once they were asleep, they'd dream lucidly, with slightly enhanced cognition.

Echolocation would send a feed to his helmet, informing him of everything in a two-meter radius: with clear-cut precision, even through walls, down under, and above himself.

The loud voice power would, quite literally, make the way the armor moved louder, to the point where someone a block away might hear him approaching.

Adrenaline rush added an adrenaline injection and monitoring system, to keep him fueled up during combat.

The time-awareness power gave him a wristwatch. An incredibly high-tech wristwatch that didn't need batteries, worked underwater, and was as hard as a bitch to break - but still, a wristwatch nonetheless

He took a closer look at the smoke vents. 1,210 in material costs, or half that, for a lesser effects, and at least six hours of labor, but preferably a total of twelve. The components included several air-particle accelerators, a dimensional fracture stabilizer, and a bunch of plating and wiring for the vents.

The moment his mind set to work, it was like he lost conscious control of his actions. And within less than thirty minutes, twelve hours had passed and the armor could now expel black smoke with special properties from the back vents.

June 7th, 2011

His ability to build tinkertech and comprehend it had given him a new level of understanding for the black smoke. It wasn't smoke, at all. It was a zone where the physical interactions and electromagnetic interactions of the world were shunted off to alternate dimensions, losing their potency. Vented to other worlds.

When he was done with the armor, he wrote down blueprints for every single power-pattern his Tinker Power had to offer. "I'll ask a favor," he told himself, putting on his helmet, going through his list of contacts. As the helmet booted up, and the programs started turning on, a mechanical droning welcomed him.

"Oracle Software v1.00 enabled."

"I really need to give you a personality and a different voice. You okay with that?"

"Compliance."

"Alright. Call Dragon for me, please."

"Calling designated number."

There was a sound of digital buzzing for a moment. Dragon picked up three seconds later, "Hello? Centurion? I see you've made some changes to the armor design."

"Oh- hello," Centurion chuckled, "You were quick to notice. How are you?" he asked, as more of a polite gesture, but also with an undertone of actual curiosity.

"Armsmaster and I have been working on improving his designs and making the combat prediction software less tinker, more mundane." A pause. It felt like something to give him more time to think, rather than herself. "We're hoping it might find some use among PRT troops, much like containment foam."

Centurion looked down for a moment, then sighed. "How is… he doing?" he asked, even surprising himself with that question.

"Armsmaster?" she asked.

"Yes, Colin."

"Colin is… he regrets what he's done, and decided to make the most of his arrest. That's why we're working together. More good can be done that way."

Centurion kept staring at the table he was sitting at, and for exactly five seconds, he was silent.

"...Is that a dimensional fracture in your battery?" she asked, with a cautious tone. "Is that… stable?"

"Oh. I applied one of my powers to the power armor. It basically creates a zone that, to an outsider, looks like it's full of smoke, but actually transports light, sound, and radiation to a different dimension, where they're nullified," he explained.

The droning voice of his AI cut in there, "Correction. Light, sound, and radiation cannot be nullified, as according to the laws of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed. In addition, both light and sound are forms of radiation, so the statement, "light, sound and radiation" is highly redundant."

"My AI just corrected me," he smirked, "I need to give it a personality, and a different voice. That aside…"

"I believe it already has a personality," Dragon scoffed. "Rather pretentious."

Centurion chuckled. "Yeah, gotta change that. Anyway, I'm… having a bit of trouble fitting more patterns on my power armor. I couldn't wrap my head around fitting more than a single one, and I was wondering if you could somehow help me. I drafted some rough blueprints for all the patterns," he explained.

"...Have you slept at all, tonight?" she asked.

"What time is it?" Centurion asked, ready for a truck to hit him.

"A few minutes past twelve. It's afternoon, Centurion."

His power armor, the internal circadian clock, and the small clock over the workshop door, informed him that Dragon's assessment of the planet's position relative to the sun was correct. Centurion shook his head. "It was eight PM not more than an hour ago. I'm not even tired," he said, disbelieving.

"I believe that is how tinkering works," she said. "You slip into a haze, and your body does a lot of the work for you. You get used to it, after a while."

Centurion grinned. "Well, anyway… do you have some tips or a way to help?"

"I don't know. Every Tinker is unique," she clarified, as if moving her hand on the other side of the call, "No one style or specialty or methodology is the same. I could probably copy or improve your designs, and Armsmaster could miniaturize them. Beyond that, I don't know."

"I'd like to… be in on the work, and help out. I don't want to be handed stuff. That's exactly why I got to work, tod- yesterday."

"I see. I'll speak with Colin about it, and maybe you can go to the Rig later this evening?" she proposed.

"Tell him I'm… willing to talk about what happened. On good terms. All this… pent-up anger about it has no place to go, and I want to get rid of it positively," he said, sighing, a great weight leaving his soul.

"That sounds good." A lull in the conversation. "Oh, it appears Vista and Clockblocker just arrived in your headquarters."

"Oh, thank God, some company," he said with a note of thankful amusement. He didn't really have the ability to turn to face Dragon, so he looked down a little, instead. "Thanks again, for everything. I'll email the blueprints to you," he informed her, as the blueprints were put into a .zip file and emailed to Dragon by the Oracle AI.

"Alright," if she had any concerns about sending highly secure files for tinker technology in a .zip file, using fucking email, she didn't show it. "I'll take a look at them when I have a free while."

