Brockton bay, Sunday evening.
The front door is all but kicked open as Emily Piggot stepped inside the house. Her eyes bloodshot with so many bags under them the TSA took an hour to check them in.
She barely managed to kick the door closed as she stumbled into the living room dropping her laptop and empty lunch bag in the middle of the floor as she staggered towards the couch.
A couch that had a very large green cat on it.
Pocky looked up at Emily.
Emily stared at Pocky.
"Move."
Pocky growled lightly.
Emily snarled back.
Pocky wisely hauled ass off the couch.
Emily took two steps and fell face first onto the couch with a whump.
Amy who had been sitting in the easy chair across the room watching this blinked lightly.
"Are you okay?"
Emily raised her hand slightly from where it lay on the floor, not having managed to make it fully on the couch before she dropped it again.
"Danny Hebert is a menace." Emily managed.
Sunday Morning. PRT HQ
"So what do we have?"James asked as he sat back in his chair looking out the heavily armored windows into the testing field where a tall lanky girl in jeans, a hoody, and a temporary mask was talking to Moon Dog and Druid.
"Well either she's sandbagging or she's a mini Alucard." The man in the lab coat to his left offered.
"Here's hoping it's the former Steve." A woman off to the side typing away at a keyboard like mad, offered.
"Steve, Alice, I want data not any 'this is like that', give me something.
"Well she's obviously a minor brute with regeneration. We can probably add a couple ranks of mover on her as well once she gets coordinated enough to get used to the new muscle she has any way." Steve offered.
"I'd put a few ranks of thinker on her too. During the gun tests and a the tinker testing it showed she has a rather surprising ability to multi task, in fact it seems to make things easier for her if she's focused on more than one thing at once. Firing guns akimbo, and putting things together, sure it was just the basic puzzles and not the tinker tech ones, but she put together three puzzles at the same time from the one jumbled box of pieces." Alice explained.
" So Brute 5, Mover 3, Thinker 3or 4?" James questioned.
"I'd go 4 for that akimbo thing. Sure she didn't hit anything when it was live fire, but when it was just the laser targeting she easily kept the grouping of both guns tight." Alice offered.
"That could just be lack of training though. I'd say 3 and review it later." Steve explained." We need some more specialized tests before we can be sure."
"Fair enough." Alice shrugged.
"So Brute 5, Mover 3 with the possibility of going higher with training, and Thinker 3, again with the possibility of going higher."James offered. "If she follows Alucard we're going to have to put a rank of Stranger on her as well, but that doesn't seem to be the case yet any way."
"Thank whatever gods are watching for that." Alice sighed.
"Well we've also cleared the Case 13 info. She is definitely a Case 13. Though not a traditional. She has no issue with Garlic, Silver, or seemingly anything with any religious symbolism aside from being confused by the colander."
"To be fair Druid and Moon Dog were also confused by the Colander." Alice offered.
"Pastafaranism is a valid religion." Steve huffed
"Anyway." James continued."The grave dirt thing still needs testing,but at least the sunlight is a no go."
"I find it very interesting as that lowers her brute rating to at best a two and nearly stops the regeneration, but aside from complaining she's tired she had no clear harmful effects." Steve pointed out. " That's gonna make her life much easier, at least if it wasn't for the diet."
"Given she was told by Alucard and it was confirmed by Druid she would need to drink blood to survive, I expected a little resistance from a fifteen year old." Alice shuddered.
"That she popped the bag and drank it down like it was a soda should say something for the girls mental state." James commented. "Though that may be the fact that she viewed it as 'just one more thing to deal with' worries me quite a bit."
"Recommend therapy is circled in big red loops already." Steve pointed out " Still with this power set, an offer to join the Wards is a given."
"Normally yes. But..." James frowned.
"The Master 4 rank." Alice nodded.
"Yep, and it's bugs. Bugs that if she focuses on she can control a few perfectly, but if she lets her emotions go." Steve shuddered." Well we all saw the video of her spat with Shadow Stalker."
