Summoner

by codekinguu

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18. Chapter 21-25

Chapter 21

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

"Now that everyone's here…" Miss Militia began with a pointed glance at a sheepish Kid Win.

Fashionably late, Clockblocker might claim.

Ten minutes too late, actually.

Still, they were kids, and this was half for their benefit, so they were mostly occupying the couches up front while the adult members of the Protectorate stood behind them, glancing at the screens arrayed behind her with presentations prepared by someone she didn't even know the name of, frankly.

Naturally, she was in the center of the room with a standing, wheeled podium… thingie next to her, a laptop on top of it with wires trailing to the wall.

She didn't know what this furniture piece was called.

"Let's begin the bi-weekly recap. Unfortunately, this is not going to be as short as usual, and since Armsmaster is technically still on medical leave from the Lung fight a month ago, despite Tinkering nonstop for the past three days-"

Several of the older Protectorate members shook their heads with wry smirks and knowing glances at each other.

Colin was truly milking that injury for all that it was worth, even if Panacea had fixed him.

She couldn't really begrudge him that. Having one's body nearly cut in half by plasma from the crotch down was a horrific injury. If not for New Wave, or specifically, Panacea, Colin would be dead. So he deserved his medical leave, even if he technically did not need it.

It was still humorously in character for him to spend all his medical leave Tinkering though.

"-I'll be doing this recap in his stead. Now..."

She pressed enter.

"Local news first, American news second, international news concerning America third."

"To start with, Brockton Bay. Several developments. New players…" She pressed enter, the screen moved to the next slide. An image of a giant, junk-looking power armor in the middle of a shootout with PRT troopers.

"There are apparently at least two new Tinkers around, and a tentative third new cape we do not know much about. First up, Trainwreck, who seems to have joined up with Faultline's crew, unfortunately. Low tech junkyard-themed Tinker with a strong specialization on simple and durable things that can be quickly built, expanded on, and repaired. Tentatively not a threat to us, so long as Faultline gets hired for outside jobs. Ratings pending, speculative Brute-Tinker 4+. Not weak." She said, and after some muted nods and a glance at the focused eyes of everyone, she pressed enter again.

"Second. Chariot. Speed based Tinker. One appearance, allegiance unknown, leaning towards a heroic disposition. Definitely young. With any luck, he might join the Wards once we can contact him. Ratings pending, speculative Tinker-Mover 3." She vaguely gestured at the blurry images of skates on the equally blurry photo, then pressed enter again.

The image this time was just a black question mark.

"Third, unknown parahuman that after extensive forensic investigation and a brief Think Tank inquiry, is believed to have executed Mush of the Merchants in the trainyards dump. There were no signs of struggle, no witnesses, and Mush was killed in one decisive strike from above before he could react, despite being fully armored and even covered in several rusted metal plates over the strike area. Mush's ratings were Brute two to six, depending on environment and time, and Changer four. Allegiance, gender, power, and current whereabouts of the cape who killed him, all unknown." She finished, and after a moment of concern that passed through all the capes in the room, she tapped the key again.

"Fourth. Forgetful. Speculative Stranger six plus. Not much is known about her, and she was only discovered because an employee of Medhall submitted this footage of her stealing painkillers and sanitation pads from a Medhall pharmacy in the middle of rush hours without being noticed despite wearing a scarf on her face. The police forwarded it to us. Female, young, dark skinned, currently just committing petty theft. Power is speculated to be about making people forget she was conversing with them or not noticing her existence. Unsure if there is some affiliation to Spitfire besides accidental mirroring in their actions."

Another clack of the key. A black question mark.

"Five. Unknown hacker, speculated to be a Parahuman. They tried to access BBPD records at the start of the week with an automated, adapting program that brute forced through the security systems. It succeeded, until a notice was sent to Dragon and she booted them. Backtracking the connection located it in downtown Brockton Bay before it was, for a lack of a better term, nuked, and precise location became impossible to track. Such a sudden wipe is highly unusual, further making us believe this might be some kind of technopath or code-based Tinker. Nothing concerning, but something to make note of."

"Six. Whirlygig. New Merchant cape, focused on wide area aerokinesis. Has shown the ability to ramp up a tornado over time, which she can direct at will. One of the most destructive capes in the Merchant's arsenal by far. Take her down quick before she can ramp up. Shaker three to five."

Another tap.

"Seven. Oni Lee. He is not technically a new player, but he is a likely returning one. Oni Lee escaped his transport to the Birdcage-"

"Wha- wait, when did we catch Oni Lee?" Assault interrupted, his voice incredulous. Murmurs of assent and confusion rose from the other Protectorate members, which also made the Wards confused.

"We were told that he was decisively out of the picture until further notice, if you remember." She reminded him, frowning a little.

"I mean, yeah, I thought that meant he lost a limb or something. I don't remember any of us reporting his capture or anything like that." Assault said, glancing aside at Battery with a strange shrug of confusion.

There was a reason for that, one that only she and Armsmaster knew about as the two most experienced and trusted, but she couldn't say such things. She could still say most of the truth.

"He was caught in Syracuse. For anyone who doesn't know, that is a day or so away from here. That is why. We do not know why he was there or what he was doing, but he has refused to talk or cooperate, so he was put in a high secrecy and high security transport to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. The person responsible for the leak has been fired." She lied, because she couldn't just outright say they had caught a mole in the PRT.

"This also segues nicely into the next section of the recap. Wider America news."

She clicked the button, and this time, the blurry picture had a play button on it.

"Oni Lee's transport was shared with Bad Canary's, and they were hit yesterday. At roughly six past eleven in the morning, the transport was intercepted by Faultline and her new recruit, presumably hired by Lung. They got up to the doors of the second van before the undercover PRT escort following the convoy tried to stop them and detain them. At this point, it devolved into the video you're about to watch." She bluntly said, and clicked the play button.

It was six minutes long, full of cuts and moving frantically from one trooper who had sight of the capes to another, trying to provide a full but short understanding of the field and situation.

To everyone's credit, they took it seriously. Even Clockblocker didn't try to crack a joke beyond snickering slightly when Icebreaker got punted out of the nightmarish structure taking up half the collapsed highway. Just focused silence.

Until it got to that part, where the chaos of the battlefield just winked out and everything became covered in that odd purple haze, and a giant black sphere parted the clouds.

"Well that's not fucking ominous." Assault sarcastically muttered, before Battery smacked the back of his head. "Ow! Hey, come on, look at this and tell me you don't wanna curse! What the fffheck is that deathball thing?"

"Yeah, what is that thing doing, actually? Some kind of kinetic energy freeze aura? Or is that a person?" Kid Win asked, leaning forward, and Hannah resisted the urge to sigh as she made a universal 'settle down' gesture, her eyes on the laptop screen.

The perspective quickly shifted to another frozen trooper's, and then the video swapped to one of the transport's guards to show the most concerning part of it all from up-close.

The four ton armored van being lifted up like it was a toy car, its reinforced armor getting torn in half like tinfoil, and the seats getting torn straight out of the transport to float back to the sphere, prisoners included.

Also, it showed quite clearly how the aura's grasp refused to let the foam expand, despite having contact with oxygen and its attempts to leave the nozzle only made the van's shredded insides covered in a thin layer of the stuff.

"Is that a telekinetic?" Dauntless asked, doing a decent job of hiding his concern.

The sphere swallowed Faultline's crew in spheres similar to itself, before doing the same to Oni Lee and Canary in a mere moment. Without any drama or delay, it exploded upwards like a rocket orbited by little mini-missiles, the air billowing around them as the sound barrier cracked with thunderous booms, a moment before the bizarre purple-black aura holding everyone in place faded, the van bursting into a giant ball of containment foam in the background.

The video was slowed down significantly to be able to showcase how quickly the unknown cape grabbed her cargo and shot up into the clouds again.

Then it ended.

"One Guild hero and a PRT hero were present, Icebreaker and Jackrabbit. Both claimed they heard Newter say 'Are you Sam's gal' to the sphere, and the sphere responded, so we can confirm only that the power's wielder is female, capable of speech, and associated with someone named Sam, and is likely not in Faultline's employ, especially considering the language and tone used."

Vista snorted with a slow grin, for some reason.

"This happened in Montreal, just outside the US-Canada border. Further research from Dragon has shown that neither this power nor its wielder have ever popped up anywhere, including vocal scans, and the only Parahumans with 'Sam' in their name are either in custody or too unrelated to be employing or deploying this woman. Dragon's surveillance satellites were only able to keep up with her and keep other important things in sight for about half of her trip, but by all accounts, it seemed she was heading to either New York, Boston, or here. Temporary PRT designation is Blackgrasp. Speculative power ratings are: Mover eight, Shaker twelve, Blaster four to six, Breaker one plus, Thinker one."

A hand shot up, and she nodded at Aegis to continue.

"Ma'am, I must admit I'm still not certain of how power ratings work, but isn't Shaker twelve a little excessive? I think Vista has ten on that, and her power is much more… Shaker-y."

"Yep." Vista said.

It was Battery that answered.

"It's complicated. It's not just about how strong an effect is, or how much it affects the area it's reaching, it's about how difficult it is to counter the effect, avoid it, how versatile it is, and some other details not even I know about. It also has mostly to do with how much of a threat the power itself is to civillians and PRT personnel. If anything, I think they're undershooting it. Instant, mass freeze. No way to counter, dodge, or prevent. And those transport vans are armored like tanks. Theoretically, she could drop onto a Protectorate base, hold everyone down, and kill them by bombarding them with rubble and cars." The woman said, her mouth twisting like she ate a sour grape.

She nodded in agreement.

"Additionally, she lifted that armored van, a four ton transport vehicle, and almost tore it in half with her telekinesis-aligned power effect, while displaying disturbing precision, and holding down seventy three PRT troopers and Icebreaker, who has a Brute three rating. Be wary of anything like this effect, and if you spot her, preliminary advice is to keep your distance or run the complete opposite direction unless engagement is necessary. We do not know her range limit and restrictions, and until we do, avoidance is best if possible. Moving on."

The image swapped to a map of Brockton Bay, color coded with gang territories and suspected spots of illicit activities.

"As for the gangs here… well, it's bad. After Lung's fight a month ago-"

She watched several winces cross faces, all over the room.

"-with the Undersiders and the Protectorate, there had been a period of wait while everyone was trying to figure out if the landscape had shifted any, and it seems they're all done prodding and waiting. Lung is down Oni Lee, though that might not be the case anymore, and he's acquired a Tinker. The Empire seems to think that letting Lung play for time with a Tinker on his side is a bad idea, so they've started slowly prodding and hounding him, trying to bleed him of resources. It's working to some extent."

She lifted a finger to the screen behind her.

"They poke at this end of his territory, and if he shows up, they retreat, take Rune, Krieg and Purity and go hit the opposite side of his turf, for example. Lung's section around the Trainyards is rapidly shrinking as he centralizes his resources to be able to defend them, and the Merchants are starting to get overly ambitious and have started nipping at the free new space as Lung pulls back. They won't hold it, but they're definitely making a nuisance of themselves. Lung doesn't take well to insults, as the Undersiders unfortunately learned. He is likely to go on a big offensive soon to get his territory back and maybe even push back, so it's looking like a full-blown gang war soon, at least until Lung gets revenge. Coil has been quiet, although there have been a few firefights between him and the ABB, who are for some reason poking at his territory. Expect adjusted patrol schedules as we try to contain this."

The image swapped to a similar map of Boston, with Accord's territory a yellow, Blasto's a green one, and the Teeth's a red one. Accord had settled in the center of the city, worryingly close to the PRT itself, while Blasto had a small chunk of territory on the left end of Boston and the teeth held a worryingly large section of the coastline, with the far right section being marked as contested with yellow-black lines crossing over it.

"Accord's Ambassadors are keeping things quiet, as usual, but there has been movement from them. Likely there's something he's been brewing that he's about to kick off into. Blasto hasn't done anything yet, but his latest creations are starting to get worryingly organic. Something to look out for."

They couldn't afford another Nilbog in Boston.

"The Teeth and the Butcher are getting antsy and violent, more than usual. It seems Blasto and Accord are just sitting it out and letting the Teeth trade punches with the local PRT, but it's not a very sustainable state for the city. Next."

Another clack of the key, and a girl wearing green and gold showed up, smiling for the cameras on her debut.

The sight made her heart clench.

Because while everyone could say they didn't know, they all had their suspicions about the incident, and hers made her feel sick. It wasn't the first time.

"A Ward by the name of Valiant has been attacked and kidnapped along the US-Mexico border. Investigation pending, but all activity among that line has been frozen, and the legality of having US capes barge into Mexico is starting unnecessary tensions. We aren't close, but this was a targeted strike, so we believe there may be someone trying to kidnap capes for some nefarious purpose or another. If anything like this moves up to here, we'll be including Protectorate members into your patrols, I'm afraid. Be careful and do not post anything about it on social media or PHO, Wards, obviously. Next."

Another clack. No picture, but a summarized version of observations, written in plain text.

"There is suspicion that Heartbreaker might have started another roundtrip. Nothing but suspicious movements and odd breadcrumbs that don't even lead in our direction, but multiple cities in Canada have deployed scouts and are preparing for lockdowns just in case, so in the off-chance he heads here, we might do something similar. Next."

A picture of Cranial with her PRT classifications.

"Cranial, a Tinker that started Toybox, a black market for Tinkertech years ago, left said black market about six months ago for unknown reasons. Since then, she has been the main suspect of dozens of disappearances that coincide with sightings of her, and in the past week, has been sighted with the Slaughterhouse Nine. Her specialty is about affecting the memory and the brain. Next, international news concerning America, which we actually have to show this time, unfortunately." She hurried forth, trying not to dwell on such topics too much, and clicked the enter key again.

A headline in Polish, showing the image of a man in costume, covered in Tinkertech weapons, his mask nothing but an ear-wide white grin etched on leather with black goggles for eyes.

"The Polish authorities over in Europe have warned us that their resident Kill Order recipient, or the equivalent of it, has decided to flee. They're suspecting he took an illegal transport and is heading to the American continent. His cape name, translated, is Stopper of Hearts, or Heartstopper when Americanized. I'm afraid his power does exactly what it sounds like."

Sighs, worried looks, the frowns etching deeper.

This bi-weekly recap was already shaping up to be longer than she'd like, so she couldn't help but agree. The less news, the better.

Because it was never good news.

"Its line of sight, seven to twelve second cooldown as far as observed, instant heart and brain death. His power works through scopes and binoculars, unfortunately, so by the time they found out who was doing it and how, Heartstopper had already killed twenty seven capes, and eleven more since. In a country as small as Poland, that's a huge number. Almost a fourth of all recorded parahumans in the entire country, in fact. His bounty is set to fifty million, so expect a huge influx of international bounty hunters to start flocking our way. If you see anyone like this, break line of sight immediately at all costs, and report it as soon as you can. His path seemed to be heading for Canada or even Greenland, but there is a chance that it was misdirection and he might be coming to the US coastal cities. Ratings pending, tentatively given Blaster seven. Next…"

And this would be the annoying bit. She wasn't sure how to break these kind of news, not really. At least it was somewhat positive.

"The team will be getting a new Ward soon." She said, not bothering with the key. There was no reason to show the video next in the folder.

And just like that, all the Wards straightened, eyes widening, their attention directed at her with abrupt intensity.

"She will come over on Monday for power testing, and after she completes the appropriate classes on required and excessive force, general protocol and public conduct, as well as getting a name and outfit assigned, she will be inducted into the team. Normally, this would be where this would end, but as per recommendation by experts, we were told to give you a bit of a… heads up." She said, trying to find a way to word this that wouldn't alienate the poor girl before she even came here.

"Do you all remember the Shrieker incident in Winslow high? I believe it was about three and something months ago."

The Wards reacted differently.

Vista just looked confused, like trying to remember some distant puzzle she forgot.

Gallant closed his eyes and sighed. Kid Win grimaced with a slow hiss, and Clockblocker let out a breath as he rubbed the back of his neck, leaning back to stare at the ceiling.

Aegis slumped.

"Oh boy." He muttered in defeat, seeing where this was going.

"For those of you who know what I'm talking about, yes, the new Ward was Shrieker. That was her trigger event, as far as we are aware. And since you will likely figure out who she is regardless, we were told to give you a bit of heads up to not mention that incident or anything surrounding it, and try to avoid discussions of it, and try to limit any mental health related jokes to a minimum." She noted with an obvious stare at Clockblocker, who raised his hands in mock-surrender.

"Yeah, I get it, no more 'I want to commit seppuku' jokes or whatnot. Won't be a problem." He said with an easy smile, likely concocting different jokes already.

She nodded, and turned her gaze back to the Wards.

"Additionally, do not mention Shadow Stalker or Sophia around her, at all. They knew each other and did not have a good relationship."

Clockblocker snorted.

"I doubt she was capable of having any of those." He sniped, and Aegis frowned at him, while the rest of the Wards either agreed or ignored the comment.

