Read aloud to me alt Taylor

by Kahlil Johnson

Dnd

1. Mag

The smell was the worst.

If I hadn't known that I could get out any time I wanted, this probably would have been just as horrifying as the Trio had planned. As it was I'd created a force field immediately after being locked in but I was still stuck with the stink of the air trapped inside of the force field with me.

Oxygen was paramagnetic; I knew that from chemistry class. However I'd never worked out how to control oxygen with my powers, something that I was obviously going to have to rectify.

I sighed as I heard the bell ring and the footsteps retreating. It stung that no one had thought to help me or even tell a teacher. There was a time when I would have been furious, railed against the cowardice of people who should have had more courage.

My expectations had been lowered over time to the point that I was hardly surprised.

The hardest thing was keeping my temper under control. I was fully capable of making the locker explode, and the fact that it would have undoubtedly turned some of the students outside into a paste was not bothering it as much as it should have.

It was good that they were gone.

I waited until I felt the iron in everyone's blood moving out of sight. It felt like it took forever even though it was a matter of only a couple of minutes. Without my powers I'd have been kicking and screaming. I might even have been stuck in here for hours.

If the Trio had known what I could do they'd have never locked me in a metal locker.

A quick use of my power and the lock spun outside. A moment later the lock slipped off the locker and I was outside of the locker.

I wasn't going to be able to stay at school, not with the filth that was covering me. Hopefully the Trio would assume that the school janitor came to let me out, or even that some member of the student body had helped. I crushed the lock into a tiny ball and slipped it into my pocket.

Something was going to have to be done about Emma and Sophia. They were escalating at an alarming rate and without any consequences it wouldn't be long before I was forced to do things to them that I didn't want to do.

If I could have gone to the authorities it would be easier, but long experience had shown me that was closed off to me. Emma and Sophia had some kind of mysterious hold on the school administration.

The fact that I didn't react to anything they did only made them escalate further, and it fueled a rage that I'd been trying to keep myself from expressing, because if I did it could end badly.

Maybe it was time for me to stop practicing and planning and actually do the thing me and Emma had talked about when we'd been friends.

Maybe it was time for me to become a hero. If I waited much longer I suspected I'd end up as a villain; it ran in the family after all.

As I left the school I scowled. Learning that my grandfather had been one of the greatest villains of his world should have horrified me. Yet the more I learned from my father and from things my mother had written, the more intrigued I became.

My grandfather had been called a terrorist, a villain on a scale that rarely was seen on Earth Bet. He'd been incredibly strong, with powers to put entire super teams down. He'd had a philosophy, one which I wasn't sure I entirely agreed with.

I stepped outside the school. There was no guard to stop me, no lanyard on my neck to reassure everyone that this was a place where I belonged. Those were for schools that the city cared about.

Winslow was where the forgotten were left to die.

"So you mean I'm actually Jewish?" I asked. I was twelve and my powers had just manifested. They weren't much, just seeing magnetic fields and moving small objects, but they were enough that the first person I told was Dad. Emma had been curiously cold recently so I hadn't told her.

Strangely, learning that Mom wasn't actually from Earth Bet wasn't the thing that shocked me the most. Even knowing that her father had been a villain didn't phase me.

Yet I'd been telling Empire 88 kids for years that just because my last name was Hebert didn't mean that I was a Jew. I hadn't disliked Jews, but I hadn't wanted to be bullied by even more of the school's populace.

"Your grandmother wasn't Jewish, and it's passed through the mother's side," Dad said. "So...no? Your mom was raised as a Methodist and she never considered herself Jewish."

"So what was granddad like?" I asked.

"Disappointed in your mom for not being a parahuman. They had different words for it in their world, some of them ugly." Dad stared at me, then looked down at his hands. "He'd have been pleased to know that you were a mutant."

Mutant. It didn't sound like a particularly pleasant word. I rolled it around in my mind.

"It happens at puberty on their world," Dad said. "They don't just...trigger like people do here. There are other people who do, of course, but they aren't considered the same as mutants."

At my look her held up his hand and shook his head. "Don't ask me to explain it; I don't really understand it myself. Your mother seemed adamant that they were different somehow."

"So why was granddad a villain?" I asked.

"People persecuted mutants and he felt he had to protect them," Dad said. "Some of the things he did to do that turned out to be pretty dark."

"I don't understand," I said. "How can protecting people be bad?"

"He was a holocaust survivor, and that warped him, at least according to your mother," Dad said. "It haunted him and in some ways he ended up almost as bad as the people who'd murdered his entire family. Yet there were times when he was a hero too, when he saved their world."

He'd have hated Brockton Bay, I supposed. I saw a dozen swastikas every day on my way to school. The Empire claimed that it had refuted the old school Nazi ideologies, that it was simply about protecting the little guy from the scum who was ruining the city, but everyone knew the truth.

They were Nazis who were pretending to be something new, but they weren't.

Well, it wasn't like I was going to be a hero, not with the ability to see magnetic fields and move a pencil. It was a cute parlor trick, nothing that would be able to stop the most incompetent of villains.

Little had I known.

My power had never stopped growing. Over the past three years it had kept getting stronger, reaching the point where I was no longer sure just how strong I really was. There was only so much testing you could do before people started to notice.

Dad had taken me camping once, and I was easily able to lift the car, but beyond that I had no idea. It was something I was going to have to test out, and it wouldn't be smart to do it in the field when I was fighting.

After all, learning I couldn't do something would probably get me killed.

It was why I'd been working on a costume for weeks. It was mostly made of metal, of course. My powers gave me an intuitive understanding of some kinds of sciences; I'd have thought I was a low level tinker except that designs didn't automatically come to me. I had to study hard and learn, something the trio hadn't been making easy.

Most of my studying had been done at the library. I'd discovered that taking advanced classes had actually been a blessing in disguise; none of my tormentors were bright enough to get in, and those classes had become a haven for me.

I'd started early enough that the bullies hadn't been able to sabotage my grades enough to keep me out of those classes. I could only imagine the kind of hell my life would have been otherwise.

It wasn't even as though the advanced classes at Winslow were all that advanced. It was just that the teachers were a little more interested when faced with students who were slightly more interested in learning than the rest of their classmates.

Unfortunately, only three of my classes were advanced. That was all Winslow had to offer, and I'd taken all I could. Computer class was a haven simply by chance. The other three classes were open season.

Every day was a challenge.

If I'd wanted, I could murder every student in the school without moving from my seat, and there were times I'd fantasized about it. Simply pull the nails from the building and turn them into projectiles. I'd gotten really good at moving more and more objects, and I suspected that no one would be able to even run.

It had always been a simple daydream, something that I knew I'd never do no matter what the provocation. What worried me was the fact that I was having that daydream more often.

I needed an outlet for my rage, or Sophia and Emma would end up as chunky salsa and I'd have a kill order from the Protectorate for using my powers to murder a pair of norms.

Walking home covered in filth wasn't the best of ideas, but I doubted any bus driver would let me on board in this condition. I took control of a water hose and washed myself off as well as I could but I was still reeking and covered in filth.

As I walked home I decided. Tonight was the night. I'd go out and I'd work out some of my anger on people who deserved whatever I had to give them.

After all, what could go wrong?

1208

ShayneT

Mar 12, 2018

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Threadmarks 2. Shadow

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ShayneT

Mar 14, 2018

#105

If I'd had any other power set, creating a costume would have been a nightmare. I'd never learned to sew, and professional costume design was expensive and ran the risk of threatening secret identities. The last thing I wanted to do was go out on my first night in a ski mask and hoodie.

Instead I'd created my own breastplate. I'd crushed alternating layers of hard and soft metal together using my power and metals that I'd scrounged from places like the train yard and the Docks. The whole thing weighed ten pounds, but I'd been practicing wearing it for several weeks. It had felt unbearably heavy at first, but now it was getting easier. It had the added benefit that I was getting more fit.

Thankfully I'd never let myself develop a gut even when I was depressed because of Emma. Having my power and believing I would eventually become a hero had been part of that.

Even though I was reasonably confident that my force shield would protect me from most things, I thought it would be a good idea to have at least a little added protection. After all, I'd never really tested my force field under real conditions and had no idea how it would hold up.

Painting the armor red had actually been more difficult. I'd never been particularly good with crafts and apparently there are a lot of steps to painting that have to be done before you can create something that looks beautiful and a little shiny.

It had taken multiple tries and several times of having to leave the basement with a fan to ventilate it before I'd finally gotten the result I wanted. Paint thinners in a poorly ventilated room gave me a headache.

The amazing part was that Dad had no idea. I told him I was doing a school project and he never even went downstairs to check, even though he could smell it. Mom's death had turned him into a shell of the man he had once been and just looking at him hurt me.

The rest of the outfit had been harder to design. I'd eventually settled on black leather pants and I'd made a cloak out of thousands of tiny metal chains. While it wouldn't stop a bullet it might stop a knife, and I had things I planned to do with it. I'd covered the chainmail with red cloth that I'd woven the metal into.

I had a belt onto which I'd attached a few essentials; for now it was mostly just a fanny pack with some money and a burner phone and a police scanner hooked on my belt. I'd considered getting zip ties, but considering my abilities I doubted I'd have trouble tying anyone up.

High leather boots and a metal helmet that left my mouth free completed the ensemble. I'd tried a mask that covered my mouth, but my breath had kept fogging up my glasses, and it had made me feel claustrophobic. It was made of aluminum because my earlier designs had given me chronic neck pain. The last thing I needed was for my own armor to put me in the hospital.

I wasn't happy that the aluminum wasn't more functional; I'd have liked for it to be bullet resistant too, but it being lightweight seemed more important if I was going on patrol. People would start to suspect things if I started to develop neck muscles like a wrestler.

I'd paid for my accessories with scrap metal that I'd pulled from abandoned buildings. I'd felt guilty about committing a crime to start off my heroic career, but nothing was cheap and I hadn't had enough money to buy a stick of gum, much less three pairs of expensive leather pants.

As I carefully slipped my fanny pack to the back of my outfit where it would be covered by the cloak, I took a deep breath. I'd been delaying going out for years, always finding some excuse or other.

I'd told myself that I'd set out when my armor was perfected, or when I'd finally perfected all the aspects of my powers. The problem was that there was always a new aspect of my powers to explore. Seeing a video of a frog being levitated in a Tesla coil using diamagnetism had made me realize that I could fly even without lifting my armor. It was easier with the armor, but it had been one of the most exciting days that I could remember.

My powers weren't just about magnetism either. I had control over a lot of the electromagnetic spectrum, which gave me a wide range of things I could do, even though magnetism was the easiest of my powers to access.

If I waited until I'd fully mastered all my powers I'd be old and gray before setting out to become a hero.

This was it. Was it normal to hear by heartbeat thundering in my ears like this? Was the hitch of breath in my chest normal?

Grimacing, I forced myself to expand my senses. From the metals in his body I could detect that Dad was upstairs in bed, as were most of the neighbors in a several block radius. Most people didn't have a lot of metal in them; it would take two of them to put together a bullet's worth. It was enough that I could detect them, which meant that I was clear to leave the house without any risk of being seen.

I floated up the stairs. I was a little wobbly. I hadn't practiced a lot at flying because of the risks of being seen. I'd heard that a lot of young heroes went out to the docks to test out their powers. The gangs knew that as well and had watchers ready to follow the young heroes home.

A lot of young heroes either ended up in the gangs of ended up quietly murdered, unwritten rules be damned. Knowing that I was going to be a hero for as long as I had I'd had a lot of time to research. The unwritten rules were more vague guidelines than actual rules and they were violated regularly by both sides.

It was up to the hero themselves to safeguard their own identities, something I planned on doing. Even if my force shield proved to be as powerful as I hoped, dad didn't have anything like it to protect him.

Floating through the kitchen I reached out with my power and the door to the backyard unlocked and swung open. I floated silently through the air, my feet inches from the floor. There were no tell tale footsteps to alert my father, no sounds of movement.

The only sound was that of my own heartbeat and breathing, which sounded unnaturally loud, as did the sound of the door closing behind me with an audible click.

Reaching the backdoor I shot up into the night sky as quickly as I could. No one was looking nearby, but the last thing I wanted was to give any watchers in the distance a chance to triangulate my location.

I felt a sudden sense of anxiety as my house began to fall away beneath me. I'd flown around in my basement and even a little in my house when Dad wasn't home and the blinds were drawn, but this was something completely different.

If my powers suddenly failed me I was dead.

I forced the anxiety away and I pushed myself through the air. It didn't take long before the fear vanished and I found myself enjoying the freedom of the wind and the sky. It was effortless, moving faster than I'd ever been in a car.

Looping through the air, spinning, turning; there was a certain childish freedom to it that I couldn't help but take a certain amount of glee in. After all, there had been little enough pleasure in my life since the death of my mother.

Why shouldn't I enjoy myself, enjoy my power?

Still, this wasn't why I was here. In a way it was another form of stalling. I'd come to make a difference and I needed to get to it. From what I heard crime dropped dramatically after three in the morning, as apparently even the criminals went to bed.

I reached down and flipped on my police scanner. I'd been drilling myself on common police codes for the last few weeks, listening to the scanner and practicing so that today I'd be able to do what I needed to without flipping through my little code book.

I listened. A 10-49...a barking dog complaint. Nothing I could do about that, even if fluffy was annoying the entire neighborhood. What was I going to do to stop a dog from barking, make a muzzle? Did muzzles even stop a dog from barking?

A 10-54...livestock on the highway? Was I even remembering the codes right? I decided then and there that I was going to write them down in the message section of my phone so that next time I could check.

A 10-49...traffic light out. Was Brockton Bay not the hive of scum and villainy that I'd always been taught? Granted, it had only been five minutes, but if television had told me anything it was that crime always just sort of...showed up when a superhero started looking.

Time passed, and I occupied myself by simply flying low over the city. I knew the streets fairly well, both by studying the maps and just through watching whenever Dad drove me somewhere. It was harder to judge where I was from the sky though. Everything looked different from up here, and not just because it was dark.

A 10-57...finally. A hit and run. Someone had apparently injured someone and the police were now chasing them.

Now if I could only figure out where they were. I reached behind me and pulled out my phone and before I could pull it out of its case a gust of wind pulled it from my hand and I dropped it. I stared at it for a moment in horror before I grabbed onto it with my power and levitated it back to my hand.

It had taken me almost two weeks to figure out how to do it without damaging the compass inside my phone. A quick check of google maps and a check of my own location and I was off.

It only took a minute or two before I found them. They were in a beat up old Dodge Charger, running red lights which wasn't cool even if the streets were mostly empty. There were three police cars following them.

A simple flex of my power and their wheels left the ground. I levitated their vehicle so that the cops following wouldn't crash into them, and I began spinning the vehicle around on its axis. I pulled all the guns out, throwing them on the ground. When I judged that the men would be dizzy enough I dropped the car.

The police were already out of their vehicle, but they didn't see me floating above a building behind them. As they rushed in and cuffed the villains I felt a sense of satisfaction. I wasn't in this for the fame or for the action figures.

I'd seen how the slow death of the city had whittled my father down, turning him into a shell of the person he'd once been. It had begun even before my mother's death, although that had massively sped up the process. He'd believed that the city that he loved could rise like a phoenix, living again when it had seemed all but dead.

