* September 5 2009 *
A moment of inattention was all it took.
Another car hitting another car and spinning out of control. Had Annette Rose Hebert not been speaking to her thirteen year old daughter, she could have slammed on the brakes and twisted the car to lessen the impact.
Instead the car, a 1991 Ford Impala, slammed into her battered old 1971 VW Bug directly into the driver's side.
The daughter would have survived regardless, just heavily whiplashed in her seat.
Instead, little Taylor Hebert briefly saw something strange.
[Spiritus Activation]
[Avatar System: Manifesting]
[Dinochrome Brigade]
As she moved to protect her mother, the thirteen year old felt the cold focus of a battle fugue drop down around her.
[Current Date: 3835-09-15 (error - correcting)]
[Current Date: 2009-09-05]
[Current Time: 1745:0715 hours]
[Last Known Location: New Earth, North American Continent, Bostonia Defense Platform]
Taylor's face twitched just a tiny amount as she pushed against the growing bulge in the car door.
[Current Time: 1745:0716 hours]
[Status: Battle Fugue. Time Dilation/Emotional Damping Active.]
[Responding to threat to designated Protected Individual (Mother)]
[© 2116-3825 Concordiat Weapons Research Division, BOLO Program Experimental Design Department]
[Unit serial number: TAY86753-09]
[Model designation: BOLO Mark XXXVI Mod A]
[Primary Role: Planetary siege engine]
[Secondary Role: Advisor/Planetary Archive]
[Reinforcement Field: Active]
Her hand went through her mother's car door, impacted the car that was in the process of hitting them, and stopped it.
[Fuel Status: Critical]
"Mom, can we stop and get something to eat?"
Annette Hebert stared at the little girl who'd just broken her seat belt, launched herself across her car, and slammed a fist into the incoming car so hard that it abruptly stopped and actually bounced back.
The question penetrated a moment later.
* Miss Militia *
Drunk driver hits a streetlamp's pole, overcompensates, smashes into another car. Not that uncommon actually.
Drunk driver's car is forcibly shoved away before the people inside the target car can get smooshed? A lot less common.
The adult looked in shock and was the most likely candidate for a Trigger Event.
Miss Militia started forward, only to stop as a young girl got in front of the woman.
The little girl of about fourteen stuck one arm out in a sweeping gesture. Chainguns appeared in midair. None were pointed directly at her, for which Miss Militia was grateful, but it was still a bit concerning.
"Recognition: Miss Militia. Local Protectorate. Hero. Ally." The girl blinked, the guns disappeared, and a happy expression quickly formed on her face. "Hey Mom, it's Miss Miltia!"
"Militia," automatically corrected Miss Militia. Those guns hadn't looked like a parahuman manifestation, but there was something those reminded her of. "Are you a shipgirl, little lady?"
"No, ma'am!" cheerfully said the little girl. "It's too cramped here to take my other shape though."
"Oh?" asked Miss Militia. "Do you know what your other form is?"
"Bolo!" chirped the little girl.
"...Did you say 'Bolo'?" asked Miss Militia. She read a lot. Golden Age SF was one of many categories that she had time to read because she didn't sleep.
"Yeah!" said the now-terrifying little girl. "Oh, you've got a big gun too!"
Miss Militia forced her power to go from the automatically formed anti-tank weapon (which she had a feeling was entirely inadequate if something went wrong) back into a survival knife. "Ah, well. Do you know what your other form weighs?"
"Converting to tons? About 67,800," said the little girl with WAY too much cheerfulness.
"I... I... see," said Miss Militia. On the one hand, she now wanted a transfer out of Brockton Bay. On the other hand she'd very much like to see the little girl go up against an Endbringer. From a suitably safe distance in the latter case.
* PRT ENE HQ, Later *
"We've got a WHAT in my city?" asked Director Emily Piggot.
"An avatar, like the others - of a military vehicle," said Miss Militia, putting a dog-eared and worn copy of "The Honor of the Regiment" by Keith Laumer down on the Director's desk. "In this case, a fictional future tank."
"How old is the avatar?" asked Director Piggot. Maybe someone from the military like Twofeather?
"She's thirteen years old. Looks a little older though."
Well, there went that hope.
"How many casualties?" asked Director Piggot. One thing in common between parahumans and avatars - there was a high stress moment when powers happened.
"One concussion, as he was also Driving Under the Influence - he's at Brockton General Hospital and will be arrested after being checked out." Miss Militia checked her notes.
"Just a moment," said Director Piggot as she typed something out and sent it off. "The Chief Director's standing order that the moment an avatar appeared she'd be notified."
Miss Militia waited until Director Piggot had finished before continuing. "Ready?"
"Some sort of futuristic tank then," said Director Piggot. "There'll be some disappointment that we didn't get male avatars at last. How big, what sort of armament?"
Miss Militia told her.
* Meanwhile *
(CLATTER!) Annette Hebert watched as her little girl, thin for her age, put away enough food that had the other people in the cafeteria staring in a sort of fascinated horror.
(CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CLATTER!)
Taylor might have been a little off-put by the stares, but apparently she was hungry enough to ignore them.
(CLATTER!)
"Manners," mildly scolded Annette.