Hannah gave him a disapproving stare before turning back to roaming the occupants of the couches with her eyes.

"Also, I believe this is needless to say, but do not judge someone based on how they acted during their Trigger event." She started, but before she could continue, Vista raised a lazy hand.

She nodded to her.

"I'm out of the loop here, I don't follow the news or anything. What is this Shrieker incident? Did she kill someone at Winslow or something? Just… you know, this is starting to sound a little more delicate than I feel comfortable with." Vista explained, and it was a reasonable question.

Aegis saved her from trying to wiggle her way out of showing the video of the girl scraping her own flesh off of herself on the open courtyard of her school while wailing like she was in the worst agony Miss Militia could imagine. Not only was it just immensely disturbing and ear-grating, she would rather not violate the girl's dignity by showing such things without her consent.

"It's uhm… hm, how to put this." Aegis started, scratching his chin.

She was not a soulless leech like most journalists and news channels were.

She just really did not want to show them the video. If they wanted to, they could find short clips of it on recorded news channels that got released before the PRT used the identity protection act to smother them.

"Oh cut the suspense, come on. It was just that some girl in Winslow turned into a bus-sized monster and started rolling around in the courtyard, shrieking her lungs out and trying to bash her brains out on the open yard. Not pleasant, obviously, and it was a real spectacle so it got on the local news here, but nobody got hurt besides a couple guys that were too close and got burst eardrums." Clockblocker waived, trying to go for nonchalance.

She approved.

Vista grimaced.

"Oof. Yeah, that sounds rough. She'll be here by next week?" Vista asked, her eyes on Hannah.

She shook her head.

"She'll probably be cleared for patrols by next week. She'll be here by Monday. And with that, this bi-weekly recap and briefing is over, at least for the things we can say in front of Wards." She said, and without hesitation besides a disappointed sigh from Vista, they got the queue and got up to walk out of the room.

The adults in the room waited until the door clicked shut before turning back towards her.

She clicked on the enter key again.

The screen showed a small map of Brockton Bay.

"Now, a short briefing on the current plan of action to keep Brockton Bay from going down in flames for the next week." She said without a hint of actual sarcasm, and Assault let out a wistful chuckle as they all stepped forward to take the couches.

Notes:

inconsistencies in the timeline and general changes abound, but i dont care for accuracy that much and i dont think you guys do either considering the nature of this story already

Chapter 22

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Danny Hebert stared at the name change confirmation papers in his hand, blinking at his daughter's new name.

Livson.

Who was Livson?

What?

Why?

He looked up to see her and her friend calmly dismantling a pistol on the kitchen table, bickering about how "you are not meant to shoot a gun sideways like a movie gangster", and about how "you totally should because it looks ' cool as fuck '", according to Lisa.

He felt like he should intervene, but his own firearm course had taught him that without a bullet in sight and a dismantled gun, there really wasn't much risk. How would he justify it? Would Taylor even listen?

And who was he to demand his daughter be less prepared for the life of a hero? That wouldn't help her. It might save her life, knowing how to use a gun.

They were also smiling.

It had been a long time since he last saw that. Or at least a smile that genuine, coming out of Taylor. He hadn't known Lisa for long.

With a deep breath, he sighed, and put the papers next to the door.

Then instead of ruining the light mood in the house with his brooding, long face, he decided to call up an old friend or two and head to a bar for a few drinks.

It was Sunday, but bars were always open, and he didn't have much, if any, work to do at the union tomorrow. Like every day.

"Okay, do the thing." Lisa said, munching on a potato chip.

Taylor did the thing.

Namely, dropping the mag, clearing the chamber by pulling the slide back, hitting the slide release and twisting to remove it entirely, removing the spring, and unscrewing the rifled barrel from the pistol base, all in under thirty seconds. There was more to disassembling a gun, but they didn't have any tools here to put the trigger mechanism back in properly, so they skipped that.

"Fucking cheater…" Lisa grumbled, pouting at the mess on the kitchen table, and Taylor chuckled.

"Nope, just focused. Speaking of which, I should probably tell you everything I can do, or at least as much as I can remember at one time. That seems like a pretty big part of cooperation and all that jazz. How many hours do you want to sit and listen for?"

Lisa hummed dubiously.

"Hours huh? Suuuure. Go ahead."

"Okay, no, stop. I'm not even using my power and I have a headache already. You are bullshit. You're a cheating cheater who cheats. Your power makes no sense and its complete fucking bullshit. " Lisa whined from the couch, and Taylor had to push down a surge of pride, because well, she hadn't exactly earned her powers. She just got "lucky" and didn't get something useless for all that mind-fuckery.

"It's not that bullshit, trust me." She laughed, patting Lisa's thigh.

"NOT- YOU CAN LITERALLY DO EVERYTHING!"

She opened her mouth to deny it, then closed it as she slowly began to run through every Legend's capabilities, most of which she abbreviated on flunked a bit to Lisa, not willing to have her think she was insane by mentioning Runeterra itself.

And every possibility she came up with, there was a solution for.

She really could do everything, or close enough to it. As long as it was only one thing, because some problems had very energy-expensive solutions.

"Okay, maybe it's a little bit bullshit. But so is Eidolon."

"You're even worse! "

"I… you know what, nevermind. I'm going to go for a run now, it's like, mid-day. Wanna come?"

Lisa frowned, then hesitated.

"I'd... no, you know what? Yes. I'm coming."

"Bull…shit…" Lisa wheezed, panting as she supported herself with her hands on her knees.

Taylor rolled her eyes.

"Okay, now you're just using excuses. You were a couch potato that got stuck in a room for like a month, you're just atrophied as shit. I'm not using anything, you're just a poro."

Lisa glanced up at her, sweaty orange hair pulled back into a ponytail as she furrowed her brows.

"A what?"

Taylor paused, blinking.

Oh, right.

Poros weren't a thing in Earth Bet.

"Just some dumb saying I saw online, don't worry about it." She waved her hand vaguely, and glanced around the people walking past them.

Going for a run in the middle of the day on the Boardwalk might have been a shit idea.

Not for herself, she didn't care much.

But she had severely underestimated how paranoid and unsafe Lisa felt in public. Any time her eyes were not on Taylor, or if she was falling behind more than a couple feet, she'd tense up and lose her rhythm, and her eyes would twitch all over the place.

Like right now.

"Lisa." She clicked her fingers, and Lisa made an affirmative noise in the back of her throat as she continued scanning every.

Single.

Fucking.

Person.

"I brought you out for a run to exercise and exhaust you so I can drag you to the couch and make a Lisa burrito without you being able to fight me over it, not to give you a headache from your own paranoia. I have a sub-power on. You could get shot with a sniper rifle and it wouldn't go through. Relax. Or if you can't, we can just ditch for someplace less crowded?" She offered quietly, and Lisa turned to her with a blank look on her face, blinking at her.

"Wha… Oh. Oh no, I'm not paranoid or scared or anything. It's just… the fucking Enforcers. They work for Coil, I thought you knew."

Taylor paused. She did not know. She thought it might have been some kind of business union that paid for security or something.

"And the place in general doesn't help. This is where that snake bastard found me the first time, you know? It's setting my teeth on edge." Lisa murmured through her heavy breaths as she straightened, and Taylor took a moment to realize that what Lisa just said was exceedingly obvious if she'd spent a moment to think about it.

"Oh. I thought you were reaching my levels of paranoia or something, sorry. I didn't think about that. Let's get out of here." She mumbled, her own eyes now doing the same thing Lisa had been doing.

Lisa nodded, and began to walk with her, for all about three steps before one of her shaking legs gave out and she yelped as she hurriedly righted herself. Taylor's half-outstretched hand paused, then retreated.

"Okay, no. I'm invoking my little sister privileges. Carry me." Lisa said, lifting a hand to lay on her shoulder for support, still breathless.

"My arms aren't strong enough, no."

"So gimme a piggyback ride."

"Really? Here?"

"Taylor I almost literally cannot feel my legs."

She rolled her eyes.

"Only if you let me burrito you on the couch. I pick the movies." She said.

Lisa snorted a little giggle.

"Yeah, sure. Now kneel, thy mighty steed." Lisa declared without an ounce of enthusiasm, almost sounding sarcastic, and Taylor let out a chuckle as she did so.

"I'm gonna throw you in the bay if you make any more horse jokes."

"Fair."

And then Lisa's arms were around her neck, her cheek resting on her head, and a profound sense of peace washed over her as Lisa's legs wrapped around her, her hands slotting into the crook of her knees to support her.

This felt right.

"Was a kid last time I got one of these so imma savor it." Lisa sighed in contentment.

"Was a kid last time I gave one, so I'm gonna do the same." She hummed, and rose, beginning the long trek back home.

At some point as they neared her house and her back and legs began screaming in protest, she turned into Evelynn and shifted into a different woman just to be safe, keeping her voice the same, and idly thought of how nice this was, feeling less alone than she had in what felt like decades.

"...Hey Lisa?"

"Hnm?" Lisa mumbled into her hair, half-asleep.

"Hope this doesn't seem like I'm coming onto you or something, or being weird, because I'm pretty certain you're not interested, but do you wanna cuddle tonight? I'm honestly really touch-starved, and this is really nice." She mumbled.

It was a tad embarrassing to ask, but, again, thousands of years of memories. Getting embarrassed had almost zero punch to it at this point. Being frank and honest was shockingly easy.

The reply came after ten seconds of complete silence.

"Okay. I'm pretty touch-starved too. Don't make it weird though. Non-negotiable." Lisa breathed out, and let her head slide off Taylor to rest on her shoulder.

"Despite my questionable decisions, I'm not that kinda girl." She huffed.

She elected to have Lisa take a shower first, both because she took far longer, and because she had to take care of a minor chore while Lisa did that.

And Lisa wanted to shower first as well. She hated feeling sweaty.

Her chore was simple. Namely, just making a bunch of tubs of certain chemical compounds that ate rust. She couldn't enchant rusty metal.

Well, she could, but it would likely explode spectacularly or at least melt into slag.

Part of why most mages used good ole unrusting silver or non-rusting, alchemical alloys to do enchantment artifacts like mana batteries, et cetera.

It took about an hour and a half to do, as she already had a bunch of beakers and basic measuring cups and the like, and with the ability to split into multiple functional, hivemind clones of herself thanks to a certain Legend she rather despised, a scheming sorceress by the name of LeBlanc, it did not take much time at all to line up five plastic tubs full of rusty scrap metal and green, bubbling froth.

Then she Teleported back to her basement, finding it more convenient than the attic, and walked out to see Lisa doing her best rendition of a melted slab of butter on her couch, the run and subsequent hour-long shower having turned her to putty as she flipped through TV channels.

She went upstairs to take a blanket, and descended on her unwitting prey.

Lisa lazily blinked at the blanket Taylor was unraveling, and let out a tired, silent chuckle.

"How do ya want me, boss?"

"Get up, sit on the end of the blanket, and prepare to be rolled." She declared, and snapped the blanket down.

"I feel like I'm going to regret this later." Lisa yawned, swaddled in a blanket up to her neck, and currently being used as Taylor's body pillow on the couch.

"Is comfortable." Taylor hummed, barely watching the movie.

Lisa hummed back something vaguely affirmative.

It was far too early to be sleeping though, so eventually, after a couple hours of napping and mindlessly resting, she swapped to Syndra to unravel the Lisa burrito, and then set her friend's boneless body down on the couch as Lisa blinked at her.

"Why is she wearing-"

"She thought she was the hottest bitch around and wanted to flaunt it." She replied easily with a shrug, her voice echoing and imperious with Syndra's trademark power and tone, then changed back to herself, only mildly stumbling when her feet hit the floor.

"Now, sit here and wait, I have a gift but I left it in my villainous lair."

Lisa snorted, nodded, then began to stare incredulously at her when Taylor locked herself in place, purple swirls of energy ramping up around her.

"You're not about to explode right?"

She couldn't actually reply. Or move in general.

Lisa slowly inched onto the opposite end of the couch, squinting at her.

One short Teleport to the bunker and back after, she opened the basement door with their suits in arm.

Lisa took it with a furrowed brow that incrementally raised as she thumbed the material and her power fed her information.

"Pure silk, artificially enhanced beyond what the laws of physics conventionally allow, made less than a day ago, and woven by controlled, altered spiders. Armor made with Lisa Wilbourn in mind. Huh, that's sweet." Lisa hummed with a smile, sounding like she was quoting her powers.

"Sounds about right. Do you want to meet the spiders?"

" No. But thank you. I was idly worried about a random killsquad coming out of nowhere and killing me, this helps."

"You're welcome." She shrugged, then gestured upstairs. "Go wear it, I wanna know if my eyeballing needs work or if it fits you. In case you're wondering, this is bulletproof, stab proof, cut-proof, pretty much fireproof, electricity proof, and I'm pretty sure armor-piercing rounds won't do much more than mess up the weave and make it need repairs, including the big rifle ones."

Lisa grinned, gave her a quick hug, and practically flew upstairs.

"Holy shit this is a perfect fit. Heavier than I expected, but nowhere near actual body armor. How do I look?" Lisa asked, spinning in a slow circle with a rigid T-pose.

She looked good. And with the inlaid lace on the forearms, one could make it as tight as they wanted to.

"You look great and not at all like you could tank a sniper rifle with a cracked rib at worst. Actually, I could probably enchant these too with impact absorption, once my s… once I get more used to exerting my powers without rolling on the floor in pain. Anyway. I might need your help convincing my dad that I need to get a GED and to sign off on it tomorrow morning. The option came to mind way too late, so I'll go to the service center and get the papers early tomorrow, before breakfast. Might need some help if he gets stubborn about 'friendships' and 'socialization' or some crap like that." She explained, idly stretching to get her own suit to fit her properly. It was a bit stiff in that brand-new sort of way.

Stretching also helped with her soreness, needless to say.

Lisa shrugged, then flopped down on the couch next to her.

"Sure. Just let me sleep eight hours. Also, since I want to be of more use... you said you could make all sorts of absurd, completely broken Tinkertech. Is there something that could replay memories? If you go into the Wards and just throw your memories of what you did on duty into some kind of device I could watch, I'm pretty sure I could feed you with a lot of useful information and such."

She frowned, staring at the ceiling.

She did not much like that idea, but she could. Memory crystals were finicky, difficult things to make, but they existed, and Ryze frequently used them to remember things as his lifespan continued marching on. They just took a lot of damn time to make.

"I might be able to. It's really time consuming though, and by the time I make one I'd already be out of the Wards, probably. Why not just sneak in a camera?" She asked, turning her head to Lisa to arch a curious brow.

"Riskier, that's all. Thought you'd appreciate the safer option." Lisa shrugged.

She turned away, humming in thought. Then she shook her head.

"No, making a dimensional storage item to pop some kind of secret camera in and out is much easier and faster. Could be useful too. I don't think Tinkertech detectors work on my stuff either, so It'll probably be safe."

Lisa nodded, rubbing and fiddling with the suit sleeve.

A thought rose, and she frowned.

"I'm going to go check up on my dad real quick. It's almost nine PM, it's not like him to be out for so long."

Lisa glanced up.

"If it helps, I think he was going out for a meeting with friends. Probably drinks or something."

Taylor frowned deeper. Her dad wasn't a drunkard by any means, but he didn't hold his liquor well.

She switched on the Rune of Domination, turned into Evelynn, and flew out from underneath the door as invisible smoke.

Well, she was worried for nothing.

He did look a bit tipsy after parting with Kurt, Lacey, and some other dockworker that came with, but he was driving slow and careful and coming back home, so she was not overly worried.

She took a moment to regroup, considered her headache, then decided to fly back home.

"You're surprisingly huggable." Lisa murmured from behind her, and she snorted.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That we're both bony, sort of. I was expecting this to be more uncomfortable." Lisa mumbled, adjusting the arm around her neck and the one around her stomach.

"Hm. Any plans for Monday I should be aware of?" She asked quietly in the calm darkness of the room, shifting a little to put less pressure on Lisa's arm with her head.

"Nah. Just gonna go to the bank, deposit the stash money into my account, probably spend the rest of the day researching the kind of assholes you want to be killing, the local villain's powers, et cetera. Save you the time and effort. You do your thing, I'll teach you everything so you don't have to waste time on it. It's perfect. My power will help too, assuming I don't let it make wild assumptions and go off." Lisa breathed out.

She hummed an affirmative, too warm and content and tired to say much.

"Thanks, Lisa."

"No prob."

"Goodnight." She mumbled, and finally closed her eyes.

"Hm."

Notes:

ah, quiet sundays. I'm sure nothing wild and wacky is ever gonna happen on monday

Chapter 23

Chapter Text

There was a slight problem with cuddling with Lisa.

Firstly, she was ridiculously clingy. They went to sleep back to chest and she woke up with Lisa somehow having managed to tangle them up like koalas trying to wrestle, Lisa's chin on her left collarbone, her left arm wrapped around the back of her neck, one leg hooked around hers and the other thrown over her hip, and her right arm wiggled beneath Taylor's left arm. She couldn't have done this if she'd tried.