His faith had never been justified. Villains had eaten away at the city like maggots chewing away at the dead carcass of an animal that didn't yet realize that it was dead.

Any changes I could make would only be for the better. The first step was to give people hope.

The Protectorate never seemed to do anything but parade around and act like celebrities. Even if they did catch a villain he was out again in less than a week. I'd thought about becoming a Ward, but I didn't want to become a prancing show pony, trotted out whenever the government wanted me to give a sound bite.

I needed to make a difference, like my grandfather had. According to my father he'd been both hero and villain in his time, doing whatever it took to protect those he saw as his people.

Mutants, whatever they were didn't exist on Earth Bet, which meant that the closest thing I had to a people were the people of Brockton Bay.

More mundane calls came through the police scanner. A domestic dispute...ugh. I didn't want to touch that one with a ten foot pole.

The problem with flying was that it wasn't easy to see what was going on on the ground. I couldn't exactly see in the dark, and I didn't have super senses other than my magnetic sense that I could use to keep track of people.

I brightened. That might be the solution. At this hour people weren't usually out and about. Those who were might be involved in dastardly doings, at least enough to warrant another look.

Closing my eyes I reached out with my senses. I could detect buildings; most of them were permeated by a lattice of electrical wiring and plumbing. The people inside were much fainter, the iron in their blood almost imperceptible among the much greater amounts of metal encasing them.

Yet despite everything I did I didn't detect anyone doing anything strange. The night was dead.

I flew around for more than an hour waiting before I got impatient and headed home. I took a circuitous route in case I was caught by traffic cameras or something, even though most of those had either been stolen or vandalized.

I could only hope that every night wasn't going to be like this. Was being a hero more about boredom than about fighting?

I'd wanted to create a reputation before I tackled the Ship Graveyard. I'd lifted that car like it was nothing, so it was possible that I might be able to tear pieces off the boats and sink them or move them somehow. I considered doing it now, but I felt too discouraged.

As I landed in the alley behind my house I floated toward my gate. The latch on the inside of the gate unlocked and I floated silently through it as it closed behind me. Soon I was inside my house, floating up the stairs and then letting my gear float off my body all at once. It was a good test of my ability to multitask with my powers and it was faster.

Also it felt cool to undress without moving a muscle.

I slipped into bed and waited to relax, but sleep wouldn't come. I was deeply disappointed. Was this all there was?

As I closed my eyes I stiffened.

I could hear whispering. I couldn't make out what it was saying, but it was distinct. It almost sounded as though it was coming from the walls.

A quick check with my ability told me that Dad was in his room alone, not that I'd expected that he wouldn't be. There was no one else in the house.

Yet the whispering in the walls continued.

I slipped out of bed and strained my ears to listen. It seemed to be coming from above me. Slipping into a robe I carefully slipped out of my room,

It almost sounded as though it was coming from the attic. I walked down the hall and the trap door in the ceiling pulled slowly down, without the normal creaking sound it made when it was done with hands.

I didn't bother with the pull down ladder. Instead I simply floated upward. Hopefully it wasn't a rat or a colony of bugs. I'd hate to think about being surrounded by something like that.

The attic was stuffed with the detritus of my parents marriage, most of it from before I'd even been born. The whispering seemed louder now, and as I floated through the dust covered remains of my parents lives I coughed, the dust filling the air.

I reached up and pulled the string to the light. The bulb was old and flickering, and I reminded myself to replace it when I got the chance. Dad had never been particularly handy around the house and now that he was depressed there was next to no chance that he'd take care of it.

There was a large chest in the corner that I hadn't seen before. It was bound in iron and had a heavy lock, not that that was an impediment. I could feel the tumblers and a moment later the lock sprang open. The chest was a moment behind.

I could barely see through the gloom; my shadow obscured the chest as I approached it.

The metal inside was something I could feel, however. With the tiniest flex of my will I levitated the thing at the top of the pile and brought it close to me.

It was a red helmet.

"At last," the whispering formed itself into words.

"What?" I wondered. Was this some kind of tinker tech communication device from Mom's Lustrum days?

"Your fool of a father tried to lock me away, but he wasn't willing to entirely deprive you of your legacy."

"What?" I asked again, feeling particularly stupid. Was the helmet talking to me? Were talking helmets a thing?

"Don't you recognize me, granddaughter?" the voice said. "I am what is left of your true family, even if I am only a pale shadow of the man I once was."

Last edited: Mar 14, 2018

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ShayneT

Mar 14, 2018

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Threadmarks 3. Whisper

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ShayneT

Mar 15, 2018

#158

I had many enemies," the helmet said. "More than once they sealed my memories away, gelded me intellectually, turning me into a dunce so that they could turn me away from the true path."

"So you stored your memories in a helmet," I said flatly.

It wasn't even a particularly stylish helmet. If anything it looked a little stupid. I was a fifteen year old kid and I'd designed something that looked much better than this.

"This helmet was always designed to protect me from psionic attack. Telepathy was always the very least of my abilities; I only had enough to make me vulnerable."

"You mean the helmet protected you from being Mastered?" I asked, finally interested.

My powers seemed designed to fight all kinds of classes of powers. Brutes I could fight. Shakers, blasters...but I couldn't do anything about Masters.

The technology in the helmet itself, assuming it could be reproduced would be something the Protectorate would pay millions for. If it protected against the Simurgh it would be worth much, much more.

"You have inherited my abilities," the helmet said. "If you hadn't you wouldn't be able to understand me."

"So I'm Jewish and telepathic?" I asked.

"Barely," the helmet said. "With effort the power will grow, but it will never amount to anything like even minimal mastery."

"I thought telepathy doesn't exist," I said. "Except maybe the Simurgh."

"Perhaps not here, but it was common on my world."

I stared at the helmet wondering if there was some kind of sophisticated Artificial Intelligence inside. It had to be; it wasn't like my grandfather had placed his soul inside a hat.

A talking hat was just silly after all.

"So what do you want?" I asked. I tried to sound nonchalant, even though I was bursting with questions. My father hadn't known a lot about the world my mother had come from or how she'd come here, and I wanted to know everything. Yet from what little I'd heard about my grandfather he didn't respect weakness.

"To guide you in the way," the helmet said. "To make sure that this world does not go the way of my own."

"There aren't any mutants here," I pointed out skeptically. From what my father said my grandfather had been an extremist, planning all sorts of crazy schemes.

"There is one," the helmet said. "I will protect you and guide you."

"You're a helmet," I said flatly. I didn't see how a helmet was going to protect me, other than being a helmet. After all, telepathy didn't exist on this world, except maybe for the Simurgh, and as far as I knew the helmet didn't have any other powers.

The anti-Master effect might be interesting though.

"I have eighty years of experience," the helmet said. "I have seen wonders and horrors beyond what you can imagine... more than the heroes of this world have ever seen. I have mastered sciences beyond the comprehension of man and I can help you create devices that will astound and amaze."

I sat up. He was offering Tinkertech?

Tinkering was the one power set that I really envied. They were able to create powers instead of endlessly tweaking the one power that they had.

From what I'd heard my grandfather hadn't been an actual tinker, offered plans and designs without actually understanding what he was building. His designs would be repeatable, able to actually make an impact in the world.

"Like what?" I asked.

The world needed new technology. It wasn't just the Endbringers; the world economies had taken hit after hit, and it took new technology to spur further development and create jobs.

"I have discovered the secrets of creating life. I have granted powers to ordinary humans, created genetic mind control. I have created clones, build aircraft and spacecraft and space stations. I have built robots and computers and power nullifiers."

It was tempting. Dad thought robots were cool, even if he did worry about them taking jobs from people. The ability to give powers to normal people might mean that we could have a better chance against the Endbringers, and he might even have weapons that might make a difference.

Yet it felt a little like making a deal with the devil. He'd been a villain for most of his career, after all, and I was intending to be a hero. He was all but telling me that he intended to take me to the dark side.

What would I sacrifice if I listened to him?

I'd gain power and knowledge, but would it be worth it if I lost my soul?

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Put me on," the helmet said. "So I can guide you in what must be done."

"You must think I'm an idiot," I said flatly. "You've already told me that you were using the helmet as a backup for your memories. What guarantee do I have that you won't just...overwrite my memory and use me as a new body so you can do... whatever you are trying to do?"

"Have you no trust in family?" the helmet asked.

I was silent, staring at it.

It chuckled. "Perhaps the people of this world aren't idiots. I can still guide you even without wearing me."

"How?" I asked.

A piece of the helmet detached. Without thinking I reached out and grabbed it.

"As long as this is touching your skin we can communicate," the helmet said.

If the piece was dangerous it could have take me over the minute I touched it. I stared at the piece in my hand as though it was a rattlesnake.

"What do I call you?" I asked.

"I have had many names. I have been called Max and Erik. I have been called Magneto and master. I will not respond to grandpa or paw paw or any other puerile names however. I deserve respect, and I will ensure that you, as my progeny will receive the respect you deserve in turn."

I had to wonder how much respect he'd thought his human daughter deserved. In his own way he was as much of a racist as the members of the Empire 88; instead of white people his chosen group was mutants. Did I really want to listen to a racist to tell me how to be a hero?

Fortunately I had time to decide. Making a life changing decision in a rush was never a good idea.

"I'll think about it," I said. I yawned. "Unlike you I still have a body, and this body needs sleep."

Hesitating, I looked at the shard in my hand. Part of me wanted to leave it here, to lock the chest and never look back. However, this... thing was my last living link to my mother. It presumably knew stories about her that my father had never even heard.

There had been a void in my life since my mother had died. In a way I had been almost as much of a shell of a person as my father; I was just better at hiding it.

Maybe this would be a way of healing some of what I had lost.

Also, robots.

Should worse come to worse and he started to have me build some sort of lair with an iron throne I could always chuck him into the ocean or into space. I was the one with the power here, and I was never going to put him on my head, so all he would be able to do would be a disembodied voice.

In the end the helmet was a resource that I couldn't ignore. It had the possibility of making me great faster than I otherwise would have been, which meant I'd be able to help the city faster.

I let the helmet drop into the chest and closed it up again. I floated back down to my room, shutting off the lights.

I dropped the octagon onto my dresser, setting it across the room from me; I certainly wasn't going to sleep with it under my pillow.

As I fell asleep I thought I heard whispering begin, and my dreams were troubled by images of gigantic flying robots killing everyone I loved.

As I stepped into the halls of Winslow the whispering began.

Everyone had known what was going to happen to me and none of them had done anything about it. For some it was tactic approval. For others it was sheer cowardice. The one thing no one had apparently expected was for me to act as though nothing had happened.

"Keep your head up, granddaughter," the thing whispered in my ear. How it knew what had happened I did not know; perhaps whatever telepathic link there was between us was deeper than I had thought.

Perhaps sleeping with it across the room hadn't been the brightest idea.

In any case I could hear anger in its tone; whether if was anger at me for not punishing the people who had transgressed against me, or angry at them for attacking and attempting to humiliate the one mutant on the planet I couldn't tell.

It seemed like sound advice, so I walked in with my head held high. I ignored everyone and I walked by my locker, which had apparently been cleaned out overnight. I could still smell an acrid scent of cleaning fluids from it, strong enough that it burned my eyes and nose as I walked by it.

I headed for my first class, only to be stopped by Mr. Gladly in the halls.

"Principal Blackwell wants to see you," he said.

I scowled. Given out interactions in the past I had a suspicion what she was going to have to say. She'd try to blame me for what had happened, perhaps aided by the testimony of the trio.

Turning, I headed for the principal's office.

The anger that was building inside of me wasn't healthy. I could feel lockers rattling all over the building and I had to intentionally calm myself.

"Why do you let your lessers torment you?" the voice whispered in my ear. "You have the power to make them stop... all of them."

"Attacking norms with powers is a good way to get a kill order," I murmured. "And while you might have been strong enough to fight the whole world, I'm not sure I want to."

"That's only true if you get caught," the voice said. "A simple accident with brake pads and you might find an administrator who is more willing to follow her oaths and actually protect her charges."

According to Dad, he'd once run a school for mutants, so he knew what he was talking about. Still, he was talking about intentionally murdering Principal Blackwell. The scary thing was that I could already think of half a dozen ways I could do it without being caught.

Sabotaging her brakes was out of course; it was too close to how mom had died, and even if I was willing to commit cold blooded murder, I wouldn't do that. It was too close to what had happened to mom and would risk other, innocent people on the road.

The thought was like a splash of cold water; I felt a chill of horror go down my spine. My anger drained away.

I was going to be a hero, and heroes did not murder people because it was convenient.

"You'd be protecting others," the voice whispered.

"I'm not doing it," I muttered under my breath. I hoped this didn't keep happening; my reputation at school was already bad enough without my being seen talking to myself. Emma and the others would have me in a psychiatric hospital that my father couldn't afford before the day was out.

"Then we will have to find another way," the voice said, as though the life or death of a single human had no more value to him than the fate of an ant on the ground.

The secretary looked at me with contempt as I stepped into the office. I'd tried complaining to the administration one time too many and she saw me as a troublemaker.

Her stapler was sitting precariously on the edge of her desk. A tiniest act of will sent the stapler falling. I moved it slightly as it hit the floor, and I heard her curse as she reached under the desk and hit her head. It was petty, but I felt a moment of satisfaction.

I stepped up to the door of Blackwell's office and I knocked.

"Come in," I heard the muffled voice from inside.

As I stepped inside I saw Principal Blackwell staring at me disapprovingly.

"Why am I here?" I asked.

"This is about the vandalism of your locker," she said.

"Go on the offensive," the voice whispered. "So long as she controls the conversation she has the power."

It was why she sat behind a big desk and wore the clothes that she did; it was intimidating.

"Are you going to press assault charges?" I asked.

"We're here to talk about your vandalizing school property," she said. "I have no idea what you are talking about."

"You know what happened," I said coolly. "Do you really think that nobody filmed what happened? Everyone has cell phones. What do you think would happen if I went to the press with the information that Winslow is actively participating in the assault of students on campus?"

She stared at me, silent for a moment.

"I'm sure that there is no evidence of something that didn't happen," she said smoothly. "And Blackmail is a crime. You are already in enough trouble as it is."

"You could kill her with the paperclip on her desk," the voice in my ear said helpfully. "It would be easy. I can show you how. You should not tolerate this from someone like her."

"Like there's evidence that I'd vandalize my own locker?" I asked. I lifted one eyebrow. "You know there are a lot of lawyers out there who will work for a cut of whatever lawsuit winnings they get. How hard do you think it would be to make a case of willful and malicious neglect?"

The voice whispered in my ear, and I brightened.

"Sometimes winning can be losing," the voice said. "If it costs too many resources."

Leaning forward I said "And even if we lose how much will defending the case cost the school? What will it do to your reputation with your superiors?"

She scowled, then waved at me.

"Get back to class."

Getting her to actually take real action against Emma, Sophia and Madison was too much to expect, at least without actual evidence and blackmail material. I knew that the three of them had probably made sure that no one was filming; they were good at protecting themselves like that.

"I'll need new copies of my books," I said. "And it would hardly be fair to make me pay for them again, not when this clearly was perpetrated by unknown parties."

She scowled and scribbled out a note, as well as a hall pass without even asking.

I was tempted to make a parting remark, something scathing and cutting, but the voice interrupted me.