"Talk to you soon. And thanks," he hung up the call.

A moment later, his AI spoke up, "Conversation rated at two out of five."

"What do you mean?" he asked, cocking his head.

"Information withdrawal had only mild success. Torture and kinetic forms of information retrieval are more successful than conversation in information withdrawal."

"That was… not my purpose," he said, carefully, "She's my friend, and I asked her a favor. I wasn't trying to force information out of her."

"Intimidation is inherently superior to friendship."

What the fuck did I program?

"Alright, Oracle. Stay quiet until I query you again."

"Begrudging compliance," the voice said, almost sassy.

Centurion stood in the workshop, like a thoughtless fish, unsure of how to proceed. He could proceed outside to his friends, or, alternatively, fix this damn AI.

Friends. He'd fix the AI later.

He walked out into the common room and sighed, exhausted. The lost sleep was starting to catch up to him, despite his most prominent superpower: Bulk Bogan physiology.

Clockblocker was lounging on the couch, one knee over the other, a single arm extended across the length of the back. He had some kind of grape juice in hand, in a can, sipping it slowly. Vista was reading the second tome of the Maggie Holt books.

"Sup," Centurion called out, waving.

"Yo." / "Hi!"

"I spent the last… fifteen hours tinkering," he said, dazed.

Clockblocker coughed, with the juice in his throat, almost spit-taking. He looked over at Centurion like he'd grown a second head, while Vista calmly looked up from her book and blinked.

"And I was attacked by Shatterbird!" he said, grinning like that was an accomplishment. "And I shot a laser up her skirt. That was accidental."

Clockblocker spat his juice all over the floor and Vista raised the book up to cover her giggling face. "Man, you can't just joke around like that," Clockblocker rubbed his nose, standing up and going to the kitchenette to grab a towel.

"I'm not joking. I was at home, playing the piano, and she casually strolls up to my window, listens to me play, then urges me to join the Slaughterhouse Nine. I refuse, and a fight ensues. I'm afraid of glass now," he said, shuddering at the memory of all those glass-shards stuck into his belly.

"Right. Sure," Clockblocker nodded, tapping him on his glass visor as he passed by. "Nice story. You know, I was going to the store to buy some grape juice to enjoy for my consumption, and suddenly Hookwolf, Lung, Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, and seven dwarves jumped out of nowhere and robbed me. Now I'm afraid of plastic."

"Clock, I'm not kidding, I swear," he said, dead serious.

Clockblocker turned around. His eyes had dark spots under them, his blue eyes twinkling a little in the dim, white light of the Wards HQ. He peered into Gabriel's eyes, his eyes like two soul-reading orbs. "Okay. And what happened?" He picked up the paper towel and started wiping the grape juice, while Vista was looking at the situation with doubled interest.

"Exactly what I said," Centurion stated.

"So… she attacked you at your home?" Vista asked, putting down the book, titled, 'Pact.'

"Yeah."

Clockblocker whistled from where he was, on one knee, mopping up the dark purple juice from the floor. "How did she know where to find you?"

"I don't… know. Maybe they stalked me? I haven't the slightest idea."

"Stalked you?" Clockblocker gaped at him, shaking his head. "Whatever."

"Are you mad at me?" Centurion put out there.

"No, why would I be mad?" Clockblocker asked, smiling tightly, with thinned lips and a complete lack of humor.

Centurion shrugged. "I'unno, You were pretty… riled up in the meeting after that sssssshhh—-tuff went down with Accord," he muttered, stopping himself at 'shit' becausae Vista was there.

"Oh, yeah?" Clockblocker asked, eyebrows shooting up, picking up the towel and bringing it over to the sink. Vista watched the passive-aggressive argument with mild fascination from across the room. "I was?"

Centurion looked down. The feelings of betrayal came back to him, "Y-yeah, you… you were," he said in a quiet tone, keeping his gaze on the ground.

"Oh, that's pretty sad then," Clockblocker said, dropping the towel and turning in Centurion's direction. He wasn't looking in his eyes, not even at his face - but rather, looking past him, as he said, "So what? Not like Accord is your problem. Hm?"

Centurion's feelings immediately lit on fire at that sentence. With anger he hadn't felt in a while. "I'm… not even going to argue," he said, heading into the workshop and slamming the door with enough force that, if it was a wooden door, it would've been snapped in half. He heard Vista's muffled yell of surprise. The impact rattled the wall around the doorframe.

He took off his helmet and sat down at the table, beginning to disassemble the mentioned item. He laid down the components bare, in a row.

He didn't really like the personality the AI had. And the voice, as well. Too robotic. So, he got to work: a wide array of artificial intelligences, based around the personalities and voices, which he sampled by using recorded footage of the people he knew.

He felt the Tinker power flash red in his awareness, in connection with Oracle Morpheus.

That won't work. He went for a voice change, and a slight differentiation of personality, to make Oracle a bit more sassy and less robotical and cold. As a voice sample he picked a random, British man. It'd give the feel of a loyal but nonetheless comical butler character. He'd call him...

"Oracle, rename to Sebastian."

"Of course, sir."

"Gosh, I love Tinker powers," he said with a big, dumb grin on his face. The anger from before seeped away rather quickly as he worked.

"They can be quite galvanizing. Do make sure not to forget sleep, the next time you indulge in a fit of superpowered engineering, Master Gabriel."

