2.A

-- PRT Sgt. Patrick Stockton --

"Oh, fuck off, Dortch."

"Hey, I'm just saying. If those Nazi fucks want to cover their tower in glass so they can look down on the rest of us, they got what was coming to them. Isn't Shatterbird Arabic?"

"Seriously, what the fuck, Dortch? I just spent two hours waiting to get my face stitched back together. Do I look like a Nazi to you?"

Simmons was black, though the total coverage armor and opaque face plate undercut his point.

"Look, she's a cunt, not saying she's not. But--"

"Anyone want coffee?" I cut him off. Dortch was a stubborn bastard. This conversation wasn't going anywhere fast. "I'll hit up the machine."

I started off towards the secure area to a ragged chorus of yeahs. Normally there's a machine in the atrium, but we've only got the one left. As critical department infrastructure, it needed to be kept safe. Made door duty suck ass, though.

Fortunately, I was just there to shoot the shit with the boys. My shift hadn't started yet, and I'm much too important for such pedestrian assignments, anyway. More important than I was a couple days ago, even, now that I'm the only qualified pilot on base. Maybe I should be more upset about that, but Feld was always such a jackass. Even back in the service. I'd done my damnedest to get Renick to reject his application, but pilots are just too hard to come by.

He'd practically been having the time of his life since Echidna. He had joined the PRT for the chance to shoot capes, and they hardly ever let him. (That's not a guess. I know that was his motivation because that's what he told me. In those words. Me and half the cafeteria. Vista and Kid Win were eating two tables over.) Well, he'd gotten plenty of chances to shoot capes, lately, and it's hard to feel too sorry for him that he found some that shot back.

Brown and Lopes, though? Fucker couldn't have committed suicide-by-cape without company?

I sighed as I exchanged verification codes with the agents on security.

Nothing to do but add them to the list. It had not been a good couple months for the Brockton PRT. Sure as shit better than they'd been for the Brockton Protectorate, but still. Then again, Legend wrote Armsmaster an obituary in the Times, and Haney and Navarro didn't even make it onto the memorial. Not sure most of the public even realized the PRT participated in the fight. I didn't regret staying in the shelter with Sarah and Hailey, but someone needed to keep order in the medical tents.

And things were not looking up. I'd been studying at the Academy in Colorado the first time the Nine had come to the Bay, but I'd kept up with the news. They didn't have Shatterbird then, but it had been bad.

There was the normal pre-shift change crowd gathered around the coffee machine. Oh, was that the new guy? Indomitable, I think, the English one. God, every name they come up with is more generic than the last. I joined in as I waited my turn.

"--drop water from a helicopter? Like, they just tie a big bucket to the bottom."

"Not from my helicopter. Find someone else to rain on Burnscar's parade. We're grounded, anyway, until we can get a mechanic and replacement parts from outside the city."

"Didn't take you for a coward, Stockton." Rowe, face plate up, sent me a mock glare. "And without a working chopper, what good are you? This coffee is for people who contribute to the base."

"Coward? I'm just looking out for you. Unless you wanted to explain to the director how your plan lost us our last helicopter?"

He shook his head with a theatrical shiver.

"I'm on internal security today. You should pray I won't have to contribute."

"A 'helicopter' is a sort of aircraft, I take it?" Indomitable asked. Seeing our nods, he continued, "I thought you had a 'cape' who specializes in mechanical devices. Couldn't he fix it?"

"Kid?" Rowe snorted. "Maybe if we gave him a month. And then it'd be even odds whether he'd have fixed it or taken it apart to build a sonic ray gun."

"Wait, is it sonic or is it a ray gun? I don't..."

Judging by his expression, that explanation somehow failed to clear things up for Indomitable. I took pity on him.

"Tinkers have specialties. There's no guarantee any given Tinker could fix a helicopter, and if they did, the fix would be Tinker tech. Which is to say, irreplicable, incomprehensible, and unreliable. Not the sort of thing you want holding you off the ground at ten thousand feet."