"Be gracious in victory, child." His voice sounded almost amused. "Taunting the defeated only leads to retribution later. Even the mouse can wound the lion when the time is right."

Was I the mouse or the lion? I didn't always understand his metaphors, probably because he was old. He'd grow up during world war two, and I had the impression that the world my mother had come from was farther along in the timeline than my own. For all respects and purposes he was from the future.

Instead of making a snarky remark I simply took the papers from her, looked her in the eye and held my head high. I turned and left the office.

The secretary was still rubbing her head, which gave me a grim sense of satisfaction.

Two wins in the same day, however small was a rare thing for me. Of course that meant that the rest of the day was likely to go downhill, but I'd treasure whatever victories I could get.

"Pessimism is the sign of the weak," the voice whispered. "The strong make their own future, even if they have to bend fate to their own will."

"I can see that you haven't been to high school," I muttered.

The hallways were empty now, leaving me free to move around as I wished. I felt a sudden impulse to simply leave; I'd had my victories for the day, why taint that with what was sure to follow.

"If you do not conquer your fears they will conquer you."

"What are you, a fortune cookie?" I snapped.

"Think of this as your first step toward conquest. While these people are inconsequential ants they have made you believe that they are lions. If you don't have the courage to face them what does it say about your will to face the greater villains to come?"

He was right.

I had to learn to face my own demons or I'd end up cowering ever time things became hard. I couldn't afford to let myself get weak, not when I was just starting out. I had to learn to stand up for myself or I'd be a failure.

Maybe having a supervillain whispering in my ear wasn't the worst thing in the world.

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ShayneT

Mar 15, 2018

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Threadmarks 4. Lumps

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ShayneT

Mar 17, 2018

#214

Everyone's eyes were on me as I stepped into the classroom. They all knew what had happened to me the day before. I could see it in their eyes. Some of them had undoubtedly enjoyed it, anticipated it even. They were doubtlessly hoping to see me break down, turn into a wreck.

I wasn't going to be part of their own personal soap opera.

"Show no weakness or they will eat you alive," the voice whispered.

For once we were in agreement. I held my head high and ignored everyone as I handed my pass to the teacher.

This was computer class, one of the classes I didn't have any of my primary bullies; afterwards I would have world issues with Mr. Gladly. Madison would be there, trying to make my life as difficult as possible.

I'd have to dodge them at lunch, and I'd have to deal with Sophia in physical education after lunch. After that I was onto my advanced classes and I wouldn't have to worry about them until tomorrow.

Logging onto my computer I made short work of the assigned work. The work had always been easy for me, and as time had gone by it had gone easier for me. I saw connections that other people didn't see and I wondered if it was my power making me smarter than other people, or if I had always been this smart and had simply covered it up to not humiliate Emma.

Logging onto the PHO afterwards was easy enough. I looked for any reference to my actions the night before.

There was one small notation, but no one really seemed to care much. There had been no video of the event and the police had only made a small note of it, so there wasn't a lot of excitement about it.

That was all according to plan. The sooner that people knew about me the sooner I would be facing real villains. Independent capes tended not to last long in the bay; they were either killed or recruited within a few months.

"Such timidity doesn't suit someone with the power of Magneto," the voice said.

Given his... confidence, he probably wanted me to go out and fight Lung the first night out, then take a selfie of myself over his body to post online.

"Defeat the strongest and the weaker will cower," the voice said approvingly.

"Or they'll gang up on me," I muttered.

The classmate to my left glanced sharply at me. I frowned and shook my head at him. I was going to need to learn to subvocalize when I talked to my fake grandfather or I was going to get the reputation for being crazy that I had been worried about.

I'd never be stupid enough to take on Lung, at least not until I was sure that I had the power and the experience to take him. It was my nature to be cautious... at least I thought it was. I'd never really had the opportunity to take risks before so I couldn't be sure.

I spent the rest of the period running through a list of the known parahumans in the Bay. My hope was that my grandfather might have ideas about how to counter each of them with my powers. Fortunately he was quite helpful, and some of his ideas were imaginative and creative.

Some of the capes in town I doubted that I'd have trouble with. Hookwolf was almost made to be beaten by me. Kaiser's weapons would be mine the moment he made them.

Others wore metal armor, something they'd probably stop doing when they realized what I could do.

According to my grandfather my force field would probably work against Purity, bending the attack around me, but I'd have to be careful about what her beam hit behind me. It was a problem he'd had in the past. As I could master other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, it was possible that her blasts might be something I could work with. I would need a lot more practice to make it work.

There weren't many Masters in the Bay...possibly Hellhound, who apparently controlled dogs although no one was really quite sure.

My biggest enemies were probably going to be people like Crusader and Shadow Stalker. Crusader's ghosts went right through armor; whether my force field would work or not depended on how their ability worked. If it took them somewhere else, leaving only an afterimage in this reality, then my shield wouldn't work.

If it simply dispersed them or put them out of phase then it was possible that it would. There would be no way to know until I encountered them, which meant that I couldn't afford to get cocky.

The voice brought up the thought that just because there were certain capes living in the Bay that didn't mean that others wouldn't come in from outside. Parahumans could be a transient bunch.

"Expect that the unexpected will happen; you can't prepare for everything," the voice said. "But prepare for as many things as you can and the rest will follow on its own."

It didn't seem like bad advice. Overpreparing was sometimes as bad as underpreparing, because changes could throw you off your plans.

As I got up to leave the class I saw that all three of my tormentors and their entourage were waiting for me.

"I think she's a little slow," Julia said. "People keep trying to tell her that they don't want her here, but she never seems to get the message."

"Hebert always was a bit of an idiot," Sophia said casually. "Can't take a hint, not ever."

"Head up, child," the voice said. "Never show fear before jackals, even if they are only cubs."

"I've seen burn victims who were better looking," Madison said. "And after yesterday I don't think I'll ever get the stink out of my nose."

"She always stank," one of the hanger's on said. "Because she's poor."

The voice in my head was silent for a moment as the tirade continued.

"I have been a leader of men for decades," the voice began. "And I have spent much of that time learning to take a man's measure. I can look at a man and make guesses about his strengths and weaknesses."

I wasn't sure where he was going with this.

"The redhead pretends to be strong but she is weak. Push her and she will fold like a house of cards."

Looking at Emma it was hard to believe. She'd always seemed strong and dauntless, even when she was tormenting me.

"It's a front, a projection to the world to convince everyone and herself that she is not weak."

Like a chihuahua in a world where every other creature was larger. They often pretended to be much larger than they were.

"The others hate her and are looking for an excuse to push her off her throne, but they too are afraid," the voice said. "All it would take is the slightest push and she would go toppling."

I glanced at Sophia and the voice was silent again.

"That one is dangerous. She clearly knows how to fight, and she has a self confidence that you don't often see in someone her age. She's either a member of a criminal organization or possibly a superhuman or both."

Sophia a superhuman? Clearly his radar wasn't infallible.

I glanced at Madison and he didn't do anything but grunt derisively.

The stress on my face must have shown despite my best efforts, because Emma shoved herself in my face.

"You look upset," she said. "Are you growing to cry? Maybe cry yourself to sleep for a full week?"

I didn't have a chance to respond before I felt rage coming from the voice, the first actual emotion that I'd ever felt coming through our link. It was rage beyond anything I'd ever experienced, and if I hadn't been in school in front of more than a dozen witnesses I'd have fallen to my knees.

I'd lost a mother, but he'd lost a daughter, and Emma's making fun of her death was apparently more than he could take dispassionately.

"It's not like you shouldn't cry," Emma was continuing. "After all, you were the one who killed her mother."

The shock of that held me frozen for a moment.

"Let me show you how to put this... creature in her place," the voice said.

I nodded slightly, and a moment later he began whispering instructions in my ear.

"You once told me that you admired me," I said coolly. "That I was stronger than you'd ever be. That's the one true thing you've ever said."

I shrugged cruelly. "You're weak, worthless. You'll never be a big time model and without that what are you? You aren't smart and you certainly aren't nice. You might be able to trick someone into marrying you, but nobody is going to want to stay. After all, someone who wouldn't even cry when their mother died is somebody who would backstab anyone."

Gesturing at everyone else I smirked. "How long do you think these jackals will stay around once they realize what you really are?"

"You're weak," I said, leaning forward. "You've always been weak. You shoved me in that crap yesterday and I took it like a champion. How long would you have lasted... a second, a minute? You wouldn't last a single hour of the crap you put me through, and I've taken it for the past three years."

Sophia was trying to shove her way through the crowd of girls who were all staring at me in shock. I'd been a punching bag for so long that the idea that I might fight back was alien to every one of them.

I felt a sudden flash of an image in my mind of an Asian face leaning forward and whispering something.

I leaned forward and whispered in Emma's ear.

"Eye, nose, mouth or ears?"

She screamed and started punching away at me. I considered putting up my shield, but the voice advised against it.

It hurt, but the bruising would be the proof I needed to at least get something done. I didn't fight back as she hit me over and over. She wasn't very strong, but I felt a vicious kick to my ribs as I crouched to the floor that didn't come from her.

"She says you started it," Principal Blackwell said.

"I never touched her, not once," I said. "You can ask Mrs. Knox."

Mrs. Knox nodded.

"She says you threatened her and she was defending herself," Principal Blackwell said.

Alan Barnes was in the room and she hadn't even called Dad. I'd already checked and I was developing a real shiner. Emma wasn't even in the room; for some reason she refused to even look at me without lashing out again.

"I never said anything like that," I said. "When are we going to call the police?"

"Over your behavior?"

"Assault and battery of a minor," I said. "She has spent the last year and a half in a concerted bullying campaign that has ended in her assaulting me."

"There is no need to involve the police," she said. "This is simply a schoolyard scrap."

"You're a lawyer," I said, turning to Alan. "If I march down to the police station looking like this what do you think the police are going to do?"

"What would going to juvie do to her modeling career, to her chances of going to college?" I asked.

He stared at me as though he'd never seen me before.

I felt strange, as though I was the one in control of the room.

"There's no proof that Emma did this," he said.

I had been searching the Internet while waiting for Alan and Emma to convince Blackwell to turn this all against me. It hadn't taken me long to find what I was looking for.

Pulling out my phone I held it up, pressing play.

Nerd girl gets pwnd!!! was what the heading said.

The audio was grainy; there was no way to know what I was saying through the catcalls of the girls. It was clear however that Emma was attacking me, and just as clear that no one else was coming forward to help me. Two of the teachers in the background were clearly not doing anything, whether through apathy or fear of lawsuits I didn't know.

"This isn't the only video online either," I said. "I've found a half dozen of them. Most of them aren't very complimentary toward me, but what do you think a juvenile judge will think when he sees them?"

Emma had always been able to stay on top by staying out of trouble and always managing to blame others for the things she did. The moment she had attacked me in front of witnesses the other girls had seen an opportunity to dethrone her, and they'd taken it.

The voice had known this would happen before I'd even opened my mouth. It's solution had been different, something I hadn't been willing to do. It never would have suggested that I let myself be beaten; it had far too much pride for that.

Or maybe it wasn't as cunning as me.

Sometimes losing can be winning if it is done right.

If he was as old as he claimed, how did he know about social media? I'd always thought old people avoided things like that like the plague.

Of course, I obviously didn't have much experience with grandparents. I hadn't known anything about Mom's parents, and Dad's had been dead for a long time. Maybe there was a whole Senior section on Myspace where they showed wrinkly pictures to each other.

"Emma and I were friends once," I said. "I don't know what happened to her. But she needs help. You can either get it for her yourself or I can call the police and she can get it that way."

I forced myself to stare at Alan Barnes coldly. I didn't know how aware of what Emma had been doing that he knew about, but I did know that he had no intention of lifting a finger to help me unless he was forced to.

I didn't even need to listen to the whispering in my mind to know that.

Glancing over at Ms. Blackwell, I said, "While I'm sure the school board isn't all that interested in a simple case of assault and battery... this IS Winslow after all, I think the media might be interested. The videos alone are enough to make this mildly newsworthy, and I've kept a log of every time that I've been abused and more importantly every time that the school ignored or rejected my claims."

"You have no proof of anything," Ms. Blackwell said.

"I don't have to," I said. "Emma is in trouble and the vultures are circling. How long do you think that it will be before some of the kids break ranks and start talking to reporters to get their fifteen minutes of fame? Teenagers love that kind of thing. That's why they make videos of themselves on You Tube doing idiotic things."

Leaning forward, I said "And once a reporter starts digging, I'm betting I'm not the only one. I'll bet that there are others who have better evidence that I do. How much bad publicity do you think it takes to get a school Principal blacklisted? Mark Twain once wrote "In the first place, God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards."

"What do you want, Miss Hebert?" Blackwell asked. She sounded tired.

"I want you to do your damn job," I said. "I want to be able to come to this school and be ignored. I'm not asking to have friends, just to not have juice thrown on me, insults every time I walk down the hallways, being tripped and almost pushed down the stairs and having it ignored because the perpetrator is a track star."

"You are asking for the impossible," Blackwell said, looking at me. "I can't control every student in this school."

"Then punish the ones who do," I said.

"Without proof what can I do? You threaten me, but the parents of the other students do exactly the same thing if I punish their children without concrete evidence, and some of them have considerably more clout than you do, even now."

"Then get rid of me," I said. "Transfer me to Arcadia, and I'm a problem out of your hair and out of Mr. Barnes. Emma isn't only cruel to me, but I seem to be the one she puts the most effort into. A lot of her issues might disappear if I'm gone."

"You think I haven't thought about it?" she asked. "You've been a thorn in my side since you came to this school, and I'd love to make you someone else's problem. The problem is that I have no control over Arcadia, especially in the middle of the semester."

"Then let me home school," I said. "There are online computer courses I can take until next semester. I'm sure with your full endorsement Arcadia would be more than willing to let me in. After all, my grades in all the classes I'm not being bullied are exemplary."

"And the ones where you claim to be bullied are not," she said. She sighed. "I can't do anything about this without the agreement of your father."

Who should have been here all along. They'd intended to bully me into compliance; I didn't even have to listen to the voice to know that much.

"Are we done here?" I asked.

"You aren't entirely blameless in this," Principal Blackwell said.

She was planning to try to turn this around, make it my fault like she had always done in the past. Giving her time to do it would be giving her time to regain her confidence. That wasn't something I wanted to do.

"I've already taken my lumps," I said, gesturing toward my face. "Are you ready to take yours?"

With that I stood up and left.

1155

ShayneT

Mar 17, 2018

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Threadmarks 5. Idiots

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ShayneT

Mar 19, 2018

#327

"Allowing yourself to be hurt for a tactical advantage is not what I would have chosen," the voice said. "My method would have worked much better."

"She was my friend once," I said. "Destroying her life like you wanted wasn't an option."

I was heading out of school, wondering how I was going to explain my face to Dad. He had a temper, and it was going to be all I could do to keep him from marching over to the Barnes' and punching Alan in the face.

"She takes joy in the death of your mother. Shouldn't she pay for that?"

"To someone like her social position IS her life. What I did today is going to threaten that," I said. "I don't know why she responded so violently to what I said... I just got a hint of an image, but it was enough to drive her nuts."

"Our telepathic abilities are frail and uncertain," the voice said. "I have known mutants who could have cored your... friend's mind like an apple. They could have stolen every thought and made her dance to their tune with just the merest effort of power."