"Oh, absolutely. I will, don't worry," Gabriel said, sighing and rubbing his face with both hands. "I need to build a pair of sunglasses with you in them, so I can use you in my civilian identity as well."

"Stylish, and millennial. Befitting of you, sir."

"Thanks. What time is it?"

"It is currently thirteen-zero-five local time, sir. The weather is slightly cloudy, with a mild chance of afternoon showers. Do bring a coat."

"Will do, Sebastian. Can you look on the internet for Tinkertech jetpack blueprints, if there's any?"

"I have found several offers from Tinkers worldwide, who propose 'available prices' and 'high-quality products,' for jetpack blueprints, sir. I should inform you this kind of trade may very well be illegal, depending on the purchase."

"Riiight. Would you be able to make one up on the spot, by accessing Armsmaster's computer?"

"Armsmaster has never produced a jetpack, and accessing his database directly, without permission, would be in direct contradiction with your contract agreement as a Ward. I'd advise thinking twice the next time you have the brilliant idea of not asking for a lawyer, sir."

"Hm," Centurion said, rubbing his eyes. "Very helpful," he said, sarcastically. "I need to go to sleep," he muttered.

"In that case, I, too shall retire for the afternoon, to preserve the batteries I am forced to work with in this arbitrary space of abstract electrons. Have a calm and safe afternoon, Master Gabriel."

"You too, Sebastian," he said, as he switched the helmet off. He put the rest of the armor on the charging stand, and headed for his bunk.

As he passed by the common room, he said, "Yo, Vista, I'll make the jetpack as soon as possible. Okay?"

She looked up from her book, looking a little sulky. "What's Clockblocker's problem?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

"He's mad that I refused Accord's offer and put everyone in danger by doing so," he explained, rolling his eyes. The frustration from an hour ago returned in the span of a moment, as he recalled the words used and clicked his tongue.

"Why would he be mad at that?" Vista asked, nearly a yell. She looked suspicious, at Gabriel. She stood up. "He's never cared about stuff like that!"

Centurion shrugged. "I don't… know. Leviathan hit us pretty hard, maybe he… reconsidered some things."

"He wasn't mad at you when Leviathan hit," Vista answered, puffing up her cheeks a little as she scowled. "You need to talk this out with each other. It's affecting the rest of the team. Everyone is so tense when the two of you are around. I'm tense."

"I'm already planning on making up with Armsmaster prrrrobably tomorrow evening. One step at a time, please," he exhaled, sitting down on the couch and taking another deep breath. "I felt betrayed when, in the meeting, he said, 'let's just give him to Accord and solve this.'"

When Dragon told him what she and Armsmaster had been doing over the last few weeks, he made up his mind. He wanted to make up with Colin, fix stuff. He couldn't say he overreacted, back at the hospital, but all this pent-up hate towards Armsmaster was useless now. Foundation-less, even. And, that aside, he was a valuable teacher. He knew his shit, was experienced as both a hero and a Tinker.

He'd been broken out of his idle musings by Vista, who demanded his attention. "Don't you see that Dennis would never say that if everything was alright!?" she asked, raising her voice and balling up her fists. She looked upset, eyes staring into him demandingly.

"Hey, Missy, calm down, please," he said, extending his hands in an alleviating gesture. He didn't want Vista to get mad at him as well.

"No!" She kicked the couch with a grunt of anger, then turned to him again, almost fuming. Her face was scarlet, and tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. "You're so… insufferable! Both of you! You just keep… acting off, against each other. I hate it. Why can't you just be friends? You're supposed to be friends."

"I know," he looked down. "I know we are. But I don't really know what to do about it. I tried talking about it not more than an hour ago. Did you hear how he answered?" Centurion did hear it, and it was a sentence that shouted, 'You're a cunt, you hate us because you refused Accord's offer and ignored the consequences'.

"You never asked him what's wrong," she said, low and quiet, looking down at the floor with furrowed eyebrows. She sniffed, then used her sleeve to clear away her runny nose and her fingers to clean her eyes of the tears. "Just told him something is."

"I tried to… bring up the subject slowly. It'd be too brusque, too abrupt, to just ask him 'What's wrong' out of nowhere," he explained, in a suave voice. Almost like cooing: she was getting seriously upset, and he didn't want her to.

"Isn't that what you do with everyone else?" she asked, cocking her head in something between concern and confusion. She looked heated, but was calming down in baby steps.

"Not with people who hate my guts for some reason or another." Could that be considered wrong, or a lie?

"Isn't that the kind of person you should do it with, though?" She looked even more confused now. "Especially when they're acting weird?"

Well, shit, she's right. A thirteen year old is giving me life lessons. I should be ashamed of myself.

"I'll… try something. But that aside… you're right. He is acting weird," he muttered, sighing.

"Whatever," Vista said, sniffling, and then breathing in. She looked just about ready to turn, even as she said, "I'm going to go take a walk through the lobby, to calm myself down."

"And I'll go to sleep. I haven't slept in… well, almost a full day now."

She stopped turning when he said that, and looked into his eyes. She didn't say it immediately, the heaving emotions in her gut clearly preventing her from it, but she chided, "Be more careful, idiot."

Centurion actually smiled, then stood up and tried to pat her head, but she shuffled out of the way with a teasing smirk. "Nope."

He grinned and chuckled. "I will, you rascal."