"Words like 'Biblical', 'Plague' and 'Oh My god where's my E-pen' come to mind." Alice offered." Though most of those seemed to vanish when she was time stopped. A projection perhaps?"
"I would like further testing on that and given her other grab bag of powers we can get her to play down the bugs.. or maybe play up it? Ehhh whatever, that's PRs problem."James shrugged." I just need to send this up to the director, after that our jobs over."
"So Chinese for lunch?" Alice asked.
"Sounds good."
Directors office PRT building.
Director Emily Piggot knocked back another cup of fairly bog standard coffee and stared at the reports in front of her.
Something smelled funny in this. Three of those she wanted questioned for the Winslow situation were dead. One from an apparent mugging gone wrong which showed signs of the Merchants being involved. One from an evident heart attack, possibly caused by the fear of being investigated, and one who got into a shoot out with a PRT recovery team and managed to blow part of his own head off when the gun he was firing at the Troopers misfired so bad that the gun exploded and took part of him with it.
Once was coincidence, twice was unlucky, three times was a plot. Everyone else in the school staff had been rounded up this morning. VERY early this morning. If Emily wasn't allowed to sleep neither were those she was having questioned.
Armsmaster's team had uncovered... well, it basicly amounted to absolute insanity. There were maybe four or five decent employees in the entire staff of of the school, and one of them was a fucking lunch lady.
The computer studies teacher, the Art teacher, the lunch lady, the woman's gym coach, and MAYBE the janitor were clean, everyone else was absolutely fucked. Three of them had restraining orders from various or former students, one of them wasn't allowed within 100 yards of a school, two had warrants for them, one was a registered sex offender, and the damn school nurse had a certificate from a well known and denounced scam operation that gave out nursing and Doctorates like candy for a hundred bucks a pop.
This wasn't a school this was six monkeys in a trench coat pretending to be a day care.
And Blackwell KNEW ALL OF IT. She had the hiring and background records of all of them, she was also undercutting all of the teachers pay and pocketing the bonuses herself. Her secretary was doing much the same, but with school fundraisers and scholarship awards for various sports achievements. And both of them were dumb enough to leave paper trails that even their own students could follow.
Emily had already been on the phone with the Mayor and the school board this morning and she was tempted to skip all of them and bring the FBI into this cluster fuck. For right now those since this was a trigger event everything about it was all in her jurisdiction and she was going to enjoy destroying each and every one of these fuckers.
The coffee was doing piss all to keep her awake, what was driving her was the burning rage that this could have happened to Amy.
The class action lawsuit that was building was going to bankrupt the mayors office, the city, or any one else involved in this, and Emily found she didn't give a shit. The full list of things that Armsmaster's team had noticed that was wrong with the school building itself showed that there were bribes aplenty to inspectors.
She was still seething in rage when she got the results of Taylor Hebert's power testing.
That calmed her down some, she was calmed down further when the report made note that Taylor was willing to join the Wards with some conditions.
As she read the rest of the note dread began creeping in. As soon as the test was over Daniel' Call me Danny' Hebert had made some calls.
There were now four DWU lawyers sitting in a meeting room with him going over his and Taylor's options.
That was a meeting she and D'liss would need to attend soon.
The one silver lining was that the girls who put Taylor in that locker, that Taylor could name and Hess fingered. She had them collected at piss o'clock in the morning and they were currently sitting in a couple of cells in their PJs. Barnes had tried to start shit, he was given the warrant she wrote up for them as well as the charges and was then ignored as his daughter was hauled off screaming.
Hess had sung like a song bird and told her every damn thing, including where all the little 'trophies' Emma kept of things done to Taylor. All of it collected by the team she sent.
The Madison girl was grabbed as well, though she didn't have any obvious evidence of things that Hess knew about, but it seems the girl collected her own information to try and get away blameless, she ratted out the three others involved and offered recordings she took as evidence that she only played a minor part in the collecting the stuff. Seems her uncle was the butcher they gathered the offal from.