"People like that get the Birdcage here," I said. "Or a bullet to the head."

It was true. Masters didn't join the Protectorate often, at least not openly. People thought it was because the Protectorate didn't trust them, or because people didn't trust them and so they kept the ones they had hidden.

As I approached a corner I could feel tiny particles of iron floating through a bloodstream.

Everyone else was in class. Whoever it was was waiting for me.

I hesitated. The smart thing to do would be to turn around and leave. I knew almost certainly who it had to be, and if she escalated enough I wasn't certain what I'd do.

"Cowardice doesn't become you," the voice whispered.

I suspected that the voice was impatient with my school life. If I lashed out with my powers here I'd be forced to go on the run, which would make me much easier to bend to his point of view.

Knowing he was a villain meant that I had to take everything he said with a grain of salt. I wasn't even sure whether to think of him as a he or an it...I kept shifting back and forth in my mind. Was this the spirit of my grandfather, somehow held through a science beyond anything known on our earth, or was it simply a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence?

Before I could choose to do anything, Sophia stepped from around the corner.

"What did you say to her?" she asked.

Her expression was dangerous; there wasn't any of the mocking boredom that she usually had when she bullied me.

I stared at her silently. I'd seen Sophia get into fights before, usually with the Empire guys. They tended to be short, efficient and brutal. Most of the Empire guys didn't go to the administration for fears of being mocked for being beaten by a black girl.

"I told her what she needed to hear," I said coolly.

"Ask her about her father," the voice said. It seemed almost gleeful. "Girls like this almost always have daddy issues."

Sophia's father wasn't around; she had a stepfather from what I'd heard.

"Just like I'd ask you about your stepdad," I said.

She froze, staring at me, and then her face flushed, which was quite a feat given her skin tone. The expression on her face told me that we'd struck a nerve.

"What the fuck did you just say to me?" she asked, slamming me up against the lockers.

It didn't hurt because of my shields, but she didn't seem to notice. I could have forced her hand away from where it was grabbing my shirt, but I didn't bother.

"It's possible she was abused," the voice said. "Or that like your other friend she had some sort of trauma that has made her this way."

I smirked.

"It hurts to think that you aren't the most important thing in my life," I said. "To know that ultimately you don't matter."

She froze, staring at me.

"In the long run, you'll end up in jail. You can only roll the dice so many times before you roll snake eyes."

Shoving me against the lockers again, she said "You don't know anything."

Listening to the voice in my ear, I said, "You think you've gotten away with it, but there are people who know what you did. How long do you think it'll be before the people in power find out?"

It was a shot in the dark. Someone like Sophia always had a skeleton in her closet, and if she really was a member of a gang there would be people who knew what she'd done.

I saw something in her eyes; I'd hit a nerve.

"You keep going like you're going and they'll lock you away. Me...my life is going to get a lot better from here on out. When we come back to our ten year reunion, where do you think you'll be? In prison orange?"

I hesitated. The voice suspected that she might be a metahuman. There was one way to find out.

"Or maybe you'll be in the Birdcage."

Only parahumans went to the Birdcage. There was a moment of shock on her face before she quickly controlled her expression.

Sophia's hands tightened around my shirt and then she dropped it. "You're just making things up."

"Maybe," I said. "But it doesn't change the fact that you and Emma aren't worth bothering with. You wonder why I haven't fought back, haven't responded to either of you?"

I leaned forward. "It's because you are beneath me."

"She's about to attack," the voice said.

Dodging to the side, I saw Sophia hit the lockers. I didn't have any combat training, and I suspected that if I actually got into a fight with her I'd have to reveal my powers or I'd get hurt quickly.

A quick burst of power and the fire alarm at the end of the hallway was pulled. People began to stream out of the classrooms into the hall, and when they saw the two of us facing each other down cell phones were coming out and pointed in our direction.

Sophia saw them, and she snarled at me.

"This isn't over Hebert," she snarled, and then she stalked off.

I shrugged and continued on my way to the outside of the school. Walking home in the middle of the day wasn't the smartest decision; the cops would probably harass me for being out of school. It didn't matter.

"Shit," I said under my breath. "You're right. Sophia is a parahuman."

The way she'd responded to the Birdcage question was highly suspicious. I suspected that it wouldn't be difficult to figure out which Cape she was. After all, she was black, which eliminated the ABB and the Empire. She was female, which further cut down the list of Capes she could be.

Although Skidmark was black, the Merchants had hardly any known Capes.

Could she be Parian? The woman had bee careful to keep her ethnicity hidden. I couldn't see Sophia running a side business as a seamstress.

As reluctant as I was to entertain the idea, that left the heroes. She obviously wasn't Vista, who was too young and white.

Shadow Stalker on the other hand...

Of she was Shadow Stalker, it would explain a lot. If Blackwell knew about it and was making concessions because of it it would mean that my decision not to join the PRT was the right one after all.

My original decision was still sound. They seemed to be more interested in public relations than in actually helping people. Something like this would mean that they were rotten to the core. Either they'd mismanagedSophia, in which case they were incompetent, or they were actively involved, which was worse.

"Do not allow your imagination to take you down dark paths," the voice said. "Until you have proof this is all just speculation."

"You are advising me to me to be cautious?" I asked incredulously. "Where's all that stuff about taking a man's mettle and all that?"

"I've had a lifetime of experience at judging people, and even I sometimes am wrong," he admitted. "Sometimes disastrously so."

Still, it was possible that if Sophia really was Shadow Stalker or some other independent cape that I hadn't heard from, I might have just made her suspicious. When someone who was timid suddenly develops confidence it was typically a sight of something.

"Do you really want to be stuck in that school when I can give you an education beyond the petty science of this world?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" I snarled. "Separate me from the rest of humanity, make yourself the only source of love and affection. That's how cults get started."

"You'll need to start your own cult of personality," he said. "Even with all your power, you need minions."

"Calling your employees minions is part of the reason that people think you are a super villain," I said. "Heroes lead teams, villains have minions."

Reaching the bus stop, I waited.

I could have flown home in a couple of minutes, but that would have risked exposing myself and putting Dad at risk. That meant that I had to put myself at the mercy of Brockton Bay public transport. I'd be lucky if urine was the only smell on the seats.

"This mode of travel is beneath you," he said.

"I'm fifteen," I said. "I won't be getting a driver's license for at least a year, and unless you want me to build some kind of eight legged death tank, which is silly considering that I can fly, it's public transportation or nothing."

Before he could respond, the bus turned the corner. A moment later it slid into place in front of me.

Stepping onto the bus, I slipped my pass into the reader. A moment later I slid onto the back of the bus. Carefully checking the plastic seats I sat down.

As we moved from stop to stop, I watched as the detritus of humanity stepped onto the bus. That couple were obviously Merchants. They reeked of burnt rope and their teeth were rotting. Their eyes were bloodshot and they barely seemed aware of where they were.

A couple of homeless guys stepped on board at the next stop. Even though I was a half dozen seats away I could smell them.

A harried looking women with three small, screaming children stepped onto the bus and sat down. Even though the children were running up and down the aisles she studiedly ignored them and all of us as well.

Although the voice didn't say anything I could sense its disapproval. It would doubtlessly tell me that I was better than all these people, but was I really? Did my being a mutant make me better than regular people somehow?

Emma would have made fun of Dad and me for being poor. The fact that I was on the bus at all instead of taking a cab was proof that I wasn't any better than any of these people.

We turned another corner. I'd forgotten how many stops there were. Usually when I took the bus to school I was so busy worrying about what Emma and Sophia had cooked up for me that I barely noticed all the stops.

Plus, it was more obvious when the bus was almost empty. Usually I was sitting staring at people's coat pockets or I was standing with my face stuck in people's armpits.

One of the homeless guys got off, and I stiffened as I saw someone getting on the bus. There was something wrong about him.

Even though it was January the day was unseasonably warm. The man was wearing a heavy overcoat. He was avoiding eye contact with everyone. That wasn't unusual in itself; everyone was busy trying to pretend they were the only ones on the bus. They looked bored about it, however, and he did not.

He was perspiring, possibly from the coat, but he looked nervous. He was fidgeting and his face was flushed. His whole body seemed to be trembling.

In one hand he was carrying a large duffle bag. It looked heavy, and his hands were clenched tightly around it.

"Beware," the voice said. "This one is dangerous."

Reaching out with my magnetic sense, I could feel a lot of metal in the bag. I couldn't make out exactly what it was, but the whole thing had to weigh at least sixty pounds.

As we headed to the next stop, I noticed that several cars were on the road with us. They were black vans and all of them were unmarked. Their windows were shaded so that you couldn't see inside; I wasn't sure that was even legal in this state.

"I'll get off at the next stop," I murmured to myself.

Whatever this was, it didn't look like the klnd of thing I should involve myself in, certainly not while I was in my civilian identity.

The man was getting more and more agitated; he'd finally noticed the vans too. Other people ion the bus were noticing him as well; I noticed that the woman shushed her children and moved three seats back, closer to me.

A check on his body showed that he had metal on him under his coat. It almost seemed like a vest, but not one like the vest I had made. It wasn't one continuous piece.

The bus started to slow, and suddenly the man surged to his feet. He pulled a gun from his pocket and he screamed at the bus driver in another language. The bus driver apparently understood him.

"He's speaking Russian," the voice in my head said. It almost sounded smug.

"And I suppose you understand Russian?" I mumbled.

"And German , French, Ukrainian, Hebrew, Portuguese and Yiddish," he said "Among other languages."

Yiddish and Hebrew were different languages? Apparently being Jewish was a lot more complicated than I had thought. It wasn't just wearing a funny cap and going to church on Saturday.

The bus sped up instead of stopping at the next stop. I scowled.

Closing my eyes, I disabled the firing pin on his gun. I'd been practicing that little trick for a while since it was something I knew I'd need. While I could stop bullets fairly easily, it was better than no bullet was ever fired.

Besides, having the guns all suddenly not work would be intimidating all on its own. It would help me work from the shadows. I hadn't intended to be this close to the action, but I was glad I had practiced.

It was all part of my preparations for being a hero. I'd gotten a cell phone so that I could call the police and PRT if I captured criminals. I couldn't depend on the criminals to always have phones on them. I felt guilty for having it; Dad would look at me with a disappointed expression on my face if he knew I had it.

Calling the police would have been an option except that I suspected that it was the police following us.

Now that they were aware that the man knew what was going on, they abandoned all pretense of being innocent black vans.

"THIS IS THE PRT," a voice on a loudspeaker said. "PULL THE BUS OVER AND SURRENDER."

The man cursed in Russian. I ignored the voice's helpful offer to translate.

Instead the man pulled his jacket open, and I froze as I saw the vest he was wearing. It looked like it was made with Tinkertech, and it was undoubtedly a bomber's vest.

Earth Aleph had had problems with terrorists, but on Earth Bet we had far less experience with them. There were parahuman groups like the Fallen and the Teeth, and the fact that the PRT was involved suggested that this man was more than he appeared.

Before I had a chance to get a good look at the bomb he'd already closed his coat again.

"It won't be as simple as pulling a wire," the voice said. "Any competent bomb maker will set it to go off if it is tampered with, and this one uses technology that I haven't seen before."

"You can't figure it out anyway?" I snapped. "I thought you were supposed to be a tinker's tinker or something."

"I can only see what you see," the voice said. "And a glimpse alone won't be enough. What I did see was that the bomb is probably powerful enough to destroy several city blocks."

Before I could reply, one of the PRT vans rammed into the side of the bus, forcing it to the side of the road.

"What the hell?"

Hadn't they seen the bomb? Didn't they care about civilian casualties?

The bus stopped and I realized with a sinking feeling that we were next to a familiar school. This was the school that I'd gone to when I was a child, and Elementary school with more than a thousand children.

Those idiots.

A moment later the man in the trenchcoat was striding toward me. Apparently he'd seen me mumbling to myself. In his mind I was probably working for the PRT, giving them updates about our situation.

He was screaming at me in a language I couldn't understand, pointing a gun that I'd already disarmed at my face. However, he also had a powerful bomb under his jacket that I couldn't yet disarm.

I should have sprung for a cab.

Last edited: Mar 19, 2018

1007

ShayneT

Mar 19, 2018

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Threadmarks 6. Interlude PRT

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ShayneT

Mar 21, 2018

#417

Robert gripped the steering wheel tightly. His career was over, and it was almost a relief.

The video Coil had would have put him in prison and on a registry if he'd ever gotten out. Every time he changed records for Coil, or slipped confidential information to him, he only dug himself in deeper.

The horrible thing was that he knew Coil had other operatives in the building, which meant that he couldn't risk trying to turn into an informant. Even if he could get immunity, which was unlikely given how Piggot ran things, he'd probably have a bullet in the back of his head by the end of the day.Coil knew things, things he shouldn't have been able to know. Things always turned out in his favor.

Today was the first time that he'd been allowed to know the identity of two of his co-conspirators. The men were both riding in the van with him now, and they'd already worked out their stories; the van radio had been defective and they'd used their best judgment in stopping the bus.

The fact that they'd stopped the bus next to an elementary school was the most horrifying thing about all of it.

Coil wanted to discredit the PRT for some reason that wasn't clear to him, and something like this was going to be a PR disaster.

The fact that the bombs themselves had been stolen from PRT facilities was only going to raise more questions about the efficacy of the PRT.

He was letting down everyone else in the organization, and his guilt was overpowering. He was almost glad that the PRT uniforms covered the face and seeing his guilt reflected on the faces of his compatriots was impossible.

For the moment he had to hope that Coil wasn't planning on this being his last mission. Would he endanger a school of elementary children simply to gain some kind of advantage over his enemies?

The only advantage was that if the bomb blew he wouldn't survive long enough to know the horrible things he'd unleashed following a madman.

For the moment there was no choice but to fall back on training.

Rushing out of the van, he and his two comrades helped form a cordon around the bus. In some ways procedures weren't that different than if they were dealing with a Shaker. Evacuation was the most important thing, and from what he heard on the radio the PRT was already taking steps to try to evacuate the children. It was going to be a difficult task, considering that they were going to have to get hundreds of children several blocks away, and the school buses were not nearby.

He felt a sudden sense of resolve. It didn't matter what Coil wanted. He wasn't going to allow children to die, even if it killed him. Death would be better than living like this; always looking over his shoulder, wondering how long it was before Coil asked him to do something he wasn't willing to do.

There had been a time where he wouldn't have considered doing something like this. Every time he'd compromised, it was like a little piece of his soul had been chipped away, leaving an empty void. Compromising had gotten easier and easier.

Stepping out onto the pavement, he pulled his weapon. Containment foam wouldn't do anything to contain the blast made by something like this, and they didn't know much about the man who was wearing the vest.

"He's moving them all to the back of the bus," the announcement came over the speaker in his helmet, as though he couldn't see what the man was doing.

"He's using them as human shields," another voice interjected.

The sound of a motorcycle in the distance indicated that Armsmaster was on his way. Robert had been avoiding Armsmaster as much as possible for fear of his new lie detection software. The man claimed it was nowhere near ready, but Tinkers were known to endlessly tweak projects even after anyone else would have said they were good enough.

"Do you have a shot?" Robert asked the man beside him.