Secondly, she slept for way too long, so Taylor had to turn into Evelynn and fly out of her grasp after wasting an hour trying to free herself without waking Lisa up.

And thirdly, she had about six to eight hours before anyone else would get up, so she had to spend a bit of time burying Lisa under blankets to make up for the missing body heat she provided and to keep her asleep.

The last part was also a good thing, of course, as it allowed her to catch up on things before they rushed at her and bowled her over.

She quickly grabbed her main burner phone, went down to the living room, and began to read all the texts she had missed out on.

A lot of it was really concerning and a lot of it was just small updates on their tasks. Sile for example had explained that he was basically an errand boy at the moment, and would likely have to drop out of the gang entirely due to increased pressure for him to do the initiation. Which was to beat someone up to the point of hospitalization, or drag some chick in for their prostitution rings.

She'd rather he drop out, and told him so. She had Bakuda in there now.

His family consisted of his grandmother, so she'd likely have to shuffle them around a little bit until money started rolling in, which, coincidentally, would begin today after she was done wasting half her day in the PRT building later.

Her ex-Merchant minions were sending updates on how they were keeping clear of drugs, or how some of them had to take small dosages because they felt like they were literally about to die of withdrawal. Ethan surprisingly seemed to be bouncing back the easiest, and even more surprisingly, had joined a local church.

She hadn't even told him to do that, but he seemed to be… finding god, or something like that. Chasing forgiveness. He probably thought she gave him his orders to change because she found him reprehensible, which she did, and this was probably his way of finding out what a good person was actually like and what they did.

She wasn't sure if she approved, since she was going to be using him as a hitman. How would he reconcile trying to become some kind of man of god while killing people? Maybe she could use him as a negotiator?

It was pretty weird, but a net gain in the end.

Sile in particular had a surprising amount of information for someone who was essentially being treated as a bread shuttle.

Lung was getting pushed really hard by the Empire and was tightening his territory. He hadn't exactly lost it, but he kind of gave up almost half of it so it would be an area he could reasonably cover himself.

Apparently, the Empire was starting to attack using skirmish tactics. Strike here, draw attention, retreat and use backup forces to attack a completely different location.

Without Oni Lee, he was fucked. Personal power didn't mean much when he had less regular members, two capes instead of however many the Empire had, and absolutely no way of getting into an actual fight. Everyone in the Empire could run from him, except those who would never go to fight him in the first place.

The knock-on effects of this were not too difficult to extrapolate.

She'd seen similar gang wars happen in Bilgewater, that accursed isle of pirates and gangs in the middle of the ocean separating the continents of Runeterra.

The only pieces missing were that she wasn't sure of personalities.

She had no idea what Lung thought like. Was he a cunning beast type, or a mindless brute? Did he have his moments or did he just rule because he had the biggest stick in the gang?

From what Lisa had slipped here and there, he seemed proud, uncompromising, and really vengeful.

So, gang war soon, probably.

The problem was that both people and capes died in gang wars, and she wanted all of them.

She just had to get to the big shots first and order them to pull their flunkies back.

She had expected a careful game of picking people off one by one, but if there was going to be semi-open warfare soon, she would either have to hurry, or use it to locate everyone she needed. Kaiser was unlikely to make personal appearances, but if she could get even one, maybe two of the Empire's capes, she would have him eventually. She didn't care about The Rules.

Lung was… a slight issue, but one good ambush and he should be hers.

She checked Bakuda's texts.

There were about thirty seven pages of them.

It took an hour just to read through them, and surprisingly, most of it was useful.

There were several rambling pages about how she really wanted to meet her again and take her out for a fun night of drinking and to show her what all her bombs could do, but for the most part, it was information on the ABB.

A lot of information.

The location of 'The Farm', a name which made her eye twitch and her teeth gnash, a warehouse around the upper edges of the Docks where the ABB would take their sex trafficking victims and drug them up until they were obedient enough for the brothels.

The five main 'generals' that Lung had in his gang, who controlled five lieutenants with a subordinate group of five to ten men each, or at least their first names and rough descriptions.

Lung's car plates and a blurry picture, two known gang hangouts besides the club, and the most concerning part…

An attack to be launched late Friday night.

Lung, or at least his white informants and general crooks he paid to keep an ear out, had caught wind of a speech that would happen at a pound in Empire territory. They probably wanted to keep the momentum going, or at least exploit it to bolster their ranks and pressure the ABB even further.

And rumor had it that Viktor would be giving the speech. Not surprising, given he'd probably stolen a lot of oratory skills, the bastard.

Lung's grand plan consisted of perching his men up on a building nearby armed with an automatic grenade launcher made by Bakuda herself, and just annihilating the entire pound before booking it for their territory. Lung would deal with the capes that would inevitably come for reinforcements, or would already be there to lay a trap down.

She didn't know if he really was smarter than he seemed, but this plan was stupidly simple and risky for his men.

She was starting to lean more towards him being more of a dumb brute that has his moments of intelligence, like not killing Lisa and keeping low after his massive fight that predated her capture.

She could let this happen, she wouldn't mourn some dead gangsters, but again…

Why kill what could be used? She could hurry and take advantage of the chaos to take over, but the more this gang war would stretch out, the more these morons killed each other, the less pawns she'd have to move on the board.

There would be a final meeting Wednesday afternoon to talk about the plan of attack, on the third floor of Oasis. She could grab Lung then, then go to the speech site on Friday to grab Viktor.

And from there, it shouldn't be too difficult to grab Kaiser. One meeting where she could follow him home, one meeting of their eyes, and it would be done.

The Merchants were practically a joke, but she should probably get on their case a bit too, maybe Master a couple of their mooks. They certainly filled the bay with their trash.

Yet, despite doing the least amount of damage to the Bay, it was actually Coil that made her the most nervous.

She had firepower, convoluted ways to deal with pretty much anything barring the Endbringers and the Triumvirate. Her weakness would be her operations, her pawns, and her plans. Those could be toppled and destroyed much more easily than her.

For the same reason that the Simurgh had to die first, Coil was of a higher priority than either Lung or Kaiser and especially Skidmark. Schemers and plotters that could target those around her were the threat that she was most wary of, not brute force.

She wasn't sure what she would do about him.

Nothing right now, so she turned to Faultline's texts.

They'd bring her capes over tomorrow. Apparently, increased patrols and heat had forced them to take it slow and careful. Otherwise, they'd have Canary and Oni Lee here already.

Tomorrow suited her better. Too much to do today.

She closed her phone, and Teleported herself to her closed little drug room, appearing in the middle of her plants.

She wiggled her toes in the dirt.

It was oddly freeing.

A quick glance to the side, and she saw the watermelon-sized bag of…

Shit, what would she call this? Haze? No, too generic…

Mov?

It was certainly unique and memorable, but it sounded like off-brand Russian crack.

Moondust?

Wasn't that just slang for cocaine already? She remembered that from some old cop show.

Haze would just have to do, she guessed.

She picked up the bag from the floor and pushed it to stay with her real form as she turned into Evelynn. After waiting a couple minutes for the cooldown to pass, she Teleported to her attic and flew straight to George's house.

She flew in under his door, and found him snoring on his couch, some old cartoon playing on his barely-functioning TV.

…What channel was playing cartoons at three in the morning?

The apartment was cleaner than she'd have thought, but she did give them an overall command to clean themselves up, so maybe that helped.

She turned into herself to materialize the Haze bag into her hand, then turned into Evelynn and shapeshifted into a tall man in a suit with a featureless face.

Just another persona she was experimenting with, really. They'd know it was her anyway.

She kicked his foot.

"Wake up." She spoke in a dry male voice, and George grumbled, shifting, running a hand through his short-fuzz hair.

She was a little tempted to call up a spike from the floor and make him really wake up, not just out of impatience but also a bit of vindictiveness and a desire to finally use that facet of Evelynn's abilities, but she had to remind herself that this was a Mastered George, not the asshole she'd grabbed almost a full week ago.

Still, she was impatient.

So she planted her boot in his stomach.

He jerked up with a gagging sound, eyes wide, fully up and awake, his legs kicking as his arms jerked to grab her foot by reflex.

She pulled it back, and waited for his eyes to rise to her.

George felt recognition and relief with a healthy dose of submissive fear, so she threw the bag of Haze onto his coffee table as he quickly forced himself upright to sit on the couch like a normal person.

"First batch. Just to reiterate: you're a drug dealer, not a drug pusher. If I catch you drugging someone without their consent and knowledge, I'll turn your insides into a public modern art display. Understand?"

George went to speak, before it seemed that a bit of bile rose up his throat, and he shut his mouth, puffing his cheeks up as he fervently nodded, wrapping his arms around his bruised stomach. She might have put a bit more force into that stomp than she intended, but whatever, he'd gathered enough bad karma for a dozen deaths, he could deal with a bruise.

"Do your job, persuade, just don't trick people. Faultline's already told you what to say and to who, but re-read the message I sent you, just in case. Also, get Chut over here, you have his number. There's a seam on this plant ball. Just crack a knife into the gap and wiggle it around until you can open the bag. Don't waste your time trying to cut through the plant itself. Gather the bags and burn them when you can, in secret, preferably. Also, clean this place up better. Cleanliness is kingliness. Anything I haven't covered? Behavior, conduct, orders?"

George shook his head as he stumbled upright, looking vaguely overwhelmed but alert.

"Alright, good. Take a nap when you and Chut are done, I don't want you stumbling on your feet on the job. Good luck."

Without much else to say or do, she turned into invisible smoke and flew back out of his apartment to work on a quick project that she deemed utterly necessary.

Rejuvenation magic. Of sorts.

It was complicated.

It took a solid hour to come up with a way to conveniently make what she wanted, but she eventually got it.

First, she made eight plant-fiber braided bracelets using Zyra's power. It wasn't anything too special, just something that could photosynthesize enough to be considered a living thing.

Then she turned into Soraka The Starchild.

Soraka was a curious thing.

Taylor also somewhat hated her for being over five and a half thousand years old and forever ruining the wonders of space for her.

She was a wanderer from the celestial dimensions beyond Mount Targon, the tallest mountain of Runeterra that breached just shy of its atmosphere. Soraka eventually gave up her immortality to descend from her star-faring, celestial ways, to protect the mortal races from their own more violent instincts.

She endeavored to spread the virtues of compassion and mercy to everyone she met, even healing those who would wish harm upon her. And, for all Soraka had seen of Runeterra's struggles, she still believed the people of Runeterra had yet to reach their full potential. A very bright presence in that world, all told.

Towards the end of the world, this woman was considered a goddess, more because of her benevolence and healing abilities than actual power. She had been deified by the masses.

It had taken a bit of theory-crafting and mental organization to remember Soraka, but just before she fell asleep yesterday, she'd caught a glimpse of a star and thankfully remembered what she could do.

Those healing abilities were what she was after. Or more specifically, Soraka's ability to infuse living things with the ability to speed up recovery. During the last days of functional resistance, she had made an Eden's garden of sorts, full of magical plants that would heal the sick and injured as if every hour was a full day's rest, nudging the body with bits of healing magic where simply speeding up recovery would leave them crippled, and simply speeding things along where recovery would function just fine.

That was absolutely perfect for someone like her, who was trying to get stronger and more resilient as fast as possible.

If she just exercised and healed herself, all her progress would be lost as the Heal summoner spell would repair the damages muscles instantly. Muscle growth did not happen during exercise, it happened when the body got to rest and rebuild itself stronger, to adapt to the torture its pilot was putting it through.

So if she could significantly speed that recovery up, she would go through the natural muscle-building process in fast-forward. She could theoretically exercise to the point of self-injury, and be completely fine by tomorrow to destroy herself again. There would be no need for rest days, her soreness would leave even quicker, and she could go above and beyond the ordinary limits of the human body by simply taking risks nobody else could afford to. It was perfect.

The best thing about this was that Soraka's magic was fueled by the stars more than her mana, so once she made them, they wouldn't need any maintenance or any recharge, like many enchantments did.

Enchanting eight small bracelets when this woman would once make entire jungle plants become healing beacons?

Child's play.

She just had to take them in her hand, take a deep breath, and try not to fall over as she had the mental equivalent of an acid trip, reaching for distant stars, taking a thread of their power into herself, perverting that thread to suit her needs, then grafting said thread through the lifeforce in the plant.

It didn't take more than ten minutes before she had eight enchanted little plant bracelets, glowing with faint swirling rainbow colors and glittering like crystals. To hide that glow and general aura, she wrapped them up tight with smooth black plant fibers, allowing them to seem like little more than meaningless trinkets.

Then, two emergency contingencies. Or, four, technically.

She made the same thing, sort of, but for simple wooden earrings. Inside, they of course hid enchanted plant matter, but instead of them having a rejuvenation and recovery aura, they were basically just a damage-activated burst of healing magic.

The process of trying to quantify how much damage and what kind of damage was enough to activate the small healing spell was… bizarre, a bit like trying to wrangle a confused, magical AI consciousness into what to do, but after another ten minutes, she managed.

And it was now…

She changed back to herself, and opened her burner phone.

She blinked at the time.

Five in the morning.

No headache either. Just a bit of pressure around her mind.

She still had three to four hours before anyone at home woke up. Maybe she could go meet that mechanic that dad had connected her to, but their meeting was for Tuesday, not today.

Hm…

She quickly glanced at the plastic tubs full of scrap metal on her table, a healthy sprinkling of rust powder on the bottoms.

Not nearly enough rust to make thermite caps, and not nearly clean enough metal for her to use for making or enchanting anything either.

She needed a forge.

A modern one, specifically, but hell, even an old school forge would do. She also needed an entire alchemy laboratory to make metals that never corroded. She had a literal blacksmith demigod in her arsenal, the shit she could make would be legendary if she could just get the materials somehow.

How was it that money was always the most important thing? It was aggravating to know she could be making incredible wonders but she had to keep her head down and wait for resources, or risk discovery.

Regardless, with two pairs of earrings and two quads of rejuvenating bracelets, she decided to calm down for the day and get to jotting down some stuff.

After putting her bracelets and earrings on. Lisa could take hers later.

She kind of looked like a hippie when she looked at herself in a dirty mirror's reflection that she'd shoved into the corner, but honestly, it wasn't too bad. If anything, it made her look a bit less bland. Nice.

She also had to do power testing later today, as well as magically enchant Lisa with Lulu, the strange little fae creature, so it wasn't like she could afford to do much more at the moment.

She should have done that last bit yesterday, but just… mental clogging. Too much stuff always on her mind. Things kept slipping.

It was frustrating, but there was nothing she could do about it but try to organize tasks better.

So she teleported back to her basement, and went to the kitchen to take some quick notes.

It took half an hour for her to give up.

There was way too much stuff to do. Way too much. She'd need an entire notebook.

She paused.

Then she went to sneakily nab a notebook, and began scrawling until she heard the first signs of life grumble through the hallway.

Lisa was up.

She looked down at the notebook.

Five pages of tasks organized into subtasks and sub-subtasks…

It was a nightmare, honestly.

She snapped it shut and flew into her room to put the notebook on her desk. She wasn't worried about Lisa finding it, if anything, it would only make communication between them easier.

Then she went downstairs to start making breakfast.

More than half of it was for her, and she hated how bloated it made her feel, but she was putting on weight, so that was all she could really ask for. Turning that weight into muscle would take a bit more effort.

Her current breakfast was…

She opened the fridge, struggling to remember for a moment.

Ah, right.

A small can of pate on one slice of bread or two at max, because of how ridiculously protein-thick it was and how low it was on calories, cottage cheese, an apple, four raw eggs mixed with milk in a cup, and a couple slices of bacon.

Technically it wasn't perfectly healthy, but she wouldn't have to worry about heart disease problems or anything, so she could afford to go a bit over the top.

She turned to smoke, quickly fled back up to her desk, and hurriedly jotted down " make an actual gym in the bunker" on a random line in the paper. Then she rushed back down, turned into herself, and began cooking breakfast in earnest.

"Taylor." Her dad said as they set the table, and she sent him a questioning glance.

He gestured to the floor above with his free hand, specifically, where her room was.

"Not that I'm judging, or disapproving, but is there… something I should…" He gave her a certain look . "Be… aware of?" He carefully finished, raising his brows, and she frowned in confusion.

"Can you not beat around the bush and just ask whatever it is you're trying to ask?" She asked, and her dad sighed as he rubbed his face.

"Are you and Lisa together? I went to the bathroom at night, you weren't downstairs so I checked your room, and… yeah." He shrugged helplessly.

Oh.

She rolled her eyes.

"I mean if you like girls that's fine, but I just think you're too young to-"

"Dad, no. Just stop. Can you not make this weird? Wowee, two girls napped together. Call it personal double standards or whatever, but I could see why the assumption would be made if we were guys doing it, but we're not. If she was Emma, you wouldn't even be bringing it up. So just stop, and let me have a normal friend without making things weird, okay? You're not helping anything with this conversation." She said with a lot more bite than she intended, and felt a brief flash of guilt at the way her dad progressively recoiled as she continued.