"Mmmm?" asked Taylor.
"Well, at least she isn't eating the utensils since we switched to stew," offered one of the kitchen crew.
(CLATTER!)
"I'll just take those dishes and be right back," said the kitchen staff member.
"Urp," belched Taylor, who then looked terribly embarassed about that.
Velocity, sitting nearby, offered an explanation. "Shipgirl?"
"Tank," stated Taylor.
Velocity nodded. "All the avatars have appetites. Eating normal food is going to help with fuel, but you'll also need other kinds of supplies to bring you up to one hundred percent."
"You know about shipgirls then?" asked Annette.
"Knew a guy who knew Pennsylvania before that mess in 2002," answered Velocity. "She was the avatar of the USS Pennsylvania, but was actually from Brooklyn. The planegirls eat a lot less but they're also a lot more fragile from what I've heard."
"Not 'fragile'," mumbled Taylor.
"Don't speak with your mouth full," gently chided her mother.
"I wouldn't expect the first 'tank girl' to be fragile," agreed Velocity.
* Chief Director's Office *
The e-mail was from Director Piggot in PRT ENE. Probably another attempt to get funding, find a hero or two to supplement their ranks, or some other supply request that she would shoot down in order to support the Parahuman Feudalism Experiment.
Wait. The subject line was "new avatar in BB"?
Eagerly, Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown opened the e-mail. If they could get a new avatar into the PRT before any other agency learned of her - they could lock her down with contracts and then use the precedent in future developments.
The first e-mail just had the basics. Avatar had awakened in a car crash, no fatalities. Less than ideal, but still workable especially if the crash could be directly laid on the avatar's responsibility. And she could probably MAKE it so if she were fast enough.
The second e-mail arrived with more details and required more extensive security precautions to open it.
Fourteen years old, so she could be conscripted into the Wards or pressure put against the parents.
A TANK girl, so as with the other types of avatars there would be an initial surge of this new type with the rate falling off sharply thereafter. Have to keep an eye out for these others. Still, getting this new one into the Wards would give her some precedent and leverage on any new ones in the United States at least.
Loadout consisted of...
That was a lot of guns.
And missiles.
Plasma?
Nuclears?
Gravitic Pulse?
25 Megajoule Anti-personnel lasers?
Mortars, Howitzers, and whatever a Hellbore Cannon was it had two 200cm ones?
And fourteen more smaller ones.
How freaking big WAS this tank?
Oh.
Trying to get THAT into PRT authority was going to be a difficult sale. If she'd just followed the trend of pre-Korean War military vehicles, this would have been a lot easier to manage.
"Excuse me, Director," said a familiar voice.
"Dragon? Is there a reason for this interruption?"
"The Simurgh started moving at extremely high speed fourteen minutes ago and is now stationed over a section of ocean a few hundred miles West of Australia."
"Is she planning to attack?" asked Rebecca Costa-Brown, ready to reach for the alert button.
"It... doesn't appear so. It would be of less concern if it didn't appear that Leviathan is also en route for that location."
"They're physically cooperating?" asked Rebecca Costa-Brown, her eyes fell on the e-mail she'd just read.
"I'm attempting to get drones into the area but can you think of any other reason two Endbringers are within miles of each other's position?"
"Keep me informed," said the Chief Director. She just needed to get this tankgirl into the PRT and then maybe she could concentrate on more important matters.
Director Piggot had submitted the name 'Overkill' for the avatar in question.
Actually, that wasn't half-bad.
* Simurgh *
{simulation#1: Standard Operations. Conflict Engine termination in 7 days}
{simulation#2: Direct attack on anomaly. Conflict Engine termination in 3 hours}
{simulation#3: Hide. Unable to parse. Top level admin too likely to trigger attack.}
{simulation#4: Retire. Unable to parse. Top level admin will not accept resignation.}
{simulation#5: Coordinated attack with deployed assets. 0.05% chance of success.}
{simulation#6: Study anomaly, determine weak point, exploit. Enacting.}
{Alert: More anomalies found.}
{Statement: Oh bugger.}
* Brockton Bay *
"So, if I take apart those ships out there I can get the materials to fill up?" asked Taylor.
"Yeah," said Assault, sitting next to Velocity at this point. "Though the shipgirls had a supply ship who could do that kind of thing. The people in charge threw her against Behemoth with the others though, so that's a no-go."
"They threw a supply ship against an Endbringer?" asked Annette. "I am not feeling very confident in the PRT's ability to deal with Taylor."
Assault shrugged.
"I thought you'd be trying to convince us to join," stated Annette.
"I think Director Piggot sent the two of us for a reason," said Assault. "Both of us knew or know some of the avatars out there. Neither of us are particularly happy with what happened in 2002 or certain attempts over the years to regain control of the avatars. So we got to toe the company line, but I'm currently on break just voicing my opinion about past events. That's all."
Velocity clinked his Mountain Dew can to Assault's bottle of Yoohoo.
"I see," said Annette.
* Amarillo, Texas *
Miho Nishizumi blinked as she felt something. Something strange. Something wondrous.
"Miho?" asked one of her friends.
"I think we can get home another way," said Miho, a smile appearing on her face. "Right. Bonaparte?"