Current Energy: 11
Current Training: Primordial Rune (Warrior) B (9/10)
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
Your morning goes almost exactly as usual. Your Master awakens at the crack of 'probably too early' to train, you spend some time dealing with Nemesis hanging off of you until such a time as she is needed by your Master for meditation, and now, you find yourself, well... bored.
This comes as just as much of a surprise to you as it does your Master, who notices you walking around the garage, randomly examining objects that you are perfectly aware of already, and promptly asks you if you are sick.
"Of course not. I cannot get sick." You answer, confident that you are immune to the trifling ills of the modern world.
Then you pause. Can you get sick? With a cold, probably not, no. Not as this emulation... but could past versions of you have done so? Most of them were superhuman themselves, but Oscar hadn't been. Hm. You decide that you simply won't emulate anything that can become ill, and then promptly cleanse the uncomfortable thought from your mind, returning to poking an engine on Trainwreck's half of the garage with one finger, then pulling it away when it begins to rumble at your touch.
"Emmy? Are you... bored?" Taylor asks you eventually, pausing in the middle of her meditation to crack one eye open to stare at you. You feel oddly petulant about this. Certainly, any normal person would be bored of your routine, and more importantly, of staring at your Master do nothing visible but breath for two and a half hours.
But you aren't a normal person! You barely even count as a person!
"I'm going to patrol the perimeter!" You declare loudly, and abruptly, facing away from your Master and manifesting your armor about yourself. You aren't blushing in embarrassment, because that would be an admittance that you're wrong. Which would be admitting you are bored and just going to wander the castle grounds for fun.
Which is wrong. You would never leave your Master defenceless while she meditates. But it's obvious that there are no threats here so you will have to go search elsewhere.
Yes. Perfect logic.
"Here. Get me breakfast while your out?" Taylor asks, in a tone somewhere between unsure and amused at you as she cleaves a small gap in the air and sends it darting forward to slide beneath your shirt.
She then goes temporarily cross eyed, and the gap slides around to your back.
"...I... do not think I should get that far away from you." You say after a second to consider the request.
"It's fine. I mean, it's not fine. But I mean -" Your Master pauses, takes a deep breath, and removes both hands from Nemesis before continuing.
"You know, you don't really do anything but follow me around and fight. I think... you should have a hobby? Maybe uh... some of your own friends?" She offers carefully, and you can sense her latent feelings of anxiety and mild distress spiking at the idea of you actually leaving for any length of time. You also feel a bone deep sense of determination that you are all too familiar with in your Master. You will not sway her on this point.
"...I don't have any money?" You try weakly.
"I left my wallet in our room. My room! I meant my room!" She states with an iron tone, glancing at you and then turning bright red before closing her eyes again, and summarily pretending you no longer exist.
And that is how you found yourself - fully armored because you were still convinced that this was a very long distance patrol - several blocks away, in a breakfast place. It was literally the first eatery you found that was open, and in your personal opinion it was still entirely too far away from the Heap for you to be comfortable. Your connection to your Master was as strong as ever. It wasn't as though you couldn't simply ask her to bring you back at a moments notice - but still, it felt... wrong to be this far away from her.
"Here you go! Four bagels, toasted, garlic cream cheese, and a single green tea!" The woman who took your order called out loudly, smiling brightly and fluttering her eye lashes at you.
"Thank you. I believe you forgot to charge me though." You say, carefully counting out the paper bills and coins into one hand, and proffering them to her.
"Oh, I couldn't. You Hero's have just been doing such a good job recently!" She says happily. You notice that, off to one side, a line is beginning to form of people who are waiting to place their own orders, and that said people are glaring in this general direction for some reason.
"Be that as it may, it is uncouth to abuse such trust. Please. I insist." You try again, once more proffering the handful of cash.
"I couldn't! But I mean, if you really want to make it up to me..." She trails off suggestively.
And then is summarily interrupted by a voice from the line.