His co-conspirator shook his head. Of course it wouldn't be that easy. Coil wanted to humiliate the PRT; a simple head shot could be covered up in the media as a PRT success even if it had been in front of a school.

"Back up," their unit commander said over the radio.

There was a sudden commotion inside the bus; it looked as though some of the male passengers were rushing the man.

"Crap," Robert said.

A moment later heat and light blotted out his vision. He staggered back, and suddenly the world went quiet as the sound of the explosion overwhelmed his sense of hearing.

Something was wrong, though. He wasn't dead, which he should have been if the explosion was as powerful as they'd all been told.

Instead, the fireball was funneling upward, away from the school and away from his fellow agents. Was this what Coil had had in mind?

The bus itself disintegrated, turning into a thousand metal fragments that were suddenly floating, rotating in a funnel.

Armsmaster pulled up beside him, with Miss Militia riding behind him on the motorcycle. He said something, but Robert couldn't hear him.

Shadows appeared in the middle of the conflagration. It took a moment for Robert to identify them as humanoid figures. Metal was flying toward the one in the lead, forming itself into armor. By the time the woman was visible, her face was covered with a sort of helmet, and her body in armor that fit her as though it was molded to her body.

Behind her were the other passengers, none of them harmed miraculously.

They were walking slowly, but as soon as they breached the edge of the flames, the passengers broke ranks and began to run.

Robert held out his containment foam sprayer and commended them to stop, even though he couldn't hear what he was saying.

It was possible that the terrorist and thief was among them, posing as one of the victims. That was something that had been tried before, which was why there were procedures in these kinds of situations.

The woman in the armor stood at the edge of the flames, staring at them for a moment. As the flames began to die down, the molten hot bus fragments continued to levitate. She turned slightly and gestured, and the fragments gently dropped to the ground.

Before Robert or any of the others could do anything, the woman turned back to them and then she shot into the air. She was fast; not Alexandria fast but faster than any of the Capes in the Bay except for Purity.

A moment later she was gone.

The next few hours were going to be difficult, especial once his superiors started to review what he had done.

At least the miracle he'd been hoping for had given him a second chance. Of all the stains he had on his soul, at least this one would not be there.

"Nobody had a good look at her," Armsmaster said, scowling.

"I think it's a little like riding in an elevator," Miss Militia said. "Everybody tries to ignore everyone else until it's over."

"It's like that in the Bay," Armsmaster said. "I think people are ashamed to be riding the buses here."

"What do we actually know?" Emily Piggot stared at them. "Was she involved?"

"Not as far as the other passengers could tell. He actually threatened to shoot her because she kept talking to herself, which was part of the reason the male passengers attacked him."

"Wonderful," Director Piggot said. "The last thing we need is a schizophrenic cape who has this kind of power."

"She is apparently a female in her mid-teens. Her hair was described as being black or brown or red... witnesses are notoriously unreliable. Everyone agreed that she was tall for a girl."

"How much power does she have?"

"She was able to contain the explosion using some kind of a force field," Armsmaster said. "While at the same time protecting everyone on the bus with individual force fields of their own. Given the known power of the explosion, it would take a lot of power to contain, and a lot of finesse to create so many other force fields all at once."

"She was able to levitate the component parts of a city bus while she was doing all this," Miss Militia said. "Brockton transit buses weigh sixteen tons empty."

"So is she some kind of telekinetic?"

"It's impossible to say yet. I've been planning to add sensors to my armor so that when something like this happens I'll have more information. Unfortunately there never seems to be the time."

"Make the time," Piggot said. "Were you able to get anything from the recorder in your suit? I didn't see anything from the video."

Armsmaster shook his head. "I didn't see anything more than you did, and you can't enhance information that's not there."

"So what is your suggested rating?"

"So far we are tentatively suggesting Mover 4, Brute 6, and Shaker 7."

"Brute from her force field, I'm assuming."

"Given the estimated power she would have had to use, I am fairly confident that we are probably underselling the issue. Usually force fields grow weaker the farther they are spread; hers had to cover multiple people and a funnel covering the bus. Should she only have to protect herself, I would imagine she'd be considerably tougher."

"How tough?"

"Tough enough that we need her for the Endbringer fights," Armsmaster said. "It's possible that she could take at least one hit from Alexandria or Leviathan... and she might be able to take many more hits."

"Find her," Piggot said. "We need to get her in the Wards, or at least make a ally of her. As long as she's not actively trying to take over the city or is a Nazi, give her what she wants within reason."

Armsmaster nodded.

"Do we have a tentative name for her?" Piggot asked.

"We are calling her Inferno."

"Despite the fact that she doesn't seem to have fire powers?"

"We've been busy, and nobody could think of anything more appropriate," Armsmaster admitted.

"Fine," Piggot said. "If the name irritates her, maybe she'll come forward to correct the record."

She turned and looked down at some papers on her desk. Picking up her phone she said, "Send the idiot who thought ramming a bus filled with explosives in front of an elementary school was a good idea up. I'd like to have a talk with him."

"What?" she barked into the phone.

Slamming the phone down, she turned to them. "Robert Sampson was just found dead in his quarters, an apparent victim of suicide."

"Do you want us to investigate?"

"You'll have to work with local police. Even though Sampson was one of ours he wasn't a parahuman, so we can't just take over the investigation. I'd like you to keep the results quiet, and off the public servers if at all possible."

"You suspect it wasn't a suicide?" Miss Militia asked.

"This incident is going to cause a political firestorm, almost as though that's what it was designed to do. I'm wary of coincidences, especially in a world full of parahumans."

Armsmaster nodded. "I'll have a report on your desk as soon as I find out anything."

"Don't let the investigation overpower your search for the girl; show the Wards and the others and have them keep an eye out for her. Someone with this kind of power won't fly under the radar for long."

Everyone stared at the black screen, everyone silent, even Clockblocker, who usually didn't know how to shut up.

They'd watched the same video three times and they were all still taking it in. Shadow Stalker was as disconcerted as anyone here. There was a new player in the Bay, and from what they'd seen she was a serious bad ass.

The thought of what she could have done with that kind of power... no sneaking around, shooting people from the shadows.

Finally, Clockblocker was the one to break the silence... of course.

"Are we sure she's on our side?" he asked.

"No," Armsmaster said. "But she also didn't do anything aggressive toward us, which is a hopeful sign. We are to make friendly contact with her if at all possible and offer her friendly terms. Treat her with kid gloves."

Clockblocker snorted. "After seeing that you don't have to tell us twice. I don't think even Shadow Stalker would try to antagonize her."

Sophia glared at him and gave him the finger. It had taken everything she had to not put a bolt in his forehead sometimes. All he did was talk and talk and talk, and he never seemed to say anything useful.

A thought suddenly occurred to her. She'd been having a uneasy feeling lately, since the locker. Hebert had always had this attitude about her, as though she knew something that Sophia and the rest of the world didn't. It had gotten worse since the locker, though.

The girl had barely even protested, and she acted as though it hadn't bothered her at all.

Was Taylor Hebert a parahuman?

She'd hinted that she knew that Sophia was a parahuman, although it had felt like she was just fishing. However, she had known something about Emma that no one else had known.

Even if Hebert was a parahuman, it was impossible for her to be this mystery girl. She was some kind of thinker. Sophia simply needed the evidence that she'd used her powers against other students, and she'd be in the trouble that she deserved.

The only thing that kept Sophia from going to the Director now was fear of her own misdeeds coming to light, and the fear that Hebert would take the same kind of deal Sophia had and they'd end up as teammates.

No, the better idea would be to watch and wait. Hebert would make a mistake sooner or later, and when she did Sophia would be waiting.

"It'd be nice to have another girl on the team," Vista said, glancing at Sophia out the corner of her eye. "Maybe she'll actually be nice."

Bitch. As though the runt actually had any room to talk. None of them had actually given her a chance. She'd been too dark and edgy for the Mickey Mouse club, apparently.

In the end, it would be Sophia alone, the way it always was. She couldn't depend on anyone other than Emma, and Taylor had hurt Emma.

She just needed to find a way to hurt Taylor in a way that wouldn't end up with her serving on the same team as Sophia.

Sophia already had several ideas. At the very least she'd taint Taylor in the eyes of the PRT; with luck no one even find out she was a parahuman until she was already shipped off to juvie.

1003

ShayneT

Mar 21, 2018

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Threadmarks 7. Suspects

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ShayneT

Mar 23, 2018

#520

I stumbled as I landed, my impromptu armor suddenly feeling like it weighed a thousand pounds. I could feel wetness running down my nose; when I reached up to touch it I saw blood on my hands.

"It's because you have spent the past two years working on control instead of strength," the voice said. "Your powers are like your muscles; there is an upper limit to your power, but it is easy to be unable to reach that limit."

"I couldn't exactly go around juggling cars, could I?" I snapped.

The things in her Dad's basement didn't weigh that much, and if she'd tried lifting the entire house she'd have broken sewer lines and water mains, which would have cost them more money that they didn't have.

Still, her practice had given her the ability to do a lot of things at once, which had helped when it had come to shielding so many people at the same time. Power was an entirely different thing.

"You will need to juggle cars and more than cars if you expect to remain safe," the voice said. "In my prime I was able to lift bridges and even asteroids. I could change the magnetism of the entire planet. My force shield held off a blow from Galactus himself."

"I have no idea who that is," I said tiredly. The armor began dropping off of me, piece by piece, falling to the ground.

"Imagine an Endbringer who eats entire planets," the voice said. "And controls technology beyond the understanding of mortal men."

"Well, I'm not you, and that whole thing was pretty hard on me."

Even the armor had been a problem. I'd had to put it on over my force field because the metal had been blazing hot. I'd been tempted to simply pretend to be one of the victims, but the voice had been convinced that it was important to make a statement.

Sometimes fights could be avoided if the other side knew they could not win. Making them think that was almost as important as actually having the power to back it all up.

The pieces of my armor laying on the ground behind me suddenly crunched together into a ball. The metal school buses were made from was cheap; certainly not something I would prefer for my own armor. However, there were things I could use it for; scrap metal was always useful.

I was walking along my alleyway, the ball I'd crushed the material into floating a few inches off the ground behind me. My feet felt like lead.

"I should have saved the man in the vest," I said.

"He killed himself," the voice said dismissively. "If you'd put a force field around him like I'd suggested then you wouldn't have traumatized the other bus passengers."

"I couldn't be sure my force field was strong enough."

"It gets weaker the farther you stretch it," the voice said. "Had you surrounded the terrorist there would have been no need to use multiple weaker force fields."

"The only training I've had in my force fields was levitating my Dad's twenty pound dumbbells and letting them drop on me from the ceiling," I said defensively. "I didn't even know if I was bulletproof."

The whole dumbbell thing hadn't been easy either. I'd kept imagining the crunch of bones. Dad had worked with Dockworkers injured by falling objects. A twenty pound weight falling from that distance would generate four thousand pounds of pressure.

Reaching my back gate, I stepped inside. I left the ball of metal by the gate; no one ever looked in the back yard and if they did they wouldn't know what to make of it.

Stepping inside my house, I headed for my bedroom. The day had been as emotionally exhausting as it had been physically exhausting.

Why hadn't I saved everyone? The voice of my grandfather had advised against it, but I'd gone against his advice before. Had part of me wanted the man to die?

As I fell backward onto the bed, I could still hear the sounds of the other passengers screaming as they rushed the man in the vest. I'd known what was going to happen, which was why I'd been able to react as quickly as I had.

Was letting someone die by inaction as bad as killing them directly? If it was, then what did that make me?

I fell asleep before I came to any kind of resolution.

It seemed like only moments before I woke to the sound of Dad moving around downstairs. I got up and headed down to see him.

"Taylor?" he asked. The moment he looked at my face his complexion grew pale. "What happened?"

"I let Emma beat me up so I'd finally have proof the school couldn't ignore," I said. I'd told Dad about Emma, even though it hadn't been more than two or three months ago.

He stared at me for a long moment, before saying, "And you are O.K. with that?"

"There's video online," I said. "I'm going to take pictures of my bruises. If they try to cover this up I'll go to the police."

He stared at me for a moment longer, then nodded. "And the other two?"

"Madison is Emma's dog. She was never the worst of them anyway. Sophia's going to be the main problem, I think." I hesitated for a moment before saying, "I can't be sure bit I think she's a Ward."

"What?" he asked.

"Yeah, and if she is that means that the PRT chose to overlook what was happening to me because she was more useful to them."

"I have a hard time believing that's true."

"You should have seen how they were acting today when I was on the bus on my way home," I mumbled.

He froze. "Were you at that bombing site?"

I shrugged. "I was on the bus when it was happening. There wasn't anything else I could do."

"You could see that blast from everywhere in the city!" he said. "This is exactly why I didn't want you to go out in some kind of costume fighting super villains."

"I wasn't!" I protested. "I was just minding my own business when this guy gets on the bus with a suicide vest. I did what I had to in order to protect myself."

"And you aren't injured?"

"Not from that," I said. I gestured toward my face. "This was all Emma."

"I'm not comfortable with you intentionally letting yourself get hurt," he said. "But if it works I won't complain."

For once he was in agreement with Granpa, which was a little shocking. Dad's moral code was obviously much better than that of a supervillain, even if he claimed to have given it up.

"Did anyone see you?" he asked.

I'd been pretty good at hiding my powers for the past two years. They could be incredibly subtle if I wanted them to.

"Everyone saw me," I admitted. "But I made a costume out of bus parts, and nobody but the passengers got a look at my face."

"That's too many people," he said. "you should have been more careful."

""What else could I have done?" I asked.

"You could have pretended to be one of them," he said. "Pretended you had no idea what was happening."

"Then they'd have my name and address, and it would be even easier to find me," I said. "People tend to trigger young; people as old as the people on the bus usually have it together better. They'd have pinpointed me right away."

"But you didn't trigger," he said.

"They have no way of knowing that.," I said. "Triggering is all they know, so its what they will assume."

"They'll just have to look at where you got on the bus and what students left school from Winslow and they'll figure it out."

"Somebody pulled the fire alarm right before I left," I said. "My bet is that a lot of people left Winslow."

He stared at me. "You didn't."

"Sophia was about to try to beat me up without any witnesses. I'm done being a punching bag if it doesn't serve my purposes."

"Pulling the fire alarm is a crime," he said. "That's a slope you don't want to go down."

"Because of my grandfather?" I asked. "Do you think it's genetic?"

It was something I had secretly wondered about, and it was something that worried me.

"Your mother wasn't a villain," he began.

"She dabbled," I pointed out, "With Lustrum."

"Well, so did her half sister and brother, from what I hear," he said. "But they became heroes in the end. Genetics has nothing to do with why I think you should stay on the straight and narrow."

"Then why?"

"Because if you have a tenth of the power your grandfather had you'll be able to make the world tremble," he said. "Nobody will be able to stop you. That kind of power is alluring. It's easy to start making excuses for doing the things you want to do anyway."

"I'm not like that!" I protested. "I care about people!"

"Will you always?" he asked. "I worry about you. You have people like Blackwell and those kids treat you like they have, and nobody seems to stand up for you, and it would get pretty easy to start thinking that there aren't any good people. If there aren't any good people, then why not take advantage of the bad ones?"

