Current Energy: 21
Friday, January 7th, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
'You know if they bully you I'll just kill them right?' You send to your Master as the pair of you are lead down yet another non-descript hallway towards what Armsmaster described as the Wards ready room.
'Why would you think that would make me feel better?' Your Master asks, genuinely appalled at your statement. You don't mind really. You'd rather she be appalled at your shocking lack of interest in human life than be on the edge of a heart attack from the stress of interacting with her 'peers'. Even in your mind, you have to put quotation marks around the descriptor. Besides the fact that your Master is clearly the superior choice of host, there is an obvious sense of... disdain... that you get whenever you bother to think about teenagers besides your Master. If you were less self-aware - or perhaps if your name was actually Zaraki Kenpachi - you might have written it off as unease and left it at that. But you are not, and have therefore been forced to confront the fact that your only experience with teenagers is limited to your very brief time spent watching Victoria speak to your Master, and the comparatively larger library of second hand experience you have of your Master's time spent being bullied nearly to death.
So yes, you have a bias, and no you don't care to correct it presently. You have yet to be proven wrong really, you tell yourself, and so no correction is required.
What you say to your Master instead of any of that is simply;
'Do you feel better?'
'...a little. But please don't kill anyone. Or... attack anyone at all actually. Please.' Your Master asks slightly desperately.
'Only 'cus you asked.' You answer blithely, fully... mostly... meaning it. Obviously you wouldn't do anything unprovoked, but the list of offences you would consider being 'provoked' is both vast and varied, so you aren't holding your breath.
'Thanks Emmy. For... everything.' Taylor answers you, and you can't help but feel a mild thrill of happiness run through your core at her gentle tone.
"Do you have some means of communication at a distance?" Armsmaster asks calmly from in front of you, breaking up the touching moment between a girl and her Autonomous Murder Being.
"What's it to you? Eh?" You answer immediately, having long since decided you don't like Armsmaster enough to even pretend to respect him.
"You aren't speaking to or looking at each other, but are both clearly changing expressions in response to something. Neither of you is wearing an obvious communication device and so-" He explains calmly as he comes to a stop in front of a large steel door with a keypad next to it.
"We can sort of talk to each other in our heads." Taylor answers before you can tell the nosy prick where he can shove his super sleuthing, smoothing over your obvious dislike in a way that has become common during the very brief period of time you have been forced to endure Armsmasters presence.
"Is the transfer of information instantaneous or is it akin to an actual conversation?" He asks intently. Clearly mining your over impressionable Master for information.
'Stop antagonizing the second greatest Tinker in the world!' Your Master snips at you quickly, even while continuing her conversation.
"It's pretty much exactly like talking to each other normally. I can see through Emmy's eyes if I need to though." She explains, glancing fervently at the door in a manner that forces you to realize that she's only humouring the man in order to avoid going into the room full of other kids.
"That would be amazingly useful for reconnaissance. Having a disposable projection with any significant range that can map an area ahead of time would be an indispensable asset to the Wards." Armsmaster comments, clearly intending to make your Master feel important. Which is mostly successful, until he says the word 'disposable' at which point her facial expression goes completely flat and she merely waits for him to finish speaking before tilting her head towards the door you have been standing in front of.
"So can we go in now or...?" She says after Armsmaster stops to wait for her to respond to his comment. Outwardly she looks as neutral as it's possible to get - a defence mechanism you know she developed for dealing with school - but inwardly there is a seething mix of disappointment and annoyance radiating off of her. Enough so that it completely eclipses the feelings of trepidation she previously was feeling.
"...This panel warns the Wards inside that a visitor who does not have access to their secret identities will be entering the room. It is essentially a brief warning informing them to put their masks on." Armsmaster says, poking the panel which turns a bright red, and deftly evading his conversational faux pas by simply ignoring it.
Ten seconds pass in awkward silence as you wait, and then the red light turns green, and the door before you opens.
You aren't really sure what you were expecting - you were trying not to enter your Spirit form around Armsmaster for fear that he would Tinker up some way of actually detecting it, so you hadn't had the time to explore before coming. But you definitely weren't expecting a poorly cleaned recreation room with a fancy high tech computer in the corner.
Four heads turn as one to stare at you as the three of you file into the room, each one wearing what looks like a cheap domino mask that you have a hard time believing actually protects anyone's identity until you see the weird distortions the kids' faces leave behind as they move. So Tinkertech then.
"Dibs!" One boy says immediately, his frizzy red hair his most recognizable feature. Your head swivels towards him like a turret acquiring a firing solution, and your gaze bores into him in a way you're sure would scare everyone in the room if they were bothering to pay any attention to you.
"Clock no! Ew!" Another voice calls out, this one belonging to a small girl that quickly jogs up to the two of you and shoots a quick salute off to Armsmaster. You can feel a sense of mild confusion coming off of your Master at the action, but flickers of pink hair at the edge of your vision distract you enough that you don't really see anything immediately wrong with it.
"Just ignore him. He's an idiot. Hi! I'm Vista!" The girl says as she turns away from Armsmaster and towards your Master, shooting only a cursory glance your way.
"Sure?" Your Master says questioningly. Glancing around at the other two boys that have temporarily paused whatever they were doing to greet her.