"Maybe one day," Vista said, then promptly made a one-hundred and eighty-degree turn on one foot and marched out of the room, space bending slightly around her to cover her retreat, the room looking narrow and oblong as if looked into through a telescope or something similar for a moment.

"Be safe," he warned her with a wave.

"You're not my mom!" Vista yelled from behind the door as it closed.

"I'm better!" he said with a tinge of irony.

110

Birdsie

Nov 12, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 13, 2019

#3,069

It was a pretty silent afternoon. Gabriel's, or rather Centurion's, room still held only the bare necessities. But he'd be moving long-term here, for as long as the Slaughterhouse Nine were in town: his actual home wasn't safe, and Shatterbird gave him proof of that.

That encounter scared the living daylights out of him, but even he was surprised at how much he kept his cool during the fight itself. He thought he'd panic, or freak out and rush headfirst like he always did, but he didn't. And that's because he knew something about her. He knew rough estimates on her power.

And that made him think. He needed to know every single detail on the powers of the Slaughterhouse Nine's members, or as much as retrievable by PRT files.

He opened up his computer and logged into the database, browsing through the Slaughterhouse Nine's files.

As he went through them, he took regular sips from a cup of hot tea he had made himself a couple of minutes before booting up the laptop. In the moment he read Jack Slash's age when he allegedly killed and replaced the former leader, he forcibly swallowed the sip of tea he was savoring, and a choked-up, "What?!" came out of his mouth.

In the span of the following hour, he had read up on every single one of them. He realized that, with enough knowledge and prep time, he could have a chance at victory in a fight with Jack Slash.

But his mind flurried with conflicting thoughts. How come he survived this long with a power that was basically long blades? There must be something else, something more nobody knew. A Thinker power that always let him know how to deal the maximum amount of damage in the least amount of time with his blade-projecting power? Fuck, he couldn't manage to get to a conclusion.

Centurion's suit spoke up, with the voice of Sebastian breaking him out of the reverie, "Sir, your appointment with Armsmaster is due in ten minutes. I strongly advise preparing."

Centurion sighed.

There was a short hallway of gray steel in front of him, ending in a door with a keypad, card scanner, and retinal scanner.

And an intercom.

Centurion pressed the button of the intercom. "Centurion here."

A moment later, the intercom buzzed, and the heavy locks on the door unclasped themselves within seconds, with a metallic sliding sound.

He slowly made his way through the door, looking around.

It was a relatively medium-sized room, with a door to what appeared to be a mildly luxurious bathroom. The room was bright, with clear white lamps on the ceiling and a bright, cyan forcefield window. There were pieces of technology scattered in several places on designated workbenches in a sectioned-off area, where Colin was sitting, programming something on the computer and presumably in the same fugue that Centurion entered when he, himself, was tinkering.

"Close the door, please," Colin said, from where he was sitting.

Centurion nodded and closed the door behind himself with telekinesis, without even turning around. "Good afternoon," he muttered, the tension in his heart growing by the second.

The incessant sound of someone typing on the keyboard stopped for a moment. "It's afternoon already?" A brief pause. "It is. That went by satisfyingly quick."

Centurion let out a chuckle. "Yeah. I get that now," he stated.

"How have you been?" Colin stepped out of the workshop area, revealing himself. His beard was relatively trimmed, but he'd clearly let himself go a little. He wore dark gray pants, white socks, and a dark blue sweater, with some kind of white undershirt.

"I'd be dishonest if I said I was doing good. What about you?" he asked, folding his arms.

"Everything is… off," the man started, somber in tone and appearance, "My schedule. My work-out routine, my sleep. Being locked up like this is… restrictive. It doesn't feel as rewarding to sit in here and constantly tinker, without getting a chance to help, or even field test the inventions. I have no idea how Dragon can deal with it."

Centurion sighed, bringing his hands up to his helmet to take it off. Then, he looked at him with a regretful expression. "I know what you mean," Gabriel said, setting the helmet on a nearby table.

"I'm… sorry," the man said, after that. His voice felt strange. Awkward, even. Like he didn't know what to say, or how he was supposed to say it, but felt obliged to make some kind of effort anyway. "I don't know how to explain my thought process, with what I did. I just felt it was… well, not ri–"

Gabriel interrupted him, "I had the same thought process. I was close to making the same mistakes, but Dragon stopped me."

"Really?" Colin asked. They sat down at the small kitchenette table, and Colin stopped for a moment, straining his face as if recalling the procedure for proper host-to-guest behavior - he glanced back at the fridge for a moment. "Uh, can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?"

"Oh, no thanks," Gabriel answered, then went on with his previous explanation.

"I was… so angry at you, for what happened," he admitted, looking down at the table for a brief moment, before looking up. "But… I realized I felt more… betrayed, than angry." He fidgeted with his gloves, occasionally glancing up at Colin.

"Yes," Colin managed with a pained expression, kind of unsure what other words to use.

"But the more I thought about it… and the more I realized that we're not too different. And I know it may be offensive, being compared to me. It's stupid for me to hold a grudge against you, for doing things that I would have done myself, if I had the chance," he said, letting out a trembling sigh.

"I doubt you'd take it that far." Colin shook his head, looking away for a distraction from the conversation. He looked over at the forcefield window, with droplets of water crashing against it and burning away into steam, as he continued, "When I heard that Leviathan would be coming, I saw a chance, in my programs, in everything I've built. All of the villains from the local area, who'd given us so much trouble. I could… kill two birds with one stone; get rid of the local villains, and give myself a chance to harm Leviathan, more than anyone else. I was too proud, too angry to notice the stupidity of what I'd planned. You'd never take it that far, Gabriel." Colin looked back at him, into Gabriel's eyes.