He gave me a grateful nod.

"I've always found aircraft a little dubious. What if there's a mechanical issue? Much better to fly under my own power, where I understand each part of the process."

He thought he understood his power? Well, I wouldn't be the one to deny him that fantasy. I changed the subject.

"You're all from the same world, right? Earth-91?"

"91?" He blinked in surprise. "How many other worlds have you found?"

"Oh! Not ninety. One other we're in regular contact with. Someone started calling it Earth-91 based on the case file number you're certain to get once research gets up off its ass."

"Well, yes. Mi-- Valiant, Blitz, and I are all from the same world."

The new topic managed to draw a couple of the others away from the 'sonic ray' debate.

"And the others? Argent and Major?" Rowe asked.

He stiffened.

"Yes. Them too."

Leffler noticed his discomfort and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Relax, buddy. The import Nazis decided to fight the Nine directly, so we don't have to worry about them anymore. If only the domestically produced ones were so dumb."

Indomitable looked at him like that was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard.

"... You believe a band of roving outlaws is going to defeat the Devil of the Rhine?"

I struggled not to laugh. 'The Devil of the Rhine?' Wasn't she supposed to be like eleven? And I'd thought calling yourself 'Shadow Stalker' was embarrassing. Still, wouldn't do to make fun of the dimensional refugee.

"The Slaughterhouse Nine aren't just some band of roving outlaws," I patiently explained. "They're probably the most dangerous group on the continent. Siberian killed Hero. Jack alone is credited with killing more than two hundred capes."

"The Devil had two hundred kills before her twelfth birthday. More than twice that, now."

What, seriously? I guess in a war capes wouldn't hold back. Poor kid. Still, he'd missed the point.

"No, not total kills. Cape kills. Like--"

"No, I understood. Two hundred mage kills. Total kills?" He shook his head. "I can hardly speculate. Twelve thousand or so--"

"Bullshit!" Leffler laughed. "You know, I almost believed you were actually scared of this kid, but you've got to keep the details believable. Twelve thousand kills?"

"... this week. Twelve thousand this week." he finished, glaring at Leffler. "I assure you, I am entirely sincere."

He gathered himself, straightening and clasping his hands behind his back, and addressed us all, deadly serious.

"The question isn't whether she'll defeat this 'Slaughterhouse.' It's how much of the city will be left afterward. Understand me: Degurechaff is the greatest murderer of the Great War. When it comes to violence, she has no equal, not in skill, not in magical power, and not in... enthusiasm. She killed six mages in the very first battle of the war. She was an unarmed artillery spotter. She was nine years old. An embarrassing showing, relative to her later performance."

He looked around the group, meeting our eyes and letting his total conviction shine through.

"And she's every bit as capable in command. If she's the best in the world, six of the next ten can be found in her battalion. All together, they're the next best thing to unstoppable, and the Devil has an uncanny knack to bring them just where you least want them. I'd thought we'd finally got the drop on her last April, my regiment surprising her battalion. We lost more than two men to each of hers. An intelligence officer later congratulated me. The worst losses the 203rd ever suffered, he said. And that's not the worst of it--"

He startled, composure breaking. His head jerked towards the front of the building.

"She's coming here. Now!" He loudly hissed.

I jumped a little, then wanted to laugh at myself. He was just telling a scary story after all. What excellent acting! Image was going to love him, once things got back to normal.

I started to congratulate him, but he'd somehow slipped away while I was distracted. I frowned and started to ask after him, but just then the building alarm pulsed once. Incoming villain. I rushed back out to the atrium.

"Stockton, you moron, where's the coffee?"

"Missed you too, Dortch. What's up with the alarm?"

"What's it matter? There's a truce," he condescended. "Go back and get our drinks."

"It's the new girl, the one playing soldier," Simmons offered.

The door opened as he finished. Hailey walked in, talking to a girl in purple. Tattletale, a part of my mind identified. She was carrying a rifle. With a bayonet. Was that blood? I stepped forward. Once, then again. Then a hand on my shoulder stopped me short.