Again he seemed to wince at the mention of him just not helping with his actions, and she quickly pinpointed that sore spot.

Not that she was intending to use it, but it was a habit. Someone's habit, she wasn't sure, it got mussed up in her head somewhere.

Of course, she was genuinely irritated. She didn't want to make this weird for Lisa and drive her away, and she was most certainly not enjoying having her dad act like he knew better than her or like he had some kind of say in what she did. That ship had sailed.

There were probably other less reasonable explanations for why she was upset, but she wasn't even sure what they were, just lurking on the edge of her thoughts.

"Taylor, I'm not-" He started, his voice raising.

" Dad." She growled with a glare, and he just sort of just stopped with a constipated expression, avoiding her gaze. "Just drop it ."

He didn't say anything after that, mutely setting the table as she cooled down.

She felt guilty for snapping at him, a bit .

Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, he didn't question the need for the GED papers she put down on the table. He just signed them without a word.

Breakfast was a bit quieter than the past few days, even if Lisa tried her best to drag them both into a conversation.

Her dad eventually went to the couch to watch TV until they had to go to the PRT.

Why he insisted on dropping her off, she wasn't sure, but she didn't trust him to keep it to himself about how she could mysteriously get there easily without any transport to speak of, so she didn't fight him on it. Best to pretend she needed transport.

She might have to Master him sooner than later.

She quickly dragged Lisa to the basement the moment they were done doing the dishes, and after flicking on the light switch, she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been slowly building up.

"Right. So, I have two gifts for you. First, I'm going to enchant you. It's permanent. Enjoy a roughly… Brute one, Mover one status. Yes, you will still need to exercise to increase your strength and stamina further, and yes, I will drag you with me." She said as she moved down the steps, and heard Lisa's huff behind her.

"Dang. I'm not even sure if you mentioned you could do that… Thank you. People would literally kill to be able to get Brute-Mover 1. 'Enchanting' is a bit of a strange word to use though. Are you a Myrddin fan?" Lisa snorted, and Taylor's step stuttered for a moment as she realized what she'd said.

There wasn't too much harm in it, she honestly trusted Lisa by now, but still, better to let their bond strengthen a bit before springing up a mild amount of insanity into the mix by explaining Runeterra.

"Eeeh not… really. It's just that a lot of these capes are from a world a lot more superstitious and medieval than ours, at least in parts, so their wording and styles get muddled up with the rest of my thoughts sometimes. To them, this is all magic and divine gifts, blah blah." She lied with a dismissive wave of her hand, as smoothly as she breathed, and Lisa let out a 'huh' of acknowledgement.

"What's the second gift?" Lisa asked with a tone like a kid trying not to seem too eager for their present during Christmas.

She felt her lips twitch into a smile.

"A girl's best friend. Supposedly. Besides you, of course. Jewelry. Well, enchanted jewelry." She said with a semi-sarcastic tone, and Lisa clicked her tongue.

"Better be diamonds boss, I'll have you know I'm a very high maintenance employee."

"You won't be getting any promotions with that attitude Miss Wilbourn." She hummed dubiously, and spun on her heel as she came to the middle of the basement.

Lisa snickered as she came to a stop in front of her.

She reached into her baggy hoodie pockets, sending a quick thank you to the hoodie gods for this article of clothing having such deep pockets, and took out four semi-elastic circular black bands, as well as two light-colored wooden earrings.

They looked mundane and barely added flavor to one's image, and that was half the point of their design. Not being eye-catching.

Lisa's eyes checked her palms, then immediately jerked up to the earrings Taylor was wearing already, before going down to her wrists, correctly guessing that the things Taylor was wearing were the same thing she was offering.

"I knew something was a tad strange when I saw those, but my power thought you were trying to change up your style until now. Not that it's giving me much right now, honestly. It just says they're likely serving a secondary purpose or have some kind of unknown effect." Lisa seemed intrigued.

"Well, close enough. Let me tell you. These bracelet things," She started, lightly stretching one of them between her fingers. It didn't stretch too much. It wasn't rubber. "Are basically a recovery booster. So instead of being a boneless potato after a run for say, four hours, you'd be a boneless potato for maybe an hour before you recovered. And since they don't heal, not exactly-"

Lisa's eyes widened.

"They'll help me build muscle and endurance with minimal downtime. And to catch my breath like four times as fast. That's… I'm not sure I'll need it if you're about to enchant me, but… wow." Lisa laughed, stretching her hand with a look that asked for permission.

She handed over all four.

"They're not really designed to come off, and they're not very flexible, so it might be a bit of a pain in the ass to slide the ankle bracelets past your ankles, but they can be cut with a knife if needed. Don't worry about them, they were cheap and easy to make. The harder thing was the earrings. They're basically like… automatic healing dispensers, one time use for each. If something gets through your suit and does a considerable amount of damage, it'll heal you once."

Lisa paused in the middle of wiggling a bracelet onto her wrist. She blinked at her. Then down at the earrings on her free hand. Then went back to staring at her.

"How long did this take you to make?"

"Less than an hour for all of these."

"I'm absolutely fucking seething with jealousy." Lisa grumbled, despite the growing smile on her face, and she hurriedly slid them on.

Taylor watched with quiet amusement as Lisa hopped around like a crippled rabbit, trying to force the ankle bracelet past her ankles, until ten minutes later, she finally got it, and collapsed back onto the stairs, panting.

"Why… exactly… are you even worried about money then? Do you have… any idea… how much money… capes will pay… for even a few of these… earrings? Do they need… I dunno, maintenance?" Lisa let out between panting breaths.

She hummed, brows furrowing.

"No, not really. I could try to find some customers for these, I guess..."

Lisa's face turned contemplative.

"I might be able to hit up Toybox to put these up for… auction. Uh, Toybox is… a Tinker black market. It's a bit hard to find them… though. I'll check around." Lisa said, breaths significantly lighter, then she blinked in surprise. "Wait, I already feel a lot better. Holy shit, this works fast. Oh my god, come here." Lisa rushed out, her voice raising in excitement as she pushed off the stairs, beelining to her.

She just stood there, mildly confused, until Lisa yanked her forward into a tight, tight hug.

"Fuck you, this isn't a gift. It's too good, and you can't be giving me so much stuff for free. I'm paying you like, at least two grand for this." Lisa rushed out, muffled into her shoulder, and she chuckled as she hugged her back.

"No offense, but if you were to pay me for your suit, your look change, your enchantment, and all of these, you'd be my eternal debt slave."

Lisa giggled.

"Yeah, probably. Consider the two grand a gift too then."

"Hm, of course. Pleasure doing business with you Miss Wilbourn. Now, if you could unlatch yourself, I want to enchant you then drag you for a run."

"Whyyyy?" Lisa groaned miserably. "I rescind my gift offer." She followed up petulantly, letting her legs go limp so she was basically hanging onto Taylor.

She couldn't help but roll her eyes as she lightly jabbed Lisa's side, finding her yelp and jerk incredibly amusing.

"Get off, you pouty gremlin. I'm going to make you an olympic athlete or kill you trying."

"That's not how the saying goes."

"That's how my saying goes."

"I'll double my gift?"

"No. Off."

"I hate running! I get all wet and sticky and gross and my hair glues itself together!" Lisa whined, digging her face into her shoulder.

"You won't hate running when you've got an angry nazi murder blender chasing you down the street. Or when you can outrun a chasing car. Now, come on, get off you lazy goblin -" She laughed, jabbing Lisa's sides as she tried to squirm on top of her, until eventually, she hit a ticklish spot and Lisa squealed and jumped back.

"Ow, owahaha-ow." Lisa grimaced, giggling and wincing, warding her off with a half-raised hand.

"Wear this before I kill you via tickling asphyxiation." She deadpanned, unable to contain her smile as she tossed Lisa the eye mask she used last time.

It hit Lisa in the face, making her flinch back and flail to grab it with her hand. Taylor snickered a little, raising a hand to hide her mouth.

"I'll wear it if you- ha ha- pretend you didn't- hear that squeal." Lisa said with a prim voice of a diplomat as she fought her giggles and hurriedly clipped the earrings on, shoving the face mask into her pocket.

"What squeal?" She asked with faux innocence, pitching her voice high and pure as a lamb, widening her eyes like a puppy with a vacant smile.

Lisa's expression shifted into a disturbed, incredulous squint.

"...Oh my fucking god. Never do that again, what the hell." Lisa shuddered, sounding genuinely horrified.

She snorted as she dropped the expression.

"Why not?"

"I feel like I just watched a horror movie trilogy condensed into two seconds."

"...Why?"

"Uncanny valley."

"Oh my f… just put on the stupid blindfold." She sighed, before directing a mock glare at Lisa, making evil wiggly fingers at her.

"Okay, okay, jeez!"

"... When I said jump, I did not mean straight up, into the ceiling, into the light bulb. " She sighed, and Lisa glared at her.

"Shouldn't you be worried 'cause there's glass in my hair?"

"You'll live. My lightbulb didn't."

"Poor thing."

"You're paying for its funeral and replacement."

"Truly, a crippling cost." Lisa said in breathless faux-despair, gasping with her hand over her mouth.

She snorted, flicking a piece of glass out of Lisa's hair to tumble off into the basement stairs.

"You're also cleaning up the mess. At least it worked though. That was a jump only an olympic athlete could probably manage. You should also be a decent bit faster now, so… I don't know, shadowbox in the shower or something to get used to it. Just don't hit the wall. And no, you're not giving me two grand, I don't need it. Best friends and annoying sisters get a one hundred percent discount. Or you can consider it your initial payment and employment bonus."

Lisa smiled with a soft puff of laughter.

"Thanks. Really. I'd hug you if I wasn't scared of getting glass on you. I should probably go shower or something."

"I mourn for our water bill…" She sighed, and Lisa lightly punched her shoulder.

"Hey come on, you'd want to clean up obsessively too if you went a damn month without a single shower. Lung's an unhygienic dickwad."

"Yeah fine, just go, I'll clean up the glass. Don't want you getting cut. Your skin is probably not much tougher than rubber. Meet me on the Boardwalk after I'm done messing with the heroes, I'll text you. We'll run back home together." She shooed Lisa away, despite her grumblings about the torture of exercise.

Then she went down into the basement, and with the pretext of cleaning, began to send instructions and shopping lists to her minions.

The PRT building was…

More interesting than she expected. It was surrounded by outwards slanting walls capped by razorwire and spotlights. The main, open entrance was large and imposing and impeccably clean, and the whole vibe was a lot more militaristic than she'd expected. Two troopers with foam sprayer thingies guarded the public entrance, and just beyond them, she could see what looked like an armored office building, was the best way to put it. Only the ground floor was really open, the rest was iron and steel plates that were leaning outwards from the windows like exhaust directing grates, likely able to close and open at will should there be a lockdown.

The main worry she had was about how the hell she was going to walk in there without someone seeing her, but the PRT had apparently informed her dad about the secondary, secret back entrance that was wrapped around the back of the building and surrounded by thick shrubbery grown around high metal walls.

This was apparently used by visitors, PRT employees, and heroes, so even if someone saw them come in, it was supposedly safe.

She put on her domino mask and subtly wished she could have shapeshifted herself permanently somehow as she hopped out.

"I'll meet up with Lisa after and walk back with her. Bye dad." She said, and closed the door shut before he could object.

He made a complicated face, then nodded, driving off as she turned to the guards at the entrance, a folder full of papers tucked under her right arm.

She walked up, and before the trooper could speak, she gave him the entire file.

"First page is ID copy."

He briefly opened it, then spoke into his headset, something too muffled for her to hear with the soft rustle of leaves all around her.

He nodded a moment later, and gave her the file back.

"Head inside, there will be a woman waiting for you." The trooper spoke, and she nodded to him with a faint smile as she took her papers back.

The gate behind him quickly slid to the side, and she walked not even twenty feet into the silent back end of the office… not building, office complex, she could see now. The place was deceptively huge when not viewed from the front. Likely deliberately made so.

Her eyes flit to a woman in a pencil skirt that was rushing over, dirty blonde hair and waif-thin, appearing a bit flushed as she adjusted her glasses with a wide smile.

"Ah hello! Usually, we'd have a hero to do introductions and such, but I'm afraid all the adult Protectorate members are in an event in New York. My name is Maria." The woman extended a hand, and she shook it, not replying.

The woman kept talking thankfully.

"Now, usually, we'd already have sent you to The Rig for initial power testing, but due to your rather unique circumstances, we'll have to conduct the initial interview we usually do when a young parahuman expresses interest in the Wards first, then go do that. It won't be too long, just ten, maybe twenty minutes." The woman smiled, and gestured her forward as she began a brisk walk.

She followed mutely, past another couple of security guards, up an elevator, then into a room that looked like someone took an interrogation room and tried to make it cozy to middling success. Brown, soft carpet, cushioned chairs, soft brown-orange walls. Not bad.

This was likely some kind of refurbished police station, now that she thought of it.

The woman quickly sat down, and Taylor followed.

"So, these are some simple questions to give us a general idea of your personality, your goals, and how we can accommodate you." The woman started, and Taylor immediately began translation from corporate bullshit to English in the privacy of her mind.

They wanted to know how difficult she would be to work with, and likely what her natural disposition would be. What they might need to work around.

She had no plan of being here long, and she wished to establish a certain kind of short-lived image for when she broke off, as well as plant a healthy dose of misdirection if possible.

"So, first question. Why do you want to be a Ward?" Maria asked, steepling her hands and smiling.

She faked a smile back.

Now for a dash of maturity and childlike innocence to throw them off.

"Well, I like helping people. Makes me feel nice and fuzzy inside, you know? I was also bullied severely in my old school, and I can't help but feel like society at large is… kind of the same thing, you know? It's just nice people trying to live their lives, but there's always some bullies making everything miserable for everyone or pulling them down. In school, I always wanted someone to help me, or the victims in general, but nobody ever did. And… I'd always ask 'why doesn't someone with power do something?' So, now that I have powers, and villains exist, it's… uh. I feel like its my… civic… duty? To help, I mean. Like I wish I was helped, in school. Because villains are basically just bullies. S-sorry, does, uhm… that make sense? I'm uh, I didn't know we'd be doing an interview." She slowly began to fumble her words in a believable manner, injecting a healthy dose of uncertainty in her voice, wringing her hands.

Acting and lying was absurdly easy at this point. She hadn't even prepared anything in advance and she was breezing through this. Even if it was a tad grating to act like a naive kid.

Ooh, wait, maybe some kind of bipolar misdirection? That sounded fun, and would give plausible reasoning to her eventual sudden break-off, however she decided to go through with it.

Maria smiled earnestly, wide and soft.

"No worries, this isn't an exam! Just speak from the heart. It'll help us establish what you want, what kind of image you naturally fit into, things like that. Next question. How do you think you'd best serve the Protectorate and the citizens, in your own opinion?"

She shuffled nervously, fake of course, and hummed uncertainly.

She also made sure to avoid eye contact. Not only because it made her look more nervous, but because Lisa told her to. Apparently meeting her eyes felt like having a sudden staring contest with the combined entirety of the Slaughterhouse nine, whatever the hell that meant. She was definitely exaggerating, and Taylor wasn't sure what caused her stare to be so "unnerving", but judging by how few people met her eyes anymore besides Lisa, she couldn't say that Lisa was just imagining it.

"Well, I'm… pretty tough when I activate my power, and very fast, but I can't fly or find people easily at all. So uh, probably by beating up the bad guys? I'm… really itching to improve myself too. I- I don't know if its from my powers or whatnot, but I feel very… ready to fight, or exercise, or just physically improve . So I'd probably best help by hitting the bad guys or… lifting cars off people?" She shrugged, and Maria nodded with some kind of sound of acknowledgement.

"That's admirable. When you think of hero work, what does that look like in your head?"

She took a moment to think of it.

Honestly, she had no idea. She imagined it was something like being the wardens to a city of madness and trying to contain all the violent crazies without indirectly getting the squishy harmless prisoners hurt. But she didn't know.

"I uhm… I guess it looks like… fighting bad guys and helping people? Trying to make sure nobody gets hurt?"

The woman nodded.

"Quite right, of course, though it is a bit more nuanced than that. The last question is a bit simpler, but also a bit of a tough one. What do you think justice is?"

To her, the answer was a complicated mess that loosely aligned with the Noxian ideal of 'two eyes for one' , but she couldn't say that. So after a couple seconds of pretending to think, she shrugged.

"I uhm, I honestly don't know. I think it's probably best for people who are like… lawyers and… stuff. To uh, decide what justice is. I don't think I know what real justice is, not yet at least?"

Maria's smile was basically a beam at this point, and she knew she said everything these people wanted to hear.

"I-"

An alarm suddenly began to ring throughout the floor, and she turned to the door, blinking.