Gabriel stared back into his eyes, then nodded. "You know, if you had told me your plan… a month and a half ago? I'd have been on board: a hundred percent."

Colin's gaze reoriented a little, his forehead scrunching up. "Really? I suppose it's true you always had a penchant for violent ends, but you also have an idealism I haven't seen in many others. A trait of inexperience, I would guess, but nothing that'd stretch so far as to violate the Endbringer truce."

"Right, that exists," Gabriel stated blankly, having had a brain-fart so hard that he forgot about the Endbringer Truce.

Colin smiled and let out a little sound of amusement. "A trait of inexperience it is, if you already forgot about that."

"But… some people do deserve to die. The truly irredeemable, the people who make others suffer for the sake of it. Like the Slaughterhouse Nine. They're in town," he said, looking at him with a grave expression and tone.

Colin nodded. "I've read the reports, but I can't really do anything about it, in here." He gestured around the room.

"...Fake your own death, pretend to be a new cape, join the Protectorate again?" Gabriel offered, ironically.

"The Protectorate would catch on rather quickly, and Dragon would even sooner. While I do have enough components in here to build something to escape with, I'd be caught quickly. It's not a good mode of thought; breaking the rules again," Colin answered, slowly standing up from his chair, then motioning for Gabriel to follow him into his workshop.

"I was… joking," Gabriel chuckled, standing up and following him. "Do you remember the exercise you gave me?"

"You've been going on with it?" Colin asked, his voice showing an almost sordid curiosity. He walked up to the computer, and started going through something as he spoke, "I'd have thought you'd drop that out of spite, but it seems you're smarter than that. Then again, you do still wear the armor - I'd noticed the changes to the helmet. You can tell me about them later. Go ahead."

"Firstly… one of the 'big' capes I thought about was Scion," Gabriel said with a sort of grin: not exactly proud, but a sort of cheeky overtone that spoke, 'it's stupid, but I did it anyway.' "I asked my Thinker power as many questions as I could about him."

"Oh? And what did it come up with?" The sound of keyboard taps paused for a moment, as Colin glanced at him.

"It answered that Scion strives for meaning, and he has none. It came to the assumption that Scion has really bad depression," Gabriel explained, then stopped. "Make him kill himself."

Colin didn't return to typing on his keyboard, but rather, stared at Gabriel for a moment. His eyes flew around the room, to the floor, to the ceiling - his face unmoving. Eventually, he returned his attention to the Ward, asking, "Are you sure your Thinker power works correctly? Many of them malfunction, where Scion is involved."

"I am one hundred percent sure that the answers it gave me are truthful," Gabriel answered, cocking his head to the side. "Although, Scion would probably blast you to another dimension before you could bully him about whatever problem he has," he added with a chuckle.

"It's amusing. When Scion first appeared, people thought he was the second coming, and that the different parahumans appearing were angels, or spirits, or other things. It all came down really quickly when Vikare died, and people realized that we're just a different sort of human," Colin explained, as he went back to writing his software, then continued to add, "It's amusing, yes - that apparently, you can kill something… Godlike, with… bullying. I don't really believe it. I don't want to believe it."

"I have a very faint belief that Oracle wouldn't have told me if it wouldn't come useful in the future," Gabriel stated, then bursting out laughing, as if he just said the best joke ever.

"What? You want to kill Scion?" Colin's brows went up, with a smirk.

"No!" Gabriel retorted, stopping his laughing fit, returning to normalcy with a few stray chuckles. "But who knows, maybe it'll come in handy," he added, doing the good ol' wink-wink-nudge-nudge.

Colin didn't see, given how occupied he was with his program. He said, "Take a look around the workshop, by the way. Let me know what you think, or if you have any questions."

"About that," Gabriel started, as he began strolling around the workshop. "I drafted some blueprints for some patterns of my power armor, which include variations of all my powers, but my Thinker power is not yet strong enough, and I can't wrap my head around fitting them all in the armor. So I sent them to Dragon," he explained.

"Interesting," Colin said. The clattering of keyboard keys wasn't interrupted for even a moment.

"I also have some ideas that… you could help me with," Gabriel explained. "When and if you have time, of course," he clarified. "But… one of them is a 'forcefield' which employs your nano-thorn technology to fire at incoming projectiles that exceed a certain set speed, so that melee attacks aren't counted as incoming projectiles."

"Nanothorns would be highly ineffective in a ranged form," Colin replied, failing to provide clarification for several moments, before speaking, "They are not an energy, or an energy field. They are a collection of objects that slip between molecular particles. This causes them to overheat quickly, and diffuse if they're not contained in some way. If I were to build a 'nanothorn shotgun,' it'd simply spray a gray blotch over an area, that does absolutely nothing on a scale that matters. Keeping bolts of nanothorns cohesive and using them as a ranged weapon would be difficult, expensive, and most likely not cost-effective when given alternate forms of achieving the same results."

"Oh, wow. I thought it could work, but I misunderstood how they worked," Gabriel admitted.

"There's a blueprint in the main locker, somewhere," Colin muttered.

He took a better look at the technology around the workshop, where before he'd ignored it to make conversation.