"He's not that bad." A taller boy with brown hair says with a chuckle as he approaches, sticking a hand out in greeting.
"Gallant. I didn't know we were meeting anybody today..?" He says pleasantly, as your Master wordlessly shakes his hand in a daze.
"Nexus! I mean- I'm going by Nexus right now." Your Master answers after a moment of... something.
You begin switching your menacing gaze between the two boys, then briefly fail to look at both of them by crossing your eyes, followed by reverting to an alternating glare schedule.
"I'm sure you already recognize me but - Clockblocker. And the guy at the Console is Kid Win." The redhead says as he hops over the couch to greet your Master properly, gesturing towards the computer wear another teen waves lazily at you before returning to his apparent duties.
"Is it true you made your name up on the spot?" Your Master asks curiously, apparently too blindsided by the warm welcoming expressions on everyone's faces to maintain a proper level of wariness in this den of ill repute.
"Oh yeah, you have no idea how much shit I caught for-" The red head begins to explain boisterously, only to be cut off by Armsmaster.
"This is Nexus, currently an independent. She'll be with us for a little while as we repair the power testing room." Armsmaster explains, eliciting an eye roll from Clockblocker but acknowledging nods from everyone else.
Once he is sure everyone has understood whatever hidden meaning he intended to convey, Armsmaster leaves the room, ostensibly to allow the teenagers to mingle amongst themselves.
Which is about when they all turn towards you, as if only just now realizing you were there.
"You're a bit old to join the Wards dude." Clockblocker jokes.
"He's my power." "I'm her power." You and Taylor say at once, the explanation apparently having come from the two of you so frequently that you have both grown quite tired with the long version of the explanation. To your surprise, while Vista and Clockblocker appear surprised by this, Gallant does not, a point that he addresses when he turns to the other two and swiftly begins to explain;
"Vicky told me about it. He's basically a sentient projection. Hi, by the way." He adds, greeting you almost as if as an afterthought. You tilt your head towards him in greeting, but don't let up in your stare.
"So like.. you're power is having a fully grown man follow you around? Like... all the time?" Clockblocker asks, walking around you as if you are a particularly interesting statue of some sort.
"Your name is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy ain't it?" You ask rhetorically, panning your head to maintain your gaze on the boy as he moves about. He stops moving to stare dumbfounded at you as you speak though, as if not expecting you to speak.
"He's kind of got you their Clock." Vista snickers, before looking back and forth between you and your Master.
"So he controls gravity or something? We heard about that thing earlier this week but we weren't briefed on it." She asks your Master curiously as everyone moves further into the room to settle on preferred seats, leaving your Master to awkwardly plop down onto the couch. You notice that despite acknowledging your presence and supposed sentience, the teens have mostly chosen to speak to your Master instead of directly to you, a fact that you are apathetic too but that seems to bother your Master slightly.
"Not really no." She answers maybe a touch standoffishly, not actually bothering to explain Spiritual Pressure or even use the words 'Spiritual Pressure' to explain herself because it made her sound like 'that crazy guy from Chicago'.
You aren't sure of the specifics there but you choose to take your Master at face value on the topic.
Eventually, however, the conversation turns away from such prickly topics as powers and your dubious personhood, and begins to delve into much more normal teenage fair. Clothes, television shows and movies being chief among them. You kind of just check out at that point, only really paying enough attention to keep your glare up and make sure you are standing menacingly behind your Master at all times. You're bored out of your mind, but your Master hasn't had this type of benign social interaction in so long that you can almost literally see her pent up stress unwinding as time passes. You had assumed something like this would have happened while she was talking to Victoria, but apparently the vast majority of that talk had been 'work' related in your own Master's words.
By the end of the afternoon, you are roof hopping back towards the park for your Master to change in, and she has obtained a decent impression of her fellow super-powered teenagers.
Which is all fine and good, except that by the time you reach the Hebert household late in the evening, Daniel Hebert's car is not in the driveway, and there is a small box sitting on the doorstep. You hover in your Spirit Form just behind your Master's shoulder as she approaches, cautiously scanning the area for any obvious problems or enemies, but are unfortunately limited by your need to stay near to her. You could get a much better picture of things if you could run around a bit, but a niggling feeling in the back of your mind tells you that she is not yet strong enough to evade any and all threats - and that you should be very mindful of that fact at this moment.
'What's in it?' You ask cautiously.
'I don't...' She begins to answer then freezes with the lid half off the box as she lifts it up, staring at it's contents. Inside is a single human finger, with a golden band resting on it.
'Is this supposed to mean something or...?' You query, double checking to make sure you aren't missing some obvious social custom.
'That's... Dad's wedding band. He never takes it off.' Taylor answers you numbly, digging around in the box for a moment and then pulling out a slip of paper with an address and a time on it.
To your Master's credit, she manages to unlock the door and enter the house before the tears begin to flow. Also to your Master's credit, she doesn't spend more than a minute crying. Like a faucet being abruptly closed, she merely takes a deep breath, puts the box in the kitchens freezer, and then immediately begins to change into her newly minted costume in the middle of the front entryway.
'We gonna go rescue the idiot?' You ask, mostly rhetorically.
'Among other things' Your Master replies frigidly.