"Ah, don't worry, there's no threat here. That's the response team alarm. There's likely some disturbance involving parahumans somewhere, so there will be a few teams mobilizing with the Wards. There'll be a bit of chaos for a bit, but it shouldn't impact our schedule."

"Oh."

Her mind raced.

Chaos, chaos.

A PRT employee who seemed to be on some desk job, nice and approachable, no heroes in the building, and chaos.

She could use this. She could use this right now while everyone was rushing and reeling.

After a moment of silence that stretched into awkwardness, she cleared her throat.

"I- I'm sorry to ask, but is- is there any chance you could accompany me to the bathroom? A… Alarms make me a little… uhm. Anxious. And nauseous. It's… in the asylum, it wasn't good when t-there was an alarm." She spoke, genuinely finding it difficult to stutter and speak so timidly. The challenge was kind of fun, a bit of a thrill.

But the woman's smile softened.

"Of course. Come with me. I'll sit outside."

"N-No, could you, uhm, come in? Just to make sure nobody uh, peeks into the stall or uh, hits the door… it's, my bullies used to do stuff like that, I'm sorry, I'm just a little on edge right now." She eked out, crossing her arms and hunching her shoulders a little.

Maria got up and nodded with a reassuring smile.

"Alright, I'll come in. It's no problem. Come with me. Though I do assure you, there is no threat here, if it helps."

She got up without replying, and followed the woman to the bathroom.

She was not kidding. The halls were littered with rushing agents and armored men, people rushing with phones on their hands, a low tier of generalized chaos.

It was such a good opportunity.

A hint of her conscience protested Mastering a woman that seemed genuinely sweet and caring, but another reasoned something simple.

She wouldn't be disrupting this woman's life in any way, nor making her do evil things or putting her in danger. Depending on how she was like, she might have to make the woman respect her and be more loyal to her than even to herself, but she wouldn't make the woman obsessed with her by any means.

At worst, Maria might be discovered, at which point, she might face prison time for espionage or leaking information to third parties and such…

Which, alright, that wasn't exactly something light, but she could always just break the woman out and bring her with her to work for her, it wasn't like her life would be over.

Plus, she needed people on the inside, that wasn't negotiable.

The bathrooms would not have cameras too, so it was a perfect setup here, right on her first day. The sheer audacity would also probably mask her actions, especially after such an interview. Definitely a recorded one. Maria had no notebook or recorder on her.

So that was why the moment the bathroom door closed behind them, she turned into Evelynn, and spent a split second to shapeshift back to herself.

Advanced senses confirmed that there was only one other woman in here doing her... uh, business, so it was safe enough.

She tapped Maria's shoulder, and their eyes met when the woman turned around.

She did not plunge into her mind, so much as she simply charmed her, sending a pleasant, fuzzy fog to overtake the woman's thoughts as her eyes flared and shifted in minute, hypnotizing patterns.

Maria's mouth opened slowly, lethargically, but before her surprise could register, her eyes glazed over, unfocused, thoughts scattering like in a fuzzy little dream.

Perfect.

She wrapped an arm around the woman's waist, and in her suggestible state, leaned close.

"Hold onto me. Be quiet." She whispered.

Maria obeyed, shifting her arms to hold onto her shoulders, and Tayor shapeshifted to be a bit taller, her one arm around the woman's waist more than enough to lift her up and carry her to the corner stall, slowly creeping in and closing the door behind her.

One flick of the lock, and she set Maria down.

The ability to charm, hypnotize, and effect the mind was something she should have probably been using more of, but there was usually no need for it, at least not up until now.

And here, she had more than a couple minutes of privacy to make this woman her insider in the PRT, even if it would take her a while to climb the ladder to be where she really needed her.

She leaned closer, and locked her limbs in place.

Her eyes flashed bright gold.

Chapter 24

Notes:

bruh this shit long af

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

She pulled out of Maria's mind, and only felt a bit like someone gave her a hard shove rather than a punch to the gut made out of exhaustion.

It was getting easier to not mess up or get tired.

She took a deep breath, and let it out in a sigh as she straightened, allowing Maria to take a moment to focus back into the real world, taking the time to grab the woman's hand and poke a little pinprick on her finger with an invisible tentacle. She quickly lapped up the drop of blood, and backed up.

It took a couple seconds to clear the mental fog, but when it did, Maria didn't really… seem different.

Just a bit shocked? Maybe? She was staring at her with wide eyes, glancing at the stall around them with a faint sense of puzzlement.

"Uhm. Apologies, I must have… zoned out. Is everything alright? Are you okay?" Eventually Maria asked, staring down at her eyes directly with a slight, growing feeling of unease, concern and confusion, and Taylor felt her brows raise.

Did she… not remember being Mastered?

Why-

Was it because she stuffed her head full of the mental equivalent of a slightly euphoric drug buzz?

Wait, of course it was!

For a moment, she contemplated the benefits of slamming her head into the wall.

Evelynn never bothered slamming people with changes like she did, she preferred a surgeon's touch and pavlovian conditioning to make her sex and torture pets how she wanted them to be. She found it more fun.

But somewhere in those dozen thousand years of existence, near the start, she might have done it for a few years until she felt it was too easy and changed her pets without that salty aftertaste of despair that came by naturally twisting them.

She probably did do this exact thing at some point, but she couldn't really be sure.

Even a demon didn't have a memory that ran that long, at least not flawlessly.

Still, she should have known she could do this. Evelynn had probably done this herself, and even so, she knew how her 'magic' worked. She felt like bashing her head into a wall.

No, she was too frustrated right now in too public a place. She should calm down and get her head back in the game.

So, with a deep breath, she did.

Now, to act or not to act?

Something in between?

"I'm perfectly fine. Would you mind giving me your phone number real quick?" She asked, and Maria nodded, quickly reaching into a handbag that Taylor hadn't even notice was hanging off her arm the entire time.

"If you don't mind me asking, how did we get here, exactly? I suppose I… zoned out?" Maria asked hesitantly, and quickly dug out two phones.

"... Why do you have two phones?" She whispered, confused, and Maria lifted up the bulkier one.

"PRT phone," Maria started, then lifted the slimmer one. "Personal phone. Why are we whispering?" Maria asked, giving an anxious glance to the door, or likely, the chaos outside.

"There's someone in here and I don't want her to hear us. Give me your personal phone number."

Maria put the bulky one in the bag, and then spun the slick one around to find her own contact, scrolling through menus.

Now, what to tell her?

Well, what she didn't really know didn't really hurt her, but it might.

And Maria had enough acceptance embedded into her to not even blink at her if she told her she was a member of the S9, so there was no need to know why she would be giving her information. If she asked, Maria would tell her.

"You kinda did zone out there. You should probably go for a doctor's check-up if you don't remember how we got here. That sounds a bit concerning." She whispered back, conscious of the woman in the next stall over that was currently washing her hands.

She almost told her not to go for an MRI scan before she remembered that she didn't alter the brain, she altered the mind.

The brain would quickly synchronize, of course, but not with the kind of speed that would indicate something anomalous in the brain waves, hopefully.

Maria nodded with a slight, anxious mumble, then found her phone number, and turned the phone around to show it to her.

She hadn't brought her burner phone with her because that seemed like a security risk, especially if they had some kind of procedure where she might have to part with it, so she simply glared at the phone number as she memorized it.

'Perfect Focus' made it trivial, and after five seconds, she nodded.

"Okay, put it away. I'll contact you later from an unknown number with the words 'The world words shine strangely'. That will be me. Put me in your contacts when you see it, alright?"

Maria nodded, some anxiety and confusion still roiling in her head.

"Now, I have some orders for you. First of all, you will feed me information you might consider relevant to cape life and general goings-on. Operations, PRT rumor and gossip, whatever you can reasonably get your hands on without risking discovery. Do you have a family, relationship, super close friends?"

Maria nodded.

"My parents who moved to Philadelphia, and a brother in Plymouth. No close friends or anything else, unfortunately." Maria whispered, and a tinge of sadness soured the air.

So no children or boyfriend or any children. Thank fuck.

She wasn't a saint, but if Maria had said she had a husband or a daughter or a son, she'd have completely called the whole thing off and let the woman go on with her days. It's one thing to put a woman in a bit of a risky spot, it's an entirely different one to put a family woman in a place that could ruin an entire familial ecosystem.

"Okay. So, next order. Do your absolute best to climb the career ladder so you can get to a higher ranking position to feed me better info. Preferably stick to Brockton Bay until further notice, or just ask me if an opportunity pops up. But do not sacrifice your health and personal life to do so, if possible. You're a good woman and you deserve to be happy. Alright?"

And she was a good woman. A surprisingly good one.

Maybe she was unnecessarily jaded, but she was expecting about half the cheer and lightness the woman exuded to be some kind of front to something worse beneath, but no. It was genuine.

She kind of wished Maria had been a bitch deep down, so she wouldn't feel that slight tinge of guilt for this, but whatever. She'd dealt with worse.

Maria smiled at the compliment, and her incredulous, slightly anxious mix of emotions faded for something nicer and more determined. She nodded.

Good.

"Okay, third order. You already know this deep down because you're a good woman, and a genuinely smart one, but do not tell anyone anything about me that could end up hurting or exposing me. So if someone asks what happened when we walked into this bathroom, or what I told you…"

Maria frowned in thought for only a moment before her features took a puzzled twist.

"Then this conversation didn't happen, and you didn't really tell me much besides apologizing for dragging me here?" Maria asked, somewhat uncertainly.

So she was a good liar too, if she had to. The perks of being socially adept.

She smiled.

"Yes, good. Of course, you won't tell them about what you feel about me either, or why you decided to follow through with this. But, on the off-chance that you are caught, I want you to say that you were Mastered into all of this, and if they ask, say that you can say you were Mastered because the cape that did it explicitly let you say it if you were to be caught, as a sort of mercy. But do not say anything else."

Maria blinked at her in confusion.

"Why would I say I was Mastered?"

Holy shit.

She genuinely had no clue.

Damn it, this was going to be a bit finicky. Having to dodge lie detectors was her main issue here. If Maria knew she was Mastered, she'd completely crash a lie detector test. The woman was a good liar, but not that good.

And she had no idea what kind of screening processes people in the PRT went through to get to the higher seats.

"Because if they catch you, then you were Mastered by me in this very moment. If you're not caught doing what you're doing for me and detained, you were not Mastered by me, ever. Understand?"

Maria opened her mouth, furrowed her brow, tilted her head, pushed her glasses back into place, a bit, and shifted.

"I'm… not sure that makes sense?"

She shook her head.

"Sense doesn't matter. It is fact. That is how my power works, and powers don't have to make sense. Retroactive precognition mixed with time travel paradoxes." She said, spouting some random bullshit that might somewhat make sense if one squinted and took some LSD.

"Powers don't make sense, but they just are. They're a fact, they're there, they're accepted. So that's how this works. You were never Mastered or influenced by me or anyone, of course. But if the PRT catches you leaking information to me and tried to interrogate you or detain you, then yes, you were Mastered in a predetermined point in past time that I will not tell you about so you cannot know. Alright? Understand?" She asked, and much to her surprise, after a few moments of silent processing, Maria did nod, and she did feel like she understood.

How the hell Maria twisted that mess around in her head to make sense, she wasn't sure, but she sure was grateful.

"That is an odd power. Not at all what was described in your file either." Maria half-asked with an inquisitive smile. "I assume you want to keep this power a secret too?"

Good, good.

This woman was smart.

She had been worried that through some logical Master-deficient loophole, Maria would leak everything and get her a Kill Order signed pronto, but she had enough sense to understand basic op-sec.

Well, she worked in the PRT, it made sense.

"Yes. I do. Now, let's get out before this becomes suspicious or weird. Nobody is in the bathroom, leave first. Continue as normal." She whispered, and Maria nodded with a smile, only a tiny hint of anxiety in her still lingering from that apparently random bout of memory loss she had.

Had she not put acceptance into the woman's mind, she would have connected the obvious dots, but if it came from her mouth, then she was right and there was no need to think of it much further.

Unbudging acceptance did wonders.

As Maria stepped outside, then out onto the hallway, she took a moment to mentally prepare herself, and switched back to herself, going to wash her hands for the sake of appearances.

Then she walked outside, and Maria escorted her to the PRT vehicle heading for The Rig with a smile, past rushing troopers, past a screen tuned to a local news channel, and outside to the right of the building.

It was actually a tad labyrinthian now that she walked through its halls. Open bridges between three three-storied buildings, some snaking around, some going through other buildings entirely, and most simply arranged like an odd mixture between a university, a military base, and an office block. It wasn't much bigger than a university, but still, it was larger than she expected, and oddly deserted.

Like it was built for a city much bigger than this and the future just didn't hold up to that expanding dream.

Practically a perfect metaphor for the Bay itself, really.

The PRT building was like a figurehead up front, behind it was a large open space for speeches and events most likely, and all around that open space was the rest of the complex.

And there were so many goddamn cameras. It was ridiculous.

Still, a simple walk through this place and some seemingly innocuous, curious questions, had given her the knowledge of where the troopers kept most of their gear, where the containment foam canisters and tanks were stored and where the grenades were kept, where troopers could sleep if there was an emergency that required excessive overtime, where the real lethal options were hidden, and even the gymnasiums where they would train.

It was enlightening.

Already, she could see lines form in her mind, barricades and traps and places to strike to send the whole fortress tumbling down, the path of least resistance for a group of men or capes to take to ruin any cohesive response the complex could bring against assault.

Maybe she should point out some weaknesses to the PRT in some anonymous email or something.

She was taken to a large, square metal box that was quite similar to an armored, monitored hangar, albeit significantly less tall. Vehicles of all types covered the place, including even a few boats and some of those hovercraft things that could go on any terrain, shoved in the corner. There were even four helicopters perched on the back of some… fork-lift like vehicle likely meant to drag them outside onto open air. They didn't look particularly well-cared for, armored, or armed, but they'd probably fly well enough for them to keep track of some foot chase or something if needed. Which was likely their purpose in general.

For the most part though, it was a mix between bulky rapid response cars like someone took a police car, threw tank plates on it, and painted it black, armored military vehicles like hummers and humvees and even personnel carriers, sans the turrets up top, all aso painted black and covered in the PRT logo. Most of the armored jeeps looked like they could take a beating from Lung and keep moving.

She paused for a moment in awe.

Her first thought was fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck those things look fucking hot as shit! She wanted those!

It was a strange childish glee that she knew many boys felt in their early years, seeing something and just inwardly sperging out because holy shit those things look so tough and cool. It was almost stereotypical, the young kid and his obsession with cool cars, or cool swords, or shining armor. A classic.

She could really fucking relate right now. The sheer intimidation factor of seeing this stuff patrolling the streets would make half the gangs pucker up or hide in their holes a bit more.

So… why the hell didn't they? Why were these beasts literally gathering dust in a fucking hangar shoved into the back of the PRT complex?

This was more of a small army base than a huge police station. Which made sense since this organization was all about fighting or responding to cape bullshit, but she hadn't expected this.

It wasn't like she couldn't figure out where this all came from. Most of this was likely literally given to them by the military, which was slowly getting cut because nobody wanted to go to war when everyone was fighting a small scale permanent civil war in their territories between capes.

Still, she inwardly bumped up the PRT by several notches on the potential threat rating.

...If they could ever be bothered to use the shit they had. It was just… why have all this gorgeous armor and never use it!?

…

She was probably starting to sound like Squealer at this point, wasn't she?

Still, these things gave her ideas. Little visions of what the future could be.

"Everything alright?" Maria asked with a kind, puzzled smile, and she shook herself out of it, resuming her walk.

"Yeah, just… why the ff- heck are all these things sitting here gathering dust? Wouldn't it be better to get them out and patrol, letting the criminals and the villains know you're just around the corner?" She asked innocently as she matched stride with Maria again, eyeing the troopers that were rushing past and around them into the cars, the fastest vehicles they could find.

"Ah, that's mostly because the PRT is not a police force. We're technically Special Forces meant to deal with parahumans, and now that the military has less use for most Special Forces, that is actually where a lot of our captains and other troopers come from, though an unfortunate amount of Americans of the military have turned to overseas mercenary work instead. That, and people would prefer not to live with small tanks driving around. Makes things uneasy and tense. Oh and, I think there's some logic for not pushing villains too much. It's the 'cornered rat' mindset. A rat with a way out will take it, but if it's shoved into a corner without an exit, it will fight quite viciously. And that gets both infrastructure and people hurt, when villains feel cornered twenty four seven." Maria rushed out like a chatterbox, and she hummed in acknowledgement as she processed that.

She hadn't gone in here with rainbows and glitter in her eyes, but still, it was a tad disappointing to see that the PRT thought this way.

It was more realistic and reasonable though. She couldn't really judge this method too much, especially with how absurdly outnumbered the heroes were in Brockton.

Maria led her to one of the more normal looking cars that looked like an armored police vehicle, with only a single man in a slightly ruffled buttoned up shirt with a black tie. Male, well-built, appearing bored. Armed, judging by how he was right handed and his left arm moved oddly when moving over his chest.