Not like that was going to save her scrawny ass either.
Hess had done her part and Armsmaster was able to recover the flute, using it as an excuse to test the inside of the walls for asbestos, which they found.
The flute was given back to Hebert after it was cleaned up along with the full run of what happened with it.
She had also seen Aegis's report on the conversation he had with the girl last night. She asked a few questions Emily had been afraid she would ask and according to the report Aegis answered them better than PR probably could have. He was probably the only reason she was agreeing to this with Hess still in the building.
Seriously she needed to find a way to reward the Wards, they were far more clever than any one gave them credit for.
Meeting room 7 PRT offices.
Danny Hebert had fucked up.
He knew he had fucked up, and he had fucked up in a glorious spectacular fashion.
He fully expected Annet to punch him in the balls several times when they again met in whatever afterlife there was.
In his fugue after she died he had all but forgotten he even had a daughter.
It had taken some serious work by Kurt and Lacey to snap him out of that. But by that point there was a rift between him and Taylor. He hadn't known about Emma, he hadn't known that sending Taylor to summer camp that year would be the thing that started that chain of events, at the time he just wanted to try and get her some where else while he tried to clean himself up.
He had managed that, barely, but he couldn't talk to her, that divide between them only seemed to grow, she never told him anything, and he didn't ask any hard questions or press, he simply buried himself in his work.
And now it had all come to a head, something he should have seen, that Annette would have seen. He at least had noticed she wasn't home when she was supposed to be and had set out to find her. With the police and the school not being helpful he called in some favors, but could only get about a hundred people to help look for her, even that was mostly Kurt's doing.
He hadn't even been the one to save her, that had been a Ward and some vampire acting fucker.
He wanted to punch the smug bastard in the face again, but every time he glared at the man he mad kissy faces back. Something was decidedly wrong with that guy.
Taylor had died. Then, she got better.
That was a shock in a half. His little girl was a cape.. and not only that a vampire, all because of her former best friend.
What the hell had even happened to Emma?
It was not something he wanted to know, it was not something he thought he ever would know even if he wanted.
He felt completely helpless at this point after being read in on Case 13s, learning that vampires were real and fought in World War 2 just made him realize how far out of his depth he was here.
He couldn't do anything for his little girl.
Or so he thought.
After the power testing she had told him that despite Shadow Stalker, she wanted to join the Wards, she wanted to be a hero.
Danny had failed thus far as a father and a protector of his little girl. He didn't have the pull he might have had twenty years ago, that could shut down the city, he didn't have super powers, or money to buy anything close to political power.
However, Danny Hebert did have a particular set of skills, skills that made him an absolute nightmare in one field of battle above all others.
He watched as Director Piggot, her Deputy Director and a pair of PRT Lawyers including Miss D'liss came into the room and took a seat at the table across from him.
He had made some calls and they had been answered. To his left was Alice Kismit, the DWU's copyright lawyer. Next to her was Gregory Parkson, the DWU's legal rep. On his other side were Marcus Finch, and Mary Helenbrook, the DWU's contract lawyers.
They were only there to point out anything he might miss.
Usually they were just paid to sit there with an air of menace while he negotiated.
Danny Hebert met the gaze of Director Piggot.
He might have failed his daughter thus far, but this was a contract negotiation for her future.
The PRT had no idea what it was getting into.
Present
"So how bad was it?" Amy asked curiously.
"Let me put it this way, I thought I did good with your contract... " Emily groaned. "I didn't manage to do shit."
"Owch."
"I am hiring that man when it comes time to renegotiate the contract when you turn 18." Emily stated only to let out a pained grunt as Pocky hopped over the back of the couch and dropped down on Emily's back.
Emily flailed her free arm a moment before giving up with a grumble as the massive green cat got comfortable sitting on her and started to purr.
Amy at least had the decency to try and stop herself from giggling.