There were several things of interest lying around.

An unpainted Armsmaster helmet, with the panels open to show layers of wiring and circuitboards that had no right to fit inside at first glance. Several inches away from it, there was a large, glowing, green crystal suspended in a glass tube, connected to some kind of technological base with buttons and cranks, with the wiring connected to the helmet.

There was a single, unused nanothorn knife, and something else that looked similar to a nanothorn knife, but had a green paint job and a similar crystal attached to it, like the one attached to the helmet. This one was smaller, though, and cut a little finer.

Gabriel approached the tube with the green crystal.

The crystal had a very interesting color: it was glassy, bright lime on some of the reflections, and a darker, almost full green on the inside, but there was a small mote of green glow in its depths.

He applied his Tinker power to get a better understanding of it, but it didn't offer anything: his tinker power's comprehension was limited to mechanical and digital devices, with things such as biology, or crystallography outside of his scope.

"Hey, uh, what's this? My Tinker power can't crack through this."

Colin glanced with one eye, then answered, "Oh, that's a willpower crystal. Took me a while of study and data exchange with another Protectorate Tinker, out from Texas, to come up with how to make it. That, and lots of scans of Gallant's power. And some help from Dragon. Originally, the crystal design was used as a 3D computer chip of sorts, using light instead of electricity. I managed to turn it into a battery that stores willpower, in all forms."

"...What?!" Gabriel exclaimed, his heart jumping up in his throat. "You did it?! How does it work?"

"For now, it doesn't," Colin answered grimly. "It just gets charged with electricity and stores it or transfers it, as the user wills. It also gives all of its electricity a willpower... I can't put it into words. A willpower flavor. I'm hoping, eventually, I will learn of a method to convert willpower into actual power. I think it's possible. I just need some time."

Gabriel nodded, stunned.

Colin just kept speaking, pointing over at the other object - the nanothorn knife-looking thing - and explaining, "The knife with the willpower crystal - you'll notice it doesn't have any buttons. The crystal reacts to the ambient willpower of the holder and uses its charge to form a blade, or object, reacting to the shape the user wills it to take. It's just an experiment. With any luck, I might make an actual power ring one day." Colin laughed, then returned to typing.

"Holy shit," Gabriel exclaimed. "Do you want to scan my forcefield?" he said, turning it on and creating a massive, golden sledgehammer out of thin air. "I can do this, now."

"I already scanned your power a while ago, but if you–" Colin's head turned, to see the occurrence, and a brilliant smile dawned on his lips.

"I tested it, and it ranks three on the crystal hardness scale. Not much, I'll admit."

Colin nodded, "A steel nail is roughly twice that. We can still work with it." He walked away from his station, pressing 'enter' to let the code compile in the meantime, as he walked over to one of the drawers and grabbed a scanning trinket.

"Wait a second," Gabriel said, closing his eyes for a moment. He took his charges and pushed them inside of the Scutum, focusing on increasing the hardness of the constructs as much as possible.

The Scutum's charge level increased to a very beautiful, satisfying and even one-hundred and fifty. The hardness of the constructs improved exponentially; they were somewhere between the durability of quartz and topaz, or, using Colin's allegory, you'd need a steel drill set to go through, and it'd take you a while of work to get anywhere. It felt impervious.

By the time Gabriel returned from his mindscape: roughly twenty-three seconds later, Colin had prepared a small pad in a corner of the laboratory, with the scanning equipment positioned on a tripod several meters away. "Go stand on it. I have some fine-tuning to make, first. I'll take two concurrent scans: one fresh, one cross-referenced with the previous data gathered from this power. We'll see what interesting things we can come up with."

"Yessiree," Gabriel saluted, then flew on the pad and landed on it gracefully.

It was roughly in that moment, as Gabriel began to exercise his environmental shields and create a variety of constructs, that Dragon spooked them, chiming in, "What are you doing over here, guys? Some kind of data-gathering?" Her voice was the slightest bit teasing.

Gabriel flinched. Fucking hell! "Yeah, we are," he responded with a friendly smirk, as he used his construct ladle to scoop up a viscous, strange golden substance from a construct pot. His power didn't seem to allow the creation of non-solid constructs: gasses, liquids, and other fluids were out, but a goop that still maintained some semblance of cohesion was allowed. Colin was observing the phenomenon with ardent interest, constantly pressing buttons on the scanner, causing the wireframe of green lights to center in on the constructs, gathering data from them.

"What are you gathering?" Gabriel asked, curiously, as he fidgeted with the golden goop.

"The material readings from this are among the strangest I've seen. It's in a state between energy and matter. And I can't really say for certain what kind of energy, or what kind of matter. It lacks the wavelengths necessary to be called an electromagnetic force, but it displays some commonalities in behavior with the hard-light that New Wave powers tend to use. It's strange, especially since the previous iteration did have some of those properties."

"It may have been unconsciously inspired by both Shielder's and Laserdream's powers," Gabriel explained. "When I create a power, the Fountain doesn't take into account only my instructions, but also my knowledge, emotions and thoughts."

"The Fountain?" Dragon asked, giving the impression of a head-tilt.

"That's what I named my Trump power," he informed. "Every time I dump charges into a random power when in a dangerous situation, it simulates a pseudo-Trigger Event to get a power that would be helpful."