"Fuck are you doing, Stockton?" Dortch hissed.

I didn't turn.

"I'm going to go ask my daughter what the hell she thinks she's doing with a gun. With a supervillain!"

I hadn't tried very hard to keep my voice down. Hailey turned her head to--

Not Hailey. The resemblance was there, to be sure. Not as much as I'd thought when I couldn't see her face. A bit leaner, higher cheekbones, sharper lines all around. But the detail that stopped me was the eyes. Hailey's were an expressive chestnut. Warm. She was a passionate girl, and you could always tell what she was feeling. The eyes now boring a hole through my face plate were a very light blue, nearly silver. And so, so cold.

Dortch's voice finally penetrated the fog.

"--don't think that's her, man. She's supposed to be from another dimension or something."

I let him pull me back. She dismissed me without a second glance, walking towards the reception desk.

Only then did I remember. 'Greatest murderer of the Great War.' 'The Devil of the Rhine.' Didn't seem quite so funny now. I shook my head, trying to clear away the mistaken identification. There was a conversation going on at the reception desk I couldn't really hear. My attention snapped back at Katy's shriek, though. There was a teenage girl's severed head slowly leaking blood on the desk. Tattletale had dropped her face into her hands.

This time Dortch didn't stop me when I stepped forward.

"Oh! Don't worry." The girl actually sounded contrite, if only a little. "I already destroyed the brain. Bonesaw has no reason to come here for the head." She turned it over to reveal the gaping cavity, showing no concern for the blood getting onto her hands.

Katy just stared at her, eyes wide, mouth working noiselessly. Poor woman. She'd only started in March. But if she wanted to keep working here, of all places, she'd have to get used to some... oddness.

"You're... turning in a bounty?" I asked, hopeful.

She turned to me and nodded.

"Several, actually, though I didn't bother to gather physical evidence for the others. That won't be an issue, I hope?"

"Uh, no. It shouldn't be. Simmons, collect this... physical evidence. Bring it to... Medical, I guess. Katy, why don't you call the director? ...Katy?"

I reached over and grabbed the phone. Armsmaster had redone the internal network after an incident with a technopath in Boston a couple years ago, so it had survived Shatterbird.

"Director Piggot? I have Argent and Tattletale here to collect several bounties."

"Which in particular?"

I covered the mouthpiece and repeated the question.

She answered matter-of-factly.

"Hatchet Face, Shatterbird, Burnscar, Mannequin, Siberian, and their ninth,"-- she gestured at the head, which Simmons was presently trying to cajole into a plastic grocery bag without touching --"Cherie Vasil. Everyone but Crawler, who you got, and Jack and Bonesaw, who I believe have fled the city."

The room went silent.

"... And Tattletale?"

"Half credit on Siberian."

Despite her smirk and airy tone, you could tell she at least knew what this meant. After a long moment she rapped on the desk and I remembered the phone in my hand. I relayed the list to the director.

"... Send them up."

Rowe was already making his way over from where he'd been peeking in at the excitement. Was he assigned to attend to the director today? I waved him off. I wanted to see this through.

A\N: Well, this is an odd one. Mostly OCs talking to each other. Does it come off as authentic? Is Sgt. Stockton interesting enough to warrant using his POV? I am planning to use him a couple more times, so feedback here is useful.

Bear in mind the PRT hanging out around the coffee machine are next shift. They weren't on duty during 1.X-1.Y, and their info from that period is second hand at best.

I'm going to start doing cape names/ranks/titles in the perspective identifier. Just names was fine for relatively well known canon characters, but if I'm going to start doing OCs and capes without canon civilian names, we'll need the clarity. I'll go back and edit old chapters at some point.

How do you feel about my workaround for avoiding the 'Earth Gimel' confusion?

Edit: Added a brief extension to the scene wherein Tanya lists the bounties they're claiming. It really was not fitting well into the next chapter.