"Lady, just take him out back and get it the hell over with! My Dad is so god damn annoying when he hasn't had his coffee yet!"
You pause, blink once, and tilt your head the the side as the employee turns bright red, hands you your Masters breakfast, and quickly darts to the register, still having not taken your money. You sigh at this, and then take a place at the back of the line in order to remedy the situation. After everyone else has ordered, of course. Coincidentally you find yourself standing in front of the girl who was previously yelling at the poor employee. You consider chiding her for her rudeness, but then decide that it is balanced by the girls neglect of her duties, and leave it at that.
At least, until she turns around to stare at you.
"So you're like, Nexus' imaginary boyfriend or whatever?" She asks out of the blue, causing you to once again blink and tilt your head downward to examine her in more detail. She is dark skinned, and dressed entirely too lightly for the weather, wearing shorts, something that you suppose could loosely be called 'hose' if one overlooked all the obvious holes in the fabric, and a too small t-shirt under the only piece of protective clothing she appears to be wearing - a light denim jacket. Her hair is black and comes down past her ears, with a single bright pink streak in the front of it. You don't actually see anything that out of the ordinary with this. Your current emulation has seen people with natural hair ranging from 'bright blue' to 'literally on fire' and so it doesn't scream 'out of place' to you the way it otherwise might.
Well, with one caveat anyway. In your experience, 'strange hair' is usually an indicator of important, if not always.
"No. I am her power. I am Multiversal Emulator. My Master and her friends call me Emmy." You explain patiently, if slightly uncomfortably. When was the last time you had to actually explain anything to anyone? Even the time you spend in your Masters school is mostly just spent watching for any strange occurrences, intervening, and then leaving.
"...So her power is having a boyfriend?" The girl repeats blithely, ignoring basically everything else you just said.
"...No. This 'me' is married, actually." You state, willing yourself to quell the slowly rising irritation you feel at the accusation of unfaithfulness.
"Kinky. I'm Aisha. Do you have a brother? Can powers have brothers? Is that a thing?" The girl - Aisha - asks, shuffling back a step as the line moves forward without actually looking behind her.
"Not... really. Why? Do you want powers of your own?" You ask curiously, while simultaneously mentally speaking to your Master.
'Master, I have your breakfast, but am otherwise engaged. Could you widen the gap?'
'Sure. Are you... having fun?' She asks hesitantly.
"I mean, if you're offering? Totally. Mostly I just wanted a hot dude to make out with though." She answers with a shrug and a saucy wink. You blink at her.
'...I do not know.' You answer honestly.
'What are you doing if you don't know?' Your Master asks you incredulously.
'I believe I am being propositioned by a pre-teen.' You answer without thinking. There is a singular moment of silence, before your Masters gap slides out of your shirt and then slides over your hand, consuming her breakfast and then sliding back up along your arm to its original position. Simultaneously, you feel your Master look through your eyes at the current situation.
'What the hell? Tell her no! She's too young! No wait, you're too young!' Your Master blurts out. You roll your eyes.
"Apologies. I am taken, and I don't actually have a brother. You are welcome to pursue any of my team members however. They are either within your age range, or of dubious age to begin with. Mostly." You state apologetically.
"Wow you don't even twitch huh? Not gonna lecture me about being too young?" She challenges you.
'Emmy, who the hell is this girl and why are you talking to her?' Your Master asks, now obviously no longer meditating she is so involved in your current conversation.
'She is in front of me in line.' You explain politely, then aloud;
"I am currently emulating a knight from before the birth of Christianity. In my time you would either have multiple children by now, or be dead of disease. I fought in my first war younger than you are currently." You state blandly. The girl blanches at that and jerks backwards in an exaggerated motion that causes her to bump into the person behind her, a man who quickly turns around to yell at her before you catch his eye and shake your head at him. He turns right back around as though nothing had happened, and Aisha looks at you suspiciously before speaking again.