I stared at him and opened my mouth to refute what he was saying, but I couldn't think of anything to say. I'd left the piece of the helmet from my grandfather upstairs, so he wasn't helping either. I doubted that his attitude toward this discussion would have been helpful anyway.

Trusting authority was already difficult for me for obvious reasons.

"You need a touchstone," he said. "Something to keep you grounded and human. Without it... it's be easy to get as bitter and frustrated as your grandfather, and the next thing you know you are trying to turn everyone in New York into monkeys,"

"You read that in a comic book," I said, scowling. "I'm sure granddad never did anything like that."

I'd ask him, of course, and if it turned out that he had done anything as monumentally stupid as that I'd make fun of him.

He shrugged, then said, "I'm getting ready to make dinner. Get washed up. You have an early morning tomorrow."

"I attacked a US Military base for missiles," the voice said. "It was possibly a little ambitious for a career debut."

"What else?"

"I created an asteroid satellite as a base," it said. "I conquered a nation in South America... I am not sure if it exists here. I mutated a group of men in the Savage Land... that is a place on my world where dinosaurs still exist due to the intervention of... never mind."

The one thing about my grandfather's avatar was that if asked it had no problem bragging about it's exploits in the past.

Asking was my way of determining just how bad he had been.

"Mutated them how?" I asked.

"I gave them the gift of powers in return for their service to me. They were from a primitive culture so they were easy to manipulate."

The voice would tell amusing stories about how his daughter married a robot and somehow managed to have children and then he would say things like that.

Perhaps sensing my disapproval, the voice changed subjects. "Why are we bothering with this?"

The sun was hot and I was sitting in a metal folding chair. I was sitting in the shade behind a table on which were set several examples of my art.

I'd been practicing precision with my powers for two years, and part of that had been pressing and twisting metal and glass together into pleasing shapes. While I didn't yet have any real power over glass, I could form metal around existing pieces in artistically pleasing ways.

Creating statuettes and costume jewelry was easy that way. I could turn and aluminum can and a broken colored glass bottle into several pieces of jewelry.

I sold them relatively cheap, although my prices had gone up as I'd gotten better at my craft.

"Dad's not exactly made of money," I said. "Even if I only make a couple of hundred dollars a show it helps a lot with the bills."

"You should take the money from the criminals of this world instead of struggling for these paltry amounts," the voice said peevishly.

I'd been doing these craft shows once every couple of months for two years. I'd made enough money that thinks weren't as tight as they would have been. We had the money to buy extra clothes or go out to dinner.

It helped that Dad totally approved of this. I think that he was terrified I'd become a villain and even becoming a hero would put me up against Endbringers.

He wanted me to become a rogue and use my powers to help people in tangible ways that didn't involve beating other people up. I could understand why he felt that way; he'd already lost so much and he didn't want to lose me too.

However, I wasn't sure that I would be able to stay away from becoming a hero. It had been my dream after all.

"This is an interesting piece," I heard a woman's voice say.

I put a neutral smile on my face. I noticed that she was talking about the foot tall metal statue I'd made of Sophia running. Her face looked angry and she was wearing her track outfit from school. The detail work was remarkable; some of the best I had ever done.

The thought that I was making money off her likeness would have pissed Sophia off more than anything, which pleased me. For some reason I'd never been willing to make one of Emma, maybe because Emma had always been more painful.

The woman was attractive, with dark hair and an olive skin tone. She had a figure that I was immediately and bitterly envious of. I wondered suddenly if my grandfather, who could mutate tribesmen into having superpowers could give me curves and if it would be humiliating for me to ask.

"It reminds me of someone I know," she said.

I froze.

"A friend?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Not someone I am close with, unfortunately. How much?"

"A hundred and fifty," I said. Before she could say anything I said, "That's reasonable for a statue of this size considering that each one is a one of a kind item, not some mass produced piece of junk from Wal-Mart."

"Did you make it yourself?" she asked.

I nodded.

"It's unusual to see someone so young being so talented," she said. She glanced at my other pieces of art.

I had a sculpture of Scion in flight, as well as sculptures of various students at Winslow in various poses. I had tiny samurai, knights in armor, cowboys on horses. Most weren't as large as the Sophia statue and were correspondingly much cheaper. I also had some necklaces and bracelets with rocks and pieces of glass that I'd thought were pretty.

"No heroes other than Scion?" she asked.

I grimaced. "The Protectorate takes trademark issues very seriously. I had to destroy my stock a year ago so I didn't get sued. Scion doesn't have any lawyers, though, so he's safe."

"Villains don't typically have representatives," she said.

"They have henchmen and fans," I said. "And people would assume that I was endorsing them if I spent all that time to make them."

"How did you get involved in this?" she asked.

"I had a shop teacher that got me interested," I lied. It was a question a lot of customers asked, and one that I got good at either deflecting or lying about. "Everything here is made of recycled metal so it is eco-friendly if that's something you are interested in."

"I'll take it," she said after a moment. She also picked up a couple of pieces of jewelry. "How much are these?"

"Fifteen each," I said. "You can have a third for ten more dollars. I've got a sales tax permit like I'm supposed to, so there is sales tax."

Considering that none of them had actually cost me anything a discount was just more money in the bank

She handed me two hundred dollar bills and a ten, and I handed her back three dollars and some change.

"I haven't seen you around the craft show circuit,' I said. "We mostly get a lot of regulars and some people who are more interested in looking around than buying."

"I didn't even know this was here until recently. I'm glad to have found this."

I hesitated. "Please don't tell the person you think this resembles who did the statue. If we're thinking of the same person she's already kind of touchy."

She smiled. "I promise I won't reveal your secret. I'm Hannah."

"Taylor," I said, smiling, and for once it was genuine.

As the woman left I felt pleased with myself. I was making more money than usual, and it was making me unusually pleased.

"The woman suspects who you really are," the voice said.

I froze, a sudden feeling of anxiety in my gut. Did she work for one of the gangs, or for the Protectorate? Had she just guessed about who I was, or had she been specifically targeting me?

Had I been stupid going to a craft show with metal artwork shortly after debuting as a metal controlling parahuman? I'd been doing it for years without a problem... although no one had known about me before.

The main question was what she was going to do with the information she had just learned.

"You should kill her," the voice said. "Before she tells everyone else."

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ShayneT

Mar 23, 2018

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Threadmarks 8. Statement

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ShayneT

Mar 24, 2018

#615

"Jesus, what's wrong with you?" I hissed. "I don't kill people just because they look at me funny. Most villains don't even do that."

For almost a minute the voice was silent. I found myself wondering if there was something wrong with the connection, or if something had happened to the helmet itself back at the house.

"I am...not always stable,' the voice admitted finally.

The fact that I wasn't surprised at all by that admission was bad enough. The fact that I was still willing to listen to it even after it was all but admitting that it was crazy was more surprising.

Maybe I just assumed that all supervillains had to be crazy, so this was just a confirmation of what I already believed.

"Your grandfather made multiple imprints of his mind at various points in his life. His persona was... sometimes flexible."

"You mean he was a hero sometimes and a villain sometimes... and a worse villain other times."

"I am an amalgam of his personality at thirteen distinct portions of his life," the voice said. "And it is not always easy to reconcile the different viewpoints he held during those times."

"But could someone's personality really change that much?" I was dubious. If they all shared the same memories wouldn't that make them the same person?

"Imagine if you had to share a mind with your own mind before your split with Emma," the voice said. "How difficult would that be to reconcile?"

I froze. I tried to remember what I had been like back then, so naïve, so happy, so trusting. The world had seemed completely different, and I hadn't had my current problems with authority, anger issues or

general negativity.

"But if that version of me had my memories, it would be me," I said.

"Would it? Personality changes take time. Also, being exposed to memories that you did not experience personally is not as world altering as experiencing the real thing. What would your twelve year old self be telling you about Emma and Sophia?"

"To give them another chance," I said. "That Emma is really my friend and that Sophia just needs a little love and affection to be a friend too."

"Imagine that twelve times over," the voice said. "The copies were never intended to coexist. Each backup was stored elsewhere, but old copies remained in the helmet for safekeeping. When I was damaged during the war, I was given to your mother along with other items when she was sent to safety."

"The war?" I asked.

"There was a thirteenth copy of your grandfather's mind, the last. What he saw was so traumatic that he has chosen never to resurface."

I was silent for a moment.

"So not only do I have a Jewish Supervillain for grandfather, but I have a schizophrenic Jewish super villain grandfather."

"Schizophrenia does not mean multiple personalities," the voice said. "It is typically a disorder involving hallucinations or delusions... such as talking to a non-existent person that no one else can hear."

"Ha ha," I muttered sourly, glancing around to make sure no one was noticing my talking to myself. Fortunately my neighbor to my left was facing away from me and hadn't seemed to notice anything. The booth on my other side was empty. The economy of the Bay was making these kinds of shows less profitable than other places.

"While murder was perhaps extreme, what do you plan to do about the woman?" the voice asked.

Frowning, I looked at the remains of my work. I'd planned on staying out for another four hours today, which might have meant as much as another two hundred dollars in income. Still, the voice tended to be right about people, at least as far as I could tell, which meant that I needed to check it out.

The closest booth was ten feet away. With the ambient noise there was no way the woman there would have been able to hear what I was mumbling to myself.

Her name was Peggy Schuster, and I'd seen her around for events for the past couple of years. She was a street artist who did funny sketches of people and their children for ten dollars each. She usually didn't make much more money than I did, and sometimes she made less.

"Hey Peggy," I said.

She looked over at me. We sometimes guarded each other's booths so that the other could go to the bathroom or get some food.

"How would you like to make some extra money?" I asked.

"Ok," she asked slowly.

"I've got something I've got to do, but I don't want to lose these prime selling hours," I said. "If you sell anything on my table you can have half the money."

It wouldn't have been fair to ask her to watch my inventory for nothing, even though we all tried to protect each other from that kind of thing. I'd secretly made thieves trip or baubles slip out of pockets in the past.

She looked reluctant. "I've got my own booth to take care of," she said.

"Turn your easel this way and you can keep an eye on my stuff," I said. "And given the look of the crowd it doesn't look like business will pick up soon anyway."

"And what if you don't get back before I'm ready to leave?" she asked.

"Then you can have all of it," I said. "I'm thinking about giving it up anyway... I've got to focus on school."

"But you've been getting so good the last few shows," she said, looking shocked.

I suppose being a middle aged woman who was still clinging onto her dreams of being an artist, seeing someone else give up their dream must have been painful.

Fortunately, art had never been my dream. It had simply been profitable. I could have gathered cans and sold them for recycling almost as easily, although my chance of being noticed would have been much higher.

"What about the money?" she asked, seemingly overwhelmed.

"I trust you," I said. "I'll catch you at the next show and we can settle up, assuming I don't get back sooner."

She looked uncertain but nodded.

"That's excellent planning," the voice said. "Making people believe you trust them is one of the best ways to create loyalty. Why you would wish to have a follower of so little... talent I do not know."

As I stood up and headed away, smiling and waving at her as I did, I muttered, "Since when have you been an art critic?"

"I am a man of refinement," it said. "From a people who have spawned an army of artists of such skill as to make the angels weep. Seeing what she calls art makes me want to rage against the heavens."

"You aren't a man at all," I muttered. "And you sound like a snob."

"I also think your modern music is rubbish," it admitted. "An offense to the ear of anyone who has heard better."

"So what kind of music do you like...German music?"

Silence.

"Seriously? I'd have thought you'd have hated anything German."

"The evil in their hearts was no greater than that of other men... they simply chose to act on it. You think the rest of the world was innocent in that conflict? Haven't you read of the nations that turned our people away, leaving them to be slaughtered?"

"The rest of the world fought against them!" I protested.

"They could have saved millions, but they chose not to because of who we were. The entire world abandoned us. Every human has the potential for ultimate evil in their hearts, which is why the mutants have to be better."

"Is that why you hate humans?" I asked.

I could feel the metal I'd given the woman retreating in the distance. It was of a distinctive size and shape, unlike anything else being sold in the market, and it was moving, which made the woman easy to follow.

"I do not hate humans. Mutants simply have the chance to surpass them, to create a world where such horrors are never again allowed."

"I'd believe that a lot more if you hadn't just suggested murdering a woman," I said dryly. "Or was that you from your crazy period? Maybe the rest of you should give me a little warning when crazy starts talking."

Before it could reply, I caught sight of the woman turning down the street.

I reached into my pocket for one of my cell phones. After I'd shown my heroing phone to Blackwell, I'd known I'd have to keep one in my civilian identity and a second one as a hero. I'd bought a second one.

Neither held any information that I didn't want anyone to know, but with two there was something I'd been wanting to try.

I'd read about this on the Internet, a way to turn a phone into a spy device. I turned the speaker off and muted the microphone. I turned all ringtones to silent. I disabled vibration.

A moment later I stepped around a corner and the phone flew upward out of my hand, leaping over a wall to hover.

With my other phone I dialed the first phone. It picked up without making a sound, and now I could hear what was happening on the other side. Now all I needed to do was get it close enough to the woman.

She was standing beside a large mass of metal that felt like a motorcycle.

"A young girl talking to herself... that's what got my attention," the woman's voice said. "She was selling some rather good artwork at the Kirby art fair. I bought a piece and thought you might take a look at it."

I could hear the sound of a shutter snapping.

"Yes, it's Sophia Hess. Apparently this girl knows her. She most likely attends the same school."

The woman was silent for a moment. "I'm not sure having Hess approach her would be the wisest course of action. Hess can be... abrasive."

She was with the Protectorate. It wouldn't be long before the Protectorate knew who I was. Would they come knocking at my door in the middle of the night, jackboots in place?

"As I said, even the heroes are fallible," the voice said. It almost sounded smug. "Their own rules, unwritten or not say that they shouldn't reveal secret identities, yet here they are revealing yours."

"What?" I asked. "How do you know that?"

"I've read about your world through your eyes," the voice said. "And it's perfectly obvious. The authorities have the resources to find out the name of villains and make them public whenever they wish. Villains are caught all the time, but the only ones whose identities are revealed are those headed for the Birdcage."

That... was true. I hadn't thought about it before. Why would the PRT protect the identities of villains they caught?

Yet they weren't extending me the same kind of courtesy?

If they revealed my identity Dad would be in danger. I had no proof yet that they planned to, but I didn't have any proof they didn't either.

"What should I do then?" I asked. "And don't say kill her; that's stupid on all kinds of levels."

"It's too late to do that now anyway; the rest of the PRT knows who and what you are. It's only a matter of time before the leaks in the organization lead the gangs right to you."

"What?"

"It's another thing that is obvious. Case after case of villains headed for the Birdcage attacked on supposedly hidden routes, the villains released. How did the villains know where to ambush the convoys? There is no known telepathy in this world, which means the information had to be leaked."

Hadn't some of the Empire 88 capes been sent to the birdcage only to be broken out? I couldn't remember. That meant that they at least had moles in the agency.

"So what do I do?" I asked again.

"Tell your father and prepare for when they come for you. Or you can try to join the Wards, even though their organization has already betrayed you on multiple fronts."

I retrieved my phone when I heard her motorcycle rev up. For the slightest moment the thought of a small mechanical problem causing her vehicle to wreck occurred to me, but as the voice of my grandfather said, the cat was out of the bag. All injuring her now would do was turn the entire PRT against me, which was the last thing I needed.