A chest holster? Wasn't that a self-shooting hazard or something?

Regardless, her raised his head, gave a polite smile and a nod, and swung the door open to get in.

Maria opened the door for her, and after giving the woman a raised brow, she slunk into the car. The blonde entered from the other door, and they began the trip to The Rig.

Pistol is Tinkertech. Modelled after the 1911-

She yanked her power back on track with a slight twitch of her brow.

Grip and way of handling suggests Trickster is unfamiliar with it. Travellers do not have any Tinkers. Travellers do not have the resources to buy Tinkertech. Travellers have a backer. Non-standard actions suggest this is a job for said backer. Backer is Coil. Tense-

Lisa clenched her jaw and turned her head away.

Just her fucking luck.

She glanced back at the hideous monster pacing around them, some bizarre mix between a gorilla and a crocodile with a giant fuck-off anaconda as a tail, its disturbingly human eyes jerking around to keep them all in her sight.

Genesis body language is subdued. Tightness around the eyes, lingering stares. Feels guilty. Does not want to do this job. Feels like she has to. Does not care about the money. Driven by personal reasons. Emotional reasons. Seeks to use Coil to assist someone she cares about. Travellers doing this job to assist one of their own members. Believe Coil can help.

Now that, that was useful information, but they weren't giving her much info to give to Tay.

Still, she was in no mood to put herself in the bastard's sights, so she just had to keep herself quiet and wait for these assholes to leave so she could go to some other bank. There was another one in the Bay, somewhere.

Even so, she wanted to fuck with the bastard. She wanted to scramble his minions goddamn brains and make them realise how fucking stupid they were, what little tools they were.

Just like her, but these fuckers did this willingly. No gun to the head, as far as she could tell from the glimpse she got of Sundancer and Genesis.

"What the fuck is taking her so long?" Trickster grumbled, antsy and jittery, glancing back to the vault. "Gen, stay here." He barked, and suddenly, a fake potted plant replaced him, and he was in the only visible corner, sprinting out of sight to the vault.

So his power needed line of sight. Good info.

She swept her eyes back to the crowd.

She could needle Genesis a bit. She was more emotional about this than Trickster, or at least showed it more. Just a bit of prodding, hopefully something that wouldn't make Genesis tell Coil. And if he did come to know, well too bad. By the time he learned, Taylor would have given her a completely new look and even voice, if she asked.

She was scared, but she also wanted to know more. She wanted to be useful to Taylor. She didn't like taking and taking and not giving back enough, it felt unfair. She owed Tay… pretty much fucking everything.

And this might somehow lead her to figure out something about Coil that could put the bastard under Tay's heel quicker.

So she took a deep breath.

"You know that skinny bastard won't help you right?" She asked, and Genesis's snake tail tilted to eye her, her steps coming to a slow stop. She stared back, appearing calmer than she felt, still flat on the floor.

Is unsure of who you're referring to. Assumes you mean Trickster. Tense, assumes you're a parahuman but is uncertain.

"That coiling snake is lying to you."

Genesis went very, very still.

Is certain you are referring to Coil. Curious and alarmed.

"He's just trying to use you. He's going to use your teammate as leverage to control you and stall for time endlessly, stringing you along until you've outlived your use. Then he's going to discard you. Whatever bullshit he's fed you, he's not going to help your friend."

Genesis was just staring at her.

Alarmed, cautious, uncertain. Is considering calling for Trickster. Doesn't know what to do. Is afraid that what you said is right. Has been suspecting the same. Has lost too much hope in anything improving to really believe Coil.

"He won't even let you break off, even if he did suddenly grow a conscience and decide to help. He doesn't like loose ends, and if he doesn't kill you himself using another set of pawns, he'll let you die in a fire he ordered you to light for him as he crawls back into his hole." She growled, forgetting to control her anger.

Twitched at the word 'hole'. Believes you know where Coil is. She knows where Coil's base is. Base is underground.

Yeah no shit, she knew that already, shut up power.

If it told her where that underground was, it would have been better.

"What do you think happened to the Undersiders? You think those guys just randomly chose to hit up Lung's casino? Coil paid them to do it. Then he ditched them, left them to die. He will do the same to you. My advice? E-"

A flash of movement caught the corner of her eye, and a mousy girl with curly brown hair dashed forward to slap her hand onto Genesis's knee.

And nothing happened.

Both Lisa and Genesis, along with most of the lobby itself, paused and turned their heads to gawk at the girl, who was standing there wide-eyed and incredulous, staring up at Genesis with an expression of muted terror trying to shift into anger.

Was expecting something to happen. Is parahuman, Striker. Biokinetic. Stature, features and power all suggest Panacea. Was planning to knock Genesis out, her power does not work on Genesis. Genesis's power does more than alter and mesh biology. Genesis's power is too intertwined with her to be a Changer. Genesis is a biological projection or summon. Controller is not here.

That was useful but-

Panacea cringed back with a glare, falling on her ass and scrambling back, still half-raised off the floor.

"You're Panacea." Genesis spoke, a strangely soft rumble.

Awed, hopeful. Thinks Panacea could help their teammate. Sees her as their only viable option. Lisa Wilbourn's previous words reinforce this belief by making her further lose hope in Coil as an alternative.

Genesis dropped to her knees without a second thought, lowering her towering bulk as if to appear less threatening, and Panacea's eyes widened further as she jerked back.

"No no, relax. I'm not going to hurt you. You're Panacea. I've seen your face on the, the websites, and TVs. Amy Dallon." Genesis rumbled, and Panacea's eyes lowered into a glare as she tensed, glancing towards Trickster's direction.

"I… Can you help us?" Genesis asked.

Amy's glare swerved back into a look that looked simultaneously offended, incredulous, scared, and hateful.

"I- what? Do I look like a villain?" Amy snarled, backpedalling.

Genesis winced and didn't follow, a strange motion on an eight foot tall behemoth of scales.

"No, no, not with- with this. We're… we're doing this in exchange for getting help for a friend of ours. The- the girl knows."

Expects you to back her up.

Yeah, no.

Genesis turned back to Amy, palms up and hands open, softly gesticulating.

"Her power disfigured her, badly. We're doing this because someone said they could help us in exchange for doing things for them. We don't want to do this. I, we'll turn ourselves in if you can fix her, we'll become heroes, or leave this world entirely, or whatever you want. Please, just help her, take a look at her." Genesis rumbled, pleaded quickly, and Amy paused, her expression shifting between a dozen different cues.

Believes Genesis. Does not want to believe Genesis. Is convincing herself of ulterior motives and deception. Distrustful. Does not believe Genesis.

"You could have come to the hospital for that without becoming scumbag criminals! Go f- screw you! Do you really think I'd believe this bullshit?! Wait till Vicky comes here and turns you into a handbag! I'm not doing anything for you!" Amy growled, glaring defiantly up at Genesis.

Scared, hiding it, tone suggests great admiration for Victoria Dallon-

She turned her gaze to Genesis.

Troubled. Wants to give up. Will not give up. Considering taking Amy Dallon with them by force. Does not want to.

"We can't bring her to the hospital! She wouldn't even fit inside! She's…"

Believes teammate is extremely dangerous and unstable. Believes any public appearance is bound to end up in death for either side. Believes there is absolutely no hope of getting help from heroic sources. Believes teammate is dangerous enough to be killed on sight by The Protectorate. Deep down, believes teammate should be killed while it's still possible, for the greater good. Will not say this. Cannot say this. Is in denial.

Oh.

Shit, that… was not a misinformed opinion. What the fuck? Was their friend turning into another Crawler or something?

"She… I can't explain it. We can't bring her to a hospital, we can't take her to the PRT. The first will call the heroes, and the heroes will kill her! They've already tried!" Genesis growled loudly, and Amy flinched back, her hands shaking despite the defiant glare she withheld.

Genesis is not lying, but isn't saying the truth either. Heroes tried to kill their group before, but the reason is unrelated.

What?

Why?

She'd read up on what little info there was on these guys. They were basically just a slightly more asshole-ish version of the Undersiders.

"Yeah, sure, and Eidolon kicks puppies for fun! I don't believe you for a second. Heroes don't kill, villains do! Great excuse to make me "willingly" get kidnapped so you can ask for ransom money or something after. You're all fu- you're scumbags. I don't believe you as far as I can throw you. Just wait until New Wave gets here and rips you all a new one!" Amy growled, and Lisa kinda liked that fire.

Genesis did not.

Frustrated. Sad. Guilty. Desperate. Convinced by Lisa Wilbourn that Coil will not help. Convinced nobody else will help. Is willing to kidnap Panacea to force her to try and fix teammate. Does not want to do it. Will do it.

Oh, fuck. She should have just kept her fucking mouth shut, shouldn't she? Godfucking damn it!

Genesis's hands drooped, her eyes closed, and with a sigh, she got up to her full height, and took a step towards Panacea, whose glare faltered at the sight, backing up into the wall.

Her mind raced, and her eyes widened as a stray thought arrived.

Which timeline is this? The risky one, likely.

So if Genesis grabbed Panacea…

Coil did not want that kind of heat, ever, at all. He'd already been taking too much of it due to her telling Lung about his bullshit.

So the moment Genesis grabbed Panacea and dragged her to their escape car…

Then this would all disappear. This timeline would end, and she would end up harmlessly depositing her money into her bank account before going on with her day in another timeline.

Her knowledge would disappear, and this opportunity would vanish.

Genesis took a second step.

The Travellers had to finish their objective so that Coil would keep this timeline.

So she absolutely had to stop Genesis from grabbing Panacea, and she had to hope they would escape the heroes, wherever those guys were at the moment.

Another piece of the puzzle flit into place as the fleeting thought of calling Taylor raced to mind, and the conversation they had yesterday of how the hell Taylor knew about Spitfire came to mind.

Blood.

She could track anyone to anywhere as long as she had tasted their blood, like a constant compass beaming their location to her. Which was pretty terrifying to know, but also rather reassuring.

Another step, Panacea's expression shifting rapidly to fear.

"Gen, we're almost done- what's going on here?" A voice asked from her left, and she quickly glanced over to see an armoured costume, like someone took a baseball player's outfit and made it a little more angular after painting it black and red, having just turned the corner to the back of the lobby where the vault was.

Worried, confused, tense and ready to use his powers, hanging close to objects he can launch at any trouble.

Ballistic.

The worst fucking guy that could have come here and asked that question.

But it wasn't like she had options.

Genesis did not stop moving, even if she glanced to the side at her teammate. Her eyes quickly moved back to Panacea. Her mouth opened.

She had to stop Genesis to keep Coil from removing this timeline.

And she had to get their blood, any one of theirs, so Taylor could track the bastards back to Coil when they took whatever his prize was back to him. Because that would be when he would close up the timelines and Taylor could conveniently Master him without making the multiverse explode or something.

Well, she had a prime Brute option right here. But it was too uncertain. Biological projection, so it had blood.

But whose blood? Was it Genesis's? She doubted it.

Ballistic was the other option.

His outfit did not look like it would succumb to her nine millimetre rounds. Her right hand rushed down to her pant pocket, and she slid two cards into her hand, whatever they might be.

Sorry Ballistic she inwardly thought, and whipped her head around at the same time her movement caught his eye. She pushed her chest off the floor with her left hand, just enough to be able to commit to a wide swing of her arm, from her right hip to her left shoulder, a backhanded flick that almost looked playful if it wasn't so straining to pull off.

She had no idea how to throw cards besides the obvious whip motion and to try to keep them straight to what she was aiming at. Besides being bored occasionally at Taylor's, she hadn't had much more practice than a combined two hours.

But it was enough.

Ballistic slapped a hand down on the desk to his left, and sent it flying at her in a rush of papers and splintered wood.

It narrowly missed her cards, which by some power-afflicted bullshit, did not seem affected by the rush of wind that followed. One went too low and to the right, into some wooden cubicle. The other went straight, but too high to hit his foot.

She saw a glimpse of red slam into Ballistic's knee before the faded glass top of the desk covered her sight, and she only barely managed to twist her waist and neck away before an explosion further propelled the desk towards her, deafening her.

The impact winded her. Despite the glass top breaking on the floor before it hit her, it did nothing to help with the wood, the cheap composite cracking against her ribs and splitting open, the desk unravelling around her into chip dust and planks breaking off from each other. The world spun twice as she slid and rolled across the smooth floor, covered in broken glass and splintered wood, one arm over her head as the other scrambled for more cards.

She wasn't concussed enough to not recognize the green bulk that rushed at Panacea and whipped around, the massive anaconda tail rearing up and striking at her from above before the dust had even settled.

She thrust her left arm forward, and for the first time, consciously activated her power in the middle of a fight, feeling her focus fray at the sudden information.

Panicked strike. Uncontrolled. Paralytic venom. Trajectory aimed towards lower face.

She lifted her arm up a little, to protect her lower face, and barely managed to catch the bottom jaw with her wrist by sheer reflex, the silk snapping the thin fangs like they weren't even there.

The jaw tore backwards from the force, and the rest of the head twisted awkwardly as its mouth snapped shut. Momentum made it half-wrap around her arm and swing the limb up, above her head, making her slide backwards on the floor, wrenching her shoulder oddly and making pain flare from the joint as she coughed, trying to gasp air back into her bruised lungs.

She grabbed a fistful of cards with her right hand, but she didn't know what they were.

She jerked her eyes to the right, just enough to be able to see the light reflect off the broken glass covering the floor around her, and she activated her power as she prepared her arm to swing, focusing like a laser on the light, the light, tell me what the light reflects you stupid power.

Middle card glows gold, left and right glow red.

She gathered her legs and jammed her knee and foot against the snake part right as it began to shift, and shifted her grip just enough to shove the red cards to the sides of her hand, damn near dropping both before she swung the gold card onto the thing's "head", held between her middle and ring finger awkwardly.

A strange ping rang out as the card sank into the snake's brow, and she watched the golden energy rush out of the card and flare along Genesis's body, locking both her and the card in place, Panacea's screaming, wriggling body locked under her gigantic armpit as the healer tried to wriggle out.

A wall somewhere above her exploded, and a tide of dust and brick filled her sight before she snapped her eyes shut and rolled away.

The direction of 'down' moved from her sides to her feet, and gravity abruptly changed direction, making her stumble and throw her arms out, opening her eyes to see a street, a half dozen Wards in front of her, rushing for the bank and dragging people out of the chaotic insides of the bank.

Trickster.

Who just got shoved in the bank?

No, didn't matter.

Save Panacea.

Don't kill the Travelers so Coil doesn't close the timeline, make sure they escape.

Get their blood.

She only barely managed to stop her spin and fall to the floor by scrambling forward on all fours like a monkey, and then she was up again, pumping her legs as fast as she could, copying Taylor's stiff running form as best as she could.

A trooper tried to stop her, shouting something, but her ears were still ringing a little and everyone was screaming so she couldn't tell what. It didn't matter.

The bank shimmered and expanded in a way that made her head hurt, Vista somehow turning the lobby into a massive arena by stretching whatever unoccupied space was in the corners, a space which the frenzied mess of capes inside immediately exploited to spread thinner, to loosen up even more and hit harder.

Clockblocker sprinted at Genesis's frozen body as Vicky pried her sister from its frozen grasp, and Aegis followed behind him, before they too were swapped by Trickster, putting Aegis up front.

Genesis unfroze, the three seconds the stun lasted abruptly ending, and the woman jerked into motion a split second before a furiously screaming Glory girl tackled her through a wall.

Genesis swapped with a corner desk and her momentum threw her straight into Kid Win's hoverboard, sending him flipping as he crashed on the street outside.

Then she got swapped again.

A hero swapped with a hostage, a hostage ran and got swapped with a PRT agent right as Clockblocker flew into the air and grabbed Genesis to stop her from bowling over Gallant who was in a melee with someone and seemed extremely confused-

Wait, what?

Aegis lunged forward and slapped Genesis's arm, and the projection froze mid-thrash.

Wait, they swapped costumes?

No no no, there's a reason you don't pull shit like that with Brute teammates, you fucking idiots-

As if to confirm her very thought, the sound barrier cracked from somewhere inside the mess of overturned and shattered desks. A fire extinguisher practically teleported into Clockblocker wearing Aegis's suit, Ballistic's handiwork.

Even through the chaos, the screaming, the ringing, and the poof of white foamy powder covering half the frenzied lobby as the extinguisher exploded, she could hear the guttural thud-crack of his ribcage folding inwards as he got launched out of the bank like a spinning rocket, in a shower of glass fragments, just a foot or two past her, bouncing off the concrete like a limp corpse before rolling to a stop to her right, bleeding out of his mouth with weak, gurgling coughs.

Her steps stuttered for a moment as she realized that he might actually die from that, if he hadn't already, debating how quickly she could take her earring out and put it on him, then she saw Glory Girl dash out of the bank with Amy's coughing form and ran forwards, confident that Miss Healer would do the job.