Colin looked up from the scanner, for a brief moment, then looked at one of the screens in the workshop where Dragon's face presumably was. They stared at each other in silence, before Colin looked at Gabriel. "How do you know that?"

"I don't know," he answered, and abruptly realized he'd spoken the last few sentences on an auto-pilot. For a moment, Gabriel felt kind of… out of it, like a character in a videogame, or a spectator watching a movie, before he regained control, and repeated, "I don't know that. How do I know it's Trigger Events?"

Colin scratched his head and beard with his left hand for a moment, rubbing his face, then said, "Okay. Maybe… sit down, and… you've been working for hours, Tinkering. That's what Dragon told me when she said you'd come to visit. Just take a moment to rest. We have enough data. I'll go compile this." Armsmaster took his scanner from the tripod, then carried it over to the workshop, perusing data in the meatime.

"I swear that what I said is correct, but I don't know why," Gabriel sat down on a chair, rubbing his face.

"All powers are instinctive on a certain level," Dragon said helpfully. "Maybe it's that, and both of you are overreacting?"

"If I were to dump some charges into a power right now, it'd probably give me a Thinker power that helps me understand powers on a more fundamental level. I'unno," Gabriel shrugged. "That's the best example I can come up with."

"And you know that from experience and instinct," Dragon answered, "It's how powers work. There's not much else to speak of."

Gabriel nodded. "You're right..." he muttered. But then, he remembered something. His power-meddling power. This was the best chance he had at getting some proper advice, or some guidance.

"Hey, Dragon, uhm..." Gabriel started awkwardly, but no more awkwardly than usual.

"Yes?"

"Should I… tell him?" Gabriel asked, folding his arms.

"Tell me?" Colin peeked out of the workshop curiously.

"Director Piggot said not to," Dragon answered.

"...I trust him," Gabriel said, feeling a wave of relief wash over him. He really did say those words, and he actually believed them to be true. Wow. Colin smiled a little from where he stood, but was still confused by the topic.

"Me too, I was just saying," Dragon said approvingly.

Gabriel inhaled, then looked at Colin. "This doesn't leave this room, alright? Dragon already knows."

"I understand," Colin nodded. His mouth set itself into a firm, stoic frown.

"I created a power that lets me meddle with other parahumans' powers. Possibly grant additional powers to parahumans, give powers to non-powered individuals, upgrade other parahumans' powers and maaaybe drain capes' powers for myself. Either by giving me additional charges, or by draining the power altogether."

Colin blinked once, but his stoic expression didn't disappear. "Have you tested it, yet?"

"I haven't had the chance. WIth the Slaughterhouse Nine being in town, I find it unlikely that I'll have time to do so," Gabriel admitted, folding his arms.

"And why do you bring this up?" Colin asked, his stoic frown disappearing as he took in the information.

"You're the only person I know, that I can talk to, who could give me some proper advice on this."

"I'm not sure what makes you think that," Colin answered, sighing and shaking his head. He looked at the tiled floor for a moment, mulling it over. "If you haven't tested it, I haven't the slightest clue of what advice to give you. Be careful?" He looked up with the suggestion.

Gabriel sighed as well and nodded. "Well, I will. But that aside..." he started, "Dragon, did you see the blueprints I sent you?" he said in a curious voice.

"Yes, but I don't think there's an easy way to implement any of them. I've seen the ones with the… palm-repulsors, as you called them," she said, "I could see adding that into a thrust system for one of my Dragonsuits, or adding the hard-light shields in during high-speed flight, but, as much as I hate to say this, they're nothing groundbreaking."

"Well..." Gabriel looked down for a brief moment. He felt a knot of sadness tie itself in his stomach. He thought he had made something new, something good that could be useful. But it made sense: his Tinker power wasn't all that great yet.

"Don't be sad," Colin said, the palm of his slightly-sweaty hand patting Gabriel on the back, "Your Trump power outshines mostly every other one. Can I see the designs?" He looked up a little, at the speakers.

Dragon's voice answered, "If Gabriel consents. But I think that's a given."

Gabriel nodded. "Absolutely," he said.

Colin smiled, and walked over to his workspace again, presumably to view what he'd come up with. In the meantime, Dragon said, "We've been working on introducing tinkertech into ordinary technology, to be utilized by the PRT. Armsmaster's combat prediction program, in particular."

"He told me about it, yes," Gabriel said with a smile. It was good to know they'd been working on something with a wide application. And perhaps that's where his disappointment came from, earlier - the fact he couldn't. "That would be very useful."

"With any luck, all PRT officers will have similar software in their helmets in roughly a year and a half," she said, with a note of pride in her voice, "We're working on a networking function. The program will learn from an opponent as the fight continues, to temper its own data, and can then send the data to a server to be shared between every other user. That way, the PRT as a whole can learn to fight better, and every trooper will gain a massive advantage."

"About that!" Gabriel brightened up all of a sudden. "I created an AI for my helmet, by taking my Thinker power and applying it into a program. It'd work significantly quicker if I could connect it to your computer," he explained, then sobered down.

"Ah, the supercomputer?" Colin asked, an injection of drabness in his tone. "It was destroyed when the Rig crashed against the shore. I've been trying to rebuild it for some time. Didn't you notice the drop in performance?"

"...Not noticeably," Gabriel admitted, tilting his head.

"Maybe you aren't as used to it as me," Colin hedged, shrugging.