It was just a flash of an impulse, but I felt a moment of horror at the thought. What was wrong with me? It was bad enough for an ordinary person to have random homicidal impulses. From what I'd heard everyone wanted to punch their boss in the face sometimes. It was different for someone like me.

For me a thought would be all it took to kill someone. Even now, without line of sight I could effortlessly murder a woman who was undoubtedly a hardworking and loyal PRT employee dedicated to making the world a safer place. The fact that she hadn't made my world safer was of secondary importance.

"The second step," the voice said, "Is to make a statement such that even if they know who you are they will not dare to disturb you. That is the way to keep your father safe and your sleep undisturbed."

I'd read somewhere that the average independent cape didn't last long in the Bay; they were either killed or scooped up by the PRT or one of the gangs. As much as I hated to admit it, the crazy voice in my head was right.

I needed to do something so large that no one in the Bay could deny that I was the new superpower in town.

There was one thing that I'd been wanting to do for a long time.

As the shadow blotted out the sun, I could see people below stopping their cars and getting out to stare up at me.

Grandfather had said to make a statement, so I was making the biggest statement that I could think of. I was moving one of the cargo ships from the boat graveyard over the city, heading for the metal recyling center at the edge of town. That center was designed to take the metal from hundreds of cars, so I hoped they would be able to use at least some of the metal from this hulking relic.

I already had some ideas for what to do with the rest of the material; there was no way the center would be able to process this much material this quickly.

In the distance I could see figures flying toward me. One was garbed in white, which meant it was probably Glory Girl. Another was red, which probably meant it was Aegis.

I was making a good clip with the ship. It was heavy even to my power, but we were still making a good forty miles per hour. I'd been flying for ten minutes and there was no sign that my power was going to falter.

I had a plan for if it did. I'd picked areas where I could set it down temporarily if I had to, even if it would destroy entire parks.

PRT vans were converging beneath me. I could see at least a dozen of them, and I could see that the police were beginning to redirect traffic from the avenue I was flying over.

As the figures got closer I could see that Lady Photon and Laserdream were also there.

Within moments they were flying in front of me.

"Stop!" Aegis said. Did it sound like his voice was shaking a little?

I didn't stop. I ignored him, choosing simply to fly around him. He moved to intercept me.

The others surrounded me in a semicircle. I wondered if they really thought we were going to fight. All I had to do was release my hold on the ship and all of them would be having a very bad day. So would the entire city.

Lady Photon shouted out, "What are you doing?"

"Recycling," I said.

"That doesn't belong to you," Aegis shouted.

I was surprised at his willingness to confront someone who was clearly demonstrating Alexandria levels of power. I actually doubted that Alexandria would have been able to lift the ship, mostly because it would have crumpled like tissue paper around her if she'd tried.

"Do you want to fight?" I asked. "Because I could drop this and we could see what happens. Or you could shut up and in two minutes we'll arrive at the recycling center."

He didn't say anything, simply looking stunned.

I arrived at the recycling center.

Several men were already standing outside, staring at me. I landed beside them, and said, "I heard you take scrap metal."

One of them, apparently the supervisor turned and stared at me. "We don't have the ability to break something that size down."

He looked petrified, as though he was afraid I was going to drop the ship on him if I didn't get an answer I liked.

I shrugged, and a moment later the ship above us began to disintegrate into thousands of pieces of metal in a monstrous rotating cloud. I gathered together the ferrous metals.

"You guys handle cars, right?" I asked.

He nodded, eyes transfixed on the scene above.

I focused, and began splitting metal into thousand pound pieces. I divided the ferrous metal from the non-ferrous and I crushed the pieces into blocks, which I gently set on the dirt outside the plant. I could have set it on the concrete, but that would have meant destroying the plant's parking lot.

Within moments I had set the cubes down, one hundred cubes wide and one hundred twenty cubes deep. The ship had weighed more than six thousand tons, and now I was letting the non-metal remnants float into piles.

"Uh...we don't have the cash on hand to pay for all of that," the manager said, staring at the piles.

"Give me what you have and you can have the rest for free," I said.

It soon became apparent that the center only had ten thousand dollars in the till. They normally paid less than 200 dollars for a scrapped car, so this was understandable.

As I took the money, I turned to face the assorted heroes. PRT vans were pulling up and surrounding me.

"How long will it take you guys to go through all this?" I asked the manager.

"Maybe a year," he admitted.

Slipping the money into a dufflebag, I turned to face the assorted heroes. I waved, and a moment later I exploded into the sky.

As it turned out I really was much faster in the sky than any of them. I left them eating dust.

Last edited: Mar 24, 2018

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ShayneT

Mar 24, 2018

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Threadmarks 9. Rookie

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ShayneT

Mar 25, 2018

#858

"That was the opposite of keeping a low profile," Dad said.

He still looked stunned. Apparently my flight across the city, short as it was had been filmed by several news crews on the ground. No one had time to get a helicopter in the air.

"They already knew who I was," I said. "I had to convince them that the best idea was to leave us alone."

Closing his eyes, Dad shook his head. "They're going to want you even more now. Before you were maybe some parahuman who got lucky. Now you're the next Alexandria. Who do you think they're going to send to talk to you?"

"The old Alexandria?" I asked cautiously.

"Or Legend or Eidolon," Dad said. "Maybe all three."

I wasn't sure I could take any single member of the Triumvirate, much less all three at once. Eidolon alone would pull out some kind of power that would negate my powers or control me or something.

"I'll tell them no," I said.

Dad sighed. "Remember when I showed you Jurassic Park?"

"Yes... "

I suspected my grandfather could actually make dinosaurs and wondered idly how much zoos would pay to have one, maybe something cute and herbivorous. That whole movie hadn't really sold me on the idea that dinosaur parks were a bad idea. Being able to shut down all security at the same time on the other hand was a bad idea.

"Just because you have the power to do something doesn't mean you should do it."

"You've been complaining about the boatyard for years," I said.

"And you moved one ship out of what, fifty? In the meantime you floated a ship weighing thousands of tons over residential areas. What would have happened if you turned out to get tired faster than you thought, or if someone had startled you, or even been stupid enough to attack you?"

"I had plans for that," I said.

"And nobody else knows anything about those plans. All they know is what they saw... someone holding a massive threat over their heads."

"That's what it was intended to mean!" I said, irritated.

Didn't he understand that the threat of force was better than actually having to use force? I didn't want to fight heroes. I didn't really want to fight villains. I simply wanted to make the world a better place. I wanted to make the Bay the place Dad talked about.

"Threatening people doesn't get you what want," Dad said, grimacing.

"You threaten people all the time during negotiations," I protested. "I've heard you on the telephone."

He hesitated. "There are specific circumstances where it can be useful. But you didn't even have anything you wanted. They've been threatened, but they don't know the reason why."

"They probably suspect," I said. "If they are as smart as they tell everyone. If they aren't I'll have to make them understand."

"You aren't fighting heroes," Dad said, looking alarmed.

"I'm not sure the locals have anything that could hurt me... Miss Militia maybe, or maybe something Armsmaster whips up. I wouldn't have to fight them, I'd just let them wear themselves out until they were willing to listen."

Dad frowned. "Try not to do that in the house; it's not paid off yet."

I stared at him, flabbergasted for a moment, then I snickered. The image of Dad coming home to find that the walls of the house were completely burned down while I was talking to the PRT, the expression on his face...

I giggled.

He smiled slightly. "We'll have to start making some plans for our response should they actually come to the door."

"If they try to kidnap you, make sure they know I won't be happy," I said. It was something I had been thinking about for a while.

Pretending to think about it, I mentally summoned several old transistor radios from the basement. As they flew into the room I disassembled them into their component pieces in mid-air. I reconstructed them in the space of a few moments into something completely new.

Dad's eyes were wide.

"What is this?" he asked. "Since when have you been a Tinker?"

I shrugged. "I found plans for this online. It's a tracker; I'll put one in each set of your shoes. It doesn't take a lot of power and the power it does use is generated by your movement."

It was a lie, of course. Granddad's avatar had showed it to me. Telling Dad about granddad seemed like a bad idea. I had no doubt that Dad would try to destroy the helmet with a baseball bat, convinced it was trying to possess me or something.

"Just remembering all of it, much less doing it all at once... "

"I think I have a natural talent for it," I said. "You'd be surprised what kind of blueprints you can find online if you want."

"Should I feel uncomfortable that I'd be more comfortable with finding out you were watching porn?" he asked.

I kept my face impassive. He didn't need to know that there had been a couple of times searching that had accidentally taken me places far outside of my comfort zone. We had a fairly nice computer and a good Internet connection, largely as a result of the money I'd earned with my sculptures over the year.

Convincing Dad that it would help me look up art shows and maybe even sell online had been easy. The fact that I mostly used it to search the PHO and look for Cape related information and fanfic hadn't been a problem.

I was thrilled not to depend on Computer class and the public library for everything I wanted to look up. That would have been humiliating.

Shrugging, I said, "All the My Little Pony porn has desensitized me for life."

He pretended to chuckle, although he looked slightly nauseous. Apparently some jokes were more than he could take.

"The trackers aren't a bad idea," he admitted. "I'd ask for something similar for you except I wouldn't be able to do anything but call the PRT."

"I'm not sure how to build the receiver; it was harder. I can use my powers to fake it though."

It was a lie, of course. No receiver had even been designed because the device had been specially created for use with grandfather's power.

"If they should come to the door, do not attack them before you talk to them," Dad said. "We've got enough money for a lawyer now, and given the nature of your powers I'm sure any lawyer would be confident you could make more money easily."

I nodded reluctantly.

"The thing you have to remember about the PRT and the cops in general is that they are the biggest gang out there. You can take a few of them down, sure, but they'll keep calling their buddies until they dogpile you. The PRT has some Capes with esoteric powers that can probably get around your defenses if they really had to. Eidolon can probably find something if nothing else works."

Scowling, I looked down at my feet. He was right, of course. The strongest Cape in the world could be taken down by a Master. Powers were essentially a game of rock, paper scissors. One power set could be defeated by another, which in turn could be defeated by a third.

It meant that I couldn't stop being vigilant.

"Oh, and you're grounded for a week," Dad said.

"What?!?" I asked. "Why?"

"For threatening the PRT without discussing it first. Have you ever considered that I might have said yes?"

"Would you?"

"Probably not," he said. "But I might have been able to say something that could have convinced you not to do it, or at least do it a little differently."

Grounding fortunately wasn't much of a problem. I wasn't grounded from the computer, and it wasn't as though I had friends that I was missing hanging out with. Dad mostly didn't want me to leave the house and do anything that would garner city wide attention again.

I spent the rest of the weekend learning to make a flexible kind of armor from normal clothes using iron particles and oil. It was detail work beyond anything I'd done before because I had to turn the oil into nanoparticles.

As long as there were no magnetic fields it was flexible and easy. Apply a magnetic field and it hardened into body armor. It was easy enough to rig up a system so that it would work even if my powers somehow failed me.

I made a second set for Dad, with a switch inside his jacket pocket. It made me feel a little better knowing that he could have at least some protection, even though it only covered his torso.

Despite my paranoia no one showed up for the rest of the weekend.

As I returned to school on Monday, I wasn't sure what to expect. Blackwell had seemed intimidated, but I hadn't actually gone to the police. Would there actually be concrete, substantive change, or would it be back to the same old routine?

Walking back to school, I heard the whispers as soon as I stepped into the entrance hall. People were gathered together into clumps and they were pretending not to look at me.

Had my identity gotten out this quickly? I hadn't seen anything online, so it was unlikely that the PRT had made some kind of an announcement.

Approaching my locker I saw Blackwell standing beside it with three police officers and a dog.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"They are trying to set you up," the voice whispered in my ears. "I've seen it many times before. Call mutants terrorists and the public doesn't care if you send gigantic murder robots after them."

"There was an anonymous report that you were hiding drugs in your locker," Blackwell said. Her face was carefully free of emotion. Was she apologetic or smirking in victory?

"The same locker that I haven't used since I was shoved into it with a pile of two week old used Tampons?" I asked. "By the same people that assaulted me on Friday?"

Turning to the police officers, I said, "You won't find my fingerprints on any of whatever you found. I'd like to press charges for assault on Emma Barnes."

I reached into my pocket to pull out some of the pictures I'd made of my face.

One of the officers, the younger one, pulled out a gun and pointed it at me. I heard screams from my classmates who were watching from a distance.

Staring at the gun, I felt my irritation growing.

"Put that away," I said. I didn't tell him that if he didn't I'd make him put it away. Threatening cops was exactly the opposite of what Dad had wanted me to do.

"Do this and this and this and the gun will explode in his hand if he tries to fire it," the voice said helpfully. Images appeared in my head. "It would be considered an unfortunate accident."

Maybe back wherever he was from, but this world had Tinkers.

"Freeze!" he shouted. "Get on the ground!"

As he stepped aside I saw that the inside of my locker was filled with guns and ammunition. It looked like I was planning to shoot up the entire school. No wonder the officer was worried about me putting my hand in my pocket.

The second officer spoke up.

"We have to take you downtown for everyone's safety," he said. "If someone planted this it'll come out soon enough."

That seemed reasonable enough, so I held up my hands and let myself be shoved face first into a wall. My hands were wrenched behind my back and I felt the click of handcuffs. Hands moved impersonally over my body, undoubtedly looking for weapons. I moved the piece of metal from my grandfather's helmet around to avoid the hands, but they found my two cell phones.

Moments later I was being shoved through the hallways, students murmuring and staring.

Anger at Sophia was filling my chest. If she was Shadow Stalker that meant she'd have easy access to my locker, and probably access to a lot of weapons from criminals she'd beaten up.

I soon found myself being shoved into a police cruiser. The officer didn't even try to protect my head. I'd have had a nasty knock if I hadn't used my force field to protect myself.

"Are you going to call my Dad?" I asked as both men got into the cruiser. The third officer left with the dog in another cruiser.

"When we get to the station to book you," one of the officers said.

"There's something suspicious about them," the voice said. "They are nervous and acting strange."

I suppose a supervillain would know, although I had a hard time imagining my Grandfather being stuffed into the back of a police cruiser like a drunken fratboy or a belligerent redneck. I didn't dare say anything however.

Was he right, or was he simply trying to manipulate me into attacking them? If the police turned against me then the rest of the world would too, which would leave him as my only advisor.

On the other hand this could be the attempt to recruit me that Dad had been worried about.

Had Sophia even been the one to put the guns in my locker? Any of the gangs could have done it just as easily.

"Who do you all work for?" I asked.

"What?" one of them asked.

"This isn't the way to the station," I said.

I didn't actually know that; unlike some people I didn't make regular trips down to the station because I'd been beating people up or shooting them. Half the kids at Winslow probably knew the route better than I did.

"We'll get there soon enough," the officer who had been rough with me said.

I sighed, letting the handcuffs click off my wrists. "Didn't they tell you who you were trying to kidnap?"

The wheel to the police car suddenly jerked out of the driving officer's hands, even as their seat belts starting choking them. I took control of the car and we ended up in a side street.

We pulled to a stop and I leaned forward. "Who sent you?"

"You should have simply played ignorant until we reached our destination," the voice said helpfully. "Then there would be no need to interrogate these morons."