She couldn't see Ballistic in the chaos, more than a dozen capes all fighting, but the shimmer of blood in the back of the cubicles was all she needed.

That did not stop her power from telling her how likely it was that she just crippled the man. An impact grenade to the knee?

Shit, he might die.

A PRT soldier lunged for her from the left, and she almost jammed the red cards into his chest before her mind caught up with the adrenaline.

The background chatter of her power focused.

Left side unbalanced, grip on foam sprayer shifting his weight upwards due to the mechanism, plans to reach for the foam grenade if he can't stop you, even at the risk of trapping allies inside due to missing, does not-

She swung her arm up at the second floor to throw the cards, flinching slightly at the spray of broken glass that washed over her as another few feet of the building were destroyed, and then she reached for the man right as he was about to tackle her.

She yanked up, pulled him close, and twisted to jam her hip into his groin and push him over and away from her in a classic, simple judo throw, one of those stupid ones that Brian used to like and forced her to learn.

She expected to maybe, barely manage to get him to roll off her hip and be too disoriented to grab for her again.

Instead, he practically flew off of her, spinning once before he hit the floor.

Right, Taylor's enchantment bullshit again. Thank god.

She didn't wait to see what he did, finally crossing the broken threshold of the bank entrance, half-leaping over the broken doors in the front. She slipped on glass and found herself staring up at the ceiling, suddenly lost as her brain registered the fact her head just hit the floor quite hard.

She spun onto her front and turned, digging into her pocket for the stun cards, and without thinking, discarded the first handful of red cards she dug out, right next to her foot.

She froze, expecting instant death.

Instead, they just clattered to the floor harmlessly.

She only had a moment to boggle and assess the fact she was still breathing, before she got back to digging, and after another two seconds of praying nothing randomly hit her and totaled her, she had a dozen glowing golden cards in her hand.

She crouched and turned, her eyes widening.

It was complete fucking pandemonium, and the way the world stretched around her gave her a headache.

Explosions, lasers, strange beams, dust, broken everything, glass, an orange orb melting the ceiling, one that flickered violently like a strobelight or a constant flashbang, further disorienting everything in the slugfest, making colors dance in her vision-

She had volume, but not aim.

Fine, fuck, she could work with this.

Trickster was turning chaos into a complete clusterfuck. Punches thrown at Genesis found themselves connecting to allies as everyone teleported and swapped at speeds that suggested Trickster could think fast or was simply high on cocaine, and-

She had to freeze the bastard.

She stood for a moment, gathering her breath, back against the broken doors, waiting, watching, even as her vision rapidly began to look like a rainbow decided to shapeshift into a wriggling centipede.

Fucking Sundancer.

Bitch.

Her power began to fill her in, working with her, in bits and piecemeal pieces as her eyes rapidly lost and found Trickster in the chaos.

Trickster follows a reactionary-

Teleported Aegis with a plant.

Reactionary pattern. Possesses no superior mental processing nor Thinker ability. Redirects strikes, eye drawn-

Aegis with Genesis to tank a punch from Glory Girl who recoiled at the burst of blood.

Eyes drawn to fast movements, wishes to swap enemies with allies at points of no return where momentum is unstoppable, to force them to hit eachot-

He teleported himself out of Kid Win's lasers, a desk replacing him.

His eyes.

He always had to have both things in his line of sight.

His eyes always go from his first selected target to his second. Is setting up pieces for final, decisive moment-

Too late. Her power could work fast when things were straightforward and easily deductible, but not this fast, and Trickster's chess-like manoeuvre was not as simple as reading the movements of someone swinging a fist at her.

Whatever he was preparing, he had everything in place, it seemed, because in the span of four seconds and two dozen abrupt teleportations, the room was suddenly split in two, with the Wards and her on the side facing the street and the Travellers on the vault's side, everyone glancing and spinning around to try and figure out or what was about to hit them.

A ball of flaming light burst into life right in front of them, further separating the room, moving back and forth too fast to dodge through. Glory Girl tried to go through, only to be replaced with a dumpster, her yell of frustration sounding out somewhere behind them.

Smoke and flame began to fill the building, and the ball slowly swelled.

They collectively pulled back, shielding their eyes.

Shit.

Would the blood even be there by the time she got to it?

The sun winked out suddenly, before another burst of light came from behind the giant curtain of smoke and flame, a moment before that too winked out.

Vista did something, and the lobby became smaller, normal, the fires somehow momentarily sputtering from that.

The Travellers were gone, a charred black hole in the wall the only sign to point to their escape.

People yelled, something about smoke grenades and the streets, another few yelling for Clockblocker, but she wasn't paying much attention to details, her vision narrowing like a tightening cone until it was focused on one thing.

She could get Coil. She could give Taylor Coil.

Someone put their hand on her shoulder.

She jerked and spun, stabbing at least four golden cards into some kind of silver armour or something with a near-united crisp ping, and then she dashed forwards, into the half-melted part of the building, ignoring how the melted, cracked tiles shifted under her, vaulting over a broken desk and through a small forest of flaming debris. Her clothes caught fire, but the suit would protect her.

The smoke bringing tears to her eyes was the worst part.

Ballistic's last position was further back, past the flames, and so she pushed forward, ignoring the pain of her hands burning every time she stumbled over something and had to shove her hands in the fire to get up, slapping her hair occasionally to put it out.

She heard steps and shouts behind her, and she whirled, throwing out all the remaining gold cards, hearing at least two distant ping sounds as they connected with her pursuers. Then she pumped her legs through cracking wood and mounds of paper and dented trashcans, like crawling through a junkyard on fire.

The heat and flame lessened near the back, not only due to proximity but due to less clutter being teleported there to be lit on fire, so after a few horrible seconds of barely being able to open her eyes through the stinging smoke, she saw it.

A flash of red amongst a bunch of large glass shards. Still liquid, almost boiling from the heat. The shredded, splayed out remnants of the lower half of Ballistic's leg were smeared across the floor just above it, half-confined in his shredded pant leg. A gleam of blooded bone briefly made bile rise up her throat.

So she had amputated the poor guy by accident. But he wasn't here, so he'd probably live.

Shit, she owed these guys so many apologies. She had no choice, she had to hurt him enough to bleed, and she didn't have time to pull out some glowing cards and just try to find which one was the one that just cut instead of fucking exploded before either Genesis or he would just smack her upside the head and she'd be done for, taken back to Coil.

God damn it.

She fell down onto her knees, and hurriedly grabbed two vaguely similar-sized pieces of glass, quickly jamming them into the thin layer of blood and pressing down until one side was coated.

Then she pressed them together, like they did in the labs to avoid coagulation, and put the bundle in her left hand, squeezing tight and with equal surrounding force, regardless of her skin splitting.

She had to run now. She couldn't explain or hold onto the glass, she couldn't sit there and explain why she'd so suddenly escalated everything into this giant shit show, she'd probably be tossed in jail and this opportunity would be gone and everything would be for nothing, and most importantly, she couldn't fucking waste time when it was any minute now that Coil might merge his timelines and split them again.

She had to get Taylor here, asap. But she had no regular phone, so how… fuck.

She was still here, so Coil hadn't pulled his timeline yet. He likely considered Ballistic's leg an acceptable sacrifice for whatever his plan here was.

She turned to the hole, still glowing faintly and making the wall sway and slowly crumble. She got up to her feet, still wracked with slight coughs, and ran, leaping through it, out onto an empty alley, stumbling from the impact, more out of surprise than difficulty.

"Halt!"

From the right.

Run left.

She did, half-melted shoes pounding at the asphalt.

Fuck, how could she escape? Make chaos? No, she'd hurt enough people for today. Maybe just-

Why were the streets covered in fucking smoke? What the hell? There was no way the bank made enough for all of this.

To the left, under the eddying, blanket-like swirls of white smoke, she saw a manhole cover, and she made a sharp turn, almost falling down as her shoes slid over the asphalt, barely recovering by slapping her hands down and pushing forward.

A flash of white light reflected off a nearby car window, the smoke lighting up around the upper edges.

Glory Girl, following from above-

She palmed one card, and mentally prayed that whatever the fuck she grabbed, it wouldn't hurt Disaster Barbie, at least not seriously enough to make the mini-Nilbog mad at her more than she already might have been.

Her lungs burned.

Taylor had been right. She definitely did not hate exercise right now, even if it wasn't Hookwolf she was running from. She wished she'd done more of it, because she was slowing, and gasping for air between tiny coughs, and her limbs felt like fucking jelly.

She glanced at her hand as it rose and fell by her side.

Red card.

Someone to the right jerked in surprise, gaping at some spot above her, his gaze lowering rapidly.

She briefly changed to a sideways sort of jog, craning her neck up to see Glory Girl speeding straight towards her like an arrow. She waited for a moment, because there was no way in hell she'd hit the bitch any other way, and when she was only thirty feet or so away, whipped her arm up, from her stomach, backwards to her waist, already reaching for more cards.

It didn't do anything spectacular, but Glory Girl didn't dodge, and that was all the opening she really needed.

Victoria yelped when she went to swat the card away and ended up making it explode, and her aura, the forcefield, it flickered as she spun clockwise from the force, her hair whipping around everywhere.

Her power went crazy for a moment, apparently deciding now was the moment to explain to her in detail how Victoria's power worked, and she ignored it as she spun, and threw half a dozen cards at the manhole cover, just thirty feet away.

Four red cards. None will hit the target.

Fuck you power was the last thought she had before she got tossed a solid four feet backwards flat on her back, and it was only her newfound Brute status that stopped her from getting the wind knocked out of her, instead trying to curl up defensively by instinct, only to accidentally roll ass over head onto her feet, disoriented on how the fuck she even did that as she stumbled a step back.

She took a single moment to stare at the giant crater in the middle of the road, the small emergency response vehicle blockade she'd accidentally caused that was currently buying her precious time before the PRT troopers got here, the spectators in the windows recording her.

Well, at least Coil wouldn't think that she was Lisa, not after this.

Glory Girl gaped at the road before she turned to her with a glare, rushing at her again.

Lisa shoved her fist into her pocket and took out the entire bundle of cards, spreading it out like a fan as she glared upwards in warning, squaring her shoulders as she panted like a dog.

She didn't have time for this shit. Glory Hole could go play the cutesy little hero some other time. It was a miracle she hadn't cracked the glass in her left hand yet.

Dallon took the hint, and slammed to a stop.

Then she slowly backed away with a constipated expression, damn near pout-glaring at her.

Not even Collateral Damage Barbie would risk fighting someone holding the equivalent to thirty grenades in their hand in public.

Well, it wasn't like Dallon knew more than half of these didn't explode.

She walked forward towards the crater, brisk and careful, glancing side to side for any more nasty surprises, having a mild staring contest with Glory Girl in the meantime as she slunk forward. Victoria's eyes flicked up.

Hers followed.

She saw Aegis, still wearing Clockblocker's outfit, fly over a rooftop, then look straight at her before speeding forth.

Nope.

She dashed forward, and before she could second-guess her escape method, leapt over the lip of the crater, and straight down into the sewer through the hole, spraining her ankle in the process as it slammed into one of the metal footholds, then bruising her hip as she tumbled onto cold, wet stone, barely keeping her left hand from dunking into the sewage water and ruining the blood.

With a miserable groan, she staggered upright, and limped down into the darkness.

They'd escaped using the sewers before. She wasn't completely lost. These things had an order, a method, signs and regulations.

It might take a little bit, but she'd get out, and she'd drag Taylor over to get that snake rat fucking bastard under her boot.

Granted, back then they had the dogs to sniff for fresh air.

Fuck.

"Give me your phone, I need to make a call."

He let the message stay half-finished as he turned his head to tell the chick to fuck off, only to find himself staring at a metal… circle. In a square.

That… oh.

His eyes widened as he leaned his upper body back, just a bit, his cigarette falling from limp lips.

Bottle green furious eyes glared at him as her finger stayed steady on the trigger, her outfit torn and burned and wet, looking like she'd just crawled out of a warzone, half of it shredded clothes and the other some kinda bodysuit.

"I, uh-"

"I'm not asking ." She growled, cocking the hammer back with an audible click.

He audibly gulped, and jerkily presented it to her. She used her left hand to grab it, awkwardly, using only half of her finger's length like she was holding something else.

She hopped back, and before he could utter another word, she flicked the safety on and shoved the pistol into her waistband, grabbed onto the roof of a beat-up car with a broken window and a dented hood that he somehow hadn't noticed pull up on him, and then hopped up, swinging herself into the car feet first through the window.

She wriggled into place before ducking under the steering wheel.

He stared, blinking.

A moment later, she popped up, grabbed the steering wheel with a hand and a half, and the car sped away with a screech of burning rubber, bouncing along the pothole covered road.

He briefly debated calling the police in for the theft.

Then he remembered that he was in the ABB, and turned his head down to stare at his empty hand.

He'd bought that like a week ago.

Fuck, man.

Notes:

I do not believe Lisa is using her power to its fullest extent. I shall be working to fix that in this fic, over time. :^)

Also I think this chapter shows that 'Mild AU' tag a bit more than others. I've changed up how the PRT works and functions a bit, fleshed it out a little, or at least i like to think i did, and I'm trying to expand some interesting future developments early on. Hope this chapter was fun.

Chapter 25

Chapter Text

"My paths are breaking."

There was silence for a moment.

"Elaborate." Alexandria said calmly.

"I had an active path to prevent any outsiders and third parties from knowing of our existence. As of a few hours ago, that Path had told me to remind a doctor in our employ of what we are capable of, one who worked at Asylum East in Philadelphia. I moved onto another path, before briefly doubling back to check for any changes in the previous one. Path to Victory told me that the path to keeping us hidden now had seven hundred and ninety eight thousand four hundred and thirty three steps."

"What." Eidolon said quickly, inflectionless.

"I checked again three seconds later, and the path had four hundred and sixty one steps. The first step was to blow up the sun ." Contessa continued, voice allowing a hint of incredulousness to show, a tiny hint of tension in her shoulders giving away the woman's confusion.

" What. " Both Eidolon and Number Man echoed simultaneously.

"I asked for the path to blowing up the sun, out of sheer curiosity. No answer. I asked the path to keeping us hidden again. This time, the path was fifty six steps. So, I decided to follow this path out of curiosity, or simply to see if it was some bizarre fluke. After completing the first step, which was to 'acquire a pound of physical currency in gold coins', the second step was to " take a ship to the western Noxian coastline ". "Noxia" does not exist . It has never existed, anywhere. A moment later, the path was empty. Since then I have started checking every one of my paths, and some of them show this exact same breakdown. This includes the path to keeping Jack Slash alive and active. I trust I do not need to explain how catastrophic this is if not addressed." Contessa said.

Alexandria felt that familiar, tiny little weight of dread settle in her chest.

"Is this limited to nonsensical breakdowns or does it affect the paths that do still function by falsefying specific instances and steps to make your plans fail on purpose, or even backfire?" She asked.

Contessa moved her head to the left, a little. Unease?

"Hm… No. It does not seem surgical whatsoever. The effect is exceedingly obvious when it happens, and it is total. Any path this… anomaly gets involved in, the entire path is… scrambled, for a lack of a better word. If my power was a computer, this anomaly feels akin to a computer virus that feeds junk data to it. After some initial alarm, I began asking specific paths. For example, I asked the path to ensuring Glamour does not speak about Cauldron to anyone. The path was normal, and easy to follow. I asked for the path to ensuring Coil does not speak about Cauldron to anyone. The path was incomprehensible and its steps kept changing erratically like a random number generator. It took about an hour and a half of continuously asking questions, but I eventually located the problem in Brockton Bay. This is assumedly the result of an unexpected power interaction with a new trigger."

"Is there a chance it is the same kind of progressive weakness exhibited by David's shard?" She asked, and Doctor Mother shook her head.

"If that were the case, all our vial capes would have the same problem. It's likely a new trigger, or an anomaly. Contessa herself should be fine by all accounts."

There was a collective wave of slight relaxation that came with those news.

"To be able to do that though… do you think it is a trigger of similar power to David's, assuming it's a new power?" Doctor Mother asked all present with a thoughtful stare, accented voice sounding as alarmed as it was intrigued, though for some reason, it sounded like a test question.

Alexandria considered it for a moment.

In a way, it would explain some part of this. Contessa's power could not read things that were too powerful. David, the Endbringers, Scion. But that was the strange thing. It either could use precognition on someone, or couldn't. They'd never faced this kind of bizarre interaction before.

Was it luck, or something more alarming?

"No. Regardless, whatever is causing this has to stop, as soon as possible. Even if they were comparable to Eidolon's power, which I highly doubt, it would still not be worth it. We need Jack Slash alive, we need to keep Cauldron a secret, and we absolutely cannot afford things like this slipping through the cracks." Contessa said, and Doctor Mother hummed uncertainly.

"If this is a person, if they are powerful enough to where we might need them in the final battle, we could attempt to force them into stasis until it is time. Maybe throw them on an uninhabited planet with enough supplies to last them years and try to explain ourselves? Reach an agreement?" Doctor Mother asked, sounding uncertain.