"What the hell! That is so fucked up. Tell me all about it." She blurts out excitedly, causing you to blink at her in surprise.
Much to your own surprise, you spend the better part of your morning espousing the virtues of various types of murder implement on the battlefield, along with some stories of your more entertaining adventures. Aisha is... flighty... and prone to sexual innuendo for no obvious reason, despite the fact that you have a tendency to completely ignore it whenever she attempts it, but otherwise is a fairly good audience. She demonstrates clear disbelief at some of the feats you claim ancient humans could have somehow managed, at which point you are forced to explain that in another universe, humans were basically all superhuman Brutes at one point, but honestly, just talking about your (borrowed) self is oddly nice.
Even if your Master spends a vast majority of the conversation interjecting with comments to the effect of 'where are her parents' and 'what is she wearing'.
Also, for some reason, a number of people insist on sneakily taking pictures of the two of you as you sit at a nearby table chatting.
Eventually, you note the time and beg leave, telling Aisha she is welcome to visit the Heap for martial arts lessons, before allowing your Master to pull you through a Gap home.
You spend the latter portion of your morning - the time shortly before your Master is to go to school - teaching her more Runecraft. The lessons aren't particularly complex. Runes, at their core, are just symbols. They connect to the primordial underpinnings of reality itself yes, and function as levers to manipulate those underpinnings in just about any way the user can imagine, but they require a great deal of skill and practice in order to do so. What few spells you can recall and use as a Saber are fairly simple in application - simple single rune spells that improve your speed, or magic resistance.
Or set a bunch of things on fire.
But some of what you can teach is quite complicated.
Hence, your morning teaching session devolves largely into a review of the different runes and their meanings, followed by a lengthy explanation of why the Ath nGabla is absolutely a spell of last resort that your Master should never, ever use, unless she is absolutely willing to kill her target, and thinks she is actually capable of doing so. You usually wouldn't consider this lecture required, but given the first thing she asked when presented with the spell was 'would it work on an Endbringer' you felt it better to delve into it now rather than later.
Similarly, despite the fact that the school appears to have largely calmed down in the last few weeks, with something resembling 'order' having been instated by the so called 'Panda Gang', things that day while your Master is in class are just... strange.
And by 'strange' you mean, everything was fine up until you chose to stand behind your Master during lunch like you always do, watchful as ever, at which point the entire lunch room became completely silent. Then exploded into muttered conversation and gossip, with many looks sent your way but boys and girls alike.
The latter half of the day consisted of an almost ludicrous number of instances of young girls getting into fist fights for some reason, something that only seemed to get worse when you started intervening. Eventually, your Master advised you to just stop appearing, and miraculously, somehow not stopping the fighting caused it to cease all on it's own by the end of the day. Even more suspiciously, you don't think even one of those girls ended up going to a teacher or the principal to report the attacks. You would have found the temporary bout of school wide insanity fascinating if it was not somehow your fault.
Even if you couldn't figure out how exactly.
When the school day ends, your Master shoots you a fond look, makes that damnable hand gesture at you, which she knows, at this point, that you don't understand or like, and then opens a Gap to the PRT headquarters.
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
"I'm sorry Ma'am but you need authorization from the Director to enter this area."
"So can you call the Director?"
"The Director is currently in a meeting."
"Great. So I'll get the Director."
"As an independent, you do not have the right to interrupt the Directors meetings for your own convenience."
You stare as this conversation continues, watching with increasing confusion and awe as this completely nameless PRT soldier verbally spars with your Master. You understand on a personal level that your Master would never abuse her power to force her way through this situation, but the fact that other people have figured that out is somewhat new to you. Case and point.
"He's really taking his life into his own hands there huh?" Clockblocker asks you, leaning against the opposite wall nearest you and waving lazily towards where your Master is daintily stomping her foot on the ground. You say 'daintily' because the floor suffers no damage from the action.
"Taylor would never harm someone just doing their job." You reply stonily, even though the boy basically just said what you were already thinking.