"Maybe," Gabriel replied. "Do you know… Warhammer 40,000? Does it exist, here on Earth Bet?" he inquired, entering the workshop.

"You mean the war-game?" Colin asked, peeking out from behind his station.

"Yes, the one with the big Space Marines and all," he further explained.

"I've heard of it, partly because the company that made it created a holiday edition with Protectorate heroes in it, and they had an Armsmaster hero unit as a part of the collection," he clarified.

Gabriel chuckled, then went on to explain an idea he had. "Some Space Marines have power weapons. They're melee weapons that exude a hazy field of blueish energy that makes them much more potent: blades that can cut through even the toughest of armor, hammers that deal devastating blows with little effort..."

"And what is this exactly building towards?" Colin's left eyebrow went up in interest, and the right one joined soon after it.

"I want to make a pair of power fists."

"How exactly… does the technology work?" he asked, moving his left hand.

"We'd need to experiment, to figure out exactly how it does. But I have some ideas on how to make a power sword, for now."

Colin shrugged, asking the question as if it were obvious, "How?"

"Your nano-thorns, but instead of a blade fully made out of them, a layer that surrounds the blade itself."

"That'd be tastefully inefficient when you can just make a slimmer blade," he said, before moving behind his console and returning to work. "Anyway, we can theorize about swords and spears that cut through armor all day, but it's pointless if we don't know the theory behind how they're supposed to work."

Ah, the feeling of being shot down even before taking off. "Ooookay. What are we going to do now?" Gabriel asked, folding his arms again.

"I'm working on the coding for the new combat prediction software. I'm going to wrap up this segment, before looking into how to apply the scans from your power into the power ring designs," Armsmaster said, continuously typing even as he spoke.

"Power ring designs?" Dragon asked in mild shock. "That's what you've been working on? Lord, Colin..."

"You could at least take a look at them," Colin grumbled back, leaning in further to focus on his work.

"You sound like a married couple arguing, you know?" Gabriel joked.

Colin's expression wasn't visible behind the computer he was at, but the one-second interruption in typing hinted at something. Dragon simply gasped, then said, "Why, I never?" in a teasing and joking manner.

"Hey Colin, you should propose," Gabriel remained on the joke, raising his eyebrows repeatedly.

"I am the former leader of the Protectorate ENE! You should respect me!" he yelled from his workshop, clearly taking the piss. It's amazing, how he went from a glory hound to someone making fun of his former attitude. He… was joking right?

"And I am Centurion! The problem-kid who hates authority! So I don't care!" Gabriel yelled back.

Dragon's chuckling spread through every inch of the 'holding cell' at the exchange.

"Hey, do you... remember Skitter?" Gabriel brought up, glancing away for a brief instant.

"Isn't it Weaver, now?" Colin asked, with a mild show of regret and distaste in his body-language; the fingers moving a little slower for a moment, the body stiffening subtly.

"Oh, yes. I… managed to convince her to join. Shadow Stalker, though, is always so keen on messing everything up," Gabriel continued, sighing.

"I've reviewed those reports," Dragon said, with a noise of affirmation. "Accusations of bullying. It matches Shadow Stalker's profile. I'd certainly side with Weaver on this, but we can't do anything without evidence. Last I checked, Director Piggot had several of her agents investigating. Something should come up in the coming weeks."

Gabriel's eyes lit up. "Let's just hope they can find something. Or else I'm seriously going to h–" he stopped mid-sentence, realizing that he was briefly returning to being gratuitously violent, even though she did deserve it. "No, bad," he told himself in a hushed tone.

Colin's nose did a thing, where he released air, but it wasn't quite a snort since the channels in his body didn't lock up. His mouth creased into a smirk, as he replied, "I'm not sure if they'll have a chance to. Director Piggot has a lot of pressure on her. One misstep and she might get fired - and this includes losing a Ward, given the pressure is from the Youth Guard. She's in a precarious position right now."

"You know about that?" Dragon asked, curious.

"You told me, I came to natural conclusions," Colin defended. "Either way, I wouldn't bet on it, though I'd certainly wish otherwise."

Dragon's silence spoke volumes more than if she had said anything: a sore, directionless cringe, sort of shameful, but trying not to reveal that Gabriel himself had been the source of the issue.

"I told the Youth Guard that I almost died at the hands of those mercenaries," Gabriel admitted, looking down.

Colin stopped typing, surprised. "Really? Well, you didn't make Piggot's job any easier because of it. She's stuck in a precarious position."

"I know she is. I have been for all this time as well, and you know it," Gabriel said, cocking his head back.

"I believe it'd be much easier if everyone could cooperate, instead," Dragon said, trying not to take sides.

Colin just sighed.

Gabriel also stayed silent. Deep down, he didn't regret what he did: Piggot had it coming by a landslide.

Gabriel stood up from the chair, and his clock-power told him it was approximately a little past four PM. Good enough to go to sleep.

"I should head back. I haven't really gotten that much sleep," he said, then sighed and looked down. "I hope we settled things, for the best."

"Yes, me too," Colin said, stepping away from his console for a moment. They looked at each other awkwardly, not quite longingly, but with a hint of closure, then Colin moved forward and they shook hands. "I'll take a look at what I can come up with, with the data you gave me." They stepped away from each other.

"Good luck," Centurion answered, pushing his helmet onto his armor. "And good evening."

"Have a good evening," Dragon answered, and Colin simply nodded.

Centurion turned around and left.