An uncertain Doctor Mother was oddly… disquieting to see.

"The paths only seem to break if this anomaly, or parahuman, has some kind of interaction with them." Contessa opened her mouth to continue, but Number Man interrupted her.

"Maybe let's work with the assumption of a human element, for now. Unless there is some unique fourth Endbringer, I find it rather difficult to believe this is caused through sheer chance, or we would be dealing with dozens of precogs having the same issue as Contessa."

Assuming this was not somehow the work of the Simurgh. She thought with a sigh.

Contessa nodded.

"Alright. For example, this indicates that Coil will somehow be affected by this parahuman soon, or already has been. Or maybe they'll change their trajectory to interact with someone else and ruin some other plan. In a reverse sort of way, this also lets us know what paths our parahuman will be interfering with, which makes finding some things about them significantly easier. Despite that, these seem to be our only options. Forced stasis, throwing them on some other Earth where they can't interfere, or outright extermination if they are weak. If they are powerful enough to perhaps make a difference in the final battle, let's try to keep them alive but out of the way. But to find out if they are, we'll have to find them first, and prod them into using their powers second."

Alexandria leaned forward.

"Those can all be arranged, given some time and resources. Can we afford that time, or must we brute force it?"

Contessa tilted her head, just a tiny bit.

"Personally, I don't think we can. Too much is at stake. We need to find out who this is, and take them out immediately. Assuming they're doing this by their very presence and involvement, we should also consider capture. We could invest some resources in the future once we harvest Heartbreaker's children, have them on site until we direct them to get involved in the final fight. If their shard can somehow mess with Scion or the Simurgh's precognition simply by being involved, they might be an invaluable tool. If not…"

"We kill them. And because it's too dangerous to send you for this, and we don't have time to be pulling favours from our customers …" Eidolon trailed off with a disappointed sigh.

"Yes. I'm afraid it will likely fall to you two to find them and ensure they're gone."

"I see." Alexandria nodded. "I'll try to direct our Thinkers and precogs to Brockton Bay, make the search seem organic. I'll door them to one of our special holding cells in Earth Gaero, and if they keep somehow scrambling things, we'll do what we must. Any other issues to bring up?"

"Heartstopper." Contessa said.

"I say we just kill him." Eidolon sniffed, dismissively waving a hand. "He won't be of any use and he's too much of a psychotic maniac to keep around."

"I'm in agreement." Number Man nodded, not glancing up from the economics report he was reading.

"I as well." Doctor Mother said quietly.

"While I'd love to agree..." she began, "Scion is not the only threat we have to face. It would be more prudent to keep him in captivity until we can use Heartbreaker's kids to wipe his mind and control him. We could have Regent control him for us, just in case we need to put someone troublesome down. Like our mystery precog-scrambler, if they prove troublesome. Speaking of the boy, any changes or concerns?" She asked Doctor Mother, who shook her head.

"None. His new identity is secure, and we've planted breadcrumbs to make sure Heartbreaker follows a false trail before it cuts off and makes him give up. Contessa reports no concerns of him breaking up, giving us away or betraying us. He's oddly content with simple things. Easy to control. But I'm not sure it's prudent to give him control of Heartstopper. We've only started rounding up Master capes recently, and it's working thanks to the Canary gambit we pulled, but wouldn't it be better to wait to give Heartstopper to a better handler? As far as we are aware, Regent's control range is not nearly big enough to keep Heartstopper discrete. The nature of his power makes keeping Heartstopper alive difficult as well, when Regent is removed from his range."

Alexandria allowed a small frown.

"Hm. Didn't we have a Case 53 Master? Some peacock-looking woman? We could use them."

Contessa's head moved a bit.

Eidolon scoffed.

"Too volatile. And they are not exactly… well-disposed to us. If Heartstopper is to be our first attempt at something like Project Death Row, which is what this sounds like, and we wish to keep him just in case, we need to hold him until it's time to kill Heartbreaker. Regent isn't suited for this. Besides, that's the entire reason we've let Heartbreaker continue as he has in the first place, isn't it? Make Master capes to ensure cooperation from subjects of Death Row?" He asked Contessa, and the woman nodded.

Alexandria steepled her fingers.

"Yes, I suppose. How long until we kill Heartbreaker?"

"I believe eleven months would be best." Number Man said, and she nodded. He'd know better in this subject.

"So, are we killing Heartstopper, or taking him in?" Contessa said, shoving the conversation back into track, and glances were shared all around the table.

"I say kill." Eidolon said.

"I must admit I agree with Alexandria. Capture." Contessa said.

"I vote kill as well." Number Man mumbled as he thumbed through a page.

The vote was down to Doctor Mother.

She seemed conflicted.

"I think… it might be best to capture him. Keep him on hand just in case someone dangerous and unforeseen pops up."

Contessa nodded.

"Alright. I will bring him. Inform our more cooperative Case 53's and employees to prepare restraints for a line of sight power. Door me." Contessa commanded.

A portal opened, and just like that, the meeting was over, each getting up and dooring away to their duties.

"Can you transform into your… 'first stage', again?"

The scrutiny on something as small as how she entered her 'brute state' was not exactly welcome. It was, frankly, a little annoying.

The testing site was at least interesting.

It was like someone took a giant gymnasium, again shaped like a hangar of sorts, filled it full of random crap and Tinkertech, and made said gymnasium's walls be full of mechanical limbs that could make the giant square and rectangular sections of the floors and walls extend and shift and bend any which way for powered sparring or movement simulations.

Then someone stuck it to the top left corner of an oil rig, across the helicopter pads. Odd place, but it worked, and the windows had a lovely view of the sea beyond the bay.

But she hadn't gotten to do much since coming here. There was a camera set up in the corner against a white sheet, and she was just told to swap in and out of her 'first Brute stage' in front of them. It had been thirty minutes of doing nothing but that, so far.

"Yes, I can." She sighed, finally.

She switched to Evelynn's black-purple smoke, a quick shimmer and a mental push to make her shapeshift as fast as possible, and it was done.

"Strange power. The smoke seems out of theme. We had assumed this was some kind of Changer effect, that you turned into that large, ehm, creature biologically before rapidly switching back when contained, but this looks more like a Breaker state of sorts. Alright. Are you certain you cannot change your shape to anything else?" One of the researchers asked, a man wearing a simple beanie with casual clothes and an inquisitive look in his eyes, whose name she forgot.

She nodded.

"Y-yeah. I thought I could maybe change into something in between this and uh, the big thing, but it didn't work at all."

The man nodded, staring at a slow-motion replay of her 'transformation' from a supposedly normal teenager into a mid-tier Brute.

"So it works on extremes, perhaps? You have your normal state, where you're barely tougher than a normal average human, then some kind of basic Brute state, then the large creature you turned into is the… maximum power state, let's say?"

She nodded with false excitement.

"Yea. It's what I've gathered from what little testing I've done. I uh, haven't been able to do much, of course, because changing into the big creature makes me… really… angry." She half-asked, waving her hand vaguely.

The second researcher, a man in a buttoned up shirt and tie with slicked back blonde hair, paused, and glanced up at her. The first took a moment, then he furrowed his brows in puzzlement as he glanced up at her from the screen too.

"Could you explain a bit more in detail?"

She took a deep breath of preparation for show, then nodded, tilting her head down as appearing quite disappointed.

"It's… so, when I turned into that thing, it felt like I got split in two. There was the big purple monster that wanted to kill e-everything, and everyone, and break anything it could see. B-but it was also… me, in a way? Like, I could control its limbs, but it felt as if it had a mind of its own and it was really angry and trying to mold with mine..." She forced her voice to waver like she'd practised, then swallowed.

Maria frowned, concerned, and went to speak, but she continued.

"I couldn't not hurt anything or anyone. Even though I was p-practically screaming in my head, the most I could do was redirect the… the rage, I guess, towards myself. I felt like I was inside that thing, buried deep down behind layers of violence, and all I could think about was clawing out my real body from inside that thing to stop wanting to kill everything. So… I haven't tested anything to do with that form since then. I never want to try. No I, I refuse." She quietly said, clenching her fists as if finding her spine and courage.

Man, acting was so easy. Especially with the kind of mental trickery she was used to and used extensively to make herself feel somewhat normal again.

She glanced up.

Maria looked pitying and sympathetic, and the two researchers looked both disappointed and understanding.

The first researcher, a man with a beanie and a slight goatee, nodded with a slight smile.

"Alright, that's your choice. Though, there is a chance there will be people in the future looking into similar cases or seeking to find some heroes who could assist you with harnessing the 'final stage', let's call it for now, without any of those feelings, so don't despair, your potential will not be wasted if we can help you. Shall we go on to test your strength?"

Finally, something more fun.

She nodded.

Two minutes later, she realized that this was not really fun.

They'd basically put her under a gigantic hydraulic press-looking machine, instructed her on proper pushing posture, and told her to push as hard as she could against the press until she couldn't stop it from descending, at which point it would automatically stop.

A bit of an odd way to figure out someone's technical strength, but it made sense.

It took about a minute before she could feel her arms buckling under the strain, and no matter how much she pushed, the metal plate slowly slid downwards.

Then it stopped moving with a hissing round, like something depressurizing.

"That is four point two tons. Nine thousand and five hundred pounds, roughly. Do you think we could do another test, or are you tired at all?"

She went to accept, just to be sure, only for the door to the hangar-gymnasium to slam open, a man in a ruffled suit waving a bulky phone back and forth in a wave as he stared at her.

"Uh, Miss Ward? Shrieker? There is some girl who claims to know you calling the front desk, they said it's urgent. They called you by civilian identity, full name. They said it's really urgent."

Wha-

Lisa.

She dashed straight at him, past the researchers, ignoring their startled yelps, and slid the last two feet to him, yanking the phone out of his hand as he cringed back, a reasonable reaction to someone speeding at you like a car.

She put it on her ear.

"Hello?"

"Hey, so, I think I found your slithering little friend while out on a walk-" Lisa started hurriedly, and was interrupted by a ruffling thud, and the sound of crunching glass.

"Lisa? Lisa?" Her mind raced.

The water wasn't far. She could sprint off the edge, duck underwater, and fly out of here as a bunch of smoke.

"Hey, back! I dropped the phone, whatever, look, I found your snake. I found your coiling little snake and now he's ready to be your pet again instead of terrorizing the rat population!" Lisa rushed out, sounding breathless and slightly manic.

What the fuck was… she…?

An idea rose.

This was a PRT phone. And the number she was calling from was not one of the burner phones.

Past the initial thought of 'what fucking drugs did you take', it didn't take a genius to tell that Lisa was trying to send her a very obvious message without being outright about things.

"But he's pretty fed and happy right now, so I'm kind of in the middle of some really pressing time limits at the moment. The window closes soon, you know?! I managed to get some blood too? So we should hurry for that vet visit before the guy's schedule window closes."

It took a moment to run through possibilities on what else Lisa might mean, but she discarded most of them, because nothing else made sense.

She wasn't sure how, but Lisa had apparently found a way to give her Coil on a silver platter. Did she find his civilian identity and shoot his leg or something? How did she get his blood?

If she wasn't sure it would make Lisa grossed out and probably uncomfortable beyond belief, she could fucking kiss her right now.

"Got it, on my way." She said, and closed the call before shoving the phone into the suited guy's hands, switching from Resolve to the Rune of Domination, half a dozen compasses flaring up in her mind. She focused on the one that had Lisa's mental image and concept attached.

"Miss Maria, there's a bit of a family emergency! We'll reschedule this and the Ward meeting as soon as possible, but I have to go, and I have to go now. Could you please drive me out? Now, fast please?"

The researchers and the suit opened their mouths to either protest or offer help, she didn't know, but Maria agreed first, and a moment later, she was princess-carrying the woman as she sprinted through hallways, ignoring the confused looks she was getting.

Five minutes later and a bunch of hasty excuses given by a ruffled, wide-eyed Maria, they were in her car, speeding down the forcefield bridge on the way to the mainland.

Her foot tapped up and down manically.

"Get to some alley as fast as possible." She said as she rolled down the window with the hand-crank, the ancient vehicle rumbling away underneath her. "Also, please get a better car." She murmured, amazed that this european-looking hunk of junk was still driving.

"Oh, I haven't found a need for better, but if you say so." Maria nodded deferentially, carefully sticking to the speed limit like glue.

The blocks and stops at the front of the pier raised, and they moved down the little street that cut through the boardwalk as she ducked down to avoid being seen.

She could fly out of the window right now, but she didn't known how many cameras or eyes were around to notice how Maria's car was oddly empty. They had to get out of the general vicinity first.

"Found a good alley, just after this turn." Maria said after three mute minutes punctuated by harsh turns and stops.

"Okay. Don't make this suspicious, act like you took a trip to some meeting place to drop me off, claim a friend of mine had found my lost pet snake and he needed an urgent vet visit."

Maria nodded.

She looked at her for a moment.

There was some steel in those eyes. Some razor-sharp focus. And the woman was young. She barely looked a day over twenty.

Maybe she lucked out on her choice, again.

The next time she felt the yank of momentum pull her shoulder to the door, she ducked down even lower, and turned into invisible smoke, shooting up to the sky through the open window and speeding straight to Lisa.

A minute later, she found her laying on the hood of a wrecked piece of junk that had seemingly drove into a dumpster in some random back alley, on her back, clothes singed and cut and burned, only the bodysuit and the waistband of her jeans intact from what she could see, breathing with strain and massaging her chest with her right hand.

She reached for her mind as she shot down.

Lisa. I'm here, don't freak out.

Beside a slight startle, followed by a grimace of pain, Lisa obeyed.

She materialised in front of the car, using Evelynn's soul perception to see if there was anyone nearby, and after a brief check for any eye witnesses, turned off the invisibility, rushing over.

"Hey, I-" Lisa started, and tried to rise.

She hopped onto the hood of the car, feet on either side of Lisa's hips, and shoved her back down with a hand on her shoulder, switching to the Rune of Inspiration to double her Summoner Spells for a moment.

Then Taylor cast two Heal spells in the span of half a second.

The sound loud and the green particles erupting out of Lisa startled her, before the tension in her face faded for relief.

She immediately swapped to the Rune of Resolve and locked in the Guardian effect.

"What the fuck happened to you? Who did this?" She asked calmly as she squatted down, elbows on her knees, and Lisa rolled her eyes beneath her.

"Before you go plotting murder, nobody. I kinda did all this to myself. Someone lit some shit on fire, I walked in, then fought Glory Girl for a moment and fractured a rib while escaping like an idiot. Also I think Amy Dallon now either owes me one, or doesn't, and hates me, depending on who you ask. Doesn't matter. There was an incident at the bank, the Travellers were there doing a job for Coil. They succeeded, but I badly injured one of them with your cards, so I got his blood in my left hand, now lick it up and let's go get that piece of shit now because he just succeeded, and that's when he converges his timelines, and whatever they took they're delivering straight to him. They have a disabled member, so they're bunking in Coil's base. We've got him, Tay." Lisa rushed out like a woman in a lot of rush, played on fast forward, a hateful, vindictive gleam in her eyes and grin. Then she brought her left hand close to her face, opened it, and pushed it up towards her.

She blinked at the pieces of glass for a moment, before the red made her understand, and she snatched them up, switching Runes again.

With only a small amount of hesitation, she separated them and ran her tongue up each piece of glass, before spitting to the side and throwing them behind her back with a lazy flick.

"Whose blood was this?" She asked as another compass needle formed in her mind, side eyeing Lisa as she glanced up at the mouth of the alley.

"Ballistic. Big dude in football-looking gear, more angular, now one-legged. We can apologize later, you can grow him another foot anyway. Let's go." Lisa said, starting to rise, and she shook her head as she pushed her back down by the shoulder.

"Lisa, I hate to sound like a bitch, but you'll just get in the way. I don't have a convenient way to get you there quickly, nor get you down to him, if he's still using his underground base you talked about. I'll go grab him, then I'll come get you immediately and teleport you into his base from our basement so you can access his resources and we can talk about how to deal with him. Alright?"

Lisa's brows furrowed, her lips pursing.

"But I- I… I just got…" Lisa started, looking for words that wouldn't come, then planted both palms to her face, blowing out a breath of frustration as her nails dug into her skin.

"I can't get you in there while being inconspicuous. You did your part, Lisa. And closure won't come by having you watch me Master him, it'll come when you stroll into his base like you own the place because you fucking will. You can even beat the shit out of him after I'm done, I can heal him with the spell I used on you." She offered, and lowered a hand to squeeze her shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah, you're right. Fuck." Lisa spit out, then raised her hands to push Taylor's knees away from her chest, forcing her to get up.

"Okay, go. I know the way home."

"Alright. Good job, Lisa. Grab you soon." She said as she rose, then smiled and nodded.

She turned into smoke and flew away before she could decipher Lisa's angry grumble.