"Yeah, I know that, and you know that, but does he know that?" Clockblocker asks rhetorically.
"...Why would he do this if he didn't? Is there some reason for this? The PRT has typically been quite accommodating of my Master." You ask curiously. You can't see Clockblockers facial expression behind his mask, but his body language telegraphs 'flinch' just as well as anything else.
"Uh, yeah. Turns out Armsmaster had his helmet cam on for most of the fight, and the footage has been getting around. I think he was trying to be... uh... helpful?" Clockblocker states lamely.
"...He considers showing the people here in excruciating detail how she could destroy them on masse... helpful?" You ask incredulously.
"NNnooooo? I think he's trying to raise your girls rep or something. He seemed kind of scandalized that the out of towners had no idea who she was." He replies with a shrug.
"That-" You start, about to explain how telling people that the monster is on their side doesn't typically make them forget it's a monster, but pause, finding that referring to your Master as a 'Monster' irks you in an entirely different way.
"Yeah. Sorry man. But you know. Ain't all bad. Red Headed Bitch basically blue screened when we watched it. Hilarious." Clockblocker continues smugly.
"...Who?" You ask, glancing at your still arguing Master and opting to change the topic. She appears to now be asking the trooper to call someone else in his chain of command to request permission for you to enter the sick ward that Mouse Protector and Dinah are in.
"Uh, your Master's mortal enemy? PR says we can't call her what she was going by before, and all the codenames she comes up with are kind of stupid, so Vista calls her a bunch of variations on 'Bitch'. She likes Wicked Bitch of the West. Kid has been calling her the One True Bitch, Gallant and Aegis have been staying out of it, but they don't tell us to stop so..." Clockblocker explains, then shakes himself as if just remembering something.
"Look I know she's busy being the Queen of Murdertown and all that, but do you think you could remind her to uh... I mean I know I asked before but..." Clockblocker trails off. You recall - briefly - that he had something he wanted to ask your Master that Oliver was opposed to for some reason.
"I shall remind her." You state, stepping forward just as the PRT trooper receives what you assume to be a particularly loud reprimand in his ear piece, because he flinches and steps aside suddenly, waving your Master past.
"Thanks! I'll just uh, stay out here. Guarding the door and all that." He states with a jaunty but awkward wave as you follow your Master into the room beyond the sealed metal door.
The room is honestly not particularly complex looking. It consists entirely of a series of hospital beds with accompanying medical equipment next to them, all of the set up lining a particularly large room you suspect is actually intended for announcements and press meetings. It has, however, been cleared of anything not explicitly for medical use, although a large number of the beds here are empty - most of those captured by Noelle having long since been cleared and left. Mouse Protector has stayed because she is friends with Miss Militia, but you aren't really sure why Dinah chose to stay behind. Or why her Parents let her.
You and your Master quickly make your way past a trooper moving some of the equipment present out of the room, where you eventually find to two people chatting animatedly with each other from adjacent beds. One an adult and one a child, recognizable as Dinah and Mouse Protector - although they are wearing two generic white masks instead of anything stylized for each of them.
"So then I told him I don't date guys with hernias, and kicked him in the balls." Mouse is saying animatedly as you approach while Dinah giggles nearby.
"Isn't she too young for-" Your Master asks as she approaches, only to be cut off when both women speak at once.
""It's never too early to learn."" They say to her at once, turning as one to face your Master, who's eyebrows shoot up in surprise.
"...How-" Your Master starts to ask again.
"Mini Protector here gave it even odds you'd show up today." Mouse Protector offers by way of explanations.
"...And you used that time to prepare a joke about kicking people in the crotch?" She asks incredulously.
"Gotta put the fear in the boys before they can get anything into you." Mouse answers. Dinah immediately begins to make wretching noises.
"Anyway!" Your Master yelps, changing the subject, no doubt while suddenly remembering exactly what kind of person Mouse Protector is.