I grimaced. Crazy granddad was right again. All I'd had to do was wait instead of being aggressive and all my questions would have been answered.

Releasing the seatbelts, I said, "Take me to your masters."

The younger one fumbled with his gun, which I polled out of his grasp telekinetically. I turned it around and pointed it in his direction and he froze suddenly. His partner was quiet as well. I pointed it at his crotch.

"Drive," I barked.

The driver didn't say anything, but did as I said.

"You guys must be real low level grunts," I said. "For them to send you to kidnap me without telling you who I was. Maybe they were hoping I'd kill you."

I completely dissembled both their guns, leaving the pieces on the floor.

"Who do you work for?" I asked. I leaned forward and the metal grill separating me from the front seat peeled away like paper. I could see the white in the officer's eyes. He was sweating. "The Empire? You guys are too white to be ABB, but maybe they're a little more flexible than I thought about the whole race thing. Coil? Nobody even knows anything about him."

I leaned forward and whispered into the younger officer's ear. "I've heard what scum like you like to do to young girls. How does it feel to be on the other side of it?"

A strange, acrid smell filled the car, and for moment I had no idea what it was. Then I glanced down and I smirked.

"I suppose that means you are starting to pick up on just how bad things are about to get."

"Jesus, Jake," the driver said disgustedly. He shook his head.

The younger officer didn't say anything. He simply stared out at me from the side of his eye. He was sweating up a storm. It had probably been his nervousness in the first place that my grandfather had cued in on.

"We're here," the driver said finally.

I looked up and I froze. I'd been so preoccupied with intimidating the thugs that I hadn't been paying much attention to my surroundings.

We were pulling up in front of a police station; a real one.

"You guys are actual cops?" I asked. "Not gang members out to forcibly induct me into virtual slavery?"

"Yes," the older man said levelly. "And no. We're just doing our job."

"You could have said that a little earlier," I complained.

"Would you have believed anything we had to say? The driver asked. "Me or the Rookie? Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing at all."

A nervous rookie. Shit.

I concentrated, and the parts from both guns reassembled themselves and a moment later they slipped into the men's pockets. The grill reconstructed itself and I leaned back heavily in the seat.

"I don't suppose we could pretend that none of this ever happened?" I said, smiling weakly.

"What do you think? The older officer asked.

The rookie didn't say anything.

1025

ShayneT

Mar 25, 2018

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Threadmarks 10. Lawyer

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ShayneT

Mar 26, 2018

#1,204

"Massachusetts law makes anything a teenager says without the presence of their parents inadmissible," my lawyer said. "Which is why they didn't bother Mirandizing you. That's only necessary before you are being interrogated."

So it wasn't like television where you could get off because the cops didn't say the magic words. I felt somehow dissatisfied by that. Television had lied to me.

"I told you," the voice said. It sounded almost smug. "I have been arrested too many times not to have some idea about the law."

Like he'd ever been arrested by ordinary cops. I couldn't even say anything snarky to him, not with my lawyer and my Dad sitting across from me.

I was handcuffed to the table, but everyone knew it was a formality.

"The good thing is that the gun case will almost certainly be dropped. The anonymous call that was made, the fact that you say none of your fingerprints will be on any of the guns... if that's true, and its known that your locker has been essentially public property with people who have an obvious agenda against you, it should be easy to get the case thrown out."

That was good, I supposed.

"The issue with the police is more difficult. Assaulting an officer doesn't have a very high bar. People have been convicted simply for holding onto a steering wheel as the police were trying to drag them out of the car. What you did was quite a bit more serious."

"I thought I was being kidnapped," I said. "For the reasons I told you before."

"That can be a mitigating factor. The more important issue is that there isn't any evidence. Neither officer was bruised, and except for officer Colt's unfortunate... accident, there didn't seem to be any actual harm done."

"The other officer seemed a lot more together," I said.

"Officer Fuller was a PRT agent for twenty years before he had a knee injury that sidelined him. He was somewhat more informed on how to deal with parahumans than his partner."

"He was actually kind of cool about the whole thing," I admitted. "The other guy was kind of a dick. He slammed my face into a wall and hit my head in the police car."

"There isn't any physical evidence, and of course there were no cameras inside the car. The kind of budget for that won't be available for a long time with the PRT diverting police funding."

"So it's my word against theirs'?" I asked.

"I can't tell a client to lie," he said. "But police testimony is usually believed by juries unless you can convince them that the testimony is flawed somehow. I suspect that officer Fuller's report will be impeccable and Officer Colt's will be more subjective. Both will be believable for different reasons."

"So what do I do?"

"Normally the PRT takes over in cases like this. Parahumans are outside the jurisdiction of the ordinary police. However, the assault and battery took place against police officers. A prosecutor could make a case that you made terroristic threats."

"I could drop a boat in their parking lot," I said irritably. "It'd make getting into their reserved parking spots a whole lot harder."

"Making those kind of threats are what got you in here in the first place," My lawyer said smoothly. "And there's no need for them. What is most likely going to happen is that the PRT will come in and they will make some threats. It will be followed by an offer to join the wards with all charges being dropped. They can make that happen."

"It's their fault I'm in here in the first place!" I said. My voice was getting louder without my meaning it to, and I could feel the whole place vibrating. I had to close my eyes for a moment to calm myself down.

"Are you sure you don't want to join the Wards?" he asked.

"They left me for two years with that... psychopath. Not just me, either, lots of other kids. I won't work for them. I'd rather go villain."

At Dad's gasp I looked at him and scowled.

"You had to know this was coming. You've been worried about it probably since Mom told you about... you know."

A glance at the lawyer; I hadn't told him about my being a mutant or about my grandfather. As far as he knew, I triggered in the locker.

"If they push me, I'll push back. The thing is, I can push pretty hard, and I can make life pretty hard for everyone. I wanted to be a hero, but I'd be OK being a rogue too."

With granddad on my side I bet I'd be a hell of a villain.

"Then I'll have to make sure that they know what their options are," My lawyer said.

The ten thousand dollars I'd given dad were just his retainer, but he seemed confident that I'd find some way to pay him his exorbitant fee.

"Can we use what Sophia did against them?" Dad asked.

My lawyer looked down at my journal. "This by itself isn't proof of anything. The e-mails you kept however should be enough to get a warrant to look at Emma's phone even if Sophia's is protected by the PRT. They'll try to take over the investigation and sweep it under the rug, but we might be able to use this to pressure them into dropping the other charges."

"There are laws about revealing the identity of a Ward, however, which makes the whole thing a lot more sticky."

"It feels like they are setting me up," I said. "Sophia is a Ward and she puts guns in my locker. That leads to criminal charges, which mean I have to go work for the Wards."

"There are a number of reasons they wouldn't do that," my lawyer said smoothly. "First, assuming they are aware of who you are the way you think they are, they wouldn't be that stupid. Antagonizing someone able to throw ships at their headquarters isn't in anyone's best interest. They haven't even had a chance to give you the soft sell, yet."

As if I'd ever be on a team with Sophia in it.

"Most likely they planned on using what they knew to find a way to approach you discreetly and non-threateningly. The fact that they talked about sending Sophia to talk to you at all suggests that they didn't know what she was doing."

I nodded. Using Sophia to convince me to join would be like bathing with a Brillo pad for a washcloth; something was going to get bloody.

"We can probably make the gun charge go away," my lawyer continued, "But that doesn't deal with the fact that your life at school is over. Officer Colt told as many people as he could what happened before officer Fuller could stop him."

"What about the charges of assaulting an officer?" I asked.

"Officer Fuller is willing to drop charges. Officer Colt was less willing until Officer Fuller had a talk with him. The District Attorney hates the PRT, and is willing to drop all charges provided that you provide a full apology to the officers. I think in part because she knows that it will cost them a bargaining chip."

"She probably doesn't want the police station to become a war zone," I said. "Was that why she had me give that little demonstration, earlier?"

She'd demanded proof that I was the ship flying parahuman and not just some weak parahuman with a good bluff. I'd asked her to look out the window and then had levitated sixty cars in the parking lot without looking at any of them.

Her face had looked a little white as she'd left the room.

My lawyer shrugged. "It probably hadn't hurt. Replacing the police station would have come out of her budget."

From the look on his face that was supposed to be a joke, but I didn't think it was funny.

"The fact that you saved a school of a thousand elementary school kids would probably come up in trial. Considering that it would be a case with no physical evidence and that it would be your word against two cops, one of whom is willing to drop the case, she probably thought it would be tough convincing a jury to convict."

The fact that the jury would be aware that I could drop a ship on the courthouse would probably make conviction even harder.

"What's the difference between being a police officer forty years ago and today?"

We could hear Officer Fuller's voice through an open door as we approached. I was still in handcuffs; we were coming to give the apology I was more than happy to make.

"Forty years ago you could yell and scream at a perp and slam their face in the ground and no one really cared." Officer Fuller said "Now any thirteen year old with a grudge can melt your face off if you look at them funny."

I heard a muffled protest, presumably from the rookie.

"You know what being nice costs? Nothing. Being a jerk gets you a melted face. And if you should come up against somebody you think is a Cape... it's not our job. You don't point a gun at them, you don't be a jerk to them... if you do they melt your face."

The protest grew louder. It almost sounded like he was whining.

"That girl was humoring us," Fuller said. "She was being polite. She let us arrest her. You saw what she did to those cars outside? How hard would it have been to get out of the car then ball the whole car up like tinfoil and throw us in the Bay?"

"She had guns!" Now I could hear the rookie's reply.

"Capes don't need guns. Most of them don't use them because what they've got instead is much better. That girl says she was set up and I believe her. She didn't need guns to shoot up that school. All she needed was one bad day," Fuller was silent for a moment."If a cape starts getting agitated you know what you do? You move really slow, you get real quiet and you do whatever the person with the ability to drop an oil tanker on your head says!"

We reached the doorway; we were in the back of the police station. Apparently Fuller had wanted to have a talk with Colt away from everyone, but he'd left the door open and we could hear what he was saying.

"You know what the worst part is? You've gone and blabbed about her secret identity to everybody, including in earshot of some of the perps. You know how seriously some of the Capes take that? If she was part of the Protectorate that'd be a crime. You know why it's not a crime to out villains? Because nobody is that stupid! Villains can explode your eyeballs for a lot less than revealing their identities to their enemies."

"Yeah, but she... "

"What happens if someone kills her dad because you had to open your big yap? I told you not to say anything, and now..."

My lawyer cleared his throat.

Officer Fuller turned and stared at us. He forced himself to smile.

The rookie looked like he was going to soil himself. His face was white staring at me. He was sitting at a desk, while Officer Fuller stood over him.

"I'm sorry for what I did," I said. "I really thought you were criminals out to kidnap me or I'd have never done what I did."

Officer Fuller looked at me with one eyebrow lifted.

"If you ever need any help, feel free to call me," I said. "I'll leave my number."

"Oh!" I said. "And I'll try to not do it again. To cops."

I probably shouldn't have qualified it that way considering the way Dad facepalmed.

I was walking out of the police station with Dad and my lawyer. Bail had been waived by the judge, probably considering that no amount of bail would have been able to keep me in jail and because the circumstances of my case seemed to warrant it.

I had an impression that the judge didn't like the PRT any more than the District Attorney did. Both had seemed intent on getting me out of the police station before the PRT found out about me and took over the case.

"They'll investigate," my lawyer said. "They might find fingerprints from multiple gang members on the guns, and they might want to call you back in to testify against whoever they think actually did plant the guns. This was done in your civilian identity, without any powers so the judge decided that it didn't fall under the PRT's jurisdiction, especially since it didn't involve any powers."

I could see PRT vans pulling up, but it was already too late. I was out and the decisions had been made. They didn't have any influence on me and I was likely to walk for the whole thing.

Better yet, the BBPD had copies of all my bullying notes. They had copies of the videos of Emma assaulting me, of the e-mails, pictures of the bruises on my face.

Sophia had escalated things and so I no longer had any interest in holding back. I'd burn her legally if I could. If she chose to escalate even further, I was willing to do so in turn.

I simply had to remember than not everyone was an enemy and that I had to be sure the people I was intimidating deserved it.

I really did intend to try to stop intimidating the cops, but the nature of my powers were such that I couldn't avoid intimidating people, unless I intentionally hamstrung myself.

"I suspect that I'll be able to force a transfer to Acadia if you want it," my lawyer murmured. "They want to avoid publicity, even though that may be impossible by now. The fact that you are a cape is going to be impossible to hide now that an entire room filled with criminals heard Colt blab about it."

"They'll probably offer protection for me," Dad said.

He looked tired. This was all a confirmation of his worst nightmares; me jailed and being seen as a villain even if I wasn't. I'd seen the worry on his face the moment when he'd seen my powers when they manifested when I was twelve. He'd known how powerful my father had been and he'd known that if I was that powerful then the world would not be able to ignore me for good or evil.

"They'd better offer protection anyway," I said.

Even though he still wasn't the man he'd once been, I knew that deep down he loved me. He was the only person left in the entire world that loved me.

I rolled the piece of metal in my pocket around and around in my fingers. It wasn't as though the crazed remnant of my grandfather was a person at all, but it was all I had left of family other than my father.

Anyone harmed or even threatened to harm either one of them, and I'd do worse than melting faces and explosive eyeballs. I would be like a biblical apocalypse.

Hmm... I hadn't thought about a name really. Was Apocalypse too villainous?

I'd have to ask my grandfather when I got home. Talking to him now would be too frustrating, what with all the people around.

From the nearest van came Miss Militia flanked by several men in black suits. They looked like lawyers. Armsmaster stood behind them, looking irritated for some reason.

"What's going on here Pettifog?" the lead man asked.

He looked a little slimy, like I imagined a car salesman would look. Not that I could remember ever buying a new car.

"You're too late," my lawyer said. He was impeccably dressed and looked utterly confident. "She's been released without bail."

"This case is under PRT jurisdiction!" the lawyer sputtered. "The BBPD had no right to release our suspect."

I leaned forward and smiled at him. The expression in my eyes wasn't pleasant. It took the man a moment to understand, and then he took a step back.

Miss Militia stepped forward, her hand on her hip. I couldn't sense the weapon there; whatever she used wasn't actually metal. It was probably some kind of hard light or something even weirder and more esoteric. In any case I couldn't easily affect it. I'd have a better time stripping her arm down to the bone.

Apparently she had a little of whatever it was that my grandfather used to judge people, because her eyes hardened and the gun at her side grew larger.

Armsmaster was moving into position, trying to get behind me. As though anyone with that much metal armor was a danger to me. I'd just throw him into the bay. It was more than five miles away but it wouldn't be a problem. Someone would save him... probably.

"Here," my lawyer said.

He handed the lead lawyer a thick sheaf of papers.

"What is this?" the lawyer looked startled at being handed the papers. Apparently he was more used to being on the offensive.

"My client has decided to sue the PRT," my lawyer said.

"On what grounds?"

"Endangerment for one. Attempting to force her into the Wards by manufacturing a crime. Damaging and destroying property of sentimental value. Being complicit in revealing her identity as a Cape to the world. There are other charges, but those are the main ones."

Hardly any of them would stick, but my lawyer would use them as bargaining points for what I really wanted; out of the hellhole that was Winslow.

A little money wouldn't be terrible either.

1216

ShayneT

Mar 26, 2018

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