"I came to see how you were doing. If you need healing maybe?" She offers, mostly to Dinah who she has turned to face. The offer was... probably also for Mouse Protector, but as your Master has long since learned, directly acknowledging the mouse tends to have consequences.
"Um. Would you believe me if I said that was actually my best case scenario?" The younger girl asks shyly. Your Master stares agape at her, and even Mouse Protector twitches slightly, turning in her bed to stare along with her.
"Di-" Your Master starts to say then pauses when Mouse cuts her off, gesturing at her mask.
"Mini" She notes aloud.
"...Mini Protector," Your Master says instead, her face taking on an expression not dissimilar to having sucked on a lemon, "What exactly were you expecting to happen?"
"I don't want to talk about it." She replies immediately, shrinking in on herself.
You consider for a moment, what could possibly be worse than being eaten alive by a giant monster.
The potential answers do not fill you with confidence.
"...What about you Mouse? Are you okay? I don't know what it was like inside Echidna but-" Taylor asks, swivelling to face the older woman.
"I'm fine." She answers bluntly, succinctly, and possibly most importantly not very convincingly.
"We aren't dating. The 'Fake Fine' doesn't work on me." Taylor states flatly.
"It doesn't matter. I'm out, Ravioli has wandered off to do whatever she does in between prison breakouts, and I - honestly I think I'm gonna take a vacation." Mouse finally acquiesces, when your Master's flat expression doesn't change. You wouldn't say Mouse Protector 'deflates' because the woman has built so much of her identity around being 'peppy' that it almost can't be taken away from her, but she definitely tones it back slightly.
"I hear there's this Cape who owns a huge castle full of burly men in this city. She might offer to let you have a room. While you're on vacation, I mean." Taylor offers jokingly.
"Oh? What do you get out of it? This Mouse runs solo you know. When I say 'vacation' I don't mean 'join your team and live in your basement' I mean, 'sunbathe on the roof'." Mouse prods suspiciously. Your Master lifts her hands into the air innocently.
"I just wanted to offer. Having you in the house for a while was... nice." Taylor admits eventually, grimacing as Mouse's expressions shifts from suspicious to 'shit eating grin'.
"Aw, does wittle Taylor need an adult woman in her life to show her the ropes? Did you never get the 'kick em in the balls' talk? That's adorable!" Mouse squeals, leaning forward and making grabby hands at your Master without actually getting out of her bed.
"Come on, give momma a hug!" she teases.
"You aren't-"
"Thirty-eight percent odds she could be." Dinah offers.
This brings both Mouse Protector and your Master pause, as they both turn to stare at her again.
"...I was joking?" She offers after a few seconds of tense silence. Mouse Protector relaxes. Your Master does not. You get the distinct impression that Dinah was not, in fact, joking. Even if that does make for a good excuse if she's caught in public using her powers.
"I'm gonna need a list or something..." she mumbles in annoyance, then louder; "So, are you going to join the Wards D-Mini? Or is that still dangerous?" Your Master asks curiously.
"Maybe. My parents want to ask me some 'questions'." She answers, somewhat bitterly. You suppose that's fair though. At least they're taking the situation seriously now. It might be a bit late to accept that their daughter is a parahuman, given all that's happened and Dinah's prior warnings - but it's a start.
Not that something like that has ever stopped a child from being mad that they aren't allowed to make their own decisions.
"Do you want another tag? Just in case?" Your Master offers, quickly pulling one from a pouch at her waist and proffering it to the smaller girl, who takes it happily.
"Thanks. Um. I know the last one got used kind of wrong, but I promise not to get murdered and leave my corpse in your castle!" She blurts out.
Your Master and Mouse Protector take a moment to stare at her again.
"Sorry." She says when she realizes what they are doing, blushing slightly.
The conversation wraps up quickly after that, with Mouse Protector promising to make her way to the Heap after she has a quick talk with Miss Militia about something, after which you and your Master - head home.